Advanced BioFuels USA

by Mark Drajem & Ari Natter and James Rowley (Bloomberg)  … Similar to Hillary Clinton’s dilemma on pipelines, a Trump administration could be caught between competing interests on approval for renewable projects or transmission lines on public lands. Trump has called for faster approval for oil and gas drillers on public land, and, as Jennifer Dlouhy has reported, renewable-energy producers are now voicing some similar complaints of delay and ambiguity.

“Despite well-intentioned efforts to achieve balance in conservation and clean energy goals, development is being severely hindered by unworkable rules that do not sufficiently contain legal risk for investors or provide sufficient clarity,” the group wrote.

But with Trump’s complaints about bird deaths, in particular, environmental reviews of wind and solar on public land could actually get tougher. Unlike the Obama administration, the government’s inertia won’t be aimed at approval of renewable projects.

A Modest Proposal

At a separate meeting with Trump representatives, Scott Sklar, the former head of the Solar Energy Industries Association, says he used the opportunity to press the case for clean energy:

“When you build the wall that the Mexicans are going to pay for, can you put U.S.-made solar on it?” Sklar, who heads the strategic technology firm The Stella Group, asked.

The response? Crickets.

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Trump and the RFS: Still Complicated

It escaped our notice before that Myron Ebell, who is advising the Trump campaign about the EPA transition, has been a long-time critic of the Renewable Fuel Standard. Trump’s views on the RFS were crystal clear during the primary campaign in Iowa; since then they’ve become muddled.

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Surrounded by jerseys from congressional baseball games gone by, lobbyists for some of the nation’s largest refiners met in the office of Rep. John Shimkus, summoned there to talk about something they loathe: the Renewable Fuel Standard.

The Illinois Republican’s district is filled with corn fields and has an ethanol plant; for farmers and biofuel producers preserving the RFS in its current form is their top priority.

But now the genial West Point graduate was laying the groundwork to become chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and he needed to assuage skeptical refiners, too. Shimkus — who says he can see the Phillips 66’s Wood River Refinery from his home — pledged the lobbyists that he is committed to the reforming the RFS, and vowed to be an honest broker on the issue, according to a lobbyist who attended the late June meeting. MORE

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Meanwhile, for the activists who fought to close the San Onofre nuclear plant in California, the victory is bittersweet, Catherine Traywick and Mark Chediak report:

The reactors will disappear, but 1,600 metric tons of radioactive waste remain. While some is stacked in steel-lined casks, and the rest is submerged in cooling pools, all of it is trapped in a political and regulatory limbo that keeps it from going anywhere anytime soon. And San Onofre isn’t alone: More than 76,000 metric tons of waste is stranded at dozens of commercial sites, just as the U.S. approaches a critical mass of nuclear-plant retirements.

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