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This week in buildings, land and industry decarbonization news, Ayla Burnett wrote about an effort from the California Energy Commission to help decarbonize the state’s dairy industry for NetZero Insider. Rather than focusing on cows’ “methane emissions,” the agency is considering the use of heat pumps to help cut them, which represent 1.4% of the Golden State’s overall emissions.
Industry won an appeal of EPA regulations covering industrial boilers used to produce electricity and other forms of energy, with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals throwing out a rule that would have called all such facilities built since 2010 “new,” which James Downing reported for NetZero Insider. The agency argued that made sense because it will need to exempt boilers built in the previous decade from the more stringent rules for “new” facilities and instead apply ones for existing facilities. But the court ruled that the rule violated provisions of the Clean Air Act.
Berkeley, Calif., is trying to address the future of natural gas with a new tactic, enacting a tax on the fuel itself, and Canary Media has the details. The city’s proposed ban on natural gas was rejected by federal courts, so now it is asking voters to approve a new tax on the owners of buildings that have at least 15,000 square feet. UC Berkeley professor Severin Borenstein looked into the implications of the tax, which starts at $2.96/therm (more than what consumers pay for gas on its own), in a blog post.
While farmers and solar developers often have debates over land use, The New York Times reported on a new solar plant design that could benefit both. Agriculture depends on pollinators, specifically insects that have been large declines in their population recently. Solar panels can provide new habitats that benefit more diverse native plants and insects, hopefully helping to grow their population and aid nearby farming in the process.
Renewable Energy Magazine reported on an effort from QCells and Navajo Power to help electrify homes in the country’s largest tribal reservation. The program will bring solar panels to homes of the Navajo and Hopi in the Navajo Nation. The program should help Navajo Power reach its goal of electrifying 1,000 homes by the end of 2025, using the panels to replace back-up diesel generators that are often used now.
The state of Maine is full of empty mills as manufacturing has moved away; its House delegation asked the Department of Agriculture to allow efficiency funding to be used in projects rehabbing them, the Daily Bulldog reported. So far, the agency has not awarded money from the Rural Energy for America Program to such projects, but the two Democrat representatives asked it to rework the rules to do so.
Read all those stories and more in this week’s Intelligence Report:
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