RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Kochs among top donors to industry ally Ryan
By Manuel Quiñones, Geof Koss, Daniel Bush and Hannah Northey, E&E Publishing reporters.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), now officially running for speaker of the House, is awash in energy industry donations, an indication of his policy views and allegiances.
But observers on both sides of the aisle and in the lobbying world are watching whether the policy wonk on issues like entitlements and taxes will have a major impact on energy and environmental policy if, as expected, he succeeds Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) as speaker.
"I would like to think that our colleagues in the House share the imperative that we certainly have on this side that energy issues, that energy policies are outdated. They need to be reformed and modernized," said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski.
CNG facility to be part of Cumberland, New Jersey alternative energy hub
Brian Ianieri, Staff Writer
The Cumberland County Improvement Authority has selected a developer to build a series of alternative energy projects — including a food waste-to-energy plant and compressed natural gas pumps — at its Deerfield Township landfill.
Authority Executive Director Gerard Velazquez said the developer for the 240-acre Regional Energy Hub will be named at a monthly meeting Wednesday.
Velazquez said the project involves a private/public partnership: The developer will sell the energy generated, and the improvement authority benefits with lower, stable energy costs and the potential for revenue sharing.
Paul Ryan is in, will seek job of House Speaker with broad GOP support
By Erica Werner, AP Congressional Correspondent via U.S. News & World Report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Paul Ryan formally declared his candidacy for speaker of the U.S. House Thursday evening, pledging in a letter to GOP colleagues, "We have an opportunity to turn the page."
"Instead of rising to the occasion, Washington is falling short_including the House of Representatives. We are not solving the country's problems; we are only adding to them," he wrote. It is time, he said, "to start with a clean slate, and to rebuild what has been lost."
Ryan will face elections next week in a closed-door House GOP meeting on Wednesday and then on the House floor Thursday. His success is assured.
Bristol, VA expecting royalties from landfill methane sales
By WCYB.
In just a couple months, the City of Bristol, Virginia will be making thousands off the gas that comes off of garbage.
Private company Injenco will be processing the methane into electricity, and Bristol, Virginia will get royalties from what will be sold off.
The project is years in the works. There are three landfills, the biggest and newest being the quarry landfill. Four years ago the three started generating enough methane to sell.
EPA head: Relationship with states never better
By Devin Henry, The Hill.
Federal environmental regulators have never had a “better relationship” with states than they do now, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said Thursday, one day before a new regulation is expected to attract a bevy of lawsuits from state attorneys general.
“I think EPA has, frankly, never had a better relationship, and more open, with the states, and more respectful of one another,” McCarthy said Thursday at a Center for American Progress event.
The Obama administration will formally publish the Clean Power Plan in the Federal Register on Friday, and more than a dozen states have already promised lawsuits. Several Republican governors are considering not complying with the rule, which requires that states cut their power sector carbon emissions.
Numerous States Prepare Lawsuits Against Obama’s Climate Policy
By Coral Davenport, The New York Times.
WASHINGTON - As many as 25 states will join some of the nation's most influential business groups in legal action to block President Obama's climate change regulations when they are formally published Friday, trying to stop his signature environmental policy.
In August, the president announced in a White House ceremony that the Environmental Protection Agency rules had been completed, but they had not yet been published in the government’s Federal Register. Within hours of the rules’ official publication on Friday, a legal battle will begin, pitting the states against the federal government. It is widely expected to end up before the Supreme Court.
“I predict there will be a very long line of people at the federal courthouse tomorrow morning, eagerly waiting to file their suits on this case,” said Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a lawyer for the firm Bracewell & Giuliani who represents several companies that are expected to file such suits.
RFA says Oregon DEQ shouldn’t single out ethanol in Clean Fuels Program
By Ann Bailey, Ethanol Producer Magazine.
The Renewable Fuel Association has written the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality a letter expressing displeasure with the state’s proposed amendments for its Oregon Clean Fuels Program.
The association has been an enthusiastic supporter of carbon fuel programs using fair, consistent and scientifically robust methods to evaluate, for all fuels, the lifecycle carbon intensity (CI), said the Oct. 21 letter written by Geoff Cooper, senior vice president of RFA. The RFA was surprised and disappointed, then, to learn that the recently proposed rule includes the addition of what the organization sees are subjective penalty factors for “hypothetical indirect and use charges (ILUC), for select biofuels, but no direct penalty for any other fuel types,” the letter said.
“Moreover, the ILUC factors, DEQ is proposing to incorporate are entirely arbitrary and have nothing to do whatsoever with the expected actual carbon impacts of CFP implementation in Oregon for the 2015-2016 timeframe,’’ Cooper wrote.
Meet the ‘Tax Extenders’
How an oddball collection of temporary tax breaks became an unkillable $85 billion ritual.
By Brian Faler, Politico.
This fall, a strange-looking package of tax breaks is likely to come before Congress. If the past is any indication, it’s going to be pushed through at the very last minute, just as lawmakers are getting ready to leave for their Christmas recess. There’s a break for Puerto Rican rum, one for NASCAR tracks and another that rewards corporate research and development spending. And one of them—this is not a typo—is an exception to an exception to an exception to a tax rule. It benefits multinational banks.
Insiders call them the “tax extenders,” a knot of handouts large and small that moves totally separate from the tax code and has become an illustration of just why the federal budget is so hard to manage—or even to understand.
This year’s batch, which the Senate wants to renew for two years, is projected to cost more than $85 billion. Though tax experts scoff at many of the provisions, they’re rubber-stamped with minimal scrutiny or debate. And though they’re considered temporary, they’re rarely allowed to die.
Can Liberals Reverse Canada’s Weakened Record on Clean Energy and Climate Action?
By Julia Pyper, Greentech Media.
Over the decade that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative party have been in power, Canada’s share of the booming global clean tech market has seen a sharp decline.
Canada’s cleantech industry has grown to nearly $12 billion. Yet the country has lost 71 percent of its market share for renewable energy and energy-efficiency goods since 2005 -- the biggest loss among the top 24 exporters of environmental goods, according to a report by Analytics Advisors.
Many now wonder if this week’s landslide victory for Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, will reboot the country’s clean-energy industry and reposition Canada as an environmental leader.
Paul Ryan to House GOP: I'll run for speaker -- if you meet my terms
By Walt Cronkite, CBS News.
Paul Ryan told House Republicans Tuesday night that if some conditions were met, he would "gladly serve" as Speaker, even though, as he told reporters later, "This is not a job I ever wanted or sought. I'm in the job I wanted here in Congress."
Ryan, who is the House Ways and Means chairman, said his willingness to serve is contingent on winning the support of all three factions: the Republican Study Committee, the Tuesday group (moderates) and the House Freedom caucus. He was met with loud applause.
Ryan hopes to shape the party into a "proposition party," rather than an opposition party. He wants the conference unified before the speaker's election, and not after a process fraught with infighting.
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