Fleet Owners, Retailers Tell EPA to Keep Renewable Fuel Standard Compliance Model

 By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, Environmental Leader.

UPS, 7-Eleven and Casey’s General Store are among the three dozen companies and trade organizations urging the EPA to keep the current compliance standard under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

The public comment period on the biofuel blending mandate ended yesterday.

Last year a group of oil refiners petitioned the EPA to change the “point of obligation” under the Renewable Fuel Standard. Under the current RFS rules, oil refiners are the parties obligated to blend more renewable fuel into the nation’s transportation fuel supply. The refiners want the EPA to change the obligated party from the refinery to the owners of the gasoline before it is blended for retail sale.

In November, the Obama administration’s EPA proposed denying the refiners’ request. But the final decision will be up to President Donald Trump’s EPA, now headed by Scott Pruitt. And the oil industry, which is central to the Oklahoma economy that Pruitt had represented as his state’s attorney general, is hoping for more sympathetic rules under the new leadership.

On Tuesday, as the RFS public comment period came to a close, a group of truck drivers, railroads, renewable fuel groups and fuel retailers, organized by the National Association of Truck Stop Operators (NATSO), told the agency that shifting the point of obligation downstream in the supply chain would undermine the purpose of the renewable fuel mandate and raise prices at the pump.

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Fuelling Solid Waste Fleets with Renewable Natural Gas

By Sarah Stadnyk, Solid Waste & Recycling.

With the transportation sector contributing the largest portion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, renewable natural gas (RNG) from food waste and organic material is the next game-changer in vehicle fuelling and the biggest opportunity for near-term, cost-neutral sustainability.

RNG can be generated from any source where organics undergo anaerobic digestion, such as landfills, residential source separated organics treatment facilities, and wastewater treatment. RNG is cost-competitive with diesel fuel, interchangeable with natural gas, and carbon neutral.

“Farms and municipalities are well-positioned to convert their biogas to RNG, a locally produced alternative fuel suitable for on-farm use and for trucking fleets,” says Jennifer Green, executive director of the Canadian Biogas Association.

Fuelling with RNG is an excellent opportunity for the solid waste sector, as they can locally produce vehicle fuel on-site for their fleets. “For the waste industry, RNG just makes sense,” says Bruce Winchester, executive director of the Canadian Natural Gas Vehicles Alliance. “Fifty per cent of fleets in North America are natural gas powered anyway, taking the product they carry around and making it a fuel is the perfect way to close the loop.”

Environmental Benefits of RNG

Generating biogas from landfill gas (LFG) and diverting organics to biogas facilities has several environmental benefits. The 2013 Canadian Biogas Study by Kelleher Environmental found that converting just half of the food waste discarded in Canada into biogas would avoid 2.2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, the equivalent of taking 490,000 cars off the road. The biogas process recovers nutrients from organic waste and returns them to the soil, resulting in improved soil health. Water sources are protected by destroying pathogens in organic material, which reduces the risk of potential environmental impact.

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Report: Trump executive orders to target Clean Power Plan, coal production, water rules

By Robert Walton, Utility Dive.

Dive Brief:

• Following several media reports that the new Trump administration has been preparing to roll back energy and environmental restrictions put in place by President Obama, The Washington Post now reports the actions will target power plant emissions, coal production and clean water rules.
• One executive order will direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to begin rolling back the Clean Power Plan, while others will address coal production and federal water, the Post reports. The orders are expected as early as this week.
• Newly-confirmed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt yesterday told employees of the agency that he is ready to work with them, but the former attorney general of Oklahoma also stressed the agency would have a respect legislation as it is written and will focus on maintaining market certainty.

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Fearing President Trump's next steps, California lawmakers review their options under Clean Air Act

By Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times.

In a sign of uneasiness over President Trump's environmental agenda, state lawmakers hosted a hearing Wednesday to discuss how California's air quality policies rely on federal regulations. 

Although the state is allowed to pursue stricter rules than federal standards under the nearly five-decade-old Clean Air Act, such steps require a waiver from the federal government. Trump's choice to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, former Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt, has signaled he may be  more skeptical of the state's requests  than previous administrators, who granted requests nearly every time they were submitted. 

“Nothing in the law has changed to justify the EPA withholding our waiver," said Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), who testified at the hearing. "The only thing that has changed is the balance of political power in Washington, D.C." 

