It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, April 21, 2022
How bitcoin is keeping zombie power plants alive
Cryptocurrency is an economic lifeline for dirty, aging coal and gas plants.
PODCAST 20 April 2022
Bitcoin mining today uses approximately half a percent of all the world’s electricity. As more shipping containers and warehouses full of high-powered computers are deployed every year to unlock more bitcoin, its associated energy use grows by double-digit percentages.
What’s more, as bitcoin mining operations scramble to find new power sources, they’re often turning to aging coal or fossil gas plants that offer cheap electricity.
This week, we’ll take you to Seneca Lake in upstate New York, where a group of unlikely activists is fighting back against a “zombie” power plant that is now fueling a bitcoin mine.
What’s happening in Seneca Lake is not a one-off story. Across the nation, the companies that own dying, dirty power plants see cryptocurrency as an opportunity to extend their facilities’ useful lives. Bitcoin mining is locking in fossil fuels — what can we do about it?
Today’s guest is Brian Kahn, the climate editor at Protocol. You can read his recent piece about the Greenidge power plant in New York here.
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Chart: Which nations get over 10% of their power from solar? Hint: Not the U.S or China.
15 April 2022 Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format. Canary thanks Natural Power for its support of this feature.
Solar energy generation around the world grew by 23 percent last year, according to Ember’s 2022 Global Electricity Review. Six countries generated more than 10 percent of their electricity from solar in 2021, and several others are getting close to that level.
The small European country of Luxembourg has integrated the most solar into its grid mix, nearly 18 percent. The nation has been aggressive in installing large-scale solar projects, and last year it announced more tax cuts for home solar installations.
Yemen, second on the list, has taken a very different path to build up its solar capacity. For seven years, the country has been mired in a civil war that has decimated its electrical grid. Only about three-quarters of the population has access to electricity, and only about 10 percent has access to centralized grid electricity. Distributed solar energy has become a lifeline in the country, particularly for farmers.
Chile is No. 3 in total share of electricity from solar, and it is only beginning to tap its massive solar potential. The country is home to the Atacama Desert, which has the world’s highest solar irradiation level. The Chilean government has big plans to become a solar energy exporter; last year, it unveiled an ambitious scheme to export solar energy to China via submarine cable.
Globally, solar provided nearly 4 percent of all electricity in 2021. That share will need to increase manyfold to get the world on a path to net-zero emissions by midcentury: Solar power needs to be providing 19 percent of the world’s electricity by 2030 and 33 percent by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.
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Natural Power is a global consultancy that supports its clients to deliver a wide range of renewable energy projects. Its independent engineering experience covers all phases of the project lifecycle, from feasibility through construction to operations, and all stages of the transaction. Learn more.
Biofuels are accelerating the food crisis — and the climate crisis, too
It’s crazy to put more food in our fuel tanks when there’s a war on. Or when there isn’t.
Ukraine has stopped exporting its grain because it’s at war. Russia’s customers have stopped buying its grain because it started that war. Famine is stalking East Africa, where a brutal drought has ravaged harvests — and now the region can no longer supplement its production with Ukrainian and Russian imports. Drought is also parching farms in the United States, especially in the West and the southern Plains — another contributor to higher food prices and growing food shortages.
The United Nations was warning even before the war in Europe’s breadbasket that the world faced “unprecedented catastrophic levels” of food insecurity, and now that global food prices have reached an all-time high, we’re facing the worst food crisis since 2008. It’s a weird time to divert more grain from the food supply to fuel tanks.
In Washington, though, it’s always time to divert grain from food to fuel. President Biden visited Iowa corn country last week to announce he’s allowing more corn ethanol to be blended into gasoline this summer, a move designed to save drivers 10 cents per gallon at a time of painful prices at the pump. It will also make food more expensive at a time of painful prices at the supermarket, but it will surely please a lot of farm lobbyists and Midwestern politicians.
The amount of corn it takes to fill an SUV with ethanol could feed a person for a year, and the U.S. and Europe could immediately replace the lost grain exports from Ukraine’s breadbasket by cutting their biofuel production in half. So it’s pretty obvious why this food crisis is a dumb time to accelerate biofuel production. In fact, a bunch of studies have confirmed that biofuel mandates were a leading driver of the 2008 food crisis, driving up prices by driving up demand for grain and vegetable oil.
The thing is, the reasons biofuels are dumb when the world is freaking out about its food supply are the same reasons most biofuels are always dumb: Land is much more efficient at growing food than growing energy. Using land to grow fuel induces the clearing of additional land to grow food, wiping out forests and other carbon sinks we need to save the climate. And for the foreseeable future, the world should always be freaking out about its food supply.
This was the theme of my first Eating the Earth column about food and climate, and fair warning: It’s going to be a recurring theme. No matter what ends up happening in Ukraine, the world will still face a long-term food crisis after the guns go silent. Farmers will need to grow 7 quadrillion additional calories every year by 2050 to feed the growing global population, and they’ll need to do it on a smaller agricultural footprint to avoid accelerating our long-term climate crisis. But humanity is currently on track to tear down another 14 Californias’ worth of forests to provide the farmland we need to grow the food we need.
