Energy Exchange

The time has come for NYPSC to focus on charging infrastructure for trucks and buses

By Elizabeth B. Stein / Published: May 11, 2022

New York is at a crossroads. Our flagship climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, requires significant emissions reductions statewide. This puts every sector of our economy on the hook to deliver and position New York on a path to climate safety. To achieve the CLCPA’s goals, government agencies, communities and the private sector must work together to establish systems and solutions that reduce climate pollution, improve air quality and equity, and spark economic growth throughout the state.

The CLCPA’s vision cannot be achieved without tackling emissions from the transportation sector, the state’s second largest source of climate pollution and a significant contributor to local air pollution. New York policymakers have recognized this reality, but a transition to new types of vehicles can only be as successful as the infrastructure that powers them. And there, the New York Public Service Commission holds the key to success. That is why EDF, together with parties, has just filed a petition requesting that the Commission take steps to address the charging infrastructure needs of electric trucks and buses in the state.

Posted in Electric Vehicles, NESCAUM, New York / Comments are closed

Lessons from New Mexico and Colorado’s leading methane rules

By Jon Goldstein / Published: May 5, 2022

Methane leaks from oil and gas sites represents a problem on many fronts. They create harmful air pollution, contribute to global warming and can even cause explosions. They also result in a lot of wasted gas.

Colorado and New Mexico — two of the nation’s leading energy producers — recently ramped up their methane pollution standards for the oil and gas industry.

Ensure standards apply to smaller, low-producing wells

The vast majority of the nation’s wells produce less than 15 barrels of oil a day and there are often calls for these sites to be exempted from environmental standards. This is a major problem because their footprint is huge and their climate impact adds up.

Posted in BLM Methane, Colorado, Methane / Tagged New Mexico | Comments are closed

States should not weaken liability laws for CCS projects

By Scott Anderson / Published: May 3, 2022

Early this January, a geyser in West Texas started spewing tens of thousands of barrels of salty water a hundred feet into the air and coating the nearby land with salt deposits. It took about 10 days to discover the culprit was an old, dry oil well plugged in 1957 by Gulf Oil. By the next day, the Texas Railroad Commission had turned over the blowout and remediation to Chevron (who acquired Gulf Oil in the 1980s), who assumed full responsibility immediately and without question.

This is a normal cost of doing business in the oilfield in Texas and elsewhere — you break it, you pay for it.

Traditional regulatory and legal principles around liability are designed to hold operators accountable when they or those they are responsible for fail to live up to their responsibilities. Such rules encourage operators to do as good and thorough a job as technically feasible.

However, some states are weakening these rules for operators of carbon sequestration and storage projects. If this quiet trend continues, the integrity of these projects, their climate benefits and their public acceptance could be significantly threatened.

Posted in Carbon capture, Texas, Wyoming / Comments are closed

Dallas workshop showcases Texas-sized excitement for ZEV trucks

By Phillip Martin / Published: May 2, 2022

Last week, EDF and the North Central Texas Council of Governments hosted a daylong workshop on the state of zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles in Texas. Over 100 fleet owners, managers, industry experts and government officials came together to discuss the latest technology for hydrogen and electric trucks, the state of the Texas grid and go along for a ride-and-drive on some of the latest truck models on the road.

The transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S., and medium- and heavy-duty vehicles are responsible for more than half of the smog-forming pollution from the sector. Freight trucks and buses also consume more than 55 billion gallons of fuel annually at a significant cost for truckers and fleets.

EDF is committed to helping fleets of all sizes transition to cleaner ZEV truck models and in the process cut dangerous air pollution and protect the health of communities. That’s where this workshop comes in.

Posted in Electric Vehicles, Texas / Comments are closed

For Colorado’s clean truck ambition, it’s time for action, not delay

By Larissa Koehler / Published: April 20, 2022

In March 2022, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis unveiled an ambitious and forward-thinking zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty truck strategy his administration said could reduce climate emissions from this sector at least 45% by 2050.

Gov. Polis is right: Colorado’s Clean Truck Strategy would build upon the state’s “national-leading climate and infrastructure goals.” But key pieces necessary to achieve that ambition have already stalled. Three state agencies (Colorado Energy Office, Department of Transportation, Air Pollution Control Division) want to push adoption of the Advanced Clean Trucks rule and the Heavy-Duty Omnibus (low NOx) rule — key policy drivers for this transition — to next year.

In response, EDF and a host of other environmental groups, environmental justice advocates and local governments filed a petition with the state’s Air Quality Control Commission to move forward with the ACT and low NOx rulemaking and adopt these regulations this year, rather than delay to 2023, and AQCC agreed to hear the petition on April 21.

In short, the AQCC should work with the Polis administration to move forward with adopting the ACT and low NOx rulemaking by the end of the year.

Posted in Colorado, Electric Vehicles, General / Comments are closed

An all-inclusive way to look at energy transition in New Jersey

By EDF Blogs / Published: April 11, 2022

By Elizabeth B. Stein and Cole Jermyn

Update: On August 17^th, the BPU voted to accept the final version of the Ratepayer Impact Study. The final version has the same limitations EDF and others identified in comments on the proposed study, including not accounting for the environmental and public health benefits of the energy transition, and failing to fully account for modernized utility practices that can minimize costs such as innovative price signals and grid modernization. But even with these limitations, the final study shows that electrification is the pathway to both lower costs and less greenhouse gas pollution.

By 2030, New Jersey ratepayers who adopt electric vehicles, electrify their buildings and improve their energy efficiency will see lower energy costs than both their fossil fuel-reliant neighbor and the average customer today. This is true for small and large commercial customers, residential customers and low-income residential customers. These results should be a wakeup call to ensure all customers can afford to deploy these technologies in order to meet the state’s environmental and energy affordability goals.

New Jersey, like many other states, has been hard at work developing a strategy to drastically reduce its own climate impact. The state’s residents are already experiencing more than their share of climate change. With 130 miles of coastline, including population centers near much-loved beaches, more frequent extreme weather events are an existential threat to the state.

The state’s Energy Master Plan identifies and coordinates efforts, in various parts of the economy, to achieve a sustainable pathway to substantial decarbonization by 2050. But a new study, proposed by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, that seeks to estimate the financial impact of these efforts to eliminate fossil fuels on gas and electric utility customers, is infected with methodological flaws and faulty assumptions that would put it out of step with the state’s energy and climate policy.

Posted in Clean Energy, New Jersey / Comments are closed