Hard-up consumers could be hit by higher electricity bills if major government energy reforms are adopted, experts have warned.

The draft energy bill, announced yesterday, aims to reduce carbon emissions and boost the supply of clean energy by drive billions of pounds of investment into new nuclear plants and renewables.

A major component of California's crusade against global warming, one started by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and embraced by successor Jerry Brown, is the legal mandate to have 33 percent of electric power sales from "renewable sources" by 2020.

ADA-ES, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADES) ("ADA") today announced the hiring of Mr. Jonathan Lagarenne as the Executive Vice President in charge of Strategic and Corporate Development. Mr. Lagarenne has worked in the air pollution control (APC) industry for 22 years and brings significant experience in managing operations, growing business segments and business development. His executive leadership experience includes holding positions of General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Hamon Research Cottrell, Inc. ("Hamon"), a major supplier of emission control equipment. As CEO of Hamon, he led an effort that in three years increased revenues by 250% and operating profits by a factor of ten by revitalizing and refocusing the sales force.

This new position was created to support ADA's five year growth strategy to take advantage of the opportunities created by the newly finalized EPA Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS). This new regulation is expected to generate a market in excess of a billion dollars for the low CAPEX emission control technologies that ADA provides. ADA believes that there are opportunities to expand its current product lines by utilizing the increasing cash flow being produced from the Company's Refined Coal business.

ADA-ES Inc., today announced the hiring of Mr. Jonathan Lagarenne as the Executive Vice President in charge of Strategic and Corporate Development. Mr. Lagarenne has worked in the air pollution control (APC) industry for 22 years and brings significant experience in managing operations, growing business segments and business development. His executive leadership experience includes holding positions of General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Hamon Research Cottrell, Inc. ( Hamon ), a major supplier of emission control equipment. As CEO of Hamon, he led an effort that in three years increased revenues by 250% and operating profits by a factor of ten by revitalizing and refocusing the sales force.

Most of us have heard of the 'carbon footprint'; that notorious culprit responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the stratosphere. But many of us don't know exactly what the term means.

A carbon footprint is a measure of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other emissions of a defined population. It is usually calculated for the time period of a year.

When you drive a car or ride a vehicle, the engine burns fuel which creates a certain amount of CO2, depending on its fuel consumption and the driving distance. When you cook your food by burning wood or gas, again you generate considerable CO2. Airplanes are said to leave perhaps the biggest carbon footprint; which is why environment-conscious people prefer to travel by surface transport whenever practical.

When you buy food and other household articles, you should be aware that their production emitted large quantities of CO2 and other harmful gases. The generation of the electrical power is another major emitter of polluting gases - in fact all activity requiring the use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, gas, wood, or even cow dung leaves a carbon footprint.

In recent times we have become more used to hearing about the cancellation of planned large scale power generation CCS demo projects, largely on cost grounds, than about them going ahead. Currently, there would appear to be only two such power plant CCS projects that have managed to progress to a positive final investment decision, ie are actually in the construction phase. One (to be profiled in next month's issue) is the lignite-fuelled Kemper County IGCC+CCS project in Mississippi (524 MW unit with 65% CO2 capture), due to go commercial in the middle of 2014 (assuming it survives legal challenges and cost escalation pressures), which, like the proposed TCEP IGCC facility in Texas (see pp 23-26), is a polygeneration plant, with ammonia, sulphuric acid and carbon dioxide for EOR envisaged as byproducts. The other is SaskPower's post combustion capture project at Boundary Dam unit 3, also lignite fuelled and hoping to enter service in 2014, with a 90% CO2 capture rate, corresponding to about 1 milliont CO2/y. The Boundary Dam 3 CCS project is currently on track to be the world's first operating large scale post combustion capture demonstration facility at a pulverised coal plant, with carbon dioxide going to EOR and/or storage - although at 110 MW it is somewhat at the lower end of large scale.

The prospect of bigger electricity bills saw an angry crowd lay siege to the headquarters of electricity supplier CLP Power last Wednesday.

Slogans were yelled and banners brandished at the building in Argyle Street, Mong Kok, in protest at CLP chairman Michael Kadoorie's warning the day before, at his company's annual general meeting, of a "material" rise in tariffs over the next three years for customers in Kowloon, the New Territories and Lantau.

In other words, 80 per cent of the city's population were going to see their electricity bills soar.

Kadoorie claimed the increases were the "inevitable" consequence of the government's clean-energy policy, which would require the company to import more gas from the mainland and pay more for it.

The prospect of bigger electricity bills saw an angry crowd lay siege to the headquarters of electricity supplier CLP Power last Wednesday.

Slogans were yelled and banners brandished at the building in Argyle Street, Mong Kok, in protest at CLP chairman Michael Kadoorie's warning the day before, at his company's annual general meeting, of a "material" rise in tariffs over the next three years for customers in Kowloon, the New Territories and Lantau.

In other words, 80 per cent of the city's population were going to see their electricity bills soar.

The following information was released by the Washington State House Republican Caucus:

Dear Friends and Neighbors:

The Legislature adjourned on April 11. I hope you had the opportunity to read my end-of-session newsletter that hit the mailboxes last week. In case you missed it you can find my newsletter online here: http://houserepublicans.wa.gov/Condotta/Condotta_EOS_Newsletter_2012.pdf

I hope you also had the chance to read my column "Solutions are Nonpartisan" in the Wenatchee World last week. This last session was a perfect example that the best ideas do not necessarily come from the majority and they can be nonpartisan. I truly believe House Republicans have solutions, not based on partisanship, but what the citizens of Washington want to see out of their government. I hope you will read the column.

PMFG, Inc. (NASDAQ: PMFG) was awarded two orders for environmental emissions control equipment valued in excess of $ 4.7 million.

THE authority established to administer the carbon tax has released its first list of companies that will pay a price for their emissions.

Among the likely suspects of large power companies and the like are a few surprises, including small gold producer Apex Gold.

The following information was released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS):

Our new report on electric vehicles, State of Charge: Electric Vehicles' Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings Across the United States, has been out for a couple of weeks now and we've gotten a lot of great comments from folks and some pretty exciting media coverage, as well as some interesting analysis of the media coverage. We've responded to a number of questions from interested readers on our blog and wanted to share some of the common questions and answers all in one place. So here are the Frequently Asked Questions on State of Charge:

If you are charging a electric vehicle overnight, are you using electricity that would be wasted anyway?

This post is part of a series on the UCS report State of Charge: Electric Vehicles' Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings Across the United States.

DALLAS, May 7, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PMFG, Inc. (the "Company") (Nasdaq:PMFG) today announced it was awarded two orders for environmental emissions control equipment valued in excess of $4.7 million. The first order is for a Selective Catalytic Reduction ("SCR") system for a fractionation facility in the United States that will produce 100,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids ("NGL"). The SCR system will be applied to a fired heater used in the NGL process to transform Nitrogen Oxide ("NOx") emissions into harmless nitrogen and water. The equipment for this order is scheduled for delivery by the third quarter of fiscal year 2013. The second order includes two SCR systems for NOx emissions control and oxidation catalysts for Carbon Monoxide/Volatile Organic Compounds ("CO/VOC") emissions control for a new, natural-gas-fired combined-cycle power generation facility in the northeastern United States. This project has a delivery schedule for the equipment that extends from the third quarter of fiscal year 2013 through the second quarter of fiscal year 2014.

Tang Kin Fei, CEO of Sembcorp Industries, is busy greeting colleagues and clients as they arrive at the companyâ s very first waste-powered steam production plant in Jurong Island.

Located in the Sakra District of Jurong Island and costing $34 million, the new plant that began operations on April 24 will burn 150 tonnes of woodchips a day to produce up to 20 tonnes of process steam per hour. Steam is generated when the woodchips are incinerated in a boiler within the plant and transferred to customers through a Sembcorp-owned â service corridorâ â " that is, a web of pipelines in which steam, water and waste is transported across the island.

To ensure a steady supply of woodchips to fuel the plant, Sembcorp will collect waste wood from the industrial and construction sectors and process the waste into woodchips, which it will then deliver directly to the plant. That will give Sembcorp control over the entire energy-from-waste value chain. It will also enable the company to save costs by leveraging its existing capabilities in solid-waste management.

â This [plant] marks an important milestone in our strategy to grow our capabilities in renewable energy and to provide sustainable energy-from-waste solutions to our customers on Jurong Island,â Tang says in his opening speech to guests.

Solar-powered cars and energy-producing algae might be the key to the survival of the human race one day. But investing in companies touting nascent, pie-in-the-sky technologies could destroy your investment portfolio well before the world runs out of energy or food. â Often, these companies are dominated by one technology, or are dependent on government subsidy,â says Angus Parker, a fund manager at HSBC Global Asset Management. They also tend to suffer from erratic profits, small market capitalisations and poor trading liquidity. That makes their shares vulnerable in volatile market conditions, he adds.

Parker doesnâ t doubt that climate change will be one of the most important investment themes of the next few decades. On the contrary, he runs the HSBC GIF Climate Change fund. However, he thinks the real opportunity for investors lies in large and well-established companies that respond effectively to the challenges and opportunities of climate change.

John Noble, a sixth generation dairy farmer, got his first taste of the benefits of biogas about a decade ago, when he installed a small system on his Wyoming County farm.

Now, Noble and a host of investors, including a handful of local farm families, are getting into biogas in a big way.

Synergy Biogas, an entity owned by Florida-based renewable energy company CH4 Biogas, last week took the wraps off its new biogas power project, located on the 1,850-cow dairy farm that Synergy owns in Wyoming County.

The following information was released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA):

EIA recently released an Analysis of Impacts of the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, pursuant to the request of Chairman Bingaman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. According to EIA's analysis, the proposed policy would reduce electric power sector carbon dioxide emissions 44% below EIA's Reference case in 2035 (see chart above). National average delivered electricity prices would increase 18% above the Reference case by 2035. However, for years before 2025, the national average electric power price increase due to the proposed policy is less than 5% above Reference case values.

A clean energy standard (CES) is a policy that promotes the use of clean energy in the electric power sector by requiring electricity providers to supply a specified share of their electricity sales from clean energy resources. CES policy specifications can vary substantially, includingbut not limited tofactors such as the targeted clean energy level required, the types of energy resources that qualify as "clean", the credit level allocated to each qualifying resource, the exemption of certain types of electricity providers from the requirement, the extent to which generation from previously-existing capacity receives credits, and the inclusion of an alternative compliance payment mechanism.

The following information was released by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF):

By Jennifer Andreassen

South Korea's new climate law will establish a cap-and-trade system covering about 60 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

May 1, 2012

Caroline Flint MP, Labour's Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has said the energy regulator Ofgem has serious questions to answer after figures obtained by Labour revealed that it has paid over a million pounds in bonuses in the last two years, while millions of families are struggling with soaring energy bills. The average bonus in both 2010 and 2011 was well above the typical annual household energy bill.