Become a Member

Category: Blog entry

  • Study: Thinning Forests for Bioenergy Can Worsen Climate

    A new study out of the Geos Insti­tute in Ash­land, Ore­gon con­cludes that selec­tive­ly log­ging or “thin­ning” forests for bioen­er­gy can increase the amount of car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere and exac­er­bate cli­mate change. The study, “Thin­ning Com­bined With Bio­mass Ener­gy Pro­duc­tion May Increase, Rather Than Reduce, Green­house Gas Emis­sions,” by D.A. Del­laSala and M. Koop­man, chal­lenges…

  • Biomass Power Facilities Idle for Months

    One of bio­mass energy’s main sell­ing points is that it’s a base­load source of ener­gy avail­able 24/7, unlike solar and wind. Despite these promises–and hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­er sub­si­dies, grants and loans–several bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties across the U.S. have been sit­ting idle for months at a time, thanks to fires, equip­ment fail­ure,…

  • Compost Chicken Manure, Don’t Burn It

    - by Mike Ewall, Decem­ber 19, 2014, Bal­ti­more Sun  Dan Rodricks’ recent col­umn urged the new gov­er­nor to get a large-scale poul­try waste incin­er­a­tor built on the East­ern Shore (“Lar­ry Hogan has a chance to be a green gov­er­nor,” Dec. 13). This awful idea has been float­ed for 15 years now and has gone nowhere despite an array…

  • Biomass Energy Growing Pains

    Sev­er­al bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties have come online over the last few years in Col­orado, Texas, Wis­con­sin, Flori­da, and Hawaii, but not with­out dif­fi­cul­ties, includ­ing fires, inef­fi­cient equip­ment, law­suits, and com­pet­ing with the low price of nat­ur­al gas. Gyp­sum, Colorado Eagle Val­ley Clean Ener­gy, an 11.5‑megawatt bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ty in Gyp­sum, Col­orado start­ed oper­at­ing in Decem­ber 2013,…

  • Water Abuse in the Fracking Process

    - by Alex Lotor­to, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network Water is used in shale gas devel­op­ment from cra­dle to grave, how­ev­er, most peo­ple don’t think about it beyond the issues of ground­wa­ter contamination. Procur­ing and bring­ing raw mate­ri­als like sil­i­ca sand, steel, cement, and frack­ing chem­i­cals to the well loca­tions requires an incred­i­ble amount of man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­porta­tion,…

  • Energy’s Water Footprint

    - by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network In 2005, ther­mo­elec­tric pow­er plants (nuclear, coal, oil, gas and trash/biomass incin­er­a­tors) were respon­si­ble for 41% of all fresh­wa­ter with­drawals and 49% of total water with­drawals (includ­ing oceans and brack­ish waters) in the U.S. Much of this water (main­ly used for cool­ing) is returned to local water bod­ies, but at a high­er…

  • Eviction of Mobile Home Park for Fracking Water

    - by Alex Lotor­to, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network Riverdale Mobile Home Park was locat­ed on the Susque­han­na Riv­er in Piatt Town­ship, Jer­sey Shore, Penn­syl­va­nia. Res­i­dents were ordered to leave the park in March 2012 by Aqua PVR LLC, a project of Aqua Amer­i­ca, a pri­vate water util­i­ty, and Penn Vir­ginia Resources, a nat­ur­al gas pipeline company. …

  • VICTORY! DC Denies Exelon-Pepco Merger

    DC’s Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion just shot down the plan for the nation’s largest nuclear util­i­ty, Exelon, to buy Pep­co, the elec­tric util­i­ty that ser­vices the Wash­ing­ton, DC area and a few neigh­bor­ing states. This is a huge vic­to­ry for ratepay­ers and the envi­ron­ment, since Exelon want­ed to have the extra mil­lions of ratepay­ers to push…

  • AUDIO: Energy’s Water Footprint in the Western Drought

    Drought in the west­ern U.S. is in the news every day, yet most media cov­er­age ignores the impact from water with­drawals for indus­tri­al pow­er facil­i­ties. While munic­i­pal and agri­cul­tur­al use are major drains on lim­it­ed water resources, so too are bio­mass, coal, nat­ur­al gas, and nuclear pow­er facilities.  On August 20, EJN spoke with Sta­cy Tellinghuisen,…

  • If You Build It, They Will Cut

    Gen­er­at­ing bio­mass ener­gy doesn’t result in more log­ging, accord­ing to the bio­mass indus­try, whose spokesper­sons claim facil­i­ties only make use of “waste” wood already com­ing from exist­ing log­ging operations. Ron Kotr­ba, Senior Edi­tor for Pel­let Mill Mag­a­zine, wrote in the May/June 2015 issue that bio­mass is the “most unlike­ly of the for­est prod­ucts to dri­ve…