Back
HYDROGEN: Indiana advocates worry that federally funded plans to create a Midwest hydrogen production hub built around natural gas and carbon sequestration could perpetuate local pollution. (Energy News Network)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to offer a conditional $1.5 billion loan to reopen a shuttered nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan. (Reuters)
MINING: A Michigan panel delays voting on a $50 million grant for a copper mining project in the far western Upper Peninsula, which the developer says would provide key materials for electric vehicles. (Bridge)
PIPELINES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A new report finds electric vehicles account for about 4.5% of new vehicle sales in Indiana, which is less than half the national rate. (Times of Northwest Indiana)
COAL: More than $3.1 million in federal funding is available this budget cycle to reclaim abandoned coal mines in North Dakota. (KXNET)
SOLAR: Two small manufacturers in Missouri receive a total of $90,000 in federal funding for onsite solar installations. (KBIA)
ELECTRIFICATION: A coalition of Minnesota advocacy groups seeks participants to help draft a roadmap for expanding home electrification as a climate strategy. (Spokesman-Recorder)
TRANSPORTATION: Michigan officials begin surveying residents on their attitudes toward replacing a gasoline tax with a road usage charge as more fuel efficient and electric vehicles are adopted. (WOOD-TV8)
GRID: Ameren completes upgrades to a 140-mile transmission line that utility officials say will improve reliability for seven southern Illinois counties. (KFVS)
CLIMATE: A community mapping project supported by NOAA scientists identifies the urban cores of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City as more vulnerable to dangerous heat than surrounding areas. (Gazette)
Correction: More than 11,000 natural gas storage wells across the U.S. may have a single barrier of failure that puts them at risk of a major methane leak. An item in yesterday’s digest mischaracterized their risk.
UTILITIES: The largest U.S. utilities have offered uneven support and sometimes conflicting positions while lobbying on climate policy in recent years, according to a nonprofit group’s new report. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
STORAGE: Global venture capital investment in energy storage soared to new records last year, with 86 deals totalling $9.2 billion in funding. (Utility Dive)
HYDROGEN:
EMISSIONS: The U.S. Energy Department allocates $254 million for projects to cut industrial greenhouse gas emissions. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
MINING: The mining industry aims for a rebrand as it becomes a necessary piece of the clean energy transition and looks to recruit young, climate-conscious employees. (Grist)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to offer a conditional $1.5 billion loan to reopen a shuttered nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan. (Reuters)
CLIMATE:
CLIMATE: National business and agricultural groups sue California over new laws requiring large companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions and other climate-related data, saying they overstep federal regulatory authority. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS:
FOSSIL FUELS: Wyoming awards $157 million to six projects aimed at developing cleaner uses for fossil fuels. (Casper Star-Tribune)
COAL: Utah lawmakers introduce bills aimed at keeping coal plants running longer, but consumer advocates worry they could drive up rates. (Salt Lake Tribune)
MINING:
UTILITIES:
WIND: California regulators advance a proposed 60 MW floating wind turbine installation off the central coast that would power a U.S. Space Force base. (Offshore Wind)
GRID:
POLLUTION: Republican Utah lawmakers push back on state regulators’ proposal to limit gas-powered lawn equipment use in some areas when air quality is bad, saying it would restrict freedoms. (Salt Lake Tribune)
HYDROGEN: Wyoming awards a company $16 million for its proposed coal-to-hydrogen conversion plant with carbon capture and sequestration. (Power)
COMMENTARY: A former Arizona utility regulator says the state’s rapid adoption of grid-scale battery storage stabilizes the grid and gives consumers more energy options. (Arizona Republic)
Natural gas can have a huge climate impact before it even makes it to your furnace or stove.
