MVCAC December 2020

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1 participants
9 discussions

Listen Up! Dr. James Hansen Has A Message For The Citizens Of Earth.
by Duane Nichols 30 Dec '20

30 Dec '20

Listen Up! Dr. James Hansen Has A Message For The Citizens Of Earth, Steve Hanley, Clean Technia, September 7, 2020 Dr. Hansen says there are three parameters to the global heating conundrum but only two receive regular attention — the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and average global surface temperatures. The third critical component is the Earth’s energy imbalance and it may be the most important of the three. “Stabilizing climate requires that humanity reduce the energy imbalance to approximately zero,” Hansen writes. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/07/listen-up-dr-james-hansen-has-a-messag…

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A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future | Sierra Club, Mary Anne Hitt, 2021
by Duane Nichols 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2021-1-january-february/feature/love-lett… A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future Article by Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Magazine, Jan. - Feb. 2021 Here's a glimpse of how we can transition entirely to renewable energy sources Last fall, I gave a Zoom lecture to a class of undergraduate students at the University of Puget Sound about the path forward on energy and climate justice. I always go into these presentations with some trepidation, because I know that many young people are overwhelmed by despair about climate change, and I want to be clear about what's at stake without adding to their anxiety. After I finished, one of the students offered a simple appreciation that lifted a weight off my shoulders: "Honestly, this presentation has been a relief. I feel so much better. Thank you." I could relate to that student's desperate need for a ray of hope. After a grinding year of climate disasters, racial injustice, and relentless threats to our democracy, it has been easy to lose sight of the better world that we are still, even now, building. I'm full of hope because, against all odds, a just and sustainable energy future is being born. Yet I'm full of hope because, against all odds, a just and sustainable energy future is being born. We at the Sierra Club are in the middle of building that future. From stopping the fracked-gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline to reaching the milestone of having 60 percent of US coal-fired power plants on their way to retirement, the progress in 2020 has been remarkable. The United States is on track to get more electricity from renewable energy than from coal sometime in the next few years. But even as we make progress in hard times, we know that just covering the world with solar panels and electric vehicles isn't enough. So what would it look like, 10 years from now, if we did this energy transition right—if we prevented runaway climate change, created millions of jobs, and rectified the harms of decades of environmental injustice in communities of color? Imagine it is 2030 and we're looking back over a pivotal decade in human history. Allow me to paint a picture for you of the energy transformation that's possible. Think of it as a love letter from the future. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>. My friends, It takes my breath away to write these words, but we did it. Rooted in our deep love for this planet and one another, we stepped back from the cliff of irreversible climate change. Families around the globe, including mine and yours, no longer face the specter of fleeing their homes because of ever-worsening climate-driven disasters. The fossil fuel industry no longer controls the levers of power to corrupt democracy. And we're building a world where everyone has clean air and clean water and access to nature. As we rolled up our sleeves to prevent a climate emergency, our solutions prioritized investments in those communities most harmed by fossil fuels and pollution and those long excluded from economic opportunity. We needed to build so much clean energy infrastructure to avoid a climate apocalypse, and we didn't just build it; we built it with family-sustaining jobs and with an eye toward restitution and reparations. Thanks to you, our kids will be raising their sons and daughters in vibrant, resilient communities full of opportunity. This is how we arrived here: First, we powered the country with 100 percent clean energy. An electric grid powered by clean energy was the foundation for turning the corner on climate, and the dirty power plants that were the worst contributors to environmental injustice were the first to go. Building on a decade of grassroots advocacy, President Biden introduced and Congress finally passed a national 100 percent clean energy standard that put us well on our way to phasing out coal and gas by 2035 while ensuring that vulnerable communities experienced the benefits of the transition. Big states such as California and New York then set even more aggressive goals, making it clear that a clean energy transition of speed and scale was possible. And since decisions about how we produce electricity are largely made by states, we continued our 50-state energy-transformation push for a decade. To support communities with economic ties to fossil fuels, Congress included a robust economic transition for fossil fuel workers and community-led economic development. Congress also passed innovative measures like a moratorium on utility shutoffs for households and support for energy-saving home improvements for families spending a high percentage of their income on electricity bills (known as a high energy burden). Renewable energy kept getting cheaper, and that allowed the Department of Energy to accelerate local clean energy solutions like microgrids—which are reliable during climate-driven extreme-weather events—in vulnerable and underserved places like the Navajo Nation and Puerto Rico. We finally harnessed the power of offshore wind along the Atlantic coast and solar across the Southeast and Southwest, while scaling up new energy-storage technologies to make clean energy available when it's needed most. Altogether, we made a quantum leap in the scale and scope of the energy transition, produced millions of jobs, and sparked the creation of thousands of new businesses. Second, we got well on our way toward electrifying everything. Here in 2030, one of the best parts of the energy transition is that it has made our lives healthier. After social media icons spread the word about how gas stoves create indoor air pollution linked to asthma in kids, families rushed to their local home-improvement stores to replace gas ranges with electric induction stovetops. Local governments passed thousands of ordinances calling for all-electric construction in new buildings, which created enough pressure for national standards. New businesses started popping up to help homeowners save money while pulling polluting gas appliances out of their homes. And the Department of Energy created programs to ensure that low-income families could make the switch affordably. Meanwhile, on the transportation front, states such as California and New Jersey set a 2035 target date for phasing out internal-combustion-engine cars, and national standards followed. States also put in place standards requiring that buses and large trucks go all-electric, which dramatically reduced air pollution in communities of color and big port and shipping centers including California's Inland Empire, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. After COVID-19 made Americans realize the importance of walkable cities and accessible public transportation, Congress included funding in infrastructure bills for clean and affordable public transit, biking, and walking options. The number of family-sustaining jobs skyrocketed as Americans were put to work building electric cars, trucks, and buses as well as transit and charging-station infrastructure. Third, we stopped attempts to expand drilling while we reclaimed abandoned wells, mines, and drilling sites. The oil and gas industry was in a precarious place as 2020 came to a close. It was struggling to compete with renewable energy, facing the wrath of communities angry about drilling and pipelines, and grappling with dwindling returns from fracking, which made the industry's finances look more like a pyramid scheme. Through on-the-ground organizing, we prevented the fossil fuel industry's last-gasp attempt to establish new markets for its products. We blocked the construction of more than a dozen proposed fracked-gas export terminals and halted the creation of a new "Cancer Alley" of chemical and plastics plants in the Ohio River valley. We forced the industry to stop drilling next to homes, schools, and communities. And we secured protection from drilling on Indigenous lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Bears Ears National Monument. Meanwhile, we created jobs for thousands of oil, gas, and coal workers. We put 120,000 people to work plugging over 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells and addressing methane leaks that were roasting our planet. Congress also passed the RECLAIM (Revitalizing the Economy of Coal Communities by Leveraging Local Activities and Investing More) Act to fund reclamation projects and community-led economic development in Appalachia. Finally, we engaged millions of people in the work for climate justice. Let's be clear: None of this was easy. As we sit here in 2030, the clean and just energy future that we've built together has been the result of millions of people stepping up in their own states and communities. I know all this seemed impossible back in 2020, when it felt as if everything was falling apart and our climate might be doomed. But everything we did mattered. All of it. We now know that we're going to keep global temperature rise below the dangerous tipping points that climate scientists warned us about a decade ago. We can look our kids in the eye and tell them that we didn't let them down. Now we can watch their dreams unfold. As all our great spiritual traditions have taught us, new beginnings are often born during our most difficult days. We created something beautiful out of those hard days in 2020. Of course we have more work to do. But we're doing that work from a foundation we built together. I can't wait to see what we'll do next. This article appeared in the January/February edition with the headline "A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future." Sent from my iPad

