Environmental News For The Week Ending 24May 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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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:

• 24 May 2020 – Coronavirus Disease News 24May 2020

• 17 May 2020 – Coronavirus Economic News 17May 2020

Chemicals often found in consumer products could lead to obesity and fatty liver diseases Chemical compounds found in many consumer products could be major contributors to the onset of lipid-related diseases, such as obesity, in humans, according to a Baylor University study.Until recently, scientists thought that diseases such as obesity and fatty liver resulted from anomalies in the metabolism of lipids triggered by excessive energy intake, fat consumption and lack of physical activity. But the Baylor study, published in the international journal Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, highlights the existence of chemical compounds people are exposed to via a variety of consumer products. These can lead to lipid-related metabolic diseases and weight gain.”Previous studies have provided strong evidence linking some hormone-like compounds to obesity in humans, but this is the first study that showed a cellular and metabolic effect on human cells exposed directly to those compounds,” said Ramon Lavado, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental science at Baylor. Lavado’s team has been conducting experiments to determine whether their suspicion that obesogens — specific chemical compounds found to disrupt normal metabolic processes — promoted a dysregulation of lipid profiles in the human liver.While poor nutrition and lack of exercise are known contributors to obesity, significant attention has emerged regarding the potential effects of some chemical compounds to trigger lipid-related diseases, Lavado said. Exposures to obesogens — particularly in early development in life — were found to disrupt normal metabolic processes and increase susceptibility to weight gain across the lifespan, he said.As of the year 2000, there were an estimated 100,000 commercially available chemicals around the world. Two decades later, that amount has more than tripled, with approximately 350,000 chemicals being available, according to recent research published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Certain environmental chemicals linked with poor kidney health – Researchers have found links between various chemicals in the environment and a higher risk of kidney disease. The findings appear in an upcoming issue of CJASN. Exposure to certain chemicals may contribute to the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the growing number of chemicals being introduced into the environment has made it difficult to understand the extent of the problem and to decipher which compounds are especially toxic to kidney health. The researchers analyzed information on 46,748 US adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2016, and they looked for associations between 262 chemicals measured in urine or blood with signs of kidney disease–specifically, albuminuria (excess urinary excretion of the protein albumin) and low estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a measure of kidney function. Among the 262 environmental chemicals, 7 (3%) showed significant associations with higher risk of albuminuria, lower eGFR, or a composite of both albuminuria and lower eGFR. These chemicals included metals and other chemicals that have not previously been associated with CKD. Specific findings include:

• High blood and urine levels of cotinine (found in tobacco) and high blood levels of 2,5-dimethylfuran (a volatile organic compound) and cadmium (a heavy metal) were associated with albuminuria.
• High blood levels of lead and cadmium were associated with lower eGFR.
• High blood levels of cadmium and lead and 3 volatile compounds (blood 2,5-dimethylfuran, blood furan, and urinary phenylglyoxylic acid) were associated with the composite of both albuminuria and lower eGFR.
• A total of 23 chemicals–including serum perfluorooctanoic acid, 7 urinary metals, 3 urinary arsenics, urinary nitrate and thiocyanate, 3 urinary polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and 7 volatile organic compounds–were associated with lower risks of one or more manifestations of CKD.

Johnson & Johnson to Stop Selling Talc Baby Powder in U.S. and Canada – Johnson & Johnson will stop selling its iconic but increasingly controversial talc baby powder in the U.S. and Canada, the company announced Tuesday.The announcement comes as the company faces more than 19,000 lawsuits from consumers who say the product was contaminated with asbestos and caused them or their loved ones to develop cancer,Reuters reported. Johnson & Johnson continues to insist the product is safe, but a 2018 Reuters investigation found that the company had known its talc products sometimes tested positive for asbestos since at least 1971 and had failed to inform the public.”It means no more little girls are going to go through what we went through,” Krystal Kim, who was part of a victorious lawsuit against the company in 2018 after developing ovarian cancer following a lifetime use of the baby powder, told The New York Times. “This stops now. That monster is off the shelves.”Because talc and asbestos sometimes occur side by side, it is possible for talc to be contaminated with asbestos during the mining process. Thousands of women who used the product sued after developing ovarian cancer, which was linked to asbestos in 1958. A smaller number developed mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer often connected to asbestos. In October 2019, the company recalled 33,000 bottles after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found trace amounts of asbestos in one of them. Also in 2019, the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy began a 14-month investigation that showed Johnson & Johnson knew about the asbestos risks for decades. “Today, in a major victory for public health, Johnson & Johnson’s asbestos-containing baby powder finally will be taken off store shelves,” Subcommittee chair Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) said in a statement. Johnson & Johnson will continue to sell the product in other countries and to defend its safety in court.

FDA Says Trucks Used to Store Bodies of Coronavirus Victims Can Carry Food, Even If Blood Leaked Inside Vehicles – On Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a handbook that verified that human and animal foods can be transported in refrigerated vehicles and food storage units that have been used to preserve human remains during the COVID-19 pandemic, even if the vehicles and units have come into contact with blood or bodily fluids from coronavirus victims. Refrigerated food trucks have been used since early March to help store bodies outside of hospitals, morgues and funeral homes in cities with high coronavirus death rates, like New York City. “Refrigerated food transport vehicles and refrigerated food storage units used for the temporary preservation of human remains during the COVID-19 pandemic subsequently can be safely used for food transport and food storage under certain circumstances,” the FDA wrote in its handbook. However, the FDA said that all trucks and storage units should be “thoroughly cleaned and disinfected,” perhaps several times, with EPA-registered disinfectants that have proven effective against COVID-19 and foodborne pathogens. The trucks and storage units need to be brought to “the appropriate temperature” before disinfection, the FDA wrote, and the workers who clean and disinfect the spaces must be protected from exposure to hazardous chemicals. The FDA also specified that vehicles and units that have come into contact with human blood or bodily fluids should not be used if they have offensive odors, refrigeration components that cannot be cleaned, or any interior surfaces that have been damaged, compromised or that are porous and cannot be removed or replaced.

MS risk 29% higher for people living in urban areas, new research reveals Air pollution could be a risk factor for the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), a new study conducted in Italy has found. The research, presented today at the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) Virtual Congress, detected a reduced risk for MS in individuals residing in rural areas that have lower levels of air pollutants known as particulate matter (PM). It showed that the MS risk, adjusted for urbanisation and deprivation, was 29% higher among those residing in more urbanised areas. The study sample included over 900 MS patients within the region, and MS rates were found to have risen 10-fold in the past 50 years, from 16 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 1974 to almost 170 cases per 100,000 people today. Whilst the huge increase can partly be explained by increased survival for MS patients, this sharp increase could also be explained by greater exposure to risk factors.The analysis was conducted in the winter, given that this is the season with the highest pollutant concentrations, in the north-western Italian region of Lombardy, home to over 547,000 people. “It is well recognised that immune diseases such as MS are associated with multiple factors, both genetic and environmental. Some environmental factors, such as vitamin D levels and smoking habits, have been extensively studied, yet few studies have focused on air pollutants. We believe that air pollution interacts through several mechanisms in the development of MS and the results of this study strengthen that hypothesis.”Particulate matter (PM) is used to describe a mixture of solid particles and droplets in the air and is divided into two categories. PM10 includes particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres of smaller and PM2.5 which have a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or smaller.Both PM10 and PM2.5 are major pollutants and are known to be linked to various health conditions, including heart and lung disease, cancer and respiratory issues. According to the World Health Organisation, 4.2 million deaths occur every year because of exposure to ambient (outdoor) air pollution. Three different areas were compared within the study region based on their levels of urbanisation, of which two areas were found to be above the European Commission threshold of air pollution. “In the higher risk areas, we are now carrying out specific analytical studies to examine multiple environmental factors possibly related to the heterogeneous distribution of MS risk”,

Climate change is fueling extreme weather that lowers cancer survival rate and threatens prevention – Climate change is hindering progress on cancer prevention and increasing people’s exposure to deadly carcinogens, according to a new report from scientists at the American Cancer Society and Harvard University. Hotter temperatures worldwide have fueled more frequent weather disasters like hurricanes and wildfires that release vast amounts of carcinogens into communities and delay access to cancer treatment. “The prospects for further progress in cancer prevention and control in this century are bright but face an easily overlooked threat from climate change,” scientists wrote in a new report in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. For instance, when Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, it caused catastrophic flooding that inundated chemical plants and oil refineries and released deadly carcinogens into neighborhoods in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. The half-life of some of the carcinogens detected after Harvey is up to 50 years, researchers said. Some areas in Houston have experienced higher levels of childhood leukemia driven by a high concentration of chemicals in the air. Climate change has also triggered longer and more destructive wildfire seasons in the U.S., releasing pollutants that remain in the air for months after the flames dissipate.In 2018, California experienced the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season on record with a total of 8,527 blazes burning nearly 2 million acres. The smoke traveled all the way to New England, while air pollution in the San Francisco Bay Area was among the worst levels in the world. Extreme weather disasters also lower cancer survival rates. One study shows that cancer patients were 19% more likely to die when hurricane declarations were made during their therapy because of treatment interruptions compared with patients who had regular access to care. “For patients with cancer, the effects of hurricanes on access to cancer care can mean the difference between life and death,” the authors wrote. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2018 it shut down several factories that provided live-saving IV fluid bags to U.S. hospitals, causing shortages in cancer facilities nationwide. Cancer is the No. 2 cause of death globally. Nearly 10 million people worldwide will die from cancer this year, according to researchers.

Food Safety Advocates Decry USDA Rule Allowing Big Ag to Self-Regulate on GMOs – Food safety advocacy groups objected to the Trump administration’s latest assault on the country’s agricultural regulatory framework as the Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Thursday it would leave oversight on GMOs to the companies producing the organisms.”There is a need for adequate safeguards and effective regulatory oversight to ensure that there aren’t unintended consequences to biodiversity from these new technologies,” Aviva Glaser, director of agriculture policy at the National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement responding the rule, “but unfortunately, USDA’s rule falls short of achieving this.”The new “SECURE rule” would allow companies involved in gene editing (GE) to avoid government oversight if the companies themselves determine the editing involves modifications that could be achieved through traditional breeding. Critics charge that the new rule leaves that determination up to the companies themselves, removing two regulatory checks in one swoop.”While some genetically engineered products are safe and beneficial, the federal government needs a regulatory system that tracks product development and ensures safety before products are marketed,” said Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) biotechnology project director Gregory Jaffe. “We support science- and risk-based federal oversight of genetically engineered plants to ensure they are safe to humans and the environment before they are released for cultivation or restoration, but today’s final regulation does not achieve that result.”Center for Food Safety senior attorney Sylvia Wu said in a statement Friday that the USDA was trying to use a needed update to an outdated set of rules to push through yet another industry-friendly policy that could have ramifications for the country’s food supply.”While revisions to USDA’s regulations – first drafted in 1987 – are necessary in order to ensure that the regulatory scheme adequately addresses the harms associated with current GE technology, the new regulations finalized by USDA, paradoxically named the SECURE rule, are anything but secure,” said Wu.”Instead of fixing long-standing deficiencies and strengthening the regulatory system to guarantee proper oversight of new GE technologies and their associated risks, the revised regulations dramatically scale back USDA’s regulatory authority, leaving most GMOs unregulated,” Wu added.Bottom line, said Consumer Federation of America director of food policy Thomas Gremillion, “consumers have a right to know how gene editing is being used to produce the foods they buy in the market.”

Forget murder hornets. Giant gypsy moths could bring ‘serious, widespread damage’ to the US. – Forget murder hornets. Now we’ve got giant gypsy moths from Asia to worry about. “If established in the United States, Asian gypsy moths could cause serious, widespread damage to our country’s landscape and natural resources,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture is warning. One species of gypsy moth that’s native to Asia was recently spotted in Washington state, where Gov. Jay Inslee issued an emergency proclamation last week because of the discovery. In the proclamation, he warned that the Hokkaido gypsy moths from Asia have been discovered in parts of Snohomish County, which is northeast of Seattle, according to UPI. “This imminent danger of infestation seriously endangers the agricultural and horticultural industries of the state of Washington and seriously threatens the economic well-being and quality of life of state residents,” the proclamation said. Both gypsy moths from Asia and Asian-European hybrid gypsy moths threaten the state, according to the proclamation. Hokkaido gypsy moths are exotic pests that can do widespread damage when hundreds of voracious caterpillars hatch, Karla Salp, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Agriculture, told UPI. While they are from Asia, Hokkaido gypsy moths are a separate species from so-called Asian gypsy moths, insect ecologist Patrick Tobin of the University of Washington told USA TODAY. Both are considered invasive pests that can wreak havoc on trees. “Both remain similar with regard to the threats they pose and the ability of females to fly,” Tobin said. ‘Murder Hornets’ are in the US: These other dangerous bugs are more common Asian gypsy moths are bad enough: “Large infestations of Asian gypsy moths can completely defoliate trees, leaving them weak and more susceptible to disease or attack by other insects,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. “If defoliation is repeated for two or more years, it can lead to the death of large sections of forests, orchards, and landscaping. “Any introduction and establishment of Asian gypsy moths in the United States would pose a major threat to the environment and the urban, suburban and rural landscapes.”

