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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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
Internal Monsanto Documents Show It Knew of Predicted Damage to U.S. Farms – Documents unearthed in a lawsuit brought by a Missouri farmer who claimed that Monsanto and German chemical maker BASF’s dicamba herbicide ruined his peach orchard revealed that the two companies knew their new agricultural seed and chemical system would likely damage many U.S. farms, according to documents seen by The Guardian.The lawsuit, which awarded the Missouri farmer $265 million, showed that Monsanto intentionally hid the risks involved in its plans and calculated how to profit off farmers worried about damage to their crops. The documents also show Monsanto’s efforts to stymie tests from third-party labs to make sure there was no data that concerned regulators.In fact, The Guardian reports that some BASF employees joked about their company sharing “voodoo science” and hoping that they stay out of jail.The issue revealed by the documents was about dicamba and a new crop system from the two companies that addressed farmers’ growing concerns that weeds resistant to Monsanto’s glyphosate weed-killer, Roundup, were taking over croplands.The new system allowed farmers to plant dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton. Then farmers could spray dicamba over their fields and kill everything that had developed a resistance to glyphosate, according to The Guardian. The documents, which date back to 2009, show that Monsanto and BASF, despite assuring regulators that their system would prevent drift to neighboring farms, were aware that their system could have catastrophic consequences, as The Guardian reported. It seems the companies were aware that farmers would likely use older versions of dicamba, which easily turns into vapor and carries away to neighboring farms that were not protected, ruining thousands of acres of crops. Dicamba is particularly volatile and likely to carry away in hot weather.
Don’t Look Now But The People Responsible For The World’s Food Supply Are Starting To Get Sick – Sanderson Farms, a large poultry manufacturer and Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, have both reported their first couple of positive cases of coronavirus. This raises the obvious question: what happens when people critical to the world’s food supply start to fall ill?As of now, there has been no such disruption – but it is beginning to morph into a massive threat, Bloomberg notes, with workers in close quarters preparing and processing food globally. Aside from the obvious threat of food not making it to consumers, things like fruits may also wind up rotting in fields if there aren’t enough workers to pick and cultivate them. Al Stehly, who operates a farm-management business in California’s North San Diego County said: “If we can’t flatten the curve, then that is going to affect farmers and farm laborers — and then we have to make choices about which crops we harvest and which ones we don’t. We hope no one gets sick. But I would expect some of us are going to get the virus.” And to clarify, it’s not the food itself that causes the threat of the virus. It’s the supply chain disruption that the virus can cause with workers.Sanderson was lucky in the sense that their one worker only worked at a small table by themselves. But other infections in the industry, where workers are closer together, could wreak more havoc. At some beef plants, workers are “elbow to elbow” and despite the employees wearing protective gear, there still remains risk of contagion. Dave MacLennan, chief executive officer of Cargill Inc., the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader said: “One of our beef plants feeds 22 million people per day, so it’s vital that these plants stay open.”Thomas Hesse, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 401 said: “There’s underlying tension, there’s fear and there’s anxiety.”
U.S. dairy farmers dump milk as pandemic upends food markets – (Reuters) – Dairy farmer Jason Leedle felt his stomach churn when he got the call on Tuesday evening. “We need you to start dumping your milk,” said his contact from Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the largest U.S. dairy cooperative. Despite strong demand for basic foods like dairy products amid the coronavirus pandemic, the milk supply chain has seen a host of disruptions that are preventing dairy farmers from getting their products to market. Mass closures of restaurants and schools have forced a sudden shift from those wholesale food-service markets to retail grocery stores, creating logistical and packaging nightmares for plants processing milk, butter and cheese. Trucking companies that haul dairy products are scrambling to get enough drivers as some who fear the virus have stopped working. And sales to major dairy export markets have dried up as the food-service sector largely shuts down globally. The dairy industry’s woes signal broader problems in the global food supply chain, according to farmers, agricultural economists and food distributors. The dairy business got hit harder and earlier than other agricultural commodities because the products are highly perishable – milk can’t be frozen, like meat, or stuck in a silo, like grain. Other food sectors, however, are also seeing disruptions worldwide as travel restrictions are limiting the workforce needed to plant, harvest and distribute fruits and vegetables, and a shortage of refrigerated containers and truck drivers have slowed the shipment of staples such as meat and grains in some places. Leedle could likely sell his milk if he could get it to market. Dairy products in grocery stores have been in high demand as consumers stay home during the pandemic, though panic buying may be slowing. Earlier this week, a local market told Leedle’s wife she could buy only two dairy products total per shopping trip as retailers nationwide ration many high-demand products.
People are panic-buying chicks ‘like they did toilet paper’ in coronavirus pandemic –Jessica Pryor of Missouri says she’d been planning to raise chickens before the coronavirus pandemic drove her to buy 11 chicks, The Missourian reported. “If the stores close down, at least we can still feed the kids,” Pryor said, according to the publication. Coronavirus fears, scarce eggs and lockdown boredom are driving sales of live chickens, especially baby chicks, across the United States, The New York Times reports. “People are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper,” said Tom Watkins, vice president of Murray McMurray Hatchery in Webster, Iowa, according to the publication. In Utah, the Ogden Intermountain Farmers Association store sold 1,000 chicks in one day, and a Dallas Green Farm and Home store in West Haven sold 350 chicks at a one-day sales event, the Deseret News reported. Katy Cox, whose family has raised chickens as a hobby for four years, came to a Riverton IFA store planning to buy four chicks, but discovered long lines and sign-in sheets for buyers. She took home six new chicks – the per-customer limit, according to the publication. “I think there is kind of a herd mentality,” Cox said, the Deseret News reported. “If one person does it then everyone does it … it is definitely different times. People have never gone through anything like this. There was how life looked before COVID-19 and then life after COVID-19.” Feed stores across the nation report selling out of live chicks almost as fast as they come in, The New York Times reports. “I didn’t know I was jumping on a bandwagon,” said Erin Scheessele of Corvallis, Oregon, who bought chicks to give her two children “something to do” while they are out of school, according to the publication. And it’s not just in the United States. Self-isolating in the United Kingdom, actor Tom Holland of the “Spider-Man” films bought three chickens after being unable to find eggs in the supermarket, Metro reports. Between stress-baking and stockpiling, eggs have become scarce on supermarket shelves, The Washington Post reported. “The reality is we don’t have twice as many eggs as we did in January,” said Russell Diez-Canseco, chief executive of Vital Farms, the largest U.S. supplier of naturally raised eggs, according to the publication. Suppliers are working on increasing their flocks, but it takes about 22 weeks for a chick to start laying eggs, The Washington Post reported. Of course, that goes for newly purchased backyard chicks, too.
Chronic wasting disease is getting closer to Georgia. What should hunters know? – Deer season in the Peach State is upon us, but wildlife experts said they’re concerned about a disease that’s inching its way closer to Georgia. The US Geological Survey said that as of January 2019, there have been 251 counties across 24 states with reported cases of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in free-ranging deer. Wildlife experts have compared it to Mad Cow Disease, but it’s known to affect deer and elk. Although it’s not in Georgia, it’s gotten closer. Scientists think CWD spreads between animals simply through contact with contaminated body fluids or indirectly through exposure to the disease in the environment. CWD affects many different species, but the one that Georgia Natural Resource experts said they’re most concerned about are the free-ranging deer. “It’s a slow and unpleasant death. The disease takes about 18 months to two years to incubate,” Theron Menken, with the wildlife division of the DNR, said. Menken compared CWD to a type of cancer. “You know, you’ll start seeing weight loss, listlessness, drooling, lack of coordination, various things like that. And it affects the nervous system,” said Menken. Menken said that once the deer is infected, the changes in its behavior are the only way to differentiate it from a healthy deer. “When the disease prions are present, the body no longer has the correct enzymes to break them up and you basically end up with vacuolas, or holes in the brain matter, so literally the brain is turning to Swiss cheese,” said Menken. He said the biggest concern he has for Georgia is hunters who go to another state and don’t take precautions. “Folks going abroad to hunt because, those particular portions of the animal, if you’re out in let’s say Colorado or one of the states that has the disease, we don’t allow you to bring back portions of those animals. You can only bring back boned out meat, hide,” said Menken. “That’s the thing with hunters going to infested areas and harvesting a deer that may look perfectly healthy, and then they transport a whole carcass back here, you know without that test, there’s really no way of knowing whether or not that deer is infected.”
