Welcome back.
In Peabody, just north of Boston, ground is being prepared for a new fossil fuel powered peaking power plant with no defensible economic or technical reason to exist given today’s climate imperatives and renewable energy and storage alternatives. Two respected consulting firms have produced deeply-researched reports illuminating greener alternatives that in all cases cost less and reduce financial, health, and environmental risks. Now, a group of dedicated activists are prepared to begin a hunger strike, seeking to focus public and Baker administration attention on what has become a high stakes effort to stop an outdated and dangerous project from moving forward.
At the same time, the window is closing on any chance for national legislation that salvages the important climate components of President Biden’s stalled Build Back Better bill. Pressure is coming from a radically conservative Supreme Court that seems intent on preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, along with the real possibility that Democrats could lose control of one or both houses of Congress in upcoming midterm elections.
Both of those topics are loaded with the green economic transition’s promise to address climate change by cutting fossil fuel use, while simultaneously (finally) righting historic environmental injustices. The horrifying urgency of Russia’s war in Ukraine is driving energy-related decisions today that could push future emissions either up or down.
Some of those decisions involve physical and policy changes to modernize the electric grid. Here in New England, that starts with convincing our grid operator, ISO-NE, to embrace the coming changes and stop protecting the fuel-based status quo of the last century. Meanwhile, we have a story from Virginia about some of the creative ways renewable energy is being deployed.
The Biden administration recently restored California’s special status as a clean transportation leader, overturning the prior administration’s attempt to remove the state’s longstanding ability to set and enforce stringent tailpipe emissions requirements. Looking at aviation, efforts are underway to eventually eliminate emissions altogether in aircraft powered by green hydrogen fuel cells.
We have carried a number of stories about Massachusetts gas utility pilot projects to provide district heating and cooling using heat pumps connected to a network of underground pipes. We have an update, including a useful graphic showing what these “geo-grids” or “micro geo-districts” might look like.
Wrapping up with a local report, we’re looking at the possible sale and decommissioning of Pittsfield’s waste incinerator, which will benefit the area’s air quality and public health while also posing challenges. We’ll be advocating for policies that reduce packaging materials and divert organic waste to composting facilities.
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
PEAKING POWER PLANTS
Protestors plan hunger strike over Peabody power plant
By Paul Leighton, Salem News
March 11, 2022
Environmental activists say they plan to go on a hunger strike next week to protest the building of a new oil-and-gas powered plant in Peabody.
In a posting on the Breathe Clean North Shore website, six members of Climate Courage say they will begin the hunger strike on Tuesday and visit the 14 communities that are involved in the planned peaker plant in Peabody.
“We’ve tried everything,” said Joy Gurrie, of Ipswich, one of the planned hunger-strikers. “We’ve marched, protested to officials. This is like a last-ditch effort.”
The $85 million peaker plant — so called because it will run only during peak demand times for electricity — is scheduled to be built on Pulaski Street in Peabody. Fourteen municipal light plants, including those in Peabody and Marblehead, are partnering on the project through the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company.
The project has been approved by the state and site work has begun on its construction next to the Peabody Municipal Light Plant’s existing Waters River Substation. But residents and environmental advocates continue to fight it.
On Thursday, the Massachusetts Climate Action Network released two reports saying the plant is risky both financially and environmentally. One of the reports said the municipal light plants could provide more power at a lower cost by “buying capacity” from the market, rather than spending $85 million to build a plant. The report estimated that would save $29 million over the first 15 years.
Another report said the plant could end up being “stranded,” or abandoned, before the end of its projected 30-year lifespan due to new laws intended to protect environmental justice communities, which are defined based on income and minority populations. The report also cited the volatility of gas prices as a threat to the plant’s financial future.
Sarah Dooling, executive director of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, said the project was approved by the state before new rules protecting environmental justice communities were adopted. The plant would be located in an environmental justice neighborhood in Peabody and less than a mile from eight others, according to her organization.
