Cuts for EPA, DOE in Trump Budget Proposal, as Congressional Budget Passes

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

President Donald Trump’s $4.4 trillion 2019 budget proposal, released Monday, echoed themes from the previous year’s budget priorities: steep cuts to domestic programs with large increases for defense. It outlines leaner budgets across federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Trump’s proposed budget, which was assembled before the Congress passed a two-year spending bill last week, calls for the EPA to operate with $5.4 billion ($6.15 billion after adjustments) beginning Oct. 1. That budget would be the EPA’s lowest since the early 1990s and about 25 percent below the 2017 mark of $8.1 billion.

The DOE would receive $30.6 billion, which is nearly 2 percent below its 2017 budget.

The proposal would also eliminate virtually all climate change-related programs at the EPA. In outlining the budget, the Trump administration said the EPA is refocusing on “core activities” and eliminating “lower priority programs,” including a program to promote partnerships with the private sector to tackle climate change.

The Trump administration said it wants to eliminate programs that are duplicative of those of other agencies or that it thinks state and local governments should assume—a proposal that appears to dovetail with the EPA’s strategic plan, also released Monday, that outlines a retrenchment around core issues like clean air, clean water, remediation of contaminated sites, and chemical safety. In place of program categories such as “clean air and global climate change,” Trump’s proposed budget allocates $112 million for a new line item called “core mission” and $357 million for “rule of law and process.”

Like climate-related programs at the EPA, DOE’s renewable energy programs are targeted for reductions in the proposal. According to numbers released by DOE, energy and related programs would receive $2.5 billion under the proposed 2019 budget, a drop of $1.9 billion from the 2017 budget. The Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would take a 65 percent cut. By contrast, the Office of Fossil Energy would get a 20 percent funding increase.

Unlike Trump’s budget proposal, the bipartisan two-year budget deal passed last week appears to include government funding for climate-related programs. It gives the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers money to study weather patterns and to prepare for the consequences of disasters, and it preserves tax incentives for renewable energy sources, electric vehicles and energy efficiency programs.

Under the bipartisan deal, nondefense discretionary spending gets a $63 billion boost in fiscal year 2018 and another $68 billion in fiscal year 2019. Almost all research agencies, including the EPA, fall under this nondefense category. It’s still unclear how any funds will be divided among individual agencies and programs. Details of who gets what in the 2018 budget will come as Congress works on an omnibus appropriations bill, expected in late March.

Methane Emissions Regulation Revised

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will replace most of the requirements of a 2016 Obama-era regulation aimed at restricting harmful methane emissions from oil and gas production on federal lands. The Monday proposal came after a previous announcement that the BLM would delay implementing the Obama-era rule until January 2019.

The rule forced energy companies to capture methane that’s vented to the atmosphere or burned off (“flared”) at drilling sites because it pollutes the environment. Many companies consider the rule unnecessary and overly intrusive, but many environmental groups warn that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are the second largest industrial contributor to climate change in the United States.

The new BLM proposal removes at least seven elements introduced under Obama’s rule, including creation of waste minimization plans by companies and standards for well completion. In announcing the changes to the rule, the BLM said that many of the former requirements were duplicative of state laws or had a higher cost or lower benefit than previously estimated.

The BLM is expected to publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register, opening it up for 60 days of public comment before issuing a final rule could be issued.

But even as the Trump administration is retreating from regulating methane leaks, new research published in the journal Climate Policy suggests it is still possible to make progress on reducing methane emissions by using a proposed North American Methane Reduction framework to direct research and to enhance monitoring and evaluate mitigation efforts.

This study, penned by my Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions colleague Kate Konschnik, suggests that state and provincial governments, industry, and nongovernmental organizations can use the framework to coordinate regulations, voluntary industry actions, and scientific developments in methane estimation and mitigation, thereby bridging the divide between science and policy and driving new research that in turn can support better policies when governments are ready to act.

California Adopts Emissions Standards for Trucks

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted unanimously to adopt emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks starting with the 2020 model year, departing from federal rules in two sectors. The state not only approved its own version of federal regulations covering truck trailers, but it is also making plans to conduct its own enforcement.

The state has special authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to make its own pollution and greenhouse gas rules for “mobile sources” such as cars and trucks. Some are concerned that the Trump administration may attempt to unravel the state’s authority to set pollution standards that are higher than federal rules.

Comments made by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt to the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee leave open that possibility.

“Federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate to the rest of the country,” Pruitt said, noting that “we recognize California’s special status in the statute and we are working with them to find consensus around these issues.”

CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols pointed to a 2013 waiver for California to implement its own, tougher tailpipe standards.

“The EPA would have to take unprecedented legal action to try to revoke that waiver,” she said. “Our best legal judgment is that that can’t be done.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Coastal States Oppose Offshore Drilling Proposal

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Attorneys general of a dozen coastal states—North Carolina, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia—are expressing opposition to the Trump administration’s proposal to expand development of oil and gas in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, calling it “outrageous” and “reckless.” In a letter, they called on U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to cancel the proposal. They also expressed ire at the deal Zinke struck with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, which exempted his state from the drilling plan, pointing to the lack of analysis or clear process underlying the decision.

Two governors from opposing parties echoed that sentiment in a separate publication.

