E2-Wire

The U.S. EPA on Thursday spelled out plans to study the water quality and health effects of “hydraulic fracturing.”

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wants to help homeowners pool their resources to buy solar energy systems that serve the multiple households.

He floated a bill Wednesday that would make jointly-owned projects – which are built on separate plots of neighborhood land – eligible for tax credits that are currently available for rooftop projects on individual households.

Under his plan, homeowners that help finance these “community solar” projects may claim the 30 percent tax credit on their share of the investment.

Various types of community solar projects have been popping up in different states (this week the New York Times looked at their emergence), but Udall’s office said the federal tax code needs updating to help move the phenomenon along.

It’s Big Oil out, Big Paper in for the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.

The coalition that unites major companies and environmental groups pushing for broad climate legislation announced Thursday that wood and paper products giant Weyerhaeuser has joined the group.

The arrival of the Washington State-based company represents a major addition to USCAP, which was in the news last month when oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips announced they were abandoning the group.

A major ethanol industry trade group plans to release a study Thursday that warns of major job losses and reduced federal revenue if a key tax credit expires later this year.

The incentive helps domestic ethanol producers by giving oil refiners and gasoline blenders a credit of 45 cents for each gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline. The credit is scheduled to expire at the end of 2010 and the industry is pushing Congress to extend the incentive.

The study commissioned by the Renewable Fuels Association concludes that allowing the credit to expire would cause the loss of over 112,000 jobs in ethanol production and related industries, hitting rural areas the hardest, according to a summary.

Other effects, the study finds, would include a 38 percent drop in U.S. ethanol production, loss of investment in next-wave biofuels, loss of billions of dollars in state and federal tax revenues, and reduction of household incomes by over $4 billion.

On Wednesday we wrote about a major auto industry trade group opposing legislation that would block EPA climate change rules. Late in the day, the lead senator behind the block-EPA plan said, essentially, that Democratic leaders forced the automakers to oppose it.

Not so, says the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which has 11 members including Detroit’s big three, Toyota, BMW and others. From the Detroit News account Wednesday evening:

“A spokesman for the alliance, Charles Territo, denied that automakers were pressured into sending the letter. He said the industry was carefully reviewing the issue before it decided to send a letter,” the piece states.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Wednesday said that auto industry opposition to her plan to block EPA climate change regulations stems from pressure by Democratic leaders.

And Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), who supports Murkowski’s plan, said the automakers’ position is no surprise given the financial aid they’ve received from the Obama administration.

“Two weeks ago, it was reported that automakers were pressured to weigh in against the bipartisan, bicameral disapproval resolutions that have been introduced to halt EPA climate regulations. Today, we see a letter that stems from that pressure,” Murkowski said in a prepared statement.

The top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday that the broad climate change and energy bill under construction in the Senate is moving in a direction that’s “largely in sync” with industry goals.

Bruce Josten, the chamber’s top lobbyist, spoke to reporters Wednesday after a host of industry trade group officials met in the Capitol with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) about the bill the senators are crafting.

Josten’s comments were hedged and careful, but they were far removed from the Chamber’s strong criticism of the climate bill the House approved last year.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is officially opposed to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) effort to block EPA from regulating greenhouse gases through a congressional resolution of disapproval.

The Alliance, which includes 11 major carmakers, worries the resolution to overturn EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare would derail an agreement reached with the Obama administration on higher fuel efficiency standards. The so-called endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of EPA's efforts to regulate carbon emissions.

Automakers like the agreement they reached with the administration because it allows them to operate under one federal standard and not the “patchwork quilt” of state fuel efficiency regulations they feared.

“At this time last year, the auto industry faced the alarming possibility of having to comply with multiple sets of inconsistent fuel economy standards,”  Alliance President and CEO Dave McCurdy wrote Murkowski in a letter sent today. 

A number of groups are asking EPA for the chance to challenge any new information the agency weighs as it decides whether to raise ethanol blend limits to 15 percent.

It’s a diverse bunch. Forty-one associations  -- from the American Petroleum Institute to the less well known Association for Dressings and Sauces --  “respectfully but strongly” urged EPA to give them additional time to comment any new “data, tests, or studies” that EPA may consider in its rulemaking.

In a separate letter, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers also asked for more time to comment. Alliance spokesman Charles Territo said the concern was that they public record would not include reaction to recent tests designed to measure the effect of higher ethanol blends on engines.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest trade group, said strong industry bidding in Wednesday’s latest Gulf of Mexico lease sale shows that the Obama administration should make more areas available for offshore oil-and-gas drilling.

The Interior Department attracted over $949 million in high bids in the sale, which covered tracts in a 2.4 million acre region of federal waters off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

“The U.S. government could replicate this success by providing leasing opportunities in unexplored areas of the Outer Continental Shelf – like offshore Virginia, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska,” said API President Jack Gerard in a statement Wednesday, calling it a way to bring in new revenues and create jobs.

The industry’s quick effort to call the sale evidence that more areas should be opened up underscores its ongoing lobbying push for more access. The Interior Department is expected to announce long-awaited plans on offshore access as soon as this month.

Also, the Obama administration has signaled that it is open to wider drilling as part of a broad climate change and energy bill.