Dooling said the organization has asked the state’s environmental secretary, Kathleen Theoharides, to conduct an environmental review of the project.
“If the Baker administration does not want this plant to be built, it would not be built,” Dooling said.
» Read article
» Read the Clean Power Coalition’s post on the hunger strike – see how you can support the strikers!
» Read the Strategen Consulting report on market capacity purchases
» Read the Applied Economics Clinic risk assessment report
Peabody Generator Opponents Make Late Plea To Halt Project
Climate advocacy groups released data Thursday they hope will prompt the state to reopen the proposed generator’s approval process.
By Scott Souza, Patch
March 10, 2022
Climate advocacy groups made a late — and perhaps ultimately final — push for the state to reopen the approval process for the proposed 60-megawatt fossil fuel-powered peak capacity generator at Peabody’s Waters River substation on Thursday.
The Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company Project 2015A — which the state Department of Public Utilities approved for $85 million in funding last July after months of appeals and fierce objections from opposition groups and some elected officials — is designed to provide residents in 14 MMWEC communities, including Marblehead and Peabody, with peak-capacity energy at below-market prices in the case of extreme weather conditions.
The MMWEC last spring hit a 30-day “pause” on the project, which moved through the state approval process in relative obscurity for years. The MMWEC and Peabody Municipal Light Plant made some alterations aimed at lowering the emissions impact on the surrounding communities but ultimately got the go-ahead for much of the framework for the original plan the utility said will operate approximately 239 hours per year and be 94 percent more efficient than generators across the state.
But both state and local climate and environmental justice advocates groups have kept up the fight — on Thursday citing more data that the generator threatens to be more expensive for consumers and risks become a “stranded asset” based on recent price trends in the energy industry and improvements in battery storage capacity.
“Gas peakers right now are not the only capacity resource,” said Maria Roumpani, Senior Manager of Strategen, an impact-driven firm whose mission is to decarbonize energy systems. “Resource economics and climate change have progressed significantly over the past five or six years (since the outset of Project 2015A). Today, we’re more aware of environmental impacts and at the same time renewable and storage energy costs have fallen dramatically, which changes a lot of the economics of the peaker.”
» Read article
» More about peaker plants
LEGISLATION
The political window is closing on climate change
If Democrats can’t compromise now, they may come away with nothing.
By The Editorial Board, Boston Globe
March 3, 2022
The long-predicted effects of climate change are now hard upon us, and they will only get worse unless we take sweeping action. But it’s not just the atmospheric window that’s closing. The political portal is as well — and not just for this year but for the next several. That means Democrats must move with dispatch to pass the climate provisions of the Build Back Better legislation.
Several coalescing probabilities make congressional action in the next few months the best, and perhaps last, chance for timely action. On Feb. 28, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit intended to block the federal government’s ability to take strong regulatory action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. That was the approach President Obama settled on in the face of Congress’s disinclination to act in a meaningful way on global warming. But Obama’s Clean Power Plan soon ran into legal problems, with the Supreme Court freezing it while a challenge to its legal grounding played out in court. Donald Trump then gutted Obama’s regulatory effort, only to see his own do-little-or-nothing rule thrown out by the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The Biden administration has signaled it intends to return to an Obama-like approach by using the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power to crack down on energy-sector emissions, but has yet to detail its plan. Despite the lack of a currently relevant justiciable policy, however, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of the D.C. Appeals Court’s ruling. The fact that the high court opted to hear this case before President Biden has a set of rules in the game suggests that its conservative majority is intent on preemptively closing that regulatory avenue. That would be in keeping with those justices’ clear skepticism about administrative authority based on a broad interpretation of statute. If so, the EPA would see its power to require sector-wide greenhouse-gas reductions severely curtailed.
