EnviroPolitics Blog

What did the world’s largest emitters have to say (or not say) at UN climate summit?

By Dino Grandoni of the Washington Post
September 24 at 8:21 AM

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the Climate Summit in the United Nations General Assembly. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

All eyes were on activist Greta Thunberg when she bluntly told world leaders: “You are failing us.”

But what mattered most at Monday’s U.N. climate summit was what China, India and the U.S. actually said — and what the three biggest emitters of greenhouse gases did not say.

Countries “once again stopped short of committing to the sort of far-reaching new goals scientists say are needed to rein in emissions,” as The Post’s Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin report from the summit.

“Greta Thunberg laid down a clear line in the sand, separating those countries and leaders who are united behind the science from those who continue to place the profits of fossil fuel polluters above the safety of their citizens,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “Sadly, most leaders from the world’s largest emitting countries failed this litmus test, dodging their responsibility to step up action as is essential to address the climate emergency we now face.”

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Altogether, the top three emitters account for nearly half of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resources Institute. Their national policies are what will have the biggest impact on whether the world can hold global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which is the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement.

The aim of the Paris accord was for nations to ratchet up their emissions cuts over time. But it relied on voluntary pledges. The Obama administration, which brokered the agreement in 2015, hoped that over time the United States could wield its soft power to press other nations to cut emissions.

President Trump’s election upended that plan. And this week’s climate summit brought into stark relief how countries are still grappling with the fallout of Trump’s promise to withdraw from the climate accord:

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

China: China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi took a veiled swing at Trump. He sought to reassure other countries that the promised U.S. withdrawal won’t affect China’s goals under the international accord.

What he said: “China will faithfully fulfill its obligations … The withdrawal of certain parties will not shake the international community,” per the New York Times.
What it means: The rub here is China, the world’s top emitter, made no new promises to further cut emissions as worries there grow about its slowing economy. And China’s original commitment for its emissions to peak no later than 2030 is not enough to begin with. Climate Action Tracker, a consortium of scientists that compares global climate pledges, has rated China’s goal as “highly insufficient” for keeping warming below 2 degrees.

India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to more than doubling India’s renewable energy capacity by 2030.

What he said: “India today has come not just to talk about the seriousness of this issue, but to present a practical approach and a road map. We believe an ounce of practice is worth more than a tonne of preaching,” per the Indian newspaper the Hindu.
What it means: India’s original Paris goals are compatible with keeping warming under 2 degrees, according to Climate Action Tracker. Still, Modi made no promise to cut its use of coal-fired power generation as some hoped. India is looking to build out all the electricity generation it can as it tries to lift millions out of poverty.

United States: After initially deciding to forgo the climate summit, Trump made a surprise, 14-minute appearance, listening to Modi’s and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remarks, according to The Post’s Seung Min Kim and Anne Gearan.

What he said: “I believe in clean air and clean water, very simple,” Trump said when asked why he decided to participate. “We have the cleanest air; we have the cleanest water.”
What it means: The Trump administration’s efforts to walk back regulations on coal plants and automobiles means the United States is set to fall far short of what it needs to do to meet the Paris temperature goal. Other than those off-the-cuff remarks, the United States was virtually invisible during the day.

What did the world’s largest emitters have to say (or not say) at UN climate summit? Read More »

Honda signs auto industry’s largest renewables deal

By PV Buzz Editorial Team

California — Seeking to slash CO2 emissions from its North American manufacturing operations, Honda has entered into long-term virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) for renewable wind and solar power that will cover more than 60 percent of the electricity that Honda uses in North America.

These VPPAs will enable Honda to fully offset the remaining carbon-intensive grid-supplied electricity being used in its Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama automobile manufacturing operations, and will help the company meet its voluntary carbon reduction goal. As a result of the deal, Honda is one of the top automakers globally in the adoption of renewable energy to power its operations.

Starting in fall of 2020, Honda will purchase 530,000 MWh/year from 120 MW of wind power generated by the Boiling Springs Wind Farm in Oklahoma, a 150 MW development of the energy company E.ON. Then in fall of 2021, Honda will secure an additional 482,000 MWh/year from 200 MW of solar power generated from a Texas solar facility. Additional details of the Texas solar facility will be disclosed in 2020 when it is nearer to completion.

