Carbon Regulations Under Fire: AB32 Delayed to 2013

At a legislative hearing on the status of California’s cap-and-trade system yesterday, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), Mary Nichols, indicated they are proposing to start the program in 2012 but delay the first compliance period to 2013.

Cap-and-trade is a cornerstone of California’s approach to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This reduction is preserved in AB32, the state’s climate change legislation. Cap-and-trade is also a key component of the state’s participation in the Western Climate Initiative, which involves a number of US states and Canadian provinces and aims to reduce carbon emissions across the partner jurisdictions.

Nichols said the quarterly auctions of emissions allowances that each large emitter in the state must turn in would begin in the second half of 2012, rather than February 2012 as planned. The first three-year compliance period, which originally covered 2012-14, will be shortened to two years.

CARB indicates that the one-year delay will provide flexibility and allow them to “stress test” the market mechanisms. They intend to release a draft of regulations covering allowance distribution and details on offset protocols within the next two weeks. Nichols indicated the agency is also on track to finish its regulations by the end of October.

Keep checking Locus or CARB’s website for more information.

EPA Delays Rules for Boilers to April 2012

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying issuing final regulations aimed at cutting pollution from factory boilers until April 2012.

The delay is one in a serious of slowdowns in regulatory agenda to curb carbon dioxide emissions using the Clean Air Act and several rules aimed at reducing emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Although the federal court has ordered the EPA to implement the boiler standards, the agency has said it needed more time for public input. This latest delay would push the deadline for compliance to 2015 from 2014.

The EPA’s delay has frustrated environmental and public-health groups, which cite evidence that the rules would save lives and avert thousands of heart and asthma attacks.

Industry, on the other hand, has said that the rules would be extremely costly and difficult to implement.

Boilers are on-site generators that can provide energy for apartment buildings and shopping malls, as well as refineries and factories.

The EPA rules also would affect incinerators at industrial facilities. Small boilers located at universities, hotels, hospitals and other commercial buildings also might have to comply, though the EPA has sought to limit the impact on smaller emitters.

Hydraulic Fracturing Disclosure Becomes the Law in Texas

Texas is now the first state with a law requiring upstream oil companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they use when extracting oil and gas from dense shale formations.
The natural-gas industry, bowing to longtime pressure, will disclose more information about the chemicals it uses for hydraulic fracturing.

Several other state agencies have regulations forcing some disclosure, but none have made it law. Texas’ law will force oil and gas companies to post the chemicals and the amounts used beginning in July 2012.

The relatively new drilling method for natural gas extraction—known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking—carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting large amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressure to break up rock formations and release gas deposits. Anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of the water sent down the well during hydrofracking returns to the surface, carrying drilling chemicals, very high levels of salts and, at times, naturally occurring radioactive material. The issue has taken on national importance as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is used in more states to extract once out-of-reach hydrocarbons from impermeable shale formations.

Locus designed its Environmental Information Management (EIM) software specifically to meet the hydro fracturing industry’s needs for managing subsurface and water quality data.
Locus expanded our software offerings to manage and visualize water, waste, wastewater, drilling fluids, radionuclides and air emissions more effectively online. With Texas law in place and other states probably to follow soon, Locus felt that the market needed an off-the-shelf tool to manage hydrofracking data. Locus’s software provides any natural gas production site that has a need for data management and reporting—and almost all have—the necessary functionality to meet these requirements.

Environmental groups worry the chemicals could contaminate aquifers and water supplies while the industry says the process is safe. There is only one way to prove it and that is to disclose data. And that is what Texas law will require. The Texas law will require companies to make public the chemicals they use on every hydraulic fracturing job in the state. Texas law is significant because oil and gas drilling is a key industry in the state and the industry vocally supported the measure.

