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On March 4, California set a new record by supplying nearly half of the state’s electricity needs from renewables. That’s just the latest payoff of the state’s admirable clean energy investments, thanks to plentiful solar power and strong policies like the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS). But California still relies on fossil fuels, via natural gas power plants, to provide nearly 40 percent of annual electricity needs. In fact, in-state natural gas generation comprises about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions statewide. Reaching our long-term energy and climate goals means ramping up renewables and at the same time turning down our gas. In many cases, gas plants will be turned off during the day, when renewable generation is most abundant. However, as the sun sets, solar generation decreases and natural gas plants must be turned on—or, if they’re already operating, they must ramp up generation to meet the evening demand spike. The solution to this evening ramp problem is to: Build cleaner alternatives than gas that can produce power in the evening Build more energy storage Use load shifting and increased energy efficiency to reduce evening electricity demand Enhance coordination between grid operators to gain access to a larger pool of resources to provide evening electricity needs Many of the state’s natural gas power plants were constructed to provide baseload power, meaning they were designed to stay on all day, nearly every day. Most of California’s natural gas plants were not designed to be turned on and off daily, nor was their frequent cycling anticipated in their original air quality permits. A natural gas plant starting up can produce as much as 30 times more nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions than it will after it has been running for a few hours. Nitrogen oxides are the particles visible in smog. They irritate lung tissue, exacerbate asthma, and make people more susceptible to chronic respiratory diseases like pneumonia and influenza. Starting up gas plants more often could increase air pollution concentrations and should be considered in their air permits. To make sure California’s clean energy transition also reduces criteria air pollution from natural gas plants, UCS is proudly co-sponsoring legislation—Senate Bill 64 by Senator Bob Wieckowski—with the California Environmental Justice Alliance, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and the Clean Power Campaign. The legislation aims to do three things: Require generators to provide data on the hourly change in emissions, startups, shutdowns, and cycling. Many plants are required to report hourly emissions data to the US EPA, but the data is not in a user-friendly format and it’s difficult to ascertain how power plant operations are changing over time without some complex analysis. More accessible information about how power plants are actually operating, as opposed to how they were predicted to operate when they were first permitted, is an essential first step to better decisions about how dispatch of natural gas power plants are impacting local air quality. Require local air districts to analyze, using this data, how power plants are currently operating and likely to operate in the future, to ensure air quality protections are included in applicable permits. SB 64 would also require air districts to limit generation from the dirtiest power plants on days with poor air quality as long as the needs of the grid can be met with other resources. Since the worst air quality days are often the hottest days with the highest electricity need, limits on power plant dispatch must not jeopardize grid reliability. Require the state to plan for how it will reduce natural gas generation and accelerate the eventual retirement of gas plants, placing a priority on reducing natural gas generation in communities most impacted by air pollution. Because natural gas–fired power plants supply a substantial portion of California’s current electricity demand and support grid reliability, natural gas generation will continue to play a role on California’s electricity grid for some time. California is charting new territory for other states and countries in terms of the level of renewables on the grid, and making a dramatic shift away from natural gas generation will not happen overnight. But, Californians are already starting to feel the impacts of climate change, and communities in California breathe some of the unhealthiest air in the country. For these reasons, it’s critical that the state shift to cleaner sources for all of its energy needs including electricity. The state needs better tools to understand how changing natural gas plant operations may impact air quality, and an explicit mechanism in law for air districts to coordinate with grid operators to reduce the dispatch of natural gas power plants on the worst air quality days. SB 64 would ensure that California’s ramp-up in clean generation does not lead to the unintended consequence of frequently cycling natural gas power plants in a way that leads to increased air pollution.

