Tag: clean energy

  • 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,…

  • Compost Chicken Manure, Don’t Burn It

    - by Mike Ewall, Decem­ber 19, 2014, Bal­ti­more Sun  Dan Rodricks’ recent col­umn urged the new gov­er­nor to get a large-scale poul­try waste incin­er­a­tor built on the East­ern Shore (“Lar­ry Hogan has a chance to be a green gov­er­nor,” Dec. 13). This awful idea has been float­ed for 15 years now and has gone nowhere despite an array…

  • 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…

  • Biofuels Company Won’t Pay State of Mississippi After Bankruptcy

    - Jan­u­ary 10, 2015, Fuel Fix Bank­rupt bio­fu­el mak­er KiOR and con­trol­ling share­hold­er Vin­od Khosla say the state of Mis­sis­sip­pi is using legal tac­tics in an attempt to squeeze mon­ey from the company. KiOR, based in Pasade­na, fired back Thurs­day at the Mis­sis­sip­pi Devel­op­ment Authority’s Decem­ber call to con­vert KiOR’s case from Chap­ter 11 reor­ga­ni­za­tion into…

  • New Report Urges Western Governments to Reconsider Reliance on Biofuels

    - by Justin Gillis, Jan­u­ary 28, 2015, New York Times West­ern gov­ern­ments have made a wrong turn in ener­gy pol­i­cy by sup­port­ing the large-scale con­ver­sion of plants into fuel and should recon­sid­er that strat­e­gy, accord­ing to a new report from a promi­nent envi­ron­men­tal think tank. Turn­ing plant mat­ter into liq­uid fuel or elec­tric­i­ty is so inef­fi­cient that the approach is…

  • Biomass Destruction Entirely Predictable

    - by Matt Miller and Ray­mond Plouride, Feb­ru­ary 4, 2015, Chron­i­cle Herald In a Jan. 9 sto­ry about dam­age to our forests as a result of the need to feed the giant new Nova Sco­tia Pow­er bio­mass gen­er­a­tor in Port Hawkes­bury (“Bio­mass project rais­ing green con­cerns”), Asso­ciate Deputy Min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Resources Allan Eddy sug­gest­ed that…

  • Dirt Cheap Clean Energy? | January issue of Energy Justice Now

    Just in time, the Jan­u­ary issue of Ener­gy Jus­tice Now — the nation­al forum for the Dirty Ener­gy Resis­tance — is here! Inside this issue: Dirt Cheap Clean Energy - Dirt Cheap Clean Energy -  Ener­gy Stor­age and Solar Inspir­ing Cus­tomers to Drop Utilities? -  Destruc­tion of Demand: How to Shrink Our Ener­gy Footprint …and more! Please share the Jan­u­ary 2015 issue of Ener­gy Jus­tice Now with…

  • Concerns About Syracuse, NY Trash Incinerator Pollution

    - Jan­u­ary 6, 2015, Local­SYR It’s the next step to allow trash from Cort­land Coun­ty to be brought into Ononda­ga County’s Waste to Ener­gy facility. Both coun­ties’ leg­is­la­tures this week have held pub­lic hear­ings on the so called “Ash for Trash” plan. For two decades now Ononda­ga Coun­ty’s Waste to Ener­gy facil­i­ty has been burn­ing trash only…

  • Largest Ground Source Heat Pump Installation in UK Poultry Sector

    - Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015, Farm­ing Life Renew­able spe­cial­ist TGE Group has been award­ed a £1m con­tract to install a 1,300kW heat pump for a Shrop­shire poul­try farmer to pro­vide heat and cool­ing across four new poul­try units. On com­ple­tion, the sys­tem will be the largest Ground Source Heat Pump instal­la­tion in the UK poul­try sector. The project, cur­rent­ly…

  • Nova Scotia Power Biomass in Cape Breton Raising Green Concerns

    - by Aaron Beswick, Jan­u­ary 9, 2015, The Chron­i­cle Herald About 2,790 hectares. That’s a rough esti­mate of how much wood­land will need to be cut annu­al­ly to feed Nova Sco­tia Power’s bio­mass boil­er at Point Tupper. “It seems that more of the fears are com­ing true than the ben­e­fits we had envi­sioned from that facil­i­ty,”…