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Florida Leans More on Natural Gas than Renewable Energy

Natural gas is easily Florida’s main source of energy, offering up 1,300 Trillion Btu in 2014. Gas is 62% of Florida’s power generation, compared to 47% in 2008, when the “shale revolution” really took off. Florida is unique in that power generation accounts for nearly 90% of the state’s total natural gas demand, while the national average is 33%. Second place Florida uses around 3 Bcf/day to generate 145 billion kWh of gas-fired electricity, compared to Texas leading at 205 billion kWh and California third at 120 billion kWh. The “Sunshine State,” however, is being criticized by environmental groups for such a dramatic shift to natural gas, despite the known cost and environmental advantages. Florida today has no wind power and solar accounts for less than 1% of the state’s electricity. Natural gas provides 585 times more electricity in Florida than wind and solar combined . Florida though is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Companies to Pledge $140 Billion in Efforts to Cut Carbon Emissions

WASHINGTON—More than a dozen U.S. companies on Monday will pledge to invest more than $140 billion in efforts to cut carbon emissions as part of a new Obama administration initiative leading up to the United Nations climate-change summit later this year. As soon as next week, the Environmental Protection Agency is set to issue final rules cutting carbon emissions from U.S. power plants. These regulations are the biggest driver behind the administration’s efforts to forge a global agreement at the U.N. conference in Paris to cut carbon emissions. Monday’s event is important because the administration sees corporate support for climate action as key to building momentum for the Paris talks in December. “It’s significant because they are carbon-intensive, energy-consuming companies making a bottom-up commitment to address climate change,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based analysis firm. None of the companies taking part in Monday’s […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Outrage over EPA emissions regulations fades as states find fixes

HAZARD, Ky. — Even after years of talk about a “war on coal,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell startled some of his constituents in March when he urged open rebellion against a White House proposal for cutting pollution from coal-fired power plants. The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is “extremely burdensome and costly,” the Kentucky Republican said in letters advising all 50 states to boycott the rule when it goes into effect this summer. The call for direct defiance was unusual even for McConnell, who has made a career of battling federal restrictions on coal. Yet more striking is what has happened since: Kentucky’s government and electric utilities have quietly positioned themselves to comply with the rule — something state officials expect to do with relatively little effort. In this coal-industry bastion, five of the state’s older coal-burning power plants were already scheduled to close or switch to natural […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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China War on Pollution Benefits From Economic Slowdown

SHAHE, China—A “war against pollution” declared by China’s leaders is getting a boost from the slowing economy as the government forces bloated industries like steel, cement and glassmaking to slim down. The results of cuts in overcapacity are already visible in notoriously smoggy Beijing. Official air-pollution data released by China’s government and monitoring by the U.S. embassy show levels of fine-particulate matter damaging to human health—known as PM2.5—fell more than 15% in the capital in the first half of 2015, compared with a year earlier. The city’s 21 million residents have been greeted with unusual stretches of blue skies. While measures taken by Beijing are partly behind the change, just as important is what’s happening in the sprawling industrial areas that encircle it. The bleak industrial city of Shahe, 200 miles south of the capital, boomed for much of this century. These days, small glass producers there that haven’t […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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To Clean Up Oil Sands’ Dirty Image, Alberta May Try Emission Tax

Alberta’s new government is engaged in a balancing act. It’s trying to cut carbon emissions while protecting an oil-sands industry that supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. Tar sands are found almost exclusively in the western Canadian province. They produce a product that generates about 17 percent more carbon dioxide on average than conventional oil, and emissions in Alberta have risen by more than 53 percent since 1990. At the same time, they’re the nation’s single most valuable export, making up nearly a fifth of total foreign sales. The challenge for the government is to work with an industry, already struggling with price cuts, on ways to hold off environmental criticism of the tar sands. Opponents have so far blocked the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry the oil to the U.S., and limited the world’s third-largest reserve from reaching new buyers. “If Alberta wants better access to world […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Diesel cars: Is it time to switch to a cleaner fuel?

Car exhaust In the 1920s, pregnant women were encouraged to drink Guinness to increase their iron intake. For decades we were all told to avoid fatty butter and eat synthetic margarine. Both pieces of so-called health advice have since been totally debunked. We are now learning that millions of motorists who’ve bought diesel cars believing they were less harmful to the environment have been equally misguided. Diesel cars emit less carbon dioxide (CO2) than their petrol equivalent, we were told. In fact, not only are CO2 emissions almost indentical on average, but they also produce large quantities of other pollutants linked with thousands of premature deaths . Carmakers say they have already taken action to reduce emissions greatly in the past decade and regulators are beginning to acknowledge the problem, but the challenge remains enormous. The reason is simple: about half of all cars currently sold in Europe are […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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California’s push for cleaner buses could edge out natural gas

LOS ANGELES Fifteen years ago, California led the way to cleaner transit buses with strict tailpipe emissions standards that effectively ushered out diesel as the primary fuel for buses in the state and replaced it with natural gas. Now, California is poised once again to take the lead, this time by mandating a switch to so-called "zero-emission" buses by 2040. The new push by California’s powerful Air Resources Board (CARB) has the potential to marginalize natural gas as a bus fuel in the same way its adoption once marginalized diesel. In response, the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition has proposed expanding the definition of “zero-emission vehicles” to include not just electric buses, but also those powered by so-called “renewable natural gas,” which is produced from cow manure or decomposing organic matter in landfills. Whereas regular natural gas offers a reduction in greenhouse gases of about 15 to 20 percent […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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U.S. Supreme Court fires warning shot across EPA’s bow: Kemp

LONDON In a rare defeat for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered it on Monday to reconsider whether the EPA’s regulations on mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants are appropriate and necessary. While the EPA considered the costs and benefits of various regulatory options later in the rule-writing process, the court faulted it for not considering compliance costs at the beginning to determine whether regulation was appropriate in the first place. The ruling is unusual because so far the federal courts, including the high court, have been deferential to the EPA’s attempts to write ambitious rules to curb pollution from power plants. While the courts have become increasingly aggressive in invalidating regulations issued by other federal agencies, the EPA’s air pollution regulations have mostly survived judicial scrutiny. Starting with “Massachusetts versus EPA” in 2007, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the EPA’s authority […]

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US power industry divided over importance of Supreme Court MATS ruling

Electricity industry representatives and consultants were divided Monday on how much impact the US Supreme Court’s remand of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to a lower court is likely to have on power markets and investments. Brian Walshe, managing director of ION Consulting in Denver, said he thinks the decision is likely to bring "significant" change in the electricity industry’s direction. "The biggest fallout will be to [Clean Power Plan] compliance strategies," Walshe said in an email. "Many utilities will now be forced to consider this ‘game of chicken’ strategy when CPP rules are announced, due to the enormity of their impact." But Tammy Ridout, American Electric Power spokeswoman, noted that the Supreme Court did not vacate the Environmental Protection Agency’s MATS rule. Article continues below… Sign up for Global Alert today. Platts Global Alert is a complete real-time information service for the global energy industry, providing breaking […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Michigan, Iowa utilities to go forward with coal retirements, conversions to gas

Despite the US Supreme Court’s ruling Monday against the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule, electric power utilities in Michigan and Iowa say they are moving forward with plans to close coal-fired power plants or convert existing coal burners to natural gas over the next several years. The Supreme Court Monday ruled the EPA erred by refusing to consider cost when deciding to regulate emissions of mercury from the power sector. The Michigan South Central Power Agency’s decision late last week to retire its 55-MW Endicott coal plant at Litchfield in June 2016, has nothing to with MATS, general manager Glen White said in a Monday interview. Endicott, which went into commercial operation in 1983, is equipped with a scrubber and already complied with MATS, which took effect in mid-April, White said. Article continues below… Platts Coal Trader provides the latest prices for key benchmark coals, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple