News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

Solar Industry Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 14:46

The American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, made up of domestic manufacturers Convalt Energy, First Solar, Meyer Burger, Mission Solar, Qcells, REC Silicon and Swift Solar, has filed a set of antidumping and countervailing duty petitions with the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and the U.S. Department of Commerce to investigate potentially illegal trade practices by Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

This action comes within a year of the Department of Commerce making its determination that Chinese solar manufacturers were circumventing tariffs on solar cells and panels by shipping their products through other countries.

However, companies found to be circumventing the tariffs are not expected to pay tariffs when the moratorium ends in June, because their supply chains mean they are no longer in violation as outlined in the circumvention decision. This new trade case seeks to address the alleged trade practices by these solar manufacturers in other countries.

The Solar Energy Industries Association, American Clean Power Association, Advanced Energy United and American Council on Renewable Energy issued a statement on the petitions:

“Today’s filing creates market uncertainty in the U.S. solar industry and poses a potential threat to the build-out of a domestic solar supply chain.

“America’s energy security relies upon building a strong domestic solar supply chain, which our members strongly support, and the Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit and incentives are working to drive historic investments in U.S. solar manufacturing that are building domestic capacity for a U.S. solar supply chain.

“We are deeply concerned the AD/CVD petitions will lead to further market volatility across the U.S. solar and storage industry and create uncertainty at a time when we need effective solutions that support U.S. solar manufacturers. We need constructive actions, like the Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit and other policies, to expand domestic solar manufacturing and deploy clean energy at scale and speed to serve growing electricity demand.

“America’s clean energy industry is urging the Biden administration to consider alternative solutions to address the petitioners’ concerns so that we can uplift American manufacturers and maintain a thriving clean energy economy across the value chain.”

The alliance is represented by Wiley Rein. The team representing the petitioner also includes partners Laura El-Sabaawi and Stephanie M. Bell.

Photo source

The post Solar Manufacturers File Trade Duty Petitions with USITC, Commerce Department appeared first on Solar Industry.

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Mining.Com - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 14:00

Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) announced Wednesday it has appointed Allen Satterwhite as its new president.

Satterwhite joins the company from Chevron, where he spent close to 30 years of his career. He was most recently president at Chevron Pipeline & Power within the global leadership forum of Chevron, one of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the world.

Prior to that, Satterwhite served as SVP of Asset Development for Chevron’s entire IndoAsia Business Unit, VP of Heavy Oil for IndoAsia Business Unit, VP of Finance & Planning for Chevron’s Natural Gas business, among many others.

He received his B.S. and Masters in Petroleum Engineering at LSU, and his MBA from Tulane.

“In his capacity as President, Allen will be tasked with overseeing the commercial facets of our business, with direct lines to operations, engineering, finance, and technology,” EnergyXCEO Teague Egan said in the statement.

“Allen’s addition to the team is another step (a major one) towards ensuring the seamless execution of our strategies, as well as propelling EnergyX growth initiatives, including both demo plant deployment and preparation for commercialization.”

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

DRILL OR DROP? - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 13:46

Lower commodity prices hit Star Energy last year, the company revealed today in annual accounts.

Singleton oil site. Photo: DrillOrDrop

Revenue fell 16% to £49.5m in 2023 and the operating profit was down 46% to £7.2m.

The company ended the year with a loss after tax of £5.5m.

Star Energy said its oil and gas sites saw higher production, up from 1,898 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in 2022 to 2,100 boepd in 2023. This followed “positive results from workovers and other well optimisation and stimulation activities carried out during the year”, the company said.

But this was “offset by lower commodity prices and a weaker US dollar compared to 2022”.

Oil revenue was down 24%, from £59.2m in 2022 to £44.8m in 2023. Gas revenue fell further, down 55%, from £4.2m in 2022 to £1.9m in 2023. Revenue from electricity sales fell 56% from £2.7m in 2022 to £1.2m in 2023.

The accounts report that the realised price per barrel of oil was $79.9 in 2023, compared with $82.7 in 2022. Over the same period, administrative expenses per barrel of oil rose from $11.5 to $12.

The accounts also report that Star Energy’s administrative costs rose to £7.3m, up 18% on the £6.2m in 2022. This was mainly because of legal and professional costs of buying a Croatian geothermal business and refinancing the group.

The company said it had written off £0.5m exploration and evaluation costs on oil and gas assets with no further development prospects.

But it reported it had invested £7.6m in oil and gas assets. This was mainly for site preparation and purchase of items required for development at Corringham in Lincolnshire, rationalisation at the Holybourne site in Hampshire and projects to increase production at existing wells. It also invested £0.3m in oil exploration opportunities at existing fields.

The accounts show that Star Energy paid £1.1m in the windfall tax or energy profits levy (EPL) in 2023.

Company chairman, Philip Jackson, said:

“The EPL is an unwelcome obligation that we do not believe was ever designed to encumber the minor onshore sector, and in particular, a company which has taken a strategic decision to pivot from its fossil fuel roots to a renewable future as cashflows permit over time.”

He also criticised delays in the permitting process:

“We continue to suffer from regulatory creep and ever-increasing delays in obtaining regulatory approval for environmental permits. In 2023, waiting times to have an application ‘duly made’ and then addressed by an officer, were commonly in excess of 12 months. The Environment Agency acknowledge these significant delays, but do not seem able to adequately address the issue.”

The company’s net tax charge rose to £8.3m, from £6.6m in 2022, because of a reduction in the deferred tax asset related to tax losses. The lower deferred tax asset also contributed to a fall in net assets from £58.3m in 2022 to £54.9m in 2023.

Star Energy said it had repaid £3.3m of RBL loan, reducing net debt in 2023 to £1.6m (£6.1m in 2022).

It also secured a new €25 million loan from Kommunalkredit for geothermal activities. As part of the loan, Star Energy and some of its subsidiaries signed a security agreement, giving Kommunalkredit’s security agent a fixed charge over property, leases, licences, pipelines, plant, buildings and equipment.

Sites update

Bletchingley, Surrey Gas-to-wire project has planning consent, environmental permits and a grid connection

Corringham, Lincolnshire Site preparation for drilling an additional well was completed in the final quarter of 2023. Phase one of project will be assessed after the company refinancing in April 2024. Initial production is expected to be about 110 bopd.

Glentworth, Lincolnshire Planning permission was granted April 2023 for an appraisal well and up to six horizontal development wells. The appraisal well has the potential to add about 200 bopd, the accounts said. The development wells could add 500 bopd. Environmental permit applications were submitted in October 2022 and still awaited, Star Energy said.

NHS hospital trust geothermal projects The feasibility study is underway for the Salisbury project. The Wythenshaw feasibility study will start in second quarter of 2024. A project in Preston depends on a government funding decision.

Singleton The workover at the site and a programme of well optimisation and stimulation had added 50 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).

Stoke geothermal scheme Star Energy reported continued delays with the project but said the technical and commercial aspects of scheme had been signed off in autumn 2023.

Other sites: Star Energy said it fully abandoned three wells in 2023 and partially abandoned three others, all unnamed. The accounts do not refer to plans to restart oil production at Avington in the South Downs National Park, reported in 2023 by UK Oil & Gas, a partner in the site.

Plans for 2024

The accounts said Star Energy was committing to spend £4.5m on projects with “short cycle returns” to take advantage of current high commodity prices. The projects also included maintenance and optimisation of existing conventional sites.

Expected net production for 2024 was 2,000 boepd and operating costs of $41/boe, the accounts reported.

Key figures for the year to 31 December 2023

Revenue: £49.5m (2022 £59.2m)

Gross profit: £17.1m (2022 £28.8m)

Admin expenses: £7.3m (2022 £6.2m)

Research and non-capitalised development costs: £2.0m (£2022 £0.1m)

Underlying operating profit: £9.1m (2022 £16.1m)

Operating profit: £7.2m (2022 £13.3m)

Profit before tax: £2.8m (2022 £18.4m)

Loss after tax: £5.5m (2022 £11.8m)

Total assets: £145.3m (2022 £149m)

Total liabilities: £90.4m (2022 £90.7m)

Net assets: £54.9m (2022 £58.3m)

Net debt: £1.6m (2022 £6.1m)

Adjusted EBITDA: £16.1m (2022 £21.1m)

Cash and cash equivalents at year end: £3.9m (2022 £3.1m)

Net production: 2,100 boepd (2022 1,898)

Gross total tax losses: £362.1m (2022 £355.3m)

Realised price per barrel: $79.9 (2022 $82.7)

Admin expenses per barrel: £12 (2022 $11.5)

Oil revenue: £44.8m (2022 £59.2m)

Gas revenue: £1.9m (2022 £4.2m)

Electricity revenue: £1.2m (2022 £2.7m)

Cost of sales: £32.3m (2022 £30.3m)

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Categories: G2. Local Greens

Skeptical Science - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 13:33

This is are-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére Sosou

Market gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou)

For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough food has become a worrying dilemma.

“Last year, our horticultural production plummeted due to water scarcity,” said Chantal Agbangla, a farmer residing in Soclogbo, a town located about 30 minutes by car from the capital of Dassa-Zoumé. “We had to travel nine kilometers to find water, mainly for our agricultural and domestic needs.”

Family farming, a pillar of the economy in Dassa-Zoumè, is more threatened than ever by climate change. Small-scale farms cover only about 2% of cultivable land in the area of Dassa-Zoumé, and their very survival seems threatened because water has become an increasingly precious commodity. Residents can no longer rely on the rainy season, as the irregularity of precipitation has made it an unreliable water source. Instead, they have embraced agroecological horticulture as a contingency plan against climate change. Agroecology emphasizessustainable farming practicesthat prioritize water retention in the soil, making this type of farming more resistant to drought.

How climate change is affecting Benin

Benin is already facing climate change impacts like long periods of drought followed by intense downpours resulting in flooding. Despite its marginal contribution to heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, representing only 0.05% of the global total, Benin is among the nationsmost vulnerableto climate change.

“The commune of Dassa experiences extreme rainfall variability, exacerbated by climate change.” Said Romanic OGOUWALE, a professor and researcher in geography specializing in climatology at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin’s principal public university. “A situation aggravated by rising temperatures and decreasing water resources in recent times.”

