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Tag: renewable energy

  • Biofuels Gain Traction at Minnesota Legislature

    - by Jon Collins, March 31, 2015, Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio A bill to cre­ate a $5 mil­lion tax cred­it to advance the devel­op­ment of the bio­fu­el indus­try in Min­neso­ta is gain­ing trac­tion at the state Legislature. New­er tech­nolo­gies allow the use of plants like native prairie grass­es or alfal­fa for con­ver­sion ethanol. The so-called advanced bio­fu­el tax…

  • Obama Loves Biomass Thermal

     by Bio­mass Ther­mal Ener­gy Coun­cil, March 23, 2015, Bio­mass Magazine [Bio­mass indus­try groups over­joyed with the President’s most recent sup­port for bio­mass ener­gy. –Josh]  The Bio­mass Ther­mal Ener­gy Coun­cil  and the Pel­let Fuels Insti­tute (PFI) com­mend Pres­i­dent Obama’s com­mit­ment to expand­ing the use of renew­able ther­mal ener­gy with the issuance of Exec­u­tive Order “Plan­ning for Fed­er­al…

  • More California Biomass Facilities Closing

    - by Seth Nide­v­er, March 26, 2015, Han­ford Sentinel [Notice not a sin­gle men­tion of health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of bio­mass facil­i­ties. ‑Josh]  Once upon a time, local orchard farm­ers tak­ing out trees piled them up in large heaps and struck a match, send­ing huge plumes of smoke into the air. More recent­ly, the waste has gone…

  • Plainfield, Vermont Biomass Continues to Rile Neighbors

    - by Eric Blais­dell, March 27, 2015, Ver­mont Pub­lic Radio Things got so heat­ed at Plainfield’s Select Board meet­ing Mon­day night in a dis­cus­sion about God­dard College’s planned bio­mass-fueled heat plant, that one elect­ed offi­cial told board mem­bers they’d be in “deep water” if they dis­re­gard­ed some res­i­dents’ wish­es to have anoth­er meet­ing on it. The school is…

  • 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.…

  • Radioactive Spikes from Nuclear Plants a Likely Cause of Childhood Leukemia

    - by Dr. Ian Fair­lie, Ecol­o­gist On 23rd August, The Ecol­o­gist pub­lished very clear evi­dence of increased can­cers among chil­dren liv­ing near nuclear pow­er sta­tions around the world, includ­ing the UK. The sto­ry sparked much inter­est on social media sites, and per­haps more impor­tant­ly, the arti­cle’s sci­en­tif­ic basis (pub­lished in the aca­d­e­m­ic peer-reviewed sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal the Jour­nal of Envi­ron­men­tal Radioac­tiv­i­ty) was down­loaded over 500…

  • $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…

  • 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…

  • 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…