The Cellulosic Myth

- by Brian Tokar

[Excerpted from "Biofuels and the Global Food Crisis," in Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar, eds., Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict Resistance, and Renewal, New York: MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS, 2010.] 

Logging for biomass energy in Vermont

Electronic Map Tracks Logging for Biomass Energy

- by Josh Schlossberg, The Biomass Monitor

The first and only electronic map tracking logging sites sourcing wood to a biomass energy facility has been released by Energy Justice Network, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization with field offices in Vermont, Pennsylvania and Oregon and Biofuelwatch, an international organization based in Vermont and the UK.

- by Josh Schlossberg, The Biomass Monitor

A new report by Rachel Smolker and Almuth Ernsting of Biofuelwatch condemns carbon capture and storage (CCS) as setting the stage for increased burning of climate-busting biomass and fossil fuels for energy, in effect keeping us from looking at the way the way we produce—and consume—energy.

BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage): Climate saviour or dangerous hype? reveals the technical and financial unlikelihood of reducing carbon dioxide emissions through carbon capture and storage, how the technology will result in the burning of even more biomass and fossil fuels, and points out the “serious risks and hazards” inherent in the process.  

- by Rachel Smolker, Biofuelwatch

In December 2012, the U.S. Senate voted to strike language from the National Defense Authorization Act that would have limited military use of biofuels by requiring that they only purchase biofuels at costs comparable to petroleum fuels. Further, they amended the bill to allow defense spending on refinery construction, previously prohibited. That move included the $510 million in funding via an agreement between the Department of Defense, the USDA and the Department of Energy. Given the call to reduce military budgets, biofuels are at issue after hackles were raised following the revelation that the Air Force had paid out $59/gallon for biofuelled test flights, and the Navy's "Great Green Fleet" demonstration, using $26/gallon fuel, at a total cost over $12 million.

- by Karen Orr, Energy Justice Network

One of the tragedies of life in Gainesville, Florida is that there is so little reality based journalism. In today's SUN, editorial page editor Ron Cunningham continues the newspaper's disinformation campaign on the city's Gainesville Renewable Energy Center (GREC) boondoggle. Cunningham rewrites history when he states: "I just wish they had been here hotly debating that issue three, four or even five years ago, when it might have made a difference."

- by Josh Schlossberg, The Biomass Monitor

A study on the health risks from a biomass power incinerator proposed for Placer County, California contains “several fallacies,” according to Norma Kreilein, MD, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Friends: We've always done excellent work on a shoe-string budget.  Our small crew has been providing critical support to community environmental leaders all over the U.S., enabling countless victories against coal, gas, incineration and other existing and proposed polluters.

We need to raise $50,000 to bring us through 2013.  We aimed to raise $10,000 of that this month, and have already raised $9,491!  I think we can make it to $15,000.  Please check out our work, reach out to us for help if you need it, and offer whatever support you can:  http://www.energyjustice.net/donate/

Below is an overview of our work that we shared with our email contacts.  Click the "read more" link below to check it out.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

The Energy Justice Team
Mike, Traci, Aaron, Alex, Josh & Samantha
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Dear Energy Justice friend,

Every day, we're hearing from communities that need our support, whether it's to stop proposals for the coal plant near their homes, the trash incinerator near their child's school, the landfill by their farmland, or the gas pipeline through their town.

After bringing together the nation's grassroots "No New Coal Plants" network in 2006, helping stop over 100 coal plant proposals, we've focused back on biomass and trash incinerators, which are far more polluting, expensive and worse for the climate. On climate pollution, here's where they fall:

Please note that, especially with the practice of fracking, natural gas is actually worse than coal for global warming, if you count all of the methane leakage from extraction to pipelines to end uses.  This chart is just for smokestack emissions, but for the whole picture on global warming pollution from gas vs. coal, see: http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/Marcellus.html

- by Josh Schlossberg, The Biomass Monitor

Friends of the Earth (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland), Greenpeace, and the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds denounce burning trees for electricity as a greater threat to the climate over the coming decades than burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, in a report released in November.