Environmental News For The Week Ending 02 February 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times).

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Unlawful stem cell products continue to harm people as FDA deadline looms – More than two years after the Food and Drug Administration updated its regulatory framework for regenerative medicine, hundreds of businesses continue to sell unapproved stem cell products and other drugs derived from human blood and tissue. The framework clarified how the agency would oversee the growing market for these products, and it encouraged the development of new therapies while also aiming to restrain the proliferation of unproven – and often dangerous – stem cell treatments. Businesses were given three years to come into compliance, a period that ends this November. But the FDA has signaled that many clinics and providers have yet to heed approval requirements for their products. As of 2017, there were more than 700 clinics advertising stem cell products for a range of conditions, yet the agency has not received the volume of approval applications is expected. It’s increasingly clear that the FDA is going to need help from Congress to make sure regenerative therapy developers comply with the law. Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Washington are aware of the problem: they’ve been appropriately concerned for several years about a large number of companies that sell unapproved stem cell products. With little to no evidence, providers often claim that these products treat countless medical problems from arthritis to autism and multiple sclerosis; in fact, many have harmed patients’ health and offered no proven therapeutic benefits. Most recently, several people in Nebraska developed serious infections and sepsis, a potentially life-threatening complication, after receiving unapproved stem cell products. In other cases, patients have been blinded, developed tumors at the site of drug injection, and even died. The companies that sell these products trade on the legitimate potential that cell- and gene-based therapies could one day help treat, and even cure, serious illnesses, traumatic injuries, and debilitating chronic conditions. The promise of this emerging field is real. But it takes years of careful testing to make sure that drugs are safe and effective for humans – that they will heal and not harm. So far, only a handful of cell-based therapies have been approved by FDA.

‘No Safe Level of Air Pollution’: Major Study Links Cardiac Arrests With Fine Particulate Matter Exposure – Researchers now say there is “no safe level” of air pollution exposure after a large-scale study found a correlation between exposure to fine particle matter, known as PM2.5, and cardiac arrests, according to theThe Sydney Morning Herald.The researchers found that exposure to PM2.5 that even fell below global standards was hazardous, suggesting that tighter regulations and cleaner energy is required, according to the study, which was published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.Scientists from the University of Sydney led the study, which analyzed air quality in Japan against 249,372 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. They concluded that even low-level exposure was associated with an increased risk of cardiac arrest for people over 65, as The Sydney Morning Herald reported.The researchers noticed that the risk of cardiac arrest grew by up to 4 percent for every increase of 10 units in the PM2.5 levels. “Our study supports recent evidence that there is no safe level of air pollution – finding an increased risk of cardiac arrest despite air quality generally meeting the standards,” said report author professor Kazuaki Negishi from the University of Sydney School of Medicine, as The Canberra Times reported. “Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a major medical emergency – with less than one in 10 people worldwide surviving these events – and there has been increasing evidence of an association with the more acute air pollution, or fine particulate matter such as PM2.5,” said Negishi in a University of Sydney statement. “We analyzed almost a quarter of a million cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and found a clear link with acute air pollution levels.”The findings are troubling for Australia, which has seen its usually pristine air plummet in quality due to the recent bushfires. In the study, more than 90 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurred at levels below the Australian standard of 25 micrograms per cubic meter. Put another way, the air quality levels ranked as “fair,” “good” or “very good” under Australian standards, as the The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The U.S. and Japanese standard is less strict at 35 micrograms per cubic meter. The researchers expect the worsening air quality will lead to more heart attack fatalities in Australia, especially among older people.

Penn Environment, local leaders push for clean air in Pittsburgh – There were 90 days when the air quality was unhealthy in Pittsburgh in 2018, according a new report by Penn Environment. They say it is harming our health and economy. Penn Environment and two local leaders gathered outside Pittsburgh City Council chambers with this message on Tuesday: Pittsburgh loves clean air. “People here in Allegheny County are fed up and are ready to be able to breathe without putting their health at risk,” said Allegheny County Council member Bethany Hallam. Hallam said the results from the 2018 report on air quality from Penn Environment are not OK. She said 90 days of bad air is 90 too many. Hallam is advocating for a more environmentally-minded county board of health and more money for the county health department. Dr. Deborah Gentile, an asthma researcher with years of experience working with children, also spoke on Tuesday. She said it is children, including those with asthma, who are suffering from this. She also said this is especially true for those living near Clairton Coke Works and Edgar Thomson Steel Mill. “This is more than double the rate we see in the country and across the state. Additionally, those children with identified asthma, 60% of them are poorly controlled, meaning they are symptomatic and sick often,” Gentile said. To combat this, the speakers said greener solutions are key, such as electric buses and energy efficient buildings..

New toxic byproducts found in chlorinated water – Adding chlorine is one of the most common methods of disinfecting drinking water, but just how safe is it? Researchers from Johns Hopkins have now found evidence that reactions between chlorine and natural compounds in water may produce previously-unknown toxic byproducts. It’s well known that chlorine is a powerful disinfectant, killing bacteria, viruses and other microbes effectively. As such, it’s credited with drastically stemming the tide of waterborne disease such as cholera and typhoid, after it became widely used to treat drinking water in the early 20th century. But adding chlorine isn’t without its own problems. The chemical reacts with compounds called phenols that are naturally found in water, creating potentially-harmful byproducts. But as the World Health Organization (WHO) says in a report (PDF, page 6), “the risks to health from these byproducts are extremely small in comparison with the risks associated with inadequate disinfection.” But now, the Johns Hopkins researchers have found signs of new byproducts that have until now gone undetected. The team suspected that current methods of analyzing the chemistry of drinking water may miss some of these byproducts, so they tested another technique. The researchers used N-α-acetyl-lysine, an amino acid that’s often used in toxicology to detect harmful molecules known as reactive electrophiles. The team added this amino acid to water that had first been treated with chlorine the same way that drinking water usually is at large scales. They then left it to sit for a full day before analyzing it using mass spectrometry. And sure enough, the researchers detected two related compounds: 2-butene-1,4-dial (BDA), and chloro-2-butene-1,4-dial (BDA with chlorine). These are known to be toxic and carcinogenic, and have never been detected in drinking water before.

Bottled Water Company Admits Dumping Deadly Arsenic Into CA’s Ecosystem… Nobody Goes To Jail – Crystal Geyser Natural Alpine Spring Water’s bottled parent company, CG Roxane, LLC, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful storage of hazardous waste and one count of unlawful transportation of hazardous material on January 9th. Yet, to date, not one person has spent one night in jail for releasing thousands of gallons of arsenic into California’s wastewater system. Elemental arsenic and arsenic sulfate and trioxide compounds are classified as “toxic” and “dangerous for the environment” in the European Union under directive 67/548/EEC. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recognizes arsenic and inorganic arsenic compounds as group 1 carcinogens, and the EU lists arsenic trioxide, arsenic pentoxide, and arsenate salts as category 1 carcinogens.This extremely dangerous and potentially deadly practice of dumping the arsenic into the California ecosystem has essentially gone unpunished.The company earns nearly $50 million per year in revenue from its spring water but was slapped on the wrist, some might say, with a $5 million penalty for discharging arsenic tainted water back into the ecosystem. The legal problems started for Crystal Geyser when it sourced spring water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains nearly two decades ago.That water was and still is poisoned with arsenic as is much of the water in Western states. The company used sand filters to remove the arsenic. But in an effort to increase the filters’ effectiveness the company washed out the sand filters with chemicals, removing the build-up of arsenic, and releasing it into an outdoor holding pond. Yes, that’s right folks. They filtered out the arsenic, and then put it right back into the ecosystem in a concentrated form.People Magazine published the news accompanied with a press release by the U.S. Attorney assigned to the case:To maintain the effectiveness of the sand filters, CG Roxane back-flushed the filters with a sodium hydroxide solution, which generated thousands of gallons of arsenic-contaminated wastewater.The company kept all of the arsenic in the holding pond for 15 years at which time it was told it would have to dispose of the arsenic-filled wastewater, a hazardous material which could kill people. But it was ultimately how the company disposed of the arsenic which got the private company into trouble with the government. According to the press release by the U.S. Attorney:

California finds widespread water contamination of ‘forever chemicals’ – Nearly 300 drinking water wells and other water sources in California have traces of toxic chemicals linked to cancer, new state testing has found. Testing conducted this year of more than 600 wells across the state revealed pockets of contamination, where chemicals widely used for decades in manufacturing and household goods have seeped into the public’s water supply. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that within this class of chemicals, called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the two most common compounds were detected in 86 water systems that serve up to 9 million Californians. State officials released the water quality results on Monday, the first step in what’s likely to be a years-long effort to track the scale of the contamination and pinpoint its sources. Only a small fraction of California’s thousands of drinking water wells were tested in this initial study. Officials said they planned to examine many more, but have not committed to future statewide testing. The results offered the clearest picture yet of California’s exposure to a public health crisis that is playing out nationally. “This has the potential of being an enormously costly issue both on the health side as well as on the mitigation and regulatory side,” said Kurt Schwabe, an environmental policy professor at UC Riverside. “It’s going to be one of the defining issues in California, environmentally, for decades.” About half of the wells sampled did not have the chemicals at detectable levels – a result that state officials said was a hopeful sign the contaminants may not have spread as widely as they have in other states. Yet testing found contaminated drinking water in communities across California, from densely-populated cities with large and complex water systems to mobile home parks that depend on a single private well. Clusters of contaminated wells were found in Southern California, in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The city of Los Angeles did not detect the chemicals in its water, but neighboring Glendale did.

Virtually All Major US Drinking Water Sources Likely Contaminated With PFAS – New laboratory tests confirm that drinking water in dozens of cities across the United States is contaminated with toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at levels exceeding what independent experts consider safe for human consumption. The findings suggest that previous studies have dramatically underestimated the number of consumers exposed to PFAS through drinking water and come as the Trump administration continues to gut environmental and clean water protections.Over the past year, researchers collected tap water samples from 44 locations in 31 states and the District of Columbia ranging from large metropolitan areas to small towns. Water from every location tested positive for PFAS with the exception of Meridian, Mississippi, where drinking water is drawn from wells more than 700 feet deep, according to a study released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) last week. Some of the highest levels of PFAS were found in major metropolitan areas, including Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans and a northern New Jersey suburb of New York City.The positive test results from 43 of the 44 locations suggest that harmful “forever chemicals” linked to cancer, liver dysfunction, fetal damage and other health problems have contaminated far more drinking water sources than previously known. Scientists and environmental watchdogs now say that various PFAS compounds are likely detectable in virtually all the nation’s major water supplies, particularly those that draw drinking water from surface sources such as rivers and lakes.Yet President Trump and Republicans in Congress oppose tough new regulations aimed at reducing public exposure to PFAS. Along with a small number of Republicans, House Democrats recently passed the PFAS Action Act of 2019, legislation that would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to establish national PFAS standards for drinking water and require polluters to assist in cleanup. Most House Republicansvoted against the bill and it’s expected to stall in the GOP-controlled Senate. Even if the PFAS Action Act were to pass the Senate, the White House has said Trump would veto the bill. His administration has systematically rolled back environmental regulations, including sweeping clean water protections. Last week, the administration ignored its own scientific advisory board and finalized a rule that exempts half the nation’s wetland and streams from regulation, leaving waterways that feed drinking water sources for 2 million people without federal protections. PFAS enters the water supply in a variety of ways, including industrial discharge and runoff from farm fields where waste from water treatment plants is used as fertilizer.

Trump administration narrows clean water protections, NC wetlands likely to suffer – In case you missed it last Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a new rule that environmentalists say will gut long-established clean water protections. Announced at a national home builders show in Las Vegas, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the Navigable Waters Protection Rule delivers on President Trump’s promise of a revised definition for “waters of the United States” and results in economic growth. But as Policy Watch’s Lisa Sorg first reportedlast September, this rule change could hold dire consequences for North Carolina: In North Carolina, wetlands cover 5.7 million acres of land, about 17 percent of the state. Most of the wetlands are in eastern North Carolina, where they provide crucial flood protection and wildlife habitat. In addition, 51,000 miles of streams – equivalent to two trips around the equator – are at risk from the WOTUS rollback. Some parts of the state, Gisler said, could lose protections for 50 percent of their streams.Even with Clean Water Act protections, North Carolina’s waters are still polluted: from coal ash pits, chemicals, hog waste, raw sewage – 85 million gallons of which spilled into the state’s waterways last year. Repealing the federal protections would likely despoil the water quality we do have.“We could see dramatic increases in number of streams plowed over, developed, paved,” if the repeal withstands legal challenges, said Geoff Gisler, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “There’s going to be a visible and noticeable difference in the quality of our waters.” And while the change is clearly intended to benefit developers and industry, the Southern Environmental Law Center notes: …. the overwhelming majority of the 626,075 public comments EPA received weighed in against the proposed rule. the rule drew criticism from floodplain and wetland managers, state wildlife agencies and international councils, state environmental agencies, associations representing family commercial fishing businesses, several fly-fishing-related businesses, river guides and paddling outfitters, outdoor apparel company Patagonia, outdoor recreational enthusiasts represented by several organizations, 59 craft breweries, 12 scientific societies that represent more than 200,000 scientists, numerous associations representing public and children’s health advocates, cities and counties, small and family farmers, environmental law professors, faith organizations, and conservation organizations too numerous to count.

E.P.A. is letting cities dump more raw sewage into rivers for years to come – NYT – The Environmental Protection Agency has made it easier for cities to keep dumping raw sewage into rivers by letting them delay or otherwise change federally imposed fixes to their sewer systems, according to interviews with local officials, water utilities and their lobbyists.Cities have long complained about the cost of meeting federal requirements to upgrade aging sewer systems, many of which release untreated waste directly into waterways during heavy rains – a problem that climate change worsens as rainstorms intensify. These complaints have gained new traction with the Trump administration, which has been more willing to renegotiate the agreements that dictate how, and how quickly, cities must overhaul their sewers.The actions are the latest example of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back nearly 95 environmental rules that it has said are too costly for industry or taxpayers. That list grew on Thursday, when the administration stripped clean-water protections from wetlands, streams and other waterways. Cities that say they are renegotiating their sewage agreements with the agency include Cleveland; Seattle; Kansas City, Mo.; South Bend, Ind.; and Chattanooga, Tenn. Other cities, including Pittsburgh and St. Louis, have already concluded talks for new terms. While officials in many of these cities praise the Trump administration’s flexibility, environmentalists say that the changes threaten safety by allowing pathogens and chemicals to keep flowing into rivers and along beaches and to back up into streets or basements during storms. Since the start of the Trump administration, the E.P.A. has undertaken rollbacks of dozens of environmental regulations, including limits on the use of pollutants near streams and wetlands, on toxic emissions from industrial facilities and on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. The latest rollback came on Jan. 23, when the E.P.A. reversed a 2015 rule that protected more than half the nation’s wetlands and hundreds of thousands of small waterways. That includes seasonal streams that flow only for part of the year, and wetlands that aren’t next to large bodies of water. Farmers and property developers will now be able to release pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants directly into many of those waterways, as well as destroy or fill in wetlands for construction projects.