Hungry rats swarm New Orleans streets as coronavirus closes restaurants, bars -With French Quarter bars and restaurants shuttered by a coronavirus lockdown, rats emboldened by hunger are swarming deserted New Orleans streets at night, WHTM reports. “It’s driving our rodents crazy,” said Mayor LaToya Cantrell, reported WWL-TV.. In Louisiana, which celebrated Mardi Gras as the pandemic took hold, more than 3,300 COVID-19 cases have been reported with more than 130 deaths, state officials say.The state has ordered people to remain in their homes, closing down restaurants and bars in the famed French Quarter of New Orleans.That makes it “a difficult time to be a rat,” since the rodents depend on dropped and discarded food to survive, said Claudia Regal, head of the local pest control board, CBS News reported.Tour guides and restaurateurs report seeing rats swarming the streets at night in search of something to eat, according to the network.“Unfortunately, with these businesses being shut down, these rats are hungry,” Regal said, WWL-TV reported. Pest control officers are using rat traps and bait to try to curtail the rat population.City leaders are asking people to properly dispose of trash and avoid throwing food into the streets, WHTM reported.City leaders also worry hungry rats could endanger the city’s homeless population, CBS News reported.”There are pathogens in these rodents,” Regal said, according to the network. “We don’t have very many disease cases that are actually related to rodents. But the potential is there.”
When humans are sheltered in place, wild animals will play – Goats in Wales; coyotes in San Francisco; rats, rats, everywhere: With much of the world staying home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, animals have ventured out where normally the presence of people would keep them away. Under the cover of night, in their feathered, silken, cream-colored coats, they trotted into Llandudno, a seaside town in Wales. On Thursday evening, a herd of Great Orme Kashmiri goats galloped through the desolate streets of the small town looking for food. Some goats got their fill from hedges, others climbed building walls. “They seem a bit wary of humans, they wouldn’t go past me at one point and were very cautious.” Luckily for the goats, there weren’t many humans around. More than a billion people worldwide are staying at home under guidance from their governments, socially distancing themselves from one another to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, which has claimed over 43,000 lives globally, including 2,300 in Britain. The goats live in Great Orme Country Park, in Conwy, Wales. They were a gift from Queen Victoria, from the royal herd, but their descendants are wild animals that roam and forage in the large park. But with the country under lockdown because of the coronavirus, the goats saw an opportunity to get a whiff of their neighboring town and hopped right to it. In the video Mr. Stuart recorded, the goats can be seen running down the middle of a street.“They were just racing through the town,” said Mr. Stuart, who called a nonemergency police line. “They are in town because it is so quiet, because hardly anyone is about.”There is also hardly anyone outside in San Francisco – except for the coyotes. Residents in San Francisco have been under orders to practice social distancing for two weeks, leaving their homes only to buy groceries, go to pharmacies and participate in other essential tasks. The streets have been left to the coyotes, which seem to be venturing farther into the city because there are so few cars, according to Deb Campbell, a spokeswoman for San Francisco Animal Care and Control. Social distancing has not increased wild animals’ populations, but it does seem to have changed their behavior in seeking new food sources, said Jim Fredericks, chief entomologist at the National Pest Management Association.“What we are also seeing is that they are looking for food in places they had not before,” he said. “The part of the equation that is missing right now is people.”Ever since Louisiana imposed a lockdown, causing restaurants to shut down, the rats in New Orleans are almost certainly wondering where the usual French Quarter crowds – and their trash – have gone.“Animals are opportunistic and feed off trash,” said Claudia Riegel, executive director of the New Orleans Mosquito, Termite and Rodent Control Board. “The restaurants are producing a lot of trash, and right now, a lot of that is just gone.” This moment of desperation for the rodents can become an opportunity for communities trying to control the pest population, since rats are more likely to be lured by traps and baits, Dr. Fredericks said.
Secretary Of Interior Orders Mashpee Wampanoag Reservation ‘Disestablished,’ Tribe Says – WBUR – The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs told the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe on Friday that the tribe’s reservation will be “disestablished” and its land taken out of trust, per an order from Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, tribe Chairman Cedric Cromwell announced in a post on the tribe’s website.”Today’s action was cruel and it was unnecessary. The Secretary is under no court order to take our land out of trust. He is fully aware that litigation to uphold our status as a tribe eligible for the benefits of the Indian Reorganization Act is ongoing,” Cromwell wrote. “It begs the question, what is driving our federal trustee’s crusade against our reservation?” Having land “held in trust” by the federal government effectively affords a tribe special legal status and autonomy to decide how to tax, develop and manage a plot of land. The decision to take land into trust is typically made by the Department of the Interior, which had OK’d the trust status for the Mashpee land in 2015.But in February, the tribe suffered a legal defeat when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston upheld a lower court decision declaring the federal government had not been authorized to take the land into trust. That ruling marked another major development in what has been a lengthy legal battle over the land. As The Associated Press reported:The case was a largely semantic debate centered on whether the tribe could be considered “Indian” under the 1934 [Indian Reorganization Act], which created the process for taking lands into trust for tribes, among other things.Despite the ruling, those 321 acres remained in trust because a separate federal court case was still pending, according to the AP.Benjamin Wish, an attorney for the tribe, said in a statement on Monday that the Department of the Interior’s justification for disestablishing the tribe is based in a false reading of the court decision.“No court has ever ordered the Department to take the Tribe’s land out of trust,” he said. “The District Court did not so order. The First Circuit did not so order. In fact, neither court ordered anyone to do anything.”
Largest US dam removal stirs debate over coveted West water – California’s second-largest river has sustained Native American tribes with plentiful salmon for millennia, provided upstream farmers with irrigation water for generations and served as a haven for retirees who built dream homes along its banks.With so many demands, the Klamath River has come to symbolize a larger struggle over the American West’s increasingly precious water resources, and who has claim to them. Now, plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath’s lower reaches – the largest such demolition project in U.S. history – have placed those competing interests in stark relief. Tribes, farmers, homeowners and conservationists all have a stake in the dams’ fate. “We are saving salmon country, and we’re doing it through reclaiming the West,” said Amy Cordalis, a Yurok tribal attorney fighting for dam removal. The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs, and could revive plummeting salmon populations by reopening habitat that has been blocked for more than a century.The proposal fits into a trend in the U.S. toward dam demolition as these infrastructure projects age and become less economically viable. More than 1,700 dams have been dismantled nationwide since 2012.Backers of the Klamath Dam removal say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could vote this spring on whether to transfer the dams’ hydroelectric licenses from the current operator, PacifiCorp, to a nonprofit formed to oversee the demolition. Drawdown of the reservoirs behind the dams could begin as early as 2022, according the nonprofit, the Klamath River Renewal Corp.Opponents, including a group of residents who live around a reservoir, say without the dams, their waterfront properties will become mudflats and their homes will lose value. “If we get halfway through and they blow a hole in the dam just to let the water out – to say, ‘Yeah, we done this’ – they can walk away from it. And we have no recourse whatsoever,” said Herman Spannus, whose great-grandfather first ran a ranch in the area in 1856.
