American cities want to recycle their plastic trash in Mexico. Critics call it ‘waste colonialism.’

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Just ahead of this year’s Super Bowl in February, the City of Phoenix, Arizona, published a peculiar press release touting its strategy for waste diversion. Thanks to its relationship with Direct Pack Incorporated, an multinational company that makes and recycles plastic, the city said it would be able to send much of its plastic waste to Mexico for recycling.

“[T]he City of Phoenix stands ready to achieve its goal of hosting the greenest Super Bowl events yet,” the announcement from Phoenix’s public works department said.

The city was referring to a forthcoming Direct Pack facility for recycling plastic items called PET thermoforms — clamshells, berry containers, salad boxes, egg cartons, and similarly shaped containers made from polyethylene terephthalate, one of the seven main kinds of plastic. Direct Pack already has a recycling facility in Guadalajara that it says can recycle tens of thousands of tons of PET thermoforms each year, and it’s been constructing a new one in Mexicali, Mexico, just across the border from California. 

The facility is great news for plastic companies based in the U.S., where industry publications say PET thermoform recycling has remained “a struggle.” These companies face growing scrutiny over skyrocketing plastic pollution, and have spent decades trying to convince the public that recycling is the answer. Direct Pack says on its website that it can give PET thermoforms new life again and again, turning plastic containers like those thrown away at the Phoenix Super Bowl into a “valuable infinite resource.” 

But environmental advocates in Mexico are less excited about the idea of processing more of what they see as garbage from abroad. “The U.S. shouldn’t send this waste to Mexico,” said Marisa Jacott, director of the Mexican nonprofit Fronteras Comunes. “We have less money, less infrastructure.” Rather than engaging in what she called “waste colonialism,” she urged U.S. companies to stop producing so much plastic in the first place and to stop promoting recycling as a cure-all to the plastic waste crisis. 

Direct Pack’s Mexicali facility is part of a larger plan from the U.S. plastics industry to improve recycling infrastructure for the 1.6 billion pounds of PET thermoforms that the U.S. and Canada produce every year. Unlike the PET bottles used for bottled water, soda, and fruit juice, which are among the easiest plastic products to recycle, PET thermoforms are accepted by just 11 percent of the United States’ material recovery facilities, or MRFs — the plants where mixed materials from recycling bins like paper, aluminum, and plastic are sorted into bales for further processing. And even that doesn’t mean that those thermoforms will ultimately be turned into new products; most recyclers are unwilling to buy and reprocess PET thermoforms because it costs more to sort, wash, and recycle them than to make new plastics.

The main North American trade group for PET container recyclers lists only one facility in the United States that will accept PET-only bales of plastic for reprocessing. The president of another industry group, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, said last year that PET thermoforms were a low-volume commodity that weren’t worth the costs of sorting and storage.

Given such a bleak landscape, Ornela Garelli, an oceans and plastic campaigner for the nonprofit Greenpeace Mexico, says the promise of thermoform recycling is a “greenwashing strategy” from the plastics industry — a way to justify the continued production of plastics. She says it’s time to stop making so many thermoforms in the first place, not hold out hope that more recycling infrastructure will ever be able to keep up with a growing glut of plastic waste.

Still, U.S. plastic makers are doubling down. A U.S.-based nonprofit called the Recycling Partnership — funded and overseen by plastic and packaging companies, including Coca-Cola and Exxon Mobil — says it plans to fund a number of PET recycling efforts this year, beginning with a first round of grants announced in early January for three companies focused on PET reclamation. 

One of these companies is Direct Pack, whose headquarters are in Azusa, California, just outside Los Angeles. But rather than building out PET thermoform recycling infrastructure stateside, the Recycling Partnership’s grant is being used to help Direct Pack build a new PET recycling facility in Mexicali, set to begin operating this spring. According to the Recycling Partnership, the plant will source thermoforms from across the U.S., process them into a plastic feedstock called “flake,” and send them across the street to an existing Direct Pack thermoform production plant, where they will be converted into new packaging.

Strawberries packed in plastic clamshells.
Getty Images

Andrew Jolin, Direct Pack’s director of sustainability, told Grist that “the whole process is environmentally sound,” adding that the company has been “embraced by the local community with our competitive pay scale and benefits.” He said concerns about the recyclability of PET thermoforms are “disinformation” propagated by Greenpeace and that Direct Pack plans to open a similar recycling plant in North Carolina by the end of the year.

Critics, however, have raised legal and ethical objections. Jim Puckett, founder and executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Basel Action Network, told Grist it was “disgusting” that the City of Phoenix and the companies represented by the Recycling Partnership were touting the Mexicali facility. “Of course it’s wonderful for them, they get to sweep their garbage across the border,” he said.

Puckett says the Mexicali facility could run afoul of an international agreement called the Basel Convention, which regulates the international plastic waste trade. Although the U.S. hasn’t ratified the agreement, Mexico has — meaning it’s illegal for Mexico to import plastic waste from the U.S. unless it’s “almost free from contamination and other types of waste” and “destined for recycling in an environmentally sound manner,” rather than incinerated or dumped. Bales of PET that contain more than 2 percent other types of plastic, paper, metal, food, or other materials are generally regulated under the Basel Convention as “hazardous waste” and are banned from U.S.-Mexico trade.

“It’s really difficult to achieve that level of cleanliness,” Puckett said. In California, MRFs are unable to sort bales of PET beyond an average of about 10 percent contamination — and that’s when they include PET bottles. There’s virtually no data on contamination in thermoform-only bales — since most recyclers in the U.S. won’t buy PET thermoforms, they’re typically not sorted into bales on their own.

Craig Snedden, Direct Pack’s president, said the company does not check PET bales before they’re imported from the U.S. to the company’s Guadalajara facility, but he’s confident that they contain less than 2 percent contamination, based on data on the weight of PET collected compared to the weight of all the nonrecyclable materials Direct Pack sends to a landfill.  Adam Gendell, The Recycling Partnership’s director of materials advancement, said the most common types of contamination are from food, which “doesn’t sink anybody’s ship” or “cause deleterious effects to the natural environment.” 

In response to a detailed list of questions, a spokesperson for the City of Phoenix referred Grist to Direct Pack and highlighted its goal of achieving “zero waste” by 2050.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns that PET thermoform recycling could divert millions of gallons of water from residential use in Mexicali, which was declared to be in a state of emergency drought last summer. Multiple washes are required to remove sticky glues and labels from PET thermoforms, making them significantly more water-intensive to recycle than bottles.

Jolin said the Mexicali facility would “not us a lot of freshwater” — about 800 gallons per day. He said it’s more environmentally friendly to recycle PET thermoforms than to make packages out of other materials like paper, because doing so requires more trees to be harvested. (The U.S. recycling rate for cardboard is greater than 90 percent, compared to 5 percent for plastic.)

Garelli, with Greenpeace Mexico,  said supporting a PET thermoform recycling plant in Mexico allows Direct Pack and its funders through the Recycling Partnership to skirt labor regulations that are tougher in the U.S. The minimum wage in Mexicali is about $17 per day — $2.12 an hour, based on an eight-hour workday — compared to $15.50 an hour in California.

“Instead of forcing their own companies to make the transition toward reusability, they are sending all their plastic waste to countries where there are more flexible laws,” she said. “They can pay low salaries to the workers.”

Federal data compiled by the Basel Action Network shows that U.S. plastic waste exports to Latin America have grown by some 90 million pounds per year since 2017, when China stopped accepting it with its “National Sword” policy. “It is not fair for countries — not only Mexico but other Latin American countries — to keep receiving this waste from the U.S.,” Garelli said. 

Editor’s note: Greenpeace is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline American cities want to recycle their plastic trash in Mexico. Critics call it ‘waste colonialism.’ on Mar 31, 2023.

Biden administration releases road map to scale up nuclear, hydrogen, and energy storage

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Last week, the Department of Energy, or DOE, released a road map for scaling up three emerging technologies that could make or break the U.S. energy transition. According to the agency, advanced nuclear, clean hydrogen, and long-duration energy storage are crucial for reaching net-zero emissions. The problem is, self-sustaining markets for these technologies don’t exist yet. 

