Tag: bioenergy

  • Save America’s Forests and Wild Lands from Anti-Environmental Congress

    The log­ging, graz­ing, min­ing and oth­er extrac­tive indus­tries are mount­ing an intense attack on our nation’s pub­lic lands.  The Decem­ber 2014 lame duck ses­sion of Con­gress saw an ugly brew of anti-con­ser­va­tion ini­tia­tives remov­ing legal con­ser­va­tion pro­tec­tion from mil­lions of acres of pub­lic lands. But this was just the tip of the oncom­ing extrac­tive indus­tries iceberg.…

  • $629 Million in Taxpayer Dollars for Bioenergy

    - by Erin Voegele, March 19, 2015, Ethanol Pro­duc­er Magazine On March 12, the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion pub­lished a report on direct fed­er­al finan­cial inter­ven­tions and sub­si­dies in ener­gy for fis­cal year (FY) 2103. The report, which responds to a request from Reps. Fred Upton, R‑Mich., chair­man of the House Com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Com­merce…

  • Montana Logging Collaborative Fails Restoration Goals

    - by George Wuerth­n­er, March 15, 2015, The Wildlife News The For­est Ser­vice (FS), the tim­ber indus­try and some envi­ron­men­tal groups formed a col­lab­o­ra­tive groups sev­er­al years ago known as the South­west Crown of the Con­ti­nent (SWCC). The goal osten­si­bly is to pro­mote healthy ecosys­tems, but the real goal is to increase log­ging in the See­ley-Swan…

  • Garden Variety Environmentalism: The Band-Aid Wing of the Green Growth Economy

    - by Michael Don­nel­ly, March 13, 2015, Coun­ter­punch It was 60+ degrees and sun­ny – had been for weeks – in west­ern  Ore­gon, as I arrived in Eugene for the annu­al Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Con­fer­ence (PIELC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon Law School – the planet’s old­est such con­fer­ence. The con­fer­ence, attend­ed by over 3000 attor­neys,…

  • Planned La Pine, Oregon Biomass Incinerator 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…

  • Gypsum, CO Biomass Incinerator Still Off-Line After December Fire

    - by Scott Miller, March 22, 2015, Post Inde­pen­dent A plant that gen­er­ates elec­tric­i­ty by burn­ing bee­tle-killed wood had only been oper­at­ing for a few months when a Decem­ber fire bad­ly dam­aged the facility’s con­vey­or sys­tem. The plant has been closed since, and will prob­a­bly remain closed until summer. The plant, built by Pro­vo, Utah-based Eagle…

  • State of Illinois Settles Ethanol Spill Fish Kill Case

    - by Pam Egge­meier, March 5, 2015, Sauk Val­ley A set­tle­ment has been reached with a rail­road com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for an ethanol spill that caused a sig­nif­i­cant fish kill in the Rock Riv­er near­ly 6 years ago, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Lisa Madigan’s office announced Thursday. In June 2009, a Chica­go, Cen­tral and Pacif­ic Rail­road train derailed in…

  • Kauai Biomass Facility to Get Fuel from Burned Forest

    - by Chris D’Angelo, March 5, 2015, The Gar­den Island It is unlike any oth­er log­ging oper­a­tion in Hawaii’s history. And the $90 mil­lion bio­mass-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty the logs are des­tined for is as unique as the project itself, state offi­cials say. “This is the largest oper­a­tion that we’ve had,” said Lisa Had­way, admin­is­tra­tor of the state Depart­ment…

  • 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…