RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Congress and White House Reach Tentative Budget Deal
By David M. Herszenhorn, The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — Congress and the White House spent September bracing for a disruptive government shutdown, and most of October fretting over a possible default on the federal debt.
In between, rebellious House Republicans ousted their speaker, John A. Boehner, and derailed his preferred successor, Kevin McCarthy, forcing the rest of their party to plead with a reluctant Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin to accept the gavel and try to control a majority that Mr. Boehner could not.
Then, suddenly — almost implausibly — a budget deal was delivered just before midnight on Monday, one that promises relative tranquillity if not a full-on détente. The rancor that had defined Congress gave way to a complex 144-page bill. Its passage on Wednesday was virtually guaranteed before many lawmakers had a chance to read the table of contents.
Local renewables fuel US companies
By Steve Hodgson, Cogeneration and On-site Power Production Magazine.
While arguments continue to rage over President Obama’s Clean Power Plan – a coalition of 24 states and a coal mining company have filed lawsuits to challenge the flagship legislation – companies and local government bodies in the US are quietly celebrating recognition of their efforts to expand the use of energy from their own, on-site, renewable energy projects.
Car manufacturer General Motor’s pickup truck assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the New Belgium Brewing Company facility in Fort Collins, Colorado; and the Californian City of Haywood’s water pollution control facility have all been honoured by the US Environmental Protection Agency under its EPA Green Power Partnership. All three employ biogas-fuelled CHP plants.
GM uses over 100 MW of solar, landfill gas and waste-to-energy schemes in its plants across the US, and plans to add wind power to its on-site renewables portfolio. At the Fort Wayne plant, the company uses a CHP scheme fuelled with landfill gas to supply over 40% of the site’s electricity load. Curiously, GM isn’t the only automobile maker to use landfill gas – BMW’s facility in Greer, South Carolina also uses the waste-derived gas to fuel an 11 MW CHP plant. Together with some on-site solar power, the company meets a fifth of its electricity needs from on-site renewables at Greer. And BMW has recently opened a biogas-fuelled CHP scheme at its Pretoria manufacturing plant in South Africa.
Business groups join fight to combat Clean Power Plan
By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times
The battle over the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan heated up Monday as pro-business groups staked out their case against the newly published rule that mandates a massive reduction in carbon emissions in the next 15 years, arguing that it will jack up energy costs and slash jobs without making a dent in greenhouse gases.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 14 other business groups filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency Friday, the day the rule was published, and followed up Monday with a press call with the National Association of Manufacturers and National Federation of Independent Business.
Oregon Clean Fuels program’s next threat: disputed science
By Taylor W. Anderson, The Bulletin.
PORTLAND — Before starting to implement Oregon’s low-carbon fuel standard , the state must first deal with some math that is both complicated and controversial.
To make sure the program actually cuts as many emissions as purported under the complex renewable fuel policy, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is considering adopting models that account for the greenhouse gases indirectly emitted by renewable fuels when land is used to produce biofuels instead of food. The concept is known as indirect land use change, or ILUC.
That type of accounting is a new and disputed science between climate experts and the companies that must comply with the low-carbon fuel program. It is maligned by some biofuels companies and revered by climate scientists who say it’s the only way to potentially cut emissions through the low-carbon fuel standard.
Bringing AD to Africa
By Keith Loria, Biomass Magazine.
In August, Tropical Power Energy Group opened Africa’s first grid-connect anaerobic digester plant in Naivasha, Kenya. Part of the Gorge Farm Energy Park, the $7.5 million project took nearly a year to get up and running. The plant is expected to utilize 50,000 metric of organic crop waste each year and produce at least 35,000 metric tons of nitrogen-rich byproduct.
Energy experts agree that the Gorge Farm AD Plant is a pioneering power project for Kenya. Distributed power projects, which generate electricity close to the point of use, are vital to Kenya’s energy security, reliability and efficiency. “Government ministries, departments and agencies are working together to encourage the private sector to develop high-quality distributed renewable power assets, like the Gorge Farm Energy Park,” says engineer Joseph Njoroge, principal secretary for the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. “Kenya is open for business for investors and developers interested in clean, renewable and bankable energy projects. The biogas technology at this cutting-edge project will provide Kenyans with more clean, reliable and cost-effective electricity in their homes and businesses.”
Trudeau has all the grounds to make a striking plan on climate change
By Campbell Clark, The Globe and Mail.
It wasn’t his central campaign theme, but prime-minister-designate Justin Trudeau now has a window of opportunity to surprise the country with a big climate-change deal – not the one in Paris, but the one with the premiers, where the rubber really hits the road.
That would be a potent political symbol for a leader who promised change. Over nine years of Stephen Harper’s rule, Canadians got used to the idea that action on climate change is distant or elusive.
Mr. Trudeau can go to global climate-change talks Paris in December and promise Canada will take real action to reduce emissions, and win a round of global applause.
New Questions for the RFS
By Mark Green, Energy Tomorrow Blog, via Breaking Energy.
It’s been a tough week for corn ethanol producers and supporters of the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
First, a new University of Tennessee report finds that the RFS and its ethanol mandates fall short on a number of environmental fronts, and that without mandated ethanol use the corn ethanol industry couldn’t survive commercially. The report:
Looking back over the last 10 years, the RFS and its resulting promotion of corn ethanol as a leading oxygenate supplement to conventional transportation fuels did not meet intended environmental goals. Corn ethanol’s environmental record has failed to meet expectations across a number of metrics that include air pollutants, water contamination, and soil erosion. Corn ethanol has resulted in a number of less favorable environmental outcomes when compared to a scenario in which the traditional transportation fuel market had been left unchanged.
New Methane-Eating Organisms Discovered
By News Staff, Science 2.0.
Understanding of methane-metabolizing organisms might have to be rethought after researchers announced discovery of two new ones.
The discovery of the novel methane-metabolizing microorganisms was made using techniques that sequence DNA on a large scale and assemble these sequences into genomes using advanced computational tools.
"Traditionally, these type of methane-metabolizing organisms occur within a single cluster cluster group of microorganisms called Euryarchaeota. This makes us wonder how many other types of methane-metabolizing microorganisms are out there?" asked Gene Tyson, associate professor and Deputy Head of University of Queensland's Australian Centre for Ecogenomics in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.
Brazil plans setting up Latin American, Caribbean Biogas Association
By Lucas Morais, SeeNews Renewables.
Brazil's International Centre for Renewable Energy (CIBiogas) announced on Tuesday it is planing to set up a Latin American and Caribbean Biogas Association.
The idea came after talks between Brazil and other countries during a meeting held in Uruguay last week.
The new agency, still unnamed, will mainly strive to foster the exchange of policies and technological know-how as well as defining a common approach to biogas projectsdevelopment in all the countries participating.
States, Industry Groups Sue to Block Obama's 'Clean Power' Plan
By Associated Press.
WASHINGTON -- States and industry groups dependent on fossil fuels began filing court challenges Friday to President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A flurry of lawsuits was expected at U.S. Courts of Appeals as the Environmental Protection Agency published its final version of the new regulations. All but two of the 24 states filing challenges are led by Republicans.
They deride the plan as an "unlawful power grab by Washington bureaucrats" that will kill coal mining jobs and drive up electricity costs.
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