Tag Archives: biofuel

Weekly News Check-In 4/8/22

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

Climate scientists are desperate: we’re crying, begging and getting arrested
On Wednesday, I was arrested for locking myself onto an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown LA. I can’t stand by – and nor should you
By Peter Kalmus, The Guardian | Opinion
April 6, 2022

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.” – United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres

I’m a climate scientist and a desperate father. How can I plead any harder? What will it take? What can my colleagues and I do to stop this catastrophe unfolding now all around us with such excruciating clarity?

On Wednesday, I was arrested for locking myself to an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown Los Angeles with colleagues and supporters. Our action in LA is part of an international campaign organized by a loosely knit group of concerned scientists called Scientist Rebellion, involving more than 1,200 scientists in 26 countries and supported by local climate groups. Our day of action follows the IPCC Working Group 3 report released Monday, which details the harrowing gap between where society is heading and where we need to go. Our movement is growing fast.

We chose JP Morgan Chase because out of all the investment banks in the world, JP Morgan Chase funds the most new fossil fuel projects. As the new IPCC report explains, emissions from current and planned fossil energy infrastructure are already more than twice the amount that would push the planet over 1.5°C of global heating, a level of heating that will bring much more intense heat, fire, storms, flooding, and drought than the present 1.2°C.

Even limiting heating to below 2°C, a level of heating that in my opinion could threaten civilization as we know it, would require emissions to peak before 2025. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in the press conference on Monday: “Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” And yet, this is precisely what President Biden, most other world leaders, and major banks are doing. It’s no exaggeration to say that Chase and other banks are contributing to murder and neocide through their fossil fuel finance.

Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize. The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk. For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the “business as usual” occurring all around me. It’s so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it’s really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it’s really happening.
» Read article

‘Climate Revolution’: Scientists Launch Global Civil Disobedience Campaign
“Scientist Rebellion will be on the streets between April 4th and 9th, acting like our house is on fire,” said organizers. “Because it is.”
By Julia Conley, Common Dreams
April 4, 2022

Scientists from around the world on Monday mobilized to demand a “Climate Revolution,” holding rallies and staging acts of civil disobedience with the goal of making the planetary emergency “impossible to ignore.”

With a kick-off timed to coincide with Monday’s release of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), researchers across the globe this week will participate in the Scientist Rebellion, staging strikes and occupations at universities, research institutes, and scientific journals to demand that the community speak out forcefully against continued fossil fuel emissions to highlight “the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis.”

“We have not made the changes necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C, rendering this goal effectively impossible,” said Dr. Rose Abramoff, an American climate scientist, referring to the goal set by the Paris climate agreement in 2015. “We need to both understand the consequences of our inaction as well as limit fossil fuel emissions as much and as quickly as possible.”

For scientists, Abramoff added, “it is no longer sufficient to do our research and expect others to read our publications and understand the severity and urgency of the climate crisis.”

One neuroscientist named Jonathan posted a video on social media explaining why he is taking part in the Scientist Rebellion.

“With our civilization poised to crumble under the weight of climate disaster in a matter of decades, the incremental advance of understanding is pointless,” he said. “In short, there’s no worthy reason for me to be doing this work if I’m not also pushing for climate action.”

The Scientist Rebellion is poised to be the largest-ever civil disobedience campaign led by scientists, with experts risking arrest in at least 25 countries on every continent in the world.
» Read article

» More about protests and actions

LEGISLATION

Senate unveils sweeping climate bill
By Sabrina Shankman, Boston Globe
April 7, 2022

The state Senate on Thursday unveiled a sweeping climate bill that would pour money into development of clean energy, set mandates for government agencies, and allow some cities and towns to ban gas in new construction.

Unlike the broad strokes of past climate legislation that focused on setting strict targets for slashing emissions, Thursday’s proposal delves into granular details of state programs and agencies perceived as acting too slow on the climate.

[…] Lawmakers said the bill must take urgent priority.

[…] The bill focuses on three aspects of the state’s response to climate change: the transition to clean energy on the electrical grid, the massive work of weaning homes from fossil fuel heat, and dramatically reducing emissions from the state’s 4.3 million cars.

It now faces steep challenges as it goes to debate in the Senate and a potentially difficult reconciliation with the House version of the bill — with a tight deadline of July 31 for having a bill on the governor’s desk.

[…] A spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs said only that the Baker administration will carefully review anything that reaches the governor’s desk.

The Senate bill is in some ways a rebuke of the Baker administration on critical parts of the state’s effort on climate, said Senator Cynthia Creem. She cited problems with programs aimed at urging homeowners to switch to clean heat and that pay gas companies to continue to lay new pipe.

“We’re seeing that unless we move quickly, we’re not going to meet the emissions required, and the agencies aren’t taking the quick approach that they need to take,” she said.

That led to the creation of a bill that is in many ways prescriptive — calling for specific policy and programmatic steps.

In addition to providing $100 million to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to support investment in the clean energy industry and innovation, the bill would allow for the growth of so-called agro-solar, in which solar panels are placed at agricultural farms.
» Read article

» More about legislation

GREENING THE ECONOMY

As Russia’s War In Ukraine Disrupts Food Production, Experts Question the Expanding Use of Cropland for Biofuels
With the planet facing the related crises of climate change and hunger, should land be used to grow food, like corn for ethanol?
By Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News
April 5, 2022

In the six weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict has not only sent energy prices soaring, but has disrupted food production, pushing costs upward and stoking fears of global food shortages.

The United Nations has warned of surging food insecurity in countries that depend on wheat from Ukraine, a critical and major breadbasket. Many of them were already teetering on the edge of hunger before the crisis.

As these effects of the conflict ripple across the globe, the world is seeing how energy and food markets are crucially linked. Just a couple of examples:

Farmers everywhere are scrambling to buy fertilizer, which has become exorbitantly expensive and scarce as prices for natural gas to make it have shot up. And vegetable growers in the U.K. say that energy prices are so high they can’t afford to heat their greenhouses, meaning less fresh produce in coming months.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is considering expanding the use of ethanol, made from corn, in an attempt to lower fuel prices—but at the risk of raising food prices.

“Food and energy markets are going through the roof at the moment,” said Tim Benton, director of the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House, the U.K.-based think tank, in a recent call with reporters. “The key question for those of us who are interested in sustainability is whether nature will be sacrificed in order to boost food production or whether climate will be sacrificed in order to boost energy production.”
» Read article

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

IPCC: We can tackle climate change if big oil gets out of the way
Experts say criticism of oil and gas’s ‘climate-blocking activities’ cut from final draft, reflective of industry’s power and influence
By Amy Westervelt, The Guardian
April 5, 2022

The fossil fuel industry and its influence over policy was the major elephant in the room looming over the release of the third and final report, out this week, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading climate authority. The major source of contention: how do you talk about mitigating climate change without confronting the fossil fuel industry? “It’s like Star Wars without Darth Vader,” says environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, of Brown University.

The first two reports, both released over the last year, highlighted the physical science on climate effects and countries’ vulnerability to further warming. But this third report deals more with the potential solutions, which have been a focal point of controversy in recent years for both the fossil fuel industry and the governments of oil-rich nations.

Social scientists were successful in pushing for more of their research to be included in the IPCC’s reports, with chapters that touch on everything from debunking claims that less developed countries need fossil fuels to help tackle poverty to a rundown of efforts to block climate policy. The report made one thing abundantly clear: the technologies and policies necessary to adequately address climate change exist, and the only real obstacles are politics and fossil fuel interests.

The role of the fossil fuel industry is highlighted throughout the report’s nearly 3,000 pages, but researchers note it was mysteriously absent from the “Summary for Policymakers” – traditionally the first part of the report that’s released and often attracts the most media attention. An earlier draft of the summary leaked to the Guardian, however, described the fossil fuel industry and others invested in a high-carbon economy as “vested interests” that have actively worked against climate policy, noting: “Factors limiting ambitious transformation include structural barriers, an incremental rather than systemic approach, lack of coordination, inertia, lock-in to infrastructure and assets, and lock-in as a consequence of vested interests, regulatory inertia, and lack of technological capabilities and human resources.”

Brulle, whose research is cited multiple times in the report, was dismayed to see the cut. “The scientists clearly did their job and provided ample material on climate obstruction activities in the report,” he says. “The political process of creating the Summary for Policymakers ended up editing all of this information out.”
» Read article

‘A file of shame’: Major UN climate report shows world is on track for catastrophic levels of warming
By Dharna Noor, Boston Globe
April 4, 2022

The world is on track to usher in a devastating level of global warming, warns a major report from the world’s leading climate scientists.

“It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said of the study in a statement.

To avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, the analysis from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, leaders must make radical, immediate changes. That includes rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels.

The world has already warmed by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution, chiefly due to the burning of coal, oil, or gas. The more ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees; crossing that threshold would exacerbate hunger, conflict, and drought globally, destroy at least 70 percent of coral reefs, and put millions at risk of being swallowed by rising seas.

The world has only a 38 percent chance of achieving that goal, the new report says.

The report is the third of three crucial documents from the UN body released over the past eight months. While the first two studies examined the causes and effects of the climate crisis, Monday’s report focuses on what the world can do to fight it.

UN scientists have long warned that expanding fossil fuel infrastructure will make the 1.5-degree target unattainable. But the new report, released Monday, goes even further, showing that even continuing to operate existing infrastructure until the end of their lifespans would put that target out of reach.

“We cannot keep warming below catastrophic levels without first and foremost accelerating the shift away from all fossil fuels, beginning immediately,” said Nikki Reisch, climate and energy Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law, in a statement.
» Read article

Methane emissions surged by a record amount in 2021, NOAA says
By Emma Newburger, CNBC
April 7, 2022

Global emissions of methane, the second-biggest contributor to human-caused climate change after carbon dioxide, surged by a record amount in 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday.

Methane, a key component of natural gas, is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide but doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere before it breaks down. Major contributors to methane emissions include oil and gas extraction, landfills and wastewater, and farming of livestock.

“Our data show that global emissions continue to move in the wrong direction at a rapid pace,” Rick Spinrad, the NOAA administrator, said in a statement. “The evidence is consistent, alarming and undeniable.”

The report comes after more than 100 countries joined a coalition to cut 30% of methane gas emissions by 2030 from 2020 levels. The Global Methane Pledge of 2021 includes six of the world’s 10 biggest methane emitters — the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Mexico. China, Russia, India and Iran did not join the pledge.

Last year, a landmark United Nations report declared that drastically slashing methane is necessary to avoid the worst outcomes of global warming. The report said if the world could cut methane emissions by up to 45% through 2030, it would prevent 255,000 premature deaths and 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits on an annual basis.

Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said reducing methane is a relatively cheap and easy way to achieve significant climate benefits.
» Read article

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

Now or never: IPCC says wind and solar key to halving emissions by 2030
By Michael Mazengarb, Renew Economy
April 5, 2022

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has backed the continued expansion of the use of wind and solar energy to do the heavy lifting in achieving rapid and necessary reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions – while also delivering some of the cheapest new supplies of energy.

The central role that renewable energy technologies will play in keeping global warming within safe limits has been detailed in the latest working group report of the IPCC, published on Tuesday.

The IPCC has warned “immediate and deep emissions reductions” are necessary across all sectors of the global economy to stem rising greenhouse gas levels, and keep a global warming limit of 1.5 degrees within reach.

According to the IPCC, wind and solar technologies can deliver the most extensive potential cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels in the global energy system, dwarfing the potential contribution of more costly technologies like carbon capture and storage.

“Large contributions with costs less than US$20 per tonne CO2 come from solar and wind energy, energy efficiency improvements, reduced conversion of natural ecosystems and methane emissions reductions,” the report says.

