The House this week is set to take up a $32 billion funding bill that environmentalists say would hobble Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including by exempting wood-burning power plants from the EPA’s emissions rules.
Former California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman said Monday morning that the $32.1 billion funding bill for the EPA, Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, Indian Health Service and other agencies contains a number of riders he says are anti-environment.
Chief among Waxman’s worries is a provision greens have referred to as the “biomass loophole.” That language treats emissions from wood-burning power plants as carbon neutral, despite studies that show burning wood for power actually emits more carbon into the atmosphere than burning coal.
The spending bill states that burning biomass for power is carbon neutral as long as American forest carbon stocks, or the amount of carbon taken out of the atmosphere by trees, are stable or growing. But Waxman said the language is “particularly onerous.”
“The House may be trying to put burning trees in the same category as putting up a solar panel or a wind turbine, and it just doesn’t work that way,” Waxman told reporters Monday morning.
Mary Booth, director of the Partnership for Public Integrity, added that the GOP language does not actually reflect the science of biomass power. She said the data show 65 percent more carbon pollution is put into the atmosphere by burning wood for power generation than by burning coal. This is due to the inefficiencies in the production system, she said.
In addition, huge swaths of forest would need to be cut down in order to replace coal with wood as a power source, which simply isn’t feasible, she said. “Replacing coal with trees is a bad idea,” Booth said.
The bill put forward by Republicans would also keep the EPA from implementing several other of its controversial regulations. Among them are the Waters of the United States rule, which seeks to define what bodies of water are federally protected, the Clean Power Plan carbon rules on new and existing power plants, federal methane rules, and new limits on ozone pollution.
Republicans say these limitations are checks on what they see as the Obama EPA’s continuing overreach, while Democrats say the funding bill would drastically decrease the ability of the agency to do its job.
The House is set to take up the bill on Tuesday, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s weekly schedule.
Waxman said he expects the Obama administration to issue a formal veto threat this week, and will mention the biomass provision as a reason why, as was done with last year’s spending bill. These riders are hurting Congress’ ability to get funding bills passed and keeping the government moving, he said.
“If we have appropriations bills filled with these riders opposed by the administration, they’ll be vetoed,” he said, “so Congress and the president have to get together to continue to fund the government or the government will close down.”
