Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday, RFA delivered a letter to President Obama urging immediate solution and long-term strategies in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Certainly both are needed, but unfortunately RFA’s solutions amount to using more corn ethanol today...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Green Enterprise , Reviving the World's Oceans , Solving Global Warming
The exciting news today is that Secretary Salazar issued a record of decision approving the Cape Wind offshore wind project. As the Secretary acknowledged during his press conference, no project is without impact and minimizing and mitigating those impacts is...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today, in yet another example of ethanol industry spin, the Renewable Fuels Association released a state-by-state version of its highly inflated jobs study. This is just another part of big ethanol’s effort to make the case for extending the Volumetric...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Big ethanol has gone into high gear lobbying for the extension of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). This article summarizes the basics. At the top of their list of dire warnings are claims that allowing the subsidy to...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
A new study by University of Missouri Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (PDF) reveals that the current corn ethanol tax credit is effectively costing tax payers $4.18 per gallon and is driving up grain prices. The study estimates that...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
This little article focuses on my friend John Sheehan and his take on biofuels and land-use. He proposed reframing the issue in an interesting way: "We need to not look at land use as a biofuels problem, we need to...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
This post by Steven Mufson reports on the advanced biofuels industry wanting addition incentive and particularly an investment tax credit. Last year, NRDC proposed a "Billion Gallon Challenge" program linking rich incentives for the first billion gallon of produciton capacity...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Robert Rapier has a great blog on the redundant and ridiculous biofuels tax credits, which given our huge Renewable Fuel Standard pay the oil companies to do what they’re legally obliged to do. I’ve written about the need to reform...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, sign the final regulations to implement the renewable fuel standard as amended in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (a.k.a. RFSII). With the tools that EPA has developed, we can finally start to...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Biomass is a bit like Longfellow’s little girl with a curl: when it is good, it can be very, very good, and when it is bad, it’s horrid. Done right, converting biomass to heat or fuel can reduce global carbon...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Solving Global Warming
As my colleague, Brandi Colander, wrote last week the trails for Cape Wind continue, but finally Secretary Salazar is personally engaged in the offshore wind projects permitting process and has committed to reaching a final decision by March 1. Today...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Technically, I'm on vacation, and I hope everyone out there is enjoying at least some R&R this holiday season. Fortunately for all of us, the good people in the Governors' offices of 11 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have been busy....
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today in the Boston Globe, two of the biggest, but very different, names in biofuels have coauthored an op-ed on the importance of getting the GHG accounting right for bioenergy. I’ve written and done a video on this critically important...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Recently, I posted a video and a narrative explanation about a critical accounting error that threatens to turn climate legislation into a big incentive for deforestation. Put as simply as possible, the House climate bill and the Boxer-Kerry Senate bill...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Last Monday, I posted a video about a critical accounting error that threatens to turn climate legislation into a big incentive for deforestation. Here’s a narrative version of the same description. If you’ve seen the video this should sound and...