Earlier this year many big gas producers said they would begin voluntarily publicizing the chemicals online at FracFocus.org. The site states that groundwater protection is the “Priority Number One”. Oil and natural gas producers have stringent requirements for how wells must be completed to protect groundwater. The genesis of these requirements is water safety. Casing is the first line of defense used to protect freshwater aquifers. Locus’ EIM database stores groundwater chemistry information for over 400,000 groundwater monitoring wells that can be easily screened online for contaminants of concern and prove the case that hydrofracking is safe when used properly.

The hydrofracking industry has been in the spotlight in recent months and Locus wanted to provide this sector with a tool to prove its case to the public and regulators that natural gas production using hydrofracking can be done safely and transparently without jeopardizing drinking water supplies.

Dr. Todd Pierce Rejoins Locus Technologies

Locus Technologies Establishes Asheville, NC Operations

SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 15, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy, and environmental software, announced today that Dr. Todd Pierce rejoined the company in their newly established office in Asheville, NC. Dr. Pierce will lead Locus’ Web-based Geographic Information Services and Augmented Reality Group.

Dr. Todd Pierce returns to Locus as Director of Geographic Information Systems. Dr. Pierce has over twenty years of experience in geographical information systems and Web programming and holds a doctorate in geography from the University of Oxford, U.K. He previously worked for Locus from 2003-2007, when he developed the mapping components of Locus’ EIM application. Dr. Pierce is now coming back to Locus to manage the implementation of all R&D for Locus GIS applications. He will lead efforts to develop subsurface 3D visualization, Augmented Reality (AR), and real-time sensing into Locus’ GIS-based applications.

Locus believes that GIS technology coupled with AR creates a new framework for studying water, energy, and global climate change issues by allowing users to inventory and display large, complex spatial datasets. GIS can also be used to analyze the potential interplay between various factors, getting us closer to a true understanding of enterprise sustainability.

While GIS is already widely used by planners, engineers, and scientists to display and analyze all forms of location-referenced data, it has not been used effectively to link subsurface, surface and atmospheric data in a single system on the Web. Since every aspect of climate change and sustainability affects or is affected by geography and geology, be it at a global, regional, or local level, interplay among geography, geology, hydrology, and atmosphere is very important for a holistic view of enterprise environmental impact. Web-based GIS linked to large data sets in Locus EIM is the single most powerful integrating tool for inventorying, analyzing, and ultimately managing and reporting this extremely complex problem. The key to understanding our dynamic climate and related energy and environmental issues is creating a framework to take many different pieces of past and future data from a variety of sources and meshing them into a single system. That is exactly what Locus has done.

Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus, commented, “Our company’s strength is directly related to our innovative and experienced environmental professionals. I am pleased that Dr. Todd Pierce has re-joined our firm to lead our Asheville operations. Todd’s previous work as a research scientist with UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), where he developed Web mapping tools for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Forest Service, and state and local agencies, is relevant to work he will lead at Locus.”

“We have a growing technology cluster here in Asheville. The presence of a highly sophisticated workforce was a critical factor in establishing a Locus base of operations in this community. I am excited to be back to Locus and to continue my work to bring the power of GIS and Web-based visualization to Locus’ cloud applications. We are at a point in the evolution of the technology and its broad application where the next logical step is development of a GIS-based framework for earth systems modeling that includes subsurface, surface and atmospheric information in a single system. Such a system that Locus pioneered crosses academic, scientific, and industrial domains to serve as a platform for a comprehensive water, energy, climate, and sustainability management system,” said Dr. Todd Pierce.

“Our world faces unprecedented challenges, and GIS technology is poised to provide enterprises the necessary tool to collect, manage, and analyze the myriad of analytical, biological, and regulatory data in a very transparent and visual way. GIS technology has proved to be invaluable in driving intelligent decision making. Todd will continue building on extensive work that has already been done to integrate Locus’ many applications, from hydrogeology to climate science, and apply GIS technology to address complex subjects such as water quality management, GHG inventories, data model development, waste management, carbon accounting, and climate change visualization. Every organization that is looking to be credible with respect to all their environmental reporting needs will need a tool like this,” added Duplan.

