Month: December 2019

Overpowered: In Virginia, Dominion faces challenges to its reign

This article discusses how Dominion Energy is facing challenges to its reign in Virginia.

This is the third of a five-part series exploring oversupply in the power sector and the factors driving a glut of natural gas-fired power plants.

When Dominion Energy Virginia decided in 2012 to convert two units of its coal-fired Bremo Bluff power station to burn natural gas, it pledged that the conversion at the Fluvanna County plant would save customers $32 million compared to the cost of building new gas-fired generation and $155 million compared to continued operation on coal.

Those benefits never materialized. Instead, in December 2018, four years after the conversion was completed, the company (known legally as Virginia Electric and Power Co.) placed the Bremo units in “cold reserve” along with several other generating units, idling more than 1,200 MW in total, nearly three-quarters the size of Virginia’s largest power plant, the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station. And earlier this year, Dominion Energy Inc. executives announced they would permanently shut down the idled Bremo Bluff units.

Studies: Another year, another carbon emissions record

This Popular Science article discusses another year, another carbon emissions record. The rise in emissions slowed down a little in 2019, but we’re still going in the wrong direction. [There are links to multiple studies.]

Despite this year’s momentum in climate advocacy, the globe’s carbon emissions stubbornly continue to climb. According to the Global Carbon Project, an international partnership of climate scientists, this year polluters around the world will emit a new record amount of carbon dioxide.

Starting in 2006, the Global Carbon Project has compiled emissions data from natural systems, energy, and industry across countries and combined it with models to develop a carbon budget: how much carbon dioxide is rising into the atmosphere, how much is swallowed back by the soil, plants, and oceans, and what the difference is. While nature does its best to capture our carbon, about half of it goes on the warm the planet.

This year, the researchers predict that a new record high of 40.6 billion tons will spew into the atmosphere. That’s an increase of 0.6 percent from last year. In 2018, emissions climbed 2.1 percent from 2017, and 2017 emissions were 1.5 percent higher than 2016. The findings are in three papers, in Environmental Research Letters, Earth System Science Data, and Nature Climate Change.

Southern States Split in Response to EPA’s Coal Ash Rule Rollbacks

This article discusses why Southern States Split in Response to EPA’s Coal Ash Rule Rollbacks.

As the Trump administration scales back federal regulation of the waste from coal-fired power plants known as coal ash, a handful of Southern states have passed laws forcing utilities to clean up or contain the toxic mess.

Other states, though, have done little or nothing.

Four years ago, the Obama administration put in place America’s first comprehensive regulations for disposing of coal ash, the residue left after coal is burned. The rule set minimum standards for monitoring groundwater near coal plants, set public record keeping and disclosure requirements, and told utilities to phase out unlined ash ponds.

UN chief warns of ‘point of no return’ on climate change

This ABC News article discusses a warning from the United Nations – we may be reaching a ‘point of no return’ on climate change. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the world’s efforts to stop climate change have been “utterly inadequate” so far and warns that “the point of no return is no longer over the horizon.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sunday that the world’s efforts to stop climate change have been “utterly inadequate” so far and there is a danger global warming could pass the “point of no return.”

Speaking before the start Monday of a two-week international climate conference in Madrid, the U.N. chief said the impact of rising temperatures — including more extreme weather — is already being felt around the world, with dramatic consequences for humans and other species.

The Daily Climate – 11/27/2013

This day’s articles include:

  1. Natural gas drilling can fracture political alliances on both sides of the aisle

  2. How Los Angeles plans to get people out of cars by 2028

  3. To address climate change, Charlotte is buying out homeowners and demolishing flood-prone houses

  4. Where flooding is most affecting property values

  5. How to go green on Black Friday

  6. Marine researchers find a dramatic ecosystem shift in Russian Arctic waters

  7. Yes, electric vehicles really are better than fossil fuel burners

  8. World’s emissions gap is growing, with no sign of peaking soon, UN warns

  9. Shocking photos of Swiss glaciers reveal how ice has nearly disappeared since 1800s

  10. US grid reliability threatened by warming rivers

  11. How climate change exacerbates gender inequality across the globe

  12. Canada’s perplexing pipeline plans go unexplained

  13. Pollution from planned fossil fuel production would overshoot Paris climate goals

What’s not to like about biomass? Deforestation, pollution and overpriced power.

This Virginia Mercury article discusses incinerators that burn biomass for energy. What’s not to like about biomass? Deforestation, pollution and overpriced power.

What if you could get your electricity from a fuel that destroys forests, produces more air pollution than coal, and is priced higher than alternatives?

“Wow, sign me up!” you would not say, because as a sane person you don’t like deforestation, pollution and overpriced power.

Also, because you are not Dominion Energy Virginia. Dominion burned wood at one power plant from 1994 until last year; converted three small coal plants to wood-burning in 2013; and burns wood along with coal at its Virginia City coal plant. This “biomass” energy makes up about one percent of the electricity Dominion sells to Virginia ratepayers, according to its most recent IRP.