From: John Miller <jmzeke00@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019 12:31 PM
To: RPS, DOER (ENE)
Subject: RPS comments for John Wassam
Dear Mr Wassam,
Here are my comments from the RPS hearing in Springfield on 6/5/2019
Thank you for this opportunity!
Sincerely,
John Miller
Good evening, My name is John Miller
Life long resident of Springfield
I am here tonight to help some of you see the light about the pitfalls of burning wood as fuel for energy production
-recent reports say that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are still rising.
-The other thing that has been rising around the world is burning wood for energy. We have to get away from this cave man mentality and start promoting real renewable clean energies like wind, solar, geothermal etc…
- Burning wood for energy production does not help reduce greenhouse gas emissions it straight out increases them. Because in the real world, burning wood is not carbon neutral
- Burning wood emits more carbon dioxide and other toxic pollutants than fossil fuels, because it has such a low energy density and is so inefficient that you have to burn so much more of it to get the required energy these plants need to operate
- The bottom line, and it seems so clear, the atmosphere has too much carbon dioxide right now, and when you emit carbon dioxide right now, it goes into the atmosphere right now. How is that carbon neutral, unless you are looking at bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet in an office somewhere. Climate change is happening now, it is not a calculation or a possibility.
-The other thing is, To cut and burn our trees to help reduce our CO2 emissions when our trees our are main natural resource for removing CO2 from the air, seems totally insane. They say it is renewable because you can plant new trees, but the thing is they take years of growth before they can sequester any meaningful amounts of CO2. In the meantime the carbon levels in the atmosphere keep increasing and our chances of recovering from this climate crisis diminishes.
- Burning Wood is not really renewable and it is definitely not clean. Someone has to lead the way. Please do the right thing stop the biomass fraud before it is too late, hopefully we still have time to limit the consequences of climate change and protect our grandchildren and great grand children from more toxic air pollution.
- I ask you to Please remove wood burning biomass and trash burning from
renewable heating sources subsidies and remove woody biomass fuel from the list of eligible renewable electricity source subsidies through the Renewable Portfolio Standard, do not roll back the protections that are in place. We should not be paying companies to pollute our air.
Don’t Pay Polluters - We BREATHE What They BURN!
Thank you!
John Miller
14 Cherryvale ave
Springfield,Ma. 01108
413 205-9814