Category: Energy/Environment

Occidental Building Costly Plant to Bury Carbon Dioxide, Hoping to Be the Last Firm Still Allowed to Produce Oil

The “oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, has been investing in Occidental.

(p. A1) About fifty miles southwest of Midland, Texas, deep in the oil-saturated Permian Basin, more than 100 workers are busy laying out roads and water lines, preparing to build an elaborate complex of fans, each as large as a tennis court.

When they start running in 2024, the fans will suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air. The carbon will be funneled thousands of feet down deep wells into geological formations, where it should remain for centuries.

The company behind this environmental moonshot is Occidental Petroleum Corp., one of the country’s most successful oil-and-gas producers. It hopes the enterprise will give it license to keep operating as a driller decades into the future.

It is spending more than $1 billion to build the first in a planned fleet of plants using direct-air capture to pull the CO2 out of the air, a budding technology with fuzzy economics. Bolstering the move are generous tax incentives included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last year that cover up to 45% of Occidental’s expected initial costs per metric ton.

. . .

(p. 8) To be successful, Occidental will need to bring the cost of capture and containment down by hundreds of dollars per metric ton of CO2, according to energy executives and analysts.

Occidental estimated its initial cost to remove a metric ton of CO2 would be between $400 and $500. It said that as it manufactures more plants and efficiencies kick in, it will be able to roughly halve that to between $200 and $250 a ton by the end of the decade, according to the company. None of the figures include federal tax credits.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden last year, rewards companies that capture and store atmospheric CO2 with a $180 tax credit per metric ton contained permanently, up from $50. Credits for capturing atmospheric CO2 and using it in enhanced oil recovery rose to $130 a metric ton, up from $35. The bill also offers incentives to companies that capture CO2 at industrial plants and sequester it, which Occidental also plans to do.

. . .

Howard Herzog, a leading researcher on carbon capture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he didn’t think bringing the cost of direct-air capture down to around $100 a metric ton was a realistic goal. Occidental is “probably more bullish on direct-air capture than I would be,” he said. But he added that how much buyers of carbon credits are willing to pay will also determine how profitable direct-air capture turns out to be.

Ms. Hollub told The Wall Street Journal in August that Occidental’s efforts on carbon capture and on becoming a net-zero emitter would allow it to keep up its investments in oil and gas. She warned that underinvestment in fossil fuels, which she says will be needed for years even amid the broader transition to clean energy, will lead to a scarcity of supplies. In contrast, she said, other oil majors such as BP PLC and Shell PLC have shrunk their oil segment and invested in renewables.

Oil companies will have to find ways to remove as much carbon dioxide as they emit “if they want to be the last producer standing in the world,” Ms. Hollub said.

For the full story, see:

Benoît Morenne. “Occidental’s Green Bet To Keep Pumping Oil.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 11, 2023): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 10, 2023, and has the title “Occidental Makes a Billion-Dollar Climate Moonshot—So It Can Keep Pumping Oil.”)

“Extinct” Species Found Alive, Hanging Out at a Walmart

The formerly extinct giant lacewing species apparently thrives on smoke from fires. So reducing air pollution in the form of smoke from fires might endanger this species. How is a conscientious environmentalist supposed to handle that?

(p. A1) With the world in lockdown in the fall of 2020, Michael Skvarla, an assistant research professor at Penn State University, turned to his private collection, the two cabinets full of insects he kept at home, to show students how to compare insect characteristics.

He unearthed for the camera-connected microscope a specimen he had found back in 2012 clinging to the outside wall of a Walmart in Fayetteville, Ark., and asked students to examine the characteristics of the antlion, a dragonfly-like predator.

Except that this bug, with its nearly two-inch wingspan, was way too big to be an antlion.

“It didn’t have clubbed antennae like it should. It didn’t have lots of cross-veins in the wing like it should,” Dr. Skvarla recalled in an interview.

“So the immediate question was: What is this thing?”

Dr. Skvarla and his students compared features, quickly concluding, live on Zoom, that it was another species that was thought extinct in eastern North America.

The giant lacewing, or Polystoechotes punctata, is a large insect from the Jurassic Era. It was once widespread, but mysteriously disappeared from eastern North America sometime in the 1950s.

