Some things seem predictable about volatile energy rule

From an Editorial of the Morgantown Dominion Post, August 15, 2019

It was almost predictable that the other shoe would drop. And that the other shoe would be on the other foot. But what was not predictable were some of the toes on that other foot, among other things.

In 2016, 27 states sued the Obama administration to block the Clean Power Plan (CPP). That plan, launched in 2015 was designed to reduce power plant emisssions 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Some estimates show our country is already anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the way to meeting that goal despite that lawsuit resulting in a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court. That stay bought time for the Trump administration to begin repealing the CPP following the president’s election.

In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the CPP and replaced it with a new rule — the Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE). What the ACE does is constrict the EPA’s regulatory responsibilities under the Clean Air Act, setting a low bar on emissions nationwide and empowering states to determine their own limits, among other things.

This week, 21 states, the District of Columbia and six major metropolitan areas sued the Trump administration over its move to ease those restrictions.

Their lawsuit argues not only is the Trump administration trying to prop up an outdated industry — coal — but the ACE is also bad for emerging new energy markets. Of course, it also notes that the science of climate change is indisputable and also comes at a human cost — additional air pollution as a result of the ACE will cost thousands of additional lives, according to the EPA’s own analysis.

Of course, some are going to immediately turn this into a political argument and by all appearances it looks like it. The 27 states that sued the Obama administration were Republican-led while the 21 suing the Trump administration are Democratic-led states.

But a closer look at these 21 states presents some problems with that argument. For one thing, four of those states — Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — all voted to elect President Trump in 2016. Another thing that might be disconcerting for pro-coal business groups and some of our state’s leaders, is Maryland and Virginia also joined Pennsylvania in this lawsuit.

Numerically, these 21 states represent nearly two-thirds of the nation’s population, too. We reject any efforts, and hope courts do too, to roll back carbon restrictions.

It’s unlikely our newspaper will sway the nation’s high court to reject efforts to repeal the Clean Power Plan. But technological trends, energy markets and the power sector decarbonizing faster than expected just might.

By the way, that is predictable.

The CPP or an ACE in the hole

Editorial of the Morgantown Dominion Post, Sunday, June 23, 2019

Call it a policy of diminishing returns or retreats from a worsening climate crisis. We’re never going to sway the Trump administration on its decision to short circuit the Clean Power Plan. But technological trends and markets might, not to mention the power sector continuing to decarbonize faster than expected.

Yet, last week the Trump administration finalized its so-called Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.

Our first question to those who put politics and self-interest above competitive markets is: How can we ever expect to win a war against the primary laws of economics? You know, if there’s a demand, someone will provide the supply, as long as the incentives are high enough.

And why even if Longview Power’s president and CEO, that operates the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired plant in the world, according to him, says it’s probably the last of its kind why think otherwise Especially when he tells you next thing that’s why Longview is developing an advanced gas-fired combine cycle plant beside its coal plant.

Finally, why would you ignore gains, that by some estimates show our country is already anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the way to meeting the Clean Power Plan’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030?

After all, aren’t happy days here again for the economy, despite the nation’s utilities already having drastically lowered emissions.

Most have no delusions about coal ever reaching the production numbers of the past and the outlook for this industry here and nationwide is uncertain, at best; grim, at worst.

Though some maintain you dance with the one that brought you, natural gas ditched coal more than a decade ago. More exactly, the advent of fracking around 2008 was to natural gas production what Elvis was to rock ’n’ roll.

But that was hardly the only front where the “war on coal” was waged. Increased use of renewables; heightened energy efficiencies; volatile international markets; and the depletion of thick, easy-to-mine seams all followed.

The decline in the coal industry is relentless, and though this decline may be slow and drawn out it’s just a matter of how low must it go. We reject any efforts, and hope courts do too, to roll back carbon restrictions, especially with the concerns about the amount of methane in the atmosphere.

Our country and our planet has a lot to lose, including our health, if we fail to address climate change. Rewrite the rules however you want, but any notion of coal’s resurgence is contrary to the way markets work and technology advances.

The ACE is certainly no ace in the hole for the coal industry. Indeed, it can only dig it and us into an even deeper one — at our own peril.

Science News of August 14, 1912

Hello, and Happy New Year everyone.

Barbara Brown (LWVMM Board Sec.) and I attended the public meeting in Charleston on the proposal to rescind the Clean Power Plan. It was very interesting and informative and we were surprised at the number of people who spoke in support of the CPP.

