Monthly Archives: April 2013

In Texas, Freshwater Use For Oil And Gas Should Be Reduced Strategically

By Virginia Palacios / Published: April 9, 2013

Texas is suffering from a water deficit; one that is spurring lawmakers at the Texas Capitol to discuss unprecedented, and much needed, investments in our water infrastructure.  With roughly 98 percent of the state in drought and water use restrictions in place in 70 percent of Texas counties as of April 3, 2013, it is crucial that our legislators consider every tool available to protect Texas’ water supply.  One approach is reducing freshwater use in the oil and natural gas sector, which can help alleviate competition for scarce water resources; however, this should be deployed at strategic places and times to minimize pollution risks and ensure a sustained future water supply for Texas.

In the Texas Legislature, the House recently passed a bill which will provide $2 billion to fund water supply projects.  It might surprise you to hear that this high price tag represents less than 10 percent of the state funding that will be needed over the next 50 years to sustain water supplies for Texas’ growing population.  In light of this, it is essential that legislators enact bills that encourage responsible water management solutions. Although the oil and gas industry’s water use appears miniscule when considered on a statewide basis, even small amounts can have a big impact in the most water stricken areas. EDF created a map of the counties in Texas currently being impacted by water scarcity and that would benefit greatly if the oil and gas sector reduced its use of freshwater.

Data used to create the map revealed the following:

  • The majority of water used for Texas oil and gas development in 2011 was in 13 counties, ten of which currently have water restrictions in place.
  • For 12 counties, oil and gas water use made up at least 25 percent of overall county-wide demand in 2011.
  • In 15 counties, oil and gas water use is projected to be greater than or equal to 25 percent of the water deficit in those counties in 2020.
  • In five counties, 100 percent of the water deficit projected for 2020 can be met by cutting oil and gas water use by half.

The oil and gas industry is a prime candidate for reducing its reliance on freshwater because – unlike the agriculture and municipal sectors – using non-freshwater is technologically feasible.  Some of the most popular alternative water sources for the oil and gas industry include brackish (or salty) water, treated flowback water from hydraulic fracturing and reclaimed water from public wastewater treatment plants.  Taking advantage of these options could be a win-win-win for industry, people and the environment. Read More »

Posted in Natural Gas, Texas / Comments are closed

America’s Schools On The ABCs Of Energy Efficiency

By Kate Zerrenner / Published: April 8, 2013

As part of my role at EDF, I keep track of stories about the benefits of energy efficiency. By that, I don’t just mean data and figures, rather stories about the real, tangible and positive impacts saving energy can have on everyday people. We live in a data-driven world, especially those of us who work on energy and climate issues, but it’s the stories about people that really stay with us. In the past few months, I’ve noticed a quite a few stories from local papers around the country discussing the benefits that schools have seen from implementing customer, or demand-side, solutions – such as energy efficiency, on-site renewables, like rooftop solar, and demand response (DR) initiatives – which allow customers to voluntarily reduce their high electricity use and receive a payment for doing so in the process.

For example, a story from the Louisville, Kentucky National Public Radio station WFPL covering the nation’s first net-zero school recently caught my attention.  To be considered a true “net-zero” building is an impressive feat, because it means the facility’s net annual energy consumption, AND its carbon footprint, is zero.

The featured school, Richardsville Elementary in Warren County, has made some impressive improvements, from installing geothermal heating and cooling, bamboo gym floors, solar panels on the school rooftop and in the parking lot, efficient cooking technologies in the cafeteria to using a ton of natural lighting. As a result, the school receives zero utility bills. But the two most compelling pieces of this story are the energy costs and the educational opportunities.

Kentucky has some of the cheapest electricity prices in the country. Many states, particularly in the southern U.S., also have low electricity prices—meaning, the cost incentive is not as powerful for energy efficiency. But I would argue that, regardless of electricity prices, schools always have an incentive to save money. With schools, for every energy dollar saved, one more dollar goes to good teachers, textbooks and computers. And the non-monetary incentives are extra important when talking about children, whose developing lungs need the cleaner, indoor air and more natural lighting that come with efficiently-designed schools, as detailed in my previous post on schools. Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy / Read 2 Responses

Don’t Turn The Lights Off On Demand Response

By Colin Meehan / Published: April 8, 2013

Source- FERC: National Assessment of Demand Response Potential

If Texas Legislators want to make sure the lights stay on this summer, they have a great opportunity to do so tomorrow, April 9, 2013, while saving electric customers money.  There are two critical bills being considered at the legislature in Texas that would expand the use of demand response, a tool that allows customers to voluntarily reduce peak, or high, electricity use and receive a payment for doing so in response to a signal from their energy provider.  We need to take advantage of tools like demand response to alleviate the pressures facing the Texas electric grid, what EDF refers to as the ‘Texas Energy Crunch,’ which include a shrinking water supply, growing population and rising summer temperatures.

