Category Archives: energy policy

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels

State of the Union leaves Obama’s environmental policy in a haze by Peter Moskowitz

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by Peter Moskowitz @PeterMoskowitz January 29, 2014 1:42AM ET

Environmental groups say Obama missed an opportunity to lay out a new climate change action plan

Barack Obama speaks in 2012 at Sempra U.S. Gas & Power’s Copper Mountain Solar 1 facility in Nevada, the largest photovoltaic solar plant in the United States.Ethan Miller/Getty Images

While President Barack Obama has delivered the strongest rhetoric of any sitting president on the urgent need for action on climate change, his actual environmental record is mixed. So when Obama delivered his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, environmental groups waited eagerly for clues about what may lie ahead for energy and the environment in the president’s last years in office.

But, according to many environmental leaders, Tuesday’s speech didn’t clear up much. Obama mentioned climate change and forcefully called for energy independence, but much of the environmental section of his speech was dedicated his “all-of-the-above” strategy, which includes big increases to one of the most controversial sources of alternative energy, natural gas.

Perhaps more telling of the Obama administration’s future energy policy is what he didn’t say. Out of the nearly 7,000 words contained in the president’s prepared speech, climate and energy accounted for under 500. And unlike in previous State of the Union speeches, the president’s talking points left out specifics about programs that could combat climate change. “He reiterated the things he was already planning to do,” said Shelley Welton, the deputy director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “But I didn’t see anything new.”

Leaders of some environmental groups say they’re most disappointed that the environmental section of Obama’s speech was largely dedicated to drilling for natural gas. Green groups say the process, often called fracking, pollutes air and land, and can have adverse health consequencesfor those who live near drilling sites.

But Obama seemed unwavering in his commitment to increase investment and streamline regulation for natural gas.
“If extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution,” he said. “Businesses plan to invest almost $100 billion in new factories that use natural gas. I’ll cut red tape to help states get those factories built.”

That left some environmentalists disappointed. “You can’t have regulations on carbon pollution and then advocate for an ‘all-the-above’ carbon policy that includes natural gas,” said Eric Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “The rhetoric of the speech didn’t live up to the seriousness of the issue.”

Others were more disappointed with what Obama seemed to leave out. In past State of the Union speeches, Obama outlined specific energy goals and policy initiatives. Last June, Obama gave a speech in which he directed the Environmental Protection Agency to make sweeping changes to how it regulates the building of new power plants. The changes would severely limit the amount of carbon dioxide a new plant can produce, making it much harder to construct new coal plants in particular. This coming June, the Environmental Protection Agency will also release new regulations for existing power plants.

Obama did mentioned solar energy in this year’s speech, but he didn’t say specifically how his administration would support the development of the solar industry. “We want to see some real leadership, but instead we saw the president fully embrace fracking and really put forward no new programs,”said Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org. “The rhetoric on climate change was good, but the actual policy wasn’t there.” With no specifics outlined in the State of the Union, many environmental groups have been left pondering what comes next for the president and the environment.

Obama has a slew of decisions to make before 2016 that will impact the environment. Perhaps most controversial are the pending application for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would deliver hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly polluting bitumen sands from Canada to the United States daily, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an international trade agreement currently being negotiated without public input, which environmentalists say could incentivize more fossil fuel energy.
Those didn’t get a mention in the State of the Union speech, but some leaders of environmental groups were just happy Obama mentioned energy and climate issues at all. That, they say, is a big step forward from previous presidents.
“It’s so important that the president recognize the climate challenge, and the president really does have a good record on climate change action,” said Abigail Dillen, the vice president of litigation at EarthJustice, a public interest law organization.

But most seemed to feel that Obama missed an opportunity to say more on the environment and push harder for curbing climate change. “If you want to bend history in one direction, you need to pick a side and put your all into it,” Greenpeace’s executive director Phil Radford said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the president continues to stand right in the middle.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, national ocean politics, natural resource management, tar sands

Common Dreams: Pipeline Protesters Urge Obama: ‘Be A Climate Champion’ Ahead of the State of the Union, protesters call on President Obama to use address to “reject KXL”

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Published on Tuesday, January 28, 2014
– Lauren McCauley, staff writer

pipeline_

Environmental groups paraded a giant inflatable pipeline around the Capitol building Tuesday ahead of the State of the Union address. (photo: @erichpica/ Twitter)Green groups are calling on President Obama to make a choice: ‘Be remembered as a climate champion or the pipeline president.’

Parading a 100-yard inflatable pipeline outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday afternoon, demonstrators are hoping to grab the president’s attention ahead of the annual State of the Union address.

Organized by groups including 350.org and Friends of the Earth, the demonstration is calling on Obama to renew the pledge he made last year when he said he would not approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline if it is found to “significantly exacerbate” carbon pollution.

