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To:

From:

Sent:

Subject:

Allen, Kara[Kara.Allen@mail.house.gov]

Allen, Kara

Thur

4/10/2014 2:01 :32 PM

SEEC

Daily Clips

4.10.14

Sustainable Energy Environment

Coalition

Top news stories:

Two California Democrats introduced a bill that would provide a bond program

that

would sell bonds

to

pay for clean energy tax incentives.

SEEC

Member Rep

Zoe Lofgren

and

SEEC Vice

Chair

Rep

Doris

Matsui are calling the proposed bonds victory bonds, after war debt that the Treasury Department

sold

to

fund World Wars I and

II

In

1999, I participated in

my first

beach cleanup with I Love A Clean

San

Diego and

the San

Diego

Surfrider Foundation. The

San

Diego region in

many

ways is defined by our relationship with the ocean.

The Obama administration released a comprehensive strategy document Wednesday aimed

at

reducing

wildfires, which it says are being exacerbated by climate change. The strategy recommends preventive

measures like controlled burns, municipal and state zoning

to

reduce the effects of sprawl and

incorporating watersheds into local management plans.

Senior Environmental Protection Agency officials consulted with at least 21 separate groups

representing a broad range of interests in the

Washington

area and held more than

1

meetings and

events with additional organizations across regional offices as the agency

prepared

its carbon pollution

regulation

for

existing power plants.

A House

subcommittee

passed a bill proposed by Rep. Cory Gardner R-Colo.) on Wednesday aimed

at

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expediting liquefied natural gas expor ts

to U.S.

allies. Gardner proposed the bill in

light of the

crisis in

Ukraine, which has highlighted the dependence

of

Eastern Europe on Russia

for

natural gas supplies.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted Wednesday

to

restrict the

Environmental Protection Agency's EPA) authority

to

block permits

to

dump dredge or fill material into

waterways. The measure would prohibit EPA from revoking a dredge or fill permit after the Army Corps

of Engineers grants the permit.

EPA

would still be able

to

veto the permit while the Army Corps is

considering it.

The

concentration of

carbon dioxide,

the

greenhouse gas

that

drives climate change,

hit

402 parts

per

million this

week

- the highest level recorded in

at

least 800,000 years.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed 9. 78 million in civil penalties

against pipel ine operators for alleged violations of federal law in 2013, the agency announced this week.

Energy news

Sixty-five

percent of

people in

the

United States

support the

renewable fuel standard

RFS) that

mandates

production

and blending

of

a certain amount

of

fuel from renewable sources, according

to

a

survey commissioned by

the

Renewable Fuels Association (RFA).

The Federal Railroad Administration FRA) will propose a new rule requiring all trains carrying oil

to

be

crewed

by

at

least

two

people,

the

agency announced Wednesday. The

FRA

also said

it

planned

to

propose a rule on train securement and that the agency wanted a rulemaking on the

movement

of

hazardous materials in general.

One of the answers

to

that is likely

to

be energy storage, which means using batteries or other

technology such as flywheels

to

capture renewable energy and allow it

to

flow

into

the

power

grid as

needed.

Researchers

at the

Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) developed technology

to

extract carbon dioxide

from

seawater

while simultaneously producing

hydrogen, and

then

converted

the

gasses

into

hydrocarbon liquid fuel.

The developer of a proposed 25 megawatt wind farm off the coast of New Jersey yesterday appealed a

state agency's decision

to

reject

the

project. Cape May, N.J.-based Fishermen's Energy asked

the

state's

Board of Public

Utilities

to

revisit what

would

be the

first

wind project

built

in state waters, about 3

miles

from Atlantic

City.

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Federal regu lators have issued four permits

for

oil and gas wastewater disposal wells in Pennsylvania in

the

past six

months,

and

those

are unlikely to be

the

last.

Industry

groups and researchers are

renewing

their

efforts to find sites in the state where the salt- and metals-laden waste fluids produced from ever

more shale gas wells can be entombed deep underground.

Legislation

intended

to quickly add muscle into Massachusetts' greenhouse gas emissions reduction

program is drawing

fire

from both power producers and clean energy advocates because

it

would lock

the

state into long-term hydropower contracts

with

Canadian

utilities

and hinder

the

state's homegrown

clean energy sector.

Mike Bloomberg,

the United

Nations special

envoy

on cities and climate, said U.S. tariffs on solar cells

are helping a

handful of manufacturers

more than

the

American public. The protectionist policies were

sought mainly by a small number of U.S. solar companies

that

are struggling to compete against Chinese

rivals, Bloomberg said.

India is slowly building upon its installed solar power capacity, thanks to the comprehensive and

ambitious National Solar Mission, state solar policies, and relatively increased enforcement of the

Renewable Purchase Obligation.

Climate news:

Can

science tell us

how

much ethical responsibility different countries bear

for combating

climate

change? It's going

to

try.

According

to

a

draft

of

a

forthcoming Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate

Change IPCC) report, ethics takes a front-and-center role in a forum traditionally reserved for exploring

scienti fic consensus.

A

group

of Senate Democrats is urging President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline

by

the end

of next month, saying the process has already taken much longer than anyone can reasonably

justify.

The

letter,

spearheaded by Sen.

Mary

Landrieu (D-La.), who faces a tough reelection bid

this

year,

requests

that

Obama set a hard deadline

for

Secretary

of

State John Kerry to make his

national interest

determination.

President Obama's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency's clean air office

will

be

getting at

least one no

vote

from a lawmaker who on

Monday

said he

can't support

someone who

accepts that climate change can aggravate

extreme

weather events.

