This report briefly reviews the status of climate science, international negotiations, and congressional activity focused specifically on climate change.

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In the 108th Congress, debate over energy efficiency programs has focused on budget, oil, natural gas, and electricity issues, and provisions in the omnibus energy policy bill, S. 2095, H.R. 6, and S. 14/S. 1149. The Bush Administration’s FY2005 budget request for the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy Efficiency Program sought $875.9 million, including $543.9 for R&D and $332.0 million for grants. In the first session, the omnibus energy bill (H.R. 6) had several significant tax and regulatory measures for energy efficiency. It did not pass the Senate due to concerns about cost and an MTBE “safe harbor” provision.

Renewable energy is derived from resources that are generally not depleted by human use, such as the sun, wind, and water movement. This report discusses various aspects of policy regarding renewable energy including tax credits and budget legislation.

In the second session, Congress continues to confront an array of issues related to the public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the national forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service (FS). The Administration continues to address public lands and national forests through budgetary, regulatory, and other actions. Several key issues of ongoing congressional and administrative interest are covered in this report.

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This report focuses on the commission’s proposal, to consolidate appropriation and authorization functions in the existing Senate and House Select Intelligence Committees. The report (1) describes the proposal; (2) compares it to the existing committee system; (3) describes a 19th century precedent for consolidation; (4) provides selected arguments in favor of consolidation as well as against; (5) discusses two alternatives to consolidating authorization and appropriation functions: a Joint Committee on Intelligence and separate intelligence appropriations subcommittees in the Senate and House Committees on Appropriations; and (6) describes current legislation.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Concert performed in UNT College of Music Recital Hall on October 29, 2004 at 8:00 pm.

"The report reviews the management and performance of the Victoria Independent School District's (VISD's) education, financial, and operational functions."

A weekly student newspaper from the Rice University in Houston, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Semiweekly newspaper from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas that includes local, national, and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

Article on the correlation and prediction of partition coefficients between the gas phase and water, and the solvents dodecane and undecane.

The standard method of joining plastic pipe in the field is the butt fusion process. As in any pipeline application, joint quality greatly affects overall operational safety of the system. Currently no simple, reliable, cost effective method of assessing the quality of fusion joints in the field exists. Visual examination and pressure testing are current non-destructive approaches, which do not provide any assurance about the long-term pipeline performance. This project will develop, demonstrate, and validate an in-situ non-destructive inspection method for butt fusion joints in gas distribution plastic pipelines. The inspection system will include a laser based image-recognition system that will automatically generate and interpret digital images of pipe joints and assign them a pass/fail rating, which eliminates operator bias in evaluating joint quality. A Weld Zone Inspection Method (WZIM) is being developed in which local heat is applied to the joint region to relax the residual stresses formed by the original joining operation and reveal the surface condition of the joint. In cases where the joint is not formed under optimal conditions, and the intermolecular forces between contacting surfaces are not strong enough, the relaxation of macromolecules in the surface layer causes the material to pull back, revealing a …

This is the Final Report of the ''Multi-Pollutant Control Using Membrane-Based Up-flow Wet Electrostatic Precipitation'' project funded by the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory under DOE Award No. DE-FC26-02NT41592 to Croll-Reynolds Clean Air Technologies (CRCAT). In this 18 month project, CRCAT and its team members conducted detailed emission tests of metallic and new membrane collection material within a wet electrostatic precipitator (WESP) at First Energy's Penn Power's Bruce Mansfield (BMP) plant in Shippingport, Pa. The Membrane WESP was designed to be as similar as the metallic WESP in terms of collection area, air-flow, and electrical characteristics. Both units are two-field units. The membrane unit was installed during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2003. Testing of the metallic unit was performed to create a baseline since the Mansfield plant had installed selective catalytic reduction equipment for NOx control and a sodium bisulfate injection system for SO3 control during the spring of 2003. Tests results on the metallic WESP were consistent with previous testing for PM2.5, SO3 mist and mercury. Testing on the membrane WESP demonstrated no adverse impact and equivalent removal efficiencies as that of the metallic WESP. Testing on both units was performed at 8,000 acfm …

This project develops a new and unique obstacle detection sensor for horizontal directional drilling (HDD) equipment. The development of this new technology will greatly improve the reliability and safety of natural gas HDD construction practices. This sensor utilizes a differential soil impedance measurement technique that will be sensitive to the presence of plastic and ceramic, as well as metallic obstacles. The use of HDD equipment has risen significantly in the gas industry because HDD provides a much more cost-effective and less disruptive method for gas pipe installation than older, trenching methods. However, there have been isolated strikes of underground utilities by HDD equipment, which may have been avoided if methods were available to detect other underground obstacles when using HDD systems. GTI advisors from the gas industry have ranked the value of solving the obstacle detection problem as the most important research and development project for GTI to pursue using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) funds available through its industry partner, GRI. GTI proposes to develop a prototype down-hole sensor system that is simple and compact. The sensor utilizes an impedance measurement technique that is sensitive to the presence of metallic or non-metallic objects in the proximity of the HDD …

Venoco Inc, intends to re-develop the Monterey Formation, a Class III basin reservoir, at South Ellwood Field, Offshore Santa Barbara, California. Well productivity in this field varies significantly. Cumulative Monterey production for individual wells has ranged from 260 STB to 8,700,000 STB. Productivity is primarily affected by how well the well path connects with the local fracture system and the degree of aquifer support. Cumulative oil recovery to date is a small percentage of the original oil in place. To embark upon successful re-development and to optimize reservoir management, Venoco intends to investigate, map and characterize field fracture patterns and the reservoir conduit system. State of the art borehole imaging technologies including FMI, dipole sonic and cross-well seismic, interference tests and production logs will be employed to characterize fractures and micro faults. These data along with the existing database will be used for construction of a novel geologic model of the fracture network. Development of an innovative fracture network reservoir simulator is proposed to monitor and manage the aquifer's role in pressure maintenance and water production. The new fracture simulation model will be used for both planning optimal paths for new wells and improving ultimate recovery. In the second phase …

The objective of this program is to develop a system to both monitor the vibration of a bottomhole assembly, and to adjust the properties of an active damper in response to these measured vibrations. Phase I of this program, which entailed modeling and design of the necessary subsystems and design, manufacture and test of a full laboratory prototype, was completed on May 31, 2004. Phase II began on June 1, and the first month's effort were reported in the seventh quarterly report on the project.1 The principal objectives of Phase II are: more extensive laboratory testing, including the evaluation of different feedback algorithms for control of the damper; design and manufacture of a field prototype system; and, testing of the field prototype in drilling laboratories and test wells. The redesign and upgrade of the laboratory prototype was completed on schedule during this period, and assembly was complete at the end of this period. Testing will begin during the first week of October. This aspect of the project is thus approximately six weeks behind schedule. Design of the field prototype is progressing per schedule.

In 2001, the Nevada Legislature passed an aggressive renewable portfolio standard (Nevada RPS) that called for 5% of each major utility's resource mix to come from eligible renewable energy by 2003, rising by 2% every two years to 15% by 2013. Of the RPS standard, 5% per year must come from solar energy. The early performance of the Nevada RPS is generally considered to be disappointing. So far, only a small quantity of electricity state wide has been generated by new renewable energy systems. The utilities and many other stakeholders appear to agree that the utilities, which were unable to fully comply with the RPS in 2003, will continue to have difficulty complying in 2004 and 2005, and perhaps beyond. To date, there have been several efforts to improve compliance with the RPS (such as California and New Mexico). Other states in the region are also motivated to develop their renewable resources, and some have adopted RPS policies. A workshop as held on November 4, 2004 in Reno in order to address additional measures available to strengthen the Nevada RPS, and to consider the implications and potential interaction with RPS policies in nearby states. The purpose of this report is …

This 1st quarterly Technical Progress Report for the Lignite Fuel Enhancement Project explains what has transpired since Great River Energy was selected to negotiate the Cooperative agreement in February of 2003. The report will summarize Pre-award activities and any other activity since signature of the contract on July 9th of this year. It also summarizes the subsequent purchasing activity and final dryer/process design up to September 30th of 2004.

This is the seventh Quarterly Technical Report for DOE Cooperative Agreement No: DE-FC26-03NT41728. The objective of this program is to measure the oxidation of mercury in flue gas across SCR catalyst in a coal-fired power plant burning low rank fuels using a slipstream reactor containing multiple commercial catalysts in parallel. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Argillon GmbH are providing co-funding for this program. This program contains multiple tasks and good progress is being made on all fronts. During this quarter, a model of Hg oxidation across SCRs was formulated based on full-scale data. The model took into account the effects of temperature, space velocity, catalyst type and HCl concentration in the flue gas.

The power industry in the U.S. is faced with meeting new regulations to reduce the emissions of mercury compounds from coal-fired plants. These regulations are directed at the existing fleet of nearly 1,100 boilers. These plants are relatively old with an average age of over 40 years. Although most of these units are capable of operating for many additional years, there is a desire to minimize large capital expenditures because of the reduced (and unknown) remaining life of the plant to amortize the project. Injecting a sorbent such as powdered activated carbon into the flue gas represents one of the simplest and most mature approaches to controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers. The overall objective of the test program described in this quarterly report is to evaluate the capabilities of activated carbon injection at four plants with configurations that together represent 78% of the existing coal-fired generation plants. This technology was successfully evaluated in NETL's Phase I tests at scales up to 150 MW, on plants burning subbituminous and bituminous coals and with ESPs and fabric filters. The tests also identified issues that still need to be addressed, such as evaluating performance on other configurations, optimizing sorbent usage (costs), and …

This report discusses projected agricultural imports and exports for FY2002, as well as legislation that deals with federal programs in support of agricultural exports and federal aid dedicated to farms and agricultural reform.