Natural Gas

Dean Scott, the senior climate change reporter for Bloomberg, moderated a panel discussion this weekend at the 2016 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The topic at hand was the upcoming U.S. elections and what it means for climate change policy, particularly if Donald Trump wins the presidency. You might think that his position on climate change is “typical” or just “more of …

The Obama administration’s new rules to curb methane come in the wake of two reports that illustrate the dangers of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). These reports show that methane is leaking throughout the fracking process from extraction to the end users. The Environmental Protection Agency recently released the final version of their new federal rules to limit methane emissions at oil and gas facilities. While this is …

The first quarter of 2016 is one of lopsided records. First there are the monthly temperature records, with February the most unusually warm on record followed by March, with yet a new record deviation. In the midst of these increasingly worrisome records is another, offering hope that the response to these changing climate patterns is underway. The latest “Energy Infrastructure Update” report just released by the …

One of the biggest environmental disasters in US history is happening right now in southern California. The methane leak at the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, located in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of northwest Los Angeles, is already the largest such leak in U.S. history and it is far from over. The leak started in October and SoCalGas has indicated that it does not …

The mayors of Grand Rapids and Salt Lake City publicized the letter, which cites the numerous acute and chronic threats to public health ground-level ozone poses. The EPA recently proposed lowering national ozone pollution levels to 65-70 parts per billion.

The problem of gas flaring Gas flaring, or the venting of natural gas, is a common process associated with oil extraction and other industrial activities. In the United States, gas flaring has grown right along with the boom in “tight oil” plays such as North Dakota’s Bakken field. Of course, flaring gas is not limited to the U.S. but is a waste of resources and …

It was a close race throughout the year, but in the end new generating capacity from renewable sources beat out new natural gas capacity by 1.16 percent in 2014. Of the 49.81 percent of new capacity from renewable energy, more than one-quarter, or 26.52 percent, came from wind energy while solar power provided another 20.40 percent of the total. Other renewable energy sources, including …