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Fracking is definitely causing earthquakes, another study confirms

by DaciaPamphlett Posted on January 7, 2015

Fracking is definitely causing earthquakes, another study confirms

By John Lighton 7 Jan 2015comments Share

Yet another study has found a link between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes. This one examined 77 minor quakes near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

The sequence of seismic events, including a rare “felt” quake of a magnitude 3.0 on the Richter scale, was caused by active “fracking” on two nearby Hilcorp Energy Co. well pads, according to the research published online [Tuesday] in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

The study found that although it is rare for fracking associated with shale gas extraction to cause earthquakes large enough to be felt on the surface by humans, seismic monitoring advances have found the number of “felt and unfelt” earthquakes associated with fracking have increased over the past 10 years.

Studies have found that it’s not just the actual drilling and extraction that causes the earthquakes; more often, the routine practice of injecting fracking wastewater into deep disposal wells is to blame. Once the toxic mix of water, sand, and chemicals is underground, it can travel for miles, changing the pressure on fault lines and sometimes triggering earthquakes.

The practice has caused a surge in earthquakes in many areas where fracking is common. Oklahoma in particular has been hard-hit. Once a state where tremors were few and far between, Oklahoma in 2014 had 564 quakes that were at least of magnitude 3 — the most in the contiguous U.S. From 1975 until 2008, the state had, on average, only three such quakes per year. From E&E EnergyWire:

The Sooner State was shaken by 564 quakes of magnitude 3 and larger, compared with only 100 in 2013, according to an EnergyWire analysis of federal earthquake data. California, which is twice the size of Oklahoma, had fewer than half as many quakes. …

“Who’d have ever thought we’d start having so many earthquakes out here in the middle of the country?” asked Max Hess, a county commissioner in Grant County, which had 135 quakes last year. He also thinks the quakes are related to oil and gas, which has been an economic boon for the rural county northwest of Oklahoma City.

“It’s been good,” Hess said of the drilling, “but it’s got its drawbacks.”

EnergyWire reports that many in Oklahoma’s oil and gas regions are cautiously tolerant of the earthquakes because of the money that comes with the drilling boom. But scientists in the state’s geological survey are concerned about the trend. “If my research takes me to the point where we determine the safest thing to do is to shut down injection — and consequently production — in large portions of the state, then that’s what we have to do,” seismologist Austin Holland told Bloomberg this summer.

Source:
Study: Fracking caused earthquakes in existing faults in Ohio

, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Shaken more than 560 times, Okla. is top state for quakes in 2014

, E&E EnergyWire.

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Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

by DaltonHauslaib Posted on January 5, 2015

Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

By John Lighton 5 Jan 2015comments Share

The new Republican Senate leadership seems to be holding true to its word: Approval for the Keystone XL pipeline will top the 2015 legislative agenda. The head of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), plans to hold a hearing on the pipeline on Wednesday and introduce a bill to approve it on Thursday.

A pro-Keystone bill came one vote short of passing in the Senate in November — and that was back when Democrats were still in control. This time, Republicans say, newly elected senators such as Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) will ensure that there are at least 60 votes, enough to overcome the threat of a filibuster and pass the legislation. But Senate leadership likely still won’t have the 67 votes they’d need to overcome a veto by President Obama, should he issue one.

So, assuming Keystone clears Congress in the next few weeks, how will Obama respond? The president has repeatedly put off making a call on the controversial pipeline, saying he’s waiting for the State Department to finish its assessment of the project. Toward the end of 2014, he was sounding like he wasn’t much a fan — when a Washington Post reporter asked Obama about Keystone last month, he responded that the project would have little positive effect in the U.S.:

“[S]ometimes the way this gets sold is, let’s get this oil and it’s going to come here and the implication is that’s gonna lower oil prices here in the U.S. It’s not. There’s a global oil market. It’s very good for Canadian oil companies and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers.”

This would seem to suggest that when Republicans try to force Obama’s hand on the project, they can expect a veto — or at least that’s what climate hawks are hoping.

Keystone is also facing another challenge: Its path through Nebraska is held up by that state’s Supreme Court, which is currently deciding whether the governor wrongly cleared the way for the pipeline through a special legislative session in 2012, instead of letting the state’s Public Service Commission, which usually handles those decisions, make the call. The Nebraska court’s ruling is also expected very soon.