Global Groundwater Is Threatened by Unsustainable Practices Amid Climate Crisis – As the planet’s thermometer continues to inch upwards, one sought-after resource is only going to increase in value: groundwater.Already, about one-third of the world’s freshwater is derived from aquifers locked away beneath our feet, and they serve more than 2 billion people, though rates of use differ drastically from country to country. Just a decade ago, these reserves provided 37 percent of the total public water supply for Americans. In the European Union, groundwater supplies 70 percent of domestic use. In India, it’s even higher, with double the annual usage of either China or the U.S. Groundwater also provides nearly 40 percent of the water used globally for crop irrigation. Engines of life they may be, but many important underground aquifers have long been mismanaged through activities like over-pumping and widespread environmental contamination. Just ask hydrologist Tom Gleeson, an associate professor at the University of Victoria, in Canada. Preserving underground aquifers is an “urgent and long-term concern” that is further complicated by climate change, Gleeson told Truthout. Indeed, aquifers in some parts of the world, like the U.S. High Plains – a subregion of the Great Plains – could be depleted within the next 30 to 50 years. This is why Gleeson recently co-authored a groundwater “call to action” and accompanying statement – the latter of which has garnered the written support of over 1,000 scientists and experts – to help foster better understanding of the current state of the world’s groundwater aquifers, and the “urgent” need to adopt sustainable groundwater practices where the current ones are lacking. Nevertheless, beyond the scope of worried experts with direct ties to the issue, broader awareness and concern about the planet’s groundwater resources has been stubbornly limited, says Thomas Harter, a professor and cooperative extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at University of California, Davis. “The point of the initiative is to continue to stir the pot and draw attention to the issue,” Harter told Truthout, pointing to a glaring imbalance currently at play. Indeed, our current global groundwater abstraction rate is estimated to be about 3.5 times the actual area of water within underground aquifers, while roughly 1.7 billion people live in areas where groundwater resources or groundwater-reliant ecosystems – or both – are threatened. “Because we don’t have a tangible perception of how poor groundwater sustainability is, this hidden resource goes by the wayside without the public and policymakers being sufficiently concerned about it,” Harter said.

The Dead Zone Downstream: Gulf Edition –Dean Blanchard Seafood, headquartered on the barrier island of Grand Isle in the Mississippi River Delta, is one of the largest shrimp suppliers in the United States. In the 1990s, Blanchard said that local shrimpers would sometimes pull alongside his dock opening fire with automatic weapons, angry at the market competition Blanchard encouraged through his dealings with the immigrants. He said he always shot back. In 2010, Blanchard graduated to political battles with BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, a spill that sent 4.9 million barrels of oil into his fishing ground. Dean Blanchard Seafood took a hit, and Blanchard later told a reporter that he estimated his business was worth 15 percent of what it was before the spill. He testified in Congress and appeared on national news shows to lobby for his industry. Increasingly, Blanchard and other Gulf Coast fishermen find themselves reckoning with a different type of pollution, a threat to ocean biodiversity and Louisiana’s $2 billion seafood industry that’s unrelated to oil and much harder to fix. “Sometimes we’ll get thousands of pounds of shrimp a day, then the next day everything’s gone,” Blanchard said. “When the dead zone comes, it just kills everything.” The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is a massive, oxygen-deprived swath of water concentrated off the coast of Louisiana and Texas, fed by polluted freshwater from states along the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is born in Minnesota, its cold water bubbling over football sized rocks that edge the glacial Lake Itasca. From there it begins a walking-paced meander, 2,320 miles toward New Orleans. Like a topological funnel between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi drains 40 percent of the contiguous United States, carrying leftover nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer spread on farmland across the Midwest toward the Delta. The chemicals encourage the growth of algae, which suck up oxygen and choke marine life. Last year, the dead zone measured as much as 6,952 square miles, larger than Connecticut and much bigger than the 5-year average of 5,770 square miles, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Studies in the journal Science state that the global area of dead zones have quadrupled in the last 50 years, driven by a growing human population and an increase in the need for corn, soybeans, biofuels, and livestock feed.

Administration eyes changes to environmental enforcement –The White House issued a notice today seeking input on efforts to “reform enforcement” – a potential boon for the energy industry.The Office of Management and Budget notice follows the “transparency and fairness” executive order last fall that Trump administration officials described as a way to protect Americans from “secretive” bureaucratic interpretation or unjust penalties, particularly in environmental cases (E&E News PM, Oct. 9).They stressed extreme examples of landowners building on federally protected wetlands and being hit with steep fines.Today’s memo, which appears in the Federal Register, states that federal enforcement has ballooned in recent decades but protections for defendants has not.The administration is “evaluating a full range of options to make significant reforms,” said the memo, which seeks public comment on the enforcement process.Observers noted the initiative could lay the groundwork for bold reforms should President Trump win reelection this fall.And critics say the effort intends to neuter regulatory enforcement and reinforce the administration’s push to make life easier for business.”This is an inquiry in search of a problem, where there is no problem,” said Joel Mintz, an environmental law professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law.In a phone interview, Mintz said several of the questions the document raises are unnecessary or would force federal investigators to jump through more hoops. For example, one question in the memo read: “Should investigated parties have an opportunity to require an agency to ‘show cause’ to continue an investigation?”

Trump administration reportedly planning to reduce protections for birds – The Trump administration is set to finalize a regulation Thursday that will end penalties against oil, gas and construction businesses that “incidentally” cause the deaths of birds as a result of their work, The New York Times reported. The regulation would reduce protections for birds offered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and only punish companies that kill birds with explicit intent. Businesses would not be held accountable for the deaths of birds caused by oil spills, wind turbines or the use of illegal pesticides, according to the Times. Though the legislation is not yet finalized, the Trump administration has already advised local governments and businesses to not take steps to protect birds, and federal wildlife officials now rarely investigate bird deaths, according to internal agency documents obtained by the Times. President Donald Trump has taken other actions to weaken environmental protections. Last week, he reduced the types of waterways protected from pollution under federal law. However, Trump has also spoken against bird deaths in the past. He has repeatedly criticized wind farms for being “bird killing.” Read more about the new legislation in the Times’ report.

Genetically engineered moths have been released into the wild to wipe out pests CNN – Genetically modified diamondback moths designed to wipe out wild pest populations were released in fields for the first time in New York state. Diamondback moths are migratory pests found in the Americas, Europe, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, but especially in areas where crops can be grown yearround. In these parts — where it’s not too hot nor too cold — are where diamondback moths cause the greatest problems, including billions of dollars in damages to cruciferous crops such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and canola. They’re one of the most damaging insects because of their high reproduction rate and resistance to most insecticides. To address these problems in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way, researchers have successfully genetically engineered (GE) male diamondback moths to control the pest population of their wild counterparts, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. “There’s a lot of interest in using genetically engineered insects for controlling medically important diseases,” said Anthony Shelton, lead author of the study and entomology professor at Cornell University’s “In agriculture, though, I think we can take the advantage of genetically engineered insects to control a major pest species.” The moths were engineered by Oxitec, a developer of insect biological control systems that is known for its modified mosquito releases to reduce mosquitoes that carry malaria or dengue fever. When rearing the moths, developers incorporated what they call a self-limiting gene that makes female offspring die shortly after hatching. Typically, tetracycline, an antibiotic used to suppress the gene, is included in the moths’ diet so that female moths can be produced as well. “However, when you want to release populations of males, you do not include tetracycline,” Shelton said. “So all the female larvae that are feeding on the artificial diet will die. And then you’ll just have thousands and thousands of males which you can release in the field.” In cabbage field studies in Geneva, New York (about 260 miles from New York City) the moths were marked with different fluorescent powders, released together, then captured in a trap. The GE moths behaved similarly to their wild counterparts in regard to factors that would determine their potential to suppress pests.

Worst Locust Swarm to Hit East Africa in Decades Linked to Climate Crisis – East Africa is facing its worst locust infestation in decades, and the climate crisis is partly to blame. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that Ethiopia and Somalia had not seen a swarm this bad in 25 years, while Kenya was facing its largest infestation in 70 years, BBC News reported. “Vulnerable families that were already dealing with food shortages now face the prospect of watching as their crops are destroyed before their eyes,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told Kenya’s Capital News. The desert locust swarm came across the Red Sea from Yemen and was encouraged by heavy rains in late 2019, according to BBC News. The UN was already warning that the infestation could spread from Ethiopia in November. Some farmers in the country’s Amhara region lost 100 percent of their crops, and a swarm forced an Ethiopian passenger plane off course in December. Locusts can travel 93 miles a day, and each adult can eat its weight in food in the same time span. A small swarm can eat enough food to feed 35,000 people in 24 hours, The Associated Press reported, and the locusts have already infested around 172,973 acres of land in Kenya. “The speed of the pests’ spread and the size of the infestations are so far beyond the norm that they have stretched the capacities of local and national authorities to the limit,” the FAO said, according to BBC News. The unusual size of the swarms is connected to the climate crisis, The Associated Press explained further: Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region’s wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off Africa’s eastern coast, which also spawned an unusual number of strong tropical cyclones off Africa last year. Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are favorable conditions for locust breeding and in this case the conditions have become “exceptional,” he said. Rainy conditions expected in March could cause the locust swarms to grow by a factor of 500 before drier weather is expected in June, the UN said.

‘Biblical’ Locust Plague With Mega-Swarms The Size Of Cities Descends On East Africa – As if the world’s facing a looming new global pandemic weren’t enough, here’s yet another rare occurrence of apocalyptic proportions threatening to devastate the economy and way of life on an entire continent: the worse outbreak of desert locusts in seventy years is ravaging East Africa – specifically Kenya as hundreds of millions have swarmed in from Somolia and Ethiopia, reports the Associated Press. The hum of millions of locusts on the move is broken by the screams of farmers and the clanging of pots and pans. But their noise-making does little to stop the voracious insects from feasting on their crops in this rural community. The by all accounts “huge” infestation is threatening to devastate communities and a region already long struggling with food security. One news source likened it to a Biblical Locust Plague With Swarms the Size of Cities.The invading locusts are “deadly” in the sense that these ‘mega-swarms’ devour crops at incredibly rapid pace – at a faster rate of destruction than other natural disasters. The numbers and immediate destructive force are staggering, according to quotes in the AP:

• About 70,000 hectares (172,973 acres) of land in Kenya are already infested.
• A single swarm can contain up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer of farmland, an area the size of almost 250 football fields, regional authorities say.
• One especially large swarm in northeastern Kenya measured 60 kilometers long by 40 kilometers wide (37 miles long by 25 miles wide).
• Farmers are afraid to let their cattle out for grazing, and their crops of millet, sorghum and maize are vulnerable, but there is little they can do.

“Even cows are wondering what is happening,” one local farmer laments in the AP report. “Corn, sorghum, cowpeas, they have eaten everything.”This as the mega-swarms consume the very fodder the livestock survive on.There’s additional concern that new rains after March could bring another explosion of the fast breeding locusts prior to the dry season taking their numbers back down.The UN Food and Agricultural Organization is reportedly mobilizing an emergency response, given even small swarms can wipe out crop fields at sizes constituting enough food that could have fed tens of thousands of people in a single day, which makes it a humanitarian disaster in the making. It’s both the nature of their small size (about a finger’s length) and the fact that they swarm in millions at a time that make preventative measures nearly impossible.The UN agency listed some creative but futile methods suggested and/or initiated in the past: “Although giant nets, flamethrowers, lasers and huge vacuums have been proposed in the past, these are not in use for locust control.” It added, “People and birds often eat locusts but usually not enough to significantly reduce population levels over large areas.”

New Protections Proposed For Imperiled Crayfish Species – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service is proposing new protections for two threatened species of crayfish found in the Appalachian coalfields.Under the new proposed rule, set to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the agency will designate 445 miles of streams in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia as “critical habitat” for the Guyandotte River crayfish and Big Sandy crayfish. Both species have lost much of their habitat across Appalachia due to water pollution from mountaintop coal mining. The proposal includes more than 360 miles of stream for the Big Sandy crayfish in Martin and Pike Counties, Kentucky; Buchanan, Dickenson, and Wise Counties, Virginia; and McDowell, Mingo, and Wayne Counties, West Virginia. Eighty-four miles of stream in Logan and Wyoming Counties, West Virginia, are proposed as critical habitat for the Guyandotte River crayfish. Researchers have confirmed the Guyandotte River crayfish has lost more than 90 percent of its range and is now found only in two streams in Wyoming County. “This really is a ray of light for both of these species’ chances at survival into the future,” said Perrin de Jong, a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. The environmental group took legal action against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the two crayfish species. The crayfish were protected in 2016 under the Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service will accept public comments on the proposal for 60 days.

Dungeness Crabs’ Shells Are Dissolving From the Severity of Pacific Ocean Acidification: As the Pacific Ocean becomes more acidic, Dungeness crabs, which live in coastal areas, are seeing their shells eaten away, according to a new study commissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).The study authors looked at ocean acidification levels from 2016. They found that the lowered pH is dissolving the shells of young Dungeness crabs in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. Without strong shells, the young crabs suffer damage to their sensory organs, as CNN reported. The findings contribute to growing concerns about the viability of the Dungeness crab as atmospheric carbon dioxide, which continues to rise, is absorbed by the Pacific Ocean and increases acidification, as The Seattle Times reported. Ocean acidity was not expected to damage Dungeness crabs so quickly. Researchers say it is a warning for the future of seafood and the health of marine life. “If the crabs are affected already, we really need to make sure we pay much more attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late,”, as CNN reported. The study was published last week in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Ocean acidification happens when the pH of ocean water drops. The primary cause is an increase in absorption of atmospheric CO2 over a long period. When CO2 is absorbed by seawater, a chain of chemical reactions is set in motion. That causes the sea water to increase its acidity as an increase in hydrogen ions tamps down carbonate ions, which would balance out the water’s pH level, as NOAA explained in a statement. Crustaceans and corals need carbonate ions to help them build strong shells. In their absence, it becomes difficult for crabs, oysters and clams to build shells. It also stops corals from building strong skeletons and it weakens plankton, as CNN reported.

Another southern resident orca feared dead -Another southern resident orca, L41, is feared dead, according to the Center for Whale Research.The whale, born in 1977, was not seen during an encounter with its family by the center’s researchers on Friday. Because of his age, and the fact that he was thin when he was seen a year ago, “we fear he may be gone and will consider him missing unless he shows up unexpectedly in an upcoming encounter,” the center reported.If L41 remains missing, that would bring the population of southern resident orcas to only 72, the second-lowest since the center first began its population census 45 years ago. There were 71 southern residents in 1976 at the end of the capture era, when a third of the pods were taken for sale to aquariums around the world.L41 was an important whale in the southern resident families. He and one other whale, J1, fathered most of the calves born to the pods since 1990. The orcas are struggling for survival against three main threats: lack of adequate food, particularly chinook salmon; vessel noise and disturbance by boats; and contaminants.

Latest UN plan to address catastrophic decline in biodiversity – more empty platitudes – The planet is now faced with the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, which will, if not averted, make the world unlivable for humanity. However, unlike the previous five, which were caused by various natural processes, the impending catastrophe is being triggered by human-induced climate change and other forms of environmental degradation caused by the irrationality of the capitalist system, and it is within our ability to stop it. Last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated that approximately one million plant and animal species face extinction over the next several decades. The global rate of species extinction is already at least thousands of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. Already during the industrial period, 75 percent of Earth’s land and 66 percent of marine ecosystems have been altered by human activity. It is estimated that nearly 600 plant species have been driven to extinction over the past 250 years. Now, a draft plan by the Working Group of the Convention on Biological Diversity, prepared for the upcoming five-day summit in Kunming, China, scheduled to start February 24, titled Zero Draft of The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, presents an initial version of a proposed plan to address this impending crisis. It warns that unless nearly a third of the planet is protected to provide livable habitats for endangered plant and animal species, and pollution cut by half, this mass extinction is inevitable. The proposed plan asserts that to avert this crisis, “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors” are needed. It goes on to state, “Biodiversity, and the benefits it provides, is fundamental to human well-being and a healthy planet.” However, “Despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide and this decline is projected to continue or worsen under business-as-usual scenarios.” The plan aims to develop necessary “goals and targets” to combat this crisis, with the aim of stabilizing biodiversity over the next decade and permit ecosystems to recover by mid-century. The plan identifies 20 targets. Among them are:

• Cutting pollution from biocides, plastic wastes, and excess nutrients by at least 50 percent.
• Providing protected status to sites important for biodiversity – covering at least 30 percent of these land and sea areas by 2030, with at least 10 percent under “strict protection.”
• Promoting sustainable agriculture.