Pittsburgh to Replace Thousands of Lead Drinking Water Pipes – Under an agreement negotiated by community groups – represented by NRDC and the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project – the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) will remove thousands of lead water pipes by 2026 in order to address the chronically high lead levels in the city’s drinking water and protect residents’ health. Under the settlement, which was recently approved by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, PWSA must prioritize replacement for residents in high-risk neighborhoods. It must also limit the practice of replacing only part of a lead service line, which can cause lead levels to substantially increase. PWSA will also expand its free tap water filter program to include low-income renters whose homes may have lead lines, homes with lead lines where PWSA replaces a water meter, and any customer whose tap water contains at least 10 parts per billion of lead.”The aggressive steps to get the lead out of Pittsburgh outlined in the settlement are necessary to protect the health of children and families,” said NRDC attorney Pete DeMarco. “The burdens of lead-contaminated water fall most heavily on low-income families and communities of color, which is why it is so important to prioritize lead service line replacements in those neighborhoods where residents are at greatest risk.”Pittsburgh’s drinking water has been contaminated with lead since at least 2016, with levels above the federal action limit in five out of the last eight testing periods. There is no safe level of lead exposure: The heavy metal can cause serious and irreversible damage to the body, affecting the nervous system, fertility and cognitive ability, among other functions, and posing a particularly high risk for children. Pittsburgh is just the latest in a growing list of cities facing drinking water crises, such as Flint, Michigan, andNewark, New Jersey. In 2016, NRDC analysis indicated that more than 18 million people were being served by 5,363 community water systems that violated the Lead and Copper Rule. But Pittsburgh United said that the settlement could now provide a model for other cities with lead-contaminated drinking water. “Safe water is a right, not a luxury,” Kennedy says. “Although work remains to be done to ensure all customers have access to safe and affordable service, this settlement puts PWSA on a path to replacing all residential lead service lines.”
Idaho Rattled by Biggest Earthquake in 37 Years – Idaho residents were rattled Tuesday evening by the biggest earthquake to shake the state in almost 40 years. The 6.5 magnitude quake struck just before 6 p.m. local time 73 miles northeast of Meridian, The Associated Press reported. It caused no known damage or injuries, but plenty of surprise. “At first I thought it was thunder, weird thunder, but then the house was moving and I realized this is an earthquake – a really big earthquake,” Boise resident Melissa Hawkins, 44, told USA Today. All told, more than two million people might have felt the earthquake, according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) figures reported by The Associated Press. Reports of shaking came from as far as Spokane, Washington; Bozeman, Montana; and Salt Lake City, Utah, according to USA Today. Despite tweets warning of the apocalypse, Caltech seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones told The Associated Press that the Idaho region has an earthquake around this size every 30 to 40 years. The last was actually much worse: the 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake of 1983. That quake struck near the town of Challis and killed two school children when they were buried under rubble, CNN reported. It also cost the state $12.5 million in property damage. The 1983 quake was along a “normal fault,” which causes vertical movement, Jones told The Associated Press. Tuesday’s quake, on the other hand, was on an unmapped “strike-slip fault,” which causes horizontal movement. Jones said it was not uncommon for faults in remote areas to go unmapped, since they are less likely to cause damage.”This is one that wasn’t obvious enough to be mapped before now,” Jones told The Associated Press.But she further explained on Twitter why Idaho sees earthquakes.”Idaho is part of the Basin and Range tectonic province. Everything west of the Wasatch Mtns. is getting slowly stretched out as a bit of North America tries to cling to the Pacific plate,” she wrote. Jones said to expect aftershocks, and the USGS reported a 4.8 magnitude one about an hour after, according to USA Today. More, smaller tremors were felt throughout the evening.
Pollution Has Slowed Around The World. Scientists Wonder How That Will Affect Maine – Atmospheric and oceanographic scientists are just as concerned as anyone about helping their friends and family, the nation and the world make it through the trials of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is also their job to pay attention to a kind of grand experiment that’s underway – an unprecedented hiatus in human pressure on global ecosystems and what that hiatus could mean on the ground, and on the water, for Maine. Paul Mayewski is the director of the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute. He says that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the pause button on pollution worldwide. “Unfortunately, like 9/11, this is a situation in which there is a tremendous shutdown in activity, even more dramatically than 9/11 because it is happening all over the world,” he says. For scientists such as Mayewski, it’s a chance to study phenomena that hearken back to the pre-industrial era and, some believe, could provide a snapshot of what a post-fossil future could look like. “We will see decreases in the emissions of carbon, potentially for many weeks, if not months. It will be important to see how much of a drop actually occurs in the atmosphere because that gives us a feeling of what kind of reductions might be helpful.” Mayewski and other scientists say any reduction in the world’s rate of carbon emissions attributable to the economic slowdown won’t make much of a direct difference in long term global warming trends. Some say, though, it could help convince consumers that a faster transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is more doable than they thought. And in the short-term, there are likely to be marked effects on other pollutants. “We’re learning what it would be like to live in a significantly less polluted, in terms of the atmosphere, significantly less polluted environment – and a situation in which air quality is much better than it normally is,” says Mayewski.
Cleaner Air Should Not Require Sheltering in Place – European Space Agency satellite images published in The New York Times on March 24 show dramatic reductions in air pollution in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle due to so many vehicles being off the road as people shelter in place. What a shame it took a pandemic. These images show us how much more livable and healthier our cities would be if we electrified transportation. What would it take to switch most vehicles used in cities to electric? It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Experience from world leaders in electrifying transportation, in countries such as Norway, tells us that it takes three things: subsidies for purchasing electric vehicles, creation of an extensive charging infrastructure – and then we need to connect vehicle electrification to renewable energy and an upgraded grid that can handle it. Renewable energy and electric vehicles mutually support each other. The next major economic-recovery package needs to restore the tax credit for developing renewable energy and continue subsidies for electric vehicles, which weren’t included in the stimulus that just passed. Specifically, Congress needs to expand the $7,500 federal tax credit for purchasing electric vehicles. The old credit phased out after a producer has sold 200,000 EVs, which General Motors and Tesla have done. Without an expanded cap, car producers won’t convert more production to EVs. Opponents of the subsidy, though usually not opposed to subsidies for the rich, cite 2016 data from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service revealing that 78 percent of the federal tax credits for EV purchases went to those with adjusted gross incomes of at least $100,000 and 7 percent to those earning a million or more. One solution is for the federal government to do what California did in 2016 – put an income limit on rebate eligibility. California’s was lowered again at the end of 2019. Further, those with incomes less than or equal to 300 percent of the federal poverty level receive an additional $2,000 rebate. Oregon has a similar low-income program. Getting the rebates right is easy and should be part of a restoration of the federal credit. Then we have to address “range anxiety” – the concern people have over being stranded because there’s not enough charging infrastructure. With federal and state subsidies, cities have a big role to play here. In my new book, Greenovation: Urban Leadership on Climate Change, I tell of world leaders such as Oslo and London – places where there are few single-family homes with garages to house chargers – that are figuring out the details involved in building an urban charging infrastructure. London is overseeing a rapid transition of its iconic black cabs and buses to electric.
Oceans can be restored to former glory within 30 years, say scientists – The glory of the world’s oceans could be restored within a generation, according to a major new scientific review. It reports rebounding sea life, from humpback whales off Australia to elephant seals in the US and green turtles in Japan. Through rampant overfishing, pollution and coastal destruction, humanity has inflicted severe damage on the oceans and its inhabitants for centuries. But conservation successes, while still isolated, demonstrate the remarkable resilience of the seas. The scientists say there is now the knowledge to create an ocean renaissance for wildlife by 2050 and with it bolster the services that the world’s people rely on, from food to coastal protection to climate stability. The measures needed, including protecting large swathes of ocean, sustainable fishing and pollution controls, would cost billions of dollars a year, the scientists say, but would bring benefits 10 times as high. However, the escalating climate crisis must also be tackled to protect the oceans from acidification, loss of oxygen and the devastation of coral reefs. The good news, the scientists say, is a growing awareness of the ability of oceans and coastal habitats such as mangroves and salt marshes to rapidly soak up carbon dioxide and bolster shorelines against rising sea levels. “We have a narrow window of opportunity to deliver a healthy ocean to our grandchildren, and we have the knowledge and tools to do so,” said Prof Carlos Duarte, of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, who led the review. “Failing to embrace this challenge, and in so doing condemning our grandchildren to a broken ocean unable to support good livelihoods is not an option.” “Overfishing and climate change are tightening their grip, but there is hope in the science of restoration. “One of the overarching messages of the review is, if you stop killing sea life and protect it, then it does come back. We can turn the oceans around and we know it makes sense economically, for human wellbeing and, of course, for the environment.”
