At more than two dozen pellet factories in the region, the logs are converted into the small pieces and shipped to Europe, where utility companies now receive subsidies for converting from coal to burning "biomass" from trees in order to combat global warming.
Brooklyn's fuel trade was already converting from coal and artificial gas to petroleum, which was served by the wider and deeper Newtown Creek, and natural gas, which arrived by pipeline.
The boiler was about a century old, and it had been converted from coal to oil.
The original oil burner, which had been converted from coal, provided the only heat.
The buying power of Novo Nordisk, for example, has convinced a large local energy supplier to convert from coal to biomass, Zarp-Andersson said.
Tilbury has been hit hard by national policymaking, including the closure in 2013 of the power station, which had only recently been converted from coal to biomass.
Hospitals buy 1.75 million plastic aprons each week from the NHS Supply Chain, which relied heavily on one Chinese factory that closed after manufacturers were ordered to convert from coal power to gas.
As three-term mayor of New York City, for example, Bloomberg planted 1 million trees, helped 2,500 buildings convert from coal to natural gas as a heat source, and instituted a public smoking ban in parks, beaches, and pedestrian plazas – even though it earned him plenty of "one-finger salutes" from the public.
When I went down the stairs, I saw that many things about the basement had changed: almost every permanent surface was painted gray, and the washer and dryer were gone, and the huge old asbestos-encased furnace — which, long before we moved in, had been converted from coal to gas — had been replaced by a device the size of a window air-conditioner.
Those same additions would be useful for oil bunkers when the battleship boilers were converted from coal to oil‑burners.
The study area lies in NWO Canada, where the Atikokan Generating Station (AGS) has been converted from coal to biomass (wood pellet) feedstock (OPG 2012).
