Encouraging news on climate action by the President

President Obama put smiles on the faces of climate activists across the country last week when he announced his executive order to limit global warming emissions from the federal government.

The President announced on March 19 that the federal government must cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40 percent over the next decade from 2008 levels. Here's why this is significant: The federal government is the largest consumer of energy in the nation. The federal portfolio of 360,000 buildings, 650,000 fleet vehicles, and $445 billion spent annually on goods and services provides abundant opportunities for energy conservation and efficiency.

The feds will avoid emitting 26 million metric tons of GHGs—the equivalent of taking 5.5 million cars off the road.

For those of us extremely concerned about climate change, this in itself is great news. But for those somehow less concerned about the problem, an important co-benefit of this action is that it will save taxpayers up to $18 billion in avoided energy costs. 

PennFuture sees this important action by the President as the latest indicator that he views climate change as a legacy issue. He announced his Clean Power Plan last June, and then his important agreement with the Chinese in November in which both the U.S. and China will significantly reduce emissions in the next ten to fifteen years.

The President's executive order last week is just his latest important step in the right direction.

Now, if Congress would just do the right thing and legislate a price on carbon, we could all rest a bit easier.

Until then, hail to the chief for his leadership.

Joy Bergey is PennFuture's federal policy director, based in Philadelphia. She tweets @joybergey .

More confirmation of climate disruption and the urgency that's called for

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest report this week on the state of climate change and it's not pretty.

Here are but a few tidbits of the bad news in the report (with my editorial comments):

• Human influence on the climate is clear and recent emissions are the highest in history. (Not surprising, but still news to some people, apparently.)
• The warming of the climate system is clear and, since the 1950’s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented.
• Each of the last three decades have been successively warmer than any decade before them going back to 1850.
• In the Northern Hemisphere, the last 30 years is likely the warmest 30-year period of the past 1,400 years.
• From 1880 to 2012, the earth has warmed .85 degrees C.
• More than 90 percent of the energy stored in the climate system from 1971 to 2010 is in the form of ocean warming; only one percent is stored in the atmosphere. (Uh-oh.)
• The upper ocean -- the top 75 meters -- has warmed by .11 degrees C per decade since 1971, offering an explanation for the so-called slowdown in atmospheric warming.  (Are you listening, climate deniers?)

Note: The report issued this week is the third part -- the "synthesis" report -- of the fifth IPCC  report issued over the years. Confused? This might help. Want to read the report for yourself? Here's the 100+ page version  and here's the 40-page summary for policy makers.

All this new bad news just reinforces what readers of PennFuture's blogs likely already know: The climate is in crisis so we must act now at all levels of government to limit carbon emissions.

Joy Bergey is PennFuture's federal policy director. She's based in Philadelphia and tweets @JoyBergey.

Even the grand old guys know we have to cut carbon

Those of us who have been adults for several decades remember the sway that big accounting firms used to have in the business world. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is one of those well-respected names that can still turn heads when they speak.

PwC just issued its 2014 Low Carbon Economy Index.

Not good news. To quote the report, "For the sixth year running, the global economy has missed the decarbonization target needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees C."

To stay on track for the two-degree-max target, we would have had to cut our carbon emissions by 6 percent in 2013. How did the world do? A miserable 1.2 percent decrease.

Last year's lapse means we now need to speed up even more to achieve the goal, specifically cutting carbon by 6.2 percent in 2014—five times last year's rate. Doesn't seem likely, does it?

To be sure, these are global measurements and projections. But is Pennsylvania doing its part? This is an especially painful question at the moment, given the horrendous step backward that the our General Assembly has just taken: They passed H.B. 2354, which throws a monkey wrench into the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposal to limit CO2 from coal-burning power plants in Pennsylvania, the major source of carbon pollution in this country.

Read what Mother Jones has to say about PwC's bad news.


Joy Bergey is federal policy director for PennFuture and is based in Philadelphia. She tweets @joybergey.

The upside of reducing methane emissions: New jobs, a more secure future.

As PennFuture has been urging for quite a while now, industry and government must act soon to limit methane leakage from natural gas wells and pipelines.

As important as it is to crack down on CO2 pollution from coal-burning power plants (which is why we are such strong supporters of the Presidents' Clean Power Plan Rule), if we don't simultaneously stop methane leaking from natural gas infrastructure, we'll still be off course for slowing climate change.

What has us scratching our heads is why the natural gas industry hasn't already voluntarily stopped the leaks. Since methane is indeed natural gas, all that leaky methane entering that atmosphere is simply wasteful on industry's part, since they could sell that captured methane and help offset the cost of implementation. Why let potential revenue vanish into thin air?

An encouraging new report prepared for the Environmental Defense Fund shows that fixing the leaks can be a win-win proposition: Dozens of American companies now manufacture, sell and support methane control technology that works.

Pennsylvania, with so much natural gas infrastructure, should see many new jobs from the commercial deployment of this technology—if the natgas industry would start using it. (Explore this cool interactive map to see what's already happening here.)

And since we can't rely on the industry to do the right thing voluntarily, we need our governments—state and federal—to require them to do this.

Why should this be a fight? How can we resist technology that creates new jobs for Pennsylvania families and helps stabilize climate change?

There's no reason that we can see for industry not to jump on this technology.

Joy Bergey is federal policy director for PennFuture and is based in Philadelphia. She tweets @joybergey.

Are methane emissions from natural gas wells a bigger problem than previously thought?

Scientists from several leading research universities, including Purdue and Cornell, published an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that calls into question the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) estimates for methane emissions during the drilling phase of fracking operations in the Marcellus shale. These findings could have a significant impact on the public debate surrounding the impact natural gas development has on climate change.

Scientists monitored methane emissions by airplane and attempted to trace significant methane emissions back to their sources. They determined that certain Marcellus shale wells in western Pennsylvania emitted 34 grams of methane per second during drilling, a phase of production not previously assumed to be a significant source of methane emissions. This is two to three orders of magnitude (100-1,000 times) higher than the EPA’s estimate for methane emissions during drilling.

The discrepancies in estimates of methane emissions are significant because methane, which is the primary component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. Although its lifespan in the atmosphere is shorter than that of carbon dioxide, methane is much more capable of trapping radiation than carbon dioxide. EPA estimates that methane can have about 20 times the impact on climate change as the same mass of carbon dioxide over 100 years.

It is clear that we still have a lot to learn about methane emissions from fracking activities and their role in climate change. EPA says that more studies are being conducted, and those data will be analyzed by government scientists. For now, this is another reminder that natural gas development must be approached cautiously.

Mike Helbing is a staff attorney for PennFuture and is based in Philadelphia.

A quick overview of EPA's plans for power plants

The EPA is finishing up a series of listening sessions (informal hearings) in 11 cities around the country to gather the public's thoughts on what the rule on existing power plants might look like. PennFuture took the lead in the Philadelphia listening session on November 8, helping to generate 76 testifiers in support of the rule, with 16 opposed and 2 neutral comments.

An overview of EPA's process for limiting CO2 from power plants

PennFuture is delighted to see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moving ahead with plans to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plants (the source of 40 percent of the country's global warming pollution). By the way, this forward motion by the EPA is required by law.

EPA is acting in parallel on two different aspects of power plant emissions: setting emissions standards on new (not-yet-built) power plants, and setting standards for existing power plants.

Quite different approaches are needed for regulating new versus existing plants, even though both are driven by the Clean Air Act. Here's a bit of background on each.

Regulating new power plants

You may recall that in April 2012, EPA first proposed a rule to limit CO2 from not-yet-built plants.  EPA later announced a delay to the finalizing of that rule.

In September 2013, EPA released a modified version of its original proposal, and the public comment period has been reopened. (Send a comment to the EPA). The EPA will consider all comments and issue a final rule by June 1, 2015, with states required to act (i.e., limit CO2 emissions from any new coal plants) by June 2016.

The regulation of new plants derives from Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act, the New Source Performance Standards, or NSPS. Note that NSPS rules are applied at the plant level. For example, technology is incorporated into the power plant to capture or reduce CO2, and CO2 levels can be measured to ensure compliance (this is a somewhat simplified depiction). The emissions standards that were proposed include limiting CO2 emissions from 1,000-to-1,100 pounds of CO2/megawatt-hour. These emission rates are equivalent to a high efficiency, combined cycle natural gas plant.

This is quite different from the likely model for regulating existing power plants.

Regulating existing power plants

The EPA announced in October 2013 that it will formally propose a rule in June 2014 to regulate CO2 from existing power plants, driven by Section 111 (d) of the Clean Air Act.

Unlike new plants, where technology to limit CO2 can theoretically be incorporated when plants are designed and built, it's not always economically or technically feasible to retrofit existing power plants to limit CO2.

Hence, the approach will be entirely different from the NSPS rule on new plants. The rule on existing plants will likely be a regional approach, with a number of strategies deployed to lower the overall levels of atmospheric CO2 emissions within a given area. EPA will likely establish procedures and guidelines for the states to use in determining tailored strategies to meet emissions performance requirements. The states will develop these plans and seek review and approval from EPA to implement the emissions reduction strategies.

PennFuture hopes to provide input to the shaping of Pennsylvania's state plan. And we're quite optimistic that the state can meet the likely targets proposed by the EPA. The World Resources Institute has put together a terrific overview of how this might be accomplished in Pennsylvania.

Stay tuned for more information on this important and complex process as the rule takes shape in the months and years to come. You can trust us to keep you up to date.

High time for the Obama Administration to act

Unfortunately, it's all too clear that this Congress is going to kick the climate can down the road, increasing the risks for future generations. That said, the President can choose to use his executive authority to act on climate.

As a matter of fact, and as a matter of law, the President is legally required to act on climate, and he's actually breaking the law by not having acted in April.

In a nutshell: The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that carbon dioxide qualifies as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. By law, that ruling compelled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do a scientific assessment on whether CO2 is a danger to human health. This led to the 2009 EPA "endangerment finding" that CO2 is indeed a threat to public health.

These results mean that the EPA must regulate CO2, according to the Clean Air Act, an act of Congress, whether the current Congress likes it or not.

The EPA issued a strong standard last summer to address auto emissions, but it is well behind on regulating stationary sources such as power plants. By law, the EPA should have issued a standard to limit CO2 from any to-be-built power plants by April 13. This hasn't happened and, consequently, the EPA is in violation of a court order. Some national environmental groups are already on record as saying they'll sue the President if a new standard isn't issued by mid-June.

We say go for it -- it's high time the laws of the land controlled CO2 emissions. And then some.