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| Union of Concerned Scientists,Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy,Union of Concerned Scientists - Food and Agriculture,Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming,Union of Concerned Scientists - Science and Democracy,Union of Concerned Scientists - Science Communication,Union of Concerned Scientists - Scientific Integrity,Union of Concerned Scientists - Tropical Forests,Union of Concerned Scientists - Nuclear Power,Union of Concerned Scientists - Nuclear Weapons,Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles,Union of Concerned Scientists - Water,Union of Concerned Scientists - Biofuel |
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A Call for Climate Justice at the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · This week, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (IACHR) started to hear testimony at the University of the West Indies, near Bridgetown, Barbados, addressing one of the most pressing global issues of our time: climate change and its implications on human rights. Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Research Scientist Carly Philips (pictured on the left above) testified on April 24. With dozens testifying over three packed days, the court heard powerful statements focused on impacts to small nation-states, connections between climate and health, calls for intergenerational justice, and - the focus of UCS’s input - state obligations to reduce corporate emissions. All testimony was ... Read more ...
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What Fixed Charges on Your Electric Bill Could Mean for Charging an EV in California - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Residential electricity rates for many Californians have increased significantly over the last year, making it more expensive to charge an electric vehicle (EV) at home. It’s still cheaper to recharge an EV than buy gasoline, but those savings have been eroded by surging electric rates.
Prompted by a state law, California’s utility regulator has proposed to change the way electricity is billed by adding a fixed monthly charge to all rate plans and making a corresponding reduction to the cost for each unit of electricity used.
Transportation is the largest sector for climate changing emissions, so it’s important that we transition our cars and trucks from gasoline to ... Read more ...
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Earth Day 2024: The Climate Benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act Are Worth Celebrating - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · Leading up to Earth Day this year, I’ve been reflecting on the meaning and purpose of the annual celebration. Earth Day began under the Nixon Administration in 1970 as a day to support environmental protection and has grown to include nations and communities around the world in appreciation of Mother Earth.
Of course, like any other holiday, there have been instances of co-optation where big polluters seek to cover up their dirty deeds and greenwash their image by sponsoring Earth Day festivities. But I’m looking to celebrate the positives.
I’ve been to my fair share of trash cleanups, concerts, and craft fairs, but this year there’s one big policy I want to focus on ... Read more ...
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Earth Day Is a Day to Celebrate the Environmental Progress We’ve Made in Recent Years - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Earth Day each year marks an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come as a society. Personally, I find it an exhilarating time to be part of the U.S. environmental movement that birthed Earth Day out of outrage over rampant use of toxic chemicals.
To address the global environmental and equity crisis of our generation, in the past three years Congress has passed two significant pieces of legislation advanced by the Biden administration that contain the most climate funding in the nation’s history: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). However, Congress has stubbornly refused to pass legislation that slashes carbon emissions ... Read more ...
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Fossil Fuel Companies Make Billions in Profit as We Suffer Billions in Losses: 2024 Edition - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Above: Lahaina, Hawai’i after the devastating August 2023 wildfire that killed more than 100 people and destroyed 2,700 homes.
Last year, I wrote that fossil fuel companies made billions of dollars in profit during 2022 as people around the world suffered billions of dollars in damage from climate and weather related disasters. The climate impacts people around the world experience are connected to the fossil fuel industry’s record-breaking profits:
“The profits made by the oil and gas majors come at the direct expense of all of us and our shared planet. These companies continue to extract more fossil fuels from the ground, lobby for their interests, deceive and ... Read more ...
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What’s Stalling the Transition to a Modern Electricity Grid? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Much of our electricity system is 50 to 70 years old, yet current plans for domestic manufacturing, electric vehicle fleets, community solar gardens and more clean energy all depend on a modern grid. New demands for electricity and the need to reduce climate-changing emissions are driving new grid planning efforts. The obstacles to new technology and more effective investments need to be addressed. How we do this, and how well it happens, depends on planning and collaboration across local, state and federal government.
The ability of the current US power grid to handle growth in electricity demand is in doubt. We are already having blackouts in extreme cold-weather, due to ... Read more ...
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The Gas Utility Industry is Gaslighting Us - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · During my first decade in Washington, D.C., my windows were caked with soot from the diesel buses that ran up and down my street. So when I found a place to live just a few blocks away on a street without buses, it was a relief. What I didn’t know is that my health was still at risk - from indoor pollution.