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Wildfires fueled by climate change threaten toxic Superfund sites
by Duane Nichols 23 Dec '20

23 Dec '20

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wildfires-fueled-climate-change-threat… Wildfires fueled by climate change threaten toxic Superfund sites Blazes at the imperiled hazardous waste sites could release toxins ranging from acid mine drainage to radioactive smoke. Michael Kodas, Inside Climate NewsDavid Hasemyer, Inside Climate News Dec. 23, 2020, 5:00 AM EST By Michael Kodas, Inside Climate News and David Hasemyer, Inside Climate News This article was published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment, and The Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. This is part 4 of "Super Threats," a series on Superfund sites and climate change. For Jake Jeresek, a leader of the U.S. Forest Service’s firefighting operation in the Kootenai National Forest of northwest Montana, blazes in the woods 4 miles east of the town of Libby demand the most urgent response. But, before his crew can snuff any flames in those woods, they must recite a poem. “When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a tiny prism and form a rainbow,” crew members intone in turn. The poem is a test of the firefighters’ respirators — a piece of safety equipment required in no other forest in the nation. The verse’s vocalizations ensure the respirators are properly sealed to the firefighters’ faces. Contaminated by Libby amphibole, a highly toxic mixture of asbestos fibers unleashed by a former mine that has killed hundreds of area residents, this section of forest is an officially designated hazardous waste zone — Superfund Operable Unit 3 of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Libby Asbestos Site. With wildfires heightened by climate change threatening 234 Superfund sites across the country, according to the federal government, the OU3 Libby Asbestos Site presents a kind of worst-case scenario in which a wildfire could send asbestos-contaminated ash into nearby communities. Some firefighters worry a plume of smoke could carry the forest’s toxins hundreds of miles away. Firefighting helicopters respond to a fire near OU3 in Montana.U.S. Forest Service It’s one of the 945 Superfund sites that the Government Accountability Office last year found were vulnerable to hurricanes, flooding, sea level rise, increased precipitation or wildfires, all of which are intensifying as the planet warms. A yearlong investigation by Inside Climate News, NBC News and The Texas Observer, based on interviews with dozens of current and former EPA officials and firefighting authorities, found that the threat presented by wildfires is exceeding authorities’ ability to adequately prepare and respond, given recent steep increases in wildfires, particularly in the West. Blazes at such sites could release toxins ranging from acid mine drainage to radioactive smoke. Some firefighters and land managers fear that it is only a matter of time before megafires like those that exploded across Colorado and California this year burn over a toxic site with disastrous consequences. There have already been a number of extremely close calls. In 2010, the 109,000-acre Jefferson Fire spread across the Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear energy research facility, where it burned over Superfund sites that had been cleaned of radioactive contamination over the previous 17 years. The lab reported that sampling of the area during the fire showed no release of radioactivity. In 2013, the Patch Springs Fire southwest of Salt Lake City burned within 10 miles of the Tooele Army Depot, a Superfund site with 902 ammunition storage bunkers along with soil and groundwater contaminated with hazardous chemicals, according to Wildfire Today. In 2018, the Carr Fire burned across 359 square miles of northern California and swept over the Iron Mountain Mine Superfund site, threatening to release corrosive chemicals into the watershed. The narrowly averted disaster spurred the EPA to reexamine the threat posed by wildfires to Superfund sites, especially old mines. Firefighters try to control the Carr Fire as it spreads near Redding, Calif., on July 31, 2018.Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images And in October, the Captain Jack Mill Superfund site, a closed mining operation in Boulder County, Colorado, was in the evacuation zone of the Lefthand Canyon and Calwood fires, but was spared when they burned away from the site. Over the last 20 years, Colorado, for which the GAO lists two fire-threatened Superfund sites, has seen one record wildfire after another, culminating this year in its three largest fires in the state’s history, each burning 140,000 to 200,000 acres. In California, with 18 threatened sites, fire season is now virtually year-round, with more than 25 million acres of the state’s wildlands facing very high or extreme fire threat, according to a report prepared for Gov. Gavin Newsom. The state saw more than 4 million acres burn this year, the most in its recorded history. In Montana, with five threatened sites, the temperature has warmed by 2.7 degrees over the past 70 years, substantially more than the nation as a whole, according to the 2017 Montana Climate Assessment. From 1970 to 2015, according to research published by Climate Central, that warming drove an at least tenfold increase in the number of wildfires larger than 1,000 acres in Montana, a greater percentage increase than in any other Western state. The Kootenai National Forest, which holds Libby’s asbestos-contaminated woods in the area known as OU3, endured its largest wildfire on record — the 25,000-acre Caribou Fire — in 2017. But that fire was some 50 miles away from the Superfund site. The following year OU3 faced a much closer blaze, the Highway 37 Fire, which firefighters held to just 71 acres. That fire burned just outside the boundary of the contaminated forest. “Climate change is driving increased severe, extensive fire behavior. We're