OCTOBER 2024
Welcome to our monthly newsletter from Restore the Delta’s Carbon and Energy Program,
featuring the latest updates on energy and carbon issues in the Delta. In this edition:
We are witnessing massive, disconnected industrialization efforts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. As news continues to pour in on the devastation wrought by hurricanes Helene and Milton onto Gulf Coast communities, flood threats are top of mind. We are generally concerned with a lack of cumulative impact assessments for the myriad carbon management, hydrogen, and biofuels projects being planned in the Delta region, much of which are being enabled by federal incentives for climate infrastructure. Proposals for geologic CO2 storage sites, CO2 pipelines, and carbon capture projects are advancing slowly across San Joaquin, Sacramento, and Solano Counties. Notably, the state’s Delta tunnel project, as proposed, would be constructed through two sites with pending applications for US EPA Class VI CO2 injection well permits.
Below are some key updates from the past month on industrial projects we’ve been evaluating, news of CO2 leakage at the first geologic storage site in the US, support for public investment in community-owned EV chargers, and our thoughts on carbon accounting for carbon dioxide removal projects.
Around the Delta
- Earthjustice sues the Port of Stockton over its approval of a fossil-fueled hydrogen project. The gray hydrogen project would use diesel trucking to transport fossil-based hydrogen, at a time when we need to be actively transitioning to cleaner energy sources. The project was approved without an environmental impact report, and represents a nearly 2% increase in countywide methane demand.
- Biofuels activity is expanding at the Port of Stockton.
- Construction is underway to rehabilitate a shipping terminal that will receive biodiesel feedstocks (including French Fry oil from Louisiana), which will be shipped to converted crude oil refineries in EJ communities in the East Bay.
- A draft Environmental Impact Report is anticipated for a wood pellet distribution facility that would store and ship pelletized forest residues overseas to be burnt for energy production.
- Meanwhile, enormous open piles of woody biomass continue to feed DTE’s biomass power plant, the single largest stationary source of NOx pollution for Southwest Stockton neighborhoods.
- The first major geologic CO2 sequestration site in the US has violated its Underground Injection Control permit and has halted CO2 injection. Archer Daniel Midland, a global food processing and commodities trading corporation, has been operating the site since 2011, with a storage target of 4.5 million tons of CO2. Approximately 8,000 metric tons of CO2 and other ground fluids escaped from a corroded monitoring well into an unauthorized zone at a geologic storage site in Decatur, Illinois. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed an enforcement order requiring ADM to take emergency actions and assess the extent of CO2 migration from the injection zone, which occurred in March 2014. EPA also alleges that ADM failed to monitor its injection well in accordance with its permit, a violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. ADM later suspended operations after discovering a second leak. The company found that drilling fluid known as brine had moved to different underground layers 5000 feet deep. These incidents raise concerns about safety of geologic CO2 storage and the risks leakages cab have to overlaying water aquifers. Additionally, ADM had been in negotiations with the City of Decatur to allow them to store CO2 under city land, yet local officials were not made aware of the corroded monitoring well until after an agreement was reached. We find it unacceptable that ADM waited several months after discovering the first leak to pause injection operations and notify the public. This incident highlights the need for stronger regulatory scrutiny and community oversight on geologic storage operations, including those proposed in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region.
- Ava Community Energy funds installation of 23 EV chargers across 7 different sites in its service area that will be owned and operated by community-based organizations. Ava Community Energy is a community choice energy provider that offers local incentive programs spanning energy efficiency, EV adoption, energy resilience, and other areas. Stockton residents and businesses will start service with Ava in early 2025. To learn more about how to engage with Ava, reach out to Davis Harper, the Stockton representative on Ava’s community advisory committee.
- Restore the Delta joins discussion on standards for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) with scientists, government, and industries at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. We joined a fun team who is developing a “net flux framework” to define key accounting criteria for CDR projects. Carbon Dioxide Removal is a climate mitigation strategy that spans a wide range of nature-based and engineered methods of removing the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere. The net flux framework counts GHG emissions over a project’s life cycle (e.g. the energy, materials, and environment used) to determine whether more CO2 is sequestered than emitted. These calculations influence how various CDR technologies and approaches are valued. For instance, industrial monocultural nut orchards with enormous fossil-based chemical fertilizer inputs and reliance on far-flung surface water deliveries are inherently net-emitting systems. They may adopt more sustainable practices that reduce their GHG footprint (e.g. electrifying equipment, avoiding pile burning, etc.), but as a system can not sequester more carbon than they emit. Generally speaking, we at Restore the Delta think there’s a need to distinguish between 1) CDR projects that rectify human disruptions of the slow, geologic carbon cycle (e.g. using purpose built machines to capture CO2 from the air and then store it underground as a means to reverse the global warming impacts of fossil fuel extraction) and 2) CDR projects that rectify human disruptions of the fast, biological carbon cycle (e.g. using biochar from pyrolyzed biomass waste streams and using it to increase carbon content of soils depleted by chemical-intensive industrial agricultural practices). Land-based CDR projects (e.g. soil carbon sequestration, tree planting, etc.) are much more vulnerable to losing CO2 to the atmosphere and are more difficult to measure, yet they can offer important benefits beyond carbon sequestration. We argue that other key benefits of land-based strategies (e.g. food security, water efficiency, erosion control, flood protection, decreased use of synthetic chemical inputs, urban cooling, improved air quality, etc.) should take precedence over carbon sequestration, which should be conservatively valued, but not be the single financial enabler of a project.
- Restore the Delta responds to a new Data for Progress report that gathered California community perspectives on climate and energy technologies. The report, which found that a majority of Californians want clean infrastructure projects to be publicly owned, calls on policymakers to establish a role for public, Tribal and community leadership in climate infrastructure. We hope this report will help Delta decision makers recognize the value in collaborating with community experts to ensure climate infrastructure projects are sensitive to place-based concerns and needs.
Letters of Support
Restore The Delta’s Carbon & Energy team frequently provides letters of support to government agencies and private companies pursuing public dollars for project development. Our reason for providing conditional support letters is to position ourselves to work in partnership and achieve better environmental and public health outcomes as projects are developed. Letters of support are not formal endorsements of projects, and are only provided after thorough evaluation. If funding applications are successful, we will evaluate and contribute to, where applicable, comprehensive environmental impact assessments detailing potential pollution burdens and mitigation actions related to project activities.
- Restore the Delta provides a letter of support to the Port of Stockton on its application to fund a diesel truck traffic rerouting feasibility study. The study would determine a designated, safe, and efficient truck access route to and from the Port’s East Complex that eliminates or minimizes truck traffic in the Boggs Tract neighborhood.
- Restore the Delta provides a letter of support to Sylvatex, a Cathode Active Material (CAM) manufacturer looking to develop a site in Stockton, on its application for Department of Energy tax credits. We are generally supportive of the project to the extent that Sylvatex can demonstrate a cleaner manufacturing process for Cathode Active Materials, an input to lithium ion batteries, which we recognize as an established clean energy storage solution that offers potential to reduce reliance on fossil energy sources.
What We’re Reading
- A California Port Gambles on Dirty Hydrogen
- An environmental tragedy is unfolding 50 miles south of Sacramento. There’s time to act
- PG&E’s 2024 Rate Increases Explained
- The Science of Carbon Dioxide Removal: What Is It and Is It Needed?
- A Carbon Capture Monitoring Well Leaked in Illinois. Most Residents Found Out When the World Did