Researchers record 1st-ever heat wave in East Antarctica – This January, East Antarctica – an area that previously seemed to be spared from climate warming – experienced its first recorded heat wave.The heat wave was recorded at the Casey Research Station between Jan. 23 and 26, marking the area’s highest temperature ever at 48.6 degrees Fahrenheit, while minimum temperatures stayed above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, according to research in Global Change Biology.A rarity in Antarctica, heat waves are known as “three consecutive days with both extreme maximum and minimum temperatures,” according to the research.Meanwhile, Denman Glacier – a large glacier in East Antarctica – appears to be rapidly retreating. Its position above the world’s deepest known canyon may be causing it to melt faster than it can recover, according to a letter in Geophysical Research Letters, Live Science reports.As the glacier retreats, warm water fills the canyon, which could cause a feedback loop that returns all of the glacier’s ice to the ocean, leading to about 5 feet of global sea level rise, reports Live Science. Researchers concluded the retreating of the glacier should be a “wake-up call” to scientists who believed melting in East Antarctica to be less of a threat than that of west Antarctica. “Although it is too early for full reports, this warm summer will have impacted Antarctic biology in numerous ways,” researchers wrote in their letter on Global Change Biology, noting disruption to ecosystem, community, and populations scales.
Antarctica Experiences First Known Heat Wave – Scientists have recorded Antarctica’s first documented heat wave, warning that animal and plant life on the isolated continent could be drastically affected by climate change.Australian Antarctic Program researchers recorded the heat wave event at Casey research station in East Antarctica during the 2019-2020 southern hemisphere summer.Findings by the team were published in the Global Change Biology journal on Tuesday, with authors warning that the changes could affect global weather patterns.Between January 23 and 26, a research team at Casey – directly south of Perth in western Australia – recorded the highest maximum and minimum temperatures ever seen at the base.During the period, minimum temperatures were higher than zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) while the maximums peaked above 7.5 degrees.On January 24, the Casey team recorded a record high temperature of 9.2 degrees Celsius, 6.9 degrees higher than the station’s mean maximum.Heat waves are classified as three consecutive days where very high maximum and minimum temperatures are recorded.At the same time, record high temperatures were also reported on the other side of the continent, on the Antarctic Peninsula. Last month, the highest ever temperature – 18.3 degrees – was recorded at the Argentinian research station Esperanza Base.The authors of the study said the local effects of climate change could have a global impact.”Antarctica may be isolated from the rest of the continents by the Southern Ocean, but it has worldwide impacts,” they said.”It drives the global ocean conveyor belt, a constant system of deep-ocean circulation which transfers oceanic heat around the planet, and its melting ice sheet adds to global sea-level rise.” Co-author Dana Bergstrom said the hot summer could affect local populations positively at first, but could also lead to drought and heat stress on species adapted for the cold.
Coronavirus could trigger biggest fall in carbon emissions since World War Two – (Reuters) – Carbon dioxide emissions could fall by the largest amount since World War Two this year as the coronavirus outbreak brings economies to a virtual standstill, according to the chair of a network of scientists providing benchmark emissions data. Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, which produces widely-watched annual emissions estimates, said carbon output could fall by more than 5% year-on-year – the first dip since a 1.4% reduction after the 2008 financial crisis. “I wouldn’t be shocked to see a 5% or more drop in carbon dioxide emissions this year, something not seen since the end of World War Two,” Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University in California, told Reuters in an email. “Neither the fall of the Soviet Union nor the various oil or savings and loan crises of the past 50 years are likely to have affected emissions the way this crisis is,” he said. The prediction – among a range of new forecasts being produced by climate researchers – represents a tiny sliver of good news in the midst of crisis: Climate scientists had warned world governments that global emissions must start dropping by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
The Climate Crisis Will Be Just as Shockingly Abrupt – While some argue that the oxygen in the climate debate should be taken up by the pandemic instead, the two issues aren’t mutually exclusive, experts say. In a warming climate, more diseases are likely to emerge and spread, making climate change action an important part of addressing future health crises. Moreover, the perception that climate change isn’t as urgent as other crises may rely on misunderstandings about how climate-related changes will happen. The rate isn’t constant: Instead, there’s reason to believe everything from Arctic melt to Amazon deforestation might experience what’s known as “tipping points,” where small changes in nature shift into rapid and irreversible damage. Greenland and Antarctica are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s, according to a new study in the journal Nature. Between 1992 and 2017, Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice. This falls under the worst-case scenario projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the effects are already being felt in many parts of the world. The IPCC predicts that by the end of the century, 400 million people around the globe could be at risk of coastal flooding every year from sea-level rise alone. Ice sheets “may already be in an irreversible retreat,” going past their tipping point, Timothy M. Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, told me. “The more we warm things up, the faster the ice melts and the sea rises.” Even if we take aggressive action to curb emissions and halt rapid change, he said, some of these effects are already locked in. And once ice begins to melt, it’s hard to re-form it without another Ice Age. Lenton recently sounded the alarm in Natureon how close we’re getting to altering the planet permanently – and how the timeline on saving lives on climate change may be tighter than many people realize.
Climate summit in Glasgow postponed to 2021 because of coronavirus pandemic – (Reuters) – A climate summit that had been due to take place in Glasgow in November has been postponed to 2021 because of the coronavirus outbreak, officials said on Wednesday, throwing new uncertainty into talks to tackle global warming. With the world currently on track for catastrophic temperature increases, the two-week summit had been meant to galvanise a renewed international commitment to an accord brokered in Paris in 2015 aimed at stabilising the Earth’s climate. But with the British hosts and other countries struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought large sections of the global economy to a standstill, officials decided to push the summit back to give governments more time to prepare. “We will continue working tirelessly with our partners to deliver the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis and I look forward to agreeing a new date for the conference,” said British Business Minister Alok Sharma, who is due to serve as president of the conference, known as COP26. A parallel summit on preserving threatened species, which had been due to take place in Kunming, China, in October, was also being pushed back to next year, a U.N. official said.
Coronavirus Is Forcing the Climate Movement to Reimagine Itself – Earth Day was supposed to be part of a week of mass mobilizations in late April. Protestors were going to rally in the streets. Students were going to gather on their university campuses to demand they divest from fossil fuels. Those too young to vote were planning to knock on doors and educate voters about the reality that their future was at stake at the ballot box in November. They can’t do that anymore due to the risk of the covid-19 pandemic. Even if they wanted to get together, many governments have flat out banned gatherings to protect public health through at least April.Instead, participants will be taking similar actions online. And the plans for Earth Day are part of a larger gear change for the climate movement, which has traditionally relied on mass gatherings and strikes to build momentum, following in the footsteps of other successful movements, including women’s suffrage, civil rights, and LGBTQ rights. But the climate movement could pave a new way forward. Youth climate strikers have already begun digital striking, but revamped plans around Earth Day will take those efforts even further. Organizers have planned a 72-hour live stream where experts will give webinars, musicians will perform, and activists can gather to bring what they’re calling Earth Day Liveinto American homes. They’ll still be targeting banks that fund fossil fuel extraction and trying to register voters through texting. “We definitely are using this as an opportunity to really start to reimagine what social movements look like in the digital age,” Katie Eder, executive director of Future Coalition, a youth-led environmental group helping organize Earth Day Live, told Earther. “And that’s what I think is really cool about this. As horrible and painful and terrible as this time is, there are ways to find silver linings by understanding that there’s never been a social movement that’s utilized technology in a way that we’re going to have to in order to get our message heard and still bring people together in a digital way.”