“We’ve seen this administration seemingly lift the concerns of one governor and one state above others,” wrote Maryland Gov. Lawrence Joseph Hogan Jr. and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper in an op-ed. “In removing Florida from the five-year plan, Zinke and the Trump administration have admitted that offshore drilling poses great risks to coastal economies.”

On Sunday Zinke reiterated why he exempted Florida—due to its unique currents and geology as well as the unanimous opposition of Florida’s legislature to the proposal.

“In the case of Florida, the governor asked first for an immediate meeting and every member on both sides of the aisle contacted my office, wrote letters on it. So Florida is unique,” Zinke said. “Not every state has all the members against it and the geology is different, the currents are different and so looking at it, we’re going to take the process, go through it, meet with every governor personally.”

In a meeting with Zinke the day before, Cooper said the Interior secretary was receptive to his requests for an extended proposal comment period and for three additional public hearings near North Carolina’s coast.

“He said that he was listening, and he heard each and every one of us,” Cooper said. “I think generally he was pretty positive about what we said. He didn’t make any promises to us.”

Cooper said he told Zinke that drilling could cause unrecoverable damage to the state’s $3 billion tourism and fishing industries.

“We told him there is no 100% safe method to drill for oil and gas off the coast, particularly in our area off of North Carolina that sees nor’easters, that sees hurricanes,” Cooper said. “It would be catastrophic if there were to be an oil spill.”

If North Carolina does not get an exemption like Florida, Cooper said he has no problem taking the federal government to court.

“Thousands of North Carolinians and 30 coastal communities have voiced their opposition to drilling off North Carolina’s shores,” said Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general, in a statement. “I will do everything I can, including taking legal action, if necessary, to fight on behalf of our people, economy, and natural resources.”

Also seeking an exemption from the proposal—albeit a partial one—is Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

“There are certain areas that we feel are not opportune for leasing and for development,” said Murkowski, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the Interior. “Let’s focus on where the opportunity is good and there is interest and defined resource with limited obstacles.”

As Another Plant Closes, Spotlight Is on Economics of Nuclear

New Jersey’s Oyster Creek nuclear power plant will shut down in October 2018, more than a year earlier than planned, Exelon Corp. announced last week.

Nuclear power is the nation’s largest source of carbon-free electricity, generating about 20 percent of U.S. electric power and 60 percent of our zero-carbon electricity. The challenge to maintain a zero-carbon nuclear fleet to meet climate goals—by keeping existing plants like Oyster Creek—often is economics. This challenge has been particularly apparent in competitive markets, where nuclear plants are not guaranteed cost recovery through ratepayers.

When Exelon CEO and President Chris Crane announced in 2010 that the plant would retire in December 2019, he said the plant faced “a unique set of economic conditions and changing environmental regulations that make ending operations in 2019 the best option for the company, employees and shareholders.” He said the plant’s decreasing value was due to the cumulative effect of negative economic factors, such as low market prices and demand, as well as the plant’s need for continuing large capital expenditures.

Meanwhile, new construction has been plagued with cost overruns. In December 2017, the Georgia Public Service Commission voted unanimously to allow construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle site to proceed. Plagued by delays and escalating costs, the Vogtle reactors represented the only large-scale nuclear construction underway in the United States since abandonment of two reactors last summer by South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper. The Georgia commission reaffirmed its decision this week, despite a challenge by consumer group Georgia Watch over concern about the ultimate cost to ratepayers.

EIA Projects United States Will Become a Net Energy Exporter in 2022

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Tuesday released its annual long-term energy outlook, which projects U.S. production of natural gas will increase through 2050. Production of crude oil and petroleum products, meanwhile, will decrease.

It projects that the United States will become a net energy exporter by 2022, four years sooner than the date projected in last year’s report, reversing “a near 70-year trend when the U.S. became a net energy importer in 1953,” said EIA Administrator Linda Capuano.

“The United States energy system continues to undergo an incredible transformation,” she added. “This is most obvious when one considers that the [report] shows the United States becoming a net exporter of energy during the projection period in the Reference case and in most of the sensitivity cases as well—a very different set of expectations than we imagined even five or ten years ago.”

Renewable generation more than doubles between 2017 and 2050, in EIA projections, with an average annual growth rate of 2.8 percent. EIA projections show 80 gigawatts of new wind and solar photovoltaic capacity being added between 2018 and 2021, spurred by declining capital costs and the availability of tax credits.

Energy consumption grows about 0.4 percent per year on average in the Reference case from 2017 to 2050, which is less than the rate of expected population growth (0.6 percent per year), according to the report.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

State of the Union Celebrates Energy Production, Ignores Climate Change

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

In his first State of the Union speech, the words climate and energy barely received a mention from President Donald Trump. What he did say about energy boiled down to only a few sentences.

“We have ended the war on American energy—and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” Trump said. “We are now very proudly an exporter of energy to the world.”

It was a statement that New York Times reporters labeled as “misleading” because overall the United States is a net energy importer, although it is projected to be a net energy exporter sometime in the 2020s.

Hints at Trump’s energy priorities were folded into comments about regulatory strategy, with Trump offering that “in our drive to make Washington accountable, we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.” The rollbacks include rescission of hydraulic fracturing standards introduced under former President Barack Obama.

The State of the Union speech follows a Sunday interview with British TV personality Piers Morgan in which the president questioned climate science and said the United States could join the Paris Agreement, from which he announced the country’s exit last summer, if it had a “completely different deal” but called the existing agreement a “terrible deal” and a “disaster” for the United States.

