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Tag: biofuel

  • 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…

  • EXCLUSIVE: Biomass Energy and the Carbon Neutral Shell Game

    - by Brett Leuen­berg­er, July 6, 2015 (Graph­ics by Brett Leuenberger) Who would have ever thought that clean renew­able ener­gy could come from a smoke­stack? And yet, accord­ing to our U.S. gov­ern­ment and the bio­mass indus­try, that’s exact­ly what’s hap­pen­ing when you burn trees (bio­mass) for ener­gy. I don’t know about you, but when it comes…

  • Solar Generation May Sideline Biomass Heating

    [Note: this arti­cle is writ­ten by long-time wood stove cheer­leader, John Ack­er­ly.  It’s nice to see him admit­ting that his wood-burn­ing dreams are about to be dashed by solar pow­er.  Ener­gy Jus­tice does not sup­port com­bus­tion sources for heat­ing, since non-burn alter­na­tives exist, and since there are many pol­lu­tion and health prob­lems relat­ing to wood stoves.]…

  • Media Disinformation on Biomass

    - by Chris Mat­era, Mass­a­chu­setts For­est Watch  Some peo­ple might call it a media fail­ure that tree-fueled bio­mass ener­gy, one of the dirt­i­est, most car­bon-inten­sive forms of ener­gy that exists, has a “clean” and “green” rep­u­ta­tion with much of the public.  It is not a media fail­ure, it is a media suc­cess when we acknowl­edge that…

  • Oregon Senate OK’s Carbon Neutral Biomass Bill

    - April 9, 2015, KTVZ State Sen. Tim Knopp (R- Bend) car­ried Sen­ate Bill 752 on the Sen­ate floor Mon­day and the effort to declare bio­mass “car­bon-neu­tral” sailed through unanimously. SB 752 declares bio­mass to be car­bon neu­tral, tak­ing a rule pre­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed by the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty and mak­ing it law. It is chief…

  • Biomass Corporation Sues Federal Gov’t for $47 Million

    - by Jacob Fis­chler, April 9, 2015, Law 360 Mead­West­va­co Vir­ginia Corp. slapped the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with a $47 mil­lion suit in the Court of Fed­er­al Claims on Thurs­day, alleg­ing the U.S. Depart­ment of Trea­sury under­paid the com­pa­ny for the con­struc­tion of a bio­mass ener­gy generator. Under Sec­tion 1603 of the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act,…

  • Mining the Soil for Biomass Energy

    Min­ing the Soil for Bio­mass Ener­gy — Thurs­day, April 16 at 1 pm PT / 4 ET Jon Rhodes, water­shed hydrol­o­gist, has more than thir­ty years of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence eval­u­at­ing the impacts of log­ging and road build­ing on for­est ecosys­tems and water­sheds. Jon runs Plan­e­to Azul Hydrol­o­gy, which pro­vides afford­able water­shed exper­tise for a wide vari­ety of con­ser­va­tion…