In other words, our food and climate crises are largely land crises. We need the limited land on earth to produce massive amounts of food and store massive amounts of carbon. But thanks to misguided government policies, of which Biden’s latest agri-pander is a relatively innocuous example, we’re using more than 30 million acres of U.S. cornfields, almost an entire Iowa worth of incredibly productive land, to grow modest amounts of fuel.
Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing new climate policies that would devote as much as 20 percent of the continent’s farmland to growing crops for fuel and electricity, an area larger than Poland. The math just doesn’t pencil out. It would take about 30 percent of the world’s crops to provide just 2 percent of the world’s energy, which would drive up food prices, speed up deforestation and ratchet up carbon emissions. The only thing most biofuels do well is funnel extra cash to farmers.
Let’s be honest: What Biden is doing is not an economic or environmental catastrophe. He’s suspending a rule so that U.S. filling stations can sell gas with 15 percent instead of 10 percent ethanol for a couple of months, which might create a bit more smog, food inflation and natural destruction. But it’s just a temporary tweak.
The real catastrophe is the world’s broader commitment to farm-grown energy, embodied in the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that 15 billion gallons of ethanol be blended into fuels each year, as well as Europe’s push for even more ambitious bioenergy mandates. If we were really serious about our long-term food and climate crises, we wouldn’t keep using productive land to grow fuels that make both crises worse. “You come out against ethanol, you are dead meat”
Ethanol is the most common form of alcohol, the fermented magic in beer, wine and liquor. It’s also a functional automotive fuel that powered the first prototype of the internal combustion engine and was once touted by Henry Ford as the future of transportation. He was wrong — gasoline turned out to be much more efficient. But over the last few decades, corn ethanol has carved out a modest role in U.S. fuel markets because powerful politicians have seen it as a miracle elixir for agricultural prosperity.
Farm-state congressional leaders such as Bob Dole (R) of Kansas, Tom Daschle (D) of South Dakota and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) of Illinois — who became an ethanol lobbyist before he went to jail over a sexual abuse scandal — repeatedly pushed through protective tariffs, tax breaks and lavish subsidies for ethanol. And presidential candidates have sucked up to ethanol interests during Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses so shamelessly and predictably that an entire episode of The West Wing lampooned the quadrennial spectacle.
“You come out against ethanol, you are dead meat,” political aide Josh Lyman warned future president Matt Santos. “Bambi would have a better shot at getting elected president of the NRA than you’ll have of getting a single vote in this caucus!”
Santos thought ethanol was ridiculous, but he supported it publicly, and so has every nonfictional president since Jimmy Carter. George W. Bush enacted and expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard. Barack Obama of corn-rich Illinois preached the biofuels gospel too. Donald Trump pandered even harder to his farm-state supporters, approving year-round 15 percent ethanol (the new standard was eventually struck down in court). Biden and his ethanol-loving agriculture secretary, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, are just following tradition.
Even environmentalists initially supported the Renewable Fuel Standard. “Renewable” sounded sustainable, and biofuels seemed like the only viable alternative to gasoline. There were no electric vehicles on America’s roads in the Bush years, and the future prospects seemed so bleak that a 2006 documentary was titled Who Killed the Electric Car?
Today, of course, electric vehicles are almost universally acknowledged as the real future of transportation. Even many boosters who once dreamed that biofuels would provide all transportation fuel now focus more on serving the hard-to-electrify aviation and shipping industries.
The question is whether biofuels are any greener than fossil fuels. They’re certainly not more efficient. Fossilized plants from millions of years ago have much higher energy density than fresh plants, and the corn ethanol production process uses almost a gallon of fossil fuel for every gallon of gasoline it displaces. Still, even though planting, plowing, fertilizing, harvesting, fermenting and distilling corn produces far more emissions than extracting and refining oil, the prevailing science before 2008 found ethanol to be slightly better for the climate than gasoline because growing corn on a farm absorbed the carbon emitted by burning ethanol in an engine.
The problem was that when cornfields were used to grow fuel, farmers needed to clear more carbon-absorbing natural land to replace the lost food production capacity. A 2008 paper in Science revealed that when this “indirect land-use change” was taken into account, corn ethanol and other farm-grown fuels were much worse for the climate than gasoline. That year’s food crisis basically confirmed the findings, as the ethanol boom depressed U.S. corn exports, which encouraged Brazilian farmers to plant more soybeans on former pastures to replace the missing grain, which encouraged Brazilian cattle ranchers to deforest the Amazon at record rates to create new pastures. More recent studies have confirmed that while biofuels made from crop residues or other waste products can help the climate, using productive land to grow fuel is a climate disaster.
The biofuels industry can still point to studies that find climate benefits, but what those studies all have in common is that they downplay the danger of land-use change — by assuming that biofuels will be grown on unspecified “marginal lands” that wouldn’t be able to grow food, or that biofuels will somehow inspire farmers to grow so much more food on their existing farms that they won’t need to clear more land, or, ironically, that biofuels will increase food prices so much that the global poor will eat less, a rather ugly source of climate benefits. In fact, the U.S. government’s modeling justifying ethanol as a climate solution generated all of its greenhouse gas savings from reduced food consumption abroad.
In the context of the global land crunch, the science of biofuels is not as complex as some scientists make it sound. The world has committed to ending deforestation by 2030 to help keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and there’s a broad consensus that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would also require a massive campaign of reforestation by 2050. At the same time, the world is already devoting an area the size of Texas to growing fuel, even though more land for farming means less land for forests, wetlands and other natural ecosystems. The twin problems of agricultural expansion and deforestation are currently getting worse, and many nations are planning to use even more crop-based biofuels to meet their renewable energy goals. There’s obviously a Texas-sized opportunity to free up scarce land for food production and carbon-friendly rewilding.
But even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Nobel Prize–winning gold standard on global warming, has promoted bioenergy as a potential strategy to cut emissions, in part because researchers devoted to bioenergy have had so much sway at the IPCC. Felix Creutzig, a German physicist who oversaw the IPCC’s bioenergy work for its landmark 2014 report, told me ardent bioenergy supporters shot down his efforts to inject words of caution into their chapter. He and other biofuels skeptics on his team had to go to the Journal of Industrial Ecology to publish a critique of excessively rosy bioenergy analyses.
“It’s a huge bias in science: People make a career investment in studying a technology, then they defend that technology,” Creutzig said. “It’s a real problem.”
Sticking with bioenergy is easy — and dead wrong
Of course, there’s an even stronger pro-biofuels bias in the political arena. In the U.S., Biden has an opportunity this year to change the rules under the Renewable Fuel Standard, and even though he’s vowed to devote his entire government to climate action, there’s virtually no chance that he’ll try to roll back the ethanol mandate.
In the European Union, the “Fit for 55” plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030 depends heavily on growing crops for fuel and burning trees for electricity — even though forest-grown power may be even more damaging than farm-grown fuels. If anything, farm and forestry interests are even more influential in Europe than in the U.S.
It’s understandable that policymakers are grasping for alternatives to fossil fuels during a climate crisis. It’s especially understandable during an energy crisis when renewable fuels can be a four-fer that address public anger about gas prices, reduce demand for Vladimir Putin’s petroleum, subsidize rural interests with outsized political influence, and at least sound like a step toward a greener world. Politically, bioenergy is usually the path of least resistance.
Right now, though, with corn prices up nearly 50 percent since the start of 2021, we’re confronted with the cost of using grain to fuel our cars rather than ourselves every time we buy cereal. And with the latest IPCC report portraying a world hurtling toward calamity, the cost of using land to grow energy rather than food or trees also ought to be starker than ever. Land is the only successful tool we have for growing the food we need to sustain us and storing the carbon we need to save us; fortunately, we now have better ways to produce energy.
Ultimately, the problem of saving the climate while feeding the world will not be solved by following the path of least resistance. We’ll have to do a lot of things that make powerful interests uncomfortable, and maybe some things that make all of us uncomfortable. The earth is our home, the only planet we’ve found with barbecue potato chips, breathable air and the NBA playoffs, and at some point we’ll have to be willing to make a few sacrifices to keep it habitable.
On the other hand: 10 cents a gallon!
Newspaper apologizes for cartoon depicting Indigenous people seeking payout from Pope
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First Nations leaders say cartoon reinforces negative
Hiawatha First Nation Chief Laurie Carr said that it's disturbing a cartoon like that was published in 2022. (CBC)
First Nations leaders in southern Ontario say the media has to do better at reconciliation after a newspaper ran an offensive cartoon depicting Indigenous people asking the Pope for financial compensation.
"You can't speak out of both sides of your mouth — to Indigenous people one way, and then what you print to the general Canadian population," said Laurie Carr, chief of Hiawatha First Nation.
Metroland Media's seven Simcoe County newspapers ran a cartoon last week that pictured the Pope saying "I'm sorry" to what appears to be an Indigenous woman and man, who respond "How $orry?"
Carr, who sits on one of Metroland Media's advisory councils in Peterborough, said "it's really disturbing" to see a cartoon published like that in 2022.
The cartoon ran in seven newspapers in Simcoe County in southern Ontario. (Travis Boissoneau/Twitter)
"When you have Metroland Media who has reached out to Indigenous people to sit on these advisory committees … to work together and to bring a better media and the truth to the general Canadian population … it's really disheartening," said Carr.
Metroland Media is a subsidiary of the Torstar Corporation, and has newspapers in the Simcoe County communities of Alliston, Barrie, Bradford and West Gwillimbury, Collingwood, Innisfil, Midland/Penetanguishene, Orillia and Stayner/Wasaga.
Editor's apology
When contacted for comment, Adam Martin-Robbins, Metroland's managing editor for the Simcoe County newspapers, directed CBC News to a column he wrote that was published on Simcoe.com on Monday.
"The cartoon we published on the editorial page in our seven local newspapers last week was offensive, and we apologize," Martin-Robbins wrote.
He wrote that the cartoon, which was drawn by Steve Nease, "was intended as a satirical look at how the Pope's long-awaited apology to Indigenous people falls short without the Roman Catholic Church also delivering on its promise of providing compensation to residential school survivors. But this wasn't the way to depict that opinion and we shouldn't have published it."
Nease wrote in an email to CBC News that he believes a papal apology is the first step toward righting the wrongs that residential school survivors faced from the Catholic church and that the Pope should "put his money where his mouth is, and compensate victims financially."
"I know that many have been offended by my cartoon, and I regret that deeply," Nease wrote.
"It was never my intention, or the intention of the newspaper that ran it, to cause such hurt."
Carr said she is thankful for an apology, but would have preferred it be just an apology, rather than explain the intention behind the cartoon.
News needs more historical context
Reg Niganobe, grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation whose members include some First Nations in Simcoe County, said cartoons like that reinforce a stereotype that Indigenous people are only out for money when something bad happens.
"Money is the only compensation that can be offered to us at the very least, other than maybe jail time or prosecution for the offenders. But that doesn't address the issue of what happens to our people," said Niganobe.
Reg Niganobe, grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation, says newspapers can help advance reconciliation by adding more historical context to their reports. (Michael Kaiser Photography)
Niganobe, whose father attended the Spanish Indian Residential School, said he accepts the editor's apology but would like to see media take actions moving forward like including more historical background when reporting on Indigenous issues.
"They leave out the historical context, right?" he said.
"They leave out all the information and all the facts that exist within them and it puts Indigenous people in a very poor light."
Martin-Robbins wrote in the column that the newspaper has reviewed its processes and added an extra layer of review and oversight for its editorial page content. He also wrote they are committed to ongoing training focused on anti-oppression, anti-racism and inclusion and diversity, among other things.
Lenard Monkman is Anishinaabe from Lake Manitoba First Nation, Treaty 2 territory. He has been an associate producer with CBC Indigenous since 2016. Follow him on Twitter: @Lenardmonkman1
Dear Simcoe County readers, we owe you an apology
The cartoon published in our newspapers last week was offensive, and we're sorry, writes Adam Martin-Robbins
It’s about trust. Our relationship with our readers is built on transparency, honesty and integrity. As such, we have launched a trust initiative to tell you who we are and how and why we do what we do. This article is part of that project. Let me start with this: We Are Sorry.
The cartoon we published on the editorial page in our seven local newspapers last week was offensive, and we apologize.
The cartoon was intended as a satirical look at how the Pope's long-awaited apology to Indigenous people falls short without the Roman Catholic Church also delivering on its promise of providing compensation to residential school survivors. But this wasn't the way to depict that opinion and we shouldn't have published it.
Second, I’d like to thank the many readers who reached out by email and social media to call us out and express their concerns.
Your responses are an important part of our reflection and learning as we strive to do better.
It's also an important reminder of how impactful the work we do is and what we must consider before publishing content about or in reference to Indigenous peoples.
We must, we can and we will do better.
Since the cartoon was published, we have reviewed and changed our processes so this won't happen again. We have added an extra layer of review and oversight for our editorial page content to ensure it meets our ethical standards.
We're also aware we have more learning to do. We're committed to ongoing training focused on anti-oppression, anti-racism, inclusion and diversity, among other things.
In our daily work as journalists, we're regularly confronted with tough ethical decisions and we often do the right thing. But, on occasion, we get it wrong.
When that happens, we know how important it is to own up to our mistakes.
Owning up to our errors is part of what makes us a trusted news source that our readers count on to keep them informed about what's happening in their communities.
We recognize, for some readers, this error in judgment has undermined your trust in us.
I know our dedicated team of editors and reporters will strive to re-earn your trust.
I assure you, we're committed to delivering fair, balanced, and ethical journalism rooted in values of respect and dignity, which readers expect from us.
Adam Martin-Robbins is managing editor of Metroland’s seven Simcoe County newspapers and Simcoe.com. We welcome your questions and value your comments. Email our trust committee at trust@metroland.com.
The Pope Apologized. Some Conservatives Are Denying Residential School Horrors Anyway.
The denial or downplaying of what happened at residential schools works to protect the status quo and amounts to a form of genocide denial that needs to be confronted, experts say.
CLASSROOM AT THE FORMER KUPER ISLAND INDIAN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, WHICH RAN FROM 1890 TO THE 1970S. PHOTO BY INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL HISTORY & DIALOGUE CENTRE VIA NATIONAL CENTRE FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION
After Pope Francis finally issued a long-awaited apology for the role the Catholic Church played in Canada’s abusive residential school system, some prominent conservatives were quick to deny residential school horrors—again.
Conrad Black, a former media baron who was pardoned by Donald Trump, published an op-ed in the Canadian daily the National Post that threw into question the probability of unmarked graves of Indigenous kids.
Last May, more than 200 unmarked graves were found at the site of a formal residential school in Kamloops, B.C., which set off a national reckoning. Nearly 2,000 more have been confirmed since and many more are expected.
But Black said, “Sophisticated audiences… do not accept that thousands of Indigenous children were murdered and secretly buried, as has been alleged.” Meanwhile, a retired University of Manitoba professor, Hymie Rubenstein, like many angsty conservatives, continues to publish articles on his Substack, “The REAL Indian Residential Schools Newsletter.”
After Pope Francis apologized, Rubenstein said, “Read and gnash your teeth about the hegemony of emotion over truth” and then pointed out that the apology was issued on April Fool’s Day. Well-known conservative figures continue to deny or downplay what happened at residential schools, some even saying the graves are a “hoax” because the bodies haven’t been exhumed. The denial works to protect the status quo and amounts to a form of genocide denialism that needs to be confronted, experts say.
It’s not just fringe figures on the right that are denying these horrors, either. Last month, Tom Flanagan, once an aide to former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, wrote that accounts of Canada’s brutal history “are not simply a fraud of hoax,” and referred to them as “bizarre claims.”
In December, then federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was caught on video telling young Conservatives that the purpose of residential schools was simply “to provide education.” He walked back his comments after the video was made public.
“It can seem like, ‘Oh, a few trolls are saying dumb things on the internet, but denialism is very appealing,” said Sean Carleton, a University of Manitoba professor in Indigenous studies. “Its objective is to keep in place the colonial status quo.”
Denying or misrepresenting the history risks retraumatizing communities, survivors, and their families. Rachel Ann Snow, a practitioner of Indigenous legal traditions and matriarch among her Iyahe Nakoda Sioux people, said this denialism is making it more difficult for survivors to come forward with their stories. Denialists are “completely attacking or undermining the existing hurt. You want to tell your trauma because part of the recovery is to talk and to face those demons,” said Snow, whose father escaped from a residential school and several other relatives were forced to attend them.
As for those calling unmarked graves a “hoax,” “If some of the denialists understood that it's not just business as usual… They know nothing about Indigenous people or how we feel we need to handle this respectfully,” Snow said. “These children were so little and so desecrated by just being thrown together. There is a whole spiritual threshold and process that has to happen.”
Daniel Heath Justice, a UBC professor and Cherokee Nation citizen, said denialism is “nothing new” and may be easier than the truth for some people to believe.
“Even really kind people don’t want to believe that their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, respected leaders of their communities, could have been part of a genocidal project. It's an existential issue for a lot of people,” Justice said.
“The frustrating thing for me is how many bodies do they need to finally believe Indigenous people? My fear is there will never be enough because they don't want to believe Indigenous people.”
The way forward, according to Justice, is to confront denialism and call it out in our own families.
Carleton thinks disinformation and misinformation will only get worse as the anniversary in Kamloops approaches, and the pope gets ready to visit Canada, reportedly in late July.
“We need to understand denialism as a phenomenon, rather than as an individual expression,” Carleton said. “These arguments need to be challenged and discredited—not just ignored—otherwise it’ll hold up the colonial status quo and anti-Indigenous racism.”
According to Snow, fighting disinformation and misinformation about residential schools is paramount to fighting and recovering from colonialism in Canada.
“It becomes a sore or a festering wound of Canada and nobody wants to look at that festering wound and say, ‘This is very ugly and it’s been there for a while,” Snow said. “But we need to see the truth in order to heal.”
Amazon CEO says unions are ‘slower and more bureaucratic’ in leaked employee all-hands meeting
Audio from a Tuesday meeting was obtained by The Verge
In an all-hands meeting with employees on Tuesday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy addressed the mounting efforts to unionize the company’s fulfillment centers. The discussion was sparked by an employee who asked about the company’s position on unions, per a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge.
Jassy argued that unionization would make employees of the company feel less empowered. “One of the things that’s unique about Amazon is that we have unusual empowerment for our employees,” he said. “If they see something they can do better for customers — or just for themselves — to get together, get in a room, decide to change it, and change it, and do it quickly. We encourage that type of speed. You know, you’re part of the union it’s much slower and much more bureaucratic, much harder to do that.”
Jassy prefaced the statement by making clear that “the decision to join a union is employees’ decision. It always has been, and always will be.”
“[WHEN] YOU’RE PART OF THE UNION IT’S MUCH SLOWER AND MUCH MORE BUREAUCRATIC, MUCH HARDER TO DO THAT”
Jassy also reiterated Amazon’s position that employees having to go through unions ruins their relationship with management. “We think there’s real value in having a connection between teammates and managers where you build a different type of connectivity,” he told employees, “a different type of bond, as opposed to having all of your voice filtered through one person.”
Many of these points have been brought up by Amazon spokespeople in previous comments, but it’s noteworthy to hear them straight from the CEO. Jassy avoided the topic of organization efforts entirely in his first letter to shareholders, though he did touch on the company’s injury rates and the difficulty of hiring employees. He had previously addressed the topic in an interview with CNBC using similar language.
Jassy also addressed recently filed objections to the JFK8 election, saying that “in the cases where we have facilities that are exploring a union” the company wants people to have “an unfettered opportunity to vote.... [Amazon] didn’t feel like that happened at JFK8, which is why we filed the objections we did.”
He ended his answer by acknowledging that the company needs “to keep improving the employee experience and our fulfillment centers every day.”
The comments conflict with many common perceptions among warehouse workers. In interviews for other stories, current and former Amazon employees have complained of overly prescriptive and optimized decisions from existing management. Several prominent Amazon Labor Union organizers also say they have been fired for political activity, including Christian Smalls and Gerald Bryson. (Earlier this week, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Bryson’s firing was illegal and ordered Amazon to reinstate him.)
Amazon and the Amazon Labor Union didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment about Jassy’s statement.
The unionization vote at Amazon’s LDJ5 facility is scheduled to begin on April 25th.
Exxon sees carbon capture market at $4 trillion by 2050
Sabrina Valle Tue, April 19, 2022
Logo of the Exxon Mobil Corp is seen at the Rio Oil and Gas Expo and Conference in Rio de Janeiro
By Sabrina Valle
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp. estimates there will be a $4 trillion market by 2050 for capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground, the company said in a presentation on Tuesday.
That is about 60% of the $6.5 trillion market the U.S. largest crude producer estimates for oil and gas by then.
Carbon capture is an important emissions reduction technology, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). It involves the capture of CO2 from fuel combustion or industrial processes, transporting it via ship or pipeline, to be stored underground in geological formations or used as a resource to create products.
Large oil companies have been investing to make carbon capture and storage (CCS) a relevant business as international bodies such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) point the technology as key to mitigate the effects of global warming.
Exxon is under public pressure to reduce its total emissions as its energy transition strategy does not include renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. It has recently hired Dan Ammann, who led the Cruise self-driving unit of General Motors Co until December, to lead its Low Carbon business starting on May 1.
U.S. oil producer Occidental Petroleum, developing the world's largest project to extract CO2 from the air, has previously estimated CCS could become a $3-5 trillion global industry. The technology could generate as much in earnings and cash flow for Occidental than oil and gas today, Chief Executive Vicki Hollub said at a conference in March.
(Reporting by Sabrina Valle; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
CO2 pipelines are coming. A pipeline safety expert says we’re not ready
Companies want to build pipelines to capture and store carbon, but a report warns that regulators aren’t prepared
Image of carbon capture technology which uses fans and filters to remove the green house gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The big fans suck in air from the atmosphere and take out the green house gas carbon dioxide. This technology can solve the problem of climate change and help with the climate crisis.
(iStock/Getty Images/IGphotography)
A year ago, a different kind of pipeline project was announced in the Midwest. Most pipelines pick up oil or gas from a well and deliver it to customers who burn it, emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This one would run almost in reverse. A company called Summit Climate Solutions planned to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol refineries in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, and then transport it via the proposed pipeline to a site in North Dakota where the CO2 would be buried deep underground.
But as the number of pipeline proposals multiplies, a new report commissioned by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, warns that CO2 pipeline regulations aren't up to the task of keeping communities safe
"The country is ill prepared for the increase of CO2 pipeline mileage being driven by federal CCS policy," writes report author Richard Kuprewicz, an independent pipeline safety consultant hired by the Pipeline Safety Trust. "Federal pipeline safety regulations need to be quickly changed to rise to this new challenge, and to assure that the public has confidence in the federal pipeline safety regulations."
Pipeline safety is overseen by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The agency began regulating carbon dioxide pipelines in 1991. Today, there are just over 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines in the U.S., most of which deliver CO2 to oil fields, where companies pump it underground to stimulate oil production. But researchers assert that capturing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and sucking CO2 directly from the air will be essential tools to tackle climate change. In order to deliver that CO2 to sites where it can be permanently sequestered underground, they estimate the U.S. could need between 30,000and 65,000 miles of pipeline.
The most concerning finding in the new report, according to Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, is that regulations for assessing the potential impacts of a CO2 pipeline rupture were not developed specifically for CO2. Every pipeline developer has to identify potential "high consequence areas" where an accidental release would have significant negative impacts on human health or the environment. High consequence areas for oil and gas pipelines are well defined, but the report notes that CO2 has different considerations and likely a much larger radius of concern. CO2 is heavier than air, and a plume of CO2 can travel for miles, depending on wind and terrain, and settle into low-lying areas. The report warns that such an event would be difficult for people in the vicinity and first responders to detect, since CO2 is colorless, odorless, and nonflammable.
"If I had to pick one finding of the report that would keep me up at night as a public safety advocate, it's that one," said Caram.
The residents of Satartia, Mississippi, learned this the hard way in 2020 when a CO2 pipeline ruptured and a plume of CO2 settled over the town, causing people to feel dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented. Many passed out. Forty-nine people went to the hospital. PHMSA has yet to release an incident report detailing the cause of the rupture.
"That incident happened over two years ago," said Caram. "It's crazy that communities are being asked to bear the burden of the risk of these pipelines when this report sits unreleased with all these unanswered questions."
In addition to urging PHMSA to update how potential impact areas are assessed, the Kuprewicz report recommends that PHMSA require pipeline operators to inject an odorant into CO2 pipelines, as is standard for natural gas pipelines, to help alert the public to potentially dangerous leaks. It proposes new requirements for informing and training local officials and emergency responders on the unique dangers posed by a CO2 release. It also recommends setting purity standards for the CO2 transported by pipelines, as impurities can introduce additional risks.
A spokesperson for PHMSA did not comment on the missing Satartia report or the concerns raised in Kuprewicz's report. But the agency did say it was reviewing his findings and working on new measures to strengthen safety standards for CO2 pipelines, as the White House instructed PHMSA and other agencies that oversee CCS projects to do in interim guidance put out in February.
Similar to Kuprewicz, the White House guidance calls for CO2 pipeline-specific emergency planning and training. It cites a need for new tools to monitor and improve safety but stops short of describing which tools are needed. It also notes that the impacts of climate change, like flooding and storms, should be taken into account in the design, construction, and maintenance of CO2 pipelines.
Lee Beck, global director for carbon capture at the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that advocates for CCS deployment, said the Pipeline Safety Trust report "provides important insights and raises really important questions." But from her perspective the Biden administration's guidance document shows it "is well aware of what needs to be done to ensure regulatory safety." Beck also noted that since 2010, there have only been 66 reported CO2 pipeline incidents and no reported fatalities. According to PHMSA data, the incident rate per mile of CO2 pipeline in 2020 was about half that of crude oil pipelines.
But Caram is concerned that PHMSA does not have the funding or capacity to effectively make new rules. "I would consider them a notoriously underfunded and understaffed agency," he said.
Rory Jacobson, the deputy director of policy at the nonprofit Carbon180, also raised this issue. "Ultimately, PHMSA will need Congress to enhance its regulatory capacity, funding, and jurisdiction to effectively and lawfully oversee the implementation of newly-passed carbon management policies," he said in an email. Carbon180 advocates for policy to support carbon removal, a category of climate solutions designed to suck carbon directly out of the atmosphere, some of which would utilize CO2 pipelines.
Other pipeline proponents emphasized the industry's track record on safety. "PHMSA and the natural gas and oil industry have decades of experience ensuring the safe transportation of CO2," said Robin Rorick, the vice president of midstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute, in a statement. The oil and gas industry group has been a key player in developing regulations for CO2 pipelines, since oil companies buy CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Rorick did not comment on the report's findings.
Jesse Harris, a spokesperson for Summit Carbon Solutions, the company that is developing the Midwest carbon dioxide pipeline, said that PHMSA "clearly specifies multiple layers of protection for CO2 pipeline operations to ensure public safety." He added, "We look forward to continuing to meet and in many cases exceeding all local, state, and federal requirements."
Technology features high-capacity and high-selectivity for capturing CO2 in a proprietary metal-organic framework (MOF)
Particularly suited to low purity CO2 streams, including atmospheric CO2, through direct air capture and capture within confined and air-tight environments
Further development of Mosaic’s technology creates pathway towards achieving lower carbon removal costs and helping to enable CO2 utilization
HOUSTON and LONDON - April 20, 2022 – Baker Hughes, an energy technology company, has acquired Mosaic Materials Inc. to further develop and scale its next-generation capture technology for carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction from stationary sources and CO2 removal (CDR) from the atmosphere.
Mosaic’s metal-organic framework (MOF) technology is a proprietary adsorbent material that acts like a high-capacity molecular sponge to selectively capture CO2. Baker Hughes will draw from its existing advanced capabilities, including modular design and material science, to develop and scale Mosaic’s innovative technology, enabling direct air capture (DAC) with a solution that requires significantly less energy to operate and provides lower total cost of ownership.
Both carbon capture of emissions from power and industrial facilities, as well as carbon dioxide removal such as DAC, will be needed to meet climate goals and emission reduction targets. Creating economical, scalable and energy-efficient DAC systems that can effectively capture CO2 from the atmosphere is important for supply into the CO2 utilization market, including eFuels.
“Removing carbon through a multi-pronged approach, including direct air capture, is critical to overcoming climate change,” said Rod Christie, executive vice president of Turbomachinery & Process Solutions at Baker Hughes. “This is why we are investing in several emerging technologies, including Mosaic Materials, to develop a comprehensive and diversified portfolio that can significantly and efficiently reduce as well as eliminate CO2, across multiple industries, including hard-to-abate sectors.”
Mosaic’s technology is the latest addition to Baker Hughes’ portfolio of carbon capture utilization and storage solutions, which includes post-combustion capture, compression, subsurface storage and long-term integrity and monitoring. The Mosaic DAC technology can serve a variety of sectors across the energy and industrial value chain, including refining, aviation, shipping, municipalities, steel and cement manufacturing. DAC can work in tandem with emissions controls to lower the aggregate amount of CO2 that is emitted. While emissions capture and improved energy efficiency at industrial sites can reduce current greenhouse gases, DAC can also cut legacy emissions in the atmosphere.
“Joining Baker Hughes provides Mosaic Materials with the means and additional engineering expertise required to scale and commercialize our cost-competitive direct air capture technology,” said Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Mosaic Materials. “We believe our technology can enable more efficient direct air capture versus other DAC offerings. Together with Baker Hughes, we can now embark on accelerating the development of this compact but powerful system.”
Alameda, Calif.-based Mosaic’s metal-organic framework also has ongoing agreements with the U.S. Navy and NASA for its technology to be used to improve breathing air quality within confined spaces such as submarines and space missions. About Baker Hughes
Baker Hughes (NASDAQ: BKR) is an energy technology company that provides solutions for energy and industrial customers worldwide. Built on a century of experience and conducting business in over 120 countries, our innovative technologies and services are taking energy forward – making it safer, cleaner and more efficient for people and the planet. Visit us at bakerhughes.com. About Mosaic Materials
Mosaic Materials is dedicated to reducing the cost and environmental impact of fossil fuels through the application of proprietary, highly efficient gas separation technologies. We utilize porous solids known as metal-organic frameworks to selectively remove impurities such as CO2 from gas mixtures in an array of applications from submarines to power plants. Visit us at mosaicmaterials.com
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded nearly USD5 million to two separate cost-shared projects that aim to study the use of direct air capture (DAC) technology at nuclear power plants. The studies - one led by Constellation at its Byron plant, and the other led by Battelle Memorial Institute at Southern Company's Farley plant - ultimately aim to leverage the plants' carbon-free energy to remove CO2 from ambient air.
Byron's cooling towers could also help sequester atmospheric carbon (Image: Constellation)
Constellation and its project partners have been selected to receive USD2.5 million of DOE funding, with non-DOE funding of USD625,000 for a total of USD3.125 million, to examine the technical and commercial viability of a DAC and sequestration system developed by Carbon Engineering, co-located with the two-unit Byron pressurised water reactor plant in Illinois. Constellation's partners in the project are 1PointFive Inc, Worley Group Inc, Carbon Engineering Ltd, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The study will involve the use of Carbon Engineering's DAC technology, licensed to 1PointFive, within plant operations at Byron and its twin 495-foot-tall (150 metres) hyperbolic cooling towers. A chemical solution would be added to water flowing through the main condenser on the non-nuclear side of the plant. After travelling through the condenser, the water would travel out to the cooling towers, where CO2 in the air will attach itself to the chemical solution and become captured and sequestered.
The project could capture 250,000 tons of CO2 every year, using waste heat from the nuclear power plant to increase the overall energy efficiency of the CO2 removal process. According to DOE, the CO2 captured during the study will be transported by pipeline to an underground geological formation in Illinois for dedicated and permanent storage. However, CO2 sequestered in this way could potentially be used in net-zero-emission industrial processes ranging from creating sustainable aviation fuel to supplying CO2 to the beverage industry, and the study will also focus on the potential for a nuclear plant to become the centre of a carbon capture hub, partnering the DAC technology with storage of CO2.
The collaboration leverages the clean energy expertise at nuclear plants to further advance climate-saving projects, Constellation CEO Joseph Dominguez said. "We need many new solutions to address the climate crisis and exploring this technology at one of our clean energy centres is a positive step driving us toward a carbon-free future," he added.
"A project like this will give nuclear power, which already delivers the most carbon-free electricity of any source in the nation, an even bigger role in helping America accelerate the transition to a carbon-free future," Constellation Chief Nuclear Officer Dave Rhoades said.
The study is expected to conclude in 2023.
The Byron plant had been scheduled for closure for economic reasons in 2021, but Exelon - which has since separated its competitive energy businesses to form Constellation - reversed its decision to retire the plant last September after Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed into law the state's new energy legislation package.
NuDACCS in Alabama
The Battelle-led Nuclear Direct Air Capture with Carbon Storage (NuDACCS) project has been awarded USD2.499 million, with non-DOE funding of USD864,446 for a total value of USD3.364, to conduct a FEED (front-end engineering design) study for the deployment of a technically advanced DAC system developed by AirCapture LLC at Southern Company's Farley pressurised water reactor plant in Alabama. The project will define system costs, performance and business-case options for leveraging available thermal energy from the nuclear plant to separate CO2 from ambient air for off-site geologic storage, in support of eventual system construction.
Battelle will be collaborating in the study with AirCapture, Carbonvert Inc, Sargent & Lundy, Southern Company and the University of Alabama.
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Byron's cooling towers could also help sequester atmospheric carbon (Image: Constellation)