Welcome back.
Peabody’s planned gas peaker is drawing fire from the town’s own Board of Health, and also from nearby neighbors in Danvers. It’s nearly impossible to justify investing in new gas infrastructure – especially facilities that pollute nearby residential neighborhoods just in the course of normal operation. The beleaguered Mountain Valley Pipeline is on the ropes too, now that the EPA has advised the Army Corps of Engineers against issuing a critical permit related to hundreds of water crossings. Enbridge’s Line 3 is another fraught project, opposed by Native American Tribes whose protests and court actions are founded on the assertion that the project and its environmental risks violate certain treaties held with the federal government. We found a story describing those commitments.
A thread we’ve been following continues to yield new information…. Recent revelations include the extent to which fossil fuel industry lobbyists pressured federal regulators to relax rail transport safety regulations, especially for highly volatile Bakken crude carried on now-infamous bomb trains.
Pressure on Harvard to complete its fossil fuel divestment is intensifying, with frustrated climate activists wondering why the university’s endowment is stubbornly keeping around $2bn in that climate-cooking industry. Another mystery involves the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency approval, early in the fracking boom, of a slew of toxic chemicals for high-pressure injection into wells. The use of these chemicals remains legal, and ground water contamination, environmental degradation, and serious health impacts continue to this day.
Greening the economy depends on the creation of good jobs to replace those lost in the transition. While delivering enough of those jobs remains a significant challenge, the offshore wind industry is off to a good start. Meanwhile, a survey of Canadian oil and gas workers found two-thirds of respondents open to green energy work.
Climate change is leaning hard on the American west this summer, as a vast region experiences a frightening cycle of heat, drought, and fire. We cover that, along with some good news: the Biden administration has restored protections to Alaska’s huge Tongass National Forest, including old growth areas that his predecessor had attempted to open for industrial logging.
We continue to be alarmed by the industry-backed rush to promote green hydrogen to an outsized role in our carbon-free energy future. While burning it produces no carbon dioxide, its emissions include large amounts of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which produce ground-level ozone (smog), and cause asthma and other dangerous respiratory conditions. Transporting and storing this explosive gas poses difficult and unresolved engineering challenges (embrittlement of metal pipes, valves, and containers; leaks that can’t be detected by sight or smell, etc). There is certainly a place for green hydrogen in the future energy mix – let’s limit it to applications that can’t be addressed with a combination of renewables, storage, demand management, and improved efficiency.
Which brings us to an excellent article describing how Mass Save, Massachusetts’ premier energy efficiency program, needs to retool its incentives to stop promoting gas appliances. The state’s climate goals can only be reached if the program starts incentivizing a shift away from gas – promoting heat pumps, improved building envelopes, and total building electrification. At the same time, the electric grid must rapidly deploy renewable energy and a huge amount of energy storage to replace existing fossil generators. Reducing the cost of that storage has become a national priority.
We’re spreading the word that GM still hasn’t solved the battery fire problem in 2017-19 Chevy Bolt EVs, and the company recommends charging them outside. While that’s unsettling for owners and bad press for electric vehicles, it’s encouraging to note that the problem does not appear to exist in the current generation battery module.
A pair of articles explains how Europe became a huge consumer of biomass, and how supplying those generating plants with wood pellets has increased emissions and burdened communities in the American southeast while mowing down vast tracts of forest.
And we end with an article warning about exposure to harmful PFAS chemicals through plastic food and beverage containers.
For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletters from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) and Berkshire Zero Waste Initiative (BZWI)!
— The NFGiM Team
PEAKING POWER PLANTS
Peabody health officials ask governor to intervene
By Erin Nolan, The Salem News
July 11, 2021
PEABODY — The Peabody Board of Health has sent a letter to Gov. Charlie Baker requesting that an environmental impact report and comprehensive health impact assessment be done for the proposed peaker plant in the city.