Honda’s combined agreements for the output of 320 MW of renewable generation capacity will result in the purchase of 1.012 million MWh of electricity per year, making it the largest renewable energy procurement commitment for an automaker and one of the largest VPPA commitments in the U.S. market. Once fully operational, these VPPAs will offset more than 800,000 metric tons of CO2e emissions annually, the equivalent of 100,000 U.S. households worth of CO2e emissions from household energy usage.3

Honda will continue to purchase electricity from the local utility for each manufacturing facility, but will receive and retire renewable energy certificates (RECs) equal to the power produced through the VPPAs, resulting in net zero CO2e emissions from electricity use within Honda’s Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama manufacturing operations. Currently, 21% of the electricity that Honda uses in North America is supplied from extremely low and zero CO2 sources.

The VPPAs will raise the total use of renewable electricity to more than 80 percent for North America.

A virtual power purchase agreement is a way for Honda to purchase renewable energy in locations where it is unable to purchase renewables from the local electric utility. Honda agrees to purchase electricity from a renewable energy supplier, but the clean energy does not go directly to Honda’s facilities; instead, it is sold into the electricity grid where the clean power is generated. However, Honda’s “virtual purchase” of renewable energy adds more clean energy into the nation’s electricity grid. This reduces the amount of electricity generated by fossil fuels, reducing the CO2 emissions of using electricity.

In the process of structuring the Boiling Springs Wind Farm VPPA, Honda implemented an innovative contract structure with the potential to mitigate financial risks in the VPPA market, further expanding the market for corporations like Honda where reduced exposure to energy price risk is desirable. This new “collar” structure sets upper and lower bounds on Honda’s exposure to energy market price fluctuations in any given quarter while resulting in strong and stable revenues for the renewable power operators.

“These combined VPPAs will help Honda meet its CO2 reduction goals by adding clean renewable electricity and by de-carbonizing the electricity grid,” said Ryan Harty, manager, Connected and Environmental Business Development, American Honda. “We hope the addition of a ‘collar’ to the Boiling Springs project will encourage other companies to consider VPPAs as a method to secure renewable power and reduce climate-altering carbon emissions.”

“We are proud to work with Honda to provide 100% clean, renewable wind power from Boiling Springs Wind Farm for its North American manufacturing facilities,” said Silvia Ortin, E.ON Chief Operating Officer North America. “E.ON’s dedication to a sustainable future is a great fit with Honda’s values and commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas impact.”

The wind and solar VPPAs are part of Honda’s ongoing efforts to not only purchase renewable power but also to generate renewable power onsite at its North American operations. To date, Honda has installed 7.3 MW of renewable wind and solar power at its facilities across the region.

Honda signs auto industry’s largest renewables deal Read More »

PFAS Contamination in Gloucester County NJ subject of a new Rutgers study

Jon Hurdle reports for NJ Spotlight

The federal government said Monday it is awarding $1 million each to Rutgers University and six other institutions to study the health effects of PFAS chemicals at seven U.S. sites including Paulsboro and West Deptford in Gloucester County, where high levels of the chemicals have been found.

The study is the second phase of a project led by the Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to look at how public health has been affected by the PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) that were once used in consumer products like Teflon, and are linked to a range of illnesses including immune system problems, high cholesterol, and some cancers.

The first phase collected data on the prevalence of the chemicals in light of increasing detections in public and private water supplies at locations including industrial sites and military bases — where the chemicals were used for decades in firefighting foam.

“There is much that is unknown about the health effects of exposures to these chemicals,” said Patrick Breysse, director of the ATSDR and CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, in a statement. “The multi-site study will advance the scientific evidence on the human health effects of PFAS and provide some answers to communities exposed to the contaminated drinking water.”

EPA declined to set timetable for regulation

The information gathered will allow communities and governmental agencies to know more about how to respond to PFAS pollution, the CDC said. It said nothing about whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would participate or use the information to regulate the chemicals. The EPA said earlier this year it would look at whether to set enforceable standards on two of the chemicals but declined to set a timetable for regulating them.

Earlier this year also, the ATSDR proposed curbs on the chemicals that were far stricter than the advisory standards advocated, but not required, by the EPA.

