Environment — Social — Governance — Opportunities

From an Article by the National Law Review (Volume XI, Number 275), Journal of Petroleum Technology, October 1, 2021

While ESG is perceived by some to be — and can be — difficult to implement, and it may seem like a profit-killer, the irony is that, for most companies that implement ESG programs, including those within the oil and gas industry, it has the opposite effect.

The institution of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) values and metrics represents a true revolution in how corporations are managed, measured, and operated. This sea change will continue to drive companies away from the familiar framework of short-term profits toward success that is defined not only by profitability but also by a sustainable and measurable contribution to the betterment of society at large.

This new paradigm brakes a long-established mold. While ESG is perceived by some to be—and can be—difficult to implement, and it may seem like a profit-killer, the irony is that, for most companies that implement ESG programs, including those within the oil and gas industry, it has the opposite effect.

According to the International Energy Association’s (IEA) 2021 Global Energy Review, renewable energy grew 3% in 2020, inclusive of a 7% increase in electricity generation from renewable sources. Logic would imply that, all things being constant, fossil fuel demand would decline. But all things are not constant, and because of an estimated 4.6% increase in global energy demand this year, a year when the world continues to feel the effects of COVID-19, the demand for fossil fuels has not diminished and will not any time soon.

Coal, driven largely by Asia, is a significant part of that demand, but natural gas is a driver across nearly all geographies. Even as we seek to supply more of our growing energy needs from renewable sources, the demise of fossil fuels — for good or for bad — is greatly exaggerated. While the industry itself is not going away, the way in which it operates and its contribution to the economy and society most certainly will be transformed.

Why is that? Certainly the societal implications of a focus on ESG represents an ethical imperative. But the truth is that money talks. BlackRock is the world’s largest investment manager, with $10 trillion of assets under management. According to S&P Global, as of February 2021, oil and gas represented 2.55% of its total investments and coal and consumable fuels accounted for 0.36%. Despite these small percentages, the investments are material and represent close to $255 billion and $36 billion, respectively, in the energy sector.

As such, when BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink speaks, people listen, including those in the energy sector. To that end, in a 2020 letter to investors, Larry Fink warned that “Given the groundwork we have already laid engaging on disclosure, and the growing investment risks surrounding sustainability, we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.”

While BlackRock has been and is instrumental in creating the ESG imperative, it is just one of the many stakeholders pushing companies in all sectors to embrace ESG and to develop metrics to measure progress toward identified goals.

Despite all the talk about the energy transition, net-zero economy goals, and the importance of ESG overall, energy companies should not lose site of the fact that (1) it is unlikely there will be a decline in global energy demand — populations are continuing to grow — and (2) broad index funds, as opposed to actively managed funds, simply cannot abandon the sector or create stranded assets. But, a lack of an ESG strategy will ultimately affect a company’s access to public, and increasingly private, capital. And that will happen to all companies, whether publicly funded or not.

A lack of an ESG strategy will ultimately affect a company’s access to public, and increasingly private, capital.

Be sure to read the full story here.

Green Growth is a flawed concept

From an Article by George Monbiot, The Guardian (UK), September 29, 2021

There is a box labelled “climate”, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named “biodiversity”, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet’s lost property department. But they all contain aspects of one crisis that we have divided up to make it comprehensible.

The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the “thing-in-itself”. They describe artefacts of our perceptions rather than the world. Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.

Take the situation of the North Atlantic right whale, whose population recovered a little when whaling ceased, but is now slumping again: fewer than 95 females of breeding age remain. The immediate reasons for this decline are mostly deaths and injuries caused when whales are hit by ships or tangled in fishing gear. But they’ve become more vulnerable to these impacts because they’ve had to shift along the eastern seaboard of North America into busy waters.

Their main prey, a small swimming crustacean called Calanus finmarchicus, is moving north at a rate of 8km a year, because the sea is heating. At the same time, a commercial fishing industry has developed, exploiting Calanus for the fish oil supplements falsely believed to be beneficial to our health. There’s been no attempt to assess the likely impacts of fishing Calanus. We also have no idea what the impact of ocean acidification – also caused by rising carbon dioxide levels – might be on this and many other crucial species.

