Free Republic

Limiting how much coal countries can burn is considered an urgent priority for restraining global heating. After all, coal is the most carbon-rich of all fossil fuels and its combustion has contributed the most to planetary warming. For the first time in international talks, negotiators agreed to "phase down" coal use to prevent global temperature rise exceeding 1.5°C in the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact. Coal's primacy in climate negotiations is partly because of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has devised pathways to halting warming at 1.5°C. These scientific assessments prioritize the rapid phasing out of coal burning...

Brent Eldridge had heard that prices for natural gas were high this winter, but nothing prepared him for how bad it could be. When he opened the envelope from Long Beach’s utility department, he couldn’t believe the total: $907.13, nearly eight times higher than his bill at the same time last year. “It made me want to puke,” said Eldridge, 48, a pastor. Household budgets in the Golden State, already stretched thin as prices soar for everything from rent to eggs, are being pummeled by monster gas bills. Southern California Gas Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric began warning customers...

Natural gas furnaces not only heat your home, they also produce a lot of pollution.Even modern high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce significant amounts of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy levels of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and methane. These emissions are typically vented into the atmosphere and end up polluting our soil, water and air.Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an affordable add-on technology that removes more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions to produce an ultraclean natural gas furnace. This acidic gas reduction, or AGR, technology can also be added to...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, story here, archived here. The article says there is a shortage of natural gas in California and that new pipelines to transport are not being built. The existing ones are old and can stop working due to extreme weather. Bloomberg, both the man and the site, push green energy, so it surprised me that they published this.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to convert a natural gas power plant to a new hydrogen system that critics say may not provide enough power and could cause more environmental damage. The proposal is part of a “Green New Deal” adopted by former mayor Eric Garcetti to shutter three natural gas plants in favor of “renewable” energy — over objections that solar and wind power would not be sufficient, and that the move would cost thousands of union jobs. Garcetti stuck with his plan even after the state suffered electricity shortages in 2020 and after Democrats...

WASHINGTON — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged US Navy divers laid bombs that destroyed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September, drawing a denial from the Pentagon Wednesday. Hersh, who scooped journalism’s top award more than five decades ago for exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968, cited an unnamed source in reporting on Substack that Americans planted remotely triggered explosives that wrecked three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe. Hersh, 85, went on to claim that the Navy...

Alabama Price of Natural Gas Delivered to Customers

State police are investigating after a homemade explosive was found at a gas transmission facility.

Californians are expecting skyrocketing natural gas bills this month, but this can’t all be blamed on the weather, according to industry insiders. Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), which serves about 5.9 million households and businesses, warned customers to expect “shockingly high” January bills that could be 128 percent higher compared to December. Those who typically paid around $65 a month last winter are likely to pay about $160 this year, SoCalGas said in a statement Dec. 29. Those with bills around $130 a month could see charges jump to $315. Last December, wholesale natural gas prices already cost five times...

A babbling MSNBC analyst with a history of Trump Derangement Syndrome is in no place to throw the word “addiction” at legitimate concerns of government reaching into American kitchens. MSNBC National Affairs Analyst John Heilemann kicked off Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a tirade on GOP opposition to gas stove bans. On the Jan. 16 edition of Morning Joe, he said “[The GOP is] addicted to this culture of lies and conspiracy theories that they have fomented, right?” Except, the proposed ban wasn’t fictitious nor conspiratorial. Bloomberg News released a story Jan. 9 headlined: “US Safety Agency to Consider...

Gas stoves are a leading source of hazardous indoor air pollution, but they emit only a tiny share of the greenhouse gases that warm the climate. Why, then, have they assumed such a heated role in climate politics? This skirmish may seem like a tempest in a teapot, but it reveals important contours of the battlefield on which climate politics are waged. As I explain in my book, “gas stoves matter to climate and to the gas industry because they serve as gateway appliances to the dominant residential uses of natural gas: heating and hot water. Installing more-efficient furnaces, better...

