Tag: bioenergy

  • Study: Thinning Forests for Bioenergy Can Worsen Climate

    A new study out of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon concludes that selectively logging or “thinning” forests for bioenergy can increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and exacerbate climate change. The study, “Thinning Combined With Biomass Energy Production May Increase, Rather Than Reduce, Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” by D.A. DellaSala and M. Koopman, challenges…

  • 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,…

  • Biomass Energy Growing Pains

    Several biomass power facilities have come online over the last few years in Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida, and Hawaii, but not without difficulties, including fires, inefficient equipment, lawsuits, and competing with the low price of natural gas. Gypsum, Colorado Eagle Valley Clean Energy, an 11.5-megawatt biomass power facility in Gypsum, Colorado started operating in December…

  • Energy’s Water Footprint

    – by Mike Ewall, Energy Justice Network In 2005, thermoelectric power plants (nuclear, coal, oil, gas and trash/biomass incinerators) were responsible for 41% of all freshwater withdrawals and 49% of total water withdrawals (including oceans and brackish waters) in the U.S. Much of this water (mainly used for cooling) is returned to local water bodies, but at a higher…

  • AUDIO: Energy’s Water Footprint in the Western Drought

    Drought in the western U.S. is in the news every day, yet most media coverage ignores the impact from water withdrawals for industrial power facilities. While municipal and agricultural use are major drains on limited water resources, so too are biomass, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power facilities.  On August 20, EJN spoke with Stacy Tellinghuisen,…

  • If You Build It, They Will Cut

    Generating biomass energy doesn’t result in more logging, according to the biomass industry, whose spokespersons claim facilities only make use of “waste” wood already coming from existing logging operations. Ron Kotrba, Senior Editor for Pellet Mill Magazine, wrote in the May/June 2015 issue that biomass is the “most unlikely of the forest products to drive…

  • EJ Victory! Taking Responsibility for Where Your Trash Goes…

    – by Mike Ewall, Energy Justice Network I’m excited to open this issue by sharing our first victory of its kind: stopping a major city (Washington, DC) from signing a long-term incineration contract that was expensive, polluting, unhealthy, and racist. The worst thing that can happen with your waste is for it to be burned.…

  • Transform Don’t Trash NYC

    – by Gavin Kearney (Environmental Justice Director, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest) & Eddie Bautista (Executive Director, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance) New York City’s homes and businesses generate anywhere from 6 to 8 million tons of mixed solid waste every year – more than any other city in the country. And the manner…

  • New York City Outsourcing Incineration

    – by Dara Hunt Congratulations to Energy Justice Network and other organizations on stopping a Covanta contract to incinerate DC waste in an Environmental Justice community.  Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in stopping New York City’s plan, and a 20-year contract with Covanta Energy to transport and burn 800,000 tons per year, or more, of…

  • EXCLUSIVE: Biomass Energy and the Carbon Neutral Shell Game

    – by Brett Leuenberger, July 6, 2015 (Graphics by Brett Leuenberger) Who would have ever thought that clean renewable energy could come from a smokestack? And yet, according to our U.S. government and the biomass industry, that’s exactly what’s happening when you burn trees (biomass) for energy. I don’t know about you, but when it comes…