According to a new report published by Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group, Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, is one of the top 100 recipients of campaign funds from the natural gas industry.

As the study reports, natural gas interests have spent “more than $747 million during a 10-year campaign … to avoid government regulation of hydraulic ‘fracking,’ a fast-growing and environmentally risky process” that aims to tap underground gas reserves.

The toxic chemicals commonly used during fracking procedures can enter an area’s underground drinking water supply or later be dumped as wastewater into waterways around the country.

“A faction of the natural gas industry has directed more than $20 million to the campaigns of current members of Congress,” reads the report, “and put $726 million into lobbying aimed at shielding itself from oversight. ”

Mica, number 89 on the list of top contributors, received a total of $67,600 from natural gas interests. The vast majority of that ($57,500) came from PACs, while $10,100 came from individuals working for the industry.

According to the report, many of the natural gas industry’s political donations favor lawmakers, like Mica, who supported the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted fracking from regulations under the Safe Drinking Act. A resolution that aims to repeal that exemption (and thus require the contents of fracking fluids to be publicly disclosed) was recently introduced in the House, by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Co. The resolution has 63 co-sponsors, Mica not among them.

“Players in this industry have pumped cash into Congress in the same way they pump toxic chemicals into underground rock formations to free trapped gas,” said Common Cause President Bob Edgar in a press release. “And as fracking for gas releases toxic chemicals into groundwater and streams, the industry’s political fracking for support is toxic to efforts for a cleaner environment and relief from our dependence on fossil fuels.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is slated to publish new findings on the potential dangers of fracking in 2012. The forthcoming report, which could shape public opinion about the practice, is likely an incentive for the industry to pump more money into campaigns before the New Year.

Those two government initiatives have paid big dividends for the Hawkeye State, spurring major growth in the wind and renewable fuels industries.

The wind energy industry employs about 3,000 people in Iowa and accounts for 20 percent of all electricity generated in the state, according to the Iowa Wind Energy Association. And the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association says biofuels support 83,000 jobs in the state, adding nearly $12 billion to Iowa’s GDP.

But some candidates said they would work to greatly limit or even do away with the programs.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is against both wind energy tax credits and a renewable fuel standard, at least at the federal level.

“I happen to believe the federal government needs to be completely out of the energy business, picking winners and losers,” he said.

Perry said if states want to compete against each other by putting similar credits or standards in place, “that is a correct and proper role for the state.”

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she’d also like to see those programs eliminated, along with subsidies for other forms of energy.

“What I would like to do is a re-examination of those credits because quite frankly I’d like to pull them back and let these industries be more self-supporting and stand on their own,” Bachmann said.

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) said he supports keeping a renewable fuel standard in place because of its impact on clean air. But he would like to see incentives for ethanol and other forms of energy phased out over a five-year period.

“I believe we have to get rid of all tax incentives for all energy. I believe we need to have a level playing field,” Santorum said.

At the other end of the spectrum was former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), who said he’d much rather see money for energy go to Iowa and South Dakota than overseas.

“I’d like to see some kind of encouragement for every vehicle to have flex-fuel capabilities and every gas station to be a fuel station, not just a gas station,” he said.

Gingrich also called for long term renewals of tax credits, rather than every year or two.

“I would like to see a minimum 10 years tax credits with a rolling annual renewal like football coaches,” he said. “That’s a pretty good model to keep people focused.”

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was also at the forum but didn’t address the topic. National frontrunners Herman Cain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney didn’t attend the event.

Branstad today announced the facility, which will produce amino acids through fermentation technologies. It will be located next to the Cargill facility, and Branstad said he believes other companies will also locate in the area.

“The location will be right next to Cargill and it will be the beginning of a whole bio-refinery complex,” he said. “I think Cargill envisions this to a be bioscience complex similar to what they already have in Eddyville, Iowa and in Blair, Neb.”

The Iowa Economic Development Authority Board approved $1.8 million in direct assistance and tax incentives for the project, and additional incentives are expected from Webster County and an Iowa DOT RISE (Revitalize Iowa’s Sound Economy) grant.

