The 16 funded projects will reduce energy costs and increase reliability for rural Americans, who tend to pay more for energy, the White House said.

The first project will allocate nearly $573 million to Dairyland Power Cooperative in La Crosse, Wisconsin, for four solar installations and four wind power installations in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois.

“One in five rural Americans will benefit from these clean energy investments, thanks to partnerships with rural electric cooperatives like Dairyland. Put simply, this is rural power, for rural America,” said agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

The projects, funded by the IRA’s Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program, will prevent more than 43 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution annually and support more than 4,500 permanent jobs and 16,000 construction jobs, the White House said.

Rural electric cooperatives serve 42 million people, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

The administration in August said it was investing $2.2 billion in overhauling the nation’s power grid, which has been pressured by extreme weather events even as data centers demand more power.

Biden was set to announce the funding in Westby, Wisconsin, on Thursday alongside Vilsack.

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Last year, Alberta temporarily halted approvals of major new projects amid concerns over renewables’ reliability and land use, cooling investment in the rapidly growing industry and challenging the federal government’s clean energy ambitions.

The western province has led the country in building renewable capacity and is on track to eliminate combustion of coal for power this year, six years ahead of plan.

Alberta’s right-of-center government said the pause on approvals would be lifted on Thursday but it would from now on take an “agriculture first” approach with proposed projects.

The province will bar renewable generation projects on land it deems has excellent or good irrigation capability and will set up buffer zones of a minimum of 35 km (22 miles) around protected areas or what the government considers pristine views.

New wind turbine projects will no longer be permitted within those buffer zones.

“We must grow our renewable energy industry in well-defined and responsible ways,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said in a statement. Smith says Ottawa’s drive to cut carbon emissions could wreck the provincial oil and gas industry.

Alberta generates most of its electricity from natural gas and produces more than 82% of the country’s crude oil.

The government, citing concerns about the cost of cleaning up renewables projects once they have shut down, says developers will have to put up a bond or security.

In a note to clients, RBC Dominion Securities analyst Nelson Ng said the new rules could slow the pace of development.

The Business Renewables Centre Canada environmental group said the announcement had few specific details and would provoke uncertainty among investors.

“Taken at face value, an unprecedented 35-km buffer zone around all protected areas in southern Alberta would eliminate large sections of the province and would create a backdoor land ban,” director Jorden Dye said in a statement.

The pause on project approvals, which was announced last August, prompted four major international companies at various development stages to stop work on their plans, an industry official said at the time.

—Additional reporting for Reuters by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru.

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Partly, that’s because the Alberta farmer has decided to take 920 acres out of production and create two solar farms, one 600 acres in size, the other 320.

That’s right. He’s a farmer who is taking farmland out of crop production in an era of historically strong prices.

Instead, his panels will generate electricity that will be sold into the grid where they will power the equivalent of 65,000 homes.

Not wanting to waste a square inch of land, though, Logan’s granddaughter Hannah manages a 150-head sheep herd that will graze underneath the panels.

His second venture is as a member of the Buffalo Plains Wind Project, which will soon see 83 additional wind turbines dot southern Alberta’s landscape, six of which will sit on his own property.

Once built, each turbine will be about the height of the CN Tower.

But he’s also raising eyebrows because it’s in his nature. In any community, there are people we listen to. They have a way of thinking that seems to resonate. We might not want to be like them, but we do pay attention.

If Logan knows this, it doesn’t drive him. Instead, he’s is a soft-spoken 70-year-old who chooses his words carefully, isn’t afraid to think before he speaks and knows the value of time gone by when he judges a business move.

Sometimes, too, he ruffles feathers.

In the right context, in fact, Logan believes feather ruffling is part and parcel of doing good business. 

What he points to, though, is that he has spent most of his life at Lomond, Alta., a farming village an hour north of Lethbridge. He and wife Marie farm on land that’s been in the family more than 115 years and now includes a feedlot and seed cleaning facility.

Unabashedly, his pride and joy is the Lomond community. It’s the individuals and families that comprise the surrounding area. Virtually all of his decisions are business decisions made with money in mind, but people, jobs and longevity are there too. If an idea doesn’t tick those boxes, the value proposition becomes increasingly tenuous.

When it does strike the right note, though, Logan is keen to pounce and will often act fast.

He accepts as fact that there will always be naysayers who are stuck in neutral and apt to criticize a sunny day. It doesn’t stop him. When he decided to build hog barns in the early 2000s, for instance, he was new to swine. People said it couldn’t be done. Still, he built the barns, created 15 permanent jobs and generated 1.2 million bushels of new demand for feed barley.

When he knew the barns had momentum and the community had grown and the jobs wouldn’t be lost, he sold the business. Later, after a Alberta barley commission trade mission to the Middle East, he sensed opportunity and began shaping deals with buyers in Dubai and Iraq. It was just after the Arab Spring ended, but Logan was undeterred.

Oh, and those two electric projects? They’ll create a dozen full-time jobs too.

