EPA sets new regulations on ‘forever chemicals’ in US drinking water
So global warming is not the only myth the EPA subscribes to. Note the weasel wording: "Has been linked to". Yes, a lot of people have linked PFAS to illness and have done so for many years. But nobody has produced good evidence for the link. Below is the most recent attempt to "link" PFAS to something. Pathetic
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2024/03/another-pathetic-pfas-study-pfas-is.html
See also:https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2023/06/more-pfas-excitement-ever-since-erin.html
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized rules on PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) also known as “forever chemicals” in drinking water systems across the US.EPA Administrator Michael Regan who previously served as head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality from 2017 until early 2021, announced the regulations at the P.O. Hoffer Water Plant in Fayetteville on Wednesday.
The new rules require public water utilities to monitor for six types of PFAS and limit maximum contaminant levels (MCL).
Exposure to PFAS has been linked to serious health risks, including certain cancers, liver and heart damage in adults, and immune and developmental effects for infants and children.
“Today I’m proud to return to North Carolina to announce the first ever, nationwide, legally enforceable drinking water standard for PFAS,” Regan said, “this is the most significant action EPA has ever taken on PFAS.”
Regan noted the importance of these chemicals, but also the risks.
“These chemicals have a place and are important for certain industries and certain practices. There’s also no doubt that these chemicals entering our environment in an uncontrolled manner are harmful to our families, harmful to our communities, and harmful to our economy,” Regan said.
PFAS are a category of chemicals used since the 1940s to repel oil and water and resist heat, which makes them useful in everyday products such as nonstick cookware, stain resistant clothing, and firefighting foam.
13 months ago, Regan was in Wilmington at the campus of UNCW to announce the start of the rule-making process.
Southeastern North Carolina has been on the forefront of contaminated drinking water, since 2017 when it was reported that chemical company Chemours had been dumping GenX into the Cape Fear River for decades.
The Biden administration has allocated $1 billion to assist states in funding infrastructure upgrades to adhere to the new regulations. North Carolina is set to receive $29 million in grant funding to aid utilities in implementing testing and upgrading water treatment technology.
“You are going to hear a lot of talk about cost and it can’t be done and we shouldn’t do this,” Regan said, “Let me just tell you it can be done. It can be achieved using a range of technologies and approaches that many water systems are using today.”
The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides water to customers in New Hanover County, has already invested more than $40 million to install granular activated carbon filters to address PFAS.
https://www.carolinajournal.com/epa-sets-new-regulations-on-forever-chemicals-in-us-drinking-water/
*******************************************Study grades natural gas as best source for reliability, affordability and environmental impact
A new study finds that natural gas is the most effective energy source meeting growing energy demands affordably and reliably, while balancing environmental and human impact.
The “Grading the Grid” study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a pro-free market nonprofit, and Northwood University rates natural gas, coal, petroleum, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar and geothermal generation sources on their reliability, environmental and human impact, cost, innovation and market feasibility.
Natural gas got an “A” grade, followed by nuclear, which got a “B+”. Wind and solar energy came in last, each receiving “F” grades, according to the study.
Natural gas, the study explains, is best suited to integrate with the intermittency inherent with wind and solar power, which only produce electricity under the weather conditions.
“Gas provides a reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean source of energy in both traditional and ‘carbon-constrained’ applications,” the study stated.
The study rated nuclear as the “best of all worlds” for its safety, abundance and reliability, as well as its ability to deliver electricity without carbon emissions.
The main challenges nuclear faces, according to the report, is its upfront costs and concerns about storage of nuclear waste. The study notes that this waste has been stored at reactor sites in dry casks that withstand a direct hit by missiles traveling 600 mph. The spent fuel may also be a fuel source for reactors currently under development.
Coal rated high in the study for abundance, affordability and reliability, but it lost points for its high levels of pollutant emissions and carbon dioxide. With U.S. gas producers hitting record-high production that drives down gas prices, the study notes, coal is facing stiff competition.
Hydroelectric received a “B-” grade. While it produces reliable energy without carbon emissions, the expansive nature of hydroelectric facilities make permitting new developments in the U.S. unlikely, which limits its potential to meet more demand.
Wind and solar don’t produce carbon dioxide emissions by themselves, but the study rates renewable energy low for other environmental and human impacts.
Because wind and solar energy require large amounts of land to produce the same amount of energy as other forms, they study explains, there are environmental impacts from the space they take up, which includes harms to wildlife.
The study also calls into question the ability of renewable energy to reduce emissions. Since they require backup from reliable sources, which is often natural gas, they aren’t drivers of major reductions.
While the fuel for wind and solar is free, the study states there are other costs associated with addressing their inherent intermittency, which make them the most expensive forms of energy of those the study examined, and the least reliable.