Demand response has been identified by numerous experts as a key component to a reliable electric grid in Texas, and Tuesday’s Senate Business & Commerce Committee hearing at 8 am represents a great opportunity for the legislature to help meet future energy needs while providing direct benefits to customers and reducing water usage.

Demand response is critical to keeping the Texas electric grid humming.  According to a comprehensive report on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reliability from the Brattle Group, “the energy-only market will not dependably support ERCOT’s current reliability target until sufficient demand response penetration is achieved.”  Demand response can be deployed in a matter of months, while it usually takes two to five years to build a natural gas power plant, even after all the permitting and financing is completed.  At the same time, demand response provides financial incentives; in the mid-Atlantic region, where demand response plays a critical role in the electric market, customers were paid a total of $330 million last year.  At the same time, according to the grid operator for the region, PJM, demand response actually lowers overall energy system costs by bringing more competitive resources into the market.  During the summer of 2012, PJM estimates this effect saved all customers around $650 million.

Read More »

Posted in Demand Response, Texas / Comments are closed

An Old-Timer Reflects On The Importance Of New Technology To Battle Methane Emissions, And What You Can Do About It

By Mark Brownstein / Published: April 5, 2013

Anyone younger than 30 may not understand what a skipping record sounds like;  in their lives, listening to tunes has more often meant hitting a playlist on iTunes or streaming Pandora, than it has meant dusting off an old record. To us “old” folks who remember when clunky 8-track tapes were the height of portable music cool, today’s options are nothing less than astounding.

Believe it or not, I was thinking about this as I participated yesterday in a panel at the World Resource Institute in Washington, D.C. to discuss their new paper titled, “Cleaning the Air: Reducing Upstream Greenhouse Gas Emissions From U.S. Natural Gas Systems.”  Reviewing the report, and reflecting on EDF’s own work to understand and reduce methane and other air pollution, it’s clear a huge opportunity exists for technology to revolutionize air quality practices in the gas industry, just as it reengineered production and delivery of audio in the music industry. And the prospects are very bright that it will.

Champions of natural gas like to say that natural gas is a preferred fossil fuel alternative to coal and oil because it has less carbon content than either, and therefore, when burned, produces less carbon dioxide, which is the a primary cause of global warming. This is true.

But what is often not said is that natural gas is primarily made up of methane, which itself is a powerful greenhouse gas pollutant, many times more powerful than carbon dioxide, particularly when methane is first released into the atmosphere. Even small leaks at the wellhead or along the infrastructure used to process and transport the gas to our power plants, homes and businesses can undo much of the greenhouse gas benefits we think we are getting when we substitute natural gas for coal or petroleum sources.  Read More »

Posted in Methane, Natural Gas / Tagged , | Read 1 Response

New York City’s Air Is Well On Its Way To Becoming Cleaner Than Ever

By Abbey Brown / Published: April 4, 2013

NYC Clean Heat is halfway to achieving its goal of reducing harmful heating oil soot pollution in New York City by 50 percent by the end of 2013.

The NYC Clean Heat program experienced tremendous growth in 2012. The Mayoral announcement in June 2012 marked the official transition from the pilot phase to full implementation of the NYC Clean Heat program, which aims to clean the air in New York City by helping buildings convert from highly-polluting No. 6 and No. 4 heating oils to the cleanest available fuels. The heating oils used in one percent of New York City buildings create more soot pollution than all the cars and trucks in the City combined – that’s why upgrading these buildings to cleaner heating fuel is the single largest step New Yorkers can take to solve local air pollution.

The goal of NYC Clean Heat is to cut heating oil soot pollution in half by the end of 2013. NYC’s Department of Health estimates that achieving this goal will result in over 120 lives saved each year and prevent hundreds of emergency room visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular conditions.

I’ve been a part of the NYC Clean Heat team for almost two years now, and I can tell you that I am floored by the progress we’ve made. For instance: 

  • By the end of 2012, over 1,200 boilers – well beyond the number of conversions the regulations required – have switched to natural gas or ultra-low sulfur No. 2 (some of the cleanest available fuels), and over 2,000 additional boilers in line to convert.
  • These 1,200 conversions have resulted in over 150 tons of reduction of soot pollution, or particulate matter (PM2.5), which is equivalent to removing over 800,000 light-duty passenger vehicles from the road for 1 year. That’s over 13 billion miles travelled!
  • NYC Clean Heat won the 2013 Citizen Budget Commission’s Award for Public Service Innovation.