On Monday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by San Francisco and Oakland against the five biggest privately owned oil companies for climate change-related damages. Why? He believes the problem is too big to be decided by the federal courts and that Congress and the administration should take care of it. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon, and the courts are at least partly to blame. In his ruling, US District Judge William Alsup agreed with the plaintiffs that there is a “vast [scientific] consensus that the combustion of fossil fuels has … materially increased carbon dioxide levels,” which has driven up average global temperatures and raised sea levels. Likewise, he noted that the oil companies “have allegedly long known the threat fossil fuels pose to the global climate,” but nonetheless funded public relations campaigns that “downplayed the risks” and disparaged climate scientists. At the same time, however, Alsup insisted that environmental harms attributed to burning fossil fuels have to be balanced with the fact that “the industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fueled by oil and coal.” “Having reaped the benefit of that historic progress,” he wrote, “would it really be fair to now ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded?” The answer to the second part of the question is emphatically yes (and it doesn’t require ignoring our own responsibility). The oil companies knew Alsup is of course correct that industrialization would not have happened without fossil fuels. But he neglects to take into account the pernicious role the defendants—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell—have played to block government action to curb carbon emissions over the last three decades. If the United States and other industrialized nations had begun the necessary transition to low- and no-carbon energy back then, the likely consequences of climate change would be significantly less dire. Rising sea levels alone will wreak havoc along the California coast. San Francisco, Oakland and six other California jurisdictions that have filed similar climate lawsuits can expect accelerating sea level rise to threaten some 8,800 homes by 2045, representing $76 million annually in today’s local property taxes, according to a recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists. By the end of the century, some 52,000 homes that currently contribute $435 million in annual property taxes will be at risk. As Alsup pointed out in his ruling, the alarm bells about climate change began ringing in the late 1980s. Thirty years ago—on June 23, 1988, to be precise—NASA scientist James Hansen generated front page news when he warned Congress about higher temperatures and rising seas. That same year, the United Nations convened the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A year later, 50 corporations and trade groups founded the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) to discredit climate science. Its charter members included none other than British Petroleum (now BP), Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Shell. Until it disbanded in 2002, the GCC conducted a multimillion-dollar lobbying and public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming. One of its fact sheets for legislators and journalists encapsulated its main talking points, disingenuously claiming that “the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood” and that “scientists differ” on the issue. Thanks to a leaked internal GCC memo from 1995, we now know that the coalition’s own scientific and technical experts were telling its members that greenhouse gases were indeed causing global warming. “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established,” the document stated, “and cannot be denied.” Exxon scientists, meanwhile, were aware of the threat posed by fossil fuels as early as 1977, according to a 2015 investigation by InsideClimate News. Nevertheless, the company purposely chose to emphasize “uncertainty” and, since it merged with Mobil in 1999, it has spent tens of millions of dollars on a climate disinformation campaign that continues to this day. Courts need to take responsibility Alsup concluded that the courts are not the proper venue to address climate damages. Given the US Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, Alsup contends the issue is best left to Congress and the administration to handle. Alsup’s conclusion presents us with a Catch-22. Kicking any decision about curbing global warming emissions to the political branches of government ignores the fact that both Congress and the current administration are tightly tied to the coal, oil and gas industries. And that hand-in-glove relationship is largely due to questionable Supreme Court decisions. The genesis of our predicament can be traced back to the early 1800s. Since then, the Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings that have granted corporations the same rights as people. More recently, in 1976, it ruled that limits on campaign contributions violate the First Amendment, essentially equating money with free speech. And in the 2010 Citizens United case, the court ruled that the government cannot limit a corporation’s independent political donations. These decisions have enabled the fossil fuel industry to exert undue influence over federal energy policy. Not only have coal, oil and gas companies collectively spent tens—if not hundreds—of millions of dollars over the past few decades to manufacture doubt about the reality and seriousness of climate change, they have spent considerably more on campaign contributions and lobbying to stymie efforts on Capitol Hill to combat climate change. In the 2015-16 election cycle alone, for example, the five defendants in the San Francisco-Oakland climate case together spent $9.8 million on federal candidates and another $58.3 million to lobby Congress and the administration, according to government data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Our three-branch system of government ostensibly rests on the concept of checks and balances. When Congress and the executive branch are hopelessly corrupted by petrodollars, it is incumbent upon the judiciary to compensate for this imbalance, which utterly fails to serve the public interest. Fortunately, Judge Alsup’s ruling is not the last word. Similar climate-damage lawsuits have been filed by cities and counties in California, Colorado, New York and Washington state. A recent press statement by Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell puts these lawsuits into perspective. “In almost all large-impact litigation, the courtroom doors are usually shut in the beginning, but if plaintiffs are persistent and keep knocking, the doors will open up,” said Kimmell, an attorney and former head of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. “This was true in the fights against Jim Crow and Big Tobacco, and we expect that the same tenacity will be necessary to overcome the entrenched political and economic influence of this deep-pocketed industry.”