Big Oil Takes Climate Litigation Back to Supreme Court – Major oil companies are urging the Supreme Court to reverse a recent ruling that allows Baltimore to pursue climate-related claims against the industry in state court. Baltimore’s case is one of several pending lawsuits that seeks damages from oil and gas producers for their role in climate change. Lawyers for BP Plc, Chevron Corp., and other companies on Tuesday filed a petition seeking review of a March 6 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that allows the Maryland city to make its case in state court, rather than federal court.
Oil Companies Appeal Baltimore Climate Case to Supreme Court -Attorneys for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, along with nearly two dozen other fossil fuel companies named in a climate damages suit by the city of Baltimore, have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a March decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the case in state court.Baltimore Acting City Solicitor Dana P. Moore said in a statement that she was “disappointed” that the oil and gas firms “continue to do or say anything to avoid accountability” for decades of misleading the public about climate change in order to delay climate action. “After raking in trillions of dollars in profits for themselves in just the past 30 years, they now expect Baltimore’s taxpayers to pay the enormous costs for the climate change damage the corporations knowingly caused.” Her office has 30 days to respond to the appeal.The question of jurisdiction – whether the proper venue for a case is state or federal court – has been a hotly contested issue in climate liability suits. The outcome of this appeal could have widespread ramifications for communities across the country attempting to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for worsening climate change. Most of the suits have been filed in state courts, and allege violations of state law. But fossil fuel companies have typically tried to move them to federal court, where precedents set in an earlier wave of climate lawsuits found that the Clean Air Act took precedence over state or local liability claims. In March, the 4th Circuit became the first appellate court to weigh in directly on the jurisdiction question, ruling that Baltimore’s case belonged in state court, where it was originally filed in 2018. The 1st, 9th, and 10th Circuit Courts have also heard arguments about jurisdiction in cases filed by Rhode Island and by communities in California and Colorado, respectively. Decisions in those cases are pending. The 4th Circuit specifically rejected the defendants’ argument that the case is covered by the federal officer removal statute. The corporations say they have operated as federal officers because they have sold or extracted fossil fuels while under a government contract. Specifically, they maintain that because they held federal leases, operated on the Outer Continental Shelf, and had other contracts with the federal government, their actions were taken under the direction of the federal government and thus fall under the federal officer removal statute.In their Supreme Court appeal, filed Tuesday, attorneys for the fossil fuel firms contended that the 4th Circuit did not consider their other arguments for keeping the case in federal court. The rules governing jurisdiction permit “a court of appeals to review any issue encompassed in a district court’s remand order where the removing defendant premised removal in part on the federal-officer or civil-rights removal statute,” attorneys for the companies wrote in the petition.
Oil firms were confronting climate risks. Then the virus hit — Before the coronavirus, oil companies were busy establishing commitments to address climate change. New goals were released regularly. BP PLC unveiled plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. So did the Spanish oil giant Repsol SA. Royal Dutch Shell PLC was forging ahead into renewable energy forays, and Occidental Petroleum Corp., a giant of the Texas shale patch, was dabbling with carbon capture and sequestration. Now those commitments are in question. Confronted with collapsing oil demand and plummeting prices, the causality of a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, oil companies are slashing budgets to weather the growing global crisis. It remains to be seen where that leaves their efforts to green the oil business. Companies with dwindling cash have a choice: Spend their remaining dollars on the traditional fossil fuel business or on their budding low-carbon enterprises. Many analysts said they expected the industry to continue its evolution, albeit at a slower pace. The factors that led companies to consider a shift in the first place – like increasing pressure from governments to tackle emissions, weak financial returns and the rise of technologies like electric cars – are likely to outlast the virus. But companies now must plan for a future with depleted balance sheets and the uncertainty prompted by a virus that has led to unprecedented lockdowns in much of the world. Near-term decisions could shape the oil industry’s transformation for years to come. “My hunch is those companies rely on cash flow from primary business to support new lines of business that they are seeking to develop,” said Daniel Raimi, a senior research associate at Resources for the Future. “If their balance sheet is suddenly in a much worse shape than it was a few months ago, I would expect that would decelerate their investment in new lines of business.” Others were more sanguine. When crude prices were high, oil companies were reluctant to settle for lower returns from renewable energy projects. Now the script has flipped. Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm, estimates that 85% of new oil and gas projects would fail to make a return of 15% – a standard industry threshold for investment decisions – with crude prices of $35 a barrel. The U.S. benchmark for crude was hovering around $20 yesterday while international prices for Brent were about $22 a barrel. Suddenly, returns of 5%-10% generated by wind and solar look attractive, the consulting firm wrote in a note to clients. “In a sustained US$35/bbl oil price environment, the argument that ‘investing in low-return renewable projects would leave value on the table’ no longer holds,” Wood Mackenzie wrote.
Exxon Must Allow Vote on Climate Denier’s Resolution — The Securities and Exchange Commission, for the second year running, has allowed Chevron and ExxonMobil to bar shareholder resolutions calling on the firms to fully disclose how they are working to curb their contributions to climate change. But in their March 23 announcement, federal financial regulators approved an Exxon shareholder resolution sponsored by a noted climate skeptic, which calls for the firm to do a “greenwashing audit”The shareholder behind the proposal is Steven J. Milloy, a longtime conservative lobbyist and political operative who publishes JunkScience.com, a website that attacks established climate science. Following the 2016 election, Milloy – who authored a book that year titled “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA” – worked on then-President-elect Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team.Milloy said he introduced the shareholder proposal in order to learn how much Exxon has spent on what he claims are “dishonest” public relations and advertising campaigns that portray the firm as “doing something on climate.” He has proposed similar resolutions in the past.”Greenwashing is meant to protect management,” said Milloy. “They can go out in public and try to claim they’re doing something. It’s all just posing, they’re just posers, pretending they’re doing something on climate.” Milloy, who E&E News reporter Scott Waldman described in 2018 as consistently “taking discredited positions for two decades” on the science behind public health and environmental regulations regarding air pollution, secondhand smoke, and climate change, said that if Exxon believed climate change was real, it would have acted by now to curb the firm’s contributions to the problem.
EPA gives public more time to comment on ‘secret science’ rule – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday announced that it will extend the amount of time in which the public can comment on its latest changes to a proposal that would limit the agency’s use of studies that don’t make their underlying data public. The announcement comes as the coronavirus has prompted state lockdowns, limited travel and restricted gatherings to stem the spread of the disease. Critics argued that more time was needed to weigh in, as many public health officials who have serious concerns over the EPA’s Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science proposal are busy in efforts to fight COVID-19. The public will now have about a month more to comment on the proposal, sometimes referred to as the secret science rule. Its comment period was previously slated to close on April 17 but will go until May 18. “EPA is committed to giving the public ample time to participate in the rulemaking process,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a statement obtained by The Hill. “By extending the comment period, we are listening to stakeholders and giving them more time to provide valuable input on how EPA can improve the science underlying its rules,” he added. The agency has argued that the rule is necessary for transparency, but opponents have said it could restrict the EPA’s use of science when making rules. Many studies do not make their underlying data public, particularly when personal information and medical data of confidential business information is involved. Critics worry the rule could prevent consideration of some landmark public health research, tipping EPA policy in favor of industry-funded studies. “Is there some clamoring from the public, anyone other than by industry for this? The answer is almost certainly not,” Andrew Rosenberg with the Union of Concerned Scientists previously told The Hill. Rosenberg said that even if the public wanted to review the scientific studies the department relies on, they wouldn’t need the underlying raw data.
