Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today said he will leave President Obama's Cabinet by the end of March to return to his family in Colorado, leaving a deep imprint on the management of the nation's lands and waters.

In his four years as secretary, Salazar, 57, overhauled Interior's management of offshore drilling, led a sweeping expansion of renewable energy and strengthened the government's relationship with American Indians.

His departure leaves another hole in Obama's Cabinet and could signal major changes at an agency that oversees energy development, conservation and wildlife protections on a fifth of the nation's land and the outer continental shelf.

The former Democratic senator from Colorado said he looks forward to returning to his family after eight years in Washington, D.C.

"Colorado is and will always be my home," Salazar said. "I am forever grateful to President Obama for his friendship in the U.S. Senate and the opportunity he gave me to serve as a member of his Cabinet during this historic presidency."

Shortly after his confirmation in 2009, Salazar pledged to restore balance to the development of oil and gas on public lands, which he warned had become a "candy store" for industry under the previous administration.

One of his first moves was to withdraw scores of oil and gas leases in Utah issued in the waning months of the George W. Bush administration that he felt were too close to national parks and monuments. While praised by conservationists, the move drew a sharp rebuke from industry and Capitol Hill Republicans and delayed the confirmation of his deputy secretary, David Hayes.

In early 2010, Salazar introduced a sweeping set of leasing reforms designed to reduce protests and litigation that had ensnarled the Bureau of Land Management's oil and gas program.

That same year, Salazar oversaw an unprecedented overhaul of the former Minerals Management Service after the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 men and spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the nation's worst environmental disaster.

"We have undertaken the most aggressive oil and gas safety and reform agenda in U.S. history, raising the bar on offshore drilling safety, practices and technology, and ensuring that energy development is done in the right way and in the right places," Salazar said. "Today, drilling activity in the Gulf is surpassing levels seen before the spill, and our nation is on a promising path to energy independence."

Salazar also led a major expansion of renewable energy on public lands and waters, a cornerstone of the Obama administration's pledge to reduce emissions of global warming gases.

Since 2009, the agency has authorized nearly three dozen solar, wind and geothermal projects on public lands that will produce 10,400 megawatts, while establishing more than a dozen solar zones for expedited development in six Southwest states. Similar efforts have taken place in the Atlantic Ocean, where a new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has initiated first-ever offshore wind lease sales up and down the East Coast.

Salazar also ushered in a new model for conservation that focused on partnerships with farmers, ranchers and forest owners, securing easements on private lands in northern Montana, on the prairie grasslands of Kansas and at the headwaters of the Everglades.

Since 2009, Interior has established 10 new national wildlife refuges and seven national parks.

"We are partnering with landowners, farmers and ranchers to preserve their way of life and the irreplaceable land and wildlife that together we cherish," Salazar said.

Reactions

Obama this morning praised Salazar for balancing renewable and conventional energy development, ensuring decisions were driven by science, and promoting the highest safety standards.

"Ken has helped usher in a new era of conservation for our nation's land, water and wildlife," Obama said in a statement. "Ken has played an integral role in my administration's successful efforts to expand responsible development of our nation's domestic energy resources."

Obama also credited Salazar for making "historic strides" in strengthening the government's relationship with Indian country, having overseen the resolution of the massive Cobell v. Salazar lawsuit and a handful of Indian water rights settlements.

Salazar's Democratic colleagues called him a responsible steward of the nation's natural resources.

"Growing up in his family's ranch in Colorado, Ken always understood and respected the importance of protecting our country's natural wealth," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "He approached his job as a man of the land because that is exactly what he is, with deep roots to the Mountain West."

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) each issued separate statements in support of Salazar's record as secretary.

But some criticized Salazar for promoting renewable energy and conservation at the expense of conventional energy development.

Oil and gas production has surged over the past several years, but the majority of that growth has taken place on private and state lands, not those managed by Interior.

One former Bush administration official said industry would remember Salazar for the moratorium he placed on deepwater drilling for nearly half a year after the Deepwater Horizon spill and for the editing of an agency report that erroneously suggested the drilling halt was supported by independent scientists.

"His legacy was very much overshadowed by the spill, the moratoria and the politicizing of that issue," the former official said. "His response to it was less than stellar."

Jim Noe, senior vice president of the oil and gas firm Hercules Offshore, said he wished Salazar well but thought the administration's first-term energy regime lacked balance.

"While the Interior Department seemed to pursue long-shot energy alternatives, it created official and de facto moratoriums that hurt the industry, thousands of workers, and the small businesses and communities that depend upon them," Noe said. "The legacy of the Interior five-year [leasing] plan has charted a course for the fewest lease sales in a generation."

Salazar was criticized by industry for excluding the Atlantic and Pacific oceans from future oil and gas development.

But few Cabinet secretaries have to answer to such a wide variety of stakeholders as the Interior secretary, a job that Salazar has said is the best in the federal government.

Paul Bledsoe, a former Interior aide under the Clinton administration who is now an independent consultant, credited Salazar for creating a more robust safety regime in the Gulf, where leases and permitting have returned to pre-spill levels and production is expected to continue to rise.

"In particular, they created a more rigorous offshore safety regime in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, under almost impossible political circumstances," said Bledsoe, who praised similar efforts to strike balances on public lands, where Salazar has proposed new safeguards for hydraulic fracturing. "Overall, they have been very careful to strike a thoughtful balance of public land uses including energy development while protecting wildlife and resources."

Dave Alberswerth, a former Interior official under the Clinton administration, said Salazar's onshore leasing reforms recognized that oil and gas leasing was not supposed to be the primary use of public lands.

"That, for me, was singularly important," he said.

Possible successors

It's unclear when the Obama administration will name a successor, and officials have been mum on who may be in the running.

While former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) has garnered attention as a possible replacement for retiring U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, multiple sources said Gregoire would likely also be in the running for the Interior post, given her state's abundance of natural resources.

Another top prospect is Interior Deputy Secretary Hayes, who also served under the Clinton administration and has led an interagency effort to permit Alaskan energy projects. As a native of New York state, Hayes if picked would buck a long history of plucking Interior secretaries from the West.

Other conventional selections include former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) and former Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.).

But many have speculated that Obama will seek to bolster his Cabinet's diversity with his Interior and EPA picks, following the selection of white males to lead the State and Defense departments and the CIA. With Salazar's departure, the president's Cabinet currently has no Hispanics.

Some have suggested the president might select former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) or Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was in the running for secretary in 2008 but was deemed too liberal on certain issues.

A Grijalva nomination would draw strong support among conservationists but would likely face a tough confirmation in the Senate.

"Will the president try to make the Interior Department an agency for all the people, or merely a lobbying stop for select industrial interests like oil and gas?" asked Bill Snape, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which has lobbied for a Grijalva nomination. "That question will be answered by who he picks to lead this department, with jurisdiction over public lands, wildlife, water resources and natural values."

One dark-horse candidate is John Berry, a former Interior assistant secretary for policy, management and budget who now serves at the Office of Personnel Management.

If picked, Berry would be the only openly gay member of the president's Cabinet.

DENVER -- Fellow Colorado Democrats are welcoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar home following his announcement today that he will step down from his post and return to the state in March. Already there is speculation about whether Salazar, a former senator and Colorado attorney general, will want to return to state politics.

"For all of his contributions and leadership in our nation's capital, Ken Salazar remains a Coloradan at heart, and after years of service to the country, we all look forward to the next chapter for him," Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio said in a statement today.

But whether that next chapter includes another political post remains to be seen.

During the 2012 election cycle, Salazar, who campaigned for President Obama's re-election, frequently faced questions about his own political future but typically sidestepped the inquiries by citing how much he enjoys being Interior secretary.

"Often, when I am asked if I would be offered a job like attorney general or something else within the Cabinet, would I consider it, I'd say, 'No!' That's because I already have the best job in the United States of America," Salazar said at a September speech at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "I'm proud in that role to serve as a custodian of America's natural resources and America's natural heritage."

Salazar similarly deflected inquires about whether he would seek a state office in the future in a question-and-answer session with reporters after that event.

"We still have a lot of work to do. That's what I'm focused on now," Salazar said at that time (Greenwire, Sept. 17, 2012).

Among his options, it appears unlikely Salazar could seek a return to the Senate in the near future, with Sen. Mark Udall (D) seeking re-election in 2014 and Sen. Michael Bennet (D) not up for re-election until 2016.

"Ken and I have worked together for more than a decade to protect Colorado and the West's land, air and water. He understands that we don't inherit the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children," Udall, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources National Parks Subcommittee, said in a statement today. "Ken knows that principle and has worked to leave our nation better than how he found it. We still have a lot to do in Colorado and across our country, but I look forward to continuing this important work."

