Around the country organic farmers are pushing for ‘GE-free’ zones

This is a great story.  There is no more important argument than that which contemplates our world's ability to feed every nation and person.

As you can see changing our current dominated system of mega-farms, using aggressive chemical treatments and GMO seeds, is not a slam dunk.  Sure, we'd all love to eat organic, local and as healthy as possible.  But, organic is a tiny part of the market.  The rest is way too big to be filled by such farmers.

We do know GMO techniques have improved seeds resistance to drought, pests and have positive attributes.  However, contaminating organic supplies destroys our ability to some day migrate more fully to less treated crops and farming.

There is a lot riding on agriculture's ability to transform and implement changes that reduce water, pesticide use, gets production more local and uses better management of the soil to restore our Earth's natural nutrients and ability to sustain food production.

Yes, we can see good reason for "GE-free" zones.  Yet, government regulations can't force farmers to strain even more to full the world's growing demand for food.  As with pushing away from fossil fuel to clean energy, this is a slow process, done with patience, smarts and sound financial principles that allow farmers, and all of us who depend on their production, to not only survive but thrive.    

Around the country, organic farmers are pushing for ‘GE-free’ zones

by Chelsea Harvey


Wheat grows in a test field at Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, Oregon, U.S., Friday, June 7, 2013. Photographer: Natalie Behring/Bloomberg

Jackson County, Oregon, has just joined the small but growing ranks of “GE-free zones” in the U.S.,  which prohibit the cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) crops. It’s at least the eighth county in the country to create such an ordinance, and efforts are springing up to pass similar measures in other places.

The Jackson County designation was made final on Dec. 22, when a federal judge approved a consent decree protecting the zone. The ordinance was originally passed in May 2014 by the voters of Jackson County, but was challenged in court by two GE alfalfa farmers, who argued that it violated Oregon state law. The challenge was rejected by a federal judge in May, and a court-approved settlement — which upholds the GE-free zone, but allows the alfalfa farmers to keep their crop for the remainder of its useful life — was finally approved in December.

There are many different types of genetically modified plants and animals, although GM crops are frequently modified to make them less susceptible to pests. Genetic engineering — especially as it relates to the food system — remains a hot-button issue in the U.S., with a primary concern among members of the public being the safety of GE products in terms of their impacts on public health and the environment. A growing movement has devoted itself to passing GE-labeling laws, for instance, which would identify products containing genetically modified organisms. 

But when it comes to GE-free farming zones, the concern is largely an economic one. The goal of creating the zones, according to proponents, is to protect non-GE crops from contamination with modified product — a risk they argue has become a threat to the livelihood of traditional and organic farmers.

Transgenic contamination is “the mixing of unwanted, unintentional GE content with traditional and/or organic crops or wild plants,” according to George Kimbrell, senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, an environmental advocacy group promoting organic and sustainable agriculture, and counsel in the Jackson County case. When GE crops are cultivated in close proximity to non-GE crops, bees and other pollinators can carry pollen between the two, spreading the genes from the genetically modified plants.

This is a concern on several levels — first, because of federal patent laws protecting the right to produce and sell certain genetically modified organisms, said Elise Higley, a Jackson County-based farmer and executive director of the Our Family Farms Coalition, an advocacy group for traditional farming which helped spearhead the Jackson County ordinance. “It is definitely a risk in that you’re not able to legally save and sell your seed if it has any kind of contamination because of federal patent law,” she said.

Beyond the legal considerations, there’s also worry about having contaminated products rejected by domestic organic markets, which advertise their wares as being GE-free, Higley said. And the ability to export to the international market is another consideration as well, according to Kimbrell.

“A lot of our export markets…have a very different view of GE crops than the U.S. government does, and they require labeling, they have restrictions, they haven’t approved a number of GE crops that we have approved,” Kimbrell said. “Time and time again, U.S. farmers have lost literally billions of dollars through these contamination incidents.”

In 2014, China rejected corn shipments from the U.S. because they contained a banned variety of genetically modified corn produced by Syngenta, an event that experts estimated cost the U.S. agriculture industry nearly $3 billion. To be clear, these losses were not necessarily the result of contamination in the field via pollination, but rather the fact that the shipments themselves included the GE corn variety. However, the incident illustrates the often severe stances of other countries on the shipment and sale of genetically modified organisms.

There are also some precedents for monetary losses as a result of contamination in the field. A 2008 report from the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements noted that contamination via cross-pollination has resulted in losses for organic farmers in Europe, Canada, the U.S., Korea, Brazil and elsewhere and suggested that “GM contamination can give rise to a wide range of economic impacts beyond those related to legal tolerance standards. These include lost markets, lost sales, lower prices, negative publicity, withdrawal of organic certification and product recalls.”