Roca Honda Resources, LLC Selects Locus’ Cloud Software

Roca Honda Resources to manage environmental data in EIM

SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 6, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy, and environmental software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract to manage environmental data for Roca Honda Resources, LLC (“RHR”).

RHR, headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a joint venture between Sumitomo Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation of America and Strathmore Resources, US Ltd. Located in the Grants Mineral District of New Mexico, the Roca Honda uranium development project is one of the largest and highest-grade proposed uranium mines in the United States in more than 30 years.

“Locus’ software is a powerful tool for organizing, evaluating and visualizing large volumes of environmental data,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “We are very pleased that Roca Honda Resources recognizes the value of EIM in managing its environmental data and is incorporating it as an integral part of its operations.”

“Developing our resources prudently and efficiently, while identifying and managing potential environmental impacts related to our operations, are critically important to Roca Honda Resources. Locus’ software will allow us to share information more quickly and efficiently between our field operations and our scientists, and evaluate data faster, ultimately contributing to a more environmentally sound management practice and efficient operation,” said Mr. John DeJoia, Senior Vice President of New Mexico operations and Manager of Roca Honda Resources, LLC.

Initially, Locus will be deployed to manage data for the Roca Honda site. However, Mr. DeJoia also expressed an interest in investigating the potential use of Locus’ software at other sites in the future.

Groundwater Monitoring From Space

New York Times reported that scientists have been using small variations in the Earth’s gravity to identify trouble spots around the globe where people are making unsustainable demands on groundwater, one of the planet’s main sources of fresh water.

They found problems in places as disparate as North Africa, northern India, northeastern China and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley in California, heartland of that state’s $30 billion agricultural industry.

Jay S. Famiglietti, director of the University of California’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling, said the center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, known as Grace, relies on the interplay of two nine-year-old twin satellites that monitor each other while orbiting the Earth, thereby producing some of the most precise data ever on the planet’s gravitational variations. The results are redefining the field of hydrology, which itself has grown more critical as climate change and population growth draw down the world’s fresh water supplies.

According to the findings from October 2003 to March 2010, aquifers under the California’s Central Valley were drawn down by 25 million acre-feet — almost enough to fill Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.

For decades, groundwater measurements in the United States had been made from points on the Earth’s surface — by taking real-time soundings at 1,383 of the United States Geological Survey’s observation wells and daily readings at 5,908 others. Those readings are supplemented by measuring water levels in hundreds of thousands of other wells, trenches and excavations. But now the satellite technology allows the real time monitoring from space. This may be the best data about groundwater that is available. Harvesting and disseminating all of the information about aquifers as they dry up and shortages loom is the best use of space technology.

Separating groundwater from other kinds of moisture affecting gravity requires a little calculation and the inclusion of information on precipitation and surface runoff obtained from surface studies or computer models.

Because the climate change is first going to be felt on water shortages the groundwater needs to be managed carefully. We have population growth, we have widespread groundwater contamination, and we satellites showing us we are depleting most of groundwater.

Locus Technologies Cloud Software to Manage Energenic’s Environmental Compliance and Stewardship

Locus SaaS software to manage environmental compliance for sustainable self-contained energy solutions by Energenic

SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 2, 2011  — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental and energy software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract from Energenic, LLC to manage its environmental, compliance, and sustainability information in Locus’ Cloud.

Energenic selected Locus’ SaaS-hosted software to implement a new environmental compliance management system to meet its business and regulatory requirements, specifically for managing and reporting environmental, compliance, and sustainability information.

Energenic specializes in the comprehensive design, development, construction and operation of large-scale energy projects. Whether the project involves electricity generation from cogeneration, solar, landfill gas, or biogas to fuels, environmental compliance and stewardship are imbedded in each Energenic design. Energenic evaluated multiple companies’ software offerings before selecting Locus to meet its business and regulatory reporting and recordkeeping requirements.