On the electoral front, meanwhile, the prognosis does not look good for the Democrats in the mid-term elections. Republicans could well end up in control of the House and perhaps the Senate as well. Shortsighted though it is, congressional Republicans, who are both deeply beholden to the fossil-fuel industry and deep into climate denial, feel little compunction to address the climate issue. Should they win control of either branch of Congress in November, it becomes highly unlikely that any meaningful climate measure will pass.
» Read article
» More about legislation
GREENING THE ECONOMY
How Air Pollution Across America Reflects Racist Policy From the 1930s
A new study shows how redlining, a Depression-era housing policy, contributed to inequalities that persist decades later in U.S. cities.
By Raymond Zhong and Nadja Popovich, New York Times
March 9, 2022
Urban neighborhoods that were redlined by federal officials in the 1930s tended to have higher levels of harmful air pollution eight decades later, a new study has found, adding to a body of evidence that reveals how racist policies in the past have contributed to inequalities across the United States today.
In the wake of the Great Depression, when the federal government graded neighborhoods in hundreds of cities for real estate investment, Black and immigrant areas were typically outlined in red on maps to denote risky places to lend. Racial discrimination in housing was outlawed in 1968. But the redlining maps entrenched discriminatory practices whose effects reverberate nearly a century later.
To this day, historically redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have high populations of Black, Latino and Asian residents than areas that were favorably assessed at the time.
California’s East Bay is a clear example.
[…]Margaret Gordon has had decades of experience with these inequalities in West Oakland, a historically redlined neighborhood. Many children there suffer from asthma related to traffic and industrial pollution. Residents have long struggled to fend off development projects that make the air even worse.
“Those people don’t have the voting capacity, or the elected officials, or the money to hire the lawyers, to fight this,” said Ms. Gordon, co-director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, an advocacy group.
» Read article
» Read the study
» More about greening the economy
CLIMATE
As War Rages, A Struggle to Balance Energy Crunch and Climate Crisis
Rising oil prices and increased demand for expanded production come at a time when scientists say nations must sharply cut the use of fossil fuels.
By Brad Plumer, Lisa Friedman and David Gelles, New York Times
March 10, 2022
As the world reels from spikes in oil and gas prices, the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare a dilemma: Nations remain extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels and are struggling to shore up supplies precisely at a moment when scientists say the world must slash its use of oil, gas and coal to avert irrevocable damage to the planet.
While countries could greatly reduce their vulnerability to wild swings in the oil and gas markets by shifting to cleaner sources of energy such as wind or solar power and electric vehicles — which is also the playbook for fighting climate change — that transition will take years.
So, for now, many governments are more urgently focused on alleviating near-term energy shocks, aiming to boost global oil production to replace the millions of barrels per day that Russia has historically exported but which is now being shunned by Western nations.
The two goals aren’t necessarily at odds, officials in the United States and Europe say.
Yet some fear that countries could become so consumed by the immediate energy crisis that they neglect longer-term policies to cut reliance on fossil fuels — a shortsightedness that could set the world up for more oil and gas shocks in the future as well as a dangerously overheated planet.
“In the short term we have to try to prevent this crisis from creating an economic catastrophe,” said Sarah Ladislaw, a managing director at RMI, a nonprofit that works on clean energy issues. “But there are also longer-term steps we need to take to reduce our underlying energy vulnerabilities.” Otherwise, she said, “we’ll end up right back in this situation several years down the road.”
» Read article
Amazon is less able to recover from droughts and logging, study finds
By Henry Fountain, New York Times, in Boston Globe
March 7, 2022
The Amazon is losing its ability to recover from disturbances like droughts and land-use changes, scientists reported Monday, adding to concern that the rainforest is approaching a critical threshold beyond which much of it will be replaced by grassland, with vast consequences for biodiversity and climate change.
The scientists said their research did not pinpoint when this threshold, which they described as a tipping point, might be reached.
“But it’s worth reminding ourselves that if it gets to that tipping point, that we commit to losing the Amazon rainforest, then we get a significant feedback to global climate change,” said one of the scientists, Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in England.
