Environmental News For The Week Ending 03 April 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

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

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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:

• 04 Apr 2021 – Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 04April 2021

• 04 Apr 2021 – Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 04April 2021

There hasn’t been much change in the trajectory of either US Covid metric: new cases continue to increase at a modest pace, while US Covid deaths continue to fall. New cases of Covid confirmed over the week ending April 3rd were 5.9% higher that those confirmed over the week ending March 27th, and 15.9% higher than those of the week ending March 20th, while US Covid deaths during the week ending April 3rd were 12.2% lower than the prior week, and down 74.7% from the peak week in late January.

Both new Covid cases and deaths continue to increase globally, however; a surge of new cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in India is driving the new cases total higher, while Brazil with its endemic P1 strain has been accounting for more than 20% of the rising global death toll. Global Covid case counts for the week ending April 3rd were 5.3% higher than the prior week, and up by 58.8% from the lull of the 3rd week in February, while global Covid deaths were 2.6% higher during the most recent week than the one before it, and 15.4% higher than during the week ending March 13th, when global deaths had briefly slid to a 4 month low.

A small downtick in new cases is evident in both US and global totals over the past few days, which might be an actual slowdown or might be indicative of a Good Friday reporting issue.

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 and decline of this thing looks like (data through April 06):

New cases globally continue to increase. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global new cases since the start of the pandemic up through 06 April.

Globally deaths are rising again. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global deaths since the start of the pandemic up through 06 April.

Here’s the week’s environment and energy news:

Numerous Hand Sanitizers Test Positive for Dangerous Carcinogen –As people rushed to buy hand sanitizer during the first months of the pandemic, new brands emerged to fill the gap left by more well-known labels. But in the frenzy, some manufacturers appear to have cut corners.Last year, several hand sanitizer brands were recalled by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for containing toxic methanol, or wood alcohol. Now, tests from independent pharmacy and lab Valisure have found high concentrations of benzene in hand sanitizers, an industrial chemical known to cause cancer in humans. “I was shocked that we were finding benzene at all,” Valisure CEO David Light told CBS News. “It might very well be the most well known… compound that is dangerous to humans.” Valisure tested 260 hand sanitizer products from 168 brands, and found that 44 of them tested positive for some amount of benzene. The FDA typically bans benzene in drug manufacturing. However, due to the high demand for hand sanitizer prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, it allowed an interim limit of two parts per million in liquid hand sanitizers. Twenty one products that Valisure tested had benzene levels above this limit. The most contaminated hand sanitizer is from Artnaturals and contains 16 parts per million of benzene,Bloomberg reported. Other highly contaminated batches include products from Scentsational Soaps and Candles Inc., The Creme Shop and a Best Brands Consumer Products sanitizer sold in a Baby Yoda-themed bottle. The full list of contaminated products can be found here. What’s particularly concerning is how benzene is absorbed and how hand sanitizer is used, Valisure noted. For example, benzene is known to cause blood cancers such as leukemia. This makes the possibility that it could be absorbed through the skin especially worrisome, as FDA studies have determined that chemicals with a similar structure, such as sunscreen, can appear in the bloodstream after being applied to the skin.Further, there are no recommended guidelines for how often a person should use hand sanitizer, raising the alarm that people could be exposed to high concentrations of benzene.Valisure filed a petition with the FDA on Wednesday asking them to recall the contaminated products and set exposure limit guidance for benzene. Meanwhile, the FDA said that it tests hand sanitizers and works with companies on recalls. However, manufacturers were ultimately responsible for the products they sold.However, watchdog group Public Citizen said the FDA should not be allowing any benzene in hand sanitizers. “It has been taken out of most products, and for it not to be taken out of a product that is here to prevent people from getting exposed to coronavirus is inexcusable,” If it is possible to have hand sanitizers that don’t have any detectable levels, it is inexcusable that the FDA doesn’t ban any hand sanitizer that contains any detectable level.”

Brain-damaging Lead Found in Tap Water From Most Illinois Communities During the Past 6 Years – More than 8 of every 10 Illinoisans live in a community where brain-damaging lead was found in the tap water of at least one home during the past six years, a new Chicago Tribune analysis found. The alarming results are from a limited number of samples collected under federal regulations by the state’s 1,768 water utilities. Depending on the number of people served by each utility, only a handful or a few dozen homes are occasionally monitored, but when combined the tests provide snapshots of a widespread threat to public health that for decades has been largely ignored. Most exposure to lead in water can be traced to pipes known as service lines that connect homes to municipal water supplies. Illinois has more service lines made of the toxic metal than any other state. Chicago has more than any other city. “Too many people still get their water from what essentially is a lead straw,” said Miguel del Toral, a retired U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist who discovered high levels of toxic metal in water at homes in Flint, Michigan, and East Chicago, Indiana. Between 2015 and 2020, tap water in dozens of Illinois homes had hundreds and even thousands of parts per billion of lead – just as extreme as what researchers found during the same period in Flint, where mismanagement of the public water system exposed children to the toxic metal and drew a world spotlight to the scourge. East Moline found one home with 3,000 ppb of lead in tap water, records show. The Rockford suburb of Loves Park detected 2,700 ppb of lead in a home. Southwest of Joliet, the water system in Coal City found 1,260 ppb of lead in one of its samples.Utilities in the three cities were among 224 statewide where at least one home had lead levels at or above 40 ppb, a threshold the U.S. EPA once declared an “imminent and substantial threat to pregnant women and young children.” Others in the Chicago area included Bartlett, Cicero, Lake Barrington, South Elgin and Wauconda. Nearly 60% of the state’s water systems found at least one home with levels greater than 5 ppb – the Food and Drug Administration’s limit for bottled water. By far the state’s worst lead-in-water problems in recent years are in University Park, a south suburb on the border of Cook and Will counties.Samples of tap water collected since 2019 in the predominantly Black community contained as much as 5,300 ppb of lead and averaged 54 ppb, according to the Tribune analysis of data obtained from the Illinois EPA through a Freedom of Information Act request. “There is no training for a water crisis,” said Mayor Joseph Roudez, who took office less than a month before the staggeringly high levels of lead began turning up across the village, including at his own home. “The experience has been horrible, and it’s still horrible.” The U.S. EPA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stress that lead is unsafe to consume at any level. More than 400,000 deaths a year in the U.S. are linked to the toxic metal. Even tiny concentrations can permanently damage the developing brains of children and contribute to heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney failure and other health problems later in life.

Dozens of Canadian Indigenous communities under boil-water advisories one year into pandemic –More than one year after the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, dozens of Indigenous communities across the country continue to lack drinking water, making it impossible for residents to follow basic hygiene measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and combat other infectious diseases.In late February, the Auditor General of Canada, Karen Hogan, presented a report documenting the total failure of successive Canadian governments, including Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, to provide for Indigenous communities’ most basic needs. “Access to safe drinking water is a basic human necessity,” Hogan said at a news conference in Ottawa. “I don’t believe anyone would say that this is in any way an acceptable situation in Canada in 2021.”In the 2015 election campaign that propelled them back to power after a decade in opposition, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals solemnly pledged to address the substandard water conditions faced by First Nations communities across the country. Trudeau specifically committed to having all advisories lifted within five years of entering office. This was accompanied by propaganda, parroted by media outlets, about Trudeau’s desire to affect a “reconciliation” with the Native population, which was focused above all at cultivating ties with a privileged indigenous elite with whom Canadian capitalism could do business. The Liberals’ miserable failure to meet their own targets on drinking water only goes to show that the fraudulent “reconciliation” campaign never had anything to offer the vast majority of the Native population, which continues to live in abject poverty.In the years following the Liberal Party’s election victory, over $2 billion was allocated to improving water conditions for the affected First Nations reserves. An estimated $1.79 billion of this had been spent as of November 2020, and at present 101 long-term boil-water advisories have been lifted.However, 58 long-term advisories remain in effect across Canada – some of which have been in force for over two decades. The Zhiibaahaasing First Nation of Silver Water, Ontario was placed under a boil-water advisory in 1991, and Shoal Lake 40, a First Nation situated on the Ontario-Manitoba border, has been burdened with a long-term advisory for 23 years. Neskantaga First Nation in northern Ontario has been without access to clean water for more than 25 years. On the home page of the nation’s website, a tracker is displayed that counts how many days it has been under the boil-water advisory. As of yesterday, April 1, it read 9,555 days. Neskantaga Nation members have twice been evacuated due to the dangers posed by the lack of access to clean water, most recently in October 2020. That month over 250 residents of the remote community were evacuated after an oily sheen was discovered in their water reservoir. Subsequent testing showed high levels of hydrocarbons in the water. The residents were moved from their homes to a hotel in Thunder Bay, more than 400 kilometres away.

The State of Wisconsin Issues an Interim Area-Wide Drinking Water Advisory for the Town of Campbell – The state of Wisconsin is stepping in to help the Town of Campbell, where close to 200 wells are contaminated with dangerous man-made chemicals.Under the interim area-wide drinking water advisory, the DNR will continue to provide water to any family on French Island if they are not already getting bottled water from the City of La Crosse.As News 8 Now first reported in January, the wells are contaminated with PFAS; man-made compounds that have been linked in infertility, Thyroid disease, and cancer. PFAS was used to produce the firefighting foam sprayed at the La Crosse airport for decades. According to the DNR, It spread through the groundwater and into private wells off airport property.As of March 25, 184 wells have tested positive for PFAS; roughly half at levels above what the state considers safe. There could be more. We don’t know how many, because the City of La Crosse has refused to test the entire island.The DNR’s advisory is significant. It frees up money for the DNR to provide bottled water to any resident not already receiving bottled water through the city. It also allows the DNR yo expand testing to neighborhoods outside the City of La Crosse’s testing area. “It’s an art and science to find out where this groundwater contamination is moving. So, it won’t always be self-evident on exactly where to sample, but we will do our best right now to get a general overview of where we think the private contamination has moved to.”, says DNR’s Darsi Foss.

PFAS in the House: Are toxic “forever chemicals” a steady drip in this reporter’s home? — After spending several months reporting on the PFAS crisis, an alarming realization hit – taco night might be poisoning me.I learned that the type of nonstick pans that I used to fry the fish usually contain the toxic chemicals, also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Research alerted me to their use in some types of parchment paper used to roll tortillas, while the aluminum foil in which I wrapped leftovers raised a red flag with its “nonstick” label. For dessert, I purchased cookies that a local bakery packed in the type of paper bags sometimes treated with PFAS, and the chemicals may have been in my tap water and fish.But PFAS, dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down, aren’t only lurking in the kitchen. The synthetic compounds are often used to make thousands of everyday products water, stain and grease resistant, and they’re popular with manufacturers across dozens of industries because they’re so effective. That’s a problem because the class of around 4,700 compounds is linked to serious health problems like cancer, heart disease, birth defects, liver disease and decreased immunity.The extent of PFAS contamination is only now coming into focus – recent studies have found drinking water supplies for well over 100 million people across demographic lines may be contaminated by the chemicals. It’s estimated that they’re present in 97% of Americans’ blood, and public health advocates are just starting to understand how widespread their use is in everyday products.Research has found that PFAS might also be in my dental floss, waterproof boots, umbrella, mattress pad, bike chain lube, cell phone, clothing, camping gear, and more. They’re used in a range of personal care products from moisturizer to bar soap to cosmetics by a number of brands. Meanwhile, my couch and carpet may have been treated with Scotchgard or other stain guards that use PFAS to make products stain resistant. The more I dug into the chemicals’ myriad uses, the more I found that I’m potentially exposed to them in nearly every facet of daily life in my house.

Air pollution and physical exercise: when to do more or less –The researchers from Seoul National University College of Medicine (South Korea), led by Professor Sang Min Park, looked at information from the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) in South Korea for 1,469,972 young Koreans living in cities, who underwent two consecutive health examinations during two screening periods: 2009-2010 and 2011-2012. They followed up the participants from January 2013 to December 2018.At each health check-up the participants completed a questionnaire asking about their physical activity in the past seven days and this information was converted into units of metabolic equivalent task (MET) minutes per week (MET-mins/week). The participants were divided into four groups: 0, 1-499, 500-999 and 1000 or more MET-mins/week. European Society of Cardiology guidelines recommend people should try to do 500-999 MET-mins/week and this can be achieved by, for example, running, cycling or hiking for 15-30 minutes five times a week, or brisk walking, doubles tennis or slow cycling for 30-60 minutes five times a week. [2]The researchers used data from the National Ambient Air Monitoring System in South Korea to calculate annual average levels of air pollution, in particular the levels of small particulate matter that are less than or equal to 10 or 2.5 microns in diameter, known as PM10 and PM2.5 [3]. The amount of exposure to air pollution was categorised at two levels: low to moderate (less than 49.92 and 26.43 micrograms per cubic metre, μm/m3, for PM10 and PM2.5 respectively), and high (49.92 and 26.46 μm/m3 or more, respectively). [3]Dr Seong Rae Kim, first author of the paper, said: “We found that in young adults aged 20-39 years old, the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke and heart attack, increased as the amount of physical activity decreased between the two screening periods in the group with low levels of exposure to air pollution.”However, in the group with high levels of exposure to air pollution, increasing the amount of physical activity to more than 1000 MET-min/week, which is more than internationally recommended levels for physical activity, could adversely affect cardiovascular health. This is an important result suggesting that, unlike middle-aged people over 40, excessive physical activity may not always be beneficial for cardiovascular health in younger adults when they are exposed to high concentrations of air pollution.”

Toxic impact of pesticides on bees has doubled, study shows – The toxic impact of pesticides on bees and other pollinators has doubled in a decade, new research shows, despite a fall in the amount of pesticide used. Modern pesticides have much lower toxicity to people, wild mammals and birds and are applied in lower amounts, but they are even more toxic to invertebrates. The study shows the higher toxicity outweighs the lower volumes, leading to a more deadly overall impact on pollinators and waterborne insects such as dragonflies and mayflies. The scientists said their work contradicts claims that declines in the amount of pesticides used is reducing their environmental impact. The research also shows that the toxic impact of pesticides used on genetically modified crops remains the same as conventional crops, despite claims that GM crops would reduce the need for pesticides.Pesticides are one factor cited by scientists for the plunging populations of some insects. Insects play vital roles in the ecosystems that sustain humanity, in particular by pollinating three-quarters of crops.The study, published in the journal Science, used US government data on pesticide use and the level of the toxicity of each chemical to give a measure of the “total applied toxicity”. This enabled changes over time to be assessed. Looking solely at the amount of pesticide applied gives a false picture, the scientists said, because some are several orders of magnitude more toxic than others. They found that the replacement of organophosphorus and carbamate insecticides reduced the total toxicity to mammals and birds by a factor of nine. “In sharp contrast, the total applied toxicity to invertebrates has markedly increased since approximately 2005,” they said, despite the amount of insecticide applied decreasing by 40%.This was because pyrethroid and neonicotinoid replacements are more toxic to pollinators and aquatic invertebrates. The harm to bees has led the EU to ban some neonicotinoids from outdoor use.The scientists said the impact on insects could have knock-on effects on other animals such as birds that rely on them for food, as indicated in a study in the Netherlands in 2014. They also said the lack of public pesticide data in many places “potentially masks a crucial driver of the global biodiversity decline”.

