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Scientists Bash EPA’s Take On Burning Wood For Power

by NapoleoGoold Posted on February 13, 2015

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Is biomass really carbon-neutral? Scott Wylie/Flickr A group of 78 scientists is criticizing an Environmental Protection Agency memo they say may dramatically undermine President Barack Obama’s directive to cut planet-warming emissions. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, a group that includes climate scientists, engineers, and ecologists criticizes a November 2014 EPA policy memo that discounts emissions generated by burning biomass, including plants, trees, and other wood products known as sources of biogenic carbon dioxide. Critics said they fear the memo shows how biomass might be treated under the EPA’s forthcoming Clean Power Plan, which will set the first regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The EPA is expected to finalize those regulations by summer. The EPA memo states that using biomass as a source of power is “likely to have minimal or no net atmospheric contributions of biogenic [carbon dioxide] emissions” as long as the biomass is produced with “sustainable forest or agricultural practices.” It also suggests that states will be able to increase the use of biomass in power plants in order to meet the limits set in the Clean Power Plan. The biogenic energy framework was the subject of a recent article in Politico magazine, which found that the interpretation “could promote the rapid destruction of America’s carbon-storing forests.” Read the rest at The Huffington Post.

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Scientists Bash EPA’s Take On Burning Wood For Power

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Scientists Bash EPA’s Take On Burning Wood For Power

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Obama’s Budget Calls for Billions in Climate Funding

by JasperCottman Posted on February 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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In yet another sign President Barack Obama is making climate change a big theme of his final two years in office, the White House today released its proposed $3.99 trillion budget, and it contains a slew of programs designed to fight global warming. It’s important to note that this budget is the president’s proposal—a blueprint—given to Congress to be fought over or blatantly ignored; it’s not law. So, this is first-and-foremost a political document used to outline the president’s vision and define his terms of engagement with Congress. Most of these measures, to use the language of the moment, will likely be “dead on arrival,” given that both the House and Senate are now under Republican control.

Having said that, the document is useful in showing which tools Obama wants to use in fighting climate change—a kind of “would if he could” laundry list of desires. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Increased spending on renewable energy research and development

The budget proposes $7.4 billion for programs designed to stimulate the development of clean energy technology, mainly through the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Agriculture, and the National Science Foundation. That number is an increase from the $6.5 billion Congress enacted for this year, according to Reuters.

The budget outlines some of these activities, including fixing the energy grid to be able to use more renewable energy, reducing the costs of clean energy, finding cheaper solutions for carbon capture and storage from fossil fuels, and doing research to measure methane emissions that leak from natural gas operations.

2. Extended tax credits for wind and solar

The budget also calls for the permanent extension of tax incentives used by the solar and wind industries. Supporters of the wind industry say the Production Tax Credit is an important lifeline to help wind compete against heavily-subsidized fossil fuel power sources; when it was in effect, it provided developers a tax break of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour of energy their turbines produce for the first 10 years of operation. But the credit expired, and the Senate recently voted down a nonbinding measure calling for a five-year extension, continuing a kind of boom-and-bust cycle in the fortunes of the wind industry dictated by whether the tax credit is currently in effect.

A separate provision, the Investment Tax Credit, provides an important incentive for solar development. It offers a 30 percent federal tax credit for solar systems on residential and commercial properties. The ITC is set to expire at the end of 2016.

3. A new fund to help states cut emissions

The budget calls for a $4 billion fund designed to encourage states to make faster and deeper cuts to power plant emissions than would be required under the rules proposed by Obama’s EPA last year. In other words, the budget would give states a financial incentive to do even more to clean up their energy sectors. States can get these incentives by, among other things, working together in regional partnerships to cut greenhouse gases. There’s unlikely to be much love for this measure in Congress: The EPA’s proposed regulations have been met by intense opposition in coal-producing states, and Republicans have labeled them a job-killer.

4. Being more prepared for natural disasters

The budget contains a range of proposals designed to help vulnerable parts of America prepare for natural disasters, including an increase of $184 million in the National Flood Insurance Program Risk Mapping efforts—historically beleaguered by debt and deficit—to $400 million. There is also additional money to tackle drought, wildfires, and coastal flooding.

