All About the Gas

Will the planet turn to the sun in time?

Third Act protesters gathering outside today’s TVA ‘listening session’ in Nashville

It’s going to come down to gas.

I’m writing this as I sit in a ‘listening session’ conducted by the Tennessee Valley Authority in Nashville, hearing arguments about how the giant utility should power the region for the next few decades. But I could be almost any place on the planet and the argument would be pretty much the same: do we build out gas to replace coal for producing electricity, or do we go straight to sun, wind, and batteries? It’s the argument that will decide how much our earth overheats.

I’m going to attempt an analogy here, always a dangerous thing. Imagine the fossil fuel industry as a cartel of confectioners, that have grown absurdly rich selling sweets. But now the entire world is teetering on the edge of diabetes (that would be climate change). They could deny diabetes exists, or that it causes any problems; eventually, after enough people lose their legs, that gets harder. Coal is the equivalent of, I don’t know—cotton candy, or candy corn, something so absurdly sweet that that even addicts recognize it might be problematic. So they’ve come up with something else: cookies and muffins sweetened with something that has half the sugar! But wait, it turns out to be sweetened with something else, that causes lots of cancer. (I hope you’re getting the carbon and methane references here). So maybe they invent an expensive therapy to remove some of the sugar from your bloodstream—that would be carbon capture. The one thing they simply won’t do is stop producing candy.

But their real problem is that some competitor has discovered this thing called fruit. Tastes great, and you can eat it without medical difficulty. It’s good for you.

That’s the situation the fossil fuel industry finds itself in right now. Here in this auditorium, utility lobbyists are insisting that you can only run a modern economy on fossil fuel; one fossil fuel proponent is holding up a light switch and arguing that without hydrocarbons it will be useless. But California, this spring, has been running the world’s fifth largest economy on windpower, hydropower, and solar power, backed up with batteries, as a result, natural gas usage hit an eight year low; this morning comes the news that globally renewable energy generated a third of the world’s power last year, and the momentum to install more is so strong that greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector almost certainly peaked last year. Last week roofing giant GAF opened a mammoth Texas plant devoted to making solar shingles that you can nail down; as Heatmap reports this morning, even historic European buildings with terracotta roof tiles can now have matching red solar panels.

It’s cheap, it’s clean, people like it—but it is deeply dangerous for the fossil fuel industry and their friends in utilities worldwide, who are desperately trying to get gas locked in for another few decades. That’s why the outcry was so fierce when President Biden paused new permits for LNG export facilities in January: the industry knows that every quarter it gets harder to make the case that overseas utilities should build the power plants that use the fuel, when they could just put up panels and batteries instead. As so often, Amy Westervelt has the details behind the industry’s desperate scramble to make natural gas a “destination fuel.” Drawing on documents that came out in the Congressional oversight hearings I described last week, she says

The industry has known for decades that methane leaks, including intentional venting and flaring, were a potential problem for the story of gas as a climate solution. A 2015 study commissioned by The Natural Gas Council and prepared by management consultancy ICF lays the issue out clearly. On the draft obtained by the House Oversight Committee, an Exxon commenter notes: “Uncombusted methane is a big part of the inventory.” Uncombusted methane is leaked or vented methane.

But just as they constructed a pr strategy to pretend climate change was a non-issue, so they worked with thier expensive university partnerships to position gas as the clean way forward. At the very beginning, this strategy might actually have made sense, back before we understood the threat posed by methane and when renewables cost far more than fossil fuels. But they’ve just kept making the same argument and it’s getting very old—when former Energy Secretary Ernie ‘Frack’ Moniz released a new pro-gas report last week (alongside Joe ‘Coal’ Manchin, and Lisa ‘Oil’ Murkowski), increasing numbers of key congresspeople just giggled (and not at his haircut). Senator Sheldon Whitehouse summed up their feelings:

“this report is yet another example of the industry deceiving the public about the compatibility of continued—or even expanded—production of natural gas with the scientific emission reduction targets we must achieve in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid the very worst effects of climate change.”

Indeed, a large swath of centrist and progressive congressional Democrats signed a letter to the Biden administration asking them to make their LNG pause permanent.

Greenhouse gas emissions associated with the LNG supply chain should be evaluated against international and domestic climate targets and examined within the context of existing and proposed LNG export facilities. To do so, DOE should publish greenhouse gas emission estimates for each proposed project. DOE should also ensure that its public interest determinations follow the letter and spirit of President Biden’s Executive Order on Revitalizing our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All and account for cumulative impacts faced by frontline communities—especially those who live near LNG export facilities.

