Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 119

Small Power Providers Are Going Renewable Much Faster Than Their Bigger Rivals. Here’s Why.

The top electricity providers in the country are going renewable much more slowly than smaller companies, according to data reported Tuesday by sustainability group Ceres.

The biggest 100 companies account for 85 percent of America’s electricity — and emissions are even more consolidated: A quarter of electricity’s carbon, mercury, NOx and SO2 emissions come from five big companies, according to the new report, Benchmarking Air Emissions. Notably, though, the top 100 producers only get 4 percent of their power from non-hydro renewable resources, such as wind and solar, while producers outside the top 100 already get 20 percent of their energy from these no-carbon sources.

Partly, explained Ceres’ Dan Bakal, this is because it’s harder to make a dent in a large company’s portfolio. “If you have a massive power company — for them to go from 2 percent to 3 percent means they are adding a significant amount of renewables to their mix,” he told ThinkProgress. But that doesn’t account for the discrepancy in rate. Smaller companies make up 15 percent of our electricity generation, so their rapid adoption of wind and solar technologies — which have boomed in recent years — is still meaningful.

At some point, transitioning to no-carbon sources is something larger companies will need to do, as well. “By 2050, we really do need to be getting to a predominantly renewables-based economy,” Bakal said.

Ironically, the more quickly large companies invest in wind and solar, the faster costs will decline, creating an economic, clean-energy snowball effect. But some of the largest utilities in the country are not in the most renewable-friendly areas. In fact, they are largely in areas that are heavily coal-dependent, and coal, though it provides less than a third of U.S. electricity, accounts for 70 percent of emissions from the sector. Utilities in these areas are mostly giant monopolies, subject to regulation, which can make the transition more difficult.

“They are operating in a part of the country that has has been less eager to lead on renewable energy, and where state legislatures are less likely to mandate it,” Nachy Kanfer, deputy director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, told ThinkProgress.

AEP — one of the biggest electricity companies in the country — owns Kentucky Power, providing electricity to 170,00 customers in that state. AEP has repeatedly appeared at the top of the annual Ceres report. Despite AEP investments in recent years, Kentucky still gets nearly all its electricity from coal-fired power plants — and its electricity is the most carbon-intensive in the nation, according to the report.

“More of the big boys will start getting in this game, and they already are.” Kanfer said. “AEP has this incredible progress story to tell — and its an inspiring progress story to tell. But AEP is still one of the biggest burners of coal in the western hemisphere.”

Utilities in other coal states have also been slower to move away from that source. It’s big business: Wyoming, North Dakota, and West Virginia all export more than twice the amount of electricity than they use — and almost all of it is coal-powered. Those states, along with Indiana, are also in the top five of CO2 emissions per watt of electricity produced. Ironically, that means residents in those states are exposed to greater risk of pollution from coal ash and power plant emissions, while not even using the electricity.

Overall, carbon emissions from electricity have decreased by 12 percent since 2008, the first year of the report, but that sector is still the largest contributor of America’s carbon emissions, even greater than transportation.

But that might be set to change. The EPA’s upcoming Clean Power Plan, expected to be released in August, will offer new standards for carbon emissions from power plants. Under the rule, states will be required to reduce their electricity sector’s carbon emissions, but are expected to have a great deal of flexibility on how to design their compliance plans.

EPA regulation can be incredibly effective in reducing emissions, the report shows. Ground-level ozone-causing compounds, NOx and SO2, have significantly decreased since 1990, when new rules governing those emissions were added to the Clean Air Act. Since 1990, NOx and SO2 emissions from power plants have dropped by 80 percent and 74 percent, respectively, the report found.

Those dramatic declines likely had broad, positive health impacts, as ground-level ozone — which greats smog — poses a serious health risk. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed lowering the national air quality standards for ground-level ozone from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 65 or 70 ppb, based on the newest scientific data on the dangers of breathing these toxins.

Renewable energy, of course, emits neither carbon nor the compounds that cause ground-level ozone. In the past several years, the renewable energy sector has experienced an incredible boom — despite the slow adoption from the nation’s largest utilities.

“[The fact that] we’ve gotten this far on renewable energy already, mostly without the part of the biggest players… is an amazing story,” Kanfer said. “The biggest power producers are so far behind, when they get in the game, the pace of progress will increase dramatically.”

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Benchmarking Air EmissionscarbonCeresClean Air ActClean Power PlanCoalElectricityemissionsEnvironmental Protection AgencyEPAGlobal WarmingKentuckyWest Virginia

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New Poll: Americans Worried About ISIS, Developing Countries Worried About Climate Change

A major new Pew Research Center study this week found that Americans and Europeans are only moderately worried about climate change while those in more vulnerable regions — Latin America, Africa, and Asia — expressed much higher levels of concern.

The study, which surveyed 40 countries and over 45,000 respondents between late March and late May of this year, found that the people of Burkina Faso, a landlocked West African country of 17 million, are more concerned about global climate change than any other country surveyed, with 79 percent of them being very concerned. On the other hand, in the United States only 42 percent said the same thing about climate change, compared to 68 percent of people who responded that they were very concerned about the Islamic militant group ISIS. In fact, climate change came second to last for concern in the United States, 12 percent ahead of territorial disputes with China and one percent behind tensions with Russia.

While climate change was at the top of the charts in many regions — primarily Latin America (61 percent) and Africa (59 percent) — ISIS was the main concern in a number of developed countries, including the United States, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Germany, the U.K., and Australia.

All in all, the study found that the majority of the populations in 19 countries believe that climate change is the top global threat, and regions especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change expressed the most concern. Those countries included South Africa, Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, and a number of other developing countries more vulnerable to drought, heat waves, sea level rise, and severe extreme weather.

Participants in the poll were asked to reply yes or no to whether they were “very concerned”, “somewhat concerned”, “not too concerned,” or “not at all concerned” regarding six issues: Climate change, global economic instability, ISIS, Iran’s nuclear program, cyberattacks, tensions with Russia, and territorial disputes with China.

This moderate concern for global climate change in the United States is not surprising considering a recent Gallup poll found that about one-third of Americans believe the effects of global warming will either never happen or not happen in their lifetime. A March 2014 Gallop poll found that climate change and quality of the environment were near the bottom of a list of 15 national issues, behind drug use, hunger and homelessness, and social security.

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In Peru and Brazil, where three quarters of respondents were very concerned about climate change, years of deforestation and lax environmental oversight have left many feeling anxious. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty, environmental degradation, and disease are already major issues, climate change is especially worrisome: Aside from Burkino Faso, Uganda (74 percent), Ghana (71 percent), Nigeria (65 percent), and Kenya (68 percent) ranked global climate change as a very high concern.

In India, where drought and heat waves have crippled agriculture and left thousands dead, and where there is a major push for renewable energy to bring power to hundreds of millions without it, 73 percent of respondents said they were very concerned. In the Philippines, where climate change is exacerbating extreme weather events such as typhoons, and where sea level rise is a major threat, 72 percent responded that they were very concerned.

Pew also attributes elevated levels of concern around climate change to the forthcoming high-profile United Nations climate conference in Paris at the end of the year, when leaders hope to hash out the next global treaty to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. As countries announce their climate targets and negotiation stances, much attention is being given to the 193-nation event.

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CREDIT: Courtesy of Pew Research Center

A Pew Research Center poll from January 2015 found that while 87 percent of scientists said climate change is mostly due to human activity, only half of the U.S. public agreed. One thing both the general public and scientists agreed on in the United States is that science education is lagging. According to the Pew poll, 68 percent of the general public considers U.S. science education at or below average; 84 percent of scientists held the same view.

While young people may not be getting their climate change information in the classroom, they are picking it up elsewhere — whether from the Pope’s major push on the issue, progressive websites, or possibly even the Weather Channel. The new Pew poll found that in the U.S., young people are ten percent more likely to express concern about climate change that those over 50 — 46 percent compared to 36 percent.

One of the largest divergences in responses in the United States came from Democrats and Republicans, with about 62 percent of Democrats being very concerned about climate change and just 20 percent of Republicans saying the same.

In China — the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter and largest coal user — only 19 percent of people responded that they were very concerned about climate change. However, this was still by far the highest response to any of the options. Only 8 percent of Chinese respondents were seriously concerned about Iran’s nuclear program and 9 percent over tensions with Russia. Perhaps the Chinese are a very level-headed culture, or perhaps their government limits access to information.

Even if climate change isn’t the primary driver of change, Chinese leaders are pursuing major efforts to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources and to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, as coal-fired power plants have left many of their urban centers draped in unhealthy levels of smog. A larger middle class and greater awareness of environmental issues are also forcing the hand of the leadership.

At the bottom end of the spectrum of the Pew study were Israel and Poland, where only 14 percent of the respondents expressed serious concern about climate change. Poland is a very heavy coal mining country and Israel has a toxic mix of other, even more pressing security concerns to worry about, including Iran and ISIS.

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AfricaBurkina FasoChinaClimate ChangeLatin AmericaPewPollSecurity ThreatUnited States

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Wildfire Smoke Can Increase Risk Of Heart Disease, Study Finds

Tiny particles in smoke from wildfires may increase the danger of acute heart problems, including cardiac arrest and ischemic heart disease, especially among vulnerable people, according to a new study published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The findings are especially worrisome as heavy smoke generated from wildfires in Alaska and Canada continues to drift southward. Smoke already has made its way down into the northern United States, including Montana, the Central Plains, the Upper Mississippi Valley, and into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

“During bushfires there is widespread and huge quantities of smoke, and people are exposed,” said Anjali Haikerwal, study author and a doctoral candidate at the school of public health and preventive medicine at Monash University in Melbourne. “These particulates can be easily inhaled deep into the lungs. These particles may act as a trigger factor for acute cardiovascular health events.”

The new research studied the connection between exposure to wildfire-related fine particulate pollution — particles smaller than 2.5 thousandths of a millimeter in diameter, which is 1/30 the diameter of a human hair — and the risk of cardiac incidents in the state of Victoria, Australia in December 2006 and January 2007. During the two-month period, smoke reached cities far from the blazes and, on most days during the wildfires, levels of particles exceeded the recommended air quality limits.

Examining Victoria health registry data during the wildfires, the scientists found a 6.9 percent increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, with a stronger link between pollution and cardiac arrests in men and individuals 65 and older. They also found a 2.07 percent increase in emergency department visits for ischemic heart disease and a 1.86 percent increase in hospitalizations for ischemic heart disease, with a stronger association in women and those 65 and older. Ischemic heart disease manifests as reduced blood flow to the heart.

“This new study suggests that particles from wildfires specifically can cause adverse cardiovascular effects on a short-term basis,” said Jonathan Samet, professor and chair of the department of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “This is a useful finding from the public health point of view and suggests that we should alert the public and the medical care system about this risk.”

Samet has conducted research on the health risks of inhaled pollutants, including particles and ozone in outdoor air, and was not involved in this study. He called the new paper “a demonstration that particles from forest fires can cause adverse effects on cardiovascular health.”

“The advance is in showing the risks of particles from one particular source — forest fires — that can lead to widespread population exposures,” he said.

Recent decades have shown a steady increase in wildfire activity in the United States. Annual wildfire costs increased to $3 billion in the early 2000s, up from $1 billion in the 1990s. The area burned during that time period doubled, rising to 6.5 million acres, up from 3.6 million. A report recently released found that between 7 and 9 million acres were burned annually in the United States.

This current year has been especially bad. As of June 30, nearly four dozen wildfires burned from Alaska down to Arizona and as far as Colorado. Wildfires in Southern California have driven thousands from their homes, while fires in Alaska have destroyed more than one million acres. Thousands of people have been evacuated because of the hundreds of fires burning across Canada’s western provinces and the thick smoke they produce. Air advisories have been issued across central and western Canada, as well as parts of the western United States. During the last two weeks, about 13,000 people have left their homes from about 50 communities in Saskatchewan. Fires have destroyed 81 houses and cabins. Earlier this week, 127 fires were burning, half of them near La Ronge, a town of 2,700 and one of the largest communities in northern Saskatchewan.

Many climate scientists believe this upsurge is the result of climate change, which contributes to conditions that encourage wildfires. Heikerwal, the study’s author, acknowledged a possible link. “We are living in this world and seeing heat waves and drought happening around us so, yes, it could be climate related,” Heikerwal said.

Climate change alters the conditions that trigger fires or determine their intensity, including how much fuel is available, how fires are ignited, and how flammable the fuel is that keeps the fires burning. By influencing storm patterns, for example, global warming may change the frequency of fires started by lightning. Climate also affects the structure and composition of forests, generally increasing the amount of fuel available to burn. Other climate variables that occur on a shorter time scale play a role, like higher temperatures, lower humidity, and stronger winds. These all increase the ease with which fires are started and facilitate the spread of wildfires.

Through shifting precipitation patterns, more frequent drought and higher temperatures, global warming has increased the risk of wildfires. Moreover, hotter temperatures have led to wildfires starting in previously wildfire-free locations like arctic Alaska and the southwestern deserts.

Furthermore, extended periods of record-breaking temperatures and drought create drier conditions that in turn make wildfires bigger and lengthen the wildfire seasons. The western United States has experienced this unfortunate phenomenon, as large wildfires have grown more frequent and the fire season has grown significantly longer in recent decades. The main drivers of this increase are considered to be higher temperatures and earlier spring snowmelt.

“Living in California, I am very aware of the issue of drought and forest fire danger,” Samet said. “The IPCC does project increased risk for forest fires as some areas become drier. Of course, it is difficult to attribute specific events directly to climate change, but the prolonged drought in California and the western U.S. is considered by many to be a reflection of climate change.”

A recent report found that as the global average temperature has increased over the last 35 years, the wildfire season has gotten longer, and the global area affected by them has doubled.

“As a generality, increasing population exposure to smoke from fires would be expected to increase risk for cardiovascular events, though the increases would likely only be detected through complex analytical approaches, unless truly catastrophic — like the London Fog of 1952,” Samet added, referring to the toxic smog that smothered England’s capital city for five days in December of that year, killing thousands.

Haikerwal called for more research to determine the danger posed by smoke that travels far from its original source. “These particles are so small that they are suspended in atmosphere for long periods, and might have the potential to locate to other places,” she said. “But we don’t know how far, or how near.”

In the meantime, given the increase in frequency and intensity of wildfires experienced in recent years in the United States and elsewhere, she urged those exposed to smoke to be aware of its health impacts, and be vigilant to such symptoms as chest pain and tightness, shortness of breath, dizziness, and coughing, all signs of possible heart trouble.

“These are the symptoms to be mindful of during this period,” she said. “Do not delay seeking medical help if you experience symptoms of heart problems during smoke episodes from wildfires.”

Marlene Cimons, a former Los Angeles Times Washington reporter, is a freelance writer who specializes in science, health, and the environment.

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Air PollutionClimate ChangeDiseaseWildfires

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Democrats And Republicans Are Actually Agreeing On An Environmental Regulation

Environmental regulation — measures to protect water, reduce carbon emissions, and limit mercury — is divisive in the 114th Congress. Almost all Democrats support it, and almost all Republicans despise it.

But there’s at least one area of environmental regulation lawmakers are agreeing on these days: Fixing our old, decrepit oil and gas pipeline system. At a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, representatives from both sides of the aisle took the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to task for failing to implement several provisions of a pipeline safety law.

Those provisions, they argued, are necessary to prevent environmental incidents, like the 105,000-gallon oil spill from a pipeline near Santa Barbara, California this past May.

“The urgency for pipeline safety is greater than ever,” said committee chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), noting the country’s record levels of natural gas production. “Although pipelines are some of the safety means of transport, the Santa Barbara spill is a harsh reminder that rigorous risk-based enforcement needs to be a priority.”

Democrats on the committee agreed.

“I am deeply concerned about PHMSA’s inability to carry out its mission, numerous safety recommendations or Congressional mandates,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said, calling it “especially troubling how many mandates that have yet to be implemented by the agency.”

This is far from the first time PHMSA — the agency that oversees America’s sprawling pipeline network — has been called out for not doing its job. A deep look at the agency from POLITICO in April found that it “stubbornly failed to take a more aggressive regulatory role, even when ordered by Congress to do so.” This has corresponded with a fossil fuel production boom that is increasingly stressing pipeline infrastructure to the point of failure.

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This map shows major natural gas and oil pipelines in the United States. Hazardous liquid lines are in red, while gas transmission lines are in blue.

CREDIT: Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

PHMSA is required to craft regulations for pipelines under a law passed by Congress in 2002 — the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act. But many of those required regulations are still not in effect — specifically, 17 out of 42 congressional mandates in the law remain incomplete.

That’s at least according to a letter sent to PHMSA by both Democrat and Republicans members of the House Energy and Commerce committee last month. That letter said the agency has failed to issue regulations on pipeline damage prevention, pipeline integrity management programs, and accident notification, among others.

At Tuesday’s hearing, PHMSA’s acting head Stacy Cummings told concerned lawmakers that the agency was making “significant progress” on getting up to speed, noting that two more regulations had already been proposed this month. But she also did not outright accept the notion that lack of pipeline safety regulations were directly responsible for the Santa Barbara pipeline spill, much less other spills and explosions that have occurred in the last few years.

Environmentalists tend to agree, noting that while inadequate pipeline infrastructure and safety does cause spills, the massive increase in U.S. oil and gas production and consumption is also a factor. That puts stress on aging U.S. pipelines, approximately half of which are at least 50 years old.

Many Republicans say the solution to that is to build more pipelines. In fact, Upton — who called the hearing on pipeline safety — is pushing a plan called the Architecture of Abundance that seeks to make it easier for new pipeline infrastructure to be built. It also seeks to “improve coordination and strengthen energy partnerships” with Canada, which could translate to a push for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which Upton supports.

The simultaneous call for both pipeline safety and more pipelines is one that some environmentalists believe to be disingenuous.

“You cannot cry foul over one oil spill when you are pushing an energy bill that could lead to many more,” said Lukas Ross, a climate and energy campaigner with Friends of the Earth .”It is frankly appalling for a man who has voted repeatedly to steamroll Keystone XL through Congress to take up the cause of pipeline safety.”

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EnvironmentOil SpillsPipeline

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Across The Globe, Wildfire Season Is Lasting Longer

With 35 active large fires currently burning up and down the West Coast — and with dry, hot conditions sparking an unprecedented number of fires throughout Western Canada — the 2015 wildfire season has started strong, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Now, a new report out in Nature Communications has a some more bad news for the West, and wildfire-prone regions around the world: In the last 35 years, wildfire season has gotten longer, and the global area affected by wildfire has doubled.

Though several studies have looked at the relationship between climate change and regional wildfire patterns, scientists lacked a comprehensive assessment of how climate change might be influencing wildfire seasons on a global scale. Using a combination of fire danger indices and surface weather data, a group of American and Australian scientists looked at how “fire weather” — weather conditions that are especially conducive to fire — has changed around the world over the last three and a half decades.

They found that as global temperatures have increased (by about .2 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979), the length of wildfire season has also increased by 18.7 percent around the world. Across nearly a quarter of the world’s vegetated areas, the length of fire season increased. Only 10 percent of vegetated areas saw a decrease in the length of fire season — Australia was the only vegetated continent that did not exhibit a significant increase in both fire season length and affected area.

Over the last several decades, the report notes, the United States has seen a particularly marked increase in the frequency and duration of large wildfires, especially in the Northern Rocky Mountains. The report links this increase to earlier snowmelt, which creates drier conditions earlier in the summer. In general, the report found, areas with the greatest changes in local weather are the most likely to see changes in their wildfire season:

Our results extend these findings by demonstrating that areas with the most significant change in fire weather season length occur where not only temperature but also changes in humidity, length of rain-free intervals and wind speeds are most pronounced. In 2012, for example, longer-than-normal fire weather seasons across an unprecedented 47.4% of the vegetated area of the US culminated in a near-record setting ~3.8 MHa of burned area.

The tropical and subtropical forests of South America have also experienced what the report refers to as a “tremendous fire weather season length changes,” with a median 33 day increase over the last 35 years.

The average length of fire season, the report notes, does not perfectly equate with fire activity — even if the conditions are right for fires to occur, wildfires still need some sort of ignition spark and ample fuel. But the researchers warn that “if these fire weather changes are coupled with ignition sources and available fuel, they could markedly impact global ecosystems, societies, economies and climate.”

An increase in fire activity could impact everything from public health to the economy. When fires burn, they emit smoke that can travel hundreds of miles, impacting air quality and exposing residents in places removed from the direct dangers of wildfire to harmful particles that can exacerbate existing health conditions, especially in the very young and very old. Fighting wildfires is also expensive, costing the U.S. government an average of $1.13 billion a year in the last decade. As climate change exacerbates wildfires, one study estimates that fighting wildfires could cost as much as $62.5 billion annually by 2050.

An increase in wildfires can also lead to an increase in climate change. As wildfires last longer, and cover a greater area, more trees burn, releasing carbon into the atmosphere and turning some forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources. And as places like Alaska experience longer wildfire seasons, carbon-rich permafrost could melt more quickly, releasing even more carbon into the atmosphere.

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Climate ChangeWildfires

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Lindsey Graham: Why Don’t Republicans Believe The Scientists On Climate Change?

Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham hit back against members of his party who don’t accept the science behind climate change Tuesday.

During an interview on Late Night, host Seth Meyers asked Graham — who has acknowledged his acceptance of climate change before — whether he was “surprised” that so many Republicans don’t share his views on the subject.

“Well I’m not a scientist,” Graham responded, echoing the numerous lawmakers who have plead ignorant to the mechanisms behind the earth’s weather and climate when asked if they think climate change is happening.

“I know I’m not a scientist,” he continued, “but here’s the problem I’ve got with some people in my party: When you ask the scientists what’s going on, why don’t you believe them? If I went to 10 doctors and nine said, ‘Hey, you’re gonna die,’ and one says ‘You’re fine,’ why would I believe the one guy?”

Graham’s statement hints at the scientific consensus on climate change: 97 percent of climate scientists who actively publish research agree that climate change is happening and is “very likely” caused by man.

If one were to take Graham’s analogy to doctors literally, the number should be even higher — he would go to 30 doctors, and approximately 29 would tell him he was going to die, while the one left over would say he was fine.

Graham’s made the comparison to doctors before. Last month, he called out the rest of his party for not focusing enough on environmental policy.

“When 90 percent of the doctors tell you you’ve got a problem, do you listen to the one?” Graham asked on CNN’s State of the Union.

Graham added during the CNN interview that he does accept climate change and that, if elected president, he would address the carbon dioxide emissions that cause it in a “buisiness-friendly” way.

Graham’s acceptance of climate science distances himself from the rest of the Republican contenders. When asked about his views on climate change on Late Night with Seth Meyers in May, presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said that, according to satellite data, the earth hadn’t warmed in the last 17 years, and that a cold spring in New Hampshire bolsters that claim — a description of climate change that’s been debunked. Marco Rubio has said there’s “no consensus” on climate change, and has skirted questions about it in the past. Donald Trump has tweeted multiple times about how snow and cold weather is proof that climate change isn’t happening. Chris Christie has said he thinks climate change is real and that humans “contribute” to it, but there’s not much evidence he’ll act on climate if he’s elected.

Graham hasn’t been perfect on climate — in 2010, he backtracked on a cap-and-trade deal, which ultimately failed. Still, he’s made the issue a bigger part of his campaign than his fellow Republican contenders.

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Climate ChangeLindsey Graham

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The Urban Farming Trend That’s Taking Over Major League Baseball

In May of 2001, Boston Red Sox coach John Cumberland planted beefsteak tomato plants in the team’s bullpen — 18 of them, to represent the last time that the team had won the World Series in 1918.

“I’m trying to change the karma,” Cumberland, the bullpen coach, told the Boston Herald. “There’s been bad soil here. Hopefully now it’s good soil.”

Cumberland’s tomato plants no longer grace Fenway’s bullpen (though the team finally got their World Series win in 2004), but in the fifteen years since beefsteak tomatoes took root in America’s oldest ballpark, the idea of growing food in a baseball stadium has transitioned from a whimsical attempt at disrupting bad karma to a growing trend embraced by teams across the country. Today, five major league teams have installed urban farms and gardens within their baseball stadiums — and those involved with the projects say that the fans are eating it up.

“The reaction is incredibly positive,” Jessie Banhazl, founder Green City Growers, told ThinkProgress. “People are really excited to see this particular area of the park that was not being used for anything all of the sudden being a thriving farm.”

The overlap of more sustainable food options and the evolution of consumer interest is a tremendous business opportunity for the sports industry

At the beginning of the 2015 season, Fenway opened a 5,000-square foot rooftop farm along a previously unused stretch of roof behind Gate A, dubbing the area “Fenway Farms.” The impetus for the farm came from Linda Pizzuti Henry, wife of Red Sox co-owner John Henry. Linda had long been interested in figuring out a way to bring a focus on sustainability and healthy eating to the ballpark, and in the summer of 2014, Linda serendipitously crossed paths with Green City Growers, a Boston-based company that had been awarded a Social Impact Prize from Henry’s foundation for its work in creating urban garden and farms.

Banhazl and her colleagues at Green City Growers pitched Linda their idea of creating an urban farm within the walls of Fenway Park. To their surprise, the park had already been considering the idea, looking for ways to turn the vacant space of roof behind Gate A into either a green roof or a garden.

“We were very lucky to have been picked to be the Red Sox’s other farm team,” Banhazl said with a laugh.

For those that only associate baseball farms with farm teams and think of baseball food as consisting of two food groups (hot dogs and beer, or peanuts and cracker jacks), the ballpark might seem like a strange breeding ground for hyper-local, sustainable urban agriculture. But sports fans, it turns out, are beginning to think more about the environmental footprint of their sports experience. According to a poll conducted by Green Sports Alliance, a Portland-based arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council that helps sports teams adopt best environmental practices, 81 percent of sports fans express concern about the environment. The poll also found that 58 percent expect their favorite team to be leaders when it comes to environmental action. There are a lot of ways a sports team can integrate environmental issues into their day-to-day operations, from building LEED-certified stadiums to developing a robust recycling program. But few measures offer such an advantageous blend of fan interaction, consumer education, and marketplace profit like revamping the stadium’s food scene.

“Sports brings people together like no other institution,” Alice Henly, a resource specialist with Green Sports Alliance, told ThinkProgress. “It is a tremendous role model at the center of American culture, but also this powerful force in the marketplace. The overlap of more sustainable food options and the evolution of consumer interest is a tremendous business opportunity for the sports industry.”

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AT&T Park’s center field garden, with fans.

CREDIT: Bon Appétit Management Company

Growing vegetables in a ballpark isn’t necessarily a new trend. Before Cumberland tried to “reverse the curse” with some beefsteaks at Fenway, the Mets, the Braves, and the Tigers all reportedly grew some kind of greenery in their bullpens, whether it be tomatoes, corn, or sunflowers.

But integrating the gardens with an eye toward improving a park’s sustainability is a relatively recent movement. There’s a bit of debate about which team created the first edible Major League garden, but the title is most often given to Petco Park — home of the San Diego Padres. In the spring of 2011, Luke Yoder, the park’s director of field operations, planted an assortment of hot peppers and tomatoes. Today, Yoder grows a mix of produce depending on the season — from avocados to blueberries — and the goods are incorporated into a few food items sold around the ballpark, appearing in salsas, relishes, and more.

A season later, two more baseball parks opened their own gardens. The first was at Coors Field in Denver, where Colorado State University teamed up with the Rockies to create the GaRden, a network of raised beds filled with organic soil and watered from drip lines made from recycled material. At 600 square feet, it was, for a time, the largest on-site garden in baseball.

But not for long. In July of 2013, during a White House visit to celebrate their 2012 World Series Victory, the San Francisco Giants announced their plans to turn the centerfield bleachers in AT&T Park into the largest on-site edible garden at a major sports venue.

“With rows of kale and strawberries and eggplant, the Giants are going to help encourage local youth to eat healthy — even at the ballpark,” President Obama said during the announcement.

Shana Daum, vice president of public affairs and community relations with the Giants, says that from the start, the thing that set the Garden at AT&T Park apart from other ballpark gardens was its scope — both its size, and its integration into the overall game experience.

These practices are an entryway to so many environmental issues, from water scarcity to agriculture and chemical impacts on our land

“Other parks before us, it was more of a garden that you passed by and could walk by, but it wasn’t interactive,” Daum told ThinkProgress. “We thought that we could bring community groups of children here to learn about how you can live in the middle of the city and you can grow a garden.”

AT&T worked with Blasen Landscape Architecture and EDG Architects to re-imagine the center field bleachers into an edenic escape for baseball fans. Together, they built raised beds and aeroponic growing towers, and fertilizing the soil with leftover coffee grounds from Peet’s Coffee. When it was initially envisioned, the garden was to span 3,000 square feet and be totally organic, replete with kale and strawberries that would eventually find their way into the stadium’s concessions.

When it opened in June of 2014, the space — dubbed the Garden at AT&T Park — covered 4,320 square feet. In addition to produce, the Garden houses a bar, tables, benches, a fire pit, and two concession stands that serve food prominently featuring Garden-grown ingredients. Produce-wise, the Garden grows everything you’d expect to find in a backyard garden patch (lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini) and a few things you wouldn’t (passion fruit, lemongrass, hops). When it opened, Giant’s right fielder Hunter Pence — a self-proclaimed health nut — was on site to christen the Garden.

“If you want to inspire kids to eat healthy,” Pence said, “you have got to eat healthy yourself.”

And so the Garden at AT&T Park was the largest edible garden at a baseball stadium, until the next baseball season, when all 5,000 square feet of Fenway Farms took root in the Boston landmark. Because Fenway is the oldest baseball stadium in the country, and included in the National Register of Historic Places, it took especially careful planning to create Fenway Farms. The Red Sox consulted with architects and structural engineers to make sure that the chosen section of roof support the weight of a farm, worked with a company that specializes in building green structures on rooftops, and brought in Green City Growers to plant, maintain, and harvest the crops.

All told, the Red Sox had to get approval from five different government agencies at the city, state, and federal level before the farm could become a reality. The Red Sox also installed a smart irrigation system for the garden, which senses weather and moisture in the air and tailors the irrigation to current conditions. Combined with a milk-crate planting system, that Banhazl describes as “totally modular,” the farm is expected to produce some 4,000 pounds of food a year. An added advantage is the farm removes some rainwater that falls on the stadium’s roof, meaning less water flows into the drainage system — a benefit of green roofs in general.

But even with thousands of square feet dedicated to on-site food production, these urban farms are only able to produce a small fraction of the food served at the stadiums. In San Francisco, the produce from the garden is used exclusively at the two concession stands located next to the growing area. At Fenway, the produce from the farm is used only in the EMC Club Dining area, the park’s smallest volume food operation. In the grand scheme of all the food that comes in and out of a ballpark, creating produce for a handful of operations, especially those only available to a select number of ticket holders, can come off as trivial at best and elitist at worst.

Which is partly why these baseball gardens aren’t simply interested in feeding their fans — they’re also trying to educate them.

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Visiting children get a lesson in sustainable agriculture at AT&T Park.

CREDIT: San Francisco Giants

A month into the Garden at AT&T Park’s existence, the Giants decided to create a position dedicated to bringing the garden to the fans — a sort of liaison between baseball and farming. To Hannah Schmunk, who had been working for the park’s food service partner Bon Appetit in another role, it sounded like a perfect opportunity.

“I heard about the Garden at AT&T Park about a month after it opened, and I thought it was the coolest thing that I’d heard in a long time,” she told ThinkProgress. In September, Schmunk stepped into the role of community development manager, charged with designing the way the space is used on game days, developing tour programs for the space, and running the Garden’s kids program.

The Garden hosts tours of children almost weekly, with 20 to 25 kids involved in each field trip. When the kids first arrive at the Garden, Schmunk gives them an activity that allows them to explore the space — a scavenger hunt, some leisurely harvesting, or planting. Then, they move into cooking activities that incorporate taking the produce from the garden and turning it into a healthy meal. To the children, who Schmunk notes view many Giants players as real-life heroes, learning about healthy eating and agriculture in the same space that their favorite players play makes for an instant connection.

“What I’ve seen in our kids programs that has been so magical is really how the garden comes alive for the kids,” Schmunk said. “They haven’t spent much time in gardens or farms, and they’ve grown up in the inner city. To watch how much joy it brings to harvest a carrot and they can’t believe their eyes that it would come from under the soil … has been truly magical.”

But it’s not just the youngest fans that are subconsciously exposed to the benefits of sustainable food when they come to the Garden.

“I think the biggest impact … that we have is that the ballpark seats 41,500 people on a given night, and this is a garden that is highly visible,” Schmunk said. “We’ve become so disconnected from our food, and the story behind it, and where it comes from. Because our garden is public and open to anyone that comes to a Giants game … we’re able to reconnect and reestablish the connection between people and their food.”

Fenway has seen similar interest from fans since the debut of their farm. The ballpark has always been a popular location, with locals and tourists alike, and hosts tours on a nearly 365-day-a-year basis; due to demand, the farm was added to the stadium tour this year.

“There has been a lot of great interest, and most importantly for us there has been a lot of great interest from students and young people,” Chris Knight, manager of facilities services and planning for the Red Sox, told ThinkProgress.

This season, the Red Sox have hosted a few different school groups, but like San Francisco, they’re hoping to implement a full community program, complete with education outreach. But Banhazl hopes that the movement toward sustainable food and education programs in ballparks doesn’t stop at Fenway.

“All it takes is a little bit of space and a commitment from the park,” Banhzal said. “I don’t see why this couldn’t be done at every ballpark around the country.”

Other ballparks already appear to be taking a cue from Petco, Coors, AT&T, and Fenway — in early June, the Washington Nationals announced that they were converting a portion of their D.C. park into a rooftop garden that would house 180 plants, from zucchinis to herbs. The garden will use compost made of food waste from the park, and the vegetables and herbs will be incorporated into food served in club-level concessions throughout the park. The team told WTOP Washington that, if all goes well, they hope to expand the garden to other parts of the stadium.

To Alice Henly, the five baseball parks that currently boast onsite gardens are just the first wave in an inevitable trend towards an increased emphasis on sustainability at sports venues.

“These practices are an entryway to so many environmental issues, from water scarcity to agriculture and chemical impacts on our land,” she said.

Gardens are a particularly hot trend, she notes, because they enhance the visitor experience — allowing fans to sit among flowers and bumblebees while they enjoy their game — but they also provide an important bridge between two worlds that might, at first glance, seem unrelated.

“It really connects these teams with their communities, and reinforces their commitment to these hugely important issues,” Henly said. “The food that is served at venues, to millions of fans, is a way for iconic sports teams to teach their communities about where their food is coming from, and why that’s important for the health or their communities, each individual fan, and the health of our agricultural system as a whole.”

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The Northeast’s Electricity Bills Have Dropped $460 Million Since They Started Paying For Carbon

A regional cap-and-trade program has added $1.3 billion in economic activity to nine New England and Mid-Atlantic states since 2011, while decreasing their carbon emissions by 15 percent, according to independent analysis released Tuesday.

In addition to stimulating the economy and reducing carbon, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has also reduced the cost of electricity for consumers, saving residential, businesses, and public users $460 million, the report from the Analysis Group found.

These benefits mean that RGGI (pronounced “reggie”) could be a model for other states looking to reduce carbon emissions under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, set to be released next month. The Clean Power Plan requires states to lower carbon emissions from the electricity sector, but lets states choose how they reduce those emissions.

“The nine New England states’ experience with RGGI can provide other states with valuable lessons for how one might comply with the CO2 regulations included in the Clean Power Plan,” Andrea Okie, a report author, told ThinkProgress.

Under the RGGI plan, nine states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont — have reduced the amount of carbon allowed from electricity producers by requiring them to buy a credit for every metric ton of carbon they emit. There are only a limited number of permits, which are put up at auction every quarter. The states use the proceeds from the auctions to invest in further carbon reduction programs, such as efficiency retrofits and renewable energy development. (New Jersey initially participated, but withdrew in 2011 under Republican Governor Chris Christie).

“From an economists’ perspective, directly putting a price on carbon the way RGGI does is the most efficient way to regulate carbon,” Okie said. In fact, the program has been so successful that after a 2011 review, the states agreed to lower the overall emissions cap.

But as a macro-economic driver, the key to RGGI’s success has been the reinvestment of money from the carbon permit auction, Okie said. So far, the states have spent 59 percent of the funds on energy efficiency; 15 percent on renewable energy projects; 13 percent on bill-payment assistance to energy consumers; 12 percent on other greenhouse gas programs and program administration; and 1 percent on clean technology research and development, the report found.

For example, investing in efficiency programs — such as weatherizing houses — reduces the amount of electricity used. But that’s not actually why bills are going down. The decrease in electricity demand actually reduces the overall price of electricity. That means the costs go down for everyone, not just someone who installed new, efficient windows.

So while opponents of the Clean Power Plan say that it will raise electricity prices for consumers and depress the economy, putting a price on carbon can actually have the opposite effect.

The EPA’s Clean Power Plan, expected to be released next month, will require states to reduce the amount of carbon emitted from the electricity sector. Electricity accounts for a third of all carbon emissions in the United States, largely due to the use of coal-fired power plants. Developing multi-state or even individual systems to price carbon is one way states will be able to comply with the EPA standards.

Then report was released at a meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) in New York. NARUC members will play a critical role in developing state compliance plans for the EPA rule — and they want plans that won’t drive up costs. RGGI is a clear example of how a program that reduces carbon can also bolster the economy, the report shows.

Another report, released Tuesday by Ceres, a nonprofit organization that encourages sustainable business practices, found that across the board, utilities are decreasing their emissions. The 2015 Benchmarking report looked at the 100 largest electricity supplier in the country and found that of the 42 states that have reduced their emissions since 2008, the average reduction has been 18 percent. (RGGI states have reduced their emissions 40 percent during that time).

Jackson Morris, director of the eastern energy program for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), agreed that efficiency measures have been critical for lowering emissions across the industry. In the 1950s, the amount of electricity we used increased alongside our economic growth, he said. Now there are so many ways to become more efficient, projections for our future electricity needs are flat in some places. In other words, we are getting more efficient as quickly as we are needing more power.

But there are other downward pressures on emissions from the electricity sector. Notably, renewable energy is a greater portion of generation than ever before. In addition, we’re seeing many of the older, high-carbon emitting power plants go offline.

“A generation of power plants built in the fifties are finally dying,” Morris told ThinkProgress. “A lot of those were not only burning coal, they were burning less efficiently — imagine a car that’s not only burning leaded gas, but getting three miles to the gallon.”

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Business Groups Are Suing The EPA Over Its New Drinking Water Protections

Multiple business groups have filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers in an attempt to strike down the federal government’s new water protection rule.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Businesses, and three other groups sued the agencies Friday over the Waters of the United States rule, which protects two million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands that hadn’t before been regulated under the Clean Water Act. The groups alleged that the rule, which was finalized in May, “disrupts the careful balance” between states’ ability to use and develop water and the federal government’s ability to regulate it.

“By broadly redefining the ‘waters of the United States,’ the agencies have asserted unprecedented authority to regulate the nation’s waters,” the lawsuit reads. “In doing so, the agencies have exceeded their power under the Clean Water Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the U.S. Constitution. Plaintiffs bring this action to stop this extraordinary expansion of federal authority.”

The lawsuit also claims that businesses will “suffer real economic harm…because they will be forced to submit to expensive, vague, burdensome, and time-consuming federal regulations before they can perform the most mundane of activities on their property.” Despite these burdens, the lawsuit adds, the rule won’t make any real difference environmentally.

The EPA and some environmental groups dispute that claim. According to the EPA, the rule protects bodies of water that serve as a drinking source for one out of every three Americans. Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council have praised the rule, though others like the Waterkeeper Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity remain concerned that the rule doesn’t go far enough environmentally.

Some business groups have also come out in support of the rule. In May, New Belgium Brewing Company testified in front of Congress, noting that clean water is crucial to beer-making.

“Our brewery and our communities depend on clean water,” said Andrew Lemley, a government affairs representative for the company. “Beer is, after all, over 90 percent water and if something happens to our source water the negative affect on our business is almost unthinkable.”

Dozens of other craft brewing companies, including Allagash Brewing Company and Sierra Nevada, joined the NRDC’s Brewers For Clean Water Campaign in support of the EPA’s new regulation.

According to a 2014 American Sustainable Business Council poll, 80 percent of small business owners approved of the protections proposed in the Waters of the U.S. rule, and 71 percent thought that protecting water was “necessary to ensure economic growth.”

With their lawsuit, the large business groups join coal company Murray Energy and twelve other organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Association, in legally opposing the rule. They also join 22 states that have filed lawsuits, including North Dakota, Alaska, Arizona, West Virginia, and Colorado.

“This rule is a staggering overreach by the federal government and violates the very law it claims to enforce,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in June. “It will have dire consequences for homeowners, farmers and other entities by forcing them to navigate a complex federal bureaucracy and obtain costly permits in order to perform everyday tasks like digging ditches, building fences, or spraying fertilizers.”

The rule has also been met with Congressional opposition, as bills seeking to undermine it have been introduced in both the House and Senate. The House bill, which seeks to block the proposal, was passed in May. The Senate bill has yet to come to a vote.

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The Best (And Worst) Retailers For Sustainable Seafood

For those looking to shop sustainably, buying seafood can be an especially fraught process. Is wild caught salmon better than farmed? Should you buy swordfish or sea bass? Is canned tuna safe to eat — or safe for the environment?

According to a new report by Greenpeace, one of the most powerful decisions a consumer can make when buying seafood is deciding which retailer to buy from. In their ninth Carting Away the Oceans report, the environmental organization ranks the top retailers in the country based on the sustainability of their seafood, from storewide policies to transparency of information. For the third year in a row, Whole Foods takes top honors, while stores like Publix, A&P, and Save Mart come in last.

“The report is really looking at how these companies can take leadership roles, whether that’s through their policies or the way they communicate with customers,” David Pinksy, the report’s author and Greenpeace’s senior oceans campaigner, told ThinkProgress. “When we look at them in terms of revenue, it’s very important that these large companies are doing the right thing.”

In this year’s report, four retailers earned a score of seven or higher in Greenpeace’s rankings, which take into account things like store policies, sustainability initiatives, information transparency, and types of seafood sold (anything on Greenpeace’s Red List of threatened species is off-limits). Pinsky said that these stores — Whole Foods, Wegmans, Hy-Vee, and Safeway — all have strong sustainability policies that guide their purchasing, and do an especially good job of providing information about their seafood and sustainability commitments to customers.

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CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos/ThinkProgress

“Each of them have taken steps to confront illegal fishing, they’ve called on Congress to pass legislation, they’ve all called for protection of sensitive marine habitat, and they are actively working to offer more sustainable canned tuna,” he said.

Since launching the report in 2008, Pinsky said, Greenpeace has seen significant progress in terms of retailers implementing more sustainable policies when it comes to seafood. This year, 80 percent of the 25 retailers looked at in the report received a passing score — something that Pinsky commends — but he notes that many are still lagging behind in addressing the necessity for marine sanctuaries, sustainable tuna fishing, and human rights abuses in the fishing industry.

“The conversation is there, and we have started to see some shifts in terms of what companies are supplying,” Pinsky said. “I think the big challenge right now goes back to human rights abuses, and how are supermarkets going to rise to the challenge here. That is absolutely the task ahead that they need to address.”

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CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos/ThinkProgress

This past year, several news outlets broke stories chronicling human rights abuses in the fishing industry, especially with regards to slavery on board fishing vessels. The Associated Press looked into slavery on Indonesian fishing vessels and found that “tainted fish” can end up at retailers like Kroger and Safeway, while a Guardian investigation uncovered slavery in the Thai shrimping industry and found that shrimp from these operations were being sold at some of the largest retailers in the world, including Walmart and Costco.

In many ways, Pinsky points out, unsustainable fishing practices encourage human rights abuses in the industry, forcing shipping vessels to travel farther out to sea for longer periods at a time in search of increasingly over-fished and dwindling populations. In some cases, workers on fishing vessels can remain at sea for months or years at a time, Pinsky said.

According to the Greenpeace report, these conditions are especially common for vessels that deal with tuna, where unsustainable management practices have led to a 60 percent reduction in populations on average. Some retailers — like Target and Costco — have created proprietary labels for canned tuna, assuring that the tuna sold in their store comes from healthy ocean stocks and is caught using sustainable management practices.

Beyond committing to sustainable fishing practices and taking charge on human rights issues, Greenpeace is also urging large retailers to double-down on their commitment to protecting delicate marine ecosystems, especially the Bering Sea Canyons located between Alaska and Russia. Nearly half of all seafood consumed in the United States comes from fisheries in the Bering Sea, and the canyons — the largest submarine canyons in the world — provide critical habitat for fish in the region. It’s also the only major habitat in the Bering Sea that isn’t protected, in some way, from fishing. To date, eleven retailers included in the report — Ahold, Costco, Giant Eagle, Hy-Vee, Roundy’s, Safeway, Southeastern Grocers, SUPERVALU, Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, and Whole Foods — have publicly called for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) to protect the Bering Sea Canyons.

The report, Pinsky said, is meant to encourage retailers to use their buying power to prioritize the need for sustainably-sourced seafood.

“The call is out there for major companies, like Walmart, Kroger, Publix, and Albertsons,” Pinsky said. “It’s time for them to get in the game and really prioritize this.”

But customers can also use their buying power to create change, Pinsky said. For those who can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods or don’t live near a Wegman’s, he suggests a simple action: Talk to your grocery store directly.

“Share with managers in these stores, ask questions,” Pinsky said. “If folks are concerned about human rights abuses or they want to see something that is more sustainable, simply asking the seafood staff counter is a very powerful thing to do.”

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