5. International efforts to fight climate change

The White House wants to provide $1.29 billion to advance its Global Climate Change Initiative, which includes $500 million for US contributions to the UN’s Green Climate Fund—the first installment of the $3 billion pledged by the US last November. “The United States expects that the GCF will become a preeminent, effective, and efficient channel for climate finance,” the budget states. But the measure is likely to hit stiff opposition in Congress, where Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), now chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight it. “The president’s climate change agenda has only siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people,” he said in November.

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Obama’s Budget Calls for Billions in Climate Funding

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Obama’s Crackdown on Methane Emissions Is a Really Big Deal

by Velma36Gqylkyuhv Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This morning the White House announced a new plan to crack down on the oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The move is the last major piece of President Obama’s domestic climate agenda, following in the footsteps of tougher standards for vehicle emissions and a sweeping plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Like the power plant plan, the methane standards will rely on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate pollution under the Clean Air Act. The new rules will regulate the amount of methane that oil and gas producers are allow vent or leak from their wells, pipelines, and other equipment. Ultimately, according to the White House, the rules will slash methane emissions 40 to 45 percent by 2025. The proposal announced today is intended to be finalized before Obama leaves office, but it’s certain to take a battering along the way from congressional Republicans and fossil fuel interest groups.

Methane makes up a much smaller slice of America’s greenhouse gas footprint than carbon dioxide—the volume of methane released in a year is roughly 10 times smaller than the volume of CO2—so the proposal might seem like small potatoes. But it’s actually a pretty huge deal, for a few reasons.

Locking in climate protection: An underlying assumption of Obama’s carbon emissions plan is that many power plants will switch from burning coal to burning natural gas. That’s great, if your only concern is carbon dioxide. But methane, the principal emission of natural gas consumption, is 20 times more powerful than CO2 over a 100-year timespan. The problem is less with natural gas-burning power plants themselves, but with the infrastructure (pipes, compressors, etc.) needed to get gas from where it’s drilled to where it’s burned—and also with venting, the burning of excess gas from wells. So far, those bits and pieces have proven to be exceptionally leaky—some studies have found up to 7.9 percent of the methane from natural gas production simply escapes into the air.

So if we replace our coal with natural gas but let methane go unchecked, we won’t be much closer to meaningfully mitigating climate change, said Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund. “Leak rates as low as 1 to 3 percent undo much of the benefit of going from coal to gas,” he added. (Some climate scientists disagree with this assessment, arguing that CO2 from coal is significantly more damaging over the long run than methane leaks from natural gas operations.) The plan proposed today will focus on plugging leaks and will help ensure that the quest to curb carbon emissions doesn’t simply shift our climate impact to another gas.

Saving money and energy: Methane leaks aren’t just bad for the climate, they’re also bad for business. Every year, according to a recent New York University analysis, between 1 and 3 percent of all US natural gas production is lost to leaks and venting, enough to heat more 6 million homes. A separate study from the World Resources Institute put the price tag for all that lost gas at $1.5 billion per year. Plugging leaks and limiting venting from drilling sites would keep more gas on the market.

The industry doesn’t deny that leaks are a problem for its bottom line; the dispute is over whether intervention from the federal government is required and whether the cost to fix the leaks is worth it. Today the president of the American Petroleum Institute called the methane proposal “another layer of burdensome requirements that could actually slow down industry progress to reduce methane emissions.” While it’s true that overall methane emissions have been on a modest decline over the past several years, Brownstein said much more is needed to meet the nation’s climate goals. And the oil and gas sector is the single biggest source of methane.

Cleaning up fracking: Behind any conversation about natural gas is always the specter of fracking. Of course, there are many concerns about fracking that have nothing to do with methane emissions: Public health issues related to water contamination, for example, or earthquakes. But stringent methane rules could alleviate some of the climate-related concerns about the fracking boom and could help refocus the debate around local pollution and land rights issues. These rules are also an opportunity, Brownstein said, for the gas industry to show good faith. “If the industry resists basic regulation for a relatively simple issue to solve, what is the public to think about the industry’s willingness to solve more complex issues,” he said. “This is a moment of truth.”

