Energy Exchange

As nations sign on to end routine flaring, Biden admin must act

By Jon Goldstein / Bio / Published: July 15, 2022

The last two months have seen encouraging momentum in the effort to tackle emissions of methane — a greenhouse gas that drives over a quarter of current warming — and the practice of flaring, which is a major source of energy waste and methane pollution.

Starting with last month’s Major Economies Forum, one of the last major climate gatherings before COP 27 in Egypt, signatories to the Global Methane Pledge introduced a new goal to end routine flaring as soon as possible, and by 2030 at the latest.

Then, just this week, the U.S. and Mexico announced a commitment to cooperate and help Mexico develop a plan to eliminate routine flaring in alignment with the Global Methane Pledge.

Fast action to end routine flaring is critical for reducing emissions of methane, protecting human health and the climate, and stopping needless waste of energy resources as the world faces an energy crisis spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Now, the U.S. has work to do to ensure domestic policies can live up to our own global commitments. Fortunately, both the Bureau of Land Management and the Environmental Protection Agency have the authority and obligation to implement strong rules that end routine flaring.

Also posted in BLM Methane, Colorado, Methane regulatons, Natural Gas, PermianMAP / Tagged New Mexico | Language: English / Comments are closed

In wake of Supreme Court ruling, we must go full steam ahead to reduce methane pollution

By Rosalie Winn / Bio / Published: July 14, 2022

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent climate change ruling has unfortunately restricted the tools available to EPA in its effort to address climate pollution from power plants. However, it’s also important to recognize that the ruling in no way changed EPA’s longstanding authority and duty to address climate pollution under the Clean Air Act to address climate pollution itself — including from new cars and freight trucks, industrial sources, new and existing power plants, and oil and gas development. And with respect to oil and gas pollution, this decision in no way impedes the agency’s ongoing and important efforts to reduce oil and gas methane pollution.

It remains critical that the EPA exercise its clear authority and obligation to move forward with protective climate standards, including its proposed rules to curb methane pollution from the oil and gas sector, which emits roughly 16 million tons of methane annually. Globally, methane from human sources is responsible for over a quarter of the warming we are experiencing today.

EPA’s authority to tackle methane pollution was reaffirmed by bipartisan majorities in Congress just last year, and the agency has commonsense, cost-effective tools at hand to address the health harms posed by oil and gas methane pollution, which in the U.S. alone has the near-term climate impact every year of 294 million passenger vehicles. Read More »

Also posted in Methane, Methane regulatons, Natural Gas / Language: English / Comments are closed

The ZEV future is here: An 8,500% increase in truck deployments, commitments is proof.

By Sam Becker / Bio / Published: July 12, 2022

Commercial U.S. fleets are going big on electric trucks, according to a new EDF analysis of class 2b-8 fleet announcements, which finds a nearly 8,500% increase in zero-emission fleet deployments and commitments since 2017.

To arrive at this eye-popping stat, EDF tracked public announcements of leading fleet commitments to deploy zero-emission trucks, as well as actual deployments (trucks on roads).

The recent influx of these vehicles — most of which are electric — is an important step toward reducing the health-harming, climate change pollution from diesel trucks and a key indicator of a flourishing market. But more ambition from policymakers is needed if we are going to achieve 100% zero-emission truck sales by 2035 — a critical date to ensure a near-zero-emission transportation sector by 2050.

Also posted in Electric Vehicles / Language: English / Comments are closed

New York PSC must ensure charging infrastructure in place for medium and heavy-duty fleet electrification

By Elizabeth B. Stein / Bio / Published: June 29, 2022

One thing is clear: The New York Public Service Commission does not shy away from a challenge. Since the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act was adopted in 2019, setting economy-wide greenhouse gas reduction targets and directing the PSC to eliminate emissions from electric generation, the commission has been hard at work updating its programs where its role under the new law is clear, and making sense of the rest.

New York’s decarbonization path is nascent, particularly when it comes to eliminating pollution from activities that do not rely directly on utility systems today, but that will rely on those systems to eliminate their emissions in the future. Trucks and buses are a perfect example. These vehicles are a small slice of the transportation pie, yet they are responsible for an outsized share of the air pollution from transportation, including about half of the transportation-related nitrogen oxide and particulate matter contaminants. These pollutants cause serious health problems, like asthma — especially in communities that experience high truck traffic.

Also posted in Electric Vehicles, New York / Language: English / Comments are closed

Creating data to support communities on the front lines of oil and gas production in the U.S.

By EDF Blogs / Bio / Published: June 22, 2022

By Jeremy Proville and Kate Roberts

This week we published a new study that combines locations of active oil and gas wells with census tract data in a way that helps us better understand the characteristics of the communities living near them. Our findings support what environmental justice groups have been voicing for years: in many counties across America, people who have been historically marginalized — communities of color, older Americans, children and people living under the federal poverty line — often live near wells in greater proportions than the other groups that make up the rest of their local county.

In addition to publishing these data with our study, we also used it to develop an interactive tool, which users can access to explore how each of 13 different demographic groups relate to oil and gas wells across all U.S. counties.

Also posted in Methane, Natural Gas / Language: English / Comments are closed

Rogue methane leaks from idle wells carry four big takeaways for policymakers

By Adam Peltz / Bio / Published: May 26, 2022

An ongoing methane leak involving several long-term idle wells in Southern California is raising safety concerns for nearby residents and highlights an important climate issue. Southern California has some of the worst air quality in the country, and leaks like these compound the negative impacts on some of the country’s most vulnerable populations. Both in California and across the country, many hundreds of thousands of end-of-life oil and gas wells are idle. That means that they are just sitting around awaiting proper site closure, which involves plugging the wells with cement to prevent gases or liquids from escaping and threatening the environment and public health.

Several such wells were recently found to be leaking methane — a powerful greenhouse gas that often escapes from oil and gas facilities alongside other toxic pollutants — in the Morningstar section of Bakersfield, CA. Local residents are concerned about the possibility of subsurface methane migration to homes and other structures in the vicinity.

While CalGEM and other agencies work to investigate and remediate the situation, four takeaways are already emerging:

Also posted in California, Methane, Natural Gas / Language: English / Comments are closed