Welcome back.
Last Friday, we saw the first Friday for the Future global climate strike since the COVID-19 pandemic locked down many large street-level protests. With upcoming COP26 climate talks, it was time to get back out there. We also offer an in-depth article on Greta Thunberg, whose solitary school climate strike sparked the Friday for the Future movement and inspired a huge wave of youth activism.
And activism is effective. We learned this week of another major natural gas pipeline cancellation. The 36″ diameter PennEast Pipeline was intended to carry fracked gas from Pennsylvania, 115 miles to an interconnection near Pennington, NJ. In spite of federal backing (including a favorable US Supreme Court ruling), New Jersey, having faced years of citizen resistance, refused a key environmental permit. Case closed.
Meanwhile, operators of the infamous Dakota Access oil pipeline have asked the Supreme Court to exempt them from completing the environmental review – due March, 2022 – that could determine whether that pipeline can continue operating. Claiming the requirement places an undue burden on developers of large infrastructure projects, they stake out the astounding position that anything is OK as long as it’s big.
Greening the economy is going to require a lot of mineral extraction, so we’re posting articles that illuminate the pros and cons of this necessary extraction. California’s horribly toxic Salton Sea and surrounding communities are an existing environmental disaster that could benefit from lithium extraction – if it’s done right. On the other hand, the prospect of deep seabed mining is alarming under any conditions, with huge potential to harm the marine ecosystem and climate.
The climate and biodiversity crises are closely related. So we selected articles this week covering the reluctance of wealthy nations to properly address climate change, along with why it’s in everyone’s best interest to reverse the over-development and over-exploitation of nature that’s fueling an unprecedented wave of extinctions.
There’s good news in clean energy, where studies and also practical experience show that a rapid shift to renewables saves money and increases grid resiliency. Standing between those facts and actual broad U.S. implementation, of course, is a phalanx of fossil industry and utility lobbyists and the legislators of both parties who depend on their money.
Massachusetts recently completed its Whole-Home Heat Pump Pilot program, aimed at showing how air-source heat pumps can provide 100% of a home’s heating and cooling needs without a backup fossil-powered furnace or boiler. Results across a variety of building types were successful and reveal a market ready for further expansion. Unfortunately, New Hampshire has taken a step backward by joining 19 other states with legislation prohibiting municipalities from requiring electric appliances in new construction.
In spite of New Hampshire Governor Chris Sunun’s head-in-the-sand refusal to face the future, we are rapidly approaching a time when fully-electric buildings and electric vehicles will be the norm. That requires a lot more electric transmission capacity, and some of those lines might be buried along existing rail corridors. An experiment is underway to bring 2,100 MW of renewable power from upper Midwest sources to eastern markets this way – avoiding the lengthy and difficult permitting process for stringing high power lines overhead.
Recent battery fires in Chevy Bolts (and some other brands) have caused concern among would-be car buyers considering electric vehicles. Researchers in Singapore recently showed a significant reduction in lithium-ion battery fire hazard by adding an “anti-short” layer of material applied to the separator between the anode and cathode of each cell. The next step is to see if this feature can be integrated into EV batteries without adversely affecting range, performance, or price. This takes time – don’t expect to see it in the upcoming model year.
The fossil fuel industry would like all of the above to just go away, and for us to leave them in peace. Nope. We’ll close out with an investigation of Senator Joe Manchin’s coal industry income, with the oil patch’s habit of sticking taxpayers with the cost of cleaning up old wells, and with satellite evidence of dozens of leaks and spills in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida.
For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletter from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)!
— The NFGiM Team
PROTESTS AND ACTIONS
A Friday for the Future: The Global Climate Strike May Help the Youth Movement Rebound From the Pandemic
2019’s protests were unprecedented, driven by passion. The pandemic dampened activism and showed the importance of mass events in spurring political change. Is a comeback at hand?
By Bob Berwyn, Delger Erdenesanaa, Inside Climate News
September 24, 2021
The first global Fridays For Future climate strike of 2021 will help show if the youth climate movement can rebuild momentum while parts of the world still grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. At least 1,300 protests are planned around the world on Friday, including about 300 in the United States.
The movement that was sparked by Greta Thunberg’s solitary school strike and vigil at the Swedish parliament in 2018 quickly grew into a social juggernaut that measurably shifted public concern about climate, according to researchers with the Institute for Protest and Movement Research, a global online academic forum.
