By Audrey Archer

Now living in Austin, Texas where diverse wildlands are numerous and easily accessible, Audrey takes any opportunity she can get to put on her hiking boots and explore her natural surroundings. She also volunteers with the City of Austin to give guided hikes on preserves.

I grew up in the high and dry panhandle plains of Texas, where trees are scarce, wind is always blowing, and the smell of feedlots lingers in the air. Needless to say, I was not overly inspired by my surroundings – at least not at the time I lived there.

Had I not traveled with my family growing up, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. Throughout these travels, I became enraptured by the biodiversity and lushness of other ecosystems and felt compelled to learn as much as I could about them.

But the stark contrast between some of the natural ecosystems and working landscapes I was exposed to led me to develop a pretty pessimistic view of humans’ impact on the environment. Surely, there had to be a better way of balancing human needs for things like food, water and shelter with nature’s needs.

Determined to tackle this problem, I got my Master’s in Environmental Management from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and took a job at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), where I had heard that scientists and economists were developing incentive programs for landowners to improve water quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restore habitat for at-risk wildlife.

Little did I know my worldview was about to be turned upside down.

Putting people first

I have been surprised in my first year at EDF by how many people have a stake in the conservation game – some of the same people I previously assumed were part of the problem. There are farmers, ranchers, food companies, transportation executives, academics and practitioners all in search of the same thing I am – balance. In this case, it’s balance for the monarch butterfly, which everyone can see is rapidly declining and needs help, fast.

Audrey and her colleagues meet with Minnesota farmer Kristin Duncanson to learn why she is interested in conserving monarch butterfly habitat and what incentives would help other farmers do the same.

Everyone comes to the table from different vantage points with different goals, so we’re working to design a program that meets these various goals. My study of natural sciences has helped me engage with the academics and practitioners who are helping to develop a science-based tool for assessing monarch habitat, but I have found myself becoming more and more invested in human sciences to understand how to translate this science into action. For that, I need to understand the needs and values of the people who will provide the supply and demand for monarch conservation. What would make the farmers want to plant milkweed? What would make the food companies want to invest?

The monarch butterfly is an interesting case study, because it’s about so much more than financial incentives. Landowners and investors are still people, and the monarch butterfly is a species that a lot of people care about.

Understanding nature can only get us so far when it comes to figuring out sustainable solutions. Understanding people gets us the rest of the way.

The missing piece

I may have become an optimist about human’s role in protecting nature, but I am not ignorant to the shortcomings of current conservation design.

The current lack of tracking restoration efforts and reporting outcomes is a huge disservice to the conservation industry. It’s one of the reasons why the politics of conservation have become so fraught. What has all of our federal spending on conservation programs bought us? We can’t expect the public or private sector to be willing to invest if we have nothing to show for it.

Audrey and her colleagues apply the monarch butterfly Habitat Quantification Tool to assess monarch habitat quality on a Minnesota farm.

It’s time we take conservation to the next level with advanced accounting tools that can deliver the most conservation per dollar invested, and report back to investors to show precisely how we have moved the needle.

We’ve been developing a tool to do this for the monarch butterfly to keep us on track and accountable as we develop a program to bring solutions to scale before the June 2019 deadline for the butterfly’s status check under the Endangered Species Act. This status check will depend on exactly this kind of accounting data.

We must be able to show what our investments will get us, or we will lose the policies and mechanisms that drive conservation in America. Both people and nature depend on it.

Related:

Farmers and environmentalists want the same thing >>

Three threats to the monarch butterfly’s winter habitat and what we can do about it >>

As winter approaches, monarch caterpillars fuel up on a Minnesota farm >>

By Jeremy Proville

Most people are familiar with the iconic image of North Korea at night—Pyongyang stands as a beacon of light amid of what looks almost like a large body of water—but what is, in fact, land draped in complete darkness. That imagery revealed details about what was previously unknowable due to the country's cloak of secrecy—its meager electricity use and level of poverty. My colleagues Daniel Zavala-Araiza, Gernot Wagner and I took an even deeper look at how well night-time lights can account for other measures of socio-economic activity in a new article published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

I got interested in what these images could tell us back in 2012 when I started attending the Geo for Good conference, an annual event hosted by Google where nonprofits and researchers learn how to use geospatial tools such as Earth Engine. Gernot, Daniel and I started wondering what interesting applications we could explore with night-time lights data, and see what we could learn by examining the entire 21-year record of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) at the country level. We took that dataset and compared it to a much wider scope of other datasets. By using a distributed, parallelized platform such as Earth Engine, the scope of this research and our analysis is able to be larger than prior studies.