If you are opposed to rescinding the CPP, you need to make your voice heard before the January 16 deadline. And as much as I hate to say it, this is your opportunity to participate in our governance, so even if you agree that the CPP should be rescinded, you should take the opportunity to make that known, too.

Vicki Conner, Morgantown
League of Women Voters

Please consider sending in comments here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355-0002

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Big Win in the Big Apple

From Bill McKibben, 350.org, January 10, 2018

Today we have news of a mighty win: one of the planet’s central cities has gone fully on the attack against the fossil fuel industry, which means the tide is finally turning in the climate fight.

Just an hour ago we stood with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as he made two major announcements: New York’s pension funds will divest from the big oil and gas companies, and the city is suing the biggest of these corporations for the climate damage they’ve caused.

This is a huge moment in our fight to stop climate change. A city as iconic as New York could trigger a wave of action against the fossil fuel industry from other powerful cities and states around the U.S. and globally. For that to happen, we need each and every one of us to continue to demand change.

Join me, Senator Bernie Sanders, and many other powerful movement leaders and grassroots organizers to discuss this massive victory and how we can build on this momentum to forge a Fossil Free world together — Tune in on Jan 31st via livestream at a watch party near you.

When we dreamed up the idea of fossil fuel divestment in 2012 we thought: some colleges and churches will do this. We didn’t dare dream that half a decade later the richest city in the world would be leading the charge. As one of the financial centers of the world, New York sends a powerful message about the fiscal folly of fossil fuels.

And not only is New York City divesting, it is also taking those most responsible to court. Fossil fuel companies – and their lies and lobbyists – are to blame for the climate crisis we’re in and it’s high time they’re held to account.

It also shows us what is possible when we step up and fight back. New Yorkers, still reeling from Superstorm Sandy, fought long and hard for this win. Now we need more people to take up this fight in their communities. There’s no excuse for any city or state, any province or region, any pension fund or portfolio, to be in business with this industry.

Find out what you can do in your city or town to work towards climate justice on Jan 31st. Join (or host) a watch party with your community to talk about what climate action is possible in 2018.

The time has come, Bill McKibben, 350.org

P.S. The announcement during today’s press conference involved Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Tish James, Naomi Klein, myself, and many more.

>>> The 350.org is building a global climate movement. Become a sustaining donor to keep this movement strong and growing.

Hearing for Healthy Communities to Protect the Clean Power Plan

From an Article by Jessica Schueler, WVNS-TV News 59, November 29, 2017

CHARLESTON, WV — While the U.S. EPA hosted a public hearing in the Capitol Complex, the Sierra Club was also holding a hearing to discuss the potential repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The environmental conservation organization hosted a press conference, panel discussion and public hearing at the University of Charleston to send a strong message to the EPA. All testimony recorded Tuesday will be handed over to the EPA as written comment tomorrow.

From health impacts to economic concerns- experts, leaders and neighbors spent their day breaking down why they believe the Clean Power Plan has to stay.

“Who is the administration thinking about now when they try to repeal the clean power plan? They’re not thinking about their children, they’re not thinking about the next generation, they’re not thinking about our planet,” Mark Magana, CEO of Green Latinos, explained.

Alternative energy entrepreneurs touted the success of renewable resources in other countries, helping protect the earth and save money. “Every single case that I address with colleagues and fixed the pollution problem- improved the bottom line of the company we were working with,” Allan Tweedle said.

Advocates also argue the Power Plan doesn’t take away jobs. “There are now twice as many jobs in the solar industry in the United States, as in the entire fossil fuel industry combined,” Tweedle added.

One veteran physician said more than half of all doctors now believe the Clean Power Plan will improve the health of Americans. “It’s estimated that up to 90,000 asthma attacks a year would be prevented. 1,700 heart attacks would be prevented and 3,600 premature deaths would be prevented- every single year,” Laura Anderko of Georgetown University said.

The EPA required speakers to sign up ahead of time in order to share thoughts on the Clean Power Plan for the hearing, however time is being allocated in the late afternoon for anyone in the public to come in and address staff.

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Environment, jobs not an either-or question for West Virginia

Letter to Morgantown Dominion-Post, Betsy Jaeger Lawson, December 3, 2017

The Dominion-Post’s coverage of the Environmental Protection Agency’s hearing in Charleston left me with the usual sense of frustration when reading that limiting carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and protecting jobs is an either-or situation.

