Welcome back.
When an energy company wants to build a new natural gas pipeline, planners typically start by ginning up demand for the fuel it will carry. A classic ploy is to get utilities to place orders for the right to buy the pipeline’s future capacity, a bit of fakery to imply that the infrastructure serves a “public necessity and convenience” that bears little relation to actual predicted energy demand. Once construction begins, the inevitable backlash is usually countered by claims that too much has already been invested and the project is so near completion that stopping it is both nonsensical and futile. The beleaguered Mountain Valley Pipeline is deep into this tactic now, with the help of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Agency has long played along with that game, facilitating a recent massive build-out of pipeline infrastructure. But the agency has lately lost significant court battles over its permits, and it is finally moving to require consideration of the environmental impact of burning all the fuel a pipeline will carry. BEAT is grateful to Food & Water Watch for their invaluable help in bringing a key lawsuit against Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, which is partly motivating FERC’s new focus on downstream emissions.
Progress is also coming from activist investors, who are pressuring major corporations to commit to responsible climate lobbying and threatening to take action during shareholder meetings if firms present a green image while working behind the scenes to support business-as-usual pollution. And healthcare workers are organizing to encourage large hospitals to divest from fossil fuels, even as oil-soaked Texas threatens its own (reverse) boycott of financial institutions that refuse to support fossils.
Meanwhile, science keeps finding new sources of greenhouse gas emissions. In the “win” column, the Environmental Protection Agency is phasing out globe-heating refrigerants and cracking down on illegal imports. On the other side, a recent study shows that methane emissions from coal mining are much greater than previously understood. That’s bad because methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and because we are currently looking at a global resurgence in coal production.
Our climate stories cover the increasingly alarming effects of the western megadrought, along with the encouraging news that a federal appeals court blocked a Trump-appointed judge’s order barring the Biden administration from considering the future costs of climate damage in its rulemaking and public projects. At the regional level, New England’s grid operator continues to take heat for policies that favor gas generator plants, while slow-walking modernization efforts.
There’s continuing progress in the effort to make the new green economy more diverse and inclusive, along with sustained pressure to transition faster. And check out some clever innovations in clean energy and energy efficiency. We also dug up some insight into why much of the rest of the world seems to get the most interesting new electric vehicles, while the US market is sometimes bypassed altogether.
We’ll close with a couple stories about mining – a huge issue in obtaining the necessary resources for our clean energy transition. We’re seeing calls to finally reform the General Mining Law of 1872, which President Ulyses S. Grant signed into law and still guides mining on public lands. We’re also keeping a wary eye on the push for deep-seabed mining, an endeavor raising increasing alarm among ocean scientists who deem it too dangerous to allow.
For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletter from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)!
— The NFGiM Team
PIPELINES
Manchin Lying about Mountain Valley Pipeline, Says Landowner
Residents in its path know the true story
By Paula Mann, The Appalachian Chronicle
March 12, 2022
GREENVILLE, W.Va. – Recently, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin met with the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) to discuss recent changes to regulations on pipeline construction, as the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported. During the hearing and in the article, he spouted false claims that the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is 95 percent complete, suggesting its completion is inevitable.
I live on the pipeline’s path and I can tell you with certainty that this is not true. Due to legal, financial, and political pressure, the project is only 55 percent complete, according to FERC.
Manchin says we must ramp up natural gas production for the sake of our country’s energy reliability and security. This is completely false. Only a rapid transition to clean energy will secure our energy independence. The climate crisis presents a massive threat to our country’s security – as the Department of Defense has asserted.
Manchin claims the completion of the MVP is for the good of our country. This is impossible because the MVP has negatively impacted rural communities like mine. People have lost vital water sources, both springs and wells, and their roads, fences and topsoil are being washed away from increased flooding along the pipeline route.
Some of the poorest and oldest residents in the state live along the route. That’s no coincidence. MVP targeted our rural communities because they thought we were easy targets. I can assure you, we are not. We have fought this pipeline tirelessly for seven years, and recent court decisions signal that we are winning.
Manchin stated that there were no pipelines to get the Marcellus Shale gas out of north central WV. This statement is also false. The WB Xpress and Mountaineer Xpress are two newly constructed pipelines to move gas out to the East and the West. The Mountain Valley Pipeline isn’t needed.
» Read article
» More about pipelines
PROTESTS AND ACTIONS
Investors launch global standard for corporate climate lobbying
By Simon Jessop, Reuters
March 14, 2022
Investors stepped up pressure on corporate climate lobbying on Monday, launching a new 14-point action plan for companies to stick to or risk having their actions put to a shareholder vote.
The Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying urges companies to commit to responsible climate lobbying, disclose the support given to trade groups lobbying on their behalf and take action if it runs counter to the world’s climate goal.
