The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it was extending the comment period on a draft rule that aims to cut the greenhouse gases emitted by biofuels. The proposed changes to the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, known as RFS-2, are an attempt to make the production of corn-based ethanol more efficient and increase the output of advanced biofuels.

Ethanol industry welcomes comment period extension

“They only had a 60 day beginning comment period and this is between 1000 and 2000 pages of scientific and technical data,” said Tom Buis, CEO of ethanol industry group, Growth Energy. Buis, who said he was not surprised by the action added: “You don’t want to get a bad rule because people didn’t have the time to thoroughly analyze it.”

One of the major sticking points for the ethanol industry in the RFS have been the international land use provisions that are being incorporated into lifecycle greenhouse gas analyses required by the RFS.

In a letter written to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson last week, Bob Dinneen, President of the Renewable Fuels Association wrote that EPA’s proposed rule “failed a basic test that government regulation be based upon science that is transparent, reliable and verifiable. The science of market-mediated, secondary international land use impacts is nascent, at best, and clearly needs time for scientific consensus to develop and less reliance on unproven assumptions,” wrote Dinneen.

Biodiesel industry concerned about impact of delaying final rule

Biodiesel industry representatives fear that the extended comment period would provide additional hardship to the U.S. biodiesel industry.

“RFS-2 was supposed to be in place at the beginning of this year, and extension of the comment period could further delay the implementation of the program,” the National Biodiesel Board said in a statement.

RFS-2 requires the use of 500 million gallons of biomass-based diesel in 2009. And biodiesel industry representatives say it may be the only fuel currently available in the market to meet that requirement. “Given the extension of the RFS-2 comment period, it is only appropriate that EPA take immediate steps to ensure that the 2009 volume goals provided for in statute are met,” said the NBB statement.

The comment period on the rule will now end on September 25 instead of July 27.

Originally published at Gas 2.0
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via Media Matters; Earth First; Huffington Post

Gov. Bill Ritter announces new wind farm partnership between Tri-State and Duke Energy

Tri-State Generation, the supplier of electricity for 44 electric cooperatives in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nebraska announced Monday it will purchase the power generated at a new 51-megawatt wind farm to be constructed in eastern Colorado. Owned and operated by Duke Energy, the project is the first large wind power deal for Tri-State, based in suburban Denver.

The 34-turbine, 51-megawatt Kit Carson wind farm is expected to be completed by the end of 2010. Tri-State said about 150 people will be needed to build it and ultimately four to eight full-time technicians will maintain it.

“This is another important step forward for Colorado’s New Energy Economy and will be a boon for the Eastern Plains, which are blessed with rich and abundant wind resources,” said Colorado Governor Bill Ritter at a ceremony on the steps of the State House on Monday. “I congratulate Tri-State and Duke Energy for taking this innovative step forward and helping Colorado to continue building our New Energy Economy.”

The co-ops that purchase Tri-State’s power provide service to about one million people on farms and ranches as well as in small towns and exurban neighborhoods like my own.

Despite the strong wind energy resource throughout much of Tri-State’s service area, the company has been reluctant to add new wind capacity to their grid. But a law passed by voters and later toughened by lawmakers will require Tri-State to get 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. Currently 72 percent of Tri-State’s power comes from coal and just one percent of comes from wind and solar, although power from the new wind farm and a solar plant planned for Cimarron, N.M. will grow that number to 3 percent. By contrast, the state’s largest utility, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, gets 10 percent of its power from renewable resources.

Tri-State, a partner in a controversial plan to build a new coal-fired power plant in Kansas, has come under some criticism from environmental and member groups for not moving quickly enough to expand its renewable energy portfolio. As a result, Colorado regulators are also considering increasing oversight over Tri-State’s plans for future power generation.

Tri-State executive vice president and general manager Ken Anderson said the company is also looking at adding geothermal sources of energy and producing solar energy at its existing coal plants.

Anderson called the new Kit Carson Wind Power Project “a small step in the right direction” and added, “I do appreciate the governor’s willingness to have patience with us.”

Colorado already has 12 wind farms, most of which produce power for Xcel Energy.

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“Despite the laudable and truly valiant efforts of groups like Iraq Vets Against the War and Individuals such as Cindy Sheehan, David Swanson Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and even Dennis Kucinich- Single payer healthcare has been marginalized to the fringes and all but removed from the debate, the peace movement is a complete failure, the new energy bill could actually make the environment worse, and we are no closer to a two state solution and justice for Palestine than we were under Ronald Regan.”

