EPA's science advisers have unveiled long-awaited draft advice on how the agency should estimate carbon dioxide emissions from biomass power, though it is not clear whether the advice conflicts with Trump EPA guidance generally declaring such electricity to be carbon neutral. The Science Advisory Board's (SAB) Aug. 29 draft report on biomass C02 renews the board's long-standing call for EPA to provide a "policy context" for how it will assess biomass C02 emissions, arguing the choice of policy is critical both in regard to the time frame for assessing emissions and forest regrowth, as well as the policy's effects on biomass demand. The draft report is available on lnsideEPA.com. (Doc. ID: 214782) But the Trump administration is crafting very narrow greenhouse gas regulations for power plants and other stationary sources, with its recently proposed GHG rule for existing plants far less stringent than the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) it would replace. EPA's "Affordable Clean Energy" (ACE) rule does not base its stringency on the use of biomass, though it does float the possibility that plants could co-fire with biomass to comply. SAB's guidance likely would also apply to any Clean Air Act permits that biomass power plants must obtain, given court rulings that "major" sources of emissions must conduct a technology review to limit their GHGs.
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