Losing the rainforest could result in up to 90 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide being put back into the atmosphere, he said, equivalent to several years of global emissions. That would make limiting global warming more difficult.
Among previous studies there has been a large degree of uncertainty as to when such a threshold might be reached. But some research has concluded that deforestation, drying, and other factors could lead to substantial forest destruction in the Amazon by the end of this century.
Carlos Nobre, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil and one of the first to sound alarm over the potential loss of the Amazon more than three decades ago, described the new study as “very compelling.”
“It raised my level of anxiety,” said Nobre, who was not involved in the research.
Covering more than 2 million square miles in Brazil and neighboring countries, the Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest, and serves a crucial role in mitigating climate change in most years by taking in more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases. In its diversity of plant and animal species, it is as rich as or richer than anywhere else on the planet. And it pumps so much moisture into the atmosphere that it can affect weather beyond South America.
» Read article
» More about climate
CLEAN ENERGY
Analysis: From Gas to Renewables to Efficiency, Putin’s War Has EU Scrambling for Energy Independence
By Mitchell Beer, The Energy Mix
March 7, 2022
With Vladimir Putin’s devastating war in Ukraine now well into its second week, news coverage and commentary are turning to the steps other European countries can take to break their dependence on Russian oil and gas, once and for all.
While the fossil industry tries to spin the war as justification for a new round of exploration and development, and Europe looks to alternate sources of gas for short-term relief, renewable energy and energy efficiency are dominating much of the conversation as a more practical, affordable solution.
Two intertwined issues brought into focus by the invasion of Ukraine are the 40% of European Union gas supply that comes from Russia, and the corresponding US$720 million in daily gas revenue that Russian President Vladimir Putin is using to finance his war. While sanctions and divestment are hitting broad swaths of the Russian economy, “in gas the flow continues unabated and, with European customers now paying even more exorbitant prices, Russia is benefiting from a staggering surge in revenue,” writes British historian and European Institute Director Adam Tooze, citing Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas.
“At the start of the year, Russia was earning $350 million per day from oil and $200 million per day from gas,” Tooze says. “On March 3, 2022, Europe paid $720 million to Russia for gas alone.”
[…]That dependence “has proved the Achilles’ heel of security for Europe and, by extension, the United States,” writes the Washington Post editorial board. “Quite simply, Russia has fossil fuels in abundance and has used this as a geopolitical tool to influence consuming countries such as Germany and Italy, blunting their willingness to take a stand against Mr. Putin’s aggressive policies until it is too late.”
» Read article
House pushes for Massachusetts to become the center of U.S. wind production
By Mike Deehan, WGBH
March 3, 2022
House Speaker Ron Mariano and the Massachusetts House want to supercharge the wind energy industry in the Commonwealth by levying new fees on fossil fuels to invest in cleaner power produced off our shores.
“What oil did for Texas, wind can do for Massachusetts. We have enough wind energy out there that can power every home and every business in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” said Franklin Rep. Jeffrey Roy, the House chairman of the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee and key author of the bill.
Mariano and Roy’s wind bill is seen by Democrats as a key piece of the state’s strategy to meet it’s long-term emissions goals.
Under state law, Massachusetts must by 2030 reduce carbon emissions by 50% from 1990 levels. That target moves to a 75% reduction in emissions by 2040 and 85% of 1990 levels by 2050.
To get there, the state’s electricity supply must shift from being generated by polluting fossil fuels to clean energy sources like wind, solar and hydro energy. After Maine voters rejected a plan by Massachusetts and other northeast states to buy and transport hydropower from Canada, the Bay state was left looking for new ways to increase green power production.
“We happen to be located in the perfect space because the most robust waters in the contiguous United States are 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.,” Roy said.
