- by Mike Ewall, Energy Justice Network

The Ban Ki Moon U.N. Climate Summit is shortly coming to New York City. As we march and teach workshops at climate convergences, the media is likely to focus on the story of the Obama administration’s “Clean Power Plan” moving us away from coal in order to mitigate climate change. The story won’t be told that this plan will do more harm than good, mainly by ignoring methane and enabling a huge move from coal to gas-fired power plants.

The plan also does more harm than good by not regulating CO₂ from trash incineration (2.5 times as bad as coal for the climate) and biomass incineration (50% worse), thus encouraging a large-scale conversion to burning everything from trash to trees. Other EPA deregulation efforts allowing waste burning to escape regulation by calling waste a “fuel” are also clearing the way for this toxic, climate-cooking disaster.

A leading researcher for a major fracking corporation recently confided in me that this move from coal to gas will spell disaster for climate change, confirming that if only about 3% of the gas escapes, it’s as bad as burning coal. Actual leakage rates are far higher (4-9% just at the fracking fields and more in pipelines and distribution systems), but it was most interesting to hear this person admit that the industry will never get below that level of leakage to become less harmful than coal.

We now know that methane is 86 to 105 times as potent as CO₂ over a 20-year time-frame -- we’re in real trouble if we keep using the outdated “20 times over 100 years” figure EPA maintains, and permit this new generation of gas-burning to be built.

Why is it strategic to focus on the power plants?  Read on…

1) Gas burned for electricity is the largest source of gas demand since 2007. From 1997 to 2013, it more than doubled and is poised to keep growing.

2) Stopping power plants is more winnable than fighting fracking, liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, pipelines or compressor stations. Stopping fracking one community at a time isn't a winning strategy when the industry has thousands of communities targeted, and rural neighbors pit against neighboring landowners desperate for lease money. State and regional bans and moratoria have been effective so far, but LNG terminals, pipelines and compressor stations have federal preemption aspects that make them hard to fight through local or state government.

Fighting proposed LNG export terminals also has the "weak link" problem.  Ten years ago, when we were fighting LNG import terminals, there were 40 proposals throughout the U.S., but the industry and government officials admitted they only needed six – two each on the east, west and gulf coasts. Now that they're planning export terminals, there are nearly 30 proposals, and the same dynamic is at play, where the industry has stated in their conferences that they only need two on each coast, after which they'll toss out the rest of their proposals and "let environmentalists take the credit." Cynical as that is, it's not a strategy we can defeat if we're trying to attack gas demand, since it's unlikely we can beat enough to prevent the planned export volumes -- especially due to federal preemption and the clustering of most proposals on the oil- and gas-dominated Gulf Coast, where it's far harder to stop them.

Each gas-fired power plant blocked is a certain amount of gas burning and fracking prevented, while we can stop over 20 LNG terminals without putting a dent in planned export volumes. While work against the LNG export terminals is commendable, it should not be prioritized over stopping the rush to build hundreds of gas-burning power plants.

3) Attacking proposals can only be done in a certain time window, or we're doomed to roughly 30 years of power plant operation and gas demand. Although coal power plants are dirtier to live near, all of the funding and resources being put into closing coal plants while ignoring (or endorsing) new gas power plants, is misguided. Existing power plants can be tackled at any time, but proposals have to be fought when they're proposed, or it's too late. Also, coal production has peaked in the U.S., prices are going up, and gas is undercutting coal. It's effectively illegal to build new coal power plants and the industry is already moving quickly to shut and replace coal. The question is:  will we allow a switch from coal to gas, or force a change to conservation, efficiency, wind and solar?

So, if there are plans for gas-burning power plants in your area, whether it’s a new plant, an expansion or conversion of an existing plant, or reopening of a closed plant, please be in touch so we can plug you in with others who are fighting these. There is strength in numbers!

- by Maeusz Perkoswki, September 16, 2014, Capital Press

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"263","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"225","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 225px; height: 225px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"225"}}]]Two biomass facilities in California that use agricultural waste to generate electricity claim the federal government owes them about $22 million.

The plaintiffs — Ampersand Chowchilla Biomass and Merced Power — claim the U.S. Treasury Department is wrongly withholding funds from an economic stimulus program that helps pay for renewable energy projects.

Each company invested more than $40 million to build facilities in Chowchilla and Merced that rely on boilers and turbines to produce energy from agricultural byproducts, such as orchard trimmings and nut shells, as well as other sources of waste.

The facilities became operational in 2011 and applied to the Treasury Department for reimbursements of 30 percent of the project costs, which were available through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Instead of providing each company with the full amount, roughly $12 million apiece, the government only reimbursed each of them for about $1 million, the complaint said.