“There are many well-documented health concerns associated with fossil fuel-burning power plants,” the letter states. “Emissions such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other hazardous pollutants can contribute to cancer risk, birth defects, and harm to the nervous system and brain. Emissions of particulates increase risk of heart disease, lung cancer, COPD, and asthma. Emission contributions from power plants increase levels of ozone and drive climate change, which can make breathing more difficult, increase allergens and the risk of fungal diseases, and affect health through the disruption of critical infrastructure such as electrical and water and sewer systems.”
» Read article
Danvers officials express concern over proposed natural gas power plant in Peabody
By Jennie Oemig, Wicked Local
July 13, 2021
DANVERS — Although efforts to bring a new power plant online in Peabody have been ongoing since 2015, officials in Danvers have been entirely left out of the planning process.
It wasn’t until last week Friday that representatives from Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) and the Peabody Municipal Light Company, the entities behind the power plant project, appeared before Danvers Select Board members and Town Manager Steve Bartha to provide more information and answer questions.
Referred to as Project 2015A, the new power plant is to be installed on the same site as two existing Peabody Municipal Light Plant capacity resources.
Rep. Sally Kerans, who represents both Peabody and Danvers, said she heard rumblings about the proposed plant shortly after she took office in January.
“I went online and read the filings,” she said. “And I had so many questions. Where’d it come from and how come no one’s heard of it?”
After reading up on the plant, Kerans said she gave testimony to the Department of Public Utilities in late April.
“I raised the issue of Danvers and the residents who live in Danversport, the neighborhood that suffered the explosion,” she said. “We are all very concerned and we have had no information from MMWEC directed to Danvers. … It’s shocking to think that MMWEC wouldn’t think to include Danvers.”
Concerns over environmental and health impacts have been raised by several groups in the area, including Breathe Clean North Shore and Community Action Works.
“I’m grateful to the group of residents in Peabody who stepped in and started asking questions,” Kerans said. “Is this the only way to meet capacity?”
Kerans said she would be surprised if the Baker Administration ultimately signs off on the project.
“It goes in the reverse direction of what we’ve been doing,” she said, referencing the climate roadmap bill signed into law in March.
» Read article
PIPELINES
EPA Warns of Mountain Valley Pipeline Impact on Streams, Says Project Should Not Receive Water Permit
The natural gas pipeline already has hundreds of water quality violations. Opponents are hopeful the EPA’s warning brings the project’s cancelation closer.
By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog
July 14, 2021
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is advising the Army Corps of Engineers not to grant a federal water permit to the Mountain Valley Pipeline due to “substantial concerns” about the project’s impact on streams and rivers. The warning is another regulatory hurdle for a pipeline that is already delayed and over budget.
The EPA’s advice brings hope to opponents of the pipeline who are growing increasingly confident that the 303-mile natural gas pipeline, which has been under construction for over three years, will never come online.
The long-distance pipeline would run from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia. A proposed extension would take the system into North Carolina. The aim is to connect Marcellus shale gas to new markets in the U.S. Southeast.
But the pipeline has to run across hundreds of streams and rivers, up and down steep slopes prone to erosion and landslides. Its construction would result in enormous volumes of sediment dumped into water bodies, potentially threatening water quality and aquatic ecosystems.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) needs a permit in order to cross these bodies of water and discharge “fill” – dirt, rocks, sand, and other debris – into streams and rivers. The Army Corps decides whether to sign off on the so-called Section 404 permit, part of the Clean Water Act, but the EPA weighs in on the process.
And the negative impacts associated with constructing a pipeline across waterways has caught the attention of the EPA. In a May 27 letter, Jeffrey Lapp, the head of EPA’s wetlands branch for Region 3 – which covers West Virginia and Virginia – wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers regarding the crucial permit requested by MVP.
In the letter, the EPA said it “has identified a number of substantial concerns with the project,” including “insufficient assessment of secondary and cumulative impacts and potential for significant degradation.” Lapp also said MVP has not provided adequate detail on the water bodies it will cross, and has not demonstrated that it has done everything feasible to avoid negative impacts. The letter was published on July 9 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a legal advocacy group.
» Read article
» Read the EPA’s letter
Thawing Permafrost has Damaged the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and Poses an Ongoing Threat
The pipeline operator is repairing damage to its supports caused by a sliding slope of permafrost, and installing chillers to keep the ground around it frozen.
By David Hasemyer, Inside Climate News
July 11, 2021
Thawing permafrost threatens to undermine the supports holding up an elevated section of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, jeopardizing the structural integrity of one of the world’s largest oil pipelines and raising the potential of an oil spill in a delicate and remote landscape where it would be extremely difficult to clean up.
The slope of permafrost where an 810-foot section of pipeline is secured has started to shift as it thaws, causing several of the braces holding up the pipeline to tilt and bend, according to an analysis by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. The department has permitted construction of a cooling system designed to keep the permafrost surrounding the vulnerable section of pipeline just north of Fairbanks frozen, as well as to replace the damaged portions of the support structure.
This appears to be the first instance that the pipeline supports have been damaged by “slope creep” caused by thawing permafrost, records and interviews with officials involved with managing the pipeline show.
In response, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources has approved the use of about 100 thermosyphons—tubes that suck heat out of permafrost—to keep the frozen slope in place and prevent further damage to the pipeline’s support structure.
The installation of the heat pipes builds on an obvious irony. The state is heating up twice as fast as the global average, which is driving the thawing of permafrost that the oil industry must keep frozen to maintain the infrastructure that allows it to extract more of the fossil fuels that cause the warming.
Any spill from the 48-inch diameter pipeline that flows with an average of 20 million gallons of oil a day, and the resulting clean-up activity, could accelerate the thawing of the permafrost even more, environmental experts said.
The extent of the ecological damage would depend on the amount of oil spilled, how deep it saturated the soil and whether the plume reached water sources. But any harm from an oil spill would likely be greater than in most other landscapes because of the fragile nature of the Alaskan land and water.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Carl Weimer, a special projects advisor for Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit watchdog organization based in Bellingham, Washington.
“The implications of this speak to the pipeline’s integrity and the effect climate change is having on pipeline safety in general.”
» Read article
VIRTUAL PIPELINES
What the Exxon Tapes Reveal About the American Petroleum Institute’s Lobbying Tactics on Oil Trains
The top oil trade group, which a senior Exxon lobbyist recently described as one of the company’s “whipping boys,” used similar delay tactics to push back against oil-by-rail safety rules.
By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog
July 9, 2021
Senior ExxonMobil lobbyists were recently exposed by undercover reporting from UnEarthed, an investigative journalism project of Greenpeace, which captured footage of the employees explaining how the oil giant influences policy makers using trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute (API).
The undercover footage revealed Exxon lobbyists boasting about wins for the company under the Trump administration and admitting to continued efforts to sow doubt about climate change and undermine action to tackle the crisis.
The recordings also confirmed the findings of years of DeSmog research on API’s lobbying tactics. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” Keith McCoy, a senior director in ExxonMobil’s Washington, D.C. government affairs team, told the undercover reporter Lawrence Carter. “Did we join some of these ‘shadow groups’ to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that. You know, we were looking out for our investments; we were looking out for our shareholders.”
These revelations exposed by UnEarthed and first published by Channel 4 News help shed light on API’s lobbying strategies, particularly when it comes to transporting oil by rail. The rise of fracking in 2009 created a transportation problem in U.S. regions like North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, which lacked sufficient pipelines and other infrastructure to move the sudden glut of oil. In response, the oil industry started ramping up transport of its products by train around 2012, but several high-profile fires and explosions of these oil trains also followed, starting in July 2013.
DeSmog’s coverage of the years-long process of creating new oil train regulations in the wake of 2013’s deadly Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, oil train disaster documented the tactics described by Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy — and revealed just how effective the company is at watering down efforts by regulatory agencies to protect the public and environment.
After years of covering the regulatory process governing oil trains, one fact stood out: API was almost always leading the process. Even though the process was supposed to be about improving rail safety, the oil industry played the dominant role. Exxon representatives were rarely seen in the many public Congressional or regulatory agency hearings and did not take a public role in fighting the regulations. However, as DeSmog reported, Exxon was meeting in private with federal regulators and arguing against stronger regulations on oil trains.