Straight from the hip

Across a career full of bold, sometimes unexpected moves, how has Alberta’s Glenn Logan made his biggest decisions? What separates the do’s and the don’ts, and how does he get to “When do we start?” (Note: The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.)

Country Guide: You have directly marketed your own crops around the world and made it a point to travel to those destinations and meet buyers. Share your motivations and perspectives gained. 

Glenn Logan: Who in their right mind would travel into the Middle East, especially just as the Arab Spring was ending? People I know still haven’t got over that, why I would want to be bothered doing that. It was huge. It makes you think differently about the world. You have to respect others. Everybody doesn’t think the same. I’ve built up a large network and it’s been all to my benefit. There are opportunities everywhere you look, you just have to pick and choose what might work for you. 

I have Muslim friends and they’re the first ones to call and wish me a Merry Christmas, the first ones to wish me a happy Easter, and we think of Muslims as a bloodthirsty bunch of people. They’re not. They just like us. 

It was just an opportunity that came up, not knowing if there was going to be any success in it, but I had to try. 

Don’t ever be afraid of failure, that’s where you get your most experience. When things don’t go so well, you learn to do things differently and you learn from your mistakes.

CG: Talk about the farm and how it’s changed over the years.

GL: We started in 1972 on a quarter-section. We were able to rent more land and take over more family land, as well. We developed that into a lot of irrigation over a period of years. We haven’t expanded in the last 10 years, we’ve focused our efforts on other things. We got into the seed business with a seed cleaning facility in 1995 as a way to create revenue for another generation starting on the farm. 

CG: Tell me about your solar farms currently under construction. You were harvesting crops, but soon you’ll be harvesting the sun. Some see this as a savvy business play while others cannot understand why a person would take prime farmland out of production.

GL: I see it as taking the best advantage of land. That was a business decision; it provides opportunity for others to replace that void. If I don’t produce it somebody else will. I guess I don’t have any qualms about taking it out of agricultural production. Canada hasn’t had a food security program, still doesn’t have one. At some point in the country you have to do some long-range planning if you want to get into that food security game. If you could see in the future farther down that road than what they’ve been able to see in the past, things might have been different. Food is going to be worth a lot money, energy is going to be worth a lot of money. Whether I am producing energy or potatoes off that land, it’s revenue. Both of them are money. The other part of that is it creates employment in rural areas. That’s hard to come by of any kind. It will put kids in school, parents in homes, businesses in communities, creates a lot of other opportunities for other people.

I don’t feel any guilt about that. You can be mad about what your neighbour is doing. If you want, you can waste your time and be mad about everything. I look at everything as an opportunity. I’ve been criticized a bit for it, but I think people understand it generally. It’s not for everybody, and everybody is not going to be doing it. On the overall scale of things, it’s pretty small peanuts.

All these projects are going to create some permanent jobs and you need to live somewhere. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

It’s the same thing with hog barns we built. They created jobs in the community, created over a million-bushel barley market that wasn’t there before. Most of the families we employed in those barns went through school with my grandkids. There were some families that came over from the Philippines that are still working in those facilities, still living in the community. Their kids have graduated from school and moved on, but the families are still here. It makes you feel good to know you had a little bit of an impact on the community.

CG: Is it the same with the wind farm?

GL: Windmills, they stick up in the air a long way and are a bit of a sore thumb on the Prairie landscape … Small communities don’t get to pick and choose sometimes. It’s not everyday you get a large project that is going to pour some money into a community. A lot of small communities would die for any kind of economic development. You see governments spending money at every level. How do we attract investment? It’s not easy. Sometimes you can’t pick your opportunities. They pick you and you have to grasp them.

We always knew southern Alberta wind blows incessantly. So, wind companies see those maps where it works to their best advantage and in relation to the infrastructure like electrical. You don’t always have to go out and beat the bushes, sometimes they’ll come and find you if they see a suitable location. It was an easy decision. We saw it as economic activity in the community. It had its negatives but the positives outweighed them in my mind. 

Everyone had a chance to participate … some saw them as an eyesore where other people saw them as an opportunity and welcomed them onto the land.

CG: Tell me about your passion for both agriculture and people. Where does your inner drive come from? Many people happily farm, punch a clock and head to the lake when it’s nice out. 

GL: It started with the Canadian Wheat Board. I was never happy turning my efforts over to the Wheat Board to market on my behalf. I and others farmers never thought we got the true value for what we produced. That’s where the incentive is, always to do better. If you can make money sitting on your hands going to the lake every other weekend and working five days a week, that’s fine. We were never happy with that. We always wanted something more.

It goes back to a sense of community, not just my local community here, but the agricultural community. We wanted to see it succeed and prosper. It’s been a long haul, it hasn’t been easy. A lot of people are doing exactly what I’ve done. I’m by no means unique in that. Lots of effort has been put in to make agriculture a better place.

CG: You say you wanted “something more.” Explain that.

GL: We wanted to create an environment where our kids, if they so wished to stay on the farm, could, and prosper. It got to be the same with grandchildren. We wanted to create something for them where they saw a future as well. They’re all not going to stay on the farm, but some have and probably some will yet when it comes time.