- by Paul Tuthill, September 12, 2014, WAMC

- by Chad Hanson, August 28, 2014, Earth Island Journal 

[How much of the forests that experienced the Rim Fire will be feeding biomass incinerators? -Ed.]

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"258","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"359","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 555px; height: 415px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: David Lucas","width":"480"}}]]The US Forest Service issued a draft decision yesterday for a massive post-fire logging project in the Stanislaus National Forest portion of the 2013 California Rim Fire, which covered 257,171 acres on the national forest and Yosemite National Park. A final, signed decision on the proposal is expected this afternoon. 

The draft decision proposes over 37,000 acres of intensive post-fire logging, which would remove the majority of the rarest and most ecologically valuable habitat resulting from the fire on the Stanislaus National Forest: “snag forest habitat” created by high-intensity fire in mature conifer forest. (Forty one percent of the Rim Fire area was comprised of non-conifer vegetation, such as grassland and foothill chaparral, and most of the forest area burned at low/moderate-intensity, wherein only a portion of the trees were killed). 

This would include essentially clear-cutting 95 percent of the snags (standing fire-killed trees) in 19,462 acres of the fire area. An additional 17,706 acres of “roadside” logging is planned along roads, including old logging roads, which are not maintained for public use (and many of which are closed roads, long since decommissioned). Much of this would be clearcut too, including live, healthy, mature, and old-growth trees, which would be removed by the thousands, for no credible public safety benefit, based upon profoundly vague criteria that allow just about any tree to be cut.

- by Ryan Trowbridge, September 10, 2014, WGGB

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"138","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 180px; height: 134px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Wednesday night, the Springfield City Council took up the contentious issue of a planned biomass incinerator in the city.

Opponents claim the plant would only add more pollution to an already polluted city, but the state just ruled Springfield does not have the authority to stop its development.

It’s an issue several years in the making and Wednesday, the City Council met to vote on what it should do next in the battle to keep the plant from being built.

Palmer Renewable Energy is looking to build a $150 million biomass wood burning plant in Springfield. The biomass plant, near Page Boulevard and Cadwell Drive, Would produce 35 megawatts of electricity.

Opponents, however, say it’s dirty energy and would further pollute the Springfield area.

- by Richard Ball, August 31, 2014, The Washington Post

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"139","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"346","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 244px; height: 243px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"347"}}]]The Post’s Aug. 28 editorial “An answer to global warming” made good points about a carbon tax. However, a serious problem that was not mentioned is how to deal with adverse impacts from biomass energy sources, such as burning wood in power plants. Most proposed carbon control schemes do not control emissions from biomass energy, erroneously assuming they are carbon neutral.

If we tax carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and ignore the emissions and side effects from production of biomass energy, we will hasten the demise of most forests and worsen the availability and cost of food, perhaps increasing carbon dioxide emissions as well.

To avoid those problems, any carbon control scheme needs to close the “biomass loophole.” For example, we could tax emissions from burning biomass like any other source of carbon dioxide emissions, at least by default, and put the burden of proving otherwise on large biomass producers or users through an appropriate system of certification of emission reductions and sustainability of production methods.

Richard Ball of Annandale, Viriginia is Energy Issues Chair at Virginia Chapter Sierra Club and was lead author for Working Group II (Impacts and Adaptation) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1989-1995.  

- by Mark Robinowitz, PeakChoice.org

The toxic impacts of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas have been subject to public debates, protests, and lawsuits, among other tactics to stop these dangers. But the other half of the fracking story, which has had much less attention, is the exaggeration of recoverable reserves.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"257","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"319","width":"480"}}]]

The fracking industry claims shale gas will fuel 100 years worth of USA consumption of “natural” gas. Massive amounts of drilling in the past several years have increased gas production above the 1973 natural gas peak. Gas has significantly increased its share of the electric power grids, lowering coal combustion and helping damper plans for new nuclear reactors.  

One of fracking’s dirty secrets is fracked wells decline far faster than conventional wells. Fracking a well also requires more money, technical talent and resources than conventional wells.  

Two of the three top gas fracking regions in the USA have peaked. Barnett Shale near Fort Worth, Texas has peaked and plateaued. Haynesville in Louisiana and Arkansas has peaked and declined sharply. The largest fracking region -- Marcellus in Pennsylvania -- has not yet peaked and provides nearly a fifth of all USA natural gas. Nationally, about forty percent of natural gas is from fracking.  