Source:
U.S. Senate panel to introduce Keystone XL bill Thursday

, Reuters.

In Keystone pipeline case, what might Nebraska court do?

, Reuters.

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This new app takes a swipe at China’s worst polluters

by SimaCTRkbhrzxi Posted on January 4, 2015

smog list

This new app takes a swipe at China’s worst polluters

By Amelia Urryon 4 Jan 2015comments Share

When Chinese environmental advocate Ma Jun realized that no one was going to take responsibility for the crippling smog that plagues his country, he decided to take matters into his own hands. His idea: encourage citizens to start pointing their fingers at the problem. Literally.

Manufacturers have been reaping the rewards of China’s new industrial economy, while ducking the consequences of fouling up its air. So Ma and colleagues built a live-updating map that shows exactly where individual polluters are emitting the noxious stuff that threatens Chinese citizens’ health, to the tune of 670,000 premature deaths, and contributes to global climate change.

Using government-installed air monitoring systems, the app reports real-time emissions from sources all over the country, marking the culprits with guilty orange circles. Although China has strict anti-pollution laws — some violations are even punishable by death — the laws are typically poorly enforced. With few electoral routes to justice available, public opinion is often the best tool for fighting smog. The L.A. Times has more:

Many of the worst polluters are state-owned companies or have close ties to regional officials. Among the worst offenders are firms such as Tianjin Pipe Group, China’s largest producer of crude-oil pipelines, which recently ranked as the region’s top source of airborne particulates, and the Dezhou Kaiyuan power plant in Shandong province, southeast of Beijing, which topped the list for sulfur dioxide, emitting seven times the national limit.

Particularly at the local and provincial level, officials suffer from a “lack of motivation” to pursue serious polluters, Ma said. Public “transparency is one of the very few options we have” to “drive enforcement,” he said.

So far, 10,000 people have downloaded the app, which means 10,000 fingers are poised to shame the worst offenders.

A few years ago, this kind of monitoring would not even have been possible. Before 2012, it was illegal for Chinese cities even to disclose information about their particulate matter; now almost 200 do so publicly. It’s no surprise that the tide of policy is turning. China’s smog is so bad that the country’s politicians have no choice but to acknowledge it and make steps toward solving the problem. This app is just one more goad to make sure those steps are real, and move policy in the right direction. When’s the last time you could say the same about Snapchat?

Source:
In China, app aims to shame polluters by showing who is fouling air

, L.A. Times.

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Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged article, business & technology, citizen, dezhou-kaiyuan, justice, king, policy, public, work | Comments Off

California’s cap-and-trade program now covers cars

by GrantBramlett Posted on January 2, 2015

California’s cap-and-trade program now covers cars

By John Lighton 2 Jan 2015comments Share

After a long PR battle between oil industry lobbyists and California’s regulatory agencies, the state’s cap-and-trade program was extended on Jan. 1, on schedule, to cover companies that sell fuel to drivers. That means fuel retailers will have to either provide lower-carbon fuels or buy permits for the pollution their products put into the air.

Industry front groups have been labeling this new extension of the cap-and-trade program a “hidden gas tax.” Citing calculations based on outdated figures, these groups have been threatening that, starting this month, prices at the pump will go up for Californians by as much as $0.76 per gallon.

That’s not true, say the California government and independent economists. Yes, some of the cost — something in the neighborhood of 9 or 10 cents per gallon — could be passed on to consumers. But with gas prices across the U.S. falling ever lower, California drivers likely won’t notice much of a difference. Furthermore, as the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Simon Mui points out, AB 32 — the California climate change legislation that led to the creation of the cap-and-trade program — takes steps to encourage fuel efficiency and to promote alternatives to gasoline-powered cars, from electric vehicles to high-speed trains. Those initiatives, NRDC estimates, could end up saving families hundreds of dollars in transportation costs each year.

So why is the industry warning of a major hike in fuel prices even when independent analysts are saying Californians can expect to pay only an additional dime a gallon? Some consumer advocates worry it’s a sign that the industry may try to have the last word by artificially hiking prices in protest of the program. For instance, the oil industry might pull one or more of the state’s 14 refineries offline, causing prices to spike. So last month, Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, sent a letter to the state agency that oversees fuel markets warning it to watch for market manipulation from a spiteful industry.

