What's New List Serve Post Display
Below is the List Serve Post you selected to display.
newsclips -- ARB Newsclips for January 11, 2013.
Posted: 11 Jan 2013 12:09:35
ARB Newsclips for January 11, 2013. This is a service of the California Air Resources Board’s Office of Communications. You may need to sign in or register with individual websites to view some of the following news articles. AIR POLLUTION NASA Working to Improve Air Quality Knowledge. Residents in California's San Joaquin Valley will see some unusual air traffic over their region in January and February of 2013 that is designed to someday help improve the air all of us breathe. Two NASA research planes will fly between Bakersfield and Fresno - one as close as 1,000 feet to the ground – to measure air pollution with a number of onboard science instruments. Posted. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/discover-aq/news/DAQ-20130110.html CLIMATE CHANGE UN Developed-Country Carbon Drops to Record on EU Ban Proposal. United Nations carbon credits for December slumped to their lowest ever after the European Union proposed to ban some offsets imported from countries including Russia unless they undergo additional checks. UN Emission Reduction Units issued after 2012 from countries without new emission goals under the Kyoto Protocol may be held in the EU registry as long as it is certain they represent carbon cuts taking place before the end of last year, according to a draft regulation presented by the European Commission yesterday. Posted. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-11/un-developed-country-carbon-drops-to-record-on-eu-ban-proposal.html EU Seeks Vote on Carbon Registry on Jan. 23, Document Shows. The European Union scheduled a vote on Jan. 23 on draft carbon-registry regulation that may include limits on some imported emission credits and is seeking further talks on a permit-supply fix, according to an EU document. The European Commission, the bloc’s regulatory arm, wants to restrict the use of some Emission Reduction Units, or ERUs, from countries that fail to adopt new carbon goals under the United Nations Kyoto Protocol as of this year. Posted. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-10/eu-seeks-vote-on-carbon-registry-on-jan-23-document-shows-1-.html California Estimates Cap-and-Trade Earnings At Just $200M. California Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget plan estimates the state will take in $200 million this year from the sale of greenhouse gas permits sold in the state’s cap-and-trade program, which puts a price on carbon emitted from power plants, cement factories and other industries. Earlier estimates put that number as high as $1 billion. http://insideclimatenews.org/content/california-estimates-cap-and-trade-earnings-just-200m What Effect Will California's Cap-And-Trade Law Have? Beginning this month, 350 California businesses will start paying for some of the carbon they emit. Businesses that participated in an auction in November paid $10.09 to offset every ton of CO2 they produce beyond a cap set by the state. Over the next few years, the cap on how much CO2 a company can produce will decrease, as the price of carbon credits increases. Lawmakers hope that pinch will spur innovation in carbon-efficient technology, but there is some concern that it may instead cause businesses to leave the state. Posted. http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/will-californias-cap-and-trade-law-inspire-others/ Gov. Brown's budget suggests how to spend cap-and-trade cash. Revenue from California's cap-and-trade auctions should be spent to help shrink carbon pollution in areas like transportation and electricity generation, the state's governor said yesterday. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in his proposed budget for 2013-2014 set out categories for spending an estimated $600 million from the Golden State's sale of carbon allowances. The funds are a tiny part of the state's proposed $97.7 billion budget, Brown said, but come from a crucial program. Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2013/01/11/2 BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY Groups want White House, not Congress, to guide climate policy. As the White House mulls over whom to nominate as the next administrator of U.S. EPA, business and environmental groups are sending their lists of climate change priorities to the Obama administration. The Clean Air Task Force released yesterday a list of recommendations it says would help the administration achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which Obama promised in the beginning of his first term. Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2013/01/11/3 BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY DIESEL EMISSIONS Study Examines Heavy-Duty Trucks, Alternative Fuels to 2050. On Feb. 4, leaders from the National Petroleum Councils study on Future Transportation Fuels will provide an overview of the study's findings and present publicly, for the first time, an in-depth review of the findings on the future of the heavy-duty industry. This two-year study, entitled Advancing Technology for Americas Transportation Future, developed a comprehensive viewpoint on the future of alternative fuels, including natural gas, plug-in electric power, hydrogen, biodiesel, and gasoline and ethanol blends. Posted. http://truckinginfo.com/news/news-detail.asp?news_id=79014 FUELS Ontario phases out entire coal fleet. By the end of the year, Ontario will become the first jurisdiction in North America to shut down almost its entire coal fleet. Yesterday, the province announced that its last two large coal units will close before 2014, making more than 99 percent of the province's electricity generated from non-coal sources. It is a major shift for Ontario, which fired 25 percent of its grid from coal a decade ago. "Today, all Ontarians can breathe a little easier," said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in a statement. Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2013/01/11/5 BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY VEHICLES Californian EV Market Shows Frst Signs of Maturity. This is a website about electric cars, and ever day there is more news about EVs on the market today or coming soon. That's amazing, considering that barely six years ago, there wasn't a single new electric car available in the United States. The first customers of the Tesla Roadster got their car in 2007, but it was a $100,000 car very few could afford. The Nissan LEAF, the first EV with mass-market appeal, followed three years later. It was the only one of its kind, but in 2013, there will be EVs in nearly every segment of the market. Posted. http://www.plugincars.com/californian-ev-market-shows-first-signs-maturity-126008.html HIGH-SPEED RAIL High-Speed Rail on track to start construction in July. A representative of California High-Speed Rail was in San Francisco today to talk about the rail system's near- and long-term plans in the Bay Area. Regional director of CHSR in Northern California Ben Tripousis joined San Francisco Director of Transportation Policy Gillian Gillett for a high-speed rail forum at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. Posted. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=8949867 GREEN ENERGY California solar energy systems top 1 gigawatt. California's rebate program for businesses and homeowners who install solar panels has now funded enough systems to generate 1 gigawatt of electricity - a level few countries and no other states have ever reached. California officials reported Thursday that state residents have installed 1,066 megawatts of solar systems using rebates from the $2.4 billion California Solar Initiative, launched in 2007 as a way to jump-start the industry. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/California-solar-energy-systems-top-1-gigawatt-4184825.php#ixzz2Hh3PhO1O Technology helps wind industry overcome 'start-stop' hurdles. According to Bill Noto, a software engineer for GE Renewable Energy, the wind energy highway is rife with speed traps. When there's sufficient demand and room for electricity to flow, utilities and grid overseers want wind farms to run full throttle. But during periods of congestion, or when market conditions call for less power on the grid, wind energy operators have to apply the brakes to keep their power from overwhelming the system. Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2013/01/11/1 BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY MISCELLANEOUS Hinkley's pollution plume being questioned by water agency again. The water regulatory agency charged with the clean up of contaminated groundwater here has ordered San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to better define its plume of chromium 6. "It is important that we have a clear and up-to-date understanding of the chromium plume boundaries," Patty Kouyoumdjian, executive officer of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, wrote in a letter to Kirk Howard, PG&E's vice president of gas transmissions and distribution. Posted. http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_22351446?source=rss#ixzz2HhFMNNGi OPINIONS Hot enough for you? All right, now can we talk about climate change? After a year when the lower 48 states suffered the warmest temperatures, and the second-craziest weather, since record-keeping began? Apparently not. The climate-change denialists — especially those who manipulate the data in transparently bogus ways to claim that warming has halted or even reversed course — have been silent, as one might expect. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-climate-change-evidence-before-our-eyes/2013/01/10/c3ff3448-5b6c-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_story.html http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130110/WIRE/130119951 BLOGS More On a Quest for Common Ground on Climate Change. In 2011, I wrote about efforts by two scientists with different political orientations to identify common ground in weighing risks posed by global warming driven by greenhouse gases. The scientists were Peter C. Frumhoff, an ecologist who directs science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Kerry Emanuel, a veteran climate and hurricane researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Emanuel has a new edition of his short everyman’s guide to global warming, by the way.) Posted. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/more-on-a-quest-for-common-ground-on-climate-change/ Carbon Taxes Provoke Debate on Economic Impact. Since the beginning of the year, California, the most populous of the United States, has a price on carbon emissions. The cap-and-trade system known as AB 23 ultimately puts a dollar price on industry carbon emissions (according to our colleague Felicity Barringer, the precise price of $10.09 per metric ton of emissions in the first free-market bidding in November). “By putting a price on carbon, we can break our unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels,” said Mary D. Nichols, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, according to Felicity’s report. Posted. http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/carbon-taxes-provoke-debate-on-economic-impact/ Federal green car fleet buys more Hyundai hybrids as overall number goes down. The Obama administration made a big deal about how it had a long-term plan to green up the federal vehicle fleet back in early 2011. Even with that big target, the overall number of hybrids is going down. And, after spending time buying fuel-efficient US cars, the Obama administration has been turning more to hybrids from foreign automakers – just like the general public –…Posted. http://green.autoblog.com/2013/01/10/federal-green-car-fleet-buys-more-hyundai-hybrids-as-overall-num/