‘We’ve never seen this’: wildlife thrives in closed US national parks -Earlier this month, for the first time in recent memory, pronghorn antelope ventured into the sun-scorched lowlands of Death Valley national park. Undeterred by temperatures that climbed to over 110F, the animals were observed by park staff browsing on a hillside not far from Furnace Creek visitor center.“This is something we haven’t seen in our lifetimes,” said Kati Schmidt, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association. “We’ve known they’re in some of the higher elevation areas of Death Valley but as far as we’re aware they’ve never been documented this low in the park, near park headquarters.”The return of pronghorns to Death Valley is but one of many stories of wildlife thriving on public lands since the coronavirus closures went into effect a month and a half ago.In Yosemite national park, closed since 20 March, wildlife have flocked in large numbers to a virtually abandoned Yosemite Valley. More than 4 million visitors traveled to Yosemite last year, the vast majority by way of automobile. On busy late-spring days, as visitors gather to see the famed Yosemite, Vernal and Bridal Veil Falls, the 7.5-mile long valley can become an endless procession of cars.But traffic jams seem a distant memory as the closure approaches its two-month mark. Deer, bobcats and black bears have congregated around buildings, along roadways and other parts of the park typically teeming with visitors. One coyote, photographed by park staff lounging in an empty parking lot under a rushing Yosemite Falls, seemed to best capture the momentary state of repose. A handful of workers who have remained in Yosemite during the closures, who have been able to travel by foot and bike along the deserted roadways, describe an abundance of wildlife not seen in the last century. “The bear population has quadrupled,” Dane Peterson, a worker at the Ahwahnee Hotel, told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s not like they usually aren’t here … It’s that they usually hang back at the edges or move in the shadows.”

A deadly virus is killing wild rabbits in North America – A deadly virus is spreading quickly among wild rabbits in southwestern North America, threatening populations and possibly endangered species. Last week the virus, which causes a hemorrhagic disease, reached Southern California. “The outlook right now is so unbelievably bleak,” says Hayley Lanier, a mammologist at the University of Oklahoma. “We’re simply left to watch the wave spread out and worry about imperiled species in its path.” Rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus first spread worldwide in the 1980s, devastating domestic rabbit populations in China and Europe. It raced through Australia, where feral rabbits had flourished after being introduced in the 18th century. Populations began to recover, but then a new strain emerged in France in 2010 that also kills wild species. Strains of this new pathogen – rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus 2 (RHDV2, also called L. europaeus/GI.2) – are more prone to recombination, which could explain the broader range of hosts, says Joana Abrantes, a researcher in virus evolution at the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources in Portugal. The new strain is less deadly in adults, but unlike its predecessor it also kills young rabbits. After the virus hammered populations in the Iberian Peninsula, killing 60% to 70%, two predators that depend on rabbits also declined: the Spanish imperial eagle by 45% and the Iberian lynx by 65%. Both types of RHDV are extremely infectious. They also persist in the environment, surviving in dead animals for at least 3 months. Predators and insects can spread it through their feces. The virus was first detected in North America in 2018, in domesticated rabbits in Canada, followed by three U.S. states, but not in wild species. In early March, biologists in New Mexico began to find dead wild rabbits. One of the first known victims was discovered by Gary Roemer, a wildlife biologist at New Mexico State University. Since then, Roemer has found 18 carcasses in 1 half-square kilometer. Biologists and wildlife veterinarians in neighboring states were on the alert and began to receive reports of multiple dead rabbits in many locations. “This is very, very unusual and what happens when we have a disease that is brand new to the landscape,” says Anne Justice-Allen, a wildlife veterinarian with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “We would never see tularemia or plague spread like this in rabbits.” She has sent several carcasses to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC), which is helping with necropsies and preparing samples for genetic testing. Because RHDV is a foreign virus, only a high containment laboratory run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Plum Island off the New York coast is allowed to test for the virus.

Pollution: Birds ‘ingesting hundreds of bits of plastic a day’ – Birds living on river banks are ingesting plastic at the rate of hundreds of tiny fragments a day, according to a new study. Scientists say this is the first clear evidence that plastic pollutants in rivers are finding their way into wildlife and moving up the food chain. Pieces of plastic 5mm or smaller (microplastics), including polyester, polypropylene and nylon, are known to pollute rivers. The impacts on wildlife are unclear. Researchers at Cardiff University looked at plastic pollutants found in a bird known as a dipper, which wades or dives into rivers in search of underwater insects. “These iconic birds, the dippers, are ingesting hundreds of pieces of plastic every day,” said Prof Steve Ormerod of Cardiff University’s Water Research Institute. “They’re also feeding this material to their chicks.” Previous research has shown that half of the insects in the rivers of south Wales contain microplastic fragments. “The fact that so many river insects are contaminated makes it inevitable that fish, birds and other predators will pick up these polluted prey – but this is the first time that this type of transfer through food webs has been shown clearly in free-living river animals,” said co-researcher Dr Joseph D’Souza. The research team examined droppings and regurgitated pellets from dippers living near rivers running from the Brecon Beacons down to the Severn Estuary. They found microplastic fragments in roughly half of 166 samples taken from adults and nestlings, at 14 of 15 sites studied, with the greatest concentrations in urban locations. Most were fibres from textiles or building materials. Calculations suggest dippers are ingesting around 200 tiny fragments of plastic a day from the insects they consume. Previous studies have shown that microplastics are present even in the depths of the ocean and are ending up in the bodies of living organisms, from seals to crabs to seabirds. Rivers are a major route between land and sea for microplastics such as synthetic clothing fibres, tyre dust and other fragmenting plastic waste. The research, published in the journal Global Change Biology, was carried out in collaboration with the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter.

Birds Are Eating Hundreds of Plastic Bits Daily, New Studies Find – The gruesome images of whales and deer dying after mistaking plastic for food has helped put into perspective just how severe the plastic waste crisis is. Now, a new study finds that it is not just land and sea animals eating our plastic trash. It turns out that birds are eating hundreds of bits of plastic every day through the food they eat. The scientists from Cardiff University, the University of Exeter and the Greenpeace Research Laboratories found that birds along Britain’s rivers are eating hundreds of fragments of microplastics daily because the worms and insects they feast on have also swallowed the plastics, making this the first study to show how plastic pollution makes its way up the food chain, as the BBC reported. The study was published in the journal Global Change Biology. Previous research has noted that half of the insects in the rivers of south Wales contain microplastic fragments. “The fact that so many river insects are contaminated makes it inevitable that fish, birds and other predators will pick up these polluted prey – but this is the first time that this type of transfer through food webs has been shown clearly in free-living river animals,” said Joseph D’Souza, one of the study’s researchers, to the BBC. “These iconic birds, the dippers, are ingesting hundreds of pieces of plastic every day,” said Steve Ormerod, a professor at Cardiff University’s Water Research Institute to the BBC. “They’re also feeding this material to their chicks.” “In almost 40 years of researching rivers and dippers, I never imagined that one day our work would reveal these spectacular birds to be at risk from the ingestion of plastics – a measure of how this pollution problem has crept upon us,” said Ormerod, as iNews in the UK reported.Similarly, another study published in the journal Environmental Pollution recently found that birds of prey in Florida swallow tiny bits of plastic debris at a rate of hundreds a day, particularly microplastic fragments made of polyester, polypropylene and nylon, as Sustainability Times reported.In that study, the researchers examined dozens of birds of prey, including hawks, ospreys and owls retrieved from the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Florida. From the 63 birds examined, representing eight different species, all were found to have microplastics in their GI tract, according to the study. “Birds of prey are top predators in the ecosystem and by changing the population or health status of the top predator, it completely alters all of the animals, organisms and habitats below them on the food web,” said Julia Carlin, the study’s lead author, in a University of Central Florida press release.

Ocean Microplastics Are Drastically Underestimated, New Research Suggests — New research suggests there may be far more microplastics in the ocean than initially estimated. Microplastics, which breakdown into miniscule pieces of plastic are notoriously tricky to catch. Their small size allows them to get buried in ocean sediment and to escape through nets.Now, a team of researchers, led by scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England, used a finer net to get a more accurate picture of the amount of plastic in the ocean. Their research suggests the seas may be holding as many as 125 trillion microplastic particles, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Pollution, as Newsweek reported.Microplastics are usually defined as tiny pieces of plastic that measure less than five millimeters across. However, despite the abundance of microplastics in the ocean, scientists have actually had a difficult time quantifying and classifying them. Usually, researchers gather samples with nets with a mesh size of 333 micrometers, or 0.333 millimeters, but these do not account for smaller pieces of plastic debris, as Newsweek reported. The Plymouth Marine Laboratory scientists, along with researchers from the University of Exeter, used nets with a mesh size of 100 micrometers, or 0.1 millimeters, to get a more accurate picture of the microplastics swirling around coastal waters, according to a University of Exeter press release. “It is quite well known what impact larger pieces of plastic have on marine animals, like turtles eating plastic bags mistaking them for jellyfish, but we wanted to know if microplastics are a problem to smaller marine animals like mussels or zooplankton,” said Pennie Lindeque, lead author of the study from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, to Newsweek. “We are interested in really quite small microplastics – around 100 micrometers in size, similar to the width of a human hair – and suspected that the standard sampling methods using a net with pores about 333 micrometers in size, wouldn’t give an accurate picture.” The researchers compared the efficacy of a 100 micrometer net to what’s collected by a 333 micrometer net and a 500 micrometer net. They found that their net collected 2.5 times as much microplastics as the 333 micrometer mesh net. It collected 10 times more microplastic than a 500 micrometer net, according to thestudy. The scientists then extrapolated that data to determine that there are roughly 3,700 pieces of microplastic in one cubic meter. That means that previous global estimates of 5 to 50 trillion particles of microplastics are severely low. The true number, according to the data in the study, is somewhere between 12.5 and 125 trillion particles.

Coral Rescue Team Races to Save Endangered Corals From Mystery Killer -Six years ago, during a global coral bleaching event and after the Port of Miami was dredged, endangered corals on Florida’s coral reef began rapidly wasting away and dying. Their “mystery killer,” whose exact pathogen still remains unidentified, is referred to as the “Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease” (SCTLD).In response, scientists launched an unprecedented, “Hail Mary” rescue effort to save the corals from local extinction. The first phase of the groundbreaking project concludes next week.SCTLD is different and more devastating than other coral diseases because of how quickly it can kill an entire coral colony, how many different species it infects, how long it has lingered and how much remains unknown about its origins, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine Science professor Andrew Baker told EcoWatch.”Corals affected by SCTLD lose tissue really fast,” he said. “Unlike many other coral diseases that can take weeks or months to pass over a coral’s surface, SCTLD can kill a colony within a few days under ‘ideal circumstances.’ Some species, principally the brain corals, have almost disappeared from local reefs within a period of about six months.”The coral biologist also noted that SCTLD was particularly difficult to eradicate because it affects almost half of Florida’s coral species, which has allowed it to persist in reef communities for a long time because it has so many different hosts it can inhabit.SCTLD now threatens the entire Florida Reef Tract (360 linear miles), which is the third-largest coral barrier reef in the world, decimating important reef-building and endangered corals in its path.”It’s really sad. Some of these corals that have been growing for tens to hundreds to possibly thousands of years are disappearing in months,” said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) coral caretaker Allan Anderson. “We’re talking about corals that have literally built this reef now dying, and it’s pretty scary that something we can’t yet identify is destroying everything.”

