Category: Blog entry

  • Biomass Opponents Silenced by North Carolina Commission

    Res­i­dents of six coun­ties in North and South Car­oli­na fac­ing mas­sive chick­en and pig-manure burn­ing bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors, includ­ing a man dressed as a chick­en [pic­tured below], were barred from giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny at a North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion hear­ing over bio­mass elec­tric­i­ty require­ments on August 28 in Raleigh. The hear­ing was in response to a request by Duke Ener­gy, Progress Ener­gy, Domin­ion…

  • Biomass Incinerator Looms on Horizon for Gypsum, Colorado

    An 11.5 megawatt bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­al for the 6,400 per­son cen­tral-Col­orado town of Gyp­sum is mov­ing along swift­ly, despite con­cerns of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and at least one town councilor. Utah-based Eagle Val­ley Clean Ener­gy LLC’s facil­i­ty would burn 70,000 bone-dry tons per year of wood chips from whole trees—living and beetle-killed—tree branch­es and limbs, and “urban wood waste…

  • Gainesville, FL Ratepayers Demand Biomass Refund

    Dozens of demon­stra­tors gath­ered in front of Gainesville City Hall on August 2 to demand that Gainesville Region­al Util­i­ties (GRU) repay $15 mil­lion to ratepayers—$194 per household—for high elec­tric rates asso­ci­at­ed with the con­struc­tion of the Gainesville Renew­able Ener­gy Cen­ter (GREC), a 100-megawatt bio­mass incin­er­a­tor sched­uled to go online in 2013. Pro­test­ers accused the util­i­ty of over­charg­ing ratepay­ers…

  • Everything’s Bigger in Texas, Including Biomass Incinerators

    Baby back ribs aren’t the only things being cooked in Texas nowa­days. With the Nacog­doches Gen­er­at­ing Facil­i­ty fir­ing up for the first time in July—at 100 megawatts, it’s one of the largest bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors in the U.S.—Texas will also be cook­ing a heck of a lot of trees. At least one mil­lion green tons of wood…

  • Report: Carbon Neutral Biomass a Scam

    A new report by Spain-based Car­bon Trade Watch cri­tiques plans by the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment and Euro­pean Union Emis­sions Trad­ing Sys­tem (EU ETS) to ramp up indus­tri­al-scale bio­mass ener­gy pro­duc­tion under the guise of “car­bon neu­tral­i­ty,” despite its mas­sive green­house gas emis­sions and threats to pub­lic health and glob­al bio­di­ver­si­ty. An esti­mat­ed 80 to 300 mil­lion tons of wood…

  • Poultry Power Poops Out in North Carolina

    (Source: Mary Ander­son, Couri­er-Tri­bune) A 36 megawatt bio­mass incin­er­a­tor that would have burned poul­try feces is no longer being con­sid­ered for Bis­coe, North Car­oli­na, to the relief of Mont­gomery and Moore Coun­ty res­i­dents and grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups, such as Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League (BREDL), which opposed the project. The devel­op­er, Poul­try Pow­er, a sub­sidiary of the Flori­da-based Green…

  • Nurse Speaks Out on Biomass Health Threats

    - by Deb­bie Mar­tinez, RN, Gainesville, Florida As a reg­is­tered nurse I find it alarm­ing that Alachua County’s huge med­ical com­mu­ni­ty has remained silent on dan­ger­ous smoke­stack emis­sions as more research now demon­strates that air pol­lu­tion from the city’s planned bio­mass incin­er­a­tor will pose a sig­nif­i­cant health risk to adults, chil­dren and the unborn with­in…

  • Florida Trash Incinerator Proposal Bites the Dust

    (Source: Lau­rie K. Bland­ford and Antho­ny West­bury, TC Palm) A trash incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­al for St. Lucie, Flori­da has fall­en through fol­low­ing a unan­i­mous deci­sion by the St. Lucie Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers to ter­mi­nate the con­tract with Geor­gia-based Geo­plas­ma, cit­ing eco­nom­ic con­cerns. The 24 megawatt incin­er­a­tor would’ve incin­er­at­ed 600 tons of trash per day using a tech­nol­o­gy called plas­ma arc, which turns…

  • Are Massachusetts’ New Biomass Regulations Strong Enough?

    The Mass­a­chu­setts Depart­ment of Ener­gy Resources final­ly released its long await­ed and much delayed bio­mass reg­u­la­tions, gar­ner­ing both cau­tious praise and crit­i­cism from grass­roots bio­mass oppo­nents. The reg­u­la­tions have dis­qual­i­fied stand-alone bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties from receiv­ing Renew­able Ener­gy Certificates—a ratepay­er sub­sidy under the state’s Renew­able Port­fo­lio Standard—though incen­tives are still avail­able for com­bined heat and pow­er facil­i­ties oper­at­ing…

  • Occupy Earth Day: An Expose of the Corporate Propaganda Systems that Undermine Systemic Change Activism

    This Earth Day, like so many oth­ers, we’ll be invit­ed to pick up lit­ter, plant trees, be remind­ed to recy­cle, and count­less oth­er per­son­al habits we can adopt to save the earth. Cor­po­ra­tions pitch­ing “green” prod­ucts will bust out their “Lorax-approved” logos and encour­age our “green” consumption. This will be the first Earth Day since…