• Air

Gas Flaring Wastes Energy and Pollutes the Air – Why is it Still Happening?

• emissions
• flaring
• greenhouse gasses
• natural gas
• pipelines
• pollution
• refineries

Gas flaring was responsible for Texas’s recent increase in oil refinery pollution, but it’s hardly a new problem. We’re less than a decade away from the UN’s goal of Zero Routine Flaring by 2030, but refineries still flare 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year, releasing 400 million tons of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Why This Matters: Companies have historically practiced gas flaring as a convenient and inexpensive way to “dispose of ” gas that was extracted alongside oil, as opposed to storing paying to store it.

• Energy

Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Failed Texas, Not Wind Turbines

• cold
• electricity
• ERCOT
• freeze
• Green New Deal
• grid
• natural gas
• wind

By Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer In the chaos following Texas’ severe winter weather, some folks have gotten their wires crossed. Conservative politicians and pundits across the country have taken the power grid shutdown as an opportunity to condemn green energy in Texas and claimed that everything from freezing wind turbines to the Green New Deal […]

• Energy

Who’s Got Gas? Some Cities Ban It, While States Ban the Bans

• ban
• climate change
• gas
• gas infrastructure
• greenhouse gas
• natural gas
• preemption

Natural gas is the new front on the climate wars.  Many cities have passed bans on new buildings powered by natural gas — from Berkley and San Jose in California to Seattle, Washington (paywall). But many Republican-led states in the South and Midwest have been trying to preempt local governments from banning natural gas. 

Why this Matters:  Gas used to be seen as the clean fuel of the future – no more.  There has been much progress made in limiting the use of natural gas in homes. 

• Energy

How a Pro-Coal Republican Policymaker Became a Clean Energy Champion

• #PoliticalClimate
• carbon pricing
• climate change
• FERC
• natural gas

When President Trump appointed Neil Chatterjee to the Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2017, the environmental community was worried. As a former energy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, onlookers expected a pro-coal agenda to define Chatterjee’s term as a regulator.  Despite maintaining sympathy for coal communities struggling through the energy transition, Chatterjee says he’s “very bullish on the growth of renewable energy.”  Chatterjee told the Political Climate podcast in a recent interview.

• Energy

Study Shows Majority of Fossil Fuel Power Plants Could be Obsolete by 2035

• coal
• fossil fuels
• natural gas
• net zero
• power plant
• renewable electricity

A vast majority of fossil fuel power plants will reach the end of their lives by 2035, a new report shows. Experts say that this revelation shows that President-elect Joe Biden’s climate goals aren’t as lofty as they may have once seemed, according to Inside Climate News.

Why This Matters: President-Elect Biden has planned to transition the United States to net zero emissions by 2050 and carbon-free electricity by 2035.

• Energy

US Exported Natural Gas Could Worsen Climate Change

• FERC
• flaring
• fracking
• LNG
• LNG exports
• methane
• natural gas
• PCB

While natural gas has been touted as a solution to the world’s fossil fuel problem, new analysis by NRDC shows that the U.S’ exporting of liquified natural gas (LNG) will only worsen global warming. When looking at the full life cycle emissions of different energy sources, U.S. LNG led to higher emissions than regional sources of LNG, pipeline gas, solar or wind power, and led only to slightly lower emissions than the use of coal. 

Why this Matters:  It seems increasingly clear that new natural gas infrastructure is controversial. Cities are taking action to ban natural gas from new buildings, and chefs are advertising the utility of electric stoves, but more must be done.