RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Quebec and California holding next cap and trade auction in May
By Canadian GreenTech.
The governments of Quebec and California will hold their next cap and trade permit auction exactly two months from today, they announced this week.
The Ministère du Développement durable, de l'Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques (MDDELCC), and the California Air Ressources Board (ARB), announced today that a seventh joint carbon market auction will be held on May 18, 2016.
Not so fast on FAA taxes
By Bernie Becker, Politico.
SO ABOUT THOSE EXTENDERS: Looks like we will still have a tax vehicle this year after all.
As our Pro Transportation colleagues Heather Caygle and Lauren Gardner reported, the Senate brushed aside the House’s plan to push FAA taxes until next March and synced the tax deadline back up with aviation policy — putting a deadline for both on July 15.
A spokeswoman for House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady said he would support the Senate proposal, essentially because he didn’t have any choice. The Senate passed its extension right before leaving for a two-week break, and won’t be back until after FAA authority expires on March 31. “While we believe a longer-term extension is in the best interests of American travelers, it’s clear that this is the only legislative option on the table since the Senate will be out of session until after the expiration of these programs,” the spokeswoman said.
If you’ll recall, part of the attraction for Brady to push the FAA taxes into next year is that advocates wouldn’t have a must-pass tax bill for attaching stray tax extenders — as for renewable energy — that expire at the end of this year. Lawmakers have made a habit of restoring those incentives after they expire, but Brady had made it clear that he doesn’t want to deal with them this year.
US EPA 'Analyzing' Potential Shift in RFS Obligation from Refiners to Blenders
By Herman Wang, Platts, McGraw Hill Financial.
The US Environmental Protection Agency is considering a request by several independent refiners to shift the responsibility for complying with the federal biofuels mandate to blenders, a top agency official said Wednesday.
But any such move would not be addressed in the 2017 Renewable Fuel Standard that lays out the coming year's required blending volumes, which are due to be finalized by November 30, he said.
"We are analyzing it," Chris Grundler, director of the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, testified before two House of Representatives oversight subcommittees. "We decided that ... such a major change in the regulation and the law should not be part of this annual rulemaking process."
UPS invests $100 million in compressed natural gas
By Renewable Energy from Waste Staff.
UPS, Altanta, announced plans to build an additional 12 compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations and add 380 new CNG tractors to its growing alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet. The CNG fueling stations and vehicle purchases totaling $100 million are part of UPS’s ongoing commitment to diversify its fuel sources and reduce its environmental impact.
“At UPS, we own our fleet and our infrastructure. That allows us to invest for the long-term, rather than planning around near-term fluctuations in fuel pricing,” says Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president global engineering and sustainability. “CNG is part of a broad investment in a variety of alternative fuel vehicles. Taken together, all of our alternative fuel vehicles represent 6% of the more than 100,000 UPS global fleet, and have driven a 10% annual reduction in use of conventional fuel.”
UPS is working to meet its goal of logging one billion miles with its alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet by the end of 2017, using a rolling laboratory approach to determine the right alternative fuel solutions to meet the unique needs of route-specific driving environments.
Farm to fleets: Manure helps Chicago startup build natural gas network
By Ally Marotti, Chicago Tribune.
Chicago startup AmpCNG launched at a farm in northwest Indiana that converted cow manure to renewable natural gas.
Nearly five years later, that manure from Fair Oaks Farm is still a core part of the West Loop-based startup’s business. But its reach has grown. It now owns and operates 19 compressed natural gas, or CNG, stations in eight states, fueling the increasing number of vehicles that operate on the resource.
“You can fuel from Chicago to Miami with the network we’ve got in place,” said Grant Zimmerman, who was named CEO of AmpCNG on Thursday, replacing Nate Laurell, now executive chairman of the board.
Ohio's new clean energy ballot initiative sparks concern among utilities
By Krysti Shallenberger, Utility Dive.
Dive Brief:
- A clean energy ballot initiative in Ohio seeks voters' approval to greenlight $14.3 billion in bonds to be issued over 11 years to fund renewable energy projects, energy storage options and other energy infrastucture.
- Ohio's Attorney General Mike DeWine approved the intiative's language, recognizing it had garnered the minimum required 1,000 signatures necessary to land a spot on the ballot. The initiative proposes an amendment to the Ohio Constitution.
- The bonds would be controlled by the Ohio Energy Initiative Commission, an Ohio-based organization that's incorporated as a limited liability corporation in Delaware, SNL Energy reports.
EPA: US Climate Plan Also Addressing Agricultural Methane Emissions
By Karen Boman, Rigzone.
The Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan will not only target reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, but methane emissions from agriculture as well.
Results of a recently published study indicate that farming, not hydraulic fracturing, was behind the rise of methane emissions since 2007. Rigzone reached out to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to see what role that methane emissions from agriculture could be playing in U.S. methane emissions.
Agricultural activity in the United States accounts for about one-quarter of total U.S. methane emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told Rigzone in an email statement. According to the EPA’s website, methane emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems account for 29 percent of U.S. methane emissions.
House hearing on RFS fails to include input from biofuel industry
By Erin Voegele, Ethanol Producer Magazine.
On March 16, subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the U.S. EPA’s management of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). The ethanol industry has criticized the event for failing to include testimony from a representative of the biofuels industry.
Christopher Grundler, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality; John DeCicco, a research professor with the University of Michigan Energy Institute; Kelly Stone, a policy analyst with ActionAid USA; Wallace Tyner, James and Lois Ackerman Professor at Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics; and Nicolas Loris, Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, offered testimony at the hearing.
During the nearly two hour event, Grundler was asked about future RFS standards. “I am not in a position to speculate what 2017, 2018, or 2019 standards will be,” he said. “That will be up to the administrator. We are doing the analysis right now for the 2017 volumes.”
Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland Could Save the US Climate Plan
By Tim McDonnell, Wired.
On Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama announced he will nominate Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month, on the Supreme Court.
Garland, who is currently chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, has an excruciating path to confirmation. He faces entrenched opposition from Senate Republicans, who have vowed to block anyone Obama appoints to the seat. As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer put it, “Garland is a political sacrificial lamb for the White House.”
But if Garland is somehow confirmed, one of his first big cases could determine the fate of Obama’s signature climate change policy.
Republicans worry about eventual EPA control of ethanol mandate
By Devin Henry, The Hill.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee raised concerns Wednesday about the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) potential eventual control over the federal ethanol fuel mandate.
Congress has provided the EPA with statutory blending requirements until 2022, at which time the Renewable Fuel Standard continues and the agency can set the levels on its own.
Republicans — many of whom oppose the mandate — said Wednesday they’re confused about what the EPA will do when the agency is in control of setting the amount of ethanol refiners blend into their gasoline supplies.
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