The specimen found at the Walmart represents the first recorded in eastern North America in more than half a century, and the first ever recorded in Arkansas.

In a peer-reviewed study published late last year by the Entomological Society of Washington that has only recently been publicized, Dr. Skvarla and a co-author, J. Ray Fisher of Mississippi State University, speculated that the insect could have disappeared with growing light pollution, too little fire smoke (which historical records suggest they like) and the introduction of non-native predators to the region.

For the full story, see:

Emily Schmall. “Lost Relic Reappears At Walmart.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 4, 2023): A12.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 2, 2023, and has the title “‘What Is This Thing?’: How a Jurassic-Era Insect Was Rediscovered in a Walmart.”)

The peer-reviewed study mentioned above is:

Skvarla, Michael J., and J. Ray Fisher. “Rediscovery of Polystoechotes Punctata (Fabricius, 1793) (Neuroptera: Ithonidae) in Eastern North America.” Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 124, no. 2 (April 2022): 332-45.

The Hybrid Trees Weyerhaeuser Plants, Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Than Did the Trees It Cuts Down

(p. A1) KIBBY TOWNSHIP, Maine—Weyerhaeuser Co. has cut down more trees than any other American company since its founder started logging before the Civil War. Environmentalists have long treated it as an enemy.

Now, the new math of carbon emissions is enabling the lumber producer to cast itself as something quite different: a force for environmental good.

Its 10.6 million acres of U.S. timberland act as a giant sponge for carbon dioxide, which Weyerhaeuser says more than compensates for the greenhouse gases it emits by felling trees, sawing them into lumber and distributing wood products.

Although Weyerhaeuser is cutting down as many trees as ever and plans to increase lumber production 5% in the next few years, it says its net carbon footprint is negative—so much so that it is offering carbon dioxide storage capacity to other companies. Weyerhaeuser expects a new unit dedicated to helping other firms offset their emissions to generate $100 million a year in profit by the end of 2025.

“I don’t think there are many companies in the world with a better environmental (p. A8) story than Weyerhaeuser,” said Devin Stockfish, chief executive officer of the Seattle-based company. “The moment is really ripe for us.”

. . .

Weyerhaeuser logs about 2% of its land each year and plants more than 130 million saplings a year to replace much of what it cuts. Company scientists have selectively bred trees over the decades to grow bigger, faster and better for lumber-making than the ones they replace. The company says those new breeds will sock away carbon dioxide faster than the ones cut down, allowing it to boost sequestration and wood production at the same time.

“There is a pretty significant difference in the genetics of the trees that we grow versus what would have grown naturally,” Mr. Stockfish said.

For the full story, see:

Ryan Dezember. “Logger Recasts Itself As Climate Friendly.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 18, 2023): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 17, 2023, and has the title “America’s Most Prolific Logger Recasts Itself as Environmental Do-Gooder.”)

Biden EV Goals Depend on “Troubled” Business Model for Fast Charging

(p. A13) President Biden’s EV ambitions will hinge in large part on the availability of public places to plug in and repower cars reliably, a network that largely doesn’t exist. Building it won’t be easy.

While the government is (p. A2) pouring billions of dollars into developing a national highway charging network, many companies aren’t sure how they will make money off the nascent business. Fast charging requires expensive utility infrastructure and projects often encounter supply chain hang ups and long wait times to connect to the grid.

. . .

The business model for fast charging has been troubled because there aren’t enough EVs in most places yet for charging to turn a profit. Yet EV advocates say many drivers will only be comfortable purchasing vehicles if rapid charging is widely available.

Utility companies and gas stations have been arguing across several states about who will own and operate EV chargers. The expensive utility bills that can result from delivering quick jolts of power have been a particular point of contention. Meanwhile, the young companies that provide charging gear and services have struggled with equipment on the fritz, vandalism and driver payment systems, a frequent source of failure.

For the full story, see:

Jennifer Hiller. “Fast Electric-Vehicle Chargers Get Boost, But Hurdles Lurk.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, April 14, 2023): A1-A2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 13, 2023, and has the title “Fast EV Chargers to Nearly Double on U.S. Highways Under Expansion Plan.” In the first paragraph quoted above, the online version has “Mr. Biden’s” instead of “President Biden’s.”)

Small “Creative” Subsistence Farmers Experiment and Innovate to Adapt to Global Warming

(p. A1) When it comes to growing food, some of the smallest farmers in the world are becoming some of the most creative farmers in the world. Like Judith Harry and her neighbors, they are sowing pigeon peas to shade their soils from a hotter, more scorching sun. They are planting vetiver grass to keep floodwaters at bay.

They are resurrecting old crops, like finger millet and forgotten yams, and planting trees that naturally fertilize the soil. A few are turning away from one legacy of European colonialism, the practice of planting rows and rows of maize, or corn, and saturating the fields with chemical fertilizers.

“One crop might fail. Another crop might do well,” said Ms. Harry, who has abandoned her parents’ tradition of growing just maize and tobacco and added peanuts, sunflowers, and soy to her fields. “That might save your season.”

It’s not just Ms. Harry and her neighbors in Malawi, a largely agrarian nation of 19 million on the front lines of climate hazards. Their scrappy, throw-everything-at-the-wall array of innovations is multiplied by small subsistence farmers elsewhere in the world.

. . .

(p. A10) . . . Mr. Mponda, 26, grows maize. But he no longer counts on maize alone. The soil is degraded from decades of monoculture. The rains don’t come on time. This year, fertilizer didn’t either.

“We are forced to change,” Mr. Mponda said. “Just sticking to one crop isn’t beneficial.”

The total acreage devoted to maize in Mchinji District, in central Malawi, has declined by an estimated 12 percent this year, compared with last year, according to the local agricultural office, mainly because of a shortage of chemical fertilizers.

Mr. Mponda is part of a local group called the Farmer Field Business School that runs experiments on a tiny plot of land. On one ridge, they’ve sown two soy seedlings side by side. On the next, one. Some ridges they’ve treated with manure; others not. Two varieties of peanuts are being tested.

The goal: to see for themselves what works, what doesn’t.

For the full story, see:

Somini Sengupta. “Climate Shocks Force Small Farmers to Reinvent.” The New York Times (Friday, April 28, 2023): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 27, 2023, and has the title “Meet the Climate Hackers of Malawi.”)


Launching Europe’s Largest Nuclear Reactor Gives Finland Electricity Resilience Against Russian Disruptions

(p. A7) Finland has started regular electricity output at Europe’s largest nuclear reactor, a move that contrasts with developments in other European countries, where opposition to nuclear power is stronger.

The long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 reactor is the first European nuclear-power facility to open in 16 years. Alongside two other nuclear reactors on the Olkiluoto island off Finland’s west coast, the new 1.6-gigawatt plant will eventually produce nearly one-third of the country’s electricity.

. . .

Finland’s reliance on nuclear energy, in combination with hydro and wind power, is part of the Nordic nation’s transition toward carbon neutrality, which has helped make Finland resilient against energy-supply disruptions, such as those following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

For the full story, see:

Sune Engel Rasmussen. “Finland Launches Nuclear Reactor.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 18, 2023): A7.

(Note: ellipsis added)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 17, 2023, and has the title “Europe’s Largest Nuclear Reactor Launches as Continent Splits Over Atomic Energy.”)

Government Environmental Agency Accuses Itself of Bulldozing Habitat of “Threatened” Barred Owl and “Endangered” Redshouldered Hawk

(p. A18) A New Jersey state agency is accusing itself of violating its own regulations, saying it destroyed land that is home to rare owls and hawks while creating habitat for another type of bird.

At issue in the unusual bureaucratic conflict is the clearing of about 20 acres of swampy forest in a state-owned wildlife preserve in the southern part of the state as part of a project to improve conditions for the American woodcock, a common, plump shorebird prized by hunters.

The state’s Department of Environmental Protection paid private contractors $200,000 for the job, which involved the removal of trees and the bulldozing of stumps, according to public documents obtained by the nonprofit New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

But clearing the forest, in the Glassboro Wildlife Management Area in Clayton, destroyed habitat for the barred owl, which is threatened in New Jersey, and the red-shouldered hawk, which is endangered, according to a notice of violation issued to one arm of the environmental agency by another on April 6 [2023].

“It’s just depressing, really,” Joe Arsenault, a plant ecologist and environmental consultant who lives nearby and has studied the area for 25 years, said of the project’s outcome. “The site had exquisite, mature growth. It had ancient trees. Today it’s like driving through a parking lot.”

. . .

The forest will slowly regrow, Mr. Arsenault said, adding that his surveys of the land had also uncovered evidence of early settlement by Native American tribes that could date to the earliest humans to settle in New Jersey. With the land upturned, the site’s archaeological record is lost forever.

“It’s a gut punch,” he said. “It is the epitome of poor decisions and poorly spent money.”

For the full story, see:

Christopher Maag. “Plan to Create Habitat Destroys Tract of Forest.” The New York Times (Saturday, April 15, 2023): A18.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “New Jersey Environmental Agency Accuses Itself of Harming Bird Habitats.”)


In Mexico City the Non-native “Jacaranda Is Kindness” and ”Always Creates Hope”

(p. 14) The Mexican president wanted cherry trees.

It was 1930, and President Pascual Ortiz Rubio had seen them lining the streets of Washington and desired the same beautiful spectacle for his country’s capital.

. . .

But winters in the capital were not cold enough for the cherries to fully blossom, . . .

. . .

For nearly 100 years, Mexico City residents have enjoyed jacaranda season: a “fascinating sorcery” that brings a little bit of the Amazon rainforest to urbanites’ doorstep, as Alberto Ruy Sánchez wrote in his 2019 book “Dicen las Jacarandas.” And when the flowers fall, “the sky blooms on the ground,” an unexpected burst of color at one’s feet.

Each spring, millions of people stroll around the country’s capital under an explosion of purple flowers. Each spring, the colorful fronds signal that it’s time to enjoy the warm season and walk on a fine rug of lavender petals. Come out and play, the jacarandas whisper with an inflection that’s both foreign and familiar.

“I was told this tree always creates hope,” said Alma Basilio, a psychologist posing for a selfie with a friend under the blossoms “The jacaranda is kindness.”

Jacarandas are actually not native to Mexico: The name comes from Guaraní, an Indigenous language spoken mainly in Paraguay and the tree has its origin in the Amazon.

. . .

Mr. Matsumoto made his way to the Americas in 1888 at the behest of a Peruvian entrepreneur who wanted a Japanese garden, the first in South America, on his property.

“From his faraway native land, the artist brought by ship beautiful plants,” reads a Peruvian volume about the residence where the garden was built. Shortly after seeing his work in Lima, a Mexican mining businessman hired him to create something for his hacienda.

Mr. Matsumoto would eventually become a wealthy entrepreneur who served several Mexican presidents: from the French-loving Porfirio Díaz to the revolutionary Álvaro Obregón and the nationalist Lázaro Cárdenas. With his flower shop, which he opened in 1898, Mr. Matsumoto introduced ornate floral arrangements to high society and created bouquets for stars of the golden era of Mexican film.

. . .

He didn’t introduce the jacarandas to Mexico — some may have already been growing in the wild — as much as domesticate them. He didn’t just suggest a more appropriate tree for the weather in the Mexican capital: He outfitted its streets with an aesthetic vision that resurfaces every spring.

For the full story, see:

Elda Cantú and Marian Carrasquero. “‘Sorcery’ in Mexico City: A Japanese Green Thumb’s Purple Legacy.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, March 26, 2023): 14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 25, 2023, and has the title “‘Merchant of Landscapes’: The Lasting Footprint of a Japanese Gardener in Mexico.”)

Electrobiome Scientists Hope Manipulating Microcurrents Can Cure “Dozens of Ailments”

(p. 10) A decade ago Adee became especially intrigued by some highly secret taxpayer-funded work performed by the Pentagon’s ultra-costly fun factory, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, inventors (they claim) of the internet. Lately the agency has been conducting, if that be the word, experiments on how best to harness the body’s minute pulses of cellular battery power, and turn them to military advantage — by killing people, that is. Might electricity help our G.I.s to whack our enemies ever more quickly and efficiently, tuning a soldier’s brain by jolting it with carefully targeted surges of electric shocks?