The IPCC said the dramatic reductions in the cost of wind, solar and battery storage technologies over the last decade meant they were already commercially viable and would be the key to decarbonising most of the world’s energy systems.
» Read article

IPCC Report Release Delayed as Rich Nations Sought to Weaken Fossil Fuel Phaseout
“I hope Working Group III has the courage to actually call for the elimination of fossil fuels production and use within a Paris agreement compliant timeline,” said one scientist.
By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams
April 4, 2022

The publication of the third and final part of the United Nations’ latest comprehensive climate assessment, originally scheduled for early Monday morning, was postponed by several hours after a contentious weekend of negotiations in which wealthy governments attempted to weaken statements about green financing for low-income nations and fossil fuel-producing countries objected to unequivocal language about the need to quickly ditch coal, oil, and gas.

The landmark report by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—written by dozens of climate scientists from around the world who synthesized the past eight years of relevant research—is expected to call for a rapid global phaseout of fossil fuels to avoid the planetary emergency’s most dire consequences.

However, a roughly 40-page “summary for policymakers”—a key reference point for governments—was edited with input from U.N. member states. Although it was expected to be finalized on Friday and published early Monday morning, diplomats continued to debate the contents of the document for hours after their Sunday deadline, pushing its release back by several hours.

“One issue is the fundamental, underlying declaration that the world has to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” an unnamed source told CNN on Monday, declining to identify specific nations. “[These objections are] coming from countries with economic interests, from countries that are prioritizing that above what is clearly a global imperative.”

“Scientists want to send the extra-clear message that what needs to happen next is to get off fossil fuels to cut emissions as quickly as possible in this decade,” the source added.
» Read article

» More about clean energy

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Massachusetts apartment retrofit offers model for multifamily energy savings
The owners of a Fall River apartment complex spent two years tightening building envelopes, replacing heating and cooling systems, and installing rooftop solar panels. Now, they hope to replicate the success elsewhere.
By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network
April 5, 2022

A Massachusetts apartment complex has nearly completed an extensive and challenging clean energy overhaul, a process that planners say helped create a playbook for tackling difficult multifamily retrofits.

The owners of the South Winds Apartment Community in Fall River, a small city on the Rhode Island border, spent two years developing and executing a plan to tighten the envelopes of the complex’s 39 buildings, replace climate control systems with heat pumps, and install solar panels on every available rooftop. The changes are expected to avoid more than 3,800 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year — equivalent to taking 750 cars off the road — and cut energy costs by 80%.

And the project is just the beginning for Taurus Investment Holdings, the real estate firm that owns the development.

“It all started with South Winds — it’s our flagship project where we really learned how to implement our process,” said Chris Gray, chief technology officer for RENU Communities, a subsidiary of Taurus that executes energy retrofits at the firm’s properties. “We have since undertaken numerous other properties and we have about 3,000 apartment units in our pipeline.”

[…] BlueWave Solar of Boston was brought in to install solar panels on every available roof, a process that presented so many obstacles that it wasn’t clear it could even be done at first.

[…] It was a major investment of time, [Alan Robertson, managing director of solar development at BlueWave] said, but the effort has set a precedent that he hopes will pave the way for more ambitious apartment projects in the future.

“There are a ton of multifamily complexes that were set up similar to this that I think a lot of developers just shy away from,” Robertson said. “Now we have an approved project with the [Department of Energy Resources] that can be a playbook for others.”

Figuring it all out despite the challenges was important to Taurus for reasons both ethical and financial, Gray said. Two of the company founders are from Germany and brought a European-style energy-conscious ethos to the business from the beginning. That mindset has continued to this day.

At the same time, Gray said, it is clear that reducing energy use now will save money in the long run. Already RENU has started work on two more apartment complex retrofits, one in Phoenix, Arizona, and another in Orlando, Florida. More such projects are expected to follow.

“We think this is going to be a requirement of real estate owners going forward,” Gray said, “so we’re trying to get ahead of the curve.”
» Read article

Biden administration lines up $3 billion so low-income families can retrofit their homes
The move will affect nearly a half million households and lower greenhouse gas emissions
By Julia Kane, Grist
April 1, 2022

Low-income families will be able to lower their utility bills with $3.16 billion in funding for home retrofits made available by the Biden administration on Wednesday. The move will also help the U.S. reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The funding, approved as part of the infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year, will flow to states, tribes, and territories through the federal Weatherization Assistance Program, or WAP.

The surge in federal dollars means that the program will be able to retrofit about 450,000 homes by installing insulation, sealing leaks, upgrading appliances to more energy-efficient models, and replacing fossil fuel-powered heating systems with cleaner, electric options. That’s a significant increase; in recent years, the program has retrofitted about 38,000 homes annually.

The boost to WAP comes amidst an embargo on Russian oil, soaring energy prices, and rising inflation — circumstances strikingly similar to those when WAP was created in the 1970s. Congress authorized WAP in 1976, just a few years after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo against the U.S., causing energy prices to spike and inflation to climb. Lawmakers reasoned that one way to achieve energy independence was to reduce energy demand by making buildings more efficient.
» Read article

Three More Manufacturers Added to Cold Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge
DOE created the challenge to accelerate deployment of cold climate heat pump (CCHP) technologies.
By Logan Caswell, HPAC
February 18, 2022

After successfully launching the Cold Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge this past May, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has added three new manufacturers to the initiative, launched in partnership with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

[…] The nine HVAC manufacturers, in partnering with DOE, NRCan, and the EPA, along with States and other efficiency program and utility stakeholders, will demonstrate the performance of prototypical products and launch field demonstrations and pilot programs to accelerate adoption. Commercialization of products could come as early as 2024.

The next generation of cold climate heat pumps developed under this challenge will have:

Increased performance at cold temperatures
Increased heating capacity at lower ambient temperatures
More efficiency across broader range of operating conditions
Demand flexibility (advanced controls to adjust usage on demand)

The DOE initially launched the Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge as part of its Initiative for Better Energy, Emissions, and Equity (E3 Initiative). The E3 Initiative advances the research, development, and national deployment of clean heating and cooling systems that include heat pumps, advanced water heaters, low-to-no global warming potential refrigerants, and smarter HVAC diagnostic tools in residential and commercial buildings.
» Read article
» Read about the DOE’s Residential Cold-Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge

» More about energy efficiency

ENERGY STORAGE

Lithium-ion roadblocks drive development of US-based alternatives for grid battery storage
By Elizabeth McCarthy, Utility Dive
April 5, 2022

There is a growing focus on emerging battery technologies that use domestic minerals and elements because supply chain constraints are impeding lithium-ion battery storage. According to university, government and industry officials, alternate battery chemistries must and can become cost-competitive.

To help meet growing decarbonization goals, preferred alternatives to lithium-ion need to be long-duration, with at least 10 hours of output, and have minimal or low toxicity, experts agreed at an April 1 session of MIT’s 2022 Energy Conference.

Emerging grid storage technologies in the running include sodium and iron-air batteries, ones using stacks of retired electric vehicle car batteries with considerable life remaining, and those reusing metals from recycled EV batteries.
» Read article

» More about energy storage

MODERNIZING THE GRID

Grid operator urges slower transition on renewables
Seeks approval from FERC for 2-year extension of pricing rule
By Bruce Mohl, CommonWealth Magazine
April 5, 2022

THE NEW ENGLAND power grid operator filed a proposal with federal regulators on Monday seeking more time to come up with a system for incorporating clean energy into the region’s electricity markets.

The grid operator, known as ISO-New England, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to put off until 2025 plans to do away with a 2013 pricing rule intended to prevent subsidized clean energy projects from unfairly squeezing other power generators (most of whom burn fossil fuels) out of the market. ISO-New England had previously planned to do away with the pricing rule next year.

In a statement accompanying the filing, ISO-New England said a longer transition period is warranted because it “will create less risk to the region than an immediate market change could evoke.”

Environmental advocates are opposing the move. “This decision throws an unnecessary lifeline to gas generators that could otherwise be priced out of the market by cost-effective clean energy,” said Melissa Birchard, senior regulatory attorney at Acadia Center.

The arcane issue is attracting attention because it is another example of the tension between those eager to abandon fossil fuels in a bid to deal with climate change and those wary of doing so too quickly out of fear of market disruptions.

ISO-New England oversees the region’s wholesale markets for electricity. In one of those markets, the forward capacity market, ISO-New England forecasts how much electricity the region will need three years in the future and then encourages power generators to bid to supply it. Power plant operators use the promise of this future revenue to build, maintain, and operate their plants.

The forward capacity market is under stress because states like Massachusetts, operating outside the market, have ordered utilities to purchase offshore wind and hydroelectricity, with their ratepayers picking up the cost of the projects.

The challenge for ISO-New England is how to incorporate these ratepayer-subsidized renewable energy projects into the forward capacity market without undermining it. Letting the renewable energy projects into the market could squeeze out other generators needed for the system’s future reliability. Keeping the renewable energy projects out of the market could mean the market may be procuring more power than it actually needs.

[…] Officials at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have been pressuring ISO New England to do away with its minimum offer price rule. Their chief complaint is that the rule is too broad, applying to all new resources and not just those resources capable of manipulating market prices.

“The minimum offer price rule appears to act as a barrier to competition, insulating incumbent generators from having to compete with certain new resources that may be able to provide capacity at lower cost,” said FERC commissioners Richard Glick and Allison Clements in a filing in January.

Now FERC will have to decide whether to grant more time to ISO-New England to do away with the minimum price rule or demand swifter action.
» Read article

» More about modernizing the grid

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

Major automakers back tough U.S. vehicle emissions rules in court battle
By David Shepardson, Reuters
March 30, 2022

Major U.S. and foreign automakers on Wednesday backed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new tougher vehicle emissions regulations in a court challenge brought by some states and ethanol groups.

Texas and 15 other states have challenged the EPA’s vehicle emissions rules that reverse a rollback of tailpipe rules issued under former President Donald Trump.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, representing nearly all major automakers, said in a court filing the EPA rule “will challenge the industry” but provides automakers with “critically important flexibilities.”

Automakers, the group added, want to ensure “critical regulatory provisions supporting electric vehicle technology are maintained.”

The states are joined by some corn and soybean growers associations, the American Fuel And Petrochemical Manufacturers and others. Corn growers, a Valero Energy subsidiary and other ethanol producers said the new EPA rules revising emission requirements through 2026 “effectively mandate the production and sale of electric cars rather than cars powered by internal combustion engines.”
» Read article

» More about clean transportation

GAS UTILITIES

Natural gas investments fuel climate concerns
By Colin A. Young State House News Service
April 4, 2022

BOSTON, Mass. (SHNS)–The tensions between what some key lawmakers would like to see Massachusetts do enroute to achieving net-zero carbon emissions and the proposals in a utility-driven report on the role natural gas could play in decarbonization were on full display Monday at the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change.

Unhappy with the process and the strategies described in the recently-filed Future of Gas report, chairwoman Sen. Cynthia Creem said the Legislature “may have to intervene” in the Baker administration’s study of the future of natural gas as Massachusetts strives to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “In my view, reaching net-zero emission requires that the future of gas is largely a future without gas,” Creem, the Senate’s majority leader and chairwoman of the committee, said.

Monday’s hearing revolved around the Future of Gas report, which utility companies put together with consultants as part of a Department of Public Utilities exploration of how natural gas fits into Massachusetts’ energy future and whether the resource might help or hinder the state’s emissions reduction efforts.

State law requires that Massachusetts reduce its emissions by 25 percent by 2020 (preliminary estimates show a 28.6 percent reduction), by 50 percent by 2030, by 75 percent by 2040 and by at least 85 percent by 2050, with tag-along policies to get the state to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century. All reductions are calculated against the baseline of 1990 emissions levels. “However, Massachusetts is currently doubling down on natural gas through the Gas System Enhancement Plan program, known as the GSEP program,” Creem said. “Under GSEP, ratepayers will pay $20 billion over the next few decades to replace gas pipelines that are inconsistent with our climate mandates.”

