Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel

The following was gleaned from a January 10 New York Times article with the above title.

Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, aimed at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, its reliance on oil imported from hostile places and the export of dollars to pay for it, includes provisions to increase the efficiency of vehicles as well as incorporate renewable energy sources into gasoline and diesel.

It requires the use of three alternative fuels: car and truck fuel made from cellulose, diesel fuel made from biomass and fuel made from biological materials but with a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. Only the cellulosic fuel is commercially unavailable. As for meeting the quotas in the other categories, the refiners will not close their books until February and are not sure what will happen.

The goal set by the law for vehicle fuel from cellulose was 250 million gallons for 2011 and 500 million gallons for 2012.  Even advocates of renewable fuel acknowledge that the refiners are at least partly correct in complaining about the penalties.

The standards for cellulosic fuel are part of an overall goal of having 36 billion gallons of biofuels incorporated annually by 2022. But substantial technical progress would be needed to meet that — and lately it has been hard to come by.

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Sweeping Changes in Store for Unions and Employers

Remember the proposed "card check" legislation a few years ago?  Many of the proposed changes of that legislation are being implemented through the rulemaking process.  See the linked article for details.

http://djcoregon.com/news/2012/01/05/sweeping-changes-in-store-for-unions-and-employers/

Obama Defies Lawmakers with Recess Appointments to Labor Board

The following was gleaned from an article published by The Hill.

Obama defies lawmakers with recess appointments to labor board

January 5, 2012

The Hill

President Obama will recess-appoint his nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), bypassing a likely filibuster from Senate Republicans to keep the controversial agency operating in 2012.

The president will use recess appointments to install Sharon Block, Richard Griffin and Terence Flynn as NLRB members. Block and Griffin are Democrats, while Flynn is a Republican.

The NLRB announcement came a few hours after the president made a public show of another recess appointment, for Richard Cordray, the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans reacted with fury to that appointment, which the White House promptly ignored by making three more. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blasted the president’s decision and said he is stripping the Senate of its oversight powers, since the NLRB nominees had not been vetted in a hearing.

The NLRB appointments are a huge victory for Obama’s union allies, which urged the president to use any means necessary to keep the NLRB functioning. Without additional members, the NLRB would have lacked the three-member quorum needed to issue rules and regulations.

Unions had been frustrated by the president’s moves on trade and regulations in 2011, and the NLRB appointments could help wipe the slate clean ahead of the 2012 campaign.

But the move also puts Obama at odds with business, which has clashed repeatedly with the NLRB in recent months. Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, denounced the recess appointments as political favoritism and said they will “further poison the well” at the labor board. 

The president is wading into uncharted waters with the appointments, made while the Senate is holding pro forma sessions. Dave Hirschmann, a top official with the Chamber, said a court battle over the constitutionality of Obama’s action is a near certainty.

The GOP’s blockade of NLRB nominees would have prevented it from issuing rules and regulations, since it needs at least three members to form a quorum. The recess appointment of Craig Becker expired Tuesday, leaving the NLRB with only two members.

With Block, Flynn and Griffin now members of the NLRB, the labor board is up to its full roster of five members.

Republicans tried to prevent recess appointments by keeping the Senate in pro forma session over the holiday break, but the White House said that maneuver is meaningless.

Lawyers for several business groups immediately began to explore their legal options to challenge the recess appointments.

How to Contact the IRS

Link to e-mail received from IRS Jan. 4, 2012

How to Contact the IRS

Call Us With Your Tax Questions Live assistance is available Monday through Friday. There is also a 24 hour recorded assistance line for your convenience. Contact Your Local IRS Office IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers for when you believe your issue is best handled face-to-face. Hours of service and other local information is provided on a per state basis. IRS Mailing Addresses ("Where to File") For those who don't file their federal tax returns electronically, the "Where to File" pages provide mailing addresses for filing all paper tax returns. You may also use your appropriate "Where to File" address for other written correspondence with the IRS. Contact Us for Status of Your Refund Want to check on the status of your refund? You can check online with the Where's My Refund application, or call 1-800-829-4477. (Please wait at least four weeks before calling.) Contact Your Taxpayer Advocate If you have an ongoing issue with the IRS that has not been resolved through normal processes, or you have suffered, or are about to suffer a significant hardship/economic burden as a result of the administration of the tax laws, contact the Taxpayer Advocate Service. We have offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. How to Make an Offshore Voluntary Disclosure  Taxpayers wanting to report undisclosed income or assets should come in through the IRS Voluntary Disclosure Program. Call the Health Coverage Tax Credit (HCTC) Customer Contact Center The Health Coverage Tax Credit (HCTC) pays 80% of a qualified health plan premium for eligible individuals, either monthly as their health plan premium becomes due or yearly as a credit on their federal tax return. If you have questions about HCTC, give us a call. Contact IRS Internationally International Services: IRS contact information for taxpayers who live outside the United States. Suspicious e-Mails, Phishing, and Identity Theft The IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails asking for personal information. An electronic mailbox has been established for you to report suspicious e-mails claiming to have been sent by the IRS. How Do You Report Suspected Tax Fraud Activity? If you have information about an individual or company you suspect is not complying with the tax law, report this activity. Contact the IRS.gov Web Site Help Desk If you need help finding something on the site, understanding our different file formats, printing files you've downloaded, installing or using the tax products CD-ROM, or any similar technical problem, here is the place to seek assistance. Send Us A Comment About the Web Site This is NOT the place for tax law questions or questions regarding your specific tax return, but you can give us some constructive feedback regarding the web site if you like. Give us your email address if you want a response, but don't include any social security numbers or other personal tax account information.