“We Are Electric” begins with a highly seductive scenario: Adee is flown from Europe to a clandestine Pentagon facility in the mountains of Southern California.

. . .

The lights dim, and a tsunami of simulated assaults then commences, overwhelming the scene. DARWARS — Ambush! they call it. Computer-generated enemy troops flood onto the field, squadrons of Humvees, faceless men with suicide belts, all attacking without mercy, and at all of which Adee fires her gun, wildly. Mostly, she misses.

Then the smoke clears, her DARPA handler-bros return and this time they turn on the juice. The lights dim once again, the faux-soldiers pour in and everything changes. Through the smoke and din and confusion of battle, there emerges from within Adee’s terrified mind the calculating confidence of a cool and logically-directed assassin. One by one she picks off the invaders. She fires and fires until her magazine is depleted. The battlespace falls silent. The smoke clears once again.

. . .

Dozens of ailments may yet be cured, say the believers, by manipulating the ions down the billions of miles of invisible circuitry that lies deep within our bodies.

Sally Adee has written an absorbing and fast-paced account of a field of research that could thus herald a whole new era of paradigm-shifting medicine. Moreover, she has done so without apparently drinking the Kool-Aid of today’s many bioelectricity boosters.

For the full review, see:

Simon Winchester. “Charged Up.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, March 26, 2023): 10.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date February 28, 2023, and has the title “Meet the Electrome. It Can Turn You Into an Assassin.”)

The book under review is:

Adee, Sally. We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body’s Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds. New York: Hachette Books, 2023.

Extreme Weather Can Bring Enough Water to Recharge California’s Aquifers

(p. A15) After a long, dry summer, winter has brought the gift of water to California, via a series of atmospheric river storms. Unfortunately, as these sprawling rivers in the sky have met developed areas covered with concrete and rivers locked in by levees, they have brought destruction: floods, mudslides, washed-out roads, blackouts, uprooted trees and at least six deaths.

But California doesn’t have to passively suffer through the whiplash of drought and floods. To reduce risk from both, it can return some of its land to water, working with natural systems.

One way to do this is by making use of unique geologic features called paleo valleys. These buried canyons carved into the state’s Central Valley were formed by Ice Age rivers that flowed down the western flank of the Sierra Nevada and were later filled in with coarse sand and gravel from glacial melt.

. . .

There is enough unmanaged surface water from rain and snow statewide to resupply Central Valley aquifers, making more water available to farmers, urban dwellers and the environment. Even with climate change, the state will most likely have enough water for recharge in the future in part because of more extreme weather, according to a 2021 study.

For the full commentary, see:

Erica Gies. “California Should Capture Its Floodwaters.” The New York Times (Monday, January 9, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 7, 2023, and has the title “California Could Capture Its Destructive Floodwaters to Fight Drought.”)

The 2021 study mentioned above is:

He, Xiaogang, Benjamin P. Bryant, Tara Moran, Katharine J. Mach, Zhongwang Wei, and David L. Freyberg. “Climate-Informed Hydrologic Modeling and Policy Typology to Guide Managed Aquifer Recharge.” Science Advances 7, no. 17 (April 21, 2021), doi:10.1126/sciadv.abe6025.

Progressives Want Us to “Reduce Consumption“ Because “They Believe Humans Are a Menace to the Earth”

(p. A15) Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.

The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living.

. . .

The report concludes that the auto sector’s “current dominant strategy,” which involves replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs without decreasing car ownership and use, “is likely incompatible” with climate activists’ goal to keep the planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. Instead, the report recommends government policies that promote walking, cycling and mass transit.

. . .

Progressives’ ultimate goal is to reduce consumption—and living standards—because they believe humans are a menace to the Earth.

For the full commentary, see:

Allysia Finley. “The Climate Crusaders Are Coming for Electric Cars Too.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Feb. 13, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 12, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

The U.C. Davis report mentioned above that urges our return to the dark ages is:

Riofrancos, Thea, Alissas Kendall, Matthew Haugen, Batul Hassan, and Xan Lillehei. “Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining.” U.C. Davis: The Climate and Community Project, Jan. 2023.