Goldman on how the ‘largest economic shock of our lifetimes’ will permanently alter energy markets – The coronavirus pandemic will likely be a “game-changer” for energy markets, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs, with carbon-based industries such as oil thought to be sitting “in the cross-hairs.” A global health crisis has meant countries around the world have effectively had to shut down, with many governments placing massive restrictions on the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. To date, around 730,000 people have contracted COVID-19 worldwide, with 34,686 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It has left many wondering when life might return to normal, amid heightened fears that a coronavirus lockdown could last several months. “With social distancing measures now impacting 92% of global GDP, the ultimate magnitude of these shut-ins which is still unknown will likely permanently alter the energy industry and its geopolitics, restrict demand as economic activity normalizes and shift the debate around climate change,” analysts at Goldman said in a research note published Monday. “Not only is this the largest economic shock of our lifetimes, but carbon-based industries like oil sit in the cross-hairs as they have historically served as the cornerstone of social interactions and globalization, the prevention of which are the main defense against the virus,” they added. Oil prices fell sharply Monday morning, as the outbreak continues to crush global demand for crude. International benchmark Brent crude traded at $22.68 a barrel, down more than 9%, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) stood at $20.01, almost 7% lower. Brent futures fell to their lowest level in 18 years and WTI briefing dipped below $20 a barrel on Monday, before both benchmarks pared some of their losses. Analysts at Goldman Sachs said they believe the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak will be “extremely negative” for oil prices, given it is “impossible to shut down a vast amount of demand without large and persistent ramifications to supply.” “The one thing that separates energy from other commodities is that it must be contained within its production infrastructure, which for oil includes pipelines, ships, terminals, storage facilities, refineries, and distribution networks. All of which have relatively small and limited spare capacity.”
Trump could roll back Obama fuel-economy rules as soon as Tuesday – The Trump administration is expected to finalize its plan to roll back stringent gas-mileage rules enacted by the Obama administration as soon as Tuesday. The administration’s plan is expected to call for reducing the required annual fleetwide average mpg increases for carmakers for model years 2021-2026 from the original 5% that would have required under the Obama-era rules, to a less-stringent 1.5%. The White House had initially proposed a freeze in gas mileage rates at 2020 levels until 2026, but it appears to be retrenching slightly to the current proposed 1.5% proposal for annual increases. Environmentalists and consumer advocacy groups argue the Trump proposal would be a far cry from the the large hikes enacted by the Obama administration. The White House could roll back Obama mpg rules as soon as Tuesday.Buy Photo The White House could roll back Obama mpg rules as soon as Tuesday. (Photo: Daniel Mears, The Detroit News) “Of all the bad things President Trump has done to the environment, this is the worst,” Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, said in a statement. “He is rolling back the biggest single step any nation has taken to fight global warming, cut oil use and save money at the pump. He is rejecting cleaner, efficient cars in favor of pollution-spewing, gas-guzzling Trump-mobiles for urban cowboys hauling lattes home from Starbucks.” David Friedman, vice president of advocacy at Consumer Reports, invoked the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic to argue that the Trump administration should not be rolling back mpg rules with the economy appearing to be heading for a recession. “At a time when many Americans are going without a paycheck, it’s unconscionable to approve a plan that will have consumers paying more for gas for years to come,” he said. “The rollback of these consumer protections was a bad idea when it was proposed two years ago. Finalizing it now, as we are on the brink of a recession, ignores the long-term financial hardships this moment will have on millions of Americans.” The Trump administration has said the proposal to roll back stringent gas-mileage rules enacted by the Obama administration will reduce the price of a new car by $3,000. But there is little evidence to back up that claim, and consumer groups say motorists could save more than that in reduced fuel costs and vehicle maintenance if current rules are left in place.
Trump rolls back car mpg rules; critics call it irresponsible – Promising lower car prices, the White House finalized its plan Tuesday to roll back stringent gas-mileage rules enacted by the Obama administration, part of a years-long effort by President Donald Trump and his team to dismantle a critical part of his predecessor’s climate agenda. The move, decried by climate activists as the biggest environmental setback of Trump’s tenure, is part of a broader arc of environmental deregulation that has been a staple of his administration and supportive Republicans in Congress. Prior moves include reopening coal mines, rolling back power plant emissions, revoking California’s power to set its own emission standards for cars. Several of the moves have triggered lawsuits. Trump administration officials presented the rollback as an effort to provide certainty to automakers who chafed under Obama’s stringent mpg rules. Trump initially went further than most automakers were publicly seeking by proposing a freeze in rates after 2020, and even a slight retrenchment to a modest annual increase divided the industry. The new mileage plan calls for reducing the required annual fleetwide average mpg increases for automakers for model years 2021-26 – from the original 5% that would have required, to a less-stringent 1.5%. Automakers will be required to achieve a fleetwide average of 40.4 mpg by 2026 under the new requirements, down from an average of 46.7 mpg for cars and trucks by 2025 that was mandated in the existing regulations. The White House had initially proposed a complete freeze in gas mileage rates at 2020 levels until 2026. Environmentalists and consumer advocacy groups argue the edict will hurt air quality and cost consumers due to increased fuel costs and repairs. The Trump administration defended the move as an effort to lower the price of new cars at a time when drivers are hanging on to their vehicles for an average length of over a decade. “These standards are reasonable, realistic and achievable, and reflect the fact that times and technologies have changed since the original rules were enacted in 2012,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said on a conference call with reporters in Washington, D.C. “Our estimates show that these changes will save consumers more than $1,000 in price tag alone, so this means that new vehicles will be more affordable for consumers, more will be sold and we’ll be safer overall,” Chao continued. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler added: “All new vehicles will continue to be subject to strict pollution standards of the Clean Air Act, and new vehicles will be subject to higher pollution standards than the older vehicles they replace.” Noting the average age of a car on U.S. roads has jumped to 12 years old from eight years old in 1990, Wheeler said: “Either consumers cannot afford the price of new vehicles or they are not interested in purchasing certain types of new vehicles.”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Clean cars rollback adds to EVs’ pain — Wednesday, April 1, 2020 — The auto emissions rule announced yesterday by the Trump administration adds a darker tint to the outlook for electric vehicles, which already faced a stormy forecast because of the novel coronavirus crisis. t
‘No One Is Being Spared.’ Coronavirus Shutdowns Sap Demand for Residential Solar Power – Large-scale solar and wind projects face possible coronavirus-related delays, but perhaps no part of the U.S. renewables industry has felt the outbreak’s sting more quickly than home solar developers and installers. The solar industry has pushed to retain its designation as an “essential” industry, allowing it to stand among the businesses that can continue operating during the pandemic. It’s unclear, however, whether there will be much work to be had for companies that rely on selling solar systems door-to-door or signing on homeowners willing to enter a long-term contract.Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables expects to revise downward its 2020 residential forecast by 23 to 40 percent. For businesses and customers alike, the future looks exceedingly uncertain. The whole of the renewables industry is assessing the inevitable impacts of COVID-19. The residential sector is already smarting. “No one is being spared – everything is down across the board,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director at the California Solar and Storage Association, in an email this week. John Berger, CEO of Houston, Texas-based Sunnova, said sales have been “herky-jerky” since COVID-19 began shutting down cities, counties and states across the U.S.“Some days are good; some days are not so good,” Berger told Greentech Media. “The sales are definitely down.”Less than 10 percent of residential solar companies responding last week to a survey conducted by the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group said business is continuing as usual. Instead, the majority of companies reported a severe curtailment in business. Layoffs have started in earnest. California, the country’s largest residential solar market by a wide margin, instituted a statewide shelter-in-place order on March 19 (six Northern California counties established additional restrictions. halting most construction as of March 31). That’s led some installers to close and put permitting processes on ice as local departments learn how to process paperwork electronically.
New York’s last coal-burning power plant closes on Lake Ontario shore – New York State’s coal-burning era will end Tuesday, when Somerset Operating Co. officially retires its power plant on the shore of Lake Ontario in Niagara County. It means the share of the state’s power generation coming from coal will fall to zero. “We were the last coal-fired plant in New York State,” plant manager Brian Gregson said Monday. The 675-megawatt plant, opened by New York State Electric & Gas Corp. in 1983, last generated electricity on March 13, when it burned off the last of its coal. The process ended at 12:02 a.m. March 14. The plant sat idle more than it ran in recent years. It has been at least five years since the plant operated without interruption for as long as a month, Gregson said. The plant’s 613-foot smokestack can be seen from as far away as Buffalo on clear days. So could the emissions from the stack, although the plant won awards for emission control before the state imposed new regulations which in effect made it illegal to burn coal to generate electricity. The business hasn’t been healthy for years. In December 2011, AES Eastern Energy, which had bought the plant from NYSEG in May 1999, went bankrupt because it was unable to pay bondholders. The creditors formed Upstate New York Power Producers and took over the plant. Beowulf Energy of New York formed Somerset Operating Co. and bought the plant in 2016. The shutdown means 52 people will lose their jobs.