A plan similar to the one now being proposed – the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011 – 2020 – had been formulated at a summit in Japan in 2010. Grand promises were made. However, predictably, the goals were not met, and conditions continue to deteriorate at an ever-increasing rate. The situation is dire. Every year that passes without substantial, world-wide, coordinated action brings Earth closer to irreversible devastation. Scientists have warned that at a certain point the process of global warming would reach a “tipping point” beyond which a positive feedback loop would be initiated whereby environmental degradation would re-enforce itself, making any future efforts to stabilize the environment difficult or impossible. This tipping point may be reached sooner rather than later.

In Glacier National Park, Ice Isn’t the Only Thing That’s Disappearing – High up in the mountains of Montana’s Glacier National Park, there are two species of insect that only a fly fishermen or entomologist would probably recognize. Known as stoneflies, these aquatic bugs are similar to dragonflies and mayflies in that they spend part of their lives underwater before emerging onto the land, where they transform into winged adults less than a half inch long. However, unlike those other species, stoneflies do their thing only where cold, clean waters flow.In fact, these flies live pretty much exclusively downstream from glaciers, snowfields, and frigid alpine springs, and they have evolved a nifty suite of antifreeze compounds to make it all possible. It’s a pretty cool trick – one that has helped the insects survive for hundreds of millions of years in frigid conditions that have sent others packing. But what makes these insects special may also be their undoing – and soon.In November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the western glacier stonefly (Zapada glacier) and the meltwater lednian stonefly (Lednia tumana) to the Endangered Species List, both under the designation of threatened. And while the two species are extremely sensitive to pollution, as all stoneflies are, another very significant risk factor is what triggered the listing.”All of the glaciers in Glacier National Park are expected to be gone by 2030,” said Noah Greenwald, director of endangered species for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). Like, all of them all of them. Ten years from now. And without giant chunks of ice to chill their streams and supply life-sustaining meltwater, the stoneflies cannot exist.”In 1900, there were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park,” said Greenwald. “There are now 25.” According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the disappearance of the park’s glaciers could also bring morewildfires to the region and negatively affect native trout species, which have also evolved to live in cold water.

‘This is not how sequoias die. It’s supposed to stand for another 500 years’ — Standing quietly on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the Californian giants can survive almost anything – fire, disease, insect attack, cold years, hot years, drought – so the story goes. The largest living organisms on the planet can grow over 90 metres (300ft) tall. When they do die after 3,000 years or so, the oldest trees, known as monarchs, usually succumb to their own size and collapse. Their giant trunks will rest on the forest floor for another millennium. But the miraculous story of the near-indestructible giant trees that millions of Americans tell their children is no longer true. For the first time in recorded history, tiny bark beetles emboldened by the climate crisis have started to kill giant sequoia trees, according to a joint National Park Service and US Geological Survey study set to be published later this year. Twenty-eight have gone since 2014. The combination of drought stress and fire damage appears to make the largest sequoias susceptible to deadly insect infestations that they would usually withstand. One of the 28 is the optimistically named Lazarus, which stands in the Giant Forest in Sequoia national park, surrounded by other sequoias and a handful of cedars and pines that died in California’s great drought. When Dr Christy Brigham, who is responsible for the welfare of the ecosystems in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, saw Lazarus for the first time, all she could do was weep. “This is a tree that has lived through 2,000 years of fires, other droughts, wet years, dry years, hot years, cold years. It’s been here longer than Europeans have been in this country and it’s dead. And it shouldn’t be dead. This is not how giant sequoias die. It’s suppose to stand there for another 500 years with all its needles on it, this quirky, persistent, impressive, amazing thing, and then fall over. It’s not supposed to have all of its needles fall off from the top to the bottom and then stand there like that. That’s not how giant sequoias die,” she says, standing next to the skeletal Lazarus as the occasional tourist wanders past. Dr Nathan Stephenson, a forest ecologist with the US Geological Survey, emphasises that there is still further research to do on how bark beetles are killing giant sequoias but he is clear on one thing. “I think beyond reasonable doubt in the limited set of circumstances, which was the most severe drought on record and all the trees had had a recent fire at their base, you can weaken giant sequoias to the point that bark beetles can kill them.”

Elon Musk At War With German Environmentalists Protesting His New Gigafactory – It was just a couple of days ago that we first reported that Tesla would need to cut down “thousands of trees” in order to build its Gigafactory 4 in Germany.In that article, we noted that the company needed to clear so much forest space to put up its factory that dozens of protesters recently organized a gathering known as a “Forest Walk” to protect against Tesla’s tree removal activities at the site, according to Teslarati. The protesters were dressed in yellow vests, replicating the “Yellow Vest Movement” in France and are also concerned about what the deforestation may do to the drinking water in the area. This past weekend, in a fit of hilarious and ironic virtue signalling cognitive dissonance, Musk responded to the criticism, saying on Twitter “this is not a natural forest – it was planted for use as cardboard & only a small part will be used for GF4.”Oh, well in that case, just cut down as many trees as you want, Elon. Musk also responded to criticisms about water usage at Gigafactory 4, lying saying “Tesla won’t use this much net water on a daily basis. It’s possibly a rare peak usage case, but not an everyday event.”Company planning documents, however, estimate that the factory would need about 98,000 gallons of water per hour. The company remains in the process of “jumping through hoops” to get the plant up and running, according to Bloomberg.One of those hoops included clearing the area of wartime bombs. Disposal officers carried out controlled detonations of seven wartime bombs on Sunday at the site.The next step will be “harvesters and trucks” rolling in to clear those thousands of trees…

Trump Admin Manipulated Wildfire Science to Encourage Logging – Respecting scientists has never been a priority for the Trump Administration. Now, a new investigation fromThe Guardian revealed that Department of the Interior political appointees sought to play up carbon emissionsfrom California’s wildfires while hiding emissions from fossil fuels as a way to encourage more logging in the national forests controlled by the Interior department.The appointees looked to frame a story around the fires that would encourage a thinning of the forest through logging, which President Trump has said would help prevent forest fires. Experts have refuted his assertion.The trove of emails that The Guardian uncovered show a coordinated effort to frame the carbon emissions from the 2018 wildfires as a blight that could be remedied by cutting down trees for logging.The Trump administration has tried to make it appear that over-regulation, mismanagement, and forest protection are responsible for the severity of recent wildfires. However, a recent review published two weeks ago has concluded that the changing climate is the main culprit behind the sharp increase in wildfire risk.”Overall, the 57 papers reviewed clearly show human-induced warming has already led to a global increase in the frequency and severity of fire weather, increasing the risks of wildfire,” said Matthew Jones, senior research associate at University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre and lead author of the review, in a statement. “This has been seen in many regions, including the western US and Canada, southern Europe, Scandinavia and Amazonia. Human-induced warming is also increasing fire risks in other regions, including Siberia and Australia.”

Australia wildfires: Devastating photo shows extent of damage – A stark image taken by a fire service official has laid bare the extent to which wildfires have devastated Australia’s landscapes and the wildlife they once hosted. The charred remains of trees dominate the photograph as far as the eye can see in the formerly lush valleys in East Gippsland, a region home to koalas, kangaroos and wombats. The picture, taken by Dion Hooper of Victoria’s forest fire management service, goes some way to illustrating the aftermath of national bushfires estimated to have killed a billion animals, incinerated thousands of homes and left at least 32 people dead. A deluge of rain provided a brief respite for firefighters tackling the infernos, which have raged since October, more than halving the number of blazes in New South Wales (NSW), Victoria and Queensland. But meteorologists warned on Monday that this was likely to change in the coming days, forecasting a return to scorching weather that would raise the risk of blazes spreading once again. “Unfortunately, the reprieve may be short-lived with a blast of heat likely late this week in some areas,” the NSW Bureau of Meteorology wrote on Twitter. As of Monday, some 59 bush and grass fires were burning in the state, where fire authorities explained how they had been capitalising upon the recent upturn in conditions, and preparing for the coming weeks. “More than 1,300 firefighters are using more favourable conditions to slow the spread of fires and strengthen containment lines, ahead of forecast increasing temperatures later in the week,” NSW Rural Fire Service said. Temperatures are predicted to hit 41C on Friday in Melbourne, which is hosting the Australian Open tennis tournament. Australia’s capital Canberra was again blanketed in a smoky haze on Monday as a result of the fires in NSW, with firefighters also tackling a new blaze in the nearby Namadgi National Park.

Crashed tanker was protecting Two Thumbs koala sanctuary, now destroyed by blaze — It’s been revealed that the large air tanker which went down Thursday afternoon with the loss of all those aboard was protecting the Two Thumbs Wildlife Trust Koala Sanctuary in the Peak View district near Jerangle. The Two Thumbs Sanctuary’s sheds, houses, machinery and all the koalas in its care were also destroyed in the blaze. Snowy Mountains Wildlife Rescue says they are deeply distressed by the loss of the air tanker and the three American crew who were killed while on firefighting duties with the RFS. Two Thumbs Wildlife Trust is a trio of koala sanctuaries and a rehabilitation centre two hours south of Canberra established by James Fitzgerald. The sanctuaries comprised Hammer’s Hill Wildlife Sanctuary, Kalandan Wildlife Sanctuary and Irwin’s Corner Wildlife Sanctuary.The sanctuaries also provided enclosures and other facilities for wildlife rehabilitation and a base for scientific research. Local wildlife rescue groups including Wildcare NSW, LAOKO (Looking After Our Kosciuszko Orphans) and NARG (Native Animal Rescue Group) have used the sanctuaries as a safe release site. They are also home to a number of other threatened species, including greater gliders, squirrel gliders, Rosenberg’s goanna and the quoll. The feeding program in the area has been suspended due to the dangerous and active fire activity there at the moment.

The cause of Australia’s bushfires – what the SCIENCE says – YouTube Video – Arson? Lack of hazard reduction? Nothing new? This video looks at what fire chiefs and scientists say is the REAL cause of the 2019-2020 fires in Australia, in response to amateur theories proposed by media commentators and bloggers. (long list of sources)

$500 million has been donated for bushfire relief, but only a fraction has reached victims. Here’s why. -“Where’s the money?”It’s the question being asked of bushfire donations, with NSW minister Andrew Constance, local member for one of the worst-Bega, one of the worst-affected areas, calling on charities and government to move quickly.“The money is needed right now, not sitting in a Red Cross bank account earning interest so they can map out their next three years and do their marketing,” Constance told media this week.Constance isn’t alone in his frustration. A significant amount of money destined for bushfire-affected regions has been held up, leaving those affected in the lurch.“The recovery has been too slow and I think that criticism is just,” NSW disaster minister John Barilaro said this week, announcing some Service NSW staff were to exclusively deal with bushfire assistance.Around $500 million has generously been raised so far for bushfire relief, including more than $50 million by comedian Celeste Barber, multi-million dollar donations by celebrities and companies, and of course, countless smaller individual donations.Many however are now asking where that money is, how it will be spent, and why it hasn’t in many cases reached the people who need it most. Since Constance gave it a tongue lashing, the Red Cross has defended its strategy, explaining that while it has received $115 million, only $30 million will be spent on immediate relief so the charity can guarantee its ongoing support.“Communities take a long time to recover. So what we are using our donated funds for is supporting our teams on the ground, at the evacuation centres and recovery centres… helping communities with their immediate needs but also their longer-term recovery which will take many years,” NSW and ACT director Poppy Brown told ABC Breakfast on Thursday, noting anyone who had lost a house was eligible for an immediate $10,000 grant.Those families who have lost a family member to the fires are eligible for a $20,000 bereavement payment to meet unmet needs such as funerals and related expenses, the Red Cross has advised Business Insider Australia. Those two forms of payment have seen about $1 million go “out the door” every day, Brown said. The Red Cross denied however the remainder was only going to marketing, with Brown revealing a maximum of 10%, or roughly $11.5 million of the money, would be spent on administrative items like fuel for cars and computers.

Australia’s fire crisis continues while flash floods hammer northern Queensland – Australia’s population has had another horror week of so-called natural disasters, again exposing the consequences of decades of inaction on climate change as well as the critical lack of civil planning and the inadequate resources for disaster management. Amid heatwave conditions, bushfires again threatened southern parts of the country. In Canberra, a state of emergency was declared by the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) government on Friday as a fire in Namadgi National Park posed the greatest bushfire threat to the capital’s residents since 2003. The blaze began when the landing light of a military helicopter ignited tinder-dry grass while carrying out “routine aerial reconnaissance” as part of fire preparations. As the season’s bushfires have exposed the woefully inadequate resources of firefighting services across the country, many have called for greater military deployment to help combat the fires. This incident exposes the dangers of relying on the armed forces as a substitute for properly-trained and prepared firefighters. As with many of the hundreds of bushfires this season, firefighters were shocked by the speed with which the fire spread. ACT Rural Fire Services (RFS) Commissioner Joe Murphy said: “This is not a fire that is operating under normal rules.” On Friday evening, the RFS warned that Canberra’s southernmost suburbs, Conder, Banks and Gordon, and the village of Tharwa, may face spot fires as a result of flying embers on Saturday afternoon, as temperatures soar past 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). Residents of rural areas south of Canberra were advised to leave amid fears that it would soon become too dangerous to drive. Following the disastrous 2003 bushfires, in which four people were killed, more than 200 injured, and hundreds of houses were destroyed, many residents criticised the lack of information provided by emergency services to warn of immediate danger. In a sign that little improvement has been made in 17 years, the Emergency Services Agency’s website – the official source for current information about the bushfire threat – went down on Friday. This followed a two-and-a-half hour outage on Thursday January 23, which has been blamed on a fault at Amazon Web Services. In Tasmania, unusually warm conditions have fuelled fires at Winkleigh and Glengarry, in the north of the state, and Rossarden in the northwest. In New South Wales (NSW), with the temperature forecast to reach 41 degrees on parts of the South Coast today, residents and tourists are again being urged by authorities to evacuate some areas that were devastated at the beginning of the year.

Canberra Fires: Terrifying Wall of Flames Heads Toward City – Extraordinary images emerging from the fires in Canberra. The Australian Capital is under threat tonight as a massive bushfire emerges amid soaring heat and high winds. A huge wall of flames moving over hills toward the Australian capital of Canberra tonight. Images posted to social media show the terrifying display of Mother Nature, as massive flames consume the hills near the city. Outer suburbs of Australia’s capital Canberra are under threat from a massive blaze tonight.The blaze is the worst fire emergency the city has faced since the devastating 2003 fires which hundreds of homes, the Chief Minister of ACT said.From the emergency servies in the ACT:“Fire situation near #Canberra is developing and escalating quickly this evening. Residents in southern areas & nearby parts of #NSW should check the latest information now, & then remain up to date through tonight.”The ACT emergency services authority issued an emergency warning to residents of Tharwa at 4:30pm saying it was too late to leave and to seek shelter immediately.“The fire may pose a threat to all lives directly in its path,” the advice said. “People in these suburbs are in danger and need to seek immediate shelter as the fire approaches.”“The fire is also threatening properties in rural areas on Boboyan, Apollo, and Top Naas roads.”The fire is fast moving and people are evacuating.The southernmost suburbs of Canberra are within range of possible spotting/ember attacks from the massive blaze in the Nnamadgi National Park. The rural hamlet of Tharwa is already facing the beast.Embers from the fire have already reached populated areas.The Australian Defence Forces said the fire may have started when a helicopter landed in the area yesterday. The bushfire ignited due to heat from a landing light on a military helicopter, a MRH-90 Taipan, which was conducting operations in Namadgi National Park, the Guardian said.Winds are now gusting northeasterly at speeds up to 40km/h, according to ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA) commissioner Georgeina Whelan.

Moving a Capital City to the Jungle — As a year of fires around the world from Brazil to Australia drew to a close, Indonesia’s capital was having the opposite problem. On the last night of 2019, more than 35 centimeters (14 inches) of rain fell on the sprawling city, causing rivers to burst their banks and inundate thousands of homes. At least 60 people died, with floodwaters rising as high as a single story house. For Jakarta, a city on the island of Java saddled with some of the worst superlatives in the region⁠ – most polluted, most congested, fastest sinking⁠ – the floods were an old story, the third time deluges have killed dozens since 2007. The problems have become so overwhelming that, even before the latest catastrophe, President Joko Widodo had decided to build a new capital 1,200 kilometers away on the island of Borneo. Poor urban planning and decades of pumping groundwater from under the capital city set the stage for floods, and efforts to boost the nation’s economy have made an outsize contribution to the global emissions blamed for rising sea levels. In the past two decades, more than 25 million hectares of tree cover has been lost, much of it logged or burned to plant oil palms. Worse still, Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of the bête noir of global warming⁠ – power station coal. Ironically, the president’s site for the new capital is near the heart of one of its biggest mining regions. . The place earmarked for the new capital is in East Kalimantan, a province the size of Louisiana that is almost entirely dependent on natural resources. Locals call it coal country. The gateway to the region and to the proposed capital is Balikpapan, Kalimantan’s financial heart and a city that owes its existence to petroleum. The former fishing village has grown into a modern urban center, but the source of the port’s wealth still dominates the shoreline⁠ – an oil refinery run by state-owned PT Pertamina. PT Pertamina, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, is now expanding the refinery to increase output by more than a third to 350,000 barrels a day. Oil wells still dot the area but the fuel has been overtaken by coal. At PT Bayan Resources Balikpapan Coal Terminal further up the coast, snaking red conveyor belts stretch out into the bay, carrying the fuel to waiting ships. The company declined to allow access to the site and didn’t respond to e-mailed questions about pollution.

Could mega-dams kill the mighty River Nile? (an interactive report) | Al Jazeera – For the 280 million people from 11 countries who live along the banks of the Nile, it symbolises life. For Ethiopia, a new dam holds the promise of much-needed electricity; for Egypt, the fear of a devastating water crisis. Large hydroelectric dams are touted as a green source of electricity, but they can leave a trail of environmental damage and water insecurity. In this interactive scientific report, Al Jazeera partnered with earth and space scientist Dr Essam Heggy to analyse the impact of large dams on the Nile as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) nears its completion date in 2023. The mega-dam has triggered a major dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over access to the Nile’s vital water resources. How much will each country get and who controls the flow? This green triangle in the north of Egypt is the Nile Delta. The lush area was formed in ancient times by the accumulation of silt brought downstream along the River Nile. North to south, the Delta measures 161km and covers the Egyptian coastline from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east. It is one of the largest deltas on Earth and is home to more than 40 million people. About half of Egypt’s agricultural produce comes from this fertile area. However, scientists have warned that Egypt’s largest food basket is under threat. In 1971, more than 750km to the south, Egypt inaugurated the Aswan High Dam. It generated around half of Egypt’s electrical power at the time, but this mega-dam also triggered the gradual decline of the Delta’s ecosystem. Dams, especially the ones with large reservoirs, interrupt the natural cycle of flooding that distributes organically rich silt on river banks, enriching the arable land available, and contributing to the rhythms of the native ecosystem. The sediment held back by the large reservoirs also helps build up the Delta and, without it, erosion has resulted in an accelerated intrusion of sea water from the Mediterranean into the Delta, effectively destroying once-fertile farmland. Today, with the construction of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, scientists are warning that a further disruption to the Nile’s ecosystem could cause irreversible damage to the region.

Brazil’s pick of a creationist to lead its higher education agency rattles scientists – The appointment of a creationism advocate to lead the agency that oversees Brazil’s graduate study programs has scientists here concerned – yet again – about the encroachment of religion on science and education policy.President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration on Saturday named Benedito Guimarães Aguiar Neto to head the agency, known as CAPES. Aguiar Neto, an electrical engineer by training, previously served as the rector of Mackenzie Presbyterian University (MPU), a private religious school here. It advocates the teaching and study of intelligent design (ID), an outgrowth of biblical creationism that argues that life is too complex to have evolved by Darwinian evolution, and so required an intelligent designer.Researchers are decrying the move. “It is completely illogical to place someone who has promoted actions contrary to scientific consensus in a position to manage programs that are essentially of scientific training,” said evolutionary biologist Antonio Carlos Marques of the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Biosciences. CAPES is a key federal agency within Brazil’s Ministry of Education. It is responsible for regulating, supervising and evaluating all graduate-level programs at Brazilian universities, and funds thousands of scholarships for master’s and doctoral students. It also issues funding calls for research and provides training for teachers in primary and secondary education. Aguiar Neto was recently quoted in an MPU press release as saying that ID should be introduced into Brazil’s basic education curricula as “a counterpoint to the theory of evolution,” and so that creationism could be supported by “scientific arguments.” He made the comments prior to the second Congress on Intelligent Design, which was held at Mackenzie in October 2019. The event was organized by Discovery Mackenzie, a research center created by MPU in 2017 to mirror the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which also promotes ID.

Turkey earthquake: At least 36 dead, 1,607 injured – At least 36 people died and more than 1,607 have been hospitalized in eastern Turkey after an earthquake rattled the region on Friday evening, according to state broadcaster TRT Haber.The 6.7-magnitude quake struck near the town of Sivrice, in eastern Elazig province, causing at least 10 buildings to collapse, Interior Minister Sulyman Soylu said.About 1,607 people were hospitalized, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management President (AFAD) said on Sunday.At least 45 people have been rescued from collapsed buildings, AFAD said, adding that 1,521 buildings have been inspected, with 76 found to be collapsed and 645 heavily damaged. Most of the injured were in Elazig province, the epicenter of the earthquake. Video from Turkey’s IHA Broadcasting Services shows emergency crews rescuing injured people from a collapsed building. The earthquake caused five buildings to collapse in Elazig and heavy damage to a number of buildings in the area, Minister of Environment and Urbanization Murat Kurum told reporters..Preliminary reports say the earthquake lasted 40 seconds, AFAD said, adding that 3,699 search and rescue personnel have been deployed.Fifteen aftershocks have been felt in the wake, with the strongest registering at 5.4 magnitude, Soylu said. The quake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 km (6 miles), according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which enhances the shaking felt at the surface.

Puerto Rico: Earthquake Aftershocks and Aftermath — Recent years have not been kind to the island of Puerto Rico, nor to her people. First, Puerto Rico’s public finances were ravaged by vulture funds, leading to the imposition of extreme austerity policies, followed by weak and inadequate attempts by Congress to address the island’s woes and place its finances on a viable long-term footing (see Puerto Rico Is Getting Squeezed, and It Will Cost All of Us). Then came the 2017 hurricane – followed by the failure to provide sufficient crisis aid, and the inability to restore access to drinking water and power to the island, among other calamities (seeWall Street Got a Bailout, Why Not Puerto Rico?; The Situation in Puerto Rico: Power, Water, and PROMESA; [http://senators%20press%20for%20expanded%20probe%20of%20fema%20hurricane%20maria%20puerto%20rico%20relief%20efforts/]Senators Press for Expanded Probe of FEMA Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico Relief Efforts,McKinsey: Doing God’s Work in Puerto Rico, among other coverage). And most recently, the island was slammed by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake, the most powerful in a century. Significant aftershocks follow daily and continue, including a 5.0 magnitude tremor on Saturday morning, according to CBS News, 5.0 magnitude earthquake hits southern Puerto Rico amid ongoing tremors). Residents worry that the worst is yet to come. According to the Morning Call, Earthquake aftershock in Puerto Rico is ‘psychological torture,’ Lehigh Valley delegation tells Rep. Wild at summit: A waitress’ “funny” story about her life in Puerto Rico during the recent earthquakes now haunts Victor Martinez, who was part of a Lehigh Valley delegation that surveyed the devastation last weekend. Her home hasn’t been damaged yet, but her family still feels the earth’s violent shakes. So, they sleep outside and only venture inside to get what they need. It unfolds like a game. Her husband stands at the front door. Flip flops, next to the door, she shouts. He races to retrieve it. The next request: shorts, second drawer in the bedroom. He runs in and out again – one item at a time – just in case the “big one hits.” Martinez said the story may conjure a comical image, but it really underscores the emotional toll on Puerto Ricans after a series of earthquakes began rocking the Caribbean island Dec. 28. One measured a magnitude of 6.4, the most powerful there in a century.“This keeps happening, and no one knows if the next one is the big one, and if this is the big one, maybe we get a tsunami,” said Martinez, owner of La Mega Radio. “They are scared. They are afraid. … That is the psychological torture that these people are going through.”

Magnitude 7.7 earthquake strikes between Cuba, Jamaica – An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 struck between Cuba and Jamaica Tuesday afternoon, with shaking reported as far north as Miami.The quake hit to the south of Cuba and to the northwest of Jamaica, but it was initially unclear if there were any injuries or damages.Floridians felt the effects in Southwest Miami-Dade where the Datran building in the Dadeland area started shaking, Fox 7 reported. Authorities evacuated the building, but no visible damage was detected.Other buildings in the Brickell and downtown areas were vacated along with The Stephen P. Clark Government Center. There were no initial reports of damage or injuries in the area.It was also felt at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the southeastern coast of the island. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages, said J. Overton, a spokesman for the installation, which has a total population of about 6,000 people.The quake triggered warnings of a tsunami that ultimately fizzled, according to The U.S. Geological Survey. Its epicenter had a shallow depth, six miles beneath the surface, but the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially issued a threat forecast and said additional local alerts may follow.

7.7 Earthquake Strikes Near Jamaica Causing Evacuations and Tsunami Warnings – A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 hit the Caribbean region on Tuesday. The epicenter of the quake is roughly 80 miles from Jamaica, and could be felt as far as Miami. While there have been warnings of potential tsunamis throughout the region, only a small wave of less than a foot was recorded in the Cayman Islands at George Town, but the waters have been relatively calm considering the severity of the earthquake.The region has also faced numerous aftershocks, including one with a magnitude of 6.1, according to the US Geological Survey.The quake comes at a time of intense seismic activity in the region, including a 6.4 magnitude earthquake that hit Puerto Rico. Experts believe that this earthquake is a “strike-slip earthquake,” which means that tectonic plates slide against each other causing movement on the surface. This would actually be good, because if this is the case, that means that tsunamis are less likely to happen, as they are most commonly associated with “thrust earthquakes,” in which the crust is thrust upward and causes the water to push up and outward, ultimately creating a tsunami.

7.7 Earthquake in Caribbean Prompts Evacuations as Far Away as Miami – A 7.7 magnitude earthquake shook the Caribbean Tuesday, rattling people from Miami to Mexico.The quake struck at 2:10 p.m. and had its epicenter 86 miles northwest of Montego Bay, Jamaica and 87 miles southwest of Niquero, Cuba. It prompted evacuations in Miami and opened sinkholes in the Cayman Islands, but so far there have been no reports of major damages or injuries.”This one was serious. It put the fear of God into many people today,” Jamaican ad executive Knolly Mosestold NPR.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially warned that “hazardous tsunami waves” could impact Belize, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, BBC News reported. However, those warnings were later withdrawn.The earthquake was felt in Kingston, Jamaica and Havana, Cuba. It was also strongly felt in Cuba’s largest eastern city, Santiago, The Associated Press reported. However, the colonial city emerged unscathed.”It felt very strong but it doesn’t look like anything happened,” Belkis Guerrero, who works at a Roman Catholic cultural center there, told The Associated Press. In the Cayman Islands, the shaking blew the covers off manholes and blasted sewage into the streets. The Cayman Islands also felt a series of aftershocks – one reached a magnitude of 6.1. Water was shut off to most of Grand Cayman Island and schools were closed Wednesday. Cayman Compass editor-in-chief Kevin Morales said that the island was unaccustomed to earthquakes and that newspaper staff were not at first sure what they were experiencing. “It was just like a big dump truck was rolling past,” Morales told The Associated Press. “Then it continued and got more intense.” In Miami, meanwhile, the shaking prompted evacuations from at least eight high-rise buildings in downtown Miami, Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell told CNN affiliate WPLG, as the main network reported. Ryan Gold of the U.S. Geological Survey told the Miami Herald that it was not surprising that the quake was felt in Miami, as BBC News reported. “It’s a very large earthquake which can produce a lot of seismic energy,” he said. The earthquake was also felt in five Mexican states including Veracruz, on the Gulf Coast, The Associated Press reported.

Florida sits on $900M in aid while storm victims wait – Tens of thousands of Floridians hammered by a run of deadly hurricanes are eligible for almost $900 million in federal disaster aid, but three years after Hermine, Matthew and Irma tore across the state, that money has barely been touched. The state, like many others, is caught in the bureaucratic knot that governs disaster relief funds administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program, which by design has few set rules, has long been criticized for its complexity. Some states have coped by setting up their own bureaucracies specifically to manage HUD disaster relief block grants. Not so Florida, the state most vulnerable to hurricane damage. There, the biggest obstacle to disaster relief is the Department of Economic Opportunity, which currently is standing between residents – some living in or near poverty – and $891.5 million in HUD block grants. The state agency has spent only $29 million of that funding as of Jan. 1, nearly $21 million of which went to Innovation Emergency Management, a consulting firm the agency hired two years ago to help navigate the grants. Now, Florida is anticipating an additional $735.5 million from HUD for Hurricane Michael and localities still reeling from the 2018 Category 5 storm have asked Gov. Ron DeSantis if they, not the department, can manage the cash. “It will be better to have the money right here, where the hammers are swinging, versus 100 miles away in Tallahassee,” Bay County Manager Rob Majka Jr. said. “We know our needs better than anyone else.” HUD disaster grants are meant to support “full and swift recovery” and many states susceptible to catastrophic weather, including North Carolina, Louisiana, and New Jersey, have beefed up their bureaucracies so they can distribute the federal funds quickly after misfortune strikes. But Florida, the country’s lightening rod for hurricanes, hasn’t. Instead, the state has left much of the tricky application process to counties with no experience and few resources. With disaster aid sitting unused, thousands of people are living in temporary housing. Schools and police departments are closing, fire halls are clinging to life. Acres of towering pines are still pinned to the ground after 155-mile-an-hour winds stripped them of their bark.

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! The Midair Collisions Menacing Air Travel – To lead their anti-bird campaigns, airports hired full-time biologists who understand the peculiarities of avian behavior. These scientists have often devised “habitat modification” programs that involve subtly altering landscapes to discourage birds. When Nick Atwell became the resident biologist at Oregon’s Portland International Airport in 1998, for example, he noticed that much of the facility’s green space was flat, and more significant, free of any obstacles. So he oversaw the erection of simple barriers that caused a wave of anxiety among the airport’s most troublesome birds. “Geese like to go to large open areas where they have the ability to escape and avoid predation,” Atwell says. “When you break up their line of sight, they don’t have the confidence that there’s not a predator around the other side of that barrier. That uncertainty kind of keeps them moving.” Aside from tweaking the topography of airports, biologists have also deployed an array of hardware designed to irritate birds. The propane cannons of yesteryear are still in use, but now they’re networked and can be fired remotely – either from a laptop or by tuning a field radio to a specific frequency. Airport biologists who are fans of sonic weapons have also invested heavily in portable speaker systems like the HyperSpike, which emits undulating wails that can exceed 150 decibels – far louder than even the loudest bands on earth. There is current interest among bird-strike specialists for lasers – surprising, perhaps, given the many instances in which pilots have reported being temporarily blinded by scoundrels wielding laser pointers. Tools such as the handheld Aerolaser allow airport personnel to focus green beams on birds that otherwise won’t budge. Since birds have more green cones in their eyes than mammals, the tactic is particularly effective. “You illuminate that beam right by them and you slowly cross it over their mid-body, and they’re seeing it as a large threatening object – sort of like a lightsaber from Star Wars,” Atwell says. “So they think they’re going to get hit by something, and they get up and go.”

Fears mount that two old satellites will SMASH into each other above US this week Space debris tracking service LeoLabs has sounded the alarm after discovering that two defunct and decommissioned satellites are hurtling towards each other and may collide over the continental US this week. The pair of satellites are expected to cross paths on January 29 at 23:39:35 UTC, at an altitude of around 560 miles (901 kilometers) above Pittsburgh, PA. At a relative velocity of 9.1 miles per second (14.7 kilometers per second), the machines are expected to come within 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30 meters) of each other. However, there is a one in a hundred chance they’ll hit each other and create a huge debris field in orbit. The bigger of the two is the decommissioned IRAS space telescope which was sent up in 1983, measuring 11.8 by 10.6 by 6.7 feet (3.6 by 3.24 by 2.05 meters) and having a launch mass of 2,388 pounds (1,083 kg). Its potential doomsday date is the GGSE-4, a defunct science payload from 1967, which weighs just 10 pounds (4.5 kg) but is attached to the 187-pound (85 kg) recently declassified military satellite Poppy 5. Earth specialists have no way of communicating with either satellite to alter their respective courses and prevent a possible collision. “There’s potentially a large amount of debris that will be created,”

Steven Mnuchin’s wife, Louise Linton, sides with Greta Thunberg on climate — Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, displayed her support for environmental activist Greta Thunberg in a now-deleted Instagram post just days after her husband mocked the Swedish teen for her views on climate change.“I stand with Greta on this issue,” Linton wrote on her page. “(I don’t have a degree in economics either) We need to drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels. Keep up the fight @gretathunberg.”The Scottish-born actress, who describes herself as “Not a Republican. Not a Democrat. Humanitarian & Animal welfare activist. Pro-Environment. Vegan ” removed the posting on Saturday but screenshots of it were widely circulated on Twitter.Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Mnuchin questioned 17-year-old Thunberg’s credentials after she warned the gathering about the consequences of using fossil fuels.“Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused,” Mnuchin mocked Thunberg. “After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us.” Thunberg responded to Mnuchin on Twitter last Thursday. “My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realize that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up,” wrote Thunberg, who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in December.

Ugandan climate activist cropped out of photo taken with her white peers – The Associated Press news agency (AP) has apologized after cropping a Ugandan climate activist from a photograph where she had posed with her white peers after a press conference in Davos, Switzerland. Climate activist Vanessa Nakate said she was invited to attend a youth climate science event. When news coverage of the event emerged, she noticed she had been cropped out of a photograph, where she appeared alongside alongside activists Greta Thunberg, Isabelle Axelsson, Luisa Neubauer and Loukina Tille. “This is the first time in my life that I understood the definition of the word racism,” Nakate said in a video statement released online. Nakate confronted AP about the incident on Twitter, writing “Why did you remove me from the photo? I was part of the group!”In a video statement published online, Nakate said: “I see the photos and I clearly see how I was cropped out of the photos. “My message was left out, and my photo was left out as well,” she said.”You didn’t just erase a photo. You erased a continent. But I am stronger than ever,” Nakate said later on Twitter.In a statement released on Friday, AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee apologized for the incident.”We regret publishing a photo this morning that cropped out Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, the only person of color in the photo. As a news organization, we care deeply about accurately representing the world that we cover,” Buzbee said. “We train our journalists to be sensitive to issues of inclusion and omission. We have spoken internally with our journalists and we will learn from this error in judgment,” she added. Thunberg said the incident was “completely unacceptable.”

How Minnesota students are combating climate change, one school building at a time — Students at Stillwater Area High School began adjusting to a small – yet significant – change at the start of the new year: no more plastic forks and spoons. Single-use plastic utensils have been replaced with metal flatware in the school lunchroom. Julia Bennett, 17, and Isabella Schaak, 18, both seniors at Stillwater, had set out on a mission to eliminate the use of single-use plastics in their school’s lunchroom. The initiative grew out of an open-ended final project prompt in their AP government class. “Climate change is really coming into effect and it’s going to affect our generation the most, and future generations,” said Schaak, listing the wildfires in Australia as a current example. Through social media, she follows MN Youth Climate Strikes, a youth-led group that coordinates climate strikes across the state, including sit-ins at the Capitol to demand action from state leaders. But, for her and Bennett, taking action at the school level felt like the natural place to start. “We were thinking of something local where we could make a change – because that’s important to us – and we decided to start here,” Bennett said. It’s a sentiment shared among their peers in other school districts as well. From eliminating single-use plastic items to pressing school boards to commit to 100 percent clean energy, Minnesota students are changing how schools respond to climate change.

The University of Minnesota should do more for the climate, student group says – A University of Minnesota student group is calling on the school to do more to address climate change. University of Minnesota Climate Strike met with lawmakers and administrators Friday to lay out a list of demands. The group insists the University divest from fossil fuels and establish more curriculum around the topic, among other actions. The student group met with lawmakers as part of a joint meeting between the House higher education committee and the newly-formed Climate Action Caucus. The joint committee heard testimony and discussed issues related to climate change with administrators, faculty and students from colleges and universities statewide. University of Minnesota Climate Strike’s demands for the University include declaring a climate and ecological emergency, developing an environmental justice major and discontinuing investment in fossil fuels. “We’re personally frustrated with the University’s focus on sustainability and focus on individual action by students on campus to reduce emissions and to make change, and that we don’t really talk about the systemic ways that the institution of the University of Minnesota can make change,” said Savannah Wery, a co-founder of the group. University Vice President for Research Chris Cramer outlined several ways the University is attempting to address climate change. In the last 12 years, the University established the Institute on the Environment research program and various undergraduate and graduate climate-related areas of study. Cramer also pointed to sustainability efforts in the University’s operations and facilities. The Climate Action Plan implemented by former-University President Eric Kaler in 2011 aims to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2020 and offset 100 percent of emissions by 2050. As of 2018, the University has reduced emissions by 37 percent on the Twin Cities campus and 32 percent system-wide, Cramer said. “Climate change is real. It affects our state, it’s affecting our University too – our students, their families [and] our facilities,” Cramer said at the meeting. Divestment meeting Representatives from multiple student groups, including University of Minnesota Climate Strike, also met with staff from the University’s Office of Investments and Banking Friday. With help from an independent financial adviser, the groups discussed the feasibility of divestment from fossil fuels with Stuart Mason, OIB associate vice president and chief investment officer, and Andrew Parks, OIB senior director of investment strategy and research. Mason and Parks explained the University’s investment process and more sustainable initiatives OIB is already taking part in, like excluding coal in their portfolio. The two administrators also discussed how hiring managers to specifically divest from fossil fuels would be more expensive. Mason said that while OIB would always be looking for cleaner options, there was only so much the department could do to make large strides towards sustainability without involvement from the Board of Regents.

Democrats’ draft climate bill charts path to carbon neutrality by 2050 —Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday unveiled a draft of their new climate plan, which aims for the U.S. to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050. The Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s Future Act, the draft of which is more than 600 pages long, would force dramatic changes in many sectors of the economy, from pushing utilities work toward 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050 to requiring the transportation sector to reduce emissions not just from cars but also from airliners. However, the legislation is much broader, pushing for cleaner buildings, efforts to force industry to clean up its supply chain and a host of new regulations targeting pollution from the energy industry. “Our draft bill is the first comprehensive climate effort in a decade. Its approach is unprecedented, with a mix of innovative and established policy tools that build from the ground up. Taken together, they will propel the vast economic transformations we need to reach an ambitious but necessary science-based target of net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by no later than 2050,” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), who spearheaded the effort, said in a statement to The Hill. And it achieves much of that progress with climate solutions that have never been seen before at the federal level.” The legislation puts the onus on states to play a role in ensuring that the entire nation reaches its carbon-neutral goal, while creating a first-of-its-kind National Climate Bank to help spur the technological developments needed to get there. Democrats expect feedback from stakeholders ranging from the energy industry to environmental groups, but any eventual package would likely face resistance in the Republican-held Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to bring a number of climate-focused bills to the floor.

‘Green New Dud, Not a Green New Deal’: Climate Groups Denounce Draft Bill From House Democrats – Environmental advocacy groups issued mixed responses Tuesday after Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released the legislative text of a draft bill for a national climate plan, with critics charging that the proposal isn’t ambitious enough to address the planetary crisis. The draft Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation (CLEAN) Future Act – largely seen as a “competing plan” to the Green New Deal – was announced earlier this month by the committee’s chair, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). Crafted after 15 committee hearings, the bill (pdf) aims to ensure that the United States achieves net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050.In a joint statement with Reps. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Pallone said Tuesday that “every day, communities across the country are paying the price for inaction through record wildfires, flooding, and drought, and Congress cannot afford to simply watch from the sidelines.””The CLEAN Future Act treats this climate crisis like the emergency that it is, while also setting the foundation for strengthening our economy and creating good paying jobs for a clean and climate-resilient future,” they added. “We look forward to continuing to work with all impacted stakeholders on this proposal in the coming months.”Food & Water Action policy director Mitch Jones was quick to provide critical feedback with a statement of his own Tuesday.”At a moment when we need bold, decisive action from Democrats in Congress in order to stand a chance of averting climate catastrophe, Rep. Pallone and the House Energy and Commerce Committee have come up far short,” he said. “Simply put, this legislation is a ‘green new dud,’ not a Green New Deal.” Detailing some of the ways in which the CLEAN Future Act falls short of adequately addressing the crisis, Jones added: This proposed clean electricity goal represents a wholly inadequate approach that would allow for the continued long-term use of an array of dirty energy sources – including fracked gas with unproven, undeveloped ‘carbon capture’ methods. A ‘technology-neutral’ approach leaves us primed for decades more greenhouse gas emissions. A bold climate plan must call for a ban on fracking and all new fossil fuel infrastructure, and a swift and just transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy across all sectors of the economy. We have no time to rely on market-based schemes, dubious offset programs, or unproven carbon capture technologies designed to prolong the life of the fossil fuel industry.

57 Climate Scientists Object After Biden Falsely Claims “Not a Single Solitary Scientist” Thinks Sanders’ Green New Deal Can Work – After former Vice President Joe Biden late last week falsely claimed that “there’s not a single solitary scientist that thinks” the kind of bold Green New Deal initiative put forth by his 2020 Democratic primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders “can work,” more than four dozen U.S. climate scientists responded Tuesday to make clear that just isn’t true. “Not only does your Green New Deal follow the IPCC’s timeline for action, but the solutions you are proposing to solve our climate crisis are realistic, necessary, and backed by science.” – Open Letter to Bernie Sanders Sanders’ Green New Deal is a sweeping proposal that calls for “100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by at least 2050” while investing $16.3 trillion over ten years to create an estimated 20 million new jobs, support vulnerable communities and a just transition for workers, and fund a massive infrastructure project. The Vermont senator has said such a plan is necessary to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Biden made his comment attacking the plan during a campaign event in Claremont, New Hampshire on Friday, but climate experts like meteorologist and journalist Eric Holthaus were quick to object: Sanders also rejected the comment, telling a crowd in Iowa, “Well, Joe, you’re wrong.” Proof of that support came Tuesday in the form of the succinct yet forceful letter (pdf) addressed to Sanders by 57 climate researchers and scholars. “The top scientific body on climate change, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), tells us we must act immediately to bring the world together to stop the catastrophic impacts of climate change,” the letter states. “The Green New Deal you are proposing is not only possible, but it must be done if we want to save the planet for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations,” it continues. “Not only does your Green New Deal follow the IPCC’s timeline for action, but the solutions you are proposing to solve our climate crisis are realistic, necessary, and backed by science. We must protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the planet we call home.”

This Year’s Other Big Climate Election? It’s for a Texas Railroad Bureaucrat – An election held in the U.S. in 2020 could do a lot to shape global climate outcomes in the immediate future. It won’t feature Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, and the winner won’t live in the White House. It’s a race for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, which holds immense power over the state’s vast oil and gas industry. Booming oil and gas production across the Permian Basin of West Texas has made this little-known regulator, with three voting members, a pivotal decision-maker for the American contribution to climate change. The reason for this comes down to natural-gas flaring. Drillers in Texas, as in other places, are allowed to burn off vast amounts of natural gas that is a by-product of oil production. This is done, in part, because of the expense involved in capturing the gas, putting it into pipelines, and moving it to processing facilities. And it happens with permission from the Texas Railroad Commission. Burning off the gas prevents the unchecked release of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas that causes as much as 36 times more warming than carbon dioxide in the 100-year period after its release, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But allowing Texas drillers to burn their unwanted gas – something the Railroad Commission almost always does – is a harmful solution: Tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants enter the atmosphere, without yielding any useful energy. Global gas flaring emits more than 350 million tons of CO2-equivalent each year, according to the World Bank. That’s equal to all the natural gas consumed in Central America and South America each year. “This is the most important environmental race in the country,” says Chrysta Castañeda, 56, one of four Democratic candidates vying to become the first non-Republican commissioner in more than 25 years and the first Democrat to win statewide office since the 1990s. The commission “is not enforcing the laws” on flaring. “What’s going on in Texas is one of the biggest contributors to the issue worldwide.”

Is Your Rep Invested in Fossil Fuels? – At least 100 members of the House of Representatives and their spouses own fossil fuel company stocks or mutual funds despite the conflicts of interest the investments pose for addressing climate change. Use the interactive map below to see if your representative owns fossil fuel investments and, if so, which companies and funds they are invested in. Sludge’s analysis includes stocks in oil, gas, and coal companies, utilities that burn fossil fuels, and conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway and General Electric that own subsidiaries in oil and gas or fossil fuel-driven electricity industries. If you don’t know your district, you can check here.

We can’t recall the planet if we mess up: Climate change is risky business WaPo -If we handled climate risk the way that businesses manage risk every day, we would have tackled climate change a long, long time ago. But that’s not how we as a society are responding – even though the potential consequences are a lot worse than most business risks. Consider how climate change risk is expressed in key reports like those from the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).The NCA says there is at least a two-thirds chance that your asthma or hay fever will get worse because of climate change. There’s a more than 90 percent probability that extreme precipitation (think flooding) will increase in frequency and intensity. What aboutheat waves increasing? There’s a 99 percent probability. In fact, heat waves kill more people than any other weather-related event in the United States.

To Fly or Not to Fly? The Environmental Cost of Air Travel – According to International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) estimates, there were 3.7 billion global air passengers in 2016 – and every year since 2009 has been a new record-breaker.By 2035, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicts a rise to 7.2 billion. Like the planes themselves, the numbers just keep going up. And given the damage flying does to the planet, that is food for thought.Not Just the CO2Many estimates put aviation’s share of global CO2 emissions at just above 2 percent. That’s the figure the industry itself generally accepts.But according to Stefan Gössling, a professor at Sweden’s Lund and Linnaeus universities and co-editor of the book Climate Change and Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions, “That’s only half the truth.”Other aviation emissions such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), water vapor, particulates, contrails and cirrus changes have additional warming effects. “The sector makes a contribution to global warming that is at least twice the effect of CO2 alone,” Gössling told DW, settling on an overall contribution of 5 percent “at minimum.”But IATA spokesperson Chris Goater told DW the science behind this so-called ‘radiative forcing’ is “unproven.”Even if we accept the 2 percent emissions figure as final, if only 3 percent of the world’s population flew last year, that relatively small group still accounted for a disproportionate chunk of global emissions.A few years ago, environmental group Germanwatch estimated that a single person taking one roundtrip flight from Germany to the Caribbean produces the same amount of damaging emissions as 80 average residents of Tanzania do in an entire year: around four metric tons of CO2. “On an individual level, there is no other human activity that emits as much over such a short period of time as aviation, because it is so energy-intensive,” Gössling explained.

Congress Now Funding Controversial Geoengineering ‘Plan B’ To Spray Particles In The Sky To Cool Earth – It was reported this month that the top climate change scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has received $4 million in funding from Congress along with permission to study two highly controversial geoengineering methods in an attempt to cool the Earth.According to Science Magazine, David Fahey, director of the Chemical Sciences Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, told his staff last week that the federal government is ready to examine the science behind “geoengineering” – or what he dubbed a “Plan B” for climate change. What could possibly go wrong? Over the past several years, the “conspiracy theory” of spraying particles into the sky to cool the Earth has become more mainstream. It came to a head last year when CNBC put out a video titled How Bill Gates-Funded Solar Geoengineering Could Help End Climate Change. The video is nothing short of an infomercial for chemtrails. It is truly bizarre how this subject has moved from the fringes of conspiracy circles and into the mainstream and no one is even batting an eye. Now that Bill Gates has endorsed and funded it, the world is suddenly open to the idea of attempting to modify the planet’s weather by spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to block out the sun.Now, the government is throwing their hat into the mix as well. This “Plan B” approach is two pronged, according to NOAA. One is to inject sulfur dioxide or a similar aerosol into the stratosphere to help shade the Earth from more intense sunlight. It is patterned after a natural solution: volcanic eruptions, which have been found to cool the Earth by emitting huge clouds of sulfur dioxide.The second approach would use an aerosol of sea salt particles to improve the ability of low-lying clouds over the ocean to act as shade.

US Threatens Retaliation Against the EU Over Proposed Carbon Tax. The US commerce secretary has warned that the Trump administration would “react” to the EU’s plans for a carbon tax with possible punitive measures against Brussels, even as officials attempt to strike a truce in their trade feud. Speaking to the Financial Times, Wilbur Ross compared the EU’s plans for a carbon tax to moves by several European countries to impose a digital services tax, which has angered US officials and caused Washington to threaten tariffs on EU products.“Depending on what form the carbon tax takes, we will react to it – but if it is in its essence protectionist, like the digital taxes, we will react,” Mr Ross said. The commerce secretary’s comments are among the clearest signs that the EU’s plans for a carbon tax – a top priority under the new commission led by president Ursula von der Leyen – could emerge as a major new irritant to transatlantic relations. Ever since President Donald Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the EU and US have been at odds over global policies to tackle climate change, but those tensions had not yet spilled over into the trade arena. Mr Trump and Ms von der Leyen said last week in Davos that they would try to strike a limited truce in their trade war this year, easing fears of full-blown escalation. Officials have said there could be common ground in areas ranging from agricultural trade and standards, to technology and energy, that could be settled fairly rapidly. But the potential for new flare-ups remains. US officials have repeatedly threatened to impose tariffs on the EU automotive sector, and the split on climate policies appears to be widening. During the Davos meetings, Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, sparred with Christine Lagarde, the European Central Bank president, over ways to tackle climate change. Mr Mnuchin described a carbon tax as “a tax on hard working people.”

U.S. environmental groups plan to sue Trump administration on airplane emissions – (Reuters) – Environmental groups said on Thursday they planned to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to regulate aircraft emissions after a 2016 agency determination that those emissions pose a danger to public health. “The Trump administration’s refusal to curb plane pollution is fueling the climate crisis,” said Clare Lakewood, climate legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which along with Friends of the Earth filed a notice of intent to sue the EPA if the agency did not act within six months. “Airplane pollution is increasing at really worrying rates, but the EPA just keeps refusing to address this skyrocketing threat to our rapidly warming planet,” Lockwood said. Airplanes are the third-largest source of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions and the largest not subject to greenhouse gas emissions standards. By 2020, emissions from global international aviation are projected to be about 70% higher than in 2005 because of rising travel demand. Worldwide, passenger numbers are forecast to double from 2017 levels to 8.2 billion by 2037. Commercial flying currently accounts for about 2% of global carbon emissions and about 12% of transport emissions. An EPA spokeswoman said the agency “is working to address this issue in 2020″ and agency documents say it intends to issue proposed rules in February. The EPA said last year it would release a proposed rule by September 2019, but failed to do so.

Lordstown Motors looking for $200M loan – Lordstown Motors Corp. would ask for $200 million from a federal loan program that helps automakers develop more efficient vehicles to ready its Lordstown assembly plant to produce electric pickup trucks. Congressman Tim Ryan, who’s leading a bipartisan group of 10 U.S. senators and representatives from Ohio urging the U.S. Department of Energy to approve Lordstown Motors’ application when it’s filed, said the money, he believes, mostly would be spent on capital investments to repurpose the plant to build the battery-powered vehicle. The $200 million Ryan confirmed Thursday also would leverage private sector financing for investment into the company that wants to begin production of the Endurance truck by the end of the year. “This is part of what public / private partnerships are about,” Ryan, D-Howland, said. “The government has to play a positive, impactful role to make this happen and help the risk taker who is putting all the money in.” His office Wednesday released a letter sent to the energy department encouraging the agency to support Lordstown Motors’ request through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Program. Lordstown Motors in a statement Wednesday evening said the company is talking with government leaders about exploring the loan program “as an avenue for advancing” the startup automaker.

Plastics Plants Are Poised to Be the Next Big Carbon Superpolluters – A boom in petrochemical plants driven by cheap natural gas could lock in greenhouse emissions for decades to come. The Sunshine Project, a gargantuan petrochemical complex planned on 2,500 acres along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge, La., will be one of the largestgreenhouse gas emitters in America when it becomes fully operational in 2029. Earlier this month, Louisiana regulators approved an air quality permit that will allow the facility to pump 13.6 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. That’s equivalent to adding 2.6 million cars to the road annually. No industrial facility in the United States reported emissions of that magnitude between 2011 and 2018, according to an E&E News review of EPA data. In 2018, only 13 coal plants emitted more. Sunshine is at the forefront of an often-overlooked boom in America’s petrochemical sector, one that climate advocates worry could undo recent greenhouse gas reductions by locking in a new source of planet-warming pollution for decades to come. A recent study identified 88 petrochemical projects along the Gulf Coast that are either in the planning stage or under construction. If all are completed, their combined emissions output could reach 150.8 million metric tons, the equivalent of 38 coal plants. “It is not something that has been on people’s radars. When it comes to the oil and gas sector and emissions, we talk about upstream methane, and we talk downstream end use, tailpipes, electricity, etc.,” said Andrew Waxman, an economics professor at the University of Texas, Austin, and a lead author of the study. Petrochemicals, he added, are “not as big as a focus, and it should be part of the conversation.”

Burning Trees For Heating Won’t Help With Climate Change: UK Think Tank — A suggestion by the UK Committee on Climate Change to burn more wood and plant replacement trees as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels has drawn criticism from think tank Chatham House, which says this is hardly the best approach to reducing emissions. “Expanding forest cover is undoubtedly a good thing, if you’re leaving them standing,” energy expert Duncan Brack told the Daily Telegraph. However, Brack, who served as special adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, suggested that burning wood for heating was not the most sustainable way forward. Calling wood burning a carbon neutral process is “highly dubious,” Brack added.These claims, according to the Telegraph’s environment editor, Emma Gatten, rest on the assumption that the carbon footprint of chopping down trees and burning them is offset by planting new trees to replace them. This assumption excludes the fact that older trees absorb more carbon and that it takes time to replace a forest.”You can leave trees standing and they will continue to absorb carbon for decades,” Brack says. “But the biomass industry implicitly assumes that forests at some point stop reach a saturation point for carbon intake and can be harvested and simply replaced.” The benefit of planting trees to mitigate the effects of climate change has been put to the test on a wider scale as well. A study released last year found that reforestation could work, but it had to be done at a massive scale. We need to plant 25 percent more trees than there are on Earth right now, or more than half a trillion in total, the study found. This would reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by a quarter, erasing 20 years of emissions. Yet it would not solve the climate problem on its own, without a sustained effort to cut emissions, commentators on the study said.

Court forces U.S. EPA to reconsider three refinery biofuel waivers – (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must reconsider three of the biofuel waivers it recently granted to small oil refineries, arguing the agency’s justification for approving the exemptions was flawed. The decisihere from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit dated Jan. 24 came after a coalition of biofuel industry groups had challenged the 2016 exemptions for Holly Frontier’s Woods Cross and Cheyenne refineries, as well as CVR Energy’s Wynewood refinery. The biofuel industry has been incensed by a surge in biofuel waivers granted under President Donald Trump’s administration, which it says is hurting farmers by undermining demand for corn-based ethanol. Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, the nation’s oil refineries are required to blend billions of gallons of biofuels such as ethanol into the fuel or buy credits from those that do. But the EPA can waive their obligations if they prove compliance would cause them financial distress. According to the court’s decision, the EPA overstepped its authority to grant the Holly Frontier and CVR waivers because the refineries had not received exemptions in the previous year. The court said the RFS is worded in such a way that any exemption granted to a small refinery after 2010 must take the form of an “extension”. “Because an ‘extension’ requires a small refinery exemption in prior years to prolong, enlarge or add to, the three refinery petitions in this case were improvidently granted,” according to the court’s 99-page decision. “We remand these matters to the EPA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” Biofuel groups cheered the decision and said it could raise questions about numerous other waivers granted to small refiners in recent years. The Trump administration has roughly quadrupled here the number of waivers it has handed out to small refiners.

Bio-methane from cow manure could be a ‘new gold rush’ on the farm – The back end of a cow generates 80 pounds each day of what Dennis Haubenschild, who owns 750 of them near Princeton, refers to as a “non-depletable renewable resource.” Now, technology and policy are aligning for farmers to take advantage of all that manure in a surprising way – by turning it into gas that can fuel vehicles. Haubenschild was among the first dairy farmers in the state to experiment with biogas production, and he uses manure-turned-gas to generate heat on his farm. But climate change policies in California and Oregon have created a different, national market for the gas that comes from livestock manure. Farmers who capture the methane, a greenhouse gas more immediately potent than carbon dioxide, can earn lucrative low-carbon credits. Dairies across the country, especially large ones, are investigating the prospect. “It’s the new gold rush,” Haubenschild said. Two large dairies in northwest Indiana are already certified for credits in California. Three Wisconsin dairies are producing biogas for transportation fuel and three more projects there are under construction, according to the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas.. In Minnesota, Riverview LLP, the company with an archipelago of massive dairies near Morris, aims to become the state’s first dairy to produce gas from cow manure for transportation fuel and low-carbon credits. Environmentalists and climate activists are watching the development with caution. While they are eager to see any industry reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some worry that government incentives prodding farmers to produce biomethane will reward only very large operations.

Tree clearing begins as Green Development prepares to construct solar farm – With its final appearances before the Planning Board approaching, Green Development has begun preparation work on its 38.4-megawatt solar farm, including tree clearing on the 400-acre property off Iron Mine Hill Road. On Jan. 16, the company issued a statement on the project, which will nearly double its renewable energy holdings in Rhode Island. Along with obtaining state permits for stormwater runoff, wetlands and forestry management, the company has begun clearing land and surveying the site for ledge and soil content to determine the final design of the project. In a follow-up email to The Valley Breeze, Green Development spokesperson Bill Fischer confirmed the company has begun clearing trees in preparation for site development. “The cutting allows for soil and ledge testing throughout the property, which is required to finalize design with the solar equipment manufacturers prior to construction,” he said. Last year, the company submitted a “notification of intent to saw or cut” to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. That permit was approved on Dec. 4 after representatives from the RIDEM inspected the property. Tree clearing has proved one of the more divisive parts of the project, which promises nearly $5.4 million in tax payments to the town. According to the company’s permits, the clearing will involve 120 acres of land owned by Ralph Ferra and another 63 acres of land owned by the Faridoon Khan Revocable Trust. Approximately 80 acres will be replanted as pollinator habitat for bees and other insects. Town Planner Tom Kravitz said he recently inspected the property after receiving a call from a resident. He confirmed clearing has taken place in the northwest portion of the property near where a proposed substation will connect the solar farm to National Grid power lines.

Processing wood infested by emerald ash borer into fuel or mulch has a cost – State and local officials are seeking a $5 million annual state subsidy to continue burning much of the metro area’s tree waste as the region faces rapidly growing piles of emerald ash borer-infested wood. “We’re at the point where the [ash borer] infestation is expanding greatly and we’re getting more trees,” “It’s hard to comprehend the volume.” St. Paul Cogeneration burns the wood infected by the invasive beetles and converts it to energy that helps heat and cool buildings in St. Paul. The energy is also sold to Xcel for electricity. The problem is that other ways of generating power are becoming more cost effective, so elected leaders are pushing for a state subsidy to make the tree-burning process competitive with lower-cost power generating methods. Officials are concerned that Xcel is unlikely to continue buying electricity from St. Paul Cogeneration when the contract expires in three years, as solar and wind energy now are less expensive options, partly due to their own tax subsidies. Randy Fordice, an Xcel spokesman, said the Minneapolis-based utility has been discussing its contract with District Energy of St. Paul since 2017 but declined to share details of those talks. The company is committed to reducing carbon emissions, he said, and renewable energy sources like wind are cheaper than ever. “As we evaluate energy contracts, the law requires us to look at price, as those costs are passed on directly to our customers,” he said. Losing that contract would jeopardize the future of St. Paul Cogeneration, said Ken Smith, CEO and president of District Energy, a nonprofit that uses biomass energy to heat and cool buildings in downtown St. Paul. If the plant shutters, wood refuse from across the state – much of it diseased ash trees – will stack up. Almost all the brush and wood chips at the St. Paul site are ash trees, he said. And downtown St. Paul would have to rely more on natural gas, Smith said.

Missouri House passes bill targeting wind energy line (AP) – Lawmakers in Missouri’s Republican-led state House on Monday voted to ban the use of eminent domain for a large wind-energy power line, a move that could present a major setback for the project. House members voted 118-42 to prevent the use of eminent domain to acquire easement rights for the Grain Belt Express power line. The high-voltage power line is to carry wind energy from Kansas across Missouri and Illinois before hooking into a power grid in Indiana that serves eastern states. Missouri utility regulators last year granted approval for the project, which could let developers pursue condemnation if landowners won’t sell easements. House lawmakers last year tried to forbid the project owners from using eminent domain for the line, but the proposal died in the state Senate after senators filibustered the bill. The proposal now heads to the Senate again for consideration.

