Does the Plainfield Renewable Energy Project help reduce global warming?
It is well known that renewable energy facilities have low greenhouse gas emissions. Biomass projects using urban wood waste, such as the Plainfield Renewable Energy Project (PRE), are especially beneficial. The California Public Utilities Commission and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have determined that projects like PRE actually have negative net greenhouse gas emissions: “In particular, electric generation using biomass (e.g., agricultural and wood waste, landfill gas) that would otherwise be disposed of under a variety of conventional methods (such as open burning, forest accumulation, landfills, composting) results in a substantial net reduction in GHG emissions. This is because the usual disposal options for biomass wastes emit large quantities of methane gas, whereas the electricity production alternatives either burn the wastes that would become methane gas or burn the methane gas itself, generating CO2. Since methane gas is some twenty-five times more potent as a GH
