Category Archives: Greenhouse gas emissions

Benicia CA, Chevron Refinery, Clean Air Act, Greenhouse gas emissions, Martinez Refining Company, Solano County CA, Valero Benicia Refinery

Three of California’s biggest climate polluters are in the Bay Area (and yes, one of those three is Valero’s Benicia Refinery)

[Note from BenIndy: Valero’s Benicia Refinery is the 5th largest stationary greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in California. As Sunflower Alliance founding member Shoshana Wechsler notes below, “[t]he thing that continues to strike me is that the Bay Area has no clue how important we are as a major fossil fuel hub. […] We need to understand that refining both petroleum and biofuels has a very negative effect on our public health and obviously contributes mightily to the climate crisis.” Let’s enter 2024 with clear eyes…and hope for clearer lungs come 2025.]

Valero’s Benicia Refinery, a principal contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in California, looms over residential neighborhoods. | Samantha Laurey / The Chronicle 2022.

SF Chronicle, by Kurtis Alexander, December 31, 2023

California’s largest greenhouse gas polluters, from power plants to oil refineries to chemical manufacturers, produced slightly fewer emissions last year than the previous year, federal data shows. But it’s still too much planet-warming gas to cut significantly into the problem of climate change, environmentalists say.

Three of the five biggest carbon emitters in the state were in the Bay Area, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2022 data on large polluting facilities. All three were refineries in the East Bay, where the process of turning crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel and other high-demand petroleum products creates substantial greenhouse gas discharges — even before the fuels themselves are used in vehicles or planes.

The refineries were among 367 large stationary sites in California that collectively reported 93 million metric tons of carbon pollution last year, a decline of about 1% over 2021, according to the data. The facilities produce about a quarter of the state’s total human-generated greenhouse gases, which does not include wildfires. Cars and trucks remain the biggest source of carbon emissions.

“The thing that continues to strike me is that the Bay Area has no clue how important we are as a major fossil fuel hub,” said Shoshana Wechsler, a founding member of the Sunflower Alliance, an East Bay group that advocates for reducing refinery pollution. “We need to understand that refining both petroleum and biofuels has a very negative effect on our public health and obviously contributes mightily to the climate crisis.”

Worldwide discharges of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have contributed to warming the atmosphere about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the post-industrial age. The heat, scientists say, has led to a host of problems, from an increase in drought and wildfire to rising seas and more extreme weather. The Earth’s 10 warmest years on record all were logged since 2010. This year is on track to be the hottest yet.

California regulators have established some of the most ambitious policies to restrict the release of greenhouse gases from large polluting facilities, including a cap-and-trade program that forces emitters to buy permits to pollute and requirements that electric utilities generate increasing amounts of clean energy.

Over the past decade, carbon emissions from the state’s big polluters have declined nearly 20%, according to the EPA data.

Many, though, say industry is still given too much leeway and stricter regulation is necessary given the climate challenge at hand. The state has a broad goal of reaching zero carbon emissions, on net, by 2045.

“Major polluters continue to pollute somewhat unabated,” said Nihal Shrinath, an associate attorney for the Sierra Club based in Oakland. “We really need to see much more aggressive emission reductions over the next 25 years.”

Shrinath said much of the decline in pollution from large facilities was due, not to regulation, but to unrelated factors, like Californians being more efficient with their energy use and needing less fossil fuels.

California’s top five greenhouse gas emitters were all oil refineries, according to the EPA data. Two were in Southern California in addition to the three in the East Bay: Chevron Richmond Refinery, Valero Benicia Refinery and Martinez Refining Company.

Ross Allen, a spokesperson for Chevron, described the company’s Richmond refinery as “absolutely essential to modern life in the Bay Area,” saying the facility supplied 60% of the fuel for Bay Area airports and about 20% of the gasoline used in Northern California. It also provides more than 3,000 jobs.

This is a screenshot of SF Chron’s interactive data table that shows greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities in California, 2022. Click the image to be redirected to the webpage with the article and the table. Readers can use the table to search for and filter GHG emitters in this state. There may be a paywall.

“We are working to reduce carbon intensity of our operations, while continuing to provide an essential product,” he said.

The state’s refineries cumulatively emitted 22 million metric tons of carbon pollution in 2022, according to the EPA data. Refineries were the second-most-polluting type of facility, following power plants, which are far more numerous and emitted 35 million metric tons last year. The chemical industry, manufacturing hydrogen, nitrogen and other products, reported 10 million metric tons of emissions.

Also among California’s 25 biggest greenhouse gas polluters were two gas-fired power plants in Pittsburg and an oil refinery in Rodeo.

The EPA data on large polluting sites generally includes facilities discharging at least 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases a year, about what’s emitted by burning coal from 136 rail cars, according to the agency.

Since you’re here, learn more about Contra Costa’s search for accountability and transparency from refineries by clicking on any of the following links:

Benicia City Council, Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, Climate emergency, Greenhouse gas emissions

Benicia City Council unanimously adopts Climate Emergency Resolution

Benicia Herald, by Galen Kusic, Editor, May 24, 2020 (No link, only available in the print edition.)
Climate Emergency - Greenpeace International
Climate Emergency – Greenpeace International

At the Sept. 3, 2019 Council meeting the City Council agreed to discuss a request from Mayor Elizabeth Patterson considering the adoption of a Climate Emergency Resolution.  The request was discussed again on Feb. 4 at a Special City Council meeting, where a subcommittee was formed consisting of Councilmembers Tom Campbell and Steve Young.

[BENINDY EDITOR’S NOTE: See the proposed resolution here, noting that this does not contain Council’s amendments.  I have requested the amended resolution and will post it when it is released by the City Clerk.  See also the accompanying Staff Report here.]

“The world’s changed since I first brought this forward,” said Patterson.  “Who would have guessed…it is actually very interesting for us to contemplate this kind of situation with a pandemic which has been described as one of the consequences of climate warming.”

Cities are adopting these resolutions to end city-wide greenhouse gas emissions.  The resolution highlights the need to combat climate change, including that Benicia is specifically vulnerable to sea-level rise, storm surge and coastal erosion, which are all enhanced by extreme weather events that cause increased flooding.

The resolution declares that an existential climate emergency threatens Benicia, the region, state, nation, civilization, humanity and the natural world.  The resolution calls for a city-wide mobilization effort to reverse global warming and appropriate financial and regulatory assistance from Solano County, state and federal authorities to end city-wide greenhouse gas emissions while safely drawing down carbon from the atmosphere quickly.

“I think we saw this as more of a global aspirational document,” said Young.  “The only thing we wanted to change in it was to localize it to some degree.”

The subcommittee added a clause at the end for the city to promote a more sustainable future, like eventually moving to an all-electric fleet.

Vice Mayor Christina Strawbridge and Councilmember Lionel Largaespada both asked for small amendments to the resolution, including not making undue burdens on businesses to attain reduction of greenhouse gas, while implementing policies that are economically feasible.

The resolution is designed to protect the community’s health and safety while also protecting and enhancing the environment.

A resident’s public comment stated that the council should not be focusing on climate change during a pandemic, but Patterson shot back that the pandemic is exactly why immediate action needs to be taken toward combating the climate emergency.

“We now from the early science of COVID-19 that one of the principle challenges for recovery and surviving an infection, particularly in older people, is the air quality,” she said.  “We know there’s a direct link to our goal to reduce carbon which contributes to air quality.”

The council unanimously voted for the resolution.

Carbon dioxide, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Greenhouse gas emissions, Keeping Watch on Earth News

The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?

Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
Grist, by Shannon Osaka, Apr 27, 2020

Pedestrians have taken over city streets, people have almost entirely stopped flying, skies are blue (even in Los Angeles!) for the first time in decades, and global CO2 emissions are on-track to drop by … about 5.5 percent.

Wait, what? Even with the global economy at a near-standstill, the best analysis suggests that the world is still on track to release 95 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year, continuing to heat up the planet and driving climate change even as we’re stuck at home.

A 5.5-percent drop in carbon dioxide emissions would still be the largest yearly change on record, beating out the financial crisis of 2008 and World War II. But it’s worth wondering: Where do all of those emissions come from? And if stopping most travel and transport isn’t enough to slow down climate change, what will be?

