Frackers Are Losing $1.5 Billion Yearly to Leaks

Leaky pipes are the "super low-hanging fruit" of climate change.

Sean Garrett/Flickr

Of all the many and varied consequences of fracking (water contamination, injured workers, earthquakes, the list goes on) one of the least understood is so-called "fugitive" methane emissions. Methane is the primary ingredient of natural gas, and it escapes into the atmosphere at every stage of production: at wells, in processing plants, and in pipes on its way to your house. According to a new study, it could become one of the worst climate impacts of the fracking boom-and yet, it's one of the easiest to tackle right away. Best of all, fixing the leaks is good for the bottom line.

According to the World Resources Institute, natural gas producers allow $1.5 billion worth of methane to escape from their operations every year. That might sound like small change to an industry that drilled up some $66.5 billion worth of natural gas in 2012 alone, but it's a big deal for the climate: While methane only makes up 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (20 percent of which comes from cow farts), it packs a global warming punch 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

Courtesy WRI

"Those leaks are everywhere," said WRI analyst James Bradbury, so fixing them would be "super low-hanging fruit."

The problem, he says, is that right now those emissions aren't directly regulated by the EPA. In President Obama's first term, the EPA set new requirements for capturing other types of pollutants that escape from fracked wells, using technology that also, incidentally, limits methane. But without a cap on methane itself, WRI finds, the potent gas is free to escape at incredible rates, principally from leaky pipelines. The scale of the problem is hard to overstate: The Energy Department found that leaking methane could ultimately make natural gas-which purports to be a "clean" fossil fuel-even more damaging than coal, and an earlier WRI study found that fixing methane leaks would be the single biggest step the US could take toward meeting its long-term greenhouse gas reduction goals.

What's more, the solution to the problem doesn't rely on some kind futuristic, expensive technology: It's literally a matter of patching up leaky pipes.

So what's the holdup? For one thing, Bradbury says, that $1.5 billion in savings wouldn't necessarily go to the companies making investments in fixing pipes: Gas inside a pipeline is owned by the producer, but the pipeline itself is owned by an independent operator who might not see any advantage in preventing methane leaks. The other issue is detection: Methane is colorless and can be odorless, so there's no way to know when it's escaping, where, and how fast, without special equipment. Gear to simplify the detection process is beginning to crop up on the market, but without a government mandate there's less incentive for companies to invest in it. And without hard data on much methane they're losing, companies are disinclined to address the problem-especially across all of the nation's 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines.

Or simply unwilling: A recent (debunked) report from the American Natural Gas Alliance claims the methane emissions risk is way over-hyped; an industry spokesperson said current practices were already enough to ensure that "people don't need to trade protection of air, land and water for economic advancement."

This is where the EPA needs to step in, Bradbury says. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA could regulate all greenhouse gas emissions, which would cover not only methane but also the main climate change culprit, CO2. It could, at a minimum, require companies to monitor these emissions. And it could reward companies that take action via recognition in its fracking best-practices program, Natural Gas STAR. Finally, the EPA could provide better support to the state-level agencies that are ultimately responsible for enforcing Clean Air Act rules.

If the president is serious about tackling climate change from the Oval Office, Bradbury said, there could hardly be a better place to start than here.

"We need to be focused on solutions and not take a wait-and-see approach," he said. "You want to get these rules in place at the front end; we're already playing catch-up."

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/04/ypfdow-20130405.htm

http://climatedesk.org/2013/04/frackers-are-losing-1-5-billion-yearly-

The Drought Is Drying Up All Our Ethanol

After getting slammed last summer, ethanol producers are hoping to catch a break-but their fate is far from settled.

BrotherMagneto/Flickr

Bill Pracht has bad memories of last summer. "The drought was so bad here that the corn was just decimated," he recalls of the farm country around Garnett, Kan., where he oversees East Kansas Agri-Energy, an ethanol plant. "Many fields were zero."

In August, corn prices hit their highest level ever, driven mainly by the severe drought that crippled America's corn belt. By October, Pracht could see that he was spending more on corn than he could make with ethanol, and with no relief in sight, he began to have doubts about keeping the plant open.

"We knew we'd be wasting money," he says.

So, he pulled the plug, shuttering the plant and laying off twenty employees until conditions improve enough to make churning out what was until recently one of the nation's fastest-growing fuel sources profitable again. And as the EPA nears a final decision on new regulations that would require oil companies to use more ethanol in their gasoline mixes, Pracht's story illustrates a risk of increasing reliance on corn-based fuels in a warming world.

