Category Archives: Weekly News Check-In

Monthly News Check-In 3/1/23

Welcome back.

Massachusetts legislators approved a pilot program last year to let 10 cities and towns ban fossil fuels in new buildings. However, under DOER’s proposed regulations, municipalities that have already asked the state for permission to ban fossil fuels in new construction would need to wait until early 2024 at the earliest to implement their bans.

“It’s important that state government permit the towns that want to do this to go forward as quickly as possible,” said State Senator Mike Barrett. “The Legislature wrote this language because a handful of towns had already moved way out in front. The communities had gone through the laborious process of drafting local bylaws and ordinances.”

The hope is that data gathered from the first ten communities will help create a roadmap for how to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals, and given the exigencies of climate change, there’s a clear urgency to moving forward as quickly as possible.

Apart from the delays involved, the obvious issue of environmental justice raises its head: the 10 cities and towns involved in the pilot project are all relatively wealthy communities, while poorer communities will have to wait.

In other news, community solar is poised to become much more common thanks to a new $7 billion fund tied to the Inflation Reduction Act. The EPA began the process of setting up the fund last week.

Massachusetts has the third highest community solar generating capacity in the the country, after New York and Minnesota.

The federal government now has $7 billion that can go to community solar through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Joe Biden in August.

On the other side, there are activist groups such as Citizens for Responsible Solar, co-founded by a former staffer for George W. Bush, actually fighting solar installations in rural areas. The organization has helped local groups opposing solar projects in at least 10 states.

Two steps forward, two steps back?

For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletter from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)!

— The NFGiM Team

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

Kalmus and Abramoff protest on stage at the AGU meeting in December.Credit: Dwight Owens» Outcry as scientists sanctioned for climate protest

» More about protests and actions

Outcry as scientists sanctioned for climate protest
In response to the protest, the AGU removed the scientists’ abstracts from the meeting programme, expelled them from the meeting and opened cases of professional misconduct against them.
By Myriam Vidal Valero, Nature
February 15, 2023

PIPELINES

Pittsylvania County

» More about pipelines

Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline provision fails in Senate vote
By CHUCK VIPPERMAN, Chatham Star Tribune
December 22, 2022

FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION

Glick departing

» More about FERC

FERC climate reviews in limbo as Glick departs
By Miranda Willson, E&E News
December 15, 2022

GREENING THE ECONOMY

Justin Kratz

McCann School Committee Give Go-Ahead on New HVAC Program
By Brian Rhodes, iBerkshires
December 20, 2022

Governon-elect Healey

» More about greening the economy

Maura Healey wants to go big on climate tech, housing, as she prepares to take office
By Matt Stout and Samantha J. Gross, Boston Globe
December 19, 2022

CLIMATE

shimmer

With new report, Massachusetts charts the path to net-zero emissions by 2050
By Sabrina Shankman, Boston Globe
December 21, 2022
» Read the plan
» Track progress with the new dashboard

face it head-on

» More about climate

‘Face it head on’: Connecticut makes climate change studies compulsory
Enshrining the curriculum in law insulates the subject from budget cuts and culture wars related to the climate crisis
By The Guardian
December 17, 2022

CLEAN ENERGY

hot wires

» More about clean energy

Here Is What Is Really Strangling the Energy Transition
By Justin Gillis and Tyler H. Norris, New York Times | Opinion
December 16, 2022

Mr. Gillis is a director at Generation Investment Management, a co-author of “The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet” and a former environmental reporter for The Times. Mr. Norris is a vice president for development at Cypress Creek Renewables, a national developer of solar farms.

BUILDING MATERIALS

forest economy

» More about building materials

How a climate-smart forest economy could help mitigate climate change and its worst impacts
By Daniel Zimmer, Director Sustainable Land Use, Climate-KIC, in World Economic Forum
December 19, 2022

LONG-DURATION ENERGY STORAGE

reversible rusting

» More about long-duration energy storage

Form Energy selects West Virginia for its first iron-air battery plant
By Renewable Energy World
December 22, 2022

MODERNIZING THE GRID

electric meters

» More about modernizing the grid

US smart meter penetration continues steady growth, tops 100M in operation: FERC
For the fourth consecutive year the number of advanced meters installed on the United States electric grid increased by approximately 8 million.
By Robert Walton, Utility Dive
December 21, 2022

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

daily rounds

US Postal Service to purchase 66,000 electric delivery vehicles in major shift
By Umar Shakir, The Verge
December 20, 2022

emerging

» More about clean transportation

Billions in Amtrak Funding Could Modernize Aging Rail System
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law includes money that Amtrak hopes can fix crumbling bridges and tunnels along the Northeast Corridor.
By Madeleine Ngo, New York Times
December 20, 2021

QUESTIONABLE SOLUTIONS

REFHYNE plant

» More about questionable solutions

Has green hydrogen sprung a leak?
By Sarah Mcfarlane and Ron Bousso, Reuters
December 22, 2022

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

s-curve coming

» More about fossil fuels

Oil Set to Become as Obsolete as Landlines, Experts Warn
By The Energy Mix
December 18, 2022

BIOMASS

dead down under

» More about biomass

Australia rejects forest biomass in first blow to wood pellet industry
By Justin Catanoso, Mongabay
December 21, 2022

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Weekly News Check-In 12/23/22

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Welcome back.

Climate activist have successfully influenced recent policy and legislative advances through a sustained focus on issues backed up by protests and actions. Inevitably, backlash has been building in numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures in the form of laws criminalizing peaceful protest. With the GOP having narrowly gained control of the House of Representatives, it looks like climate organizations will soon have to fend off investigations into baseless claims of collusion with foreign governments with the intent to hurt the American energy sector.

Undaunted by those political follies, climate groups notched another win when the Senate dropped West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting ‘reform’ legislation from the current $1.7 trillioin spending bill. Does this harm American energy? It prevents reckless greenlighting of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline. But consider news that the Massachusetts iron-air battery startup Form Energy just announced it will locate its first manufacturing plant in Weirton, West Virginia. This plant will host 750 good full-time jobs and produce long-duration batteries – the infrastructure of the future that can help eliminate the need for gas power plants that the MVP was designed to serve. West Virginia is showing American energy a clear path forward.

For the past couple of years, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Richard Glick has attempted to move the agency toward considering downstream climate impacts caused by the fuel carried through pipelines, as part of the permitting process for that infrastructure. He wasn’t successful, and his tenure with FERC is drawing to a close. We consider downstream emissions critical to fossil infrastructure assessment – this is unfinished business.

All of the above underscores how impactful single decisions, events, or actions can be within the energy transition’s broad narrative. Berkshire County made its move this week, dedicating $3.1 million from the Baker administration’s Skills Capital Grants to build a brand new HVAC training program at the McCann Technical School in North Adams. As many as 100 students will enroll each year, learning critical technical skills for the green economy in heat pumps, mechanical ventilation, and modern building controls. The timing is perfect, and the young people who graduate from this program will find high demand for their skills as buildings everywhere need to convert from fossil fuel to efficient electric heat.

All that electrification requires some changes to the grid – how we produce energy, how we move it around, and also how we use and pay for it. Managing demand is an important tool in avoiding peaks, and smart meters allow customers to control utility costs by timing usage their efficiently. The U.S. now has over 100 million smart meters installed, and the number is growing rapidly.

Unfortunately, that good news on the usage side is being counterbalanced for now by sluggish uptake of renewable energy resources on the production side. Justin Gillis and Tyler H. Norris illuminate the role that outdated electric utility business models are playing in slowing the rate of wind and solar energy connections into local grids. In a New York Times opinion piece, they call out utilities for failing to make necessary investments to upgrade their distribution systems, and explain how this is slowing the uptake of clean energy resources.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts just published its plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 along with an online dashboard for tracking progress. Neighboring Connecticut followed in New Jersey’s recent footsteps by mandating climate studies in all of its K-12 school districts.

In other good news, big developments in clean transportation include word that the Inflation Reduction Act included funds that finally allowed the US Postal Service to put an ambitious fleet electrification plan together. Also, Amtrak is looking at a big investment to modernize its operations. With the rapid electrification of transportation, some are warning the fossil fuel industry of a looming crash in oil demand.

Because humans need to respond to climate change at a time of growing population, substantial resources are needed for new housing while also upgrading existing structures for better energy efficiency. Traditional building materials like steel and cement are massively carbon intensive to produce, so there’s growing interest in using timber products as greener alternatives. “Climate-smart forestry” is creating lots of buzz. It’s a nice concept, but in a world losing forest land at an alarming rate, we’ll be watching to see if the promises are real. Australia just did something very real for forests by removing the “renewable” classification from forest biomass. It’s the first major economy to do so, and presents a challenge to Europe and other economies that continue to drive global deforestation by clinging to the wood pellet industry’s convenient fictions of sustainability and carbon neutrality.

We’ll close with a reality check on green hydrogen – an undeniably useful fuel for hard-to-decarbonize industrial processes like steel making, and for some aviation and heavy transport applications. But it’s become an industry darling, hyped as the solution to everything from power generation to home heating – functions much better served by cheaper, safer, more efficient technologies. Several new studies warn that hydrogen poses its own climate risks when leaked unburned into the atmosphere – and it doesn’t take much to negate all of the climate benefits of this zero-carbon fuel.

For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletter from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)!

— The NFGiM Team