A number of people invited to testify Monday echoed Creem’s argument, that ratepayers are going to be on the hook for new gas infrastructure that could become obsolete in the coming decades and that gas utilities are using the GSEP program meant to remedy gas leaks to instead prepare their systems to handle newer fuels like renewable hydrogen or biogas in an attempt to stay in business through a transition away from natural gas. “There’s a stark binary facing us right now,” Caitlin Peale Sloan, vice president at the Conservation Law Foundation, said during Monday’s hearing. “Are we going to start to ramp down gas utility infrastructure and invest the billions left to be spent under GSEP into sustainable solutions with low ongoing costs and operating costs? Or are we going to plow ahead and put billions more into the gas system?”
» Read article

» More about gas utilities

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

Ottawa Issues ‘Slap in the Face’ to Climate Science, Approves Bay du Nord Offshore Oil Megaproject
By Mitchell Beer, The Energy Mix
April 6, 2022

[…] In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s announcement, voices in Newfoundland and Labrador stressed the economic gains that Equinor has promised if the project goes ahead, in a province facing dire hardship. Without Bay du Nord, “Newfoundland and Labrador is going to suffer for a long, long time,” Brigus, Newfoundland Mayor Shears Mercer told CP. “We’re broke. The province is broke.”

But mid-way through a week that had already seen the IPCC report and the Bay du Nord decision, the reaction through the day Wednesday ranged from rage to tears.

“For the first time in my life I had to choke down tears talking to a journalist about the Canadian government approving the Bay du Nord project. Doubling down on new fossil production while it could not be clearer this is the wrong thing to do is nothing else than heartbreaking,” tweeted Caroline Brouillette, national climate policy manager at Climate Action Network-Canada.

“It hurts to see the work of so many people inside and outside of government undermined by expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, yet again,” Brouillette added. “Moments like these show how inadequate our governments’ (even the most ‘progressive’ ones) response to the crisis are. How unwilling @JustinTrudeau is to be honest with Canadians about the need to plan for a future climate and economy that is safe and sustainable.”

Trudeau “is doubling down on the myth that Canada can be a climate leader while continuing to produce and export vast amounts of climate-destroying fossil fuels,” she added in a release. “The longer our leaders postpone being honest with Canadians about the incompatibility of increased oil production and a climate- and jobs-safe future, the rougher the awakening will be. Today’s decision is a failure of courage.”

“The Government of Canada’s decision to approve a new billion-barrel mega-oil project is a slap in the face to climate scientists, communities across Canada, and the world impacted by the climate crisis,” said Julia Levin, senior climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence Canada. “The planet is on fire and the science is crystal clear. Approving Bay du Nord is another leap towards an unlivable future. The decision is tantamount to denying that climate change is real and threatens our very existence.”
» Read article

ExxonMobil Announces $10 Billion Oil Investment the Same Day IPCC Signals End for Fossil Fuels
The oil giant’s massive plan to drill in Guyana’s waters comes as the UN Secretary General warns of fossil fuels as a “blight on investment portfolios.”
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
April 5, 2022

“Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released part of its latest report on Monday. This scientific summary, focused on how the world can cut greenhouse gas emissions, warns of the extraordinary harm to all of humanity caused by fossil fuels and the need for a rapid energy transition away from oil, gas, and coal, calling for meaningful changes over the next three years. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets, a blot on the landscape, and a blight on investment portfolios.”

That same day, oil giant ExxonMobil made an announcement of its own: a $10 billion final investment decision for an oil and gas development project in the South American nation of Guyana that the company said would allow it to add a quarter of a million barrels of oil a day to its production in 2025.

The IPCC’s call to action was urgent. “We are on a fast track to climate disaster,” Guterres said, reciting a list of consequences that have become all too familiar over the past few years — and warning of worse to come. “Major cities under water. Unprecedented heatwaves. Terrifying storms. Widespread water shortages. The extinction of a million species of plants and animals. This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies.”

The IPCC’s report marked the end of an era for fossil fuel producers, some observers said, establishing that, as The Guardian put it, the world has seen “a century of rising emissions [that] must end before 2025 to keep global heating under 1.5C, beyond which severe impacts will increase further, hurting billions of people.”

The disconnect between the two announcements, suggesting two markedly different trajectories for 2025, seems all the more glaring given that ExxonMobil itself has been an active participant in the IPCC “since its inception in 1988,” as the company wrote in a 2021 report. Exxon’s announcement that it plans to continue to pour billions of dollars into nonetheless expanding fossil fuel production — not just in Guyana but around the world — sends a strong message about the direction the company plans to steer, despite the warnings flowing from the IPCC, with consequences for us all.
» Read article

» More about fossil fuels

LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS

How the Recoil From Russian Gas Is Scrambling World Markets
Europe wants 50 billion cubic meters of additional natural gas, but supplies are tight. Prices will rise and other regions might have to do with less.
By Stanley Reed, New York Times
April 4, 2022

Just months ago, Germany’s plans to build a terminal for receiving shiploads of liquefied natural gas were in disarray. Would-be developers were not convinced customers would make enough use of a facility that can cost billions of dollars. And concerns about climate change undermined the future of a fossil fuel like natural gas.

Perceptions have changed. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin’s threats to sever fuel supplies, the government in Berlin has decided it needs these massive facilities — as many as four of them — to wean the country off Russian gas and act as a lifeline in case Moscow turns off the taps. The cost to the taxpayer now seems to be a secondary consideration.

Most of the gas that Europe buys from Russia to power its electrical utilities is delivered through pipelines, over land or under the sea. Liquefied natural gas provides another way to move gas great distances when pipelines are not an option. Natural gas is chilled to a liquid and loaded on special tankers. It can then be transported to any port with equipment to turn it back into a gas and pump it into the power grid.

“We are aiming to build L.N.G. terminals in Germany,” Robert Habeck, the country’s economy minister, recently said before talks with potential gas suppliers. Mr. Habeck is a politician from the environmentalist Greens but is finding, somewhat to his dismay, that Germany needs the fossil fuel.

[…] Europe’s scramble raises the prospect of a global battle over supplies in a market that analysts say has little slack. Asia, not Europe, is usually the prime destination for liquefied natural gas. China, Japan and South Korea were the leading buyers last year.

The additional gas that Europe is targeting would add around 10 percent to global demand, creating a tug of war with other countries for fuel. That prospect could mean that gas prices that have touched record levels in recent months will remain high, prolonging misery for consumers and squeezing industry.
» Read article

» More about LNG

PLASTICS, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Microplastics found deep in lungs of living people for first time
Particles discovered in tissue of 11 out of 13 patients undergoing surgery, with polypropylene and PET most common
By Damian Carrington, The Guardian
April 6, 2022

Microplastic pollution has been discovered lodged deep in the lungs of living people for the first time. The particles were found in almost all the samples analysed.

The scientists said microplastic pollution was now ubiquitous across the planet, making human exposure unavoidable and meaning “there is an increasing concern regarding the hazards” to health.

Samples were taken from tissue removed from 13 patients undergoing surgery and microplastics were found in 11 cases. The most common particles were polypropylene, used in plastic packaging and pipes, and PET, used in bottles. Two previous studies had found microplastics at similarly high rates in lung tissue taken during autopsies.

People were already known to breathe in the tiny particles, as well as consuming them via food and water. Workers exposed to high levels of microplastics are also known to have developed disease.

Microplastics were detected in human blood for the first time in March, showing the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs. The impact on health is as yet unknown. But researchers are concerned as microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of early deaths a year.

“We did not expect to find the highest number of particles in the lower regions of the lungs, or particles of the sizes we found,” said Laura Sadofsky at Hull York medical school in the UK,a senior author of the study. “It is surprising as the airways are smaller in the lower parts of the lungs and we would have expected particles of these sizes to be filtered out or trapped before getting this deep.”
» Blog editor’s note: This article is human-centered, but keep in mind that the negative health effects of microplastics in lungs, other organs, and blood apply equally to every other creature. Aside from the fact that one species has no right to poison every other species, we’re messing with a complex web of life that ultimately sustains us.
» Read article

» More about plastics, health, and the environment

Subscribe to Blog via Email

» Learn more about Pipeline projects
» Learn more about other proposed energy infrastructure
» Sign up for the NFGiM Newsletter for events, news and actions you can take
» DONATE to help keep our efforts going!

Weekly News Check-In 6/11/21

PEAKING POWER PLANTS

Proposed Peabody Power Plant Public Forum Set
The wholesale electric company behind the surge capacity plant project currently on pause will share information and solicit feedback.
By Scott Souza, Patch
June 10, 2021

PEABODY, MA —The wholesale electric company behind a proposed gas-powered surge capacity power plant in Peabody will hold a public meeting on June 22 to share information on the project and address resident concerns.

The project, which has been in the planning stages since 2015, was put on hold on May 11 amid growing opposition from climate advocacy groups and elected officials concerned about quality-of-life issues they say the plant will bring to an already overburdened environmental justice community.

But the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company has said the plant is necessary to satisfy mandatory surge capacity requirements in a way that renewable energy sources like solar, wind and hydro cannot reliably accomplish.

The MMWEC said it will solicit feedback during the meeting set for the Peter A. Torigian Center at 6:30 p.m.

“As a capacity resource, Project 2015A — MMWEC’s proposed peaking plant in Peabody — is expected to run just 239 hours per year, producing fewer emissions than 94 percent of similar peaking resources in the region, and will help its participating municipal light plants maintain stable rates for their customers,” the MMWEC said in scheduling the forum.

But advocacy groups Breathe Clean North Shore, the Massachusetts Climate Action Network and Community Action Works plan to deliver a petition to the utility’s Ludlow offices Friday morning demanding that the project be abandoned or altered to only use “clean” energy sources.

They say in the petition that the plant — which would be built at the Waters Street substation near the Peabody/Danvers line — will add to pollution, hamper efforts to combat the climate crisis and potentially create a “stranded asset” whose cost will fall on ratepayers.

The groups had also called for more public input on the project, which until recently moved through the planning process in relative obscurity.
» Read article

Peabody Power Plant Battle Heats Up As ‘Pause’ Nears 30 Days
Climate advocacy groups will request plans for the oil and gas plant to be altered or abandoned ahead of a decision on the project’s future.
By Scott Souza, Patch
June 8, 2021

PEABODY, MA — As a pause in the plans to build a 60-megawatt gas and oil power plant in Peabody nears 30 days, climate advocacy groups are planning to deliver a petition to the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company behind the project demanding that the utility abandon it or replace it only using clean energy sources.

Breathe Clean North Shore, the Massachusetts Climate Action Network and Community Action Works plan to deliver the petition to the utility’s Ludlow offices Friday morning — one month after the project was delayed amid a sudden swell of community outcry about its potential safety, climate and quality of life impact on Peabody residents and those in surrounding communities.
» Read article

» More about peaking power plants

PIPELINES

The Keystone XL Pipeline Is Officially Dead
By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
June 10, 2021

The Keystone XL pipeline is officially canceled.

TC Energy, the Canadian company behind the pipeline that would have moved oil from Alberta’s tar sands to Nebraska, confirmed Wednesday that it was giving up on the controversial project.

“The Company will continue to coordinate with regulators, stakeholders and Indigenous groups to meet its environmental and regulatory commitments and ensure a safe termination of and exit from the Project,” the company wrote.

The news was met with jubilation from environmental and Indigenous groups who had spent years battling the project over concerns it would worsen the climate crisis and harm the ecosystems and communities along its route.

“After more than 10 years — we have finally defeated an oil and gas giant! Keystone XL is DEAD!” the Indigenous Environmental Network tweeted in response to the news. “We are dancing in our hearts for this victory!”

The defeated pipeline would have extended 1,179 miles and transported 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, The New York Times explained. It would have ended in Nebraska, but connected to other pipelines that would help the oil complete its journey, as The AP reported.

