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Remembering Marvin Wheeler

- by Mike Ewall, Energy Justice Network 
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"482","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"332","style":"width: 333px; height: 230px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]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 tons a day of trash and sewage sludge in the heart of Pennsylvania's third largest city.
 
Surrounded by schools, parks, playgrounds, public housing, a hospital, and a prison, this experimental incinerator was a threat to all that Marvin held dear.  
 
"Keep in mind, this is a brown and black low-income neighborhood," he reminded us. "I think they picked this site because of the county prison that's over there... it's like 'kill the prisoners a littler earlier, before they finish their sentences.'"
 
It saddens us that he is no longer with us to see the fruits of the victory he helped make possible. When others weren't available to help, Marvin organized a petitioners committee and kicked off the effort to bring the issue to the voters. He helped us collect the thousands of signatures we needed to get the Allentown Clean Air Ordinance we drafted onto the city ballot so that the people could choose to adopt protections from incinerator pollution. In freezing winter weather, Marvin worked hard on collecting signatures, slogging from door to door with us, welcoming us into his home, and introducing us to other key people in the community. His warm and humorous personality kept us going in the frantic drive to collect enough signatures in the city's initiative process.
 
While we didn't win the way we had planned (at the polls), the incinerator deal has fallen apart in the past several months. As one of the original petitioners, Marvin is named in our lawsuit over the ordinance initiative (which is still in the courts, as we fight over the right for people to vote on such matters). The delays killed the project as permits and investors were also tied up. The 35-year waste supply contract with the city was canceled by the city late last year. The company's air permit was rescinded a few months ago, and their waste permit (which we also legally challenged) was just revoked as well.
 
As a medical professional, Marvin was teaching kids about asthma triggers and understood that incinerator would be a large one. He spoke about how asthma inhalers and medicines just treat the symptom after the disease, and spoke of the need to be proactive, not reactive. 
 
"The issue here is air quality... and when you think about that and the number of children in this area and the school less than a half a mile from here... what impact does it have on those middle school children?"
 
Here is a fantastic video of Marvin speaking about the struggle, and how "we have to do something different" with green jobs and recycling, not incineration.

Are Media Outlets Megaphones for Polluters?

Are Media Outlets Megaphones for Polluters?
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"473","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 333px; height: 333px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]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 has found an alarming trend in one-sided media reporting on energy issues, making it difficult for the public to make informed decisions about climate change, air pollution, and our energy future.

Join Steve on Thursday, May 21 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET to get the scoop on media’s scanty reporting on corporate polluters and what you can do about it.

 

Find audio archives of past calls here. 

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.]

- John Ackerly, May 1, 2015, Biomass Magazine

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"471","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"302","style":"width: 333px; height: 210px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Industrytap.com","width":"480"}}]]Most of us have looked at the explosive growth of solar photovoltaic systems as just a parallel and complementary renewable energy technology.  Solar panels make kilowatts while wood and pellet stoves make Btus, right?  Wrong.

To stay relevant, the biomass heating industry needs to keep abreast of rapid advances in the solar industry. We also need to think of ways to integrate our technology with other renewables, and we need to explore how that integration can happen right away, because renewable energy policy decisions being made now will impact our industry in coming decades.

The solar industry has a vision, ambition and plan for rapid expansion that is largely absent in the wood and pellet stove community.  Pathways for rapid expansion of pellet technologies are being developed in Europe, but not in the U.S.  While solar advocates are focused on a wide range of financing options, regulatory frameworks, R&D, utility partnerships, the wood and pellet stove industry seems to put more effort into trying to maintain the status quo and fight against regulations. 

Chinese Incinerator Plan Cancelled After Thousands Join Protests

- by Mimi Lau, April 9, 2015, South China Morning Post

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"464","attributes":{"alt":"Chinese Incinerator Protest","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: SCMP pictures"}}]]A western Guangdong city has cancelled a plan to build an incinerator that prompted a protest - of up to 10,000 people on some accounts - during which three police cars were flipped and a duty office vandalised.

Luoding city government posted two letters on its website on Wednesday announcing the decision. One informed the Langtang township government that it had decided to cancel the project, which Langtang had brokered with China Resources Cement Holdings. The second urged residents to stop blocking roads, vandalising property or disturbing public order.

