Category: Blog entry

  • Commissioners Scrap Frederick, MD Incinerator Plan

    - Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Novem­ber 21, 2014, Her­ald-Mail The Fred­er­ick Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers are scrap­ping plans for a waste-to-ener­gy incin­er­a­tor after more than five years of debate. The Fred­er­ick News-Post report­ed that the board vot­ed 3–2 Thurs­day night to can­cel a con­tract with Whee­labra­tor Tech­nolo­gies Inc. for the $471 mil­lion project. The board unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed in favor of haul­ing the coun­ty’s trash…

  • Tanker Truck Collapses, Spills Ethanol in Kenilworth, NJ

    - by Katie Lan­nan, Novem­ber 19, 2014,  NJ.com Fire­fight­ers called to the scene of what was orig­i­nal­ly described to them as a “small spill” Wednes­day after­noon instead found 500 gal­lons of ethanol that had leaked out of a col­lapsed tanker truck. The truck, car­ry­ing 7,000 gal­lons of ethanol, split as it was offload­ing its con­tents…

  • College Trash Habits Cause Concern, as Does Incinerator in Chester

    - by Bob­by Zipp, Novem­ber 20, 2014,  Swarth­more Phoenix Two weeks ago, a group of the Green Advi­sors con­duct­ed a waste audit of Kohlberg Hall and the Sci­ence Cen­ter. The pur­pose of the annu­al audit is to cre­ate a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the amount of waste pro­duced by those build­ings and test how well the…

  • More Wood to be Burned for Energy in 2015

    - by Erin Voegele, Novem­ber 14, 2014, Bio­mass Magazine The U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion has released the Novem­ber issue of its Short-Term Ener­gy Out­look, which includes updat­ed fore­casts for the use of wood and bio­mass fuels in U.S. heat and pow­er production. The EIA pre­dicts that wood bio­mass will be use gen­er­ate 118,000 MWh elec­tric­i­ty per…

  • SOS! National Day of Action to Save Our Southern Forests

    -By Emi­ly Zucchi­no, Octo­ber 28, 2014, Dog­wood Alliance Today’s biggest threat to South­ern forests is the grow­ing bio­mass indus­try. The wood pel­let indus­try is expand­ing at a rate that is impos­si­ble for South­ern forests to sus­tain. Our beau­ti­ful forests are being clear-cut, processed into pel­lets and then shipped to Europe to be burned for electricity. We…

  • Biofuel Company Files for Bankruptcy

    - by Katie Fehren­bach­er, Novem­ber 11, 2014, Gigaom.com Bio­fu­el com­pa­ny KiOR, which has become a sym­bol of the dif­fi­cul­ties of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists invest­ing in clean tech­nol­o­gy star­tups, final­ly filed for bank­rupt­cy this week, many months after shut­ting down its bio­fu­el plant and oper­at­ing on fumes, unable to pay its debts. Many, includ­ing myself, have been pre­dict­ing this for awhile…

  • Indiana Ethanol Facility Fined $9,600 for Clean Air Act Violations

    - by Seth Slabaugh, Novem­ber 11, 2014, The Star Press Car­di­nal Ethanol has paid a $9,600 fine to set­tle a com­plaint that it vio­lat­ed its Clean Air Act oper­at­ing permit. The penal­ty is insignif­i­cant in light of the grass­roots, investor-owned com­pa­ny’s prof­itabil­i­ty — $26.4 mil­lion net income for the fis­cal year end­ed Sept. 30, 2013. Pres­i­dent Jeff Painter…

  • Industry Take: How Will 2014 Elections Impact Biomass?

    - by Bob Cleaves, Novem­ber 23, 2014, Bio­mass Magazine On Nov. 4, Amer­i­cans vot­ed. This elec­tion was a deci­sive vic­to­ry for Repub­li­cans. Sen­ate, House, guber­na­to­r­i­al and even state leg­is­la­ture races across the coun­try saw con­ser­v­a­tives pre­vail. These results were expect­ed, sur­pris­ing to polit­i­cal types only in the thor­ough­ness of the wins across the board. What does this…

  • Fracking Wastewater Treatment Facility Proposed in Pennsylvania

     — by Nicole Mul­vaney, Decem­ber 10, 2014, Times of Trenton An Israeli water recy­cling com­pa­ny is propos­ing a haz­ardous waste treat­ment facil­i­ty about 6 miles south­west of Tren­ton across the Delaware Riv­er in the Key­stone Indus­tri­al Port Complex. Elcon Recy­cling Cen­ter, which has an office in West Wind­sor, went before rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pennsylvania’s Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal…

  • Is Cellulosic Ethanol All it’s Cracked Up to Be?

    - by Edward Dodge, Decem­ber 10, 2014, Break­ing Energy The EPA has long pro­mot­ed cel­lu­losic ethanol as the future of bio­fu­els, but tech­ni­cal chal­lenges have kept pro­duc­tion far below tar­gets. A recent rule change allows RNG, renew­able nat­ur­al gas, to qual­i­fy as cel­lu­losic bio­fu­el even though RNG is not cel­lu­losic, but this helps EPA appear to be meet­ing their goals.…