The study concludes that policies pursuing a rapid transition away from conventional, reliable sources will have a negative impact on human health and the well-being of an energy-abundant society.
“Advocates for wind and solar hold them up as essential to environmental and climate health. However, rushing a systemwide transition to these untested and unreliable energy options puts human lives and the North American economy at risk,” the study concludes.
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How Green Energy, EVs Actually Endanger America
Consider some inescapable self-inflicted scenarios from hell that government “experts” never warned you about regarding utopian visions of carbon-free vehicles powered by friendly breezes and sunbeams.
So, imagine it’s one of those warm, beautiful days when the first news breaks about a big hurricane or tropical storm heading your way.
You immediately begin thinking about stocking up on food supplies that don’t require refrigeration and charging up your electric plug-in to get out of town in a hurry if necessary … just like, it seems, everyone else is doing.
Or maybe, with no warning, “poof,” all power goes off because the grid is down for suspicious reasons no one fully understands or can inform you about.
As it turns out, a foreign adversary cyberattack precludes either of those previous options, plus an added problem.
Along with knocking out all power transformers, the malign hackers also took remote control of both autonomous and operator-controlled electric vehicles, jamming exit highways with colossal human and metal crash wreckage.
In both cases, it’s already too late.
In the first scenario, there isn’t enough available electrical power to serve the broad hurricane zone. It has been in dangerously short supply since millions of EV cars and trucks have been added to an ancient grid that has depended upon natural gas turbines to balance fluctuating wind and solar loads.
It seems that shutting down those fossil companies through “net-zero” carbon policies didn’t prevent extreme weather after all.
Instead, extreme ideological EPA policies such as imposing costly, useless carbon capture requirements on those natural gas producers prevented energy companies from economically competing with heavily government subsidized “green” fantasies.
A March 2024 ruling adding heavy-duty trucks to its original all-electric light vehicle mandate dealt another crushing drain on already slim power margins: each one of them consuming seven times as much electricity on a single charge as a typical daily home.
Sadly, your plug-in has no plug with any juice due to emergency rationing necessary to support medical care facilities and other critical services. And forget about any hopes of using municipal or commercial recharging stations which have the same problem.
The situation soon becomes more expansive and dangerous as high winds have downed long transmission lines connecting remote wind and solar sites to the grid sparking massive fires and extending regional power outages.
Deluges of rain have flooded metropolitan centers and small lowland communities, making them inaccessible for emergency rescue by now-useless electric ambulances, fire trucks and police vehicles with depleted batteries.
Downed trees collapse local power lines, further blocking access and operations of similarly stranded maintenance crews.
Even then, circumstances could have been much worse with cyber scenario two.
Neighbors and friends with battery back-up radios finally inform you one of three power grids serving the entire nation has been disabled by hackers of unknown geographic origin, with transmission connections to the other two intentionally switched off to prevent universal overload collapse.
Darkness soon descends everywhere around you except where backup energy generators temporarily powered by batteries and purloined natural gas provide isolated pockets of light which are soon extinguished as well.
Hospitals are rapidly losing limited generator-supplied electricity to operate life-critical equipment. Meanwhile, primary power can’t be restored any time soon due to melted power transmission lines and damaged turbines at few remaining conventional fossil and nuclear power plants.
Supplies of clean water are being depleted as well.
Whereas metropolitan areas with high water towers atop high-rise buildings will have enough gravity flow to supply most basic living needs for at best a few days, when that runs out, taps will go dry, toilets won’t flush, and emergency supplies of bottled water will become exhausted.
Mountains of uncollected waste, including human biological material, soon create a previously unimaginable unsanitary health crisis.
If you are fortunate enough to live within walking distance of a nondepleted grocery, plan to use cash because the credit card system won’t be operative. Ditto, any ATM machine.
In any case, those stores can’t be restocked because of stranded EV long-haul and local delivery trucks.
Meanwhile, police and fire responses who are busily engaged in rescuing people trapped in elevators and other emergency services have also become overwhelmed by widespread store looting by desperately hungry individuals and families.
As tens or hundreds of millions of others over many states share such chaotic dilemmas, there is no way of predicting when power will be restored. And whereas present weather and temperature conditions may be moderate, many of these regions – including yours – anticipate a coming winter home heating crisis which will put countless lives at risk.
There are few opportunities for people to leave for warmer climes. Personal EVs are useless, as are commercial EV buses and moving vans.
Contemplating either of such avoidably catastrophic scenarios might provide cause to seriously doubt those government experts who continue to warn us of climate change and extreme weather being our greatest threat, with the solution being to load our ancient, cyberattack-prone power grids with weather dependent energy systems overloaded with voracious EV electricity consumption.