Repealing the Clean Power Plan is not going to help us or bring coal-mining jobs back.

It will keep us trapped in an endless cycle of poverty and poor health. As many people at the hearing said, the Clean Power Plan does not go far enough.

More carbon and methane in the atmosphere will create much worse health problems down the road and we need even stricter limits than what President Obama’s EPA proposed.

To say that the EPA is overstepping its bounds by protecting air and water quality is nonsensical. Their job is to protect the environment and our health. Employment is the responsibility of the Department of Labor.

I attended the hearings in Charleston. The Sierra Club sponsored a well-attended hearing at the same time with an impressive panel of experts, which was never mentioned in the newspaper article.

It is not environmental regulations that are causing the coal industry to wind down. But that is a convenient excuse given by the fossil fuel barons who want to protect their wealth. We have to stop thinking of clean environment and jobs as an “either-or.” The future of West Virginia depends on it.

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See also: Sierra Club outlines opposition to repeal of Clean Power Plan

Sent from my iPad

Mary Anne Hitt and Michael Bloomberg ask for support of the Clean Power Plan (CPP)

Today Michael Bloomberg visited Sierra Club’s office in Washington, D.C. and announced an increased commitment to retire America’s coal plants and transition the U.S. economy to a clean energy future. With the generosity of Bloomberg Philanthropies and others, we will amplify our existing success to achieve ever more ambitious goals — building a healthier, cleaner, more prosperous world.

This follows the Trump administration’s announcement of their plan to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP), Obama’s landmark regulation on carbon pollution for power plants.

“The Trump administration has yet to realize that the war on coal was never led by Washington — and Washington cannot end it,” said Bloomberg. “It was started and continues to be led by communities in both red and blue states who are tired of having their air and water poisoned when there are cleaner and cheaper alternatives available… Without any federal regulations on carbon emissions, those groups have combined with market forces to close half the nation’s coal-fired power plants over the past six years — and with this new grant, we aim to reach 60 percent by the end of 2020.”

Add your voice to Michael Bloomberg’s! Tell the EPA you support limits on carbon pollution and oppose their “Dirty Power Plan.”

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ generosity comes at a great time, adding to our existing momentum as we fight for clean air, water, and the climate and allowing us to build on our existing achievements:
This year, AEP and Xcel both announced the two largest clean energy projects in US history. Retiring coal plants have opened up new market opportunities for renewable energy, which has raced to fill them and is now cheaper than coal in most parts of the country.

Along with dozens of allies, the Beyond Coal Campaign has helped secured retirement commitments for 11 coal plants since Trump’s inauguration — that’s one plant every 24 days. We are now just a handful of plants away from securing retirement commitments from half of America’s coal fleet.

Additionally, because of work from Beyond Coal and allied groups, the largest coal export terminal in North America is dead, the last of six Northwest proposed coal export terminals to be defeated by tribal and community leaders.

And just this week, in the 48 hours since EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a repeal of the Clean Power Plan, nearly 60,000 Sierra Club members and supporters have submitted a comment to EPA opposing this.

We know Michael Bloomberg has our back. Do you? Take thirty seconds and submit your comment to EPA now to save the Clean Power Plan!

Carbon pollution from coal power plants sickens our families and makes climate change worse. Previously, the EPA estimated that the Clean Power Plan would prevent 90,000 asthma attacks, 300,000 missed work and school days, and 3,600 premature deaths annually by 2030. These health impacts of climate change disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income families. This means that any attempt to dismantle the Clean Power Plan is an added assault on the most vulnerable populations among us.

For the health of our families and safety of our future, as monster storms and wildfires pummel our nation, we must keep the Clean Power Plan in place. But Trump’s EPA wants to repeal the Clean Power Plan completely.

Now that the EPA has announced its plan, we must fight back. Let’s flood the comment inbox with thousands of messages of support for strong climate action like the Clean Power Plan. If enough of us speak up, we may be able to keep the Clean Power Plan in place. Will you add your voice?

As the EPA takes this drastic action, let’s speak up to defend the Clean Power Plan — and the health and safety of our communities.

To defending strong climate action,

Mary Anne Hitt
Director, Beyond Coal Campaign
Sierra Club

Do not discard the CPP!