However, environmental activists have long argued that now was the wrong time to lock in more fossil fuel infrastructure. For them, Wednesday’s victory was a long time coming. Protests against the pipeline first persuaded President Barack Obama to cancel a key permit for the project in 2015. Obama’s decision was then reversed two years later, when President Donald Trump restored the permit early into his term.
» Read article

» More about pipelines

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

Hundreds Arrested at Line 3 ‘Treaty People Gathering.’ Water Protectors Vow To Continue Until the Pipeline is Canceled
Indigenous activists in Northern Minnesota occupied sites of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, seeking to disrupt construction. The action puts national attention on an issue that President Biden has tried to ignore.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
June 8, 2021

Nearly 200 people were arrested on Monday while protesting the Line 3 pipeline, a long-distance tar sands pipeline that runs across Indigenous land and threatens food and water resources, including the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Indigenous and environmental groups, and even some elected officials, condemned the aggressive use of a helicopter to disperse protesters.

More than 2,000 people began gathering at an undisclosed location in Northern Minnesota over the weekend, answering a call from Indigenous Anishinaabe people and a coalition of environmental groups to disrupt the construction of the pipeline.

The “Treaty People Gathering” kicked off on June 7, when hundreds of water protectors arrived at construction sites where Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, is ramping up construction of the Line 3 pipeline, which began in June after a several-month hiatus due to weather.

The direct action aims not just to delay and disrupt construction, but also to ratchet up the pressure on the Biden administration to intervene. Biden has avoided a public position on the issue, but growing national attention on the protests could make ignoring the water protectors increasingly difficult for the administration. The silence is all the more glaring as Biden has positioned himself as a champion of both climate action and Indigenous rights.

The Line 3 pipeline has been described as a replacement for an aging line, but much of it traverses new land, and the “replacement” will nearly double the current volume of oil traveling through the system, increasing it to 760,000 barrels per day. The emissions associated with the project would be equivalent to 50 coal-fired power plants.

The threat of oil spills is also not theoretical. In 2010, Enbridge’s Line 6B spilled nearly a million gallons of heavy oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

Those opposing the pipeline’s construction are seeking to deliberately highlight how the project violates Indigenous people’s treaty rights.

“We called this mobilization the Treaty People Gathering because we are all treaty people. Our non-native allies have a responsibility to stand with us against projects like the Line 3 pipeline that put our Anishinaabe lifeways at risk. Today, we’re taking a stand for our right to hunt, fish, and gather, and for the future of the climate,” said Nancy Beaulieau, Northern Minnesota Organizer with MN350 and co-founder of the Resilient Indigenous Sisters Engaging (RISE) coalition.

The gathering aims to rekindle the spirit and energy of the 2016 Dakota Access pipeline protests, led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a broad swathe of Native and non-Native allies, where thousands of people gathered in North Dakota for several months in the latter half of 2016.
» Read article

‘Which Side Are You On?’: #StopLine3 Protesters Appeal to Biden on Historic Day of Action
“We still have time to save our sacred waters and land—our life sources,” said Indigenous organizer Dawn Goodwin.
By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
June 7, 2021

In what organizers are calling the largest-ever demonstration of its kind in Minnesota history, more than 2,000 Indigenous-led water protectors on Monday continued nonviolent, direct action protests against the planned replacement and expansion of Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

Stop Line 3 campaigners said over 1,000 water protectors marched with Indigenous leaders to the headwaters of the Mississippi River on the third day of the Treaty People Gathering—which organizers billed as “the beginning of a summer of resistance”—to participate in a treaty ceremony at a proposed Line 3 crossing site.

The $9 billion pipeline project—which if completed will carry up to 750,000 barrels of crude tar sands oil, the world’s dirtiest fuel, from Alberta to the port of Superior, Wisconsin—is slated to traverse Anishinaabe treaty land without tribal consent. The proposed pipeline route crosses more than 200 bodies of water and 800 wetlands, raising serious concerns not only about the project’s impact on the climate emergency, but also about leaks and other accidents opponents say are all but inevitable.

South of the Mississippi headwaters gathering, over 500 activists in coordination and solidarity with the Indigenous women and two-spirit-led Giniw Collective shut down a Line 3 pumping station at Two Inlets, northwest of Park Rapids, with some demonstrators locking themselves to construction equipment.

A low-flying helicopter protesters said belongs to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security kicked up a large dust cloud in an apparent effort to intimidate and disperse activists from the pump station protest site. Water protectors continued their resistance even as police clad in riot gear arrived at the station and reportedly began arresting demonstrators later in the afternoon.
» Read article

» More about protests and actions

GREENING THE ECONOMY

Scientists Find Cheap And Easy Way To Extract Lithium From Seawater
By MINING.com, in Oil Price
June 7, 2021

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology developed what they believe is an economically viable system to extract high-purity lithium from seawater.

Previous efforts to tease lithium from the mixture the metal makes together with sodium, magnesium and potassium in seawater yielded very little. Although the liquid contains 5,000 times more lithium than what can be found on land, it is present at extremely low concentrations of about 0.2 parts per million (ppm).

To address this issue, the team led by Zhiping Lai tried a method that had never been used before to extract lithium ions. They employed an electrochemical cell containing a ceramic membrane made from lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO).

In a paper published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, the researchers explain that the membrane’s crystal structure contains holes just wide enough to let lithium ions pass through while blocking larger metal ions.

The cell itself, on the other hand, contains three compartments. Seawater flows into a central feed chamber, where positive lithium ions pass through the LLTO membrane into a side compartment that contains a buffer solution and a copper cathode coated with platinum and ruthenium. At the same time, negative ions exit the feed chamber through a standard anion exchange membrane, passing into a third compartment containing a sodium chloride solution and a platinum-ruthenium anode.

Lai and his group tested the system using seawater from the Red Sea. At a voltage of 3.25V, the cell generates hydrogen gas at the cathode and chlorine gas at the anode. This drives the transport of lithium through the LLTO membrane, where it accumulates in the side-chamber. This lithium-enriched water then becomes the feedstock for four more cycles of processing, eventually reaching a concentration of more than 9,000 ppm.

According to the researchers, the cell will probably need $5 of electricity to extract 1 kilogram of lithium from seawater. This means that the value of hydrogen and chlorine produced by the cell would end up offsetting the cost of power, and residual seawater could also be used in desalination plants to provide fresh water.
» Read article
» Read the research paper

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

Global carbon dioxide levels continued to rise despite pandemic
Emissions rose to 419 parts per million in May, the highest such measurement in the 63 years that the data has been recorded
By Katharine Gammon, The Guardian
June 8, 2021

The data is in: carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere hit 419 parts per million in May. The levels have now reached the dangerous milestone of being 50% higher than when the industrial age began – and the average rate of increase is faster than ever.

The figure is the highest measurement of the crucial greenhouse gas in the 63 years that data has been recorded at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii – despite slowdowns in air travel and industry during a global pandemic in the past year.

The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the reason is complex. Global emissions fell by 6.4% in 2020, but given the seasonal and natural variability, modest decreases wouldn’t make a big impact on the global tally of carbon emissions. And even as emissions dropped, wildfires burning through trees released carbon dioxide – maybe even at a similar rate as the modest lowering of emissions from the pandemic’s slowing impact on the global economy.

“The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO₂ is fossil-fuel emissions,” geochemist Ralph Keeling, whose father started gathering data at the Mauna Loa site, told Noaa. “But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each year more CO₂ piles up in the atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the Covid-related shutdowns of 2020.”

In order to meet the goals of the Paris climate accords – to keep temperature rise to 1.5C – the United Nations Environment Programme report finds countries need to cut their global emissions by 7.6% every year for the next decade.

“Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than pre-industrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way,” said the Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research.

“If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”
» Read article

Wealthy Nations Continue to Finance Natural Gas for Developing Countries, Putting Climate Goals at Risk
Advocates are calling for an end to natural gas development, but some poor nations say doing so would unfairly penalize them and stifle economic growth.
By Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News
June 7, 2021

As the world’s governments try to raise their collective climate ambitions, one of the biggest questions is whether developing countries can expand their access to energy and reduce poverty without driving a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

A new report warns that wealthy nations are still pushing in the wrong direction, by continuing to finance new natural gas infrastructure across the global south. While natural gas once held the promise of serving as a “bridge fuel” to a cleaner future, a growing body of scientific research suggests the fossil fuel will need to be phased out rapidly in coming decades in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The analysis, published Monday by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a climate think tank, looked at spending by multilateral finance groups like the World Bank and government lenders like the United States Export-Import Bank. It found that the groups provided an average of $15.9 billion annually to gas projects in low- and middle-income countries from 2017 through 2019, more than to any other energy source and four times as much as to wind or solar energy.

“What we’re seeing is increasing pressure on developing countries from the global gas industry and from international institutions to expand their production and consumption of natural gas,” said Greg Muttitt, senior policy adviser at the sustainable development institute and the report’s lead author. “We’re concerned about this because it’s quite clear that with how late we are in the climate crisis, we really need to be winding down fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”

Muttitt said preliminary data from last year, which covers multilateral lenders only, shows an encouraging trend: For the first time, clean energy received more financing than fossil fuels—four times as much. Still, gas continued to draw billions of dollars in support, even as funding for oil and coal fell.

The report comes as leaders of the wealthy G7 nations prepare to meet this week in the United Kingdom. Last month, the climate and environment ministers from G7 countries issued a joint message committing to “take concrete steps towards an absolute end” this year to international financing of coal-fired power plants that aren’t fitted with technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions. They also said they would phase out support for fossil fuel energy more broadly, but did not set a timeline and allowed exceptions “in limited circumstances.”
» Read article

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

Massachusetts group tests new model for solar on affordable housing projects
The Solar Technical Assistance Retrofits will offer financial and technical assistance to community development agencies interested in rooftop solar, with private investors providing the upfront capital
By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network
June 11, 2021

A Massachusetts program announced Thursday that it has secured $10 million to invest in up to 3 megawatts of solar projects on affordable housing buildings.

The Solar Technical Assistance Retrofits program, or STAR, will offer financial and technical assistance to community development agencies interested in installing rooftop solar as a way to lower energy costs.

“We believe that affordable housing should have full access to clean energy just like everyone else — it’s an equity issue,” said Emily Jones, senior program officer at the Local Initiatives Support Corp. in Boston, one of the agencies developing the program.

Solar panels offer environmental and financial benefits to housing agencies, including freeing up money to invest elsewhere or pass savings on to residents. Community development groups also generally serve neighborhoods that stand to feel a disproportionate impact from climate change.

However, over the past decade or so, the tight budgets of these nonprofits have meant few new affordable developments have included solar panels. Many, perhaps most, have instead opted for solar-ready construction, with roofs and electrical systems designed to support a hypothetical future solar system.

But once a development is built, new challenges to going solar appear. The buildings are generally operated with very small margins, leaving the agencies with little money to invest in solar installations.

Furthermore, affordable housing agencies generally own multiple buildings, each with its own advantages and obstacles for solar panels. Researching the often complex and technical options and seeking out financing partners can be too much for agency staff that is already stretched thin. Even the seemingly minor detail of freeing up staff to gather the information and complete the paperwork a solar developer needs can become a major stumbling block.

The STAR program, which launched in January, is designed to address this complex set of obstacles in a way other programs have not. Participating organizations receive grants to help them launch the process, in-depth analyses of their solar options from a local solar developer, and access to financing to help them install solar panels, often with no upfront cost.
» Read article

The Department of Energy is trying to make clean hydrogen this generation’s ‘moonshot’
New “Energy Earthshots” initiative aims to make clean hydrogen cheap.
By Emily Pontecorvo, Grist
June 8, 2021

The U.S. Department of Energy announced a new “Energy Earthshots” initiative on Monday, evoking the spirit of ambition that put astronauts on the moon in the 1960s. This time, the goal is to accelerate the development of clean energy solutions that will help tackle climate change.

