U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-MO-8, writes in the St. Louis Post Dispatch that EPA’s move to treat greenhouse gas emissions from biomass energy the same as fossil fuels will cost jobs. The full letter is below:
EPA’s new rule on woody biomass will cost jobs
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has strayed from its core mission in favor of an aggressive agenda that often circumvents Congress, treats health as a means rather than an end and increasingly costs jobs in a tough economy.
The latest EPA overreach has Southern Missouri schools, cities and small businesses backing off plans to convert coal-fired boilers to biomass, at a 90 percent savings in emissions. A new EPA rule will not recognize woody biomass — the waste wood cleared from our plentiful forests as part of good land management or through the forest products industry — as a renewable fuel.
The consequences could be severe for the 100-job, $120 million construction of the Perryville Renewable Energy Center, a 32-megawatt project to power 23,000 homes with clean energy. Ironically, without the new plant, which is moving forward despite the ruling, these 23,000 homes would revert to coal, and a $10 million market for our state’s forestry industry would disappear.
The EPA’s twin killing would stop the development of low-emission domestic energy production in rural America and encourage the waste of forest by-products. The EPA is uninterested in innovation and practical energy solutions, unless it is windmills, solar panels or giant kites to harness high-altitude winds.
Twenty years ago, legislators could count on an earnest, if eager, regulator at the EPA. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were landmark articles of legislation with apolitical intentions and limited consequences for American workers. Today, the EPA is using its authority to further a political agenda, to help liberal politicians satisfy special interests and lay the groundwork for sweeping policy change that otherwise would not survive a single administration.
The EPA has an important mandate at a time when technological developments promise a transition to cleaner energy and manufacturing with minimal costs. But a “green revolution” can be accomplished only with the cooperation of American businesses, not by overwhelming them.
U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson • R-Cape Girardeau
Tags: biomass