As the death rate of North Atlantic right whales rises, their birthrate falls. Why? Perhaps because of the pollutants accumulating in their bodies, some of which are likely to reduce fertility. Or because of ocean noise from boat engines, sonar, and oil and gas exploration, which may stress them and disrupt their communication. So you could call the decline of the North Atlantic right whale a shipping crisis, or a fishing crisis, or a climate crisis, or an acidification crisis, or a pollution crisis, or a noise crisis. But it is in fact all of these things: a general crisis caused by human activity.

Or look at moths in the UK. We know they are being harmed by pesticides. But the impact of these toxins on moths has been researched, as far as I can discover, only individually. Studies of bees show that when pesticides are combined, their effects are synergistic: in other words, the damage they each cause isn’t added, but multiplied. When pesticides are combined with fungicides and herbicides, the effects are multiplied again.

Simultaneously, moth caterpillars are losing their food plants, thanks to fertilisers and habitat destruction. Climate chaos has also knocked their reproductive cycle out of sync with the opening of the flowers on which the adults depend. Now we discover that light pollution has devastating effects on their breeding success. The switch from orange sodium streetlights to white LEDs saves energy, but their wider colour spectrum turns out to be disastrous for insects. Light pollution is spreading rapidly, even around protected areas, affecting animals almost everywhere.

Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems. When coral reefs are weakened by the fishing industry, pollution and the bleaching caused by global heating, they are less able to withstand the extreme climate events, such as tropical cyclones, which our fossil fuel emissions have also intensified. When rainforests are fragmented by timber cutting and cattle ranching, and ravaged by imported tree diseases, they become more vulnerable to the droughts and fires caused by climate breakdown.

What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would see a full-spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere is now safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper estimates that only 3% of the Earth’s land surface should now be considered “ecologically intact”.

The various impacts have a common cause: the sheer volume of economic activity. We are doing too much of almost everything, and the world’s living systems cannot bear it. But our failure to see the whole ensures that we fail to address this crisis systemically and effectively.

When we box up this predicament, our efforts to solve one aspect of the crisis exacerbate another. For example, if we were to build sufficient direct air capture machines to make a major difference to atmospheric carbon concentrations, this would demand a massive new wave of mining and processing for the steel and concrete. The impact of such construction pulses travels around the world. To take just one component, the mining of sand to make concrete is trashing hundreds of precious habitats. It’s especially devastating to rivers, whose sand is highly sought in construction. Rivers are already being hit by drought, the disappearance of mountain ice and snow, our extraction of water, and pollution from farming, sewage and industry. Sand dredging, on top of these assaults, could be a final, fatal blow.

Or look at the materials required for the electronics revolution that will, apparently, save us from climate breakdown. Already, mining and processing the minerals required for magnets and batteries is laying waste to habitats and causing new pollution crises. Now, as Jonathan Watts’s terrifying article in the Guardian this week shows, companies are using the climate crisis as justification for extracting minerals from the deep ocean floor, long before we have any idea of what the impacts might be.

This isn’t, in itself, an argument against direct air capture machines or other “green” technologies. But if they have to keep pace with an ever-growing volume of economic activity, and if the growth of this activity is justified by the existence of those machines, the net result will be ever greater harm to the living world.

Everywhere, governments seek to ramp up the economic load, talking of “unleashing our potential” and “supercharging our economy”. Boris Johnson insists that “a global recovery from the pandemic must be rooted in green growth”. But there is no such thing as green growth. Growth is wiping the green from the Earth.

We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we dramatically reduce economic activity. Wealth must be distributed – a constrained world cannot afford the rich – but it must also be reduced. Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of almost everything. But this notion – that should be central to a new, environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.

>>>>>>>…………………>>>>>>>…………………>>>>>>>

See Also: The idea of ‘green growth’ is flawed. We must find ways of using less and wasting less energy, Michael Joy, The Conversation, May 27, 2021

As countries explore ways of decarbonising their economies, the mantra of “green growth” risks trapping us in a spiral of failures. Green growth is an oxymoron. Growth requires more material extraction, which in turn requires more energy. The fundamental problem we face in trying to replace fossil energy with renewable energy is that all our renewable technologies are significantly less energy dense than fossil fuels. This means much larger areas are required to produce the same amount of energy. And, there is much more to consider!

