Biofuels are driving up the price of food. Biofuel production threatens to worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land. That’s the damning conclusion of a United Nations bioenergy forum, as reported by CNN. In its opposition to the biofuels boom, the U.N. is not alone. The Hartford Courant reports that residents of Suffield, Connecticut are none too pleased with CT Biodiesel's plan to build the largest biodiesel plant in the Northeast in their town. "No Biodiesel" signs sprouted up on front lawns. Vexed by health and safety (especially fire) concerns, residents flooded planning meetings, chanting, "Get out of our town." CT [Biofuels] responded in the time-honored American tradition; company officials offered the town 35k gallons of free biodiesel a year, more than $400k a year in projected property taxes, guaranteed first crack at new jobs and aid for the town's fuel bank, student scholarships and charitable organizations. “Resident Laureen Peck had a message for company officials at a recent town meeting: ‘There are safety issues here, and money will not override us.’”
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No Biodiesel either? Wow. The list of “Environmentalist Approved” energy sources gets shorter by the day. I guess we are now down to just Solar Power.
No Wind – ruins the views and kills birds
No Nuclear – no place for the waste
No Hydro – kills the Salmon
No Ethanol – steals food from people
No Biodiesel – ditto
No Clean Coal – Coal = BAD
No Oil or Gas – Only Fidel can drill off our coasts.
I guess I better go start building a mud hut in my back yard and power up that bicycle.
Alex: The only reason they are not protesting Solar is that it is not practical yet. Just wait until somebody proposes covering a couple thousand square miles of the Sonoran desert with solar panels. Try googling “blind desert pupfish”.
I didn’t see any environmental organizations referenced.
I just see “residents” which would make this a NIMBY opposition.
It sounds like the NIMBYs in this former agricultural town will lose the jobs to a town with an industrial legacy, or they will bargain for enough transparency of operations to assuage their fears.
While it’s a very hard problem, there are a lot of people working on cellulosic ethanol and propynol, such as the recent GM investment in Coskata. We do have enough plant waste to make a dent in our energy requirements if this can be solved.
Certainly, people are realizing that ethanol from corn doesn’t pencil out financially or from an energy efficiency standpoint, unless you are sucking down federal subsidies for your corn.
But converting various waste streams to energy is going to be a big story in the 21st century. The era of cheap energy is ending soon.
btw, Brazil’s ethanol from sugar cane works because the chemical process eliminates one step compared to corn (per Professor Frances Arnold of CalTech and Gevo), and sugar cane grows like a weed there.
This solar plant got built in the desert, apparently without killing pupfish or getting stopped by crazy environmentalists. It’s delivering electricity to my house in Los Angeles right now.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/csp.html
Unfortunately this tells a different story about California electrical sources
http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html
Good find Juniper.
Wow. Just wow. The Environmentalist capital of the world and all of the renewable energy sources on the list show a net DECLINE, save for a slight gain in wind.
All of their net new production is basically Gas. CA – Prime example of what the NIMBY environmentalist strategy can do to a state.
Contrast that with industry-friendly Texas. Their wind power generation has shot thru the root over the past 10 years, it is now the dominant wind-producing state in the country and has more than 1/3 of the country’s “under-construction” facilities going up.
http://www.awea.org/projects/
I’m not a fan of using edible food product to make fuel for biodiesel. Biodiesel is a great product to make from non-edible sources such as recycled vegetable oil from restaurants, algae, vegetable oil not for human consumption, etc. I have no interest in wasting more than we should. Imagine the cost of vegetables (corn) being stable and the price of biodiesel costing a fraction of methanol (methanol can be distilled and reused after biodiesel is produced…reclamation is about 70%). I would gladly welcome biodiesel processing in my city. I have some in my backyard, literally. The only hazards I see is the methanol and sodium hydroxide. It’s all non-toxic in the end, but I do understand limited hazards during the reaction.
Robert Schwartz :
Just wait until somebody proposes covering a couple thousand square miles of the Sonoran desert with solar panels. Try googling “blind desert pupfish”.