Antarctic Penguin Poop Emits Laughing Gas – A colony of king penguins in Antarctica emit so much nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, in their poop that researchers went a little “cuckoo,” while studying them, according to Agence France Presse, which reported on a new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.The study looked at the effects of a king penguin colony’s activity on soil greenhouse gas fluxes in South Georgia, an island just north of Antarctica. One finding in particular was notably unique – penguin feces, or guano, produce extremely high levels of nitrous oxide, as CNN reported.The scientists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark were investigating the effect of glacier retreat and penguin activity on greenhouse gas emissions. They decided to take samples from South Georgia Island since it his home to over 150,000 breeding pairs of king penguins, as Newsweek reported. “After nosing about in guano for several hours, one goes completely cuckoo,” lead researcher Bo Elberling said in a statement, as Newsweek reported. “One begins to feel ill and get a headache. The small nitrous oxide cylinders that you see lying in and floating around Copenhagen are no match for this heavy dose, which results from a combination of nitrous oxide with hydrogen sulphide and other gases.”Penguin poop is known to create huge amounts of nitrous oxide because the penguins’ diet is rich in fish and krill that have absorbed large amounts of nitrogen via phytoplankton. The nitrogen is then released from the guano. When it hits the soil and interacts with the air, it is converted to nitrous oxide.Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, with a warming effect that is 300 times what carbon dioxide produces, according to Newsweek. It’s also used as a sedative for dental procedures, as a recreational drug and in agriculture.

Forest Loss in Papua New Guinea Increases Domestic Violence Against Women –Change. That’s what Monica Yongol has seen in her 54 years. In that time, the loggers and then the oil palm companies have moved into the remote corner of Papua New Guinea where she raised her family, altering the contours of the society she knew. “Things have changed a lot over the years for the women,” Yongol said. “The male members of society or even other males from other clans, they go ahead and make decisions in private spaces, which means women are not included.” Often, those decisions determine the fate of the forests that the people of Mu, Yongol’s village in the rural local-level government of East Pomio on New Britain Island, have lived next to and subsisted on for generations. In East Pomio, part of Pomio district in East New Britain province, mothers have traditionally passed what they have down to their children. The principle has worked well, Yongol said, because women have a vested interest in ensuring that the land continues to provide for them.”Women are looking at how they sustain the lives of their children in the future generations,” she said, “whereas men are more looking at short-term benefits.” But the influx of “development” – first to harvest the island’s tropical timber in the 1990s, and more recently to set up oil palm plantations – backed by politicians and lawmakers in distant capitals, has shifted the calculus around the value of the land. Yongol and the other women gathered at the Vunapope Catholic Mission on a muggy November afternoon said they feel sidelined, shut out of decisions about what’s to happen to the forests where they have traditionally tended their gardens, gathered wood and harvested wild-growing food.In another cruel twist, Elizabeth Tongne said, these attitudes also lead to the scapegoating of women for standing in the way of progress. “They’re blaming us for stopping development on the land,” she said.

Chicago sets record for wettest May ever – Following a week of nearly constant rain, Chicago set a record early Tuesday for the wettest May in city history.The 0.11 inches of rainfall recorded overnight at O’Hare Airport pushed the city’s May precipitation to 8.3 inches, according to the National Weather Service.That passes the previous May rainfall record of 8.25 inches, set in 2019, the weather service said.The new record marks three straight years of record-setting monthly rainfall in May. The third wettest May on record, in 2018, saw 8.21 inches of rain, according to the weather service.The heavy rain set two other records in the past week.More than 3.5 inches of rainfall was recorded last Thursday, according to the weather service, making it the single wettest May day in Chicago since 1871. Another 3.11 inches of rain fell Sunday, making it the 5th wettest May day.On Monday, the rainfall caused extensive flooding in Chicago, spilling water into the city’s Riverwalk and into the basement of the Willis Tower, causing a power outage and temporarily closing the building. A lakeshore flood advisory is set to expire 4 p.m. Tuesday.Tuesday’s forecast calls for scattered showers and a high of 56 degrees, the weather service said.

Michigan dams fail near Midland, causing ‘catastrophic’ flooding – Unprecedented flooding was ongoing Wednesday morning in Midland County, Mich., after a pair of dams collapsed following record rainfall. Thousands of residents have been told to evacuate as floodwaters gush into the communities along the Tittabawassee River, inundating homes and businesses and prompting an emergency declaration from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). The flooding is threatening a major Dow Chemical plant that lies along the river. [Chicago breaks May rainfall record for third year in a row as heavy rains soak Midwest] The Edenville Dam was breached Tuesday evening after Midland received 4.7 inches of rain in a 48-hour period, following days of heavy rain across the state. The dam sits about 18 miles upstream of Midland, a city of more than 40,000. That collapse sent floodwaters gushing into Sanford Lake, where a dam has powered the Boyce Hydroelectric Plant. The Sanford Dam succumbed shortly thereafter, the twin reservoirs of water left with no place to drain but into the city of Midland. A flash flood emergency is in effect for downstream areas of Sanford. According to the Associated Press, 10,000 residents have been evacuated.The National Weather Service in Detroit issued a rare flash-flood emergency, the governor warning that downtown Midland could find itself under up to nine feet of water early Wednesday. News reports showed flooded Midland homes and businesses on Wednesday morning. The Weather Service bulletin described a “particularly dangerous situation” and “catastrophic” flood threat.“This is devastating,” said Whitmer on Wednesday, following an aerial tour of the damage. She said the flood severity is on the order of a 500-year event. A 500-year flood would have a 0.2 percent chance of occurring in any given year.“Right now, the water is rising, and we won’t know the extent of it for maybe the next 12, 15 hours,” said Whitmer at a news conference Tuesday evening.Scores of businesses have been shuttered in the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, which has been particularly severe in Michigan, and are facing serious economic hardship. “This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said Whitmer. “I feel like I’ve said that a lot over the last number of weeks, but this truly is a historic event that is playing out in the midst of another historic event.”

Dow Michigan HQ Threatened With “Nine Feet Of Water” Flood After Two Dams Break – The headquarters of chemical giant Dow, which was spun off from DowDuPont last April, are threatened by flooding, prompting the company to activate its local emergency center in Michigan and implement “flood preparedness plan which includes the safe shutdown of operating units on site,” the company said on Facebook after two dams failed upstream of its Midland, Michigan, headquarters.Dow said that “only essential Dow staff needed to monitor the situation and manage any issues as a result of the flooding remain on site.” Other companies with operations at Dow’s Midland complex include DuPont and Corteva Agriscience, according to Bloomberg which adds that the companies are working together on their response. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who is already managing a public health crisis in one of the states that has been hard hit by Covid-19, announced an emergency declaration in response to the dam collapse. She told people to evacuate the area around Midland, urging those in the flooding zones to get to a shelter.”In the next 12 to 15 hours, downtown Midland could be under nine feet of water,” Whitmer said. “To go through this in the midst of a global pandemic is almost unthinkable.” The Edenville Dam, at the base of nearby Wixom Lake, failed amid high floodwaters in the area, sending water gushing through a now-gaping hole near its spillway. A second one, the Sanford Dam at the base of Sanford Lake, had also failed, according to the National Weather Service, which issued an alert advising of “extremely dangerous flash flooding” in the area. The Tittabawassee River that flows below those lakes, through Midland, crested at nearly 34 feet in a 1986 flood that saw Dow Chemical shutter nearly all of its local operations. Floodwaters in Midland are expected to reach nearly 4 feet higher than that on Wednesday, the Midland Daily News said.

Dam Failure Threatens a Dow Chemical Complex and Superfund Cleanup – Floodwaters from two breached dams in Michigan on Wednesday flowed into a sprawling Dow chemical complex and threatened a vast Superfund toxic-cleanup site downriver, raising concerns of wider environmental fallout from the dam disaster and historic flooding. The compound, which also houses the chemical giant’s world headquarters, lies on the banks of the Tittabawassee River in Midland, where by late Wednesday rising water had encroached on some parts of downtown. Kyle Bandlow, a Dow spokesman, said that floodwaters had reached the Dow site’s outer boundaries and had flowed into retaining ponds designed to hold what he described as brine water used on the site.The Superfund cleanup sites are downriver from the century-old plant, which for decades had released chemicals into the nearby waterways. The concern downriver, according to Allen Burton, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan, is that contaminated sediments on the river floor could be stirred up by the floodwaters, spreading pollution downstream and over the riverbanks. “You worry about the speed of the current, this wall of water coming down the river,” he said. “It just has a huge amount of power.” Mr. Bandlow of Dow said the company was “implementing its flood preparedness plan, which includes the safe shutdown of operating units on site,” which still manufactures plastics and other chemical products. He said only essential Dow staff remained on site to monitor the situation and “manage any issues as a result of the flooding.” Mr. Bandlow did not provide information on the status of the cleanup sites. Over the years the Dow complex has manufactured a range of products including Saran Wrap, Styrofoam, Agent Orange and mustard gas. Over time, Dow released chemicals into the water, leading to dioxin contamination stretching more than 50 milesalong the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and into Lake Huron. Research has shown that dioxins can damage the immune system, cause reproductive or developmental problems, and cause cancer. There is also a tiny nuclear research reactor on the site, used to create material that can be used in product experiments. Overnight, Dow filed an “unusual event” report with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning of potential flooding at the site. But the reactor had already been shut down because of the coronavirus crisis, and there were no indications of flood damage on Wednesday.A federally funded Superfund cleanup of the Tittabawassee River began in 2007, and was slated for completion next year. Cleanup of other contaminated waterways is set to take longer.

Edenville Dam power license revoked for failure to reinforce structure – Numerous violations and longstanding concerns that the Edenville Dam could not withstand a significant flood led the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to revoke its license for power generation in September 2018. The Edenville dam, located on the border of Midland and Gladwin counties, failed late Tuesday afternoon, leading to the failure of a downstream dam on the Tittabawassee River and forcing evacuations in Midland County. The extent of the damage is not yet determined.The energy commission (FERC), which regulates U.S. power generation, notified the dam’s previous owner as far back as 1999 that it needed to increase capacity of the Edenville dam’s spillways to prevent a significant flood from overcoming the structure.FERC subsequently notified the dam’s new owner, Boyce Hydro Power LLC, when the license transferred in 2004.By June 2017, the commission cracked down, citing the owner’s “longstanding failure to address the project’s inadequate spillway capacity at this high hazard dam.””Thirteen years after acquiring the license for the project, the licensee has still not increased spillway capacity, leaving the project in danger,” wrote Jennifer Hill, director dvision of Hydropower Administration and Compliance. “The spillway capacity deficiencies must be remedied in order to protect life, limb and property.” Notable by FERC was Edenville’s classification as a high hazard dam, meaning its failure could present significant risk to life and property, especially in the downstream village of Sanford, city of Midland and Northwood University.Boyce Hydro had argued to FERC that it had ongoing litigation with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality over gaining permits to construct more spillway capacity.

Tropical Storm Arthur to bring life-threatening surf and rip currents to East Coast – Life-threatening surf and rip currents will spread along U.S. East coast beaches in the days ahead as Tropical Storm Arthur kicks up ocean swells offshore, the National Hurricane Center warned on Monday.It’s another early start for the Atlantic hurricane season: Arthur formed Saturday in waters off Florida, marking the sixth straight year that a named storm has developed before June 1. The hurricane center said Arthur is expected to move near or just east of the coast of North Carolina, where up to 5 inches of rain was expected in spots on Monday before turning away from the East Coast Tuesday.At 5 a.m. EDT, the storm’s center was about 85 miles south-southwest of Morehead City, North Carolina and 135 miles south-southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Arthur had top sustained winds of 45 mph and was moving to the north-northeast at 14 mph. A tropical storm warning was issued for parts of North Carolina’s coast, from Surf City to Duck, including Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, and heavy rainfall is expected for much of the eastern part of the state, said Michael Lee, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Newport, North Carolina.”But the main threat that we’re really trying to get out there is that there is enhanced risk for dangerous rip currents both today and tomorrow. So, any folks who want to try to go to the beach and get in the water, we have a high risk out for most of our beaches,” Lee said.The weather service said eastern North Carolina should prepare for some localized flooding and dangerous marine conditions along the coast.

Tropical Storms Are Getting More Intense Due to the Climate Crisis –The devastation caused by hurricanes in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, North Carolina and Houston over the last few years is a direct effect of the climate crisis, which is making tropical storms stronger and wetter, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as CNN reported.The study looked at nearly four decades of satellite data from storms around the world. The researchers noticed that the likelihood of a storm reaching Category 3 or above, with sustained winds above 110 miles per hour, increased every decade, according to CNN.”The change is about 8 percent per decade,” James Kossin, author of the study, told CNN. “In other words, during its lifetime, a hurricane is 8 percent more likely to be a major hurricane in this decade compared to the last decade.”The ramifications of their findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are far-reaching for coastal communities, insurers and policymakers, as increasingly severe hurricanes will usher in more damage, as The Washington Post reported. “Almost all of the damage and mortality caused by hurricanes is done by major hurricanes (category 3 to 5),” Kossin said, as CNN reported. “Increasing the likelihood of having a major hurricane will certainly increase this risk.” The research data aligns with predictions that scientists have made about the effects of a warming planet. Hurricanes and typhoons gain strength from warm ocean waters and water vapor in the air, among other factors, according to The Washington Post.