Over the next years, attending local strikes became a gateway to sustained political organizing around climate change. Lorena Sosa, an 18-year-old college student from Orlando, Florida and an organizer with the youth climate group This Is Zero Hour, said she was well aware of climate change before 2019, but didn’t know what she could do to help solve the problem.
“For the longest time I had this huge stress about the impact we were having on the environment,” Sosa said. News headlines about deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline left her feeling powerless, she said. But in September 2019, Sosa heard about a protest happening in her city as part of a global day of climate strikes organized by the Fridays for Future movement.
The Fridays For Future model of mass climate marches was a key factor in moving the political and social needle in Europe, but never became as widespread in the United States. Even so, the 2019 Fridays for Future protests were important because they kept the spotlight on the climate issue, said Mélanie Meunier, a researcher at the University of Strasbourg, France and author of a February 2021 study on youth climate activism in the United States.
“There are still people who don’t even want to hear about climate change, but they can’t ignore it when thousands of people are marching in the streets, so it increased awareness at a very basic level,” she said.
In the United States, youth climate activism has been most effectively expressed at the political level by the Sunrise Movement, she said. By focusing youth activism through a political lens, the Sunrise Movement achieved measurable results, arguably helping Joe Biden win key electoral states in the 2020 election, she said.
» Read article
» More about protests and actions
PIPELINES
PennEast cancels natural gas pipeline project; cites lack of environmental permits from N.J.
By Susan Phillips, WHYY
September 27, 2021
In an astounding turnaround after years of battling New Jersey over permits to build a natural gas pipeline from Northeast Pennsylvania to Mercer County, PennEast has canceled its 116-mile project.
The move comes just three months after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with PennEast over the state of New Jersey, which had attempted to block the pipeline company from seizing state-controlled land for the project. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, had granted the company eminent domain to seize land from uncooperative landowners, including the state of New Jersey.
PennEast spokeswoman Pat Kornick issued a statement Monday morning, citing the continued lack of support from the Garden State in acquiring environmental permits.
The pipeline would have shipped Marcellus Shale gas from Luzerne County across the Delaware River to Mercer County to provide what the company said was much-needed, affordable natural gas to residents. Opponents said it would harm acres of forest, wetlands, and waterways; pose a danger from potential explosions; and represented an outmoded fossil fuel infrastructure project at a time when climate change was increasingly tied to extreme weather events.
» Read article
Dakota Access pipeline asks U.S. Supreme Court to scrap environmental study order
By Devika Krishna Kumar, Reuters
September 21, 2021
Dakota Access on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit whether the largest pipeline out of the North Dakota oil basin requires additional environmental review.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia revoked a key environmental permit for the pipeline last year and ordered an additional environmental study. read more
The pipeline entered service in 2017 following months of protests by environmentalists, Native American tribes and their supporters. Opponents said its construction destroyed sacred artifacts and posed a threat to Lake Oahe, a critical drinking supply, and the greater Missouri River.
Energy Transfer (ET.N), which operates the 570,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) pipeline out of the Bakken shale basin, has said its pipeline is safe.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was expected to complete its review of the pipeline in March 2022.
The pipeline’s operators said in their petition additional review is unnecessary and that it would impose burdens for other large infrastructure projects.
» Blog editor’s note: Pipeline developers and operators should, in fact, bear the burden of showing any project’s necessity and also thoroughly describing potential environmental impacts. To claim otherwise is outrageous.
» Read article
» More about pipelines
GREENING THE ECONOMY
Critics Question the Climate Crisis Benefits of Deep Seabed Mining
As the world starts to seriously entertain the possibility of commercially mining the deep sea for valuable metals, it’s worth taking a closer look at the claims used to justify its potentially long-lived impacts.
By Marta Montojo and Ian Urbina, DeSmog Blog
September 18, 2021
While commercial mining of the deep seafloor is not yet happening, momentum is building and the world is now seriously entertaining the possibility. The targets of these companies are potato-sized rocks that scientists call polymetallic nodules. Sitting on the ocean floor, these prized clusters can take more than three million years to form. They are valuable because they are rich in manganese, copper, nickel, and cobalt that are claimed to be essential for electrifying transport and decarbonizing the economy amid the green technological revolution that has emerged to counter the climate crisis.