“I think the main issue is that people focus way, way too much on people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Transportation makes up a little over 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. (In the United States, it makes up around 28 percent.) That’s a significant chunk, but it also means that even if all travel were completely carbon-free (imagine a renewable-powered, electrified train system, combined with personal EVs and battery-powered airplanes), there’d still be another 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions billowing into the skies.

So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing, utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity — even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions. Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity isn’t so green either.

Even with a bigger proportion of the world working from home, people still need the grid to keep the lights on and connect to the internet. “There’s a shift from offices to homes, but the power hasn’t been turned off, and that power is still being generated largely by fossil fuels,” Schmidt said. In the United States, 60 percent of electricity generation still comes from coal, oil, and natural gas. (There is evidence, however, that the lockdown is shifting when people use electricity, which has some consequences for renewables.)

Manufacturing, construction, and other types of industry account for approximately 20 percent of CO2 emissions. Certain industrial processes like steel production and aluminum smelting use huge amounts of fossil fuels — and so far, Schmidt says, that type of production has mostly continued despite the pandemic.

The reality is that emissions need to be cut by 7.6 percent every year to keep global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the threshold associated with the most dangerous climate threats — according to an analysis by the United Nations Environment Program. Even if the global lockdown and economic slump reduce emissions by 7.6 percent this year, emissions would have to fall even more the year after that. And the year after that. And so on.

In the middle of the pandemic, it’s become common to point to clear skies in Los Angeles and the cleaner waters of Venice as evidence that people can make a difference on climate change. “The newly iconic photos of a crystal-clear Los Angeles skyline without its usual shroud of smog are unwanted but compelling evidence of what can happen when individuals stop driving vehicles that pollute the air,” wrote Michael Grunwald in POLITICO magazine.

But these arguments conflate air and water pollution — crucial environmental issues in their own right! — with CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is invisible, and power plants and oil refineries are still pumping it into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, natural gas companies and livestock farming (think cow burps) keep releasing methane.

“I think people should bike instead of driving, and they should take the train instead of flying,” said Schmidt. “But those are small, compared to the really big structural things that haven’t changed.”

It’s worth remembering that a dip in carbon emissions won’t lead to any changes in the Earth’s warming trend. Some scientists compare carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to water flowing into a leaky bathtub. The lockdown has turned the tap down, not off. Until we cut emissions to net-zero — so that emissions flowing into the atmosphere are equivalent to those flowing out — the Earth will continue warming.

That helps explain why 2020 is already on track to be the warmest ever recorded, beating out 2016. In a sad irony, the decrease in air pollution may make it even hotter. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, explained that many polluting particles have a “masking” effect on global warming, reflecting the sun’s rays, canceling out some of the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. With that shield of pollution gone, Ramanathan said, “We could see an increase in warming.”

Appreciate the bluer skies and fresher air, while you can. But the emissions drop from the pandemic should be a warning, not a cause for celebration: a sign of how much further there is to go.

Update: As of April 30, the International Energy Agency estimates that carbon emissions will fall by 8 percent this year. The IEA drew on more data than an earlier CarbonBrief analysis which estimated a drop of 5.5 percent.

Air pollution, Air Quality, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Greenhouse gas emissions, Keeping Watch on Earth News, Oil Industry, Refinery closures, Toxic pollutants

Emissions are way down. No, that’s not all good news for the environment.

Chaos in the oil sector could actually intensify climate change.

Mother Jones, by Rebecca Leber, April 21, 2020
Getty

As the coronavirus cripples world economies, greenhouse gas emissions are plummeting: This year, they could drop by as much as 5.5 percent—the largest decrease ever recorded. On Monday, the price of oil went negative, meaning storing oil now costs more than the oil itself. Since we’re burning less gas and fuel, air pollution has dropped 30 percent in northeastern cities, and Los Angeles’ notorious smoggy skyline has cleared.

You might be thinking all this is great news for the environment. It’s a nice idea—but the real story is more complicated. “You don’t want companies collapsing like this,” says Andrew Logan, oil and gas director of Ceres, a think tank focused on sustainable investment. “Even the most ardent climate advocate shouldn’t wish for a chaotic transition in this sector. A chaotic transition brings all sort of pain to workers and also the environment.”

It helps to think of COVID-19 as a test run—a very painful one—of what an industry in decline will look like. “We’re seeing, as is case the now, what the cliff looks like if everyone shuts down at the same time,” Logan says.

With a glut of supply, North America producers Exxon, Shell, Devon Energy, and Cenovus Energy have already collectively announced spending cuts this year totaling $50 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. In North Dakota, Trump donor Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources drilling company has cut output by 30 percent the next two months. In Canada, the famously destructive tar sands are too expensive to mine and refine on oil prices this cheap. Even the Southwest’s Permian Basin, the most productive region for oil and gas in the United States, is expected to see dramatic closures.

Environmentalists are worried about what comes next, because of the many unintended consequences of market chaos. For starters, when gas prices tank, Americans will likely start buying more cars and taking more road trips, driving up demand all over again.

Other environmental problems aren’t quite so obvious. Lorne Stockman, a senior research analyst with the climate advocacy group Oil Change International, worries that the coming bankruptcies this year “are an environmental nightmare in the making,” with “wells left to rot as bankruptcy proceedings are going through.”

As the industry contracts, some drilling operations will simply leave their wells, and many don’t have the funding set aside to take proper precautions to make sure greenhouse gases and other pollutants don’t leak out. Environmental advocates are especially worried about leaks of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

Abandoned wells are already a big problem. Even in relatively good times, oil and gas wells still dry up. When they do, they might be sold to smaller, sometimes less scrupulous operators to tap what’s left in the well. Then those operators eventually abandon the well or go bankrupt. They can’t afford to clean up the site, which involves plugging the well with cement to avoid leaks into groundwater.

We don’t know for sure how many of these wells exist around the country, though the EPA estimates there are more than 1.5 million of them that have accumulated over a century. Wyoming has had thousands it’s in the process of plugging, and Pennsylvania has 8,000. Taxpayers will eventually pay for both cleanup and environmental damages.

Drilling operations that don’t shutter will have to find ways to cut costs. In boom times, methane is valuable to drillers because it can be captured and reused for fuel. But when oil and natural gas prices have crashed in the past, drillers have sought to get rid of excess methane in the cheapest way possible—by burning it (a process known as “flaring”) or simply letting it leak into the atmosphere (called “venting”). Both processes can contribute to climate change and contaminate surrounding communities. Flaring and venting worry many environmental advocates. The International Energy Agency notes that “low natural gas prices may lead to increases in flaring or venting, and regulatory oversight of oil and gas operations could be scaled back.”

Methane emissions hit a 20-year high last year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Although scientists don’t fully understand why, they believe that fracking operations may dramatically underestimate the methane they release. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, operations typically lose 15 times the rate that producers report because of malfunctions and intentional venting. The COVID-19 crisis could lead to more leaks, because companies won’t have any incentive to capture methane to use for fuel.

Amid the turbulence in the oil sector, the Trump administration has continued to roll back environmental regulations, and it has already undone Obama-era rules targeting methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

Nathalie Eddy, a field advocate for the environmental watchdog Earthworks, is worried that environmental contamination will be made worse as the administration weakens rules. “When the market falls like this one of the first things that will go is the limited capacity for inspection,” she says. The EPA, Department of the Interior, and Department of Transportation have already announced they will suspend some routine inspections and monitoring, including pipeline reporting and field inspections, and waive civil penalties if violators say COVID-19 was a factor.

Climate advocates have urged the EPA and Department of the Interior to require companies to monitor methane leaks and set aside money for their cleanup. To help the sector recoup the lost revenue, they propose a job stimulus program aimed at reclaiming these sites for the double-duty benefit of a clean environment and keeping workers employed.

But so far, those pleas are going unanswered. The Trump administration has floated several schemes for helping the oil sector: During the first round of stimulus, congressional Democrats managed to shoot down the oil industry’s bailout request. Now, the administration is considering paying producers to leave crude in the ground until the global glut shrinks. Meanwhile, the major banks want some collateral for the $200 billion they are owed from oil companies: According to Reuters, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup could even seize the industry’s assets, which could pose an enormous conflict of interest for a financial sector that just months ago was signaling a move away from the oil sector.

So far, it looks like the short-term emissions drop won’t result in any lasting policy improvements, Stockman says. “We have seen the wrong kind of stimulus that isn’t aimed at changing our relationship to fossil fuels.”