Why is all of this important? Approximately 1,500 buildings still need to complete conversions in 2013. Also, roughly 2,000 permits for No. 6 oil are set to expire before March 2014, representing 232 tons of soot pollution. Because this week is National Public Health Week, we are more aware than ever of what reducing air pollution in New York City will mean. NOW is the time to take action. Read More »

Posted in New York / Tagged | Comments are closed

More voices emerge in support of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

By Tim O'Connor / Published: April 3, 2013

In the past two weeks, California’s California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) received a heavy dose of positive news: strong support from major companies to develop cleaner transportation fuel options and solid evidence to prove the standard is working.

On April 2nd, major business interests and non-profit organizations across the state filed four separate briefs supporting the LCFS in the state Appeals Court in Fresno. The briefs, filed in response to a letter from the court in February, say definitively that the LCFS is a necessary program for California because it creates a market signal for new, cleaner fuels and solutions that can grow California’s economy and improve air quality.

The impressive diversity of interests weighing in is a who’s-who list of energy giants, including the nation’s largest supplier of natural gas for vehicles (Clean Energy), a 108-year old utility with 15 million customers (Pacific Gas & Electric), a consortium of alternative diesel companies (National Biodiesel Board and the California Biodiesel Alliance), and a coalition of five environmental organizations.

Notable excerpts from the briefs include:

With the impetus of the LCFS, the biodiesel industry in California is poised to triple in the next few years with substantial investments and new jobs in many of California’s most economically disadvantaged areas.

– The National Biodiesel Board/California Biodiesel Alliance

Companies with the potential to exceed this target… can sell credits to regulated entities who can’t…creating a strong financial incentive for lower-carbon fuel innovation.

This is why the LCFS is so important- it provides a long term investment signal to create a robust alternative fuel market in a reasonable timeframe.

– Clean Energy

PG&E supports the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in its efforts to preserve the LCFS…the LCFS is an important part of the overall California strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contributing 16 million metric tons of reductions…with a significant disruption to the LCFS program, it will make it less likely that California will reach its GHG emission reductions goals.

– Pacific Gas & Electric

The LCFS encourages companies to invest in low-carbon fuels to meet increasingly stringent performance targets. Based on statements from alternative fueling industries and the CARB LCFS Fourth Quarterly 2012 Update, even at this early stage of implementation, the LCFS has resulted in rising quantities of lower carbon fuels being consumed in California and the market is rewarding investments in cutting edge, low-carbon fuels.

– NGO Coalition that includes American Lung Association, Coalition for Clean Air, Conservation Law Foundation, EDF, and the Sierra Club

 

In addition to the legal filings, California also released its latest progress report on LCFS implementationin March showing growth in low carbon fuel deliveries to the state. Credits from the cleanest biofuels have grown by 300% in just nine months, and the data shows that regulated companies have over-complied with the standard by 45% — that’s more than a million tons over the past two years.

Reports have also begun surfacing that major deals for bulk volumes of low carbon fuels are on the horizon. For example, Neste Oil submitted a letter to the California State Senate stating they have already delivered commercial volumes of renewable diesel from tallow (an ultra-low carbon fuel) to California and “expects to deliver approximately a hundred million gallons of NExBTL renewable diesel fuel into California this year.”

In a similar story, San Diego-based Sapphire Energy recently entered into its first commercial agreement for “green crude” (made from algae) sales – an agreement with oil giant Tesoro. According to Sapphire’s president, “This moment is enormously important for the industry as it validates the benefits and advantages of [our] crude, and confirms its place as a market-viable, refiner-ready, renewable crude oil solution.” In a story on Sapphire’s website, the new partnership with Tesoro was described as potentially helping supply clean energy to meet the demand created by new fuel standards, including California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Implementation of the LCFS is still in the early stages, but in just over two years the standard has started to deliver tangible economic and environmental benefits. The regulation is poised to change a fossil-fuel dependent transportation system that has been developed over the last one hundred years and that costs California drivers almost one hundred billion dollars every year – most of which leaves our state (and nation) the moment it’s spent.

Using Californian ingenuity and the American entrepreneurial engine, we can change the status quo – toward a more sustainable system that doesn’t poison the air and pinch our pocketbooks.

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