NRDC President Frances Beinecke. (Photo credit: Matt Greenslade/photo-nyc.com)

By Tom Kenworthy

The head of the Natural Resources Defense Council appeared before a Senate committee looking into the implications of the nation’s shale gas revolution yesterday. Frances Beinecke issued a compelling appeal for tougher federal oversight of the oil and gas industry and its drilling practices that have raised widespread concerns about public health and safety.

“I have never seen a single issue that has frightened, antagonized and activated people across this country like the practice of fracking,” NRDC president Beinecke told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Referring to the industry practice of stimulating oil and gas production by injecting a mix of chemicals, water and sand into underground rock formations, Beinecke said:

“Families are angered and frustrated by their inability to control fracking in their towns, and sometimes on their own property. They want to know that their water is safe, their air is clean and their lands and farms are protected. They want to know their children are healthy.”

Beinecke’s comments captured a troubling truth for the oil and gas industry, which to a large extent has been caught off guard by the mounting public hostility to fracking, or hydraulic fracturing. Fracking is now used in the vast majority of drilling operations and has opened up vast new domestic reserves of oil and gas previously locked in shale formations. As Beinecke noted, a December Bloomberg poll found that 66 percent of U.S. respondents believe there should be more aggressive government oversight of fracking, a majority that surged by ten points in just the previous three months.

While the industry favors the current patchwork of state regulation, Beinecke said states have neither the technical ability nor the political will to adequately protect the public from ill effects of drilling that can include air and groundwater pollution, hazardous wastes, and carbon pollution from methane leaks.

In addition, as other groups like the Center for American Progress have pointed out, Beinecke said that numerous oil and gas exemptions from bedrock national environmental laws make federal oversight also insufficient. “There is simply no justification for exempting fracking from the basic environmental laws that have applied to other industrial activities for four decades,” she said in written testimony, noting exemptions enjoyed by oil and gas from statutes such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act among others.

She also called on the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees drilling on some 700 million acres of federal land and other properties where the federal government controls the mineral rights, to toughen pending fracking rules that now appear to be in the process of getting watered down. The BLM, she said, “may be going in exactly the wrong direction.”

That concern was also raised last week by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate energy panel. In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Wyden urged that he ensure a “properly constructed rule with sound requirements for public disclosure, well integrity, and monitoring.”

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The price of solar photovoltaics (PV) modules continue to decline.

Dan Lashof via NRDC’s Switchboard

Last July I published an issue brief called Closer than You Think, pointing out that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2011 were lower than many people realized—about 9 percent below their 2005/2007 peak—putting President Obama’s 17-percent-below -2005-levels reduction target within reach. Since then recognition that U.S. emissions have been falling has become more widespread. In October, Dallas Burtraw and Matthew Woerman at Resources for the Future argued that the U.S. is “on course” to achieving a 16.3 percent reduction by 2020. Last week the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) released a report documenting the rapid growth in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and natural gas generation over the last few years and estimating that U.S. 2012 carbon dioxide emissions were almost 13 percent below 2005 levels. This week the World Resources Institute released an analysis asking “Can The U.S. Get There From Here?” and senior associate Nicholas Bianco said “The U.S. is not yet on track to hit its 17 percent target.”

So are we there yet or what? The apparent dispute between WRI and RFF is largely semantic, of the glass-is-half-full v. half-empty kind. The RFF report actually showed that the U.S. is only “on course” if the EPA does its job of setting global warming pollution standards for power plants and several other categories of stationary sources which it had examined in an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking back in July 2008. EPA has set standards for mobile sources and proposed a standard for new power plants, but stationary source standards that will have a big impact on emissions, particularly standards for existing power plants, remain a work in progress. WRI, for its part, noted that the 2020 target is achievable using existing tools if the federal government takes an ambitious “go getter” approach. WRI finds that 90 percent of the reductions needed by 2020 can come from four measures: carbon pollution standards for existing power plants; phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); reducing methane emissions from oil and gas production and distribution; and increasing energy efficiency standards for appliances and other energy-using equipment. Even if federal standards end up being “middle of the road,” WRI finds that the 2020 target could still be attained if states adopt more aggressive “go getter” policies.

