#socalgas

[mostlysignssomeportents]

SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules

Today (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html

The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.

Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.

The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.

The bill topped $36 million – and it was illegally charged to its customers, the Californians whose immediate health and long-term survival these efforts opposed. SoCal Gas refuses to disclose the full extent of the spending, as do its lawyer-procurers, who cite legal confidentiality and a First Amendment right to secretly seek to influence policy in their refusal to disclose their profits from this illegal conduct.

The law firms involved are a who's-who of California's most prominent corporate fixers, including Reichman Jorgensen and Holland & Knight. The partners involved have a long rap sheet for anti-climate dirty tricking, most notably Jennifer Hernandez, notorious in climate justice history for an incident where activists claim she posed as one of them, infiltrating a campaign to force corporate despoilers to clean up their pollution in order to sabotage it, while secretly on a wealthy, prominent landowner's payroll.

Hernandez claims to care about the environment and says that her longstanding, corporate-funded, extensive campaigns and lawsuits against state environmental regulations are motivated by concern over their impact on working people. Her firm, Holland & Knight, denies serving SoCal Gas in opposing gas regulations, but it received $594k in ratepayer dollars, and submitted comments opposing the rules on its own behalf. Those comments were nearly identical to the comments submitted by SoCal Gas.

Hernandez also represents an obscure organization called The Two Hundred for Home Ownership in "a flurry of lawsuits" over California Air Resources Board rules on pollution, seeking to overturn the state's landmark climate change regulations.

Two Hundred for Home Ownership was founded by Robert Apodaca, who told the Bee that Hernandez's work for him is pro bono and not funded by SoCal Gas, but his entry into the fray occurred just as SoCalGas was founding an astroturf group called Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy (C4BES), which pretended to be an independent organization, disguising its relationship with SoCal Gas.

Apodaca is also founder of United Latinos Vote, an organization that had been largely dormant for seven years, not receiving any donations, until 2018, when the California Building Industry Association gave it $99k. The CBIA is a large-dollar recipient of donations from SoCal Gas, and its CEO insists that it was not acting on SoCal Gas's behalf when it made its unpredented donation to Apodaca.

The CBIA donation to United Latinos Vote was forerunner to a flood of corporate donations from the likes of Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66. Shortly after receiving this cash, United Latinos Vote ran a full page ad in the LA Times, accusing the Sierra Club of pushing for anti-gas appliance rules that would harm working class Latino families.

This ad, in turn, featured prominently in advocacy by the SoCal Gas front group C4BES, funded with $29.1m in ratepayer money, which it then spent seeking to link clean appliance rules with anti-Latino racism. A quarter of California's carbon emissions come from home gas use.

SoCal Gas is regulated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which tolerated this mounting illegal conduct for many years, even as the company circulated internal memos as early as 2015 discussing its plans to oppose electrification in the state on the basis that it constituted "a significant risk to our business."

But last year, CPUC fined SoCal Gas $10m. Now, CPUC's Public Advocate office has filed a damning, extensive report on SoCal Gas's unlawful conduct, seeking $80m in rate cuts to compensate Californians for the funds misappropriated to protect the company's shareholder interests:

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M517/K407/517407314.PDF

Additionally, the Public Advocate is demanding $233m in fines for the company's refusal to allow investigators to audit its books and discover the full extent of the fraud.

SoCal Gas is the nation's largest utility, but (incredibly), it's not the dirtiest. That prize goes to Ohio's FirstEnergy, which handed $60m in ratepayer dollars to state politicians in illegal bribes in exchange for coal and nuclear subsidies and cancellation of state climate rules. That scandal led to GOP speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder being sentenced to 20 years in prison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal

There is something extraordinarily sleazy about using ratepayers' own money to lobby against their interests. SoCal Gas and its Big Law enablers have funneled millions in Californian's money into campaigns to poison us and boil us alive, and they did it while using workers and racialized people as human shields.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

Image: Maryland GovPics (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/6635539089/

Jackie (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/79874304@N00/197532792

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The American Prospect:

The Clean Air Act (CAA) has been fiercely opposed by polluters and their allies since its passage in 1970. Industry has never quite stopped fighting to prevent the government from protecting American lives and communities at the expense of even a bit of their profits. But over the past few years, opposition to the law has reached new feverish heights. Multiple cases seeking to gut the CAA have been filed by (or with the support of) oil and gas organizations, their dark-money front groups, and their political allies since 2022.

