Electricity generation by U.S. state

U.S. states vary radically in terms of electricity generation. 

Vermont is the cleanest, while Delaware is the dirtiest.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The U.S. gets 60 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels, but plans are afoot to drastically reduce that share.

   

• 
  
  How? Look at the energy mix per state. As this map shows, some are way ahead of the curve. Others, not so much.
   

• Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware is America’s worst polluter – if only in relative terms.

SEE MORE Electricity generation by U.S. state - Big Think Energy mix per U.S. state

Our melting planet: James Longman reports from 'extraordinary' Arctic Circle

Sep 28, 2021

EU lawmakers vote to prolong fossil fuel gas subsidies until 2027

Campaigners voice dismay after rule permitting gas pipelines where energy is mixed with hydrogen

The committee also voted to allow natural gas projects, such as pipelines and storage facilities, to be eligible for special status that will speed up their approval.

 Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Tue 28 Sep 2021 

European lawmakers have voted to prolong subsidies for fossil fuel gas until 2027, opening a potential backdoor for pollution that campaigners said would be a disaster for the climate if it becomes law.

Members of the European parliament’s industry committee voted on Tuesday to allow the EU to continue subsidising natural gas pipelines until the end of 2027, as long as the energy is mixed with an unspecified amount of hydrogen.

Hydrogen, which can be made from fossil gas or renewable sources, is seen by policymakers as a vital stepping stone to net zero emissions by 2050.

The committee also voted to allow natural gas projects, such as pipelines and storage facilities, to be eligible for special status that will speed up their approval, although they ruled out access to EU grants for such projects. Campaigners estimate between 50 and 70 natural gas projects could obtain “project of common interest” status, an EU seal of approval that helps plans get off the drawing board, gain access to finance and exemptions from EU competition rules.

The campaign group Global Witness estimates that about 70 gas projects could be eligible, producing 213m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, equivalent to Germany’s coal burning in 2018.

The two controversial amendments to the EU’s trans-European energy infrastructure regulation were approved by MEPs, barely three months after the European Commission said the world was entering “a make or break decade” to tackle the climate crisis. The commission’s original “Ten-E” text proposed sweeping away special status for all natural gas projects as part of the union’s effort to hit net zero emissions by 2050.


EU’s green deal plans launched with ‘make-or-break decade’ warning

In May the International Energy Agency said rich countries should decarbonise electricity generation by 2035, while calling for an immediate stop to the approval of new oil and gas fields.

The European parliament, which elected a record number of green MEPs in 2019, is usually the most ambitious player on the climate emergency in the world of EU law making. On this occasion, however, campaigners were surprised and disappointed when MEPs watered down the original plans, by allowing natural gas companies to continue competing for special status, and opened the door to subsidies for any gas company that claims to be “hydrogen-ready”.

Under the parliament’s compromise on blending, energy companies blending an unspecified mix of fossil gas and hydrogen are eligible for EU subsidies until 2027, as long as they have a plan to drop gas by the end of the decade. Even once EU subsidies are stripped away, the same gas/hydrogen pipelines will be eligible for fast-track approval until the end of 2029.

The MEP position was drafted by Zdzisław Krasnodębski, a member of Poland’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice party, who is vice-chair of the parliament’s industry committee.

He said: “The objective of this revision is to align the Ten-E regulation with the objectives of the European Green Deal. We should also bear in mind, however, that energy union priorities remain valid and should still be reflected in the rules governing the support for important energy infrastructure projects.” In addition to sustainability, he said projects would be evaluated based on their contribution to energy security, market integration and affordability for consumers.

His final compromise was supported by most MEPs in the largest political groups, including the centre-right European People’s party, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew group. Green MEPs abstained.

The parliament will now enter negotiations with EU energy ministers, who left much less room for gas projects when they agreed their negotiating red lines earlier this year.