64% of World’s Farmland at Risk From Pesticide Pollution, Study Finds — About one third of the world’s agricultural land is at high risk from pesticide pollution, a new study has found. The research, published in Nature Geoscience Monday, looked at the use and spread of 92 active pesticide ingredients in 168 countries. They considered an area at risk if the concentration of a chemical exceeded the limit at which it would have no effect, and at high risk if that concentration exceeded the limit by a factor of 1,000. “Our study has revealed 64 percent of the world’s arable land is at risk of pesticide pollution,” University of Sydney Research Associate and the study’s lead author, Dr Fiona Tang said in a University of Sydney press release. “This is important because the wider scientific literature has found that pesticide pollution can have adverse impacts on human health and the environment.” Further, a total of 31 percent of land was at high risk, the study authors wrote. The researchers looked at 59 herbicides, 21 insecticides and 19 fungicides and based their calculations on application rate data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. They then used a model to estimate how much of the pesticides would remain in the soil, atmosphere, groundwater and surface water. Pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are widely used to boost productivity in farming, the press release noted. However, they have unintended consequences for human and environmental health. They can enter bodies of water through runoff or by entering the groundwater, contaminating drinking water. Pesticides likechlorpyrifos have been shown to harm the cognitive development of children, while others have been linked to cancer. They also pose a threat to wildlife such as bees and birds. “It is significant because the potential pollution is widespread and some regions at risk also bear highbiodiversity and suffer from water scarcity,” she said in an AFP article published by Phys.org. Specifically, 34 percent of the high risk areas were in regions with high biodiversity while five percent were in water-scarce areas, the study found. Nineteen percent of the high risk areas were in low or middle income countries.

Biden mulls giving farmers billions to fight climate change. Even farmers are unsure about the plan. – The Biden administration’s ambitious plan to create a multibillion-dollar bank to help pay farmers to capture carbon from the atmosphere is running into surprising skepticism, challenging Agriculture Department officials to persuade the industry to get behind the massive climate proposal.The plan is to roll out some type of action this year, the senior official said, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss the department’s thinking.Arguably one of the federal government’s most ambitious attempts to combat climate change, the concept aims to use market forces to produce sharp reductions in the human-made emissions that are the primary cause of global warming.But while the idea is popular with some sectors of the environmental movement that see it as a sign of the seriousness of Biden’s commitment to tackle global warming, it’s facing doubts from both the right and left flanks of the agriculture lobby. In addition, various groups representing industries as wide-ranging as food conglomerates and venture capital-backed carbon market operators have hit up offices on Capitol Hill andthose in Biden administration to share ideas and raise concerns about how potentially billions in investment would be spent.The American Farm Bureau Federation, the most influential farm group in Washington, indicated recently that it has some hesitations about the carbon bank idea, even though it could put millions of dollars into the coffers of its members.The questions reflect the difficult politics of climate change, questions about the science of carbon sequestration, and fears that big food and agriculture companies will use the scheme as an inexpensive way to avoid reducing their own carbon footprint. Farmers and ranchers worry they won’t end up benefiting much from the potential gold rush, as corporations and financial middlemen race to get into the markets.Though specifics of the plan haven’t yet emerged, the concept is a novel one: With scores of major corporations having made grand promises about achieving carbon-neutrality, USDA would help offer a chance to buy credits to offset their pollution by supporting farmers who plant an extra batch of crops such as cereal rye and clover or make other on-farm changes to help absorb carbon dioxide into the soil. Such agriculture techniques would bring about a net reduction in greenhouse gases.

Worst drought in 40 years leads to rising hunger and severe food shortages in Angola –Severe food shortage and hunger are on the rise in Angola as the country is gripped by its worst drought in nearly four decades, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on March 26, 2021. The rainy season in Angola, which typically runs from November to April, is being hampered by an abnormal dry spell, affecting crops and livestock, as well as millions of people living in the southwestern provinces.Since December 2020, the country has been experiencing episodes of drought, with below-average rainfall in the provinces of Benguela, Cuanza Sul, Huambo, Huila, and Namibe.According to WFP, the situation will remain grim in the coming months due to the absence of above-average rainfall.As water supply decreases, severely affecting crops and livestock, with losses estimated up to 40 percent, WFP warned of rising food insecurity and malnutrition rates in the worst-hit areas. “The situation is also reportedly giving rise to migratory movements from the most affected areas with families moving towards other provinces and across the border to Namibia,” the organization wrote.”WFP is now coordinating food security and nutrition assessments in the south of the country with an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis expected by the end of May.”

Study: Drought Puts More Hoosiers With Private Wells At Risk From Arsenic – Indiana Public Media — A map showing people exposed to high arsenic levels in private wells during droughts. 10 μg per liter is the maximum amount of arsenic allowed in public water supplies, includes Ohio. (Courtesy of the journal Environmental Science & Technology) Hoosiers are already at greater risk for unsafe levels of arsenic in private drinking water wells than people in some other states – and a new study shows drought can make the problem worse. Arsenic naturally occurs in the ground, but long-term exposure to the metal in drinking water can increase your risk for all kinds of health problems – including bladder, lung, prostate, and skin cancers. Melissa Lombard is a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a co-author of the study. She said drought might cause water to move differently in an aquifer and change its chemistry, resulting in more arsenic than usual. “If you run out of water, that’s a problem. But we’re only really starting to think about how that might impact – a drought might impact the water quality and human health,” Lombard said. The Purdue Climate Change Research Center said the Midwest is expected to experience more periods of drought in the future. Lombard said Indiana, in particular, tends to have high levels of arsenic in the groundwater and more people on private wells. “So those two in combination result in Indiana being at a higher risk than a lot of other states,” she said. The Indiana Department of Health recommends testing your private well at least once a year. Find out how to test your well and what to do if you find high levels of arsenic.

America’s Megadrought and its Potential Impact on American Consumers – While we are distracted with the fear porn associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation of great concern to the producers of our food is unfolding with very little meaningful recognition by the mainstream media, particularly given its seriousness. Let’s look at the actual data from the United States Drought Monitor for the western United States: Here is a table showing the data behind the map: In mid-March 2021, 20.61 percent of the western United States was considered to be in an exceptional drought situation, down from 22.16 percent at the end of December 2020 but up from 0 percent in March 2020. In total, 39.49 percent of the western United States is considered to be in an extreme or exceptional drought, down from 46.63 percent just prior to Christmas 2020 but, again up substantially from 0 percent in March 2020. Here is the latest drought summary for the western United States: “A slight expansion of severe drought (D2) was made to northeast Montana, based on 90-day SPI (standardized precipitation index) and soil moisture below the 10th percentile. These low soil moisture conditions are related to the lack of snowfall this winter. In contrast to the northern high Plains, snow water content is running close to average for late March and led to the elimination of abnormal dryness (D0) across south-central Montana. Since parts of western Arizona and southeast California have received little to no precipitation during the past two month, D3 (extreme) and D4 (exceptional) drought were slightly increased. This expansion of D3-D4 was supported by 9-month SPI values which covers the failed 2020 monsoon and this past winter. An expansion of D2 (severe) and extreme (D3) drought across parts of southern California was based on large water year to date precipitation deficits and 6-month SPI values. […] widespread D4 persists across southeast New Mexico where dust storms have been quite frequent this month and soil moisture remains in the lowest one percentile.” Let’s look at the drought situation for the entire continental United States. Here is a map showing the drought situation for March 24, 2020: Here is what the drought situation looked like by the beginning of August 2020: Here is what the drought situation looked like at the end of December 2020: Lastly, here is what the drought situation looks like now: Given that, historically speaking, drought conditions in the continental United States tend to be very low during the early part of the year, the fact that an extreme drought is currently plaguing the west is of great concern for food producers of all types and for consumers and, given the current stresses in the world’s supply chains, we may well find that significant food price inflation will result in even greater financial strain on American farmers and for American and Canadian consumers.

New problems arise for crop storage as planet gets warmer – About 25% of the nation’s potato chips get their start in Michigan, where reliably cool air during September harvest and late spring has been ideal for crop storage. That’s a big reason why the state produces more chipping potatoes than any other. But with temperatures edging higher, Sackett had to buy several small refrigeration units for his sprawling warehouses. Last year, he paid $125,000 for a bigger one. It’s expensive to operate, but beats having his potatoes rot. “Our good, fresh, cool air is getting less all the time, it seems like,” The situation here illustrates a little-noticed hazard that climate change is posing for agriculture in much of the world. Once harvested, crops not immediately consumed or processed are stored – sometimes for months. The warming climate is making that job harder and costlier. The annual period with outdoor air cool enough to store potatoes in Michigan’s primary production area likely will shrink by up to 17 days by mid-century and up to a month by the late 2100s, according to an analysis by Julie Winkler, a Michigan State University geography and climate scientist. The window for unrefrigerated storage is also narrowing for apples in the Northwest and Northeast, peanuts in the Southeast, lettuce in the Southwest and tomatoes in the Ohio valley, according to follow-up research published last year by plant physiology scientist Courtney Leisner at Auburn University. Techmark Inc., an agricultural engineering company based in Lansing, Michigan, designed the Sackett farm’s equipment. Co-owner Todd Forbush, whose customers also include growers of sugar beets, onions and carrots, said storage of those crops increasingly will need refrigeration. Growers will face tough choices about the economics of their operations. Producers who install equipment to regulate temperature and humidity will see power costs rising as the outside air gets hotter. “Whose pocket is it going to come out of? Probably the consumer,” Leisner said, adding that the potential effects of global warming on storage had been “largely ignored.” “There’s a big disconnect in our minds about the chain of events between the field and the grocery store and onto our plate,” she said. “Just a few degrees can make all the difference in whether it’s economical to store the fruits and vegetables that we expect to have on our dinner table 365 days a year.”

Groundwater Depletion in Pakistan -Pakistan has about 1.2 million tube wells extracting 50 million acre feet of water every year for farm irrigation. NASA satellite maps show that Pakistan is among the places worst affected by rapid depletion of groundwater. A recent World Bank report titled “Groundwater in Pakistan’s Indus Basin : Present and Future Prospects” lays out the need for better groundwater management in Pakistan. Here are three key highlights of this reports:

• 1. Improved groundwater management is crucial for a healthy, wealthy, and green Pakistan. Pakistan’s Indus Basin Irrigation System is the largest artificial groundwater recharge system in the world, but the current water management paradigm doesn’t reflect it.
• 2. Over-abstraction, waterlogging and contamination threaten the crucial role of groundwater as a life-sustaining resource, which has cascading impacts on drought resilience, public health, and environmental sustainability.
• 3. For groundwater to remain a safe and reliable source of drinking water and a lifeline for tail-end farmers, a balance must be achieved between efficiency of the surface water system and sustainability of groundwater resources.

The World Bank report points to the need for better management of groundwater resources. One of the keys to groundwater management is to have an elaborate network of small dams and water reservoirs in strategic locations to recharge underground aquifers. As the NASA satellite map shows, the Punjab is the worst affected province where the groundwater depletion is the highest. Currently, 1.2 million private tube wells are working in the country, out of which 85% are in Punjab, 6.4% are in Sindh, 3.8% are in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and 4.8% are 3 in Baluchistan. National Water Policy 2018 was followed by the Punjab Water Policy in 2018 and the Punjab Water Act 2019. The policy emphasizes the need to curb groundwater over-extraction and contamination, and the Act establishes a regime of licenses for abstraction and wastewater disposal, managed by newly created regulatory bodies.

Supreme Court sides with Georgia over Florida in long-fought water war – The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with the state of Georgia in its decades-long water dispute with Florida, a devastating blow to the Sunshine State’s attempt to buoy its struggling oyster industry. Florida has long contended that the growing Atlanta area has soaked up needed water from the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers before it can reach the Apalachicola Bay, a once-thriving oyster region in an economically-depressed area of the panhandle. In a unanimous opinion that reflected as much on ecology as the law, the justices said Florida had failed to show that additional flows from Georgia would have saved its oyster industry. Florida has argued Georgia’s water use increased the salinity of the bay – a feature that disrupts the brackish water preferred by oysters and can encourage disease as well as oyster predators. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Florida failed to prove Georgia’s water use injured the state, writing that Florida’s own actions contributed to the demise of the industry. “Florida’s own documents and witnesses reveal that Florida allowed unprecedented levels of oyster harvesting in the years before the collapse. In 2011 and 2012, oyster harvests from the Bay were larger than in any other year on record,” she wrote. “That was in part because Florida loosened various harvesting restrictions out of fear – ultimately unrealized – that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill would contaminate its oyster fisheries.” “The record also shows that Florida failed to adequately reshell its oyster bars,” she added, a practice needed to help create habitat for young oysters. The decision leaves little hope for Florida to quickly reestablish an industry that dates back to the mid-1800s. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted unanimously in December to shut down oyster harvesting through 2025. Florida and Georgia first began fighting over water levels in 1990, though Thursday’s decision caps a case that has been litigated since 2013.

Brookfield Renewable Partners subsidiary sues state over plan that could remove dams – The owner of the four dams on the Kennebec River subject to removal as part of a revised plan is suing the Maine Department of Marine Resources and its commissioner, Patrick Keliher. A lawsuit filed by a subsidiary of Toronto-based Brookfield Renewable Partners calls the rulemaking process of the Kennebec River Management Diadromous Resources Amendment “unlawful,” and seeks to have the amendment process stopped. The filing claims that the Marine Resources agency is not consulting with its sister agencies regarding the provisions of the management plan, nor is it following the plan as it was conceived in 1993. “The (M)DMR does not have statutory authority to amend the Kennebec River Management Plan,” reads the complaint, which was filed in the Maine Superior Court in Augusta and requests preliminary injunction. “The (M)DMR’s efforts unilaterally to change Maine’s policy with respect to hydropower on the Kennebec River should be declared illegal.” MDMR declined comment Wednesday, as did the Office of the Maine Attorney General. The amendment to the plan includes the potential removal of four dams along the Kennebec River: the Shawmut in Fairfield, Weston in Skowhegan, and Lockwood and Hydro Kennebec Dams in Waterville. All of the dams are owned by Brookfield. The dams account for more than 250 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy annually. The complaint references the state’s 1993 Kennebec River Resource Management Plan.

Researchers dumped tons of coffee waste into a forest. This is what it looks like now. One of the biggest problems with coffee production is that it generates an incredible amount of waste. Once coffee beans are separated from cherries, about 45% of the entire biomass is discarded. So for every pound of roasted coffee we enjoy, an equivalent amount of coffee pulp is discarded into massive landfills across the globe. That means that approximately 10 million tons of coffee pulp is discarded into the environment every year. When disposed of improperly, the waste can cause serious damage soil and water sources. However, a new study published in the British Ecological Society journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence has found that coffee pulp isn’t just a nuisance to be discarded. It can have an incredibly positive impact on regrowing deforested areas of the planet. In 2018, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawaii spread 30 dump trucks worth of coffee pulp over a roughly 100′ x 130′ area of degraded land in Costa Rica. The experiment took place on a former coffee farm that underwent rapid deforestation in the 1950s. The coffee pulp was spread three-feet thick over the entire area. Another plot of land near the coffee pulp dump was left alone to act as a control for the experiment. “The results were dramatic.” Dr. Rebecca Cole, lead author of the study, said. “The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses.” In just two years, the area treated with coffee pulp had an 80% canopy cover, compared to just 20% of the control area. So, the coffee-pulp-treated area grew four times more rapidly. Like a jolt of caffeine, it reinvigorated biological activity in the area.