State Sen. Rob Hogg (Photo: Iowa Senate Democrats)

State Sen. Rob Hogg (D-Cedar Rapids) said the new jobs are great news but the governor is still nowhere close to meeting his campaign promise and is actually going in the wrong direction.

“I think he came in promising that he’d be able to do things with job creation and I think the promise was unrealistic,” Hogg said. “I think it was a campaign gimmick to put some number out there and raise people’s hopes to win an election.”

Branstad and Debi Durham, head of the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress, met with CJ Cheiljedang representatives in January. Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds then met with them on a trade trip in June, and Branstad visited with them again on his September trade mission to Asia.

“It’s a major investment and it is a result of the direct and hands-on effort that we’ve made at economic development,” he said.

But Hogg said at nine months into Branstad’s administration the state should have 30,000 new jobs. His tally puts the state 15,000 jobs fewer than when he took office in January, and Hogg said cuts to education and economic development will hinder that into the future.

“There’s been this series of things where he’s kind of come in with this new sheriff approach,” Hogg said. “He wants to run everything his own way and the problem with that is we need a bipartisan economic development strategy. My recollection was with the former governor we were having announcements like that every month at least. I haven’t heard that from Governor Branstad because I think we’ve been under-investing in our economic development strategy as a state.”

Branstad also announced today an executive order to create the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress board, a 15-member body including the chair of the economic authority board; head of the Iowa Innovation Corporation; director of Economic Development Authority Board; and the governor or his designee.

Branstad said the 11 other members of the board — which he will appoint without Senate confirmation — will be individuals who are actively engaged in the private, for-profit sector of the economy or have similar experience. The board’s goal is to develop a strategic vision for economic development and private sector job creation.

In a statement this week the company said that it plans to focus resources on iron mining, its core business.

The facility, located at the Telkite Technology Park near Sawyer International Airport in Marquette, Mich., was constructed to produce high-energy, low-emission biofuel cubes from sustainably collected wood and agricultural feed stocks. Since initial production the plant has not performed to design capacity, nor at a production level that justifies continued operation.

The company, which delivered its first load of biofuel cubes to the Marquette Board of Light and Power this summer, said it will try to find new positions for the 30 people who work at the biomass plant.

No public funds were used in the construction or operation of the plant, the company said.

Other biomass projects are awash in public dollars.

On the eastern side of the Upper Peninsula in Kinross the Mascoma corporation and logging company J.M. Longyear plan to produce 40 million gallons of ethanol annually at the Frontier biofuel refinery project.

That project is expected to receive more than $100 million in public funds as a renewable energy demonstration project.

Some of those cuts include:

_ Subsidies for coal, gas and oil: Fossil fuel companies don’t need taxpayer subsidies because they’re highly profitable, the report argues.

Also for the chopping block, the report argues, is President Barack Obama’s proposed “clean energy standard,” which would mandate use of energy from renewable energy, nuclear, natural gas and “clean coal.” The report says it locks the nation into forms of polluting energy and would raise prices.

_ Nuclear loan guarantees: The report says that the industry is mature and should be able to attract its own investment…

_ Biofuels subsides: Get rid of the ethanol tax credit and the Renewable Fuels Standard, which mandates increasing use of biofuels, because biofuels should be allowed to compete in the market without government help, it argues.

It also would cut billions of dollars in subsidies for advanced biofuels and for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal and storing them underground.

The report also calls for cuts to farm subsidies and crop insurance, highway projects, federally-backed flood insurance, and the use of public lands for livestock, mining and timber.

Harkin’s comments are certain to rankle environmentalists and many in the oil industry, who have criticized a recent decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to allow higher blends of ethanol in newer vehicles, citing greenhouse gas concerns and ethanol’s impact on engines.

“What’s missing from this bill is any mention of biofuels and what biofuels can contribute to our energy independence in this country,” Harkin, one of the most outspoken proponents of biofuels, said on the Senate floor today.

He continued:

So, while I most certainly will vote for a motion to proceed because I think we should proceed to it, I’ll say at the outset that major changes will need to be made to this bill before it can earn my support on final passage.

