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.