» Read article
» More about clean energy
MODERNIZING THE GRID
The future is now: Doubling down on fossil fuels is not the solution to New England’s energy needs
By Joe Curtatone, Utility Dive | Opinion
March 1, 2022
Joe Curtatone is president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council
Across New England, the second half of January ushered in freezing temperatures and along with it, a reinvigorated debate about the region’s overreliance on fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. New England has made significant strides in recent decades, retiring most of its coal fleet and moving to a — comparatively — cleaner generating fleet that is now largely dominated by natural gas.
That is why it may surprise you to learn that in late January, the grid mix was, in fact, very dirty with over 25% coming from oil and coal at times, and with the monthly contribution of those dirty sources totaling a staggering 13%. Over the course of an entire year, coal and oil generation is quite small, typically below 1%, as it was in 2021. But in this cold, and with gas prices far higher than in recent years, it was coal and oil to the rescue on the vast majority of days. To be clear, the system was not in an emergency condition. It was just cold.
As we move on from a year that was the hottest in Boston’s history, with New England facing the impacts of climate change at an even more accelerated pace, this is simply untenable. New England states have enacted some of the most aggressive climate laws in the country, and we have made bold and smart bets on making clean energy resources like offshore wind and solar the new backbone of our grid in the future. But as this past January demonstrates, our work to meet those ambitions has only begun.
ISO New England’s CEO was recently quoted as saying, “[t]he clean energy transition is a long journey and we cannot escape the reality that the region will be reliant on much of the existing fleet, and the fuels they utilize, for many years to come”. We fear that framing the problem that way risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. By continuing to look to fossil fuel peaking resources as a first resort rather than last, we are ignoring significant opportunities that exist today to bring all available clean resources to solve this problem. Here are some ideas to start.
» Read article
Grid operators’ ‘seam’ study paves way for renewable expansion
A new study shows how strategically sited transmission projects can unleash a wave of new clean energy generation.
By Jeffrey Tomich, E&E News, in Energy News Network
March 5, 2022
A joint study by two regional grid operators with territories that span a wide swath of the central U.S. reveals how strategically sited transmission projects along their boundaries could enable a wave of new renewable energy generation that may not otherwise get built.
The final study, published yesterday, is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP) to help enable more wind and solar development across an area that’s become increasingly challenging for renewable developers because of grid constraints.
The study identified seven transmission projects along the MISO-SPP boundary that would cost $1.65 billion and enable 28 gigawatts of new generation capacity — and perhaps as much as 53 GW — across MISO and SPP combined. The latter estimate, based on modeling by SPP, would roughly double the combined wind and solar capacity that currently exists in the two regions.
“Identifying those projects that can meet the needs of interconnecting generators in both regions for a period of time is huge, it’s very important,” said Natalie McIntire, a technical and policy consultant for the Clean Grid Alliance, a St. Paul, Minn.-based group whose members include renewable developers.
The projects to help unlock the region’s renewable energy potential could accelerate the pace of the transition from fossil fuels in regions of the country long tied to coal.
» Read article
» More about modernizing the grid
SITING IMPACTS OF RENEWABLES
In Virginia, abandoned coal mines are transformed into solar farms
Six old mining sites owned by the Nature Conservancy will be some of the first utility-scale solar farms in the region — and the nonprofit group hopes the model can be replicated nationwide
By Zoeann Murphy, Washington Post
March 3, 2022
Empty freight cars line the railroad tracks as far as the eye can see from Tim Jennings’s backyard in Dante — a town of less than 600 residents.
“They should open up some more new mines around here,” the 61-year-old former coal miner says, pointing up at the mountains surrounding the valley. “Solar panels — that might work too.”
In southwest Virginia, abandoned coal mines are being transformed into solar installations that will be large enough to contribute renewable energy to the electric grid. Six old mining sites owned by the Nature Conservancy will be some of the first utility-scale solar farms in the region — and the nonprofit group hopes it’s creating a model that can be replicated nationwide.
In 2019, the Nature Conservancy acquired 253,000 acres of forest in the central Appalachian Mountains that it calls the Cumberland Forest Project. It’s one small part of the group’s efforts in the mountain range, which reaches from Alabama to Canada.
“We’ve identified the Appalachians as one of the most important places on Earth for us to do conservation,” says Brad Kreps, the Nature Conservancy’s Clinch Valley program director, who is leading the solar projects. “We put the Appalachians in a very rare company along with the Amazon, the wild lands of Kenya and the forests of Borneo.”
The Cumberland Forest includes several abandoned mine sites scattered around Virginia’s coal fields region. Solar developers partnering with the Nature Conservancy, such as Dominion Energy and Sun Tribe, say the mine sites have vast flat areas exposed to sunlight that are a rarity in the mountains, and the sites offer advantages like being close to transmission lines.
» Read article
» More about siting impacts of renewables
CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
Biden Restores California’s Power to Set Stringent Tailpipe Rules
The state is expected to write strict auto pollution standards designed to significantly speed the transition to electric vehicles and influence new federal rules.
By Coral Davenport, New York Times
March 9, 2022
The Biden administration on Wednesday restored California’s legal authority to set auto pollution and mileage rules that are tighter than federal standards, a potent climate policy that had been stripped away by former President Donald J. Trump.
The return of one of California’s most powerful environmental prerogatives could have a significant impact on the type of cars Americans will drive in the coming decade, the amount of gasoline the nation consumes and its ability to reduce the tailpipe emissions that contribute heavily to climate change.
As the most populous state, and with the world’s fifth-largest economy, California has been able to influence automobile makers and set the pace for the rest of the country. Seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted the California rules, turning them into de facto national standards. Twelve other states are following California’s mandate to sell only zero-emissions vehicles after 2035.
With that leverage, California’s actions become pivotal to Mr. Biden’s broader push to accelerate the transition away from gasoline-powered vehicles toward electric vehicles, which require no oil and produce no emissions.
» Read article
Fortescue teams up with aero giant Airbus to accelerate green hydrogen planes
By Michael Mazengarb, Renew Economy
March 8, 2022
Fortescue Future Industries says it wants to speed up the development of aircraft fuelled by green hydrogen, as part of a push to decarbonise the aviation industry, forming a new partnership with European aircraft giant Airbus.
The clean energy unit of resources giant Fortescue Metals Group signed the MoU with Airbus on Tuesday to cooperate on the development of zero emissions aircraft, fuelled by hydrogen.
The partnership will see the two companies identify the needs and potential boundaries to the use of green hydrogen as an aircraft fuel, covering government regulation, necessary infrastructure and how to best establish global supply chains.
According to a joint statement, FFI will provide technical expertise on the development of the necessary hydrogen supply chains, and Airbus will focus on assessing the energy needs and fuelling requirements of the aviation industry, as well as the aviation regulatory environment.
Fortescue founder Dr Andrew Forrest said the aviation industry was responsible for a significant proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, and had so far proven elusive in decarbonisation efforts.
“The time is now for a green revolution in the aviation industry. This exciting collaboration brings together leaders in the aviation industry with leaders in green energy for a pollution-free future,” Forrest said.
Airbus has unveiled a number of zero emissions aircraft concepts and is hoping to launch its first hydrogen-fuelled commercial aircraft by 2035.
The company says that green hydrogen could be used through two key methods for reducing aviation emissions, including as an input in the production of synthetic fuels for use in current aircraft, as well as for direct use in next-generation aircraft using modified turbines and fuel cells.
» Read article
» More about green transportation
GAS UTILITIES
A net-zero future for gas utilities? Switching to underground thermal networks
Three pilot projects in Massachusetts will connect ground-source heat pumps to heat and cool entire neighborhoods.
By Jeff St. John, Canary Media
March 1, 2022
Massachusetts’ major gas utilities, facing the eventual demise of fossil fuels under the state’s decarbonization mandate, are contemplating a new business model: replacing neighborhood gas pipeline networks with pipes that capture and share thermal energy underground.
