‘Green News Report’ – May 5, 2020

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: U.S. oil industry gets a bailout, after all; U.S. drillers waste enough natural gas to power 7 million homes; Renewable energy eclipses coal in U.S. electricity mix; PLUS: Shell Oil announces it aims to be carbon neutral by 2050… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Bill McKibben: On Being the Villain in a Michael Moore Movie; 50 Years From Now, Many Densely Populated Parts of the World Could be Too Hot for Humans; Saudi Arabia’s Oil Tanker Flotilla Is Reaching The U.S.; Europe’s energy giants turn greener, but paths and targets diverge… PLUS: Coronavirus could drive ‘mass abandonment’ of oil wells… and much, MUCH more! …

STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• U.S. oil industry gets a type of bailout, after all:
• Fed Changes Open Door for More Drillers to Get Loans (Bloomberg):
  Larger, more heavily indebted companies can now qualify and use the money to pay off prior loans under the changes the central bank announced Thursday….”These changes directly reflect demands from polluters and their favorite members of Congress,” said Lukas Ross with the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “Long before the coronavirus, the drillers were in deep trouble. Now frackers want to pay back their debts with our money. Trump’s big oil bailout must be stopped.”
• Federal reserve set to launch ‘Main Street’ loan program (AP):
  Already, critics allege that the Fed changed some of the program’s terms to allow highly indebted oil and gas companies to borrow under the program. The Fed says its changes came in response to requests from many different industries.
• Fed enters a risky new world with ‘Main Street’ loan program (AP)
• Federal Reserve’s expanded lending program could help Wyoming oil and gas (KPVI-Casper)
• Major spikes in methane measured from U.S. drilling operations:
• US Oil and Gas Methane Emissions Are 15 Percent Higher Than We Thought (Environmental Health News):
  Methane emissions are vastly undercounted at the state and national level because we’re missing accidental leaks from oil and gas wells, according to a new study…Methane causes about 25 percent of human-driven climate change according to the Environmental Defense Fund, and the oil and gas industry is the leading emitter of methane. Last year, global atmospheric methane reached a 20-year high.
• Permian Oil Fields Leak Enough Methane for 7 Million Homes (Bloomberg):
  “Our study found that the quantity of methane emitted in the Permian Basin are the highest ever measured from any U.S. oil and gas basin. This is a really big deal from a climate standpoint,” the study’s lead authors, Harvard atmospheric scientist Yuzhong Zhang and EDF scientist Ritesh Gautam, said via email Wednesday.
• Reported Methane Emissions from Active Oil and Gas Wells in Pennsylvania, 2014-2018 (ACS Publications)
• Quantifying methane emissions from the largest oil-producing basin in the United States from space (Science Advances)
• Carbon Brief: global methane emissions underestimated:
• Methane emissions from fossil fuels ‘severely underestimated’ (Carbon Brief):
  There is a positive side to this finding, says Hmiel: “Simply put, if the emissions from anthropogenic sources are larger than we thought, then that puts more of the emissions under our domain and agency. Whereas humanity has little control over ‘natural’ emissions as they were going to occur anyway.”
• Shell Oil: Oil demand may never return. Also: we’re aiming for net zero by 2050:
• Big Oil’s “net zero” club grows (Axios):
  Plenty of details remain to be filled in when it comes to how exactly these behemoths will meet these long-term goals and even interim targets.
• Shell unveils plans to become net-zero carbon company by 2050 (Guardian UK):
  Firm to cut carbon intensity by selling more green energy but critics say first step must be to stop new drilling.
• Shell sets emission ambition of net zero by 2050, with customer help (Reuters)
• Oil giant Shell announces that it will become net zero by 2050 (Electrek)
• Lessons from a Big Oil investor call (Heated.World)
• AUDIO: Shell Oil Q & A — First quarter 2020 results (Shell Oil)
• Shell: OK, We May Actually Be Fucked This Time (Earther):
  The coronavirus has sent oil demand plummeting, and it may never return to where it once was. In a stunning admission, Shell CFO Jessica Uhl told investors she sees “major demand destruction that we don’t even know will come back.”
• Shell CEO Says Covid-19 May ‘Capitalize Society’ to Reduce Long-Term Oil, Natural Gas Demand (Natural Gas Intel)
• U.S. renewables surpass coal for electricity generation for entire month:
• IEEFA update: Renewables surpass coal in U.S. power generation throughout the month of April 2020 (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis)
• Utility-scale renewables overtake coal in US (Energy Global Mazazine)
• Republicans Are Planning to Use Coronavirus to Gut Renewable Energy (Vice)

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

For a comprehensive roundup of daily environmental news you can trust, see the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Daily Headlines page

• Bill McKibben: On Being the Villain in a Michael Moore Movie (Climate Crocks)
• 50 Years From Now, Many Densely Populated Parts of the World Could be Too Hot for Humans (Inside Climate News)
• Saudi Arabia’s Oil Tanker Flotilla Is Reaching The U.S., Despite Some Objections (NPR)
• Coronavirus could drive ‘mass abandonment’ of oil wells (E&E News)
• Chesapeake Energy preparing bankruptcy filing (Reuters)
• Europe’s energy giants turn greener, but paths and targets diverge (Reuters)
• Monopolies in Meat: Endangering Workers, Farmers, and Consumers (The American Prospect)
• Exxon’s Snake Oil: 100 years of deception (Columbia Journalism Review)
• What Does ’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? (Inside Climate News)
• VIDEO: A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (The Intercept)
• SEJ Backgrounder: Green New Deal Proposes Sweeping Economic Transformation (Society of Environmental Journalists)
• Explainer: The ‘Green New Deal’: Mobilizing for a just, prosperous, and sustainable economy (New Consensus)
• What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like: How to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes. (David Roberts, Vox)
• A Global Shift To Sustainability Would Save Us $26 Trillion (Vox)
• Project Drawdown: 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (Drawdown.org)
• An Optimist’s Guide to Solving Climate Change and Saving the World (Vice)
• The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. (Politico)
• The world’s bleak climate situation, in 3 charts: We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there. (Vox)
• The Climate Risks We Face (NY Times):
  To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate – so every reduction in emissions helps.
• The Uninhabitable Earth: When will climate change make earth too hot for humans? (New York Magazine):
  Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak – sooner than you think.
• A beginner’s guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy (Vox):
  Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it’s possible for the whole world to run on renewables – we merely lack the “political will.” So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).