EnviroPolitics Blog

After Championing Greener Building Codes, Local Governments Lose Right To Vote

The nonprofit consortium that oversees much of the nation’s building codes just gave the construction and gas industries more control over the process.

The International Code Council, a nonprofit that oversees building codes for much of the Americas, has implemented a change t

By Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffington Post

The private consortium that oversees the model building codes for much of the United States and parts of the Caribbean and Latin America on Thursday stripped local governments of their right to vote on future energy-efficiency codes.

The decision came more than a year after the construction and gas industry groups that wield heavy influence at the International Code Council objected to aggressive new energy codes for which government officials voted.

The change, though technical and wonky, marks what environmental advocates say is one of the most consequential roadblocks to decarbonizing the U.S. economy. It also illustrates the limits of both the new Biden administration’s powers and the causes for which activists can mobilize public support. Local governments, members of Congress, environmentalists and architects overwhelmingly opposed the proposal.

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Under the new system, the building codes that govern energy systems and insulation ― once subject to a vote by the city and state governments tasked with implementing them ― will instead fall under a separate “standards” process that, despite soliciting input from local officials, will give industry more control over the outcome.

The ICC said it would create a new body to help oversee the process and give government officials “the strongest voice on the committee,” promising “one-third of the seats” on that entity to “government regulators.” It’s unclear which groups would occupy the other two thirds.

“Well, my sense is the committee will be comprised of people who have an interest in energy efficiency and building science,” Dominic Sims, the ICC’s chief executive, said in a phone interview. “So, I don’t know that there’s that big of a separation between people.”

The committee is a significant departure from the old process, which allowed government officials from across the country — including representatives from cities’ sustainability and energy departments — to register to vote on the codes.

Sims said it would actually hasten the transition away from fossil fuels.

“I will say this: The impetus and the discussion around this issue is not just about the last 12 months,” he said. “Each code cycle, it’s been different. There’s been winners and there’s been losers. That sort of unevenness has not produced quick enough results, or else we’d be at net zero already.”

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Opinion: Facing the facts — nuclear subsidies or a huge spike in greenhouse gases

I spent much of my law career fighting nuclear proliferation in New Jersey. But the ongoing reliance on fossil fuels puts our state, our country and our planet in danger

By R. WILLIAM POTTER, writing in NJ Spotlight

By now, everyone but the most ardent climate-change deniers recognizes the “inconvenient truth” of global warming and climate change. But it’s more than merely a truth; it’s an “existential threat” to the planet and its 9+ billion inhabitants who have less than a decade to mend their ways and prevent the worst consequences caused by relying primarily on fossil fuels.

That threat is recounted in gruesome detail in “The Uninhabitable Earth — Life After Warming,” by journalist David Wallace-Wells. He quotes peer-reviewed studies warning that “at 2 degrees (of warming) the ice sheets (covering the poles) will begin their collapse, major cities will become unlivable and heat waves will kill thousands each summer … And this is our best-case scenario.”

What about the worst case? With continued reliance on burning fossil fuels — natural gas, coal, petroleum — the world will heat up by 6 to 8 degrees, and “the oceans would swell 200 feet higher, flooding two-thirds of the world’s major cities …” Much of New Jersey would be swallowed up by a combination of sea-level rise and land subsidence.

Climate-change deniers insist the evidence is inconclusive, despite thousands of scientists independently attesting to the looming threats. They also argue that we cannot afford to make major changes in our energy systems, such as those proposed in the Green New Deal — which they insist will lead us down the slippery slope to a Venezuelan-style socialism.

The climate-change deniers are not only wrong, but also delusional. We are in the midst of a moral equivalent of war, and each of us must pitch in and do his or her part to stave off the worst of the truly catastrophic climate-change scenarios.

The ZEC part of the puzzle

Now pending before the Board of Public Utilities — following the enactment of the “Zero Emission Certificates Act” — is a petition by the Public Service Enterprise Group to continue to charge consumers roughly $300 million a year above the market rate for electricity fueled by natural gas rather than power from PSEG’s three nuclear units. Part of their argument is that Salem 1, Salem 2 and Hope Creek emit zero greenhouse gases.

In its petition, the company asserts that the nuclear plants cannot compete with natural gas on a price-only basis. Hence, they will be shut down and decommissioned unless the BPU awards the company more zero-emission certificates (ZECs) as compensation for the myriad societal benefits conferred by continued operation of these nuclear units.