EPA Should Not Be Allowed to Dodge Clean Power Plan Ruling, Cities and States Tell Court

Coalition of states, cities and green groups urges D.C. Court of Appeals to reject Trump administration request to stall decision on cornerstone climate regulations

From an Article by John Cushman, Inside Climate News, April 6, 2017

The Trump Administration is seeking to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s climate policies.

A coalition of states, cities and environmental groups filed twin briefs on Wednesday accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of trying to “perpetually dodge” court decisions that could keep alive the Clean Power Plan, which the Trump Administration wants to dismantle.

They urged the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reject the administration’s new petition to put the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s climate policies, into an indefinite state of limbo, while the EPA sends the rule back to the drawing board.

The appeals court heard oral arguments in the case months ago and should be ready to rule at any time. A quick ruling could, within a year, put the regulations on the docket of the Supreme Court, which issued a stay in 2016.

The tussle over how to proceed now that President Donald Trump has ordered the EPA to review the Clean Power Plan suggests that those who favor the rule are more eager for an appeals court verdict than those who oppose it.

A prolonged delay would “concretely harm” people living in their states, the brief said—”many of whom have sought for more than a decade to compel EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.”

The brief even made a veiled threat that if the courts ultimately rule that states have no recourse under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2, they might fall back on a tactic that worked for them in the past: suing polluters under common law for the “nuisance” of intense storms, rising seas and damage to public health.

That was a reference to an earlier lawsuit, Connecticut v. American Electric Power, which was tossed out when the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act pre-empted common law.

The brief noted that it’s not clear how the EPA could even conduct a thorough review of the Clean Power Plan under Trump’s latest budget proposals. Recently leaked draft documents describe deep cuts to staff working on climate change, including the score of lawyers working on the Clean Power Plan for the agency’s general counsel.

In a companion brief, several environmental groups made similar complaints. The Trump team’s motion to put the case in abeyance, they wrote, is an atttempt “to do what it could not do otherwise: effectively and indefinitely suspend a duly promulgated rule without proposing, taking comment on, justifying, or defending in court any legal or factual premises that might support such a result.”

The briefs cited extensive precedents for rejecting the Trump argument. But one might carry particular weight: a ruling on April 3, when the Supreme Court itself rejected a comparable request for an abeyance on a different rule, under the Clean Water Act.

“An order mothballing this case would leave our millions of members with no federal protections in place from this dangerous pollution with long-term impacts,” the green groups pleaded. “Moreover, the combination of the judicial stay and abeyance would leave scant incentive for EPA to act.”

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net

Moms Air Force Speaks Out

Moms Outraged at Trump’s Pick to Head EPA

From an Article by Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force, December 9, 2016

The nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is unprecedented. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, it is a travesty—because Pruitt has vigorously used his office to derail and obstruct clean air safeguards that are broadly supported by Americans in red and blue states alike. This nomination is a danger to our children and families.

Moms are outraged about this most cynical choice. We do not want an Environmental Destruction Agency.

Pruitt has used his office to attack vital safeguards for our children’s health.

Pruitt, Oklahoma’s top legal officer, has been against every single clean air protection we have gained. He has sued to stop vital safeguards that protect us from mercury, arsenic, acid gases and other emissions. These protections are supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association and the American Public Health Association.

Pruitt has used his office to attack protections against soot and smog pollution, and to attack EPA’s science documenting oil and gas air pollution levels.

Pruitt is against standards for reducing soot and smog that crosses state lines and pollutes neighbors’ air. Pruitt is against standards that improve air quality in our national parks. In 2014, Pruitt led an “unprecedented, secretive alliance” with large energy companies to attack clean air rules. This included using a letter written by an energy company as his own to challenge EPA’s science-based analysis of the oil and gas pollution levels in our communities.

Pruitt lies about science.

Pruitt has also professed profound ignorance—willful ignorance—about global warming. He is against any and all plans to cut the carbon and methane pollution that is dangerously altering our atmosphere. He perpetuates lies in an all-out assault on science.

He says the science on climate change is not settled. This is a lie. He claims that human activity has not changed the atmosphere. This is a lie. He claims we can do nothing about a natural phenomenon that has always occurred. This is a lie.

Pruitt accepts money from corporate polluters—to protect them.

He has sued to protect corporate polluters—and his campaigns have been funded by polluters. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from fossil fuel companies—to protect their ability to pollute.

Pruitt destroys solutions, rather than solves problems.

