Tag: Energy and the environment

Dominion, AG reach proposed agreement in offshore wind case

[ad_1]

RICHMOND, Va. — Dominion Energy has agreed to implement several consumer protections in connection with its massive offshore wind project under a proposed agreement with the office of the Virginia attorney general and other parties released Friday.

The proposed agreement, which includes performance reporting requirements and provisions laying out a degree of construction cost sharing, is still subject to final approval by the State Corporation Commission.

Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican whose office represents the interests of consumers in utility regulation proceedings, said the agreement would provide “first-of-its-kind” protections for ratepayers while ensuring the 176-turbine project with an estimated $9.8 billion capital cost moves forward in a fiscally responsible way.

“I am pleased that we have achieved consumer protections never seen before in modern Virginia history,” Miyares said in a statement. “For the first time Dominion has significant skin in the game to ensure that the project is delivered on budget. Should the project run materially over budget, it will come out of Dominion’s pocket, not consumers,” he said.

Dominion filed its application to build and recover the costs of the project with the State Corporation Commission nearly a year ago. That kicked off a lengthy process before the regulatory agency, one that has included voluminous filings and an evidentiary hearing in May.

The commission in August signed off on the project, but it included a consumer protection provision — a performance guarantee — that Dominion strenuously objected to, saying it would kill the project.

The parties to Friday’s proposal said they had conferred since then and reached the terms of the proposed agreement. It calls for a cost-sharing arrangement for any overruns beyond the estimated $9.8 billion price tag. The company would cover 50% of construction costs between the range of $10.3-$11.3 billion and 100% of costs between $11.3-$13.7 billion. If construction costs were to exceed $13.7 billion, the issue would go back to the commission.

The proposal would not require the company to guarantee certain energy production levels, like the SCC had initially ordered. Rather, Dominion will have to report average net capacity factors annually and “provide a detailed explanation of the factors contributing to any deficiency.” Capacity factor is a measure of how often a generating facility runs during a period of time.

Richmond-based Dominion said in a news release that the deal would provide “significant customer benefits.”

“I appreciate the thoughtful effort of all parties in reaching a constructive agreement to allow the project to continue moving forward,” said Bob Blue, Dominion’s chair, president and and chief executive officer.

Also parties to the agreement are Walmart, Virginia’s largest private employer, and two conservation groups: Appalachian Voices and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Will Cleveland, an attorney for SELC, emphasized in a statement that the primary issue in the case was “never about offshore wind’s value but the risks created by the ownership structure.”

No other offshore wind project under development in the U.S. is funded by captive ratepayers, and no other project has a monopoly utility owner acting as its own general contractor, the law center said.

The project, which will be located about 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, has drawn broad support from local officials, policymakers, business groups and trade unions, who say it will help fight climate change and create jobs.

The company already has a two-turbine pilot project up and running. The 2.6-gigawatt, utility-scale project’s schedule calls for construction to be complete in late 2026. Dominion expects the project to generate enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes.

Clean Virginia, an environmental and rate reform advocacy group that is a party to the proceeding, did not oppose the agreement, which it said in a statement represented a “vast improvement” for consumers.

“Absent pressure from environmental advocates, the Office of the Attorney General, regulatory staff, and Walmart, Dominion would have proceeded with one of the most expensive energy projects to date in Virginia with few consumer protections and would have faced little performance expectations to actually generate consistent clean energy,” Laura Gonzalez, the group’s energy policy manager, said in a statement.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 28, 2022
Alaska-Australia flight could place bird in record books

[ad_1]

CANBERRA, Australia — A young bar-tailed godwit appears to have set a non-stop distance record for migratory birds by flying at least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a bird expert said Friday.

The bird was tagged as a hatchling in Alaska during the Northern Hemisphere summer with a tracking GPS chip and tiny solar panel that enabled an international research team to follow its first annual migration across the Pacific Ocean, Birdlife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler said. Because the bird was so young, its gender wasn’t known.

Aged about five months, it left southwest Alaska at the Yuko-Kuskokwim Delta on Oct. 13 and touched down 11 days later at Ansons Bay on the island of Tasmania’s northeastern tip on Oct. 24, according to data from Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Ornithology. The research has yet to be published or peer reviewed.

The bird started on a southwestern course toward Japan then turned southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a map published by New Zealand’s Pukoro Miranda Shorebird Center shows.

The bird was again tracking southwest when it flew over or near Kiribati and New Caledonia, then past the Australian mainland before turning directly west for Tasmania, Australia’s most southerly state. The satellite trail showed it covered 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) without stopping.

“Whether this is an accident, whether this bird got lost or whether this is part of a normal pattern of migration for the species, we still don’t know,” said Woehler, who is part of the research project.

Guinness World Records lists the longest recorded migration by a bird without stopping for food or rest as 12,200 km (7,580 miles) by a satellite-tagged male bar-tailed godwit flying from Alaska to New Zealand.

That flight was recorded in 2020 as part of the same decade-old research project, which also involves China’s Fudan University, New Zealand’s Massey University and the Global Flyway Network.

The same bird broke its own record with a 13,000-kilometer (8,100-mile) flight on its next migration last year, researchers say. But Guinness has yet to acknowledge that feat.

Woehler said researchers did not know whether the latest bird, known by its satellite tag 234684, flew alone or as part of a flock.

“There are so few birds that have been tagged, we don’t know how representative or otherwise this event is,” Woehler said.

“It may be that half the birds that do the migration from Alaska come to Tasmania directly rather than through New Zealand or it might be 1%, or it might be that this is the first it’s ever happened,” he added.

Adult birds depart Alaska earlier than juveniles, so the tagged bird was unlikely to have followed more experienced travelers south, Woehler said.

Woehler hopes to see the bird once wet weather clears in the remote corner of Tasmania, where it will fatten up having lost half its body weight on its journey.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 28, 2022
EU approves ban on new combustion-engine cars from 2035

[ad_1]

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament and EU member countries have reached a deal to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars and vans by 2035.

EU negotiators sealed on Thursday night the first agreement of the bloc’s “Fit for 55″ package set up by the Commission to achieve the EU’s climate goals of cutting emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade.

The EU Parliament said the deal is a “clear signal ahead of the UN COP27 Climate Change Conference that the EU is serious about adopting concrete laws to reach the more ambitious targets set out in the EU Climate Law.”

According to the bloc’s data, transport is the only sector where greenhouse gas emissions have increased in the past three decades, rising 33.5% between 1990 and 2019. Passenger cars are a major polluter, accounting for 61% of total CO2 emissions from EU road transport.

The EU wants to drastically reduce gas emission from transportation by 2050 and promote electric cars, but a report from the bloc’s external auditor showed last year that the region is lacking the appropriate charging stations.

“This is a historic decision as it sets for the first time a clear decarbonization pathway — with targets in 2025, 2030 and 2035 and aligned with our goal of climate neutrality by 2050,” boasted Pascal Canfin, the chair of the environment committee of the European Parliament. “This sector, which accounts for 16% of European emissions at the moment, will be carbon neutral by 2050.“

World leaders agreed in Paris in 2015 to work to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) by the end of the century. Scientists even the less ambitious goal will be missed by a wide margin unless drastic steps are taken to reduce emissions.

Greenpeace said the 2035 deadline is too late to limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The EU is taking the scenic route, and that route ends in disaster,” said Greenpeace EU transport campaigner Lorelei Limousin. “A European 2035 phase-out of fossil fuel-burning cars is not quick enough: New cars with internal combustion engines should be banned by 2028 at the latest. The announcement is a perfect example of where politicians can bask in a feel-good headline that masks the reality of their repeated failures to act on climate.”

The EU Parliament and member states will now have to formally approve the agreement before it comes into force.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 27, 2022
Saudi oil giant Aramco unveils $1.5B sustainability fund

[ad_1]

Saudi oil and gas company Aramco unveiled a $1.5 billion fund on Wednesday for sustainable investments, part of efforts to burnish the state-owned company’s green credentials in an announcement ahead of the U.N. climate conference next month in Egypt.

Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia that the fund will focus on “breakthrough technologies that are important and startups that will help us to address climate change.”

Nasser billed the fund as one of the world’s biggest sustainability-focused venture capital funds and said it would invest globally and launch immediately. He spoke at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative meeting, sometimes known as “Davos in the Desert,” a comparison to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of corporate bigwigs and world leaders in the Swiss Alps.

Aramco is one of the largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters. Environmentalists have long accused oil and gas companies of using climate-friendly pledges to “greenwash” their polluting activities.

One area Aramco’s fund will focus on is carbon capture and storage, which involves sucking heat-trapping carbon dioxide from factory smokestacks and storing it underground.

Climate experts, however, warn the technology is risky, unproven and expensive and could be used to delay the phaseout of fossil fuels. Others say all untested solutions should be pursued given how little time there is left to meet U.N. emissions-cutting goals.

Other investment themes the fund will target include greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, nature-based climate solutions, digital sustainability, hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic fuels.

Aramco has committed to reaching net zero operational emissions by 2050, but that only accounts for a fraction of the company’s total emissions. It does not include the carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels that the company produces.

Oil companies have been using “green-sounding ‘net-zero by 2050’ pledges” to justify technological fixes that will allow them to “keep on digging up and selling oil and gas,” said Pascoe Sabido, a researcher specializing in the energy and climate sector at Corporate Europe Observatory, which investigates European Union business lobbying.

“Aramco’s sustainability fund has nothing to with fighting climate change and everything to do with extending the life of its fossil fuel business,” he said.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to diversify the economy away from oil revenue, though the government continues to rely heavily on crude exports.

The U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, will hold negotiations aimed at limiting global temperature increases next month in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

———

Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

[ad_2]

Source link

October 26, 2022
German leader warns against ‘worldwide renaissance’ for coal

[ad_1]

BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday that Russia’s war in Ukraine mustn’t lead to a “worldwide renaissance” for coal — comments that come as Germany itself brings coal-fired power plants back online in an effort to prevent an energy crunch this winter.

In a speech to parliament, Scholz highlighted his government’s efforts to counter the effects of Russia’s decision to cut off gas supplies to Germany. The government has in recent months approved reactivating several coal- and oil-fired power plants, and environmental activists warn that Germany risks defaulting on its climate goals by burning more fossil fuels.

Scholz said five further plants that use lignite, a low-quality and high-emission type of coal, have gone back online in recent days “as a time-limited but necessary emergency measure.” The chancellor this week also decided to keep Germany’s last three nuclear power plants, which originally were supposed to be switched off at the end of the year, running until mid-April.

“We continue to stand firmly by our climate targets,” Scholz told lawmakers.

Officials from almost 200 countries will gather next month in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to discuss how to tackle global warming.

Scholz vowed that Germany, which is moving to expand its use of renewable energy, will pass all the major legislation needed to fulfill its climate targets by the end of this year and that the European Union will stay on course. He called for a final agreement in the coming months on the EU’s proposed “Fit for 55” package to achieve the bloc’s goals of cutting emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade.

“The Russian aggression and its consequences mustn’t lead to a worldwide renaissance of coal,” the chancellor said. “We will make clear offers so that developing and emerging countries also can embark resolutely on the path toward a climate-neutral energy sector.”

“We will vigorously help the states that today already are suffering particularly from the consequences of climate change,” he added.

Germany’s foreign minister said earlier this month that Berlin wants the huge economic damage resulting from global warming to be discussed at the climate talks in Egypt.

Coal accounted for 31.4% of Germany’s electricity generation in this year’s first half, up from 27.1% a year earlier. Around 48.5% of the country’s electricity came from renewable sources, up from 43.8% the year before, while the proportions derived from nuclear power and gas declined to 6% and 11.7%, respectively.

———

Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

[ad_2]

Source link

October 20, 2022
Study: Cancer-causing gas leaking from CA stoves, pipes

[ad_1]

Gas stoves in California homes are leaking cancer-causing benzene, researchers found in a new study published on Thursday, though they say more research is needed to understand how many homes have leaks.

In the study, published in Environmental Science and Technology on Thursday, researchers also estimated that over 4 tons of benzene per year are being leaked into the atmosphere from outdoor pipes that deliver the gas to buildings around California — the equivalent to the benzene emissions from nearly 60,000 vehicles. And those emissions are unaccounted for by the state.

The researchers collected samples of gas from 159 homes in different regions of California and measured to see what types of gases were being emitted into homes when stoves were off. They found that all of the samples they tested had hazardous air pollutants, like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX), all of which can have adverse health effects in humans with chronic exposure or acute exposure in larger amounts.

Of most concern to the researchers was benzene, a known carcinogen that can lead to leukemia and other cancers and blood disorders, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The finding could have major implications for indoor and outdoor air quality in California, which has the second highest level of residential natural gas use in the United States.

“What our science shows is that people in California are exposed to potentially hazardous levels of benzene from the gas that is piped into their homes,” said Drew Michanowicz, a study co-author and senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, an energy research and policy institute. “We hope that policymakers will consider this data when they are making policy to ensure current and future policies are health-protective in light of this new research.”

Homes in almost every region in the study — Greater Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and Fresno — had benzene levels that far exceed the limit determined to be safe by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment. But the region with the highest benzene levels by far was the North San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

This finding in particular didn’t surprise residents and health care workers in the region who spoke to The Associated Press about the study. That’s because many of them experienced the largest-known natural gas leak in the nation in Aliso Canyon in 2015.

Back then, 100,000 tons of methane and other gases, including benzene, leaked from a failed well operated by Southern California Gas Co. It took nearly four months to get the leak under control and resulted in headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

Dr. Jeffrey Nordella was a physician at an urgent care in the region during this time and remembers being puzzled by the variety of symptoms patients were experiencing. “I didn’t have much to offer them,” except to help them try to detox from the exposures, he said.

That was an acute exposure of a large amount of benzene, which is different from chronic exposure to smaller amounts, but “remember what the World Health Organization said: there’s no safe level of benzene,” he said.

Kyoko Hibino was one of the residents exposed to toxic air pollution as a result of the Aliso Canyon gas leak. After the leak, she started having a persistent cough and nosebleeds and eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer, which has also been linked to benzene exposure. Her cats also started having nosebleeds and one recently passed away from leukemia.

“I’d say let’s take this study really seriously and understand how bad (benzene exposure) is,” she said.

———

Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

———

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 20, 2022
Biden to release 15M barrels from oil reserve, more possible

[ad_1]

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will announce the release of 15 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve Wednesday as part of a response to recent production cuts announced by OPEC+ nations, and he will say more oil sales are possible this winter, as his administration rushes to be seen as pulling out all the stops ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Biden will deliver remarks Wednesday to announce the drawdown from the strategic reserve, senior administration officials said Tuesday on the condition of anonymity to outline Biden’s plans. It completes the release of 180 million barrels authorized by Biden in March that was initially supposed to occur over six months. That has sent the strategic reserve to its lowest level since 1984 in what the administration called a “bridge” until domestic production could be increased. The reserve now contains roughly 400 million barrels of oil.

Biden will also open the door to additional releases this winter in an effort to keep prices down. But administration officials would not detail how much the president would be willing to tap, nor how much they want domestic and production to increase by in order to end the drawdown.

Biden will also say that the U.S. government will restock the strategic reserve when oil prices are at or lower than $67 to $72 a barrel, an offer that administration officials argue will increase domestic production by guaranteeing a baseline level of demand. Yet the president is also expected to renew his criticism of the profits reaped by oil companies — repeating a bet made this summer that public condemnation would matter more to these companies than shareholders’ focus on returns.

It marks the continuation of an about-face by Biden, who has tried to move the U.S. past fossil fuels to identify additional sources of energy to satisfy U.S. and global supply as a result of disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and production cuts announced by the Saudi Arabia-led oil cartel.

The prospective loss of 2 million barrels a day — 2% of global supply — has had the White House saying Saudi Arabia sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin and pledging there will be consequences for supply cuts that could prop up energy prices. The 15 million-barrel release would not cover even one full day’s use of oil in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration.

The administration could make a decision on future releases a month from now, as it requires a month and a half for the government to notify would-be buyers.

Biden still faces political headwinds because of gas prices. AAA reports that gas is averaging $3.87 a gallon. That’s down slightly over the past week, but it’s up from a month ago. The recent increase in prices stalled the momentum that the president and his fellow Democrats had been seeing in the polls ahead of the November elections.

An analysis Monday by ClearView Energy Partners, an independent energy research firm based in Washington, suggested that two states that could decide control of the evenly split Senate — Nevada and Pennsylvania — are sensitive to energy prices. The analysis noted that gas prices over the past month rose above the national average in 18 states, which are home to 29 potentially “at risk” House seats.

Even if voters want cheaper gasoline, expected gains in supply are not materializing because of a weaker global economy. The U.S. government last week revised downward its forecasts, saying that domestic firms would produce 270,000 fewer barrels a day in 2023 than was forecast in September. Global production would be 600,000 barrels a day lower than forecast in September.

The hard math for Biden is that oil production has yet to return to its pre-pandemic level of roughly 13 million barrels a day. It’s about a million barrels a day shy of that level. The oil industry would like the administration to open up more federal lands for drilling, approve pipeline construction and reverse its recent changes to raise corporate taxes. The administration counters that the oil industry is sitting on thousands of unused federal leases and says new permits would take years to produce oil with no impact on current gas prices. Environmental groups, meanwhile, have asked Biden to keep a campaign promise to block new drilling on federal lands.

Biden has resisted the policies favored by U.S. oil producers. Instead, he’s sought to reduce prices by releasing oil from the U.S. reserve, shaming oil companies for their profits and calling on greater production from countries in OPEC+ that have different geopolitical interests, said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute.

“If they continue to offer the same old so-called solutions, they’ll continue to get the same old results,” Macchiarola said.

Because fossil fuels lead to carbon emissions, Biden has sought to move away from them entirely with a commitment to zero emissions by 2050. When discussing that commitment nearly a year ago after the G-20 leading rich and developing nations met in Rome, the president said he still wanted to also lower gas prices because at “$3.35 a gallon, it has profound impact on working-class families just to get back and forth to work.”

Since Biden spoke of the pain of gas at $3.35 a gallon and his hopes to reduce costs, the price has on balance risen another 15.5%.

———

Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 19, 2022
Patagonia condor repopulation slows with possible wind farm

[ad_1]

SIERRA PAILEMAN, Argentina — It was a sunny morning when about 200 people trudged up a hill in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region with a singular mission: free two Andean condors that had been born in captivity.

The emotion in the air was palpable as conservationists got ready for a moment that so many had been working toward for months. But the joyous moment was also bittersweet.

Preliminary plans for a massive wind farm that could be located in the Somuncura Plateau to feed a green hydrogen project is putting at risk a three-decade-long effort to repopulate Patagonia’s Atlantic coast with a bird that is classified as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

While members of the Mapuche, the largest Indigenous group in the area, played traditional instruments, and children threw condor feathers into the air that symbolized their good wishes for the newly liberated birds, an eerie silence engulfed the mountain in Sierra Paileman in Rio Negro province as researchers opened the cages where the two specimens of the world’s largest flying bird were kept.

Huasi (meaning home in Quechua) seemed born for this moment. As soon as the cage opened, he spread his wings and took off without a moment’s hesitation. Yastay (meaning god that is protector of birds) appeared cautious, uncertain of the wide open Patagonia skies after spending his first two years in captivity, and it took him around an hour before taking off.

People hugged while researchers sprang into action and started tracking the birds. In the back of their minds were latent worries about what the potential for new wind farms in the area could mean for the lives of these newly released birds.

Conservationists fear the birds inevitably would collide with the rotating blades of the turbines and be killed. In neighboring Chile, an environmental impact study for a planned wind farm with 65 windmills concluded that as many as four of the rare condors could collide with the massive structures yearly. Environmental authorities rejected the project last year.

“Why are we freeing two? We generally free more than two,” Vanesa Astore, executive director of the Andean Condor Conservation Program, said. “We’re at like a maintenance level now.”

Researchers had to release Huasi and Yastay now or risk that they would have to remain in captivity for the rest of their lives, which can range from 70 to 80 years, Astore explained, noting condors can only adapt to the outside world if they are released before their third birthday.

The current uncertainty regarding the future of the wind farm that would be built by Australian firm Fortescue Future Industries has not only put conservationists on alert but has prompted them to slow the pace of reproduction and release of the Andean condors even as the company insists it has no plans to set up shop in the Somuncura Plateau.

Condors are notoriously slow breeders that only reach sexual maturity at 9 years old and have an offspring every three years, but researchers have found ways to speed that up by removing eggs from pairs in captivity to incubate artificially. When the egg is removed, the pair will then produce another egg within a month, which they will raise while the first one is raised by humans with the help of latex puppets meant to simulate their parents and help them recognize members of their own species.

That strategy allow researchers to “increase reproductive capacity by six times,” said Luis Jacome, the head of the Andean Condor Conservation Program.

That effort is now on pause.

“We aren’t maximizing because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Astore explained.

Since the conservation program started 30 years ago, 81 chicks have been born in captivity, 370 condors have been rehabilitated and 230 freed across South America, including Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia.

Sixty-six of those have been released along Patagonia’s Atlantic coast, where the bird was nowhere to be seen at the turn of the century even though Charles Darwin had written in the early 1800s about the presence of the large birds in the region.

The Andean condor has now made a comeback, and for many locals that has a spiritual resonance.

“The condor flies very high, so our elders used to say that the condor could take a message to those who are no longer here,” said Doris Canumil, 59, a Mapuche who took part in the ceremonies for the liberation of the condors.

While they celebrate the success of the program, conservationists worry it could all be erased.

“These birds that we’ve liberated, that once again joined the mountain range with the sea through their flight, that have matured and had their own offspring that live and fly here in this place, they will simply die in the blades of the windmills,” Jacome said. “So the condor would once again become extinct in the Atlantic coast.”

Conservationists found out about the proposed wind farm through the media and alarm bells immediately went off.

Last year, Fortescue unveiled a plan to invest $8.4 billion over a decade in a project to produce green hydrogen for export in what the government touted as the largest international investment in Argentina over the past two decades. In order to qualify as green, the hydrogen must be produced using renewable power, and that is where the windmill farm would come in, taking advantage of the strong, reliable winds of Patagonia.

The government of President Alberto Fernández celebrated the project, saying it would create 15,000 direct jobs and somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 indirect jobs.

Yet neither the company nor the provincial government of Rio Negro had carried out an environmental impact study before unveiling the project.

For now at least, Jacome said, the “only thing green are the dollars” attached to the project.

“We’re putting the cart before the horse,” Jacome said. “We need to have environmental impact studies that demonstrate what is going to be done, how many windmills, where they will be placed.”

Fortescue agrees and says it “is committed to evaluating the social, environmental, engineering, and economic considerations before committing to the development” of any project.

The Australian firm said in a statement that any pre-development study will include consultations with local organizations to “guarantee the protection of the local species such as the Andean Condor.”

Following questions about the project, Fortescue has decided to not measure winds at the Somuncura Plateau until the province finishes its environmental plan and will instead explore “other areas of interest within lands near Sierra Grande and the Province of Chubut,” the company said.

On Oct. 11, the Rio Negro provincial government said Fortescue launched a 12-month effort to analyze the environmental and social impacts of the project.

Provincial officials see the number of jobs attached to the project as key.

“On the one hand, we have to preserve and take care of our fauna,” Daniel Sanguinetti, Rio Negro’s planning and sustainable development secretary, said. But the government also must “promote the development of the 750,000 Rio Negro citizens who currently live (here) and generate sources of production and genuine work for all of them.”

Sanguinetti added it was important “not to get carried away by different situations that supposedly would happen at some time in the future when all of this would have been implemented, when the reality is that the project is in its initial phases.”

For those who have made repopulating the Patagonia coast with the condor their life’s work, the discussions over the future of the project are deeply personal.

“We feel a little bit like parents,” said Catalina Rostagno, who moved to the base camp in Rio Negro two and a half months ago for the process of liberating Huasi and Yastay. “The condor is a reflection of me.”

——-

Politi reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 18, 2022
Australia and Singapore strike agreement to achieve net-zero

[ad_1]

CANBERRA, Australia — Australian and Singaporean leaders announced Tuesday what they described as a world-first agreement to cooperate in transitioning their economies to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined their so-called Green Economy Agreement between the two countries after an annual meeting in the Australian Parliament House.

The agreement has 17 components that cover facilitating trade and investment in green services, harmonizing standards and building green growth sectors through collaboration between business.

Australia has committed to reducing its emissions to net-zero by 2050 and Singapore is considering adopting the same target.

Albanese described Singapore as “one of the most innovative economies in the world,” while Australia had the potential to become a “renewable energy superpower” due to its vast open spaces and relatively small population.

The agreement “will support clean energy innovation, unlock business opportunities and create jobs, and help deliver our mission’s targets while positioning Australia as a renewable energy superpower,” Albanese said.

Lee foreshadowed further cooperation in cross-border electricity trade and “sustainable aviation” through what he described as the “world’s first such agreement.”

”These are all areas which are of interest to Singapore and to Singapore businesses and we hope with a Singapore-Australia GEA they’ll be able to move forward,” Lee said.

“But we also hope with this GEA will encourage other countries to look at what we have been able to do and to ask whether some of this may not make sense to them to do with Singapore or to do with each other,” Lee added.

Singapore is already planning to use solar power from northern Australia transmitted by a 4,200-kilometer (2,600-mile) submarine cable.

Singaporean company Sun Cable plans to start construction in 2024 of the 30 billion Australian dollar ($19 billion) Australia-Asia PowerLink project that will include 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of solar panels near the northern Australian city of Darwin.

Albanese described the export of Australian solar power to Singapore as an “ultimate win-win.”

“If this project can be made to work — and I believe it can be — you will see the world’s largest solar farm, you will see the export of energy across distances … (and) the production of many jobs here in Australia, including manufacturing jobs,” Albanese said.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 18, 2022
Utility begins loading fuel at new Georgia nuclear plant

[ad_1]

ATLANTA — Workers have begun loading radioactive fuel into a new nuclear reactor in Georgia, utilities said Friday, putting the first new American nuclear reactor built in decades on a path to begin generating electricity in coming months.

Georgia Power says workers will transfer 157 fuel assemblies into the reactor core at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, in the next few days. There are already two reactors operating at the plant, with fuel being loaded into a third unit and a fourth unit still under construction.

Chris Womack, chairman and CEO of Georgia Power, the largest unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co., said in a statement that fuel loading shows “steady and evident progress” at Vogtle.

“We’re making history here in Georgia and the U.S. as we approach bringing online the first new nuclear unit to be built in the country in over 30 years,” Womack said. “These units are important to building the future of energy and will serve as clean, emission-free sources of energy for Georgians for the next 60 to 80 years.”

After the 90 tons (82 metric tonnes) of uranium oxide is loaded by a crane into the reactor, operating company Southern Nuclear will test whether the plant’s cooling and steam supply system work while fuel is inside the reactor at the super-high temperatures and pressures created by splitting atoms. Operators will then start generating electricity and link the plant to the transmission grid, with the reactor planned to reach commercial operation by the end of March.

The Georgia Public Service Commission approved the new reactors in 2012, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The cost of the third and fourth reactors has climbed from an original estimate of $14 billion to more than $30 billion.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved plans to load the fuel in August. Approval was delayed because much of the third reactor’s wiring had to be redone after federal regulators found major flaws. Southern Co. also fell behind on inspection documents that had to be completed before the NRC could sign off.

Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers are already paying part of the financing cost and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase of at least $3.78 a month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. But the elected five-member Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs. The utility has other unrelated rate increases awaiting a decision.

The fourth unit is supposed to be completed in late 2023. The two new units combined are projected to produce enough power for more than 500,000 homes and businesses.

Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.

Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the two reactors, while Oglethorpe Power Corp. owns 30% on behalf of 38 power cooperatives. The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia owns 22.3% on behalf of 49 city-owned utilities, while the city of Dalton’s utility owns 1.6%. MEAG has contracts to sell electricity from Vogtle to the city-owned utility in Jacksonville, Florida, and to some electric cooperatives and city utilities in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

The other owners of Vogtle are trying to shift costs onto Georgia Power. Oglethorpe, MEAG and Dalton all sued Georgia Power earlier this year, claiming the company was trying to bilk them out of nearly $700 million by unilaterally changing a contract.

Under a 2018 deal, Georgia Power agreed to assume all cost overruns above a certain level. In exchange, the co-owners would sell part of their ownership shares to Georgia Power. Oglethorpe and MEAG say projected overruns have reached that level, but Georgia Power said the threshold is $1.3 billion higher than the level claimed by the co-owners.

Georgia Power is settling MEAG’s lawsuit in exchange for making at least $76 million in payments to MEAG.

———

Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 14, 2022
Climate protesters throw soup on Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’

[ad_1]

Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of two protesters who have thrown tinned soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s famous 1888 work Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, Friday Oct. 14, 2022. The group Just Stop Oil, which wants the British government to halt new oil and gas projects, said activists dumped two cans of Heinz tomato soup over the oil painting on Friday. London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested two people on suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass. (Just Stop Oil via AP)

[ad_2]

Source link

October 14, 2022
German energy company RWE to end coal use by 2030

[ad_1]

BERLIN — German energy company RWE said Tuesday that it will phase out the burning of coal by 2030, saving 280 million metric tons of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.

The decision will accelerate the closure of some of Europe’s most polluting power plants and a vast lignite strip mine in western Germany.

It will also prevent the eviction of residents of several villages and farms west of Cologne near the Garzweiler mine. The exception is Luetzerath, a hamlet that has been the focus of protests by environmentalists and which will now need to be cleared to extract more coal in the short-term.

The government argues this is necessary to ensure energy security amid the fallout of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

RWE’s announcement boosts the German government’s efforts to bring forward the deadline for phasing out coal use by eight years as part of the country’s goal of ending its greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who is responsible for energy, said negotiations with the operators of Germany’s other coal mines and eight coal-fired power plants were ongoing.

The Fridays for Future climate activist group said the announcement that Luetzerath will be destroyed and some coal-fired plants will temporarily be kept online for longer to cover possible energy shortfalls was “cynical.” It said protests against the plan would be organized in several locations across Germany.

In parallel to its phaseout of coal, RWE said it would expand renewable energy production and build gas-fired power plants capable of burning hydrogen.

RWE, which over the weekend announced the purchase of American company Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, said it is now on a path that is compatible with the 2015 Paris climate accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Separately on Tuesday, the Netherlands said it plans to join a German-led initiative to promote the market ramp-up of hydrogen produced using renewable energy.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the two countries will also explore cooperation on future offshore wind parks in the North Sea that would produce both electricity and “green hydrogen.”

———

Follow AP’s coverage of climate and environment issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

[ad_2]

Source link

October 4, 2022
US shift away from coal hits tribal community in New Mexico

[ad_1]

KIRTLAND, N.M. — The clamor of second graders breaking away from lessons to form lunch lines has gotten quieter in a rural New Mexico community, where families losing coal jobs have been forced to pack up and leave in search of work.

At Judy Nelson Elementary, 1 in 4 students have left in an exodus spurred by decisions made five years ago to shutter a coal-fired power plant and mine that sit just up the road from the school in a largely Navajo community. The plant and mine had provided electricity to millions of people across the southwestern U.S. for nearly a half-century.

The San Juan Generating Station burned its last bit of coal Thursday. The remaining workers will spend the coming weeks draining water from the plant, removing chemicals and preparing to tear down what has long been fixture on the high-desert horizon.

It’s part of the latest wave of coal-burning units to be retired as New Mexico and other states try to fight climate change by requiring more carbon-free sources of electricity. President Joe Biden also has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

Just weeks ago, Hawaii’s last coal-fired power plant closed after 30 years, and more retirements are scheduled around the U.S. over the next decade.

Realities of shuttering the San Juan plant are setting in for surrounding communities, including the Navajo Nation, where poverty and joblessness already are exponentially higher than national averages. Hundreds of jobs are evaporating along with tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue used to fund schools and a community college.

“A lot of the Native American families have multi-generations living in the home so it doesn’t just affect the husband and wife. It affects their children and their grandchildren,” said Arleen Franklin, who teaches second grade at Judy Nelson. Her husband purchases equipment for a coal mine that feeds another power plant scheduled to close in 2031.

Denise Pierro, a reading teacher at Judy Nelson, said it’s stressful for parents to see a steady income erased. Pierro’s husband, who served as the general manager of the mine for the San Juan plant, is among those forced into early retirement.

“They’ve taken the rug out from underneath our feet,” she said.

Area power plants, mines and associated businesses represent 80% of property tax revenues that fund the Central Consolidated School District, which spans an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Almost 93% of the students are Navajo.

It’s rural and remote. Some students ride a school bus for three hours round trip, arriving home well after sunset. Internet service is spotty or nonexistent, and many homes don’t have electricity or indoor plumbing. The poverty rate within the district is four times the national level. The median annual household income is about $20,000, and the unemployment rate hovers around 70%.

New Mexico’s Democratic leaders have celebrated the plant’s closure while touting a landmark 2019 law that pushes for a renewable energy economy. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is running for reelection, has said the law represented a promise to future generations for a cleaner environment and new job opportunities.

Environmentalists have said the closure will reduce air and water pollution in a region that some have described as an industrial sacrifice zone. They argue that power plant emissions and methane from the oilfields have caused health problems for residents.

Joe Ramone, a 69-year-old pipe welder who worked at San Juan, lives in a Navajo community not far from the Four Corners plant. When the wind blows just right, he said his community is hit with ash and coal dust.

Still, he said his priority is making sure Navajos have work.

“I don’t want to see anybody unemployed and I am in no way in favor of these companies being shut down. But there’s room for improvement,” he said, suggesting more investments could have been made.

The loss of the San Juan plant and the mine ripple through every facet of life, from fewer lunch orders at Kirtland’s café to a dwindling ash supply for concrete manufacturers. Meanwhile, prices have skyrocketed for everything from the Navajo staple of mutton to the woven baskets and other materials needed for healing ceremonies.

Public Service Co. of New Mexico, which runs the plant, is providing $11 million in severance packages to help about 200 displaced workers. About 240 mine workers are getting severance payments worth $9 million. Another $3 million went to job training.

A state fund established by the energy law also includes $12 million for affected workers.

Solar and battery storage projects are meant to eventually replace the capacity lost with San Juan’s shutdown and provide jobs during construction. But some of those projects have been delayed due to supply chain problems, and others are on hold indefinitely amid historic inflation and other economic constraints.

Fresh off a night shift as an electrician at the mine for the neighboring Four Corners Power Plant, Christine Aspaas, a Central Consolidated School Board member, said even if those “green” jobs existed now, they would be temporary. And to make up for lost property tax revenue, she said, some families will have to pay up to seven times more.

It’s been heartbreaking for so many Navajos to consider leaving home, Aspaas said.

“That’s what others don’t understand,” she said. “There’s culture, there’s traditions, and so it’s not easy.”

Sharon Clahchischilliage, once a teacher and a former New Mexico lawmaker, said people in her Navajo community near Shiprock are angry.

“One of them told me, ‘I don’t know who to be angry at for us having to do this. We don’t have a family anymore,’” she said, referring to bonds broken as Navajos search for jobs elsewhere.

In the final days, the plant’s spinning turbine sent vibrations through layers of concrete and passing work boots. Heat emanated from the boilers below.

In the dim control room, workers monitored screens displaying temperatures, pressure, turbine speeds and pollution control systems. Allen Palmer, 70, spent over half his life working his way up the ranks.

“I hate to see it close,” he said.

Workers knew for years that the plant would be shuttered. It became more real as coal piles shrank each day — until there was nothing left. As the finish line approached, the company served workers green chile cheeseburgers as a morale booster alongside a big projection screen that read: “Thank you to all employees at San Juan for your years of dedicated service!”

The last few dozen employees will be laid off over the coming weeks. Some were ready to retire; in June, there were voluntary layoffs when the first of the last two generating units closed.

“There’s lots of us who have worked 20-plus years and we all know each other and it’s our family,” said plant director Rodney Warner, who will oversee the decommissioning. “It’s who we are.”

December would have marked 10 years at the plant for Steven Sorrow, 32. He and his coworkers know there’s a good chance they will have to uproot and possibly enter other fields. Some will head to Wyoming, Colorado or Utah, where there are other plants and mines.

“It’s going to be an adjustment for sure,” he said. “I feel like I’ve tried to prepare over the five years when they told us what we had left. Hopefully I’ve prepared well enough.”

Aspaas said officials need to find ways to keep the workforce in New Mexico. She said the foundation of economic development is education but without economic development, education suffers.

“This whole transition, everything that’s happening, the closures, that’s what is threatening our ability to keep funding education,” she said. “When you go down to what it impacts, it is the education of our people, of the Navajo people, our students.”

[ad_2]

Source link

October 2, 2022
What the war in Ukraine means for Asia’s climate goals

[ad_1]

NEW DELHI, India — The queues outside petrol pumps in Sri Lanka have lessened, but not the anxiety.

Asanka Sampath, a 43-year-old factory clerk, is forever vigilant. He checks his phone for messages, walks past the pump, and browses social media to see if fuel has arrived. Delays could mean being left stranded for days.

“I am really fed up with this,” he said.

His frustrations echo that of the 22-million inhabitants of the island nation, facing its worst ever economic crisis because of heavy debts, lost tourism revenue during the pandemic, and surging costs. The consequent political turmoil culminated with the formation of a new government, but recovery has been complicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the consequent upending of global energy markets.

Europe’s need for gas means that they’re competing with Asian countries, driving up prices of fossil fuels and resulting in what Tim Buckley, the director of the thinktank Climate Energy Finance, refers to as “hyper-inflation … and I use that word as an understatement.”

Most Asian countries are prioritizing energy security, sometimes over their climate goals. For rich countries like South Korea or Japan, this means forays into nuclear energy. For the enormous energy needs of China and India it implies relying on dirty coal power in the short term. But for developing countries with already-strained finances, the war is having a disproportionate impact, said Kanika Chawla, of the United Nations’ sustainable energy unit.

How Asian countries choose to go ahead would have cascading consequences: They could either double down on clean energy or decide to not phase out fossil fuels immediately.

“We are at a really important crossroads,” said Chawla.

SRI LANKA: “SLOW GRIND”

Sri Lanka is an extreme example of the predicament facing poor nations. Enormous debts prevent it from buying energy on credit, forcing it to ration fuel for key sectors with shortages anticipated for the next year.

Sri Lanka set itself a target of getting 70% of all its energy from renewable energy by 2030 and aims to reach net zero — balancing the amount of greenhouse gas they emit with how much they take out of the atmosphere — by 2050.

Its twin needs of securing energy while reducing costs means it has “no other option” than to wean itself off fossil fuels, said Aruna Kulatunga, who authored a government report for Sri Lanka’s clean energy goals. But others, like Murtaza Jafferjee, director of the think tank Advocata Institute say these targets are more “aspirational than realistic” because the current electrical grid can’t handle renewable energy.

“It will be a slow grind,” said Jafferjee.

Grids that run on renewable energy need to be nimbler because, unlike fossil fuels, energy from wind or the sun fluctuates, potentially stressing transmission grids.

The economic crisis has decreased demand for energy in Sri Lanka. So while there are still power cuts, the country’s existing sources — coal and oil-fired plants, hydropower, and some solar — are coping.

CHINA, INDIA: HOME-GROWN ENERGY

How these two nations meet this demand will have global ramifications.

And the answer, at least in the short-term, appears to be a reliance on dirty-coal power — a key source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions.

China, currently the top emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, aims to reach net zero by 2060, requiring significant slashing of emissions.

But since the war, China has not only imported more fossil fuels from Russia but also boosted its own coal output. The war, combined with a severe drought and a domestic energy crisis, means the country is prioritizing keeping the lights on over cutting dirty fuel sources.

India aims to reach net zero a decade later than China and is third on the list of current global emitters, although their historical emissions are very low. No other country will see a bigger increase in energy demand than India in the coming years, and it is estimated that the nation will need $223 billion to meet its 2030 clean energy targets. Like China, India’s looking to ramp up coal production to reduce dependence on expensive imports and is still in the market for Russian oil despite calls for sanctions.

But the size of future demand also means that neither country has a choice but to also boost their clean energy.

China is leading the way on renewable energy and moving away from fossil fuel dependence, said Buckley, who tracks the country’s energy policy.

“It might be because they are paranoid about climate change or because they want to absolutely dominate industries of the future,” said Buckley. “At the end of the day, the reason doesn’t really matter.”

India is also investing heavily in renewable energy and has committed to producing 50% of its power from clean energy sources by 2030.

“The invasion has made India rethink its energy security concerns,” said Swati D’Souza, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

More domestic production doesn’t mean that the two countries are burning more coal, but instead substituting expensive imported coal with cheap homegrown energy, said Christoph Bertram at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. What was “crucial” for global climate goals was where future investments were directed.

“The flipside of investing into coal means you invest less into renewables,” he said.

JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA: THE NUCLEAR OPTION

Both Japan and South Korea, two of Asia’s most developed countries, are pushing for nuclear energy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Sanctions against Russian coal and gas imports resulted in Japan looking for alternative energy sources despite anti-nuclear sentiments dating back to the 2011 Fukushima disaster. An earlier-than-expected summer resulted in power shortages, and the government announced plans to speed up regulatory safety checks to get more reactors running.

Japan aims to limit nuclear energy to less than a quarter of its energy mix, a goal seen as overly optimistic, but the recent push indicates that nuclear may play a larger role in the country.

Neighboring South Korea hasn’t seen short-term impacts on energy supplies since it gets gas from countries like Qatar and Australia and its oil from the Middle East. But there may be an indirect hit from European efforts to secure energy from those same sources, driving up prices.

Like Japan, South Korea’s new government has promoted nuclear-generated electricity and has indicated reluctance to sharply reduce the country’s coal and gas dependence since it wants to boost the economy.

“If this war continues … we will obviously face a question on what should be done about the rising costs,” said Ahn Jaehun, from the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement.

INDONESIA: DAMAGE CONTROL

The war, and consequent rising gas prices, forced Indonesia to reduce ballooning subsidies aimed at keeping fuel prices and some power tariffs in check.

But this was a very “hurried reform” and doesn’t address the challenge of weaning the world’s largest coal exporter off fossil fuels and reaching its 2060 net zero goal, said Anissa. R. Suharsono, of the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“We’re sliding back, into just firefighting,” she said.

Coal exports have increased nearly 1.5 times between April and June, compared to 2021, in response to European demand and Indonesia has already produced over 80% of the total coal it produced last year, according to government data.

The country needs to nearly triple its clean energy investment by 2030 to achieve net zero by 2060, according to the International Energy Agency, but Suharsono said it wasn’t clear how it was going to meet those targets.

“There are currently no overarching regulations or a clear roadmap,” she said.

———

Bharatha Mallawarachi in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Japan, Tong-hyung Kim and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea contributed to this report.

———

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 1, 2022
What the war in Ukraine means for Asia’s climate goals

[ad_1]

NEW DELHI, India — The queues outside petrol pumps in Sri Lanka have lessened, but not the anxiety.

Asanka Sampath, a 43-year-old factory clerk, is forever vigilant. He checks his phone for messages, walks past the pump, and browses social media to see if fuel has arrived. Delays could mean being left stranded for days.

“I am really fed up with this,” he said.

His frustrations echo that of the 22-million inhabitants of the island nation, facing its worst ever economic crisis because of heavy debts, lost tourism revenue during the pandemic, and surging costs. The consequent political turmoil culminated with the formation of a new government, but recovery has been complicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the consequent upending of global energy markets.

Europe’s need for gas means that they’re competing with Asian countries, driving up prices of fossil fuels and resulting in what Tim Buckley, the director of the thinktank Climate Energy Finance, refers to as “hyper-inflation … and I use that word as an understatement.”

Most Asian countries are prioritizing energy security, sometimes over their climate goals. For rich countries like South Korea or Japan, this means forays into nuclear energy. For the enormous energy needs of China and India it implies relying on dirty coal power in the short term. But for developing countries with already-strained finances, the war is having a disproportionate impact, said Kanika Chawla, of the United Nations’ sustainable energy unit.

How Asian countries choose to go ahead would have cascading consequences: They could either double down on clean energy or decide to not phase out fossil fuels immediately.

“We are at a really important crossroads,” said Chawla.

SRI LANKA: “SLOW GRIND”

Sri Lanka is an extreme example of the predicament facing poor nations. Enormous debts prevent it from buying energy on credit, forcing it to ration fuel for key sectors with shortages anticipated for the next year.

Sri Lanka set itself a target of getting 70% of all its energy from renewable energy by 2030 and aims to reach net zero — balancing the amount of greenhouse gas they emit with how much they take out of the atmosphere — by 2050.

Its twin needs of securing energy while reducing costs means it has “no other option” than to wean itself off fossil fuels, said Aruna Kulatunga, who authored a government report for Sri Lanka’s clean energy goals. But others, like Murtaza Jafferjee, director of the think tank Advocata Institute say these targets are more “aspirational than realistic” because the current electrical grid can’t handle renewable energy.

“It will be a slow grind,” said Jafferjee.

Grids that run on renewable energy need to be nimbler because, unlike fossil fuels, energy from wind or the sun fluctuates, potentially stressing transmission grids.

The economic crisis has decreased demand for energy in Sri Lanka. So while there are still power cuts, the country’s existing sources — coal and oil-fired plants, hydropower, and some solar — are coping.

CHINA, INDIA: HOME-GROWN ENERGY

How these two nations meet this demand will have global ramifications.

And the answer, at least in the short-term, appears to be a reliance on dirty-coal power — a key source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions.

China, currently the top emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, aims to reach net zero by 2060, requiring significant slashing of emissions.

But since the war, China has not only imported more fossil fuels from Russia but also boosted its own coal output. The war, combined with a severe drought and a domestic energy crisis, means the country is prioritizing keeping the lights on over cutting dirty fuel sources.

India aims to reach net zero a decade later than China and is third on the list of current global emitters, although their historical emissions are very low. No other country will see a bigger increase in energy demand than India in the coming years, and it is estimated that the nation will need $223 billion to meet its 2030 clean energy targets. Like China, India’s looking to ramp up coal production to reduce dependence on expensive imports and is still in the market for Russian oil despite calls for sanctions.

But the size of future demand also means that neither country has a choice but to also boost their clean energy.

China is leading the way on renewable energy and moving away from fossil fuel dependence, said Buckley, who tracks the country’s energy policy.

“It might be because they are paranoid about climate change or because they want to absolutely dominate industries of the future,” said Buckley. “At the end of the day, the reason doesn’t really matter.”

India is also investing heavily in renewable energy and has committed to producing 50% of its power from clean energy sources by 2030.

“The invasion has made India rethink its energy security concerns,” said Swati D’Souza, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

More domestic production doesn’t mean that the two countries are burning more coal, but instead substituting expensive imported coal with cheap homegrown energy, said Christoph Bertram at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. What was “crucial” for global climate goals was where future investments were directed.

“The flipside of investing into coal means you invest less into renewables,” he said.

JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA: THE NUCLEAR OPTION

Both Japan and South Korea, two of Asia’s most developed countries, are pushing for nuclear energy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Sanctions against Russian coal and gas imports resulted in Japan looking for alternative energy sources despite anti-nuclear sentiments dating back to the 2011 Fukushima disaster. An earlier-than-expected summer resulted in power shortages, and the government announced plans to speed up regulatory safety checks to get more reactors running.

Japan aims to limit nuclear energy to less than a quarter of its energy mix, a goal seen as overly optimistic, but the recent push indicates that nuclear may play a larger role in the country.

Neighboring South Korea hasn’t seen short-term impacts on energy supplies since it gets gas from countries like Qatar and Australia and its oil from the Middle East. But there may be an indirect hit from European efforts to secure energy from those same sources, driving up prices.

Like Japan, South Korea’s new government has promoted nuclear-generated electricity and has indicated reluctance to sharply reduce the country’s coal and gas dependence since it wants to boost the economy.

“If this war continues … we will obviously face a question on what should be done about the rising costs,” said Ahn Jaehun, from the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement.

INDONESIA: DAMAGE CONTROL

The war, and consequent rising gas prices, forced Indonesia to reduce ballooning subsidies aimed at keeping fuel prices and some power tariffs in check.

But this was a very “hurried reform” and doesn’t address the challenge of weaning the world’s largest coal exporter off fossil fuels and reaching its 2060 net zero goal, said Anissa. R. Suharsono, of the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“We’re sliding back, into just firefighting,” she said.

Coal exports have increased nearly 1.5 times between April and June, compared to 2021, in response to European demand and Indonesia has already produced over 80% of the total coal it produced last year, according to government data.

The country needs to nearly triple its clean energy investment by 2030 to achieve net zero by 2060, according to the International Energy Agency, but Suharsono said it wasn’t clear how it was going to meet those targets.

“There are currently no overarching regulations or a clear roadmap,” she said.

———

Bharatha Mallawarachi in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Japan, Tong-hyung Kim and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea contributed to this report.

———

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 1, 2022