Energy

On a 120-acre farm in Biscoe, North Carolina, near the edge of the Uwharrie National Forest, a flock of hair sheep takes shelter from the summer sun beneath a row of solar panels.  They provide a valuable service to O2 emc – the Cornelius-based company that owns this solar installation – by preventing weeds that could block sunlight and decrease the panels’ efficiency.“What we’re trying to do is put agriculture and solar right next to each other,” says Brock Phillips of Sun-Raised Farms, who owns and manages the sheep. [node:read-more:link]

Eddyville, Fort Dodge, Clinton, Newton, Cedar Rapids. Communities like these have been mainstays of the Iowa bioeconomy for years, even decades — home to corn and soy processing on the largest world scale, and much much more — integrated complexes of advanced refining where companies share infrastructure and often where the residues of the one process become feedstocks for another. They’ve been to farm products what fossil fuel hot spots like the Baytown, Texas mega-complex have meant to oil refining. Now, they have company. [node:read-more:link]

The Nevada regulators’ order was the most extreme example of a nationwide effort by corporate utilities — panicked about losing market share and profits — to roll back net-metering policies. It’s backed by the deep pockets of fossil fuel industrialists like the Koch brothers, conservative lobbying groups like ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the electricity industry’s own trade group, the Edison Electric Institute. [node:read-more:link]

In a radio interview in Iowa late last week, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made pretty clear the rational that went into his agency proposing lower levels of cellulosic biofuels, advanced biofuels, and total renewable fuels that would be required for blending under the next Renewable Fuel Standard rule: “Production levels and demand matter.” Pruitt goes on to express his concern that his agency is being “used in setting those [RFS blending targets] in a way to encourage ‘blue-sky’ thinking.” He is referring to the concept that the standard’s annual blending targets (Renewable Volume Obliga [node:read-more:link]

Driven by wind credits, low gas prices and consumer demand, rural co-ops are finding new ways to grow renewables. [node:read-more:link]

Nine Mid-Atlantic and New England states have agreed to cut power plant greenhouse gas emissions across the region by 65 percent by 2030 through the nation's first cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon contributing to global climate change.New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative have agreed to reduce the cap on power plant carbon emissions an additional 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030. [node:read-more:link]

Back in April, Energy Secretary Rick Perry ordered up a study of the reliability of the nation’s electrical power grid. The coal and nuclear power industries had been arguing that the system faced challenges that required special breaks for their energy sectors. President Donald Trump keeps looking for reasons to pump taxpayer resources into reviving the coal industry. This study undermines his case. The study was released Thursday, and it found the energy grid is in pretty good shape. [node:read-more:link]

A long-awaited Energy Department staff report on electricity markets and reliability singles out natural gas — not renewables or environmental regulations — as the leading driver of coal plant closures in this decade, challenging the Trump administration's case for saving coal. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration has fired another shot at the scientific community, this time dismantling a federal advisory committee on climate change.Members on the 15-person committee tell CNN they learned the news by email Friday. [node:read-more:link]

Brazil's government approved taxing ethanol imports for the first time in a move to protect local producers from growing shipments coming from the United States.Brazil's Agriculture Ministry said the country's foreign trade chamber, known as Camex, approved a 20-percent tax on ethanol imports, which would be levied only after a tax-free quota of 600 million liters per year is surpassed.Brazilian ethanol imports reached 1.29 billion liters in the first half of the year alone, a 330 percent increase compared to the same period a year earlier.The move ends an agreement between the world's two [node:read-more:link]