In 2010, the country experienced severe flooding that affected crop production. In response to these challenges, the Beninese government is actively engaged in the implementation of strategies to reduce the country’s contribution to climate change and adapt to its effects, including providing farmers with short-cycle crop seeds that can be harvested every two months like corn, soy, peanuts, beans.

How women are responding

In Benin, women are increasingly involved in the creation of agricultural cooperatives to promote empowerment and engagement, as women play a crucial role in the agricultural sector. Like other regions of the country, in Dassa-Zoumè, several women’s agricultural cooperatives offer help to local farmers, such as the Itchèléré agricultural cooperative in Dassa.

“Even traditionally humid areas now suffer from drought,” said Yves GBEDJI from the Itchéléré agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè. “We must seek alternative water sources, sometimes traveling long distances to obtain it.” The LIFO and Olodjo rivers can supply water, but they are more than five kilometers away from these rural populations, making them difficult to access, especially without transport.

Women are often faced with the dilemma of having to choose between using water for household chores such as washing dishes and laundry, or for irrigating their vegetable crops.

“At times, we are forced to use water intended for our domestic needs to irrigate our horticultural crops, leading to conflicts within households,” said Chantal Agbangla.

“The commune of Dassa experiences extreme rainfall variability, exacerbated by climate change.

A situation aggravated by rising temperatures and decreasing water resources in recent times.”

Joséphine KOBA is one of the many women turning to horticulture. She is in her forties, a mother of five children and is involved in the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè. She is a trainer at the cooperative on the production of compost from agricultural waste. “With the instability of the rainy season, we opted for horticulture to provide food year-round, especially in the dry season,” she said. “We grow tomatoes, peppers, vegetables, okra, and many other essential products.”

Before agroecological practices were implemented, most crops were produced with chemical fertilizers. Now, locally made compost feeds these crops. However, access to water remains a major obstacle, especially in areas where the granite rock bed makes well construction difficult.

Building wells

Several projects and programs have been launched to help these vulnerable populations of Dassa Zoumè, particularly young people and women of Soclogbo, better cope with climate change. One recent project enabled farmers to install wells for irrigation, said Yves GBEDJI, a 30-year-old local farmer. The well program is funded by the Dutch Embassy in Benin. It aims to improve the food and nutritional security of rural populations through increasing agricultural productivity and increasing income.

“As for the Benkadi project, it trained us in sustainable techniques such as reforestation, building ditches, and rational water resource management,” said GBEDJI. The Benkadi project is led by a consortium of civil society organizations grouped in four different West African countries including Benin, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Mali with a Dutch partner, Woord end Daad. This project aims to strengthen the resilience and adaptation of local populations in the face of climate change.

What’s next?

This quest for water affects vulnerable individuals in rural communities of Dassa-Zoumè, notably children, women, people with disabilities, and young people.

For Marie Odile HOUNTONDJI, gender and social inclusion expert with the Benkadi project ofthe Civil Society Actors Platform in Benin, more vulnerable individuals should be involved in the conversations about how to face this problem. The objective, she said, is to achieve inclusive efforts to reduce the effects of climate change, especially in agriculture.

As the residents of Dassa-Zoumè struggle daily to access water, vital for their survival and that of their crops, one truth remains evident: In the face of the urgency posed by climate change, their resilience and determination stand as their most valuable assets.

Categories: I. Climate Science

Indigenous Environmental Network - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 13:05

IEN Giikinoo-amaage-gidiwin Gitigaan April is a busy month in the garden as most of the vegetable seedlings have been started and tending to them indoors until the chance of freeze passes. Here in the north, starting seeds indoors is a necessary season extension practice. This year we expiremented with a new indoor seed starting method […]

The post IEN Giikinoo-amaage-gidiwin Gitigaan – Teaching Garden first appeared on Indigenous Environmental Network.

Wild Idaho Rising Tide - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 12:00

The Wednesday, April 24, 2024, Climate Justice Forum radio program, produced by regional, climate activists collective Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), features an Earth/Greenwash Day 2021 conversation between WIRT co-founder and organizer Helen Yost and Green and Red Podcast host Scott Parkin, talking about a decade of allied, Northwest, direct action campaigns against fossil fuels transportation, extraction, and infrastructure and resulting industry and government backlash. We also share news and reflections on Highway 95 and Eid Road construction closures south of Moscow, federal regulator approval of GTN Xpress methane pipeline expansion and dismissal of three rehearing petitions, and Oregon youth protests of climate change and GTN Xpress. Broadcast for twelve years on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow, every Wednesday between 1:30 and 3 pm Pacific time, on-air at 90.3 FM and online, the show describes continent-wide, grassroots, frontline resistance to fossil fuels projects, the root causes of climate change, thanks to generous, anonymous listeners who adopted program host Helen Yost as their KRFP DJ.

Evening Report — Friday, April 19, 2024 — Earth Week, April 19, 2024 KRFP

Road Closures Expected on U.S. 95, April 19, 2024 Lewiston Tribune

Pink Moon: Full Moon for April 2024, April 12, 2024 Old Farmer’s Almanac

Despite Petitions, Federal Regulators Approve Construction on Expanded Northwest Gas Pipeline, April 22, 2024 Idaho Capital Sun

‘We’re Not Going Anywhere:’ Climate Action Groups Take to the Streets of Downtown Bend in Earth Day Protest, April 19, 2024 KTVZ

Happy Greenwash Day!, April 22, 2021 Wild Idaho Rising Tide

Thanks to Scott Parkin and the Green and Red Podcast…, April 25, 2021 Wild Idaho Rising Tide

Green and Red Podcast Episode 83: Fighting Fossil Fuels in Idaho with Organizer Helen Yost, April 22, 2021 Green and Red Podcast

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Mining.Com - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 11:52

American Battery Technology (NASDAQ: ABAT) has updated the initial assessment for its Tonopah Flats lithium project near the town of Tonopah, Nev., midway between Las Vegas and Reno. The company has been exploring the property since 2021.

The initial assessment was done in December 2023, and the current study is an update. However, American Battery does not say the studies conform to National Instrument 43-101 definitions.

Rather the figures comply with the U.S. S-K 1300, which the company says is “similar to a preliminary economic assessment”.

Site visit: Unearthing the lithium ‘gold rush’ in Nevada

The Tonopah Flats claystone is one of the largest lithium resources in the United States. The measured and indicated resource is 3.16 million tonnes averaging 596 ppm lithium and containing 11.4 million tonnes of lithium hydroxide monohydrate (LHM). The inferred resource is 2.93 billion tonnes averaging 550 ppm lithium, containing 21.2 million tonnes LHM.

American Battery believes that over the 50-year mining period, about 540,000 tonnes of claystone will be treated annually.

The company plans to use its own dilute acid leaching lithium extraction process that has demonstrated recoveries lithium over 90%. It has also validated in-house lithium hydroxide manufacturing techniques. Annual LHM production will be 30,000 tonnes of LHM.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Mining.Com - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 11:44

Integrated Power Services (IPS) is acquiring the assets of ABB’s industrial services business. The acquisition brings to IPS five well-equipped electric motor, generator, mechanical, switchgear, and circuit breaker service centers in Edmonton, Alberta, Burlington, Ontario, Arizona, Indiana, and North Carolina.

The ABB business offers high-quality repair and field service capabilities for electric motors up to 50,000 hp (37,285 kW) and low and medium-voltage switchgear equipment from 480 V to 15 kV. Additionally, the service centers perform rotating equipment repair services for pumps, compressors, blowers, bearings, gearboxes, and OHV mining drivetrains.

This agreement follows IPS’ acquisition of ABB’s hydro-generator and transformer repair business in June 2022.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Alaska Wilderness League - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 11:34

The post There is no liminal space in the Arctic Summer appeared first on Alaska Wilderness League.

Categories: G2. Local Greens

Mining.Com - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 11:32

Power Nickel(TSXV: PNPN; US-OTC: PNPNF) increased its ownership of the Nisk project in Canada’s Quebec province to 80% from Critical Elements Lithium (CRE: TSXV) and reported new drill results from a polymetallic zone.

The filing of a resource estimate in November qualified Power Nickel for 30% more in the project to conclude the earn-in agreement, the company said on Wednesday. New assays from the Lion zone have buoyed the project with strong copper, platinum and palladium mineralization, CEO Terry Lynch said in a release.

Shares in Power Nickel have soared nearly 60% since it reported the first Lion drill results on April 15. They were up 4% on Wednesday to C41¢ apiece, valuing the company at C$65.6 million ($47.8m).

“We have a real sentiment of having found a large prolific area hosting different styles of multi-elements mineralization, each being a smaller part of a much larger system,” Lynch said. “We look forward to ramping up our efforts throughout ’24 and ’25 as we seek to bring these targets to a production decision.”

Drill hole PN-24-047 cut 14.4 metres gradingof 0.59 gram gold per tonne, 69.14 grams silver, 8.17% copper, 6.25 grams palladium, 8.44 grams platinum and 0.58% nickel, the company said.

The hole included 4.7 metres at 0.85 gram gold, 91 grams silver, 11.66% copper, 8.42 grams palladium, 6.69 grams platinum, and 0.46% nickel; and 3 metres at0.95 gram gold, 167.46 grams silver, 17.33% copper, 13.04 grams palladium, 29.24 grams platinum and 1.77% nickel.

Map courtesy of Power Nickel.Carbon neutral

Power Nickel entered the project in 2021. It plans to develop Nisk, in Quebec’s James Bay region, as Canada’sfirst carbon neutral nickel mine by using carbon capture and hydroelectric power. Provincial and federal tax breaks cover half of exploration costs as the company works towards a feasibility study in this year’s third quarter.

Lynch is in negotiations to sell a 10% stake of the company for a 10% offtake from Nisk. A deal is planned by the end of June. Major shareholders include the Lynch family with 20%, Critical Elements at 10%, and the Stern family at 10%.

Inco, now a part of Vale (NYSE: VALE), discovered nickel on the site in 1962. Golden Goose Resources produced a historical resource for Nisk in 2008 of 2 million measured and indicated tonnes and 783,000 inferred tonnes. Critical Elements Lithium bought the site in 2014, but little work was done.

Nisk holds 4.9 million indicated tonnes underground grading 0.78% nickel, 0.05% cobalt, 0.42% copper, 0.78 gram palladium per tonne for 38,300 tonnes nickel, 2,400 tonnes cobalt, 20,500 tonnes copper and 123,100 tonnes palladium, according to Power Nickel’s filing.