seeing more and more large, dramatic, destructive fires,” said Don Whittemore, a fire incident commander from Colorado who helped the Forest Service, EPA, state and county leaders put together their plan for managing fires in OU3. “They've had a bunch of large fires on the Kootenai and in northwest Montana in the last couple years,” he said. “I can say it's a landscape primed for fire. It is set to burn. It's ideal to burn.” Visitors walk along the shore of Lake McDonald in Montana's Glacier National Park as the Howe Ridge Fire burns in the background on Aug. 12, 2018.National Park Service via AP Libby: A wakeup call The Highway 37 Fire outside Libby started July 19, 2018, along the highway, where sparks and hot engines often lead to wildfire. Nolan Buckingham’s Asbestos Wildland Fire crew donned their respirators in case the fire crossed the boundary into the contaminated forest and were on the blaze in less than 10 minutes. Given the extreme health hazards presented by a forest contaminated with highly toxic asbestos, there was no margin for error under extremely difficult conditions. “That fire really put people out of their comfort level, even if it wasn’t in OU3,” Buckingham said. As the fire roared uphill, the respirators made it hard for the firefighters to keep up. Luckily, a spot where the steep slope flattened out briefly a quarter mile up that hill gave them the break they needed. “We were able to catch it,” Buckingham said. Nolan Buckingham with members of the crew fighting the Highway 37 Fire near Libby, Mont.Nolan Buckingham For the next several days, aircraft bombed the fire with water constantly as Buckingham and his team set up hoses and sprinklers and, at one point, burned away vegetation before the fire could get to it. Contractors with heavy equipment helped them build a fire line around the blaze. The fire was finally declared contained July 31. “We learned a lot from the Highway 37 Fire,” Nate Gassmann, the district ranger for the Kootenai National Forest, said, including strategies for containing fires and quickly decontaminating the crew members after their shift. Nolan Buckingham, in red hat, stands with his crew on a spot overlooking the heart of the mine in August 2019.Courtesy Nolan Buckingham Still, when the contaminated forest’s fuel buildup and steep topography align with warm dry weather, Whittemore, the fire incident commander, said he worries the area could see far more than 70 acres burning. “Given the right alignment — 50,000 plus acres in a day,” said Whittemore, who has studied OU3 in detail and led large firefighting teams across the West. “It's got the fuels. It's got the topography. It just needs the weather alignment,” he said. “And if you're cognizant and aware and thinking about climate change on a global, national, landscape level, it'd be irresponsible not to think that that's a strong possibility. You have to plan for the worst-case scenario. Because more and more, we're not only seeing worst-case scenarios, we're seeing events that exceed worst-case scenarios.” Iron Mountain: A near disaster The Carr Fire began some 5 miles west of the Iron Mountain Superfund site in Redding, California, on July 23, 2018. It ultimately overran the site, crippling critical wastewater treatment infrastructure that captures as much as 168 million gallons of acid mine drainage each month. It took more than five weeks to contain. The Carr Fire burns on July 30, 2018, west of Redding, Calif.Terray Sylvester / Getty Images “There was this feeling of ‘My God. We ought to have better tracking of wildfires at Superfund locations,’” said Stephen Hoffman, a former senior environmental scientist at EPA who continues to consult with the agency on abandoned mine sites. “Before that, there wasn’t a lot of thought about climate change and fire. That has changed.” Iron Mountain is a mountainous, 4,400-acre site with steep slopes and deep, V-shaped valleys in California’s northern Shasta County where iron, silver, gold, copper, zinc and pyrite were mined from the 1860s until the 1960s. The former mine leaches water more corrosive than battery acid that also contains large amounts of zinc, copper and cadmium. Were it to flow untreated into surrounding streams, the toxic water would kill fish, including the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, and destroy the habitat for area wildlife. The acid and poisons in the tainted water could eventually contaminate Spring Creek Reservoir, which holds mountain runoff before it enters the Sacramento River 8 miles above Redding, a city of 90,000 that depends on the river for its drinking water. For more of NBC News' in-depth reporting, download the NBC News app In anticipation of the fire burning power poles, site managers shut off electricity to the treatment facility that cleans the toxic acid drainage before it enters the watershed. Fire also crawled into the mine along hundreds of feet of polyethylene pipe, a fuse that could have ignited the combustible pyrite — fool’s gold — causing an explosion deep inside the cavern. After the treatment system shut down, an emergency collection reservoir and a million gallon holding tank captured the tainted water before it could reach nearby streams. Firefighters extinguished the flames creeping along the pipe inside the mine before they ignited the pyrite, preventing an explosive fire that could have released choking clouds of sulphur dioxide. The million gallon tank collected 395,000 gallons of acid mine water that was neutralized once electricity was restored to the treatment facility a few days after the fire. Plastic pipes that caught fire were replaced by stainless steel pipes. “Failure would have immediate, long-lived effects on the region’s drinking water supplies and fisheries,” Kate Burger a senior engineering geologist for the Central Valley Water Board, said. The close call prompted EPA officials to note the danger wildfire posed to the site, in a five-year review completed a month after the fire. Lily Tavassoli, the Iron Mountain project manager for the EPA during the Carr Fire, defended the agency’s readiness, saying the site had been prepared to handle wildfires on the scale of fires past. But the Carr Fire was “larger, faster moving and more intense than anything we had experienced before,” she said. The Carr Fire burns along Highway 299 near Whiskeytown, Calif., on July 27, 2018.Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Planning for the ‘potential impacts of climate change’ Two years before the Highway 37 Fire, Whittemore, the incident commander, read through the Libby Asbestos Response Plan and other documents that EPA had asked the Forest Service to prepare. He noticed little acknowledgement of what he’d been seeing in his decades fighting fires throughout the West — the warming climate was making fires larger and more resistant to suppression. Whittemore said small test burns and fires in laboratory settings that have been conducted by those agencies don’t reflect what would happen with the asbestos, smoke and ash if a large, intense fire sent a smoke column from OU3 high into the atmosphere. “The amount of organic material, period, that's liberated from a large fire is extraordinary,” he said. “Now, throw into that a cancer-causing material. To me, that's really, really scary.” That smoke could affect communities far from Libby, he said. The town of Libby in northwestern Montana.Rick Bowmer / AP “They didn't appreciate downwind impacts to places like Whitefish, to Glacier National Park, across the border into Waterton National Park or other parts of Canada,” Whittemore said of the plans. He said he hopes a final cleanup study now underway will consider those areas far from Libby. More than two years after the Highway 37 Fire, the EPA, the Forest Service and the Libby Asbestos Superfund site’s owner, W.R. Grace & Co., are still working on a feasibility study of cleanup options, which was expected next year but has been delayed until late 2022 or early 2023. Libby’s asbestos-filled forest surrounds the mine where, until 30 years ago, W.R. Grace mined vermiculite, a mineral valuable in insulation and lawn and garden products. The vermiculite was also filled with Libby amphibole and tons of that asbestos were released every day from Grace’s operation, coating the miners, the town and the forest. In 2008, Grace was ordered to pay $250 million for future cleanup costs. Several years earlier government prosecutors had brought criminal charges against company executives, who they claimed knew how deadly their operation was. The executives were acquitted and, in the years since, most of the Superfund operating units in and around Libby have been cleaned up. But Grace, the EPA and the Forest Service are still figuring out what to do with the asbestos-filled forest. Environmental cleanup specialists work at one of the last remaining residential asbestos cleanup sites in Libby in September 2018.Kurt Wilson / The Missoulian via AP While the EPA has not previously looked at the effects of a warming climate and increasing droughts on the threat posed by the contaminated forest, the agency will do so as part of the final cleanup study, Dania Zinner, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the Libby site, wrote in an emailed response to questions. “Ongoing discussions about potential impacts of climate change on the site, including fire behavior modeling, are continuing.” Caitlin E. Leopold, director of corporate communications for Grace, said the company was working with the EPA on the plan for the forest. "The Superfund framework does include climate change considerations as part of the process in accordance with the EPA,” Leopold said. “Grace is continuing to work through the feasibility process with the agencies.” Zinner said that the plan would consider the dangers posed to residents of Libby and beyond. “EPA and partners are considering any type of situation that could have an impact on human health risks at the site now and into the future,” she wrote. Recalculating the wildfire threat Entering this year’s fire season, officials in EPA Region 9, the region that includes California, Nevada and Arizona, updated fire contingency plans for remote Superfund sites, which are mostly abandoned mines. “We also have been monitoring — and will continue to monitor — fire behavior closely to track threats to Superfund sites, as well as other sensitive infrastructure,” Michael Alpern, a spokesman for the region, said. The Carr Fire remained a powerfully cautionary tale for many firefighters. Jim Woolford, a former director of EPA’s Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, said the Carr Fire triggered increased scrutiny of the vulnerability of mines to fires. “That near miss led to our Superfund mining team to reevaluate the threat from wildfires,” he said. A spokeswoman for Shahid Mahmud, head of EPA’s National Mining Team, said that as a result of the more frequent and larger conflagrations, including the Carr Fire, cleanup plans for former mines are now designed with wildfires in mind. Emergency protocols addressing wildfire threats are reviewed every year, and have become more urgent recently, the spokeswoman said. Firefighters wearing respirators in the OU3 area in Montana.U.S. Forest Service But wildfire experts and climate scientists said that while it’s possible to reduce the threat, it’s not feasible to eliminate it. Mines will drain acid as long as their waters encounter sulphur-bearing minerals; radioactivity can persist deep in contaminated landscapes for thousands of years; and much of the asbestos in the contaminated forest outside Libby will remain there as long as the trees do. For sites where no polluter can be made to pay and the EPA lacks cleanup funds, the agency will need to design protections that shield the sites from wildfires as long as the contamination remains. And wildland firefighters and other emergency responders near Superfund sites in places like Libby will don their protective suits, hold fire lines and hope they can prevent almost unfathomable environmental catastrophe. Sent from my iPad

