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PM ACC 1/1/2015
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What We Won and What We Didn’t in 2015
Jan 1, 2016 | Care2
By Diane MacEachern
As 2015 comes to a close, what environmental gains did we make, and what still needs to get done in the year ahead? -
Obama’s Climate Agenda on Trial
Jan 1, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A slate of major environmental rules rolled out by the Obama administration in 2015 will face serious challenges in the new year, as opponents look to beat back the president’s ambitious policies — a core piece of his legacy. -
2016: What to Look for in Energy and Climate
Jan 1, 2016 | Climate Central
By Bobby Magill
2016 will kick off with a sense of optimism about climate change after the success of the Paris climate talks in December. -
Solar is In, Biomass Energy is Out—and Farmers are Struggling to Dispose of Woody Waste
Jan 1, 2016 | Los Angeles Times
By Geoffrey Mohan
It should have been a good year for turning wood and waste into electrons. A record-setting drought forced growers to bulldoze thousands of acres of trees, and hardly anyone in the Central Valley has permission to light bonfires anymore. -
California Climate Year In Review: A Tale Of Tremendous Progress
Jan 1, 2016 | National Resources Defense Council
By Alex Jackson
Were Charles Dickens to survey the 2015 California climate and energy landscape this holiday season, he might conclude it was the best of times: California passed the most aggressive clean energy targets in the world, established the most ambitious...
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What We Won and What We Didn’t in 2015
Jan 1, 2016 | Care2
By Diane MacEachern
As 2015 comes to a close, what environmental gains did we make, and what still needs to get done in the year ahead?
What Didn’t Get Done?
* Protect the coastal plain of America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge provides habitat for polar bears, musk oxen, Arctic foxes and hundreds of species of birds. It’s also where the Porcupine Caribou go to birth their young. These wild lands have been in the sights of the oil industry for years, but thus far, the efforts of Alaska Wilderness League and many other environmental groups have helped keep oil drilling on the coastal plain at bay. President Obama has recommended that the region be designated as wilderness, which ensure it stays off limits to industrial development permanently. The next session of Congress should make that happen.Love This? Never Miss Anoth
* Pass strong legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – Given the tens of thousands of unregulated chemicals that are loose in the environment, strengthening the Toxic Substances Control Act is of paramount importance. The Senate did pass a reform bill as 2015 was coming to a close. However, as Andy Igrjas of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families notes here, it did not go nearly far enough. On the plus side, the legislation lets EPA order companies to test a chemical, rather than go through a formal (and long) rulemaking process. It also helps protect many existing state laws, including those that are stronger than the federal law. On the other hand, it makes it harder for EPA to intercept a dangerous chemical when it enters the country as part of an imported product. It also prevents states from taking new actions against toxic chemicals if EPA is also assessing them, a measure that could delay needed health interventions for years. The House has already passed its own version of TSCA reform. The next step will be to mesh the two bills and come up with final legislation that hopefully is stronger than either the House or the Senate version. Read a more thorough analysis of the issue at SaferChemicals.org.
* Prevent mass animal extinction - The killing of Cecil the Lion in July 2015 spawned international outrage and helped highlight the threats animals worldwide face, not just from hunting, but from issues like overdevelopment and climate change as well. Fifty Democrats in the House of Representatives have asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the lion as an endangered species, which would limit trophy hunting. But, that may be too little, too late. The Center for Biological Diversity reports that natural extinction rates are about one to five species per year. Now, “scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times” that rate, “with literally dozens going extinct every day,” a crisis caused almost entirely by humans. An astonishing “99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of exotic species, and global warming.”
* Improve food safety – As 2015 comes to a close, Chipotle Restaurants are still under scrutiny for the E.coli outbreaks that have sickened over 50 people in their restaurants. But that’s just the tip of the food poisoned iceberg. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that “One in six Americans will get sick from foodborne diseases.” “That amounts to nearly 50 million people, resulting in approximately 128,000 hospitalizations, and, tragically, 3,000 deaths,” says Consumer Reports. The Food Safety Modernization Act was passed to create a safer, healthier food supply. But, Congress hasn’t funded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with nearly enough money to implement the Act. Organizations ranging from the American Public Health Association to the Center for Science in the Public Interest to the Trust for America’s Health continue to urge both the House and the Senate to boost funding so FDA can “build the systems it needs to implement the law” and make our food supply truly safe.