Open pit resources total 519,000 indicated tonnes at 0.63% nickel, 0.04% cobalt, 0.3% copper and 0.56 gram palladium for 3,300 tonnes nickel, 200 tonnes cobalt, 1,600 tonnes copper and 9,400 tonnes palladium, the filing shows.

‘Spectacular hole’

Also reported on Wednesday, Lion drill hole PN-24-051 returned 11.4 metres grading 0.24 gram gold, 13.95 grams silver, 2.51% copper, 3.2 grams palladium, 19.59 grams platinum and 0.18% nickel. It included 2.6 metresat 0.4 gram gold, 41.18 grams silver, 8.09% copper, 8.37 grams palladium, 84.75 grams platinum and 0.54% nickel; and 4.9 metresat 0.23 gram gold, 7.53 grams silver, 1.32% copper, 2.47 grams palladium, 0.53 gram platinum and 0.12% nickel.

“Many of these results were checked twice as they were well over normal detection limits,” Lynch said. “Hole 51 doesn’t look that thick but as the assays showed, it was a spectacular hole.”

The company has partnered with Australia-based Fleet Space Technologies to use ambient noise tomography to explore for nickel. The technology uses satellites and hand-held devices to capture background vibrations and develop 3-D images of the subsurface down to 2 km in depth.

Fleet claims the process is 10 times more sensitive than nodal geophones, instruments that measure underground vibrations.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Institute for Local Self-Reliance - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 11:08

A community-owned clean energy project has a lot more to offer than just electricity.

For this episode of the Local Energy Rules Podcast, host John Farrell is joined by Christina Hollenback, CEO of Justice Capital, and Joseph McNeil, CEO of SAGE Development Authority. They discuss how SAGE Development Authority has created a model for community-led wind development and why community ownership is so important to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Listen to the full episode and explore more resources below — including a transcript and summary of the conversation.

Episode Transcript

Joseph McNeil:We’re willing to work with anybody else about what we’ve done, how we’ve done it, because it’s not something that we’re trying to sell. This is a gift and more frontline communities need to be moving into this space so that we can change the outlook and at least what we expect from energy systems that are developer centric, business centric, profit driven, back getting to a place where communities are standing first in that space instead of investors.John Farrell:Smack in the middle of the Dakotas on the border between north and south, the SAGE Development Authority of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is working on Anpetu Wi wind project, whose name means first rays of the morning sun. Unlike most large renewable energy projects on tribal lands, this project will purposefully align tribal values of sovereignty, no harm to the environment or areas of cultural significance, and it will provide financial resources to support long-term development for the tribe. The key is ownership, and in November, 2023, my two guests, Joseph McNeil, CEO of SAGE Development Authority for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and Christina Hollenbeck, CEO of Justice Capital, explained how they’ve structured the project to maximize the benefits and control for the Standing Rock Tribe. I’m John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and this is Local Energy Rules, a podcast about monopoly power, energy democracy, and how communities can take charge to transform the energy system. Joseph and Christina, welcome to Local Energy Rules.Christina Hollenback:Thanks.Joseph McNeil:Thank you. Great to be here.John Farrell:So I love to start off my podcast just kind of asking how people got into the work that they’re doing now. So maybe if I could start with you, Christina, and just ask kind of what motivated you to get into doing clean energy development? Why work on the capital stack, as some people like to call it, for clean energy?Christina Hollenback:I started out in a really, I guess I reverse engineered my position, which was as a water protector, as someone who believed deeply in community sovereignty and community ownership and really trusted and believed in frontline communities all over the world to lead the just transition, I realized there’s a huge gap and the gap was actually structuring those deals, both the social capital as well as the very legalese economic structures that extractive industries have really perfected, right? But there wasn’t an entity to be a stop gap and support frontline communities to structure those deals, structure the capital stack in a way that would honor their vision, their values, the equity that they have in those projects and ensure that community governance and community benefit were core to those structures. And so that’s where Justice Capital founded and now as we both convene investors to be able to operate and partner with community partners like SAGE, it’s always an honor and then working with folks like SAGE to help them structure and raise the capital that they need to be able to win.John Farrell:Wonderful, thank you, Christina. And Joseph, what motivated you to get into clean energy development? Why are you helping develop a 235 megawatt wind project?Joseph McNeil:It goes back for myself looking at turbines, going up all around the reservation in North and South Dakota back in the early 2000s and asking my brother, why aren’t we doing that here? Because he was the chairman of the Tribe at that time. And he said, well, that’s a good question. Let’s explore that. How do we do that? Then it got me involved in tribal politics and then soon thereafter we had some money to write a grant for an RFP and then discover for ourselves what the developer scenario looked like and it looked like a land lease deal. That was it, that at that time we decided it wasn’t really going to be the route we were going to do. There needs to be more for us that we can build our own capacity so we can be self-sufficient and that’s the goal is to bring electric energy, renewable energy to our people that costs less because we deal with some extreme forced dependency issues that are over almost two centuries old.

So we can’t continue to live like this and we do have the tools and toolbox per se to do this kind of work in a sovereign way. It’s just exercising and finding partners to help us to come to a place where we can really build something solid and institutional public power authority that breaks the mold. There’s no reason we should be dependent on anyone else’s energy, particularly with the wind that we have and what we learned from the first go around with developers, the RFP was that, and I say this to everyone that asks about the question I said, you wouldn’t go to Saudi Arabia, put up drills and say, Hey, I’m going to give you a great land lease deal on all that oil we’re going to pull out. We’re the Saudi Arabia of wind. Why do you think that we would want less? So in that instance really drove home the motivation to move forward and I’m happy that us as a Tribe and folks on council had looked at this in a real comprehensive way as a strategy.John Farrell:So Joseph, could you describe a little bit for people who might not be familiar, where are the Standing Rock Sioux Lands located and to describe a little bit of this wind project? How big is it going to be? How many turbines?Joseph McNeil:Yeah, so if you take North Dakota and South Dakota, most people call them the Dakotas. We are smack in the center of both of those. We straddled in North Dakota side, south central and South Dakota side, north central about the size of Connecticut. And when you take a look at our wind capacity according to NREL, we’re in the high forties, high to mid forties as far as wind capacity goes. And what we’ve looked at as well as other tribal nations like to the south of the Cheyenne River, they’ve looked at doing wind as well, is how do we develop that into a way that’s going to be substantial as a commercial project? The goal is to do a project and then build renewable energy assets separate from that for our communities. But we’re looking at roughly 235 megawatts. We have the potential to generate between 4 to 500 megawatts in our current area. The only reason we’re at 235 is because of the restrictions on the KV line to sell our power commercially, which is a 345 KV line. Southwestern Power states and dictates how much power you can put on the line at that time. So this one project 235 megawatts, about 56 turbines, and we’re looking at a four and a half megawatt turbine.John Farrell:That’s great. Could you, Christina, talk a little bit about how Justice Capital is collaborating with SAGE development on the project?Christina Hollenback:Yeah, absolutely. So Justice Capital, you could think of us as an outsource chief investment officer or chief strategy officer to SAGE and Anpetu Wi being the first of many projects that SAGE is leading to lead the just transition and renewable energies in the region. Anpetu Wi is also our first project to support them on and so we support them on structuring the capital and engaging with different governmental agencies, et cetera, around ensuring that they have the terms and the conditions to make sure that they’re able to deploy their capital into the project in a way that also attracts investors and attracts others to come in on the project while not giving away ownership. And extractive ownership models are prevalent all over frontline communities, but certainly in tribal communities. And so we’ve structured SAGE’s support for Anpetu Wi in such a way that maintains SAGE’s values and maintains the benefit to the Tribe and the nation and her people and also maintains the vision and value of SAGE in terms of also their partnership and their ownership in the project as well.Joseph McNeil:So Christine brings up a good point here that I did bring up was that the name of the project is called Anpetu Wi, and in our language Anpetu is day and Wi is the son. So together that means the first raise of the morning sun and it was well thought of one of the elders who used to work in reservation resource before he passed and he thought about this project in a way that is revelatory, that is bringing about a new day is like the prayer of a new day for us to move forward and that’s what we do traditionally, is we’ll go out pray when the sun arises for guidance and strength new day. So Anpetu Wi is the name of the project, 235 megawatts. Thanks Christina.John Farrell:Yeah, that’s wonderful. Now both of you have talked about this idea about ownership and both in the structure of the capital but also in terms of, you mentioned Joseph that some of the early offers that you had to do wind development on Standing Rock lands were really just like a land lease structure. So maybe there would’ve been a private developer who comes in, they own all the turbines, they own all the electricity and they would’ve essentially just rented some of your property in order to host those turbines. Can you talk about why ownership is so important here in terms of both the financial value but maybe in terms of as well as Christina mentioned some of these alignment with values for the community?Joseph McNeil:I think for us when we look at increasing our ownership stake in the project, initially it was spending the riskier dollar upfront proving the feasibility and pre-development. That’s doing the met tower readings, getting met towers up and we currently have five up, we’ve just relocated two of ’em to another area so we can expand and increase our net capacity factor. And land control cultural studies, environmental studies that runs the gamut from aquatic studies to avian studies and then gets into U.S. fish and wildlife, those types of things, but also the transmission studies. So that’s that real riskier dollar that increases our ability to invest into our project. And let’s say we spend 10 million on that, that could be valued up to 30, $35 million because it’s the riskier dollar upfront. So based on the NREL studies and what we’ve known for, it seemed to be a good, I don’t want to say a good bet, but it was really good money well spent in this space and that was meant to be our ownership.

Now as IRA rolls out, there’s an ability to have a direct loan for tribes now in place of ITC or PTC funds those tribes could not play into previously because we couldn’t get tax benefits. So in this place it creates much more value for us to increase our ownership stake by using government funds and low interest loan to buy into our own project to a greater degree. That means 20 to 25 years of real revenue coming into us so that we could rebuild our infrastructure, our schools, housing, home mortgages, provide financial institutions for our people to invest in the entrepreneurship, have entrepreneurship built into our educational system K through 12, and then afterwards into college so that we can rebuild our workforce and then start other industries here at Standing Rock that make sense.

