Welcome back.
Each week we scour news outlets for articles related to energy, climate, and the transition to a carbon-free economy. We also cover related issues, like plastics and biomass. Here’s a distillation of the most interesting and useful news uncovered this week – from local to global.
This edition includes articles about opposition to the Weymouth compressor station and Columbia Gas’ TGP 261 upgrade project in Agawam. Even more on climate, clean energy alternatives, energy storage, the fossil fuel industry, electric utilities… and “what could possibly go wrong?”
— The NFGiM Team
WEYMOUTH COMPRESSOR STATION
Mass. OKs Air Permit For Controversial Weymouth Compressor
By Barbara Moran, WBUR
July 12, 2019
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Friday granted an air permit for a proposed natural gas compressor station in Weymouth, removing another hurdle for the controversial project to proceed.
A statement from MassDEP spokesman Ed Coletta noted that the “ruling relies on an evidence and science-based evaluation of air quality and health impacts associated with the proposed project [and] takes into account all applicable state and federal requirements.”
In a written statement, Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund said he was disappointed with the decision, “but not surprised given how this process has been conducted thus far.” He called the process unfair to Weymouth and all South Shore residents.
“This entire process has demonstrated that our regulatory entities seem to be beholden to industry interests,” Hedlund said.
Blog editor’s note: The image above shows what it looks like when a properly sited compressor station blows up (and they do, occasionally). Precisely why these facilities should never be sited in dense, urban areas like Weymouth’s Fore River Basin. Also the pollution issues….
» Read article
COMPRESSOR OPPONENTS GAIN BIG NEW ALLY: MASS. SENATE
By Chris Lisinski, State House News Service
July 11, 2019
Nearly three-quarters of the Senate penned a letter Thursday urging the Department of Environmental Protection commissioner to rescind approval for a controversial natural gas compressor station in Weymouth, a significant escalation from what had been mostly staunch local opposition.
The two-and-a-half page letter, signed with bipartisan support by 29 of the Senate’s 40 members, asks DEP Commissioner Martin Suuberg to reject the proposal. It was released one day before his final decision on whether to uphold an air quality permit under appeal is due.
Warning that “public trust is lost” after the lengthy permitting process that saw outcry from environmental and health experts, the senators said the compressor plans sought by Algonquin Gas Transmission are a threat “to the Commonwealth as a whole” and could set a “dangerous precedent” for siting such facilities.
“The administrative proceedings surrounding the Weymouth compressor station application are fraught with errors, inaccuracies, and obstructions,” senators wrote. “Because of this, combined with the overall environmental and public health implications of the project, we believe that the DEP should rescind all permits pertaining to Algonquin’s application predicated upon the many permitting appeals filed by citizen groups and affected municipalities, and reevaluate the proposal in light of the facts and in a publicly transparent fashion.”
» Read article
At ‘wit’s end,’ Mariano pushes Weymouth air monitoring bill
By Chris Liskinski, State House News Service
July 9, 2019
House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano urged colleagues Tuesday to advance legislation that would require additional air-quality monitoring near compressor stations, a bill he told constituents two weeks ago he would try to fast-track amid ongoing controversy over a Weymouth proposal.
Mariano, a Quincy Democrat, opened a Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy hearing Tuesday by saying he was at his “wit’s end” dealing with decades of pollution from industrial facilities in the area of the Fore River, which runs between Quincy and Weymouth.
Now, after what Mariano described as “egregious shortcomings” in the Baker administration’s approval of a Weymouth natural gas compressor station, he pushed for the legislation as necessary to ensure public health.
» Read article
Shut up about the Weymouth compressor already, willya?
By Andrea Honore, Blue Mass Group
July 7, 2019
Here are some good reasons why you should care—even a little bit—about the Weymouth compressor project getting built. If it happens in Weymouth, it will happen to you.
» Read article
» More Weymouth compressor station articles
TGP 261 UPGRADE
Massachusetts mayor says access to cheap gas not worth the cost to climate
By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News
July 8, 2019
In December, the average price of 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas for residential customers nationally was $9.63, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration; in Massachusetts, it was $15.16, the fifth-highest in the country.
Still, Morse argues, bringing in more gas would just be business as usual at a time when the environment needs unconventional action. And if Holyoke can break old patterns, perhaps other communities will follow, he said.
“I hope we’re setting a precedent,” he said. “I hope we’re providing momentum to this conversation.”
» Read article
» More TGP 261 upgrade articles
CLIMATE
The Case for Declaring a National Climate Emergency
By Carolyn Kormann, New Yorker Magazine
July 11, 2019
The resolution that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and the Oregon representative Earl Blumenauer introduced to Congress on Tuesday (which was co-sponsored by more than two dozen other lawmakers), echoed the Green New Deal in calling for “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency.” It’s a symbolic resolution in Congress for now, given the Senate’s resistance to any climate-change policy, but it at least puts pressure on the 2020 Presidential candidates to keep discussing the issue as an emergency and debating climate solutions. It also reflects the reality of what’s needed, in the face of current facts.
» Read article
Boston faces major challenge as sea levels rise
By Rick Sobey, Boston Herald
July 10, 2019
Boston is expected to have 12 to 19 high-tide flooding days this year, the NOAA projects.
By 2030, high-tide flooding is likely to happen about 15 to 25 days along the Northeast Atlantic, as a median regional value. By 2050, NOAA projects 40 to 130 high-tide flooding days for the region.
“Once communities realize they are susceptible to high tide flooding, they need to begin to address the impacts, which can become chronic rather quickly,” William Sweet, an oceanographer for NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, said in a statement. “Communities find themselves not knowing what to expect next year and the decades to come, which makes planning difficult. Our high tide projections can play a vital role in helping them plan mitigation and other remedies.”
» Read article
It’s the End of the World as They Know It: The distinct burden of being a climate scientist
By David Corn, Mother Jones
July 8, 2019
It’s hardly surprising that researchers who spend their lives exploring the dire effects of climate change might experience emotional consequences from their work. Yet, increasingly, Cobb, Shukla, and others in the field have begun publicly discussing the psychological impact of contending with data pointing to a looming catastrophe, dealing with denialism and attacks on science, and observing government inaction in the face of climate change. “Scientists are talking about an intense mix of emotions right now,” says Christine Arena, executive producer of the docuseries Let Science Speak, which featured climate researchers speaking out against efforts to silence or ignore science. “There’s deep grief and anxiety for what’s being lost, followed by rage at continued political inaction, and finally hope that we can indeed solve this challenge. There are definitely tears and trembling voices. They know this deep truth: They are on the front lines of contending with the fear, anger, and perhaps even panic the rest of us will have to deal with.”
» Read article
Big Oil’s ‘Natural Climate Solutions’ Feasibility Overblown, Critics Say
By Kendra Chamberlain, DeSmog Blog
July 6, 2019
There have been a slew of scientific papers over the years pointing to NCS as a useful tool in removing carbon dioxide from the environment. In their critique, Lang and Counsell have zeroed in on a TNC-led 2017 paper published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper’s authors estimate NCS “can provide 37 percent of cost-effective CO2 mitigation needed through 2030” needed to stay below the 2° Celsius threshold of global warming.
The TNC paper’s claim that NCS can account for up to 37 percent of CO2 mitigation by 2030 has garnered quite a lot of attention by media, conservation organizations, and others as a “forgotten solution” to climate change.
A spokesperson from The Nature Conversancy agreed with Anderson’s assessment. “NCS by itself is no silver bullet. It’s not a matter of NCS or reducing fossil fuel emissions; the world needs both,” the spokesperson said. “But with [less than] 3 percent of all climate funding currently going to land use solutions, we think it deserves a much bigger place in the conversation.”
Counsell and Lang take the argument a step further. They claim that major oil companies have seized on the opportunity to promote NCS initiatives as a means to greenwash themselves while continuing to drill for fossil fuels.
“As long as the oil industry can say, look we’re doing something, we’re supporting tree planting, it just diverts the conversation from the need to leave fossil fuels in the ground,” Lang said, adding that major oil companies are incentivized to move the conversation away from fossil fuel reductions.
“This whole discussion about natural climate solutions is exactly what the oil industry wants. It’s handing them the perfect PR exercise on a plate,” he said.
» Read article
Baking Alaska: record heat spurs wildfires and “mass mortality events”
By Susie Cagle, The Bulletin – originally published in The Guardian
July 5, 2019» Read article
Stop Building a Spaceship to Mars and Just Plant Some Damn Trees: Researchers found that there’s room for an extra 900 million hectares of canopy cover
By Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Mother Jones
July 4, 2019
The study, however, has its limitations. For one, a global tree-planting effort is somewhat impractical. As the authors write, “it remains unclear what proportion of this land is public or privately owned, and so we cannot identify how much land is truly available for restoration.” Rob Jackson, who chairs the Earth System Science Department and Global Carbon Project at Stanford University and was not involved with the study, agrees that forest management plays an important role in the fight against climate change, but says the paper’s finding that humans could reduce atmospheric carbon by 25 percent by planting trees seemed “unrealistic,” and wondered what kinds of trees would be most effective or how forest restoration may disrupt agriculture.
“Forests and soils are the cheapest and fastest way to remove carbon from the atmosphere—lots of really good opportunities there,” he said. “I get uneasy when we start talking about managing billions of extra acres of land, with one goal in mind: to store carbon.”
» Read article
Forests for Carbon Storage
By George Wuerthner, The Wildlife News
July 4, 2019
Currently, there is a bill in the Massachusetts legislature that would ban logging on all of the state lands. The premise of the legislation is that logging contributes significantly to CO2 emissions. The legislation sponsors argue that the best use of Massachusetts state-owned property is to maintain intact forests for carbon storage.
If this legislation should pass into law it may signal a shift in how we view the value of our federal and state forests. Our forests greatest value is for carbon storehouse, not wood products.
» Read article
Tree planting ‘has mind-blowing potential’ to tackle climate crisis
Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide
Damian Carrington Environment editor, the Guardian
July 4, 2019
» Read article
» More climate articles
CLEAN ENERGY ALTERNATIVES
Compost heating test going well!
Rose Wessel, Old Stone Mill Center (blog post)
July 12, 2019
This is an entirely new, first of its kind, compost heating system being developed by AgriLab for heating our Office space at The Old Stone Mill here in Adams, MA. The heat extracted from this system will feed a radiant floor in the office, and possibly some additional space as well.
» Read article
US renewable energy transition to move faster than anticipated by 2022: FERC report
By Iulia Gheorghiu, Utility Dive
July 9, 2019
By June 2022, the pace of U.S. renewables growth is going to surpass fossil fuel growth by a significantly greater margin than what FERC had anticipated as recently as April, according to the commission’s May 2019 Energy Infrastructure Update, released Friday.
» Read article
Even FERC can’t deny the energy transition
By Christian Roselund, PV Magazine
July 8, 2019
The latest projections from the federal agency show no growth in fossil fuel capacity over the next three years, while new solar and wind more than make up for nuclear retirements. This is likely an overly conservative assessment.
» Read article
It’s New York vs. California in a New Climate Race. Who Will Win?
By Brad Plumer, New York Times
July 8, 2019
California and New York have recently set some of the world’s most ambitious climate targets, aiming to slash their net emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases down to nearly zero in just three short decades.
Now the race is on to see if either state can pull off this feat — something that no major economy in the world has yet achieved. For now, neither state has a clear advantage, and both must overcome unique obstacles to clean up their power plants, cars and buildings.
» Read article
Puerto Rico Harnesses The Power Of The Sun For A Renewable Energy Future
By Marisa Peñaloza, Greg Allen
July 5, 2019
The first phase will cost $1.4 billion. Padilla says, optimistically, the entire rebuild will take about five years. As part of it, he says, PREPA will greatly boost the amount of power generated by renewable energy. “This is a key part of what an energy sector should look like,” Padilla says.
» Read article
Experiments show dramatic increase in solar cell output
Method for collecting two electrons from each photon could break through theoretical solar-cell efficiency limit.
By David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
July 3, 2019
In any conventional silicon-based solar cell, there is an absolute limit on overall efficiency, based partly on the fact that each photon of light can only knock loose a single electron, even if that photon carried twice the energy needed to do so. But now, researchers have demonstrated a method for getting high-energy photons striking silicon to kick out two electrons instead of one, opening the door for a new kind of solar cell with greater efficiency than was thought possible.
While conventional silicon cells have an absolute theoretical maximum efficiency of about 29.1 percent conversion of solar energy, the new approach, developed over the last several years by researchers at MIT and elsewhere, could bust through that limit, potentially adding several percentage points to that maximum output.
» Read article
Conservative Indiana Chooses Renewables Over Gas As It Retires Coal Early
By Jeff McMahon, Forbes
July 2, 2019
“Renewables are so cheap, said Mike Hooper, the senior vice president of the Northern Indiana Service Company (NIPSCO), that the utility can close its coal plants early and return $4 billion to its customers over the next 30 years.”
Empowered by the low price of renewables, NIPSCO decided to double the number of coal plants it will retire in 2023—four instead of two—and to retire its 12 Michigan City units ahead of schedule in 2028, getting the utility out of coal in ten years.
» Read article
Los Angeles solicits record solar + storage deal at 1.997/1.3-cents kWh
By Catherine Morehouse, Utility Dive
July 2, 2019
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is preparing a potentially world record-setting power purchase agreement (PPA) for solar + storage at 1.997 cents and 1.3 cents per kWh, respectively.
California is seeking more generation in order to meet its peak system reliability needs from 2019 to 2024, and last week launched a procurement track that would add 2 GW of new resources. LADWP noted projects such as the Eland Center are important toward meeting high capacity needs.
“We need to have more capacity on our system and this is an inexpensive way, and a clean way, to do that,” said Barner.
» Read article
Why I replaced my new gas boiler with a heat pump
By Jan Rosenow, RAP
June 26, 2019
But what about the embodied carbon emissions of the new heat pump? Would it not be better to wait until a heating system has reached the end of its life before replacing it? In response to my Twitter post, someone suggested to me that “knee jerk installations of heat pumps over natural gas boilers ‘to save CO2’ are not done until the useful life of the gas boiler has been met. Premature boiler changes will cause more CO2 than they will save.”
Here again, the numbers support the early retirement of gas boilers. The total embodied carbon emissions for a typical air source heat pump installed in a UK home are 1,563 kg CO2e. My heat pump avoids 1,313 kg CO2e per year. It means that after less than 1.5 years, a heat pump starts saving carbon compared to a gas boiler, even if the gas boiler is replaced before the end of its life. Hence, from a carbon perspective, it makes sense to replace a gas boiler even if it was just installed. Assuming a 20-year lifetime for the heat pump, the embodied carbon emissions per year are just 78 kg CO2e per year, or 4% of the operational carbon emissions from fuel use.
» Read article
» More clean energy alternatives articles
ENERGY STORAGE
New York regulators assess potential for storage to replace peaking units in the state
By HJ Mai, Utlity Dive
July 3, 2019
Replacing New York’s fleet of less efficient peaking units with energy storage systems and renewables will be key to achieving the state’s clean energy goals. New York aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030 and shift to 100% clean electricity by 2040.
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier this year announced proposed regulations to accelerate this plan. The governor’s proposal includes lower thresholds for nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from simple cycle and regenerative combustion turbines, and would phase in control requirements from 2023 to 2025. Gas-fired peaker plants, which generate infrequently, can account for more than a third of the state’s daily power plant NOx emissions when they run.
» Read article
» More energy storage articles
FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY
OPEC head: Climate activists are the ‘greatest threat’ to oil industry
By Miyo McGinn, Grist
July 5, 2019
Climate activists and their “unscientific” claims are “perhaps the greatest threat to our industry going forward,” said Mohammed Barkindo, the secretary general of OPEC (the cartel representing 14 countries with 80 percent of the world’s oil reserves) earlier this week.
He might have been talking about protesters more broadly, but the rest of his statement suggests that young people are being particularly irksome. Barkindo said some of his colleague’s children are asking them about the future because “they see their peers on the streets campaigning against this industry.” (I guess the birds and the bees isn’t the most uncomfortable conversation parents are having with their kids in OPEC households.)
» Read article
More Signs That Natural Gas Can’t Compete With Renewables on Cost
By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog
July 5, 2019
Right now, natural gas prices are artificially low because fracking companies have been producing record amounts of natural gas at a loss. As Schlotterbeck points out, this is an unsustainable business model. But it has supplied natural gas consumers with artificially cheap energy, giving natural gas a competitive edge over the dying coal and nuclear power industries.
The news that gas prices can only go up while renewables and battery costs continue to drop (and already are easily beating natural gas for power generation in places like California) means that in a free market economy, no new natural gas power plants would be constructed. That scenario is welcome in light of a new study released this week, which concludes that the climate pollution from existing fossil fuel infrastructure is enough on its own to push the planet past 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming by 2100.
» Read article
The New Gas Boom
TRACKING GLOBAL LNG INFRASTRUCTURE
By Ted Nace, Lydia Plante, and James Browning, Global Energy Monitor
June, 2019
Through a massive increase in portside infrastructure, floating offshore terminals, and oceangoing LNG ves-sels, the natural gas industry is seeking to restructure itself from a collection of regional markets into a wider and more integrated global system. If successful, this transformation would lock in much higher levels of natural gas production through mid-century—a seem-ing win for the industry—except that the falling cost of renewable alternatives will make many of these proj-ects unprofitable in the long term and put much of the $1.3 trillion being invested in this global gas expansion at risk. Such an expansion is also incompatible with the IPCC’s warning that, in order to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, gas use must decline 15% by 2030 and 43% by 2050, relative to 2020.
» Read article
Norway Wealth Fund To Dump Fossil Fuel Stocks Worth Billions In Environmental Move
By David Nikel, Forbes
June 12, 2019
The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund will sell off more than $10 billion of stocks in companies related to fossil fuels following the rubber-stamping of Finance Committee recommendations in Norway’s Parliament today. As part of a broad shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, the move from Norway’s center-right coalition government confirms several recent announcements including the phasing out of oil exploration and coal-related stocks.
The new guidelines mean Norway’s Wealth Fund can no longer invest in companies that mine more than 20 million tonnes of coal annually, or generate more than 10,000 MW of power using coal.
» Read article
“Shockwaves” as Norway’s $1Trill wealth fund plans to disinvest from upstream oil
By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International
March 8, 2019
The beginning of the end of the age of oil moved a step closer today, with Norway’s Government recommending that its $1 trillion wealth fund should divest from upstream oil and gas producers.
The news that the world’s largest wealth fund, known as the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG,) which is highly influential just by its huge financial size, will divest from companies that explore and produce oil, “has sent shockwaves through the energy sector”, according to the Financial Times.
Whilst the move is significant in driving the fossil fuel disinvestment momentum, the FT notes there are caveats: “the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has given a reprieve to the global oil majors” such as Shell and BP and “the fund appears to be allowed to still invest in oil and gas companies if they have activities in renewable energy.”
The move is primarily concerned about protecting the Norwegian economy from any future plunge in the oil price rather than climate concerns, although these are mentioned by the Government.
» Read article
» More fossil fuel industry articles
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
Senate passes cybersecurity bill to decrease grid digitization, move toward manual control
By Robert Walton, Utility Dive
July 1, 2019
The Securing Energy Infrastructure Act (SEIA) establishes a two-year pilot program to identify new classes of security vulnerabilities and to research and test solutions, including “analog and nondigital control systems.” The U.S. Department of Energy would be required to report back to Congress on its findings.
Recent news that the United States government has been working to insert malicious code into Russia’s electric grid has raised the specter of a cyberwar between the two nations. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterje told lawmakers last month that critical infrastructure in the U.S., including the electric grid, is “increasingly under attack by foreign adversaries.”
» Read article
» More electric utility articles
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Karnes County natural gas facility burns just before dawn
By Jon Wilcox, Victoria Advocate
July 11, 2019
A Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline facility in Karnes County caught fire Thursday morning.
About 5:40 a.m., emergency dispatchers received warning of the blaze and dispatched firefighters and sheriff’s deputies to the facility, said Emergency Management Coordinator and County Commissioner Shelby Dupnik.
Located at 8724 County Road 326, about two miles west of Runge, the facility pressurizes natural gas for pipeline transport, Dupnik said.
In spite of numerous safety features, a gas compressor at the location is suspected of failing and starting the blaze, he said.
No one was reported injured, and authorities have no reason to suspect foul play.
» Read article
Large gas explosion reported by LA Fitness in Florida, reports say
By WCVB, ABC News
July 6, 2019
A vacant pizza restaurant exploded Saturday in a thundering roar at a South Florida shopping plaza, injuring more than 20 people as large chunks of concrete flew through the air.
The blast sent debris flying along a busy road in Plantation, west of Fort Lauderdale in Broward County. The restaurant was destroyed, and nearby businesses were damaged.
Plantation Fire Battalion Chief Joel Gordon said there were at least 15 to 20 patients, two of whom were in serious condition, and there were no apparent deaths.
Responders found an active gas leak when they arrived, but they were not immediately sure if that was the cause of the blast.
» Read article
No Fracked Gas in Mass 