renewable energy

September 17, 2024

Debate grows over whether some PFAS chemicals have a place in clean energy

By Shannon Kelleher

As the planet warms at an alarming rate, culminating in the hottest summer on record, nations worldwide are rapidly scaling up so-called clean energy technologies that can replace the world’s dependence on climate change-inducing fossil fuels.

More than 100 countries last year committed to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 to try to slow climate change and reduce the related devastating human and environmental toll from increasingly frequent and extreme weather events.

In the United States, manufacturers of electric vehicles (EVs) and EV batteries have announced more than $188 billion in investments over the last nine years, with most of the money committed during the last two. And this May, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $71 million investment in projects to expand access to solar power – dubbed the “cheapest form of energy” by the DOE.

But behind the enthusiasm lies a little-discussed but looming concern. Many of these technologies being heralded as tools to turn back climate change rely on fluoropolymers, a family of plastics that are part of a class of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Many types of PFAS are considered so hazardous that the US and many other countries have targeted them for elimination.

PFAS have been identified as ubiquitous environmental pollutants that don’t break down naturally, with several linked to a range of human health problems. Fluoropolymer safety for humans and the environment is still a matter of debate.

But the paradox of boosting the use of potentially harmful types of PFAS chemicals in order to create technologies that can address harmful climate change is stirring debate among some experts and prompting a deeper look at the pursuit of “clean energy”.

“Obviously, the green energy transition is very important,” said Ian Cousins, a professor at the University of Stockholm in Sweden who studies the environmental impact of PFAS. “I don’t want to hinder that. But at the same time… the green industry should be not just green energy but green in every regard.”

July 8, 2024

Electric vehicle batteries adding to toxic PFAS pollution, study finds

By Shannon Kelleher

A type of toxic PFAS in lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and other electronics is polluting air, soil and water in the United States and Europe, adding to concerns that the growing clean energy sector could harm the environment even as it strives to combat climate change, according to a new study.

Researchers said they analyzed samples of soil, sediment and surface water collected in 2022 near manufacturing plants in Minnesota, Kentucky, Belgium, and France, finding they were commonly contaminated with a subtype of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) called bis-perfluoroalkyl sulfonimides (bis-FASIs) at concentrations in the parts per billion.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Communications, also found that bis-FASI emitted into the air at these sites may travel long distances, potentially polluting areas far from the facilities where they are made and used.

“If we are not careful about the choices of materials and chemicals used in renewable energy technologies, then it is a concern that this may become a new source of PFAS pollution,” said Ariana Spentzos, a science and policy associate at the Green Science Policy Institute. Spentzos was not involved in the study.

“However, it is a false choice to choose between renewable energy and less PFAS pollution,” she added, noting that there are viable alternatives for many uses of PFAS in renewable energy.

April 22, 2024

EPA announces $7 billion to make solar more accessible

By Shannon Kelleher

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Monday that it will provide $7 billion to create or expand low-income residential solar programs across the country, a move the agency said will lower energy costs for roughly 900,000 households in communities that might otherwise struggle to access the alternative energy source.

The grants will be awarded to 60 recipients made up of the state agencies, Tribes and nonprofits selected through a grant competition funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. The program includes services to help communities overcome barriers to switching to solar, including assistance with siting and permitting solar projects and connecting to the grid. according to an EPA press release.

In at least 25 states and territories, the agency says the grants will launch new programs “where there has never been a substantial low-income solar program before.”

“The United States can and must lead the world in transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels,” said US Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) said in a statement.

The “Solar for All”, which Sanders introduced, “will not only combat the existential threat of climate change by making solar energy available to working class families, it will also substantially lower the electric bills of Americans and create thousands of good-paying jobs,” Sanders said.

January 12, 2024

Environmental groups ask court to reverse nuclear plant exemption

By Shannon Kelleher

Regulators violated federal law in granting an exemption to keep California’s last nuclear power plant operating past 2025, when the 40-year-old plant was originally set to shutter operations, environmental groups argued in a court hearing this week.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could only legally grant Pacific Gas & Electric Power Co. (PG&E), the plant’s operator, an exemption from a license renewal rule in the Atomic Energy Act if the agency expressed confidence that there was time to conduct environmental and safety reviews and to hold a public hearing before the reactors’ licenses expired, Diane Curran, counsel to the local nonprofit San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, told a three-judge panel hearing the case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“If they don’t make that finding, they’re putting public health and safety at risk without justification,” Curran told the court. “The safety guardrails that the Atomic Energy Act puts on nuclear reactors can’t be just thrown out the window, which has happened here. The NRC has never abandoned its original finding that to operate a reactor past 40 years raises new and significant safety concerns that need to be addressed in the license renewal process.”

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) filed a lawsuit against the NRC in June, alleging that the agency violated the Atomic Energy Act when it issued the exemption. The groups have raised concerns about safety issues at the Diablo Canyon power plant, including deteriorating equipment and earthquake risk.