The ringleaders of this effort are the usual trade groups driving climate apocalypse, including the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the American Petroleum Institute (API), as well as oil giants themselves, like ExxonMobil.

Yet the coordinated attacks on this lifesaving, popular, and historically successful regulation go beyond the singularly destructive interests of the oil industry alone. And they go beyond the federal rule too, and are working their way into litigation against state enactments of the CAA.

Of course, many of the companies driving these suits are some of the biggest names in corporate greenwashing, like Amazon, FedEx, SoCalGas, and more.

These companies have continuously insisted that they are committed to leading the clean-energy transition, even while they fight for the right to poison the general public for profit, and have endeavored—at every turn—to destroy any opportunity the public may have to pursue recourse for it.

Last year, the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association (EMA) threatened a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) over the state regulator’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule.

The rule, which would mandate a “phased-in transition toward zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles,” threatens the transportation sector’s historically noxious way of doing business; the sector accounts for more than 35 percent of California’s nitrogen oxide emissions and nearly a quarter of California’s on-road greenhouse gas emissions. CARB’s rule could go a long way toward actualizing rapid reductions in the state’s annually generated emissions.

However, later that year EMA and some major truck manufacturers reached an agreement with CARB not to sue over the rules, in exchange for the state’s loosening of some near-term emissions reductions standards.

EMA has by and large kept its promise to not intervene with the regulation in courts, but litigation challenging CARB’s rule would soon be picked up by the California Trucking Association (CTA). Enforcement of the rule has since been on hold, as CARB waits to be issued an ACF-related waiver from the EPA in return for CTA not filing for preliminary injunction against the law.

Even despite these agreements, some of EMA’s own members—and even some of those specifically signed on to the CARB deal—pop up on CTA’s member rolls, as per CTA’s own 2023 membership directory. Daimler Trucks North America and Navistar, Inc., are specifically listed as Allied Members of CTA for 2023.

Amazon is listed among CTA’s Carrier Members, while separately making routine promises to be a partner in the fight against climate change. While Amazon announced its “Climate Pledge” in 2019 of reaching net-zero emissions by 2040 to great fanfare, and has since branded itself a climate leader, the Center for Investigative Reporting has detailed how the e-commerce giant is overselling its green credentials by drastically undercounting its carbon emissions.

In truth, Amazon’s emissions have increased more than 40 percent in the time since it issued the pledge. Amazon also remains the largest emitter of the “Big Five” tech companies, producing no less than 16.2 million metric tons of CO2 every year. Without question, the corporation should be regarded as an industry leader in greenwashing, rather than in actual climate action.

FedEx is also a CTA Carrier-level member. Like Amazon, the company has also made promises “to achieve carbon neutral operations by 2040,” an initiative FedEx has labeled “Priority Earth.” In the years since, FedEx has funneled intensive time and resources into lobbying directly against climate action while pushing its net-zero greenwashing narrative.

UPS is another CTA Carrier-level member. UPS has historically been less effusive in its climate promises than have other corporations on this list, but the delivery giant has continuously reinforced its stance that “everyone shares responsibility to improve energy efficiency and to reduce GHG emissions in the atmosphere.”

[beardedmrbean]

At a Planning and Design Commission Meeting last week, associate city planner Laura Tuller disclosed that Sacramento will back off — at least for now — on enforcing what has been touted as a key policy in combating climate change.

“The city will not currently preclude mixed fuel development,” Tuller told the city council-appointed commission. during an update on the city’s building electrification strategy.

Her statement referred to enforcing an ordinance passed by the council that would, with some exceptions, ban natural gas hookups in new construction projects starting in 2023.

Methane from natural gas is a potent contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change. State and local leaders in California have identified what is called “building decarbonization” — relying on cleaner electric power — as a crucial way to achieve its zero carbon emissions goal by 2045.

Tuller explained that the decision to pause enforcement is the result of a recent court ruling. Other cities such as San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz have made the same determination.

In April, The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the City of Berkeley’s building electrification ordinance in a lawsuit backed by the Sacramento-based California Restaurant Association. The court said that the city had stepped on the federal government’s role regulating energy markets.

The ruling has, for the moment, put a chill on what building decarbonization advocates say is a sensible movement. Prior to the Berkeley ruling, 76 cities from Los Angeles to Sacramento had passed electrification ordinances banning natural gas hookups in new construction. Sacramento leaders say they can’t enforce the gas ban until they see what happens with the City of Berkeley’s appeal of the decision.