Climate Change: Hurricanes Getting Stronger; Cyclone Amphan Pummels Bengal – Monday the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published a study, Global increase in major tropical cyclone exceedance probability over the past four decades. As the Washington Post tells the story in The strongest, most dangerous hurricanes are now far more likely because of climate change, study shows: A new study provides observational evidence that the odds of major hurricanes around the world – Category 3, 4 and 5 storms – are increasing because of human-caused global warming. The implications of this finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are far-reaching for coastal residents, insurers and policymakers, as the most intense hurricanes cause the most damage.The study, by a group of researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, builds on previous research that found a trend, though not a statistically robust one, toward stronger tropical cyclones.Tropical cyclones are a category of storms including hurricanes and typhoons worldwide. The findings are consistent with what scientists expect to happen as the world warms, given that hurricanes get their energy from warm ocean waters and water vapor in the air, among other factors.And as I write this, right on schedule, cyclone Amphan. is pumelling the Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha, and Bangladesh. This is the biggest storm of its type in more than a decade (see Cyclone Amphan live updates: Storm nears West Bengal’s Digha, landfall to start from 4pm onwards). Although it has weakened in classification since Monday evening, this is still an extremely severe cyclonic storm.The storm has recently made landfall at Digha, in West Bengal, and rain and wind are expected to continue through at least tomorrow. Last year, both Bangladesh and India had success in evacuating vulnerable people who were in the path of another serious storm, cyclone Fani, and leading them to shelters, saving many lives, and registering mere dozens of casualties, Although people didn’t die in multitudes, there was nonetheless considerable damage: buildings, power stations, water systems, foliage, and wildlife (see Climate Change: The Wrath of Cyclone Fani; and More Mangroves: Protecting Tropical Coastal Areas from Cyclone Damage). This year, more than three million in the path of Amphan have been evacuated. Yet there are complications compared to last year.This storm arrives as India has just begun phase 4 of its national COVID-19 lockdown. So far, India has stemmed the catastrophe that many had feared would overwhelm its health care system and has recorded far fewer deaths and infections than either the U.S. or the U.K., despite its much larger population.Many storm shelters had been temporarily converted to COVID-10 quarantine centers. Authorities are scrambling to find new shelters, and many people are refusing to go to facilities that until recently had served as quarantine centers, even though they have ostensibly been cleaned. Shelters will no doubt be found and used, yet it is difficult to maintain social distancing in such facilities.

Super-cyclone Amphan hits coast of India and Bangladesh — The Bay of Bengal’s fiercest storm this century, super-cyclone Amphan, slammed into the coast of eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon, bringing heavy gales and the threat of deadly storm surges and flooding. The super-cyclone made landfall at 4pm local time with winds of about 120mph (190km/h), causing storm surges of up to 5 metres (17ft), before moving northwards towards Kolkata, one of India’s biggest cities. The first five deaths from the cyclone – three in the Indian state of West Bengal and two in neighbouring Bangladesh, were reported on Wednesday afternoon. More than 2 million people were evacuated from their homes in Bangladesh, and a further half a million people in West Bengal and Odisha were moved from vulnerable low-lying areas to shelters. The Indian navy was put on high alert to be ready to offer humanitarian assistance to those caught up in Cyclone Amphan, which is only the second “super-cyclone” to form in the Bay of Bengal since records began. The director general of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), SN Pradhan, said the situation was “fast-transforming” as the cyclone moved across West Bengal and Odisha. “It is another form of new normal, we have to handle disasters considering the pandemic too. In view of the prevailing Covid-19 scenario, all teams are equipped with PPE [personal protective equipment],” said Pradhan. Surging waters broke through embankments surrounding an island in Bangladesh’s Noakhali district, destroying more than 500 homes, local official Rezaul Karim said. Embankments were also breached in West Bengal’s Sundarban delta, where weather authorities had said the surge could inundate land up to 15km inland. Evacuation efforts had been hampered by the need to follow strict physical distancing precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, with infection numbers still soaring in both countries. Many people had also refused to leave their homes and be moved to shelters for fear of contracting the virus. Authorities in both India and Bangladesh said they were using extra shelter space to reduce crowding, while also making face masks compulsory and providing extra soap and sanitiser. The Catholic Relief Services aid group said people faced “an impossible choice” of braving the cyclone by staying put, or risking coronavirus infection in a shelter.

72 deaths reported due to cyclone: Mamata Banerjee : The Tribune India — Extremely severe cyclone ‘Amphan’ has killed 72 persons, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday. The cyclone ravaged Kolkata and several parts of West Bengal as it left behind a trail of destruction by uprooting trees, destroying thousands of homes and swamping low-lying areas of the state.”I would request Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come and visit Cyclone Amphan-affected areas,” the CM said, while announces Rs 2 lakh compensation for those killed in the cyclone. While a man and a woman were killed when trees came crashing down on them in North 24 Parganas district, a 13-year-old girl died in a similar incident in adjoining Howrah, officials said. Three persons were killed in Hooghly and North 24 Paraganas districts due to electrocution, they said. Senior state officials said it was too early to estimate a toll on life or damage to property as the hardest hit areas were still not accessible. Packing heavy rain and winds with speeds of up to 190 kmph, extremely severe cyclone Amphan slammed Digha coast of West Bengal at 2.30 pm on Wednesday, triggering heavy rainfall and gustings in various parts of the state. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has been monitoring the situation at state secretariat Nabanna since Tuesday night, said the impact of Amphan was “worse than coronavirus”. The cyclone barrelled through coastal districts of North and South 24 Paraganas of Bengal, unleashing copious rain and windstorm, blowing away thatched houses, uprooting trees, electric poles and swamping low lying towns and villages, officials said. Strong winds with speed up to 125 kmph per hour upturned cars in Kolkata and felled trees and electricity poles blocking important roads and intersections.Reports arriving in Kolkata from North and South 24 Parganas and East Midnapore said roofs of thatched houses were blown away, electric poles got twisted and hundreds of trees broken and uprooted. There was a massive power cut in large parts of Kolkata, North 24 Paraganas and South Paraganas. The mobile and internet services were also down as the cyclone had damaged several communication towers. Streets and homes in low lying areas of Kolkata were swamped with rainwater. Portions of several dilapidated buildings came crashing down in Kolkata and other parts of the state. Embankments in Sundarban delta – a UNESCO site – were breached as the surge whipped up by the cyclone inundated several kilometers of the Island.

Cyclone Amphan kills dozens, destroys homes in India, Bangladesh – Al Jazeera – Amphan, the most powerful cyclone to strike eastern India and Bangladesh in 20 years, has killed at least 88 people, officials said, as rescue teams scoured devastated coastal villages, hampered by torn down power lines and flooding over large tracts of land. In the Indian state of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that at least 72 people had perished – most of them either electrocuted or killed by trees uprooted by winds that gusted up to 185km per hour (115 miles/h). In neighbouring Bangladesh, the official toll was put at 16. Mass evacuations organised by authorities before Cyclone Amphan made landfall undoubtedly saved countless lives, but the full extent of the casualties and damage to property would only be known once communications were restored, officials said. Millions across India and Bangladesh were left without power. Residents in the Indian city of Kolkata, the capital of the hard-hit West Bengal state, awoke to flooded streets with some cars window-deep in water. Television footage showed the airport inundated. “The impact of Amphan is worse than coronavirus,” Banerjee told local media. In neighbouring Bangladesh, officials said 16 people had died, including a five-year-old boy and a 75-year-old man who were hit by falling trees, and a cyclone emergency volunteer who drowned. The United Nations office in Bangladesh estimates 10 million people were affected, and some 500,000 people may have lost their homes. Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from the capital Dhaka, said the cyclone “was one of the most intense in a decade” to hit Bangladesh, with authorities expecting losses of more than $1bn. “Five million people are without power. There has been heavy damage, especially in southwestern Bangladesh in the Sundarbans mangrove forest which got the direct hit … thousands of houses have been washed away due to the tidal surge,” Chowdhury said. “People are definitely going to lose croplands and fisheries. That area is known for shrimp culture and other aquaculture, so these people are going to lose their livelihood.” Bangladesh officials said they were waiting for reports from the Sundarbans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famed for its mangrove forest and population of endangered Bengal tigers.

The Arctic Is Unraveling as a Massive Heat Wave Grips the Region – Freakishly warm air has billowed up from Siberia over the Arctic Ocean and parts of Greenland, and the heat will only intensify in the coming days. The warmth is helping to spread widespread wildfires and to kickstart ice melt season early, both ominous signs of what summer could hold.The Arctic has been on one recently. Russia had its hottest winter ever recorded, driven largely by Siberian heat. That heat hasn’t let up as the calendar turns to spring. In fact, it’s intensified and spread across the Arctic. Last month was the hottest April on record for the globe, driven by high Arctic temperatures thataveraged an astounding 17 degrees Fahrenheit (9.4 degrees Celsius) above normal, according to NASA data.

Greenland is some of the world’s most-distressed real estate. In recent years, it’s been subject toNow, a May heat wave has pushed things into overdrive. Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Washington Post that the mid-May warmth is “quite extraordinary…there is no similar event so early in the season.”Siberia has been one of the blistering hot spots on the globe all year, and heat is pushing out of the region and traversing the Arctic. Plumes of abnormally warm air have snaked over the North Pole. Norway’s weather service is forecasting temperatures there will approach freezing in the coming days. That might not sound hot, but remember, this is the North Pole. The warmth could pose a threat to sea ice, which saw its fourth-lowest extent on record for April.Heat has also gripped portions of Greenland, where the ice sheet’s annual melt got started two weeks early. According the Polar Portal run by three Danish research institutions, including the Danish Meteorological Institute, the western and southern margins of the ice sheet saw abnormal melt over the weekend, and more warmth could spur more melt this week as well. The season is still early, and the spike in melt is relatively small compared to previous sudden upticks in melting (See: last summers’s record-setting meltdown).Still, early melt is never a good thing, and doubly so given this year’s lower-than-normal snowfall. That means more crusty, dirty snow on the surface could absorb more warmth in summer, something that helped spur record mass loss last year. And when there’s less mass added to the ice sheet, it can set up more mass loss year over year. The ice sheet is already losing six times more mass than it was in the 1980s, so this setup is not good!

It Hit 80 Degrees in the Arctic This Week – This story will provide important context for the headline, and I encourage you to read it – but really, the headline tells you what you need to know: It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit above the Arctic Circle this week. A little farther south, in Siberia – you know, the region of world we reference when we want to connote something cold – it was 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Arctic sea ice in the neighboring Kara Sea took the deepest May nose dive ever recorded. Oh, and random swaths of the region are on fire. Things are extremely wrong. Let’s start with the heat above Arctic Circle. Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, flagged a map showing blistering heat across western Siberia. The region has been the epicenter of an explosive heat wave that has rippled across the Arctic this week. Models forecast temperatures there will be as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for this time of year. The heat could break a bit by the middle of next week, but widespread warmth will continue to grip the region. On land, it means wildfires continue to spread. Pierre Markuse, a satellite monitoring expert, has kept an eye on the series of increasingly odd fires above the Arctic Circle, a place known more for ice than fire. Most of the blazes he’s documented are in the eastern portion of Siberia, which also dealt with its fair share of heat all year in addition to low snowpack. Seeing fires burn next to braided rivers and large patches of unmelted snow is truly a mood for our current era of climate destabilization. These impacts are the latest in a litany of climate horrors for the Arctic as a whole. Last summer, it reached nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit above the Arctic Circle in Sweden. The same summer, the mercury hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the northernmost settlement on the planet. Greenland also melted and burned. That’s just some of what happened last year. I could list the same for 2018. And 2017. And you get the point.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Mysteriously Weakening In Specific Locations, Throwing Off Satellites And Spacecraft – The Earth’s magnetic field, which protects life on our planet by blocking the majority of harmful solar radiation, is mysteriously weakening in specific locations. Over the last two centuries, it has lost nearly 10% of its strength, leading some to speculate that a multi-century pole reversal has begun. What’s more, scientists have identified a large, localized region of weakness extending from Africa to South America, along with a second ‘center of minimum intensity’ southwest of Africa – both of which are allowing charged particles from the cosmos to penetrate lower altitudes of the atmosphere – throwing off satellites flying in low-Earth orbit, according to Sky.Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, the field strength in this area has rapidly shrunk over the past 50 years just as the area itself has grown and moved westward.Over the past five years a second centre of minimum intensity has developed southwest of Africa, which researchers believe indicates the anomaly could split into two separate cells. –SkyAccording to scientists from the Swarm Data Innovation and Science Cluster (DISC) at the European Space Agency (ESA), measurements from their ‘swarm satellite constellation’ have shed tremendous light on the second anomaly.In fact, the anomaly had puzzled ESA researchers as their Swarm satellites would sometimes ‘black out‘ when flying through the affected region. Three years ago, they observed a link between the blackouts and Ionospheric thunderstorms.”The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously,” said Dr. Jurgen Matzka of the German Research Center for Geosciences. “We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth’s core driving these changes.”If this is the beginning of a pole reversal – which happens roughly every quarter-million years, it would result in multiple north and south magnetic poles all around the globe during the multi-century phenomenon.”Such events h ave occurred many times throughout the planet’s history,” said ESA, adding “we are long overdue by the average rate at which these reversals take place (roughly every 250,000 years)”

Coronavirus Lockdowns Led to Record 17% Emissions Drop – The lockdowns imposed around the globe in response to the coronavirus pandemic led to a record drop in greenhouse gas emissions, according to research published in Nature Climate Change Tuesday. The researchers found that daily emissions fell by 17 percent during the height of quarantine measures in early April when compared with the same time in 2019, the University of East Anglia (UEA) reported in a press release. “Globally, we haven’t seen a drop this big ever, and at the yearly level, you would have to go back to World War II to see such a big drop in emissions,” UEA professor of climate change science and lead author Corinne Le Quéré told NBC News. “But this is not the way to tackle climate change – it’s not going to happen by forcing behavior changes on people. We need to tackle it by helping people move to more sustainable ways of living.”The research is the first major study of emissions this year, according to The Guardian, though the International Energy Agency projected a record 8 percent decline in emissions for 2020. Because it is not possible to measure the change in carbon dioxide emission directly, since the gas remains in the atmosphere for such a long time, researchers instead relied on data for on-the-ground indicators like traffic, energy usage, flights and manufacturing, Wired explained.That data also revealed the major drivers of the emissions decline, the UEA press release explained. The drop in ground transport, such as cars, was responsible for 43 percent of the decline, while declines in industry and power together accounted for another 43 percent. While air travel was majorly impacted by the pandemic, it only accounted for 10 percent of the emissions drop because it is only responsible for three percent of emissions overall.The data was gathered from 69 countries responsible for 97 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. At the height of the global response, areas responsible for 89 percent of emissions were under some kind of lockdown. On average, countries saw their emissions fall 26 percent. In the U.S. and the UK, emissions fell by a third, Wired reported. While these numbers are dramatic, they also illustrate the challenges involved in lowering emissions enough to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. “This is a really big fall, but at the same time, 83% of global emissions are left, which shows how difficult it is to reduce emissions with changes in behaviour,” Le Quéré told The Guardian. She also pointed out to Wired that the 17 percent drop at the height of confinement measures only returned emissions to 2006 levels. “So this is really showing just how much emissions are increasing through time every year. This incredible drop in emissions only takes us back 14 years,” she told Wired. If some restrictions are in place all year, they will decline by seven percent. That is around the yearly decline needed to meet the Paris agreement climate goals of limiting global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. “We would have to have the same speed of reduction that’s happening in 2020 every year for the next decade,”

Lockdowns lead to drastic fall in carbon emissions, but the effect could be temporary – The coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns have resulted in a significant fall in worldwide carbon emissions, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The analysis was undertaken by scientists from around the world and led by Corinne Le Quéré, from the University of East Anglia (UEA), in the U.K. The research, published Tuesday, found that compared to mean daily levels in 2019, daily emissions declined by 17% at the beginning of April, when confinement measures were at their peak. The fall in emissions is an estimate based on a combination of policy, activity and energy data. The researchers estimated that the total fall in emissions around the world, from January until the end of April, was 1,048 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2). China experienced the biggest fall, with a drop of 242 MtCO2, while the U.S. saw a decline of 207 MtCO2. “Population confinement has led to drastic changes in energy use and CO2 emissions,” Le Quéré, who is professor of climate change science at UEA, said in a statement. “These extreme decreases are likely to be temporary though, as they do not reflect structural changes in the economic, transport, or energy systems. The extent to which world leaders consider climate change when planning their economic responses post COVID-19 will influence the global CO2 emissions paths for decades to come.” The pandemic has seen some cities launch initiatives aimed at changing the way people travel, which could in turn have an impact on emissions. Authorities in London, for example, are set to make some streets in the U.K. capital car-free zones. They have already widened sidewalks and introduced temporary cycle lanes in a bid to encourage people to move around on foot or by bike, and avoid public transport. Some feel that systemic change is needed in order to move the planet to a more sustainable footing, however. “This huge drop in carbon emissions is due to the global lockdown, but as the world emerges from this terrible pandemic avoiding catastrophic climate change must be at the top of the agenda,” Jenny Bates, a Friends of the Earth campaigner, said in a statement reacting to the study in Nature Climate Change. “We must make sure that our recent experience of better air quality, lower carbon emissions and simple things like hearing birdsong are prioritised post-lockdown by building the next normal around active travel, access to nature, and ending our reliance on fossil fuels,” Bates added.

Ohio’s governor listened to the science on coronavirus. Why not climate change? | Grist – In his first State of the State address, a little over a year ago, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine took time out to recognize his “amazing” health and human services team, asking them to stand in the House Chamber of the Statehouse for applause. That team – led by Dr. Amy Acton, director of the Ohio Department of Health – has steered the Republican governor’s efforts to limit the spread of coronavirus and prevent fatalities. In mid-March, before Ohio even had its first confirmed case of COVID-19, DeWine closed K-12 schools ahead of any other governor in the country, limited mass gatherings, and postponed the state’s March 17 primary election. Today, Ohio has about 29,000 total coronavirus cases and over 1,700 related deaths, though Acton said Ohio “flattened the curve” of peak cases in early April. “I’ve been very plain to the people of Ohio,” DeWine said during a May 12 audio panel hosted by the New York Times. “They’ve done a good job in keeping distance, by and large, but we have to continue to do that. The virus is still very much out there. It’s very tough, it’s very lethal, it spreads very, very well.” DeWine, 73, has served in Ohio politics for over four decades, most recently as Ohio’s attorney general. A self-described “conservative Republican,” he took the governor’s office in January 2019. About 86 percent of adults in Ohio said they approve of how DeWine has handled the crisis, the highest rating for any governor, according to a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll. Overall, DeWine’s response has won over 90 percent of Ohio’s Democrats and 84 percent of its Republican constituents. Now, as Republican legislators and President Donald Trump pressure states to reopen their economies – and pockets of mask-less protestors urge the governor to lift restrictions while disparaging state health experts – DeWine has maintained a cautious approach. He has opened sectors slowly and requires facilities to meet safety protocols, even as the state shifts from stay-at-home orders to “strong recommendations,” as he put it. Yet while DeWine has been willing to buck party politics and uphold scientific evidence on coronavirus, his performance on other health-related issues – namely, climate change and the environment – has been less consistent. Green groups have applauded him for his efforts to curb Lake Erie’s toxic algal blooms, which contaminate drinking water and harm human health. But they have derided him for signing a sweeping rollback of Ohio’s clean energy policies, a measurecritics called the “worst” anti-renewables law to pass in any state.

Microsoft’s ambitious climate goal forgets about its oil contracts Earlier this year, Microsoft announced a bold new climate goal: By 2030, the company aims to be “carbon negative,” meaning it will be pulling more carbon dioxide out of the air than it emits. Awkwardly, the same week that Microsoft made its announcement, it was sponsoring an oil conference in Saudi Arabia. Now, areport published by Greenpeace is giving us our first quantitative indication of how Microsoft’s business with the oil industry could inflate its climate impact and undermine its efforts to achieve carbon negativity.Published Tuesday, the Greenpeace report explores how the three biggest cloud computing companies – Amazon, Microsoft, and Google – are helping the fossil fuel industry extract, process, and distribute oil and gas more quickly and cheaply, by furnishing the industry with cloud hosting services, custom artificial intelligence software, and machine learning tools. Of the three, Microsoft “appears to have the most” oil-slicked contracts, per Greenpeace. And while much about the partnerships remains opaque, Greenpeace’s report shows that a single collaboration with ExxonMobil has the potential to inflate Microsoft’s yearly carbon footprint by 21 percent.“The oil and gas industry accounts for billions of dollars in profits for big tech companies, yet the carbon emissions related to these contracts are not reflected in any of the tech companies’ published footprint data,” said Elizabeth Jardim, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace and co-author of the report, in a statement. Indeed, partnerships with the fossil fuel industry to accelerate oil extraction – which Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all come under fire for in recent years – point to a critical gap in today’s corporate emissions reporting schemes.

Exxon Sued Again for ‘Misleading’ Advertising | DeSmog – ExxonMobil is facing yet another lawsuit challenging the corporation’s allegedly deceptive behavior related to climate change. The latest suit, filed May 15 in the D.C. Superior Court, claims the oil major is misleading consumers with “false and deceptive” advertising about its investments in “clean” fuels and technology. The Washington, D.C.-based environmental nonprofit Beyond Pesticides alleges that Exxon’s deceptive marketing and advertising violates the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act. According to the organization, Exxon portrays itself as an environmentally friendly company in ads without revealing the true extent of its business that remains overwhelmingly invested in exploiting fossil fuels to the detriment of the environment and the climate. “ExxonMobil’s advertising and marketing mislead the public by presenting ExxonMobil’s clean energy activities as a significant proportion of its overall business,” the complaint states. “In contrast to ExxonMobil’s representations, its investments and activities in clean energy constitute only a very small percentage of its total business, the majority of which continues to be based in traditional fossil fuels and in petrochemicals, including those used in environmentally harmful pesticides.” The lawsuit points to Exxon’s own numbers depicting the company’s investments in cleaner alternatives and compares them with the company’s total capital expenditures. For example, over the last 20 years Exxon says it invested over $9 billion in what it calls “lower-emission solutions,” while its total capital expenditures during that time were over $465 billion. That equates to less than 2 percent spending on these technologies in the past two decades. Another figure Exxon touts is investing up to $100 million in lower-emissions technologies over 10 years, or an average of $10 million a year. This comes out to annual investments of only 0.03 percent of the company’s total annual spending, which in 2019 was $31.1 billion. “Nowhere in its advertisements touting clean energy production does ExxonMobil state what percentage of the company’s investment is in oil and gas compared to how much is invested in clean energy,” the complaint argues.

Here Are the Corporate Lobbyists on the DNC Committee That Blocked the Climate Debate – Sludge – Last August, the normally-obscure summer meetings of the Democratic National Committee were flooded with hundreds of youth activists and environmental advocates urging a presidential debate focused on the global climate crisis. At the time, 64% of Democrats supported a climate-focused debate, first requested in June by then-candidate Washington Gov. Jay Inslee – as did 14 other presidential candidates, including Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. But despite the energy of the protestors and the support of the candidates themselves, the DNC Resolutions Committee voted 17-8 on Aug. 22, 2019 against a resolution led by Washington’s Tina Podlodowski calling on Tom Perez to reverse his ban on a climate debate. That national DNC members would vote down a climate-focused debate backed by party members, grassroots activists, and the presidential campaigns themselves is a demonstration of the power that DNC Chair Tom Perez has over party rules. The Resolutions Committee members, who are the first gatekeepers in the process for adopting policy positions, are largely appointed by the chair, and operate without public record-keeping for accountability. Perez had come out against amending the rules to allow for a climate debate in a June blog post, although he later unilaterally changed other sanctioned debate qualifications, such as the individual donor threshold. At the time of the climate protests, Sludge reported the DNC was accepting large donations from fossil fuel executives, placing the party outside of the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge endorsed by every leading Democratic presidential candidate.Who, then, are the DNC members of the Resolutions Committee who first voted against recommending a climate debate? The 28-member Resolutions Committee contains at least five members with backgrounds in advancing corporate interests: three current corporate lobbyists, one of them a co-chair of the committee and another a News Corp lobbyist put forward by Tom Perez; one past electric utility lobbyist and drug industry consultant, who established a Democratic precedent of corporate PAC fundraising; and one principal with a consulting firm whose current clients include large corporations and whose past clients include BP. The committee also includes Symone Sanders, a senior advisor for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Crucially, at least 13 of the standing committee’s 28 members are at-large DNC members, which means they were put forward as a slate by Perez and approved by a voice vote, not individually elected. Of these 13, ten committee members voted against a climate-focused debate when the matter was voted on by the full DNC membership, as tracked by a publicly-viewable spreadsheet released by Michael Kapp, a pro-transparency DNC member from California, as well as Kenji Yamada, also from California.

