Progress Illinois

The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) released a report this month outlining which states are most vulnerable to the rising price of oil, and which are doing the most to ween themselves off oil dependence. All told, the news is encouraging for Illinois, though there is plenty of room for improvement.

The NRDC finds that the Prairie State is better off than 35 other states in terms how hard it has been hit by skyrocketing crude costs. These rankings are determined by pinpointing the percentage of an average citizen's annual income devoted to fuel costs. Generally, people spend more on gas in rural states, states with more farming, and states with less public transportation. Poorer states are also among the hardest hit, as residents generally spend a greater proportion of their incomes on oil.

According to the report, the average Illinois resident spends $1933.79 a year on gas, approximately 4.8 percent of their annual income. Below is a list of the ten worst hit states and how they ranked last year. Two of our neighboring states, Indiana and Iowa have found themselves in much worse shape as prices have gone up:

1) Mississippi (also #1 last year)
2) South Carolina (also #2 last year)
3) Georgia (also #3 last year)
4) Louisiana (up from #8)
5) Kentucky (down from #4)
6) New Mexico (down from #5)
7) Indiana (up from #12)
8) Arkansas (up from #9)
9) Oklahoma (down from #6)
10) Iowa (up from #17)

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After killing a clean coal bill in June, electric utility Commonwealth Edison lifted its opposition to a similar measure yesterday, leading the Illinois House to easily pass (86-5) a measure that could lead to construction of a new generation of clean-coal power plants in the Prairie State. According to Crain's, "the bill would require utilities and power marketers to buy 5 percent of their electricity from facilities like the 600-megawatt plant proposed for Downstate Taylorville, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by separating carbon during the coal-burning process for later burial." Both House Speaker Mike Madigan and his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, support the measure, claiming this technology will save consumers money in the long-run.

But there are still a lot of steps between yesterday's vote and the actual development of new plants. First, the Senate must pass the same measure. Then the testing begins:

Like earlier versions, the House-passed bill would require Taylorville plant developer Tenaska Co. to conduct a detailed cost study before the bill’s provisions take effect. The Legislature then would have to vote again to move forward with the project after seeing the study, as well as critiques of the document by state utility regulators.

The state would foot the bill for that study, which is projected to cost between $10 million and $18 million.

Why is there so much trepidation? As Crain's notes, "the carbon-sequestration technology is expensive, and its feasibility has yet to be proven."

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Today, the Tribune editorial board gets really excited about T. Boone Pickens, the former oil man who's pushing a new proposal to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. I saw Pickens' first TV spot over the weekend. Have a look:

I have to admit, the first 50 seconds of the ad impressed me. I liked the emphasis on the "transfer of wealth" and thought this line was solid: "This is one emergency we can't drill our way out off." That was followed by Pickens' mention of harnessing wind power, which is fantastic.

But then he proposed "using America's abundant natural gas as a cleaner, cheaper alternative to foreign oil."

Oh, T. Boone.

Here's the Tribune's summary of the so-called "Pickens Plan":

He proposes replacing the 22 percent of electricity the nation gets from natural gas with wind energy. That would free up that natural gas to become an alternative fuel for cars. He says cars running on natural gas could cover 38 percent of U.S. transportation needs.

Climate Progress' Joseph Romm explains why this proposal is problematic:

Seriously, though, it’s great that gazillionaire TBP is talking up peak oil and joining the wind power bandwagon (see “Wind Power — A core climate solution“). And it’s great he plans to spend tens of millions of dollars pushing this idea and delivering the mesage that $15 billion dollars for the wind production tax credit is peanuts compared to the $700 billion this country is going to spend on foreign oil this year.

But if you want to displace oil, the obvious thing to do is use of the wind power to charge plug-in hybrids (see “Plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution“), multiple models of which will be introduced into the US car market in two years. Indeed, with electric utilities controlling the charging of the plug-ins, they can make optimum use of variable windpower, which is mostly available at night time. That would be win-win-win.

The Pickens Plan, however, is based on the utterly impractical idea that “Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel.”

Uhh, never gonna happen, T. Boone. Never. The most obvious reason is the gross inefficiency of the entire plan.

