🚨HOW TO EARN TRUST WITH COMMUNITIES OF COLOR🚨

Trust 101: Earning Trust With Communities of Color will be offered March 21-April 29, 2022 by Trusting News, American Press Institute, and the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Register here!

Germany blocks Russian Nord Stream 2 methane gas pipeline: The $11 billion Nord Stream 2 would double the flow of Russian-produced methane gas into Germany, but German Chancellor Olah Scholz put the pipeline on hold after Russian President Putin sent troops to Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine. The pipeline construction is completed, but gas has not begun to flow as the pipeline awaits final certification. The project has faced opposition for both its climate impacts and potential to expand the Kremlin’s influence over the EU. About 40 percent of the methane gas used in the EU comes from Russia, and Russia has recently wielded that influence by slowing deliveries, causing higher prices, drained gas reserves, and an energy crunch across Europe. The EU has begun to seek alternative gas supplies and the European Commission told Reuters halting the pipeline would not affect Europe’s energy supply. (The Hill, Reuters, CNBC, Gizmodo, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $)

Tourist-driven black carbon pollution is accelerating melting in Antarctica: The number of Antarctic sightseers doubled over the past decade, reaching nearly 75,000 in 2019. New research finds the soot, or black carbon, from these visits is causing an extra inch of snowpack shrinkage each year. “It really makes us question, is our presence really needed?” Alia Khan, a glaciologist and study author asked NPR. The soot found in Antarctica comes from the cruise ships and other vehicles shuttling researchers and tourists around the melting pole, creating a blanket of dark particulate matter that lowers the land’s albedo, a measure of how well a surface reflects solar energy. (NPR, CNN, The Guardian)

SCOTUS denies appeal from Dakota Access Pipeline developers: The US Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s decision to cancel a permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline, though the pipeline remains in operation as the Biden administration reviews its environmental impact. “The litigation concerning the pipeline is over, but the fight continues,” Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman told Grist. The Standing Rock Sioux, other tribes and environmental groups are hoping an environmental review will shut down the controversial pipeline intended to transport crude more than a thousand miles from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineers environmental review of the project should be completed later this year. (Grist, Gizmodo, The Hill, Washington Examiner)

Biden announces millions in spending on critical mineral production: The Biden Administration announced a series of public-private partnerships to increase the production of minerals used in the energy transition and electronics and defense systems. Among the variety of monetary awards and new funding streams, $35 million is headed to MP Materials to separate and process rare earth elements in California and the Energy Department will fund a $140 million demonstration project to recover rare earth elements and critical minerals from coal ash and other mine waste. Biden said the federal assistance is needed to counter China’s dominance in critical mineral production, a market in which demand is set to skyrocket 400-600 percent over the next several decades. (White House Fact Sheet, The Hill, Reuters, Washington Post $)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Researchers say science skewed by racism is increasing the threat of global warming to people of color (Inside Climate News)

DENIAL: Climate denial still flourishes on Facebook - report (Politico $)

POLITICS: An effort to make the American corn industry climate-friendly has turned into a political melee in the midwest (TIME)

TRIBES: Tribal leader laments climate, mascots, election changes (AP)

CITIES AND STATES: Ohio road budget could run out of fuel as drivers switch to electric vehicles (Energy News Network), Six injured in explosion at Marathon Petroleum in St. John Parish, company says (WWNO) 

TEXAS: Did Texas undercount 2021's freeze deaths? COVID and historical patterns cannot explain spike (Houston Chronicle)

CALIFORNIA: California lawmaker proposes 2027 closure of Aliso Canyon (Politico $)

IMPACTS: Antarctic sea ice falls to lowest level since measurements began in 1979 (The Guardian), Antarctic sea ice levels are now at their lowest on record (Daily Mail), Antarctic sea ice shrinks to smallest surface area on record (Bloomberg $)

HURRICANES: Near Louisiana coast, storms leave city with wrecked homes, doubts about the future (Wall Street Journal $)

BIOFUEL: U.S. EPA commits to increasing biofuel use, targets not yet finalized (Reuters), 

HYDROGEN: Portuguese cement and glass companies join green hydrogen consortium (Reuters), Toyota and Yamaha are developing a hydrogen-fueled v8 engine (CNBC)

GRID: Can the grid’s wildfire defense stay ahead of extreme weather? (E&E News)

EVs: Tesla’s reverse on battery cells signals shift for electric vehicles (FT, June Yoon $), Is Elon Musk helping the planet more than Greenpeace? (MSNBC)

MINING: China lithium deposit discovered near Mount Everest may be boon in push to secure critical resource (South China Morning Post), Biden voices support for new U.S. mines, if they don't repeat past sins (Reuters)

MILITARY: The marines need billions for climate prep (Gizmodo), Former CIA chief Petraeus: Don’t sleep on climate as a threat (Politico $)

METHANE: Oil and gas facilities could profit from plugging methane, IEA says (The Guardian), Energy sector methane emissions under-reported by ‘alarming’ rate, IEA says (FT $), Methane emissions 70% higher than governments say - report (Politico $)

OIL & GAS: Oil prices surge as Russia-Ukraine crisis escalates (CNBC), Biden acknowledges new Russia sanctions mean higher gas prices (Washington Examiner) 

SOLAR: Kenya to use solar panels to boost crops by ‘harvesting the sun twice’ (The Guardian), Texas emerges as solar’s next frontier as power demand booms (Bloomberg $), China solar power capacity set for record increase in 2022 - industry body (Reuters)

WIND: ‘These waters are hot’: U.S. auction opens up offshore wind rush (Bloomberg $)