Startup of Ethane Cracker Complex at Baytown three years ago

From an Article by Kristen Hays & Astrid Torres, S&P Global Platts, August 26, 2021

ExxonMobil and Sabic’s joint-venture petrochemical complex near Corpus Christi, Texas, is undergoing commissioning ahead of its fourth-quarter startup, the plant’s manager said August 26th. “We’ll be up with everything by the end of the year,” the plant manager, Paul Fritsch, said during a tour of the facility.

Built on a former cotton field, and surrounded by cotton fields and sunflowers, the new complex features a 1.8 million mt/year ethane-fed cracker, the world’s second-largest, and the world’s largest monoethylene glycol unit at 1.1 million mt/year. The complex also has two linear low density polyethylene units, each with capacity of 650,000 mt/year.

The companies announced in October that the joint venture would come online in Q4 2021, earlier than 2022 as originally planned. The JV brought on-site utilities online first, to ensure adequate flows of water, steam, nitrogen and other inputs to the downstream products. “We’ve been working on that for most of the year,” Fritsch said. “As we start up in the fourth quarter we’ll have more hustle and bustle.”

The complex has all laboratory facilities on site to test raw materials and PE and MEG produced to ensure output meets necessary specifications, which was finishing its commissioning process. Huge screens with intricate data glowed in the dimly lit control room, and a simulation laboratory takes engineers through scenario after scenario of what would happen to the production units or utilities in potential events, from heavy rain to minor pressure changes in valves to sudden power outages.

The complex was built with modules, which were transported to the site from September 2019 through June 2020, the companies said. The module plan allowed the companies to continue the work with fewer contractors on site than projects that build units on site from the ground up, so construction was not suspended or slowed at the height of COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. Fritsch said the project had 4,000 contractors on site at its height, and maintained COVID-19 safety protocols. A similar project without modules could have twice that number of contractors or more.

Fritsch also said the project has provided medical oversight, including administration of 2,800 vaccinations so far to workers and contractors who want them. Other major petrochemical projects temporarily slowed or suspended work to implement COVID-19 safety protocols, such as Shell’s new petrochemical complex under construction in Pennsylvania and LyondellBasell’s new propylene oxide/tertiary butyl alcohol unit in Texas.

The ExxonMobil-Sabic project is part of 9.77 million mt/year of new US PE capacity under construction or planned to start up in 2021 and beyond. As of 2020, the US had 23.4 million mt/year of PE capacity, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.

The new cracker is among more than 10 million mt/year of ethylene capacity under construction or planned in the US to come online in 2021 and beyond, which includes Total’s new 1 million mt/year joint-venture cracker in Port Arthur, Texas, which began starting up in June. US ethylene capacity in 2020 was 40.56 million mt/year, according to Platts Analytics.

The MEG unit will increase US MEG capacity by 23.6% to 5.75 million mt/year. US MEG capacity has more than doubled to 4.65 million mt/year since late 2018 as Lotte Chemical, MEGlobal, Sasol and Nan Ya Plastics brought a cumulative 2.5 million mt/year in new production online.

The joint venture also includes a marine terminal to export liquids, including MEG, propane and butane streams.

>>>>>>>…………………>>>>>>>…………………>>>>>>>

See also: Shell cracker plant 80% complete; first electricity exported to grid, Chrissy Suttles, Beaver County Times, July 9, 2021

BEAVER COUNTY, PA — Shell Chemicals’ ethane cracker plant is now 80% complete, as workers continue to commission the site’s 250-megawatt natural gas and steam cogeneration facility.

Employees at the Beaver County petrochemical complex have now exported power to the PJM electricity grid from each of the power plant’s three units – a major milestone on the project’s path to startup.

Once operational, the cogeneration plant will provide electricity to the complex while exporting approximately one-third of its power, or 80 megawatts, to the wholesale grid in an average day. “We are proud to have successfully tied our cogeneration facility to the grid and exported power from our site,” said Shell Senior Vice President Hilary Mercer.

Workers will soon begin commissioning the complex’s ethane cracking unit and three polyethylene production units, using power from the cogeneration facility to do so. The company began “first fire” activities in early June to prepare the power plant’s piping.

The multi-billion dollar project is expected to be completed and operational by next year. It will convert fracked gas ethane into ethylene, used in plastics manufacturing to make a range of products from automotive parts to food packaging.