The department’s new “Pathways to Commercial Liftoff” reports identify key challenges and potential solutions for getting these industries off the ground. They provide, for the first time, concrete numbers on how much additional energy capacity is needed from each of the three new technologies to reach U.S. climate goals. They also spell out how much money private and government actors will need to invest in research and development, and what challenges stand in the way of commercializing these sectors. 

The Biden administration aims to halve emissions by 2030 and hit net-zero emissions by 2050. These fast-approaching deadlines mean that the next few years are critical for redrawing the energy landscape. 

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, but it’s also an all-technologies-on-deck situation,” said DOE chief commercialization officer Vanessa Chan in a webinar last week introducing the new reports. “We want to ensure that we’re looking at all technologies that can help toward the president’s ambitious climate goals.” 

The “liftoff” reports mark one of the first concrete steps the Biden administration has taken to map out how the government will spend billions in recent clean energy funding. As a result of laws including the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides energy investments and boosts U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, the DOE now holds tens of billions in climate investments to spend over the next decade.

This huge pot of money means that the agency can help “buy down risk” for companies and private investors that remain hesitant to wade into new energy territory, according to Chan. The new reports highlight the federal government’s plans to help jump-start three new industries.

“Advanced nuclear” is a catch-all term for new nuclear reactor models that improve on the safety and efficiency of traditional reactor designs. Advanced nuclear could help provide stable, reliable electricity to complement renewables like solar and wind, which fluctuate throughout the day. But the nuclear industry is at a “stalemate,” according to the department. Recent nuclear projects have tended to go over budget and run into delays, leaving both project developers and utilities wary about investing in new reactors. 

The DOE says the U.S. will need an additional 200 gigawatts of advanced nuclear power to reach its climate goals, enough to power about 160 million homes. Getting there will require $35 billion to $40 billion in private and public investments by 2030, and about $700 billion total by 2050. Crucially, the report says that at least five to 10 new reactors need to be in development across the country by 2025 for the U.S. to hit its goals. 

Like nuclear, long-duration energy storage aims to provide a stable source of power. The technology includes batteries and other grid-connected systems that can store energy from renewables and then dispatch it for 10 hours or longer when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. About 225 to 460 gigawatts of long-duration energy storage could come online by 2050, the DOE report says — but first, capital costs need to go down by half. And reaching market viability will require $330 billion in investments by 2050. 

A view of the green-tech “REFHYNE” hydrogen production plant in Wesseling, Germany.
Andreas Rentz / Getty Images

Clean hydrogen, a fuel produced using renewable energy, has the potential to replace traditional fossil fuels in industries that can’t easily run directly on clean electricity. Today, hydrogen is almost exclusively produced from fossil fuels, and is primarily used for oil refining and chemical fertilizers. But if clean hydrogen can get to commercial scale, the DOE estimates that hydrogen alone could reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 10 percent by 2050 by replacing fossil fuels in aviation, shipping, and industries that currently use hydrogen as a feedstock, like ammonia and methanol production. 

Sasan Saadat, a senior research and policy analyst at Earthjustice, stressed the importance of first displacing today’s use of fossil fuel-derived hydrogen before turning to novel sectors like road transportation and aviation. “It would be foolish to invest in creating new demand before we finish cleaning up hydrogen’s existing footprint,” he told Grist. 

He lauded the “liftoff” reports for highlighting this near-term goal. But as the agency moves forward with public investments, Saadat said officials will need to provide clear guidance on which end uses to prioritize. Otherwise, “We may end up with a situation where we use a bunch of scarce green hydrogen to do things that electricity could have done more easily.”

Some industry experts have also raised concerns about the lack of options for safely transporting and storing hydrogen fuel. The DOE has already earmarked $8 billion toward funding up to 10 regional “hydrogen hubs,” in the hopes of creating a network of infrastructure to address transportation concerns. In all, the public and private sectors would need to commit $85 billion to $215 billion to hydrogen through 2030 to align with U.S. climate goals. 

DOE officials emphasized that the reports — developed after dozens of conversations with companies, investors, and technical experts — are not prescriptive. As “living, breathing documents,” the reports will be regularly updated according to the most up-to-date information and ongoing consultation with relevant industries.

“The introduction of any new energy technology at scale is not a linear path,” said David Crane, director of the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. “It’s a winding road with speed bumps all along the way.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden administration releases road map to scale up nuclear, hydrogen, and energy storage on Mar 31, 2023.

The next farm bill could be a historic climate law – if Congress can agree on it

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When Congress renegotiates the farm bill every five years, it doesn’t exactly grab headlines. But this year, as the sweeping trillion-dollar legislative package that deals with everything from manure lagoons to food stamps comes up for renewal, climate advocates say it could be momentous. 

Typically passed with bipartisan support, the legislation, projected to cost $1.4 trillion over 10 years, encompasses relatively mundane things like crop insurance and money for rural broadband. Nutrition programs alone usually claim three-quarters of the bill’s funding. But environmental groups and some farmer advocacy organizations are lobbying Congress to turn this year’s bill — due for an update by October — into the next historic climate law. They say it could curb warming caused by agriculture, a key emitter of greenhouse gasses, in large part by converting the country’s vast farmlands into fields that suck carbon out of the air.

Climate activists march to the U.S. Capitol after the Farmers for Climate Action: Rally for Resilience in Freedom Plaza on March 7, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Paul Morigi / Getty Images

But as farm bill negotiations get under way on Capitol Hill, climate-specific policy ideas — like subsidizing farmers who plant cover crops that store carbon — are emerging as a point of contention in a divided Congress.

“It’s still in the early stages,” said Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine who sits on the House Agriculture Committee. “I’m feeling less discouraged than I could be,” she added, noting a history of broad support for farm bill programs that benefit both farmers and climate — say, by promoting soil health or making farms more resilient to drought — even if they don’t explicitly target emissions. 

As climate advocates prod lawmakers to tamp down on farm-related greenhouse gas emissions, new research shows food production alone is on track to warm the planet 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. In the United States, agriculture accounts for more than a 10th of the country’s emissions but could produce as much as a third by 2050, according to a recent Environmental Working Group analysis. But the soil beneath the country’s corn, soybeans, other crops, and pastures is capable of storing enough carbon to offset emissions by up to 10 percent.  

The farm bill could transform U.S. agriculture into a climate solution, said Cathy Day, climate policy coordinator at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Her organization is pushing Congress to boost funds for already existing conservation programs that help farmers plant trees and cover crops, reduce use of fertilizers that emit nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, and shift to grazing systems that keep soil intact, among other practices that cut emissions directly or lock carbon in the ground. Day also wants to see lawmakers invest in research and technology to help growers monitor how much carbon they sequester on their lands — a key metric for understanding how effective farms are at combating climate change.

Congress allocated $20 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s conservation programs under the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark bill that President Joe Biden signed last year. According to Day and other climate advocates, that wasn’t enough. While the bill made slashing emissions an explicit part of a few USDA programs, the funding will last only 10 years, Day said. “If we want to see that kind of funding go forward, we need to make [similar] funding permanent rather than have it a one-off situation.” 

Key farm bill programs that the IRA promised to infuse with cash — the Conservation Stewardship Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program — are notoriously oversubscribed. About three-quarters of farmers who apply for those programs don’t get funded, according to a recent report by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. That analysis, though, focused on data from before the IRA went into effect, and the billions of dollars authorized by the bill will help cover the backlog, said Michael Happ, program associate for climate and rural communities at the institute. 

Still, that money will do little more than make up for cuts — including those to the Conservation Stewardship Program — in the past two farm bills, according to Day. Groups like the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and even the more conventional American Farm Bureau Federation want to see Congress spend more on the conservation programs and target emissions. In recent years, those programs have shied away from funding “climate-smart” agriculture, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis published last year. Currently, half of the farm bill-authorized funds for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which shares costs for conservation-minded farm projects, goes to farmers’ livestock needs. That includes bankrolling methane digesters — systems usually made up of sealed tanks or ponds — that some farms use to convert methane from manure into fuel, called biogas, and fertilizer. 