Scheduled for release on Sunday in Berlin, Germany, the

new Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate

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Change IPCC) report

will point

to

many

possible ways-from burying greenhouse

gases to

going nuclear

to encouraging biofuel production-to save humanity from

the

ravages of climate

change.

The drought

that

is withering vegetable and fruit crops in California may push up food prices more

than

the dry spell that ravaged

the

Corn Belt in 2012, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

For the first

time,

San Diego County officials are including effects of climate

change in

their update of

the

local Hazard Mitigation Plan. The region's 18 city

governments, county and

several fire

protection

and

water districts are joining to update the plan - with

the

public's

input

via this online survey.

The director and

some

cast members of "Sharknado 2: The Second One"

appeared

on stage in a

Pasadena hotel

on

Tuesday to preview the upcoming airborne shark sequel and

touched

on

a very

serious topic: climate change.

With the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel

on

Climate Change

preparing

to

release

its long

awaited

report assessing options for fighting global warming, a fossil fuel industry-funded

research

group

made the

case

on April 9 that the phenomenon is actually beneficial to the planet.

In February 2013, the

journal

Frontiers

in

Psychology published a

peer-reviewed

paper which

found that

people

who

reject

climate science are more likely

to

believe

in

conspiracy

theories.

Predictably

enough,

those people didn't like it.

Vast

stretches of

the

Somerset

Levels, an

expanse of

coastal plains

and wetlands

in

southwest

England,

have

spent

much

of

the winter underwater. At

the

peak of the crisis,

some

11,500 hectares (28,420

acres) was submerged as violent storms brought "biblical"

deluges

week after week, for months on end.

The Norwegian government, seeking

to

sustain

oil revenues

that

have

fueled the

country's

prosperity,

has floated plans

to

let drillers push closer than ever

to

the ice cap -- only

to

run into the strongest

opposition yet. The uproar

frames

a larger

and

increasingly contentious fight

over

whether the Arctic

Ocean's

mostly untouched oil

and

gas

reserves

can

be

safely or economically exploited.

The U.K. government said it's forming a "lab" to study ways to boost funding for climate-protection

projects, part of a United Nations-led effort to channel 100 billion a year into the industry by 2020.

Summer is just around the corner and, after a winter like this

one,

it's high time to start making those

vacation plans. Of course, our buoyant spirits were somewhat dampened by the

latest

U.N. climate

report.

Spoiler alert, it wasn't real good, well, unless you're into horrific

droughts,

monster

storms,

heat

waves, mass extinctions, failing crops, dogs

and cats

living together,

mass

hysteria,

in

which case,

jackpot

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Environment Health news:

In

a

letter

to

Obama on Wednesday, all

eight

Republicans

on

the

Senate

Environment

and Public

Works

Committee said the agency's proposed rule would

hurt

economic recovery and represents an overreach

of authority.

China plans to ban imports of coal with high-ash and high-sulfur

content

as the nation seeks

to

l imit the

dirtiest fuels

to

fight pollution. The

world s

largest coal consumer

will

encourage imports of higher

quality supplies, according

to

Ren Lixin, the head of the coal division at the National Energy

Administration.

A bill

that

would

place a

moratorium

on

the

use

of

hydraulic

fracturing,

or

fracking, in oil

drilling

in

California was approved

by

a state Senate panel on Tuesday.

The South Portland Planning Board on Tuesday endorsed a 180-day extension of the moratorium on tar

sands developments, which is set

to

expire May 5.

Those cutbacks - continuing a trend, the Center for Public Integrity found,

that

began in 2006 and

accelerated last year - mean

the

EPA will

conduct

thousands fewer inspections and evaluations each

year, and initiate and conclude thousands

fewer

judicial and administrative enforcement cases.

About the only thing former President Ronald Reagan

doesn t

have named after

him

is a

mountain, not

one recognized

by

the federal government anyway.

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

EPA)

is hosting the Advancing Sustainable Ports

summit

to

mark the kickoff of a

new EPA

initiative to recognize ports

that

take action

to

improve

environmental

performance. EPA

will

also award $4.2

million

in

grant funding for

clean diesel projects at

six U.S. ports.

We

already know

that poverty

and climate change are inextricably linked, and

that

poor communities

often

bare

the

brunt

of

the other negative impacts

of

fossil fuel extraction. We,

as

environmentalists,

can t afford

to

ignore the issue of poverty, and we shouldn t assume that the policies we advocate for

are

automatically

benign in terms

of their

human-scale impact.

Walmart

has recognized that 91 percent of its shoppers would be interested in purchasing organic

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groceries

if

they

were more

affordable, and on Thursday

the

company

announced that

it s going

to

finally give customers

what they want

-- a line of organic foods that costs

the same

as non-organic.

We recently found

out

that K-Cups,

those

single-serve thingers you use in your office s Keurig

coffeemaker

create

so much trash

that

debris from the ones sold just in the last year would circle the

planet almost 11 times.

The

oil

industry has

set

its sights

on

this swath

of the state

with a

proposed

drill site

just

1,000

feet

from

the

u

rans house. That would

mean

noise,

dust

and dozens

of

trucks passing each day. But the

u

rans

are most

concerned

about their

drinking water which they fear could

be

poisoned by toxic

waste

from

the well.

Beijing artist Liang Kegang

returned

from a business trip in

southern

France with wel l-rested lungs and a

small item

of protest

against his

home

city s choking pollution: a glass jar of clean, Provence air.

A

popular

tourist town

in

western Puerto Rico has become the island s first municipality to

ban

plastic

bags. Rincon Mayor Carlos Lopez tells

reporters that

plastic bags have

been

affecting marine life

at

a

nearby

reserve.

He

urged

other

municipalities

to

follow his lead.