Solar energy would get 10-year reprieve under KY House bill – A state lawmaker is proposing a 10-year delay in controversial new rules for residential solar panel owners in Kentucky who want to sell their excess energy onto the utility grid. Rep. Jim DuPlessis, R-Elizabethtown, said Tuesday that he’s trying to build support for his House Bill 323. Under the bill, anyone who gets solar panels installed by Dec. 31, 2024, could operate under existing “net metering” rules, which allow solar customers to sell excess energy to electric utilities for the same price they pay when they buy energy. The bill would extend the current net metering rates for these solar panel customers through the end of 2029. Last year, at the request of the electric utilities, the General Assembly passed a law requiring the Kentucky Public Service Commission to determine the net metering rates at which residential solar customers are compensated. The solar industry has protested, arguing that newer rates are likely to be unpredictable and less generous. No new net metering rates have been set so far. But after a public hearing, the PSC agreed to hire an “expert consultant” to help it review the rate applications expected to be filed by electric utilities in coming months. DuPlessis said his bill will give Kentucky’s nascent solar industry “a little breathing room” by stabilizing the rates – essentially, locking in the known costs and benefits – for people considering whether to invest $10,000 or more in home solar panels. “We don’t want to be pulling the rug out from under the local installers,” DuPlessis said. “Right now, it’s hard for them to put in a system when they can’t tell their customers what the overall costs are going to be, when they don’t know what rates are going to look like in a year, in two years.”

BlackRock Targets Energy Storage With New Multi-Billion-Dollar Renewable Energy Fund – The world’s largest asset manager has a new multibillion-dollar renewable energy fund in the works, and a good chunk of it may go to batteries.Long a major global investor in wind and solar energy, BlackRock has more recently begun buying into energy storage projects – including its acquisition last year of GE’s distributed solar and storage business. Looking out over the next few years, energy storage is one market “where we’ll see the opportunity set expand,” said Martin Torres, head of the Americas at the renewables group within BlackRock Real Assets.Torres and his team are also “eagerly watching” the emergence of the U.S. offshore wind market, he told GTM. BlackRock shook the financial universe this month when CEO Larry Fink said the company will put sustainability at the “center” of its investment approach. Exactly what Fink’s announcement will mean for BlackRock’s fossil fuel investments remains to be seen. But in the realm of renewables, at least, BlackRock’s green bona fides need little burnishing.

Newsom says PG&E ‘no longer exists,’ doubles down on state takeover — Exactly one year after PG&E Corp. filed for bankruptcy, Gov. Gavin Newsom said PG&E “no longer exists” and doubled down on a state takeover if the utility doesn’t shape up by June 30.“There’s going to be a new company or the state of California will take it over,” Newsom said at an event with the Public Policy Institute of California in Sacramento about the future of the state’s energy Wednesday.“Because if PG&E can’t do it, we’ll do it for them. Period, full stop. We’re sick of excuses and delays,” he said.PG&E’s problems have been among the most pressing issues for Newsom since he was inaugurated as California’s 40th governor last year. He has taken an active role in the company’s bankruptcy and has recently challenged the utility’s plan to resolve it while threatening a state takeover on multiple occasions. Newsom was also sharply critical of PG&E’s mass blackouts last year, and he championed a new state wildfire law that would help shield the company from future fire costs if it resolves its bankruptcy by June 30, among other provisions.“Bankruptcy turned out to be an extraordinary opportunity for the state,” Newsom said Wednesday. “I never would have imagined that a year ago today. I thought it was a huge burden, one I didn’t anticipate spending as much time and energy on.”Related Stories BIZ & TECHBY J.D. MORRISPG&E says talks with Newsom will probably lead to governance…What it gave state regulators is the chance to transform the 115-year-old company into a 21st-century utility, he said.In response, PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said by email that the company’s employees are “striving every day to become the utility of the future.” She said the company is still seeking feedback from Newsom’s office and will file an updated bankruptcy exit plan “in the coming days.”

Guardian to ban advertising from fossil fuel firms – The Guardian will no longer accept advertising from oil and gas companies, becoming the first major global news organisation to institute an outright ban on taking money from companies that extract fossil fuels.The move, which follows efforts to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and increase reporting on the climate emergency, was announced on Wednesday and will be implemented with immediate effect. The ban will apply to any business primarily involved in extracting fossil fuels, including many of the world’s largest polluters.“Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the world,” the company’s acting chief executive, Anna Bateson, and the chief revenue officer, Hamish Nicklin, said in a joint statement.They said the response to global heating was the “most important challenge of our times” and highlighted the Guardian’s own reporting on how lobbying by energy companies has explicitly harmed the environmental cause.Environmental groups have long argued that energy companies use expensive advertising campaigns to “greenwash” their activities, paying to highlight relatively small investments in renewable energy while continuing to make the vast majority of their revenue from extracting fossil fuels. They have called for news outlets to reject such advertising, although until now only a handful of small outlets have adopted this approach.Last year, the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, announced the Guardian wouldadjust its style guide to represent the scale of the environmental challenge facing the Earth, using terms such as “climate emergency” and “global heating” rather than “climate change” and “global warming”. At a corporate level, the company has emphasised its commitment to becoming carbon-neutral by 2030, while also almost entirely divesting its Scott Trust endowment fund from fossil fuel investments. The decision to reject the advertising money from fossil fuel firms comes at a tricky time for the media industry, with the Guardian Media Group board warning the business is facing substantial headwinds this year. Advertisingmakes up 40% of GMG revenue, meaning it remains a key way to fund the journalism produced by Guardian and Observer journalists around the world.

New Research Facility in West Virginia Aims to Diversify the Use of Carbon — West Virginia’s coal industry is performing better than it did during its lowest point in generations in 2015 and 2016. But with domestic competition from natural gas and the volatile nature of foreign markets, experts say coal’s future is unpredictable.West Virginia, one of the states most reliant on coal, will soon be home to a research facility to transform coal into carbon products. Ramaco Carbon, a Wyoming-based carbon technology company, will be opening the research facility in Charleston, the state’s capital. Both the company and West Virginia officials have high hopes for how much this technology could impact the coal industry and the country’s top coal producers, though others say it’s too early to know if this new research will yield significant results, and environmental groups oppose the coal industry’s expansion. “West Virginia is truly blessed with an abundance of natural resources and our coal is as good and as plentiful as it gets,” Republican Gov. Jim Justice said in his State of the State Address Jan. 9. “We absolutely need to continue doing all we can to harness the power of coal in every way possible and having this facility to test new ways to convert this dynamic resource is a great opportunity for all,” he said.

Millions owed in taxes on Cloud Peak legacy coal mines – The New owner of Spring Creek Mine owes $4.4 million in back taxes in Montana and $10 million in federal royalty payments for coal mined in Montana and Wyoming. Navajo Transitional Energy Company says it is negotiating payment plans for state and federal taxes on mines it purchased last fall in the bankruptcy sale of Cloud Peak Energy. The company objected to records-based reporting that indicated NTEC taxes are unpaid and past due. “NTEC has made all royalty and tax payments since acquiring the Montana and Wyoming mines on Oct. 24, 2019. The assertion that NTEC is behind on payments if factually incorrect,” the company said in a Friday statement. NTEC went on to say that taxes owed to the federal government were accumulated under Cloud Peak and that the Department of the Interior is now “doubling down on receipt of delinquent payments,” which NTEC said it has agreed to pay in installments. Spring Creek Mine Coal is loaded into a truck in this aerial view of Cloud Peak Energy’s Spring Creek Mine in 2013 near Decker. On Tuesday, Cloud Peak was trading at just 16 cents per share. Larry Mayer, Billings Gazette Montana tax records kept by Big Horn County, where Spring Creek mine is located, indicate that NTEC does owe property and gross proceeds taxes totaling $4,461,608.78, according to Treasurer Denise Rios. The taxes aren’t on a payment plan. The Montana Department of Revenue, which collects coal severance taxes, said payments, made quarterly, aren’t due until the end of January.

Ohio EPA Terminates Permit For Proposed Mine In Perry State Forest | WOSU Radio — The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency announced it will cancel a wastewater discharge permit for a proposed coal mine in the Perry State Forest. The Ohio EPA said Thursday that CCU Coal and Construction’s wastewater discharge permit was terminated at the company’s request, effective April 1. This calls into question the company’s plans to place a mine on 500 acres of the Perry State Forest in eastern Ohio’s Perry County. That land was already clear-cut to make way for the project. CCU Coal and Construction did not immediately respond to WOSU’s request for comment. Residents have been fighting to block the mine for about a year now, citing environmental and health concerns. Many nearby residents rely on well water.

A pointless mandate or a Trojan horse? Intrigue surrounds Indiana coal bill – An Indiana bill moving through the legislature would place unprecedented new burdens on utilities before they could close coal-fired power plants.But under amendments proposed in the past week, it’s unclear if the bill would have any impact at all on utility resource planning.That is not necessarily a relief to clean energy advocates, citizens groups, industrial customers and others who oppose it. Rather, it makes some worry that the bill is a “Trojan Horse,” in the words of Citizens Action Coalition executive director Kerwin Olson, that could become more insidious with revisions after it is passed, namely the removable of a July 2021 sunset provision currently in the bill. HB 1414 would require utilities get approval for coal closures from the state regulatory commission, and order that plants can only close because of federal mandates unless it’s proven that closure is in the public interest.No coal plants are slated for closure before the July 2021 sunset date, except for one that has an exemption in the bill. Hence the proposal would have no apparent impact.But opponents worry the sunset provision is meant to assuage concerns over the bill, while still leaving the door open for future legislation or last-minute amendments to remove it. Republican state Rep. Edmond Soliday, sponsor of the bill, has framed the current version (with the sunset) as creating a “pause” on plant closures until a state energy task force finishes a report due next year.But Olson says it “begs the question: what are we pausing? It doesn’t pause anything if the sunset date is real since it wouldn’t affect closures in the next year.” The Indiana Energy Association that represents the state’s utilities has opposed the bill. But advocates also worry that legislators and coal industry interests supporting the bill are trying to sweeten the deal for individual utilities so that they will support it.

Kentucky officials worry bankrupt mines may abandon cleanup – Kentucky officials are concerned that two bankrupt coal companies could abandon their environmental obligations. At a hearing this week in West Virginia, officials said Blackjewel LLC and Revelation Energy might leave Kentucky taxpayers with a bill for millions in mine reclamation costs, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. Reclamation is a process of improving the natural areas affected by mining; at surface mines that typically means restoring the contours of the landscape and planting grass and trees. State officials told the court that Blackjewel’s violations account for about 30 percent of the total outstanding noncompliance notices issued by the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources at the end of 2019. Blackjewel made national headlines last year when the company suddenly laid off hundreds of miners and failed to pay them for past work. Several employees protested the move by blocking loads of coal from moving on railroad tracks in Harlan County. The company eventually paid the workers. At a bankruptcy hearing in Charleston, West Virginia, on Wednesday, Kentucky officials referred to a letter the state filed Jan. 13 in which the department reviewed 20 percent of permits held by Blackjewel and Revelation. It found that the bonds used to cover reclamation liabilities would fall about $38 million short of covering the estimated costs. Blackjewel has said in court that it has sold, or is planning to sell, many of the permits that require reclamation work.

Coast Guard investigating after towing vessel hits bridge, setting 15 coal barges adrift in Ohio River – The Coast Guard and Kentucky Transportation Cabinet are investigating after a towing vessel carrying 15 barges of coal hit the Caroll Lee Cropper Bridge in Boone County on Tuesday. The bridge goes over the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky, crossing on I-275. The crash happened in the early hours of the morning when a Tennessee Valley Towing vessel traveling north carrying 15 barges of coal collided with the bridge, separating the barges from the vessel. Coast Guard officials said other tow vessels in the area were able to collect all of the barges and no damage was done to any of them and no debris was left in the river. “The tow boats would take them, one at a time, and tie them off and bring them safely to a location where they can put them all back together,” said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Jim Brendel. No injuries were reported, officials said. Inspectors didn’t find any damage to the bridge The Coast Guard is investigating how the crash took place.

NARUC releases white paper on impact coal-fired power plants – The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) released a white paper that examines the impacts of changes in the electricity generation mix on operating coal-fired power plants. Over the past two years, about 30 gigawatts of coal capacity having retired. The report, called Recent Changes to U.S. Coal Plant Operations and Current Compensation Practices, looks at the shift from coal generation towards natural gas and renewables. For example, in Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma, coal was replaced almost entirely by wind generation. In Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, coal was replaced with natural gas generation. The report offers an overview of strategies for coal plant owners and operators to manage costs while providing flexible electricity. “State energy regulators need to ensure that reliable power can be delivered to customers, regardless of whether or not the sun is shining or wind is blowing,” NARUC Chairman Kara Fornstrom of the Wyoming Public Service Commission, vice chair of NARUC’s Subcommittee on Clean Coal and Carbon Management, said. “This report looks at challenges faced by coal plants that are now operating as cycling resources, and presents options for operators and regulators.”

Bankrupt Murray Energy coal company still banks on Trump, FEC records show – cleveland.com – The Murray Energy Corp. may have filed for bankruptcy, but the coal company’s political action committee is still banking on President Donald Trump. New filings at the Federal Election Commission show the PAC for the Ohio-based company that declared bankruptcy in October donated $160,000 in July to a “Trump Victory” fund dedicated to the re-election of a president who campaigned on bringing back the coal industry.The company’s chairman, Robert Murray, hailed Trump’s election as “a great day for coal miners and their families and for all Americans who depend on reliable, low-cost electricity, which coal provides.” Soon after Trump took office, Murray presented him with a list of policy requests. Trump acted on several of them, including pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, repealing a Clean Power Plan implemented by the Obama Administration, and cutting staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

S&P: Fourth quarter results for U.S. coal sector likely to be dismal – S&P Global Market Intelligence: Fourth-quarter 2019 earnings reports are likely to be rough on U.S. coal producers yet again when miners begin reporting results over the next few weeks. Every major U.S. coal company is expected to report earnings per share for the period that is either worse than the prior quarter or year-ago quarter, an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis of analyst forecasts shows. For many producers, quarterly earnings per share will be worse compared to both periods. Moody’s Investors Service recently said it expected EBITDA across its rated portfolio of U.S.-based coal companies to fall by about one-third. Deterioration in coal export volumes will likely lead to even lower cash flow in 2020, Moody’s added in its recent report reiterating its negative outlook on the sector. “We anticipate that companies in their year-end earnings calls will outline steps they are taking to continue to generate positive free cash flow and navigate weak market conditions,” Moody’s stated. “While coal companies have not reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2019, CSX Corp., which is more tied to exports than some other railroads, reported a 17% drop in coal volumes for the fourth quarter, and expects a 14% drop in coal revenue in 2020.” Peabody Energy Corp. and Arch Coal, two of the largest miners in the U.S. by volume with exposure to both metallurgical and thermal coal, are expected to report a loss to shareholders for the fourth quarter of 2019. Thermal coal producer Hallador Energy Co. and increasingly metallurgical coal-focused Contura Energy Inc. are also expected to report negative earnings per share for the period.

Low gas prices, warm weather pushing coal out of European generation market – Cheaper natural gas prices this year are likely to cement Europe’s shift away from coal as a fuel for producing power. Abnormally mild winter weather has cut demand for the fuel as a flood of new supplies entered the world’s biggest gas market. That along with higher costs for carbon-emissions allowances has tilted the economics of generating electricity away from coal and toward using more gas. “Policy makers in Europe are now happy with such low natural gas prices,” said Ewout Eijkelenboom, senior consultant at the Netherlands-based industry adviser Kyos Energy Consulting. “It makes the coal phase-out easier than expected – it is almost a natural way of exiting coal.” Falling gas prices are a global phenomenon. Liquefied natural gas projects are pumping out record numbers of cargoes, cutting wholesale gas costs from the U.S. to Asia. That in turn has helped push down the cost of electricity across Europe, taking some of the heat out of the political debate about energy. Benchmark gas in Amsterdam plunged to a five-month low last week because of the global glut. Market rates for the coming summer are at the lowest since at least 2007. It’s especially notable that the weakness has arrived during the winter, which is peak-demand season. “We’ll need to do something with all that surplus gas,” said Elchin Mammadov, a European utilities analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “I’m expecting a further drop in prices and more coal-to-gas switching.”

