5 results for tag: natural gas
REBuilding Task Force Delivers Recommendations
The buildings we use for homes, workplaces, and gathering spaces play a special role in the future of our changing climate. They can provide a safe place to escape extreme heat, storms, or wildfires caused by climate change. But when those same buildings rely on fracked methane (“natural”) gas, the air insides in unsafe to breathe and methane is one of the worst climate pollutants.
A special state task force came together to tackle this issue and recently recommended some practical, common-sense policies that can make Oregon’s buildings safer, lower energy bills, and reduce pollution. Now we need to act on their recommendations.
Oregon ...
NW Natural Wants to Raise Rates (Again). This is What You Need to Know.
NW Natural, a utility company that sells fossil “natural” gas (e.g. methane), wants to raise prices for Oregon customers for a second year in a row. What they are planning to do with the money is, quite frankly, jaw-dropping, which is why OEC and a group of environmental and community-based organizations, represented by the Green Energy Institute at Lewis & Clark Law School and Earthjustice, are pushing back as formal intervenors in an ongoing public “rate case” proceeding. To get to the bottom of it, I sat down with Nora Apter, OEC’s Climate Program Director, to learn more about what NW Natural is doing and why their customers–or ...
No time to burn: let’s keep the future of gas short in Oregon
By: Nora Apter, the Climate Program Director for Oregon Environmental Council. Greer Ryan, Oregon Clean Buildings Policy Manager with Climate Solutions.
When it comes to global warming pollution, we’ve heard a lot about the dangers of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But did you know that methane, the primary ingredient in so-called “natural” gas, is approximately 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a 20 year timeframe? Fossil “natural” gas is far from being the safe, clean product that gas utilities and fossil fuel companies claim. In reality, gas is not good for you or the ...
Building for a Better Future
Right now, there is an important conversation happening in Oregon, and around the country, about buildings. The buildings in which we live and work are a critical piece of the climate puzzle. They are both vital to reducing climate change causing fossil fuels and our first line of defense against climate harms like extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and air pollution.
Buildings are the second largest–and growing–source of climate pollution in Oregon, responsible for 34 percent of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to the fossil fuels used for electricity to power our homes and buildings, and the fossil gas piped in for heating ...
Oregon Climate Action Plan Turns Two!
Two years ago, Governor Kate Brown made history when she signed the Oregon Climate Action Plan (OCAP), executive order 20-04. It’s the largest executive action on climate in Oregon history, and arguably the biggest single climate action ever undertaken by the state given its broad sweep. OCAP set in motion a broad array of state agency activities to respond to the climate crisis by reducing climate emissions from our state’s largest polluting sectors and prioritizing communities on the frontlines of climate impacts.
OEC and our partners in the OCAP Coalition, which includes more than 50 climate, environmental justice, youth, labor, public ...