Global Rainforest Destruction Surged in 2020, Study Finds – A new study published Wednesday found that the destruction of primary forest increased by 12% in 2020, impacting ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon and shelter abundant biodiversity. Brazil saw the worst losses, three times higher than the next highest country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the report from Global Forest Watch (GFW) citing satellite data. The driving factor of deforestation has been a combination of a demand for commodities, increased agriculture, and climate change. 2020 was meant to be a “landmark year” in the fight against deforestation in which companies, countries and international organizations had pledged to halve or completely stop forest loss, said the report. The report, which included data from the University of Maryland, study cited in the report registered the destruction of 10.4 million acres (4.2 million hectares) of primary forest.The loss of tree cover ー which refers to plantations as well as natural forest ー was a total of 30 million acres. Australia saw a ninefold increase in tree cover loss from late 2019 to early 2020 compared to 2018 primarily driven by extreme weather. Heat and drought also stoked huge fires in Siberia and deep into the Amazon, researchers said. The findings did, however, show signs of hope, particularly in southeast Asia. Indonesia and Malaysia saw downward trends for deforestation after implementing regulations such as a temporary palm oil license ban – although that is set to expire in 2021. These losses constitute a “climate emergency. They’re a biodiversity crisis, a humanitarian disaster, and a loss of economic opportunity,” said Frances Seymour of the World Resources Institute, which is behind the The destruction of tropical forests released vast amounts of CO2 in 2020, a total of 2.6 million tons. That equals the annual amount of emissions from India’s 570 million cars, researchers said.The study suggested that COVID-19 restrictions may have had an effect when it came to illegal harvesting because forests were less protected or the return of large numbers of people to rural areas.

New Report Finds Indonesian Forestry Company Cleared Endangered Orangutan Habitat — An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016, some of them home to critically endangered orangutans, according to a new report. Nusantara Fiber controls 242,000 hectares (598,000 acres) of industrial tree plantations via six subsidiary companies in the Bornean provinces of West, Central and East Kalimantan. Industrial trees include acacia and eucalyptus, which are used in the production of paper and textile fibers; timber trees; and trees grown for biomass energy generation. The Nusantara Fiber group obtained most of its permits from 2009-2011 and started clearing forest areas to develop its plantations in 2016, according to a spatial analysis by the research consultancy Aidenvironment. The analysis used satellite imagery, forest cover maps from Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, and Global Forest Watch maps of tree cover loss. The analysis shows that from 2016 to 2020, the group cleared 26,000 hectares (64,200 acres) of forests, making it the top deforester among all company groups with industrial tree concessions in Indonesia during this period. Most recently, the group cleared 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) of forests in 2020. It contends these areas were designated as degraded land, and that its clearing activity was approved by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, which Aidenvironment acknowledged in its report. But the forests that were lost were still valuable, according to the NGO. It cited a concession managed by PT Industrial Forest Plantation (IFP), one of Nusantara Fiber’s six subsidiaries, in Kapuas district, Central Kalimantan province. Based on a 2016 assessment of orangutan habitat in Indonesia, the forests inside IFP’s concession overlapped almost fully with a known habitat of the southwestern subspecies of the Bornean orangutan, Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii, a critically endangered animal. A 2014 assessment commissioned by IFP had also identified the presence of orangutans inside the concession boundaries, as well as other protected fauna and flora, including 29 bird species, 22 mammal species, six types of reptiles, and 15 tree and plant species. Despite these assessments, IFP went on to deforest 10,700 hectares (26,400 acres) between 2016 and the end of October 2020. Most of the deforestation took place in 2019 and 2020, with 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres) and 5,800 hectares (14,300 acres) of forests cleared respectively. “Bornean orangutans are Critically Endangered, so any disturbance of their habitat is massively concerning,” As of now, there are approximately 50,000 hectares (124,000 acres) of forests remaining in Nusantara Fiber’s concessions. They are at risk of disappearing too, as the concession holders are licensed to clear them.

The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs – The Amazon rainforest may now emit more greenhouse gases than the famously lush ecosystem absorbs, according to new research.Long considered to be a bulwark against climate change because of its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, a new study suggests rising temperatures, increasing drought and rampant deforestation have likely overwhelmed the Amazon’s ability to absorb more greenhouse gases than it emits, reports Craig Welch for National Geographic.The sobering findings appear in a new study published earlier this month in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change that calculates, for the first time, the net emissions of greenhouse gases from both human and natural sources in the Amazon Basin, reports Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.A key distinction in appreciating the study’s findings is that they do not just concern carbon dioxide, according to Mongabay. Though carbon dioxide often gets top billing in discussions around climate change, there are many other significant greenhouse gases, including methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols and sooty black carbon.So, while the Amazon still absorbs and stores a prodigious amount of carbon, its net greenhouse gas emissions have tipped from negative to positive – not just because its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide has been damaged by human activity, but also because the transforming landscape has increased emissions of these other greenhouse gases. “If you’re only looking at the carbon picture, you’re missing a big part of the story,” Kristofer Covey, an environmental scientist at Skidmore College and the study’s lead author, tells the New Republic’s Melody Schreiber. “We need to start understanding the full complexity of this ecosystem. We’re down there tinkering at a massive scale, and we don’t really understand the full implications of what we’re doing.”For example, the dried-out wetlands and compacted soils that result from extensive logging often increase nitrous oxide emissions, and fires used to clear land for livestock and agriculture release particles of soot called black carbon that absorb sunlight and cause localized warming, according toNational Geographic. “Cutting the forest is interfering with its carbon uptake; that’s a problem,” Covey tells National Geographic. “When you start to look at these other factors alongside CO2, it gets really hard to see how the net effect isn’t that the Amazon as a whole is really warming global climate.”

Invasive Species Cost Billions of Dollars in Damages Annually, Researchers Find -Exotic, invasive species, introduced by humans, wreak ecological and economic havoc in new habitats. In astudy published in Nature, researchers found the costliest among these species are Aedes mosquitoes, rats, cats, termites and fire ants, Science News reported.”For decades, researchers have been evaluating the significant impacts of invasive species, but the problem isn’t well known by the public and policy makers,” Boris Leroy, a biogeographer at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Science News. “By estimating the global cost, we hoped to raise awareness of the issue and identify the most costly species.”Researchers found that over the past four decades (1970 to 2017), invasive species have cost nearly $1.3 trillion in damages, the French National Centre for Scientific Research wrote in a statement.The research analyzed over 1,300 estimates of damages by invasive plants and animals, The Guardian reported. And while these damages yielded an annual average of $26.8 billion, the annual bill actually tripled every decade. “In 2017 alone, it hit $162.7 billion, or 20 times the combined budgets of the WHO and the UN Secretariat that year,” the French National Centre for Scientific Research wrote.The study, which was the most comprehensive of its kind, was intentionally conservative, relying on only observed data, The Guardian reported. “But there are so many unquantifiables from a monetary perspective, like ecosystem damage and lost productivity, so it’s still the tip of the iceberg,” profesor Corey Bradshaw, of Flinders University in Australia, who was part of the study, told The Guardian, adding that the real costs could be 10 times higher.The international research team said growth in global trade is to blame for the uptick in economic cost. Deforestation and agricultural expansion have also helped species move easily from habitat to habitat, Science News reported.Coming with a heavy annual cost of about $149 billion, Aedes mosquitoes, including the Asian tiger mosquito and the yellow fever mosquito, rank as the costliest invasive species. First arriving in the U.S. around the 1980s, in used tires shipped from Asia, the Asian tiger mosquito quickly spread across 40 states and has invaded parts of Europe, South America, Africa and Australia. The yellow fever mosquito, originally from sub-Saharan Africa, has spread around the world in similar ways. Together they transmit diseases like Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever and dengue, Science News reported.

National Grid, Eversource Power Outages: Wind Damage Reported Across Massachusetts – NBC Boston – Powerful winds topping 50 mph knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses Monday across parts of New England. The wind gusted to 72 mph in West Bethel, 57 mph in York, 55 mph in Rumford and 53 mph in Portland, Maine, and 54 mph in Nashua, 53 mph in Concord and 52 mph in Manchester, New Hampshire, according to the National Weather Service. Atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, a gust of 123 mph was recorded. On Monday afternoon, more than 89,000 homes and businesses were without power in New England, including more than 35,000 apiece in both Maine and New Hampshire, officials said. The other four states all had more than 1,900 outages, including more than 6,600 in Massachusetts and more than 2,500 in Vermont and Connecticut. Damage was reported across Massachusetts and other parts of New England on as strong winds blasted the area. Trees have been reported down in Amesbury, Mashpee, Tewksbury, Worcester and Natick, among other towns. Trees and power lines are down on a house on Janebar Circle in Framingham. A tree also took down power lines in Auburn and Holliston. Gusts to 60 mph will be possible from the Berkshires to the Worcester Hills and for the rest of New England 40 to 60 mph gusts will be possible on Monday. The powerful winds were preventing utility workers from using bucket trucks to restore power, said Kerri Theriault, Central Maine Power’s director of electric operations.

Schroeder wildfire threatens Rapid City fire suppression, South Dakota – (videos) Multiple National Guard helicopters were in full aerial suppression mode on March 29, 2021, as the Schroeder Fire burned multiple homes and threatened thousands more west of Rapid City, South Dakota.Approximately 500 homes were ordered to evacuate the area as high winds helped spread the blaze.The area was under a High Wind Warning with gusts over 110 km/h (70 mph) reported in nearby Rapid City.Crews will be working around the clock to attempt to contain the fire as high winds continue to push it south overnight.Multiple highways as well as Mount Rushmore National Memorial were closed due to the fire.Heavy air tankers from Colorado are expected to join fire suppression efforts in the Black Hills tomorrow as multiple fires broke out across the area during the Red Flag Warning. As of March 29, the fire was last estimated at around 770 ha (1 900 acres) with 0% containment.

South Dakota Wildfires Close Mount Rushmore and Force Evacuations –Three wildfires raging in South Dakota have shuttered Mount Rushmore and forced hundreds to flee their homes. The largest blaze is the Schroeder Fire, first reported at 9:22 a.m. Monday one mile west of Rapid City, according to a Facebook update. It has since spread to 1,900 acres and forced up to 500 people to flee their homes, the Rapid City Journal reported Monday evening. Authorities attributed the fire to human causes, but its spread to environmental factors.”We are at record-dry conditions along with high winds playing a major factor in this fight,” South Dakota Wildland Fire Division Director Jay Esperance said in the Facebook update. As of the most recent update, there were 250 firefighters battling the flames. The fire has destroyed at least one home and two pole barns, the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Facebook. No injuries have been reported, The Associated Press said. Meanwhile, Mount Rushmore National Memorial was forced to close because of two other fires, the Keystone Fire and 244 Fire, CNN reported. The 244 fire is located 1.5 miles southwest of Keystone. It spread to around 75 acres as of Monday afternoon, according to the interagency website Great Plains Fire Information. The Keystone Fire has successfully been reduced from 30 to 15 acres as of 7 p.m. Monday, the website said. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said that the fires were not directly threatening Mount Rushmore, The New York Times reported. However, strong winds made the situation unstable. “I do want to remind everybody that this is an incredibly fluid situation,” CNN quoted Noem at a press conference. “That these winds are a major factor and that as they shift and change and we get those gusts, that’s when the can jump and we’re going to have to stay pretty mobile.”

Severe heat wave hits Delhi with highest March temperatures since 1945 – The Safdarjung Observatory in New Delhi, India registered a maximum temperature of 40.1 °C (104.1 °F) on Monday, March 29, 2021, making it the city’s hottest March day since 1945. This is 8 °C (14.4 °F) higher than normal, said Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) regional forecasting center.”This is the hottest day since March 31, 1945, when the capital recorded a maximum of 40.5 °C (104.9 °F).On the same day, Najafgarh recorded 41.8 °C (107.2 °F), Narela recorded 41.7 °C (107 °F), Pitampura 41.6 °C (106.8 °F), and Pusa 41.5 °C (106.7 °F), according to data provided by IMD.Delhi’s minimum temperature on Monday was 20.6 °C (69 F), 3 °C (5.4 °F) higher than average.According to Shrivastava, a heatwave is declared in the plains when the maximum temperature is more than 40 °C (104 °F) and at least 4.5 °C (8.1 °F) above normal. A ‘severe heatwave’ is declared when the departures surpass 6.5 °C (11.7 °F) above normal.Heat wave conditions are very likely in some pockets with severe heat wave conditions in isolated pockets over West Rajasthan on March 30. Heat wave conditions in isolated pockets are expected over East Rajasthan, Saurashtra & Kutch, Madhya Pradesh, and Vidarbha on March 30, IMD warned. Dust raising Strong Surface Winds, with speeds reaching 30 to 40 km/h (18 to 25 mph), are very likely over Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh on March 30 and April 1.

Destructive floods after near-record rains hit Nashville, claiming lives of 4 people, Tennessee – (videos) Four people have been killed and 130 rescued after near-record levels of rainfall hit Nashville, Tennessee on March 27 and 28, 2021, causing significant flooding across the region. John Cooper, Mayor of Nashville declared a local state of emergency. The last time such destructive flooding hit Nashville was in May 2010, causing the death of 26 people and damaging or destroying almost 11 000 properties. Repeated rounds of very heavy rainfall caused widespread flooding issues in many areas across Middle Tennessee from Saturday morning, March 27, through Sunday morning, March 28. Through Sunday morning, Franklin recorded 219.7 mm (8.65 inches) of rain, Clarkrange 213.6 mm (8.41 inches), Brentwood 207.2 mm (8.16 inches), Elmwood 198.1 mm (7.80 inches), Fairview 198.8 mm (7.83 inches), Centerville 197.1 mm (7.76 inches), Christiana 184.9 mm (7.28 inches), Hermitage 181.8 mm (7.16 inches), and Lebanon 179 mm (7.05 inches). The final 48-hour rainfall total at Nashville International Airport is 178 mm (7.01 inches), the NWS office in Nashville said. This is the second-highest two-day rainfall ever recorded there. In 24 hours, the same weather station registered 146 mm (5.75 inches) — the 4th highest 1 day total ever in Nashville. While 178 mm (7.01 inches) of rainfall doesn’t come close to 349.2 mm (13.57 inches) received on May 1 and 2, 2010, it’s still significant, Nashville Metro Water Services (MWS) said.Between 22:00 LT on Saturday, March 27th and 07:00 LT on Sunday, March 28th the Nashville Office on Emergency Management (OEM) Dispatch responded to 251 calls for service. The calls included 126 flooding calls, 29 road barricade requests, and 20 boat rescue calls. Nashville Public Works said they had 8 crews working through the night responding to multiple high-water barricade requests and debris removal calls. Nashville Fire Department (NFD) Personnel and NFD Special Operation Swift Water Rescue Teams rescued at least 130 people from automobiles, apartments, and houses. Flood warnings remained in place for parts of Davidson County early Sunday morning, Nashville OEM said, urging residents not to drive through ponding water or around barricades on roads or emergency vehicles blocking roads or other areas.

