McCarthy: Clean Power Plan Targets May Change

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

The EPA Administrator this week, suggested (subscription) that interim goals for existing power plants to comply with the agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan could be softened before the rule is finalized this summer.

The proposal unveiled last year calls for a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 and sets state-by-state emissions targets, beginning as early as 2020. Regulators and electric utilities have complained that a lack of time could destabilize electric supplies. According to the News and World Report, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy stated that changes to the 2020 date are “very, very much on the table.”

“While states can craft their own glide path, we want to make sure they hit the targets that we need and they’re going to be effective strategies,” McCarthy told an audience at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners winter meeting. “We clearly need to make sure there is trajectory towards a goal that is as far away as 2030 and that there is an ability to ensure that states are actively working and on a trajectory to achieve that final goal.”

New Climate Agreement Draft Long on Diversity of Views, Short on Resolutions

“86 pages, 54,000 words, 1,234 square brackets here’s official draft of #Paris2015”—that’s how Sebastian Duyck, an Arctic Centre researcher and observer at last week’s climate talks in Geneva summarized the proceedings’ output on social media. The draft negotiated in Lima last November more than doubled in size, and the number of words, phrases, and sentences not agreed by all countries—the brackets referred to in Duyck’s tweet—also increased, but although the new draft became more complex—not simpler as planned—it represents progress to some participants.

“Although it has become longer, countries are now fully aware of each other’s positions,” said Christiana Figueres, the head of the United Nations climate change secretariat.

“After years of false starts and broken promises, restoring ownership and trust in the process is no small achievement. And I think we have come a long way toward doing that,” said Ahmed Sareer, a Maldives delegate who represents an alliance of island nations.

Among the new draft’s significantly varying proposals for checking climate change are a zero net greenhouse gas emissions goal by 2050 and a peaking of emissions “as soon as possible.”

In new text, developed countries, including the United States, emphasized the need for all countries to contribute to emissions reductions efforts, and developing countries asked for financial help to deal with climate change.

The international agreement, to be reached in Paris in December, is supposed to go into effect in 2020. The next critical date is June in Bonn, where all countries are to announce their emissions reductions plans.

Experts Debate Economic, Carbon Impacts of Biomass Conversion to Electricity

Last November, the EPA issued a policy memo that appeared to promote the harvest of forests to produce power by treating bioenergy as a carbon-free energy source. But there are a couple of problems with that strategy, reports the New York Times. It ignores the opportunity cost of dedicating land to bioenergy rather than to other purposes, potentially imperiling food supplies and ecosystems—and, according to a recent World Resources Institute report, energy from forests and fields is not carbon neutral.

In a Feb. 9 letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy that decries the new power plant policy, 78 scientists said, “Burning biomass instead of fossil fuels does not reduce the carbon emitted by power plants.” In fact, “Burning biomass, such as trees, that would otherwise continue to absorb and store carbon comes at the expense of reduced carbon storage.”

In a Feb. 11 letter to McCarthy, six environmental Massachusetts-based environmental groups also opposed the policy, stating, “We are pleased that EPA is moving forward with the Clean Power Plan. However, we write to express our deep concern at EPA’s apparent decision to treat biomass power as carbon neutral for the purposes of EPA’s Clean Power Plan and Prevention of Significant Deterioration permitting.” They added that the decision “contradicts sound science and promotes burning forest wood for electric power production, which is exactly the wrong direction for our county’s renewable energy policy.”

But a just-published report in the journal Nature Climate Change argues that deploying bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) could produce a net reduction in atmospheric carbon—with up to a 145 percent emissions cut from 1990 levels. Moreover, according to energy expert and study coauthor Daniel Kammen, BECCS may be one of the few cost-effective carbon-negative opportunities available to mitigate the worst effects of climate change and could be critical should that change be worse than anticipated or should emissions reductions in non-energy sectors prove difficult to realize.

On the basis of analysis of various fuel scenarios using a detailed model of the American West power grid developed at the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, the University of California–Berkeley report predicts that biomass conversion to electricity combined with prospective carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies could result in a carbon-negative power grid in the western United States by 2050.

“There are a lot of commercial uncertainties about carbon capture and sequestration technologies,” admitted the study leader, Daniel Sanchez. “Nevertheless, we’re taking this technology and showing that in the Western United States 35 years from now, BECCS doesn’t merely let you reduce emissions by 80 percent – the current 2050 goal in California—but gets the power system to negative carbon emissions: you store more carbon than you create.”

These latest contributions add to and continue what has been several years of debate (subscription) on the possible benefits and drawbacks of biomass energy and how best to quantify the ultimate impact of its use.

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.

Obama Could Unveil Climate Strategy with Clean Air Act Tie Soon

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

The Obama administration could soon make an announcement detailing plans to address climate change, even in the face of continuing political barriers to progress on the issue. Unnamed administration officials pointed to July for the rollout, while an Administration aide was more vague.

“In the coming weeks and months, you can expect to hear more from the president on this issue,” White House environment and energy adviser Heather Zichal said at an environmental forum June 11. Though timing and details are still in flux, Zichal said the plan will expand on the administration’s efforts to permit more renewable energy on public land and to promote energy efficiency. A central part of the administration’s approach to deal with climate change, Zichal noted, would be to use the authority given to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address greenhouse gases from power plants under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA missed an April deadline to release final rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants under the act and has shared no details about its plan for the rules since. Speculation about the public release of a climate strategy did delay the filing of a lawsuit against the EPA for that missed deadline; filers pledged to “wait to see” if Obama releases a plan in the coming weeks.

If the plan includes final rules for new fossil fuel-fired power plants, known as the new source performance standard, those rules will prompt a Clean Air Act provision—section 111 (d)—requiring the EPA and state governments to regulate greenhouse gases from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants. The White House has signaled that new rules securing reductions from existing power plants are likely to be part of its strategy. A new report by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy outlines some of the key considerations that are likely to arise if energy efficiency is included as an option for states needing to secure reductions from existing sources. It explores how incorporation of energy efficiency into past state air quality programs can inform federal and state environmental regulators as they evaluate these section 111(d) issues.

A second analysis by the Nicholas Institute identifies how potential regulatory tools under the Clean Air Act—beyond the greenhouse gas rules—could accelerate development and deployment of potentially game-changing clean air and energy technologies to reduce emissions in the nation’s key industrial sectors.

Holding Pattern Continues for McCarthy

The timing of Obama’s climate plan could complicate the nomination of Gina McCarthy, Obama’s pick to replace former administrator Lisa Jackson as head of the EPA. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced last month that McCarthy’s nomination would be delayed until July.

The Senate Environment and Public Works panel backed McCarthy a month ago in a party line vote. The nomination remains in a holding pattern as a result of continued opposition by Republicans and urgings to release data the EPA uses to design air pollution regulations.

U.S. Tax Code Has Minimal Effect on Carbon Dioxide, Other GHG Emissions

Current federal tax provisions have minimal net effect on greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report from the National Academies of Science. The report, which evaluates how key elements of the current tax code affect the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, finds that several existing tax subsidies have unexpected effects, and others yield little reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of revenue loss (subscription).

Climate Commitment Renewed at G8 Summit

While the crisis in Syria and the economic downturn pushed climate change out of the spotlight at the G8 Summit, it was highlighted in a communiqué released following the close of the talks. G8 leaders dedicated a page to climate change—noting that it is “one of the foremost challenges for our future economic growth and well-being.”

The statement acknowledges “grave concern” the leaders have regarding failure to make deep emissions cuts and includes support for UNFCCC’s efforts to deliver a new global treaty to curb greenhouse gases in 2015 with a more ambitious framework than is currently in place.

“We remain strongly committed to addressing the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2020 and to pursue our low-carbon path afterwards, with a view to doing our part to limit effectively the increase in global temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, consistent with science,” the statement reads. “We also note with grave concern the gap between current country pledges and what is needed, and will work towards increasing mitigation ambition in the period to 2020.”

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.

With Oklahoma Tornado, Questions Swirl about Climate Change Link

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Hours after a powerful tornado tore through an Oklahoma suburb, killing dozens, some renewed speculation about such storms’ connection to climate change. In recent years, researchers have been working to assess what causes these storms and whether manmade global warming could be affecting them.

Plain geography is a factor. Moore, Oklahoma, is in the middle of what is known as Tornado Alley—an area where cold, dry air from Canada and the Rockies meets warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to create the unstable conditions that cause tornados. Although, generally, researchers agree that climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme weather events, they cannot say for sure whether there is a connection between climate change and tornadoes.

“The short answer is, we have no idea,” said Michael Wehner, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, noting he’s studying the issue and is optimistic about achieving a more definitive answer. “The reason I’m optimistic that we can get somewhere on this is that supercomputing technology is driving this very hard. We’re just getting into the sweet spot for these kinds of issues, with the largest mainframes that money can buy.”

Studies, the Houston Chronicle cites, indicate no evidence at this time to link tornado activity to climate change. According to the National Weather Service, tornadoes aren’t getting more frequent, but more accounts of these storms are being made available for public consumption.

Vote Expedites Northern Leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline

The House approved legislation Wednesday to expedite construction of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline’s northern leg by eliminating the need for a presidential permit and requiring no additional environmental studies. The vote was largely symbolic, U.S. News and World Report wrote, noting that experts say it has virtually no chance of surviving a Senate vote. The White House has also threatened to veto the bill, claiming it “prevents thorough consideration of the complex issues that could have serious security, safety, environmental, and other ramifications.”

So far, the Canadian government has nearly doubled spending—reaching $16.5 million—to promote the pipeline. But it seems Americans are more aware of climate change than the Keystone XL pipeline project, according to a new poll (subscription) by Yale and George Mason universities.

Moniz Vows to Review LNG Export Data, Energy Efficiency in New Role

In his first official speech after being sworn in as Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz indicated he plans to delay any final decisions on applications to export liquefied natural gas until he reviews data showing what impact exports would have on domestic supplies and prices. The boom in domestic production of the resource has lowered prices and stirred debate regarding exports. Moniz doesn’t plan to order new studies right now. Rather, he’ll review what is already out there—including a study commissioned in 2012 by the Department of Energy.

He saw efficiency as a vital part of meeting the country’s climate and energy challenges, noting he plans to advance a large bipartisan energy efficiency bill moving through Congress.

“Efficiency is going to be a big focus as we go forward,” Moniz said. “I just don’t see the solutions to our biggest energy and environmental challenges without a very big demand-side response. That’s why it’s important to move this way, way up in our priorities.”

Meanwhile, Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama’s pick to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has waited longer than any other nominee for U.S. Senate confirmation—more than 20 days longer than Michael Leavitt in 2003.

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.

Arctic Experiencing More Than Just Melt

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Carbon dioxide emissions are soaking into Arctic waters and affecting the chemistry of the ocean, a new report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program shows. Increasing carbon dioxide emissions and freshwater runoff challenge the ocean’s ability to neutralize acidification—an imbalance caused by absorption of the greenhouse gas from the air. The study said the Arctic’s cold water makes it more vulnerable to absorbing carbon dioxide, lowering pH levels and thereby increasing acidity.

“We have already passed critical thresholds,” said Richard Bellerby, report chairman. “Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years.”

In fact, the average acidity of surface ocean waters is now roughly 30 percent higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. This month, experts predict carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to reach 400 parts per million for a sustained period of time—40 percent more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than before that revolution began. Among the report’s other key findings: Arctic marine ecosystems are highly likely to undergo significant change, acidification may contribute to the alteration of fish species, acidity is not uniform across the Arctic, and acidity rise is the result of an uptake in carbon dioxide emissions from human activities.

Negotiating Climate Policy

Nations gathering for the week-long climate talks in Bonn, Germany, moved closer to solidifying details for a 2015 international climate agreement that would take effect in 2020. Although there were no breakthroughs in bridging the divide between the U.S. and China, participants began to lay the groundwork for progress at November’s climate summit in Poland. More specifically, a U.S. proposal to move away from a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and let countries draft their own emissions reduction plans gained support at the meeting. The current level of pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is far too low, says U.N. Climate Change Secretariat Christiana Figueres. “The challenge for the 2015 agreement is precisely to bridge the gap,” Figueres said. “The process is not on track with respect to the demands of science.”

In the European Union, politicians announced plans for a “rescue attempt” centered on the union’s carbon trading system, which is designed to provide incentives to industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union Parliament rejected a proposal to backload the auctioning of credits within the system last month, a plan that would have removed a surplus of emissions permits from the system dubbed the world’s largest carbon market. A second vote determining whether to withhold carbon permits from the oversupplied market to address the current imbalance is expected by July.

Obama’s Energy and Environment Team Takes Shape

With Ernest Moniz—a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor—now confirmed as the Energy Secretary, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works was scheduled to vote on whether U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nominee Gina McCarthy would get her turn in front of the full Senate. All eight Republican lawmakers on the committee boycotted the hearing on the vote today, contending that McCarthy hasn’t answered several questions fully. At least two Republicans were needed to move ahead with a vote, according to committee rules.

“As you know, all Republicans on our EPW committee have asked EPA to honor five very reasonable and basic requests in conjunction with the nomination of Gina McCarthy, which focus on openness and transparency,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “While you have allowed EPA adequate time to fully respond before any mark-up on the nomination, EPA has stonewalled on four of the five categories. Because of this, no Republican member of the committee will attend [Thursday]’s mark-up if it is held.” Chairwoman Boxer vowed to move McCarthy’s nomination through the committee, even if it required her to change the committee rules to remove the requirement for Republican attendance for a quorum.

Meanwhile, recently confirmed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made her first appearance, since winning confirmation last month, to defend the department’s proposed fiscal 2014 budget.

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.