General
Five environmental fights to watch in 2020
Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill
The Trump administration is pushing ahead with their broad regulatory rollback, while on Capitol Hill House Democrats are looking to pass legislation on their ambitious clean energy agenda.
How Democrats decided climate change was a campaign issue
Abby Smith, Washington Examiner
Democratic presidential candidates are talking about climate change with increasing urgency as they fight for the party’s 2020 bid, but they’re also still attempting to dodge some of the same political traps as a decade ago.
Sanders says he’ll enact national drinking water standards
Holly Ramer, The Associated Press
He said as president, he will create national clean water standards for PFAS and other chemicals in an effort to guarantee clean drinking water “as a human right.”
Carlos Ghosn, Fugitive but a Favorite Son, Returns to Beirut
Vivian Yee and Hwaida Saad, The New York Times
Mr. Ghosn, the former chairman of Nissan, has abruptly announced that he is in Beirut, where he grew up, after escaping Tokyo, where he was set to stand trial next year on charges of financial wrongdoing.
Oil starts 2020 higher on trade optimism, Mideast tensions
Ahmad Ghaddar, Reuters
Oil prices rose to begin the new year on Thursday buoyed by signs of improving trade relations between the United States and China which eased demand concerns and rising tensions in the Middle East.
Oil and Natural Gas
U.S. shale producers to tap brakes in 2020 after years of rapid growth
Jennifer Hiller and Liz Hampton, Reuters
Vastly slower U.S. oil growth this year and the prospect of a plateau for the world’s top oil producer have signaled a new and unfamiliar era of self-restraint for the go-go shale industry.
Energy Producers’ New Year’s Resolution: Pay the Tab for the Shale Drilling Bonanza
Ryan Dezember, The Wall Street Journal
North American oil-and-gas companies have more than $200 billion of debt maturing over the next four years, starting with more than $40 billion in 2020, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
FERC makes Cal-ISO gas constraint tool permanent as Aliso Canyon limitations persist
Jasmin Melvin, S&P Global Platts
When conditions warrant, the constraint allows Cal-ISO to limit the amount of natural gas that can be burned by power plants in the Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric regions.
Utilities and Infrastructure
Amid shut-off woes, a beacon of energy
Scott Wilson, The Washington Post
The Blue Lake Rancheria tribe has constructed a microgrid on its 100-acre reservation, a complex of solar panels, storage batteries and distribution lines that operates as part of the broader utility network or completely independent of it.
Judge allows California’s shift to energy saving light bulbs
Don Thompson, The Associated Press
U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller of Sacramento rejected a petition from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the American Lighting Association to temporarily block new minimum efficiency standards for light bulbs that the California Energy Commission adopted in November.
FERC’s ‘Rifts’ Only Widened in 2019
Michael Brooks, RTO Insider
The party-line feud between FERC’s commissioners over whether to consider GHG emissions in its reviews of natural gas infrastructure continued to increase tension at the commission last year.
US electric sales to pivot in 2020s on electric vehicles, solar PV
Garrett Hering, S&P Global Platts
After a decade of soft to diminishing sales of electricity, US utilities could see a sustained rebound in the 2020s.
Renewables
U.S. auto safety agency to investigate fatal Tesla crash in California
David Shepardson, Reuters
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said earlier this month it had opened an investigation into a 12th Tesla crash that may be tied to the vehicle’s advanced Autopilot driver assistance system after a Tesla Model 3 rear-ended a parked police car in Connecticut.
Tesla Turns to China With U.S. Tax Credit Ending
Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal
The end of the U.S. tax credit on Jan. 1 for the company’s customers comes as Tesla’s future growth increasingly looks tied to China, where it began this week delivering the first of its locally made Model 3 compact cars.
Coal
The Hartford cites climate change as it limits insurance coverage of businesses with stake in coal and tar sands
Stephen Singer, Hartford Courant
The insurer is halting coverage of companies that post 25% or more in revenue from thermal coal mining and more than 25% of energy production from coal. It also will not write policies or make investments in companies that generate more than 25% of revenue directly from extracting oil from tar sands.
Nuclear
Hiring at Hanford lab targets dangerous radioactive waste
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
The initial staff has arrived at the Analytical Laboratory, the first of the four major facilities at the Hanford $17 billion vitrification plant to have a Washington state permit to operate.
Climate
Volkswagen starts settlement talks with German consumer groups over diesel scandal
Edward Taylor, Reuters
In 2015 the carmaker admitted to using manipulated engine management software to mask excessive pollution levels in its diesel cars, sparking a raft of prosecutions and lawsuits that have led to at least 30 billion euros in legal costs and fines.
Amazon threatens to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental policies
Jay Greene, The Washington Post
A lawyer in the e-commerce giant’s employee-relations group sent a letter to two workers quoted in an October Washington Post report, accusing them of violating the company’s external communications policy.
California eases way for land clearing to prevent wildfires
Don Thompson, The Associated Press
California regulators said Tuesday that they have streamlined the state’s permit process to make it faster to approve tree-thinning projects designed to slow massive wildfires that have devastated communities in recent years.
The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn.
Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post
By the final year of the decade, the planet had surpassed its 2010 temperature record five times. Hurricanes devastated New Jersey and Puerto Rico, and floods damaged the Midwest and Bangladesh.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Latest Arctic Lease Sale Harbinger of Bad Returns for Taxpayers
Autumn Hanna, Morning Consult
Last month, the federal government held its annual auction for oil and gas development leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska located on Alaska’s North Slope. These sales provide some measure of how well (or poorly) the feds are managing taxpayer-owned resources.
Save Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from loggers in climate change fight
Jane Fonda, USA Today
I’ve been in Washington, D.C., for the last three months doing weekly actions called Fire Drill Fridays — because what 97% of active climate scientists are saying scares me, and I feel the need to do more.
The decade we won our energy independence
Harold Hamm, Washington Examiner
As we usher in a new decade, I have been reflecting on certain moments in time that will be etched in the history of energy. I believe these past 10 years will prove to be one of the most momentous decades in the history of the United States.
A Decade of Turmoil: How Nuclear and Coal Have Struggled to Survive
Aaron Larson, Power
From accidents to plant closures there has been little to cheer about. Still, nuclear and coal power continue to provide reliable baseload generation to billions of customers around the globe
A Decade of Climate Science Confirmed What We Already Knew
Faye Flam, Bloomberg
There has been, for many years, an understanding that a warmer world would be a more temperamental one, and measurements upon measurements show the average temperature is rising in step with those predictions.
Research Reports
The past and future of global river ice
Xiao Yang et al., Nature
Our results show that, globally, river ice is measurably declining and will continue to decline linearly with projected increases in surface air temperature towards the end of this century.
|
