Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 112

This Kind Of Electricity Provider Is Already Integrating Renewables

Only about one in eight American houses and businesses gets electricity from a cooperative — and on average, they pay about $500 less a year for the privilege.

Unregulated by public commissions and unfettered by shareholders, electricity co-ops answer to their customers, who elect the companies’ boards. This structure, and their smaller size, allows co-ops to be more flexible, coming up with new and innovative ways to embrace the future of energy, advocates say.

“We’re trying to power what we call a new way of thinking,” Gary Connett, direct of member services for Great River Energy, said at a Washington, D.C. event Thursday.

Great River Energy, which provides wholesale electricity to a group of Minnesota co-ops, is helping its members take Minnesota’s renewable energy standard (25 percent by 2025) in stride, adding wind power from neighboring North Dakota, as well as facilitating community and rooftop solar. In one project, customers can “subscribe” to a solar panel in a community array and receive a discounted large-scale ( 85- or 105-gallon) electric hot water heater. From an environmental standpoint, this program helps transition people off fossil-fuel sources. From the co-op’s standpoint, this is a way to make electricity demand more predictable.

Under the program, large hot water heaters also act as energy storage systems, helping the co-op decrease demand when electricity is at its most expensive, such as in the morning, when everyone is getting up. The co-op runs the water heaters at night, when North Dakota’s winds are howling, but air conditioners are low and lights are off.

Interestingly, the plan goes against a Department of Energy (DOE) initiative to phase out large hot water heaters — which have typically been seen as wasteful and inefficient. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) ushered a bill through in April to exempt electric co-ops from DOE’s plan.

“While other systems of storing energy undergo research and development, Minnesota’s cooperatives have these load management practices and technologies in place today to provide for a more reliable and economic system, and facilitate the integration of renewable energy resources,” Darrick Moe, president of the Minnesota Rural Electric Association, a Great Lakes customer, said in a statement about the bill.

The program is just one example of how electric co-ops are able to be flexible and forward-thinking in their approach to delivering electricity.

Electric co-ops are something of an American phenomenon. Still serving rural populations, the electric co-op model proliferated beginning in the 1930s, when nine out of 10 rural Americans still didn’t have power. For-profit utilities that served (and still serve) cities didn’t want to spend the money to build miles of infrastructure for just a few customers. A lending program under the Rural Electrification Administration, created in 1935 by then-President Roosevelt, allowed rural customers to band together and start their own companies. And they did — by 1953, 90 percent of U.S. farms were electric, according to NRECA, a national co-op organization.

Now, as the electricity sector — pushed by state and national goals intended to decrease the country’s carbon footprint — transitions to renewable energy sources, co-ops are better positioned to help their customers.

While some large utilities are fighting back against rooftop solar, a co-op in New Hampshire seamlessly threw out a limit on the number of people who could go solar, developing what they — and their customers — think is a fair rate for continuing to provide the infrastructure and reliability that solar panels fail to provide.

Last year, New Hampshire Electric Co-op (NHEC) was rapidly approaching the state-mandated cap on net metered customers — that is, customers who received payment for the electricity they put back on the grid. The co-op knew, though, that customers wanted to go solar. It also knew that it wasn’t viable for all its customers to be zeroing out their bills every week. Rather than enact a flat fee, the co-op analyzed transmission and distribution costs, which it will continue to pass along to customers, no matter how much electricity the customers sell back.

NHEC board member Kenneth Colburn chalked the process up to “NHEC’s willingness to take initiative — and, more importantly, the freedom that we had to take initiative that was provided by the co-op business model.”

That freedom to operate in their members interest is critical to solving the issues created by transitioning to new ways of doing things, Colburn said during Thursday’s event.

“Here we are, seven months, eight months, after the problem arose, and we have a solution,” he said.

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Electricity

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Jeb Bush Parrots Frank Luntz Climate Script, Just As His Brother Did A Decade Ago

The White House is gearing up to announce the final carbon pollution standards that power plants will have to meet in EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). And that means you can expect many conservatives critical of the plan to start using the poll-tested words “technology” and “innovation” over and over and over.

For instance, Bloomberg BNA just interviewed GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush about the CPP and his own energy, environment and climate strategy. He said, “Technology, innovation and discovery should play a major role in preserving a clean and healthy environment.”