No doubt, $300 million sounds like a lot of money. But it’s worth it and well spent if it helps us avoid increased reliance on natural gas. That “cheap” alternative is pumped into the state from the fracking fields of Pennsylvania, which emit methane, a greenhouse gas that is a staggering 86 times more damaging to the environment than CO2 emissions from a coal-fired power plant — as measured over an equally staggering 20-year period.

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This New Jersey landfill is preserving capacity through landfill mining

Ocean County Landfill Corp.’s landfill mining project is helping preserve capacity while allowing operators to repurpose cover soil.

By Adam Redling , Waste Today

Preserving landfill capacity is a foremost objective for today’s landfill operators thanks to increasing complications with both permitting of new sites and expansion of existing ones.

In an effort to maximize the capacity at its 300-acre landfill in Manchester, New Jersey, Ocean County Landfill Corp. began to look at options in the mid-2000s for preserving space at the site.

The company first looked at redeveloping an older, unlined portion of its landfill built between 1972 and 1985, which comprised around 60 acres. The original goal was to expand capacity and extend the lifespan without requiring a horizontal or vertical expansion beyond what the landfill was presently permitted for.

“The footprint of the landfill is pretty well-established, and we don’t really have the luxury of going out any farther without encroaching on neighborhoods and wetlands and things like that,” explains Martin Ryan, vice president of engineering at Ocean County Landfill Corp. “So, as we were looking at the lifespan of our facility and trying to figure out ways to squeeze a little more time out of it, we thought that certainly a vertical expansion was something that was a possibility, but that’s not a definite thing that will get approved by the regulators. Also, I think there’s some sensitivity to the surrounding community, as well. You don’t want to have this huge mountain of garbage sticking up out of the pine trees [that surround the landfill], so we had kind of settled on our final elevation with some sensitivity to the surrounding community.”

Ryan says the company first discussed an overliner design where new waste could be placed on top of the existing capped areas within the vertical limits the site was approved for. In order to assess the viability of this, Ocean County Landfill Corp. had waste composition tests performed. The primary goals were to gauge the thickness of cover soils and to obtain waste characterization, condition and stage of decomposition data.

“The firm we hired did a biomethane potential (BMP) test, which basically said that the waste was largely ‘cooked,’ for lack of a better word,” Ryan says. “This meant it was largely decomposed. The testing also found the mass should be stable and not prone to a lot of settlement, while simultaneously showing that there was quite a bit of cover soil there.”

Ryan says, at the time, the landfill was importing almost every yard of soil it was using for cover and capping construction. Between the desire to minimize the height of waste at the landfill and the ample supply of cover soil that would eliminate the need to outsource from third parties, Ocean County Landfill Corp. decided that landfill mining, not installing an overliner, was the best course of action.

Ryan says that, at the time, no landfill mining project of the scale the company was proposing had been undertaken in New Jersey. This necessitated both ample planning and time needed to secure permitting.

“We were looking at mining basically all of the waste that’s in that old, 60-acre part of the landfill, but we looked at it as a win-win because we would be keeping our construction crews busy with mining during times in between building baseliners and caps, we would create a lot of cover soil for us to help offset the need to then import all that soil, and then we’d also develop a new area for future landfilling, which we hope will allow us to operate until around 2036 or 2037, [beyond the original estimated close date of 2024],” Ryan says.

Mining for opportunity

After going through all the regulatory hurdles to be approved by the state, Ryan says that they began screening operations in 2014. They developed a plan for phased excavation and base liner construction that constituted three phases, which would stretch out over approximately 15 years.

Lawrence Kiesel, vice president of construction at Ocean County Landfill, says before commencing operations, the company evaluated several different types of screens for the project. The company demoed both shaker deck-type screens where waste was placed in the top and fines and dirt filtered out the bottom as well as trommel screens that spun to accomplish the same goal.

Ocean County ultimately settled on a Doppstadt SM720K trommel screen since the circular rotation was able to better separate the dirt from the waste. Kiesel notes that the company uses an excavator to dig to a depth of around 40 to 45 feet. The excavator then transfers the waste to an off-road end-dump truck so the material can be moved from the area that is being mined to a separate screening station, where another excavator feeds the hopper of the trommel screen. A wheel loader is then used to load the resulting material into off-road end-dump trucks, which transport the 2-inch-minus cover soil and over 2-inch waste materials, respectively, back to the site’s active landfill cell.

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Philly labor leader ‘Johnny Doc’ arrested again by federal agents–this time on extortion charges

The Philly electricians union leader is accused of threatening his nephew’s boss.