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Obama’s Crackdown on Methane Emissions Is a Really Big Deal

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Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

by DemetriHmi Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

President Barack Obama will unveil a new plan to cut methane from America’s booming oil and gas industry ahead of the State of the Union address, in an attempt to cement his climate legacy during his remaining two years in the White House.

The new methane rules—expected ahead of the State of the Union speech next week—are the last big chance for Obama to fight climate change, campaigners said.

“It is the largest opportunity to deal with climate pollution that this administration has not already seized,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Methane is the second biggest driver of climate change, after carbon dioxide. On a 20-year timescale, it is 87 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas.

US officials acknowledge that Obama will have to cut methane if he is to make good on his promise to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.

“It is the largest thing left, and it’s the most cost-effective thing they can do that they haven’t done already, and all the signs are there that they intend to step forward on that,” Doniger said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to roll out a combination of regulations and voluntary guidelines for the oil and gas industry, people familiar with the plan said.

The rules represent Obama’s first big climate push on the oil and gas sector, after moving to cut emissions from power plants and, during his first term, cars and trucks.

But the clock is ticking. Any new EPA regulations would have to be finalized by the end of 2016—and Republicans in Congress and industry lobby groups are already mobilizing to oppose the standards.

Methane accounts for about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. The biggest share of this by far comes from the oil and gas industry, which has exploded over the last decade.

The US is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas, and is on track to become the world’s largest oil producer in 2015.

Most of those greenhouse gas emissions are from leaky equipment—faulty casing on newly fracked wells, but also millions of miles of pipelines and aging infrastructure.

The EPA had originally promised to announce a new methane plan by the end of last year.

The agency administrator, Gina McCarthy, indicated that the agency would combine regulations with voluntary guidelines for industry.

Unlike the power plant rules, which left industry a fair amount of latitude in cutting emissions, the methane standards are believed to be tightly focused on plugging leaks.

The new rules could directly target leaking valves and other equipment that allow methane to escape from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure.

The new rules could also be backed up with voluntary guidelines for other types of air pollutants that would also lower methane emissions.

“If you take steps to reduce volatile organic compounds, those steps would automatically have the secondary benefit of reducing methane emissions,” said Sandra Snyder, an environmental attorney at the Bracewell Giuliani law firm.

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Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

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We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change

by ChanceKunkle Posted on January 13, 2015

We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change

By on 13 Jan 2015commentsShare

If we can develop better cities, we can make a big dent in future greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the gist of a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 274 cities researchers looked at are going to need more energy as they grow — a lot more, especially if we continue on our current track. The cities’ energy needs are poised to triple between 2005 and 2050 — but, with forward-thinking urban and transportation planning, we could limit those energy needs so they’ll only double.

The type of city determines how best to proceed. And in the world’s many developing countries, the study finds, keeping cities compact and carefully structuring their transportation systems is crucial. At Climate Central, John Upton explains:

Of the overall opportunity to reduce projected urban energy use by 2050, which the researchers called the urbanization mitigation wedge, 57 percent was found to be in Asia. Another 29 percent was in Africa and the Middle East.

Improving urban and transportation planning in countries where the very concepts are often foreign would, experts agreed, be challenging. It’s common in developing countries for rickety homes and businesses to be built on underused land without obtaining permits or permission, resulting in sprawl that’s underserviced by sewer lines, roads and other infrastructure.

“In India, there is no urban form,” said Anshuman Khare, a sustainable development professor at Canada’s Athabasca University who grew up in India and has also worked and studied in Japan and Germany. “You look at Asia and say, ‘OK, what has to change there?’ I can’t say what has to change, because everything has to change.”

Evidence from China, where some cities, such as Shanghai, have been working to introduce Western-style transportation plans, suggest that the challenges could be surmountable, said Michael Replogle, the policy director at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, which helps cities around the world with transportation planning. Overcoming those challenges may require intensive assistance from foreign countries and cities where urban planning and building codes are taken for granted.

For cities in developed countries, the study says high gas prices could nudge future development in the right direction. Too bad those are gone now, yesterday’s news, from back when you were chuckling at Gangnam Style and, like, Doge.