Fracking for oil has reversed the decline of USA oil extraction since the 1970 peak. The Bakken shale in North Dakota has fueled wild claims of alleged energy independence and even proposals to export oil to Asia. However, Bakken has not even offset the decline of the Alaska Pipeline, which has dropped three fourths from its 1988 peak and is approaching “low flow” shutdown. Fracking in south Texas has also raised Texan oil production but the state’s peak was still back in 1972 -- a reason huge efforts have been made for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Post Carbon Institute has published reports documenting how fracking estimates have been exaggerated. They were vindicated in May of this year when the Department of Energy admitted plans for oil fracking in the Monterey Shale in California had been exaggerated and downsized the estimated resource by ninety-six percent (96%). Post Carbon’s montereyoil.org website has details.  

We are in a paradox at this time of Peak Everything and Climate Chaos. If we keep burning fossil fuels we will continue to wreck the biosphere, but if we suddenly stopped that would wreck civilization, which could accelerate ecological destruction (how many forests would be burned for electricity, for example). Fossil fuels allowed our population to zoom from under a billion to over seven billion today.

Fracking, deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and tar sands extraction in Canada have delayed gasoline rationing. We are in the eye of the energy crisis hurricane, perhaps for a few more years.

The Limits to Growth study in 1972 predicted peak resources around the turn of the century, followed by peak pollution as dirtier resources were used as higher quality resources were depleted. Fracking, tar sands, mountaintop removal and other desperate destructions seek to maintain the exponential growth economy now that the easier to extract fossil fuels are in decline.  

Using solar energy for two decades taught me that renewable energy could only run a smaller, steady state economy. Our exponential growth economy requires ever increasing consumption of concentrated resources (fossil fuels are more energy dense than renewables). A solar energy society would require moving beyond growth-and-debt based money.

After fossil fuel we will only have solar power, but that won't replace what we use now. We need to abandon the myth of endless growth on a round, and therefore, finite planet to have a planet on which to live.

Humanity does not face the question of whether to use less fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases, since we have reached the limits to energy growth due to geological factors. How we use the remaining fossil fuels as they deplete determines how future generations will live after the fossil fuels are gone. Will we use the second half of the fossil fuels for bigger highways or better trains? Relocalization of food production or more globalization? Resource wars or global cooperation?

Mark Robinowitz is author of “Peak Choice: cooperation or collapse” at PeakChoice.org

- by Dave Miller, September 4, 2014, WALB News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"255","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"220","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 200px; height: 220px; float: left; margin: 3px 10px;","width":"200"}}]]The Albany-­Dougherty Payroll Development Authority has given the go-ahead for its part in the proposed new biomass generator in conjunction with Procter&Gamble in Albany.

We reported Tuesday that the PDA Ok'ed a new lease for Procter and Gamble that could help them cut waste, and allowing the company to have another tenant.

The combined heat and power biomass facility at the Albany Procter & Gamble Paper Products Co. was touted as a boon for the local economy by strengthening existing industries, protecting jobs and positioning Albany as a premier location for renewable energy projects.

The utility scale biomass plant would be one of the largest in Georgia and represents up to $230 million of investment by Albany Green Energy, LLC. The potential project, which is being driven by Procter & Gamble, Constellation New Energy and Sterling Energy Assets, would create 25 to 35 full-­-time jobs and an average of 190 construction jobs across 21 months with a peak of 575 jobs, and create nearly $8 million in tax revenue over the two-decade deal.

[Interesting piece by industry PR person in regards to dealing with public opposition to dirty energy projects. -Ed.]

- by Al Maiorino, September 2, 2014, Renewable Energy Magazine

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"138","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 180px; height: 134px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Transylvania County in North Carolina is currently engaged in intensive internal debate about the role of biomass in their future. The current state of affairs began last year when Renewable Developers, a New York based LLC, proposed the construction of a biomass waste to energy conversion plant in the town of Penrose.

The new facility would utilize the pyrolysis method of conversion to turn wood chips and municipal solid waste into approximately four megawatts of renewably sourced electricity. Unfortunately, staunch public opposition lead by the NIMBY group People for Clean Mountains (PCM) immediately began to oppose the facility after it was announced.

- by Duane Shimgawa, August  28, 2014,  Pacific Business News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"254","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 211px; height: 142px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Cleanislands.com"}}]]The only coal-fired power plant in Hawaii, which is the single largest generating plant on Oahu, is under financial stress because there is no financial reserve, according to the Hawaiian Electric Co.'s new energy plan released this week.

Hawaiian Electric is also asking AES Hawaiito convert some of the energy being produced at the plant in Campbell Industrial Park to biomass from coal

Given the potential financial impact of an interruption of service associated with a financial default of AES Hawaii, HECO said it has been negotiating in good faith with the company to explore the possibility of an amendment to the power purchase agreement that would make financial sense to AES Hawaii and ratepayers.

As part of the ongoing negotiations for the change in the power purchase agreement, the state’s largest electric utility has asked AES Hawaii to convert some or all of the energy produced at the facility from coal to biomass, possibly from black pellets made from wood.