To vacuum up these treasured chunks requires industrial extraction by massive excavators. Typically 30 times the weight of regular bulldozers, these machines are lifted by cranes over the sides of ships, then dropped miles underwater where they drive along the seafloor, suctioning up the rocks, crushing them and sending a slurry of crushed nodules and seabed sediments from 4,000-6,000 meters depth through a series of pipes to the vessel above. After separating out the minerals onboard the ship, the processed waters, sediment and mining ‘fines’ (small particles of the ground up nodule ore) are piped overboard, to depths as yet unclear.
But a growing number of marine biologists, ocean conservationists, government regulators and environmentally-conscious companies are sounding the alarm about a variety of environmental, food security, financial, and biodiversity concerns associated with seabed mining.
These critics worry whether the ships doing this mining will dump back into the sea the huge amounts of toxic-waste and sediments produced by grinding up and pumping the rocks to the surface, impacting larger fish further up the food chain such as tunas and contaminating the global seafood supply chain.
They also worry that the mining may be counterproductive in relation to climate change because it may in fact diminish the ocean floor’s distinct carbon sequestration capacity. Their concern is that in stirring up the ocean floor, the mining companies will release carbon into the environment, undercutting some of the very benefits intended by switching to electric cars, wind turbines and long-life batteries.
“By impacting on natural processes that store carbon, deep sea mining could even make climate change worse by releasing carbon stored in deep sea sediments or disrupting the processes which help ‘scavenge’ carbon and deliver it to those sediments,” Greenpeace stated in a recent report.
» Read article
» Read the Greenpeace report
» More about greening the economy
CLIMATE
‘Verge of the abyss’: Climate change to dominate UNGA talks
Forcing wealthy nations to honour UN climate pledges will ‘be a stretch’, British PM Boris Johnson admitted on Sunday.
By Aljazeera
September 20, 2021
Pressure is building on world leaders to rapidly ratchet up efforts to fight global climate change, a topic expected to top the agenda at the United Nations General Assembly.
Leaders will hear pleas to make deeper cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases and give poorer countries more money to develop cleaner energy and adapt to the worsening impacts of ever-increasing climate change.
“I’m not desperate, but I’m tremendously worried,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said told the Associated Press ahead of this week’s GA meetings. “We are on the verge of the abyss and we cannot afford a step in the wrong direction.”
On Monday, Guterres and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson host a closed-door session with 35 to 40 world leaders to get countries to do more leading up to crucial COP26 climate negotiations in Scotland in six weeks. Those negotiations are designed to be the next step after the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
» Read article
What Covid and the ivory-billed woodpecker being declared extinct have in common
Habitat loss and climate change are causing species to die out, which in turn endangers the humans they leave behind.
By Dr. Alexis Drutchas, attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Division of Palliative Care, in NBC News / Think
September 29, 2021
For too long, we have treated the natural world as an infinite commodity. In the wake of unchecked human population growth and consumption, we’ve destroyed natural habitats for the sake of creating housing in cities and suburbs, and for vast commercial farms that produce agriculture and livestock. This habitat erosion decimates wild animal populations and renders surviving animals homeless — both of which ultimately endanger humans, as well.
In the most recent example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing 23 more animals and plants from the endangered species list Wednesday — because they’re extinct. Included on this list is the ivory-billed woodpecker, which spanned from coastal North Carolina to East Texas before logging and slaughter for private collectors and hat-makers dwindled the population. Hawaii had a total of eight birds listed as extinct, including the Kaua’i ’o’o, which is known to have a beautiful flute-like call, because invasive species and warming temperatures allowed mosquitoes carrying diseases to access elevations they were once unable to reach.
Habitat loss and climate change are burning the candle at both ends, leading to the tragedy of extinction while also increasing the amount of contact between humans, livestock and the animals that do remain. These complex dynamics then fuel animal-borne infections — in the form of viruses like Covid-19. With fewer barriers between us and animals, viruses can more easily jump the species barrier to become zoonoses, a term for animal-to-human infectious diseases that will inevitably become more familiar to everyone in the years to come.