In general, however, there have been few large-scale studies of economic losses due to this type of contamination, said Jennifer Kuzma, professor and director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University. She pointed to one survey conducted by the Food and Water Watch, which found that a third of respondents had experience with contamination and about half of these had been rejected by buyers as a result. However, she noted that the sample size was fairly small, including only 268 responses.

But the concerns about coexistence between GE and non-GE farmers are a growing issue, she added.

“I think it’s a serious issue, and a lot of ethical questions come up about who reaps the benefits and who bears the cost of insuring a lack of contamination,” Kuzma said. “We’ve heard arguments on both sides, with organic farmers saying that they’re largely responsible for creating these buffer zones. Sometimes they’ll delay planting so the crops don’t pollinate at the same time as a GM farmer’s crops do.”

“It seems to me that most of the economic burden right now is on the organic or non-GM producers, and so then one has to ask the question: Is that fair or equitable?” she added. The issue can be argued from both sides, she said.

This is where the GE-free zones come into play, Kimbrell said. As there’s currently no national guidance on the separation or coexistence of GE and non-GE agricultural zones, individual localities, such as Jackson County, have started taking matters into their own hands.

“Until we have those restrictions on a federal level, until we have liability on the patent holder for contamination, then we need these zones in order to have any alternative to the current dominant paradigm of the GE crop systems,” Kimbrell said.

In addition to Jackson County, five counties in California, and at least one in Washington, Hawaii and another in Oregon, have enacted similar ordinances, and more may be on the way. Costilla County in Colorado, for instance, is currently pushing for a GE-free zone, although the ordinance has not yet been enacted.

But such regulations are not likely to occur uncontested. Shortly after the Jackson County ordinance received enough signatures for the ballot, for instance, the state of Oregon passed an emergency bill barring any other counties from regulating GE agriculture.

The issue remains a knotty one on the scientific side as well. Scientists have largely concluded that genetically modified organisms are safe for human consumption and frequently benefit the environment, although many members of the public remain skeptical and continue to push for more transparent GMO labeling.

The added economic concerns for farmers who wish to keep their crops GE-free is just another facet in an already thorny and ongoing debate. And the issue is not likely to become simpler anytime soon.

“I think these issues are only going to grow in intensity as organic or non-GM foods become more and more popular,” Kuzma said. “I think we’re going to see more of these food labeling bills and GE-free zones popping up, and I think it’s time we had kind of a national, more public conversation about how we want to approach genetic engineering from a societal context, and to have more open and transparent discussion about the issue in which many types of people can participate.”

What scientists just discovered in Greenland could be making sea-level rise even worse

As you read more of these types of stories, you begin to understand the urgency some governments, and parts of the world, have accelerated their preparation for coastal flooding and damage.  Resilience is fast becoming a required mandate for many communities.

You can well imagine the impact on the many industries that depend on predictable ocean currents, levels, stability.  Right now we see ports around the world shifting all operations that don't directly relate to loading/unloading a ship up and away from the low levels of where the cranes sit.  They know they can't protect all assets if high winds and flooding assault their faculties.  If many of those have shifted back from their exposed positions, they could focus on just ships and cranes in an emergency.  

Every industry, every person will need to adjust to a new environmental and economic realty.  The good news is, as we've shown here, the faster you react, the more profitable that shift will be.  Adjusting your use of energy, production of waste, investment in efficiency, adaptation of new technology all will bring amazing ROI.

What scientists just discovered in Greenland could be making sea-level rise even worse

by Chelsea Harvey

Rising global temperatures may be affecting the Greenland ice sheet — and its contribution to sea-level rise — in more serious ways that scientists imagined, a new study finds. Recent changes to the island’s snow and ice cover appear to have affected its ability to store excess water, meaning more melting ice may be running off into the ocean than previously thought.

That’s worrying news for the precarious Greenland ice sheet, which scientists say has already lost more than 9 trillions tons of ice in the past century — and whose melting rate only continues to increase as temperatures keep warming up. NASA estimates that the Greenland ice sheet is losing about 287 billion tons of ice every year, partly due to surface melting and partly due to the calving of large chunks of ice. Because of the ice sheet’s potential to significantly raise sea levels as it runs into the ocean, scientists have been keeping a close eye on it — and anything that might affect how fast it’s melting.

The new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, focuses on a part of the ice sheet known as “firn” — a porous layer of built-up snow that slowly freezes into ice over time. It’s considered an important part of the ice sheet because of its ability to trap and store excess water before it’s able to run off the surface of the glacier, an essential service that helps mitigate the sea-level rise that would otherwise be caused by the runoff water.

“As this layer is porous and the pores are connected, theoretically all the pore space in this firn layer can be used to store meltwater percolating into the firn whenever melt occurs at the surface,” said the new paper’s lead author, Horst Machguth of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, in an email to The Washington Post. Over time, the percolating meltwater trickles down through the firn and refreezes.

