Tag Archives: states

Nevada utility to stop burning coal, which will probably just be burned somewhere else

by weask Posted on April 4, 2013

Nevada utility to stop burning coal, which will probably just be burned somewhere else

By John Upton

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More good news on America’s shift away from coal: Nevada’s largest utility plans to very gradually shutter its dirty coal generators over the next 12 years.

Some of the coal-fired energy sold by utility company NV Energy will be replaced with renewable sources. But 60 percent of their coal-fired energy will be replaced by that cool-kid fossil fuel that contaminates groundwater supplies: fracked natural gas.

From The Las Vegas Sun:

“This does three things: it retires coal from Nevada, builds renewables, and it creates jobs,” said Tony Sanchez, NV Energy senior vice president.

The amendment calls for the accelerated closing of three of the four units at Reid Gardner, the controversial 553 megawatt coal plant in Moapa, by 2014. It leaves the fourth unit operating until 2017, after which the utility would have no coal plants operating in Southern Nevada.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has relentlessly called for the closing of the plant, most recently during an address to the Nevada Legislature last month.

(Under the plan, the utility would not divest from its share of ownership in the Navajo and Valmy coal plants until 2017 and 2025, respectively.)

With this proposal (which some have criticized because it will result in higher electricity prices), Nevada joins the air-friendly trend of switching from coal to natural gas and renewable energy.

Trendiness aside, American coal mining hasn’t exactly stopped– it’s just being shipped around the world and burned elsewhere. “Figures released in March by the official U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show U.S. coal exports reached a record of more than 115 million tons in 2012, more than double the 2009 figure,” Climate News Network recently reported.

From National Geographic:

The United States essentially is exporting a share of its greenhouse gas emissions in the form of coal, data show. If the trend continues, the dramatic changes in energy use in the United States—in particular, the switch from coal to newly abundant natural gas for generating electricity—will have only a modest impact on global warming, observers warn. The Earth’s atmosphere will continue to absorb heat-trapping CO2, with a similar contribution from U.S. coal. It will simply be burned overseas instead of at home.

“Switching from coal to gas only saves carbon if the coal stays in the ground,” said John Broderick, lead author of a study on the issue by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at England’s Manchester University.

So cheers to Nevada and other states where coal-fired energy production is winding down. But maybe lay off the high-fives until America’s coal actually stays in the mountains.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Nevada utility to stop burning coal, which will probably just be burned somewhere else

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Fuels America’s fight to protect consumer choice and the environment

by Posted on March 15, 2013

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Fuels America’s fight to protect consumer choice and the environment

Posted 15 March 2013 in

National

Today we are proud to announce the new FuelsAmerica.org.

Every day it’s more obvious that renewable fuel and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) are a critical part of energy investment in the United States, creating new jobs and helping us break our addiction to oil.

But despite its record of success, renewable fuel is still under attack.

Oil companies are spending millions to roll back established industry standards that expand the use of renewable fuel – the one energy policy proven to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and provide real benefits to Americans.

With the re-launch of FuelsAmerica.org, we will be at the forefront of calling out the lies the oil industry has been spreading. We will rally together to create a movement in support of renewable fuel.

To find out more about this movement, you can check out some new site features to get you started:

Fuels America Map: Find and read stories by people and organizations from around the country, showing how much renewable fuel has made a difference in their lives.

The Facts: Want to learn the truth about oil companies? Visit The Facts section to find out exactly how the oil industry is hurting our economy, environment, and livelihoods.

Facebook and Twitter: Like Fuels America on Facebook and follow Fuels America on Twitter to stay up-to-date on our fight against the oil industry.

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Chevron reports record profits — and will spend some of them undermining California pollution standards

by 2KeaheySchoeffler461 Posted on February 1, 2013

Chevron reports record profits — and will spend some of them undermining California pollution standards

By Philip Bump

Another day, another oil company reporting massive quarterly and annual profits. Today: Chevron.

