Mulch Producers Await Final BCAP Rule From Feds

By P.J. Heller

With the federal government expected to publish its final rule for the Biomass Crop Assistance Program within weeks, mulch producers are nervously watching to see if the grave concerns they have raised have been addressed.

“We’re hopeful,” said Bob LaGasse, executive director of the Mulch and Soil Council.

At issue is a provision inserted into the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) that provides financial subsidies for forest products — primarily those that produce mulch, wood composites, paper, pulp and packaging — that can be burned to create energy in biomass plants. The initial intent of BCAP, overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was to encourage and subsidize the growing of biomass crops.

As of Aug. 9, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency reported it had spent more than $242 million subsidizing BCAP in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Of that amount, more than $190 million went to non-federal woody resources, with another $12.4 million going to federal woody resources, the agency said.

Making forest products eligible for the government subsidies, LaGasse and others say, created an uneven playing field with suppliers opting for the higher government payments rather than selling to mulch producers and others. The result, they argued, resulted in shortages of materials, higher prices and threatened job losses and business closures.

LaGasse noted that the addition of forest products into BCAP was done without public hearings or public comment.

“It slipped in the back door unnoticed,” he said.

The Mulch and Soil Council, along with other groups affected by the measure, responded with a furious letter writing campaign to government officials during a public comment period that ended in April. USDA reported it had received more than 24,000 comments.

“The whole concept of BCAP was originally a half decent idea,” LaGasse said. “Where it went bad was when it got applied to forest byproducts.

“The USDA has acknowledged it was not their intent to disturb the existing marketplace,” he said. “They are aware of the tremendous concerns and they have pledged every effort not to interfere with the marketplace. Whether or not they do that remains to be seen.”

LaGasse said a solution to the issue would be for USDA to go back to its original plan to provide growers with financial subsidies to raise new biomass crops on unproductive agricultural lands.

“The only part about forestry that we support at this point would be any crop subsidies for the production of plantation trees that are specifically grown and harvested for biomass,” he said.

Adding to the controversy over using forest wood for energy was a June report by the Manomet Center for Conservation and Sciences in Massachusetts that found such fuel was not immediately carbon-neutral as had been widely assumed.

Rather, the report said, biomass harvested from actively managed, natural forests in the state results in greater greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than using fossil fuels. It also found that it could take decades for the resulting “carbon debt” to be paid off through the regrowth of those harvested trees.

Once the carbon debt is paid off, “biomass begins yielding carbon dividends in the form of atmospheric greenhouse gas levels that are lower than would have occurred from the use of fossil fuels to produce the same amount of energy,” it noted.

“While burning wood does emit more GHGs initially than fossil fuels, these emissions are removed from the atmosphere as harvested forests re-grow,” the organization said in a follow-up statement. “. . .The timing and magnitude of the recovery is a function of forest productivity, land management choices, and technology and fuel characteristics.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, is considering whether to require biomass plants to obtain greenhouse gas emission permits. Those plants are currently exempt from the requirement and have been considered carbon neutral.

Citing the Manomet report, LaGasse said it made no sense to disrupt the existing mulch and soil marketplace “that has such employment and environmental benefits in order to propagate a technology that actually has a very delayed payout.

“Here you’re taking carbon profitable businesses and putting them out of business today so that you can create this carbon deficit for the next 20 to 30 years,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

A final rule on BCAP could come by the end of September. The issue is expected to be a hot topic at the Oct. 27-29 annual meeting of the Mulch and Soil Council in Dallas.