Death toll rises to 7 after devastating floods in Nashville – Parts of the South have endured multiple severe weather outbreaks in March and have just not been able to catch a break. On Saturday, yet another significant day of severe weather unfolded across the region. In addition to damaging wind gusts, hail and tornadoes across the South, “extremely dangerous and life-threatening” flooding turned deadly in Nashville.Flooding quickly worsened late Saturday as relentless downpours continued across parts of the South. One of the hardest-hit areas from these downpours was Tennessee. At one point Saturday night, flash flood warnings spanned more than half of the state. Nashville quickly became one of the hardest-hit areas on Saturday night as torrential rain pounded the region. As storms continued to deluge the Music City into Sunday, a life-threatening flash flooding situation developed very quickly across the Nashville metro. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a rare flash flood emergency for Metro Nashville as well as Brentwood, Franklin and Mount Juliet, Tennessee, overnight, warning of “an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation.” As of midday on Sunday, local news reported that at least four people were killed in the flooding in the Nashville area. According to The Tennessean, 130 people in Nashville were rescued by crews. On Monday, three additional fatalities were confirmed, one in the Nashville area and one each in the counties of Hawkins and Cheatham.On Sunday evening, Nashville Mayor John Cooper signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in the city due to the flooding. Davidson County is now requesting assistance from both state and federal levels.An apartment building in the southeastern part of Nashville partially collapsed as floodwaters inundated the area. At least five people were trapped in the area as fire rescue units struggled against “swift water” to reach them, according to local media.There were also reports across the same part of the city of people “clinging to trees,” desperate to get to higher ground to avoid floodwaters, according to the NWS.Reports of flooded roadways and homes as well as water rescues quickly poured in across the Nashville area. Parts of Interstate 24 were completely underwater overnight, leading to closures and significant backups on open portions of the roadway.Throughout Williamson County there were more than 55 road closures due to the flooding, according to the county’s Emergency Management Agency.Crews from the Nashville Fire Department and Nashville Emergency Operations Center reported that they were responding “all over the county to those impacted by severe weather” on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, they announced that there were 251 total incidents overnight, with 71 patients needing to be transported.Police in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, even deployed an armored rescue vehicle to reach people trapped in flooded cars.The heaviest downpours in the state targeted a large swath from just south of Jackson, Tennessee, northeastward to Nashville. On Saturday, Nashville recorded an astounding 5.75 inches of rainfall. This rainfall amount made March 27 the wettest March day on record for the city, as well as the fourth-wettest day of all time, according to the NWS.

Up to 3 m (10 feet) of fresh snow hits Valcea, Romania (video) Up to 3 m (10 feet) of snow fell in a mountain resort in Valcea, Romania, in 7 days to March 28, 2021. This county usually sees the heaviest snow and precipitation around May. Heavy snow blanketed the mountain resort Varful Lui Roman in Valcea County. The owner captured images and footage as the thick snow left him surprised.According to local media, it snowed daily for a week on Varful Roman, which stands at 1 700 m (5 577 feet) altitude). The owner estimated that it might take up to six months before the mountain snow melts.”You can’t see the roof [and] the fence. We jump over it. How can we open another gate? We jump over it. The door is no longer visible,” a resident said as snow engulfed his home.Heavy precipitation, in general, is usually the heaviest at around May in the area.

March temperature records tumble across Europe ahead of new widespread cold blast -Temperatures in much of northwest Europe have hit record levels as unusually warm weather gripped the region on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, starting with the UK, which registered its warmest March day in 53 years when the mercury soared above 24 °C (75.2 °F). The heat dome is forecast to dissipate in the coming days, while a new area of high pressure is expected over Iceland and northern Britain. Forecast models call for significant cool-off in the days ahead, centered first in SE Europe, followed by another significant and widespread cold wave. On Tuesday, the UK sweltered through its warmest March day in 53 years as temperatures peaked at 25 °C (76.1 °F) at Kew Gardens, west London. It was slightly below the country’s hottest March temperature of 25.6 °C (78.1 °F) set in 1968 at Cambridgeshire. According to Met Office forecaster, Alex Burkill, Tuesday’s temperature was ‘exceptionally high for the time of year.’ Steve Ramsdale, a chief meteorologist at the Met Office, added, “Highs will fall to the mid-teens before falling further by Friday (April 2), especially along the east coast.” Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands just 16 km (10 miles) off northern France, hit 22.9 °C (73.2 °F) on Tuesday afternoon, smashing the highest March temperature in the area in more than 125 years of record. In Switzerland, monthly records tumble at individual weather stations, including several at high elevations of the Alps. Grimsel recorded 10.9 °C (51.6 °F), exceeding the record of 10.4 °C (50.7 °F) set on March 11, 1997. Chasseral, a mountain peak in northwestern Switzerland, rose to 14 °C (57.2 °F), beating the previous record of 13 °C (55.4 °F) set in March 1990. Belgium had 13 stations break local monthly records on the same day, while Austria had 29 stations. Records also fell in Spain and Oman. On Wednesday, March 31, Germany and Netherlands set all-time records for March, with highs of 27.2 °C (81 °F) and 26.1 °C (79 °F), respectively. A new monthly record was set in Paris as the city registered 26 °C (78.8 °F), beating the previous record set on March 25, 1955.Meanwhile, France’s average maximum temperature on Wednesday was the highest for the month of March as the mercury hit 29.8 °C (85.6 °F), while Luxembourg had its first 25 °C (77 °F) reading for March.The heat over Europe is expected to dissipate in the coming days, while a new area of high pressure is forecast over Iceland and northern Britain.

A tropical storm in 2018 produced the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth – A tropical storm just south of the equator in the southwestern Pacific Ocean on December 29, 2018, produced an unprecedented temperature of -111.2 °C (161.96 K / -168.1 °F), the lowest recorded on Earth, according to a recent scientific research paper. The temperature was recorded atop the thunderstorm clouds, with an altitude of more than 20.5 km (12.8 miles) above sea level.In a new paper published in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters, researchers examined data gathered during a tropical storm in the southwestern Pacific in 2018. The storm, which was a result of a deep convection event, pushed so high in the atmosphere that it smashed the record for the lowest temperature on Earth. Convection is a process by which a warm fluid travels upward, while cooler fluid falls beneath it. Huge storms are usually the result of warm surface air pushing high into the atmosphere, cooling rapidly, and forming thick clouds. This event produces wind and rain, and other systems associated with thunderstorms, such as the presence of cooler air on the surface. During the storm in 2018, conditions were perfect that when the hot air on the surface switched positions with the cooler air in the atmosphere, the warm air is pushed much higher than usual. This is a process known as an overshoot, which results in the cloud tops becoming colder than what would usually be seen in a thunderstorm. Overshooting tops indicate that a storm is particularly severe that it can cause hazardous weather.

Volcanic eruption in Geldingadalir continues, lava flow steady at 5 – 7 m3 per second, Iceland —The volcanic eruption in Geldingadalir, Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland has now been ongoing for 9 days, with lava flowing steadily at 5 to 7 cubic meters per second, the Icelandic Met Office (IMO) reported on March 29, 2021. A lot of data has been collected since the eruption started, including on-site and remote measurements along with modeling work forecasting the event’s possible behavior over the coming days. The lava is basaltic and highly fluid with little explosive activity, IMO said. “It is a very small eruption and the lava flow has been steady at 5 – 7 m3 per second since its onset.” Currently, the extent of the lava field is within Geldingadalur but if the eruption keeps ongoing at a similar rate, it is modeled that the lava will flow east towards Merardalur valley. The current magma is rich in MgO (8.5%) which indicates that it is coming from depths of around 17 – 20 km (10.5 – 12.4 miles). There has been constant gas pollution close to the eruption site, spatially determined by local wind conditions. Gases can accumulate to life-threatening levels in certain weather conditions, IMO warns. There have been no indications of significant tectonic movements since the eruption started and there are currently no indications of new openings at other locations along the magma injection path. “This eruption calls for specific and targeted monitoring of the eruption itself and also of the gas’s effects on air quality and the downwind environment,” IMO said. If the volcano continues to erupt it could eventually end up being categorized as a shield volcano. This type of volcanoes are generally formed over long time periods with lava fields extending from a few to several kilometers around its source.

Lava flow at Pacaya volcano heads toward inhabited areas, Guatemala -High-level effusive activity continues at Pacaya volcano, Guatemala with columns of abundant ash lasting from minutes to hours, reaching 3 km (9 850 feet) above sea level and traveling 7 km (4.3 miles) in a southerly direction on March 30. 2021. On March 29, the lava flow reached coffee plantations and swallowed up an abandoned house near the village of El Patrocinio. The activity is causing ashfall in the communities to the south of the volcano, such as Finca El Chupadero and Los Pocitos. The effusive activity continues to feed the lava flow on the west flank, with a length of 2 850 m (9 350 feet) as of March 30. INSIVUMEH seismic stations register constant tremors, associated with the rise of magma, as well as continuous degassing in the crater. It is not ruled out that more lava flows are generated in other flanks or the generation of degassing columns with abundant ash, INSIVUMEH reported at 14:07 UTC on March 30. On March 29, lava flow reached the coffee plantations and swallowed up an abandoned house near the village of El Patrocinio, CONRED reported. It continues to advance between 50 and 60 m (160 – 195 feet) per day. The next community is El Patrocinio, located 1.5 km (0.93 miles) from where the lava flow is currently located, CONRED said on March 30.

17th paroxysmal eruptive episode at Etna forces closure of Catania International Airport, Italy — The 17th paroxysmal eruptive episode since February 16 started at Etna volcano, Italy at 23:00 UTC on Wednesday, March 31, 2021. The Aviation Color Code was raised to Red at 19:11 UTC on March 31 and remains at this level as of 09:32 UTC when the last VONA was issued. 7 people who got lost on the mountain on Wednesday were rescued on Thursday morning.The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Etnaeus Observatory (INGV-OE), informs that starting around 23:00 UTC on March 31, Strombolian activity at the Southeast Crater has gradually switched to a lava fountain, marking the start of the 17th paroxysm since February 16.At 00:18 UTC on Thursday, April 1, a lava overflow started at the eastern edge of the Southeast Crater expanding in the upper part of the Valle del Bove.The ash cloud rose up to 9 km (29 500 feet) a.s.l. by 07:47 UTC, drifting SSW.The temporal trend of volcanic tremor amplitude highlights a continuous increase in values that have reached very high levels, INGV-OE reported at 01:52 UTC. The center of the sources of volcanic tremor is located at the SE crater at an elevation between 2 500 m and 2 800 m (8 200 – 9 180 feet) above sea level.This is the longest paroxysm in the sequence that started on February 16, 2021.

Beijing announces crackdown on violators of air pollution rules after sandstorms -Beijing will take aim at violators of air pollution rules over the next month after two sandstorms hammered the city this month. The Chinese capital saw its biggest sandstorm in years in the middle of March, followed by another that brought its air quality index (AQI) to the ceiling of 500 over the weekend, Reuters reported. State media said the city will conduct inspections for all construction sites through April, although the storms are believed to have originated in Mongolia. City officials will also crack down on air quality issues such as insufficient disposal of waste and construction dust, according to the Xinhua news service. Xinhua reported that investigations of air pollution violations are up 30 percent this year. The increase comes after the city imposed a series of stricter standards on industrial emissions, dissipating much of the smog that had persisted in the city for years. Although the sandstorm is thought to have started in Mongolia, Li Shuo, policy director for Greenpeace China, told The New York Times earlier this month that it was “the result of land and ecological degradation in the north and west of Beijing.” “Beijing is what an ecological crisis looks like. After two weeks of smog and static air, strong wind carries a sand storm in, sending AQI off the chart,” Li said earlier this month.

Tesla urges court to reinstate hike in emissions penalties (Reuters) – Tesla Inc is pressing a U.S. appeals court to immediately reinstate a 2016 Obama regulation more than doubling penalties for automakers who fail to meet fuel efficiency requirements, according to court filings. The Trump administration on Jan. 14 delayed the start of higher penalties until the 2022 model year. Tesla told the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals the Trump action was “unlawful” and “diminishes the value of performance-based incentives that electric vehicle manufacturers, such as Tesla, accrue under the standards”. Although President Joe Biden supports tougher emissions standards, his administration opposes Tesla’s request for immediate court action, saying the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is scrutinizing the Trump action on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) penalties and will complete its review in six months. A group representing major automakers also opposes immediate action. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. NHTSA declined comment. Tesla first asked the appeals court to act on March 4, saying the Trump administration’s “egregious action presents a situation as extraordinary as it is unjustified and inflicts immediate and irreparable injury on Tesla.” In a filing Monday it said that the government’s position that there was no immediate harm to allowing the Biden administration time to review the Trump decision “ignores the ongoing impacts” on the credit-trading market. The Justice Department rejected Tesla claims it faces irreparable harm noting NHTSA has not yet assessed CAFE penalties for 2018 or 2019 model years. Tesla, whose electric cars produce zero emissions, sells credits to other automakers to reduce their burden of complying with the regulations, and argues that the Trump rule change makes those credits less valuable. In 2020, Tesla posted its first full-year profit, helped by record vehicle deliveries and a jump in regulatory credit sales. Tesla generated a revenue of $1.58 billion from sales of regulatory credits last year, a sharp increase from $594 million in 2019. NHTSA said in its interim final rule issued in the final days of the Trump administration that it expected its final rule to cut future burdens on industry by up to $1 billion annually.

This machine in Texas could suck up companies’ carbon emissions – if they pay –To burnish their green credentials, companies have long paid to plant trees or protect forests in the hopes that nature will absorb their greenhouse gas emissions. Shopify, the Canadian company that runs e-commerce sites, wants to take a more hands-on approach – by paying a Texas venture to pull carbon dioxide from the sky and store it underground.Shopify struck a deal this month with Carbon Engineering, which is about to start building a sprawling “direct air capture” facility in West Texas with its partner 1PointFive. Their plant, expected to be the largest of its kind, will use huge fans to draw in air and churn out pure CO2. Shopify has agreed to “buy” 10,000 metric tons of the gas that will be permanently sequestered in deep rock formations.The initiative comes as corporations are redoubling promises to address climate change. Tech firms, airlines, and oil-and-gas giants have all recently pledged to reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050 – a loosely defined strategy which generally means they’re working to cut new emissions and reverse past pollution. Climate scientists say the world must now do both to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by mid-century.As part of those efforts, companies as wide-ranging as Microsoft, Audi, ExxonMobil and Stripe are investing in businesses developing cutting-edge technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere and lock it away. Selling CO2-removal by the ton offers a way to fund these enormously expensive ventures while allowing companies to claim credit for (eventually) trimming their carbon footprints.“We firmly believe these types of frontier technologies are going to be a necessary part of the climate solution,” said Stacy Kauk, director of Shopify’s sustainability fund. Along with the deal it struck to remove 10,000 tons in Texas, the ecommerce software company is buying 5,000 metric tons of carbon removal from Climeworks. The Swiss firm is expanding its direct air capture plant in Iceland and developing a new one in Norway.

Studies: NPPD could cut emissions at little cost –Nebraska’s largest electric utility could dramatically reduce carbon emissions over the next three decades at little or no cost to ratepayers, according to a pair of recent reports prepared for the utility’s board of directors. The path – and cost – of completely eliminating emissions by midcentury, though, becomes far less certain. The Nebraska Public Power District, which serves most of the state’s population outside the cities of Omaha and Lincoln, last year hired two firms to forecast the potential impact of federal carbon regulations. The results, by Ascend Analytics and Siemens, both conclude that the utility could significantly reduce its exposure to such policies without burdening customers with severe rate hikes. Ascend’s study said that if wholesale power prices continue to fall, the utility likely could cut its carbon emissions by 90% without any added expense. It predicts a dramatically higher price for eliminating the final 10% of emissions, concluding the only economically feasible way to eliminate them would be through offsets. The study’s modeling exercises consistently endorsed closing coal and nuclear plants before 2036, when many of their sales contracts to retail utilities would expire, and investing in wind, solar and some combination of batteries and “flexible” natural gas. The analysis by Siemens is slightly less sunny. It predicts that substantial carbon reductions can be achieved with modest increases in prices for customers until perhaps some time after 2040. Siemens estimates that the utility could, for example, chop its carbon intensity in half by 2030 and by 80% by 2050 while increasing rates to its utility and municipal customers by no more than the rate of inflation. Getting to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050 would be significantly tougher, according to the study, and likely would require doubling customer rates between 2035 and 2050. Siemens’ models also endorsed closing the utility’s coal giant, the 1,365-megawatt Gerald Gentleman Station, before 2036. However, it said that attaining 100% clean energy might require relicensing the Cooper Nuclear Station, a costly proposition. Both studies recommend closing the 225-megawatt coal-fired Sheldon Station early or converting it to operate on natural gas. “For years, we’ve been saying, ‘You should retire your coal-fired generation and replace it with clean energy,’” said John Crabtree, a Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign representative in Nebraska. “Ascend Analytics made the case that NPPD needs to retire much of their coal-fired generation and replace it with clean energy.” And particularly significantly, he added, “Their rationale was that this was the best economic case.”

