Category Archives: Fossil fuels

Air Quality, California Regulation, Clean energy, Fossil fuels, Sen. Kevin de León

SB100 – California Assembly Passes Historic 100% Carbon-Free Electricity Bill

Repost from the Sacramento Bee
[From GreenTechMedia.com: “The world’s 5th largest economy will have to eliminate carbon emissions from electricity by 2045.”]

Plan to power California with all renewable energy clears major hurdle

By Taryn Luna, August 28, 2018 05:29 PM

The California Legislature is poised to send a bill to the governor that would require all retail electricity to be generated from solar, wind and other renewable energy sources by 2045.

Despite objections from utilities and oil companies, the Assembly voted 43-32 to eliminate fossil fuels in the state’s energy sector on Tuesday. Senate Bill 100, introduced by Sen. Kevin de León, must return to the Senate, and is all but guaranteed to reach the Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk before the legislative session ends this week.

“When it comes to fighting climate change and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, California won’t back down, ” de León said. “We have taken another great stride toward a 100% clean energy future.”

Climate activists and environmental groups have hailed the plan as a critical step forward in the battle against climate change. The bill’s passage in California will serve as a symbolic strike against the Trump administration, which has steadily attempted to erode environmental protections, roll back fuel economy standards and weaken existing rules meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fire plants.

Opponents have long argued that California’s efforts to combat climate change are futile and fail to make a substantial difference as the planet continues to warm. Some Assembly members warned the bill would hurt workers in the fossil fuel industry and raise prices for utility customers.

“We pass all these goals for renewables, but at the same time our families back home will pay the cost with an increase in the electric bills every year as we try to achieve this,” said Assemblyman Devon Mathis, is, R-Visalia.

The bill is opposed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Diego Gas And Electric Company, Western States Petroleum Association, Agricultural Council of California and more than two dozen others.

The proposal toughens regulations in a state seen as a global leader on climate change.

State lawmakers set a goal two years ago of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders last year extended the state’s cap-and-trade program, a market-based system that allows polluters to buy permits for the greenhouse gases they emit, through 2030. Lawmakers described the cap-and-trade program as the state’s best tool to encourage companies to reduce their carbon footprint and allow the state to reach its greenhouse gas goals.

De León initially introduced SB 100 in 2017 and the Assembly held the bill, effectively killing it for the year. In addition to setting the no-carbon standard, the bill would revise interim goals along the way. The bill bumps up an existing target by four years to hit 50 percent renewable energy in 2027 and sets the state on track to meet the 60 percent threshold by the end of 2030.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Vice President Al Gore wrote separate letters of support for SB 100. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom pledges to issue a directive on his first day of office, if elected, to put California on target to achieve 100 percent renewable energy. He has not publicly endorsed SB 100.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who is hosting a global climate summit in San Francisco next month, has also remained silent on the proposal.

Benicia CA, Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, California Governor Jerry Brown, California Regulation, Chevron Refinery, Climate Change, Fossil fuels, Oil producers, Oil refineries, Richmond CA, Richmond Vice Mayor Melvin Willis, San Francisco Bay Area, Valero Benicia Refinery

SF Chronicle opinion: Mayors urge governor to end fossil fuel production in California

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle

Mayors urge governor to end fossil fuel production in California

By Elizabeth Patterson and Melvin Willis, Aug. 24, 2018 3:31 p.m.
FILE – This March 9, 2010, file photo shows a tanker truck passing the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, Calif. A U.S. judge who held a hearing about climate change that received widespread attention has thrown …

As San Francisco prepares to host Gov. Jerry Brown’s historic Global Climate Action Summit in September, we, the San Francisco Bay Area mayors of cities impacted by the toxic consequences of fossil fuel production, are standing with elected representatives from frontline communities and throughout California in calling on the governor to phase out fossil fuel production.

Benicia and Richmond both face the toxic consequences of California’s complicity in one of the most toxic, polluting, dangerous industries on Earth and the primary driver of climate change: the oil and gas industry.

Benicia is home to the Valero oil refinery, and our residents are regularly exposed to emissions during standard operations. In May 2017, a power outage sent flames, heavy black smoke and toxic gases spewing into the air for two straight weeks. Among the pollutants were nearly 80,000 pounds of toxic sulfur dioxide — five years’ worth of “normal” emissions — and carbonyl sulfide, a highly toxic and extremely flammable gas. Accidents are only the most visible of the toxic pollution that impacts our public health, day after day. Our asthma rates are three times the state average.

