- Colorado’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted unanimously on Monday to give preliminary approval to Xcel Energy’s Clean Energy Plan, which would see the utility close 660 MW of coal-fired generation a decade earlier than scheduled and shift to renewable resources.
- Under the plan, Xcel will close units 1 and 2 at the Comanche Generating Station in Pueblo and invest $2.5 billion in renewable energy and battery storage. The utility expects the plan to save ratepayers $213 million.
- In January, the utility solicited notably low bid prices for wind-plus-storage, $21/MWh, as well as $36/MWh for solar-plus-storage ($3.60 kwh for solar plus storage), some of the lowest bids for renewable energy plus storage on record.
- Despite these low bids, Xcel plans to substantially invest in purchasing gas 383 MW of gas plants
Xcel’s Clean Energy Plan is part of its years-long “steel for fuel” strategy in which the utility is shifting away from fossil fuel generation and investing in renewable energy. Last year, CEO Ben Fowke told Utility Dive the move is made possible by steeply declining prices for wind, solar and battery technologies.
“We’re looking at [wind prices] in the low teens to low 20s [in dollars/MWh] — not starting prices, but levelized across the 25-year life of the project,” he said. “That beats gas, even at today’s prices.”
By 2021, Xcel forecasts that wind will be its single biggest resource in terms of generation output. Environmentalists cheered approval of the plan that will help the utility get there.
“The plan is a clear rebuttal to the notion that we have to choose between affordable electricity rates and clean air,” said Zach Pierce, senior campaign representative for Colorado Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in a statement.
Retiring the coal units was “the most contentious part,” of the plan, according to the Pueblo Chieftain, which noted two out of the state’s three commissioners originally worried the plan relied too much on solar-plus-storage.
Coal made up 44% of Colorado’s electric generation last year, and the proposal would decrease that generation to 24%, according to the Denver Post.
Replacing that capacity does not appear difficult for the utility. Earlier this year, Xcel received over 400 proposals in response to its resource solicitation that returned record-breaking bids for storage-paired renewables. The utility plans to add 1.8 GW of renewables to its portfolio, including 1,100 MW of wind and 700 MW of solar to replace its coal-fired generation.
By 2026, the utility estimates 55% of Colorado’s electricity will be generated by renewables, dropping CO2 emissions 60% below the 2005 level, according to Sierra Club’s press release. The PUC is expected to release a written statement outlining its decision in September.
Utility Dive‘Steel for fuel’: Xcel CEO Ben Fowke on his utility’s move to a renewable-centric grid
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Discriminatory housing practices linked to higher pollution and asthma rates, new report finds: The findings link higher rates of asthma to historically redlined communities in California.
Communities subjected to discriminatory lending and mortgage practices decades ago now have higher rates of asthma, according to new research out Wednesday. These predominately low-income communities and communities of color also suffer from increased exposure to pollutants.
Redlining — the practice of denying loans or insurance to certain groups or neighborhoods over concerns that they might be at higher risk of default — has been banned for more than half a century. But the discriminatory practice played a major role in shaping modern neighborhoods, with a disproportionate impact on low-income people of color. And it may also be having a profound affect on contemporary health issues.
An analysis of eight California cities indicates that redlining left vulnerable groups at disproportionate risk of asthma and air pollution exposure. The new research from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) shows that residents in historically redlined communities are more than twice as likely as residents in other communities to make emergency room trips due to asthma.
Those same neighborhoods also have significantly higher levels of diesel particulate matter in their air, a component of diesel exhaust, which causes lung cancer and has been linked to bladder cancer. Decreased mental function and heart damage are also associated with the carcinogen, which effects ecology as well as people — diesel exhaust has been found to degrade the environment needed for honeybees.
“Redlining maps that were drawn 80 years ago, partially on the basis of race, are still predictive of not only who lives in a neighborhood, but also what kind of health problems they are experiencing,” Anthony Nardone, a Berkeley-UCSF medical student who led the analysis project, said in a statement.
The researchers traced the modern health trends back to redlining practices from decades ago. A direct culprit is the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), formed in 1933, which for years color-coded the risks associated with different neighborhoods across the country. Redlining itself comes from the red color assigned to grade D areas, or those deemed to be at the highest risk of default, while green was assigned to grade A neighborhoods.
Racial demographics played a significant role in these assignments, with “foreign-born” status among the factors taken into account. Income was another major factor; the restrictions ultimately allowed for the government to deny home loans to large swathes of people, with 239 cities overall impacted.
As the years passed and redlining became illegal, the authors of the study note that some cities have shifted demographically, with gentrification playing a role in slightly altering neighborhoods. But black and Latinx people disproportionately still live in the red zones — with serious health implications.
The researchers used historic redlining maps from San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Diego for the analysis. They compared the HOLC ratings to both current air quality and health outcome data results for each city, ultimately finding that neighborhoods once coded as red visited emergency rooms 2.4 times more often than those once coded as green. Diesel particulate matter measurements were also nearly twice as high in the formerly red neighborhoods.
While diesel particulate matter has been linked to asthma, the researchers said other factors cannot be ruled out in assessing asthma rates, with poverty and crime rates among the variables that need to be accounted for. Regardless, the authors said that the connection between redlining and the current health and pollution trends is a strong one.
“The persistence of the legacy of redlining, in terms of its current effect on asthma healthcare utilization, was striking,” said John Balmes, director of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, in a statement.
The full report is not published yet, but Nardone told ThinkProgress the researchers plan to submit to a journal by the end of June.
Black and Latinx Americans suffer more from dirty air but the EPA is charging ahead with rollbacks
The California study is only the latest to show the lingering effects of redlining. A 2018 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that the practice has left historically redlined communities worse off economically today. Moreover, contemporary research has shown that people of color are often steered by real estate agents towards more polluted neighborhoods, even though redlining is banned.
And the disproportionate impact of pollution and other environmental issues on low-income communities and people of color has long been documented. A March study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that black and Latinx Americans often suffer from “pollution inequality” as they breathe air largely contaminated by their white counterparts, who typically generate more of the pollution. Separate findings by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have shown that air pollution overwhelmingly impacts people of color more than white people.
Many proponents of bold climate action, like the congressional Green New Deal resolution, are pushing for environmental justice to be a key component of any major proposal — putting the needs of frontline communities, including those impacted by pollution and poor air quality, at the forefront. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has overseen the mass rollback of environmental protections meant to safeguard human health; that includes efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act, the U.S. federal law controlling pollution at a national level.
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May 21st, 2019 by World Resources Institute
Originally published on the World Resources Institute blog.
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Every month, climate scientists make new discoveries that advance our understanding of climate change’s causes and impacts. The research gives a clearer picture of the threats we already face and explores what’s to come if we don’t reduce emissions at a quicker pace
Our blog series, “This Month in Climate Science,” offers a snapshot of the month’s significant scientific literature, compiled from some of the leading peer-reviewed journals. This edition explores studies published in April 2019. (To get these updates delivered right to your inbox, sign up for our “Hot Science” newsletter.)
- Warming may be greater than expected: Scientists previously assumed that doubling the world’s pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels would cause 2-4.5 degrees C of warming. However, Science reported that the latest models developed for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment found that this concentration of carbon dioxide would lead to 5 degrees C of warming or more. If this preliminary analysis proves to be correct, climate impacts would be even more severe for rising concentrations of carbon dioxide than previously thought.
- Underestimated emissions from Canadian oil sands: Using aircraft measurements, scientists found that annual emissions from Canadian oil sands’ surface mining operations are 64% higher than previous data suggests, and that emissions from the Canadian oil sands overall are 30% higher. The authors said that greenhouse gas inventory guidelines may need to be updated.
- Permafrost emissions higher than previously assumed: Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas. Scientists have long assumed that melting permafrost emits carbon dioxide and methane, but only negligible amounts of nitrous oxide. Flying over permafrost on the north slope of Alaska, scientists found nitrous oxide emissions in August—just one month—were equal to the upper limit of previously assumed annual nitrous oxide emissions for the region.
Impacts
- Climate change driving economic inequality: Scientists found that over the last few decades, warming has substantially decreased economic growth in many poorer countries located in warmer climates, and increased economic growth in wealthier countries in cooler climates. The authors found that per capita income inequality between the poorest and wealthiest countries is 25% larger than it would be in the absence of human-induced warming. It should be noted that the study largely focused on median losses between 1961 and 2010, rather than decadal trends during this 50-year period.
- Alarming rates of forest loss: Global Forest Watch data revealed the world lost 12 million hectares of tropical tree cover in 2018, the fourth-highest annual loss since record keeping began. Forest decline has significant implications for the global carbon sink, among other impacts.
- Disappearing cloud forests: Researchers modeled climate impacts to the tropical cloud forests and found that up to 80%of them will dry or shrink in the next 25-45 years. In Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Northern South America and parts of Southeast Brazil, 100% of cloud forests will be affected. Tropical cloud forests harbor some of the highest levels of biodiversity and provide rich ecosystem services, such as providing water and habitat.
- Reefs reeling: The Great Barrier Reef experienced unprecedented back-to-back heat-induced bleaching events in 2016 and 2017. A new study found that coral larvae declined by 89%, dramatically impairing the reef’s recovery.
- Marine species more susceptible to warming: One study found that marine species have higher sensitivities to warming than land-based ones. Local extinctions were twice as high among marine species as terrestrial species.
