02 May 21
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Bess Levin | Michael Cohen: Rudy Giuliani Will "Absolutely" Rat Out Ivanka, Don Jr., and Trump to Save Himself
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "Ask Rudy Giuliani, or his son, Andrew, if the former mayor of New York City is in legal trouble at the moment, and you'll undoubtedly get an eye-bulging, hands-flailing response that Donald Trump's personal attorney has done nothing wrong in his life and that the only person who should be worried about his legal exposure is Hunter Biden."
According to his ex-lawyer, Donald Trump should be very, very afraid.
sk Rudy Giuliani, or his son, Andrew, if the former mayor of New York City is in legal trouble at the moment, and you’ll undoubtedly get an eye-bulging, hands-flailing response that Donald Trump’s personal attorney has done nothing wrong in his life and that the only person who should be worried about his legal exposure is Hunter Biden. Obviously, that is not true at all given that (1) Giuliani’s multiyear quest to dig up dirt on the president‘s son uncovered nothing, and (2) experts say Rudy is very much in trouble. Calling Wednesday‘s raid on Giuliani‘s apartment and office an “extremely significant” escalation of the federal investigation into his Ukraine dealings, former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara said this week that there is a strong chance the former New York City mayor will be charged. At that point, prison could be in his future.
All of which makes Michael Cohen, who was once in a very similar situation, think Giuliani is “absolutely” going to turn on Trump to save himself. Appearing on CNN on Thursday, the ex-president’s former “fixer,” who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion and campaign-finance violations, predicted that Rudy is sweating profusely at the moment, and despite whatever he and his son claim, knows that he’s in trouble. Why? For starters, he ran the Southern District of New York, which is currently investigating him, from 1983 to 1989 and knows what kind of power it holds. “There’s no doubt that he’s nervous…. And it’s rightfully so that he’s nervous, because he knows the power of the SDNY is unlimited, and they use that power,” Cohen told Alisyn Camerota. Noting that Giuliani likely “has no interest in going to prison and spending the golden years of his life behind bars,” Cohen said, “Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely. He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.”
Which, of course, would be an unfortunate turn of events for the ex-president who is already facing all kinds of legal trouble, not to mention potentially bad news for his children. “What’s ironic here,” Cohen told Camerota, “is the fact that these tactics of the Southern District of New York, in terms of bullying you into a plea deal, were created by Rudy Giuliani going back 30 years ago. And it’s just ironic that the tactics that he created for that office are now going to be employed against him, in terms of making him plead guilty and, certainly, at the least, turning over information about Jared, Ivanka, about Don Jr., about Donald himself, about all of these individuals in that garbage can orbit of Donald Trump.” He added that one cannot even imagine the trove of shadiness the Feds may uncover as a result of seizing Giuliani’s electronic devices:
Who knows what Rudy was involved with. What we’re going to find out is, there are text messages, there are emails, there are different types of communication apps that the FBI knows how to reestablish, even if Rudy, who I don’t think is technological, tried to—tried to delete or what have you…. And what happens is, they may be starting the investigation looking at things like the Ukrainian conversations between himself, Lev Parnas, and others [and then] you may end up finding that Jared Kushner was involved or Don Jr. or a host of other individuals in Trump’s orbit. And what happens then is that the Southern District, they end up expanding the probe….
We have no idea how expansive that this investigation is going to ultimately reveal itself, because Rudy’s an idiot. And that’s the problem. Rudy drinks too much. Rudy behaves in such an erratic manner that, who knows what's on those telephones or what’s on his computers?
Asked if he thinks Donald Trump is scared about what may come out of the Rudy situation, Cohen said there was no question the ex-president is currently soiling himself. “He was afraid even when they raided my home and my law office,” Cohen said. “Because Donald Trump cares about only one person, and I say it all the time. He cares about only himself. So, he doesn’t care that they raided Rudy’s home. He doesn’t care that they raided Rudy’s law office. What is it going to do to affect me, is all that he’s thinking right now. What did stupid Rudy do? What did stupid Rudy write? What sort of text messages or emails? What sort of stupid things was Rudy up to that’s now going to implicate me? Because Donald knows he has enough trouble right now between Tish James and the attorney general’s office, as well as Cy Vance and the district attorney’s office here in New York…. He knows that he has all sorts of legal issues. He didn’t need more. That’s one thing I can assure you. He definitely didn’t need more. And Rudy is going to be, you know, a treasure trove. In all fairness, Merrick Garland is like Santa Claus, and Rudy’s devices are going to be like the presents that are waiting for you on Christmas day…. And what do I think? I think Rudy knows that he has trouble. I think Donald understands that Rudy will provide whatever information that he has to the SDNY.“
Asked if he thought his dad would, indeed, throw Trump under the bus to save himself, Andrew Giuliani gave a…not entirely convincing answer before changing the subject to—you guessed it—Hunter Biden.
Police officers walk near a fire burning in the street during May Day protests in Paris on Saturday. (photo: Bertrand Guay/Getty Images)
Protesters Gather Across the World for May Day
Jeannette Muhammad, NPR
Muhammad writes: "Protests surged in cities around the world for May Day as demonstrators called for better working protections and other causes. They come as COVID-19 and a stumbling economy continues to disrupt the world."
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Asylum seekers are detained by U.S. Border Patrol at the border wall after crossing into the United States near Yuma, Ariz., on April 19. (photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Biden Cancels Border Wall Projects Trump Paid for With Diverted Military Funds
Nick Miroff, The Washington Post
Miroff writes: "The Biden administration said Friday it has canceled border wall projects paid for with funds diverted from Defense Department accounts, a widely expected move that follows Biden's decision to suspend construction activity on President Donald Trump's signature project."
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Serious cases of COVID-19 have grown in recent weeks in Americans 50 and younger. (photo: Tempura/Getty Images)
COVID 'Doesn't Discriminate by Age': Serious Cases on the Rise in Younger Adults
Will Stone, NPR
Stone writes: "After spending much of the past year tending to elderly patients, doctors are seeing a clear demographic shift: young and middle-aged adults make up a growing share of the patients in COVID-19 hospital wards."
It's both a sign of the country's success in protecting the elderly through vaccination and an urgent reminder that younger generations will pay a heavy price if the outbreak is allowed to simmer in communities across the country.
"We're now seeing people in their 30s, 40s and 50s — young people who are really sick," says Dr. Vishnu Chundi, an infectious disease physician and chair of the Chicago Medical Society's COVID-19 task force. "Most of them make it, but some do not. ... I just lost a 32-year-old with two children, so it's heartbreaking."
Nationally, adults under 50 now account for the most hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the country — about 35% of all hospital admissions. Those age 50 to 64 account for the second-highest number of hospitalizations, or about 31%. Meanwhile, hospitalizations among adults over 65 have fallen significantly.
More than 30% of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated, but the vast majority are people older than 65 – a group that was prioritized in the initial phase of the vaccine rollout.
While new infections are gradually declining nationwide, some regions have contended with a resurgence of the virus in recent months — what some have called a "fourth wave" — propelled by the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the U.K., which is estimated to be somewhere between 40% and 70% more contagious.
As many states ditch pandemic precautions, this more virulent strain still has ample room to spread among the younger population, which remains broadly susceptible to the disease.
The emergence of more dangerous strains of the virus in the U.S. — the B.1.1.7, as well as other variants first discovered in South Africa and Brazil — has made the vaccination effort all the more urgent.
"We are in a whole different ballgame," says Judith Malmgren, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington.
Rising infections among young adults create a "reservoir of disease" that eventually "spills over into the rest of society" — one that has yet to reach herd immunity — and portends a broader surge in cases, she says.
Fortunately, the chance of dying from COVID-19 remains very small for people under the age of 50, but this age group can become seriously ill or suffer from long-term symptoms after the initial infection. People with underlying conditions such as obesity and heart disease are also more likely to become seriously ill.
"B.1.1.7 doesn't discriminate by age, and when it comes to young people, our messaging on this is still too soft," says Malmgren.
Hospitals filled with younger, sicker people
Across the country, the influx of younger patients with COVID-19 has startled clinicians who describe hospital beds filled with patients, many of whom appear sicker than what was seen during previous waves of the pandemic.
"A lot of them are requiring ICU care," says Dr. Michelle Barron, head of infection prevention and control at UCHealth, one of Colorado's large hospital systems, as compared with earlier in the pandemic.
The median age of COVID-19 patients at UCHealth hospitals has dropped by more than a decade in the past few weeks, from 59 down to about 48 years old, says Barron.
