RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Washington State Senator rails against Clean Energy Fund
By Jerry Cornfield, The Herald.
OLYMPIA — Maralyn Chase is a hybrid-driving environmentalist who considers herself a cheerleader for finding alternatives to fossil fuels for energy. Yet the Democratic state senator from Shoreline has been railing for months on Facebook against a signature piece of Gov. Jay Inslee’s strategy to make Washington the epicenter of a revolution for a thriving clean energy industry.She’s questioned the constitutionality of a program known as the Clean Energy Fund that funnels money through public and investor-owned utilities to private energy firms for research and development.
Convert Your Unwanted Trick-or-Treat Candy Into Renewable Energy
By Charlene Arsenault, Patch Network.
UnReal, “the unjunked food company,” announced that it is hosting a Halloween candy trade-in, where families can drop off their excess or unwanted trick-or-treat candy to be converted into renewable energy – instead of tossing it in the trash.
The event takes place on Nov. 2 from 3-6 p.m. at Whole Foods Market Newton, 916 Walnut St.
Families can drop off their candy at a designated UnReal booth in-store. The unwanted candy will then be turned into energy using the Grind2EnergyTM system; an organics recovery process that converts food scraps into renewable energy like natural gas, electricity, and compressed natural gas and fertilizer. The Newton store is one of three Boston-area Whole Foods Markets participating in the Halloween trade-in event.
Ohio Conference to Focus on Renewable Natural Gas
By NGT Staff, NGT News.
On Dec. 2, Clean Fuels Ohio and Energy Vision will present “Waste to Wheels II: Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) for Transportation,” a day-long conference that will take place at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.
Clean Fuels Ohio says the conference will focus on the development of RNG transportation projects throughout Ohio and beyond, and the event will feature panel discussions focused key related topics, such as the following:
– Basics anaerobic digestion and gas cleaning technologies;
Goldman Sachs to invest $150 billion in clean energy
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Fortune.
Financial giant Goldman Sachs announced on Monday that it plans to invest $150 billion in clean energy projects and technology like solar and wind farms, energy efficiency upgrades for buildings, and power grid infrastructure.
The investment bank previously had a target to invest $40 billion in clean energy technologies by 2012, and will now almost quadruple that amount by 2025.
Goldman Sachshas long been bullish on clean energy and was an early financier of solar and wind farms around the world. This summer the company signed a pledge, organized by the White House, to take measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions and invest in cleantech.
Steering Committee to meet Wednesday on next Ways and Means chair
By Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, Politico.
The House Republican Steering Committee will meet Wednesday to begin the process of selecting the next Ways and Means Chairman.
The top slot on the tax-writing panel opened after former chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) became speaker last week. The two men vying for the gavel are both friends and allies of Ryan: Ohio Rep. Pat Tiberi and Texas Rep. Kevin Brady. Tiberi, who was also close with former Speaker John Boehner, is the fourth in seniority on the panel, and chairs the trade subcommittee. Brady is second in line, and chairs the health subcommittee.
California Gov. Jerry Brown: Time is Running Out For Cleaner Energy
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Fortune.
Climate change is adding urgency of the normally slow process of updating the world’s energy infrastructure.
That was the sentiment from two high-profile leaders—California Gov. Jerry Brown and former BP CEO John Browne—who have spent decades pushing the energy industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Brown, the two-time California’s governor, has been working on climate change and energy for nearly forty years at both the state and local level. He said that California’s latest energy plan, which would require that half of electricity come from clean energy by 2030, took just a year to get passed compared with seven to ten years at the federal level.
Obscure part of Clean Air Act could kill Obama's climate plan
By Kyle Feldscher, Washington Examiner.
Congress is poised to kill the legal justification for President Obama's Clean Power Plan by eliminating an obscure passage in Clean Air Act amendments passed in the early 1990s.
Three top House Republicans say in a letter sent to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday that Congress' nonpartisan Office of Law Revision Counsel ruled in 1992 that an amendment in section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which the agency is using to justify its power plant rules, is unenforceable. If the law is enacted as written by the office, it would replace the current Clean Air Act as law and the Clean Power Plan's legal justification would be significantly undermined.
Could Paul Ryan preside over transformative tax reform?
By Patrick Torphy, The Christian Science Monitor.
As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan has been Congress’s go-to tax wonk. Now, as speaker of the House, that same passion is expected to be channeled into his leadership agenda, and some are anticipating a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the tax code.
Mr. Ryan hasn’t laid out specific policy proposals he would pursue as speaker, but he has flirted with some issues while avoiding others.
The Wisconsin representative has said he won’t work with Obama on immigration reform, but he did tell CBS News that his party needs to spearhead “policy risks," including tax reform.
61 Percent of Public Supports Clean Power Plan in States Suing to Stop It
By Alan Neuhauser, US News & World Report.
When it comes to the Clean Power Plan, most voters don't want their day in court.
Across the 26 states suing to stop the landmark rule – the first ever to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants – an average 61 percent of adults say they support the policy, according to an analysis released Monday by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
In only three of those states do most voters oppose the Clean Power Plan: West Virginia and Wyoming, the nation's top two coal producers, as well as North Dakota, which has seen a boom in unconventional oil and natural gas production, commonly referred to as "fracking."
The Dairy Farmer and the Digester
By Aryeal Jackson, Ithaca Times.
If you tell people from Candor that you're going to see a dairy farmer about poop they might say, “Oh, you mean Bob Aman?” Aman was green before green was trendy. He’s invested in renewable energy for over 40 years. His manure digester produces biogas that powers his entire farm.
In 1977 Aman invested $250,000 in a manure digester to produce electricity for his farm and reduce the odor from spreading manure on his fields. Aman said, “What we have is deep green electricity.”
Aman’s father built the farm on Kelsey Road in 1944, just three miles from where Bob Aman has his dairy cows. He, and now his son Aaron, run the original farm and the dairy farm on Foote Crossing Road.
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