CG: Why is it important to you to have that prosperous nature, a strong community and all those good things? 

GL: Sometimes you ask yourself that question a lot. Everything you do doesn’t succeed. You get beat up a bit and sit back and lick up your wounds. In a matter of days you get over that and go at it again. Try it again from a different perspective and different angle and a desire to succeed. It’s hard to compare it to a game, but there’s a certain drive with a lot of people. I like to think I have that drive.

CG: Where did that come from? 

GL: My parents were quite happy with their lot in life. I was born and raised in Saskatchewan and left to go to university. I guess it’s the experiences you gather along the way, the people you met and had conversations with. You start to look at everything as an opportunity and you want to explore that opportunity until it gets to a point where it’s a go or it’s not a go. It’s hard to explain. You just get out there and try to take advantage of everything the world has to offer you.

CG: Was there something when you were a younger man, when you tried to explore something until it was a go or not a go? 

GL: We built the farm up. We started small and built over our lives on the farm to what it is today, and have been pretty successful at that. We’ve proved that with the length of time we’ve been here. In your life you always make mistakes, but you don’t let it defeat you.

CG: What is your philosophy when you inevitably taste defeat? 

GL: I don’t know what it would be. You have some pretty frank discussions with your family. You want to leave the world a better place than when you arrived at it. There’s a whole lot of things. Maybe it’s a sense of community or obligations to society to make it a more successful place to live. We’ve been lucky in Canada — terribly lucky in Alberta — you must look at it from a larger perspective than just your little world around you.

CG: Are there certain things you point to or say here is a concrete example of how lucky you are to live where you live or have an opportunity that kick-started positive things in your life?

GL: I hate using the word lucky too often. If you see the opportunity … when you do you better grasp it and run with it until you find a good reason not to. Then you look for something else. Not all of them are going to be successful. 

CG: When we talk about all these business opportunities, I’m curious, where does this vision come from?

GL: You take stock of what resources you have available at the time, what you can do with those resources, and the knowledge you have and build something from there.

CG: Where does your ambition come from? And what are yours?

GL: I’m sort of semi-retired, I help where the farm needs help, but I’m anxious to see how my son’s family and my grandchildren are going to succeed in this land. We’ve been here a long time. We’re just caretakers of the land. I guess that’s what drives me, I want to make life better for them. 

CG: What does your family mean to you?

GL: I would use that word lucky, reluctantly. I’ve got eight grandchildren right now and am so fortunate they’re close by and all involved in the farm somehow. I’m fortunate to be involved in their lives in some respect, as well. What both Marie and I have done, that’s what’s driven us. We want to turn over to them and see them succeed on the farm. 

CG: What are your biggest challenges today? Or for any farmer for that matter.

GL: I think it takes perseverance. I think anyone that’s involved in agriculture knows it takes perseverance. Canada is rather a hostile place to be in ag. We have a huge variance in weather — from floods to drought and everything in between, frost and snow at inappropriate times. You can’t be a quitter and be a farmer.

CG: What do you say to younger farmers exploring business prospects? 

GL: I’m not in the habit of telling people what I think is right. I have no idea what’s right for them and the situation for them that they’re in. All you can ask people to do is take a chance. You might fail, but pick yourself up and take another chance. Eventually find one you’re very good at. 

CG: What are the characteristics of good businesspeople?

GL: I’m not saying you need a formal university education. You have to be dedicated to do the best job you could possibly do under some very trying circumstances. The education you get is probably not going to prepare you for some of the obstacles or pitfalls you’ll face in life, but you have to be resilient. You have to establish your goals. You have to attack them with energy. I think farmers are not recognized for their special abilities. There are thousands more just like me doing the same darn thing. They all have the same mentality and keep at it until you succeed, don’t give up. It was Winston Churchill that famously said, “Never, never give in.” Those few words are very powerful. I look at people who have similar attitudes in life, not just in agriculture.

CG: Who are your heroes?

GL: Most of my heroes tend to be political: Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush. In agriculture, Gerry Ritz had a lot of courage. He relieved us of the burden of the CWB. (Former federal agriculture minister) Eugene Whelan was a liberal. I never agreed with a darn thing he said, but he was a big booster of agriculture and you had to respect him for that. It would be a dull world if everyone thought the same.

CG: Why is having a healthy, thriving community such a big focus for you?

GL: Let’s go back to business. If there wasn’t community, if there was no place to buy fertilizer, or crop inputs or groceries, that would be a big cost to me. I’d have to drive to Lethbridge or somewhere to get what I needed locally if only I had (a) bit of support. My kids and grandkids would have been on a bus for two hours to get to a school if there wasn’t one here. 

CG: Do you see this as your duty as a citizen of the community?

GL: Everybody has a responsibility to the country and society in one way or another. Everyone needs to do their part. I’ve always been on economic development organizations and always wanted to contribute not only to my community, but also the larger community. Rather than going outside your community for everything, let’s see what we can do within.

