Monthly Archives: July 2016

Four Things You May Not Know About the Heat Wave

Photo by: Julie Falk

This post first appeared on EDF Voices

The National Weather Service issued extreme heat warnings for a large swath of central United States this week, drawing comparisons to the dangerous heat events of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

The combination of extreme heat and humidity in large Midwestern cities such as St Louis and Chicago will likely lead to a range of human health impacts, including the potential for fatalities. Naturally, some will question whether this heat wave is the result of human-caused climate change.

Here are four things to consider as we sort that out:

1. Temperature is only part of the story

While it is unclear at this time if daily temperature records will be broken during this event, it doesn’t necessarily matter. , especially if these conditions persist for more than two days, as is expected for this event.

We now know that the increase in global mean temperature as the result of greenhouse gas emissions is pushing us into a new climate reality where extreme heat events are much more likely.

As if heat isn’t enough, increasing atmospheric temperature has also boosted global evaporation. This has led to an increase in global atmospheric moisture content over the last several decades, and by extension a propensity for stronger heat indices.

2. Thermometers don’t matter

The metric used to quantify the combined temperature and humidity impacts on humans, the heat index, is what makes a day feel like 110 degrees even if the thermometer only shows 96 degrees – much the same way a wind chill feels colder than the mercury suggests.

With the heat index already above 105 Fahrenheit for two days straight and then rising as high as 115 F  in many Midwestern locales, health officials are urging millions of Americans to stay hydrated and indoors.

3. Day 3 of a heat wave is critical

The third day is also critical for the human body. That’s when people who remain exposed to extreme heat can often no longer cope and fatalities historically rise, especially if temperatures remain high at night and keep people from resting.

With the heat building over the eastern half of the U.S. and expected to last into the weekend, even President Obama weighed in via Twitter this week, urging citizens to “drink water, stay out of the sun and check on your neighbors.”

4. Natural cycles may play a part, as with Dust Bowl 

There are always natural climate cycles at play and they can conspire to temporarily enhance or detract from the continually increasing climate change signal.

These cycles are usually expressed through changes in the surface temperature of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and have fancy names such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

But their impact is really quite simple: Because the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are so large, these natural cycles can heat large areas of the atmosphere from underneath, much like a stove heats a pot of boiling water. When aligned like they are right now, they can contribute to extreme heat and drought in the central part of the country.

It’s happened before. The conditions that kicked off the 1930s catastrophic Dust Bowl in central U.S. are widely reckoned to have originated from a combination of these natural cycles.

To be sure, the events in the 1930s also had a human cause, including poor land management and agricultural practices that led to a large-scale depletion of soil moisture. It warmed the land surface over the Great Plains and Midwest, exacerbating a persistent and large high-pressure system already in place.

Is it climate change? Science will tell.

Of course, our impact on the climate is much different today.

With monthly and annual temperature records being smashed month after month and year after year – recently pushing global atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations past 400 parts per million – it’s likely that human-caused global warming is playing a large role in this week’s heat wave.

Also different today is that the science of linking climate change to large-scale extreme heat wave events has advanced rapidly over the last decade, helping us know when to attribute extreme weather events to global warming.

So stay tuned as this week’s “heat dome” unfolds. The climate science community will be rolling up their sleeves, once again, and go to work to understand the various forces at play.

Posted in News / Read 2 Responses

3 Keys for the American Petroleum Institute’s New Climate Task Force

AdobeStock_56840116By Ben Ratner, Director, EDF’s Corporate Partnerships Program

The climate change discussion is percolating even in surprising places. The latest sign: the American Petroleum Institute’s recent formation of an internal task force on climate change. Reportedly the new task force’s mandate is to revisit API’s approach to this crucial issue, going into an election year and with ever greater scrutiny on fossil fuels.

It is too soon to know whether the task force will rubber stamp a business-as-usual approach defined by glossing over climate concerns and attacking policy measures, or chart a new path instead.

But if the task force is serious about a fresh look at the issue, here are three keys for the task force to consider as it ponders the future of API on climate.

Face the Facts

The oil and gas industry must be responsive to growing pressures from its investors, corporate customers, and Americans affected by oil and gas operations – from local pollution to climate change.

The historic global climate agreement reached in Paris, supported by nearly 200 countries including powerhouses like the United States and China, was also supported by a wide cross-section of American businesses – including PG&E, which as a natural gas distribution company and power generator is a user of API members’ products and a face to climate-conscious consumers.

Last April, over 400 investors representing more than $24 trillion in assets under management urged stronger leadership and more ambitious policies to lessen risk to investment and retirement savings of millions of Americans. Since then, the 2016 investor shareholder resolution season yielded a record breaking number of resolutions – 94 – addressing climate change, many levied as challenges to large oil companies.

And American public concern on global warming is reaching an eight year high, with nearly two-thirds of adults saying they worry about global warming a “great deal” or “a fair amount”, according to Gallup.

Facing all the facts, not cherry-picking them, can ground the task force’s work in today’s dynamic environment and enable an effective response in a changing world.

Solve Methane

While understanding and concern on the methane challenge has snowballed, API’s response has severely lagged.

But it doesn’t have to.

The methane emissions from the U.S. oil and natural gas industry account for the climate damage over a 20-year timeframe equivalent to roughly 240 coal fired power plants. And yet, when the Environmental Protection Agency issued rules earlier this year requiring operators to implement basic safeguards to detect and prevent emissions, API’s public response was to decry new environmental rules as “unreasonable and burdensome”.

Months prior, API’s combative regulatory filing questioned the authority of EPA even to regulate methane emissions, resisted twice-a-year inspections for accidental leaks and urged inspection exemptions that ignore insights on leak unpredictability.

The next round of methane rules is around the corner, and better late than never for API to embrace the United States’ goal of a 45% reduction in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and to support effective national methane rules grounded in science and economics. Supporting a level playing field to address the invisible but undeniable methane problem would increase investor confidence and keep more product in the pipelines working for the economy, not against the climate. And it just might help build public trust in an industry that according to Edelman lags only the pharmaceutical and financial services industries in that category.

Truth be told, new regulations and compliance are not cost-free, but neither are exploration and drilling. Investing in effective rules will provide climate and environmental safeguards – a needed advancement responsive to legitimate pressure that is only rising.

Support Carbon Pricing

Implementing a market based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is widely thought to be the ultimate key to achieving U.S. climate goals including cutting emissions 80% by 2050. Geographies from northeastern states and California to South Africa and the EU have implemented various forms of carbon pricing. A number of mostly European API members have publicly supported pricing carbon, for example BP recognizing “that carbon pricing by governments is the most comprehensive and economically efficient policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions.”

And yet, some prominent API members have to date withheld support for carbon pricing, or provided lukewarm quasi-endorsements but not lobbying muscle.

The oil and gas industry has survived through evolving, and it’s time to evolve on carbon pricing. An economically rational policy can provide the investment clarity companies want, while delivering the greenhouse gas reductions that societies, supply chains, and ecosystems need.

API is a large organization with diverse views represented, and the climate task force’s job won’t be easy. But the time for change couldn’t be better.

This post first appeared on the EDF + Business Blog

Posted in Economics, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Jobs / Read 1 Response

EPA Updates Standards to Reduce Methane Pollution from Landfills

Landfill Gas Extraction — photo by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

(This post was co-written by EDF’s Tomás Carbonell)

This morning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized long-overdue revisions to national emission standards and emission guidelines for new and existing municipal solid waste landfills.

These standards will reduce harmful air pollution from landfills, which are our nation’s third largest source of climate-destabilizing methane pollution and also discharge other deleterious pollutants.

In 2025, EPA estimates that the final standards and emission guidelines will reduce methane emissions by an estimated 334,000 metric tons and non-methane organic compounds by more than 2,000 metric tons, primarily by expanding the application of landfill gas capture technology.

Today’s announcement updates standards and guidelines for existing sources that have not been substantially changed since they were first issued in 1996. Over the last two decades, technology and practices have evolved to enable better and more efficient control of landfill emissions — both from new and existing sources. For instance, leading landfill operators and industry experts have identified and implemented a number of best practices for achieving further reductions in landfill emissions, including: installing gas collection systems early in the life cycle of the landfill; using proper landfill covers and rigorously monitoring the integrity of those covers; using landfill gas as an energy source to replace fossil fuels; and developing alternatives to landfilling, including recycling and composting of organic waste.

Despite these advances, some have argued that EPA is not authorized to update emission guidelines for existing sources and instead must maintain requirements that are now more than 20 years out of date. EPA’s authority to review and revise emission guidelines for existing landfills, however, is firmly grounded in the text and purpose of the Clean Air Act and consistent with bedrock principles of administrative law.

Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes these standards and guidelines for landfills, requires standards for new and existing sources alike to reflect the “best system of emission reduction,” taking into account cost and other factors.

Courts have consistently held that this provision of the Clean Air Act is manifestly forward-looking, enabling EPA to:

look toward what may fairly be projected for the regulated future, rather than the state of the art at present (National Asphalt Pavement Association v. Train, F.2d 775, 785, D.C. Circuit 1976 — quoting Portland Cement Association v. Ruckelshaus, 286 F.2d 375, 391, D.C. Cir. 1973)

If EPA is to fulfill this statutory obligation, it must have the ability to ensure that guidelines for existing sources are updated over time – just as the agency does for new sources — to reflect the latest advances and improvements in systems of emission reduction.

More broadly, EPA’s authority to update guidelines for existing sources flows inexorably from the fabric of the Clean Air Act, which recognizes the importance of EPA assessing new information about air pollution threats, incentivizing development of new technologies, and enabling their swift application.

In amending the Clean Air Act in 1977 Congress explicitly noted the importance of providing for continuous development and updating of standards:

Throughout this bill there is a philosophy of encouragement of technology development. It is an encouragement to induce, to stimulate, and to augment the innovative character of industry in reaching for more effective, less-costly systems to control air pollution. (S. Rep. No. 95-127 at *18, 1977)

Indeed, EPA periodically revisits the nation’s health-based standards for various pollutants in light of new scientific information and has revised standards for sources ranging from cars to power plants as new technologies have enabled more efficient and protective approaches. This process of regular review and improvement is consistent with firmly established principles of administrative law, which have long held that agencies have authority to revisit and update their regulations over time.

As the Supreme Court held in a landmark case:

Regulatory agencies do not establish rules of conduct to last forever; they are supposed … to adapt their rules and practices to the Nation’s needs in a volatile, changing economy. They are neither required nor supposed to regulate the present and the future within the inflexible limits of yesterday. (American Trucking Associations, Inc., et al v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe RR Co., et al., 387 U.S. 397; 87 S. Ct. 1608, 1967)

Although EPA’s final landfills standards secure important benefits for climate and public health, there remain significant opportunities to achieve cost-effective emission reductions from municipal solid waste landfills. EPA’s decision to revise its landfill standards, however, is firmly consistent with the Clean Air Act’s long history grounded in innovation and cost effective pollution reductions. It can help to ensure these requirements remain vibrant over time and spur development of these and other new technologies to reduce landfill pollution.

Posted in Clean Air Act, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, News, Policy / Read 2 Responses