And even if high gas prices return, the study’s authors suggest there’s little remedy for the most sprawling cities, many of which are here in America, where cars are more or less a necessity. The hope is that cities in developing countries will avoid making the same mistakes.

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We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change

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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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Climate Change Takes A Village

by Myrna Posted on December 16, 2014

As the Planet Warms, a Remote Alaskan Town Shows Just How Unprepared We Are. It’s obvious that something is wrong in Shishmaref. Kate Sheppard/The Huffington Post The cockeyed wooden building visible upon landing in Shishmaref belongs to Tony Weyiouanna Sr., 55, who uses it to preserve fish and render seal oil. Weyiouanna is the president of the board of the Shishmaref Native Corporation, which manages the land and resources allocated to the community under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. When the village first voted to relocate, he was tasked with heading up the effort as the technical staff assistant for the relocation coalition, which included representatives from the city council, the native government and the native corporation. At the time, Weyiouanna was working as the transportation planner for Kawerak, the regional economic and social development association, where he dealt with roads and other public works projects. Transportation planning is one thing. Planning to move a town is another. “I was like, ‘How the heck am I going to do this?’” remembers Weyiouanna. We’re sitting at his kitchen table drinking coffee as he recalls the relocation effort’s early days. He pauses occasionally to check a reindeer roast in the oven, and the smell, rich and earthy, fills the small house. One of his three children lounges on the couch in the adjoining living room, watching television. The coalition put together a detailed action plan, laying out for the community and for state and federal agencies what an “orderly relocation” would entail. Step one was to identify high-potential relocation sites, sizeable enough to accommodate the town’s growing population, with access to land and water and the hunting and fishing grounds on which the residents’ ancestors had relied for generations. The geography, hydrology and environmental suitability of the sites would be studied. The town would determine infrastructure needs for the new community, like an airport, roads, a clinic and a school. Finally, they would salvage what they could from Shishmaref and clean up the island after they left. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Link:  Climate Change Takes A Village ; ; ;

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Climate Change Takes A Village

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We Could Soon Be Spending a Lot More Money Fighting Ebola

by BlaineCady Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Funding for the fight against Ebola could soon increase sharply. The omnibus spending bill currently being negotiated in Congress will reportedly include most of the $6.18 billion that President Barack Obama requested to help combat the disease. Most of that money would be directed toward American and international efforts at the source of the outbreak in West Africa. But in addition to the international aid, Obama’s request includes tens of millions of dollars to help hospitals in the United States prepare for the virus—money that experts say would also help protect Americans from future outbreaks of other infectious diseases.

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The funding would be used to purchase protective gear for a national stockpile, expand traveler monitoring at airports, and increase testing capacity in the United States. Obama’s request also includes $166 million for equipment and training at 50 new hospital-based “Ebola treatment centers” that would be able to isolate patients and test for the disease on site.

This might seem like a lot of money, given the extremely low number of Ebola infections in the United States. Despite widespread fears, there have been only four cases of the disease in the US since the outbreak began (excluding the handful of patients who were brought to the US for treatment). But the American Hospital Association, a hospital lobby group, actually says the request is too low: In a letter to Congress last week, the group asked for an additional $500 million specifically for US hospitals.

One reason hospitals could use the extra help is that treating even a single Ebola patient is enormously expensive. Care for two patients at the Nebraska Medical Center, one of only four US hospitals equipped with biocontainment units, cost about $30,000 per day, or $1.16 million overall, according to Jeff Gold, the hospital’s chancellor. The daily cost of treating one patient, Dallas nurse Nina Pham, at a biocontainment unit at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland was even higher—about $50,000 per day, or $400,000 for Pham’s eight-day stay.

At a hearing in November, Gold said he was not yet sure if his Nebraska hospital would get its money back from the patients’ private insurers. He urged Congress to cover the costs, arguing that the “financial sustainability” of his and other hospitals “is critical to containing any future outbreak of an infectious disease.”