CG: How would describe yourself?

GL: I’ve often asked myself and others: if your grandkids were looking at your tombstone what would you like to read. My answer has always been, “He cared enough to make a difference.”

Right and wrong

CG: How do you know a business idea is right for you?

GL: I think you have to trust your gut. It’s hard to describe, it’s a feeling if it will work or won’t. If this might be good for you, then assemble a team of lawyers, accountants, knowledgeable people or anyone that might relate to the project and take that approach.

Just because you have a gut feeling and have sold yourself, you still need people to help on the due diligence.

CG: How do you know if a business idea is wrong for you?

GL: You look at the resources you have at hand. Do you have the resources for the project? Does your location suit it? What about transportation? Energy supplies? All that leads to a successful venture. 

Recently, everybody was excited about growing lupins. I was excited about it, too. However, my soil pH is too high to successfully grow them. That’s one of those things we discard. If you decide not to do something, you get on with another idea or another project. Don’t dwell on what the past held for you.

CG: How do you get other people on your side by building relationships and influence?

GL: Quite often you have a large personal network and inevitably someone within your contact list has done a similar or the exact same thing. If you have developed and held that relationship you can talk to people that have done it. It’s a proven idea. It might not even be in Alberta, it could be virtually anywhere.

Giving back

Beyond the farmgate, the most common place to find Glenn Logan is sitting around a boardroom table or speaking with politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government. That’s because he made a second unpaid career of being an industry advocate. It’s said that policy is made by those who show up and many organizations have had Logan show up for them time and time again. Below are some of his industry involvements past and present:

• Alberta Barley: Past board chair and director
• Alberta Beef Producers: Past director
• Vulcan County: Past councillor, three terms
• Alberta-British Columbia Seed Growers: Current national director, past vice-president, president and past president
• Canadian Seed Growers’ Association: Current second vice-president and director
• Ag for Life: Current board director
• Beef Information Centre: Past director
• Canadian Cattlemen’s Association: Past board director
• Bow River Irrigation District: Current board director
• Alberta 4-H Foundation: Past vice-president, president and past president
• Agriculture & Food Council of Alberta: Past board member
• SeedNet: Founding member, current director and vice-president

The post Everywhere he looks: How does this Alberta farmer find so much opportunity? appeared first on Country Guide.

If you ask a random group of people what farming is, and what role farmers play in society, you will get a wide range of answers. Unsurprisingly, though, the list will likely be topped by the idea that the primary role of a farmer is to produce food.

If you ask farmers why they farm, in addition to “feeding the world,” they will tell you of their love of the land, and how they are stewards of the soil. They will define farming by independence, hard work and self-sufficiency. Some will claim that farming is not only a job, but also a way of life. Others will emphatically argue that modern farming is no longer a lifestyle, it is a business.

At some point, most will say that there is also pride in being a farmer, the sort of almost patriotic passion that Paul Harvey’s speech “So God Made a Farmer” verbalizes.

But are these romantic notions? Do the images that farmers and society have of the industry truly reflective of modern farming? Are broad acre farmers really feeding the world, or are we just supplying commodities to be processed into foodstuffs? Are we truly stewards of the land when we knock down every tree and drain every pothole so that large modern equipment is not impeded in our quest to maximize commodity production?

Are we really self-sufficient, independent caretakers of the world? It sure doesn’t feel like it when I look at my budgets for fuel, fertilizer and equipment replacement this spring.

Are the common definitions of farming obsolete? In fact, it makes me wonder: do the ways we think about agriculture and farming limit our future opportunities and business potential? 

These questions arose as I listened to a group of farmers complaining about a solar energy project. They claimed the solar panels were a blight on the landscape and that placing them on dry prairie rangeland would threaten world food security. The conversation went on about the foolishness of solar energy in the first place.

And then it hit me. The one thing that all farmers — livestock, grain, vegetable, fibre producers, etc. — have in common is that farmers are harvesters of solar energy. Every crop we grow or pasture we graze converts solar energy into food and fuel for society’s needs. Farmers are more dependent on renewable solar energy than anyone. Farmers, in fact, are renewable energy harvesters.

It has only been in the past century that modern agriculture has become addicted to fossil fuels to power equipment and provide many of the fertilizers and inputs that we farmers rely on today. Before then, farmers grew their own fuels to feed the beasts of burden used on farm operations. In much of the world this is still the case on small-hold farms.

Then, a cheap fossil fuel-based economy provided farmers with equipment, fuels, fertilizers, etc., which allowed farm operations to expand and produce more. In fact, modern farming is so productive that we easily feed the world — or at least everyone in the world that can afford food. We are so productive that the cost of food has continually dropped. Commodity prices over the last century have not even kept up with inflation. Successful farm businesses have not been built on high commodity prices, but on increasing production to overcome rising costs and inflation.

