Weekly News Check-In 7/2/21

Welcome back.

Peaking power plants were a hot topic this week, with efforts underway far and wide to replace these heavy polluters with green technologies like battery storage. We lead off with ace reporter Danny Jin’s excellent Berkshire Eagle article about campaigns close to home. Also a citizen’s letter clearly lays out the issues surrounding Peabody’s proposed gas plant, and a success story: how a battery project replaced a planned gas peaker in Oxnard, CA.

Activists occupied the Waltham, MA office of Canadian energy giant Enbridge, calling for cancellation of the Weymouth compressor station and Line 3 pipeline currently under construction across northern Minnesota.  Meanwhile, an unprecedented number of legal actions against the oil and gas industry are proceeding through the courts. And on the legislative front, Congress voted to repeal Trump’s free pass on the powerful greenhouse gas methane, resetting emissions limits to levels previously established by the Obama administration.

Our section on greening the economy focuses on the needs of communities dependent on the fossil industry, as they transition toward sustainability. We also found an uplifting story from Ohio, where an electric vehicle car-sharing program is key to lifting marginalized people out of poverty.

Our friends in the Pacific Northwest just experienced a horrible week, and the deadly heat wave had climate change’s fingerprints all over it. Of course, news about long-duration battery storage, modernizing the grid, and electrifying the transportation sector all mention great tools for fighting back – but the fossil fuel industry remains focused on selling as much planet-cooking product as possible before their party’s over. Two reports underscore the industry’s push for profit, and their liberal use of influence and deception.

We’ll wrap with news you can use about avoiding plastic food and beverage containers – including what these do to your health and the environment. But first, we’re popping a cork to celebrate what appears to be the collapse of plans for the Goldboro liquefied natural gas export facility in Nova Scotia, and hoping its demise sufficiently shakes the foundations of the Weymouth compressor station to topple that project too.

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

As Pittsfield power plant seeks permit renewal, environmental groups call for clean-energy transition
By Danny Jin, The Berkshire Eagle
July 1, 2021

PITTSFIELD — With the air-quality permit for a Merrill Road power plant set to expire in October, several local groups want the plant’s owner to consider switching to cleaner alternatives.

Maryland-based private equity firm Hull Street Energy owns the plant at 235 Merrill Road and has filed for a renewal of its permit. But, a coalition of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team and 20 other local groups is concerned about pollution from the gas-fired plant, which sits next to Allendale Elementary School and is within a mile of Pittsfield’s Morningside neighborhood.

A “peaker” power plant, Pittsfield Generating, typically runs only a few days a year, during the highest points of electricity demand. The plant ran just 5 percent of the time in 2019 and 2 percent of the time in 2020, according to research group Synapse Energy.

But, the approximately 19,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 3 tons of nitrous oxide emitted in 2020 have local climate groups and others worried about negative health effects. They want Hull Street Energy, which declined to comment to The Eagle, to consider clean-energy alternatives such as batteries, which store energy to be released when demand is high.

“They’re moving ahead with that permit, and we would like them to reconsider,” Rosemary Wessel, director of BEAT’s No Fracked Gas in Mass initiative, said of Hull Street Energy. “We would like them to meet with us and talk about transitioning to clean energy. Folks will be concerned that this plant will be continuing to operate and polluting the air that residents breathe.”

Four elected officials signed on to a June 2 letter that the coalition sent to Hull Street Energy, but Wessel said the company has yet to respond. State Sen. Adam Hinds, D-Pittsfield; state Rep. Paul Mark, D-Peru; state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield; and state Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, D-Lenox, signed the letter. (There are no peaker plants in the district represented by state Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams.)

Meanwhile, coalition leaders and elected officials have had “wonderfully cooperative” communications, Wessel said, with Cogentrix Energy, the owner of two other local peakers. Wessel said she sees the conversations with Cogentrix, which owns a peaker on Doreen Street in Pittsfield and one on Woodland Road in Lee, as a model for the coalition to pursue with Hull Street Energy.
» Read article

Letter: Few real answers on peaker plant
From Carol Hautau, Salem, in The Salem News
June 28, 2021

At last Monday’s community forum (“Opponents: Power plant changes a start,” June 24), the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) presented Project 2015A, a plan to build a gas- and oil-fired peaker plant in Peabody.

The meeting did nothing to dispel the feeling that MMWEC and the Peabody Municipal Light Plant have kept this project below the radar to avoid public scrutiny. The panelists took pains to spell out how they met the letter of the law about public notice and supplied the audience with a numbing amount of technical information, which silenced discussion and did not inform or respond to concerns. Long, complex jargon-filled speeches (forward capacity market, hedge discounts) seemed intended to convince those present that the panelists and the entities they represented were the only ones who could be depended on to make the right decision for the communities involved.

The real question of the day — why construct a fossil fuel-burning energy plant in this age of climate disruption — was not addressed adequately. Wind, solar, wave and tidal energy may be intermittent sources today, but battery technology will soon solve that problem. Rather than finding a green solution to their energy reliability needs, the Project 2015A crew held up the hypothetical conversion of this new fossil-fuel plant to green hydrogen, a highly explosive, difficult to transport fuel barely out of its developmental diapers. Green hydrogen sounds an awful lot like “clean coal”— a concept that is thoroughly discredited.
» Read article              

142 Tesla Megapacks power on to create giant new battery, replacing gas peaker plant in California
By Fred Lambert, Electrek
June 30, 2021

A new 142-Tesla Megapack project has been turned on in California’s Ventura County to create a giant new battery that is replacing a gas peaker plant.

The project is called the Saticoy battery storage system, and it came about when the local community in Oxnard fought against having a new gas-powered peaker plant to help respond to the energy demand during peak times.

Instead, they settled on a proposal from Arevon Asset Management (Arevon), a renewable energy company, to deploy a massive 100 megawatt/400 megawatt-hour battery system to help power the peak energy demand.

The community was about to get a polluting [262MW] gas power plant near the beach, and instead, they now have one of the largest energy storage sites in US, and it was deployed in just nine months.

They are using 142 Tesla Megapacks, the automaker’s largest energy storage solution (pictured above).

Carmen Ramirez, Ventura County District 5 Supervisor, commented on the project:

“Saying no to a gas peaker plant and yes to battery-stored energy has provided our community with a nonpolluting power plant, increased our tax base, and created good jobs and ultimately better health for the people. This project is truly a testament to Oxnard’s determination and resilience to modernize and better our community.”

The Tesla Megapacks receive electricity from Southern California Edison (SCE) under the terms of a 20-year purchase and sale agreement.
» Blog editor’s note: According to a 2017 article in the Los Angeles Times, the gas power plant this battery system replaced was intended to be sized at 262MW (inserted into article, above).
» Read article              

» More about peaker plants

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

3 Environmental Activists Arrested After Occupying Waltham Energy Company Offices Overnight
By Miriam Wasser, WBUR
June 30, 2021

After more than 24 hours of occupying the Waltham offices of Canadian energy giant Enbridge, three environmental activists were arrested Wednesday afternoon by Waltham police.

“We are here because the Line 3 [pipline in Minnesota] needs to be stopped,” protester Samie Hayward said to officers shortly before being taken into custody. “And we are here in solidarity with [those fighting] the Weymouth Compressor.”

The protest began at around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday when more than 60 activists walked into the office building that houses Enbridge’s Northeast U.S. headquarters. Some played musical instruments while others sang or chanted slogans like “we are the protectors.” Many held signs that read “Stop Enbridge. Stop Line 3” and “Enbridge Profits from Environmental Injustice.”

The protestors, who said they were affiliated with the local activist group Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (FRRACS) and standing in solidarity with the Indigenous-led Giniw Collective in Minnesota, accused Enbridge of “committing crimes against humanity” and perpetrating climate change by constructing and operating controversial fossil fuel projects like the Weymouth Compressor and the Line 3 oil pipeline.

“I’m really alarmed about climate change and how poorly as a society we are dealing with it, and I’m here because there are companies like Enbridge that have been given social license to continue doing what they’re doing,” said one of the protesters, Jeff Gang.

“They’ve built this compressor in Weymouth, which is dangerous and a disaster for the climate, as well as being deeply unjust for the people who live around it. And now they’re trying to build the pipeline, Line 3, cutting through historically Indigenous lands and continuing the circle of genocide that’s been perpetrated on Indigenous people.”

After approximately 20 minutes of chanting and singing in the office Tuesday, Waltham police arrived on the scene and told the protesters they were trespassing. Most of the activists left the building, but several stayed — and 13 spent the night.

Equipped with a list of demands, they repeatedly told officers that they wouldn’t leave until those demands were met. At one point, protester Wen Stephenson picked up a bullhorn and read the list out loud:

1. That the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Department immediately cease its dangerous blockade of Anishinaabe peoples’ privately-owned #StopLine3 camp and release all arrested protesters.
2. The immediate halt to Line 3 Pipeline construction and drilling near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
3. The shutdown of Enbridge’s Natural Gas Compressor Station in Weymouth, Mass.
4. The shutdown of Enbridge’s West Roxbury Lateral gas pipeline in Boston, Mass.
5. The shutdown of the Enbridge-supplied Alton Gas project threatening Mi’kmaq land and water in Nova Scotia.

In an email, Enbridge spokesman Max Bergeron wrote: “As a company, we recognize the rights of individuals and groups to express their views legally and peacefully. We don’t tolerate illegal activities of any kind including trespassing, vandalism, or other mischief.”
» Read article              

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price
Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels
By Chris McGreal, The Guardian
June 30, 2021
» Read article              

» More about protests and actions

LEGISLATION

Congress Votes To Restore Regulations On Climate-Warming Methane Emissions
Reducing greenhouse gases, means tackling pollution from the oil and gas industry
By Jeff Brady, NPR
June 25, 2021

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NPR) — Both houses of Congress have taken a step toward more vigorously regulating climate-warming methane leaks from the oil and gas industry, a move supporters say is key to achieving President Biden’s ambitious climate goals.

On Friday, House lawmakers voted to reverse a Trump rollback by passing resolutions under the Congressional Review Act, which gives them the ability to undo agency rules passed in the last months of the previous administration. The Senate approved the measure in April.

“What we’re voting on today is the legislative equivalent of a double negative. This is the repeal of a repeal,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said at a press conference before the April vote.

Biden is expected to sign the resolutions, which would reverse an Environmental Protection Agency methane rule finalized last year and leave in place a stricter 2016 EPA rule, finalized during the Obama administration.