Small Percentage of Frequent Flyers Are Driving Global Emissions, New Study Shows –Another study finds evidence that the majority of climate-damaging flights are undertaken by a small minority of frequent travelers.The research, published by the UK-based climate charity Possible, is based on a review of the existing literature on global flight frequency before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the aviation industry. It found extensive evidence of flight inequality both between and within countries.”This report shows the same pattern of inequality around the world – a small minority of frequent flyers take an unfair share of the flights,” Possible’s Alethea Warrington told BBC News. “While the poorest communities are already suffering the impacts of a warming climate, the benefits of high-carbon lifestyles are enjoyed only by the few. A lot of people travel. But only the privileged few fly often.”Globally, few people fly regularly. Less than 20 percent of people have ever flown, according to the report, and only five to 10 percent of the world’s population flies in any year. Further, the wealthiest 10 percent of people are responsible for 76 percent of the energy consumption involved with packaged holidays.Meanwhile, the top 10 countries for aviation emissions account for 60 percent of the world’s total, while the top 30 account for 86 percent. The top three countries for total emissions from flying were the U.S., China and the UK, while the top five for per capita emissions from residents came from Singapore, Finland, Iceland, Australia and the UK. At the same time, a gap remains within those top-flying countries between the most frequent flyers and everyone else.

• U.S.: 12 percent of the population takes 66 percent of the flights
• UK: around 15 percent of the population takes 70 percent of the flights
• France: two percent of the population takes 50 percent of the flights
• Canada: 22 percent of the population takes 73 percent of the flights
• Netherlands: eight percent of the population takes 42 percent of the flights

To address these inequalities and reduce aviation emissions, Possible is proposing a Frequent Flyer Levy in the UK, which would tax people who take more flights. “Air travel is a uniquely damaging behavior, resulting in more emissions per hour than any other activity, bar starting forest fires. So targeting climate policy at the elite minority responsible for most of the environmental damage from flights could help tackle the climate problem without taking away access to the most important and valued services that air travel provides to society,” Leo Murray, Possible director of innovation, told The Guardian.

NASA Study Finds Direct Proof of Greenhouse Effect – In a first-of-its-kind study, NASA has managed to achieve something that has so far eluded scientists: provide direct, global observations that fossil fuel emissions are heating the planet.There is already robust evidence that human activity is causing the climate crisis. This conclusion is supported by 97 percent of climate scientists, and has been established through direct observations of skyrocketing carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures. However, the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and their climate effects remained theoretical, until now. .The research, published in Geophysical Research Letters on March 25, used satellites to provide evidence of radiative forcing. Essentially, this is the mechanism behind the greenhouse effect, CBS News explained. When sunlight enters Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back into space, while some of it is absorbed as heat. In order for global temperatures to remain steady, solar energy coming in needs to equal solar energy going out. Heat can be trapped by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor. As the concentration of heat-trapping gases increases, the energy balance is thrown off and the Earth becomes warmer. This radiative forcing is the driving mechanism behind climate change.”While there are well‐established observational records of greenhouse gas concentrations and surface temperatures, there is not yet a global measure of the radiative forcing, in part because current satellite observations of Earth’s radiation only measure the sum total of radiation changes that occur,” the study authors noted. To get around this, researchers used radiative kernels (a type of methodology) to separate radiative forcing from the totality of energy balance changes observed by satellites between 2003 and 2018. They found that radiative forcing increased, and that these increases were caused primarily by rising greenhouse gases, and secondarily by decreasing aerosol pollution, which has a cooling effect. In total, radiative forcing increased by 0.5 watts per meter-squared, which is 10 times the energy used by people in a given year, and enough to heat the atmosphere by more than half a degree Fahrenheit in 16 years, CBS News reported. The study builds on a new but growing body of direct evidence for radiative forcing. A 2015 study made the first observations of carbon dioxide’s ability to absorb heat radiated from Earth’s surface at the surface level. However, the NASA study provides the first comprehensive observations of these changes. That said, the observations are just confirming what most scientists already believed to be true. “In reality, the observational results came in just as predicted by the theory,”

Most Economists Agree: Benefits of ‘Drastic’ Climate Action Outweigh Costs of Status Quo -While scientists and campaigners continue calling on world leaders to pursue more ambitious policies to cut planet-heating emissions based on moral arguments and physical dangers, a U.S. think tank released survey results on Tuesday that make a clear economic case for sweeping climate action.The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law invited 2,169 Ph.D. economists to take a 15-question online survey “focused on climate change risks, economic damage estimates, and emissions abatement,” according to a report on the results. Nearly three-quarters of the 738 economists who participated in the survey say they agree that “immediate and drastic action is necessary.””In sharp contrast, less than 1% believe that climate change is ‘not a serious problem,'” the report says, noting a jump in support for bold climate action now compared with a 2015 survey. “Nearly 80% of respondents also self-report an increase in their level of concern about climate change over the past five years, underscoring the high level of overall concern among this group.” Of those surveyed, 76% believe the climate crisis will likely or very likely have a negative effect on global economic growth rates. Additionally, 70% think climate change will make income inequality worse within most countries and 89% think it will exacerbate inequality between high-income and low-income countries. “People who spend their careers studying our economy are in widespread agreement that climate change will be expensive, potentially devastatingly so,” said Peter Howard, economics director at the institute and co-author of the research, in a statement. “These findings show a clear economic case for urgent climate action.”

Governments – ‘not BlackRock’ – should lead the economy away from fossil fuels, economist says – Governments should be leading the global economy’s sustainable transformation, not markets, according to author and economist Ann Pettifor.Pettifor, author of “The Case for the Green New Deal,” told CNBC on Friday that a reliance on financial markets to steer the economy away from fossil fuels was “not tenable.”She argued that since markets and societies have different interests, government intervention would be necessary to engineer a new Green Deal with state funding. A so-called Green Deal for the global economy would see ambitious – and likely costly – targets set in an effort to move the world away from fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”We know that governments can intervene. We know that we have developed an advanced monetary system that will enable us to mobilize large sums of finance, and we did that for Wall Street, we did that when dealing with the pandemic, we know governments can do this and therefore I want to see the state take much more of a role,” Pettifor told “Squawk Box Europe.””I want to see public authority over the system of transformation and not private authority. I want to see the EU leading this, not BlackRock,” she added. I want to see the EU lead the way for a new Green Deal: Ann PettiforHer comments come after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink penned an annual public letter to CEOs in which he dubbed the transformation toward a green economy as a “historic investment opportunity” and called for greater disclosure from companies as to how they will survive in a world of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Fink has maintained that climate risks and investment risks are one and the same, meaning investment managers have a fiduciary duty to direct capital toward assets seeking to address climate change.

Nine Ways Biden’s $2 Trillion Plan Will Tackle Climate Change – Here are nine key climate elements of Biden’s jobs and infrastructure plan:

• The largest single climate-related provision in the plan is $213 billion to build, modernize and weatherize affordable housing, an idea that melds Biden’s climate and economic justice goals. The plan would tackle homes and buildings, the source of 40 percent of all U.S. carbon emissions, while addressing the shortage of quality housing for low-income communities of color.
• Biden proposes spending $174 billion to accelerate a transition to electric vehicles in the United States through consumer incentives like tax credits to purchasers of EVs, the building of a network of 500,000 EV charging stations, and direct federal spending. For example, there would be federal funding for converting school buses to electric vehicles. And Biden proposes to use the federal procurement process to electrify the entire federal fleet of vehicles, including those of the U.S. Postal Service
• The proposal also includes $100 billion for power grid modernization and resilience, both intended to stave off catastrophic outages like the one that was blamed for 70 deaths in Texas in February, and to upgrade the system to better handle and transport wind and solar energy. The Biden plan would establish a new Grid Deployment Authority, with an aim of making better use of existing rights-of-ways along roads and railways to site new high-voltage transmission lines.
• Biden would make an historic $85 billion investment in modernizing public transit, support that mass transit systems would welcome after a year in which 65 percent had to cut service because of the drop in ridership and revenue resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. That investment would come on top of the $30.5 billion that was in Biden’s Covid-19 relief bill to help mass transit systems, which typically get only $10 billion annually in federal funding.
• The plan calls for a $35 billion investment in clean technology research and development, including the launching of a new incubator for cutting edge research. Biden proposes spending $15 billion in demonstration projects that will be key for tackling climate, like utility-scale energy storage, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, advanced nuclear, rare earth element separations and floating offshore wind. Many of these areas of research already have bipartisan support.
• Biden would spend $16 billion employing union oil and gas workers to cap abandoned oil and gas wells and clean up mines, not only helping address unemployment in fossil fuel communities, but addressing emissions of the climate super-pollutant methane from the orphaned facilities.
• Biden’s package includes broad increases in corporate taxes, but he steered clear of including a carbon tax; though the idea has recently won support in the oil industry, neither Republicans nor Democrats on Capitol Hill have expressed enthusiasm for the idea. But Biden would fulfill his campaign pledge of eliminating fossil fuel industry subsidies, which are estimated to add up to at least $20 billion annually, including favored tax treatment for capital investments.
• Biden’s plan for the first time would establish a federal Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard requiring utilities to deliver a certain percentage of electricity from renewable or other clean energy sources. Although his plan did not spell out initial goals, Biden’s aim is to put the nation on track to a 100 percent carbon-pollution-free electricity sector by 2035.
• In the most direct nod to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, Biden would invest $10 billion in a new “Civilian Climate Corps.” In addition to conservation of public lands and waters projects, which was the focus of Roosevelt’s CCC, Biden’s Climate Corps would be deployed on projects to bolster community resilience and advance environmental justice.

Biden’s $2 Trillion Proposal Could Boost Ohio Valley Infrastructure And Clean Up Energy Sector —President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan contains tens of billions of dollars to address environmental and economic issues throughout the Ohio Valley region, according to details released Wednesday by the White House.Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had promised a major infrastructure initiative, but one never got traction during his four years in office.Speaking in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Biden called his plan the largest jobs investment since World War II. “It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America, unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago.”The plan includes $16 billion to plug thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells and reclaim hundreds of coal mines. The administration says the effort would create thousands of union jobs in communities hurt by the decline of fossil fuel production. Biden proposes a $40 billion program to retrain dislocated workers for jobs in growing sectors such as clean energy, manufacturing and caregiving.The plan includes more than $100 billion in grants and loans to improve water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and eliminate all lead pipes and service lines that supply drinking water. That could help rural communities in the region with aging water systems, such as eastern Kentucky’s Martin County, which has struggled to maintain its water system. Comparing high-speed internet to electricity 100 years ago, Biden’s plan proposes $100 billion to bring reliable broadband to rural areas and tribal lands.A $17 billion investment in ports and inland waterways could help improve infrastructure for commerce on the Ohio River and other navigable rivers in the region.The plan commits $50 billion to improving the resilience of infrastructure to the effects of climate change, including floods and wildfires. The plan calls for a massive modernization of the nation’s electric power grid and encourages clean energy generation and storage. It would establish 10 demonstration projects to capture and store carbon emissions from industries such as steel, chemicals and cement.It would remediate and redevelop former energy and industrial sites and promote economic development through theAppalachian Regional Commission’s POWER grant program. As with traditional infrastructure bills in past administrations, Biden’s invests heavily in roads, bridges and transit systems. Republicans said the plan didn’t spend enough on infrastructure and criticized the tax increases that would pay for it. It also didn’t sit well with lawmakers from fossil fuel producing states.

Electric vehicles and biofuel: Pentagon poised to go greener under Biden – The Pentagon is weighing a series of proposals to make the military more energy efficient, from mandating all-electric vehicles to weaning trucks, ships and aircraft off of fossil fuels, according to people familiar with the options. The Biden administration has made clear from the beginning that combating climate change is a top priority – and the Pentagon, the world’s single largest energy consumer, has a key role to play. The military has a record of developing new policies intended to curb greenhouse gases, and a massive budget of roughly $700 billion annually to carry them out. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has already signaled that he will move quickly on this issue, establishing a Climate Working Group in March to coordinate the Pentagon response to climate change and track its implementation. “Climate change presents a growing threat to U.S. national security interests and defense objectives,” Austin wrote in a March 9 memo. “The department will act immediately to include the security implications of climate change in our risk analyses, strategy development and planning guidance.” The possible changes, laid out by three people familiar with the proposals, come as the Biden administration rolls out an ambitious, eight-year infrastructure plan aimed at eliminating carbon emissions from the power grid by 2035 and across the economy by 2050. In parallel with this plan, the Pentagon is looking to mandate that all non-combat vehicles be electric by 2030 and to finance more projects to reduce the carbon footprint and harden facilities against the effects of climate change, according to multiple experts who have been advising the Pentagon. “Climate change is a growing threat to our security and we need to integrate climate risk into all of our planning,” said Pentagon spokesperson Pete Hughes, noting that increasing energy efficiency can also make military operations more agile. “It’s also essential that we compete for the clean energy technologies of the future as they will be essential to capability.” Still, in the face of flat defense budgets, the effort will have to compete with other top Pentagon priorities, such as modernizing the nuclear triad and developing new technologies ranging from artificial intelligence to hypersonic weapons. At least in the early going, some Republican lawmakers who are traditionally skeptical of efforts related to climate change have signaled they’re willing for the military to go green if it enhances the mission.

New Bills In U.S. Senate Would Bolster Efforts To Store Carbon Underground — A carbon capture unit attached to an industrial facility. A pair of new bills in the U.S. Senate aims to bolster the nascent carbon capture and storage industry, as oil and gas companies increasingly embrace the technology to achieve emissions reduction targets.One new bill, introduced this week, would strengthen an existing tax credit known as 45Q that lets companies take a deduction for every ton of carbon sequestered from the air and stored underground, either permanently or as part of the extraction process for liquids such as crude oil. The new bill extends by five years until 2030 the window for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects to begin construction and qualify for the 45Q tax credit.The bill also increases the value of the 45Q credit from $50 to $120 per metric ton of CO2 captured and stored in saline geologic formations, and from $35 to $75 for CO2 captured and stored in oil and gas fields or used in the processing of fuels, chemicals or other products.The bill, called the Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Tax Credit Amendments Act, has support from a bipartisan group of senators, according to the Carbon Capture Coalition, including Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Barrasso (R-WY), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), John Hoeven (R-ND) and Chris Coons (D-DE). It was introduced by Tina Smith (D-MN) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). An explainer of the bill by the Carbon Capture Coalition is here.A second bill, introduced two weeks ago, provides funding and grants to build out transportation infrastructure to ferry captured CO2 to storage locations. The increased funding is aimed at both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, although grants would also be created for state and local governments to procure CO2 utilization products for infrastructure projects. The bill is called the Storing CO2 and Lowering Emissions Act (SCALE Act).More legislation to help scale up the technology is expected, especially as President Joe Biden prepares to unveil his $3 trillion infrastructure package.”In general CCS has broad bipartisan support and it is widely expected that additional incentives or investment will make it into the infrastructure package,” said Alex Dewar, a senior director at Boston Consulting Group. “The Biden administration is also likely to use a range of existing fiscal policy measures to further support CCS.”

Biden White House Announces Major Boost for Offshore Wind – Taken together, the initiatives will create 77,000 jobs, generate enough electricity to power over 10 million homes for a year, and avoid 78 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, according to the administration. The plan would general 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030 – a capacity that would surpass the roughly 19 GW predicted in 2019 by some industry analysts. As NBC News noted, the nation’s offshore wind capacity is largely untapped:[W]hile on-land wind farms have flourished in recent years, offshore wind has yet to take off in a significant way, in part due to bureaucratic and permitting hurdles that were a source of major frustration for renewable energy companies during the Trump administration. As of now, the U.S. has only one operational offshore commercial wind farm, with just five turbines.According to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, making up for such inaction is urgent.”For generations,” Haaland said in a statement, “we’ve put off the transition to clean energy and now we’re facing a climate crisis.” Although “every community is facing more extreme weather and the costs associated with that,” Haaland said that “not every community has the resources to rebuild, or even get up and relocate when a climate event happens in their backyards.” She noted that the “climate crisis disproportionately impacts communities of color and low-income families.”Among steps announced by the Interior, Commerce, and Energy departments were a data sharing agreement between NOAA and offshore wind development company Ørsted Wind Power North America to help development of infrastructure; the identification of nearly 800,000 acres in the shallow ocean triangle known as the New York Bight to be “Wind Energy Areas”; $8 million for 15 new offshore wind research and development projects; and notice that BOEM would launch an Environmental Impact Statement for Ocean Wind’s proposed 1,100 megawatt facility off the coast of New Jersey.”The ocean energy bureau said it will push to sell commercial leases in the area in late 2021 or early 2022,” the Associated Press reported.

Biden targets big offshore wind power expansion to fight climate change (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Monday unveiled a goal to expand the nation’s fledgling offshore wind energy industry in the coming decade by opening new areas to development, accelerating permits, and boosting public financing for projects. The plan is part of President Joe Biden’s broader effort to eliminate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change, an agenda that Republicans argue could bring economic ruin but which Democrats say can create jobs while protecting the environment. The blueprint for offshore wind power generation comes after the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leasing auctions on federal lands and waters, widely seen as a first step to fulfilling the president’s campaign promise of a permanent ban on new federal drilling to counter global warming. The United States, with just two small offshore wind facilities, has lagged European nations in developing the renewable energy technology. The administration of Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump had vowed to launch offshore wind as a promising new domestic industry but failed to permit any projects. “We’re ready to rock and roll,” National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said at a virtual press conference to announce the administration’s moves. The plan sets a target to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, which the administration said would be enough to power 10 million homes and cut 78 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. One of the first steps will be to open a new offshore wind energy development zone in the New York Bight, an area off the densely populated coast between Long Island, New York and New Jersey, with a lease auction there later this year. The industry will employ 44,000 workers directly by 2030 and support 33,000 additional support jobs, the administration said, with a promise that they would be “good-paying union jobs.” Many of those jobs will be created at new factories that will produce the blades, towers and other components for massive offshore wind turbines and at shipyards where the specialized ships needed to install them will be constructed. The administration predicted the nation would see port upgrade investments related to offshore wind of more than $500 million. The administration said it will also aim to speed up project permits, including environmental reviews, and provide $3 billion in public financing for offshore wind projects through the Department of Energy.

Climate activists on Biden infrastructure plan: Go bigger -President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion climate and infrastructure plan is too modest to address a global emergency, some environmental advocates say. The plan to splurge on transitioning the nation to clean energy, rebuilding the country’s roads and bridges, and improving access to clean water and broadband pales next to the $1 trillion in annual spending that the most ardent climate activists and unions say they want over the next decade to tackle climate change. “We need to have a larger investment than is currently being talked about because of the scale of the need, of the economic crisis,” said Keya Chatterjee, executive director of the U.S. Climate Action Network, an environmental advocacy group. “We need to come out of this with a reimagined society.” Ben Beachy, director of the Sierra Club’s Living Economy program, told POLITICO that “there is a lot to like in this proposal. Much of it really is transformative.” But still, he added: “Congress needs to up the ante on scale to deliver a plan that’s as big as the crises that we face. Today’s proposal is a good start and we need to go bigger.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic lawmaker who has called for aggressive climate action, weighed in Tuesday evening, tweeting that the overall package “is not nearly enough. The important context here is that it’s $2.25T spread out over 10 years. For context, the COVID package was $1.9T for this year *alone,* with some provisions lasting 2 years. Needs to be way bigger.” Others are more optimistic, including Biden’s environmental allies, whose pressure during last year’s presidential campaign prompted the then-Democratic nominee to ramp up the ambition of his climate goals. For them, after four years of federal inaction under former President Donald Trump, the proposed spending represents a sea change that could push the world’s largest economy headlong into revamping its manufacturing, industry and infrastructure with climate in mind. Biden’s proposals call for hundreds of billions of dollars for investments in electric vehicle manufacturing, research for breakthrough technology to sharply curb planet-heating emissions, massive jobs efforts aimed at plugging abandoned wells and mines, new labor and wage standards tied to renewable energy tax credits, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and the use of the federal government’s purchasing power to buy cleaner products, electrify the vehicle fleet and adopt zero-carbon energy.

New wind-energy areas off Jersey coast –The federal government is planning to open up new areas off the Jersey coast for offshore wind farms, a development that could accelerate the Murphy administration’s goal to transition to clean energy in New Jersey. In a series of announcements Monday, the Department of Interior said it has identified nearly 800,000 acres in the New York Bight, a triangular area of coastline between Long Island and New Jersey, as potential wind-energy areas, a designation that could lead to new offshore wind farms being developed there. The Biden administration also committed to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, creating nearly 80,000 jobs. The commitments marked a reversal of policies by the prior administration, which advocated drilling for offshore oil and gas instead of shifting to clean-energy technologies like offshore wind aggressively pushed by New Jersey and other states along the Eastern Seaboard. “For generations, we’ve put off the transition to clean energy and now we’re facing a climate crisis,’’ said Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, at a White House forum. “It’s a crisis that doesn’t discriminate – every community is facing more extreme weather and the costs associated with that.’’ The New York Bight is located in an area of shallow water, a parcel where offshore wind farms could be located to help states meet their offshore wind goals. New Jersey has set a target of 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2035. New York has a goal of 9,000 mw by 2035, too. “The Murphy administration has finally found a willing partner in Washington,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “The potential for offshore wind is limitless.’’ If the 30,000 megawatts does come from the potential offshore wind farms, that means dozens of potential fossil fuel plants won’t be needed, O’Malley said. “We were hoping the Biden administration would open up the spigots for offshore wind,” he added. Additionally, the Interior Department said it is initiating the environmental review of the nation’s third commercial-scale offshore wind project by announcing its notice of intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Ocean Wind LLC project. The facility, expected to be New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm, is proposed to be built about 15 miles off Atlantic City. The project will have a total capacity of 1,100 mw – enough to power about a half-million homes across New Jersey. The project is being developed by Ørsted, with a partial interest from the Public Service Enterprise Group. It is not expected to be operational until 2025.

Orsted to link a huge offshore wind farm to ‘renewable’ hydrogen production – Danish energy company Orsted wants to construct a large-scale offshore wind farm in the North Sea and link it to so-called “renewable” hydrogen production on the European mainland, with the project garnering support from several major industrial firms. Under the proposals, which were outlined on Wednesday, Orsted would develop a 2 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind facility and 1 GW of electrolyzer capacity, with the company claiming its plans would result in “one of the world’s largest renewable hydrogen plants to be linked to industrial demand.” The SeaH2Land development – which is supported by companies including ArcelorMittal, Yara and Dow – would also include 45 kilometers of hydrogen pipelines between Belgium and the Netherlands. The electrolyzer part of the project – to be built in two 500 megawatt phases – would use electricity from the wind farm to produce hydrogen. Among other things, partners involved in the development need to undertake a full feasibility study of SeaH2Land, while Orsted has yet to take a final investment decision. If all goes smoothly and the project gets the green light, however, both portions of the electrolyzer could be up and running by 2030. “As the world looks to decarbonise, it’s paramount that we act now to secure the long-term competitiveness of European industry in a green economy,” Martin Neubert, Orsted’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement. Described by the International Energy Agency as a “versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. If the electricity used in the process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some describe it as “green” or “renewable” hydrogen. The last few years have seen a number of businesses take an interest in projects connected to renewable hydrogen, while major economies such as the European Union have laid out plans to install at least 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzers by 2030. In March, a major green hydrogen facility in Germany started operations. The “WindH2” project, as it’s known, involves German steel giant Salzgitter, E.ON subsidiary Avacon and Linde, a firm specializing in engineering and industrial gas.

counter early research on large turbines, bird deaths — Friday, April 2, 2021 — Larger wind turbines are not to blame for bird deaths at wind farms, despite claims in earlier research, according to a new federal study.

After local pushback, Indiana bill on wind, solar standards takes a ‘180 degree turn’ – A bill that would have overridden local ordinances that restrict or prohibit wind power in Indiana has taken a “180 degree turn” after pushback from local officials. HB 1381 would establish statewide standards for how close wind and solar projects can be to other properties. But a new amendment would allow county and local governments to maintain restrictive ordinances, while also offering a hefty incentive for abandoning them. The bill was amended in the Senate Utilities hearing Thursday morning to include the option for counties to adopt “renewable energy districts.” Essentially, these districts would provide a space for governments to approve wind projects – if a group of property owners want the turbines on their land – while maintaining local control over their siting. The key is that the bill no longer requires localities to change their standards or approve projects as the previous iteration did. Instead, it dangles a carrot for them to do so. The amended bill establishes a one-time funding source for these local governments that could bring in as much as $3,000 per megawatt capacity of the wind project. One wind turbine alone has a capacity of 2.5 to 3 megawatts, meaning a wind project of multiple acres and dozens of turbines could bring in a significant boost to a local economy, legislators say. This funding is an important bridge between lawmakers and local officials who have been concerned about wind projects’ impacts on nearby property values, said Sen. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, who authored the 47-page amendment. “It allows some dollars to come in to help compensate the neighbors of those projects,” he said in the hearing. “We felt that was key.”

Solar energy chasing nuclear capacity in Ohio Solar energy is poised to challenge nuclear power as the third-largest source of electricity generation in Ohio, according to a new analysis.The Buckeye state is in the midst of a solar boom, with dozens of large projects in various stages of development, despite political headwinds. The latest approvals this month by the Ohio Power Siting Board pushed the state’s approved solar project pipeline to about 2.1 gigawatts, with another 4.3 gigawatts’ worth of projects pending before regulators.If all of those projects are completed, the state’s annual potential solar output would total about 14 million megawatt-hours – closing in on the roughly 17 million MWh capacity from the state’s two nuclear power plants.That’s according to a new analysis by Ohio University policy analyst Gilbert Michaud and University of Wyoming economist Christelle Khalaf. The report, which was commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council, takes into account differences in the two sources’ capacity factors – how output varies due to weather, repairs, maintenance and other conditions. The report comes as state lawmakers consider the latest set of bills to further hinder solar and wind development in the state, and as NRDC and others try to push back on a false narrative that nuclear power offers the only significant potential for large-scale carbon-free electricity in the state.Ohio’s solar queue has almost tripled since last year. Driving the expansion of proposed solar projects has been a demand for clean energy by multiple large corporations, as well as ambitious clean energy targets by other states in the PJM grid region, according to Jason Rafeld, executive director of the Utility Scale Solar Energy Coalition. “Unlike states east of us, Ohio has abundant open, flat and dry land that is ideal for solar farms,” Rafeld said during recent legislative testimony. And costs for utility-scale solar have come down 90% since 2009, he noted, making it competitive with any fuel source.

Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar power – While President Joe Biden moves to expand the use of renewable energy nationwide, the Texas Legislature is doing the opposite, adding fees on solar and wind electricity production in the state in hopes of boosting fossil fuels.Among the reforms of the state’s electric grid following last month’s deadly winter storms, Republicans in the Texas Senate have included new fees aimed at solar and wind companies that Democrats warn would damage the state’s standing as a national leader on renewable energy production, particularly wind power.State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said while wind and solar have expanded in Texas, those are “unreliable” sources of energy because they cannot be called up at a moment’s notice during an emergency like the freeze in February.To correct that, Schwertner said his bill will give the state’s grid monitor authority to create fees for solar and wind. As it stands now, he said billions of dollars in federal subsidies to wind and solar companies have “tilted” the market too much to benefit those sources of energy, and he aims to re-balance it.Yet fossil fuels also receive government subsidies of roughly $20 billion a year, according to some estimates.Democrats in the Senate say raising fees on green energy would be a step in the wrong direction for a state that has done well in developing wind and solar. Over the last decade, renewable energy has surged past coal and nuclear power to become the state’s second-leading source of electrical power, after natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.“This section could actually be detrimental to renewables,” said State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio. TEXAS GRID REFORMS

• The Texas Senate on Monday passed a major set of reforms for the state’s electrical system. The legislation next goes to the Texas House for consideration. If both chambers pass identical bills, it can go to Gov. Greg Abbott for his approval. Here are some key elements of that bill.
• Weatherization: Would require power companies and energy producers to weatherize facilities, including transmission lines, at their own expense to assure they can stand up to extreme freezing temperatures.
• Wind and Solar fees: Would direct the state’s grid manager to charge solar and wind producers for not being reliable enough to help more during winter storms.
• Rolling outage drills: Would require a test run of how rolling outage operations work. During winter storms, attempts to turn off power temporarily turned into days-long outages because of mistakes and technical glitches.
• Prohibit wholesale electric index plans: Would end wholesale electric plans that resulted in some homeowners getting hit with astronomical electric bills
• Emergency price maximums: During electricity emergencies, would allow maximum pricing for electricity to last only 12 hours rather that going on for days.
• Emergency alert system: Would create an alert system to notify Texans when power outages are anticipated.

Analysis reveals nearly 200 died in Texas cold storm and blackouts, almost double the official count – The deaths of nearly 200 people are linked to February’s cold snap and blackouts, a Houston Chronicle analysis reveals, making the natural disaster one of the worst in Texas this past century. The tally, which is nearly double the state’s official count, comes from an investigation of reports from medical examiners, justices of the peace and Department of State Health Services, as well as lawsuits and news stories.The state count, which is preliminary, has yet to incorporate some deaths already flagged by medical examiners as storm-related. The 194 deaths identified by the Chronicle so far include at least 100 cases of hypothermia that killed people in their homes or while exposed to the elements, at least 16 carbon monoxide poisonings of residents who used dangerous methods for heat and at least 22 Texans who died when medical devices failed without power or who were unable to seek live-saving care because of the weather.Sixteen deaths were from other causes, such as fires or vehicle wrecks, while the remaining 40 were attributed by authorities to the storm without listing a specific cause.“This is almost double the death toll from Hurricane Harvey,” said State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas. “There was no live footage of flooded homes, or roofs being blown off, or tidal surges, but this was more deadly and devastating than anything we’ve experienced in modern state history.”The toll is almost certain to grow in coming weeks as death investigators in the state’s most populous counties clear a backlog in cases from the cold snap. The Travis County medical examiner alone is investigating more than 80 deaths between Feb. 13 and Feb. 20.

Texas House passes numerous bills to overhaul state’s power grid | KEYE – Days after the Texas Senate beat them to the punch by passing a bill requiring weatherization and a statewide alert system for power outages, the House passed a slew of power grid bills overlapping with the upper chamber counterpart legislation Wednesday.The lower chamber passed a total of six power grid bills, which cover topics that are already part of the unanimously-passed Senate Bill 3, which will now be sent to the Senate.State representatives passed House Bill 10, which deals with the leadership structure of the independent organization charged with overseeing the power grid – ERCOT, currently.A day after the Texas Senate passed a wide-ranging power grid bill, the House is considering a number of such bills on their own during Tuesday’s floor session.This bill requires the board to have at least three governor appointees, one lieutenant governor appointee, and one house speaker appointee, in addition to the 11 other members already outlined in current code.These members will serve staggered two-year terms, and must be a resident of the state.House Bill 11 outlines weatherization requirements for utility providers.Unlike its Senate counterpart, the House bill did not spell out penalties for those in violation of these requirements, but an amendment was added that authorized the Public Utility Commission of Texas to hand down penalties for not complying with this law.”We know lack of weatherization was not the only issue that resulted in the electrical failures, but it certainly was a part of the issue,” said state Rep. Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, and the bill author.The House passed HB 11 unanimously.

