Energy Exchange

How oil & gas states did (and did not) protect land and water in 2019

By EDF Blogs / Published: February 6, 2020

Regulating the day-to-day details of an oil and gas operation can be a complex task, with both regulators and operators working hard to prevent leaks, explosions and other threats to worker safety, community health and the environment. As we learn more about technical advancements in the oilfield as well as risks from various aspects of production, it is vital that the regulations requiring best practices are kept up to date.

EDF believes this process of continuous improvement is foundational for protecting land, water and communities from development-related impacts. That’s why we track what states are up to on a consistent basis. Building on our review of state progress toward this goal in 2018, we’ve gathered up the big changes states made this past year and assessed the trends.

Here are the big things we saw in 2019.

Posted in Methane, Natural Gas, produced water / Tagged produced water | Comments are closed

5 best practices for Canadian methane regulations

By Shareen Yawanarajah Ph.D. / Published: October 21, 2019

The Canadian government recently reaffirmed its commitment to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45% below 2012 levels by 2025 as part of the Pan-Canadian Framework. In April 2018, the federal government published comprehensive regulations intended to achieve this commitment.

Methane causes 25% of the warming that we are experiencing today, and the largest source of industrial emissions is from the oil and gas industry. Reducing emissions by 40-45% by 2025 will be equivalent to shutting down 1,300 coal plants — or roughly one-third of the coal plants around the world.

Posted in Methane, Methane regulatons / Tagged Canada | Comments are closed

New time-of-use program empowers Illinois consumers to lower bills, reduce carbon footprint

By Christie Hicks / Published: October 16, 2019

In early October, the Illinois Commerce Commission approved a new electricity rate that holds tremendous opportunity — a time-of-use rate option for customers of Commonwealth Edison Company, the largest utility in the state. This new pricing structure has the potential to lower bills for consumers, while reducing our reliance on dirty sources of power.

After five years of fighting for a TOU rate in Illinois, EDF and the Citizens Utility Board helped design the voluntary new option for customers, which includes three pricing periods for residential customers: Super Peak (2pm-7pm), Off Peak (10pm-6am) and Peak (all other times), with prices being highest during the Super Peak, and lowest during Off Peak. The pilot will serve residential customers and target electric vehicle owners, whose usage is typically higher but more flexible. The time-of-use option is similar to real-time pricing currently available (also on a voluntary basis) in Illinois, but with distinct, pre-determined pricing periods rather than fluctuating hour by hour as real-time prices do.

Posted in Clean Energy, Illinois, Time of Use / Comments are closed

Is the oil and gas industry serious about climate?

By Mark Brownstein / Published: September 23, 2019

Hundreds of diplomats and heads of state will converge on the United Nations this week to discuss urgent actions to prevent catastrophic climate change. Just a few blocks away, CEOs and other top executives of the world’s largest oil and gas companies will host a meeting of their own, where they will also be talking about the climate, aiming to showcase the industry’s efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s just a 10-minute walk between the two, but the symbolic journey is more like a thousand miles — and oil and gas producers are still struggling with the first steps. Their New York gathering, part of something called the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), could reveal important signs as to how serious they are about picking up the pace.

That challenge is stark: The world’s economy needs to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions by the end of this century if we are to have better-than-even odds of limiting warming to two degrees. Net-zero means not putting more carbon into the atmosphere than we can take out. To hit the global goal, Europe, the U.S. and other advanced economies must get to net-zero by 2050.

Posted in Methane, Natural Gas / 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

Can fossil fuel companies find a place in a climate-friendly world?

By Fred Krupp / Published: July 24, 2019

We have to transform our energy system to avert the worst impacts of climate change. And if oil and gas companies want a place in that future, they must transform themselves—or else be consigned to history. Is it realistic to think fossil fuel companies could be part of the solution? Plenty of reasonable people say no, but I think constructive engagement with some in the industry can speed the transition. A few companies have taken meaningful steps in the right direction. To secure a place in the future, however, they need to think bigger and move faster.

The challenge is urgent and stark: The world’s economy needs to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions early in the second half of the century to achieve what science says is necessary. Net-zero means putting no more carbon into the atmosphere than we can take out. To hit this ambitious global goal, Europe, the U.S. and other advanced economies must get to net-zero, 100% clean economies by 2050.

Posted in Methane, Methane regulatons / Comments are closed