Hemp is something that I look at and say there is a market for the future. We can make paper out of that or cardboard out of that. That’s an industry that’s long lasting can provide jobs for generations. And water and hydrogen, we just sit on the Rosa River here. There’s a lot of opportunity there for renewable agriculture growth and then for we always say the buffalo has always been our lifeblood and still is, but to put some money in reinvesting into that to create larger herds so that we can take care of our people and to also revitalize our culture through interpretive center, cultural museum that provides an ability for us to tell our own story, to tell our own history and repatriate our items that have been out in Smithsonian and Harvard and other places that have taken basically from us so that we can get these things back and tell our own history through our own voices. Not a western lens, but a Lakota lens in our own homelands to talk about our relationship with the earth and that spiritual connection that we have as people, more ancestors to our children yet to come.

There’s a connection and a story to be told there, not just for us, but I think for most of the world. We’re all indigenous to a place around the world — where you come from John, your ancestors come from across the sea over in Europe somewhere. There’s a connection spiritually to you to those lands mean something. So we all have a connection to the earth and we all need to seek that commonality so we can understand and live together generations to come. So for me it’s multifaceted to how this can be beneficial far beyond what we’re doing by simply putting up a wind farm.Christina Hollenback:I think when we look at traditional models of development, they are always extractive to frontline communities and as Joe was mentioning, here’s a land lease deal, here’s a percent, right, on this deal, rather than shared prosperity, shared ownership, even when there’s real value that SAGE is bringing to the table, being in relationship to the permitting and taxing authority for the project, having 2.5 million acres of land. So if one location for that turbine is not the right location, we got some other land that we might be able to put the other turbine on. So there’s real opportunities that working with tribal nations offer, but the relationship has always been extractive. It has never valued those opportunities that nations offer and it’s to be very frank, not just devalued, it’s extracted from the value that they bring to the table.

And so I think really what this is ushering in is a more community centered paradigm of development and ownership where it’s not to say that developers aren’t also going to get paid for their work. It’s not to say that investors are not going to get paid back for investing in the project, it’s just saying that you’re not going to do so to extract from in this case the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. In other cases, as this type of model could be replicated in other places, another nation or another frontline community, it’s saying that actually we can do this in a way that creates shared prosperity, that creates real ownership for the nation and that frontline community that the developers and investors are partnering with. And we can do so in a way that doesn’t mean that anyone is excluded any further from the shared prosperity that can come through.John Farrell:One of the things we’d love to talk about, and Christina you just touched on this, it’s really helpful, is that idea of the land. So Joseph, could you talk a little bit about, there was an initial plan for like here’s where the turbines are going to go, but you have a mix of different types of land that are available to you and to the tribe. Could you talk about just one of the things I found fascinating in our conversation that sort of led to us doing this interview was how you had to work through all those different things and how you respected cultural issues and community issues about the land that a developer would either steamroll over – an outside developer – or that they would find it as a big roadblock. And that’s when you talked about the investment that you’re putting up front here is that you’re finding a respectful way to deal with all those things. So could you talk a little bit about when you identified the land that you were going to use for the turbines and how you’ve accommodated some of these different cultural and environmental issues?Joseph McNeil:Sure, thank you for that question. When we first came into the project looking at the maximized wind capacity that we had was up on the hilltops in an area west of Fort Yates. We sit right along the river on a North Dakota side of Standing Rock called the Porcupine Hills. And the original project was designed to sit there roughly 26, 27 turbines were going to be located there of the 56 some odd turbines. And in the configuration and as we went through the process, we went through micro siting with our THPO, tribal historic preservation officers who do our cultural work and we cleared all of the sites, but as we come to doing it phase by phase is that okay, now we have to design the roads and now we have to design the interconnection lines, collection lines, then it was going to be too much. Then we realized at that point, THBO realized at that point, and said this is going to disturb the cultural feel and possibly some sites because we practice strict avoidance, not mitigation, we won’t move anything, we won’t come so close, we’re going to strictly avoid things.

So we had to move it and it proved out to be a good thing because just this spring when the long year bat study came through, they were flying all through that area anyway, so one way or another those turbines were going to get off the hill and those were 26 turbines that we had to move and I said, well that’s fine. We can be like water, just find the next available place to move to. And aquatic studies and features became an issue in that space. So we moved again. We’ve done significant shifting of the project as we’re going through these phases over the last few years. Our ability to look at more tribal land is one of the benefits that we have.

There are a couple of different types of tribal land which are in trust. One is land that’s owned by the Tribe and other is land that’s owned by tribal members. And then there’s the third kind which is actually there’s two other kinds land that’s simple fee status, which is around the country, people own, it’s private property. And then the government also owns or the state owns land that it can either hold in trust or fee status. So those are the three major types that we deal with tribal allotted and then fee land. And so we shifted and we moved looking at tribal land first allotted land thereafter and then fee land because back in 1887 –before 1887, we had all of the land, but the Dawes act in 1887 said that we’re going to the federal government to break up tribal lands by partitioning into them into individual parts. Checker boarding the land gave us a real difficult way to go after that so we couldn’t have a large land base bases we had previously to aggregate resources on.

So that’s where the fee land comes into play and we just go by the regular practices that a developer does in the fee land places and then we had to create with the Bureau of Indian Affairs wind energy evaluation leases to do met towers and then wind solar resource leases that would act as land option leases and fee simple for tribal lands and allotted lands. So we had to create those documents in that space to help the Bureau of Indian Affairs and DOI facilitate leasing of those lands moving forward and those things that they existed for solar down south, but they didn’t exist for wind up north. As far as Bureau of Indian Affairs goes, and I say BIA because that’s the agency that regulates our lands within our borders. We’re still in trust. We still have to report to an agency that could say yes or no. That’s some of the tough stuff that we’ve always had to deal with since colonization. And this is again going back to us being sovereign and expressing that ability to do so. We have to play the game and do it well.

One of the important things that I like to say about this project is that we don’t want to be a unique unicorn even though we are using the spear of that unicorn to push through places where it hasn’t gone before, but we are just a simple boring project that is one, investible, safe and it’s got great wind capacity just like any other project does. And our interconnection queue study is moving right on along. We’re more than halfway through, so it’s proving itself over and over again for the last few years. And I think when I hear from other developers that have been in this space for certain projects for 10 years, we’re four years in roughly three to four years in of activity and we’re talking to developers in about being a partner instead of just buying the project out. And it’s resonating because they see a way forward not just with this as a new thing, a partnership, but with other tribal nations where there hasn’t been development because everything’s been built around tribes, all the transmission. And now we’re looking at where do we get more energy from tribes.John Farrell:I just love the way that you’ve talked through this in terms of there are components of the typical project development process which you’re taking on as a way of securing more ownership, like figuring out where the turbines are going to be located, doing the wind studies, doing the cultural studies, doing the environmental assessment. And what I love about it is that it’s very much a genuine analysis of is this going to work for us, for our community and not just can we get here? How close can we get, how many feet? I think as one of you said, it’s not about mitigation, it’s just about avoiding those problems, but also to appreciate too that you have additional layers, right? Like a private developer who’s looking to just using fee land doesn’t have to go to the BIA and work with them on what are the procedures. So you don’t want to be a unicorn, but you do have some unique things and yet here you are going through that work on behalf of potential project partners to make it easier for investors. I just think it’s worth noting that you are not only facing up to some of these challenges that might be unique to your project, but you’re also addressing them proactively in a way that hopefully also lays the ground for future projects. So now if there’s a project maybe in another tribal lands in the Dakotas or in the upper Midwest, you’ll have covered some of the ground about how does this work in a way that they could follow.Joseph McNeil:True and talking about how we’re facing these challenges, in one aspect on fee land, we are going to have to deal with the North Dakota PSC. That’s where we don’t want to be anything special. We want to be a normal everyday project moving through its way. And then on the trust land side for the tribe, we had to work with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to create a utilities code that stands and holds water just like any state code would for renewable energy development and wind energy. It has all of the same components and heightened components for community safety, species safety and cultural safety. So those are the things that are more elevated in our code. It gives our nation as Standing Rock the ability to stand toe to toe with the state and come into agreement instead of be superseded by a law, by the state, to say that they have control of all energy projects within their boundaries. Because we exist before their boundaries, but we needed to make sure that we had law to stand toe to toe. So we’re going to have to go into compact. Now how many of the developers have to deal with compacts? But these are the things that we’re ironing out beforehand as we move into the project.John Farrell:I just want to touch on that. I find this both just fascinating to learn about, but I think important for people to understand in terms of the challenges you face around regulation and sovereignty. So here you have the standard state regulatory body that regulates electricity development, the Public Service Commission in North Dakota on typical private property. Their rules apply for how you site energy resources and permit energy resources and what you’re saying, what I hear you saying is those rules could have applied on tribal lands, but if you want to be able to exercise your own sovereignty, your own decision-making around that, you basically created your own code similar to that regulatory code through the public Service commission that regulates that itself. So it’s an additional piece of regulatory infrastructure you have to create, but it’s essential for having the meaningful sense of control and ownership that you want because without it, you’re just, you’re going to be subservient to whatever that commission has set up for the rules.Joseph McNeil:Correct. And it was something where we took this, oh geez, I forget how much that code cost. It wasn’t cheap. And explain it to our council, which wasn’t a great leap at all for them to understand and for us to understand, and our communities to understand – not just council, but our communities to understand, that we are moving in a space where we’re increasing our ability to be sovereign and that’s the whole name of the game we move into. Eventually when the revenue starts coming in where we’re building distributed energy systems adjacent to communities and SAGE is now becoming a public power authority that is creating energy and billing our people at a lower rate. And that’s the whole goal of this, is to use the revenue to build systems so that our people can afford energy at a lower rate and still have a successful business.

Then these laws that we created serve multiple layers of regulatory authority for us to exist and govern ourselves. So this creating these institutions that has been critical for us to move into this space and we’re willing to work with anybody else about what we’ve done, how we’ve done it, because it’s not something that we’re trying to sell. This is a gift and more frontline communities need to be moving into this space so that we can change the outlook and at least what we expect from energy systems that are developer centric, business centric, profit driven, back, getting to a place where communities are standing first in that space instead of investors.John Farrell:We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, I ask Joseph and Christina about how they’ve put together the financing for the project, the challenges of interconnection, and how we could change policy to make subsequent tribal and community energy projects more viable. You’re listening to a local Energy Rules podcast with Joseph McNeil, CEO of the SAGE Development Authority for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and Christina Hollenbeck, CEO of Justice Capital.

