RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Clinton promises ‘enough clean energy to power every home in America’
By Bradford Richardson, The Hill.
If elected president, Democrat Hillary Clinton says she can create enough green energy to power every home in America by the end of her second term.
“By the end of my first term, we will have installed a half a billion more solar panels, and by the end of my second term, enough clean energy to power every home in America,” Clinton said at the Blue Jamboree in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday.
The Democratic presidential front-runner said her plan to subsidize alternative sources of energy would not entail a middle-class tax hike.
Biogas Integration for Cellulosic Ethanol Production
By Amanda Bilek, Biomass Magazine.
As cellulosic ethanol production facilities have come online, anaerobic digesters have been colocated at the plants to recover biogas from soluble residues inherent in the ethanol production process. These soluble residues contain a source of energy that can be recovered using anaerobic digestion, and the captured biogas can help meet process energy needs.
Recently in Iowa, DuPont held a grand opening for the world’s largest cellulosic ethanol facility. Once fully operational, the plant will produce 30 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year. The opening of the DuPont plant comes on the heels of Poet-DSM’s cellulosic ethanol facility opening in 2014. The Poet-DSM plant aims to produce 20 MMgy.
RFA: RFS has reduced GHG emissions by 355 million metric tons
By Renewable Fuels Association, from Ethanol Producer Magazine.
Biofuels consumed under the expanded renewable fuel standard (RFS2) have reduced U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 354 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent since 2008, according to a new analysis conducted by California-based Life Cycle Associates. The Renewable Fuels Association, which sponsored the study, said the findings have important implications for both the pending final rule for 2014–2016 RFS volumes and upcoming global climate talks in Paris.
“The RFS2 has resulted in significant GHG reductions, with cumulative CO2 savings of 354 million metric tonnes over the period of implementation,” according to the report. “The GHG reductions are attributed to greater than expected savings from ethanol and other biofuels.” Specifically, the authors ascribe the larger-than-anticipated GHG emissions reductions to: technology improvements in grain ethanol production, increased consumption of low-carbon advanced biofuels, and the steadily rising carbon intensity of petroleum fuels.
Whereas the U.S. EPA uses a 2005 petroleum “baseline” for estimating RFS2 emissions impacts, the Life Cycle Associates study uses a “dynamic” petroleum baseline that reflects the true emissions impacts associated with U.S. petroleum consumption. The report, which builds on earlier work regarding marginal petroleum emissions, states that “…the advent of new crude oil extraction and processing technologies has raised the aggregate CI of petroleum fuels above the 2005 (EPA) baseline.”
The Powder That Could Be Key for Natural-Gas Cars
Daniel Akst, The Wall Street Journal.
Natural gas burns relatively cleanly, and thanks to new extraction technologies, there is plenty of it. But few cars use it; most of the more than 150,000 U.S. vehicles running on natural gas are still trucks and buses.
One reason is that natural-gas-powered cars would need a much bigger fuel tank—perhaps filling the entire trunk as well as current gas-tank space—to achieve the range that drivers are accustomed to getting from gasoline. A given volume of gasoline contains more than triple the energy found in an equal volume of compressed natural gas.
Now scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions on both sides of the Atlantic have come up with a new technology to pack more natural gas into a small space without the very high pressure or very low temperatures that are normally required. The result may be smaller and lighter tanks that are better suited to passenger vehicles.
World's Largest Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Opens in U.S.
By Daniel Looker, Agriculture.com.
Near Nevada, Iowa, workers hurry to bring the world’s largest cellulosic ethanol plant online next year. This activity caps years of research and work by DuPont to source a supply of corn stover from 500 farmers within 40 miles of the company’s new 30 million-gallon biorefinery.
DuPont joins POET, Abengoa, and Quad County Corn Processors in reaching commercial-scale U.S. production of fuel from cellulose. Already DuPont has licensed its technology for a second plant in partnership with Chinese ethanol producer New Tianlong Industry Company – not in this country, but in Jilin, China’s largest corn-producing province.
“Unfortunately, we’ve been unsuccessful in licensing it in the U.S. That is the result of the uncertainty regarding the Renewable Fuel Standard,” says Jan Koninckx, DuPont’s global head of biofuels.
Ontario releases cap-and-trade program details
By John Georgakopoulos, REMI Network.
On November 16, 2015, Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (“MOECC”) posted details about Ontario’s proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade system (cap-and-trade system) to the Environmental Registry (EBR #012-5666) for public comment. The public comment period ends on December 15, 2015. What follows is a summary of Ontario’s proposed cap-and-trade system.
Cap-and-trade system design options
Timing
The MOECC is proposing that the cap-and-trade system begin on January 1, 2017. Implementation of the cap-and-trade-system by January 1, 2017 is expected to give Ontario enough time to meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target of 15 per cent below 1990 GHG emission levels. The first auction of emissions allowances would then take place in March 2017.
New Ways & Means chairman gives Speaker Ryan a tax-reform partner
By Mark Schoeff Jr., Investment News.
The promotion of Rep. Kevin Brady to chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee gives new House Speaker Paul Ryan a key partner on tax-reform efforts, according to experts.
Selected by his Republican colleagues earlier this month to head the panel, Mr. Brady, R-Texas, succeeds Mr. Ryan, R-Wisc., in the role. The committee has jurisdiction over tax, trade and entitlement policy.
The gavel is being handed to someone who, like Mr. Ryan, has made tax-reform a legislative signature.
EPA chief says Senate vote to scrap power-plant rules will fail
By Laura Curtis, Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Bloomberg.
WASHINGTON - One day after the Senate voted to block the Obamaadministration's plan to throttle greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency predicted the rules would survive all challenges in Congress, the courts and on the presidential campaign trail.
The Clean Power Plan will prevail as have other agency regulations imposed under the Clean Air Act, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said Wednesday at the "Election 2016 and The Future of Energy" discussion with Bloomberg Politics in Washington.
"There is a history of us moving forward under the Clean Air Act, and there is a history of us winning time and time again," McCarthy said. "We are not seeing our large initiatives go down because a Republican has gone into the presidency, or because Congress has decided to to take it up."
The Economist explains why Exxon Mobil would support a carbon tax
By H.T., The Economist.
“I don't think putting a price on carbon is necessarily the answer,” John Watson, the boss of Chevron, an American oil company, said in remarks reported in the Financial Times in June. “I've never had a customer come to me and ask to pay a higher price for oil, gas and other products.” It might seem safe to assume that all oil-and-gas businesses would share his dismissive view. After all, a levy on carbon dioxide, whether via a cap-and-trade system along the lines of the EU's Emissions Trading System, or via a carbon tax, should be about as welcome to their industry as Christmas is to turkeys. Yet since 2007 Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest publicly listed oil company, is proposing a carbon tax, and has already put a shadow price on each tonne of CO2 it emits. And in the lead-up to the climate-change summit that starts in Paris at the end of this month, six European oil majors have advocated carbon-pricing systems. Are they serious? If so, why this strange burst of altruism?
Cynics start from the premise that this is a public-relations exercise, rather than a commitment to wean the world off fossil fuels—which still account for 87% of the global energy mix. They note that the oil majors which are supportive of a carbon price put the onus on governments to implement it, knowing full well that higher petrol prices look like vote-losers in many parts of the world. And they point out that the industry is divided. State-run oil companies are as sceptical as Mr Watson. And like Chevron, Exxon Mobil declined to join the six European energy companies in signing their letter to the UN.
Oregon cap and trade program in the works for 2016
By Taylor W. Anderson, The Bulletin.
SALEM — Two Eugene Democrats are gearing up to make Oregon the second state in the U.S. to cap greenhouse gas emissions on certain industries and put penalties and a credit system in place to reduce pollution, a system known as carbon capping.
Sen. Chris Edwards, who chairs the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, said Tuesday he would work over the next four months with Sen. Lee Beyer to push legislation in the 35-day legislative session in 2016 that would set up what he calls a cap-and-invest system.
Don’t miss an update—join our weekly newsletter below.