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:
- 07 Feb 2021 – Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 07February 2021
07 Feb 2021 – Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 07February 2021
New US cases this past week were down 23.9% from the prior week, and down 53.3% from the early January peak. Although the 7-day average of new cases is now the lowest since November 9th, it’s also higher than in every 7-day period before that date.
The US covid death rate is also falling, albeit much more slowly; this week’s deaths were down 5.1% from the prior week, and down 9.8% from the week ending January 16th, which was the highest on record. I am not counting the 1,507 Covid deaths reported by Indiana on Thursday, which resulted in reports of a national record high, because those represent Covid deaths that weren’t reported over the past year that were just discovered in an audit of that state’s records. Speaking of data, the Covid Tracking Project, one of the more often cited sources of covid information, will end daily updates on March 7th, apparently because they believe US government data will now be getting better.
Globally, this week’s new covid cases were down 15% from the prior week and down around 60% from the early January peak. The global infection rate has been falling more slowly than in the US in recent weeks due to an increase in cases caused by the more contagious mutant coronavirus strains. The largest US outbreak of the British mutant strain known as B-1-1- 7 that i know of is in south Florida, where 91 confirmed cases were spread over 3 counties around midweek. Global deaths from Covid were down nearly 10% week over week, but only down 12% from the peak.
With cases and deaths falling, we’re paying less attention to the disease and the demographics, and hence last week’s “disease” collection is lighter than in previous weeks. The “economic” collection, on the other hand, includes thorough daily coverage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion covid relief package now moving through both houses of Congress.
Some of the COVID-19 graphics presented in the articles linked at the beginning of this post have been updated below.
Summary data graphics:
Below is a copy of today’s graph of new US cases from WorldOMeters so you can get a visuallization of what the growth of this thing looks like.
New cases globally have started to decrease. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global new cases since the start of the pandemic up through 09 February.
Globally deaths appear to have also started to decrease, although much more slowly than new cases. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global deaths since the start of the pandemic up through 09 February.
Calculated Risk continues to track US testing, but has stopped displaying the graphic below. The decline in positive test results over July and August ended in September. The test results continue to vary widely with no apparent overall pattern other than generally upward trend in positive results from the first part of October until the end of December when they started a steep decline. The 30 January graphic (the latest one posted):
Here’s this week’s other environmental news, with two stories emanating from Ohio’s nuclear bribery scandal at the end:
Toxic Metals Contaminate All Baby Foods Tested: New Government Report – A new Congressional report presents some disturbing information about the contents of popular baby foods, including some organic brands.Toxic metals arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury were all present at levels beyond what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers safe for other products. Yet infants are particularly susceptible to these toxins, which can impair their neurological development and have lifelong impacts on their ability to earn a living and avoid criminal behavior.”No level of exposure to these metals has been shown to be safe in vulnerable infants,” Linda McCauley, dean of the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University, told The New York Times.The report was published Thursday by the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on economic and consumer policy. It was prompted by a 2019 report from Healthy Babies Bright Futures, which found that heavy metals were present in 95 percent of commercially available baby foods.”What they did was take food off store shelves and test it. We said we should go straight to the companies and ask for their materials,” subcommittee Chair Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told The Washington Post.The subcommittee requested internal testing data from Nurture, Beech-Nut, Hain, Gerber, Campbell, Walmart and Sprout Foods. The first four companies agreed to the request, while Campbell, Walmart and Sprout did not.Arsenic, lead, and cadmium were found in the products of all the responding companies, while mercury was found in products from Nurture, the only company that tested for it.The impacted products were:
- Nurture (HappyBABY), which sold products with as much as 180 parts per billion (ppb) arsenic, 641 ppb lead, more than five ppb cadmium and as much as 10 ppb mercury.
- Hain (Earth’s Best Organic), which sold products with as much as 129 ppb arsenic and used ingredients with as much as 309 ppb arsenic. It also used ingredients containing as much as 352 ppb lead and 260 ppb cadmium.
- Beech-Nut, which used ingredients that included as much as 913.4 ppb arsenic, 886.9 ppb lead and 344.55 ppb cadmium.
- Gerber, which used rice flour containing more than 90 ppb arsenic, ingredients with as much as 48 ppb lead and carrots with as much as 87 ppb cadmium.
The FDA has currently only set one legal limit for toxic metals in baby food, according to The New York Times. It requires that rice cereal not have more than 100 ppb arsenic. However, many of the ingredients tested far exceeded the legal limits set by the government for drinking water. The FDA limits for bottled water are 10 ppb inorganic arsenic, 5 ppb lead, and 5 ppb cadmium, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has mandated there be no more than 2 ppb mercury in drinking water.
How Some Drugs Can Turn Into a Cancer-Causing Chemical in the Body –When consumers get a prescription drug from the pharmacy, they assume that it’s been tested and is safe to use. But what if a drug changes in harmful ways as it sits on the shelf or in the body? One dangerous result has been the creation of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a probable carcinogen, in certain drugs. NDMA is found in chlorinated water, food and drugs in trace amounts. To minimize exposure, the Food and Drug Administration has set an acceptable level of NDMA in each pill at less than 96 nanograms. But over the past few years the FDA has found excessive amounts of NDMA in several drugs for hypertension, diabetes and heartburn. As a result, the agency has initiated recalls to protect the public. These products were contaminated with NDMA during the manufacturing process. The FDA recommended best practices for manufacturers to minimize this risk going forward. Unfortunately for the buying public, emerging evidence suggests that NDMA can also be created as some pills sit on the store shelf or medicine cabinet, or even after the patient swallows it. Thus, there is no way to test for its presence in the factory. I am a pharmacist and distinguished professor who has written extensively about manufacturing issues and FDA oversight associated with both drugs and dietary supplements in the past, including the issue of NDMA contamination. In a new article, I discuss how NDMA can end up in a patient’s medication if it wasn’t put there during its manufacture. Ranitidine (Zantac) was a commonly used heartburn and ulcer prescription and over-the-counter medication for decades before it was recalled by the FDA on April 1, 2020. It may now be the canary in the coal mine for the post-manufacturing creation of NDMA.In one study, investigators found that ranitidine contained only 18 nanograms of NDMA after it was manufactured. However, when stored at 158 degF for 12 days – as if the drug had been left in a hot car – NDMA dosages rose above 140 ng. This is only slightly above the 96 ng limit the FDA has deemed safe, but this was only 12 days later. In another study, storing ranitidine where it was exposed to higher temperatures or high humidity enhanced the creation of NDMA over time. This suggests that some medications can leave the factory with a safe amount of NDMA but if kept for too long at home or on the store shelf can exceed known acceptable limits by the time patients use them. In a new study in JAMA Network Open, investigators simulated the stomach environment and found that when ranitidine was exposed to an acidic environment with a nitrite source, these chemicals could create more than 10,000 ng of NDMA. These results support a clinical study in which urine samples were collected from 10 adults both before and after using ranitidine. After people swallowed ranitidine, the urinary NDMA doses rose from about 100 ng to more than 40,000 ng over the next day.
New Charges Over Flint’s Water Crisis Offer Only a Trickle of Justice – No punishment has yet fit the crime of the Flint water crisis, complete with its child poisoning and lethal outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease. After a prior investigation fell apart in 2019, Michigan state prosecutors unveiled a slew of fresh charges against nine figures involved in the fateful penny-pinching move to switch Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in 2014. The river’s waters, made corrosive from decades of industrial pollution, ate at Flint’s old water pipes, releasing lead into drinking water and into the brains of thousands of children.Lead is a neurotoxin with irreversible effects and is not safe to ingest at any level. The New York Times and Education Week reported in 2019 that the percentage of Flint’s school children who qualified for individualized special education services more than doubled from 13 percent before the crisis to 28 percent after. Add to those victims, the one dozen people who did not survive their bouts with Legionnaire’s disease, a type of pneumonia that scientists linked to the water supply switch. The PBS program Frontline determined in 2019 that a total of 115 Flint residents had died of pneumonia during the outbreak, suggesting deaths attributed to Legionnaire’s had been undercounted, potentially by up to a factor of nearly 10.Seven of the nine defendants – which include former state health and communications officials, former state-appointed emergency managers, and an ex-Flint public works manager – are staring down 5 to 15 years in prison for crimes including involuntary manslaughter and perjury. Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, however, only faces two relatively minor counts of willfully neglecting to intervene in his underlings’ incompetence and failing to adequately protect the public against disaster.In theory, Snyder could end up in prison for a year, and prosecutors say it is possible he could face more charges. Without them, he would be getting off easy for being asleep at the wheel during one of the greatest instances of environmental injustice in recent American memory. Or was he truly “asleep”? Snyder’s excuse during the crisis and ever since is that he never knew enough to stop the falling dominoes of decisions and cover-ups happening underneath him. Yet plenty of circumstantial documentation begs the contrary …
EPA Dismisses Harmful ‘Secret Science’ Rule -A federal judge vacated the so-called “secret science” rule that limited EPA’s ability to use public health research to craft policy on Monday.The Biden administration had determined the justification proffered, unsuccessfully, by the Trump administration for its hasty publication of the rule was legally indefensible.The rule, originally conceived by the tobacco industry in the 1990s, would have restricted EPA’s ability to use studies that cannot make their underlying data – like participants’ medical histories – public.Such research includes bedrock epidemiological studies upon which EPA has relied for decades, and the implementation of the rule would have made it dramatically more difficult to enact public health and environmental protections. EPA spokeswoman Lindsay Hamilton said the Biden administration was “pleased” with the ruling, adding, “EPA is committed to making evidence-based decisions and developing policies and programs that are guided by the best science.”
Court tosses Trump EPA’s ‘secret science’ rule – A federal court has vacated the Trump administration’s “secret science” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule, which critics had said would undermine the use of public health studies in agency rulemaking. The decision comes after the Biden administration asked the court to throw out the rule restricting the EPA’s use of studies that don’t make their underlying data publicly available. In his order vacating the rule and remanding it to the EPA, Montana federal District Judge Brian Morris noted that the agency argued that a prior court ruling eliminated the rule’s legal basis. “Defendants explain that in light of the Court’s conclusion that the Final Rule constitutes a substantive rule, the Environmental Protection Agency lacked authorization to promulgate the rule pursuant to its housekeeping authority, which is the only source of authority identified in the Final Rule,” said the order from Morris, an Obama appointee. The Trump EPA classified the rule as procedural, rather than substantive, which allowed it to become effective immediately under the agency’s housekeeping authority rather than having to wait for the standard 30 days after Federal Register publication. Morris, in a decision last week, ruled against this, determining that the rule was substantive, not procedural, terminating the agency’s fast-track of it. “The Final Rule’s status becomes particularly clear when one examines what it is missing – any kind of procedure. EPA itself noted in its rulemaking that it would have to issue future guidance on how the rule operates procedurally,” he wrote at the time. That decision delayed it from going into effect, making it subject to a Biden administration freeze and review on Trump-era rules that were not yet effective. Prior to the court decision on Monday, the rule appeared to be under White House review. Trump administration officials had billed it as a transparency measure and a way to combat “secret science.” Opponents warned that it could hamstring the use of major health studies that keep their data under wraps for legitimate reasons including privacy. The rule didn’t eliminate the use of all studies with private data but gave preference to those with public data. An EPA spokesperson said in an email that the agency was “pleased” with the decision to vacate the rule. “EPA is committed to making evidence-based decisions and developing policies and programs that are guided by the best science,” the spokesperson said. Meanwhile, environmentalist groups that had sued over the rule celebrated the court order. “Today’s decision is great news for EPA’s ability to use rigorous, lifesaving science to protect all Americans from dangerous pollution and toxic chemicals,” said Environmental Defense Fund senior attorney Ben Levitan in a statement.
A Quarter of Known Bee Species Haven’t Been Seen Since 1990 – The number of wild bee species recorded by an international database of life on earth has declined by a quarter since 1990, according to a global analysis of bee declines. Researchers analyzed bee records from museums, universities and citizen scientists collated by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, (GBIF) a global, government-funded network providing open-access data on biodiversity.They found a steep decline in bee species being recorded since 1990, with approximately 25 percent fewer species reported between 2006 and 2015 than before the 1990s.Although this does not mean these species are extinct, it may indicate that some have become so scarce that they are no longer regularly observed in the wild.”With citizen science and the ability to share data, records are going up exponentially, but the number of species reported in these records is going down,” said Eduardo Zattara, the lead author and a biologist from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue and Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. “It’s not a bee cataclysm yet, but what we can say is that wild bees are not exactly thriving.”A separate series of scientific studies into global insect declines this month warned that the abundance of insects was falling by 10 to 20 percent each decade, an “absolutely frightening” loss that threatened to “tear apart the tapestry of life”.In the US, a study in 2020 found that a lack of bees in agricultural areas was limiting the supply of some food crops. In Britain, the government this month allowed farmers to use neonicotinoids on sugar beet crops despite the bee-killing pesticides having been banned across the EU in 2018 with the UK’s backing.The new study, which is published in the journal One Earth, analyzed records from three centuries of collections that include more than 20,000 known bee species around the world.It found that declines were not evenly distributed across bee families. While records of Halictid bees, the second most common family, have declined by 17 percent since the 1990s, those for Melittidae – a much rarer family – have plummeted by more than 41 percent. Scientists have warned that a lack of scientific data on insect declines in tropical countries is hampering their understanding of global bee declines, with most GBIF records covering North America and Europe.
Biden Urged to Help Save American Bumblebees From Extinction – Warning that threats including the climate crisis and pesticides are pushing the American bumblebee toward extinction, two conservation groups on Monday urged the Biden administration to give federal protections to the native pollinator.”We’re asking President [Joe] Biden to be the hero that steps up and saves the American bumblebee from extinction,” said Jess Tyler, an entomologist and staff scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “It’s unthinkable that we would carelessly allow this fuzzy, black-and-yellow beauty to disappear forever.”To stave off that scenario, Tyler’s group joined the Bombus Pollinator Association of Law Students of Albany Law School in urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the American bumblebee as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).Keith Hirokawa, a professor of law at Albany Law School, called it “unfortunate that we’re forced to call upon the Endangered Species Act to protect a species so fundamental to human and ecosystem health.””It is our hope,” said Hirokawa, “that the Biden administration grasps the gravity of this moment.”The groups’ 72-page petition [pdf] to the agency describes the gravity in clear terms, pointing in part to how the species – referring to the pollinators known as both Bombus pensylvanicus and Bombus sonorous – have gone from being once common and dominant to suffering a “devastating loss” of abundance. Bolstering the groups’ argument for ESA protections is international recognition of the American bumble’s plight, with the petition citing as an example the IUCN’s “vulnerable” classification. Further, the groups add, “The American bumblebee has not been protected under any state endangered species statute.” Simply put, the species “urgently needs the protections that only ESA listing can provide. Without these necessary protections, the American bumblebee will continue to precipitously decline,” the groups wrote.
Somalia declares state of emergency over new locust invasion, infestation persists in Saudi Arabia— Somalia has announced a state of emergency on Wednesday, February 4, 2021, as the nation battles a new generation of desert locust swarms that have already caused major damage to farmlands. Meanwhile, infestations are ongoing in Saudi Arabia, posing risks that any locusts that escape control could form adult groups that would likely move inland. Somalia is facing humanitarian needs never witnessed before as the country is battling locusts, as well as flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initially warned that the fleet of anti-locust aircraft in Kenya and Somalia could be grounded as the funding fell short of 38 million dollars. The intensity of the locust outbreak over the East African region has been blamed on climate change. The state of emergency declared in Somalia is in effect particularly in the southern areas. In a statement, FAO said, “rains and winds are two of the most favorable conditions for desert locusts to multiply rapidly and spread to areas where they had been under control.” “In Somalia, hopper bands are present on the northwest coast and in the northeast where some have started to fledge and will be forming immature swarms. Intensive control operations are underway to reduce the number of new swarms that will form this month.” Swarms that develop on the northwest coast are likely to move to the plateau and adjacent areas of eastern Ethiopia, while swarms in the northeast are forecast to spread west along the plateau, where they could mature and produce another generation of breeding from mid-March onwards, especially if more rain will fall.
