The future of California's cap-and-trade program remains uncertain as it gets its day in court

By Chris Megerian, The Los Angeles Times.

Lawyers for the state and businesses clashed in a Sacramento appeals court Tuesday over how much power California has to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and whether that authority includes raising revenue for lawmakers to spend. 

The case could determine the future of the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The program is the centerpiece of California’s climate agenda and has been extolled as an international model in the fight against global warming, but opponents argue that it constitutes an unconstitutional tax.

A decision, which is expected from the state appeals court judges within three months, has been hotly anticipated by businesses and advocates whose next steps hinge on which way the court rules. Spectators and journalists began lining up outside the courthouse before it opened on Tuesday morning, and there weren’t enough seats in the courtroom for everyone to watch the proceedings.

National environmental organizations have vociferously defended the cap-and-trade program, one of the few such initiatives anywhere in the world. The groups are particularly concerned about any stumbling block in California with President Trump promising to roll back environmental regulations in Washington. 

“With the federal government seemingly stepping back from climate leadership, California’s example is even more important,” said Erica Morehouse, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Read more...

EPA Staff told to 'stand down' on axing climate page

Robin Bravender and Hannah Hess, E&E News reporters

Trump administration officials appear to have walked back plans to scrub climate change references from U.S. EPA's website.

"We've been told to stand down," an EPA employee told E&E News today. That new directive comes after staff were told yesterday to remove the agency's climate change page from its website, worrying climate change activists and sending data specialists scrambling to download files.

The backlash that erupted after reports surfaced last night that the climate page would be eliminated may have prompted administration officials to change course. News of the plans was first reported last night by Reuters. EPA's press office did not respond to requests for comment today.

It's unclear whether the agency's climate page will remain indefinitely, or only temporarily. "It's not imminent," the EPA staffer said of its removal.

Just yesterday, staffers had gotten opposite instructions. "The word that came down was 'scrub,'" that employee said. The directive was "clearly from the political people. ... It came from the White House."

The controversy over the climate change page comes after EPA was directed to halt its social media and scale back communications with the press. The Trump administration removed the White House climate change website on its first day in office. EPA career staffers, former agency employees and environmentalists view the changes as a troubling sign of how the new administration plans to deal with climate change policies and the agency's workforce.

The directive to remove the climate change information didn't sit well with career employees, the EPA staffer said today. It's "world class" data, and a lot of work went into making it accessible to the public. "And it's true," the source added.

As of press time, EPA's climate change website remained in place, featuring data about last year being the warmest on record, the health impacts of climate change and interactive maps that allow users to see the local impacts of a changing climate.

Read more...

Trump administration freezes all EPA grants, restricts public communications indefinitely

By Cole Rosengren, Waste Dive.

Dive Brief:

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been told by the Trump administration to cease all public communications via social media, press releases, blog posts or contact with the media. Upcoming webinars will also be reviewed and no new content will be posted on the agency's website, as reported by The Huffington Post.
• The agency has also been told to freeze all grants, contracts and new hires until further notice, as confirmed by ProPublica. Whether this only applies to new items or all of the roughly $4.6 billion in existing EPA contracts is unclear. 
• These directives appear to be part of a larger effort by the administration to re-frame environmental policy. As was widely reported, mentions of climate change were removed from the White House website shortly after Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20. Reuters recently reported that the EPA has been directed to remove its climate change page as well, though it is currently still active as of publication.

Dive Insight:

While observers have noted that it's not uncommon for new administrations to implement temporary holds on policy until agency leadership is confirmed, some of these moves are seen as more drastic than usual. Similar directives had been given to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies, though based on Trump's past comments the EPA may be in for some of the most significant changes. The president has vowed to make major cuts to environmental regulations and reports indicate this could affect the EPA's budget in particular.

In a recent exit memo, former administrator Gina McCarthy highlighted landfill standards and food waste reduction as key parts of future work to reduce emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change. So far, the new administration's priorities appear to be different. About 30 recent agency rules such as the 2017 Renewable Fuel Standard targets and Superfund site scoring have been put on hold and McCarthy's potential successor has struck a different tone.

Read more...

Maryland opens animal waste-to-energy program

By Anna Simet, Biomass Magazine.

The Maryland Energy Administration has opened the application window for its Animal Waste-to-Energy Grant Program, which will make investments in projects that utilize animal waste to generate electricity, with a focus on reducing environmental impacts of animal waste on state natural resources.

Last year, the state funded two animal waste technology projects totaling $1.8 million, the bulk of which was awarded to Clean Bay Renewables of Maryland to construct and operate a 2-MW manure-to-energy plant in Somerset County.

This year, MEA has made up to $2 million available for the program. There is no participation cap or set number grantees, but participants must provide a cost share of at least 50 percent. Grants will be awarded on a competitive basis, and at the discretion of an evaluation team made up of MEA staff members, consultants from other government agencies and other institutions or organizations. 

Read more...

Air Liquide and Puregas Solutions join forces to develop the biogas market in Europe

By Bioenergy Insight.

Air Liquide and Puregas Solutions signed an agreement to access their respective biogas upgrading technologies. This collaboration allows the two experts to provide biogas upgrading solutions that meet customers' needs and projects’ characteristics.

The agreement uses the synergies of Air Liquide and Puregas Solutions and is complementary to the offers of both companies in equipment sales, maintenance and service.

Read more..

Trump Won't Stop The Clean Energy Revolution

From Oilprice.com, via Nasdaq.