He has led lawsuits to undo clean air protections. But he has never, not once, advanced a single solution to any of the problems that the Clean Air Act must, by law, address. Pruitt does not offer solutions to mercury coming from coal-fired power plants, mercury that damages fetal and infant brains.

Pruitt does not offer solutions to soot and smog pollution. Pruitt does not offer solutions to the wasted methane that escapes from fracking operations. Pruitt does not offer plans to cut the emissions that are dangerously throwing our climate off balance.

Pruitt is not a leader for the new economy.

He is operating with an outdated understanding of science, economics, markets and job growth. He will not help position America globally as an innovative energy leader.

The Clean Air Act was signed into law by a Republican president and it was strengthened twenty years later by a Republican president. It is a vital demonstration that some things must transcend partisan politics: the protection of clean air and clean water chief among them.

President-elect Donald Trump was not given a mandate by the American people to stop protecting us from air pollution.

Pruitt’s entire career has demonstrated that his priority is obstructing clean air safeguards for our children.

Tell your elected officials: Scott Pruitt is a dangerous EPA nominee.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

See also: www.CERES.org

Investors and Businesses Know the Clean Power Plan is Good for the Economy

From an Article by Katina Tsongas, Senior Manager, Policy Program, Ceres Coalition, September 27, 2016

Today, challengers to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan will try to make their case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that the plan—the nation’s first comprehensive effort to reduce carbon pollution from power plants—will cause “irreparable harm” to our economy.

However, hundreds of leading investors and businesses—as well as top climate and energy experts—recognize that this claim is far from the truth.

A 2016 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that the Clean Power Plan will in fact accelerate annual growth of renewable energy production nationwide by nearly five percent through 2030, falling in line with the mandate’s goal of reducing U.S. power-plant carbon pollution 30 percent by 2030.

Businesses from across the country—from large employers to mom-and-pop stores—support the Clean Power Plan. Last summer, more than 365 companies and investors sent letters to governors calling for swift implementation of the plan. Industry leaders like General Mills, Staples, Unilever, eBay and Levi Strauss were among the wide swath of companies who signed onto to the letters, stating, “tackling climate change is one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.”

More recently, eight major companies—including Adobe Systems Inc, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, IKEA North America Services and Mars Incorporated, took their support a step further by submitting legal briefs in defense of the Clean Power Plan.

“[We] believe the Clean Power Plan, when fully implemented, would not cause business harm to [our] operations as large energy consumers and purchasers,” wrote the companies. Tech companies Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft submitted a separate legal brief.

These companies understand that the Clean Power Plan plays a major role in the United States’ contribution to the global Paris Agreement—a climate pact signed by more 170 countries that showcases broad, universal support for addressing greenhouse gas pollution across the globe. They acknowledge the value of moving towards a low-carbon economy and the importance of forward-looking climate policies that will help to secure a clean energy future.

The Clean Power Plan is a critical step in making that future an achievable reality.

NOTE: This Article is from CERES,  the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

$Bioenergy w/ CC$ - Too Expensive

We’re placing far too much hope in pulling carbon dioxide out of the air, scientists warn

From an Article by Chelsea Harvey, Washington Post, October 13, 2016

In the past decade, an ambitious — but still mostly hypothetical — technological strategy for meeting our global climate goals has grown prominent in scientific discussions. Known as “negative emissions,” the idea is to remove carbon dioxide from the air using various technological means, a method that could theoretically buy the world more time when it comes to reducing our overall greenhouse-gas emissions.

Recent models of future climate scenarios have assumed that this technique will be widely used in the future. Few have explored a world in which we can keep the planet’s warming within at least a 2-degree temperature threshold without the help of negative-emission technologies. But some scientists are arguing that this assumption may be a serious mistake.

[The suddenly urgent quest to remove carbon dioxide from the air]

In a new opinion paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, climate experts Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester and Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research have argued that relying on the uncertain concept of negative emissions as a fix could lock the world into a severe climate-change pathway.

“[If] we behave today like we’ve got these get-out-of-jail cards in the future, and then in 20 years we discover we don’t have this technology, then you’re already locked into a higher temperature level,” Peters said.

Many possible negative-emission technologies have been proposed, from simply planting more forests (which act as carbon sinks) to designing chemical reactions that physically take the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The technology most widely included in the models is known as bioenergy combined with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS.

