Nights like last night are hard. Cold, no wind, no sun. Photovoltaic doesn't work when the sun goes down, wind turbines don't spin, we aren't going to dam any more rivers for hydro, but over in Gypsum CO a new power plant was cranking out ten megawatts of electricity.
Not enough to power Las Vegas, pales in comparison to that huge coal plant in Craig that pumps out 1,139 megawatts, but then ten can be used locally close to the source.
And what is the source?
All that dead wood from beetle kill and climate change that has been choking our forests. Lodgepole isn't certifiable for building codes, you can't manufacture two by fours out of it, all you can do is make poles or burn it. Burning it in a biomass plant burns it as clean as can be and the carbon footprint is about zero. The carbon would have been given up through rotting anyway.
Colorado has National Forests with lots of beetle kill. I know "environmentalists" are going to go ballistic over salvaging dead trees from forests they've never seen half a continent away. Too bad. Conservation is wise use according to Teddy Roosevelt and burning dead wood is wise use.
When pine trees are hit by the beetle they turn orange as the needles die, then gray after the needles fall off, now they are green energy.
http://forestpolicypub.com/...
Not my first choice for reducing greenhouse gasses, but it's a lot better than choosing dirty Venezuelan over dirty tar sands crude. My first choice? Conservation as in conserving electricity. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Less kilowatts per month not from a green source but not used period. Less miles driven in any car, fewer flights, less time on the internet. In that spirit I'm headed out to cut up some beetle kill slab I bought yesterday from the lumber mill. Less natural gas to heat the house.