Energy Exchange

How to decarbonize California’s economy without breaking the bank

By Michael Colvin / Published: June 25, 2019

As temperatures rise and the impacts of climate change become more prevalent, California is aggressively implementing solutions that will take more greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. California has one of the most ambitious climate goals of any state in the country, pledging to get to 100% clean electric power by 2045.

To get to 100% clean electricity, California will have to remove carbon (or “decarbonize”) in two major areas: vehicles and buildings. For California’s residential and commercial buildings – which, combined, make up about 25% of the state’s total greenhouse gas pollution — decarbonizing means changing how we heat (space heating for warmth, water heating and clothes drying are the best examples) and how we cook.

Posted in California, Clean Energy, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

Ohio Supreme Court ends FirstEnergy’s illegal subsidies in a win for customers and the environment

By John Finnigan / Published: June 19, 2019

Update: On August 20, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected FirstEnergy’s motion for reconsideration of “credit support” charges approved by state regulators in 2016. The Supreme Court ordered the charge be removed, saying state regulators had failed to place the necessary conditions on how FirstEnergy spent the subsidies.

In the three years’ time the appeals process has taken, FirstEnergy has collected nearly all of the $600 million it was seeking. Current law states that FirstEnergy gets to keep the $600 million rather than refund it to customers. Environmental Defense Fund and our partners have been working hard to change the refund law and today’s ruling should give added momentum to this effort.

The Ohio Supreme Court today rejected FirstEnergy’s “credit support” charges approved by state regulators in 2016. The Supreme Court ordered the charge be removed, saying state regulators had failed to place the necessary conditions on how FirstEnergy spent the subsidies.

For years, FirstEnergy has been seeking a bailout for its uneconomic coal and nuclear plants. The Ohio-based utility finally got its wish in late 2016, when the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved more than $600 million in customer-funded subsidies.

Today the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that those customer funded subsidies must be removed. In the three years’ time the appeals process has taken, FirstEnergy has collected nearly all of the $600 million it was seeking. Current law states that FirstEnergy gets to keep the $600 million rather than refund it to customers. We have been working hard to change the refund law and today’s ruling should give added momentum to this effort.

Posted in Clean Energy, FirstEnergy, Ohio / Comments are closed

Trump’s EPA moves one step closer to dangerous proposal to eliminate methane pollution standards

By Rosalie Winn / Published: June 18, 2019

Over the last several weeks, widespread reporting has documented the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. Recent reports have shown White House attempts to block a senior state department official’s testimony on climate change, and documents that EDF recently obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests show Trump administration advisor William Happer coordinating closely with the Heartland Institute to discuss work that sought to undermine climate science.

At the same time, the Trump EPA has likely taken another step towards entirely deregulating a powerful climate pollutant. Last week, the Trump EPA sent to the Office of Management and Budget a proposal that is expected to entirely eliminate direct regulation of methane from the oil and gas sector — an action that is starkly at odds with the overwhelming body of scientific evidence on the harmful nature of methane pollution and one that even some of the biggest industry leaders have come out publicly against.

Posted in Methane, Methane regulatons, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

New and better way to assess the climate impact of new pipelines

By N. Jonathan Peress / Published: June 11, 2019

The urgent need to decarbonize the energy system makes it imperative for state and federal regulators to understand the climate impacts of proposed energy infrastructure. Officials deciding whether to approve new natural gas pipelines must be able to answer a crucial question: Will a particular pipeline reduce pollution by speeding the demise of more carbon intensive alternatives, or increase greenhouse emissions by locking in dependence on another fossil fuel?

Yet to date, natural gas utilities and pipeline developers have been largely unwilling to provide detailed life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) assessments to regulators reviewing their supply projects and plans. Nor have regulatory agencies been pressing for this data.

In fact just this morning, Federal Energy Regulatory (FERC) Commissioner Richard Glick testified to Congress that “the Commission is ignoring its statutory mandates under the Natural Gas Act by refusing to analyze reasonably foreseeable greenhouse gas emissions associated with new interstate natural gas pipelines and facilities used to import or export liquefied natural gas.”

But a new analysis released this week of a proposed interstate pipeline project in New York and New Jersey significantly advances this compelling need. The fact that it was commissioned by a utility company makes it even more significant.

Posted in Natural Gas, New Jersey, New York / Comments are closed

Industrial methane emissions are underreported, study finds

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 7, 2019

By Amanda Garris

Emissions of methane from the industrial sector have been vastly underestimated, researchers from Cornell and Environmental Defense Fund have found.

Using a Google Street View car equipped with a high-precision methane sensor, the researchers discovered that methane emissions from ammonia fertilizer plants were 100 times higher than the fertilizer industry’s self-reported estimate. They also were substantially higher than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimate for all industrial processes in the United States.

“We took one small industry that most people have never heard of and found that its methane emissions were three times higher than the EPA assumed was emitted by all industrial production in the United States,” said John Albertson, co-author and professor of civil and environmental engineering. “It shows us that there’s a huge gap between a priori estimates and real-world measurements.”

The researchers’ findings are reported in “Estimation of Methane Emissions From the U.S. Ammonia Fertilizer Industry Using a Mobile Sensing Approach,” published May 28 in Elementa. The work was funded in part by a grant from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future’s joint research program with EDF. Read More »

Posted in Climate, Methane / Comments are closed

Three key questions for EU policymakers considering the sustainability of gas

By Poppy Kalesi / Published: June 4, 2019

In response to DG Energy’s invitation that the European gas industry investigate the ways it can contribute to the reduction of methane, a powerful climate pollutant, two prominent trade groups issued a new report to inform policy discussions around the 2020 gas package – also touted as the decarbonisation package – ahead of the 32nd Madrid Forum in Spain this week.

At nearly 150 pages, the Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) and Marcogaz report is a substantial review of best practices for reducing oil and gas methane emissions. For all of its heft, however, the report does little to spell out any relevant policy recommendations to improve the industry’s overall efficiency, skirting its responsibility to advise the Commission on methane policy when it is such a pressing sustainability question to answer in the Union Methane Strategy before the end of 2019.

Posted in Europe, Methane, Methane regulatons / Comments are closed