Harkin also argued that expanding ethanol use would be cheaper than encouraging natural gas vehicles because it would require fewer infrastructure investments.

But natural gas, every station would have to put in a big compressed tank under a lot of pressure. That would then have to be transferred to a compressed tank, a very strong tank in your car. There would have to be some sort of nozzle to do that. It wouldn’t just be having to put gasoline in an engine. So a whole new infrastructure would have to be built to accomplish this. No new infrastructure would have to be built to put biofuels in your car.

Harkin specifically called for provisions in the bill that would increase the number of flex-fuel vehicles and expand the number of biofuels fueling stations and pipelines.

Here’s the full audio of his remarks.

An ethanol production plant in South Dakota (iStockphoto)

Before the American Clean Energy and Security Act could reach the House floor for a vote on June 26, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) took to the podium and launched an improvised filibuster in protest of last-minute additions to the bill by the Democratic leadership. For over an hour, he read passages from the more than 300 pages of amendments, lambasting provision after provision on behalf of his frustrated Republican colleagues who balk at the expansion of energy regulation.

Now, as the Senate takes up debate on the legislation, the objections to some of these late changes are coming from a very different camp: environmental advocacy groups.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

One of the most important amendments to the cap-and-trade bill, which seeks to lower the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and promote alternative energy sources, represents a compromise between the bill’s architects and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who threatened to block passage if concessions were not made to agricultural interests. The amendment significantly reduces the criteria that biofuels, such as ethanol and wood pellets, would have to meet in order to be considered “renewable” — a victory for farmers who grow these materials.

But a study by the National Resources Defense Council shows that these changes could reduce the emissions-cutting effects of the legislation by as much as a third, thereby undermining the bill’s central aim.

“The ACES bill is supposed to require a 17 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020,” David Hawkins, director of climate programs at the NRDC, stated in his written testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday. “Because of the biomass loophole in the House-passed bill, the real reduction achieved could be far less — as little as 11 percent.”

In an ideal world, biofuels would produce no net emissions, since when plants grow, they take carbon out of the environment, and when they are burned, they release that carbon back into the air. However, there can be indirect contributions to greenhouse gas emissions — for example, if the land on which crops for biofuels are planted would otherwise have been used for carbon-reducing trees, or for food that is then instead planted on a freshly cleared rainforest in South America.

The version of the bill passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee tried to enforce biofuel carbon-neutrality by factoring in these indirect effects on emissions and restricting the conditions under which biofuels would be considered renewable. The Peterson amendment stripped the bill of several of these provisions and prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from accounting for indirect land use issues outside the United States for the next five years. According to Peterson and his backers, indirect land use is difficult to calculate, and the EPA will need some time to properly assess its impact.

The legislation establishes a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions and requires polluters to purchase allowances for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit. However, Hawkins charges that under the House bill, power plants could reduce their need to buy carbon allowances without actually cutting back on emissions.

“If a coal power plant replaces half of its coal with biomass, it has to hold carbon allowances for only half of its pollution,” he said in his statement to the Senate. “This makes sense only on the assumption that 100 percent of the carbon dioxide released when the biomass is burned was taken up from the atmosphere during its production.”

Nathanael Greene, director of renewable energy policy at the NRDC, concurred with his colleague. “In a worst-case scenario,” Greene said, “you’re going out to an old-growth forest that’s sequestered carbon over hundreds of years,” he said. “You take that, you chop that down, you burn that, and from the atmosphere perspective, it’s exactly the same as burning coal. In that case, it really doesn’t matter that you’re displacing coal. You’re adding just as much carbon to the landscape.”

The NRDC study on the effects of the lower biofuel restrictions was conducted about a month ago, but the figures were not released until Hawkins’ testimony on Tuesday before the Environment and Public Works Committee, according to Greene, who helped produce the study. Hawkins could not be reached for comment.

The 11-percent effective emissions reduction figure invoked by Hawkins represents the low end of the potential range calculated by NRDC; more likely, the number would be around 14 percent. Both figures are below the 17-percent target recommended by President Obama and prescribed by the legislation, which itself is too low for many scientists and environmental advocates.

Rolf Skar, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace, worries that additional support for biofuels could reduce the incentives for cleaner energy sources, such as wind and solar. “Putting them in the mix here just means that they’re going to substitute for windmills and other true sources of renewable energy,” he said, adding that the Peterson amendment “was clearly based on politics, and not science.”

On the other side of the debate, the farm lobby has cheered Peterson’s efforts. Farmers could derive substantial income from provisions that subsidize the production of biofuels.

“As a general proposition, we support what Mr. Peterson got in the House bill,” said Paul Schlegel, director of public policy at the American Farm Bureau. But he added that the Bureau opposes cap-and-trade legislation overall due to its costs for farmers and consumers of energy.

In a statement following the passage of the House bill, Peterson said, “This bill promotes homegrown, clean burning renewable fuels, which is one of the best things we can do for the economy and the environment.” Peterson’s office did not respond to a request for further comment.

Many environmentalists still hold out hope that the biofuels provision will be changed in the Senate.

Josh Dorner of the Sierra Club is optimistic that given the relatively liberal composition of the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee’s Democratic membership, the committee might be able to strengthen the biofuels language in ways the House could not. “If you look at the EPW Committee compared to the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, it’s a much more hospitable environment,” he said.

Still, there is already evidence that the fight to maintain the farm-friendly biofuel provisions could be bipartisan. On Wednesday, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) stated his intent to keep all of Peterson’s provisions in the Senate version of the bill, and to add “more allocations and allowances” for agriculture.

“Farm interests probably have a stronger hand in the Senate,” Dorner conceded, “given that people in nearly every state have some sort of agricultural interest.”

President Barack Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (WDCpix)

Even as some House Democrats moved closer last week to installing first-of-a-kind limits on the carbon emissions blamed for global warming, others are in a full-court press to kill a separate White House effort to curb those same greenhouse gasses.

The episode is just the latest in a series of confrontations between liberal Democrats who favor strict emission-cutting reforms and a number of moderates who have sided with the various industries that would be affected by the changes. Unfortunately for environmentalists, the moderates, thus far, are winning the fight.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

On Thursday, for example, the Energy and Commerce Committee passed sweeping climate change legislation sponsored by Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) — but not before the proposal was diluted to satisfy panel Democrats representing the coal, oil and automobile industries. As a result of the changes, many environmental groups are opposing the Waxman bill outright.

In the latest episode, most members of the House Agricultural Committee contend that newly proposed White House emission rules for biofuel producers would hobble the industry and increase the nation’s reliance on imported fossil fuels. Similar to the earlier E&C debate — where key Democrats leveraged their votes in order to water down Waxman’s bill — many of the Democrats on the Agriculture panel are poised to join Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) in opposing the Waxman bill unless something is done to eliminate the biofuel rules being proposed by the White House.

The saga is emblematic of the difficulty facing environmentally minded lawmakers as they push reforms opposed by enormously influential industries like those found in the energy and agriculture sectors. It also highlights the difficulty of moving such reforms in the middle of a recession when any actions imposing additional costs on industry — even if they’re done in the name of public and global health — are quickly labeled job-killers. In what is quickly becoming a common theme in Washington, the Obama administration’s plans to cut emissions are running smack into an industry buzz saw that they just might not escape.

The new White House proposal, unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency this month, aims to shift the country away from foreign oil by mandating an increase in renewable fuel usage — to 36 billion gallons by 2022, up from 9 billion gallons in 2008. In a controversial move, EPA has also outlined a plan — mandated by Congress in 2007 — for ensuring that the shift to biofuels won’t unintentionally hike carbon emissions elsewhere. For example, there are fears that increasing the U.S. production of corn for ethanol — once the darling in the renewable fuels debate — would lower food supplies on the global market. In that case, EPA’s model is designed to account for deforestation by overseas farmers who might be forced to expand cropland in response to higher food costs. Those fuels failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by certain amounts relative to the gas and diesel they would replace would no longer be eligible for federal subsidies.

Appearing last week before the House Appropriations environmental subpanel, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told lawmakers that the agency “did propose to take into account indirect land use because that’s what the law required us to do.”

