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Palmer Renewable Energy has filed a lawsuit against Springfield after the City Council voted last month to revoke the energy development firm's permit to build a wood-burning biomass plant in East Springfield. Although details of the civil complaint were not immediately available on Saturday, Springfield City Councilor Timothy J. Rooke confirmed that the city has received notice of the suit, which is reportedly seeking somewhere in the ballpark of $50 million. On May 23, the 13-member City Council voted 10-2 -- one member was absent for the May vote -- to revoke the Palmer-based developer's special permit to build a...

The IPCC recently released the Summary of a report about renewable energy. Both Pielke Jr. and Donna Laframboise have mentioned it, and once the final report comes out at the end of the month I'm sure we'll hear more about it. However, in looking over the report I was stunned to find out what the IPCC considers as renewable energy (RE). This story at Scientific American covers it very well. I recommend reading it. Here's the problem. The IPCC has different categories of renewable energy. They include solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, ocean, and biomass. Biomass is by far the largest...

Two Central Valley biomass plants have agreed to pay more than $830,000 in fines for violating the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday. “Today’s enforcement actions are a victory for human health,” Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest, said in a statement. The plants in Chowchilla and El Nido, both owned by Global Ampersand, LLC, of Boston, were fined $343,000 and $492,000, respectively. Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment. David Kim, assistant regional counsel for the EPA, said that the fines showed that even the renewable energy industry could run...

Chinese researchers have developed a magnetic solid acid catalyst that raises the prospect of efficiently converting biomass cellulose into useful chemicals, such as sugars for biofuel production.According to the researchers, the catalyst is better than conventional equivalents because it shows good hydrothermal stability and can be recycled - magnetic nanoparticles pull the acid away from the substrate when a magnetic field is applied.Using biomass as a source of renewable fuel has attracted interest in recent years in response to global climate change and the search for alternatives to fossil fuels. The main component of biomass is cellulose - a polymer comprising many...

KRISTIANSTAD, Sweden — When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity. But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels. But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of...

GREENFIELD, Mass. — Matthew Wolfe, an energy developer with plans to turn tree branches and other woody debris into electric power, sees himself as a positive force in the effort to wean his state off of planet-warming fossil fuels. “It’s way better than coal,” Mr. Wolfe said, “if you look at it over its life cycle.” Not everyone agrees, as evidenced by lawn signs in this northwestern Massachusetts town reading “Biomass? No Thanks.” In fact, power generated by burning wood, plants and other organic material, which makes up 50 percent of all renewable energy produced in the United States, according...

Biomass-derived fuels take a step closer to solving the energy problem thanks to a new process developed by US scientists. As fossil fuel resources continue to diminish, there is a greater need for developing new approaches for producing fuels from renewable resources. Solar cells and hydrogen fuel could provide long term solutions but the most immediate option is substitution of petrol with biofuels. First-generation biofuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel have shown this is possible but they can only satisfy a small portion of the energy demands of the transportation sector and they also use edible biomass as a feedstock increasing competition...

Air Force Maj. Michelle Coghill confirmed both of the military aircraft's engines used the biofuel for Thursday morning's flight at Eglin Air Force Base near Valparaiso, Fla., the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News reported. The Air Force said the flight represented the first time all of a military or civilian airplane's engines were fueled by a biofuels blend. The test flight represents part of an ongoing Air Force effort to develop and test biofuels. The Daily News said officials from both the Air Force Research Laboratory and Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base oversaw the test flight. Unlike conventional...

Fagen Inc. was pretty busy from 2006 to 2008, building 47 ethanol projects across the U.S., bringing in about $2.2 billion in revenue for the family-owned business in Granite Falls, Minn. "Corn ethanol has been the best thing that has happened to the farmers since the invention of the combine," said 61-year-old Ron Fagen, who grew up in the tiny community of Maynard near Granite Falls. "It gives them another market for their corn." But the ethanol party's over, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: ... Fagan is actually taking part in a project to build what is expected to be...