Thanks to a recent test conducted by my local Sierra Club chapter, I learned that the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions from the hoodless gas stove I’ve been cooking on for the last 30 years in my poorly ventilated galley kitchen exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum safe level of 100 parts per billion (ppb) for a one-hour exposure outdoors. (There is no EPA ... Read more ...
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Swiss Women Lead the Way in Historic Climate Justice Victory - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · In a pivotal week for environmental justice, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, delivered rulings on three climate cases. A landmark ruling in the Swiss Women’s case criticized governments for not acting in line with science and unequivocally stated that inadequate government action on climate change constitutes a violation of human rights. The other two cases were dismissed due to procedural issues, not due to the merits of the cases. The ECHR rejects as inadmissible approximately 90 percent of all cases brought before it.
Below, I detail some of the key aspects of each case and outline how the courts ruled. Looking at each of these rulings, it’s ... Read more ...
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As its Lone Climate Scientist Board Member Departs, ExxonMobil Still Heads in the Wrong Direction - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 4) |
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Apr 4 · As ExxonMobil prepares for its annual general meeting (AGM) this spring, the corporation is facing calls to drop an unprecedented lawsuit against shareholders who are asking for deeper global warming emissions reductions. There has been comparatively less attention to the decision by climate scientist Dr. Susan Avery not to seek re-election to the ExxonMobil board of directors. Yet this shift in corporate leadership is significant, marking the end of a chapter in ExxonMobil’s long and ongoing history of climate deception and disinformation.
Here’s a primer on why a climate scientist was on ExxonMobil’s board, what Dr. Avery accomplished during her tenure, and how ... Read more ...
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The Fossil Fuel Industry Continues Producing Heat-Trapping Emissions that Drive Climate Change - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 3) |
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Apr 3 · A new dataset released by InfluenceMap provides information on heat-trapping emissions traced to the 122 largest investor and state-owned fossil fuel companies in the world. Fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change and the terrifying effects of it that we see happening across the world. That makes this dataset a powerful tool for understanding how each of these entity’s heat-trapping emissions have contributed to climate change.
I have been working with this new InfluenceMap dataset in my own research, and here I’ll share how I’m using it and offer a look at heat-trapping emissions from five major investor-owned fossil fuel companies: ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ... Read more ...
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Women in a Transportation System Designed for Men - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Apr 2) |
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Apr 2 · At some point as a bright-eyed kid who loved STEM, I was told to “draw an engineer”. You can probably guess what happened. My little stick figure came with a hard hat, a wrench, and no indication of them being a woman. This matches over 50 years of research showing children drawing only 27% of scientists as female, with similar trends for drawing engineers. And when children don’t imagine women as engineers and scientists, that directly shapes the future. This already shows up with severe underrepresentation of women in civil engineering (16%) and the transportation industry as a whole (14.5%).
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the many ways sexism pervades ... Read more ...
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A Handy New Chart Shows Clean Energy’s Remarkable Progress - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Apr 2) |
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Apr 2 · Spring is a glorious time for renewable energy. Whatever the weather in March and beyond - in-like-a-lion blustery or out-like-a-lamb sunny - spring tends to be a season of strong electricity production from solar and wind in particular. Spring is also a glorious time for taking stock, since the official data on the previous year’s US electricity generation become available. And, this spring, that clean energy production is looking more impressive than ever.
A new graphic from the Union of Concerned Scientists charts the portion of electricity coming from solar and wind over time in the United States. Drawing on data from the US Energy Information Administration, it depicts ... Read more ...
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What’s the Role of the Land Carbon Sink in Achieving US Climate Goals? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 2) |
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Apr 2 · The longevity of naturally occurring carbon sinks, like those in Earth’s forests, is a key part of all modeled and projected pathways to net-zero. Without the considerable carbon absorption capacity of our lands (and oceans), we’d currently have much more CO2 in the atmosphere and an accelerated timeline of warming.
But the complexities of the interactions between the land and atmosphere, especially in a rapidly changing climate, are challenging to model, leading to uncertainty around the magnitude and persistence of this critical carbon sink. I dug into this complexity with my energy colleagues in the context of their recent analysis of pathways for how the US can meet its ... Read more ...