Perhaps the best indicator of farm productivity is our market. No longer are we just feeding the world. Farmers are now harvesting solar energy to fuel the world too. In 2021, the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan’s “Biofuels Factsheet” Pub. No. CSS08-09 documented how, in the 2019-20 crop season, 35 per cent of the corn grown by U.S. farmers — a whopping 4.9 billion bushels — went for ethanol in the 201 ethanol refineries in operation in the U.S. Another 91 biodiesel plants are a major market for soybeans, canola, corn oil and livestock fats and grease.

The biofuels market has become critical to supporting the prices of all agricultural commodities. A 2006-08 study of the impact of biofuels on corn prices revealed that biofuels had raised corn prices by 20 to 50 per cent, wheat prices by one to two per cent and vegetable prices by 10 per cent.

However, that market is not without problems, and there are more clouds on the horizon. First and foremost, biofuels continue to be subsidized by governments through tax incentives and credits. And demand is ensured by mandated biofuel content standards.

More troubling is much of the corn grown for ethanol production in the U.S. Midwest is grown under irrigation. In Nebraska, for example, 780 gallons of water are required for every gallon of ethanol produced. Midwest aquifers and western rivers are being rapidly drawn down, especially by agriculture, while both rural and urban demand for water is increasing.

Current fertilization practices needed for high-production agriculture are also having an environmental impact. Fertilizer runoff is resulting in an average of 5,408 more square miles of the Gulf of Mexico being classified as hypoxic every year, resulting in injury and death of fish in this area due to algae bloom fed by the flood of ag-based nutrients.

But even more worrisome, from a farmer’s perspective, is the movement away from fossil fuels due to climate change concerns. Future electrification of motor vehicles could have a significant impact on the biofuel market for farm commodities.

The bottom line is that farmers today are once again growing their own fuels. Instead of harvesting oats to feed the horses, we are now growing corn and vegetable oils to refine into fuels to be burned in internal combustion engines. We have reached a new equilibrium of food/fuel production on farms — as long as the trends in the demand for biofuels and environmental impacts of biofuels are ignored.

But if farmers truly are business oriented, they need to be looking now at alternative crops as humanity’s demands change with respect to fossil fuel use and farming practices.

Instead of farmers locking ourselves into the belief that farmers feed the world, let’s be honest about what farmers actually are: renewable solar harvesters. Let’s at least consider the possibility that many farm areas could switch from the growing of crops for biofuel energy to directly capturing the energy from the sun with solar panels.

Last September Bill Nussey published a thoughtful article comparing the benefits of corn-grown ethanol with solar panels. He calculated an acre of Iowa corn yields 551 gallons of ethanol. However, that same acre of Iowa land covered with solar panels would produce 198,870 kilowatt hours annually.

Based on average mileage for a gas-powered car, and for an electrical vehicle, Nussey claims the energy yield from the solar panel would propel an electric car 70 times further than the acre of corn-based ethanol.

In 2012, the USDA Agricultural Research Service compared the efficiency of solar panels with photosynthesis. The bottom line is that modern solar panels can convert about 10 per cent of the solar energy they receive into useable chemical energy whereas crop photosynthesis only converts one per cent. Today, new solar panel designs can reach up to 20 per cent efficiency.

The major drawback to solar energy capture is that plants store the energy they produce in seeds and plant matter. Solar panels do not store energy so some type of energy storage system must be developed for the energy that is produced but not immediately needed.

Many who are opposed to solar energy will also point to the high cost of solar panels. Yet they ignore the costs of labour, farm equipment, crop inputs, water, transportation, and processing needed to grow, harvest and convert that plant into a food or fuel that people can use. 

The hardest part to argue against development of a solar farm is that companies are now willingly paying more to farmers interested in leasing their land for a solar production than farmers receive in crop land rental.

Without question, not all farmland is suitable or should even be considered for solar panels. But at the same time, if you consider that growing any crop is in fact harvesting solar energy, is it not appropriate to consider solar energy production as a potential “new crop” for your farm? If you live in an area of poor soils or an area that is consistently short of rainfall, could a solar farm be a way to preserve your farm and community?

History tells us that the introduction of the tractor was resisted by many farmers who continued to use horses for many years after tractors were introduced. Ignoring the potential of solar generation on farms may be just as detrimental to today’s farm businesses as ignoring tractors was when our ancestors had to decide whether to get on board with a changing world or stick with the old ways of thinking.

Society is demanding a transition from fossil fuels. As business leaders, farmers need to look for opportunities in change rather than just resist it.

Redefining what farmers do is the first step in not only finding new opportunities but telling society and governments that farmers are already doing what they are demanding. Farmers are the original renewable energy producers!

The post Is farming on the cusp of being redefined? appeared first on Country Guide.

“I’m not taking any options on or off the table,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told a briefing when asked about a carbon tax.

Psaki said President Joe Biden believed it was possible to design a carbon tax that would not violate his pledge not to raise taxes on people making $400,000 or less a year (all figures US$).

Some Democrats, including Senator Ron Wyden, have focused on a carbon tax as a possible alternative as Manchin opposes a key measure in the spending bill called the Clean Energy Payment Program (CEPP).