The prevalence and magnitude of night-time light is an alternative, standardized, and relatively unbiased way to gather information about important socio-economic indicators like CO2 emissions, GDP, and other measures that would in some cases be unknowable. For example, these data helped estimate the size of the informal economy of Mexico in a 2009 study by Ghosh et al.

We’re hoping that by combining all of these methods, data sets, and tools, researchers can develop an even better understanding of how we relate to the environment, so we can ultimately become better stewards of it. Google Earth Engine, Hadoop and Spark are powerful examples of such tools —our hope is that our fellow researchers will ask and pursue new questions, so we can advance the conversation even further.

Most people are familiar with the iconic image of North Korea at night—Pyongyang stands as a beacon of light amid of what looks almost like a large body of water—but what is, in fact, land draped in complete darkness. That imagery revealed details about what was previously unknowable due to the country’s cloak of secrecy—its […]

The post What Night-time Lights Tell us about the World and its Inhabitants appeared first on Market Forces.

By Ben Ratner

Last November, on the same day the Paris climate agreement took effect, 10 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, including BG Group, BP, Eni, Pemex, Reliance Industries, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Statoil and Total, announced a billion-dollar investment in climate solutions. Together, the member-companies of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) produce 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas and operate in 55 countries.

Their commitment was the beginning sign of a growing and public recognition by the oil and gas industry that tomorrow’s low carbon energy transformation has become today’s new energy imperative.

Right now, the biggest, most pressing climate item for the oil and gas industry is methane. Importantly, OGCI’s announcement included a global focus on reducing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Far more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timespan, methane is responsible for about a quarter of the warming we feel today.

These global companies are betting $1 billion on climate solutions to tackle methane emissions
Click To Tweet

Many expect OGCI to direct hundreds of millions of its billion-dollar pledge into addressing methane. Beyond the climate benefits, it’s a smart business investment. The International Energy Agency has said, “the potential for natural gas to play a credible role in the transition to a decarbonized energy system fundamentally depends on minimizing these emissions.” Simply put, methane is an existential threat for an industry and its long term investors banking on natural gas to aid the transition to a lower-carbon energy economy.

Potential is high for OGCI’s methane endeavor to catalyze important breakthroughs. With sets of OGCI members holding joint stakes in nearly 250 natural gas projects worldwide, there is opportunity to catalyze and spread methane emission reductions throughout the whole industry. We stand ready to help OGCI develop innovative solutions and offer the following suggestions as it begins its methane work.

Data Drives Success

Data alone won’t solve the methane challenge. But strong and credible data are essential. In the United States, vast scientific initiatives have greatly improved our understanding of methane leaks, releases and total emissions from oil and gas activity. This scientific understanding helps companies identify reduction opportunities and regulators develop sound, data-based regulations.

Globally, however, methane measurement is much less mature. Filling the gaps to better inform how companies and countries can address this problem in other parts of the world is important, while companies continue to pursue mitigation opportunities. As a future founding member of the UN’s Oil and Gas Methane Science Studies partnership, OGCI is positioned to bolster reliable and transparent methane science worldwide.

Innovation Requires Collaboration

Some of the innovation required to solve the methane challenge will come from collaboration within and among the OGCI companies. But not all of it. Around the world, there are entrepreneurs, scientists and investors that are already tackling methane. In our experience with the Methane Detectors Challenge, we learned that innovation requires early and ongoing collaboration across technology and energy sector lines. Without it, entrepreneurs don’t know what the market needs or wants and energy companies don’t know what technologists can deliver.

Today, there are gaps of information, culture, language and understanding between technology entrepreneurs and the energy companies they are trying to serve. Closing these gaps by supporting technology innovation is a prime opportunity for an industry group like OGCI to support, and OGCI is positioned to do this now that it has set up a smaller investment vehicle with the license to be nimble.

Focus on Prevention and Detection

Preventing methane leaks and finding them quickly are the two most important methane opportunities.