Methane is the main ingredient in natural gas. When released before it burns, it’s a far more potent greenhouse gas than even carbon dioxide. But it does not linger in the atmosphere nearly as long. That means eliminating leaks now could have an immediate effect on global warming.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in April that methane and carbon dioxide “continued their unrelenting rise in 2020 despite the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic response.”

The oil and gas industry is the largest source of human-caused methane emissions. A recent study by the Environmental Defense Fund found that cutting methane emissions now could slow the rate of global warming by as much as 30%.
» Read article              

» More about legislation

GREENING THE ECONOMY

As the US Pursues Clean Energy and the Climate Goals of the Paris Agreement, Communities Dependent on the Fossil Fuel Economy Look for a Just Transition
A new report identifies areas from Appalachia to Alaska that will need help to keep their employment, wages and tax bases from falling steeply as coal, oil and gas are phased out.
By Judy Fahys, Inside Climate News
June 28, 2021

Perhaps the proudest achievement of Michael Kourianos’ first term as mayor of Price, Utah was helping to make the local university hub the state’s first to run entirely on clean energy. It’s a curious position for the son, brother and grandchild of coal miners who’s worked in local coal-fired power plants for 42 years.

Kourianos sees big changes on the horizon brought by shifts in world energy markets and customer demands, as well as in politics. The mines and plants that powered a bustling economy here in Carbon County and neighboring Emery County for generations are gone or winding down, and Kourianos is hoping to win reelection so he can keep stoking the entrepreneurial energy and partnerships that are moving his community forward.

“That freight train is coming at us,” he said. “You look at all the other communities that were around during the early times of coal, they’re not around.

“That’s my fear,” he said. “That’s my driving force.”

New research from Resources for the Future points out that hundreds of areas like central Utah are facing painful hardships because of the clean-energy transformation that will be necessary if the United States hopes to reach the Paris agreement’s goals to slow climate change. Lost jobs and wages, a shrinking population and an erosion of the tax base that supports roads, schools and community services—they’re all costs of the economic shift that will be paid by those whose hard work fueled American prosperity for so long.

“If we can address those challenges by helping communities diversify, helping people find new economic growth drivers and new economic opportunities, that might lessen some of the opposition to moving forward with the ambitious climate policy that we need,” said the report’s author, Daniel Raimi, who is also a lecturer at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
» Read article              
» Read the report: Mapping the US Energy Economy to Inform Transition Planning

Electric car-share program helps underserved and unemployed Ohioans
“No car, no job. No job, no car.” The car-share program is part of a larger effort in Lorain County, Ohio, using a Paradox Prize grant to address the dilemma.
By Kathiann M. Kowalski, Energy News Network
July 1, 2021

Most drivers of electric vehicles don’t experience homelessness or the urgency of finding a job after addiction, prison or other problems. Yet those are precisely the people whom an innovative car-sharing program in Ohio aims to help.

Place to Recover Training and Resource Center in Sheffield Township and Catholic Charities’ St. Elizabeth Center in Lorain are now sharing an electric Chevrolet Bolt to help their clients. Funding comes from part of a $100,000 Paradox Prize grant to those and other organizations in Lorain County.

Representatives of the programs spoke at Green Energy Ohio’s 2021 Electric Vehicle Tour in Oberlin on June 8.

“This electric car-share program has really benefited marginalized populations who otherwise would not be able to access employment or resources to help them get employment, like getting to the doctor and getting to interviews and getting training,” said Wendy Caldwell, chief executive officer at Place to Recover. The organization helps people reentering society after incarceration, substance abuse treatment or other circumstances.

Just a couple of miles away, St. Elizabeth Center provides overnight shelter for adult men, as well as daily hot meals and other social services for people in need. The Catholic Charities facility uses the car to get clients to doctor’s appointments, legal appointments, meetings with social services, housing interviews and other places.

“I can’t emphasize enough how important that is to these people, how meaningful it is,” said Matthew Peters, an emergency services coordinator for Catholic Charities. “How much hope it gives them to know that there’s a network and a community of people around them who are bright and motivated and empathetic and concerned and making this possible!”
» Read article              

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

Global Warming Cauldron Boils Over in the Northwest in One of the Most Intense Heat Waves on Record Worldwide
As residents prepare for even more temperature records to fall in the heat dome forecast to persist for days, scientists see a heavy climate change fingerprint.
By Judy Fahys, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News
June 29, 2021

The latest in a seemingly endless series of heat waves around the world hit the Pacific Northwest last weekend and will continue through the week, showing that even regions with cool coastlines and lush forests cannot avoid the blistering extremes of global warming.

Temperatures across most of Oregon and Washington spiked 20 to 30 degrees Celsius above normal, with even hotter conditions expected through Tuesday driving concerns about impacts to human health, infrastructure and ecosystems.

In a Twitter thread over the weekend, Ben Noll, a meteorologist with the New Zealand National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, reported that Portland, Oregon would be hotter than 99.9 percent of the rest of the planet on Sunday. “The only places expected to be hotter: Africa’s Sahara Desert, Persian Gulf, California’s deserts,” he tweeted.

The intensity of the heat wave, measured by how far temperatures are spiking above normal, is among the greatest ever measured globally. The extremes are on par with a 2003 European heat wave that killed about 70,000 people, and a 2013 heat wave in Australia, when meteorologists added new shades of dark purple to their maps to show unprecedented temperatures.

And the more extreme the temperature records, climate scientists said, the more obvious the fingerprint of global warming will be on the heat wave. But even among climate scientists, the biggest concern was the immediate impacts of the record shattering temperatures.

“I shudder to think what the mortality rate will be from this event,” said Phil Mote, a climate scientist with the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Research shows that early season heat waves like this one are deadlier than those happening later in the year because people haven’t acclimatized yet, he added.

Local weather service offices warned people to cool themselves with a reminder that heat was the leading cause of weather-related fatalities between 1991 and 2020. But experts and officials warned that people in the region, where there are fewer people with air conditioning than without it, are ill-equipped to protect themselves from persistent triple-digit temperatures.
» Read article              

» More about climate

ENERGY STORAGE

Why a seasoned energy executive sees a bright future in long-duration energy storage from ESS
Executive interview with Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS Inc.
By Jennifer Runyon, Energy Storage World (sponsored content)
June 29, 2021

When Eric Dresselhuys got a call from the board of directors at ESS earlier this spring asking him to come on as Chief Executive Officer of the company that provides an Iron Flow Battery (IFB) for long-duration storage, he didn’t hesitate.

“It was a pretty easy yes,” he said in an interview.

Dresselhuys isn’t new to the energy space. In fact, he was creating technology that electric utilities could use to make their grids smarter before the words “smart grid” were well known. In 2002, he founded Silver Spring Networks, which combined IoT with big data for smart grids. In 2013 Silver Spring went public and in 2018 it was acquired by Itron.

Dresselhuys sees great growth for long-duration storage, which he defines as energy storage technology that can take energy, most likely produced by renewable sources like wind and solar, and store it for a very long time, well beyond the understood and accepted maximum of four hours that lithium-ion technology is used for.

“We’re talking about electrifying everything. We want to take the carbon out of not just the power system but the economy. And by the way, we have to do that cost effectively and with no toxicity,” he said.

We won’t be able to achieve those goals without cost-effective, safe long-duration storage, he said.

Indeed, a world powered by upwards of 25-30% wind and solar still needs electricity 24 hours a day. Further, many clean energy advocates point to a scenario in which we overbuild vast amounts of wind and solar power generating facilities — because their cost to build is so low — and then store the power so it can be used later. A good way to store gigawatts of excess energy safely and reliably is through flow batteries like the systems ESS manufactures.
» Read article              

» More about energy storage

MODERNIZING THE GRID

US grid needs overhaul to keep up with renewable revolution, says GE exec, Sen. Heinrich
By Scott Voorhis, Utility Dive
June 22, 2021

As power companies and startups alike roll out new solar and wind projects, the U.S. needs new investment in its electric grid to keep up with the changing sector, said participants in the “Energy Forward: Reinvent the Grid” discussion.

Over the last century, industry and government’s focus when it came to the electric grid was ensuring stability, said Colin Parris, senior vice president and chief technology officer at General Electric’s GE Digital.

But renewable sources like wind and solar are by their very nature “dynamic,” he said, noting the flow depends, to some extent, on the weather:

“The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow,” Parris said.

The challenge is adding renewable sources while maintaining stability. That means building new lines that connect to renewable sources, some of which — like offshore wind farms — may be in remote locations. It also means developing AI capabilities “to forecast problems” and “real-time capabilities to control the flow of electricity,” Parris said.

The transition, Parris said, is akin to going from a one-lane road to a “multilane highway.”

Karen Wayland, CEO of the GridWise Alliance, which consists of major utilities as well as companies including IBM and GE, offered a similar assessment.

“The grid has to be able to accommodate all of that new load — you have to make sure you know where the load needs [are], and you also have to have a much more flexible grid that can respond to varying loads,” she said.

To that end, Wayland, who was an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and a former U.S. Energy Department official, said she hopes to see at least $50 billion to address grid issues in the final infrastructure package.
» Read article              

» More about modernizing the grid

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

As car-centric Cape Cod tries to cut emissions, transportation is a challenge
The Massachusetts region’s unique geography and seasonality — and decades of car-centric development — present a challenge for local leaders trying to reduce climate emissions, more than 55% of which comes from transportation.
By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network
June 28, 2021

As Cape Cod launches its first strategic plan to slash its greenhouse gas output, the need to rein in transportation emissions is emerging as a substantial challenge for the sprawling, car-centric region.

In April, the Cape Cod Commission regional planning authority released a draft climate action plan that finds transportation is responsible for more than 55% of greenhouse gas emissions in the region. That’s significantly higher than the statewide average of 42%. While the report recommends efforts to increase electric vehicle adoption, strengthen public transit, and shape land-use policies to reduce sprawl, the current development patterns and highly seasonal nature of the economy pose significant obstacles.

“It’s obviously a big challenge,” said Steven Tupper, transportation program manager for the commission. “We have a unique seasonality and a unique geography.”

Cape Cod, a 15-town region covering nearly 400 square miles in southeastern Massachusetts, is an iconic tourist area notable for its beaches and as the summer destination for the Kennedy family. Roughly 213,000 people live on the Cape year-round, according to the United States Census Bureau, but that number nearly triples during the summer as vacationers and second-homeowners flock to the region.

The heavy reliance on cars on Cape Cod has its roots in the historical development of the region. Until the late 1800s, Cape residents were largely clustered into small harborside villages that sprung up around maritime industries. The transformation into a tourist destination began around the turn of the century and accelerated from 1950 on. Neighborhoods full of detached homes with spacious yards began filling in space between formerly isolated village centers.