» Read article
» More about climate
CLEAN ENERGY
Rapid Shift to Clean Energy Could Save ‘Trillions.’ But Corporate-Backed Groups Are Fighting the Transition in US Budget Bill
Wind, solar, and batteries are already the cheapest source of electricity and an aggressive shift to clean energy makes more economic sense than a slow one, according to a new study. However, an enormous lobbying effort is underway to block climate policy in the $3.5 trillion budget bill under consideration.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
September 23, 2021
A slow transition away from fossil fuels would be “more expensive” than a rapid shift to renewable energy, according to a new study, a conclusion that stands in sharp contrast to fossil fuel industry talking points aimed at heading off aggressive climate policy currently being shaped in Congress.
An accelerated clean energy transition would lead to “net savings of many trillions of dollars,” a calculation that does not even take into account the damages from unchecked climate chaos, the recently released study from Oxford University found. On economics alone, the logic of a rapid shift to renewable energy is obvious and necessary.
“The belief that the green energy transition will be expensive has been a major driver of the ineffective response to climate change for the last forty years,” the researchers write. “This pessimism is at odds with past technological cost-improvement trends, and risks locking humanity into an expensive and dangerous energy future.”
The authors note that outdated thinking on renewable energy — that it comes with tradeoffs like higher electricity prices, for instance — has long dominated policy discussions. Echoes of this idea can be found today in mounting attacks by a network of lobbyists and think tanks on the climate provisions in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget package.
But that line of argument has been inaccurate for years, and the Oxford study says it is now decisively wrong. “Our analysis suggests that such trade-offs are unlikely to exist: a greener, healthier and safer global energy system is also likely to be cheaper,” they write [original emphasis].
The U.S. has a chance to solidify an accelerated track towards cleaner energy. The Democrats in Congress are working on legislation that would push the U.S. electricity system to roughly 80 percent carbon-free power by 2030, a definition that includes hydro and nuclear power, up from around 40 percent today.
The so-called Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP) is complex, but it essentially rewards utilities that move quickly to add renewable energy to their portfolios with each passing year, while imposing fees on laggards who move slowly.
» Read article
» Read the Oxford University study
Five years after blackout, South Australia now only state with zero supply shortfalls
By Giles Parkinson, Renew Economy
September 28, 2021
South Australia’s Liberal government has celebrated the fifth anniversary of the controversial state-wide blackout by claiming that the state is now leading the country – both in terms of renewables, but also in the lack of any supply shortfalls.
“Five years ago South Australia was plunged into a statewide blackout that put lives at risk, inflicted immense damaged our economy and made us the laughing stock of the nation,” state energy minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said in a statement.
“Today South Australia has the best performing electricity grid in the nation as the Marshall government’s energy policies have strengthened what was a fragile, unstable and highly vulnerable electricity network.”
The state-wide blackout, triggered by massive storms that tore down multiple transmission towers and three transmission links, quickly became a political football and an ideological battleground between parties pro-renewables, and those against.
It amplified the “when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine” meme, but far from putting a stop to renewables, it ensured that more work was done to underpin the massive rollout of large scale wind and solar that followed.
In the past 12 months, South Australia boasts of a world-leading share of wind and solar of 62 per cent (up from 48 per cent at time of blackout).
That has been led by a world-leading share of rooftop solar that earlier this week reached 84 per cent of state demand, and could reach 100 per cent in the next month or so. That is unheard of in a gigawatt scale grid.
The state also boasts new resources, including three big batteries – at Hornsdale (then the world’s largest), Lake Bonney and Dalrymple North – several large scale “virtual power plants,” and new synchronous condensers that (along with the batteries) can provide the critical grid services once delivered by coal and gas.
» What is a synchronous condenser?
» Read article
» More about clean energy
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
MassCEC Pilot Showcases Success of Whole Home Heat Pumps
By Meg Howard, Program Director, MA Clean Energy Center
September 13, 2021
Heat pumps can serve as a whole-home heating and cooling solution in Massachusetts. That was the primary takeaway of MassCEC’s Whole-Home Heat Pump Pilot, which ran from May 2019 through June 2021. And whole-home heat pumps will be fundamental to the Commonwealth meeting our goal of one million households using high-efficiency electric heating systems by 2030.
Whole-home heat pumps are essentially heat pumps that serve 100% of a building’s heating needs. While heat pumps are increasingly common in Massachusetts, many are supplementary to fossil fuel heating systems in homes. However, as the state increasingly electrifies its buildings, more and more will rely on heat pumps for all of their heating needs.