Needless to say, if this was done honestly no new LNG facility would ever be approved and this year’s ‘stagnation’ for the industry would stretch out forever—which wouldn’t be much of a blow to those in the countries destined to receive these cargoes. Europe is already awash in gas—it’s switched so decisively towards renewables in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine that as winter ended its gas stores were still 60% full, a record. And Asia—the market these new LNG terminals are being built to service—is increasingly figuring out the economics of it all. A new report from Zero Carbon Analytics found that solar costs are falling so fast in places like China and India that forecasts of gas demand are now in freefall.

Especially as domestic reserves are depleted and reliance on LNG rises, there is a looming risk that gas will not remain cost-competitive with cheaper, locally abundant energy sources. This could lead to backsliding to more dependence on coal in some countries, such as India where coal represented 55% of energy consumption in 2022, but conversely could also see a stronger uptake in wind and solar. Here, India is targeting around 50% of power generation from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. 

The IEA attributes the gas demand destruction behind its falling forecasts to the rise of renewable energy as a power generation source and to improved energy efficiency, particularly in mature markets. Solar costs in APAC fell by 23% on average in 2023 alone, helping to drive expansion. Wood Mackenzie likewise found that utility solar PV was the cheapest source of power in the Asia Pacific in 2023. 

So if you can’t sell it to the Europeans, and you can’t sell it to the Asians, maybe you can sell it to the…red states? That seems to be the plan, which is why I’m sitting in this hearing room alongside many excellent local advocates. One state over in South Carolina, the legislature is currently debating a new law that would would “increase the Palmetto State’s dependence on methane gas as a source of power generation, even as the burning of that harmful greenhouse gas accelerates the drowning of the South Carolina’s low-lying coast.” One state regulator has already resigned in disgust, saying the law would give utilities a ‘blank check.’

But the big prize may be here in the Tennessee Valley, where the TVA is expected to announce tomorrow that it will replace a coal-fired power plant with a gas-powered one. Six of the nine TVA board members are appointed by president Biden, so this is a place where you’d think they’d honor the spirit of his gas pause, but so far no. In addition to this new plant in Cheatham County, according to the indefatigable climate wonk Leah Stokes, whose book on utilities is the go-to source, the TVA plans on adding an 5.1 megawatts of gas-fired power, compared with paltry, even by regional standards, levels of renewables. Since the Biden administration wants a clean electric grid by 2035, this makes no sense. And yet here we are.

In other energy and climate news

+April was the 11th month in a row when the planet set a new heat record. If we are very lucky, that heat may moderate just a tad in the months ahead—perhaps May or June or July will only be the second-warmest of its kind. But at the moment there’s about a 66% chance that this will end up as the hottest year on record—which would make it the hottest in the last 125,001 or so. How hot has it been? Here’s a story about an Indian newscaster passing out from the heat as she reads a story about…heatwaves.

That’s air temperature—but the news from the oceans has been even grimmer, as records get set with no end in sight. As Bob Berwyn reports, marine heatwaves are currently larger than the combined land area of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, and doing almost unbelievable damage:

“I’m not sure I can come up with the right words to describe the global ocean situation at present, but it is pretty dire,” said Ben Noll, a climate scientist with New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, who recently calculated that 78 percent of non-sea ice covered global ocean was experiencing marine heat wave conditions.

“It speaks to the critical, extreme nature of the warming that the planet has recently experienced,” he said, but the impacts on marine ecosystems are mostly hidden beneath the surface of the seas, except to researchers, divers, fisher people and other careful observers. “The impact of these warm seas may be difficult to grasp and comprehend, but the undersea world seems to be suffocating.”

+Dramatically increased temperatures mean, above all, more water vapor in the air. The numbers are truly amazing—as Kiwi meteorologist Ben Noll said on Twitter, we’re now seen month after month beat the old records for most water vapor in the air.

More water in the air means more water pouring down. Check out hideous flooding in the last few days in Kenya, where people watched in anguish as government bulldozers razed homes in areas behind dams threatening to burst, in Houston where a four-year-old boy was swept away by floodwaters, and in Brazil where the BBC reported that “hundreds of towns were underwater.”

