RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.New Surrey, BC facility to turn organic waste into natural gas
By USGasVehicles.com.
The Canadian City of Surrey, British Columbia, is set to open a new biofuel processing facility, the first of its kind in North America. The facility will process the City’s organic waste into a 100 per cent renewable natural gas (RNG).
Idaho Power pitches sales agreement with landfill energy project
By Twin Falls Times-News, via MagicValley.com.
BURLEY — Idaho Power Co. has made an offer on the energy produced by Southern Idaho Solid Waste District’s planned landfill gas-to-energy project at Milner Butte Landfill.
The power company has asked the Public Utilities Commission to approve a 20-year contract and purchase price agreement beginning in October 2018. CAFCO Idaho Refuse Management LLC will sell output from the 5-megawatt project at the landfill west of Burley.
Stratford, Ontario city council votes to consider energy recovery facility that would convert organic waste to biogas
By Megan Stacey, Stratford Beacon Herald.
Kitchen scraps could soon be making the City of Stratford some serious dough.
Potential plans to construct a facility that would turn organic waste into renewable natural gas came before city council earlier this week. In a unanimous decision, councillors gave the city the green light to enter into an informal partnership with two agencies to look at building a facility that would produce renewable natural gas.
By Megan Stacey, Stratford Beacon Herald.
Kitchen scraps could soon be making the City of Stratford some serious dough.
Potential plans to construct a facility that would turn organic waste into renewable natural gas came before city council earlier this week. In a unanimous decision, councillors gave the city the green light to enter into an informal partnership with two agencies to look at building a facility that would produce renewable natural gas.
“This is an interesting project. It's a partnership between the city, the Ontario Clean Water Agency...and General Electric Water and Process Technologies,” director of infrastructure and development services Ed Dujlovic said at the council meeting.
Organic waste would be converted to biogas, which could then be “cleaned” and purchased by Union Gas.
“It's GE technology that they actually have working in England, it's a process called hydrolysis where they take organics, use the anaerobic digester that we already have, and increase the efficiency of creating methane gas. From that, they can clean it, and put that back into the natural gas system,” explained Dujlovic.
Environmental regulations that are impacting companies and municipalities make this type of facility a real area of focus, he added.
Oregon Senate committee agrees cap and trade needs more work
By Pete Danko, Portland Business Journal.
While the Oregon Senate committee working on climate legislation moved a cap-and-trade bill forward on Wednesday, even supporters say the measure isn't ready for full Senate consideration.
“This is not a bill that in its current form is ready for the floor,” said Sen. Michael Dembrow, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, who backs creation of a carbon cap and market in Oregon. “But it is ready for ongoing conversation."
By Pete Danko, Portland Business Journal.
While the Oregon Senate committee working on climate legislation moved a cap-and-trade bill forward on Wednesday, even supporters say the measure isn't ready for full Senate consideration.
“This is not a bill that in its current form is ready for the floor,” said Sen. Michael Dembrow, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, who backs creation of a carbon cap and market in Oregon. “But it is ready for ongoing conversation.”
The committee voted unanimously to send the complex and potentially far-reaching Senate Bill 557 to the Rules Committee, but only after Republicans insisted that it move forward without recommendation for passage.
“We can’t recommend something we haven’t totally worked out,” Sen. Alan Olsen said. His fellow Republican on the committee Sen. Herman Baertschiger Jr. agreed.
LaGrange, GA Considers LFG Deal with Savannah Energy
By Alicia Hill, LaGrange Daily News.
LaGRANGE – Less than an hour after returning from a walk through at Great Wolf Lodge, LaGrange City Council began its regular work session with discussion on another major project that is in the works for the city.
This time instead of harnessing the power (and funds) of out-of-town visitors, the city hopes to use the power of the gas generated by the LaGrange landfill to bring additional income into the city.
LaGrange has had a program to extract and use landfill gas for several years, but over time the equipment has required more and more repairs. So, when a global leader in energy services contacted the city asking to take over using their own funding, officials took the proposal very seriously.
Critics of Pruitt Emerge on the Right Over E.P.A. Finding He Won’t Fight
By Coral Davenport, New York Times.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump chose the Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, his mission was clear: Carry out Mr. Trump’s campaign vows to radically reduce the size and scope of the agency and take apart President Barack Obama’s ambitious climate change policies.
In his first weeks on the job, Mr. Pruitt drew glowing praise from foes of Mr. Obama’s agenda against global warming, as he moved to roll back its centerpiece, known as the Clean Power Plan, and expressed agreement with those who said the E.P.A. should be eliminated. His actions and statements have galvanized protests from environmentalists and others on the left.
By Coral Davenport, New York Times.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump chose the Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, his mission was clear: Carry out Mr. Trump’s campaign vows to radically reduce the size and scope of the agency and take apart President Barack Obama’s ambitious climate change policies.
