With their roaring diesel engines, tugboats push, pull, and guide much larger vessels into port and out to sea. They are small but mighty — and incredibly dirty, spewing huge amounts of toxic exhaust and planet-warming emissions every year.
Now, however, the humble harbor craft is going electric.
America’s first fully battery-powered tugboat recently docked at the Port of San Diego, where officials are working to decarbonize tugs, diesel cranes, and trucks. The electric tug was built over three years at an Alabama shipyard and then moved through the Panama Canal before arriving in Southern California earlier this spring.
“We’re ecstatic,” Frank Urtasun, the port’s chairman, told Canary Media. “This electric tugboat is a real game-changer that I think will have ramifications across the country.”
The 82-foot-long vessel is set to begin operating within the coming weeks, as soon as the shoreside charging infrastructure is completed, said Crowley. The Florida-based company owns and operates the electric boat — named “eWolf” in honor of Crowley’s first tug, the 1965 Seawolf — and everything that’s needed to keep it running.
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A farmer spreads nitrogen fertilizer on a wheat field in France. Three potent greenhouse gases, nitrogen, and methane, are closely linked to climate change. Photo: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
By David Gelles, NY Times Climate Forward, April 9, 2024
The extreme weather. The melting glaciers. The weirdly warm oceans. They’re all the product of global warming, which is being driven by the release of the three most important heat-trapping gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
Global average carbon dioxide concentrations jumped last year, “extending the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases” in NOAA’s 65 years of record-keeping. Methane and nitrous oxide levels also rose sharply last year. All this despite a wave of global policy measures and economic incentives designed to wean the world off fossil fuels.
These weren’t just one-off anomalies. In each case, the rising emissions continued a long-term trend. By analyzing more than 15,000 air samples from around the world, NOAA found that the upticks in emissions last year “were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.”
The result has been a series of profound changes to the planet in a remarkably short amount of time. “The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is comparable to where it was around 4.3 million years ago during the mid-Pliocene epoch,” the NOAA report found. That was when the “sea level was about 75 feet higher than today” and “large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra.”
Carbon dioxide
Last year, humans spewed some 36.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the most ever. That number may well be higher this year.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now more than 50 percent higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
It’s no secret where all this carbon dioxide is coming from. The burning of oil, coal, and gas is the main source of CO2 emissions, and the use and production of fossil fuels continue to rise around the world, with the United States producing more oil and gas than ever before.
And even as the build-out of renewable energy is speeding up, the appetite for fossil fuels remains strong, in part because overall energy demand is soaring.
Fossil fuels aren’t the only source of carbon dioxide. The extraordinary forest fires that have charred Canada, Europe and Chile over the past year are also adding CO2 into the atmosphere. Yet even there, the vicious cycle of human-caused climate change is easy to see: Many of those fires were made worse because of the warming that has already occurred.
Methane
For a while, it looked like methane emissions were slowing down. After a rapid rise in atmospheric methane concentration during the 1980s, levels stabilized in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then in 2007, they started rising again, and fast.
Last year saw the fifth-highest-ever jump in methane concentration since record-keeping began, and methane levels are now more than 160 percent higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution, according to NOAA. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas; while it breaks down faster than carbon dioxide, it is more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
The vast majority of the increased methane emissions can be traced back to humanity’s insatiable appetite. Agriculture is the biggest source of methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, followed closely by the burning of fossil fuels.
Nitrous oxide
While carbon dioxide and methane are the two gases most commonly associated with climate change, nitrous oxide is another potent heat-trapping gas, and is also on the rise.
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NEW YORK (April 5, 2024) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a plan to protect people living and working in residential and commercial buildings at the Meeker Avenue Plume Superfund Site in the Greenpoint/East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn.
Groundwater and soil in the area are contaminated with chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs), which can vaporize into the soil and seep into buildings through their foundations.
“The most immediate threat to people is that the contamination can seep into buildings where people can breathe it in, so EPA is testing under foundation slabs to determine if there is a problem,” said Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. “I encourage people to comment on this proposed plan, which will help EPA take action to reduce and address the potential risk to people in the area.”
The Meeker Avenue Plume Superfund Site covers over 190 acres across several city blocks in the Greenpoint/East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. The soil, soil gas and groundwater at the site are contaminated with CVOCs, including toxic tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), which are classified by EPA as likely to cause cancer. This part of Brooklyn included historical petroleum refining and storage operations along the banks of Newtown Creek. The site was discovered when chemical contamination was found in soil and groundwater outside the historic petroleum spill area.
