Tag Archives: energy

Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

by DaltonHauslaib Posted on January 5, 2015

Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

By on 5 Jan 2015commentsShare

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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Congress will soon approve Keystone, say Republicans

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There’s More to the Oil Collapse Than Just Shale

by TomasDennis Posted on January 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bloomberg provides us today with the following chart of oil prices over the years:

James Pethokoukis has a complaint:

There is one major factor affecting oil prices that somehow got left out. Really, nothing on fracking and the shale oil revolution? Granted, it’s not an event easy to exactly date (though somehow the accompanying article manages the trick), but neither is China’s economic takeoff, and that got a shout-out.

It’s a fair point—but only up to a point. Keep in mind that US shale oil production has been growing steadily for the past five years, and during most of that time oil prices have been going up. It’s only in the past six months that oil prices have collapsed. Obviously there’s more going on than just shale.

James Hamilton, who knows as much about the energy market as anyone, figures that about 40 percent of the recent oil crash is due to reduced demand—probably as a result of global economic weakness. Of the remainder, a good guess is that half is due to shale oil and half is due to the OPEC price war in Bloomberg’s chart.

In other words, although US shale oil production is likely to have a moderate long-term impact, it’s probably responsible for a little less than a third of the current slump in oil prices. The rest is up to OPEC and a weak economy. So give shale its due, but don’t overhype it. It’s still responsible for only about 5 percent of global production.

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There’s More to the Oil Collapse Than Just Shale

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Obama Sounds Like He’s About to Reject the Keystone Pipeline

by LoganCrookes Posted on December 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Grist website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Speaking at his end-of-the-year press conference on Friday afternoon, President Obama sounded very much like he’s poised to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. He gave his sharpest assessment to date of its potential costs and benefits—lots of costs and few benefits.

Climate hawks rejoiced, not only because of Obama’s implied opposition to Keystone, but because he finally confronted American ignorance of how the oil market works, and attempted to reorient our energy policy around reality.

At the press conference, Obama took a question from The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin on what he will do about the Keystone XL pipeline, which congressional Republicans plan to try to ram through in January. Eilperin said Obama has in past comments “minimized some of the benefits” of Keystone. Obama responded that he has merely accurately characterized the benefits, which are objectively minimal, and walked Eilperin through a lesson in macroeconomics.

Here are the highlights:

I don’t think I’ve minimized the benefits, I think I’ve described the benefits.

At issue on Keystone is not American oil, it is Canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in Canada. That oil currently is being shipped through rail or trucks, and it would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it all the way through the United State down to the Gulf. Once that oil gets to the Gulf, it is then entering into the world market and it would be sold all around the world… There is very little impact, nominal impact, on US gas prices, what the average American consumer cares about, by having this pipeline come through.

And sometimes 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 US 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 US consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to US consumers.

And video of Obama’s whole answer:

It has been a source of aggravation to climate hawks that Obama has often pandered to the economic ignorance of the American public when it comes to gas prices. Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy falsely asserts that increased domestic production of oil will reduce “our dependence on foreign oil,” as if there really were any such thing. Oil is a global commodity. Prices are set by global supply and global demand. Whether the oil we buy happens to be drilled in the US, Canada, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or Libya makes no difference. We are subsidizing our adversaries who produce oil as long as we are filling our gas-guzzlers with it. More oil production in the US, or oil importation from Canada, will not inoculate us against the price shocks caused by supply disruptions in the Middle East or elsewhere.

The whole American debate around energy policy has been perverted by the public’s failure to understand this basic concept. Republicans, of course, eagerly fan the flames of economic illiteracy. Obama’s approach has usually been to try to split the difference between this foolishness and smart energy policy by promising to increase domestic production of both renewables and fossil fuels. But now Obama has confronted these public misperceptions and tried to educate the public so that energy policy can be decided on a more rational basis.

As for Keystone, Obama went on to observe that the other supposed benefit, construction jobs, is real but small and temporary. Meanwhile, our transportation and clean water infrastructure crumbles and Republicans refuse to appropriate money to fix and improve it, which would create more jobs and lasting economic effects than construction of any pipeline. “When you consider what we could be doing if we were rebuilding our roads and bridges around the country, something that Congress could authorize, we could probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs, or a million jobs,” he said. (In fairness, Obama has refused to propose raising the gasoline tax to fund more transportation investment.)

And Obama mentioned the cost of climate change and the possibility that Keystone would exacerbate it. “If we’ve got more flooding, more wildfires, more drought, there are direct economic impacts on that,” he said.