Hey, thanks for listening to Local Energy Rules. If you’ve made it this far, you’re obviously a fan and we could use your help for just two minutes. As you’ve probably noticed, we don’t have any corporate sponsors or ads for any of our podcasts. The reason is that our mission at ILSR is to reinvigorate democracy by decentralizing economic power. Instead, we rely on you, our listeners. Your donations not only underwrite this podcast, but also help us produce all of the research and resources that we make available on our website and all of the technical assistance we provide to grassroots organizations. Every year ILSR’s small staff helps hundreds of communities challenge monopoly power directly and rebuild their local economies. So please take a minute and go to ilsr.org and click on the donate button. And if making a donation isn’t something you can do, please consider helping us in other ways. You can help other folks find this podcast by telling them about it, or by giving it a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. The more ratings from listeners like you, the more folks can find this podcast and ILSR’s other podcasts, Community Broadband Bits and Building Local Power. Thanks again for listening. Now, back to the program.John Farrell:You’ve touched a little bit on how did you get the money together to do the pre-development for this project, and I was hoping to go into that in a little more detail to understand kind of what money, what capital did the Tribe itself have available? Is, you have money coming from philanthropic sources, is there, you mentioned federal, the Inflation Reduction Act IRA, that there’s maybe some money there that can help. How are you putting that together and maybe if you could help us understand how much of that is unique to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and maybe how much of that is stuff that might be available to other tribal communities that are trying to do this kind of community owned project development?Joseph McNeil:Remember the Dakota Access Pipeline? That for us was a natural thing to do. That for us was part of our DNA, standing for the water and protection of the water primarily. Because that pipeline was less than a mile from my wife’s hometown and where our kids play and where we get our water, but our relationship to the water and our relationship to the earth means something great. And during that time, we had a lot of folks who come through and ask what can they do? A lot of foundations came through while we were already writing grants to do pre-development work in this space. Our current chairwoman, Janet Alkire was working in that area for land operations and energy development and the then chairman Dave Archambault was getting folks coming through and asking about what they could donate to it. And so he said, let’s put some of this money to this project because he knew those were real potential there. And we want to thank ’em for that because it’s still moving forward.

So that’s philanthropy and they’ve been greatly helpful in us being able to hire the best in class partners in that space. We brought on UL, which used to be AWS Truepower out of Boston, which does a lot of wind energy design, power plant design in the Dakotas and around the country. We had other great consultant that came from GE and Tennessee Valley. We were able to bring in best of class. So when we were able to say that these are our folks that we have working with us, people understood, oh great, then we know what you’re talking about is true. So other foundations are able to come on and say, okay, we can see these other foundations that started working with us and we want to be helpful as well. We’re able to bring in with Christina and working with Justice Capital and then also other partners that we have with Baker Tilly to continue to write foundational grants and then also federal grants.

Christina’s work with Justice Capital has a mix between the two foundational philanthropic partners and federal partners and then our folks at Baker Tilly have brought a lot of grants that work, a lot of tribes in that space to help us achieve federal grants. Like we got the tribal economic development capacity building grant, energy capacity building grant, which is like $475,000 to help us put into pre-development capacity building for SAGE. It’s just been a great relationship as we look at that space, but it’s never an easy thing because we’re still putting money into the project, into us working on our pre-development part of this.

And then also the need for us to be in the space as far as interconnection is a developer-centric thing itself, category itself. Developers that have large balance sheets could absorb a doubling in price of studies where we had to be responsive in 15 days of developer could said, I’ll just put a chunk of change down there and that’ll hold my spot in queue. We did all the pre-development work outside of that land control, environmental studies, et cetera, with cash. But it’s been working with those foundational philanthropic partners to be able to be that flexible to do that. And that’s not an easy thing and that’s where working with folks that understand that space and have relationship therein has been a great benefit for us to help us move stage by stage. And I think Christina can pick up the ball on that.John Farrell:Yeah, I’d love to hear some from you, Christina, and then come and circle back to that question about interconnection and whatnot. That is I think something a lot of people in the clean energy sector are talking about right now and understand the project. But yeah, Christina, please if there’s more you could talk about with this, that’d be lovely.Christina Hollenback:So yeah, just building on what Joe already shared, one of the things that I think a lot of folks forget in this work and sometimes even foundations forget it, is that really the grant making dollars are only 5% of their money. The 95% of their money is invested into projects and funds and different offerings all across the world to be very frank. And so what we made sure was based on the values and the vision that SAGE had already outlined, they were clear that they wanted to retain ownership, make sure that they were no harm, not low harm, right? There was a very clear vision that was outlined by the nation and by SAGE. So our ability to kind of filter investors through that and then as we partner with investors, not just talking about grant dollars, but talking about program related investments, right? Talking about the full breadth of capital that they have at their fingertips, which could range from grants or recoverable grants to PRIs and or if they’re not a foundation, maybe it’s a low cost catalytic debt that values the impact along with the financial return.

And then ultimately as we move in construction finance, we’ll need more market rate returns. But I think the way that this is structured, which is totally different, is that rather than thinking about some low cost debt or some grants to cap off a project, it’s saying, what if we right size the grants and the catalytic capital to the earliest stages of this, what will become a cash producing asset, to be able to ensure that SAGE and the Tribe maintain ownership and governance over the project to ensure their values can be infused through the project in perpetuity. So I think that the engagement with investors is really, really key and just can’t emphasize enough that this is built off of the no DAPL movement. I mean, there’s just, people know Standing Rock because of the movement that was led by young people on the front lines. And rather than there just being a philanthropic thread to pull for those folks that want to support what happens in the wake of no DAPL, it’s actually saying don’t just open up 5% of your portfolio, open up a hundred percent, because there’s a place for every different type of capital, every different source of capital has a place to be able to finance and support SAGE’s work and specifically with Anpetu Wi as one of those many projects in Sage’s ecosystem. And so I think in many ways it turns upside down the traditional capital structuring model, et cetera, to ensure once again that it’s aligned with the vision and values of SAGE and of Standing Rock and of the Lakota people.John Farrell:Thanks, Christina. I really just, I’m glad that you put emphasis to that and mentioned it twice about the advantage of those dollars coming up front to support pre-development and the values of the project around ownership and the long-term benefits. I think that’s been such a struggle.Christina Hollenback:Can I just be real specific there, John? In the end, it would be almost negligible in terms of the returns if we structured that at the end when we structure that at the beginning, for every dollar invested in SAGE at this stage into the impact. We project it will return $10 in community wealth building for SAGE and for the tribe. So what is negligible at the end is absolutely paramount at the beginning and now positions SAGE to become the lead investor in all of their future projects, which means they will not have to dilute their ownership in every future project. They will not have to give up their governance and ownership and be beholden to other outside capital desires and needs in every future project that SAGE does. So no pun intended, it is literally the wind in the sails for every other project in the ecosystem that SAGE has in development of which there’s many to really position the Standing Rock Zoo Tribe and the nation to be a regional leader in clean energy production and resiliency.John Farrell:That’s amazing. I want to talk about one specific area of impact that this early investment is having around interconnection. So people who are following clean energy generally have probably seen some stories about like, oh, interconnection is a big issue right now, especially with transmission. All of our big grids are very congested. So as Joseph, as you talked about early on your project, like many others, needs permission to connect to the transmission lines to sell its power on the electric grid. Can you talk a little bit about what’s involved in that specifically? So for people who are maybe not spending day to day doing this kind of development work, but then also how it’s been important to have – you referenced this briefly – about sometimes you have to have money on fairly short notice to hold your place in line to get on the grid, and that’s where some of this early investment has been so crucial.Joseph McNeil:Just as an example, when we first applied our application was $2,000 per megawatt. That was $470,000. Some of the folks that we had partnering with us at the time were like, great, we can help you out with that. And then with 20 days notice, roughly a month’s notice, we had 20 days to respond to a “true up” they called it of what the application studies were going to look like. So they wanted the initial applicants to put another $2,000 up. So we needed $470,000 within 20 days, and then it just doubled everything. The cost of everything doubled. So as we’re looking at the ability to do that, it was really important for us to have these kind of partners who were understanding and willing to listen to what does this dynamic that interconnection and developers have in this space and why are the costs doubling?

So as we dug down into this discussion, we talked to other attorneys who work in the space with SPP and MISO, in the area, they’re able to be able to have us have conversations with some other folks to discuss our ability to be in this space and be flexible in this space without harm to others. There’s a lot involved in all of these discussions, but for us to take this circ*mstance to foundations and or grant makers or impact investors that were working or looking at our project, it was kind of vital for us to say, hey, community hasn’t existed part in this part ever. I think that we’re the only commercial community project in this space at this magnitude of 235 megawatts. So for us to be reflexive and responsive in that took a lot of running, really, really did.

But we have a solid project. It always goes back to the simple bones of this. We have roughly 45 to 50% wind capacity in the area that we’re looking at doing, and our studies show us being in that space. And so that’s why we moved two out into a say newer area just adjacent to it so that we can increase that capacity a little bit because it just means more back to us so that we can utilize for community growth. But back to interconnection, it’s no joke from the larger cadre of folks and developers who operate in this space of interconnecting large power onto 345 kvs.

Also, how that tariff affects distribution on a local basis for smaller DERs to exist in community, all come through state regulated or translated commissions and bodies that vary state by state. So you don’t know what you’re going to get state by state and limit the ability to produce for your community. So on North Dakota side for Standing Rock, you can build a solar system that is roughly 10 kilowatt hours per house, and then after that it goes to the per rate, which is the avoided cost of power, the cost of coal, which is like 2 cents, and you can’t finance a project on that. So as we look at the system from top to bottom, it’s not built for communities to participate in. And as we look at more communities getting involved in this space, this is really the cutting edge of this and how do we get our voice heard to the legislatures and to the FERC in general to start looking at how they’re issuing a tariff and how states are translating that tariff to protect particularly communities coming up into this.

