Hawaiian plant is latest to convert from coal to biomass
According to their website,
The Hu Honua clean energy project produces electricity from locally grown sustainable crops and surplus green waste that would otherwise go unused. The goal of the clean energy project is to utilize 100 percent renewable feedstock, such as wood residue, to generate electricity at the plant.
Project Facts
- Powers 18,000 homes with renewable energy
- Replaces 225,000-250,000 barrels of imported oil annually
- On-island biomass resources, include:
- residual wood from the local timber industry
- invasive species clearing operations
- landscaping materials
- green waste otherwise being landfilled
Lights on Oregon’s biomass power section is still in production. However, be aware that biomass is yet another tool we can use to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Let it be clear, options exist. Nevertheless, many environmental groups, instead of supporting such renewable energy initiatives, oppose them and do their best to prevent their success.
Do your part. Sign our petition to the state legislature.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
The Blundering Biofuel Killers
Are good intentions a legitimate excuse for negligent homicide?
Biofuel production will significantly contribute to the early, avoidable deaths of at minimum between 10 and 20 million people worldwide in the year 2008 alone, a conservative estimated based on United Nations global poverty statistics and advice by experts on global hunger. Privately, I fear the malnutrition body count will climb higher, as food prices are rising quickly, and the higher they go, the more people will die. Global deaths due to malnutrition and related illness in 2008 could reach as high as 20 to 30 million, but I hope I am wrong in that dark suspicion. Economists estimate that over 100 million of the world’s poor are in great jeopardy due to a lack of food. The world food crisis has other significant driving factors, such as high oil prices and expanding populations, but biofuel production is the only major contributing element that is 100% under our immediate control. The fundamental moral question is why are our politicians making a difficult situation dramatically worse by turning mountains of grain into fuel at a time the whole world desperately needs more food?
To put this tragedy in historical perspective, the infamous Cambodian dictator Pol Pot killed approximately 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979. Two hundred thousand were executed, but the rest mainly died from starvation due to Pol Pot’s idiotic agricultural policies. Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s 1958 “Great Leap Forward” 5 year plan caused the starvation of millions of Chinese, with mortality estimates ranging widely from 14 million up to 40 million. Mao tried to forcefully shift China’s agricultural based economy to greater industrial output. Mao had the best of intentions, just like so many of our politicians who support forcing by government decree the massive diversion of food to fuel. These leaders hold firm to their almost mystical beliefs in biofuels, even after being repeatedly warned that this shift from agriculture to fuel production is starving people around the world and is murder for the environment as well.
Unless the biofuel bandwagon is halted by public protest, by the year 2020 the world will be diverting 400 million tons of grain each year into ethanol production, which is calorically equal to 100% of current global rice production. There have been major demonstrations and/or food riots in at least 37 countries, and according to the World Bank 33 nations face political instability as staple food prices have risen 83% in the last 3 years. Biofuel production is equivalent to a new tax on food that starves the poor in order to feed money to rich agricultural corporations. Big business makes our biofuels, not Mom and Pop.
The United Nations has warned that 82 countries now face food emergencies this year as cereal stocks are at an all-time low. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul stated that production of biofuels is “30 to 70% responsible” for food price inflation. A detailed analysis by Don Mitchell, an internationally respected economist at the World Bank, states that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%! Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern stated that “If there was a secret vote (on biofuels), there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess what we are doing.” One of many ways biofuel production causes hunger is by driving up the cost of fertilizer; up over 200% in 2007. If something you eat requires fertilizer to grow, biofuels have increased its cost.
Oil price increases have not shrunk the human food supply, but biofuel production has. The more biofuels we produce, the less food we have to eat, because we grow biofuel crops, even switchgrass, using the same land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment, and labor we use to grow food. New studies have shown that ethanol from non-food cellulose sources, such as switchgrass, wood chips, and crop waste, etc., will never be economically viable, so biofuels are essentially a dead-end technology. Researchers brag that algae can produce 15 times more fuel per acre of land than growing corn for ethanol, but that still means we would need an impossibly large number of acres (about 133 million acres) of concrete lined open-air algae ponds to meet our highway energy demands. Algae schemes that use less land invariably call for feeding algae sugar or starches, which means growing sugarcane, corn, or sugar beets, so you are simply trading ethanol potential to make oil instead of vodka.
Every year the human race burns the equivalent of 400 years worth of total planetary vegetation in the condensed form of fossil fuels, so how are we ever going to replace all of that concentrated biomass energy by growing a relatively small volume of biofuel crops on our overpopulated, fresh water starved little planet? How are the homeless, the elderly, the disabled, veterans, and all those living on low fixed incomes going to survive 14 more years of rapid food price inflation caused by Barack Obama’s biofuel plan? The justifying claim that ethanol is a “clean fuel” is false as well. Ethanol blended fuels burn cleaner on a per gallon basis, but not on a miles traveled basis, because ethanol contains 33% less energy than gasoline. Ethanol blended fuels actually emit more CO2 per miles driven than ordinary gasoline in addition to emitting far more CO2 during their manufacture. So why do so many people keep mindlessly repeating the false claim that ethanol is “green” and “renewable.” If we dramatically speed up global warming by producing ethanol, soon we won’t be able to “renew” much of anything.
Biofuel production causes water pollution, water shortages, erodes topsoil, tortures wildlife, and numerous studies have proven that biofuel farming speeds global warming by releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Biofuels are a major contributor to global famine. If you kill one person with a gun you go to jail, but what about contributing to the deaths of millions through bad policy?
For more information and better energy alternatives, see http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html
Christopher Calder
September 5th, 2008 at 5:48 am
I think I would agree with the overall argument of the comment. However, you do recognize the difference between “biofuel” and “biomass”? They are different things.
“Biofuel” is made out of such things as corn, sugarcane, sugar beat, oil palm, etc. ” The biofuel process makes the food processed uneatable (in most cases).
“Biomass,” on the other hand, is produced a variety of different ways. From, wood, crops, garbage, landfill gas, alcohol fuels, etc. However, we are mainly looking at the “Cellulosic Ethanol” process. That is, the kind of “Biomass” that does not use crops that otherwise would be consumed by humans. For more information, see the National Renewable Energy Laboratory: http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/39436.pdf