Category: Air Pollution

China Pledges to Stop Building Coal-Burning Power Plants Abroad

9/21/2021

In a move designed to bolster Beijing’s climate credentials, President Xi Jinping of China said Tuesday that his country would stop building coal-burning power plants overseas, ending its support for construction projects that rely on the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel. “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad,” Mr. Xi said in prerecorded remarks to the United Nations General Assembly. Within its own borders, China produces the largest share of global emissions of greenhouse gases. It is by far the biggest producer of coal domestically and the largest financier of coal-fired power plants abroad, with an enormous 40 gigawatts of coal power planned. - NYTimes

How Death and Disaster Followed the Shale Gas Boom in Appalachia

8/13/2021

In the past decade, fracking has contributed to the deaths of more than a thousand people and the emission of more than a thousand tons of carbon dioxide in the Appalachian Basin. - EOS

Parts of the Amazon Go From Absorbing Carbon Dioxide to Emitting It

7/14/2021

Portions of the Amazon rainforest are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they absorb — a troubling sign for the fight against climate change, a new study suggests. Deforestation and an accelerating warming trend have contributed to change in the carbon balance, which is most severe in the southeastern region of the Amazon, where there are both rising temperatures and reduced rainfall in the dry season. The most affected regions have warmed by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit during the dry season in the last 40 years, comparable to the changes seen in the rapidly-warming Arctic. - NYTimes

Study Identifies Methane ‘Super-Emitters' in Largest US Oilfield

7/1/2021

About half of the biggest sources of the potent greenhouse gas methane in the Permian Basin oilfield are likely to be malfunctioning oilfield equipment, according to a month-long airborne study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University. - NASA

Study Links Fossil Fuels To A Million Deaths In 2017

6/25/2021

In 2017 around 1.05 million deaths were avoidable by eliminating fossil fuel combustion, according to a study published in the science journal Nature Communications. The largest number of these deaths occurred in world’s two most populous countries - China and India. Air pollution caused due to combustion of coal alone contributed to half of these deaths. Residential, industry and energy sectors were other dominant global sources of fossil fuel emissions. The study indicates that replacing traditional energy sources will have substantial health benefits. - Forbes / Nature

Right: Oil covers the sand at low tide near Refugio State Beach, Goleta, CA, May 20.

China’s Carbon Pollution Surpasses All Developed Countries Combined

5/8/2021

Carbon pollution from China's bustling, coal-intensive economy last year outstripped carbon pollution of the US, the EU, and other developed nations combined, making up a whopping 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. As China’s economy has grown in the last 30 years, so too have its emissions. While pollution from developed countries has largely been flat since 1990, it has more than tripled in China. The country’s soaring emissions and stable population mean that its per capita emissions have grown quickly, too. At 10.1 tons per person, emissions are just below the 10.5 ton average. The US still leads the world in per capita emissions, at 17.6 tons per person - ARS TECHNICA

Scientists Announce Fast-Track for Net-Zero-Carbon Sustainable Aviation Fuel

3/19/2021

Aircraft stand at a turning point in the race to reduce emissions to mitigate climate change. Although the aircraft sector only accounts for a sliver of transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States—at 9%—it is difficult to decarbonize. That task just got a burst of energy with the publication of a new paper on carbon-negative sustainable aviation fuel by scientists. - NREL

A Drop in CFC Emissions Puts the Hole in Ozone Layer Back on Track to Closing

2/10/2021

Emissions of trichlorofluoromethane, or CFC-11, were supposed to taper off after the Montreal Protocol banned CFC-11 production in 2010. But 2014 to 2017 saw an unexpected bump. About half of that illegal pollution was pegged to eastern China.. Now, atmospheric data show that global CFC-11 emissions in 2019 were back down to the average levels seen from 2008 to 2012, and about 60 percent of that decline was due to reduced emissions in eastern China. These findings suggest that the hole in Earth’s ozone layer is still on track to close up within the next 50 years — rather than being delayed, as it would have been if CFC-11 emissions had remained at the levels seen from 2014 to 2017. - Science News

Fossil Fuel Pollution Causes 1 in 5 Premature Deaths Globally

2/9/2021

Pollution from fossil fuels causes one in five premature deaths globally, suggesting the health impacts of burning coal, oil and natural gas may be far higher than previously thought, Parts of China, India, Europe and the northeastern United States are among the hardest-hit areas, suffering a disproportionately high share of 8.7 million annual deaths attributed to fossil fuels, the study published in the journal Environmental Research found. The new research gives the most detailed assessment of premature deaths due to fossil-fuel air pollution to date. Another study in 2017 had put the annual number of deaths from all outdoor airborne particulate matter — including dust and smoke from agricultural burns and wildfires — at 4.2 million. - Reuters

Coal’s Big Breakdown

2/3/2021

For a half-century, coal plants in the US west churned, pumping electricity onto the grid, cash into state and tribal coffers, and pollution into the water, land and air, unruffled by recessions or environmental protests and lawsuits, impervious to the booms and busts that plagued oil, gas and hardrock mining. Just as the coal leviathan maintained a steady stream of “baseload” power to the grid, so too did it provide an economic foundation for coal-dependent communities, together with a baseload level of smog. Now that foundation is crumbling. - High Country News

The Impact Of Abandoned Oil Wells On The Environment

2/3/2021

Canada has underestimated its methane emissions from abandoned wells by 150 percent, and the USA by around 20%. While methane emissions from abandoned wells were reported to the United Nations as part of the U.S. and Canada’s greenhouse gas inventories, experts worry that there could be as many as 500,000 undocumented wells in the USA and 60,000 in Canada contributing to these emissions. In 2018, in the USA alone, 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells emitted 281 kilotons of methane, equivalent in terms of climate change to consuming 16 million barrels of crude oil. - OilPrice.com

Particulate Oxidative Burden Associated with Firework Activity

1/29/2021

Have you ever enjoyed firework displays while also wondering, "Hey, what kinds of metals are those putting out? How persistent are the pollutants? Are there health impacts like asthma resulting from this?

You're in luck. This paper's abstract addresses those concerns. If you are interested, we can try to get the entire paper. - American Chemical Society

Will the Extraction Industry’s Economic Turmoil Blight Colorado?

10/22/2020

Mark Schell’s family has farmed in Colorado since 1906 and even though he works as a certified public accountant, he hasn't left that way of life behind. About a year ago, Schell bought a 310-acre farm in Mead, Colorado, that he leases to someone else to raise crops. But he was spending more and more time there, trying to get Occidental Petroleum to clean up, or “plug,” old wells the company inherited when it bought Anadarko Petroleum in 2019. “(Occidental) started plugging these in April and then they told me they weren’t going to plug the rest of them...because they don’t have the money,” Schell said. - HCN

An aerial view shows gas wells encroaching on the Roan Plateau near the town of Battlement Mesa, Colorado.

Dramatic Plunge in London Air Pollution Since 2016

10/4/2020

London air pollution plunged since Sadiq Khan became mayor, with a 94% reduction in the number of people living in areas with illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide. The number of schools in such areas has fallen by 97%, from 455 in 2016 to 14 in 2019. Experts described the reductions as dramatic and said they showed the air pollution crisis was not intractable. More than 9,000 people in the capital were dying early each year due to dirty air in 2015. The report from the mayor of London, reviewed by scientists, shows that more than 2 million people in the capital lived with polluted air in 2016, but this fell to 119,000 in 2019. The report, which does not include the further falls in pollution seen after the Covid-19 lockdown began in March, shows levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) by roads in central London fell by 44% between early 2017 and early 2020. - The Guardian