A news release from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy — EP Editor
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to over $96 million in funding for bioenergy research and development. This funding supports the U.S. bioeconomy, as well as DOE’s goal of providing consumers and businesses with a range of domestic energy options that are affordable, reliable, and secure.
Topic areas within this FOA will advance DOE’s Bioenergy Technology Office’s objectives of reducing the price of drop-in biofuels, lowering the cost of biopower, and enabling high-value products from biomass or waste resources. Topic areas include:
Scale-Up of Bench Applications (up to $28M): Reducing the scale-up risk of biofuel and bioproduct processes.
Waste to Energy Strategies for a Bioeconomy (up to $18M): Addressing ways to use materials that are currently “waste” to make energy and new products, including strategies for municipal solid waste; wet wastes, like food and manures; and municipal wastewater treatment.
Algae Bioproducts and CO2 Direct-Air-Capture and Efficiency (up to $14M): Lowering the cost of algal biofuels by improving carbon efficiency, and/or by employing direct air capture technologies.
Bio-Restore: Biomass to Restore Natural Resources (up to $8M): Quantifying the economic and environmental benefits associated with growing energy crops, with a focus on restoring water quality and soil health.
Efficient Wood Heaters (up to $5M): Developing and testing low-emission, high-efficiency residential wood heaters.
Biopower and Products from Urban and Suburban Wastes: North American Multi-University Partnership for Research and Education (up to $15M): Developing innovative technologies to manage major forms of urban and suburban waste, with a focus on using plastic waste to make recycled products and using wastes to produce low-cost biopower.
Scalable CO2 Electrocatalysis (up to $8M): Developing low temperature and low-pressure CO2 electrocatalysis technologies for generating chemical building blocks.
The application process will include two phases: a concept paper and a full application. Concept papers are due on March 5, 2020, and full applications are due on April 30, 2020. For more information, read the full FOA on EERE Exchange.
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State lawmakers got close on multiple waste and recycling bills, but most didn’t make it through. Sponsors have pledged to revive the efforts when they return for a new session later this month.
The New Jersey legislature failed to reach an agreement on multiple waste and recycling bills before the end of its two-year legislative session yesterday, but momentum is expected to continue.
Among the most high-profile items was an organics diversion requirement for select large generators. The Assembly passed the bill (A3726) last month, but it never came up for a vote in the Senate. Sen. Bob Smith told Politico he has a commitment from Senate President Stephen Sweeney that a new version will be taken up shortly after a Jan. 30 committee hearing.
Another major bill (S2776) passed the Senate on Monday, but failed to advance in the Assembly. It would have phased in bans on single-use plastic and paper bags, as well as expanded polystyrene foam food containers, and required straws only be given out upon request. Smith has also pledged to reintroduce a new version of that bill this month.
Both chambers did pass two notable recycling bills on Monday that now await Gov. Phil Murphy’s signature. The first (S3939) would establish a Recycling Market Development Council to assess state needs and recommend solutions. The second (A4382) would establish a state stewardship program for architectural paint.
Given the session deadline, multiple bills appear to have run out of time to resolve political disagreements – some of which were complicated by late-stage amendments – and must now be introduced anew. Despite these partial results, waste and recycling topics appear to be gaining momentum as municipalities throughout the state struggle with rising costs.
Those concerns are best evidenced by the passage of S3939, which was spurred by a committee hearing last summer to address local recycling issues. Local governments in New Jersey cannot consider canceling their recycling programs due to state requirements – unlike in some other parts of the country – but are still faced with the same cost pressures. The bill mirrors similar legislation passed recently in states such as California and Washington to focus more on market development.
If the bill is signed, Murphy will be expected to appoint members to the new council within 60 days, who will have one year to prepare a report. In addition to assessing existing markets for recyclable materials, the council will also be asked to explore a range of topics such as contamination reduction, local market development (including possible incentives for paper mills), procurement standards for recycled content and other relevant policy recommendations.
The Association of New Jersey Recyclers (ANJR), which has long been advocating for a revival of the state’s solid waste advisory committee, formed its own market development committee last year to kickstart discussions. S3939 stipulates that ANJR will be represented on this new state council. Executive Director Marie Kruzan told Waste Dive she sees an opportunity for the two groups to work together on finding solutions that could wind up in the recommendation report.
Arizona’s biggest electric utility spent millions of dollars in 2018 to defeat a renewable energy ballot initiative. Just two years later, it now says it wants to get all of its power from carbon-free sources.
As Steven Mufson and I report this morning, Arizona Public Service announced an ambitious plan to wean itself entirely off fossil fuels by 2050, with the intermediate goal of getting nearly two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear and renewable sources by 2030.