November 6, 2023

Proposed decision could deal another blow to California rooftop solar

By Shannon Kelleher

California regulators will vote this month on proposed key changes to programs that incentivize solar energy installations at apartment buildings, schools, and farms in a move critics fear will put the benefits of clean, renewable energy out of reach for many people.

“The proposed changes will hurt all rooftop solar, and the state’s decarbonization goals,” said Self Help Enterprises, a low-income housing program in Visalia, California, in an email to The New Lede. “However, low-income populations will be hit especially hard since a higher percentage of their income goes to rent and utilities.”

Hundreds of groups that advocate for clean energy and environmental justice, farms, and schools have signed letters protesting the proposals along with 135 local officials.

The vote is currently set for Nov. 16 after being postponed multiple times in the face of strong opposition. The vote comes about seven months after California’s net metering (NEM) 3.0 policy went into effect, which drastically decreased the value of the solar energy credits that homeowners receive when they share excess energy they produce with the grid.

The latest proposed net metering changes are related to the state’s Virtual Net Energy Metering (VNEM) and Net Energy Metering Aggregation (NEMA) programs, which benefits renters, schools districts, and farmers by allowing customers with properties that have multiple electric meters to install a single solar energy system. The programs enable customers with solar systems to receive credits for sharing the excess energy they produce with the grid.

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC)’s proposed changes would require properties to sell the electricity they generate to the utility company before buying it back at full retail price.

October 6, 2023

Puerto Rico’s natural gas buildout may harm those it claims to help

By Shannon Kelleher

Since 1999, Lissie Aviles, a Catholic nun, has lived in a convent in Cataño, Puerto Rico, a tiny town that borders the Bay of San Juan. The area is home to the world’s largest rum distillery, a Bacardi factory dubbed the “Cathedral of Rum.” Just across the bay, millions of tourists – many from the US mainland – flock to visit Old San Juan’s beaches and historical sites each year.

Cataño is known both as the smallest municipality on the island and as “the town that refused to die,” after it succeeded in fending off an early twentieth-century effort to merge the city with the inland community of Bayamón. The challenges for Cataño residents have persisted — after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, about 60% of Cataño residents were left homeless. Today, about 46% of the population lives below the poverty line in a US territory lacking full political representation and weighed down by a long legacy of colonization.

Aviles spends much of her time training faith educators in nearby parishes. But in recent years, her work has taken on an additional focus – defending local residents against harmful impacts tied to the island’s intensifying focus on expanding access to liquified natural gas (LNG).

The federal government has earmarked billions of dollars to help stabilize the island’s hurricane-rattled power system, including funding temporary generators powered by natural gas. Additionally, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has approved a project to dredge the San Juan Bay beginning in January, allowing the nearby LNG terminal to receive ships carrying six times more LNG than current tankers. And one particularly contentious project is expanding with a new LNG pipeline.

While natural gas is considered the cleanest of fossil fuels because it produces less carbon dioxide than oil or coal, climate scientists say rising use of natural gas is emerging as one of the greatest contributors to human-caused climate change.

Though the stated aim of the LNG buildout is to ensure adequate resources to power the island, LNG imports are bringing methane leaks and diesel exhaust generated by the ships and trucks that transport the fuel, and posing risks associated with potentially explosive infrastructure, say Aviles and other critics. These dangers add to the cumulative risks of existing fossil fuel pipelines, tankers, and other infrastructure that already coexist uneasily with nearby neighborhoods. As they work to heal the wounds wrought by the 2017 hurricane and by Hurricane Fiona in 2022, many Catano residents fear the unintended consequences of an LNG boom.

August 24, 2023

California court dismisses lawsuit over nuclear power plant

By Shannon Kelleher

A California state judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by an environmental group seeking to force Pacific Gas & Electric Power Co. (PG&E) to adhere to a 2016 pledge to fully retire the state’s last nuclear power plant by 2025.

Instead of preparing to shutter its operation, PG&E is seeking approval to keep the Diablo Canyon plant open through 2045. The plant, which has come under fire for environmental and safety concerns, rests on the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The San Francisco County Superior Court decision, issued August 23, sided with PG&E’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit on procedural grounds. The decision followed a court hearing on Monday.

“It didn’t come as a huge surprise, but we’re still very disappointed in the outcome,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth (FOE), which filed the lawsuit in April alleging that PG&E is violating the agreement it signed with the group in 2016. “It was very clear to us after the hearing that the judge didn’t want to touch this case with a ten-foot pole.”

The court decided to dismiss the case after taking the position that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) continues to have jurisdiction over matters related to the contract between FOE and PG&E.

“The issues presented by FOE’s claim are policy matters that fall squarely within the CPUC’s authority,” wrote Judge Ethan Schulman in the decision.

February 17, 2023

In push to mine for minerals, clean energy advocates ask what going green really means

By Shannon Kelleher

A traveler crossing the expanse of northern Nevada desert known as Thacker Pass might see a wasteland – nothing but scrubby sagebrush out to the rim of the caldera, where the mountains cut the horizon.

But for local tribal members, the land they call Peehee Mu’huh, or “Rotten Moon,” is a hallowed place of remembrance and sacred burial site. In 1865, US cavalrymen massacred their ancestors at the site, including children and elders. Members of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe visit often, praying and sharing food together in the windswept wilderness.

Now, a contingent of forces that includes the US government and a large Canada-based mining corporation are pushing to make Thacker Pass a gateway to the future– they seek to carve into the landscape, extracting massive quantities of lithium for use in batteries that could power one million electric vehicles (EVs) per year. The mineral deposit at Thacker Pass is considered the largest known lithium source in North America, making it an important resource for “clean energy” technology that mitigates harmful climate change by curbing fossil fuel dependence.

Staunch opposition has formed around the project from local tribes as well as environmental advocates who argue the mining operation would threaten vulnerable wildlife and dangerously pollute the air and water just as similar mining project have in the past. But earlier this month a US District Court judge largely upheld the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s 2020 decision to approve the mine.

Though opponents vow to keep fighting, the court ruling allows Canada-based Lithium Americas to advance construction plans for the $2.2 billion project, and General Motors Co. (GM) recently announced plans to invest $650 million in the mine.

The Biden administration last year announced a series of incentives aimed at boosting supplies of lithium as well as other minerals such as nickel and cobalt, deemed “critical” for use in electric vehicle production and other renewable energy needs, saying increasing supplies will help “improve America’s energy independence, strengthen national security, support good-paying jobs…”

But the battle over Thacker Pass illustrates just how complicated the issue is as environmental advocates find themselves presented with these thorny questions: What does “going green” really mean? What is the true cost of the clean energy revolution? And will vulnerable communities inevitably pay that price?

“This story is the same everywhere,” said Ian Lange, a professor of economics at the Colorado School of Mines. “If you don’t want to mine for minerals, we’re going to keep drilling for oil and gas.”

February 3, 2023

Floating solar gaining popularity as unconventional US energy source

By Grace van Deelen

For the small, working-class community of Cohoes, New York, climate change and costly energy prices are posing increasing concerns, just as they are for cities and towns across the country.

Now, Cohoes, just 10 miles north of the state’s capital city of Albany, is poised to take an unconventional step toward addressing those concerns by constructing what experts say is the first – or one of the first – municipally-owned and operated floating solar installations in the United States.

The town plans to install a 3.2-megawatt floating array of solar panels on its 10-acre municipal water reservoir; construction is due to start later this year.

“We have almost no buildable land [within Cohoes],” said Theresa Bourgeois, the town’s director of operations. “But we really wanted to figure out how we could do this within the city.” Floating solar became the obvious solution, she said.

Cohoes projects the floating solar installation will generate enough energy to power the entire town of roughly 17,000 people. In all, the project will cost the city about $6 million, and the town is hoping that new provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will provide some funding.

Adaptation growing
Japan has about 80% of the world’s floating solar capacity, and other countries in Asia and the Middle East have also been quick to adopt floating solar, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Floating solar is far less common in the US, but adaptation appears to be on the rise. Before 2016, only two projects had been installed, but the number grew to over 20 by the end of 2020, according to NREL. The largest projects are concentrated in California and Florida.

A 2019 study by NREL found that if floating solar were installed on just 27% of suitable man-made water bodies, the resulting energy could make up 10% of the nation’s energy production.

December 23, 2022

Updated clean air standards to cut smog-forming truck emissions

by Shannon Kelleher

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated its clean air standards for heavy-duty vehicles for the first time in more than 20 years.

The updated standards, which will go into effect in 2027, are designed to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from the tailpipes of large trucks. NOx reacts with other compounds in the air to form ozone pollution, contributing to more than 60,000 deaths in the US each year. The new standards are about 80% stronger than those they replace.

The December 20 announcement came the same day the US Postal Service revealed a five-year plan to transition towards using electric delivery vehicles.

The EPA estimates that by 2045, the updated clean air standards will result in up to 2,900 fewer premature deaths, 6,700 fewer hospital and emergency room visits, and 18,000 fewer cases of childhood asthma each year.

“EPA is taking significant action to protect public health, especially the health of 72 million people living near truck freight routes in America, including our most vulnerable populations in historically overburdened communities,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a press release on Tuesday.

The rule will also require emissions warranties that are 2.8 to 4.5 longer than those currently in place, meaning trucks will need to meet emissions standards for a greater period of time as they age. Additionally, companies will be required to test trucks and send data to the EPA annually, and the EPA will pull trucks from the road and test them to see if they meet the standards.