EnviroPolitics Blog

Environmental Business News in NJ, PA & NY

Tip #1: EnviroPolitics, a paid-subscription, daily newsletter, provides free daily updates of environmental business news in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and beyond. Check out the site and add it to your favorites list. It’s available 24/7 at: Enviro-Business.

Tip #2: More conveniently, you can sign up to receive free alerts when the site is updated. To get on the alert list, simply send a blank email to: enviro-biznews@aweber.com

Tip #3: Get your company’s or organization’s environmental news published in EnviroPolitics. You don’t have to be a subscriber to the newsletter to take advantage of this free service. Send your information to: envirobusinessnews@enviropolitics.com

If you’re not in charge of public relations at your organization, pass this tip on to the person who is. They’ll appreciate the referral.

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Why rising gas prices will hurt Jersey less

It may come as small comfort to residents of the Garden State, but steadily rising gas prices will have less of an effect in New Jersey than elsewhere in America.

That’s what the smart-growth organization, New Jersey Future, tells us in their most recent issue of Future Facts.

For the first time in years, they say, the statistics indicate that Americans are buying less gasoline and driving fewer miles. But gas prices are likely to continue to rise.

So, why are New Jerseyans likely to suffer less?

Check out Future Facts for the group’s answer.

Why rising gas prices will hurt Jersey less Read More »

Hang out your wash, Save the planet

I always enjoyed the smell of freshly laundered clothes after they hung to dry on an outdoor clothesline.

And the sound of clean sheets snapping like sails when a breeze stirred up.

When I was a kid, my mother hung out our wash in the back yard.

At 80-something, she still does when weather permits.

When my kids were young, and we lived in a ‘starter house’ in a ‘starter neighborhood,’ my wife hung out the wash. Sometimes,

I did too. So did most all of our neighbors. It provided a chance to exchange greetings and maybe some gossip with whomever happened to be putting wash up or taking it down when you were doing the same.

Then we moved to a more affluent neighborhood where, it was made clear to us that “people don’t do that here.” Apparently, it was an eyesore. A sign that you couldn’t afford a clothes dryer. Whatever the reason, it was decidedly déclassé.

If social mores were to change, I admit I probably would not string up the old clothesline. All that schlepping from the basement to the yard. Heavy baskets. Life’s too hectic. Who has the time?

Well, apparently, some folks do.

Today, I stumbled upon a post in the blog of the New Jersey law firm of Stark and Stark in which attorney Jonathan H. Katz explores “a growing environmental movement that has been dubbed ‘The Right to Dry.’ “

Did you know that a study found that “(clothes) dryers can emit up to a ton of carbon dioxide per household every year”?

What for me is a nostalgic sensory experience is, for others, an environmental statement, a legal ‘right,’ and the subject of legislative debate.

Whether or not you’re committed to letting it all hang out, I think you’ll enjoy Mr. Katz’s post.

Hang out your wash, Save the planet Read More »

Broadwater decision falls to NY governor

“WASHINGTON – Approving the Broadwater liquefied natural gas barge Thursday, federal energy regulators took swipes at political leaders in New York and Connecticut who want to keep it out of the Long Island Sound and tossed a hot potato directly into the lap of newly-minted Gov. David Paterson, whose administration can approve or kill it.”

That’s the lead to yesterday’s Newsday story about the latest development in Shell’s controversial proposal to install a liquefied natural gas offloading facility in Long Island Sound. The Hartford Courant’s covered the decision today in State Blasts Broadwater Ruling .

(For more background, see our previous posts: How will Spitzer’s exit affect LNG project? and The latest shot fired in the LI Sound LNG war )

The reaction in the blogosphere has just begun. Early entries include Sphere, Connecticut Energy Blog, Royal Dutch Shell , and SEABGB. No doubt, more to come.

Broadwater decision falls to NY governor Read More »

Rendell hails ethanol but looks beyond it

Like a baseball coach who praises his current squad but has an eye on up-and-comers in his farm system, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on March 13 praised developers of the state’s first ethanol plant at its groundbreaking ceremony but days later was encouraging research to hasten the day when fuel can be produced from such cellulosic sources as switch grass and wood waste.

Making fuel from corn is what BioEnergy LLC’s will be doing at its $265 million ethanol biorefinery now under construction in Clearfield County. It’s Pennsylvania’s first such facility and will be one of the largest in the nation.

The plant is expected to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol when operational in 2010–among the largest outputs east of the Mississippi and among the top 10 in the nation–and create at least 110 jobs.

Pennsylvania taxpayers played a significant role, contributing a total of $17.4 million to get the project off the ground.

On March 17, the governor told members of the Pennsylvania Association of Conservation Districts that corn-based ethanol was the “near-term alternative,” a “technologically and economically viable alternative that can be put into our supply today to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

But, he added that he sees cellulosic ethanol technology as “more promising for the state’s future and the environment.”

Rendell plans to convene a cellulosic biofuels summit in Pennsylvania later this year. His administration is already investing in private research and development projects focusing on cellulosic ethanol that may be produced from biomass materials like switch grass, crop residues, small-diameter trees and agricultural waste.

The developers of the state’s first ethanol plant apparently are also looking to the future. BioEnergy plans to build a cellulosic research and development pilot plant next to the ethanol biorefinery to test different types of biomass including organic wastes.

Rendell hails ethanol but looks beyond it Read More »

How will Spitzer’s exit affect LNG project?

Even before Eliot Spitzer’s announcement yesterday that he is resigning as governor of New York, Connecticut politicians opposed to the proposed construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform in Long Island Sound were preparing to lobby Spitzer’s replacement.

The Hartford Courant reported on Tuesday that State Senate President Donald Williams “wants Connecticut to reach out to his (Spitzer’s) lieutenant governor and persuade him to oppose Broadwater.”

Broadwater Energy is a consortium of Shell Oil and TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. that is seeking to build a $700 million terminal some 9 miles from Long Island, N.Y., and 10 miles from the Connecticut shoreline.

Williams noted that Spitzer’s administration was expected to make a decision soon on state permits for the proposed LNG terminal.

The project is opposed by numerous political leaders in Connecticut, including Governor M. Jodi Rell, and the state’s vociferous Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

See our most recent post on the issue: The latest shot fired in the LI Sound LNG war

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On Monday, when the news of the Spitzer sex scandal began to break, environmental writer Tom Andersen’s blog, SPHERE, published a post under the mischievous headline:

Expect Broadwater to Try to Influence Governor Spitzer with Results of Bogus Opinion Survey (although as of this afternoon, he may be preoccupied)

In it, Andersen writes about an email he received from a woman who said she lived on Long Island and had received a phone call last Thursday…

… from a fellow who said he was from an “independent research company” asking me if I would like to take a survey…

You’ll learn a lot about public opinion polls by taking a few minutes to read what Andersen’s tipster had to report. (Just click on the link above).

Folks on both sides of this issue are hunkering down for a whiz-bang public opinion battle. It should be fun to watch.

And it may serve as a preview of coming attractions in New Jersey where ExxonMobil proposes to construct its own LNG receiving terminal 20 miles off the coast.

See: Offshore NJ natural gas proposal draws rapid & rabid response

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POSTSCRIPT: Denise Civiletti, a Broadwater opponent, writes in her blog, Civiletti, that opponents who had been trying to get a meeting for some time with Gov. Spitzer now realize that the date on which they finally succeeded, February 11, was the same day that the governor reportedly was busy arranging an assignation with a high-priced hooker two days later at a Washington, D. C. hotel. She speculates about this in: What was on his mind? Not Broadwater!

How will Spitzer’s exit affect LNG project? Read More »