This post is a part of a series on Clean Energy Momentum On June 13th, the Union of Concerned Scientists worked with the California 100% Clean Energy Coalition to bring more than 100 people to Sacramento to lobby in support of Senate Bill 100 (De León) and California’s transition away from fossil fuels. SB 100 would accelerate the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 60% by 2030 and require that the remaining 40% of the electricity mix come from RPS-eligible resources or zero-carbon resources by 2045. Last year, SB 100 passed the California State Senate, but stalled in the Assembly. A day after lobby day, the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Energy scheduled SB 100 for a hearing on July 3rd! Meeting 100% of California’s electricity needs with zero-carbon resources is a bold goal, but achieving it is within reach. In 2016 California received about 25% of its electricity from eligible renewables. Another 19% came from a combination of nuclear and large hydropower, which are zero-carbon resources that would be eligible under SB 100. Statewide we are already on track to exceed the current RPS requirement of 50% renewables by 2030. California has led the nation in the transition from coal to clean energy resources and demonstrated that a cleaner electricity system need not come at the price of a growing economy. We have the technology to run a flexible and efficient grid with even more renewables, and the prices for energy storage are coming down. The time is right to double down on this clean energy momentum. Climate change is the biggest threat to the health and economic stability of Californians. With more extreme weather events threatening the livelihoods of frontline communities, it is time to pass legislation that will prevent further damage to these communities. Cleaning up our electricity grid will also provide a blueprint for significant cuts in global warming emissions.

UPDATE (6/15/18): Success! Last night the senate unanimously passed a strong, many-faceted energy and climate bill, the kind that a state can be proud of. Now on to the house! UPDATE (6/13/18): The senate is voting on the clean energy bill and amendments tomorrow (Thursday). If you live in Massachusetts, contact your senator and let your voice be heard. You can e-mail (see here) or, better yet, call (phone numbers are available here). The Massachusetts legislature is in the final weeks of its two-year legislative session, and there’s finally some movement in both houses on our clean energy future. Here are four things that need to happen to get to the legislative finish line, and why. But first: some context. Where the state is coming from Flowers are blooming on Beacon Hill. Now we need legislation to blossom. (Credit: J. Rogers) Many of the issues we talked about on this platform a few months ago—what the key issues for next steps on clean energy in Massachusetts were—are still the issues of the day. What’s different now is that we’ve had a project selected by the state and our utilities for sizeable amounts of low-carbon power (Canadian hydro, in this case). And we’ve just selected the first tranche of Massachusetts offshore wind power. Both of those advances were courtesy of the legislature’s strong action in 2016, when it passed the Energy Diversity Act. What we need now is to fill in the gaps left in that package. What got left undone In the lead-up to what became the 2016 law, UCS published an analysis about the risks of natural gas overreliance and the possibility of bringing new and stronger strategies to bear on the problem. That analysis focused on both natural gas risks and carbon pollution, and the prospects for cutting both. The analysis showed that combining the large-scale renewables procurement, a hefty offshore wind commitment, and a strengthening of the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) could do the trick nicely, and at low cost. The RPS has been a major driver of renewable energy in and for Massachusetts, and keeping it out ahead of the market—think of it as a carrot in front of the (non-partisan) donkey of energy progress—is what keeps things humming and growing. Alas, strengthening the RPS was one big piece that wasn’t included in the final version of the Energy Diversity Act. But leaders in both the house and senate pledged to rectify that this session, given that the offshore wind coming will eat up basically all the demand that the growth in the RPS over the next dozen years would otherwise supply. And we need the RPS to drive more than that. Also needed, but lacking, was a long-term solution to let solar—rooftop, large-scale, or other—keep doing what we need it to do: diversify our electricity mix, increase our energy resilience, and create jobs, jobs, and more jobs. So, what needs to happen? 