Tom Irwin is vice president and director of Conservation Law Foundation New Hampshire.

It’s no secret that New Hampshire is lagging far behind the rest of New England in the build out of clean energy like wind and solar. The state ranked 40th in solar energy construction in 2022, falling from 36th in 2021.

The solution to this problem is clear: investing more heavily in renewables like solar and wind while moving away from our reliance on fossil fuels. After electricity prices doubled this summer thanks to volatile natural gas prices, some state officials and legislators are coming around to the idea that New Hampshire needs to part ways with the fossil fuel industry. The problem now is that New Hampshire has fallen victim to the latest false prophet of sustainability: biomass.

Biomass is defined as any renewable organic matter that comes from plants or animals. In a heavily forested state like New Hampshire, most biomass comes from wood products like firewood, wood pellets, wood chips, pulp, and sawdust. This biomass is then burned (tons of it an hour) to create electricity.

Biomass is theoretically carbon neutral. The carbon released from burning a tree may eventually be absorbed by a new tree, if one is planted in its place, of a species that grows and absorbs CO2 equivalently, along with a number of other factors that must be present. But even under those optimal conditions, there remains an unresolvable and substantial time lag between the carbon released by felling and burning a tree and the reabsorption of that carbon by other trees. And it isn’t just on carbon that biomass falls short. Science shows that biomass releases more particulate matter into the air and our lungs than coal emissions do.

That brings us to the problem with New Hampshire’s plan to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. Rather than turning to non-polluting renewables like wind or solar, it’s decided to try to burn its way out of the climate crisis.

As of 2021, biomass accounted for six percent of New Hampshire’s energy output. That might not sound like a lot, but when you consider that New Hampshire only gets 16 percent of its energy from renewables, the state’s reliance on biomass gets put into perspective.

Some lawmakers and state officials are keen on seeing those numbers go up, so much so that some Republicans in the state legislature have dubbed 2023 ”the year of biomass” and have announced plans for legislation that would bring four defunct biomass plants in northern New Hampshire back online.

That’s not all. During the 2022 session, the legislature approved a plan put forward by Burgess BioPower to keep their plant in Berlin running (and funded by taxpayer money) without a cap on energy production. A piece of legislation has also been introduced this session to throw the plant yet another lifeline.

The Burgess biomass plant is only 25 percent efficient, meaning that it only uses the energy from one out of every four trees it burns. Despite being described as “really small” compared to other energy resources in New Hampshire, this highly inefficient plant burns through an acre of forest per hour.

While others have passed laws blocking biomass plants from being built near overburdened communities and designating the electricity they produce as non-renewable, New Hampshire has made no such commitment, and with “the year of biomass” only just getting started, it doesn’t look like that will be in the cards any time soon.

As legislators and state officials in New Hampshire look to get a hold on soaring electricity prices, they need to be reminded that we cannot in fact burn our way out of the climate crisis.

No method of energy production is perfect, but science has shown time and time again that non-polluting renewables like wind and solar are the most climate-conscious option while also being the least volatile and least polluting. New Hampshire can and should be actively pursuing these options, and there’s no better time to start than right now.

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