That goal, to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial norms by mid-century, is moving increasingly out of reach, scientists say, with urgent action needed in the short-term to have any hope of reaching it.
Developed by Swedish pension scheme AP7, BNP Paribas Asset Management and the Church of England Pensions Board, the standard is backed by investor groups leading on climate talks with companies whose members manage a collective $130 trillion.
“Time must be called on negative climate lobbying. Investors will no longer tolerate a glaring gap between a company’s words and their actions on climate,” said AP7, Sustainability Strategist Charlotta Dawidowski Sydstrand.
“As active owners we are committed to engaging collectively and individually with companies globally to highlight and improve their climate lobbying accountability and performance and to escalate this stewardship where required.”
In a statement, the investors said that lobbying that sought to delay, dilute or block climate action by governments ran counter to their interests and could result in resolutions being filed at the shareholder meetings of firms that failed to act.
» Read article
» More about protests and actions
DIVESTMENT
Healthcare Workers Call on Hospitals and Medical Institutions to Divest From Fossil Fuels
The global fossil fuel divestment campaign continues to grow, but the healthcare sector has thus far refrained from large-scale divestment. A coalition of health professionals wants to change that.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
March 14, 2022
A coalition of healthcare professionals and climate finance organizations are calling on hospitals to divest their pension and retirement funds from fossil fuels, citing the severe public health hazards from climate change.
“The research on the severe, ubiquitous and accelerating consequences to public health from climate change is unequivocal,” Dr. Ashley McClure, a primary care physician and co-Executive Director of the California-based nonprofit Climate Health Now, said in a statement. “Just as many leading health organizations have divested from tobacco companies given the unacceptable health harms of their products, our institutions must now invest in alignment with public health and collective safety by urgently divesting our resources from the coal, oil, and gas corporations fueling the climate crisis.”
Around the world, more than 1,500 institutions have announced divestments from fossil fuels with commitments that total more than $40 trillion, according to a database maintained by climate advocacy groups 350.org and Stand.earth. The pledges come from governments, philanthropies, universities, faith-based organizations, and pension funds.
But activists are pressing on a new front, demanding that hospitals and healthcare institutions sever their financial ties with fossil fuels. Named “First, Do No Harm,” the coalition of healthcare professionals and climate finance organizers is calling on medical institutions to exclude oil, gas, and coal from their pensions and retirement funds. They are also asking healthcare workers across the country to join in the effort and pressure their employers to take that step.
“Our sector has to act on this. This is a healthcare issue. Climate policy is health policy. We can no longer ignore the voluminous research that can directly connect serious healthcare threats to fossil fuel air pollution, for example,” Don Lieber, a certified surgical technician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told DeSmog.
» Read article
Companies that divest from fossil fuel could face a state boycott in Texas
By Mose Buchelle, NPR
March 15, 2022
As threats from climate change grow, big financial firms are betting on the energy transition. But that’s provoked a conservative backlash, with Texas leading states aiming to boycott such funds.
» Listen to report (4 minutes)
» More about divestment
FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION
FERC failed to adequately review a gas pipeline project’s effect on carbon emissions: appeals court
By Ethan Howland, Utility Dive
March 14, 2022
FERC in mid-February adopted a new framework for reviewing natural gas infrastructure proposals that includes expanded criteria for deciding whether the facilities are needed and how they could affect people and the environment.
The framework also includes an interim policy for reviewing a project’s potential GHG emissions.
The framework, especially the GHG review criteria, has come under sharp criticism from FERC commissioners James Danly and Mark Christie, some U.S. senators, and the natural gas industry.
In part, the new review criteria are in response to a string of court rulings that found flaws in FERC’s natural gas infrastructure reviews, Glick said on Thursday during the CERAWeek conference. Those cases include Sabal Trail, Birckhead, Vecinos and Spire Pipeline. Courts have recently found other federal agencies failed to adequately review projects such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Dakota Access oil pipeline.
“The courts send these projects back to the agencies and what that does is it takes years of additional litigation, years of additional review, and it adds hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars of cost,” Glick said.
FERC is trying to provide a more legally durable approach through the new review framework, according to Glick.
[…] The latest court case — Food & Water Watch and Berkshire Environmental Action Team v. FERC — centered on FERC’s review of Tennessee Gas’ upgrade project in Agawam, Massachusetts. The project included a 2.1-mile stretch of pipeline and a compressor station.
Then-FERC Commissioner Glick partly dissented from the December 2019 decision approving the project, saying the agency didn’t adequately consider the project’s climate-related effects.
Citing the Sabal Trail and Birckhead decisions, the D.C. Circuit on Friday said FERC is required to consider a project’s indirect effects. The court remanded FERC’s decision to the agency and told it to perform a supplemental environmental assessment that must quantify and consider the project’s downstream carbon emissions or explain in detail why it cannot do so.