Trump admin slaps solar, wind operators with retroactive rent bills – (Reuters) – The Trump administration has ended a two-year rent holiday for solar and wind projects operating on federal lands, handing them whopping retroactive bills at a time the industry is struggling with the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, according to company officials. The move represents a multi-million-dollar hit to an industry that has already seen installation projects canceled or delayed by the global health crisis, which has cut investment and dimmed the demand outlook for power. It also clashes with broader government efforts in the United States to shield companies from the worst of the economic turmoil through federal loans, waived fees, tax breaks and trimmed regulatory enforcement. U.S. power plant owner Avangrid Inc, majority owned by Spain’s Iberdrola, received a bill for more than $3 million for two years of rent on its 131-megawatt Tule wind project on federal land near San Diego, according to spokesman Paul Copleman. Officials at two other renewable projects also confirmed they had received retroactive rent bills from the federal government but asked not to be named discussing the issue as the industry continues to lobby the government for support to weather the downturn. Some 96 utility-scale solar, wind and geothermal projects operate on lands run by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, according to The Wilderness Society and Yale Center for Business and the Environment. The bills came as a surprise, said Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-scale Solar Association, a trade group for owners of big solar farms. But she said some companies had likely set funds aside in case the bills ever came.

Coronavirus Wipes Out 5 Years of US Solar Job Growth The U.S. solar sector has lost 65,000 jobs due to the COVID-19 crisis, erasing five years of job gains, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. According to a new SEIA analysis, the American solar industry now employs around 188,000 people, down from 250,000 at the beginning of the year. Many of those jobs could come back in an economic rebound. Still, it’s a stark reversal for what had been one of the country’s fastest-growing industries, forecast by SEIA to reach more than 300,000 jobs by June of this year before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. The solar industry is now losing jobs at a faster rate than the broader American economy, SEIA says. Federal relief looks uncertain. While SEIA doesn’t directly track jobs across its member companies, surveys of members ranging from nationwide solar developers to smaller regional installers back up the figures, said Dan Whitten, SEIA’s vice president of public affairs. The survey revealed “tens of thousands of jobs lost, and a lot of jobs that were furloughed [or] people’s hours being cut back,” he said. > Josh Lutton, president of Illinois-based solar installer Certasun, said the state’s March 20 stay-at-home order forced his company into a three-week hiatus, and since then, business has been slow at what is usually the busiest time of the year. “We didn’t generate revenue for three weeks when we weren’t installing,” Lutton told GTM. Certasun’s roughly 50 employees now follow social distancing and workplace hygiene guidelines, but municipalities have halted permits and inspections. Leads for new customers have dropped, and some customers are canceling their plans. “They’re saying, ‘I just lost my job, I’m worried about losing my job, or I lost a lot of money in the stock market and I want to keep my powder dry,'” Lutton said. Residential and commercial solar sectors hit hardest SEIA’s analysis aligns with federal data on job losses since the coronavirus pandemic forced large-scale stay-at-home orders and business closures across the country. Last week, BW Research Partnership reported that nearly 600,000 U.S. clean energy workers filed for unemployment benefits in March and April. Of those, around 96,000 were working in renewable energy, primarily wind and solar power, with solar likely representing two-thirds of that figure, Whitten said. Solar isn’t the hardest hit of the clean energy sectors – that unfortunate distinction goes to the energy efficiency sector, which employs more people, many of them in jobs that require being able to access homes and businesses. But solar is suffering greater job losses than other sectors such as electric vehicle manufacturing or power grid infrastructure.

Daytime electricity demand in New York City most affected by COVID-19 mitigation actions -Actions to mitigate the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have caused daily weekday electricity demand in New York City to decrease by 16% in April compared with expected demand, after accounting for seasonal temperature changes. However, decreases in the city’s electricity demand have not occurred uniformly across the day. The largest differences between actual and expected demand have been during daytime weekday hours when many schools and businesses that normally would have been open are now closed.The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Hourly Electric Grid Monitor provides hourly electricity demand data from the 64 balancing authorities in the contiguous United States and subregional demand for select balancing authorities. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) operates the electric grid serving New York state and provides demand for its subregions, including New York City, which is also called NYISO Zone J.By combining this data with hourly temperature data available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, EIA compared the electricity demand of every hour of the day for all weekdays in 2020 through May 1 with the average demand of all instances of the same hour of the day with the same hourly temperature (referred to as temperature-comparable demand) from January through June 2019. Weekends and holidays were excluded.For New York City, the largest difference in electricity demand in April 2020 compared with 2019 temperature-comparable demand was during weekday mornings from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. when electricity demand was 22% lower than expected in those hours. For midday, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., the average percentage decrease was about 20%. The deviation from temperature-comparable demand gradually decreased in the evening hours, down to 10% by midnight. Overnight differences were lower: from midnight to 4:00 a.m., the deviation from temperature-comparable demand was lowest, averaging about 7%. Changes to demand are less pronounced between midnight and 4:00 a.m. because most people are normally asleep during this time and many nonessential businesses that have beenordered closed as part of COVID-19 mitigation actions are also normally closed during these early morning hours.

ELECTRICITY: FERC market order to cost consumers billions – report — Tuesday, May 19, 2020 — A contentious order issued last year by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rankled renewable power proponents, posed hurdles for regional clean energy objectives and driven states to consider exiting the nation’s largest energy capacity market.

Details released of a huge offshore wind turbine that can power 18,000 homes per year — Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) has released details of a 14-megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine, in the latest example of how technology in the sector is increasing in scale. With 108-meter-long blades and a rotor diameter of 222 meters, the dimensions of the SG 14-222 DD turbine are significant. In a statement Tuesday, SGRE said that one turbine would be able to power roughly 18,000 average European households annually, while its capacity can also be boosted to 15 MW if needed. A prototype of the turbine is set to be ready by 2021, and it’s expected to be commercially available in 2024. As technology has developed over the last few years, the size of wind turbines has increased. Last December, for example, Dutch utility Eneco started to purchase power produced by the prototype of GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X 12 MW wind turbine. That turbine has a capacity of 12 MW, a height of 260 meters and a blade length of 107 meters. The announcement of Siemens Gamesa’s new turbine plans comes against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which is impacting renewable energy companies around the world. Earlier this month, the European company said Covid-19 had a “direct negative impact” of 56 million euros ($61 million) on its profitability between January and March. This, it added, was equivalent to 2.5% of revenues during the quarter. The pandemic has, in some parts of the world, altered the sources used to power society. At the end of April, for instance, it was announced that a new record had been set for coal-free electricity generation in Great Britain, with a combination of factors – including coronavirus-related lockdown measures – playing a role. On Tuesday, the CEO of another major wind turbine manufacturer, Danish firm Vestas, sought to emphasize the importance of renewable energy in the years and months ahead. “I think we have actually, throughout this crisis, also shown to all society that renewables can be trusted,” Henrik Andersen said.

Ohio regulators OK Lake Erie wind farm with ‘poison pill’ that may kill project — Ohio regulators’ imposition of a last-minute permitting condition could put an end to the Great Lakes’ first wind energy project. The Ohio Power Siting Board ruled Thursday that the Icebreaker project could move forward but only if blades on the demonstration project’s six turbines are turned off every night for eight months of the year. “This order is not an approval,” said Dave Karpinski, president of Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, also known as LEEDCo. The OPSB’s condition “may well be fatal to the entire project.” OPSB staff had first suggested nightly shutdowns for most of the year in 2018, despite LEEDCo having reached an agreement with environmental groups for monitoring and safeguards to protect bats and birds. The proposed construction site north of Lakewood is not within a main migratory flyway for birds. An ornithologist who prepared a study for a draft environmental impact report had called it “the lowest-risk project” he ever worked on.After months of negotiations between LEEDCo and staff at the OPSB and Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the developer reached a compromise with regulatory staff last May that dropped the requirement. “We are stunned by the OPSB order today,” Karpinski said, noting that the added condition “reneges” on its agreement with OPSB staff. “Throughout the OPSB proceedings in this case, we made it abundantly clear that a requirement to shut down the turbines from dusk to dawn for the majority of the year renders the project economically not viable.” Basically, shutting down generation for that much of the year would greatly reduce the amount of revenue that the project could produce. And any change to the condition would require further proceedings before the OPSB, with no guarantee of a favorable outcome even if monitoring data did not show significant impacts to bats or birds. Testimony from the intervenors’ expert last summer did not show a need to feather the turbines for most of the year. Agency staff testified in support of the compromise settlement agreement with LEEDCo. After the compromise a year ago, the only remaining opponents were two intervenors represented by an attorney who had done work for Murray Energy and often filed appearances in wind cases on behalf of a pro-coal nonprofit that did not disclose the source of its funding. Discovery in the LEEDCo case showed that at least some of the intervenors’ litigation expenses had been paid by Murray Energy. OPSB chair Randazzo has been a longtime critic of renewable energy and has previously represented wind energy opponents before the board.

Tesla request reveals deep divide among agencies over battery power – A simmering dispute between the state’s electric grid manager and the Public Utility Commission has burst into view over a request by Tesla to make it easier to develop battery storage systems in Texas.The electric carmaker’s request before a committee of Electric Reliability Council of Texas, wouldn’t normally attract much attention. But Texas regulators and ERCOT have been struggling for more than two years over how to accommodate developing battery storage technology that experts predict could accelerate demand for renewable energy sources and ultimately reduce electricity prices.Large batteries can be charged from solar units or other forms of energy at night when power is cheapest and the stored energy sold when prices peak during midday. But Texas has been slow to adopt the technology, treating battery storage as a form of power generation and retail consumption with big cooling systems instead of just one integrated network.One Texas regulator said he’s embarrassed by the time it has taken for the state to nimbly embrace new technology. This is the kind of thing Texas should be able to adopt to,” Commissioner Arthur C. D’Andrea said. “When there is a new technology, a new way of doing things, we embrace it and pull it into the market and we make it work.”Integrated battery storage systems – essentially self-contained ready-to-go units that sit on concrete slabs – are becoming more sophisticated sources of low-cost and resilient power for manufacturing sites, office buildings and homes. They also are competing with fossil-fuel and other sources of electricity and and the retail providers that sell it.Tesla filed an urgent request last month with ERCOT, asking the grid manager to make it clear that integrated battery systems are considered wholesale storage. Without that clarity, battery developers are prevented from using advanced and more efficient technology to provide new capacity to the ERCOT system as early as next year, according to Tesla’s application.The staff of the Public Utility Commission took the unusual step of filing comments in Tesla’s ERCOT case, saying Texas already has rules in place to accommodate new integrated battery technology. But ERCOT questioned the validity of the comments because staff members didn’t sign their individual names to the comments, commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said during a recent public meeting.

In the Shadows of America’s Smokestacks, Virus Is One More Deadly Risk – This isn’t the first time Vicki Dobbins’s town has been forced to shelter in place.Last year, the Marathon Petroleum refinery that looms over her neighborhood near Detroit emitted a pungent gas, causing nausea and dizziness among neighbors and prompting health officials to warn people to stay inside. When a stay-at-home advisory returned in March, this time for the coronavirus, “it was just devastating,” Ms. Dobbins said.Ms. Dobbins, who is 76, later contracted Covid-19, and spent two weeks on oxygen in intensive care. Now she has a question. “Do the polluters in our area make us more susceptible to asthma, bronchitis, heart failure, cancers?” she asked. “Is the virus just going to be one of the ones added to that list?”Nationwide, low-income communities of color like hers, River Rouge, Mich., are exposed to significantly higher levels of pollution, studies have found, and also see higher levels of lung disease and other ailments. Now, scientists are racing to understand if long-term exposure to air pollution plays a role in the coronavirus crisis, particularly since minorities are disproportionately dying.The science is preliminary – the virus, being so new, remains poorly understood – though researchers are finding reason to look closely. People with two conditions tied to air pollution,inflammatory lung disease and coronary heart disease, face a higher risk for severe Covid-19, preliminary research has shown. Last month, work by Harvard specialists found that coronavirus patients in areas with historically heavy air pollution are more likely to die than patients elsewhere.And while it’s impossible to say with certainty that any one person was made more vulnerable to the virus because of pollution, earlier studies of other respiratory diseases have established thatlong-term exposure to air pollution increases the risk of those illness.“The system has allowed, basically, low-income people and people of color to have to breathe the pollution,” said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and Detroit’s former health director.The tensions are playing out in minority communities across the country that live with industrial air pollution and the health risks that come with it. A neighborhood in Houston, Texas, for instance, that is home not only to factories making plastics materials used in medical masks, but also incinerators that burn medical waste. A community outside San Francisco near the state’s largest refinery but far from most hospitals. And the county where Ms. Dobbins lives, which has seen more Covid-19 deaths than almost any other outside of New York state.

Though Lightfoot halted demolition at shuttered Little Village coal plant, activists fear it’s still imminent – Days after Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that another demolition at a shuttered coal-fired plant in Little Village would temporarily be halted, a group of community activists on Sunday pushed to prevent the building from coming down “until COVID-19 passes.” Lightfoot’s administration gave the go-ahead Thursday to demolish a “turbine structure” at the site of the former Crawford power plant. But when protesters showed up at Lightfoot’s Logan Square home that night, she swiftly called off the demolition and said it “will not move forward for the next several days.” However, activist Raul Montes Jr. fears the demolition is still imminent. Montes and Blue Island Mayor Domingo Vargas led a news conference Sunday near the site and pushed for a moratorium on any demolitions at the site until October. They were joined by Kenneth Klein, a Little Village resident who believes he developed lung cancer and COPD from living near the plant. “People were not getting notice of the demolition that was going to occur. There’s no transparency, and we just feel that we want justice for this. We’ve gone through enough already” The push for added transparency comes after an April 11 smokestack implosion at the site sent a cloud of dust billowing through Little Village. Local Ald. Mike Rodriguez (22nd) has also voiced his opposition to any immediate demolition work and has called for work crews to leave the site. Montes worries the dust from the blast exacerbated the conditions of individuals like Klein and others with respiratory illnesses, who are particularly susceptible to COVID-19. In the wake of the debacle in April, Lightfoot blamed Hilco Redevelopment Partners, slapped the firm with $68,000 in fines and vowed to overhaul a flawed city regulatory system that allowed it to happen. She also ordered a six-month moratorium on implosions at the site – a ban that wouldn’t have affected the recently delayed demolition. Nevertheless, Montes believes the city’s actions were nothing more than “a slap on the wrist to a company that has a lot of money.” Meanwhile, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has sued Hilco, MCM Management Corp. and Controlled Demolition Inc. for violating state pollution laws. In reversing course last week, Lightfoot vowed to engage with the local community to discuss “the structurally dangerous condition of that small building.” But as far as Montes can tell, that hasn’t happened, and he now fears that Lightfoot will simply “go ahead with the demolition” in the coming days.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot admits her people ‘should have done a better job’ telling Little Village residents about second demolition – Mayor Lori Lightfoot acknowledged Monday her administration “should have done a better job” of communicating with Little Village residents but stood her ground on the need for yet another demolition on the site of a shuttered coal-fired power plant. In fact, the mayor argued the turbine building is in such imminent danger of collapsing, the northbound lanes of Pulaski Road are being shut down to protect passing motorists. “The building that we’re talking about – not the large one – is a risk. It is unsafe. It is structurally compromised,” Lightfoot said, adding that she also worries that while the city and community keep talking, something could happen on site that poses “a danger to the workers that are there.” Also, “it’s right up against Pulaski” Road, the mayor said. “So we’re taking the steps to shut down the northbound lanes, which are at the eastern edge of the site, for safety. This is not a nicety. This is a building and buildings that are structurally unsound.” Lightfoot said she went out to the site Friday night to “walk the grounds again” and see the perilous conditions with her own eyes. “It’s not safe for anybody. So while we absolutely must continue to educate residents and demonstrate to them – visually as well as orally – what the dangers are, those buildings must come down. We’re gonna do it step by step. But we have to bring them down,” she said, refusing to say when the demolition would take place.

ENERGY TRANSITIONS: Coal plants disappear in Va. But CO2 is rising — The switch from coal to gas has driven down U.S. electricity emissions over the last decade. But the opposite has happened in Virginia, where a massive build-out of natural gas plants has negated CO2 reductions associated with coal retirements. Virginia’s carbon dioxide emissions were higher in 2019 than they were in 2009, according to an E&E News review of EPA emissions data. Those figures are remarkable given the collapse of coal in Virginia, where the fuel fell from being used in about 43% of the state’s power generation in 2008 to less than 10% last year. The numbers underscore a growing climate challenge for the United States: As the U.S. coal fleet shrinks, long-lived gas plants are filling the void in ways that might fail to result in large reductions of CO2. Virginia is a case in point. The state passed a law this year requiring all but two of its six remaining coal plants to close by 2024. But their retirement will provide limited emissions reductions. Virginia coal plants released less than 5 million tons of carbon last year, down from 25 million tons in 2009. Gas emissions, meanwhile, soared from roughly 4 million tons a decade ago to almost 25 million tons in 2019, accounting for about 80% of all power sector emissions in Virginia. Yet the Old Dominion also shows why greening the power sector is so hard. Gas now generates more than half the state’s electricity, the most of any fuel. Many grid experts say gas will likely back up renewable energy sources for years to come. At the same time, they note that power companies will need to confront emissions from gas plants if they hope to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions scientists say are needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Court Tells Federal Agencies To Review Coal Mining Impacts On Endangered Species – A federal court on Friday approved a deal that requires two federal agencies to review the environmental impacts of coal mining on endangered species, including West Virginia’s Guyandotte River crayfish. Under the agreement, the Office of Surface Mining – the agency that regulates mountaintop coal mining – and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – the agency that protects endangered species – will review a 1996 document or “biological opinion,” that lays out how coal mining is likely to affect endangered species or their habitat. The deal was the result of a lawsuit filed last year by environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the Sierra Club and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. They argued the endangered Guyandotte River crayfish in West Virginia was at risk because the federal government was using outdated guidelines that failed to ensure that mining does not jeopardize endangered species. Studies have shown that air and water pollution from coal mining can harm birds, fish, crayfish, insects and freshwater mussels, as well as nearby communities. The Fish and Wildlife Service has until Oct. 16 to review the biological opinion and submit it to the Office of Surface Mining. In a press release announcing the decision, conservation groups called the court deal a win. “For West Virginia to stay ‘wild and wonderful,’ as residents like to describe their state, we have to protect our animals from extinction, so it’s important that federal agencies actually do their job and take steps to make that happen,” said Jim Kotcon, conservation chair of the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club. The review could affect a number of endangered species impacted by coal mining nationwide, although under the court-approved deal the agencies must also adopt specific new guidance to prevent harm to the Guyandotte River crayfish. In January, the Fish and Wildlife service proposed designating 445 miles of streams in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia as “critical habitat” for the Guyandotte River crayfish and Big Sandy crayfish.

Motion to dismiss lawsuit against Justice-owned companies denied —An effort by several companies owned by Gov. Jim Justice to dismiss a lawsuit alleging they owe a Canadian steel manufacturer millions of dollars was denied by a federal judge Monday.U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres denied the motion to dismiss filed by attorneys for Nevada Holdings Inc., previously known as Southern Coal Sales Corp., in a lawsuit brought in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York by Essar Steel Algoma Inc.Southern Coal Sales, one of more than 100 companies owned by Justice and managed by his son, Jay Justice, filed the motion to dismiss on June 24, 2019, after Algoma filed a second amended complaint adding 12 other Justice-owned companies to the lawsuit alleging that these companies were alter egos for Southern Coal Sales.“(Algoma) claims that Southern Coal is an undercapitalized sister entity to, or a subsidiary of, the Justice parties, ‘which exert complete dominion and control over and therefore operate over Southern Coal as its instrumentalities and alter egos,'” Torres wrote in her decision. “According to (Algoma), Southern Coal was undercapitalized in part because the Justice parties ‘siphon[ed] money from Southern Coal,’ leaving it ‘unable to perform its contractual obligations,’ and rendering Southern Coal “‘judgment-proof.'”Algoma, the second largest steel manufacturer in Canada, filed suit against Southern Coal in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Vermont, then the case was transferred to the U.S. District Court in New York on Sept. 19, 2017. Algoma is asking for a judgment of $6.7 million.The company alleges Southern Coal Sales violated an agreement to supply 780,000 tons of coal, amounting to more than half of Algoma’s annual needs.

Federal Judge Threatens Jail Time as Coal Company Flouts Court Orders – Coal company American Resources Corporation, which owns mines in Kentucky and West Virginia, is facing sanctions after failing to comply with a bankruptcy court’s orders, even after the company received $2.7 million in government aid meant for companies harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. Indiana-based ARC purchased coal mines and equipment from bankrupt coal company Cambrian for $1 last September. The purchase came with a heavy debt burden that included environmental reclamation obligations, employee wages and health care costs, and utility bills. Almost immediately, ARC failed to pay those expenses, leading Eastern Kentucky federal bankruptcy court Chief Judge Gregory Schaaf to impose monetary sanctions against the company. Lack of payment to employees at ARC subsidiary Quest Energy led some employees to protest this January by blocking a Pike County, Kentucky railroad. “It’s hard to go to work between two rocks and not get paid for it,” a Quest miner who asked to be kept anonymous said at the time. “There’s men that’s getting their power bills cut off and men’s children starving.” “There’s some concern that this is not an inability to pay, but an unwillingness to pay,” said Cambrian attorney Patricia Burgess in a May 14 hearing. ARC received $2.7 million in loans from the federal government this April through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, which was intended for small businesses. ARC attorney Billy Shelton told Schaaf the slump in energy usage brought on by coronavirus-related shutdowns had interfered with ARC’s ability to turn a profit off the newly acquired mines, but the judge said ARC’s failure to pay began long before the pandemic.

LIPA officials planning to retire at least 1 power generating unit – The Long Island Power Authority, faced with coronavirus-impacted revenue declines and a growing surplus of power, plans to retire at least one large steam generating unit and will make a decision on which ones by year’s end, officials said Monday. The decision to wind down a portion of the National Grid-owned fleet of old steam generators marks a major turn for LIPA as the state prepares for a carbon-free grid in coming decades and as LIPA seeks to renegotiate the tens of millions of dollars it pays in property taxes for the sites. LIPA chief executive Tom Falcone said the first retirement of 400 megawatts to 600 megawatts of generating capacity – the equivalent of one or two big steam-generating units – would be followed by additional retirements after 2024, when the first big offshore wind turbines are slated to be operating off the Long Island and Massachusetts coasts. Each of Long Island’s three large functioning steam-based power stations owned by National Grid consist of multiple generating units or plants, as well as some smaller so-called peaking units for high-demand summer use. The Northport power station, for example, has four larger steam-based units.

Coal industry will never recover after coronavirus pandemic, say experts – The global coal industry will “never recover” from the Covid-19 pandemic, industry observers predict, because the crisis has proved renewable energy is cheaper for consumers and a safer bet for investors. A long-term shift away from dirty fossil fuels has accelerated during the lockdown, bringing forward power plant closures in several countries and providing new evidence that humanity’s coal use may finally have peaked after more than 200 years. That makes the worst-case climate scenarios less likely, because they are based on a continued expansion of coal for the rest of the century. Even before the pandemic, the industry was under pressure due to heightened climate activism, divestment campaigns and cheap alternatives. The lockdown has exposed its frailties even further, wiping billions from the market valuations of the world’s biggest coal miners. As demand for electricity has fallen, many utilities have cut back on coal first, because it is more expensive than gas, wind and solar. In the EU imports of coal for thermal power plants plunged by almost two-thirds in recent months to reach lows not seen in 30 years. The consequences have been felt around the world as well. This week, a new report by the US Energy Information Administrationprojected the US would produce more electricity this year from renewables than from coal for the first time. Industry analysts predict coal’s share of US electricity generation could fall to just 10% in five years, down from 50% a decade ago. Despite Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to “dig coal”, there are now more job losses and closures in the industry than at any time since Eisenhower’s presidency 60 years ago. Among the latest has been Great River Energy’s plan to shut down a 1.1-gigawatt thermal plant in North Dakota and replace it with wind and gas. Records are falling thick and fast. By Friday, the UK national grid had not burned a single lump of coal for 35 days, the longest uninterrupted period since the start of the industrial revolution more than 230 years ago. In Portugal, the record coal-free run has extended almost two months, the campaign groupEurope Beyond Coal recently reported.Last month Sweden closed its last coal-fired power plant, KVV6 in Hjorthagen, eastern Stockholm, two years early because the mild winter meant it was not used even before the pandemic. Austria followed suit with the shutdown of its only remaining coal plant at Mellach. The Netherlands said it would reduce the capacity of its thermal plants by 75% to comply with a court order to reduce climate risks. More importantly, in India – the world’s second-biggest coal consumer – the government has prioritised cheap solar energy rather than coal in response to a slump in electricity demand caused by Covid-19 and a weak economy. This has led to the first year-on-year fall in carbon emissions in four decades, exceptional air quality, and a growing public clamour for more renewables.