Exports empty Canada’s canola bins, driving prices to near records (Reuters) – Canada, the world’s biggest canola grower, is running short of the oilseed six months before the next harvest, with strong export demand driving prices to nearly 13-year highs last week. Supplies of major commodity crops are dwindling worldwide as buyers hoard food supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. China is loading up on grains and oilseeds that it can feed to animals, raising food inflation and causing some nations to restrict exports of their crops. Canola, known for its bright yellow flowers, is crushed mainly for oil to make French fries, mayonnaise and salad dressings. Its meal is also fed to livestock like pigs. To Manitoba farmer Bill Craddock, it seemed like a good decision in autumn to sell all of his canola at high prices, only to see them spike even more this month. The roots of Canada’s canola shortage trace back to the autumn, when farmers reaped their smallest harvest in five years. Strong export demand for canola seed and oil then drove a late-summer rally that prompted farmers to sell more crop earlier than usual. Those early deliveries to commercial handlers have helped Canada export nearly 33% more canola year-to-date over last year, according to government data. Top buyer China more than doubled purchases to 1.2 million tonnes as of December, despite continuing restrictions against Canadian exporters Richardson International and Viterra. Other exporters can still ship Canadian canola, helping meet China’s voracious demand for animal feed as its hog herd recovers from a deadly disease. With the market soaring, canola importers locked in their purchase prices under terms of their sales agreements last week, fearing even higher prices, said Tony Tryhuk, manager of commodity trading at RBC. That forced Canadian exporters on the other ends of those sales to buy canola futures at high prices to fill them, likely registering big losses in the process, he said. ICE canola futures retreated late in the week to less than C$700 per tonne, remaining close to levels unseen since the record 2008 commodity boom. Strong canola oil demand has also spurred Canadian crush plants to process brisk volumes domestically, further straining supplies. Both crush plants and exporters may already be short canola to fulfil orders, a Canadian exporter said. Archer-Daniels-Midland Co, Bunge Ltd and Richardson, major crushers, declined to comment. Cargill Inc did not respond. The canola rally is not necessarily over, Tryhuk said. Bigger than usual futures positions for November delivery indicate that seed exporters and crushers are already worried about the shortage continuing through the next harvest, he said.
Pakistani Universities Promoting Moringa to Fight Malnutrition — Aga Khan University and Sindh Agriculture University are jointly promoting Moringa tree planting in Pakistan’s Thar desert to fight malnutrition, according to multiple media reports. Moringa has gained popularity as superfood in the West in recent years. People of drought-stricken Tharparkar have been suffering from malnutrition and disease in the middle of a long-running drought in the region. Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam, and the Aga Khan University will plant 40,000 moringa tree seedlings in Matiari, a rural district in central Sindh, in an effort to improve the health of malnourished mothers, children and adolescents in the area. The moringa tree plantation campaign has been funded by the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Fund for the Environment, a $10 million fund dedicated to practical solutions to environmental problems. There is high incidence of stunting and wasting among children in Tharparkar district and elsewhere in rural Sindh due mainly to their very limited diet of daal-roti (lentils and bread) which does not supply essential nutrients such as vitamins and minerals for good health and early development. Moringa tree packs 92 essential nutrients, 46 antioxidants, 36 anti-inflammatories and 18 amino acids which help your body heal and build muscle. Native to South Asia, the hardy and drought-resistant Moringa tree can contribute to everything from better vision and stronger immune system to healthier bones and skin. Moringa has 25 times more iron than spinach, 17 times more calcium than milk, 15 times more potassium than bananas and nine times more protein than yoghurt, according to Dr. Shahzad Basra of the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, Pakistan. “It also has seven times more vitamin C compared to oranges, over 10 times more vitamin A compared to carrots and three times more vitamin E compared to almonds”, he added. No wonder the powder made from Moringa leaves is sold as superfood in the West.
Three of World’s Largest Sugar Pine Trees Are Found in California – Three of the world’s largest sugar pine trees have been discovered in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.More specifically, the trees clock in as the planet’s second, third and sixth largest known sugar pines. Michael Taylor, a professional tree hunter who has been seeking large trees for more than 30 years, found the green giants in October 2020.”I want to document these trees before they’re all gone,” Taylor told The Sugar Pine Foundation (SPF).Taylor recorded the second and third largest sugar pines in Tahoe National Forest west of Lake Tahoe, The Associated Press reported. The two trees are slightly shorter than the length of a football field. The largest of the two stretches 267 feet and six inches tall and is appropriately dubbed “Redonkulous.” Its diameter at 4.5 feet from the ground – known as its diameter breadth height – is 10.5 feet. The second tallest of the two, and the third tallest known sugar pine, is 267 feet and 1.8 inches.The third pine is located in Stanislaus National Forest, near Yosemite National Park. As the world’s sixth-largest sugar pine, it rises 253 feet and two inches above the ground. Sugar pines are the world’s largest species of pine tree, the SPF explained. They are native to the mountains of California and Oregon, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). They can live up to 500 years and are second only to giant sequoias in total volume.
Recompose, the first human-composting funeral home in the U.S., is now open for business –Somewhere in Kent, tucked anonymously into acres of warehouses and light-industrial workshops, the first full-service human-composting funeral home in the United States is operational.After nearly a decade of planning, research and fundraising – not to mention a successful campaign to change state law – Recompose is finally converting people into soil.Outside, the entrance to Recompose looks like most of its neighbors – just another unit in a tall, almost block-sized building with plain metal siding and big, roll-up warehouse doors. But inside, it feels like an environmentalist’s version of a sleek, futuristic spaceship: spare, calm, utilitarian, with silvery ductwork above, a few soil-working tools (shovels, rakes, pitchforks) on racks, bags of tightly packaged straw neatly stacked on shelves, fern-green walls, potted plants of various sizes.One immense object dominates the space, looking like an enormous fragment of white honeycomb. These are Recompose’s 10 “vessels,” each a hexagon enclosing a steel cylinder full of soil. One day in mid-January, eight decedents were already inside eight vessels, undergoing the process of natural organic reduction (NOR) or, more colloquially, human composting. One vessel contained the remains of Ernest “Ernie” Brooks II, a renowned underwater photographer. Organic-farming pioneer Robert “Amigo Bob” Cantisano lay in a second. A third held Paulie Bontrager, a committed environmentalist, vegan and nature lover from West Virginia who died unexpectedly while visiting her daughter in Burien. The Recompose process takes 30 days in a vessel full of wood chips and straw, then another few weeks in “curing bins,” large boxes (one per person) where soil is allowed to rest and continue exhaling carbon dioxide. Once that process is complete, friends and chosen family can either retrieve the soil themselves, or donate it to an ecological restoration project at Bells Mountain near Vancouver, Washington. So far, most have elected to donate. Recompose costs $5,500 for everything: the body pickup (in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties), the paperwork, the process itself and an optional service. (Body transport from further away can be arranged, for an extra fee, and Recompose has already accepted bodies from California and the East Coast.)
Biden delays Trump rule that weakened wild bird protections – The Washington Post – The Biden administration said Thursday it was delaying a rule finalized in former President Donald Trump’s last days in office that would have drastically weakened the government’s power to enforce a century-old law protecting most wild birds. The rule could mean more birds die, including those that land in oil pits or collide with power lines or other structures, government studies say. But under Trump, the Interior Department sided with industry groups that had long sought to end criminal prosecutions of accidental but preventable bird deaths. While the new rule had been set to take effect Monday, Interior Department officials said they were putting it off at President Joe Biden’s direction and will reopen the issue to public comment. The migratory bird rule was among dozens of Trump-era environmental policies that Biden ordered to be reconsidered on his first day in office. Former federal officials, environmental groups and Democrats in Congress contend many of the Trump rules were meant to benefit private industry at the expense of conservation. “The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a bedrock environmental law critical to protecting migratory birds and restoring declining bird populations,” Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said. “The Trump administration sought to overturn decades of bipartisan and international precedent in order to protect corporate polluters.” A federal judge in August had blocked a prior attempt by the Trump administration to change how the bird treaty was enforced. But the administration remained adamant that the law had been wielded inappropriately for decades to penalize companies and other entities that kill birds accidentally.
Traffic Sounds Make It Harder for Birds to Think, Scientists Find — A study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Wednesday found that traffic noises can impair the ability of songbirds to learn. In some cases, birds took twice as long to figure out new skills when listening to road sounds. “While our expectation was that noise would reduce cognitive performance, I was a bit surprised by the extent of the effect we observed,” A growing body of research shows that noise pollution can have a major impact on non-human animals, BBC News reported. A study published in September 2020 found that the relative quiet of lockdown enabled male white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco to sing a higher quality song that was more attractive to females. Under the sea, shipping noises have been shown to stop humpback whales from singing. However, Wednesday’s study was the first to show how noise pollution harms cognitive ability in animals, its authors told AFP. To achieve their results, the researchers gave zebra finches a series of tasks that mimic the process of searching for food, BBC News explained. These included finding food beneath flipping lids designed to resemble leaves or figuring out how to access food in a cylinder. The researchers had the birds attempt the tasks without noise and also while a recording of traffic sounds played in the background. (The level of noise resembled road noise in a semi-rural area, AFP explained.) They found that the background noise had a big impact on the birds’ ability to complete the tasks. “In some cases, we observed that it took animals more than twice as long to learn new skills when they heard road traffic played at natural sounds levels,” Templeton told i. “For example, learning to remember the location of a hidden food reward took control birds about nine trials, but those exposed to traffic noise took on average 18 trials to learn the same task.” The birds’ performance was also impaired on tasks that required them to control impulses, distinguish different colors and learn from each other. The only ability that was not impacted was their ability to link a color to a food reward.
Human Noise Pollution Is Harming Ocean Creatures — Humans are changing the way the ocean sounds, and it is having a profound impact on marine life. A major new literature review published in Science on Thursday found that noise from vessels, sonar, seismic surveys and construction can damage marine animals’ hearing, change their behaviors and, in some cases, threaten their ability to survive. “When people think of threats facing the ocean, we often think of climate change, plastics and overfishing,” Neil Hammerschlag, a University of Miami marine ecologist who was not involved with the paper, told The Associated Press. “But noise pollution is another essential thing we need to be monitoring.” Sound is key to how ocean animals communicate with each other and navigate their environments. Underwater, it is only possible to see for tens of yards and to detect a chemical signal from hundreds of yards away, The New York Times explained. Sound, on the other hand, can travel thousands of miles, which is why many marine creatures have evolved to detect and emit it. However, the singing of whales and groaning of coral reefs contribute to an underwater soundscape that is significantly changing because of human activity. To better understand, a 25-author research team reviewed more than 10,000 papers on the topic. For one, the researchers wrote, overfishing and habitat loss have decreased the sounds generated by ocean life. “[T]hose voices are gone,” Carlos Duarte, study lead author and Red Sea Research Center marine ecologist, told The Associated Press. The climate crisis is also altering sounds from geophysical sources such as sea ice and storms, the study found. Then there is the noise humans have added through shipping traffic, fossil fuel exploration and even intentional attempts at deterrence. Evidence shows that these noises harm marine mammals, but several studies show that they impact fish, invertebrates, sea birds and reptiles as well.
Mysterious California sea lion deaths linked to toxic synthetic chemicals – Sea lions in California had been dying of a mysterious cancer for decades. Now, scientists say they have finally uncovered the likely cause: toxic chemicals from industrial trash, pesticides and oil refinery waste. A team of mammal pathologists, virologists, chemists and geneticists have concluded that sea lions with higher concentrations of DDT, PCBs and other chemicals in their blubber are more prone to cancer triggered by a herpes virus. The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, are the result of 20 years of research, gleaned from tissue samples collected from 394 sea lions. “[Sea lions are] predisposed to cancer by these high levels of legacy compounds that are still in the environment,” Frances Gulland, a University of California, Davis, researcher who studied the animals for decades at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, told the Los Angeles Times. Gulland and other scientists studied sea lions that died of various causes along the Sausalito coast. The levels of pollutants found in the sea lions blubber are “among the highest recorded in any marine mammal” the researchers said, likely because of the high levels of dumping along the California coast in the 1970s. DDT, the insecticide which was banned in the US in 1972, takes generations to break down and can accumulate easily in fat tissue. While the findings begin to answer longstanding questions about what has been plaguing sea lions off California’s coast, it also raises concerns about the effects of ocean pollution on other mammals, including humans. “Sea lions, they’re coming up on the beach, using the same waters that we swim and surf in, eating a lot of the same seafood that we eat,”
Chemical Dumping Linked to California Sea Lions’ High Cancer Rates — California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) have one of the highest rates of cancer of all mammals, andscientists have long wondered why.The answer, published in Frontiers in Marine Science in December 2020, is complex. But a key component is exposure to toxic chemicals, from when the California coast was an industrial dumping ground.”It is extraordinary, the level of pollutants in these animals in California. It is a big factor in why we’re seeing this level of cancer,” study coauthor and Marine Mammal Center pathologist Dr. Pfldraig Duignan told the Los Angeles Times.In the past 40 years, 18 to 23 percent of the sea lions treated at the Marine Mammal Center hospital in Sausalito, California died of a particular type of cancer, the center wrote in a press release. This is unusual, as wild mammals tend not to develop this disease. In fact, the California sea lions have the highest rate of a single type of cancer of any mammal, including humans. This shocked study lead author Frances Gulland when she first started to work at the Marine Mammal Center 26 years ago. “Wildlife should not be getting cancer like this, that’s crazy!” Gulland told the Los Angeles Times. But the 250,000 or so California sea lions breed on islands off the Central California coast, the study authors noted. This is the same area that saw dumping of DDT in the 1960s, and pollution from industrialization and urbanization in the following decades. Industrial trash, radioactive material and waste from oil refineries was also dumped into the ocean, the Los Angeles Times reported.”With all the dumping since the Second World War, right up to the 1970s, that’s a lot of stuff out there,” Duignan told the Los Angeles Times. “These legacy chemicals haven’t broken down anything appreciable in intervening years, and nobody knows if they ever will. This is something that they’re going to have to be exposed to for who knows how long.”
New endangered whale species identified in Gulf of Mexico – A new species of whale has been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico – but scientists warn the animal is critically endangered. The newly-identified species of baleen whale has been dubbed “Rice’s whale” after American biologist Dale Rice, who was the first to recognize the mammal. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) previously thought the whales were a subspecies of the Bryde’s whale, however, the agency announced that it was actually a new species entirely in a paper published in Marine Mammal Science. The discovery was made after examining the skull of a Rice’s whale that washed up on a Florida beach in 2019. Differences in the whale’s skull clearly separated Rice’s whales from Byrde’s whales, which are closely related to the blue and humpback whale, marine biologists said. Rice’s whales are filter feeders that can weigh up to 60,000 pounds and grow up to 42 feet long. Sadly, however, there are estimated to be fewer than 100 left in existence. The species is listed as critically endangered under the Endangered Species Act and is protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Its biggest threats include include vessel strikes, ocean noise, energy exploration and production, oil spills, entanglement in fishing gear, and ocean debris, according to the NOAA.
Biden Backs Trump Decision to Strip Gray Wolf of Protections (Bloomberg) — The Biden administration is standing by a Trump-era decision to strip the gray wolf of endangered species protections, arguing the move was backed by sound science, even though it is being fought by conservationists in court.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service defended the delisting call in a letter to Earthjustice, one of the environmental groups challenging the move.”We made our delisting determination using the best scientific and commercial data available,” Gary Frazer, the assistant director for ecological services, said in the letter. “Our delisting action recognizes the successful recovery of one of the most iconic species to our nation’s natural heritage, which currently numbers more than 6,000 wolves, greatly exceeding our recovery goals for the Northern Rocky Mountains and Western Great Lakes populations.”When the Trump administration announced the decision last October, it called the move an Endangered Species Act success story. After more than 45 years of protection under the statute, gray wolf populations had recovered enough to warrant the shift, the Fish and Wildlife Service said at the time.However, in January, six environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a California-based federal district court challenging the decision, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service had only evaluated the health of wolf populations in the Midwest, overlooking the species’ status in California, Washington, Maine and other states.