Before Salazar's decision to seek a Senate seat in 2004 -- he succeeded retiring Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R) by defeating Coors Brewing Co. Chairman Pete Coors (R) -- it was widely assumed he was preparing to seek the governor's office in 2006.

But Salazar instead jumped into the 2004 Senate race at the urging of national Democratic leaders, easing out Udall -- then a congressman who was also interested in the job -- when he became convinced he could win.

Whether Salazar -- once a popular state official, serving as the state attorney general in the early 2000s and as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources in the early 1990s -- could renew his gubernatorial ambitions will depend in large part on whether current Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) seeks re-election in 2014 or winds up in Obama's second-term Cabinet.

Hickenlooper has stated his intention to seek a second term, but he is often listed among potential candidates for the 2016 presidential cycle, with some political observers suggesting Hickenlooper could opt out of re-election to focus on the White House race.

While Colorado-based Republican consultant Dick Wadhams, former chairman of the state GOP, acknowledged Salazar could be a formidable candidate if he opts to seek office -- at the same time arguing that his bid could be affected by Obama's popularity over the next two years -- he also suggested Salazar, who is 57, may not want to return to elected office.

"It's not a foregone conclusion," Wadhams said. "Secretary Salazar might be able to enter private life."

This story was updated at 2:02 p.m. EST.

When he entered the Oval Office four years ago, President Obama gave environmentalists something they had long sought: a presidential commitment to much stronger fuel economy standards.

The same advocates now hope Obama's second term will bring a similar fervor for reining in carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's current fleet of power plants, which contribute 40 percent of America's carbon output.

"What we're asking the administration to do is to treat existing source standards in the same way that they treated the car standards in the first term," David Doniger, policy director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a recent interview. "It's the big item."

The second tranche of car standards was only finalized in August, so Doniger said he hoped to see Obama hit the ground running on the power plant rule on "Day Two" of his second administration.

"This is a project that will take the full second term, and it needs to be started right at the beginning of the second term, in the same way that the car standards were started at the beginning of the first term," he said.

Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the Clean Air Task Force, echoed this hope.

"We are in consensus in the environmental community, maybe for the first time ever, on what the No. 1 priority for this administration is," he said in a recent interview. "And that is to address carbon pollution from existing coal plants."

The existing power plant standard was the only specific policy item mentioned in a recent letter by a coalition of environmental groups to Obama, signed by NRDC, CATF and others.

"You have the authority under existing law to achieve urgently-needed reductions in the carbon pollution that is disrupting our climate and damaging our health," they wrote, proposing that the rule cut emissions by at least 25 percent by 2020 across the existing fleet. Late last year, NRDC offered a suggestion on how to do that (E&ENews PM, Dec. 4, 2012).

U.S. EPA is widely expected to comply with the terms of a 2010 settlement agreement that requires the agency to write the existing power plant rule, together with a rule for future power plants that was proposed last year and is due to be finalized early this year.

But the controversial Clean Air Act rule may bring with it inherent challenges that the tailpipe emissions rule did not, and that might discourage the White House from playing the same role in its development.

The White House took a very central role in the tailpipe emissions rulemaking, setting the pace with executive office action that the agencies then followed.

Obama's involvement began his first week in office, when he issued a pair of memorandums on Jan. 26, 2009, directing the Department of Transportation to finalize new fuel economy rules and EPA to reconsider California's request for a waiver that would allow it to promulgate its own tailpipe emissions rules for greenhouse gases. Former President George W. Bush's EPA had previously rejected California's bid.

"It was a very clear direction," Doniger said. "It didn't have the content spelled out. It was not a proposal. But it was a direction to go do it."

EPA approved California's waiver in June and issued its endangerment finding in December, paving the way for the agency to write its own tailpipe emissions rules for greenhouse gases.

The White House orchestrated an agreement among automakers, states and other stakeholders the following May, which harmonized state and federal vehicle standards and provided for the coordination of DOT's corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards with the new EPA standards.

A second set of standards was completed in August that will extend that program through model year 2025.

John DeCicco, a self-described "CAFE veteran" who worked on automotive environmental policy in Washington for the Environmental Defense Fund, among others, called Obama's fuel economy deal a "huge cow-herding exercise."

But he said it stemmed from the industry's desire to find regulatory certainty amid a changing landscape where increased regulation had become inevitable.

The previous administration had begun to consider raising the standards, if only modestly, to address energy security concerns. Then in 2007 Bush mentioned the need to "reform and modernize" fuel economy standards during his State of the Union address.

DeCicco, who is now on the faculty at the University of Michigan, said this signaled to the industry that its allies in Washington would no longer be able to keep fuel economy standards where they had been for nearly three decades.

"To the auto industry, it was like their nightmare had come true," DeCicco said. "Their longtime friends, the Republican administration, had turned on them because the political pressure to do something on energy security was so high at that time."

Later that year, Congress approved and Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act, which set a fleetwide gasoline mileage standard at 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

But the industry that once voiced qualms about meeting that standard signed on to Obama's agreement calling for 35.5 mpg by 2016 -- less than three years later -- in part to avoid a "pincer movement," as DeCicco put it, by California, which was pushing for its own tailpipe emissions standards. Automakers would have had to bow to California's separate, higher standards in order to compete for its large market share. "That created the leverage for when Obama came in," DeCicco said.

There were other factors that greased the skids for the first-term deal on fuel economy but that might be absent from the discussion on power plants.

For one thing, two of Detroit's Big Three had just been the recipients of a bailout by the U.S. taxpayer. Former EPA Administrator William Reilly said in a recent interview that that may have played a role.

"If the government owned the utilities as it did the car companies, it would probably make it a little easier," he said.

And the fuel economy deal followed a 2008 spike in gasoline prices that some experts blamed for helping bring about the Great Recession.

Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said the public accepted that higher fuel economy standards would save them at the pump. "They have a lot of environmental benefits, but they also generate a lot of savings for consumers," he said. "And that's different from what you're talking about with greenhouse gases" from power plants.

While the greenhouse gas rules are economically justified, especially when considering the cost of adapting to climate change, "it's not like putting money in consumers' pockets," Livermore said.

"That energy security dimension on the politics is a very powerful driver for how policy has developed for the auto sector, compared with the utility sector," DeCicco concurred. "There's just not an equivalent."

Advocates for power plant rules can talk about the health care costs that are avoided when the air gets cleaner, but it's a more complicated message, he added.

Bryan Hannegan, vice president of environment for the Electric Power Research Institute, a think tank, said there were also several important differences between the rules themselves, which made the car rule less controversial and more manageable than the power plant rule was likely to be -- and therefore a better candidate for direct presidential involvement.

For one thing, Hannegan said, CAFE sets standards only for new cars -- not the existing fleet, as the power plant rule will seek to do. For another, he said, the Energy Policy Conservation Act, which provides for CAFE standards, allows for the consideration of a variety of factors including the economic consequences of the rule, while in most cases the Clean Air Act does not.

EPA's greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions rules fall under the Clean Air Act, and they are coordinated with DOT's CAFE standards.

CAFE standards average over a manufacturer's entire fleet, giving carmakers additional compliance flexibility and cost savings, Hannegan said. But the U.S. Court of Appeals decision last year to remand a Clean Air Act rule for smog- and soot-forming emissions that included an averaging component casts fresh doubt on EPA's authority to use one.

And then, political realities have changed since Obama was first elected. The tea party has gained steam, the House is in Republican hands and Obama has only just begun talking about climate change again.

Livermore said all these factors mean EPA is likely to take the lead on the rule, rather than becoming "part of an overarching political strategy germinating from the White House that drags EPA along."

Utilities may profit from a seat at the table

Most observers agree that a grand bargain of the same kind that includes buy-in from the regulated industry is less likely for power plants. But utilities are likely to participate in writing the rules nonetheless.

Joe Mendelson, who helped bring about the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, said there are actually some similarities between the position of the automotive industry in 2010 and the one utilities find themselves in now.

"It's obviously not exact parallels, but you're looking at an industry sector that's dealing with some pretty significant changes, and that has got regulatory pressure hanging out there with both EPA and regional programs," he said.

Utilities are more heterogeneous than automakers, Mendelson said, with different interests and concerns, but they should still start shifting their efforts away from fighting EPA greenhouse gas regulation in court and by other means, and toward earning a seat at the negotiating table.

"The legal situation is such that the law's not going to change, so it becomes incumbent on them to become engaged in shaping what the regulations look like going forward," said Mendelson, who will join the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff as chief climate counsel next week.

"It may not be a peace accord type of agreement, but the process that's going to go forward will have to yield that kind of outcome, I would expect," he said.

CATF's Schneider said even power companies with coal-heavy portfolios have something to gain from talking to EPA.