What Did Get Done?
* Get international agreement to stop climate change – In a feat no one expected would happen, leaders of nearly 200 countries went to Paris and left with a plan in place to try to bring climate change to a halt. While most people agree that the plan doesn’t go far enough, and others criticize its mostly voluntary measures, it still cannot be denied that climate change finally became an international priority that many countries, including the United States, acknowledge they can no longer ignore.
* Cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline – After years of pressure from focused and motivated activists, President Obama finally canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline would have transported dirty tar sands oil from Canada across the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico for oil refining. Activists argued that the oil should stay in the ground rather than be burned as a way to combat climate change as well as air pollution. (This Care2 article highlights 5 ways the pipeline could make people sick.)
* Ban plastic microbeads – This is a big one! Pres. Obama signed into law a bill that will phase out plastic microbeads in face wash, toothpaste and shampoo. Manufacturing of these products must cease by July 1, 2017, and all sales of products on the shelf that contain the plastic pellets must end by July 1, 2018. The ban came after increasing research showed thatmicro-plastic does not biodegrade and is building up in the ocean at alarming rates. It followed the passage of a similar law in California.
* Convince furniture companies to ban the use of fire retardants – Furniture manufacturers have long treated their furniture with toxic flame retardant chemicals. The Natural Resources Defense Council called it a “stupid use of a chemical: they are ineffective in preventing furniture fires and are linked to serious health effects.” In 2015, Ashley Furniture, the largest manufacturer and retailer of furniture in the country, bowed to consumer demand and said it would ban toxic flame retardant chemicals in all of their furniture. Ethan Allen, Restoration Hardware and Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams have all said their furiture is free of toxic flame retardants. Crate and Barrel, Room & Board, and Williams-Sonoma, which includes Pottery Barn and West Elm, say they have mostly eliminated the chemicals from their products. IKEA and Wal-Mart have told their vendors to stop adding flame retardants to their furniture as well.
* Protect whales from military vessels – The U.S. Navy has had a deafening, blinding impact on whales – literally. Naval vessels use intense, high-volume and far-ranging sound waves to detect submarines and other objects beneath the earth’s surface. Because whales and dolphins “see” with their ears, the noise disrupts the ability of these animals to reproduce and thrive. In one documented case, 17 whales beached themselves and died, an action that was attributed to mid-frequency sonar emitted by the Navy. Happily, a federal court agreement reached between the Natural Resources Defense Council and the U.S. Navy will force the Navy to silence its sonar in areas around Southern California and Hawaii during certain periods of the year when marine mammal populations are most vulnerable. The agreement runs until the end of 2018, reports NRDC’s onearth.org, when the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service will issue neCecil environmental impact statements and authorizations regarding military exercises in sensitive water.
Activists, of course, made the difference in just about all of these victories, reports Moms Clean Air Force, who credits their Naptime Activism program for making it easy to sign petitions to elected officials. And, of course, all of the petitions circulated across Care2.com helped, as well.
For more good news about the Earth, stop by Grist.org.
What do you consider a major environmental victory for 2015? And what tops your agenda for 2016? Please share!
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Obama’s Climate Agenda on Trial
Jan 1, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A slate of major environmental rules rolled out by the Obama administration in 2015 will face serious challenges in the new year, as opponents look to beat back the president’s ambitious policies — a core piece of his legacy.
In the lead-up to the landmark Paris climate talks in December — an event that yielded a first-of-its-kind global agreement to cut carbon emissions — the Obama administration released a series of sweeping new environmental rules, each garnering both condemnation and deep-pocketed opposition from interest looking to torpedo the regulations in 2016.
As Obama enters the final year of his presidency, much of his focus on environmental issues will be implementing and preserving the work he’s already done. If 2015 was the year he pushed his environmental agenda forward, 2016 could be the year he looks to preserve it.