No, climate change isn’t nearly as great as the threat presented by their own policies, with the best solution of all…powerful winds of regime change sanity blowing through November voting booths before it is too late.
https://www.newsmax.com/larrybell/green-energy-ev/2024/04/05/id/1159927/
******************************************Australia: "Low cost" renewable energy is an impossible dream
The amusing claim that wind and sunshine are "free" still sounds relevant to some. But converting wind and sunshine into electricity and and delivering it to peple's homes is VERY costly. Coal is free too -- until you start digging it out of the ground
The pre-eminent figure in political economy at Sydney during Albanese’s time at university was red-ragger Ted Wheelwright. Never a fan of the invisible hand, Wheelwright believed in something called “balanced economic development” while disparaging the role of multinational companies and foreign investment. He was a true believer in government intervention and big government, both key convictions of Albanese.
But here’s the thing: while the Prime Minister may sadly remember a lot of what he was taught all those years ago – he probably doesn’t sign up to the evils of foreign investment like Wheelwright did – he failed to come to grips with some ironclad laws of economics. These include the fact that price results from the interaction of supply and demand and that there is a difference between marginal and average costs.
I mention this because of his incorrect assertion that “investment in renewables will lead to cheaper power, because that’s what every economist tells us”.
Not this little black duck, aka an economist, I’m afraid. Virtually all my pals in the economics profession also take the view that renewable energy as a source of 24/7 power is actually more expensive than other sources after accounting for overbuild, additional transmission, the need for back-up/storage and frequency and voltage controls. By the way, economists need their friends in the engineering profession to get to the bottom of the issue.
It’s worth going through the issues because our Prime Minister needs to come to his senses: if he really believes renewable energy is cheaper power, we are heading for the economic rocks and quite quickly.
The most common (but deficient) way of looking at this issue is using levelised cost of electricity according to the source of generation. This is done for many countries but actually falls into the trap of confusing marginal and average costs. Marginal costs are the additional costs of generating an extra unit whereas average costs are the total costs divided by all the units generated.
LCOE takes into account the cost of installation as well as the expected lifetime of the asset. (Wind and solar last half as long as coal and nuclear). A key variable is the capacity factor of the different sources: nuclear has the highest and wind and solar the lowest (around 25 to 33 per cent).
By rights, extended wind droughts and cloudy periods should be taken into account but this rarely occurs. The cost of the feeder stock is then added – which is zero in the case of wind and solar, and meaningful in other cases
The end result is the net present value of electricity generation over the lifetime of the asset in question. Note here that the results are highly assumption-dependent and relate only to wholesale electricity costs, which make up less than one-third of retail costs in the National Electricity Market.
The reality is that LCOE estimates don’t tell us very much because we need electricity 24/7 and wind and solar, by definition, cannot provide this. Moreover, because wind and solar are decentralised assets, they require very expensive and substantial transmission lines to connect to the grid.
These lines have to be paid for and are becoming increasingly expensive to build. There is also a great deal of local resistance to their construction. In addition, ancillary services – frequency and voltage control – have to be paid for. The point here is that when you consider the issue in a holistic way, electricity generation dominated by renewable energy cannot provide the 24/7 power we need or offer affordable prices.
We only need to look at the countries that have pushed a great deal of renewable energy – leaving hydro to one side – into their systems through regulation and subsidies – think Denmark, Germany, the UK and the states of California and South Australia. They all have very high electricity prices with their attendant problems for households and businesses.
It might even pique the interest of our Prime Minister to observe Victoria, which is currently subsidising two brown coal-fired electricity plants having embarked on a headlong campaign to promote renewable energy installations across the state as well as offshore. Astonishingly, its government has also rejected the use of gas; gas peaking plants are the best fit with renewables.
If renewable energy really is cheaper, why would it be necessary to subsidise the investors? And if renewable energy is the best form of electricity generation, how is it the case that two coal plants are now being incentivised to continue? The Eraring plant in NSW is next in line.
The reality is that pushing renewable energy into the system undermines the business models of 24/7 coal-fired generators, but these generators become crucial to pick up the inevitable slack created by the intermittency of wind and solar. Expensive batteries can make a bit of difference but only for short periods. The number of large-scale batteries we would need to firm wind and solar renders this route completely impractical.
In other words, it’s not good economics, notwithstanding the naive view of the Prime Minister. It is also unacceptable to simply expect those in rural and regional communities to bear the external costs of having these installations littered in their backyards.
Over time, it is easy to predict that the owners of the last standing reliable plants will be able to hold the federal and state governments to ransom, thereby driving up electricity prices even further. It’s a perfectly rational business response.
You wouldn’t buy a fridge that only works a third of the time or a stove that only works a third of the time. But we are expected to believe renewable energy is the route to cheaper electricity and economic prosperity. Albanese’s assertion that “climate action is good for our economy” is simply not borne out by the figures.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
1 comment:
It was know that Natural Gas was the best source of fossil fuels back in the 1970s, so the study now finding the same result is no surprise.
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