Energy Justice Network gets 131 groups opposing DOE loans for incinerators

In just six days over the hol­i­day week­end, we got 131 groups signed on to a let­ter to Depart­ment of Ener­gy, oppos­ing bil­lions in renew­able ener­gy sub­si­dies from ben­e­fit­ing incin­er­a­tion, bio­mass and biofuels.

It includ­ed about 100 grass­roots or state/regional groups from 27 states plus DC and Puer­to Rico as well as about 30 nation­al / inter­na­tion­al groups, includ­ing some of the big greens: Clean Water Action, Earth­jus­tice, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green­peace USA and Sier­ra Club.

Find the final sign-on let­ter, with links to all of the groups’ web­sites, here:
http://www.energyjustice.net/files/1703signon.pdf

The let­ter points out that the law requires these renew­able ener­gy loan guar­an­tees to be for tech­nolo­gies that reduce, avoid or sequester green­house gas­es.  How­ev­er, the incin­er­a­tor tech­nolo­gies they’re con­sid­er­ing at the worst green­house gas emit­ters of all: worse than coal!

Oth­er let­ters sent in by allied groups are linked from this arti­cle:
http://www.cleanairwatch.org/2014/05/son-of-solyndra-green-groups-see-re…

Here’s our first media cov­er­age:

Greens fault DOE for includ­ing waste-to-ener­gy in loan program

Aman­da Peter­ka, E&E reporter
Pub­lished: Wednes­day, May 28, 2014

The Depart­ment of Ener­gy risks under­min­ing the goals of its renew­able ener­gy loan guar­an­tee pro­gram by includ­ing waste-to-ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, envi­ron­men­tal­ists warned yesterday.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists urged DOE to drop such tech­nolo­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly those involv­ing garbage incin­er­a­tion, from its list of eli­gi­ble projects in the loan guar­an­tee program.

Burn­ing garbage to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty leads to increased man-made green­house gas emis­sions that con­tribute to cli­mate change, the envi­ron­men­tal groups said in three sep­a­rate let­ters to the department.

“We should not be tar­get­ing our tax­pay­er backed fed­er­al loan guar­an­tees to prop up pol­lut­ing, dan­ger­ous and inef­fi­cient tech­nolo­gies,” wrote a coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal­ists that includes the Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil and sev­er­al Mid-Atlantic-based groups.

DOE last month announced it would make avail­able up to $4 bil­lion in loan sup­port for renew­able ener­gy and effi­cien­cy projects ( Green­wire, April 16). Includ­ed among the eli­gi­ble projects are waste-to-ener­gy projects, a broad cat­e­go­ry that encom­pass­es sev­er­al dif­fer­ent technologies.

In announc­ing the reopen­ing of the pro­gram, Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Ernest Moniz high­light­ed waste-to-ener­gy as one of five tech­nol­o­gy areas that are high pri­or­i­ties for DOE. The depart­ment opened a 30-day com­ment peri­od before it will final­ize and begin accept­ing appli­ca­tions into the program.

Sev­er­al com­pa­nies are pur­su­ing the con­ver­sion of munic­i­pal sol­id waste both to ener­gy and to fuel. A 2009 study by U.S. EPA and North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty found that green­house gas emis­sions from land­fills are two to six times high­er than those gen­er­at­ed from plants that burn waste, per unit of elec­tric­i­ty generated.

But the envi­ron­men­tal groups say that claims that incin­er­a­tion tech­nolo­gies emit less green­house gas emis­sions than land­fills are based on “false assump­tions.” They also said that garbage incin­er­a­tors emit more mer­cury, heavy met­als and oth­er air pol­lu­tants than coal-fired pow­er plants.

A broad­er coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal groups arrayed under the Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work also charged that incin­er­a­tion projects were “baby Solyn­dras,” refer­ring to the solar ener­gy com­pa­ny that received hefty loans from DOE before going bank­rupt in 2011.

“Incin­er­a­tors are also the most expen­sive way to man­age waste,” wrote the net­work, which includes the Sier­ra Club, Earth­jus­tice and oth­er major nation­al envi­ron­men­tal groups. “DOE should look crit­i­cal­ly at these baby Solyn­dra pro­pos­als, since the loan pro­gram requires a rea­son­able prospect of repay­ment that this indus­try can­not rea­son­ably expect to provide.”

The nation­al groups say they also oppose oth­er tech­nolo­gies that involve con­vert­ing bio­mass into ener­gy and fuel, and urged that DOE exclude “most, if not all, bio­fu­els projects” from eligibility.

A recent report by the Part­ner­ship for Pol­i­cy Integri­ty slammed bio­mass ener­gy as the “new coal,” charg­ing that it con­tributed to air pol­lu­tion and car­bon diox­ide emis­sions ( Green­wire, April 2).

The bio­mass indus­try says that its prod­uct is a clean and renew­able source of energy.

“Our indus­try uses resid­u­als from for­est main­te­nance as well as wood already used for oth­er pur­pos­es like con­struc­tion,” Bio­mass Pow­er Asso­ci­a­tion Bob Cleaves said in a recent state­ment. “These mate­ri­als have no oth­er use; they would oth­er­wise decom­pose either in land­fills, emit­ting the harm­ful methane gas, or on a for­est floor where they would pro­vide kin­dling to wildfires.”