A sign of the media times is how quickly our leading progressive organs rally to deny that Democrats are doing what Democrats really are doing. A classic example was this week’s flare up in the coming climate war over banning gas stoves. A Biden appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission explicitly threatened to ban gas stoves based on dubious evidence of public-health harm. “This is a hidden hazard,” said commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” We and others criticized the idea, and the media response was...

Email today from Senator Jim Risch, R-ID Have you heard? The Biden administration is looking at banning gas stoves. Gas stoves, which many Idahoans use every day to feed their families. Gas stoves, which restaurants and chefs choose to operate their business. Gas stoves, which save households up to 30% or $350 on utility bills each year. Why is this a priority? Simply put, the Biden administration is considering whether the government should prevent the purchase of new gas stoves and even if Americans' gas stoves should be taken away. Obviously, this isn’t the first time the Biden Administration has...

A federal agency says a ban on gas stoves is on the table amid rising concern about harmful indoor air pollutants emitted by the appliances. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission plans to take action to address the pollution, which can cause health and respiratory problems. “This is a hidden hazard,” Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner, said in an interview. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” Natural gas stoves, which are used in about 40% of homes in the U.S., emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and...

A federal ‘safety agency’ is considering a ban on gas-powered stoves amid fears of ‘harmful pollutants.’ The US Consumer Product Safety Commission said gas-powered stoves are a ‘hidden health hazard.’

The brutal, unrelenting cold that lasted for several days over the Christmas holiday froze off a sizable portion of Appalachia’s ample gas production, cutting off supply to power plants when they needed it most. Gas transmission pipelines said the gas they were promised simply didn’t show up. On the electric grid that connects Pennsylvania to 12 other states, at one point almost 25% of the capacity on the system either didn’t start up or broke while operating, leaving coal and petroleum-fired units to pick up the slack. PJM, a Valley Forge-based grid operator, is still analyzing what happened during the...

While natural gas prices are in “free fall” on the national market, California’s prices to customers are doubling and in some cases tripling to “shockingly high” levels at a time when people on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ use energy the most. Freezing out Californians in winter is part of the state’s energy plan. It is rationing by another name. Try to look surprised. California’s biggest energy companies, among them SoCalGas, announced Friday that, due to a spike in prices, “January bills are likely to be shockingly high. … While we don’t set these prices (they’re set by regional and...

Conserve Energy: Extreme Cold Causing Gas Supply Shortage Due to frigid temperatures and an increased demand on interstate pipelines, Con Edison asks natural gas customers to help conserve supplies Posted on: December 24, 2022 - 9:49pm This message is being sent on behalf of ConEdison as it is of community wide interest. Please conserve energy as we face a heating gas shortage across the Northeast. Simple things can make a big difference. Set your thermostats lower than usual if health permits Postpone using major electric appliances such as stoves, dishwashers, and clothes dryers until other times Turn off non-essential lights,...

In an attempt to decarbonize the environment, the Milwaukie City Council recently voted 3-2 to ban gas piping from connecting to new residential buildings after March 1, 2024, and unanimously approved a measure to begin replacing gas systems in city buildings with electrical energy, according to the Portland Business Journal. The decisions, which outraged NW Natural officials, follow a ban on natural gas in new residential buildings adopted four months ago by city officials in Eugene. The region’s largest natural gas utility expressed disappointment in the lack of scientific analysis and public engagement before the vote to remove an energy...

Natural gas has crashed by about 25% over the past week, from $7 to $5.38, and has been practically cut in half since $10 since Aug/Sept. What happened? Nothing unusual, producers got off their butts and overproduced while prices were high and killed the shortage. But the shortages in NE are due as much or more due to the lack of transport infrastructure to that region than actual shortage of the commodity...which is measured at salt dome/storage in TX and the midwest, NOT at the end of the pipe in Billerica, MA. This is a perfect example of the folly...