» Read article
PROTESTS AND ACTIONS
What are the treaties being invoked by Line 3 opponents?
While the U.S. government signed a series of treaties with the Anishinaabe people, including the Ojibwe, between 1825 and 1867, the most significant are those of 1837, 1854 and 1855.
By Yasmine Askari, MinnPost
Photo: REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi
July 14, 2021
Tribal council representatives and members of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe will be gathering at the Minnesota Capitol today to request a “nation-to nation” dialogue with Gov. Tim Walz and President Joe Biden in an effort to stop construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline.
Last Friday, leaders of the tribe gathered in a press conference to raise concerns about the pipeline’s effects on surrounding resources and waters, most notably the treaty-protected wild rice, and said continued efforts to build the pipeline was in violation of the tribe’s treaty rights.
As the pipeline nears completion, with the project estimated to be 60% finished as of June, opponents of the pipeline have been advocating for upholding treaty rights as a means to try to halt construction.
» Read article
DIVESTMENT
The climate is boiling. Why has Harvard still not fully divested from fossil fuels yet?
At $42bn, the Harvard endowment exceeds the combined monetary value of many small countries. But it stubbornly refuses to speed up divestment
By Kim Heacox, The Guardian
July 15, 2021
» Read article
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
E.P.A. Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking a Decade Ago, New Files Show
The compounds can form PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to cancer and birth defects. The E.P.A. approvals came despite the agency’s own concerns about toxicity.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
July 12, 2021
For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS — a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife — according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The E.P.A. in 2011 approved the use of these chemicals, used to ease the flow of oil from the ground, despite the agency’s own grave concerns about their toxicity, according to the documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times. The E.P.A.’s approval of the three chemicals wasn’t previously publicly known.
The records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by a nonprofit group, Physicians for Social Responsibility, are among the first public indications that PFAS, long-lasting compounds also known as “forever chemicals,” may be present in the fluids used during drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
In a consent order issued for the three chemicals on Oct. 26, 2011, E.P.A. scientists pointed to preliminary evidence that, under some conditions, the chemicals could “degrade in the environment” into substances akin to PFOA, a kind of PFAS chemical, and could “persist in the environment” and “be toxic to people, wild mammals, and birds.” The E.P.A. scientists recommended additional testing. Those tests were not mandatory and there is no indication that they were carried out.
“The E.P.A. identified serious health risks associated with chemicals proposed for use in oil and gas extraction, and yet allowed those chemicals to be used commercially with very lax regulation,” said Dusty Horwitt, researcher at Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Communities near drilling sites have long complained of contaminated water and health problems that they say are related. The lack of disclosure on what sort of chemicals are present has hindered diagnoses or treatment. Various peer-reviewed studies have found evidence of illnesses and other health effects among people living near oil and gas sites, a disproportionate burden of which fall on people of color and other underserved or marginalized communities.
“In areas where there’s heavy fracking, the data is starting to build to show there’s a real reason for concern,” said Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and an expert on PFAS. The presence of PFAS, she said, was particularly worrisome. “These are chemicals that will be in the environment, essentially, not only for our lifetimes, but forever,” she said.
» Read article
GREENING THE ECONOMY
Vineyard Wind developers sign deal with unions to build $2.8b project
Agreement would ensure at least 500 jobs go to union workers for massive offshore wind project south of Martha’s Vineyard
By Jon Chesto, Boston Globe
July 16, 2021
The joint venture behind the massive Vineyard Wind project has signed an agreement to ensure union workers will play a key role in building the country’s first large-scale offshore wind farm.
Executives from Vineyard Wind and its turbine manufacturer, General Electric, plan to join politicians and union leaders on Friday at the state-funded New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal, where much of the wind-farm construction will be staged, to celebrate their new project labor agreement with the Southeastern Massachusetts Building Trades Council. The deal with the unions is seen as another key milestone in finally launching the Vineyard Wind project, and by extension the nation’s entire offshore wind industry.
