Renewable Fuel Producers Score A Win
Despite Trump’s vow to roll back all measures endorsed by Obama, his Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt is backing off plans to scuttle the U.S. biofuel policy. The Trump administration had planned to change regulatory standards to reduce the amount of renewable fuel that must be blended with conventional fossil fuel for gasoline and diesel supplies. In the third week in October 2017, Pruitt sent a letter to Congressional leadership indicating the renewable fuel volume mandates for 2018 would remain unchanged.
Most analysts saw the about face as a win for ethanol and renewable diesel producers such as Green Plains (GPRE: Nasdaq), FutureFuel...
What’s In Store For Alternative Energy With Obama’s Cabinet?
As the Obama inauguration nears and his cabinet picks are made public, the impact of his presidency on the alternative energy sector is becoming more tangible. During the campaign, we heard plenty on Barack Obama's views on environmental regulation, climate change and alternative energy. But what about the people who will be advising him day-to-day on these matters, and who will be ambassadors both inside and out of the country for the administration's policies? One thing is for certain: Obama's picks so far for positions with influence on energy and environmental matters mark a clear break from...
Right About Tesla, Wrong About Yingli
Doug Young Bottom line: Beijing should promote cutting-edge companies like Tesla that can help advance its new energy agenda, while abandoning ones like Yingli that use old technology to make cheap copycat products. Two green energy stories were in the headlines last week, spotlighting China’s drive to become a global leader in the new technology and also the right and wrong ways to achieve that aim. An item involving US electric vehicle (EV) powerhouse Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) represented the right approach, with reports that the company might near a deal with Beijing to build a manufacturing plant in China....
Climate Change & Corporate Disclosure: Should Investors Care?
Charles Morand On Monday morning, I received an e-copy of a new research note by BofA Merrill Lynch arguing that disclosure by publicly-listed companies on the issue of climate change was becoming increasingly "important". The note claimed: "e believe smart investors and companies will recognize the edge they can gain by understanding low carbon trends." I couldn't agree more with that statement. It was no coincidence that on that same day the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a non-profit UK-based organization that surveys public companies each year on the state of their climate change awareness, was...
Why We Need More Energy in the Economy But Less in the Atmosphere
Garvin Jabusch Preface: As per my usual, this post is more or less a narrative, and is definitely not math-centric. But, still, nothing quite conveys the stark reality of a thing like its governing equation. So, two of those found their way in here, but both are short and explained in English. With that, let’s look at why energy is so good. And bad. Any system in nature, including the human economy, is bound by a simple fact: it can only thrive and grow in proportion to the energy inputs it has access to. Energy equals growth. In economic...
China Trys to Cork EU Solar Tariffs With Wine Probe
Doug Young China is quickly learning how to play the game of tit-for-tat trade wars, with news that Beijing has launched a new anti-dumping probe against wines imported from the European Union. Anyone who has followed recent China-EU trade relations will know, of course, that announcement of this new probe by the Commerce Ministry comes the same day that the EU formally announced anti-dumping tariffs against imported Chinese solar panels. While I certainly don’t condone this kind of trade war rhetoric, I have to say that China’s decision to target Europe’s wine industry looks like a very...
350.org’s Smart New Campaign
Garvin Jabusch Many parallels exist between the college campus divestiture campaigns of the 1980s and today. Both were/are seeking to apply intense student and community pressure to persuade boards of trustees to get endowment monies out of investments in businesses or locations perceived as undesirable. In the '80s it was South Africa and Apartheid that students objected to. Back then, one could almost conceive of college students versus a beleaguered South African government as something of a fair fistfight between entities with comparable chances of winning popular opinion and thus investment dollars to their side. And indeed the students...
Low Carbon Fuel Rules: From CAFE to LCFS and Everything In Between
The Whole Darn Low Carbon Landscape. How they Work, How they Work Together, and How they Might Work Better
by Joanne Ivancic, executive director, Advanced Biofuels USA
The Trump Administration is taking a new look at Obama Administration era Co2 regulations. On the transportation side, these include reviewing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards; threatening to take away California’s authority to set their own mileage and pollution controls, including CO2 (carbon dioxide) emission reduction standards; and quarreling with the petroleum and biofuels industries over implementation and enforcement of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
Thus, the Clean Air Act (CAA), California’s unique authority...