The waivers have been an important tool for California's efforts to improve air quality in polluted areas and tackle global warming. Other states also can choose to follow California's lead, meaning waiver requests made from Sacramento can have nationwide implications. 

“If Washington doesn’t want to lead on cleaning up our air or fighting climate change, it should stay out of our way," De León said.

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Love's Trillium CNG Awarded Large Miami-Dade Transit Contract

By Rich Piellisch, Fleets &  Fuels.

Love’s Trillium CNG revealed a blockbuster win on Thursday: a ten-year, $330 million-plus contract for two public-access fueling stations each able to support 250 compressed natural gas-powered buses for Florida’s Miami-Dade Transit – and the task of procuring those buses for the agency: 300 of New Flyer vehicles to be delivered through this year and next.

The stations are to be open early next year and in summer 2018. They are dispense “a minimum” of 20% RNG/renewable natural gas.

The stations will be the only CNG fueling outlets in the county, which “awarded Trillium the contract under which the company will design, build and maintain the CNG facilities, upgrade maintenance facilities, as well as procure 300 CNG buses for the county’s public transportation system.”

‘Significant Savings in the Long Run’

The agreement also includes CNG-related updates to existing transit infrastructure, as well as new fueling buildings, bus washes, and a ten-year operation and maintenance pact, Love’s says.

“The fiscal impact for the initial ten years in the implementation of the CNG bus program is an estimated $321.6 million,” states a Miami-Dade County release. “This long-term investment can yield significant savings in the long run,” the announcement states, noting an option to renew up to an additional ten years.

‘Innovative Public-Private Collaboration’

“This is easily one of the most innovative public-private collaborations we’ve undertaken with a transit agency,” Trillium CNG director Bill Cashmareck said in his company’s release.

“The combination of providing buses, designing, building and maintaining the CNG systems, upgrading maintenance facilities, and constructing new fuel and wash buildings demonstrates the breadth of our services.

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What happens to NYC food scraps after the city takes them? Soon a large fraction will wind up on Long Island and be turned into profit.

The Compost King of New York - By Elizabeth Royte, The New York Times.

On an overcast winter morning, Charles Vigliotti, chief executive of American Organic Energy, drove me to his 62-acre lot in rural Yaphank, N.Y., 60 miles east of Manhattan, to show me his vision of the future of alternative energy. He snaked his company Jeep around tall piles of wood chips, sandy loam and dead leaves. Then, with a sudden turn, we shot up the side of a 30-foot bluff of soil. At the top, we gazed down upon those many piles and breathed in the mildly sulfurous exhalations of a nearby dump. Vigliotti radiated enthusiasm. Within the next several months, he expected to break ground — “right there,” he said, thrusting his index finger toward a two-acre clearing — on a massive $50 million anaerobic digester, a high-tech plant that would transform into clean energy a rich reserve that until recently has gone largely untapped: food waste.

This resource, Vigliotti knew, had a lot going for it. Like oil and coal, kitchen scraps can be converted into energy. But unlike oil and coal, which are expensive to dig out of the ground, food waste is something that cities will actually pay someone to haul away. Many innovative municipalities, in an effort to keep organic material out of dumps — where it generates methane, a greenhouse gas — already separate food from garbage and send it to old-fashioned compost facilities. There, workers pile the waste in linear heaps called windrows, mix it with leaves and grass clippings and let oxygen-dependent microbes transform the gunk into lovely dark fertilizer. But the more material you compost, the more space (and gas-guzzling bulldozers and windrow turners) you need to process it. It can get a little smelly, too, which is yet another reason New York City, which generates about one million tons of organic waste a year, will probably never host giant compost farms.

But anaerobic digestion, in which food is broken down by microbes inside tall, airtight silos, has a real shot at scaling near densely populated areas. The footprint of such plants is relatively small, and their odors are mechanically contained, if they are operated properly. Digesters do cost more to build and run than compost sites, but they more than make up for that by generating two separate revenue streams: fertilizer and biogas, which is chemically similar to natural gas and can be burned to make heat and electricity.