» Read article
Federal regulators to reconsider controversial Springfield compressor station
By Dharna Noor, Boston Globe
March 11, 2022
Federal regulators will have to reconsider their approval of a controversial plan to expand natural gas infrastructure in the Springfield area, a federal court ruled on Friday.
The proposal, put forth by Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, LLC — a subsidiary of the energy giant Kinder Morgan — aims to build 2.1 miles of new gas pipeline and replace two small compressors with a larger unit at its Agawam site.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — an independent agency that grants permits to build interstate fuel pipelines and compressor stations — approved the plan in 2019 after conducting a necessary environmental review. But Friday’s decision, from the DC Circuit Court, calls that 2019 review into question.
The ruling came in response to a 2020 lawsuit filed by environmental groups Food and Water Watch and Berkshire Environmental Action Team, which alleged that the commission had ignored precedent requiring regulators to consider all potential greenhouse gas emissions of proposed pipelines.
In their lawsuit, the environmental groups argued that, though regulators assessed the emissions that will come directly from building and operating the new pipeline, they ignored the indirect “downstream” emissions that will come from burning the gas it would bring.
“FERC failed to review the emissions that would result due to more gas being pushed into a local distribution network for combustion by residential and commercial customers,” Adam Carlesco, staff attorney at Food and Water Watch.
Jane Winn, executive director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, said the ruling was a “big victory.” But she wished the court would have gone further.
The court’s ruling did not uphold another argument raised in the suit, that FERC should have also considered the greenhouse gas pollution that would come from producing and transporting gas to fill the new pipeline, saying the issue wasn’t adequately fleshed out.
The suit also argued that FERC’s 2019 assessment didn’t adequately consider how the project could worsen air quality in an area already plagued by pollution. But the court found that because none of its members live in close proximity to the proposal, Berkshire Environmental Action Team did not have legal standing to make those claims.
That’s particularly “disappointing,” said Winn, because just last month, FERC announced a new policy to consider projects’ effects on both the climate and environmental justice communities.
“The ruling falls in line with the first half of that policy … but not the second,” she said.
» Read article
» More about FERC
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
US Blocks Illegal Imports of Climate Damaging Refrigerants With New Rules
The EPA implemented new rules on the gases early this year, but the climate is already seeing its benefits.
By Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News
March 17, 2022
Just weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency began enforcing strict new limits on the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons, potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, the agency said it has blocked illegal imports of the harmful chemicals equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from burning 1.2 million barrels of oil.
Starting Jan. 1, U.S. chemical and equipment manufacturers were required to begin phasing down production and consumption of climate-damaging HFCs as mandated by the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, which was enacted in December 2020.
The rule will reduce domestic production and consumption of HFCs by 85 percent over the next 14 years and brings the U.S. into compliance with an international agreement known as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The agreement is expected to prevent up to 0.5 Celsius of climate warming by 2100 through requiring manufacturers to use chemical refrigerants that are less damaging to the climate.
The HFC regulation places strict limits on the volume of HFCs that individual companies can produce or import. A key part of the rule is robust enforcement by an interagency task force that includes the EPA, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies to ensure that U.S. companies do not violate the rule by exceeding their limits with additional, illegal imports.
Over the past 10 weeks, the agencies have prevented illegal HFC shipments equivalent to approximately 530,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions, the EPA said in a press release on Tuesday.
“Our task force is already sending the clear message to potential violators that we are fortifying our borders against illegal imports,” said Joe Goffman, principal deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, in a written statement. “Strict enforcement of our HFC allowance program ensures that U.S. efforts to phase down these climate-damaging chemicals are successful.”
» Read article
» More about EPA
GREENING THE ECONOMY
Massachusetts program seeks to diversify clean energy job opportunities
An internship program that initially attracted mostly “White males from private universities” has been retooled to open doors for people of color.
By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network
March 16, 2022
A Massachusetts agency is expanding a pilot program to recruit students of color for internships with clean energy companies with the goal of laying the groundwork for more diversity and equity within the sector.
[…] Massachusetts has long been considered a leader in solar energy policies and adoption, and was ranked the top state for energy efficiency by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy for nine straight years. Now the state is poised to be the first to deploy large-scale offshore wind with the development of the Cape Wind project.
As these sectors continue to grow, state officials and environmental justice advocates have emphasized the importance of making sure people of color and low-income populations share in the economic gains the industries promise to deliver.
“Getting folks in on the ground level so they are able to rise as the industry grows is of the utmost importance,” said Susannah Hatch, clean energy coalition director for the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “There’s enormous opportunity.”
One of the ways the clean energy center is trying to tackle this problem is by adjusting its flagship clean energy internship program, which launched in 2011, to more actively recruit and engage students of color.
