The United Steelworkers Union (USW) says that proposed state legislation to end Maryland’s biofuel credit could increase pollution and fuel costs, suppress development of renewable fuels and lead to massive job loss.

Maryland House Bill 1102 and Senate Bill 684, if passed, would redefine renewable energy to exclude “black liquor”—a byproduct of the pulping process in the manufacture of paper—as a biofuel. This would eliminate the payments that paper companies currently receive from Maryland utilities for selling renewable-energy credits to them. Maryland adopted a renewable energy law in 2005 that requires utilities to buy certain minimum percentages of their electricity from renewable sources. Washington, D.C. has a virtually identical law known as the renewable portfolio standard law.

Paper companies use the spent pulping liquor, which includes bark and unused wood chips leftover from the pulping process, as fuel so that the material does not go into landfills or water. This biomass fuel is carbon-neutral because the trees that are planted for every tree brought into a mill absorb more carbon dioxide than the mill emits when it uses this biofuel ... more