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Tag: bioenergy

  • How To Reduce Premature Deaths Linked to Environmental Risks

    [Phas­ing out com­bus­tion-based ener­gy such as fos­sil fuels and bio­mass ener­gy can save lives] – by Nan­cy C. Loeb and Juli­et S. Sorensen, April 8, 2016, Truthout Mil­lions of deaths around the world are pre­ventable every year with­out any addi­tion­al spend­ing on research for treat­ment. And the cause has noth­ing to do with gun vio­lence or war. Accord­ing…

  • Maine Towns Vote Whether to Burn Trash or Make Biogas

    Actu­al­ly, there’s a third (and bet­ter) option and it’s called Zero Waste. - by Andy O’Brien, April 7, 2016, The Free Press On March 31, 2018, it will no longer be eco­nom­i­cal for mid­coast towns to send their house­hold trash to the  Penob­scot Ener­gy Recov­ery Co. (PERC) incin­er­a­tor in Orring­ton. That’s the date when the facil­i­ty los­es a…

  • Energy Information Administration: Trash Incineration About Disposal, Not Energy

    The fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­stra­tion puts to rest the idea that “waste-to-ener­gy” facil­i­ties exist to cre­ate elec­tric­i­ty, instead admit­ting that their main func­tion is to dis­pose of trash, with elec­tric­i­ty as a byproduct. - April 6, 2016, U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Administration At the end of 2015, the Unit­ed States had 71 waste-to-ener­gy (WTE)…

  • Report: Climate Consequences from Logging Forests for Bioenergy

    A new report warns about the poten­tial wors­en­ing of cli­mate change from log­ging Cana­di­an forests for elec­tric­i­ty and heat, and rec­om­mends a “pre­cau­tion­ary approach” regard­ing the expan­sion of bio­mass energy. For­est Bio­mass Ener­gy Pol­i­cy in the Mar­itime Provinces, writ­ten by Jamie Simp­son for the Hal­i­fax, Nova Sco­tia-based East Coast Envi­ron­men­tal Law, eval­u­ates envi­ron­men­tal impacts from…

  • Doctor’s Orders: Wood Burning Hazardous to Your Health

    - by Dr. Bri­an Moench, Utah Physi­cians for a Healthy Environment Civ­i­liza­tion orches­trates the curb­ing of one person’s free­doms for the pro­tec­tion of oth­ers and the greater good. When two people’s free­doms are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, civ­i­liza­tion embraces the con­cept that the free­dom to not be harmed by oth­ers takes prece­dence. Traf­fic laws, zon­ing ordi­nances, and…

  • Study: Thinning Forests for Bioenergy Can Worsen Climate

    A new study out of the Geos Insti­tute in Ash­land, Ore­gon con­cludes that selec­tive­ly log­ging or “thin­ning” forests for bioen­er­gy can increase the amount of car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere and exac­er­bate cli­mate change. The study, “Thin­ning Com­bined With Bio­mass Ener­gy Pro­duc­tion May Increase, Rather Than Reduce, Green­house Gas Emis­sions,” by D.A. Del­laSala and M. Koop­man, chal­lenges…

  • Biomass Power Facilities Idle for Months

    One of bio­mass energy’s main sell­ing points is that it’s a base­load source of ener­gy avail­able 24/7, unlike solar and wind. Despite these promises–and hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­er sub­si­dies, grants and loans–several bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties across the U.S. have been sit­ting idle for months at a time, thanks to fires, equip­ment fail­ure,…

  • Biomass Energy Growing Pains

    Sev­er­al bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties have come online over the last few years in Col­orado, Texas, Wis­con­sin, Flori­da, and Hawaii, but not with­out dif­fi­cul­ties, includ­ing fires, inef­fi­cient equip­ment, law­suits, and com­pet­ing with the low price of nat­ur­al gas. Gyp­sum, Colorado Eagle Val­ley Clean Ener­gy, an 11.5‑megawatt bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ty in Gyp­sum, Col­orado start­ed oper­at­ing in Decem­ber 2013,…

  • Energy’s Water Footprint

    - by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network In 2005, ther­mo­elec­tric pow­er plants (nuclear, coal, oil, gas and trash/biomass incin­er­a­tors) were respon­si­ble for 41% of all fresh­wa­ter with­drawals and 49% of total water with­drawals (includ­ing oceans and brack­ish waters) in the U.S. Much of this water (main­ly used for cool­ing) is returned to local water bod­ies, but at a high­er…

  • AUDIO: Energy’s Water Footprint in the Western Drought

    Drought in the west­ern U.S. is in the news every day, yet most media cov­er­age ignores the impact from water with­drawals for indus­tri­al pow­er facil­i­ties. While munic­i­pal and agri­cul­tur­al use are major drains on lim­it­ed water resources, so too are bio­mass, coal, nat­ur­al gas, and nuclear pow­er facilities.  On August 20, EJN spoke with Sta­cy Tellinghuisen,…