Pracht isn't alone: Over the last year, nearly 10 percent of the nation's ethanol plants have shut down. Annual corn yields came in almost a third lower than projected, according to the USDA, driving record-high corn prices that are likely to continue to rise into 2013, up to 19 percent higher than 2011-2012 averages. Overall, 2012 was the first year since 1996 (another drought year) in which total ethanol production decreased (by 4.5 percent), reversing a trend of exponential growth that's lasted almost a decade, according to the federal Energy Information Administration:

Tim McDonnell

In February, USDA Chief Economist Joseph Glauber blamed drought for "one of the most unfavorable growing seasons in decades" in testimony before the Senate's Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry in February.

But despite the pain of 2012 and some grim predictions from NOAA about the months ahead (drought could lift in the eastern reaches of the Corn Belt and Pracht's region of Kansas, but worsen elsewhere in the state and to the west), a report on Thursday from the USDA predicts that corn growers will plow into the coming season with gusto: 97.3 million acres of corn are expected to be planted in 2013, up six percent since before the drought and the most acreage since 1936.

Courtesy Bill Pracht

That should be a sign of hope for the ethanol industry, says Joseph Glauber, the USDA's chief economist; if weather conditions improve and the whole crop comes in, corn prices could drop a third by year's end. But he cautions that ethanol ain't out of the woods yet: If conditions like the first three months of 2013 persist, he says, ethanol production could fall by another eight percent this year.

"As much as anything it's related to the drought," he says.

For that reason, last week's USDA report came as a huge relief to Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents the ethanol industry. Dinneen is hopeful the drought improvements NOAA forecasts for Iowa and Minnesota will spread southwest to Nebraska and Kansas, where the forecast is less optimistic.

"In any kind of normal weather year, we'll have a bin-busting season," Dinneen says. "You're always concerned. You don't want to see another [drought], but this is a time of year when everybody's optimistic."

Of course, how the season will pan out is still far from settled. The EIA also projects a further drop in total ethanol production this year of about 0.9 percent, much less severe than Glauber's prediction but enough to highlight the uncertainty producers face going into the summer, and the vulnerability of the ethanol industry to variable climate conditions.

For ethanol, growth is also limited by what's known as the "blend wall;" because only a relatively small fraction of cars can run well on ethanol-based fuel, ethanol can comprise no more than ten percent of the total fuel supply-a ceiling Dinneen says his group is pushing aggressively to raise. At the same time, President Obama signaled last month a desire to shift away from corn ethanol with heavy investments in advanced, non-corn biofuels-from things like municipal solid waste or woody biomass, sources that could prove more resistant to drought than corn-via his proposed Energy Security Trust.

Still, Glauber says, for the time being ethanol eats up forty percent of US corn, which leaves it vulnerable to bad weather and subsequent shifts in grain supplies: "Ethanol is a huge driver of corn demand. All of a sudden, there are much higher corn prices when you have a drought."

As long as climate change is a factor, the EIA reports, more and more ethanol producers are adopting oil recovery methods to squeeze more power out of their corn, increasing the chances of staying profitable in a time of unpredictable weather.

For Bill Pracht, those advances can't come soon enough. He hopes to be able to re-open his plant by September, keeping a skeleton crew on in the meantime so that the plant can spring back into action when the price is right.

"When Mother Nature cooperates," he says, "we'll be able to start it up and get back to where we were before."

http://climatedesk.org/2013/04/the-drought-is-drying-up-all-our-ethano

VIDEO: On the Ground at the BP Gulf Oil Spill Hearings

More than $17 billion is at stake as the civil trial against BP opens in New Orleans.

This week marked the start of the the civil trial against BP over its role in the 2010 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 men and caused the worst spill in US history. District judge Carl Barbier warned of a lengthy trial, one that could last up to 3 months if a deal isn't reached earlier, and if the first three days of the trial are anything to go by, BP is in for a battery of tough questions about its safety record and procedures. As much as $17.5 billion in damages is hinged on the legal question of whether the company was "grossly negligent" in causing the deaths and the subsequent spill. Climate Desk caught up with Dominic Rushe at partner publication, the Guardian, who has been covering the trial as it unfolds.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/02/2909

Top 4 Reasons the US Still Doesn't Have a Single Offshore Wind Turbine

The UK has 870. Germany has 416. So what's stopping us?

