The end of new drilling in Colorado?
Plus: A tale a two states' renewable policies.
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local & state climate action.
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Hello to new subscribers! This week I’ll be highlighting some stories that caught my eye. Next week paid members will get an exclusive recording of me reading my Grist story on Juneau’s local carbon offset, and I’ll be taking the last, leap-year week of February off.
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(Colorado sunset oil drill by bradm.404 on Flickr)
The beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?
Would a state with current oil and gas production ever ban fossil fuel extraction outright? Some Colorado senators are going to try, introducing a bill phasing out all new production in the state by 2030, the Colorado Sun reports:
The ban would allow for continued pumping from existing wells, but would also phase out modifications to those thousands of wells through redrilling or deepening. Unused drilling permits would expire. Previous operators of orphaned wells would have to pay more to hasten state cleanup efforts… The legislature should also pass studies of how to redesign Colorado’s training and workforce economy for a fair transition for the thousands of workers in good-paying oil and gas jobs, the backers say. Existing wells will pump on for decades even if the ban passes, they note.
I’m not familiar enough with Colorado politics to know the likelihood of this passing, but Colorado is probably the largest oil and gas producing state where this is even a discussion. The state is the fourth largest crude oil producer in US (though there is a giant gap between number 1, Texas and the rest of the top five) and also ranks highly in gas production.
Meanwhile in California, a state agency is moving through the bureaucratic steps of a previously announced end to fracking permits. It’s not a huge part of California’s oil and gas production, but another moment in policies explicitly ending the supply of fossil fuels, rather than trying to lower demand.
Vermont requiring local renewable projects, Arizona not so much
Emma Cotton at VTDigger has a good story about Vermont’s proposed changes to how utilities buy renewable energy, moving up the 100% requirement to 2030, instead of 75% by 2032. What’s most notable to me in this bill is an explicit requirement of regional —meaning grid-specific — projects:
While Vermont’s utilities can control the sources from which they purchase electricity, they do not control the electrons that course through New England’s grid. Rather, they purchase renewable energy credits from renewable projects to cover their fuel use.
On paper, Vermont’s electric grid is already mostly renewable, but in reality, Vermonters still receive much of their electricity from natural gas, for example, at night when solar panels are not generating electricity.
The push for the change comes from the idea that if utilities buy an increasing amount of power from new renewable sources, the money would fund new renewable projects in the region and reduce the grid’s dependence on natural gas.
A few years ago, Arizona was on the verge of passing their own 100% renewable mandate, but, because local (regulatory board) elections matter, the opposite is now true, Politico reports
Republicans expanded their majority on the utility commission to 4-1 in 2022 and have taken steps since then to reverse clean energy mandates. Most recently, the panel voted 4-1 to sunset rules that required regulated utilities to set energy efficiency requirements and get 15 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2025. Both were backed by small surcharges on electricity bills that collected more than $3.4 billion from Arizonans since 2006. Conservatives argue that the rules benefit only a handful of ratepayers… Environmentalists point to the broad benefits of energy efficiency investments, which can lower peak demand and reduce the need for costly new power plant construction. Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, reported more than $1.25 billion in net benefits from the efficiency surcharge between 2005 and 2022.
One tiny issue though: Many of Arizona’s utilities already hit 15%, and the state as a whole did in 2022, and given the state’s solar potential, that will absolutely increase (alongside gas). The question is — will it increase as much as it would without these policies in place?
A weird time for offshore wind
Here’s an example of one hand not talking to the other, but also one of competing priorities from Bloomberg Green
Located halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Morro Bay boasts a rich ecosystem of fish, otters and migrating whales that the Indigenous Chumash people want to protect with a new marine sanctuary. But 20 miles (32 kilometers) out, developers plan some of the West Coast’s first offshore wind farms where 1,100-foot-tall turbines (335 meters) tethered to the seabed will help California cut its carbon emissions.
One US government agency appears poised to approve the sanctuary. Another already leased 376 square miles of ocean for wind development, just outside the sanctuary’s boundaries. Now, a fight is brewing over whether the scenic bay itself should be left out of the sanctuary, to give undersea power cables from the wind farms a place to come onshore.
Behind the dispute is a widely protected California offshore but also a legacy of disrespect and environmental degradation. I’ll also note that a few miles away is the long-controversial Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, with its own contested place within California’s electricity future.
“If renewable energy developers are allowed to run afoul just like fossil fuel interests do, what’s the point?” said Violet Sage Walker, chairwoman of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council. “There is so much at risk here. Morro Bay is a sacred place, yet its history of environmental degradation spans generations. We do not want to see this legacy of disrespect continue.”
And the looming fear of a change in administration:
Some Chumash tribe members are willing to accept the carve-out for transmission lines if it means getting their long-sought sanctuary approved, in part because they fear former President Donald Trump could block the effort if he returns to office.
Offshore wind in the US has seen some significant, pardon the pun, headwinds in the past year, in part because of opposition both homegrown and astroturfed, but also economic issues. Heatmap’s recent podcast talks about where it might go next.
More local climate action links:
- A potential state program for electric school buses in Virginia (Energy News Network)
- L.A. County saw another near-record rain. How much of it will it get to keep? Not enough. (LA Times)
- Memo to FEMA: Time to update the Waffle House disaster index - do the EV chargers work? (WFLA)
- Nine states sign heat pump agreement to clean up air pollution (The Verge)
- New soot standard could bring healthier air to parts of the Philly region (WHYY)
- As Michigan winters vanish, researchers study snow for clues about what’s next (Bridge Michigan)