Environmental Law

In The News (September 29)

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

• Federal wildlife officials have launched an extensive environmental analysis of wind energy in the Great Plains region, an area that has caught the eye of lots of wind developers; the project will take about two years and center on the Dakotas, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
• Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has "captivated" West Coast venture capitalists with his support of "cleantech" alternative energy sources, according to Bloomberg.
• Industrialized nations pledged more than $6.1 billion last week to international investment funds aimed at helping developing countries adopt cleaner technologies and mitigate growth in greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Bank, as reported by Reuters.
• The economy might be in crisis but there are at least some areas -- west Texas, for one -- where a revival appears to be underway, with wind energy fueling the development, Reuters again.
• Federal officials are awarding $15 million in technical assistance to companies including retailers, financial institutions and commercial real estate firms under an initiative to jump-start the spread of commercial energy saving technologies and building designs, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Energy.
• A wind project developer, Horizon Wind Energy, will offset the effects of its new wind farm in north central Kansas by investing in a 20,000 acres of offsite habitat restoration to benefit grassland birds, especially the greater prairie-chicken, from an item on Environment News Service.
• Solar v. the environment, a continuing saga: Environmentalists are decrying what one of them calls the "industrialization of the Mojave Desert" via plans to construct large solar farms there, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
• At a time when critical environmental issues are on the table, including greenhouse gas emissions, a Green Party leader says Canada's environmental groups are being muzzled; from the Toronto Star. 
• A California senator has called on the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a draft rule for an economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions registry, something that was supposed to have done by Sept. 26, according to a statement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat.  

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on September 29, 2008 (boomark / email).