To hear Vigliotti explain it, the supply of feedstock for his anaerobic digester was unending, a veritable geyser of potential profit flowing from every part of the food chain: orphaned produce from wholesale markets, the crusty remains of all-you-can-eat buffets, fryer oil, kitchen grease and gloopy residential plate scrapings. All of this was simply waiting to be tapped by someone with the chutzpah and the capital to convert it into a product — renewable energy — for which there is unending demand. Vigliotti’s only real cost, not inconsiderable, was refining. And lawyers. “We face a staggering level of regulatory approval,” he told me.

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Will Oregon regulate carbon emissions?

By Tracy Loew, The Statesman Journal.

The Oregon Legislature is again considering regulating carbon emissions, possibly in the form of a cap-and-trade system that would link to those already in place in California and Quebec.

The House and Senate environment committees kicked off the first of several joint hearings on the topic Monday with an overview of climate change and of carbon pricing options.

“Climate change is here. It’s going to impact us no matter what happens,” Kathie Dello, associate director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, told lawmakers.

Oregon has been working to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions for a decade. A new report shows the state won’t meet its 2020 goal.

Earlier this month, the state Department of Environmental Quality completed a report on the impacts of a cap-and-trade program in Oregon.

The program would put a collective cap on greenhouse gas emissions statewide, then auction off allowances to emit those gases.

Businesses could sell or trade allowances, but eventually might find it cheaper to invest in carbon reduction technology.

Unlike a carbon tax or fee, a cap-and-trade program would allow Oregon to control how emissions are reduced, Palmer Mason, DEQ senior legislative advisor, told the committees.

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U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 11.6% Since 2007

By Sustainable City Network

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a draft report this week that indicates the nation's greenhouse gas emissions declined 2.2 percent in 2015, continuing a generally downward trend since U.S. emissions peaked in 2007.

Overall, net emissions in 2015 were 11.6 percent below 2007 levels, according to the report. Except for 2012, when emissions were slightly lower, they have not been this low since 1993.

The decline in recent years has been mostly attributable to reductions in the electric power industry as a result of mild winters and power plants switching their fuel from coal to natural gas. Consumption of electricity decreased slightly in 2015, but power plants still accounted for the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions (29%), followed by transportation (27%), and industries (22%).

"Emissions from industry have in general declined over the past decade, due to a number of factors, including structural changes in the U.S. economy (i.e., shifts from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy), fuel switching, and energy efficiency improvements," according to the report.

As the EPA acknowledges, when manufacturing shifts from the U.S. to another country, like China or Mexico, the carbon emissions follow, which negates some of the gains seen in the U.S.

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Peterson, Davis, Noem, and Loebsack Lead Call for Strong RFS

(Washington DC) – Congressional Biofuels Caucus Co-chairs Congressman Collin C. Peterson (D-MN), Congressman Rodney Davis (R-IL), Congresswoman Kristi Noem (R-SD), and Congressman Dave Loebsack (D-IA), led Members of Congress in a bipartisan letter to the Trump Administration about the importance of a strong Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

In their letter to President Trump the lawmakers emphasized the economic benefits of the RFS saying, “In 2015 alone, the RFS is directly responsible for creating nearly 86,000 jobs ranging from farms to equipment manufacturers to ethanol production facilities.” The letter encourages the administration to create certainty in the market by continuing its commitment to the RFS.

“As a co-chair of the Congressional Biofuels Caucus, it is important to remind the new Administration of its commitment to the Renewable Fuel Standard and how it creates jobs and strengthens rural economies,” Peterson said. “I am pleased with the bipartisan support for this letter and will continue to fight for a robust Renewable Fuel Standard in the years to come.”

“A strong RFS is extremely important to our nation's economy,” Davis said. “The RFS is crucial to supporting jobs across rural America and in other parts of our country. I look forward to working with the new administration to ensure we maintain a strong RFS.”

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RFS News: Bipartisan effort underway to target draft reform bill

By Jenny Hopkinson - Politico, with help from Victoria Colliver and Jason Huffman.

RFS NEWS: BIPARTISAN EFFORT TO DRAFT REFORM BILL: A bipartisan group of lawmakers has begun discussing how to craft a compromise to update the decade-old rules governing the nation’s biofuel market and hope to draft a bill this summer, Pro Energy’s Eric Wolff reports. Ethanol and oil industry sources say they’ve met with Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), Bill Flores (R-Texas) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) on an overhaul of the Renewable Fuel Standard, but automakers, believed to be key to any deal, have not come to the table.

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