So I tried googling “blind desert pupfish,” and all I found were a couple links to some blogs urging me to google “blind desert pupfish,” with the apparent expectation that I would find shocking examples of the environmental community being stupidly opposed to even the greenest of power sources.
In Mr. Schwartz’s defense, though, I will also point out that the solar plants that norman was crowing about so proudly were build in the 1980s, and there is no telling what kind of permitting issues a developer would run into today if he tried to build another such plant. And, as Juniper points out through his link, such plants only supply about 1/500th of California’s power, which means that norman consumed his share of solar power simply by keeping his computer on long enough to blog about environmental issues, instead of shutting it down early. Kind of a wash.
Regarding the actual subject of the article, the town of Suffield is actually, based on my reading of the satellite photographs and their official website, a relatively posh suburb of Hartford, which “maintains a delicate balance between its colonial roots and today’s modern life-style,” or, put another way, “is a gracious town with a rural flavor in a suburban setting.” Of course the residents object to any sort of industry that would remotely seem threatening to themselves or their property values! The businessmen seeking to build this plant would be better advised to look for a brownfield site in East Hartford or New Haven or Bridgeport or somewhere else like that.
And finally, to address A-Rod’s point — sure, if you conflate all environmentalists and take the sum of their collective fears, no technology is safe. And, to be fair, there are a few rather extreme greenie types who do the work for you, and come out against so many alternatives that you feel as if you can’t take them seriously. Which is a good feeling to have, because you shouldn’t take them seriously.
My feeling is the vast majority of environmentalists are at least individually coherent — they recognize the need for industry, and would sanction at least certain energy alternatives, even if opposing others as (in their view) counterproductive. I would even venture to say that you could cobble together a (perhaps slim) majority of environmentalists who could all back the same package of “good” alternatives, even if others (out of heartfelt concern, or simple NIMBYism) would object.
In the end, the environmentalists can research and squabble all they want, but it is up to the rest of us to be receptive enough examine their claims and proposals seriously and critically, and then get behind the ones which we generally find convincing or useful. Just like anything else, really.
A-rod is definitely lumping environmentalists in ignorance. Here’s his list, revised:
Wind – separates true environmentalists (who strongly support it under most conditions) from NIMBYs
Nuclear – maybe. But it’s no panacea, because it’s expensive, because of terrorism concerns, because of no solution to waste and because uranium mining is environmentally filthy. But it may need to be included in the mix because of CO2 problems
Hydro – should be limited because of damage to river ecology.
Ethanol – from corn is a boondoggle–no more energy out than energy in to make the stuff. From sugar cane, net energy is much better. From switchgrass, probably good if they can get the price down.
No Biodiesel – depends on source of the biodiesel. Palm oil is a bad source, because the palm farms replace peat that holds tremendous amounts of CO2 in sequestration. In other words, by converting the peat lands to palm production, you release a huge amount of CO2. Other sources may be relatively benign.
No Clean Coal – Coal = BAD there is no such thing as clean coal. If they figure out how to use the CO2 to grow algae, and turn that into fuel, if they quit destroying mountains in appalachia to mine the coal, then maybe “clean coal” will live up to its name
No Oil or Gas – Only Fidel can drill off our coasts. (this is a joke, right, A-rod?)
Ocean Tech (wave and tidal) very benign, even aesthetically. probably will be a major contributor. Large installations already going in in Europe, much investigation in the US, particularly by the CA utility. http://tinyurl.com/yrp88g
energy efficiency/conservation measures this is the source of by far the biggest bang for the buck, and the greatest potential in absolute terms.
Most of this stuff is a hell of a lot more complicated than A-rod makes it out to be.
Try This Link.
The Fidel thing is no joke. Foreign powers are now drilling in areas that our government will not let our own oil companies develop.
How stupid is that?
R. Schwartz,
Thanks for the link. I love how the author makes it sound as if these fish started the endangered species movement on their own. Like they reached out of the hole, grabbed some spelunker by the collar, and gave him a long diatribe on the immorality of killing off species.
Amazing.