Energy & the Environment News and Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

Germany will in turn withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty

11/11/2022, 5:50:45 PM

After France, Spain and the Netherlands, Germany will in turn pull out of the 30-year-old Energy Charter Treaty, accused of hindering climate ambitions, the German government announced on Friday. .

“We are consistently orienting our business policy towards climate protection and are therefore withdrawing from the Energy Charter Treaty, ” says State Secretary at the Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection , Franziska Brantner, in a press release.

" is an important sign sent to the United Nations climate conference", COP 27 currently meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), she adds.

https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-11-11-ger ... s-hrj.html

[caltrek]

The Renewable Energy Transition Is Failing
by Richard Heinberg
November 21, 2022

Introduction:

(Independent Media Institute) Despite all the renewable energy investments and installations, actual global greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing. That’s largely due to economic growth: While renewable energy supplies have expanded in recent years, world energy usage has ballooned even more—with the difference being supplied by fossil fuels. The more the world economy grows, the harder it is for additions of renewable energy to turn the tide by actually replacing energy from fossil fuels, rather than just adding to it.

The notion of voluntarily reining in economic growth in order to minimize climate change and make it easier to replace fossil fuels is political anathema not just in the rich countries, whose people have gotten used to consuming at extraordinarily high rates, but even more so in poorer countries, which have been promised the opportunity to “develop.”

After all, it is the rich countries that have been responsible for the great majority of past emissions (which are driving climate change presently); indeed, these countries got rich largely by the industrial activity of which carbon emissions were a byproduct. Now it is the world’s poorest nations that are experiencing the brunt of the impacts of climate change caused by the world’s richest. It’s neither sustainable nor just to perpetuate the exploitation of land, resources, and labor in the less industrialized countries, as well as historically exploited communities in the rich countries, to maintain both the lifestyles and expectations of further growth of the wealthy minority.

From the perspective of people in less-industrialized nations, it’s natural to want to consume more, which only seems fair. But that translates to more global economic growth, and a harder time replacing fossil fuels with renewables globally. China is the exemplar of this conundrum: Over the past three decades, the world’s most populous nation lifted hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty, but in the process became the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal.

Read more here: https://independentmediainstitute.org/ ... -failing/

caltrek’s comment: Less desirable solutions may also come to be included in the mix. I am very reluctant to support the development of nuclear fission produced energy, but it is a potential alternative. Geoengineering is also highly problematic in my view. Greater efforts toward recycling are highly desirable. Hydrogen also strikes me as having great potential. Still, it is hard to disagree with the conclusion presented in the article:

We need a realistic plan for energy descent, instead of foolish dreams of eternal consumer abundance by means other than fossil fuels. Currently, politically rooted insistence on continued economic growth is discouraging truth-telling and serious planning for how to live well with less.

[weatheriscool]

Water boil order issued for more than 2 million in Houston
Source: AP

54 minutes ago

HOUSTON (AP) — More than 2 million people in the Houston area were under a boil order notice Monday after a power outage caused low pressure at a water purification plant, officials said.

The order means water must be boiled before it’s used for cooking, bathing or drinking. Multiple Houston area public and private schools, as well as some local colleges, were closed Monday as a result of the notice, while others made adjustments to provide affected campuses with bottled water and sanitizer. The warning was issued Sunday after a power outage at a water purification plant, the city’s public works department said.

Testing of the water quality was underway, according to Houston officials.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said on Twitter that the city believes the water is safe but a boil order was required because water pressure dropped below the required minimum by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. He said water sampling would begin Monday morning, and the boil order could be lifted 24 hours after the city is notified the water is safe.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/business-hou ... m=HomePage

[weatheriscool]

Denver gets go-ahead from EPA after progress on lead pipes
Source: AP

By MICHAEL PHILLIS

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday approved a nearly $700 million plan to remove all lead water pipes in the Denver region, saying the local water utility’s approach for reducing lead levels is succeeding and making swift progress. It’s a recognition that cities can effectively address the lead pipe crisis if they try.

Lead water lines are a major source of lead poisoning. The metal causes brain damage and the agency says no amount is safe for children’s bodies.

Denver’s water had high levels of lead a decade ago, testing showed. In response, local officials promised in 2020 to replace between 64,000 and 84,000 lead pipes in 15 years, a comparatively fast pace. To make sure people aren’t getting lead poisoning in the meantime, they also promised to hand out lead-removing filters to residents. So far the utility has dug up 15,000 lead pipes.

“From our perspective, Denver Water has one of the most successful (lead water line) replacement programs in the country,” the environmental group EDF told EPA in official comments.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/health-busin ... 95120694b2

[caltrek]

While Helpful in Preventing Air Pollution, Wind Power is Not Yet Living Up to Its Potential
by Justine Calma
December 2, 2022

Introduction:

(The Verge) Wind power isn’t cleaning up as much pollution as it could, especially in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, new research shows. The US’s wind energy boom has already led to billions of dollars of health benefits. But the majority of that hasn’t trickled into communities that have historically been burdened with the most air pollution, finds a study published today in the journal Science Advances. Fortunately, that could change if new wind energy projects are deployed more strategically.

Over the past two decades, wind energy has grown from less than half a percent of the US electricity mix in 2002 to almost 10 percent today. By 2014, increasing amounts of wind energy had measurably improved air quality, resulting in health benefits across the US, according to the new study. But only 32 percent of those benefits reached low-income communities. And just 29 percent reached racial and ethnic minority populations.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has set a goal of ensuring that 40 percent of the benefits from clean energy reach “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.”

In this study, “health benefits” are actually a matter of life and death. They essentially put a dollar amount on deaths that are prevented by cleaning up the air. In this case, they estimated that by 2014, wind energy contributed to $2 billion in health benefits, spurred on by renewable electricity standards set by dozens of states. And while the US has improved its air quality since the 1970 Clean Air Act, there’s still a lot of progress to make. More than 137 million Americans, about 40 percent of the population, live in locales that received failing grades for air pollution from the American Lung Association.

Moreover, the health risks that come with breathing in that dirty air are unevenly spread. People of color are 3.6 times more likely to live in counties with multiple failing air pollution grades. Low-income communities in the US have also been consistently exposed to more particulate pollution than more affluent neighborhoods

Read more of The Verge article here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/2/234 ... l-justice

Read sbout the results of the study as presented in Science Advances here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn8762

[weatheriscool]

OPEC+ Latest: Group Agrees to Keep Oil Production Unchanged
Source: Bloomberg

The OPEC+ alliance decided to maintain production at current levels, pausing to take stock of a global oil market that’s roiled by uncertainty over Chinese demand and Russian supply.

The 23-nation group has only just implemented the hefty 2 million barrel-a-day reduction agreed at its last gathering in October, and the full impact of that cut is unclear amid severe gyrations in prices. After hitting the lowest level since September on Nov. 28, Brent crude ended up posting its biggest weekly gain in a month.

The volatility has been driven by European Union sanctions on crude exports from OPEC+ member Russia, which come into effect on Monday. At the same time, China is tentatively easing the Covid measures that have eroded consumption in the world’s biggest oil importer.

The agreement came after an online gathering of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, which replaced the in-person gathering at its Vienna headquarters that had been planned until this week. Sunday’s virtual meeting took about 20 minutes.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... et-outlook

[weatheriscool]

Thousands of dead seals wash up on Russia's Caspian shore
Source: CNN

By Mariya Knight,

(CNN)
—

Around 2,500 endangered seals have been found dead on Russia’s Caspian coast, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported Sunday, citing authorities in the North Caucasus region.

Caspian seals, the only mammals found in the Caspian Sea, have been classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list since 2008.

The seals washed up on the coast of Russia’s republic of Dagestan, along the Caspian Sea, the largest landlocked body of water in the world, which is bordered by five countries: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.

Dagestan’s Ministry of Natural Resources said the animals had died of “natural factors” and warned that the number of dead seals was likely to be much higher.



A Caspian seal swimming in the Caspian Sea.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/de ... index.html

[raklian]

U.S. pledges to ramp up supplies of natural gas to Britain as Biden and Sunak seek to cut off Russia

U.K. government says the new partnership will “drive work to reduce global dependence on Russian energy exports.”

The U.K.-U.S. Energy Security and Affordability Partnership, as it’s known, will be directed by a U.K.-U.S. Joint Action Group.

Among other things, the group will undertake efforts to make sure the market ramps up supplies of liquefied natural gas from the U.S. to the U.K.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/energy- ... plies.html

[weatheriscool]

Researcher creates algorithms to predict arsenic contamination in private wells
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-algorithm ... wells.html
by Greg Bruno, Rutgers University

Despite the risks to human health, testing for arsenic isn't required for most private drinking wells in New Jersey. To help address this regulatory gap, a Rutgers researcher developed a machine learning model that can estimate arsenic contamination in private wells without the need to sample the water itself.

"New Jersey has many naturally occurring arsenic sources, which can elevate the arsenic concentration in groundwater," said Subhasis Giri, an assistant research professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources and lead author of the study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. "Our work contributes to the understanding of this human health risk by revealing the sources of arsenic concentration in private drinking water wells, which will in turn help with mitigation."

Arsenic occurs in both organic and inorganic forms. Natural sources are rocks, soils and water, while anthropogenic sources include pesticides, wood preservatives, mining and the smelting of arsenic-containing minerals. Long-term exposure to elevated levels of arsenic in drinking water can cause serious health consequences, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

To identify arsenic hotspots in three countries in west-central New Jersey (Hunterdon, Somerset and Morris), Giri and colleagues at Columbia University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology developed a computer model that uses machine learning to predict the likelihood that a private well is contaminated with unsafe arsenic levels.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Oil spill in rural Kansas creek shuts down Keystone pipeline
Source: AP

By JOHN HANNA, HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, and JOSH FUNK today

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — An oil spill in a creek in northeastern Kansas shut down a major pipeline that carries oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, briefly causing oil prices to rise Thursday.

Canada-based TC Energy said it shut down its Keystone system Wednesday night following a drop in pipeline pressure. It said oil spilled into a creek in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City.

The company on Thursday estimated the spill’s size at about 14,000 barrels and said the affected pipeline segment had been “isolated” and the oil contained at the site with booms, or barriers. It did not say how the spill occurred.

“People are sometimes not aware of of the havoc that these things can wreak until the disaster happens,” said Zack Pistora, who lobbies the Kansas Legislature for the Sierra Club’s state chapter.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/oil-spills-b ... 41d24d66c2

[weatheriscool]

3 bald eagles die, 10 sick after eating euthanized animals
Source: AP

an hour ago

INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. (AP) — At least 13 bald eagles were likely poisoned by scavenging the carcasses of euthanized animals that were improperly dumped at a Minnesota landfill, and three of the majestic birds have died.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that state and federal wildlife officials are investigating after the eagles were found this month near the Pine Bend Landfill in the Minneapolis suburb of Inver Grove Heights.

Ten of the birds are in intensive care at the University of Minnesota Raptor Center. The center’s executive director Victoria Hall said she is optimistic those birds will recover.

Hall said when the eagles were found some of them were lying motionless, face down in the snow, and Raptor Center workers weren’t sure if they were still alive. Veterinarians suspect that the eagles that died had eaten part of a carcass of an animal that had been euthanized with pentobarbital, and investigators confirmed that some euthanized animals had been brought to the landfill on Dec. 2.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/health-eagle ... 4b0c0cedcc

[Time_Traveller]

Include biodegradable plastic in English single-use cutlery ban, say campaigners

Wed 14 Dec 2022 11.00 GMT

Campaigners have urged the environment secretary not to exclude biodegradable plastic from a ban on single-use cups, plates and cutlery.

Thérèse Coffey is expected to announce a ban on single-use plastic items such as cutlery and stirrers in the coming weeks, according to the Financial Times. Campaigners have condemned the suggestion that she would allow so-called biodegradable plastic single-use items to continue to be used as an alternative.

The EU has banned single-use plastic items since July 2021 and its guidance is clear that “biodegradable/bio-based plastics are considered to be plastic”.

Steve Hynd, a policy manager for the campaign group City to Sea, called for Coffey to clarify her intentions, and said bioplastics must be included in any ban.

“It is incredibly alarming to read reports that these important, and frankly very minimum, environmental standards might be watered down to exempt ‘biodegradable’ single-use alternatives,” he said. “Many of these bioplastics are incredibly environmentally damaging and won’t break down in the natural environment and so will do nothing to tackle the plight of plastic pollution.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ampaigners

[weatheriscool]

Keystone pipeline rupture spilled diluted bitumen, complicating cleanup
Source: Reuters

Dec 15 (Reuters) - The oil spilled from TC Energy Corp's (TRP.TO) ruptured Keystone pipeline was diluted bitumen, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Thursday, adding complications to the cleanup. The 622,000 barrels per day (bpd) pipeline was shut since last week after it spilled 14,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas, including into a creek.

The parts of the pipeline carrying oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois opened on Wednesday, leaving the ruptured part that extends from south of Steele City, Nebraska to a storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma closed. Bitumen from Canada's oil sands is a dense, thick form of oil that shippers dilute with lighter oils so it can move through pipelines. The resulting product is called dilbit for short.

A 2016 National Academy of Sciences study for the U.S. Department of Transportation examined whether transporting dilbit carries different environmental risks than other oils, following a 2010 spill in Michigan. The report said that when diluted bitumen spills, a thick, dense material forms as a residue after exposure to the environment. The residue tends to stick to surfaces, sometimes sinking to the bottom of a water body where it is difficult to recover.

“For this reason, spills of diluted bitumen pose particular challenges when they reach water bodies,” the report said. Crews are using equipment to skim water off the surface of Mill Creek in Kansas and to vacuum oil into trucks. Colder temperatures may hamper the cleanup, the EPA said.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-12-15/

[weatheriscool]

White House Begins Plan to Refill US Emergency Oil Reserves
Source: Bloomberg

The Biden administration is making good on a plan to replenish the nation’s emergency oil reserves, starting with a 3 million barrel purchase of crude. The purchase of barrels for February delivery follows a historic 180 million barrel release of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to tame high gasoline prices amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other supply issues. 

“This repurchase is an opportunity to secure a good deal for American taxpayers by repurchasing oil at a lower price than the $96 per barrel average price it was sold for, as well as to strengthen energy security,” the Department of Energy said in a notice Friday announcing the plan.

The announcement caps a year that saw President Joe Biden make unprecedented use of the SPR to help curb soaring domestic costs of fuel. The price of oil has come down in recent months and it’s now almost 40% off the highs seen in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion. Even so, the administration has repeatedly said it reserves the right to do more sales if needed.

US benchmark oil futures initially pared some losses on the news before eventually settling down 2.4% at $74.29 a barrel. The Biden administration previously laid out a plan to repurchase oil for the approximately 700 million barrel-strong reserve when the price of crude hit around $70 a barrel. The SPR — the world’s largest emergency supply — was created in 1975 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... cy-reserve

[weatheriscool]

Model shows extinction cascades caused by land use and climate change will wipe out more than 25% of world biodiversity
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-extinctio ... rsity.html
by Flinders University

A new tool developed by European and Australian scientists enabling unparalleled modeling of interconnected species loss shows cascading extinctions are unavoidable, and that the Earth will lose some 10% of its animals and plants by 2050, rising to 27% by 2100.

The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

Using one of Europe's most-powerful supercomputers, European Commission scientist Dr. Giovanni Strona also of the University of Helsinki and Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University used the tool to create synthetic Earths complete with virtual species and more than 15,000 food webs to predict the interconnected fate of species that will likely disappear from the ravages of climate and land-use changes.

The tool presents a grim prediction of the future of global diversity, confirming beyond doubt that the world is in the throes of its 6th mass extinction event.

The two scientists say past approaches to assessing extinction trajectories over the coming century have been stymied by not incorporating co-extinctions—that is, species that go extinct because other species on which they depend succumb to climate change and/or changes to the landscape.

[wjfox]

South Australia’s incredible week: 104.1 per cent wind and solar over seven days

18 December 2022

South Australia aims to reach 100 per cent “net renewables” within a few years – over a full year – but in the past week it has already done better than that.

Our attention to the state was sparked by a tweet from Teal supporter and energy analyst Simon Holmes a Court, who tweeted on Friday that the state had average an “incredible” 99.8 per cent over the previous seven days.

When we checked before writing this story on Sunday afternoon, it had done better than that – averaging 104.1 per cent over the seven days (to 2.30pm AEST on Sunday).

To be clear, this 104.1 per cent relates to the amount of wind and solar compared to state demand. The state is connected to the rest of the grid so imports and exports are inevitable, so the figure is already a “net result.”

But it is still impressive. There was no coal and gas provided just a little over six per cent of demand over the week. Imports accounted for just 2.6 per cent and exports of wind and solar for 13.7 per cent of total production.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-austr ... even-days/

[Time_Traveller]

Cop15: historic deal struck to halt biodiversity loss by 2030

Mon 19 Dec 2022 10.46 GMT

Governments appear to have signed a once-in-a-decade deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, but the agreement seems to have been forced through by the Chinese president, ignoring the objections of some African states.

After more than four years of negotiations, repeated delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic and talks into the night on Sunday in Montreal, nearly 200 countries – but not the US or the Vatican – signed an agreement at the biodiversity Cop15, which was co-hosted by Canada and China, to put humanity on a path to living in harmony with nature by the middle of the century.

In an extraordinary plenary that began on Sunday evening and lasted for more than seven hours, countries wrangled over the final agreement. Finally, at about 3.30am local time on Monday, news broke that an agreement had been struck.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s negotiator appeared to block the final deal presented by China, telling the plenary that he could not support the agreement in its current form because it did not create a new fund for biodiversity, separate to the existing UN fund, the global environment facility (GEF). China, Brazil, Indonesia, India and Mexico are the largest recipients of GEF funding, and some African states wanted more money for conservation as part of the final deal.

However, moments later, China’s environment minister and the Cop15 president, Huang Runqiu, signalled that the agreement was finished and agreed, and the plenary burst into applause.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... y-2030-aoe

[wjfox]