The central program works by matching potential interns with employers through an online database. Interested students submit their information and resumes to the system, then Massachusetts clean energy and water innovation companies can search for and hire interns from this pool. Businesses that hire interns through the program are reimbursed $16 per hour for the students’ work. Many employers pay interns more than the subsidy rate, and they are not allowed to pay less than $15 per hour. Each company can hire two interns through the program; if they want a third, they must choose an applicant who attends a community college.
In its first 10 years, the initiative matched 4,400 students with internships; 880 of these students ended up with part-time or full-time jobs at their host companies. From the beginning, however, the program seemed to attract a narrow demographic, Jacques said.
“When the program first started, it was heavily White males from private universities,” she said.
[…] Then, in 2021, the clean energy center added a new section, known as the Targeted Internship Program, dedicated to recruiting and mentoring interns of color and students from other underrepresented backgrounds. This initiative placed 38 students with employers around the state. The agency hopes last year’s performance was just a start.
“We’re trying again to really grow those numbers,” Jaques said. “We’re trying to make it more innovative and making sure we really are tapping underrepresented communities all across Massachusetts.”
» Read article
US Bans Russian Oil But Activists Want Broader Break With Fossil Fuels
Phasing out the consumption of fossil fuels is seen as critical in both the fight against the climate crisis and the violence of petrostates.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
March 9, 2022
President Biden signed an executive order banning the import of Russian oil and gas on March 8, but activists around the world are calling for a more comprehensive break with fossil fuels, warning against replacing Russian fuels with a new drilling frenzy elsewhere.
[…] “Up until now, Russia has been taking in $500 million a day in oil and gas sales. That’s hundreds of billions every year that Putin can put toward suppressing his people, undermining western democracies, and building his war machine,” Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré, former commanding general of the U.S. First Army, told reporters during a media briefing. “Putin is weaponizing gas, and calls to increase exports play right into his hands.”
Led by Ukrainian activists, a coalition of more than 465 organizations across 50 countries signed a letter calling on the world to not only reject Russian oil and gas, but to rapidly phase out all fossil fuels.
“Continuing any relationship with Russia means supporting war in Ukraine, killing children, women, and men on the streets of peaceful cities,” Yevheniia Zasiadko, head of climate department at the Center for Environmental Initiatives Ecoaction, said in a statement accompanying the letter. “This is the breaking point, where Europe must completely abandon fossil fuel from Russia, stop all business and support of fossil projects.”
On the same day Biden announced the Russian fossil fuel ban, the European Commission proposed a strategy to slash Europe’s use of Russian gas by two-thirds within a year. The plan calls for more liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and more gas storage, but also a rapid expansion of renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Europe is seeking to speed up its break with fossil fuels, while using more in the short run, but such a path in the U.S. is much more contested.
Coming off a rough few years with the pandemic, the oil industry now appears poised to capitalize off of the war and the chaos in energy markets. As industry executives gathered in Houston this week for the annual CERAWeek oil industry conference, many were “feeling very good about themselves,” as the New York Times put it. With oil prices soaring, quarterly profits are destined to balloon.
» Read article
» Read the “Stand with Ukraine” letter
» More about greening the economy
CLIMATE
Second-Largest U.S. Reservoir Falls to Historic Lows
By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
March 17, 2022
The second-largest reservoir in the U.S. dropped to a historic low on Tuesday as a climate-fueled megadrought continues in the nation’s West.
Lake Powell, which sits on the border of Utah and Arizona, fell below 3,525 feet for the first time since the reservoir was filled more than 50 years ago to create the Glen Canyon Dam, AP News reported. There are now concerns about the dam’s ability to continue generating energy in the near future as the water levels drop faster than anticipated.
“We clearly weren’t sufficiently prepared for the need to move this quickly,” John Fleck, who directs the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, told AP News.
The Western U.S. is in the midst of its worst megadrought in 1,200 years, and the climate crisis has made the drought 42 percent more extreme than it would have been otherwise. So far, most of the concerns surrounding the drought have revolved around the supply of water to California, Nevada and Arizona, AP News explained. However, the situation at Lake Powell reveals that hydroelectric power is now also at risk.
The Glen Canyon Dam provides power to around 5 million customers in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Currently, water levels at Lake Powell are 35 feet above the point at which turbines would stop moving, otherwise known as “minimum power pool.”
The 3,525-foot level is considered a “target elevation” for drought contingency plans, according to CNN. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation predicted in early March that the water would fall to that level sometime between March 10 and 16. That the target has ultimately been breached is cause for alarm, experts said.
» Read article
‘Common-Sense Decision’: Court Allows Biden to Weigh Social Cost of Carbon
The decision to block a Trump-appointed judge’s order “puts the government back on track to address and assess climate change,” said one climate advocate.