“We are very pleased that Energenic selected our Cloud platform. We are very proud that our software will complement Energenic’s disciplined expertise to engineer fiscally, technologically, environmentally, and sustainably responsible power solutions for generations to come. ePortal will allow Energenic to take a better aggregate view of its environmental challenges, take full ownership of its environmental data, and make better planning decisions for environmental stewardship,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“Energenic is committed to the next generation of energy technologies and services. Using Locus’ software will improve our project delivery, our financial well-being and our environmental stewardship. Locus’ ePortal software will help us meet our compliance and legal responsibilities, as well as position us to grow with the evolving regulatory landscape. Managing our data and information in the Cloud, and streamlining our reporting processes, will help us support our mission to provide sustainable energy sources to our clients while becoming better stewards of the environment,” added Frank DiCola, Energenic’s president and CEO.

 

ABOUT ENERGENIC
Energenic is a joint business venture between long-term business partners Marina Energy LLC, a subsidiary of South Jersey Industries (NYSE: SJI), and DCO Energy LLC. Energenic specializes in the comprehensive design, development, construction, and operation of large-scale energy projects and has offices in Nevada and New Jersey.

For more information, visit www.energenic-us.com, www.sjindustries.com, and www.dcoenergy.com.

EPA proposes stricter water quality controls for wetlands, creeks, and other water bodies

EPA will impose stricter pollution controls on wetlands and streams.

The new guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency, which will be codified in a federal regulation later this year, could prevent the dumping of mining waste and the discharge of industrial pollutants to waters that feed creeks, lakes, and drinking water supplies. The specific restriction will depend on the waterway.

The question of which isolated streams and wetlands qualify for protection under the Clean Water Act has been in dispute for a decade. The EPA policy change is likely to affect tributaries flowing into water bodies such as the San Francisco Bay. Once finalized, the regulations will apply federal water quality standards to a range of waterways, including the headwaters of lakes and rivers as well as intermittent streams.

The new regulations will require companies to better manage their water quality data to avoid fines and to demonstrate that they are not polluting water bodies. Locus EIM software provides of-the- shelf cloud-based tool to accomplish this.

Locus Introduces iPhone Application for Field Environmental Data Collection

Locus offers another industry-first application for environmental data collection

SAN FRANCISCO, California, March 28, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based energy, environmental, and emissions information management software, announced today a new iPhone application for field data collection. eWell for the iPhone consists of two linked components: the iPhone application itself, and Locus’ Environmental Information ManagementTM (EIM) web-based application. Data are collected using the iPhone and the data provisioning setup is performed in EIM. Once data are collected, they are wirelessly transmitted to EIM for review and reporting.

Using EIM, eWell users can map the routes for checking a series of wells that need to be sampled, and/or those that they need water levels and other field parameters measured. They can download these routes to the iPhone, along with selected historical environmental data on their wells, for use in the field for real-time validation and QA/QC of collected data. Once downloaded to eWell, the routes and well locations can be seen and accessed directly from the iPhone’s Google Maps interface.

Once in the field, customers can use their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads to record water levels, pH, turbidity, and other environmental readings, as well as to compare current and past readings. Where Wi-Fi or 3G coverage is available, data collected in the field uploads instantly to EIM. Where access is unavailable, users save the collected data automatically, which can then be uploaded when coverage becomes available. eWell for the iPhone completely streamlines the data upload and download processes, eliminating any steps that require equipment synchronization.

“The release of this new iPhone/iPod/iPad version of eWell adds yet another powerful tool to Locus’ arsenal of web-based technologies for lowering the cost of environmental data collection and management. For information that cannot be collected through interfaces to other applications, such as from analytical laboratories LIMS systems, data historians or wireless sensors, eWell offers a powerful alternative that eliminates duplicate input, reduces transcription time, performs data checks and validation at point of collection, and maintains a complete audit trail, including the georefererence on who did what, when, and where,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO Locus Technologies.

Once in EIM’s data review tables, users can review uploaded data for accuracy and completeness. After completing all data validation checks, field readings are moved to liveEIM for reporting and other project uses. EIM is part of Locus’ ePortal SaaS platform.

“The smart phone-based eWell represents another milestone for applying mobile Web 2.0 technologies to the business world. Locus will continue expanding this popular platform to include field data collection for energy, carbon, resource consumption, and other sustainability information. As is the case for all other applications that Locus has pioneered over last decade, eWell is designed to lower a company’s environmental expenditures while improving data quality,” added Duplan.

Locus first released eWell in 2000 on the PalmTM, and was the environmental industry’s first wireless Internet application for recording and transmitting environmental data in the field.

The eWell iPhone app is available for download from the Apple, Inc. App Store immediately for $19.95. Over the course of 2011, Locus will introduce eWell on other smart phone platforms, including Android.

Locus Technologies Awarded Contract to Manage Los Alamos National Laboratory Environmental Information and Data

Locus SaaS software to manage data for nation’s largest laboratory

SAN FRANCISCO, California and LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, March 21, 2011  — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to manage LANL’s environmental data in Locus’ Cloud. The contract is worth up to $2 million from 2011 through an additional four option years.

LANL is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security (LANS), located in Los Alamos, N.M. The 37-square-mile laboratory is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world; it conducts multidisciplinary research for fields such as national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing. LANL is one of two laboratories in the United States at which the government conducts classified work toward the design of nuclear weapons.

The Locus EIM software will help LANL organize and manage its future environmental compliance and monitoring activities using SaaS. By centralizing the data collected during current remediation and surveillance efforts, Locus’ EIM software will enable the facility to more efficiently address legacy site contamination, both chemical and radioactive, across multiple locations. EIM will allow Los Alamos to take a better aggregate view of its environmental challenges and make better planning decisions for environmental stewardship.

Activities that EIM will organize include environmental data of all media types, comparison of historical contamination levels; planning and performing sampling, processing, and analysis of environmental media; providing institutional coordination, integration, and communication of all environmental monitoring activities, data, and documentation; implementing regulatory and action standards and policy with line organizations; and interacting with government agencies, stakeholders, the public, and Indian tribes on environmental resource management issues.

Locus designed its EIM software specifically to meet challenging water-quality management issues, covering both analytical chemistry and the management of radionuclides data in a complex hydro-geological setting. EIM will also provide a web-based GIS system for Los Alamos data that will be available to the general public, bringing ease of use and complete transparency to complex data sets.

“With more than 37 square miles of complex geology and hydrogeology, Los Alamos National Laboratory is home to 14 major canyon systems that affect the Rio Grande, and the complexity and size of Los Alamos operations make environmental compliance a top priority. We are very proud that LANL has determined that EIM has the robust functionality to meet the facility’s formidable data management requirements. After the National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford (SLAC), Los Alamos is the second U.S. Department of Energy site to be managed in EIM. We are very excited to work with LANL’s talented team of professionals on this important long term project,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

LANL has created byproduct waste since the 1940s. Its past practices for disposing of waste, while meeting the standards of the day, are not up to today’s standards. Investigations, cleanup, and remediation are now under way, and the Lab has dramatically reduced its waste generation from ongoing work.

“High-quality environmental data is one of the key drivers that will help us meet our cleanup goals,” said Alison Dorries, division leader for the Lab’s Waste and Environmental Services organization. “Moving forward, our data will help us be more sustainable and better stewards of the environment. Organizing these massive volumes of data, and making them available to the public, will help demonstrate our commitment to openness and environmental compliance.”

 

ABOUT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and URS for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

LANL news media contact: Fred deSousa, (505) 665-3430, fdesousa@lanl.gov