Until recently, many scientists have assumed that most of Greenland’s firn space is still available for trapping meltwater. But the new research shows that this is likely no longer the case. Through on-the-ground observations, the scientists have shown that the recent formation of dense ice layers near the ice sheet’s surface are making it more difficult for liquid water to percolate into the firn — meaning it’s forced to run off instead.

“If you look at some of the other studies which have been arguing that you have unlimited capacity for retention of water in the firn, this study shows that that is not the case,” said Kurt Kjær, a curator and researcher at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who has studied glacier dynamics on the Greenland ice sheet but was not involved in the study.

The researchers conducted their study by examining ice cores drilled into West Greenland’s firn between 2009 and 2015. They wanted to find out how a series of particularly warm summers, which caused especially significant melting events in 2010 and 2012, might have affected the ice sheet.

“I think the most notable result of our study is showing that the firn reacts faster to an atmospheric warming than expected,” Machguth said in his email. By examining the cores, the researchers found that the deluge of meltwater in recent years had trickled into the firn and frozen into chunks called “ice lenses.” These lenses then began to hinder any additional liquid water from trickling down through the firn, meaning the meltwater began to accumulate and freeze near the surface, increasing the number and thickness of the existing lenses in a kind of vicious cycle.

The cores suggested that the lenses thickened quickly between 2009 and 2012, Machguth said. Then, starting in 2012, another change took place.

“At our main field site the very intense melt of summer 2012 did not result in a strong increase of the ice layer as the layer was already in place,” he wrote to The Post. “Instead, at the main field site we could observe how the ice layer forced the meltwater to run off along the surface.”

This effect was most pronounced at lower elevations in West Greenland, where the water first ran down the ice sheet and accumulated. But Machguth and his colleagues predict that the same ice lens formation process will continue to occur at higher and higher elevations — and the amount of meltwater forced to run off the glacier, having no available firn to trickle into, will only increase.

This is not only a concern on the basis of its possible contribution to sea-level rise — the researchers also suggest that an increase in runoff could lead to certain feedback processes that will cause even more melt to occur in the future. Runoff water can carve channels into the ice sheet’s surface and create slushy areas, they note in the paper, which can cause a reduction in albedo — the ability of the ice sheet to reflect sunlight away from its surface. With more sunlight being absorbed, rather than reflected, surface temperatures could become even warmer and cause melt rates to accelerate.

And these changes to the firn are largely irreversible. While new firn can form as more snow falls and accumulates on Greenland’s surface, the process can take decades — and might not be able to occur at all in a warming climate.

This particular study was only conducted in West Greenland, so the scientists can’t say for sure whether their findings apply to the entire island. It would be enlightening to conduct similar studies elsewhere on the ice sheet, Machguth noted.

But in the meantime, the observations represent an important step forward in understanding the processes affecting Greenland, and could help scientists improve the simulations they use to make predictions about what will happen to the ice sheet in the future. “When you get this kind of dataset, a new kind of knowledge, of course it should be put into the models,” said Kjær, the Natural History Museum scientist.

2016: What to Look for in Energy and Climate

Now that we are 45 days in, we can start to see some of these things play out.  All of these issues have significant ecological and economic ripples across many continents.

2016: What to Look for in Energy and Climate

by Bobby Magill

2016 will kick off with a sense of optimism about climate change after the success of the Paris climate talks in December. In the U.S., that may mean more enthusiasm for commitments to renewables and other lower-carbon energy sources as low oil prices make the future of fossil fuels production in the U.S. and Canada less certain. 2016 stands to be critical for greenhouse gas emissions cuts in the U.S. as the country finds ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet its long-term climate pledge made in 2015.

These are four key energy and climate issues to watch in 2016:

New Commitments to Renewables

                                                                
A photovoltaic solar panel.
                                
Some cities and states, especially on the West Coast and in the Northeast, could join the small but growing list of those making a commitment to obtain 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources in the coming decades.

In 2015, Hawaii became the first state to pass a law making such a commitment. That law requires the state to get all of its electricity from renewables by 2045. In December, San Diego became the largest city in the country to make that commitment, requiring all of the city’s power to come from renewables by 2035.

Others have made less ambitious commitments, but no less significant. A law passed in California requires the state to obtain 50 percent of its electricity from renewables, excluding hydropower. New York City and San Francisco have also pledged to increase their use of renewables, and smaller cities, such as Burlington, Vt., have already gone 100 percent renewable, mainly through the use of large amounts of hydropower.

