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MANUFACTURING REMAINS CLIMATE CHALLENGE WITH FEW SOLUTIONS: Members of both parties are aiming to help reduce carbon emissions that result from the manufacturing of products like steel, cement, and iron — one of the most challenging but overlooked components of combating climate change.
Technologies exist to “decarbonize” the power, transportation, and building sectors with renewable electricity, electric vehicles, and energy efficiency. But that is largely not true for industrial manufacturing, which is responsible for about 22% of U.S. emissions.
“Out of the major energy sectors, heavy industry is the hardest to decarbonize,” Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told me. “Even though it’s an enormous fraction of carbon emissions, it’s a huge step away from the public so they don’t see it or know how it works.”
The high rate of emissions of industrial manufacturing is a major problem for proposals like the Green New Deal that would fund a significant build-out of new clean energy infrastructure and climate change resiliency projects, such as seawalls and levees, that require carbon-intensive materials.
“A Green New Deal idea is that we spend a lot of government money and build a lot of super green stuff,” Friedmann said. “If you don’t take care of the industrial sector, that stuff increases your emissions.”
What’s the problem? The chemical processes of producing steel, cement, and iron inherently require the use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels, and there are few substitutes that would work the same way.
“Any scenario where we get to zero carbon has to grapple with the fact that we don’t know how to make steel, cement, and fertilizer without carbon as a chemical input and it’s been historically under-researched,” Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois told me.
Working on solutions: Casten is a co-author of bipartisan legislation introduced in the House and Senate in July, the Clean Industrial Technology Act, that would create a new program within the Energy Department to research and develop technologies that could be used as non-carbon alternatives in industrial manufacturing processes.
Casten, a freshman, was a clean energy businessman who led companies that aimed to help manufacturers cut their greenhouse gas emissions. As an example of the challenge, he cites experience working on a project at a silicone plant in West Virginia. Coal is a critical part of the chemical process of creaking silicon, which is used to make solar panels.
“There is no way to produce silicon right now without a coal input, which means we don’t really know how to make solar without coal,” Casten said.
Manufacturing also uses a lot of power: Another challenge is that manufacturers generate additional emissions from the electricity consumed in order to power large facilities, many of which have long lifespans, including steel plants built in the 1930s, Friedmann says.
Powering a cement kiln or a blast furnace requires enormous amounts of high temperature heat, meaning it’s more difficult to switch to all renewable or zero-carbon fuels.
If you combine the indirect emissions from power used by facilities with the emissions inherent in the chemical makeup of a product, the industrial sector is the largest emitting sector in the U.S. economy, at 30%.
Carbon capture remains far away: The technology for capturing carbon directly from an industrial facility so that it is never released into the atmosphere is also less advanced than the kind that can remove carbon dioxide from a coal or natural gas plant’s exhaust.
Brad Crabtree, co-director of the Carbon Capture coalition, a group of environmental and business groups that hosted a July 18 congressional briefing on industrial emissions, said there are no large-scale carbon capture projects operating in the U.S. for any of the three highest emitting industrial sectors: steel, cement, and chemicals.
“If we are to meet our climate change goals, we need a critical mass of carbon capture technologies in these sectors by 2030,” Crabtree said.
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who co-authored the Senate version of the Clean Industrial Technology Act, said he expects the legislation to prompt more research into carbon capture for industrial use.
“We expect carbon capture will be a significant piece of this,” Whitehouse told me.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writer Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe). Email [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS REQUEST GAO PROBE OF TRUMP’S HANDLING OF OFFSHORE DRILLING SAFETY RULES: Democratic House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders requested Monday that the Government Accountability Office investigate whether the federal government is equipped to respond to offshore oil spills.
“The Trump Administration’s misguided proposals to expand drilling in most U.S. continental-shelf waters and rollback of important offshore drilling safety regulations may increase the risk of another catastrophic spill,” said committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, along with colleagues Paul Tonko of New York and Diana DeGette of Colorado, in a letter to GAO.
The Democrats say the Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration has delayed acting on a series of proposed regulatory changes proposed by the Obama-era EPA to ensure the safety of chemical dispersants used in responding to oil spills.