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility that even companies with coal generation could see themselves being advantaged by rules like this," he said.

For example, many of the same utilities are also facing EPA rules for mercury, smog, soot and other emissions, and knowing now what their carbon-related requirements will be might head off unnecessary investment in a power plant that they might otherwise choose to close, he said.

"They might avoid stranding costs in one emissions control or the other if they knew there was a carbon rule coming," Schneider said.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) worked for years on legislation that would have coordinated Clean Air Act rules for a variety of pollutants, but he stopped introducing his "Three-P's" bill in the previous Congress, citing a lack of utility interest. Schneider said that was exactly the kind of effort utilities might want to revive now.

"There were enough shortsighted utilities that kind of took the head-in-the-sand, drag-the-feet perspective that really weighs down that effort," he said. "And I think that to the extent that companies and their ratepayers are going to pay the cost of that now -- if there are costs in this -- then that will show that Carper was wise and that they were not."

Hannegan saw a different opportunity for collaboration. The Clean Air Act will prove a cumbersome way to limit greenhouse gases, he predicted, and proponents of regulation will find they have to ask Congress to approve amendments to it.

"At that point, you do need that coalition," he said. "So that when members of Congress turned to utilities in their district, the utilities are supportive, and they say, 'This is the right thing for the country and the right thing for us.'"

Second of three stories about airline biofuels. Click here for the first part.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- The future of aviation fuels is cooking in a bland office park here in the biotech Silicon Valley, about 10 miles south of San Francisco.

In vertical tanks similar to those used by brewers, genetically engineered algae are gorging on sugar, converting it to a common type of oil. In only a few days, the microscopic organisms will become bloated, with upward of 75 percent of their body weight made of oil.

The algae cook is Solazyme Inc., which has learned to tailor the oil for aviation with properties not unlike petroleum-based fuel. In 2011, United Airlines Inc. flew the first commercial U.S. flight on a 50-50 blend of gasoline and Solazyme's algae-derived jet fuel.

Although the operation here isn't commercial-scale, airlines are excited by the technology's prospects.

"They've figured it out, from our perspective, how to get to commercial," said Jimmy Samartzis, managing director of global sustainability for United Airlines.

Solazyme is among a handful of advanced biofuel producers working on different technologies to scale up production of jet fuel from renewable materials.

Algae are busy churning out oil inside 600-liter fermentation tanks at Solazyme's pilot plant in south San Francisco. All photos courtesy of Amanda Peterka.

Companies are in various stages of commercialization and are working with feedstocks that range from woody biomass to municipal trash and technologies that include fermentation, thermochemical processes and alcohol-to-jet. The fuels, though made from different technologies, have two things in common: Unlike ethanol, they are all drop-in fuels that can be used in existing infrastructure. And they are made from feedstocks other than corn.

The road isn't easy: Capital costs for most advanced biofuel producers are high, and aviation fuels face competition from diesel and other markets that are more profitable in the short term for producers.

Still, companies like Solazyme say they see long-term opportunity in the demand from the aviation industry, which is looking toward biofuel to deal with escalating fuel costs, a growing customer base, and both internal goals and regulatory pressure to cap carbon dioxide emissions.

"You can see the inherent approval in this industry that people [in the aviation industry] have," said Graham Ellis, vice president of business development at Solazyme. "They want to make this happen, they have made it happen, and now it's simply a matter of completing the scale-up."

To Solazyme co-founder and CEO Jonathan Wolfson, the first to successfully scale up technology will be companies that deal in triglycerides, the oil produced by the algae in Solazyme's vats.

The oil compounds, consisting of a glyceride attached to three fatty acids in the shape of an E, are some of the most abundant substances on Earth.

"The largest-volume liquid on the planet is water. The second-largest is petroleum. The third is a cheat; it's liquid natural gas. But the fourth is triglyceride," Wolfson said in a recent interview. "All plant oil and all animal fat are triglycerides. It is the only one of those four liquids that is a direct ingredient in every major market."

Tricks of the trade

At Solazyme's pilot plant in South San Francisco, after the algae are filled with oil, they are removed from the fermentation tanks and fed into a dryer. A dry mixture of cells appears on the other end, and from that Solazyme extracts the oil.

Solazyme's trick is that the company has figured out how to tailor the triglycerides to different types of products by genetically engineering the algae strains. The company can make oils, for example, that are especially tailored to soap to improve lathering performance.

For jet fuel, tailoring allows Solazyme to address a main market barrier to producing aviation biofuels: the yield loss in making jet fuel compared with making diesel.

In general, companies have so far moved faster to produce diesel than they have to produce jet fuel, finding the former more attractive. Diesel has a much larger market, and natural triglycerides are typically about 20 carbons in length, longer than the 14- to 18-carbon chain needed to make jet fuel.

Through tailoring, "we can drop the chain length right down into the jet range, and all of a sudden, for the first time, the world has a perfect triglyceride oil tailor-made for making jet at high yield," Ellis said. "Theoretically, you can make jet at the same cost as diesel today by utilizing our type of technology because we can make the right oil up front and boost the yields accordingly."

In labs that span the second floor of the building that houses the fermentation tanks, Solazyme scientists have screened hundreds of thousands of different strains of algae to find optimal varieties. Pipettes and vials line countertops, and scientists hover over small versions of the fermentation tanks on the floor below.

"We're tweaking it," Ellis said. "What can we do to get algae to produce more oil, to do it faster, to do a different chain length, a different composition? That's what's going on here. This is really creating new bugs, or advancing the bugs we've got, and making sure we've got a good selection ready" for commercialization.

Other companies are also working on tailoring oil, but Solazyme's algae technology is unusual in the field.

Wolfson and co-founder Harrison Dillon founded Solazyme in 2003 after discussing the possibility of using algae and molecular biology to produce fuels in college. The two began with a vision of growing algae in ponds and photobioreactors but realized about a year in that such processes would not work economically on a large scale to produce fuels and chemicals.

So they began to feed the algae sugars rather than have the algae do photosynthesis themselves to produce them. The shift in production method was a turning point, Wolfson says, because it enabled the company to use fermentation equipment that had been developed in other industries, such as beer, pharmaceuticals and animal feed. The tanks in the company's pilot plant in South San Francisco are, in fact, taken from those industries.

They are only a fraction of the size of the 500,000-liter tanks being constructed in a plant in Brazil, part of a joint venture between Solazyme and Bunge Ltd., a global agribusiness and food company. The tanks in Brazil, about 5 meters across and five stories high, will be the backbone of Solazyme's first commercial-scale facility, set to begin operating in late 2013 (Greenwire, Dec. 4, 2012).

Solazyme on Dec. 13 also announced that 500,000-liter tanks were successfully used for fermentation at a plant in Clinton, Iowa, that is owned by Archer Daniels Midland Co. Solazyme is expected to begin producing 20,000 metric tons of oil at the plant starting in 2014 and scale up to 100,000 metric tons, the same capacity as the Bunge facility.

Solazyme has sampled hundreds of thousands of strains of algae looking for the best ones to tailor oils for use in jet fuel, cosmetics, food and other products.

But like many other companies working in advanced biofuels, Solazyme will not necessarily produce the oils needed for fuels at the plants, or right away, despite its involvement so far in testing in both commercial and military planes and a partnership with United Airlines.

"We haven't said publicly where we expect to enter the aviation market, and I think that we're not at a position to comment on that right now, either, other than to say that just as recently as this summer ... the Navy fighter jets and the helicopters were flying on our fuel," Wolfson said. "We continue to be demonstrating that our fuel is a complete drop-in replacement, not just with commercial aviation but with military aviation."

At the Brazil plant, Solazyme is focusing first on its commercial lines of cosmetics and food products that can be made from its tailored oils.

"Our focus has to be on, now that we've invested a decade in this technology and many hundreds of millions of dollars, our focus is on broad commercialization," Wolfson said. "Initially, your very first volumes here are a lot less likely to be fuels than they are some of the higher-value oil applications."

'Right market in the long term'

It's a similar story for other companies in advanced biofuels broadly. In the short term, the economics are more skewed toward chemicals than fuels, and in the fuels field they're more skewed toward ground-based biofuels rather than aviation biofuels.

Still, there are "parallel technology platforms which are now emerging" to commercialize aviation biofuels, Jim Rekoske, vice president and general manager of the renewable energy and chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, said at a recent conference in Washington, D.C.

Rekoske said that the opportunity for biofuels companies is in the long term. UOP, the refining technology subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., is another major player in the renewable aviation fuels arena and is working on thermal processing technology to rapidly convert solid biomass like corn stover and forest materials into liquid fuel.

The company, which is largely a technology licenser to other companies in the field, is currently building a demonstration plant in Hawaii with a $25 million award from the Department of Energy. The plant, located at a Tesoro Corp. refinery, is producing fuel but will not be fully operational until 2014. The completed plant will be able to produce more transportation fuel per dry metric ton of biomass than traditional ethanol.

UOP also recently added an alcohol-to-jet process to its repertoire and submitted about 100 gallons of the fuel to the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force research labs for testing. Rekoske says the company likely will be ready to license the technology by the middle of 2013.

Asked whether he believes cost-effective biofuels are feasible, Rekoske answered with what he called an "emphatic yes." In an interview in December, Rekoske said that he anticipates there will be some "short-term dysfunction."

"Long term is what you should be planning business for. There are other options for road transport -- electrify vehicles, use more barges and road transport -- but ultimately, if we want to continue to fly and travel rapidly, we're going to have to use jet," Rekoske said. "As far as the people in aviation told me, it's going to be difficult to electrify planes. So our view is that it's the right market in the long term."

There are several other companies working on aviation fuels, many of which are leading a broad push on ground-transportation biofuels.

Colorado-based Gevo Inc., for example, is also focusing on alcohol-to-jet. The company is built around isobutanol, a building block for petrochemicals that can be made from both traditional corn feedstocks and cellulosic materials (Greenwire, Oct. 10, 2012).

KiOR Inc. is leading a group of companies that is working to certify pyrolysis -- a thermal chemical technology -- for use in jet fuel under the ASTM process. Earlier this year, the Texas-based company announced it had started operating a plant in Mississippi that takes in plant-based feedstocks. The process, the company said, is capable of producing renewable crude oil in a matter of seconds.

Solena Fuels LLC of D.C. is using waste feedstocks to create jet fuel. Solena has a renewable plant in England that in December signed a purchase agreement with British Airways to supply jet fuel for the next 10 years. The company uses a Fischer-Tropsch process that converts the waste to synthesis gas and then into fuel through a combination of heat and catalysts.

Scientists test smaller-scale versions of Solazyme's fermentation tanks in a lab at the company's headquarters in South San Francisco.

Wisconsin-based Virent Inc., known mostly for its work producing plant-based plastic bottles, is working to produce jet fuel from pine tree sugars. Earlier this year, the company announced that it had successfully converted the biomass to jet fuel from a catalytic process in partnership with Virdia. The fuel passed testing at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Aemetis Inc., based in California, has licensed technology from Chevron Lummus Global Biofuels that allows it to produce renewable jet fuel by engineering microbes and enzymes that is a 100 percent replacement for petroleum- and diesel-based fuel. The company has retrofitted and owns a 55-million-gallon plant in California.

'Tied up in Washington'

The push for aviation biofuels is being held back by policy uncertainty, said John Plaza, CEO of Imperium Renewables Inc. in Washington state, which is also working with Chicago-based LanzaTech NZ Ltd. on technology that will convert biomass-based alcohols to hydrocarbon fuels for aviation.

Imperium began the research in 2010 and received a $4 million grant from the Department of Energy in 2011 with LanzaTech, Boeing Co., the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Under the grant, LanzaTech produces the alcohol and hands it off to Imperium to convert to jet fuel. The labs and Boeing participate in testing. Plaza expects the fuel technology pathway to be certified by ASTM by late 2013 or early 2014 but says that Washington, D.C., has held up the industry.

"Overall, I think we're a couple of years behind where we hoped to be in 2010 and 2011, when things seemed to be brighter," Plaza said. "It's tied up in Washington. There's a stagnation in many industries as we wait for the government to figure out its role and how to subsidize the petroleum industry in the future. All of that combined together has created a lot of uncertainty for companies like Imperium and others to provide a solution."

But like other executives who have thrown their weight behind alternative fuels, he expressed optimism.

"While I'm frustrated that the pace of opportunity has been slower than we had hoped, longer term I still feel there's a tremendous potential for this industry," Plaza said.

The lack of commercial supply of aviation biofuels has also put airlines in a bind. The aviation industry has set goals of carbon-neutral growth by 2020 and a reduction in emissions by half by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, but it does not yet have the supply to get there.

United's Samartzis said he does not expect to see "truly commercial scale" of renewable jet fuel until at least 2014.

The problem is of the chicken-and-egg variety, said Carol Sim, director of environmental affairs at Alaska Airlines, which is involved with commercializing aviation biofuel in the Pacific Northwest.

"There's interest from feedstock suppliers, interest from the refining industry," she said, "but if they can't have some guarantee that there's going to be a market after they make the capital investment, they're hesitant to start the process.

"For us, although we are large in our region, we only have 3 percent of the domestic capacity in the passenger airline industry," Sim added. "Even though we may want to do something, from a national standpoint, we're a very small company. We just don't have the buying capacity to really influence much."

Solazyme's Wolfson said he can sympathize with doubters of the industry and the renewable fuel standard -- of which there are several in D.C. -- but points to the "enormous progress" made over the last few years.

"I think if you actually look at what's happened systemically over the last 10 years, just even over the last five, there's enormous progress," Wolfson said. "People said you can't even make a renewable jet fuel four years ago. Nobody had ever put them into a jet engine."

Up next: A look at how airlines are using regional partnerships to overcome obstacles to commercialization.

Outgoing Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire touted myriad accomplishments that would qualify her for several top posts in the Obama administration -- including U.S. EPA chief -- in her final address yesterday.

The Democrat has been widely rumored to be under consideration for a handful of posts, including EPA and the Interior, Energy and Transportation departments if their current leaders leave (Greenwire, Jan. 8).

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he will leave the administration today (see related story).

Gregoire, a former head of Washington's Department of Ecology, touted several key initiatives, including her efforts to restore the Puget Sound, in her final State of the State address.

"It's very clear," she said, "No other state has what we have."

Her work on the Puget Sound is widely regarded as her chief environmental achievement, and she highlighted it as the state's "jewel" and the "economic engine" of western Washington.

"We created a partnership among local, state and federal governments, tribes and stakeholders to get it done," she said.

Further, the two-term governor noted her work on water issues, such as new water markets and banking to create flexibility and protection for "fish-critical basins."

It is unclear whether President Obama will nominate a replacement for outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson anytime soon. Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe will take over the role on an acting basis; he can remain in that post for most of a year before Obama would have to nominate a replacement.

If Obama chooses to tap a successor to Jackson, the administration would undoubtedly face a heated confirmation process in the Senate. Other possibilities besides Gregoire and Perciasepe include current EPA air chief Gina McCarthy; Kathleen McGinty, who led President Clinton's White House Council on Environmental Quality and was Pennsylvania's environment secretary; California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols; and Daniel Esty, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (E&E Daily, Dec. 28, 2012).

Gregoire's speech also touched on topics that relate to other potential administration posts. On energy, for example, she touted the state's hydropower industry, as well as wind power.

When she took office in 2005, the state produced no wind power.

"Today, we are among the top five wind-energy producers," she said. "We are pioneering the smart grid and have a strong presence in the solar power supply chain."

She added: "Clean, renewable energy has been our unique history for 80 years. Today, we are No. 1 in the nation in renewable energy."

Gregoire has also been mentioned as a possible replacement for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. LaHood is suspected to be leaving the administration in the coming months but has yet to make an announcement.

Gregoire noted that her administration "made the best decisions for transportation," including a "historic" 2005 construction package that was ratified by voters.

Washington state also imposed a voter-endorsed gas tax, which funded 421 statewide projects. Nearly 90 percent of those projects are finished, and most are also under budget, Gregoire said.

Environmentalists, congressional staffers and Obama administration officials paid tribute yesterday to the late Earthjustice lawyer Joan Mulhern at a Washington, D.C., memorial service.

Mulhern, who died last month after a long illness, was praised as one of the country's most aggressive defenders of the Clean Water Act and a steadfast foe of mountaintop-removal coal mining (E&ENews PM, Dec. 19, 2012). She was described as willing to battle Republicans and Democrats alike.

"She was a protector of mountains, a protector of our watersheds and the people who inhabit them," U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said at last night's memorial service at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Joan Mulhern was one of the nation's top clean water advocates. Photo courtesy of Earthjustice.org.

"I can tell you she was a fierce adversary," Jackson said to laughter. "And people forgave all of her fierceness because it was genuine because in this town it was hard to find."

Joe Lovett, executive director of Appalachian Mountain Advocates, which sues coal companies to force compliance, said Mulhern was the one advocate who helped him navigate the halls of Congress in lobbying against mountaintop removal when the issue was not as controversial as it is now.

Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen said Mulhern took on the Clinton administration and powerful West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd (D) against what he called the first pro-mountaintop removal spending bill rider. Mulhern lobbied to have it stripped.