Experts say the the case of Pham and her colleague, Amber Vinson, illustrates the need for improved resources and training. The two nurses were were infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Duncan, a Liberian who contracted the disease in Monrovia before visiting family in Texas. Duncan was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, which had neither the right facility nor the trained staff needed to handle a contagious Ebola patient. As subsequent reports revealed, Pham and other hospital staff were forced to learn how to use the necessary protective gear only after Duncan arrived. The incident revealed some of the weaknesses in the US health care system’s approach to handling the virus.

“We underestimated the preparedness of hospitals,” says Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “We made the assumption that they handle blood and body fluids all the time so this would be no different. The challenge is the volume of body fluids from this disease is enormous—that meant the protective gear needed had to be greater than before.”

Other diseases, other benefits

Advocates for increased funding argue that even if a major Ebola outbreak never occurs in the US, the money could help prepare hospitals for future diseases.

“The US health system should not respond by creating a disease silo that focuses solely on Ebola,” professors Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University and William Foege of Emory University wrote in an opinion piece with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), which was published last month on the website of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The trio called for “sustained and flexible enhancement” of the American public health system and lauded Obama’s request for potentially making such an improvement possible.

The Ebola treatment centers proposed in Obama’s request would be “essential” to responding to new infectious threats, “such as a rapidly moving pandemic influenza or bioterror event,” they said.

In an email, Gostin said that while these sorts of improvements are needed to prepare for a number of diseases, it was the Ebola outbreak that made them “politically possible.”

Benjamin agreed that preparing hospitals to fight Ebola would simultaneously help them get ready for other infectious diseases. Citing a “growing list” of emerging threats—including the coronaviruses and strains of influenza and bird flu—Benjamin said US hospitals need to be better prepared for other for life-threatening diseases that can spread through bodily fluids.

“At some point, we’ll get our hands around this Ebola thing and it will go away,” he said. “But what about the next one?”

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We Could Soon Be Spending a Lot More Money Fighting Ebola

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The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

by Jeramy66Jmllpv Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

One World Trade Center, or the “Freedom Tower,” as it was formerly known, soars above New York City, finally filling a void left by the 9/11 terror attacks. The brilliant blue-silver facade glints no matter where you are in the city—nothing less than a “beacon of hope, just like the Statue of Liberty,” says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the site in a joint venture with real estate giant the Durst Organization.

The tower is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. And it’s also supposed to be one of the greenest—a first on its scale to aim for the US Green Building Council’s LEED gold certification, a coveted prize for sustainable building design. One World Trade Center features lighting that reacts to sunshine, rain harvesting, and a state-of-the-art onsite fuel cell installation, one of the largest of its kind in the world. In 2008, then-New York Gov. David A. Paterson praised this “space-age energy technology,” adding, “I can think of few sites in the country where the symbolism of this is more important.”

Then came Sandy.

A 26-page trove of internal documents obtained by Climate Desk from the Port Authority reveals for the first time a substantial hit to the project’s green ambitions: Superstorm Sandy caused critical damage to the World Trade Center’s $10.6 million clean-power sources—those world-class fuel cells—a third of which went unrepaired and unreplaced, in part because of a costly flaw in the main tower’s design, and pressure to honor a billion-dollar deal with Condé Nast, the global publishing powerhouse and high-profile anchor tenant.

What happened in the basement of One World Trade Center after Sandy is a previously untold—and as yet unresolved—chapter in the site’s redevelopment, already dogged by false starts, political squabbling, and cost overruns, involving some of the biggest names in New York City’s world of corporate real estate.

Breaking the Port Authority’s Green-Energy Promise?
In 2007, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state agency created in the aftermath of 9/11 to coordinate rebuilding efforts, introduced aggressive green standards for the Freedom Tower and its surrounding complex—”unprecedented in their scope and depth,” according to the building’s architects. The World Trade Center towers would be required to attain LEED gold certification, achieve net zero CO2 emissions (by purchasing green-energy credits), and operate with at least 20 percent more energy efficiency than the state’s current building code. “Every day is Earth Day at the World Trade Center,” claimed the Port Authority.

Another key requirement in the agreement was a fleet of fuel cells, which work by converting natural gas into electricity using an energy-efficient electrochemical process, rather than by burning it. They’re also cleaner because they don’t emit greenhouse gases or soot on location; the heat and water they generate as a byproduct can be used for cooling and heating the tower.