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
March 17, 2022
Environmentalists applauded late Wednesday after a federal appeals court blocked a Trump-appointed judge’s order barring the Biden administration from considering the future costs of climate damage in its rulemaking and public projects.
In March 2021, a coalition of 10 Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration over a White House directive instructing federal agencies to factor the “social cost of greenhouse gases” into their policymaking decisions, from new pollution regulations to drilling on public lands.
Last month, a federal judge in Louisiana sided with the Republicans, issuing a sweeping injunction prohibiting the Biden administration from factoring the cost of carbon—which it pegged at $51 per ton—into its policy moves. The Trump administration, by contrast, contended that each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere in 2020 would only cause roughly $1 to $7 in economic damages.
The Wednesday ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit stayed the Louisiana judge’s injunction, allowing the Biden administration to continue using the $51-per-ton metric—a figure based on Obama-era assessments that some researchers and climate advocates say don’t account for the full scope of emissions damage.
One recent analysis estimated that the actual social cost of carbon dioxide—from negative health impacts to destroyed homes—is at least 15 times the number adopted by the Biden administration.
» Read article
» More about climate
CLEAN ENERGY
Australian electrolyser breakthrough promises world’s cheapest green hydrogen
By Sophie Vorrath, Renew Economy
March 16, 2022
An Australian start-up spun out of the University of Wollongong has claimed a major new breakthrough that promises to enable renewable hydrogen production of around $A2.00 per kilogram by the mid-2020s – out-competing fossil fuel-derived hydrogen.
Hysata, launched just last year out of UOW’s Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM), said on Wednesday that the breakthrough had put the company on a clear path to commercialise the world’s most efficient electrolyser, and to reach giga-scale green hydrogen production by 2025.
As RenewEconomy has previously reported, Hysata was formed to commercialise the promising electrolyser technology developed by a heavy-hitting team at the UOW’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, led by Professor Gerry Swiegers.
[…] In a report published this week in Nature Communications, the team behind Hysata’s “capillary-fed electrolysis” (CFE) cell technology, said they had used it successfully to produce green hydrogen from water at 98% cell energy efficiency – a level well above the International Renewable Energy Agency’s 2050 target.
As the researchers explain, the evolution of electrolysers has been about reducing resistance to increase efficiency. To this end, the team’s CFE cell completely eliminates bubbles – one of the biggest remaining drags on efficiency – making it the highest performing cell globally.
[…] “Our electrolyser will deliver the world’s lowest hydrogen cost, save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs, and enable green hydrogen to outcompete fossil fuel-derived hydrogen.
“Our technology will enable hydrogen production of below US$1.50/kg per kilogram by the mid-2020s, meeting Australian and global cost targets much earlier than generally expected. This is critical to making green hydrogen commercially viable and decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors,” [Hysata CEO Paul Barrett] said.
» Read article
Could clean energy replace Russian oil?
Fossil fuel interests are calling for more domestic drilling to supplant Russia’s fossil fuels. But climate advocates say there’s a better alternative: Speeding the renewable energy transition.
By Dharna Noor, Boston Globe
March 14, 2022
Minutes after President Biden announced last week that the US will ban imports of Russian oil, the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying organization, issued a statement calling for more domestic drilling and increased gas exports to Europe.
It’s a rallying cry the fossil fuel trade group has been sounding since the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So have an array of politicians and pundits.
But climate advocates say there’s a better alternative: Speeding the renewable energy transition.
“This is the time to get ourselves unhooked from our volatile fossil-fueled economy,” said Collin Rees, a program manager at climate research and advocacy group Oil Change International.
It’s clear the world needs to rapidly phase out polluting energy. A landmark UN climate report concluded that any delay in global cooperation to cut greenhouse gas emissions “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”
Increasing drilling, said author and activist Bill McKibben, would move us in the wrong direction: “It only gets us deeper into dependence on fossil fuel.”
Russian fuel comprises just a small portion of the US’s energy mix — only roughly 3 percent of crude imports came from the country last year. Bringing new dirty energy sources online to supplant that, said Rees, makes little sense.
“Instead, we can massively ramp up energy efficiency efforts and massively ramp up renewable energy sources like wind, solar,” he said.
For Europe, which obtains a much larger portion of its fuel from Russia, weaning off Russian energy imports will be harder. But it’s a challenge the EU may soon have to face: Russia is threatening to cut off European gas supplies, and the EU is also weighing cutting imports from Russia by two-thirds this year.
» Read article
» More about clean energy
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Microsoft data centres to heat Finnish homes, cutting emissions
By Reuters
March 17, 2022
Finnish utility Fortum (FORTUM.HE) said on Thursday it will use waste heat from two new Microsoft (MSFT.O) data centres to warm homes and businesses in and around the capital Helsinki, while also cutting carbon emissions.
