Natasha Fast (SAVE), Pastor Angela Manning (New Life Ministries), Allan Ricketts (Project Manager), Geraldine Fairell, Ken Klanicki, Brad Lofton (Executive Director), picture by John S. Quarterman (LAKE)
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Pictured is a group of concerned citizens meeting about the
proposed biomass plant with Valdosta-Lowndes County
Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
Project Manager Allan Ricketts
and Executive Director Brad Lofton.
Ricketts and Lofton gave a two-hour presentation,
took some action items, and have provided a schedule
on which they will fulfill them.
I thank them for that and look forward to the further materials.
Lying in the center of the table in the picture is this document:
Biomass carbon neutrality in the context of forest-based fuels and products
by Reid Miner, NCASI, Al Lucier, NCASI
The copy on the table is dated April 7, 2010; the online version
is dated May 2010.
It’s a powerpoint presentation that makes many good points,
among them that coal doesn’t grow back, while trees do.
So in theory it would be possible, by organizing harvesting of biomass
over a region to make burning biomass for electricity carbon neutral.
The document comes right out and says:
At point of combustion, CO2 emissions per unit of energy produced
are generally higher for biomass fuels than for fossil fuels.
Continue reading →
Previously I promised to come back to the subject of whole trees.
Allan Ricketts asserted in the VLCIA meeting with concerned citizens
on 10 June 2010
that the biomass plant Wiregrass LLC proposed for Valdosta will never
burn whole trees because it would be economically unfeasible for it to do so.
While I have no doubt that Col. Ricketts is acting on the best information
given to him, there are reasons to be sceptical about what will happen
in the future.
Continue reading