Friday Five: August 22, 2014

There are times when corporations do attempt to do the "right thing" even if that means adding costs. Note, that the only thing that drives this is consumer demand. When facing a threat of extinction, a company will do what it has to in order to survive. That process, however, takes decades, and not every issue has that long.
Nestle imposes animal welfare standards for suppliers
"'We know that our consumers care about the welfare of farm animals and we, as a company, are committed to ensuring the highest possible levels of farm animal welfare across our global supply chain,' said Benjamin Ware, manager of responsible sourcing for Nestle.
The commitment by the world's largest food and beverage company could potentially ripple across the industry and force smaller firms to adhere to the same practices, animal advocates said."

More often, companies will do whatever is most expedient to achieve or increase profitability (note: that is not a disparaging remark, for in our society and economy, that is precisely all we currently as of business, and all they are good at doing), regardless of the environmental impact. Only when the purchasing power of those affected reaches a critical mass will the companies act...or when something large enough to affect its business acts (hint: that's government).
Frackers are sending sludge to the Mitten State
"Now, the radioactive sludge that was being turned away by Pennsylvania was on its way to Michigan, home to 84 percent of the country’s aboveground freshwater supply. LuAnne Kozma began to do some digging. She had begun studying up on and organizing against Michigan’s nascent fracking boom two years ago, after hearing ominous stories from family in New Jersey. This was a new wrinkle."

Too often, governments require a catastrophe in order to see the need for action. Even then, as this case exemplifies, many favor taxpayer-funded solutions for the mistakes of the shareholders and managers. Letting companies off the hook for their mismanagement - and frankly, their negligent endangerment of people - is something we would never allow in treating an individual person who jeopardized the life of another. We should not tolerate it of companies.
NC lawmakers pass coal ash legislation; adjourn after very long short session
"Rep. Paul Luebke argued that state leaders needed to say, loud and clear, that Duke and its shareholders – not its customers – should at least pay to clean the highest-risk sites by removing the ash to a lined landfill, by using it in certain construction projects or by installing a liner beneath the ash.
“If they’re high risk now, it means for a long time they were risky to the public. For a long time the public was hurt by contamination in groundwater,” the Durham Democrat said on the chamber floor.
In response, Rep. Mike Hager, Republican majority whip, pointed out that the N.C. Utilities Commission would handle any request for a rate increase, with opportunity for the public to have its say."

One of the more broken features of the current utility model (especially in states where utilities still own electricity generating or energy producing assets) is that these monopolies have been allowed to assume that any cost associated with a current asset can be passed onto their rate payers (citizens who have no choice but to pay them or do without power). Kudos to OPU for demanding that the utility consider all alternative investments to the status quo...both to protect rate payers and public health.
Oregon Public Utilities Commission increases scrutiny on Pacific Power's coal plants
"In 2012, the Oregon PUC disallowed $17 million dollars that PacifiCorp was seeking from its customers for expensive retrofits on its aging coal plants without first fully vetting the alternatives. During the deliberations on their 2013 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) they were warned by the commission that they were headed for a 'trainwreck of a rate case' if they continued to invest heavily in out-of-state coal plants without first presenting their plans to the PUC for proper analysis. In July of this year, the PUC refused to acknowledge Pacific Power’s expenditures at two units at the Jim Bridger coal plant in Wyoming and one unit at the Hunter plant in Utah, a strong signal that the company will have a difficult time recouping those expenses, protecting Oregon customers from higher rates."

The great thing about analyzing the German governments three-year plan for energy transition, and debating some of its many shortcomings is...THEY HAVE A PLAN!!!!
There's a reason that countries like Germany and China will fly past the US economically if we do not act soon...they recognize the impact that energy has on their economy, and Germany specifically is doing something about it. I would LOVE to be debating the shortcomings of US energy policy....but we do not have one, so I cannot.
German government’s three-year Energiewende plan
"Germany could easily do more, as could the EU. Brussels repeatedly calls for greater cross-border power trading, but where is the call for EU transport policy? I can’t take a night train, say, from Frankfurt to Rome or Madrid. Trains continue to be stuck in national systems, and no one is complaining. Instead, Switzerland is the driver behind overnight trains with its City Night Line, but it has been reducing the number of connections in recent years, not increasing them.
So yes, the chart above does have a wide scope. But it is not exhaustive. There is still a lot of room for improvement."

Happy Friday!

