Tag: bioenergy

  • California Lawsuit Seeks Pollution Cuts From Massive Tree-burning Power Plant

    - by Kevin Bundy, August 22, 2014, Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diversity The Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty filed a law­suit today chal­leng­ing a Clean Air Act per­mit issued by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency for a mas­sive, 31-megawatt bio­mass pow­er plant pro­posed by Sier­ra Pacif­ic Indus­tries in Ander­son, Calif. The chal­lenge, filed direct­ly in the 9th Cir­cuit U.S.…

  • Berlin, NH Biomass Incinerator Operational, But At What Cost To Ratepayers?

    - by Chris Jensen, August 21, 2014, New Hamp­shire Pub­lic Radio A new bio­mass plant in Berlin is final­ly pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty for Pub­lic Ser­vice of New Hamp­shire under a con­tro­ver­sial 20-year con­tract that a report says will cost PSNH ratepay­ers $125 mil­lion more than if the elec­tric­i­ty was pur­chased on the open market… That esti­mate came from…

  • Oregon Group Files Civil Rights Complaint Over Biomass Air Pollution

    - by Lisa Arkin, August 6, 2014, Beyond Tox­i­cs On August 6, Beyond Tox­i­cs filed a civ­il rights and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­plaint with the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) chal­leng­ing the Lane Coun­ty Region­al Air Pro­tec­tion Agency’s deci­sion to allow a pow­er plant to increase its dis­charges of haz­ardous par­tic­u­late mat­ter. The com­plaint alleges that allow­ing…

  • Springfield, MA Biomass Incinerator Permit Reinstated

    - by Suzanne McLaugh­lin, August 20, 2014, MassLive Mass­a­chu­setts Land Court has grant­ed Palmer Renew­able Energy’s request to rein­state its build­ing per­mit for a bio­mass wood-burn­ing plant in East Spring­field, undo­ing the Spring­field Zon­ing Board of Appeals’ deci­sion that the build­ing per­mit was invalid. The deci­sion states that no spe­cial per­mit is need­ed and the build­ing…

  • Beetle-Kill Fuels Bioenergy

    - by Kel­ly Hat­ton, July 17, 2014, West­ern Confluence On a morn­ing in ear­ly March, I ride with Cody Neff, own­er of West Range Recla­ma­tion (WRR), in his truck from Frisco, Col­orado, to the company’s near­by work­site in the White Riv­er Nation­al For­est. Light is just start­ing to reach over the high snow-cov­ered slopes sur­round­ing Frisco, but Neff…

  • From Beetle Kill to Biomass

    [More indus­try pro­pa­gan­da than a news arti­cle, but it demon­strates the bio­mass indus­try’s  lust for Nation­al Forests to feed their dirty incin­er­a­tors. ‑Ed.] - by Ruth Hei­de, July 22, 2014, Val­ley Courier There’s a dif­fer­ent kind of “gold” in “them thar hills.” It’s in the trees themselves. Cor­rect­ly har­vest­ed, the bee­tle kill tim­ber that exists on pub­lic…

  • Proposed Incinerator a Bad Choice for Island

    - Lin­da Damas Kel­ley, August 6, 2014, West Hawaii Today Just hav­ing returned from a month­long main­land trip, I found that the waste-to-ener­gy con­tro­ver­sy has reached a boil­ing point. I just read recent com­men­taries by Hunter Bish­op and Nel­son Ho; like them, I too worked for the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment dur­ing the May­or Har­ry Kim…

  • USDA Funds Genetic Engineering Research for Switchgrass Biofuels

    -  July 24, 2014, Farm­ers’ Advance Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty (MSU) plant biol­o­gist C. Robin Buell has been award­ed $1 mil­lion from a joint U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy and U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) pro­gram to accel­er­ate genet­ic breed­ing pro­grams to improve plant feed­stock for the pro­duc­tion of bio­fu­els, bio-pow­er and bio-based products. Specif­i­cal­ly, the MSU Col­lege…

  • Biomass Burning Kills 250,000 People a Year

    -  by Jo Nova, August 5, 2014, JoanneNova.com.au The head­line at Sci­ence Dai­ly is that wild­fires and oth­er burns lead to cli­mate change. The paper itself asks: “As such, par­ti­cle burn-off of clouds may be a major under­rec­og­nized source of glob­al warm­ing.” For me what mat­ters are the deaths in the here and now: “We cal­cu­late that 5 to…

  • Residents Voice New Concerns on Gainesville, FL Biomass Incinerator

    -  by Mor­gan Watkins, August 5, 2014, Gainesville Sun Local res­i­dents wor­ried about the bio­mass plant showed up Tues­day evening for a pub­lic meet­ing on its draft Title V air oper­a­tion per­mit, which could be approved this fall, to make their con­cerns known. Folks milled around the Hall of Heroes Com­mu­ni­ty Room at the Gainesville Police Depart­ment…