While the fuel releases fewer carbon emissions than coal when it’s burned, it’s mostly made up of methane — a planet-warming gas that’s far more potent than carbon in the short term if it leaks from gas infrastructure. And at thousands of gas storage wells across the U.S., leaks are more likely than storage site owners may be accounting for. As many as 11,446 storage wells could have a single point of failure, meaning only one thing has to go wrong for a leak to start, Floodlight’s analysis of a new report finds.
Those potential disasters could look just like what happened at the Rager Mountain storage site in November 2022.
At the Pennsylvania site, a heavily corroded gas storage well broke below the ground, sending methane aboveground and into the air. The leak wasn’t stopped for two weeks, and by then, it had released the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 300,000 gas-powered cars. Bloomberg even labelled it the worst climate disaster of the year.
And there’s more than just a climate risk. Storage fields essentially work as “a huge battery system” that keeps fuel ready to use in power plants and home heating, researcher Drew Michanowicz told Floodlight. Leaks jeopardize that supply.
It all makes for a big challenge for federal and state regulators as they work to keep energy resources secure and cut down on a big source of methane emissions.
Read the whole story from Floodlight here.
🚢 Hitting pause on gas: The Biden administration pauses all approvals of new liquefied natural gas export facilities to further review their climate and other impacts, crediting “the calls of young people and frontline communities” for its decision. (E&E News)
🏭 Fossil fuel switch: States are dependent on hundreds of millions of dollars of annual fossil fuel revenues that pay for schools and roads, and they’ll need to find other funding sources as they transition to renewables. (Axios)
🌎 Devastating climate impacts: Researchers estimate climate change has killed at least 4 million people around the world since 2000, crediting increasingly extreme weather for excess deaths. (Grist)
🏫 Building solar resilience: FEMA will soon start putting solar panels on schools, hospitals and other public buildings when they’re rebuilt after disasters, with the hopes of boosting resilience in future extreme weather events. (New York Times)
💸 Going public: In the face of high electric rates and unreliable power, several communities around the country are pushing to replace investor-owned utilities with public, resident-owned power companies. (Grist)
💰 Pro-propane: A propane industry lobbying group has spent millions of dollars over the past two years to promote the fuel as a clean energy source, even though it’s a byproduct of oil and gas refining. (The Guardian/Heated)
☀️ Solar for everyone: A solar nonprofit matches socially conscious investors’ cash with lower-income homeowners to spread the benefits of clean energy in a Minneapolis neighborhood. (Energy News Network)
🚘 An EV charging solution: Advocates say making many Level 1 charging outlets available to renters in large buildings could do more to convince them to adopt electric vehicles than installing a few faster charging ports. (Grist)
SOLAR: Texas breaks its record for the amount of grid power coming from solar, with more than 15 GW of solar providing 36% of power on the grid on Sunday. (KUT)
ALSO:
EFFICIENCY: Louisiana regulators narrowly vote to approve new energy efficiency rules during a raucous meeting in which protestors chanted, “Vote! Vote! Vote!” over a commissioner’s speech. (Louisiana Illuminator)
OIL & GAS:
PIPELINES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
UTILITIES: The Southern Group’s Florida lobbying firm staffs up. (Florida Politics)
COMMENTARY:
CLEAN ENERGY: Renewable energy and transmission permitting reforms will be a key focus for Minnesota lawmakers this session in an effort to hit long-term clean energy targets. (Star Tribune)
OIL & GAS:
FINANCE: Minnesota leaders plan to launch the state’s green bank this year with $45 million in starting funds to help finance clean energy and climate projects. (Sahan Journal)
WIND: North Dakota’s top utility regulator questions Verizon’s purchase of power from a proposed 200 MW wind project, saying the company doesn’t need it and is merely trying to “get environmental activists off their backs.” (North Dakota Monitor)
SOLAR: An energy justice cooperative is selected to develop three community solar projects around Chicago that backers say will help lower energy costs for low- and moderate-income communities. (Inside Climate News)
POLITICS: Vulnerable Democrats in swing states call on the Biden administration to dial back plans to slash power plant pollution, boost electric vehicle sales and pause natural gas exports. (Bloomberg)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
MINING: South Dakota legislation would bring the state closer to reopening uranium mining, which environmental advocates say has left a legacy of polluted waterways. (KEVN)
CLIMATE: If a Biden administration review finds that liquefied natural gas exports are a significant driver of climate change, it could lead to a permanent ban on the practice. (E&E News)
CARBON CAPTURE: Summit Carbon Solutions reaches an agreement with a major biofuel producer that would add 17 ethanol plants to the developer’s proposed carbon pipeline in Iowa and South Dakota. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
TRANSPORTATION: Officials in Springfield, Missouri, consider a host of short and long-term recommendations to improve its local transit system. (Daily Citizen)
OIL & GAS: More than 11,000 underground natural gas storage sites across the U.S. could have a single barrier to failure that puts them at risk of a major methane leak, according to a new federal analysis. (Floodlight)
ALSO:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: Researchers estimate climate change has killed at least 4 million people around the world since 2000, crediting increasingly extreme weather for excess deaths. (Grist)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
HYDROGEN: Hydrogen produced with clean energy could be essential to decarbonizing heavy industry, but questions remain over just how clean it really is. (Canary Media)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department proposes rules that would require modest efficiency improvements for new gas stoves. (E&E News)
MINING: An investigation finds proposed lithium mines across the West will require billions of gallons of water, further stressing supplies in drought-plagued areas. (Howard Center)
COMMENTARY: President Biden’s pause on new LNG export approvals is more of a political signal than a climate win, an editorial board writes. (Washington Post)
OIL & GAS: The federal Bureau of Land Management abandons work on a resource management plan ten years in the making that would guide oil and gas development in northwestern New Mexico’s Chaco region, baffling conservationists and the industry alike. (Capital & Main)
ALSO:
MINING:
UTILITIES: An Oregon county joins winemakers’ lawsuit against Pacific Power for its alleged role in sparking the 2020 Labor Day wildfires. (KOIN)
ELECTRIFICATION: Colorado residents accuse Xcel Energy of hampering efforts to electrify their homes and disconnect from natural gas service. (Daily Camera)
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Oregon receives $1.27 million in federal funding to develop electric vehicle charging infrastructure in underserved communities. (KPIC 4)
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: Republican Utah lawmakers establish an “environmental stewardship” caucus that emphasizes the importance of fossil fuels. (Deseret News)
On a November afternoon in 2022, a 57-year-old well tapped into an underground natural gas storage reservoir in western Pennsylvania started leaking, fast enough that people a few miles away heard a loud, jet engine-like noise.
By the time the leak was stopped nearly two weeks later, roughly 16,000 metric tons of methane had escaped into the atmosphere, the equivalent of more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 300,000 gas-powered cars.
The blowout of a well at the Rager Mountain gas storage field was the worst methane leak from underground storage since Aliso Canyon in California in 2015. That incident forced thousands of people from their homes and sickened many of them, taking four months to contain. In 2021, 35,000 plaintiffs in one class-action lawsuit were awarded up to $1.5 billion in damages.
While not as large or imminently dangerous to residents, the Rager Mountain leak was a “disaster,” according to one Pennsylvania regulator. Bloomberg labeled it the United States’ worst climate disaster that year.
The natural gas that leaked methane in Pennsylvania and California is not stored in tanks but in giant underground geological formations accessed by multiple wells. There are about 400 such storage fields across 32 states.
According to a new report, there are thousands more potential opportunities for a similar situation across the country. The new analysis of data collected by federal regulators suggests there are as many as 11,446 storage wells in the country with the same key risk as the wells that failed at Rager Mountain and Aliso Canyon: They have only a single barrier to failure.
“That population is a lot larger than we had estimated, or other researchers had estimated with state [data],” says Greg Lackey, an author on the study and researcher at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
All but one of Pennsylvania’s 49 gas storage fields has at least one potential single point of failure well, researchers found.