Here are some of the biggest regulations Obama finalized or proposed last year, and how they’ll be litigated in 2016.
Clean Power Plan
The most notable environmental rule issued in 2015 was the climate rule for power plants, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation designed to cut carbon emissions from the power sector.
The rule is the centerpiece of Obama’s climate change agenda, and the biggest promise he took with him to the United Nations climate talks. It’s designed to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
Environmentalists hailed the rule, but it has met with scorching opposition from Republicans, commodity groups, businesses and utilities. Opponents have argued that, while the rule will cut carbon emissions, it will do so at the expense of jobs and American energy bills, which could go up as states shift to cleaner energy mixes.
Dozens of opponents sued against the rule the day in October that it hit the Federal Register, arguing the EPA went beyond its legal authority in assigning states carbon reduction targets.
“EPA’s rule is flatly illegal and one of the most aggressive executive branch power grabs we’ve seen in a long time,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said. “The EPA cannot do what it intends to do legally.”
The EPA defended the rule as one with “strong scientific and legal foundations” and has sought to protect it from the lawsuits. Opponents want federal judges to issue a stay on the rule and, with legal filings on the matter due on Dec. 23, the first judicial skirmish over the rule is set for early 2016.
Clean Water Rule
A federal court dealt a blow to another EPA rule in 2015 when it blocked implementation of a new rule setting regulatory authority over small waterways.
The so-called “Waters of the United States” rule looks to clarify which streams, wetlands and other smaller waterways the federal government has regulatory authority over.
But opponents of the rule — Republicans, red states and the agriculture industry among them — argue the rule is overly-broad and an unjust expansion of federal power. They sued against the regulation, and two federal courts issued separate injunctions against it in 2015, ruling that opponents have a strong case and could win when their challenges move forward.
The EPA and Army Corps. of Engineers have maintained that the rule is legal and plans to fight the lawsuits against it. The stay didn’t overturn the rule: the courts need to go through the process of making a full ruling on it, and the appeals process could eventually bring the water rule to the Supreme Court.
Ozone
When the Obama administration finalized a new standard for acceptable concentrations of surface-level ozone particles, neither industrial groups nor public health and environmental coalitions were pleased.
Businesses and manufacturers sued over the new 70-parts-per-billion standard in December, arguing that the new standard would be hard to implement and lead to billions of dollars in compliance costs.
“The EPA’s ozone regulation, which could be one of the most expensive in history, is unworkable and overly burdensome for manufacturers and America’s job creators," said Linda Kelly, the senior vice president and general counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers.
Greens and health officials defended the EPA’s ability to issue the new rule, which came out in October. But they filed lawsuits of their own, arguing regulators should have finalized a standard even stricter than the one they landed on.
“This standard leaves kids, seniors and asthmatics without the protection doctors say they need from this dangerous pollutant,” Earthjustice attorney David Baron said. “The EPA has a duty to set standards that assure our air is safe to breathe. We say they violated that duty here.”
Even before the ozone rule was released, both sides said they expected to sue over the final standard, citing their dueling lawsuits against the EPA the last time it updated the rule, in 2008.
Neither side succeeded then, and the rule stood.
Beyond legal challenges, the power plant, water and ozone rules could all face challenges from congressional Republicans, as well.
While legislative measures stopping the rules are dead with Obama in office, Republicans showed last year that they were willing to try using the appropriations process to block them anyway.
Key Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have said they plan to exhaust their legislative options for blocking the regulations even with Obama in office. But McConnell acknowledged in October that lawmakers’ hands are likely tied for now, despite passing a since-vetoed Congressional Review Act resolution against the power plan.
“Our options to stop [the Clean Power Plan] are quite limited,” McConnell said then. “We do have the possibility of a CRA. The weakness of that, obviously, is that even though we can pass it through here with a simple majority, [Obama is] likely to veto it.”
Methane emissions
The Obama administration led off 2015 promising to take action on methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling sites.
The EPA proposed rules in August to require drillers use new technologies to track and block accidental and purposeful leaks when producing and transmitting oil and gas. The proposal kicked up a potential fight with the gas industry.
Greens have said a strong methane rule is one of the last major climate initiatives Obama can effectively push through during his final term in office. Methane has about 25 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide, and a push to cut down on leaks will compliment Obama’s work on carbon emissions elsewhere, they say.
Drillers, though, are skeptical of the rule, saying they are already taking steps to cut methane leaks on their own. They support EPA’s opt-in programs for cutting methane emissions, but warn that actual regulations could “undermine American competitiveness” in the oil and gas sector.
“EPA’s proposal for additional methane regulations on oil and gas wells and transmission are duplicative and costly,” Howard Feldman, the senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, said in December. “They could also undermine the progress our industry has made lowering greenhouse gas emissions.”
Republicans, too, have opposed new methane rules, with House Natural Resources Committee chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) calling the proposal “another unprecedented attack” on oil and gas interests.
The agency hopes to finalize the rule by the spring. -
2016: What to Look for in Energy and Climate
Jan 1, 2016 | Climate Central
By Bobby Magill
2016 will kick off with a sense of optimism about climate change after the success of the Paris climate talks in December. In the U.S., that may mean more enthusiasm for commitments to renewables and other lower-carbon energy sources as low oil prices make the future of fossil fuels production in the U.S. and Canada less certain. 2016 stands to be critical for greenhouse gas emissions cuts in the U.S. as the country finds ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet its long-term climate pledge made in 2015.
These are four key energy and climate issues to watch in 2016:
New Commitments to Renewables
Some cities and states, especially on the West Coast and in the Northeast, could join the small but growing list of those making a commitment to obtain 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources in the coming decades.
In 2015, Hawaii became the first state to pass a law making such a commitment. That law requires the state to get all of its electricity from renewables by 2045. In December, San Diego became the largest city in the country to make that commitment, requiring all of the city’s power to come from renewables by 2035.
Others have made less ambitious commitments, but no less significant. A law passed in California requires the state to obtain 50 percent of its electricity from renewables, excluding hydropower. New York City and San Francisco have also pledged to increase their use of renewables, and smaller cities, such as Burlington, Vt., have already gone 100 percent renewable, mainly through the use of large amounts of hydropower.
The coming year is likely to bring other commitments, the biggest of which is in New York. State law now requires the Empire State to obtain 30 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2015. In December, Gov. Andrew Cuomodirected a state agency to go even further by developing a new standard that would require New York to obtain half of its electricity from renewables by 2030, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent. The new standard is required to be finalized in June.
Rippling Effect of Oil Prices
2016 is being rung in amid a long-term crash in oil prices that is having global economic and climate implications, and the stories of its ripple effects will generate headlines well into the new year.
Global crude oil prices fell off a cliff in the summer of 2014, and by the end of 2015, the price of U.S.-produced oil had fallen from more than $90 per barrel to between $35 and $40 per barrel. Those prices knocked the wind out of the fracking boom that had overtaken much of the U.S. in North Dakota, Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and other oil and gas producing states. That boom turned the U.S. into the world’s leading crude oil producer.
The fallout of the oil bust is wide-ranging with serious climate consequences, good and bad. Low oil prices brought low gasoline prices, which encouraged Americans to drive more. That led to a 2.4 percent increase in gasoline consumption in 2015 over the previous year, likely leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well. As wells drilled during the fracking boom continue to produce abundant natural gas, natural gas prices have also fallen,hastening utilities’ transition from polluting coal-fired power plants to possibly more climate-friendly natural gas-fired power plants.
The oil price crash also took a toll on Canadian tar sands, which represent the world’s third-largest oil reserve. Tar sands are more carbon-laden and energy intensive to produce than most other forms of crude oil, exacerbating climate change in the process. The oil price crash has cost more than 35,000 tar sands jobs in Alberta, and tar sands producers are operating at extremely thin margins.
With oil prices expected to remain low for a while, 2016 could be the year the Canadian oil sands producers prove they can operate at an adequate profit and weather both low oil prices and international pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or continue shrinking.
Emissions Growth
Stagnant growth in carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels could become a trend in 2016. Or not.
Growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels halted in 2015 partly because of the global boom in renewable energy — a big deal for the climate because until recently, economic growth and carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels rose and fell together. If the stagnation becomes a trend in 2016, it could prove that the global economy can boom without relying on fossil fuels and that countries can begin to prosper while slashing emissions to slow climate change.
Scientists have warned, however, that the emissions growth stagnation could just be a short-term anomaly and that emissions could start rising again as fossil fuel use in developing countries — especially India — continues to rise unabated.
The marriage of emissions growth and economic growth ended in 2014, as global emissions growth grew only slightly, flatlining for the first time in 40 years. In December, a Stanford University study suggested emissions growth halted oreven declined in 2015, foreshadowing an eventual peak in global carbon emissions in a decade or two.
One of the biggest challenges is finding a way for India to curb its emissions. India is seeing a rapid growth in emissions, unlike China, the U.S. and the European Union, which are seeing emissions declines, Rob Jackson, the lead author of the Stanford study and a professor of Earth system science there, said. “India’s emissions are now exactly what China’s were in 1990. India has the challenge of producing more energy and yet not just being able to rely on coal to do it.”
The Post-Keystone Climate Fight
The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline was killed by the Obama administration primarily because of the possible climate effects of both the pipeline and the tar sands it would carry. With the Keystone XL fight over, activists and scientists who had fought against the pipeline are turning to other fronts in their battle against greenhouse gas emissions.
One of those in 2016 may be oil and gas leasing and development on energy-rich federally controlled public lands, mainly in the West, which represent 28 percent of the total land area of the U.S. If all the fossil fuels on public lands in America are burned, their carbon emissions would represent up to half of all the potential greenhouse gas emissions that would come from burning all the remaining fossil fuels on U.S. soil, according to a report by Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity.
In September, a group of scientists and activists, part of the Keep It in the Ground Coalition, sent a letter to the Obama administration, urging it to halt all new federal fossil fuels leasing and development on public lands.
Though the administration is unlikely to do that anytime soon, the message may be having an effect. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management postponed until 2016 a November oil and gas lease sale for 37,580 acres of public lands near national parks in Utah because of a “high level of public interest,” BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall said.
In December, the BLM postponed until March another oil and gas lease sale for Arkansas and Michigan because of pressure from climate activists.
It’s far from clear how much traction this movement might get in 2016, but Obama himself may have lent some credence to the movement to keep federal minerals in the ground in his speech announcing the denial of the Keystone XL permit: “Ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”
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Solar is In, Biomass Energy is Out—and Farmers are Struggling to Dispose of Woody Waste
Jan 1, 2016 | Los Angeles Times
By Geoffrey Mohan
It should have been a good year for turning wood and waste into electrons.
A record-setting drought forced growers to bulldoze thousands of acres of trees, and hardly anyone in the Central Valley has permission to light bonfires anymore.
But more than trees have withered in California's sun. The state's biomass energy plants are folding in rapid succession, unable to compete with heavily subsidized solar farms, many of which have sprouted up amid the fields and orchards of the San Joaquin Valley.
Paul Parreira is painfully aware of the irony. The third-generation grower and almond processor is running out of dirt roads where he can spread ground-up almond shells, even as he expands a one-megawatt solar array on six acres of his family's property in Los Banos.
The waste-to-energy facilities where Parreira used to send about 50,000 tons of shells per year are vanishing. Six have closed in just two years, the latest in Delano, which shut down Thursday, after San Diego Gas & Electric ended its power purchase agreement. Twenty-five people were laid off, and 19 will remain to complete closure of the plant, said Dennis Serpa, fuels manager of the 50-megawatt plant, owned and operated by Covanta.
The Rio Bravo biomass facility south of Fresno is taking some of the fuel that would have gone to Delano. But short of a miracle, the 25-megawatt plant run by IHI Power Services Corp. will burn its last wood chips in July, when its power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. expires.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, meanwhile, is locked in a dispute with the 18-megawatt Buena Vista biomass facility in Ione, and has threatened to terminate its contract, according to district spokesman Christopher Capra.
The closures have forced the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to consider allowing more agricultural waste to be burned in open piles, which produces particulate matter and ozone-forming compounds associated with cardiovascular illnesses.
Air quality already is notoriously bad throughout the district — four of the five dirtiest metropolitan areas, based on ozone and particulate measures, are in the valley, according to the American Lung Assn. Based only on measures of particulate matter, the Fresno-Madera area was the worst in the nation, followed by Bakersfield, Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, and Modesto-Merced.
A policy change on open burning would require extensive public hearings. But the district may have little choice.
"Do not underestimate the fact that state law requires that if farmers do not have an economically feasible alternative, the district is prohibited from banning the open burning of those materials," Executive Director Seyed Sadredin cautioned the district's governing board at its November monthly meeting. "We have 11 farmers right now that are risking the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars if they do not find a way to dispose of that material."
No one expects a wholesale return to bonfires wafting smoke across the Central Valley. But without the revenue from selling farm waste to the biomass plants, the costs of clearing agricultural debris are expected to skyrocket.
"It's going to triple the cost to farmers," said Frank Sanchez, who owns a tree-grinding service that is one of the top customers at Rio Bravo. "They're going to be paying about $1,000 to $1,200 an acre just to do the same work that you were doing before for about $300 an acre."
Sanchez pared his profit margin to zero in October, hoping to keep his clients until the market improves. If it doesn't, he'll lay off as many as 30 workers from his Wasco-based company.
Tejon Ranch, one of his clients, knocked down 160 acres of almond trees in 2015. But the debris will stay on the farm. "For 160 acres, you're looking at 200 or so truckloads," said Trey Irwin, vice president of agriculture for Tejon, a conservancy that has a strict no-burn policy. "It's pretty hard to find a home for 200 truckloads."See the most-read stories this hour >>
Some growers have begun experimenting with a more advanced farm-scale technology, but it could be a decade or more before those can be scaled up, industry experts say.
"The new technology is just not developed yet to the scale that we are," said Rick Spurlock, general manager of the Rio Bravo Fresno plant. "We are a utility-scaled plant. We're handling 200,000 tons of fuel. It would take 25 of those facilities to equal one of these facilities.
"But problem is, that future is 10 to 15 years away and the problem we have is today." The experimental plants burn about 100 pounds of hulls per hour, while the largest biomass plants can handle a ton per hour.
Meanwhile, the incentives to switch to solar are strong. Parreira broke ground on his one-megawatt plant five years ago, when he could get a subsidized rate of 15 cents a kilowatt-hour.
"I'm here to tell you, there was a whole bunch of welfare that went along with that deal," Parreira said. But, he added, "You can certainly argue that biomass had its day in the sun, 20 years ago, when it had its subsidies."
Biomass-to-electricity plants — essentially hyper-efficient wood furnaces linked to steam turbines — owe their existence to federal alternative-energy mandates enacted on the heels of the 1970s energy crisis. In the 1980s, more than 60 biomass plants in California turned 10 million tons of woody waste into about 2% of the state's electricity, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. By the turn of the century, the industry already had contracted by more than a third, amid deregulation of California's grid, according to the lab.
By 2011, California's biomass industry faced a cliff. Its long-term contracts and a key subsidy paid by ratepayers were about to expire. New purchase agreements would be tied more closely to the cost of natural gas, and those prices were plummeting.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. renegotiated purchase agreements with Rio Bravo and another facility in Mendota, along with three others in Northern California. The utility agreed to pay a higher rate in exchange for an earlier exit from contracts. San Diego Gas & Electric got the same deal from Delano.
Now down to 25 plants with a capacity of 611 megawatts, the biomass industry is taking its case to Sacramento, bolstered by Gov. Jerry Brown's latest drought-related emergency proclamation. It touts biomass energy generation as a solution to culling dead trees that pose a wildfire threat in the Sierra Nevada. The San Joaquin Valley facilities are a short distance from the most browned swaths, advocates note. They are hoping for some direct funding or a way to pass costs to utilities, and ultimately to consumers.
Advocates for biomass say utilities and their regulators should factor other benefits of biomass into the rates — the plants prevent pollution from open burning and help municipalities comply with state rules to reduce landfilling.
"With wind and solar, you just get electrons," said Julee Malinowski-Ball, executive director of the California Biomass Energy Alliance, an industry advocacy group. "With biomass you get all this added benefit."
Utilities aren't buying it.
"We have not made a conscious decision to back away from biomass contracts," said Stephanie Donovan, spokeswoman for San Diego Gas & Electric Co. "We have had a philosophy of being technology agnostic. What we really are looking for is the least-cost, best-fit resource."Big oil companies united to fight regulations – but spent millions bracing for climate change
PG&E said its renegotiations with biomass providers were not motivated by a desire to terminate contracts early. The utility "buys more bioenergy than any other energy purchaser in California, with biomass accounting for 17% of our renewable portfolio currently," said spokesman Denny Boyles.
To protect ratepayers, biomass "must be competitive with alternative renewable resources," Boyles said. "Our contract terms are reviewed and approved by the CPUC to ensure that they balance the interests of obtaining more biomass generation at reasonable prices and under reasonable terms."
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California Climate Year In Review: A Tale Of Tremendous Progress
Jan 1, 2016 | National Resources Defense Council
By Alex Jackson
Were Charles Dickens to survey the 2015 California climate and energy landscape this holiday season, he might conclude it was the best of times: California passed the most aggressive clean energy targets in the world, established the most ambitious carbon reduction target in North America, divested its public pension funds from coal, and madeunprecedented commitments to bring clean energy to disadvantaged communities.
Yet it was also the worst of times: a massive leak at SoCalGas's Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility remains unsealed (pumping huge amounts of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere and sickening many local residents), the oil industry flexed its corruptive influence in stripping the petroleum reduction goal out of Senate Bill 350 (2015's sweeping clean energy bill by De León and Leno), and 2015 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record.
So what's a less equivocal contemporary reviewer to do? While enormous challenges undeniably remain, I think history will judge the tale of 2015 to be one of tremendous progress for California's climate initiatives - in particular, as a year in which our ambition began to take hold on a national and global scale.
Lead by Example...
Here at home, California policymakers raised the bar on a number of fronts (inspired of course by festive carols):He Came A-Wassailing: Governor Brown used his January inaugural address to announce a series of sweeping climate goals (or "pillars") to set the table for the year ahead. Chief among them were to (1) increase to 50 percent the state's share of renewable electricity; (2) double the energy efficiency savings in existing buildings; and (3) cut petroleum consumption in half; all by 2030. Not long after, the Legislature took up the challenge to put these goals into law, led by Senate Pro Tem Kevin De León. While the oil industry celebrated a largely pyrrhic victory when the petroleum reduction goal was removed from the bill (the state's legal authority and Californians' support for ratcheting down the policies already reducing our petroleum dependence remains firmly intact), when the dust had settled in September, California had enacted the most aggressive combined clean energy targets in the world. And with all the focus on the petroleum reduction goal, the fossil fuel lobby overlooked key provisions in the bill that direct the state's utilities to build electric vehicle charging infrastructure capable of supporting one million EVs within the next 10 years (or as my colleague put it, "to eat the oil industry's lunch").All I Want For Christmas is My (Auction Proceeds). California's economy-wide cap-and-trade program completed its first compliance period with a near-perfectcompliance rate (99.8%). Having doubled in size to accommodate the addition of transportation fuels and natural gas to the emissions limits requiring pollution permits this year, the program is on solid footing as it prepares to expand to accommodate additional trading partners (next up: Ontario and Manitoba) and achieve greater reductions (next up: extending beyond 2020). Auctioning state-owned pollution allowances has now generated $3.5 billion that by law must finance investments in emission reduction projects, particularly in California's communities hardest hit by air pollution. NRDC partnered with the Greenlining Institute to tell the stories of the many lives changed for the better by California's clean energy programs at UpliftCA.org (including Norma Alvarado, pictured below, who left a minimum-wage job at McDonald's to start an apprenticeship program with the Fresno Ironworkers Union Local 155 installing solar in the Central Valley).Won't You Guide Our (State) Tonight. In April, Governor Brown layered a target on top of his five pillars - an executive order establishing a statewide limit on carbon pollution of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. That order puts California halfway toward achieving its 2050 commitment to reduce emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels, in line with the science-driven consensus of the reductions required from industrial nations to avoid the most catastrophic risks of climate change. Recognizing this sleigh needed more reindeer, California then proceeded to enlist more than 123 U.S. and international jurisdictions to commit to the same level of reductions by 2050 in the "Under2MOU" - the signatories of which now represent more than 720 million people and a quarter of the global economy.
...And Carry a Big Stick Abroad
But perhaps most significantly, 2015 marked a turning point for when California's efforts began to find real traction on the national and global stage. In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency completed the Clean Power Plan in August to set the first limits on carbon pollution from our nation's power fleet, the largest source of domestic carbon emissions. While the Republican Scrooge caucus in Congress continues its callous and reckless attempts to erect political and legal hurdles to implementation, nearly every state has started working on its own plan to comply. President Obama followed the Plan's release by rejecting - once and for all - the Keystone XL pipeline. And just last week the Department of Energy adopted energy efficiency standards for commercial rooftop air conditioners, heat pumps, and furnaces that together will save more energy and avoid more pollution than any other rule in the agency's history.
With the United States firmly in the game, the stage was set for a global accord at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris that would for the first time include reduction commitments from all of the world's major emitters. It did not disappoint: while herculean efforts lie ahead to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the December 2015 Agreement puts the world on a path to avoid catastrophic climate impacts, commits countries to robust transparency requirements, and ensures the initial reduction pledges will be updated every five years.
Despite not having an official seat at the table, California can take pride in its influence on the final outcome. Beyond being in the vanguard of the (growing) groundswell of subnational actors demanding climate action, state officials report California'slongstanding partnership with China to share technical expertise and lessons learned in developing emissions inventories and monitoring systems played an integral part in overcoming China's initial reticence to the Agreement's transparency and review provisions.
The Year Ahead
While California has never been short on vision, actual results derive from the comparatively unglamorous processes of implementation, oversight, and enforcement. With lofty new goals in law, our attention must turn to hunkering down at California's regulatory agencies to iron out how to get there, including:Expediting review and approval of the investor-owned utilities' electric vehicle charging infrastructure applications at the California Public Utilities Commission;Finalizing the short-lived climate pollutant reduction strategy teed up by Senate Bill 605 (Lara) (and cementing the reduction targets for each of those pollutants - methane, black carbon, and HFCs - in follow up legislation recently announced by Senator Lara);Updating California's Scoping Plan to outline the strategies and investments required to hit the new 2030 statewide emissions reduction target;Developing California's Clean Power Plan implementation plan;Laying the foundation for extending the cap-and-trade program beyond 2020;And much, much more.
But one significant new target remains in limbo: codifying the 2030 statewide greenhouse gas reduction limit announced by Governor Brown last April, which is the aim of SB 32 (Pavley). Executive orders and administrations come and go, but the certainty afforded by statute - like the 2020 limit in AB 32, the state's groundbreakingGlobal Warming Solutions Act of 2006 - will be critical for California to build on the successes of 2015.
Not the Same (Old) Lang Syne?
Finally, a note of optimism for the year to come. For more than a decade, climate change and clean energy policy in the U.S. has inexplicably been a highly partisan issue. But a line from a NY Times story on San Diego's commitment to 100 percent renewable energy within 20 years offers some hope that that may yet begin to fray. San Diego's mayor, Kevin Faulconer, is a Republican. Yet, according to the piece, "he sold the plan to a conservative business base in part by saying that transforming the electric grid would drive the economy and create jobs."
""It's not a partisan issue at all," he said. "It's the right thing to do.""
As more and more states realize the potential and benefits of moving to clean energy, let's hope that tune catches on.
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