UK
Leaked documents reveal devious secret scheme designed to keep utility costs high: ‘[It’s a lot] more expensive’

Rick Kazmer

Tue, August 22, 2023 

Lobbyists in the UK’s energy sector say that rules pushing for more heat pumps are a pipe dream.

The Guardian, reporting on leaked documents the newspaper reviewed, wrote that gas boiler industry officials are working to halt rules that would quicken the installation of efficient heat pumps as early as next year.

They’d like the measure to be delayed until 2026, while also pushing for hydrogen alternatives, according to the report.

What’s happening? 

The proposed rules would require that, starting in 2024, makers of dirty-energy-burning furnaces need to install more heat pumps as part of a quota system. Fines would be levied for failure.

The UK’s Energy and Utilities Alliance claimed that the rules are unrealistic and that potential fines could be burdensome at hundreds of millions of pounds (or dollars), all per The Guardian.

“The central proposal that boiler manufacturers are able to dictate the products homeowners install in their homes is flawed,” the Alliance wrote in a document cited by The Guardian.

The report said the Alliance (a nonprofit trade association working toward a “sustainable, energy secure” future) is touting hydrogen as an alternative to gas. Hydrogen supporters claimed the transition would be easier to pull off than moving to heat pumps, as gas boilers could be refitted.

Critics in The Guardian report counter that hydrogen is “unsuitable” for home heating.

“[H]eating with hydrogen is a lot less efficient and more expensive than alternatives such as heat pumps, district heating and solar thermal,” Jan Rosenow, Europe’s director at the Regulatory Assistance Project think tank, told The Guardian.

For the Alliance’s part, chief executive Mike Foster sees a future with a variety of systems.

“I am clear that three [technologies] will be needed: heat pumps, distributed heat networks, and hydrogen for home heating,” he told The Guardian.

Why is it important? 

Heat pumps are an efficient way to both heat and cool homes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that, on average, heat pumps use about half the energy of other electric heat sources. The U.S. Department of Energy lists the pumps as an “energy-saving” alternative to furnaces and air conditioners in “all climates.”

Other sources claim the pumps are up to four times more efficient than furnaces. Laws mandating heat pumps in new construction are starting to be passed in the U.S., as well.

International consensus on their use would be a boon in the effort for more efficient and planet-friendly home heating and cooling.

How to be heat-pump efficient 

Keep an eye out for government rebates, which can be worth thousands of dollars for heat pump upgrades. Companies, including Airbnb, have offered incentives to hosts who install the energy-efficient tech.

Before buying a new furnace, research the cleaner alternatives. Twenty minutes of online reading could save you money for decades.

Unpaid workers, silent sites: China's property woes hit Country Garden

Tue, August 22, 2023 

By Laurie Chen

TIANJIN, China (Reuters) - At an unfinished Country Garden residential complex on the outskirts of the northern Chinese metropolis of Tianjin, construction has slowed to a dull whirr and a few idle workers roam a near-empty site.

"They haven't paid us since Chinese New Year (in January). We are all worried," said a labourer surnamed Wang, 50, who said he had stopped work at the Yunhe Shangyuan site last week.

The sprawling complex is one of two projects Reuters visited on Friday in Tianjin, a port city of 14 million people about 135 km (84 miles) southeast of Beijing. Both sites are run by Country Garden, China's largest developer by sales volume before this year, now mired in a debt crisis threatening to spill over to the wider economy.


Construction had partially or fully stopped at both sites - the larger one with a few rows of unfinished five-storey apartment blocks and the other with lifeless cranes and thick green scaffolding hanging over skeletal high-rises. Workers at dorms on the sites complained of months without pay.

"I'm under a lot of pressure," said a worker at the Yunhe Shangyuan site surnamed Wei, also in his 50s, who added that he had only received a one-off living stipend of 4,500 yuan ($618) so far this year.

"I have a wife and kid who's about to return to school, as well as elderly parents ... Workers can't live on this."

Once considered one of the more financially sound developers, Country Garden is now a bellwether of how the cycle has turned for developers.