Natural gas is primarily made up of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short-term. Methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure are under increasing scrutiny in the United States and worldwide, as stopping them represents a relatively cheap and effective way to prevent greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global warming.
Leaks from gas storage are only one part of the industry’s methane problem. Such facilities also are at risk of dramatic blowouts that are hard to control because they are connected to large, pressurized reservoirs of gas.
Regulations put in place on gas storage post-Aliso Canyon are still rolling out, including a requirement for baseline risk assessments on all wells by 2027. New EPA rules on methane leaks and repair and a planned federal fee on “waste” methane would impact gas storage as well.
The fee, which is still being finalized, would force companies to eventually pay up to $1,500 per metric ton of methane in excess of the equivalent of 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, a threshold the Rager Mountain leak meets almost 20 times over. Industry groups have pushed back against the fee, arguing it would harm smaller oil and gas companies and discourage oil and gas production overall.
Many of these wells are decades-old and not originally designed for storage. They have gone through the stresses of repeated cycles of injecting and withdrawing gas. Some, like Rager Mountain, are in relatively rural, sparsely-populated areas, but others are close to neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, Ohio and California.
The Rager Mountain leak was caused by a break below ground in one well’s casing — the barrier between where pressurized gas flows and the geology around it. The well had become heavily corroded from exposure to water, air and organic matter through an open valve, according to an third-party analysis submitted to regulators and obtained through a public records request.
“They probably didn’t realize it, but they were creating an optimum case for corrosion,” says Dan Arthur, president of the engineering and technical services firm ALL Consulting, who reviewed the analysis.
Arthur says older wells in storage fields haven’t been given “as much significance” as they should be, and operators need to make sure they’re fully addressing well integrity.
“Age is a risk factor that you have to consider, but it also depends on how you are caring for the well,” he says. Redundant barriers reduce the risk of methane escaping if the well casing fails, Arthur and Lackey say.
Minimum federal safety standards on underground storage fields were set less than a decade ago in the aftermath of the Aliso Canyon leak. One of the federal agencies in charge of regulating gas storage sites, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, only began collecting regular data on underground storage fields in 2017.
The number of wells with potentially only one barrier was three times larger than previously estimated before the PHMSA data became available, Lackey says. This “single point of failure” design featured in both Rager Mountain and Aliso Canyon blowouts is present in as many as 64% of all gas storage wells in the United States, his research found.
But the data reported to PHMSA is not enough to confirm how many of these wells actually have a single point of failure that would flag wells at the highest risk of another blowout, Lackey says. Researchers would need more information about each well’s design and construction, he says.
“What you don’t get insight into is how many other casings there are, or where the locations of cement are,” Lackey says, describing additional barriers that would lower the risk.
Rager Mountain’s owner and operator, Equitrans, had its own risk ranking of storage wells, according to the third-party analysis. While Rager is the company’s largest field in Pennsylvania, its wells were not the highest ranked in the company’s own risk management plan; Others were higher up the list because of their proximity to residential areas.
Both Peoples Natural Gas, the previous owner of the field, and Equitrans “recognized that corrosion was an issue,” so the companies used probes, known as “logs,” to examine the integrity of the well casings. But, the analysis noted, “Such a strategy is dependent on the logging being reasonably accurate.”
A 2016 test of the casing wall of the well that eventually failed underestimated its corrosion, the report says. When Equitrans reran the test after the blowout using an updated algorithm, it showed far more corrosion.
In the wake of the Rager Mountain blowout, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, said it was considering a “top to bottom review” of the state’s gas storage industry. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that have their own regulations covering gas storage.
“Everything is on the table for consideration in terms of making sure this industry is regulated appropriately and the public is protected and the environment is protected from potential incidents like this happening again,” said Kurt Klapkowski, acting deputy secretary for DEP’s Oil and Gas Management office, a month after the incident.
But after a successful effort by Equitrans to move the bulk of the incident investigation to federal regulators, DEP appears uncertain or unable to move forward with such a review. Klapkowski told the agency’s Oil and Gas board in September that regulators were “trying to figure out where our jurisdiction ends or might be preempted by the federal government.”
Pennsylvania DEP’s investigation into surface and groundwater contamination at Rager Mountain is ongoing, the agency said in an emailed statement, and it “remains committed to its goal of inspecting storage field wells on an annual basis regardless of risk.”
Wells are assessed through surface inspections and information reported by operators, DEP added, using multiple factors to prioritize wells for inspection, including the potential environmental impact and likelihood of failure, as well as proximity to population.
Equitrans has taken several steps to reduce risk in its storage fields, spokesperson Natalie Cox said in an emailed statement. They include reprocessing older well tests, running additional tests on another 100 wells in 2023, and changing its requirements for when to add protective gel to reduce corrosion. The company did not answer questions about whether these tests led to any well replacements.
Lackey’s study also found that nationally, while most leaks from gas storage were connected with accidents or well improvement projects known as workovers, leaks from corrosion released a much larger volume of methane.
“If it’s a valve or something that’s broken off on the wellhead, that might be easier to contain, rather than something downhole that would be exposed to higher pressures within the well,” he says. “During workovers you have systems in place to contain the well … whereas with corrosion, that’s something going on silently in the background.”
While a 2016 government task force recommended phasing out single point of failure of wells, ultimately the federal minimum standards only required operators to address them through submitting risk-management plans to federal regulators — plans that are not public.
The release of gas from Rager Mountain in November 2022 represented about 15% of the field’s working storage volume. Underground storage fields act as “a huge battery system,” says Drew Michanowicz, a researcher who has studied their proximity to residential areas.
Major leaks from storage not only release huge volumes of greenhouse gases but also reduce reliability in areas where natural gas dominates home heating and electricity production, Michanowicz says.
The federal leak investigation at Rager Mountain remains open at least until regulators review work on fixing three temporarily plugged wells in the field, likely in the spring. But Rager Mountain is otherwise operating. In October, with PHMSA’s approval, Equitrans began injecting gas into the field for the winter.
Floodlight is a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. This story was produced with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Charging electric vehicles in Massachusetts could get less expensive under a pair of utility proposals now under consideration, but advocates are arguing for tweaks they say would make the transition faster and more fair.
A 2022 state climate law requires the state’s two major electric companies, Eversource and National Grid, to submit proposals for so-called time-of-use rates offering lower prices to electric vehicle owners who charge their cars during times of lower demand hours. The utilities did so in August 2023, proposing off-peak rates they say could save users hundreds of dollars a year compared to basic service rates.
Climate advocates generally support the time-of-use concept. Lowering the cost of charging could motivate potential buyers as the state tries to hit its goal of getting 900,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030, they argue. Shifting vehicle charging to off-peak hours could also lower power use during peak times, reducing the need to fire up older, dirtier fossil fuel power plants to meet demand.
Still, stakeholders said, there is room for improvement in everything from the process of collecting public feedback to the precise calculations behind the rates.
“We are very supportive of time-of-use rates, broadly speaking,” said Oliver Tully, director of utility innovation and reform at climate nonprofit the Acadia Center. “We want to make sure these initial plans are as strong as possible.”
In considering the utilities’ proposals, the Department of Public Utilities is trying out a new strategy: They have asked the utilities themselves to collect feedback from the public. The goal is to hear from parties that might not have qualified to be formal intervenors in the case, said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
“They’re saying: We want you to talk about this and come to an agreement because the [Department of Public Utilities] process limits who’s in the room for the conversation,” she said.
While she appreciates the aim of opening the discussion to more voices, however, she isn’t confident the utilities, left to their own devices, will create enough opportunities for feedback.