In a BECCS scenario, plants capture and store carbon while they grow — removing it from the atmosphere, in other words — and then are harvested and used for fuel to produce energy. These bioenergy plants will be outfitted with a form of technology known as carbon capture, which traps carbon dioxide emissions before they make it into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide can then be stored safely deep underground. Even more carbon is then captured when the plants grow back again.

The idea sounds like a win-win on paper, allowing for both the removal of carbon dioxide and the production of energy. But while more than a dozen pilot-scale BECCS projects exist around the world, only one large-scale facility currently operates. And scientists have serious reservations about the technology’s viability as a global-scale solution.

First, the sheer amount of bioenergy fuel required to suit the models’ assumptions already poses a problem, Peters told The Washington Post. Most of the models assume a need for an area of land at least the size of India, he said, which prompts the question of whether this would reduce the area available for food crops or force additional deforestation, which would produce more carbon emissions.

When it comes to carbon capture and storage, the technology has been used already in at least 20 plants around the world, not all of them devoted to bioenergy. In fact, carbon capture and storage can be applied in all kinds of industrial facilities, including coal-burning power plants or oil and natural gas refineries. But the technology has so far failed to take off.

“Ten years ago, if you looked at the International Energy Agency, they were saying by now there would be hundreds of CCS plants around the world,” Peters said. “And each year the IEA has had to revise their estimates down. So CCS is one of those technologies that just never lives up to expectations.”

This is largely a market problem, according to Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer and carbon capture expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“There’s no doubt you can do it,” he said. “We have coal plants that do CCS, you can have biomass that can do CCS — the technology’s not a big deal. The question is the economics.”

Because it’s more expensive to produce energy with carbon capture than without it, there’s little incentive for the private sector to invest in the technology without a more aggressive policy push toward curtailing emissions, he pointed out. A carbon price, for instance, would be one way of creating a market for the technology.

It’s not that the modelers have no reason for incorporating BECCS so heavily, though. Over a long enough time period, and at the scale needed to make a dent in our global climate goals — especially assuming a high enough carbon price in the future — it may be the cheapest mitigation technology, Peters said. But this may not be enough for policymakers to invest in its advancement now.

“Decision-makers today don’t optimize over the whole century,” he said. “They’re not asking: What technology can I put in place now to make a profit in 100 years? So the sort of strategic thinking in the model is different from strategic thinking in practice.”

Additionally, the models that are commonly relied on to project future climate and technological scenarios assume that the CCS technique works perfectly within the next few decades, when it’s only just emerging.

“The models don’t have technical challenges; they don’t run into engineering problems; the models don’t have cost overruns,” Peters said. “Everything works as it should work in the model.”

The bottom line, he and Anderson note in their paper, is that all these assumptions make for a huge gamble. If policymakers decide we’re going to meet our climate goals only with the aid of negative-emission technologies, and then these technologies fail us in the future, we will already be locked into a high-temperature climate scenario.

In this light, the authors write, “negative-emission technologies should not form the basis of the mitigation agenda.” Indeed, they conclude, nations should proceed as though these technologies will fail, focusing instead on aggressive emissions-reduction policies for the present, such as the continued expansion of renewable energy sources.

Other scientists agree. Daniel Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California in Berkeley and director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, has published several recent papers on BECCS technology, and agrees that it is “nowhere near ready to be considered a component of a viable carbon reduction strategy.”

“The paper is right,” he continued in an emailed comment to The Washington Post. “A run to endorse BECCS as a key component of the needed 80 percent or greater decarbonization we need by 2050 is unproven, premature and potentially costly. It is worth research, but has a ways to go before it can enter the realm of a solutions science for climate change.”

Herzog also agreed that “the focus of today should be on mitigation as opposed to worrying about negative emissions sometime in the future.” In the future, he said, as we approach the end of our decarbonization schemes, negative emissions could still have a place when it comes to offsetting carbon from those last activities it’s most difficult or most expensive to decarbonize.

But Herzog added that, in his opinion, we’ve likely already overshot a 2-degree temperature threshold, to say nothing of the more ambitious 1.5-degree target described in the Paris climate agreement. At the very least, he noted, a reliance on renewables alone would be unlikely to get us there, if it were still possible. Indeed, multiple recent analyses have suggested that the combined pledges of individual countries participating in the Paris Agreement — very few of which have even considered negative emissions — still fall short of our temperature goals.

“I think what you’re going to see in the long run is a mix of technologies coming in to help solve the problem,” he said. “You need a mix of renewables, efficiency, nuclear, CCS, lifestyle changes — just a whole litany.”