“On the surface, that absolutely reduces the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions,” Day said. “However, those methane digesters also support an existing agricultural system that is built around high fossil-fuel use.” Digesters are often, though not always, used at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, sometimes called CAFOs, industrial livestock pens that are a major source of methane emissions. Rather than propping those facilities up, Day said the farm bill should subsidize practices like perennial grazing and agroforestry, which involves diversifying farmland with trees and shrubs that limit soil erosion, create wildlife habitat, and store carbon. Day said she’s not sure yet if such proposals will see bipartisan support but that incentive-based policies stand a better chance than mandates. 

Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, wants to make sure the farm bill addresses climate change. Robert F. Bukaty / AP Photo

Even if the farm bill boosts “climate-smart” farming by the billions, that alone won’t solve a major problem: Most growers don’t have the tools to know how much carbon they’re storing in their soil, said Cristel Zoebisch, deputy director of policy at Carbon180, a nonprofit focused on carbon removal and storage. “We need to be fairly certain that the amount of CO2 we’re saying we’re offsetting is actually being sequestered in agricultural lands,” Zoebisch said. “We don’t really have a good sense of what the baseline, what the starting point of soil carbon stocks looks like across the country today.” 

Zoebisch wants to see the farm bill fix that by directing money toward research, local demonstration trials and the development of equipment farmers could use to measure the carbon they sequester. While Congress recently passed the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act to help farmers access carbon markets — where they could profit from the carbon stored on their land — the bill didn’t resolve uncertainty around how to measure soil carbon or if the markets are worth it financially for farmers. 

And while that act showed bipartisan interest in voluntary farm programs that could curb emissions, a Republican-led House and a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate could stand in the way of more stringent regulations, like Senator Cory Booker’s proposal to ban CAFOs. Representative Glenn Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, said last year he wants to “make sure the farm bill doesn’t become the next climate bill.” And Senator John Boozman, a senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, raised concerns at a committee hearing earlier this month about the climate-specific agriculture funding earmarked in the IRA, which Republicans unanimously opposed. But Republican leaders, including Thompson and Boozman, also have intimated they could be open to climate-beneficial programs with limitations. 

Success in getting Republicans on board might hinge on how programs are framed. For example, lawmakers from both parties have signaled support for voluntary programs that assist farmers in planting cover crops, while some Republicans have pushed back against requiring growers to engage in climate-friendly practices to get subsidies for crop insurance. “There is a lot of potential for climate targeting — without calling it climate,”  Day said.

On Tuesday, Pingree and Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, reintroduced the Agriculture Resilience Act, an ambitious marker bill that aims to make agricultural emissions net-zero by 2040. Pingree told Grist it could be hard to get a Republican cosponsor on her bill, but she expects the farm bill alone to help lower emissions, even if implicitly, through established programs that strengthen local food systems and improve soil health. That includes the USDA conservation programs and, among others, the Local Agriculture Market Program, which funds farmers markets. 

“Unless it was gutted and destroyed, the farm bill will be a climate package,” Pingree said. “Optimism might be a little too strong of a word, but I’m keeping an open mind that this process could work.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The next farm bill could be a historic climate law – if Congress can agree on it on Mar 30, 2023.

It’s been a place of worship for centuries. Now a copper mine threatens its future.

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For nearly a decade, tribal leaders in Arizona have fought to save Oak Flat – a sacred site central to the religious practices of the San Carlos Apache and other Indigenous nations connected to the area. Now, the site’s fate rests with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who is weighing whether mining copper in the area, and effectively destroying the site, violates the religious rights of local Indigenous peoples. 

Religious groups including: Seventh-day Adventists, the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team of the Religious Freedom Institute, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Christian Legal Society, Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, and the Sikh Coalition, have banded together to support the Apache and filed briefs as part of their advocacy.

Located about 40 miles from Phoenix, Oak Flat sits atop the third-largest deposit of copper ore in the world. In 2014, Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake authored legislation to transfer Oak Flat from Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a British-Australian company owned by Rio Tinto and BHP. For nearly a decade, tribal leaders have fought to keep the ceremonial grounds free from mining projects and other disturbances.

The company, which is known to mine iron ore, copper, lithium, aluminum and other materials, has previously been accused of desecrating Indigenous lands. In 2020, the mining company destroyed Juukan Gorge, a 46,000 year-old Aboriginal heritage site in Australia. Rio Tinto’s mining of copper and gold in the Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia have also raised concerns with local herdsmen. The company says the copper at Oak Flat will be used for electric vehicles, smartphones and MRI scanners.

Oak Flat has been used as a religious site to connect Indigenous peoples to their Creator, faith, families and natural world since before colonization and European contact, said Wendsler Nosie, the former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the head of Apache Stronghold to the Arizona Republic.

“While we cherish different religious convictions, we are united in our commitment to defend religious freedom. This case holds implications beyond its effect on Native American Worship,” one brief contained.

According to the Arizona Republic, Rio Tinto says mining at Oak Flat would bring 3,700 jobs and $1 billion annually to Arizona’s economy.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline It’s been a place of worship for centuries. Now a copper mine threatens its future. on Mar 30, 2023.

It’s not just oceans that are rising. Groundwater is, too.

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Beneath our feet there is an invisible ocean. Within the cracks of rock slabs, sand, and soil, this water sinks, swells, and flows — sometimes just a few feet under the surface, sometimes 30,000 feet below. This system of groundwater provides a vital supply for drinking water and irrigation, and feeds into rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Across the globe, it contains 100 times as much fresh water than all of the world’s rivers and lakes combined.

As Earth warms, groundwater — long seen as an immutable resource — is in flux. Most often, climate change is associated with a decrease in groundwater, fueled by worsening drought and evaporative demand. But in some areas, this water is actually creeping higher, thanks to rising sea levels and more intense rainfall, bringing a surge of problems for which few communities are prepared.

Places in the United States where the water table is inching higher — along the coasts, yes, but also inland, in parts of the Midwest — are already beginning to experience problems with infrastructure. Cracks in aging and poorly maintained pipes are being inundated, leaving plumbing unable to carry away stormwater and waste. Pavement is degrading faster. Trees are drowning as the soil becomes soupier, starving their roots of oxygen. During high tides and when it rains, groundwater is even reaching the surface and forming temporary ponds where there never used to be flooding.

This phenomenon — groundwater rise — could also have dire effects on people’s health, exposing them to new or unearthed pollutants. In the San Francisco Bay Area, rising groundwater threatens to spread contamination that can evaporate and rise into the air inside homes, schools, and workplaces. In Beaufort County, South Carolina, it is flooding septic systems, leaching raw sewage into nearby waterways. Along the Vermilion River in Illinois, it is seeping into unlined pits containing coal ash — a hazardous waste — and carrying heavy metals into drinking-water aquifers.

These three communities, profiled below, demonstrate the risks that other parts of the country may soon face as climate change alters a system long taken for granted.

West Oakland, California

Grist / Getty Images

Oceans do not stop where the sea meets the shore. Along the coasts, saltwater creeps through porous soil and rock, creating an underground saltwater table that can extend miles inland.

Many Americans are familiar with sea-level rise. As we crank up the planet’s thermostat, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and the thermal expansion of seawater mean the oceans are rising and intruding farther and farther inland — both on top of the land and underneath it.

Few regions expect an inundation from below, explained Kristina Hill, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies rising groundwater in urban coastal areas. “They think that building a levee is going to protect them from rising seawater. But, of course, a levee doesn’t affect much about the way that groundwater rises behind it.”

One of many concerning possibilities is that rising groundwater will mobilize contaminants that have been lurking in the soil for years, left behind by industrial and military sites, and allow them to spread, unnoticed, beneath our feet. 

Grist

Phoenix Armenta has been working to educate communities around the San Francisco Bay Area about this threat for years. In February 2020, McClymonds High School, which is not far from where Armenta lives in West Oakland, was forced to close for several weeks after a cancer-causing chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, was found in the groundwater below the school. 

West Oakland — a once-thriving Black community decimated by racist urban-planning practices — has been the site of shipyards, car manufacturers, metal smelters, and a former Army base, and is close to a major port and several highways. It’s unclear where the TCE in the groundwater below McClymonds High School migrated from, but NBC Bay Area reported that the industrial solvent could have come from any or all of five polluting sites within a half-mile of the school, including a metal-finishing shop and a former dry cleaner. 

Armenta, who was working for a local environmental justice organization at the time, was deeply concerned, but not surprised, by the news. “That entire school is surrounded by toxic sites and toxic contaminants,” they said. 

Hill said that rising groundwater could have played a role in transporting the TCE from a contaminated site to below McClymonds High School. U.S. Geological Survey modeling shows that groundwater levels in West Oakland are already climbing, meaning more contamination is likely on the move in parts of the city. But it’s difficult to link specific instances, like what happened at McClymonds High School, to changes induced by rising seas — that would require more monitoring wells to track groundwater levels at a granular level and to map the flow of contamination. 

Contaminants that have a gas component, like petroleum products and solvents, are particularly dangerous because they can wind up in the air people breathe. These substances can enter sewage systems through cracked pipes, evaporate, travel up into buildings, and then seep into homes, schools, and workplaces. They can also enter directly through cracks in building foundations.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control conducted testing and found that TCE was not present in the air inside McClymonds High School. Eventually, the agency allowed the school to reopen, but that doesn’t mean the risk has gone away. As groundwater in West Oakland continues to rise, scientists and activists warn that more contamination will spread, and the risk of hazardous substances seeping into homes, schools, and businesses will grow. “It’s likely to be a hot spot where these things will happen early,” Hill said.

The communities most at risk are disproportionately people of color and people with low incomes. Racist housing policies, including redlining, have pushed Black Americans, in particular, into low-lying areas that flood frequently and neighborhoods surrounded by refineries, factories, and other sources of pollution. “Now those areas have both polluted soil from military or industrial activities, [and] they also have rising groundwater,” Hill said.

Armenta wants to see better monitoring, and they also want to see the toxic sites remediated. “The businesses that have been polluting in this community should be cleaning it up,” they said. If the sites are left unaddressed, rising groundwater will continue to spread contamination and people will get sick.

Beaufort County, South Carolina

Grist / Getty Images

Everywhere you look in Beaufort County, South Carolina, there is water. The low-lying coastal county, which sits at the bottom of the state, is laced with streams and rivers, and flanked by marsh and barrier islands. Sea-level rise is obvious here, according to Larry Toomer, who owns an oyster market and restaurant in Bluffton, a fast-growing town in the southern part of the county. On sunny days, water pools in parking lots, and during the full moon, the high tide overtakes roads. 

But Toomer worries about the water he can’t see. 

Similar to San Francisco Bay, sea-level rise in this part of South Carolina is pushing water not only up, but inland, raising groundwater levels miles away from the coast. For the rural communities that dot Beaufort County and rely on residential septic systems, this creep spells trouble. As the water table climbs, it can infiltrate and impair septic systems, from the pipes to the leach fields, causing raw sewage — and the viruses, bacteria, and nitrogen it potentially contains — to spill into nearby waterways. It’s an existential problem for a town like Bluffton, where shellfish harvests fortify the economy and residents spend days on the water and nights roasting oysters over the fire. “Without good water quality, you won’t have good seafood,” said Toomer, who serves on the Bluffton town council as mayor pro tempore.

A working septic system depends on the distance between its underground tank and the groundwater below. Waste flows from homes into a tank, where solids sink to the bottom to be eaten by bacteria and liquids flow into a nearby field. There, the wastewater seeps through the earth, where it’s filtered by soil and digested by bacteria. Eventually, clean water trickles into the groundwater. 

When rising seas narrow the gap between a septic tank and groundwater, waste can’t be properly treated. Toilets back up, and raw sewage oozes into yards, where it can be washed into surrounding waterways. The fumes can cause respiratory problems, while nitrates may spur algal blooms.

Grist

Bluffton is bisected by the May River, which isn’t a river at all, but more like a river-shaped bay, fed by the tides of the Atlantic. In recent decades, extreme rainfall and booming development have eroded the river’s water quality. In 2009, high levels of fecal coliform, bacteria like E. coli associated with human and animal waste, led the state to halt shellfish harvests on the upper third of the river. While fecal coliform aren’t always dangerous, they’re considered an indicator for water quality. 

Kim Jones, Bluffton’s watershed resilience manager, said the city has surveyed septic systems, looking for failing tanks. As of last summer, they’ve only found five. “But we continue to get these positive hits,” Jones said, indicative of bacteria being swept into the river when tides below ground encounter groundwater.

Around one in five households in the U.S. rely on septic systems to treat wastewater, meaning they’re not connected to a central public sewer. Rising groundwater will challenge systems up and down coastal areas, particularly lower-elevation states like Florida and Virginia. Communities need to plan for this now, said Molly Mitchell, a coastal researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “Houses built today, in 30 years, will be in a very different environment,” she said. “Being aware of it could help reduce a lot of future impacts.”

Bluffton is in the process of phasing out septic systems and constructing a community sewer system — a major investment that requires building sewer lines and hook-ups to each home. But many communities can’t afford such projects, or residents may not be willing or able to pay new monthly bills on top of connection fees. Other alternatives — like community septics or above-ground systems — aren’t cheap, either.

Meanwhile, an effort is underway to assess how sea-level rise affects groundwater throughout Beaufort County. Scientists are measuring the height of the water table and how it changes with the tides. That can be used to model what will happen as oceans keep rising or rainfall intensifies. Already, residents complain of pumping out waterlogged leach fields. Alicia Wilson, a project scientist from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, expects that will only become more frequent. “The question is,” she said, “when do things fall apart?”

Such data collection isn’t widespread but will be crucial for helping towns prepare for the future. Rising groundwater is “out of sight, out of mind,” Jones said. But the tides underfoot shape the health, economy, environment, and very essence of her town. “It’s going to be an increasing issue for a lot of communities.”

Vermilion River, Illinois

Grist / Getty Images

Inland, far from America’s coastlines, climate change is driving a rise in groundwater levels through an increase in rainfall. Heavy precipitation — particularly when it comes over a short period of time — can cause lakes and rivers to flood and saturate the ground directly. That excess water then percolates down through the soil, raising the groundwater below, explained Mark Hutson, a geologist who previously worked for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. 

In the Midwest, this change is already underway. As the climate has warmed, the frequency of extreme rainfall events in the region has doubled since the early 1900s. In some places, the resulting rise in groundwater levels from this extreme rainfall — known as “groundwater flooding” — is temporary, receding once the earth is able to absorb the extra moisture. Elsewhere, like in the Great Lakes, steadily rising water levels — which could be up to 17 inches higher on average by 2050 — can permanently change the depth of the water table. 

As groundwater levels have risen, so too have concerns about the fate of hundreds of coal ash impoundments — typically unlined pits containing waste from power plants that burn coal for electricity. 

Though these dump sites are scattered around the country, they’re concentrated in the Midwest and South. Coal ash contains contaminants like mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, which can leach into the groundwater supply that towns and private well owners rely on for their drinking water. It can also pollute nearby waterways, poisoning plants and wildlife. A 2019 investigation by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice, which examined 265 coal-fired power plants that monitored the environment around their coal ash dump sites, found that more than 90 percent had already contaminated nearby groundwater with these heavy metals. 

Grist

At the Vermilion Power Station in central Illinois, which was operated by the Texas-based Dynegy corporation until its closure in 2011, three unlined ponds contain over 3 million cubic yards of coal ash, which has already contaminated the groundwater with boron, arsenic, and sulfate, testing by the Illinois EPA found. And that groundwater has already begun leaching toxins into the nearby Middle Fork Vermilion River; according to a 2018 report by the Illinois nonprofit Prairie Rivers Network, “the riverbank nearest the coal ash is stained brightly orange and has an oily sheen.” The organization has pointed out that groundwater flooding after heavy rains in this region could carry even more pollution from the Vermilion site.

In 2015, hoping to address concerns about groundwater pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted new regulations that required most of the country’s coal plants to stop sending waste to unlined pits and begin closing them entirely. (New coal ash waste has to be sent to lined sites that don’t cut into the aquifer). 

That usually meant capping them with a hard shell to prevent rainfall from getting in — but the rules said nothing about the threat from below, said Andrew Rehn, a water resources engineer with the Prairie Rivers Network. 

“If you have an ash pond, and it’s got a cap on it, and it starts raining, that cap does prevent that rain from getting in the ash,” Rehn said. “And then you say, ‘Oh, look, it works.’ [But] you’ve ignored groundwater.” 

