EPA proposes own greenhouse gas limits -- a "warning shot" to Congress

On the same day that two prominent senators unveiled a new, slightly tougher climate-change bill, the Environmental Protection Agency popped out a surprise that lend impetus to the bill's passage.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories and oil refineries -- a move the Los Angeles Times called "a warning shot to Congress that if it does not move to curb global warming, the Obama administration will act on its own."

Jackson's proposal targets only the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, as identified by the nation's first greenhouse gas reporting system, which the EPA unveiled just last week. The new proposal would require industrial facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year to obtain construction and operating permits from the agency.

As the LAT notes, that's a departure from the Clean Air Act, which requires regulation of any source that produces more than 250 tons of a pollutant covered under the Act.

Jackson said she was trying to reduce emissions "without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the vast majority of our economy. This is a common-sense rule that is carefully tailored to apply to only the largest sources -- those from sectors responsible for nearly 70% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions sources."

Although industry lobbyists questioned whether the regulation would stand up in court, the EPA's action follows a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that rebuked the Bush Administration for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

--Craig Pittman

My last post on Fueling Station

I am sad to say this will be my last post on the Fueling Station. I am leaving the St. Petersburg Times in a few days time. I would like to thank everyone who has read and contributed to this blog since we began three years ago. I encourage you to stay engaged in the energy and climate change debate. I certainly will. My colleague Craig Pittman will continue to do his best to keep you up to date.

David Adams, Times Staff Writer

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Climate change bill to be unveiled in Senate

A major new climate change bill is due to be introduced in the Senate today by California Democrat Barbara Boxer.

The bill is the Senate's version of an energy and climate measure the House of Representatives passed last June. The bill is expected to require industrial emissions of greenhouse gases to be reduced by 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. It also calls for a "cap and trade" system of carbon credits.

The bill is likely to set off intense lobbying from special interests, as well as a push-back from Republicans who fear climate legislation will hurt the economy.

Here's an explanation of the climate debate in Congress from the Huffington Post.

David Adams, Times Staff Writer

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G-20 ready to pull the plug on fossil fuel subsidies

The Group of 20, meeting in Pittsburgh this week, has a draft agreement ready to phase out government subsidies for oil and other fossil fuels in the "medium term,"reports Reuters today.

Countries such as China, Russia and India subsidize coal and oil to keep prices artificially low, which boosts demand for hydrocarbons.

The G-20 draft says the subsidies "encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with climate change.” According to the Wall Street Journal, cutting those subsidies could cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 10% by 2050.

You may recall that President Obama promised to work toward that goal during his speech to the U.N. earlier this week. Reuters says that getting agreement approved by the G-20 meeting is a victory for his administration.

But the WSJ notes that removing those subsidies could have an unintended side effect: "Consumption subsidies distort demand; in the Middle East and Asia, demand for oil kept rising even when crude hit $140, because many consumers didn’t pay market prices." Getting rid of the subsidies would raise prices in those places, and thus cut demand and "smooth out the violent price swings that have characterized the oil markets in recent years—and which helped galvanize public attention and appetite for alternative energy."

--Craig Pittman

Are electric cars too quiet for pedestrians & bicyclists to hear them?

Even as the Department of Energy lends more than $500 million to Fisker Automotive Inc. to develop a pair of plug-in hybrids and $465 million to Tesla, another federal agency ponders a more pressing question: What kind of sound should electric cars make?

"Some automakers are seeking to address concerns in the United States and Japan that the nearly noiseless vehicles may be so quiet that they pose a threat to pedestrians," the Washington Post reports today.

An ongoing study by the University of California-Riverside has found that hybrids needed to be 74 percent closer than a combustion-engine car before test subjects could hear from which direction the cars approached. The study's sponsor, the National Federation of the Blind, has been pushing Congress for a law requiring hybrids and EVs to add some sort of warning noise to the noiseless cars.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been meeting with Nissan to pick a good warning sound, says the Post. So far the company's experts have presented a chime, a melody and what the paper calls "a futuristic whir" that's apparently based on the sound made by the flying cars in the movie "Blade Runner." A similar discussion is going on in Japan.

In what may be the weirdest solution, Lotus has been experimenting with putting a speaker under the hood to play a recording that sounds like a regular combustion engine:

The irony of the problem is not lost on the carmakers."Frankly, we've been working for 30 years to make cars quiet -- never thinking they could become too quiet," said Robert Strassburger, vice president for vehicle safety at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

--Craig Pittman

EPA unveils first national greenhouse gas reporting system

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that, starting in January, it will require about 10,000 facilities nationwide to report the amount of their greenhouse gas emissions, to provide a better understanding of where greenhouse gas emissions originate and will help to reduce emissions.

Setting up the first national greenhouse gas reporting system could also make it easier for the EPA to step in with regulations to cut U.S. emissions if Congress fails to pass climate change legislation, Reuters notes.

“This is a major step forward in our effort to address the greenhouse gases polluting our skies,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said. “For the first time, we begin collecting data from the largest facilities in this country, ones that account for approximately 85 percent of the total U.S. emissions."

--Craig Pittman

Obama tells world leaders climate change threat is "urgent," will require sacrifice

"Serious." "Urgent." "Growing." Those were the words President Obama used to describe the threat from global warming when addressing a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations Tuesday, reports the Washington Post.

"Rising sea levels threaten every coastline," said Obama, making his first-ever address to the U.N. "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent . . . The security and stability of each nation and all peoples -- our prosperity, our health, our safety -- are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out." 

The speech -- here's the full text -- is more than mere rhetoric. It's an attempt by Obama to jump-start negotiations on a new deal to cut emissions. The New York Times reports: "Negotiators trying to hammer out a deal to cut global emissions by December in Copenhagen have largely stalled, and the United Nations organizers are hoping that gathering the leaders will give the talks new political momentum."

However, Obama acknowledged that he's talking about sacrifices at a time when everyone is already hurting, noting that "there should be no illusions that the hardest part of our journey is in front of us. We seek sweeping but necessary change in the midst of a global recession, where every nation's most immediate priority is reviving their economy and putting their people back to work."

Although Democrats in the U.S. Senate are now talking about waiting until 2010 to take up a climate-change bill, Obama told the gathering that the U.S. is already taking other steps. He said the U.S. will be making its largest-ever investment in renewable energy, setting new standards for reducing pollution from vehicles and making clean energy profitable. He also promised to work to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, Bloomberg says.

[AP photo]

--Craig Pittman

Potential of US natural gas reserves, explored on NPR this week

NPR correspondent Tom Gjelton is taking an in depth look at natural gas this week. His first fascinating piece this morning explored the potential of large new underground sources of natural gas in deep shale rock.

Until recently major oil and gas companies did not believe gas reserves were big enough to be worth exploring. But that is changing "due to new successes in getting gas out of shale rock, " says Gjelton. Some experts say natural gas reserves in the United States are actually 35 percent higher than believed just two years ago, and could be even higher.
One area known as the Marcellus basin, stretching from New York to West Virginia, is believed to hold as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the equivalent of about 80 billion barrels of oil. (There are also large shale gas basins in Texas, Wyoming, Arkansas and Michigan.)

While natural gas is not a clean fuel, it's carbon emissions are half that of coal, meaning that it could provide a useful low carbon energy source in the transition away from fossil fuels.

Check out this interactive map of US natural gas resources.

- David Adams, Times staff writer

Energy Secty says Americans are "like your teenage kids" when it comes to climate change

With the Senate showing signs of balking at passing a climate-change bill this year, leaving President Obama feeling boxed in by the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference, Energy Secretary Steven Chu made some comments to the Wall Street Journal that may not help matters much.

Chu, speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, told the WSJ that he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,”  Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”

Still, Chu said, he is optimistic that eventually the public will see the wisdom of the Obama Administration's pitch that energy efficiency and caps on greenhouse-gas emissions will help the economy rebound. Although if he's thinking the public is just a bunch of teenagers, maybe Chu could put his message into a musical about high school to convince everyone.

[Photo: "High School Musical" from Disney]

--Craig Pittman

Who's pushing to drill off Florida's coast, and what does Florida get in return?

After months of controversy over the proposal to overturn Florida's longtime ban on oil drilling in state waters, a pair of stories in today's St. Petersburg Times explore who's pushing to drill, and what Florida might get out of it.

Florida Energy Associates LLC, the secretive group behind the effort, has mounted an expensive lobbying effort to convince state lawmakers to overturn the ban. Incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, say they favor lifting the ban -- although critics are quick to point out that neither represents a district that would be affected by oil spills like the one still going on off Australia.

So far the only oilman identified as part of the group is M. Lance Phillips (pictured), 49, of Mexia, Texas, who in addition to running an oil business is a Republican Party official, trophy hunter, exotic-game rancher, high school coach and avid fisherman. He says: ""We really do want to do for Florida what oil and gas has done for Texas."

--Craig Pittman