So if they’re putting money out saying, yeah, we’re going to do all this solar, you can do everything you want to. It feels like the biggest bonfire. It’s not a gaslight, it’s a gas bonfire, and they’re not just gaslighting us with this thing. It’s like, how do you get it done? And I think that that’s kind of the challenge that more I talk to people in the industry that are understanding what we’re doing. They’re like, how do you get it done? And we don’t have a magic pill to it. We’re just talk with folks all through throughout the value chain there, all throughout the regulatory chain about the uniqueness of our project and what it means to our people, and that resonates no matter where you go.John Farrell:I’d love to ask you in wrapping up about what folks who are working in this space, a lot of us do policy advocacy, some at the national level, some at the state level, some even at the local level. Some of us have relationships with foundations. As you were talking about Christina, they’re using just such a small fraction of their resources oftentimes. What should people be paying attention to? If you are someone who cares about this idea of equity in addressing climate change, who likes to see communities really get meaningful benefits and have meaningful say over clean energy development, what are things that we should be thinking about or trying to do in our advocacy work around clean energy and climate? I’ll go to you first, Christina.Christina Hollenback:Yeah, I think there’s a couple of areas. One is I think when we’re looking at the brass tacks around IRA implementation, which I think there’s a lot of policy and advocacy conversations, including folks like SAGE is really vital because what’s really happening is that, as Joe has said, SAGE is just setting precedent at every, I mean literally just moving the goal line across every single benchmark around this and IRA really opened up the opportunity for community ownership. But in the brass tacks, the rest of those infrastructures around FERC and other entities are still developer oriented. They’re still assuming a big developer is going to come in, own the project, do what they do. And so for us to take advantage of IRA, take advantage of the opportunities that this administration has put before us, really thinking about how as we’re making those fixes, how does it actually operationally get addressed? That’s one area on the policy side that I think is really key. And we’ll be having a memo that’s released early next year that we’d love for folks to take a look at for folks to amplify, et cetera around some of those brass tacks fixes that are really needed.

I think the other thing for those that are working with foundations or family offices or who are trying to deploy their capital in a way that is in alignment with what is sustainable, right, and good in the earth, but also what also is going to be the leadership of this just transition, which is indigenous communities all over the world, I think really looking at how are you assessing what risk looks like in this moment? So we’ve had conversations with some foundations, some investors that are like, well, it’s too risky at this stage. Well, the risk of inaction has to be calculated at this point when we’re also talking about climate change. The risk of inaction, the risk of this not going through is huge. And so I think that as we’re thinking about with foundations and other investors, what does it look like to be supporting frontline community led solutions? It means that you have to ensure that the grant dollars for them to have the technical assistance and support that they need to be successful is there and is right sized to the appropriate stage of development.

And then it’s also that we have to look at the full breadth of capital. We have to look at the full spectrum of capital and put it all to use towards the same vision and values that SAGE has outlined and that SAGE is a steward of because SAGE has been, SAGE has been, I won’t say appointed, but it is the trusted steward for these projects by the Lakota people and by Standing Rock. And so how do we as investors, how do we as foundations fall in line with that trust and how do we get skin in the game to actually own some of that risk so that the risk is not solely born once again by frontline indigenous communities as it has been in perpetuity, during colonization? So yeah, those are the two things that I would say are really game changers in terms of next steps. And then also just learn with us, rock with us every step of the way. SAGE is blazing trails. There’s a lot of awesome things about that. There’s a lot of challenging things about that. But one thing that comes from that is that we’re always learning. We’re always getting better, and we welcome partnership to get us there. So it’s an honor to walk with Joe and with SAGE and with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Lakota Nation, and glad to have others walk with us in a good way so that we can see more of these projects grow all over Turtle Island.John Farrell:And maybe the way I would ask this question of you, Joseph, is how can you make other projects that might follow in your footsteps and more boring, as you put it, and less novel and less groundbreaking? How can we make this simpler and more normal?Joseph McNeil:I think about the ability for us to find financial resources in such a little period of time and discuss how we are acting as a developer in this space instead of a developer. We looked at so many other ways. We said, geez, we wish there was a pool of money for tribes to pull out from. And I think as we take a look at what’s being offered out there and these loans, et cetera, direct loan, direct pay, I mean, these are all fantastic tools out there, but a lot of tribes and frontline communities that can aggregate their resources to do energy development need pre-development dollars. And if there’s an study that says in this area, this is a potential, maybe that’s all you need to qualify for a development pool of funds to get your pre-development work done, because otherwise you’re relying solely on a developer and them spending their money on developing your asset, and then it puts you back in that same position of having a developer-centric project. Then you’re end up leasing your land or having very small pittance and revenue derivatives from that project for 20, 25 years.

What they told us in the beginning, John, was that, okay, after 20 years, these turbines are yours. That’s great. Boy, we’re going to have how many years of revenue that’s all ours after that? Maybe five. Oh, that’s not so great. And then, then we have to make sure that we have enough money to tear these things down or refit them. So the cost benefit wasn’t really there because all the money would’ve been gone to refit the turbines. So you’re playing a long distance time game of duration, game of poker there and hoping for the best. But if there’s a pool of funds out there that can help communities do this upfront, then you know what your value is upfront. If that’s a loan, that’s even better because then those communities can own that asset and use it as their chips to start off in this game with like we did.

So everything that we’re doing, we’re happily willing to hand it over, help with other folks, and this is all around relationships as well. So folks that we’ve talked to, happily introduced them to folks that we talk to so that more people can do the same thing because we need this to be normalized. It needs to be normal that a developer isn’t the only one that can do this, and then the two developers out there, communities where it’s going to be moving forward, everything else is used up. What else is there? There’s congestions, there’s all of this out there, and tribal lands are, at least within this country and in this continent, one of the last places, best places to develop renewable energy assets from who else to partner with and think about it and being partners because it’s not just your investors. How much money do you need to make? My God, it’s just kind of awesome when you think about all the amount of money that’s going out there, what people are bringing, geez, our kids are going to inherit this and hopefully learn along the way that we got to do this together. That’s my whole thing about being good partners and finding good partners. When we started having a developer discussion, it was really about that partnership and it weaned away pretty quickly a lot of those developers who were interested in being partners all with the community.John Farrell:Well, Joseph and Christina, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this amazing wind project and an amazing model for community ownership for tribal nations. I’m eagerly following along in the development of this project, but also very interested to see how you’re going to be able to help change and make this kind of development more boring and typical for so many others to come.Joseph McNeil:We appreciate it.Christina Hollenback:That would be awesome.Joseph McNeil:I appreciate the opportunity to with your audience and welcome any queries and questions to us as folks have them.John Farrell:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Local Energy Rules with Joseph McNeil, CEO of SAGE Development Authority for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and Christina Hollenbeck, CEO of Justice Capital. On the show page, look for links to more information about the project and about Justice Capital, whose purpose is to support financial structures that avoid extractive energy development. Also look for ILSR’S recent Report Advantage Local, which documents the social and economic benefits of community clean energy ownership, as well as a couple of older podcasts about community wind projects that were developed many years ago. Local Energy Rules is produced by myself and Maria McCoy with editing provided by audio engineer Drew Birschback. Tune back into Local Energy Rules every two weeks to hear how we can take on concentrated power to transform the energy system. Until next time, keep your energy local and thanks for listening.

A New Day for Wind Farm Development

SAGE Development Authority, the first Native owned public power company, was created by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to secure energy independence, protect the environment, and promote equitable economic growth. SAGE works on many initiatives, but in particular, has been developing the 235 megawatt Anpetu Wi Wind Farm.

Hollenback and McNeil each emphasize the importance of owning the wind farm, rather than leasing land to an outside developer. By owning the project, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will collect all of the revenue — estimated to double Standing Rock’s annual revenue — and can reinvest it in the community.

That means 20 to 25 years of real revenue coming into us so that we could rebuild our infrastructure, our schools, housing, home mortgages, provide financial institutions for our people to invest in entrepreneurship… for me it’s multifaceted to how this can be beneficial far beyond what we’re doing by simply putting up a wind farm.— Joseph McNeil

Owning the land and the development process has allowed for extra care and flexibility in project siting. SAGE has a practice of strictly avoiding harm, explains McNeil, rather than mitigating it after the fact.

Securing Financing Without Sacrificing Self-Determination

Hollenback describes Justice Capital as an outsourced chief investment officer to SAGE. It supports SAGE by attracting investors and serving as the intermediary with government agencies — while staying true to SAGE’s values and maintaining the Tribe’s vision.

What this is ushering in is a more community centered paradigm of development and ownership, where it’s not to say that developers aren’t also going to get paid for their work. It’s not to say that investors are not going to get paid back for investing in the project. It’s just saying that you’re not going to do so to extract from, in this case, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.— Christina Hollenback

While the federal Inflation Reduction Act includes some provisions that make it easier for Tribal communities to develop clean energy projects, McNeil describes many challenges that have come up in pre-development — a stage less likely to be covered by grants or loans. It also takes a lot of money to participate in the interconnection process. Still, SAGE has been raising funds through every available channel and the project’s interconnection study is underway.

We don’t want to be a unique unicorn… We are just a simple boring project that is one, investible, safe, and it’s got great wind capacity just like any other project does.—Joseph McNeilEpisode Notes

See these resources for more behind the story:

• Find news and updates on the Anpetu Wi Wind Farm.
• Learn more about Justice Capital and how it has partnered with SAGE.
• Read ILSR’s report Advantage Local, which documents the social and economic benefits of community clean energy ownership.
• Listen to episode 4 and episode 7 of the Local Energy Rules podcast, which cover community wind projects.

For concrete examples of how towns and cities can take action toward gaining more control over their clean energy future, explore ILSR’s Community Power Toolkit.

Explore local and state policies and programs that help advance clean energy goals across the country using ILSR’s interactive Community Power Map.

This is the 208th episode of Local Energy Rules, an ILSR podcast with Energy Democracy Director John Farrell, which shares stories of communities taking on concentrated power to transform the energy system.

Local Energy Rules is Produced by ILSR’s John Farrell and Maria McCoy. Audio engineering by Drew Birschbach.

This article originally posted at ilsr.org. For timely updates, follow John Farrell on Twitter, our energy work on Facebook, or sign up to get the Energy Democracy weekly update.

Featured Photo Credit: iStock

The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates.

That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter.

In other words, if Coca-Cola is producing one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about a tenth of the identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers, and other ecosystems.

That finding “shook me up a lot, I was really distraught,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author. It suggests that companies’ loudly proclaimed efforts to reduce their plastic footprint “aren’t doing much at all” and that more is needed to make them scale down the amount of plastic they produce.