The initiative will focus on bringing down the cost of technologies that will enable the U.S. to achieve a net-zero emissions energy system by 2050, a crucial benchmark for preventing runaway global warming. First up is the “Hydrogen Shot” — a goal to get the cost of clean hydrogen from $5 per kilogram down to $1 by 2030, or an 80 percent drop.

“Clean hydrogen is a game changer,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “It will help decarbonize high-polluting heavy-duty and industrial sectors, while delivering good-paying clean energy jobs and realizing a net-zero economy by 2050.”

Hydrogen is a flexible fuel that can be used in a range of applications and doesn’t release any greenhouse gases when it’s burned. Today the United States produces about a seventh of the world’s hydrogen, which is primarily used in oil refineries and to produce ammonia for fertilizer. But hydrogen could be key to cutting emissions from some of the hardest-to-decarbonize activities, such as industrial processes, steelmaking, storing clean energy for the power grid, and powering heavy-duty vehicles.

The problem is that today, about 95 percent of all hydrogen is made by reacting steam with natural gas in a process that releases carbon dioxide emissions. The Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Shot initiative aims to scale up methods of producing the fuel cleanly, using renewable electricity, nuclear power, or natural gas or biomass with carbon capture technology to prevent emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Clean hydrogen production does exist today at a small scale, and is mainly inhibited by cost. But larger projects are underway. A utility in Florida is building a pilot plant to produce hydrogen from excess solar power, and New York-based company Plug Power has announced plans for three new hydrogen production facilities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas that will produce the fuel using hydropower and wind energy.
» Blog editor’s note: Green hydrogen does have a place in our energy future, but producing it from natural gas or biomass (even with carbon capture) would be environmentally problematic. So would overuse of this resource – for instance, using it for any applications that could be handled by wind/solar/storage assets. We’ll be watching this topic closely.
» Read article

» More about clean energy

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Watchdogs on alert ahead of climate law implementation
By Colin A. Young, WWLP, Chanel 22 News
June 9, 2021

BOSTON (SHNS) – Seventy-five days ago Wednesday, senators, representatives and administration officials gathered in the State Library to watch Gov. Charlie Baker sign a wide-reaching climate policy law. That means there are just 15 days left before it takes effect, and the lead Senate architect of the law made clear Wednesday he will be watching its implementation closely.

Sen. Michael Barrett spoke as part of the Northeast Clean Energy Council and Alliance for Business Leadership’s annual Massachusetts Clean Energy Day, an event that also featured his House counterpart Rep. Jeff Roy and Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Patrick Woodcock […].

“I want to emphasize the Senate’s interest in following through with implementation of the 2021 climate act. The Senate as a body has a lot invested here,” Barrett said, adding that even though the law was a result of legislative and executive branch collaboration, “small gaps” remain between how the Senate would like to see the law implemented and the Baker administration’s perspective.

The law Baker signed in March after months of stops and starts commits Massachusetts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, establishes interim emissions goals between now and the middle of the century, adopts energy efficiency standards for appliances, authorizes another 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind power and addresses needs in environmental justice communities.

Barrett has taken a watchdog role in the law’s implementation since the governor’s signature was still wet. Minutes after the bill signing, he told the News Service he was concerned that the Baker administration had tried to “evade legislative intent” of the new law. On Wednesday, he pointed specifically to the law’s provision calling for a municipal opt-in net-zero stretch energy code — which was a major point of contention between the Legislature and governor during debate on the bill — as an area of concern.

“The framing, verbally, of the administration’s responsibility here by others in the administration has tended to drop the words ‘net-zero’ out of the conversation, which is really strange because we not only require in statute that there be a definition of net zero building, we also require that there be, and I’m quoting from the statute, ‘net-zero building performance standards’ promulgated by the end of 2022,” he said. The senator added, “So there’s still a difference between legislative intention, which is pretty clear, and what the administration says it intends to do with drafting the net-zero stretch energy code.”

Barrett said the Senate would be “dead serious” about making sure “that the politics within the executive branch, which may include builders and developers, don’t somehow throw us off path.”

“I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I haven’t seen a significant indication really that there’s unambivalent buy-in by the executive at the current time, current company exempted,” he said.

Barrett excluded Woodcock from his criticisms throughout his remarks Wednesday. During his own remarks, Woodcock mentioned that DOER is “moving forward with building code updates, not only with our stretch code but looking at a municipal opt-in that includes a definition of net-zero.”
» Read article

» More about energy efficiency

MODERNIZING THE GRID

New England states push for governance changes in ISO-NE, ahead of anticipated MOPR reform
To quell state frustrations, regulators say conversations will have to move beyond reforming the controversial minimum price rule.
By Catherine Morehouse, Utility Dive
June 7, 2021

State regulators in the Northeast are cautiously optimistic that the new administration and improved relations with their grid operator will finally place their states — and their region — on a path toward dramatically reducing emissions in the next decade. But much of that progress depends on whether structures within the New England ISO change beyond the reversal of controversial orders in the region, they say.

Almost every state in the ISO New England footprint has an ambitious mandate or goal for clean electricity in the coming decades, requiring large amounts of renewable energy to come onto the power system. But efforts by the grid operator to prevent price suppression in the region, as a result of increasing levels of subsidized resources, led to tensions between the regional operator and state officials in recent years — specifically, rules set under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2018 to reform its capacity auction by splitting it in two. Under the first auction, the minimum offer price rule (MOPR) would apply, effectively raising the bidding price of all state-subsidized resources. The second auction is an attempt to somewhat rectify this by allowing cleared resources to substitute themselves out for newer, state sponsored resources, and get paid for doing so.

Ultimately, this rule, approved in 2018 and known as Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources (CASPR), heightened the conflict between states and their regulators, and for a time cemented the MOPR as an appropriate response to concerns over state-subsidized resources. States felt the rules would interfere with the laws binding them to bring on more clean energy, and regulators became increasingly frustrated when faced with regional policies they believed would not allow them to fulfill their statutory duties to implement those laws.

But now, under a new FERC and faced with a wave of political backlash — including some states in the also MOPRed PJM Interconnection threatening to exit the markets altogether, and a letter sent to the ISO in October from five Northeast states demanding changes to the market’s design, planning process and governance — FERC and the grid operators are working to rectify those policies, and give states a more central voice in the discussion.

“The MOPR regimes and Eastern capacity markets have pretty much forced us to get to a situation where we’re at battle, in many cases, with the states — and needlessly so, in my opinion,” said FERC Chair Richard Glick, who consistently opposed the orders when he was a commissioner, during FERC’s second technical conference in May on re-evaluating resource adequacy in the markets.
» Read article

» More about modernizing the grid

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

Inside of world’s largest airship revealed in stunning images
By Edd Gent, Live Science
June 8, 2021

New details about one of the world’s largest aircraft, Airlander 10, reveal a spacious cabin with floor-to-ceiling windows (and plenty of legroom) inside the blimp-like exterior. And the futuristic aircraft will be loads better for the environment.

British company Hybrid Air Vehicles recently released concept images of its forthcoming airship, which is 299 feet (91 meters) long and 112 feet (34 m) wide, with the capacity to hold about 100 people. But rather than being crammed in like sardines, passengers will be treated to floor-to-ceiling windows and the kind of space and legroom commercial airlines currently reserve for business-class customers.

The firm thinks the vehicle, which is expected to enter service by 2025, will soon challenge conventional jets on a number of popular short-haul routes, thanks to its improved comfort and 90% lower emissions.

“The number-one benefit is reducing your carbon footprint on a journey by a factor of 10,” Mike Durham, Hybrid Air Vehicles’ chief technical officer, told Live Science. “But also, while you’re going to be in the air a little bit longer than you would if you were on an airplane, the quality of the journey will be so much better.”

The Airlander is so much greener than a passenger plane, Durham said, primarily because it relies on a giant balloon of helium to get it into the air. In contrast, airplanes need to generate considerable forward thrust with their engines before their wings can provide the lift to get them airborne.

Once it’s in the air, the airship relies on four propellers on each corner of the aircraft to push it along. In the first generation, two of these propellers will be powered by kerosene-burning engines, but the other two will be driven by electric motors, further reducing the vehicle’s carbon emissions. By 2030, the company expects to provide a fully electric version of the Airlander.
» Read article

» More about clean transportation

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

$just another fracker$ Exxon is Telling Investors its Permian Fracking Projects are ‘World Class’. The Data Says Otherwise.
A new report finds that the productivity of ExxonMobil’s wells in the Permian basin declined in 2019, raising “troubling questions about the quality” of its assets.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
June 10, 2021

ExxonMobil’s production numbers in the Permian basin in West Texas and New Mexico appear to have deteriorated in 2019, according to new analysis, calling into question the company’s claims that it is an industry leader and that its operations are steadily becoming more efficient over time.

Chastened by years of poor returns and rising angst among its own shareholders, ExxonMobil narrowed its priorities in 2020 to just a few overarching areas of interest, focusing on its massive offshore oil discoveries in Guyana and its Permian basin assets, two areas positioned as the very core of the company’s growth strategy.

Exxon has long described its Permian holdings as “world class,” and the company prides itself on being an industry leader in both size and profitability.

“For our largest resource, which is in the Delaware Basin, we’re only just about to unleash the hounds,” Neil Chapman, the head of Exxon’s oil and gas division, said at its March 2020 Investor Day conference. The Delaware basin is a subset of the Permian basin, stretching across West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

But while the pandemic and the oil market downturn forced cuts in spending, the company’s belief in the Permian and its assurances about its quality remain unshaken.

This is despite ExxonMobil’s wells in the Permian producing less oil on average in 2019 than they did in 2018, according to a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The decline raises “troubling questions about the quality” of those assets, the report states, and the company’s “ability to sustain the industry-leading production that the company has been touting to investors.”

IEEFA used data from IHS Markit, an industry analysis firm, the same data that Exxon itself uses in its presentation to investors. The data show that Exxon’s average first-year production per well in the Delaware portion of the Permian basin fell from 635 barrels per day in 2018 to 521 barrels per day in 2019. The slip in performance came as the company drilled twice as many wells over that timeframe.

“[A]s ExxonMobil drilled more Delaware Basin wells, the performance of its wells deteriorated year-over-year, both absolutely and in comparison with peers,” IEEFA analysts Clark Williams-Derry and Tom Sanzillo wrote in their report. Data for 2020 is not complete, but so far, the numbers suggest a further deterioration.
» Read article
» Read the IEEFA report

Cleaning Up Methane Pollution From Permian Super Emitters is ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ for the Climate, Study Finds
Experts shine a spotlight on the worst offenders in the Permian basin. The technological fixes are obvious, they say, but state regulators are so far unwilling to act.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
June 4, 2021

Only a handful of super emitters are responsible for an enormous amount of the methane pollution in the Permian basin, according to a new study. And ratcheting down these emissions can lead to quick and significant wins for the climate.

According to the study published on June 2 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, a relatively small number of sites — 11 percent — account for nearly a third of methane emissions in the region. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas — more than 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time-frame.

Between September and November 2019, a team of scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University, conducted aerial flights over the Permian basin, using sensors to detect methane plumes, tracing them back to specific emitters. The researchers found that roughly half of all the methane was escaping from drilling sites, and the other half from pipelines and processing facilities, indicating a slightly larger pollution footprint for pipelines compared to other regions.

The findings come at the same time as a separate study from Ceres and Clean Air Task Force, published on June 1, which found that some smaller oil drillers in the Permian basin have worse methane pollution rates than the largest oil and gas companies’ operations there, including ExxonMobil and Chevron.