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EPA Grant Program Helps to Accelerate Transition to Cleaner Ports - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Apr 1) |
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Apr 1 · Air pollution from ports comes from many sources: ships, trains, tugboats, cargo equipment, and – quite importantly – the trucks that move cargo containers to and from ports. The vehicles, vessels, and equipment that move our freight create hot spots of some of the worst air quality in the country and contribute significantly to climate change. However, zero-emission options for these workhorses of the economy are growing rapidly and some ports are beginning to move towards cleaner operations.
To accelerate the much-needed transition to cleaner ports nationwide, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the Clean Ports Program (CPP), which provides $3 billion for ... Read more ...
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Four Reasons You Should Care about California Snow - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Apr 1) |
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Apr 1 · Last week, I visited Yosemite National Park and walked along a gorgeous trail surrounded by snow-blanketed sequoia trees. Beyond the horizon of pine trees to the south lies the Sierra National Forest, and beyond the rocky horizon to the north lies the Stanislaus National Forest. Further beyond these national forests lies the rest of the expansive Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, spanning 400 miles.
Tomorrow, April 2nd, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) will perform the last open-to-the-media snow survey of the year. These seasonal snow surveys offer a health check-up for our water system. If you’re a precipitation nerd, you can follow the livestream here.
The ... Read more ...
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EPA’s Final 2027-2032 Truck Rule Risks Leaving Communities Behind - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 29) |
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Mar 29 · The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just finalized its Phase 3 greenhouse gas regulation as a part of the administration’s plan to decarbonize the transportation sector. The Phase 3 regulation will cut new greenhouse gas emissions from trucks in 2032 by 32 to 62 percent for vocational trucks (e.g., refuse, delivery vans, school and transit buses) and 9 to 40 percent for tractor-trailers, compared to the current 2024 standards. We could also see up to 623,000 electric trucks on the road in this time period, with zero-emission trucks making up over one third of all new truck sales by 2032, according to our analysis…but that number is highly dependent on manufacturer compliance ... Read more ...
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Everything You Need to Know about EPA’s New Clean Car Emissions Standards - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 26) |
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Mar 26 · Last week, the Biden Administration finalized the newest, and strongest, set of vehicle emissions standards for new passenger cars and trucks. These new rules apply to all auto manufacturers and only affect new vehicle sales. They will go into effect in model year 2027 and steadily increase in stringency through model year 2032. Here’s what you need to know:
Transportation is the largest source of climate emissions in the US (29 percent) and passenger cars and trucks account for the majority of this pollution. These new rules represent the largest climate regulatory action ever adopted by EPA and are expected to reduce more than seven billion tons of climate emissions. That’s ... Read more ...
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Paula García Knows Renewable Energy Is for the People - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Mar 26) |
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Mar 26 · “Careful with the plants, careful with the trees, careful with the animals,” her grandfather would repeat.
Traveling to the southern region of Colombia as a young child, Paula García remembers being taught by her elders about the deep interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. During visits, her family would echo the teachings of their ancestors, perspectives that García still carries with her today.
As early as the 1920s, United States-based oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil began exploring and exploiting Colombian oil, starting with ExxonMobil’s acquisition of the Tropical Oil Company of Colombia in 1920. The subsequent decades brought expansion, ... Read more ...
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UCS Testimony on the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Mar 25) |
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Mar 25 · From March 25 to March 27, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is hosting a public hearing on the December 2023 proposed regulations governing implementation of the Section 45V Credit for Production of Clean Hydrogen.
My comments, to be presented on March 27, are copied below. They focus on four key issues from the full set of technical comments UCS submitted to the record in February: correctness of Treasury’s overall approach; necessity of the three-pillars framework; need for updating upstream methane emissions accounting; and concerns over treatment of biomethane and fugitive methane.
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Presented via telephone during the March 27, 2024, public hearing ... Read more ...
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A Trip Down Memory “Train”: A Brief History of Public Transit - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 20) |
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Mar 20 · Being able to get from place to place is the foundation for a thriving community and sets the stage for growing our economy and upward mobility. For more than a century, the United States has recognized this, and maintaining roads and bridges has been a core function of federal, state, and local governments. While public transit is also a key option in getting around, it has suffered from chronic disinvestment despite its many community-wide benefits, and the current system leaves many of us disconnected, especially those who have long been divided by highways and borne the brunt of the cumulative impacts of environmental pollution. The federal government embraced a role in ... Read more ...