Microsoft simultaneously announced plans for the construction of the data centres, which will be powered by renewable energy, with their location chosen to allow for recycling of heat created from the cooling of computer servers.
District heating is widely used in Finland, pumping hot water through pre-insulated underground pipes, and has traditionally relied on fossil fuel sources.
Fortum operates a system of underground pipes stretching 900 kilometres and serving 250,000 users in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Once completed, the data centres will account for 40% of the system’s heat supplies, the two firms said.
Fortum said its investment for the heat capture side from the data centres was estimated at 200 million euros ($221 million), with expectations this would cut some 400,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
» Read article
» More about energy efficiency
MODERNIZING THE GRID
ISO-NE’s market rules biased toward gas plants, renewable energy groups say in FERC complaint
By Ethan Howland, Utility Dive
March 16, 2022
ISO-NE has long warned New England has limited natural gas pipeline capacity, which the grid operator in December said could lead to blackouts under extreme winter conditions.
However, when qualifying resources for its capacity auctions, ISO-NE assumes gas-fired resources will always have fuel supplies and be able to operate, according to the complaint from ACPA and RENEW.
In contrast, the grid operator assesses how much capacity other resource types can reliably deliver, leading renewable resources to have accredited capacity well below their nameplate capacity, Francis Pullaro, RENEW executive director, said Wednesday.
If FERC approves the complaint, pipeline-dependent generators would get a “haircut” on how much capacity they could qualify for in ISO-NE’s capacity auctions, Pullaro said.
[…] The need for reliable operating reserves is especially acute as New England adds more intermittent resources to its power system, according to the complaint.
ISO-NE is starting a stakeholder process to consider changes to its capacity accreditation process by using an “effective load carrying capability” methodology, which could address some of the concerns raised in the complaint, the trade groups said.
» Read article
How a smarter grid can prevent blackouts
By Peter Behr, E&E News
March 16, 2022
As the grid strains under the weight of climate change and new sources of demand, one important way to prevent blackouts comes from an unlikely location: your house.
Customers who allow utilities to control heat pumps, water heaters and electric vehicle charging stations would give operators a potent new tool for managing grid systems in extreme weather emergencies, like the Western wildfires, Gulf Coast hurricanes and Texas’ 2021 power crisis, researchers say.
The issue was highlighted in a January report from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that said customers’ major energy resources, if synchronized with utilities’ control centers, can be “shock absorbers” helping balance power supply and demand in grid emergencies such as California’s 2020 rolling blackouts.
In the past, California customers have responded voluntarily to officials’ pleas for electricity conservation. That won’t be good enough in the future, the new analysis said. And the need for strategic power use will only grow as the amount of customer-owned solar panels, storage batteries and EV charging rises, it added.
“We’ll quickly get to a point where the number of devices and the variability of generation and load will drive a need for better coordination,” said Hayden Reeve, an author of the report and senior technical adviser at PNNL.
Such interactive customer-grid connections require fundamental changes in utility electricity rate policies, according to the lab’s analysis.
Instead of static customer rates that remain the same regardless of changing demand and wholesale power prices, U.S. utilities need “dynamic” rates that vary with demand, rewarding customers with lower costs when they shift energy use to overnight hours, for example, when power is typically cheapest and often cleanest, the researchers said.
But dynamic rates have faced persistent resistance from utilities, regulators and customers in most of the U.S. over more than a decade, government and private think tank studies have found.
[…] The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in its annual review of advanced meter deployment blamed regulators for the slow growth of dynamic rates.
» Read article
» Read the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory report
» Read the FERC review on advanced metering deployment
» More about modernizing the grid
CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
Here’s a Cool New EV, but You Can’t Have It
The new Volkswagen microbus is the latest electric vehicle set to debut in Europe, but U.S. consumers must wait. Why is that?
By Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News
March 17, 2022
Volkswagen has given the world a first look at the new ID. Buzz, an all-electric van that takes design cues from the classic Volkswagen microbus.
Buyers in Europe can get the new model later this year. But customers in the United States will need to wait until 2024 for a larger version tailored to the U.S. market.
EV buyers in the United States are now used to this, as automakers have introduced some of their most anticipated new models in international markets. Some models take years to arrive in the United States or don’t arrive at all.
I reached out to Brian Moody, executive editor for Autotrader, to try to understand why American buyers need to wait for certain EVs, and what that says about the U.S. car market.
“It could be as simple as wanting to debut [a new model] on your home turf first,” Moody said, about Volkswagen’s plans. The van will initially be assembled in Hannover, Germany.
Among the other possible reasons, U.S. vehicle safety laws are some of the most stringent in the world, Moody said.
Also, EVs are a smaller share of the passenger car market in North America, with 4 percent of new vehicle sales in 2021, than they are in Europe, at 17 percent, and China, at 13 percent, according to EV-Volumes.com (figures include all-electric and hybrid vehicles). The recent surge in gasoline prices should help to boost interest in EVs in all of those places.
Policies play a role. The European Union and China have more policy support for electric vehicles than the United States does, which affects companies’ strategies in each place. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better legislation includes an extension and expansion of incentives for buying EVs, but the proposal has been unable to get the votes it needs to pass the Senate.
» Read article
Senate seeks fixed date for bus electrification
Poftak said more money needed to transition more quickly
By Chris Lisinski, Statehouse News Service, in CommonWealth Magazine
March 14, 2022
WARNING THAT the pace of electrification underway for the MBTA’s bus fleet is “too slow for the Legislature,” a top senator is newly forecasting that his chamber plans to make the transportation sector a focus in upcoming climate legislation.
Sen. Michael Barrett, who co-chairs the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee, told leaders of the Baker administration’s transportation secretariat on Friday that he expects a forthcoming Senate bill will make another pass at requiring the T to transition its bus network to full electrification by a specific date.
MBTA officials are preparing for an all-electric-bus future and rolling more zero-emission vehicles into the fleet, but General Manager Steve Poftak told lawmakers the need for new charging stations and updated maintenance facilities poses a challenge, more so than the actual purchase of non-fossil fuel vehicles.
The T should have a full suite of garages up and ready to handle an electric fleet in roughly the next 15 to 18 years, Poftak said.
“We’d like to do them faster. In order to do them faster, we’re going to need additional money,” he said at a Joint Ways and Means Committee hearing about Gov. Charlie Baker’s $48.5 billion fiscal 2023 state budget. “It’s approximately a $4.5 billion investment in electrified facilities.”
“I don’t think the Legislature is going to wait 15 to 18 years to green the T fleet because we can’t get to our emissions goals, we can’t get 50 percent below 1990 levels in total statewide emissions, if we operate on those kinds of timeframes. It just doesn’t compute,” Barrett replied. “I can appreciate the complexity here, but that is not going to work.”
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High gas prices have a lot more people searching for electric vehicles
But not everyone can afford to buy a new (or used) EV.
By Chad Small, Grist
March 15, 2022
There’s a war going on in Europe. Gas prices are sky-high. What’s an American to do? Well, search for electric vehicles, apparently.
According to Cars.com, online searches for new and used electric vehicles more than doubled in the roughly two-week period following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s around the same time President Biden announced the U.S. would ban oil and gas imports from Russia, which produces a significant chunk of the world’s fossil fuels. As a result, gas prices across the U.S. have risen sharply, reaching an average of more than $4.30 a gallon, as of last week.
“When gas prices spike, searches immediately go toward more efficient vehicles,” Joe Wiesenfelder, executive editor at Cars.com, told E&E news.
Because they do not run on gasoline like a traditional combustion engine, electric vehicles, or EVs, spare their owners much of the stress associated with skyrocketing oil prices. The cost of charging an EV depends on a few factors, such as the model in question and the location you use to charge your vehicle. According to the Energy Department, a “tank” of electricity for a mid-size EV charged at home comes out to about $16. And, naturally, the benefits of EVs go beyond individual savings: Because electricity can be produced from renewable sources, EVs are appealing to drivers looking to mitigate their carbon footprints.
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» More about clean transportation
SITING IMPACTS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES
As the US Rushes After the Minerals for the Energy Transition, a 150-Year-Old Law Allows Mining Companies Free Reign on Public Lands
The Mining Law of 1872 lets miners pay no royalties for the precious minerals they dig from federal land and requires no restraints on their activities.
By Jim Robbins, Inside Climate News
March 13, 2022
[…] In May of 1872, a couple of months after he signed the bill that created Yellowstone National Park, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the General Mining Law of 1872: An Act to Promote the Development of the Mining Resources of the United States. It gave carte blanche to anyone seeking minerals on federal lands, as a way to finish populating the West.
On hundreds of millions of acres owned by U.S. taxpayers, the law transfers gold, silver, copper, uranium, lithium and other metals, in vast amounts, from public ownership to anyone who locates them, pounds four stakes in the ground around their location and files a claim. Foreign firms can stake claims by forming a U.S. subsidiary. Unlike publicly owned oil and gas resources, miners pay no royalties on the metals and minerals they dig from public lands.
Since the law’s passage, the population of the American West has increased almost exponentially and today the lands it applies to are seen as part of the solution to a different challenge—weaning the nation’s economy off of the fossil fuels that drive climate change.
Production of lithium and other minerals critical to electrifying the world’s economy will need to increase by 500 percent to reach clean energy goals by 2050, according to the World Bank. The price of lithium has recently soared to more than $35,000 a ton.
With the Biden administration prioritizing a domestic supply chain of minerals for the energy transition, and federal law giving them away royalty free to mining companies, the U.S. is poised for an unprecedented expansion of digging, which could leave environmental damage at such a large scale it cannot effectively be remediated.
