Bioenergy a Boon for California, If It Works

East Bay Express
Nate Seltenrich — Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 4:42 PM

Waste equals food. At least that’s what we were taught in ecology class. In the eyes of California’s Bioenergy Interagency Working Group, organic waste equals something a bit more 21st-century: low-carbon biofuels, biogas, and renewable electricity. In its 2012 Bioenergy Action Plan, released on Wednesday, the working group lays out a plan to convert more of the state’s considerable wood, forest, agricultural, food, yard, and animal wastes directly into energy through anaerobic digestion, biomass burning, landfill gas capture, and other technologies.

The plan, developed by representatives the California Natural Resources Group, the Department of Food and Agriculture, Cal EPA, the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, and others, lauds bioenergy in all its forms as a win-win-win. Though of course, it’s not that simple.

First, the logic goes, we can divert organic waste from the landfill (by weight, it represents nearly 60 percent of the material trashed each year in California) and move the state toward its new goal of recycling, composting, or source-reducing 75 percent of its solid waste by 2020. Second, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from landfills and farms caused by decaying organic matter by capturing it and converting it to usable energy. And third, we can increase production of all-important baseload (that is, not intermittent like solar and wind) renewable electricity in the state, continue to wean our buildings and vehicles off fossil fuels, and march ever toward — or beyond — California’s 30-percent-by-2020 Renewable Portfolio Standard.

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