Although the proposal exempts most corn ethanol from the so-called “indirect land use” requirements, the biofuels industry and its congressional champions are up in arms. Peterson, who voted for the 2007 energy bill that mandated the EPA’s new rules, said Thursday that the proposed limits “are short on science and long on obstructive and excessive restrictions for domestically produced biofuels.” Tom Buis, who heads Growth Energy, a biofuels lobbying firm, told House lawmakers Thursday that “it’s about the most bizarre concept I’ve ever heard.” Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, said the EPA is preparing to penalize ethanol producers for overseas decisions “over which our industry has absolutely no control.” And Carlos Riva, president and CEO of Verenium Corporation, a cellulosic ethanol company, said the EPA is “putting stumbling blocks in front of the infant before it’s learned to walk.”

The concerns are timely. Following the passage of the Waxman bill through Energy and Commerce, Democratic leaders must decide how to bring it to the floor without diluting it even further. On Wednesday, they dodged a bullet when the panel killed an amendment, sponsored by Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry (R), that would have prevented the EPA’s indirect land use proposal from ever taking effect.

Peterson, for his part, is pressing for the entire bill to pass first through his Agriculture Committee, where members would surely be more successful than Terry in killing the land use provision. Indeed, Peterson and Rep. Frank Lucus (Okla.), the senior Republican on the Agriculture panel, have already introduced legislation to do just that.

Waxman’s office said Friday that it will be Democratic leaders who decide how the bill will reach the floor. Peterson’s office did not return calls for comment.

If opponents of the indirect land use proposal are successful in stripping it out, environmentalists argue, it would spell bad news for the fight against climate change.

Kate McMahon, an energy policy expert at Friends of the Earth, was quick to point out that the EPA’s proposal is intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not prop up biofuel industries that might be contributing to the problem more than they’re solving it. “If we’re going to call these advanced biofuels,” McMahon said, “then they should be better than what’s already out there.”

The EPA’s proposal is similar to new emissions standards adopted by California in April. The California framework rates the “carbon intensity” of the various fuels imported into the state — everything from oil squeezed from the tar sands of Canada to corn ethanol produced by coal-fed refineries in the mid-West. The state is currently gathering data from the industries that will reveal baseline carbon intensity figures by 2010. Those baselines will then have to be reduced by 10 percent by 2020.

Like the EPA proposal, the California strategy also takes into consideration the use of food crops to create fuel — an international land use standard designed to see to it that the cumulative effect of using the renewable isn’t to add to global emissions. That international approach, said Dimitri Stanich, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, “accounts for emissions that would overwhelm our effort to reduce climate change.”

Stanich said the pushback from the corn ethanol industry is probably an indication that those companies recognize that corn-based fuels could be phased out in coming years in favor of more advanced recipes that emit fewer greenhouse gasses.

“They’re feeling bullied,” he said, “but [California’s rule] doesn’t single anyone out … The regulation is designed to gravitate toward any of the cleanest fuels.”

Even some farm state Republicans are beginning to doubt the powers of corn-based ethanol to solve the world’s energy and climate change problems. At last week’s Appropriations hearing with Lisa Jackson, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) conceded that the popular fuel is beginning to lose its luster.

“I’m not sure ethanol, in retrospect, will have turned out to have been as wise a choice as we thought when we started down this road,” Cole said. “But it’s got quite a political constituency behind it now.”

The new project, called the Sustainable Aviation Fuels Users’ Group, says they are specifically committed to using biofuels from renewable sources that do not compete with the “agrifood sector,” do not interfere with drinking water and “improve the economic conditions of local populations.” (That means no corn ethanol, for one thing.) And, according to Air France, the airlines will factor in the “full life cycle” of the biofuels to assure that the overall impact of their usage yields fewer CO2 emissions.

Seems like a pretty bold proposition. We already know that aircrafts can fly on non-food-crop biofuels such as algae. But we also know that those green fuels have yet to be produced on a mass scale, largely because there’s a lack of funding for research and development. If the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users’ Group is serious about its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it may have to consider using airline resources to support building up sustainably produced biofuels.