In his first weeks on the job, Mr. Pruitt drew glowing praise from foes of Mr. Obama’s agenda against global warming, as he moved to roll back its centerpiece, known as the Clean Power Plan, and expressed agreement with those who said the E.P.A. should be eliminated. His actions and statements have galvanized protests from environmentalists and others on the left.
But now a growing chorus of critics on the other end of the political spectrum say Mr. Pruitt has not gone far enough. In particular, they are angry that he has refused to challenge a landmark agency determination known as the endangerment finding, which provides the legal basis for Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan and other global warming policies.
These critics say that Mr. Pruitt is hacking only at the branches of current climate policy. They want him to pull it out by the roots.
“The endangerment finding must be redone, or all of this is for naught,” said Steven J. Milloy, who runs a website, JunkScience.com, aimed at debunking the established science of human-caused climate change, and who worked on the Trump administration’s E.P.A. transition team.
SEaB to provide onsite anaerobic digestion system for US naval base
By Sandra Sassow, Bioenergy Insight Magazine.
SEaB Energy has won a contract to supply the State of California Energy Commission with Flexibuster, an innovative waste-to-energy system.
The agreement comes as part of a four year research programme into sustainable energy generation from food waste. The project aims to “demonstrate and evaluate environmentally and economically sustainable food waste biomass to electricity systems”.
Flexibuster is Southampton, UK, based SEaB Energy’s innovative decentralised anaerobic digestion system. Converting food waste to biogas, anaerobic digestion facilities are generally large scale and centralised. Although they enable energy recovery and reduce GHG emissions through processing food waste, they require the expensive and carbon emitting transportation of the food waste from its point of origin to the AD facility. Flexibuster, however, is a de-centralised and onsite solution, removing the need for waste transportation.
Murkowski hopes to revive her ambitious, bipartisan energy bill with new legislation
By Erica Martinson, ADN.
WASHINGTON — Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is making a push to resurrect her energy bill that stalled out in the final days of Congress in 2016.
So far, the plan mirrors her previous effort: keep it bipartisan, and separate any legislation likely to gum up the works in the Senate.
By Erica Martinson, ADN.
WASHINGTON — Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is making a push to resurrect her energy bill that stalled out in the final days of Congress in 2016.
So far, the plan mirrors her previous effort: keep it bipartisan, and separate any legislation likely to gum up the works in the Senate.
A similar bipartisan effort helped her energy bill move through the upper chamber last year but was also the thing that stopped it from making it past the more conservative House of Representatives, where members were unwilling to make the same compromises that drove it to succeed in the Senate.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Murkowski chairs, passed 59 bills, largely by voice vote, on March 30. Nine of those bills are Alaska-specific legislation that Murkowski included in her energy package last year. The bills offer federal-state land exchanges, encourage expanding hydroelectric power in Alaska, and make changes to existing statutes, including one allowing for a natural gas pipeline through non-wilderness areas of Denali National Park.
"I think we wrapped up our business meeting in probably less than 15 minutes," Murkowski said later that day. At the hearing, "we moved through a package of lands bills; we moved through the sportsman bill that Senator (Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico) and I have been working on; we moved through a nuclear provision, (and) provisions relating to hydro."
Evonik turns waste into fuel
From Filtration&Seperation.com.
Evonik Resource Efficiency GmbH, a sector of German specialty chemicals company, Evonik Industries, plans to launch its next generation of SEPURAN Green membranes in late 2017.
From Filtration&Seperation.com.
Evonik Resource Efficiency GmbH, a sector of German specialty chemicals company, Evonik Industries, plans to launch its next generation of SEPURAN Green membranes in late 2017.
“Waste to fuel” is the motto of Evonik’s SEPURAN Green business. The use of biomethane derived from organic waste sources used as fuel alternative in CNG or LNG powered vehicles is still in the early stages but will become more and more popular and play an important part in meeting greenhouse gas savings and carbon footprint targets for individual companies.
Technologies for biogas upgrading to meet natural gas or pipeline specifications have experienced considerable progress over the past five years. The technology has advanced significantly, despite the fact that, in many countries, particularly outside Europe, the market lacks a proper framework.
White House signals it will not defend Obama-era smog rules
By Robert Walton, Utility Dive.
Dive Brief:
- The White House signaled last week it will not defend Obama-era smog restrictions in an ongoing case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has asked the D.C. Circuit to postpone oral arguments slated for next week, allowing it time to "fully review" the rules. The limits were passed in 2015 to tighten standards on ozone — a main ingredient in smog — from 75 parts per billion (ppb), to 70 ppb.
- Also last week, nearly two dozen senators have sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, demanding the agency explain how it intends to address greenhouse gas emissions as it reviews the Clean Power Plan, President Obama's signature carbon regulation.
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