From:                                         eknox <josh@eknox.net>

Sent:                                           Friday, July 19, 2019 8:49 PM

To:                                               RPS, DOER (ENE)

Subject:                                     Biomass: proposed changes for electricity retailers

 

Mr Wassam-

 

Please do NOT allow electricity retailers to meet increased renewable energy goals by purchasing energy from polluting biomass power plants. 

 

This would fly in the face of the stringent science-based standards Massachusetts adopted in 2012 that recognized the environmental and public health impacts of biomass energy. Massachusetts is currently the only state in the nation that considers greenhouse gas emissions as criteria for biomass eligibility in its renewable portfolio standard, and only highly efficient plants can qualify. 

 

Your proposed regulations would roll this back without any science-based justification for the change, at a time when climate scientists are telling us we need to do more to protect our forests and reduce our carbon emissions.

 

This would disproportionately affect poor communities in western mass.

 

Please do NOT add more air pollution to a low-income community that already suffers alarmingly high rates of asthma, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic health problems.

 

Please retain the emissions criteria for the portfolio standards.

 

Please do all you can to reduce emissions.

 

Thank you

 

Josh Knox

40 morgan street

Holyoke ma

01040

 

--

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. - Franklin D Roosevelt

Dictated to my phone: Please pardon typos/auto-correct/Siri errors.