Energy Exchange

Strategies for smarter, cleaner buildings in California

By Michael Colvin / Published: September 20, 2019

California’s buildings are one of the largest remaining emitters of greenhouse gases. Building emissions come from appliances that combust gas, such as water heaters and furnaces, but are also from our refrigerators, air conditioners and other heavy-duty appliances that are either always on or use a lot of electricity.

California has spent decades making our appliances more efficient through robust energy efficiency programs and other projects. But at a recent hearing at the California Energy Commission, lead Commissioner Andrew McAllister suggested a new vision for reducing the greenhouse gas pollution coming from our homes and buildings: What if the electrified devices in our home could talk to the electric grid?

Posted in California, Demand Response, Gas to Clean, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

North Carolina’s transportation sector is poised for electrification, but creative solutions are needed to achieve success

By Dionne Delli-Gatti / Published: September 19, 2019

In 2018, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order 80, an initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality and enhance public health statewide. It was an important step toward addressing the global climate crisis starting right here in our backyard. The governor’s order calls for the creation of a Zero Emission Vehicle Plan, which outlines a goal to get 80,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025. This is an exciting initiative that should help push the EV market along. But North Carolina is capable of achieving far more than is laid out in the current plan — most of which the state is already on track to achieve.

North Carolina’s transportation system has long been ripe for electrification. In fact, the state will likely reach or exceed 80,000 EVs, roughly 4.5% of light-duty (passenger vehicle) sales, by 2025 under a business as usual scenario. Therefore, a more ambitious target of 15% light duty EV sales, with an additional 5% medium-duty and heavy-duty EV (large trucks and buses) sales target, is not only achievable but also better supports the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% over 2005 levels by 2025. North Carolina will need to adopt new policies to support this ambitious goal.

Posted in Clean Energy, Electric Vehicles, North Carolina / Comments are closed

Buckle up: Methane monitoring is going mobile

By Isabel Mogstad / Published: September 10, 2019

A “better, faster, cheaper” methane leak detection solution used to be an elusive unicorn of the oil and gas industry. Yet, since EDF commenced its methane innovation work in 2014, there has been a mass proliferation of innovative methane detection companies, big and small. With new ideas and new technologies, innovators are challenging old assumptions and pushing the frontier of what is possible.

The Stanford and Environmental Defense Fund Mobile Monitoring Challenge launched in 2018 to independently and rigorously assess a selection of the most promising technologies available today to help oil and gas companies detect, pinpoint and estimate methane leaks from upstream production facilities.

The results of this challenge were published today in the journal Elementa — and the findings offer a glimpse towards a promising new era of higher frequency monitoring. Even as the Trump administration attempts to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency’s common-sense methane regulations, some companies are looking to innovative technology to go above and beyond what is currently required. The results are significant beyond U.S. borders as well. Numerous international oil companies, including the members of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, will require higher frequency, accurate methane monitoring to help achieve their methane reduction commitments.

Here are the three main takeaways from the Mobile Monitoring Challenge study.

Posted in Fourth Wave, Methane, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

Despite federal rollbacks, Illinois can write its own climate, clean energy future

By Christie Hicks / Published: September 9, 2019

State leaders, including many in Illinois, are embracing action to promote clean energy and address climate change despite the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back common sense limits on pollution.

In Illinois we have an opportunity to act as a bulwark against wrong-headed policies promulgated in Washington. Indeed, state leaders are currently considering legislation that would make Illinois a clean energy leader, with benefits that communities across the state would share.

Posted in CEJA, Clean Energy, Illinois / Comments are closed

EPA’s proposal to rollback methane rules ignores scientific evidence, will lead to 5 million tons of methane pollution

By EDF Blogs / Published: September 3, 2019

By Rosalie Winn and Jessica Christy

Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler proposed to entirely eliminate regulation of methane pollution from the oil and gas sector. He also proposed removing all federal regulation for both methane and harmful volatile organic compounds from pipelines and other midstream facilities.

The proposal is an attempt to prevent any federal oversight of pollution from more than 850,000 older oil and gas facilities across the country, while removing additional safeguards for new sources in major swaths of the oil and gas supply chain.

The proposal targets previous rules EPA adopted to address air pollution from oil and gas facilities built or updated after 2015. These “new source” rules include commonsense requirements to cut both methane and VOC emissions across the upstream (production, gathering and boosting, and processing) and midstream (transmission and storage) segments of the oil and gas supply chain. While companies have been complying with these policies for years, the current proposal seeks to:

Eliminate all methane standards across the oil and gas supply chain.
Exempt facilities in the transmission and storage segment from any federal standards.
Prevent any future regulation of pollution from “existing” sources built before 2015.

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

How renewables, natural gas and flat demand led to a drop in CO2 emissions from the U.S. power sector

By Kristina Mohlin / Published: September 3, 2019

New state-by-state research shows significant reductions across the country from 2005-2015

Decarbonizing the power sector in the United States will be critical to achieving the goal of a 100% clean economy by 2050 – especially since reaching “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions across the economy means that other energy-using sectors such as buildings and transport will increasingly need to be electrified, switching away from direct fossil fuel use and relying on low-carbon electricity instead. Demand for electricity is therefore very likely to grow in the future – which makes it critical that its CO2 emissions sharply decrease through the accelerated deployment of low carbon technologies, such as wind and solar power, in the decades ahead.

Posted in Clean Energy, Natural Gas / Comments are closed