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Longview at Mon County Commission this coming Wednesday
by Duane Nichols 14 Dec '20

14 Dec '20

Subject: Longview at Mon County Commission on Wednesday > > Tha agenda for the Mon County Commission lists: > > c) To consider for approval of documents related to Mountain State Clean Energy LLC & Mountain State Renewable LLC > > d) Consideration of a Collaboration Resolution between Monongalia County Commission and Monongalia County Board of Education > > We have learned that Longview has changed their name to Mountain State Clean Energy, LLC, so these are the PILOT agreements and related documents for the new 1200-MW gas-fired power plant. > > While the total amounts of payments are the same as originally proposed in Sept. 2019, the payment under the PILOT is much smaller, and most of the money will come to the Commission as a lease payment, as specified in a related document (Lease Agreement). This appears to be a mechanism to keep the State from reducing allocations to the school board, as happened with the PILOT for Longview I. > > Nothing in the documents addresses the greenhouse gas emissions or pollution from the new plant. Nothing protects workers at existing plants. Nothing adjusts the PILOT payments for the actual value of the plant, or addresses most of the other issues we have raised over the last two years. > > Please contact the County Commission and urge them to establish a 30-day comment period and to delay action on these agreements until the public has a chance to respond. Tell them you oppose giving tax breaks for fossil fuel plants that emit greenhouse gases. > > E-Mail letters to the Commissioners at: > > Tom Bloom <tbloom(a)moncommission.com> > Ed Hawkins <commissionerHawkins(a)moncommission.com> > Sean Sikora <ssikora(a)moncommission.com> > > Or file comments protesting the PILoT on line at: > https://www.monongaliacounty.gov/contact_us/index.php > (Comments at this page are limited to 300 characters. > > Contact me or the County Commission at > info(a)moncommission.com > if you want copies of these documents. > > Jim Kotcon, Sierra Club, > 304-594-3322 (home) > > > Virus-free. www.avast.com

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Mon County Commission to Approve New PILOT Agreements for Longview Power on December 16th
by Duane Nichols 13 Dec '20

13 Dec '20

Mon County Commission to Approve New PILOT Agreements for Longview Power on December 16th Ignoring GHG & Climate Change is irresponsible TWO PROJECTS: Longview Gas-Fired Power Plant & Solar Field Given New Cryptic Names, AND Access to Information is Difficult Protest Letter from Duane Nichols, Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition, Dec. 13, 2020 Incomplete information from the Mon County Commission brings holiday fears to the northern areas of Monongalia County. There is apparently a proposed “tax-avoidance scheme” being cooked up as a holiday gift to an out-of-state corporation. Apparently, this scheme is ignoring the global climate change problems including its impact on the pandemic and other public health issues. Another fossil fueled power plant on top of two existing power plants is adding insult to injury. The Longview Power plant already has experienced two bankruptcies, brought 300 trucks per day to the roads of Ft. Martin, received millions of dollars in tax forgiveness, and polluted the area with fine particulates, acidic gases and shadowy vapor plumes. Now our County Commission is apparently encouraging additional abuse to our county. Our residents have not been informed. There has been a sketch in the local newspaper, inadequate to provide an understanding. But, no legal announcement, no public hearing, no comment period, and no proper explanation of the complex tax avoidance scheme. We all know that globally, now is the time for fossil fuels to at least pay-their-own-way. We already have two large power plants in the Ft. Martin community with multiple impacts to residents there and the nearby locations of Bakers Ridge, Star City, Osage, Stewartstown, including University High School, etc. These are all exposed to the stack gases and cooling tower plumes and even worse to the fine particulates and ultrafine particulates. These pollutants are now known to penetrate the lung tissue, enter the blood stream and affect the heart, brain, etc. Any proposed PILOT agreement for Longview Power Two, or whatever is its new name, needs to involve public hearings or at least a thirty-day comment period so that (1) the general public can be informed as to what is being proposed, (2) financial advisor consultants can understand the long range significance of these tax avoidance schemes, and (3) public health experts can advise on the impacts to students, residents and the elderly in the various health care facilities of our area. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>>. NOTE: As of November 10th, Longview Power Two & Three have been renamed Mountain State Clean Energy (natutal gas plant) and Mountain State Renewable Energy (solar plant), respectively. Using the word “Clean” is a misnomer for a plant that generates so many tons of acid gases, fine particulates, and greenhouse gases. http://www.frackcheckwv.net/2020/12/13/mon-county-commission-to-approve-new…

