General
New Jersey governor signs law aimed at protecting poor from pollution
Maria Caspani, Reuters
A landmark environmental justice bill stalled for over a decade became law in New Jersey on Friday.
EPA to Make Another Significant Office Change, Agency Memo Says
Stephen Lee, Bloomberg Law
The EPA is shifting oversight of its continuous improvement office from the agency’s administrator to the chief financial office, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg Law.
Environmental gains during pandemic prove short-lived
Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill
The coronavirus pandemic isn’t having the lasting environmental boost some had hoped for, as emissions tick back up and single-use products like disposable face masks and takeout cutlery clog landfills.
Ginsburg left a long environmental legacy
Alex Guillén, Politico
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday at age 87, helped establish critical Supreme Court precedent that empowered EPA to address the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
Oil Declines on Signs of Libya Restart With Virus Cases Growing
Saket Sundria and Alex Longley, Bloomberg
Oil declined as Libya signaled the resumption of some crude exports, while surging coronavirus cases clouded the outlook for demand and weighed on risky assets.
Oil and Natural Gas
U.S. and European Oil Giants Go Different Ways on Climate Change
Clifford Krauss, The New York Times
While BP and other European companies invest billions in renewable energy, Exxon and Chevron are committed to fossil fuels and betting on moonshots.
Saudi Firms Start Talks to Form $11 Billion Chemicals Maker
Farah Elbahrawy, Bloomberg
Saudi Industrial Investment Group and National Petrochemical Co. started talks to merge, potentially creating a firm with $11 billion in assets as Middle Eastern energy companies assess their options in a lower oil-price environment. The shares climbed.
Oil refiners worldwide struggle with weak demand, inventory glut
Sonali Paul et al., Reuters
Global oil refiners reeling from months of lackluster demand and an abundance of inventories are cutting fuel production into the autumn because the recovery in demand from the impact of coronavirus has stalled, according to executives, refinery workers and industry analysts.
Utilities and Infrastructure
Puerto Rico Utility Perpetrated Fuel Oil Fraud, Customers Say
Alex Wolf, Bloomberg Law
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority knowingly overpaid fuel oil suppliers at ratepayers’ expense and so shouldn’t take over pursuit of the related fraud claims, a class of utility customers says.
Renewables
The Age of Electric Cars Is Dawning Ahead of Schedule
Jack Ewing, The New York Times
Battery prices are dropping faster than expected. Analysts are moving up projections of when an electric vehicle won’t need government incentives to be cheaper than a gasoline model.
Nation’s first freshwater windfarm all but approved as Ohio siting board removes ‘poison pill’
John Funk, Utility Dive
The Ohio Power Siting Board reversed itself Thursday and agreed in a unanimous vote to remove language from a construction permit the Board approved in May that would have required the nation’s first freshwater wind farm to shut down turbines at night eight months out of the year to protect migrating birds and bats.
Russian Indigenous communities are begging Tesla not to get its nickel from this major polluter
Maddie Stone, Grist
Every year in August and September, the people of Ust’-Avam, a remote indigenous community located in the Taimyr region of the Russian Arctic, toss nets into the Avam River to catch tugunok fish, an important traditional food. This year, the community stopped fishing early, around the start of the month. There were no tugunok to be found.
Coal/Nuclear
Rural lawmakers feel betrayed that a Utah power plant gets some of its coal from Colorado
Brian Maffly, The Salt Lake Tribune
Back in the 1980s, Utah lawmakers thought they had “a gentlemen’s agreement” with the then-new Intermountain Power Plant (IPP) outside Delta to exclusively burn coal mined in Utah.
Wyoming wants to keep coal burning. But is carbon capture the answer?
Camille Erickson, Casper Star Tribune
Over the past decade, Wyoming’s coal industry has taken a beating, but this year has proven particularly brutal. Layoffs have whipped through the state at a searing pace, outstripping previous busts and catapulting thousands of families into uncertainty.
Climate
How California Became Ground Zero for Climate Disasters
Christopher Flavelle, The New York Times
The engineering and land management that enabled the state’s tremendous growth have left it more vulnerable to climate shocks — and those shocks are getting worse.
A New York Clock That Told Time Now Tells the Time Remaining
Colin Moynihan, The New York Times
Metronome’s digital clock in Manhattan, has been reprogrammed to illustrate a critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible.
Charleston aims to force fossil fuel companies to pay $2bn to combat climate crisis
Oliver Milman, The Guardian
Charleston, the architectural jewel of the US south, has survived the ravages of revolutionary wars, an earthquake and even a siege waged by the notorious pirate Blackbeard. But the city now needs saving from its largest existential threat yet – the climate crisis.
Tropical Storm Beta to drop a foot of rain in Texas and Louisiana
Jonathan Allen, Reuters
Tropical Storm Beta was predicted to bring a foot of rain to parts of coastal Texas and Louisiana next week as the 23rd named storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season moves ashore on Monday night, the National Hurricane Center said.
Damage from wildfires’ toxic air lingers long after the smoke clears
Katheryn Houghton, Los Angeles Times
When researchers arrived in this town tucked in the Northern Rockies, they could still smell the smoke from devastating wildfires a day after it had cleared. Their plan was to chart how long it took for people to recover from living for seven weeks surrounded by relentless smoke.
Tallying Trump’s climate changes
Ben Geman, Axios
The Trump administration’s scuttling or weakening of key Obama-era climate policies could together add 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent to the atmosphere by 2035, a Rhodium Group analysis concludes.
The new politics of global warming
Ben Geman, Axios
The 2020 election is both very different and very familiar when it comes to the politics of global warming and the stakes of the outcome.
Capturing the Faces of Climate Migration
Libby Peterson, The New York Times
A Times Magazine series examines how climate change will force millions worldwide to move. Recently, Meridith Kohut photographed people on the front lines of this shift. In America.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Every Place Has Its Own Climate Risk. What Is It Where You Live?
Stuart A. Thompson and Yaryna Serkez, The New York Times
For most of us, climate change can feel like an amorphous threat — with the greatest dangers lingering ominously in the future and the solutions frustratingly out of reach. So perhaps focusing on today’s real harms could help us figure out how to start dealing with climate change. Here’s one way to do that: by looking at the most significant climate threat unfolding in your own backyard.
Climate change is killing the farm belt. With a little help, farmers can fix it.
Art Cullen, The Washington Post
Climate change — both in Iowa and elsewhere — is making it harder for farmers to turn a profit. It could affect our ability to feed ourselves for generations.
Rising bankruptcy toll shows US oil patch is not ‘OK now’
Myles McCormick, Financial Times
Business failures pile up despite Donald Trump trumpeting the sector’s recovery.
Research Reports
The zero-carbon car: Abating material emissions is next on the agenda
Erin Hannon et al., McKinsey & Company
The automotive industry could abate 66 percent of emissions from their material production at no extra cost by 2030—if industry participants work together and start now.
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