State-Level Executive Order, Federal Legislation Focus on Emissions Trading

With an executive order on Monday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy began the process for New Jersey to re-enter the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the nine-state cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions from electric power plants that former Gov. Chris Christy exited in 2011.

“Leaving RGGI, as it is called by most, made us an outlier in our own neighborhood,” Murphy said. “It signaled a retreat from a comprehensive and collaborative effort to curb the carbon emissions that contributed to climate change.”

The executive order requires the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) commissioner and the Board of Public Utilities president to immediately begin negotiations with RGGI member states. The DEP also must—within 30 days—create a framework for allocating RGGI funds.

RGGI, the first market-based regulatory program in the United States, is a cooperative effort among states to create a “cap” that sets limits on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector—a cap lowered over time to reduce emissions. Power plants that can’t stay under the cap must purchase credits or “emissions allowances” from others that can. Proceeds from the program are used to fund renewable energy and energy efficiency projects throughout the member states.

In announcing the move to rejoin RGGI, Murphy estimated that New Jersey had lost $279 million in RGGI auction revenue and suggested that re-entry would create jobs by restoring the state as a leader in the green economy.

“Rejoining RGGI is about much more than cutting emissions and strengthening our defense against climate change, he said. “It’s about investing in our future.”

Virginia is presently considering linking with the program that presently partners Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Draft regulations that aim to cap emissions from the state’s electricity sector beginning in 2020 and to reduce them 30 percent by 2030 were announced in November.

Also on Monday, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen and Congressman Don Beyer introduced the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act. The cap and dividend bill aims to address climate change by gradually reducing carbon emissions to 80 percent below 2005 levels through emissions permit auctions held for sellers of oil, coal, and natural gas into the U.S. market. Dividends would be returned to U.S. taxpayers quarterly.

“This legislation puts a price on carbon pollution and returns the proceeds directly to the American people at the same time it accelerates the growth of good paying jobs in clean technologies,” Van Hollen said in a press release.

Study: Offsetting America’s Carbon Footprint through Agriculture

There is general agreement that the technical potential for sequestration of carbon in soil is significant, and some consensus on the magnitude of that potential. A new study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that the world’s farmland soils have the technical potential to offset as much carbon as the United States emits, if lands are managed better. That could mean agriculture’s sequestration potential represents a viable pathway to achieving the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursuing efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Though some models suggest that farms have the capacity to absorb as much as the carbon equivalent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions annually—roughly 36 gigatons—agricultural land currently absorbs about 0.03 gigatons. The Washington Post highlights this so called “carbon farming,” a reference to farmland that’s not a source of carbon but rather a sink, in a feature on the politics of sustainable agriculture and describes efforts to account for agriculture emissions in a scientifically valid way.

By estimating the potential amount of sequestered carbon in different scenarios, the study in Scientific Reports aims to open up discussion of the agricultural sector’s carbon mitigation potential, which received short shrift in the Paris Agreement but is beginning to garner some thought.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Trump Administration Issues Solar Import Tariff

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

The Trump administration announced Monday that it will begin imposing a 30 percent tariff on solar cells and modules imported into the United States. The tariff will decline annually over a four-year period—reaching 15 percent in year four—and the first 2.5 gigawatts of imported solar cells will be exempt from the safeguard tariff in each of those four years.

The U.S. has the world’s fourth-largest solar capacity after China, Japan and Germany. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said the tariff, which is opposed by most of the renewable energy industry, is necessary to prevent unfair practices by overseas manufacturers, mainly in Asia.

“From 2012 to 2016, the volume of solar generation capacity installed annually in the United States more than tripled, spurred on by artificially low-priced solar cells and modules from China,” the USTR said in a fact sheet announcing the Trump administration’s decision. “China’s industrial planning has included a focus on increasing Chinese capacity and production of solar cells and modules, using state incentives, subsidies, and tariffs to dominate the global supply chain.”

The tariff comes in response to petitions from two American manufacturers who complained for years that rising imports were eating into their sales. The International Trade Commission (ITC), in September, voted in favor of imposing a tariff. Monday’s announcement is similar to one recommended by the ITC late last year.

More than 80 percent of U.S. solar installations use imported panels, many of which come from China. However, China is not the only country that could be affected by the decision. Countries like South Korea now account for many of U.S. solar imports, which means they could face job losses and other hardships as a result of the tariffs.

Although imposing tariffs could create as many as 6,400 solar manufacturing positions, overall industry job losses could exceed those gains, an independent analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance performed for Utility Dive found. The Solar Energy Industries Association said 23,000 jobs would be lost in 2018, noting that most solar manufacturing in the U.S. involves making parts for cheaper imported panels.

Homeowner installation costs are expected to go up about 4 percent and utility-scale installation costs could go up about 10 percent, according to ClearView Energy Partners.

Before the tariff announcement, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that total U.S. small-scale solar capacity was 16 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2017 and projected it to grow to 19 GW by the end of 2018. It estimated that U.S. large-scale solar capacity totaled 27 GW at the end of 2017 and projected it to rise to 30 GW by the end of 2018.

Studies Examine Continuing Warming Trend

According to an analysis released last week by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 2017 was the second warmest year in 123 years of record-keeping. Using a different methodology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had earlier put 2017 as the third warmest year. In either case, it was the 21st consecutive year in which the annual average temperature exceeded the 20th century average of 13.9 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit) and the third consecutive year that every state across the contiguous U.S. and Alaska experienced above-average annual temperatures. Notably, it was also the warmest year on record without the warming influence of El Niño, which contributed to the heat of the warmest year, 2016.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said there’s little doubt about the source of the multi-decadal warming.

“Basically all of the warming in the last 60 years is attributable to human activities, and carbon dioxide emissions are the No. 1 component of that,” Schmidt said.

According to NOAA’s annual global climate report, worldwide, temperatures in 2017 were 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average, and ocean temperatures experienced their third-warmest year on record.

In Poll, Mayors Acknowledge Threat of Climate Change

Two-thirds of mayors said that cities should take action on climate change, even if doing so requires financial costs, according to an annual poll by Boston University.

“As the widening wealth gap, rising cost of housing and other economic challenges dominate the discourse in Washington, D.C. and across the country, the 2017 Menino Survey of Mayors provides invaluable insights into some of the most complex issues facing our nation’s mayors,” said Bob Annibale, Global Director of Citi Community Development and Inclusive Finance. “This year’s survey confirms yet again that our nation’s mayors are leading the way—prioritizing issues within and beyond their municipal borders, such as affordable housing and climate change, with innovative approaches that affect positive change for their constituents.”

Those polled cited a range of top climate and sustainability issues, including reducing the number of vehicles on the road (36 percent), upgrading city buildings and vehicles (31 percent), and sourcing greener energy (27 percent). Increasing residential density and updating building codes were also considered integral parts of any serious effort to address climate change, but when it came to the private sector, respondents pushed back on the need to institute new costly regulations.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

EIA: Coal-Fired Electricity Generation, Coal Production to Decrease in 2018

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

A near record amount of coal-fired electricity is poised to go offline this year, according to recently released data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Set to retire in the United States this year are some 13 gigawatts (GW) at more than a dozen units—that’s an amount second only to the nearly 15 GW of coal power shut down in 2015. The falling fortunes of coal are also evident in the EIA’s projections for its production: a decline from 773 million short tons last year to 759 million in 2018 and 741 million in 2019. By contrast, natural gas production is expected to match a record set in 1970.

According to the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, coal’s share of the electricity generation mix, which only a decade ago was close to 50 percent, is projected to fall below 30 percent this year. The primary reason? Cheap natural gas, which this year could see the largest single-year increase since 2004 with the addition of roughly 20 GW of new natural gas-fired power generation. The EIA expects these trends to continue in 2019, when it projects that gas-fired plants will generate 34 percent of the country’s electricity and coal, just 28 percent.

Inexpensive and plentiful natural gas is not the only factor influencing coal plant closures. Other factors, according to the EIA, are plant age and size—most coal plants retired since 2008 have been older and smaller than their competition—changes in regional electricity use, federal or state policies that affect plant operation, state policies that require or encourage the use of certain fuels, and improving competitive generation technologies.

Other EIA forecasts for 2018: nuclear power will provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity, non-hydropower renewables, nearly 10 percent; and hydropower, slightly less than 7 percent. U.S. wind power generation capacity will rise to 96 GW, up from about 88 GW in 2017, while solar power generation capacity will hit 50 GW, up from 43 GW last year.

Chatterjee, LaFleur Discuss FERC Order

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Neil Chatterjee said Tuesday that a new FERC investigation into grid resilience could take longer than the 90-day timeframe established by regulators last week when they unanimously rejected a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from the Department of Energy (DOE) to change its rules to help coal and nuclear plants in the electricity markets FERC oversees.

FERC gave regional grid operators 60 days to detail how they could enhance grid resilience, after which other “interested entities” will have 30 days to reply—considerably faster than most major market reform discussions at FERC.

“One of the reasons I thought the record warranted the short-term [coal and nuclear payments] is … it’s going to take time to sort through this,” Chatterjee said during a panel discussion hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center where he and FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur discussed FERC’s Jan. 9 ruling as well as previewed the docket that the panel created to investigate regional transmission organizations (RTOs’) resilience practices. “I am under no illusion that this process will end in 90 days.”

Both Chatterjee and LaFleur were reluctant to prejudge the outcome of the proceeding or to speculate on the kind of responses that RTOs will give, but they stressed that they will continue to consider the country as a whole in making decisions to improve resiliency and reliability in the power sector. (subscription)

“We’ll see what comes forward in the docket,” said LaFleur, noting that it is possible that different proposals could come out of the different regions, which have unique challenges.

As Public Hearings Begin, Governors Voice Opposition to Offshore Drilling Plan

Ever since the Trump administration revealed a draft five-year plan that would expand oil drilling to previously protected areas in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans, governors of nearly every state on those seaboards—including South Carolina, Rhode Island, Oregon, California, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina—have expressed opposition. Under the proposed plan, more than 90 percent of the continental shelf would be available for drilling rights and only one out of 26 planning areas across the three oceans and the Gulf of Mexico would be entirely off limits to oil drilling.

U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has been in talks with many of the coastal state governors since he agreed to exclude Florida from the plan days after its release. Governors and lawmakers have sent letters pointing to the importance of tourism as a reason to exclude their states from the plan—the tact taken by Florida’s governor.

“The long-term health of New York’s economy is inextricably linked to protecting our ocean resources,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote in a letter to Zinke. “Much like Florida, New York’s ocean coast is unique and plays a vital role in our economy.”

Maine’s Gov. Paul LePage and other Gulf Coast governors who already have drilling off their shores are among those open to new exploration.

The proposal presently includes 47 lease sales from 2019 to 2024 in 25 of the nation’s 26 offshore planning areas. Among them: 19 sales off the coast of Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, 9 in the Atlantic, and 7 in the Pacific.

This week, the public also began weighing in during the first of several meetings planned in the capitals of affected states.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

FERC Rejects Proposed Grid Resiliency Rule, Issues New Order

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

The five members of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday unanimously rejected a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from the Department of Energy (DOE) to change its rules to help coal and nuclear plants in the electricity markets FERC oversees (subscription). Instead it opened a new proceeding in which it calls on regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) to submit information to FERC on certain resilience issues and concerns within 60 days (subscription).

Since Sept. 28, when DOE Secretary Rick Perry proposed mandating that plants capable of storing 90 days of fuel supplies at their sites get increased payments for providing “resiliency” services to the grid, a broad array of power sector stakeholders have raised concerns about the legality and vagueness of the proposed rulemaking and the short timetable to implement it.

In voting against the DOE proposal, FERC found that neither the proposal nor comments on it revealed a problem with existing market rules.

“While some commenters allege grid resilience or reliability issues due to potential retirements of particular resources, we find that these assertions do not demonstrate the unjustness or unreasonableness of the existing RTO/ISO tariffs,” FERC wrote. “In addition, the extensive comments submitted by the RTOs/ISOs do not point to any past or planned generator retirements that may be a threat to grid resilience.”

FERC went on to note that even the DOE’s own grid reliability study, cited to justify the DOE proposal, “concluded that changes in the generation mix, including the retirement of coal and nuclear generators, have not diminished the grid’s reliability or otherwise posed a significant and immediate threat to the resilience of the electric grid.”

FERC’s Jan. 8 order means electric grid operators must answer questions from the commission about how they define resilience, what they do to ensure it and how they evaluate threats to it.

Although FERC could issue a new order after receiving that information, The Washington Post suggests that the language in the current order would support the trend toward free competitive electricity markets.

One issue not raised in the debate, which centered on market concerns, was changes to the electric system to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Researchers at Resources for the Future projected significant emissions increases and negative effects on social welfare had the DOE Notice of Proposed Rulemaking gone forward.

Trump Administration Unveils Plan to Vastly Increase Oil Drilling Off U.S. Shores

The Trump administration revealed a draft plan that would greatly expand oil drilling to areas in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans that were previously protected.

“This is a start on looking at American energy dominance,” said U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, adding that the proposal would make the United States “the strongest energy superpower” (subscription).

Previous administrations had largely limited offshore oil and gas production to the Gulf of Mexico, but Zinke’s proposal would make more than 90 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf open for leasing. His proposal includes 47 lease sales from 2019 to 2024 in 25 of the nation’s 26 offshore planning areas. Among them: 19 sales off the coast of Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, 9 in the Atlantic, and 7 in the Pacific (some off the coast of California).

“Today’s announcement lays out the options that are on the table and starts a lengthy and robust public comment period,” Zinke said (subscription). “Just like with mining, not all areas are appropriate for offshore drilling, and we will take that into consideration in the coming weeks.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which would oversee the leasing process, will hold a 60-day public comment period on the plan.

Although embraced by oil and gas industry groups, the proposed plan is expected to face opposition from governors of many coastal states and many U.S. lawmakers.

On Tuesday, a group of 37 senators called the proposal “the height of irresponsibility” (subscription).

“This draft proposal is an ill-advised effort to circumvent public and scientific input, and we object to sacrificing public trust, community safety, and economic security for the interests of the oil industry,” the senators wrote in a letter to Zinke.

The proposal follows an April 2017 executive order by President Donald Trump requiring that the Interior Department reconsider former President Barack Obama’s five-year offshore drilling plan.

If finalized, the proposal would reverse Obama’s ban on drilling on the Atlantic coast and in the Arctic, but, in addition to Florida waters which Zinke this week closed to drilling, it would keep off-limits the waters near Alaska’s far-western Aleutian Islands, which were protected by former President George W. Bush.

People’s Hearings on Clean Power Plan Begin

Several “people’s hearings” planned by states to discuss the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) repeal of the clean Power Plan took place in New York, Maryland and Delaware this week. Proposed to be repealed in October, the rule aimed to set state-by-state carbon reduction targets for power plants.

The hearings follow an announcement last month by the EPA that it will hold three more hearings on its proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan—in California, Wyoming and Missouri—after criticism for not conducting a transparent review process and previously holding only one public hearing over two days in Charleston, West Virginia.

Transcripts and comments associated with the hearings will be sent to the EPA as part of its rulemaking—EPA is presently taking input on what should replace the rule. In an interview with Reuters, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt listed replacement of the Clean Power Plan as one of his top 2018 priorities—alongside plans to greatly reduce EPA staff and rewrite the Waters of the United States rule.

“A proposed rule will come out this year and then a final rule will come out sometime this year,” Pruitt said of the Clean Power Plan’s replacement.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Study Says Meeting Paris Agreement Goals Won’t Prevent Aridification

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

A study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that more than a quarter of Earth’s land will become significantly drier even if the world manages to limit warming to the Paris Agreement goal of less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Limiting the temperature rise to the agreement’s more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius could significantly reduce the amount of land affected.

“Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20–30 percent of the world’s land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches 2 degrees C [Celsius],” said Manoj Joshi, study co-author from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. “But two-thirds of the affected regions could avoid significant aridification if warming is limited to 1.5 degrees C.”

According to the study, the regions that would most benefit from keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius are parts of South East Asia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa, Central America and Southern Australia.

The study authors used projections from 27 global climate models to identify the areas of the world where aridity will substantially change when compared to current year-to-year variations. With a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, they found that between 24 percent and 32 percent of the Earth’s total land surface will become drier. At an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, only between eight percent and 10 percent of that surface becomes drier.

Aridification could dramatically increase the threat of widespread drought and wildfires. It is also a threat to agriculture, water quality and biodiversity, noted Chang-Eui Park, the study’s lead author from China’s Southern University for Sustainability and Technology.

Park likened the emergence of aridification to “a shift to continuous moderate drought conditions, on top of which future year-to-year variability can cause more severe drought. For instance, in such a scenario 15 percent of semi-arid regions would actually experience conditions similar to ‘arid’ climates today.”

Trump Administration Repeals Proposed Rules for Hydraulic Fracturing on Government Land

One day after a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider it’s decision to overrule a lower court’s rejection of a proposed Obama-era rule regulating hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rescinded the rule. Under the proposed rule, companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, whereby pressurized water is pumped underground to break open hydrocarbon deposits to increase well productivity.

The rule had been scheduled to go into effect in 2015, but it was never implemented due to court challenges by energy industry groups and several oil- and natural gas-producing states, which argued the rule was over-reaching and duplicative of state requirements, as well as by environmentalists, who pointed to a need to regulate potential risks to groundwater.

“This final rule is needed to prevent the unnecessarily burdensome and unjustified administrative requirements and compliance costs of the 2015 rule from encumbering oil and gas development on Federal and Indian lands,” BLM wrote in the 26-page final rule.

The move took effect immediately on December 29, skipping the 30-day waiting period often incorporated into rollbacks.

Vogtle Nuclear Project Gets Green Light

Georgia’s Public Service Commission has voted unanimously to allow construction of two nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle to continue. Plagued by delays and escalating costs, the Vogtle reactors represent the only large-scale nuclear construction underway in the United States since abandonment of two reactors this summer by South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper. This week, Dominion Power bought SCANA and assumed these failed South Carolina nuclear project costs.

“The decision to complete Vogtle 3 & 4 is important for Georgia’s energy future and the United States,” said Paul Bowers, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, in a statement. “The Georgia Public Service Commission has shown leadership in making this complex and difficult decision and recognized that the Vogtle expansion is key to ensuring that our state has affordable and reliable energy today that will support economic growth now and for generations to come.”

Co-owned by Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities, the reactors are presently scheduled to come online in 2021 (unit 3) and 2022 (unit 4).

The commission attached conditions to its approval of the Vogtle completion, including a lower return on equity for Georgia Power; more money returned to ratepayers; and the possibility of re-examining the project if Congress doesn’t extend a production tax credit for nuclear power past a 2021 expiration date.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

China Announces Long-Awaited Carbon Market Plan

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not circulate next week in observance of the holiday. It will return on January 4, 2018.

China, the world’s top polluter, unveiled plans for an emissions trading scheme on Tuesday.

This carbon market, which would allow facilities to trade credits for the right to emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, would initially start with China’s power sector. It would include approximately 1,700 utilities that each emit more than 26,000 tons of carbon a year—adding up to more than 3 billion tons of carbon emissions annually. Experts indicate it will take at least a year for the program to get underway, although the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) gave no hard deadlines for launch. Over time, China is expected to gradually tighten annual allocations to force up the emissions credit price.

“Everything is gradual, step by step,” said Li Junfeng, a senior government adviser on the carbon market plan.

Nine regions and cities, including Jiangsu, Fujian and seven regions with pilot schemes, will coordinate to establish the program, the NDRC said.

Although details of the market’s expansion have not yet been released, once the market is fully operational, it is expected to cover eight sectors: power; iron and steel; non-ferrous metals, such as aluminum; chemicals; petro-chemicals; paper; building materials; and civil aviation. Designed to encompass as much as 40 percent of the nation’s total emissions, the program aims to be more than twice the size of the European Union’s emissions trading scheme.

Efforts to Replace the Clean Power Plan Underway

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Clean Power Plan Monday, asking the public to comment on what a replacement rule might look like. In October, the Trump administration proposed repealing the Obama-era rule, which sets state-by-state carbon reduction targets for power plants.

“EPA is considering proposing emission guidelines to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing electric utility generating units (EGUs) and is soliciting information on the proper respective roles of the state and federal governments in that process, as well as information on systems of emission reduction that are applicable at or to an existing EGU, information on compliance measures, and information on state planning requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA),” the notice reads.

The notice followed an announcement Friday that the EPA plans to terminate the rule in 10 months. The agency has suggested that it could have a replacement by October 2018. The news came as part of a broader Trump administration agenda to retract many environmental and other regulations.

Studies Strengthen Link between Human-Caused Climate Change and Some Extreme Weather

On the heels of an announcement by the Trump administration that climate change would be removed from the list of national security threats, new studies are pointing to further connections between global warming caused by human activities and past extreme weather events such as heat, drought, flooding and wildfire outbreaks.

A United Kingdom Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysis of 59 studies published in the last two years examined the influence of climate change on extreme weather. It suggests that warming worsened that weather in 70 percent of cases.

A separate group of studies published last week in Explaining Extreme Events in 2016 from a Climate Perspective, a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), analyzed 27 extreme weather events from 2016, the hottest year in recorded history, and found that human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of them.

Many of the BAMS studies found a strong likelihood of a human influence on extreme weather events but stopped short of saying they were outside the realm of natural variability, and not all of the studies linked 2016’s extreme events to human activity.

But it’s the first time in BAMS history that scientists have found some events that could not have occurred in the absence of global warming. According to the new reports, the three definitively human-caused extreme events in 2016 were the overall global temperature increase; record heat in Asia; and marine hot spots in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea (where a mass of warm ocean water has been dubbed “the Blob”) and off the coast of northern Australia.

“For years, scientists have known humans are changing the risk of some extremes,” said Jeff Rosenfeld, BAMS editor in chief (subscription). “But finding multiple extreme events that weren’t even possible without human influence makes clear that we’re experiencing new weather, because we’ve made a new climate.”

 

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Decisions on Nuclear Plant Construction, FERC Directive Could Affect Grid’s Generation Sources

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Over the last decade, market upheavals and the technological advances underpinning them have placed pressure on existing electric generation units and driven deployment of non-baseload generation, creating significant uncertainty about existing business and regulatory models. This uncertainty calls into question the fate of nuclear. The Georgia Public Service Commission on Monday said it will decide December 21 whether to allow construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle site to proceed or to call for the project to be canceled. Plagued by delays and escalating costs, the Vogtle reactors represent the only large-scale nuclear construction underway in the United States since abandonment of two reactors this summer by South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper.

Those earlier plant cancellations and the looming Vogtle decision highlight the uncertain future of the U.S. nuclear industry. As much as 90 percent of nuclear power could disappear over the next 30 years if existing units retire at 60 years of operation—the current maximum length of operating licenses. A study by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions explores how the potential loss of existing nuclear plants in the Southeast interacts with the region’s other electricity sector challenges—among them, increasing natural gas dependence, demand uncertainty, and emerging technology—and proposes steps states can take to address these challenges.

Nuclear plants, along with coal plants, would get a boost in wholesale power markets if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approves a proposal by Department of Energy Secretary Rick that would mandate that plants capable of storing 90 days of fuel supplies at their sites get increased payments for providing “resiliency” services to the grid. Proposed by Perry on September 28, the directive to FERC to change its rules was set to expire this week, but Perry has granted FERC 30 more days to make a decision on the proposal.

The extension request, made by newly sworn-in FERC chairman Kevin McIntyre, divulged that the agency’s public comment request resulted in more than 1,500 pieces of feedback from a wide array of energy stakeholders.

“[T]he Commission has sworn in two new members within the last two weeks. The proposed extension is critical to afford adequate time for the new Commissioners to consider the voluminous record and engage fully in deliberations,” McIntyre wrote in the letter to Perry.

Studies: Arctic Warming Unprecedented; Most Accurate Climate Models Predict Greatest Warming 

Two new studies point to the accelerating threat of climate change. One, an annual assessment of the Arctic released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), finds that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, a pace that holds national security and economic implications. The other, a study comparing the results of simulations from multiple climate models to satellite observations of the actual atmosphere, finds that climate models predicting the greatest warming are more accurate than those predicting less warming.

According to the Arctic Report Card, 2017 was the second-warmest year on record in the Arctic, behind 2016; sea ice maximum set a new record low; and the permafrost rapidly warmed. Most worrying to scientists, though, was the pace of change.

“The current observed rate of sea ice decline and warming temperatures are higher than at any other time in the last 1,500 years, and likely longer than that,” the report states.

The changes will affect the entire planet, but especially the Northern Hemisphere, by altering weather patterns, leading to reduced wind power and increased drought.

“The changes that are happening in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic,” said co-author Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program. “These changes will impact all of our lives. They will mean living with more extreme weather events, paying higher food prices and dealing with the impacts of climate refugees.”

The NOAA report comes on the heels of a study published in the journal Nature suggesting that international policy makers and authorities are relying on projections that underestimate future warming—and, by extension, are underestimating the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed to avert catastrophic climate change. According to that study, global warming projections for the end of the century could be up to 15 percent higher than previously thought.

“The basic idea is that we have a range of projections on future warming that came from these climate models, and for scientific interest and political interest, we wanted to narrow this range,” said study co-author Patrick Brown of the Carnegie Institution for Science. “We find that the models that do the best at simulating the recent past project more warming.”

According to the study, global temperatures could rise nearly 5 degrees Celsius by century’s end under the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s business-as-usual prediction for greenhouse-gas concentrations. Moreover, the analysis increases the odds that temperatures will rise more than 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, placing odds at 93 percent, up from 62 percent.

Clean Power Plan Alternative; More Hearings on Horizon

During his first congressional hearing since taking office in February, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that he is working on a replacement to the Clean Power Plan. Proposed to be repealed in October, the rule aimed to set state-by-state carbon reduction targets for power plants. No new details about the replacement rule were pressed for by the six subcommittee members, however.