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KOTCON-PILT-LONGVIEW-13DecY2K20.doc
by Duane Nichols 13 Dec '20

13 Dec '20

Longview PILOT Agreements on Agenda of MON COUNTY COMMISSION for this coming Meeting, on Wednesday, December 16th at 10 am. Up to 300 characters of protest can be submitted via email .... http://cms2.revize.com/revize/monongaliawv/contact_us/index.php

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COMMENT sent to MON COUNTY COMMISSION, 300 character limit
by Duane Nichols 09 Dec '20

09 Dec '20

COMMENT for regular meeting today ... The new name for Longview Power TWO is unknown to the general public and inappropriate as “CLEAN ENERGY. This proposed power plant will pollute our air and have many other local impacts. Public review of PILOT AGREEMENTS is essential before adoption. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Duane Nichols, Coordinator, Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition, December 9, 2020 NOTE — the new name is “Mountain State Clean Energy” as of November 10th.

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The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense - The New York Times
by Duane Nichols 06 Dec '20

06 Dec '20

The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense - The New York Times, Dec. 5, 2020 The metaphor is easy enough to grasp: Multiple layers of protection, imagined as cheese slices, block the spread of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. No one layer is perfect; each has holes, and when the holes align, the risk of infection increases. But several layers combined — social distancing, plus masks, plus hand-washing, plus testing and tracing, plus ventilation, plus government messaging — significantly reduce the overall risk. Vaccination will add one more protective layer. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/coronavirus-swiss-cheese-infectio…

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Energy storage is the 'Swiss army knife' of the renewables transition, but it's still evolving - Virginia Mercury
by Duane Nichols 04 Dec '20

04 Dec '20

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/12/03/energy-storage-is-the-swiss-army… Energy storage is the ‘Swiss army knife’ of the renewables transition, but it’s still evolving From the 4th Article In Series by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, December 3, 2020 Hang around any debate about clean energy and you’re bound to hear one question: What do you do when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing? The answer, at least in theory, is straightforward: energy storage. Storage can be thought of as the third leg of the stool Virginia will use to reach its clean energy goals. It’s what Virginia Advanced Energy Economy Executive Director Harry Godfrey calls “the Swiss army knife of the energy space,” a way to fill gaps by more intermittent renewable sources while also balancing out the push and pull of energy supply and demand that bedevils every electric grid. Every plan crafted by utilities for transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables relies on energy storage. But this keystone is also today the weakest link of most clean energy portfolios. Utilities and states see storage as a powerful way to balance out the intermittency of renewables like wind and solar; California, for example, is hoping storage coupled with wind and solar will help replace natural gas and coal plants now facing retirement. Batteries, though, remain hampered by limitations in how much energy they can store and how long it can be pumped onto the grid. Standard batteries today have a duration of four hours; extending that time span on a broad scale will take further research and investment. Nor is the technology very widespread yet: Recent estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration put battery capacity at under 1,000 megawatts. “If you look at all of the operational grid-scale batteries throughout the country, they store collectively less energy than our nuclear facilities in Virginia produce in just a couple of hours,” said Dominion Vice President of Public Policy and State Affairs Katharine Bond. Still, the technology may be approaching a turning point: global information and analytics firm IHS Markit in a white paper earlier this year forecast that “battery storage will continue to grow rapidly, with all trends pointing to a maturing battery industry that is well beyond the demonstration phase.” Energy storage “is the single most important technology and policy issue facing energy right now,” said Bill Murray, vice president of corporate affairs and communications at Dominion Energy. “Storage has gotten better, no question about it. We need it to get geometrically better.” Dominion already has several efforts underway. In February 2020, as the Virginia Clean Economy Act was still being hammered out at the General Assembly, regulators approved four Dominion pilots that aim to examine issues such as how batteries can be coupled with solar and how they can be used to avoid costly upgrades the utility would otherwise have to make to substations and distribution wires. The company has also been experimenting with electric school bus batteries as a potential storage solution. Appalachian Power’s interest in the technology has ramped up as well. In October, the utility announced a partnership with Dominion and economic development group InvestSWVA to advance energy storage development in the region. “Much of Appalachian Power’s service territory in Virginia is rural and storage could aid service reliability for customers,” wrote spokesperson Teresa Hall in an email. “The area is also well suited for overall storage development. Land is available and costs are reasonable, but developing Southwestern Virginia into a hub for storage has to be done responsibly.” How extensive the southwestern partnership will be remains to be seen. The VCEA set an energy storage target for Virginia of 3,100 megawatts, putting it among the most aggressive states in the U.S. when it comes to deploying the technology. As with most other VCEA targets, the bulk of that development will fall to Dominion, which is responsible for proposing 2,700 megawatts of storage compared to Appalachian’s 400 megawatts. For both utilities, there’s more than one persuasive argument for investing in storage. Like solar and wind, storage can act as a power generator that can add electricity to the grid when demand rises. But batteries in particular “can sort of play in all spaces,” said Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Will Cleveland. Unlike other renewables, storage can also play critical roles in a utility’s distribution and transmission systems — the complex and costly network of wires, substations and technology that ensure the grid functions smoothly and efficiently. “Storage can be used to improve distribution system reliability and also serve as a non-wires alternative for capacity upgrades,” said Hall. Other states have already reported savings with storage. The New York Public Service Commission reported earlier this year that electric utility Con Edison had successfully used a two megawatt battery as part of an effort to avoid paying $1.2 billion to upgrade a substation. Exactly how far storage solutions might stretch isn’t yet clear. “You want to use a battery every hour that it’s available when it’s not charging,” said Cleveland. “You want to use it in whatever the highest economic value is at any hour.” Determining that value will be a tricky proposition, though — one that’s likely to take years. Much of the responsibility will fall to a new Energy Storage Task Force that a 2020 law ordered the State Corporation Commission to create “to evaluate and analyze the regulatory, market and local barriers to the deployment” of storage solutions. That body hasn’t yet been formed, and its final report isn’t due until October 2021. “I don’t know that any state has fully gotten up to speed on those things,” said Cleveland, “but certainly Virginia has not.” Does pumped storage count as storage? First on the list of unresolved storage issues is what exactly falls under that umbrella. Everyone agrees that batteries do, and it’s advancements in that technology that are largely driving growth in storage around the world. More controversial is pumped hydropower, which today is the most common type of storage used worldwide, accounting for more than nine-tenths of all storage in the U.S.. A form of power generation that would have been familiar to our forebears, pumped storage systems create electricity when demand is high by channeling water from one reservoir into another, turning turbines as it flows. As demand drops, the water is then pumped back into the original reservoir. Virginia’s utilities have been using it for decades. Dominion touts its 3,000 megawatt Bath County Pumped Storage Station as the largest battery in the world, and Appalachian Power has operated its 636 megawatt Smith Mountain Lake facility since the 1960s. While tried and true, these systems aren’t accepted by all clean energy advocates as part of the path forward. Pumped storage is expensive to build and has a large footprint; furthermore, it requires external electricity to operate, so whether or not it’s “renewable” depends on what resources are supporting it. The Virginia Clean Economy Act’s wording also doesn’t make it clear whether or not pumped storage is part of the renewable energy future lawmakers are envisioning. The law explicitly states that “renewable energy” doesn’t include “electricity generated from pumped storage,” and it excludes energy from pumped storage from being counted toward utilities’ yearly targets for how much of their energy must come from renewables, a benchmark called the renewable portfolio standard. Crucially, though, the VCEA doesn’t explicitly exempt pumped storage from being counted toward the 2,700 and 400 megawatt storage development targets Dominion and Appalachian Power must meet by the end of 2035. Further complicating the picture is a 2017 law passed by the General Assembly nearly unanimously that declared one or more pumped hydro facilities in Virginia’s coalfield region that at least partially rely on renewables to be in the public interest. Dominion has already signaled it sees pumped hydro as part of its energy storage approach. Among the new capital projects the company listed in its 2020 Integrated Resource Plan, the first long-range plan to be filed in the wake of the VCEA, is a 300 megawatt pumped storage project in Tazewell — outside the utility’s territory — that would cost $2.9 billion. In 2017, three years before the VCEA’s passage, plans filed by the company with federal