“Today’s vote would be a disaster for the climate if it ends up being reflected in the final law,” said Tara Connolly, a senior campaigner at Global Witness. “The science is clear: we need to urgently phase out fossil gas to prevent the worst effects of climate breakdown. EU member states must not fall for this giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, and close the loopholes which would allow fossil gas subsidies when negotiations start.”

Erik Bergkvist, a Swedish Social Democrat MEP, involved in the compromise, said it was the best possible agreement. “What would the alternative have been? Of course we could have stepped off negotiations, but then we know we would have had a result that would have been much worse. The main thing that we have been asking for … is an end date for fossil fuel investment. It’s better to have an end date, otherwise there wouldn’t be a phase out.”

He voiced optimism that EU-subsidised fossil fuel gas would only exist in small quantities, when blended with low-CO2 hydrogen. “We have to remember that blending is low-carbon. The main proportion will be renewable hydrogen gas.”

While he acknowledged that the fossil gas/hydrogen mix had yet to be defined – a task for another EU negotiation – he insisted it would be “quite narrow and quite tough on fossil fuels”. The hydrogen/fossil gas blend “cannot be 95% carbon [dioxide]”.

Green campaigners do not share this optimism. They would reserve scarce and expensive renewable hydrogen for industries that are difficult to decarbonise, such as fertilisers. Mixing hydrogen with natural gas was like “mixing champagne with table wine,” said Connolly. “You want to use [hydrogen] where it is most valuable, otherwise you put a huge amount of costs on everyone”.

Energy crunch is 'revenge of old economy': Goldman Sachs

The prices of commodities need to be "much higher to get returns sufficient to start attracting capital," says Goldman Sach's Jeff Currie

Author of the article:

Bloomberg News
Todd Gillespie
Publishing date: Sep 28, 2021 • 

The energy crisis that’s sent natural gas and power prices to record highs is a sign of “revenge” from “under-invested” legacy energy sources like fossil fuels, according to Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

“Poor return saw capital redirected away from the old economy to the new economy,” Currie said in a discussion with Francine Lacqua and Snam Chief Executive Officer Marco Alvera on Bloomberg TV. “It’s not unique to Europe, it’s not unique to energy, it’s a broad-based old-economy problem.”

Gas shortages have exposed vulnerabilities in global energy supply chains in recent months, leaving small U.K. energy companies collapsing in their wake. European energy markets from natural gas to carbon permits reached records on Tuesday, signaling the supply shortage will worsen just as winter starts.

Investment in gas in particular needs to be increased to fend off more volatility during the energy transition, Currie said, dating the origins of the problem to when long-cycle capital expenditure was “shunned” after the 2008 financial crisis.

“In many parts of the world, you’ve overbuilt wind, you’ve overbuilt solar,” he added, pointing to a lack of investment in coal, metals and mining. “The new economy is over-invested and the old economy is starved.”

The prices of commodities need to be “much higher to get returns sufficient to start attracting capital,” Currie said. “People wanted a quick return, and now you’re paying the price for it.”

According to Alvera, Europe needs to increase strategic gas storage capacity to stabilize the global market and to overcome the intermittency of renewable energy sources. He said he expects gas prices to fall quickly during the summer.

“We have a lot of oil storage, a lot of oil inventory, but in the U.K. there’s hardly any gas storage, and in Europe the storage that we have is half-empty,” said the gas-infrastructure CEO.

Alvera, who recently published a book on hydrogen, said the fuel can act as a stabilizing force in energy markets.

“What’s been exposed is that you can have as many wind farms as you want, but if you have no wind then you have an issue,” he added. Hydrogen can be added to the energy mix, he said, because it means you can “absorb electricity when it’s cheap and you can turn it back into electricity when it’s expensive.”

A more orderly transition could come as the cost of renewable resources declines, said Alvera. But the pressures on global commodity prices aren’t going to evaporate anytime soon, according to Currie.