Every leak that is prevented is a leak that doesn’t need to be repaired. Innovation in design, technologies and strategies that prevent emissions at specific and known sources of equipment should be top of mind for OGCI. For example, aerial measurement studies have shown that tanks are significant emission sources, some of which are not properly controlled. Routine methane releases from inefficient or malfunctioning valves are also believed to be a significant source.

An undetected methane leak can leak indefinitely. It’s one reason why periodic detection is so important, and efficient airborne sweeps for large leaks should be investigated. But while routine checks are better than none, they can still allow leaks to persist for months at a time. In the United States alone, studies have shown that 10 percent of leaks are responsible for 80 percent of emissions. Fortunately, next-generation detection technologies are being developed to catch large leaks with the speed we’d expect in the digital age.

Spurring innovation in the energy sector has an unlikely group of allies, backed by $1 billion
Click To Tweet

Statoil, a Norwegian-based international oil and gas company and OGCI member, is pioneering continuous methane emissions monitoring at a well pad in Texas, and a leading natural gas utility is doing the same in California. These are promising developments, bringing real-time methane monitors to market. Now, the next level of industry leadership from groups such as OCGI are vital to help spur competition in this growing segment and drive unit deployment up and costs down.

Avoiding the wasteful flaring of natural gas in favor of recapturing the fuel is another worthy opportunity to tighten the oil and gas system. There are roughly 16,000 flares worldwide, and some flares burn all day and night. OGCI can galvanize investors and operators to provide the capital and incentives to put entrepreneurs to work turning wasted gas into productive use.

Results Matter

OGCI’s success will be measured by the amount of methane reductions it delivers. Now is the time for OGCI to set a clear path for how it will achieve success with its multi-million dollar methane mitigation endeavor.

EDF’s global goal – reducing oil and gas methane emissions 45 percent by 2025 – coincides with OGCI’s 10-year mandate and is a mark we encourage the group to embrace or exceed. Industry leaders and investors need to manage methane risk so that natural gas is a cleaner, more responsible transition fuel. Governments and their citizens need to know that industry is doing all it can to address the global methane challenge. OGCI is in a unique position to spur innovation that can satisfy both needs.

Follow Ben on Twitter @RatnerBen

By Ben Ratner

Last November, on the same day the Paris climate agreement took effect, 10 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, including BG Group, BP, Eni, Pemex, Reliance Industries, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Statoil and Total, announced a billion-dollar investment in climate solutions. Together, the member-companies of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) produce 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas and operate in 55 countries.

Their commitment was the beginning sign of a growing and public recognition by the oil and gas industry that tomorrow’s low carbon energy transformation has become today’s new energy imperative.

Right now, the biggest, most pressing climate item for the oil and gas industry is methane. Importantly, OGCI’s announcement included a global focus on reducing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Far more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timespan, methane is responsible for about a quarter of the warming we feel today.

These global companies are betting $1 billion on climate solutions to tackle methane emissions
Click To Tweet

Many expect OGCI to direct hundreds of millions of its billion-dollar pledge into addressing methane. Beyond the climate benefits, it’s a smart business investment. The International Energy Agency has said, “the potential for natural gas to play a credible role in the transition to a decarbonized energy system fundamentally depends on minimizing these emissions.” Simply put, methane is an existential threat for an industry and its long term investors banking on natural gas to aid the transition to a lower-carbon energy economy.

Potential is high for OGCI’s methane endeavor to catalyze important breakthroughs. With sets of OGCI members holding joint stakes in nearly 250 natural gas projects worldwide, there is opportunity to catalyze and spread methane emission reductions throughout the whole industry. We stand ready to help OGCI develop innovative solutions and offer the following suggestions as it begins its methane work.

Data Drives Success

Data alone won’t solve the methane challenge. But strong and credible data are essential. In the United States, vast scientific initiatives have greatly improved our understanding of methane leaks, releases and total emissions from oil and gas activity. This scientific understanding helps companies identify reduction opportunities and regulators develop sound, data-based regulations.

Globally, however, methane measurement is much less mature. Filling the gaps to better inform how companies and countries can address this problem in other parts of the world is important, while companies continue to pursue mitigation opportunities. As a future founding member of the UN’s Oil and Gas Methane Science Studies partnership, OGCI is positioned to bolster reliable and transparent methane science worldwide.

