What’s the future for a oil-boom state?
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this week's edition includes an rare look at an "electric stable". If someone sent you this newsletter as a forward (thanks!) you can sign up to get it in your inbox here.
(Gas flaring in San Juan County, New Mexico by John Fowler on Flickr)
Truth and consequences
New Mexico's ultra-short legislative session (30 days!) started less than two weeks ago but major climate and energy bills are already moving in different directions.
The Clean Futures Act would put a goal of 50% emissions reductions and a net-zero by 2050 goal into law. It's already cleared one legislative committee and has the full backing of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The second bill offers tax incentives for projects producing hydrogen as a fuel for lower emissions. The governor's office considers it a priority, in part to help New Mexico gain some of the $8 billion in "hydrogen hub" investments passed as part of the federal infrastructure law.
But after a well-attended hearing, the hydrogen bill was tabled in a 6-4 vote. It's unlikely to make any progress this session.
What's happening here? New Mexico is the number two oil-producing state in the country, but that's a relatively recent development. Production in the state has quadrupled in the past decade, and revenue from oil and gas now has makes up around a third of the state's entire budget, including an all-time high of $110 million in 2020. Such a quick change has led to frustrations from both oil producing areas and the state's well-established environmental groups.
Oil production is expanding in the state now, but New Mexico has "ridden the roller coaster of oil and gas" before, State Sen. George Muñoz, who introduced a bill to reinvest oil and gas revenues into an economic diversity fund, told NM Political Report. Others are looking for a more direct replacement for the oil and gas industry. Enter hydrogen.
Hydrogen as a fuel is well, complicated. It could be used to reduce difficult-to-cut emissions including airline travel, cement making, and overseas cargo ships. Or it could be used to store excess renewable energy in a fuel form that can be used later, like a battery.
But it’s also attractive to oil and gas companies as a future alternative business and a replacement for even more fuels — whether or not they are investing seriously in the technologies.
There’s also the complication that there are very different kinds of hydrogen, each with different levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike fossil gas and oil, the only thing you get out of burning hydrogen is water, but the way you make hydrogen matters.
There's plenty of ways to make hydrogen with a variety of potential greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen made through splitting water with zero-emissions electricity - sometimes referred to as "green hydrogen" is the only one in which fossil fuels never enter the picture. But right now, green hydrogen is very expensive, and notably for New Mexico, requires plenty of water.
Despite Gov. Lujan’s push, committee members of both parties seemed to be wary of the bill for a variety of reasons. Don't count hydrogen out in New Mexico yet, but with plenty of open questions on hydrogen's use in the larger energy transition and a lot of people watching, they didn't jump in front just yet.
Meanwhile, New Mexico’s emissions target bill is moving forward. A couple things that stood out to me:
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the 50% reduction goal by 2030 does not mention offsets, and the net-zero 2050 goals caps offsets or similar mechanisms at 10%. The actual emissions reductions are 90%.
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The bill's text covers direct emissions from a variety of sources, including heating, transportation, farms, industrial and extractive companies. That's notable, especially considering concerns about methane leakage from New Mexico’s oilfields. But there's no indication the state intends to include emissions from the oil and gas New Mexico produces that will be consumed outside the state, aka most of the production.
New Mexico is far from the only state trying to have it both ways: encouraging emissions cuts without curbing fossil fuel production, but it is among a small group of places whose fortunes will most directly rise and fall alongside oil and gas. It's not surprising that they are looking for another option — but there's no clear direction yet.
A reminder:
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Blast from the past
A friend sent me this amazing blog post and photo of an electric car charging station in 1906 ("an electric stable": there's that horse skeuomorph). In my recent newsletter about EVs, I mentioned that electric cars had actually been the vast majority of the very early car market, but I had never seen anything like this.
More local climate stories
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One local journalist on why getting personal about climate change made him a better reporter. "And for non-journalists who want to help the media do a better job: Let your local news organization know what kind of reporting you want to see."
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For the first time, a Harvard study links air pollution from fracking to early deaths for nearby residents in Western Pennsylvania. (Of note: one of the reasons "for the first time" is the relative lack of air monitoring in rural areas).
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Mega-dairy accused of violating Oregon air pollution rules while seeking clean energy credits in California
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An in-depth look into a solar-jobs training program in Virginia — and the "glitch" in confidence they're trying to solve.
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A special treat for my UK folks: The 11 slides that finally convinced Boris Johnson about global warming. (TBH a pretty good primer for everyone)