North Carolina mulls trees as renewable resource

N.C. regulators decided in December that burning automobile tires to produce power qualifies as a biomass energy. Now they are considering whether burning trees also qualifies.

“You’ve given us something to grapple with,” ToNola Brown-Bland, a member of the N.C. Utilities Commission, said last week after a day and a half of contentious hearings on the issue. She asked lawyers for the power industry, environmental groups and others to submit proposed orders by the end of August.

At issue is Duke Energy Carolinas’ plan to burn wood chips from trees, co-firing them with coal or burning them alone, to produce power from a renewable biomass resource. A 2007 state law requires utilities to start using renewable fuel, ramping that up to 12.5% of all the power they sell by 2021. And it counts wood waste as a renewable source.

Duke contends the law’s list of renewable fuels is intended to show the kinds of sources that would qualify, but not every fuel. By listing wood waste, the law indicates wood in general is an acceptable source, Duke says. The utility also says it won’t be able to meet the state’s requirements if it has to rely only on wood waste. Duke plans to convert several of its aging coal plants to wood power.

At last week’s hearings, Duke attorney Alex Castle noted the commission ruled last year that the rubber content in used tires qualifies as a biomass fuel. Neither tires nor rubber are listed in the law as biomass resources. He cited two other decisions by the commission that gave open-ended readings to the law.

The commission’s public staff, Progress Energy Carolinas and North Carolina’s municipal power agencies agree with Duke’s position.

The Southern Environment Law Center, the Environmental Defense Fund and pulp and paper company MeadWestvaco are among those who disagree — strenuously. They contend the law limits wood burning to wood waste. Allowing utilities to harvest trees for power production would threaten over-cutting of the state’s forests, they argue. And it would drive up prices for commercial wood products by creating a huge competitor for those resources that could pay high prices for the wood and recover those costs through rate hikes.

Read the full story in the Charlotte Business Journal.