The rules also exempted hundreds of coal ash sites that weren’t actively receiving new waste, but which contain as much as half of the coal ash ever produced in the U.S. Groups like Earthjustice have sued the EPA to force the agency to regulate these so-called “legacy” impoundments. 

Under the Biden administration, the EPA has started to look more closely at how groundwater affects coal ash sites. Last year, the agency created a list of 163 coal ash sites with waste potentially located below the water table. Nearly half of these are located in just four states: Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana. 

Dealing with the problem would require moving coal ash to a landfill that’s “high and dry,” Rehn said. But sites like the coal plant in Waukegan, Illinois, plan to cap and monitor the coal ash instead, despite protests from local communities. 

“​​This is a very urgent issue, because the closure is required, the closure is happening,” said Jenny Cassel, an attorney with Earthjustice who worked on coal ash cases. “And in some places, it’s happening in ways that are not going to alleviate the problem.”

Across the United States

This slow-moving crisis is popping up in communities across the U.S., but there are some common steps that can be implemented anywhere to help stem the spread of contaminants through climate-driven groundwater rise. Hill said one of the most important for government agencies and municipalities to take is simply more monitoring — in particular, at “maximum groundwater moments,” such as a few days after a heavy rain or at a high tide. Currently, sampling tends to be so infrequent that it doesn’t catch the movement of the contamination. 

“There are ways that we could be sampling and trying to catch the maximum risk, instead of kind of smoothing it all over with sampling that isn’t related to rain events or tide events,” Hill said. “Ideally, we’d help local people be involved in that sampling so that they know what’s happening in their own neighborhoods.”

Understanding, though, has to be paired with action. Along with taking broader steps to address climate change and its impacts, agencies need to ensure polluters clean up toxic sites, rather than just capping them and hoping for the best. 

Mitchell, the coastal researcher in Virginia, hopes that officials will use such data sets to more proactively address groundwater rise. 

“I think sometimes when we talk about issues related to changing environments, it can seem overwhelming or depressing,” she said. “But I really think the important thing is that when we have good information about the future, we make better decisions.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline It’s not just oceans that are rising. Groundwater is, too. on Mar 29, 2023.

US renewable power surged ahead of coal for the first time last year

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Last year, U.S. renewable electricity generation surpassed coal for the first time, according to newly released federal data. The report marks a major milestone in the transition to clean energy, but experts say that much faster progress is needed to reach international climate targets.

According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal statistical agency, combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022. Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent — for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The figure narrowly exceeded coal’s 20 percent share of electricity generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021. 

The growth in renewable electricity was largely driven by a surge in added wind and solar capacity, the agency said. Texas was the top wind-generating state last year, producing more than a quarter of all U.S. wind generation. It was also the leading state for natural gas and coal power. Iowa and Oklahoma landed at second and third in wind generation, accounting for 10 percent and 9 percent of national wind power respectively. 

California took the lead in solar, clocking in with 26 percent of the nation’s solar electricity. Texas came in second at 16 percent, followed by North Carolina at 8 percent. Renewable generation also exceeded nuclear for the second year in a row, after surging ahead for the first time in 2021. 

But the report found that fossil fuels still dominate the country’s energy mix. Natural gas remained the top source of electricity in the U.S. — its share rose from 37 percent of electricity generation in 2021 to 39 percent in 2022. 

For 2023, the Energy Information Administration forecasts additional growth in renewables. The agency predicts wind power will increase from 11 percent to 12 percent of total power generation this year. Solar is projected to rise from 4 percent to 5 percent. Coal is expected to further decline from 20 percent to 17 percent. Meanwhile, natural gas generation is expected to remain unchanged.

Despite the encouraging news, some energy experts say the uptick in renewables still isn’t fast enough. On Tuesday, the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization, announced that global annual investments in renewables need to more than quadruple to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The assessment echoes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top climate science body, which called for a rapid scale-down of greenhouse gas emissions largely produced from fossil fuels. 

Melissa Lott, director of research for the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told the Associated Press that the $369 billion in clean energy spending authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act should have a “tremendous” impact on further accelerating domestic renewable energy growth. But to reach that potential, the U.S. may need new policies to remove hurdles that stand in the way of building new clean energy infrastructure. 

In the United States, rapid deployment of renewable energy has been hindered by practical barriers including delays in connecting projects to aging electric grids. At the end of 2021, thousands of wind, solar, and battery storage projects were waiting to connect to grids across the country. According to data from the Department of Energy, less than 20 percent of wind and solar projects waiting to be connected are successfully completed. And even when projects are approved, developers often discover they need to pay for new transmission lines to deliver power to residents and businesses. Those transmission lines often face further permitting delays.

“It doesn’t matter how cheap the clean energy is,” Spencer Nelson, the managing director of research at the nonprofit ClearPath Foundation, recently told the New York Times. “If developers can’t get through the interconnection process quickly enough and get enough steel in the ground, we won’t hit our climate change goals.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline US renewable power surged ahead of coal for the first time last year on Mar 29, 2023.

The ghost of Tulare Lake returns, flooding California’s Central Valley

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When American settlers arrived in California 150 years ago, the sprawling Central Valley was home to the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River. Tulare Lake expanded each spring as rain and melting snow filled the valley, growing so large that fisherfolk could sail across its surface to catch terrapin for San Francisco restaurants. But the land barons who took over the region soon drained the lake and covered it in crops, helping make it one of the nation’s most productive agricultural hubs.

Now, as California closes out a historically wet winter, Tulare Lake has reappeared for the first time since 1997. As runoff from several rivers drains into the valley, the homes and streets and fields that sit on the lake bed, which covers 1,000 square miles, are being inundated once again. The flooding will only increase over the next few months as the state’s record snowpack melts, dousing the area with the equivalent of 60 inches of rain.

Tulare Lake has always emerged during especially wet years, but the flooding will be worse this time: the region’s powerful agriculture industry has compounded flood risk around the lake by pumping enormous amounts of subterranean groundwater, turning the region into a giant bowl. Farmers overdraw the basin’s aquifer by around 820,000 acre-feet per year, far more water than Los Angeles consumes over the same period, and this pumping has caused the southern Central Valley to sink faster than almost any other place in the world.

Subsidence is occurring throughout California, but the problem is at its worst in the area around Tulare Lake, which is about 200 miles north of L.A. Some cities near the lake bed have sunk by as much as 11 feet over the past half-century. That rapid decline makes homes and crops in the basin much more vulnerable to flooding than when the lake last appeared 35 years ago. What’s more, the levees and channels that control flooding are getting less effective as the land around them subsides.

“Tulare Lake is playing Russian Roulette with flooding, and they just lost,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, an independent researcher and consultant who has studied flood risk in the Central Valley. “Water is flowing differently because of the subsidence, and they don’t have any kind of flood management.”

An 1873 map of California showing the former boundaries of Tulare Lake. Early American settlers drained the lake and planted crops on the dried lake bed.
David Rumsey Map Collection

Even as flood risk has grown due to subsidence, local leaders have rejected the state’s attempts to finance new flood defenses. When California began to draft a statewide flood protection plan after Hurricane Katrina, many counties and flood control districts in the agriculture-dominated Tulare Lake basin declined to participate, denying themselves state funding for new levees and bypass systems.

“The local interests who were there at those meetings were pretty adamant that they did not want to be part of a state level plan,” said Julie Rentner, president of the California-based environmental organization River Partners, who participated in the drafting of the plan. “They felt like they had it under control. Especially in some of the more conservative parts of California, there’s a real concern and real suspicion that the state intervening in the way water is managed will have deleterious impacts on local communities or local economy.” 

In other cities, like Sacramento, the state spent billions to improve a network of levees and channels that helps manage runoff, but the Tulare Lake basin has no centralized flood infrastructure at all. Tulare County last updated its flood control master plan in 1972, when land in the area was several feet higher. The only levees in the lake bed are those owned and maintained by local flood control districts, which often lack the capital to make significant improvements. Those structure seem all but certain to fail as the lake reappears over the coming weeks, and some already have. 

The officials charged with managing groundwater around Tulare Lake have also resisted the state’s attempts to control the pace of subsidence. Earlier this month, state officials chastised a group of local groundwater control agencies for failing to set “minimum thresholds and measurable objectives” for countering subsidence as required by state law. The agencies had said they wanted to limit the region’s subsidence to between 1 and 2 feet over 20 years, a number so high state officials thought it was a typo.

