energy

January 26, 2024

Biden hits the brakes on controversial gas export projects

By Shannon Kelleher

The Biden administration will temporarily pause pending applications for facilities that export natural gas, citing climate change considerations, the White House announced Friday.

The announcement, which comes after heavy pushback from environmental groups and affected communities along the Gulf, will put the brakes on eight new export terminals while the Department of Energy (DOE) reviews its approval process, including how to account for the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. The pause will not affect liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals that are already operating.

“Today, we have an evolving understanding of the market need for LNG, the long-term supply of LNG, and the perilous impacts of methane on our planet,” said the White House in a statement. “We also must adequately guard against risks to the health of our communities, especially frontline communities in the United States who disproportionately shoulder the burden of pollution from new export facilities.”

“The pause, which is subject to exception for unanticipated and immediate national security emergencies, will provide the time to integrate these critical considerations,” the White House statement said.

LNG is made of methane, a potent contributor to climate change. While industry groups have called LNG “the cleanest of the fossil fuels,” new research from Cornell currently undergoing peer review suggests its total greenhouse gas emissions are higher than those from coal.

January 5, 2024

A “grave concern” – fight building against Biden’s hydrogen hubs

By Dana Drugmand

When President Joe Biden visited Philadelphia in mid-October to announce a $7 billion federal investment in seven regional ‘clean’ hydrogen hubs proposed across the country, he touted the promise of “tens of thousands of jobs” and the potential for sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to “taking 5.5 million gas-powered vehicles off the road.”

But for many climate and environmental advocates, the announcement was no cause for celebration. Though proponents of hydrogen pitch it as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, nearly all hydrogen production globally currently stems from these planet-warming fuels, and environmental advocates worry that a massive hydrogen buildout risks extending the fossil fuel era at a time when climate science demands an urgent transition away from coal, oil, and gas.

The hydrogen hubs “amount to another corporate scam”, Marion Gee, co-executive director at the Climate Justice Alliance, said at the time of Biden’s announcement, while Food and Water Watch Policy Director Jim Walsh called the project “greenwashed dirty energy [that] will undermine efforts to address the climate crisis.”

Now, some activist coalitions are challenging the government narrative and organizing efforts to block some hub buildouts. They cite a lack of transparency and the potential for negative environmental impacts among a laundry list of concerns.

“It’s really a misappropriation of funds, of our taxpayer funds, to go down this hydrogen path,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a regional environmental group focused on protecting the quality of the Delaware River watershed. “We’re going to be fighting it, and I think the public as a whole is going to be fighting these hydrogen hubs across the nation.”

The group is coordinating a sign-on letter to the US Department of Energy (DOE) expressing “grave concern” with a proposed hydrogen hub for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The letter asserts that the government hub project amount to a “little known federal initiative that will have indelible impacts on our communities and the environment.”

December 11, 2023

“Sounding the alarm,” a new youth lawsuit seeks climate action by EPA

By Dana Drugmand

US environmental regulators have allowed “dangerous levels of climate pollution” to destabilize the climate system with horrific impacts that will worsen over time, according to allegations laid out in a federal lawsuit filed Sunday by a group of California youth.

“We are running from wildfires, being displaced by floods, panicking in hot classrooms during another heat wave,” 15-year-old plaintiff Noah C. said in a statement. He is one of 18 young people named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed in US District Court for the Central District of California. (The last names of the plaintiffs are abbreviated due to their ages.) “We feel a constant worry about the future, and all around us no one is moving fast enough.”

EPA Administrator Michael Regan and the US federal government are also named as defendants in the case.

The lawsuit charges the government with knowingly endangering the lives and welfare of the nation’s youth by permitting unsafe levels of greenhouse gas emissions tied to the burning of fossil fuels, in violation of the US Constitution’s rights to life, equal protection, and due process. Additionally, the case contends that EPA has acted beyond its constitutionally delegated authority in allowing extensive climate pollution that harms human health and welfare.

The climate crisis is “government-imposed and sanctioned,” the lawsuit states. “Climate crisis is the single greatest driver of the health of every child born today,” according to the lawsuit.

November 30, 2023

US push to turn farm manure into renewable energy draws concerns

By Keith Schneider

AMES, IOWA – In a gathering that drew the attendance of both farmers and Wall Street financiers, US regulators joined with oil giant Chevron at a November conference here to promote what backers promise will be a monumental breakthrough – systemic changes that would turn polluting agricultural waste into a source of renewable energy that replaces fossil fuels and slows climate change.

Speakers at the conference, which was hosted by Iowa State University and co-sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture, assured attendees that the answers to agricultural and climate woes can be found in technology that already exists: Key, according to conference promoters, is the rapid expansion of large methane biodigesters, which capture manure waste from the nation’s cattle, hog and poultry operations and convert it into a harvest of both public and private riches.

Water and air would be cleaner and farmers could see billions of dollars in new farm income, among other benefits, according to backers.

“It can provide a substantial portion of global energy needs,” Rudi Roeslein , CEO of Roeslein Alternative Energy, told the attendees. His company has built farm-based methane systems around the country that produce enough fuel to displace six million gallons of diesel fuel and 80,000 cars. “If we do this on a large scale in the US we could generate $63.6 billion worth of revenue for farmers around the country.”

Roeslein’s company promises on its website to “restore a balance” to farmland “by using the sustainably harvested biomass to create renewable natural gas.”

Chevron promotes its investment in manure biodigestion as “finding inspiration in nature.”

“I’m really excited about the innovation in this space,” Lisa Schulte Moore, a professor and co-director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State, said in an interview. “The renewable natural gas market is providing economic incentives for better management of manure.”

But critics argue that the emergence of an alliance of Big Ag, Big Oil, and Big Government to generate energy from livestock waste is ripe with peril. They say that air pollutants and waste discharged from farms and from already existing farm-based biodigesters receive scant federal and state oversight. They fear that without strict regulation, manure digesters could make water and air pollution worse, not better. Industrial-sized farms, including concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), already are one of the nation’s largest sources of water pollution, and among the principal causes of air pollution.

September 20, 2023

Postcard from California: State takes on Big Oil for decades of climate lies

By Bill Walker

California fired its opening salvo against the oil and gas industry two years ago, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks after 2035. In April, the offensive escalated, as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) ordered a phaseout of diesel trucks and locomotives starting in 2036. The state opened another front in June, establishing a watchdog agency to investigate gasoline-pump price spikes and recommend fines for oil companies deemed guilty of gouging customers.

Now the state has dropped its biggest bombshell yet: a monumental lawsuit against five of the world’s largest petrochemical companies for their “decades-long campaign of deception” about the harm of their products to the planet’s climate, and the disastrous and costly impacts of the climate crisis on California.

The 135-page lawsuit, filed last week in San Francisco County Superior Court, alleges that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP (formerly British Petroleum) knew since the 1950s that burning fossil fuels would heat up the climate with devastating consequences, but covered up the truth instead of alerting the public. The suit also names as a defendant the American Petroleum Institute (API), the industry’s trade association. The defendants are accused of fraud, negligence, product liability, false advertising and creating a public nuisance.

“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change — but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record-breaking profits at the expense of our environment,” state Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a news release. “From extreme heat to drought and water shortages, the climate crisis they have caused is undeniable. It is time they pay to abate the harm they have caused.”

August 28, 2023

Postcard from California: Roadblocks on the path to phase out gas

By Bill Walker

The October 2015 blowout at Aliso Canyon – a vast network of underground natural gas storage wells in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley – stands as one of the worst environmental disasters in California history.

Before it was capped after 112 days, the leak spewed forth 5 billion cubic feet of methane and other noxious gases, temporarily displacing nearly 10,000 families from the downwind Porter Ranch community. Residents suffered severe headaches, nausea, nosebleeds and other symptoms, and the fear of potential long-term health effects, including cancer. The US’ largest-ever leak of natural gas sprang from a rupture in a well casing from which owner SoCalGas had decades earlier removed, but never replaced, a worn safety valve.

In 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown called for closure of Aliso Canyon within 10 years, to protect health and advance the state’s transition from methane gas, a potent driver of climate change, to clean energy. In 2019, Brown’s successor, Gov. Gavin Newsom, vowed to “fast-track” that timeline.

That pledge has yet to materialize: Well into Newsom’s second term, his appointees to the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) not only have failed to set a firm date for closing Aliso Canyon but have twice raised the level for how much gas the wells can store.

Now they are poised to do it again.

This week, the PUC will vote on a petition from SoCalGas to boost the storage limit by two thirds, to more than 68 billion cubic feet – the maximum state geologists say is safe. SoCalGas claims stockpiling more fuel at Aliso Canyon would mean lower utility bills this winter, and the commission’s staff recommends approval of the proposal.

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January 4, 2023

Postcard from California: Big Oil’s campaign to kill drilling ban near homes and schools

By Bill Walker

In September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a landmark bill banning new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet – about two-thirds of a mile – of homes, schools, day care centers, healthcare facilities, parks, and businesses open to the public. The measure also banned “reworking” old, unproductive wells lying within the buffer zones.

It was a huge win for environmental justice advocates, capping a decade-long campaign to protect Californians from the well-documented health risks of living near drill rigs, including premature births, heart disease and asthma. More than 7 million Californians – disproportionately lower-income people of color – live within a mile of active oil or gas wells.

Newsom signed the bill, SB 1137, on a Friday. The ink had hardly dried when, the following Monday, the oil and gas industry launched a petition drive to throw out the new law.

