Biden’s tough call, a fossil fuel milestone, and Long Island beaches
On home renovations, natural gas consumption, and nitrogen pollution.
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Whether you are roasting in a muggy room of your home, working your air conditioner overtime, or chilling on a beach somewhere, I have three stories out this week that should matter to you.
The first has to do with how the Biden administration plans to spend the $4.3 billion earmarked in the Inflation Reduction Act to pay back homeowners for renovations that reduce energy waste.
The money, in the form of tax rebates, will go through state energy offices. But first, federal regulators need to decide whether they want states to actually measure and maximize the energy savings – or just get the money out the door as quickly as possible.
With the exception of California, existing state programs to give out money for energy-saving home improvements rely on what’s called “modeled” projections. Essentially, a contractor comes in and plugs some numbers into a computer program to forecast how much energy some insulation here or new windows there might save. Then the state uses that number to decide how much money to give you and the contractor for the makeover. If the renovations don’t actually save any money, better luck next time.
The alternative is what’s called a “measured” program, where rebates go out based on how much energy households actually conserve. These types of programs are more than twice as effective, but require data to set a baseline against which post-renovation savings can be assessed. And utilities rarely make it easy to get that data.
This is what makes the Energy Department’s forthcoming rules so important. Depending on how the federal regulators write them, the guidelines could make a measured program easy to pursue, or stack the decks in favor of the modeled approach.
There are a bunch of ways this could go down, but three sources with knowledge of the Biden administration’s draft plans told me the Energy Department is considering steps that would effectively kill any hope of a nationwide revolution in measuring and saving energy.
You can read the full story here on HuffPost.
The second story has to do with how much natural gas the U.S. is consuming. The country is poised to burn a record amount of the fuel this summer to produce enough electricity to power the air conditioners needed to keep people safe from extreme heat... which is in turn getting worse thanks to emissions from natural gas.
It’s all part of the fracking boom that in the past year saw the U.S. become the world’s top producer and exporter. You may remember the chart I sent out last week on liquefied natural gas exports. Check out this one, also from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:
Natural gas produces less carbon than coal. But the methane that is its main ingredient is a super-potent greenhouse gas that traps 86 times more heat than CO2 during the first two decades it’s circulating in the atmosphere. When it leaks, The New York Times reported this week, it can be worse than coal.
You can read the full story here on HuffPost.
The third story is about how partisan politics on Long Island are making a water crisis worse. (Sorry, this has nothing to do with the Gilgo Beach serial killer).
Suffolk County was poised to hold a referendum this November on whether to raise sales taxes by about 12 cents per $100 to create a fund that would subsidize installations of “advanced” septic tanks and expand sewer systems.
This is a vital step to not only deal with flooding, but to stem the flow of nitrogen from septic tanks into the waterways that make the eastern half of Long Island a desirable place to go. Already, Suffolk County suffers from blooms of blue-green algae – so toxic it kills elephants – at twice the frequency of any other county in New York. The pollution threatens beaches, kills fish by the thousands, and contaminates the aquifer that provides drinking water to these densely-populated suburbs.
Earlier this month, however, the Republicans who control 11 of the 18 seats in the county Legislature yanked the referendum from November’s ballot. The reason, according to insiders and critics, is completely political. Right wingers, particularly in the Conservative Party that typically co-endorses candidates with the Republicans, worried that an environmental ballot measure would drive more Democrats to turn out to vote in an off-year election.
Is that a valid concern? Last year, Republican Lee Zeldin handily won the governor’s race in his home county with more than 58% of the vote, even as a referendum on a $4 billion environmental bond act passed with nearly 64% approval. That “would seem to belie the theory that environmental initiatives inspire party-line voting,” wrote Newsday opinion columnist Michael Dobie.
But the GOP scrapped the referendum anyway. If they don’t reverse that decision by a special legal procedure at the July 25 general session, Suffolk County will need to start the whole process over, going back to the state next year for permission to hold a referendum. Assuming it works, and voters pass the measure, it could be years late. By then, the county may have lost access to state and federal matching funds for which it is only eligible if it does something like what this referendum would do.
You can read that story, too, here on HuffPost.
Directionalists back any solution that takes us towards the final goal. In climate, this means they support anything that puts a notable dent in emissions. Destinationists are less flexible: they have an ideal outcome in mind. They block and reject anything that doesn’t fit their perfect vision. If they want to see a car-less world, they push against electric vehicles (EVs), even if they would cut emissions by a lot.
Destinationalism is a problem.
–Our World in Data’s Hannah Ritchie in The Guardian
Telecoms are causing the latest lead crisis. A big new investigation in The Wall Street Journal found aging cables owned by AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants are decaying and leaching lead into waterways where people fish and swim. The problem is particularly bad in Louisiana.
Congress is eyeing permitting reform again. Last Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told colleagues in a letter that he wants to “unlock permitting reform” by August recess. E&E News reports that there’s some support from Republicans in the House.
Cry wolf, get paid. A California Fish and Wildlife program is paying ranchers millions to compensate for lost livestock and protections against wolves, part of an effort to allow the canids’ population to rebound without giving the go ahead to shoot them like in neighboring states, Ambrook Research reports.
Exxon Mobil buys into the CO2 pipeline business. The oil giant just agreed to spent nearly $5 billion to buy Denbury, the operator of the United States’ largest network of carbon dioxide pipelines. The Associated Press has more details, and here’s the press release.
Big Oil is advertising against electric vehicles. Drilled got its hands on an Exxon Mobil ad depicting internal combustion engines as a way to “unplug” and find freedom. Hmm.
Problems mount for a nuclear storage site in New Mexico. A new lawsuit, reported on here by the independent nonprofit newsroom Source NM, accuses nuclear giant Holtec International of making “false” statements in its controversial proposal to build a storage facility for radioactive waste in the state.
‘Free speech or interference?’ That’s how the Nevada Independent is framing the two sides of a lawsuit filed by Lithium Americas against protesters fighting to prevent mining in Nevada’s Thacker Pass.
Thank you for your time and attention. If this newsletter didn’t earn it, maybe this song recommendation will.
Signing off from humid Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where our Yemeni neighbors are mourning the death of 86-year-old Hamoud Saeidi, who was shot and killed at random by a 25-year-old gunman who shot the father of six, grandfather of 30 and great-grandfather of 31 in the back and left him to die on the sidewalk in Jamaica, Queens. May his memory be a blessing.