“President Obama needs to decide whether he wants to be remembered as a climate champion or the pipeline president. He can’t have it both ways,” said Jason Kowalski, Policy Director for 350.org.

He has “all the information he needs to reject Keystone XL and he should do so in the State of the Union,” the groups added in a statement ahead of the action.
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The demonstration comes within days of the anticipated release of the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on the project, which Obama previously said he would look to for guidance on whether to permit the pipeline or not.

“Despite shoddy analysis by industry contractors working for the State Department, there is no doubt that approving Keystone XL would have a dramatic impact on the climate and should be rejected immediately by President Obama as not serving the national interest,” the groups continued, referencing a previously released draft of the SEIS which was condemned by both scientists and green groups as “deeply flawed.”

“The State of the Union would be an excellent time to reject the project and embrace a clean energy future,” they add.

Last week, the lesser known southern leg of the Keystone XL began operating, carrying tar sands from its northern terminal in Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.

Whether or not the Keystone XL is approved, the enormous upswell in opposition to the project has “changed American environmental politics,” according to a piece published Friday in the New York Times.

Times reporter Sarah Wheaton writes:

Although some critics say the environmental movement has made a strategic error by focusing so much energy on the pipeline, no one disputes that the issue has helped a new breed of environmental organizations build a mostly young army eager to donate money and time. The seven-year-old email list of 350.org, an organization that focuses on climate change, has more than doubled to 530,000 people since the group began fighting the pipeline in August 2011. In addition, about 76,000 people have signed a “pledge of resistance” sponsored by seven liberal advocacy groups in which they promise to risk arrest in civil disobedience if a State Department analysis, expected this year, points toward approval of the pipeline.

“I remember when I heard the call for civil disobedience, I thought, ‘Yeah, right, you’ll get like 40 people to show up,’ ” Ross Hammond, a senior campaigner with Friends of the Earth, told the Times. “‘And then, bam!’ Over a two-week period, about 1,200 people were arrested at the White House.”

During Tuesday’s demonstration, 350.org founder Bill McKibben reiterated the power of the KXL opposition:
✔ @billmckibben

Giant pipeline currently circling White House, a reminder before tonite’s SOTU of what’s brought environmentalists into the streets
12:14 PM – 28 Jan 2014

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, tar sands

Common Dreams: Communities Resist as Tar Sands Flow Through KXL South

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/01/22-9

Published on Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Sacrificing the health of the people and planet, 590,000 additional barrels of oil will now flow to refineries on the Gulf
– Lauren McCauley, staff writer

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Activists in Portland, Maine showing solidarity with communities along the pipeline by locking themselves to TD bank. (Photo: Meaghan LaSala)Tar sands oil began flowing through the the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline Wednesday as operations commenced delivering the “the dirtiest fuel on Earth” to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

The southern leg—the lesser known half of Transcanada’s pipeline—originates in Cushing, Oklahoma and passes through countless communities in Oklahoma and East Texas before arriving at refineries and shipping ports along the coast.

“We are the story that isn’t often told,” East Texas resident Maya Lemon said in a statement circulated by the group NacSTOP (Nacogdoches County Stop Tar Sands Oil Permanently), “the story where Obama’s decision to delay on KXL north was paired with an endorsement to fast track KXL south.”

While opposition to the project has lacked the national attention given to protests against the northern section, local activists and community members on the front lines of the pipeline have long-fought the project and the eminent domain laws that bullied it through.

“We are dissatisfied with the process that allows this pipeline to begin operation, we are frustrated that landowner rights and issues related to eminent domain have never been fully resolved, and we are concerned that our communiies are not prepared to respond safely from this pipeline,” NacSTOP writes in a letter calling for solidarity action nationwide.

Answering that call, two activists in Portland, Maine were arrested for protesting in solidarity with the communities along the pipeline route Wednesday by locking themselves to the front door of a TD Bank, one of the biggest investors in the pipeline.

The activists, both with the group Maine Trans and/or Women’s Action Team, braved 15 degree weather hoping to draw attention to the 590,000 additional barrels of oil that will now flow to refineries located in largely minority communities in Manchester, Texas.

“Climate change’s origin is deeply rooted in this practice of sacrificing of communities that are deemed dispensable,” Betsy Catlin, one of the protesters locked to TD Bank, told Common Dreams.

“It comes as no surprise that these are mostly low-income, communities of color: majority Latina/o on the East End of Houston and majroity African-American in Port Arthur,” said life-long Houston resident and community activist, María Jiménez, who added that these communities “are living examples of environmental racism.”

According to a recent comparitive health study, children raised amid refineries in Houston’s Manchester neighborhood are already 56% more likely to contract childhood leukemia, says Yudith Nieto, an organizer with Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS).