In New Jersey, PFAS chemicals including PFNA (perfluorononanoic acid) and PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) were found in Paulsboro in 2009, and studied in 2016-2017 by Rutgers scientists who looked at a small sample of 192 people who had been involved in a class-action lawsuit over the chemicals. The participants’ blood was found to contain PFNA at about four times the national rate, and there was some evidence of a link between the chemical and elevated cholesterol.

In 2014, a long-awaited study from the Department of Environmental Protection reported that two-thirds of New Jersey public water systems in 20 counties tested positive for the chemicals, which persist in the environment long after their use or manufacture has ceased.

In January this year, a South Jersey landfill cancelled a contract to take thousands of tons of PFAS-contaminated soil from a former military base in eastern Pennsylvania — where ground water contains the chemicals — amid rising public concern about risks that the chemicals would leak into ground water in New Jersey.

Study set to start next month

The new study, due to start on Oct. 1, aims to cover 1,000 adults and 300 children, in an area where Solvay Solexis, a chemical company, used PFAS before voluntarily halting its use in 2010. The study’s subjects will be recruited beginning six to 12 months after the start date, said Dr. Robert Laumbach, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, which will investigate PFAS exposures in Gloucester County under the new federal grant.

Water in a Paulsboro public well where PFAS chemicals were found has been treated and tested since 2016, Laumbach said. The study will reconstruct past exposures, and measure PFNA and other PFAS chemicals in blood, which persist for years, and have been dubbed “forever chemicals.” In nearby West Deptford, affected private wells have been offered treatment, he said.

“We will work closely with the Paulsboro and West Deptford communities to maximize the benefits of the study for community members,” he said. “There will be a community advisory board and community participation in how we design and implement the study.”

The research adds to tough new standards that New Jersey has set for three of the chemicals over the last five years, establishing itself as a national leader on regulating PFAS.

Nationally, the study aims to recruit at least 2,000 children aged 4–17 years and 6,000 adults aged 18 years and older who were exposed to PFAS-contaminated drinking water in states including California, Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

PFAS Contamination in Gloucester County NJ subject of a new Rutgers study Read More »

White House threatens to withhold highway funds from California for its ‘chronic air quality problems’

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on July 8 at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on July 8 at the White House.
(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni
September 24, 2019 at 11:14 a.m. EDT

Trump administration officials threatened this week to withhold federal highway funds from California, arguing that it had failed to show what steps it is taking to improve its air quality. The move by the Environmental Protection Agency escalates the fierce battle between President Trump and the left-leaning state, and could put billions in federal funds in jeopardy.

In a predated letter sent late Monday to the California Air Resources Board, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler suggested that the state “has failed to carry out its most basic tasks under the Clean Air Act,” and needs to either update its plans to tackle air pollution or risk losing federal highway funds.

At stake, the EPA said, are billions of dollars in federal highway funding every year. Federal officials have the right to halt that money if they determine a state is not taking sufficient steps to show how it aims to cut air pollution such as soot or smog-forming ozone.ADVERTISING

In the letter, Wheeler notes that 34 million Californians live in areas that don’t meet federal National Ambient Air Quality Standards, more than twice as many residents than any other state. California has more than 130 “state implementation plans,” which serve as blueprints for how California would tackle these pollutants, awaiting federal approval.

“California has the worst air quality in the United States,” he wrote, adding that many of its plans “are inactive and appear to have fundamental issues” that would keep them from getting approved.

The decision to invoke a rarely used federal punishment represents the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s feud with California over environmental and other policy issues. Just last week, the EPA joined the Transportation Department in revoking California’s right to set stricter pollution limits on cars and light trucks.

“I’ve never seen a letter like this before,” said Janet McCabe, former acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under President Barack Obama. “It’s ironic that EPA is taking California to task for not solving the air quality problem when for decades the state has been moving forward with the most aggressive clear air rules and programs in the nation.”

She added: “That’s clearly threatening language in there.”

California officials have repeatedly argued that they have sought to impose stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles as part of a broader effort to tackle smog in their state. The vehicle standards the Trump administration is blocking, CARB chairwoman Mary Nichols said last week, “are necessary to protect the public health standards and welfare.”

