forests

USDA Announces Initiative to Expand U.S. Wood-to-Energy Efforts

- by Sue Retka Schill, September 13, 2013. Source: Biomass Magazine 

The USDA announced a partnership agreement to expand wood energy use, which will help improve the safety and health of U.S. forests. The new partnerships include USDA, the Alliance for Green Heat, the Biomass Power Association, the Biomass Thermal Energy Council and the Pellet Fuels Institute. Ag secretary Tom Vilsack also announced more than $1.1 million in grants to five organizations to form state-wide teams that will stimulate development of wood energy projects in Idaho, California, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Alaska.

"Today's announcements will help us find innovative ways to use leftover wood to create renewable energy and support good jobs in rural America," Vilsack said. "Wood to Energy efforts are a part of our 'all of the above' energy strategy. Appropriately scaled wood energy facilities also support our efforts to remove hazardous fuels and reduce the risks of catastrophic wildfires."

E.U. Agroenergy Policy: A Foreseeable Disaster

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A new report, A Foreseeable Disaster: The European Union’s agroenergy policies and the global land and water grab, demonstrates that schemes to convert plants and trees into electricity, liquid fuels, and heat, a.k.a. agroenergy or agromass, will do more harm than good.

The report, written by Helena Paul and published in July 2013 by Transnational Institute, Centre for Research and Documentation Chile-Latin America (FDCL), and Econexus for Hands off the Land Alliance, challenges an expansion of European agroenergy by “critically analysing the origins, claims, and effects of the European Union’s (EU) transition to a new bioeconomy.”

Agromass, a subset of biomass, consists of “so-called wastes and residues from agriculture and forestry (for example, waste products from oil palm plantations: oil palm shells, empty fruit bunches, palm fronds, trunks, palm kernel shells and mesocarp fibres).” Major components of agromass are wood chips and pellets—which utilize whole trees, treetops and limbs—grasses, agricultural crops and agricultural residues. Agromass can also include municipal solid waste and sewage.

Australia to Reverse Ban on Native Forest Incineration

- by Jenny Weber, Huon Valley Environment Centre  

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The NSW Government has opened a submission period through the Environment Protection Authority for comment on this plan to amend the regulation that currently prohibits use of native forests for bio-energy. The Protection of the Environment Operations (General) Regulation 2009 currently prohibits the use of “native forest bio-materials” to generate electricity. 

The O’Farrell government is proposing to amend this regulation to enable the following vegetation on public or private land to be burnt for electricity generation: areas approved for logging for pulp products; vegetation that has been approved for clearing; offcuts and ‘waste’ from the timber industry. 

This amendment would increase logging and devastate NSW’s remaining native forests. Far-reaching damaging impacts on native wildlife survival, the health of communities and the state’s carbon emissions are likely consequences of the logging industry based in burning native forests for bio-energy.

Timber Industry Distorts Information to Exploit Our Forests

- by Samantha Chirillo, July 11, 2013. Source: Register-Guard

Swanson supposedly states just the facts regarding Oregon's forests and industry, but instead distorts them. Swanson is connected to the Swanson Group, a family that owns mills dependent on public timber.

Her bias may be expected, but her name-calling is childishly rude. Educated, employed, property-tax-paying, law-abiding Oregonians like Susan Applegate and Patty Keene, whose June 6th guest viewpoint triggered Swanson's response, aren't "extremists" or "radicals." They just don't believe the unsupported claims the timber industry cares for the best interests of Oregon's forests and people. 

Biomass and Other Transition Fuels are a False Solution

- by Karen Orr, Energy Justice Network

Clean, truly renewable energy could fully power a large electric grid 99.9 percent of the time by 2030, according to recent research published by the Journal of Power Sources.

This can be done economically and without government subsidies if a well-designed combination of solar power, wind power and storage in batteries and fuel cells is implemented.

Biomass/incineration, ethanol, nuclear power and other false solutions have been promoted as “transition” fuels or technologies, yet the capital-intensive nature of these technologies make transition impossible. 

Biomass Industry Reveals Plans to Turn U.S. into European Resource Colony

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A July Biomass Magazine and Pellet Mill Magazine webinar series, “Satisfying Europe's Growing Appetite for American Wood Pellets,” lays out the biomass industry’s disturbing plans to convert North American forests into wood pellets to fuel European biomass incinerators—further depleting U.S. forests, soils, and watersheds, while hastening runaway climate change. 

Tim Portz of BBI International hosted the industry webinar, joined by guest speakers Seth Ginther of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association, and Dave Tenny of the National Alliance of Forest Owners, a U.S.-based timber industry front group.

Oregon: Biomass Battleground

- by Samantha Chirillo, Energy Justice Network

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The scenario with the Seneca Sustainable Energy biomass power facility, located adjacent to the Seneca timber mill, is disturbingly similar. The State and local air authorities might let Seneca have its way, but no ad campaign on the part of Seneca is going to hide the reality that biomass energy, like the chemical clearcut regime it emerged from, is a dirty, destructive dead-end.

Biofuels and Biomass Lose Favor: Investors Beware!

- by Rachel Smolker, Biofuelwatch

Having spent the past eight years or so of my life fighting back against large-scale commercial and industrial bioenergy, it feels good to finally see the tides turning, albeit slowly, maybe not always for the right reasons, and perhaps too little too late. But consider that in just the past two weeks there have been some remarkable signs that awareness is growing and policies may be slowly shifting. 

A few examples: 

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the EPA, stating the agency has no basis for a three-year deferral that would have exempted CO2 from "biogenic" sources (ethanol, biomass, municipal wastes, landfill gases) from greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act.

Amidst Opposition, a Conference and Industry in Crisis

- by Will Bennington, Global Justice Ecology Project 

Tree plantations and bioenergy with carbon capture: far from “safe” geoengineering J

June 11, 2013. Source: Almuth Ernsting, Hands Off Mother Earth.