Suncor, refining and storage of asphalt, Noxious Neighbors: The EPA Knows Tanks Holding Heavy Fuels Emit Harmful Chemicals. Why Are Americans Still at Risk?

An analysis of refining and storage of asphalt and No. 6 refining.   Suncor Refinery in Commerce City produces and stores asphalt.  No. 6 fuel oil is used in shipping and heating homes in New England but not much used in Colorado For decades EPA has allowed the use on an API-developed formula that concludes asphalt storage releases very little VOCs.  …

Fight over ‘peaker’ plants poses grid climate test

By Miranda Willson | 08/24/2021 E&E News CenterPoint Energy Inc.’s A. B. Brown Generating Station is pictured outside Evansville, Ind. CenterPoint is proposing to replace the aging coal-fired facility with a combination of natural gas “peaker” plants and renewable energy. PBurzynski/Wikimedia Commons Clarification appended. A proposed natural gas power plant and pipeline project in southwestern Indiana are drawing fire out of concerns that …

Good answers to the question/concern that ending fossil fuel subsidies will raise gas prices: Research from EESI shows that more than 95% of fossil fuel subsidies go to profits that benefit investors and executives, not workers or consumers. Execs lay people off, collect lavish bonuses, and declare bankruptcy.

By Drew Hudson, RE: Good answers to the question/concern that ending fossil fuel subsidies will raise gas prices, which are already high enough that Biden has asked OPEC to pump more oil. “No. Ending fossil fuel subsidies will not raise gas prices.” And here’s one more excellent report (thanks Public Citizen!) about why: Dozens of fossil fuel executives received lavish …

Common law duty of care to protect younger people against future harm from climate change

By Adam Morton, The Guardian. Eight teenagers and an octogenarian nun had sought an injunction to prevent Ley approving a proposal by Whitehaven Coal to expand the Vickery coalmine in northern New South Wales, arguing the minister had a common law duty of care to protect younger people against future harm from climate change. Justice Mordecai Bromberg found the minister had a duty of care to not …

Ending settler colonialism and capitalism and returning Indigenous lands are all possible—and necessary

Much environmental framing misses the point about capitalism and Indigenous sovereignty. In this era of catastrophic climate change, why is it easier for some to imagine the end of fossil fuels than settler colonialism? To imagine green economies, carbon-free wind and solar energy, and electric, bullet-train utopias but not the return of Indigenous lands? Why is it easier to imagine the …

Gernot Wagner, Nature: 8 priorities for updating and calculating the social cost of carbon

19 February 2021, Nature, Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon: Advice to the Biden administration as it seeks to account for mounting losses from storms, wildfires and other climate impacts. By Gernot Wagner , David Anthoff , Maureen Cropper , Simon Dietz , Kenneth T. Gillingham , Ben Groom , J. Paul Kelleher , Frances C. Moore & James H. Stock One of the first executive orders US President Joe Biden signed in …

A case for transparent net-zero carbon targets and risk management: rate of emission reduction over this decade is key. Ensure temperature limits are not breached by enacting stringent near-term targets.

Nature, Published: 04 February 2021, Stephen M. Smith, Communications Earth & Environment volume 2, Article number: 24 (2021) Cite this article https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00095-w Perceived risks from carbon dioxide removal have led to calls for net zero targets to be split into separate goals for removals and emissions. A better approach is to accompany net targets with ambitious near-term action, disclose measures to achieve them and closely monitor and …

Emissions are still rising. Global fossil fuel use is similar to a decade ago.

Reuters, June 2021: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-fossil-fuel-use-similar-decade-ago-energy-mix-report-says-2021-06-14/  The share of fossil fuels in the world’s total energy mix is as high as a decade ago, despite the falling cost of renewables and pressure on governments to act on climate change, a report by green energy policy network REN21 showed in its  Renewables 2021 Global Status Report Fossil fuel use has persisted amid rising …

Undoing Equivalence: Rethinking Carbon Accounting for Just Carbon Removal

Front. Clim., 16 April 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.664130 by Wim Carton1*, Jens Friis Lund2 and Kate Dooley3 – 1Lund University Center for Sustainability Sciences (LUCSUS), Lund, Sweden; 2Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark; 3Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.664130/full Concerns are increasingly raised over the centrality of carbon removal in climate policy, particularly in the …