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More cheating automakers? Mitsubishi and Fiat are now in hot water too

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What’s in the new McNugget? No one will tell me

by JosefinaWithnell Posted on April 27, 2016

What’s in the new McNugget? No one will tell me

By Melissa Croninon Apr 27, 2016Share

Will someone please tell me what’s in the new McNugget? For the love of the Hamburglar, I just cannot figure it out.

An allegedly improved version of America’s favorite lump of fried poultry debuted at some 140 McDonald’s restaurants in Oregon and southwestern Washington in March, a spokesperson for the company told Crain’s on Wednesday. The new nuggets, according to the company, “are made with a simpler recipe that parents can feel good about while keeping the same great taste they know and love.” According to Crain’s, the rest of the country will get to enjoy the crispy little pillows of mystery ahead of the Olympic Games in August.

But McDonald’s has not provided any specific details about the contents of this new, “cleaner” nugget. And in the post-Chipotlegate era, how can we be sure that “simpler” necessarily means “cleaner” — or even “healthier?” Grist embarked on an investigative journey.

The first clue: A McDonald’s in Portland, Ore., shared a photo of what is presumably the new nugget. But it hasn’t responded to my questions regarding what, exactly, is pictured here:

It was time to go up the chain. I called the McDonald’s global corporate office multiple times. I left several messages with the McDonald’s U.S. corporate office. I sent an email. I even tweeted at the McDonald’s corporate account — no response, although the account tweets every few minutes at its loyal and vocal fans.

You’d think that McDonald’s, a company with a less-than-stellar transparency record, would jump at the chance to talk about the “cleaner” McNugget! But no one seems to want to tell me what makes this McNugget different than the old McNugget, and I’m certainly stumped. If you find out, I’d love to know.

UPDATE: McDonald’s got back to us! What’s in the McNugget? “100% white meat chicken, no artificial flavors or colors and our signature seasonings and crispy breading. The Chicken McNuggets we are testing in Portland have no artificial preservatives.” Rest easy tonight, dear reader.

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Soy boom threatens Brazil’s climate goals

by MyrtisPrendergas Posted on April 20, 2016

Soy boom threatens Brazil’s climate goals

By Jeffrey Hoelle and Peter Richardson Apr 19, 2016comments

Cross-posted from

The Conversation Share

Brazil’s economy is teetering on the edge of collapse. The country’s political regime has been rocked by recent corruption scandals, and impeachment proceedings are encircling the nation’s leaders. And yet things couldn’t be much better for Brazil’s soybean farmers.

At the beginning of the last decade, Brazil emerged as a major soybean exporter. Today, Brazil produces about one-third of the global supply and earns more from soybean exports than from any other commodity.

Although soybean production is generating revenues for Brazil, it could spell trouble for the nation’s widely lauded environmental commitments.

Brazil is the first emerging economy that has pledged to make absolute reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions – that is, reductions from the level that it emitted at a specific point in time (2005), not from an estimate of what it will emit at some future time. Its climate plan calls for cutting emissions by more than 40 percent by 2030, with most of its emission reductions to come through avoiding deforestation. By 2030, Brazil has pledged to restore 12 million hectares of carbon-absorbing forest and eliminate illegal deforestation.

As social science researchers who study environmental change in the Amazon and the Brazilian savanna known as the Cerrado, we have seen the country’s agricultural sector grow rapidly in once-marginal regions. We believe that over the next several years, with Brazil’s soybean sector thriving and its political establishment in crisis, the nation’s commitment to slowing climate change will be severely tested.

Why economic downturns are good for soy farmers

Tough economic times for Brazil can mean boom times for soybean farmers. Soybean prices in Brazil generally depend on two factors: the global price for soybeans, and the value of the local currency (the real) against the U.S. dollar.

Obviously, a high global price for soybeans means more money for farms. However, the importance of the local currency is even more critical for farmers’ bottom lines. Commodities like soybeans are priced in dollars but purchased in local currency, so when the Brazilian real is weak, farmers receive more value (in local terms) for their harvest and earn higher profits.

This dynamic creates a paradoxical relationship between Brazil’s agriculture sector and the national economy: When the economy struggles, farmers reap big profits. In the early 2000s, when the real fell to one-third of its value over a three-year period, soybean profits jumped to stratospheric levels.

In response, farmers converted an area equivalent to the size of Indiana to soybean production. In some areas cropland prices nearly tripled.

