carbon dioxide
New Bill Targets Carbon Dioxide Pipeline Leaks
Legislation introduced by Assemblymember Arambula, with research help from UCLA students, aims to protect Californians from the dangers of transporting captured carbon dioxide.
Guest contributor Jennifer Imm is a J.D. Candidate at UCLA Law (2L) Last week, Assemblymember Dr. Joaquin Arambula introduced AB 2623, a bill designed to guard California communities against the dangers of transporting carbon dioxide in pipelines. These risks aren’t hypothetical: A leak from a carbon dioxide pipeline already caused serious health harms in Satartia, …
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CONTINUE READINGIn Defense of Live Carbon
Why Stopping Deforestation May be the Hardest and Most Important Part of the Climate Change Challenge
When contemplating the enormous challenge of global climate change, it is sometimes helpful to think about a simple model of the global carbon budget (see figure below). These admittedly reductionist schematics distinguish between sources, sinks, and reservoirs. Fossil hydrocarbons from the geological reservoir–call this dead carbon—are extracted and burned to generate energy, emitting vast amounts …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA Shouldn’t Roll Back Coal Power Plant Emissions Standard, Conclude Experts in Electrical Grid Management and Pollution Control Technology Innovation
Emmett Institute Faculty File Two Comment Letters on Behalf of Experts, Demonstrating Flaws In Proposed Rollback of New Source Performance Standard for New Coal-Fired Power Plants
In 2015, EPA set greenhouse gas emissions standards for new coal-fired and natural gas-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards program, Section 111(b) of the Act. These standards ensure that new plants can be built only if they incorporate state-of-the-art emissions controls. Unfortunately, in late 2018, the Trump Administration EPA proposed …
CONTINUE READINGUpdate on the Litigation Over EPA’s Rule Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Power Plants
UCLA Faculty File Amicus Brief on Behalf of Technological Innovation Experts
Late in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency issued New Source Performance Standards to control greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified fossil-fuel-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act. This regulation is a companion to the more-often-discussed Clean Power Plan rule, which addresses greenhouse gas emissions from existing sources in the power generation sector. Last …
CONTINUE READINGWhy it’s important that we know that we’re at 400 ppm of CO2
A major (and unfortunate) milestone has been crossed this past week. Measurements of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million, the highest in millions of years. Others have commented on how worrying this milestone is for the planet. But what I want to focus on here is how important it is that …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Current U.S. Energy Pathway is Paved with Coal, Oil and Natural Gas
How well are we doing, in our efforts to strip fossil fuels from our energy mix? If you want to believe the most recent estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the answer is: not so well. As EIA prepares its 2013 report on the impact of various proposed policy changes, it asks itself: …
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CONTINUE READINGOceans: the biggest loser from our international failure to address greenhouse gas emissions?
In this op-ed from Monday’s Los Angeles Times, UC San Diego scientists Tony Haymet and Andrew Dickson succinctly and directly summarizes the threat that ocean acidification poses to our world, and plead for reductions in carbon emissions. (My colleagues have blogged about ocean acidification before, here and here among other places.) Unfortunately, as my …
CONTINUE READINGWhat to do about those coal plants we already have…
The California Public Utilities Commission looked pretty good, back in 2007, when it created a rule prohibiting utilities from making new long-term investments in power plants emitting more carbon dioxide than an efficient natural gas plant. That meant no new conventional coal plants, which emit twice as much carbon dioxide as a natural gas plant. …
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CONTINUE READINGNew EPA Greenhouse Gas Rulemaking Not Quite What it Seems
EPA is proposing to tailor the major source applicability thresholds for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and title V programs of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and to set a PSD significance level for GHG emissions. This proposal is necessary because EPA expects soon to promulgate regulations …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on the Chamber of Commerce’s extraordinary demand for a “Scopes trial” on climate change
UPDATE: regarding the standard of judicial review of any on-the-record hearing (discussed below), see the comments: commenter Steve Taber disagrees with my initial analysis, and he may be right (though I don’t have time to look into it further today). ORIGINAL POST: Holly has written a thoughtful post discussing the meritlessness and cynicism of the …
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