bioenergy

- by Suzanne McLaughlin, August 20, 2014, MassLive

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"221","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Massachusetts Land Court has granted Palmer Renewable Energy’s request to reinstate its building permit for a biomass wood-burning plant in East Springfield, undoing the Springfield Zoning Board of Appeals’ decision that the building permit was invalid.

The decision states that no special permit is needed and the building permit is reinstated, City Solicitor Edward Pikula said. Pikula said he is still reviewing the decision.

Palmer Renewable Energy proposed building a 35-megawatt, wood-to-energy plant on the grounds of Palmer Paving Co. property near the intersection of Page Boulevard and Cadwell Drive.

- by Kelly Hatton, July 17, 2014, Western Confluence

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"242","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 319px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Western Confluence"}}]]On a morning in early March, I ride with Cody Neff, owner of West Range Reclamation (WRR), in his truck from Frisco, Colorado, to the company’s nearby worksite in the White River National Forest. Light is just starting to reach over the high snow-covered slopes surrounding Frisco, but Neff is awake and ready to talk. He tells me that originally it was a love of cattle, not forests, that brought him west to the University of Wyoming, where he studied rangeland ecology while raising beef on a piece of leased land outside Laramie. Now, fifteen years later, he’s running a fifty-employee company and supervising forestry projects on Colorado’s Front Range and in Wyoming’s Medicine Bow National Forest. It’s a position he didn’t necessarily imagine for himself, but one that he has taken on with enthusiasm.

Neff and wife, Stephanie—who Neff credits for his success—started WRR in 2001. They saw a need for what Neff calls responsible and beneficial rangeland and forest management.

From behind the steering wheel, Neff interrupts himself to point out areas on the slopes where the company has completed projects. As he steers up the rough road, he takes phone calls, fields questions, and jots notes for himself on the pad of paper nested in the truck’s console.

When we turn off the main highway and bump slowly along the temporary dirt road that winds up the mountain, Neff points out tightly packed, small-diameter lodgepole pine as illustrative of the problems of this forest. The stands of thin trees are all the same species, the same age, and all are competing for the same resources, susceptible to the same pests. These stands are an easy target for bark beetles. Out the passenger window, I see the impact. Dead trees stand like skeletons among the green.

At the road’s end, the forest opens into a clearing where a fleet of machinery cuts, hauls, and chips trees marked by the Forest Service for removal. Neff hands me a hardhat and a neon vest to put on before we walk over to the semi parked on the edge of the clearing.

[More industry propaganda than a news article, but it demonstrates the biomass industry's  lust for National Forests to feed their dirty incinerators. -Ed.]

- by Ruth Heide, July 22, 2014, Valley Courier

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"220","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 244px; height: 181px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]There’s a different kind of “gold” in “them thar hills.”

It’s in the trees themselves.

Correctly harvested, the beetle kill timber that exists on public and private lands in the San Luis Valley could provide a gold mine for the biomass and other lumber industries while at the same time improving forest health.

Rio Grande National Forest Supervisor Dan Dallas told SLV County Commissioners Association officials yesterday there’s half-a-million acres of primarily spruce and fir in the Rio Grande National Forest alone that could be culled out. He said he has been trying to get something going to get rid of the dead trees during his entire tenure here, but it took columns of smoke that could be seen from Nebraska last year to really get people’s attention.

- Linda Damas Kelley, August 6, 2014, West Hawaii Today

-  July 24, 2014, Farmers’ Advance

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"238","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 222px; height: 167px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Michigan State University (MSU) plant biologist C. Robin Buell has been awarded $1 million from a joint U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program to accelerate genetic breeding programs to improve plant feedstock for the production of biofuels, bio-power and bio-based products.

Specifically, the MSU College of Natural Science researcher will work to identify the genetic factors that regulate cold hardiness in switchgrass, a plant native to North America that holds high potential as a biofuel source.

"This project will explore the genetic basis for cold tolerance that will permit the breeding of improved switchgrass cultivars that can yield higher biomass in northern climates," said Buell, also an MSU AgBioResearch scientist. "It's part of an ongoing collaboration with scientists in the USDA Agricultural Research Service to explore diversity in native switchgrass as a way to improve its yield and quality as a biofuel feedstock."

One of the proposed methods to increase the biomass of switchgrass, and therefore its utility as a biofuel, is to grow lowland varieties in northern latitudes, where they flower later in the season.