Nichols could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Bill Becker, president of Becker Environmental Consulting, said in a phone interview that it did not make sense for the administration to punish California for failing to address air pollution in the state when it was simultaneously blocking its efforts to cut down on these emissions.

“Isn’t it ironic that EPA is taking away some of the important regulatory tools for meeting the federal health-based standards, and then sanctioning California?” Becker said. “It’s like the kid killing his parents, and then pleading for mercy because he’s an orphan.”

The Los Angeles area and other parts of the mountainous state have long struggled with smog. Trapped by mountains on three sides, the car-clogged Southern California region forms a basin in which dirty air pools. Smog levels rose so high there in the middle of the 20th century that Congress gave California a special status under the Clean Air Act to set its own pollution standards.

A senior EPA official, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said California’s pollution situation was “unique” and required the aggressive step. But about three dozen other states also had counties that failed to meet air standards for six different pollutants, as of the end of August.

White House threatens to withhold highway funds from California for its ‘chronic air quality problems’ Read More »

US energy regulator FERC moves to limit mandatory utility purchases of solar energy

José Rojo Martín reports for PVTECH

Solar representatives have cautioned against a move to overhaul US rules that have guided utilities’ mandatory renewable purchases for decades, setting the scene for a policy clash.

Recent proposals by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reform the so-called PURPA Act risk putting the brakes on competition, US solar body SEIA said last week.

Passed in 1978, the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act has in the decades since mandated public utilities to procure energy from small producers, defined as qualifying facilities (QFs).

Regulator FERC is now suggesting to lower the maximum capacity threshold – from 20MW to 1MW – for QF projects to be able to benefit from compulsory energy purchases by utilities.

The proposed change, lawyers believe, would relieve most utilities in organised wholesale markets from procuring energy from QFs above the 1MW capacity mark.

“QFs larger than 1MW would no longer be presumed to lack nondiscriminatory access to markets,” Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld said in a recent policy note.

FERC has justified the move by pointing at the “maturation” now reached by small power producers, a market it claims is now “improved and better understood”.

‘Not a fledgling industry anymore’

For its part, US PV body SEIA has now spent weeks arguing PURPA protection remains “crucial” to protect independent solar producers from some utilities’ “monopoly” ambitions.

Speaking after the new FERC proposals, the solar association urged the regulator to rethink the “most harmful portions” of its new draft document.

“Rather than focusing on PURPA’s goal of ensuring competition, this proposal would have the effect of dampening competition and allowing utilities to strengthen their monopoly status, to the detriment of customers,” SEIA’s regulatory affairs VP Katherine Gensler said in a statement.

FERC’s intentions to weaken renewable purchase obligations have been apparent for years. “Renewable generation is not a fledgling industry anymore…[it] no longer needs to be supported by PURPA,” the regulator claimed in 2016, as it first launched its review into the Jimmy Carter-era legislation.

The revision it proposed last week would pile further requirements on QFs, forcing them to prove commercial viability and financial support for projects before they can be deemed eligible for mandatory utility purchases.

For US solar, the PURPA setback marks a bleaker turn of events after the industry helped settle a dispute with a Michigan utility, freeing a 584MW PV pipeline from years of standstill over obligations under the act.

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The rise of solar power: Growth nobody expected and where it’s likely to lead

Solar power is on the rise. You can see the evidence on rooftops and in the desert, where utility-scale solar plants are popping up. The picture is not all rosy, but if the recent past is any indication, solar power is going to help lead the transition to a carbon-free future, and it might do it faster than we all expected.

Elon Musk and Tesla promised solar roof tiles in 2016, but the industry might not need an upgrade as its grown significantly with the solar panels currently available. You can see the evidence both on individual rooftops and in the utility-scale solar plants increasingly popping up in deserts across the country.

In the United States, of all about 30% of the new power capacity added to the grid in 2018 was from solar. But the picture is not all rosy. Solar power (and sunshine) is intermittent and the price of lithium-ion batteries, one of the most popular current storage solutions, is still relatively high.

These are real problems that the industry needs to tackle if solar is going to reach its potential. However, if the recent past is any indication, solar power is going to help lead the transition to a carbon-free future, and it might do it faster than we all expected. Watch the video to learn more.

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