Seattle Biomass Developer Threatens to Sue Biomass Opponent (Read full post)

- by Josh Schlossberg

Feb. 15, 2012: An attorney for the Seattle Steam Company sent a letter to biomass opponent Duff Badgley of Seattle, Wash. forbidding him from making certain public statements--including use of the term "incinerator"--in reference to air pollution threats from the company's existing downtown biomass incinerator and another proposed natural gas facility.

"The language you have used publicly is a commercial disparagement of Seattle Steam's legitimate business and will cause it harm," reads the letter from Edward W. Pettigrew of Graham and Dunn law firm to Badgley, coordinator for No Biomass Burn and a member of Occupy Seattle. The letter warns that "having advised you of the falsity of your statements, your continued use of them will render you liable for defamation and commercial disparagement."

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to "incinerate" is to "cause to burn to ashes." "Incinerator" is defined as "a furnace or a container for incinerating waste materials."

Seattle Steam Company's biomass incinerator

(Photo: biomassmagazine.com)

Is Newspaper Coverage of Biomass Energy Biased? (Read full post)

- by Josh Schlossberg

Two newspapers, the Gainesville Sun in Florida and the Rutland Herald in Vermont, have recently come under fire for giving readers a biased view of the issue of industrial-scale biomass energy.

"What the Sun readers got was a near black out of the news regarding the proposed incinerator combined with a few editorials in favor of it," said Gainesville resident Karen Orr. "The newspaper's handling of the bio burner is pretty much the way they handle any local environmental issue that threatens the status quo, threatens the growth and development industry, threatens their advertisers, threatens the power of the local political machine."

On Feb 23, 2012, Winstanley, developers of a 25-35 megawatt biomass power incinerator proposed for Springfield, Vermont, held a public information meeting for over two hundred local residents. During the Question and Answer segment, Springfield resident Maggie Kelly held up a chart demonstrating the levels of asthma-inducing particulate matter that would be emitted from the proposed biomass facility, asking the developers "Why would the citizens of Springfield allow the construction of a power plant that is dirtier in many respects than a coal plant?"

"Mt. Tom is actually a pretty good coal-firing plant...so it's not so bad to be compared to Mt. Tom," responded Winstanley consultant Dale Raczynski. "There's an existing coal plant out there that has very low emissions. We're being compared to that. And we have also very low emissions..."

The Rutland-Herald's article did not quote the developer's admission. Instead, reporter Susan Smallheer wrote that the developer had denied the chart's data: "Raczynski said coal was not a source of renewable power, and that the woodchip plant's emissions per megawatt were lower than the Mount Tom plant."

Georgia Communities Face Newest Biomass Proposal

A new citizen group has formed in Jefferson County, Georgia to fight the construction of a 24 megawatt biomass power incinerator that would burn wood and tires, proposed by North Star Jefferson Renewable Energy.

Jefferson County Environmental Defense Initiative (JEDI), the newest chapter of Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL), is made up of members of Wadley and Louisville, Georgia.

Up to twenty percent of the fuel for the facility would consist of tire scraps, according to JEDI's North Star Jefferson Pollution, a bi-lingual factsheet. "In addition to natural rubber, modern automobile tires are made of styrene-butadiene, polybutadiene, carbon black from petroleum, silica from sand or quartz, zinc oxide, steel, textile fabric and various chemicals."

Eleven States Sue EPA on Particulate Matter Regulations

- by Josh Schlossberg

Feb. 14, 2012: Eleven states have joined together to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Federal District Court in Manhattan, NY, for delays in strengthening air quality standards for particulate matter (PM).

The states, which include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, want to force the EPA to comply with its duty to "timely review and revise as necessary the National Ambient Air Quality Standards [NAAQS] for particulate matter pollution."

The lawsuit claims the EPA "has harmed and continues to harm the States by delaying the adoption and implementation of more protective fine particulate matter standards that will result in cleaner and healthier air in the States, benefiting the health and welfare of their citizens."

EPA is required by law to revise air quality standards every five years. The last revision took place in fall of 2006.

"Particulate matter has scientifically demonstrated negative effects on public health and welfare," says the states' filing. "The EPA has determined that particulate matter pollution causes thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of hospital visits in the United States every year."

Biomass incinerators generally emit higher levels of particulate matter than facilities burning coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

Europe to Burn More U.S. Forests

- by Rachel Smolker

As if it weren't enough that the U.S. is currently on track towards vastly increasing combustion of all forms of biomass, now we're also supplying Europe's even more massive appetite, especially for wood pellets. For example, Scotland's Forth Energy proposes to burn around 3.5 million tons of pellets, mostly imported, in three large biomass incinerators. The developers state their intent to obtain all those pellets largely from the timber industry's "Sustainable Forestry Initiative" certified logging from North America.

Meanwhile, Drax, owner/operator of an enormous coal burning facility that provides 7% of electricity in UK, has announced plans to generate 20% of that power from co-fired wood pellets. That would be equivalent to about 800 megawatts of biomass electricity--even larger than RWE's Tilbury station (750 MW). Tilbury is also making the transition to co-fire around 7 million tons per of imported pellets per year.

European facilities prefer port locations for easy access to shipping. Both RWE and Drax are working both sides of the Atlantic to ensure both demand and supply, investing in new pellet producing plants in the U.S., Canada and South America. With biomass being sold as "clean, green, carbon neutral, renewable energy," the market in "climate conscious" Europe is likely to expand, and we will see far more of our forests pelletized and shipped overseas before we even have a chance to burn them here!

Study: Logging for "Fire Fuels Reduction" Harms Western Forests

- by Josh Schlossberg

A new University of Wyoming study challenges timber and biomass industry efforts to log more western forests on public lands in the name of "forest health." The study, by Mark A. Williams and William L. Baker and published recently in Global Ecology and Biogeography, concludes that fuel levels in western dry forests are within historic ranges and that high-severity wildfire is a regular and natural occurrence.

"A set of laws, policies and initiatives that aim to uniformly reduce fuels and fire severity is likely to move many of these forests outside their historical range of variability with adverse effects on biological diversity," says the study. The findings contest timber and biomass industry claims that past fire suppression has caused forests to become "unhealthy," with more logging the best cure.

The Anti-Biomass Incineration Campaign works on the national, regional, and community levels to oppose industrial biomass energy incineration by influencing legislative policy, through public and media education and outreach, and by providing networking, resources and organizing support to communities across the U.S.

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