Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 124

Kenya’s New Wind Farm Will Provide Nearly One Fifth Of The Country’s Power

Last week Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta broke ground on a major renewable energy project for the country and for the African continent as a whole: a 310-megawatt wind farm some 300 miles north of the capital city of Nairobi. The farm, which will consist of 365 turbines when fully completed in mid-2017, will be the largest in Africa — overpowering Morocco’s Tarfaya wind farm, currently Africa’s biggest project with 131 turbines. It is also expected to provide around 17 percent of Kenya’s power demand.

Known as the Lake Turkana Wind Power project, the wind farm will be spread across 162 miles in a part of the country that receives steady wind all year. Due to the availability and consistency of the wind, the load factor of the wind farm — the average level at which overall installed capacity is used — is expected to be about 62 percent. Many European wind farms have load factors that are less than half of that, and the global wind power load factor was estimated to be 22.7 percent in 2012. The high capacity of Kenya’s project will allow the wind power generators to sell the electricity for a cheaper price than many other countries.

The project, which is expected to cost $690 million, is being financed by a group of European and African investors such as the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. It is the largest single private investment in Kenya. The undertaking has already been delayed several years due to the lack of transmission lines to link the remote area to Kenya’s electricity grid.

Currently wind power accounts for about one percent of the country’s total power generation, a number that is expected to rise above 10 percent by 2017.

“We can expect the Lake Turkana Wind Power project to bring change gradually,” Kenya Power’s Benson Muriithi told CNN earlier this year. “As demand for electricity grows, we will see electricity generated from wind turbines play a more important role in Kenya’s and reduce power costs in the country.”

Sub-Saharan Africa has been advancing rapidly since 2000, with the region’s economy doubling in size by 2013. Energy demand in the region grew by around 45 percent over the same period. Even so, some 630 million people, or two-thirds of the population, still lack access to electricity. Large wind projects like the new one in Kenya will help fill this gap over the coming decades. A recent report by the International Energy Agency determined that renewable energy will make up almost half of sub-Saharan Africa’s power generation growth by 2040.

Over the next three years, Kenya hopes to add 5,000 megawatts of power to its grid, an ambitious target that will take installed capacity up from 1,700 megawatts in 2013 to 6,700 megawatts by 2017. Aside from wind and solar power capacity, Kenya is rich in hydropower and geothermal energy sources. The country recently installed a 280-megawatt geothermal plant — one of the world’s largest. Geothermal recently overtook hydropower as the single largest electricity provider in the country.

Just as the Lake Turkana Wind Power project is breaking ground, Kenyan developers are already planning a larger 400-megawatt wind farm, with two financiers — France’s Development Agency and Germany’s Development Bank — visiting Kenya this week to assess the project.

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Is The Declaration of Independence A ‘Scientific Paper’?

Nearly twelve score years ago, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Interdependence:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Okay, the Declaration of Interdependence sounds a lot like the Declaration of Independence.

By saying that it is a self-evident truth that all humans are created equal and that our inalienable rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our Founding Fathers were telling us that we are all in this together, that we are interdependent, that we have a moral duty to protect these inalienable rights for all humans. President Lincoln, perhaps above all others, was instrumental in making clear that the second sentence of the Declaration was “a moral standard to which the United States should strive,” as Wikipedia puts it.

The double appeal to “Nature” — including the explicit appeal to “the laws of Nature” in the first sentence — is particularly salient. For masters of rhetoric like the authors of the Declaration, a repeated word, especially in an opening sentence, is repeated for the singular purpose of drawing attention to it.

Some argue that the phrase “laws of nature” meant something different to Jefferson than it does to us (see here).

But I don’t think most people understand just how deeply steeped in science — and Sir Isaac Newton’s “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” — the founding fathers were, particularly Jefferson. Because the connection between science and politics is so important today, I’ll do a post discussing this point in detail later.

It’s worth noting now that for nearly two decades — including the entire time Jefferson was Vice President and President of this country — he was also President of The American Philosophical Society, the nation’s oldest scientific society, which was founded by the great American scientist Ben Franklin. “Natural Philosophy” was the phrase used for the natural sciences back then, which is why it’s in the title of Newton’s famed Principia.

