RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Renewable Portfolio Standards offer billions in benefits, study finds
By Herman K. Trabish, Utility Dive.
Renewable portfolio standards have shown net benefits running into the billions of dollars, according to a new study from the Lawrence Berekley National Laboratory (LBNL).
While the numbers are significant in themselves, they also illustrate what new policies that align the goals of renewable energy mandates and the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan could do.
“This work presents something of the magnitude of the benefits associated with avoided air pollution and avoided greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the renewable electricity used to meet the RPS targets in the year 2013,” said Galen Barbose, a research scientist with LBNL and one of the authors of the study.
Clean energy effort moves forward with New England proposals
By David Sharp, Associated Press, via News & Observer.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut have dozens of proposals to consider as they look for enough additional electricity for tens of thousands of homes to meet their clean energy goals.
All told, 51 proposals need to be vetted in coming months as the three states look to sign long-term contracts for electricity from wind turbines, dams and solar projects, said Matthew Beaton, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
"There's a lot of competition out there and that's exactly what we were trying to accomplish," Beaton said. "It's a very encouraging sign to see such interest."
UN Chief Wants Clean Energy Investments Doubled by 2020
By Associated Press.
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. secretary-general on Wednesday challenged investors around the world to at least double their investments in clean energy by 2020, saying that "we must begin the shift away from fossil fuels immediately."
Ban Ki-moon told an investor summit on climate risk that increasing investment in clean energy is critical in following up on the landmark agreement to tackle climate change reached in Paris last year.
Ban said about $330 billion was invested in clean energy last year, but that is far from what he calls the "clean trillion" needed per year in the decades to come.
More than $1 billion in cap-and-trade funds unspent as budget negotiations begin anew
By Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times.
When budget negotiations were in danger of stalling last year, Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers put off deciding how to spend more than $1 billion in funds collected from the auction of greenhouse gas pollution credits.
At the time, Brown said he expected the differences between his proposal and the Legislature's to be resolved "fairly expeditiously in the next few days or weeks."
Seven months later, a deal remains elusive.
Now, with next year's budget proposal on the table, advocates and environmentalists remain anxious about what will become of the cache of funds raised through the state's cap-and-trade program — created as part of the landmark 2006 law to combat climate change.
Even with low fossil fuel prices, renewable investment hit record highs
By Carolyn Beeler, PRI.
Oil prices hit 12-year lows this month as coal and natural gas prices remain low as well.
But seemingly counterintuitively, renewable energy investments were at record highs in 2015, climbing 4 percent to nearly $330 billion worldwide according to a recent report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
"People are beginning to appreciate that actually, the renewables revolution will go on even if oil, coal and gas keep on getting cheaper," said Bloomberg New Energy Finance senior analyst Angus McCrone. “I think it certainly marks a change from around the 2007 period, where people equated interest in renewables with high oil prices and saw the two as very much hand-in-glove."
Senate Energy Bill Sees Several Renewable Fuel Amendments
By EESI.
On January 27, the Senate began consideration of the Energy Policy Modernization Act(S. 2012). The bill was shepherded through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in late July. It contains a host of energy measures including efficiency, infrastructure, supply and accountability as well as conservation – but controversial topics were avoided in the bill. Some of these were taken up in the year-end omnibus package, including extension of renewable tax credits and repeal of the oil export ban. Since Wednesday, legislators have also opened the floodgates on amendments.
Senators Murkowski and Cantwell asked their colleagues to avoid bogging down the bill with superfluous amendments, with Cantwell remarking, “Let’s show the Senate can work. Let’s not go crazy with a bunch of ancillary things,” but the request may have fallen on deaf ears. As of Thursday 180 amendments had been offered, with 11 of them passing. Of the 11 passed amendments, they are mostly of non-controversial measures, including ones related to studying the effects of crude oil exports, defining smart manufacturing, incentivizing geothermal energy and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) investments.
How big a deal was Congress extending the renewable energy tax credits? A very, very big deal.
By David Roberts, Vox.
Back in December, Congress did something it rarely does any more these days — struck a series of compromises and passed a bill, specifically a giant $1.8 trillion spending bill.
Among many other things, that bill extended the two key federal tax credits that support renewable energy: the production tax credit (PTC), which mostly goes to wind, and the investment tax credit (ITC), which goes to solar.
It went by quickly in an otherwise news-packed month, so it's worth pausing a moment to note that for US renewable energy it was a very, very big deal.
US Senate Seeks to Expedite LNG Exports in Energy Modernization Act
By Sputnik International.
WASHINGTON — The new energy legislation, the Energy Modernization Act of 2015, would expedite the regulatory process that often holds up the development of LNG export facilities due to environmental and other legal hurdles.
Under the bill, in an effort to speed up the permitting process, US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz would face a 45-day time limit to authorize or reject new projects requiring federal oversight.
Hawaii Seeking RNG & Other Cleaner, Low Cost Fuel Alternatives
By Megan Greenwalt, Waste 360.
Hawaii Gas, the state’s regulated gas utility, is looking to purchase renewable natural gas (RNG) as part of its fuel diversification strategy from local and national suppliers who can provide RNG in increments of up to 8,000 MMBtu per day (Million British thermal units).
“Hawaii Gas is seeking proposals for the delivered cost and quantity of bio-methane (raw biogas) or upgraded bio-methane (RNG), which is most commonly produced from wastewater treatment plants, landfills or other sources of biomass,” says Joseph Boivin, senior vice president of business development and corporate affairs for Hawaii Gas. “The RNG will be blended with our synthetic natural gas on Oahu and distributed through an existing 1,000 mile utility pipeline distribution system to approximately 30,000 residential and commercial customers.”
RGGI states to consider WA State plan to use its CO2 units, but “substantive issues” flagged
By Mike Szabo, Carbon Pulse.
RGGI states will evaluate Washington State’s draft proposal to allow it to use the regional carbon market’s allowances in its own state-wide cap-and-trade scheme, RGGI’s operator said on Tuesday, adding that the plan raises “substantive issues”.
Washington’s Department of Ecology earlier this month released details of its plan to launch a carbon market to help it halve state GHG emissions from 1990 levels by 2050.
The proposal identifies emissions allowances from RGGI, as well as California and Quebec’s carbon markets, as being eligible for compliance in the Washington scheme, in addition to certified offsets from livestock, mine methane and ozone depleting substance projects in California.
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