Its financial woes have added to the debt crisis in China's real estate sector, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the world's second-largest economy, currently losing steam amid a housing slump and weak consumer spending.

A representative of Country Garden's Yunhe Shangyuan project said in a Wechat statement its "registered employees" were all being paid.

At the Yunjing Huating site, the government in June ordered construction to be suspended to fix management problems, a project representative told Reuters in a separate statement. It has since passed inspection and work is expected to resume next week, the person said, adding the suspension would have no impact on the targeted completion date of October 2024.

Some workers are not employed directly by the developer, the Yunjing Huating representative said, but by its contractor, which "has promised to pay the workers' wages by the end of this month".

The project contractor, Shenyang Tengyue Construction, did not pick up calls from Reuters or respond to emails seeking comment.

The housing ministry did not comment on Reuters queries about halting of construction in the property sector in general or Country Garden in particular.

UNFINISHED HOMES

Country Garden has nearly 1 million homes to complete, according to estimates from Japanese investment bank Nomura. It has not publicly acknowledged whether any of its projects have halted construction due to financial constraints.

In an exchange filing on Aug. 10, Country Garden said it would "spare no effort to ensure delivery" of apartments and that it would "ensure the operation of projects nationwide" to fulfill its commitment to home buyers.

Country Garden built its success by quickly selling a large number of units for low margins and by promising "five-star living" in less popular, smaller cities.

Tianjin has about a dozen Country Garden projects, with the majority finished and delivered, said Gao Fei, investment advisory manager at the Tianjin branch of Centaline Property Agency.

Gao said halted construction projects were "relatively rare" in the city, representing about a dozen out of 300 sites for sale, but "there are indeed projects whose development progress has slowed down".

"In China, it is a common phenomenon because now all developers control the rhythm of construction based on the sales rate ... so once sales slow down, so will construction," Gao told Reuters.

Confidence in the sector took a big hit last year after many Chinese homebuyers threatened to stop repaying mortgages, as developers stopped building pre-sold housing projects due to strapped liquidity and strict COVID-19 restrictions.

China's real estate market slightly rebounded in the first quarter of 2023 but transaction volumes have since declined, with the majority of city housing markets remaining in a "depressed" state, said Gao.

"We have seen that many home buyers are affected by a lack of income, and their home buying choices and what they can afford have been impacted in turn."

(Reporting by Laurie Chen in Tianjin; Additional reporting by Clare Jim in Hong Kong; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Sonali Paul)

Feds approve offshore wind farm south of Rhode Island and Martha's Vineyard

STEVE LeBLANC
Tue, August 22, 2023 

FILE - Three wind turbines from Deepwater Wind stand in the water off Block Island, R.I, the nation's first offshore wind farm, Aug. 15, 2016. Another planned offshore wind farm, by Revolution Wind, moved a step closer to construction on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023, with the Department of the Interior announcing it has approved the project, to be located in federal waters about 15 miles southeast of Point Judith, R.I, and south of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. 

(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File) 

A planned offshore wind farm moved a step closer to construction Tuesday with the Department of the Interior announcing it has approved the project, to be located in federal waters near Rhode Island south of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

The Revolution Wind project will have an estimated capacity of more than 700 megawatts of renewable energy, capable of powering nearly 250,000 homes, and is expected to create about 1,200 jobs during construction, regulators said.

It's the department's fourth approval of a commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project, joining the Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts, the South Fork Wind project off Rhode Island and New York, and the Ocean Wind 1 project off New Jersey.

The Revolution Wind project is another step toward the Biden administration's goal of developing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030, said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

"Together with industry, labor and partners from coast to coast, we are building an entirely new industry off the east and west and Gulf coasts,” Haaland said in a statement.

The final version of the plan approved by the department calls for installing fewer turbines than originally proposed by the developer. The goal is to help reduce impacts to visual resources, the ocean floor habitat, and other ocean activities.

The plan identifies possible locations for the installation of 65 wind turbines and two offshore substations.

Revolution Wind will create a fund to compensate for losses by recreational and commercial fisheries in Rhode Island and Massachusetts — as well as fisheries from other states — directly related to the construction of the turbines.

The project will also take steps to reduce potential harm to protected species like marine mammals, sea turtles, and Atlantic sturgeon.

The Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management remains on track to complete reviews of at least 16 offshore wind project plans by 2025, representing more than 27 gigawatts of clean energy, the bureau said.

Vineyard Wind, a separate project, is under construction 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. It includes 62 turbines and is expected to put out 800 megawatts, enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes, beginning this year.

The first U.S. offshore wind farm opened off Rhode Island’s Block Island in late 2016. But with five turbines, it’s not commercial scale.

Equinor inaugurates world's largest floating wind power farm in Norway

Tue, August 22, 2023

By Nora Buli

OSLO, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Norwegian energy firm Equinor and its partners will inaugurate the world's largest floating offshore wind power farm on Wednesday, whose output will supply nearby oil and gas platforms and cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

The Hywind Tampen wind farm, where Equinor is partnering with other oil firms including OMV, Vaar Energi - majority-owned by ENI - started producing power in November last year, with full output reached earlier this month.

Its 88 megawatts of capacity will cover around 35% of annual power demand for five platforms at the Snorre and Gullfaks oil and gas fields in the North Sea, about 140 kms (87 miles) off Norway's west coast.

This will cut CO2 emissions from the fields by about 200,000 tonnes per year, Equinor has said. That is 0.4% of Norway's total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2022.

Some environmentalists say the move is positive as it helps bring down the country's CO2 emissions, while others say Norway should instead stop producing oil and gas.

Hywind Tampen comprises 11 wind turbines fixed to a floating base that is anchored to the seafloor, rather than fixed to the ocean bed, a new technology industry experts say is suitable for use in deeper waters offshore and that Equinor hopes to develop further.

Norway, which is targeting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2040, which would double the country's current power output, is tendering its first commercial wind farms, including three floating ones, this autumn.

Equinor's other parners on the project are Wintershall Dea, majority-owned by BASF, INPEX Idemitsu and Norway's Petoro.

($1 = 10.5859 Norwegian crowns) (Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Gwladys Fouche and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

UPS workers approve 5-year contract, capping contentious negotiations that threatened deliveries

HALELUYA HADERO and MATT OTT
Updated Tue, August 22, 2023 


 UPS Teamsters and workers hold a rally in downtown Los Angeles, as a national strike deadline nears on July 19, 2023. The union representing 340,000 UPS workers said Tuesday, Aug. 22, that its members voted to approve the tentative contract agreement reached last month, putting a final seal on contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide. 

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

The union representing 340,000 UPS workers said Tuesday that its members voted to approve the tentative contract agreement reached last month, putting a final seal on contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.

The Teamsters said in a statement that 86% of the votes casts were in favor of ratifying the national contract. They also said it was passed by the highest vote for a contract in the history of the Teamsters at UPS.

The union said more than 40 supplemental agreements were also ratified, except for one that covers roughly 170 members in Florida. The national master agreement will go into effect as soon as that supplement is renegotiated and ratified, it said.

UPS said voting results for deals covering employees under two locals are expected soon.

“Our members just ratified the most lucrative agreement the Teamsters have ever negotiated at UPS," Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. "This contract will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers.”

He said the contract set a new standard for pay and benefits.

“This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” O'Brien said, giving a nod to the union's growing ambitions to take on the e-commerce behemoth.

Voting on the new five-year contract began Aug. 3 and concluded Tuesday.

After negotiations broke down in early July, Atlanta-based UPS reached a tentative contract agreement with the Teamsters just days before an Aug. 1 deadline. It came as large and small businesses were working on contingency plans in the event of a strike, which would have spiked shipping prices and scrambled supply chains.

Earlier this month, the delivery company reported its revenue fell for the second quarter as package volume declined amid negotiations with the union. The shipping industry has also been impacted by unpredictable consumer spending.

The company, which has lowered its full-year revenue expectations by $4 billion, had said it expected bargaining to restart if members rejected the deal. But that outcome could have also opened the door to a strike with the potential to cause widespread disruption.

Under the tentative agreement, full- and part-time union workers will get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more in total by the end of the five-year contract. Starting hourly pay for part-time employees also got bumped up to $21, but some workers said that fell short of their expectations.

UPS says that by the end of the new contract, the average UPS full-time driver will make about $170,000 annually in pay and benefits. It’s not clear how much of that figure benefits account for.

As part of the deal, the delivery company also agreed to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a full holiday, end forced overtime on drivers’ days off and stop using driver-facing cameras in cabs, among a host of other issues. It eliminated a two-tier wage system for drivers and tentative deals on safety issues were also reached, including equipping more trucks with air conditioning.

Union members, angered by a contract they say union leadership forced on them five years ago, argued in the lead up to the deal that they have shouldered the more than 140% profit growth at UPS as the pandemic increased delivery demand. Unionized workers said they wanted to fix what they saw as a bad contract.

The Teamsters’ leadership was upended two years ago with the election of O’Brien, a vocal critic of union President James Hoffa — son of the famed Teamsters firebrand — who signed off on the previous contract in 2018.

The 24 million packages UPS ships daily amount to about a quarter of all U.S. parcel volume, according to the global shipping and logistics firm Pitney Bowes. UPS says that’s equivalent to about 6% of the nation’s gross domestic product.

This isn’t the first showdown the union has had with the delivery company. During the last breakdown in labor talks a quarter of a century ago, 185,000 UPS workers walked out for 15 days, crippling the company’s ability to function.

A walkout this time would have had much further-reaching implications, with millions of Americans now accustomed to online shopping and speedy delivery. The consulting firm Anderson Economic Group estimated a 10-day UPS strike could have cost the U.S. economy more than $7 billion and triggered “significant and lasting harm” to the business and workers.

Labor experts say they see the showdown as a demonstration of labor power at a time of low U.S. union membership. This summer, Hollywood actors and screenwriters have been picketing over pay issues. United Auto Workers are considering a potential strike.

“Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers,” Carol Tomé, UPS CEO, said when the tentative deal was announced.

Industry groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labor leaders and President Joe Biden also applauded the deal.

In session reacting to school shooting, Tennessee GOP lawmaker orders removal of public from hearing

PARENTS OF SHOOTING VICTIMS

JONATHAN MATTISE and KIMBERLEE KRUESI

Tue, August 22, 2023

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Families close to a Nashville fatal school shooting broke down in tears Tuesday after a Tennessee Republican leader ordered state troopers to remove them and others from a legislative hearing room while they waited to testify in favor of gun control measures.

The emotional scene was just one of several chaotic moments that erupted during the second day of Tennessee’s special legislative session. Republican Gov. Bill Lee initially called lawmakers back to the Capitol to consider his proposal to keep firearms away from dangerous people.

“I was supposed to speak, I was supposed to testify,” said Sarah Shoop Neumann, sobbing and shaking in front of the silent GOP-controlled House subcommittee room, which was cleared out after some clapping from the public gallery, even though she sat quietly and wasn't holding any signs.

As a parent whose child attends The Covenant School, Neumann is among the family members desperately attempting to address the state's relaxed gun laws after a shooter opened fire inside their school and killed three children and three adults. She was later allowed back to testify against a bill that allows for more teachers to carry guns at school. The House subcommittee advanced the bill, though its odds appear longer in the Senate.

“We’re just trying to do something,” Neumann later told reporters, as other Covenant parents huddled around her. “It’s overwhelming.”

However, Lee's bill has been all but defeated by the Republican supermajority, where legislative leaders have largely refused to consider the issue. Without any debate, three variations of similar proposals for so-called extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs, carried by Democratic Rep. Bob Freeman of Nashville, immediately failed Tuesday in the same House subcommittee where the public was kicked out.

On the first day of the special session on Monday, House Republicans advanced a new set of procedural rules that carried harsh penalties for lawmakers deemed too disruptive or distracting, and banned visitors from carrying signs inside the Capitol and in legislative hearing rooms. The Senate and House also signed off on severely limiting the public from accessing the galleries where people have traditionally been allowed to watch their government in action.

The actions come after the Tennessee Republicans attracted national attention for expelling two young Black Democratic lawmakers earlier this year for breaking House rules during a demonstration in support of gun control. Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson have since been reinstated to their positions, but the actions sent shock waves about the Republican supermajority's ability to hand down strict punishments to opponents.

Yet protestors on Tuesday found ways to defy the new sign ban, showing up to the House chamber with pro-gun control messages written on their bodies and clothes. Others wrote out messages on their phones and held them up for lawmakers to see.

That defiance faced a harsher response as lawmakers broke out into committee rooms to begin debating legislation.

Allison Polidor, a gun control advocate from Nashville, was escorted out of a hearing room because she was holding a sign that said, “1 KID ALL THE GUNS.”

“I wasn’t saying anything. I wasn’t doing anything. I was holding up a sign,” Polidor told reporters outside the room.

Rep. Lowell Russell, the Republican subcommittee chairman, had also warned that he could order everyone out of the room.

Shortly after, another Republican lawmaker said his bill was stalled that would let people with handgun carry permits bring guns onto K-12 and college school property if they know the school doesn’t have armed security. That announcement sparked some gun control advocates in the crowd to break out in applause.

“Are we going to quiet down and listen, or are we going to sit there and clap?” Russell said.

When some kept clapping, Russell said, “Alright, troopers, let’s go ahead and clear the room.”

Members of the media were allowed to stay, and some members of the public who were testifying on legislation were allowed in.

“We gave them three or four times to not do outbursts in the committee hearing, and unfortunately they continued after three, maybe four warnings,” Russell told The Associated Press afterward. “So unfortunately, that’s just the way it goes, if they don’t follow the rules.”

After the public was kicked out, Neumann was allowed to return to testify against the bill that allows for more armed teachers. She said the Covenant teachers’ hands were shaking so badly that day while trying to keep the children quiet, safe, hidden and secure that they couldn’t have handled a firearm.

“They are heroes. They enacted every protocol in place perfectly,” Neumann said. “And they could not have done those things if they were also meant to be armed and go out and attack the shooter.”

A woman watches the House Civil Justice Subcommittee meeting on a monitor in the hall after the audience was removed by the Republican chairman during a special session of the state legislature on public safety Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. 

(AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Some states reject federal money to find and replace dangerous lead pipes

MICHAEL PHILLIS
Tue, August 22, 2023 




A Denver Water crew works to replace a lead water service line installed in 1927 with a new copper one at a private home on June 17, 2021, in Denver. As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead water pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds.

Washington, Oregon, Maine and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available, The Associated Press found. Some states are less prepared to pay for lead removal projects because, in many cases, the lead must first be found, experts said. And communities are hesitant to take out loans to search for their lead pipes.

States shouldn't “shrug their shoulders” and pass up funds, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.

“It's troubling that a state would decide to take a complete pass on the funding because part of the reason for the funding is to figure out whether you even have lead," Olson said.

The Biden administration wants to remove all 9.2 million lead pipes carrying water to U.S. homes. Lead can lower IQ and create behavioral problems in children. The 2021 infrastructure law provides $15 billion to find and replace them. That money will help a lot, but it isn’t enough to get all the toxic pipes out of the ground. State programs distribute the federal funds to utilities.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is reviewing state requests to decline funds but did not provide a full list of states that have said no so far. That information will be available in October, officials said. States that declined first-year funds can still accept them during the remaining four years.

“EPA has been working closely with our state partners on utilizing Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding that is available,” the agency said.

Lead pipes are far more common in some states such as Michigan and Illinois, which each have hundreds of thousands. The harm there is clear. Flint’s lead crisis elevated lead in tap water to a national health issue. Residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, drank water with too much lead for years until all their lead pipes were replaced. In response, however, Michigan is clamoring for as much money as it can get to remove lead.

The states that declined funds have fewer problematic pipes, but that doesn’t mean lead isn’t an issue. There’s concern about lead in some Maine schools. Portland, Oregon, has struggled with high lead levels for years, although recent tests have been better and officials say the issue isn’t lead pipes, but household plumbing.

Washington accepted $85,000 of $63 million it could have taken and said the decision was based on the limited number of water systems that wanted loans. The EPA estimates the state has 22,000 lead pipes. Oregon, which could have accepted $37 million, said inventories are going to be done with existing staff and resources, adding that utilities have no known lead lines. The EPA projected that the state has 3,530 lead pipes — a relatively small number — based in part on information collected from utilities.

The location of many lead pipes is a mystery. The EPA is requiring communities to provide initial inventories of their lead pipes by October 2024. Maine, which banned lead pipes far earlier than most states, said other funds would be used for inventories and they didn’t have lead replacement projects ready to fund. Most states that rejected funding initially indicated they would probably ask for money in later years.

To access the grants, there also needs to be demand for loans but utilities are hesitant to seek them out, according to Deirdre Finn, executive director of the Council of Infrastructure Financing Authorities, a group that represents the federally funded state programs that distribute infrastructure funds.

“This is a great opportunity,” Finn said. “But it would be helpful if states and utilities had access to 100% grant funding to move these projects along.”

Federal funds can only go to replacement projects that remove the entire lead pipe. Lead pipes run from the water main in the street to homes, but the ownership of the pipe is often split between the utility and homeowner. Some cities replace just the portion they own — a harmful practice that spikes lead levels — and paying to replace the homeowner's side is often a problem. Grants can help utilities pay to replace the homeowner's side, Finn said.

The EPA offered early funds based on a state's general drinking water infrastructure needs — not the number of lead pipes. The EPA later developed estimates of each state's lead pipes to inform how future years of funding should be distributed. Therefore, some states were offered more early money than they can spend.

In May, for example, Alaska told the EPA it wanted just $6.8 million of the $28 million it was entitled to receive. Carrie Bohan, facilities program manager in the division of water at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, said utilities' demand for loans to inventory their systems for lead pipes is “very, very small.” But over five years, there will be plenty of federal funds available to find the small number of lead pipes in Alaska and replace them.

Money that’s not used will be redistributed to other states that need it.

“I think it’s a potential disservice to other states if we were to apply for the full amount knowing that we couldn’t make use of it,” Bohan said.

But just figuring out how to distribute the money based on need is difficult. In April, the EPA's lead pipe estimate surprised some experts by predicting that Florida had 1.16 million, the most of any state.

The higher estimate meant Florida would get more funds, but the state objected, arguing its utilities would find far more lead in the tap water if it really had that many lead pipes.

“Once these lead line surveys are completed, it is expected that the actual extent of facilities with lead service lines documented in Florida will be significantly less than what was estimated by the EPA,” said Brian Miller, a spokesperson with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Biden administration spending $150M to help small forest owners benefit from selling carbon credits

RUSS BYNUM
Tue, August 22, 2023

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks to a conference of Black forestland owners in Brunswick, Ga., on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. Vilsack announced a new Biden administration program that will spend $150 million to help owners of small parcels of forestland partner with companies willing to pay them for carbon offsets and other environmental credits. 

(AP Photo/Russ Bynum) 

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday it will spend $150 million to help owners of small parcels of forestland partner with companies willing to pay them for carbon offsets and other environmental credits.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the grant program at a conference of Black landowners in coastal Georgia, saying programs that allow private companies to offset their own emissions by paying to protect trees have disproportionately benefited owners of large acreage.

“In order for those small, privately held forest owners to be able to do what they need and want to do requires a bit of technical help," Vilsack told about 150 conference attendees in a church ballroom in Brunswick. "And sometimes that technical help is not easy to find. And it’s certainly not easy to afford.”

The grant money comes from the sweeping climate law passed by Congress just over a year ago and targets underserved landowners, including military veterans and new farmers, as well as families owning 2,500 acres (1,011 hectares) or less.

The goal is to protect more tracts of U.S. forest to help fight climate change. The past decade has seen a rapidly expanding market in which companies pay landowners to grow or conserve trees, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere, to counterbalance their own carbon emissions.

For owners of smaller family tracts, selling carbon offsets or other credits would give them an alternative income to harvesting their timber or selling their property to a developer.

Companies are pouring billions of dollars into environmental credits, but small landowners face daunting barriers to eligibility, said Rita Hite, president and CEO of the American Forest Foundation. To participate, owners need to take an inventory of their forested property, have a land management plan and run models to calculate the land's carbon value.

“Previously, if you didn’t have 5,000 acres or more, you weren’t participating in these markets," Hite said. "Not only are there technical hurdles, but also financing hurdles.”

The American Forest Foundation and the Nature Conservancy launched a joint program four years ago that covers many of the costs for family land owners to sell carbon offsets for their land.

Those groups and other nonprofits will be eligible to apply for grants of up to $25 million to provide direct help to landowners under the Biden administration's program. So will state forestry agencies, university agricultural extension services and others The money could pay professionals to help owners develop land management plans or to connect them with with project managers who serve as middlemen between owners and companies seeking environmental credits.

The grants were welcomed by John Littles, a leader of the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network hosting the Georgia conference. The group represents 1,600 Black landowners across eight Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

“Most of the time, we're left out — more specifically people of color,” Littles said. “We're not afforded the opportunity to help design the programs, so the programs are mainly now designed for large landholdings and large acreage.”

Littles said his network plans to apply for a grant under the new program. But he's not sure how much demand there will be from landowners. He said that will largely depend on whether owners of smaller acreages can get enough money from conservation credits.

“I think it's still early to tell," Littles said. “But it has to be a benefit for the landowners."

Hite of the American Forest Foundation said landowners with small acreage shouldn't expect big profits from selling environmental credits. She said owners enrolled in the group's Family Forest Carbon Program earn on average about $10 per acre in a year.

“Is this going to matter for a 30-acre landowner? It’s not going to make them rich,” Hite said. “But it will probably pay the taxes.”

Research finds reducing consumption of just one food item would be like taking 8 million cars off the road: ‘It would make a really big difference’

Jeremiah Budin
Tue, August 22, 2023 


According to a new study undertaken by an Oxford University professor, if the biggest meat eaters in the United Kingdom were to switch to low-meat diets, the environmental impact would be equivalent to eight million cars being taken off the road.

Professor Peter Scarborough and his research team surveyed 55,000 people with varying diets and analyzed the results in depth, accounting for all the myriad impacts that the production of different foods have on the environment, including land use, water use, water pollution, and loss of species.

Their findings were that meat eaters had the highest environmental impact in every case.

The study found that someone with a high-meat diet accounted for about 22.58 pounds worth of carbon dioxide production per day, while someone with a low-meat diet would account for about 11.84 pounds worth. A vegan would account for about 5.45 pounds on average.

The study’s findings do not say that everyone has to become a vegetarian or vegan in order to save the planet, but rather that simply reducing thea mount of meat people eat would be a huge benefit.

”Our results show that if everyone in the UK who is a big meat-eater reduced the amount of meat they ate, it would make a really big difference,” Professor Scarborough told the BBC. “You don’t need to completely eradicate meat from your diet.”

The adverse environmental impacts of the meat industry are not news — a growing body of scientific research has documented how harmful it is. Animal farming contributes a huge amount of planet-warming gases to the atmosphere relative to plant farming, while also using up and also polluting a huge amount of water.

However, another study has found that although people are aware that meat impacts the environment, they are largely under-informed about the extent of the problem. In reality, livestock farming accounts for 14.5% of the heat-trapping gases produced by humans worldwide, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

NASA scientist issues grim warning 35 years after his original prediction: ‘[W]e knew it was coming’

Stephen Proctor
Tue, August 22, 2023 


James Hansen, who was a NASA climate scientist when he first warned the world that the planet was heating in 1988, is back with another stark warning — this time hoping for different results.