Snow, wind hammer U.S. Northeast in ‘life-threatening’ blizzard (Reuters) -A powerful winter storm engulfed the U.S. Northeast on Monday, blanketing much of the region in heavy snow, blasting coastal areas with high winds and bringing New York City and other major urban centers to nearly a standstill. The nor’easter – an East Coast storm with winds blowing from the northeast – could bring accumulations of 1 to 2 feet (31 cm to 61 cm) to the country’s most densely populated region before tapering off on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. By early Monday evening, the nor’easter had dumped as much as 27 inches (68 cm) of snow in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and 17 inches (43 cm) in parts of New York City. More than 13 inches (33 cm) covered Manhattan’s Central Park, as bands of snow began moving north into New England. By early evening, Boston reported a mix of snow and rain, the Weather Service’s forecaster Marc Chenard said. But just a few miles inland from the New England coast, up to 12 inches (30 cm) of snow were reported, he said. By Tuesday morning, some areas could see 15 inches (38 cm). If the winter storm achieves its maximum potential, it would be the first to bring more than 2 feet of snow in New York City since 2016, when a record-breaking blizzard dumped 27.5 inches (70 cm) on the country’s most populous city, according to the weather service.
Major winter storm slams Northeast U.S. with heavy snow and freezing rain (videos) – A powerful winter storm blasted the U.S. Northeast on Monday, February 1, 2021, bringing heavy snow and high winds that led to power outages for more than 22 000 customers throughout the region. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts the heaviest snow over parts of northern New York into northern Maine on Tuesday, February 4, with freezing rain over parts of coastal New England. This major Nor’easter prompted advisories and warnings from Tennessee to Maine, with a snow emergency issued for Philadelphia and a state of emergency declared for New York City and New Jersey on Sunday night. “It’s the storm of the century,” said New Jersey snowplow operator James Carew, who has been in the field of work for 30 years. Power outages driven by heavy wind and snow cut power to more than 14 000 customers in Massachusetts solely, 4 000 in New Jersey, 3 000 in New York, and 1 200 in Connecticut According to PowerOutage, about 4 994 customers remain without power in Massachusetts, as of 14:00 UTC today. More than 1 600 flights have been canceled at major airports in the Nor’easter’s path, including Newark Liberty International Airport, John F Kennedy Airport, and Philadelphia International Airport. In New York, Central Park received more than 38.1 cm (15 inches) on late Monday, placing the storm in the top 20 snowstorms in the city’s recorded history. The highest snowfall total recorded on the East Coast was in Newton, New Jersey, with up to 81 cm (31 inches) of snow. In New Jersey, state police reported Monday night that they responded to more than 660 motor vehicle crashes and more than 1 000 motorist aids. “Motorist aids can be anything from flat tires, mechanical breakdowns, spin-outs, etc. We urge residents to remain off of the roads,” the state police said. The NWS forecasts snow to continue across northern New England on Tuesday, with the heaviest snow over parts of northern New York state into northern Maine. Additionally, freezing rain will form over parts of coastal New England, with snow ending overnight Wednesday, February 3, across the Central Appalachians or Mid-Atlantic and wane over the Northeast on Thursday, February 4.
‘Snow Droughts’ Increasing in the Western U.S. –Most of us know a bad drought when we see one: Lakes and rivers recede from their normal water lines, crops wither in fields, and lawns turn brown. Usually we think of these droughts as being triggered by a lack of rain, but scientists also track drought in other ways.”The common ways to measure droughts are through precipitation, soil moisture and runoff,” says Laurie S. Huning, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent work adds another dimension to that by looking at water stored in snowpack.Huning is the co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with U.C. Irvine colleague Amir AghaKouchak, which developed a new framework for characterizing “snow droughts.” These can occur when there’s an abnormally low snowpack, which may be triggered by low precipitation, warm temperatures or both.Their research is timely. This winter, southwestern states have received just a quarter to half of the average snow-water equivalent – the amount of water held in the snowpack – the key metric for determining a snow drought.And that can have sweeping impacts. The water content of a snowpack can change the amount and timing of when runoff occurs, and that has implications for wildlife, ecosystems, water resources, flood control, hydropower and drought mitigation.Snow droughts can also have far-reaching effects on agriculture – and economies. California’s Central Valley, the heart of its agriculture industry, relies on snow melt from the Sierra Nevada. The state saw $2.7 billion in losses in the sector following low precipitation and warm temperatures during 2014-2015.
Big Sur road collapse: A huge piece of California’s Highway 1 was washed out – A huge piece of California’s Highway 1 was washed out this week by a winter storm that brought heavy rain and snow. California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) officials said in a statement Friday a debris flow from the hillside above the roadway “overwhelmed drainage infrastructure, flowed across the highway, and eroded the road resulting in the complete loss of a segment of Highway 1” at Rat Creek, about 15 miles south of Big Sur, a mountainous stretch of the state’s central coast. Caltrans crews discovered the debris flow on Thursday, and issued an emergency contract to Papich Construction in San Luis Obispo County to assist with the repair. At daybreak Friday, Caltrans crews and emergency contractors arrived at the scene and found “both lanes of the highway had washed out.”The damage assessment team will continue to work through the weekend, Caltrans’ statement said. It’s unclear how long the repair could take and the road will remain closed in the meantime. The area where the road collapsed is about a mile south of the burn scar left behind by the Dolan Fire, one of the wildfires that ravaged the state last summer, Caltrans said. Another stretch of Highway 1 reopened in July 2018, after a massive mudslide in May 2017 heaped tons of rocks on a quarter mile section of the highway, making it impassable and adding 13 acres to the coastline.California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties in response to winter storms that “threatened to cause mud and debris flows,” forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents, according to the declaration.At least 25 structures in Northern California have been damaged as a result of mudslides and debris flow caused by a powerful atmospheric river-fueled storm. Most of the impacted areas are where burn scars exist from earlier wildfires.
Major storm leaves 2 dead, takes out massive chunk of Highway 1 in California, U.S. —Massive storms that barrelled through Northern California over the weekend brought heavy rains and snow, causing floods and landslides and leaving at least 2 people dead. Meanwhile, a front approaching the Northwest will move onshore on Monday, February 1, and advance eastward to Southern California by Wednesday, February 3, producing rain and high elevation snow over parts of the northern region.The atmospheric river-driven storms hit Northern California on Thursday, January 28, unleashing damaging mudslides, widespread flooding, and heavy snow, which led to the evacuation of thousands of residents.At least two people were killed in the storms’ onslaught. On Thursday, a skier’s body was retrieved in deep snow near a chairlift and intersecting trails at Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada.On Friday afternoon, January 29, seven people were trapped in an inundated drain system near a Mexican border crossing, one of them was confirmed dead. On the same day, governor Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation for the counties of Monterey and San Luis Obispo.Due to heavy rains, a portion of the iconic Highway 1 collapsed into the ocean on Friday. In a video posted by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, a large part of the highway was still covered with debris from mudslides.At the point of the collapse, both lanes of the road completely disappeared, with a huge hole sloping toward the Pacific Ocean in its place. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, upstream of the washout site is a large area burnt by wildfires, particularly by the Dolan Fire, which scorched an area of about 52 000 ha (128 500 acres) from August 18, 2020. “Rat Creek drains an area partially burnt by the fire,” Dr. Dave Petley of The Landslide Blog said in an analysis. “The images of the aftermath of the washout show large volumes of timber, which would be as expected for a post-wildfire mudflow,” he wrote. “Of course the amount of overland flow generated in wildfire areas means that the gully will have dealt with a larger than normal volume of flow, with a higher density, generating the unusual level of erosion. The roadbed was on erodible material, possibly weathered rock and some fill.”
Ice jam pushes St. Clair River to record levels, triggers devastating floods in Michigan, U.S. – Houses and main roads in southeastern St. Clair County, Michigan, were flooded on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, after ice jams pushed the St. Clair River to a record high of 176.3 m (578.5 feet).U.S. and Canadian coast guards have sent icebreaking ships to the St. Clair River after ice build-up caused devastating floods to southeastern St. Clair County, from Algonac to Port Huron.”I’ve lived here for about 45 years now and the water is higher than I’ve ever seen it,” said Algonac resident Bill Gratopp. High waters were also reported in East China Township and Marine City.According to a statement from the U.S. coast guard, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Griffon was underway on Tuesday evening, February 2, flushing ice that is contributing to the significant floods. A flood warning has been issued by the St. Clair County after the river reached record levels of 176.3 m (578.5 feet)Coast Guard officials added that they began to get calls from residents this week regarding flooding in various towns along the river and that the water was “threatening homes and businesses,” said spokesman Jeremiah Schiessel.Mark White, deputy director for the St. Clair County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said the waters rose quickly.”We have four cutters working that river, so there’s a lot of real estate to cover but we’re hopeful that they can get things accomplished.””[The towns] are experiencing some super high water. A lot of coastal flooding. Yards are totally flooded out. Driveways totally impacted and quite a few cars impacted as well.”Meanwhile, Schiessel assured that crews are working to relieve the flooding situation. However, “Mother Nature is a pretty powerful force,” he said. “When you’re talking about trillions of gallons of water that is basically trying to go through a funnel, it can wreak havoc even with all of our resources…”
Heavy rains hit New South Wales, Australia – Heavy rains hit New South Wales, Australia A broad band of rain and storms hit New South Wales, Australia on February 1 and 2, 2021. The Bathurst region was drenched by nearly a month’s worth of rain in about eight hours– up to 43.4 mm (1.7 inches) fell from 08:30 UTC (19:30 LT on Monday, February 1) to 17:00 UTC (04:00 LT on Tuesday), close to the long-term February average of 57.8 mm (2.3 inches). There has been 54.2 mm (2 inches) of rain recorded for the month so far, with the additional 9.8 mm (0.4 inches) registered on February 1. The heavy rain came after Bathurst fell short in January. Last month, the region only registered 36.2 mm (1.4 inches)– the long-term average for January is 68.3 mm (2.7 inches)– this despite there being more rainy days, nine, compared to the average of 7.5 days. According to Weatherzone, 56.8 mm (2.2 inches) was recorded to February 2– there were 11 rain days in that period in 2020 and 2021. The wettest February on record in Bathurst was recorded in 1971 with 235.5 mm (9.3 inches). Its wettest February 24-hour period is 101.1 mm (3.4 inches) registered in 1950. Orange registered 69 mm (2.7 inches) in 24 hours to 09:00 LT on Tuesday, February 2 — close to its monthly average of 74 mm (2.9 inches). This already makes this February its wettest since 2014.
Destructive flash floods hit Izmir after more than a month’s worth of rain in just 6 hours, Turkey – Destructive flash floods lashed the Turkish Aegean coastal province of Izmir on Tuesday, February 2, 2021, resulting in heavy damage, one fatality, and another person missing. Authorities called the situation a disaster, advising residents to stay indoors and only leave their homes when necessary. A weather station in Guzelyali recorded 126 mm (4.9 inches) of rain in 24 hours, Izmir municipality reported. Of the total amount, 113 mm (4.4 inches) fell from 03:00 to 09:00 LT, February 2 — more than Izmir’s average for the entire month of February (102.3 mm (4 inches)). The resulting flash flooding blocked main roads in the downtown area and surrounding districts of Aliaga, Foca, and Dikili, killing one person and leaving another one missing. The two individuals were trapped in a vehicle that was washed away by rising water in the town of Menderes. Mayor Tunc Soyer said the situation was a disaster as the flood caused heavy damage in the province, prompting a half-day leave to public employees. In Balcova district, several streams overflowed, affecting many residences and businesses in Karabaglar and Bayrakh. “I have been living here for 30 years and have never seen such a disaster,” said Balcova resident Mehmet Akyol. In his area, a stream was clogged with debris and floodwaters drifted away vehicles, leaving them piled up on each other.
Britain’s flood defences continue to deteriorate – Last year, over 3,400 crucial flood defence structures across England were deemed to be in poor condition. The research arm of the environmental charity Greenpeace, Unearthed, published a report on January 24 noting, “New data, obtained from the Environment Agency (EA) using Freedom of Information rules, shows that 3,460 ‘high consequence’ flood defence assets were rated as being in poor or very poor condition in 2019/20. That’s 6 percent of all such assets in England, an increase on the previous year after many defences were damaged in last winter’s flooding.” Out of the 3,460, 791 of the assets were classed as very poor, having severe defects which could lead them to fail completely. The EA defines high consequence assets as “flood defence assets that contribute to managing flood risk in a location where the consequence on people and property of an asset failing is high”. Large parts of the UK have just suffered flooding from Storm Christoph. The Environment Agency issued 130 flood warnings across England, with 225 less severe flood alerts. Residents were forced to leave their homes in parts of Ruthin, North Wales, and Maghull in Merseyside due to rising floodwaters. In the Didsbury district of south Manchester, the River Mersey came very close to bursting its banks as it reached the highest water levels it had ever recorded. Around 2,000 homes and businesses were told to evacuate the area. This part of Manchester had not faced the danger of flooding for 60 years. In areas that had suffered or were under threat from January’s Storm Christoph, such as Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire, 831 crucial flood defences were classed as in poor or very poor condition when inspected last year. This represents nine percent of all the assets in those areas. Warrington, which was flooded in Storm Christoph, had the second highest figure of over 25 percent of its flood defences classed as in poor condition last year. Unearthed’s research showed flood defence assets maintained by third parties were even more likely to be in a poor state. It noted, “Across England, third party-managed flood defences were twice as likely to be in a poor condition last year as those managed by the EA – eight percent compared to four percent.”
Tropical Cyclone “Ana” hits Fiji, leaving at least 1 person dead and 5 missing – (videos) Category 2 Tropical Cyclone “Ana” made landfall near Rakiraki, Fiji at 06:00 LT on January 31, 2021, and continued tracking SSE over the Central Division towards the Suva area. By 12:00 LT (00:00 UTC), Ana’s center was located over the coast of Viti Levu, between Suva and Navua, heading towards Kadavu. The storm caused extensive damage and flooding, leaving at least 1 person dead and 5 others missing. Destructive storm force winds with average speeds of 100 km/h (62 mph) and momentary gusts up to 140 km/h (87 mph) were battering Viti Levu, Yasawa and Mamanuca Group, the western half of Vanua Levu, Lomaiviti Group, Vatulele, Beqa, Kadavu, and nearby smaller islands and the Moala Group as the storm moved over. Ana peaked as Category 3 tropical cyclone and weakened back to Category 2 at 12:00 LT on February 1 (00:00 UTC) while located about 240 km (150 miles) WSW of Onoi-Lau. It was moving SSE at about 13 km/h (8 mph).On Monday, February 1, authorities said more than 10 000 people were sheltering at 300 evacuation centers after Ana’s passage over the main island of Viti Levu brought winds of 140 km/h (87 mph). Extensive damage and flooding were reported across parts of the island, including the capital Suva. The main rivers have surged, flooding low-lying areas, closing highways, and causing power outages and landslides. According to the National Disaster Management Office, a 49-year-old man had drowned, while 4 fishermen and 1 child are still missing. Flooding of roads, villages, towns, and communities near streams, rivers, and low lying areas remains a threat to the Fiji Group as the system moves away. Moderate to heavy swells and breaking waves reaching the coastal areas that can cause coastal inundation and sea flooding especially during high tide. Poor visibility in areas of heavy rain and thunderstorms. At 06:00 UTC on February 1, the center of Category 2 Tropical Cyclone “Ana” was located about 500 km (311 miles) S of Suva, Fiji. The cyclone is moving SSE at 28 km/h (17 mph) while weakening.