Vineyard Wind chief executive Lars Pedersen said the agreement covers about 1,000 jobs over the course of the two-and-a-half-year construction project, including about 500 union jobs. The reportedly $2.8 billion project will be built in federal waters about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, with 62 giant GE wind turbines that will generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, or enough power for more than 400,000 homes.
» Read article
Two-Thirds of Canadian Oil and Gas Workers Want Net-Zero Jobs
By Mitchell Beer, The Energy Mix
July 14, 2021
More than two-thirds of Canadian fossil fuel workers are interested in jobs in a net-zero economy, 58% see themselves thriving in that economy, and nearly nine in 10 want training and upskilling for net-zero employment, according to a groundbreaking survey released this morning by Edmonton-based Iron & Earth.
While large majorities are worried about losing their jobs, receiving lower wages, or getting left behind in a transition to net-zero, three-quarters would sign up for up to a full year of retraining—and 84% would participate in rapid upskilling that ran 10 days or less if they were paid to attend, according to the research conducted by Abacus Data.
“Oil and gas workers are just people who have families, who need to put food on the table, put a roof over their heads, and this is the work they’ve known,” Iron & Earth Executive Director Luisa Da Silva told The Energy Mix. “This is where their jobs have been.”
But “people are quite amenable to upskilling,” she added, and “for the workers on the ground or who are more on the technical side, their skills are still transferrable.” Whether a project is a tar sands/oil sands mine or a hydrogen plant, “they don’t look that different. If you’re a welder, you’ll be using the same skills.”
“The basic fundamentals of physics and science, the technical skills underlying an energy worker’s job or a fossil fuel worker’s job, are very similar,” agreed consultant Ed Brost, a chemical engineer who spent 35 years working for Ontario Hydro, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., and Shell Canada. “A joule is a unit of energy in fossil fuels and in the electricity world. So it’s a matter of adapting, upskilling, and tuning up an existing skill set to match the 21st century instead of something from the last century.”
That means two of the essential elements of the transition are for workers to know what their next job will look like, and how their current skills will give them a pathway into a net-zero economy. Iron & Earth is calling for 10,000 fossil fuel workers to receive that training by 2030.
» Read article
CLIMATE
American west stuck in cycle of ‘heat, drought and fire’, experts warn
Wildfires in several states are burning with worrying ferocity across a tinder-dry landscape
By Maanvi Singh, The Guardian
July 13, 2021
» Read article
In ‘Critical Step’ for Climate, Biden to Restore Protections for Tongass National Forest
“The Tongass is not only one of the few truly wild places left on the planet, it is vital to our path forward as we deal with climate change,” said the Alaska-based group SalmonState.
By Julia Conley, Common Dreams
July 15, 2021
Conservation and climate action groups on Thursday applauded the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s announcement of far-reaching new protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest as well as a restoration of a key rule that former President Donald Trump rescinded three months before leaving office in a bid to open millions of acres to industrial logging.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the administration would put back in place the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, also known as the Roadless Rule, which Trump exempted Alaska from in a move that outraged Indigenous communities in the region as well as environmental advocates.
With the rule back in effect, companies will again be barred from road construction and large-scale logging in more than half of the 16 million acre forest, which includes five million acres of old-growth trees such as Sitka spruce trees that date back at least 800 years.
The forest serves as a habitat for more than 400 species of wildlife and fish, ensures food sovereignty for Indigenous communities in Alaska—including the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples, whose traditional territories lie within the forest—and plays a vital role in mitigating the climate crisis.
As one of the world’s largest intact temperate forests, the Tongass National Forest stores more than 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon and sequesters an additional 10 million metric tons annually, according to the Alaska Wilderness League.
» Read article
CLEAN ENERGY
Fossil Fuel Industry Given Billions in EU Hydrogen Support, Report Finds
In Italy, fossil fuel companies met over a hundred times with ministers and civil servants, helping to quadruple financial support for the sector, a new report claims.
By Sebastian Wirth, DeSmog Blog
July 8, 2021
Over €8 billion is being invested in hydrogen and “renewable gas” projects in southern Europe using EU Covid-19 recovery funds, thanks to extensive lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, a new report has found.