The decision came after residents of the town engaged in a defiant stand-off with police on Tuesday, in protest against what they said was the violent handling of a peaceful sit-in against the incinerator on Monday.

"People are angry with the site selection of the incinerator as it is within a 1km radius of people's homes," said one young resident. "The cement factory is producing enough pollution, we don't need another polluter."

Shuttered Claremont, New Hampshire Incinerator to Reopen

- by Patrick O’Grady, April 15, 2015, Valley News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"463","attributes":{"alt":"wheelabrator incinerator in claremont new hampshire","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 197px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The shuttered Wheelabrator incinerator on Grissom Lane was sold at auction Tuesday for $1.63 million, with the buyer saying he plans to use it to burn municipal waste.

As several bidders stood outside the plant hoping to pick up pieces of equipment at a bargain price, auctioneer Stuart Millner explained that he would allow a bidder to buy everything, including about 9 acres of land.

Millner started the bidding at $1.5 million and Ed Deely — who said he was there on behalf of Hybrid Tech Farms — quickly raised it to the final price of $1.63 million. Other bidders who were not present at the site communicated with Millner by phone, but it was unclear how many there were.

The sale price was referred to as “restricted,” which Deely explained means there will be restrictions, agreed to with Wheelabrator, on the municipalities from which the company can accept solid waste. Late Tuesday, Deely said it is too early to predict when the sale would be finalized or when the plant would start burning trash.

Reject the Exelon Takeover of Pepco

Energy Justice Network testified in D.C. against Exelon energy corporation's takeover of Pepco, electric service provider to Washington, D.C. and Maryland. 
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"442","attributes":{"alt":"nuclear plant","class":"media-image","height":"324","style":"width: 333px; height: 227px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"475"}}]]This takeover is a bad deal for the District of Columbia and is not in the public interest. It would hit DC ratepayers with higher electricity bills, would undermine renewable energy and would not provide reliable power.
 
Exelon is the nation's largest nuclear utility, with 23 of the nation's 99 remaining nuclear reactors. 81% of Exelon's electricity output in 2013 came from these 23 reactors. Two-thirds of them (15 of the 23) are in a list of reactors that are "at risk" of early retirement. Five of these "at risk" Exelon reactors have enough of these problems in combination that they're said to "face particularly intense challenges." The costs to keep unprofitable plants running means huge rate hikes for ratepayers. The costs of their closure are even more alarming, due to both the need for replacement power as well as the astronomical costs of reactor decommissioning.
 
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that the cost of decommissioning ranges from $300 million to $400 million per reactor. Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Energy Institute both estimate that the average reactor unit now costs about $500 million to decommission. Actual decommissioning costs in recent years have exceeded $1 billion per reactor, as evidenced by the over $1 billion price tag for decommissioning Exelon's Zion reactor in Illinois and the $1.2 billion price tag for decommissioning the Vermont Yankee reactor. The 2-unit San Onofre reactor site in California, closed for good in 2013, has an estimated decommissioning price tag of $4.4 billion.
 
Nuclear reactors are NOT reliable. A reactor closed down temporarily for repairs, or permanently due to costs or unresolvable safety issues requires significant replacement power. Nuclear reactors also cannot take the heat. In the hottest summer days, when demand is highest due to air conditioner use, nuclear reactors increasingly have to curtail power or close temporarily, as they cannot legally discharge their heated cooling water that they cannot adequately cool.
 
Exelon is hostile to renewable energy, despite some minor investments. In Maryland, they're starting to push for nuclear power to be included in state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which would decimate the market for wind power as existing nuclear facilities can name their price and undermine new wind and solar development.
 
Nuclear power is not environmentally sound. To produce the same amount of energy as coal, it lays waste to more land with uranium mining. It consumes extensive amounts of fossil fuels to mine, mill, convert, enrich and fabricate nuclear reactor fuel, and transport long ways around the country between each of these steps, before the fuel even reaches the reactor. Extensive radioactive and chemical pollution contaminates communities each step of the way, including in nuclear reactor communities, where radioactive air and water releases are routine and legal, not to mention illegal releases from spills. 
 