Tropical Cyclone “Eloise” death toll rises to 21 after striking Mozambique – At least 21 people have been killed by Tropical Storm “Eloise” since it formed on January 15, 2021 — 1 in Madagascar, 11 in Mozambique, 4 in Eswatini, 3 in Zimbabwe, and 2 in South Africa. Eloise made landfall just south of the port city of Beira, Mozambique early Saturday morning (LT) on January 23. The storm peaked shortly before landfall with 1-minute sustained winds of 165 km/h (105 mph), making it a Category 2 equivalent hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.It left a trail of destruction in Beira, Manica, and Quelimane. The same area that was hit by the highly destructive Tropical Cyclone “Idai” in 2019, which left more than 1 300 people dead, many more missing, and over 100 000 displaced.Eloise moved inland after making landfall, bringing heavy rains to southern Zimbabwe, northern South Africa, and far eastern Botswana.More than 270 000 people have been affected by the storm, most of them in Mozambique, according to UN OCHA.More than 20 000 people have been displaced and 20 500 houses were damaged or destroyed in Mozambique, mainly in Sofala Province. At least 424 classrooms and 82 health centers were damaged.With floodwaters present in multiple locations, the risk of water-borne diseases, including cholera, is high, OCHA warned.More than 177 000 hectares (437 700 acres) of crops were flooded in Mozambique alone, which could affect upcoming harvests and undermine regional food security.Eloise is the 5th named storm of the 2020/21 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season.
Category 2 Tropical Cyclone “Lucas” affecting Vanuatu and New Caledonia –Tropical Cyclone “Lucas” formed over the Coral Sea on February 1, 2021, as the 5th named storm of the 2020/21 South Pacific Ocean cyclone season. The storm moved into the basin from the Australian region as a Category 2 tropical cyclone, to the northwest of Port Vila in Vanuatu.The storm is forecast to continue moving southeast over the Coral Sea, passing approximately 300 km (185 miles) west of Vanuatu Islands on February 2 and 3 and possibly make landfall over New Caledonia on February 3. Heavy rains are already falling over most parts of Vanuatu and New Caledonia and are forecast to continue over the next 48 hours, accompanied by strong winds and storm surge. On February 1, the Vanuatu Meteorological Services have issued a tropical cyclone advisory and a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall for the central and southern islands of Vanuatu.Weather warnings could remain active even after the system’s immediate threat has diminished, as some areas may still be highly susceptible to rain-induced hazards. Localized evacuations are possible if weather conditions prove particularly hazardous.
BOM: La Nina likely past peak, but influence continues – The 2020 – 21 La Nina is likely to have peaked with respect to atmospheric and oceanic patterns in the tropical Pacific, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on February 2, 2021. All of the international climate models surveyed by the Bureau are anticipating NINO3.4 will return to borderline or neutral values by mid-autumn. It is typical for La Nina to continue to influence the Australian climate, even as the La Nina weakens. Impacts associated with La Nina, such as above-average rainfall in eastern and northern Australia, are expected to persist into early autumn, with climate outlooks indicating above-average rainfall is likely for parts of these regions, particularly over northern Queensland. Over the past fortnight, the sea surface temperatures across the Pacific Ocean basin have warmed by around 0.2 degC. The 90-day Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has decreased slightly but continues to remain well above the La Nina threshold of +7, and trade winds have returned to near-average strength in the central tropical Pacific. Model outlooks indicate a return to neutral conditions (neither El Nino nor La Nina) during the late southern summer or early autumn. The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is positive, but is expected to tend towards neutral values over the next fortnight. The Madden – Julian Oscillation (MJO) is currently located over the western Pacific Ocean. Its influence on Australia is expected to weaken during the next fortnight as it moves east into the central Pacific……. Read more »
Wooroloo Fire Destroys Homes in Australia, Forces Locked-Down Residents to Evacuate – The Wooroloo fire, raging out of control outside Perth, Western Australia, has destroyed at least 71 homes and was expected to continue to grow.Authorities warn the fire, already fueled by hot and unusually dry conditions, is being made dangerously erratic by winds gusting at over 45 mph and blowing embers as much as three miles ahead of the firefront.Smoke from the blaze turned skies over the city on Australia’s western coast a hazy orange, raining ash on suburban homes, and dangerously degraded air quality. Climate change makes wildfires more extreme as increased temperatures dry out brush and soil, exacerbating fire conditions. Officials emphasized that evacuation orders caused by the fire overrode the snap lockdown triggered by a COVID-19 infection earlier in the week.As reported by The New York Times: The fire, reminiscent of the infernos that devoured Australia’s southeast coast more than a year ago, is another reminder that as climate change spurs more frequent and intense natural disasters, Australia and other countries are likely to find themselves dealing with intersecting catastrophes. For a deeper dive: BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, 9News, CNN, The New York Times, AP, The Independent. Photos: Al Jazeera; Climate Signals background: Wildfires
Judge: PG&E may have been ‘criminally reckless’ before Zogg Fire -A federal judge said Wednesday that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. may have been “criminally reckless” in failing to cut down a pine tree near where a deadly wildfire started last year west of Redding.U.S. District Judge William Alsup made the comment at a virtual hearing about whether he should require PG&E to more carefully account for the state of tree trimming work when deciding whether to turn off power lines to prevent wildfires.The judge is trying to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that led the Zogg Fire to start in September and kill four people, destroy more than 200 buildings and burn more than 56,000 acres in Shasta and Tehama counties. PG&E has not officially been blamed for the fire, but authorities are investigating whether one of the company’s power lines was the cause.Alsup oversees PG&E’s probation arising from the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. He has proposed expanding the company’s probation conditions to require explicit consideration of vegetation conditions along power lines when deciding whether to cut electricity because of fire risk. He has indicated that such a requirement might have forced PG&E to turn off electricity near the Zogg Fire’s origin and therefore avoid the blaze. Of particular concern to Alsup has been a single gray pine that he said was leaning over the power line suspected of starting the fire. State officials seized part of the tree in their investigation. Alsup said “it was reckless, maybe criminally reckless,” for PG&E to have left the tree in place. He said it was particularly alarming because gray pines “have a shallow root system.”
Saharan dust plume with high values moving over Europe – A large Saharan dust plume is moving NE over parts of Europe — from Spain and France today, February 6, 2021, into Italy, Germany, and the rest of northern and eastern Europe and the Balkans in the coming days. Sand-laden rains, a fairly rare phenomenon in winter, are expected over much of the region. (animation, numerous pictures)
Thawing Permafrost Is Full of Ice-Forming Particles That Could Get Into Atmosphere – Permafrost – frozen soil in the far north – is thawing, releasing greenhouse gases and long-lost microbes. But one thing that scientists have not studied extensively is whether permafrost contains certain kinds of particles that could affect clouds and weather. As atmospheric scientists, we found in a recent study that thawing permafrost contains lots of microscopic ice-nucleating particles. These particles make it easier for water droplets to freeze; and if the ones in permafrost get airborne, they could affect Arctic clouds. In the summer of 2018, one of us, Jessie Creamean, went to Fairbanks, Alaska, and collected samples of permafrost from a research tunnel deep underground. These samples ranged from 18,000 to 30,000 years old, and our team tested them to see how many ice-nucleating particles are hiding in permafrost. It turns out permafrost contains a ton of them – up to 100 million highly active individual particles per gram of mostly dead microbes and pieces of plants. This density is on par with what is found in fertile soils, which are some of the most concentrated sources of ice-nucleating particles on Earth. Everywhere in the world, ice-nucleating particles typically play a major role in cloud behavior, and the strength of that effect is still being studied. No one yet knows whether ice-nucleating particles from permafrost are getting into the atmosphere and affecting clouds. But the theory of how ice-nucleating particles change clouds is understood. Ice-nucleating particles are extremely good at forming small ice crystals – a rare skill found in less than 1 in a million of all the particles floating around in the air. Ice-nucleating particles can be mineral dust from deserts, specks of soil from farm fields or – like what we found in the permafrost – bacteria and bits of biological material from oceans or plants. The ability to easily form ice has big consequences for clouds and weather. Ice-nucleating particles allow cloud ice to form at warmer air temperatures than normal, up to around 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Without these particles, a water droplet can supercool to about negative 36 F before freezing. When ice-nucleating particles are in a cloud, water droplets freeze more easily. This can cause the cloud to rain or snow and disappear earlier, and reflect less sunlight.
Sulfur dioxide emissions detected at Soufriere volcano, St. Vincent and the Grenadines –Multi-Gas measurements conducted at La Soufriere volcano on February 1, 2021, confirmed the presence of sulfur dioxide (SO2) for the first time. Filter packs used to measure hydrogen chloride (HCl), Hydrogen fluoride (HF), Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) will need to be sent abroad for analyses. The fact that SO2 is now coming out of the volcano suggests that the ground water is drying up, National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) reports. The absence of Sulfur dioxide in the early stages of the eruption was due to the interaction of sulfur dioxide with the ground water (Sulfur dioxide was dissolving in the ground water). The lava dome survey on February 1 produced the following reasults: estimated length 511 m (1 676 feet), width 231 m (757 feet), height 93 m (305 feet), total volume 5.93 million m3 (209.4 million ft3).
Study: Earth Warmer Than Any Time in Last 12,000 Years – Climate campaigners on Thursday pointed to a study showing that Earth is hotter than it’s ever been during the entire epoch of human civilization as the latest proof of the need to treat human-caused global heating like the dire emergency that it is. On Wednesday, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature published a report revealing that an analysis of ocean surface temperatures found that the planet is hotter now than at any other time in the past 12,000 years, and that it may actually be warmer than at any point during the last 125,000 years. Researchers determined this by solving what scientists call the “Holocene temperature conundrum.” This was the mystery of why the global heating that began at the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago peaked around 6,000 years later – before giving way to the onset of a cooling period that lasted until the Industrial Revolution, when the current anthropogenic warming period began. It turns out that the collected data, obtained from fossilized seashells, was inaccurate, showing only hot summers while missing the colder winters. “We demonstrate that global average annual temperature has been rising over the last 12,000 years, contrary to previous results,” research leader Bova, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The Guardian. “This means that the modern, human-caused global warming period is accelerating a long-term increase in global temperatures, making today completely uncharted territory. It changes the baseline and emphasizes just how critical it is to take our situation seriously.”
After 2020 decline, EIA expects energy-related CO2 emissions to increase in 2021 and 2022 – In its January 2021 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects that energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States will increase in 2021. Economic growth and the lessening of pandemic-related restrictions result in more energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions. EIA expects total energy-related CO2 emissions to increase to 4.8 billion metric tons in 2021 and 4.9 billion metric tons in 2022. U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell by an estimated 11% in 2020, largely because of reduced travel and other factors that have led to less energy consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the short term, EIA forecasts rising CO2 emissions as a result of economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in fuel mix, and greater demand for residential electricity as colder winter weather leads to more heating demand in 2021. EIA expects petroleum to account for about 46% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2021 and 47% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022. Most of these emissions come from the transportation sector as a result of increased travel as the economy recovers from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. EIA expects natural gas, which accounted for about 36% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020, to decline to about 34% of total emissions in 2021. Emissions from natural gas are declining mainly because natural gas consumption is declining as natural gas prices increase relative to coal prices. EIA expects natural gas prices to increase by 98 cents per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2021 while prices for coal increase by 12 cents/MMBtu. As a result, EIA forecasts that natural gas’s share of total energy-related CO2 emissions will decline to 32% in 2022 as natural gas prices rise. Coal accounted for 19% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020. EIA expects this share of total emissions to rise to 21% in 2021 and 2022 as coal becomes more economical for use in electricity generation amid higher natural gas prices.
U.S. Cities Are Under-Counting Their COâ‚‚ Pollution By Almost 20% – A new national estimate suggests that urban emissions are significantly higher than previously thought, complicating efforts to reduce greenhouse pollution. At least 48 U.S. cities are under-counting their carbon dioxide pollution by nearly 20%, according to a new study that compares local disclosures against a national database that can now estimate the same information. The new analysis could create confusion about how much cities emit – and therefore how much pollution they must cut – at a time of increased attention to climate change from the White House, state capitals, and city officials. About three-quarters of fossil-fuel COâ‚‚ pollution comes from cities. As populations swell, reducing those emissions becomes even more critical, said Northern Arizona University professor Kevin Gurney and his co-authors in the journal Nature Communications.The difference between the cities’ and the study authors’ estimates is consequential at a national scale – amounting to 70 million tons of COâ‚‚, or about the output of the entire state of Massachusetts. If the difference between the 48 cities included in the study and the research estimates were extrapolated across the country, the under-counted emissions would amount to 474 million tons, or 24% more than California emitted in 2015. “We hope that this will stimulate a significant reevaluation of how to go about the entire endeavor,” Gurney said. “We are recommending that a science-driven estimate be generated for all cities and provided to them.” Standards by which cities estimate their own emissions vary widely, which has long been an obstacle to building a consistent picture of urban emissions in the U.S. Measuring emissions can be expensive and time-consuming, which is a problem in places where resources are already stretched. Cities commonly miss industrial or commercial uses of gasoline, or emissions from individual facilities. They may also calculate emissions related to shipping and driving in different ways.
US has multiple, affordable paths to net zero emissions by 2050, California study concludes – Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 could be “surprisingly feasible,” with costs running $1 per day per person or just 0.4% of the U.S GDP, according to a new report from the University of San Francisco, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and consulting firm Evolved Energy Research. . No matter which decarbonization strategy the U.S. ultimately adopts, technical limitations in other fields mean the electricity sector must be among the first to pursue aggressive decarbonization, eliminating 65-70% of its emissions by 2035, according to Jim Williams, the paper’s lead author and an associate professor at the University of San Francisco. Despite the need for carbon-free electricity, excessively ambitious decarbonization targets could actually undermine the nation’s success. “If you look at the reality of what that would entail on the ground, the impact would be such that I would anticipate any policy that pushes that change along would swiftly face blowback and ultimately be abandoned,” said Ryan Jones, co-founder of Evolved Energy Research. “That is the worst outcome in terms of this transition.” Within about a decade, the U.S. will have its choice of a variety of economical strategies for combating climate change, according to the new paper by Jones, Williams and their colleagues, published in AGU Advances. But for the next ten years, technical limitations mean the course is relatively set. After the mid-2030s, the paper anticipates that at least eight viable pathways to a carbon neutral economy will emerge. But before 2030, the success of those eventual strategies rest on the same set of critical actions. First and foremost, according to Williams, the electric sector must cut its own carbon emissions by at least two-thirds. This is a necessary first step, Williams said, because carbon-free electricity enables multiple downstream strategies such as electrification or the development of alternative fuels. But it’s also a matter of simple pragmatism: it is possible to make dramatic strides toward decarbonized electric generation with existing technology. The same cannot be said of, for example, airliners. “There are no-brainers up front that derive from the science of the situation,” Williams said. “At some point you get to more difficult applications like air travel. … There are going to be applications where you need other decarbonized energy sources, specifically liquid fuels, and for those things we’re not as clear what the ultimate best strategy is going to be.”.
Burned by carbon pricing, Dems chart new course on climate — Tuesday, February 2, 2021 – It was more than a decade ago when Democrats tried and failed to pass a federal cap-and-trade program. Now they are taking a different approach. President Biden and congressional Democrats seem increasingly likely to pursue a plan that eliminates greenhouse gas emissions from power plants while pouring money into green infrastructure to cut carbon dioxide from cars, buildings and factories. The approach marks a sharp departure from the last time Democrats controlled Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, climate policy largely centered around the creation of a carbon cap-and-trade program. But a decade of bruising political losses, coupled with the success of tax incentives and state mandates designed to boost wind and solar production, has convinced many Democrats to travel a new path. Focusing on infrastructure investments has the benefit of creating jobs, as well as cutting emissions, they say. Targeted investments can also address long-standing concerns over racial and economic equity. And many in the party believe they have found a politically popular policy – a clean energy standard – that can create a foundation for electrifying other segments of the economy. “The shift is real,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), chair of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and a former member of the task force that helped write Biden’s climate plan. “What we determined, after months and months of hearing from folks across the spectrum, is they just didn’t think that a price on carbon was a silver bullet,” she added. “Climate policy’s got to be broader.”
