NIMBY IT'S ABOUT PROPERTY VALUE

Inverness County is the wrong place for a 15-turbine wind farm, say residents

Emily Latimer -
cbc.ca


Residents of Nova Scotia's Inverness County are raising concerns about a proposed wind farm that would bring 15 turbines to the hills between Highway 19 and Trans-Canada Highway 105, along the west coast of the island.

© Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press

A wind farm in Lower West Pubnico, N.S., is shown in a photo taken on Monday, Aug. 9, 2021. A proposed wind farm for the west coast of Cape Breton includes 15 turbines.

David Hart is the spokesperson for the Route 19 Community Association, a group of nearly 200 residents opposed to the project because it is "incompatible with the existing social and cultural and economic characteristics of the community and the local environment."

Hart said the group has been going door to door with flyers along the coast from Hastings to Judique asking people to visit their website to learn more about the proposed project and to get involved with a letter-writing campaign.

"Our mission is really to maintain and improve the quality of life and overall ensure the characteristics of our community and region are protected," Hart said.

Though Hart said the group isn't opposed to wind power or green energy, he said the plan is "obviously the wrong project in the wrong place."

"It's just a matter of putting the right project in the right place. This one does not belong along the seacoast of Inverness County," Hart said.

15 turbines proposed

Community Wind Farms Inc. is developing the Rhodena Wind project with ABO Wind Canada, in response to Nova Scotia's Rate Base Procurement program for low-carbon and low-cost energy.

The project would be built "mostly on Crown land and private land where we have the permission of the landowner," according to the website. The developers estimate that the project would produce 100 megawatts of power.

Marian MacLellan lives along Highway 19 in Long Point. Her property runs from the coast toward the mountain where the proposed wind farm may be located. She has several concerns including health impacts, animal welfare, and declining property values.

"Windmills may be fine if they're in the right locations, but I do not believe it's right to put them in communities where there are a lot of people living and where it can affect their health," she said.

While some say wind farms have been linked to adverse health problems in people, a Health Canada study found no link between the two. The study did find that the louder the wind turbine was, the more people reported being "very or extremely annoyed."
Plans amended

Community Wind CEO Keith Towse said the company has changed the proposed layout in response to community feedback, and an updated plan should be online in the coming days.

"We've revised our layout and moved those turbines so the closest turbines in the current layout are 1,700 metres to the closest residence, and over three kilometres away from Highway 19," Towse said.

He said there are established regulations governing health impacts that are addressed during the environmental assessment process.

"No wind project would be approved that doesn't meet those regulations," he said.

More than 3,700 hectares are being considered for the project. The company estimates the area to be used for turbines, road and transmission lines will have a footprint of 655 hectares.

The company has begun environmental assessment studies, which must be completed before the project can be considered for approval by the province. If approved, the company hopes to have the wind farm running by summer 2025.

Inverness County's land use bylaw about the regulation of wind turbine development has not been updated since January 2012. A spokesperson for the county said council will hold a meeting to review the bylaw in May.

Fireproof Australia: who are the radical Extinction Rebellion splinter group?

Violet Coco and Sam Noonan are both members of the Fireproof Australia activist group. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

They have blocked major roads, obstructed traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and been denounced by Dominic Perrottet


Royce Kurmelovs

THE GUARDIAN

Sat 9 Apr 2022

It was the re-election of a Coalition government in May 2019 that altered the trajectory of Sam Noonan’s life and politics.

“I didn’t really care about politics until then,” Noonan says. “But then a lightbulb went off, and I kind of went, ‘Well, this is not working, we need to do something.’”

At first the 48-year-old helped organise climate rallies in her region, but it was Extinction Rebellion – the group which caused widespread disruption in London in November 2018 – that captured her attention.

The group members’ willingness to face a strong possibility of being arrested appealed to her, as they appeared to take the catastrophic risk of climate change seriously.

“[I felt] these, you know, radical, annoying, disruptive, interfering sort of tactics were probably our last chance of doing something,” Noonan says. “I just knew, intuitively, that this is where I needed to be.

“I always said to my husband once we started all this activism that even if all else fails and we can’t save the planet, I want to know that I tried and be able to say to my grandkids, I really did my best, I did my best at the time.”

A few months after Noonan joined Extinction Rebellion, the Black Summer bushfires swept through New South Wales, Victoria and parts of South Australia, changing her life again.

Noonan, who is blind, had to confront the possibility of fleeing her home in the Illawarra, south of Sydney.

“Fires were coming from three directions at once,” Noonan says. “I was there wondering if I could evacuate out of Dapto because I didn’t have anyone who could drive the car and a lot of the train lines were down.”

After the catastrophic event that left 18,000 Australians internally displaced, Noonan joined a new protest group calling themselves Fireproof Australia.

Fireproof Australia taking their first roadblock action on the Princes Highway 

in Sylvania, NSW. 

Photograph: Fireproof Australia

In recent weeks the group has been grabbing headlines for blocking major roads during the morning peak hour to call for immediate action on climate change, including obstructing traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge at least three times.

The NSW government rushed through strict laws to curb the protests, and the premier, Dominic Perrottet, attacked Fireproof Australia for their disruptive tactics.

“This type of behaviour needs to stop,” Perrottet said. “People have the right to protest, people have the right to free speech, we promote that.

“But don’t do it at the expense of people trying to get to and from work, trying to get their kids to school, stopping people earning a living and a wage – that’s what these protests are doing.

“We’ve passed the laws, we’ll throw the book at these people, because their behaviour is completely unacceptable.

“And if you really want to lose support in the community for your cause, keep acting like that.”
‘We tried protesting’

This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest comprehensive review, saying it was “now or never” to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Protest groups around the world have been growing more ambitious in response to what they see as an emergency.

Among those that have emerged in the UK are Tyre Extinguishers, which encourages people to deflate the tyres of SUV owners, and Just Stop Oil, which targets oil infrastructure.

Groups such as Fireproof Australia, Floodproof Australia and Blockade Australia are local variations who employ direct action in a campaign of “civil resistance” against governments which they believe aren’t acting fast enough on climate change.

Violet CoCo, a Fireproof Australia member, says the group splintered from Extinction Rebellion in May 2021 to take the protests to a new level.

“Fireproof Australia is designed to be more disruptive and more accessible in that disruption,” CoCo says. “All you need to do is sit down on a road to participate, you don’t need to wear a fancy costume.”