Innovation Requires Collaboration

Some of the innovation required to solve the methane challenge will come from collaboration within and among the OGCI companies. But not all of it. Around the world, there are entrepreneurs, scientists and investors that are already tackling methane. In our experience with the Methane Detectors Challenge, we learned that innovation requires early and ongoing collaboration across technology and energy sector lines. Without it, entrepreneurs don’t know what the market needs or wants and energy companies don’t know what technologists can deliver.

Today, there are gaps of information, culture, language and understanding between technology entrepreneurs and the energy companies they are trying to serve. Closing these gaps by supporting technology innovation is a prime opportunity for an industry group like OGCI to support, and OGCI is positioned to do this now that it has set up a smaller investment vehicle with the license to be nimble.

Focus on Prevention and Detection

Preventing methane leaks and finding them quickly are the two most important methane opportunities.

Every leak that is prevented is a leak that doesn’t need to be repaired. Innovation in design, technologies and strategies that prevent emissions at specific and known sources of equipment should be top of mind for OGCI. For example, aerial measurement studies have shown that tanks are significant emission sources, some of which are not properly controlled. Routine methane releases from inefficient or malfunctioning valves are also believed to be a significant source.

An undetected methane leak can leak indefinitely. It’s one reason why periodic detection is so important, and efficient airborne sweeps for large leaks should be investigated. But while routine checks are better than none, they can still allow leaks to persist for months at a time. In the United States alone, studies have shown that 10 percent of leaks are responsible for 80 percent of emissions. Fortunately, next-generation detection technologies are being developed to catch large leaks with the speed we’d expect in the digital age.

Spurring innovation in the energy sector has an unlikely group of allies, backed by $1 billion
Click To Tweet

Statoil, a Norwegian-based international oil and gas company and OGCI member, is pioneering continuous methane emissions monitoring at a well pad in Texas, and a leading natural gas utility is doing the same in California. These are promising developments, bringing real-time methane monitors to market. Now, the next level of industry leadership from groups such as OCGI are vital to help spur competition in this growing segment and drive unit deployment up and costs down.

Avoiding the wasteful flaring of natural gas in favor of recapturing the fuel is another worthy opportunity to tighten the oil and gas system. There are roughly 16,000 flares worldwide, and some flares burn all day and night. OGCI can galvanize investors and operators to provide the capital and incentives to put entrepreneurs to work turning wasted gas into productive use.

Results Matter

OGCI’s success will be measured by the amount of methane reductions it delivers. Now is the time for OGCI to set a clear path for how it will achieve success with its multi-million dollar methane mitigation endeavor.

EDF’s global goal – reducing oil and gas methane emissions 45 percent by 2025 – coincides with OGCI’s 10-year mandate and is a mark we encourage the group to embrace or exceed. Industry leaders and investors need to manage methane risk so that natural gas is a cleaner, more responsible transition fuel. Governments and their citizens need to know that industry is doing all it can to address the global methane challenge. OGCI is in a unique position to spur innovation that can satisfy both needs.

Follow Ben on Twitter @RatnerBen

Written by Diane MacEachern

Yoga pants are great for a doing lot of things besides yoga. Think pajamas, what you wear to your kids’ soccer game, running out to get milk…

What they’re NOT good for is eating – either by us, or by fish, birds and other wildlife. That’s why the fact that yoga pants are ending up in the food chain as plastic microfibers we can’t even see, is so disturbing.

The Story of Stuff project explains this their new video, the Story of Microfibers. Yoga pants are made from plastic-based synthetic fabrics like polyester. Polyester is stretchy, easy to wash and dry, and pretty durable, which is why it’s so popular. But when you wash it, it sheds fragments of plastic that are so teeny, they’re not caught in washing machine filters or the filters at wastewater treatment plants.

Instead, the microfibers end up getting discharged into streams and rivers and eventually end up in the ocean. The fibers float around absorbing toxic chemicals like heavy metals and pesticides. These chemicals disrupt our endocrine systems, wreak havoc with our reproductive organs and may cause cancer. But of course, the fish don’t know that! Fish accidentally eat these microplastic pods, we eat the fish, and voilà. We (sort of) end up eating our yoga pants – and all the chemicals concentrated in the microfibers, too.