The drastic about-face for the electric utility is a sign of how the political climate has changed.
Voters rejected the measure shifting the state to renewables in the 2018 election, even after billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer’s campaign in support of the ballot measure known as Proposition 127 brought the total amount spent on both sides to at least $62.8 million. APS’s announcement makes it less likely there will another big ballot initiative fight in future elections.
“I am very encouraged by the news from Arizona Public Service this morning and I am also happy that our efforts behind Proposition 127 in 2018 are finally moving Arizona to a more clean energy future,” Steyer, who is now a Democratic candidate for president, said in a statement Wednesday morning. “The plan put forth by APS shows that when public interest advocates keep pushing energy companies, they can get real results.”
In its own news release, APS said that after the ballot initiative fight the utility “took a hard look at our generation mix and future plans” when setting its carbon-free energy goals.
APS’s plan, which is not legally binding, outstrips the modest renewable requirements already on the books in Arizona that mandate that it rely on renewable energy for 15 percent of supplies by 2025. Yet it’s especially striking since the electric utility poured $37.9 million into a campaign to defeat the ballot initiative, which would have required APS to meet a similar goal — generating 50 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the former president of the Brazil-based mining giant Vale and 15 other people with homicide, faulting them for negligence in a dam disaster that killed at least 259 people a year ago.
Those charged include Vale’s former chief executive, Fabio Schvartsman, and other senior officials employed by Vale and by a German firm hired to assess the stability of its dams. They were also charged with environmental crimes, as were the companies.
The announcement came days before the first anniversary of one of the deadliest mining disasters in years.
The dam in Brumadinho, in the state of Minas Gerais, was built to hold waste from an iron ore mine. When it burst on Jan. 25, 2019, the company cafeteria and other facilities were buried in a torrent of mud.
On Tuesday, one of the state prosecutors who brought the charges, William Garcia Pinto Coelho, said Vale had executives systematically hide evidence of safety concerns and retaliated against auditing firms that flagged problems.
And the German firm Tüv Süd, Mr. Pinto Coelho said, was compensated for knowingly presenting Vale with misleading reports about the stability of its dams.
Prosecutors said they had found evidence that Vale officials knew Brumadinho’s dam was at risk since at least November 2017. It was on an internal list of 10 dams at risk of bursting, they learned.
“The goal of these omissions, ultimately, was to avoid any negative impacts to Vale’s reputation that could affect its market value,” Mr. Pinto Coelho said.
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Carla K. Johnson and Mike Stobbe / Associated Press
Travelers wear face masks as they wait their flight at Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong today. Face masks sold out and temperature checks at airports and train stations became the new norm as China strove Tuesday to control the outbreak of a new coronavirus
SEATTLE (AP) — A U.S. citizen who recently returned from a trip to central China has been diagnosed with the new virus that has sparked an outbreak and stringent monitoring around the world.
The man returned to the Seattle area in the middle of last week after traveling to the Wuhan area, where the outbreak began. The man is in his 30s and is in good condition at a hospital in Everett, outside Seattle.
The U.S. is the fifth country to report seeing the illness, following China, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea.
Late last week, U.S. health officials began screening passengers from central China at U.S. airports. Officials around the world have implemented similar airport screenings in hopes of containing the virus during the busy Lunar New Year travel season.
In announcing the airport screenings last week, CDC officials said then risk to the American public was low but that it was likely the illness would appear in the U.S. at some point.
The New Jersey Legislature presented Governor Phil Murphy with hundreds of bills in the final days of its lame-duck session that expired last week. Below is a list of environmental bills that the governor signed into law today and those he took no action on which, following a lame-duck session, constitutes a ‘pocket veto.’