State policymakers are similarly nervous about the implications of the Berkeley ruling.

A Sacramento Bee investigation earlier this month found that donations to CRA and its foundation from SoCalGas, the nation’s largest gas utility, soared after CRA launched its lawsuit.

Critics of SoCalGas as well as the California Public Advocate’s Office, which is an independent state watchdog arm of the California Public Utilities Commission, have accused SoCalGas of financially backing the Berkeley lawsuit with millions of dollars.

“It strains credibility to suggest that the utility did not fund research that supported the California Restaurant Association’s litigation,” the watchdog said in a filing this month.

The restaurant association has vigorously denied any coordination with Southern California Gas Co. on the lawsuit. The CRA said its motivation for the lawsuit was purely to protect new restaurants who prefer using gas, especially Chinese restaurants that prefer gas-powered woks.

SoCalGas has vehemently denied that it in any way funded the CRA’s lawsuit.

The recent Bee investigation noted that contributions to the CRA and its foundation from SoCalGas and its parent company Sempra grew from $174,594 in years 2015 to 2018 to $1.8 million from 2019 to 2022 — a tenfold increase.

The original Sacramento electrification ordinance passed in 2021 and went into effect, albeit briefly, on Jan. 1. Restaurants, however, were exempted until 2026. But through its role as members of a technical advisory panel advising the city, the CRA along with two allies connected to Chinese restaurants, argued the gas ban was culturally insensitive to the tradition of wok cooking.

Several Asian chefs that The Bee spoke to, including celebrity chef Martin Yan, pointed out that induction wok cooking is becoming more common in Asia, and that the industry needs to do its part to combat climate change. Many chefs believe cooking with electric-powered induction woks —although more expensive — is better than cooking with gas-powered woks, especially when environmental and health effects are considered.

At the technical advisory panel’s recommendation, in November 2022, the city council adopted “infeasibility waiver guidelines” that included a key clause;: If the business was found to make a legitimate claim that precluding them from using natural gas would “prohibit socio-cultural traditions that communities practice,” they could be exempted.

“I was shocked when I read that. It just felt like this secret gutting,” Rosie Yacoub an activist with the climate group 350 Sacramento told The Bee. She added, “What does that even mean? It seems like anyone could make that case.”

At a City Council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Darrel Steinberg and City Council member Katie Valenzuela said that The Bee investigation raised questions about the city’s conflict of interest policy for advisory groups like the technically advisory panel, though stopped short of any specific suggestions for reforming the process.

Charlie Spatz, research manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, said that the conflict of interest issue raised thorny questions.

“The question here is whether the utility money was motivating or influencing the restaurant association’s engagement with the city council,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with restaurants engaging in electrification policy, but it’s important to remember that gas utilities are spreading disinformation to restaurants with the goal of blocking electrification policy.

“It’s a bad faith campaign designed to drive unfounded fear in the restaurant industry and it only serves the interests of gas utilities.”

That disinformation, Spatz and others note, centers on what they believe are dubious studies that try to undermine research such as that performed by Stanford University that concludes gas cooking can be harmful without proper ventilation.

There are signs that even if the Berkeley decision is not overturned, market conditions at least in Sacramento, which has through SMUD some of the lowest electric rates in California, are pushing new construction to be all-electric.

A tool that the city links to called Xerohome appears to typically show cost savings in utility bills of $600-$1,100 annually when homeowners opt for modern all-electric appliances.

Brian Hanly, President of Next Generation Capital, says his company has increasingly opted for all-electric developments in Sacramento, including the 21-unit development, Icon @14C, which was completed in 2020.

“We were a bit afraid of the consumer response in the beginning,” Hanly told The Bee. He added, “It’s above my pay grade to understand the environmental ramifications between natural gas and electric, but we’ve had a positive experience.”