“Oil companies launched a ballot initiative, backed a number of failed bills to dismantle clean energy efforts and have spent $70 million lobbying Sacramento politicians” to undermine the state’s climate law, said Shannon Baker-Branstetter, policy counsel for Consumers Union, in a press release put out with the letter. “Through it all, consumers have been steadfast in their support of clean energy and energy efficiency.” Baker-Branstetter noted that even as oil prices are falling, industry-backed groups “continue to claim that gas price spikes are coming starting in January 2015. … We want to make sure that California consumers are protected against possible market manipulations.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, perhaps in response to these concerns, California’s Energy Commission appointed new members to the state agency that monitors how regulations affect fuel prices — including the head of antitrust operations in the state attorney general’s office.

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The very first thing the new Republican Senate will do is try to push through Keystone

by KarolynThibodea Posted on December 17, 2014

The very first thing the new Republican Senate will do is try to push through Keystone

By John Lighton 17 Dec 2014comments Share

Once Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) becomes Senate majority leader next month, his first order of business will be to hold a vote on authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, he said on Tuesday. If it passes, that would force President Obama to either approve or veto the bill, and thus the pipeline, before he is ready to. From CNN:

The President has said he wants the decision left in the hands of the State Department, which is six years into a review of the project and currently holds final authority because the pipeline would cross international borders. …

The House has repeatedly approved a bill that would take the Keystone decision out of the Obama administration’s hands, end the review and give the project the green light.

For months, the Senate’s Democratic leaders ignored that House bill, but then last month they suddenly changed course and allowed a vote on it in a doomed bid to help Senate Energy Chair Mary Landrieu win her runoff election in oil-friendly Louisiana. Approval for Keystone came up one vote short, and Landrieu lost by 12 points.

Next year, when McConnell is in control of the Senate, newly elected Republican senators will give him the votes he needs to pass the Keystone bill. But if the president vetoes the legislation, McConnell probably won’t have enough votes to override him. Republicans will have 54 seats, and a number of Democrats could be expected to vote with them, but it would be a stretch to get to the 67 needed to overturn a veto.

Climate activists reacted to McConnell’s statement exactly the way you’d expect them to.

“This is just the climate denial agenda that the fossil fuel industry paid for,” Sara Shor, tar-sands campaign manager for 350.org, said in a statement. The group is planning more anti-Keystone protests for January. “The fossil fuel industry has all the money, but we’ve got the people. When it comes to politics, intensity often carries the day. We’re going to bring the heat.”

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Are you dumb if you buy a Prius when gas prices are this low? Um, no

by TrinaUccenoyuhd Posted on December 11, 2014

Are you dumb if you buy a Prius when gas prices are this low? Um, no

By John Lighton 11 Dec 2014comments Share

Time for us to talk about the media’s FAVORITE THING: gas prices. There’s like maybe a slim chance you’ve already read a story about how cheap prices are at the pump. They’ve hit a four-year low, an average of about $2.70 in the U.S. — and they might drop to $2.50 by Christmas. Maybe you’ve even been to one of said pumps and experienced for yourself just how cheap gas is! But there are some environmental implications. Let’s discuss.

First, as Heather Smith already noted, the low cost of fuel has brought gas-guzzling SUVs back from the dead. It’s also making people who drive more fuel-efficient cars look stupid in the mind of one cynical Bloomberg Businessweek reporter. See: “With $2 Gas, the Toyota Prius Is for Drivers Who Stink at Math.”

It would take almost 30 years of fuel savings from the hybrid Prius to cover its price premium over the little Chevy Cruze, although that doesn’t account for the Chevy buyer making savvy investments with her savings in the meantime. It doesn’t matter, since we will all be flying around in futuristic Teslas before the Prius pays off. The all-electric Nissan gets a lot closer: The Leaf, without any gas stops, takes just 3.8 years on the road to beat the cheaper sticker price of the Cruze.

Overall, because of people who think like the Businessweek reporter, plus people who get real excited about things that are huge and loud and rumble beneath them, the average fuel economy of vehicles being purchased is now falling flat, after years of rising. This chart, via Brad Plumer at Vox, shows that the stagnation is already apparent in the last few months’ sales.