John Dougherty exits federal court after pleading not guilty at a 2019 arraignment KIMBERLY PAYNTER / WHYY

By Max Martin, BillyPenn

Philly labor leader John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty is now facing not one, but two federal indictments.

Authorities charged the head of the Local 98 electricians union on Wednesday in a new federal criminal matter, according to court documents. Dougherty was arrested at his South Philadelphia home on Wednesday morning and released under supervision in the afternoon, said Acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams.

A 19-count indictment charges Dougherty and his nephew, Gregory Fiocca, with conspiracy and extortion. The duo allegedly threatened “violence and economic harm” on a contractor if he did not continue employing Dougherty’s nephew — even for hours he didn’t work.

Through a spokesperson, Dougherty said the charges were part of a long-term “persecution” against him.

Federal prosecutors say nephew Fiocca was a frequent no-show at his union electrical job. But when the contractor failed to pay him for a full 40 hours a week last August, Fiocca allegedly resorted to violence.

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Fiocca grabbed a project manager identified as “R.G.” by the neck and threw him on a desk, threatening both him and the contractor, identified only as “R.P,” as well as the entire business.

“You owe me, 36 f-king hours before I break your f-king jaw,” Fiocca told the project manager, according to court documents. “Call an Agent. Call the [Union] Hall. There’s nothing you can do to me. I’m getting my money…You think yous are untouchable? I’ll break all of you, I’ll f-king break your face and [R.P.’s] face. How’s that sound?”

Fiocca allegedly said he was “calling my uncle already” and suggested the union leader would be “pulling everyone off the job.” An unnamed Local 98 representative later called Dougherty, according to court filings.

Related news stories:
The FBI sent a dozen agents with a battering ram (BILLYPENN)
‘You Think Yous Are Untouchable?’ (NBC10 video)
John Dougherty charged with extortion (Philly Voice)

The powerful union boss intervened on his nephew’s behalf with “escalating threats of economic harm,” U.S. Attorney Williams alleged outside the federal courthouse Tuesday. Dougherty allegedly threatened to bar Local 98 electricians from working overtime, pull workers from the job site and potentially cut off the contractor’s electrical work with the city unless the spat with his nephew was resolved.

“Fiocca took advantage of his uncle’s position as a powerful leader of an influential union, assaulted a co-worker, and enriched himself at the expense of his employer — and [Dougherty] is alleged to have had his back through all of it,” Williams said.

The contractor continued to employ Fiocca from August through at least mid-January, during which time prosecutors allege Fiocca “did little or no work, and received salary, wages, and credit for employee benefit contributions paid by the contractor,” according to the filing.

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Tiny Washington hamlet turns landfill trash to natural gas, as utilities fight for a future

Renewable natural gas, enough to supply 19,000 homes each day, is produced at this plant operated by the Klickitat Public Utility District. The plant is located at a sprawling landfill operated by Republic… (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

By Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times

ROOSEVELT, Klickitat County — Two trains each day pull into this tiny hamlet tucked deep within the Columbia River Gorge. They carry more than 12 million pounds of garbage that is transferred to a fleet of trucks, which crawl up a cliff-side road full of hairpin turns to the top of an arid plateau.

There, an armada of excavators, bulldozers and compactors work to spread, crush and bury this trash.

Now, this giant landfill is the source of pipeline-quality natural gas — enough for some 19,000 homes to operate furnaces, stoves and water heaters each day.

The landfill gas is owned by the Klickitat Public Utility District, which raised some $40 million to build a processing plant to strip out gas impurities.

The production helps fuel a high-stakes political battle unfolding in Washington and elsewhere in the nation over the future of gas utilities in a century of intensifying climate change driven by the global use of fossil fuels.

Each day more than 12 million pounds of garbage is dumped, spread, compacted and finally covered with a layer of dirt at the Klickitat County landfill owned by Republic Services. It sits on a plateau… (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

A big question hanging over this industry is how to lower the carbon footprint of buildings, which in Washington currently account for more than 23% of state greenhouse gas emissions and represent the fastest-growing source.

Pacific Northwest gas officials cite the potential for greening the state’s pipeline network with landfill renewable natural gas and other low-carbon fuels that can be used for heating and other tasks. This winter, they joined in a lobbying campaign to kill a bill in the Legislature encouraging an alternative path — electrification of buildings from a grid that, under state law, must be purged of greenhouse gas pollution over next quarter century.

In Washington, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) — the state’s largest utility — is in the thick of this fight. The company is a major provider of electricity but also has a big stake in the gas industry with 26,000 miles of pipelines and some 800,000 customers.