The rain falling in coastal areas increasingly runs into higher sea levels, also caused by global warming, which prevents rivers from draining. The Washington Post had a remarkable story on southern cities along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic, which is well worth reading. In Louisiana,

As waters rise, wetlands — the state’s natural barrier against major storms — are in a state of “drowning.” Choked septic systems are failing and threatening to contaminate waterways. Insurance companies are raising rates, limiting policies or even bailing in some places, casting uncertainty over future home values in flood-prone areas.

Roads increasingly are falling below the highest tides, leaving drivers stuck in repeated delays, or forcing them to slog through salt water to reach homes, schools, work and places of worship. In some communities, researchers and public officials fear, rising waters could periodically cut off some people from essential services such as medical aid.

In Charleston, South Carolina:

the city saw its fourth-highest water level since measurements began in 1899 in December. It was the first time on record that seas had been that high without a hurricane. A winter storm that coincided with the elevated ocean left dozens of streets closed. One resident drowned in her car. Hundreds of vehicles were damaged or destroyed, including some that were inundated in a cruise terminal parking lot.

The average sea level at Charleston has risen by 7 inches since 2010, four times the rate of the previous 30 years.

Jacksonville, Fla., where seas rose 6 inches in the past 14 years, recently studied its vulnerability. It found that more than a quarter of major roads have the potential to become inaccessible to emergency response vehicles amid flooding, and the number of residents who face flood risks could more than triple in coming decades.

One almost certain casualty of all this, according to another Post story, is iconic Highway 1 along California’s Big Sur coast. I’ve driven this road many times—nothing quite matches it for sheer beauty. But landslides, driven by ever more rain, keep wiping out the road, and some experts

foresee a day when such investment becomes foolish and preservation becomes impossible. Cheryl Hapke helped lead study of the geology beneath Highway 1, spending 22 years as a USGS research scientist working closely with CalTrans in studying landslide risks. By now, she said, communities continually finding themselves stranded may need to think about relocating.

“I’m not saying do it tomorrow, but at some point, the conversation probably has to be had,” said Hapke, now a Florida-based principal consultant in coastal resiliency for Fugro, an environmental consulting firm.

“We’re living with what we’ve created in this changing climate,” she added. “There’s answers. They’re not easy.”

+The long-running—and incredibly valiant—Juliana v. U.S. youth climate lawsuit may have run its course:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.

“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.The lawsuit, Juliana v United States, was filed by 21 young people from Oregon who alleged the federal government’s role in fueling the climate crisis violates their constitutional rights.

The Wednesday order from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals will require a US district court judge to dismiss the case for lack of standing, with no opening to amend the complaint.

+I’ve been writing a lot recently about the outsized role ‘fast fashion’ is playing in driving the climate crisis. But now a comprehensive new report makes clear that climate change is taking a terrible toll on the women who work in this industry:

As Nour feeds another half-finished pair of pants through her sewing machine, her arms begin to shake. Amid the whir of fans, her T-shirt sticks to her like skin. She fights to focus, knowing full well her target of up to 100 pieces an hour isn’t going to hit itself. 

“I am completely soaked in sweat,” the 38-year-old says of her work shifts. “The heat makes me exhausted.”

Nour, who asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal from her employer, works at Yakjin, a South Korean-owned garment factory in Cambodia. More than 2,500 employees here stitch apparel for major U.S. giants like Walmart and Gap. Workers at Yakjin say the heat often leads to near-fainting episodes, fatigue, and dehydration. With no windows, the air feels stifling but their requests for fans are at times ignored. 

Workers at three other factories in Phnom Penh, the country’s capital, producing clothes for brands like Primark, H&M, and Old Navy (owned by Gap Inc.), told similar stories of worsening heat.

Around the world, fashion’s mostly female labor force is grappling with working conditions made increasingly unbearable and unhealthy by climate change. Women picking cotton in India’s sun-baked fields are toiling in temperatures of roughly 113 degrees Fahrenheit, while workers in Ghana’s Kantamanto — one of the world’s largest second-hand markets where clothing discarded by Western consumers is resold — are losing vital wages when flooding prevents trade. Nour is just one of nearly 1 million garment workers in Cambodia, a country that has experienced roughly 1.4 degrees F degrees of warming per decade since the 1960s.