Slashing methane emissions represents prime targets for climate action. But while the solutions are well-known, researchers and legal experts told DeSmog that state regulators have done very little to compel the industry to clean up.
» Read article
» Read the study

» More about fossil fuels

LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS

Canada’s Pieridae Energy hires MUFG as SocGen exits over emissions worries
By Sabrina Valle and Simon Jessop, Reuters
May 28, 2021

RIO DE JANEIRO/LONDON (Reuters) – Canada’s Pieridae Energy Ltd has hired Japanese lender MUFG Bank to help raise $10 billion for its proposed Goldboro liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant in Nova Scotia, it told Reuters on Thursday.

The decision to hire a new banker came after Societe Generale SA, its previous financial advisor, committed to phasing out of new shale financing on environmental grounds.

Societe Generale confirmed it had stopped providing support to both Goldboro and a separate project, Quebec LNG, to limit exposure to shale oil and gas production in North America by 2023.

Historically a backer of LNG projects, SocGen’s departure further reduces investment options for a dozen North American LNG projects still requiring financing. Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC also have tightened restrictions on lending for high-carbon energy projects.
» Blog editor’s note: Pieridae plans to develop the Goldboro LNG export facility in Nova Scotia – a potential destination for fracked gas traveling through the controversial Weymouth compressor station. A year ago, their engineering contractor KBR quit the project to clean up its environmental portfolio. Their financial advisor just did the same thing.
» Read article

» More about LNG

BIOMASS

Biomass is false solution to climate change
Recent state decisions are a step in right direction
By Philip Duffy and Alexander Rabin, CommonWealth Magazine | Opinion
May 14, 2021
Dr. Philip Duffy is president and executive director of Woodwell Climate Research Center in Woods Hole and Dr. Alexander Rabin is assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine specializing in pulmonary and critical care medicine.

FOR TOO LONG, burning wood has been wrongly considered “clean” energy, when in fact it is bad for both the climate and human health. With two recent decisions, Massachusetts seems poised to reverse direction on this false solution and prioritize healthier communities and a safer climate. While these are steps in the right direction, they are only the first of what is needed, and the Commonwealth has an opportunity to lead.

Springfield is the nation’s “asthma capital,” where residents face some of the highest rates of respiratory illness in the country as a result of decades of environmental hazards and heightened levels of air pollution. Springfield is also an environmental justice community, whose residents have spent 12 years fighting construction of a biomass plant proposed in their backyard. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection recently revoked the developer’s Air Plan Approval, citing “the heightened focus on environmental and health impacts on environmental justice populations from sources of pollution” in the nine years since the permit was first approved.

This decision and a new proposal from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources to strengthen the state’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard are welcome recognition that the health and well-being of the community and the environment are inextricably linked.

While these are huge steps in the right direction for Springfield, as well as for other environmental justice communities, in Massachusetts and many other states burning wood to generate electricity is currently considered “renewable” and eligible for incentives under the states’ Renewable Portfolio Standard, a policy that is intended to drive adoption of “clean” energy. But biomass is a false solution that serves neither our climate nor our communities.

For humanity to have a viable future, climate and public health policies must be based on science, not industry messaging. And the science is clear: to have a chance of an acceptable future, we need to immediately and drastically reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere, and also remove a massive amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. Burning our forests is incompatible with both of those goals and harmful to our health.
» Read article

The IEA’s New Net Zero ‘Roadmap’ is Dangerously Reliant on Destructive Bioenergy
The influential agency is also wildly overestimating the amount of bioenergy currently in production, argues Biofuelwatch’s Almuth Ernsting.
By Almuth Ernsting, DeSmog Blog | Opinion
June 1, 2021
Almuth Ernsting is Co-director of Biofuelwatch and Regional Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition in Europe and North America.

The International Energy Agency’s new “Net Zero by 2050” report has won plaudits for its bold recommendations on how the world can limit warming to 1.5°C, in line with the Paris Agreement: no investment in new fossil fuel projects, and an end to petrol and diesel cars by 2035.

But the vision it presents governments is fantastic in another sense of the word, too.

From 2030 onwards, the IEA sees technologies that don’t yet work at scale doing much of the heavy lifting. In reality, annual carbon dioxide emissions reliably mirror the state of countries’ economies, dipping only during recessions.

As for the not-yet-proven technologies, I can think of no better reply than Greta Thunberg’s tweet slamming US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry for his recent remark that half of emissions cuts would need to come from technologies we don’t currently possess: “Great news! I spoke to Harry Potter and he said he will team up with Gandalf, Sherlock Holmes & The Avengers and get started right away!”

The IEA is made up of thirty member states and eight associated countries, comprising most of the world’s economic power. Its reports both reflect and shape the prevailing paradigm for how governments respond to the climate crisis.

In this light, one of the most pernicious elements of the IEA’s net-zero scenario is the future role it foresees for bioenergy.

This bioenergy “vision” has been rightly criticised as a “false solution” by environmental NGOs. Converting land to biofuel production can have a disastrous impact on both the climate and biodiversity. Palm oil biofuels are linked to three times the carbon emissions of the fossil fuels they replace, and soy biofuels have twice the emissions footprint. Meanwhile, industrial crop and tree plantations are associated with widespread land-grabbing, human rights abuses, and loss of access to food.

So there are numerous drawbacks to the IEA’s supposedly modest bioenergy scenario, which by our estimates would involve a more than four-fold increase in land used for crop and tree plantations, as well as a growing reliance on forest wood. This would worsen climate change and biodiversity loss and lead to a new wave of land-grabbing likely accompanied by human rights abuses and loss of food sovereignty in the Global South.
» Read article

» More about biomass

PLASTICS, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT

Ocean Plastic: What You Need to Know
By Audrey Nakagawa, EcoWatch
June 8, 2021

Ocean bound plastic is plastic waste that is headed toward our oceans. The term “ocean bound plastic” was popularized by Jenna Jambeck, Ph.D., a professor from the University of Georgia. In 2015, she and a team of researchers estimated the amount of plastic waste entering the ocean from land.

Addressing ocean bound plastic is a key element to ocean conservation. Around 80% of plastic in the ocean can be sourced back to ocean bound plastic. Plastics that end up near bodies of water such as rivers are at risk of ending up in the ocean. Other plastic can reach the sea through sewage systems or storms. For example, in 2011, after the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and earthquake hit Japan, around 5 million tons of debris ended up in the ocean. Some of the debris sank while some ended up on the U.S. west coast. Additionally, trash and plastic can come from ships or offshore platforms. However, decades ago, countries dumped their waste directly into the sea. In the U.S. this was outlawed in 1988 in the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988.

Plastic waste is a huge threat to our Earth, and diverting ocean bound plastic is one way we can do better to help the environment.

Each year, despite conservation efforts, 8 million tons of plastic reaches our oceans to meet the 150 million metric tons of plastic that already exists in marine environments. According to the Smithsonian, as of 2016, we produce around 335 million metric tons of plastic each year. Half of this plastic is single-use. Of the plastic we use globally, only around 9% of it gets properly recycled.

To create a mental picture of just how much plastic ends up in our oceans, imagine a garbage truck the size of New York City depositing its garbage into the ocean every minute of every day for a whole year. If this doesn’t frighten you enough, the amount of plastic that will be produced and consumed is supposed to double over the course of the next ten years. If nothing is done to address plastic consumption, and the aftermath, there could be over 250 million metric tons of plastic in our oceans in ten years.

Even if you don’t live on a coast, the plastic you throw away can still end up in the ocean. According to the World Wildlife Fund, plastic ends up in the ocean when it’s thrown away instead of recycled, when it’s littered on land, and when products we use are flushed down the drain or toilet. Additionally, cosmetic or cleaning products that contain parabens or microplastic beads can be washed into the ocean.
» Read article

Who’s Making — and Funding — the World’s Plastic Trash?
ExxonMobil, Dow, Barclays, and more top lists in a new report ranking the companies behind the single-use plastic crisis.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
May 18, 2021

ExxonMobil is the world’s single largest producer of single-use plastics, according to a new report published today by the Australia-based Minderoo Foundation, one of Asia’s biggest philanthropies.

The Dow Chemical Company ranks second, the report finds, with the Chinese state-owned company Sinopec coming in third. Indorama Ventures — a Thai company that entered the plastics market in 1995 — and Saudi Aramco, owned by the Saudi Arabian government, round out the top five.

Funding for single-use plastic production comes from major banks and from institutional asset managers. The UK-based Barclays and HSBC, and Bank of America are the top three lenders to single-use plastic projects, the new report finds. All three of the most heavily invested asset managers named by the report — Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and Capital Group — are U.S.-based.

“This is the first-time the financial and material flows of single-use plastic production have been mapped globally and traced back to their source,” said Toby Gardner, a Stockholm Environment Institute senior research fellow, who contributed to the report, titled The Plastic Waste Makers Index.

The report is also the first to rank companies by their contributions to the single-use plastic crisis, listing the corporations and other financiers it says are most responsible for plastic pollution — with major implications for climate change.

“The trajectories of the climate crisis and the plastic waste crisis are strikingly similar and increasingly intertwined,” Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, wrote in the report’s foreword. “Tracing the root causes of the plastic waste crisis empowers us to help solve it.”

The world of plastic production is concentrated in fewer hands than the world of plastic packaging, the report’s authors found. The top twenty brands in the plastic packaging world — think Coca Cola or Pepsi, for example — handle about 10 percent of global plastic waste, report author Dominic Charles told DeSmog. In contrast, the top 20 producers of plastic polymers — the building blocks of plastics — handle over half of the waste generated.

“Which I think was really quite staggering,” Charles, director of Finance & Transparency at Minderoo Foundation’s Sea The Future program, told DeSmog. “It means that just a handful of companies really do have the fate of the world’s single-use plastic waste in their hands.”
» Read article

» More about plastics in the environment

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Weekly News Check-In 9/11/20

WEYMOUTH COMPRESSOR STATION

Weymouth compressor station starts testing
The city of Quincy sent a warning to residents letting them know they may smell natural gas in the area of the station this month
By Joe DiFazio, The Patriot Ledger
September 9, 2020

The controversial natural gas compressor station in Weymouth has begun testing this week and, in the process, releasing natural gas into the atmosphere.

The station, on the banks of the Fore River, is being built by Enbridge, a Canadian-based multinational energy transportation company. The compressor station is part of Enbridge’s Atlantic Bridge project, which would expand the company’s natural gas pipelines from New Jersey into Canada.

The testing began on Tuesday and will run through Oct. 1. In addition to testing for leaks and calibrating piping, the station will complete an emergency shutdown test on Saturday. Enbridge said they will be venting the natural gas through a charcoal trailer to help reduce its characteristic smell. In order to test operation of the facility’s pipes, it has to purge air from the pipes using pressurized natural gas.

The station has been the target of vociferous opposition by residents and local politicians and has been mired in legal battles since its inception.

“Our position hasn’t changed, this is an inappropriate location for this facility,” said Chris Walker, chief of staff to Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, on Wednesday. “They won a recent court ruling to do this, but the legal challenges continue.”

A legal decision last week by a federal appeals court reversed a prior decision to vacate an air permit for the station. The reversal was the latest green light for Enbridge on its way to making the site fully operational.
» Read article

Federal appeals court reverses decision to vacate Weymouth compressor air permit
The judges said in their decision that operations could not begin until March 2021 at the earliest but project opponents say the gas could be turned on much sooner.
By Wheeler Cowperthwaite, The Patriot Ledger, in Wicked Local Weymouth
September 6, 2020

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated its previous decision to throw out an air permit for the natural gas compressor station Enbridge is building in North Weymouth.

On June 3, Judge William Kayatta issued the original decision, throwing out the air permit granted by the state Department of Environmental Protection state because it did not follow its own procedures when it approved a gas turbine, rather than an electric motor, to cut emissions at the station.

In the unanimous opinion issued Monday, the three-judge panel said they were amending their original decision by allowing the company to keep the air permit. The case is still remanded to the Department of Environmental Protection on the question of what kind of turbine would best cut emissions at the station.