Today, the result is a spread-out population that is dependent on cars to reach doctor’s appointments, shop for groceries, or visit friends.

“There’s going to be, without question, the need for automobiles in this region,” Tupper said.
» Read article              

Altered Microstructure Improves Organic-Based, Solid State Lithium EV Battery
Ethanol Solvent Boosts Battery Energy Density, A Step Toward Better EVs Of The Future
By Nicole Johnson, University of Houston
June 17, 2021

Only 2% of vehicles are electrified to date, but that is projected to reach 30% in 2030. A key toward improving the commercialization of electric vehicles (EVs) is to heighten their gravimetric energy density – measured in watt hours per kilogram – using safer, easily recyclable materials that are abundant. Lithium-metal in anodes are considered the “holy grail” for improving energy density in EV batteries compared to incumbent options like graphite at 240 Wh/kg in the race to reach more competitive energy density at 500 Wh/kg.

Yan Yao, Cullen Professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston, and UH post doctorate Jibo Zhang are taking on this challenge with Rice University colleagues. In a paper published June 17 in Joule, Zhang, Yao and team demonstrate a two-fold improvement in energy density for organic-based, solid state lithium batteries by using a solvent-assisted process to alter the electrode microstructure. Zhaoyang Chen, Fang Hao, Yanliang Liang of UH, Qing Ai, Tanguy Terlier, Hua Guo and Jun Lou of Rice University co-authored the paper.

“We are developing low-cost, earth-abundant, cobalt-free organic-based cathode materials for a solid-state battery that will no longer require scarce transition metals found in mines,” said Yao. “This research is a step forward in increasing EV battery energy density using this more sustainable alternative.” Yao is also Principal Investigator with the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH (TcSUH).

Any battery includes an anode, also known as negative electrode, and a cathode, also known as positive electrode, that are separated in a battery by a porous membrane. Lithium ions flow through an ionic conductor – an electrolyte, which allows for the charging and discharging of electrons that generates electricity for, say, a vehicle.

Electrolytes are usually liquid, but that is not necessary – they can also be solid, a relatively new concept. This novelty, combined with a lithium-metal anode, can prevent short-circuiting, improve energy density and enable faster charging.

Cathodes typically determine the capacity and voltage of a battery and are subsequently the most expensive part of batteries due to usage of scarce materials like cobalt – set to reach a 65,000-ton deficit in 2030. Cobalt-based cathodes are almost exclusively used in solid-state batteries due to their excellent performance; only recently have organic compound-based lithium batteries (OBEM-Li) emerged as a more abundant, cleaner alternative that is more easily recycled.
» Read article              
» Obtain the published paper

» More about clean transportation

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

In Video, Exxon Lobbyist Describes Efforts to Undercut Climate Action
On the tape, made in a Greenpeace sting, he described working with “shadow groups” to fight climate science, and detailed efforts to weaken President Biden’s proposals to burn less oil.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
June 30, 2021

The veteran oil-industry lobbyist was told he was meeting with a recruiter. But the video call, which was secretly recorded, was part of an elaborate sting operation by an individual working for the environmental group Greenpeace UK.

During the call, Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations for Exxon Mobil, described how the oil and gas giant targeted a number of influential United States senators in an effort to weaken climate action in President Biden’s flagship infrastructure plan. That plan now contains few of the ambitious ideas initially proposed by Mr. Biden to cut the burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.

Mr. McCoy also said on the recording that Exxon’s support for a tax on carbon dioxide was “a great talking point” for the oil company, but that he believes the tax will never happen. He also said that the company has in the past aggressively fought climate science through “shadow groups.”

On the video call recorded by Greenpeace, Mr. McCoy defended the company’s efforts to mislead the public on climate change, even as the company’s own scientists were recognizing greenhouse gas emissions as a risk to the planet. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” Mr. McCoy said. “Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true.”

Mr. McCoy didn’t identify the groups. Exxon Mobil has spent millions of dollars funding conservative groups that challenge established climate science. “But there’s nothing illegal about that,” he said. “We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”
» Read article               

Fossil Fuel Companies Are Promoting ‘Lower Carbon,’ ‘Responsibly Sourced’ Oil and Gas
The oil and gas industry is looking to capitalize off an increasingly-popular socially responsible investing wave that emphasizes the environment.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
April 26, 2021

This month, EQT, the nation’s largest natural gas producer, plans to launch a pilot project that will certify it to start selling not just natural gas, but something it calls “responsibly sourced natural gas.”

EQT’s move comes on the heels of a similar announcement from Chesapeake Energy, one of the pioneers of fracking which recently emerged from bankruptcy. Both EQT and Chesapeake will seek certification from outside providers, including a business called Project Canary, which touts its ability to collect data on methane emissions and pollutants from oil and gas wells and offers a certification it calls TrustWell™.

“There is a generation of Millennials around the globe who have written off fossil fuels,” Chris Romer, co-founder of Project Canary, told the oil and gas industry trade publication Rigzone this month. “We need to address the brand problem.”

But it’s difficult to pin down what “responsibly sourced” gas means, in part because of a growing number of competing certification programs that all offer their own definitions. When it comes to Project Canary in particular, the company says its standards are high — and that there’s not enough gas from its most “responsibly sourced” wells to meet demand from buyers.

These latest branding efforts arrive amid a broad ESG investment wave that emphasizes the ways businesses approach environmental, societal, and corporate governance issues. Industry advisors are increasingly offering up new ideas about how oil and gas companies can use the language of ESG to market their fossil fuel as different from the competition’s.
» Read article              

» More about fossil fuels

LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS

The Goldboro LNG plant scheme has collapsed
By Tim Bousquet, The Halifax Examiner
July 2, 2021

“While Pieridae has made tremendous progress in advancing the Goldboro LNG Project, as of June 30, 2021, we have not been able to meet all of the key conditions necessary to make a final investment decision. Following consultation with our Board, we have made the decision to move Goldboro LNG in a new direction.” (Alfred Sorensen, Chief Executive Officer, Pieridae Energy.)

To be clear, Pieridae has not made “tremendous progress” progress towards developing the plant: not one shovelful of dirt has been turned, and so far as I can see, the company hasn’t gotten a penny in actual investment money towards its $14 billion (yes, billion with a B) goal, although it did enter a preposterous $206 million loan scheme; as Joan Baxter reported in April:

Pieridae financed the purchase of Shell’s aging assets at three sour gas fields in Waterton, Jumping Pound, and Caroline, with a loan of $206 million from Third Eye Capital and private placement.

One of Pieridae’s directors, Mark Horrox, is a principal of Third Eye Capital, and a director of one of its portfolio companies, Erikson National Energy, which bought about 14% of Pieridae in the private placement, a $20 million investment that is now worth just a bit more than half that.

While the parties to the loan disclosed an interest rate of 15%, the fine print in the audited statements states that Pieridae has an obligation to Third Eye Capital — namely a fee of $50 million if it does not agree to purchase some “certain petroleum and natural gas properties from Third Eye.”

As the Examiner has reported extensively, Sorensen has been going hat-in-hand to the Canadian government, asking for nearly $1 billion in financing from the Canadian public. Evidently, the federal government said “no dice,” and the entire Goldboro scheme has crumbled.

Dead On Arrival.

What about the “strategic alternatives that could make an LNG Project more compatible with the current environment”? The technical term for this comment is “bullshit.”
» Read article               

Pieridae Evaluating Goldboro LNG Strategic Alternatives
By Pieridae Energy Limited, Yahoo Finance
July 2, 2021

CALGARY, Alberta (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Pieridae Energy Limited (“Pieridae” or the “Company”) (PEA.TO) today released the following statement from Chief Executive Officer Alfred Sorensen with respect to a future path for the Company’s Goldboro LNG Project:

‘While Pieridae has made tremendous progress in advancing the Goldboro LNG Project, as of June 30, 2021, we have not been able to meet all of the key conditions necessary to make a final investment decision. Following consultation with our Board, we have made the decision to move Goldboro LNG in a new direction. The Project’s fundamentals remain strong: robust LNG demand from Europe and high global LNG prices, Indigenous participation, a net-zero emissions pathway forward, and support from jurisdictions across Canada. This speaks to our ongoing efforts to find a partner to take advantage of these opportunities.

That said, it became apparent that cost pressures and time constraints due to COVID-19 have made building the current version of the LNG Project impractical.

We will now assess options and analyze strategic alternatives that could make an LNG Project more compatible with the current environment. [emphasis added – see story above…] In addition, the Company will continue its work to further optimize the operation and development of our extensive Foothills resources and midstream assets, including our carbon capture and sequestration and blue power development.’
» Read statement              

» More about liquefied natural gas

PLASTICS, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Here’s What Happens When You Eat From Plastic Containers
By Darlena Cunha, EcoWatch
July 1, 2021

Drinking water is supposed to be good for you, but what happens when you diligently carry that disposable water bottle around all day, to remind yourself to take a sip? With that sip, you take in an undue amount of plastic, according to recent research. And that’s not all.

Takeout cartons, shelf-stable wrapping, those water bottles, even canned goods can be the culprit. And while no one likes the idea of consuming plastic, most of us still shrug and throw that container in the microwave.

4 Reasons Not to Eat or Drink From Plastic Containers:

1. The plastic transfers from the containers to your food.

Humans ingest at least 74,000 particles of microplastic a year, according to research in The Journal of Food Science. A lot of this comes from our takeout containers. In fact, we could be ingesting more than 200 particles a week, just from our plastic food storage units.

2. Microplastics are bad for you.

We’re ingesting plastics, so what? They don’t just make their way through our system and out of our bodies. They can stay with us.

Scientists have found that microplastics can cross the hardy membrane that protects the brain from foreign bodies in the bloodstream, at least in animals. They are carcinogenic to humans.

3. There is no such thing as safe plastic.

It’s not just the phthalates. Plastics contain multitudes of chemicals, including bisphenols A, S and F (BPAs, BPSs, and BPFs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Chemicals like these have been linked to cancers, weakened immune systems, organ problems, and developmental delays in kids. Bisphenols specifically (particularly BPA) have been identified as endocrine-disrupting and linked to obesity. Research also shows that BPAs make it more difficult for women to conceive and increase the risk of miscarriages.

4. These containers are bad for the environment.

We are literally filling our world with plastic garbage. Since plastic came into common use in the 1950s, we have produced more than 8 billion tons of it. Only 10 percent of that, at most, has been recycled.
» Read article              

» More about plastics, health & environment

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Subscribe

---

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

Weekly News Check-In 5/14/21

Welcome back.