Eternal vigilance needed to protect our water supply, streams & rivers (Angie Rosser of WV Rivers Coalition)

Submitted by Julie Archer, League of Women Voters of West Virginia, July, 17, 2021

We’re sharing this important Action Alert from our friends at the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

A recent a policy decision by the WVDEP related to water quality standards creates a loophole to allow industries to dump more toxins in our source water.

This proposal is part of a second round of human health criteria revisions – the portion of our water quality standards that protects our health from dangerous pollutants like cancer causing toxins, chemicals known to cause birth-defects, and poisons like cyanide.

Submit comments on the proposal today! [1]

This policy is dangerous for West Virginia. Not only will it allow more toxins in our drinking water sources, it creates a shortcut for polluters to allow EVEN MORE toxins in our water with less public
involvement.

Ways this policy puts our health and our water at risk:

* The proposal creates a loophole for industry to further weaken the
human health criteria on a case-by-case basis if industry funds a study
that sways the WVDEP to decide that water and fish can handle more
toxins.
* This is handout to big corporations, who can afford the studies.
Hint: chemical manufacturers asked for this loophole, so we are pretty
sure they can afford these studies and are confident they believe they
can demonstrate results in their favor.
* There is already a process in place to revise water quality
standards. The revision sidesteps that procedure by creating a shortcut
that reduces scrutiny and public input in decision-making.
* The loophole exacerbates environmental justice issues by allowing
more toxins in waters near industrialized areas, which are often poorer
communities that are already struggling with problems related to social,
economic, and environmental justice.
* On top of all these factors, it’s just plain old bad policy. It’s_
_vague and sets a precedent for further weakening of water quality
standards statewide.

This is an all hand on deck call to action!

You can submit comments on the proposal through July 19 here [1]. It’s important for the WVDEP to hear personalized responses from commenters. Think about how the policy change would affect you and your loved ones
personally.

In addition to submitting written comments, please plan to join the virtual public hearing on the proposal on July 19 at 6:00PM [2].

See the Links:
——
[1] https://wvrivers.salsalabs.org/hhc2021/index.html

[2] https://dep.wv.gov/events/Pages/event.aspx?eventid=363

Subject: An invitation to join FracTracker in the Alliance

Become a FracTracker Supporter.

You’re warmly invited to join us in a newly formed group of special donors called the “Alliance.”

The members of the Alliance, our Advocates, provide ongoing, monthly gifts that help form a steady stream resource we know we can count on. Your monthly support will help make tangible changes, such as decreasing the number of oil and gas wells in the US, protecting the public from toxic and radioactive chemicals, and stopping petrochemical expansion into vulnerable communities.

As part of the Alliance, you will have direct access to the FracTracker team and receive special communications regarding our progress. You can also choose from swag options such as FracTracker Alliance t-shirts, stickers, and more. And if you sign up before July 4th, you will have the option to receive a complimentary FracTracker tote bag as a token of our gratitude.

Join the FracTracker Alliance today:

https://fractracker.networkforgood.com/projects/134604-join-the-alliance/

As we close out the fiscal year, we thank all of our friends and supporters for helping FracTracker achieve our mission to map, analyze, and communicate the risks of oil, gas, and petrochemical development to advance just energy alternatives that protect public health, natural resources, and the climate.

For more information on FracTracker’s finances and programing, please browse our annual reports here. If you have any questions about the Alliance, please contact me at (717) 303-0403 or lenker@fractracker.org.

With gratitude and respect,

Brook Lenker, Executive Director, FracTracker Alliance

p: 717-303-0403 m: 717-756-2637 f: 717-695-2119
a: 704 Lisburn Road | Suite 102 | Camp Hill, PA 17011
w: www.fractracker.org e: lenker@fractracker.org

Green methanol is produced from biomass not natural gas

From the Methanol Institute, World Wide Web, 2020 – 2021

The “Renewable Methanol: A Carbon-Neutral Fuel” webinar organized by the Methanol Institute took place on August 5, 2020. The webinar is organized with the support of presenting companies Clariant, Haldor Topsoe, bseEngineering, and Ørsted. The global transition towards climate mitigation and greater sustainability has inspired a concerted effort from government, business, and society to find viable solutions to lower greenhouse gas emissions to meet the Paris Climate Agreement.