1. The house needs to pass strong energy bills Last month the really important energy committee of the House of Representatives “reported out” a suite of bills that can serve as the basis for strong action by the whole chamber: RPS – Increases our requirement for new renewable energy to 35% new renewable energy by 2030—a nice round(ish) number, though not as strong as what other states have done (50×30; see below), or even our neighbor Connecticut (40×30) Solar – Raises the “net-metering” caps that keep many solar projects from connecting and keep disrupting the growth of our solar economy (though our strong solar economy and interest in investing in solar mean that we’ll hit even those new caps soon) Energy storage – Aims to strengthen our power sector’s resilience with targeted deployments of batteries or other technologies Electric vehicles – Drives EVs with rebates and other policies There’s also an important bill to take our nation-leading energy efficiency efforts to the next level. Several of the bills are now in front of the House Ways & Means Committee, so it’s up to that committee to strengthen them and get them to the full house, and quickly. And then it’s up to the full membership to strengthen and pass the lot of them. 2. The senate needs to pass its strong, multi-part bill. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the state house… The Massachusetts Senate Ways & Means Committee passed a solid bill last week. The “Act to Promote a Clean Energy Future” (Senate Bill 2545) includes a range of important provisions to drive progress in the electricity sector and more. A taste: RPS – Increases our requirement for new renewable energy to 50% by 2030—on par with requirements in New York, New Jersey, California, and other states Solar – Removes the net-metering caps, and addresses some other barriers that have been thrown up in utility proceedings Climate progress – Lays out a process for setting targets for cutting our carbon pollution by 2030 and 2040, and makes sure the administration has the tools to address carbon emissions from our transportation sector, and in the commercial and industrial sectors Energy storage – Has the state get a lot more serious about driving innovation in energy storage Plus – More offshore wind, more clean energy procurements, more… The bill deliberations will also present some opportunities for getting it even more right. On solar, for example, a key issue is making the technology more accessible to a broader swath of our society, in particular with programs aimed at low-income households. All in all, and particularly with strengthening amendments, a solid foundation for clean energy progress. And the full senate will be taking up the bill any day now. (Watch this space for more info.) 3. The two chambers need to agree on a final version. Unless one chamber passes verbatim the bill(s) that the other one has approved, whatever comes out of these processes will need to go to a conference committee—basically, a small group appointed by each chamber to hammer out something that will satisfy members of both bodies. That means the house and senate need to get close enough so that they have something that qualifies for conference. What we can’t have happen is ending up with a suite of bills on one hand and a multi-part bill on the other, and no way to connect the two. That should be an important consideration for the leadership of each chamber. Once the bills get into conference, and the conference committee does its thing, then the membership of each needs to say, “Aye.” 4. The governor needs to sign. One last step: The governor. Gov. Charlie Baker has contributed a few pieces to the energy-future discussion, so whatever results from the legislative process is likely to reflect some of his priorities, and likely to earn his signature. And then? And then… we make it happen. There will be regulatory proceedings to go through—basically, the process of filling in the blanks, putting meat on the bones of the new statutes, so that people know the rules of the game for implementation. None of this procedural stuff, on the legislative or regulatory fronts, is entirely easy. But it’s not particularly hard, either. And we know that the technologies are there and ready, and that so are the entrepreneurs, the businesses, and the customers. So what we need from our legislature, and now, is the framework for progress. Not further reflection. Not studies. Action. That’s what leadership is about. And that’s what we’re looking for over the next few weeks, as citizens and constituents, residents and ratepayers.