Several narratives converged this week, making this collection of articles feel tightly related. The main topic is climate change. A new UN report stresses the urgency of immediately curbing methane emissions, especially from the extraction, transport, and use of natural gas. It amounts to a clear argument against the “bridge fuel” concept, and recommends a halt to all new gas infrastructure projects.

That is exactly what appears to be playing out in Peabody, MA, where strong local objections to the municipal utility’s plans for a new gas-powered peaking power plant prompted a pause in the project’s development so that carbon-free alternatives can be considered.

Elsewhere, efforts continue to scuttle ongoing pipeline projects, including calls to defund Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline in northern Minnesota.

This urgency to “kick gas” and other fuels doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. Local economies and lots of jobs depend on pipelines, and shutting them down often affects interstate and international agreements. While we remain dependent on the fossil fuels that pipelines carry, their vulnerabilities to cyber attack pose ongoing risks of major economic disruption. The abrupt shutdown of Colonial Pipeline’s east coast fuel distribution network drove that point home this week.

Meanwhile, the future of clean energy came a step closer this week with Federal approval for the Vineyard Wind project. This marks the start of a massive buildup of U.S. offshore wind power. And because the green economy is just as competitive as the dirty one, Massachusetts already finds its lead position challenged as other states vie to provide materials, services, and labor for that emerging market.

Another week, and another report on a technology breakthrough in the race for solid state EV batteries. Researchers at Harvard report that their innovative, multi-layered lithium-metal battery cell solves a key stability problem that will allow the batteries to cycle many thousands of times without degradation.

Wrapping up, we offer a straightforward description of fracking, the fossil fuel extraction technique responsible for a surge in natural gas production over the past decade, along with unprecedented gas infrastructure build-out and disastrous releases of methane from every step in the process.

   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 (Note: taking two weeks off – back with you on June 4th)

PEAKING POWER PLANTS

Peabody Power Plant Opponents Cheer Pause In Project
The Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company says it will delay the project for 30 days to reassess and explore alternatives.
By Scott Souza, Patch
May 11, 2021

PEABODY, MA — Elected officials and climate advocacy groups cheered the “pause” announced Tuesday in the proposed gas power plant project in Peabody near the Danvers line.

The Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, which had pushed the plant to satisfy surge capacity requirements for Peabody Municipal Light and the region, said Tuesday morning its board of directors authorized the 30-day “pause” during a special meeting held on Monday.

It said the delay was to address concerns brought before the board, while also “considering available options to fulfill its participants’ required capacity obligations under ISO New England rules.”

The halt comes amid recent outcry from North Shore residents and public officials about safety, quality of life and environmental concerns surrounding the project that was first proposed five years ago.

State Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers), who represents Danvers and West Peabody, wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities asking for a review of the proposed plant based on the “environmental burden” the region already bears, including Route 128, a propane company, and a pipeline.

The power company had said the new plant was needed to provide emergency surge capacity in the case of a catastrophic event — such as what happened this winter in Texas when renewal forms of energy such as wind and solar were not considered reliable enough to meet demand follow a large snowstorm and ensuing freeze.

But on Tuesday MMWEC CEO Ron DeCurzio said the board of directors determined it is worth reexamining whether the needs can be met without an additional fossil fuel plant.
» Read article       

Doctors cite health risks from new plant
87 physicians against natural power project in Peabody
By Erin Nolan, The Salem News
May 11, 2021

PEABODY — Regina LaRoque, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the past year has taught her an incredible amount about the overlap between respiratory diseases and air pollution.

“Being exposed to air pollution actually puts you at increased risk for COVID, and we need to be speaking out about these associations so people understand that polluting our air is dangerous for people’s health,” LaRoque, who is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said.

This is one of the many reasons she was one of 87 Massachusetts physicians to sign a letter opposing the construction of a natural gas-powered peaking power plant in Peabody. The doctors cite both health and environmental concerns.

The letter states the proposed plant is “a project that expands natural gas and oil infrastructure, threatens the health of the surrounding community, and is in direct conflict with Massachusetts’ greenhouse gas reduction mandate.” In addition, the letter states the plant “is not needed as the demand for natural gas is declining and cleaner energy sources are becoming available.”

The letter, written primarily by LaRoque, is addressed to Charles Orphanos, the general manager of the Peabody Municipal Light Plant and a director at Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company. The proposed facility would be built on city property at PMLP’s Waters River substation, behind the Pulaski Street industrial park, and operated by MMWEC.

PMLP and MMWEC say the plant, which would help provide energy capacity for customers at peak demand times, is needed and has to be a reliable source of energy that’s not dependent upon weather patterns.
» Read article       

» More about peaker plants

PIPELINES

Biden’s Pipeline Dilemma: How to Build a Clean Energy Future While Shoring Up the Present’s Carbon-Intensive Infrastructure
After Colonial’s cyber-attack and shutdown, he can’t ignore pipelines’ problems, but environmental groups want more aggressive action.
By Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News
May 14, 2021

Even as President Joe Biden worked this week to shore up support for his push to invest $2 trillion in a new energy future for the United States, his administration found itself bombarded with the harsh realities of the nation’s oil-dependent present.

More than a half-dozen federal agencies scrambled to contain fallout from a cyber-attack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline, the nation’s largest petroleum products conduit, just as the start of the nation’s peak driving season approaches. Panic buying triggered gasoline shortages and price spikes all along the East Coast before Colonial restarted the line Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a legal and international conflict escalated in Michigan over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s ordered shutdown of Enbridge’s Line 5, a 68-year-old oil pipeline on the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac that transports oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands. Another Enbridge tar sands pipeline project in Minnesota, Line 3, has become a flash point for environmental and Indigenous groups that want the Biden administration to intervene to stop construction. And a court ruling could come any day opening a new chapter in the six-year battle over the Dakota Access pipeline. Even though President Donald Trump pushed that project to completion, a court-ordered expanded environmental review is now in the hands of the Biden administration.

Throughout his campaign, Biden embraced the most ambitious climate platform ever advanced by a U.S. presidential nominee, without taking a stand on oil and gas pipeline investment. The events of the past week make clear that he won’t be able to avoid the issue, even though it threatens to divide his political coalition. Labor stayed with Biden even though he pledged to block the Keystone XL pipeline, a project they supported, but which had become emblematic of climate activists’ drive against fossil fuel expansion. But after fulfilling his Keystone pledge on his first day in office, Biden stayed away from pipelines, focusing instead on a message with appeal to both unions and environmentalists: that a transition to clean energy would be an engine of blue-collar job creation.

“They’re not focused on the supply side, as much as they are on the demand side,” said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future. “So the policies that they have been outlining have to do with, for example, deploying more electric vehicles, which would reduce demand for oil. And so by reducing demand for oil, you’re reducing the need to build additional pipelines and operate existing ones.”

However, U.S. oil consumption is nearly back to its pre-pandemic level of 20 million barrels per day, most of it flowing at some point through the nation’s more than 190,000 miles of petroleum pipeline. More than half of that network was built before 1970. Even as Biden seeks to build an entirely new energy infrastructure, some of those pipelines are going to wear out or, as in Colonial’s case, face unexpected disruption.

“Regardless of your position on climate change,” said Raimi, “shutting down certain pipelines and doing it without planning can cause a lot of problems.”
» Read article       

Enbridge continues Straits pipeline operation, defying Gov. Whitmer’s deadline
By Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press
May 12, 2021

In defiance of an order by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to cease operations by Wednesday, Canadian oil transport giant Enbridge continued to flow 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids through Line 5, its controversial, 68-year-old twin pipelines on the Straits of Mackinac lake bottom.

Whitmer on Tuesday, in a letter to Vern Yu, Enbridge’s executive vice president for liquids pipelines, said continued operation of the line after Wednesday “constitutes an intentional trespass” and that the company would do so “at its own risk.”

“If the state prevails in the underlying litigation, Enbridge will face the prospect of having to disgorge to the state all profits it derives from its wrongful use of the easement lands following that date,” she said.

Whitmer in November moved to revoke Enbridge’s 1953 easement to situate the pipelines on state-controlled bottomlands near where Great Lakes Michigan and Huron connect, citing repeated violations of the easement’s terms on pipeline safety measures and an unreasonable risk to the Great Lakes from the aging pipes’ continued operation. The governor gave Enbridge 180 days to arrange for shutdown of the pipes, a deadline that ends Wednesday.
» Read article       

» More about pipelines

CYBERSECURITY

‘Jugular’ of the U.S. fuel pipeline system shuts down after cyberattack
The infiltration of a major fuel pipeline is “the most significant, successful attack on energy infrastructure we know of.”
By GLORIA GONZALEZ, BEN LEFEBVRE and ERIC GELLER, Politico
May 8, 2021

The main fuel supply line to the U.S. East Coast has shut down indefinitely after the pipeline’s operator suffered what is believed to be the largest successful cyberattack on oil infrastructure in the country’s history — presenting a danger of spiking gasoline prices and a fresh challenge to President Joe Biden’s pledges to secure the nation against threats.

The attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which runs 5,500 miles and provides nearly half the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel used on the East Coast, most immediately affected some of the company’s business-side computer systems — not the systems that directly run the pipelines themselves. The Georgia-based company said it shut down the pipelines as a precaution and has engaged a third-party cybersecurity firm to investigate the incident, which it confirmed was a ransomware attack. It first disclosed the shutdown late Friday and said it has also contacted law enforcement and other federal agencies.

Biden received a briefing on the incident Saturday morning, a White House spokesperson said, adding that the government “is working actively to assess the implications of this incident, avoid disruption to supply, and help the company restore pipeline operations as quickly as possible.”

A shutdown that lasts more than a few days could send gasoline prices in the Southeastern U.S. spiking above $3 a gallon, market analysts said. That could deepen the political risks the incident poses for Biden, stealing momentum from his efforts to center the nation’s energy agenda on promoting cleaner sources and confronting climate change.

That means much depends on how quickly Colonial can restart the pipelines — which depends in large part on whether the company’s cyber consultants can determine that it’s safe to do so.

“They’ll learn that in the first 24 to 72 hours,” said Rob Lee, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Dragos and an expert in the risks to industrial computer systems. He added that if the attack was limited to Colonial’s business computer systems, “I think it’s going to be relatively short-lived.”
» Read article       

» More about cybersecurity

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

Climate and Indigenous Protesters Across 4 Continents Pressure Banks to #DefundLine3
“Those who financially back Enbridge are directly implicated in its crimes,” says a Red Lake Anishinaabe citizen and organizer. “To put it bluntly, blood is on their hands.”
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
May 7, 2021

From fake oil spills in Washington, D.C. and New York City to a “people mural” in Seattle spelling out “Defund Line 3,” climate and Indigenous protesters in 50 U.S. cities and across seven other countries spanning four continents took to the streets on Friday for a day of action pushing 20 banks to ditch the controversial tar sands pipeline.