This transition has led to renewable methanol gaining traction as a carbon-neutral solution for multiple industries. The benefits of renewable methanol are manifold. The production of renewable methanol relies on off-taking CO2 from industrial emitters which allows them to reduce their emissions while moving towards carbon-neutrality. Renewable methanol can then be utilized as a carbon-neutral fuel for multiple applications such as land and marine transport vessels to help them reach their own emission reduction goals.

The webinar shares the experiences of companies that are part of the renewable methanol value chain in various regulatory and commercial landscapes. The companies will also shed light on what they believe is the future of this sustainable solution as global industries move towards limiting their impact on their operating environments and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

>>>>>>>………………>>>>>>>>………………>>>>>>>>

See also: Technical Knowledge Webinar on Green Hydrogen and Green Methanol, April 6, 2021

Organized by MI, NSEFI and IWPA, this webinar includes plenary sessions on the different facets of producing green hydrogen through green methanol, methanol as a hydrogen carrier and other applications of green methanol followed by Q&A session with industry experts from around the world. The webinar​ gives a platform to gain insights, learn about solutions and explore potential opportunities for collaboration on clean energy projects in India.

The Green New Deal is good for everyone in the long run

RE: Climate Change, Economic Sustainability and Environmental Preservation

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey just re-introduced the Green New Deal resolution in Congress.

Since this landmark resolution was first introduced two years ago, one thing has become clear: the fight for climate justice can only be won by tackling jobs, justice, and climate. Together.

The Green New Deal is one of the most popular policy proposals in the country. 57% of voters want their members of Congress to co-sponsor the resolution.1 It has inspired countless other bills like the Green New Deal for Public Housing introduced by Sen. Sanders, and the Green New Deal For Cities that Rep. Cori Bush introduced on Monday.

But despite all this, the Green New Deal has yet to pass through Congress. We have a once in a generation opportunity to push forward transformational change through this resolution. The plan for a Green New Deal, and economic, racial, and climate justice is on the table, but it’s up to our grassroots strength to force Congress to act.

Will you sign on as a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of the Green New Deal, and send a message to every Democrat, Republican, and Independent in Congress that we’ve waited long enough and we won’t tolerate inaction any longer?

The Green New Deal is one of the most strongly supported pieces of legislation because people across the country want bold climate action now. Already, over 100 members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors of the resolution, but we need more – and we need bolder action from the White House.

The Biden administration’s current infrastructure plan doesn’t go far enough. $2 trillion over 10 years isn’t enough. We need a minimum of $16 trillion dollars to address the scale of the crisis we are facing.

The Green New Deal makes it clear that we need to transition from fossil fuel jobs to fair, clean energy union jobs that support people and the climate. We can make sure we have a livable planet for future generations if we take action today – if our leaders stand up for people, not profits. If we pass the Green New Deal.

Please add your name now as a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of the Green New Deal. We’ll be in touch with more ways you can help grow support for the Green New Deal and related bills in Congress.

With hope, Team 350

Steam crackers dominate the greenhouse gas emissions

Analysis by Tom Brown, Independent Commodity Intelligence Service (ICIS), April 9, 2021

LONDON (ICIS)–The political will to decarbonise energy-intensive industries is there, the funding is there and, increasingly, the rhetoric of multinational chemicals producer executives is there.

The chemicals sector has traditionally had a difficult time with facing the public, with a campaign by European trade group Cefic in the early 2010s for the sector to become more open and transparent quickly forgotten.

Largely upstream of the industries that the public is aware of, the sector has had little need to present a public face, and the several scandals that tend to emerge every decade, such as the DuPont/Chemours US water contamination lawsuit, encourage a low profile.

The level of attention given to plastic waste and the circular economy has centred the spotlight more firmly on the sector, and large firms seem to be becoming more comfortable with a higher public profile, and the potential for chemicals producers to be perceived as a positive force.

Firms like Germany’s major BASF are also using the ambivalent-to-positive public attention to advocate for support for the sector to help with the dual pressures to decarbonise and to carry out the most radical reworking of production processes since the invention of steam crackers.

ONCE IN A CENTURY SHIFT

The extent that sustainability issues are dominating the agenda for management boards at present was exemplified by BASF’s recent capital markets day, which was overwhelmingly devoted to the company’s decarbonisation plans.

CEO Martin Brudermuller termed the current transition a “once in a century” shift for the sector, and called upon governments to provide financial support for companies to develop and scale the technologies that will allow the sector to decarbonise.

