FRANKFORT, Ky. – Democratic lawmakers are probing the reasons why a National Academy of Sciences study on the health effects of surface coal mining in Central Appalachia was cancelled.

The U.S. Interior Department halted the study in 2017, calling it a cost saving measure.

But Reps. Raúl Grijalva from Arizona and Alan Lowenthal from California have asked the department to turn over all documents related to the cancellation, including any conversations between Interior officials and coal companies or industry groups.

Erin Haynes, an epidemiology professor at the University of Kentucky, says it's still not clear what the health risks are for people living in communities near surface mines.

"This area has lacked, I think, scientific attention, and it's highly warranted and overdue," she states.

The House Committee on Natural Resources wants acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to release all documents and communications related to the surface mining study to the committee by March 15.

According to Haynes, even the process of restoring land after it has been mined can lead to situations that potentially can put local residents at risk.

"The reclamation process involves moving large rocks that were once underground to above ground and now, into valleys,” she explains. “All of those elements and metals and minerals are then into the water. They weren't supposed to be there. These are natural elements, but they're supposed to be underground."

Ronald Whitmore, a retired pharmacist who spent many years working in Eastern Kentucky, recalls filling prescriptions for a variety of health conditions that he believes were the result of living near mining areas.

"They always say,'Well you know, coal is the cheapest source of energy, you know – we're getting it so cheap, and why don't we burn more coal?'” he relates. “But nobody considers the huge cost to the health care system and what it does to our health."

Last summer, surface mines in Kentucky produced more than 2 million tons of coal, a nearly 15 percent decrease from 2017.


get more stories like this via email

By Jennifer Oldham for Sierra.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Pumps hissed, a camera oscillated, and wind whistled through oil and gas wells at the Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center at Colorado State University. The mechanical symphony could be the soundtrack to a revolution in our ability to detect and measure methane, the invisible, odorless "super pollutant" responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States is the world's largest producer of oil and gas and its biggest emitter of methane-much of it leaks from oil and gas operations. A raft of new federal and state laws require energy companies to monitor and fix emission leaks. That's why companies are lining up to test methane-detection devices at the Fort Collins facility.

"Things are moving quickly-people have realized legislators aren't messing around," said Ryan Brouwer, facility manager at the testing center. "We have 12 different companies testing now. I am booked until the fall, and we have a waiting list."

Brouwer showed off high-pressure tanks that feed gas into wells, other tanks, and separators. Their valves, pipe joints, and other fittings leak the methane-the main component of "natural gas"-into the air. Then finely tuned handheld sensors, softball-size devices mounted on hefty tripods, and equipment attached to drones and aircraft go to work. These sensors report their readings of the rate, location, and duration of leaks to center scientists, who then compare them with data on the known releases.

Why all the fuss? Because methane is an enormously powerful greenhouse gas, 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat. As an article from the Rocky Mountain Institute put it, "If CO2 pollution wraps one blanket around the earth, methane pollution is like wrapping the earth in over 80 blankets." Studies show that eliminating these emissions would lead to immediate benefits for the climate and public health.

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere today is two-and-a-half times preindustrial levels, and accelerating. Agriculture is the largest anthropogenic source (all those belching cows, mostly), followed by oil, coal, gas, and bioenergy, which account for 46 percent of emissions. Rotting organic material in landfills is another major contributor.

Of these offenders, the emissions from fossil fuels are perhaps the easiest to deal with, as it's largely a matter of plugging leaks. According to the International Energy Agency, methane emissions from fossil fuels must drop by three-quarters this decade to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals. Hence the race at the Colorado State center to develop and improve methane-detecting sensors on the ground and in the air. As these technologies improve, scientific studies are finding that earlier calculations widely underestimated the actual amount of the gas in the atmosphere.

"We saw so much variability in methane emissions across the regions," said Evan Sherwin, who led research at Stanford University for a paper published in Nature in March. "If we compare our numbers to the Environmental Protection Agency's numbers, ours were three times higher."

Sherwin worked with a team from Stanford, Kairos Aerospace (now Insight M), and other labs to conduct aerial surveys over six hydrocarbon-producing regions, taking a million measurements over Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. They estimated that the operations emitted 6.2 million tons of methane a year-equivalent to all the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use in Mexico.

"We found [that] as low as .05 percent of oil and gas production facilities are responsible for half or more of emissions," said Sherwin, who is now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We really do now have the tools to find the bulk of the emissions that matter pretty rapidly."

In addition to worsening the climate crisis, methane emissions represent an annual loss of $1 billion to the gas companies. The prospect of recovering that leaking gas is incentivizing energy companies worldwide to fix methane leaks discovered by satellites. Six years ago, energy companies in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative invested in the satellite company GHGSat; they've used the satellites to help detect and quantify leaks in Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, and Kazakhstan. After the results were confirmed with on-the-ground testing, local operators fixed the leaks, said Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, chair of OGCI's executive committee.

"Three problems we discovered were approximately equal to a million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent," he said. "It's like taking away close to 250,000 cars." Methane detection and measurement, he concluded, "is now at a point where we may be able to start moving the needle at scale." Indeed, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that the methane increase in the atmosphere in 2023 slowed from the record growth earlier this decade. Even so, the year marked the fifth-highest increase since 2007.

More than a dozen satellites now orbit the planet scanning for methane plumes. Some are privately owned; others are operated by governments and nonprofits. Data from select satellites are available on the International Methane Emissions Observatory's online data portal.

Mark Brownstein is a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, which developed its own methane-detecting satellite, MethaneSat. "This is data that will provide the most comprehensive amount of emissions and the rate at which they are being emitted," he said. "We see this data as being incredibly important to hold countries and companies accountable to commitments they've made."

Satellites have limitations though. They can't see past cloud cover or over water, and they have time constraints on how much data they can collect from any one location. Consequently, said Dan Zimmerle, the director of Colorado State's methane center, all types of sensors are needed to make progress in fixing leaky oil and gas equipment and spotting flares that fail to fully combust all the gas being vented.

Zimmerle's operation is set to receive $25 million from the Department of Energy and industry partners to modernize equipment, standardize testing solutions, and support field trials of methane-sensing satellites. The team is searching for locations to test how the satellites are performing.

"We will put up a test release," Zimmerle said. "They will task on it, we will get a report from them that says what they saw, and we will compare it to the real thing."


Jennifer Oldham wrote this article for Sierra.


get more stories like this via email

As Coloradans deal with record-breaking heat, wildfires, and prolonged drought - linked to a changing climate - a new report shows how American taxpayers are subsidizing disinformation about climate change.

Co-author Chuck Collins is co-founder of the Climate Accountability Research Project. He said people with ties to the fossil fuel industry are bankrolling groups trying to block action on climate change through tax-deductible donations.

"There are 137 organizations that are actively involved in promoting climate disinformation," said Collins, "challenging the science, sowing doubt, blocking alternatives. Their goal is to run out the clock and keep extracting their profits."

Between 2020 and 2022, people gave these organizations nearly $6 billion in tax-deductible donations - which is entirely legal under the U.S. tax code.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that financial contributions deserve the same First Amendment protections as speech, at least in political campaigns.

Collins argued that because wealthy donors are essentially pushing the burden of building and maintaining roads, schools, and other essential services, onto other taxpayers - the public deserves to know who they are.

"They're opting out of paying their taxes," said Collins. "So, the rest of us do have a public interest in knowing how that money is being used. And whether it's being used in a way that influences Congress, and influences public policy, and takes us down a road that we may not want to go down."

Many donors are now listed online at ClimateCriminals.org, which also features a countdown to a deadline set in Paris to cut fossil fuel emissions in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Collins noted many more donors remain anonymous by contributing through groups, including donor-advised funds. He believes increasing transparency is important in removing barriers to serious climate action.

"We should know who is blocking our ability to respond in a timely way to climate change," said Collins. "And we should hold those people accountable."




get more stories like this via email

Washington state has launched a new website that lets people and organizations know about ways they can fund going green.

With resources for clean energy and efficiency projects at an all-time high, the state has created the portal FundHubWA to help navigate funding opportunities.

That includes tax incentives, rebates, and state and federal grants.

Amy Wheeless is the federal policy and program alignment manager with the Washington State Department of Commerce, which is running the site.

She said hub is an apt name for it and walks through how it works.

"You say 'I'm an individual,' or 'I'm a farmer,' or 'I'm a business,' and 'I'm looking for funding opportunities for energy efficiency or for electric vehicles,'" said Wheeless, "and then it will present a variety of federal and state opportunities that are available."

FundHubWA offers resources from federal laws passed in recent years, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS for America, the Inflation Reduction Act - and from Washington state's Climate Commitment Act.

The website is available for individuals and a wide range of organizations, including public agencies, tribal governments and nonprofits.

Carol Albert is the senior advisor for federal funding in Gov. Jay Inslee's office. She said these funding sources are important for combating climate change.

"There's never been a better time," said Albert, "to get projects going in communities, that are contributing to cleaner and healthier and more prosperous areas of Washington, to really move away from fossil fuels."

Albert said FundHubWA could prove especially useful for local governments in rural communities.

People in these areas often do more than one job, which can make it overwhelming to track all the available opportunities.

"There are just not enough hours in the day," said Albert. "So the portal is a way for them to get to this information quickly and then assess if they or their communities would qualify for it."

The website is supported with funding from the Climate Commitment Act, which could be repealed in November if Initiative 2117 passes.

Albert said regardless of the outcome of the election, the future of FundHubWA will be up to state lawmakers.




get more stories like this via email