Polyester is the fastest growing fabric in the world. In fact, says the Story of Microfibers, 60% of fabric produced by the textiles industry in 2014 was polyester, and additional clothing is made from other plastic-laden synthetic fiber. When you think of plastic pollution in the water, you might think of plastic bags. But the Story of Microfibers says that “fibers are, by count, the single largest contributor to watershed plastic pollution in developed countries and account for a significant portion of plastic waste entering the ocean.”

What Can You Do?

Contact your own favorite brands and urge them to clean up their clothing – Send them an email, tweet them, call them out on Facebook, or talk to the manager when you shop in a store. Ask them to pass your concerns up the “chain of command” to their purchasing directors and sustainability vice presidents, if they have them.

Buy clothes made from natural fibers like cotton, wool, hemp, linen, and bamboo – Read the label before you buy. If that shirt or vest says “polyester,” leave it on the rack.

Wash clothes less – In many households, consumers wear something once and then toss it in the laundry. In fact, unless something is stinky, sweaty or grimy, it can often be worn a couple of times or more. Aim to wash clothes only when they need it.

Avoid fast fashion – Cheap clothes disintegrate much more quickly than garments that are made to last. BigGreenPurse.com offers these “9 Best Ways to Dress Like an Eco-Fashion Queen.”

Reduce use of plastic overall – Though the Story of Microfibers focuses primarily on clothing, all plastic breaks down into microfibers eventually. Bottles and bottle caps, packaging, plastic bags, toys, plastic beads in face and body wash, and fast food containers are additional sources of microplastic that can get into the food chain.

Explain what’s going on to your kids – Environmentalist Sam Love has written a very effective book called, My Little Plastic Bag, that shows kids how easy it is for fish to become laden with plastic. Even though Love’s book focuses on bags and not clothes, it effectively makes the same point.

While these are good steps, Beth Terry, the founder of MyPlasticFreeLife, says that’s not enough. She is urging clothing brands to invest time and resources to investigate how widespread the microfibers problem is and test potential solutions.

Now go do some yoga. Namaste.

TELL CONGRESS: PROTECT EPA

Written by Mark R. Burns

Today, in the United States, race is still the most significant predictor of who suffers most from pollution.

Communities of color – as well as Latino, Native American and low-income white communities – endure disproportionate exposure to air and water pollution, hazardous waste, and environmental contamination, all of which seriously impact the health and well-being of those communities.

Kids are especially at risk. Air pollution, for example, has been linked to cognitive development delays, higher rates of diabetes, and long-lasting respiratory issues like asthma.

Having the means to fight back

As a dad who’s made more than enough anxious trips to the emergency room with his wheezing son, I’m acutely aware of the impact of asthma on a kid’s life. But I also happen to be a white male who lives in an area of my state that has not been subjected to the kinds of overt and widespread pollution that have victimized the communities cited above.

No one is immune to pollution, but when it comes to local environmental issues, the stakeholders in areas like mine often have access to representation, information, influence, zoning laws, money and power to organize against and confront environmental threats. They are also able to put in place, if they haven’t already done so, protections to preempt those threats. Race counts. So does the value of real estate. As a result, communities like mine rarely get targeted by polluters.

The Need for Environmental Justice

In the 1990s, the EPA recognized the disparity between communities with the means to respond to environmental concerns and those that are most vulnerable and least powerful. And so it adopted the concept of environmental justice, “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, particularly minority, low-income and indigenous populations, in the environmental decision-making process.”

This prioritized giving stakeholders in these communities a voice, a line of communication and means of empowerment that would allow them to organize and respond to local pollution situations. For more than twenty years, grant programs like the EJ small grants and Collaborative Problem Solving programs have assisted over 1,400 communities in dealing with pollution issues. In many cases this approach has also sparked ideas and action that result in beneficial economic development.

So what’s the outlook for environmental justice in these vulnerable communities under new EPA head Scott Pruitt?

It is not good.

President Trump’s budget proposal includes a 31% cut to the EPA budget. Pruitt has stated that “the budget reorients EPA’s air program to protect the air we breathe without unduly burdening the economy.” This emphasis on regulations as an impediment to economic growth translates to serious cuts to enforcement and compliance even as many important regulations have already been rolled back and more are targeted. While this approach and these actions will have onerous consequences for everyone, they will be even more devastating for disenfranchised, vulnerable communities.