Violet Coco, a member of the Fireproof Australia activist group.

Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

They also have different demands. Extinction Rebellion wants governments to declare a climate emergency and rapidly cut emissions to zero by 2025 while Fireproof Australia’s goals are more immediate.

CoCo says the group wants a permanent, Australian-based air tanker fleet to fight bushfires, smoke-proof schools, aged care and disability centres to protect the vulnerable, and an immediate plan to rehome flood and fire survivors.

Some commentators who support urgent action on the climate crisis have criticised direct action tactics as counterproductive, warning they may alienate the very people who need to be persuaded. Writing in the Nine newspapers last month, the social researcher Rebecca Huntley said people who were “disengaged, uncertain or sceptical” were less likely to listen to someone who was making it harder for them to get to work.

“In the qualitative research I have done, groups such as Extinction Rebellion come up in conversation in a very negative way and can be a barrier to talking about global warming and how climate action might actually improve their lives,” Huntley wrote.

But CoCo says every other attempt to get governments to act has failed.

“We tried,” CoCo says. “We tried protesting to the politicians. We’ve tried one-day marches. Nothing happened. And so now we need to escalate these disruptive tactics.”

The group is often associated with Blockade Australia, whose members obstruct physical infrastructure such as rail lines or cranes, although the two groups are separate.

Blockade Australia’s membership is drawn from several campaigns, including Rising Tide, which targeted the coal industry in Newcastle, and anti-Adani protesters from Queensland.

The group’s first major action was obstructing coal trains at Newcastle, the largest coal port in the world in November 2021, prompting an attack from Barnaby Joyce, who said $60m in exports had been lost in one week.

In recent weeks the group has targeted Port Botany in Sydney, Australia’s largest container port, which led to the arrest of Maxim Curmi, who was jailed for four months after he scaled a 60m crane.

Unlike other groups, Blockade Australia has no specific goals. Maddie, a spokesperson who declined to give her surname citing the risk of arrest, says it is focused on “building momentum” as it “doesn’t see any worth in appealing to the goodwill of a system that doesn’t have any”.

‘Method to their madness’

The hurried NSW legislation in response to the street and industry blockades has been branded a “draconian” attempt to criminalise the right to protest by 40 civil society groups, including the NSW and Act Aboriginal Legal Service, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Human Rights Law Centre, Environmental Defenders Office and Australian Democracy Network.

Piero Moraro, a lecturer in criminology at Edith Cowan University who studies civil disobedience, says the right to protest can simply be restrained to “waving flags under the eyes of the police”.

As much as governments and commentators may cast militant or disruptive protest groups as troublemakers and even criminals, Moraro says they can drive change thanks to the “radical flank effect”.

“It is a reference to Martin Luther King,” Moraro says. “One reason why he was successful is that you also had the Black Panthers. White America was faced with the choice to either go with King or face more radical protests.”

Associate prof Hans Baer, an honorary research fellow at the University of Melbourne, says there is a risk disruptive protests will “put off mainstream Australia”, but they are also necessary.

“It’s the more radical people who get the attention that pushes the more middle of the road people to act,” Baer says.

“There may be a method to their madness. So long as it doesn’t hurt people, if it only hurts infrastructure that is doing damage and that in turn hurts a lot of people, well, why not?”

We Are Wasting Time on These Climate Debates. The Next Steps are Clear.

April 10, 2022

WIND TURBINE BLADES

Credit...Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By John Bistline, Inês Azevedo, Chris Bataille and Steven Davis

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which was released last week and which we co-authored with many colleagues, offers hope for limiting global warming.

But there is no time to waste. And wasted time includes time spent debating issues that divert us from our most important priorities right now.

Unfortunately, debates about distant future decisions and future uncertainties are distracting advocates, policymakers, researchers and the public from their shared, near-term goals. At best, these disputes give observers — especially policymakers and their advisers, who are trying to make tough short-term decisions during a global energy security crisis — a misleading impression that experts disagree about effective steps to decarbonize energy systems. At worst, these disputes can stall progress by delaying policies and incentives that would accelerate clean energy deployment.

Rather than getting mired in these debates, we should focus on credible commitments to public policy, private investment and innovation.

The Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) means reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by roughly half by 2030, on the way to net-zero emissions by near midcentury. As we pursue these ambitious reductions, debates about how much of our energy can or should come from wind and solar 30 years from now obfuscate a near-consensus on next steps. For the coming decade, rapidly reducing coal electricity and building extensive wind, solar and storage systems are low-cost strategies in many places, regardless of how much energy might or might not eventually come from renewables.

This is because plummeting costs make solar and wind increasingly competitive, and electricity from solar is now the “cheapest source of electricity in history” in some locations, according to the International Energy Agency. Moreover, the costs of batteries and other storage technologies are also declining. Together with demand response, energy efficiency, and behavior changes, these strategies may support reliable electricity systems with much higher levels of renewables. And while individual actions may help reduce emissions, dramatic changes to energy supply are likely to play a central role in reaching net-zero emissions.

Let’s also not argue about exactly how much carbon removal may be needed by midcentury. Carbon removal and carbon capture have proven to be polarizing among environmental groups; some have resisted state and federal climate policies because of their inclusion. Bear in mind, though, that there are many options for removing carbon from the atmosphere to offset emissions in agriculture, aviation, and industry. Investing in removal-related research and development and exploring commercialization may be valuable near-term steps, but it’s premature to worry about the right balance of carbon removal versus other strategies. Contrary to claims that carbon removal is fundamentally at odds with other strategies, we can spend the next decade simultaneously deploying available clean energy technologies and scaling up removal strategies.

We can also move past the debate over whether we have all the technologies we need. Pilot-scale and commercial projects exist for almost all emissions sources, even for harder-to-abate ones. We’re unlikely to reach ambitious goals like net-zero emissions without making use of all technology and policy tools at our disposal and without continued investments in research and development. Having more options at lower costs could make the energy transition more affordable. Conversely, progress toward mitigating climate change doesn’t depend on any one technology alone, and we’re making strong progress on many fronts. Innovation often breeds more innovation, so positive surprises may yet await us.

Ultimately, we don’t know exactly what a net-zero emissions energy system will look like, but we know enough to keep us busy for at least a decade: We need to deploy mature technologies (renewables, storage, electric vehicles, efficient equipment like heat pumps) and invest in technologies that may be needed down the road. There’s little doubt that net-zero pathways could decrease fossil fuel use, electrify transport, and improve efficiency.