Come Clean – Low Carbon Fuel Policies and How They’re Changing the Transportation Sector — As part of the Paris Agreement and other regional sustainability goals, countries across the globe are formulating strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The resultant policies target numerous different areas such as stationary emissions, electricity production, and transportation fuel sourcing. Within the transportation sector, one aspect that has spurred quite a bit of investment relates to reducing the carbon intensity of transportation fuels. The “low carbon fuel” policies that are in place today, coupled with those that are being evaluated for the future, have the potential to displace a sizeable portion of the petroleum-based fuels in the regions where they are adopted. In today’s blog, we begin a series on low carbon fuel policies, the mechanisms being evaluated to meet increasingly stringent regulations, and the impact these regulations could have on refined-products markets. Given the global focus on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), it’s only natural that folks in the business of producing, transporting, processing, and refining hydrocarbons need to stay abreast of what’s going on. We’ve been helping out in that regard by writing a number of blogs on GHG-related topics, including series on ESG and hydrogen. There’s so much more to discuss, though, especially on the increasing number of laws and regulations being implemented in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere that are aimed at decarbonizing the transportation sector. With that in mind, we thought it would make sense to undertake a blog series that delves into these efforts in detail – after all, they already are changing how refiners do business and will have only greater effects going forward. Today, we’ll start with an overview of different regulatory mechanisms that have been adopted and are being discussed to reduce GHG emissions from on-road transportation fuel use. As we noted in the introduction, GHG emission-reduction policies can cover a broad list of targets – everything from electricity production; home heating; stationary emissions from industrial facilities, buildings, and landfills; and fuel usage in the transportation sector. In this series, our focus is on-road transportation fuels – i.e., the gasoline and diesel you put in your cars and trucks – and especially on one aspect of these fuels: their Carbon Intensity (CI) value. (More on CI in a moment.)

California to Test Whether Big Batteries Can Stop Summer Blackouts – With summer’s heat approaching, California’s plan for avoiding a repeat of last year’s blackouts hinges on a humble savior – the battery. Giant versions of the same technology that powers smart phones and cars are being plugged into the state’s electrical grid at breakneck speed, with California set to add more battery capacity this year than all of China, according to BloombergNEF. It will be the biggest test yet of whether batteries are reliable enough to sustain a grid largely powered by renewables. Last year, when the worst heat wave in a generation taxed California’s power system and plunged millions into darkness in the first rolling blackouts since the Enron crisis, many blamed the state’s aggressive clean-energy push and its reliance on solar power. Should a heat wave strike again this summer, it will be up to batteries save the day. Their success or failure may even have implications for President Joe Biden’s ambitious plan to achieve a carbon-free electricity system by 2035 – which would require massive battery deployment and the expansion of renewable energy systems across the nation. Biden’s long-awaited infrastructure plan, unveiled this week, includes a tax credit for grid-scale batteries, according to U.S. Energy Storage Association. They’re part of his larger effort not just to shift to renewable power but to make the aging electric grid more reliable. “This is going to be the preview summer for batteries in California, and we want to make sure this initial chapter is as successful as possible,’’ said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the grid across most of the state. By this August, the state will have 1,700 megawatts of new battery capacity — enough to power 1.3 million homes and, in theory, avert a grid emergency on the scale of last year’s.

Coal Is In Terminal Decline, But China’s Consumption Is Climbing – Once one of the world’s cheapest and most abundant fuel sources, coal is now struggling to compete against clean energy alternatives that are now cost-competitive (both solar and wind power became cheaper than coal in most of the world back in 2019). At the same time, the flood of low-emissions natural gas from the United States shale revolution has also driven down demand for coal. But all of that was before the global pandemic tore through the global economy and transformed our collective priorities. We’ve seen this before. Countries often make lofty climate goals and commit to leaving coal behind until crisis hits – and then they run back to their old stalwart fuel source. It happened to Japan after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster drove the country away from nuclear energy. It’s happening to Mexico as the nation scrambles to shore up its energy security in the face of an economic downturn. Canada considered a return to coal to fill the economic holes left by the demise of its oil sands. And now China is leading the charge back to coal in an effort to establish energy security and sovereignty in the face of economic downturn and pandemic fears.According to a report from Power Engineering this week, “China has emerged far and away as the dominant driver in [coal’s] rising relevance for the developing world.” While the world’s coal consumption dropped by 4 percent, China’s gained 2 percent over the last year. “Worldwide,” the report continues, “China now accounts for 53 percent of the overall coal-fired generation portfolio.” China’s rise in coal production and consumption is not limited to domestic activity. At the same time that Beijing has been committing to loftier climate goals than ever before, pledging to go carbon neutral by 2060 and to reach peak emissions in just a decade, it has ramped up coal production both at home and abroad, where at least a portion of those increased emissions will be attributed to other country’s carbon footprints. Two years and an eternity ago, Yale Environment 360 predicted China’s return to coal and warned that the country’s ambitious overseas development plans will directly imperil global climate initiatives. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a colossal infrastructure plan that could transform the economies of nations around the world,” the article stated. “But with its focus on coal-fired power plants, the effort could obliterate any chance of reducing emissions and tip the world into catastrophic climate change.” China is not just re-emerging as a coal-fired world power. Beijing has also positioned itself at theforefront of the global clean energy movement and China holds a monopoly on many of the rare earth metals that the clean energy production chain relies on. To characterize China as a one-dimensional climate destroyer or climate savior is clearly a massive and disingenuous oversimplification of the issue. While these kinds of flattened portrayals are common, the reality is much more complex, and the nuances of it are extremely important, not just for China, but for the globe. As the world’s second-largest economy (for now) and largest greenhouse gas emitter by a massive margin, China’s success or failure in its climate pledges is of paramount importance to the entire world. A return to coal is not the whole story, but it’s a seriously worrying development.

Coal Country Races to Shield Itself From Biden’s Climate Plan –Coal’s slow downfall is gaining momentum across the U.S. as clean energy becomes cheaper and wins widespread support, but lawmakers in mining states from Wyoming to West Virginia are determined to fight back with a series of roadblocks to President Joe Biden’s plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Seeking to prolong the lifespan of an industry that’s vital to local economies, at least five states are seeking to pass legislation that would give them weapons such as bigger hurdles to shut coal-fired plants, a war chest for potential legal battles, more power to state regulators over utilities, tax cuts and cheaper state insurance for power stations. The race to shield coal country from an energy transition that Biden contends will generate jobs and wealth in everything from solar-panel manufacturing to wind power generation highlights the political complexity of the shift to renewables. Even some Democrats in coal-producing states support the efforts to protect people’s livelihoods and the funding of schools and other public services in areas that derive income from the dirtiest fossil fuel. Meanwhile, utilities say the measures will drive up costs for ratepayers, while environmental groups say they’re only slowing, not stopping, the eventual move away from coal.“It’s not planning for the future,” said Dennis Wamsted, an analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “It’s protecting the past.”In Colstrip, a town in eastern Montana founded by the Northern Pacific Railway in 1924 to provide coal for steam locomotives, a power plant supplied by local mines has long been crucial to the area’s economy. That’s why Mark Sweeney, a Democratic state senator, supports proposals aimed specifically at keeping it open. Even though he recognizes climate change is a serious issue and that his stance makes him an outlier in his party, he says he worries about the devastating impact of a shutdown to the community. If it shuts, “it’s a ghost town,” he said. Sweeney, who hopes the Colstrip plant can run for at least another 10 years, also argues that few emissions are produced delivering coal from the nearby mine, and that’s much more efficient than shipping the fuel to power plants in other states or across the world. “The last one that should be shut down is the one that’s sitting on a coal pile,” he said by phone. “We have a whole lot of coal.”In Wyoming, the country’s biggest coal producer, the Republican-dominated legislature is considering a bill that would require the Public Service Commission to assume that early retirement of coal-fired power plants isn’t in the state’s best interest, making it harder for utilities to shut facilities they’ve determined aren’t economic. Another proposal would set aside half a million dollars for legal challengesagainst other states that pass laws restricting the use of coal.

Senate passes bill with requirements aimed at keeping coal-fired plants operating as long as possible – The West Virginia Senate has unanimously passed a bill that would require coal-fired power plants owned by public electric utilities in the state to keep at least 30 days of coal supply under contract for the lifespan of those plants.Senate Bill 542, which now goes before the House of Delegates, would also require public electric utilities to give notice to the West Virginia Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, state Public Service Commission and the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Government and Finance before announcing the retirement or proposed shutdown of a an electricity-generating unit.The legislation, passed without debate on the Senate floor Wednesday, is a gutted version of the original bill that would have made further-reaching reforms to keep West Virginia’s dwindling fleet of coal plants operating as long as possible. Those reforms included requiring in-state power producers to maintain 2019 coal consumption levels and file compliance plans every three years with the long dormant state Public Energy Authority specifying their fuel supply and how 2019 coal consumption levels would be maintained.West Virginia Coal Association and United Mine Workers of America representatives enthusiastically endorsed the original version of the bill to the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee, but representatives from Appalachian Power, FirstEnergy and Dominion Energy as well as state Public Service Commission Chairman Charlotte Lane all expressed reservations with the bill.Appalachian Power and FirstEnergy representatives told the committee that the bill was uneconomic and would introduce unnecessary costs for the companies that they would then have to transfer to ratepayers.The result was a new version of the bill that would mandate power producers maintain a 30-day fuel supply onsite instead of a 90-day supply to come closer to what representatives from Appalachian Power, FirstEnergy and Dominion Energy told the energy committee was the supply amount they currently keep onsite.

West Virginia gov, company ordered to pay $6.8M in coal feud (AP) – A federal judge in Delaware has ordered West Virginia Gov. James Justice and one of his family-owned coal companies to pay $6.8 million for breaching a contract with a Pennsylvania coal exporter.The ruling was handed down Monday in a lawsuit filed in 2018 by Pennsylvania-based Xcoal Energy & Resources.Xcoal claimed that the billionaire coal magnate and two of his companies, Roanoke, Virginia-based Bluestone Energy Sales Corp. and Southern Coal Corp., failed to fulfill a 2017 agreement to deliver hundreds of thousands of tons of coal for shipment overseas.The Justice companies argued that Xcoal breached the agreement in several ways, and that it has a history of being sued by other coal companies for failing to complete shipments and then deflecting blame.U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Stark ruled that Xcoal had proven by a preponderance of the evidence that Bluestone was the party that breached the coal supply agreement, and that the defendants failed to prove any of their counterclaims.Stark determined that Xcoal was entitled to slightly more than $6.8 million in damages from Justice and Southern Coal.Xcoal and Bluestone entered into an agreement in 2017 under which Bluestone would supply Xcoal with 720,000 net tons of metallurgical grade coal from a mine in Bishop, West Virginia. Southern Coal and Justice guaranteed the payment and performance obligations of Bluestone, a pass-through entity with no assets.The agreement entitled Xcoal to a $9.88 per ton discount from market price, with deliveries to be made in monthly installments of about 30,000 tons over 24 months.The companies quickly found themselves at odds over the timing and method of rail shipments, as well as the sampling and quality of the coal being delivered. As a result, Xcoal received less than 24,000 tons of coal over seven months between November 2017 and May 2018, when Xcoal filed its lawsuit, leaving more than 696,000 tons undelivered.The agreement did not specify whether Xcoal or Bluestone was to arrange for empty Norfolk Southern railcars to be brought to the mine.Noting that responsibility for obtaining the empty rail cars was the critical issue in the case, the judge found that Bluestone was responsible for getting the empty railcars and it breached the agreement by failing to do so. Stark said Xcoal was entitled to damages equaling $9.98 for each ton of undelivered coal, offset by a payment of $65,000 that it had withheld.Lawyers for Justice and his two companies argued that Xcoal and its owner, Ernie Thrasher, had placed unreasonable commercial demands for coal shipments from Bluestone that went beyond the scope of the agreement. They also said Xcoal unreasonably rejected shipments of coal. The trial in the case began last August but was quickly knocked off course when one of Justice’s attorneys informed Stark after opening statements about an anonymous letter he had received earlier that morning. The one-page letter bore a Pittsburgh postmark and was signed “XCOAL WHISTLE BLOWER.” The letter alleged that Thrasher had settled an earlier lawsuit by signing a new coal sales agreement with Bluestone with no intention of meeting Xcoal’s contractual obligations. It claimed that Thrasher’s plan was to force Bluestone to default through delayed coal shipments and withheld payments so Xcoal could collect a $10 million guarantee from Justice.The letter also suggested that Thrasher contrived to not accept shipments from Bluestone by obtaining false lab reports about the chemical composition of the coal, that Xcoal had someone “inside” coal-testing company SGS, and that Rick Taylor, an Xcoal consultant, directed the lab to falsify results. The letter also claimed that Norfolk Southern granted favored treatment and special rates to Xcoal.

Sierra Club Warns State Could Wind Up Subsidizing Coal Mining – Innocuous legislation enabling the state to take over regulation of the coal mining industry would cost Tennessee more money and could create environmental problems, according to the Sierra Club. House Bill 90 carried by Rep. Dennis Powers, R-Jacksboro, and Senate Bill 742, co-sponsored by Sen. Ken Yager, R-Kingston, is designed to clean up legislation passed in 2018 to put coal mining regulations under state authority, shifting oversight from the federal Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement. The House Agriculture and Natural Resources Subcommittee passed the legislation Tuesday morning without discussion. The matter is to be taken up Wednesday in the Senate Energy, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee Powers told lawmakers Tennessee is the only state of 23 with surface mining that doesn’t have its own regulatory program, but he acknowledged a review of Tennessee’s plan by the federal government makes it clear that changes must be made before it takes over for the feds. The federal government must be able to determine that the state’s program is “at least as stringent as federal law” and that the state can administer and operate it, said Powers, who passed the initial legislation in 2018. House Majority Leader William Lamberth, who is sponsoring the bill for Gov. Bill Lee’s Administration, told Tennessee Lookout the state is simply working out the details for taking over regulation from the federal government. He was not concerned about the possibility the legislation could cost Tennessee at least $870,000 to create a regulatory division.Tennessee has gotten about $2.3 million in federal grants to set up the regulatory structure. The Tennessee Chapter of the Sierra Club, however, contends the state has done such a poor job of preparing to regulate coal it should leave the program up to the federal government and avoid the expense of hiring people to run the program. In addition, it says Tennessee could be forced to pay the costs of a coal mine shutdown when companies go bankrupt in an industry that is barely alive. “This is, frankly, irresponsible for people to be voting to set up a program that is, A, going to cost us money and, B, lead us to having greater liabilities in regard to cleanup of mines that are now going to be bankrupt,”

Alabama mine workers plan strike against Warrior Met Coal – The United Mine Workers of America is planning to go on strike at Warrior Met Coal starting at 10:30 a.m. April 1.Brookwood-based Warrior Met Coal is one of central Alabama’s largest public companies.The group cited unfair labor practices involving more than 1,100 workers at all of the company’s operations. The strike notice involves the No. 4, 5 and 7 mines as well as the Central Shop. “These productive, professional miners at Warrior Met mined the coal that meant the company could become successful again,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said. “And Warrior Met has capitalized on their hard work, earning tens of millions in profits for their Wall Street owners. They have even rewarded upper management with bonuses of up to $35,000 in recent weeks.” Warrior Met Coal leaders offered in a statement they have continued attempts to reach an agreement on the contract that ends April 1. They said employees are valued and every effort was made to keep employees and their livelihoods secure during the pandemic. The UMWA has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board relating to Warrior Met’s conduct during negotiations. The union will cover dues-paying members with health care coverage and assistance payments during strike duty. “Despite repeated attempts by our negotiating team to bridge the differences we have at the bargaining table, Warrior Met is going backwards,” Roberts said. “We have always been ready to reach a fair agreement that recognizes the sacrifices our members and their families made to keep this company alive. At this point, Warrior Met is not.” Warrior Met Coal said it respects the decision to strike and will continue negotiations in an effort to find a resolution.

