CATF Articles & Posts
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Regulation Is Needed: Making “Best” Practices Standard Practice
The recent release of the Administration’s comprehensive strategy for reducing methane emissions raises the question of how best to reduce methane emissions, especially from the oil and gas sector. Can voluntary programs really lead to the methane reductions we need, or are mandatory regulatory programs necessary? While voluntary programs can…
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Regulation Works: How science, advocacy and good regulations combined to force a massive reduction in power plant pollution and public health impacts
In 1996, Clean Air Task Force was founded to launch an effort to clean up emissions from coal-fired power plants. Our primary goal was to massively slash their emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2). So CATF’s first step was to document the impacts…
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Study Shows EPA Underestimates Methane Emissions from Natural Gas Production and Demonstrates Need for Tough National Standards
A recently published article (Brandt et al.) assessed methane leakage rates from the natural gas sector and concluded that “official inventories consistently underestimate actual CH4 emissions, with the [natural gas] and oil sectors as important contributors…” The report stacks up 20 years of research—with different scales and seemingly different findings—along…
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Do CO2 Injections Pose Risk of Harmful Earthquakes?
How common are measurable earthquakes in association with oilfield operations? The answer is: exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, another scientific paper has raised the possibility of seismic events occurring as a result of injection of CO2 to stimulate new oil production from depleted oil fields. Since this process, known as enhanced oil…
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Peak Coal in China — or Long, High Plateau?
China coal power is one of the world’s largest single contributors to carbon dioxide emissions, which will likely need to be reduced to near-zero levels over the next few decades to manage climate change. So when two reports came out in the last few weeks that project a peak in…
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Carbon Capture and Storage – Why It’s Essential
EPA’s move last week to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants marks the beginning of an era of widespread use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in fossil power generation. Going forward, in the absence of any other technology allowing emissions reductions, all new coal-fired power plants must…
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First Things First: Capping Corn-Based Biofuel Production
When Congress dramatically expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007, supporters of the revised RFS—which is supposed to push 36 billion gallons of biofuel into the US fuel market by 2022—touted the program as a solution to our overdependence on foreign oil, a cure for flagging rural economies, and a…
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The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Has Some Excellent Advice for the President on Climate Change
Two months ago, President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology issued a nine-page open letter to the President outlining six critical, common-sense pathways for the Administration to address global climate change during his second term. Released without much fanfare, the letter appears to have disappeared from public view,…