Wait, that wasn’t Jeb. That was Frank Luntz in his famous 2002 memo to conservatives and the Bush White House explaining that the best way to pretend you care about the climate and the environment — while opposing regulations that might actually do something to reduce pollution — was to blather on about “technology and innovation.”

What Jeb actually said was “I’m confident that with sensible and balanced policies from Washington, American innovators and entrepreneurs will pioneer a new generation of technology that improves our environment, strengthens our economy, and continues to amaze the world.

Wait, that wasn’t Jeb either. That was his brother, President George W Bush, in 2008 climate remarks parroting Luntz’s advice for the umpteenth time.

What Jeb actually truly really said was “Generally, I think as conservatives we should embrace innovation, embrace technology, embrace science. It’s the source of a lot more solutions than any government-imposed idea.”

Yes, it’s Orwellian that Bush keeps saying conservatives should “embrace science” given that they have actually chosen to embrace anti-scientific climate denial as I discussed in May the last time Jeb trotted out those meaningless two words.

Now Jeb is adding in the “technology and innovation” mantra popularized by his brother. And who can blame him? They are both marvelous, glittering things. Of course, because we’ve ignored the science for a quarter century, “technology and innovation” are not magic wands that can preserve a livable climate without strong government programs to spur deployment — such as a price on carbon or EPA carbon pollution standards. But they are both marvelous, glittering things we can all agree on.

And that is precisely why they are a cornerstone of Luntz’s poll-tested euphemisms for “we want to sound like we care about the climate, we just don’t want to do anything about it”:

Technology and innovation are the key in arguments on both sides. Global warming alarmists use American superiority in technology and innovation quite effectively in responding to accusations that international agreements such as the Kyoto accord could cost the United States billions. Rather than condemning corporate America the way most environmentalists have done in the past, they attack their us for lacking faith in our collective ability to meet any economic challenges presented by environmental changes we make. This should be our argument. We need to emphasize how voluntary innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation.

Yes, progressives do like to argue that because of successful American innovation and technology development efforts — much of it backed by the federal government — it is now super-cheap to slash carbon pollution. Of course, we like to argue this point because that’s what all of the major independent scientific and economic analyses show, and so that’s what every single major government in the world agrees is actually true (see here).

Team Bush, however, is just really good at staying on message. As I wrote way back in 2007, the “technology trap” is where clean energy technology is used as an excuse to further delay action, rather than as a reason to foster immediate action on climate change and the environment.

Luntz himself reiterated his advice in an early 2005 strategy document “An Energy Policy for the 21st Century“ writing, “Innovation and 21st-century technology should be at the core of your energy policy.” Luntz repeated the word “technology” thirty times in that document.

Then, in an April 2005 speech describing his proposed energy policy, Bush repeated the word ‘technology’ more than forty times. Business Week pointed out that Bush was following Luntz’s script and noted “what’s most striking about Bush’s Apr. 27 speech is how closely it follows the script written by Luntz earlier this year.” The article, titled “Bush Is Blowing Smoke on Energy,” also pointed out “the President’s failure to propose any meaningful solutions.”

The Luntz script seems to have worked for George W. It remains to be seen if it will work for Jeb, too.

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Climate ChangeJeb Bush

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The Hidden Silver Lining In The EPA’s Most Recent Court Loss

If you just read the headlines, it looks clear that the Environmental Protection Agency suffered a loss in court this week.

On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals told the agency that it must loosen some of its restrictions on air pollution that crosses state lines. In 13 states, the court ruled, the EPA’s limits on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions that drift over into other states were too strict. Now, the EPA must go back and rewrite how those states should comply with the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, also known as CSAPR (pronounced “casper”).

That’s obviously not great news for the agency, but in a statement to ThinkProgress, the EPA said it was “pleased” with the result.

Indeed, for the EPA, there are two silver linings within Tuesday’s ruling. The more obvious one is that, despite the fact that it has to go back and re-do some of it, the rule itself was upheld. Brought by a number of states, the court case had been trying to eliminate the rule entirely, arguing that the EPA didn’t have the authority to tell them to reduce their emissions for the benefit of other states. The D.C. Circuit rejected that argument, noting the Supreme Court had strongly affirmed the rule last year.

In other words, the agency may have to re-write some states’ emissions targets, but it doesn’t have to re-do the entire thing. And while it’s re-writing those parts, the 13 states still have to comply with the rule.

“EPA is pleased that the court decision keeps the Cross-State Rule in place so that it continues to achieve important public health protections,” an agency spokesperson said in an email. “The Cross-State Rule was promulgated to address a serious problem and continued implementation of the rule will lead to significant benefits for human health and the environment.” The EPA estimates the rule will achieve $280 billion in annual health benefits by preventing up to 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks, 19,000 cases of acute bronchitis, 400,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and 1.8 million sick days a year.

The second silver lining is less obvious. Tuesday’s ruling, some attorneys say, adds a bit more padding to the idea that courts like to uphold EPA regulations most of the time — even if they find the regulation to be partially flawed. For example, when the Supreme Court found flaws with the EPA’s Mercury Air Toxics rule last month, it didn’t invalidate the rule — it merely sent it back to the D.C. Circuit for review. The D.C. Circuit could very well invalidate the rule, but some attorneys say it’s likely that it will be upheld, and the EPA will be told to make some fixes.

“The best alternative to a flawed protection isn’t no protection, it’s better protection,” Earthjustice attorney Neil Gormley, who represented intervenor groups in the mercury case, told ThinkProgress. “So that’s why courts are giving the EPA the opportunity to fix errors instead of invalidating those rules entirely.”

The fact that courts have been wary to invalidate EPA rules is a good sign for the agency’s controversial climate regulations, which are expected to be finalized as soon as next week. Because once those regulations are finalized, they’re expected to be subject to a barrage of lawsuits seeking to invalidate them, both from the coal industry and from coal-heavy states.

But environmental groups are confident that the EPA will come away from those legal challenges largely unscathed.

“EPA has an excellent track record in court, and the Clean Power Plan should be sustained against expected attacks,” said David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a press release on Thursday.

In that same statement, Sierra Club Chief Climate Counsel Joanne Spalding agreed. “EPA has won each round to date and its winning streak is likely to continue because the Clean Power Plan is on solid footing,” she said.

Of course, litigation is often unpredictable. As with Tuesday’s ruling on CSAPR and last month’s ruling on the mercury regulations, there is always a chance that a court could find a legal problem with the EPA’s climate rule. But if those rulings are any indication, it’s less likely that a legal problem would result in a full repeal of the landmark rule.

“It often is the case when rules are challenged that the agency might not come away with 100 percent on everything,” Howard Fox, an Earthjustice attorney who worked on the CSAPR case, told ThinkProgress. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a loss. You have to look at the big picture.”

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Air PollutionClean Power PlanClimate ChangeCross-state air pollutionCSAPREPAEPA Climate Rule

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Agriculture Might Be Emitting 40 Percent More Of One Greenhouse Gas Than Previously Thought

Synthetic fertilizers are used throughout agriculture — and especially in the United States’ Corn Belt — to help plants grow. But the fertilizers also emit a greenhouse gas known as nitrous oxide (N2O) that is almost 300 times more potent, pound for pound, than carbon dioxide.

Now, a recent study out of the University of Minnesota suggests that emissions from nitrous oxide have been severely underestimated, by as much as 40 percent in some places.

Nitrous oxide emissions have historically been calculated in two ways: either by adding up the amount of nitrogen used as fertilizer (known as the bottom-up method) or by taking measurements from the air (known as the top-down approach). But these two techniques haven’t always yielded compatible results, and regional measurements taken with a top-down approach showed more nitrous oxide emissions than in the bottom-up models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, leading researchers to speculate that the IPCC was likely underestimating global nitrous oxide emissions.

Researchers at University of Minnesota wondered where the discrepancy in the two models came from — what was the top-down model measuring that the bottom-up models were missing?

The answer, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came from looking at N2O emissions across Minnesota not just from the soil, but also from streams and rivers, where nitrogen fertilizers can often end up due to drainage and runoff.

The researchers found that when these river and stream systems are taken into account, estimates of nitrous oxide emissions tended to increase. The researchers also noticed a strong relationship between the size of the stream or river and its emissions, finding that small streams close to land had the highest emissions.

“Even very small amounts of N2O can be very harmful from a greenhouse gas balance perspective,” Peter Turner, a PhD candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, told BBC News. “We found that there was a nine fold underestimation with streams in the area, which translates to about a a 40 percent underestimation of the agricultural budget.”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, about 74 percent of nitrous oxide emissions in the United States come from agricultural soil management. To mitigate emissions, scientists suggest improving a crops’ ability to absorb the nitrogen that is applied to the soil, as nitrogen that remains in the soil increases the potential for nitrous oxide emissions.

But this new study suggests that a better understanding of how nitrous oxide emissions interact with streams and rivers could also help researchers and farmers develop better strategies for nitrous oxide mitigation.

“We identified an important relationship between the size of the stream and its potential to emit nitrous oxide that can be used to scale up emission estimates,” Turner said in a press statement. “Understanding the riverine nitrous oxide source is an important step forward for understanding the global nitrous oxide budget.”

Anita Ganesan from the University of Bristol told BBC News that the study could have global implications, helping areas around the world with similar intensive agriculture schemes — like Europe, India, or China — better account for their nitrous oxide emissions.

“In the global context, this could also have large implications for regions of the world where there are large agricultural sources and where we may not have the measurement coverage to assess emissions using atmospheric measurements,” she said. “Through this study, we may be able to improve ‘bottom-up’ models to better account for these hotspot emissions.”

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AgricultureClimate ChangeGreenhouse Gas Emissions

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Environmental Group Sues California Over ‘Fundamentally Flawed’ Fracking Report

An environmental group is suing the state of California’s oil agency for not incorporating certain information into its fracking rules — information that included warnings of the risks fracking poses to drinking water and the environment.

In the lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity (CDB) states that, though California’s fracking law SB 4 mandated that the state complete an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for fracking, the EIR was “fundamentally flawed” and didn’t incorporate information from a separate statewide report on fracking. That report, which was released after the EIR was finalized, “identified a substantial number of new and more severe risks and harms from well stimulation, including threats to California’s water supplies … and the health risks suffered by millions of Californians who live near oil and gas wells and are exposed to dangerous air pollutants,” the lawsuit states. By not including this independent statewide report on fracking into its EIR, California violated the law, the lawsuit alleges.

According to the lawsuit, the deadline for the state’s report on fracking was January 1, 2015, but the report didn’t come out until July 2015 — meaning that it was too late to “meaningfully inform” the EIR.

“The whole point of the deadline was that the scientific review would be fully used in the EIR,” Kassie Siegel, director of the CBD’s Climate Law Institute, told ThinkProgress. “We had a promise from the legislature is that we’d have a real scientific review and a real report, and they’d make a decision based on science, and that didn’t happen.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is asking the state to halt all new permits for well stimulation, which includes traditional hydraulic fracturing as well as acid fracking.

The state’s report recommended that oil and gas development near homes, hospitals, and schools be halted, and it also warned of the dangers of shallow fracking — a method that drills wells less than 2,000 feet deep and that’s used in 75 percent of California’s fracking. According to the lawsuit, the report recommended that permits for shallow fracking be denied unless the state can adequately prove that the method won’t harm groundwater. Siegel said that there was “no way” that California could prove shallow fracking was safe.

“When Governor [Andrew] Cuomo reviewed the science, he banned fracking,” she said, referring to New York’s decision to ban the oil and gas extraction technique. The fact that the scientific report wasn’t incorporated into the EIR means that Governor Jerry Brown’s office didn’t adequately review the science of fracking.

“Any rational agency that considers these findings would ban fracking,” she said.

California’s SB 4, which was signed into law in September 2013, requires oil and gas companies to list the chemicals they use in the fracking process online, but has come under fire from environmentalists, who say the law doesn’t go far enough to protect the state from fracking. Earlier this year, for instance, an investigation found that the California Department of Conservation had been allowing oil companies to inject wastewater into state aquifers. CBD and the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force the state to stop allowing this practice.

“Right now, Californians are completely unprotected from fracking and other dangerous oil activities,” Siegel said. “We haven’t received any protection from fracking at all. We have more information and we were promised that this information would be used…that promise was broken.”

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CaliforniaClimate ChangeFracking

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Activists Hanging From A Bridge Force Arctic Drilling Ship To Turn Around

“Not today, Shell!” an anchor support yelled from a Portland bridge as 13 climbers hung below for the 29th consecutive hour.

Cheers and chants were heard from land and water around 7:30 a.m. Pacific Time Thursday, as a Royal Dutch Shell ship slowly turned around in the water and retreated from the bridge. The Arctic-bound ship stopped in its tracks Thursday during its second attempt to reach a Shell drilling site. The oil company aborted its first attempt early Wednesday morning, when Greenpeace activists rappelled off of St. John’s Bridge in Portland, Oregon with the support of assistants and “kayaktivists” on the water, two hours before the icebreaking vessel was scheduled to leave. The ship’s second attempt also failed.

The vessel, MVS Fennica, is meant to keep ice at bay during Arctic drilling and carries a crucial part of Shell’s spill response system, according to Kristina Flores, one of 13 anchor supports at the bridge, who documented the protest using Periscope.

“What we have on the water today is an eyesore,” she said. Activists considered the Fennica’s retreat a victory, but remained in position. Many climbers participating in the blockade, who risked arrest on felony charges, have access to social media. One live-tweeting climber posted when the ship retreated.

The fennica is headed back to its dock where it belongs – not the arctic! #ShellNo pic.twitter.com/wCwByWhgHD

— Dan Cannon (@DanEnviroCannon) July 30, 2015

The Dutch company’s Arctic drilling plans have been the subject of controversy for many years. Most recently, hundreds of Seattle protesters on kayaks and small boats arrived in Elliott Bay to keep the company’s drilling rigs at the port. They held signs and banners similar to those held by Portland protesters, which read “Shell No” and “Save the Arctic.”

Now, protesters are calling on President Obama to halt plans for drilling in the Arctic — something the administration just gave Shell final approval for last week.

“This is President Obama’s last chance to wake up and realize the disaster that could happen on his watch,” Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA, said in a statement. “There is still time for our President to cancel Shell’s lease to drill in the Arctic, living up to the climate leader we know he can be.”

The climbers say they’re ready to stay put until they’re certain the Fennica won’t go to the Arctic.

“We’ve been here for 29 hours, and we’re ready to be here for another 29,” Flores said. Every day that the ship’s departure is delayed is another step towards ending Shell’s Arctic drilling plan.

“The window for drilling is closing, because there’s only a certain number of weeks that there’s no ice there, so Shell is really under time pressure to get that boat up there and we’re doing everything we can to delay that,” Leonard said.

Activists think the Fennica, which arrived in Portland for repairs on a meter-long gash in the side of the ship, is not prepared for the harsh conditions of the Arctic. And despite a section on its website addressing its Arctic drilling plan, Shell hasn’t done much to diminish the opposition to drilling in the Arctic. In late 2012, its oil spill response system failed “under very calm, tranquil conditions,” according to environmentalist Todd Guiton. “If it can’t handle the best we have here [the Pacific Northwest], I really have my doubts it can handle even a little adversity in the Arctic,” he said.

Later that year, Shell ships experienced engine failures and discharged “oily waste” into the Alaskan Arctic. Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote that sudden swells, storms, and heavy fog common in the Arctic create an environment unsafe for drilling. That the Fennica didn’t make it to the Arctic safely initially creates concerns about its ability to safely support drilling.

Meanwhile, protesters continue to hang from the bridge in hammocks, equipped with plenty of food, water, and diapers, and are prepared to stay for several days. Portlanders even brought breakfast and coffee to them Thursday morning in support.

“This planet is why we’re here,” Flores said. “If we destroy it, we don’t have a place to inhabit. This is personal.”

Rupali Srivastava is an intern with ThinkProgress.

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OilPortlandProtestShell

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Lions Aren’t The Only Big Cats Disappearing From The World

Lions, tigers, and … just lions and tigers. It’s been a big week for both. While lions captivated the public eye with the unsavory killing of Zimbabwe’s beloved Cecil the lion, this week was actually supposed to be about tigers. In fact, Wednesday was International Tiger Day. And while lion lovers don’t have much to feel good about, tiger admirers feel on the verge of desperation.

First, early in the week a census was released that revealed that there were only around 100 tigers left in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans forest, the world’s largest mangrove forest. This is far fewer than experts originally thought, with the previous census a decade ago recording some 440 tigers. The Sundbarans is a World Heritage Site and one of the last remaining strongholds for the majestic cats. They are called Bengal tigers after all, and this is Bangladesh.

As Agence France-Presse reports, the reason for the low numbers has to do as much with the methodology used for the count as it does with the tigers’ suffering population. While in the past pugmarks, or footprints, were analyzed, this time hidden cameras documented the cats’ movements. Tapan Kumar Dey, Bangladesh’s wildlife conservator, told Agence France-Presse that the year-long survey that concluded in April found a population ranging between 83 and 130, giving an average of 106 tigers.

[image error]

Camera trap image of wild Sumatran tiger, 2006.

CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons

Across the border in India, some 74 tigers were recently counted in the Sundarbans on that side of the border. There are believed to be some 2,226 tigers living in India with smaller populations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar. In a rare instance of positive news, the tiger population in India has actually rebounded by more than 30 percent since 2010, when it was determined to be 1,706. It reached an all-time nadir of 1,411 in 2006. Indian environmental officials have attributed this success to the creation of government-staffed tiger reserves.

According to the Guardian, tigers’ natural Indian habitat, “tropical evergreen forests, deciduous forests, mangrove swamps, thorn forests and grass jungles,” have almost disappeared outside of these reserves, of which there are 48.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, wild tiger populations are at an all-time low, having fallen some 97 percent in a little over a century. A few as 3,200 live in the wild today.

To add human-caused insult to human-induced injury, it turns out that sea level rise could wipe out a large portion of remaining tiger habitat in the Sundarbans. A post by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in honor of International Tiger Day states that “without mitigation efforts, projected sea level rise — nearly a foot by 2070 — could destroy nearly the entire Sundarbans tiger habitat.”

“This area harbors Bengal tigers and protects coastal regions from storm surges and wind damage,” IUCN said in a post. “However, rising sea levels that were caused by climate change threaten to wipe out these forests and the last remaining habitat of this tiger population.”

In a statement, IUCN Director General Inger Andersen said the impacts of this devastating loss range far beyond tigers and their habitat.

“The fate of the tiger is intrinsically linked to the fate of the forests and grasslands it inhabits and in turn, the fate of the people who rely on these resources for their food and livelihood,” he said. “Resolving this human-tiger conflict epitomizes the challenge of modern-day conservation — how to allow people and wildlife to live side by side, to benefit from each other.”

This has been a rough week for animal lovers, especially those fond of big cats. Perhaps it is appropriate to end on a poem.

The Tyger

By William Blake

1794

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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BangladeshBengalClimate ChangeLionSea Level RiseTiger

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Brazil’s Olympic Swimming, Sailing Venue Is ‘Basically Raw Sewage,’ Investigation Finds

An unprecedented amount of human poop is festering in Rodrigo de Freitas Lake and Copacabana Beach, where hundreds of swimmers and boaters are scheduled to compete in next year’s summer Olympics and Paralympics, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Published Thursday by reporters Brad Brooks and Jenny Barchfield, the investigation found “dangerously high levels of viruses and bacteria” from untreated sewage in the country’s Olympic venues. The high levels of contamination risk seriously sickening Olympic athletes, some of whom have already experienced fevers, vomiting, and diarrhea, according to the report. One expert told the AP that, if athletes ingest even three tablespoons of the water, they have a 99 percent risk of infection.

“What you have there is basically raw sewage,” said John Griffith, a marine biologist who examined and evaluated the AP’s investigation. “It’s all the water from the toilets and the showers and whatever people put down their sinks, all mixed up, and it’s going out into the beach waters.”

Brazilian officials assured the AP water will be safe in time for the 2016 games, which is something they’ve been saying for a while. Indeed, this is far from the first time the public has been warned about the foulness of Brazil’s Olympic venues. But the investigation made it hard to see how that would happen considering the country’s history of water pollution from its less-than-modern sewage system. The AP describes it like this:

Extreme water pollution is common in Brazil, where the majority of sewage is not treated. Raw waste runs through open-air ditches to streams and rivers that feed the Olympic water sites.

As a result, Olympic athletes are almost certain to come into contact with disease-causing viruses that in some tests measured up to 1.7 million times the level of what would be considered hazardous on a Southern California beach.

Despite decades of official pledges to clean up the mess, the stench of raw sewage still greets travelers touching down at Rio’s international airport. Prime beaches are deserted because the surf is thick with putrid sludge, and periodic die-offs leave the Olympic lake, Rodrigo de Freitas, littered with rotting fish.

What’s more, people are already swimming in these waters. People hoping to compete in the Olympics are scheduled to perform a triathlon qualifier event at Copacabana on Sunday, and rowers are scheduled for a Wednesday test run at Rodrigo de Freitas Lake. Nearly 1,400 athletes are expected to be exposed to those waters next year, the AP report said.

Water is a huge problem for Brazil — not only because of contamination, but because of an intense, long-standing drought. The drought not only adds stress to the country’s water supply during a major sporting event, but presumably means there’s little officials could do to dilute contaminated waters.

This is not the first time poor environmental conditions have threatened a major sporting event. Just last month in Santiago, Chile, the Copa America soccer tournament coincided with dangerous smog levels in the city. Extreme heat exacerbated by climate change caused at the Australian Open last summer. And when Brazil hosted the World Cup last year, experts warned that the effects of climate change could threaten players’ health in the future.

As environmental problems continue to threaten large sporting events, it’s worth noting that large sporting events themselves also can have negative impacts on the environment. Air travel in Brazil during the World Cup, for example, was expected to produce the equivalent of 2.72 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, which is the same as approximately 560,000 cars driving for a year. One of the stadiums constructed for the World Cup was also built in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.

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Olympics

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Numbers Numb, Stories Sell: The Secrets Of Climate Communications

Pope Francis has helped jumpstart a broader conversation on climate change. It is long past time for everyone who understands the dire nature of the climate threat — and the supercheap cost of action — to join the conversation.

If you want to learn some of the “secrets” of effective messaging, a good place to start is the climate communications panel at the June 23 White House Public Health and Climate Change Summit. The panel discussion, “Actionable Information: From Science to Social Media,” is one of the best I’ve ever participated in.

The moderator was Jason Goldman, White House Chief Digital Officer. Panelists included Ed Maibach (MPH, PhD), director of George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication; Lance Pierce, president of CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) North America; and Ruth Etzel (MD, PhD), director of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection.

The entire panel is worth watching:

My favorite quote from the panel — the one I will be repeating most often — belongs to Maibach:

Numbers numb, stories sell. We don’t deal well with numbers, it tends to suspend our sense of emotion, but we respond very, very well to stories. Individual stories will almost always trump a litany of statistics.

“Numbers numb, stories sell,” is a classic piece of rhetoric, just four simple words, but delivering a memorable message with the aid of several figures of speech. It is a mantra that science communicators in every field should live by.

The figures of speech are some of the essential “secrets” to persuasive, memorable, and effective communications.

The most powerful figure of speech is a metaphor, a point made by both Churchill and Lincoln. I quoted one extended metaphor that Pope Francis used in his recent climate Encyclical: “God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement.”

The Encyclical is stuffed with powerful, yet simple quotes — a must read in its entirety for climate communicators. As I said in the video, “one of the keys to effective public speaking is quoting people more interesting than you are.”

So here’s one more quote from the Pope, an age-old sentiment that seems strangely radical in the world we now live: “We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.”

For more advice on climate messaging, read “How To Engage And Win The Conversation About Climate And Energy.”

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Climate ChangePope Francis

The post Numbers Numb, Stories Sell: The Secrets Of Climate Communications appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Obama’s Clean Power Plan Will Actually Lower Your Energy Bill, According To New Study

A new study from researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology examines how states can reduce carbon pollution cheaply while also keeping household energy prices low. Titled “Low-Carbon Electricity Pathways for the U.S. and the South,” the report found that reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — a requirement of the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan — could be done cost effectively through a combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency policies as well as a modest carbon price.

To minimize costs, the country needs to reduce its coal consumption more rapidly.

“To minimize costs, the country needs to reduce its coal consumption more rapidly, continue to expand its gas-fired power plants, but temper this growth with aggressive policies to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy,” Marilyn Brown, the project’s lead researcher and the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech, told ThinkProgress.

The researchers also found that complying with the Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce emissions from U.S. power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, would produce substantial collateral benefits. These include lower electricity bills, greater GDP growth, and significant reductions in SO2, NOx, and mercury emissions.

“The strong push on energy efficiency also enables GDP to rise above the business-as-usual forecast,” said Brown. “The U.S. increases its exports and decreases its imports as a result of being more competitive.”

The Obama Administration’s final Clean Power Plan rule is expected in early August. This study is the second one in a number of days to spell out how complying with the rule could end up saving customers money on their energy bills. Another study published by the energy research firm Synapse Energy Economics last week found that energy bills in 2030 could be $35 per month lower under a “Clean Energy Future” scenario as compared to business-as-usual. These studies are significant not only for their research value, but also because they push back on the oft-employed talking point that the Clean Power Plan — and renewable energy deployment in general — will cause electricity rates to skyrocket.

“As energy is used more efficiently, non-competitive power plants can be retired, construction of new coal plants can be deferred, and transmission and distribution infrastructure investments can be delayed, all of which would lower rates and therefore lower the energy bills of all consumers,” Brown said. “This is a counter-intuitive finding to some who keep hearing from critics that have claimed that it will significantly increase the electricity bills of American families.”

The Clean Power Plan allows for state-level flexibility in meeting the carbon reduction targets, which vary according to state. In the proposed rule, Washington needs to cut its emissions by 72 percent in 2030 compared to 2012, while Kentucky only needs to reduce power plant emissions by 18 percent. This variability is meant to reflect both the potential reduction options available to the state as well as reductions expected from existing policies.

“With the compliance flexibilities woven into the CPP, states have an array of options before them,” the authors of the Georgia Tech report write. “On the supply side, they need to assess opportunities to shift the mix of fuels used to generate electricity in their state. On the demand side, they need to consider options for decreasing electricity consumption through energy-efficiency programs and policies.”

States need to prepare for a future where solar energy plays a much stronger role.

The researchers modeled the ways that options could be combined to achieve the desired pollution cuts without increasing electricity prices. Brown said they used a state-of-the-art analysis tool called the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) also uses.

“It is arguably the most influential energy modeling tool in the U.S.,” she said. “It’s a ‘bottom up’ model with lots of resolution about specific supply- and demand-side technologies.”

Brown and her small team of researchers found that the combination of lower renewable energy costs, a $10 to $20 price metric per ton of CO2 emissions, and integrated energy efficiency policies could curtail emissions growth substantially from the power sector — but that in isolation, none of these would achieve the desired cuts.

The current carbon price per metric ton in California, where a statewide carbon market was recently set up, is $12.67. France introduced a domestic carbon tax in 2014 that started at $7.69/metric ton, but will rise to around $16 by 2020 for large emitters.

While none of these steps on their own will achieve the desired outcome, the researchers found that reduced capital costs for renewables and additional carbon costs from fossil fuel emissions will create “a synergistic force for driving growth in renewable energy.”

This force will cause large increases in renewable energy generation when compared to the reference case — by 44 percent in the United States overall and 76 percent in the South. This is not true of all forms of renewable energy, such as hydropower and nuclear, but specifically applies to wind, biomass, and solar.

For modeling purposes the study’s researchers did detailed solar cost analysis and determined that by 2030, installed costs of solar would be approximately $1.75/Watt for utility-scale PV, $2/Watt for commercial-scale PV, and $2.50/Watt for residential-scale PV in 2010 dollars.

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When it comes to energy efficiency, the authors used a reference case in which electric power generation will grow at an annual rate of 0.8 percent between 2012 and 2030, increasing 17 percent overall during that period. Interestingly, they found that in the absence of a carbon price or stronger energy efficiency measures, growth in solar power could actually cause electricity use to increase more than the reference case over that same time period.

“This phenomenon underscores the oversimplification of simply seeking to cut energy consumption,” they write. “To the extent that the energy consumed is solar or other renewable resources with limited environmental or other externalities, net social welfare would also increase with greater consumption.”

However, the researchers found that the combination of a small carbon price, energy efficiency policies, and cheaper solar costs could allow the South to achieve an 18 percent reduction in energy demand and the overall United States a 16 percent reduction by 2030. They also found that this approach would lower electricity bills significantly, causing rates to rise only 5 or 6 percent over the time period as compared to the projected 7 to 13 percent.

“Energy efficiency programs and policies need to be revved up, along with monitoring and verification schemes and energy benchmarking,” said Brown. “States need to prepare for a future where solar energy plays a much stronger role, both rooftop systems and solar farms, with a wide array of different financing and ownership schemes.”

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Carbon DioxideClean Power PlanEnergy EfficiencyGreenhouse Gas Emissionspower plantsRenewable Energy

The post Obama’s Clean Power Plan Will Actually Lower Your Energy Bill, According To New Study appeared first on ThinkProgress.