Cap the coal ash or truck it out? ADEM holds public hearing in Shelby County – In Shelby County Thursday night, ADEM gave people in the community a chance to speak up about what they think should be done with the coal ash at Alabama Power’s Gaston steam plant in Shelby County. The meeting is the second public hearing this week. “That stuff is poison,” says long time Wilsonville resident Will McCarty. McCarty is one of many community members hoping ADEM doesn’t give Alabama Power the permit the company is seeking. “To cap or not to cap the coal ash pond?” is the question. Coal ash is the by product of burning coal at power plants. Supporters of capping like Blake Hardwich of the Energy Institute of Alabama, say capping is what’s best for the community. “Safe, secure, technically reliable, and sound to close in place instead of trucking, which is another option. Trucking and excavating coal ash and taking it through state highways and in communities where you could cause even more environmental damage,” says Hardwich. On the other hand, some people in the community would like to see the coal ash moved…. Citing research showing coal ash leaks into groundwater around its ponds and creates public health problems. “It’s irresponsible, and so we’re here to speak up to ADEM and ask them to tell Alabama Power to move this ash off of our waterways,” says Justinn Overton, executive director of Coosa Riverkeeper. Overton says the best outcome would be moving it. “In other states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina…. this ash is being moved in a reasonable time period and under budget to upland lined modern landfills away from our waterways,” she says. One by one, people were allowed to tell ADEM representatives their concerns. ADEM will continue accepting questions until April 8th at 5 pm, and responses to the questions will be delivered when ADEM decides what will be done.

Study Shows Bias, Conflicts Of Interest Among Doctors Who Read Black Lung X-rays -Doctors hired by coal companies in black lung cases are far less likely to diagnose the disease in X-rays than are independent doctors or those who are hired by coal miners, a new study has concluded, pointing to conflicts of interest in the system that sick miners use to receive assistance.The doctors who worked for coal companies to read the chest X-rays of miners found an absence of the disease nearly 85% of the time, according to the authors of the study, published Friday by the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health’s Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. In contrast, the doctors whose clients were coal miners found an absence of black lung a little more than 51% of the time.“The more frequently a physician is hired by the employer/mine-operator to provide a medical opinion related to workers compensation cases for black lung disease, the more likely that physician will not identify black lung disease on a chest X-ray,” the study concluded. “The opposite is true too.”The study, published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, looked at 264 specialists in pulmonology and radiology who reviewed X-rays for more than 37,000 miners from 2000 to 2013. The study examined more than 7,000 court decisions in black lung claims cases from 2002 to 2019 to determine who hired the doctors involved.The study found that coal companies paid their doctors up to 10 times more compared to doctors hired by miners or their advocates.“The miners are not paying that much to people reading X-rays on their behalf,” said Robert Cohen, a pulmonologist at the University of Illinois Chicago and one of the study’s authors.Cohen said that the general market fee for physicians who read X-rays for black lung runs $75 to $100, while those hired by coal companies can be paid as much as $750 to $1,000.“It’s just what the market will bear,” he said. “Folks that have a lot of money can pay a lot of money to get the readings that they desire.”Central Appalachia has seen a resurgence of black lung disease in coal miners in recent years, particularly in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. A 2018 federal study found that 1 in 5 Central Appalachian miners had the disease, versus 1 in 10 miners nationwide. The study Cohen co-wrote illustrates the difficulty facing coal miners in obtaining federal workers’ compensation benefits for black lung disease, and the absence of a “gold standard” for determining who has it. Its authors recommend a series of changes to eliminate conflicts of interest and make the system fairer.

EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document (Reuters) – Experts tasked with assessing whether the European Union should label nuclear power as a green investment will say that the fuel qualifies as sustainable, according to a document reviewed by Reuters. The European Commission is attempting to finish its sustainable finance taxonomy, which will decide which economic activities can be labelled as a sustainable investment in the EU, based on whether they meet strict environmental criteria. Brussels’ expert advisors last year split over whether nuclear power deserved a green label, recognising that while it produces very low planet-warming CO2 emissions, more analysis was needed on the environmental impact of radioactive waste disposal. The Commission asked the Joint Research Centre (JRC), its scientific expert arm, to report on the issue. A draft of the JRC report, seen by Reuters and due to be published next week, said nuclear deserves a green label. “The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies,” it said. Storage of nuclear waste in deep geologic formations is deemed “appropriate and safe”, it said, citing countries including France and Finland in the advanced stages of developing such sites. Two expert committees will scrutinise the JRC’s findings for three months, before the Commission takes a final decision.

White House Wants Nuclear in Clean Energy Mandate, Gina McCarthy Says – Nuclear energy should be one of the power sources eligible for a national clean energy mandate sought by the White House as part of its infrastructure plan, presidential climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters. McCarthy’s remarks on Thursday came amid concern about the carbon-free fuel source from progressives and some environmentalists who have qualms about radioactive waste and uranium mining for reactor fuel. Inclusion of nuclear in the so-called Clean Energy Standard, which requires the generation of clean power, could be a boon for companies including NuScale Power LLC, TerraPower LLC, Westinghouse Electric Co., General Electric Co., and Exelon Corp. “The CES is going to be fairly robust and it is going to be inclusive,” McCarthy said on the call, adding that carbon capture, which also has drawn the ire of some green groups, will be included in the emerging energy proposal as well. The White House wants the clean energy requirement, which was included in the $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan President Joe Biden unveiled Wednesday, to be passed as part of whatever bill emerges as a vehicle in Congress, McCarthy said. But some analysts have questioned whether such a proposal would be allowed under the budget reconciliation process that allows passage of some tax and spending legislation on a simple majority vote, which is how Democrats are expected to attempt to pass the infrastructure bill.

Nation’s 1st advanced nuclear reactor could operate near Tri-Cities under new agreement – What could be the nation’s first commercial advanced nuclear power reactor would be built and operated near Richland under a partnership agreement signed Thursday. X-energy, of Rockville, Md., will work with Energy Northwest of Richland and Grant County PUD to develop, build and operate an 80-megawatt reactor, the Xe-100, on land already leased by Energy Northwest at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington. Advanced reactors are intended to be designed with enhanced safety features and a smaller footprint for their modular design concept. Their smaller size and ability to quickly ramp up and down makes them a perfect complement to intermittent renewable resources, such as wind and solar, that rely on weather conditions to generate power, according to the TRi Energy Partnership. Such reactors can help the nation transition from fossil fuels, it said. The TRi Energy Partnership could be operating a reactor within seven years, and the project could be scaled up to four-reactor, 320-megawatt power plant. “We hold the future of nuclear energy in this country on our shoulders here at Energy Northwest and the Tri-Cities, along with our partners,” said Brad Sawatzke, Energy Northwest chief executive officer. Energy Northwest now operates the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power reactor, the Columbia Generating Station, 10 miles north of Richland in Eastern Washington. The reactor, which has operated since 1984, can produce 1,207 megawatts, enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle and its metro area. The X-energy reactor is expected to be placed at a site previously licensed when Energy Northwest, then called the Washington Public Power Supply System, or WPPSS, planned to build three nuclear reactors north of Richland. Two of the plants were canceled. The site has access to the transmission grid and utilities and has been well characterized for nuclear development, which should should speed up the environmental review and current licensing requirements, Sell said.

New Mexico sues US nuclear commission over waste storage plan – New Mexico on Monday announced a lawsuit against the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), alleging insufficient oversight of a planned nuclear fuel storage site in the state.The facility, proposed by New Jersey-based company Holtec International, would house tons of used fuel accrued from nuclear power plants nationwide. In its complaint, the state argued the federal commission overstepped the bounds of its power and “rubber-stamped” Holtec’s proposal. The state also accused the agency of blocking challenges from institutions that objected to the proposal. “I am taking legal action because I want to mitigate dangers to our environment and to other energy sectors,” Attorney General Hector Balderas (D) said in a statement. “It is fundamentally unfair for our residents to bear the risks of open ended uncertainty.” “The NRC’s mandate does not include policy setting or altering the public debate and emphatically cheerleading nuclear industry projects. Yet it is doing both to the detriment of New Mexico,” the complaint states. The complaint also identifies what it says are numerous potential safety hazards if the facility is built. “There are at least 18 abandoned and plugged wells located on the property that could contribute to the formation of sink holes if the casing on these wells has been compromised. There is one plugged saltwater disposal well located north-cast of the property boundary that could contribute to sinkhole formation and potential subsidence,” the complaint reads. “Additionally, ground subsidence related to potash mine workings, as has been documented in the region, must be evaluated in greater detail as a potential risk to the stability of the [consolidated interim storage facility] CISF facility.” New Mexico is currently the site of the only federal underground site housing nuclear waste in Carlsbad. The Holtec proposal is for a four-decade license to build a separate facility about 35 miles away, which would house spent fuel until a permanent solution could be identified. About 83,000 metric tons of spent fuel are currently housed in temporary facilities across nearly 40 states, according to The Associated Press. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has also vocally opposed the project, although it has drawn support from local officials in the southeastern part of the state, according to the AP.

I-95 reopened after truck carrying radioactive uranium compound crashes near Fayetteville – Interstate 95 reopened near Fayetteville about five hours after a truck carrying a radioactive uranium compound crashed. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol said the crash happened near Exit 58 (I-295) around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. Both sides of I-95 were closed until the northbound lanes reopened just before 2 p.m. The North Carolina Department of Transportation said the southbound side reopened around 4:30 p.m. NCSHP said they don’t believe there was a threat from the material involved in the crash. Troopers also said it doesn’t appear that there is a rupture or compromise of the containers involved.

Gov. Mike DeWine signs repeal of nuclear bailout, other parts of scandal-tainted House Bill 6 – – With little fanfare, Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation Wednesday dismantling two key parts of the corruption-ridden House Bill 6 that give billions in ratepayer dollars to energy companies.House Bill 128, which takes effect in 90 days, repeals part — though not all — of the law at the center of what authorities say is the largest bribery scheme in Ohio history.HB128 rescinds a $1 billion-plus financial bailout of the Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear power plants along Lake Erie.It also repeals a “decoupling” provision that allows FirstEnergy Corp. to collect a comparatively high amount of money from customers even in years when demand is down, and orders refunds for money already collected. As a result of HB128, FirstEnergy announced Wednesday it will refund customers $26 million collected under the “decoupling” policy between January 2020 and last month.The new law also revokes language from a different law making it easier for FirstEnergy to pass a state test meant to prevent utilities from making significantly excessive profits. House Bill 6, which DeWine signed in 2019 after a contentious battle, came under even more scrutiny starting last summer, when then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four allies were charged with using more than $60 million in FirstEnergy bribery money to secure the bill’s passage.HB128 passed the legislature with little opposition. One reason for that is that after Householder’s arrest, DeWine and a majority of state lawmakers called for the repeal of HB6. But another reason is that Energy Harbor, the former FirstEnergy subsidiary that now owns the nuclear plants, has lobbied for the option of turning down the bailout money because a federal regulatory ruling might otherwise make the subsidies a liability.During the debate over HB6, proponents of the legislation asserted that the Perry and Davis-Besse plants would close without a bailout. However, Energy Harbor has repeatedly refused to release any evidence showing that was the case. Several other parts of HB6 still remain in place, including provisions gutting Ohio’s energy-efficiency programs and renewable-energy mandates, as well as statewide subsidies for two coal plants — one in Indiana, one in Ohio — owned by a consortium of utility companies in the state.

Repealing subsidies to 2,176 MW of Ohio nuclear power leaves uncertainty – Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has signed House Bill 128, ending the customer-funded subsidies for two of Energy Harbor’s nuclear power plants, and leaving questions about the future of the 2,176 MW of carbon-free resources. Analysts and experts are mixed on whether replacement legislation to support the nuclear plants could emerge. DeWine signed HB 128 on March 31, which repealed key pieces of the highly controversial House Bill 6 that was tied to an alleged bribery scheme promoted by FirstEnergy and subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July 2020 announced charges related to a more than $60 million bribe paid to Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and his associates. Householder pleaded not guilty in the case and a trial is pending. Following a bankruptcy proceeding, FirstEnergy Solutions was renamed Energy Harbor, now a private company which owns the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants that received the subsidies, as well as three other nuclear power plants located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Former owner FirstEnergy Solutions argued financial support was required to keep Davis-Besse and Perry from retiring due to revenue shortfalls resulting from declining wholesale energy, capacity, and ancillary service market prices in the PJM Interconnection markets where the plants are located. The subsidy debate was heated, with opponents claiming the nuclear power plants did not require a financial boost. Ultimately, a referendum push to overturn the HB 6 legislation failed. “The nuclear subsidies included in HB 6 were unnecessary and unjustified, and only passed due to the alleged unprecedented corruption in the legislative process and referendum effort,” Todd Snitchler, president and CEO of merchant generator trade group Electric Power Supply Association, said in an emailed statement. It is unclear if a new effort to support the nuclear plants will emerge from the Ohio Legislature. The definition of power generation units at risk of retirement is that the are not expected to recover their avoidable costs from market revenues, which are a combination of energy and ancillary service revenues and capacity market revenues, according to Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor. Based on the IMM’s analysis in its 2020 State of the Market Report for PJM, no nuclear plants are considered to be at risk of retirement. “The single site nuclear plants, Davis Besse and Perry, receive a subsidy and are not expected to retire,” the IMM said in the report which was published before the subsidy was repealed. “We believe that nuclear subsidies will come back in some form,” Matt Williams, power market analyst with S&P Global Platts Analytics, said in an April 1 email. “Though with how slow the legislature has been moving on this issue, specifics and timing remain uncertain,” Williams added.

After financing xenophobic campaign, FirstEnergy deplores anti-Asian bigotry –There has been a terrifying surge in violence against Asians over the past year, prompting one Ohio company to take a stand on an issue it was arguably on the other side of in 2019. As Dave Anderson of the Energy and Policy institute flagged over the weekend, that’s a far cry from the tone of FirstEnergy-financed advertising during the 2019 fight over House Bill 6 – a $1.3 billion energy bailout that morphed into one of the biggest corruption scandals in Ohio history.After Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bailout law, FirstEnergy and related interests funded a furious fight to stop a citizen initiative to repeal it. Much of the campaign consisted ofbogus claims that the repeal effort was really a Chinese conspiracy to take over Ohio’s power grid. Some of the rhetoric in the million-dollar campaign might even have surpassed Trump’s.“They took our manufacturing jobs,” one spot ominously opens. “They shuttered our factories. Now they’re coming for our energy jobs. The Chinese government is quietly invading our electric grid.”As the ad makes these assertions, it flashes video of Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Communist Party function.In another ad meant to scare Ohioans from signing the petition to repeal the bailout, the FirstEnergy-funded effort again falsely linked bailout opponents to China.“Warning!” it said. “Don’t give your personal information to the Chinese government. Don’t sign their petition allowing China control over Ohio.”

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