CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Understanding carbon markets and footprints is now more important for US companies to learn. Our introductory seminar on carbon trading and finance has been given to over 900 people incuding many Fortune 1000. Our next seminar is on the afternoon of October 28th in New York."With the Senate debating climate change legislation, the time is more opportune to get up on the learning curve on carbon trading and finance," said Peter Fusaro, Chairman of Global Change Associates and carbon expert.

The U.S. is about to enter the carbon constrained world. Today, we are facing federal carbon cap and trade legislation debated in the Congress in 2009. Already states on both coasts and the Midwest are already implementing carbon regulation. However, there is much confusion on how these markets develop. Peter Fusaro has been actively engaged on energy and environmental issues for over 34 years from both public policy and capital markets, and has been involved in climate change initiatives since 1990. This market is very complex and can be hard for the layman to understand. Peter’s insights into carbon market developments are now sought by industry professionals, financial institutions, technology companies and policy makers in order to simplify market design as well as identify investment opportunities. Recognizing the need for his unique expertise, Peter is offering a continuously revised four hour course on carbon market developments in the U.S. and Europe from 2008 due to the dynamism of the market and policy developments.

Since December 2006, more than 900 professionals have taken Peter Fusaro’s webinars, classroom seminars, and in-house trainings on green trading, cleantech & emissions trading, renewable energy trading and carbon market developments. Law firms, trade associations and leading universities throughout the US and Europe have invited Peter to present his “Introduction to Carbon Markets and Finance’ seminar.

ALBANY — How can the state use just one well to set regulations for the impact of gas drilling on water, roads and air when dozens, even hundreds, may be built in places such as Sullivan County? Shouldn't the gas companies address the cumulative impacts of all those wells?

That's just one issue that environmental groups plan to raise Thursday at the state Assembly hearing on the Department of Environmental Conservation's proposed regulations for gas drilling of the Marcellus shale, which sits beneath Sullivan and other counties.

The hearing, held by the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee, should provide a preview of issues that will be raised at other hearings in coming months before the state finalizes those rules.

Aileen Gunther, D-C-Forestburgh, and Annie Rabbitt, R-Greenwood Lake, are on the committee.

"The whole cumulative impact is a glaring problem," says Wes Gillingham, program director of Sullivan County's Catskill Mountainkeeper. "Each company knows how much land they've leased. One well leads to another and another. And how will the state control the impact of all that waste?"

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ALBANY -- Gov. David Paterson announced Monday the formation of a pair of groups aimed at improving the state's energy efficiency.

The New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium, or NY-BEST, will distribute $25 million to researchers specializing in the development of batteries and energy storage devices.

The state also is using $600,000 over three years to establish the New York Energy Policy Institute and fund energy-efficiency research.

The state Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) funded a study that identified 18 academic-based research centers as potential candidates to house and oversee the institute.

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Goldman Sachs marketed $12 million worth of carbon offsets to CE2 Carbon Capital in what Goldman Sachs is calling the largest publicly announced U.S. offset deal so far, reports Reuters.

CE2 Carbon Capital is a U.S. investor and owner of carbon-based assets and commodities.

Goldman Sachs sold the offsets on behalf of Blue Source, a company that generated the offsets from projects aimed at preventing forests from being cut down, as well as carbon capture projects at landfills and coal mines. Goldman Sachs is a minority partner in Blue Source.

The forestry offsets came from tree stands that were protected by convincing farmers in North Carolina not to cut down the trees.

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An agreement is imminent between four St. Lawrence River towns and the St. Lawrence County Industrial Development Agency to mete out $16 million and 20 megawatts of low-cost power from the New York Power Authority to spur economic development.

"It's been a long process, and it looks like the end is near," said Larry R. Legault, Louisville supervisor. "We want to move forward with this."

The St. Lawrence Local Government Task Force, representing the towns of Lisbon, Waddington, Louisville and Massena, could approve an agreement with the IDA at a meeting Thursday in Louisville, said task force Chairman Robert O. McNeil.

The task force last year proposed creating the St. Lawrence River Valley Redevelopment Agency to decide how the money and power should be used. The agency will be governed by a five-member board representing the towns and county, and Massena Electric Department will manage the agency's daily operations.

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The state is asking local government agencies to regulate key aspects of the natural gas industry, raising yet more questions about who will pay for manpower to oversee multinational energy companies setting up shop in Southern Tier's backyards.

The industry's effect on water resources and roads are included in a report released Sept. 30 by the Department of Environmental Conservation outlining environmental concerns from full-scale Marcellus Shale development.

Risks to water, the report says, include turbidity, methane contamination and, to a lesser degree, potential for hazardous chemicals to breach well-bore casings or spill while being handled or disposed of on the surface.

To deal with those threats, the state is calling on local health departments to oversee a testing program of private wells in drilling zones. Testing would begin before drilling starts, and continue for a year after it ends.

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The industry and investment community is all worked up over the various oil and natural gas shale plays in North America, but little attention is given to what could go wrong with these plays.

IN PICTURES: 7 Forehead-Slapping Stock Blunders

The first issue is that not very much drilling has been done in some of the most promising shale plays. Since there is very little development and production history, it is difficult to determine the average estimated ultimate recovery (EUR), initial production (IP) rates and decline curves of wells here. Thus any estimates of the total resource potential are unreliable.

Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK), which has 510,000 acres in the Haynesville Shale, uses an average EUR of 6.50 Bcfe, an IP rate of 14.1 million cubic feet equivalent per day, and a first year decline of 85%. However, the oldest Chesapeake Energy well in the Haynesville Shale is only nine months old, and it is difficult to attribute this data to the entire play.

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New York and 17 other states have moved to intervene in a lawsuit over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to allow California to set its own standards for greenhouse-gas emissions by automobiles.

In a statement Friday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said the states are seeking to intervene in an action brought in September by the National Automobile Dealers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

"Our opposition to this lawsuit is based on states' rights - the right of New York and other states to take common-sense steps to protect their environment, public health and economy from being devastated by continued, unchecked global warming," Cuomo said.

The states are: New York, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

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Drilling proponents are pleased, critics are not

NEW YORK STATE — Environmentalists and the drilling industry alike agree that the new regulations proposed for the industry will add safeguards for the environment, but for critics the question remains: do the safeguards go far enough and are there sufficient resources available to enforce them.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) released a massive 810-page document on September 30 that lays out the proposed regulations in what is called the draft supplemental generic environmental impact statement (SGEIS).

Among the new safeguards when the new rules take effect is that drillers will be required to reveal all of the chemicals used in fracking fluids. They will not be able to store flow-back water, also called produced water, in plastic-lined pits; instead, they will be required to use steel tanks. Also, the drillers will be obliged to test water from any private water wells within 1,000 feet of a gas well, and if there are no private wells that close, the distance expands to 2,000 feet.

People who would like to see gas drilling proceed were generally pleased.

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Officials in five European countries say they are investigating an international carbon credit scam considered to be worth more than $1.5 billion. According to a recent report for the Guardian, the scam was started by gangs in Britain and Spain who bought and sold emissions allowances across borders in order to avoid paying Value Added Tax (VAT).

Scotland Yard detectives, Revenue and Customs officers and Europol—the European law enforcement agency—are all involved in the investigation. The scam is said to involve several countries, including Italy, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. According to the report, a source close to the investigation said the “inquiry has escalated.”

“This is a Europe-wide operation and we are finding it difficult to keep up," the source was quoted saying.

Fraud cases in the carbon credit market are not new. Over the summer, detectives in the UK began an investigation into an alleged $50-million carbon credit scam that involved VAT fraud. A total of nine people have been arrested and 27 properties searched as a result of the investigation.

And more recently, the United Nations was forced to suspend the British-based auditor of tradable carbon credits, SGS United Kingdom Ltd. The company was accused of irregularities in its review of projects that qualified for the carbon credits. The suspension of SGS came less than a year after the UN suspended the Norwegian certification company, DNV, for similar violations.

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