“This is the first inning of a multi-year, potentially decade-long commodity supercycle,” Currie said. “It’s driven by the war on climate change, the war on income inequality. All of these dynamics lead to a structural rise in commodity demand against this whole idea of the revenge of the old economy.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Texas Restricts Fracking Practice Because It Causes So Many Earthquakes

Texas is halting new permits for wastewater injection wells in a swath of the state after a wave of earthquakes were linked to the fracking practice.

By Audrey Carleton
28.9.21

The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) is halting new permits for the injection of wastewater from fracking in a swath of the state after a wave of earthquakes were connected to the practice.

In a release to fossil fuel producers published Friday, the state’s oil and gas regulator said it would no longer be permitting disposal wells around Midland, in the northwest region of Texas, because of earthquakes until further notice. The agency requested that an existing 76 wells reduce their daily injection volumes and ordered that permitted wells that aren’t yet in service refrain from starting injection. The announcement came the same day a 3.3 magnitude quake happened just 36 miles north, E&E News reported Monday.

“​​The Railroad Commission of Texas’ most critical mission is protection of public safety and the environment,” Andrew Keese, spokesperson for the agency, told Motherboard. “The RRC’s Seismologist and staff have been investigating recent earthquakes close to populated areas near Midland and Odessa, and assessed steps that could be taken by oil and gas operators to help mitigate the events.”

Wastewater injection is a common practice for the disposal of brine, which is produced in the fracking process. It involves shooting polluted liquid deep underground into containment zones in porous geological formations, where it is intended to stay indefinitely. That water typically includes a cocktail of chemicals used in the fracking process, which are at risk of leaching into nearby waterways, contaminating groundwater and ecosystems.

The practice is commonplace in the Permian Basin in Texas, the largest oil field in the country (an estimated five trillion liters were disposed of in the region between 1978 and 2016). It’s also well-understood to cause seismic activity. When fluid is injected at such a high pressure so deep (sometimes miles) into the ground, it runs the risk of hitting a fault line, counteracting existing friction between tectonic plates and spurring on a quake. In Oklahoma, also home to ample oil and gas drilling, the state geological survey tied a 900-fold increase in earthquakes between 2008 and 2019 to wastewater injection, a pattern that state seismologist Jake Walter told Scientific American is “unprecedented in human history.”

Known to some as “frackquakes,” the seismic disturbances are a common consequence of wastewater injection that have alarmed residents near the state’s petroleum-producing zones for over a decade.

In 2009 and 2010, researchers at Southern Methodist University linked a string of earthquakes in Cleburne, Texas to the injection of fracking wastewater underground after installing sensors near fault lines and pinpointing injection wells near the epicenter of a number of quakes. The same authors reported the same trend around a wave of earthquakes a few years later, between 2013 and 2014, in Azle, Texas, 50 miles north.

The practice, and the resulting quakes, have long disturbed nearby residents.

“They haven’t had earthquakes around here for 100 years, and to have this happen now — 32 within just the last couple of months — is crazy,” Darla Hobbs, a resident of Azle, Texas told NBC news about the string of earthquakes in her town in 2014. “And it’s not our fault for living here. It’s the gas well industry for drilling, and fracking, and the injection wells.”

As recently as March of 2020, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in west Texas, near the New Mexico border was tied to nearby wastewater injection. Located in an area of “known human-caused seismicity,” the United States Geological Survey reported at the time, it was the largest event recorded in the region in two decades, spanning 5.3 miles and triggering more than 1,000 reports from residents, despite its location in a sparsely-populated area.

The months since have seen another six earthquakes, including Friday’s, hit the area around Midland and Odessa. The RRC said in its release to operators that wastewater injection “likely contributes” to this activity.

 

Beyond Petroleum: The First Supermajor To Turn Its Back On Oil

By Haley Zaremba - Sep 28, 2021, 3:00 PM CDT

• It’s going to take time, investment, infrastructure, and enormous effort to complete the clean energy transition.
• The world still needs hundreds of billions of barrels of oil.
• BP’s bold new Chief Executive Bernard Looney is trying to make sure that BP can beat its peers in a race toward clean energy dominance.

While international policymakers and regulatory bodies have already been applying some degree of pressure on the energy industry to decarbonize for years now, the push for cleaning up the global energy sector’s act has been supercharged by the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) and the United Nations (UN). 

The landmark 6th Assessment Report announced in no uncertain terms that we have reached a point of no return for the climate, having irreversibly altered weather patterns and unequivocally warmed the Earth due to human activity. However, there is still a small window of time to mitigate further damage and change the planet’s trajectory toward catastrophic climate change. This will require decarbonization at a massive scale and on an incredibly short timeline. The UN, not mincing words, has called it a “code red for humanity.”

That being said, it’s simply not feasible for the global economy to quit fossil fuels cold turkey. It’s going to take time, investment, infrastructure, and enormous effort to complete the clean energy transition, and in the meantime, the world still needs hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. This dynamic has made it hard to convince oil supermajors to set aside fossil fuels -- their stalwart cash cow -- when there is still so much money to be made before oil goes quietly into that goodnight, especially when brand new mass-scale clean energy enterprises probably won’t turn a profit for years.

 Despite the bumps in the road, however, it’s clear which way the tide is turning. Fossil fuels aren’t irrelevant yet, but they have no place in the future if this planet is to have one. Already, some oil execs and fossil fuel industry defectors have decided to abandon ship and are positioning themselves at the helm of the clean energy revolution, bringing their oilfield know-how and innovative expertise with them.

And now, at long last, some oil companies are reading the writing on the wall and deciding to bet big on renewables in order to establish a place at the front of the pack for the new energy era. One of the most notable cases is that of BP, which is changing course and liquidating huge portions of its fossil fuel holdings in a historic shift in strategy. 

BP’s bold new Chief Executive Bernard Looney is trying to make sure that BP can beat its peers in a race toward clean energy dominance. “He aims to slash BP's output by 40%, or about 1 million barrels per day, an amount equal to the UK's entire daily output in 2019,” Reuters recently reported. This makes BP the very first major oil company CEO to announce intentional cuts in future oil production. “At the same time,” the report continued, “BP would boost its capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources to 50 gigawatts, a 20-fold increase and equivalent to the power produced by 50 U.S. nuclear plants.” 

This plan will entail the selling off of $25 billion in fossil fuel assets over the next few years, representing about 13% of the company’s total fixed assets. 

While BP is proving to be a trailblazer in the fossil fuel sector’s adaptation to the clean energy revolution, the rest of European Big Oil isn’t too far behind. For the last few years, European supermajors have been pivoting away from total dependence on fossil fuel markets, trying to make the transition from Big Oil to Big Energy. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, it’s a different story. Big Oil in the U.S. has been much slower to accept the inevitable and start to prepare for the coming sea change. 

While the Biden administration has been making a concerted effort to catch up to the rest of the global clean energy industry through the likes of legislation including the historic Infrastructure Bill, it will be hard for companies that have not already started to pivot toward renewables to stay competitive, and could even imperil the energy security of nations that fail to curb their dependence on oil, gas, and coal. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

 

Portuguese Floating Wind Farm Shows Better-Than-Expected Results

Courtesy EDP Renewables

PUBLISHED SEP 27, 2021 10:38 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Portuguese utility EDP Renewables has good news about its WindFloat Atlantic floating offshore wind farm, the first project of its kind with semi-submersible platform bases. In its first full year of operation, WndFloat Atlantic's three turbines produced 75 GWh of electricity, exceeding expectations for the pre-commercial scale development. 

"The project has performed well above expectations. It has registered high levels of availability and a production that has exceeded expectations for many months," said EDPR project director said José Pinheiro. "We wanted to share these positive results of a project that has marked a 'before and after' in the offshore wind energy industry because of the technology used and because it has become the first floating and semi-submersible wind farm in the world." 

EDPR is already exploring options for commercial-scale developments in Portugal and abroad, and it is working through a JV partnership with Engie to bring the system to market. 
WindFloat Atlantic draws on platform technology developed by Principle Power, an engineering startup based in California. Repsol also contributed to the pilot-scale installation. 

Floating offshore wind has a much larger global potential than near-shore, bottom-fixed sites, but also comes at a significant lifetime cost premium. Its proponents hope to bring down the cost of moorings, float structures, and long-term maintenance as the technology matures. 

Principle Power is seeing early success in the budding floating-wind market. Its platforms are also in use at Statkraft's Kincardine wind farm off Scotland, which is the world's largest at a capacity of 50 MW. Kincardine just started operations this month, becoming the second large-scale installation of turbines based on semi-submersible platform. Cobra and Flotation Energy, the firms behind Kincardine, are also among the bidders in Scotland's giant ScotWind lease round. 

Principle Power says that it is learning from each of these projects, finding "important innovations in modularization and manufacturability to further increase deliverability and competitiveness." A third generation of its design will be deployed for the Les Éoliennes Flottantes du Golfe de Lion (EFGL) project off Leucate, France. 

Climate activist Nakate seeks immediate action in Glasgow

By CHARLENE PELE

1 of 9

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, right, speaks at the start of a three-day Youth for Climate summit in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021. Sitting at left is Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)


MILAN (AP) — Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said Wednesday that youth delegates meeting in Milan want to see immediate action from leaders at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland — not cheap, last-ditch grasps at supporting polluting fuels before getting down to business.

Nakate is among 400 activists invited to Italy’s financial capital for a three-day Youth4Climate meeting that will draft a document for the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, which opens on Oct. 31.

“If leaders and governments are going to talk about net zeroes or cutting emissions, halving emissions by 2030 or 2040 or 2050, that means it has to start now,″ Nakate told The Associated Press.

”It doesn’t mean, if we are going to do it by 2030, between now and 2030 let’s open a coal power plant, you know, let’s frack some gas, or let us construct an oil pipeline. That is not the real climate action that we want,″ she said. “”If you are to go net zero by 2030, it has to start now.″

Although the activists have traveled to Milan from 180 countries, Nakate said many have the feeling that their suggestions for the closing document that will be published Thursday are not welcome. She said the dynamic was “concerning.”

“It really feels like everything has been decided for us,″ Nakate, a 24-year-old with a degree in business administration. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg similarly accused the organizers on Tuesday of bringing in “cherry-picked” delegates and pretending to listen.

But she said young people were speaking up, and had created their own working group on fossil fuels.

“Hopefully it’s something they can accept,″ she said.

Nakate gave an emotional opening speech to the gathering on Tuesday, calling out leaders for failing to meet financial pledges and describing the devastating impact of climate change at home in Uganda. While she said she was overwhelmed by the support she has received after her speech, she rejected the media’s tendency to dub leaders of the movement.

“It’s how people portray the climate movement,″ Nakate said. “It is not just one face or two faces. It’s communities. It is people who are organizing in different countries. I think that is the true face of the climate movement. The people who are standing up for the planet and a better future.”

In 2020, Nakate was cropped out of an Associated Press photo at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The AP apologized and acknowledged mistakes in how it initially responded.

Pope Francis on Wednesday praised young environmental activists for challenging global leaders to make good on promises to curb emissions and insisted that political leaders make wise decisions to promote “a culture of responsible sharing.”

Francis thanked the activists for their “dreams and good projects” and encouraged them to form an educational alliance to help “rebuild the fabric” of humanity through care for the planet.

“This vision is capable of challenging the adult world, for it reveals that you are prepared not only for action, but also for patient listening, constructive dialogue and mutual understanding,” he said.

Francis has made care for “our common home” of the Earth a hallmark of his papacy and devoted an entire encyclical to the issue in 2015. The Scottish bishops conference has said it expects Francis to attend the Glasgow climate summit, though the Vatican hasn’t yet confirmed his presence.

“It is time to take wise decisions so that we can make use of the many experiences gained in recent years, in order to make possible a culture of care, a culture of responsible sharing,” Francis said in the message.

___

Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/Climate-change