Tag: biofuels

  • Biomass Energy: Another Kind of Climate Change Denial

    (Graph­ic: Indi­ana Joel) We’re all famil­iar with cli­mate change deniers, cheer­ful­ly and/or will­ful­ly igno­rant folk who refuse to accept that human-caused car­bon emis­sions are respon­si­ble for the cli­mate cri­sis — or that there even is a cli­mate cri­sis. Those of us who val­ue sci­ence and com­mon sense typ­i­cal­ly have as much patience for these twen­ty-three per­cent of Amer­i­cans…

  • Bioenergy Capacity Continues to Increase

    - by Erin Voegele, Sep­tem­ber 26, 2014, Bio­mass Magazine The U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion has released the Sep­tem­ber issue of its Elec­tric Pow­er Month­ly report, indi­cat­ing total in-ser­vice bioen­er­gy capac­i­ty equaled 13,431.4 MW as of the close of July, up from 13,368.4 MW at the close of June. Over­all, 313 MW of new bioen­er­gy capac­i­ty was…

  • Oregon Site Selected for Biofuel Plant

    - by Eric Morten­son, Sep­tem­ber 19, 2014, Cap­i­tal Press Red Rock Bio­fu­els, a sub­sidiary of IR1 Group of Fort Collins, Colo., will use for­est bio­mass — debris from log­ging or thin­ning oper­a­tions — to pro­duce fuel. It is one of three firms select­ed for the project, which is intend­ed to pro­duce a com­bined total of 100 mil­lion…

  • Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Set to Drive Biomass Demand

    - by David App­le­yard, Sep­tem­ber 3, 2014, Cogen­er­a­tion and Onsite Pow­er Production New analy­sis from the Inter­na­tion­al Renew­able Ener­gy Agency (IRENA) fore­casts com­bined heat and pow­er (CHP) and indus­tri­al heat demand are set to dri­ve glob­al bioen­er­gy con­sump­tion over the com­ing decade and more. Accord­ing to Glob­al Bioen­er­gy Sup­ply and Demand pro­jec­tions, a work­ing paper for REmap 2030, glob­al bio­mass demand could dou­ble…

  • Louisiana Biorefineries Getting $161 Million Taxpayer Handout

    - Ted Grig­gs, Octo­ber 4, 2014, The Advo­cate Two bioen­er­gy com­pa­nies are get­ting a com­bined $161 mil­lion in fed­er­al loan guar­an­tees or con­tracts that will help them devel­op bio­fu­el refiner­ies in Plaque­m­ine and Alexandria. Cool Plan­et Ener­gy Sys­tems is get­ting a $91 mil­lion fed­er­al loan guar­an­tee to pro­duce renew­able bio­fu­el in cen­tral Louisiana from trees, forestry waste…

  • Bulgarians Blockade Road to Protest Proposed Biomass Incinerator

    - Sep­tem­ber 22, 2014, Novinite.com Res­i­dents of the south­ern Bul­gar­i­an city of Smolyan have staged a brief road block to oppose plans to build a bio­mass-fired ther­mal pow­er plant. Res­i­dents of the Usto­vo dis­trict of Smolyan blocked traf­fic along the Smolyan – Madan road for some 10 min­utes on Mon­day, accord­ing to reports of the Bul­gar­i­an Tele­graph Agency and Cap­i­tal Daily. The pro­test­ers demand…

  • Are Biomass Incinerators Gobbling Up Firewood?

    [While we are cer­tain­ly not advo­cat­ing for any form of burn­ing, includ­ing fire­wood, it’s inter­est­ing how the bio­mass indus­try com­petes with itself. ‑Ed.] - by Anna Simet, Octo­ber 03, 2014, Bio­mass Magazine Last week, I blogged about the pel­let avail­abil­i­ty sit­u­a­tion in the North­east (the “short­age” last year, what might hap­pen this year, etc.) What I…

  • Biomass Causes Problematic Emissions Too

    - by Richard Ball, August 31, 2014, The Wash­ing­ton Post The Post’s Aug. 28 edi­to­r­i­al “An answer to glob­al warm­ing” made good points about a car­bon tax. How­ev­er, a seri­ous prob­lem that was not men­tioned is how to deal with adverse impacts from bio­mass ener­gy sources, such as burn­ing wood in pow­er plants. Most pro­posed car­bon con­trol schemes…

  • Proposed Washington Biomass Incinerator Nets $200k State Grant

    [Anoth­er bio­mass incin­er­a­tor that would require the log­ging of pub­lic lands. ‑Ed.]  - by Eric Florip, August 27, 2014, The Columbian A $200,000 state grant will sup­port a new bio­mass-fueled pow­er plant near Steven­son expect­ed to be oper­a­tional next year, Gov. Jay Inslee announced Wednes­day. The mon­ey will go to Wind Riv­er Bio­mass Util­i­ty, which has…

  • Tennessee Biomass Incinerator Shut Down For Costs, Safety

    - by Frank Munger, August 24, 2014, Knoxville News Sentinel Oak Ridge Nation­al Laboratory’s Bio­mass Steam Plant, her­ald­ed as a mon­ey saver and friend to the envi­ron­ment, failed to live up to its hype oper­a­tional­ly, and the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy is report­ed­ly try­ing to rene­go­ti­ate its deal with the com­pa­ny that per­formed this and oth­er projects at…