Oct. 4, 2025 7 AM PT
To the editor: What could possibly be the holy messiah of unpolluted vitality and wildfire prevention? In response to Noah Haggerty’s article, our savior appears to be biomass vitality (“California needs biomass energy to meet its wildfire goals. Its projects keep going south,” Sept. 30). However this text doesn’t point out the mountains of analysis that warn towards the harms of carbon seize and storage to the ambiance, ecosystems and the folks whom such practices are supposed to serve.
Crucially, the mere processing of biomass materials — through clearing forests, chopping timber into wooden chips and transporting supplies over lengthy distances — emits alarming quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. Together with the high-energy combustion and gasification of the biomass, the “carbon-neutral” or “carbon-negative” claims lose their floor because the net atmospheric carbon emissions trump those that they propose to sequester.
As a substitute, public funding ought to prioritize research-backed renewable energy sources like solar and wind to resolve emissions and public well being crises.
Jojo Pak, Berkeley