Of course, there’s one market mechanism that does have the power to make driving something like, say, a Cadillac Escalade a stupid idea, even with low gas prices: carbon pricing. California’s carbon-pricing scheme will be extended to cover vehicle fuel on Jan. 1, and that could make a difference in the long-term economics of purchasing a big ol’ traditional car over a newer, greener model. The fossil fuel lobby has been pushing hard to cast this as a hidden gas “tax” on California drivers. Many fossil fuel companies accept, in their internal accounting, that such schemes are inevitable, but they’re still fighting hard to put them off as long as possible.

And with the low gas prices, the International Energy Agency is reminding world governments that now is the perfect time — a “golden opportunity” — to get rid of subsidies for the fossil fuel industry and to put a price on carbon. From the British news site Responding to Climate Change:

Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said [policymakers] could consider measures that “would have been unthinkable a year ago”.

She was addressing media at the UN climate talks in Lima, where negotiators are considering a target of net zero emissions by 2050.

And while cutting fossil fuel–related emissions down to nothing by 2050 might be a long-shot scheme, world leaders are in a good place to receive this tidbit of IEA advice. It looks like diplomats will return home from the U.N. conference in Lima tasked with developing a plan for their own country to reduce emissions. Putting a price on carbon is an effective and increasingly popular way to do that.

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Whales start pulling their own weight, save us for a change

by well Posted on December 5, 2014

prince of whales

Whales start pulling their own weight, save us for a change

By Amelia Urryon 5 Dec 2014 2:19 pmcomments Share

Whales: what a bunch of majestic slackers. We’ve been saving them for DECADES, and only just now are we starting to see the favor returned, thanks to a go-getting group of belugas making moves to shut down a controversial pipeline in eastern Canada.

Preliminary work on the terminal of TransCanada pipeline Energy East was suspended this week due to concerns about the habitat of endangered beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River.

The Cacouna, Quebec marine terminal was proposed for the eastern shore of the St. Lawrence and would serve as a loading point for oil carriers. But COSEWIC’s endangered species classification for the population, which contains about 900 individual whales and is the southernmost population of belugas in the world, could make building the terminal in Cacouna difficult for TransCanada.

“We are standing down on any further work at Cacouna, in order to analyze the recommendation, assess any impacts from Energy East, and review all viable options,” TransCanada spokesman Tim Duboyce told Bloomberg.

I mean, FINALLY, belugas, you give us something to be grateful of besides that one terrible song. (I guess it might be worth considering the small point of humans having driven this particular beluga whale population from 5,000 in 1900 to 1,200 by the 1950s … technicalities!)

And Energy East, though less famous than KXL (the Kardashian of celebrity pipelines), is pretty bad news for humans, as well as the rest of terrestrial life as we know it:

The construction of Energy East would involve converting an existing gas pipeline that stretches across Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario into a tar sands pipeline. …

It would be carrying the same tar sands oil that Keystone XL would carry, but Energy East would have a higher capacity: about 1.1 million barrels of tar sands crude each day versus Keystone XL’s 830,000 bpd. Earlier this year, a report from Canada’s Pembina Institute also found that Energy East could create even more greenhouse gas emissions than Keystone XL.

Wow. Big first move, belugas. Maybe next you can think about chipping in on the rent.

Source:
Work Stops On Tar Sands Export Terminal Due To Endangered Beluga Whale Population

, Think Progress.

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Dear U.N.: Coal plants don’t count as climate-friendly projects

by TammaraDaddario Posted on December 4, 2014

Dear U.N.: Coal plants don’t count as climate-friendly projects

By John Lighton 4 Dec 2014 12:43 pmcomments Share

One of the ways the U.N. hopes to help developing countries prepare for climate change is through a mechanism called the Green Climate Fund (GCF). In 2009, rich countries pledged to come up with $100 billion a year, by 2020, to help poorer parts of the world get ready to face a problem that they, by and large, didn’t cause.

So far, rich nations have pledged about $10 billion. That’s not nearly enough, and it might end up being even less if countries don’t make good on their pledges (for instance, if Congress succeeds in blocking Obama from delivering the $3 billion the U.S. recently promised).

A healthy portion of the commitments so far have come from Japan. Way to lead, Japan! Right? Well, maybe not so fast. An Associated Press investigation found that around a billion dollars of what Japan had told the U.N. was “climate financing” to poorer nations actually went to fund coal plants built in Indonesia by Japanese companies. The AP reports:

Japan says these plants burn coal more efficiently and are therefore cleaner than old coal plants.