Significantly, it supports calls from delegates to the United Nations global plastics treaty —which is undergoing its fourth round of discussions in Ottawa, Canada, through Tuesday — to restrict production as a primary means to “end plastic pollution.”

“What the data is saying is that if the status quo doesn’t change in a huge way — if social norms around the rapid consumption and production of new materials don’t change — we won’t see what we want,” Cowger told Grist.

Read Next Petrochemical companies have known for 40 years that plastics recycling wouldn’t work Joseph Winters

That plastic production should be correlated with plastic pollution is intuitive, but until now there has been little quantitative research to prove it — especially on a company-by-company basis. Perhaps the most significant related research in this area appeared in a 2020 paper published in Environmental Science and Technology showing that overall marine plastic pollution was growing alongside global plastic production. Other research since then has documented the rapidly expanding “plastic smog” in the world’s oceans and forecasted a surge in plastic production over the next several decades.

The Sciences Advances article draws on more than 1,500 “brand audits” coordinated between 2018 and 2022 by Break Free From Plastic, a coalition of more than 3,000 environmental organizations. Volunteers across 84 countries collected more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the number of items contributed by specific companies.

About half of the litter that volunteers collected couldn’t be tied to a specific company, either because it never had a logo or because its branding had faded or worn off. Among the rest, a small handful of companies — mostly in the food and beverage sector —turned up most often. The top polluters were Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria — the parent company of Philip Morris USA — and Philip Morris International (which is a separate company that sells many of the same products).

More than 1 in 10 of the pieces came from Coca-Cola, the top polluter by a significant margin. Overall, just 56 companies were responsible for half of the plastic bearing identifiable branding.

The researchers plotted each company’s contribution to plastic pollutionagainst its contribution to global plastic production (defined by mass, rather than the number of items). The result was the tidy, one-to-one relationship between production and pollution that caused Cowger so much distress.

Log-log linear regressions and point plot for the relationship between the percent of global plastic mass produced by companies (x axis) and the mean percent of the total branded plastic found in the audit events (y axis). Courtesy of Win Cowger

Many of the top polluters identified in the study have made voluntary commitments to address their outsize plastic footprint. Coca-Cola, for example, says it aims to reduce its use of “virgin plastic derived from nonrenewable sources” by 3 million metric tons over the next five years, and to sell a quarter of its beverages in reusable or refillable containers by 2030. By that date the company also aims to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells. Pepsi has a similar target to reduce virgin plastic use to 20 percent below a 2018 baseline by the end of the decade. Nestlé says it had reduced virgin plastic use by 10.5 percent as of 2022, and plans to achieve further reductions by 2025.

In response to Grist’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola listed several of the company’s targets to reduce plastic packaging, increased recycled content, and scale up reusable alternatives. “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way,” the spokesperson said.

Similarly, a PepsiCo representative said the company aims to “reduce the packaging we use, scale reusable models, and partner to further develop collection and recycling systems.” They affirmed Pepsi’s support for an “ambitious and binding” U.N. treaty to “help address plastic pollution.”

Three of the other top polluting companies did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s worth noting that many of the companies’ plans involve replacing virgin plastic with recycled material. This does not necessarily address the problem outlined in the Science Advances study, since plastic products are no less likely to become litter just because they’re made of recycled content. There’s also a limit to the number of times plastic can be recycled — experts say just two or three times —before it must be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. Many plastic items cannot be recycled at all.

Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth in the U.K., commended the researchers for making “a very useful contribution to our understanding about the link between production and pollution.” He said the findings could shape regulations to make companies financially responsible for plastic waste —based on the specific amount they contribute to the environment.

The findings could also inform this week’s negotiations for the U.N. global plastics treaty, where delegates are continuing to spar over whether and how to restrict production. According to Cowger, if the treaty really aims to “end plastic pollution” —as it states in its mandate —then negotiators will need to think beyond voluntary measures and regulate big producers.

“It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m gonna reduce my plastic by 2030, you’ll see,’” Cowger told Grist. “It’s gonna be a country that says, ‘If you don’t reduce by 2030, you’re going to get hit with a huge fine.’”

This story has been updated to include a response from PepsiCo.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute on Apr 24, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

Break Free From Plastic - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:59

APRIL 24, 2024 – A research paper published today in Science Advances reveals a direct correlation between plastic production and plastic pollution, such that every 1% increase in consumer goods companies’ plastic production is associated with a 1% increase in plastic pollution in the environment. The study finds that fast-moving consumer goods companies disproportionately contribute to the problem more than household and retail companies. The study marks the first robust quantification of the global relationship between plastic production and pollution.

The research, led by scientists from a dozen different universities in the United States of America, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Estonia, Chile, Sweden, Canada, and the United Kingdom, found that 56 global companies are responsible for more than half of all branded plastic pollution. The Coca-Cola Company was responsible for 11% of branded waste, followed by PepsiCo (5%), Nestlé (3%), Danone (3%), and Altria/Philip Morris International (2%). The top companies identified produce food, beverage, or tobacco products.

The five-year analysis used #BreakFreeFromPlastic brand audit data from 1,576 audit events across 84 countries. Brand audits are citizen science initiatives in which volunteers conduct waste clean-ups and document the brands found on the pollution collected. Over five years, more than 200,000 volunteers submitted data through Break Free From Plastic or 5 Gyres’ TrashBlitz app.

The strong relationship between consumer goods companies’plastic production and pollution, across geographies and widely varying waste management systems, suggests that reducing plastic production in the fast-moving consumer goods sector is a viable solution to curb global plastic pollution. As world leaders negotiate a Global Plastics Treaty at INC-4 this month in Ottawa, Canada, this research serves as a tool to support a high-ambition legally binding treaty that includes provisions on corporate accountability, prioritizing plastic production reduction measures, and promoting reuse and refill systems.

Read the paper here.

Co-Author Quotes:

“When I first saw the relationship between production and pollution, I was shocked. I wanted to throw up, it was the reality of my worst nightmare. It means that producers big and small are toeing the line, despite all the things big brands say they are doing, we see no positive impact from their efforts. But on the other hand, it gives me hope that fast-moving consumer goods companies reducing their plastic production and shifting towards more durable and reusable products would have a strong positive impact on the environment.”

- Win Cowger, Research Director, The Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research

“Our study underscores the critical role of corporate accountability in tackling plastic pollution. We, as individuals, are not responsible for the plastics crisis; the onus lies on these 56 global companies to take decisive action. I urge world leaders at INC-4 to listen to the science, and to consider the clear link between plastic production and pollution during negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty.”

- Dr. Lisa Erdle, Director of Science & Innovation, The 5 Gyres Institute

“This scientific study affirms what activists and communities impacted by plastic pollution have been saying for years: the more plastic is produced, the more plastic is found in the environment. It’s that simple. Yet again, plastic polluters like The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, and Nestlé continue to fail on their voluntary commitment to reduce their plastic footprint. We need a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty that mandates significant cuts in plastic production and stops corporations from flooding the planet with single-use plastic.”

- Sybil Bullock, Associate Campaign Manager, Break Free From Plastic

“The research identifies the top 56 multinational companies contributing to global branded plastic litter. Past studies have ranked countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria, etc. among the top sources of plastic waste into the ocean. This has led to a narrative in social media that blames poor countries for global plastic pollution, ignoring the fact that around the 1960s global companies flooded developing countries with cheap, single-use plastics displacing traditional biodegradable materials and sustainable reuse-refill systems which, in the case of the Philippines, dated back to the 16th century. The current study focuses instead on the role of corporations and global plastic production.”

- Dr. Jorge Emmanuel, Adjunct Professor and Research Faculty Fellow, Institute of Environmental & Marine Sciences, and College of Engineering & Design, Silliman University

“This research provides the first quantification of global producer contribution to branded plastic pollution. The findings suggest that single-use packaging significantly contributes to branded plastic pollution. This data can help inform ways to address plastic production and reduce plastic waste ending up in the environment.”

- Dr. Kathy Willis, Postdoctoral Fellow from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency

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About Break Free From Plastic (BFFP)

#BreakFreeFromPlastic is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in 2016, more than 2,000 organizations and 11,000 individual supporters from across the world have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. BFFP member organizations and individuals share the values of environmental protection and social justice and work together through a holistic approach to bring about systemic change. This means tackling plastic pollution across the whole plastics value chain—from extraction to disposal—focusing on prevention rather than cure and providing effective solutions. www.breakfreefromplastic.org.

About The 5 Gyres Institute

The 5 Gyres Institute (5 Gyres) is a leader in the global movement against plastic pollution with more than 10 years of expertise in scientific research, engagement, and education. With the original goal of answering a few key scientific questions about ocean plastics, co- founders Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins led 19 research expeditions in all five subtropical gyres, as well as many of the world’s lakes and rivers. 5 Gyres continues to lead with scientific research to drive upstream solutions through education, advocacy, and community building. Learn more at 5gyres.org and @5gyres.

Special Note to Reporters

More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science Advances press package at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak/. Several scientists who contributed to this paper will be present at INC-4 and available for interviews upon request.

In collaboration with

and others.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Institute for Local Self-Reliance - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:28

Is 2024 the year of trust-busting? This bipartisan issue of small versus big is a fight taking place on the streets and in the Federal and State courts, from grassroots movements to Congressional hearings. ILSR’s Co-Executive Director Stacy Mitchell and Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project, joined the Laura Flanders & Friends show to give context to this pivotal antitrust moment.

Stacy explains, “What we are seeing in this administration is we actually have people in place who are making huge change and are using the tools to the full extent that they have . . . There is a lot of grassroots support for the idea of dealing with corporate power. Everybody is feeling this . . .”

Watch the show below or here.

Fuels America Blog - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:09

For Immediate Release: April 24, 2024

WASHINGTON D.C. — Amid the ongoing negotiations surrounding the Farm Bill, industry stakeholders representing nearly the entire supply chain for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) – includingsevenmajor airlines – called on Agriculture Committee leaders in the House and Senate to boost the role of American farms in fueling low-carbon aviation.