One of the many dire consequences of the proposed cuts will be the withdrawal of all funding for the Office of Environmental Justice. The OEJ will be eliminated.

This is an unconscionable threat to the concept of “equal protection under the law” and to the years of diligent work and important progress the EPA has made in helping to protect our most vulnerable communities from pollution.

When faced with this impending reality, Mustafa Ali, a senior advisor for environmental justice to former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and a founding member of the Office of Environmental Justice during the George H. W. Bush administration, tendered his resignation to Pruitt on March 8th. In a concise, measured, three-page letter, the 24-year veteran of the agency explained the importance of the OEJ and its programs, and implored Pruitt to seize the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring people together, to ensure that all communities have safe places to live, learn, work, play and pray and to ensure that our most vulnerable communities, who have been struggling for clean air to breathe and clean water to drink becomes a reality for them and their children.”

Whether Scott Pruitt responds positively – or at all – to Ali’s letter remains to be seen, but it is highly doubtful. One thing is for certain: The dismantling of the OEJ would effectively silence vulnerable communities while putting the EPA in the shameful position of sanctioning environmental discrimination. And that would be a disgrace.

TELL CONGRESS: PROTECT EPA

Written by Moms Clean Air Force

Aerial infrared imaging shows methane leaking at a SoCal Gas storage facility. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.

This was written by Samantha Page. It originally posted on Think Progress:

The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously on Thursday to enact regulations that will curb the amount of methane the oil and gas industry can leak and vent during production and storage.

The new rule — years in the making — requires oil and gas companies to monitor infrastructure and repair leaks. It is a massive step forward for California’s air quality programs, advocates say, and it is the strictest in the nation.

The Air Resources Board expects the new rule will reduce methane leaks by 45 percent over the next nine years.

The oil and gas industry contributes about a third of the United States’ overall methane emissions. Not only is methane a powerful greenhouse gas, trapping heat 86 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 20-year span, but leaking and flaring natural gas also adds benzene (a carcinogen) and NOx compounds (which create ground-level ozone) into the air we breathe.

Still, the environmental dangers of leaking methane haven’t stopped Congress or Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from taking steps this year to reduce accountability from the oil and gas industry. In February, the House passed a Congressional Review Act to rescind a Bureau of Land Management rule that required oil and gas operators on public lands to limit their methane leaks and flaring.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who opposed the methane rule in his previous role as Oklahoma attorney general, has also rescinded a request for information from oil and gas operations that would have been used for the EPA to develop rules that could have applied to existing infrastructure.

“As the federal government steps back, it is going to be tremendously important for states to take the lead,” said Tim O’Connor, the director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s California oil and gas program. “Nationally, oil and gas is the single largest source of methane out there.”

A study from the California Air Resources Board released in February found naturally occurring (but usually underground) benzene is released at half the state’s natural gas leaks. Flaring — the process of burning off gas, rather than capturing and processing it — adds ground-level ozone, diminishing air quality in the surrounding areas.

The study “really demonstrates the need and value” of passing California’s new rule, “for reducing economic waste and climate pollution — but also for protecting public health,” O’Connor said. Other studies from around the country have found a link between fracking for oil and gas and negative, localized health impacts.

There is also an economic component to the rule. In California alone, more than $50 million worth of natural gas each year is wasted, O’Connor said. Annually, some 75,000 tons of methane are released by leaky equipment and intentional venting.

If Congress follows through with repealing the BLM rule, it is expected to cost taxpayers, who receive revenue for natural gas development on public land, $800 million over the next 10 years. The value of the lost gas is projected to be roughly $330 million annually — and the rule only applied to new oil and gas development.

Meanwhile, California is not the only state taking action against leaky natural gas infrastructure. Colorado, whose regulations were the basis for the BLM rule, put limits on methane emissions in place back in 2014. Earlier this year, Ohio took steps to limit methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, and there is an ongoing rule-making process in Pennsylvania to do the same. The California PUC will also likely take steps later this year to regulate leaks from natural gas transmission lines, which are another significant and dangerous source of methane.

O’Connor pointed out, though, that despite California’s comprehensive set of rules, 90 percent of the state’s natural gas is imported from other states. “Even if we get our gas production [leaks] down to zero, we still have a significant footprint,” he said.

Ironically, studies have found that trapping otherwise lost gas is a net benefit for producers. It would cost less for oil and gas developers to fix the leaks than they lose when the gas disappears into thin air — but it takes investment.

That investment is often in the form of jobs, inspectors, repairmen, and the like, which is one reason that there is broad support for limiting natural gas leaks and venting. According to recent polling, 73 percent of voters want the federal government to require companies to reduce gas leaks. Another 61 percent support laws that minimize wasteful practices like venting and flaring of natural gas.

Meanwhile, the problem might be even worse than estimated. This month, another report found that refineries and power plants are leaking a whole lot more natural gas than the industry is reporting. Natural gas leaks are 21 to 120 times larger than reported at power plants and 11 to 90 times larger at refineries, according to the the study, released earlier this month by Purdue University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Natural gas, which is 80 percent methane, has been touted as a bridge to clean energy, because burning natural gas is roughly half as carbon intensive as coal combustion. But, due to methane’s outsized impact on climate change, if the industry leaks more than 3 percent of the natural gas used for electricity, the methane cancels out any climate benefit.

“It’s a better fuel all around as long as you don’t spill it,” Paul Shepson, Purdue’s Jonathan Amy Distinguished Professor of Analytical and Atmospheric Chemistry, said in a statement. “But it doesn’t take much methane leakage to ruin your whole day if you care about climate change.”

Because of discrepancies in industry reporting, it’s hard to estimate exactly how much natural gas is leaking. The rates Shepson and colleagues found were “significantly higher” than estimates done with industry data and reported by the EPA in 2014. In fact, studies have repeatedly found that the oil and natural gas industry — from fracking to transportation and storage to production and combustion — leaks far more than it reports.

“It would be informative to gather more data,” Shepson told ThinkProgress via email.

Of course, even if it weren’t leaking at all, the boom in natural gas production would still be concerning. The natural gas boom has been lauded as a way to transition the country to a clean energy economy. Natural gas, when burned, emits a little over half as much carbon dioxide as coal, the primary source of electricity in the United States.

That benefit, though, disappears when as little as 3 percent of natural gas leaks during the fossil fuel’s lifecycle.

And even the best case, slowing catastrophic climate change — while better than flinging humanity headlong into it — does not actually prevent or avoid rising sea levels, intensified storms, or desertification.

Photo: EDF

TELL CONGRESS: PROTECT EPA

Earlier this week, Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) highlighted completion of the Caminada Headland beach & dune restoration project. The restored areas of this headland are an essential part of one of our priority projects, Belle Pass to Caminada Pass Restoration – but they are only part of the picture! There’s more to barrier islands and headlands than sandy beaches and dunes. An important part of healthy barrier islands and headlands is what’s called “back barrier marsh.” This ...

The post Back Barrier Marsh: A Key Component of Caminada Headland Restoration appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

Earlier this week, Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) highlighted completion of the Caminada Headland beach & dune restoration project. The restored areas of this headland are an essential part of one of our priority projects, Belle Pass to Caminada Pass Restoration – but they are only part of the picture! There’s more to barrier islands and headlands than sandy beaches and dunes. An important part of healthy barrier islands and headlands is what’s called “back barrier marsh.” This ...

The post Back Barrier Marsh: A Key Component of Caminada Headland Restoration appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

Earlier this week, Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) highlighted completion of the Caminada Headland beach & dune restoration project. The restored areas of this headland are an essential part of one of our priority projects, Belle Pass to Caminada Pass Restoration – but they are only part of the picture! There’s more to barrier islands and headlands than sandy beaches and dunes. An important part of healthy barrier islands and headlands is what’s called “back barrier marsh.” This ...

The post Back Barrier Marsh: A Key Component of Caminada Headland Restoration appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

Controlling methane is one of the fastest and most affordable climate strategies at our disposal

By EDF Blogs

Jeremy Proville and Jonathan Camuzeaux 

Just 60 days into Trump’s presidency, his administration has wasted no time in pursuing efforts to lift oil and gas development restrictions and dismantle a range of environmental protections to push through his “America First Energy Plan.” An agenda that he claims will allow the country to, “take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.”

Putting aside the convenient roundness of this number, its sheer size makes the policy sound appealing; but, buyer beware. Behind the smoke and mirrors of this $50 trillion is an industry-commissioned Institute for Energy Research (IER) report that lacks serious economic rigor. The positive projections from lifting oil and gas restrictions come straight from the IER’s advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance. Several economists reviewed the assessment and agreed: “This is not academic research and would never see the light of day in an academic journal.”

Here are six reasons Trump’s plan can't deliver on its promises.

1. No analytical back up for almost $20 trillion of the $50 trillion
Off the bat, it’s clear that President Trump’s plan relies on flawed math. What’s actually estimated in the report is $31.7 trillion, not $50 trillion, based on increased revenue from oil, gas, and coal production over 37 years (this total includes estimated increases in GDP, wages, and tax revenue). The other roughly half of this “$50 trillion” number appears to be conjured out of thin air.

2. Inflated fuel prices

By using inflated oil and gas prices and multiplying the benefits out over 37 years, the author dismisses any volatility or price impacts from changes in supply.

6 Ways President Trump’s Energy Plan Doesn’t Add Up
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3. Technically vs. economically recoverable resources
The IER report is overly optimistic when it comes to the amount of oil and gas that can be viably produced on today’s restricted federal lands. Indeed, the report assumes that recoverable reserves can be exploited to the last drop over the 37-year period based on estimates from a Congressional Budget Office report. A deeper look reveals that these estimates are actually for “technically recoverable resources,” or the amount of oil and gas that can be produced using current technology, industry practice, and geologic knowledge. While these resources are deemed accessible from a technical standpoint, they cannot always be produced profitably. This is an important distinction, as it is the aspect that differentiates technically-recoverable from economically-recoverable resources. The latter is always a smaller subset of what is technically extractable, as illustrated by this diagram from the Energy Information Administration. The IER report ignores basic industry knowledge to present a rosier picture.

The IER report ignores basic industry knowledge to present a rosier picture.

4. Lack of discounting causes overestimations
When economists evaluate the economic benefits of a policy that has impacts well into the future, it is common practice to apply a discount rate to get a sense of their value to society in today’s terms. Discounting is important to account for the simple fact that we generally value present benefits more than future benefits. The IER analysis does not include any discounting and therefore overestimates the true dollar-benefits of lifting oil and gas restrictions. For example, applying a standard 5% discount rate to the $31.7 trillion benefits would reduce the amount to $12.2 trillion.

The IER analysis does not include any discounting and therefore overestimates the true dollar-benefits of lifting oil and gas restrictions.

5. Calculated benefits are not additional to the status quo
The IER report suggests that the $31.7 trillion would be completely new and additional to the current status quo. This is false. One must compare these projections against a future scenario in which the restrictions are not lifted. Currently, the plan doesn’t examine a future in which these oil and gas restrictions remain and still produce large economic benefits, while protecting the environment.

6. No consideration of environmental costs
Another significant failure of IER’s report: even if GDP growth was properly estimated, it would not account for the environmental costs associated with this uptick in oil and gas development and use. This is not something that can be ignored, and any serious analysis would address it.

We know drilling activities can lead to disastrous outcomes that have real environmental and economic impacts. Oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez have demonstrated that tragic events happen and come with a hefty social, environmental and hard dollar price tag. The same can be said for natural gas leaks, including a recent one in Aliso Canyon, California. And of course, there are significant, long-term environmental costs to increased emissions of greenhouse gases including more extreme weather, damages to human health, and food scarcity to name a few.

The real issue is what is being sacrificed if we set down this path: That is, a clean energy future where our country can lead.

The Bottom Line: The $50 Trillion is An Alternative Fact but the Safeguards America will Lose are Real
These factors fundamentally undercut President Trump’s promise that Americans will reap the benefits of a $50 trillion dollar future energy industry. Most importantly, the real issue is what is being sacrificed if we set down this path. That is, a clean energy future where our country can lead the way in innovation and green growth; creating new, long-term industries and high-paying jobs, without losing our bedrock environmental safeguards. If the administration plans to upend hard-fought restrictions that provide Americans with clean air and water, we expect them to provide a substantially more defensible analytical foundation.

This post originally appeared on our Market Forces blog and is the first in an occasional series about the economics of President Trump's Energy Plan.