tingilinde

trump damaging his buddies episode 2452

This time it's pipeline projects. (via YaleEnvironment360)

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“One of our huge tactical advantages was that the administration was working for these pipelines,” says a project opponent.

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james hansen

The New Yorker profile of James Hansen is more than a decade old, but it's reasonable to revisit.  What we're going through now is peanuts compared to the challenge of global warming. 

 

on dieselgate

How VW (and other German car makers) got there and how it may have saved VW.

 

90% renewables in the us by 2035?

A group at Berkely looks at a couple of scenarios..  remarkable things are possible, but would require policy changes. 

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“Technically, it’s feasible,” says Billy Pizer, an expert in climate change who teaches at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and was not involved in the Berkeley research. “I think people have thought about this for awhile and, with a combination of renewables and storage, you can certainly reach those sorts of targets.”

Researchers took the available data on renewable energy and created two scenarios for the next 15 years. In one, energy policy remains the way it is now, without ambitious policy changes to encourage the growth of renewable energy. The other imagines what ambitious policy changes implemented over that time could yield. In the first forecast, 55 percent of U.S. energy infrastructure would come from renewables. That falls short of the change necessary to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals, but does reflect the dramatically lowering costs in the renewable energy sector. “Cost reductions in clean technology have occurred much faster than anticipated just a few years ago,” said Amol Phadke, a senior scientist at UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Public Policy in a press release. “It is technically and economically feasible to deliver 90 percent carbon-free electricity on the U.S. power grid by 2035.”

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and in the good new scolumn

Coal hit new lows in the US.

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“The grid is changing so much faster than anyone expected,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “A decade ago, I was teaching my students that coal was the ‘baseload’ source that runs all the time, and solar was something you might sprinkle in if you want to pay more. Now coal’s been pushed to the margins and it’s wind and solar that are the cheapest options.”

At the same time, electric companies used to worry that using more than just a tiny fraction of wind and solar would make it difficult to keep the nation’s lights on, since the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. But since then, utilities have discovered ways to tackle this problem by using technologies like natural-gas plants that can be quickly turned on to meet spikes in demand, better weather forecasting and, increasingly, vast battery storage projects such as those planned in Nevada and California.

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on the benefits from earth day

Health and economic benefits from laws the Republicans hate. Even industry has benefited. 

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But of course, these regulations almost always have corresponding benefits: They create jobs, they save human lives. They make life better and healthier for the tens of millions of Americans living downstream from polluting industries that were once unregulated.

That’s the reality we need to think about as we approach next week’s 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, which inspired some of the most beneficial environmental laws and regulations of our time, starting with the Clean Air Act of 1970. In the first 20 years after passage, that law cost $523 billion, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated — but it produced $22.2 trillion in benefits for public health and the economy.

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toxic assets

Investing in coal is a toxic.

 

 

residential power demand

Overall electric power demand is off ten percent and more around the country, but it gets interesting when you look at residential areas.

 

american gasoline use

Quite a drop.

 

 

an open license to pollute

The Republican EPA.

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The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a sweeping relaxation of environmental rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing power plants, factories and other facilities to determine for themselves if they are able to meet legal requirements on reporting air and water pollution.

The move comes amid an influx of requests from businesses for a relaxation of regulations as they face layoffs, personnel restrictions and other problems related to the coronavirus outbreak.

Issued by the E.P.A.’s top compliance official, Susan P. Bodine, the policy sets new guidelines for companies to monitor themselves for an undetermined period of time during the outbreak and says that the agency will not issue fines for violations of certain air, water and hazardous-waste-reporting requirements.

Companies are normally required to report when their factories discharge certain levels of pollution into the air or water.

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