The United Steelworkers Union
(USW) says that proposed state legislation to end Maryland's biofuel credit
could increase pollution and fuel costs, suppress development of renewable
fuels and lead to massive job loss.
Maryland House Bill 1102 and
Senate Bill 684, if passed, would redefine renewable energy to exclude
"black liquor"-a byproduct of the pulping process in the manufacture
of paper-as a biofuel.This would eliminate the payments that paper companies
currently receive from Maryland utilities for selling renewable-energy credits
to them. Maryland adopted a renewable energy law in 2005 that requires
utilities to buy certain minimum percentages of their electricity from
renewable sources. Washington, D.C. has a virtually identical law known as the
renewable portfolio standard law.
Paper companies use the spent
pulping liquor, which includes bark and unused wood chips leftover from the
pulping process, as fuel so that the material does not go into landfills or
water. This biomass fuel is carbon-neutral because the trees that are planted
for every tree brought into a mill absorb more carbon dioxide than the mill
emits when it uses this biofuel.
Unlike other industries, the
paper sector relies more on renewable fuel to reduce its dependency on fossil
fuels, and this helps the U.S. in its overall goal to reduce its carbon imprint
and dependence on other nations for fuel.
"If the fuel credit is taken
away, it will change the economics of fuel use at our mill," said USW
Local 676 President Greg Harvey , who is a recovery boiler operator at the
NewPage paper mill in Luke, Maryland.
