Isra-Mart srl:EPA Gives Break to Biomass Over Climate

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Under pressure from some members of Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is easing up on regulating global warming pollution from facilities that burn biomass for energy.

The agency said Wednesday it needs more time to figure out whether biomass — including farm waste, sawmill scraps and forest thinnings — is really a green fuel.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson notified members of Congress who had complained that new rules regulating industrial carbon dioxide emissions would make it hard to develop new biomass energy plants they see as job creators and part of a national green energy strategy.

“I hope you will see the steps described in this letter as following through on my prior commitment to exercise whatever discretion the Clean Air Act affords to avoid discouraging the use of renewable, domestically produced fuel in power plants and factories,” she wrote.

The EPA said it would issue a new rule July 1 to exclude biomass from regulations requiring large polluters to reduce their heat-trapping pollution for three years. That regulation went into effect earlier this month.

More than two-dozen members of Congress had asked the agency late last year to reconsider its position on biomass because it can be carbon neutral if emissions are counted as something that would be released anyway when wood rots.

With Republicans in the House gearing up to take on the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations, the biomass decision could sway some votes for legislation aimed at delaying or blocking global warming efforts.

“The EPA was precariously close to enforcing new job-killing regulations, and with the urging of a bipartisan congressional effort, made the right decision in reversing course,” Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said in a statement. “I will continue to watch the EPA carefully to ensure that the new economic opportunities that woody biomass offers for rural Oregon has the opportunity to move forward.”