Month: July 2018

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending July 20, 2018 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

In spite of a vote in the House condemning a carbon tax (which Dana Nuccitelli called foolish), Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) is preparing to introduce legislation next week that would pause federal regulations on climate change in exchange for an escalating tax on carbon emissions, according to a draft obtained by E&E News.  Although Curbelo’s proposed tax is not revenue-neutral, a recent study found that policies in which the proceeds from a carbon tax are returned to taxpayers will have little negative economic impact while effectively curbing carbon emissions.  America’s Pledge, an initiative co-founded by California Gov. Jerry Brown and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has released a report detailing “bottom-up” strategies for states, cities and businesses to take meaningful action on climate change.  A coalition of worker advocacy groups is calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create the country’s first national standard for heat stress, something the government has failed to do for over 40 years.

E&E News interviewed EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler.  (If you open the article, be sure to check out Wheeler’s suit.)  On Wednesday, the EPA pushed back the deadline for closing coal ash dumps that don’t meet water protection standards until 31 October 2020.  Wheeler said the changes would save utilities roughly $30m annually.  A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked a Trump administration policy that sought to ignore a regulation limiting sales of “glider trucks” that environmental groups called “super-polluting.”

Fossil fuel producers, airlines, and electrical utilities outspent environmental groups and the renewable energy industry 10 to 1 on lobbying related to climate change legislation between 2000 and 2016, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Climatic Change.  Today, airplane engines release about 1.5% of the CO₂ that humans create by burning fossil fuels – as much as Canada’s carbon footprint.  They also release significant amounts of sulfur, oxides of nitrogen, and water vapor into the upper atmosphere, all of which impact warming.  To meet our climate goals, something must be done, but what?  The EU and China have signed a joint agreement on climate change as part of the EU-China summit in Beijing, but according to a report released on Thursday, China still needs to take significant steps to curb its own CO₂ emissions.  Living shorelines can help slow or stop erosion in coastal areas.  Since Florida’s permitting rules on living shorelines were eased a little more than a year ago, 34 small living shorelines, typically under 500 feet, have been approved or built.

Roy Scranton, a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, had an essay in The New York Times adapted from his new book We’re Doomed. Now What? Essays on War and Climate Change.  A new survey of attitudes about climate change and what to do about it has been conducted by ABC News, Stanford University’s Political Psychology Research Group and Resources for the Future.  Go here for a summary of the results.  Attorneys for 21 young activists suing the federal government over climate change urged a judge Wednesday to allow their case to go to trial while government lawyers argued that a court can’t direct national energy policy.  Meanwhile, a federal judge on Thursday dismissed New York City’s lawsuit against five of the world’s largest oil companies, stating that global warming should be solved by Congress and the president—not by the courts.  David Hasemyer has prepared a review of the various lawsuits against the federal government and fossil fuel companies, showing where they stand now.

Climate

California is not the only place experiencing wildfires.  At least 11 wildfires are burning inside the Arctic Circle, with Sweden being particularly hard hit.  In addition, high temperature records are being set across Scandinavia, Japan is sweltering, and in the U.S. an extreme heat wave is hitting Texas and surrounding states.  All in all, over a billion people are at risk in a warmer world, according to one study.  A paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that wildfires in the western U.S. are causing an increase in small particulate matter in the atmosphere, a particularly worrisome form of air pollution.

A paper published Thursday in the journal Science has reported that summers are heating up faster than the other seasons as global temperatures rise, especially in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, and the changes carry the clear fingerprints of human-caused climate change.  Canada’s Arctic is warming at one of the fastest rates of anywhere on Earth, with the annual average temperature on northern Ellesmere Island increasing by 3.6°C between 1948 and 2016.  This is causing significant melting of glaciers.

According to a new report from non-profit organizations GRAIN and The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, meat and dairy companies are on track to being the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, outpacing even the fossil fuel industry.

The large cities in India are among the hottest on Earth.  Somini Sengupta reported from New Delhi on conditions in several of them in the summer, when conditions are becoming unbearable.  Meanwhile, in Africa, the drought that threatened to turn off the taps in Cape Town was made three times more likely by global warming, according to a study released on Friday by World Weather Attribution.