"In one corner, the president, the president's priorities, the budget, Senator Byrd, and standing behind them the coal industry," Van Noppen remembered. "In the other corner, Joan and the troops she could mobilize. I don't think it was a fair fight myself."

Van Noppen said, "Earthjustice has lost our first mountain hero, and our hearts are broken."

Years later, early during the Obama administration, Mulhern didn't think the Council on Environmental Quality was paying enough attention to her concerns about mountaintop removal. So she led a campaign that flooded the administration with emails.

"Joan ended up spending a few weeks in Siberia," recalled Sierra Club's environmental quality director, Ed Hopkins. "But I think her conclusion was that it was very helpful to get the attention of the administration."

Before moving to Earthjustice, Mulhern was an advocate for the group Public Citizen, where she fought the tobacco industry. "Of course, Joan won," said Joan Claybrook, the group's former president and current board member.

"She was such a public-interest lobbyist," Claybrook added. "She was tough, unrelenting, determined, everything you want and need in an advocate."

A lifelong Red Sox fan, Mulhern graduated from the University of Vermont and had a law degree from Georgetown University, where she fought for student loan forgiveness. She also worked for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

"I don't think I have met anybody who had the reverence for the Clean Water Act that Joan had," Hopkins said. "I can't think of what we would have done had Joan not been here to fight those clean water riders that show up so predictably."

Van Noppen said, "Wherever a wetland is being saved from development, Joan is there. Wherever a polluted stream that used to be a treasured swimming hole is restored and can be used again by that community, Joan is there. Wherever a mountain is protected from having its top literally blasted off, Joan is there."

Click here to go to Earthjustice's tribute page.

Chuck Hagel's ties to Chevron Corp. haven't caused a stir as the former senator makes his bid to become the next Defense secretary.

The Nebraska Republican has sat on Chevron's board since 2010. In 2011, he received $301,199 as compensation, including $184,000 in stock. If his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, he will have to leave the position.

He hasn't received flak for the position mostly because of the nature of Chevron's federal contracts. Chevron, a major federal contractor, made more than $501 million in sales to the government during fiscal 2012. Most of that came from selling fuel to the Pentagon.

"The decisions on fuel procurement are fairly low on the radar screen of a defense secretary," said Tyson Slocum, head of the watchdog group Public Citizen's energy program. "I don't think that would be as alarming as, say, a board membership at Lockheed Martin or a contractor that goes to the core of strategic decisionmaking at the Pentagon."

Environmentalists have been unwilling to speak against President Obama's controversial choice, planning to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"I'm sure it will raise some eyebrows," said Ralph Cavanagh, head of the Natural Resources Defense Council energy program. "But I'm not threatened by a secretary of Defense who understands the oil industry. What I bet it will give Chuck Hagel is a good sense of the energy security problem of our dependence on oil."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) also sat on Chevron's board (David Barker, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 15). -- JE

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee indicated yesterday that they plan to scrutinize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's new post-Fukushima safety upgrades for U.S. reactors with the same zeal that they have homed in on U.S. EPA's clean air regulations.

"In the 112th Congress, this committee focused significant attention on the combined effect that many substantial EPA regulations have had on our nation's coal plants," Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and almost two dozen House Republicans told NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane in a letter yesterday.

"As indicated in our July 24, 2012, hearing, we are similarly concerned about the potential cumulative impact of numerous post-Fukshima and other regulatory changes on our nation's nuclear plants," they wrote.

Lawmakers including Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, also signed the letter.

The lawmakers said NRC faces competing and conflicting viewpoints and insufficient data while implementing safety upgrades stemming from the 2011 nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant.

NRC is beefing up security at U.S. plants after three Japanese reactors were crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Emergency diesel generators needed to keep the units cool were washed away, allowing hydrogen to build up and trigger explosions and radioactive leaks.

But the Republicans criticized NRC for taking a "piecemeal approach" and urged the agency to be careful not to burden plant operators with too many changes at once. The Nuclear Energy Institute is also calling on NRC not to overburden the industry and distract from the current operation of plants.

The GOP letter focused on the NRC staff's recommendation that almost a third of the U.S. nuclear fleet install filtering systems to prevent explosions during accidents.

The staff recommended in November that plants with Mark I and Mark II containment systems -- identical to the Japanese reactors that were crippled last year -- install systems to avoid the buildup of explosive hydrogen gas. The systems can cost up to $45 million each (Greenwire, Nov. 2, 2012).

At the time, John Monninger, deputy director of NRC's Division of Risk Analysis, said the equipment would allow operators to release steam and pressure from a damaged nuclear power plant while using filters to better protect the public and workers from radiation. Filtered vents are systems of water-filled tanks, sand or other materials that scrub the gas of radioactive material before it leaves the plant.

Anti-nuclear groups are fully backing the staff's recommendation, calling the decision a "no-brainer."

But Republicans said NRC overlooked an internal NRC panel's concerns about the cost estimates that staff used and called on the agency to take more time to analyze the proposal. "A piecemeal approach of deciding the filtered vent issue in isolation, while potentially eroding the adequate protection standard is in our opinion not appropriate," the lawmakers wrote.

The industry is also opposed to requiring filtered vents. Tony Pietrangelo, NEI's senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, has said U.S. operators follow detailed procedures during severe accidents that would direct them when to vent early, and installing new equipment won't prevent a radioactive release.

NRC staff met with industry officials and Pietrangelo today in Rockville, Md., and said the full five-member commission will ultimately decide whether plant operators must install filtered vents. It is also not clear how many plants will have to make changes to offset seismic or flooding risks.

After much ado about the carbon tax last summer in think tanks and policy shops around town, it finally made an appearance yesterday on Capitol Hill when a group of House Republicans reintroduced their nonbinding resolution opposing its enactment in any form -- including as a "fiscal cliff" revenue raiser.

Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) introduced the measure with supporters including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.).

"A carbon tax would increase the cost of everything from driving a car to heating and cooling a home," said McKinley in a statement this morning, adding that "raising taxes on everyone from manufacturers to homeowners is not the way to improve our economy, and Congress should reject this idea."

The resolution was referred to the Ways and Means Committee, which has primary responsibility in the House for the revenue side of efforts to avoid mandatory across-the-board budget cuts that are set to take effect in six weeks.

The fiscal cliff has been discussed as a possible opening for enactment of a carbon tax, and Ways and Means Democrats Pete Stark (Calif.) and Jim McDermott (Wash.) each introduced legislation in the last Congress that might have served as a template for it. Stark lost his bid for re-election last year, but McDermott said he planned to reintroduce his bill this Congress to help inform the discussion on long-term tax reform.

"It stirred up more than a little bit of interest," he said yesterday. "The fact that it's being talked about means people are going to have to start thinking about it."

McDermott said he has not yet found Republican support for the bill, adding that he expected the business community and others to champion it before the GOP does.

"The interest has to come from the outside," he said.

Interest off Capitol Hill has grown steadily for years, and the conversation intensified last year, especially among scholars associated with center-right groups like the American Enterprise Institute and the R Street Institute.

But the transition to Congress has proved difficult, at least for now.

"I don't hear a lot of action from the Hill," said environmental economist Michael Greenstone in a telephone interview yesterday, adding that a carbon tax has a lot of proponents in "think tank land."

"We can find ways to tax more of the things we love, such as income, or alternatively, we can tax more of the things we hate, such as carbon," said Greenstone, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for part of Obama's first term. But he acknowledged that the politics on the issue are tough, especially given the lack of consensus among lawmakers about whether the planet is warming and what is causing it.

R Street Institute's Deputy Director Ray Lehmann said the short-term stopgap bills that Congress has been considering during the past few months to avoid the fiscal cliff would not be the kinds of packages that could include a carbon tax anyway.

"It's the sort of thing that we would expect to get serious consideration if a long-term tax-reform package would come to fruition, but we seem at this point to be in the midst of a series of short-term deals," he said. "It's not even something we would want to advocate as part of a short-term deal because it requires some thought and debate, and that's not what you get in these types of negotiations."

Reporter Nick Juliano contributed.

A Utah Republican is resurrecting an effort to gut the president's ability to designate new national monuments.

A bill introduced yesterday by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), H.R. 250, would amend the Antiquities Act to require Congress to approve any new monument designations. It was one of several public-lands- and energy-related bills Chaffetz introduced as the 113th Congress gets up and running, including a measure aimed at promoting a hydropower project in his state.

The "Antiquities Repeal Act" is identical to legislation introduced in the last Congress by former Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.), who retired at the end of the last session. Chaffetz was a co-sponsor of that bill, which received a subcommittee hearing but no other action in the House.

