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Unlikely Allies in North Carolina Clean-Energy Fight

With North Carolina’s renewable energy mandate under assault from Republican legislators, green groups seeking to save it have found an unlikely ally: the state’s hog industry.

Smithfield Foods Inc. and other companies that raise and slaughter pigs have put aside decades of disagreements and united — for the moment — with environmentalists to defend the only state law in the nation that lists swine manure as a renewable resource.

Smithfield has been the target of lawsuits, petitions and political campaigns for stashing hog manure in football-field size lagoons or spraying it on farm fields. Now the company says it has found a way to green its process: capturing the biogas rising off the manure and using it to make electricity.

Unless, that is, a Republican-led drive succeeds to rescind tax incentives and requirements for utilities to use renewable energy.

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Uncategorized

Unlikely Allies in North Carolina Clean-Energy Fight

With North Carolina’s renewable energy mandate under assault from Republican legislators, green groups seeking to save it have found an unlikely ally: the state’s hog industry.

Smithfield Foods Inc. and other companies that raise and slaughter pigs have put aside decades of disagreements and united — for the moment — with environmentalists to defend the only state law in the nation that lists swine manure as a renewable resource.

Smithfield has been the target of lawsuits, petitions and political campaigns for stashing hog manure in football-field size lagoons or spraying it on farm fields. Now the company says it has found a way to green its process: capturing the biogas rising off the manure and using it to make electricity.

Unless, that is, a Republican-led drive succeeds to rescind tax incentives and requirements for utilities to use renewable energy.

Read More
NewsUncategorized

Don’t Like Obama’s Clean Power Plan? Fine, Here’s Cap and Trade

Republican governors who boycott the Obama administration’s new power-plant regulations may instead get an offer they can’t refuse: a cap-and-trade system many of them also oppose.

Five years after Republicans in Congress shot down President Barack Obama’s plan for carbon trading, his administration unveiled rules to combat climate change. They include a provision for carbon trading, which Republicans had criticized as a government intrusion in the workings of the free market.

“It’s clear that what they’re trying to do — without establishing a federal cap-and-trade program — is set up a plan that has a very strong likelihood of becoming a de facto federal cap-and-trade program,” said Andre Templeman, managing director of the carbon-markets consultancy Alpha Inception LLC.

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Uncategorized

Don’t Like Obama’s Clean Power Plan? Fine, Here’s Cap and Trade

Republican governors who boycott the Obama administration’s new power-plant regulations may instead get an offer they can’t refuse: a cap-and-trade system many of them also oppose.

Five years after Republicans in Congress shot down President Barack Obama’s plan for carbon trading, his administration unveiled rules to combat climate change. They include a provision for carbon trading, which Republicans had criticized as a government intrusion in the workings of the free market.

“It’s clear that what they’re trying to do — without establishing a federal cap-and-trade program — is set up a plan that has a very strong likelihood of becoming a de facto federal cap-and-trade program,” said Andre Templeman, managing director of the carbon-markets consultancy Alpha Inception LLC.

Read More
Uncategorized

Don’t Like Obama’s Clean Power Plan? Fine, Here’s Cap and Trade

Republican governors who boycott the Obama administration’s new power-plant regulations may instead get an offer they can’t refuse: a cap-and-trade system many of them also oppose.

Five years after Republicans in Congress shot down President Barack Obama’s plan for carbon trading, his administration unveiled rules to combat climate change. They include a provision for carbon trading, which Republicans had criticized as a government intrusion in the workings of the free market.

“It’s clear that what they’re trying to do — without establishing a federal cap-and-trade program — is set up a plan that has a very strong likelihood of becoming a de facto federal cap-and-trade program,” said Andre Templeman, managing director of the carbon-markets consultancy Alpha Inception LLC.

Read More
NewsUncategorized

Renewable Energy Gains Greater Opportunity in US Clean Power Plan

After a year of being pummeled by opponents, Obama’s final carbon reduction plan emerged this week with an even stronger push for renewable energy.

Wind and solar energy are centerpieces of the Clean Power Plan, the United States’ first ever rule to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants.

The rule not only makes renewables one of the plan’s three central building blocks, but also creates special incentives to spur communities to build renewables more quickly than required.

The revised version of the rule comes after a year of review, hundreds of meetings and 4.3 million public comments delivered to EPA.  It requires that states come up with plans to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 870 million tons, or 32 percent below 2005 levels, in 2030.

Read More
Uncategorized

Renewable Energy Gains Greater Opportunity in US Clean Power Plan

After a year of being pummeled by opponents, Obama’s final carbon reduction plan emerged this week with an even stronger push for renewable energy.

Wind and solar energy are centerpieces of the Clean Power Plan, the United States’ first ever rule to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants.

The rule not only makes renewables one of the plan’s three central building blocks, but also creates special incentives to spur communities to build renewables more quickly than required.

The revised version of the rule comes after a year of review, hundreds of meetings and 4.3 million public comments delivered to EPA.  It requires that states come up with plans to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 870 million tons, or 32 percent below 2005 levels, in 2030.

Read More
Uncategorized

Renewable Energy Gains Greater Opportunity in US Clean Power Plan

After a year of being pummeled by opponents, Obama’s final carbon reduction plan emerged this week with an even stronger push for renewable energy.

Wind and solar energy are centerpieces of the Clean Power Plan, the United States’ first ever rule to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants.

The rule not only makes renewables one of the plan’s three central building blocks, but also creates special incentives to spur communities to build renewables more quickly than required.

The revised version of the rule comes after a year of review, hundreds of meetings and 4.3 million public comments delivered to EPA.  It requires that states come up with plans to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 870 million tons, or 32 percent below 2005 levels, in 2030.

Read More