regulators indicated interest in a much larger facility capable of generating 870 megawatts. “In the energy storage space, we’ve got to take an all-of-the-above approach,” Bond told the Mercury this fall. “If it’s proven technology and it’s cost effective, we should deploy it as part of this clean energy transition and a carbon-free grid.” Not everyone agrees. Among renewable energy advocates, “there’s very much a divide” as to whether pumped storage should be seen as a clean energy solution or simply an economic development driver, said Cliona Robb, an energy attorney with Thompson McMullan who also chairs Virginia’s Solar Energy Development and Energy Storage Authority. One such opponent is Arlington-based utility-scale storage developer Delorean Power, which has strongly argued against the inclusion of pumped hydro on the grounds that it would “largely undermine” the VCEA’s “intent of creating storage targets in the first place.” Pumped hydro “is a proven, legacy technology and offers very little benefits for grid modernization, economic development and energy storage innovation in Virginia,” the company wrote in a State Corporation Commission filing this summer. Absent direction from the General Assembly, the decision seems likely to fall to the SCC — as will any approvals of Dominion’s Tazewell pumped storage facility that the utility submits to regulators. The VCEA “is an important public policy, but it’s also going to require significant investments and significant costs,” energy attorney Will Reisinger told regulators this October as part of a case against Dominion’s Tazewell plans. “That heightens the importance of the planning process, and it makes it more critical to ensure that Dominion only invests in reasonable projects that are required to comply with the Clean Economy Act or are required for the company to provide quality and reliable service.” How soon and how fast What qualifies as energy storage isn’t the only question facing regulators this fall. Also at issue is how quickly that storage ought to be rolled out. While the VCEA mandated the development of 3.1 gigawatts of storage by the beginning of 2035, it left the nuts and bolts of how that would occur to the State Corporation Commission, which was charged with crafting regulations for energy storage deployment and setting interim targets leading up to the Jan. 1, 2035 deadline. “These were the kind of things that we didn’t really have the bandwidth — I don’t think anyone had the bandwidth — to nail down,” said David Murray, executive director of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C.- Virginia chapter of the Solar Energy Industries Association. As they did with the shared solar rules, regulators have largely deferred to Dominion and Appalachian Power. Draft regulations hewed closely to the utilities’ proposal, including a set of interim targets that would delay the rollout of most energy storage until 2030. Dominion and Appalachian have justified the “back-loading” of targets on the grounds that waiting to fully deploy storage until closer to the 2035 deadline will let Virginia take advantage of technological advancements made elsewhere at a cheaper price. “We are expecting more renewables (solar and wind) to be connected to our grid towards the end of the 15-year period, creating the need for more storage to balance generation output,” wrote Dominion spokesperson Rayhan Daudani in an email. “We are also expecting energy storage cost reductions and technology improvements to materialize in the latter half of the 2020s and 2030s, which will drive value and additional benefits for ratepayers and the power grid.” Clean energy advocates and the storage industry are pushing for more aggressive targets, however. A group including MDV-SEIA and the Energy Storage Association complained that delays could cause Virginia to miss out on early cost savings and could “lock in other investments that may reduce the utility of storage in the future.” Delorean meanwhile argued for a more aggressive timeline on economic grounds, citing the ongoing financial constrictions due to the pandemic: “The Virginia legislature wanted to do something big for energy storage, and this was clearly articulated in the VCEA,” the company wrote in a commission filing. “The regulations adopted by the SCC need to send that same business-friendly message so that companies across the supply chain migrate to Virginia and the clean-energy industry can continue growing in earnest.” How big a role will non-utilities play? In Virginia, which has prized its identity as the U.S.’ top state for business, friendliness toward a growing industry might seem a given. The electric grid is a different story, however. Since the state re-regulated its electricity markets and handed monopolies back to Dominion and Appalachian Power in 2007, the utilities have carefully guarded their territory. Lawmakers too have frequently been cautious in allowing third-party companies to enter state markets and affect the monopolies’ customer bases. That could be changing. The last two big pieces of energy legislation to pass the General Assembly — the Grid Transformation and Security Act of 2018 and the VCEA of 2020 — have included mandatory carveouts for non-utility companies to take on certain capital projects. The State Corporation Commission has also increasingly shown favor toward utility proposals to buy power or other assets from non-utility developers in order to offload some of the financial risk that would otherwise be borne by Virginia residents and businesses. Among the VCEA carveouts was one requiring that 35 percent of the storage target be developed by third parties. (Another also carved out 35 percent of the solar and onshore wind goal.) “When we drafted the bills that authorized these new programs, we envisioned policies and program rules that will unleash a competitive clean energy market that creates (a) maximum number of local jobs and attract(s) millions of dollars in investment to the commonwealth,” six Democratic lawmakers, including VCEA sponsors Sen. Jennifer McClellan and Del. Richard “Rip” Sullivan, wrote to the State Corporation Commission in an early November letter. The letter, a four-page list of the legislators’ concerns with commission proposals for both energy storage and shared solar regulations, also issued a veiled rebuke of SCC’s approach: The bills, lawmakers asserted, “were intended to open competition for new entrants, and not simply make incremental changes that largely maintain the status quo.” Of particular concern to many industry players are the permitting requirements regulators have proposed for non-utility companies to build storage. An early recommendation by SCC staff that would have required any project larger than 100 kilowatts to undergo a rigorous permitting process led by the commission provoked a strong backlash. The Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy said the low threshold imposed “onerous” requirements on a wide swath of projects, while the Southern Environmental Law Center labeled it “a transparent attempt to ensure non-utility storage is never built in Virginia.” Dominion, for its part, said the 100 kilowatt threshold was reasonable and consistent with a threshold set by regional electric transmission organization PJM for projects to sell power into wholesale markets. This November, commission staff conceded the 100 kilowatt threshold might be too low and bumped their recommendation up to one megawatt — still far lower than what many advocates sought. But they held tight to many of the permitting requirements, stating that while “certain aspects may be perceived as burdensome, they are intended to ensure that developers seeking to operate within the commonwealth will operate safely, will not negatively impact the reliability of the electric power system and will be ethically responsible in their interactions with Virginia consumers.” That sense of caution is also evident elsewhere. The Rural Solar Development Coalition that convened last year in response to a flurry of solar applications in Southside and Tidewater Virginia is also beginning to eye storage as the “next wave” of the renewables transition, said Halifax County Administrator Scott Simpson. “We want to be sure that our localities are prepared and understand what storage means, and if any of us were to be proposed a storage facility, what questions are there,” he said. *** — Fourth in a five-part series on the commonwealth’s transition to a carbon-free electric grid. Tomorrow: energy efficiency — ***

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MVCAC December 2020