A new study, published in the journal Nature, suggests that a slowing of the Gulf Stream (aka the “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation” or AMOC) will lead to a period of prolonged warming because less heat will be carried into the deep ocean.  However, writing at RealClimate, climate scientists Stefan Rahmstorf and Michael Mann were very critical of the paper, stating “the idea that a weak AMOC promotes rapid global warming is in itself not supported by any convincing evidence.”

Antarctica is a strange place, as shown by a recent paper in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.  For example, it is the only place on Earth where the surface is colder than the stratosphere.  This causes some of the greenhouse gases that warm the rest of the planet to cool Antarctica for much of the year.

Energy

The International Energy Agency has released its World Energy Outlook 2018, covering energy investments in 2017.  A major finding was that global energy investments fell 2% in 2017, with a “worrying” 7% decline in renewable energy investments.  On the other hand, a bright spot was the 54% increase in electric vehicle (EV) sales, which topped one million for the first time.

The Pacific island nation of Palau, which currently relies on diesel fuel to supply almost all its electricity, is in the middle of an experiment. Over the next year and a half, the country will shift to 100% renewable energy, at no cost to the government.  This will happen because of the efforts of Gridmarket, a predictive analytics and mapping company, and Trammell Crow, a Republican philanthropist committed to fighting climate change.  On a larger scale, Costa Rico, which already gets 80% of its electricity from renewable sources, is working to be carbon-neutral by 2021 through an incentive-driven plan that will focus largely on the transportation sector, its largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

The CEO of Deepwater Wind, the company that developed the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., said Monday the company is beginning the next, larger phase of development for offshore wind farms to supply power to Rhode Island and Connecticut, to Long Island, NY, and to Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  Meanwhile, MAKE Consulting has projected that onshore wind turbine size and capacity is on track to continue increasing at a steady pace, while offshore equipment will grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years.  Illustrating that nothing is foolproof, Britain is experiencing a “wind drought” that has reduced output from its wind turbines by around 40%.

The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state regulators erred in rejecting the proposed 780-mile Grain Belt Express electricity transmission project from developer Clean Line Energy.  The project would cross Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana to distribute Kansas wind power as far as Indiana and beyond.  Meanwhile, Duke Energy cancelled an RFP for Midwest wind energy because the price of the electricity was too high, presumably because of a lack of transmission options.

Last week I provided a link to a study arguing the likely demise of nuclear energy in the U.S.  Now, Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Rhodes has argued that nuclear energy must be a part of the energy solution.  In addition, David Roberts has analyzed the utility of natural gas as a bridge fuel to totally renewable energy

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending July 13, 2018 follows.  Please forward the Roundup to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

On Monday, President Trump nominated Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy created on the U.S. Supreme Court by the resignation of Justice Anthony Kennedy.  Writing in The New York Times, Brad Plumer evaluated what his impact on environmental law is likely to be should he be confirmed.  Likewise, Robinson Meyer wrote in The Atlantic about Kavanaugh’s environmental opinions while serving as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he has served since 2006.  Also on Monday the EPA sent its proposed replacement for the Clean Power Plan to the White House for review.  Amanda Paulson and Mark Trumbull of The Christian Science Monitor speculated about why it did so in the context of changes that have been occurring at the Agency.

California law requires that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions return to 1990 levels by 2020.  The California Air Resources Board announced that the goal has already been met; in 2016, in fact.  A centrist Democratic group, New Democracy, says the party’s climate and energy strategy should offer a vision that embraces the nation’s fracking boom alongside renewables and efficiency.  Meanwhile, the latest iteration of the twice-yearly survey conducted by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College has found that 73% of people in the U.S. now think there is solid evidence of global warming and 60% believe that the warming is due, at least in part, to human influences.  Exxon Mobil said on Thursday it has ended its association with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has written an expert court report that forcefully supports a group of children and young adults who have sued the federal government for failing to act on climate change.

