Energy

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans new favorite study trashes Biden's climate plans – but who's behind it?

      by

      Sign up for the Guardian’s Green Light newsletterWyoming’s US representative, Liz Cheney, envisions a dark future for her home state under Joe Biden.If the new administration extends its pause on new oil and gas drilling on public land, it would endanger Wyoming’s economy, kill 18,000 jobs and cause the energy state to lose out on critical education, infrastructure and healthcare funding. Biden would be “cutting off a major lifeline that Americans have relied on to survive during this time”, she has said.But there is a problem with Cheney’s forecast. The numbers she is relying on came from an analysis that is the brainchild of the oil and gas industry.The Western Energy Alliance – which represents 200 western oil and gas companies – proposed the $114,000 publicly funded analysis to state officials, tried to provide matching dollars for it and stayed involved throughout its development, according to public records obtained by Documented and shared with Floodlight and Wyoming Public Media.In February 2020, a Wyoming state senator, who is also the president of an oil company, proposed the spending. The Western Energy Alliance sought to help fund the study but was unable because the industry was in serious decline. It did, however, spend $8,000 publicizing the report, as was first reported by Politico.Records show Governor Mark Gordon’s office was aware of and never disclosed the group’s deep involvement in the study.Now, the Western Energy Alliance is spending thousands more to amplify the warnings in an ad campaign against Biden’s climate policies. The numbers have been cited dozens of times in local and national newspapers, including in the New York Times in a reference to Wyoming officials’ projections.The data has become core to Republican messaging opposing Biden’s climate plans even as critics suggest the study might exaggerate economic impacts by as much as 85%. The author even appeared at a meeting of the Congressional Western Caucus in February, alongside Cheney.While industry-funded research is not uncommon, transparency advocates say it is increasingly being used to produce conclusions favorable to oil and gas companies in order to shape public opinion.“It’s a time-honored practice,” said Bruce Freed, the president and co-founder of Center for Political Accountability. “It gives cover to the industry … they’re not going to pay for anything that will undercut them.”The Western Energy Alliance first approached the University of Wyoming economics professor who authored the report, Tim Considine, in mid-2019 to ask him to write a proposal about his research for state officials, he and the group confirmed. Internal emails show the Western Energy Alliance president, Kathleen Sgamma, pitched the analysis to the governor’s office in February 2020.“Just wanted to let you know that I’m working with the Governor’s office about who will commission and pay for the analysis, so I’m making progress,” Sgamma emailed Considine.A month earlier, Considine had shared his proposal with Sgamma and then offered to amend it based on her preferences if it would “help your fund raising [sic]”.While Considine was conducting his study with state funds, the Western Energy Alliance was part of a team working with state officials to review the report before its release. The group’s spokesperson, Aaron Johnson, got Considine to change his methodology to count more possible economic impacts in Alaska. Johnson later told Considine that the study got “very positive results from industry leaders”.In response to this story, Sgamma defended the study, saying it was by a reputable professor and it shows the sacrifice that the president is asking of westerners.“The bottom line is we didn’t fund it, and that’s usually where the disclosure comes in,” Sgamma said.Considine maintains his analysis was fair and independent. Critics, though, have questioned his closeness with industry, including allegations that when he worked in Pennsylvania he was “the energy industry’s go-to academic for highlighting the positives, and not the negatives, of fossil fuel development”. Considine called the criticisms “an old canard”.“I do not feel that getting comments on my study from the Western Energy Alliance affected my findings. In my judgment there was no conflict of interest to receive industry feedback,” he said.Considine’s past work also includes giving expert testimony on behalf of the coal company Murray Energy in a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as conducting research paid for under a consulting agreement with the coal company Cloud Peak Energy.The $114,000 for the Wyoming study – funded by the public through the Wyoming Energy Authority and Wyoming State Energy Program – was proposed in early 2020 by former lawmaker Eli Bebout, who is the president of Nucor Oil and Gas and has received significant campaign contributions from the industry. Bebout, in an interview for this story, said he didn’t recall any direct involvement with the industry group.Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, declined to discuss the study for this story. “At this time, we believe the study speaks for itself,” said the spokesperson Michael Pearlman, pointing to a news release from December that did not disclose the industry involvement.Aside from the industry ties, the University of Wyoming study’s methodology has raised eyebrows among experts.Considine modeled two scenarios. In one, he considered a complete drilling ban on federal lands, which is not what Biden is proposing. In the other, he looked at a freeze on new leases, which is what Biden has done temporarily. Considine acknowledged in early emails to Sgamma that the latter would be difficult to do with existing data.Considine stands behind his conclusions. He said, if anything, his numbers were underestimates because he projected conservative productivity growth and low oil prices.But Laura Zachary, the co-director of Apogee Economics and Policy – which works with and on behalf of environmental advocacy groups – said the numbers that politicians have been quoting from Considine’s study are “very misleading”. She estimates the study exaggerates economic impacts by 70% to 85%.Another analysis of potential drilling policies, by the environmental group Resources for the Future, contradicts Considine’s conclusions of economic ruin for western states. It found the government could make oil companies pay more to drill on public lands and increase revenues going to states, while reducing climate pollution.“It’s not uncommon [in research] to take funds from industry,” Zachary said of Considine. “But it’s very important, obviously, to not have that guide what your findings are or your research methods as an academic.”The Biden administration has paused new oil and gas leasing on public lands. But companies are still drilling on previously leased lands. The climate pollution from fossil fuels developed on public lands is significant, and Biden has promised to scale it back.The state of Wyoming, meanwhile, has long fought to support fossil fuel development, given the industry’s importance for employment and revenue. The oil and gas industry alone represented nearly 30% of total state revenue in 2019. About 7% of Wyoming’s workforce is in the mining industries, which include oil and gas.The Trump administration heralded unprecedented new access to public lands for energy production, much to the chagrin of environmental advocates. If Biden’s nominee, Deb Haaland, is confirmed to run the interior department, she is expected to reverse course and prioritize the climate crisis.Wyoming’s congressional delegation voted against her nomination, arguing that she has extreme policy views and couldn’t substantively answer key questions. In one congressional meeting, Senator John Barrasso referenced a separate outlook from the American Petroleum Institute in explaining his opposition to Haaland.“I, along with other western senators, have consistently opposed nominees who hold such radical views, he said. “The people of Wyoming deserve straight answers from any potential secretary about the law, the rules and the regulations that will affect their lives and their livelihoods.”Go behind the scenes with the reporters at Floodlight. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas freeze casts renewable energy as next battle line in US culture wars

      by

      Sign up for the Guardian’s Green Light newsletterThe frigid winter storm and power failure that left millions of people in Texas shivering in darkness has been used to stoke what is becoming a growing front in America’s culture wars – renewable energy.The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which oversees the Texas grid, has been clear that outages of solar and wind energy were only a minor factor in blackouts which, at their peak, left 4 million Texans without electricity, with many resorting to burning furniture or using outdoor barbecues to desperately warm themselves amid the shocking blast of Arctic-like conditions.Crucially, the supply of natural gas, which supplies about half of Texas’s electricity, seized up due to frozen pipes and a lack of standby reserves. The grid failed after about a third of Ercot’s total capacity – supplied by coal, nuclear and gas – went offline as demand for heating dramatically surged.Regardless, the Republican leadership in Texas, abetted by rightwing media outlets and a proliferation of false claims on social media, has sought to pin the crisis on wind turbines and solar panels freezing when the Lone Star state needed them most.“The Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Greg Abbott, Texas’s governor, told Fox News last week, in reference to a plan to rapidly transition the US to renewable energy that currently only exists on paper. “Our wind and our solar got shut down … It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”Abbott subsequently walked backed these comments but others have been less hesitant to use the crisis to attack renewables. Sid Miller, Texas’s agriculture commissioner, stated that “we should never build another wind turbine in Texas” on Facebook, while Tucker Carlson, the prominent rightwing Fox News host, said “windmills” were “silly fashion accessories” prone to failure.Fox News blamed renewables for the blackouts 128 times in just a 48-hour period last week, according to Media Matters. The distortions were amplified by social media, with a picture of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine widely shared on Twitter and Facebook, even though the photo was taken in Sweden in 2014.A YouTube live stream by the conservative commentator Steven Crowder blaming the blackouts on “the failures of green energy” has been viewed about a million times, while the Texas Public Policy Foundation used paid Facebook adverts to urge people to “thank” fossil fuels for keeping them warm while assailing “failed” wind energy.The scorn heaped on renewables has echoes of the blackouts suffered by California during devastating wildfires last year, which caused several prominent Texas Republicans such as Dan Crenshaw, a member of Congress, and Senator Ted Cruz, who last week fled his stricken home state for sunny Cancún, to mock California’s shift to cleaner energy.The expansion of wind and solar, a key policy goal of Joe Biden, is now developing into yet another cultural battle line, despite strong public support for renewables. Jesse Keenan, an expert in climate adaptation at Tulane University, said the use of “targeted disinformation” and conspiracy theories is obscuring the more pressing issue of how states like Texas cope with the challenges of extreme weather linked to the climate crisis.“There are plenty of other comparable extreme events that are going to compromise the integrity of the energy system,” Keenan said. “These events are going to increasingly resonate in the monthly power bill. The question is do ratepayers want to keep paying to clean up a mess or do they want to invest in building resilience that will save them a lot more in the future?”Keenan said that much like how the US reacted to the 9/11 attacks by escalating its national security activity, the country now needs a similar level of response to the climate crisis by first taking basic steps, like weatherizing infrastructure and keeping reserve power in store, that Texas’s free-market grid system neglected to do.America has now “reached a turning point where the costs of disasters far exceed the amortized costs of upfront investments in resilience”, Keenan said. “Part of the impetus here is an acknowledgment that the status quo is unsustainable and we need to adapt our infrastructure and our way of life.”Transforming Americans’ power supply to renewable energy while bolstering resilience in the face of an unfolding climate crisis is a daunting challenge. Wind and solar energy need to increase their current capacity by up to five times by 2050 in order to reach net-zero carbon emissions, a Princeton report found last year, requiring nearly a 10th of the contiguous US to be covered in turbines and panels and thousands of miles of new power lines and substations in a revamped grid.All of this will need to happen as wildfires, flooding and storms are set to worsen due to global heating, with scientists finding last year that extreme rainfall in Texas alone will become up to 50% more frequent by 2036 than it was in the second half of the 20th century. Storm surges along parts of the Texas coast are set to double by 2050. If infrastructure is not prepared for this “the lights will probably go out again”, said Joshua Rhodes, a power grid researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.But Texas, much like several other states, appears wilfully unprepared for this reality. “We never hear the words ‘climate change’ spoken at Ercot because of the politics. It’s a taboo subject,” Doug Lewin, an energy consultant in Austin, told the Houston Chronicle. “We’re using the past as a predictor of the future and we can’t do that. We’ve fundamentally shifted the planet’s systems, and it’s only just started.”The fallout from this political crusade against renewables will be felt heaviest among poorer communities and people of color who are already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, heaped on top of a pandemic.“The last few days have been overwhelming,” said Nalleli Hidalgo, a Houston-based activist at the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, which has been attempting to help thousands of people lacking water, food and power.“Climate change will continue to hit coastal states like Texas the hardest, we need to invest in renewable energies and sustainable infrastructures, and create weatherized systems to prevent this from happening again.” More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Why is Texas suffering power blackouts during the winter freeze?

      by

      Millions of people in Texas have spent days in below-freezing temperatures without power in what officials have called a “total failure” of the state’s electricity infrastructure. How did oil- and gas-rich Texas – the biggest producer of energy in the US – get here?While there are many factors that led to the power outages in Texas, the state’s power grid has come under intense scrutiny in light of the storm. Here’s what we know so far about Texas’s power grid and the role it played in the state’s winter disaster.Who controls Texas’s power grid?The “Lone Star” statelikes to go it alone when it comes to delivering power to its residents. Texas is unique among the 48 contiguous US states in that it relies on its own power grid. The other 47 states are all part of the two power grids that service the eastern and western halves of the country.The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as Ercot, manages the state’s power grid. Ercot is technically a non-profit corporation, and while it functions independently from the state’s government, the corporation is overseen by a state agency called the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Members of the commission are appointed by the state’s governor.Texas is the only state in the country, besides Alaska and Hawaii, that is not part of either the Eastern Interconnection or Western Interconnection, the two main power grids in the US. This means that Texas is not regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc), the agency that oversees interstate electric transmission. Instead, Texas is basically “an electrical island in the United States”, as described by Bill Magness, CEO of Ercot. While this means that Texas has more control over electricity in the state, it also means there are fewer power plants the state can rely on for power.Parts of Texas are not serviced by Ercot. El Paso at the western tip of the state gets power from the Western Interconnection, which is why the city has been saved from the most brutal effects of the power outages.Why are so many people without power?Ercot turned off power for millions of customers after several power plants shut down due to the below-freezing temperatures the state is experiencing. Officials at Ercot said the equipment at the plants could not handle the extreme, low temperatures. The choice was either shutting down power for customers or risking a collapse of the grid altogether.Why is Texas on its own power grid?For as long as electricity has existed in Texas, the state, which prides itself on its independence has relied on itself for power. Officials in the state have long had a stubborn will to stay out of the hands of federal regulators.While Magness, Ercot’s CEO, said that the shutdown was due primarily to “reasons that have to do with the weather”, critics have said Texas’s energy market incentivizes cheap prices at the cost of delaying maintenance and improving power plants. In 2011, the state experienced similar blackouts, though for a shorter period of time compared with what has been seen this week.Following those blackouts, the Ferc gave a series of recommendations to Ercot to prevent future blackouts, including increasing reserve levels and weatherizing facilities to protect them from cold weather.Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, told the Washington Post that Ercot “limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances”.Did renewable energy play a role in the grid’s malfunction?While Republicans have been blaming frozen wind turbines for the state’s blackouts, officials and experts say that malfunctions in natural gas operations played the largest role in the power crisis.Ercot said all of its sources of power, including those from renewable sources, were affected by the freezing temperatures. The state largely relies on natural gas for its power supply, though some comes from wind turbines and less from coal and nuclear sources.Natural gas can handle the state’s high temperatures in the summer, but extreme cold weather makes it difficult for the gas to flow to power plants and heat homes. Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas Austin, told the Texas Tribune that “gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now”.With the climate crisis likely to trigger more freak weather events like the one Texas is suffering it is noteworthy that there are places that experience frigidly cold weather that rely heavily on wind turbines and manage to have electricity in the winter. In Iowa, a state which sees freezing temperatures more often than Texas, nearly 40% of electricity is generated by wind turbines.What are officials doing to prevent future blackouts?With millions still without power as of late Wednesday, officials in Texas remain focused on getting power back to residents and remedying the damage from the storm. Politicians from both major parties have criticized Ercot for its handling of the storm, but officials have steered clear of providing examples of specific fixes. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has called for an investigation into Ercot, declaring it an emergency item for the state’s legislative session.But some Texas leaders have made it clear that they believe Texas should remain independent from the national power grids. Rick Perry, a former governor of the state who also served as Donald Trump’s energy secretary until 2019, said: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      California bill would ban fracking near schools and homes

      by

      [embedded content]
      A new bill introduced in the California state senate on Wednesday would ban all fracking near schools and homes by 1 January 2022 and in the entire state by 2027.
      Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique used to extract huge amounts of oil and gas from shale rock deep underground. It involves injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals into rock. Environmental groups say the chemicals threaten water supplies and public health.
      The bill introduced by the senators Scott Wiener and Monique Limón would halt new fracking permits and the renewal of current ones on 1 January 2022, in addition to banning new oil and gas production within 2,500ft (762 meters) of any home, school, healthcare facility or long-term care institution, such as dormitories or prisons. It would outlaw all fracking in the state by 1 January 2027, along with three other oil extraction methods: acid well stimulation treatments, cyclic steaming and water and steam flooding.
      California has been a leader in combating the climate crisis, with a law in place requiring the state use 100% renewable energy by 2045.
      In 2019, Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor, halted new fracking permits and fired the state’s top oil and gas regulator after a report showed a 35% increase in new wells. That moratorium ended last April after an independent, scientific review of California’s permitting process.
      The Democratic governor in September called on lawmakers to ban fracking by 2024 as he ordered regulators to begin preparations to prohibit the sale of all new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles by 2035.
      But the proposal is likely to be one of the most contentious fights in the state legislature this year. The state’s influential oil and gas industry generated $152.3bn in economic output in 2017, which generated about $21.5bn in state and local taxes.
      Wiener on Wednesday called the climate crisis an “existential threat to our community”.
      “We have no time to waste, and California must lead on climate action, including transitioning to a 100% clean energy economy,” he said.
      “If there’s not a bill, there’s not a conversation,” said Limón, “and it is necessary to have these conversations at the state level about environmental impacts and public health as oil production continues near our homes and schools. This bill continues robust policy conversations on fossil fuels and alternative energy production that have been going on for decades.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Losing our marbles over Stonehenge | Brief letters

      by

      Donald Trump’s acquittal in the US Senate (Report, 14 February) surely provides the best possible evidence for never allowing politicians to get involved in judicial decision-making. Their priorities lie in other directions. Les Baker Fordingbridge, Hampshire• The Queen gets £220m a year for seabed lease options for windfarms (Queen’s property chief delays sale of Scottish seabed windfarm plots, 12 February). Really? Perhaps she could give the country her cut given the future costs of the climate crisis, Covid and the expected hardships to come? Stephen King London• While I can empathise with Elizabeth Kerr (Letters, 11 February) my own travel aspirations are more mundane. I would just like to be able to visit Scotland to hand-deliver the teddy bear I have bought for my first grandchild, born six weeks ago. Nick Denton Buxton, Derbyshire• I assume that the original site in Wales was the manufacturer’s showroom (Dramatic discovery links Stonehenge to its original site – in Wales, 12 February). After all, you wouldn’t buy a circle of standing stones unless you’d seen it standing up and circular, would you? Katy JennisonWitney, Oxfordshire• If the people of Wales call – quite rightly – for the return of the “Preseli marbles” (Letters, 12 February) please can the stones go home by the same route and method so that we can all enjoy the spectacle? Sue BallBrighton More

    • 225 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline. Good, but he doesn't get a climate pass just yet | Nick Estes

      by

      Joe Biden scrapping the Keystone XL permit is a huge win for the Indigenous-led climate movement. It not only overturns Trump’s reversal of Obama’s 2015 rejection of the pipeline but is also a major blow to the US fossil fuel industry and the world’s largest energy economy and per-capita carbon polluter.There is every reason to celebrate the end of a decade-long fight against Keystone XL. Tribal nations and Indigenous movements hope it will be a watershed moment for bolder actions, demanding the same fates for contentious pipeline projects such as Line 3 and the Dakota Access pipeline.Biden has also vowed to review more than 100 environmental rules and regulations that were weakened or reversed by Trump and to restore Obama-era protections to two Indigenous sacred sites, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which are also national monuments in Utah. And he issued a “temporary moratorium” on all oil and gas leases in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, sacred territory to many Alaskan Natives.None of these victories would have been possible without sustained Indigenous resistance and tireless advocacy.But there is also good reason to be wary of the Biden administration and its parallels with the Obama administration. The overwhelming majority of people appointed to Biden’s climate team come from Obama’s old team. And their current climate actions are focused almost entirely on restoring Obama-era policies.Biden’s policy catchphrases of “America is back” and “build back better” and his assurance to rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” should also be cause for concern. A return to imagined halcyon days of an Obama presidency or to “normalcy”– which for Indigenous peoples in the United States is everyday colonialism – isn’t justice, nor is it the radical departure from the status quo we need to bolster Indigenous rights and combat the climate crisis.Obama’s record is mixed. While opposing the northern leg of Keystone XL in 2015, Obama had already fast-tracked the construction of the pipeline’s southern leg in 2012, despite massive opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups.His “all-of-the-above energy strategy” committed to curbing emissions while also promoting US “energy independence” by embracing domestic oil production. Thanks to this policy, the lifting of a four-decade limit on exporting crude oil from the United States, and the fracking revolution, US domestic crude oil production increased by 88% from 2008 to 2016.Domestic oil pipeline construction also increased – and so, too, did resistance to it. During the protests against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, Obama’s FBI infiltrated the Standing Rock camps. “There’s an obligation for protesters to be peaceful,” he admonished the unarmed Water Protectors at the prayer camps who faced down water cannons in freezing weather, attack dogs, mass arrests and the ritualistic brutality of a heavily-militarized small army of police.In 2018, Obama claimed credit for the United States becoming the world’s largest oil producer, urging industry elites in Texas to “thank” him for making them rich. Trump’s subsequent, and more aggressive, policy of “unleashing American energy dominance” built on Obama’s gains.Undoing four years of Trump – and the lasting damage it brought – can’t be the only barometer of climate justice. Nor should we lower our expectations of what is possible and necessary for Native sovereignty and treaty rights.Biden partly owes his election victory to Native voters. Arizona voting districts with large Native populations helped flipped the traditionally Republican state last November to his and Democrats’ favor. Native aspirations, however, don’t entirely align with Biden’s climate agenda, the Democratic party, or electoral politics.In Arizona, where Biden won the Native vote, the Forest Service could, in the coming months, hand over 2,400 acres of Chi’chil Bildagoteel, an Apache sacred site, to the Australian mining company Rio Tinto. In 2014, the Arizona Republican senator John McCain attached a rider to a defense authorization bill to allow the transfer of land to make way for a copper mine, which would create a nearly two-mile wide open-pit crater destroying numerous Native burial sites, ceremonial areas and cultural items in the process. (Last year, Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge Cave, a 46,000-year-old Indigenous sacred site, to expand an iron ore mine in Australia.)A Democratic Senate passed Resolution Copper; Obama signed it into law; and Trump fast-tracked the environmental review during his last days in office. Resource colonialism is a bipartisan affair.Much like the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s dilemma with the Dakota Access pipeline, the Apache Stronghold, made up of members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe opposing the copper mine at Oak Flat, has little recourse. No law exists giving Native people control of their lands outside government-defined reservation boundaries.We must ask ourselves why Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialismRio Tinto’s copper mine aims to meet at least a quarter of the United States’ annual copper needs, an essential metal that will be in high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. According to the World Bank, three billions of tons of metals and minerals like copper and lithium will be required by 2050 for wind, solar and geothermal power to meet the base target of the Paris agreement, which Biden has committed the US to rejoining.And before Trump left office, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final permit to the Canadian mining company Lithium Americas to create an open-pit lithium mine at Thacker Pass on traditional Paiute land in Nevada. The mine could bolster Biden’s $2tn “green energy” transition plan. Lithium is a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries, and it’s what attracted Elon Musk’s Tesla battery factory to Nevada. Last October, Biden reportedly told a group of miners that he planned to increase domestic lithium production to wean the country from foreign sources like China.These “green” techno fixes and consumer-based solutions might provide short-term answers, but they don’t stop the plunder of Native lands. Even the addition of Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, to the Biden cabinet won’t fundamentally change the colonial nature of the United States. We must ask ourselves why Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialism.But no matter who is US president, Indigenous people will continue fighting for the land and the future of the planet. For us, it has always been decolonization or extinction. More

    • 250 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden must be our 'climate president'. He can start by ending pipeline projects | Faith Spotted Eagle and Kendall Mackey

      by

      As we prepare to turn the page on 2020, and inaugurate Joe Biden as president on 20 January 2021, the incoming administration has a climate mandate to listen to people across America – and keep fossil fuels in the ground. This means stopping the Keystone XL, Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines on day one.While Trump props up failing fossil fuel companies, including through government handouts from Covid-19 stimulus packages to the tune of $15bn, Biden has already committed to transitioning the United States off oil, holding polluters accountable, honoring treaty rights and stopping the Keystone XL pipeline.In August, Joe Biden laid out his $2tn climate plan, which has the support of Indigenous peoples and their allies, Black communities and environmental voters. Biden’s climate plan is the most ambitious plan of a major party presidential nominee ever. To be the most ambitious climate president ever, Biden must implement a climate test on all federal permitting and projects, to ensure any project not aligned with tackling the climate crisis and keeping warming under 1.5 degrees does not move forward. A meaningful climate test must keep fossil fuels in the ground.Just last week, Biden announced the New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland as his nominee for US secretary of the interior. Haaland is a member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe; if confirmed she will be the first Native person to serve in the role. We hope her leadership will help protect our public lands and Indigenous sovereignty as we phase out fossil fuels.As we write, communities across Minnesota are rising up to protect land, water and treaty rights as Line 3 pipeline construction begins and lawsuits are filed in opposition. Meanwhile, communities in South Dakota are mobilizing to pressure Biden to rescind the permit for Keystone XL and end the project once and for all.If built, Line 3 would release as much greenhouse gas pollution as 50 new coal-fired power plants, violate Ojibwe treaty rights, and put Minnesota’s water, ecosystems and communities in harm’s way. Keystone XL would have a similarly devastating impact on water, land, people and the Oceti Sakowin tribes’ treaty and inherent rights.Both pipeline projects have blatantly refused meaningful consultation with the tribes impacted. This is glaringly disrespectful to grassroots dedication in territories that have stood up to this invasion for years, as well as a denial of the irreversible impact these pipelines will have on cultural and spiritual sites.Projects like Line 3 and Keystone XL are also directly linked to violence against and trafficking of Native women and girls, due to the installation of temporary housing for mostly male pipeline workers, known as “man camps”. These man camps are also a hotbed for Covid-19, drawing thousands of out-of-state workers. South Dakota is at a crisis point with Covid-19 cases, yet the threat of Keystone XL construction looms.There is increasing anticipation of violence from militarized police partnered with Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline company backing Line 3, triggering memories of violence against water protectors and allies in the fight to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).In the shadow of centuries of genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, Barack Obama halted DAPL and rejected Keystone XL. Now, Biden has a chance to build upon this legacy and stop Line 3, Keystone XL and DAPL.Stopping these pipelines is completely within Joe Biden’s purview and responsibility. Through executive action, Biden can order an immediate pause on oil pipeline construction, and a moratorium on any new projects or expansions, as he reviews Trump-era approvals for conflict or undue influence from the fossil fuel industry. Biden must also reverse over 100 environmental and climate protection rollbacks brought on by the Trump administration.But to be a true climate president, Biden must go further. Just as pipelines will inevitably spill, any new or existing fossil fuel project would inevitably fail a climate test. There is no safe or clean way to extract, transport, or refine coal, oil or gas without poisoning our communities and driving us past 1.5C of warming. In addition, the construction, transport and burning of fossil fuels have grave impacts on public health and safety, including premature death, lung cancer and increased rates of Covid-19.From the Keystone XL Promise to Protect to the Line 3 Pledge of Resistance, tens of thousands of people are prepared to wield our sacred and patriotic duty to stop these toxic and unnecessary fossil fuel projects. In addition, thousands of people have already sent petitions to Joe Biden urging him to halt these projects.It’s time to make polluters pay for the damages done to our communities’ health, land and wellbeing. This starts with stopping fossil fuel projects and returning land to Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, we must dismantle existing projects and fund a just and equitable transition to a regenerative 100% renewable economy.The stakes are higher than ever – economically, socially and politically. Biden must show guts in holding coal, oil and gas executives accountable for knowingly bringing climate disasters, pollution, sickness and death to our doorsteps.It’s our time to leap toward a renewable energy revolution that centers Indigenous sovereignty, community health, and a safe, livable future for all.Faith Spotted Eagle is a Yankton Sioux Tribe member, an opponent of pipeline projects including Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the first Indigenous person to win an electoral vote for president
      Kendall Mackey is 350.org regional campaign manager More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Scott Morrison's climate language has shifted – but actions speak louder than words

      by

      Scott Morrison’s language about Australia adopting an emissions reduction target of net zero by 2050, and about climate action more generally, is starting to warm up. The recent shift in the prime minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way, and is the shift real?The story so farWe know the Coalition’s history on climate policy. The Abbott government repealed Labor’s climate price, attempted to gut the Renewable Energy Target and abolish agencies driving a transition to low emissions energy. Morrison while treasurer brandished a lump of coal in the parliament, telling his opponents not to be “scared”. For much of this year, the Coalition has ignored persistent entreaties from environmentalists and major business groups to adopt a target of net zero emissions by 2050 (at the latest), and to use the economic recovery from Covid-19 to lock in the transition to low emissions. Morrison has never ruled out adopting a net zero target but has created the impression the government wasn’t interested – an impression reinforced by the government’s declaration that it would pursue a “gas-led recovery” after the pandemic.When and why did the language change?In the couple of weeks before the US presidential election on 3 November, Japan, China and South Korea adopted pledges taking them closer to net zero. Morrison also had a private conversation with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, in which net zero was raised. Leaders were anticipating the likely election of Joe Biden. The Democrat had promised to end the backsliding of the Trump era and revitalise international climate negotiations, starting with bringing the US back into the Paris deal. Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as his climate envoy after winning the election is a further signal of seriousness. From the moment Biden was projected as the likely winner, Morrison’s language began to change. It became noticeably warmer. Morrison now says Australia wants to “reach net zero emissions as quickly as possible”.What about 2030?Before we get to 2050, Australia has an emissions reduction target for 2030, and the government will be under pressure to update that commitment with a higher level of ambition in the next round of international climate talks.Australia’s current target is a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, and the government has been planning to meet that (not very ambitious) target using carryover credits from the Kyoto period. Official government emissions projections released in December last year found Australia was not on track to meet the 2030 target unless it used the credits. Australia’s use of the Kyoto-era concessions has been strongly opposed by a large number of nations in international climate discussions, and experts say there is no legal basis for their use under the Paris agreement.After Biden’s victory, Morrison used a speech to business leaders to signal, hey presto, magic happens: Australia might not deploy the accounting trick to help meet the 2030 target after all. The prime minister said: “My ambition is that we will not need them and we are working to this as our goal, consistent with our record of over-delivering.” The hint from Morrison was that new projections, expected to be released in December, will show Australia is on track to meet the promised cut without carryovers.How can that happen?In part, because the Australian government has not been great at forecasting future emissions and tends to substantially change its estimates each year.Estimating future emissions is difficult. Each year, officials make assumptions about what will happen in 50 areas of the economy and come up with projections of how much will be emitted. For more than a decade, they have significantly over-estimated how much CO2 the country will emit in the years ahead before revising down the projections, sometimes significantly.The biggest miscalculation has been in electricity generation. Renewable energy has come into the grid much faster than the government expected – the national 2020 renewable energy target was met ahead of time, state targets in Victoria and Queensland have started to have an impact and the cost of solar and wind energy continues to drop, making investment more attractive. Officials also overestimated how much grid electricity the country would use – demand has fallen, in part due to nearly a third of homes now having solar panels.For reasons that are not clear, the official projections have assumed there would be less renewable energy in the system than the models used by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which runs the power grid. Addressing this will bring future projections down.There are other anomalies. The projections do not factor in drought, which in recent years has reduced emissions from agriculture as farmers have had to substantially reduce cattle and sheep numbers.Officials last year revised down the emissions forecast for the next decade by 344m tonnes. If a similar readjustment were to happen this year, it could lead to the government saying it was now on track to meet its modest 2030 target without the carryover credits.Has anything else changed that could affect the projections?The only new policy of note from the Morrison government this year has been its low-emissions technology roadmap. Released in September, it claimed developing five new technologies could “avoid” 250m tonnes of emissions a year by 2040.There was been no explanation of how that number was reached, and with the arguable exception of “clean” hydrogen, the government has not yet committed significant new funding to develop the technologies. It is unclear how this policy could reasonably change the projections in a meaningful way.More noteworthy is that, while the federal government has tried to slow the influx of solar and wind by neither continuing nor replacing the renewable energy target, the states keep stepping in to fill the gap.The big one is the NSW plan to underwrite 12 gigawatts of new wind and solar over the next decade – a development that will be banked by Canberra as “progress” in terms of projected national emissions reductions, but also criticised by the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, because it might bring forward the closure of coal plants, which is of course a necessary development if you are a government now wanting to trumpet a downward trend in emissions. You know it makes sense.Would a lower emissions forecast be good news?Lower emissions would, of course, be great. But if it happens it isn’t something we should get too excited about, for two reasons.The first should be pretty obvious – the government will not have actually done anything yet. These are projections, not actual emissions.Before Covid-19 hit, Australia’s national emissions remained stubbornly flat under the Coalition, having dipped only about 2% in the more than six years since it was elected. They will be lower this year due to the pandemic, but that is not something the government can claim credit for, and it may not continue.The second reason is, as mentioned above, Australia’s target is nothing to crow about. It was a fudge from the beginning. The size of the cut – 26%-28% – was just a lift of the US commitment under the Paris agreement, with one notable difference – the Obama administration promised that target for 2025, while the Australian government pushed it back to 2030.Getting to net zero emissions, as scientists say is necessary, isn’t just about the end goal. It’s about how much you emit as you get there. To play its fair part in meeting the goals of the Paris agreement, Australia can only emit so much over the next three decades.Advice to the government in 2015 suggested playing its part would require a cut equivalent to between 45% and 65% by 2030. A recent analysis by analysts at the Climate Action Tracker found Australia’s fair share over that timeframe was 66%. The current target does not get the job done.So will the government do more on climate?It is not impossible, but it is far from guaranteed.There will be pressure on Australia over the next year not only to set a target of net zero by 2050, but to go further by 2030 than promised. The US under Biden will be required to set a new target for that date and other major countries are expected to do the same. Dropping the plan to use carryover credits will not be enough to satisfy their expectations.Apart from saying we can meet our (lowball) 2030 target without a Kyoto-era accounting trick (cue applause) there’s no sign at the moment the government is working up a higher 2030 target. It is working on a long-term climate strategy, which was a commitment under the Paris agreement. It was due this year, but has been pushed back to before the next major climate summit in Glasgow late next year. It is expected, but not guaranteed, to include modelling of what future action on climate will mean for Australia.There are a couple of other policies in the works. The government has dumped a long-promised electric vehicle strategy and replaced it with the promise of a “future fuels” plan on hydrogen, electric and bio-fuelled vehicles, but it is not expected to deliver significant new commitments to accelerate an emissions cut.Potentially more significantly, it has also said it will look at the safeguard mechanism, a Tony Abbott-era policy that was supposed to limit emissions from big industrial sites. So far, the scheme has barely justified its existence. Companies have mostly just been allowed to increase their CO2 limit, known as a baseline, and pollute more.Presumably recognising this is not sustainable, the government earlier this year said it accepted a recommendation from a review headed by former Business Council of Australia president Grant King that the mechanism should be changed so that companies would be rewarded for cutting emissions below their baseline if they were undertaking “transformative” projects and not just producing less or shutting down. It sounds like a step back towards carbon pricing – rewarding cuts and, if the Coalition can stomach it, finally penalising increases in emissions.Would the government go back to carbon pricing?Morrison should use his political capital and his internal authority to drive a substantive change – but he won’t want to lose his job over it. Part of what’s going on with Morrison’s shift in language is the prime minister testing how much he can get away with: how positive can he sound about emissions reduction before the right of the Liberal party starts having a tantrum, or before the National party has a public meltdown because someone has whispered coal is not good for humanity after all? Think of Morrison as inching along a dimly lit ledge several stories above the ground.But the rest of the world isn’t waiting for the Coalition to get its act together. Action on emissions is picking up elsewhere and at some point Australia will have to deal with rising CO2 from big industry and transport. In the meantime, as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO recently reported, climate change is already here and extreme weather events are getting worse. More