RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.Millar Western ramps up $42M cleantech biogas project in Whitecourt, Alta.
By Tony Kryzanowski, Cleantech Canada.
WHITECOURT, Alta.—Millar Western Forest Products Ltd. has spent more than $42 million on a new facility to convert biological waste from its Whitecourt, Alta. pulp mill into biogas.
The first use of anaerobic digestion technology at a chemi-thermo-mechanical pulp (BCTMP) mill in the Western Hemisphere, the major cleantech project will test the process in the coldest climate yet.
“The project was a long term fit for our pulp mill,” Ron Reis, senior vice-president of Millar Western’s pulp division, said. “We recognized that environmental issues today are a growing concern for the public and we wanted to put the mill in a position where we could do a better job in the future both from a greenhouse gas emissions and organics discharged into the river point of view.”
Ontario passes cap-and-trade legislation
By Keith Leslie, The Canadian Press.
TORONTO — Ontario has passed legislation creating a cap-and-trade system to fight climate change, which the government predicts will add $5 a month to home heating bills and 4.3 cents to the price of a litre of gasoline, or $8 a month on average.
"The costs, according to our economists, are $13 a month, and that's before we consider any of the investments," said Environment Minister Glen Murray.
"So if you're buying an electric vehicle or home heating and cooling system or new energy systems that we'll be helping subsidize, that will lower those costs."
Under cap and trade, industries are given specific pollution limits, but can sell their emission allowances to other companies if they come in below their annual limit, or buy credits if they exceed it.
Green energy spurs jobs growth in Midwest, U.S.
By Joe Spease, The Kansas City Star.
Last month on Earth Day, leaders from more than 170 nations signed an international accord addressing the global threat of climate change. The Paris climate agreement laid out the steps countries, including the U.S., China and India, are committing to take to reduce carbon emissions.
People know climate change threatens the planet but don’t feel it in their everyday lives. A recent report should help change that thinking. Clean Jobs Midwest by Clean Energy Trust and Environmental Entrepreneurs, shows how critical clean energy and energy efficiency are to our economy. The report highlights the positive effect federal policies addressing climate change can have on job and economic growth.
New report shows importance of Clean Power Plan
By Daniel Cohen, The Hill.
Power plant emissions of carbon dioxide have been falling for a decade, even without national regulations. However, further progress could cease in the absence of the Clean Power Plan, whose fate awaits hearings by the Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals.
That's the conclusion of scenarios modeled by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the "early release" issued last week of its "Annual Energy Outlook 2016." The scenarios predict that power plant carbon dioxide emissions would be 20 percent lower with the Clean Power Plan than without it.
In an earlier piece in The Hill, I noted that U.S. power plant emissions are already declining at a faster pace than needed to attain the Clean Power Plan's 2030 target. Emissions dropped 21 percent from 2005 to 2015, more than half of the 32 percent cut needed by 2030. Coal use is down sharply again so far this year.
Waste Management to acquire 3 southern California companies
By Cole Rosengren, Waste Dive.
Dive Brief:
- Waste Management Inc. is buying Benz Sanitation Inc. and its two sister companies, Tehachapi Recycling Inc. and Benz Propane Co. Inc. The companies are based in Kern County, CA.
- Benz offers commercial and residential waste collection, document shredding, construction services, portable toilets, septic tank pumping, and propane services.
- Benz had been planning to lay off 132 employees, however Waste Management plans to retain a majority of the employees while the company's owners retire. The sale is expected to close on August 1.
Here's the No. 1 Problem With Renewable Energy Financing
By Robert Hackett, Fortune.
Predicting growth in the renewable energy sector can be problematic. With continuous stops and starts from a policy perspective, and the unpredictable pace of technological advancement, it’s hard for financiers to know how—or when—their investments will pan out.
“First off the most important thing in the capital markets is a level of certainty,” Chris Buddin, head of Goldman Sachs’ clean technology and renewables group, said at Fortune’s Brainstorm E energy conference on Tuesday
“When there are peaks and valleys of when we think there’s going to be credits or subsidies or incentives, you can’t make long-term decisions” Buddin told the audience in Carlsbad, Calif. He mentioned the investment tax credit passed by Congress at the end of last year as an example of this kind of unpredictability. The program, which passed just as an earlier version was set to sunset, gives solar companies a 30% tax credit on the price of solar installations for another five years.
A $3.3 trillion industry must change drastically if we want to save Earth — and it's not fossil fuels
By Sarah Kramer, Tech Insider.
If the world is going to fight climate change, it's not just fossil fuels we need to worry about.
According to a new study, we'll have to get very clever about our food supply.
In a study published Tuesday in the journal Global Change Biology, scientists suggest that greenhouse gases emitted by global agriculture will have to be cut — and drastically, perhaps five times as much as current reductions call for.
This marks the first calculation of precisely how much the agricultural sector will need to reduce its output of potent heat-trapping gases like methane (which is far worse than carbon dioxide) in order to satisfy the Paris Agreement on climate change.
California’s glut of cap-and-trade allowances may cut revenue
By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee, via Fresno Bee.
When California extended its “cap-and-trade” program of curbing carbon emissions to automotive fuels, starting this year, it was projected to generate hundreds of billions in new revenue dollars.
Prior to extension, the state’s quarterly auction of emission allowances was generating well under $1 billion a year, but applying them to fuels would, it was believed, more than double that revenue stream to over $2 billion.
California motorists burn about 15 billion gallons of fuel each year – and consumption is rising again after years of slow decline. Requiring refiners to buy emission credits, either in the Air Resources Board’s auctions or in the secondary market, would, it was believed, add about a dime to each of those gallons, most of which would show up in auction proceeds.
Winners and losers of Ontario’s climate-change plan
By Shawn McCarthy and Richard Blackwell, The Globe and Mail.
Renewable energy companies see tremendous opportunity in Ontario’s climate-change plan, though skeptics question whether the proposed incentives and regulations will achieve the government’s goals and will impose costs that are unacceptable to voters.
The $7-billion plan – outlined in a document leaked to The Globe and Mail – would provide incentives for energy retrofits and fuel switching; change building codes to require energy-efficiency improvements and phase out fossil-fuel use in new homes; and mandate a 5-per-cent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation fuels.
China Will Start the World's Largest Carbon Trading Market
By John Fialka, ClimateWire, via Scientific American.
When it comes to learning about emissions trading, China has had a leg up.
The world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases has spent 15 years scouting the globe to learn from the mistakes of other nations and find the best ways to build a trading system of its own, which could become the world's largest.
One of China's earliest mentors was Dan Dudek, an agricultural economist and vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) who, early in his career, got into an argument with its president, Fred Krupp, over whether China might be a big piece of the puzzle the group was exploring: Was there a way to use economics, rather than politics and regulations, to shift the world's businesses away from polluting the environment toward protecting it and to reward low-cost innovations that do that?
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