Category: Blog entry

  • Tennessee Biomass Incinerator Shut Down For Costs, Safety

    - by Frank Munger, August 24, 2014, Knoxville News Sentinel Oak Ridge Nation­al Laboratory’s Bio­mass Steam Plant, her­ald­ed as a mon­ey saver and friend to the envi­ron­ment, failed to live up to its hype oper­a­tional­ly, and the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy is report­ed­ly try­ing to rene­go­ti­ate its deal with the com­pa­ny that per­formed this and oth­er projects at…

  • Creditors Given OK to Foreclose on WA Biofuel Facility

    - by Kristi Pihl, August 23, 2014, Tri City Herald Some of Green Pow­er’s Tri-City cred­i­tors have received the green light to fore­close on the trou­bled bio­fu­el com­pa­ny’s unfin­ished Pas­co plant. Franklin Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Cameron Mitchell recent­ly approved a request by the cred­i­tors to fore­close on the liens they hold against the com­pa­ny’s per­son­al property.…

  • California Lawsuit Seeks Pollution Cuts From Massive Tree-burning Power Plant

    - by Kevin Bundy, August 22, 2014, Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diversity The Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty filed a law­suit today chal­leng­ing a Clean Air Act per­mit issued by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency for a mas­sive, 31-megawatt bio­mass pow­er plant pro­posed by Sier­ra Pacif­ic Indus­tries in Ander­son, Calif. The chal­lenge, filed direct­ly in the 9th Cir­cuit U.S.…

  • Berlin, NH Biomass Incinerator Operational, But At What Cost To Ratepayers?

    - by Chris Jensen, August 21, 2014, New Hamp­shire Pub­lic Radio A new bio­mass plant in Berlin is final­ly pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty for Pub­lic Ser­vice of New Hamp­shire under a con­tro­ver­sial 20-year con­tract that a report says will cost PSNH ratepay­ers $125 mil­lion more than if the elec­tric­i­ty was pur­chased on the open market… That esti­mate came from…

  • Oregon Group Files Civil Rights Complaint Over Biomass Air Pollution

    - by Lisa Arkin, August 6, 2014, Beyond Tox­i­cs On August 6, Beyond Tox­i­cs filed a civ­il rights and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­plaint with the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) chal­leng­ing the Lane Coun­ty Region­al Air Pro­tec­tion Agency’s deci­sion to allow a pow­er plant to increase its dis­charges of haz­ardous par­tic­u­late mat­ter. The com­plaint alleges that allow­ing…

  • Energy Justice Summer: Standing With Communities in the Shalefields

    - by Ener­gy Jus­tice Summer This sum­mer youth have gath­ered in the shale gas region of North­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia to facil­i­tate train­ings, com­pile reports, and to fight for the safe­ty of landown­ers, work­ers, and the environment. Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer is based in Susque­han­na Coun­ty in order to direct­ly con­nect with the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers impact­ed by shale gas…

  • Santa Barbara, CA Eyes $50 Million Trash Anaerobic Digestion Project

    [NOTE: this is a pro­pos­al for anaer­o­bic diges­tion of munic­i­pal sol­id waste, not an incin­er­a­tor.  Ener­gy Jus­tice sup­port diges­tion of unre­cy­clable resid­u­als before land­fill­ing as part of a zero waste plan.] - by Joshua Moli­na, August 16, 2014, Noozhawk San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty is propos­ing a $50 mil­lion trash-to-ener­gy project that would dou­ble the life of the Tajiguas land­fill and rad­i­cal­ly rede­fine trash diver­sion as…

  • Springfield, MA Biomass Incinerator Permit Reinstated

    - by Suzanne McLaugh­lin, August 20, 2014, MassLive Mass­a­chu­setts Land Court has grant­ed Palmer Renew­able Energy’s request to rein­state its build­ing per­mit for a bio­mass wood-burn­ing plant in East Spring­field, undo­ing the Spring­field Zon­ing Board of Appeals’ deci­sion that the build­ing per­mit was invalid. The deci­sion states that no spe­cial per­mit is need­ed and the build­ing…

  • Beetle-Kill Fuels Bioenergy

    - by Kel­ly Hat­ton, July 17, 2014, West­ern Confluence On a morn­ing in ear­ly March, I ride with Cody Neff, own­er of West Range Recla­ma­tion (WRR), in his truck from Frisco, Col­orado, to the company’s near­by work­site in the White Riv­er Nation­al For­est. Light is just start­ing to reach over the high snow-cov­ered slopes sur­round­ing Frisco, but Neff…

  • From Beetle Kill to Biomass

    [More indus­try pro­pa­gan­da than a news arti­cle, but it demon­strates the bio­mass indus­try’s  lust for Nation­al Forests to feed their dirty incin­er­a­tors. ‑Ed.] - by Ruth Hei­de, July 22, 2014, Val­ley Courier There’s a dif­fer­ent kind of “gold” in “them thar hills.” It’s in the trees themselves. Cor­rect­ly har­vest­ed, the bee­tle kill tim­ber that exists on pub­lic…