- Emperor penguin populations plummet: Researchers documented “almost total breeding failure” of the world’s second-largest emperor penguin population, located in Halley Bay, over the last three years. While there has been variability in breeding success from year to year, this period of prolonged breeding failure is unprecedented. The breeding failure coincided with extreme weather, including the strongest El Niño in the last six decades, as well as record-low sea ice cover and early ice break up. Interestingly, a southern colony’s penguin population increased at the same time, suggesting some of the penguins from Halley Bay may have migrated there in pursuit of more favorable conditions.
- More dead zones: Scientists looked at historical trends in U.S. waterways and found that annual precipitation, as well as extreme rainfall and warmer spring temperatures, are driving “dead zones” and algal blooms. Extreme precipitation can increase agricultural runoff, leading to greater nitrogen pollution in waters.
- Impacts of concurrent extremes: Many studies look at extreme events like droughts and heatwaves individually. However, sometimes they occur at the same time. A new study used a technique to examine concurrent climate extremes and identifies vulnerable wheat-producing regions of the world that could experience concurrent heat stress and droughts. Specifically, they found a close interlinkage between drought and heat stress in Australia, Canada, the EU and the United States. This is important because extremes can lead to further yield losses and market shocks.
Climatereanalyzer, Daily Summary
Ice
- Rapid Antarctic melt: The Ross Ice Shelf takes up about a third of Antarctica’s total ice shelf area. Scientists found that a part of the shelf that is particularly important for its overall stability is melting 10 times faster than the shelf average.
- Antarctic ice loss could slow: After ice breaks apart, the solid earth rebounds to some degree, much like “a mattress rises after someone gets out of bed.” Scientists found that in the very long term – 350 years into the future – this mechanism will slow the retreat of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica by about 38 percent. However, glaciologists caution that there are many other factors fueling the Antarctic ice sheet’s disintegration.
- Exponential ice loss in Greenland: Studying data from 260 glaciers on the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1972 to 2018, scientists found that mass ice loss increased six-fold since the 1980s. They also found that sea level rose 13.7 millimeters since 1972, with about half of the increase occurring in just the last eight years.
- Melting Arctic will be costly: Researchers found that melting Arctic permafrost and changes in surface reflectivity will cause $67 trillion in economic losses even if countries’ climate commitments are implemented. Limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C to 2 degrees C (2.7 to 3.6 degrees F) decreases the losses to $24.8 trillion and $33.8 trillion, respectively.
- Glacier melt fueling more sea level rise than previously thought: Researchers found that sea level rise from melting glaciers may be greater than previously estimated. Ice loss from glaciers currently contributes 25 to 30 percent of observed sea level rise, and glaciers in some mountain ranges could disappear altogether this century.
- Disappearing European Alps: Modelers found that if the world limits temperature rise to 1.5-2 degrees C, the European Alps will lose about half of its ice by mid-century. If emissions continue unabated, glaciers in this region will decline by 94% by the end of the century.
- Melting glaciers in World Heritage sites: Researchers modeled climate impacts to 19,000 glaciers in World Heritage sites, and found that 33 to 60 percent of their ice volume could be lost by the end of the century.
Emissions
- Carbon dioxide concentrations higher today than in last 3 million years: Scientists have now established that carbon dioxide concentrations are unprecedented over the past 3 million years. The authors stated that failure to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C will force Earth “beyond climatic conditions experienced during the entire current geological period.”
- Warming may be greater than expected: Scientists previously assumed that doubling the world’s pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels would cause 2-4.5 degrees C of warming. However, Science reported that the latest models developed for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment found that this concentration of carbon dioxide would lead to 5 degrees C of warming or more. If this preliminary analysis proves to be correct, climate impacts would be even more severe for rising concentrations of carbon dioxide than previously thought.
- Underestimated emissions from Canadian oil sands: Using aircraft measurements, scientists found that annual emissions from Canadian oil sands’ surface mining operations are 64% higher than previous data suggests, and that emissions from the Canadian oil sands overall are 30% higher. The authors said that greenhouse gas inventory guidelines may need to be updated.
- Permafrost emissions higher than previously assumed: Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas. Scientists have long assumed that melting permafrost emits carbon dioxide and methane, but only negligible amounts of nitrous oxide. Flying over permafrost on the north slope of Alaska, scientists found nitrous oxide emissions in August—just one month—were equal to the upper limit of previously assumed annual nitrous oxide emissions for the region.
- Massive plastics emissions: The production of plastics has quadrupled over the last 40 years. A new study showed that without strategies to aggressively reduce plastic consumption, the life cycle emissions of plastics will grow from 1.7 GtCO2e in 2015 to 6.5 GtCO2e by 2050. For reference, the entire United States emitted 5.8 GtCO2e in 2016.
- Emissions impact of U.S. multinational foreign affiliates: Researchers have for the first time assessed the emissions associated with U.S. multinational enterprise foreign affiliates, which operate beyond the borders of the United States. They found that the carbon footprint of such operations ranks as the 12th top emitter globally, on a scale similar to Australia or the United Kingdom.
