Category: Blog entry

  • Biomass Industry Needs to Prepare for Water Constraints

    - April 14, 2014. Source: KDUZ/KARP St. Paul, Minn.– The ethanol plant in Buf­fa­lo Lake for­mer­ly owned by Min­neso­ta Ener­gy is in the process of cor­rect­ing water and air qual­i­ty per­mit vio­la­tions, and must pay a $10,000 civ­il penal­ty, accord­ing to an agree­ment with the Min­neso­ta Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Agency (MPCA). In Octo­ber 2012, Renville Coun­ty offi­cials…

  • Biofuel Producer Warns of Default, Bankruptcy

    - by Christo­pher Mar­tin, March 18, 2014. Source: Bloomberg Busi­ness­week [Read more about Khosla: Cel­lu­losic Ethanol: A Bio-Fool’s Errand ‑Ed.] Kior Inc. (KIOR:US), the Vin­od Khosla-backed oper­a­tor of the first U.S. com­mer­cial-scale cel­lu­losic bio­fu­el plant, fell the most on record after man­age­ment told reg­u­la­tors they have seri­ous doubts about stay­ing in business. Kior declined 41 per­cent to 63 cents…

  • Genetically Engineered Trees as Biofuel Feedstock

    [Now that corn ethanol has fall­en out of favor polit­i­cal­ly, the bioen­er­gy indus­try will be focus­ing more and more on forests.] - by Alex Mara­gos, Novem­ber 28, 2014, WLFI Ethanol made from corn already pow­ers mil­lions of cars and trucks on the road, but a group of researchers at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty wants to make bio­fu­el bet­ter.…

  • UK Biomass Project Halted, Developer Blames “erosion of support” for Biomass

    UK bio­mass project halt­ed, devel­op­er blames “ero­sion of sup­port” for biomass – by Nina Chest­ney, March 7, 2014. Source: Reuters Renew­able ener­gy devel­op­er RES has stopped a 300-mil­lion-pound ($500 mil­lion) project to build a bio­mass plant in Northum­ber­land, north­east Eng­land, due to what it called incon­sis­tent gov­ern­ment subsidies. The 100-megawatt (MW) plant was sched­uled to be…

  • Fanning the Northeastern Biomass Flame

    [The bio­mass indus­try is team­ing up with envi­ron­men­tal­ists to increase the amount of forests burned for pol­lut­ing ener­gy in the Great North Woods.] Fan­ning the North­east­ern Bio­mass Flame - by Joseph Sey­mour, March 11, 2014. Source: Bio­mass Magazine Migrat­ing 1 mil­lion homes to bio­mass heat is optimistic—let alone 6 million—but recent devel­op­ments in the north­east­ern U.S. are dri­ving…

  • UK Biomass Project Halted, Developer Blames “erosion of support” for Biomass

    UK bio­mass project halt­ed, devel­op­er blames “ero­sion of sup­port” for biomass – by Nina Chest­ney, March 7, 2014. Source: Reuters Renew­able ener­gy devel­op­er RES has stopped a 300-mil­lion-pound ($500 mil­lion) project to build a bio­mass plant in Northum­ber­land, north­east Eng­land, due to what it called incon­sis­tent gov­ern­ment subsidies. The 100-megawatt (MW) plant was sched­uled to be…

  • Maryland Seeking to Becomes the Nation’s Burn-Capitol

    Mary­land’s state leg­is­la­tors are at it for a four year in a row, push­ing bills that would increase trash and bio­mass incin­er­a­tion in their state and region. In 2011, the state became the first, and only, to put trash burn­ing in com­pe­ti­tion with wind pow­er in its renew­able ener­gy man­date. Now, over half of the ener­gy used to meet…

  • VICTORY: Hazardous Waste Incinerator Defeated in Bucks County, PA

    A polit­i­cal­ly-con­nect­ed new com­pa­ny hoped to sneak an appli­ca­tion through dur­ing the hol­i­days for a 60 ton/day haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor in Bris­tol Town­ship, near Philadel­phia, PA. Once word got out late last year, polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion grew fast and furi­ous. Peo­ple packed local gov­ern­ment meet­ings to overflowing. Ener­gy Jus­tice direc­tor, Mike Ewall, who grew up in the adja­cent town­ship,…

  • Methane’s Global Warming Potential makes Gas worse than Coal for Climate

    We just updat­ed our page on nat­ur­al gas with links to the lat­est stud­ies show­ing that methane is far more potent for glob­al warm­ing than EPA con­sid­ers it. Next time you’re hear­ing how much nat­ur­al gas is a tran­si­tion fuel or that it’s bet­ter than coal — or that land­fill gas should be burned for ener­gy (which releas­es more methane than…

  • New Law Will Make Biomass Heating Cheaper in Massachusetts

    - by Shi­ra Schoen­berg, Decem­ber 1, 2014, Mass Live A new law that goes into effect in Jan­u­ary will make it cheap­er to use renew­able ener­gy to heat a home – and could pro­vide a boost to the wood indus­try in rur­al parts of West­ern Massachusetts. “This is going to help (renew­able) tech­nolo­gies com­pete with and…