Exxon’s New Carbon Capture Plan Looks a Lot Like Its Old One – Exxon Mobil Corp. pledged to spend $3 billion on low-emission technologies through 2025 to address investor concerns over its environmental record, unveiling a plan that comprises several projects that have already been announced. Exxon said Monday in a statement it will “commercialize” its low-carbon technology initiatives through a new venture called ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.The announcement, made on the eve of Exxon’s fourth-quarter earnings report, comes as the Irving, Texas-based company faces intense pressure from environmentalists and investors for not moving fast enough on climate change and also for delivering weak financial performance compared with peers. Shareholder D.E. Shaw & Co. is in talks about adding new directors to Exxon’s board, according to people familiar with the matter, and activist investor Engine No. 1 last week revealed its own slate of nomination.Exxon has sought to fend off some of the criticism with targets to reduce methane leaks and emissions intensity. Its latest response is an increased focus on carbon capture, a technology favored by many other large oil and gas producers.But investors looking for a meaningful strategic shift may be disappointed. The planned investments announced Tuesday represent less than 5% of the oil giant’s capital budget over the period.Furthermore, several of the projects touted by Exxon aren’t new. The carbon capture efforts in the Netherlands, Belgium and Qatar are already being developed with partners. Exxon said it has moved ahead with permitting for the expansion of its LaBarge facility in Wyoming, which would be the company’s biggest carbon capture project, but that project is still in doubt after being put on hold. Government support is needed to make carbon capture more commercially viable, Exxon also said in the statement. The “opportunities can become more commercially attractive through government policy, including the United States tax credit 45Q, which ExxonMobil supports, and other supportive policies in the European Union, Canada and Singapore,” it said.
Power plant linked to idled U.S. carbon capture project will shut indefinitely – NRG (Reuters) – NRG Energy Inc will shut down indefinitely the power source for what had been the only U.S. project capturing carbon from a coal-fired generator until it was idled last year, a spokesman said on Friday. The company notified the Texas grid operator, ERCOT, on Wednesday that the Petra Nova gas plant would be mothballed indefinitely effective June 26, according to a market notice. “This was a decision we have been evaluating for some time,” NRG spokesman Chris Rimel said in an email. He added that the unit would be preserved in the event that the carbon capture system is some day restarted. Petra Nova’s carbon capture project was seen as a major test of efforts to sequester planet-warming gases and store them below ground, a technology considered crucial to companies and governments hoping to fight climate change. The plant was designed to capture a portion of the carbon emissions from the W.A. Parish coal plant, and pipe it 81 miles to the West Ranch oil field, where it would push more oil to the surface. NRG idled the carbon capture facility in May of last year, however, saying a collapse in the price of oil prompted by the coronavirus pandemic had made it uneconomical. The joint venture between NRG and Japan’s JX Nippon received a $190 grant from the U.S. government but suffered chronic mechanical problems.
Carbon capture technology has been around for decades – here’s why it hasn’t taken off – Elon Musk is going to pay $100 million towards a prize to come up with the best carbon capture technology. (Or so he tweets. Details are scarce so far.) The maverick tech CEO’s promise is not particularly notable for its generosity. With a net worth over $200 billion, $100 million is 0.05% of Musk’s wealth. But still, the richest person in the world’s tweet brings attention to an often overlooked technology which has been around since the 1970s, but has mostly been relegated to niche corners of the energy community. In response to one tweet recommending tree-planting, Musk said trees “are part of the solution, but require lots of fresh water & land. We may need something that’s ultra-large-scale industrial in 10 to 20 years.” The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is tracked as in parts per million, or PPM. As of December, atmospheric carbon dioxide stands at 414.02 ppm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We started the industrial revolution with 280 parts per million in the atmosphere,” Lackner tells CNBC. “By now we have 415 [ppm], and we are going up 2.5 ppm a year at this moment.” The consequences of that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already dire and will get worse. “The oceans have started to rise, hurricanes have gotten way worse, climate has become more extreme, and this will only get worse over the next decade,” Lackner says. The only choice, Lackner says, is to “draw down” the atmospheric carbon dioxide – or to suffer unknown, devastating consequences. Capturing carbon from the air, not from a factory smokestack, is called “direct air capture,” and there are currently 15 direct air capture plants in Europe, the United States and Canada, according to the IEA. “Carbon removal is expected to play a key role in the transition to a net-zero energy system,” the IEA says, but currently it is a very expensive technology. Direct air capture is “very expensive because the CO2 in the atmosphere is only .04%,” Herzog tells CNBC, and the technical process of removing carbon dioxide from a gas gets more expensive the lower the concentration of the carbon dioxide gets. “But it is very seductive. A lot of people jumped on this,” he says. Lackner sees it as a necessity. “In the end I see CO2 as a waste management problem. We have for two centuries simply dumped the waste from energy production – which is carbon dioxide – in the atmosphere and not thought about it any further, and we are gradually waking up to the fact that that’s not acceptable,” Lackner says.
SENATE: Power-sharing deal in hand, Schumer turns to climate change — Wednesday, February 3, 2021 — Senate leaders have finally struck a power-sharing agreement that will allow Democrats to officially take the reins of committees, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling on incoming chairs to put climate change at the top of the agenda. After weeks of negotiations, the New York Democrat announced this morning that the Senate will vote today on the organizing resolution, which sets the chamber’s rules and committee rosters for both parties for the 117th Congress. “I’m confident our members are ready to hit the ground running on the most important issues that face our country,” Schumer said. “Senate Democrats are not going to waste any time taking on the biggest challenges facing our country and our planet,” he added. The organizing resolution allows Democrats to formally take over Senate committees, which technically have remained in the hands of Republicans even though Democrats control the 50-50 chamber because of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. GOP chairs have yielded the gavels to their counterparts as a courtesy, including for confirmation hearings on President Biden’s Cabinet nominees. Schumer made clear today that the incoming Democratic panel leaders will get to work immediately on climate change. “I’ve already instructed the incoming Democratic chairs of all relevant committees to begin holding hearings on the climate crisis in preparation for enacting President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ agenda, which includes major climate legislation,” Schumer said on the floor. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee began that process this morning with a hearing examining energy-sector trends and past progress in addressing climate change. “As we all know, climate change touches virtually every aspect of our economy and involves virtually every aspect of public policy,” Schumer said. “So as the Biden administration prepares a whole-of-government approach to combating climate change, the Democratic majority will pursue a whole-of-Senate approach, as well.”
Biden’s climate change agenda will face big obstacles with evenly divided Senate – President Joe Biden has passed an early flurry of executive action on climate change during his first weeks in office, reversing environmental rollbacks from the Trump administration and quickly acting on campaign promises to address global warming.. The president’s orders, though significant, don’t substitute for the administration’s plans to implement more permanent climate legislation, including parts of the $2 trillion proposal to cut planet-warming carbon emissions to zero by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Without new climate legislation from Congress, Biden’s orders to reverse Trump’s rollbacks on emissions from vehicles, power plants and oil and gas drilling could be easily undone by a future administration. Many of Biden’s legal reversals could take years to impose too. What could stand in Biden’s way in passing major climate reform on issues – such as phasing out coal and oil with clean energy technology – is moderate Senate Democrats and Republicans from fossil-fuel states who oppose policies they view as harmful to the industry in their home state. The Biden administration has a slim Democratic Senate majority that’s 10 votes short of the 60 needed to break the Senate’s filibuster and pass climate bills. The Senate is divided 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaking vote for Democrats. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who opposes ending the filibuster and has broken with his party to defend coal production in West Virginia, is the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and will yield tremendous power in deciding what passes. Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School, said that while many of Biden’s climate proposals wouldn’t require Congressional action, Congress is essential to appropriate infrastructure spending and help strengthen the Clean Air Act and other regulatory controls to mitigate fossil fuel production. “Without Congressional action you don’t have the certainty of continuity. You have a loss of momentum, which is a big problem,” Gerrard said. “At the same time, we see the plummeting costs of wind and solar. The market is going to be driving a lot of this without government action.” Democrats tried but failed to pass climate change legislation when they controlled Congress under former President Barack Obama and will likely face similar difficulty under Biden. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the majority leader, has addressed how difficult major bipartisan reform on climate will be and recently recently called on the president to declare climate chang a national emergency. Invoking a climate emergency is a controversial move that would give the Biden administration larger authority to circumvent Congress, like redirecting funding for clean energy sources and canceling offshore drilling projects. And the move would certainty face legal challenges.
Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez seek ‘climate emergency’ declaration (AP) – With Democrats in charge of Congress and the White House, progressive lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pushing the Biden administration to act ever more aggressively on climate change. A week after President Joe Biden signed executive orders intended to combat the worst effects of global warming, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers urged him to go even further and declare a national emergency on climate change. Along with other liberal lawmakers, the independent Vermont senator and the New York Democratic congresswoman introduced legislation in the House and Senate that would direct Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Such a declaration, similar to one issued by former President Donald Trump on construction of a southern border wall, would give Biden more power to combat global warming, including reinstating a ban on crude-oil exports and forcing companies to manufacture solar panels, electric-car charging stations and other elements of the so-called green economy. The lawmakers introduced a similar resolution in 2019, but this time they have high-level support, including a recent statement by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that Biden should consider declaring an emergency to take additional actions on climate. “If there ever was an emergency, climate is one, the New York Democrat told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow last week, adding that an emergency declaration would give Biden “more flexibility. Unlike Trump’s “stupid wall, climate change is a real crisis, Schumer said. “We have to do something about climate. We don’t have any more time. The bill requiring an emergency declaration faces an uphill road in the Senate, where a 60-vote threshold is needed. So far, just four senators have signed onto the bill, which faces stiff opposition from Republicans and likely resistance from moderate Democrats.
Waiting to Address Climate Change Will Cost Trillions – There’s really no good reason to wait to tackle the climate crisis, but especially when it comes to money. A new report offers yet more proof that the longer we wait, the higher that cost will be. The analysis by policy research firm Energy Innovation, published on Wednesday morning, examines two scenarios for reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That’s a target set by the Biden administration and several other countries, and based on advice from United Nations climate scientists on how to avert dangerous levels of warming. In one modeled scenario, the U.S. begins aggressive efforts to decarbonize now. In the other, officials wait until 2030 to start. The financial difference could prove to be massive. The analysis shows that starting to decarbonize now would cost $320 billion per year, or a total of $4.5 trillion. Waiting until 2030, though, and the costs of reaching net-zero by 2050 would be $750 billion each year, or about $8 trillion by 2050 when all is said and done. That means the cumulative cost associated with putting off decarbonizing until 2030 are 72% higher than the cost of getting the ball rolling now. “To meet climate goals, it is imperative to start climate action today,” Megan Mahajan, one of the co-authors and a senior policy analyst on the Energy Policy Solution team, said in an email. “In particular, it is urgent to quickly transition to electric vehicles and building components, because polluting equipment sold today will last for decades. And transitioning to clean sources of electricity as rapidly as possible becomes even more important as vehicles and buildings increasingly rely on electricity rather than fossil fuels.” The authors used Energy Innovation’s open-source Energy Policy Simulator, a peer-reviewed model that estimates the impacts of climate and energy policies. In the 2021 scenario, the policies the authors plugged in include a clean energy standard that reaches 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2050, 100% electric vehicle standards for light-duty vehicles by 2035 and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045, and building efficiency improvements ranging from 11%-40% by 2050. The 2030 scenario, the study says, “necessarily requires steeper emissions reductions to achieve the same cumulative abatement.” That’s because if the U.S. keeps emitting greenhouse gases, more urgent action will be needed to stave off extreme heating. Waiting a decade, for instance, would mean having to transition to 100% clean energy by 2040 instead of 2050 due to the pollution that piled up in the atmosphere over the course of the 2020s. It would also require constructing nine times more clean energy capacity per year by the mid-2030s.
Manchin: We should be building the green economy in West Virginia – West Virginia’s senior U.S. Senator has drafted a bill that would create jobs in states that have a history of relying on fossil fuels, such as coal. Now that he has taken the seat as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin has a bill called 48C Tax Credits, which would reinstate and expand tax credits for manufacturers. He is working with Michigan Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow to get traction for the bill. If approved, the bill could have a $4 billion impact on the U.S. economy. “A 48C tax credit simply does this; $4 billion will be directed to the coal fields of America – most of them in West Virginia where the coal mines have been closed down – where coal fire planting has been shut down, where the economy has been destroyed, and you can trace those tax credits if you bring us manufacturing jobs, you bring us technology jobs, you bring us something.” Manchin said if the Biden administration is going to be pulled into the direction of a ‘green energy’ policy, he wants to ensure those workers from the coal fields will have a seat at the table. “You can’t unlock that door unless you have something to show in return and then that’s how we have to do it,” he said Thursday in a video call with editors and reporters from CNHI newspapers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. “I’m going to say if you’re still going to get tax credits and if it’s for any type of energy, then those tax credits have to be used and spent in the states that lost the traditional jobs they replaced. You do that and, by God, we’ll have all kind of opportunity.” Manchin said the first hearing he will hold in the energy committee will focus on a discussion he refers to as “Climate Baseline.” He said he hopes there no one in West Virginia who still denies that changes in climate are real and that humans “had a tremendous impact” so it should be up to humans to right the wrongs that led us here. At the same time, Manchin said demand for fossil fuels in developing nations continues to be a large driver in the reality that fossil fuel dependence is not going to end anytime soon.
Biden team in talks with utilities, car companies about emissions: climate adviser —(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has started discussions with the utility and automobile sectors about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, White House domestic climate change adviser Gina McCarthy told Reuters. The talks are part of a broad effort by the Biden administration that McCarthy will spearhead to engage every federal agency to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035 and the whole economy by 2050. The United States is the world’s second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China, with the power and transport sectors making up more than half of the emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. McCarthy’s first major task will be to come up with a 2030 emission reduction target under the Paris climate agreement before Biden convenes world leaders for a climate summit on April 22. “We’re already having conversations with the utility world and we’re having conversations with the car companies,” McCarthy said in an interview. “The car companies understand now that the future for them is electric vehicles … so we’re going to be sort of working to make sure that we move forward with some kind of an agreement on that and a strategy to get us out of the gate fast.” The White House has met some major automakers – including General Motors Co – as it prepares to begin talks with the industry about revising vehicle emission standards through 2026 or beyond. GM said last week it aimed to sell only electric cars by 2035. She met virtually with the board of the Edison Electric Institute, the main utility lobby, which discussed its “support for recent energy-related executive orders,” a spokesman for the group told Reuters. McCarthy will chair a task force composed of the heads of all Cabinet agencies to see what measures can be taken through regulation, budget appropriation and legislation to combat climate change, she said.
GOP Senator John Kennedy Wants Us to Know His Car Doesn’t Run on ‘Unicorn Urine’ — Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who is known for firing off attention-seeking colloquialisms in cable news interviews, did so once again on Tuesday night, peppering a Fox News appearance with the colorful phrase “unicorn urine.” The ultra-conservative lawmaker, speaking to Benghazi chairman turned Fox News host Trey Gowdy, railed against President Joe Biden’s climate change and energy policies while standing up for the oil and gas industry.”Most Americans support an all-of-the-above energy policy: Oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, hydrogen,” the Louisiana lawmaker remarked. “But they also understand that we can’t run the greatest economy in all of human history without oil and gas.”Turning to Gowdy, he was adamant that his car “does not run off fairy dust” and it “doesn’t run off unicorn urine,” adding that Biden has caved to the “left-wing crazies” who blame climate change “when they break a shoelace.”