Oceans
- Why does the ocean sequester carbon? Scientists researched ways the ocean sequesters carbon dioxide and identified a “particle injection pump,” a series of biological and physical processes that move carbon through ocean mixing or via animals. This newly identified “pump” sequesters as much emissions as the well-established gravitational pump. This is a significant scientific breakthrough because previous known mechanisms like the gravitational pump could only partially explain ocean carbon storage. Another study published this month suggests that ocean carbon storage will decline due to warming.
Extreme Weather
- Warming increased odds of Hurricane Maria’s rains: Scientists studied more than 60 years of precipitation data and found that Hurricane Maria led to the largest amount of rainfall over Puerto Rico since at least 1956. They said that warming made this kind of severe precipitation almost five times more likely to occur.
Related Stories:
NOAA’s 2017–2018 Arctic Report Card: Arctic Air Temperatures Warming At 2× Global Rate
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Climate Progress, May 23rd 2019 excerpt
The Carbon Dividends Plan that Luntz tested is from the bipartisan Climate Leadership Council founded by Ted Halstead along with corporate giants like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, GM, and Ford. It was co-authored by former Secretaries of State James A. Baker, III and George P. Shultz, and has also been embraced by Americans for Carbon Dividends, an industry-backed group co-chaired by former Sens. John Breaux and Trent Lott.
Luntz surveyed 1,000 voters nationwide earlier this month and found that carbon taxes rebated to the public have 4-to-1 overall support (66% support versus 15% oppose), which is similar to its support level among swing voters. Republicans support the plan 2-to-1 (53% versus 25%), with overwhelming support from Republicans under 40 (75% supporting, 11% opposing).
The carbon tax proposal calls for a steadily rising price on carbon that starts at $40 per ton; a family of four would get about $2,000 in payments in the first year.
A new survey finds Republicans under 40 support a carbon tax 7-to-1. And a remarkable 85% of Republican millennials are concerned that “the current Republican position on climate change is hurting the party with younger voters.”
But what makes this result so striking is that the survey was conducted by Frank Luntz, a top GOP strategist and pollster. Luntz wrote an infamous memo in 2002 detailing the exact words conservatives should use if they want to sound like they care about climate change without actually doing anything about it.
Luntz, for instance, is the one who urged Republicans to use the phrase “climate change,” arguing that it is “less frightening” than “global warming.”
Significantly, Luntz’s firm, which has been polling this issue for decades, reported this week that a Carbon Dividend Plan — which charges fossil fuel companies for their carbon emissions and rebates the money directly back to the public — is uniquely popular.st time we’ve polled a climate plan that has real positive appeal across Republicans and Democrats,” Nick Wright, a partner at Luntz Global, told Axios.
Most GOP leaders, however, still only offer climate plans built around Luntz’s 2002 recommendations, which means repeating the poll-tested words “technology” and “innovation” over and over while never committing to anything that might actually start reducing emissions now as the science advises in order to avoid catastrophe.
The Carbon Dividends Plan that Luntz tested is from the bipartisan Climate Leadership Council founded by Ted Halstead along with corporate giants like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, GM, and Ford. It was co-authored by former Secretaries of State James A. Baker, III and George P. Shultz, and has also been embraced by Americans for Carbon Dividends, an industry-backed group co-chaired by former Sens. John Breaux and Trent Lott.
Luntz surveyed 1,000 voters nationwide earlier this month and found that carbon taxes rebated to the public have 4-to-1 overall support (66% support versus 15% oppose), which is similar to its support level among swing voters. Republicans support the plan 2-to-1 (53% versus 25%), with overwhelming support from Republicans under 40 (75% supporting, 11% opposing).
The carbon tax proposal calls for a steadily rising price on carbon that starts at $40 per ton; a family of four would get about $2,000 in payments in the first year.
Yet, while this price represents a serious start in the effort to reduce carbon pollution, the overall plan is problematic for many environmentalist because of two provisions.
First, the Carbon Dividends Plan would require phasing out “many, though not all, Obama-era carbon dioxide regulations … including a repeal of the Clean Power Plan,” which uses the Clean Air Act to set emissions standards for existing power plants. Second, it would shield fossil fuel companies from climate lawsuits.
Oil companies slipped a present to themselves into this carbon tax plan
“We do not support a plan that preempts existing law or tort liability,” David Doniger, senior strategic director for climate and clean energy programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Think Progress via email. “We want to add tools to the toolbox, not trade them off.”
But the good news is that the survey question that found overwhelming support for putting a price on carbon and rebating the money to consumers did not ask people about preempting lawsuits or undoing existing laws. So, this suggests that there may be room for a climate deal in Congress, assuming the public elects a president who understands the existential nature of the threat.