Bryce Oates had a very interesting essay in Civil Eats entitled “In Farm Country, Grappling with the Taboo of Talking about Climate Change.”  I highly recommend it because it provides information that may lead to a better understanding among nonfarmers of some in the farm community.  Another interesting essay appeared in Nautilus.  It was written by Mark L. Hineline and is entitled “Is Fixing the Climate Incompatible with American Ideals.”  On the subject of essays, former BP CEO John Browne made the case in Bloomberg Opinion for why the big oil and gas companies have a role to play in the energy revolution.  Dana Nuccitelli addressed the impact of climate change alarmists in contrast to climate change deniers.  Finally, World Resources Institute’s Liz Goodwin wondered if people will wake up to food waste in the same way they have waked up to plastic waste.

Climate

Scientists are finding that temperature affects the adult size of a variety of species, with higher temperatures being associated with smaller body size.  Although the exact consequences are unknown, it is possible smaller body sizes could have a number of impacts on species fitness, with a cascading effect through various trophic levels.  In addition, a study of sea birds revealed that the nutritional value of their prey, fish and squid, deteriorated during ocean warming events.  These are just two examples of the potential impacts of a warmer planet.  Another example of the complex interactions in nature that can be changed by increasing CO₂ levels was revealed by a new paper in the journal Ecology Letters.  The authors studied the impact of rising CO₂ on milkweed, the plant required for Monarch butterflies to reproduce, and found that beneficial chemicals produced by the milkweed decrease as CO₂ increases, making the Monarchs more susceptible to an important parasite.

Nights have been warming faster than days.  Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich explained at The New York Times why that’s dangerous.  It particularly doesn’t bode well for those without air conditioning.  A new study published in PLOS Medicine found that during a heat spell, college students living in dorms without air conditioning scored between 4% and 13% lower than students in air conditioned dorms when tested on their response times and mental arithmetic shortly after waking up.  A new study, published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, illustrates another way to document changes in climate over time.  The authors selected 46 trees shown in television footage of the Tour of Flanders bicycle race in Belgium from 1981 to 2016.  The footage clearly showed that the trees budded and bloomed earlier each year over the period covered.

As Earth warms, it is important for people working outdoors to be mindful of the heat index, which combines temperature and humidity, to avoid heat stress.  A recent study revealed that severe heat stress, including death, can occur at a heat index of just 85°F, even though U.S. occupational safety standards warn that workers are at risk when the heat index reaches 91°F.

A new study, published in the journal Science Advances, found that in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, CO₂ from microbial decomposition of soil organic matter is escaping into the air faster than plants are taking it back up.  Put another way, the soil microbes appear to be more temperature sensitive than the shrubs, suggesting that as Earth warms, the Arctic tundra will become a net contributor of atmospheric CO₂, rather than a net sink.  Another paper, this one in the journal Nature Geoscience, examined the impact of melting permafrost.  The findings suggest that because of emissions of methane and CO₂ from wetlands and melting permafrost, human-caused emissions will need to be cut by an additional 20% to meet the Paris Agreement’s limits of 1.5°C or 2°C temperature rise.

In the first of three articles in The New York Times’ Climate Fwd newsletter, Kendra Pierre-Louis wrote about the youth soccer players trapped in the cave in Thailand: “By now, it’s well known that their predicament was caused by rising floodwaters in the cave. What is less known is that the pattern of precipitation that ensnared them is in keeping with broader changes to the region’s seasonal monsoon that researchers have attributed to climate change.”

Energy

I’d like to start the Energy section this week with a gee-whiz article about a long shot energy technology that could provide an inexhaustible carbon-free power source.  The renewable fuel is ammonia (NH₃) (yes, the fertilizer and cleaning agent) and the route to an “ammonia economy” is described well by Robert Service in this article from Science.  While full development has some ways to go, ideas like this are what give me hope for the future.

According to data released on Tuesday by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, wind, solar, hydropower, and biogas met 36.3% of Germany’s electricity needs between January and June 2018, while coal provided just 35.1%, the first time this has occurred for such an extended period.  Here is an interesting idea from the UK: Use social media to turn energy conservation into a game and rewarding people monetarily for high achievement.

Pumped storage is a concept that has been around for a long time and has been used extensively at nuclear power plants to store excess energy at night when demand was low.  Now it is getting a second look as a means for storing solar and wind energy.  NPR’s Dan Charles recently visited the Bath County Pumped Storage Station owned by Dominion Energy in the Appalachian Mountains.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in early July examined the nuclear power industry in the U.S. and concluded: “Achieving deep decarbonization of the energy system will require a portfolio of every available technology and strategy we can muster. It should be a source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon energy, over the next few decades.”  Likewise, according to the UK’s first “National Infrastructure Assessment”, published Tuesday by the National Infrastructure Commission, renewables can generate half of Britain’s power by 2030 without adding to consumer bills, potentially crowding out nuclear as a significant low carbon source of electricity.  Furthermore, the report concluded that the country can have low-carbon electricity, heat, and transport in 2050 at the same cost as today’s high-carbon energy system.

According to an in-depth article by Saqib Rahim at E&E News, the Trump administration has been very accepting of off-shore wind energy, leading him to speculate that by 2021 the U.S.’s first utility-scale off-shore wind project could be operational.  The question is, though, who will develop it, U.S. or European companies.  The latter have a lot more experience and see the U.S. East Coast as a new frontier after years of success across the Atlantic.

The average U.S. retail price of electricity is about 10.4¢/kWh.  Research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory examined the cost performance of utility energy efficiency programs, utilizing data from almost 8,800 programs across 41 states between 2009 and 2015.  They concluded that the average cost of saving electricity through efficiency programs was 2.5¢/kWh.

Investments in clean energy in India rose 22% in the first half of 2018 compared to the same period last year, while investments by China fell by 15%, according to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  At this rate, India is expected to overtake China and become the largest growth market by the late 2020s.  Nevertheless, it should be noted that absolute investment by China was much higher in the first half of 2018 at $58.1 billion, compared to India’s $7.4 billion.  In addition, globally, clean energy investment dropped 1% and totaled $138.2 billion in the first half of 2018.

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending July 6, 2018 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned on Thursday.  Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, will serve as Acting Administrator until President Trump nominates a new administrator and the Senate acts on the nomination.  The Trump administration has drafted a new proposal to regulate CO₂ emissions from coal-fired power plants, one that is far less stringent than the Clean Power Plan.  The U.S. will fall far short of its pollution reduction goals under the Paris Climate Agreement, according to a new report from the Rhodium Group, a private market research firm.  Over 20 national and state conservative groups are urging the Trump administration to reject the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol that aims to reduce emissions of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, which are potent greenhouse gases.  China’s CO₂ emissions fell from 2014 to 2016 and might already have peaked, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience.  Ontario’s newly elected Progressive Conservative government announced on Tuesday it would end the province’s cap-and-trade program on CO₂ emissions, fulfilling one of Premier Doug Ford’s election promises.

The four-day meeting of the Green Climate Fund collapsed with the abrupt resignation of the chairman and with no decisions on funding 11 proposals worth nearly $1 billion or on how to increase the main climate finance initiative’s dwindling resources.  China did not appear on a June 29 list of participants in the voluntary phase of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) deal, which requires airlines to limit their emissions or offset them by buying carbon credits.  Rhode Island on Monday became the first state to sue oil companies over the effects of climate change, filing a complaint in Providence/Bristol County Superior Court seeking damages for the costs associated with protecting the state from rising seas and severe weather.  David Hasemyer has provided a review of the major climate change lawsuits, indicating where they now stand.  Colorado has an innovative program of installing solar panels on the houses of low-income residents who have already had their homes weatherized, thereby lowering their energy costs even more.

Joseph Robertson, Global Strategy Director for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, had an opinion piece entitled “Declare energy independence with carbon dividends” in The Guardian and The Chicago Tribune had an editorial on the topic.  At Yale Climate Connections, Amy Brady interviewed Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore.  In the interview, Rush described her book as “a collaborative process where my responsibility was to the speakers and to their lived experience.”  Earther reported that Dulce, a ten-minute documentary short about climate change, is beautifully shot.  Architectural Digest had an interesting article about the ways architects are working to reduce energy use by buildings, which currently use 39% of the U.S.’s energy.