Brazil’s current economic collapse is once again creating windfall conditions for soybean farmers. Over the past year and a half, the cracks in the country’s economy have become rifts and the real has lost more than one-third of its value. The further the currency falls, the higher soybean prices rise. From 2011 to 2016, soybean prices increased by 70 percent, peaking in January 2016.

Percent change in soybean prices, and the value of Brazil’s currency, since 2011. Soybean prices in Brazil have surged to near-record levels, even as prices, in terms of U.S. dollars, have declined.

ESALQ/USP

In local terms, we estimate that the value of this year’s harvest will be more than one-third larger than the harvest just two years ago. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that this year Brazil will produce nearly as many soybeans as the United States, an output that was unthinkable even just a few years ago.

Soybeans are generating valuable foreign exchange, new investment capital and high-wage jobs, all of which Brazil critically needs. As the farm sector’s economic clout increases, so does its political influence. Earlier this year during Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, in a procession seemingly transplanted from a U.S. state fair, dancers dressed as cotton, corn and soybeans paraded through the streets and were “harvested” by a giant float in the shape of an agricultural combine.

Brazil’s agriculture lobby is gaining ground as President Dilma Roussef’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party) disintegrates in a wave of corruption scandals. We believe government support for enacting new environmental regulations and enforcing existing environmental laws is already fading.

Forests at risk

After the international community and Brazil’s domestic environmental groups denounced large-scale deforestation in the Amazon in the early 2000s, the government adopted a battery of reforms to reduce forest losses.

Enormous new forest reserves were created and indigenous reserves were expanded. New environmental regulations were enacted to inhibit clearings for cattle pastures and soybean farms. Private agribusinesses worked with environmental advocacy groups, intervening in the soybean and cattle supply chains to discourage land clearing, especially for soybean production.

Evidence suggests that these measures worked. Deforestation fell from nearly 30,000 square kilometers in 2004 to less than 5,000 square kilometers in 2012. But next year the incentive to clear land will be greater than it has been in a decade. Windfall profits from this year’s soybean harvest will give landowners both the incentive to purchase or clear land and the capital that they need to do so.

Early signs of a new wave of deforestation in the Amazon are already appearing. Late last year the Brazilian government released data that showed a 16 percent increase in tree destruction over 2014 levels. The largest increases in forest loss were recorded in Brazil’s leading soybean-producing state, Mato Grosso.

The next several years could well pose a breaking point for Brazil’s economy, which currently is being held together by the country’s booming agriculture sector. In turn, further expansion of agriculture could derail Brazil’s climate commitments.

For most of this decade Brazil has received tremendous acclaim for its environmental actions. Brazil also stands ready to sign the climate change agreement negotiated late last year in Paris. But the country’s ability and will to follow through on those commitments has never been in such doubt.

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Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

by ArethaTrott1085 Posted on April 18, 2016

Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

By Katie Herzogon 18 Apr 2016comments Share

America’s best Brit John Oliver took a brief pause from skewering presidential candidates Sunday to skewer Congress’ response to the Flint lead-poisoned water crisis. As Oliver points out, the crisis is hardly Flint’s alone: 2,000 municipal water systems in all 50 states show elevated levels of lead, which can contribute to brain damage, developmental difficulties, and lower IQs in children.

In response to this disaster, Congressional Republicans Rep. Mark Meadows (NC), Rep. Tim Walberg (MI), and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT) all have said that is it shocking — just shocking — that federal regulators could let something like this happen in the United States.

How does something like this happen in the United States?

As Oliver explains, it happens in part because of representatives like Meadows, Walberg, and Chaffetz, who voted to cut funding for government programs dedicated to cleaning up lead pollution.“You would think that our members of Congress would be onboard with doing more to fight lead poisoning.” Oliver said. Well, they aren’t, and Congress has only done its best to cut funding to other organizations that protect public health, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Watch Oliver explain above.

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Keystone spills 16,000 gallons and the oil market barely notices

by DHHTonyvtqmec Posted on April 8, 2016

Keystone spills 16,000 gallons and the oil market barely notices

By Kate Yoderon 7 Apr 2016comments Share

TransCanada’s response to a Keystone pipeline leak in South Dakota this week offers us a glimpse into what might have been the future of Keystone XL, had it been approved by President Obama: Plenty of headaches for not much value.