CORONAVIRUS: ‘We have never done this before.’ Inside N.Y.’s grid lockdown — New York’s historic decision to require workers to live at facilities operating the state’s power grid during the novel coronavirus pandemic may be a test case for the rest of the nation. For the first time, the grid operator has asked more than three dozen workers to live 24 hours, seven days a week at two control centers in the suburbs of Albany, N.Y. As part of a multilayer plan to ensure the state’s power remains flowing, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) says two crews can live at the sites in East Greenbush and Guilderland, N.Y., indefinitely. In the rare case that both operating rooms become infected at the same time, the local utilities – Consolidated Edison Inc. and National Grid PLC – would help operate the grid. “We have never done this before. We drilled for this stuff, we’ve had plans in place for different types of sequestration,” Richard Dewey, NYISO’s chief executive officer, told E&E News. “This is pretty unprecedented in our history.” New York has emerged as the epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak, with more than 59,000 confirmed cases and 965 deaths, according to a briefing Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) gave yesterday. President Trump told reporters over the weekend he was considering a short-term quarantine across New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. But the president later tweeted such a move was unnecessary and instead, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a travel advisory for the three states to implement, urging residents to refrain from nonessential domestic travel for the next 14 days. “I support what the president did because it affirmed what we’ve been doing,” Cuomo said at the briefing yesterday. The crisis has rippled throughout the Empire State’s economy and Legislature, shuttering businesses and prompting a delay of the state’s presidential primary that was scheduled for next month. It’s also thrown the state’s climate goals into peril by delaying Cuomo’s proposal to overhaul permitting for renewable projects. As the virus spreads, other U.S. grid operators say they are preparing for and monitoring New York’s experience. NYISO shares information with other U.S. and Canadian grid operators, all of which have gone through similar steps to prepare, Dewey said. “We are the first grid operator to actually put the plan in motion, to move the operators on-site, and that’s primarily because of the very high rate of infection that New York state is seeing, where it’s much higher than in other parts of the country,” Dewey said. “People are trying to gather information from us about what we did, what worked, what we think didn’t work, sort of a lessons learned, so to the extent to this pandemic spreads more drastically across the country and they’ve got to take similar steps, they put those plans in place, as well.”
FirstEnergy Solutions successor faces $500M in damages and a new hearing before FERC – The Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC) is back in federal bankruptcy court this week with a demand for more than $500 million from Energy Harbor, the successor to FirstEnergy Solutions (FES), for damages it contends it has suffered and will suffer because the court allowed FES to break its long-term contract with OVEC. Created in the 1950s, OVEC is jointly owned and operated by utilities in Ohio and nearby states. It sells its power into the PJM market, often at a loss. FES inherited the contract from its parent FirstEnergy Corporation, and had been obligated to pay its share of expenses and buy a small portion of the electricity the company’s 60-year-old coal-fired power plants generate. OVEC’s $500 million claim came just as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order demanding that Energy Harbor explain whether breaking the OVEC contract was necessary for its survival. FERC also invited FES opponents to weigh in. It set a schedule for arguments to be filed and said it expected to rule on the matter within 180 days. FERC contended unsuccessfully in bankruptcy court that the OVEC contract could not be broken without considering the impact on the public. The agency, along with OVEC, said that there was a jurisdictional issue at hand as well. They argued that the bankruptcy court had to consider the public interest in forcing FES to keep the contract – which had been approved by FERC in the first place. They argued that the court could not treat the contract as just another business contract. The bankruptcy court disagreed and allowed FES to break the contract. FERC, OVEC and others with similar contracts appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The appellate court ruled that the bankruptcy court had jurisdiction but that it should have considered FERC’s arguments rather than deciding the issue strictly as a business matter. The bankruptcy court has yet to set a new hearing and is expected to wait for the outcome of the new case FERC created this week.
Ohio coal giant Murray Energy, strapped for cash, is close to liquidation -Ohio coal giant Murray Energy Corp. is “close to liquidation,” according tothis article in The Wall Street Journal. The company says its business has been walloped of late from “historically bad” coal markets and the coronavirus pandemic. To stay afloat, the nation’s largest private coal company, which last October filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, sought permission on Monday, March 30, from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Columbus to stop paying roughly $6 million a month in retiree medical costs, The Journal reports. From the article: Murray said in court papers that unless it can suspend those health care obligations, it “may be faced with no choice” but to liquidate, likely costing roughly 4,900 employees their jobs. Lenders including Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Bain Capital Credit LP have been financing the company since it filed for chapter 11 protection in October, positioning themselves to acquire Murray in exchange for the forgiveness of $1.2 billion in debt. The lead bid, which requires court approval, covers Murray’s thermal coal mines, its metallurgical coal operations and its stakes in coal supplier Foresight Energy LP and trading house Javelin Global Commodities Holdings LLP. The offer is meant to trim a significant amount of Murray’s $2.7 billion in financial debt and ensure the survival of the St. Clairsville, Ohio company as a going concern outside of bankruptcy. In court papers, The Journal reports, “Murray said excess coal supply, a warm winter and the coronavirus pandemic’s devastating impact on energy demand has upended business projections, draining roughly $180 million in liquidity from the company over the past two months.” The company noted, “Forecasts once thought conservative were rewritten and then weeks later, rewritten again.” It also is “concerned it may breach covenants in its bankruptcy loan and lose access to the financing needed to pay workers and suppliers,” The Journal reports. But even with the financing, Murray “said it expects to have $30 million when it emerges from bankruptcy, too little to manage the business responsibly,” according to the newspaper.
Murray Energy Seeks Relief From Retiree Health Care Obligations – Murray Energy Corp. wants the federal government to take over health care payments to its retirees as the company continues to navigate the bankruptcy process. The St. Clairsville-based company – the largest privately-owned coal producer in the nation – asked the federal judge overseeing its bankruptcy case to relieve it from its retiree health care obligations in a motion entered Monday. The company cited a lack of cash-on-hand and a potential default on payments to its lenders as reasons for making the request. According to the motion, Murray has about $6 million in available cash. Interim relief from the health care payments would save the company about $200,000 per day, it states. If the relief is not granted, the company states, it likely will be forced into “value-destructive enterprise-wide liquidation” that would leave “no business to restructure and no go-forward employment opportunities for thousands.” According to the filing, the company would transfer union retirees from the Murray Energy Corp. Individual Employer Plan to a 1993 Plan and would ensure there is no gap in benefits for retirees. Under legislation passed by Congress in December, the U.S. Treasury would take over those payments, meaning that retirees’ benefits would not be impacted. This move would increase liquidity for the company as it works to restructure and sell its assets to a “stalking horse” bidder, Murray NewCo, that was created for that purpose.
Justice Coal Companies Agree To Settle $5 Million In Delinquent Mine Safety Debts — Coal companies owned by the family of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice have agreed to pay more than $5 million in overdue mine health and safety fines and fees. According to a press release released Wednesday, a total of 24 coal companies owned by the Justice family agreed to settle millions of dollars in unpaid penalties and fines owed to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA. The fines stemmed from nearly 3,000 citations issued to Justice mine operators between May 2014 and May 2019 under the federal Mine Safety and Health Act. The settlement comes nearly one year after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the Justice companies in May 2019, following an Ohio Valley ReSource investigation thatshowed the Justice companies had the highest delinquent mine safety debt in the U.S. mining industry. The civil lawsuit, brought by U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, alleged 23 Justice coal companies located in five states – Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky – owed more than $5 million in delinquent debts. In the release, Cullen said the Justice-owned companies agreed to pay all outstanding debts and penalties associated with their mine safety violations.