Bills signed into law:
S721 /A1751 (Greenstein, Cunningham, Diegnan / Quijano, Benson) – Authorizes use of certain electric school buses
S1683 /A4267 (Smith, Greenstein / McKeon, Space, Wirths) – Concerns regulation of solid waste, hazardous waste, and soil and fill recycling industries
S2511 / A4020 (Madden / Mazzeo, Murphy, Johnson) – Changes title of DEP “conservation officer” to “conservation police officer”
S3920 wGR / A5552 (Pou / Wimberly, Sumter) – Concerns provision of energy to certain manufacturing facilities by providing exemptions to certain energy-related taxes
S3939 and S3944 / ACS for 2018:A5681 and 2018:A5682 (Smith, Greenstein, Bateman, Codey / Pinkin, Lopez, McKeon) – Establishes Recycling Market Development Council
S3985 / A5663 (Smith / McKeon, Pinkin, Vainieri Huttle) – Amends “Electric Discount and Energy Competition Act” to add a definition of “open access offshore wind transmission facility” and revises law concerning “qualified offshore wind projects”
S4025 / A5695 (Pou / Wimberly, Sumter) – Makes FY 2020 language allocation of $1,000,000 appropriated to Grants for Urban Parks to Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson
S4162 / A6014 (Smith, Greenstein / Vainieri Huttle, Pinkin, Houghtaling) – Establishes NJ Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers University; appropriates up to $500,000
S4275 / A6088 (Smith, Greenstein / Burzichelli) – Allows BPU to increase cost to customers of Class I renewable energy requirement for energy years 2022 through 2024, under certain conditions
S4276 / A6109 (Corrado, Bateman / Armato, Calabrese, Land) – Appropriates $32,153,936 to State Agriculture Development Committee, and amends 2017 appropriations for stewardship activities, for farmland preservation purposes
S4277 / A6112 (Greenstein, Bateman / Freiman, Danielsen, Downey) – Appropriates $5,000,000 from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues to State Agriculture Development Committee for municipal planning incentive grants for farmland preservation purposes
S4278 / A6108 (Greenstein, Bateman / Taliaferro, Karabinchak, Kennedy) – Appropriates $21 million from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues to State Agriculture Development Committee for county planning incentive grants for farmland preservation purposes
S4279 / A6106 (Smith, Bateman / Houghtaling, Reynolds-Jackson, Pinkin) – Appropriates $1,350,000 from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues to State Agriculture Development Committee for grants to certain nonprofit organizations for farmland preservation purposes
S4309 / A6107 (Turner, Cruz-Perez / Mejia, Vainieri Huttle, Zwicker) – Appropriates $13,902,723 from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues to NJ Historic Trust for grants for certain historic preservation projects and associated administrative expenses
S4310 / A6114 (Codey, Bateman / Carter, Murphy, Lopez) – Appropriates $8,872,682 to DEP from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues for grants to certain nonprofit entities to acquire or develop lands for recreation and conservation purposes
S4311 / A6113 (Greenstein, Bateman / Mukherji, Verrelli) – Appropriates $77,450,448 from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues and various Green Acres funds to DEP for local government open space acquisition and park development projects
S4312 / A6111 (Smith, Bateman / Giblin, Mazzeo, Land) – Appropriates $36.143 million from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues for recreation and conservation purposes to DEP for State capital and park development projects
S4313 / A6110 (Corrado, Bateman / Moriarty, McKeon, Swain) – Appropriates $33.915 million from constitutionally dedicated CBT revenues to DEP for State acquisition of lands for recreation and conservation purposes, including Blue Acres projects
A4136 / S2675 (Land, Milam / Andrzejczak, Van Drew) – Establishes Possession In Excess of Daily Limit Vessel License for black sea bass and summer flounder; dedicates fees therefrom to marine fisheries programs
A5511 / S1852 (Spearman, Jones, Reynolds-Jackson / Turner, Cruz-Perez) – Revises certain penalties for illegal operation of snowmobile, all-terrain vehicle, or dirt bike
A5970 / S4201 (Lopez, Speight, Chaparro / Codey) – Amends list of environmental infrastructure projects approved for long-term funding for FY2020 to include new projects, remove certain projects, and modify estimated loan amounts for certain projects
A5971 / S4202 (Mukherji, Pintor Marin, Spearman / Bateman, Corrado) – Authorizes NJ Infrastructure Bank to expend additional sums to make loans for environmental infrastructure projects for FY2020
A5972 / S4203 (Pinkin, Benson, Zwicker / Greenstein, Singleton) – Makes changes to New Jersey Infrastructure Bank’s enabling act
Governor Murphy declined to sign the following bills, meaning they expire without becoming law:
S2421 / A1030 (Smith, Bateman / Johnson, Kennedy, Benson, DeAngelo) – Concerns installation of electric vehicle charging stations in common interest communities
S3393 / A5384 and A5157 (Sarlo, Addiego / Mazzeo, Murphy, Houghtaling, Calabrese, Armato, Dancer) – Allows certain preserved farms to hold 14 special occasion events per year; imposes further event restrictions on residentially-exposed preserved farms
A1045 /S2856 (Houghtaling, Downey, Dancer / Gopal, Oroho) – Clarifies sales tax collection responsibilities of horse-boarding businesses in New Jersey
A2731 / S3407 (Taliaferro, Space / Sweeney, Oroho) – Removes statutory limitation on number of permits that may be issued by Division of Fish and Wildlife for the taking of beaver
A4382 / S2815 (Pinkin, Lopez, Kennedy / Beach, Smith) – Requires paint producers to implement or participate in a nationwide paint stewardship program
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