Friends of Renewable Energy: it is critical to call Kerry this week!

The Kerry- Boxer Climate Bill now moving through Congress has biomass burning as a form of clean energy. The opposite is true. This inclusion is industry-driven. Lobbyists spent $80 million on Capitol Hill in the first quarter of 2009 to rivet its inclusion into the Waxman - Markey House bill -ACESA -HR. 2454. Each biomass incinerator costs $250,000,000! To clearcut and burn our forests at 23% efficiency!

Biomass is not "carbon neutral" or "clean energy". In fact, it emits 1.5 times the carbon that coal emits per megawatt hour. (Biomass-3,300 lbs per megawatt hour;Coal-2,100 lbs. Petroleum-1,900 lbs.; Natural gas-1,700 lbs.) Biomass burning is an antiquated, damaging, and extremely inefficient manner of producing electricity. We need funds to retrofit and insulate homes and buildings, restore the grid, do research and install renewable power sources such as geothermal, solar and wind. Biomass will increase costs to taxpayers due to the damages to community and environmental health and further will worsen and hasten climate disasters.

It is time for action on your part:Take the biomass subsidies out of the Kerry-Boxer Climate Senate Bill!

Please Call:

(202)224-2742 Karena Neubauer - DC < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >,

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Kerry's Boston Office Legislative Assistant on the environment.
(617)565 8519, main number
(617)565-8519, Kate Anderson's direct dial number

More information can be found at the following websites:

www.maforests.org
www.massenvironmentalenergy.org
www.springfieldincinerator.info
www.greenfieldbiomass.info
www.nobiomassburning.org

We at the Jones River Landing support the ClimateSOS campaign to ensure that any climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate does not make climate change worse. We've joined a coalition of like minded groups which has launched a website at www.climateSOS.org.

As you may know, "green" energy incinerators such as biomass power plants emit at least 50% more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced than coal, as well as other greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals. These "renewable energy" sources which burn trash, forests, and construction and demolition debris, among other things, evaporate huge quantities of cooling water, operate at about 25% efficiency, and discharge toxic and heated effluent to our rivers. The carbon dioxide from these "renewable energy sources" is exempt from both cap and trade and EPA permitting authority. NRDC's climate scientist David Hawkins pointed to the "large biomass loophole" in the ACES climate bill in his testimony before the Senate in July 2009.

There is a link to Act for Climate Justice, which has this article about wood burning biomass plants that you mind find of interest.

http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/2009/08/burning-forests-for-electricity/.

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