(Groundwater agencies and flood control districts that represent the Tulare Lake area didn’t immediately respond to interview requests.)

A flood map produced by Kings County, California, shows the former outline of Tulare Lake. The lake has emerged after a series of atmospheric rivers struck California.
Kings County Office of Emergency Management

Much of the land on the lake bed is owned by J.G. Boswell, an agricultural company founded by the famous land baron of the same name. Boswell is one of the titans of the Central Valley, and has long been among the largest private farming operations in the world — it grows cotton, tomatoes, wheat, and a variety of other staples on fertile land that used to be underwater. The company maintains pumps and flood cells to protect its crop from inundation, but many of its fields will likely flood later this spring.

But it’s not just farmland that stands to flood. The Tulare Lake basin is home to half a dozen small towns, including Allensworth, the oldest town in California founded by Black people, and Corcoran, which houses a large state prison and a large population of agricultural laborers. Due to the pace of subsidence, these towns grow more vulnerable to flooding with every passing year, and some have already taken on several feet of water this year. Earlier in March, someone sliced a hole in a barrier along a local creek, flooding most of Allensworth.

A vehicle surrounded by flood waters and flooded farmland near Allensworth, California. Much of the surrounding area has flooded as Tulare Lake reappears.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

Few people in these towns have flood insurance. Corcoran, one of the largest cities on the lake bed, has a population of around 22,000, but only five of its households participate in the National Flood Insurance Program. Furthermore, the Federal Emergency Management Agency hasn’t updated federal flood maps to account for the past decade of subsidence, so many residents in flood zones may not even be aware of the risk they face. 

The worst is yet to come. Snowpack in the southern Sierra Nevada is almost triple the size of an average year’s, and warming weather will send the equivalent of 60 inches of rain toward Tulare Lake. That water will stick around for months or even years; as the lake grows, flooding could expand north toward the city of Fresno more than 40 miles away, putting thousands of homes and farms at risk. The lake bed also contains facilities like a sewage sludge composting plant that could leak or rupture as the area fills with water.

The result is a brutal irony. Draining Tulare Lake made it possible for the agricultural industry to thrive in the southern Central Valley, but that same industry has made the region more vulnerable than ever as the lake returns.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The ghost of Tulare Lake returns, flooding California’s Central Valley on Mar 28, 2023.

A spill outside Philadelphia adds to the growing list of chemical accidents this year

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A spill at a factory outside Philadelphia that sent thousands of gallons of chemicals into the Delaware River has sparked worries among the area’s residents over a major source of drinking water. One of the chemicals in the spill — butyl acrylate — was also on the 50-car train that derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, which spewed toxic fumes into the air as it burned for days.

The company that owns the chemical plant, Trinseo, estimated that 8,100 gallons of a latex finishing solution, a white paint-like substance, flowed into Otter Creek, a Delaware River tributary about a dozen miles upstream of a treatment plant that provides drinking water for more than a million people in and around Philadelphia. 

Exposure to high levels of butyl acrylate can cause skin irritation, headaches, dizziness and vomiting. Philadelphia officials at first told residents they might want to drink and cook with bottled water as a precaution, then changed tune on Sunday saying that tests showed no signs of contamination in the water supply intake and that tap water would be safe to drink at least through Monday evening. Workers stopped taking in river water at the treatment plant for most of the weekend but said they would need to bump up the water supply periodically to keep the plant operating.  

The accident occurred not only in a watershed long affected by industrial pollution, but also on the heels of the disastrous spill in East Palestine, which has prompted heightened scrutiny of chemical makers and railroad companies like Norfolk Southern, owner of the train that derailed in Ohio last month. Only three months into the year, there have already been 50 incidents resulting in chemical spills or fires around the United States, according to the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. Such incidents occur roughly once every two days, the Guardian estimated in a recent analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data spanning several years. 

Across the country, there is a “significant risk” of spills getting into drinking water, according to an EPA report, but most such events receive little notice. “Because releases to the environment are under-reported, there is no definitive assessment of the number or impact of releases to water,” the report said. 

Despite assurances from local officials, people in Philadelphia flocked to buy bottled water on Sunday, forming long lines and clearing shelves at stores. “We cannot be 100 percent sure that there won’t be traces of these chemicals in the tap water throughout the afternoon,” Michael Carroll, Philadelphia’s deputy managing director for transportation, infrastructure and sustainability, said in a statement Sunday morning. Several hours later, at a news briefing, officials said the spill hadn’t contaminated the city’s water supply and that rushing to buy bottled water wasn’t necessary. “If you want to store water, you should feel free to draw it from your tap, store it in a bottle, you can put in a pitcher, put it in your fridge,” Carroll said at the briefing.

Prior to the spill, some grocery store chains in the region had stopped selling water — including some gallon jugs from Giant Eagle and Acadia Spring Water — that had been bottled near East Palestine, citing an abundance of caution and ongoing tests for contamination following the train crash. Other supermarkets have continued to stock the water. (A scientist told Time it’s unlikely the bottled water is contaminated given its distance, 25 miles, from East Palestine.)  

According to Trinseo, an “equipment failure” caused the spill outside Philadelphia. The 2021 EPA report found equipment failure as the leading cause of chemical spills or unpermitted discharges nationwide — responsible for 49 percent of the total volume released into the environment between 2010 and 2019.

In addition to butyl acrylate, two other toxic chemicals — ethyl acrylate and methyl methacrylate — were in the solution that got into Otter Creek. Officials will continue testing the city water supply through the week, Carroll said at the briefing Sunday. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A spill outside Philadelphia adds to the growing list of chemical accidents this year on Mar 27, 2023.

Want to sequester carbon? Save wild animals

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As the world increasingly turns toward natural climate solutions like reforestation and grassland restoration to sequester carbon, it may be overlooking a crucial ally: animals. 

Protecting existing populations and restoring others to their natural habitats often improves the natural capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide within ecosystems, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. Robust populations of just nine species, such as sea otters or gray wolves, or genera, including whales, could lead to the capture of 6.41 gigatons of CO₂ annually, the researchers found. That’s about 95 percent of the amount needed to be removed annually to ensure global warming remains below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

In “Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions,” led by the Yale School of the Environment and the Global Rewilding Alliance, 15 international experts compare the carbon content in savannas, forests, and other ecosystems when their wildlife populations were healthy and when they were below historical numbers. They found multiple cases in which thriving populations of certain species, particularly large vertebrates, through acts like foraging, burrowing, and trampling, increased an ecosystem’s carbon storage capacity by as much as 250 percent.

The researchers argue that these essential species disperse seeds, facilitating the growth of carbon-sequestering trees and plants. Others trample or eat the vegetation that would otherwise rob those trees of space and nutrients. Predators prey on herbivores that, without predation, might adversely impact that essential fauna.

“Ecological science has had a long history of overlooking the role of animals as an important driver of the biogeochemistry of ecosystems,” Oswald Schmitz, an ecologist at the Yale School for the Environment and an author of the study, told Grist. “What we say is that we know animals can change the vegetation makeup of ecosystems, and a lot of ecosystem ecologists say vegetation is important for ecosystem function and carbon cycling, then surely the animals must be important, too.” 

According to the study, keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels not only requires reducing fossil fuel emissions but removing around 500 gigatons of atmospheric CO₂ by 2100. Natural solutions, like protecting and restoring forests, wetlands, and grassland ecosystems can help, but such measures, implemented at their current pace, will not do the job in time. Restoring animal populations, or “trophic rewilding,” can accelerate the rates of sequestration and storage in a process called “animating the carbon cycle.”

“Instead of taking 77 years to get that 500 gigatons out, we could actually have that in 35 years,” Schmitz said. “We could do it if we really made a concerted effort to rebuild these populations.”

In Africa, every increase of 100,000 animals in the Serengeti raises the amount of carbon sequestered by 15 percent. Wildebeest are particularly effective allies in the climate fight. More than 1 million of the ungulates migrate across almost 10,000 square miles of savanna. They consume carbon contained in the grasses they eat, then excrete it in their dung. That carbon is then integrated into the soil by insects. They also manage the grasses, mitigating the risk of wildfires. When disease wiped the wildebeest population in the early 1900s, fires grew more frequent and intense, releasing more carbon, transforming the Serengeti from a carbon sink to a carbon source. When the wildebeest population recovered beginning in the 1960s, the Serengeti became a carbon sink again. 

