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Allen, Kara[Kara.Allen@mail.house.gov]
Allen, Kara
Fri 11/1/20131:54:43 PM
SEEC Daily Clips 11.1.13

Sustainable Energy & Environment


Coalition

Top news stories:


A letter sent Thursday by Reps. Bob Good latte, R-Va., Jim Costa, 0-Calif., SEEC Member Peter Welch, 0Vt., and Steve Womack, R-Ark., asks Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy to
decrease the ethanol mandate in next year's renewable-fuel standard.

The White House is expected to take new steps on Friday to help society adapt to global warming, an
acknowledgment that worldwide efforts to control emissions will be inadequate to head off big climatic
shifts.

In her first major policy speech since taking office in April, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell
condemned Congress on Thursday for the recent federal government shutdown and called for adequate
funding of national parks and public lands, as well as the protection of new areas for their economic and
recreational benefits.

U.S. utilities agreed to buy 7.6 gigawatts of wind capacity this year through September, as construction
in 2013 slowed to a trickle after a federal tax credit expired at the end of 2012, the American Wind
Energy Association said.

The federal government is still wading through more than a million public comments filed on its plan to
tighten standards for drilling on public lands, with "no date certain" for finalizing those mandates,
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Thursday.

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Energy news:

With a maximum output of 250 megawatts, the California Valley Solar Ranch will generate enough
electricity to power roughly 100,000 homes. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. buys the plant's power under
two long-term purchase agreements. California law requires the state's utilities to get one third of their
electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2020.

The White House will begin publishing annual tallies of federal subsidies for petroleum and coal. The
plan is part of a wider set of "open government" commitments announced Thursday.

The AAA auto club said Thursday that 13 percent of U.S. gas stations are charging drivers less than $3per-gallon to fill up their tanks.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) today introduced his first bill since joining the Senate earlier this year, aiming
to require electric utilities to provide 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and
to mandate reductions in energy use by both electric and natural gas utilities.

If a new patent is any indication, Apple customers could soon be able to plug their iPhones directly into
a solar panel for power. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the patent by Apple today. And
while the company has seven previous solar-related patents to its name, this is the first one that would
allow Apple users to plug their MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, and other devices directly into a solar panel
without a bulky converter.

An Arizona utility commissioner is asking for all the key players in a debate over a solar energy policy in
the state to reveal any additional secret funding of nonprofits or public relations campaigns. The probe
comes after Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility, admitted last week that it had been
secretly contributing to outside nonprofits running negative ads against solar power.

Poland is Europe's coal colossus. More than 88 percent of its electricity comes from coal. Belchatow is
one of its huge sources and the largest carbon emitter in Europe. (There's no "belch" in Belchatow - it
is pronounced bel-HOT-oof.) This month, a United Nations conference on climate change will be held in
Poland, a location many environmental activists consider the least appropriate choice they could
imagine.

At a Fossil Free Europe tour event in Amsterdam on Tuesday, two aldermen from Boxtel, Netherlands
announced that their town would be divesting from the 200 fossil fuel companies that hold the largest
coal, oil, and gas reserves. This makes Boxtel the first municipality in Europe to make a commitment to
divest from fossil fuels, joining over 20 U.S. towns and cities that have vowed similar commitments.

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Climate news:

Two men were killed as heavy rains across Central Texas swelled rivers and creeks and triggered flash
flooding Thursday, prompting dozens of rescues across a region that's been dealing with a long,
punishing drought.

Average global surface-air temperatures have been rising at a slower rate than some climate scientists
projected. A reason, as a new study published in Science on Thursday helps demonstrate, is that the
oceans have been absorbing much of the heat.

Three months nearly to the day after first inviting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina
McCarthy to visit West Virginia's coal fields-and getting no official answer back-Sen. Joe Manchin, OW.Va., just happened to run into her again in a Capitol Hill elevator on Thursday.

The nations that make decisions about Antarctic fishing failed Friday for a third time to agree on a plan
that would create the world's largest marine sanctuary.

Now Congress wants to backtrack. Seems members didn't comprehend the scale of the problem they
were trying to fix. The issue of unsuitable homes built on flood plains is so entrenched that the new law
led to severe economic impacts for homeowners who were forced to foot greater shares of the
insurance bills needed to protect their properties.

When it comes to the wilderness of Isle Roya le National Park, located in the northwest corner of Lake
Superior, the wolves have always had the run of things. Only accessible to humans by boat or seaplane,
Isle Roya le is the least-visited national park in the continental United States. Last year, only 16, 746
visitors made the journey.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will wade into a controversial topic next week:
The greenhouse gas footprint of the U.S. natural gas drilling boom.

New Sen. Cory Booker (D) will serve on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the panel
his predecessor - the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) - used as a perch to push for tougher
regulation of chemicals and carbon emissions curbs.

Now is the time of year when Alaska's snowpack starts to build and temperatures plunge as the days

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become shorter and shorter. But this year, October has turned out to be more like September, with
rainstorms instead of snowstorms, and some of the mildest temperatures on record for the month,
particularly across interior Alaska.

Environment & Health news:

A strong earthquake shook a remote, mountainous area of central Taiwan on Thursday evening, but
there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. The earthquake, estimated at a magnitude of
6.3 by the United States Geological Survey and by Taiwan's authorities, occurred in a sparsely inhabited
area roughly 30 miles south-southwest of Hualian, a resort town on the east coast.

A strong earthquake has rocked central Chile, causing buildings to sway in the capital of Santiago. There
were no immediate reports of major damage or deaths.
Fracking for shale gas is safe as long as operations are well-regulated and well-run, the main public
health watchdog for England said on Thursday, after reviewing evidence from the US on the
controversial technology.

The next version of LEED officially launches next month at Green build, the US Green Building Council's
(USGBC) annual conference. LEED v4 makes some important changes, specifically on addressing the
toxicity of building materials, which could ripple across the vast construction industry.

After two years of review, Montana and federal officials notified Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday that
they intend to seek damages for injuries to birds, fish and other natural resources from a major crude oil
spill into the Yellowstone River.

With the U.S. EPA now more than four years into the process of developing regulations for coal ash, a
Michigan environmental group says an ongoing lack of oversight raises serious safety question.

The mayor of Kauai County, Hawaii, has vetoed a hotly contested bill that would have restricted the use
of pesticides by companies developing genetically modified crops on the island.

North Dakota Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday that they will seek bipartisan legislation to require
regulators to publicly report all oil spills and other hazardous leaks.

A deep sea oyster reef restoration being touted as the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico began in an
unlikely place: a quarry in landlocked Missouri.

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After 15 months at sea, fugitive eco-warrior Paul Watson has disembarked in the United States despite
an international Interpol request for his arrest, his organisation Sea Shepherd announced Thursday.

African water companies lose as much as $800 million a year, or about 35 percent of total production,
because of leaks, fraud and unpaid bills, according to the African Water Association. As much as 50
percent of the water produced in some African nations is never accounted for, Sylvain Usher, the
secretary general of the Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based group, said Oct. 30 in an interview in Abidjan.

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