Biomass is building up in California as solar energy builds,
according to The Los Angeles Times:
The waste-to-energy facilities where Parreira used to send about
50,000 tons of shells per year are vanishing. Six have closed in just
two years, the latest in Delano, which shut down Thursday, after San
Diego Gas & Electric ended its power purchase agreement. Twenty-five
people were laid off, and 19 will remain to complete closure of the
plant, said Dennis Serpa, fuels manager of the 50-megawatt plant, owned
and operated by Covanta.
The Rio Bravo biomass facility south of
Fresno is taking some of the fuel that would have gone to Delano. But
short of a miracle, the 25-megawatt plant run by IHI Power Services
Corp. will burn its last wood chips in July, when its power purchase
agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. expires.
The
Sacramento Municipal Utility District, meanwhile, is locked in a
dispute with the 18-megawatt Buena Vista biomass facility in Ione, and
has threatened to terminate its contract, according to district
spokesman Christopher Capra.
The closures have forced the San
Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to consider allowing more
agricultural waste to be burned in open piles, which produces
particulate matter and ozone-forming compounds associated with
cardiovascular illnesses.
It seems like we've talked about this before. Oh, yes, it is also
a problem in Minnesota. But instead of solar in Minnesota, it's been the low price of natural gas that is undoing biomass:
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.
"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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.