And so, in 2008, the Port Authority helped orchestrate a $10.6 million dollar deal with Connecticut’s UTC Power to provide nine fuel cells to supply power to three main towers at the site, including One World Trade. In Tower One, the fuel cells would provide up to 10 percent of the building’s electricity source, according to the fuel cell manufacturer; in towers Three and Four, they would supply a combined 30 percent.

Then, three years later, Sandy hit. Some 200 million gallons of water cascaded into the lower levels of the site, flooding the National September 11 Memorial Museum with at least five feet of water, according to the New York Times. What no media outlets reported, though, was that the flood also destroyed all nine fuel cells.

And while towers Three and Four now have new fuel cells, the main tower’s have never been replaced. The building opened without them—despite the fact that they were required in the original agreement.

So why didn’t the Port Authority replace the fuel cells? Evidence suggests that the reason had to do with financial pressure.

Pleasing High-Profile Tenants—and a Costly Design Flaw
In May 2011, the publishing giant Condé Nast signed a $2 billion deal to become the tower’s anchor tenant. Built into the terms of the lease was a move-in deadline: The Port Authority would be liable for penalties or lost earnings if Condé Nast was forced to wait beyond January 1, 2014, to begin the process of moving in. (Climate Desk contacted Condé Nast, but the company did not respond on the record.)

But the fuel cell disaster created the real possibility that the Port Authority and Durst were not going to make that deadline, a potential financial disaster. Part of the problem was a well-documented mistake in the building’s design: A temporary underground structure serving an existing train station was preventing builders from finishing the tower’s giant underground loading dock—the central piece of infrastructure used to haul masses of equipment up into the tower. Without the loading dock, there was no way for tenants to start moving their equipment into the building. And once a new loading dock went in—budgeted to cost $18.4 million—it would be all but impossible to remove and replace the dead fuel cells. Nevertheless, with the tight deadline, Port Authority decided to build the new loading dock. That meant the fuel cells had to come out fast—and finally, after several months, they did.

The Port Authority’s director of environmental and energy programs, Christopher Zeppie, warns of construction delays if the fuel cells aren’t removed in this March 2013 letter. Earlier, in December 2012, Zeppie told officials that “we need to get the damaged fuel cells out ASAP.”

Today, more than two years after Sandy, the new loading dock still blocks access to the one window through which the fuel cells could possibly be replaced. Durst admits in a statement to Climate Desk that “in order to replace the fuel cells that were destroyed by Super Storm Sandy, One World Trade Center’s interim loading dock needs to be disassembled,” but did not say if or when that might occur.

With no new fuel cells, the Port Authority needed to figure out how the main tower was going to reach the 20 percent energy efficiency goal stipulated in the rules. According to Durst, the building has now met the goal, but the company did not detail exactly how the building now makes up energy savings, except to say it “has been achieved through a number of means,” including the use of LED lighting. Focusing on the fuel cells is “missing the forest” for the trees, said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Durst.

But that leaves a key part of the green deal in limbo: The rule that states that fuel cells must be built “into the towers.” Durst did not deny that the building was currently in a state of noncompliance with the original 2007 agreement. Neither the Port Authority nor Durst would confirm which organization in the joint venture is ultimately responsible for replacing the fuel cells. The Port Authority declined to be interviewed or to answer a series of questions for this story, instead referring us to Durst.

The 2007 environmental standards include the requirement to build fuel cells “into the towers.”

Richard Hankin, the director of 16 Acres, a documentary that charts the deeply convoluted progress at the site, says this confusion over who’s in charge of final sign off is typical of the site in general. “Over the years, the sheer size and complexity of the bureaucracy has often made it impossible to figure out who’s responsible for any given area or ultimate oversight,” he said.

Hankin found that complications at the World Trade Center stemmed from the tremendous number of invested parties—developers, architects, insurance companies, and victims’ groups—combined with the high turnover in top positions at the agencies responsible. “It’s that classic situation: The right arm is unaware of what the left arm is doing, compounded by the fact that it’s often a new left arm,” he said.

Future Questions About WTC’s LEED Certification
In addition to potentially flouting the original agreement, it remains unclear whether or not the fuel cell fiasco will undermine the tower’s LEED certification efforts. The US Green Building Council listed the gold certification as “projected” as recently as May 2014 in its magazine. But, says Marisa Long, the communications director at the US Green Building Council, “if the calculations for the LEED certification included a component like fuel cells, and damage to that component forces a change in calculations, the number of points earned to achieve LEED will be based on the new calculations.” Those calculations appear to be based on the original 2007 deal, which contains a variety of standards, not simply those concerning energy efficiency. Durst says it will still meet LEED gold certification.

Despite the setback for the building, those involved continue to publicly laud the project’s green cred. Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority, opened the building earlier this month by saying the building “sets new standards of design, construction, prestige, and sustainability.” Kenneth A. Lewis, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, told the USGBC magazine: “We want to open it up and have the LEED plaque on the door.”

While there’s still time to get the building across the line, Lewis’ hope for a grand LEED-certified opening has vanished. For now, the doors are wide open, without the plaque, and without a clear solution to the alternative energy demands of the tower.

“If one thing is delayed or goes wrong, it very much has a domino effect with all the other parts,” Hankin said. “It can result in a lot of finger-pointing.”

Link: 

The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

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The Fracking Boom Could End Way Sooner Than Obama Thinks

by AidenLoche Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama is fond of touting America’s vast trove of natural gas—and the energy (read: economic growth) it can provide—as a reason to support fracking. “Our 100-year supply of natural gas is a big factor in drawing jobs back to our shores,” he told a gathering at Northwestern University in October.

You can hear that same optimism about US natural gas production from Democrats, Republicans, and of course, the industry itself. The conviction that America can fuel its economy by churning out massive amounts of natural gas for decades has become a core assumption of national energy policy. But what if it’s wrong?

Those rosy predictions are based on official forecasts produced by the Energy Information Administration, an independent federal agency that compiles data on America’s energy supply and demand. This spring, EIA chief Adam Sieminski told a Senate hearing that he was confident natural gas production would grow 56 percent between 2012 and 2040. But the results of a series of studies at the University of Texas, reported today in an article in the journal Nature, cast serious doubt about the accuracy of EIA’s forecasts.

The UT team conducted its own analysis of natural gas production at all four of the US’s major shale gas formations (the Marcellus, Haynesville, Fayetteville, and Barnett), which together account for two-thirds of America’s natural gas output. Then, they extrapolated production into the future based on predicted market forces (the future price of gas relative to other fuels) and known geology. Their analysis suggests that gas production will peak in 2020, 20 years earlier than the EIA predicts. What’s more, the UT researchers project that by 2030, gas production levels will be only half of EIA’s prediction.

The difference in opinion stems from a difference in the scale of the analyses. The UT team’s grid for each shale play studied was at least 20 times finer than EIA’s, according to Nature:

Resolution matters because each play has sweet spots that yield a lot of gas, and large areas where wells are less productive. Companies try to target the sweet spots first, so wells drilled in the future may be less productive than current ones. The EIA’s model so far has assumed that future wells will be at least as productive as past wells in the same county. But this approach, UT-Austin petroleum engineer Ted Patzek argues, “leads to results that are way too optimistic”.

Why do these numbers matter? The federal government, states, and the private sector all base their energy investments—research and development, infrastructure construction, etc.—on forecasts of where our energy will come from in the future. If natural gas really is super-abundant, there may be less urgency to invest in renewables like solar and wind to replace coal plants as they age or are regulated out of existence. But if there’s less recoverable natural gas than we think, we’ll need to change our strategy to avoid coming up short on power 20 years down the line. At the same time, there are international repercussions: Many countries are taking cues from the United States on how to develop their own natural gas resources, so what happens here will shape those plans as well. And a series of massive natural gas export facilities are already being proposed across the US to ship our gas overseas; what will happen to global markets if those run dry prematurely?

Because they rely on informed guesses about future market conditions, these forecasts can never be bulletproof, and the UT study doesn’t close the book on how much natural gas the US really has in store. But it’s an important reminder that we should treat politicians’ promises about fossil fuel wealth with skepticism.

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The Fracking Boom Could End Way Sooner Than Obama Thinks

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