The House last year adopted a similar amendment -- requiring a state's legislature and governor to sign off on monument designations -- to a bill aimed at safeguarding public lands access for hunters and fishermen (E&E Daily, April 18, 2012). The effort to amend the Antiquities Act ultimately died in the Senate.

Chaffetz recently joined other Utah Republicans in opposing a push from conservationists and an outdoor industry association to create a 1.4-million-acre monument around Canyonlands National Park (E&E Daily, Nov. 16, 2012).

The bill's first stop, if it receives a hearing, will be in front of the Natural Resources Committee's subpanel on public lands and environmental regulation, which is chaired by fellow Utah Republican Rob Bishop, who says reforming the Antiquities Act will be among his top goals this session (E&E Daily, Jan. 16).

Bishop said he is willing to explore other options to limit the president's monument designation authority after efforts to overhaul the Antiquities Act fell short last year. The 1906 law allows presidents to designate national monuments, and critics of the law charge that those designations can interfere with mining and oil and gas drilling.

A Chaffetz spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.

Chaffetz yesterday also reintroduced legislation he had offered in the previous session of Congress aimed at facilitating hydropower development on the Diamond Fork System of the Central Utah Project. H.R. 254 would eliminate a requirement that a hydropower developer reimburse the Bureau of Reclamation $106 million for the cost of developing a project on the system.

Fisheries managers may need to rethink how they set catch limits because new research is questioning a fundamental part of the equation.

Sustainable harvests typically target the growth of a fish stock each year, which is called productivity. How productive a stock is has long thought to be a direct consequence of the abundance of the fish population.

Essentially, the long-held assumption was, the more fish in the sea, the more productive they are up to a certain point, and thus the higher the catch limit.

Research in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenges that assumption.

A team from the University of Washington, Rutgers University and Argentina's Centro Nacional Patagónico analyzed 230 fish stocks from around the world and found that abundance drove productivity in 18 percent of the stocks.

For most of the stocks, shifting to a higher or lower productive state had little or nothing to do with how many fish were there. Rather, other environmental factors were the primary force behind productivity shifts in 69 percent of the stocks.

"That was a very surprising finding," said Olaf Jensen, a study co-author and fisheries biologist at Rutgers. "Most management is based on the fundamental idea that there is a repeatable relationship between productivity and abundance."

While it is unclear what exactly sparked the shifts, the researchers suspect things like changes in predator, prey or competitor populations or changes in habitat, such as temperature.

The team used records in a global fish stock database that was unveiled last year. They calculated what productivity would have been without fishing, which includes physical growth, addition of new offspring and natural survival. Then they tested four models -- abundance, environmental conditions, a combination of the two or random -- to see which one best matched the productivity pattern.

Sustainable harvests are typically targeted around annual productivity to preserve the population at a steady level. Jensen compared it to withdrawing only interest on a savings account, while keeping the principal in the bank.

Mangers used abundance (the principal) to determine how much growth (interest) to anticipate and harvest. But the study shows productivity is much more like a volatile stock market, fluctuating between high and low states.

"We have to be a lot more modest about our ability to manage populations for a specific population size," Jensen said. "There are all kinds of environmental variables beyond our control."

The study was party funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages hundreds of fish stocks.

Richard Methot, the agency's stock assessment science adviser, welcomed the study.

"What this paper points out is the frequency that irregular changes in productivity are a bit more common than we had comfortably assumed previously," he said.

Fisheries managers will have to be more prepared to adjust harvest rates based on environmental conditions, rather than "driving through the middle of all the possible shifts," Methot said.

The science adviser said NOAA officials would try to make catch-limit forecasts more responsive to these possible changes, now that they know they play such a key role in productivity.

"We have forecasts in place today that, in principle, they can take into account that additional information, but very few cases actually do that," Methot said.

Managers have been working on implementing adjustments based on environmental factors, he said. For example, after a 1995 paper found California sardines fluctuated with ocean temperature, managers modulated harvests as temperatures went up and down. However, that relationship has failed to hold up in recent years, indicating other factors are at play, Methot said.

He agreed that it is imperative to have regular stock assessments to detect shifts in aggressively fished stocks. But taking it to the next level to find the early indicators to predict when shifts will occur will be a significant challenge, he added.

Chemicals from plastic floating in the ocean pose a likely threat to marine life, a new study says.

University of California, Davis, researchers found that plastics soak up contaminants in seawater. Marine creatures that ingest plastics are threatened by both the material and the pollutants, the study says.

"It surprised us that even after a year, some plastics would continue to take up contaminants," said doctoral student Chelsea Rochman, who led the study. "As the plastic continues to degrade, it's potentially getting more and more hazardous to organisms as they absorb more and more contaminants."

The study represents the first controlled, long-term evaluation of how much the five most common plastics absorb contaminants, UC Davis said. The findings were published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Plastics examined by the research:

• Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, used in water bottles.

• High-density polyethylene, HDPE, found in detergent bottles.

• Polyvinyl chloride, PVC, turned into clear food packaging.

• Low-density polyethylene, LDPE, found in plastic shopping bags.

• Polypropylene, PP, used for yogurt containers and bottle caps.

Investigators filled mesh bags with pellets of the five plastic types and tied those to docks at five locations in the San Diego Bay. They retrieved the bags several times over a year and measured how much the plastics had soaked up pollutants in the water.

Researchers initially thought that the pellets would stop absorbing toxics after several months. They found, however that HDPE and LDPE continued taking in contaminants throughout the 12-month probe, UC Davis said. The analysis estimated that at one study site, it would have taken 44 months for HDPE and 19 months for LDPE to stop soaking in substances.

The most commonly produced plastics, polyethylene and polypropylene, "absorbed much greater concentrations of contaminants than PET or PVC," Rochman said.

That means that products made from HDPE, LDPE and PP might present more of a chemical risk to marine creatures, the study said.

HDPE, LDPE and PP constituted 62 percent of all plastics produced globally in 2007, the study says. PVC and PET made up 19 percent and 7 percent respectively.

Florida International University has thrown a life preserver to the imperiled Aquarius Reef Base, the world's only operational underwater research station.

The Miami-based school said yesterday that it would step in as the operator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility, located off the coast of Key Largo, Fla. Previously, the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, operated the base, but FIU took over after the North Carolina school said it would no longer serve as the base's host institution in the new year.

James Fourqurean, director of FIU's Marine Education and Research Initiative for the Florida Keys, said the university had been looking for a way to expand research and educational opportunities as well as community outreach into the Florida Keys. So FIU was interested when it heard the base was looking for a new host.

The base will allow professors to broadcast talks from the underwater lab, and researchers will be able to communicate with divers on the outside.

"It's a tool that will allow us to bring working scientists in the environment into classrooms," Fourqurean said.

Tom Potts, director of the Aquarius Reef Base, said FIU is a younger institution with a substantial commitment to marine sciences.

"Aquarius can be the big-splash way for them to expand -- and, at least initially, it can be the cornerstone of the Florida Keys expansion," said Potts, who will continue as the facility's director. The five remaining staff members of the lab also will be kept on.

Potts said NOAA has signed a $600,000 continuing resolution cooperative agreement to keep the base running, giving the base half of its funding from last year, through March. FIU had to apply for the funding because it was not the host institution in 2012, Potts said. The grant is delivered through a partnership that FIU is a member of, called the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies.

Potts said $600,000 is barely enough to keep the porthole open.

"We are by no by means out of the woods financially," he said.

Fourqurean said university officials will be looking for new funding streams -- private donors as well as government funding. They also hope to work with private institutions and government agencies that might pay to use the base for research. In the past, NASA has used the base to train astronauts headed into space. The Navy has also used the base.

President Obama's fiscal 2013 proposal scrapped funding for the base altogether. Last summer, a clutch of South Florida Republicans, led by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose congressional district included Key Largo, pushed for the money to be reinstated before the base closed at the end of the year. The congresswoman has scuba dived to the reef base herself on a few occasions (Greenwire, Aug. 28, 2012).

The base is important, Potts said, because it enables researchers to spend as much as 10 days at a time underwater -- allowing for full immersion in their projects. Potts said 2013 marks the 20th year since Aquarius was first deployed. The base has comprehensive data sets since then that show the changes in the reef.

"Aquarius is like ground zero," he said. "It's a neat microcosm of what's happening to coral reefs worldwide."

Environmental groups are up in arms after the Army Corps of Engineers felled a wildlife preserve at the Sepulveda Basin in California.

The Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Los Angeles River members said the area was filled with greenery and wildlife a few weeks ago. But the government agency bulldozed 43 acres of the area, which the Army Corps said was a drug-dealing and sex-trafficking hub.