Can Europe’s Largest Economy Survive Without Coal? — One of the greatest moral dilemmas that has been creeping into the everyday activities of specialists working with coal, oil and in some cases even gas (despite its being perceived a natural bridge to a low-carbon future) could be phrased in the following way: how do you stop producing fossil fuels when you still have cheap ample reserves? In stark contrast to oil and gas – of which Germany has traditionally been a major net importer and in both cases looking back to a more than 50-year history of depending on primarily Russian hydrocarbon riches – Europe’s leading economy has substantial reserves of coal, lignite in particular. In fact, Germany remains the world’s largest producer of lignite and burns most of it for power generation, accounting for some 22 percent of the nation’s gross electricity output. Ironically, lignite production is more CO2 intensive than hard coal as it is done by extracting coal from open-cast pits, nevertheless, its mid-term future looks a lot better than that of hard coal mining in Germany. Whilst lignite remains economically competitive, Germany’s hard coal production went downhill after the government ended its subsidy schemes. The last hard coal mine closed its gates in December 2018, ending a 200-year history of the Ruhr Region and potentially starting a new development phase of Westphalia, a geographical phenomenon inextricably intertwined with coal. Yet even though Germany ceased to extract hard coal itself, it continues to use it. Around 12 percent of power generation is coming from hard coal, imported primarily from Russia, Canada and the United States. Once Germany’s flagship industry, the steel sector consumes almost 40 percent of the nation’s hard coal. If Germany is to remain an industrial powerhouse, it would need to keep on importing hard coal as it remains an indispensable element of steel-making. This would in turn compel it to rely on imports from Russia (Murmansk and Ust-Luga, to be precise), thereby creating a triple dependence on Russian hydrocarbons. If one is to take monthly statistics in the past 3 years they would find that 53 percent of all imported coal came from Russia, a dependence which has palpably deepened in the past 24 months thanks to the vicinity of large coal-handling ports in the Russian Baltics. Oil, gas and coal – in all three instances Germany imports more than a third of its needs from Russia; in the case of gas it will be significantly higher very soon with NordStream-2 being slated for a mid-2020 commissioning and Groningen going to a government-mandated halt.

As Xcel moves toward coal-free, will natural gas remain part of energy mix? – When Xcel Energy announced last year that it plans to stop burning coal in Minnesota by 2030, environmental groups applauded the company’s effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.But one part of Xcel’s plan is being met with less enthusiasm: It’s proposing to replace a coal-fired power plant in the central Minnesota town of Becker with a brand-new plant that would burn natural gas to generate electricity.Xcel says it needs natural gas as part of its transition to carbon-free electricity. But some advocacy groups say building a new fossil fuel plant is unnecessary – and may be unwise.The proposed gas plant is part of a resource plan Xcel Energy submitted in July to the state Public Utilities Commission. In Minnesota, utilities are required to file a resource plan every few years, outlining the different energy sources they need to serve their customers for the next 15 years. The PUC must approve the plan.Xcel’s plan calls for retiring its remaining two coal-fired power plants in the Upper Midwest – both in Minnesota – by 2030, adding new solar and wind to its energy mix and keeping its nuclear plant in Monticello, Minn., operating at least until 2040.Xcel received special authority from the state Legislature three years ago to build the natural gas plant in Becker to replace the coal-fired plant it’s planning to close there, bypassing the traditional route of getting approval from state regulators.But Xcel isn’t required to build the new plant. And the PUC could require that it be smaller than the 786-megawatt size Xcel proposed.In the initial public reaction to the plan, the proposed natural gas plant received some of the sharpest criticism. “We would be one of the first to sort of recognize that Xcel has been making really bold commitments about reducing their carbon emissions, and they’re obviously very serious about those goals,” said Kevin Lee, director of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy’s Climate and Energy Program. But he added, “To us, a large investment in gas is one of the most obvious ways in which we think that they’ve missed the mark.”

Defying Climate Goals, New York Approves Rate Hike to Pay for New Natural Gas Infrastructure – DeSmog – One of the first tests of New York’s ambitious climate plan didn’t go well, as the New York Public Service Commission voted on January 16 to raise electricity rates on customers by $1.2 billion over the next three years to help Consolidated Edison, or Con Ed, pay for new natural gas pipelines and infrastructure.New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) targets 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. To meet those goals, any new gas infrastructure constructed now and in the future would have to be retired well before the end of its useful life, becoming stranded assets.Con Ed’s plans for the funds include the expansion of natural gas pipelines in Queens and the Bronx and the addition of potential new natural gas infrastructure projects. Over a billion dollars of the rate hike funds would go toward fixing leaking natural gas pipelines.Environmental activists opposed the rate hike based on the grounds that it stands in contradiction of the state’s climate goals.“Governor Cuomo’s administration is starting off 2020 by ignoring the CLCPA and supporting climate denialism,” said Lee Ziesche, Sane Energy Project Community Engagement Coordinator. “We have just 10 years left to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and Con Ed’s plan spends the next three years and hundreds of millions of our ratepayer dollars going in the wrong direction.” New York isn’t alone in raising questions of greenwashing. Oil companies, major investment firms like BlackRock, banks like Bank of America, and tech companies like Microsoft are all making public relations efforts that assert the companies are taking climate change seriously. Meanwhile, they are still investing in or otherwise supporting the expansion of oil and gas production.

Local Climate Policy Run Amok, Bellingham Edition – Earlier this month the New York Times ran a story about Bellingham, Washington, a picturesque town that looks out across Puget Sound to the San Juan Islands. Bellingham is home to Western Washington University, but rational thought is in short supply when it comes to climate activism.What got the country’s attention is a proposal before the city council to require all homeowners to switch from natural gas to electric heating by 2040. A number of cities already require new construction to use electric heat, but Bellingham would be the first to mandate a complete phaseout for everyone.The opposition is spearheaded by, surprise, the privately owned gas and electric utilities, which plan a PR campaign talking up the wonders of CH4. Real estate interests are unhappy too. They will face off against the enviros, who all seem to see this as a big step toward municipal carbon neutrality. I hesitate to draw conclusions about what people think or don’t think based on reading a few news articles, since I live hundreds of miles away and have no personal connections to Bham. Nevertheless, I’ve checked out a number of sources representing a range of views, and I’ve yet to see anyone making the obvious point that electric heating mandates are just as likely to increase carbon emissions as reduce them. The problem, of course, is that Bellingham proposes to significantly increase local electricity consumption but is making no corresponding effort to reduce the role of fossil fuels, and especially natural gas, in electrical generation. Where will the new electricity come from? At the margin, the “green” heating Bham homeowners will turn to when the gas is turned off is likely to come from…..gas. This is because renewables will not supply the full load at any point in the foreseeable future, and the home heating law will just increase electricity demand above what it would have been otherwise. Since conversion to electricity absorbs about half the energy content of the gas used to spin turbines, more gas may end up being burned that way than if the city had taken no action and the fuel had been piped directly to the houses heating with it. Amazingly, this point is expressed by exactly no one in a slew of articles that quote an array of business owners, politicians and activists. So I’m dumbfounded twice over, first by the push for a policy that has an unclear relationship to its ostensible goals, and then by the apparent absence of any awareness of the problem on the part of the entire cast of characters.

Is Natural Gas Really Helping the U.S. Cut Emissions? | Can natural gas be part of a climate change solution? That’s what the American Petroleum Institute argues in a new campaignit has launched ahead of this year’s elections, pushing back against some Democratic candidates who support bans on new development of oil and gas. The campaign echoes a refrain that supporters from both political parties have pushed for years: that gas is a cleaner fuel than coal and can serve as a bridge to a low-carbon future.The industry points to data showing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions are at their lowest level in decades, as coal power generation has been replaced by gas, which produces about half the carbon dioxide emissions when burned, and by renewable energy sources like wind and solar. But experts agree that those official figures understate emissions of methane, the primary component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas released in leaks throughout the oil and gas development supply chain. And while there’s uncertainty about how much methane is leaking, several studies show that the benefits of the switch from coal to gas over the last decade are smaller than government data suggests, perhaps substantially smaller. Many oil and gas companies have pledged to reduce their methane emissions. But beyond the methane leaks, emissions from new petrochemical plants and liquid natural gas export facilities in coming years, spurred by the gas boom, are set to surge. With costs of renewable energy sources like wind and solar now competitive with natural gas, many experts who have studied the industry’s emissions say that even though the switch from coal to gas has likely provided some climate benefits, marginal as they may be, it’s harder to argue that it can continue doing so in the future. Official EPA data says methane emissions from the oil and gas industrywere down slightly from 2005 to 2017 and were down significantly from 1990 levels. Yet while EPA hasn’t published data for the past two years, other sources suggest methane emissions may be rising. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the industry’s venting and flaring – venting is the intentional release of methane to the atmosphere, while flaring burns the methane to emit carbon dioxide instead – jumped by about 66 percentin 2018. That doesn’t include unintended leaks from equipment. Ananalysis by the Rhodium Group of more recent data found that the industry’s methane emissions were up last year.

Chattanooga remains heartbeat of TVA’s nuclear power future, CEO Jeff Lyash says | -Despite the loss of thousands of TVA jobs in Chattanooga over the past four decades, Chattanooga remains the heartbeat of TVA’s single-biggest source of power and will remain one of Chattanooga’s biggest employers, the head of federal utility said Thursday. In a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club, TVA President Jeff Lyash called Chattanooga “the nuclear heartbeat” for TVA, which is looking at ways to both develop the next generation of smaller reactors and extend the life of its existing atomic plants. TVA, the nation’s biggest public utility, derives more than 40% of its electricity from its seven nuclear reactors – more than twice the U.S. average and twice the share of any other of TVA’s generation sources. Lyash said TVA is currently studying the potential of building small modular reactors in Oak Ridge near where America’s “Atoms for Peace” program after World War II first developed nuclear energy. TVA also is considering whether to seek another 20-year life extension to the Browns Ferry, Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants in Tennessee and Alabama. Lyash, a nuclear engineer and trained senior reactor operator who previously worked at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, wants TVA to improve its nuclear plant performance and potentially expand nuclear output even as other U.S. utilities are shutting down aging nuclear plants.

Billions at stake: Santee Cooper case back in state court – A class action lawsuit resulting from the failed V.C. Summer nuclear plant and involving South Carolina-owned power company Santee Cooper is back in state court. That’s the latest turn of the legal screw in a lawsuit involving more than 2 million of Santee Cooper’s customers. A key issue is whether Santee Cooper’s customers will be stuck with paying several billion dollars that the power company is said to owe due to the nuclear project’s failure in mid-construction in July 2017. Another affected matter is whether the historic state-owned utility, which began as a rural electrification project in the 1930s, will eventually be sold to a big out-of-state energy company or remain under state control. Last year, Santee Cooper’s partner in the doomed V.C. Summer nuclear venture – SCANA, a publicly traded company suffering financial woes because of the project – was sold to Dominion Energy, one of the nation’s largest power companies. The state’s 170 lawmakers will be mulling the possible sale of Santee Cooper in this legislative session. Last week, U.S. Judge Terry Wooten ordered that the Santee Cooper case – which had temporarily been transferred to federal court – be sent back to state court to be tried before special Judge Jean Toal, a former S.C. Supreme Court chief justice. It is unclear when a trial will begin. Toal had originally set Feb. 24 as the trial start date in the case. But Judge Wooten’s order could be appealed to the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, delaying the trial.

Santee Cooper suffers setbacks in fight to charge customers for failed nuclear project – – Santee Cooper suffered a series of setbacks Thursday in a major court fight over whether South Carolina’s state-owned utility can charge its customers billions of dollars more for a nuclear plant construction project that was never finished. Jean Toal, a former S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice who is handling the case, rejected Santee Cooper’s request to stop the case from becoming a class-action lawsuit, a move that would have greatly reduced the number of South Carolinians seeking refunds and rate cuts from the utility.Santee Cooper lawsuit over failed SC nuclear project booted back to state court Toal also dismissed Santee Cooper’s petition to limit the case’s potential monetary penalties against the 85-year-old utility. Finally, Toal sided with the group of attorneys who are suing Santee Cooper on customers’ behalf in agreeing to postpone the case’s Feb. 24 trial date to April 20 in Greenville. Ratepayer attorneys said they wanted more time to prepare their case against Santee Cooper and S.C. Electric & Gas, its partner in the failed, $9 billion V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion project. They also wanted time to notify the 2 million South Carolinians who get Santee Cooper’s power – either directly or through an electric cooperative – of the class action lawsuit. The case seeks to force Santee Cooper to refund customers what they have already paid in higher power bills for the project while also preventing the utility from charging customers any further for the unfinished plant. Santee Cooper and SCE&G abandoned the project in July 2017 after years of construction site dysfunction and rapidly escalating costs. SCE&G’s new owner, Virginia-based Dominion Energy, last year agreed to a lawsuit settlement that lowered SCE&G customers’ power bills but still requires them to pay $2.3 billion more for the failed project.

TMI watchdog denied hearing on downsized emergency response at closed nuclear power plant – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has denied a request for a hearing on a proposal to scale back some emergency response-related measures at Three Mile Island in Dauphin County. The request for the hearing came from Three Mile Island Alert, a watchdog organization which opposes plans by the TMI owner to reduce its role in emergency planning as of early next year. The NRC concluded TMI Alert lacks the legal standing to compel the hearing. TMI Alert has 25 days to appeal. TMI owner Exelon is asking the NRC for an exemption that would, among other things, remove the 10-mile evacuation zone surrounding TMI and end off-site radiation monitoring and regular testing of sirens to warn the public of an accident. Exelon also would reduce its involvement in off-site emergency planning, and its financial contribution toward local planning and response capabilities. Exelon says those things will eventually become unnecessary because of reduced threat of serious accident at TMI, which shut down for good in September. Specifically, Exelon says they will become unnecessary as of 488 days after the Sept. 20, 2019 shut down date. That’s when fuel rods, now submerged in a cooling pool, will have cooled to the point they are unlikely to cause a serious fire and release of radiation if the pool were to leak and allow them to heat up, according to Exelon..

Tepco estimates 44 years to decommission Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant – Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. has estimated that it will take 44 years to decommission its Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant. Tepco presented the outline of decommissioning plans to the municipal assembly of Tomioka, one of the two host towns of the nuclear plant, on Wednesday. The Fukushima No. 2 plant is located south of the No. 1 plant, which suffered a triple meltdown accident in the wake of the March 2011 massive earthquake and tsunami. According to the outline, the decommissioning process for the No. 2 plant will have four stages, taking 10 years for the first stage, 12 years for the second stage and 11 years each for the third and fourth stages. Tepco will survey radioactive contamination at the nuclear plant in the first stage, clear equipment around nuclear reactors in the second, remove the reactors in the third and demolish the reactor buildings in the fourth. Meanwhile, the plant operator will transfer a total of 9,532 spent nuclear fuel units at the plant to a fuel reprocessing company by the end of the decommissioning process, and 544 unused fuel units to a processing firm by the start of the third stage. Tepco will submit its finalized decommissioning plans for the Fukushima No. 2 plant to the Nuclear Regulation Authority after gaining approval from the municipal governments of Tomioka and the other host town, Naraha, as well as the Fukushima Prefectural Government.

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