Read more at Energy & Environment:

Greenland’s ice is melting from both above and below — and scientists say they’re connected

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Plan for Environment & Economy

The Clean Power Plan is the Transition Needed for the U. S. and the Earth

From a Letter by William D. Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly, New York Times, September 25, 2016

Last year, President Obama took aim at the nation’s largest source of carbon dioxide pollution, announcing a plan that would reduce these climate-changing emissions from the country’s power plants by one-third by 2030, from 2005 levels.

It is an ambitious proposal to rein in a pollutant that has escaped regulation. But the president was absolutely right in taking this action. As he pointed out, these plants emit more carbon dioxide than our cars, planes and homes combined, and it is this greenhouse gas that is the principal culprit behind the alarming warming of our planet.

Predictably, the plan has run into a determined legal assault from businesses, industry groups and more than two dozen states, many with economies that rely on coal mining or coal-fired electricity generation, and its fate now lies with the judicial branch. On Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is set to hear a challenge brought by those litigants.

As former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency who served three Republican presidents, we strongly support the president’s Clean Power Plan. It is consistent with the fundamental, longstanding approach this country has applied in the face of environmental threats. We have filed a supporting brief with the court.

Over the last 45 years, the nation has built a successful, durable legal framework to protect public health and the environment. This is the result of two factors: first, a clear, essential delineation of responsibilities between the federal government and the states; and, second, laws written sufficiently broadly to anticipate new threats to public health. Those critical elements came together in 1970 with the passage of amendments to the landmark Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by President Richard M. Nixon.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 gave the new E.P.A. the duty to set national ambient air-quality standards for six major air pollutants to protect public health. The law also deliberately and explicitly gave states the authority to devise and implement their own plans to meet the E.P.A. standards.

State responsibility was crucial to the legislative compromise that resulted in the amendments’ passage by overwhelming majorities in both houses. Congress recognized that states were closer to the problems they faced, and often had a better understanding of how solutions could be tailored in more cost-effective ways. That consideration has defined virtually all subsequent public health legislation that the E.P.A. administers.

Although states were given the primary responsibility to meet the standards, Congress gave the E.P.A. the power to implement plans of its own if states failed to act. The clear and unmistakable message from Congress to the E.P.A. was to protect the health of Americans.

We have always viewed the E.P.A. first and foremost as a public health agency. In our time running it, both of us faced unanticipated threats to public health. The broad terms of the Clean Air Act gave us authority to act sooner rather than later.

That model — federally set national standards coupled with state planning and implementation — is the bedrock of the legal structure that is now in place to protect public health. The Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Superfund all operate under that framework.

With the Clean Air Act, the success of this approach is clear. Levels of those six major air pollutants regulated by the law — ground-level ozone, particulates, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and lead — have declined substantially, with lead by more than 90 percent, even as the nation’s gross domestic product grew by more than 230 percent.

The current challenge to the E.P.A.’s power-plant rule once again thrusts the role of the states front and center. Principles of states’ rights and responsibilities are at the core of the agency’s approach. The E.P.A. has granted maximum flexibility to states to make the emissions reductions in ways tailored to address their specific circumstances.

Given the explicit deference to state authority embedded in the Clean Air Act, the charge by opponents that this rule amounts to “one of the most aggressive executive branch power grabs,” as one state attorney general put it, simply ignores the law and its success over 45 years.

That law, passed long before climate change had emerged as a looming catastrophe, may not be the ideal tool to address this daunting challenge. But Congress’s failure to take any meaningful action requires the E.P.A. to act with the only tool it has — the Clean Air Act. Once the agency determined that carbon dioxide posed a risk to public health, as it did in 2009, the agency was required to act to reduce that risk, under a 2007 Supreme Court ruling.

The debate about whether the climate is changing is over. The consequences will be drastic if the United States and other countries do nothing. Climate change has no boundaries. It confronts all of us with the reality that what happens anywhere on the planet can affect all of us everywhere.

The actions this country is taking to reduce greenhouse gases exemplify American exceptionalism. Our leadership is indispensable to international progress. Failure to accept and assert that responsibility guarantees that future generations of Americans will face a world markedly different from today’s and bear a cost far in excess of addressing the challenge now.

<<< William D. Ruckelshaus was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan; William K. Reilly was the agency’s administrator under President George H.W. Bush.

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net