The Germany-based producer has committed to cut its emissions by 60%, compared to 1990 levels, by 2030 but the chemicals production process is a difficult one to decarbonise – steam cracking is not easy to achieve via hydrogen or electricity power.

This is to be achieved by new technologies, bio-based feedstocks and shifting to sustainable power sources but, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) has noted, the tight timeframes for decarbonisation have come about before many systems to cut emissions for energy-intensive sectors have been commercialised.

BASE CHEMICALS THE KEY EMITTER

A key factor will be the expense of decarbonising production processes for lower-margin but widely-used basic chemicals, which make up the lion’s share of BASF’s production emissions.

According to the company, processes for steam cracking, and the production of ammonia, arylic acid, caprolactam, syngas, nitric acid, methyl-diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), toluene diisocyanate (TDI), hydrogren and ethylene oxide (EO) account for the bulk of its carbon dioxide emissions.

CARBON PRICING STATUS

The difficulty and expense in decarbonising large-scale but lower-margin value chains raises the multi-billion dollar question: will consumers’ interest in sustainability translate to them paying more for basic rather than premium products?

Brudermuller believes so, at least in public. Even US industry trade groups, which tend to be redder in tooth and claw than European bodies on climate issues, have started to endorse carbon pricing mechanisms: “We are convinced that ultimately all players involved will work together to make this once-in-a-century transformation economically successful,” he said, speaking at the company’s capital markets day.

“This also includes consumers accepting higher prices for CO2-free products throughout the value chain to offset higher operating costs and additional investments,” he added.

The company projects that capital expenditure on CO2 reduction technologies will be €1bn in 2021-25, €2bn-3bn in the latter half of the decade, and around €10bn in the 2030s as the innovations reach commercial scale.

Although the most substantial investments are expected down the line, the company is looking for government support in the earlier stages to help de-risk the technology development process, according to Brudermuller. “For very early stage higher-risk technology, you get a higher share of support than you do later, we don’t expect so much support when building world-scale plants, but I think it is fair now when there is such immense pressure to decarbonise,” he said.

PARIS TARGETS, INSUFFICIENT AND UNMET

Governments worldwide are also developing their decarbonisation roadmaps, from hydrogen and renewable energy as a power source to carbon capture for heavy industry to bio-based jet fuel.

With the accession of President Joseph Biden, the US is expected to return at the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, UK, this November. With China also setting out plans to reach net zero by 2060, most of the globe is pushing in the same direction, although the pace of progress remains a cause celebre between governments.

“The Earth’s temperature would still rise about 3.7 degrees [Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius] if we did everything we promised to do in Paris, and we’re not,” said John Kerry, the US’ envoy for climate, speaking at a recent IEA summit.

CRUCIAL DECADE AHEAD

This underscores a key issue with climate abatement measures: that the tipping point of public attention and governmental action is substantial but may have coalesced too late for the technological and structural changes necessary to mitigate the impact of climate change.

The next 10 years may be the most crucial but, as shown by BASF’s projected capex (capital expenditure) schedule, the real substantial work may not begin until the 2030s.

“Do we respect that there are differentiated responsibilities [between countries]? Yes, but we cannot just willy-nilly ignore the next 10 years,” Kerry said. “If we do not do enough in these 10 years, we cannot keep the earth’s temperature [rise] at 1.5 degrees [Celsius].”

Raj Kumar Singh, India’s minister of power, new and renewable energy, was less circumspect on long-term goals, calling the idea of 2060 targets “pie in the sky” when speaking at the IEA event. “When you talk about the challenges before us together… that is something which we need to consider very honestly. We can obfuscate but that is not going to make the problem go away,” he said.

“2060 is a long time away, what are you going to do in the next five years, what are you going to do in the next 10 years? The world wants to know,” he added. “I want to know how many countries have actually accomplished the Kyoto targets.”

NECESSARY INDUSTRIALISATION

Singh also criticised developed world goals that assume that all nations are on track to begin cutting carbon emissions, or for emissions to peak and start to decline in the near future, at a point when advanced economies have already developed, and account for 80% of CO2 emissions.

Some 600 million people in Africa are currently without access to power, according to the African Union.The implications of this, according to Singh, are that advanced economies should be setting their sights on becoming carbon negative, not carbon neutral, to allow for emissions levels from low-income developing countries to increase far enough into the future to achieve widespread industrialisation.

The scale of industrialisation still needed in low-income developing countries provides an opportunity for those societies to leapfrog fossil-based growth entirely, according to John Kerry and a fellow first-world minister on the panel, European Commission Green Deal vice-president Frans Timmermans. “We need to show this can be a just transition, to remove coal, but do it in a way to allow those regions to grasp the opportunities of the new economy,” Timmermans said.

An issue with the leapfrogging concept is that development of coal power is market-driven and installation of new renewable energy capacity is still largely policy-driven, according to BP’s world energy report.

When the need remains to connect more citizens to electrical grids and internet connections, it is easy to see why the cheapest, quickest to set up sources of power remain attractive, however dirty.

The fact that, according to the IMF, the lowest income countries are set to suffer the largest per capita falls in income from the coronavirus pandemic could also drive increased coal power take-up. In the rush to vaccinate populations, there has been little global cooperation between countries, with governments largely looking inward.

Hopefully, after the dust settles, governments will recognise that their fortunes are also tied to helping developing countries rebuild, after largely leaving them to their own fortunes during the pandemic.

Regional Initiatives Across the United States

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, March 17, 2021

The $43 million was “in the state’s hot little hands,” Mike Dowd told the group. So what next?

That was the question facing not only Mike Dowd, director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s Air Division, but also a collection of developers, state officials and environmental and low-income advocacy groups who had gathered over Zoom.

All were focused on the best uses of that $43 million in carbon money, the first round of funds Virginia had received through its participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an 11-state agreement that puts a price on the carbon emissions that are driving climate change, requires power plants to pay that price and then channels the proceeds back to the states.

Most of that funding will eventually be paid for by customers of the state’s electric utilities, which are allowed under state law to pass on the costs of carbon allowances to customers, with no extra returns for investors. State officials had conservatively projected annual proceeds from RGGI’s carbon auctions to be in the range of $106 to $109 million. But with allowances trading at $7.60 per short ton of emissions at this March’s quarterly auction, actual revenues now look to be much higher, amounting to perhaps as much as $174 million annually if prices hold.

What to do with that major new stream of income — especially in a pandemic year when purses are tight — has been the preoccupation of dozens of Virginia officials this winter.

The law passed by the General Assembly in 2020 authorizing participation in RGGI spells out certain high-level priorities for the funds: 50 percent for low-income energy efficiency programs, 45 percent for a new Community Flood Preparedness Fund to assist communities affected by recurrent flooding and sea level rise, 3 percent for DEQ to oversee Virginia’s participation in RGGI and carry out statewide climate change planning and the remainder for other administrative work.

But between those goals and projects on the ground lies a lot of space. Should the state be creating new programs or beefing up existing ones? Should certain housing types or certain geographic areas get priority — particularly given new equity commitments designed to ensure that benefits are felt across the board?

“There’s not a whole lot of direction there, so I think it’s really important … to think about the spirit of the legislation and try to address some of the underlying causes,” said Dawone Robinson, director of an energy affordability program run by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of one of the advisory boards Virginia convened to decide how to spend its carbon dollars.

Compounding the challenge has been time constraints: Virginia’s fiscal year ends on June 30. With the first auction funds arriving this March, agencies have only a few short months to spend them. While RGGI funds are nonreverting, meaning agencies won’t lose them at the end of the fiscal year, most are eager to get the funds out of the door immediately.

“If we’d had our druthers, we would have been working on this last year,” said Carmen Bingham of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, who is also serving on the same advisory board as Robinson. Between slowdowns due to COVID-19 and the RGGI law not going into effect until July 1, however, the agencies that will receive the bulk of the carbon funds — the Department of Housing and Community Development, which will oversee the low-income energy efficiency funds, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which will oversee the Flood Preparedness Fund — have been forced to move quickly to narrow down their priorities.

“We’re in this very weird place of having to work frantically in order to come up with how do we spend this first round of money,” said Bingham. But, she added, “that’s the hand we’re dealt and the cards we’ve got to play.”

Low-income energy efficiency in Virginia

From the beginning, Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration zeroed in on the possibilities the funds earmarked under the RGGI law for low-income energy efficiency offered for affordable housing.