The research warns that backing for the supposedly green developments has “thrown a lifeline” to fossil fuel companies, despite pledges by the European Commission to pursue a low-carbon transition.
EU officials have said they are eager to avoid repeating the same mistakes made during the 2008 financial crisis, when billions of euros of public money was used to bail out fossil fuel companies.
But the report says the sector has managed to secure support in France, Spain, Italy and Portugal for the development of hydrogen and renewable gases such as biomethane, whose potential critics argue is being wildly exaggerated.
The European Network of Corporate Observatories and Fossil Free Politics, the campaign groups which produced the report, entitled ‘Hijacking the recovery through hydrogen: how fossil fuel lobbying is siphoning Covid recovery funds’, put this down to fierce industry lobbying
» Read article
» Read the report: Hijacking the Recovery Through Hydrogen
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Efforts to pursue climate goals in Mass. clash with incentives offered that promote fossil fuels
By Sabrina Shankman, Boston Globe
July 10, 2021
Massachusetts has ambitious climate goals, and not a lot of time to achieve them, which has some clean energy and climate experts questioning why a state program continues to promote fossil fuels with cash incentives for oil and gas home heating systems.
The state’s climate plan demands that 1 million households be converted from fossil fuels to electric heat by the end of the decade, part of a sweeping transition meant to help stave off the worst of climate change’s consequences. And yet the state’s only incentive program, and its best tool for helping convince businesses and homeowners to make that switch, is sticking with rebates for new carbon-emitting systems likely to remain in service long past that deadline.
The program, Mass Save, is run by utility companies with oversight by the state, and hands out between $640 million and $700 million a year in rebates that are funded by a surcharge on utility customers’ bills. It is credited with successfully reducing carbon emissions from home heating across Massachusetts since its inception in 2008. But in the past, those cuts have come largely by encouraging conversions from oil to gas, a less-dirty fossil fuel that the state plans to phase out.
However, in a set of proposed new incentives that would take effect next year, Mass Save is again planning substantial incentives to install gas systems and, in some instances, oil. And at a time when record-breaking heatwaves are scorching the country and the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is at an all-time high, experts said incentives must now move sharply in the other direction.
“This draft plan for energy efficiency still exists in the old mind-set, the old world, where we don’t actually have to do anything on climate very urgently, or where there isn’t a role in energy efficiency in helping us get to our goals,” said Caitlin Peale Sloan, a senior attorney and vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation in Massachusetts. “And that isn’t the case.”
Ultimately, the state wants the vast majority of homes and businesses to be outfitted with electric heat pumps that plug into a power grid fueled by wind and other renewable sources. While Mass Save’s proposed new incentives include robust rebates for heat pumps, the program is planning to direct those rebates primarily toward homes currently using oil or propane, not the 52 percent of residences statewide that now use natural gas.
Heat pumps are highly efficient, and provide cooling in addition to heating, but they come with hefty up-front costs. And with the low cost of natural gas and high costs of electricity in Massachusetts, a switch from gas to electric heat pumps could cause those customers to see their energy bills increase. For that reason, some experts say, Massachusetts needs to rethink its incentive program.
Mass Save’s critics point to two big hurdles standing in the way of fast action: First, the program prioritizes financial savings over energy savings, and second, the incentives it uses to encourage customers are decided by utility companies, including gas providers. The utilities revise the program’s incentives every three years, and while the state provides input, it has limited tools to ensure its input is adopted.
“These are electric and gas companies. There is an inherent conflict in the business models at play,” said Cammy Peterson, director of clean energy at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and a member of the state’s Energy Efficiency Advisory Council, which oversees the Mass Save program.
» Read article
ENERGY STORAGE
New rules to reward batteries for keeping the lights on, and make hybrids a reality
By Michael Mazengarb, Renew Economy (Australia)
July 15, 2021
Fast responding big batteries and wind and solar projects are set to be financially rewarded for helping to avoid blackouts under new reforms signed off by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) on Thursday.
