Biomass

- by Al Maiorino, March 3, 2015, Environmental Leader

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"295","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"319","style":"width: 333px; height: 221px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]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 and the intersecting state lines of Oregon, Nevada, and California. This new renewable project aims to expand military fuel sources, improve reliability of the nation’s fuel supply and prevent supply disruption to reinforce the nation’s energy security.  Despite these benefits that bring additional employment and revenue benefits for the local community of Lakeview, NIMBY, or “not in my backyard,” opponents to biofuel refineries across the United States run fierce opposition campaigns that threaten project completion.  These campaigns can often result in project delays or even cancellation all together, and despite a properly zoned site.

Two Lake County Commissioners, Brad Winters and Ken Kestner, support the biofuel project and believe that when completed, the project will improve Lakeview’s air quality by creating healthier forests and preventing forest fires. Additionally, Oregon Business wrote an economic report stating that the biofuel plant would create up to “25 direct and 79 to 109 indirect and induced jobs,” resulting in an increase in labor income. However, Commissioner Winters acknowledged the myths promoted by the opposition that take hold by noting that those opposed to the creation of the biorefinery are not basing their concerns and objections on factual information.  Winters emphasized the importance of community members’ attendance at review workshops and hearings in order to become more informed as state and federal agencies evaluate the proposal as a prerequisite for completion.

Despite a successful rezone of the proposed site by the Lake County Planning Board, opponents remain focused on keeping the proposal out of their community. They fear that transporting these biofuels through the Lake County railroad from Lakeview to Alturas could possibly result in derailments with damaging effects on the community. The opposition is highly organized, holding meetings to strategize and planning petition drives to re-open the process for public comment before the County Commissioners. As is the case with some projects, the opposition group is also instigating a recall drive against Lake County Commissioners and Lakeview Town Council members, showing that all land use truly is political in nature.

Meanwhile, supporters are hoping that this project will receive the necessary approvals according to current plans so construction can begin in summer or fall of 2015 for operations to commence by 2016.  Just as the opponents have utilized grassroots tactics to add to their numbers, so too much supporters. To save time and money, companies must engage communities and stakeholders throughout the entire permitting process to ensure that community members are informed and engaged every step. By identifying and mobilizing members of what is often the silent majority, public support can be built throughout Lake County for a quick and successful project approval.

- by Chris D’Angelo, February 11, 2015, The Garden Island

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"401","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Green Energy Team, LLC’s $90 million biomass-to-energy facility in Koloa is now hot.

“They lit the boiler and have started making steam,” said Kauai Island Utility Cooperative spokesman Jim Kelly, who is handling press inquiries for GET. “For the next probably three to four weeks, they’re going to basically be pumping steam through it and cleaning out the tubes.”

The company began testing the facility for the first time last week and expects to have it connected to the KIUC grid and producing electricity by April, according to Kelly.

The 6.7-megawatt facility is located near Knudsen Gap and will provide about 11 percent of the island’s electricity — enough to power 8,500 households and replace about 3.7 million gallons of imported oil annually. It is the first closed-loop, biomass-to-energy plant in the United States, and will rely completely on its own sources of Kauai biomass wood chips.

- by Erin Voegele, February 6, 2015 Biomass Magazine

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"343","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 198px; height: 198px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects has released the December edition of its Energy Infrastructure Update, reporting the U.S. added 254 MW of biomass energy capacity last year.

In December, the U.S. added five biomass generating units with a combined capacity of 23 MW. During the full year 2014, the U.S. added 58 biomass generating units with a combined capacity of 254 MW. In 2013, 142 biomass units were added with a combined 858 MW of capacity.

Within its report, the FERC highlighted LES Service LLC’s 6 MW landfill gas-to-energy, which came online in December. The project, known as the Zimmerman Energy Facility, is located in Fulton County, Indiana. Power generated at the facility is sold to Northern Indiana Public Service Co. under a long-term contract.

- by Roy Keene

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"100","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"319","style":"width: 333px; height: 221px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]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 plant could be the first of many as wood-generated electricity becomes more profitable.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “The Eugene-Springfield area is one of the largest wood products processing areas in the world.” This area is also the epicenter for a huge volume of industrially owned forest biomass. With industry’s infrastructure in place and hundreds of thousands of acres in tree plantations, our area is ideally positioned for wood-fueled electrical power generating. Once Seneca has perfected their generating process and shown profits by selling electricity back to the grid, similar proposals and projects can be expected — especially as more federal “green” energy subsidies become available.

- by Brentin Mock, February 24, 2015, Grist

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"398","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"270","style":"width: 333px; height: 187px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]It’s well-established that the Environmental Protection Agency has been quite flaccid when it comes to enforcing civil rights issues. The online news outlet E&E recently took the time to remind us how bad it is last week, reporting from Flint, Mich., where environmental justice complaints about a biomass energy plant built in a low-income, black community have gone ignored since the early 1990s.

“In that corner of Flint, there is just a lot of polluting stuff that’s either in Genesee Township or the northeast side of Flint, and nothing has ever really been done about that,” Rev. Phil Schmitter told E&E reporter Robin Bravender. “The plant is about a mile from an elementary school and a low-income housing complex.”

Back in 1994, environmental justice activists in Flint asked the EPA to block construction of the biomass plant, arguing that low-income African Americans have already suffered enough from the concentration of pollution and poverty in the northeastern quarter. The EPA noted the request, and it’s on the agency’s list of civil rights complaints, filed July 1, 1994 as one of the few cases accepted for investigation. But here we are, over 20 years later, and the situation hasn’t been resolved. The plant has been up and running since 1995, burning wood to energy to its merry delight.

Now, the EPA’s lack of action on civil rights enforcement deserves scrutiny, even as the agency has taken steps like creating Plan EJ 2014, a detailed proposal for correcting this problem. And certainly there are cumulative impact questions that need to be answered in Flint. But as much as anything, the story of the Flint biomass plant reveals just how complicated these issues can be.

- by Michael Donnelly, February 13, 2015, Salem News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"394","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"300","style":"color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20.671998977661133px; width: 200px; height: 300px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Tillamookcountypioneer.net","width":"200"}}]]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 elite – Senate President, House Speaker, State Treasurer and others to join the state’s largest newspaper and call for his resignation - involve influence-peddling by his ten-year girlfriend/fiancée Cylvia Hayes. 

Hayes, 48, - a woman with a grifter’s history - pretty much publicly advertised that her clout with the governor was for sale and cashed in for over $200,000 at the same time she was his advisor on energy policy, working out of the governor’s mansion and using government employees as subordinates. 

The most damning allegation? She took over $118,000 from a sham non-profit that went defunct without ever filing a report with the IRS. She herself never reported her payments. The entire purpose was to shake loose tens of millions of state subsidies for “Green” Energy projects. 

The Energy Foundation - Banksters for the “Green” “Movement.”

It’s all because of something called the 25 by 25 Renewable Energy Portfolio standards that were quietly adopted in Oregon (and many other states). It requires that 25% of the energy mix in Oregon’s grid to come from Renewable sources by 2025. 

A shadowy non-profit called The Apollo Alliance went state to state pushing the concept. Suddenly, there was a huge pool of tax money to be tapped by private entities with ties to renewable energy. Mission Accomplished!

In 2013, Cylvia Hayes was hired by the Energy Foundation. This San Francisco group, tied to billionaire Democrat sugar daddy and potential California US Senate candidate Tom Steyer, paid her $40,000 dollars and funded part of her fellowship with Clean Economy Development Center (CEDC), a clean energy group based in Washington, D.C, though Hayes seems to have been their only paid fellow. Another top green paymaster, the Rockefeller Bros. Fund also contributed. 

Jessica Bailey, of 1sky/350.org and a former program officer for sustainable development at the Rockefeller Bros. Fund also was a strategic adviser to CEDC. Hayes’ fellowship salary was the $118,000 she did not report. The CEDC was stripped of its tax status in 2014 for failing to file IRS returns for three consecutive years. 

The most damning thing for Kitzhaber is that he then hired the guy, Dan Carol who arranged for Hayes’ Fellowship as his own highest-paid aide - at a $162,720 annual salary; nearly twic Kitzhaber’s own $98,600 salary. Somehow, they thought no one would notice!

The “Green” Biomassacre

Number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees: 1 - Harpers List, January 2006

The Apollo Alliance and allies have also been traveling around pushing Biomass projects, greenwashing the forest habitat, species and huge carbon cost of burning trees (let alone trash which they also consider “renewable”) - a process 1.5 times dirtier than burning coal - for small amounts of electrons. 

There’s a reason for it. After all the tens of millions in wind farm subsidies and other renewables, they make up about 4.7% of the power in Oregon’s grid – power that is useless on its own without coal-powered, steam-generated baseload energy regulating the grid from the Boardman Coal Plant, Oregon’s largest carbon polluter.

That 4.7% barely keeps up with the increases in consumption. And, now the Boardman Plant is being forced to go off coal and --- you guessed it --- switch over to Biomass. Burning our forests is the only way they can possibly meet the 25% target (Though some are trying to get Nukes declared renewables for portfolio purposes!)

Since the Democrats cannot call for the necessary reduced energy consumption in our grow-or-die economy (they’ve proven that time and again in their regular endorsements of oil wars), they have fully embraced forest liquidation for Biomass. 

Green groups funded by the same cabal of foundations (who collectively operate as the Environmental Grantmakers Association – EGA) have also come on board plans to strip forests for Biomass under the guise of fire-proofing them. 

That part of the equation has corrupted elected officials at the federal level with Democrats Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio echoing John Kitzhaber and the two other Democrats on the State Land Board in calling for massive increases in logging on public forests – state and federal - and successful plans to sell off parts of our state forests.

The quietly adopted 25 by 25 Renewable Energy Portfolio corrupted Oregon Democrats...as a whole, not just Kitzhaber. It’s also one of those tip of the iceberg things. 

