Finally, some fairness in global reporting of greenhouse gas
George David Banks, The Hill, January 14, 2019
A few weeks ago, the Trump administration scored a major diplomatic victory in international climate policy in the industrial city of Katowice, Poland. While this win won’t receive much attention in the headlines, Trump’s State Department achieved a decades-old foreign policy goal that helps protect U.S. manufacturing and levels the playing field against major economic competitors, particularly China. At stake was transparency in the reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the creation of a single set of rules for all countries. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United States faced more stringent reporting requirements than its competitors in the developing world. The Katowice agreement now requires others to do the same as the United States — report their GHG emissions across all sectors, including trade-sensitive industries like steel, chemicals and aluminum.
Our Take: You don’t have to be a part of the Paris Accord to make progress. George David Banks, the author of this piece, will be speaking at Meet Alaska in Anchorage on Friday, January 18th.
DIVIDED: Major Green Groups Not Endorsing Green New Deal Because It Goes Too Far
Power the Future, January 17, 2019
The left is growing increasingly divided over whether to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist-inspired “Green New Deal.” While Ocasio-Cortez pushes a reluctant Nancy Pelosi to embrace her far-left agenda, organizations on the left, including major environmentalist groups, aren’t so sure they like Ocasio-Cortez’s plan. The New Republic reports that while 626 environmental groups have backed the “Green New Deal,” submitting a letter to Congress voicing their support, “six of the largest, most influential environmental advocacy groups didn’t sign it.”
Our Take: If you can’t get the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and the Audubon Society on board with your plan – you might be too radical. Daniel Turner, Executive Director of Power the Future, will be speaking at Meet Alaska in Anchorage on Friday, January 18th.
State says it will answer FERC’s engineering questions by June
Larry Persily, January 16, 2019
Alaska Gasline Development Corp. (AGDC) has told federal regulators it will be late June before the state-led project team can provide all the detailed engineering data requested in December for the proposed Alaska LNG project’s gas treatment plant at Prudhoe Bay and gas liquefaction plant in Nikiski. AGDC on Jan. 15 responded to 76 technical engineering data requests submitted Dec. 26 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is preparing the project’s environmental impact statement. The state corporation answered five of the requests. It said it would provide responses to 43 of the questions by March 1, 22 by May 3 and the last six by June 28. However, that is not the end of the data requests.
Our Take: What to watch for – additional state funding from the legislature. With only about $15 million left going into the new fiscal year, the agency will need more money to continue.