That measure, which would reward power utilities for investing in renewable energy such as wind and solar and fine those who do not, has been backed by Biden to achieve his climate goals including cutting U.S. emissions by about 50 per cent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels but is effectively dead, Congressional sources say.

Manchin indicated a carbon tax was not in play.

“The carbon tax is not on the board at all,” he told reporters. Manchin, a fellow Democrat, is a centrist from West Virginia, the top U.S. coal producing state after Wyoming.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Progressive Caucus, told reporters that a carbon tax did not come up in a meeting she and other Democrats held with Biden at the White House on Tuesday.

Under a carbon tax, the government sets a gradually rising price for each ton of greenhouse gas that polluters emit, incentivizing industries to move to cleaner energy sources.

One source familiar with discussions in Congress around a carbon tax said the Senate finance committee is weighing a fee in the range of $15-$18 per tonne of CO2 that would steadily rise over the years. Much of the revenue would be returned to consumers as cash payments.

With the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow due to begin in less than two weeks, the White House has been making the case that it can reach Biden’s climate goals even if the legislation does not have everything Biden wanted, including the CEPP.

Psaki cited a report from Rhodium Group, an independent research organization, to underscore White House confidence that Biden’s goals can be met.

Biden moved to re-enter the Paris climate agreement on his first day in office, but he had relied on Congress to deliver legislation to deliver a bulk of the emissions reductions he pledged by the end of the decade.

The back-and-forth among his fellow Democrats in Congress over his bills has threatened to undermine his efforts to reassure the world that he can deliver the U.S. national pledge to slash emissions up to 52 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

If Congress is forced to drop certain climate measures, the legislation would still take huge steps on global warming with incentives for electric vehicles and expanded tax credits for renewable power such as wind and solar, according to John Larsen, an author of the report.

“I’m much more worried about no deal than trimmed down bills,” he said.

Manchin urged lawmakers to pass the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill before the wider spending bill and in time for the U.N. climate talks that start at the end of the month.

Progressive Democrats have said the bills should be passed together to ensure that the debate on wider legislation on climate and social programs does not slip into next year, or get abandoned altogether.

“We have the trust in each other, we should be able to vote immediately on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is a tremendous piece of legislation for the president to take with him to Glasgow,” Manchin told reporters.

— Reporting for Reuters by Timothy Gardner, Trevor Hunnicutt, Jeff Mason and Valerie Volcovici.

The post White House not ruling out a U.S. carbon tax appeared first on Country Guide.

As part of the same plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Montreal-based Caisse plans to hold green assets worth $54 billion by 2025 and dedicate $10 billion to decarbonize carbon-emitting sectors.

Pension funds globally are under pressure to act on climate change, with several schemes announcing divestments from fossil fuel companies this year.

The new emissions targets for Caisse, which has $390 billion in assets, follow the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OTPP)’s Sept. 16 announcement of new interim plans to cut emissions.

While oil production assets currently make up one per cent of Caisse’s portfolio, the pension fund said it wants to divest it to avoid contributing to growth in global oil supply.

At the same time, it aims to boost the supply of renewable energy, sustainable transportation and real estate and invest in new sectors, such as green hydrogen, batteries, electrification of transport and carbon capture.

Caisse plans to move toward net zero emissions through investments in less carbon-intense assets, carbon budgets for each investment team and bonuses tied to climate targets.

“With this new strategy, we are demonstrating our leadership as an investor and enter the next stage of climate investing,” Charles Emond, president and CEO of Caisse, said in the statement.

“We believe this is in the interests of our depositors, our portfolio companies and the communities we invest in.”

The pension said Tuesday it had exceeded its climate targets, reducing the portfolio’s carbon intensity by 38 per cent since 2017.

— Reporting for Reuters by Maiya Keidan.

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“We know it is very difficult to achieve this,” CEO Gilberto Tomazoni said in an interview. “It will challenge the entire company.”

JBS said in 2019 that its own operations produce an estimated 4.6 million tonnes of carbon emissions from industrial facilities and 1.6 million tonnes from energy use.

But some 90 per cent of overall JBS emissions come from its supply chain, Tomazoni said, without giving a specific figure. He said traditional cattle rearing emits 40-45 tonnes of carbon equivalent per tonne of meat produced.

Brazil is home to one of world’s largest commercial herds, and new cattle ranches are a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, an essential bulwark against catastrophic climate change.

Methane, a natural byproduct of digestion in cows and other ruminants, is also a major source of greenhouse emissions. About a third of greenhouse emissions from agricultural production, excluding land-use change, comes from methane released by cows, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute.

The 2040 target announced by JBS comes amid a growing backlash from consumers and investors threatening to boycott or divest from companies contributing to deforestation in Brazil.

As part of its plan, JBS vowed to invest US$1 billion over the next decade in innovations aimed at reducing carbon emissions in its global operations. The commitment also involves a pledge to pay for reforestation and forest restoration initiatives.

The company has also promised to stop processing cattle coming from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon by 2025 and in other Brazilian biomes by 2030. Those targets also reflect when JBS will be able to track both its direct suppliers and their suppliers.

