Category: Blog entry

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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%…