From the Associated Press:

Chevron Corp. posted a 41 percent gain in net income for the fourth quarter as the company produced more oil and gas, improved the performance of its refinery business and realized a gain from swapping assets in an Australian natural gas field.

Chevron Corp. posted net income of $7.2 billion for the quarter on revenue of $60.6 billion. That’s up from $5.1 billion on revenue of $60 billion a year ago.

It was the biggest fourth quarter profit in the company’s history.

Emphasis added, so that you can marvel.

And what will Chevron do with its gobs and gobs of money? One million dollars of it will go to pay a fine levied by the state of California. And some will go to undermining that state’s carbon-reduction rules.

From the Contra Costa Times:

San Ramon-based Chevron is leading an aggressive campaign to delay implementation of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a cornerstone of the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The fuel standard requires the oil industry to gradually reduce the “carbon intensity” of transportation fuels like diesel and gasoline by at least 10 percent by 2020. Chevron and its allies, including the Western States Petroleum Association, are trying to undermine the standard by rallying opposition, financing critical studies and lobbying the Democratic-controlled Legislature, state agencies and Gov. Jerry Brown. …

Chevron and the Western States Petroleum Association argue that the 2020 timeline can’t be met without severe economic impacts, including a huge spike in gasoline prices.

Ironically, higher gasoline prices are also what helped propel Chevron to its all-time best quarter. Don’t pretend you don’t like it, Chevron.

As we did yesterday with Shell, we’ve broken Chevron’s quarterly profits down: $80 million a day. $3.3 million an hour. $926 every second. And so, Chevron would have earned:

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Guess which North American country produces the most garbage. Wrong!

by greenenergy4 Posted on January 17, 2013

Guess which North American country produces the most garbage. Wrong!

By Philip Bump

Despite how demure its citizens are, Canada sometimes feels a little insecure about always being promoted as second-fiddle to the United States. There is a famous T-shirt which suggests that Canada is America’s hat; while this is largely true, Canada yearns to occasionally suggest that the U.S. is Canada’s boxer shorts. (Your Florida is hanging out.)

In one thing, though, Canada emerges victorious: garbage production. From the CBC:

The Conference Board of Canada gave Canada a C grade on Thursday and ranked it in 15th place among 17 developed nations studied across a host of environmental-efficiency metrics. …

While Canada earned a few A grades in categories such as water quality, endangered species and the use of forest resources, overall the country scored a D average. …

Canada fared dismally in terms of the amount of waste we produce. In 2009 (the data year on which the study was based), Canada produced 777 kilgrams of garbage per citizen. Across all 17 countries studied, the average was only 578 kg produced.

pedalfreak

This is actually a dump in Canada. Really. With bears.

This is what happens when you have a ton of extra space — it fills up with junk you don’t need to keep. Been there, Canada! We feel you!

[This spot could have been used for a hacky joke about the things Canadians throw away — Tim Horton’s cups, moose antlers, empty syrup bottles, retired NHL players — but we’re too mature for that.]

So congratulations to our head-warming neighbors to the north. You’ve done it. You’ve bested America in a field that most people would assume the U.S. would win in a walk. On garbage production, we are truly Canada’s underpants.

On nearly every other factor studied, though:

The 15th-place [overall] ranking put Canada only ahead of the U.S. and Australia …

The report found Canadians use 1,131 cubic metres per capita of water per year. The only country that uses more water is the United States, which consumes 1,632 cubic metres per capita.

U-S-A, motherf*ckers. U. S. A.

Source

Canadians produce more garbage than anyone else, CBC

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Oh no, the Doomsday Clock didn’t change at all

by oks23po Posted on January 15, 2013

Oh no, the Doomsday Clock didn’t change at all

By Philip Bump

venosdale

This clock — like all clocks — is wrong.