The United States pledged in 2021 to cut emissions at least in half by 2030, but emissions surged almost 7 percent in 2021. Although the budget bill is currently stalled in the Senate, over $500 billion in clean energy investments in the bill could, according to a recent analysis, put emissions back on track to meet the 2030 target. During a time when global oil and natural gas prices are rising, these tax credits and other policies in the proposed bill also could lower annual energy expenses by 6.6 percent for households and businesses by 2030.

We also need to worry more about issues of land use, permitting and infrastructure. Net-zero will likely require substantial land use for renewables and expansions in transmission and pipeline infrastructure, but there is a reluctance to agree to such projects. For example, Maine voters recently blocked a project to bring more of Quebec’s hydropower into the Northeastern United States, and environmental groups and residents in otherwise climate-conscious states like California and New York have resisted solar and wind farms. Overcoming such challenges requires careful engagement and consensus building among constituencies affected by such projects. Time spent on such engagement now may be time saved later.

Carefully mitigating the risks and balancing the trade-offs associated with different types of deeply decarbonized systems is another important priority. For example, to ensure the near-term reliability and affordability of the electricity grid, regions may want to keep nuclear and natural gas capacity in order to meet growing demand from electric vehicles and to retire coal, even as natural gas is gradually replaced by zero-emitting fuels such as hydrogen.

It is also important to consider how well-designed climate strategies may support national and regional economic goals, including jobs, equity, and overall economic activity. For example, while the costs of rooftop solar are decreasing, there have been large disparities in its adoption in the United States by race, ethnicity, and income. The consequences of air pollution from many current energy systems can be inequitable, but a transition to sustainable and low-carbon energy systems may mitigate such disparities. Decarbonization strategies should aim to equalize opportunities for adopting new technologies and to promote just transitions.

Of course, the United States can’t do this alone. Although actions on the part of this country are imperative if we are to achieve global climate goals, the United States represents a shrinking share of the world’s emissions, and U.S. leadership can help facilitate international collaboration and cooperation on technology transfer, finance, trade, and energy security for all.

The decisions we make now may have an outsize impact on humanity’s long-term future. Climate change threatens to jeopardize communities, public health and the environment. The next steps are clearer and more affordable than they have ever been.

Rather than getting distracted by distant and likely irreducible uncertainties, let’s focus on what matters: deploying clean technologies we know we need, implementing a coherent climate policy, laying the groundwork for future progress and creating a just transition that shares the benefits of a sustainable energy system.

John Bistline is a program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. Inês Azevedo is an associate professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University. Chris Bataille is a senior researcher at Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales. Steven Davis is a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.


A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2022, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Climate Debates Are Stalling Progress. 

East African oil pipeline hits the headwinds


 Hilda Nakabuye, Fridays for Future activist from Uganda, speaks at the opening of the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, March 29, 2022. Climate activists are urging more banks and insurers not to back the controversial $5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline that is primed to transport oil from the Hoima oilfields in Uganda to the Tanzanian coastal city of Tanga. Influential climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Hilda Nakabuye have lent their support to opponents of the pipeline citing the need for Africa to stay away from fossil fuels. 

(Michael Kappeler/dpa via AP, file) 

WANJOHI KABUKURU
Tue, April 12, 2022,

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — 

Climate activists are urging more banks and insurers not to back the controversial $5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline that is primed to transport oil from the Hoima oilfields in Uganda to the Tanzanian coastal city of Tanga. Influential climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Hilda Nakabuye have lent their support to opponents of the pipeline citing the need for Africa to stay away from fossil fuels.

The unrelenting pressure mounted by environmental groups, under the banner #StopEACOP, has led to a growing list of banks and insurers quitting the oil pipeline project. Just this week the project suffered another major setback after insurer Allianz Group pulled out of the project. It joins 15 banks and seven insurance companies — including HSBC, BNP Paribas and Swiss Re — who have denied financially backing the pipeline in response to the campaign waged by numerous environmental organizations, led by the international group 350.org.

The 897 mile (1443 km) oil pipeline is billed as the longest heated pipeline in the world. The China National Oil Corporation and French energy conglomerate TotalEnergies, alongside the Uganda National Oil Company and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Cooperation, have remained firm in pushing ahead with the pipeline project which is expected to start transporting oil in 2025.

Johnson Nderi a financial analyst in Nairobi supports the oil pipeline, saying “Africa needs cheap stable power as that afforded by oil and coal, to grow its manufacturing sector.”

Construction of the pipeline will displace thousands of families and threaten water resources in the Lake Victoria and River Nile basins, according to 350.org. The environmental group goes on to say that the crude pipeline will generate some 37 million tons (34 million metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide emissions annually, fueling climate change.

“TotalEnergies is putting profits over people and it shows. Communities in Uganda and Tanzania have been fighting tirelessly against the planned pipeline and the trail of destruction it is already leaving in its wake,” Omar Elmawi, the coordinator of the #StopEACOP campaign, said. “At a time when scientists call for the phasing out of fossil fuel projects, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, it is ill-advised and irresponsible to go ahead with this project, while ignoring the cries of those most affected.”

TotalEnergies has defended the pipeline noting that it adheres to strict Ugandan and Tanzanian environmental laws. An environmental social impact assessment report conducted by the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment raised concerns about significant risks posed to wildlife notably chimpanzees in the Bugoma, Wambabya and Taala forest reserves.

Initially priced at $3.5 billion, the underground electrically heated pipeline will now cost $5 billion and is expected to start near Lake Albert in Hoima District, western Uganda. It will skirt around Lake Victoria entering northern Tanzania on its way to Chongoleani peninsula on the Indian Ocean transporting 216,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The pipeline is expected to displace over 14,000 households in both Uganda and Tanzania, according to the international poverty charity Oxfam. But proponents of the project are citing a $2 billion annual revenue from the oil exports alongside some 12,000 direct jobs in its defence.

British firm Tullow Oil first discovered oil in the Lake Albert Basin in 2006, with recoverable oil estimates pegged at 1.2 billion barrels. In 2020, Tullow sold its entire stake to Total Energies. In early February, the oil pipeline's major backers, led by Total Energies, announced the conclusion of the Financial Investment Decision, signaling the commencement of the construction of the oil pipeline.

This 900-Mile Crude Oil Pipeline Is a Bad Deal for My Country — and the World
April 8, 2022
By Vanessa Nakate

Chalk drawings from a protest in Johannesburg, South Africa, on March 12, 2021, against a crude oil pipeline through Uganda and Tanzania.

Credit...Kim Ludbrook/EPA, via Shutterstock

Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist.

KAMPALA, Uganda — This week, the panel of climate experts convened by the United Nations delivered a clear message: To stand a chance of curbing dangerous climate change, we can’t afford to build more fossil fuel infrastructure. We must also rapidly phase out the fossil fuels we’re using.

In moments like this, the media rarely focuses on African countries like mine, Uganda. When it does, it covers the impacts — the devastation we are already experiencing and the catastrophes that loom. They are right to: Mozambique has been battered in recent years by cyclones intensified by climate change. Drought in Kenya linked to climate change has left millions hungry. In Uganda, we are now more frequently hit by extreme flash floods that destroy lives and livelihoods.

But this latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent more of these impacts, has implications for Africa’s energy systems, too. Africa isn’t only a victim of the climate crisis, but also a place where infrastructure decisions made in the coming years will shape how it unfolds.

TotalEnergies, a French energy company, this year announced a $10 billion investment decision, which involves a nearly 900-mile oil pipeline from Kabaale, Uganda, to a peninsula near Tanga, Tanzania. From there, the oil would be exported to the international market.

Despite local opposition, TotalEnergies and a partner, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, have pushed ahead. The project might have a difficult time securing additional financing, as many banks have already ruled out the project. The multinational insurance company Munich Re has also vowed not to insure it, at least in part because of the harm it would do to the climate.

Burning the oil that the pipeline will transport could emit as much as 36 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to one estimate. That is roughly seven times the total annual emissions of Uganda.

More immediately, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline will have terrible consequences for people in Uganda and Tanzania. An estimated 14,000 households will lose land, according to Oxfam International, with thousands of people set to be economically or physically displaced. There are reports that compensation payments offered to some communities are completely insufficient. The pipeline will also disturb wildlife habitats. The climate writer and activist Bill McKibben said that it looks almost as if the route had been “drawn to endanger as many animals as possible.” An oil spill would be even more catastrophic for habitats and our freshwater supplies. (TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation previously said they are working to avoid causing damage to the countries.)

Oil pipelines have become a symbol around the world of the fight for climate justice. In 2021 the Biden administration halted the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States after a decade-long fight led by Indigenous groups, climate activists and farmers. In East Africa the Stop EACOP campaign is a similar alliance that has emerged to fight fossil fuel infrastructure. Over a million people have signed a petition calling on TotalEnergies and the pipeline’s other backers to stop the project.

However, the Ugandan government remains largely in favor of the pipeline. Politicians have seemingly bet their political futures on the promise of revenues it could generate. Understandably, many people in Uganda not directly affected by the pipeline also think the oil could be a door to wealth. Our country has low levels of formal employment, and many people struggle to feed their families. Oil was discovered in the Lake Albert basin in 2006, when I was in primary school, and I remember my teacher proudly announcing to the class that Uganda had found “black gold.”

But the discovery of oil in Nigeria, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo has not brought widespread prosperity. Instead, it has brought poverty, violence and the loss of traditional lands and cultures. Much of the profits have gone to foreign multinationals and investors and to the pockets of corrupt local officials. TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation will own 70 percent of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, with Uganda and Tanzania sharing the remaining 30 percent. This pipeline is not an investment for the people.

It is also not an investment for the long term. The International Energy Agency projects that growth in renewable energy will accelerate in the next four years. Fossil fuel projects like EACOP could lead to short-term gains but eventually huge losses — and might end up among the estimated $1.3 trillion of stranded oil and gas assets by around 2050.

Research presented by the International Renewable Energy Agency found that sub-Saharan Africa can meet almost 70 percent of its electricity needs from local renewable energy by 2030, which would provide up to two million additional green jobs in the region by 2050. Africa possesses 39 percent of the world’s potential for renewable energy, according to Carbon Tracker, but along with the Middle East, receives only 2 percent of annual investment. Africa needs the climate financing it has been promised by rich countries, as well as from private institutions, to develop clean energy.

There is a huge appetite for clean energy alternatives here. I have seen it through my work to install solar panels and clean stoves in rural schools. These efforts sometimes feel hopeless when money floods in from foreign banks and governments for fossil fuels. But Africa is where critical investments should go in our fight for a stable climate in the coming years. Financial institutions must reject the East African Crude Oil Pipeline and fossil fuel projects like it, in favor of clean energy. The science is clear. So is the case for investment.

Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist.

This Bacteria-Powered Battery Eats Up Methane to Spit Out Electricity


Miriam Fauzia
Tue, April 12, 2022, 

Cavan Images

When discussing climate change, carbon dioxide sucks up a lot of the air, so to speak. Less attention is spent on methane, which accounts for 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions but is 80 times more powerful at trapping heat.

You’ve probably already heard that cow farts are a big contributor of atmospheric methane (220 pounds every year!), but rotting organics and natural gas can also expel methane into the air. Slashing emissions involves decreasing our dependence on natural gas, recycling and composting trash, and getting cows to fart less. But a new, unique method may convert methane into a usable energy source with the help of a microscopic friend: bacteria.

On Tuesday, a team of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands published a paper in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology where they constructed a battery consisting of methane-munching bacteria that convert the gas into electricity.

“This could be very useful for the energy sector,” Cornelia Welte, a microbiologist at Radboud University and study co-author, said in a press release.

This California Dairy Farm’s Secret Ingredient for Clean Electricity: Cow Poop

Using bacteria to generate energy isn’t a new concept. Anaerobic digestion installations (also called biogas installations) capture gases like methane and carbon dioxide produced by bacteria that are digesting organic wastes. This gas is then converted into either heat or electricity—or upgraded into a form of methane that’s can be injected into natural gas pipelines or used as vehicle fuel. Currently, there are around 2,200 operating biogas systems across the U.S. and nearly 50 million micro-scale digesters worldwide (mostly in China and India), according to a 2019 report by the World Biogas Association.

But a problem with these installations is that they aren’t all that energy efficient. “Less than half of the biogas is converted into power, and this is the maximum achievable capacity,” said Welte.

To see if they could improve the energy efficiency, the researchers turned to Candidatus Methanoperedens, a bacteria that can be found in freshwater and consumes methane to survive—a process that peels away electrons. Those free electrons are used to digest another chemical called nitrate, which is made of nitrogen and oxygen.

“We create a kind of battery with two terminals,” Heleen Ouboter, a microbiologist and co-author of the study, said in the press release. At one terminal—designated the biological terminal—the researchers placed the methane-munching bacteria, and at the other terminal—a chemical terminal—they placed a stream of nitrate. This stream is gradually reduced over time, forcing the bacteria to hand over their electron scraps to an electrode leading to a mini-reactor. With this setup, the researchers were able to convert around 31 percent of the methane fed to the bacteria into electricity.

How to Turn an Electric Vehicle Battery Into a Miniature Power Plant for Your Home

It’s impressive, but the conversion process needs to be hastened to play valuable impact in the real world. And the research team wants to run more tests to see how well this bacteria can perform the reaction in a natural environment (so far, it’s only been in the lab). But the new findings are a promising start as we try to uncover new ways to offset methane emissions and cool our planet.

UK Wind turbines set new record for power production


Rachel Millard
Tue, April 12, 2022

Wind turbine

Wind turbines set a new record in the first three months of the year, generating almost as much electricity as gas-fired power stations.

Renewable sources overall generated more power than gas and coal for only the second time, according to data from market specialist EnAppSys. It highlights the growth of renewables in Britain’s electricity system amid the push to cut carbon emissions.

However, high gas prices amid a turbulent period on wholesale markets led to record wholesale electricity prices in a situation that is likely to add to calls for market reform.

Paul Verrill, director of EnAppSys, said: “More wind generation was seen this quarter than in any other quarter on record. Renewables exceeded aggregate fossil fuel generation for a calendar quarter. This has only ever happened once before, in the first quarter of 2020.”

Efforts to cut carbon emissions from power generation have driven a surge in wind turbine developments in recent years, with 25 gigawatts of capacity now installed over land and in the seabed, compared to less than 5 gigawatts in 2008.

The capacity is set to rise, with the Government targeting a five-fold increase in offshore wind capacity from about 11 to 50 gigawatts by 2030.

The target was raised from 40 to 50 gigawatts last week amid efforts to cut the West’s reliance on Russian gas.

One of the newest developments, Orsted’s giant Hornsea Two wind farm 55 miles off the Yorkshire coast, generated its first power in December and will be fully operational this year.

Coal now generates less than 2pc of British electricity and this is set to be phased completely by October 2024. Wind typically now accounts for about 20pc of the total, with gas on 35pc and nuclear about 16pc.

Over the past three months, EnAppSys said wind generated 23.3 terawatt hours, about 31pc of total demand and beating its previous record of 23 terawatt hours at the start of 2020.

It accounted for almost 70pc of all generation from renewables, which includes hydropower and biomass. Overall wind generation was more than double that during the third quarter of 2021, when a lull in wind speeds pushed generation down to 10.4 terawatt hours.

Despite the increase in wind power, high gas and coal prices as a result of global gas shortages and Russia’s war on Ukraine led to record wholesale electricity prices.

Day-ahead electricity prices were three times as high as the same quarter in 2021 and six times as high as the same quarter in 2020.

High wholesale gas and electricity prices are now being felt in households across Britain, due to the 54pc increase in the energy price cap at the start of April, pushing average bills up to £1,971.

High fossil fuel prices were “the primary factor” in sustained high electricity prices despite increased wind generation, EnAppSys said.

The way the market works means gas determines the electricity price more so than other sources of power.

There are calls for this to be changed so that wholesale prices better reflect the growing use of renewables, which do not have fuel costs and where installation costs have been falling.

“Record fuel prices meant this was one of the most expensive quarters in the GB market’s history,” EnAppSys added.
Shell to develop 'blue' hydrogen facility in UK in decarbonising push

Shell has struck a deal with a German energy company to produce hydrogen in the Humber as part of efforts to decarbonise the UK’s largest industrial cluster.

Uniper and Shell have signed a “cooperation agreement” to make the gas at the German utility's site in Killingholme, from where it could then be used by heavy industry across the area.

While it is more likely to be used for industrial purposes, the hydrogen produced at the 720MW plant would be enough to heat about half a million homes per year, the companies said.

Hydrogen does not produce carbon emissions when burned, and politicians hope it can replace fossil fuels in industry, heavy transport and potentially some home heating as the UK tries to cut emissions to net zero by 2050.

Shell and Uniper plan to produce hydrogen from natural gas. This is the most common method currently used to make hydrogen, but is in itself a vast source of carbon emissions.

To make this hydrogen "low carbon", they plan to capture and stash the emissions from this process under the North Sea, using carbon capture technology which has yet to be deployed at scale in the UK.

Mike Lockett, Uniper UK country chairman, said the plans represent a “significant step towards decarbonising the UK’s largest industrial cluster” and have the “potential to secure and grow the region’s economy.”

David Bunch, country chair at Shell, said the company was “ready to play our part in ensuring an orderly transition to net zero while bolstering the UK’s energy security.”

Shell plans to invest £25bn in the UK over the next decade, 75pc of which in "low carbon" products, he added.

Greg Hands, energy minister, said the announcement shows “real confidence” in hydrogen calling it a “cutting-edge new super fuel.”

Ministers are hoping that both the production and use of hydrogen will grow rapidly in coming years.

In their energy security strategy published last week amid efforts across the West to cut reliance on Russian gas, they doubled the target for low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, from 5GW to 10GW.

They said at least half of this should come from hydrogen produced through electrolysis, a process which, unlike production from natural gas, does not generate carbon emissions.

The Shell and Uniper project is among several planned hydrogen projects in the UK, including BP’s proposed plant in Teesside which will also make hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture.

Many developers are waiting on final details of government support for emerging hydrogen and carbon capture industries before making firm investment decisions.

Shell and Uniper will now work on process design studies and site development activity, they added.

Climate change caused hurricanes to dump more rain in 2020, study says


People stop to look at the lowered gates of the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier as Tropical Storm Henri arrives in Providence, R.I., on August 22, 2020. Scientists said climate change led hurricanes and tropical storms to dump more rain during the 2020 season.

 File Photo by Matthew Healey/UPI | License Photo

April 12 (UPI) -- Human-caused climate change caused tropical storms and hurricanes to dump up to 10% more rain in 2020 compared to those during the pre-industrial era, a study released Tuesday indicates.

Researchers used what they called "hindcast attribution" -- like a forecast but for the past -- to quantify rainfall associated with storms during the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. The season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 each year, included 30 named storms, 14 of which were hurricanes.