However, they still emit twice as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide as plants running on natural gas. Villagers near the Cirebon plant in Indonesia also complain that stocks of shrimp, fish and green mussels have dwindled.

Japan claims that it didn’t (technically) do anything wrong, and (technically) it seems to be right. But building coal plants in poor areas isn’t exactly what the U.N. means when it refers to “climate financing.”

“Unabated coal has no room in the future energy system,” Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s point person on climate change, told the AP. “Over time, what we should be seeing is a very, very clear trend of investment into clean renewable energy.”

The big takeaway from this story is that the U.N. just doesn’t have rules for what is “climate financing” and what isn’t. But it will have to get some if the Green Climate Fund is to reach its funding goals and spend the money in ways that are at all worth countries making commitments in the first place.

Around 300 environmental groups sent a letter to the fund’s board yesterday urging the board to get on it — to rule out “financing fossil fuel and other harmful energy projects or programs.”

“What this tells is that wealthy countries may view the GCF as a way to greenwash what they want to finance anyway,” wrote Kyle Ash, Greenpeace’s senior legislative representative, in a statement to Grist. “The GCF Board should agree to an absolute ban on any fossil fuel investments, and send a broad communication to follow the U.S. lead on banning public investment in financing of coal projects abroad.” Or at least trying to.

“It defies reason that we have to raise this issue with the UNFCCC/GCF at all,” said Samantha Smith, the leader of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

The U.N. acknowledged to the AP that the current situation isn’t ideal and needs to be fixed. The GCF’s board will be meeting in February and will at that point consider an “exclusion list” — a list of types of projects that should not receive funding.

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A plan to get solar headed in the right direction — literally

by JovitaLarnach Posted on December 2, 2014

westward ho

A plan to get solar headed in the right direction — literally

By Sam Blisson 2 Dec 2014comments Share

Up here in the northern hemisphere, south-facing solar panels produce the most total electricity. So we should build them to look that direction to make the biggest impact, right? Not so fast, my friend.

Clean energy buffs have been saying for a while that we should point our photovoltaics to the west, not the south, to maximize the value of the juice produced. Westward-facing solar panels capture late-day sunshine (think about it) when electricity demand is highest.

The wonks at utility-software maker OPower know this to be true, and they recently scoured their enormous stockpile of energy data to come up with some new math on the subject (the blog post is well worth reading, or at least looking at the pretty charts). Here’s just one nugget from the analysis of over 100,000 California solar systems:

Overall, 71% of residential systems in the Golden State primarily face the southern sky, while 20% primarily face the western sky. Only around 9% of systems face within 10 degrees of due west — an orientation that’s highly aligned with the needs of the grid, according to recent guidelines from the California Energy Commission.

The Cali solar landscape may begin to tilt toward the west soon, though. Those new guidelines from the CEC, released in September, include a program to give up to $500 to people who build panels that point to the Pacific.

Why is it important, you ask, to provide solar power in the early evening? Well, nine-to-fivers and students come home from work and school and — depending on location and season — turn on the AC or the heat, plug in their rechargeables, run some appliances, and illuminate screens. Meanwhile, the electric utility scrambles to meet this demand as power output from south-facing solar panels wanes. Often, this means firing up natural gas-burning power plants. Sorry climate.

So, if westward-oriented solar panels can offset some of the electricity system’s carbon emissions, why have we been positioning them to aim south? In short, the incentives suck. Most people with solar arrays get paid for the total power generated (or net meter it) at a flat rate. So solar owners and lessees choose to put up panels facing south to make the most money. Who could blame them?

OPower’s study mentions a few ways to fix the issue. First, and easiest, utilities can pay for solar power at varying rates, to reflect the price of power at a particular time of day. Second, solar trackers, which allow panels to follow the sun as it moves from east to west, are getting cheaper. And lastly, tech innovation means better options for storing lots of energy. Large-scale electricity storage makes timing irrelevant — just maximize solar power production and feed it back into the grid as needed!

Until these advances become affordable reality, do your utility a favor and set up your new solar system to look longingly to the west. Your panels want to watch the gorgeous sunset too, you know.

Source:
9% of solar homes are doing something utilities love. Will others follow?

, Outlier.

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