ACTIVISM: Marching in the streets for climate-crisis action (Nature), London gallery ends BP sponsorship under pressure from activists (FT $)

AVIATION: Almost 15,000 ‘ghost flights’ have left UK since pandemic began (The Guardian), Airbus plans to test hydrogen engine on Aa380 jumbo jet to fly in 2026 (CNBC), Airbus to test hydrogen-powered engine on A380 superjumbo (FT $)

CDR: Meet peat, the unsung hero of carbon capture (New York Times $)

FINANCE: HSBC sets climate targets but leaves out emissions from capital-markets activity (Wall Street Journal $), Blackstone swears off oil-patch investing as private equity’s retreat widens (Bloomberg $), Fintech entrepreneurs aim to spur green bond issuance in Africa (Bloomberg $)

JOBS: LinkedIn: Green jobs soaring beyond available labor force (The Hill) 

PEOPLE: The one group of people Americans actually trust on climate science (The Atlantic), 10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint (Washington Post $), Messy human reactions to climate change are a good thing for the planet (Bloomberg $)

PLASTIC: Three in four people worldwide support a ban on single-use plastics (Yale Environment 360)

STEEL: How a high-tech twist on a 19th-century process could clean up steel and cement making (The Verge)

CRITTERS: Video: Galapagos Islands, sea life affected by climate change (ABC News)

• Color in the climate crisis (The Hill, Antjuan Seawright op-ed)

• What winter weather forecasts, wildfires and mosquitoes mean for our health (NBC, Neelu Tummala, op-ed)

• The west’s delusion of energy independence (New York Times, Dennis C. Blair and Joseph F. Dunford Jr. op-ed $)

• Editorial: Climate change fuels deadly heat waves. Ranking them like hurricanes could save lives (LA Times, Editorial Board $)

• Energy bills recharge the case for solar panels (FT, Lindsay Cook op-ed $)

• Opinion: hydrogen unlikely to be Ukraine’s energy saviour (Energy Monitor, Seb Kennedy op-ed)

• Maryland must reduce its natural gas consumption | commentary (Baltimore Sun, Editorial Board)

• How can states build resilience to sea level rise? Look to Louisiana (The Hill, Bren Haase and Natalie Snider, op-ed)

• Note to Biden: The US can't export renewable energy to our energy-deprived allies (The Hill, Merrill Matthews op-ed)

Dirty Energy Astroturf: Energy Poverty’s Woke-Washed California Coming of Age

Tuesday’s look at the issue of energy access abroad, in India and Africa, may make it seem like it’s a foreign issue, but unfortunately the industry is “wokewashing” in the US, too. 

It’s not universal, yet. For example, the goofballs at Heartland are sticking to their traditional tin foil hattery during their multi-state tours, as an email we have obtained claims. That’s in addition to what Politico recently reported on the effort to recruit states to boycott banks that don’t do business with fossil fuel losers. Similarly, CNN recently covered a more sophisticated multi-state campaign to prevent local policymakers from protecting their residents from methane gas stoves. 

And while “working families” are often used as human shields, going deep into one state-level fight, InsideClimate News looked at the new twists in the California rooftop solar story. They expose efforts by one astroturf group to sabotage solar for the benefit of its dirty energy backers, like Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and Southern California Edison.

What sets this story apart, though, is that the group, Affordable Clean Energy for All, is attacking subsidies for rooftop solar as poor people’s taxes supporting rich solar homeowner’s expensive luxury solar panels, using an equity argument that makes it appear progressive when talking about a “cost shift”. Of course numerous studies have shown that rooftop solar provides a net-benefit to other, non-solid customers, but that's not stopping them!.

It’s part of at least a decade’s worth of careful strategic planning. In 2012, the industry group EEI rolled out an “action plan” to use the cost shift argument to protect its profits from the increased uptake of renewables. 

By 2014, ALEC had its model legislation ready to present to groups of Black public officials with a history of funding from EEI, like the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women and the National Policy Alliance.

Reverend Ambrose Carroll, though, an Oakland pastor and executive director of Green the Church, told ICN the astroturf effort was “poppycock” and “very disingenuous”, “a move of power to, on a whim, decide to co-sign for the name of equity.” 

In an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury, Rev. Carroll explained how “powerful special interests have changed their vocabulary to keep up with higher standards of accountability” and “ have begun to use catchphrases like equity, social justice and equal outcomes.” 

But of course, “often that rhetoric is nothing more than a fancy public relations spin as the economically and politically powerful continue to advance policies that are not actually in the interests of equal outcomes.”

Rev. Carroll called out the “cost shift” argument for being dishonest, because “solar panels generate more efficient local energy, help decarbonize the grid, prevent blackouts and  significantly lower people’s monthly utility bills.” That’s why he doesn’t “believe the big utilities or their allies when they say making everyone, especially working families, pay the highest rooftop solar fees in the nation is in the best interests of equity.”

Fortunately, in light of opposition by actual local grassroots campaigners like Rev. Carroll, as well as some other notable names chiming up, California regulators are doing a deeper dive into the issue before voting on what to do about rooftop solar rates. 

But we’re not off the hook yet. “Like the mortgage industry claiming redlining stabilizes the housing market or the private prison industry claiming mass incarceration makes society safer,” Rev. Carroll concluded, “the big utilities are not being socially responsible.” 

We couldn’t say it better ourselves, so we’ll give Rev. Carroll the last word on it:  

Worse, they’re exploiting the very communities that they claim they’re helping by arguing that these fees are equalizers when they are blatantly profit makers. If frontline communities were truly their concern, then the big utilities and their allies at the CPUC would be bolstering clean and affordable local power, not destroying the very regulation that makes on-site and rooftop solar more affordable for working communities.

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