The panel said in the decision that the Department of Environmental Protection will not be able to complete its review within the 75-day deadline the court set, which has been extended to Jan. 19, 2021.

The Department of Environmental Protection staff also concluded, following a preliminary review, that an electric motor is not the best available control technology, although that is not its final decision.

“If correct, the staff’s conclusion also means that the permit will be approved and any operations before January 19, 2021, will have resulted in no emissions in excess of Massachusetts regulations,” the panel said.
» Read article
» Read the decision

» More about the Weymouth compressor station

PIPELINES

Dakota Access Pipeline Faces Legal Challenge In Illinois
Podcast, The 21st Show
September 8, 2020

It’s been four years since the protests began in Standing Rock Indian Reservation over the Dakota Access Pipeline. Many of us tend to associate the pipeline with those protests at Standing Rock, but the pipeline travels through several states, including right here in Illinois. And Illinois is the only state challenging a proposal that would lead to a million barrels of oil flowing through the pipeline everyday.

To talk more about the proposal, The 21st is joined by a climate and environment reporter from Illinois Newsroom and an attorney representing environement groups.

Guests: Lecia Bushak, multimedia environmental journalist, Illinois Newsroom, and John D. Albers, Attorney representing environmental groups, Shay Law, Ltd.
» Listen to the podcast

A Major Oil Pipeline Project Strikes Deep at the Heart of Africa
Despite the global plunge in oil prices, a major pipeline that would carry oil 900 miles across East Africa is moving ahead. International experts warn that the $20 billion project will displace thousands of small farmers and put key wildlife habitat and coastal waters at risk.
By Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360
May 21, 2020

Imagine a tropical version of the Alaskan oil pipeline. Only longer. And passing through critical elephant, lion, and chimpanzee habitats and 12 forest reserves, skirting Africa’s largest lake, and crossing more than 200 rivers and thousands of farms before reaching the Indian Ocean — where its version of the Exxon Valdez disaster would pour crude oil into some of Africa’s most biodiverse mangroves and coral reefs.

Such a project is ready for construction, to bring to the world oil from new oil fields in the heart of Africa. It is the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.

The middle of a global pandemic, during which oil demand is in freefall and prices at rock bottom, might seem an odd moment to boost the world’s oil production. But the petrochemicals industry is always looking for new reserves to replace those being exhausted. And two oil fields discovered on the shores of Lake Albert, which straddles the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are currently among the biggest and cheapest new reserves available. They contain an estimated 6 billion barrels, roughly half the size of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay field.
» Read article

» More about pipelines

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

Delaware Just Sued 30 Fossil Fuel Companies and the American Petroleum Institute Over Climate ‘Denial and Disinformation’
By Dana Drugmand, DeSmog Blog
September 10, 2020

Delaware, the home state of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, announced on Thursday, September 10 that it is taking dozens of major oil and gas companies including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil to court over the rising costs of climate impacts such as sea level rise and coastal flooding.

Like other U.S. states and municipalities suing the fossil fuel industry, Delaware says that the industry knew half a century ago about the likely climate impacts resulting from the use of its products, but instead of warning the public or changing their business model, the fossil fuel companies engaged in campaigns to attack climate science and downplay the risks of burning coal, oil, and gas in order to stave off policy responses.

“Delawareans are already paying for the malfeasance of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies,” Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in a press release. “Exxon, Chevron, and other mega-corporations knew exactly what kind of sacrifices the world would make to support their profits, and they deceived the public for decades. Now we are staring down a crisis at our shores, and taxpayers are once again footing the bill for damage to our roads, our beaches, our environment, and our economy. We are seeking accountability from some of the world’s most powerful businesses to pay for the mess they’ve made.”

The lawsuit, filed September 10 in Delaware Superior Court, a state court, seeks monetary damages to help pay for costs the state is already incurring and that are expected to mount as climate impacts worsen.
» Read article
» Read the press release
» Read the complaint

Latest Youth Climate Lawsuit Filed Against 33 European Countries Over Human Rights
By Dana Drugmand, DeSmog UK
September 4, 2020

Six young people from Portugal have filed an unprecedented climate change lawsuit against almost all of Europe, targeting 33 European nations for failing to take adequate action on the climate crisis that they say threatens their human rights.

It is the latest in a series of legal actions brought by young people around the world demanding urgent climate action to protect their fundamental rights and safeguard their futures.

The case was filed on September 3 in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. It is the first climate case brought directly to this international court. Lawyers for the youth plaintiffs will argue that European governments’ current plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change and therefore constitute human rights violations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

“If successful, the 33 countries would be legally bound, not only to ramp up emissions cuts, but also to tackle overseas contributions to climate change, including those of their multinational companies,” the charity Global Legal Action Network, which is providing legal support for the case, explained in a press release.
» Read article
» Read the press release

» More about protests and actions

GREENING THE ECONOMY

Report: Black households spend almost 50 percent more on utilities than white households
By Angely Mercado, Grist
September 10, 2020

By the end of this month, tens of millions of households in the U.S. stand to lose protections against utility shut-offs, which were instituted early in the COVID-19 pandemic. But household utilities have long placed an outsized burden on low-income households and communities of color. New research released Thursday sheds light on just how large that burden has been — even before the pandemic and its economic fallout.

According to a new study by the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Black, Hispanic, and Native American households spend a much larger portion of their income on energy bills than non-Hispanic white households on average — 43 percent more, 20 percent more, and 45 percent more, respectively. Low-income households (which the report defines as those with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level) spend three times as large a share of their income on energy costs as other households.

These disparities make low-income households and communities of color disproportionately vulnerable to utility shut-offs now that moratoriums are beginning to expire.
ACEEE energy burden definition: Energy burden means the percentage of household income that goes toward energy costs, and we looked specifically at utility energy bills (transportation energy costs are also a significant household expense, but it was outside the scope of the analysis).
» Read article
» Read the ACEEE report

BP, Major Wall Street Banks Want Carbon Pricing Policy In U.S.
By Tsvetana Paraskova, Oil Price
September 10, 2020

Supermajor BP, as well as many major Wall Street banks, recommends that the U.S. set a price on carbon in a report commissioned by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which recognizes that climate change could pose a risk to the financial markets.

The report from CFTC’s Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee – which includes, among others, executives from BP, ConocoPhillips, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Vanguard, Allianz Global Investors, and the Environmental Defense Fund – says that “Both physical and transition risks could give rise to systemic and sub-systemic financial shocks, potentially causing unprecedented disruption in the proper functioning of financial markets and institutions.”

“This report begins with a fundamental finding—financial markets will only be able to channel resources efficiently to activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions if an economy-wide price on carbon is in place at a level that reflects the true social cost of those emissions,” said the authors led by CFTC’s subcommittee chairman Bob Litterman.

The report was the first of its kind from a U.S. regulator, the CFTC, whose climate-related risk subcommittee recommends pricing carbon emissions.
» Read article
» Read press release and access report

Coal and Gas Burning Countries Set to Gain from EU Just Transition Fund
By Phoebe Cooke, DeSmog UK
September 9, 2020

Coal-burning countries could benefit from billions in EU funding even as they fail in their climate commitments, a new report shows.

Every member state is required to phase out coal entirely by 2030 and transition directly to clean electricity to meet the EU’s Paris Agreement target of limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

But a briefing released today by climate thinktank Ember finds that seven of the 18 EU member states still using coal to generate electricity have no plans for a phase-out in the next decade.

Despite this, those seven countries would be set to benefit from two-thirds of the Just Transition Fund, worth up to €40 billion (£36 billion) and set up to support the EU regions most impacted by a transition to a low carbon economy. While two of these countries – Poland and Bulgaria – plan a significant expansion of gas use alongside continued coal burning.

Charles Moore, Ember’s European Programme Lead, said in a statement: “The majority of EU coal-countries are not ready for a just transition.”

“They have no plans to give up coal by 2030 – or they plan to swap coal for fossil gas – another dead end if the EU is to meet its Paris Agreement commitments. Now is the time to support coal regions in countries genuinely undergoing a rapid energy transition. But the Just Transition Fund looks set to reward inaction rather than real climate ambition.”
Blog editor’s note: File this story under “how not to do it”.
» Read article
» Read the Ember report

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

Q&A: Why Women Leading the Climate Movement are Underappreciated and Sometimes Invisible
A new anthology co-edited by two women climate leaders helps make the point that “the climate crisis is not gender neutral.”
By Ilana Cohen, InsideClimate News
September 5, 2020

The American scientist Eunice Newton Foote theorized in 1856 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could produce global warming three years before similar work by the Irish physicist John Tyndall, whose research on warming is often cited as the beginning of climate science.

Foote was also an early women’s rights campaigner, signing the 1848 Seneca Falls “Declaration of Sentiments,” a manifesto produced during the nation’s first women’s rights convention.

She is, thus, a fitting historic figure for Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson to cite in opening their new book, “All We Can Save,” an anthology of essays, poetry and original illustrations on climate change by a diverse range of women, to be published Sept. 22.

“Foote arrived at her breakthrough idea through experimentation,” the co-editors write. “With an air pump, two glass cylinders, and four thermometers, she tested the impact of ‘carbonic acid gas’ (the term for carbon dioxide in her day) against ‘common air’… From a simple experiment, she drew a profound conclusion: ‘An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature…'”
» Read article

Lethal price of climate inertia far exceeds action
Climate change will impose a lethal price if we do not all pay the far smaller cost of confronting it.
By Tim Radford, Climate News Network
September 10, 2020

In the hotter world of climate change, it won’t just be the glaciers that melt: national and regional economies, big business, government and even the multinationals will all pay a lethal price.

If the planet becomes 4°C warmer by 2100, then many regions could see a 10% fall in economic output. They’d be the lucky ones. In the tropics, the economic losses could be double that.

There are of course ways to limit losses and save lives. US researchers believe that if a quarter of all motorists in the US switched to electric vehicles, the nation could save $17bn a year in the costs of climate change and air pollution. If three fourths of drivers switched to cars [fueled] by renewable electricity, savings could tip $70bn.

Both studies are specimens of the kind of economic reasoning – always arguable and often intensely-argued – that necessarily must make “what-if” calculations about the notional costs to society of carbon dioxide emissions and the notional value of human lives blighted by heat-related illnesses and air pollution a lifetime from now.

But both are just the latest in a long line of calculations that demonstrate, repeatedly, that the costs to the next generation of doing nothing about climate change far outweigh the costs now of shifting from fossil fuels to clean sources of energy.
» Read article

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

Biofuels are a controversial climate solution. Could they still help save the planet?
By Emily Pontecorvo, Grist
September 11, 2020

Of all the tools we have to curb climate change, devoting land to growing bioenergy crops is among the most contentious. The reason it’s considered a solution is that plants suck up carbon from the air while they grow. When we turn them into fuels and burn them, no new carbon is added to the atmosphere —the whole cycle is considered “carbon neutral.” Proponents tout biofuels as an answer for industries that can’t easily replace fossil fuels with clean electricity or batteries, like flying, shipping, and long-haul trucking. They argue that as carbon-capture technology advances, biofuels could even become carbon-negative, taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than they put in.

But critics say biofuels’ carbon-neutrality is a mirage. They argue that if you account for the fact that you likely need to chop down forests or replace farmland that could be used to grow food to produce them, the case for biofuels crumbles.

Two recent studies try to calculate these complex trade-offs, one looking at the potential benefits of growing bioenergy crops at the scale of specific land-use choices, and the other zooming out to the consequences of relying on them to reduce emissions at a global, gigaton scale.
» Read article

Game changer: Violet Power to offer 50-year solar panel warranty with US-made IBC technology
By Mark Osborne, PV Tech
September 8, 2020

Coming out of stealth-mode, US-based integrated PV panel manufacturing start-up, Violet Power intends to disrupt the PV industry with in-house production of high-efficiency IBC (Interdigitated Back Contact) solar cells. The company will use cell-to-module ‘flex circuit’ and thermal plastic encapsulant technology in a glass/glass configuration that will have a solar panel warranty of 50 years, more than three times the average in the industry, today.

