Tag: Ohio

Offshore Wind Project approved by Ohio, but with a poison pill.

E&E News discusses how Ohio has approved nation’s 1st freshwater offshore wind project. Ohio yesterday unanimously approved the Icebreaker wind farm, North America’s first offshore freshwater project, planned for just off the Cleveland shore in Lake Erie. The ruling by Ohio’s Power Siting Board came a decade after plans for the project began to take shape and is contingent on a series of nearly three dozen conditions to be satisfied before, during and after construction. Included is a requirement that the project go silent for months of the year to protect birds and bats. The order also is a turning point for Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo), a Cleveland-based public-private partnership that’s developing the project with partner and investor Fred. Olsen Renewables of Norway. But LEEDCo’s president said the condition to stop turbines from March through October could ultimately be fatal to the project.

Allegheny Front discusses that same offshore wind project, but points to the “poison pill” included in the approval. When Ohio recently approved construction of a wind farm in Lake Erie, the first ever freshwater offshore wind project in North America, the developers were shocked. The approval by the Ohio Power Siting Board included conditions that the developer, Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo), says will essentially kill the project. The turbines must be shut down at night for eight months of the year, from March to October, to protect birds and bats.

Study: Market Headwinds Buffet Appalachia’s Future as a Center for Petrochemicals

Inside Climate News discusses how the falling stock market is affecting Appalachia’s future as a petrochemical hub. A proposed $5.7 billion ethane plant in Belmont County, Ohio, was seen as a likely casualty even before coronavirus cratered oil prices and collapsed the economy.

Less than two years ago, the Trump administration and the chemical industry were promoting development of a plastics manufacturing center in Appalachia they thought would benefit Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky.

IHS Markit, a global information and data company, forecast the potential for as many as five plants that would turn abundant ethane from fracking in the Marcellus and Utica shale regions into ethylene and polyethylene, among the most commonly produced petrochemicals and components of all sorts of plastic products.

Now, analysts at IHS Markit have concluded that a proposed $5.7 billion ethane plant in Belmont County, Ohio, may never be constructed due to circumstances that were present even before the coronavirus began to dramatically shrink the economy.

And in a new study, analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a nonprofit think tank that works toward a sustainable energy economy, have found that the plant faces a damaging, cumulative set of risks, all raising doubts about whether it will ever be financed.

Ohio solar project will benefit low-income communities

Energy News discusses how an Ohio solar project will benefit low-income communities. A joint project in Toledo by the port authority, a community foundation and local industry earmarks profits for community needs.

An innovative solar project in Toledo will do triple duty when it’s completed this spring. It will provide renewable power to a nearby axle factory. It will use otherwise unproductive land. And hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of the project’s electricity will benefit nearby low-income communities.

Foresight Energy is latest U.S. coal miner in bankruptcy

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette discusses  Foresight Energy becoming the latest U.S. coal miner in bankruptcy.

Foresight Energy filed for bankruptcy with plans to hand ownership to its creditors, becoming the latest coal company to fail as power generators switch to cleaner and cheaper fuels.

The filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri is another sign that efforts to stem coal’s decline aren’t working.

A wave of U.S. miners have filed for Chapter 11 in recent years, including St. Clairsville, Ohio-based Murray Energy, which owns a controlling stake in Foresight. Its owner, Robert Murray, is an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, who has pledged to save the industry.

Clean Water Wanted: Contaminated Wells And The Legacy Of Fossil Fuel Extraction

Ohio Valley Resource discusses how water is contaminated by fossil fuel extraction.

Chet Blankenship died from kidney failure soon after his family started noticing odd colors and smells in their well water. After he died, they got their water tested, and learned that arsenic was among the contaminants that had seeped into their well. The National Institutes of Health links high arsenic exposure to a range of kidney diseases.

The family can’t prove that the arsenic in the water caused Blankenship’s death, and they can’t get firm answers about the contamination in their well and the mining and drilling activity that surrounds their property. But Timothy’s memories of his grandfather reflect the family’s anxiety about the water they depend on.

The Biggest Municipal Solar Farm in the US Is Coming to…Cincinnati?

This Mother Jones article discusses how the biggest municipal solar farm in the US is being built in Cincinnati.

In 2017, when the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement—an international treaty that attempted to avert climate catastrophe by cutting global emissions—John Cranley, the Democratic mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, joined other mayors across the country to announce his intention to remain faithful to the agreement’s primary goal of keeping the rise of global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius in this century. Cranley and leaders from from dozens of cities like San Francisco and Chicago even went a step further, promising to work toward a 100 percent transition to clean energy sources, with ambitious deadlines.

Natural Gas Production Problems

This NPR article discusses how natural gas production headed for a slow-down in 2020. Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia accounted for one third of the country’s shale gas production in 2019.

This article discusses how a pipeline giant sues Railroad Commission, alleging lax oversight of natural gas flaring. A subsidiary of Tulsa-based Williams Cos. is suing Texas’ oil and gas regulatory agency after it approved a request from Dallas-based Exco Operating Co. to burn off natural gas from wells in South Texas while they were hooked up to Williams’ pipeline system.

This Bloomberg article discusses how the Permian gas problem is just getting worse. America’s top shale field is becoming increasingly gassy as drilling slows down, undercutting profits for explorers at a time when investors are demanding better returns. Natural gas has long been a nuisance in the Permian, where a massive glut weighs on prices, with crude producers sometimes having to pay to get it hauled away or burn it off in a controversial practice known as flaring. Now the problem is intensifying as wells age and fewer new wells are drilled.

This article discusses the bust cycle that natural gas is now in. Good times rolled for an extended period, and led to Pennsylvania becoming the nation’s No. 2 gas producer behind Texas. Then about four years ago, declining commodity prices began to hit the producers and continued to hit them. And is still hitting them, with prices half of what they were a year ago.

Dark Money Is Pouring in to Protect the “Worst Energy Policy in the Country”

This Mother Jones article discusses how Dark Money Is Pouring in to Protect the “Worst Energy Policy in the Country”. In Ohio, the fight over a nuclear and coal bailout is getting weirder by the day.

This summer, Ohio’s beleaguered nuclear and coal plants got a major gift in the promise of a big bailout. Now, the fight over that promise has escalated into one of the most dramatic and bizarre showdowns of the 2020 election cycle.

It all started back in July, when the Ohio state legislature passed a law—called HB6—that, starting next year, will charge consumers new fees to rescue four struggling power plants. Those charges will eventually add up to a $1 billion bailout for the utility FirstEnergy Solutions’ two nuclear plants, while handing a lifeline to two 1950s-era coal plants owned by another utility, the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation.

Ohio’s Nuclear Bailout Plan Balloons to Embrace Coal (while Killing Renewable Energy Rules)

This Inside Climate News article discusses Ohio’s Nuclear Bailout Plan Balloons to Embrace Coal (while Killing Renewable Energy Rules). It’s a trifecta the Trump administration has pushed for nationally, with businesses and homeowners footing the bill for uneconomical power plants.

While other states are embracing renewable energy, Ohio is heading in the opposite direction. A bill passed this week by the Ohio House would subsidize nuclear and coal power while cutting state support for renewable energy and energy efficiency, with the utilities’ customers footing the bill.

Advocates and analysts are trying to make sense of a plan that seems to defy political and economic logic: It would support uneconomical power plants by increasing costs for businesses and homeowners, both with new charges on their bills and through the cancellation of programs that help them save money on energy.

The measure now heads to the Ohio Senate, and the idea of a nuclear bailout has the support of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. If it becomes law, it would mean Ohio is decisively turning away from policies that aid the transition to renewable energy, said Kit Kennedy, senior director of the climate and clean energy program for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Wyoming Proposes ALEC Bill Cracking Down on Pipeline Protests

This article talks about a third state’s attempt to stifle pipeline protests, using  legislation developed by America American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a fossil fuel, climate change-denying political organization. The legislation imposes felony sentencing, 10 years in prison, and/or a $100,000 fine on individuals who “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.”

It is clearly an attempt to eliminate Constitutional protections of free speech.