+One keeps assuming it’s only a matter of time before Massachusetts governor, and climate champ, Maura Healey, puts the kibosh on a planned expansion of a private jetport at Hanscom Field in suburban Boston. Her job may have gotten easier with a new report that adds the area’s historic Minuteman Park (it follows the route between Lexington and Concord where the fighting was heaviest on the first day of the Revolution) and Walden Pond to the nation’s list of endangered historic areas. “It will diminish the tranquility of these sites and will also cause jet pollution,” Kathi Anderson, director of the Walden Woods project, said. “But the most important environmental impact of private jet travel relates not just to this area, but to the globe. Because private jet traffic is the most climate-impactful type of travel.”

+Truly landmark reporting from Mike Soraghan in Politico on the fact that the nation’s pipeline inspections are essentially a sham, where the industry gets to watchdog itself with predictable results. This is a remarkably thorough investigation:

The inspectors report to the pipeline companies themselves. Regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Transportation and state agencies leave the monitoring of pipeline construction almost exclusively to this network of private inspectors paid by the developers. When inspectors identify safety lapses, it’s often left to the companies themselves to decide when to make fixes, or whether to make fixes at all.

Eight inspectors who’ve worked on pipeline projects in states across the country, some granted anonymity to discuss safety hazards, told E&E News that their warnings were often ignored by the pipeline companies. And if they refuse to be ignored, they say, they can be fired…

Federal investigations, third-party analyses of pipe failures, formal complaints and interviews with more than a dozen people involved in pipeline construction reveal a system rife with lapses. Oil spills in Kansas and damage to farms in Oklahoma have been linked to flawed inspections. Inspection failures were cited by federal investigators seeking a $40 million fine for the spilling of toxic drilling fluid in Ohio. And on the Mountain Valley gas pipeline project in Virginia and West Virginia, federal appeals court judges say inspectors “failed to prevent” widespread erosion problems.

“The inspectors are like a smokescreen,” said Frank Chamberlin, a pipeline inspector from Upstate New York. “They put them on the project as a scapegoat.”

As Bill Kitchen makes clear in a report at Common Dreams, communities along the MVP pipeline—Joe Manchin’s price for the Inflation Reduction Act—may be at paricular risk due to “corroded” pipe.

When water pressure blew a gaping hole in the Mountain Valley Pipeline on May 1, folks living near the right of way must have had many mixed reactions—anger, fear, outrage, I told you so, even relief. Relief that it happened now before the pipeline becomes highly pressurized with methane gas.

If the 42-inch pipeline ever explodes at 1,480 pounds per square inch of gas pressure, it will be like nothing we have ever seen. Anyone nearby will likely not survive.

+An impassioned cry to defend one more thing at risk from the climate crisis: nordic skiing, increasingly conducted on narrow ribbons of manmade snow. As Charlie Cobb writes in Faster Skier,

nothing quite compares to the feeling of skate skiing on a fast, icy day, or classic striding in firm tracks with extra blue kick wax. It’s the best feeling in the world; is that not worth preserving? Is preserving the things that make us happy, the things that make life worth living, not as important as preserving the basic necessities?

In many ways, I feel like the climate crisis is a lot like a ski marathon. A marathon where you fall and break a pole at the start, or miss the start completely, or come into it with a cold. Your best possible result is out of reach from the moment you really get going, but the race is long; if you don’t give up—if you put your best foot forward—then you might just achieve a decent result. But you’d better get going . .

+Sophie Kevany reports that bumblebee nests are starting to overheat as temperatures rise:

Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable.

Most bumblebee broods would not survive at temperatures above 36C, the paper, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, concluded. The research team reviewed 180 years of literature, and found that for all bumblebee species studied the optimum temperature range for incubating nests was between 28C and 32C.

Peter Kevan, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “If [bumblebees] can’t keep temperatures below what is probably a lethal limit of about 35C, when the brood may die, that could explain why we are losing so many bumblebees around the world, especially in North America and Europe.”

+Among the winners of this year’s Goldman Prize is Murrawah Maroochy Johnson from the Birri Gubba First Nation of Australia, who helped stop a major coal project on her ancestral land. As Mongabay reports

In late 2022, the Land Court of Queensland recommended the rejection of a mining lease for one of Australia’s biggest proposed coal mining and export projects, owned by billionaire Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal Ltd. The project would have emitted 1.58 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over its lifespan and destroyed the 8,000-hectare (20,000-acre) Bimblebox Nature Refuge in the Galilee Basin of central Queensland state.

As co-director of the organization Youth Verdict, Maroochy Johnson guided the group’s opposition to that historic court victory that resulted in multiple precedents making the link between climate change impacts and cultural and human rights.