"The Army Corps of Engineers has come in here and basically destroyed what was a thriving habitat for animals and for people to come enjoy the environment. And what we have now is basically a war zone," said one activist.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board has asked the agency for an explanation. The Army Corps reportedly said it would respond to the request (KABC News, Jan. 13). -- WW

Kenyan police yesterday seized 100 million shillings, or $1.15 million, worth of ivory, the largest haul ever recorded.

The 2 tons of ivory was in transit from Rwanda and Tanzania to Indonesia when authorities found it.

"We fail to understand where one gathers the courage to park such enormous quantities of ivory, hoping that they can slip through our security systems," said Kiberenge Seroney, the port's police officer in charge of criminal investigations (Akwiri/Macharia, Reuters, Jan. 15). -- MM

Russians in the Sakha Republic are being encouraged to target wolves as game for the next three months.

The announcement was issued in light of concerns that wolves were cutting down the reindeer population too quickly.

Officials hope to bring the wolf population down from 3,500 to 500 animals.

"The population is more concerned than ever about mass wolf attacks on farm animals," Sakha President Yegor Borisov was quoted in a regional paper. "We must determine a clear plan of action."

The top three hunters will receive a prize of 1 million rubles, or $33,000, each. By some estimates, wolves killed 16,111 domesticated reindeer and 313 domesticated horses in the last year, causing 150 million rubles, or $5 million, in damage (Steve Gutterman, Reuters, Jan. 15). -- MM

This story was updated at 3:21 p.m. EST.

U.S. EPA decided not to move forward with a potential well-contamination case after the driller threatened not to cooperate with a national study into hydraulic fracturing, according to a confidential report.

A resident of a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb reported that his family's drinking water had begun to bubble like Champagne, leading EPA to issue an emergency order that said at least two homeowners could be in danger from flammable methane seeping into a well.

More than a year later, the agency rescinded its order against driller Range Resources, setting aside scientific evidence that said hydraulic fracturing could be the cause of the problem. The agency has not offered a public explanation for why it changed its order.

In a statement, EPA said resolving the matter would allow the agency to shift its "focus in this case away from litigation and toward a joint effort on the science and safety of energy extraction."

EPA's decision ignored the dangers of the situation, said Steve Lipsky, who lives in Weatherford, Texas, the Fort Worth suburb, and is a member of one of the families affected by the contaminated well.

"I just can't believe that an agency that knows the truth about something like that, or has evidence like this, wouldn't use it," Lipsky said (Ramit Plushnick-Masti, AP, Jan. 16).

Energy In Depth, a campaign created by the industry trade group Independent Petroleum Association of America, issued a rebuttal, denying claims that EPA changed its position because of Range. Instead, the campaign said, the scientific research EPA had intended to use had been called into question. -- JE

An oil leak discovered in a pipeline system off the coast of Shetland prompted Abu Dhabi National Energy, the pipeline's operator, to close down up to 27 of its oil fields in the area.

Another eight platforms were shut down in addition to the one found leaking, although its operator said no hydrocarbons leaked into the sea.

The pipeline system produces about 10 percent of the United Kingdom's North Sea oil production -- 80,000 to 90,000 barrels a day.

Abu Dhabi National Energy is working to fix the leak.

Starting the system back up "would occur after thorough technical assurance has established that it can be undertaken safely and without any increased risk," a spokesman said (BBC News, Jan. 16). -- MM

The British crown estate is set to invest $32 million into wave and tidal projects in the United Kingdom.

The industries have suffered from a lack of funding in Great Britain despite the area having some of the best locations for these renewable energy projects.

The crown estate, which owns the seabed around the United Kingdom and therefore stands to greatly benefit from the expansion of marine power, will be a major lift to the sector that was stifled by the 2011 decision to cut the government's fund for marine energy by more than half (Fiona Harvey, London Guardian, Jan. 16).

The United States is also exploring the technology.

Newport, Ore., was selected as the site for the Pacific Marine Energy Center, a joint operation between Oregon State University and the University of Washington that is substantially funded by federal dollars.

The facility about 5 miles from shore will test devices for generating potential and environmental impacts, according to Oregon State AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 15). -- KJ

National Park Service spokesman David Barna will retire on Feb. 1, the agency announced today.

Barna, 62, has served as NPS's chief spokesman since 1995, working on a range of projects from Ken Burns' documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

He has worked for the federal government for 38 years, including stints as spokesman for the National Science Foundation and the Bureau of Mines.

"I've worked for many federal agencies, and this is absolutely the best place to work," he said. "I don't know why it doesn't show up in the ratings. It's been an honor."

The Park Service will conduct a nationwide search for Barna's replacement, a process that could take up to five months, Barna said. Until then, spokesman Jeff Olson will act as chief with help from regional staff.

Barna's public announcement comes on the same day Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced his own plans to leave (see related story). That, Barna said, was a coincidence; he first told staff he was leaving in December.

"It's not true that he's leaving because he can't go on without me," Barna joked. "This has been a long time coming."

In government planning, there are such things as yearly office progress targets, and then there's the U.S. EPA inspector general's fiscal 2013 annual plan.

The plan Inspector General Arthur Elkins released yesterday afternoon lays out exactly what he expects to provide the government -- down to the dollar and the criminal conviction -- in return for the government's investment in his office.

For example, Elkins expects the agency will identify 903 environmental or business recommendations or specific risks for corrective action in fiscal 2013. The goal is for 334 specific actions to be taken to improve performance at EPA and reduce risk.

As for criminal convictions, indictments, civil judgments or other administrative actions as a result of the IG's work? Elkins' target is 85.

Those numbers depend on the IG's office receiving the $59.137 million in funding -- including money for Superfund and Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board efforts -- that President Obama requested for the office in his budget proposal. So far this fiscal year, the office has been operating below that level due to a continuing resolution funding the government through March.

But if Elkins can get the funds Obama requested, he expects to generate a 120 percent return on the government's investment through savings and various improvements his office can create.

The Government Performance and Results Act requires all federal agencies to develop annual performance plans that lay out specific performance goals each year.

Elkins' plan also identifies the top management challenges the agency faces and lays out ways his office is helping to fix those problems. They include the rising tide of cyberattacks at the agency and EPA's ongoing workforce management problems. In recent years, the IG's office has found numerous examples of EPA staff members being assigned to certain projects without thought as to whether they have the proper skills to do the job.

Along with listing recurring projects and assignments carried over from last year, Elkins' annual plan details new assignments his office expects to begin in fiscal 2013.

Some of those projects are expected to be high profile. Late last month, Elkins' office announced it was launching a probe of outgoing Administrator Lisa Jackson's use of an alternate email account that allowed her to conduct official agency business under the alias Richard Windsor. The revelation of Jackson's alias email account has raised concern among congressional committees and outside good governance groups.

Other reviews scheduled for 2013 that will be closely followed outside the agency are a look into the agency's internal controls over the controversial renewable fuel credits program, an evaluation of EPA's research on human subjects, and an ongoing review of the agency's ability to safeguard the nation's water supply in the event of an attack or natural disaster.

The inspector general is also planning investigations on human exposure from lead smelters after a USA Today series exposed several cases of contamination near closed facilities that EPA has failed to address. It will also look into methane emissions from leaking pipes -- a longtime concern at the agency -- as well as air emissions from flaring operations that are common at refineries.

Other planned reviews seem likely to be more mundane. Elkins' plan notes that his office intends to look into how agency employees dispose of used and excess computers and to study control mechanisms when it comes to EPA employee travel.

Click here to read the fiscal 2013 annual plan.

Reporter Jeremy P. Jacobs contributed.

In an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, outgoing U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson reflected on her four-year tenure, calling the legislation to send 80 percent of fines from the 2010 BP PLC oil spill to coastal states one of her finest moments.

Between $5 billion and $20 billion of those fines is expected to be spent to improve affected ecosystems.

Jackson said the public will need to pressure legislators to accept evidence that some pollutants are harmful, and she urged more research into oil dispersants.

"I would say it's time for our elected officials to listen to what people want -- and that's clean water, clean air and a clean place to work and live and raise their families," Jackson said.

She said it was a "proud moment as a Louisianan to know that some of the most forward-looking work on restoring wetlands is coming from Louisiana," praising the efforts of Garret Grave, an administrator in Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) administration (Bruce Alpert, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jan. 15). -- MM

After seven months of delays, construction will begin again on a waste-treatment plant located at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.

The plant on Washington state's Hanford nuclear reservation is estimated to cost $12.3 billion. The plant is 85 percent complete, and construction is more than halfway finished.

The Department of Energy halted construction months ago amid concerns about the plant's eventual safe operation and technical issues.

DOE is considering whether to feed waste into one of two parts of the facility depending on radioactivity rather than feed it into a pretreatment facility.