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Where Is Truck Charging Needed First? We Have the White House’s Answer - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 20) |
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Mar 20 · The transition to replace the most heavily polluting diesel vehicles on the road with zero-emission models is critical both to avoid the worst effects of climate change and to clean up foul air in freight-adjacent neighborhoods. Indeed, the communities most impacted by local air pollution from freight have been leading the call for the zero-emission freight for decades - you should hear from our partners at the Moving Forward Network (MFN) directly on this (see here and here for starters). Together, we advocate for policies to achieve 100 percent zero emission truck sales by 2035.
I wrote previously about the general categories of where zero-emission electric trucks charge - ... Read more ...
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EPA Strengthens Emissions Controls for Facilities Emitting Cancer-Causing Ethylene Oxide - Union of Concerned Scientists - Scientific Integrity (Mar 18) |
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Mar 18 · Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized updated regulations for certain facilities that emit ethylene oxide (EtO), a colorless, cancer-causing gas. These long-awaited rules will require facilities using EtO to sterilize medical devices and some food products - known as commercial sterilizers - to significantly reduce their emissions of EtO, install additional control equipment, and improve monitoring.
Ethylene oxide is used in chemical manufacturing, as well as sterilization, due to its effectiveness at killing microbes. However, mounting evidence has shown its harms to both workers and community members. Short-term, elevated exposure by inhalation ... Read more ...
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Ask a Scientist: UCS Transportation Program Adds Equitable Mobility to its Portfolio - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 12) |
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Mar 12 · Cars and trucks are a lot cleaner than when I was growing up. In 1963, a typical car - which ran on leaded gasoline without pollution control devices - emitted 520 pounds of hydrocarbons, 1,700 pounds of carbon monoxide, and 90 pounds of nitrogen oxide every 10,000 miles traveled. In 1966, vehicles were responsible for nearly 60 percent of the 146 million tons of pollutants discharged into the air across the United States.
Thanks largely to the Clean Air Act, new passenger vehicles are 98 to 99 percent cleaner than they were 60 years ago when it comes to most tailpipe pollutants, including hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulate matter. Even so, ... Read more ...
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Reevaluating the Role of Fossil Gas in a Decarbonizing Grid - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Mar 11) |
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Mar 11 · Fossil gas power plants currently provide the largest source of electricity generation and capacity in the United States. To meet our climate goals and reach net zero emissions by 2050, most studies show that we need to dramatically reduce gas use for generating electricity, heating homes and businesses, and running industrial processes.
But gas power plants have also played an important role in helping to maintain the overall reliability of the electricity grid by meeting peak power demands, such as on hot summer days when people turn on their air conditioners. However, as we replace fossil fuels with clean electricity for heating and transportation to meet our climate goals, ... Read more ...
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Growing Shade Equity, One Tree at a Time - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Mar 11) |
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Mar 11 · Beneath the reputation of Los Angeles as a land of cars, palms, and sunshine lies a reality of stark inequalities - including access to trees and shade. Nearly 20% of L.A.’s urban forest is concentrated where only 1% of the city’s population lives, endangering lower-income communities and people of color with hotter-feeling summers and poor environmental quality. In the US and elsewhere, heat is the biggest weather-related killer, and people who live with less shade are two to three times more likely to suffer from heat-related illness and death.
From one neighborhood to the next, heat is not experienced evenly. That’s because every neighborhood is made up of a unique ... Read more ...
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More Transportation Choices Lead to Better Health, Better Communities, and a Healthier Planet - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 11) |
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Mar 11 · One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting with my mother on a Chicago Transit Authority bus, headed to spend a summer day on Lake Michigan. In fact, images of transportation often come to mind when I think about growing up: Morning walks to elementary school; riding my bicycle around the New Jersey suburb I moved to before third grade; taking a high school sweetheart on the NJ Transit train to an outdoor concert in Manhattan; driving my friends to the beach for our after-prom weekend.
In my professional life, I have been driven by the recognition that - whether a train, bus, bike, sidewalk, or car - transportation is a means to independence.
Unfortunately, ... Read more ...
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The US Supreme Court is Operating Like a Rogue EPA - Union of Concerned Scientists - Scientific Integrity (Mar 10) |
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Mar 10 · The US Supreme Court seems to have appointed itself as a rogue Environmental Protection Agency, seeking to protect polluters rather than the public.
The latest evidence comes in the arguments the court heard last month in the challenge by Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia to the Biden administration’s “good neighbor” plan. The plan cuts power plant and industrial ozone pollution that wafts from central parts of the nation into eastern states.
According to the American Lung Association, nearly 120 million people in the nation - one of every three - lives with unhealthy levels of particle and ozone pollution. The White House says its plan would decrease asthma symptoms for ... Read more ...
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EVs Are at a Turning Point, It May Not Be What You Think - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Mar 7) |
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Mar 7 · There’s been a lot of nay-saying around EVs lately, including, amongst other things, worries that EV sales are stalling out now that all the early adopters have already made the switch and mainstream buyers aren’t ready to dive in. I wouldn’t blame you if you thought nobody was buying EVs or that sales were about to plummet. While there are some near term headwinds, I’ve never had as much confidence in the ability to zero out tailpipe emissions from our cars and trucks. Here’s why I’m optimistic:
2023 was a milestone year for electric car sales in the US. For the first time ever, annual sales surpassed one million vehicles, accounting for more than seven percent of new ... Read more ...
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Wildfire Threat to Texas Nuclear Weapons Facility Highlights Intersecting Risks - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Mar 7) |
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Mar 7 · Last week, Texas’s Windy Deuce Fire, one of several large fires that broke out in the state’s panhandle region, passed within a few miles of a nuclear weapons facility and necessitated an emergency evacuation of nonessential employees. The immediate threat of wildfire to the Pantex nuclear facility, at which nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled, has passed for now. But is it normal for a wildfire to be burning in Texas in February? What role is climate change playing? And with wildfires growing more severe and burning larger areas, how many other nuclear facilities are at risk?
As climate change increases the frequency or intensity of extreme events such as ... Read more ...
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EPA Finalizes Critical Chemical Disaster Prevention Rules - Union of Concerned Scientists - Scientific Integrity (Mar 4) |
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Mar 4 · On Friday, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued long-awaited regulations to strengthen the Risk Management Program (RMP). The RMP requires roughly 12,000 industrial facilities that use or store extremely hazardous substances to develop Risk Management Plans that identify prevention and response measures for chemical releases. The new rule restores critical disaster planning and prevention protections under the program after it was gutted in 2019 under the Trump administration.
The RMP was first established in 1996 and in the nearly 30 years since, the program has been subject to political tug-of-war. After the Biden-Harris administration took office, the EPA ... Read more ...
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A New EPA Plan Offers a Roadmap on Environmental Justice and Cumulative Impacts - Union of Concerned Scientists - Scientific Integrity (Feb 29) |
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Feb 29 · In a past blogpost, I described the concept of “cumulative impacts” as a doctor visit in which, rather than getting a quick screening of one issue, a patient receives a holistic assessment and treatment. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just released an updated 2023 Equity Action Plan explaining how the agency intends to “imbed equity, civil rights, and environmental justice” into all aspects of its work.
Part of this plan discusses the agency’s priorities on cumulative impacts, which it defines as “the totality of exposures to combinations of chemical and nonchemical stressors and their effects on health, well-being, and quality of life outcomes.” A close look can ... Read more ...
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Investing in Public Transit Is Investing in Public Health - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Feb 28) |
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Feb 28 · Last week, I interviewed a patient who was hospitalized for severe and persistent asthma attacks. Ms. S had been perfectly healthy until her respiratory symptoms commenced one year ago. She described her struggle to breathe on her worst days as feeling as though “an elephant was sitting on her chest.” I asked about smoking history and exposure to any potential indoor irritants (i.e. dust, mold), all of which she denied. Perplexed, I then thought to ask her about environmental exposures. She noted that she moved to a new apartment around the time her symptoms began. Suspecting a connection, I inquired about the location of her apartment and traffic congestion in the area. Ms. S ... Read more ...
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California Regulators Increased Their Clean Energy Ambition. Will They Deliver? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Feb 15) |
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Feb 15 · Today, California took another important step in planning for the transition to clean energy, a step that’s been a long time coming.
To reach the state’s goals of 100% clean electricity and economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2045, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has been tasked with planning the clean electricity transition via its Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process. The CPUC has a significant amount of discretion over the process; for example, the CPUC can choose to what extent and by when electricity providers must reduce their emissions.
Which brings me to the biggest news of the day: at long last, the CPUC has set an even more ambitious ... Read more ...
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Something Stinks: California Must End Manure Biomethane Accounting Gimmicks in its Low Carbon Fuel Standard - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Feb 15) |
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Feb 15 · California’s transportation fuel policy is knee deep in cow poop, and it’s not a good look. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is considering amendments to its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) regulation, but indicated they have no plans to address the problems caused by counter-productive subsidies for manure biomethane. CARB’s use of the LCFS as a cash cow to fund manure digesters is bad transportation fuel policy and bad agricultural policy. Accounting gimmicks disguise a poorly run offset scheme as a magic carbon negative climate solution. CARB needs to phase out credits for “avoided methane pollution,” refocus the LCFS on transportation and get to work developing a more ... Read more ...
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Ohio Ratepayers Shouldn’t Have to Pay for Money-Losing Coal Plants - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Feb 15) |
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Feb 15 · Large numbers of coal plants in the United States have been closing for quite some time now due to the declining economics of coal-fired power. It doesn’t make financial sense for many coal plants stay open due to competition from more affordable clean resources - such as wind and solar - as well as from other fossil fuel power plants, such as those fired by methane gas.
But what if I told you that some coal plants are able to continue operating - and continue polluting - with little to no regard for how much money they’re losing? And further, what if I told you that these coal plants have been operating since the 1950s, and their ability to stay open is being aided by ... Read more ...
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Grid Investments are Critical to Our Clean Energy Future - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Feb 13) |
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Feb 13 · Last November, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released an interdisciplinary study exploring the various pathways to meeting US goals to cut heat-trapping emissions economywide 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050. The good news? It’s doable - and the United States would reap significant health and economic benefits in the process. The simple fact is that ditching fossil fuels for low-cost clean energy resources is good for the planet, good for the US economy, and good for public health.
But achieving this goal will have its challenges. It will take an unprecedented level of coordinated investment across all ... Read more ...
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Plug-in Hybrids: Are They Really a Solution to Reducing Emissions? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Feb 12) |
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Feb 12 · It’s immediately clear how fully-electric battery electric vehicles (BEVs) can help reduce emissions; eliminating gasoline and tailpipes in favor of increasingly clean electricity helps limit both climate change and air pollution. Plug-in hybrids are a bit more complicated. A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (or PHEV) has both a gasoline engine and one or more battery-powered electric motors. The battery in a PHEV can be charged using grid electricity just like a fully electric vehicle but a PHEV can continue driving when the battery is low on charge by switching to the gasoline engine (either to generate electricity for the motors or to directly drive the wheels).
Recently ... Read more ...
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Ask a Scientist: Gas Plants Disproportionately Harm Marginalized Communities - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Feb 8) |
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Feb 8 · Just how bad is fossil “natural” gas?
Its primary component is methane. Responsible for 12 percent of all US global warming emissions from human activities, methane traps significantly more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide, making it 86 times more harmful for the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. And, as it turns out, the infrastructure used to produce, store, distribute, transmit, and burn gas leaks like a sieve, making gas as bad as coal for the climate.
Gas, which now generates 40 percent of US electricity, is considered by some to be critical to maintain grid reliability. But in fact, gas power plants are unreliable in extreme ... Read more ...
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Banks Continue to Prop Up the Fossil Fuel Industry - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Feb 5) |
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Feb 5 · The hypocrisy of the world’s biggest banks on climate change keeps mounting. Last month, the British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported that London-based HSBC, one of the world’s top-10 biggest banks, has helped raise $47 billion for the fossil fuel industry since its 2022 announcement that it would not finance new gas and oil infrastructure.
Some of HSBC’s dealings were on behalf of Saudi Aramco, the world’s second-ranked company in Fortune’s Global 500 and often dubbed the world’s biggest polluter for being the largest corporate emitter of greenhouse gases. In response to the report, the bank told TBIJ that its investments remain “science-based,” under ... Read more ...
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The Serious Risks Around Treatment of Biomethane in 45V - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Feb 2) |
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Feb 2 · In December, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service proposed regulations governing implementation of the 45V Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit, passed as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.
A substantial portion of the guidance and supporting materials is dedicated to electrolytic production of hydrogen; i.e., using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. I break down key aspects of the proposal’s electrolyzer requirements, including the rigor of its core organizing framework and the risks posed by possible compliance flexibilities, in a separate blogpost, found here.
But electrolysis isn’t the only hydrogen production pathway ... Read more ...
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