Category: Blog entry

  • Vermont: The Little State that Could?

    - by Rachel Smolk­er, Biofuelwatch nosag­bigsign I am for­tu­nate to live in the tiny state of Ver­mont, a state that has bold­ly led the way on so many issues it’s hard to list them all. We were the first to pass same-sex mar­riage and to take seri­ous steps to make health care acces­si­ble to all.…

  • Are Dirty Energy Opponents NIMBY? Proving Industry Wrong

    It’s typ­i­cal for ener­gy devel­op­ers fac­ing com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to pro­posed facil­i­ties to try to dis­cred­it oppo­nents by call­ing them NIMBY (Not in My Back­yard), steer­ing the argu­ment away from health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts to sim­ply one of aes­thet­ics. Cor­po­rate prof­i­teers argue that local oppo­si­tion doesn’t have a prob­lem with a giv­en ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy itself — so long…

  • EPA Proposal Classifies Wood Fuel from Construction, Demolition

    [Bio­mass indus­try push­ing for even less reg­u­la­tion of their dirt­i­est fuel source. ‑Ed.] - by Erin Voegele, March 27, 2014. Source: Bio­mass Magazine Bio­mass industry On March 27, the U.S. EPA released a pro­posed rule to amend its Non-Haz­ardous Sec­ondary Mate­ri­als reg­u­la­tion under the Resource Con­ser­va­tion and Recov­ery Act. The NHSM rule was final­ized in Feb­ru­ary…

  • Nippon Temporarily Shut Down Because of Biomass Fuel Problems at Power Plant

    - by Paul Got­tlieb, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2014. Source: Penin­su­la Dai­ly News PORT ANGELES — Fuel-sys­tem prob­lems with Nip­pon Paper Indus­tries USA’s new­ly expand­ed bio­mass cogen­er­a­tion plant have caused a two-week shut­down of the mill, accord­ing to a union official. Dar­rel Reetz, vice pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of West­ern Pulp & Paper Work­ers Local 155, said Thurs­day he…

  • Whole Trees 90% of Rothschild, WI Biomass Incinerator Fuel

    - by Kevin Mur­phy, Feb­ru­ary 26, 2014. Source: Wasau Dai­ly Herald wausaudai­ly­her­ald The recent­ly built pow­er plant at Dom­tar paper mill is get­ting only 10 per­cent of its fuel from log­ging waste, which orig­i­nal­ly was sup­posed to sup­ply near­ly all of the plant’s ener­gy needs. The 50-megawatt, $255 mil­lion pow­er plant went online in Novem­ber to pro­vide steam for Domtar’s paper…

  • DTE Energy: Black Soot Irks Residents of Cassville, Wisconsin

    - by Jeff Mont­gomery, March 22, 2014. Source: THOnline.com blox­im­ages­newyork CASSVILLE, Wis. — Lin­da Hulst said she began notic­ing the soot short­ly after a near­by bio­mass plant start­ed operations. For three years, the black, char­coal-like mat­ter has sprin­kled her prop­er­ty. “Every fresh snow is cov­ered with it,” she said. “It gets on our deck, on our fur­ni­ture, on the…

  • State Allowed Logging on Plateau Above Slope of Washington Mudslide

    - by Mike Bak­er, Ken Arm­strong, and Hal Bern­ton, March 25, 2014. Source: The Seat­tle Times The plateau above the sog­gy hill­side that gave way Sat­ur­day has been logged for almost a cen­tu­ry, with hun­dreds of acres of soft­woods cut and hauled away, accord­ing to state records. But in recent decades, as the slope has become more…

  • Some Biofuel Feedstock Estimates ‘Overstating’ Yields

    - March 4, 2014. Source: Envi­ron­men­tal Leader Esti­mates for poten­tial bio­fu­el feed­stock crop yields from some wide­ly cit­ed research stud­ies may over­state those yields by as much as 100 per­cent, accord­ing to research by the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Clean Transportation. One key fac­tor in devel­op­ing a sus­tain­able bio­fu­els pol­i­cy is to real­is­ti­cal­ly esti­mate the amount of bio­mass that can…

  • Group Descries Logging in Northampton, MA Watershed

    - by Rebec­ca Everett, March 17, 2014. Source: Dai­ly Hamp­shire Gazette Chris Mat­era of Northamp­ton said he was dri­ving through Whate­ly to go ski­ing two weeks ago when he noticed piles of fresh-cut logs at the mouth of a trail into a forest. “I said, ‘Wait, isn’t that the water­shed?,’” he recalled recently. Mat­era, who heads…

  • Biomass Industry Needs to Prepare for Water Constraints

    - by Phil Cicio­ra, March 5, 2014. Source: Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois News Office Debates sur­round­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of bioen­er­gy have emerged in recent years relat­ing to water qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty, and those debates will only grow loud­er as big urban areas in the U.S. start run­ning out of water and envi­ron­men­tal groups and the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion…