The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued guidelines on the use of diesel fuel in oil and gas hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a method that involves pumping water containing chemicals into shale formations to unlock trapped energy resources. The EPA defines five substances as diesel variations and outlines guidelines and “technical recommendations” for their use.
“Decisions about permitting hydraulic fracturing operations that use diesel fuels will be made on a case-by-case basis, considering the facts and circumstances of the specific injection activity and applicable statutes, regulations and case law, and will not cite this guidance as a basis for decision,” the EPA said.
Although the EPA has limited authority to regulate fluids in fracking, it has been allowed to regulate diesel fluids under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Tuesday’s guidelines mark the first time the agency has done so.
The guidelines are intended to protect underground stores of drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act. These new standards, the agency said, can be adopted by states to govern natural gas production.
Olympians, World Leaders Look to Make Progress on Climate Change
Just one day after Sochi Olympians released a statement calling on world leaders to take action on climate change and prepare a global agreement at a U.N. meeting in Paris in 2015, President Barack Obama and French Republic President Francois Hollande pledged joint efforts on climate. The two leaders agreed to expand their work in the area ahead of the U.N. meeting that will bring world leaders together to forge a global climate agreement to take effect in 2020.
“Even as our two nations reduce our own carbon emissions, we can expand the clean energy partnerships that create jobs and move us toward low-carbon growth,” according to an op-ed published in the Washington Post. “We can do more to help developing countries shift to low-carbon energy as well, and deal with rising seas and more intense storms.”
Beyond the pledge, the Obama administration may be preparing to bring a new U.S. carbon-reduction pledge to the U.N. talks in Paris.
“In at least three interagency meetings at the White House since September, administration sources said, officials have debated whether the new goals should extend to 2025 or 2030. They also have laid out the scientific and economic modeling that must be done in the coming months and discussed whether a new target should assume Congress will eventually enact climate legislation or whether the White House must continue to use existing authority under the Clean Air Act to squeeze out more emissions reductions,”ClimateWire reports (subscription).
Study Challenges Climate Effects of Wind Farms
European wind farm installations have little large-scale impact on temperature and precipitation, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. The latest research challenges the idea, which some earlier studies suggested, that wind farms’ warming effects might not be purely local.
The weather effects from wind “remain small and likely unnoticeable,” Francois-Marie Bréon, study co-author, said of the research, which constitutes the first continent-scale modeling of the relationship of turbines, precipitation and temperature (subscription).
To arrive at their finding, study authors used the measured local weather impacts of wind farms operational in 2012 to model future effects based on the projected two-fold increase in wind production by 2020. They concluded that “the impacts remain much weaker than the natural climate interannual variability and changes expected from greenhouse gas emissions.”
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.