GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

{***TYLER***}One day after holding smog hearings, E-P-A now prepares to issue new rules for ethanol emissions.Also, yesterday's trip to New Hampshire now has the President trying to shake a potential controversy over his Cap-&-Trade comments.And "protesters" greet Ken Salazar on his trip to Massachusetts. His latest comments about the Cape Wind controversy.Good morning, I'm Tyler Suiters - thank you for joining us for the energy report this 3rd day of February, 2010. New rules for measuring emissions for biofuel production are due out as soon as today from the EPA.The White House has signed off on a proposed rulemaking known as the second renewable fuels standard... Or RFS2... One that hads been delayed since late last year.The standard could include a requirement that corn-based ethanol produce less carbon dioxide over its life cycle than gasoline.The ethanol industry opposes the life-cycle emissions requirement... Which would include emissions from land cleared abroad resulting from growth of biofuel crops in the U.S. The so-called "indirect land use" effect. The plan could also reduce the U.S. mandate for cellulosic ethanol of 100 million gallons this year.Investments in biofuels are down because of the recession and tight credit markets.And "biofuels" will be one of the main topics at the White House today. President Obama will meet with a bipartisan group of governors this afternoon to discuss energy policy... Specifically the biofuels industry and the coal sector.Eleven governors are invited to attend the meeting with the President and Vice President...The majority of them from major coal producers and users: West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. An Obama Administration official says the President will raise the topic of carbon capture and storage technologies. Also, he's is expected to lay out a government strategy to boost biofuel development and address their environmental challenges.The meeting comes as the White House is set to release a report from the Biofuels Interagency Working Group. That team was established last year to help spur biofuel investment and make the industry more environmentally friendly.The Des Moines Register says the biofuel report will set targets for commercializing new types of fuel crops, like switchgrass... and recommend that the government "work regionally" to develop fuels and feedstocks that best fit various regions of the country. As the Senate wrangles with a new energy bill, President Obama acknowledged cap and trade is a controversial part of the debate ... and could get left behind.But speaking at a town hall meeting in Nashua New Hampshire Tuesday, the President defended cap and trade as proven a way to price carbon and create incentives for innovation without creating a large government bureaucracy. The controversial cap-and-trade system has become a divisive issue in the Senate.The president's admitting it was "conceivable" the Senate would "separate" cap and trade out led to a spate of headlines saying Obama was retreating from his support of cap and trade, and declaring the provision dead. The White House rejected that interpretation. {***SOT FULL***} TRT- :22OC- "senate ends up" (TYLER){***TYLER***}Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the future of wind energy in the U.S. does not hang on his decision about the Massachusetts Cape Wind project. The secretary spent much of Tuesday touring the site of the proposed offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound... Where developers want to build 130 wind turbines.He says he also watched what he called a "crimson sunrise" on a beach where local tribes hold their sacred rituals and met with tribal leaders who say the project would interfere with those ceremonies.Salazar says developing wind energy is important... But he also must respect the rights of the first Americans.Salazar also encountered protesters from both sides of the issue along the way.But no matter what he decides on Cape Wind... There are plenty of wind potential in other areas of the country. {***SOT FULL***} TRT- :08OC- "down the coast"(TYLER){***TYLER***} Salazar has say he'll decide on the future of cape Wind by March first.(TYLER){***TYLER***}A commercial wind farm proposed along a scenic ridgeline on the Virginia-West Virginia border may be dead.After a year of controversy, Tazewell County, Virginia, last night passed a "ridgeline ordinance."It bars construction of anything taller than 40 feet without a special exemption.Ordinance opponents said the government shouldn't restrict private property uses, but proponents said local residents feared the loss of tourism and property value from the intrusion of the huge turbines.The 60 wind turbines would have been strung along miles of East River Mountain ridgeline and reached 400 feet high.The turbines were proposed by Dominion Energy and BP Wind Energy. Dominion says it's considering its options.The head of the UN's climate change panel is refusing to apologize for a 2007 report paragraph that claimed global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," did admit the mistake had damaged the body's credibility.But Pachauri told the British newspaper "the guardian" to "look at the larger picture, don't get blinded by this one mistake."He said, "The larger picture is solid, it's convincing and it's extremely important. How can we lose sight of what climate change is going to do to this planet?" Climate change skeptics have renewed their attacks on the IPCC report, which collated the work of hundreds of scientists worldwide, since stolen e-mails appeared to show one team trying to skew the evidence for global warming. Other scientists recently flagged the paragraph on Himalayan glaciers. But Pachauri is fighting a claim that other research on potential devastation from climate change was manipulated.Cleaning up the wastewater from hydraulic fracturing is proving harder than anticipated.Natural gas drillers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia are using the technique to get natural gas out of the huge Marcellus Shale.The technique has been used over the last decade in the south and west.It involves fracturing rock deep underground with sludge mixtures, and some of the water comes back up with the gas.Drillers were recovering the water and trucking it to local sewage treatment plants ... But it turns out those plants can't clean up some of briny wastewater contaminants, and they're tainting drinking water downstream.Drillers are working on developing technology to recycle water on site.Here's a look at goings on around the Beltway..12 Noon, Joseph Romm moderates a discussion at the Center for American Progress on the science of climate change. 1:00 PM, business leaders join U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell in calling on Congress to stand up to the big banks and get serious about controlling the commodities markets for consumer goods like gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and others. And at 2:00 PM, Carol Browner delivers the keynote address at RETECH 2010, the renewable technology conference at the Washington Convention Center. And that's the energy report - thank you for joining us in the energy news center. If you have any suggestions or comments regarding our programming here on clean skies news, we'd like to hear from you, you can email us at contact@cleanskies.com. And just a reminder - you can follow us on twitter and Facebook.I'm Tyler Suiters, you're watching Clean Skies News.