Making fuel from pig poop sounds exciting – unless you live nearby — The land that Elsie Herring lives on, about 60 acres of farmland in southeastern North Carolina, has been in her family since her grandfather purchased the property in 1891 from his former enslaver. Herring and her older siblings were born and raised on the land, and they continue to live in simple houses and trailers sprinkled throughout the fields. But there is also an unwelcome guest on the Herrings’ property. In the late 1980s, a hog farm was constructed next door to the siblings’ homes, on a contested portion of land that Herring believes rightfully belongs to her family. The farm, now owned by Smithfield Foods, the nation’s top producer of pork, is relatively small. There are two hog houses where pigs are lined up side to side, butt to head, with little space to move. These houses have slats in the floor that allow swine excrement to fall into troughs below, from which it is pumped into malodorous lagoons just outside the structures. And not 8 feet from the home of Herring’s late mother, separated by a thin strip of trees, are the so-called spray fields – corn fields on which hog manure is sprayed as a fertilizer. Mists of water and swine feces from the operation make their way to Herring’s property, bringing with them a constant, unbearable odor. All she, her family, and neighbors can do is keep the windows and doors shut, and place air fresheners and scented aerosol sprays around the house to mask the smell. “It’s nice to smell something that smells sweet instead of something that’s just so foul,” Herring told Grist. “You just have to do what you have to do to make life as pleasant as you can and try to stay safe at the same time,” she added, noting that even though masking the odor presents a short-term solution, it doesn’t protect them from inhaling the airborne fertilizer. Herring says she has developed bronchitis due to the inescapable pollution. “Living near these animals, knowing that they are on my family’s land without our permission and having their waste blown on us, having our air and our water polluted,” Herring said, “is like so many injustices are compounded in one.”Herring and her family are not alone. There are approximately 2,400 similar hog farms in North Carolina, most of them in Duplin County, where she lives, as well as Sampson, Bladen, and Robeson counties, and lagoons and spray fields are the primary ways these pork farms handle their hog waste. If the lagoons are left unchecked, the waste that builds up in the pink-tinted waters releases not only extreme odors but methane, ammonia, and other pollutants that can spread into nearby communities. Methane is a greenhouse gas about 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and the other pollutants, like hydrogen sulfide, which is responsible for the odor, can inflame the eyes, skin, and lungs. The smell leaves people reluctant to exit their houses for fear of difficulty breathing – even just to hang their laundry outdoors. The predominantly Black and low-income communities surrounding these farms have experienced increased rates of respiratory and heart disease for decades.
Renewable fuels accounted for almost $4 billion in Iowa’s GDP in 2020, report shows Iowa’s renewable fuels industry accounted for almost $4 billion or about 2 percent of Iowa’s gross domestic product in 2020, according to a report commissioned by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. The report, written by Agriculture and BioFuels Consulting’s John Urbanchuk, shows the industry also provided $1.8 million in household income and 37,000 jobs. Biodiesel production increased in 2020, but ethanol production – which accounts for about 88 percent of the 37,000 jobs – faced myriad obstacles. Decreased fuel consumption during coronavirus, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s use of small-refinery waivers and a drop in exports to Canada and Brazil all hampered the industry. “Biofuels still provide a major boost to Iowa’s economy, but quite frankly, the report is a wake-up call to redouble our efforts at the state level,” said Monte Shaw, IRFA’s executive director, in a news release. “Midwestern states like Iowa must be aggressive to drive local demand for biofuels in a meaningful way, thereby providing a sturdy market foundation, even as we supply the rest of the United States and markets around the world.”
Goodbye, gas? The era of electric cars is coming faster than anyone thought. – One of the questions that has long plagued automobile executives was whether motorists – after a century of pulling into gasoline stations for a near instant fill up – would be willing to switch to electric vehicles typically requiring hours-long charges.With electric vehicles constituting less than 3 percent of the global auto sales, that question remains unresolved. Governments and automakers, however, are not waiting for the answer. Confident technological advances will ease consumer concerns, they are forging ahead with plans to convert the majority of new car and light truck sales to electric by the 2030s in an effort to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.Within the next two decades, new cars buyers may not have any choice but electric vehicles, much as Americans in the 1970s had no choice but to buy cars with smaller, less powerful engines after the federal government imposed fuel efficiency standards following the Arab oil embargo, said Devin Lindsey, an automobile analyst with the research firm IHS Markit.”Everyone wanted a large engine,” he said. “But they had to buy the cars. That’s all there was.”With China, Europe, and states such as California and Massachusetts imposing electric vehicle mandates, the transition from petroleum vehicles has gained increasing momentum in recent years. That has only accelerated with the election of President Joe Biden, who, since taking office, has ordered the EPA to work on tougher car emissions standards and federal agencies to start buying electric vehicles en masse. Auto manufacturers are rushing new electric pickup trucks and sports cars to show rooms, eager to establish footholds in what is expected to be the market of the future – whether they like it or not. The transition gained more speed recently when General Motors announced it would produce only electric vehicles by 2035.”Manufacturers want to be on the forefront,” he said. “The batteries are so much more efficient and there’s so many less moving parts, which means less maintenance and repairs. The only thing that holds it back is people afraid they can’t take long road trips. But once they shorten the charge to minutes and not hours, that’s game changing.” Such a shift to electric vehicles would have long-term consequences for an oil industry that currently provides more than 90 percent of the U.S. transportation sector’s energy needs, raising questions about the future of oil drillers and refineries across Texas.
Opinion | G.M. and the Electric-Car Comeback – The New York Times — General Motors’ announcement last week that it will stop making gas-powered cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles by 2035 and become carbon neutral by 2040 is even bolder than it sounds: The repercussions will ripple broadly across the economy, accelerating the transition to a broader electric future powered by renewable energy. The pledge by the nation’s largest automaker to phase out internal combustion engines puts pressure on other auto companies, like Ford and Toyota, to make equally ambitious public commitments. It follows an earlier announcement by G.M. that it would invest $27 billion in electric vehicles over the next five years While every major auto company is investing in zero- and low-emission vehicles, amounting to $257 billion worldwide through 2030, until now none had been willing to say when they would end production of gas-powered cars. Wall Street rewarded G.M.’s clarity by bumping its stock. Now investors will expect the rest of the industry to explain how their electric vehicle strategies measure up.G.M.’s decision is a sea change. For decades, the company and other automakers resisted pollution rules. As recently as last year, G.M. supported the Trump administration’s relaxation of fuel efficiency standards, only to make an about-face after the November election. When one of the most recalcitrant and iconic American companies so markedly changes its tune and embraces the clean-energy transition, something big is happening. Pressure will undoubtedly mount on oil and gas companies, among others, to produce credible energy transition plans of their own.The plan by G.M.’s. chairman and chief executive, Mary Barra, will also mean big changes for auto design and manufacturing, and for the auto supply chain. Suppliers must now pivot away even more intently from making traditional transmissions and engines to producing the advanced batteries, motors and power systems electric vehicles need. And car dealers, after years of pushing gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, must now aggressively market electric cars to consumers. Phasing out the gas-powered cars and trucks that many people drive will cause demand for gasoline to drop steadily over the next few decades, cutting into oil and gas industry profits. Gasoline is the most consumed petroleum product in the United States, with light-duty vehicles accounting for more than 65 percent of total on-road fuel consumption. If medium- and heavy-duty trucks that burn diesel also transition to lower-polluting fuels, demand for oil will drop further. In the short term, the oil and gas industry can absorb lower demand for certain petroleum products, but in the long term, it will need to rethink its business model.Politically, G.M.’s pledge also further isolates the U.S. oil and gas industry, which has, on the whole, been too slow and reactive on climate change. Corporate leaders across the economy increasingly recognize that climate change requires a societal response and are positioning their companies to be part of the solution. Investors, employees and others seeking to slow global warming will demand as much.
DOE, House Energy committee question proposed building energy code changes – Increased involvement by local and state officials led to efficiency gains, prompting pushback from the building industry. The organization responsible for developing model building energy codes is facing growing pressure to reconsider proposed changes that would limit the role of state and local governments in approving future updates. More than 200 stakeholders submitted comments ahead of the International Code Council’s Jan. 21 board meeting, with about three-quarters of them opposing a plan to overhaul the process for approving its triennial updates. Meanwhile, the organization received a letter from the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee requesting answers to several questions related to the proposed changes and the influence of industry groups like the National Association of Home Builders on the process. A U.S. Department of Energy official raised similar questions at the recent meeting. “We at DOE don’t currently have a comprehensive justification for why it’s needed,” said Jeremy Williams, a program specialist with DOE’s Building Technologies Office. “We’d ask ICC to further demonstrate where exactly the current process fails and how the proposed process would proceed.” The changes would strip voting rights from thousands of public sector members and leave final say over future energy codes up to a committee made up of building code officials, industry groups and other stakeholders, with some spots for clean energy advocates. Any one stakeholder interest group could not account for more than a third of the committee’s members. The proposed overhaul was set in motion last fall after industry groups representing homebuilders and developers raised concerns over the recently completed code development cycle, which saw record online voting turnout by state and local government officials, resulting in the code’s biggest efficiency gains in at least a decade.
Biden’s EPA pick assures lawmakers he will listen to states in climate fight (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency told lawmakers on Wednesday he will consult with states and other stakeholders as the agency determines how to deliver on the administration’s plans to tackle climate change and clean up pollution hotspots. The comments came during an unusually cordial Senate confirmation hearing for the nation’s top environmental regulator, a nomination that has historically triggered fierce debate between Republicans and Democrats over how to balance U.S. green regulation with economic development. “We all understand the anxiety and the fear as we make this transition that folks in your states have,” said Michael Regan, 44, referring to Biden’s plan to shift the country toward cleaner energy sources to combat global warming. Regan is the former head of North Carolina’s environmental regulator, where he earned a reputation as a consensus builder, and would be the first Black man to lead the EPA if confirmed by the Senate. Republicans have said they are worried a rapid shift away from fossil fuels would kill jobs and stunt economic growth in the world’s top producer of oil and gas and have already criticized some of Biden’s early moves like canceling the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, and pausing new leases for oil drilling on federal land.
Michael Regan’s coal ash cleanups set template for EPA regs — Wednesday, February 3, 2021 —In February 2014, a lagoon holding a slurry of heavy metal-laden coal ash at Duke Energy Corp.’s shuttered Dan River power plant in North Carolina was breached. A drainage pipe burst, leading to the release of 20 million gallons of polluted water into the river on the border with Virginia, enough to fill 30 Olympic-size swimming pools. “That catastrophe exploded a political scandal on the front page of every North Carolina newspaper and the top story on every TV station,” said Frank Holleman, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) who worked to reach a settlement after the spill. Charlotte-based Duke, the largest U.S. utility, pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act the following year. It agreed to pay $102 million in fines and funding for conservation projects. The spill would eventually lead to the nation’s largest coal ash cleanup settlement.Utilities are often the most powerful private entities in Southern states, Holleman said. In North Carolina’s case, he said, Duke used its influence to resist expensive measures like moving coal ash from leaky pits near groundwater to drier locations at higher elevations. Environmentalists had spent years warning that disasters like the Dan River spill were inevitable. Power plants often store coal ash, also known as coal combustion residuals, in low-lying earthen pits. They tend to be near rivers because coal power requires a water supply to generate steam. Michael Regan, who became secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality in 2017 and today sits before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for his confirmation hearing as President Biden’s choice to lead EPA, played a key role in negotiating cleanup requirements. Regan could use the Tar Heel State coal ash standards as a template for federal regulations, activists say.
RENEWABLE ENERGY: Biden wants solar jobs. People may not want them — Monday, February 1, 2021 — As President Biden pushes to build out clean energy, he’ll have to contend with a problem: Solar jobs are hard to fill.It’s a curious puzzle. The solar industry’s job rolls have expanded to hundreds of thousands of workers in recent years, as demand for rooftop solar and solar farms has spiked. The jobs offer decent wages, a sense of social mission and sometimes a path to quick promotion.But solar firms face an array of difficulties keeping themselves staffed, even in a COVID-19 economy when so many are out of work. “It’s heavy lifting: You have to get up on ladders; you have to drive long distances. It can be exhausting work,” said Andrea Luecke, who recently stepped down as executive director of the Solar Foundation, where for a decade she compiled reports on employment in the industry. “Why would anyone want to work in the solar industry, slamming panels or digging trenches, if people can work at Starbucks?”Such scarcity has dogged the solar field for years, but Biden’s priorities are going to put hiring managers under new pressure.The president has embraced creating “millions and millions” of clean energy jobs as a panacea. It is a multipurpose life raft meant to stem the climate crisis, solve the jobs crisis and create paths to careers for disadvantaged communities across the country. Last week, he signed an executive order that called for federal agencies to enact various policies to boost clean energy employment (Energywire, Jan. 28). His call to action comes as solar, one of clean energy’s biggest job creators, is already in all-out growth mode.
Bill aims to strengthen COVID-19 protection for mine workers in lieu of MSHA action – A bill introduced by West Virginia’s two U.S. senators and six congressional colleagues would add long-sought COVID-19 protections for miners.Throughout the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Labor and its mine safety agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MHSA), have declined to issue an emergency temporary standard related to the novel coronavirus.
Bitcoin’s wild ride renews worries about its massive carbon footprint – Bitcoin’s price isn’t the only thing surging lately – the amount of electricity it consumes is also on the rise. The cryptocurrency has for years alarmed experts due to the sheer level of energy required by so-called miners, which release new coins into circulation. Bitcoin has a carbon footprint comparable to that of New Zealand, producing 36.95 megatons of CO2 annually, according to Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, an online tool created by data scientist Alex de Vries. It consumes as much power as Chile – around 77.78 TWh – according to Digonomist’s estimates. The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a separate tool from researchers at Cambridge University, shows a much larger figure of 110.53 TWh – more than the entire annual energy consumption of the Netherlands. “That’s an unfathomable amount of electricity,” said Charles Hoskinson, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur who co-founded Ethereum, the blockchain network underpinning ether, the world’s second-most valuable digital coin. Bitcoin’s energy needs are “enormously large,” Michel Rauchs, research affiliate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told CNBC. It accounts for around 0.5% of total global electricity consumption, according to the Cambridge researchers’ estimates. “Although we agree the amounts are ludicrous right now, that is still half as much as inactive home appliances in the U.S. consumed,” Rauchs said. The amount of energy wasted on idle home devices like phone chargers and microwaves in the U.S. could power the bitcoin network for two years. Why does bitcoin consume so much energy? Bitcoin isn’t controlled by any single authority – like a central bank – but a disparate network of computers. So-called “miners” run purpose-built computers which compete to solve complex math puzzles in order to make a transaction go through. The blockchain – a digital ledger of all bitcoin transactions – is designed this way to ensure that users aren’t able to “double spend” funds, a flaw in which the same digital token could be spent more than once. Each block that is added onto the chain carries a hard, cryptographic reference to the previous block. Proponents of bitcoin say this makes it extremely secure. But bitcoin miners do not run this operation for free. A key incentive of bitcoin’s model, known as “proof of work,” is the promise of being rewarded in some bitcoin if you manage to solve the complex hashing algorithm. “The issue is, it can never get better by design,” says Hoskinson, who now runs IOHK, a blockchain firm that developed another digital token called cardano. “The more successful bitcoin gets, the higher the price goes; the higher the price goes, the more competition for bitcoin; and thus the more energy is expended to mine.” A key measure of bitcoin’s mining difficulty hit an all-time high last month. With bitcoin rising in price, revenue to miners is also increasing, incentivizing more participants to mine the cryptocurrency.