Independence Day is, for all intents and purposes, the United States’ birthday. People celebrate the holiday in all kinds of ways, but I began the day with a good solid session in my vegetable garden - weeding, feeding and tilling the compost heap. I also sowed a small row of lettuce and spinach. It’s not the best time of year for them, but considering the wet and mild summer thus far, it can’t hurt to try.

Beyond enjoying the time outside and the health and mental benefits of gardening, I find growing my own vegetables to be an intensely patriotic activity. This country’s roots in agrarianism are deep - from before the American Revolution until well after the Industrial Revolution, we were largely a country of farmers. In troubled economic times and in times of war we turned to the land to provide us with the food, fuel and fiber necessarily in our daily life. One of our most famous founders, Thomas Jefferson, the very author of the Declaration of Independence considered himself to be a farmer first and always.

So, this Independence Day, I will think about some of that stuff as I’m bent over pulling weeds. But like many Americans, I will also celebrate by gathering with friends and family, cooking some food on the grill, and quite likely, blowing stuff up.

DoE no longer pursuing domestic nuclear fuel reprocessing

In a relatively quiet move earlier this week, the Obama administration canceled plans for a large-scale nuclear fuel recycling facility in the United States. The move could signal the end of the Global Nuclear Energy Project (GNEP), an international program proposed by the Bush administration to promote the use of nuclear power and to find solutions to closing the nuclear fuel cycle.

The Bush administration had started to draft an environmental impact statement for GNEP, a process that would effectively open the door for the possible future construction of reprocessing plants in the U.S. But on 29 June, the Obama administration announced in the Federal Register that it was canceling that document. According to the statement, the Obama administration decided to cancel GNEP because the Department of Energy is no longer pursuing domestic commercial reprocessing, which was the primary focus of the prior administration’s domestic GNEP program.

Opponents of GNEP, concerned about high costs and the risk of nuclear proliferation applauded the decision. “This decision to halt the reprocessing EIS is celebrated by those who know the technical absurdity, proliferation risks and high costs involved with pursuit of commercial reprocessing of radioactive spent nuclear fuel in the U.S.,” said Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth, who also thanked Energy Secretary Chu for making the move.

Although the future of GNEP looks uncertain, especially as its budget has been slashed to zero, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 provides $145 million for the DoE to continue to continue the research and development of proliferation-resistant fuel cycles and waste management strategies.

“So as far as we’re concerned, GNEP may have gone away, but the need to recycle spent fuel in this country is more important than ever because of the government’s stupid decision to close Yucca Mountain,” said Danny Black, the president of Southern Carolina Alliance, a regional economic development organization that was working to bring a major nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to South Carolina.

“I think we are, as much as we can be, still optimistic,” Black said. “We are even more optimistic because, at this point, there is no alternative. Without Yucca Mountain, the pressure is on the industry to do more with recycling.”

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via Crooks and Liars

Friday evening’s House vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act was much closer than party lines would have predicted. If you want to learn a bit more about the trends, the surprises and the otherwise noteworthy votes, The New York Times published a handy little interactive map that I highly recommend playing around with.

A cursory glance at the map shows the oft-noted trend of Democrats in energy-producing districts voting against taxes and regulations on the fossil fuel industry (i.e Western Colorado, the Dakotas, Southern Louisiana, etc.). While 44 such Democrats jumped ship to vote no, only 8 Republicans supported the bill.

Map Credit: New York Times

Group calls bill weak, says Obama choosing politics over science

A day after President Obama threw his support behind the American Clean Energy and Security Act, one of the world’s most prominent environmental advocacy organizations has come out in strong opposition to the bill, which is set to go to a full vote on the House floor as early as Friday.

Greenpeace USA Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett today released a statement calling the proposed climate legislation “weak” and insufficient to address the severity of the problem at hand. Greenpeace called on Congress to reject the bill and “begin immediate and urgent work on legislation that treats seriously the dire threat of climate change.”

“We are calling upon Congress to vote against this bill unless substantial measures are taken to strengthen it,” said Muffett.

Greenpeace’s biggest bone of convention was that emission reduction targets in the bill are “far lower than science demands,” and that the giveaways and preferences in the bill will spur the growth of a new fleet of nuclear and coal-fired power plants “to the detriment of real energy solutions.”