Over the next year, utilities Eversource, National Grid and Columbia Gas plan to break ground on separate pilot projects testing the viability of making such “geo-grids” or “micro geo-districts” into in-the-ground realities. If they succeed, the model could be extended to a much broader set of the utilities’ customers — and potentially offer gas utilities in other regions a path toward a carbon-free future.
Nikki Bruno, Eversource’s director of clean technologies, said the utility has hopes to expand well beyond its $10.2 million, three-year pilot project in a lower-income neighborhood in the city of Framingham, Massachusetts.
For that to happen, however, “we would have to show an environmental benefit, customer affordability, and technology performance,” she said.
Right now Eversource is busy signing up a mix of residential and commercial customers willing to install heat pumps that can tap into the pipes it will be laying alongside its fossil gas pipelines, Bruno said. Those pipes will carry a water-and-antifreeze mix that circulates through loops in boreholes sunk hundreds of feet into the earth, absorbing underground temperatures that linger at a stable range around 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
As that temperate fluid is brought back to the surface, it can be used by electric-powered heat pumps to generate heat when it’s cold outside or cold when it’s hot outside, whichever is needed, as this Eversource graphic indicates.
» Read article
» More about gas utilities
FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY
Canada’s ‘petro-provinces’ see opportunity in Russia-Ukraine war
Amid calls to ban Russian oil and gas, environmentalists slam pro-oil ‘opportunism’ in Canada and call for energy transition.
By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours, Al Jazeera
March 8, 2022
As efforts ramp up to broker a ceasefire and bring an end to nearly two weeks of Russian attacks on Ukraine, calls have been growing internationally to ban oil imports from Russia as a way to exert pressure on President Vladimir Putin to end the war.
United States President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a ban on US imports of Russian oil and gas. It was unclear whether Europe, more energy-dependent on Russia than the US, would follow suit.
That is where Canada’s oil industry lobby groups and pro-oil politicians are now hoping to step in, urging countries to choose what they describe as Canadian “ethical oil” over Russian “conflict oil” reserves.
But environmentalists, rights advocates and other experts have denounced attempts to expand fossil fuel projects in light of the war in Ukraine, saying the conflict should instead hasten a global energy transition to respond to the climate crisis.
“We’re seeing once again the fossil [fuel] lobby seizing upon a crisis with horrific human consequences to promote its destructive agenda and double down on fossil production expansion,” Caroline Brouillette, national policy manager at Climate Action Network Canada, told Al Jazeera. “It’s been absolutely distressing to see some politicians echo this grotesque spin.”
» Read article
» More about fossil fuels
WASTE INCINERATION
If Pittsfield trash incinerator plant sale goes through it will close, which could mean you’ll pay more for trash disposal
By Larry Parnass, The Berkshire Eagle
March 11, 2022
If approved by a bankruptcy judge, a national company that boasts of capturing “value from waste” will take over and decommission a Pittsfield incinerator that has been a city landmark for two generations.
Filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court identify Casella Waste Management of Massachusetts as the company poised to pay $1 million to buy the Hubbard Avenue plant, whose smokestacks, visible across the city’s east side, long have concerned environmentalists.
In February, a letter to employees from Richard Fish, Community Eco Power’s president and CEO, confirmed that a prospective new owner intended to dismantle the incinerator, which, in 2021, burned 80,000 tons of trash from Pittsfield and Berkshire County.
In a letter of intent included in a recent bankruptcy court filing, a Casella executive says that if the sale is allowed, it would halt trash incineration in Pittsfield and transform the site into a transfer station. From there, the executive said, trash would be trucked to landfills, possibly including four owned by Casella in New York state.
Closing the incinerator would force Pittsfield and other customers to renegotiate how to dispose of trash, having lost the option to have those costs tempered by the use of waste to generate energy. Casella already holds a contract to collect trash in Pittsfield.
» Read article
» More about waste incineration
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