When Hansen appeared before the United States Senate in June of 1988, the world had just experienced the warmest first five months of any year in recorded history, The New York Times reported at the time.

Up until that time, scientists had been cautious about blaming the warming of the planet on pollutants put into the air by human activity. But Hansen told the committee that NASA was 99% certain that the warming trend was caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere.

Sadly, the problem has continuously gotten worse worldwide in the decades since. And Hansen has continued his fight to bring attention to the issue. In 2011, he was one of 140 people to be arrested while protesting the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

In a recent statement released by Hansen alongside two other scientists, Hansen predicted the warming of the planet to accelerate in the coming years, musing about a “new climate frontier.”

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen told The Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality — we knew it was coming.”

Speaking of the heat waves that have ravaged much of the Northern Hemisphere recently, Hansen told The Guardian he cannot help but feel “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response.”

Of the lack of response by humanity as a whole, Hansen added, “It means we are damned fools. We have to taste it to believe it.”

Though it’s been 35 years since Hansen first warned the world in Senate testimony about what we’re now seeing with our own eyes, there is reason for optimism.

The move away from dirty energy is kicking into high gear. Sales of electric cars continue to rise, with an expected growth of 35% from 2022 to 2023, electric boats with solar-powered charging stations are now available, and grassroots efforts to make renewable energy more widely available are underway.

ICELAND

Vet profited from 'cruel' exploding whale harpoons

James Crisp
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Iceland, Japan and Norway are the only countries where commercial whaling remains legal

 - Icelandic photo agency/Alamy Stock Photo

A vet who advised Iceland on whaling helped to design a “cruel” explosive harpoon used to hunt and kill the animals.

For more than 20 years, Egil Ole Øen, a whaling expert and adviser to the Icelandic government, profited from his patent on the weapons, which are meant to cut the time whales take to die.

The grenades on the explosive harpoons are packed with penthrite and need to detonate either in the thorax, thoracic spine, neck or brain to guarantee a quick death.

But in June, Iceland temporarily banned whaling after a report said the annual killing of fin whales was taking too long and broke animal welfare laws. The ban is set to expire on August 31.

The report by the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority, which prompted the ban, documented some whales taking hours to die and having to be shot several times in last year’s season, which runs annually from June to September.

During last year’s hunt, 148 fin whales were killed.

Egil Ole Øen said he was not paid very much for the harpoon patent and denied he was in a conflict of interest - Nammco

Fin whales, which can live to 110 years and are classified as vulnerable, are the second largest creature on the planet after blue whales and are nearly 80ft when fully grown.

“Many of the whales killed in Icelandic hunts are pregnant – so you are killing the next generation,” said Danny Groves, the head of communications at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, which wants the ban made permanent.

“If the device does not explode, the harpoon cannon usually has to be reloaded for another shot. This takes about eight minutes and significantly prolongs a whale’s torment. Often it is far longer than eight minutes and can take hours.”

The method of killing is “never going to be welfare friendly”, he added, before raising concerns over Mr Ole Øen’s involvement in the practice.

“There is an ethical question here,” he said. “Having a consultant vet profiting from a cruel practice is not a good look.”

Questions have also been raised over whether frozen fin whale meat can still be exported to Japan legally because of the suspected breach of those laws.

Vet ‘proud’ of patent

Mr Ole Øen, who is also an adviser to Hvals, Iceland’s last remaining whaling company, said he was not paid very much for the patent and denied he was in a conflict of interest.

At its peak, it was less than about £2,000 a year, which he said he spent on travel expenses to attend conferences on whaling, which is still legal in Iceland, Norway and Japan.

He told The Telegraph: “The patent has nothing to do with harpoons. It is a safety that prevents from accidental fire. It has never been a secret that I have been the inventor and have shared the patent with the engineer that built it. I am proud of that it probably helped to save lives.”

He also told Iceland’s Heimildin newspaper, which reported he also trained harpoon shooters: “I know very well that there are many people who want to attack me because of my work and research on whaling.”