The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
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Court Delays Clean Power Plan Again
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an order placing litigation on the Clean Power Plan in abeyance for another 60 days. The court also rejected a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) request for indefinite suspension of the litigation and ordered the EPA to provide status updates every 30 days.
The Clean Power Plan, which was finalized in 2015, seeks to regulate emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants. This is the fifth time since April 2017 that the court has issued a temporary stay of the plan—as the Trump administration eyes rolling back or replacing the rule.
Following the order, judges have come forward to say they would no longer vote to keep litigation on the Clean Power Plan on hold.
In the order, the judges—Wilkins, Tatel and Millett—express their reluctance to abide further delays. Judge Tatel, joined by Millett, wrote:
“ … I have reluctantly voted to continue holding this case in abeyance for now. Although I might well join my colleagues in disapproving any future abeyance requests, I write separately only to reiterate what I said nearly a year ago: that the untenable status quo derives in large part from petitioners’ and EPA’s treatment of the Supreme Court’s order staying implementation of the Clean Power Plan pending judicial resolution of petitioners’ legal challenges as indefinite license for the EPA to delay compliance with its obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.”
Study: Methane Leaks from U.S. Oil and Gas Industry Higher Than Thought
A newly released study in the journal Science indicates that, the United States oil and gas industry emits fugitive emissions of methane at a rate of 13 million metric tons per year. The study suggests that methane, a powerful driver of global warming and the main ingredient in natural gas, is 60 percent higher each year than estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“This paper shows that the emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry are a lot higher than what is currently estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Ramón Alvarez, a study author from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). According to EDF, the researchers found that 2.3 percent of total production per year is leaked into the air. EPA estimates a 1.4 percent leak rate.
“The fact is that the magnitude of emissions are so large that it has a material impact on the climate impact of natural gas as a fossil fuel,” he said.
The authors suggest that the discrepancy owes to the way that the U.S. oil and gas industry measures and monitors methane emissions—at known intervals and at specific parts of equipment—without verification of the leak volume at a given facility as a whole. This methodology means that the industry does not count surprise leakage events, which the authors find are relatively common.
According to the study, methane leaks from natural gas facilities have nearly doubled the climate impact of natural gas. The authors suggest that the 13 million metric tons of methane emitted each year by U.S. oil and gas operations is equal to the climate impact of carbon dioxide emissions from all U.S. coal-fired power plants operating in 2015.
The study, which used infrared cameras and involved more than 400 well sites, suggests that methane leaks from operator errors and equipment failures, unless controlled, might lessen the effectiveness of switching to gas from coal as a climate strategy.
Ontario Plans Exit from Carbon Market
Doug Ford, Ontario’s incoming premier, plans to deliver on his campaign promise to scrap Ontario’s cap-and-trade scheme and leave the North American carbon trading program. Ford announced that he intends to block participants in California and Quebec from trading allowances with Ontario entities after he takes office June 29.
The withdrawal from the joint market would leave Ontario out of the next carbon allowance auction, scheduled for Aug. 14. The news has left California, which began holding joint auctions with Ontario and Quebec in February, exploring its options.
“Pulling them out in a formal way is actually going to take a regulatory change,” the head of California’s cap-and-trade program, Rajinder Sahota, said at a California Air Resources Board workshop. Ontario’s involvement in the program expanded the size of the market by about a quarter.
California said it may take steps in its current carbon market rulemaking package to address Ontario’s planned withdrawal.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump revoked much of the National Ocean Policy put in place in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The president cited a need to improve energy security.
“Ocean industries employ millions of Americans and support a strong national economy,” Trump wrote in the new executive order. “Domestic energy production from Federal waters strengthens the Nation’s security and reduces reliance on imported energy … This order maintains and enhances these and other benefits to the Nation through improved public access to marine data and information, efficient interagency coordination on ocean-related matters, and engagement with marine industries, the science and technology community, and other ocean stakeholders.”
The order supports drilling and other industrial uses of the oceans and Great Lakes, in contrast to the 2010 National Ocean Policy, which focused largely on conservation and climate change.
Trump’s list of seven ocean policy priorities includes calling for federal agencies to coordinate on providing “economic, security, and environmental benefits for present and future generations of Americans.” Other listed priorities mention the need to “facilitate the economic growth of coastal communities and promote ocean industries,” “advance ocean science and technology,” and “enhance America’s energy security.”
Antarctic Ice Melting Speeds Up
The most comprehensive study to date of Antarctica’s ice sheets has found sharply accelerating ice loss. The assessment published in the journal Nature, funded by NASA and the European Space Agency and performed by a consortium of academic institutes and government agencies around the world, indicates that the rate of loss of Antarctic ice has tripled in the last five years compared to the last two decades.
Whereas Antarctica was losing ice at a rate of 73 billion metric tons per year a decade ago, it is now losing 219 billion metric tons per year, a rate scientists say could contribute six inches of sea-level rise by 2100.
The scientists involved in the study arrived at their finding by combining data from 24 satellite surveys, which resulted in the creation of a new dataset that could improve future projections of sea-level rise by allowing the ice sheet modeling community to test whether their models can reproduce present-day change.
“Thanks to the satellites our space agencies have launched, we can now track [polar ice sheet] ice losses and global sea level contribution with confidence,” said Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, who co-led the study.
The rapid, recent changes were driven almost exclusively by warm ocean waters that are destabilizing the West Antarctic ice sheet’s largest glaciers from below.
Notably, the researchers concluded that increases in the mass of the East Antarctic ice sheet were not nearly sufficient to make up for the rapid decreases in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula.
Another study published last week in the journal Nature, this one by a team of scientists funded by the National Science Foundation, found that large parts of the East Antarctic ice sheet did not significantly melt millions of years ago, when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were similar to today’s levels. However, the authors cautioned that could change as these concentrations continue to rise above 400 parts per million. They averaged 410 parts per million in April—the highest recorded monthly average.
Draft Report Says World Off Track to Meet 1.5 C Goal
A leaked draft report suggests that human-induced warming would exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius by about 2040 if emissions continue at their present rate, but that countries could keep warming below that level if they made “rapid and far-reaching” changes.
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, set a goal of limiting warming to “well below” a rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times while pursuing efforts to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The final government draft of Global Warming of 1.5ºC, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report, obtained by Reuters and dated June 4, indicates that government pledges are too weak to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal.
The draft report is set for publication in October, after revisions and approval by governments. In a statement, the IPCC said it will not comment on the contents of draft reports, because the work is ongoing.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not circulate next week (June 14). It will return on Thursday, June 21.
Members of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) want to meet with Trump administration officials to discuss the federal government’s specific plans to ease the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE standards.
“CARB has participated in a number of high-level meetings with the White House and federal agencies, but we have not been given any specific proposals to respond to, and so remain concerned that the agencies are departing from the evidence and the law, as well as failing to honor our historic partnership,” wrote Steve Cliff, CARB’s deputy executive officer in a letter printed by ClimateWire. “This matter is of vital importance to public health and the environment, and it is essential that we have an opportunity to meet with OIRA [Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs].”
California has vowed to stick to its own, stricter standards authorized under the Clean Air Act despite plans by the Trump administration to weaken fuel economy and tailpipe emissions standards. On May 1, seventeen states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s revisiting of Obama-era vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards last month.
Although it is reported that the new EPA proposal will outline a series of alternatives to the existing standards, the preferred option seems to be a freeze of fuel economy targets at 2020 levels through 2026. EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration submitted their proposal to the Office of Management and Budget recently. It will undergo review before it is published for public comment.
Closing the Global Energy Financing Gap
The path taken to bring reliable electricity to the more than 2 billion people in the world lacking it has major ramifications for development, global power dynamics and climate change. Government-sponsored development finance institutions are key for delivering energy financing to emerging markets—contributing roughly a third of all investment directly—and playing a critical role in reducing investment risks and mobilizing private capital into the clean energy space.
The U.S. government’s little-known development finance institution, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), remains underutilized and lacks core financial tools and capabilities. Legislation to establish a new fully-equipped institution to promote investment in developing countries continues to move closer to passage in Congress. A new policy brief by my colleagues at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Energy Access Project at Duke University outlines the energy financing gaps in emerging markets and analyzes how the new tools and authorities proposed under Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (BUILD Act) legislation may equip the new U.S. development finance institution to respond to those financing needs.
The stakes are high, as China has made overseas infrastructure investment a centerpiece of its foreign policy. OPIC’s entire investment portfolio across all sectors is currently less than the $25 billion that Chinese policy banks invested in foreign energy projects in 2017 alone. With domestic coal demand on the decline in China, these same government banks are investing an average of $5 billion per year in new overseas coal facilities.
The policy brief finds that a modernized U.S. development finance institution would increase U.S. global influence, open clean energy investment opportunities for U.S. companies in high-growth emerging markets, and provide a more transparent and market-oriented alternative to Chinese government infrastructure financing.
Trump Administration Eyes Coal Bailout
President Donald Trump ordered U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Rick Perry “to prepare immediate steps” to stop the closing of coal and nuclear plants, according to a White House statement.
“Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix, and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
A leaked plan, published by E&E News, calls for the creation of a “strategic electric generation reserve” to promote national defense and maximize domestic energy supplies. It also requests the direct purchases of electricity or capacity from a list of specific coal and nuclear plants over a period of 24 months.
The leaked memo invokes DOE’s emergency powers under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, as well as an obscure provision in the Defense Production Act of 1950, enabling the Department to require the performance of private contracts “in preference to other contracts” in order to “promote the national defense.”
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