The main Keystone drawback Obama neglected to mention is the local environmental risk to the communities the pipeline would pass through due to possible leaks.

Nonetheless, green groups were overjoyed. NextGen Climate, the organization funded by Tom Steyer, immediately sent out video of Obama’s answer with the subject line, “KEYSTONE XL GETS THE PRESIDENTIAL SEAL OF DISAPPROVAL.” We don’t actually know that, yet, but it’s looking likely.

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Obama Sounds Like He’s About to Reject the Keystone Pipeline

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Rick Perry Is One Lucky Dude

by ChristiGuest Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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From James Pethokoukis:

The energy sector gives, and the energy sector takes. The stunning drop in oil prices looks like bad news for the “Texas Miracle.” (Texas is responsible for 40% of all US oil production — vs. 25% five years ago — and all of the net US job growth since 2007.) This from JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli: “As we weigh the evidence, we think Texas will, at the least, have a rough 2015 ahead, and is at risk of slipping into a regional recession.”

Man, Rick Perry is one lucky guy, isn’t he? It’s true that the “Texas Miracle” may not be quite the miracle Perry would like us to believe. As the chart below shows in a nutshell, the Texas unemployment rate has fared only slightly better than the average of all its surrounding states.

Still, Texas has certainly had strong absolute job growth. However, this is mostly due to (a) population growth; (b) the shale oil boom; and (c) surprisingly strict mortgage loan regulations combined with loose land use rules, which allowed Texas to escape the worst of the housing bubble. Perry had nothing to do with any of this. And now that oil is collapsing and might bring the miracle to a sudden end, Perry is leaving office and can avoid all blame for what happens next.

One lucky guy indeed.

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Rick Perry Is One Lucky Dude

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Your electric vehicle might not be as green as you think it is

by ToneyKirschbaum Posted on December 17, 2014

Your electric vehicle might not be as green as you think it is

By on 17 Dec 2014commentsShare

Driving an electric car feels good: You’re not burning gasoline, and you’re avoiding its attendant ills, like poisoning your community and contributing to climate change. But, when you take into account where the electricity that powers your car comes from, it turns out that those warm fuzzies might be baseless.

A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that if you live in a coal-dependent state, driving an electric vehicle might make your net effect on the environment and public health worse than if you had just stuck with a gas-powered vehicle. A team from the University of Minnesota compared cars powered by 10 different gasoline alternatives. The AP’s Seth Borenstein reports:

The study finds all-electric vehicles cause 86 percent more deaths from air pollution than do cars powered by regular gasoline. Coal produces 39 percent of the country’s electricity, according to the Department of Energy.

But if the power supply comes from natural gas, the all-electric car produces half as many air pollution health problems as gas-powered cars do. And if the power comes from wind, water or wave energy, it produces about one-quarter of the air pollution deaths.

Hybrids and diesel engines are cleaner than gas, causing fewer air pollution deaths and spewing less heat-trapping gas.

But ethanol isn’t, with 80 percent more air pollution mortality, according to the study.

The takeaway? In many parts of the country, electric cars may be … symbolic, at least at the moment. But they will make more and more sense as coal dies out and America’s energy system continues to get greener.

“Unfortunately, when a wire is connected to an electric vehicle at one end and a coal-fired power plant at the other end, the environmental consequences are worse than driving a normal gasoline-powered car,” Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science, said in an email to Climate Central. Caldeira is unaffiliated with the study, but is working on similar research. “But electric vehicles are still good because they move us down a path toward a future near-zero emissions energy and transportation system,” he said. “Unfortunately, given the way electricity is generated in the U.S. today, the first steps down this path to lower pollution involves increases in pollution.”

Burning coal for electricity is responsible for a huge amount of America’s air pollution, and it’s the single biggest source of climate change — causing CO2 pollution in the country. Recognizing this, the Obama administration has proposed rules to crack down on coal plant pollution, which should have the effect of pushing some utilities toward cleaner energy. Meanwhile, the natural gas boom is already making coal an uneconomical source of power for utilities.

So, coal is already on the decline. And that’s good news for all those aspiring Tesla drivers out there.

Source:
Study: Your all-electric car may not be so green

, The Associated Press.

Electric Cars a Mixed Bag For Health, Climate

, Climate Central.