The coming year is likely to bring other commitments, the biggest of which is in New York. State law now requires the Empire State to obtain 30 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2015. In December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed a state agency to go even further by developing a new standard that would require New York to obtain half of its electricity from renewables by 2030, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent. The new standard is required to be finalized in June.

Rippling Effect of Oil Prices                                                                                                

2016 is being rung in amid a long-term crash in oil prices that is having global economic and climate implications, and the stories of its ripple effects will generate headlines well into the new year.

Global crude oil prices fell off a cliff in the summer of 2014, and by the end of 2015, the price of U.S.-produced oil had fallen from more than $90 per barrel to between $35 and $40 per barrel. Those prices knocked the wind out of the fracking boom that had overtaken much of the U.S. in North Dakota, Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and other oil and gas producing states. That boom turned the U.S. into the world’s leading crude oil producer.

The fallout of the oil bust is wide-ranging with serious climate consequences, good and bad. Low oil prices brought low gasoline prices, which encouraged Americans to drive more. That led to a  2.4 percent increase in gasoline consumption in 2015 over the previous year, likely leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well. As wells drilled during the fracking boom continue to produce abundant natural gas, natural gas prices have also fallen, hastening utilities’ transition from polluting coal-fired power plants to possibly more climate-friendly natural gas-fired power plants.

The oil price crash also took a toll on Canadian tar sands, which represent the world’s third-largest oil reserve. Tar sands are more carbon-laden and energy intensive to produce than most other forms of crude oil, exacerbating climate change in the process. The oil price crash has cost more than 35,000 tar sands jobs in Alberta, and tar sands producers are operating at extremely thin margins.

With oil prices expected to remain low for a while, 2016 could be the year the Canadian oil sands producers prove they can operate at an adequate profit and weather both low oil prices and international pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or continue shrinking.

Emissions Growth

                                                                 
A power plant in Russia.
                                
Stagnant growth in carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels could become a trend in 2016. Or not.

Growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels halted in 2015 partly because of the global boom in renewable energy  —  a big deal for the climate because until recently, economic growth and carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels rose and fell together. If the stagnation becomes a trend in 2016, it could prove that the global economy can boom without relying on fossil fuels and that countries can begin to prosper while slashing emissions to slow climate change.

Scientists have warned, however, that the emissions growth stagnation could just be a short-term anomaly and that emissions could start rising again as fossil fuel use in developing countries — especially India — continues to rise unabated.

The marriage of emissions growth and economic growth ended in 2014, as global emissions growth grew only slightly, flatlining for the first time in 40 years. In December, a Stanford University study suggested emissions growth halted or even declined in 2015, foreshadowing an eventual peak in global carbon emissions in a decade or two.

One of the biggest challenges is finding a way for India to curb its emissions. India is seeing a rapid growth in emissions, unlike China, the U.S. and the European Union, which are seeing emissions declines, Rob Jackson, the lead author of the Stanford study and a professor of Earth system science there, said. “India’s emissions are now exactly what China’s were in 1990. India has the challenge of producing more energy and yet not just being able to rely on coal to do it.”

The Post-Keystone Climate Fight

                                                                                                                                                     
Oil and gas development on federal public lands in eastern Utah.
                                
The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline was killed by the Obama administration primarily because of the possible climate effects of both the pipeline and the tar sands it would carry. With the Keystone XL fight over, activists and scientists who had fought against the pipeline are turning to other fronts in their battle against greenhouse gas emissions.

One of those in 2016 may be oil and gas leasing and development on energy-rich federally controlled public lands, mainly in the West, which represent 28 percent of the total land area of the U.S. If all the fossil fuels on public lands in America are burned, their carbon emissions would represent up to half of all the potential greenhouse gas emissions that would come from burning all the remaining fossil fuels on U.S. soil, according to a report by Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity.

In September, a group of scientists and activists, part of the Keep It in the Ground Coalition, sent a letter to the Obama administration, urging it to halt all new federal fossil fuels leasing and development on public lands.

Though the administration is unlikely to do that anytime soon, the message may be having an effect. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management postponed until 2016 a November oil and gas lease sale for 37,580 acres of public lands near national parks in Utah because of a “high level of public interest,” BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall said.

In December, the BLM postponed until March another oil and gas lease sale for Arkansas and Michigan because of pressure from climate activists.

It’s far from clear how much traction this movement might get in 2016, but Obama himself may have lent some credence to the movement to keep federal minerals in the ground in his speech announcing the denial of the Keystone XL permit: “Ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

How Low Oil Prices May Impact GHG Emissions

Of course, this article was published a while back and, since, the prices have clearly plummeted to lows we have no seen in decades--at least in the US.

We thought it important to run it now as the implications of low prices have not changed, perhaps even become more pronounced.  Over the past 18 months we've seen, as suggested here, skyrocketing sales of SUV's.  Energy efficiency is a distant consideration now for buying a car.  Cheap gas has lured us back to over consumption.