Under California’s referendum and initiative process, if enough registered and verified voters sign a petition to overturn a law, it goes on the ballot in the next general election. But even before voters get a chance to decide, the law is suspended until the election. Once hailed as a progressive tool of grassroots democracy, the initiative process is increasingly used by special interests to kill laws they don’t like.

Two weeks before Christmas, the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA) announced it had gathered almost a million signatures on a petition to block the law, which was supposed to take effect this month. If roughly two-thirds are certified by county and state election officials, the buffer zones provided for by SB 1137 can’t take effect until after November 2024.

December 1, 2022

“Flagrant environmental injustice”- groups petition EPA over coal ash pollution

By Grace van Deelen

Seven years after US regulators set what were supposed to be strict rules for the disposal of coal ash—a toxic mix of metals such as arsenic and lead generated by coal-burning power plants—the vast majority of coal power plants are continuing to allow coal ash contamination of groundwater at levels considered unsafe, according to environmental advocacy groups.

Roughly half a billion tons of coal ash at 300 sites across around the United States are exempt from “life-saving health protections,” according to a petition delivered Thursday to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The petition calls on the agency to update regulations to include the complete closure and cleanup of legacy coal ash landfills and to take “aggressive enforcement against violators.” The petition specifically cites coal ash waste impacting communities in Indiana and Illinois. In addition to the organizations that signed on, the petition received nearly 2,000 citizen signatures.

“We want communities to know exactly what’s happening at their power plant. Much of it is very concerning and very damning,” said Lisa Evans, an attorney at Earthjustice, one of the lead groups petitioning the EPA.

November 18, 2022

Postcard from California: Regulators bowing to scheme to cripple rooftop solar

Once again, California is poised to sabotage its own climate goals.

After almost a year of heated public debate, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has unveiled its latest proposal for changes to the state’s rooftop solar program. The so-called reforms could cripple what is by far the most successful solar initiative in the U.S.

More than 1.5 million California households, schools and small businesses have installed solar panels. For 2019, the latest estimate available, the state said rooftop solar kept 6 million metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – equal to taking 1.3 million cars off the road. That’s a big boost to the state’s goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045.

But California’s “Big Three” utilities – Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. – hate rooftop solar.

Under a program known as net metering, solar customers are freed from having to buy electricity from the utilities, whose rates are some of the highest in the country. Instead, solar panel owners generate much of their own power. If they generate more than they draw from the utility-owned grid, the excess flows back into the system, and the utilities must pay them for it.

Last year the Big Three pushed the PUC to deeply slash the rebates to solar customers and tack on a steep monthly surcharge just for connecting to the grid. In February, the PUC bowed to the lobbying and issued a proposal that could have slowed rooftop solar growth by half or more.

Public outcry forced the PUC to pull the first proposal back for revision. A new proposal in May still amounted to what outraged consumers, solar companies and environmental advocates called “a tax on the sun,” so the commission pulled it back again.

But round three, released Nov. 10, remains a severe blow to the future of rooftop solar. It scraps the connection surcharge, but still cuts the rebate for energy returned to the grid by about 75%, decimating one of the strongest incentives for consumers to go solar.

September 21, 2022

Solar power helping health care facilities gain climate resilience

By Pam Strayer

It is not easy to rattle Rosa Vivian Fernandez. As the CEO of a California healthcare clinic that primarily serves a low-income, largely Hispanic community, Fernandez sees the harsh struggles faced by disadvantaged populations on a daily basis. But when she traveled to Puerto Rico in 2017 to visit extended family members, Fernandez was shocked to see how deeply Hurricane Maria had devastated the island infrastructure, including the ability of healthcare providers to serve people in need.

More than 5,000 people died due to the violent Atlantic storm, which caused an estimated $92 billion in property damages, wiping out the electrical grid.

“All the healthcare centers–the ones that did not get flooded or destroyed by the storm–went down,” she said. “People died from the lack of services.”

Power to a children’s hospital in San Juan was restored when Tesla deployed its own solar panels and batteries after the 2017 hurricane, setting them up in the hospital parking lot. But this week most of Puerto Rico was again without power in the wake of yet another hurricane, forcing a cancer hospital on the island to relocate its patients when a backup generator failed.

After her 2017 visit, Fernandez realized the clinic she heads, San Benito Health Foundation in Hollister, California, could also be vulnerable to power failures that could jeopardize patient health. California’s record heat waves and other factors are increasingly taxing an already strained electrical power grid. Something had to be done, she decided.

Today, the 17,000 square-foot-clinic San Benito clinic is 100% solar powered, relying on a $1.7 million, self-contained microgrid of solar panels that collect energy, along with batteries to store the energy, and a controller that manages the system.