High-emissions biomass power doesn’t belong in a renewable energy portfolio alongside no-emissions technologies like wind and solar.
Americans across the political spectrum want renewable energy that protects health and the environment, and understand that burning trees for energy is not “clean and green”.
There’s no faster way to move carbon into the air than by cutting and burning forests, and permit data shows biomass is dirtier than coal. But consumers pay more for this so-called “clean” energy.
“Until the state has a solid understanding of how much wood is realistically available without diminishing the long-term health and diversity of our forests, and until there is a protective harvesting standard in place, there should be a moratorium on any new, large-scale facilities in Vermont.”
New ratepayer subsidies to burn trash in New Jersey ? Sounds like a plan that only the waste industry could love, but it’s the state’s “green” Energy Master Plan that writes a new chapter in NJ’s waste industry story.
Lisa Jackson: “We all remember ‘too big to fail’; this pseudo jobs plan to protect polluters might well be called ‘too dirty to fail.’ How we respond will mean the difference between sickness and health — in some cases, life and death — for hundreds of thousands of people.”
Biomass power plants won’t reduce residential wood-burning and the pollution it produces one iota, but will add hundreds of tons more new particulate matter and ozone-precursors to the air.
DOE’s loans are intended to support development of “innovative and advanced clean technologies”. We’re wondering what’s so innovative, advanced, and clean about a garbage burner.
Numbers from the Beaver Wood Energy biomass plant reveal it will be one of the biggest polluters in Vermont.
The biomass power industry produced 1.4% of power in the United States in 2009, but a far greater proportion of air pollution. How is this “clean” energy, again?