Georgia Power:Plant Mitchell will turn stored coal ash into Portland cement – Georgia Power today announced a new beneficial reuse project for coal ash stored at Plant Mitchell, a retired coal-fired power station near Albany, Georgia. The project at Plant Mitchell marks the first time that stored ash from existing ash ponds at sites in Georgia will be excavated for beneficial reuse as part of an ash pond closure project. “As part of our ash pond closure efforts, Georgia Power is always looking for opportunities to reuse coal ash that are beneficial for our customers and communities,” said Dr. Mark Berry, vice president of Environmental & Natural Resources for Georgia Power. “The coal ash beneficial reuse project at Plant Mitchell will save space in landfills and ultimately serve to help produce a valuable product.” With the Plant Mitchell project, approximately two million tons of stored coal ash will be removed from the existing ash ponds for reuse in Portland cement manufacturing beginning this year. Today, the company already recycles more than 85 percent of all ash and gypsum, including more than 95 percent of fly ash, it produces from current operations for various beneficial reuses such as concrete production as well as other construction products.
Top head placed at Vogtle nuclear Unit 4 containment vessel – Georgia Power announced that the top heads are now placed on both units 3 and 4 in its major nuclear expansion project. The final major lifts inside the containment vessels are completed, the utility reported. The Unit 4 top head was placed earlier today (Friday). Vogtle units 3 and 4 are the first new nuclear power expansions in the U.S. in years. Georgia Power expects to have Unit 3 operational next year and Unit 4 in 2022. The $25 billion project has endured despite numerous setbacks, delays and cost overruns. Bechtel is heading up the engineering, procurement and construction effort. The containment vessel is a high-integrity steel structure that houses critical plant components. The top head is 130 feet in diameter, 37 feet tall, and weighs nearly 1.5 million pounds, more than two fully-loaded jumbo jets. It’s comprised of 58 large plates, welded together, each more than an inch and a half thick.
Coronavirus could disrupt normal refueling practices for nuclear facilities as staffing concerns grow – The nuclear sector has sprung into action to screen employees for signs of the novel coronavirus and prepare for potential disruptions to their typical refueling practices in light of pandemic-related travel restrictions. Nuclear generators have been enacting pandemic protocols for weeks to continue protecting their workforce. “We were prepared in advance for a range of challenges and some of those preparations are well-suited to this pandemic,” Matt Wald, Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) spokesperson, told Utility Dive. As competition for residential customers increases, utilities must become trusted solution providers to satisfy and keep customers. Learn how utilities can humanize customer interactions by deepening engagement strategies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering changes to rules and requirements to help generators protect their workforce from the highly contagious respiratory virus. Meanwhile, the industry is trying to address a shortage of supplies needed to protect its essential employees. The nuclear industry “planned for this. I was not surprised to hear that they were at least three or four steps ahead of the federal government.” Like most of the country, the nuclear energy industry is facing a shortage of personal protective equipment, like plastic gloves, single-use sanitized wipes, dust masks and disposable thermometers. Several sites must also plan for an influx of 100 or more workers for the cyclical nuclear refueling process scheduled during the spring and fall when demand is lower. As travel is restricted or discouraged and more “non-essential” businesses close down or restrict their hours, utilities are considering the potential limitations of proceeding with refueling outages. The nuclear industry “planned for this. I was not surprised to hear that they were at least three or four steps ahead of the federal government” in responding to the novel coronavirus, Professor Jacopo Buongiorno, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, told Utility Dive. “All the nuclear power plant operators are ready to potentially sequester a number of operators for weeks at the site … so that there is that continuity of operations,” Buongiorno said.
Sen. Muth seeks answers about coronavirus response plan at Limerick nuclear plant – A state senator who represents parts of Montgomery, Berks and Chester counties called upon Exelon to improve its commitment to worker and community safety during a refueling at the Limerick Generating Station amid the COVID-19 outbreak.“Thus far, Exelon has provided an inadequate pandemic response plan, withheld information from county and state officials, and failed to prioritize the safety of its employees, contract workers, community first responders, as well as all residents of the 44th senatorial district and entire region,” Senator Katie Muth (D-44th) wrote in an April 1 letter addressed to Exelon executives. “This is grossly irresponsible as Exelon has brought at least 1,400 workers to the epicenter of Pennsylvania’s Covid-19 pandemic.” On Wednesday, Exelon officials confirmed two cases of COVID-19 among the workforce at the Limerick plant, adding the full-time employees were sent home and were receiving care and that neither employee had been onsite since March 20. Company officials added that any employees who came in close contact with the affected persons or worked at that reporting location were notified, and that an additional deep cleaning occurred at all areas that potentially were exposed.
Brouillette intervenes in Pa. nuclear fight — Friday, April 3, 2020 — Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has sided with operators of a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant in a fight with local officials over the need to enforce social distancing practices at the site.
Spent-fuel transfer moves forward despite coronavirus concerns – – Despite concern over the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, Holtec is forging ahead with plans to transfer radioactive spent fuel from a large pool above the reactor at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to steel-lined dry casks.Workers from other parts of the state as well as from around the country arrived in Plymouth earlier this week.Some plant employees and area residents say fuel transfer should be delayed until the threat of the virus passes.Pilgrim permanently shut down in May and was subsequently sold by Entergy Corporation to Holtec International for decommissioning.The company’s timetable calls for moving 3,000 spent-fuel assemblies now in the pool to dry casks by the end of 2021.Seventeen previously loaded casks sit on a cement pad outside the reactor building. The transfer this spring will result in 748 assemblies being moved from the pool into 11 more casks. Work is scheduled for April and May.Thirty new workers arrived at the site and began a two-week training period Monday.According to a Pilgrim employee who wished to remain anonymous, he and fellow plant workers are extremely concerned about the possibility of contracting the coronavirus from those newly arrived at the Plymouth site.Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien sent an email regarding the measures being taken: “We understand and appreciate the concerns raised by our employees, brought (to) us by local elected officials, and have worked to clarify a number of different rumors and help everyone understand the decisions being made, and the rules they fall under.”O’Brien said not all the new workers are from out of state. The group includes 16 from Massachusetts; four from Vermont, Rhode Island and New Hampshire; three from Florida; two from Arkansas; and one each from North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan and the state of Washington.
Nuclear regulators ease some power reactor regs in response to COVID-19 | Utility Dive – In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its strain on available nuclear plant personnel, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing power reactor operators to apply for temporary exemptions from regulations limiting the amount of hours workers can stay on the job, according to a letter released by the agency on Monday. In addition, the NRC staff is also working on a separate memorandum that will guide nuclear plants as to which labor and time-intensive tasks they can temporarily waive, such as many of the inspections during refueling outages. Nuclear reactors have already been enacting contingency plans designed to limit the amount of workers onsite in order to avoid exposure to the coronavirus. It is unknown how long nuclear reactors will need operate with these reductions in staff and maintenance tasks, and whether they can stay running as often as they do in normal times. In order to avoid “worker fatigue,” the NRC has a number of rules about the maximum length of plant employee shifts, as well as requirements for breaks workers must take between long shifts. For example, shift may not exceed 16 hours in a 24-hour period, 26 hours in a 48-hour period and 72 hours in a 7-day period.But in light of the “unprecedented time for our country” created by the COVID-19 pandemic and in order to ensure that the regulations “do not unduly limit licensee flexibility in using personnel resources to most effectively manage the impacts” of the pandemic, the NRC is allowing plants who believe they cannot meet the work hour limits to apply for a 60-day exemption, according to the letter. In order to receive an exemption, however, plants must show that they will still maintain “alternative” controls on work hours, such as no more than 16 hours of work in a 24-hour period and no more than 86 hours in a 7-day period.