PSE has signed a 20-year contract that by 2024 will purchase all the output from the Klickitat plant. The company leaders now champion the potential of this renewable natural gas, along with hydrogen, to help reach an “aspirational goal” of eliminating almost all carbon emissions by 2045.

This path forward would require a kind of energy revolution that could run up against significant supply constraints.

Washington’s pipeline-quality methane production from landfills makes up just 1.3% of the state’s natural gas consumption. A state Department of Commerce study found that extensive use of other organic wastes — such as sewage, dairy manure and food processing leftovers — could push production up to 5% of the state’s consumption. That could possibly climb up to 10% through gasification of wood if cost-effective processing could be developed.

Future supplies of low-carbon hydrogen are uncertain. If production is scaled up greatly, this hydrogen still would have other high-value uses besides home heating, and switching largely to this fuel would require big investments to change pipelines.

Critics in the environmental community are skeptical this vision will ever be fully realized. “This is being way oversold,” said Doug Howell, a senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club.

PSE Chief Executive Officer Mary Kipp acknowledges the way forward is full of challenges but is hopeful that technological innovation will enable the utility to pull off this transformation.

“One thing we have been really upfront on — we don’t have all the answers,” said Kipp, who took over leadership of the utility in 2019.

Legislative battles flare

The uncertainties surrounding alternative pipeline fuels have not slowed gas industry lobbying efforts to fend off legislative attempts to spur greater electrification of buildings.

In Washington state, the industry targeted a bill that initially included what would have been a first-in-the-nation, statewide ban on fossil-fuel heating in new buildings by 2030.

The bill was a priority for Gov. Jay Inslee, who has garnered a national reputation for his zeal in combating climate change.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Alex Ramel, a Democrat newcomer from northwest Washington with a background in energy conservation and environmental organizing.

With Democrats in control of the state House and Senate, Ramel was hopeful that the legislation — at least in some form — could be passed into law.

The bill would help carry out Inslee’s energy strategy for reducing almost all state carbon pollution by 2050 — a target set by the Legislature. The governor’s plan, as outlined in a state Commerce Department document released in January, includes a transition from gas to electric heating in most Washington buildings.

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Texas power grid CEO fired after deadly February blackouts

Bill Magness, President and CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), testifies as the Committees on State Affairs and Energy Resources hold a joint public hearing to consider the factors that led to statewide electrical blackouts, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, in Austin, Texas. The hearings were the first in Texas since a blackout that was one of the worst in U.S. history, leaving more than 4 million customers without power and heat in subfreezing temperatures. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

By PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ power grid manager was fired Wednesday amid growing calls for his ouster following February’s deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures.

Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, becomes the second senior official to depart in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history. The state’s top utility regulator resigned Monday.

Magness was given a two-month termination notice by ERCOT’s board in a meeting Wednesday night. The move came as the grid operator is now under investigation by the House Oversight Committee.

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“During this transition period, Bill will continue to serve as President and CEO and work with state leaders and regulators on potential reforms to ERCOT,” the organization said in a statement.

Magness, who made more than $876,000 in salary and other compensation in 2019, was the target of much of the outrage over the blackouts that began Feb. 15 when a winter storm plunged temperatures into single digits across Texas, causing skyrocketing demand for electricity to heat homes. Grid operators unplugged more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which Magness has said was necessary to avert an even more catastrophic blackout that could have lasted months.

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House panel seeks storm documents from Texas grid operator

In this Feb. 16, 2021, file photo, a woman wrapped in a blanket crosses the street near downtown Dallas. As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of Texas’ power grid collapsed, followed by its water systems. Tens of millions huddled in frigid homes that slowly grew colder or fled for safety. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Oversight Committee is investigating the agency that operates the Texas power grid, seeking information and documents about the lack of preparation for the recent winter storm that caused millions of power outages and dozens of deaths across the state.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who chairs an environment subcommittee, sent a letter to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, saying he is concerned that the loss of electric service — “and the resulting human suffering, deaths and economic costs” — will happen again unless ERCOT and the state of Texas adequately prepare for a predicted increase in extreme weather events.

Severe winter storms in Texas “have occurred repeatedly over decades, and ERCOT has been unprepared for them,” Khanna wrote in a letter to ERCOT CEO Bill Magness. The group’s own consultant has predicted that severe winter weather events will continue to occur every decade, yet ERCOT and state officials have done little to prepare for them or build appropriate infrastructure, Khanna said.

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