Why using rare metals to clean up the planet is no cheap fix — He is neither a climate sceptic nor a fan of inaction. But as the world moves to adopt a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Guillaume Pitron, a French journalist and documentary maker, worries about the costs. The figures in his book The Rare Metals War are stark. Changing the energy model means doubling the production of rare metals about every 15 years, mostly to satisfy demand for non-ferrous magnets and lithium-ion batteries. “At this rate,” writes Pitron, “over the next 30 years we … will need to mine more mineral ores than humans have extracted over the last 70,000 years.”Before the Renaissance, humans had found uses for seven metals. During the industrial revolution, this increased to a mere dozen. Today, we have found uses for all 90-odd of them, and some are very rare. Neodymium and gallium, for instance, are found in iron ore, but there is 1200 times less neodymium and up to 2650 times less gallium than there is iron.Zipping from an abandoned mine in the Mojave desert to the toxic lakes and cancer-afflicted areas of Baotou in China, Pitron weighs the awful price of refining the materials, ably blending investigative journalism with insights from science, politics and business.There are two sides to Pitron’s story, woven seamlessly together. First, there is the economic story of how China worked to dominate the energy and digital transition. It now controls 95 per cent of the rare earth metals market, making between 80 and 90 per cent of the batteries for electric vehicles, says Pitron, and more than half the magnets in wind turbines and electric motors.Then there is the ecological story of the lengths China took to succeed. Today, 10 per cent of its arable land is contaminated by heavy metals, 80 per cent of its groundwater isn’t fit for consumption and air pollution contributes to around 1.6 million deaths a year there, according to Pitron (a recent paper in The Lancet says 1.24 million deaths in China a year are attributable to air pollution – but let’s not quibble).
Long Ridge power plant in Ohio to use hydrogen and natural gas — The owner of a power plant being built along the Ohio River in eastern Ohio is taking steps toward fueling it with hydrogen and not just natural gas, as originally planned. When the 485-megawatt power plant at Long Ridge Energy Terminal in Monroe County opens later this year, the natural gas-fired plant will be blended with hydrogen, a carbon dioxide-free energy source being pitched as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to transition the plant to 100% hydrogen over the next decade – potentially green hydrogen – a renewable energy source that uses electrolysis to split water to harvest hydrogen molecules. “What we hear loud and clear is that we want carbon-free power,” said Bo Wholey, Long Ridge’s president. Hydrogen power plants could help the transition away from greenhouse gases, he said. But before it’s considered a victory for zero or low emissions, experts say everything weighs on the source of the hydrogen. There’s so-called gray hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels and is the main type of hydrogen used throughout the world. As a new technology, green hydrogen is less readily available, but it holds promise as a renewable source. Using green hydrogen is about twice as expensive as gray hydrogen, experts told The Dispatch. Those costs could go down if prices of electrolyzers continue to drop, there’s a cheap source of renewable electricity and the use increases. “Hydrogen is a versatile, zero-carbon molecule that can be used in different applications. The key question is: How can you make sure its costs can be competitive?” said Amgad Elgowainy, a senior scientist specializing in hydrogen economies at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. “This is a difficult question because making a green option is usually more costly compared to the business-as-usual conventional energy sources and technologies. So, in that sense, support is needed to enable a green option by bridging the cost gap with the conventional option.”
Bill would give voters say on siting wind and solar projects – Toledo Blade – A bill will soon be introduced to try again to give township residents the ability to challenge via voter referendum the siting of wind farms in their communities.A key difference this time around is the inclusion of proposed solar projects.”The main objective is to let our citizens know what’s happening,” new state Sen. Bill Reineke (R., Tiffin) said. “So many of these projects have been a secret.”He plans to introduce the bill along with fellow Sen. Rob McColley (R., Napoleon) later this week.It would require a developer of a proposed wind or solar project to share its application with affected local townships at least 30 days prior to filing it with the Ohio Power Siting Board. That information would include the location of the projects and the names of property owners with whom lease agreements have been negotiated. In the case of wind farms, turbine heights would be required. The bill would also apply to smaller solar projects that are not subject to OPSB review. The board considers siting of energy-producing projects, pipelines, and transmission lines.Each township’s trustees would have the option of passing a resolution to allow local voters to petition for a referendum or a resolution that would directly put siting board approval on the ballot. The trustees could also opt to do nothing, indicating tacit support for the project.Any township trustee who personally has a lease agreement, or has an immediate family member who has, could not vote. If there aren’t two trustees left to constitute a majority, the public is automatically given the option to seek a referendum.The siting board’s final approval of a project would become effective within 90 days unless township residents file within that window petitions containing valid signatures of registered voters equaling at least 8 percent of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election.
A wind turbine production plant in Britain will now get most of its power from renewable gas — A turbine production plant owned by energy giant Vestas will now be powered using an environmentally-friendly source of gas, according to a new deal announced on Monday. A biogas facility off the south coast of England will soon provide electricity to a factory operated by the Danish company, in what will be the latest example of how the idea of a “circular economy” is being embraced by big business.In a statement Monday, Earth Capital said its portfolio company, Black Dog Biogas, would send power to the Vestas factory, which manufactures blades for offshore wind turbines. Both sites are located on the Isle of Wight.The Black Dog plant is able to provide enough power to meet roughly 80% of the Vestas factory’s requirements, in addition to approximately 1,200 homes on the Isle of Wight, Earth Capital said.The biogas facility generates energy using materials like grass and maize, which are grown on the island. The process has several steps, according to Earth Capital. Enzymes break the feedstocks down, producing biofertilizer and biogas.The latter is used to fuel two combined-heat-and-power units, which produce heat and electricity, while the biofertilizer is scattered on farmland to help produce the crops used by the power plant. This, Earth Capital said, helped to “support a circular economy” whilst at the same time negating the need to use what it described as “carbon intensive fertilisers.”
Wind developers are retrofitting newer projects with bigger, better blades – Utilities and developers are repowering wind turbines with bigger, better blades years ahead of the end of their original life expectancies as they look to take advantage of technology improvements and expiring federal tax credits. Xcel Energy recently won approval for a $750 million plan to retrofit four wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota, two of which were built in 2015. The oldest of the batch originally started generating power in 2008. Wind farm contracts and decommissioning plans generally set life expectancies around 25 to 35 years. By repowering the projects long before that, utilities are able to boost output around 10% or more, adding power to the grid without facing fresh permitting or interconnection hurdles. “It’s a smart thing to do,” said Beth Soholt, director of the Clean Grid Alliance, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit. Soholt noted that the added generation means additional federal tax credits, which helps lower the cost of power. “It’s also a good benefit for ratepayers.” A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study on the wind industry reported a mean age of 11 years for turbines reengineered in 2019. Wind farm owners repowered 1,828 turbines producing 2,864 megawatts, with the most common change being an increase in the size of the rotor diameter. Tower height rarely changed, the report said. The data covered “partially repowered” projects that replaced equipment rather than the entire turbine, an approach Xcel will use.
Empire State Building powers up with 100% wind after deal with US developer -New York’s Empire State Building is now 100% powered by wind energy, following the signing of a contract between the iconic property’s manager, Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT), and US developer Green Mountain Energy. The three-year deal will see the edifice, which underwent a ten-year, $550m retrofit that has resulted in a 40% reduction in energy use and emissions, powered as part of an overall supply of 300 million kWh of renewable energy to ESRT’s portfolio, which will save emissions equivalent to taking “all New York City taxis [off the street] for one year”. “ESRT is viable example of how to scale carbon neutral technologies, strategies and policies to balance with an effective economic business case,” said Dana Robbins Schneider, director of energy at ESRT. “We have purchased renewable power from Green Mountain Energy for the Empire State Building, for a decade,” she said. “We now expand that to all properties in New York State with an additional direct energy contract for our Connecticut properties. Our tenants now work in carbon neutral offices.” ESRT’s portfolio totals more than 10 million square foot (1 million m2) of property. Green Mountain first began supply clean-energy to the Empire State building in 2011. “At Green Mountain, we’re encouraged by the vocal advocacy from ESRT that continues to lead New York’s transition to renewable energy,” said Mark Parsons, Green Mountain Energy’s vice president. “As the longest-serving competitive green energy provider, our mission is to use the power of consumer choice to change the way power is made, and we are committed to helping New Yorkers reduce their carbon footprint.”(Copyright)
Biden administration puts Vineyard Wind energy project back on track – Boston Globe — The long-delayed Vineyard Wind offshore project has been put back on track by the Biden administration. In one of her first actions as the new director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Amanda Lefton pledged on Wednesday to conduct a “robust and timely” review of Vineyard Wind and essentially resume the permitting process where it left off in December. That’s when the developers of Vineyard Wind withdrew their proposal for a wind farm that could generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough power for more than 400,000 homes, to be built about 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Soon after Joe Biden became president last month, the developers rescinded their withdrawal and requested that BOEM resume its review. Vineyard Wind, a joint venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, was to be the first major offshore wind farm in the United States. It would be financed through contracts with three major Massachusetts electric utilities. But the project ran into delays under the Trump administration, after commercial fishermen raised concerns that the giant turbines would be hazardous to their work.
Group Sues to Block Wind Farm Cable in Wainscott – Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the East Hampton Town Board, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, and South Fork Wind in an effort to block the town board’s Jan. 21 approval of an easement that would permit the developers of the proposed South Fork Wind farm to land an export cable at the Beach Lane beach and to bury it under town-owned roads on its way to a Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton. Tuesday’s move by the group, a well-funded effort to thwart the cable’s landing in Wainscott, follows its Dec. 30 delivery of a petition seeking formation of an incorporated village. The supervisor has scheduled a public hearing on Friday, as required under state law, to determine the legal sufficiency of the petition. The suit charges that the town “improperly rushed the grant of easement prior to the completion of the environmental and regulatory process,” according to a statement from the group. The statement further charges that the town board’s approval of an easement and host-community agreement, which would see the town and the town trustees sharing around $29 million over the project’s 25-year lifespan, was “a grab for money” intended “to end-run the Wainscott community’s effort to incorporate as a village.” The town board voted 4 to 1 in favor of granting the easement, and 4 to 0 in favor of the host-community agreement. Councilman Jeff Bragman voted against the easement agreement and abstained from voting on the host community agreement, arguing that the town would maintain leverage and therefore its ability to influence the project by waiting until state and federal reviews are completed. The proposed wind farm is under review by the New York State Public Service Commission and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Proposal would give money to North Dakota coal plants by taxing wind power -North Dakota lawmaker wants to impose a new tax on wind farms and give the money to coal-fired power plants in the form of grants. Rep. Dave Nehring, R-Bismarck, presented the proposal Tuesday to the House Finance and Taxation Committee, saying it’s meant to bring part of a federal tax credit “back to North Dakota to support the generation built here that is the backbone of our electric grid.” Critics argue the measure would not address supporters’ concerns about the reliability of the power grid and would drive future wind development to other states. “A tax levied is not a tax collected,” said Jeff Danielson, who works as central states director for American Clean Power and spoke on behalf of the Wind Industry of North Dakota coalition. “The tax proposed in this bill would be so high that that business would not likely locate in North Dakota.” House Bill 1458 takes aim at the federal Production Tax Credit, which offers a tax credit for electricity generated from wind farms. The subsidy has helped propel a boom of tall, spinning turbines across the landscape of windy states such as North Dakota, and it’s often criticized by the coal industry and coal supporters, who view it as unfair. Congress enacted the tax credit in 1992 and has extended it numerous times. Watch Now: Keeper takes tumble into icy penguin pool at UK zooBrady Bunch: QB has taken over 200 teammates to Super BowlShe was stunned by Biden’s inauguration. How this South Carolina mom escaped QAnon. Golden Globe nominations 2021: TV, film snubs and surprises The bill before North Dakota lawmakers would levy a tax on wind farms that’s equal to half the Production Tax Credit. The tax would apply only to wind farms that begin operating in 2021 or future years. State tax officials estimate the measure would generate $5 million per year in tax revenue from a new wind farm. The money would go into a “grid reliability and resiliency fund,” and the three-member Public Service Commission would be tasked with using the money to provide grants to qualifying power plants. Power plants in North Dakota run on coal, natural gas or water. Plants would be eligible only if they meet a number of criteria, including having a 30-day supply of fuel onsite, as is the case at coal-fired facilities. The bill comes as coal plants nationwide struggle to compete amid a boom in renewable and natural gas-fired power.
Norfolk Southern faces environmental violations in train derailment, coal spill in Roanoke County – Environmental regulators have issued a notice of violation to Norfolk Southern for a train derailment last fall that spilled tons of coal into the Roanoke River. After investigating the incident in western Roanoke County, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said it had “reason to believe” the railway might have violated water protection regulations. The notice of violation, which was dated Jan. 25, is the first official step in a process that could lead to fines against Norfolk Southern. Meanwhile, an investigation continues into what caused an eastbound train of 26 coal hopper cars to jump the tracks near a trestle that crosses the river late on the night of Oct. 30. Twelve of the cars, loaded with about 2,600 tons of coal, plunged into the river as the trestle collapsed. No one was injured. Norfolk Southern has reported its findings to the Federal Railroad Administration. “We expect the FRA to make the report available to the public within the next month or so,” railroad spokeswoman Rachel McDonnell Bradshaw wrote in an email Tuesday. An investigation by the railroad administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is still underway and no other information was available, a spokesperson said. Norfolk Southern has rebuilt the crossing and restored rail service on Nov. 19, Bradshaw said. The rail cars that capsized into the river near Barley Drive were carrying lumps of coal that were quickly swept away, according to the DEQ notice of violation, which was provided this week in response to an open-records request from The Roanoke Times. Although it has not been determined how much of the 2,600 tons of coal ended up in the water, the notice said there was a “significant” amount observed at the Salem Water Treatment Plant, about 3.4 miles downstream from the crash. “Visually notable deposits” were seen for another 3 miles, reaching the Salem Rotary Park near LewisGale Medical Center, the document stated. As a precautionary measure, the city of Salem stopped drawing its drinking water from the river until Nov. 30. City wells and the Western Virginia Water Authority were used as a replacement, at a cost of about $49,000, according to spokesman Mike Stevens. Labor and chemical costs added another $7,000. The city is seeking reimbursement from Norfolk Southern, Stevens said.
COVID Amplifies Environmental Injustice in Chicago – Southwest Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood is one of the city’s most polluted neighborhoods and has also been ravaged by the novel coronavirus, Grist reports, yet another stark instance in which the pandemic has illuminated and exacerbated existing environmental injustices.The immigrant-rich neighborhood has been pummeled by COVID-19. At one point last November, one in nine. Little Village residents had a confirmed case of COVID-19 and residents in two of its ZIP codes were 15 times more likely to die from it than those living in the overwhelmingly white Near Northside neighborhood just over half-a-dozen miles away.Due to the legacy of a coal plant (the demolition of which caused an air pollution crisis itself) and other polluting industries, Little Village also suffers from among the highest levels of cumulative pollution burden in the city, far higher than the overwhelmingly white downtown neighborhoods just a handful of miles away. COVID-19 has pummeled the community, in mid-November, one in nine Little Village residents had a confirmed case of COVID-19.”The question is always: why aren’t resources going towards the communities that need it?” said Jose Acosta-Cordova, an environmental planning and research organizer at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. “And in Chicago, environmental justice is where all of the struggles – economic justice, racial justice, immigration, labor issues – meet.”As reported by Grist:The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the toll decades of environmental injustices have taken on poorer communities of color. That’s something the Biden administration has signaled it wants to work on: On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order creating a new White House council on environmental justice, and pledged that 40 percent of the benefits from federal investments in clean energy and clean water would go to communities that bear disproportionate pollution.