Friday Five: July 4, 2014

For decades, we have been told that burning fuels was safe (proven wrong), that transporting fuels is safe (proven wrong), that mining was safe (proven wrong), and most recently, that fracking was totally safe...every year we get more and more evidence that it is not.
Study shows how drilling wastewater causes quakes
"Combined, those wells daily pour more than 5 million gallons of water a mile or two underground into rock formations, the study found. That buildup of fluid creates more pressure that 'has to go somewhere,' said study lead author Cornell University seismologist Katie Keranen.
Researchers originally figured the water diffused through underground rocks slowly. But instead, it is moving faster and farther and triggers quake fault lines that already were likely ready to move, she said."

We do know that mining, transporting, processing, and burning carbon causes significant cost to our health and our economy.  It is about time that we force industry to accurately project those costs when developing or renewing projects.
One judge’s smackdown of a Colorado coal mine could help fight carbon projects everywhere
"This kind of bold decision will ultimately get appealed, appealed again, and maybe overruled. It establishes a precedent, but whether it’s the kind of precedent other judges will believe in remains to be seen. For now, the big winner in this – other than the conservation groups that first filed the suit and the people who like to hike, graze, and shoot things in the Sunset Wilderness Area — is the legal concept of a social cost of carbon protocol itself. It’s already getting a lot more attention than something with that long and boring of a name can reasonably expect to get — and that’s a good sign."

Kudos to the Unitarians for taking steps to divest from fossil fuels, but retaining enough interest to be active shareholders.  Even better, their divestment will be better for their financial interests.
At Unitarian Universalist assembly, a vote to divest from fossil fuels
"About 2.9 percent of the UUA’s $175-million endowment is invested in Carbon Tracker 200 companies, according to information Walden forwarded from the UUA treasurer.
The fossil fuels divestment vote stems from a resolution brought by the group, Unitarian Universalists for Fossil Fuel Divestment and Sustainable Reinvestment, Walden said. The UUA 'has a long history of shareholder activism on a variety of issues, including environmental justice.'"

It is positively crazy that we treat seeds as a patentable product from which a small group of people can gain great wealth while the farmers who put all the work into the actual food production languish in poverty.  Even more striking is that these companies that patent often times do much less work than that for which they get credit.
Linux for Lettuce
"Most classical plant breeders will tell you that their work is inherently collaborative—the more people involved, the better. Baggett had used versions of another broccoli called Waltham, released by the University of Massachusetts in the 1950s, as part of the foundation for his original exserted-head lines. Hoping to advance its evolution by letting others work on it, he and Myers shared their germplasm (an industry term for seed) with breeders throughout the United States. One recipient was the broccoli division of Royal Sluis, a Dutch company that had a research farm in Salinas, California. Through the channels of corporate consolidation, that germplasm ended up with the world’s largest vegetable-seed company, Seminis, which in 2005 was bought by the world’s largest seed company, Monsanto. In 2011, Seminis was granted US Patent 8,030,549—“Broccoli adapted for ease of harvest”—whose basic identifying characteristic was an exserted head. More than a third of the original plant material behind the invention was germplasm that Baggett had shared in 1983."

In order to make great strides against the "wicked problems" that we face, we need every available brain on hand to innovate, communicate, and activate solutions.  For the entire scientific revolution and Enlightenment, we have pushed half of our population away from such endeavors, and it has been to our detriment.  It is time we changed that.
This great ad reveals all the ways we hold girls back
"This all comports with the research that shows that girls and women shy away from riskier endeavors—including majors where getting B's and C's are more likely to happen—than boys and men do. It's not just, or even mainly, about looks. It's about these other pressures on women that leave them little room to screw up. Especially since science, as a field, is about experimenting with things and learning to pick yourself up again and start over if your hypothesis fails. So kudos to Verizon and Makers for getting it right, and hopefully this will encourage further efforts to tackle the real reasons girls find their natural curiosity so frequently stifled while growing up."

Happy Friday (and Fourth)!

Friday Five: June 6, 2014

On the quality of life front, there was only one main story this week, and everyone has a different take on it.Some think that it merely codifies the direction the economy is already heading.
Hopes for impact of carbon rules in US are modest
"'I don’t think it’s a revolution because our carbon emissions are already going down because of cheap natural gas,' said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a consultancy. 'It’s not Obama’s war on coal. It’s reality’s war on coal. Natural gas turns out to be better than coal in the marketplace.'"

Some – especially those in the fossil fuel industry – think it will increase the cost of electricity and could eliminate more jobs than it saves.
5 things to know about emissions caps
"As more wind turbines and solar panels are installed, jobs in fabrication, construction and sales will shift there. Ditto for new natural-gas-fired power plants, which could lead to more drilling jobs in gas-rich states from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania."

Others, even those who have railed against environmental protections in the past, understand that when taken in total, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Obama acts to curb carbon
"The apocalyptic predictions have been made before, without coming true. In 1990, when Congress approved new measures to reduce acid rain, critics said they would cause electricity rates to climb without doing any environmental good. (I was one of them.) Some anticipated a 'clean air recession'.
In fact, electricity rates have declined in inflation-adjusted terms since the restrictions were adopted, and the favorable results — including lives saved — have been far greater than expected. The economy boomed in the 1990s. A 2003 report by the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget found that the benefits of these and related air pollution rules were at least 11 times more than the costs."

And some see how the effects of carbon pollution go beyond economics, human health, or even the availability of energy…down to the issues of basic human and civil rights.
Climate change is a civil rights issue
"These vulnerable children end up missing more school because the air they breathe makes them sick. Their parents miss work they can’t afford to lose.
Utility companies have kept these plants running decades longer than they were designed to last because air pollution laws had loopholes that made it cheaper to keep old plants going than to replace them with newer, cleaner power plants. Profits were more important than people."

Meanwhile, others want you to know how far you could reduce the impact your lifestyle has on the quality of life of others.
Tiny-home-in-a-box will turn 200 sq. ft. into a sophisticated dining room AND trashy nightclub
"The CityHome was designed to be an all-in-one furniture module for tiny spaces: It can transform a room from a bedroom to an office to a kitchen, for example, with a literal wave of the hand. This is the future!"

Happy Friday!

JIM URQUHART / REUTERS

Flashes: May 7, 2014

Stanford's divestment of coal seems like a groundbreaking environmental moment until you realize Goldman Sachs' long-term outlook for coal is bleak.

Mitch McConnell says carbon hypocrites should stop using climate change as a political tool.  By that logic, does that mean rich politicians will stop pretending they know about poverty?

Originally, we couldn't switch to renewables because they cost more.  Now they cost the same.
But now we can't switch because they are intermittent.  Except, this past winter proved conventionals are intermittent.
Now we have to make whole those who have invested in sunk, fossil fuel technologies before we can move forward?
When did the energy field move from capitalism to socialism?

I love the Jon Stewart commentary on government picking winners and losers:  (paraphrase)
"You say the government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers, they should be focusing on building roads, rails and bridges....except that's the government picking winners and losers!  That's the government picking cars, trucks and trains over other modes of transportation."

Enjoy the journey!

Friday Five: May 2, 2014

This week we learned a great lesson of economics: it is not a predictive field of study, only a reactive one.  As much as we like to think we can foretell the future, when it comes to basing our quality of life on the availability of limited commodities, we build our houses on sand instead of rock.
Factbox: Energy Future Holdings' road to bankruptcy
"Energy Future Holdings filed for Chapter 11 protection on Tuesday, seven years after it was taken private in the largest-ever leveraged buyout. Over the last five years, the company used a number of financial maneuvers to manage a significant debt load, but ultimately could not convince its many and disparate creditors to restructure its balance sheet outside of bankruptcy court."

Case in point...six years ago when several of us were talking about the looming horizon of grid-parity for solar, the vast majority did not believe. Now, it is a reality. Next up: buildings that need no outside energy source other than what's available on site. They will be so widely available that they will be a code requirement within 10 years.
When it comes to solar power, the market is finally making environmentalism easy
"Little Sun is a good example of how the market and environmentalism don’t have to compete: Both the company and its evangelists are motivated to propagate an affordable form of non-polluting energy. The economics are working in concert with solar’s advantages of sustainability and independence over traditional power sources. And, suddenly, that intersection of efficacy and impact is making solar power as a whole more desirable than it’s ever been before."

One of the greatest challenges to a clean energy economy has come from unchecked conservatism. Conservatism that demands proof before implementation provides great value to society; conservatism that in the face of science, economics, and law holds onto a harmful status quo has no place in our society.
WSJ overruled by Supreme Court on clean air laws
"The regulations of smog and soot pollution will yield up to $280 billion in health benefits nationwide by preventing hospital visits and avoiding lost work days, according to the EPA's cost-benefit analysis. The human benefits are just as stark, with The American Thoracic Society estimating the new transfer rule could prevent upwards of 40,000 premature deaths annually."

I believe this in large part because of the bad business decisions that such extreme conservatism begets. Utilities can play a strong and stabilizing role in the transition to a clean energy future. However, as long as their leaders cling to the entitlement that they deserve guaranteed return on bad investments, we will continue to threaten the quality of our existence.
What future role for today's utilities
"Maybe our current utilities will provide enabling infrastructure, or maybe they will become insignificantly small players – or disappear. After all, the grid as enabling infrastructure might get smaller, and communities can own the grid and provide other enabling services – storage comes to mind. In the end, what is at stake in the energy transition is not just a choice between various low-carbon sources of electricity. It is also a choice between 1) corporations promising consumers low energy prices (and you can go to hell if you don’t want the giant project near your home) and 2) local renewables that may look more expensive, but you pay those higher prices back to you and your neighbors – and you have input into what gets built in your community."

Sound business thinking not only recognizes and accepts, but fully embraces, the limitations of the natural systems that underpin our entire existence. Requiring business leaders to act responsibly when it comes to protecting our quality of life does not place unreasonable obstacles in the way of progress any more than requiring a credit check places an unreasonable restriction on borrowing money. We need to mandate a minimum amount of protection to continue our existence, and not allow irresponsible behavior to jeopardize our future.
The one thing every business dies without
"So take a day this week to think hard about how the planet underpins the business, and how your company and sector should deal with that reality. Consider three steps. First, ask some leading questions: What do climate change and extreme weather mean for your business, your customers, and your supply chain? How do growing resource constraints like water shortages, or rising commodity prices, affect your value chain and your margins?"

Happy Friday!

(Photo: raulbaenacasado/Shutterstock)

Friday Five: March 28, 2014

We hold onto a shaky hope that the use of fossil fuels to power our lives has little to no consequence on our quality of life. The truth is far more certain: our reliance on fossil fuels harms our lives, albeit unequally. For those with the means to live far from threatened areas near mines, power plants, and waste facilities, life goes along without complaint. For those not so lucky, they at best lead a life that is less healthy, and at worst die younger than those more fortunate.
When the rivers run black
"The result is that the exhaust that emerges today is far cleaner than it was decades ago. But cleaning up the airborne emissions means that the solids remaining after the burn are far dirtier than before. In fact, coal ash is often loaded with arsenic, mercury, lead, and other contaminating elements. A 2012 study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that cleaner air emissions are traded for 'significant enrichments of contaminants in solid wastes and wastewater discharged from power plants.'"

The anti-regulation economist believes that in the absence of regulation, business will always do what is best for quality of life because its customers will demand it do so and business always responds to its customers. Except, that what its customers don't know....
Activists catch power plant on hidden camera
"...a hidden camera set up by the Sierra Club ... shows a power plant regularly discharging coal ash pond water into the Ohio River, apparently permitted via a very liberal interpretation of the meaning of 'occasional.'"

The coal industry requires subsidies to stay profitable. An industry over a century old still needs government help to remain afloat. If you think that to be a bunch of environmentalist lies, here is but one example of the over $650 billion in worldwide subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
Why are we hauling Pennsylvania coal all the way to Germany?
"'The industry was struggling, and the Pennsylvania delegation wanted to do something to help it,' says Jim Dyer, who today is a lobbyist with the Podesta Group, but began his career four decades ago in the office of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Joseph McDade. 'The one way it could help it was ... to get the federal government interested in buying some of it.'"

Even with these subsidies, we know that the coal industry - without a game changing technology breakthrough that addresses the myriad health and environmental issues - cannot survive economically. This is not conjecture, but a fact of the marketplace.
Pacific Power's reliance on coal sends Oregonians' electricity bills soaring
"The OPUC hearing comes in light of Sierra Club’s analysis of reports from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) showing that Oregon Pacific Power customers have seen their electricity bills increase by 61% since 2006, the year after Warren Buffet started operating the utility. Pacific Power customers saw a greater rate increase than customers of any other major utility in the six states that Pacific Power serves. The costs of continuing to operate old, outdated coal plants continue to rise, and Pacific Power’s parent company, PacifiCorp, will seek rate recovery from Oregon customers for its $4.2 billion coal fleet expenditures. PacifiCorp owns the largest number of coal plants in the West, and Pacific Power customers in Oregon get 63% of their energy from out-of-state coal plants."
Goldman Sachs declares solar energy will soon be cheaper than fossil fuels, and Elon Musk is a genius
"'…our Clean Energy team believes the number of households hitting grid parity will continue to grow as the cost of the systems comes down … SolarCity has seen a 40% decline in the per watt cost of PV panels since the second quarter of 2013 driven by improved scale which is expected to continue,' state clean tech analysts Brian Lee and Thomas Daniels. 'This has been true for Tesla’s battery costs as well, which have declined from of $500/KWh in 2008 to $250/KWh for the Model S to potentially $125/KWh at the gigafactory. As a result we should note that the quantitative grid parity and return calculations we show above are arrived at without any Federal or state credits.'"

This past winter showed us that fossil fuel electricity generation has intermittency issues on par with those of wind and solar. That does not mean that we should trade one intermittency for another (although the environmental costs should force that decision on us), but we should solve the issue regardless of energy source chosen. Batteries will not solve the problem, and although hydro and flywheels have promise, I like simple solutions. This one is "in the book" as Paul Erdos might say.
Energy storage hits the rails out west
"Compared to the mechanics of chemical batteries, the idea behind rail storage is simple. During periods of low electricity demand, power is dispatched from the nearby grid to pull a chain of weighted train cars uphill. And there they will sit—losing no power to degradation—until the grid has a period of high power demand. Then they are sent rolling downhill. Their momentum sends electrons back to the grid through a system of regenerative braking that uses the turning power of the wheels to generate electricity."

Happy Friday!

If Indiana is against energy efficiency, then what are they for?

Indiana's governor, Mike Pence has a serious decision to make.  The Indiana General Assembly has come out against energy efficiency with an overwhelming vote to end the popular, and by most accounts effective, Energizing Indiana program.  Senate Bill 340 originally sought to give large industrial customers a chance to opt-out of the program - shifting more of the responsibility to small and mid-sized customers.  The House hijacked it, however, and turned it into a bill that as of December 31, 2014 would make it illegal for the Indiana regulatory commission to require an energy efficiency program.  In 2009, that regulatory body enacted the program to help drive energy efficiency and boost job growth in the state, keeping up with programs enacted in most of the neighboring states.  Since its inception, the program has created as many as 5,000 permanent, direct jobs, resulted in three times as many indirect jobs, and saved almost a billion kilowatt hours at a cost of approximately $500 million.

More importantly, the programs have reduced demand by 100 MW, and if continued would reduce it by almost 1800 MW in 2020 when the program would have cost $2 billion.  We often think of building new power plants to meet increased demand, but given the size of our current demand, we can offset increases by reducing usage elsewhere.  Every dollar we spend on permanent energy efficiency avoids us having to build a power plant.  Currently, the reductions of energy efficiency cost about $5 per kilowatt of power.  By 2020, the 1800 MW reduction will have cost about $1 per kilowatt.  Compared with $6 per kilowatt of nuclear, $2.3 per kilowatt for coal, and $1 per kilowatt for natural gas, the investment makes the most economic sense.  This is especially true when factoring in the job creation impact.  Energy efficiency creates twice as many jobs per dollar invested as any of the fossil fuels, and just slightly more than nuclear energy.

The reason for the backlash against the bill comes from the utility industry in Indiana.  Although they accurately claim no direct sponsorship of the bill, their interests get ignored if the program continues. In Indiana, unlike other states, the utilities still control both the generation assets and the delivery network, and their profits are coupled to usage: as people use more energy, they receive more revenue and profit.  In deregulated states, utilities can decouple their charges from usage, recouping the cost of investment even as usage flattens out or drops.  Although this creates a whole set of issues that all utilities will have to deal with by changing their business model, it at least gives the utility economic incentive to improve reliability and efficiency.

The other issue, and perhaps more important one, comes from the fact that the program resulted not from direct legislation, but rather from a legal order from a regulatory agency.  Although fully supported by the governor at the time, and even the majority of the legislature, the program did not come from a newly enacted law as in other nearby states.  This perceived "over-reach" provides an opportunity for those who would oppose the effect to claim that the rules do not have the appropriate legitimacy.

Both of the objections raise valid arguments, and after nearly four years, it makes sense to revisit programs to make sure they maintain relevancy and effectiveness.  Mike Pence has a hard decision because his own party did not deliver him the most important thing he needs right now....

Options.

By making it an all-or-nothing, the governor faces the decision to either eliminate jobs and create a further burden on the middle class, or further enrage a portion of the corporate base.  (I should note that business groups come down on both sides of this issue as many large and small businesses have seen growth in the marketplace because of the program.)  If the legislature had proposed a fix that addressed the concerns of utilities, and provided some realistic relief for large corporate customers, the decision would not be about a politically-charged ending of a program, but rather a fix.  There are many possibilities the legislature could have proposed: scaling the contribution based upon customer size, fully deregulating the utilities to allow them to decouple cost from usage, and/or setting the rate of contribution at the cost of new investment to ensure that energy efficiency targets only the most cost-effective programs.  Any of these would have made reasonable sense, and given the governor options.

But right now, he really has no options.  He must veto this bill and tell the Assembly to start anew.

It’s time to start paying the cost

Twenty-five years ago today, the Exxon Valdez spilled 161 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound near Alaska. After billions of dollars of clean-up and reparations, and decades of legal disputes, and thousands of lives changed forever….

Crude oil still pollutes the waters of the sound.

When incidents like this happen, we are supposed to learn a lesson. Tell a person that they should use caution because something MIGHT happen, and most of the time you caution will fall on deaf ears.  However, once someone sees what HAS happened, they usually respond with a passion to correct the wrong – especially if it has harmed them or someone they love.

After twenty-five years, however, we seem slow to make the corrections necessary.  Every year, we hear of a new spill, leak, or other environmental incident associated with the extraction, transportation, or processing of fossil fuels.  The news stories talk of companies that regret the damage, and that will make reparations swiftly and fairly.  As Exxon Valdez proves, all the talk in the world will not restore an ecosystem, or return a living to a fisherman who no longer has a place to fish.

The common response from politicians or industry leaders conveys part of the problem.  They state that, “Everything that could have been done to prevent the damage was done, and everything that can be done to clean it up will be done.”  This makes for a helpful sound bite, but does not convey the whole truth.  What that statement means is that they did the bare minimum of what they were required to do, and that they will do whatever they can afford to do.  Neither the business leaders nor the politicians have all the responsibility for this.  Their response echoes the desires that we as a society have for the energy from these fossil sources.  We want to believe that our use of these energy sources has no negative consequence, and that any disturbance causes only temporary and localized damage.

As populations increase, and the need for these resources continue to increase, we will only hear about more oil spills, mine collapses, earthquakes, etc. associated with fossil fuel development.  If we truly want to quell or mitigate these incidents, then we have one simple recourse…

Make sure that the companies that we have delegated to perform this task carry all the costs associated with prevention, response, clean-up, and damage to health.

This means that the fossil fuel industry needs to employ more inspectors, build more resilient and protective infrastructure, and maintain response crews at and along every piece of its network.  They would employ better technology, find the most efficient way to accomplish the risk management, and protect lives in the process.  In this requirement for bearing all the costs, we would include a zero-tolerance policy for failure.  Any life ended or damaged would require full and pre-determined compensation.  Any ecosystem damaged would require full and immediate restoration.  Any clean-up would require full and immediate completion.  Although I know that the costs of climate change should fall under this umbrella, I would accept – as a start – including the direct costs of spill prevention, mine collapse prevention, earthquake prevention, particulate emissions elimination, coal ash decontamination, oil spill clean-up….all the activities that have a direct tie to the supply chain.

Those in industry would decry such regulation as over-reaching.  In truth, it simply lets the reality of the industry match the perception and outward appearance that the corporations want.  People want to believe that fossil fuels systems have little to no impact on their daily lives, and that we can use them safely.  Industry wants us to believe that environmental issues occur rarely, and that when they do happen, they respond immediately and completely.  It is not an over-reach to want this to be the reality.

Industry is right when it says that this will impact the viability of the industry.  If people do not want to pay the cost for this level of security, some sectors of the industry may collapse.  In few other businesses, however, do we let this prevent us from protecting lives.  We do not allow a restaurant to remain open if it poisons someone, we do not allow a medical practitioner to continue work if they do not do everything within their power to save a life.  If the industry cannot protect life and survive, then we need to know that.  A basic principle of economics holds that all parties in a transaction have full knowledge of the transaction when they do business.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has violated this basic tenant of the free market, and it is time that we held ourselves accountable.