As of December 2023, EPA sampled underneath and inside of 18 residential structures, 11 public housing buildings, and one public school. EPA has results that show no further action is needed at 15 of the residential properties, the 11 public housing buildings, and the public school. Three of the residential properties will require additional monitoring. In addition, in February and March 2024, EPA sampled 18 properties and will be evaluating the results, and will be conducting additional sampling in the future. Because prior sampling from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation did detect CVOC vapors inside several dozen properties, the State installed specialized systems to handle the vapors. This proposed plan would allow EPA to continue to install these systems, as needed, as it continues to sample.
Under the proposal, EPA would install special systems called sub-slab depressurization systems where needed and take preventative measures such as the sealing of cracks and gaps in the lowest level of a structure, where necessary. Sub-slab depressurization involves connecting a blower (an electric fan) to a small suction pit dug into the slab to vent vapors outdoors. EPA’s plan reflects the estimated costs for 100 structures within the Meeker Ave site study area. The plan estimates that the EPA’s work will be conducted on an ongoing basis for at least 5 years, the approximate time frame needed for the EPA to complete the vapor intrusion sampling necessary.
The EPA will work closely with property owners and area residents to ensure the remediation is done with minimal disruption. The EPA said it would investigate the entire site to determine the full nature and extent of contamination.
EPA will hold a public meeting on April 16, 2024, to explain the cleanup proposal and to take public comments. It will be held at 6:00 p.m. at St. Stanislaus Kostka Lower Church, 607 Humboldt St, Brooklyn, NY. Comments will be accepted until May 10, 2024.
Written comments may be mailed or emailed to Rupika Ketu, Remedial Project Manager, EPA, 290 Broadway, 18th floor, NY, NY, 10007, ketu.rupika@epa.gov.
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LOS BANOS, Calif. (CN) — Canals in California may soon feature a new look — solar panel canopies, designed to stop evaporation and soak up the sun’s rays, created under a new project funded with help from the federal government to boost green energy infrastructure.
Governor Gavin Newsom joined staff from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Thursday to highlight a new “solar-over-canal” project along one of the state’s primary aqueducts. The pilot project proposes placing a solar canopy to “float” over a major waterway as a source of renewable energy that can also prevent the loss of precious water through evaporation.
Adam Nickels, Deputy Regional Director at the Bureau of Reclamation, said that the Biden Inflation Reduction Act helped make it possible to pick a portion of the Delta-Mendota Canal for placement of a solar panel in Merced County.
About $19 million from Biden’s fund is designed to help fund solar projects, with $15 million going toward making “floating solar” research happen.
Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton of the Bureau of Reclamation said that researchers hope to identify the best design for floating solar projects and what will work to pair with existing waterways.
Representative Jim Costa, a Democrat from Fresno, praised Biden for investing in infrastructure while criticizing the former Trump administration for making promises to do so “that never happened.”
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Scott Wahl, business administrator for Avalon, told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday that of the more than 550,000 cubic yards of sand the town received last spring: “Very little of that sand is left.”
“The volume of sand for a hydraulic beach fill is driven by two factors: Sand availability, and money availability,” Wahl said.
Avalon, he noted, is no stranger to replenishing its beaches with more sand ahead of the busier months.
The town restored beaches with 700,000 cubic yards of sand in 2015 and north of 940,000 cubic yards two years later.
Last year’s Army Corps project was initially estimated to be $28 million but that cost later ballooned during contract negotiations, an Army Corps spokesman said. That work, part of a years-long plan to periodically replenish those slices of the Jersey Shore every two to four years, also benefited Stone Harbor.
Avalon paid $1.1 million for that larger shore project work last year, Wahl confirmed. The rest of the cost was covered by other sources including state and federal taxpayers.
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Cosmetics and personal care products in which PFAS historically have been used include foundation; blush and highlighter; eyebrow products; eye makeup (mascara and other lash products, eyeshadow, eye cream); moisturizers, cleansers, and other creams and lotions; shampoo and hair conditioner; lipstick and lip balm; nail polish; sunscreen; shaving cream; and dental floss.
Intentionally added PFAS may appear on a product’s ingredient list, but not always. Some PFAS may be present in cosmetics unintentionally as the result of raw material impurities, contamination from processing equipment, carryover from processing aids, or the breakdown of other, intentionally added, PFAS ingredients.
The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA) requires the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assess the safety of PFAS in cosmetics and publish its results by the end of 2025.
In the meantime, however, seven states have taken matters into their own hands, enacting laws that ban or restrict the use of PFAS — usually all PFAS but occasionally a few specific PFAS — in cosmetics and other personal care products.
In general, they ban the manufacture, sale, distribution for sale, or offering for sale of such products to which PFAS have been intentionally addedto provide a specific characteristic or perform a specific function in that product.
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