“Despite President Obama’s assurance that he would enact strong, science-based legislation,” Greenpeace’s Muffett explained, “we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest…”

“To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak,” said Muffett.

Mixed support and strange bedfellows

By staking-out opposition to the bill, Greenpeace now joins the conservative-leaning PAC, Americans Solutions for Winning the Future, which just launched a fear-based TV ad about the dire economic consequences of passing Waxman-Markey.

Greenpeace, however, does not represent the entire universe of environmental advocacy organizations. Many organizations and environmental advocates have expressed their concerns with the bill, but see its passage as better than the other alternative of doing nothing at all. The Sierra Club and The League of Conservation Voters, for example, just produced a new advertisement in support of Waxman-Markey featuring the words and images of President Obama.

Although President Obama has not aggressively shaped and pushed ACES, he is expected to sign the bill as it is currently written if it gets to his desk. But that may never happen.

Even if a single Republican does not vote for the bill, it likely has the numbers to pass a full vote of the House. The same cannot be said for the Senate, where getting the bill through with a veto-proof super majority of sixty votes will prove much more difficult.

Image via Greenpeace Italia
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Calling the bill “extraordinarily important,” Obama said that passage of Waxman-Markey “will finally spark a clean energy transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet.” Watch the clip:

A company I have followed closely for well over a year now, Marine Current Turbines, has won the (UK) Renewable Energy Association’s Developer of the Year Award. The award recognized MCT’s successful design, deployment and operation of its uber-innovative 1.2MW SeaGen tidal current energy system.

Installed in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough last year, SeaGen, the world’s first commercial-scale tidal current energy system is now generating power into the local grid at a peak capacity of 1.2 megawatts.

Martin Wright, Managing Director of Marine Current Turbines said, “This award, voted by the UK renewables industry, recognises the efforts and commitment of our engineering and project development teams.” Martin, who received the award at a ceremony in London added, “the development and deployment of SeaGen has been challenging and we have still have work to do in order to deploy our technology on a commercial basis but the REA Award underlines the belief, shared across the industry, that tidal energy can and will make a meaningful contribution to the UK energy market in the coming years.”

SeaGen’s success in the UK narrows hasn’t gone unnoticed in North America. Marine Current Turbines is currently testing it’s tidal power turbine system in Canada’s Bay of Fundy.

NOAA

Methane and carbon dioxide, two of the most important and potent heat-trapping greenhouse gases increased last year, according to a preliminary analysis for NOAA’s annual greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites around the world. The increase in the two gases came despite a downturn in the major economic indices.

Levels of methane in the atmosphere rose 0.6 percent in 2008, according to preliminary data from the Zeppelin station on a remote island in the Norwegian Arctic, after a similar 0.6 percent gain in 2007.

The rise in methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-five times more potent than carbon dioxide is of particular concern say climate scientists because the buildup of methane perpetuates an exponential pattern of further methane increases. As temperatures rise, the rate at which methane is unlocked and released from arctic permafrost increases.

“Only by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and increasing energy production from renewable resources will we start to see improvements and begin to lessen the effects of climate change,” said scientist Pieter Tans of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

The 2007 jump surpassed a global rise in methane of 0.34 percent to a new record high after levels had been stable for about a decade. World data for 2008 are not yet available.

[Also published at gas 2.0] In a new study published online in the journal Science, researchers led by Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced modeled entire fuel systems all the way from crop cultivation to vehicle propulsion, comparing cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions for both biofuels and bioelectricity. According to researchers, the bioelectric pathway came out ahead of both corn ethanol and advanced cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass.

“We expected that electricity would look better than corn ethanol, but it was surprising to see that this was also the case for the more advanced second-generation ethanols,” Campbell says. “In all cases, the electricity pathway uses a lot less land to achieve the same amount of transportation.”

>>Listen to an interview with lead author Elliott Campbell from the Science Podcast

Campbell and others found that  electric vehicle powered by biomass will travel an average of 81% farther than an internal-combustion vehicle powered by cellulosic ethanol if both are produced from the same area of cropland. Essentially, we are talking about substantial gains in miles per acre when powering vehicles with biomass (via bioelectric pathways).

But not all biomass or bioelectricity is created equal. The results also suggest that alternative bioenergy pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve transportation and climate goals.

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