In Ohio’s coal country, pandemic pushes unemployment rate from bad to worse | Energy News Network -Ohio’s coal mining counties have been hit even harder as unemployment surged following the country’s coronavirus outbreak.As the statewide unemployment rate moved from 4.7% in February to 5.6% inMarch, counties in Appalachian Ohio also saw rates twice as high – up to 12.2% in Monroe County. The six counties with the highest percentages of people out of work in March were all in the state’s Appalachian region. Job security has been an ongoing concern for coal miners and their communities, and the coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse. As of April, the U.S. coal industry had lost one in seven jobs since January, when doctors diagnosed the first U.S. case of COVID-19.“Anywhere in the country where the economy was already struggling or in free fall, like in coal country, the pandemic is only making things worse,” said economist Jon Erickson at the University of Vermont, where his research focuses on resilience. Unlike other job sectors, “there’s no option to work from home.”U.S. coal production last year was already down nearly 30% from just five years earlier in 2014, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. The EIA’s short-term energy outlook released April 7 forecasts that U.S. coal production this year will fall another 22% percent from last year.“Lower production reflects declining demand for coal in the electric power sector, lower demand for U.S. exports, and a number of coal mines that have been idled for extended periods as a result of COVID-19,” the EIA report said. The industry has struggled to compete with natural gas from fracking. Meanwhile, the levelized cost of new solar or wind generation is now cheaper than the marginal cost to keep most coal-fired power plants running, according to a 2019 analysis by Energy Innovation & Technology and Vibrant Clean Energy.Job losses have continued. CCU Coal and Construction cut more than 200 jobs in eastern and southeastern Ohio last year after American Electric Power decided to close its Conesville plant in Coshocton County. More U.S. coal miners have been out of work, at least temporarily, since the COVID-19 crisis began. All or part of five mines in Virginia announced shutdowns because of the virus at the end of March, indicating they would fill existing orders from stockpiles. Around that time, Consol Energy shut down a mine in West Virginia after workers came down with the virus.

D.C. Circuit gives new life to Maryland drive to tighten pollution limits for upwind coal plants – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday mostly agreedwith the Environmental Protection Agency’s rejection of Maryland and Delaware’s petitions to tighten pollution limits on upwind power plants, which the two states claim are impacting their ability to meet federal ozone standards. But the court found EPA’s reason for rejecting Maryland’s request to address selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) controls at two power plants inadequate and remanded that part of the petition to the agency for further review. The ruling is not only important for Maryland, but for other states seeking remedies for their ozone non-attainment status, an attorney involved with the case told Utility Dive. The EPA must now conduct an analysis of SNCR controls compared with other ways of meeting air quality standards in Maryland to determine if the SNCRs are cost-effective. The ruling is “a partial, but significant victory” for Maryland and downwind states more generally, Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, told Utility Dive. The institute is involved in the case as an amicus curiae, or ‘friend of the court’, on behalf of Delaware and Maryland.This case deals with EPA’s 2008 ozone standards. There will inevitably be another round of petitions with respect to non-attainment of the 2015 ozone standards, he told Utility Dive.In the future, EPA won’t be able to just tell states seeking remedies for their non-attainment status, ‘you’re out of luck, it’s too expensive,’ Lienke said. In 2016, Maryland and Delaware petitioned EPA under Section 126 of the Clean Air Act, saying the agency had an obligation to reduce significant contributions from upwind states that prevent them from attaining federal ozone standards. Maryland’s petition targeted 36 power plants across five states, including two facilities operating SNCRs, one in Pennsylvania, the other in West Virginia. But while EPA conceded that the two facilities are impacting Maryland’s ability to meet federal ozone standards, it said that the operation of SNCRs is not cost effective, and it would not require facilities to use them.According to EPA, SNCRs are “a post combustion emissions control technology for reducing NOx by injecting an ammonia type reactant into the furnace at a properly determined location.” The technology is often used “since it requires a relatively low capital expense for installation, albeit with relatively higher operating costs.” The court rejected EPA’s finding and said the agency must conduct a new analysis that compares use of SNCRs with other methods of attaining the 2008 ozone standards within Maryland’s 2021 statutory deadline, Lienke noted.

Utility’s coal ash removal sparks concern from activists (AP) – A major utility’s plan to close five Indiana coal ash ponds at a power plant along Lake Michigan and move coal ash to a landfill has sparked concerns from environmental activists about how the dust kicked up by that project will be controlled. Northern Indiana Public Service Co. is seeking a permit from the state to remove more than 170,000 cubic yards of coal ash from its Michigan City station and transfer most of it to a state-approved landfill in its Wheatfield, the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana reported. The utility’s plan has raised concerns about its health and environment risks, particularly for communities of color, said La’Tonya Troutman, environmental climate justice chair for the LaPorte County NAACP. Troutman along with Ashley Williams, an organizer at Just Transitions NWI, want the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to extend the May 22 deadline for public comment on the utility’s plan. The pair expressed concern over how the dust would be controlled during removal of coal ash from one location to another. They said the coronavirus pandemic is raising health concerns connected to pollution, and most people may not be paying attention to the utility’s proposal when families are losing jobs and struggling to stay afloat. “We’re going to be taking coal ash from one community and dumping it on the next,” Williams said. “We don’t want to create future injustices here.” Utility spokesman Nick Meyer said the coal ash will be transported in enclosed trucks from Michigan City to the Wheatfield landfill, where it would be monitored and capped when full. A dust control plan is in progress and will be made public when completed.

Ash basin closures one step closer — The coal ash basins at Duke Energy facilities in North Carolina are one step closer to closing permanently, including the ones at the Cliffside plant.After several years of back and forth on what to do about the ash basins at several Duke Energy facilities in the state, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has approved the closure plans detailing the excavation of unlined coal ash basins at three Duke Energy facilities – Cliffside/Rogers Energy Complex, Marshall Steam Station and Mayo Steam Station.At the beginning of 2020, the Department of Environmental Quality and Duke Energy announced an agreement was reached to safely close the ash basins by 2029. The plan for closure has met with approval from the state, Duke Energy and some environmental groups in the Carolinas. “We are pleased and they are pleased. Now we’ve got to get to work,” said Duke Energy spokesman Bill Norton. In February, DEQ held multiple public hearings, provided the proposed closure plans for public comment, reviewed written public comments and analyzed site-specific information provided by Duke Energy and the public for each facility. Under a February consent order, Duke Energy is required to excavate more than 80 million tons of coal ash from open, unlined basins at several locations, including Cliffside/Rogers, and place the excavated coal ash in onsite lined landfills. . Moving forward the energy giant will increase the size of their onsite landfill where they are currently storing dry ash still produced at the facility. Construction of the two lined basins will finish in late 2021, then the coals ash in the remaining two water basins can be transferred to them, Norton said. The estimated total cost to permanently close all ash basins in the Carolinas is now around $9 billion. By the end of 2019, Duke Energy already spent $2.5 billion of it, he said. The bill will be footed by customers through slow increases to rates over time.

Duke testing shows Kingston coal ash uranium at triple report levels — The coal ash produced at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired power plant near Knoxville is more than three times richer in uranium – and the dangerous radioactive elements it produces as it breaks down – than documented in public reports after a massive coal ash spill in 2008. Knox News commissioned Duke University to analyze samples of coal ash the news organization obtained from TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant, the site of the largest coal ash spill in American history. The Duke University analysis shows TVA’s Kingston coal ash contains more than three times the amount of uranium reported in 2009 by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and in 2011 in a joint report from TVA and its disaster cleanup contractor Jacobs Engineering. Duke University employed the industry-standard EPA methods in the tests it conducted in a certified lab in February. Knox News provided Duke University with samples for testing from the 2008 spill, as well as samples taken from the Kingston plant in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Duke University Professor Avner Vengosh said the test results confirm the radiological threat TVA’s coal ash poses when it becomes airborne. “If it is dust and you inhale it, it’s a different ballgame,” he explained. “Then, you have radiation in your lungs.” Since the spill, TVA has been converting from storing coal ash in a liquid slurry to a dry form of the toxic byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity. TVA says dry storage is safer for people and the environment. TDEC has similarly touted dry storage as the best means of protecting the public from the threat of coal ash exposure and contamination. Hundreds of disaster relief workers who cleaned up TVA’s Kingston spill allege they were poisoned by exposure to coal ash dust without adequate protection. A Knox News ongoing tally from public records shows 48 cleanup workers have died from ailments they claim are linked to their exposure..

In disgusting turn, shareholders reap the profits from ratepayer payouts intended to keep Ohio’s nuclear plants afloat – cleveland.com -So much for the cries of doom and gloom over the future of the two Ohio nuclear plants FirstEnergy Corp. built and that an affiliated company operated.To keep open the Perry nuclear power plant east of Cleveland and the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio’s electricity customers are about to start paying an extra $150 million a year in subsidies. That comes courtesy of the Ohio General Assembly and Gov. Mike DeWine via House Bill 6, a bill they rushed into law last summer.Akron-based FirstEnergy Solutions, which then owned the two plants, had argued (through an army of Statehouse lobbyists) that, without the nuclear subsidy, it would be forced to close the two plants.In February, Solutions emerged from bankruptcy and became an independent (and solvent) firm, Energy Harbor Corp., also based in Akron.It now appears the biggest beneficiaries of the deal will be Energy Harbor stock investors.Energy Harbor’s board voted last week to boost stock buybacks by $300 million, from $500 million to $800 million, cleveland.com’s Andrew J. Tobias reports. When a company buys back its own stock, that cuts the number of available shares, which can boost their prices, benefiting shareholders. And where did that extra $300 million come from? Could it be on the expectation of the impending subsidy from Ohioans on their electricity bills? It’s fair to ask whether Perry and Davis-Besse were ever in real jeopardy of closing, or was it all a shell game to shore up the company’s finances?That’s House Bill 6: Socializing losses and privatizing profits, although the bill’s Statehouse backers said otherwise. HB 6, quarterbacked by House Speaker Larry Householder, was absolutely, positively all for a good cause, the speaker assured Ohioans — promoting clean air and, by the way, saving nuclear power plant workers’ jobs. Energy Harbor now owns Perry and Davis-Besse and a share of the coal plants. And while Energy Harbor stock isn’t publicly traded, it’s available through brokers.The stock buybacks may already have worked their magic — Energy Harbor was trading at $37.50 a share when markets closed Wednesday evening. That’s versus $15.75 when trading began April 7, according to Tobias. A 138% rise in about five weeks is not bad — if you’re a speculator.

Energy Department nominee shifts on Yucca Mountain question – Mark Menezes, the nominee for deputy secretary of the Energy Department, on Wednesday clarified remarks he made in February, saying the Trump administration has no plans to use Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage site. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., pressed Menezes during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, asking for a clarification. “The administration will not be pursuing Yucca Mountain as a solution for nuclear waste, and I am fully supportive of the president’s decision and applaud him for taking action when so many have failed to do so,” Menezes told Cortez Masto. Menezes, currently an undersecretary, said in February that the department was trying to “put together a process that will give us a path to permanent storage at Yucca.” But President Donald Trump had already declared on Twitter that he was committed to alternatives to Yucca Mountain. Menezes assured Cortez Masto that was still the case and reiterated the department’s effort to study interim storage of nuclear waste at other sites. The budget includes $27.5 million for studies of temporary storage at public and privately owned sites. It would take congressional action to allow storage of nuclear waste at private sites or locations other than Yucca Mountain. There are several bills introduced in Congress that call for consideration of interim storage sites, including those that include Yucca Mountain. Nevada’s congressional delegation is backing bills filed in the House and Senate that would require consent of a governor and other stakeholders in a state selected to store nuclear waste.

Saudi Nuclear Plant Advances as IAEA Frozen Out – Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead to complete its first nuclear reactor, according to satellite images that have raised concern among arms-control experts because the kingdom has yet to implement international monitoring rules.Satellite photos show the kingdom has built a roof over the facility before putting in place International Atomic Energy Agency regulations that allow inspectors early verification of the reactor’s design. Foregoing on-the-ground monitoring until after the research reactor is completed would be an unusual move normally discouraged under regulations to ensure civilian atomic programs aren’t used to make weapons.Saudi Arabia has repeatedly pledged that its nuclear program is strictly forpeaceful purposes, but Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman also said the kingdom would develop a bomb if its regional rival Iran did so. Those statements made in 2018 raised a a red flag within the nuclear monitoring community which is uneasy that it has more ability to access nuclear sites in Iran than it does in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s ministry of energy didn’t respond to a request to comment. A new satellite image shows that the almost-completed roof now conceals the cylindrical reactor vessel, which was still visible through roof beams in March. While Saudi Arabia has been open about its ambitions to generate nuclear power, less is known about the kinds of monitoring the kingdom intends to put in place. President Donald Trump’s administration sent a letter to Saudi Arabia last year setting requirements to access U.S. atomic technology. The baseline for any agreement is tougher IAEA. inspections.

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