-  by Jo Nova, August 5, 2014, JoanneNova.com.au

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"236","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 275px; height: 413px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The headline at Science Daily is that wildfires and other burns lead to climate change. The paper itself asks: “As such, particle burn-off of clouds may be a major underrecognized source of global warming.” For me what matters are the deaths in the here and now:

“We calculate that 5 to 10 percent of worldwide air pollution mortalities are due to biomass burning,” Jacobson said. “That means that it causes the premature deaths of about 250,000 people each year.”

 This is similar to Indur Goklany’s conclusion in 2011:

Killing people with “concern”? Biofuels led to nearly 200,000 deaths (est) in 2010.

In a study  published in  Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Indur Goklany calculated the additional mortality burden of biofuels policies and found that nearly 200,000 people died in 2010 alone, because of efforts to use biofuels to reduce CO2 emissions.

Goklany (2011) estimated that the increase in the poverty headcount due to higher biofuel production between 2010 and 2004 implies 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost DALYs in 2010 alone.

-  by Morgan Watkins, August 5, 2014, Gainesville Sun

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"235","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 225px; height: 154px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: State of Florida"}}]]Local residents worried about the biomass plant showed up Tuesday evening for a public meeting on its draft Title V air operation permit, which could be approved this fall, to make their concerns known.

Folks milled around the Hall of Heroes Community Room at the Gainesville Police Department on Northwest Eighth Avenue, talking over the issues with fellow residents as well as with Florida Department of Environmental Protection officials who were on hand to answer questions.

Several people submitted written comments to the FDEP at the meeting, which was styled as an open house, although others stopped by a table in an adjacent room to give verbal comments instead.

The Gainesville Renewable Energy Center has applied to the FDEP for the five-year permit, which would be effective Jan. 1. This would be its initial Title V permit.

The biomass plant drew complaints of noise, odor and dust issues in the past from residents of the Turkey Creek Golf & Country Club, while government employees who work nearby at Alachua County's Public Works facility complained about odor and dust problems as well.

-  by Susan Smallheer, July 17, 2014, Rutland Herald

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"229","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 200px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]North Springfield, Vt. — Out with biomass, in with solar panels.

Winstanley Enterprises announced Wednesday that it was seeking state approval to build five, 500-kilowatt solar arrays in the North Springfield Industrial Park.

Some of the land that will be used was earlier proposed to be the site of the ill-fated North Springfield Sustainable Energy Project, which was rejected by state regulators earlier this year. The biomass plant would have burned tons of woodchips a year to produce 35 megawatts of electricity.

The developers of the project could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

But according to a news release sent out earlier in the day, it is a joint project of Winstanley Enteprises LLC, of Concord, Mass., Green Lantern Development LLC, of Waterbury and Powersmith Farm Inc., of Guilford.

But according to the three groups’ news release, the five arrays would total 2.5 megawatts of electricity, and represent approximately $8 million in capital investment.

By comparison, the biomass plant was estimated to cost upward of $150 million.

-  by Rob Handy, July 6, 2014, Register Guard

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"99","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 221px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Samantha Chirillo"}}]]During my tenure as a Lane County commissioner, I watched Lane County’s timber harvest rise from 337 million board feet in 2009 to 590 million board feet in 2012, reported concisely by the state Department of Forestry. In spite of this huge surge, a 75 percent increase, I never witnessed the often-predicted surge in jobs or revenues.

What I did witness was a distinct increase in clear-cutting, especially in the forests closest to Eugene. That was accompanied by rural residents in Triangle Lake being contaminated from the aerial spraying of forest poisons and by the degrading of such public waters as Quartz Creek, a vital McKenzie River tributary.

I also noticed how increased burning of logging slash made the valley murky with smoke. Ironically, the Seneca biomass energy facility I contested, instead of reducing slash burning, has degraded our air quality further by increasing its allowable pollution!

Read The Biomass Monitor's coverage of the story behind these air pollution tests: "Tracking Biomass Air Pollution on the Olympic Peninsula" 

-  by Arwyn Rice, July 14, 2014, Peninsula Daily News  

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"208","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 275px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]PORT ANGELES — Air quality in central and eastern Clallam County is generally good, but wood burning for home heating and transportation-related pollutants are contributing to occasional “unhealthy” air days, according to a year-long Olympic Region Clean Air Agency study.

Odelle Hadley, senior air monitoring specialist for the agency, presented the study to about 40 area residents during a meeting at the Port Angeles Library on Sunday.

The study, undertaken in 2013 to identify which location would best represent the area to test air quality, is a precursor to testing air quality impacts of the new co-generation biomass boiler at the Nippon Paper Industries USA Inc. plant in Port Angeles.

Nippon’s new biomass boiler — one of four boilers at the plant — was operational for about a month in November and December but has been under repair since, so the study does not reflect any impact the boiler may have on local air quality, Hadley said.