‘It’s a slam upon our state’: Sen. Bill Cassidy rebukes Joe Biden over ‘Cancer Alley’ remarks – President Joe Biden’s recent utterance of “Cancer Alley” has raised the hackles of Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. The Baton Rouge Republican said the president’s use of the term, rooted in longstanding concerns about toxic air pollution in the industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was an insult against Louisiana. “I’m not going to accept that sort of slam upon our state,” Cassidy said in a call with reporters Tuesday. “It sounds like great rhetoric. But again, I don’t accept that slam.” Biden mentioned Cancer Alley in a speech about several executive orders he signed late last month to combat climate change and pollution. He said “environmental justice” will take center stage as his administration works to improve the health and well-being of communities of color, especially “the hard-hit areas like Cancer Alley in Louisiana or the Route 9 corridor in the state of Delaware,” Biden said. While the executive orders didn’t specify how the Biden administration plans to address Louisiana’s petrochemical belt, local environmental activists said the president is clearly concerned about the disproportionate impact of pollution on the state’s mostly Black and low-income communities – a matter they say is rarely discussed by Louisiana politicians. Cassidy, a physician specializing in digestive ailments, acknowledged Louisiana does have higher rates of cancer than other states, but rejected industrial pollution as a major cause. Instead, Cassidy put the blame on lifestyle choices, like smoking and overeating, and other factors. “We have a higher incidence of cigarette smoking, of obesity, of certain viral infections, and other things which increase the incidence of cancer in our state,” Cassidy said. “So whenever you speak of Cancer Alley … you have to do what is called a regression analysis to separate out those factors … and several others that could be an alternative, and a more typical explanation for why some folks may have cancer. When you do that, the amount of cancer which is left unexplained is pretty marginal.” Gail LeBoeuf, an environmental and civil rights activist in St. James Parish, said Cassidy is “blaming the victims.”
Denmark wants to build a renewable energy island in the sea, its largest construction project ever – Denmark is to push forward with plans to build a huge artificial island in the North Sea that will act as a major renewable energy hub and cost billions of dollars to develop. The Danish Energy Agency, part of the government’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, said Thursday the project would be owned by a public-private partnership, with the Danish state holding a majority stake. The scale of the project, which will be located in waters 80 kilometers off the coast of Jutland, the large peninsula which contains the Danish mainland, is considerable. The first phase – set to have a capacity of 3 gigawatts (GW) – will involve approximately 200 offshore wind turbines sending electricity to the hub, which will distribute it to nearby countries via the grid. In future, the capacity of the hub could be expanded to 10 GW. This, Danish authorities say, would be enough to power 10 million homes in Europe. Depending on its final capacity, the island will cover an area between 120,000 and 460,000 square meters. The estimated cost of building the artificial island, 10 GW of capacity and required transmission grid will amount to 210 billion Danish krone ($33.97 billion). “The energy hub in the North Sea will be the largest construction project in Danish history,” Dan Jorgensen, the Danish minister for climate, said in a statement. “It will make a big contribution to the realization of the enormous potential for European offshore wind, and I am excited for our future collaboration with other European countries,” he added. The project will now move forward, with Denmark’s climate department entering into discussions with potential investors from the private sector. On the political front, conditions of the tender will be negotiated, new legislation passed and environmental impact assessments carried out. In addition to the artificial island, a second energy hub of 2 GW is also being planned for the island of Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea. Denmark is something of a pioneer when it comes to offshore wind projects. The world’s first offshore wind farm, in waters near the Danish island of Lolland, was commissioned by Orsted – the company formerly known as DONG Energy – in 1991. Other Danish firms, such as turbine maker Vestas, are major players in wind power. Looking further ahead, the European Union – of which Denmark is a member – wants its offshore wind capacity to hit 60 GW by 2030,
Place, prices, alternatives playing roles in coal-fired generation retirements – Despite retirement of 131.8 GW of coal-fired generation capacity since 2010, about 225.3 GW of such capacity remains operating today, led by Texas, Indiana and West Virginia, and replacing that capacity with low- or no-carbon alternatives by 2050 would likely coincide with declining wholesale power prices, industry observers say. Since 2010, almost 8.5 GW of coal-fired generation has retired in Texas, but it still has more than 18 GW of coal-fired capacity operating, the largest amount among the 50 states, according to the S&P Global Market Intelligence power plant database. “The Texas coal fleet is younger than the US average and a growing demand has likely kept some coal [capacity operating] in Texas, although the amount of coal is dropping quickly,” said Joshua Rhodes, a University of Texas Webber Energy Group research associate. “Other states that either produce coal or have monopoly utilities are often slower to move away from the rock.” Of the 10 states that have had the most coal capacity retired since 2010, five lie all or partly in the PJM Interconnection, accounting for more than 45 GW of retired capacity. These states have also been affected by the boom in natural gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations via hydraulic fracturing, which has resulted plunging gas prices. Spot gas at the Texas Eastern M-3 pipeline fell from $5.101/MMBtu in 2010 to $1.593/MMBtu in 2020, according to the S&P Global Platts price database. Power prices have fallen, also, in the PJM area. PJM West Hub day-ahead on-peak prices have fallen from an estimated average of $53.68/MWh in 2010 to an average locational marginal price of $23.31/MWh in 2020. “The future will depend on where you are, but near-term it is likely to be won by solar, wind, storage, and gas,” Rhodes said in a Feb. 1 email. The other five states among the top 10, in terms of coal capacity retirements since 2010, are Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Georgia, which lie in what many call America’s “Sun Belt.”Solar power has been growing in several of these states, as the unsubsidized levelized cost of energy for solar power has fallen from about $248/MWh in 2010 to about $37/MWh in 2020, according to the Lazard investment firm. Texas leads the 50 states in terms of wind generation capacity, and the LCOE for wind has fallen from $124/MWh in 2010 to about $40/MWh in 2020, according to Lazard.Wholesale power prices have also fallen, from about $41.15/MWh for average day-ahead on-peak indexes at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas North Hub in 2010 to about $26.15/MWh for ERCOT North Hub day-ahead on-peak LMPs in 2020.
Coal to Exit From U.S. Power System by 2033, Morgan Stanley Says – Bloomberg – Coal is on track to disappear from the U.S. power grid by 2033 as the push for a carbon-free electricity system gains strength, according to Morgan Stanley. The fossil fuel will be supplanted largely by renewables, which will supply 39% of U.S. electricity in 2030 and 55% in 2035, according to a report Monday from Morgan Stanley. The shift comes as a growing number of states implement laws mandating utilities eliminate carbon emissions from their fleets. Coal supplied about 20% of U.S. electricity last year and may rebound to as much as 22% in 2021 as higher natural gas prices prompt utilities to shift their fuel mix, according to Energy Department forecasts. But that short-term rebound won’t overcome the global shift toward cleaner sources of electricity, a trend that’s getting a big push from President Joe Biden’s pledge to put the U.S. on a path to an all-green power system. Gas prices may climb 48% this year, which “drives coal generation and the sector’s carbon footprint to increase in 2021 but we continue to project a constant decline thereafter,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in the report. Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has committed $500 million to launch Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S. by 2030.
TVA proposes to build new gas plants at shuttered coal sites – Despite opposition from some environmental groups against continuing to burn fossil fuels, the Tennessee Valley Authority is proposing to replace aging gas plants in Memphis and New Johnsonville, Tennessee, with new gas-fired combustion turbines in Kentucky and Alabama. In a draft environmental assessment of its energy options released this week, TVA is proposing to build six new natural gas combustion turbines with a combined generating capacity of 1,500 megawatts at its former Paradise coal plant in Kentucky and its shuttered Colbert coal plant in Alabama within the next three years. Both of those plants already have natural gas-fired generators and the gas-fired peaking plants, which are designed to be used to help meet power demand peaks, will replace aging combustion turbines TVA is shutting down at its Allen plant in Memphis and its New Johnsonville plant west of Nashville. The old plants have a combined capacity of 1,400 megawatts, but TVA’s studies indicate they are less efficient and emit more carbon dioxide than the new units would. TVA said closing the gas combustion turbines at Allen would cost eight jobs in Memphis and shutting down Johnsonville would cost 28 jobs. “TVA would help offset this employment loss by placing some interested employees in available positions across the TVA service area,” TVA said in a 301-page report on its proposed changes. “In addition to employment impacts, during the decade following the CT retirements, annual average system-wide emissions of CO2 would decrease by 0.6 percent.”
Oil spill from wreckage at Lata wharf – An old tuna boat that sank off the Lata wharf, Temotu Province, a decade ago has begun leaking oil, prompting a resident to call on authorities to clean up the wreck before the oil spillage turns into an environmental disaster. In an email sent to this paper yesterday, Mr. Cedric T Williams, a resident of Lata, said the wreckage has started releasing oil into the sea. Mr. Williams said one other issue being brought up by ship owners and operators over the past 10 years is the space of sunken ship occupies. “Complaints have been raised on the public forums over and over again but it has fallen on deaf ears. Further complaints have since emerged when the sunken ship starts spilling oil in nearby sea areas.” He said the ongoing debate on social media blamed the Temotu Provincial Government led by Premier Clay Forau, a former foreign minister. Mr. Forau has since said that successive provincial governments have notified the relevant authorities including the Solomon Islands Maritime Safety Administration (SIMSA), but said all the communication had fallen on deaf ears. “With the seriousness of the oil spillage, the Temotu public is now calling on the government to act swiftly to rectify the issue before it causes further damage to the environment. More so, we are calling on our Members of Parliament to approach the appropriate authorities particularly the Minister of Infrastructure Development and SIMSA to act on the issue immediately,” he said.
Are NJ nuclear subsidies optional or essential? – In a reprise of a debate from three years ago over lucrative subsidies to keep New Jersey’s three nuclear power plants from closing, backers and critics squared off over whether to keep charging ratepayers for the $300 million annual payments. In two virtual public hearings Monday, the two sides once again portrayed the financial viability of the PSEG Nuclear units in starkly contrasting terms. PSEG executives argued the plants are in worse fiscal shape than they were in 2018 when a divided Board of Public Utilities voted to award the initial subsidies to avert their closing. Unlike the last go-around, however, the board-hired consultant, Levitan Associates, determined the three units are no longer profitable, a reversal of its position in 2018. But prominent opponents of the subsidies, including New Jersey’s Division of Rate Counsel and the independent market monitor for PJM, the regional power grid, say the company failed to demonstrate it needs the financial incentives. Nuclear power plants across the country are finding it difficult to compete with cheaper natural gas, forcing the closing of seven nuclear units in the past few years with as many as a dozen at risk of doing so, according to William Healey, of the New Jersey Alliance For Action. Joseph Accardo, vice president and deputy general counsel of PSEG, noted New Jersey already has determined it needs the nuclear units if it is going to meet the state’s aggressive clean-energy goals. The units provide roughly 40% of the state’s electricity and 90% of its carbon-free power. If the plants are retired, New Jersey residents would pay billions of dollars more for their electricity, most of which would come from dirtier gas plants, he said. The existing $300 million subsidies need to be retained in full, Accardo said.
TVA seeks input on conducting environmental study for proposed Clinch River Nuclear site (WATE) – The Tennessee Valley Authority is asking for public comment on a proposal to conduct an environmental study for an advanced nuclear reactor technology park at the Clinch River Nuclear Site in Roane County.Its the next step in a proposal winding its way slowly through regulatory processes.The park would contain one or more advanced nuclear reactors with a cumulative electrical output not to exceed 800 megawatts. TVA plans to evaluate a variety of alternatives, including a no-action alternative. TVA is asking for public comments to identify potential alternatives, information, and analysis relevant to the construction, operation, and decommissioning of such a park. Comments must be received or postmarked by March 19.Comments may be submitted in writing to J. Taylor Cates, NEPA Specialist, 1101 Market Street, BR 2C-C, Chattanooga, TN 37402; online at https://www.tva.com/nepa; or by email to [email protected]. Please note that due to COVID-19 teleworking restrictions, electronic submission of comments is encouraged to ensure timely review and consideration. All comments received, including names and addresses, will become part of the administrative record and available for public inspection.
Villages in Japan Are Competing to Become a Nuclear Waste Site – Two fishing villages in Hokkaido are vying to host the final storage facility for half a century of Japanese nuclear waste, splitting communities between those seeking investment to stop the towns from dying, and those haunted by the 2011 Fukushima disaster, who are determined to stop the project. In the middle is a government that bet heavily on nuclear energy to power its industrial ascent and now faces a massive and growing pile of radioactive waste with nowhere to dispose of it. Since it first began generating atomic energy in 1966, Japan has produced more than 19,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste that is sitting in temporary storage around the country. After searching fruitlessly for two decades for a permanent site, the approaches from Suttsu, population 2,885, and Kamoenai, population 810, may be signs of progress. The towns have focused a debate that has bedeviled an industry some regard as a vital emissions-free energy source and others revile as a dangerous liability. The accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 reinforced public skepticism about both the safety of reactors and our ability to safely store their residue for centuries. While new generations of fail-safe reactor designs may eventually help assuage the first concern, the problem of the waste remains. That’s where the two fishing villages come in. Japan’s nuclear energy strategy is to reprocess spent fuel to reuse extracted uranium and plutonium, and to seal the remainder in glass, enclose it in steel containers and bury it in bedrock in a “deep geological repository” least 300 meters underground. There the radioactivity would slowly decay, losing 99.9% of its potency in 1,000 years. “It’s safer to keep high-level waste underground than storing it above ground, considering the risks of earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, fires or terrorism,” according to a public release from Japan’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NUMO). Then came Fukushima and public sentiment turned inexorably against atomic power. The day before the 2011 tsunami and earthquake caused the nation’s worst nuclear accident, Japan had 54 reactors operating, generating almost a third of the country’s electricity. Only nine have restarted, and the government has scrapped the target date to complete the waste repository after a wholesale review of the industry.So the radioactive waste continues to pile up, stored temporarily above ground at the giant Rokkasho nuclear power complex in the far north of Japan’s main island of Honshu and other plants and research stations around the country. The Rokkasho and Tokaimura nuclear facilities already have about 2,500 blocks of vitrified waste, while another 19,000 tons of spent fuel is scattered around other sites, waiting to be processed. To find a site that would permanently hold at least 40,000 vitrified blocks, the government in 2017 produced a color-coded map showing suitable locations in green in terms of geology, seismic activity and ease of transportation from power plants.
Corruption in utility bailouts hurts ratepayers and the planet – Brookings Institution –The U.S. energy mix is changing. Renewables are ascendant in growth and continue to plummet in cost. Meanwhile, the struggles of fossil fuels were apparent even before the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a dramatic drop in oil prices and hastened the collapse of coal. The result is a cleaner and cheaper U.S. power sector that is more responsive to market forces and technological advancement. Electric utilities, with their integral role in power generation, are among the vanguard of stakeholders effecting this transition. By building out renewables portfolios, investing in emerging technologies, and retiring old and inefficient infrastructure, many utilities are helping to shift the United States to a more efficient and responsible energy grid while stimulating job growth and reducing electricity costs for consumers.Some utilities, however, have resisted the prevailing technological and societal trends powering the modernization and decarbonization of the U.S. electrical grid. This resistance often comes in the form of keeping old and inefficient power plants online, despite financial incentives to embrace cleaner, more modern generation sources.Because many of those older power plants operate at a loss, utilities taking this position often turn to local and state governments for subsidies or bailouts. While bailouts are not necessarily problematic in and of themselves, in some cases a shadowy constellation of individuals, organizations, and companies are the driving forces behind them. Such networks of actors often offer tendentious justifications for the bailouts they seek that downplay the negative financial and environmental consequences. They then take advantage of lax disclosure laws to conceal their involvement or their connections to the policymakers pushing to grant the bailout with public funds.The recent corruption scandal surrounding the FirstEnergy electric utility and House Bill 6 (H.B. 6) in Ohio provides an example of the harm done to ratepayers and the energy transition when bad actors and dark money work together to conceal the true motivations behind utility bailouts.H.B. 6, taken up in the Ohio House of Representatives in April 2019 and then signed into law by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine three months later, is a sweeping, energy-focused bill opposed by an unlikely bipartisan mix of lawmakers, environmentalists, and free-market conservatives. Itsprovisions granted bailouts to two floundering nuclear power plants owned by FirstEnergy and two unprofitable coal-fired power plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation. Those bailouts were to be paid for by surcharges on residential, commercial, and industrial electric bills totaling $170 million per year until 2027. Furthermore, H.B. 6 stipulated the reduction – after 2026 – of the state’s decade-old clean-energy mandate and the weakening of energy efficiency standards for utilities.
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