If you are asked what time it is, the answer is 11:55. If you are asked what happens at midnight, the answer is “all of humanity is destroyed and the Earth becomes the crumbling home planet of resilient insects until it is eventually consumed by the sun.” On the plus side, if you answer this way people will probably stop asking you what time it is.

Yes, our friends at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (not a supervillain meetup) have decided that we are five theoretical minutes from our complete destruction — a determination that … doesn’t change from last year. So that’s good, I guess? From Live Science:

Keeping their outlook for the future of humanity quite dim, the group of scientists also wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama, urging him to partner with other global leaders to act on climate change.

The clock is a symbol of the threat of humanity’s imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock’s time this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists considered the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, the slow and costly recovery from events like Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and extreme weather events that fit in with a pattern of global warming.

I don’t really get why the clock didn’t change. We took more steps backward in 2012 than we did forward, according to analysis by yers truly. And isn’t the nature of climate change such that the threat of it automatically increases over time?

But that’s not my main complaint. My main complaint relates to this:

The Doomsday Clock came into being in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. That year, the Bulletin set the time at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing humanity’s destruction. By 1949, it was at three minutes to midnight as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated. In 1953, after the first test of the hydrogen bomb, the doomsday clock ticked to two minutes until midnight.

The Bulletin was at its most optimistic in 1991, when the Cold War thawed and the United States and Russia began cutting their arsenals. That year, the clock was set at 17 minutes to midnight.

Why bother making the clock run from midnight to midnight if you’ve only ever used 17 minutes of it? I get that in 1947 they unveiled this thing and were like, “Guess what, motherfuckers: Time’s almost up.” But it seems like the schtick would grow old pretty fast. The first mention I could find of the clock was in this 1968 Times article. The story was four paragraphs, buried somewhere in the paper. The paper doesn’t specifically say, “This news caused us to shrug,” because journalists were more polite back then.

But anyway: Use the whole clock! Last year could have been, like, 10:37. And then this year, 10:52! Oh man, we’d think. Is it that late? And we’d probably also try to stop the clock from moving forward because we certainly don’t want the clock to go to 11:30 because that’s when Jay Leno comes on and he is the worst. Talk about a horrifying apocalypse, am I right? Of course, for all we know it’s 11:55 a.m.? Hard to tell sometimes on those old clocks that no one uses anymore.

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, if a horde of alien destroyers appeared over the United States next week, alerting us that the planet was going to be destroyed to make way for an interstellar highway, the most the clock could advance is four minutes — meaning we’d be only .28 percent more likely to be destroyed than we are now. That seems like it’s probably wrong.

Anyway, gotta get going. Didn’t realize it was so late.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 13, 2012

Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

By Susie Cagle

You may not be at all surprised to learn that pesticides are bad for us. No, but, like, really bad.

jetsandzeppelins

A couple of months ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned about the effects of pesticides on kids. Today’s kids have grown up with a new normal of pesticide-laden food and increased food allergies (up 18 percent in the U.S. between 1997 and 2007). According to a new study, those two things might be connected. From Mother Earth News:

The study reported that high levels of dichlorophenols, a chemical used in pesticides and to chlorinate water, when found in the human body, are associated with food allergies.

“Our research shows that high levels of dichlorophenol-containing pesticides can possibly weaken food tolerance in some people, causing food allergy,” said allergist Elina Jerschow, M.D., M.Sc., ACAAI fellow and lead study author. “This chemical is commonly found in pesticides used by farmers and consumer insect and weed control products, as well as tap water …

“Previous studies have shown that both food allergies and environmental pollution are increasing in the United States,” said Dr. Jerschow. “The results of our study suggest these two trends might be linked, and that increased use of pesticides and other chemicals is associated with a higher prevalence of food allergies.”

Eat all the organic apples you want, but there’s no escaping pesticides. The New York Times’ Mark Bittman had some strong words about that this week:

[T]he most striking non-event of the last year — decade, generation — is how asleep at the wheel we have all been regarding pesticides. Because every human tested is found to have pesticides in his or her body fat. And because pesticides are found in nearly every stream in the United States, over 90 percent of wells, and — in urban and agricultural areas — over half the groundwater. So Department of Agriculture data show that the average American is exposed to 10 or more pesticides every day, via diet and drinking water.