How realistic is it to think we can achieve the emission reductions in WRI’s “go-getter” scenario? Here is where the BCSE/BNEF report helps, with more than one-hundred figures that paint a picture of the major changes underway in America’s energy system that have already achieved about three-quarters of the targeted reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. (Note that the WRI and RFF reports look at reducing total global warming pollution by 17 percent, which is a somewhat more challenging task, given projected growth in the non-CO2 gases which account for about 20 percent of the total). The BCSE/BNEF report highlights the recent dramatic growth in three major technologies: energy efficiency, renewables, and natural gas. (The report misleadingly labels these collectively as “sustainable” energy, when natural gas, while cleaner-burning than other fossil fuels, is by definition not sustainable). Let’s take a look at each of these technologies in turn.

Energy efficiency

The data presented in the BCSE/BNEF report show clearly that energy efficiency has been the energy policy success story of the last 30 years. Since 1970 total natural gas used in our homes has remained essentially flat while the number of households has increased by over 70% (Figure 22). In commercial buildings overall energy use per square foot has declined substantially since 1980, while electricity use per square foot has increased slightly, although not nearly as much as you would expect given the huge increase in the number of computers, printers, and servers we now stuff into our offices (Figure 91). There is still plenty of room for improvement. Most large office buildings are now Energy Star certified, but that is not the case with smaller office buildings and other types of commercial buildings, such as stores, schools, and hospitals.

Renewable energy

Read more

By Tom Kenworthy

When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, power plants are the 800-pound gorilla in the room. But a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency shows that oil and natural gas are a pretty sizable monkey on our climate back as well.

Reporting for the first time on GHGs from petroleum and natural gas systems, the EPA this week said that the oil and gas sector ranked second in emissions to power plants, releasing 225 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2011. More than a third of that came from methane, the main constituent of natural gas, and a far more potent global warming gas than carbon dioxide.

The oil and gas sector was responsible for 40 percent of total U.S. methane emissions. In terms of greenhouse gas equivalent, the sector’s overall emissions were only about 1/10^th those of power plants.

Emissions from petroleum and natural gas systems come from a range of activities from drilling oil and gas wells both onshore and offshore, and the processing, transmission, storage and distribution of natural gas.

This was the second year that EPA, directed by Congress, has reported U.S. GHG emission data. The 2011 data includes a total of 41 sources, 12 of them new in the second year of the program.

This year’s release of the data shows that power plant emissions, which account for about one-third of all U.S. emissions, were abut 4.6 percent lower than 2010 levels.

Refineries ranked number three on the list of biggest emitters, with about 182 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Tom Kenworthy is a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

by Colin Meehan via EDF

An interesting fact seemed to go unnoticed in all the press around the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s (ERCOT) Long Term System Assessment, a biennial report submitted to the Texas Legislature on “the need for increased transmission and generation capacity throughout the state of Texas.”

ERCOT found that if you use updated wind and solar power characteristics like cost and actual output to reflect real world conditions, rather than the previously used 2006 assumed characteristics, wind and solar are more competitive than natural gas over the next 20 years.  This might seem a bit strange since we’ve been told for years by renewable energy skeptics that wind and solar power can’t compete with low natural gas prices. Let me back up a second and explain what’s going on here, and what it means for both the energy crunch and Texas’ ongoing drought.

Every two years since 2005, ERCOT has used a series of complex energy system models to model and estimate future conditions on the Texas electric grid.  This serves a critical function for legislators, utilities and regulators and others who need to prepare for changes as our electric use continues to expand and evolve.  As with any model of this kind, the assumptions are critical: everything from the price of natural gas, to the cost to build power plants and transmission lines. Facing an acute energy crunch and given that solar and wind costs have come down a great deal since the first study in 2006, ERCOT dug a little deeper into their historical assumptions and developed a version of the model that used current, real-world cost and performance data for wind and solar power.

What they found was astounding: without these real-world data points, ERCOT found that 20,000 MW of natural gas will be built over the next 20 years, along with a little bit of demand response and nothing else.  Once they updated their assumptions to reflect a real-world scenario (which they call “BAU with Updated Wind Shapes”) ERCOT found that about 17,000 MWs of wind units, along with 10,000 MW of solar power, will be built in future years.

*In their Updated BAU scenario ERCOT only specific combined cycle natural gas units built, the inclusion of combustion turbines may increase the total capacity of natural gas built in the scenario.

In addition to demonstrating the economic viability of renewable energy, these results show two drastically different futures: one in which we rely overwhelmingly on natural gas for our electricity, and one in which we have a diverse portfolio of comparable amounts of renewable energy (which does not use water) and natural gas.  All of this is crucial to keep in mind as the Legislature, the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT evaluate proposals to address resource adequacy concerns and the impacts of a continuing drought on our state’s energy supply.

Finally, one ERCOT statement in particular stands out from this analysis, in direct contradiction to renewable energy opponents who say that renewable energy is too expensive: “the added renewable generation in this sensitivity results in lower market prices in many hours [of the year].”  This means that when real-world assumptions are used for our various sources of power, wind and solar are highly competitive with natural gas. In turn, that competition from renewables results in lower power prices and lower water use for Texas.

As state leaders look for ways to encourage new capacity in the midst of a drought, it’s important to realize that renewable energy is now competitive over the long term with conventional resources.  The fact that renewable energy resources can reduce our water dependency while hedging against higher long-term prices means that however state leaders decide to address the energy crunch, renewables need to be part of the plan.

Through June of 2012, renewable energy was right behind natural gas in terms of the most new energy generating capacity being installed in the United States, with wind making up most of the renewables push. And now Business Insider has flagged the numbers for the remainder of the year.

Last week, they reported that wind ultimately pulled ahead of natural gas to become the leading installer of new capacity in 2012, at 10,689 total megawatts.

Those numbers came from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s report on the trends and highlights in U.S. energy for the past year. According to FERC’s update, natural gas installed 8,746 megawatts of new capacity, coal installed 4,510 new megawatts, and solar came in fourth with 1,476 new megawatts. Here’s the relevant table from the report, conveniently highlighted by Business Insider:

One thing to note here is the issue of capacity factor: That’s how much power an installation actually produces as a percentage of its theoretical capacity. (Which is what’s listed in the table.) Natural gas plants do quite well in this regard: Their median performance tends to come out to at least 80 percent, and they max out at 93 percent, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s cost database.

Unfortunately, wind power doesn’t perform as well, due to the intermittency of, well, wind. Its median tends to be around 40 percent offshore. Onshore it’s been at 30 percent, though arguably onshore performance is pulling alongside offshore. And both max out at 50 to 54 percent. So even though wind beat out natural gas for new capacity in 2012, the new natural gas installation will almost certainly wind up generating more total electricity.

The good news for wind is that it’s still a relatively young technology, with lots of room to improve. The energy it does deliver is produced much more efficiently in comparison to natural gas — the former loses less than one percent of its energy as waste heat, while the latter can lose as much as 54 percent. Natural gas production in the U.S. may be on track to plateau, leading to predictions of rising prices, which will give wind power a further economic opening.

And, of course, there’s the fact that, while cleaner than coal, natural gas remains a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions both through leaks and combustion.

By Tom Kenworthy

Oil and gas development in an area of Colorado that is in the midst of a huge drilling boom is contributing more than half of the chemical pollution that contributes to the formation of ozone, a new study by University of Colorado scientists has found.

The research by scientists at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado may have important implications for the shale oil and shale gas revolution underway in many parts of the U.S. It may have particular relevance to other rural areas of the West – in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah and Sublette County, Wyoming south of Jackson — that have been plagued by high ozone alerts in recent winters, sometimes higher than the Los Angeles basin.

Both the Utah and Wyoming regions have intensive oil and gas development and the ozone alerts in those areas have often been described as a puzzle with possibly many contributing factors. A $5 million study is underway in the Uinta Basin to ferret out the likely causes of the region’s ozone problem.  Ozone pollution is a factor in a range of health problems including respiratory illnesses and asthma.

In the Colorado study, published online in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers determined that 55 percent of the airborne volatile organic compounds that contribute to ozone in the town of Erie were coming from oil and gas operations. The scientists were able to make that precise determination using a recently discovered chemical signature that can differentiate between oil and gas emissions and those coming from vehicles and other sources.

“We had a very strong signature from the raw natural gas,” said Jessica Gilman the CIRES study lead author in an interview with the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper.

The town of Erie is located in Weld County, a 4,000 square mile county northeast of Boulder and east of Fort Collins. That county, which overlays a hot new oil and gas play in the Niobrara Formation, has nearly 20,000 oil and gas wells, though it had about 15,000 during the study period.

Recent intensive development of oil and gas that is creeping into urban and suburban areas has prompted widespread concern in some Weld County communities about health and social impacts, with residents complaining about ill effects ranging from nosebleeds and headaches to asthma attacks.  The town has imposed a six-month moratorium on new drilling permits, and another community to the north, Longmont, has voted to exclude drilling within city limits, prompting a suit by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that regulates drilling.

Tom Kenworthy is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Boosted by the fracking boom that has opened up fossil fuel reserves trapped under the Bakken Shale, North Dakota is now the second-largest oil producing state in America. But the state has a dirty little secret: drilling companies are wasting a lot of natural gas to get to that oil.

How much natural gas is getting wasted in North Dakota? Producers are flaring roughly one third of gas reserves in the state — enough natural gas each day to heat half a million homes. The flaring is so widespread, North Dakota is starting to rival some of America’s biggest cities in light pollution. Check it out:

The image comes from the sustainable investment group Ceres. According to the organization, one of its investors, Mercy Investment Services, has filed a shareholder resolution with the large oil developer Continental Resources to encourage adoption of policies that limit flaring.

According to the World Bank, the oil boom in North Dakota has made the U.S. one of the top-10 gas flaring countries in the world.

The presidential and congressional elections dominated the American news cycle in 2012. And although climate change took a backseat during the campaign, energy played a surprisingly prominent role.

The news cycle was dominated by energy: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made fossil fuel extraction his number one priority; fossil fuel interests spent hundreds of millions of dollars to promote oil, coal, and gas during the election; and President Obama busily defended his promotion of renewable energy after getting attacked by the fossil fuel lobby.

Looking back at 2012, here are some of the most important energy stories of the year:

AP Fact Check: In 36 Years Of Data, No Evidence That Drilling Reduces Gasoline Prices

In March, the Associated Press analyzed more than 30 years of gas price and domestic drilling data. It found absolutely no correlation between increased domestic drilling and lower prices for consumers. Why? Because oil is a global market and U.S. production represents a small portion of global demand.

This was a particularly important story in 2012. Throughout the election season, the fossil fuel lobby and proponents of “drill-baby-drill” pushed a plan for unchecked fossil fuel development, falsely claiming it would lower gas prices. Experience proved otherwise. Even though the U.S. is producing more oil than at any point since the mid 1990′s, gas prices have remained “stubbornly high.”

Big Polluters Spend $270 Million In Final Months Of 2012 Elections

Fossil fuel interests spent unprecedented amounts of money this election season. In the last two months of the campaign, groups promoting fossil fuels spent $270 million on television ads to influence the presidential, House, and Senate races. From April to November, these groups spent $265.9 million on the presidential campaign alone, according to a Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis.

But the lavish spending didn’t work. Despite spending record amounts of money, polluter groups failed to change the presidency, failed to change the balance of power in Congress, and failed to give Republicans the important coal states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Environmental Groups Celebrate A Political Victory: ‘Knock, Baby, Knock’ Beat ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

Judging by pure spending, the 2012 election wasn’t looking good for environmentalists. Polluter groups outspent environmental groups 4-1, making it seem like the momentum was on their side. But the results showed otherwise: Four out of the “flat earth five” climate deniers in the House lost their races; Seven of eight Senate candidates supported by environmental groups won their races, thus preventing Republicans from taking the Senate and cutting off the drumbeat of anti-environmental legislation in the House; 11 of the 12 “Climate Heroes” promoted by environmentalists won their races; and the President kept his job.

While gridlock will likely define Obama’s second term, environmental advocates said the 2012 elections proved their strength: “We went head to head with the likes of Crossroads and Karl Rove,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, after the elections.

Shell’s Woes In The Arctic Underscore Challenges In The Region

The Arctic is shedding ice at an alarming rate due to global warming. The response? Oil companies want to use the opportunity to look for more offshore oil and gas that will only accelerate warming. In 2012, Shell became the first company to drill exploratory wells in U.S. Arctic waters, raising concerns about the local and global environmental impact. (For more on this, check out the great documentary produced by the Center for American Progress oceans team).

Shell’s troubles throughout the year proved just how tough it is to drill in the region. From crushing its oil containment unit “like a beer can” to losing control of its drilling rig, the company faced numerous challenges. And major organizations responded. In April, insurance giant Lloyd’s of London warned that responding to an oil spill in a region that is “highly sensitive to damage” would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk“; German bank WestLB announced it would not finance offshore oil or gas drilling in the Arctic, saying the “risks and costs are simply too high”; and Total SA, the fourth largest publicly traded oil and gas company in the world, said drilling in the region could be a “disaster.”

Renewable Electricity Nearly Doubles Under Obama

President Obama was attacked hard in 2012 for his promotion of renewable energy, green jobs, and environmental regulations. Many opponents claimed that stimulus investments in renewables didn’t work. But the figures told otherwise.

According to figures from the Energy Information Administration, non-hydro renewable electricity generation has nearly doubled since Obama took office, reaching 5.75 percent of net electricity. In 2008, before Obama entered the White House, non-hydro resources like solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass represented just over 3 percent of generation. While political uncertainty has made 2013 prospects for renewables uncertain, the U.S. has still maintained a strong role in the global market. Since 2004, one trillion dollars have been invested in the global clean energy sector, with a large portion of that coming from the American private and public sectors.

This is just a small selection of the many important stories throughout the year. Tell us what your top energy stories are below.

After a 21-city tour educating people on a new fossil fuel divestment campaign, climate activists are starting to see results.

In the last month, groups on 192 university and college campuses have organized campaigns to pull their schools’ endowments out of the fossil fuel industry. One small school, Unity College, has already committed to divesting from coal, oil, and gas. At Harvard, a school with the country’s largest endowment, 72 percent of students voted in favor of divesting from fossil fuels. Although Harvard officials balked, a group of student activists has kept the pressure on.

There’s another big piece of news on the divestment front this week. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is now calling on his city to strip fossil fuels from its two main pension funds. According to the city’s finance director, Seattle has $17.6 million invested in Chevron and ExxonMobil, as well as smaller investments in other oil and gas companies. Mayor McGinn sent a letter to the city’s pension fund managers on Friday calling for them to move their money elsewhere:

To the members of the Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System Board:

I write to you today to ask that you refrain from future investments in fossil fuel companies and begin the process of divesting our pension portfolio from those companies. I recognize that this process will require a thorough evaluation of the portfolio’s performance, assets, and investment strategies. City staff stand ready to assist you in this work.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges we currently face as a city and as a society. We have watched in recent weeks as weather influenced by climate change has caused significant damage and financial losses to cities and states on the East Coast. The projections suggest that the problem could get much worse. According to Bill McKibben and 350.org, fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide in their reserves, five times the amount considered safe to avoid catastrophic climate change.

I believe that Seattle ought to discourage these companies from extracting that fossil fuel, and divesting the pension fund from these companies is one way we can do that. The City’s cash pool is not currently invested in fossil fuel companies, and I already directed that we refrain from doing so in the future. In addition, I am asking the Deferred Compensation Plan Committee to develop options for City employees to allow them to move their investments out of fossil fuel companies if desired, and to offer fossil fuel free investment choices to them refrain from future investments in fossil fuel.

The City of Seattle’s finance director informs me that two of the system’s top 10 investments are with ExxonMobil and Chevron. The pension system has currently $17.6 million invested with these two firms, which represents roughly 0.9% of the system’s $1.9 billion in assets. I understand that it is likely the system has investments in other fossil fuel-related entities as well.

There is a clear economic argument for divestment. While fossil fuel companies do generate a return on our investment, Seattle will suffer greater economic and financial losses from the impact of unchecked climate change. Our infrastructure, our businesses, and our communities would face greater risk of damages and losses due to turbulent weather that climate change causes. As a waterfront city, several of our neighborhoods and industrial districts are at risk if climate change causes a significant rise in sea level.

I believe that Seattle’s pension funds should be invested in companies that can provide a good return on our investment without putting our city and our future at risk. I am ready to work with the City Council and the pension board to make this happen.

Sincerely,

Mike McGinn
Mayor of Seattle

This is the first time a city official has called for pulling money out of fossil fuels since the divestment campaign began. The strategy, organized by 350.org and promoted by a slew of other environmental groups, is modeled after a campaign in the 1980′s that pressured South Africa into abandoning apartheid. While the South Africa campaign was effective in forcing an end to the country’s racial segregation policies, the fossil fuel campaign is meant as more of symbolic gesture to “strip the social license” of fossil fuel companies exacerbating climate change.