Climate

We are all aware that the northeastern U.S. went through a heat wave this past week.  So did Canada, where 33 people died in Quebec.  Climate Signals has reported that hot nights in the contiguous 48 states have been increasing, a sign that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations are driving the long-term trends in temperatures.  The U.S. is not alone in experiencing record high temperatures this summer.  So have many other parts of the world, including the UK, which has also been experiencing drought.

A new paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters explored the costs associated with sea level rise as the world warms.  If we miss the 2°C target, sea level would likely rise by 2.8 to 5.9 ft, with global annual flood costs without adaptation of $14 trillion to $27 trillion by 2100.

Carbon Brief had a guest post entitled “How use of land in pursuit of 1.5°C could impact biodiversity” by Prof. Pete Smith, a lead author on the IPCC’s forthcoming special report on climate change and land.  An important question to arise from their deliberations is whether and/or when to apply bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to achieve the negative emissions required to limit warming to 1.5°C.

In a report released on Thursday, Australia’s Climate Council warned that by the 2030s the Great Barrier Reef could see devastating mass bleachings as often as every two years unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced.  In addition, new research, recently published in Nature Climate Change, describes a series of sudden and catastrophic ecosystem shifts that have occurred recently across Australia.  These changes, caused by the combined stress of gradual climate change and extreme weather events, are overwhelming ecosystems’ natural resilience.

Raising cows and other ruminants has severe negative impacts on the climate.  Two articles this week reviewed ways to reduce those impacts.  One of the major problems associated with ruminants such as cows is that they belch copious quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.  Attacking the problem directly, scientists have discovered that adding a particular species of dried seaweed to cows’ feed can drastically decrease their methane production.  Another alternative is to eliminate animal production for food altogether by growing animal tissue (i.e., “fake meat”) in bioreactors in an industrial-scale facility.  Writing in Wired, Joi Ito reviewed the six levels of what he calls “cellular agriculture.”

Energy

Arizona’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service Co., is fiercely opposing a push to mandate increased use of renewable energy in the state, setting up a political fight over a measure funded by billionaire Tom Steyer.

The Ohio Power Siting Board has recommended conditional approval of the $126 million “Icebreaker” six-turbine off-shore wind energy project in Lake Erie, proposed by the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp.  The project will be eight to ten miles northwest of downtown Cleveland.  The staff has included more than 34 conditions, including a bird and bat monitoring plan.  Recent studies have provided considerable information on minimizing the danger to birds and bats from wind turbines.

Swiss Re announced it is no longer providing re/insurance to businesses with more than 30% exposure to thermal coal across all lines of business.  It is joining other insurers that have decided to abandon investments in coal-based businesses and/or stop providing coverage for such risks.

A new paper in the journal Science Advances explored the possibility of storing CO₂ in the unconsolidated sediment on the sea floor.  The researchers concluded that such storage was feasible, assuming that the subsea sediment remained intact and did not become fractured in the future.

Even though the UK government cancelled a large tidal energy project last week, there is still considerable interest in the idea.  Damian Carrington reviewed the large range of concepts currently under study for generating electricity with tidal power.  Fossil fuels supplied about 80% of the energy consumed in the United States in 2017, the lowest share since 1902, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy.

With more plug-in hybrids and EVs hitting the road, the question arises as to what to do with their batteries when they no longer have sufficient capacity to power the vehicles.  One answer is to apply them to less demanding tasks, such as energy storage in homes.  When they are no longer suited to that task, they can then be recycled and their elements recovered.  Also, because of the projected increase in EV sales, oil companies are eying EV charging as a way to maintain income as gasoline and diesel fuel sales drop.  The problem is, electric utilities also want that market, setting up a major competitive battle.

Pacific Gas & Electric is seeking approval for four energy storage projects totaling 567 MW/2.27 GWh. Among the four projects are two that would be the largest lithium ion batteries globally on their own and one that would be the world’s largest chemical battery.  Meanwhile, Chinese EV battery makers are frantically building lithium-ion battery gigafactories, including one that will be the largest in the world.