The AEMC has also approved a range of new reforms to significantly reduce the red-tape encountered by aggregators of distributed energy resources, like residential battery storage and rooftop solar PV systems, and to simplify the rules for hybrid projects that combine different technologies.
AEMC chair Anna Collyer says the package of reforms comes ahead of an anticipated ramp-up in investment in energy storage technologies, which will play an increasingly important role in the energy market as thermal generators retire.
“The changes we’re announcing today recognise that energy is no longer a one-way transaction,” Collyer said.
“The energy market is moving to a future that will be increasingly reliant on storage to firm up the expanding volume of renewable energy as well as address the growing need for critical system security services as the ageing fleet of thermal generators retire.
“Within two decades, installed storage is expected to increase by 800% − it will be central to energy flowing two ways.”
On Thursday, the AEMC published its final determination to create a new fast frequency response market that will provide a financial reward for electricity projects that have the ability to rapidly respond and balance out fluctuations in the electricity system within just a few seconds.
With no moving parts, battery technologies have demonstrated their lightning-fast ability to adjust their output in response to changes in the energy system’s supply-demand balance, and Infigen Energy had requested the creation of a new rapid response market to reward batteries for this ability.
Frequency response services have existed in the energy market for some time, but until now, the fastest timeframe has been a six-second frequency response market.
The new market announced by the AEMC will provide payment to technologies that are able to respond to fluctuations in just one to two seconds and will predominantly benefit batteries and solar photovoltaic projects.
» Read article
US Department of Energy: Cost reduction target of 90% by 2030 set for long-duration energy storage
By Andy Colthorpe, Energy Storage News
Photo: Eos
July 14, 2021
The cost of long-duration, grid-scale energy storage should be reduced 90% within this decade in order to accommodate the “hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy” needed, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said yesterday.
Granholm’s Department of Energy has set the cost reduction goal as part of Energy Earthshots, an initiative to support breakthroughs in clean energy that make it more abundant, more affordable and more reliable. Defining long-duration energy storage as technologies that enable 10-hour duration or more, Granholm said they will be among what’s needed to meet the US’ policy target of 100% clean electricity by 2035.
Taking inspiration from the DoE ‘moonshot’ programmes of several years ago that helped reduce the cost of solar PV to a level competitive with fossil fuels, the Long Duration Storage Shot and parallel Hydrogen Shot are the first two to have been launched so far from an expected six to eight Energy Earthshots the Department plans to start each year.
“We’re going to bring hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy onto the grid over the next few years, and we need to be able to use that energy wherever and whenever it’s needed,” Granholm said.
» Read article
CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
Charge your 2017-2019 Chevy Bolt EV outside: GM renews caution over fire concerns
By Bengt Halvorson, Green Car Reports
July 14, 2021
Drivers of certain 2017-2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV models recently endured months of living with just 90% of their battery capacity and range—and a winter of charging outside—due to concerns over fire risk.
As of Wednesday, they’re being advised by the automaker to go back to parking outside and not to leave their cars charging overnight, at the peak times that afford the most benefit for the environment.
The issue goes back to a safety probe launched by NHTSA in October, followed by GM’s announcement of its own investigation and advice to owners in November. Things looked hopeful in May, when GM announced that it had developed a comprehensive remedy plan for the issue that would “utilize GM-developed diagnostic tools to identify potential battery anomalies and replace battery module assemblies as necessary.”
All of the incidents involved a fire originating around the vehicles’ battery packs, when the cars were plugged in and nearly fully charged. GM noted that none of the vehicles affected have the “design level N2.1” cells that GM transitioned to in mid-2019. Those unaffected cells were made in Holland, Michigan, rather than Ochang, South Korea, for the earlier ones.
Now owners are being advised to go back to caution mode. The situation has some strange optics as GM prepares for first deliveries of its GMC Hummer EV, which leads its Ultium EV push with unrelated, next-generation technology, later this year.
Hyundai faced a similar issue with some Kona Electric models, and opted in March for a quick but expensive fix: to replace the entire battery pack in up to 82,000 affected vehicles, including nearly 4,700 in the U.S.
» Read article
BIOMASS
Biomass: The EU’s Great ‘Clean Energy’ Fraud
It turns out that for more than a decade, European power plants have merely been reducing their carbon footprint on paper by outsourcing their footprint to the United States.
By Alex Kimani, Oil Price
July 13, 2021
In 2009, the European Union issued a Renewable Energy Directive (RED), pledging to curb greenhouse gas emissions and urging its member states to shift from fossil fuels to renewables. But the fine print provided a major loophole: the EU classified biomass as a renewable energy source, on par with wind and solar power.
Following the directive, EU governments have been incentivizing energy providers to burn biomass instead of coal, driving up huge demand for wood.
In fact, the EU has been importing so much biomass from the American South that it has emerged as Europe’s primary source of biomass imports.
Back in 1996, the United Nations (UN) devised a method to measure global carbon emissions. In a bid to simplify the process and avoid double counting, UN scientists suggested that biomass emissions should be calculated where the trees are cut down, not where the wood pellets are burned.
The UN adopted this methodology in its Renewable Energy Directive, allowing energy companies to burn biomass produced in the United States without having to report the emissions.
The UN was clearly more concerned about the amount of carbon we are putting out into the atmosphere regardless of the source. This source-agnostic approach has, however, been creating a lot of controversy amongst policymakers, advocates, and scientists—and now the investment community.
“I can’t think of anything that harms nature more than cutting down trees and burning them,” William Moomaw, professor emeritus of international environmental policy at Tufts University, has told CNN.
“It doesn’t change the physical reality. A law designed to reduce emissions that in reality encourages an increase in emissions … has to be flawed,” Tim Searchinger, senior research scholar at Princeton University, has told CNN, referring to Europe’s directive.
» Read article
How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for ‘green energy’ in Europe
By Majlie de Puy Kamp, CNN
Photographs by Will Lanzoni, CNN
Video by Matthew Gannon, Demetrius Pipkin & Nick Scott, CNN
July 9, 2021
Andrea Macklin never turns off his TV. It’s the only way to drown out the noise from the wood mill bordering his backyard, the jackhammer sound of the plant piercing his walls and windows. The 18-wheelers carrying logs rumble by less than 100 feet from his house, all day and night, shaking it as if an earthquake has taken over this tranquil corner of North Carolina. He’s been wearing masks since long before the coronavirus pandemic, just to keep the dust out of his lungs. Some nights, he only sleeps for two or three hours. Breathing is a chore.
“I haven’t had proper rest since they’ve been here,” he said.
That was eight years ago, when the world’s largest biomass producer, Enviva, opened its second North Carolina facility just west of Macklin’s property in Garysburg. The operation takes mostly hardwood trees and spits out biomass, or wood pellets, a highly processed and compressed wood product burned to generate energy. Enviva is one of nearly a dozen similar companies benefiting from a sustainability commitment made 4,000 miles away, more than a decade ago.
In 2009, the European Union (EU) pledged to curb greenhouse gas emissions, urging its member states to shift from fossil fuels to renewables. In its Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the EU classified biomass as a renewable energy source — on par with wind and solar power. As a result, the directive prompted state governments to incentivize energy providers to burn biomass instead of coal — and drove up demand for wood.
So much so that the American South emerged as Europe’s primary source of biomass imports.
Earlier this year, the EU was celebrated in headlines across the world when renewable energy surpassed the use of fossil fuels on the continent for the first time in history.
But scientists and experts say it’s too early to celebrate, arguing that relying on biomass for energy has a punishing impact not only on the environment, but also on marginalized communities — perpetuating decades of environmental racism in predominantly Black communities like Northampton County, where Macklin and his family have lived for generations.
» Read article
PLASTICS, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ are contaminating plastic food containers
Harmful PFAS chemicals are being used to hold food, drink and cosmetics, with unknown consequences for human health
By Tom Perkins, The Guardian
July 9, 2021
» Read article
» 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!
For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletter from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)!
The Goldboro LNG plant scheme has collapsed
Here’s What Happens When You Eat From Plastic Containers
No Fracked Gas in Mass 