“Against the backdrop of rising climate chaos, the continued bankrolling of Line 3 and similar oil and gas infrastructure worldwide is fueling gross and systemic violations of human rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights at a global scale,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law.

“It’s time for the big banks to recognize that they can and will be held accountable for their complicity in those violations,” Muffett added. His organization is part of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, over 150 groups that urge asset managers, banks, and insurers to stop funding climate destruction.

The global protests on Friday follow on-the-ground actions that have, at times, successfully halted construction of Canada-based Enbridge’s Line 3 project, which is intended to replace an old pipeline that runs from Alberta, through North Dakota and Minnesota, to Wisconsin. The new pipeline’s route crosses Anishinaabe treaty lands.

Simone Senogles, a Red Lake Anishinaabe citizen and organizer for Indigenous Environmental Network, declared that “no amount of greenwashing and PR can absolve these banks from violating Indigenous rights and the desolation of Mother Earth.”
» Read article       

» More about protests and actions

GREENING THE ECONOMY

Massachusetts sees more competition to bulk up offshore wind infrastructure
The state got an early jump on offshore wind development, but recent onshore infrastructure investments in New York, New Jersey and Virginia threaten to cut into the state’s claim as the leading hub for the industry.
By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network
May 6, 2021

Massachusetts faces growing competition from other states trying to take advantage of the anticipated surge in offshore wind development by building onshore infrastructure to support the burgeoning industry.

Vineyard Wind, which would be the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind development, is expected to receive a major federal approval within weeks, kicking off the growth of a long-simmering industry in the region. Anticipating this project in the waters off of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, the state has made major investments in developing facilities to support the industry.

Recently, however, other states across the Northeast have announced their own ambitious plans for port infrastructure and economic development, and some in Massachusetts are feeling the pressure to confirm the state’s position as a leader.

“The opinion is relatively widely held that we could’ve been doing more in the last few years to maintain and increase our lead,” said Eric Hines, director of the Tufts University offshore wind engineering graduate program. “There’s a collective sense of urgency right now to really get serious about investing for the future on the land side.”

Massachusetts has been at the forefront of the offshore wind conversation since 2001, when businessman Jim Gordon proposed Cape Wind, a 468-megawatt wind farm that would have been located in the waters south of Cape Cod. Facing harsh opposition from powerful opponents, that plan was eventually defeated.

The state’s current push for offshore wind began in 2016 with the passage of a law calling for the procurement of up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind energy. In 2018, Vineyard Wind was awarded the contract for the first 800 megawatts; the following year Mayflower Wind was selected to provide the next 800 megawatts. Since then, Massachusetts has upped its total planned procurements to a total of 5,600 megawatts.

Along the way, public and private parties in the state have been developing support facilities on land. In the city of New Bedford, on the south coast, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center developed a $113 million marine commerce terminal designed specifically for use by the offshore wind industry. In Charlestown, a waterfront neighborhood of Boston, the clean energy center built a $40 million facility for testing turbine blades, the largest such facility in North America.

At the same time, other states joined in the pursuit of offshore wind. Along the East Coast, states have committed to procuring some 29,000 megawatts of offshore wind, according to the American Clean Power Association.

These states have also started planning port facilities and other onshore infrastructure to support the industry. New Jersey, which has aiming for 7,500 megawatts by 2035, is planning an offshore wind port for 200 acres along the Delaware River in the southern part of the state with an expected cost of $300 million to $500 million. The state has also pledged another $250 million to build a manufacturing facility for turbine components.
» Read article       

E-Commerce Mega-Warehouses, a Smog Source, Face New Pollution Rule
A plan aimed at the nation’s largest cluster of warehouses is designed to spur electrification of pollution-spewing diesel trucks and could set a template for restrictions elsewhere.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
May 8, 2021

Southern California is home to the nation’s largest concentration of warehouses — a hub of thousands of mammoth structures, served by belching diesel trucks, that help feed America’s booming appetite for online shopping and also contribute to the worst air pollution in the country.

On Friday, hundreds of residents flocked to an online hearing to support a landmark rule that would force the warehouses to clean up their emissions. The new rule, affecting about 3,000 of the largest warehouses in the area used by Amazon and other retailers, requires operators to slash emissions from the trucks that serve the site or take other measures to improve air quality.

“I’m just tired of living with warehouses, trucks — driving down the Sierra, having trucks pull up, having to put down your windows,” said Daniel Reyes, a resident and member of a group that has long sought changes like these. “I’m tired of seeing warehouses next to schools. I’m over it, man.”

The rule, which was adopted late Friday by the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s 13-member board in a 9-4 vote, sets a precedent for regulating the exploding e-commerce industry, which has grown even more during the pandemic and has led to a spectacular increase in warehouse construction.

Vast warehouse hubs have sprung up across the country, including in the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, as have sprawling installations in New Jersey, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago.

The changes could also help spur a more rapid electrification of freight tucks, a significant step toward reducing emissions from transportation, the country’s biggest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The emissions are a major contributor to smog-causing nitrogen oxides and diesel particulate matter pollution, which are linked to health problems including respiratory conditions.
» Read article       

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

Scrap new gas infrastructure, says UN report
Methane is a huge culprit in the climate crisis
By Justine Calma, The Verge
May 6, 2021

A major new United Nations report makes it extremely clear that relying on natural gas won’t help the world avoid climate catastrophe. Once seen as a “bridge fuel” that could provide a less-polluting alternative to coal and other fossil fuels, growing evidence shows that gas is a bigger culprit in the climate crisis than previously thought.

Though it’s been attractively branded as “natural” gas, the fuel is primarily plain old methane. When burned, the fuel does produce less carbon dioxide than coal and oil. The problem is that extracting so-called natural gas and bringing it to homes and buildings leads to a lot of methane leaks. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times more power to warm the planet than carbon dioxide — especially in the first couple decades after it’s unleashed on the atmosphere. In fact, methane has been responsible for nearly a third of global warming that’s already taken place.

Human-caused methane emissions will need to drop by 45 percent this decade in order to avoid worst-case climate scenarios and meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations report warns. Expanding natural gas consumption and infrastructure would jeopardize those targets.

“One thing the report calls for very strongly is not building any more of this fossil fuel infrastructure,” Drew Shindell, lead author of the report and a professor at Duke University, said in a press conference. “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.”

Fortunately, achieving those methane cuts is affordable and possible with existing technology, according to the report. For starters, fossil fuel industries need to do a better job of preventing leaks. But that alone won’t be enough. In the long run, keeping the current fossil fuel infrastructure would derail efforts to mitigate the climate crisis. And while emerging technologies that capture carbon dioxide from polluting power plants might do some good, “there are multiple risks that this technology will not work, will be too expensive, and/or will have so many side effects that society will not want to use it,” according to the report. Bottom line: the report calls for a sweeping transition to renewable energy, which it says would “remove the bulk of methane emissions” in the long term.
» Read article       
» Read the UN report

There’s a New Definition of ‘Normal’ for Weather
By Henry Fountain and Jason Kao, New York Times
May 12, 2021

The United States is getting redder.

No, not that kind of red. (We’ll leave that to the political pundits.) We’re talking about the thermometer kind.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week issued its latest “climate normals”: baseline data of temperature, rain, snow and other weather variables collected over three decades at thousands of locations across the country.

The normals — which are available on annual, seasonal, monthly, daily and even hourly timescales — are invaluable to farmers, energy companies and other businesses, water managers, transportation schedulers and any one who plans their activities in coming weeks or months based on what is likely, weather-wise. They come in handy, too, if you want to know how to pack for Oshkosh, say, in October, or if you’re past the last frost date and wondering if it’s safe to put out some tomato seedlings.

“What we’re trying to do with climate normals is put today’s weather in the proper context,” said Michael Palecki, who manages the project at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Because the normals have been produced since 1930, they also say a lot about the weather over a much longer term. That is, they show how the climate has changed in the United States, as it has across the world, as a result of emissions of heat-trapping gases over more than a century.

“We’re really seeing the fingerprints of climate change in the new normals,” Dr. Palecki said. “We’re not trying to hide that.”

Not that they could. The maps showing the new temperature normals every 10 years, compared with the 20th century average, get increasingly redder.

“There’s a huge difference in temperature over time, as we go from cooler climates in the early part of the 20th century to ubiquitously warmer climates,” he said.

The change is especially drastic between the new normals and the previous ones, from 2010. “Almost every place in the U.S. has warmed,” Dr. Palecki said.

The temperature results are in keeping with what we’ve long known: that the world has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1900, and that the pace of warming has accelerated in recent decades.
» Read article       

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

Biden administration approves Vineyard Wind project, first major offshore wind farm in U.S.
By Alex Kuffner, The Providence Journal
May 11, 2021

The Biden administration has given the green light to Vineyard Wind I, a project of 62 turbines to be built in waters off Rhode Island and Massachusetts that would be the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in America.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was on the call with reporters Tuesday to announce final approval of the long-awaited $2.8-billion project that would be built between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard, produce enough power for about 400,000 homes and go into operation in 2023. As Rhode Island governor, Raimondo oversaw construction of a five-turbine demonstration project off Block Island that in 2016 became the first offshore wind farm in the nation.

“In the process of doing that, I experienced first-hand how to make these projects a reality,” she said. “As governor, I saw that this is complicated to do it right.”

The 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm, by proving the viability of an energy resource that had to that point been tapped only in Europe, was expected to usher in a wave of development on this side of the Atlantic. But in the nearly five years since it started sending power to electric consumers in Rhode Island, the offshore wind industry has stuttered forward in fits and starts.

While a fiercely contested auction in 2018 that raised an astounding $405 million merely for leasing rights off southern New England signaled a newfound confidence in the future of offshore wind, the delays experienced by Vineyard Wind in the face of opposition by commercial fishermen and under a less-than-friendly Trump administration were a sobering reminder that political support would be critical for anything to move forward.

The winds shifted with the election of Joe Biden last November and his adoption of a sweeping climate agenda that has prioritized the development of alternatives to fossil fuel-fired sources of power generation.

In March, the Biden administration announced an aggressive plan to boost offshore wind, setting a goal of installing enough turbines to generate 30,000 megawatts of energy by 2030. Approval of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project, a joint venture of Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, is the strongest sign yet of the renewed federal commitment.
» Read article       

‘Universal’ faith in hydrogen could lock world into fossil fuel reliance: German study
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research concludes electrification should lead with H2 reserved for decarbonising air travel and heavy-emitting industries
By Darius Snieckus , Recharge News
May 6, 2021

Hydrogen should be reserved for focused use in decarbonising air travel and the world’s heavy-emitting industries or it could lock the world into longer-term fossil fuel reliance and drive up greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to a new German study.

Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) concluded that hydrogen should only be used in sectors that “cannot be electrified” as production of the carrier is still “too inefficient, costly and [its] availability too uncertain, to broadly replace fossil fuels” in running cars or heating homes.

“For most sectors, directly using electricity for instance in battery electric cars or heat pumps makes more economic sense. Universally relying on hydrogen-based fuels instead and keeping combustion technologies threatens to lock in a further fossil fuel dependency and GHGs,” said PIK’s Falko Euckerdt, who led the study.

“Hydrogen-based fuels can be a great clean energy carrier – yet great are also their costs and associated risks. Fuels based on hydrogen as a universal climate solution might be a bit of false promise. While they’re wonderfully versatile, it should not be expected that they broadly replace fossil fuels.”

Hydrogen-based fuels will “likely be scarce and not competitive for at least another decade”, said Euckerdt.

“Betting on their wide-ranging use would likely increase fossil fuel dependency: if we cling to combustion technologies and hope to feed them with hydrogen-based fuels…then we [might] end up further burning oil and gas and emit GHGs. This could endanger short- and long-term climate targets.”
» Read article       

How New York Could Build Publicly Owned Electricity Without Taking Over Dirty Plants
A candidate for New York City comptroller has a novel idea for a municipally owned solar utility in a city with little space for giant panel farms.
By Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffpost
May 5, 2021

As rising utility rates squeeze working-class New Yorkers and power plant owners seek to swap oil for other fossil fuels, calls have mounted in the nation’s largest city to remove the profit motive altogether and seize the means of electricity production.

But a government takeover of the city’s utility infrastructure would be no simple feat ― steep costs, lengthy legal battles, and that’s before you get to the challenge of replacing fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives. Blackouts, electrical accidents and pollution would become a political liability for anyone in power.

But Brad Lander, the progressive Brooklyn city councilman now running for comptroller, thinks he’s found a way to skip past that and start generating clean, publicly owned electricity almost immediately.

Lander envisions spending $500 million over the next eight years to install 25,000 solar panels on rooftops citywide. The city would own and operate the panels through a municipally run utility that, given how much electricity it would generate, could negotiate better rates with Consolidated Edison, the private utility giant that controls the city’s transmission lines.

The new city-owned entity would pay rent to landlords and homeowners in exchange for rooftop space and take on all the installation costs, making it an easy sell.

“It seems so obvious, yet no one in the U.S. that I can find at any scale is doing this,” Lander said. “It seems so straightforward, given, on the one hand, an appetite for public power and, on the other, the clarity that we need to do a giant expansion of rooftop solar.”
» Read article       

» More about clean energy

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

Battery breakthrough for electric cars
Harvard researchers design long-lasting, stable, solid-state lithium battery to fix 40-year problem
By Leah Burrows, SEAS Communications, in The Harvard Gazette
May 12, 2021

Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the electric vehicle market, but today’s lithium-ion batteries fall short of what’s needed — they’re too heavy, too expensive and take too long to charge.

For decades, researchers have tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, which hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.

“A lithium-metal battery is considered the holy grail for battery chemistry because of its high capacity and energy density,” said Xin Li, associate professor of materials science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). “But the stability of these batteries has always been poor.”

Now, Li and his team have designed a stable, lithium-metal, solid-state battery that can be charged and discharged at least 10,000 times — far more cycles than have been previously demonstrated — at a high current density. The researchers paired the new design with a commercial high energy density cathode material.

The research is published in Nature.

The big challenge with lithium-metal batteries has always been chemistry. Lithium batteries move lithium ions from the cathode to the anode during charging. When the anode is made of lithium metal, needle-like structures called dendrites form on the surface. These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the battery to short or even catch fire.

To overcome this challenge, Li and his team designed a multilayer battery that sandwiches different materials of varying stabilities between the anode and cathode. This multilayer, multimaterial battery prevents the penetration of lithium dendrites not by stopping them altogether but rather by controlling and containing them.
» Read article       
» Obtain the research paper

» More about clean transportation

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

Fracking 101: What You Should Know
By EcoWatch
May. 11, 2021

What is fracking?

Fracking is a process of blasting water, chemicals and frac sand deep into the earth to break up sedimentary rock and access natural gas and crude oil deposits. The fracking industry, which has sought to promote the practice as safe and controlled, has preferred the term “hydraulic fracturing.”

Fracking emerged as an unconventional, “relatively new” and extremely popular technique only about 20 years ago in the U.S., after advances in technology gave it an unprecedented ability to identify and extract massive amounts of resources efficiently.

Fracking is one of the most important environmental issues today, and it’s a prime example of how a new technology that offers immediate economic and political benefits can outpace (often less obvious) environmental and health concerns.

Why is fracking so controversial?

Modern fracking emerged so quickly, faster than its impacts were understood. Just as importantly, once scientists, health experts and the public started to object with evidence of harm it was causing, business and government succeeded in perpetuating a message of uncertainty, that more research was necessary, further enabling the “full speed ahead” fracking juggernaut.
» Read article       

» More about fossil fuels

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Subscribe

---

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

Weekly News Check-In 5/7/21

Welcome back.

Out here in the Berkshires, we’re working to raise awareness of health and emissions problems associated with fossil fueled peaking power plants. We’re focused on replacing our existing peakers with a combination of battery storage, renewable energy, and energy efficiency measures. Meanwhile, our friends on Boston’s north shore are mounting a similar effort to avoid construction of a new gas plant in Peabody. Plans for that progressed quietly for six years, and largely flew under the radar until very recently.

The struggle to retire/replace/avoid natural gas peakers provides an excellent segue into the murky world of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Every transaction requires a massive amount of computation, and huge banks of computers are humming away right now to handle that traffic. Annual energy consumption to support cryptocurrencies surpasses that of the entire country of Sweden – and that will only rise as the value and utilization of these currencies increases. Devoting massive amounts of electric energy (no matter how it’s generated) to supporting electronic currencies runs counter to climate mitigation efforts. New York state, host to a growing number of cryptocurrency computing centers, is considering placing a 3-year moratorium on “crypto mining” while it studies whether it can support these currencies while still meeting its emissions targets.

We have an update on state-level efforts to criminalize protests, and also a good article explaining the history, current status, and potential future of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Recall that courageous and sustained resistance at Standing Rock in 2016-17, largely by indigenous people, raised awareness and rallied popular opposition to this and other pipelines. Republican-dominated state legislatures (backed by the fossil fuel industry) responded with a growing arsenal of draconian laws aimed at raising the stakes for people and organizations who engage in civil action – in the form of steep fines and long prison sentences.

Like it or not, greening the economy is going to require a lot of mining. Projected demand for minerals like lithium, silicon, copper, and aluminum outpace our rate of acquisition. Meanwhile, we’re learning that some of our schemes to benefit the climate are under-performing. Forest carbon offsets involve tricky accounting, and a new California study exposes some of the pitfalls. Lesson: there’s no substitute for actually not burning stuff.

EV enthusiasts are impatiently awaiting the arrival of solid state batteries, and expect them to seriously juice the potential for clean transportation. This article explains the technology, why it’s causing so much buzz, and why you can’t have it for a while.

Notes from the fossil fuel industry include Joe Nolan’s promotion to CEO of Eversource, New England’s largest utility. Congratulations, Mr. Nolan. We’re encouraged that you spent 25 years expanding Eversource’s renewable energy portfolio – which sounds better if we ignore the fact that the utility scored public relations points off that program while it worked even harder to expand sales of natural gas. And we open this section with an article exposing Eversource’s leadership in an industry effort fight electrification and lock in natural gas consumption for years to come.

We close with a strange, developing biomass story from the western Massachusetts town of Ashfield. Seems like California-based Clean Energy Technologies (CETY) plans to build a high temperature ablative fast pyrolysis reactor in town as a first step to other, similar-but-larger facilities elsewhere in the region. A press release indicated town support, which surprised town officials who knew nothing about the plans….

  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

Letter: Keep clean air a priority as Pittsfield ‘peaker plant’ is up for permit
By Susan Purser, Becket, in The Berkshire Eagle
May 4, 2021

To the editor: Currently, we have a chance to improve the air quality in Pittsfield especially on very hot or cold days.

Pittsfield Generating, a “peaker plant” on Merrill Road, provides electricity during periods of very high power demand. Unfortunately, this plant is an old facility and is quite polluting to the surrounding neighborhoods of Morningside and Allendale when it runs a few times a year.

The Pittsfield Generating is up for renewal of its air quality permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection in the next few months. This is an excellent opportunity to bring this plant into the 21st century with a combination of solar, battery storage and conservation, or, if needed, to be shut down. An upgrade to the plant not only provides for cleaner air but continues the flow of revenue from the plant to the city of Pittsfield.

There will be a DEP public hearing regarding the permit soon. Residents of Pittsfield are strongly encouraged to attend or submit comments.

Further information will be available at tinyurl.com/PeakerPermit. In addition, please sign the peaker petition at tinyurl.com/PeakerPetition.

We all deserve cleaner air to breathe. Let’s make that happen.
» Read letter        

North Shore Officials, Peabody Light Spar Over Proposed Gas Plant
Officials cite resident safety and environmental concerns, while Peabody Light said the plant is needed to meet surge capacity requirements.
By Scott Souza, Patch
May 6, 2021

PEABODY, MA —Growing environmental and quality-of-life concerns surrounding a proposed gas power plant in Peabody are in conflict with the Peabody Municipal Light Plant’s insistence that the plant is necessary to meet surge capacity requirements.

The long-proposed plant moved forward in relative obscurity until recent months when advocacy groups began to publicize the project and both residents and elected officials started questioning whether the congested city is right for the plant they say is in conflict with the state’s new climate law.

In a recent letter to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, State Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) said the Waters River substation location near the Peabody and Danvers line already encompasses several “environmental burdens,” including Route 128, a propane company, a pipeline.

“The plan before you is for a gas turbine that can rev up to full capacity in 10 minutes, a new 200,000(-gallon) oil tank, a smokestack, an ammonia storage (container), among several components,” she wrote. “All of these bring to mind legitimate concerns about the impact on our environment and our health.”

She also questioned whether renewal energies have been [exhaustively considered] as an alternative to the new plant and why there has been so little public input allowed in the five years of the proposal’s development.
» Read letter        

Peabody power plant plans caught city off-guard
By Erin Nolan, The Salem News
May 4, 2021

PEABODY — About three weeks ago, Councilor-at-Large Jon Turco received a notice about a public hearing related to the building of a new gas-powered plant in the city. He thought it was a new project.