A large amount of dispersants were used in responding to the deadly BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill — the largest spill in U.S. history — to reduce the chance that surface oil slick would reach shoreline habitats like marshes and mangroves or contact animals at the surface.
But dispersants, environmental groups say, push the effects of an oil spill deeper underwater, where they are harmful to marine life, and research after the BP oil spill raised uncertainties about the safety of its use after offshore oil spills.
The EPA has not finalized updates to federal rules covering dispersants proposed by the agency under the Obama administration in 2015. Democrats say EPA staff recently indicated to them that the agency does not intend to finalize the regulations until at least 2022.
MURKOWSKI INTRODUCES BILL TO EXPAND CLEAN ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS: Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced Monday that she introduced legislation to expand the access of loans for clean energy infrastructure to allow for greater development of projects in small and rural communities.
Her bill would permit certain state financing entities to be eligible for the Energy Department’s Section 1703 loan guarantee program, making it easier for states to secure financing for projects.
Under the loan program, DOE partners with private entities and lenders by providing loan guarantees for clean energy infrastructure projects that typically struggle to earn sufficient private investment due to technological risk. The program supports projects that avoid, sequester, or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon capture, industrial energy efficiency projects, and transmission lines to deliver wind and solar power.
“Right now, the department’s loan guarantee program is tailored more toward large projects, which inadvertently shuts out the projects needed in many smaller and rural communities,” said Murkowski, the chairwoman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee “My goal here is to level the playing field so that state entities can access the loan guarantee program, bundle a number of smaller projects together, and then make them a reality to reduce local costs and emissions.”
UK PARTNERS WITH US TO PROTECT OIL SHIPPING THROUGH STRAIT OF HORMUZ: Britain is partnering with the U.S. to protect oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz from Iran.
The British government said it would work with the U.S. after it struggled to assemble a European coalition to help maintain security there.
“Both the U.K. and U.S. are committed to working with allies and partners to encourage others to join and broaden the response to this truly international problem,” the U.K. government said, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. will provide intelligence and reconnaissance information to British patrol ships, the newspaper said.
Britain was pushed to act after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards acknowledged last month they had seized a U.K.-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero, during transit of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran said the capture was in retaliation for Britain seizing an Iranian tanker that was ferrying oil to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime.
Iran seized another oil tanker belonging to Iraq this past weekend in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, adding to tensions in the vital throughway for world oil.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz — through which a third of the world’s seaborne oil is transported — in retaliation for U.S. sanctions.
US EXPANDS SANCTIONS ON VENEZUELA, TARGETING SECONDARY PURCHASES OF OIL: The Trump administration expanded sanctions on Venezuela Monday, imposing penalties on any company or individual that transacts with or supports entities already being sanctioned by the U.S.
This could bar Chinese and Russian entities from buying oil or diluent from Venezuela’s state-run oil monopoly, PDVSA.
Those countries have continues to transact with PDVSA despite the Trump administration imposing sanctions on the company in January, resulting in Venezuela’s oil production falling 50% from last year, according to figures reported in July by OPEC.
Strict enforcement of the new sanctions could “materially reduce Venezuelan crude supply” from current levels of about 880,000 barrels per day in June, according to the consulting group ClearView Energy. ClearView expects enforcing the sanctions against China and Russia to be challenging, particularly if they conduct non-dollar transactions, but even a “small decline” in Venezuela’s oil output could “significantly” affect the price of heavy crude oil. There are few alternatives to Venezuela’s heavy oil.
The Rundown
Reuters China coal mine approvals surge despite climate pledges
New York Times How hot was July? Hotter than ever, global data shows
Wall Street Journal Can energy-producing buildings work in swampy south? Atlanta is trying
Bloomberg Battery-powered ships next up in battle to tackle emissions
Calendar
TUESDAY | August 6
House and Senate in August recess.
WEDNESDAY | August 7
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The U.S. Energy Association holds a briefing on the status of the 45Q carbon capture tax credit and how to prepare for its usage.
THURSDAY | August 8
12:30 p.m. ET. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on National Parks holds a field hearing in Deer Lodge, Montana “to examine opportunities to expand visitation at lesser-known National Park System units.”