[novumtimes]

Rancho Palos Verdes faces more gas shutoffs amid land movement

Southern California Gas Co. is shutting off natural gas service to 54 more Rancho Palos Verdes homes because of additional land movement in the area. The utility on Thursday announced service would be suspended indefinitely for 29 homes in the western Seaview neighborhood and 25 homes in the Portuguese Bend Beach Club area starting about 3 p.m. Friday. The decision followed a sudden gas line break on Exultant Drive in Seaview on Aug. 30, as well as new geological hazard surveys, SoCalGas said in a statement. Land movement has also impacted the gas line on Palos Verdes Drive South, which serves the Portuguese Bend Beach Club community. In both cases, SoCalGas determined it was no longer possible to safely continue service. “At this time, SoCalGas does not know when it will be safe to restore service to these communities,” the utility’s statement said. A complete list of affected streets is available online. Emergency disaster relief may also be available to customers affected by the shutoffs. More information can be found on the SoCalGas website. Residents whose service has been turned off should not attempt to restore service themselves or connect alternative fuels like propane to their natural gas meters, because it is dangerous. The Portuguese Bend neighborhood continues to be the only one in Rancho Palos Verdes that is under a city-issued evacuation warning. No such advisories are in place for Seaview or Portuguese Bend Beach Club. The gas service shutoffs are the latest hardship dealt to residents of Rancho Palos Verdes’ rolling hillsides. In late July, SoCalGas shut off gas for 135 homes in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood, citing worsening land movement in the area. And over Labor Day weekend, Southern California Edison shut off power to more than 200 homes in Portuguese Bend and Seaview — a decision designed to reduce the risk that the shifting earth could spark a wildfire if power lines remained electrified, officials said. City officials said residents in these neighborhoods can choose to remain in their homes without gas or electricity, and many have done so. But authorities continue to warn that residents should be prepared if their homes become subject to a shutoff amid the ongoing land movement. During a special City Council meeting earlier this week, Edison officials said they are considering shutting off power to the Portuguese Bend Beach Club area as well, but couldn’t definitively say whether that will occur. The decision will be based primarily on whether land movement conditions change. Source link via The Novum Times

[imhomeinspections]

🏡Inspections that matter for people who care🔍

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[solarpowerindustry]

Innovative Technology That Uses Solar Energy to Convert 100% Renewable ... - PR Newswire

PRNewswire/ -- Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) announced today that an innovative technology developed by UCLA researchers with ... http://dlvr.it/SzZQ9H

[ehz-official]

新技术可以凭空捕获碳和水...

初创公司Avnos正在试验一台机器，该机器可以帮助解决气候变化问题，并适应现实中已有的影响。

总部位于洛杉矶的初创公司 Avnos 正在加利福尼亚州贝克斯菲尔德测试一台可以从空气中吸收二氧化碳和水的机器。 摄影师：Alisha Jucevic/彭博社

加利福尼亚州贝克斯菲尔德附近一条交通繁忙的路段，在这里试图同时解决两大环境危机似乎有些奇怪。但在那里，夹在一个废弃的太阳能热项目和一个杏仁农场之间，一家公司正在测试一种可以从空气中吸收二氧化碳和水的机器。

该机器是洛杉矶初创公司 Avnos 的首次尝试，旨在证明它可以实现所谓的混合直接空气捕获 (DAC)。它的技术将净化空气中的二氧化碳并捕获可在干旱日益严重时代使用的水。这是对一项已经很有前途的技术的一次大胆尝试。

插图：Chris Philpot for Bloomberg Green

①  周围空气被吸入装置的吸附侧，在那里进行除湿

② 吸附剂材料从除湿空气中分离二氧化碳

③ 吸附过程产生的热量传递到装置的另一侧

④ 主动热交换有助于释放或“解吸”水和二氧化碳

⑤ 该装置的两侧是镜像：当吸附材料“满”时，滑动面板会切换两侧的功能

⑥  收集解吸的水和二氧化碳

美国能源部最近宣布将投资超过10 亿美元用于多个旨在从环境空气中捕获二氧化碳的项目。阿夫诺斯是一个研究小组的成员，该小组收到了其中 1200 万美元的资金。（该公司还在最新一轮融资中筹集了 8000 万美元。）许多致力于解决这个问题的初创公司使用机器，使用大型风扇吸入空气，然后将空气传递到或通过化学溶剂，将二氧化碳从空气���分离出来。然后，二氧化碳被封存在地下，理论上它会在那里停留几个世纪或更长时间，而不是在大气中使地球变暖。

阿夫诺斯正在尝试做同样的事情，但其技术也在这个过程中产生了一种有价值的副产品：水。该公司的机器让周围空气通过干燥剂，从而吸出水分。然后，除湿后的空气通过一种获得专利的吸附剂材料，捕获二氧化碳。首席执行官兼创始人 Will Kain 表示，每捕获一吨二氧化碳，Avnos 就能生产约 5 至 10 吨水。这样做彻底改变了 DAC 方程式：太平洋西北国家实验室 (PNNL) 实验室研究员兼阿夫诺斯公司顾问 Pete McGrail 表示，DAC 系统平均每捕获一吨二氧化碳消耗 5 至 10 吨水。

“实际上，有一个肮脏的小秘密，它们 [DAC 系统] 会消耗能量，当然，”McGrail 说。“但这些技术在这个过程中也会消耗大量的水。”

Avnos 表示，每捕获一吨二氧化碳，他们就能生产约 5 至 10 吨水。摄影师：Alisha Jucevic/彭博社

DAC是能源密集型的，这是成本高的原因之一。科学家估计，使用 DAC 每年从大气中去除数十亿吨碳（科学表明到本世纪中叶需要达到这样的规模才能将全球变暖限制在 1.5 摄氏度），这将需要比目前更多的能源。DAC 需要如此多能源的部分原因是所使用的许多化学溶剂需要高热量才能将二氧化碳从空气中分离出来。

他说，阿夫诺斯的系统由麦格雷尔和 PNNL 的其他研究人员在四年多前首次开发，大大降低了从空气中捕获碳所需的能量。它不依赖必须加热的化学溶剂，而是使用湿度敏感的物理溶剂，这种溶剂在捕获和释放二氧化碳方面没有相同的热量要求。驱动该过程所需的热量从机器的一侧收集，机器产生热量，从而形成独特的“水分摆动”过程。

其他研究人员也在评估低能耗、水分摇摆方法的优点，以减轻 DAC 的高能耗。在十月份的一项研究中，西北大学的一个研究小组发现，在适当的条件下，该技术可以成为一种节能且具有成本效益的碳捕获方法。

尽管该研究中测试的方法与 Avnos 的技术不同，但在二氧化碳去除方面，基于水分波动的 DAC 系统可能是“产品组合的重要组成部分”，Vinayak Dravid 说，他是材料科学与工程教授。西北大学麦考密克工程学院和该研究的资深作者。

生产水是 Avnos 价值主张的核心。这家初创公司的系统首先仍然需要一些能源和投资来建造机器。将其生产的水出售给当地市政当局或可利用其生产可持续航空燃料的公司将有助于抵消这些成本。尽管 DAC 还处于早期阶段，但它已经遭到了当地社区的反对。凯恩说，将水作为碳去除的副产品可以为阿夫诺斯提供运营的社会许可，特别是在像加利福尼亚州这样缺水是一个主要问题的地方。

Avnos 创始人兼首席执行官 Will Kain  摄影师：Alisha Jucevic/彭博社

Kain 表示，Avnos 的工艺可以为需要水的社区生产水，并补充说，像其他 DAC 技术一样，在加州允许消耗大量水的工业工艺是很困难的。

McGrail 表示，在了解大规模部署传统系统可以使用多少水后，他构想出了一种产水 DAC 系统。

既然试点单位已经建立，Avnos 面临的挑战是将两个子系统集成到机器内，作为微妙舞蹈的一部分。凯恩说，水捕获子系统和二氧化碳子系统都可以独立工作，但直到今年夏天这家初创公司在贝克斯菲尔德工厂启动机器之前，它们还没有作为一个统一的系统在现场运行。

在八月炎热的一天，这家初创公司的高级工艺工程师 Atefeh Alijah 走近了这台大约有一辆大卡车大小的机器。她轻按了几个开关，点击了数字屏幕上的几个按钮，然后打开了机器。

立即，它隆隆作响，听起来就像一个巨大的窗式空调机组。风扇将空气吸入一侧的铁锈色过滤器，然后再通过第二层过滤器。运行几分钟后，阿利亚关闭系统并重新编程以通过另一侧运行。一块金属面板从一侧移动到另一侧，露出另一侧的相同系统。这个过程再次开始。

几分钟后，空气从另一侧出现，宝贵的二氧化碳和水通过管道泵送到最终目的地。在贝克斯菲尔德的演示现场，这是一个装水的塑料桶，里面装着足够喝几口的水。从理论上讲，从机器中排出的水是蒸馏水，尽管它在工业桶内看起来不太吸引人。（凯恩开玩笑说他仍然愿意喝它。）该试验场的设计目标是每年从空气中捕获 30 吨二氧化碳，并生产多达 300 吨水。

高级工艺工程师 Atefeh Alijah  摄影师：Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg

由于现场没有内置存储装置，Avnos 将二氧化碳释放回周围空气中。但在商业规模上，二氧化碳将被储存在储罐中并运送给客户以封存地下或转化为可持续的航空燃料。凯恩说，阿夫诺斯希望将其单位与利用或封存合作伙伴放在同一地点，以避免建设交通基础设施的成本。

捕获的二氧化碳的最终命运——谁可以购买它以及他们如何处理它——是碳捕获界争论的一个主要焦点。环保人士认为，允许化石燃料公司投资碳捕获并购买清除额度只会给他们继续污染的许可。

但该行业可以发挥作用：Kain 已从康菲石油公司和壳牌风险投资部门筹集了资金，在他看来，DAC 行业正处于起步阶段，应该接受各方的帮助。他毫不犹豫地将阿夫诺斯的服务出售给这些公司，只要二氧化碳不被用来开采更多的化石燃料，这一过程在业内被称为提高石油采收率。他指出，石油和天然气公司在大规模地质封存方面也拥有最丰富的经验，这可能有助于寻求封存二氧化碳。

温室气体可能有其他用途。Kain 对吸引航空业买家持开放态度，向他们提供捕获的二氧化碳，作为可持续航空燃料(SAF) 和其他流程的原料。实现这一目标的一种方法是将水分解为氧气和氢气而产生的氢气与二氧化碳结合，将结合产物转化为燃料。

潜在买家正在涌现。JetBlue Ventures 投资 Avnos 是因为它将捕获的碳视为 SAF 的重要原料，就像 JetBlue Ventures 投资组合公司 Air Company 正在开发的那种原料一样。

“空气制燃料是我们真正感兴趣的 [SAF] 途径之一，空气制燃料的原料是捕获的碳，因此我们喜欢该链条的这一部分，”捷蓝航空总裁艾米·伯尔 (Amy Burr) 说道风险投资。

然而，该用例将是碳中和而不是负碳。虽然为航空等难以脱碳的行业提供碳中性燃料可能有助于实现净零排放，但 SAF 仍处于起步阶段，正在应对自身成长的烦恼。

在隔离方面，阿夫诺斯将需要依赖各种合作伙伴。这些潜在合作伙伴之一是另一位早期投资者南加州天然气公司。Avnos 和该公用事业公司以及其他合作伙伴从美国能源部获得了近 1200 万美元，用于在加利福尼亚州克恩县设计一个碳捕获和运输中心。

SoCalGas 管理着 100,000 英里（161,000 公里）的地下管道，将天然气输送到加州中部和南部周围的企业和家庭。业务发展高级总监尤里·弗里德曼 (Yuri Freedman) 表示，情况可能并非总是如此，因为该州正在从天然气转向更多的可再生能源。“在无碳的未来，我们将运输不同的分子”，其中包括二氧化碳，他说。

Freedman 负责监督该公司的低碳基础设施项目，并将对 Avnos 的投资视为对 SoCalGas 业务未来的投资。该公司希望利用其现有的通行权建造新的管道来运输二氧化碳。

该试验场的设计目标是每年从空气中捕获30吨二氧化碳并生产300吨水。摄影师：Alisha Jucevic/彭博社

“我们正在寻求以我们以前从未使用过的方式使用分子，”他说。在将碳转化为商品方面，仍然存在许多悬而未决的问题，包括二氧化碳将如何大量销售和远距离运输。

与此同时，Avnos 正在努力建设下一个更大的运营基地，每年能够捕获 300 吨二氧化碳和多达 3,000 吨水，预计将在明年内建成并运行。该项目由美国国防部赞助，凯恩表示，美国国防部有兴趣将该技术应用于开发 SAF。

该初创公司预计，当其 300 吨工厂投入运行时，去除一吨二氧化碳将花费 500 美元。但 Kain 预计，到 2028 年，该公司每年捕集二氧化碳的能力将达到 50 万吨，成本将降至每吨 240 美元，并最终在 2030 年代初期达到每吨 100 美元，这对于时间框架来说是一个非常雄心勃勃的目标。DAC 行业的许多人将这一成本视为遥不可及的圣杯，届时每年捕获保持地球凉爽所需的数十亿吨碳在经济上是可行的。

