People along the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego, who have shivered through an unusually cool summer, can be forgiven for being just a little bit jealous of residents of the East Coast, where warm temperature records have repeatedly been smashed this summer. During June, July and part of August as well, it seemed that many coastal areas of the West were missing out on summer entirely.
Monthly Archives: August 2010
US EPA Official Says “No on 23″
US EPA Regional 9 Administrator Jared Blumenfeld, at Crissy Field in San Francisco on August 25th. (Photo: Gretchen Weber)
The ranks of officials publicly opposing Proposition 23 seem to be growing. Earlier this month we reported that Energy Secretary Steven Chu said passing the measure would be a “terrible setback” for California’s clean energy leadership and that the state’s Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols called Prop 23 a “very serious threat” to the core programs of AB 32 and related regulatory programs.
Today, at a meeting of the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association in San Francisco, federal EPA Administrator Jared Blumenfeld urged attendees to vote against the measure.
Doing so, he said, “is certainly what you should do.”
Continue reading
Cow Power Not Cutting It
Cows at Fiscalini Farms in Modesto, California. (Photo: Sheraz Sadiq)
Last year, as part of a radio series on methane, I drove down to visit John Fiscalini, who was building a huge methane “digester” to convert his cows’ “byproducts” into clean energy, and reduce the carbon footprint of his sizable dairy farm and cheese factory outside Modesto. After millions of dollars in design and construction costs, Fiscalini was fed up with state air and water regulators, who he felt were pulling him in different directions. A year later, have things improved? Not so much, as Quest’s Lauren Sommer found out, when she returned to the San Joaquin Valley for an update. — Craig Miller
Three years ago, KQED’s QUEST visited a Central Valley dairy that was taking an innovative approach to its waste problem. Instead of collecting thousands of pounds of cow manure in open holding ponds, Joseph Gallo Farms uses it in a renewable energy technology known as a methane digester. Continue reading
Climate News Roundup
A few items in the climate news that caught our eyes this week…
1. CEC approves 250-megawatt solar thermal project in Kern County
The California Energy Commission approved the Beacon Solar Energy project on Wednesday. It’s the first time in 20 years that state energy regulators have approved construction on a solar thermal farm, the Los Angeles Times reports.
2. Geoengineering won’t curb sea-level rise, study finds
A new report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that geoengineering strategies to combat global warming by blocking the sun’s radiation would not have much of an impact on rising sea levels, unless the efforts are extremely aggressive. (Read more at Nature.com)
3. Earth’s plant growth fell due to climate change, says NASA
After 20 years of increasing growth under warming temperatures, the Earth’s vegetation saw a slight decrease over the last decade, according to a new NASA analysis. Scientists reported they were surprised to find that the negative effects of regional droughts outweighed the positive influence of a longer growing season.
4. Another hurdle cleared for the world’s largest solar farm
Federal regulators are one step closer to approving plans for the 1,000 megawatt plant proposed by Oakland-based company Solar Millennium LLC. The project would be located across more than 7,000 acres in Riverside County. (Read more at The New York Times.)
Feds to States on Global Warming Suit: Back Off
Navajo Generation Station. The place of coal in California's energy diet is shrinking, but that's not necessarily true for the rest of the country. (Photo: Alex E. Proimos via Flickr)
Bit by bit, the US Environmental Protection Agency is moving to limit the gases that scientists say cause global warming. Over five years, the agency is limiting auto emissions and is also requiring new industrial plants to use improved pollution controls
Sooooo, US Justice Department lawyers argue, California, seven other states, New York City and three land trusts should not be suing major utilities, demanding that they reduce global warming emissions.
In papers filed with the US Supreme court this week, Justice Department lawyers argue the authority to curb emissions that cause climate change belongs to the Environmental Protection Agency and to Congress. Continue reading
Another Mountain Critter Confronts Climate Change
The San Bernardino flying squirrel is a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel, pictured here. (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed petitions with the US Fish and Wildlife Service today to protect four mountaintop species from climate change, including the San Bernardino flying squirrel. The CBD is requesting that the species be listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and that critical habitat be designated.
The San Bernardino flying squirrel is a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel. Historically it has thrived in the high-elevation conifer forests of Southern California, in just two locations: the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. But according to Shaye Wolf, a biologist at CBD, the species has likely disappeared from the San Jacinto Mountains in the past few decades. Studies indicate that the remaining population is isolated in the San Bernardino Mountains, which is bordered on the north by the Mojave Desert, a formidable barrier to migration. Continue reading
Rebuilding a Buffer Against Climate Impacts
Hear our radio feature on wetlands restoration in San Francisco Bay, to be aired Friday afternoon on The California Report.
As my colleague Paul Rogers reported this week, earth has begun to move in the biggest wetlands restoration ever undertaken on the West Coast. This week I took a brief tour of the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve, near Hayward.
What is and what will be: Hundreds of acres of salt evaporation ponds, in the background, are being restored to tidal wetlands, as seen in the foreground of this scene from Eden Landing in Hayward. (All photos: Craig Miller)
Scanning much of the scene, “Eden” wasn’t exactly what came to mind. Vast, white expanses of salt and gypsum deposits are more reminiscent of Utah than a bay estuary. These are the remnants of a once booming salt harvesting industry.
But fueled partially by federal stimulus funding, bulldozers and backhoes are now reshaping levees there as part of the larger South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, which will eventually return 630 acres of abandoned salt flats into tidal wetlands at Eden Landing, and thousands more in an arc around the south end of San Francisco Bay. Continue reading
Clean Energy from Below
UPDATED with interactive map
Hear my radio feature on geothermal energy and the rest of a five-part collaboration on renewable energy between NPR and KQED, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
It may be a distant second to California now, but Nevada is making a run to become the nation’s largest producer of geothermal energy.
A conventional geothermal power plant at The Geysers complex in Lake County. (Photo: Craig Miller)
California still produces an estimated 80% of the nation’s geothermal power (used to produce electricity*), with more than 40 plants online. But according to a summary from the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) this summer:
“Nevada could become the leading geothermal energy producer in the coming years if growth and production trends continue on their current trajectories. Nevada’s 86 planned or developing geothermal power plants have the potential add up to 3,686.4 Megawatts of geothermal power to Nevada’s energy portfolio, power for 2.6 million homes – enough to meet the electricity needs of 100% of the homes in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.”
GEA describes 14 Nevada projects as being “in latter stages of development.” Meanwhile, says the group’s executive director, Karl Gawell, development in California is slowing down. “Everything’s relative,” Gawell told me in a phone interview. “Projects are moving forward in California, they just take longer.” Continue reading
The Overspray from Prop 23
On Monday, US energy secretary Steven Chu became the latest high-profile voice against California’s Proposition 23, the statewide initiative to suspend AB 32, the state’s four-year-old climate strategy.
“AB 32 was a good bill and continues to have California in a leadership role in developing clean energy and the efficient use of energy,” Chu told reporters at a dedication in Menlo Park. “From the middle 1970s California played that role and it would just be a terrible setback.”
Last week the trend was given full voice by Mary Nichols, who, as chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), is charged with getting AB 32 fully implemented in the next two years, called Prop 23 a “very serious threat,” not just to the core programs of AB 32, but to an array of regulatory programs that support the state’s attack on greenhouse gases. Continue reading
DOE Secretary Opposes Prop 23
In what are believed to be his first public remarks on the subject, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu came out against California’s Proposition 23 today. Chu said passage of the measure, designed to suspend the state’s landmark climate law known as AB 32, would be “a terrible setback.”
Continue reading