Our ability to drive away from fossil fuel is always subject to the back drop of fluctuating fuel prices.  The market changes people's perspective over night.  Sad.  This is not a short-term problem.  Being myopic about carbon levels is dangerous.

It is frustrating when we look to save money when a great investment in efficiency and clean energy, over the long-term, would fix utility cost and deliver, for most of us, a better ROI.  Our hole, dug by 7 billion people, grows deeper.

How Low Oil Prices May Impact GHG Emissions

By Bobby Magill                           

                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Pull your car into a New Jersey filling station, and the low prices might give you a shock at the pump.

Gasoline was less than $2.90 per gallon at many stations in the Garden State this week. So, compared to a year ago when regular unleaded in New Jersey averaged about $3.20 a gallon and $3.62 across the Hudson River in New York, gasoline is cheap.

                                                                       

Oil tankers transporting crude oil to market.
                                

The national average is about $3.08 today. A year ago, it was about $3.36.

That kind of a break at the pump comes courtesy of crude oil prices that have plunged from more than $105 in July to about $85 today because of a weak global economy and ample crude oil production both in the U.S. and worldwide.

Low crude oil and gasoline prices, along with how changing global oil markets affect both of those, have a direct effect on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

The cheaper gasoline is, the more people drive and use fuel, leading to more and more greenhouse gas emissions.

There are economic benefits to that, especially if it means, for example, that it costs less to transport goods across the country. But with the increased oil consumption, the climate suffers.

“People who think that you can get large economic benefits by pushing down oil prices but not have substantial climate costs are mostly kidding themselves,” said Michael Levi, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “These are two things that go together.”

Why have oil prices dropped so quickly?

“Supply is greater than demand,” Levi said. “Weak global economy, strong global production, (and) lack of confidence Saudi Arabia will make up the difference.”

Demand for oil in China and Europe has dropped because of economic woes in those regions and the U.S. is producing a lot of its oil domestically. Thanks to the shale oil drilling and production frenzy in North Dakota and Texas, U.S. crude oil imports are the lowest they’ve been in more than 14 years.

Gasoline prices follow tumbling international crude oil prices, leading to the lower cost of a gallon of gasoline at the pump today.

But as for how that impacts greenhouse gas emissions, a few months of low gasoline prices aren’t likely to inspire people to rush out to buy gas guzzling SUVs right away, and energy companies aren’t likely to make any major decisions about expanding or cutting back oil exploration and production.

“Short-term price fluctuations don’t have a large impact on the kind of greenhouse gas numbers that matter,” Levi said.

Low oil prices that remain stable are what drive increased demand for oil — and which in turn could then have a bigger role in emissions, said Peter Erickson, senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Seattle.

“If it really is a short-term effect, it may not be that significant,” he said. “It’s when the oil price stays stable for a long time and when gasoline prices stay stable for a long time when investors and especially consumers notice and make decisions based on that.”

One of the things that could affect the long-term stability of oil prices and whether they are high or low is the fate of restrictions on U.S. crude oil exports put in place in 1975 in response to the Arab oil embargo.

A new U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report examining what might happen if the U.S. crude oil export ban were to be lifted says global greenhouse gas emissions could increase and the environment could suffer if U.S. oil could be exported overseas.

Part of the reason is that although international oil prices would drop, U.S. oil prices would actually increase, encouraging more shale oil and gas exploration and production here, affecting air and water quality, the report says. And because U.S. gasoline prices follow the international price of oil, the prices at the pumps would drop.

“It will encourage extra (oil and gas) development,” said Charles Mason, a petroleum economist at the University of Wyoming whose research for the group Resources for the Future was cited in the GAO report. “You’re going to have local (oil) producers get a higher price. That higher price will encourage keeping projects going a little bit longer that might otherwise have been shut in.”

                                                                        

Oil drilling off the coast of California.
                                

Though the GAO reports that exporting U.S. crude would mean more domestic crude oil development and production, it may not amount to much in terms of CO2 emissions.

Lifting export restrictions could lead to an increase in global CO2 emissions by a tiny fraction — less than 0.0007 percent of total 2012 global CO2 emissions, or nearly 22 million metric tons annually, the GAO reports. Global CO2 emissions from burning energy totaled more than 32.7 billion metric tons of CO2 that year.

The federal government has taken no action on lifting the crude oil export restrictions, and with oil prices still dropping, experts have conflicting opinions about where crude oil prices are headed next.

If the European economy improves and China’s economy stabilizes, crude oil prices will bounce back, Mason said.

If those economies don’t improve, oil prices will stay low.

