Tag: renewable energy

  • Zero Waste to Landfill: How Incinerators Get Promoted

    – by Caroline Eader The incinerator industry promotes a false belief that the only choices we have in handling our waste is to either burn it for energy or to bury it in a landfill. The existence of what is known as a “waste-to-energy” (WTE) facility does not eliminate the need for a landfill. First,…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • Remembering Marvin Wheeler

    – by Mike Ewall, Energy Justice Network  When we formed Allentown Residents for Clean Air (ARCA) in 2012, we couldn’t have kicked it off without Marvin Wheeler, who found us as an active member of the West Park Civic Association. As a retired school nurse, Marvin understood the health threat posed by the plan to burn 150…

  • Are Media Outlets Megaphones for Polluters?

    Are Media Outlets Megaphones for Polluters? Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 5pm PST / 8 ET Guest Speaker: Steve Horn, Investigative Journalist Are media outlets doing an adequate job covering the health and environmental impacts of dirty energy corporations and other polluters? Not according to Steve Horn, a Madison, Wisconsin-based freelance investigative journalist and writer for DeSmogBlog. Steve…

  • Solar Generation May Sideline Biomass Heating

    [Note: this article is written by long-time wood stove cheerleader, John Ackerly.  It’s nice to see him admitting that his wood-burning dreams are about to be dashed by solar power.  Energy Justice does not support combustion sources for heating, since non-burn alternatives exist, and since there are many pollution and health problems relating to wood stoves.]…