It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie. A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies. -snip-

A jury sentenced a Lakeview man to 10 years in prison for growing nearly 7,500 marijuana plants. Andrew Stever, 40, was sentenced on Monday after a three-day trial in the Federal District Court in Medford.Ten years is the mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of growing 1,000 or more pot plants. In July 2007, officers from several local, state and federal agencies found 7,459 plants growing on Stever's Lakeview property, which bordered Forest Service land. Two men fled the scene, leaving behind personal property and three firearms, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Portland. Physical evidence and testimony linked...

Joann (Tink) Birchem says she “can see the forest for the trees.” In time, everyone else will see it too, she says. Birchem and her husband Jerry, own Valley Forest Wood Products LLC and Birchem Logging Inc., both in Mountain Iron, Minn. Somewhere in northeast Minnesota, where thousands of trees dot the landscape, Tink Birchem saw the forest that she believes holds the future of heating. That future is in the form of a small wood pellet that burns hot and clean inside special furnaces. Eventually, everyone is going to need them and the reason can be explained in one...

Sizing-Up Anaerobic Digestion When Richard Kessel became the chief executive officer for the Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Environmental Power Corp. in July 2006, he was armed with more than 30 years experience in the energy field and the wherewithal to mold companies into formidable players in the renewable energy industry. EPC, and its single subsidiary Microgy Inc., is rapidly expanding its renewable energy portfolio by developing, owning and operating large-scale anaerobic digestion facilities that produce methane-rich biogas from agricultural livestock and organic wastes. EPC’s ability to design anaerobic digestion systems and to provide ongoing operational maintenance on a large scale sets it...

It's the basement apartment like no other. Life has been found 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea floor, at temperatures reaching 100 °C. The discovery marks the deepest living cells ever to be found beneath the sea floor. Bacteria have been found deeper underneath the continents, but there they are rare. In comparison, the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life. John Parkes, a geobiologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it might even redefine what we understand as life, and, bizarrely, what...

After three years of clandestine development, a Georgia company is now going public with a simple, natural way to convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil.

News item: ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2008) — Researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees... While it may be five to 10 years before green gasoline arrives at the pump or finds its way into a fighter jet, these breakthroughs have bypassed significant hurdles to bringing green gasoline biofuels to market... "Green gasoline is an attractive alternative to bioethanol since it can be used in existing engines and does not incur the 30 percent gas mileage penalty of ethanol-based flex...

TIFTON — A Tifton agricultural researcher says he has found the solution to the world’s energy crisis through genetic modification and cloning of bacterial organisms that can convert bio-mass into hydrocarbons on a grand scale. The local researcher believes his groundbreaking discovery could result in the production of 500 to 1,000 barrels of hydrocarbon fuel per day from the initial production facility. The hydrocarbon fuel — commonly known as oil or fossil fuel when drilled — will require no modification to automobiles, oil pipelines or refineries as they exist today and could forever end the United States’ dependence on foreign...

S. Degradans is the source of the Ethazyme mixtures. University of Maryland research that started with bacteria from the Chesapeake Bay has led to a process that may be able to convert large volumes of all kinds of plant products, from leftover brewer’s mash to paper trash, into ethanol and other biofuel alternatives to gasoline. That process, developed by University of Maryland professors Steve Hutcheson and Ron Weiner, is the foundation of their incubator company Zymetis, which was on view today in College Park for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and state and university officials. "The new Zymetis technology is...

Local foresters predict that up to 90 percent of lodgepole pines will die in some areas near West Vail. Local firefighters say that creates a veritable tenderbox that could easily ignite and spread. Sackbauer was pleased to see lots of work being done near his home this summer to reduce the risk of fire spreading, either from the forest into the neighborhood, or vice versa. workers created a 200- to 300-foot barrier of “defensible space,” a clear-cut area that aims to help stop the spread of fire. The town also hired a six-man “hand crew” to cut trees on town-owned...

Jefferson County officials said last week that plans to aid an Arizona businessman in his quest to construct a bio-energy facility in Golden are moving forward. Wade Yates, special project coordinator for Jeffco, said the county has finalized a $161,700 contract with CVL Consultants of Colorado for an engineering study and design plan for the proposed wood-pellet fuel biomass plant. If the report finds the site is appropriate for the Front Range’s first biomass facility, the consultants will help Jeffco rezone the land from agricultural to industrial uses and develop a comprehensive site development plan. At that point, “we’re really...