Whole-home heat pumps offer many benefits. First, they deliver a comprehensive heating and cooling solution that serves the whole house, increasing comfort and convenience. Second, they do not require homeowners to maintain and operate two separate heating systems. This eliminates the need to maintain fossil fuel pipes or tanks and keeps the homeowner from needing to maintain and potentially replace a second heating system in their home. And last, whole-home heat pumps deliver superior emissions reductions and will continue to get cleaner as the state’s electricity transitions toward being carbon free.
MassCEC’s pilot worked to demonstrate that whole-home heat pump systems offer a high-performance solution today and that the market is ready for significant expansion going forward.
» Read article
New Hampshire gas law handcuffs local government on climate-friendly construction
The Granite State is the latest of 20 states that have barred local governments from requiring electric heating and appliances in new construction, one of the easiest and cheapest ways for cities to curb climate emissions, advocates say.
By Lisa Prevost, Energy News Network
September 27, 2021
New Hampshire is the latest state to adopt a law that prohibits any type of restriction on new natural gas hookups, a fossil fuel industry-driven legislative effort that now extends across 20 states.
The law (SB 86) is unlikely to have any immediate impact in New Hampshire, as no towns were actually considering such restrictions. But environmental groups predict that, over time, these laws will make it harder and more expensive for states and cities across the country to meet their climate targets, while also helping to lock in new emissions for decades.
“These laws make it impossible for cities and towns to do one of the cheapest and easiest actions that they could do to fight climate change — cut carbon out of new buildings,” said Alejandra Mejia Cunningham, a building decarbonization advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They’re sending towns back to the drawing table and forcing them into other options that are more expensive and won’t really get them to their 2050 climate goals.”
Cities across the country are considering ordinances and incentives to ensure the electrification of new homes and buildings as a way of reducing building emissions. The trend is furthest along in California, where about 50 municipalities have adopted building codes to reduce their reliance on gas, according to the Sierra Club.
A dire alert from the United Nations last month warned that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report shows the world needs to phase out fossil fuels immediately to avert catastrophic climate change. That includes natural gas, which emits fewer carbon emissions than coal when burned but enough to threaten Paris agreement targets with continued use.
But pro-gas groups are pushing back on electrification efforts, framing the issue as a matter of consumer choice. In New Hampshire, after Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed the ban prohibition into law late last month, he immediately drew praise from the Consumer Energy Alliance, an advocacy group whose members include the American Gas Association and the American Public Gas Association.
» Read article
» More about energy efficiency
MODERNIZING THE GRID
PPL makes ‘small’ investment to gain insight into ‘innovative’ $2.5B SOO Green transmission project
By Robert Walton, Utility Dive
September 27, 2021
New transmission is widely considered a key to bringing more renewables to major power markets and accelerating the energy transition, but large projects can take years to win regulatory and siting approvals. SOO Green’s co-location approach aims to speed that process by undergrounding high voltage lines along existing rail corridors.
PPL’s investment “will enable us to gain greater insight into an innovative approach to building large transmission projects that may avoid some of the traditional barriers to siting, permitting and construction as we work to advance the clean energy transition,” utility spokesman Ryan Hill said in an email.
Along with PPL, the project is owned by Siemens Energy, Jingoli Power and investment funds managed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
Hill said the company’s position is “small” and “the investment is not considered material.” PPL’s Pennsylvania and Kentucky utilities are not involved with the SOO Green project, he said, meaning ratepayers will not foot the bill for the company’s involvement. “Our investment in SOO Green is being made through a separate subsidiary,” he said.
The SOO Green project aims to enable delivery of 2,100 MW of renewable energy from the upper Midwest to eastern markets. The project will use a 525 kV underground cable and Siemens’ modern Voltage Sourced Converter technology.
» Read article
» More about modernizing the grid
CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
Researchers propose fire-preventing “anti-short layer” for EV batteries
By Stephen Edelstein, Green Car Reports
September 29, 2021
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU Singapore) have proposed a new way to prevent fires in lithium-ion batteries.
As reported by photovoltaics industry trade journal PV Magazine, the researchers have tested a so-called “anti-short layer,” which is an extra layer of material on the separator between the cathode and anode in lithium-ion cells.
This layer blocks the dendrites that are a main cause of EV battery fires, the researchers claim. Dendrites are caused by manufacturing flaws or damage to the cells, and can grow across the gap between a cathode and anode, causing short circuits.
Such problems have led to a recall of Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV electric cars after several reported fires. General Motors has stopped production and has said it will replace battery cells and modules in 2017-2019 Bolt EVs, but it’s possible newer models may get replacements as well.
The anti-short layer doesn’t stop dendrites from forming, but does prevent them from reaching from one electrode to the other, researchers claim. It was allegedly tested on more than 50 lithium-ion cells in different configurations, with no short circuits in charging even after batteries exceeded their expected lifecycles.
The layer is made from a material commonly used in battery manufacturing, and would increase battery production costs by around 5%, according to the researchers. NTU Singapore’s spinoff NTUitive will reportedly work to commercialize this technology, but it’s worth noting that promising research doesn’t automatically translate to a commercially-viable product.
» Read article
Building a More Sustainable Car, From Headlamp to Tailpipe
Vehicle makers shy away from traditional materials that are hard to recycle, like leather and plastics, and look to repurpose alternatives that still convey quality.
By Eric A. Taub, New York Times
September 9, 2021
In the 1970s, Chrysler’s TV commercials played up its vehicles’ “rich Corinthian leather.” That meaningless phrase, dreamed up by marketers and cooed by the actor Ricardo Montalbán, became emblematic of what defined a luxury vehicle.
Fifty years later, those words have been replaced by elements that are creating a new concept of automotive luxury: recycled PET bottles, coffee grounds and tree fiber.
“The definition of a premium automobile is changing,” said Rüdiger Recknagel, Audi’s chief environmental officer. “It’s now who’s using the best materials with the least environmental impact.”
As companies around the world turn their attention to reducing the effect their products have on the environment, carmakers are turning away from traditional materials that are hard to recycle, such as leather and plastics, and looking to alternatives that continue to convey quality. In manufacturing as well, they have moved to recycled components in an effort to use fewer resources and cut down on emissions.
Recycled materials make up 29 percent of a BMW vehicle, said Patrick Hudde, BMW’s vice president for sustainability supply chain. The company obtains 20 percent of its plastics from recycled materials, as well as 50 percent of its aluminum and 25 percent of its steel.
At Audi, the Mission: Zero program hopes to achieve a 30 percent reduction of vehicle-specific carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared with 2015, and to achieve carbon neutrality across its entire network by 2050; that includes suppliers, manufacturing, logistics and dealer operations.
General Motors expects to have 50 percent sustainable content by weight in its vehicles by 2030, said Jennifer Widrick, the company’s director of global color and trim. The company defines sustainable materials “as those that do not deplete nonrenewable resources or disrupt the environment or key natural resource systems.”
And Volvo, the Swedish manufacturer, predicts that by 2025, 25 percent of its plastics will be bio-based or from recycled materials. In addition, it’s looking to reduce its carbon footprint by 40 percent in four years, compared with 2018, and to achieve climate-neutral manufacturing at that time.
» Read article
» More about clean transportation
FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY
After Hurricane Ida, Oil Infrastructure Springs Dozens of Leaks
By Blacki Migliozzi and Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
September 26, 2021
When Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast with near 150 mile-per-hour winds on Aug. 30, it left a trail of destruction. The storm also triggered the most oil spills detected from space after a weather event in the Gulf of Mexico since the federal government started using satellites to track spills and leaks a decade ago.
In the two weeks after Ida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a total of 55 spill reports, including a spill near a fragile nature reserve. It underscores the frailty of the region’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure to intensifying storms fueled by climate change.
“That’s unprecedented, based on our 10 year record,” said Ellen Ramirez, who oversees NOAA’s round-the-clock satellite detection of marine pollution, including oil spills. “Ida has had the most significant impact to offshore drilling” since the program began, she said.
Using satellite imagery, NOAA typically reports about 250 to 300 spills a year in American waters, including the Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, a pace of about 25 spills a month. In the two weeks before Ida, NOAA spotted just five potential oil slicks in the Gulf. The program, the National Environmental Satellite and Data Information Service, uses satellite technology to detect important but hard-to-see events, like methane leaks, signs of deforestation and others, that affect the climate and environment.”
» Read article
» More about fossil fuels
» Learn more about Pipeline projects
» Learn more about other proposed energy infrastructure
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