The record-breaking hurricane season caused about $40 billion in damage worldwide.

"Hurricanes are devastating events, and storms that produce more frequent hourly rain are even more dangerous in producing damage flooding, storm surge and destruction in its path," lead study author Kevin Reed said in a press release.

"Our findings indicate that environmental changes caused by humans are signaling more and quicker rainfall, which have direct consequences for coastal communities and sometimes outlying areas," said Reed, associate professor and associate dean of research at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.

Reviewing the rainfall rates over 3-hour and three-day timeframes during the storms, the team found that tropical storms had an increase of 10% and 5%, respectively, compared to storms before 1850. For hurricanes, the effect was an 11% and 8% increase.

The team said human activities, including industrial growth, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to a more than 1 degree Celsius increase in the global surface temperature in 2020 compared to 1850.

This has led to a sea surface temperature increase in the North Atlantic basin of between 0.4 degrees to 0.9 degrees.

"An increase in hurricane rainfall due to global warming is not surprising," said study co-author Michael Wehner.

"What is surprising is that the amount of this human-caused increase is so much larger than what is expected from increases in humidity alone. This means that hurricane winds are becoming stronger as well," said Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The research team published its findings Tuesday in the journal Nature.

Study: extreme hurricane seasons made twice as likely by ocean warming


A new study from Berlin-based Climate Analytics says extreme hurricane seasons have been made twice as likely by global warming of the oceans. Photo by Mark Garcia/NASA

April 13 (UPI) -- Exceptionally intense Atlantic tropical hurricane seasons are twice as likely as they were in the 1980's due to global warming, according to a new study by Berlin-based Climate Analytics.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Weather Climate Dynamics, found that for the year 2020 extreme Atlantic hurricane seasons were made twice as likely by ocean warming.

"While the attribution of individual tropical cyclone events remains difficult, there can be no doubt that climate change is creating more intense storms," study author Peter Pfleiderer said in a press release.

The researchers found, using a novel weather-pattern-based statistical model, that a "forced warming trend" in Atlantic sea surface temperature, or SST, increases from 1982-2020 doubled the probably of "extremely active tropical cyclone seasons."

Human-caused climate change caused tropical storms and hurricanes to dump up to 10% more rain in 2020 compared to those during the pre-industrial era, according to a separate study released Tuesday.

The new study said, "There is increasing consensus in the scientific literature that the number of tropical cyclones might not or only moderately increase, while the number of most intense storms would increase substantially."

The research shows that Atlantic tropical cyclone activity has increased and that increase "can be robustly ascribed to variations in atmospheric circulation as well as sea surface temperature increase."

"Our findings indicate that warming SSTs over the tropical Atlantic might have already contributed significantly to more extreme tropical cyclone seasons and thereby to the fatalities, destruction and trillion dollar losses that these cyclones have caused over the last four decades," the study concluded.

The study said to minimize future risks, "stringent emission reductions in line with achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement would be required."

"Our results do not imply that increasing sea-surface temperatures lead to more tropical cyclones -- but point toward a trend of more intense storms and therefore more extreme outcomes for seasons with many tropical cyclone," Pfleiderer said.

Lithium ion batteries going cobalt-free; nickel next on the chopping block


The energy startup Sparkz is preparing to mass produce the first high-performance, low-carbon lithium ion battery made in the United States. Photo by Sparkz

BANGOR, Maine, April 13 (UPI) -- In an effort to bring down costs, General Motors, Tesla, Nissan and other automakers have pledged to start building cars with cobalt-free lithium ion batteries.

Meanwhile, a pair of energy startups, Sparkz and Texpower, are preparing to scale up production of their high-performance, cobalt-free batteries.

But with the price of nickel rapidly rising, the need for additional battery chemistry breakthroughs remains.

Old problem, new urgency

Since they first moved from research labs to market in the 1980s, lithium ion batteries have relied on cobalt cathodes. Cobalt offers tremendous energy density, but the metal is expensive.

In recent years, cobalt has accounted for roughly a quarter of the cost to make a lithium ion battery, more than the cost of all the other metals in a battery combined.

As part of a broader push to shrink the carbon footprint of the U.S. economy, the Biden Administration wants electric cars to account for 50% of the auto market by 2030.

Many of the biggest automakers are planning accordingly, but to get more Americans into electric cars, most industry leaders and policy makers agree that prices for EVs -- and the batteries that power them -- will need to come down.

In recent months, federal officials in the White House and at the Department of Energy have announced a variety of programs aimed at shoring up domestic supply chains for the kinds of materials needed to build more lithium ion batteries and electric cars.

Problems beyond cost

Most of the world's cobalt mines and processing facilities are operated by Chinese companies and located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where mine operators have faced accusations of child labor violations and other human rights abuses.

"Eliminating cobalt makes batteries more affordable and reduces China's stranglehold on a critical mineral, while addressing significant national security and supply chain issues," Sanjiv Malhotra, founder and CEO of Sparkz, told UPI in an email.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns about the impacts of Congo's cobalt mines on soil, air and water quality.

"The motivation for battery makers and automakers is primarily driven by cost and long-term transparency," Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told UPI.

"But not far behind that is the environmental aspects and human rights, especially today when there is more focus on those issues," Srinivasan said.

From the beginning, scientists and lithium ion battery makers have known that cobalt was a problem, but it has become more pressing in recent years as the trade war between China and the United States intensified and supply chains faltered.

Last month, the price of cobalt reached $79,295 per ton, its highest price since June 2018.

Replacing cobalt

Over the last decade, scientists have developed a variety of technological tweaks to make up for the performance drop-off when a lithium ion battery's cathode is robbed of its cobalt.

Mostly, researchers have replaced cobalt with nickel.

"The higher nickel you go, the better the energy density," Arumugam Manthiram, an expert in energy storage and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told UPI.

But altering the chemical composition of a battery is never easy, and even small changes can lead to changes in performance and reliability.

"Too much nickel and the cycle life will suffer," Manthiram said. "It can lead to other concerns, too, like thermo stability."

Sparkz, which expects to break ground on a new lithium ion battery production facility, or gigafactory, and deliver batteries to its first customers by the end of 2022, is the proud owner of six patents transferred from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

One of those patents is the recipe for a cobalt-free cathode material featuring a special mix of nickel, iron and aluminum.

The patented material can double the energy density achieved by lithium iron phosphate batteries, the only cobalt-free battery currently on the market.

"Lithium iron phosphate is commercialized and relatively cheap, but its issue is limited driving range," Manthiram said. "So if people worried about cost, they can use lithium iron phosphate."

Lithium iron phosphate has reached its performance peak, however, according to Manthiram, who helped first develop the technology a few decades ago.

"With high nickel, there is room to squeeze out a little bit more," he said.

International politics complicate nickel use

Nickel is geologically and geographically more widely distributed than cobalt, with healthy deposits in Canada, Greenland and even the United States. However, a small but significant amount of nickel is sourced from Siberia, and Russia has an outsized influence on the nickel market.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sent nickel prices soaring. Last month, the London Metal Exchange halted the metal's trading after its price doubled in a day.

Though most expect nickel's price to moderate in the coming weeks and months, its volatility remains a concern.

While efforts are underway, it will take time to bring more nickel mines and processing facilities online to meet the growing demand for high-nickel electric car batteries.

"If you're in the battery community, you worry about nickel," Srinivasan said.

The challenge for battery researchers is that science can never move as fast as shifts in markets, prices and consumer preferences. Nevertheless, researchers are already working on the new iterations of the lithium ion battery.

Even with demand for cobalt-free batteries at a fever pitch, Sparkz won't be selling to automakers for some time.

"The process for approval with the automakers can be three to five years," Malhotra said. "As we continue talks with automotive manufacturers, we will begin making batteries for three key markets: agricultural and off-road vehicles, material handling and stationary energy storage."

Often, battery makers must find bridge markets for their products as they work to meet the needs of car makers.

Looking for more breakthroughs

"At DOE, for the longest time, we've supported manganese-rich technologies, Srinivasan said. "For us, the thing has always been, let's diversify, let's not put too many eggs in one basket."

Sparkz CEO Malhotra said his company will continue to focus on re-engineering and scaling a domestic battery supply chain, while federal scientists find the next breakthrough.

"We should allow our extensive network of experts at our national laboratories to focus on research and development and let companies like Sparkz manufacture and scale," he said in an email.

Despite the new challenge presented by the rising nickel prices, Manthiram said going cobalt-free is the right move.

"Cobalt is a problem today, nickel will be a problem tomorrow, and lithium silicon will be a problem the day after tomorrow," Manthiram said. "But right now, cobalt needs to be removed, and that is done by nickel. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to do it."

GM signs cobalt deal with Glencore as rush 

for battery metals intensifies

Abhijith Ganapavaram
Tue, April 12, 2022



(Reuters) -General Motors Co said on Tuesday it would buy cobalt from miner Glencore PLC to use in its electric vehicles (EVs), as automakers around the world scramble to stock up on the critical raw material amid supply chain disruptions.

Global automakers, ranging from EV leader Tesla Inc to Volkswagen, are splurging billions of dollars on developing vehicles for a market that could be worth $5 trillion over the next decade.

However, metals to make batteries that last longer hard to come by due to supply chain disruptions, which has led to automakers rushing to secure supplies of lithium, nickel and cobalt.

The prices of these rare metals have soared to multi-year highs.

Cobalt, a metal that makes up 0.001% of the earth's crust, ensures cathodes do not easily overheat or catch fire and helps extend the life of batteries, which automakers usually guarantee for eight to 10 years.

The cobalt, secured from Glencore's Murrin Murrin operation in Australia, will be used in GM's Ultium battery cathodes, which powers the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq vehicles, the companies said in a joint statement https://bit.ly/37doJ0r.

They did not disclose the size of the deal.

GM, which has laid out plans to ramp up capacity to build one million EVs in North America by the end of 2025, also has an agreement with General Electric Co to develop a supply chain of rare earth and other materials.

It had also announced it would invest in a U.S. lithium project last year, which could become the country's largest by 2024.

Rival Ford Motor Co said on Monday it had signed a preliminary deal to buy lithium from a Lake Resources NL facility in Argentina.

(Reporting by Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel)

WH environmental justice advisors press for Justice40 action

BY DREW COSTLEY

In this Jan. 20, 2021, file photo, President Joe Biden signs his first executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Biden laid out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days in office, promising swift action on everything from climate change to immigration reform to the coronavirus pandemic. Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council say one year into the Biden Administration's commitment that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities, not enough has been done. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said Tuesday that the Biden administration hadn’t done enough to make good on its promise that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities.

Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the HBCU Climate Change Conference in New Orleans, the council members said they’ve secured $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a program called Engage, Enlighten and Empower to hold the Biden administration accountable for carrying out its Justice40 initiative.

President Biden made the commitment in a sweeping executive order on his first day in office. The initiative has been held up as an unprecedented push to bring environmental justice to communities long plagued by pollution and climate inaction.

The three members of the federal environmental justice council leading the $14 million-dollar effort, Beverly Wright, Peggy Shepard and Robert Bullard, have been working closely with the administration on Justice40.

But Wright told members of the press that more needs to be done to “turn a novel idea into a project that works.”

The trio are combining philanthropic grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, $6 million from Shepard’s WE ACT for Environmental Justice, $4 million from Wright’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and $4 million from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, to ensure federal funding from Justice40 “goes where it’s intended,” Shepard said.

The effort should “ensure equitable implementation of the Justice40 initiative at the state and local level and empower local communities to participate in the policy-making” that comes as a result of the initiative, a press release said.

The funds will go to educate grassroots organizations on the resources available to them through Justice40, inform state and local governments on how the money should be used, and develop a screening tool to determine where Justice40 funds are needed most, one that includes racial demographic data. Controversially a federal screening tool used by the administration does not take into account the racial makeup of communities.

There has been little change on the ground yet from the Justice40 pledge because the federal government is still trying to figure out which communities are most in need of the investment. In recommendations to the Biden administration, many reputable environmental justice advocates pushed for a methodical, intentional process for identifying disadvantaged communities and disbursing funds.

At the briefing, Wright and Bullard said they’ve seen past federal social and infrastructure projects fail to deliver on promises to disadvantaged communities and don’t want to see it happen again.

“There’s been a lot of really novel approaches at changing the lives of Americans in general that have worked out” benefitting just white Americans, Wright said.

Bullard pointed to discrimination in how flood relief was distributed in Texas, where the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice is located, as an example.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Battle over carbon capture as tool to fight climate change

BY DREW COSTLEY

1 of 18

The Marathon Petroleum Refinery is seen in Reserve, La., Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Last year, Congress pledged $3.5 billion to carbon capture and sequestration projects around the United States, which has been called the largest federal investment ever by advocates for the technology. But environmental justice advocates and residents of legacy pollution communities are wary of the technology, with many calling it a "false solution." (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


Polly Glover realized her son had asthma when he was nine months old. Now 26, he carries an inhaler in his pocket whenever he’s out and about in Prairieville, Louisiana, part of Ascension Parish.

“He probably needs to leave Ascension quite frankly,” Glover says, but he hasn’t because “this is his home and this is our family and this is our community.”

The parish is part of the 85-mile (137-kilometer) span between New Orleans and Baton Rouge officially called the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, more commonly known as Cancer Alley. The region’s air quality is some of the worst in the United States, and in several places along the corridor, cancer risks are much higher than levels considered acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Glover says the air is “terrible” where she lives, but there’s also great biodiversity — osprey, eagles, migratory birds, deer, rabbits, fish and alligators — among the region’s lakes, rivers and wetlands. The environmental advocate has been working for 30 years to preserve the place she’s loved since childhood.

That’s why she is wary of anything that might make air quality worse or threaten wildlife — and her biggest fear now is that a $4.5 billion plant designed to capture climate-changing carbon and make clean-burning hydrogen fuel will actually do more harm to the Lake Maurepas basin.

The blue hydrogen energy plant (BLUE MEANS IT USES NATURAL GAS TO CREATE H2) is slated to be built and operated by Air Products and Chemicals, a multinational petrochemical company. The company says the plant will capture airborne carbon emissions created during production and put them safely underground — a process called carbon capture and storage.

“Sometimes I think people think you’re kind of bubbling this in at the bottom of the lake,” said Simon Moore, vice president of investor relations, corporate relations and sustainability at Air Products. “You know, this is a mile below the Earth’s surface, where the geological formation of the rock has this porous space, which simply absorbs the CO2.”

Still, Glover is worried. “I’m not a scientist. I’m a mom who cares,” she said. “We have got to be better stewards of the environment and while reducing carbon emissions is necessary, injecting them into the basin is not the answer.”

There are several other carbon capture and storage projects proposed or in the works throughout the U.S., including in Louisiana, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and California. Companies behind them maintain they can successfully remove carbon from the air to reduce pollution, then safely transport and store the carbon underground — or do both.

In some cases, oil and gas companies are banking on this new technology to either help build new profit centers, such as plants that make hydrogen, or extend the lifespan of their fossil fuel facilities.

Carbon capture and storage projects are gaining traction since Congress approved $3.5 billion for them last year. The Global CCS Institute, a think tank seeking to advance these projects globally, called it the “single largest appropriation of money for CCS in the history of the technology.”

In the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top scientists said carbon capture and storage technology has to be part of the range of solutions to decarbonize and mitigate climate change. But they said solar and wind energy and electricity storage are improving faster than carbon capture and storage.

Opponents of carbon capture and storage maintain the technology is unproven and has been less effective than alternatives such as solar and wind at decarbonizing the energy sector.

“Carbon capture is neither workable nor feasible,” said Basav Sen, climate justice policy director for the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C. “It’s merely an excuse for the fossil fuel industry to keep operating the way it does.”

A study in late 2020 by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found over 80% of 39 projects that have sought to commercialize carbon capture and storage ended in failure. The study cited lack of technological readiness as a top factor

But even if the technology was deployed successfully, several critics say the projects would pose threats to the public health of communities long plagued by air and water pollution.

First, they said any project that prolongs the lifespan of an existing industrial facility presents additional environmental harm by extending the amount of time it pollutes a community, which the IPCC report confirms.

Second, they noted that since carbon capture would require more energy to power the equipment, it would result in more air pollution because the technology can only catch a portion of the carbon emitted by a facility.

Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and pioneer of carbon capture and storage technology, disputed this in an interview with the Associated Press. But he acknowledged there is a risk in transporting and storing carbon.

In 2020, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide ruptured in the town of Satartia, Mississippi, which caused over 40 people to get hospital treatment and more than 300 to evacuate. The incident is cited by experts, advocates and residents who live near proposed carbon capture and storage projects to illustrate potential dangers of transporting carbon long distances.

Injecting carbon underground for storage could end up contaminating aquifers, according to Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program for the Center for International Environmental Law.

Over 500 environmental organizations, including the law center, signed an open letter published in the Washington Post in July 2021, calling carbon capture and storage a “false solution.”

In response, the Carbon Capture Coalition, which advocates the technology, released its own letter in August with over 100 signatories. They pressed Congress to include investment in carbon capture and storage in any upcoming legislation.

Matt Fry, a state and regional policy manager with the Great Plains Institute, a Minneapolis-based climate and energy think tank, told AP the technology is essential to meeting mid-century climate goals.

“The potential for a completely decarbonized, electrified world is a reality,” Fry said. “But we’re going to need to transition to get there. And it’s going to require carbon capture to address those emissions.”

At the point of capture, Herzog said, the technology poses a “very low” threat to public health. “There’s always a chance of some mishaps,” he added, “but on the overall scale of chemical plants, (the technology) is fairly benign.”

Still, residents near proposed projects worry.

In California’s Central Valley agricultural region, Chevron, Microsoft and Schlumberger New Energy are collaborating to build a facility in the town of Mendota that will create energy by converting agricultural waste into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, then mixing it with oxygen to generate electricity with the promise of capturing 99% of the carbon from the process.

Chevron said it plans to inject the carbon “underground into nearby deep geologic formations.”

That’s concerning for Nayamin Martinez, who lives in the valley and is director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. “That worries us a lot,” she said. “What does that mean in terms of risk for contamination of drinking water?”

Creighton Welch, a spokesperson for Chevron, said the process they plan to use is safe. “CO2 capture, injection, and storage are not new technologies and have been conducted safely for decades,” Welch said.

Back in Louisiana, Glover and other residents also fear carbon capture technology will affect the water. The carbon dioxide captured at the Air Products and Chemicals facility will be stored in sites such as under Lake Maurepas, an important wetland.

Kim Coates, who lives on the lake’s northeast side, said it’s a buffer between the Gulf of Mexico and residents. But she said she’s witnessed generations of destruction to that ecosystem through industrial development and, more recently, hurricanes and tropical storms.

Now Coates fears more of the same if carbon is stored under the lake. “We’ve seen the destruction over time with no one looking forward to what was going to happen in the future,” she said.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS