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GRID: A new order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will require grid operators to plan for a massive transmission buildout to support renewable energy, but critics say the rule infringes on state authority and could be subject to legal challenge. (Canary Media)
ALSO:
TRANSPORTATION: A coalition of 24 states yesterday petitioned a federal court to overturn EPA rules limiting emissions from trucks, while a separate lawsuit challenges California’s phase-out of diesel engines. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: As anticipated, the Biden administration yesterday announced a new 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and 50% on solar components; China claims the move violates international trade rules. (CNN)
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: House Democrats are investigating whether Donald Trump’s solicitation of $1 billion in donations from oil companies violates federal campaign finance laws. (Washington Post)
NUCLEAR:
COAL: Federal and state records show a company that operates an Alabama coal mine where an explosion killed one nearby resident and critically injured another has been cited hundreds of times for safety violations and is delinquent on dozens of penalties. (Inside Climate News)
ELECTRIFICATION: California lawmakers advance legislation that would require labels on all new natural gas stoves warning customers of potential health hazards resulting from the appliances’ emissions. (Associated Press)
COMMENTARY:
In 2022, decades of advocacy by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network to address poor air quality near industrial facilities took a significant leap forward.
That’s when the Biden Administration awarded more than $50 million through the Inflation Reduction Act to increase air quality monitoring in some U.S. communities historically overburdened by pollution.
A year later, LEAN, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, got $500,000, which it used to deploy a fleet of mobile air monitoring vehicles. For three months earlier this year, the cars cruised up and down the Mississippi River, collecting continuous air quality data along a 300-mile route in southwest Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley.”
MaryLee Orr, LEAN’s executive director, has called the project a “dream” come true for her and the organization she founded in 1986.
“I get teary-eyed because for me, it’s been a lifetime of trying to find this kind of technology that communities could have,” Orr said during a virtual community meeting in January to roll out the project.
Now Louisiana will likely become one of the first states to push back on such community-led efforts. A Republican-backed bill headed to the governor’s desk will implement standards prohibiting data collected through some community air monitoring programs like LEAN’s from being used in enforcement or regulatory actions tied to the federal Clean Air Act.
“(Lawmakers) are making one hurdle after another to stop communities and discourage them from collecting any data by saying even if you collected it, we’re not going to count it; it’s not going to be important,” Orr said.
The industry-backed bill passed the House Wednesday on a 75-16 vote. The amended version returns to the Senate Monday, where an earlier version passed by an overwhelming majority.
What’s happening in Louisiana could be an indication of what’s to come elsewhere. A similar measure is up for consideration in the West Virginia Legislature.
Meanwhile, millions more in IRA grants are up for grabs for community-based groups, state, local and tribal agencies to do their own air monitoring in low-income and disadvantaged areas.
Localized air monitoring efforts allow marginalized communities overburdened by polluting industries to force transparency about the air they breathe and push state leaders to hold industry more accountable for harmful emissions.
Proponents of the new standards in Louisiana frame it as an attempt to bring more uniformity and standards to community air monitoring. But in a letter to one lawmaker, Region 6 Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Earthea Nance said the law would conflict with federal law, which states that “various kinds of information other than reference test data … may be used to demonstrate compliance or noncompliance with emission standards.”
Environmental advocates view the bill as a way to protect industry’s bad actors.
“The petrochemical industry is working with Louisiana legislators to inhibit community air monitoring because they know full well that they are polluting the air,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.
Since it was established in 2000, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has offered residents living near industrial facilities a low-cost, air monitoring tool approved by the U.S. EPA. The group’s name comes from the industrial-size buckets that contain monitoring equipment that members use to collect their own air samples around industrial facilities in their neighborhoods.
“It shows that they are scared of science and scared of the facts,” Rolfes said. “The power is on our side.”
Sen. Eddie Lambert, R-Gonzalez, whose legislative district includes three of the most heavily industrialized parishes in southeast Louisiana, sponsored the bill. It mandates that any air monitoring data used for enforcement and regulation must come from the most up-to-date EPA-approved equipment.
Analysis of that data can now only be conducted by labs approved by the state, which currently lists 175 accredited labs.
According to Stacey Holley, chief of staff for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the accreditation process can take between nine months and a year. The time is shorter for labs and research facilities wanting to amend their existing accreditation, she said.
Lambert did not return multiple emails or calls seeking comment on his bill. During a previous committee hearing, Lambert said the measure would ensure the public had accurate air quality information in this “age of the internet and disinformation.”
The Louisiana Chemical Association said the new standards don’t stop anyone from doing community air monitoring.
“Senator Lambert’s bill encourages that any air monitoring being conducted by individuals or organizations adhere to basic standards that EPA and LDEQ follow when testing air quality in the community,” Greg Bowser, president and chief executive officer of the statewide lobbying group, said in a statement. “These are the same standards a facility must meet when it complies with air monitoring requirements under their approved permits.”
Opponents say they need to do their own monitoring because the LDEQ is apathetic to concerns around air quality and the agency is slow to respond to spikes in pollutants detected by community air sensors.
“Essentially, every time a community member reports an air quality problem, whether it’s a dust cloud or toxic odors, DEQ doesn’t respond immediately,” said Kim Terrell, a research scientist and director of community engagement at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic in New Orleans. “Part of that is that the agency is underfunded and understaffed. And part of that is that responding to residents’ complaints aren’t as big of a priority as they should be.”
Holley did not respond to inquiries related to those allegations.
In earlier committee testimony, Terrell said community-based air monitoring provides the best indication of air quality within certain geographical areas. She told lawmakers that reliable data can come from sources besides what the bill deems as the “gold standard” of air quality monitoring.
“There are other types of monitoring technologies that can provide useful data beyond the very limited techniques that are required in that bill,” she said.
Rolfes views the new standards and the most recent actions of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who took office in January, as troubling signs that Louisiana leaders want to dial back accountability and enact a pro-oil and gas industry stance.
“The legislators involved in this are showing us that … the petrochemical industry is worth more than the health of people in this state,” she said.
LDEQ’s air monitoring system consists of 40 stationary air quality sensors across a sprawling state that has among the highest emissions of toxic and greenhouse gasses in the country.
Terrell said LDEQ’s monitors are often insufficient to capture “real time” air quality data because many are too far away from “fence line” communities, don’t measure certain harmful pollutants or are unable to detect spikes depending on their position and wind flow.
She added that the kind of 24-hour, seven days a week air monitoring LEAN’s program did is a way to bridge those gaps.
LEAN was among four entities awarded a total of $2.4 million for community air monitoring in Louisiana. The other recipients were LDEQ, the Louisiana State University Health Foundation and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
Adrienne Katner, associate professor at LSU’s School of Public Health, said the new standards won’t directly impact the nearly $500,000 the university received for a project collecting air quality data for a road construction project along Interstate 10 and the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans.
But, added Katner, “We are concerned it might affect how we release the data should one of the community groups we work with want to take that data and file a complaint about air quality in the area.”
LEAN spent about $250,000 in 2023 to hire Aclima, a San Francisco-based pollution mapping company, which used its fleet of mobile air monitoring vehicles — Orr calls them “Harry Potter cars” — to collect samples around the clock for three months. The route included more than 20 cities in south Louisiana along the Mississippi, many of them majority Black and overburdened by industrial pollution.
The Aclima monitors sucked in air every second and uploaded the data for its science team to analyze and map for the public. The mobile monitors measured carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, fine particulates, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, black carbon and at least five other toxic emissions.
Earlier this year, LEAN’s mobile monitoring detected a methane leak in St. Charles, Louisiana that Orr said would have likely gone unnoticed. LEAN alerted state officials about it.
Orr said a full report of Aclima’s findings would be released in the coming months.
“I think there are going to be some surprises for people,” she said. “I think there are some areas where maybe people wouldn’t have expected things to be high, and they are. And then I think there’s places where you thought there might be huge, bigger numbers, and there weren’t.”
Should the governor sign Lambert’s bill into law before then, the findings likely would be disregarded by LDEQ. That’s because Aclima — named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies for its hyperlocal air pollution and greenhouse gas mapping — is not listed among the laboratories accredited through LDEQ.
Orr said LEAN has no plans to abandon its citizen monitoring effort. The group will use the rest of the IRA funds to install stationary air sensors.
“They’re saying they are not taking away air monitoring, but it seems like they want to take the teeth out of it,” Orr said. “They’re taking away the thing that seems to scare the people who are behind this bill, and that’s people having the right to know what they’re being exposed to.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
SOLAR: A northern Maine community of around 11,400 homes and businesses was able to run on only solar power last week for about 12 cumulative hours, a first-ever occurrence for utility Versant. (Maine Public Radio)
OFFSHORE WIND: New Hampshire lawmakers and business leaders want state energy officials to take a more active role in encouraging offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine compared to the “market-based approach” to electricity decarbonization being used. (NHPR)
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TRANSPORTATION:
GAS: A Connecticut county’s farm bureau wants the state to support more anaerobic digesters on farms to turn wasted food into electricity, heat and fertilizer. (CT News Junkie)
CLIMATE:
UTILITIES: A consortium of four southeast Pennsylvania counties signs a five-year deal with a retail energy supplier to help them purchase more renewable power. (WHYY)
HYDROPOWER: Both federal- and state-level public comment periods are open this summer as the lengthy relicensing process draws closer to an end for three hydropower dams in Massachusetts’ Franklin County. (Mass Live)
TIDAL: Federal energy regulators grant an eight-year license to a nonprofit firm to test out tidal energy turbines in the Cape Cod Canal. (Cape Cod Times)
COMMENTARY: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s former president encourages Marylanders to ditch gas-powered landscaping equipment to reduce emissions and noise pollution. (Baltimore Sun)
CLIMATE: Norfolk, Virginia, works through the design stage of a hotly debated $400 million project to reimagine a poor, majority Black community that includes a linear “Blue Greenway” to capture stormwater and reduce flooding that regularly saturates the neighborhood. (Energy News Network)
ALSO: Documents reveal Alabama officials have long been aware of Black residents’ flooding concerns, but have used restrictive land covenants to block their ability to file flooding-related claims. (Inside Climate News)
PIPELINES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama begin voting whether to join the United Auto Workers, just weeks after a Tennessee Volkswagen plant opted to unionize. (AL.com)
STORAGE: Texas’ rapidly growing battery sector has already bailed out the state power grid once this year, injecting 2 GW of power on a warm April night as a large number of gas and coal plants were offline for maintenance. (Canary Media)
SOLAR:
WIND:
OIL & GAS: Workers building a $21 billion liquified natural gas plant in Louisiana are beset by dangerous, silica-laden dust blown around at the construction site. (Sierra)
GRID: A Georgia water group releases a report showing how state economic incentives have resulted in a rash of new data centers that strain the power grid and use large amounts of water for cooling. (Georgia Recorder)
EMISSIONS:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration is expected to announce new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles this week, extending Trump-era policies aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing. (New York Times)
ALSO:
POLITICS: A $6.6 million fuel industry ad campaign is targeting President Biden and Democratic Senate candidates over support for tougher emissions standards for cars. (NBC News)
GRID:
TRANSPORTATION: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calls for developers to emulate the public-private, transit-oriented real estate approach behind a high-speed rail line under construction between Las Vegas and southern California. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
SOLAR: A northern Maine community of around 11,400 homes and businesses was able to run on only solar power last week for about 12 cumulative hours, a first-ever occurrence for utility Versant. (Maine Public Radio)
NORFOLK, Va. — Rainstorms at Tidewater Gardens public housing complex were anxiety-inducing enough. That dread among parents was only amplified when the skies opened up on schooldays.
Fast-pooling water would convert the low-lying community along the Elizabeth River floodplain into a soupy mess that trapped cars and made flippers a more fitting footwear choice than rubber boots.
“If it rained for just 10 minutes straight, it was flooded and you were stuck,” said Zenobia Wilson, a mother of three and resident of the public housing complex for 12 years. “We had to carry our children on our backs to get them to and from school.
“It was beyond boots because the water was up to our knees, every time.”
Norfolk is on the cusp of acting to tame the torrents that regularly saturated a marginalized neighborhood as climate change-induced rainfall intensifies.
Their proposed remedy is a massive endeavor to reshape both land use and water flow as the city of 233,000 plugs away at its ambitious St. Paul’s Transformation Project.
What’s called the Blue Greenway is the environmental centerpiece of the first phase of a hotly debated, $400 million undertaking to reinvent the housing, layout and vibe of a poor, majority Black community along the city’s neglected east-side waterfront.
Ideally, the linear park still in the design stage will blend the practical with the pretty to fabricate a linear 23-acre resource to capture storm water runoff, welcome back a slice of the natural world and appeal to picnickers and outdoor exercisers deprived of green spaces for decades.
Construction likely won’t begin until next spring, but landscape architect Tim Stromberg has been huddling with a team of engineers, environmental scientists, architects and other specialists for several years. They’re striving to turn a liability — stormwater runoff — into an asset.
“This area is a park desert,” said the 45-year-old principal with Norfolk-based Stromberg/Garrigan & Associates. “We see this as a health and wellness project.”
Most of the Blue Greenway will flow through the broad footprint of what was Tidewater Gardens, built in the early 1950s atop a tidal creek and a radiating network of wetlands.
The last of the red brick, barracks style apartments — where residents tangled regularly with leaks and mold infestations — was demolished in August 2023. The nearby Tidewater Park Elementary School, where parents dropped off their children, is shuttered and set to be torn down.
Just feet from the school, along bustling East Brambleton Avenue, crews will eventually “daylight” Newton’s Creek, constricted to an underground culvert for decades. That liquid spine of the Blue Greenway will wind its way south to the center of a pillar of east Norfolk’s Black community, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception.
Roughly three acres of newly constructed wetlands and the primary water channel — about the length of four football fields and up to 130 feet wide — will be the workhorses of the engineered project. They will play a gigantic role in filtering pollutants from absorbed runoff before it empties into the Elizabeth River and then the Chesapeake Bay.
Its price tag of up to $60 million will be covered with city dollars and federal grants.
Basically, it will resemble an elongated bathtub that is 8 to 9 feet deep. Its wide, encircling rim is designed as a necklace of green space dotted with amenities.
Norfolk, part of Virginia’s expansive Tidewater region, is trying to address warming of the planet on multiple fronts because of the well-documented double-whammy effect of climate change.
Not only are deluges more intense, but sea levels are rising faster here than anywhere else on the East Coast. The latter is exacerbated by a phenomenon called subsidence. Simply put, coastal lands are sinking because communities are withdrawing — and not replenishing — enormous quantities of groundwater.
On a separate but complementary climate front, the city is in the midst of advancing a gargantuan floodwall endeavor made up of tide gates, levees, pump stations and natural features such as oyster reefs and native vegetation along the shoreline. The federal government is covering 65% of the $2.6 billion project specifically designed to protect Norfolk from catastrophic storms. State and local funds are supposed to cover the remainder.
Preventing flooding is just one of the Greenway’s climate and health benefits. It also can clean the air and mitigate the urban heat island effect, which is especially harsh in congested cities where concentrations of asphalt and concrete raise temperatures to dangerous highs.
“Climate change is about adaptation,” Stromberg said about incorporating the Blue Greenway into a reimagined neighborhood. “That made us think about the scenarios of today and of the future.”
Once it’s built, “maintaining this will require five or six city departments,” Stromberg said. “This could serve as a model for how to repurpose a piece of land for a higher and better use.”
Landscape architects, he explained, tie the built and urban environments to natural systems.
“Creating something like this is a landscape architect’s dream,” Stromberg said about SGA’s largest project to date. “The reward when it’s built will be to see people using the space.”
After all, the handprints of former Tidewater Gardens residents are all over the Greenway’s blueprints.
While Stromberg’s team is handling the park’s technical infrastructure elements, they relied on input about amenities from Tidewater Gardens residents who called the 618-unit complex home until they were relocated two years ago.
“Listening is so crucial,” Stromberg said, about the joint brainstorming sessions that began in 2019. “We wanted to make sure we were extremely sensitive to the community’s needs.”
Preserving and protecting the canopy of thirsty and mature oaks, magnolias and other trees that once shaded the apartments was paramount for residents. They also wanted pavilions added for reunions, parties and cookouts.
Yet another request centered on access to walking paths, fitness equipment, a splash park, playgrounds, basketball courts, and lessons about birds, butterflies and native plants.
“These are simple requests and we want to honor them,” Stromberg said. “This is about giving people access to something they cherish.”
Greenway plans call for planting at least 300 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 200,000 grasses and flowers.
Balancing man-made and natural systems serves as a welcome mat for inclusivity, said Mike Fox, Stromberg’s colleague.
“With the wetlands come the butterflies and frogs and crickets,” Fox said. “That whole experience, being part of nature is what’s therapeutic and adds to visitors’ serenity.”
Stromberg is counting on the unique oasis to be a neighborhood magnet. He noted that it can be extended north of East Brambleton Avenue, near the former elementary school.
That expansion idea remains in the mix as Norfolk plans to eventually raze and reinvent two other nearby public housing complexes shortchanged on parks — Young Terrace and Calvert Square — in the next phases of the St. Paul’s transformation.
Also, the Blue Greenway will be at the centerpiece of a related city scheme to link the St. Paul’s neighborhood to the previously inaccessible Elizabeth River Trail, the expansive downtown waterfront and Norfolk’s more affluent west side.
For 60-plus years, the community has been isolated by loud, pedestrian-unfriendly, heavily trafficked roads and a tangle of on- and off-ramps, cloverleaf interchanges and overpasses feeding Interstate 264.
City officials are studying how to tackle a large-scale roadway makeover courtesy of a federal grant designed to heal past injustices inflicted on Black communities nationwide.
Tensions have festered about who will actually benefit from such wholesale changes.
For instance, activists with the New Virginia Majority accused the city of “saving the trees, not the people” with its Blue Greenway project. In tandem, they claim wealthier newcomers, not displaced former residents, will eventually become the majority in mixed-use housing being built near the site of Tidewater Gardens. To help prevent flooding, the new housing is being built on ground that has been elevated with at least seven feet of soil.
Stromberg is tuned in to how complicated and difficult these transitions are for cities. As the planet warms, they’re an even trickier balancing act for leaders trying to meet the needs of residents while also accounting for racist policies of the past.
“The jury is still out on what the success rate will be for the return of former Tidewater Gardens’ residents,” he said, adding he’s hoping the Blue Greenway will serve as a lure.
“As some start to move back, I can see a second wave of former residents reconnecting to their neighborhood,” he said. “The key is that they have a sense of ownership.”
Susan Perry, director of the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development since 2021, has focused on resilience and alleviating poverty in her decade-plus career with local government.
Norfolk would have been remiss with this redevelopment project, she said, if it had stopped at simply replacing deteriorating housing and re-establishing a street grid to tether the neighborhood to downtown amenities.
The impact of soaring emissions of heat-trapping gases couldn’t be ignored.
“What we always say is that the Blue Greenway is our resilience strategy writ large,” Perry said. “It really will be a crown jewel of the neighborhood.”
This story was reported via participation in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 National Fellowship. The Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Journalism provided training, mentoring and funding.
The Port of Cleveland is going electric.
One of the Great Lakes’ largest shipping ports is transforming part of a large warehouse into an “electrification hub” to anchor its emission-cutting efforts in the coming decades.
The project is among the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority’s first steps toward its goal of net-zero emissions for its own operations by 2050. The target does not include “Scope 3” emissions from the ships, trains, and trucks that come and go from the port, but officials hope the upgrades will support their emissions cuts as well.
“Upgrading the electric feed into the terminal is not the most exciting thing,” said Carly Beck, the port’s senior manager for planning, environment and information systems, but it’s a necessary foundation for all other parts of the port authority’s climate plan.
Shipping ports are a major source of not only climate emissions but also harmful air pollution for nearby communities. Fossil fuels power most of the cranes, vehicles, and other equipment used to move commodities and consumer goods around the globe. The United Nations estimates that global shipping is responsible for about 3% of emissions worldwide.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority became the first port on the Great Lakes to announce a net-zero emissions goal when its board unanimously approved its climate action plan last September. In February, the board approved spending $32 million from state and federal transportation grants to modernize the warehouse and make electrification upgrades.
Cleveland’s downtown port on Lake Erie handles about 13 million tons of cargo each year, from steel and iron ore to wind turbine parts and heavy machinery. Most goes to or comes from parts of Ohio and neighboring states via rail or truck.
“Lake Erie … sits at a very important position geographically as part of the Great Lakes,” said Dana Rodriguez, a senior analyst on global shipping at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, like many of its U.S. counterparts, is a public entity that owns and maintains infrastructure at the port. It contracts with a commercial operating company, Logistec, to run day-to-day operations.
The port considered multiple approaches for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, including hydrogen power, before deciding to focus its efforts on electrification, Beck said. All told, the port estimates full electrification will require roughly 5 to 7 megawatts of available power, she said. Design work for modernization and the electrification hub at the port’s Warehouse A is underway.
The port also is working with Logistec on a grant application for funds under the U.S. EPA’s Clean Ports Program, set up under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Roughly $2.8 billion in competitive grants are available for deploying zero-emission technology, with an additional $150 million for climate and air quality planning. The application is due May 28.
If successful, the port plans to add 2 megawatts of solar capacity on top of Warehouse A, which will provide a significant chunk of its anticipated electrical needs. Other funds would be used to start acquiring electric equipment for port operations, such as a large forklift.
Over time, the port plans to acquire additional equipment as and when machinery and funds become available, including replacements for a large crane and other material-handling equipment.
“It’s just a matter now of biting off chunks as we can,” Beck said. Timing for the acquisitions will also depend on when different types of electrical equipment become available, which will involve ongoing review.
Port Authority President and CEO Will Friedman said the electrification push fits with the port’s broader sustainability goals, including reducing water pollution in Lake Erie and managing dredged material more sustainably.
“We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do. We have a social conscience here,” Friedman said.
The decision also should help the port stay competitive, especially as more companies consider the indirect emissions of their contractors.
“We think that’s going to be the future if you’re part of the supply chain network,” Friedman said, adding that ignoring greenhouse gas emissions really isn’t an option. “All industries are trying to figure out how they can decarbonize, and maritime shipping is certainly a part of that.”
Decarbonization makes sense for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County in the global scheme of things, said Grant Goodrich, executive director for the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University.
“Getting products in and out of Europe and being able to advertise and market that you can do it in a more emissions-friendly manner gives you a competitive advantage,” Goodrich said. The European Union already is pushing for the shipping sector to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and Goodrich expects that will ultimately become important in the American marketplace as well. Cutting greenhouse gases also could help attract more cruise ship business to Cleveland, he added.
The port’s regional nature likely will make some aspects of decarbonization easier. For starters, the port generally does not store fuel for ships on site. Ships typically fill up elsewhere, often from barges, depending on where they believe they can get the best deal, Friedman said. If a ship does need extra fuel while in Cleveland, trucks deliver it.
On the other hand, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority has less bargaining power than some much larger ports on the East and West coasts. That limits its ability to increase fees, which makes grants and other types of funding particularly important.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority’s focus on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions is consistent with the goals for a majority of other ports included in a March 2024 report from the Environmental Defense Fund and Arup. However, the report noted, the majority of total port emissions driving human-caused climate change generally are not within ports’ direct control and would fall into Scope 3.
“Action in the broader zone of user and community and industry influence, where impacts are often far greater and where potential benefits are significant, is lacking,” the EDF report said.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority’s upgrades include planning to provide power for some of those other indirect emissions.
“We don’t want to forget about Scope 3,” Beck said.
She added that the port anticipates offering incentives to encourage ships and others to reduce their emissions.
An example would be for ships to plug into electrical shore power, known as “cold ironing,” instead of running diesel engines while in port. Besides cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the process can also reduce pollution from particulate matter, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. The port also hopes to encourage independent operators to acquire electric tugboats and similar equipment.
“Port decarbonization is just one key piece of the full decarbonization equation,” said Rodriguez at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It is also up to the trucking and shipping sectors to meet the ports halfway and contribute to the decarbonization efforts. In an effort to reach net zero by 2050, all stakeholders must play their part.”
COAL: Stalled efforts to redevelop a former coal plant property in Indiana reflect a broader struggle for local officials who face legal obstacles when seeking to repurpose contaminated power plant sites. (Inside Climate News)
ALSO: An Iowa Environmental Council study says pollution from two MidAmerican coal plants over a 20-year period caused 165 premature deaths and higher rates of asthma, COPD and heart disease. (Radio Iowa)
PIPELINES: After Iowa legislation to limit the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines fails for a third straight year, lawmakers and activists vow to try again next year. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: General Motors will stop producing the Chevrolet Malibu and invest $390 million in a Kansas assembly plant to make more electric vehicles. (Reuters)
FOSSIL FUELS: Ohio House lawmakers pass a bill allowing a facility that burns coal to produce coke used in the steelmaking process to claim renewable energy credits. (Cleveland.com, subscription)
CLEAN TECH: Researchers at a national laboratory in Iowa are researching ways to convert non-recyclable plastic into fuels, oils and other materials. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: Michigan becomes the latest state to propose a constitutional amendment to enshrine clean water, air, soil and a stable climate as a fundamental right, which in some states has led to limits on oil and gas drilling. (Planet Detroit)
EFFICIENCY:
COMMENTARY: An Ohio farmer says the East Palestine train derailment that damaged his property also opened his eyes to the benefits of clean energy and a proposed community solar bill. (Columbus Dispatch)
OIL & GAS: A Navajo Nation resident and advocate pushes back against an oil and gas company’s proposal to convert a water well into a wastewater injection site near his family’s home. (Capital & Main)
ALSO:
CLIMATE: California Gov. Gavin Newsom touts $11 billion in climate projects funded by the state’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program over the last decade, but critics say the efforts haven’t done enough to reduce pollution. (Los Angeles Times)
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY:
UTILITIES: An Arizona nonprofit prepares to help a growing number of Phoenix residents pay their utility bills after experiencing unprecedented demand for the aid last summer. (ABC 15)
COAL: Mining companies in Wyoming hint at potential layoffs at Powder River Basin facilities after larger-than-expected production decreases. (WyoFile)
HYDROGEN: A company breaks ground on a $550 million green hydrogen production hub in Arizona. (Hoodline)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TRANSMISSION:
COMMENTARY: A California editorial board urges Los Angeles leaders to make climate goals legally enforceable and “not mere aspirations to be shrugged off by finger-pointing bureaucrats.” (Los Angeles Times)
To understand the stakes of cleaning up the most-polluting vehicles on our roads, look no further than Charlotte.
The largest city in North Carolina, it’s at the crossroads of two major trucking routes, with 17,000 trips per day spewing smog- and soot-forming pollutants that consistently rank the metro area among the nation’s 100 worst for air quality.
It’s also a burgeoning epicenter for electric vehicle manufacturing and research, home to many of the state’s 40-plus businesses that are already playing a role in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain.
Clean transportation advocates say the air quality and economy in Charlotte and throughout the state stand to benefit from new Biden administration tailpipe emission rules for heavy-duty trucks, which account for an outsized share of the region’s climate emissions and air pollution.
“The Heavy Duty Rules are a critical step forward in establishing a ‘federal floor’ for clean trucks all across the country,” said Aaron Viles, campaigns director with the Electrification Coalition.
But they also say there’s still a need for other policies to usher in a new generation of electric trucks and buses, including a state-based rule scuttled by the GOP-controlled legislature last year.
The transportation sector is the largest source of global warming pollution and the country. Cleaning it up, experts say, means phasing in new electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes, reducing our use of passenger vehicles overall, and powering the grid with renewable energy.
The transition is not without hurdles. Would-be electric vehicle owners and fleet managers worry about a lack of charging infrastructure. And while the costs of electric-powered vehicles are falling steadily and the price of operating them is minimal, potential consumers still balk at their relatively high sticker price.
What’s more, many of the vested interests that revolve around gas and diesel vehicles prefer the status quo, and they extend well beyond the oil industry — including dealers who make money from oil changes and other routine repairs, fueling stations, and manufacturers of engine components.
But climate advocates say overcoming these obstacles has rewards beyond just reducing greenhouse gasses and avoiding catastrophic global warming. In North Carolina, that’s especially true when it comes to cleaning up heavy duty vehicles.
Though trucks, buses and the like make up a tiny fraction of all vehicles on the road, they account for over a quarter of the North Carolina transportation sector’s smog-forming pollutants and nearly a third of its soot-forming emissions, per state officials. Zero-emission vehicles would help curb this pollution.
The transition to heavy-duty electric vehicles could also benefit North Carolina’s economy, with dozens of industries across the state already invested in component production, assembly, or other aspects of the supply chain, according to a 2021 database compiled by the Environmental Defense Fund.