For more info, see www.powerdc.org

Save America's Forests and Wild Lands from Anti-Environmental Congress

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"436","attributes":{"alt":"save america's forests","class":"media-image","height":"189","style":"width: 197px; height: 189px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"197"}}]]The logging, grazing, mining and other extractive industries are mounting an intense attack on our nation's public lands. 
 
The December 2014 lame duck session of Congress saw an ugly brew of anti-conservation initiatives removing legal conservation protection from millions of acres of public lands. But this was just the tip of the oncoming extractive industries iceberg.
 
With Republican capture of the Senate in the 2014 election, the goal of the ultra right wing to privatize public lands may soon become reality. Representative Peter DeFazio’s legislation to virtually privatize and allow clearcutting on one million acres of federal land in Oregon could pass into law in the new Congress and become a model for the rest of our public lands. This anti-conservation juggernaut must be stopped. The landmark environmental and conservation laws that for a half century gave some protection to our public lands are eroding, and will disappear like the glaciers in Glacier National Park or the polar ice caps unless we, the hardcore grassroots, unite and fight back in a coordinated national campaign. 

Radioactive Spikes from Nuclear Plants a Likely Cause of Childhood Leukemia

- by Dr. Ian Fairlie, Ecologist

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"435","attributes":{"alt":"safe nuclear power?","class":"media-image","height":"292","style":"width: 333px; height: 203px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Cartoon: cravensworld.wordpress.com","width":"480"}}]]On 23rd August, The Ecologist published very clear evidence of increased cancers among children living near nuclear power stations around the world, including the UK.

The story sparked much interest on social media sites, and perhaps more importantly, the article's scientific basis (published in the academic peer-reviewed scientific journal the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity) was downloaded over 500 times by scientists.

Given this level of interest and the fact that the UK government is still pressing ahead with its bizarre plans for more nuclear stations, we return to this matter - and examine in more detail an important aspect which has hitherto received little attention: massive spikes in radioactive emissions from nuclear reactors.

$629 Million in Taxpayer Dollars for Bioenergy

- by Erin Voegele, March 19, 2015, Ethanol Producer Magazine

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"434","attributes":{"alt":"burning money","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 153px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]On March 12, the U.S. Energy Information Administration published a report on direct federal financial interventions and subsidies in energy for fiscal year (FY) 2103. The report, which responds to a request from Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power, is an update of two earlier EIA reports covering FY 2007 and FY 2010.

Overall, the report finds the total value of direct financial interventions and subsidies in the energy markets decreased by nearly 25 percent between FY 2010 and FY 2013, declining from $38 billion to $29.3 billion. In FY 2010, $11.69 billion in subsidies were electricity related, with $10.7 billion in subsidies for fuels used outside the electricity sector and $15.57 billion in subsidies for conservation, end uses, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. In FY 2013, the breakdown included $16.11 billion in electricity-related subsidies, with $5.21 billion in subsidies for fuels used outside the electricity sector and $7.94 billion in subsidies for conservation, end uses, and LIHEAP.

Planned La Pine, OR Biomass Facility Hinges on Market

- by Dylan J. Darling, March 17, 2015, Bend Bulletin

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"423","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 171px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Biomass Magazine"}}]]A wood-burning power plant remains a possibility for La Pine, with the city now taking the lead on the project from Deschutes County and the company behind it waiting for a change in the energy market.

“It’s just been on hold due to market conditions,” said Rob Broberg, president of Biogreen Sustainable Energy Co., based in Vancouver, Washington. “And we plan on holding out until we are able to market and sell power.”

The company must find an energy buyer to make the planned plant economically viable, said Rick Allen, La Pine city manager.

“They need to find a power company that wants to buy their power,” he said. “…That’s really the issue.”

The $75 million, 25-megawatt biomass plant would produce enough electricity to power about 19,000 homes, Broberg said. The plant would burn wood — limbs and other scrap left over after logging, debris from thinning projects and urban waste — to heat water, create steam and turn a turbine. Interested power companies would likely be in California, where the state requires an increasing percentage of its power to come from “greener” sources such as biomass, wind and solar.

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