Category: Blog entry

  • Biomass: The Unsustainable Energy Source

    - by Atheo, Aletho News The pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al from Big Green Ener­gy, aka Bio­mass Gas & Elec­tric, presents bio­mass as “clean, renew­able ener­gy,” sus­tain­able and green. The US Depart­ment of Ener­gy uses the terms “clean and renew­able” when intro­duc­ing vis­i­tors at its web­site to the topic. But is it accu­rate to describe the repeat­ed removal of bio­mass…

  • Soil is Not Renewable

    - by Friends of the Wild Swan and Swan View Coalition Soils are the foun­da­tion of ter­res­tri­al life. For­est pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is direct­ly tied to soil con­di­tions. Soil takes thou­sands of years to devel­op and is not “renewable“on a human time scale. Soil is an ecosys­tem in itself that must be healthy in order to pro­vide…

  • Planned La Pine, OR Biomass Facility Hinges on Market

    - by Dylan J. Dar­ling, March 17, 2015, Bend Bul­letin A wood-burn­ing pow­er plant remains a pos­si­bil­i­ty for La Pine, with the city now tak­ing the lead on the project from Deschutes Coun­ty and the com­pa­ny behind it wait­ing for a change in the ener­gy market. “It’s just been on hold due to mar­ket con­di­tions,” said…

  • RWE Drops Biomass Power, Adds Biomass Thermal, Wind

    - by Anna Simet, March 12, 2015, Bio­mass Magazine While RWE Group report­ed it achieved its earn­ings tar­gets for 2014 and EBITDA was sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than planned, low elec­tric­i­ty prices and unusu­al­ly mild weath­er neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed busi­ness per­for­mance, which dropped 25 per­cent from 2013 to 2014. Peter Teri­um, CEO of RWE, said that cur­rent­ly, 35 to 45 per­cent…

  • Landfill Keeps Rhode Island Incinerator Debate Alive

    - by Tim Faulkn­er, March 4, 2015, Eco RI News The seem­ing­ly annu­al debate about build­ing a waste incin­er­a­tor in Rhode Island resolved lit­tle on the issue this year, except that any such facil­i­ty is too expen­sive and like­ly at least 10 years from ever being built. The sole advo­cate for con­sid­er­ing an incin­er­a­tor is the oper­a­tor of…

  • Procter & Gamble Fires Up Massive Biomass Investment

    - by Heather Clan­cy, March 3, 2015, Forbes  With com­pa­nies like Apple and Google reg­u­lar­ly steal­ing head­lines for their solar and wind invest­ments, it’s easy to for­get “renew­able” ener­gy comes in many forms. For con­sumer prod­ucts giant Proc­ter & Gam­ble bio­mass con­tin­ues to be high­ly strate­gic. Indeed, it’s work­ing on one of the biggest cor­po­rate bio­mass plants in the Unit­ed States,…

  • Hardwood Trees Chipped for Nova Scotia Biomass

    - by Roger Tay­lor, Feb­ru­ary 26, 2015, Her­ald Business Hard­wood trees are being allowed to go up in smoke, and with them a num­ber of rur­al man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs that are hard to replace. It is easy to reach that con­clu­sion after read­ing sto­ries about sev­er­al com­pa­nies in rur­al Nova Sco­tia that have been mak­ing prod­ucts from…

  • Wisconsin Governor Wants to Cut $8 Million from Bioenergy Research

    - by Thomas Con­tent and Lee Bergquist, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2015, Jour­nal Sentinel In an about-face from his first term, Gov. Scott Walk­er wants to elim­i­nate fund­ing for a Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son renew­able ener­gy research cen­ter that has played a key role in help­ing land one of its biggest gov­ern­ment grants ever. In his bud­get, Walk­er is…

  • Syracuse City Council Seeks Alternatives to Incineration

    - by Tim Knauss, March 2, 2015, Syracuse.com The city coun­cil today vot­ed against a 20-year exten­sion of Syra­cuse’s garbage dis­pos­al con­tract with the Ononda­ga Coun­ty Resource Recov­ery Agency, cit­ing a desire to pur­sue alter­na­tives to trash incineration. Syra­cuse remains oblig­at­ed under its exist­ing con­tract to haul waste to OCCRA’s trash plant near Jamesville through June…

  • BLM Plan to Convert Nevada’s Pinyon Forests to Biomass Threatens Ancient Rituals

    - by Lisa Gale Gar­rigues, Indi­an Coun­try Today Media Network For cen­turies the piny­on trees of Neva­da have nour­ished the Shoshone, Paiute and oth­er peo­ples, giv­ing them pine nuts, ingre­di­ents for soup, milk and even a place to pray. Now it is about to become some­thing else: a prof­itable source of biomass. The Piny­on-Juniper Part­ner­ship, a con­sor­tium…