“When you look at where the electric vehicle supply chain investments are going, it’s really clustered in a number of leading states,” said Will Scott, Southeast climate and clean energy director with Environmental Defense Fund. “And North Carolina is among those.”
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is term-limited after this year, had sought first to garner these benefits with the Advanced Clean Truck rule. Initiated with an October 2022 executive order, the measure requires manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of electric trucks, buses, and other large vehicles. California pioneered the standard, and it has been adopted by 10 other states.
But after prodding from the North Carolina Chamber, Republicans who control the General Assembly balked, passing a provision in the state budget to prevent the rule.
“Government mandates and intervention into the market would stifle… innovation and investment,” the Chamber wrote on its website after the budget language prevailed, “as well as increase costs in new trucks, on which nearly all of our members rely.”
The new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency measure, issued this spring, is less ambitious than the California one. But with the Advanced Clean Truck rule essentially dead in the state, advocates say the federal regulation is welcome.
“States that don’t have ACT will now have a federal policy that can support cleaning up our medium- and heavy-duty transportation sectors,” said Stan Cross, transportation director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
In an effort to mollify the industry, Biden officials made their rule “technology neutral,” meaning it would require manufacturers meet a certain tailpipe pollution limit rather than sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles.
The Electrification Coalition says that means the federal rule will result in lower overall electric sales for most classes of vehicles. For instance, the Biden rule is expected to result in as little as 5% of new tractor cab sales bring electric by 2032, depending on class on weight. The California standard, by contrast, requires 40% of all heavy-duty tractor sales to be zero-emitting – and most likely electric, though other technologies qualify.
Still, when it comes to less air and global warming pollution, cleaning up trucks and buses nationwide has an obvious advantage over a patchwork of states doing so. Overall, the Biden administration expects its rule to avoid 1 billion tons of greenhouse gasses.
There’s also value in Biden attacking transportation sector pollution nationally, piece by piece, Cross said. The administration has already promulgated similar rules for passenger cars and trucks, and standards for port equipment, off-road vehicles, and more are still forthcoming.
“They’re doing the math, and they’re thinking about these standards in a comprehensive and holistic way,” said Cross. “They can look at all of our ports, all of our marine traffic, all of our airports, all of our plane traffic, all of our off-road construction — and set standards that will get us where we need to be.”
In a state like North Carolina, home to several major interstates and their truck traffic, cleaning up trucks beyond state borders will also help reduce health-threatening air pollution. An American Lung Association analysis of states with major trucking routes, for example, found that if all heavy-duty vehicle sales were electric by 2040, the state could avoid over 1,700 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of lost work days.
Those benefits would be crucial for Charlotte, which consistently ranks among the 100 most polluted cities in America for smog-and soot-forming pollution in the Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report.
“Charlotte advocates for clean air, which includes using electric transportation,” Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said in a written statement praising the new rules.
And for North Carolina businesses in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain, the prospect of a national market is clearly better than customers in a smattering of states.
Anything that accelerates the trend toward electric vehicles, Scott said, will come back to the state in the form of jobs and economic activity.
“North Carolina has put itself in a good position to capture a lot of those benefits,” he said.
Still, the nationwide rule has a major downside for fleet managers from North Carolina cities and corporations that have commitments to go all-electric. The supply of heavy-duty electric vehicles is still relatively low, and the states who have adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule will get first dibs on it.
The problem could be especially acute in the near term, during which manufacturers can satisfy national requirements just by catering to the 11 states with the more advanced rule.
“ACT puts your state in pole position for the limited amount of zero-emission, trucks and buses that are going to be coming off of assembly lines,” Cross said.
Indeed, that’s part of why advocates supporting the federal standard say they’ll keep looking for opportunities to pass the Advanced Clean Truck Rule in the state.
And though it has little chance of passage, Cooper’s budget this year removes last year’s prohibition on the stronger clean truck standard and includes funding for electric vehicle infrastructure.
“We applaud the governor for taking these steps to end oil’s monopoly on our transportation systems,” said Anne Blair, the Electrification Coalition’s vice president of policy. “But there is still much more that needs to be done to ensure North Carolina and the country are not left behind as the world shifts to electric transportation.”
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