“Lots of factors have suggested that demand was much weaker than maybe what the industry had been planning for,” said said Andrew Logan, director of the oil program at Ceres, a nonprofit group focusing on sustainability in business. “I don’t see prices going back to consistent highs anytime soon. The picture seems like it’s going to get worse going forward.”

This may be the beginning of a new era of volatility in crude oil prices after years of stability, he said.

“You go back 10 years and the consensus was that higher oil prices were what we all wanted to see,” he said. “We’re not going back to triple digits. It recalibrates the scope of the shale (oil) boom in the U.S. Shale is not going away, but it may become a smaller piece of the pie for better or worse.”

And that means the U.S. may be entering a new era of uncertainty both in the shale oil and gas fields and at the gas pump. Stay tuned.  

What's Ahead for Climate Change in 2016?

Sorry we missed updating the blog yesterday...we fell behind with other stories pouring in.

Catching up today.  Great over view of part of our year ahead?  How about you...predictions?  Optimistic for progress in 2016?

What's Ahead for Climate Change in 2016?

by Brian Kahn

This year will kick off with a sense of optimism about climate change after the success of the Paris climate talks in December. In the United States, that may mean more enthusiasm for commitments to renewables and other lower-carbon energy sources as low oil prices make the future of fossil fuels production in the United States and Canada less certain. 2016 stands to be critical for greenhouse gas emissions cuts in the United States as the country finds ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet its long-term climate pledge made in 2015.

These are four key energy and climate issues to watch in 2016:                    

               

New Commitments to Renewables
Some cities and states, especially on the West Coast and in the Northeast, could join the small but growing list of those making a commitment to obtain 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources in the coming decades.

In 2015, Hawaii became the first state to pass a law making such a commitment. That law requires the state to get all of its electricity from renewables by 2045. In December, San Diego became the largest city in the country to make that commitment, requiring all of the city’s power to come from renewables by 2035.

Others have made less ambitious commitments, but no less significant. A law passed in California requires the state to obtain 50 percent of its electricity from renewables, excluding hydropower. New York City and San Francisco have also pledged to increase their use of renewables, and smaller cities, such as Burlington, Vt., have already gone 100 percent renewable, mainly through the use of large amounts of hydropower.

The coming year is likely to bring other commitments, the biggest of which is in New York. State law now requires the Empire State to obtain 30 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2015. In December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed a state agency to go even further by developing a new standard that would require New York to obtain half of its electricity from renewables by 2030, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent. The new standard is required to be finalized in June.

Rippling Effect of Oil Prices

2016 is being rung in amid a long-term crash in oil prices that is having global economic and climate implications, and the stories of its ripple effects will generate headlines well into the new year.

Global crude oil prices fell off a cliff in the summer of 2014, and by the end of 2015, the price of U.S.-produced oil had fallen from more than $90 per barrel to between $35 and $40 per barrel. Those prices knocked the wind out of the fracking boom that had overtaken much of the United States in North Dakota, Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and other oil and gas producing states. That boom turned the United States into the world’s leading crude oil producer.

The fallout of the oil bust is wide-ranging with serious climate consequences, good and bad. Low oil prices brought low gasoline prices, which encouraged Americans to drive more. That led to a  2.4 percent increase in gasoline consumption in 2015 over the previous year, likely leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well. As wells drilled during the fracking boom continue to produce abundant natural gas, natural gas prices have also fallen, hastening utilities’ transition from polluting coal-fired power plants to possibly more climate-friendly natural gas-fired power plants.

The oil price crash also took a toll on Canadian tar sands, which represent the world’s third-largest oil reserve. Tar sands are more carbon-laden and energy intensive to produce than most other forms of crude oil, exacerbating climate change in the process. The oil price crash has cost more than 35,000 tar sands jobs in Alberta, and tar sands producers are operating at extremely thin margins.

With oil prices expected to remain low for a while, 2016 could be the year the Canadian oil sands producers prove they can operate at an adequate profit and weather both low oil prices and international pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or continue shrinking.

Stagnant growth in carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels could become a trend in 2016. Or not.

 With the Paris climate talks just now kicking off, Test Tube News looks at so-called "deniers" of manmade climate change.          

      

Growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels halted in 2015 partly because of the global boom in renewable energy  —  a big deal for the climate because until recently, economic growth and carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels rose and fell together. If the stagnation becomes a trend in 2016, it could prove that the global economy can boom without relying on fossil fuels and that countries can begin to prosper while slashing emissions to slow climate change.

Scientists have warned, however, that the emissions growth stagnation could just be a short-term anomaly and that emissions could start rising again as fossil fuel use in developing countries — especially India — continues to rise unabated.

The marriage of emissions growth and economic growth ended in 2014, as global emissions growth grew only slightly, flatlining for the first time in 40 years. In December, a Stanford University study suggested emissions growth halted or even declined in 2015, foreshadowing an eventual peak in global carbon emissions in a decade or two.