然而，实现规模经济并不能保证。但凯恩认为，只要有一点帮助，这是可行的。

“我们认为，我们部署该技术的最佳机会是建立合作伙伴关系，”凯恩说。“发展这些类型的合作伙伴关系，并有机会在任何给定时间跨多个项目和多个合作伙伴部署我们的技术，我认为这对于以我们想要的部署速度和成熟度曲线进行部署至关重要”。

财经贝EHZ官网原文链接：

https://www.cjz.vip/303745207.html

[nj-stone]

Cory Doctorow: America's largest gas company, secretly paid millions for people to oppose California climate rules, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. Californians were forced to pay to lobby *against our survival*: It's breathtaking fraud: @socalgas https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

[msclaritea]

Caroline Kennedy sees possibility of ‘resolution’ in Assange case | The Hill

"U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy said there “could be a resolution” in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was arrested in 2019 over his publishing of classified materials and has since fought in British court to avoid being extradited to the U.S. 

Assange, an Australian citizen, was arrested by British authorities on behalf of the U.S. in 2019 and expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy after almost seven years in asylum there. Since then, he has spent the past four years in a London prison fighting against extradition. 

Asked by the Sydney Morning Herald if the U.S. and Australia could reach a diplomatic outcome with regards to Assange’s extradition, Kennedy said it was an “ongoing case,” being handled by the Department of Justice.

“So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think there absolutely could be a resolution,” Kennedy said. 

Assange faces 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. American prosecutors allege he conspired to hack a government computer in connection with WikiLeaks’s publishing of sensitive government files in 2010. With the help of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, Assange allegedly obtained and published Afghanistan and Iraq war logs as well as secret diplomatic cables. 

During Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Australia earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who will be visiting the U.S. in October, said his government stands firm against the U.S. prosecution of Assange. Blinken rebuked that position, noting Assange is accused of “very serious criminal conduct.”

Kennedy reportedly pointed to Blinken’s comments and said, “But there is a way to resolve it,” adding, “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.”

Court sides with kids who sued Montana over climate changeCalifornia secures settlement with SoCalGas over ‘misleading’ claims that natural gas is ‘renewable’

The Morning Herald asked the ambassador whether U.S. authorities could come to a plea deal agreement with Assange, and she repeated that the case is “up to the Justice Department.” 

Earlier this year, a group of Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on him to drop the case against Assange, arguing that the charges “pose a grave and unprecedented threat” to journalism practices and the First Amendment. The lawmakers referenced a separate letter from a group of news organizations published last year that also called for the dismissal of Assange’s charges."

Those were not real Democrats, but Leftists. If Australia didn't want Julian Assange convicted, they shouldn't have harbored the cults that helped build him. Anybody who keeps a diary is a journalist. Assange is not. He is a Chaos agent, sent to fuck up America's national security and international standing, just in time for the black president's run. What he did was extremely serious and a danger to US. I want Julian Assange convicted.

[catwaller]

SoCalGas Safety Dance - 811 :15

[eagletek]

How SoCalGas' soaring prices are enabled by secrecy

The doubling and in some cases quadrupling of Southern Californians’ natural gas bills in recent months stemmed from rapid price spikes in the so-called spot market, a real-time wholesale market for the fuel. The lack of transparency in California’s spot market for gasoline played a similarly major role in the pummeling California drivers took at the pump last year. The secrecy surrounding…

[denverworksheet]

Amid talk of SoCalGas rate hikes, groups urge L.A. city attorney to investigate utility

Twenty organizations called on Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to investigate SoCalGas for 'potential price gouging and market manipulation.'

from California https://ift.tt/6riX9Hk

[sharethetea]

Uncaptured Image: Neon cactus sign reflecting in a SoCalGas van window

[24zodiacdivisions]

Natural gas pipelines that are made from steel that rust are an environmental hazard to the population at large. The state of California and the Federal government are liable for this environmental cost to the planet. Dig it up and replace the defective piping.

[loscerritoscommunitynews]

SoCalGas Achieves Important Milestone for Green Hydrogen Infrastructure System

@socalgas @bizfed

December 18, 2022 The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved Southern California Gas Co.’s (SoCalGas’) request to track costs for advancing the first phase of Angeles Link, a proposed green hydrogen pipeline system that could deliver clean, reliable, renewable energy to the Los Angeles region. As envisioned, Angeles Link could be the nation’s largest green hydrogen pipeline…