This shouldn’t be surprising: pesticide drift is a term used to describe the phenomenon by which almost all pesticides — 95 to 98 percent is the number I’ve seen — wind up on or in something other than their intended target. (This means, of course, that in order to be effective more pesticides must be used than would be necessary if targeting were more accurate.)

Much damage has been done, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

It sure is — and not just for humans. R.I.P. bees.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Can’t we just skip ahead to the end of this U.N. climate conference already?

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2012

Can’t we just skip ahead to the end of this U.N. climate conference already?

By Philip Bump

jikatu

Doha, Qatar.

I wonder whether more Americans know what Qatar is or know that the U.N. has an annual convening to discuss climate change. Neither has much of an impact on our lives.

And so it is with trepidation that I bother to relay that the aforementioned U.N. gathering is just getting underway in Doha, Qatar — a whole entirely equivalent to the sum of its parts. Here is an AP article about the meeting; here is one from the International Herald Tribune. The basic theme so far has been hope that the U.S. will actually step into a leadership role following Sandy and the reelection of Obama. If you’re wondering how likely that is, you can see this thing I wrote last week or you can note that the U.S. is already defending how much progress it has made. Which it has, but that’s like saying that when I jump up in the air, I’m making progress toward a moon landing.

There’s a bit of excitement to report. On day one (today), there is already a dispute over whether or not developed countries upheld a commitment to provide $30 billion in assistance to developing countries to aid climate change efforts. From Bloomberg:

The question over how much finance was provided under the “fast-start” program has the potential to undermine trust between donor and recipient nations during two weeks of United Nations talks on a treaty to curb global warming. Aid is the linchpin of the talks starting today in Doha after industrial nations pledged in 2009 to channel $100 billion a year for climate projects by 2020. …

The European Union, U.S., Japan and other developed nations paid out $23.6 billion of assistance to poorer countries during the three years through 2012, falling short of the $30 billion promised in 2009, the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said today. An estimate today from the World Resources Institute in Washington put the total paid at almost $34 billion.

Here’s how ridiculous this squabble is. Earlier today (as I mentioned), the New York City mayor’s office announced that it expected the economic damage from Sandy to total some $19 billion. Independently calculated damage to the city’s transit system, meanwhile, nears $5 billion. The cost to the state on the whole could top $42 billion. That’s $12 billion more than the entire amount of money being grudgingly supplied (maybe) to countries that will be disproportionately affected by climate change, just to clean up a climate-change-worsened mess in one state.

Similar financial obligations are part of the reason that developed countries (a term one should use with all due sense of irony) are reluctant to participate in the U.N. gathering. As difficult as it is to get those countries (primarily the United States) to deal with their own pollution, it’s that much harder to get them to contribute to less-wealthy countries — despite the obvious correlation between the growth of wealth and decades of greenhouse gas emissions.

So, anyway, for the next two weeks various representatives of various countries will meet in Qatar and discuss how to curb emissions that The Economist today noted are already 11 percent higher than the best-case scenario for 2020. I’ll just fast-forward to the end for you, quoting an article that might as well be written today to save everyone some time.

After two weeks of fraught negotiations, participants in the United Nations’ Convention on Climate Change arrived at a last-minute agreement on a plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions. While not binding and not approaching the level of cuts suggested by the expiring Kyoto Protocol, attendees seemed confident that the agreement provided a strong framework for next year’s negotiations.

“We’re pleased with the agreement discussed,” said some dude representing the United States. Despite the lack of any actual controls on his country’s pollution, “the United States is strongly committed to international action to slow global warming, and we feel confident that this is a great step forward.” The official then jumped in the air and asked to be identified in this article as an astronaut.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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