Charlie Gay, PV industry technology veteran (more than 45 years), who has recently become the new CEO of Violet Power, said, “There are currently no vertically-integrated U.S. PV panel manufacturers to meet the growing global demand for solar power. This lack of manufacturing capability within the United States results in billions of dollars in lost opportunity including jobs, wages, and revenue for American workers and government at the local, state, and federal level. In addition, there are serious concerns over supply chain self-reliance and electric grid security, which can be best addressed with control of the entire value chain. Violet Power’s manufacturing model addresses all of these concerns, and more.”
» Read article

» More about clean energy

ENERGY STORAGE

Invinity-Bushveld partnership renting out flow batteries’ electrolyte to lower upfront cost
By Andy Colthorpe, Energy Storage News
September 8, 2020

Invinity Energy Systems, supplier of a grid-scale vanadium flow battery being installed at a site in the UK will rent the battery’s electrolyte out to the investor developing the project, thereby helping lower the upfront cost of getting the system deployed.

Before Invinity Energy Systems was formed by a merger last year between US-headquartered flow battery provider Avalon Battery and UK counterpart redT, Avalon started up the business model of renting out battery electrolytes to customers.

Early last year, Avalon supplied a battery system to a microgrid project for solar installation company Sandbar Solar in California which allowed Sandbar’s HQ buildings to run on solar energy 24/7 and rented the electrolyte to Sandbar.

At the time, Avalon said that it expected the vanadium used to retain 100% of its value and be fully recyclable even after years of heavy duty use, while company president Matt Harper – now also Invinity’s president – said that electrolytes represent around 35% of a flow battery system’s upfront cost.
» Read article

Its Electric Grid Under Strain, California Turns to Batteries
When demand exceeded supply in a recent heat wave, electricity stored at businesses and even homes was called into service. With proper management, batteries could have made up for an offline gas plant.
By Ivan Penn, New York Times
September 3, 2020

Last month as a heat wave slammed California, state regulators sent an email to a group of energy executives pleading for help. “Please consider this an urgent inquiry on behalf of the state,” the message said.

The manager of the state’s grid was struggling to increase the supply of electricity because power plants had unexpectedly shut down and demand was surging. The imbalance was forcing officials to order rolling blackouts across the state for the first time in nearly two decades.

What was unusual about the emails was whom they were sent to: people who managed thousands of batteries installed at utilities, businesses, government facilities and even homes. California officials were seeking the energy stored in those machines to help bail out a poorly managed grid and reduce the need for blackouts.
» Read article

» More about energy storage

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

Changing tack: windpower breezes back into shipping with Swedish venture
By Reuters Staff, Reuters
September 10, 2020

A Swedish consortium aims to launch commercially by 2025 a wind-driven car carrier that will emit 90% less carbon dioxide than a conventional roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) cargo ship, it said on Thursday.

The 200-metre long carrier will have a capacity for 7,000 cars and have a maximum height of 105 meters when its five 80-metre upright “wing sails” are fully extended – bringing to mind a futuristic version of the wings of a 19th century clipper.

“This will of course challenge our habits and when this vessel will be in the ocean sailing, it will be an odd bird,” consortium partner Wallenius Marine Chief Operating Officer Per Tunell told an online news conference. “We are on track to make it possible for launching and putting this vessel in operation for late 2024.”

The consortium said in a statement a North Atlantic crossing would take the ship around twelve days, against eight days for conventional vessels.
» Read article

Illegal devices that bypass vehicle emissions controls spread across US
Thousands of tons of pollution spew into the air in the US from devices that proliferate online and in body shops
By Eli Wolfe and Alexandra Tempus of FairWarning, in The Guardian
September 9, 2020

When officials at the Environmental Protection Agency began investigating Freedom Performance, LLC, they didn’t have to look very hard for evidence that the company was violating the Clean Air Act. According to legal documents, the Florida car parts distributor literally advertised violations on its website.

“The road to hell is often paved with good intentions,” stated one ad for a kit to remove federally required emissions controls from diesel trucks. It identified a particular emissions control system that “is certainly noble in its intent” but “in reality it is putting your engine through hell … The best solution is deletion.”

According to the EPA, Freedom Performance was advertising defeat devices –hardware and software that bypasses or eliminates emission controls. The Clean Air Act forbids tampering with these controls, and violations carry heavy fines. But defeat devices – also known as “delete devices” – are popular with many vehicle owners.

Shops advertise that “delete kits” will improve mileage and extend the lifespan of expensive components, saving customers thousands of dollars. In recent years, a lucrative cottage industry of defeat devices has exploded across the US as repair shops, online retailers and manufacturers feed, and generate, consumer demand.
» Read article

» More about clean transportation

FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION

FERC details carbon pricing conference as groups blast renewables, consumer and women exclusions
By Catherine Morehouse, Utility Dive
September 9, 2020

Federal regulators on Friday announced details of a much-anticipated technical conference on carbon pricing, following a request from a broad group of renewable energy, gas and power groups for the commission to look at the issue more closely, but some stakeholders expressed disappointment with the lineup, decrying a lack of representation from renewable energy and consumer advocates, as well as lack of gender diversity.

Of the 30 panelists lined up for the technical conference to be hosted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, seven represent grid operators or their market monitors and seven represent energy companies, but none represent renewable energy or consumer interests, and only one represents state interests. Other speakers include academics, consultants, trade groups and law firms. Three of the speakers are women.

Critics of the lineup say leaving consumer advocates and states out of the discussion is a misstep — for one thing, it won’t help mounting state and federal tensions over wholesale market policy, said Jeff Dennis, managing director and general counsel for Advanced Energy Economy (AEE), one of the stakeholders that requested FERC convene the discussion.
» Read article

» More about FERC

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

Big Oil’s hopes are pinned on plastics. It won’t end well.
The industry’s only real source of growth probably won’t grow much.
By David Roberts, Vox
September 4, 2020

Overall, plastics represent a fairly small sliver of oil demand. Annually, the world consumes around 4,500 million tonnes (mt) of oil but only around 1,000mt of petrochemicals (oil and natural gas used to make chemical products), and of that 1,000mt, only about 350mt are plastics. (A tonne is a metric ton, about 1.1 US tons.)

Nonetheless, plastics are commonly projected to be the biggest source of new demand for oil over coming decades — in some projections, the only real source. It is these projections that the industry is using to justify billions in new projects, as oil companies across the world shift investment toward petrochemicals.

And Big Oil is working its hardest to make the projections come true: The New York Times just ran an investigative piece revealing the industry’s plans to push more plastic, and plastic waste, into Kenya. Plastics are the thin reed upon which the industry is placing all its hopes.

But a new report released this week by Carbon Tracker throws a big bucket of cold water on these hopes. It argues that, far from a reliable source of growth, plastics are uniquely vulnerable to disruption. They are coming under increasing scrutiny and regulation across the world. Huge consumer product companies like Unilever are phasing them out. And the public is turning against them.
» Read article
» Read the Carbon Tracker report

» More about fossil fuels

BIOMASS

Kill the ‘zombie’: Springfield demonstration calls for end to biomass proposal after decade-long battle
By Peter Goonan, MassLive
September 6, 2020

More than 75 people gathered on the steps of City Hall on Thursday calling for an end to a long-proposed biomass project in East Springfield, saying it is a threat to public health and an environmental hazard.

Some of those speaking used the phrase “we can’t breathe” in expressing their strong opposition to the wood-to-energy plant proposed by Palmer Renewable Energy LLC at 1000 Page Blvd.

Verne McArthur, of the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, led the activists and residents in chants against the biomass project, including, “We will, we will, block you, block you.”

“This event is about the zombie project — this biomass plant that Palmer Renewable wants to build and keeps pulling political strings to get loopholes to go do it,” McArthur said. “We’ve been fighting it for 10 years and they’re now trying to come back.”

There is a climate bill before the state Legislature, in conference committee, that includes one proposed clause that would list biomass energy plants as “non-emitting sources” — a designation that would help the developers receive subsidies, opponents said. Ten city councilors have urged legislators to reject the clause, and there is also a signature petition.

The demonstration occurred after a recent council subcommittee meeting in which the city’s building commissioner, Steven Desilets, said the biomass building permit remains valid despite being initially approved in 2011 and later extended.
Blog editor’s note: We offered a report last week that includes information on the climate bill, a link to the petition, and suggestions for writing to your state senator and representative.
» Read article

» More about biomass

PLASTICS BANS

New York’s plastic bag ban has survived the pandemic
By Angely Mercado, Grist
September 4, 2020

It’s a great time for New Yorkers to start investing in reusable grocery bags. Late last month, a state supreme court judge in Albany upheld a statewide ban on plastic carryout bags after considering a lawsuit led by a longtime plastic bag manufacturing company. The court also rejected a loophole in the new regulations that would have allowed the distribution of thicker plastic bags, which advocates say do not comply with the spirit of the ban.

The New York state legislature passed a law back in 2019 largely prohibiting vendors in the state from distributing single-use plastic carryout bags to customers. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) then drafted regulations to govern the law’s implementation in February of this year. The regulations stated that stores could hand out plastic bags only if the bags are washable, have an attached strap that does not stretch or wear with use, can be used at least 125 times, and can carry 22 pounds. They also said that reusable plastic bags should be at least one-hundredth of an inch thick. Environmental groups like Earthjustice worried that the language of the regulations could undermine the plastic bag ban by exempting thicker plastic bags.

Just after the regulations were issued, a lawsuit led by the plastic bag maker Poly-Pak Industries was filed against the state of New York and the DEC in hopes of stopping the ban. The suit was filed right before the ban was supposed to go into effect in early March.

In May, Earthjustice submitted an amicus brief on behalf of three leading environmental groups: WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Beyond Plastics, and Clean and Healthy New York. The three organizations argued on behalf of the ban and asked for the loophole to be closed. The state court ultimately endorsed the substance of the brief by upholding the ban and striking down the exemption for thicker plastic bags.

“We see the use of plastic bags as a climate change and community health problem,” said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an associate attorney at Earthjustice. “[Thicker plastic bags were] not what the legislature intended…. It wanted to end the use of plastic bags, full stop.”
» Read article

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

» More about protests and actions

LEGISLATION

» More about legislation

GREENING THE ECONOMY

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

» More about clean energy

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

» More about energy efficiency

ENERGY STORAGE

» More about energy storage

MODERNIZING THE GRID

» More about modernizing the grid

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

» More about clean transportation

GAS UTILITIES

» More about gas utilities

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

» More about fossil fuels

LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS

» More about LNG

PLASTICS, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

» More about plastics, health, and the environment

Subscribe to Blog via Email

PEAKING POWER PLANTS

» More about peaking power plants

PIPELINES

» More about pipelines

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

» More about protests and actions

GREENING THE ECONOMY

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

» More about clean energy

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

» More about energy efficiency

MODERNIZING THE GRID

» More about modernizing the grid

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

» More about clean transportation

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

» More about fossil fuels

LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS

» More about LNG

BIOMASS

» More about biomass

PLASTICS, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT

» More about plastics in the environment

Subscribe to Blog via Email

WEYMOUTH COMPRESSOR STATION

» More about the Weymouth compressor station

PIPELINES

» More about pipelines

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

» More about protests and actions

GREENING THE ECONOMY

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

» More about clean energy

ENERGY STORAGE

» More about energy storage

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

» More about clean transportation

FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION

» More about FERC

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

» More about fossil fuels

BIOMASS

» More about biomass

PLASTICS BANS

» More about plastics bans

Subscribe to Blog via Email