“[R]efining tar sands will only increase that percentage while the refineries keep up their blatant disregard for the lives of those of us forced by circumstance to breathe their dangerous emissions on a daily basis,” she added.

Fully operational, the 486-mile southern pipeline will transport 830,000 barrels of crude per day between vast underground storage tanks in Cushing, Okla., and the Gulf Coast, the Dallas Morning News reports. Other pipelines and rail services feed into it from the north.

National environmental groups responded to the news with despair, both for the communities along the pipeline route as well as for what the moment spells for the priorities of American politicians and their approval of the northern half.

“Expediting KXL south was not the mark of a president who really ‘gets’ climate change,” said leading climate activist and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben, who later tweeted:

“Tar sands is more corrosive, more toxic, and more difficult to clean up than conventional crude. Coupled with lax oversight and TransCanada’s dismal safety record, this pipeline spells bad news for farmers and families whose land, health, and safety were forfeited so that oil companies can reach export markets with their deadly product,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune in a statement.

“We hope from this point on that unity is the clarion call for the climate movement,” lamented Juan Parras, founder of TEJAS.

“Environmental Justice communities, private property owners, residents living in proximity to the pipeline, and all those up and downstream – we’re are all affected here in the same struggle: to permanently stop the most ecologically devastating mining operations in the world and address the ongoing injustices of petrochemical refining,” he added.

Speaking with residents along the pipeline route, Al Jazeera produced this report on the impact of the southern leg

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels

Common Dreams: Message to World Elites: Don’t Bet on Coal and Oil Growth

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/24-13
Published on Friday, January 24, 2014 by Davos 2014

by Kumi Naidoo
coal_5
A coal power plant is reflected in a puddle. (Photo: REUTERS/Ina Fassbender)A mind-boggling sum of about US$ 800 for each person on the planet is invested into fossil fuel companies through the global capital markets alone. That’s roughly 10% of the total capital invested in listed companies. The amount of money invested into the 200 biggest fossil fuel companies through financial markets is estimated at US$ 5.5 trillion.

By keeping their money in coal and oil companies, investors are betting a vast amount of wealth, including the pensions and savings of millions of people, on high future demand for dirty fuels. The investment has enabled fossil fuel companies to massively raise their spending on expanding extractable reserves, with oil and gas companies alone (state-owned ones included) spending the combined GDP of Netherlands and Belgium a year, in belief that there will be ongoing demand for dirty fuel.

This assumption is being challenged by recent developments, which is good news for climate but bad news for anyone who thought investing in fossil fuel industries was a safe bet. Frantic growth in coal consumption seems to be coming to an end much sooner than predicted just a few years ago, with China’s aggressive clean air policies, rapidly dropping coal consumption in the US and upcoming closures of many coal plants in Europe. At the same time the oil industry is also facing slowing demand growth, and the financial and share performance of oil majors is disappointing for shareholders.

Nevertheless, even faced with weakening demand prospects, outdated investment patterns are driving fossil fuel companies to waste trillions of dollars in developing reserves and infrastructure that will be stranded as the world moves beyond 20th century energy.

A good example is coal export developments. The large recent investment in coal export capacity in all key exporter countries was based on the assumption of unlimited growth of Chinese demand. When public outrage over air pollution reached a new level in 2012-2013, the Chinese leadership moved swiftly to mandate absolute reductions in coal consumption, and banned new coal-fired power plants in key economic regions. A growing chorus of financial analysts is now projecting a peak in Chinese coal demand soon, which seemed unimaginable only a couple of years ago. This new reality has already reduced market capitalization of export-focused coal companies. Even in China itself, investment in coal-fired power plants has now outpaced demand growth, leading to drops in capacity utilization.

Another example of potentially stranded assets is found in Europe, where large utilities ignored the writing on the wall about EU moves to price carbon and boost renewable energy. Betting on old business models and the fossil-fuel generation, they built a huge 80 gigawatts of new fossil power generation capacity in the past 10 years, much of which is already generating losses and now risk becoming stranded assets.

Arctic oil drilling is possibly the ultimate example of fossil companies’ unfounded confidence in high future demand. Any significant production and revenue is unlikely until 2030 and in the meantime, Arctic drilling faces high and uncertain costs, extremely demanding and risky operations, as well as the prospect of heavy regulation and liabilities when (not if) the first major blowout happens in the region. No wonder the International Energy Agency is sceptical about Arctic oil, assuming hardly any production in the next 20 years.

Those investing in coal and oil have perhaps felt secure seeing the global climate negotiations proceed at a disappointing pace. However, the initial carbon crunch is being delivered by increasingly market-driven renewable energy development, and by national-level clean energy and energy efficiency policies – such as renewable energy support schemes and emission regulation in Europe, or clean air policies in the US and in China. Global coal demand, and possibly even oil demand, could peak even before a strong climate treaty is agreed.

Investors often underestimate their exposure to fossil fuels, particularly indirect exposure through, for example, passively managed pension funds and sovereign debt of strongly fossil fuel dependent states. Assessing exposure, requiring fossil energy companies to disclose and reduce carbon risks, and reducing investments in sunset energy technologies will lead to profitable investment in a world that moves to cleaner and smarter energy systems.

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, national ocean politics, natural resource management, tar sands

Politico: A Big Fracking Lie President Obama isn’t just not fixing climate change – he’s making it worse

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/fracking-natural-gas-exports-climate-change-102452.html?hp=pm_1#.Ut_4xN2tu2x

If you want to know just how bad an idea it is for America to ship “fracked” natural gas to overseas markets, travel the 65 miles from the White House to a place called Cove Point in southern Maryland.
There, right on the Chesapeake Bay, the Obama administration wants to give fast-track approval to a $3.8 billion facility (12 times the cost of the NFL Ravens stadium) to liquefy gas from all across Appalachia. The new plant, proposed by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, would somehow be built right between a coveted state park and a stretch of sleepy beach communities, with a smattering of Little League baseball fields just down the road. Along the Chesapeake itself, endangered tiger beetles cling to the shore while Maryland “watermen” hunt crabs and oysters in age-old fashion.

Right here, Dominion wants build a utility-scale power plant (130 megawatts) just to power the enormous “liquefaction” process for the fracked gas. The company will then build an industrial-scale compressor, a massive refrigeration system and an adjacent, surreal six-story-tall “sound wall” to protect humans and wildlife from the thunderous noise. The facility as a whole would chill the gas-extracted from fracking wells as far away as New York-to 260 degrees below zero so it can be poured onto huge tankers (with Coast Guard escort due to terrorism risks) and then shipped more than 6,000 miles to India and Japan.

Sound good yet? There’s more: The Cove Point plant in Maryland is just one of more than 20 such “liquefaction” plants now proposed-but not yet built-for coastal areas nationwide. They are intended, as an emerging facet of U.S. energy policy, to double down on the highly controversial hydraulic fracturing drilling boom across the country. But like the Keystone XL pipeline for tar sands oil and the proposed export of dirty-burning coal through new terminals in the Pacific Northwest, this liquefied gas plan is bad in almost every way.

Simply put, this gas needs to stay in the ground. If it’s dug up and exported, it will directly harm just about everyone in the U.S. economy while simultaneously making global warming worse. How much worse? Imagine adding the equivalent of more than 100 coal plants to U.S. pollution output or putting 78 million more cars on our roads. Yes, supporters say, but this gas would be replacing a lot of coal use overseas. And they’d be right. The only problem is we’d be replacing that coal with aggregate “life-cycle” emissions from gas that are almost certainly worse than coal, creating new net damage for the global atmosphere (more on this later).

Ironically, a recent sea-level rise report commissioned by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, reportedly a presidential hopeful, shows that climate change could soon wipe out the peninsula of Cove Point itself. The very point of land next to Dominion’s proposed facility-the whitewashed lighthouse, the country roads and homes and forests-would all drown if the world continues to combust oil, coal and natural gas at current rates, according to the Maryland report.

The “inconvenient truths” on liquefied gas also come-in different forms-from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere. On the economic side, a study commissioned by the DOE last spring found that exporting U.S. gas would raise the fuel’s price here at home. It’s basic supply and demand. More buyers overseas will drive up our domestic price by as much as 27 percent, according to the DOE. And that increase will reduce incomes for virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, from agriculture to manufacturing to services to transportation. No wonder manufacturers like Dow and Alcoa are resisting this emerging U.S. export policy for gas, forming a coalition called “America’s Energy Advantage” to push back.

The DOE found that only one economic sector wins from gas exports. You guessed it: the gas industry! This one special interest wins so big-hundreds of billions in profits-that the DOE now basically argues that it offsets the pain for everyone else, creating a perverse and tiny net bump in the nation’s GDP. If you’re a farmer or wage-earner, too bad. Dominion’s profits at Cove Point are more important than the financial lives of already-struggling average Americans.

The gas export calculations grow even more insane when you factor in climate change. The industry bombards the public with ads saying natural gas is 50 percent cleaner than coal. But the claim is totally false. Gas is cleaner only at the point of combustion. If you calculate the greenhouse gas pollution emitted at every stage of the production process- drilling, piping, compression-it’s essentially just coal by another name. Indeed, the methane (the key ingredient in natural gas) that constantly and inevitably leaks from wells and pipelines is 84 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 20-year period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Bill McKibben founder of 350.org.
Mike Tidwell is director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/fracking-natural-gas-exports-climate-change-102452.html#ixzz2r9CvGzMb