Low-income tenants ideally would be able to rent “more highly efficient properties” as a result of RGGI funding, then-Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Trade Angela Navarro said during a webinar last July. An administration memo similarly identified “deeper levels of energy efficiency” in affordable housing and upgrades to public housing as priorities.

Advocates, however, pointed in a different direction: weatherization, a set of improvements to a building that cut down on energy waste and consequently tend to lower electric bills.

The federal government has funded weatherization programs for low-income households since the 1970s, but federal program guidelines strictly define what falls under the weatherization umbrella. Improvements like roof or wall repairs that are deemed health and safety issues don’t qualify, even if they are fixes that have to occur before weatherization can be done. When weatherization providers encounter these issues, they have to walk away, creating what’s called a “deferral.”

In Virginia, those number in the hundreds: Janaka Casper, CEO of Community Housing Partners, the state’s largest weatherization provider, said that as of 2019 his organization had recorded 525 deferrals.

In practice, that has meant that “the homes that are most in need of weatherization services can’t be worked on,” said Chelsea Harnish, executive director of the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council. “This is housing stock that is in desperate need. This could be a hole in the roof. It could be a hole in the floor. To me that directly goes to energy efficiency.”

To many advocates, who have been asked by the Department of Housing and Community Development how its portion of the RGGI money — which this fiscal year will amount to $21.7 million — should be spent, the deferrals were a top priority. Not only did they represent an identified need, but they offered the opportunity to address some of the commonwealth’s most vulnerable populations, including historically economically disadvantaged and minority communities.

“From a sheer climate perspective, it has often been the preferred route to tackle the low-hanging fruit,” said Robinson. “That’s not low-income housing. That’s not rental housing.”

But policymakers must “look at the totality of benefits that can be achieved,” he insisted. “If you value equity, what is the cost of achieving racial equity? If you value increasing indoor air quality, what is the value of human health?” he asked. “These are invaluable measures that aren’t addressed and aren’t calculated in a traditional cost-benefit (analysis).”

As the Department of Housing and Community Development’s RGGI advisory group met throughout the winter, weatherization slowly slid onto the priority list. This Monday, the group signed off on a recommendation for how this year’s carbon funds should be spent: 60 percent on weatherization and 40 percent on efforts to increase energy efficiency for affordable housing through the state’s Affordable and Special Needs Housing Program.

Advocates like Bingham said the split bridged the state’s immediate needs and longer-term ones. Weatherization “has that immediate impact that we can actually see, whereas housing projects are going to take awhile. They’re not going to be as quick to get a benefit right away,” she said.

…. Part 2 scheduled to appear next ……
.

The rapid increase in carbon dioxide is affecting the entire Earth

From a Staff Report, Yale Climate Connections, November 25, 2020

Why frightening facts don’t always move people to action on climate change. Anger, anxiety, overwhelm … climate change can evoke intense feelings.

A conversational approach often works better, says psychologist Renée Lertzman. “It’s easy to feel dwarfed in the context of such a global systemic issue.”

She says that when people experience these feelings, they often shut down and push information away. So to encourage climate action, she advises not bombarding people with frightening facts. “When we lead with information, we are actually unwittingly walking right into a situation that is set up to undermine our efforts,” she says.

She says if you want to engage people on the topic, take a compassionate approach. Ask people what they know and want to learn. Then have a conversation.

This conversational approach may seem at odds with the urgency of the issue, but Lertzman says it can get results faster.

“When we take a compassion-based approach, we are actively disarming defenses so that people are actually more willing and able to respond and engage quicker,” she says. “And we don’t have time right now to mess around, and so I do actually come to this topic with a sense of urgency…. We do not have time to not take this approach.”

#####. #####. #####. #####. #####. #####.

Seven (7) of the Best TED Talks about Climate Change, Climate Reality Project, April 5, 2019

These are definitely “ideas worth spreading.” Imagine being able to invite some of the leading minds of the climate movement over for dinner. You could pick anyone from anywhere. Who would be sitting around your table?

It’s hard to narrow down when there are so many amazing people out there fighting for solutions. (This must have been how Nick Fury felt while he was assembling the Avengers, right?) But, for us, we would try to pick people who are taking on the climate crisis in totally different – but equally incredible – ways.

Think of this collection of TED Talks as our guest list for the world’s most inspiring dinner party on climate. Read here about the leader of the student strike movement, climate scientists, a former president, a trained meteorologist and more.