This week, U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their contributions to climate change. Judge Alsup’s ruling dangerously rested on balancing climate harms with fossil energy benefits, deferred to legislative- and executive-branch solutions that major fossil fuel companies have spent millions opposing, seriously underplayed the role of ExxonMobil and others in spreading disinformation about climate science and policy, and punted on the question of who should pay for climate damages. With apologies to Harper’s Index, here’s a Fossil Fuel Company Climate Liability Index, followed by six key facts illuminated by these numbers. Combined 2017 profits of the five defendants in the San Francisco and Oakland lawsuits (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell): $44,416,000,000 Total reported federal lobbying spending of the five defendants in 2017-2018 (year to date): $48,580,000 Total reported federal political contributions of the five defendants in the 2016 and 2018 (to date) election cycles: $14,759,152 ExxonMobil’s reported 2016 contributions to think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that contest climate science and oppose both the Paris Climate Agreement and a carbon tax: $1,650,000 Combined amount spent by Chevron and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) on lobbying in California in the first six months of 2017: $11,046,675 Reported spending by ExxonMobil on oil and gas exploration and infrastructure, 2000-2017: $442,738,000,000 Reported spending by ExxonMobil to develop and deploy higher-efficiency and lower-emission energy solutions across its operations, 2000-2017: >$8,000,000,000 Reported spending by Chevron on oil and gas exploration and infrastructure over the past decade: $287,483,000,000 Reported spending by Chevron in carbon capture and storage (CCS) research and development over the past decade: >$75,000,000 Proportion of industrial carbon pollution produced by the five defendants, 1854-2010: 12.5 percent Proportion of sea level rise from 1980-2010 that scientists have traced to emissions from the five defendants: around 2 percent Proportion of global average temperature increase from 1980-2010 that scientists have traced to emissions from the five defendants: around 4 percent Number of homes threatened by accelerating sea level rise by 2045 in the eight California jurisdictions that have sued fossil fuel companies: 8,800 Annual local property tax revenue represented by those homes: $76,000,000 FACT: Fossil fuel companies are the main beneficiaries of our fossil-fueled energy system and economy The benefits of fossil fuels have not accrued equitably, and the fossil fuel industry has compounded its advantage by externalizing its costs. Major fossil fuel companies profit handsomely from an energy system dependent on their products. The five defendants netted more than $40 billion in 2017, alone. Maintaining the status quo may be in the fossil fuel industry’s interest, but a low-carbon pathway is necessary to protect the climate and renewable energy is increasingly competitive. Judge Alsup’s ruling presented a false choice between climate action and energy access, echoing the rhetoric of defendants ExxonMobil and Chevron that fossil fuels are necessary to support economic growth, health, and education in low-income countries. FACT: Fossil fuel companies exercise undue political influence to block policy solutions The defendant companies have invested some of their enormous profits in political contributions, direct lobbying, and indirect lobbying through such trade associations and industry groups as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). NAM’s ironically named Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), the fossil fuel industry’s attack dog on climate liability lawsuits, did a happy dance about the dismissal of the suit. Thus, the judge’s conclusion that climate change is a matter for the legislature and the executive branch is a Catch-22 that makes my brain hurt. Yes, Congress and the White House should take decisive action to curb climate change, but the fossil fuel industry has pulled out all the stops in an effort to block strong federal policies. The industry has friends in high places in the Trump administration: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, to name just a few. Just this week, Buzzfeed broke the news that Pruitt urged fossil fuel executives to apply for EPA regional administrator positions. The defendant companies are not just responding to consumer demand. They do what they can to fix the market through undue political influence, which has forestalled the development and availability of renewable energy. And the duty of the legislative and executive branches to act does not absolve the judicial branch of responsibility. FACT: Fossil fuel companies are investing significantly more in oil and gas exploration than in R&D for clean energy Investments by ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil and gas companies in low-carbon research and development are a drop in the bucket compared to their spending on oil and gas exploration and infrastructure. Even a former ExxonMobil engineer has argued that what is needed is research focused on how to supply affordable low-carbon energy while also reducing fossil fuel demand. ‘Nuff said. FACT: Burning fossil fuels is the single most significant contributor to global warming, and scientists can increasingly quantify how much Judge Alsup earned praise for acknowledging that the magnitude of the climate change problem is vast and urgent. Yet his description of carbon dioxide as “a gas produced by, among other things, animal and human respiration, volcanoes and, more significantly here, combustion of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas” is more than a little misleading, given that the burning of fossil fuels is the most significant contributor to global warming by far. Scientists’ ability to quantify the damage due specifically to human-caused climate change is growing quickly. A UCS-led study published last September in the scientific journal Climatic Change for the first time links global climate changes, including the sea level rise at issue in the San Francisco and Oakland lawsuits, to the product-related emissions of specific fossil fuel producers, including the defendants. Importantly, the study also quantified the climate change impacts of emissions traced to these companies’ products from 1980 to 2010, when these major fossil fuel companies knew the risks of burning fossil fuels and not only failed to take steps to reduce those risks but also funded a concerted campaign to deceive the public and block action. The top five investor-owned companies ranked in terms of cumulative emissions — Chevron, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Shell, and ConocoPhillips — are responsible for one-eighth (12.5%) of all industrial carbon emissions from 1854 to 2010. FACT: Taxpayers are already footing the bill for climate damages According to recent analysis by my UCS colleagues, accelerating sea level rise in the lower 48 states is putting as many as 311,000 coastal homes with a collective market value of about $117.5 billion today at risk of chronic flooding within the next 30 years, the lifespan of a typical mortgage. Chronic property flooding could translate not just into eroding property values, but also into unlivable houses and falling tax revenues that fund local schools, roads and emergency services. The properties at risk by 2045 currently house roughly 550,000 people and contribute nearly $1.5 billion toward today’s property tax base. The contribution of any single fossil fuel company to a climate impact such as sea level rise may appear small, but the costs of dealing with and preparing for these impacts are enormous and mounting—and taxpayers alone are currently on the hook. A few inches of sea level rise might not seem dramatic, but it could be the difference between a minor event and a human and financial catastrophe. For example, scientists have found that sea level rise contributed an additional $2 billion in damage to the havoc wrought by Hurricane Sandy in New York City. FACT: Lawsuits and paying fines aren’t the only way that fossil fuel companies can be held accountable for making climate change worse It is critical that San Francisco, Oakland and other communities can seek compensation through our courts for the costs of climate-related damages and preparedness. And as tobacco litigation has shown, ensuring that companies pay their fair share of the costs imposed on society by their products is not the only remedy to be secured through judicial action. To be sure, the settlements of state lawsuits against Big Tobacco included billions of dollars in payments to cover health care costs. But the settlements also ordered the public release of millions of pages of previously secret internal documents; brought an end to certain advertising, promotion and marketing practices; and shut down the tobacco industry’s lobbying and junk science shops forever. The reduction in the tobacco industry’s political and economic influence helped clear the way for policies such as the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and US Food and Drug Administration tobacco regulations. Judge Alsup’s dismissal of the San Francisco and Oakland lawsuits is a setback, but the cities can appeal—and their city attorneys have signaled that the case is not over. Likewise, lawsuits by several other communities in California, Colorado, New York and Washington state are now working their way through the courts. The public demand for major fossil fuel companies to be held accountable for damage they knew their products were causing will only grow louder as climate impacts get worse.