"Jack-up" ships like this are needed to drive massive offshore wind turbines into the seafloor. There's not a single one in the US.

Despite massive growth of the offshore wind industry in Europe, a blossoming array of land-based wind turbines stateside, and plenty of wind to spare, the US has yet to sink even one turbine in the ocean. Not exactly the kind of leadership on renewables President Obama called for in his recent State of the Union address.

Light is just beginning to flicker at the end of the tunnel: On Tuesday, outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a gathering of offshore industry leaders he was optimistic the long-embattled Cape Wind project would break ground before year's end. And in early January industry advocates managed to convince Congress to extend a critical tax incentive for another year.

But America's small yet dedicated entrepreneurial corps of offshore developers are still chasing "wet steel," as they call it, while their European and Asian colleagues forge ahead on making offshore wind a basic component of their energy plans. So what's the holdup? Here's a look at the top reasons that offshore wind remains elusive in the US:

1. Begging bucks from Uncle Sam: The industry breathed a sigh of relief this year when Congress re-upped the Production Tax Credit, which recoups wind developers 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of power they produce, and the Incentive Tax Credit, which pays back 30 percent of a wind project's construction costs. It might sound like chump change, but the PTC alone amounts to $1 billion a year, and industry advocates insist that wind would hit the doldrums without these subsidies. Still, they hardly put wind on a level playing field with the lavishly subsidized (and lushly lobbied) fossil fuel industry.

That's especially a problem for offshore wind, says Thierry Aelens, an executive with German developer RWE. Higher construction and transmission costs make electricity from offshore over twice the price of onshore in the US, he says, a tough pill for state regulators and utility operators to swallow, especially given the low cost of natural gas made possible by fracking. Today renewables startups rely heavily on private investment to get off the ground, but the industry needs better financial backing from the feds to help it compete with fossil fuels, Aelens says. "Germany is a fully subsidized system. Which technology get supported is fully in the hands of the government."

"Why would you want to sail in a forest of windmills?"

2. Blowback from "stakeholders": Whale and bird lovers. Defenders of tribal lands. Fishermen. The Koch brothers. Since it was proposed in 2001, Cape Wind, a wind farm whose backers say could provide 75 percent of Cape Cod's energy needs, has been run through a bewildering gauntlet of opponents and fought off more than a dozen lawsuits on everything from boat traffic interference to desecration of sacred sites to harming avian and marine life. Just down the seaboard another major project, Deepwater Wind, had to negotiate concerns that its turbines would throw a roadblock in the migratory pathways of endangered right whales. Alliance for Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind's main opposition group, claims the project "threatens the marine environment and would harm the productive, traditional fisheries of Nantucket Sound."

Last summer's "Cape Spin" is an excellent "tragicomic" rundown of the controversy:

Of course, there's another powerful factor at play here: NIMBYism. No one could put it better than fossil fuel magnate Bill Koch, owner of a $20 million Cape Cod beachfront estate and donor of $1.5 million to ANS: "I don't want this in my backyard. Why would you want to sail in a forest of windmills?"

Why indeed.

But Catherine Bowes, a senior analyst with the National Wildlife Federation, says while there are legitimate concerns for wildlife, Cape Wind and Deepwater have both bent over backwards to accommodate them. "I think there's an attempt at highjacking" the wildlife message by the NIMBYers, she says. "Wildlife issues are often used as a reason to oppose a project even by those who have never cared about animals before." Many of the nation's leading environmental organizations-including NWF, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club-have come out in favor of the project. It's easy to see why, Bowes says: "We know that the biggest threat to wildlife is global warming."

3. Not a single ship in the Unites States is equipped to handle wind turbines: Forget about whales and yacht routes. How the hell do you go about lodging a 450-ton, over 400-ft tall turbine into the ocean floor? Answer: With one massive mother of a boat.

But there's a problem, says Chris van Beek, Deepwater's president: "At this point, there is not an existing vessel in the US that can do this job."

The world's relatively small fleet of turbine-ready ships-500-ft., $200 million behemoths-is docked primarily in Europe; an obscure 1920 law called the Jones Act requires ships sailing between two US ports to be US-flagged, and once the foundation of an offshore turbine is laid it counts as a "port." Consequently, turbine installation ships cruising in from, say, Hamburg, wouldn't be able to dock in the States.

On top of that, given the pittance of offshore projects in the works in the US, bringing the ships in from abroad can be cost-prohibitive. Offshore turbines could find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Weeks Marine of New Jersey is working to solve the problem by building the first country's first turbine ship. They've completed the hull and hope to have the boat seaworthy by 2014, possibly in time to chip in on putting up Cape Wind.

4. States and feds butting heads: The recipe for every offshore wind farm has two essential ingredients: a construction site, and a contract with the electric utility for the developer to sell the farm's power into the grid at a fixed price for a set period of time. In Europe, these go hand-in-hand: Governments auction off sites with the contract thrown in. But in the US, the deep water necessary for wind turbines is managed by the federal Interior Department, while the contracts are awarded by states. So a project could wind up winning the site lease, but getting passed over for the contract, or vice-versa.

"It's fucking nuts," Deepwater CEO Jeff Grybowski says. Even if you sweet-talk a state-Rhode Island, in his case-into signing the purchase contract, "there's a possibility for some other developer to win the land, and then you don't get the project." Since Deepwater and Cape Wind have the only two federal permits for offshore wind, both by the Obama administration, this state-federal tension hasn't been a major issue yet. But as wind lobbyists schmooze their way into statehouses up and down the Atlantic seaboard and score more contracts, the feds will need to rethink how they decide who gets to develop the ocean floor.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/02/top-4-reasons-the-us-still-doesnt-have-

How the US Navy is Leading the Charge on Clean Energy and Climate Change

Damn the do-nothing Congress. The Navy is going full steam ahead on green energy.

USNS Henry J. Kaiser delivers a 50-50 blend of advanced biofuels. Official U.S. Navy Imagery/Flickr

Increasingly, the US Navy is leading the charge towards clean energy, which can in turn impact national security and even climate change. Through investments in biofuels, construction of a more energy-efficient fleet, forward thinking about issues like rising sea levels and a melting Arctic, and commitments to reduce consumption and reliance on foreign oil, the Navy is leading the charge of a vast energy reform effort to "change the way the US military sails, flies, marches, and thinks."

Please join host Chris Mooney for the next installment of Climate Desk Live on Wednesday February 27 at 9:30a.m, where he'll discuss the Navy's charge towards energy independence with Dr. David W. Titley, retired naval officer who led the US Navy's Task Force on Climate Change, Capt. James C. Goudreau, Director, Navy Energy Coordination Office, and Julia Whitty, environmental correspondent for Mother Jones whose cover story on this topic appears in latest issue of the magazine.

Event Details:

Date: February 27, 2013, 9:30 a.m.

Location: University of California Washington Center, 1608 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, Washington, DC

Please RSVP to cdl@climatedesk.org

About Dr. David W. Titley:

Dr. David W. Titley is a nationally known expert in the field of climate, the Arctic, and National Security. He served as a naval officer for 32 years and rose to the rank of Rear Admiral. Dr. Titley's career included duties as Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy and Deputy Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance. While serving in the Pentagon, Dr. Titley initiated and led the US Navy's Task Force on Climate Change. After retiring from the Navy, Dr. Titley served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Operations, the Chief Operating Officer position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Titley has spoken across the country and throughout the world on the importance of climate change as it relates to National Security. He was invited to present on behalf of the Department of Defense at both Congressional Hearings and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meetings from 2009 to 2011.

About Captain James C. Goudreau:

Captain James C. Goudreau serves as the Director of the Navy Energy Coordination Office. His sea duty and overseas assignments include: Assistant Supply Officer onboard USS REASONER (FF 1063) and USS NIMITZ (CVN 68), Supply Officer, USS THE SULLIVANS (DDG 68) and Supply Officer, Joint Maritime Facility, St. Mawgan in Cornwall, United Kingdom. His most recent assignment was as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics at Expeditionary Strike Group Seven and Amphibious Force Seventh Fleet Based in Okinawa, Japan. Captain Goudreau's ashore tours include: Naval Air Station Key West, FL; Naval Inventory Control Point, Philadelphia, PA as the P-3 Weapons Team Lead and Director of Aviation Industrial Support; Fleet and Industrial Supply Center San Diego as Site Director, Fleet Readiness Center Southwest; and Commander, Defense Logistics Agency North Island. Captain Goudreau is a member of the Defense Acquisition Corps (formerly the Acquisition Professional Community) and is qualified as a Naval Aviation Supply Officer and as a Surface Warfare Supply Corps Officer. He has been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (three awards), Navy Commendation Medal (five awards), Navy Achievement Medal (two awards), and various campaign and unit awards.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/02/how-the-us-navys-clean-energy-evolution

After Nebraska Setback, Greens Regroup on Keystone XL

Will Nebraska become a real-life example of losing a battle to win the war?

Duffernutter/Flickr

Environmentalists waging an ongoing fight against the Keystone XL pipeline were dealt a major setback this week when Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman signed off on the pipe's route through his state. Now all that stands between TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, and broken ground is a signature from the State Department, the final decision about which is expected this spring.

Between now and then, the sprawling unofficial coalition of green individuals and groups that have bonded in the last two years over opposition to the pipeline is gearing up for a final push. It's certain to be an uphill battle: Yesterday a letter signed by 53 senators put renewed pressure on Obama to say yes, and other than the rare rhetorical nod to climate action there are few clues that he'll approve the project. So the rhetoric of the next couple months could make or break the pipeline.

Opposition to the Keystone XL has tended to coalesce around two different arguments, the tools in the anti-Keystone toolbelt: The first is that the pipe could deal a deadly blow to the global climate by raising the floodgates for oil from Canada's tar sands, believed by scientists to be one of Earth's dirtiest fuel sources; the second is that the pipe could pose a slew of localized threats on its path from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, from potential leaks contaminating groundwater to careless work crews plowing through fragile dinosaur fossil beds. Governor Heineman's decision seems to close the book on the state-level fight and steal some thunder from the localized argument, but leading Nebraska activist Jane Kleeb says local landowners aren't ready to cede their home turf quite yet.

"Oh yeah, it's far from over. We have landowners asking us to train them in civil disobedience," Kleeb said. "These folks are not joking around. They homesteaded this land. They don't trust this company. And they don't want [the pipeline]. So they're going to do everything they can to keep it from crossing their lines."

Nebraska DEQ; Tim McDonnell

Kleeb says although she's made the global climate case to Nebraskans, in her experience the strongest battle strategy focuses on localized issues. She still has one ace in that hole: a lawsuit in Nebraska Supreme Court brought by a trio of landowners against Gov. Heineman, challenging the constitutionality of the state law that allows him to green-light the pipeline. So far the suit hasn't slowed the governor down, but Kleeb is hopeful that if the case falls in her favor it could throw a wrench in the works, regardless of the State Dept.'s decision. And she continues to trumpet the risk the pipeline poses to water and ecological resources in her state, arguing that the state's official map of the pipeline route misrepresents the size of the Sand Hills, a delicate Nebraska ecosystem that the pipe's original route cut straight through but that the approved route purports to make a point of avoiding (see map).

But David Loope, a geologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says perceived threats to the Sand Hills and Nebraska's Ogallala Aquifer, which the pipe is still plotted to cut across, are overblown.

"I'm conflicted," he says. "I think the pipeline is a terrible idea for global reasons. But the hew and cry coming from Nebraska is pure NIMBYism."

Loope says the global climate change argument against the pipeline is far more honest, and he hopes to see that prevail as the leading opposition rallying cry in Washington, DC. There's a good chance it will: Bill McKibben, the environmentalist who's become the Keystone XL's most public opponent, said in an email that while he'd love to help save Nebraska, putting climate front and center is the best way to save the rest of the world, too: "The fight has always been about whether the president actually means what he says about about fighting climate change. We'll find out."

http://climatedesk.org/2013/01/after-nebraska-setback-greens-regroup-o

VIDEO: Hiking the 1,700-Mile Keystone Pipeline "Trail"

Ken Ilgunas wanted to learn more about the controversial pipeline. So he strapped on a pair of hiking boots and hit the trail.

"I live a pretty unconventional life," Ken Ilgunas tells me, speaking over Skype from a community library in Marion, Kansas. It's a typical understatement for Ilgunas, who has the kind of ultra-low-key demeanor one acquires after many nights in the backcountry by oneself. In September, after a year of minimalist living in his van, Ilgunas, 29, was on the hunt for a new adventure. He'd been following the controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline, heard stories of the landscapes it could jeopardize, and decided the best thing to do would be to go see the thing first-hand. So in September, he found a State Department map, strapped on a pair of good hiking boots, hitchhiked to Canada, and started walking the 1,700-mile route the pipe, if built, will take from the tar sands to ports in the Gulf of Mexico. He expects to finish his journey mid-February; along the way he's encountered frigid cold, charging moose, cows (lots of cows), and plenty of folks who want to keep the pipe out of their backyards.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/01/video-hiking-the-1700-mile-keystone-pip