The Valero refinery in Bencia,Ca., as seen on Tuesday June 20, 2017. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District on Wednesday is expected to approve the nation’s first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from …

The Texas-based petroleum giant’s Benicia refinery employs 480 people and supplies nearly a quarter of our city’s tax revenue, but at what cost?

When Valero proposed a crude-by-rail project to bring 70,000 barrels of tar sands and Bakken crude oil per day by rail through the Sierra, Sacramento and Davis to Benicia, our residents resisted, and our small, historic town stood up to our biggest employer and taxpayer. After three years of environmental review, national attention and a failed effort by Valero to get the federal government involved, the City Council voted unanimously against it.

Farther south on San Francisco Bay is Richmond, one of the poorest communities in the Bay Area. Our city of largely Hispanic, African American and Asian residents fought against toxic industrial pollution from Chevron’s Richmond refinery that processes 250,000 barrels of crude oil daily. Chevron is our largest employer and taxpayer. Nonetheless, our community has risen up, defeating Chevron-backed candidates in 2014 that outspent us 5 to 1 in our local election, and elected true champions for our community. Richmond forced major environmental conditions on Chevron as it expands the refinery and strengthened our Industrial Safety Ordinance in response to the refinery’s toxic explosion and fire in 2012 that sent 15,000 residents to seek medical treatment.

Toxic pollution isn’t the only threat we face. With 32 miles of shoreline, more than any other city on San Francisco Bay, Richmond is at extreme risk from sea level rise that will soon cost our community far more than we can afford. So, Richmond, home to an oil giant, became the ninth city in less than a year to bring major fossil fuel companies to court over climate change. We filed a lawsuit against 29 oil, gas and coal companies — including Chevron, along with BP and Exxon — to hold them accountable for their role in climate change and its impacts on the community.

The fossil fuel industry’s business plan is destroying not only our health and communities, but also the survival of our species.

Yet, under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state of California has not only tolerated the fossil fuel industry, but expanded it — granting permits for drilling 20,000 new oil wells.

The Bay Area has had enough of this climate hypocrisy. It is wrong to make communities sick. As one of the top oil-producing states, it is time to bring the fossil fuel era to an end.

While our small towns have the courage to stand up to a billion-dollar fossil fuel industry to protect our public health and climate, why hasn’t Brown?

On the toxic front lines of climate change, we stand with 150 local elected officials from a majority of counties in California that are taking bold steps to stop fossil fuels. We all are urging Brown to make a plan to phase out oil and gas production in California, to clean up our cities, towns and agricultural lands, and protect our people.

If our cities can say “no” to expanding fossil fuels, Gov. Brown, you can, too — and we’ll have your back.

Elizabeth Patterson is mayor of Benicia. Melvin Willis is vice mayor of Richmond.
Fossil fuels, Oil and gas industry

Investment execs: Oil and gas must face its future as a ‘declining industry’

Repost from The Energy Mix, originally from Financial Times

Fossils Must Face Their Future As A ‘Declining Industry’, Investment Execs Assert

June 18, 2018, primary Author Anton Eser and Nick Stansbury
lalabell68/Pixabay

Oil and gas must prepare to “face its future as a declining industry” and leave it to finance and investment professionals to allocate the US$29 trillion that will be needed by 2050 to decarbonize the global energy system, two senior investment executives argue in a recent post for the Financial Times.

Capital investment markets, in turn, will need the policy certainty to get on with the job, write Chief Investment Officer Anton Eser and fund manager Nick Stansbury of Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), an arm of the UK’s Legal & General insurance company.

“Whilst the 2015 climate agreement in Paris offers some help, we still lack clear policy signals on what the long-term price for carbon is going to be, and when there will be an effective mechanism to implement it,” they write. “Without this certainty, pricing carbon risks and opportunities is going to remain highly complex.”

While the biggest challenges facing oil and gas are “a reasonable distance in the future”, Eser and Stansbury say the industry will no longer be able to rely on growing demand and production declines in mature oilfields to keep global markets in balance. Peak demand, in particular, is on the way, and “will have a big, and under-appreciated, destabilizing effect” when it arrives.

That leaves two choices for oil and gas companies—trying to reinvent themselves as renewable energy businesses, or beginning to ramp down their investments and return more cash to shareholders. But the two analysts declare themselves skeptical that fossils can make the transition to the renewable energy sector.

“The business models are very different, and the oil industry is likely to have a different cost of capital to the renewable sector,” the write. “We see few oil companies with a record of creating real shareholder value in this area.”

In that light, they see the second option as more promising. “The time to stop investing is not today,” they write, “but that point is coming. The industry needs to be clear that its future is one of long-term decline—whilst returning increasing sums of cash to investors. There is a possibility that the industry over-invests as we reach that point of peak demand, leaving an oversupply that persists for a long time. Fighting for market share in a declining market would be even worse.”

To maintain a place with the growing number of investment funds that emphasize environmental, social, and particularly climate strategies, Eser and Stansbury say oil and gas companies will have to “articulate a much clearer long-term strategy and the role they have to play in the energy transition.” More realistically, they say fossils can play a “positive part” as a “cash-generating engine that can be used to power the transition when the time comes, and we urge the industry to make a clear commitment to this future.”

Amazon Watch, Chevron Refinery, Climate Change, Communities For A Better Environment (CBE), Fossil fuels, Idle No More Bay Area, Keep it in the ground, Oil and gas industry

Local and Ecuador leaders protest at Chevron in Richmond

Press Release from AmazonWatch

Bay Area environmental and indigenous organizations join protest to call attention to Chevron’s key role in causing destruction to people and planet

MAY 17, 2018, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tell Amazon.com to Protect the Real Amazon!
AMAZON WATCH

Richmond, CA – Indigenous leaders from the Ecuadorian Amazon joined Bay Area allies at Chevron’s Richmond Refinery on Thursday morning to call on California’s political leadership to phase out oil and gas production and processing in the state, including its importation of crude oil drilled in the Amazon rainforest.

For more information contact:
Moira Birss 1.510.394.2041 moira@amazonwatch.org
Zoë Cina-Sklar 1.510.671.1878 zoe@amazonwatch.org
Interviews, photos, and more information available upon request

Gloria Ushigua and Manari Ushigua, leaders of the Sapara people, called attention to the impacts that the fossil fuel economy – including Chevron’s key role in causing destruction to people and planet. In addition to Chevron’s toxic legacy in Ecuador, the Sapara leaders and allies from Communities for a Better Environment, Green Action, and Bay Area indigenous-led organization Idle No More SF Bay outlined how California’s oil and gas extraction and processing is harming communities from the Ecuadorian Amazon to Richmond, California.

The Sapara Nation of the Ecuadorian Amazon is recognized by UNESCO as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” because their language and culture are in danger of disappearing. There are about 500 Sapara people still living in their ancestral home, a large territory that is a critical part of the Amazonian ecosystem. However, Sapara territory – and the Sapara themselves – are in serious danger from oil drilling planned for two oil blocks that overlap with approximately 500,000 acres of their ancestral territory.

Chevron refineries throughout California are the largest purchasers and processors of crude oil imported from the Amazon rainforest, as well as one of the state’s biggest overall polluters. A 2017 Amazon Watch report demonstrated that half of crude oil exports from the Western Amazon come to California, adding to the toxic impact of the California’s fossil fuel production and refining industry.

Manari Ushigua Santi, Sapara Nation, said: “The possibility of oil drilling in our territory – something the Ecuadorian government is pushing – could be the end of the Sapara people, and certainly an end to our strong connection with the forest. After all, there are few of us, and we have seen the deforestation and cultural destruction already caused by oil drilling in other parts of the Amazon. Now that we know about the link between oil from the Amazon and California refineries, we know that the state government’s continued support of the oil industry also puts us and other peoples of the Amazon in danger.

Gloria Ushigua Santi, Sapara Nation, said: “We are all fighting for our survival, to protect our little pieces of land. I have seen how destructive the fossil fuel industry is for California’s own communities. I don’t want our land to become polluted, like this land by the refinery. We call on California’s leadership to move quickly from an unsustainable reliance on a fossil fuel economy to a sustainable one based on renewable energy. Anything less puts the Sapara, the Amazon and other Amazonian indigenous peoples, California communities, and our entire global climate in danger.”

Isabella Zizi, Idle No More SF Bay, said: “It’s important to be here today because it shows that the very resistance starts in our own backyards. It makes a direct connection to what is happening down in the Ecuadorian Amazon with our indigenous brothers and sisters and our relatives down there who are facing the same destruction and harms to their own people and that we can come together and unite and make change together and stand up to Big Oil.”

Andrés Soto, Communities for a Better Environment, said: “I’m here today representing Communities for a Better Environment with our ongoing solidarity with Amazon Watch and the advocacy that connects the extractive activities in Ecuador directly to the refining activities in Richmond and the commonalities of not only health impacts but also political corruption. We need to link our resistance because we’re dealing with transnational corporations and so we also need to have a transnational resistance.”

Leila Salazar-López, Amazon Watch Executive Director, said: “Continued oil and gas extraction in California – both on land and offshore – and its imports of Amazon crude is a significant obstacle to doing what science says must be done to prevent the worst outcomes from climate change: keeping fossil fuels in the ground.”