In the long run, JBS said the adoption of intensive cattle farming will replace the sprawling ranches that now dominate Brazil’s current approach, helping to cut emissions.

JBS said also that it will be using 100 per cent renewable energy worldwide by 2040, while executives’ variable pay will be measured against the delivery of environmental goals.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ana Mano and Nayara Figueiredo.

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The former U.S. vice-president has pledged support for advanced biofuels as part of his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

But Biden, who leads the crowded Democratic field in opinion polls in Iowa and nationally, faces lingering questions in the U.S. Farm Belt over his push in 2014 as President Barack Obama’s No. 2 to slash the amount of corn-based ethanol that refiners must blend into the country’s fuel supply.

Biden, a former U.S. senator from Delaware, was considered instrumental in orchestrating the blending cuts as a way to help struggling refineries on the East Coast deal with rising compliance costs under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a 2005 law requiring oil companies to blend increasing volumes of ethanol and other biofuels into fuel, Reuters previously reported.

A federal court struck down the cuts in 2016. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has yet to make the biofuel industry whole for the lost gallons despite repeated promises to do so.

That could hurt Biden in Iowa, where he kicked off a campaign tour on Tuesday. The state is America’s top corn and ethanol producer, with 44 biofuel plants that help support more than 40,000 jobs. It holds the first presidential nominating contest in 2020, and any Democratic candidate who wants to win that vote and peel off some of Republican President Donald Trump’s Iowa support in the general election will likely have trouble if lukewarm on biofuels.

“I really hope we can finally get some answers to what happened,” said Dave Walton, a farmer who grows corn, soybeans and livestock. “Right now, I am suspicious of anything Biden will say about his commitment to ethanol, but we do need to hear from him.”

Iowa farmers and ethanol producers sent a letter, seen by Reuters, to Biden in 2014 asking him to explain his actions. They also requested a meeting that never materialized, according to those who sought it.

The RFS creates demand for Walton’s corn, lifting prices, while ethanol production results in a byproduct that serves as cheap feed for his livestock. Walton, a registered independent who voted for Trump in 2016, says his vote is up for grabs in November 2020 because of the president’s trade wars and mixed support of the RFS.

Biden released a 22-page climate policy proposal earlier this month that promised net-zero emissions and a 100 per cent clean-energy economy by 2050, largely through taxpayer investments in renewable energy and electric car infrastructure. He promised to refuse campaign contributions from oil and gas executives and strengthen regulation of oil companies.

The proposal’s roughly 10,400 words did not include “ethanol,” although Biden did explicitly support advanced biofuels, which fall under the RFS umbrella.

In an email on Monday, the Biden campaign did not comment on his role or motivations in the 2014 episode. The campaign said the country’s energy revolution must be “fought for and with our farmers.”

“By doubling down on our national renewable fuel standard obligations and implementing stronger, bolder commitments that invest in ethanol and biofuels, we can loosen big oil’s grip on our nation while spurring economic growth in areas hard-hit by Trump’s trade war,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.

Backing biofuels

In Iowa, ethanol is not as much a threshold Democratic Party issue as abortion rights or gun control.

Ethanol is opposed by many Democrats, who see it as maintaining a reliance on fossil fuels and combustible engine vehicles. Environmentalists argue that using land to grow corn for fuel also ruins natural habitats. Studies on the environmental benefits of ethanol versus gasoline in car engines have shown mixed results.

But backing biofuels typically is important for political success in the state, said Cary Covington, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.

“In the general election, Iowa’s largely Republican agricultural community is going to be less inclined to vote for a Democrat if they don’t support ethanol. It’s like, don’t poke the bear and give them a reason to be against you,” Covington said.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has made success in Iowa a priority, stands out among top Democratic contenders as the most full-throated supporter of the state’s ethanol industry.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont supported the RFS during the 2016 campaign, and at least seven Democratic candidates have toured Iowa ethanol facilities.

Ahead of a visit to an ethanol plant in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Tuesday, Trump took a jab at Biden. The president highlighted his administration’s lifting of a ban on summer sales of higher ethanol blends of gasoline.

“We gave them ethanol, which nobody was ever going to do, which Biden didn’t do in eight years as vice-president,” Trump said.

While Iowa farmers welcome Trump’s move, they have argued its impact is negated by the administration giving exemptions to the nation’s biofuel laws to small refineries, including those owned by oil majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor and agriculture secretary under Obama, said the concerns over Biden’s ethanol bona fides were “unfounded.” He said the Obama administration was a friend of the biofuels industry on a number of fronts, including funding new infrastructure for higher ethanol blends of gasoline.

“I think to focus on one action and ignore all the good the Obama administration did for the biofuel industry is unfair,” said Vilsack, an informal adviser to a slew of Democratic candidates who want to better connect with rural Americans.

Monte Shaw, head of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said it was true the Obama administration supported the biofuels industry. But he said he was aware of only one instance where Biden intervened on the issue, and that was to lower targets.