Read Romm's whole response. He goes on to explain why the government is never going to spend the money necessary to convert to natural gas vehicles and why such a conversion would do little to curb greenhouse gases.

The Tribune has a great article out today on the fight over BP's effort to expand its oil refinery in Whiting, IN. For many months now, environmental groups and local lawmakers have tried to block or delay the expansion, noting that BP's claims about how much pollution the expanded plant will produce are overly optimistic. As the protests have grown louder, BP has received the necessary air permits will little trouble, first from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, then from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

As the Tribune piece makes clear, over at the EPA, the left hand clearly isn't watching what the right hand is doing:

Federal regulators signed off on the BP permit late last month, seven months after the Environmental Protection Agency accused the company of repeatedly violating pollution limits on existing flares at the refinery.

For at least five years, the EPA wrote in a November complaint, the refinery's flares have routinely exceeded limits on sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. Sulfur dioxide is an ingredient in smog and soot that can trigger asthma and other respiratory ailments; hydrogen sulfide is a pungent gas that can cause fatigue.

Officials at the EPA's regional office in Chicago said the ongoing enforcement action and the permit review are separate matters.

During the agency's investigation, regulators were stymied in their attempt to calculate the total amount of pollution emitted by BP's flares. Most of the devices were not equipped with pollution monitors until recently, said George Czerniak, the EPA's regional chief of air enforcement.

Call me crazy, but the EPA officials signing off on new air permits for the facility probably should have noticed that the company was under investigation for violating emissions limits.

Is it possible to live off the grid in the suburbs? That's what Aileen Eilert of Lisle is attempting to find out. As part of its "Chicago Matters: Growing Forward" series, WBEZ's Ashley Gross profiles Eilert's push for suburban sustainability, in part prompted by her nephew's death in Iraq:

EILERT: You know, we’re fighting over there and it was about oil, and so I just thought I’ve got to do something. I mean, it’s too late for me to do anything about my nephew, and it's sad, he was such a good kid. I’d like to see it where we don’t have to do this anymore. I’d like it to be where people, 'Oh we don’t need to buy oil from countries that may not be friendly to us or may not be stable.'

While Eilert is an outlier -- she's already erected a wind turbine near her home, installed solar panels on her garage, bought a hybrid, and started planting a garden where her lawn used to be -- University of Illinois-Chicago professor Evan McKenzie says eco-living is catching on all over suburbia:

MCKENZIE: There’s just a changing awareness. The stuff that was planned and put in place in the '60s and '70s and even the '80s, I think in some cases is giving way to new ideas. I mean they’re selling and giving away rain barrels in the suburbs so people collect rainwater to water their plants with. I never heard of that before. Suburban homebuyers today are thinking a lot more about the quality of life issues, and as a result the market and municipalities are reflecting it.

Check out the whole report here.

In early April, Virginia-based energy company Dominion Resources announced plans to buy 25,000 acres near Springfield for the Prairie Forks Wind Farm. Now the Southtown Star is reporting that Kansas-based developer Trade Wind Energy "has signed leases with landowners for two wind farms in DeWitt County and is in discussions for a third in Christian County." According to the Star, increased interest in wind power is due to technological advances and, of course, skyrocketing energy costs:

[Trade Wind Energy development manager Duane] Enger said improvements in wind-turbine technology have made it possible to operate at lower wind speeds - Trade Wind looks for areas with consistent 10 to 18 mph winds - but that rising energy prices also are a factor.

"There has just been more demand for energy the last few years," he said.

Each project would have capacity to house 100 to 150 wind towers and would produce 100 to 150 megawatts of electricity. A megawatt is typically enough to supply 250 to 300 homes.

A study commissioned by British Petroleum indicates that emissions from the expanded BP oil refinery in Whiting, IN could be much greater than the company initially claimed. The report was drawn up by Trinity Consultants and submitted to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management as part of BP's application for new state permits. It shows that the current expansion of the plant could result in a 50 percent increase in Co2 emissions (BP has claimed emissions would only rise by 20 percent). In terms of greenhouse gas pollution, this increase is roughly the equivalent of putting 200,000 to 400,000 new cars on the road.

Meanwhile, Co2 is only one of several pollutants that could be emitted at higher levels, reports the Post-Tribune, which received the study via a public information request:

According to the report by Trinity Consultants, nitrogen oxides -- which can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract -- could increase up to 11 times the threshold amount. To reduce nitrogen oxide emissions during combustion, BP will install new heaters and retrofit or replace existing heaters. Carbon monoxide -- an odorless, colorless gas that can kill and at lower levels headaches, dizziness, nausea and fatigue -- could go up more than five times the threshold.

BP claims that the report is misleading because it lists the amount of pollutants the plant would emit if ran at maximum capacity. Environmentalists counter that BP is known for polluting past legally sanctioned levels, and its ability to do so at Whiting constitutes a serious environmental and public health risk. The state of Indiana has already awarded BP the necessary permits to expand the facility and construction is ongoing. However, the decision to allow the expansion faces a legal challenge from environmental groups.

Many parts of the world have already accepted the link between disastrous weather events and global warming. But during the recent flooding of the Mississippi and other Midwestern rivers, public officials and reporters seemed reluctant to discuss the possible connection. While it's easy to simply blame the catastrophe on "mother nature," a growing chorus of scientists, environmentalists, and even the U.S. government are pointing out that global warming models have long predicted flooding of this sort in the Midwest. For instance, there's this statement released today by the National Wildlife Federation:

The big picture is that global warming is making tragedies like these more frequent and more intense. Global warming is happening now. Our dependency on fossil fuels like oil and coal is causing the problem, and people and wildlife are witnessing the effects.

Many from the affected region agree. Gene Tackle, an Iowa State University agricultural meteorology professor had this to say to Reuters News Service:

There has been in the last 30 years a tendency toward more heavy rainfall events in the central U.S. We have a past trend and our models, based on increased greenhouse gases produced by humans, indicate that the trend will continue.

One of the most vocal advocates of climate change awareness is Joseph Romm, a former Clinton official and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Earlier this week, Romm stressed that even global warming skeptics should take note of the devastation in the Midwest:

The [...] conservative interpretation is that this season and other recent disaster years are an aberration, that the disasters are not the result of climate change and that weather will return to “normal”. Even if that were true, the natural disasters underway today are consistent with the predicted consequences of global warming and are very likely a taste of things to come.

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Backyard Conservative joins the chorus of Illinois Republicans -- along with John McCain and President Bush -- calling for more oil drilling to lower fuel prices:

This is what the American people want: Drill here, Drill now, Pay less--where we have proven reserves!!!

Lift the ban on offshore drilling on the Outer Continental shelf, far from our beaches, but rich with oil. New technology is least intrusive, protecting coral reefs and habitat.

But what effect will offshore drilling have on gas prices? Dean Baker does some back-of-the-envelope calculations:

According to the NYT, the Energy Information Agency estimates that the total amount of oil in the offshore zone in question is about 16 billion barrels. If we assume that it would take about ten years from the day of authorization to get to peak production and that most of the oil is pumped out over 30 years, this would translate into a bit over 1 million barrels of oil a day.

That would be equal to about 1 percent of world production in a decade. If we assume a long-run demand elasticity of 0.3, this would imply a drop in world prices of approximately 3 percent. In today's prices, we would be looking at a drop in the price of a barrel of oil from around $135 to $131. If this were passed on one to one in gas prices (this is long-run story), we might expect to see a drop in the price of a gallon of gas from around $4.00 to around $3.92 a gallon.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration backs up Baker's work. Last year, they released a report suggesting that drilling on the Continental Shelf wouldn’t have “a significant impact” on gas prices until 2030.

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With an accord reached Tuesday between Democratic and Republican state lawmakers, Ohio will become the sixth state to ratify the Great Lakes Compact:

Ohio had been a major obstacle to the pact because of a disagreement over whether the plan would inadvertently violate property rights for groundwater on privately owned land. House Speaker Jon Husted, a Republican, and Democratic Minority Leader Joyce Beatty, reached a deal Monday to affirm private property rights and set the stage for Tuesday's vote.

The Great Lakes hold about 90 percent of our nation's fresh surface water and 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. As water resources become more scarce, the compact is viewed by supporters as a means of protecting the environment, and as a way for people in the region to protect their water rights. But some environmentalists say that the compact itself gives states too many options to continue the wholesale privatization of surface water.

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