The spill, which TransCanada originally estimated at 187 gallons, was revealed on April 7 to be substantially larger: 16,800 gallons.

Following the discovery of leak on April 2, TransCanada shut down the original Keystone pipeline from Canada to Oklahoma. You might expect that the closure of this pipeline — which supplies the U.S. with about a quarter of the oil that enters the Midwest from Canada — would have a sizable impact on the oil market this week.

Not so. A Bloomberg article reports that the oversupplied oil market essentially shrugged. With U.S. crude stockpiles near record levels, and oil prices near record lows, the impact of the Keystone shutdown was negligible. Which raises the question: Why did so many think we needed the KXL pipeline (which would have essentially duplicated the route of the existing Keystone pipeline), anyway?

Because they told us that, repeatedly. “This pipeline was intended to be a critical infrastructure project for the energy security of the United States and for strengthening the American economy,” the official website for Keystone XL explains. The XL pipeline was meant to ship even more crude oil — a projected 830,000 barrels per day — into the U.S.

At the present, that looks like 830,000 surplus barrels.

This spill is instructive for more reasons than economic ones. We’re watching, in real time, what could have happened with Keystone XL. Spills are inevitable (estimates for KXL ranged from two spills per year to two spills per decade). TransCanada’s detection system might fail to discover the spill — in the case of the April 2 leak, a local landowner alerted the company of the leak. And the same day the spill was detected, TransCanada requested a no-fly zone over the site, ostensibly to clear the skies for surveillance by its cleanup crew. This move also restricted public and media access to the area. TransCanada’s request was humored for a short-lived period, and then denied after the Federal Aviation Administration deemed it unnecessary.

TransCanada once claimed Keystone XL “passed every economic, environmental, and geopolitical test.” This spill didn’t exactly help their case.

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This chart shows the United States’ mind-blowing clean energy potential

by DanelleGirardin Posted on March 30, 2016

This chart shows the United States’ mind-blowing clean energy potential

By Clayton Aldernon 30 Mar 2016comments Share

The United States uses about 3.7 million gigawatt-hours of electricity each year. That’s an unfathomably huge number. But the next time someone tries to make the argument that 100 percent renewable energy is out of reach for the U.S., show them this image:

Environment America Research & Policy Center

All of U.S. electricity usage is down there at the bottom right. Everything else is the States’ renewable potential.

Earlier this year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory released a report that said the United States’ upper ceiling on rooftop solar generation potential was around 39 percent of all U.S. electricity sales. That’s the tiny yellow circle in the middle. The potential of utility-scale solar? 350 times that li’l guy.

In a new report from Environment America Research & Policy Center — where this image appears — researchers lay out the achievability of a U.S. transition to 100 percent renewable energy. “There’s no question of whether or not there’s enough renewable energy,” said Rob Sargent, a program director at Environment America, on a press call. It’s more a function of how to achieve such a transition.

The recommendations in the report will sound familiar. If we want to make it to a 100 percent renewable future, we need to start by ramping up solar and wind production, shifting toward electric vehicles, pumping dollars into energy storage research, and taking advantage of energy savings and efficiency programs.

But maybe more than anything, we need to take a good long gander at that bowling ball of renewable generation potential and convince ourselves that carving out a grape’s-worth is within our power.

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9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

by MaritaMontefior Posted on March 24, 2016

9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

By Clayton Aldernon 24 Mar 2016 10:59 amcomments Share

Today, you’ll see some headlines touting last year’s record investment in renewables. A new report from the Frankfurt School–UNEP Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows investment in clean energy grew to $286 billion globally in 2015 — a new world record! — up 5 percent from the previous year. Here’s what the global trend in renewable investment looks like since 2004:

Global new investment in renewable energy by asset class, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

As a whole, investment in renewable capacity was more than twice that invested in coal- and gas-fired projects last year, and new clean generating capacity added was greater than all other kinds of new generating capacity combined. Note that coal and gas only make up about a third of the pie chart below:

New power generating capacity added in 2015 by main technology, gigawatts

But it would kind of be bonkers if that weren’t the case.

Investment in new renewable generating capacity has had a rocky history, but it has more or less been rising everywhere except Europe for the past decade. (Europe has notably seen a decline in investment since about 2011.)

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Still, total global renewable capacity — not just newly added renewable capacity — continues to make up just a small fraction of the energy mix. Total clean energy capacity grew to 16.2 percent of the global mix in 2015, an increase from 15.2 percent in 2014. Actual electricity generated by renewable sources (excluding large hydroelectric projects) grew to 10.3 percent. It’s encouraging growth, to be sure, but perhaps not the sunny picture painted by the phrase “new world record.”

Zooming the lens in a bit reveals a more interesting story. “There are so many numbers, it’s difficult to wrap them up in a few remarks,” cautioned Angus McCrone, lead author and chief editor on the report, on a press call. Indeed, there’s a lot going on in the UNEP report, but one of the things it does well is shine a shaft of light between the big numbers. Who, exactly, is spending all this money, and what kind of money are they spending? China — whose just-released Five-Year Plan has been heralded as its greenest ever — is pouring money into new renewable projects. But what kind of projects are we actually talking about?

China was No. 1 in renewable investment in 2015, responsible for 36 percent of the world’s total. Europe came in second; even its continued slide in investment left it with $4 billion more pumped into the renewable sector than the United States. Here’s the regional breakdown, in billions of dollars, of spending on renewables in 2015:

Global new investment in renewable energy by region, 2015, $bn

That’s not the whole story, though. While China experienced 81 percent growth last year in new small distributed capacity (solar projects with a capacity of less than 1 megawatt), Japan still smashed the rest of the world in that sector. In the bar graph below, note that even with declining investment in small distributed capacity, the U.S. still finished in second:

Small distributed capacity investment by country, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

China commissioned around 29 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity in 2015 and installed close to 16 GW of solar PV projects. The country’s investments are largely dominated by company borrowing for and spending on renewable projects: what UNEP calls asset finance. Asset finance mostly consists of what’s on company balance sheets, as well as loans and equity financing. Europe, too, invested more than the U.S. in terms of asset finance last year. Here’s the breakdown of how countries invested their renewable dollars in 2015:

New investment in renewable energy by country and asset class, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, UNEP

So the UNEP report helps clarify the role China plays in the renewable sector: It’s mostly deploying utility-scale projects, and they’re mostly projects that are ready for asset finance. Globally speaking, though, here’s what asset finance for renewables looks like over time and space:

Asset finance investment in renewable energy by region, 2004–2015, $bn

But asset finance comes relatively late in a renewable project’s life cycle; that is, at the point of roll-out. Earlier in the cycle, though, the funding landscape looks a little different. Funding from public markets, for example, might begin to trickle in at the point when a given company scales up manufacturing. The United States, which leads the world in terms of investment in publicly listed renewable companies, saw a 41 percent increase in this kind of funding in 2015, compared to the previous year. Note China’s 45 percent dip in this area in the following chart:

Public markets investment in renewable energy by company nationality, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

In terms of venture capital and private equity — the kind of investment that comes at an earlier stage in a company’s cycle — the United States also boasted the heaviest spend. Here’s the global distribution of venture capital spending since 2004, broken down by region:

Venture capital/private equity investment in renewable energy by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, UNEP

And the U.S. was responsible for more value in terms of mergers and acquisitions (including refinancings, takeovers, and buy-outs) in the renewables space than any other country last year. As the following chart shows, while China has seen modest growth in acquisitions over the past couple years, the country still makes up only a small chunk of total spending in this space:

Asset acquisitions and refinancings by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

None of this is particularly surprising, but it is illuminating — and in many cases, sobering. Don’t forget that China brought more than 40 GW of coal and gas power online last year, too. Investment in the renewable sector continues to grow, but if countries are serious about the commitments they made at the Paris Climate Conference, they’ll have to wean themselves off fossil fuels a lot faster. “When you’re on a diet, it’s not enough to account for the salads you’re eating,” said Ulf Moslener, lead editor on the report, on a press call. “You also have to account for the ice cream.”

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Clinton backtracks on coal comments after coal lovers throw a fit

by Shauna4037 Posted on March 15, 2016

Clinton backtracks on coal comments after coal lovers throw a fit

By Katie Herzogon 15 Mar 2016comments Share

On Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told the world that the coal industry would be in trouble when she’s president. On Monday, she tried to take it all back.

At a town hall event broadcast on CNN Sunday evening, Clinton was asked, “Make the case to poor whites who live in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, who vote Republican, why they should vote for you based upon economic policies versus voting for a Republican.” She tried to argue that she stands with working people, but it didn’t come out exactly right:

I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country, because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business … and we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives, to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal, and all the other fossil fuels. But I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.

It’s true that Clinton is the only candidate who has laid out a comprehensive plan to help coal country transition to a cleaner economy. Her $30 billion plan would rebuild infrastructure and invest in public health, education, and entrepreneurial initiatives in order to help coal-reliant communities transition to a cleaner economy.

But of course that’s not the part of her statement that everyone glommed onto. Conservative politicians and commentators — and Democrats running for office in coal country — immediately attacked her for allegedly wanting to put the coal industry “out of business.”

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“Hillary’s vow to kill coal miners’ jobs finishes a vast Democratic betrayal,” read the headline the in New York Post. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader from Kentucky, called Clinton’s comments “callous” and “wrong” on the Senate floor. Breitbart wrote that Clinton’s statement is “a clear sign she intends to accelerate the destruction of one of the country’s leading energy sector industries.”

Two of the three Democratic candidates for governor of West Virginia also attacked: Booth Goodwin said he “absolutely disagreed” with Clinton, and Jim Justice, who made his fortune in coal, said he would “not support anyone who does not support coal,” according to the AP.

Clinton, in a head-spinning reversal, quickly backed up on Monday. After first pointing out that Republicans were spinning her words (which is true), the campaign released a statement saying, “Coal will remain a part of the energy mix for years to come, and we have a shared responsibility to ensure that coal communities receive the benefits they have earned and can build the future they deserve.”

But here’s the thing: Clinton may be afraid of losing coal country votes, but Big Coal has been dying for decades. As Alec MacGillis wrote in The New Republic in 2014, “Employment in the coal industry has been in decline for so long in states such as Kentucky and West Virginia that the number of jobs directly at risk from any clampdown on coal is far smaller than the sweeping rhetoric about ‘coal country’ would have one assume.” In Kentucky, the heart of “coal country,” employment in the industry went from 38,000 in 1983 to less 17,000 in 2012, MacGillis reports. And AP notes that production in the top three coal states declined between 5 and 20 percent in 2015 alone. In Ohio, it fell 22 percent.

While it’s true that environmental regulations — and automation — have had an impact on the industry, coal isn’t actually dying because of environmental regulations. It’s dying because of the free market. The decline in coal directly corresponds to the rise in natural gas, a cheaper and more efficient source of energy — and one that the GOP has been pushing in earnest. As Michael Lynch, an energy consultant, told The New York Times in 2014, “It’s not Obama’s war on coal. It’s reality’s war on coal. Natural gas turns out to be better than coal in the marketplace.”

With coal companies going bust and banks decreasing their support for the industry, no one can save Big Coal now. What the government can do is create clean energy jobs and help coal communities adjust to the new reality — which is exactly what Hillary Clinton was talking about doing. At least, until the bad press started rolling in.

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Obama’s offshore drilling plan mostly a win for environmentalists, with a caveat

by DwightMyers Posted on March 15, 2016

Obama’s offshore drilling plan mostly a win for environmentalists, with a caveat

By Rebecca Leberon 15 Mar 2016comments Share

President Obama has shown little interest in gambling his environmental legacy in his final year of office. Rather than slow down after the Paris climate change conference in December, he has pushed forward on policies climate activists say are necessary to keep fossil fuels in the ground — first, his administration announced a moratorium on new coal leases, and now, it has taken the Atlantic Coast off the table for drillers.

The administration released a new version of its five-year plan for offshore drilling on Tuesday, and the most significant change is its reversal on its plan from a year ago to open the mid-Atlantic to offshore development. The Arctic, meanwhile, is still open for business: The new proposal solicits comments on whether to drop Arctic leases entirely or whether to limit them in some areas. But it also still has an option that includes leases in the Chuckhi Sea, Beaufort Sea, and Cook Inlet — much criticized by environmentalists who say a spill anywhere in the Arctic will have devastating effects for the rest of the region. The Gulf will be open for 10 leases.

The Interior Department’s plan for offshore drilling essentially sets the course for oil and gas development long after Obama leaves office. Technically it covers a period from 2017 to 2022, but oil and gas exploration offshore can take years to get off the ground, even decades before paying off the cost. Any delay is promising: While presidential candidates could promise to reverse course, in practice, they are unlikely to do so, explained Natural Resources Defense Council’s Beyond Oil Director Franz Matzner. “This administration sets the five-year plan for the next administration,” Matzner said in an email. “The next administration could, in theory, try to undo that, but we have not seen that precedent in the past. Far and away the most secure route for the Obama administration would be to permanently withdraw the Arctic and Atlantic from all future leasing, using his executive authority under [the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act].”

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If the proposed version is finalized after the 90 days of public comment, it will be a significant achievement for environmentalists and local communities that organized against offshore drilling. With one caveat, of course: the Arctic.

“They won’t get it right every time, but it gives us a new hook to hold them and the next president to account,” 350.org spokesperson Jamie Henn said in an email. “The new test of climate leadership is if you’re keeping fossil fuels in the ground.”

“Less than a week after committing to protect the Arctic with Prime Minister Trudeau, President Obama has left the door open for Shell and the rest of the oil industry to drill in the region,” Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard said in an email. “This decision doesn’t balance conservation and energy — it fuels climate chaos. President Obama must place the whole Arctic off limits. This program isn’t yet final, the president must use the time he has to take all new offshore drilling out of circulation.”

The Interior didn’t highlight climate change as part of its calculus on Tuesday, only citing “significant potential conflicts with other ocean uses such as the Department of Defense and commercial interests; current market dynamics; limited infrastructure; and opposition from many coastal communities.” But there was intense pressure from cities and businesses that rely on $4 billion in tourism and fishing on the coasts to remove the Atlantic from the plan. In recent weeks, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have highlighted their opposition against drilling off the East Coast and the Arctic.

This is the second time the administration has tried to open the East Coast for drilling, only to reverse course. Just before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster by BP, the administration proposed auctioning up to 104 million acres of the mid- and south-Atlantic and 10 leases in the Arctic. Then last January, Interior again put the Atlantic on the table, which set off protests from environmental groups and local businesses and residents.

The oil and gas industry, which eyed the Atlantic for its 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 31.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, will be furious. But public opinion on oil drilling is more complicated than political divides. Public support for offshore drilling plummets when there are spills, as it did after the BP disaster in 2010, but tends to rise again with passing time.

In his final year of office, Obama faces limits in what more he can do for the environment and climate. He’s already pushed his executive power on climate change more than any other president; the offshore drilling plan is one of the few opportunities he has left. Protecting the coasts by limiting oil and gas development offshore would be a fitting ending for a president who once called the BP spill the “worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.”

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JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

by ZenaidaBecerra Posted on March 8, 2016

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

By Katie Herzogon 8 Mar 2016comments Share

The death rattle of coal industry grew a little louder when JPMorgan Chase announced last week that the bank will no longer be directly financing new coal operations in the developed world. “We believe the financial services sector has an important role to play as governments implement policies to combat climate change, and that the trends toward more sustainable, low-carbon economies represent growing business opportunities,” said the bank in a statement.

JPMorgan joins a growing list of banks that have pledge to cut ties with coal, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. But before you start to think big banks are closet progressives, it’s best to keep in mind that even if they do cut ties that they are still following the money: Coal is a poor investment right now. Demand for coal in the U.S. has dropped 10 percent in the last three years, and it will drop off even more in the next 15, since replacing the power sector’s favorite fuel with renewable energy and natural gas is a key component of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Right now, production is at a 30-year low, and coal companies are going bust left and right. At the State of the Union in January, the president called on the elimination federal subsidies for fossil fuels as well as an end to cheap leases on federal lands for oil and coal companies. So while JPMorgan’s plan to pull back from coal is good, it’s also smart.

The coal industry, of course, disagrees. Bloomberg Business reports that the the National Mining Association called JPMorgan’s changes “hardly a heroic gesture” given the market downturn. “The bank hedges its bets on financing projects in developing countries, because, not surprisingly, that’s where the growth is and will be,” said Luke Popovich in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

He’s got a point: JPMorgan isn’t divesting from fuel entirely. The bank will continue to finance coal projects in developing nations using ultra-supercritical technology, which have lower emissions and higher efficiency than conventional plants. So while this is a step in the right direction, it’s just that: A step.

“In order to have a chance at stabilizing the climate, we need financial institutions to follow these commitments on coal mining with further steps to end coal financing altogether,” said Ben Collins, senior campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, an organization lobbying for coal divestment. “It’s time for the financial sector to step up and lead the just transition we need to a clean, renewable future.”

Clearly, we’re not there yet, but with JPMorgan’s announcement, the death of Big Coal looks even more inevitable.

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