Category: Blog entry

  • Is Biomass All It’s Cut Up to Be?

    - by Howard Brown, Octo­ber 17, 2014, Sum­mit Daily One pos­si­ble rea­son for stick­ing to the ill-advised Ophir Moun­tain and oth­er clear-cut­ting plans is that the clear-cut trees would go to the bio­mass pow­er plant in Gyp­sum. Bio­mass pow­er is renew­able ener­gy. It wouldn’t jus­ti­fy destroy­ing Sum­mit County’s won­der­ful forests and trails, but bio­mass is green ener­gy…

  • Man Killed in Accident at Drax Biomass Plant in Louisiana

    - Octo­ber 21, 2014, MyArkLaMiss.com The work­er who died after an acci­dent at a Drax Bio­mass plant in More­house Parish has been iden­ti­fied as 32-year old Christo­pher Erv­ing of West, Mississippi Erv­ing was a con­tract­ed employ­ee of the Jack­sonville, Flori­da based Haskell Corporation  Drax Bio­mass has released a state­ment on the incident: “It is with deep…

  • New Contract to Accelerate Use of Biomass in China

    - Octo­ber 13, 2014, Bioen­er­gy News US-based renew­able fuels pro­duc­er Blue­Fire Renew­ables has finalised and signed a new mas­ter engi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion (EPC) con­tract for its cel­lu­losic ethanol plant in Ful­ton, Mississippi. The con­tract is with Chi­na Inter­na­tion­al Water and Elec­tric, a sub­sidiary of renew­able ener­gy com­pa­ny Chi­na Three Gorges (CTG). ‘The mas­ter EPC struc­ture will…

  • 34.5 Megawatt Biomass Project Planned for Japan

    - Sep­tem­ber 16, 2014, New Gen­er­a­tion Power New Gen­er­a­tion Pow­er Inter­na­tion­al, a lead­ing glob­al renew­able ener­gy com­pa­ny, will devel­op three 11.5 Megawatt (MW) wood bio­mass plants in Japan. Togeth­er, Chica­go-based New Gen­er­a­tion Pow­er Inter­na­tion­al (NGPI) and Nip­pon Ener­gy Solu­tion, Inc. (NES) will launch a new wood-based bio­mass ener­gy gen­er­a­tion ven­ture that will con­struct three sep­a­rate facil­i­ties locat­ed in…

  • Valero’s Indiana Ethanol Plant Damaged After Morning Fire

    - Octo­ber 13, 2014, The Paper of Mont­gomery County Crews were called to an ear­ly morn­ing fire at the Valero ethanol plant in Mont­gomery Coun­ty Monday. After 1 a.m., a call came in about a fire at the Valero plant, just off of U.S. 231 near Lin­den. Fire­fight­ers from six depart­ments respond­ed to the plant just…

  • Three Injured in Canada Wood Pellet Plant Explosion

    - Octo­ber 14, 2014, Bioen­er­gy Insight An explo­sion at Pin­na­cle Renew­able Ener­gy’s wood pel­let plant in British Colum­bia injured three and result­ed in around 30 employ­ees being evacuated. The inci­dent hap­pened on 9 Octo­ber after a fire broke out inside equip­ment used to dry wood fibre. The plan­t’s built-in sup­pres­sion sys­tem had already extin­guished the flames…

  • Fossil Fuel Divestment: How to Evolve the Campaign Beyond its Shortcomings

    - by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­workOcto­ber 2014 Some­times, envi­ron­men­tal move­ment cam­paigns that become very pop­u­lar aren’t the ones that are the most strate­gic. Try­ing to divert the fos­sil fuel divest­ment band­wag­on to a bet­ter path hasn’t been easy (or well-received), but some crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion is long overdue. As activists like to point out, we don’t have…

  • Biomass Incinerator a Threat to Children

    - by Nor­ma Kreilein, MD, Fel­low of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pediatrics [The bio­mass facil­i­ty pro­posed for Jasper, Indi­ana referred to in this let­ter was can­celed this year thanks to the hard work of Dr. Kreilein and Healthy Dubois Coun­ty –Ed.] I am writ­ing as a con­cerned pedi­a­tri­cian in South­ern Indi­ana. We live in the heart of…

  • Biomass Energy: Another Kind of Climate Change Denial

    (Graph­ic: Indi­ana Joel) We’re all famil­iar with cli­mate change deniers, cheer­ful­ly and/or will­ful­ly igno­rant folk who refuse to accept that human-caused car­bon emis­sions are respon­si­ble for the cli­mate cri­sis — or that there even is a cli­mate cri­sis. Those of us who val­ue sci­ence and com­mon sense typ­i­cal­ly have as much patience for these twen­ty-three per­cent of Amer­i­cans…

  • I Can’t Breathe: Air Pollution Worse for Communities of Color

    - by Brentin Mock, Grist In North Car­oli­na, sci­en­tists from the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency have found a “sta­ble and neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tion” between poor birth out­comes among women and their expo­sure to air pol­lu­tion. That’s pret­ty much com­mon knowl­edge, if not com­mon sense, no mat­ter what state or coun­try you look at. But the EPA sci­en­tists also…