A 10-year program from Florida City Gas titled SAFE (Safety, Access and Facility Enhancement) has exceeded all milestones the utility initially put forth for 2016. Roughly 33.56 miles of main were commissioned and installed, exceeding the projected number by 46 percent. Approximately 1,310 meters transferred from the back of homes or businesses and services were relit, exceeding the projected number of transfers by 44 percent. About 90 linear feet of main were retired, 12 percent more than originally projected, and approximately 1,433 service lines were installed, a 7 percent increase from the original projection. According to Carolyn Bermudez, general manager and vice president of Florida City Gas, “We are proud of all we have achieved during this first year; it definitely sets a positive course for the remaining nine years of this project.”
Waste Management will soon apply for an air permit from the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District to build a facility to capture methane from a Kentucky landfill. The company intends to use the natural gas to fuel 800 waste management trucks, up from the 80-truck fleet it switched from diesel to natural gas five years ago. The $30 million investment plan comes as more companies and municipalities are looking for ways to better manage their methane and reap the financial rewards from selling it or using it to fuel local fleets. This endeavor comes on the heels of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalizing rules last year that require new and existing landfills to capture and control methane emissions at levels that are one-third lower than previous requirements.
The LNG Outlook, a first-ever assessment of the global liquefied natural gas market from Shell, has found that global demand for LNG reached 265 million tons in 2016—that’s enough to supply power to roughly 500 million homes a year. The increased demand comes from the addition of six new importing countries since 2015: Colombia, Egypt, Jamaica, Jordan, Pakistan and Poland. The fastest-growing buyers are China and India, with the number of LNG importers worldwide increasing from 10 in the year 2000 to 35 in 2015. The outlook also says that from 2020 to 2030, most new LNG demand growth will be driven by policy, floating storage regasification units, replacement of declining domestic gas production, small-scale LNG and transport.
In January, Avista Utilities partnered with Energy Trust of Oregon to make Energy Trust’s slate of energy efficiency programs and services available to Avista residential and business customers in La Grande and surrounding areas, plus locales across Southern Oregon. The arrangement is designed to help customers save natural gas and lower utility bills simultaneously. “We’re excited to be available to La Grande and the surrounding area,” said Energy Trust Communications Manager Hannah Cruz. “We have strong natural gas efficiency programs. Customers overall can now see these programs coming out to [the] area and helping them weather these extreme events we’ve experienced [this past] winter.” Gas utilities NW Natural and Cascade Natural Gas are also partners with Energy Trust.
To fund the demonstration and testing of a new mobile natural gas compressor, Southern California Gas Co. has signed a contract with Onboard Dynamics Inc. The compressor, made in the United States, can be used to refuel compressed natural gas vehicles no matter where they are—reducing the need for CNG vehicles to travel to public CNG stations. According to Lisa Alexander, vice president of customer solutions and communications for SoCalGas, “This mobile technology provides a cost-effective and convenient refueling solution for smaller CNG operators. This, in turn, may lead to an accelerated adoption of CNG, which would contribute to improved air quality and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, compared to petroleum-based fuels.”
The Canadian city of Medicine Hat is located directly above the largest and oldest pool of natural gas in the country. The city is one of the last in North America to own its energy resources, and its relatively small population of 63,000 people enjoys large profits from the reserve. To ensure profit longevity for generations, Medicine Hat is setting up a fund into which the surplus wealth from oil and gas production will be deposited, much in the same vein as the famed Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which houses the surplus wealth produced by the country’s petroleum income.
DTE Energy recently helped kick off the city’s Grow Detroit’s Young Talent program, which last year connected 8,100 Detroit residents ages 14–24 to meaningful, real-world work experiences at local nonprofits and corporations. The program’s focus for 2017 is to keep the momentum going and ensure participants are adequately prepared for their eventual vocations. According to Mayor Mike Duggan, the city set a goal in 2016 to employ 8,000 young people after a huge influx of applications came in for 2015. The trend continued in 2016, as nearly 11,000 young adults applied for the 8,000 spots in the program. “What really needs to happen for Detroit to be healthy is to rebuild the middle class. The way to rebuild the middle class is to build a strong workforce. That needs to start with young people in their teens,” said DTE Energy Chairman and CEO Gerry Anderson.
A report by researchers Seongeun Jeong and Marc Fischer from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Estimating Methane Emissions from Biological and Fossil-Fuel Sources in the San Francisco Bay Area, has quantified the relative contributions of various sources to methane emissions for the region. Although the study found that methane emissions are about 1.8 times what the Bay Area Air Quality Management District had estimated, about 82 percent of emissions stem from biological sources such as landfills. Only 17 percent emanates from fossil fuel sources.