“SAF, which can be produced from renewable biomass andagriculture-based feedstocks, presents an opportunity to expand U.S. marketsfor agricultural goods, bolster our nation’s rural economy and provide arenewable, low-emission domestic energy supply for the aviation sector,” wrotetheAerospace Industries Association, Airlines for America, Airbus, AlaskaAirlines, American Airlines, the American Soybean Association, Atlas AirWorldwide Holdings, Inc., Boeing, the Cargo Airline Association, Clean FuelsAlliance America, Delta Air Lines, FedEx Express, Fuels America, GE Aerospace,US, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, Gevo, Inc., Growth Energy,Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, the Kansas Corn Growers Association, theKansas Grain Sorghum Association, the Kansas Soybean Association, MarquisSustainable Aviation Fuel, the National Air Carrier Association, the NationalAir Transportation Association, the National Business Aviation Association, theNational Corn Growers Association, Novonesis, the Ohio Corn & Wheat GrowersAssociation, the Ohio Soybean Association, POET, LLC, the Renewable FuelsAssociation, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, United Parcel Service,and Vertical Aviation International.

“Due to wide bipartisan, bicameral support in Congress, aswell as benefits to U.S. farmers, biofuel producers and the aviation industry,we ask that you include meaningful SAF provisions, such as the Farm to Fly Act,in the Farm Bill to strengthen American agriculture and help leverage this keyresource,” they added.

The Farm to Fly Act (H.R. 6271andS. 3637) wouldaffirmeligibility for SAF within current U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)Bio-Energy Programs, facilitate greater collaboration on SAF, and affirm acommon “GREET” definition of SAF for USDA purposes to ensure accuratemeasurements of emissions reductions from climate-smart farming practices andlow-carbon aviation fuel.

The full letter is available here.

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The post Press Release: Industry Leaders Share Sustainable Aviation Priorities for Farm Bill appeared first on Fuels America.

Categories:

Carbon Tracker Initiative - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 09:44

30 April – 1 May | London

Innovation Zero, the UK’s largest sustainability conference, returns to London Olympia for the second edition alongside its new co-located event, Infrastructure Zero.

Supported by the UK Government, Innovation Zero provides a meeting place for announcements, partnerships, deal-making, and collaborations for those who develop, produce, deploy, and fund low carbon solutions. See the full programme here.

Christopher de Vere Walker, Head of Power & Utilities, will be participating in the session: Investments in Energy Infrastructure

The post Innovation Zero appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Categories: I. Climate Science

Environmental Working Group - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 09:35

USDA conservation funding ‘guardrails’ vital for reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissionsrcolemanApril 24, 2024

When Congress provided almost $20 billion in Department of Agriculture funding for climate-smart farming practices, it included legislative “guardrails” to ensure the money goes to practices that actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build soil carbon.

Recent events show these guardrails are more important than Congress could have ever imagined.

Farmer demand for climate-smart funding, including assistance for cover crops, has greatly exceeded anyone’s expectations, and backlogs of farmers seeking assistance keep growing.

But, under pressure from some legislators, the USDA is giving some climate-smart funds to projects that may or may not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including irrigation projects.

If Congress were to remove the legislative guardrails around the $20 billon funding – included in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA – the USDA would inevitably revert to past practice when just one-fifth of its conservation funding flowed to practices that reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This would send conservation funds to farmers for things like irrigation practices that likely do not benefit the climate, regardless of this or a future administration’s views on the climate crisis.

Retaining the IRA funding guardrails is critical to the USDA’s evolution, from an agency that funds hundreds of different conservation practices and hopes for the best, to an agency that makes combatting the climate crisis a priority.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from farming is not just critical to helping avoid a climate catastrophe; it’s also critical to avoiding a political catastrophe for our farmers. Unless farmers reduce the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture could soon become the top source of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at more than 30 percent.

When driving, guardrails help us from falling off a cliff. For the USDA, the IRA guardrails will help avoid a different kind of catastrophe.

Areas of Focus Farming & Agriculture Climate & Agriculture Conservation Disqus Comments Authors Scott Faber Anne Schechinger April 24, 2024

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

Rocky Mountain Institute - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 09:28

Setting climate targets to reduce financed emissions is now the norm for most of the banking sector. And, for the over 40 founding signatories to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, April marks the deadline to publish a full suite of decarbonization targets that cover priority sectors including agriculture, aluminum, cement, coal, real estate, steel, oil and gas, power generation, and transport.

Many large banks are now eager to shift focus from target-setting to measuring and deploying transition finance. But — while mobilizing capital for the transition is necessary — laying the right foundation through target-setting is still critical if banks are to not only reduce financed emissions but also finance emissions reductions.

The Pegasus Guidelines, which launched on April 4, show how banks can leverage robust methodologies to set individual targets based on their own internal strategies. The Guidelines are a first-of-its-kind reporting methodology that supports banks to assess and disclose the emissions intensity and alignment of their aviation lending portfolios against a 1.5°C pathway. By equipping banks with a methodology, roadmap, and solutions to access high-quality data, the Guidelines enable lenders to set and make progress against informed climate targets for the sector and better support their clients’ decarbonization efforts.

Aviation, like other hard-to-abate industries, is complex, and its transition even more so. If banks are to understand what challenges clients face, how clients measure up to each other and the market, and the best tools to support their transition, over-simplified assumptions for measuring emissions and setting targets won’t do.

When setting climate targets, banks need to make choices about scoping, emissions measurement, and roadmap selection. These choices will have a large impact on a bank’s ability to implement its targets for real economy impact. Finance needs tools that enable a nuanced understanding of a sector: its processes, market structure and value chain, and — of course — what needs to change and how to reach net zero.

For the past several years, RMI has worked with finance, industry, and other standard-setters across the aviation, aluminum, shipping, and steel sectors to create sector-specific measurement and disclosure frameworks that do just this: focus on the market realities of each sector to enable a fair and more nuanced assessment of varied types of clients and to help banks identify the critical levers needed to support sectoral decarbonization.

Sectoral frameworks create a level playing field for industry

Aviation
RMI’s sectoral frameworks are tailored to respond to the specific needs of each sector. For example, the Pegasus Guidelines allow banks to examine their airline lending portfolios and differentiate traffic between passenger (including belly cargo) and dedicated cargo, which have different baseline emissions intensities and face different trajectories and constraints in their transition. The Guidelines also incorporate lifecycle emissions accounting, ensuring that sustainable aviation fuel — the sector’s primary decarbonization lever — can be accounted for through negative upstream emissions. And, since many aircraft are leased, the framework is designed to include emissions regardless of whether financing is provided to an airline or a lessor.

Aluminum
It can be difficult to assess the progress of clients with a wide range of starting emissions intensities resulting from significant differences in the production process between recycled and primary aluminum and further driven by differences in access to reliable, low-carbon electricity used in primary production. To assess producers on a like-for-like basis and reflect the realities of operating companies, the Sustainable Aluminum Finance Framework assesses primary and recycled production against their respective 1.5°C pathways and tailors each client’s climate-aligned benchmark to its starting emissions intensity using the Sectoral Decarbonization Convergence Approach developed by the Science-Based Targets initiative. This approach ensures that all clients have an actionable pathway towards decarbonization while asking even lower-carbon producers to make progress.

Exhibit 1: Variability in the emissions intensity of aluminum production | Source: International Aluminum Institute

Steel
The carbon intensity of steelmaking varies not just by technology type but also by the share of primary versus recycled material inputs used in production. Primary steel production is significantly more carbon-intensive than secondary production since it largely uses metallurgical coal to reduce iron ore. A single benchmark for the sector could incentivize steel producers to increase the use of scrap as a decarbonization strategy but — since global scrap availability is finite — this strategy is limited as it could result in scrap being redistributed rather than in emissions reductions. The Sustainable Steel Principles differentiate between primary and secondary steelmaking, keeping the focus to transitioning primary steel production which requires the adoption of clean end-state technologies rather than a more incremental approach that risks moving emissions between steelmakers.

Exhibit 2: Global emissions intensity of steelmaking by technology and input mix | Source: CRU

Shipping
The Poseidon Principles for shipping, which launched in 2019, spearheaded the sector-specific approach to emissions measurement and target setting. Under the Poseidon Principles, a vessel’s emissions intensity is compared against a decarbonization trajectory for its respective ship type and size class, acknowledging that vessels will face different constraints and opportunities to decarbonize. By linking the methodology to data available through the International Maritime Association, the Principles also paved the way for other sectoral approaches to ensure that high-quality data could be available for reporting.

Sector-based frameworks are an essential first step for banks to meet climate goals

Ultimately, a robust target-setting framework is not only a tool to meet banks’ commitments, but a vital tool to enable the real economy to meet its climate goals. RMI’s sector-based frameworks enable standardized comparisons between clients and across portfolios and to catalyze more effective collaboration between lenders and their clients on their transition to a low-carbon future. The frameworks aim to provide decision-makers with the intelligence necessary to engage clients, steer capital, and shift from reducing financed emissions to driving emissions reductions in sectors that are critical to our way of life.

The post Why Sectoral Target-Setting Finance Frameworks Are Key to Industrial Decarbonization appeared first on RMI.

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Global Justice Ecology Project - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 09:24

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 GJEP and Biofuelwatch visited Chile and Wallmapu (Mapuche territory) with the support of the digital media platform Resumen during the month of April 2024. During this visit into the field we confirmed, through the aerial images obtained by Resumen, that destructive clearcut logging […]

The post Chile Report-back appeared first on Global Justice Ecology Project.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Mining.Com - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 09:16

Gold Royalty (NYSE American: GROY) is teaming up with Taurus Mining Royalty Fund, financier for mid-tier and junior mining companies, to expand its reach in finding and executing potential deals.

On Wednesday, the firms entered into a three-year agreement that provides each with the ability to co-invest in certain precious metals royalties and streams sourced by the other.

The agreement provides a framework for cooperation and communication amongst the parties in the identification and evaluation of potential co-investment opportunities, a statement from Gold Royalty said.

Each party will have the right to invest between 25% and 50% in select asset transactions with a value of $30 million or more, the royalty firm said, adding that future dispositions of interests acquired by either party through this arrangement will be subject to rights of first offer.

John Griffith, chief development officer of Gold Royalty, said this agreement would offer the company an enhanced access to new and complementary geographic regions.

Gold Royalty currently holds a diversified portfolio consisting primarily of net smelter return royalties on properties located in the Americas.

These include Canadian Malartic, one of Canada’s largest operating gold mines, and the REN project, which is an underground extension to the largest US gold mine, the Goldstrikein Nevada.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry