Tony Dutzik

More HQs Than Answers: Will Québécois Supply Meet Growing Northeast Demand? Large new interties between Québec and both New York and New England are set to come online over the next six months, but flows on existing ties have declined in recent years. We explore whether HQ ha...

Interesting piece that validates some of skeptics' concerns about overreliance on Canadian hydro as part of New England's decarbonization strategy (and an interesting tidbit about offshore wind in the Maritimes). blog.gridstatus.io/more-hqs-tha...

Working on a deep-dive retrospective on the upcoming 10-year anniversary of one of the most consequential pieces of climate legislation ever passed in the U.S. Stay tuned next week.

Fewer U.S. solar projects are reporting delays in their expected online date. #permittingreform #solarpower ☀️🔌💡 www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

Trash in America Our throw-away economy harms our environment, health and climate. Trash in America outlines the costs of this system and a path to a zero-waste future.

But while there's a lot we don't know about our trash, what we *do* know reinforces that America's one-way material economy - in which stuff is extracted, often used only briefly, then trashed - is costly and damaging. Our report has ideas for how to solve it.
frontiergroup.org/resources/tr...

States fill some of the data gaps, but as we searched for state data we found that states report data using different metrics, tallied in different ways and reported across different timescales, making comparisons across states or compilation into a national picture very difficult.

Americans are completely in the dark about how these changes in the waste stream - and changes in solid waste management generally - affect our environment, the health of our communities and/or fragile municipal budgets.

The most recent federal data on the volume of trash we produce, what's in it and where it goes are from 2018. Think about what has changed since then: the rise of e-commerce, growing volumes of e-waste, the emergence of fast fashion ... the list goes on and on.

Trash in America Our throw-away economy harms our environment, health and climate. Trash in America outlines the costs of this system and a path to a zero-waste future.

Yesterday, my @frontiergroup.bsky.social colleagues re-released our flagship report on the solid waste problem and its solutions: "Trash in America."

But the most important thing about the report is what's missing: updated info on how much stuff we throw away. 🧵
frontiergroup.org/resources/tr...

Meet the TikTok stars demanding oil companies clean up their mess There are millions of abandoned oil wells across the United States. A group of unlikely activists in Texas is making sure no one forgets they need to be cleaned up.

Abundance!
www.motherjones.com/environment/...

Meet the TikTok stars demanding oil companies clean up their mess There are millions of abandoned oil wells across the United States. A group of unlikely activists in Texas is making sure no one forgets they need to be cleaned up.

a big new one from me: I profiled a group of neighbors in west texas who have become the face of the abandoned well problem in the heart of oil country for @motherjones.com - an unlikely group of former industry workers and ranchers who are fed up with how Big Oil won’t clean up its messes:

Winning the cultural argument on car bloat is a precursor to winning the policy argument. Which is why it frustrates me to see allies echoing Detroit’s message that there’s no demand for these things. There won’t be! Until people start talking about how awesome they are! Which Trump just did.

He doesn’t. And I don’t think he cares much about urban dwellers. But calling small cars “amazing” in this way is worth something. Biden would have never.

And, more to the point, editors aren't printing that story.

The story was very good journalism. But nobody's reading a story about rural people getting sick from pollution from industrial ag and stupid wastewater management practices. Which is mostly, aside from what seems to be a peripheral but real contribution from the data center, what this was.

Whether this has any immediate practical effect is almost beside the point. If the President of the United States can help lay the groundwork for greater cultural acceptance of smaller cars in the U.S., more power to him and let's go.

I've been spending the morning calculating the costs of the proposed rollback of fuel economy standards. It's been a challenge, since NHTSA's reported numbers don't always match their model outputs, and they keep changing time periods depending on the variable. But here's what I've got through 2050:

This isn't even state DOTs "gaming" the system; it's just a poorly designed system! (Because of lobbying by state DOTs, the road building industry, etc when the regs were written)

When people say NEPA is "broken" or "needs reformed", they're generally right. But not in the way they think

Does NEPA sometimes hold up good transport projects? Sure. But our current system isn't designed to build good projects - it's designed to churn out highways. Weaken NEPA and you will get more of them with less accountability and less mitigation for their environmental and community impacts.

DOTs and other project sponsors *routinely* overstate projected traffic, understate costs, manipulate analysis boundaries to minimize impacts, evade requirements to consider alternatives, and claim that damaging projects have "no significant environmental impact."

100% this. The NEPA process is already widely abused by state departments of transportation and others building wasteful, destructive highway projects through neighborhoods and natural areas. Litigation is the *only* effective tool for holding them and the process accountable.

Exactly

An EV El Camino is either the best idea ever or the worst and I can't decide which.

Those noted hippies at [checks notes] S&P estimate that Permian oil/gas production last year produced 117 MMTCO2e of greenhouse gases. That's equal to *all* emissions from the entire state of Virginia. And doesn't include the carbon content of the fuel itself. view.highspot.com/viewer/6370e...

Been looking at greenhouse gas emissions data from the Permian basin, and wanting every pundit who argued that environmentalists/climate advocates should stop worrying about fossil fuel production to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Detroit could keep up technologically, but with no fuel economy standards, no incentives, and dealers who don't want to sell the product, they won't achieve the scale needed to bring costs down and drive innovation. Anything new is going to have to come from outside that structure, as Tesla showed.

"[O]perating inside a bubble formed from protectionist trade policy and anti-green ideology risks leaving Detroit increasingly vulnerable to disruption as the industry changes around it and when political fortunes shift."

How much does American driving contribute to global climate pollution? Three Frontier Group analyses help inform the conversation about cars and climate.

All while the US transportation system continues to be one of the biggest contributors to climate change worldwide and a danger to health, safety and well-being at home. That’s not good for anybody, except car dealers, manufacturers and the oil industry. frontiergroup.org/articles/how...

Overcharged: How state EV fees discourage clean choices States are imposing hefty annual fees on electric vehicles, despite the benefits of EVs for air quality and the climate. Will those fees discourage Americans from "going electric"?

The desired future here is one in which trad automakers compete in a walled-off market free from technological competition, EVs are penalized, and consumers are sucked into more crippling auto debt as a condition for living their daily lives. frontiergroup.org/resources/ov...

Can cheaper EVs recharge the drive to clean transportation? Electric vehicles have long had an Achilles' heel: their cost. A new generation of automakers hopes to change that and deliver affordable EVs to the public.

The hitch in the automakers’ plan to focus on selling more profitable SUVs is a) that nobody has the money for that and b) that they leave themselves wide open for competition from whoever cracks the code on making affordable, attractive EVs. frontiergroup.org/articles/can...

Can We Make Environmental Peace with Car Culture? After Yesterday, Probably Not. There is a better way. And if the auto industry’s short-sighted and ham-handed attack on tailpipe emissions standards helps the rest of us to visualize it more quickly, and commit the necessary resour...

Same as it ever was. The U.S. auto industry is in worse position to meet the mid-21st century than when I wrote this in a fit of frustration 7 years ago and the rollback of fuel economy standards mean it’ll be in even worse shape 7 years from now. frontiergroup.org/articles/can...