$1.7 Million Penalty to Resolve Clean Air Act Violations

Excerpts from EPA News Release:

News Releases from Headquarters

 

Essroc Cement Company to Pay $1.7 Million Penalty to Resolve Clean Air Act Violations/$33 million investment in pollution controls to reduce smog and asthma causing emissions by more than 7,000 tons per year

Release Date: 12/29/2011
Contact Information: CONTACTS: Stacy Kika Kika.stacy@epa.gov 202-564-0906 202-564-4355 Cathy Milbourn Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov 202-564-7849

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Essroc Cement Company has agreed to pay a $1.7 million penalty and invest approximately $33 million in pollution control technology to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Air Act (CAA) at six of its Portland Cement manufacturing plants. The settlement will protect Americans’ health by reducing more than 7,000 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) pollution each year that can lead to childhood asthma, acid rain, and smog. Essroc has also agreed to spend $745,000 to mitigate the effects of past excess emissions from its facilities.

Under the settlement, Essroc will install state of the art pollution control technology to control SO₂ and NO_x at five of its plants and demonstrate a selective catalytic reduction system (SCR) system at two long wet kilns in its Logansport, Ind. plant. If successful, this will be the first SCRs used on long wet kilns anywhere in the world. Essroc will also permanently retire its sixth plant, located in Bessemer, Penn. This plant is currently out of operation and its permanent retirement will ensure that the facility does not restart without proper permitting under the CAA.

The settlement also requires Essroc to spend $745,000 on a mitigation project to replace old engines in several off-road vehicles at its plant sites. The replacement engines are estimated to achieve approximately a 50-80 percent reduction in nitrogen oxides in each engine.

Reducing air pollution from cement plants is one of EPA’s National Enforcement Initiatives for 2011-2013. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, two key pollutants emitted from cement plants, have numerous adverse effects on human health and are significant contributors to acid rain, smog, and haze. The pollutants are converted in the air into fine particles of particulate matter that can cause severe respiratory and cardiovascular impacts, and premature death. Reducing these harmful air pollutants will benefit the communities located near the Essroc plants, particularly communities disproportionately impacted by environmental risks and vulnerable populations, including children.

The states of Indiana and West Virginia, and the Commonwealths of Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, are also signatories to this consent decree.

The settlement was lodged today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final court approval.

Building Storehouses for the Sun's Energy, for Use After Dark

The following was gleaned from a January 3 New York Times article with the above title.

Building Storehouses for the Sun’s Energy, for Use After Dark

The solar power industry must overcome a major stumbling block: finding a way to store it for use when the sun isn’t shining.

Solar thermal power makes electricity by using the sun’s heat to boil water. The water can be used to heat salt that stores the energy until later, when the sun is no longer shining.

The U.S. Energy Department recently gave a $737 million loan guarantee to a solar thermal company for a plant that will generate 110 megawatts at peak and store enough heat to run for eight to 10 hours when the sun is not shining.

One advantage of adding storage capacity has to do with the equipment that makes electricity being the most expensive part of a solar thermal system.  If it is connected to storage technology, it can run almost twice as many hours as a plant without storage. That means the unit cost of electricity drops.

Another has to do with the arcane economics of electricity. A utility must assure a supply of electricity in two forms: energy and capacity. The difference has never meant much to most consumers, who directly pay only for energy, as measured in kilowatt-hours.

But capacity, the dependable ability to produce power, is becoming more important as renewable energy forms a larger and larger part of the grid.

Wind and sun provide a lot of energy but not much capacity. Today, backup capacity for wind and solar power comes in the form of expensive gas-fired generators, which sit idle most of the year but operate when the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining.

Storage could cut costs by 4 cents a kilowatt-hour, Mr. Denholm calculates — a considerable benefit for a commodity that retails for an average of 11 cents. A big part of the savings is not having to build the gas-fired generators for backup.

Happy Birthday, Euro!

Yesterday (January 1), I was watching Fareed Zakaria's program on CNN.  He began by talking about his predictions for 2011 and how some of them worked out and some of them did not.

One thing he was sort of right and sort of wrong about was the financial crisis in Europe.  At the beginning of 2011, Mr. Zakaria expected Germany to bail out its less responsible neighbors because Germany had the money.  Well, Germany did dole out some money, but it did not do so freely and it was not happy about it.  Furthermore, Mr. Zakaria said that in 2012, he expects Germany to continue to help out its southern neighbors, but that Germany would try to get the best deal that it could before doing so.  So look for more austerity in Europe.

Towards the end of the program, Mr. Zakaria mentioned that the Euro had turned 10 years old.

Mr. Zakaria played a video that had been played all over Europe when the Euro was launched.  The video spoke of Europeans moving forward into the future with hope and confidence.  After the video was over, Mr. Zakaria asked, "Hope? Confidence?"  Those emotions are not exactly what most Europeans of feeling right now.

Mr. Zakaria ended his discussion of the Euro by considering the Euro note's physical appearance.  There are no politicians, statesmen, or human figures of any kind.  This was a deliberate decision made so that no one would be offended.  When you look at the Euro note, what you do see are bridges and architectural forms.  What is interesting is that these bridges and architectural forms do not really exist anywhere in the real world.

We were left to draw our own conclusions.