US Should Approve A123’s Sale
Doug Young A123 Systems battery cell products (Source: A123) In writing this blog, I generally try to keep my own views muted and focus instead on the latest news and what it means for the companies involved. But I'm making one of my occasional exceptions to that rule today to say that the US really should go ahead and approve the sale of bankrupt battery maker A123 Systems (OTC:AONEQ) to a Chinese company, since this deal seems to have few if any national security implications and blocking...
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Resigns
by Jim Lane
In Washington, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned.
US President Donald Trump announced the exit on Twitter, commenting, “President Donald Trump announced Pruitt’s exit, saying on Twitter “I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this.”
Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler becomes acting administrator.
The Digest’s Take
Elsewhere in the media, it is widely reported that Pruitt was undone by a growing number of controversies and investigations relating to his conduct as EPA Administrator, particularly relating...
Overcoming Hurdles to Clean Energy Commercialization
by David L. Levy In the absence of a global framework for regulating emissions, the future of the planet largely rests on choices by private firms and investors regarding which technologies to pursue and commercialize. Despite the mounting evidence of severe climate change, there is a funding crisis for potential solutions. The Department of Energy released data at the beginning of November showing that global emissions of CO2 rose 6% in 2010, despite the ongoing economic recession. This trajectory is higher than the worst case projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in it’s 2007 Fourth...
How New England Can Eliminate Oil Use For Single Family Homes for Less Than...
Chris Williams We can use simple, effective, and proven policies that have been used to supercharge the New England solar PV industry to incentivize renewable thermal technologies and eliminate oil use for single family homes. Here's the best part, the policies will be cheaper than solar PV, they will create more local jobs per kW installed and displace more expensive fuel. At Renewable Energy Vermont 2012, I delivered a presentation on how a production-based incentive for renewable thermal technologies, like the $29/MWh incentive in New Hampshire, would be cheaper than the current solar PV incentive in Vermont and...
Another Biodiesel Plant Gets The Axe. Here’s Why.
by Jim Lane
In another small but sharp blow to the Trump Administration’s strategy for American manufacturing revival, news arrives from Texas of a second smaller biodiesel shuttering owing to “ challenging business conditions and continued federal policy uncertainty,” as Renewable Energy Group (REGI) phrased it in announcing the closure of its15 million gallons per year New Boston, Texas biorefinery. The company is currently working with plant employees on relocation opportunities within the production network.
The tax credit issue
The forces impacting the US biodiesel industry at present are complex, but REG in this case is pointing the blame at the biodiesel tax...
Report Alleges EPA Tests Skewed Against Ethanol By Oil Industry Influence
by Jim Lane
In Washington, researchers for a report published by the Urban Air Initiative contend that “technical data that shows the nation has been exposed to decades of flawed test fuels and flawed driving tests, which in turn means flawed emissions results and mileage claims”. The complete Beyond a Reasonable Doubt series from UAI is available here.
Further, EPA emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, according to a report from Boyden Grey & Associates, the Agency appears to have directly solicited financial contributions and technical input, “especially on the fuel matrix,” from an oil industry controlled research organization.
Of the...
The Worst Waste
Jim Lane Peter Brown of FFA Fuels, promotes his company these days with the pithy slogan, “Fuels from the Worst Waste Around.” Which of course raises the legitimate question, what is the worst waste, and can we find a use for it? Discussions of worst waste will usually focus on the obvious say, landfill or the odious say, medical or nuclear waste. Toxicity and longevity are typical concerns, and that’s one of the reasons why nuclear energy remains controversial to this day. No Waste in Nature As LanzaTech’s Jennifer Holmgren observed in a recent article by...
Clean Energy Finance Experts United Against Trump
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA This website, AltEnergyStocks.com, endorsed Barack Obama for President in 2008 and 2012. In those two elections, we based our endorsements on a point-by-point analysis each candidates' energy policies, favoring the candidate who expressed the strongest support for policies to transition our economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels. This year, the comparison is so stark a point-by-point comparison hardly seems worth the exercise. Here are a few quotes from the candidates' websites that drive the difference home: On Climate Change Trump: "I think it's ridiculous, we've...