The plant would convert millions of gallons of radioactive waste into glasslike logs for storage. Currently, the site's waste is stored in underground tanks that have leaked into groundwater (Shannon Dininny, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 15). -- MM

The final bids to build the first leg of California's bullet train track will be submitted Friday, but neither the public nor officials will see the estimated costs until after a proposal is selected.

Bullet train officials plan to keep the prices in sealed envelopes while they examine the bids for the first 29 miles of train track in the state's Central Valley. The move is meant to keep officials from being biased toward cheaper bids.

The rail authority has budgeted between $1.2 billion and $1.8 billion for the first part of the project, which will run from Madera to Fresno.

"This is a major milestone in moving high-speed rail forward and getting under way this summer," said California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Jeff Morales. "It is the industry standard in design-build projects to open bid prices following initial evaluations as not to skew the process. We are working hard to secure the best possible value for taxpayers."

But the process could further delay the project by two months. It has already been stalled since November 2012, and a groundbreaking is only months away.

"The process is supposed to be transparent," said state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D), chairman of the Senate transportation committee. "Once the bid is in, it's in the public domain, and the public needs to [be able to see] what the bids look like, especially on a project like this" (Mike Rosenberg, San Jose Mercury News, Jan. 16). -- JE

After Nissan's Leaf electric car failed to meet its sales goal for the past two years, the company decided to expand the use of the factory making its batteries to supply parts for hybrid vehicles as well.

The Tennessee factory was funded with a $1.4 billion loan from the Energy Department and opened late last year to make components for the Leaf. But the car sold fewer than 10,000 units in the past two years, falling short of a goal of servicing 200,000 vehicles.

"It's a damned expensive plant, so we want to use it as much as possible," said Andy Palmer, Nissan's executive vice president.

In the last year, Leaf sales grew by 1.5 percent.

Components and batteries for the Nissan NV200 model and Infiniti LE electric sedan -- slated for production in 2014 -- can be produced at the Tennessee plant (Alan Ohnsman, Bloomberg, Jan. 15). -- MM

After Ford Motor Co. faced criticism for the fuel economy of its newly released hybrid models, the auto giant said U.S. EPA may change its procedures for testing hybrid mileage.

Two of the company's newest models fell 17 percent to 21 percent below the company's promise of 47 miles per gallon, ending up at 37 and 39 mpg.

Hybrids can lose about 7 mpg when driving at 75 mph rather than 65 mph, Raj Nair, Ford's product development chief, said at the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference in Detroit today. A difference of 30 degrees Fahrenheit in outside temperature also can cause a disparity of 5 mpg. Hybrids also can lose another 5 mpg after 6,000 miles driven, he said.

"We continue to work closely with the EPA to determine whether the industry testing procedure needs changes for hybrid vehicle testing," Nair said (Craig Trudell, Bloomberg, Jan. 15). -- MM

Two of the biggest automakers are continuing their push to develop electric cars despite lackluster appetite for the vehicles.

General Motors Co. and Nissan Motor Co. are both pushing to drive sales in the electric-car business -- but with two different approaches.

GM said that later this year, it will produce the Cadillac ELR, a luxury version of the Chevrolet Volt. Nissan decided to approach the market from a different angle by offering a new base model for its all-electric Leaf sedan that is $6,000 cheaper than the car currently on the market.

GM sold 23,000 Volts in the United States last year, which is less than 1 percent of its overall sales. Last year, Nissan sold about 9,800 Leafs in the United States. The company had predicted it would sell more than double that number.

The companies' efforts represent the two biggest bets on battery-powered vehicles, but they are not alone.

Other new entries coming to market include small electric cars from the Italian automaker Fiat SPA and the German luxury-car company BMW Group. Still, analysts are doubtful the market will grow much in the near term (Bill Vlasic, New York Times, Jan. 16). -- KJ

Toxic air emissions dropped by 8 percent from 2010 to 2011, though total emissions of hazardous chemicals rose for the second year in a row, U.S. EPA said today.

The agency pointed its finger at the metal mining sector to account for an overall 8 percent increase in chemical releases into the air, land and water.

The data come from the agency's 2011 Toxics Release Inventory, which requires nearly 21,000 facilities to report toxic chemical releases into the air, water and land every year. The goal of the program is to provide communities public information about nearby emissions.

In 2011, TRI data showed that 4.09 billion pounds of chemicals were disposed of in the environment.

The Toxics Release Inventory plays a "critical role in EPA's efforts to hold polluters accountable and identify and acknowledge those who take steps to prevent pollution," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

She added that since 2009, there has been more than a 100 million-pound decrease in air pollutants as a result of industry, regulatory and public interest group efforts.

Some of the biggest drops came from cuts in hydrochloric acid and mercury emissions, likely the result of coal-fired power plants installing new pollution controls or shifting to cleaner-burning fuels like natural gas, EPA said.

The release of toxics into water similarly dropped 3 percent, but releases to land increased 19 percent.

EPA said the increase is the result of more land disposal at metal mines, which often handle massive volumes of materials. EPA said that even a slight change in the chemical composition of what's being mined can lead to big changes in the amount of toxic chemicals the facility must dispose of.

Other sectors also saw modest increases, including the hazardous waste management industry.

A last-minute decision by the pilot of the oil tanker that hit a bridge in the San Francisco area last week may have been part of the accident's cause, experts said.

Pilot Guy Kleess decided to change course and head between a different set of towers under the Bay Bridge. This move made the ship more vulnerable to the current that cuts under the bridge. According to experts, he would have had less margin for error from the course change as he steered the Overseas Reymar.

"I don't know why he changed direction, and that sort of information will have to come out in the investigation," said Peter McIsaac, president of the San Francisco Bar Pilots association.

The accidental sideswiping resulted in more than $2 million in damage to one of the towers. But because the tanker was empty, no oil spilled into the bay.

The Coast Guard is investigating different possible causes for the accident, including human error and equipment failure (Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 15). -- JE

Hong Kong will offer $1.3 billion in subsidies to replace old diesel vehicles, the region's leader said today.

The proposal is meant to cut particulate emissions by 80 percent and nitrogen oxides by 30 percent, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said in his first policy speech since taking office.

Hong Kong's smog is blamed for 3,000 premature deaths a year. The air quality has gotten worse since 2007, and the government has failed to take aging buses and trucks off the streets.

"We strive to improve air quality on all fronts," Leung said. "We must phase out old diesel commercial vehicles with greater financial incentives while putting in place more stringent regulatory measures" (Khan/Yun, Bloomberg, Jan. 16). -- JE

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) is putting forth a plan to overhaul the state's oil tax structure.

The governor said the proposal, expected to be announced today, is simpler and aimed at making Alaska more competitive while encouraging new production.

The plan does away with the progressive surcharge that companies have said discourages new investment. The proposal also focuses incentives on companies that produce oil from new fields on the North Slope.

The governor's proposal will build on the ideas that the administration saw as an emerging consensus near the end of last session, including promoting production from new fields while also addressing the tax level when oil prices are high (AP/Fuel Fix, Jan. 16). -- KJ

Mississippi's Department of Marine Resources Executive Director Bill Walker yesterday was fired by the agency's governing board.

The agency's spending under Walker's tenure is under state and federal investigation. Walker did not attend the meeting and did not comment on his firing. The commission suspended him Dec. 28.

"In this case, we trusted [Walker] and so we gave [him] free rein with everything," commission Chairman Vernon Asper said. "We saw lots of good things happen, and we never suspected some of the things that were being alleged were taking place. We're grieved about this" (Michael Newsom, Biloxi Sun Herald, Jan. 15).

The department has been subpoenaed by the state auditor's office as part of the grand jury investigation into Walker's activities. As a result, the department has been unable to release documents to local media.

"Accordingly, pursuant to the terms of the subpoena and upon advice received from the State Auditor's Office, the department's only course of action was to comply with the subpoena and deny the release of records to the [Biloxi] Sun Herald," attorney Sandy Chestnut said at yesterday's board meeting (Anita Lee, Biloxi Sun Herald, Jan. 15).

With Walker gone, the duties as acting agency director fall to Danny Guice, the former legislator who was handpicked for the deputy director job in November. He has served as acting director since Walker was placed on suspension.

Had he known then what he knows now, he might have turned down the job, he said.

"Maybe I'm here by providence," said Guice, who served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1984 to 2008. "Somebody's got to straighten this out" (Anita Lee, Biloxi Sun Herald, Jan. 15). -- JE

Will global financial constraints cause businesses to scale back their plans for sustainable investments? During today's OnPoint, Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, discusses the impact of the financial crisis on green investments. He also explains how rising global coal demand will affect emissions reduction goals.

Click here to watch today's OnPoint.