“I read through it, and truthfully I thought, ‘this must be in the beginning phases of a project, so let me learn about this,’” he said about the three-page document informing him of an upcoming Department of Public Utilities meeting. “Then through that meeting, I learned this was taking place since 2017 and had been voted on by our Light Plant. Yet there had been no correspondence from the Light Plant to the council, no correspondence from the state to the council, even though I believe this a project which will have an impact on Ward 3 in Peabody.”

Turco isn’t alone. Other local and state elected officials said they weren’t aware of the years-old plans to build a 60-megawatt power plant at Peabody Municipal Light Plant’s Waters River substation, behind the Pulaski Street industrial park. But both the Light Plant and the organization which would operate the plant said there were no attempts to keep the project secret from public officials or Peabody residents.

The plans to build the plant, which would be owned and operated by Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, were unanimously approved by the light commission in 2017.

“There are 11 members of the City Council and all or all but a few were completely caught off guard,” Turco said. “That is a problem, because we were elected to represent these people.”
» Read article               

» More about peaker plants

CRYPTOCURRENCY

As bitcoin mining hooks into Upstate NY power plants, some wonder if it’s just more hot air
By Glenn Coin, Syracuse.com
May 5, 2021

Syracuse, N.Y. – By next year, owners of a gas-fired power plant on Seneca Lake hope to be producing enough electricity to power 85,000 homes.

But much of that electricity won’t turn on lights in living rooms. It will instead stay on site at the plant in Dresden, powering up to 27,000 computers that will run 24 hours a day to snag increasingly rare virtual currency called bitcoin.

The plant worries climate change activists, who say the extraordinary amount of energy consumed in what’s known as bitcoin mining will make it hard for New York to meet its aggressive climate change goals.

“We’re talking about burning more fossil fuels to make fake money in the middle of climate change, which we view as insane,” said Yvonne Taylor, vice president of the environmental group Seneca Lake Guardian.

The Greenidge Generation Holdings plant is part of a growing trend. Lucrative cryptocurrency centers gobble up huge amounts of energy, so much so that they take over power plants or old factories to use for themselves. Several have already set up shop in Upstate New York, where energy is cheap and cold weather reduces the cost of cooling thousands of computer processors, each of which emits as much heat as a 1,400-watt hair dryer.

New York will have to grapple with the surging demand of bitcoin mining if the state expects to slash greenhouse gas emissions, said Tristan Brown, a professor of sustainable resources management at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

“Bitcoin does raise some interesting questions,” Brown said. “Is this something we necessarily want to have contributing to our (electrical) demand? What type of value does it bring the state economically? That’s ultimately what state policy will have to determine.”

While those questions are being debated, state legislators in both houses have introduced bills to impose a three-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining operations.

“This is literally the biggest environmental issue we’re facing,” said Assemblywoman Anna Kelles, D-Ithaca, who wrote and is sponsoring the moratorium bill in the Assembly. “If this does take over a lot of power plants, the greenhouse impact alone will counter all the work we’ve been doing. We need to understand it better.”
» Read article               

Crypto mining ban considered in New York following environmental concerns
Cryptocurrency mining could be suspended in the state of New York
By Joel Khalili, TechRadar
May 6, 2021

The practice of cryptocurrency mining could be banned on environmental grounds in the state of New York after a new bill was placed under review.

Tabled by Democrat senator Kevin Parker, the bill seeks to establish a three-year moratorium on crypto mining, with the goal of preventing irreparable damage to the state’s sustainability ambitions.

The bill was referred to the Committee on Environmental Conservation on May 3 and, if passed, will require crypto miners to undergo an environmental impact review if they are to continue to operate.

“The continued and expanded operation of cryptocurrency mining centers will greatly increase the amount of energy usage in the State of New York and it is reasonable to believe the associated greenhouse gas emissions will irreparably harm compliance with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”

The recent surge in the price of cryptocurrencies has placed mining practices under the spotlight. One of the most common grievances with Bitcoin mining in particular has to do with the toll it takes on the environment.

Under the proof-of-work (PoW) system applied by Bitcoin and others like it, mining operations compete to solve complex mathematical problems. The first to do so earns the right to process a block of transactions, in exchange for transaction fees and newly minted cryptocurrency.

Although this system is crucial to maintaining and securing the Bitcoin network, the amount of energy used up by competing miners is astronomical. A recent report from the University of Cambridge claims that Bitcoin uses up more energy on an annual basis than the country of Sweden, at 141.91 TWh/year.
» Read article               

» More about cryptocurrency

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

Montana, Kansas, and Arkansas enter the arms race to criminalize protest
The Republican push to criminalize pipeline protests is expanding beyond fossil fuel-producing states.
By Naveena Sadasivam, Grist
May 3, 2021

Montana will become the fourth state this year to pass legislation that increases penalties for trespass on properties with so-called “critical infrastructure” — a long list of facilities including pipelines, refineries, and other oil and gas equipment. The bill punishes those who “materially impede or inhibit operations” of an oil and gas facility with up to 18 months in prison and a fine of $4,500. Those who cause damage to critical infrastructure that costs more than $1,500 could face a jail term of up to 30 years. Kansas and Arkansas passed similar laws earlier this month, and in January Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill that makes trespassing on oil and gas properties a misdemeanor punishable with up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

In total, 15 states have enacted such laws since 2017, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, a nonprofit civil liberties group that has been tracking anti-protest legislation. (Montana will be the sixteenth if the bill gets the governor’s signature.) The most common provisions in these bills include lengthening jail terms so they stretch anywhere between six months and several decades, raising fines to the tune of thousands of dollars, and financially penalizing groups that help organize protests resulting in trespass or damage of critical infrastructure. For instance, trespassing on property with a pipeline in Arkansas is now a Class D felony punishable with up to six years in prison; in contrast, a traditional criminal trespass charge has a maximum of one year of jail time.

“That’s an incredibly harsh and chilling penalty, particularly in the context of environmental protests which occur in or around construction sites for pipelines, where it’s unclear where property lines begin and end,” said Nicholas Robinson, a senior legal advisor with the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. In cases where pipeline companies used eminent domain to seize land, the protesters arrested may be the very property owners who’ve been forced to sell access to their land.
» Read article               

» More about protests and actions

PIPELINES

Explainer: The Dakota Access Pipeline faces possible closure
By Stephanie Kelly and Devika Kumar, Reuters
May 4, 2021

A U.S. court could order the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) shut in coming weeks, disrupting deliveries of crude oil, and making nearby rail traffic more congested.

WHAT IS DAPL?

The 570,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Dakota Access pipeline, or DAPL, is the largest oil pipeline out of the Bakken shale basin and has been locked in a legal battle with Native American tribes over whether the line can stay open after a judge scrapped a key environmental permit last year.

A federal judge ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to update the court on its environmental review of the pipeline by May 3 and decide if it believes the line should shut during the process. read more

WHAT IS THE DISPUTE?

Native American tribes long opposed to DAPL say the line endangers Lake Oahe, a critical water source. Pipeline construction under the lake was finished in early 2017 and the line is currently operating. But a judge last year vacated a key permit allowing that service, raising the possibility that the line could close while a thorough environmental review was completed.

Dakota Access oil pipeline’s operators plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, according to a court filing last week. read more
» Read article               

» More about pipelines

GREENING THE ECONOMY

New climate goals are going to need a lot more minerals
Demand for critical minerals is expected to skyrocket
By Justine Calma, The Verge
May 5, 2021

The world isn’t mining enough minerals to reach a future that runs on clean energy, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel are the building blocks for clean energy economies. Countries can’t meet their new climate goals without them. If supply chains can’t meet skyrocketing demand, mineral shortages could mean clean energy shortages.

Many of the world’s biggest economies have set goals to nearly eliminate climate pollution from fossil fuels in the next few decades. Leading climate scientists have found that greenhouse gas emissions need to reach net zero globally by around 2050 to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Hitting that 2050 target would require six times more critical minerals than are produced today, the IEA found. For some minerals, the gap between supply and predicted future demand is way bigger. Demand for lithium, for example, is expected to grow 70 times over the next couple decades. But the supply from existing lithium mines and projects under construction can only meet about half the projected demand this decade.

“This mismatch is something that worries us,” Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said at a press conference today. “Our numbers show that the critical minerals are not a sideshow in our journey to reach climate goals. It’s a part of the main event.”

Batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy storage are the biggest factor driving the potential mineral shortage. An EV requires six times more mineral resources than a car that runs on fossil fuels. Cobalt, nickel, graphite, and manganese are essential for batteries, too.

Wind and solar power generation are also mineral-hungry industries. Wind turbines need rare earth minerals for magnets, while solar panels are made with copper, silicon, and silver. An increase in renewable energy is also spurring the need to modernize electrical grids, which can’t be done without more copper and aluminum.
» Read article              
» Read the IEA report

DOE turns its focus toward equity with commitment to lowering solar deployment barriers
By Robert Walton, Utility Dive
May 5, 2021

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday announced plans to encourage deployment of more solar and storage in low- and moderate-income communities, including a more than $15 million commitment for technical assistance and to help underserved areas attract investment.

The new initiatives and funding will help advance DOE’s justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) goals, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement, including by expanding access to clean energy and fostering a more diverse solar workforce.

Equity in the clean energy transition was also on the agenda Tuesday at the EE Global Forum. Jigar Shah, head of DOE’s Loan Programs Office, said it is “obvious” that equity issues were not a priority for the office under previous administrations.

Decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2035 will mean delivering clean energy to all communities. Shah, who founded solar company SunEdison, said it can be more difficult or expensive to get renewables projects built in some areas, but DOE is committed to changing that.

The Biden administration is “very committed to equity,” Shah said. But “it is obvious the loan program office has not participated in this issue. We do billion-dollar solar farms and billion-dollar wind farms, or geothermal facilities, or [work with] Ford Motor Co., or a Tesla manufacturing facility.”

To address the disconnect, Shah said DOE “started a listening tour” and has had talks with more than 40 groups including residential solar installers and municipalities “around where they thought we might have the most impact.”
» Read article              

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

The Climate Solution Actually Adding Millions of Tons of CO2 Into the Atmosphere
New research shows that California’s climate policy created up to 39 million carbon credits that aren’t achieving real carbon savings. But companies can buy these forest offsets to justify polluting more anyway.
By Lisa Song, ProPublica, and James Temple, MIT Technology Review
April 29, 2021

Along the coast of Northern California near the Oregon border, the cool, moist air off the Pacific sustains a strip of temperate rainforests. Soaring redwoods and Douglas firs dominate these thick, wet woodlands, creating a canopy hundreds of feet high.

