How To Reduce Premature Deaths Linked to Environmental Risks
Doctor’s Orders: Wood Burning Hazardous to Your Health
$355,375 Grant to Install Biomass Heating in Massachusetts Elementary Schools
- Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, May 5, 2015, Biomass Magazine
RWE Drops Biomass Power, Adds Biomass Thermal, Wind
- by Anna Simet, March 12, 2015, Biomass Magazine
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"422","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 255px; height: 171px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]While RWE Group reported it achieved its earnings targets for 2014 and EBITDA was significantly better than planned, low electricity prices and unusually mild weather negatively affected business performance, which dropped 25 percent from 2013 to 2014.
Peter Terium, CEO of RWE, said that currently, 35 to 45 percent of the utility’s conventional power stations are no longer making any money under current market conditions. “I am not talking about book values—these power stations are costing us real money,” he said. “We cannot avoid the sobering fact that conventional power generation is hardly viable any longer under current market conditions.”
He added that recent modernizations of RWE’s portfolio of power stations haven’t paid off, and that it is difficult to keep a gas or hard coal-fired power station commercially feasible. Previous Investments have made RWE the third-largest gas-fired power station operator in Europe, with capacity of around 15,000 megawatts across the continent. “Considering how quickly the electricity wholesale price fell in recent years, it would be impossible to cut a power station’s costs at the same rate to maintain margins or even make any profit at all,” he said.
Firing Up Hawaiian Biomass Facility
- by Chris D’Angelo, February 11, 2015, The Garden Island
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"401","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Green Energy Team, LLC’s $90 million biomass-to-energy facility in Koloa is now hot.
“They lit the boiler and have started making steam,” said Kauai Island Utility Cooperative spokesman Jim Kelly, who is handling press inquiries for GET. “For the next probably three to four weeks, they’re going to basically be pumping steam through it and cleaning out the tubes.”
The company began testing the facility for the first time last week and expects to have it connected to the KIUC grid and producing electricity by April, according to Kelly.
The 6.7-megawatt facility is located near Knudsen Gap and will provide about 11 percent of the island’s electricity — enough to power 8,500 households and replace about 3.7 million gallons of imported oil annually. It is the first closed-loop, biomass-to-energy plant in the United States, and will rely completely on its own sources of Kauai biomass wood chips.
Contaminated Love Canal Soil Going to Nebraska Incinerator
- by Richard Piersol, March 1, 2015, Lincoln Journal Star
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"399","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 222px; height: 125px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: New York Times"}}]]About a thousand tons of contaminated soil from the notorious Love Canal environmental disaster in New York is being shipped by rail to Kimball for incineration because the company that is disposing of it ran into objections from Canadians, who didn't want it.
Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, became a symbol for environmental abuse in the late 1970s when it was discovered that 22,000 tons of toxic waste had been buried there by Hooker Chemical Co. and then ignored for decades by local authorities.
Property development, weather and the removal of a heavy clay cap released the toxic waste and allowed it to leach under the town, leading to widespread and severe health consequences, vast litigation and finally, the federal Superfund law.
U.S. Added 254 Megawatts of Biomass Energy in 2014
- by Erin Voegele, February 6, 2015 Biomass Magazine
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"343","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 198px; height: 198px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects has released the December edition of its Energy Infrastructure Update, reporting the U.S. added 254 MW of biomass energy capacity last year.
In December, the U.S. added five biomass generating units with a combined capacity of 23 MW. During the full year 2014, the U.S. added 58 biomass generating units with a combined capacity of 254 MW. In 2013, 142 biomass units were added with a combined 858 MW of capacity.
Within its report, the FERC highlighted LES Service LLC’s 6 MW landfill gas-to-energy, which came online in December. The project, known as the Zimmerman Energy Facility, is located in Fulton County, Indiana. Power generated at the facility is sold to Northern Indiana Public Service Co. under a long-term contract.
Zero Waste to Landfill: How Incinerators Get Promoted
- by Caroline Eader
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"386","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 333px; height: 371px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"431"}}]]The incinerator industry promotes a false belief that the only choices we have in handling our waste is to either burn it for energy or to bury it in a landfill. The existence of what is known as a "waste-to-energy" (WTE) facility does not eliminate the need for a landfill. First, 10% to 15% of the waste stream cannot be incinerated and secondly, after burning there is a significant amount of ash (10% to 15% by volume, or about 30% by weight) which is still sent to a landfill.
The industry notion that trash incineration doesn't compete with composting or recycling is misleading. Industry would have people believe only material which can't be recycled is processed, but the truth is incinerator contracts do not exclude recyclable material from being incinerated. When I´ve asked industry representatives why they do not remove the recoverable material, they say, "It's not my job."
If you read Covanta and Wheelabrator incinerator contracts, you'll find that their job is to get BTUs from municipal solid waste (including plastic and paper) for energy recovery.
Concerns About Syracuse, NY Trash Incinerator Pollution
- January 6, 2015, LocalSYR
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"375","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 222px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]It’s the next step to allow trash from Cortland County to be brought into Onondaga County’s Waste to Energy facility.
Both counties’ legislatures this week have held public hearings on the so called “Ash for Trash” plan.
For two decades now Onondaga County's Waste to Energy facility has been burning trash only from Onondaga County.
The legislature is now considering changing that law to allow for trash to come in from Cortland County.
The the extra trash would allow the incinerator to meet the minimum levels of trash it handles as established in a new contract agreed to between OCRRA and the plant operator, Covanta.