Green Crony Capitalism is also a national phenomenon, not just Oregon. And it’s been exposed here and hit here in Oregon hard because it's partly a one-party state thing, the fact that the Oregon GOP is certifiable is a sad part of the equation. Flat Earthers would be a kind way of describing them. 

The fact that a lot of this was known before the election and Oregonians still voted for Kitzhaber is telling. His opponent was atrocious. There are no more Tom McCalls, Vic Atiyehs or even Bob Packwoods in the Oregon GOP. They’d be drummed out in a second these days. 

- by Mike Ewall, December 19, 2014, Baltimore Sun 

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"384","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"183","style":"width: 180px; height: 183px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"180"}}]]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 of government subsidies. In that time, these incinerators have been banned in Delaware and at least 10 proposals have been stopped throughout the U.S. (and several more around the world). I know because my organization, Energy Justice Network, supported most of these communities in their justified opposition. One has been built in the U.S., in Minnesota, and it was plagued by air pollution violations requiring expensive new pollution controls and was later caught burning unauthorized waste streams.

Nearly all of these incinerators are in the United Kingdom. Data presented by university researchers in Ireland at a biomass industry conference a few years ago showed that dioxin pollution from burning poultry waste was 2.6 times the legal limit in Europe. Dioxins are the most toxic man-made chemicals known to science and mainly accumulate in meat and dairy products, including contaminating poultry.

Poultry waste burning, like other forms of "biomass" incineration, releases 50 percent more carbon dioxide than coal, creating problems for global warming. Releases of several other key pollutants would also be worse than a new coal power plant, as permit comparisons have shown in North Carolina. Green Planet Power Solutions is currently being subsidized by Maryland to burn 466 tons per day of poultry litter in Somerset County and is seeking to be exempt from pollution control requirements usually in place for incinerators.

There's a reason why Exelon and other power companies aren't pursuing building these. They're prohibitively expensive and can only exist with regulatory exemptions, federal "renewable" energy tax credits and state subsidies including power purchase agreements as well as renewable energy credits in the state's incinerator-heavy "renewable" energy mandate which some are seeking to double.

A real green governor would stop throwing public money at expensive and polluting incinerator "quick fixes" and deal directly with the problem: that there is too much poultry production in one place and that the waste currently produced can and should be handled with green alternatives such as aerobic composting.

- January 10, 2015, Fuel Fix

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"383","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 306px; height: 285px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]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 Chapter 7 liquidation.

“The motion reflects a continuation of the MDA’s aggressive and scorched-earth litigation in this case, which apparently is intended to extort a recovery from the debtor and the Khosla-related plan support parties,” lawyers wrote in a papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

KiOR denies MDA’s claims that it’s manipulating its case to benefit Khosla, a billionaire venture capitalist who has invested heavily in alternative energy. A new company controlled by Khosla is in line to buy KiOR’s assets, saying it will continue KiOR’s research meant to turn wood chips into a crude oil substitute.

- by Justin Gillis, January 28, 2015, New York Times

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"213","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 222px; height: 125px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Western governments have made a wrong turn in energy policy by supporting the large-scale conversion of plants into fuel and should reconsider that strategy, according to a new report from a prominent environmental think tank.

Turning plant matter into liquid fuel or electricity is so inefficient that the approach is unlikely ever to supply a substantial fraction of global energy demand, the report found. It added that continuing to pursue this strategy — which has already led to billions of dollars of investment — is likely to use up vast tracts of fertile land that could be devoted to helping feed the world’s growing population.

Some types of biofuels do make environmental sense, the report found, particularly those made from wastes like sawdust, tree trimmings and cornstalks. But their potential is limited, and these fuels should probably be used in airplanes, for which there is no alternative power source that could reduce emissions.

“I would say that many of the claims for biofuels have been dramatically exaggerated,” said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, a global research organization based in Washington that is publishing the report. “There are other, more effective routes to get to a low-carbon world.”

The report follows several years of rising concern among scientists about biofuel policies in the United States and Europe, and is the strongest call yet by the World Resources Institute, known for nonpartisan analysis of environmental issues, to urge governments to reconsider those policies.

- by Matt Miller and Raymond Plouride, February 4, 2015, Chronicle Herald

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"382","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 188px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Aaron Beswick / Chronicle Herald"}}]]In a Jan. 9 story about damage to our forests as a result of the need to feed the giant new Nova Scotia Power biomass generator in Port Hawkesbury (“Biomass project raising green concerns”), Associate Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Allan Eddy suggested that these negative impacts were simply unintended consequences that “couldn’t have been predicted before the plant opened.”

This is simply wrong.

There were plenty of warnings that the proposed biomass project was too big to be sustainable and it strains the limits of credibility to suggest that the department responsible for managing our forests was unaware of the potential negative impacts.

Numerous stakeholders, individuals and experts predicted this outcome and laid out clear steps to try to mitigate the ecological damage that the advent of this huge new consumptive pressure would bring.