But if you travel inland the mix of trees gradually shifts.

Beyond the crest of the Klamath Mountains, you descend into an evergreen medley of sugar pines, incense cedars and still more Douglas firs. As you continue into the Cascade Range, you pass through sparser forests dominated by Ponderosa pines. These tall, slender trees with prickly cones thrive in the hotter, drier conditions on the eastern side of the state.

All trees consume carbon dioxide, releasing the oxygen and storing the carbon in their trunks, branches and roots. Every ton of carbon sequestered in a living tree is a ton that isn’t contributing to climate change. And that thick coastal forest can easily store twice as much carbon per acre as the trees deeper inland.

This math is crucial to determining the success of California’s forest offset program, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions by preserving trees. The state established the program a decade ago as part of its efforts to combat climate change.

But ecology is messy. The boundaries between forest types are nebulous, and the actual amount of carbon on any given acre depends on local climate conditions, conservation efforts, logging history and more.

California’s top climate regulator, the Air Resources Board, glossed over much of this complexity in implementing the state’s program. The agency established fixed boundaries around giant regions, boiling down the carbon stored in a wide mix of tree species into simplified, regional averages.

That decision has generated tens of millions of carbon credits with dubious climate value, according to a new analysis by CarbonPlan, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes the scientific integrity of carbon removal efforts.
» Read article              
» Read the Carbon Plan analysis

Dissecting ‘Unsettled,’ a Skeptical Physicist’s Book About Climate Science
Five statements author Steven Koonin makes that do not comport with the evidence.
By Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News
May 4, 2021

Physicist Steven Koonin, a former BP chief scientist and Obama administration energy official,  seeks to downplay climate change risk in his new book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t and Why it Matters.”

His critics say he often draws general conclusions from specific slices of data or uncertainties (sometimes signaled by key words or phrases.) As a result, they say, his statements are frequently misleading, and often leave the reader with the incorrect impression climate scientists are hiding the truth.

“Identifying, quantifying, and reducing uncertainties in models and observations is an integral part of climate science,” said atmospheric scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “The climate science community discusses uncertainties in an open and transparent way, and has done so for decades. It is simply untrue that Prof. Koonin is confronting climate scientists with unpleasant facts they have ignored or failed to understand.”

Scientists who have been engaged in recent climate research also believe Koonin’s critique seems out of step with what has been happening in the field. He relies on the latest statements of the consensus science, but the most recent reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out in 2013 and 2014. The IPCC’s updated assessment reports due out later this year and next year will almost certainly include recent studies that undercut Koonin’s conclusions.

Here are five statements Koonin makes in “Unsettled” that mainstream climate scientists say are misleading, incorrect or undercut by current research:
» Read article               

» More about climate

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

What You Need to Know About Solid-State Batteries
This next jump in battery-tech could solve a lot of EV problems.
By Chris Teague, Autoweek
April 30, 2021

The world of the internal combustion engine will sadly, but very necessarily, come to a close at some point in many of our lifetimes. Hybrids and electric vehicles are becoming more affordable and more advanced at a rapid pace, which means batteries are taking the place of fossil fuels. This has led to an equally rapid progression in battery technology, with the main goals of improving capacity, charging times, and safety. One major advancement in this field is the advent of solid-state batteries, which promise to push the boundaries of the limitations that current lithium-ion batteries carry.

Solid-state batteries, as the name suggests, do away with the heavy liquid electrolyte that lives inside lithium-ion batteries. The replacement is a solid electrolyte, which can come in the form of a glass, ceramics, or other materials. The overall structure of a solid-state battery is quite similar to that of traditional lithium-ion batteries otherwise, but without the need for a liquid, the batteries can be much denser and compact. Without diving too deeply into their inner workings, solid-state batteries expend energy and recharge much in the same way as traditional lithium-ion units do.

Beyond the rare potential for causing a fire, the liquid electrolytes inside lithium-ion batteries aren’t particularly great at longevity. Over time, compounds in the liquid can corrode internal battery components and can experience degradation or solid material build up inside, both of which lead to a degradation of battery capacity and overall performance.

Solid-state batteries are, for now, still in development. Toyota aims to sell its first EV powered by a solid-state battery before 2030, while several other automakers are working in partnership with battery produces on their own projects. Notably, Volkswagen is working in partnership with QuantumScape, a California-based company that hopes to push its batteries into commercial use by 2024.
» Read article               

Study: Synthetic fuels cost more money and cause more CO2 emissions vs. batteries
By Stephen Edelstein, Green Car Reports
May 4, 2021

As buzz around synthetic fuels builds, the Europe-focused environmental group Transport & Environment (T&E) cautions that vehicles burning these supposedly greener fuels may cause more carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions than battery-powered vehicles, and cost more as well.

That’s the conclusion T&E voiced in a position paper asking regulators not to include synthetic fuels (sometimes referred to as “e-fuels”) in the upcoming Euro 7 framework for emissions rules in the European Union.

As some automakers begin to experiment with the technology, T&E said synthetic fuels shouldn’t qualify for emissions-reduction credits under future regulations, calling the environmental benefits of these fuels “a mirage.”

By 2030, an electric car charged from the electricity grid will produce 40% lower CO2 emissions than a gasoline car burning synthetic fuel, according to the paper. Furthermore, the amount of electricity used to power an EV is lower than the amount needed to produce synthetic fuel, so electric cars do better on emissions even with a dirtier grid mix than synthetic-fueled cars, the paper said.

Synthetic fuel will also be more expensive for both automakers and drivers, T&E said.
» Read article              

» More about clean transportation

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

Leaked docs: Gas industry secretly fights electrification
By Benjamin Storrow, E&E News
May 3, 2021

In public, Eversource Energy likes to tout its carbon neutrality goals and its investments in offshore wind.

But officials from New England’s largest utility struck a different tone during an industry presentation in mid-March. Instead of advocating for lower emissions, company officials outlined a defensive strategy for preserving the use of natural gas for years to come.

Natural gas is “in for [the] fight of it’s life,” said one slide presented at the meeting and obtained by E&E News. It also called for a lobbying campaign, saying that “everyone needs to contact legislators in favor of NG.” Another slide asked how the industry could “take advantage of power outage fear” to bolster gas’s fortunes.

Eversource is identified in the presentation materials as the co-leader of a national “Consortium to Combat Electrification,” run out of the Energy Solutions Center, a trade group based in Washington. The slides identified 14 other utilities involved in the effort and said the group’s mission was to “create effective, customizable marketing materials to fight the electrification/anti-natural gas movement.”

The presentation comes amid a rising tide of policies aimed at banning natural gas in buildings.

Eversource executives sought to distance themselves from the messages conveyed in the presentation, saying they don’t reflect the views of the utility’s leadership. Yet the company’s private assessment, delivered to industry insiders, underscores the challenge facing gas providers as state and federal policymakers set their sights on net-zero emissions targets.
» Read article               

Eversource’s New CEO Talks Future of Natural Gas
By Emily Hayes, RTO Insider
April 30, 2021

As Joe Nolan prepares to take on the role of Eversource Energy’s chief executive on May 5, he is facing the challenge of transitioning New England’s largest utility to be carbon neutral in operations –— and potentially, carbon neutral for its customers.

He has worked for the utility for 35 years, and 25 of those years were spent growing Eversource’s renewable energy portfolio. He is leading the utility’s joint venture with Danish offshore wind company Ørsted to start building three wind farms in the Northeast. Nolan will take over the CEO position from Jim Judge.

Nolan, 58, told NetZero Insider he wants to double down on achieving carbon neutrality for Eversource’s buildings and vehicle fleets as CEO.

But Massachusetts, one of the states Eversource operates in, recently passed comprehensive climate legislation that includes a legally binding commitment to reduce the state’s carbon emissions to 50% below 1990 levels by 2030. President Biden’s proposal to cut emissions in half by 2030 only strengthens state mandates like Massachusetts’s new climate laws.

Yet the utility plans to spend billions of dollars upgrading pipes that distribute natural gas, and ratepayers will be responsible for covering the cost. The utility is also in the process of renewing three contracts with natural gas supply companies.

The plans clash with the goals of the state’s new climate law, as well as the new climate-driven mission statement for the state’s Department of Public Utilities. But new orders that specify how to wean utilities off fossil fuels are needed before agencies enforcement can happen.

Energy experts like Amy Boyd, director of policy at the Acadia Center, say that the money utilities put into natural gas systems is “buried money and stranded costs” that will fall on low-income and environmental justice communities without the same access to renewable energy options. As a result, those communities will experience higher utility rates.

From a physics perspective, it is “always more thermodynamically effective to just use electricity directly,” Boyd added.

Hydrogen molecules are also smaller than methane. If methane is leaking in the existing natural gas pipe system, then hydrogen will surely leak as well.
» Read article         

» More about fossil fuels

BIOMASS

Construction deal reached for $15m Massachusetts biomass project
By Power Engineering International
May 3, 2021

US-based energy company Clean Energy Technologies has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ashfield Agricultural Commission (Ashfield Ag Resources) for the development of a biomass renewable energy processing facility in Massachusetts.

The MoU enables the two parties to co-develop the $15 million project. Clean Energy Technologies (CETY) will provide its high temperature ablative fast pyrolysis reactor (HTAP Biomass Reactor). Ashfield Ag Resources has provided the energy company with the rights to feedstock and site control.

The HTAP Biomass Reactor is a ‘unique’ and proprietary process that transforms organic forest waste by using ultra-high temperatures and produces renewable electrical power, BioChar fertilizer and high heating value fuel gas in addition to other commercially valuable chemicals.

The parties agreed in principle to the critical components which are expected to annually deliver up to 14,600MWh of renewable electricity and 1,500 tons of BioChar by Q1 2022.

Clean Energy Technologies also plans to secure additional biomass resources to deliver additional projects ten times larger in the future. (emphasis added)

Kam Mahdi, CEO of CETY, said “This project is the first of four anticipated renewable biomass projects, and is expected to serve as a model for developing new projects to capture market share in this highly profitable and growing industry. By vertically integrating the biomass projects into our business, we are also able to grow our heat recovery business horizontally. We hope that our future projects will be large by orders of magnitude and have a profound impact on the environment while bringing us new sources of income.”
» Read article
» Read press release
» Read some of the backstory: Plant to power Ashfield lumber biz draws ire, By Richie Davis, Daily Hampshire Gazette, June 24, 2018

» More about biomass              

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Subscribe

---

» 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!