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NETWORK NOTES

Pennsylvania Environmental Network (PEN) announces boycott

With electric utility deregulation, corporations selling "green energy" and "renewables" use the term "biomass" to describe the burning of any non-fossil fuel that can be argued to include organic matter. That may include garbage, construction and lumber mill wood waste; sewage sludge, animal factory wastes, crop wastes (often containing pesticides); and tires. The term may also be applied to combustion of landfill gases as well as the burning of "energy crops, which may include pesticides." All of the waste streams that can be incinerated as "renewable biomass" may have their own set of toxic contaminants that make burning them hazardous to the environment.

As part of a new national campaign against biomass, the Pennsylvania Environmental Network (PEN), supported by 11 environmental groups, has declared a boycott of the nation's leading "green energy" corporation, GreenMountain.com Company. The aim of the boycott is to get GreenMountain.com to commit to not using biomass incineration as a part of its promised "green energy" products and to commit to an ever-increasing percentage of "new renewables" in their mix.

For information and for a sample boycott letter, contact Mike Ewall, Green Energy Leadership Team Director, Pennsylvania Environmental Network, 1434 Elbridge St, Philadelphia, PA 19149; e-mail: catalyst@envirolink.org; or www.penweb.org/issues/energy/.