Similar examples exist across a wide range of ecosystems. In the Arctic, herds of caribou and other large animals compact snow, preventing permafrost melt. Whales feed in deep waters and release nutrients in their waste at shallower depths, stimulating the production of phytoplankton, which are essential to fixing carbon in the ocean. The animals also are enormous carbon sinks in their own right.

Yet many of these populations face increasing threats from overfishing, habitat loss, impediments to their migratory patterns, and other risks. Losing these species, or even seeing their historic range or numbers decrease, risks transforming the ecosystems they inhabit from carbon sinks into carbon sources.

While animating the carbon cycle has the potential to be a powerful accelerant of carbon removal, the study’s authors warn that trophic rewilding cannot be done without considering unintended consequences. Gray wolves can help carbon removal in boreal forests because they prey on the moose that browse on carbon-storing trees, but they can hurt carbon stores in grasslands, where they eat the elk that stimulate plant production through their grazing. Increases in populations of large animals can increase methane release, an issue that can be offset by reducing domestic livestock populations, according to the study. 

Balancing livestock and wildlife populations also raises another central consideration of trophic rewilding: its impact on local human populations. Schmitz said the key to successful trophic rewilding programs is to cater them to local conditions and needs.

Bison, which once roamed North America by the millions, could help store huge amounts of CO₂ in grasslands, but cattle ranchers often resist restoration efforts because of the health threats they can pose for cattle. 

“It’s about having people think about themselves as stewards of the land, and we ought to also compensate them for that stewardship,” said Schmitz. “If we would come up with a carbon market that paid the ranchers for the amount of carbon that these bison sequester, they could maybe make more money by being carbon ranchers than they could by cattle ranching.”

What must come first, Schmitz said, is a change in how the global climate community approaches natural carbon solutions. “One of the big frustrations in the conservation game is you’ve got the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, and then you also have the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity, and they don’t talk to each other,” he said. “One is trying to save biodiversity, and the other is trying to save the climate. And what we’re saying is you can do both, with the same thing, in the same space.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Want to sequester carbon? Save wild animals on Mar 27, 2023.

How the natural gas industry cozies up to utility regulators

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Last November, in a vast conference hall at a Marriott hotel in New Orleans, utility executive Kim Greene took the stage. Greene, the CEO of Southern Company, a Georgia-based conglomerate that owns gas and electric utilities across six states, was the first to speak on a panel titled “The Role for Natural Gas in America’s Clean Energy Future.” 

“Natural gas is foundational to America’s clean energy future,” she started, before proceeding to tell the audience about the nation’s 2.6 million miles of pipelines that deliver gas to 187 million Americans and 5.5 million businesses. “These customers are depending on our energy every day,” she said. “So as we look to the clean energy future, the most practical, realistic way to achieve a sustainable future where energy is clean, safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable, is to ensure that includes natural gas.” 

The statement, with its head-scratching, circular logic, may sound aimed at an audience of oil and gas industry executives, or perhaps an earnings call. But the seats were filled with utility commissioners — the state-level public servants who regulate gas, electric, water, and telecommunications companies. The panel was the centerpiece event for the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, or NARUC. And Greene was hardly the only industry representative there to lecture on the bright future for natural gas.

The conference provided a glimpse into the collegial relationship utility regulators have with the companies they are charged with regulating on behalf of the public, and the way the natural gas industry is working that relationship to shape how the country moves toward its climate goals. Public utility commissioners hold significant sway over the storied clean energy future. They help decide what energy infrastructure gets built, and when. If a utility wants to raise rates to invest in new power plants, transmission lines, or pipelines, it’s up to these powerful panels to determine whether such multimillion-dollar, long-lived projects are necessary, and how much a company can profit off of them. That means commissioners are not only shaping the energy transition, but determining what it means for utilities and their bottom lines. 

At the time of the conference, the industry was scrambling to adapt to new circumstances. President Biden had signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August, making hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies available for clean energy over the coming decade and threatening some utility business models that rely on fossil fuels. Electric companies were staring down the prospect of having to reevaluate the cost assumptions underpinning their capital spending plans, which in many cases include building new natural gas power plants. Natural gas companies faced an existential crisis. The growing push to electrify buildings, and new federal and state incentives that support the shift, could lead to greatly reduced demand for their product. In 2022, U.S. shipments of electric heating systems called heat pumps outnumbered those of gas furnaces for the first time.

In 2022, U.S. shipments of electric heating systems called heat pumps outnumbered those of gas furnaces for the first time. Tristan Spinski for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Some commissions that once approved natural gas projects without hesitation were now bringing more scrutiny to proposals following new state policies requiring rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A handful had even launched investigations into the future of natural gas, tribunals where gas companies were being put on the stand to show how they could evolve to comply with state climate goals. Plus, soaring natural gas prices related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were highlighting the risks of continuing to rely on the fuel. 

All of that was surely on utility executives’ minds when they sent a small army of missionaries to the NARUC meeting. The annual conference is hosted by and for utility commissioners, and the sessions in November covered a range of topics, from how to make sure funding from the Inflation Reduction Act benefits low-income customers to planning for the expansion of electric vehicle charging and clean energy storage systems. Those were in addition to at least half a dozen sessions about natural gas. On the conference attendee list, commissioners were outnumbered by people from the gas and electric companies they regulate. 

The lobbying effort began almost immediately upon arrival; the conference Wi-Fi password was “committed2clean,” a marketing slogan used by the Edison Electric Institute, the largest trade organization for electric utilities. (Regina Davis, the assistant executive director for NARUC, said the group had the opportunity to set the password as a top sponsor of the conference, and that the organization “did not hear of any complaints concerning the password.”) The American Gas Association, Edison’s counterpart for gas utilities, also sponsored the conference, though they shared the bill with a number of other trade groups that represent renewable energy and nuclear companies. 

Industry executives sat on panels and threw parties. The four-day event’s theme was “Connecting the Dots: Innovative/Disruptive Technology and Regulation,” and company representatives worked to convince regulators that they are innovating and disrupting — but that ultimately, the energy systems of the future should look a lot like the energy systems of today.

The Edison Electric Institute and the American Gas Association, the largest trade organizations for electric utilities and gas utilities, respectively, were among the sponsors of the conference. Emily Pontecorvo / Grist

“One hundred and eighty seven million Americans use natural gas in their homes today, that’s more people than voted in Tuesday’s election,” Karen Harbert, the executive director of the American Gas Association, said during a discussion about investor expectations and natural gas. “We’re growing one customer every minute of every day.”

Industry representatives like Harbert often linked the idea that natural gas is essential to a clean energy future with another, seemingly conflicting point — that companies plan to replace natural gas with lower-carbon fuels down the line. The industry is investing in reducing methane emissions from leaking infrastructure in the near term, Harbert said, but “also innovating and delivering new technologies and new fuels through our existing 2.7 million miles of pipeline.”

Harbert and other speakers described using those pipelines to deliver increasing amounts of “renewable natural gas,” a label for methane diverted from landfills and animal feedlots, as well as hydrogen, a gaseous fuel that does not produce CO2 when burned. But she noted that such efforts to cut emissions are “not cheap” and told commissioners utilities “need to be able to get rate recovery on some of the innovation that we are investing in.” In other words, customers should help pay for this experimentation.

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The gas industry claims to be “innovating and delivering new technologies and new fuels through our existing 2.7 million miles of pipeline.”

Left: MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images Right: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

During most of the sessions focused on natural gas, none of the panelists chimed in to acknowledge that continuing to burn natural gas will worsen climate change, whether or not methane leaks are reduced. Left unsaid were the reasons many environmental justice and clean energy groups remain skeptical of plans to pursue renewable natural gas and hydrogen, including concerns that they could cost more than other options and perpetuate pollution without meaningfully reducing emissions. 

“We respectfully and vehemently disagree with the characterization that our meetings are not open to varied perspectives,” Davis, the NARUC spokesperson, told Grist. “We make a concerted effort to invite diverse perspectives and include representation from consumer/environmental and other constituencies relevant to NARUC’s membership.”

Davis highlighted, among other events, one unique panel that brought critical questions about the future of natural gas to the fore. It featured participants in a series of workshops held in 2021 by the clean energy research nonprofit RMI, which is known for its building electrification advocacy, and National Grid, a gas and electric utility that operates in Massachusetts and New York. They brought together staff from other energy companies and environmental groups — those typically pitted against each other in utility commission proceedings — in an attempt to build trust and find common ground. 

The goal was to discuss some of the many potential challenges to cutting emissions from the natural gas system. For example, as homeowners who can afford to switch to electric appliances do so, the shrinking pool of remaining natural gas customers could be left footing the bill for maintaining 2.7 million miles of pipelines, as well as any experiments with lower-carbon fuels that gas companies pump through them.

“There are so many questions and challenges that are unclear, and even controversies and conflicts about what the vision is for the path forward,” Mike Henchen, a principal at RMI, said during his opening remarks about the project. “We wanted to work across that difference in a collaborative, constructive way to see what we have in common and where we can find guiding principles.”

But the panel’s optimistic title, “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work,” did not exactly bear out. Henchen spoke candidly about tensions during the workshops, noting that even words like “transition” had been unexpectedly loaded. He said the participants decided not to examine data together because each interpreted it differently, and it only served to highlight divisions. Ultimately, many points of agreement came down to boilerplate principles like “affordability” and “comprehensive system planning.”

Still, Henchen was proud of the work as a starting place. He contrasted it with the discussions about natural gas that pervaded the conference. “I see words like, ‘natural gas is an unstoppable workhorse,’ and that ‘the industry has reduced its carbon footprints,’” he said. “These kinds of talking points, I feel like we need to get past them.” He looked out at the commissioners in the audience and asked for their help. “This transition is underway, the path is not yet written, and I look forward to your leadership in helping us move it forward.”

But while commissioners will undoubtedly be key players in this transition, another session — a commissioner-led discussion about soaring winter energy costs for consumers — indicated that many of these officials don’t exactly see themselves as being in a position of power. 

The conversation began with a bit of recent history from Eric Blank, the chair of the Colorado Public Service Commission. First, he said, the price of natural gas shot up when the pandemic began to wind down, driving up gas and electricity bills. It spiked again after Russia invaded Ukraine. And costs incurred during a brutal 2021 ice storm were piling on top of high gas prices, while people in Colorado were also still paying for system upgrades their utilities had made over the last decade.

“People are hurting, and we’re struggling to figure out what to do. I’m looking forward to seeing if anyone has any solutions,” Blank said, letting out a laugh that suggested he didn’t have high expectations.

Utility commissioners generally have a mandate to secure reliable services for residents and businesses at “just and reasonable” rates. What counts as “just and reasonable,” a standard phrase written into many state laws, is often debated. But it was clear the commissioners felt that between inflation and the war, forces out of their control were putting it out of reach. 

Few offered Blank solutions. Instead, the session began to resemble group therapy. Abigail Anthony, a commissioner in Rhode Island, said her state had some programs to help low-income residents, but most customers there were going to see a 45 percent increase this winter. “Nothing prepares people for seeing that.”

“It’s gonna be an ugly time for ratepayers in Georgia,” said Georgia Public Service commissioner Tim Echols, who worried aloud about his reelection in 2023. “We just approved another six natural gas plants. We haven’t hedged as much as you guys have,” he said. “I wish we had.” 

If a utility wants to raise rates to invest in new infrastructure, it’s up to commissioners to determine how much it can profit. Here, Georgia Power CEO Chris Womack answers questions before the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2022. AP Photo/Jeff Amy

Michael Richard, a commissioner in Maryland, nodded toward his state’s renewable energy goals as a potential future lifeline. “That may not have a lot of impact or benefits for this coming year,” he said, “But as we look to increasing electrification and renewable energy in the state, that hopefully will begin to have some positive impact on prices.”

As the commissioners in the room resigned themselves, however reluctantly, to the price volatility of an energy system that’s hooked on natural gas, just outside the room, powerful forces were working to keep it that way. According to David Pomerantz, the executive director of the nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute, these two stories were related.

“I think they’re wrong that there’s not that much they can do,” he told Grist. “It sort of reflects what I would call a failure of imagination in the regulatory community. That’s a hallmark of regulatory capture.”

The Energy and Policy Institute acts as a watchdog of utilities, and has documented the many scandalous ways they try to maintain a grip on regulators and policymakers, such as by offering them bribes or supporting advocacy organizations that appear independent but are backed by corporate interests. But here he was alluding to a more subtle form of influence: the way utilities control the information environment that commissions operate in, creating an atmosphere where it feels like they are the only ones with the answers. 

For example, rate cases, in which utilities lay out their capital spending plans and request rate increases, are hard to engage in, let alone follow, without expertise. Many states have a consumer advocate’s office that weighs in; in many cases, nonprofit advocacy groups attend hearings, submit comments, and hire experts to help them analyze utility proposals. But utilities hold tightly onto the system data that underlie those proposals, limiting the ability of commissioners or outside parties to question them or offer credible alternatives. When utilities claim a proposal is good or bad for safety or reliability, it’s hard for anyone else to claim otherwise.

In many cases, nonprofit advocacy groups attend hearings, submit comments, and hire experts to help them analyze utility proposals. But utilities hold tightly onto the system data that underlie those proposals. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

Pomerantz also said too many commissions are reactive, rather than proactive. “They don’t see themselves as setting policy. Their job is to take the cases that are handed to them by the utilities and adjudicate them, right?” he said. “But then the utility’s leading the dance on everything and the commission is just following. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

Davis, the NARUC spokesperson, stressed that commissioners are always looking for ways to increase affordability. “Passing through the commodity cost of natural gas to ratepayers is basically required by U.S. and state constitutional principles and is anything but a symptom of regulatory capture,” she told Grist. “State regulators do not have the luxury or freedom to simply be imaginative at will.” 

But Pomerantz offered one possible solution, noting that commissions could require utilities’ shareholders to pay some of the cost of fuel for electricity generation, rather than passing 100 percent of it onto customers, which would not only improve affordability but create an incentive to transition away from fossil fuels. One commission in Hawaii has already implemented a program like this.

To be fair, commissioners occupy an awkward position in the energy transition. They are not technically policymakers, though some commissioners are democratically elected. “In a nutshell, commissions must implement the policies of their states,” said Davis. “Any overreach in their authority will likely result in an action by the courts.” That means they must maintain the appearance of being nonpartisan implementers of the law. But within that implementation lie all kinds of decisions that resemble policy, with major implications for how swiftly, and justly, the transition plays out. 

At NARUC’s annual meeting, the utilities were, in one very real sense, leading the dance. The American Gas Association regularly throws a party for the commissioners during the conference. The invitation for the “Big Easy Bash” stated, in three places, that the event was not sponsored by NARUC, nor was it “part of the 2022 NARUC Annual Meeting and Education Conference agenda” — though it did advise attendees to bring their NARUC meeting badge to gain entry.

The party was held at the House of Blues, a concert venue around the corner from the conference building. Bartenders passed out free drinks while a cover band roused the crowd with decade-hopping hits like “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire, and “Ride Wit Me” by Nelly. As everyone on the dance floor threw their hands in the air shouting, “Hey, must be the money!” TV screens around the venue cycled through an American Gas Association presentation. The slides contained statements like, “Somewhere in the U.S. a home or business is signing up for natural gas service at this moment,” and “America’s natural gas utilities are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through smart innovation” under headings like “Natural Gas is Essential for Improving our Environment.” 

Once upon a time, there may have been a stronger case for the deference commissions show utilities, said Pomerantz. A decade or two ago, the utilities had technical tools and expertise that no one else did. That’s no longer the case.

“Utilities might have a monopoly on the distribution grid, but they don’t have a monopoly on ideas and information,” he said. “So it’s great for them to have a healthy relationship with regulators, but regulators should also have healthy relationships with a host of other parties who also have good ideas, and who frankly aren’t motivated by, you know, profits.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the natural gas industry cozies up to utility regulators on Mar 27, 2023.