The 40 Things Biden Should Do First on Climate Change (excerpt): Bloomberg Green

 

Randolph Bell, Director for Global Energy Security, Atlantic Council

Take care of fugitive methane emissions.

“Failing to fully address methane leakage is increasingly a risk for the climate and for the U.S. economy. Methane makes up at least 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—recent analysis suggests far more—and is at least 25% more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. With natural gas projected to play an important role in the global energy system even under aggressive decarbonization scenarios by providing low-carbon power in the developing world and feedstock for hydrogen production (with carbon capture and storage), addressing methane is crucial for meeting climate goals.”

“The U.S.’s methane problem has the attention of major oil & gas producers, who decried the Trump Administration’s August reversal of an Obama-era rule on methane. Engie’s decision last month, under pressure from the French government, to delay its $7 billion deal with U.S. LNG company NextDecade because of U.S. methane emissions underscores the risks to the U.S. economy.”

“President-elect Biden can immediately direct the EPA to initiate a new rulemaking process to ensure that industry monitors and addresses leaks in new equipment, as Obama’s rule did. Biden can also be more ambitious and address leaks in older equipment, an effort that was not completed under Obama.” —As told to Akshat Rathi

 

Go to complete Bloomberg Green story 

 

Related: Preparing for climate refugees

Government's COVID Commission manufacturing plan calls for huge public gas subsidies: ABC NEWS

methane gas industry calls for sunsidies

State bans on coal seam gas development would be scrapped and the Federal Government would underwrite gas prices and massively subsidise costs and investment for gas companies, under confidential plans for a "gas-led manufacturing recovery" post-COVID-19.

Key points:

• Leaked documents reveal a draft plan calling for massive gas subsidies and public investment
• The interim report also calls for reduced 'green and red tape' and an end to all fracking moratoriums in NSW and Victoria
• The National COVID Coordination Commission has several members with deep links to the gas industry

The draft plans, obtained by the ABC, call for the scrapping of "green and red tape" on gas development, including a relaxation of Australian standards for equipment used in gas infrastructure and a loosening of environmental regulations and approval processes.

They are set out in an interim report from the manufacturing taskforce of the National COVID Coordination Commission (NCCC).

The NCCC is a hand-picked team of business leaders and former bureaucrats set up by the Prime Minister's Office to shape the economic recovery from the virus and lockdown, and includes several members with strong links to the gas sector.

The manufacturing taskforce includes business representatives as well as union leaders from that sector.

Its draft report advocates "underwriting new [gas] supply with government balance sheets" to allow gas producers "to invest with confidence and new pipelines to be built to get the gas to markets".

Read the ABC NEWS article

Gas lobby seizes Covid moment, and declares war on Australia’s future: RenewEconomy

Green Deal

'The history of war tells us that such events are usually launched on doubtful and fabricated pretexts: The US war in Iraq, the German invasion in Europe at the start of WWII, all the way back to Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain, and just about every war in between.

And so it is with the extraordinary attack launched on Australia’s future by its incumbent fossil fuel industry, and the gas lobby in particular. Its casus belli is the Covid-19 pandemic, and the fossil fuel industry has been enabled to do this after being invited by the Morrison regime to do more or less at it pleases and design its own future.

The reach and sheer audacity of the proposals unveiled over the past week is extraordinary, and the lasting impact on Australia’s future may dwarf anything that Tony Abbott and his Far Right cheerleaders may have done; notwithstanding his white-anting of the Carbon Pollution Reductions Scheme more than a decade ago, the scrapping of the carbon price in 2014 and the unceasing campaign against science and engineering.

This is the critical decade. Scientists tell us, repeatedly and with a near unanimous voice, that serious emissions reductions must be achieved in the next 10 years if the world is to flatten the emissions curve and give itself half a chance of capping average global warming at less than 2°C. A target of 1.5°C may already be out of reach.

Australia finds itself at a critical juncture. It benefits from the stunning cost reductions in solar, wind and battery storage, and key institutions have mapped out a path to a high renewable energy grid. Experts are shining the light on a future of green manufacturing and “green energy exports” that could enhance the position of the country as a significant energy superpower.
But the fossil fuel industry and its backers, with their focus almost entirely on short-term profits and ideological claptrap, have other ideas. They have decided to throw a live grenade into Australia’s own economic bunker, and its environment, and put the future of the current and emerging generation at risk.

Consider the list of what has emerged from the government-appointed gas-industry led reviews in the past week, including the King Review, the Covid Commission, the technology investment roadmap, and from the intense pressure being put on energy regulators.


– Bastardising the remit of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency in an attempt to to force them to invest away from renewable and smart and enabling technologies and into gas and carbon capture and storage

– Polluting the already controversial and ineffective Climate Solutions Fund by creating a “base-line” that industry experts suggest will allow big polluters to increase their emissions and get paid for doing so.'

– Delaying critical energy market rule changes and reforms that might have encouraged smart new technologies such as battery storage and demand management, and end the rorting of the current system by incumbent coal, gas and hydro generators.

– Pushing the case for gas and CCS in a “technology investment roadmap” that otherwise clearly identifies wind, solar, storage and other technologies such as EVs, heat pumps, energy efficiency and demand management as the cheapest and most reliable options.

However, none of these quite reaches the breadth, depth and cynicism of the so-called Covid-Commission, which appears entirely possessed with the narrow interests of the gas industry, from where many of these commissioners have emerged.


Read more of this Renew Economy story

Major U.S. cities are leaking methane (Natural Gas) at twice the rate previously believed

Natural gas, long touted as a cleaner burning alternative to coal, has a leakage problem. A new study has found that leaks of methane, the main ingredient in natural gas and itself a potent greenhouse gas, are twice as big as official tallies suggest in major cities along the U.S. eastern seaboard. The study suggests many of these fugitive leaks come from homes and businesses—and could represent a far bigger problem than leaks from the industrial extraction of the fossil fuel itself.

“This is an issue that people tend to ignore when trying to estimate methane emissions,” says Kathryn McKain, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, who wasn’t involved in the new research. When compared with the global amount of natural and human-driven methane emissions, she notes, “These emissions are small, but they’re preventable.”

Read the ScienceMag article