Only Washington has passed statewide all-electric construction requirements. New York policymakers are considering statewide mandates for both new and existing buildings. Meanwhile, local air monitoring systems (Purple Air, monitoring particulate matter and VOCs) in highly fracked areas of Ohio and found that the U.S. EPA’s regional air quality monitors often miss variations in pollution at the local level. (Energy News …
How Cities Are Using Digital Twins Like a SimCity for Policymakers
CityLab Design The new technology, which creates virtual models of cities and simulates policy scenarios, could be a potential game-changer for urban planning. By Linda Poon April 5, 2022 The entire 40-square-mile metro region of Orlando, Florida, may soon live virtually inside the offices of the Orlando Economic Partnership (OEP). The group has partnered with the gaming company Unity to develop …
The Case for the EU Cutting Off Its Russian Gas Supply Now: Instead of waiting until 2030, Europe might as well rip the Band-Aid off
By Gernot Wagner February 25, 2022 The Case for the EU Cutting Off Its Russian Gas Supply Now: Instead of waiting until 2030, Europe might as well rip the Band-Aid off. The European Union is poised to announce a strategy of weaning itself off Russian gas, part of an ambitious energy plan that includes cutting overall fossil-fuel use 40% by 2030. But …
API pushes for more oil & gas in the future
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office on CCS detailed the overall failures of that technology so far — and the ways in which it provides new opportunities for fossil fuel extraction. As Molly Taft wrote for Gizmodo on Wednesday: The one “successful” CCS project to come out of all that investment was the Petra Nova plant, which closed in 2021 after just four years …
These 7 efficiency policies could help avoid $8B in new gas plants, ACEEE says, and cost about 40 percent less
Utility Dive, Oct. 14, 2021, by Robert Walton excerpt: ACEEE’s analysis concludes that a set of seven residential efficiency and demand response retrofit measures could serve about 9 million Texas households and offset most of the capability of new proposed gas combined-cycle generators. And those residential programs would have a five-year total programmatic cost of about $4.9 billion, or 39% …
Carbon Tracker’s FF Asset Retirement Obligations (ARO) Portal + CO Rural Economic Development
In Carbon Tracker’s paper, It’s Closing Time: The Huge Bill to Abandon Oilfields Comes Early, we explained how the oil and gas industry is legally obligated to plug and abandon (P&A) wells, but it hasn’t set aside the resources to do so. Billion Dollar Orphans estimates that plugging 2.6 million documented onshore wells in the U.S. alone will cost $280 billion. This estimate …
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 …