To:

From:
Sent:
Subject:

Allen, Kara[Kara.Allen@mail.house.gov]
Allen, Kara
Tue 4/15/2014 1:53:56 PM
SEEC Daily Clips 4.15.14

Sustainable Energy & Environment

Coalition

Top news stories:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Gina McCarthy is traveling to Taiwan and Vietnam this
week for events related to environmental education and international cooperation on environmental
issues.

China said on Tuesday it had lodged a protest with the United States over a visit by Washington's
environmental protection chief to self-ruled Taiwan this week.

Natural gas drilling at some sites in southwestern Pennsylvania released 100 to 1,000 times the amount
of methane as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated for such operations, according
to a new study.

The League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund announced
Monday that they are joining forces on a multimillion-dollar electoral effort. The goal of the initiative,
which they're calling LeadingGreen, is to drive $5 million in direct campaign contributions to proenvironment candidates in 2014.

A survey released Tuesday -- the first comprehensive one of its kind - says that only 10 killers of 908
environmental activists slain around the world over the past decade have been convicted. The report by
the London-based Global Witness, a group that seeks to shed light on the links between environmental
exploitation and human rights abuses, says murders of those protecting land rights and the environment
have soared dramatically. It noted that its toll of victims in 35 countries is probably far higher since field
investigations in a number of African and Asian nations are difficult or impossible.

CREW FOIA 2014-006851-0000784

Signs have been detected that a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific known as El Nino is imminent,
presaging changes to global weather patterns in the months ahead, the World Meteorological
Organization said.

Energy news:
Wind farms are more popular in Britain than hydraulic fracturing, a new study shows. According to the
You Gov poll, 62 percent of respondents said they would rather live next to a wind farm than a fracking
site. Nineteen percent said they would prefer an oil or gas well near their home, according to the poll.

There is an old joke in the energy business that advanced biofuels are the fuel of the future, and always
will be. A Spanish company, Abengoa Bioenergy, has bet $500 million on robbing that joke of its punch
line. In the middle of a cornfield here it is building a 38-acre Erector set of electrical cable and pipe that
will soon begin producing cellulosic ethanol, which it calls a low-polluting alternative to petroleum
products.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday said when the Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA) is late in issuing its annual Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) it increases costs
for refiners.

Some prototypes look like parachutes. Others, like one developed by the Google-owned startup Makani
Power, look more like gliders. Another, called a buoyant airborne turbine, or "the BAT," resembles a
blimp, but it's hollow, with a spinning turbine suspended in its center.While renewable energy
developers dream of harnessing the stronger, more consistent breezes that blow thousands of feet
above our heads, it's hard to say when airborne wind energy technology will become commercially
viable.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) released a new minute-long ad that touts her work defending Louisiana's oil
industry using her own words. The ad shows news clips playing in Louisiana homes of Landrieu talking
about her record on oil and gas and hammering the Obama administration, and calls her chairmanship
of the Energy Committee "the most powerful position in the Senate for Louisiana."

Energy giant ConocoPhillips Co. has received approval from the Department of Energy to resume
exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its Kenai, Alaska, facility, and plans to start exporting this
spring.

It turns out this would also be much easier for utilities to manage. If grids were in chunks of 500-700
connections, they would be big enough to stabilize local fluctuations in power generation, but small
enough to avoid large-scale failures, according to research by the American Institute of Physics.

CREW FOIA 2014-006851-0000785

Governments are funding research to find cost effective and efficient ways to recycle rare earth metals
from used products. For instance, the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Innovation Hub is looking for
ways to secure the supply of five rare earth metals identified by the government as critical, reported
Ensia.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing Japan's coal industry to expand sales at home and abroad,
undermining hopes among environmentalists that he'd use the Fukushima nuclear accident to switch
the nation to renewables.

The story of German power giant RWE AG (RWE) exemplifies the crisis facing the nation's utility industry -and those of many countries across Europe -- as nuclear power plants get shuttered in the wake of the
Fukushima disaster, renewables steal away revenue, and consumers and companies complain about
rising power costs that are three times higher than in the U.S.

Climate news:

March 2014 was the fourth-warmest March on record globally, according to recently released NASA
data, making it the 349th month - more than 29 years - in which global temperatures were above the
historic average.

The United States needs to enact a major climate change law, such as a tax on carbon pollution, by the
end of this decade to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, according to the
authors of a report released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change.

An evangelical Christian, married to a pastor, living in conservative West Texas, and widely regarded as a
top-notch climate scientist, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is a rare breed on paper - in person, she's even rarer.
Deftly moving between topics like science, religion, and gender with equal parts insight and levity,
Hayhoe is an unassuming force of nature.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) readily admits he's "not smart enough" to determine the roots of climate change.
He is, however, able to rule out one possible cause: humans.

Corn is the most common grain in the U.S., with its production historically concentrated in a Midwestern
region stretching from the Ohio River valley to Nebraska and trailing off in northern Minnesota. It had
been ungrowable in the fertile farmland of Canada's breadbasket. That is changing as a warming
climate, along with the development of faster-maturing seed varieties, turns the table on food
cultivation. The Corn Belt is being pushed north of what was imaginable a generation ago.

CREW FOIA 2014-006851-0000786

Last night's episode of Fox's Cosmos series didn't seem political or controversial, at least on the surface.
Rather, it introduced us to the world on the molecular and atomic scale, at one point venturing inside of
a dewdrop (packed with extremely cool tiny organisms like tardigrades) and, later, inside of a plant cell.
It was kind of reminiscent of what you learned in your ninth grade bio class - albeit much less sleep
inducing.

Canada's energy industry has officially surpassed transportation as the largest producer of climatechange causing greenhouse gases, in no small part because of large increases in tar sands extraction,
according to a government report quietly released Friday.

Environment & Health news:

A federal appeals court on Monday struck down a top component of the Dodd-Frank Act requiring
companies to disclose whether their products contain minerals from the war-torn Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC).

Throughout the last two centuries, cities across the globe - as you might view them from space - have
expanded in a relatively uniform way: first incrementally, then at a breakneck speed.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) weighed in Monday against a Nevada rancher who is
battling the federal government. "Well, it's not over," Reid told KRNV, a Reno, Nev.-based television
station. "We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's
not over."

The Central Valley was once one of North America's most productive wildlife habitats, a 450-mile-long
expanse marbled with meandering streams and lush wetlands that provided an ideal stop for migratory
shorebirds on their annual journeys from South America and Mexico to the Arctic and back.

To the untrained eye, Manatee Springs is an idyllic refuge in Central Florida: The cool water is so clear in
parts that the sand glistens like polished aluminum. A vast series of underwater caves beckons
thousands of divers. Deer wander by as do manatees, turtles, owls. Eagles soar overhead.

Palm oil production in Southeast Asia, the largest growing region, is at increasing risk from the probable
onset of an El Nino later this year after estates were already hurt by dryness in the first quarter. Prices
advanced.

CREW FOIA 2014-006851-0000787

The group that conducts Japan's whaling says it expects to resume scientific whaling in the Antarctic
after this year's hunt was cancelled following an order by an international court.

CREW FOIA 2014-006851-0000788