“More than trees have withered in California’s sun. The state’s biomass energy plants are folding in rapid succession, unable to compete with heavily subsidized solar farms, many of which have sprouted up amid the fields and orchards of the San Joaquin Valley,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Six biomass plants have closed in two years. “The closures have forced the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to consider allowing more agricultural waste to be burned in open piles, which produces particulate matter and ozone-forming compounds associated with cardiovascular illnesses.” Four of the five U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest levels of particulates in the air are in the Valley.
The operator of a tree-removal company says costs to growers will triple with the loss of a buyer for the downed timber. It could be years before biomass technology becomes more cost-competitive. The industry had 60 plants generating electricity in California in the 1980s. It shrank by a third when the power grid was deregulated. “Now down to 25 plants with a capacity of 611 megawatts, the biomass industry is taking its case to Sacramento, bolstered by Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest drought-related emergency proclamation. It touts biomass energy generation as a solution to culling dead trees that pose a wildfire threat in the Sierra Nevada.” The Times story quotes an almond grower who is expanding the solar array on six acres of his farm in Los Banos, Calif., who says he gets a subsidy of 15 cents per kilowatt hour on the one-megawatt facility.