One of the biggest challenges is finding a way for India to curb its emissions. India is seeing a rapid growth in emissions, unlike China, the United States and the European Union, which are seeing emissions declines, Rob Jackson, the lead author of the Stanford study and a professor of Earth system science there, said. “India’s emissions are now exactly what China’s were in 1990. India has the challenge of producing more energy and yet not just being able to rely on coal to do it.”

The Post-Keystone Climate Fight

The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline was killed by the Obama administration primarily because of the possible climate effects. With the Keystone XL fight over, activists and scientists who had fought against the pipeline are turning to other fronts in their battle against greenhouse gas emissions.

One of those in 2016 may be oil and gas leasing and development on energy-rich federally controlled public lands, mainly in the West, which represent 28 percent of the total land area of the United States. If all the fossil fuels on public lands in America are burned, their carbon emissions would represent up to half of all the potential greenhouse gas emissions that would come from burning all the remaining fossil fuels on U.S. soil, according to a report by Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity.

In September, a group of scientists and activists, part of the Keep It in the Ground Coalition, sent a letter to the Obama administration, urging it to halt all new federal fossil fuels leasing and development on public lands.

Though the administration is unlikely to do that anytime soon, the message may be having an effect. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management postponed until 2016 a November oil and gas lease sale for 37,580 acres of public lands near national parks in Utah because of a “high level of public interest,” BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall said.

In December, the BLM postponed until March another oil and gas lease sale for Arkansas and Michigan because of pressure from climate activists.

It’s far from clear how much traction this movement might get in 2016, but Obama himself may have lent some credence to the movement to keep federal minerals in the ground in his speech announcing the denial of the Keystone XL permit: “Ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

One of the stories we are working on today on the radio side

What an excellent, exciting processing change we are seeing in Grand Junction CO as they separate out organics to power their NG-converted city fleet.  From waste water to clean energy conversion--the true essence of our prism, the business side of green.  A triple-bottom line win that we hope to see other cities use.

Grand Junction has Found a Way to Save Thousands in Fueling City Fleet

Every day, a facility on the outskirts of Grand Junction takes in 8 million gallons of what people have flushed down their toilets and washed down their sinks. The water coming out the other end of the Persigo Wastewater Treatment Plant is cleaner than the Colorado River it flows into. The organic solids strained from that water are now serving a new purpose – producing fuel for city vehicles.

The solids at Persigo have been processed for decades so they can be safely dumped at a landfill. That processing produces methane, which the plant used to just burn off into the air. Yet, using more infrastructure to further refine that methane, they now end up with natural gas that’s chemically identical to what’s drilled from underground.

Grand Junction has been replacing an aging fleet of garbage trucks and city buses with compressed natural gas vehicles, fueled mostly by the human sourced gas from the treatment plant. The city’s wastewater services manager, Dan Tonello, says Grand Junction is the first city in the nation to do that.

“We’re looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars a year being saved by implementing this process,” Tonello said, “and for a utility our size that’s significant money.”

Joanna Underwood is the president of Energy Vision, a non-profit dedicated to expanding the use of this renewable natural gas, or RNG. She applauds the Grand Junction project as a common sense way to both save money and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

“That’s a model for small wastewater treatment plants anywhere in the country,” she said.

She points out there are other sources for RNG beyond human waste. We interviewed Underwood in the ground-floor restaurant of a Denver Hotel and she started walking among the tables, pointing those sources out: the ham and eggs left over on customers’ plates, their unfinished toast and the coffee in their cups. Natural gas can be made from food waste, too.

Right now, food scraps from restaurants are being collected along with that from grocery stores and large food manufacturers all over Colorado’s densely populated Front Range. In a few weeks it will all be heading up to Weld County, where the Heartland Biogas Facility is in its final stages of construction. It basically does the same thing as the Persigo treatment plant does with solid waste, but on a much bigger scale.

“It’s very unique. It’s one of the largest in North America,” said Bob Yost. His company, A1 Organics is partnering with the Heartland facility to coordinate all the food coming in.

Yost said there could soon be 25 to 30 semi-truck loads of food waste making its way to the plant, where it is then mixed together with manure from a local dairy. It turns out the best way to get the most natural gas from waste is to process a balanced diet of both food scraps and animal waste.

After the facility extracts the RNG from the waste, it’s injected into a pipeline along with fossil natural gas, feeding a nationwide delivery system.

Joanna Underwood of Energy Vision said that if all the organic waste in the country was gathered, current technologies could produce enough natural gas to replace about half of the diesel fuel used in the U.S. transportation sector.

So, not a replacement for the traditional oil and gas industry by a long shot. But Underwood argued that practical solutions to climate change have to be assembled piece by piece.