If the EPA does not issue a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, it could hint that Pruitt might open up a legal battle over the 2009 carbon endangerment finding. During the hearing, Pruitt hinted that he may be skeptical of the analysis backing the finding, which found that greenhouse gases endangered public health and welfare and required the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“In fact there was something done in 2009 that in my estimation has never been done since and was never done before,” said Pruitt. “[The EPA] took work from the U.N. [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC] and transported it to the agency and adopted it as the core of the finding.”

But as ClimateWire reported, the finding was informed not only by reports from the IPCC, but also from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, U.S. Climate Change Science Program and National Research Council as well as studies and reports from other independent research groups. In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rebuffed a criticism that the EPA had “improperly delegated its judgment” to the IPCC and other organizations in the endangerment finding.

In written testimony submitted to the subcommittee, Pruitt elaborated the three goals of his Back to Basics agenda: “Refocus the Agency back to its core mission. Restore power to the states through cooperative federalism. Lead the Agency through improved processes and adhere to the rule of law.”

Following Pruitt’s subcommittee hearing, this week, the EPA announced it will now hold three more hearings on its proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan—in California, Wyoming and Missouri—after the EPA was criticized for not conducting a transparent review process and holding only one public hearing over two days in Charleston, West Virginia.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Moody’s Warns Cities, States to Prepare for Climate Change Risks

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

A new report from Moody’s outlines how the credit rating agency will evaluate the impact of climate change in its ratings for state and local bond issuers. The report warns cities and states to prepare for climate change or face increased difficulty maintaining or obtaining higher credit ratings.

Ratings from Moody’s also help determine interest rates on bonds issued by cities to fund roads, buildings and other civic projects. Cities not adequately preparing for climate change, then, may face higher rates.

“The interplay between an issuer’s exposure to climate shocks and its resilience to this vulnerability is an increasingly important part of our credit analysis, and one that will take on even greater significance as climate change continues,” the report notes.

Moody’s uses six indicators to assess exposure to the physical climate change, including hurricanes and extreme-weather damage as a share of the economy, and the share of homes in a flood plain.

Moody’s identifies Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas as the states most at risk for damage from climate change. It says it will assess both a city’s ongoing risk from climate trends and climate shock from extreme weather events such as natural disasters, floods and droughts.

“What we want people to realize is: If you’re exposed, we know that. We’re going to ask questions about what you’re doing to mitigate that exposure,” said Lenny Jones, a managing director at Moody’s. “That’s taken into your credit ratings.”

Mayors Sign Climate Charter

More than 50 North American cities signed the Chicago Climate Charter Tuesday during the North American Climate Summit in Chicago, where former President Barack Obama spoke, calling cities, states and nonprofit groups “the new face of leadership” on climate change.

“Obviously we’re in an unusual time when the United States is now the only nation on Earth that does not belong to the Paris agreement,” Obama said. “And that’s a difficult position to defend. But the good news is that the Paris agreement was never going to solve the climate crisis on its own. It was going to be up to all of us.”

The mayors, who attended the summit hosted by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, hailed from cities across North America, including Mexico City, San Francisco and Phoenix.

“Climate change can be solved by human action,” said Emanuel (subscription). “We lead respectively where there is no consensus or directive out of our national governments.”

The charter calls for mayors to achieve a percent reduction in carbon emissions at least as stringent as the Paris Agreement; to quantify, track and report emissions; to support flexibility for cities to take action on climate issues; and to incorporate climate issues into emergency planning, among other provisions.

The charter also calls for cities to work with scientific and academic experts to find solutions. Some mayors have specifically agreed to commitments to expand public transportation and invest in natural climate solutions such as tree canopy and vegetation.

Study: Melting Arctic Sea Ice Will Lead to Increased Drought in California

Scientists have linked rapidly melting Arctic sea ice to warmer ocean temperatures and higher sea levels. Now new research shows it could also reduce rainfall in California, worsening future droughts in the state. By mid-century, according to a study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, loss of ice in the Arctic and warming temperatures there could drop California’s 20-year median for rainfall by as much as 15 percent.

“Sea-ice loss of the magnitude expected in the next decades could substantially impact California’s precipitation, thus highlighting another mechanism by which human-caused climate change could exacerbate future California droughts,” the study says.

The authors describe a series of meteorological events that lead to formation of storm-blocking air masses in the North Pacific—masses similar to the so-called Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, a nickname given to the persistent region of atmospheric high pressure that occurred over the Northeastern Pacific Ocean that kept rain from making landfall during California’s 2012–2016 drought. Although the study doesn’t attempt to explain that drought, its lead author, climate scientist Ivana Cvijanovic said it could help scientists understand future weather patterns.

“The recent California drought appears to be a good illustration of what the sea-ice-driven precipitation decline could look like,” she said.

Previous studies hypothesized that the North Pacific atmospheric ridge is due to increased ocean surface temperatures and heat circulation in the tropical Pacific. The new study elaborates on that understanding by describing the relation of Arctic sea-ice loss and tropical convection.

The authors say large-scale warming of the Arctic surface and lower atmosphere affects the way heat travels from Earth’s lower latitudes into the Arctic, in turn causing circulation changes in the deep tropics that eventually boost the buildup of a giant high-pressure system, like the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, off the California coast. In normal winters, high and low-pressure systems alternate. But when there’s a ridge, the wet and wintry Pacific storms instead slide north.

“We should be aware that an increasing number of studies, including this one, suggest that the loss of Arctic sea ice cover is not only a problem for remote Arctic communities, but could affect millions of people worldwide,” said Cvijanovic.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.