It is the dawn of a new era and the oil and gas industry is chomping at the bit as the most industry-friendly administration in recent memory comes to power. But even as the regulatory environment for oil and gas drilling is about to get a lot easier, the inroads of clean energy and the steady pace of innovation in emerging technologies will continue.

In fact, in addition to the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration, global threats to clean energy abound, including rising interest rates, economic weakness in China, and political risk in Europe. Still, these trends probably won’t “cause a clean energy shipwreck in 2017,” according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which predicts the clean energy sector will “sail on.”

And for good reason. In many parts of the world renewable energy has achieved escape velocity, reaching grid competitiveness with fossil fuels in many parts of the world. BNEF cites a wind project in Morocco that has an unsubsidized price of $30 per megawatt-hour and a solar project in Chile that generates electricity for $29.10/MWh. “These must be the lowest electricity prices, for any new project, of any technology, anywhere in the world, ever,” BNEF writes in its “10 Predictions for 2017.”

As renewables continue to carve out a larger share of electricity markets, the rules of the game are going to change. Low-cost wind and solar could transform electricity markets to a “base-cost renewables” structure, BNEF says. Instead of base-load electricity coming from coal, hydro, natural gas and nuclear, plus peak electricity from gas-fired peaker plants, the “base-cost renewables” model will see cheap renewables first, with the remainder to be filled with “flexible capacity from demand response, storage and gas, and then importing the remaining needs from neighbouring grids.”

Read more...

Trump team plans big cuts to science at EPA

By Timothy Cama, The Hill.

The Trump administration’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning major budget cuts, as well as regulatory and scientific overhauls at the agency, according to a new report.

The team’s plan for the EPA identified more than $800 million in planned budget cuts, including to state and tribal assistance grants, climate programs and environmental programs and management, according to Axios. 

But Myron Ebell, who led the Trump transition team for the EPA, cautioned that the document in question was an initial briefing document, prepared in October— before Election Day—for the transition team.

Ebell, the head of the environment program at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute and the author of the document, said it is not the transition team’s “Action Plan” for the EPA, which was written much later and identified what the team wants to do with the agency. Ebell declined to provide the Action Plan.

The briefing document devotes significant attention to reforming how the EPA uses science.

“EPA does not use science to guide regulatory policy as much as it uses regulatory policy to steer the science,” the document says, according to Axios. “This is an old problem at EPA. In 1992, a blue-ribbon panel of EPA science advisers that [sic] 'science should not be adjusted to fit policy.' But rather than heed this advice, EPA has greatly increased its science manipulation.”

Read more...

EPA approves pathway for Isobutanol as an advanced biofuel

By Dan McCue, Renewable Energy Magazine.

The approval is for a pathway for isobutanol produced at Gevo Inc’s Luverne, Minnesota plant to be an advanced biofuel under the Renewable Fuel Standard Program.

With a partial substitution of fossil based energy sources that are currently used at Luverne with green energy sources, such as biogas, Gevo said in news release on Thursday that it should be possible for it to achieve the 50 percent or greater greenhouse gas emissions reduction needed to claim the advanced D5 Renewable Identification Number according to the pathway approval.

A RIN is a serial number assigned to biofuels for the purpose of tracking their production, use and trading, as required under the RFS.

RINs can be sold and traded, and as a result carry a monetary value, which is linked to the biofuels that generate the RINs.

Gevo’s isobutanol from feed corn starch currently generates D6 RINs, and with this approval, Gevo’s isobutanol could generate D5 RINs as well.  D5 RIN credits have historically had greater value in the marketplace than D6 RINs, potentially making Gevo’s isobutanol more valuable in the future.

Isobutanol, used as a gasoline blend stock, generates 1.3 RINs per gallon.

Read more...

EPA denies petition to waive advanced biofuels requirements

By Chris Prentice, Reuters.

U.S. environmental regulators have denied a request from oil refiners to waive some of their advanced biofuels use requirements from 2016, in what is likely to be one of the Obama administration's final decisions on the controversial program.

The denial, published on Environmental Protection Agency's website on Wednesday, comes just days before President-elect Donald Trump takes office and as his nominee for EPA chief was being questioned in a Senate hearing.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program was signed into law in 2005 and designed to boost a renewable fuel industry annually. It requires oil companies to use increasing volumes of biofuels including cellulosic ethanol, which is produced of plant waste material.

AFPM and others from the oil industry have spent years lobbying EPA to lower the biofuels requirements, saying they are unachievable.

The EPA in a Jan. 17 letter to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) said it was denying the group's request to waive some of the volumes that previously the agency said would be required for use in 2016, citing short supplies.

Read more...

Tax Rewrite Players? Five House Tax-Writers to Watch in 2017

By Kaustuv Basu, Bloomberg BNA.

Top House Ways and Means Committee members are jockeying for positions of influence as Congress eyes a tax overhaul in 2017. 

The House GOP consumption tax-based blueprint is currently in the hands of committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and his staff as they work with fellow Republicans and the Trump team to shape a legislative proposal.

But there may be opportunities for House tax-writers to put their imprint on the bill, potentially even leading opposition to the plan’s border adjustability provision.

Here are five Ways and Means Committee members to watch this year, former congressional tax aides, lobbyists and others tell Bloomberg BNA.

Tiberi

Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio) challenged Brady for the Ways and Means chairmanship in late 2015.

Read more...