“One thing isn’t gonna do it,” she said. “But for this sector, which in and of itself is big, it’s not a small piece.”

And it’s a piece to which we can each individually contribute – about one cubic foot of natural gas per day.

Harvest Public Media is working with Inside Energy on a series of stories looking at how energy fuels our food system. 

Annual Top 10 States for LEED Green Buildings

Commercial buildings, as you know, chew up a lot of energy.  They contribute mightily to our dependence on fossil fuel.  Good to see these States--and the projects listed below--adding in many ways to our economy and environmental improvements.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced its annual Top 10 States for LEED, the world's most widely used and recognized green building rating system. The per-capita list highlights states throughout the country that are making significant strides in sustainable building design, construction and transformation. LEED-certified spaces use less energy and water resources, save money for families, businesses and taxpayers, reduce carbon emissions, create jobs and establish a healthier environment for residents, workers and the larger community.

"Green construction is quickly outpacing conventional construction in the U.S.," said Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and founding chair of USGBC. "LEED has become an essential tool for the transformation of building design and construction. By recognizing these states excelling in the use of LEED, we are celebrating the green building professionals, architects, business, policy and community leaders who work tirelessly to design and develop innovative solutions toward a healthier, more sustainable future. LEED construction drives economic growth, creates jobs and makes communities greener."  

Now in its sixth year, the ranking looks at total square feet of LEED certified space per resident, based on U.S. Census data and includes commercial and institutional green building projects certified throughout 2015. Illinois retained its top national position for the third year in a row, with 161 LEED certifications representing 3.43 square feet of certified space per resident. Illinois and Colorado are the only two states to have made the list every year since 2010.

A newcomer to the Top 10 list is Utah, illustrating how LEED is expanding beyond states with densely populated urban areas. And after a three-year hiatus, Texas, Washington and Nevada are again on the list.

A continued strong performance from Maryland and Virginia has reaffirmed the mid-Atlantic region, which includes Washington, D.C., as the epicenter of green building. While D.C. is not included in the list of top states due to its status as a federal territory, it is notable as it continues to lead the nation with 19.3 square feet of LEED space per resident certified in 2015.

This year's list has the highest average (2.47) per capita space LEED-certified among the to p10 states since 2010. Four of the six states included in the 2014 list increased the square feet of space they certified per resident in 2015 (Ill., Md., Mass. and Calif.).

The full ranking is as follows:

Notable projects certified in 2015's Top 10 States for LEED include:

• Illinois: Virgin Hotel Chicago; LEED Gold

• Maryland: Holy Cross Hospital in Germantown; LEED Gold

• Massachusetts: New Douglas Elementary School in Douglas; LEED Silver

• Washington: University of Washington Husky Stadium, the largest stadium, college or professional, in the Pacific Northwest, in Seattle; LEED Silver

• Colorado: North Colorado Springs Readiness Center home to the Colorado National Guard; LEED Platinum

• Nevada: Clark County Wetlands Park Nature Center in Las Vegas; LEED Gold

• California: Los Angeles Convention Center Recertification; LEED Gold

• Texas: The Treehouse at Memorial City, part eco office and part club house in Houston; LEED Platinum

• Virginia: Chesapeake Bay Foundation Virginia Environmental Center in Virginia Beach; LEED Platinum

• Utah: U.S. District Courthouse in Salt Lake City; LEED Gold

Collectively, 1,633 commercial and institutional projects became LEED certified within the Top 10 States for LEED in 2015, representing 274.9 million square feet of real estate. Worldwide, 4,837 projects were certified in 2015, representing 818.9 million square feet.

USGBC calculates the list using per-capita figures as a measure of the human element of green building. This also allows for fair comparisons among states with significant differences in population and number of buildings.

In 2015, LEED for Building Operations and Maintenance was once again the most popular rating system within the top 10 states, representing 49 percent of the total square footage certified. LEED for Building Design and Construction was the second most popular rating system in the top 10, representing 46 percent of the square footage certified and LEED for Interior Design and Construction was the third most popular rating system, representing 5 percent of total square footage certified in these states in 2015.

The LEED green building certification system is the foremost program for the design, construction, maintenance and operations of green buildings. More than 52,000 commercial, neighborhood and residential projects are currently LEED certified, comprising more than 5 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 150 countries and territories globally.  Green construction is a large economic driver. According to the 2015 USGBC Green Building Economic Impact Study, green construction will account for more than 3.3 million U.S. jobs–more than one-third of the entire U.S. construction sector–and generate $190.3 billion in labor earnings. The industry's direct contribution to U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is also expected to reach $303.5 billion from 2015-2018.

- See more at: http://www.renewablenow.biz/designing-for-green.html#sthash.tAjsgb89.dpuf