Category: Blog entry
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Local Opposition Affects Oregon Biofuel Plant
- by Al Maiorino, March 3, 2015, Environmental Leader In 2014, the United States Departments of the Navy, Energy and Agriculture awarded a $70 million grant to Red Rock Biofuels for the design, construction, commissioning and performance testing of a new biofuel refinery. The biorefinery is planned for Lakeview, Oregon, close to the Fremont Nation Forest…
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Firing Up Hawaiian Biomass Facility
- by Chris D’Angelo, February 11, 2015, The Garden Island Green Energy Team, LLC’s $90 million biomass-to-energy facility in Koloa is now hot. “They lit the boiler and have started making steam,” said Kauai Island Utility Cooperative spokesman Jim Kelly, who is handling press inquiries for GET. “For the next probably three to four weeks, they’re going…
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Contaminated Love Canal Soil Going to Nebraska Incinerator
- by Richard Piersol, March 1, 2015, Lincoln Journal Star About a thousand tons of contaminated soil from the notorious Love Canal environmental disaster in New York is being shipped by rail to Kimball for incineration because the company that is disposing of it ran into objections from Canadians, who didn’t want it. Love Canal, a neighborhood in…
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U.S. Added 254 Megawatts of Biomass Energy in 2014
- by Erin Voegele, February 6, 2015 Biomass Magazine The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects has released the December edition of its Energy Infrastructure Update, reporting the U.S. added 254 MW of biomass energy capacity last year. In December, the U.S. added five biomass generating units with a combined capacity of 23 MW. During…
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Exploiting Private Forests for Bioenergy
- by Roy Keene The debate over a single wood powered electrical generator in Eugene has been myopically focused on just one project and one proposed fuel source. Supporters for Seneca Sawmill Co.’s proposed power plant have yet to publicly mention that slash could be replaced with chipped trees as fuel prices rise, or that this…
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What a 20-year Biomass Battle Tells Us About Environmental Justice Policy
- by Brentin Mock, February 24, 2015, Grist It’s well-established that the Environmental Protection Agency has been quite flaccid when it comes to enforcing civil rights issues. The online news outlet E&E recently took the time to remind us how bad it is last week, reporting from Flint, Mich., where environmental justice complaints about a biomass energy plant built…
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One Bin for All?
- by Melanie Scruggs, Texas Campaign for the Environment Right now, the City of Houston is expanding its two-bin or “single-stream” recycling program to finally cover all the nearly 350,000 homes that it services. As an avid zero waster, you may be thinking two things: 1. It is fantastic that Houstonians finally have access to a…
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Green Crony Capitalism: Oregon’s Governor and the Grifter(s)
- by Michael Donnelly, February 13, 2015, Salem News Oregon’s Governor-for-Life John Kitzhaber, 68, resigned Friday the 13th. His resignation letter was the usual lawyerly-parsed, blame-the-media/take no responsibility sham we’re used to seeing. He had been governor from 1995–2003 and again from 2011 until now. The basic allegations which forced the rest of the state’s Democratic Party…
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Out of the Garbage Can and Into the Fire
- by Mike Ewall So-called “waste-to-energy” (WTE) is usually a euphemism for trash incineration, disposing of waste while making modest amounts of electricity and sometimes steam for heating purposes. Now, waste-to-fuels (WTF?) — turning waste into liquid fuels for transportation — is starting to emerge as a subset of WTE. Noting their acronym problem, the industry has…
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Zero Waste to Landfill: How Incinerators Get Promoted
- by Caroline Eader The incinerator industry promotes a false belief that the only choices we have in handling our waste is to either burn it for energy or to bury it in a landfill. The existence of what is known as a “waste-to-energy” (WTE) facility does not eliminate the need for a landfill. First, 10%…