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Chart of the Day: The World Has More Oil Than It Needs

by ziarullibertatealocuridemunca Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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I don’t have a lot to say about this, but I wanted to pass along this chart from Chris Mooney over at Wonkblog. Basically, it shows that although both supply and demand for oil have been roughly in sync for the past five years, demand abruptly dropped earlier this year and is projected to stay low next year. This is why prices have dropped so far: not because supply has skyrocketed thanks to fracking—the supply trendline is actually fairly smooth—but because the world is using less oil.

This is a short-term blip, and I don’t want to make too much of it. Still, regular readers will remember that one of the biggest problems with oil isn’t high prices per se. The world can actually get along OK with high oil prices. The problem is spikes in oil prices caused by sudden imbalances between supply and demand. Historically this wasn’t a big problem because potential supply was much higher than demand. If demand went up, the Saudis and others just opened up the taps a bit and everything was back in balance.

But that hasn’t been true for a while. There’s very little excess capacity these days, so if oil supply drops due to war or natural disaster, it can result in a very sudden spike in prices. And that can lead to economic chaos. But if demand has fallen significantly below supply, it means we now have excess capacity again. And if we have excess capacity, it means that the price of oil can be managed. It will still go up and down, but it’s less likely to unexpectedly spike upward. And this in turn means that, at least in the near future, oil is unlikely to derail the economic recovery. It’s a small but meaningful piece of good news.

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Chart of the Day: The World Has More Oil Than It Needs

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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 on 4 Dec 2014 12:43 pmcommentsShare

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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Quote of the Day: What Mysterious Force is Preventing Passage of a Roads Bill?

by PollyGandy Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx, at a meeting of the Business Roundtable with President Obama:

Why not, before the Congress goes home for December, just pass a bill that takes the two bipartisan bills that I just mentioned, up, and solves the problem?

Smith is referring to a couple of bills that would restore the gasoline tax to its old level and increase funding for transportation projects. He raises a good question. I suppose there could be several reasons it’s hard to pass either of these bills:

Democrats are in thrall to labor unions, who are opposed to funding more infrastructure projects.
All our roads and bridges are in pretty good shape and we don’t really need more money for them.
As a socialist, President Obama opposes these bills because they would increase the profits of billionaire construction company CEOs.
Vladimir Putin has threatened to invade Nova Scotia if we pass these bills.
Santa Claus is coming to town and we’re all hoping we’ve been good enough to get the bridge repairs we asked him for.

Or, of course, it could be because Republicans are less afraid of letting our roads crumble into dust than they are of Grover Norquist saying mean things about them if they were to maintain the gasoline tax at historical levels. Because, you know, taxes.

Nah. That’s ridiculous. It’s probably the Putin thing.

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Quote of the Day: What Mysterious Force is Preventing Passage of a Roads Bill?

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Half of Americans Think Climate Change Is a Sign of the Apocalypse

by Myrna Posted on December 2, 2014

What a new report on theology and global warming means for public policy. Ig0rZh/Thinkstock Snowmageddon, snowpocalypse, snowzilla, just snow. Superstorm Sandy, receding shorelines, and more. Hurricanes Isaac, Ivan, and Irene, with cousins Rammasun, Bopha, and Haiyan. The parade of geological changes and extreme weather events around the world since 2011 has been stunning. Perhaps that’s part of why, as the Public Religion Research Institute reported on Friday, “The number of Americans who believe that natural disasters are evidence of the apocalypse has increased somewhat over the past couple years.” As of 2014, it’s estimated that nearly half of Americans—49 percent—say natural disasters are a sign of “the end times,” as described in the Bible. That’s up from an estimated 44 percent in 2011. Read the rest at The Atlantic. Source:  Half of Americans Think Climate Change Is a Sign of the Apocalypse ; ; ;

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Half of Americans Think Climate Change Is a Sign of the Apocalypse

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5 Striking Things We’ve Learned About Pesticides in California

by Myrna Posted on December 2, 2014

Pesticides have been linked to everything from bee deaths to the hole in the ozone layer. blueenayim/Thinkstock California keeps detailed data on every commercial pesticide applied across the state. It provides a unique look at how, where and when chemicals are used. The Center for Investigative Reporting obtained more than two decades’ worth of that data from the state – the equivalent of more than 56 million pesticide applications. We used the data to build this app that lets you search for pesticide use around your home, workplace or anywhere else in California. And it helped inform our investigation into the pesticides used by the strawberry industry. As we played with the data, we came across some nuggets that didn’t make it into that story. Here are five of the most interesting things we pulled out of the data: Read the rest at The Center for Investigative Reporting. Continued: 5 Striking Things We’ve Learned About Pesticides in California

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5 Striking Things We’ve Learned About Pesticides in California

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