Minnesota has spent more than $11 million in taxpayer and utility funds to advance technologies that burn biomass for heat and electric generation or convert it to a synthetic gas. Now, it's getting difficult for the technology to compete.Of course this is just part of the story. Minnesota bans coal-generated electricity from North Dakota.
"The era of low-priced natural gas has blunted opportunities for biomass and other renewables," said Doug Tiffany, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota.
Natural gas prices have dropped by half since their peak in 2008 as exploration using hydraulic fracturing opened new gas fields in shale formations beneath Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
What's been a bonanza for those states has been just the opposite for Chippewa Valley Ethanol in Benson, Minn., 125 miles west of the Twin Cities. The cooperative spent more than $20 million in 2008 on a system that gasifies wood chips and corncobs.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Biomass Energy Update -- Minnesota's Perspective -- The StarTribune
Link to StarTribune here.
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Bruce, could you take a look at this article and specifically the second paragraph under the section called "Gas vs Coal"?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-26/safe-gas-fracking-touted-by-obama-disputed-by-environmentalists.html
Again, someone saying; "Still, fracking isn’t subject to laws for safe drinking water and has exemptions under the Clean Water Act"
I am not trying to beat a horse to death but which is it?
I don't know what the writer is referring to with "fracking isn't subject to laws for safe drinking water," but I'm sure it's accurate. I just don't know the particulars.
DeleteThe industry does have -- repeat, does have -- exemptions under the Clean Water Act.
The laws are very confusing (at least for me) and I have no interest in trying to sort them out. The whole issue is now in the political arena meaning the laws can be re-written.
Googling "fracturing exemptions safe water act" will find answers to the legal questions.