Category: Blog entry

  • Baltimore Incinerator Proposal Permit Yanked

    On March 17, the permit for the Energy Answers trash incinerator planned for the Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland was declared invalid by the Maryland Department of the Environment, capping years of protest from local residents and a student-led organization, Free Your Voice, part of United Workers. The proposed incinerator would be the largest in the nation,…

  • Maine Towns Vote Whether to Burn Trash or Make Biogas

    Actually, there’s a third (and better) option and it’s called Zero Waste. – by Andy O’Brien, April 7, 2016, The Free Press On March 31, 2018, it will no longer be economical for midcoast towns to send their household trash to the  Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. (PERC) incinerator in Orrington. That’s the date when the facility loses…

  • Energy Information Administration: Trash Incineration About Disposal, Not Energy

    The federal government’s U.S. Energy Information Adminstration puts to rest the idea that “waste-to-energy” facilities exist to create electricity, instead admitting that their main function is to dispose of trash, with electricity as a byproduct. – April 6, 2016, U.S. Energy Information Administration At the end of 2015, the United States had 71 waste-to-energy (WTE)…

  • How To Fight a Pipeline

    – by Alex Lotorto, Energy Justice Network Energy Justice Network is on the cutting edge of fighting fracking and related infrastructure in the northeast. It’s a special organizing challenge to fight pipelines, as we’re fighting a line, not a point, on the map. Companies and agencies won’t release data listing all impacted landowners. In Pennsylvania,…

  • Report: Climate Consequences from Logging Forests for Bioenergy

    A new report warns about the potential worsening of climate change from logging Canadian forests for electricity and heat, and recommends a “precautionary approach” regarding the expansion of biomass energy. Forest Biomass Energy Policy in the Maritime Provinces, written by Jamie Simpson for the Halifax, Nova Scotia-based East Coast Environmental Law, evaluates environmental impacts from…

  • Bioenergy Wrecks the Climate

    – by Ellen Moyer, December 2, 2015, Huffington Post Climate change is telling us to stop pitching pollution into the atmosphere–in much the same way that the bubonic plague taught our ancestors to stop dumping filth into the streets in the Middle Ages. We listened then, but not now. Governments continue paying industries huge bonuses to…

  • Military Forests to Fuels in Oregon

    – by Chris Zinda, Counterpunch Goose Lake is 26 miles long and 9 miles wide, extending from south central Oregon and into northeastern California where the two meet with Nevada. The lake used to support an endemic form of redband trout that act like ocean going salmon, growing to giant proportions and migrating up the streams…

  • Destruction of Demand: How to Shrink Our Energy Footprint

    – by Richard Heinberg, November 4, 2014, Post Carbon Institute The human economy is currently too big to be sustainable. We know this because Global Footprint Network, which methodically tracks the relevant data, informs us that humanity is now using 1.5 Earths’ worth of resources. We can temporarily use resources faster than Earth regenerates them only by…

  • Doctor’s Orders: Wood Burning Hazardous to Your Health

    – by Dr. Brian Moench, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment Civilization orchestrates the curbing of one person’s freedoms for the protection of others and the greater good. When two people’s freedoms are mutually exclusive, civilization embraces the concept that the freedom to not be harmed by others takes precedence. Traffic laws, zoning ordinances, and…

  • $181,000 Fine for Ethanol Air Pollution in Albany, NY

    – by Brian Nearing, December 12, 2014, Times Union An oil terminal operator at the Port of Albany has been hit with a $181,000 penalty by the state Department of Environmental Conservation for air pollution violations that lasted nearly a year. Buckeye Partners failed to properly control vapor emissions from ethanol — a corn-based biofuel used as a gasoline…