In his book, “Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence,” the historian Gary Wills calls the Declaration a “scientific paper,” and explains that “the Declaration’s opening is Newtonian. It lays down the law.” The Principia, of course, famously lays out Newton’s 3 laws of motion, which many at the time called the “laws of nature.”

How familiar was Jefferson with the Principia? Very. Newton’s masterpiece was widely revered among the founding fathers. But Jefferson in particular had studied it closely, and he even wrote a letter identifying what he calculated to be a tiny mathematical error in it.

Jefferson was grounding the nation’s Declaration of Independence in the scientific laws of nature — a key point detailed at length in the book “Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison,” by I. Bernard Cohen, the great historian of 18th century science. That is why, for instance, Jefferson wrote about truths that were “self-evident,” which is to say axiomatic.

Today, it is the laws of Nature, studied and enumerated by scientists, that make clear we are poised to render those unalienable rights all but unattainable for billions of humans on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions. It is the laws of Nature that make clear Americans can’t achieve sustainable prosperity if the rest of the world doesn’t, and vice versa.

Moreover, founding fathers like Jefferson firmly believed we had an equal duty to future generations, as is clear from The Constitutional Law Foundation’s discussion of “Intergenerational Justice in the United States Constitution, The Stewardship Doctrine”:

The most succinct, systematic treatment of intergenerational principles left to us by the founders is that which was provided by Thomas Jefferson in his famous September 6, 1789 letter to James Madison. The letter was Jefferson’s final installment in a two year correspondence with Madison on the proposed Bill of Rights. Given the importance of this letter as background material for the bill of rights, and its independent value as a brilliant statement of intergenerational equity principles, it serves as the natural starting point for a discussion of the founders’ views on specific intergenerational issues.

The key question for Jefferson was very simple: Must later generations “consider the preceding generation as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in the course of a life?” Soil was an obvious focal point for examining the issue of intergenerational equity for a Virginia planter like Jefferson.

The answer to Jefferson was another self-evident truth: “Every one will say no; that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation.”

It is immoral for one generation to destroy another generation’s vital soil — or its livable climate. Hence it is unimaginably immoral to Dustbowlify their soil and ruin their livable climate irreversibly for many centuries if not millennia. Yet that is what we are currently on track to do according to a 2015 NASA study — along with many other recent studies.

Let’s return to the Declaration of (Inter)dependence. Ironically — or perhaps intentionally — the toughest inalienable right to maintain is “the pursuit of happiness.” Certainly, the catastrophic global warming we know we face (thanks to our understanding of the laws of nature) threatens life and liberty (see “Syria Today Is A Preview Of Memorial Day, 2030“).

But if we keep listening to the deniers and delayers, if we fail to sharply reverse our current emissions path nationally and globally, then we are headed toward 4°C (7°F) planetary warming or more by century’s end — with sea level rise of 4 to 6 feet or higher, rising perhaps six to twelve inches a decade or more for centuries, widespread Dust-Bowlification, a large fraction of species extinct, and much of the ocean a hot, acidic dead zone.

Not bloody many people will be pursuing “happiness” under those conditions. They will be desperately trying to avoid misery, when they aren’t cursing our names for betraying our moral values.

If we don’t aggressively embrace the clean energy transition starting immediately — and help lead the entire world to a similar transition — then the Ponzi scheme we call the global economy will probably be in some stage of obvious collapse by our 250th anniversary, July 4, 2026.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And so “happiness” is repeated also, underscoring its importance to the Founders. “Life” and “Liberty” are really the very minimum we owe our fellow humans. We have a moral obligation to work toward freedom from want and care for all.

We live in perilous times. We must all hang together or we will surely all hang separately.

Happy Interdependence Day Century!

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A Swiss Pilot Just Completed The Longest Solar-Powered Flight In Aviation History

On Friday, Swiss Pilot André Borschberg broke at least three world records.

Just before noon, Borschberg landed the Solar Impulse 2 plane in Hawaii after taking off from Japan nearly five days before. The plane was powered without a drop of jet fuel, using only electricity generated from the sun striking the photovoltaic panel across its wing.

Borschberg actually broke one world record before his flight ended, for taking the longest nonstop solo flight without refueling in aviation history. The previous record was a 76-hour flight, held by Steve Fossett for his nonstop flight around the world in 2005.

But when he landed, Borschberg also broke the record for the world’s longest successful solar-powered flight, both by time and by distance. The flight lasted 4 days, 21 hours and 50 minutes, and traveled 8,209 kilometers across the Pacific.

There has never been a solar flight as long as this in the history of aviation.

HE MADE IT! @andreborschberg just touched down in #Hawaii after a record-breaking flight! #futureisclean @b… https://t.co/WQWsRKiCEi

— SOLAR IMPULSE (@solarimpulse) July 3, 2015

Theoretically, the Solar Impulse 2 plane could stay airborne indefinitely if it weren’t for the need for a human pilot, who at some point would need to sleep and eat. Because of strict weight limits, the plane can only carry a certain amount of food and water. Borschberg, for his part, reportedly only took intermittent 20-minute naps for the entire Japan-to-Hawaii flight.

The Solar Impulse 2 was unveiled last year by Borschberg and pilot Bertrand Piccard, with the intention of flying around the world using only solar and battery power. The plane is about 5,000 lbs — or about the same as a car — with most of the weight contained in two 2077-pound batteries to power its night flight. It’s also pretty slow — the aircraft’s maximum speed is 87 miles per hour, meaning it has to stay in the air for several days in a row during long transoceanic legs.

Needless to say, it’s not a commercially viable plane. But Piccard and Borsrchberg say it’s less about commercial viability, and more about the promise of innovation.

“This is a clear message that clean technologies can achieve impossible goals,” Piccard said in a statement.

After today’s landing in Hawaii, Borshberg and Piccard will continue their attempt to fly around the world. The next leg will be from Honolulu to Phoenix, Arizona, and then the two will fly together across the Atlantic on a return journey to Abu Dhabi, where they first took off in May.

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Koch-Backed Group Calls For No More National Parks

Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.

Just in time for the Fourth of July — when millions of people across the country will visit America’s national parks and other public lands — the Koch brothers are rolling out their latest campaign against these treasured places: pushing for no more national parks.

In an op-ed published in Tuesday’s New York Times, Reed Watson, the executive director at the Koch-backed Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), along with a research associate at the Center, call for no more national parks, citing the backlog in maintenance for existing parks.

“True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have, not insatiably acquiring more and hoping it manages itself,” the op-ed reads. “Let’s maintain what we’ve already got, so we can protect it properly,” it concludes.

While the authors seem to push for “true conservation” from the federal government, in reality, PERC has a long history of advocating for the privatization of America’s national parks and other public lands, and has significant ties to the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industries.

PERC, which labels itself as “a property rights and environmental organization,” has received significant contributions from Koch-backed organizations, including from Donors Trust, which has been called the “dark-money ATM of the right.” Additionally, Watson, the lead author of the op-ed and current PERC Executive Director, previously worked at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and in a 2009 op-ed criticized a number of bipartisan bills to protect wilderness, arguing that “land management agencies [should] turn a profit” by removing restrictions on timber and energy development.

In addition to arguing for no new national parks, PERC’s op-ed also calls for an end to one of America’s best parks programs, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF is a budget-neutral program that uses funds from offshore oil and gas development fees to fund federal, state and local outdoor projects across the country. The program has been used to support some of America’s most iconic national parks, including the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and has helped create tens of thousands of outdoor projects such as local parks and baseball diamonds in all 50 states.

Members of Congress from both parties have called for full funding and reauthorization of the LWCF before it expires permanently on September 30. However, PERC and a select few Republican leaders in Congress are instead advocating for diverting the funds to cover maintenance costs, despite continuing to cut the National Park Service’s budget.

PERC and its oil and gas allies have also ramped up involvement in an extreme right wing campaign to give control of America’s public lands to the states and sell them off to the highest bidder. In March, PERC released a study that claimed to provide economic evidence to support the transfer of national public lands to state control. The study was widely cited in a series of nearly identical op-eds written by a front group for the oil and gas-backed public relations firm of Richard Berman, nicknamed “Dr. Evil” by consumer-protection and organizations he has targeted.

However, an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities (CWP) shows that PERC’s economic analysis is “flawed,” ignoring billions of dollars spent every year fighting wildfires and “fail[ing] to account for the multiple values provided by national public lands,” beyond drilling, mining, and logging. The study’s “glaring flaws would suggest that the authors designed a study to specifically support the organization’s ideology, which prioritizes extractive industries, reduces public access through privatization, and ignores the benefits of balanced land management,” CWP wrote in April.

CWP also cites two recent studies in its analysis from economists in Utah and Idaho showing that states would not be able to afford to manage lands if they were transferred to state control. In addition to the serious economic concerns they raise for state budgets, these proposals to transfer America’s public lands to the states and sell them off to private interests are unpopular with Western voters, and most importantly, unconstitutional.

Despite these concerns, PERC and its oil and gas allies in Congress have continued to ramp up efforts to seize and sell off America’s public lands and push an overall “No More National Parks” campaign. While these highly partisan and divisive attacks on the environment have taken priority in Congress, the conservation efforts supported by both parties, such as the reauthorization of the LWCF, are at risk of being left behind. Congress will have less than 100 days to act and reauthorize LWCF when it returns from recess next week.

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This Airline Just Invested Millions Into Turning Garbage Into Jet Fuel

This week, a California-based biofuel company announced a $30 million deal with United Airlines to develop jet fuel using oils derived from animal and vegetable fats — i.e. household trash.

Fulcrum BioEnergy will use the investment to develop up to five projects to produce up to 180 million gallons of this fuel per year, with United signed up to buy at up to 90 million of those gallons each year at competitive rates.

“The Fulcrum announcement is a big deal precisely because of the need for low carbon solutions for aviation,” Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ clean vehicles program, told ThinkProgress. “Other companies have made fats and vegetable oils into aviation fuels, but what is important about the Fulcrum technology is the ability to make fuel from wastes like ordinary garbage rather than food resources.”

Alternative fuels including biofuels are an important part of the aviation industry.

This is the largest investment by United in alternative jet fuels, but it is not the first.

In 2013, the airline partnered with another California-based biofuel producer, AltAir Fuels, to buy 15 million gallons of agricultural waste-based fuel — which can use things like corn, sugarcane and other sources of biomass — over three years. This summer some of that fuel will start to be used in flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco as part of a fuel mixture that’s 30 percent biofuel and 70 percent traditional fuel. The fuel is a “drop in” substitute for petroleum-based fuels and requires no moderation to the current engines.

The overall quantity United is using represents a minuscule fraction of the 3.9 billion gallons of fuel the airline used last year, let alone the 1.5 billion barrels of jet fuel used by the industry overall. The recent moves rather signify the first stage of transition to a cleaner, greener airline industry — an industry with a rapidly growing emissions profile.

While greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft are currently only responsible for 2 to 3 percent of total domestic emissions, by 2050 the industry could contribute up to 15 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. In 2013, more than three billion people worldwide were airplane passengers. According to the Air Transport Action Group, aviation is responsible for 12 percent of all transportation emissions.

The U.S. is currently the largest contributor to these emissions, but homegrown companies like Fulcrum hope to curtail that trajectory. Fulcrum has already invested $130 million in developing their alternative fuel — one that can cut an airline’s carbon emissions by 80 percent compared with standard jet fuel, according to the company.

Karen Bunton with Fulcrum BioEnergy told ThinkProgress that their process “has been thoroughly vetted by numerous third parties including the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Agriculture” and it meets “all of the aviation industry and military technical requirements and specifications.”

The company is preparing to start constructing the Sierra BioFuels Plant near Reno, Nevada, that will produce 10 million gallons of ethanol annually using household garbage. Bunton said the plant had a modular design that can be “easily replicated and scaled to build larger facilities that will produce between 30 and 60 million gallons of competitively-priced jet fuel or diesel per year.”

She said the company has “large volumes of feedstock” secured from waste service partners, and hopes to accelerate development in order to produce more than 300 million gallons of transportation fuel annually.

Vera Pardee with the Center for Biological Diversity told ThinkProgress that with air travel expected to more than triple by 2030, “alternative fuels are a viable and most likely necessary step in the process of reducing GHG emissions from aircraft.”

Before this can happen though fuels from innovative companies like Fulcrum BioEnergy and AltAir Fuels must show that they are do actually “outperform” current fuels when it comes to a lifecycle analysis including things like land use changes, according to Pardee.

“Of course, alternative fuel industries promote their own products; it is EPA’s burden to determine the parameters of which fuels are acceptable alternatives based on such a rigorous analysis,” she said.

By 2030, no more than 5 percent of the global fleet would be under any kind of GHG regulations.

In June, the EPA announced that greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes are a health hazard and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. In developing airplane emissions regulations, the EPA is deferring to international deliberations on the issue by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, which is expected to release an emissions standard early in 2016.

Pardee is not impressed with the standard under consideration, saying it would regulate only completely new aircraft certified after 2023, “which means that by 2030, no more than 5 percent of the global fleet would be under any kind of GHG regulations.”

“Truly, then, ICAO is navigating toward an emissions target nearly indistinguishable from business as usual,” she said.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association of the world’s airlines, has a much more ambitious target of achieving carbon-neutral industry growth after 2020 and a 50 percent reduction in net CO2 emissions by 2050 relative to 2005 levels.

Perry Flint, head of corporate communications for IATA in the Americas, told ThinkProgress that “alternative fuels including biofuels are an important part of the aviation industry’s four pillar strategy to address aviation’s contribution to climate change.”

The four pillars include improving technology (including fuels), increasing efficiency, upgrading infrastructure, and developing a market-based mechanism to fill the remaining emissions gap.

In order for the industry to play its part to the fullest, state and federal policies will be critical in aiding this transition and supporting the broad-based changes that need to take place.

“Stable policy that supports the cleanest, most innovative fuels, especially non food-based fuels is critical,” said Martin. “Both federal and state policies have a role to play, as does private sector investment and government support for research, development and deployment of strategic technologies.”

United is taking advantage of the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) subsidy in pursuing these fuel sources, which are in their early stages of production and face numerous market barriers. However the RFS is not guaranteed in the long term — in fact the Obama administration recently ThinkProgress.

Fracking’s Water Footprint Is On The Rise

According to a new study released by the U.S. Geological Survey, the amount of water used in controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing — better known as fracking — is on the rise.

Released Tuesday, the study found that a horizontal natural gas well in 2014 used 28 times more water than a similar natural gas well in 2000, while an oil well used 22 times as much water. But water use also varies widely across the industry, with operations using anywhere from 2,600 gallons to as much as 9.7 million gallons per well.

“Hydraulic fracturing is not the same everywhere, and that’s reflected in the water use,” Tanya Gallegos, USGS research engineer and the study’s lead author, told ThinkProgress. “There’s quite a bit of variability throughout the United States.”

The study builds off of an earlier survey conducted by the USGS, which looked at data from millions of wells drilled across the country between 1947 and 2010. Gallegos wanted not only to update the findings of that study, but also expand it by looking at how water use in fracking operations might vary from watershed to watershed.

“Water use is complex, and it’s not a one-size fits all,” Gallegos said. “There are a lot of different considerations that could influence water use.”

Overall, Gallegos said, this recent study found that horizontal wells — wells that are drilled vertically and then parallel to the surface — tend to use much more water than directional or vertical wells. The USGS also found that that water use was especially high in areas with known shale gas reservoirs, like the Eagle Ford Formation in Texas.

[image error]

CREDIT: USGS

The study also found that the number of horizontal wells drilled in the United States has begun to exceed the number of vertical wells — in 2014, only 42 percent of newly drilled wells across the country were vertical.

The USGS researchers didn’t look at how water use in fracking operations compared to water availability in the area, but as Climate Central points out, many of the most water-intensive operations — those in Texas or in the Great Plains — tend to be located in relatively arid areas.

In some cases, however, natural gas production has actually led to a decrease in overall water use, as natural-gas fired electricity uses less water than coal, making up for the amount of water needed to obtain the natural gas through fracking. “In terms of water quantity, fracking consumes a relatively insignificant volume of water compared to that required to cool power plants: for the 10 states that fracked the most shale gas wells in 2012, average water consumption for cooling power plants per cubic foot of natural gas burned was 30 times greater than the water consumed for fracking per cubic foot of shale gas,” Climate Central wrote in a recent report about water consumption and natural gas production.

Still, fracking’s large water footprint has become a point of criticism for those skeptical of the practice, especially in drought-ridden California, which reportedly used 70 million gallons of water for fracking in 2014. As Patrick Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity and Californians Against Fracking told ThinkProgress, that water “most likely cannot be put back into the water cycle.”

“I know there are places in the Central Valley where the ground is literally sinking because so much groundwater is being pumped out,” Sullivan said. “It is inexcusable that we are continuing to use this precious water for fracking … we’ve got to protect our water supply in the state; we’re running dry.”

But Gallegos argues that because water use is so variable across fracking operations, it’s difficult to make overarching claims about the industry’s water footprint, even in a single state. She hopes that the USGS data provide the public with better information and lead to more productive conversations about fracking and water use in the United States.

“This information could be used to highlight that there are differences, and we have to be careful about when we’re making comparisons between one region to another and one operation to another,” she said. “Hopefully this will provide us with some of the background information that might be useful for asking the right questions.”

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India Says It Won’t Set Date For Reducing Total Carbon Emissions

In disappointing news for watchers of global warming, an Indian government official has said the country won’t announce a target date for reducing the total amount of carbon it emits. India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, which causes climate change.

First reported by the BBC, the comments came from Indian environment minister Prakash Javadekar, who said that the country will submit a plan to cut emissions to the U.N., which is hosting international climate talks at the end of the year. But India will not give a target date for when it expects to peak its total carbon emissions.

“The world is not expecting… India to announce its peaking year,” Javadekar told the BBC. “Countries know where India stands and what its requirements [development needs] are and therefore nobody has asked us for [the] peaking year.”

The comments are not exactly new ground for Javadekar, who has said before that India will need to keep emitting carbon in order to combat its poverty problem. Last year, in an interview with the New York Times, Javadekar said “that his government’s first priority was to alleviate poverty and improve the nation’s economy, which he said would necessarily involve an increase in emissions through new coal-powered electricity and transportation.”

He said that the idea of peaking carbon emissions is more “for developed countries.” The United States, the second-largest carbon emitter, has pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. China, the largest carbon emitter, announced on Tuesday a commitment to peak its emissions around 2030.

China’s peak may even happen sooner, according to ClimateProgress’ Joe Romm, who after a recent trip to Beijing found that it’s “a widely held view … that China will peak its carbon dioxide emissions around 2025.”

India does, for its part, recognize the threat of human-caused climate change. After a recent heat wave killed more than 2,300 people, making it the 5th deadliest in recorded world history, the country’s minister of earth sciences was clear about what was driving the disaster.

“Let us not fool ourselves that there is no connection between the unusual number of deaths from the ongoing heat wave and the certainty of another failed monsoon,” Harsh Vardhan said in comments to Reuters. “It’s not just an unusually hot summer, it is climate change.”

But instead of announcing concrete goals, India seems to be looking more toward getting funding for clean energy projects. Right now, India relies heavily on coal-fired plants for electricity and as a result, has some of the most polluted air in the world. But it also has a goal to install 170 gigawatts of clean energy by 2022, which it reportedly expects to achieve through foreign investment.

India and the United States have also pledged to work together to fight global climate change, laying out a set of goals this past January to “expand policy dialogues and technical work on clean energy and low greenhouse gas emissions technologies.” That deal included efforts to cooperate on reducing emissions of fluorinated gases, invigorate India’s promotion of clean energy investment, and partner to reduce the debilitating air pollution that has plagued many of India’s cities.

The agreement also emphasized that the countries would “cooperate closely” for a “successful and ambitious” agreement at the Paris climate talks at the end of the year. During that conference, 196 nations are expected to meet and tentatively agree a course of action to respond to climate change. It is widely considered the last chance for a global agreement that could feasibly keep the rise in global average temperatures under 2°C.

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Chinese CO2 Emissions Headed To 2025 Peak, May Plateau Much Sooner

I just returned from six days of meetings in Beijing with top energy and climate experts. It’s now a widely held view in the Beijing climate community that China will peak its carbon dioxide emissions around 2025.

That would be five years ahead of the official 2030 target China announced this week for the upcoming U.N. climate talks in Paris, which was the same target China announced in November. In both cases, however, China said it would do its best to peak earlier — and, as I noted last fall, China would not tell the world they would do their best to beat a target and then not actually beat that target.

China appears to be beating climate and clean energy targets across the board. It is ahead of its renewable energy targets — and some experts believe they will easily overshoot their 2020 targets for wind and solar. Also, as we reported in May, China may well have already peaked in coal consumption back in 2013. It will take some time, however, to know whether that is a true peak or something closer to a plateau in coal use.

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China’s coal use (dark orange) has dropped since 2013, according to initial government data. Many climate and energy experts in China believe the country has peaked in coal.

China clearly has both the desire and ability to move fast in this area. That was confirmed in numerous conversations with environmentalists, academics, government officials, and policy analysts who advise the government.

This desire is driven more by the terrible air quality in cities like Beijing than it is by their leaders’ desire to take action on climate change — which itself is quite strong. I unfortunately experienced the bad air quality first-hand. If you spend any time in Chinese cities like Beijing, their urgency on this matter is easy to understand.

Some people we talked to thought China could be on track to peak in CO2 well before 2025, but that seems to be a minority view at this point. Since China’s use of oil and gas is all but certain to rise over the next decade, the key question is whether China’s coal consumption has truly begun a steady decline — or whether it will be roughly flat for the next few years. In the former case, CO2 may well effectively plateau in the near future. It will take a few years for the trend to become clear.

Ultimately, the outcome depends on on two things. First, can the government deliver on what has become one of the biggest citizen demands the Party has faced in its history — how to clean up the air while keeping economy on a stable track? It would be hard to fail on this and stay in power. Second, does China want to be a superpower in a thriving world with a livable climate that it is perceived as helping to have preserved — or in a desperate world without one that it is perceived as having helped destroy?

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After Years Of Litigation, BP Agrees To $18.7 Billion In Claims And Penalties For Historic Oil Spill

In simultaneous press conferences in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, the attorneys general of the states most directly impacted by the massive 2010 BP spill announced a “global deal” to settle years of litigation with the oil giant for a total of $18.7 billion.

The settlement, largely split between the five Gulf Coast states, includes $6.8 billion to Louisiana, $3.25 billion to Florida, $2.3 billion to Alabama, $2.2 billion to Mississippi, $750 million to Texas, and $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act penalties.

“Today, I am pleased to say that after productive discussions with BP over the previous several weeks, we have reached an agreement in principle that would justly and comprehensively address outstanding federal and state claims, including Clean Water Act civil penalties and natural resource damages,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement. “BP is also resolving significant economic claims with the impacted state and local governments.”

Lynch said the agreement in principle would be worked into a consent decree, which would then undergo a public comment period.

“If approved by the court,” she said, “this settlement would be the largest settlement with a single entity in American history.”

Louisiana Attorney General Caldwell called the agreement a “game changer” — “the largest environmental settlement in history.” Gov. Robert Bentley (R-AL) called it a “landmark agreement.”

Calling April 20, 2010 “a day Alabamians will never forget,” Gov. Bentley described the enormous impact the spill had on tourism, coastal businesses, and public health before providing more details about the settlement.

“The BP/ Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in United States history, and the impact to the Alabama Gulf Coast was detrimental,” he said.

Bentley was the only governor to attend his state’s press conference announcing the Gulf States settlement, calling it a “significant step forward,” that would help Alabama “become a stronger, safer and more resilient state as a result of this terrible disaster.” He also thanked BP for coming to the table and “settling this in a fair way.”

Last year, BP’s lawyers fought all the way to the Supreme Court to cap the amount of Gulf oil spill-related fines it must pay at $12 billion, almost a third less than the amount U.S. prosecutors sought.

The Supreme Court refused to hear their case, confirming a District Court judge’s finding of “gross negligence,” which triggers the maximum permissible fine — up to $18 billion.

A federal judge was preparing to announce how much the company owed in Clean Water Act penalties because of the damage the spill caused to the environment. The settlement goes to resolve those penalties as well as claims involving natural resource damage and local government economic damage. It will also settle state economic claims.

This does not include cleanup costs BP has already incurred, nor a separate settlement with businesses and individuals over spill-related losses. The Wall Street Journal estimates that, combined with Thursday’s announced settlement, BP will have paid $53.8 billion as a result of the spill.

However, the damage caused by the spill could actually be larger than what is reflected in the settlement.

“$18.7 billion may sound like a lot of money, and it is, but it pales in comparison to what BP owes,” said Jacqueline Savitz, vice president of Oceana. “The Clean Water Act violations should have amounted to $13.7 billion alone, due to the company’s gross negligence and the sheer amount of oil they spilled. And that’s using conservative estimates.”

Savitz noted that under the Oil Pollution Act, BP has to pay for the natural resources the spill destroyed.

“The exact amount is still being worked out by NOAA, but based on the amounts paid for a much smaller spill, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, these damages could be in the $30 billion range,” she said. “Even if it’s a smaller amount, it’s certainly a lot more than the $7.1 billion they are proposing to pay in this settlement.”

Put another way, the $18.7 billion settlement is comprised of $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act penalties, $7.1 billion in natural resource damages, and $4.9 billion in economic damages. The state settlements will be paid out over the next 18 years, while federal penalties will be paid over the next 15 years.

Louisiana’s share, $6.8 billion, is the largest of all the affected states. It includes $5 billion for natural resource damages, at least $787 million in Clean Water Act civil penalties, and $1 billion in state economic damages. Gov. Bobby Jindal has been facing a $1.6 billion state budget shortfall.

BREAKING: Louisiana and 3 other Gulf States reach settlement with @BP_America over 2010 #DeepwaterHorizon @WAFB pic.twitter.com/SVTmoHMkqy

— Farrah Yvette (@farrah_yvette) July 2, 2015

Alabama’s settlement will be split, with $1.3 billion going to environmental projects, and $1 billion going to the state’s general fund. Attorney General Luther Strange said it would “return the state’s finances to where they would have been, and should have been,” prior to the spill.

Mississippi will receive an additional $1.5 billion, split between environmental and economic damage compensation, in addition to $659 million in early funding.

Florida’s $3.25 billion share is mostly for economic damages ($2 billion) and the rest, $1.25 billion, from their natural resource damage claims. State Attorney General Pam Bondi said the settlement avoids going down a “black hole” of litigation.

The spill, which occurred deep below the Gulf of Mexico 100 miles offshore, released 4.9 million barrels of oil from the Macondo well and resulted in a fiery explosion that killed 11 people on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

This agreement settles all federal and state claims, as well as over 400 local government claims.

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The post After Years Of Litigation, BP Agrees To $18.7 Billion In Claims And Penalties For Historic Oil Spill appeared first on ThinkProgress.

This Carbon-Intensive Form Of Coal Plant Is Being Slashed In Germany

On Thursday, the German government decided to phase out some 2.7 gigawatts of brown coal-fired power in order to meet the country’s 2020 climate goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels — a target that the rest of the EU hopes to reach a decade later.

After months of back and forth between members of chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition and heavy industry pressure, the announcement was met with mixed reaction.

Environmental groups had hoped for a levy, or tax, on carbon from the most polluting power plants. But that proposal was opposed by unions, plant operators, and local governments. Instead, operators will now be offered financial incentives to take plants offline. In addition, a “capacity reserve” system will be put into effect in which utilities can switch to brown coal-fired power plants during power shortages rather than be part of the normal power market.

Brown coal, otherwise known as lignite, is a cheap, carbon-intense form of coal with a relatively low heat content. It is generally brown in color as opposed to black and has a high water content.

The 2.7 gigawatts slated to go offline is the equivalent of about five large coal-fired power plants, or about 13 percent of Germany’s total lignite-burning power plant capacity. The plants will be entirely phased out four years after going on reserve in 2017.

The economy ministry said that the agreement will lead to an 11 million tons-per-year reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, compared to the previous levy plan which would have eliminated at least 16 million ton per year. Bloomberg Business reports that the lignite industry also “agreed to cut an additional 1.5 millions tons a year from 2018 in a way that still needs to be negotiated.”

The climate action group 350.org released a statement saying the good news is that “the decision by the German government to mothball some of the oldest lignite power plants is yet another sign that coal is on its way out.”

The bad news: “It doesn’t go nearly far enough. In fact, the government caved in to big polluters and went with a watered-down proposal.”

Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions fell for the first time in three years in 2014. According to the environmental ministry, the drop came both from the expansion of renewables and a relatively mild winter. Renewable sources accounted for 27.8 percent of power consumption in 2014, up from 6.2 percent in 2000, and carbon emissions dropped 4.3 percent year-over-year.

This made 2014 a big year for Germany’s renewable energy transition, known as Energiewende, which requires the phasing out of nuclear energy by 2022 and reducing GHGs at least 80 percent by 2050. The government also wants the at least double the percentage of renewables in the energy mix by 2035.

In response to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011, Germany decided to shutter its nuclear power operations, causing the country to rely more on coal as it transitions to renewables. Currently coal still accounts for some 44 percent of the country’s power generation.

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The post This Carbon-Intensive Form Of Coal Plant Is Being Slashed In Germany appeared first on ThinkProgress.