“It’s not an impartial third party running the stakeholder process,” she said.
The utilities had a first meeting scheduled to take place online today, which Eversource spokesman William Hinkle called, “the first of a series.”
The timeline laid out by the utilities is also of concern to some advocates. The utilities do not want to roll out these rates before they deploy advanced meters and software, and then have a year’s worth of experience with the new system “to ensure network stability,” according to Eversource’s filing. By the utility estimates, this timeline would mean the new rate option would be unlikely to kick in before 2029.
Many advocates don’t think it’s necessary to wait quite so long, however. Other states, such as Vermont and California, have implemented time-of-use rates for electric vehicle charging without requiring advanced meters. Data from chargers or the vehicles themselves can be used to determine how much power was used for charging and when, allowing for billing at different rates.
“You can implement basic time-of-use rates without a smart meter,” Tully said. “If you allow for submetering using charging technology you should be able to accurately do that.”
Getting started now, instead of waiting for advanced metering, could also make the launch of time-of-use rates go more smoothly, said Graham Turk, a graduate research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative. Any new rate structure is going to need adjustments once it is introduced.
“The earlier they do that, the better,” Turk said. The current proposal would “just push that farther down the line when [electric vehicles] are a lot more prevalent and it’s a lot harder to do this for the first time.”
Lower rates during off-peak hours may not be enough on their own to recruit new electric vehicle drivers, many experts said. Getting the precise numbers right will be vital.
“The real challenge is going to be in ensuring that the rate structure is something that encourages people to participate, but doesn’t punish people for using electricity outside of the time-of-use rate hours,” said Priya Gandbhir, senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation.
The utilities’ filings include example numbers for what an electric vehicle charging time-of-use rate might look like, but do not propose specific rates yet, given how much could change in the market and regulations over the next five years. In each of these illustrative cases, the cost of off-peak vehicle charging is substantially lower than the cost of basic service, while the cost of on-peak charging is significantly higher.
That makes rough sense, advocates said, but when the real numbers are determined, a delicate balance must be struck. If the difference between on-peak and off-peak rates is too small, it won’t do enough to motivate more people to consider electric vehicles. At the same time, if the gap is too big, then a few on-peak charges could mean a bigger bill than under basic service rates, effectively punishing some consumers if a sudden change in schedule alters their charging times.
“Basically, when people’s bills come through at the end of the month they should be able to see some savings, regardless,” Gandbhir said. “They shouldn’t have to be perfect.”
As all these complicated decisions are made, it is essential to keep in mind the effects these changes could have on lower-income populations in the state, said Mary Wambui-Ekop, a longtime energy equity activist and co-chair of the equity working group for the state’s Energy Efficiency Advisory Council.
She worries that the overall cost of a major transition toward a new metering system and time-of-use rates could add to the already high energy burden of low-income households. In Massachusetts, households earning under 30% of the average median income pay 13% of their earnings to energy costs, as compared to 2% for households at or above median income.
“The bottom line is low-income households in Massachusetts, Black and brown households, have higher energy burdens,” Wambui-Ekop said.
At the same time, residents working multiple jobs, living in rental units, and just trying to keep up might not have the time, education, or internet access to learn about and weigh new and potentially cost-saving options.
There is precedent for this concern: Lower-income households have also been left behind in other pushes for renewable energy or energy efficiency in the state. A 2020 report by the utilities, for example, found that residents of wealthier communities were far more likely to have taken advantage of energy efficiency programs than those in lower-income areas and neighborhoods with higher populations of color.
Plans for time-of-use rates — for electric vehicle charging or beyond — must therefore include careful plans for making sure historically disadvantaged communities can share in the benefits and avoid shouldering the burden, Wambui-Ekop said.
“I am not opposed to time-of-use rates,” she said, “They are great in a perfect market. Unfortunately, the market system has not been fair to low-income households.”
.svg)
