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Tag: oregon

  • 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…

  • Boardman, Oregon Coal Plant Mulls Biomass

    - by George Plaven, April 6, 2015, EO Media Group As a poten­tial source of renew­able ener­gy, giant cane could be the answer to sav­ing Port­land Gen­er­al Electric’s coal-fired pow­er plant in Board­man long after the facil­i­ty quits using coal by 2020. On the oth­er hand, as an inva­sive species, giant cane could spread wild across the Colum­bia…

  • 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…

  • Planned La Pine, OR Biomass Facility 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…

  • Local Opposition Affects Oregon Biofuel Plant

    - by Al Maior­i­no, March 3, 2015, Envi­ron­men­tal Leader In 2014, the Unit­ed States Depart­ments of the Navy, Ener­gy and Agri­cul­ture award­ed a $70 mil­lion grant to Red Rock Bio­fu­els for the design, con­struc­tion, com­mis­sion­ing and per­for­mance test­ing of a new bio­fu­el refin­ery.  The biore­fin­ery is planned for Lake­view, Ore­gon, close to the Fre­mont Nation For­est…

  • Exploiting Private Forests for Bioenergy

    - by Roy Keene The debate over a sin­gle wood pow­ered elec­tri­cal gen­er­a­tor in Eugene has been myopi­cal­ly focused on just one project and one pro­posed fuel source. Sup­port­ers for Seneca Sawmill Co.’s pro­posed pow­er plant have yet to pub­licly men­tion that slash could be replaced with chipped trees as fuel prices rise, or that this…

  • Green Crony Capitalism: Oregon’s Governor and the Grifter(s)

    - by Michael Don­nel­ly, Feb­ru­ary 13, 2015, Salem News Oregon’s Gov­er­nor-for-Life John Kitzhaber, 68, resigned Fri­day the 13th. His res­ig­na­tion let­ter was the usu­al lawyer­ly-parsed, blame-the-medi­a/­take no respon­si­bil­i­ty sham we’re used to seeing.  He had been gov­er­nor from 1995–2003 and again from 2011 until now.  The basic alle­ga­tions which forced the rest of the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty…

  • Lakeview Biofuel Plant Proposal Raises Air Quality Concerns

    - Sep­tem­ber 25, 2014, Ore­gon Pub­lic Broadcasting A project pro­posed in Lake­view, Ore­gon, would turn woody bio­mass from log­ging into bio­fu­els for South­west Air­lines, the U.S. Navy and Marines. The bio­fu­el would have few­er green­house gas emis­sions than tra­di­tion­al jet fuel and diesel, but some wor­ry the project might add to exist­ing air qual­i­ty prob­lems in…

  • 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…

  • More Logging and Biomass Burning Won’t Solve Job Woes

    -  by Rob Handy, July 6, 2014, Reg­is­ter Guard Dur­ing my tenure as a Lane Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, I watched Lane County’s tim­ber har­vest rise from 337 mil­lion board feet in 2009 to 590 mil­lion board feet in 2012, report­ed con­cise­ly by the state Depart­ment of Forestry. In spite of this huge surge, a 75 per­cent increase, I…