That’s led to a growing clamor for reform of the 1872 law as this new gold rush continues to boom.
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DEEP-SEABED MINING
Deep-sea mining could begin next year. Here’s why ocean experts are calling for a moratorium.
The risks vastly outweigh the potential benefits, they argue.
By Joseph Winters, Grist
March 7, 2022
[…] Deep-sea mining in international waters is currently illegal, and environmental organizations, scientists, and many governments want to keep it that way. They argue that the practice could irreversibly harm one of the planet’s remotest ecosystems, one of the few places on Earth that has largely escaped human disruption.
Now, their calls have become increasingly urgent, as international regulators are expected to begin issuing deep-sea mining permits by the summer of 2023. Activists are trying to enlist everyone from tech companies to United Nations delegates in an all-hands-on-deck push to stop mining companies from exploiting the seabed.
[…] The case for deep-sea mining is simple: As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, increased demand for technologies like electric vehicle batteries and solar panels will require massive quantities of cobalt, manganese, nickel, and other clean-energy metals. Land-based metal reserves are few and far between, and they’re often located near communities that are harmed by mining activities. But there are billions of dollars’ worth of these metals at the bottom of the ocean — far from civilization — and no one is yet taking advantage of them.
Some also argue that, by powering clean-energy technologies and thereby accelerating a shift away from fossil fuels, deep-sea mining will protect the oceans from unabated climate change. Rising CO2 emissions have already caused devastating ocean acidification, deoxygenation, and the decline of marine species populations around the world. Gerard Barron, CEO of the Metals Company, a Canadian firm that is already preparing vessels to begin mining the ocean deep, has argued that deep-sea mineral deposits are “the easiest way to solve climate change.”
However, ocean experts vehemently disagree. The deep sea is one of the planet’s most obscure places, home to tens or even hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species that are still unknown to humans. Scientists argue it would be reckless to disrupt this environment. According to research from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, more than half of marine species in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — a mineral-rich fracture zone that extends 4,500 miles along the floor of the Pacific Ocean — are dependent on the deep-sea mineral deposits that mining companies have set their sights on. Removing these potato-shaped deposits, which are known as polymetallic nodules, “would trigger a cascade of negative effects on the ecosystem,” the researchers concluded. And recovery would be nearly impossible, given the fact that these nodules take millions of years to develop.
There are other worries, too. Deep-sea mining would kick up debris from the ocean floor, and scientists worry that clouds of sediment could clog marine species’ filtration systems and make it harder for them to see through the water. Sonic disruptions caused by mining could also reverberate far and wide, negatively impacting whales and other species that rely on sound waves to hunt for prey. Meanwhile, fishing industry representatives have highlighted the practice’s risks to commercial fish stocks.
“The threat to biodiversity is really quite concerning,” said Jeffrey Drazen, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Drazen also warned that seabed mining could potentially exacerbate climate change by disrupting carbon sequestration dynamics in the deep ocean.
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» More about deep-seabed mining
FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY
Coal Mining Emits More Super-Polluting Methane Than Venting and Flaring From Gas and Oil Wells, a New Study Finds
So much methane is released from coal mining, the Global Energy Monitor says, that it exceeds the carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal at over 1,100 coal-fired power plants in China.
By Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News
March 15, 2022
Methane emissions from coal mines worldwide exceed those from the global oil or gas sectors and are significantly higher than prior estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency and the International Energy Agency, a new Global Energy Monitor report concludes.
“The numbers just aren’t adding up,” Ryan Driskell Tate, the report’s author, said of coal mine methane emission estimates when compared to those in prior reports. “It’s an area that has dodged a lot of scrutiny.”
Coal mining emits 52 million metric tons of methane per year, more than is emitted from either the oil sector, which emits 39 million tons, or the gas industry, which emits 45 million tons, according to the report, published Tuesday.
Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas and the second leading driver of climate change after carbon dioxide. On a unit-per-unit basis, methane is more than 80 times as powerful at warming the planet as carbon dioxide over its first 20 years in the atmosphere. The gas slowly accumulates in coal seams as organic matter is converted to coal, a process that can take millions of years.
Methane emissions from coal mining worldwide are comparable to the vast carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal at over 1,100 coal-fired power plants in China over the near term, the report concludes. China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, derived more than 60 percent percent of its power in 2020 from burning coal, compared to about 19 percent in the United States.
“We all know that the oil and gas industry emits a lot of methane and that coal plants in China are a major source of CO2 emissions,” said Driskell Tate, the energy monitor’s project manager for its Global Coal Mine Tracker. “The most surprising thing about this report is just realizing that coal mining has a comparable climate impact.”
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» Read the Global Energy Monitor report
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