“If he was involved in more, we’d love to hear about it. The best thing he can do is come to Iowa, sit down with key players in the industry and explain what happened,” Shaw said.

— Jarrett Renshaw is a Reuters correspondent covering U.S. energy policy and the 2020 U.S. election campaign from New York.

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In the shuffle, following the departure of Treasury Board president Scott Brison from cabinet, Trudeau on Monday called up Bernadette Jordan, MP for the southern Nova Scotia riding of South Shore-St.Margaret’s, to head a newly created portfolio as minister of rural economic development.

The appointment is a first in that Jordan becomes the first-ever female federal cabinet minister representing a Nova Scotia riding. A dedicated federal portfolio for rural economic development isn’t technically a first, although one hasn’t existed since the forestry and rural development department of 1966-69.

In her new role Jordan is expected to oversee “the creation of a rural development strategy to spur economic growth and create good, middle-class jobs in rural Canada,” Trudeau’s office said in a release Monday.

“She will also take action to bring high-speed internet to more rural households and businesses, and work with municipalities, provinces, territories and Indigenous partners to meet the unique and diverse infrastructure needs of rural communities.”

Before her election to the Commons in 2015, Jordan served as a development officer for the Health Services Foundation in Bridgewater, N.S.

Monday’s appointment is a promotion for Jordan, who from last August until now had served as parliamentary secretary for the minister of democratic institutions, Ontario MP Karina Gould.

As an MP, Jordan has also chaired the Atlantic Liberal caucus and served a stint last year as chair the Commons standing committee on fisheries and oceans.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, in a separate release Monday, hailed the creation of the new ministerial position as “clearly demonstrat(ing) the importance of our rural communities” and their businesses.

“As a rural-based industry, the competitiveness of Canada’s agri-food industry is intimately connected to the vibrancy of rural communities and critically important to Canada’s economic growth,” the CFA said.

“We look forward to working with Minister Jordan and discussing the CFA’s key rural priorities which include introducing long-term, predictable infrastructure funding with provisions to address the full breadth of rural and agricultural infrastructure needs,” CFA president Ron Bonnett said in the release.

Among those needs, he said, are dealing with “transportation bottlenecks” as well as providing “access to clean water and wastewater treatment, infrastructure that leverages on-farm renewable energy production and enables access to natural gas, and access to modern, affordable high-speed internet.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Under a plan several years in the making, the fast-food company — along with its franchisees and suppliers — aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by roughly one third, preventing 150 million tonnes of them from being released into the atmosphere by 2030.

“To meet this goal, we will source our food responsibly, promote renewable energy and use it efficiently, and reduce waste and increase recycling,” McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook said.

The commitment comes as U.S. President Donald Trump works to weaken Obama-era efforts to combat climate change. Trump decided last year to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate pact.

Meat processor Tyson Foods, one of McDonald’s suppliers, is among the hundreds of companies that already have committed to fight climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

McDonald’s said it would put the greatest emphasis on the largest contributors to its carbon footprint: beef production, restaurant energy usage and sourcing, packaging and waste. Those segments combined account for about 64 per cent of McDonald’s global emissions, the company said.

The company said its plan involves “elevating and supporting sustainable agriculture practices,” noting its release last year of its 2020 goals for beef sustainability, to “proactively identify, share and scale beef production’s most sustainable practices.”

McDonald’s said Tuesday it also plans to install energy-efficient lighting and kitchen equipment, support sustainable packaging and encourage recycling in its restaurants.

Between 2015 and 2030, McDonald’s and its partners intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to its restaurants and offices by 36 per cent. The company also aims to reduce emissions intensity per tonne of food and packaging by 31 per cent during that time frame.

McDonald’s program was approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, a collaboration between the World Resources Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and the United Nations Global Compact, which help companies address climate change.

“We are about halfway there already on (total) packaging and waste,” Francesca DeBiase, McDonald’s chief supply chain and sustainability officer.

McDonald’s Canada, in a separate statement Tuesday, said it will work with its franchisees and suppliers “to develop plans to address the largest segments of our carbon footprint.”

The Canadian arm said it would work with franchisees to continue setting up energy reduction measures such as LED lighting, low oil volume fryers and other “high efficiency” technologies.

It also noted its participation in the first-ever beef sustainability pilot in Canada, which ran from 2014 to 2016 and “verified key sustainability outcomes across all aspects of beef production, including well-managed grazing systems and the protection of waterways.”

The global chain said the reductions announced Tuesday are the equivalent of taking 32 million passenger cars off the road for an entire year or planting 3.8 billion trees and growing them for 10 years.

The company said its target “will enable McDonald’s to grow as a business without growing its emissions.”

CEO Easterbrook, who also has committed to reducing antibiotic use in chicken and cutting artificial ingredients, said the costs would not be disruptive.

“We’re not expecting any substantial shift in business financials either at the corporate or restaurant level,” Easterbrook said.

— Lisa Baertlein is a Reuters correspondent covering the U.S. restaurant and grocery sectors from Los Angeles. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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