Palmer Renewable Energy can’t greenwash its emissions away (Guest viewpoint)
Updated Mar 08, 2021;
By Mary S. Booth | Partnership for Policy Integrity
Vic Gatto’s Guest Viewpoint (Feb. 26) touting the benefits of the controversial wood-burning power plant he wants to build in East Springfield is packed full of fallacies and misinformation. Gatto begins by claiming that the plant will generate “clean green power” but the truth is that clean energy never comes out of a smokestack. He wants you to believe that just because the plant has a permit, it won’t pollute.
Let’s look at the facts. According to its 2011 operating permit from the MassDEP, Palmer Renewable Energy will burn nearly a ton of green wood chips per minute, around the clock, requiring a smokestack more than twenty stories high to help disperse the pollution. Even with “state of the art” pollution controls, the plant will emit more than 200 tons of harmful air pollutants each year, including over 33 to
‘Innovative zoning’ package advances in Northampton; will allow 2-family homes by right
Northampton city hall File photo
NORTHAMPTON The city is closer to allowing two-family homes by right all across the city.
At its meeting on Thursday night, the City Council unanimously approved, on first reading, a package of zoning changes that would allow two-family homes by right anywhere in the city. Ordinances need two votes for council approval.
“Single family home zoning is exclusive,” Carolyn Misch, assistant director of the city’s department of planning and sustainability, told the council. “And in that way, it sort of demarcates who’s allowed and who’s not allowed. And so we want to start to lift those sort of historic patterns of inequity and acknowledge the fact that we don’t want to create the barriers for people and their choice about where they want to live.”
Guest Viewpoint: Springfield biomass plant will provide needed energy, jobs
Updated Feb 26, 2021;
By Vic Gatto | Palmer Renewable Energy
The Palmer Renewable Energy biomass plant in Springfield will generate 42 megawatts of clean green power. We at Palmer Renewable have stayed silent during the on-going debate about our project in the hopes that the multi-year permitting process and seven years of unsuccessful litigation and appeals to that permit would speak for us. Unfortunately, the ongoing public misinformation about biomass and criticism of our municipal light department partners compels us to respond.
First, some facts: Every electric company must maintain its power lines by clearing tree limbs away that could break and take a line down in a storm. This is not a small effort. Where does the tree-trimming waste go after it is cut? In Massachusetts, wood debris is barred from landfills, so in most cases the tree-trimmers chip the limbs and blow them into the surrounding fore
Activists Urge Gov Baker To Reverse Energy Rules That Boost Biomass wamc.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wamc.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
12-year battle continues: Area organizations urge Gov. Charlie Baker to not allow rule changes favorable to Springfield biomass plant
Updated Feb 17, 2021;
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SPRINGFIELD Area organizations that have fought against a proposed biomass energy plant in East Springfield for the last 12 years urged Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday to reject rule changes favorable to the project.
Protesters gathered outside the state office building on Dwight Street, presenting a petition to Baker signed by 38 organizations. The petition demanded that Baker withdraw proposed amendments to the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard that ”would allow inefficient and dirty biomass power plants like the (Palmer Renewable Energy) plant to qualify as renewable energy in Massachusetts and collect millions of dollars in subsidies each year.”