"I think we will continue to see that, especially if there's not a lot of vaccine uptake in these groups," she says.
While most hospitals are far from the onslaught of illness seen during the winter, the explosion of cases in Michigan underscores the potential fallout of loosening restrictions when a large share of adults are not yet vaccinated.
There's strong evidence that all three vaccines being used in the U.S. provide good protection against the U.K. variant.
One recent study suggests that the B.1.1.7 variant doesn't lead to more severe illness, which was previously thought. However, patients infected with the variant appear to be more likely to have more of the virus in their bodies than those with the previously dominant strain, which may help explain why it spreads more easily.
"We think that this may be causing more of these hospitalizations in younger people," says Dr. Rachael Lee at the University of Alabama-Birmingham hospital.
Lee's hospital also has observed an uptick in younger patients. Like in other Southern states, Alabama has a low rate of vaccine uptake.
But even in Washington state, where much of the population is opting to get the vaccine, hospitalizations have been rising steadily since early March, especially among young people.
In the Seattle area, more people in their 20s are now being hospitalized for COVID-19 than people in their 70s, according to Seattle King County Public Health Chief Health Officer Dr. Jeff Duchin.
"We don't yet have enough younger adults vaccinated to counteract the increased ease with which the variants spread," said Duchin at a recent press briefing.
Nationwide, about 32% of people in their 40s are fully vaccinated, compared with 27% of people in their 30s. That share drops to about 18% for 18- to 29-year-olds.
"I'm hopeful that the death curve is not going to rise as fast, but it is putting a strain on the health system," says Dr. Nathaniel Schlicher, an emergency physician and president of the Washington State Medical Association.
Schlicher, also in his late 30s, recalls with horror two of his recent patients — close to his age and previously healthy — who were admitted with new onset heart failure caused by COVID-19.
"I've seen that up close and that's what scares the hell out of me," he says.
"I understand young people feeling invincible, but what I would just tell them is — don't be afraid of dying, be afraid of heart failure, lung damage and not being able to do the things that you love to do."
Will younger adults get vaccinated?
Doctors and public health experts hope that the troubling spike in hospitalizations among the younger demographic will only be temporary — one that vaccines will soon counteract.
It was only April 19 that all adults became eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine, although they were available in some states much sooner.
But there are some concerning national polls that indicate a sizable portion of teens and adults in their 20s and 30s don't necessarily have plans to get vaccinated.
"We just need to make it supereasy — not inconvenient in any way," says Malmgren, the Washington epidemiologist. "We have to put our minds to it and think a little differently."
She recommends more outreach through social media platforms or even at bars and other places where younger people hang out. Two bars in New Orleans tried this tactic earlier this month — one even offered a free shot to customers who got vaccinated.
When Chicago physician Vishnu Chundi talks to the families of his COVID-19 patients, he generally doesn't hear resistance to getting the vaccine so much as a sense of complacency about getting it done quickly.
"You have to be motivated to go to these places, you have to get two vaccines now — it's a process," he says. "If it's available for them, they're going to go pick up coffee somewhere and it's there — yes, they'll get vaccinated."
A screenshot from former Loveland police officer Austin Hopp's body camera moments before he forcefully arrested 73-year-old Karen Garner on June 26, 2020. (photo: Sarah Shielke/Life and Liberty Law Office)
3 Colorado Officers Involved in Forceful Arrest of Woman With Dementia Resign
Claire Cleveland, NPR
Cleveland writes: "Three Loveland, Colo., police officers involved in the forceful arrest and detention of Karen Garner, a 73-year-old woman with dementia, have resigned from the department."
"I share the community's concerns on this. It hurt to see that," Loveland Police Chief Robert Ticer said of the body camera footage of the arrest during the conference. "I've been in law enforcement 32 years, and what I saw in there hurt me, personally."
Ticer made the announcement Friday during a press conference, which came more than a week after a federal civil rights lawsuit against multiple officers and the Loveland Police Department was filed by Sarah Schielke from The Life and Liberty Law Office on behalf of Garner. Officers Austin Hopp, Daria Jalali and community service officer Tyler Blackett, who assisted in booking Garner, all resigned.
"Today we listened to Chief Ticer give a speech singularly endeavoring to protect only himself and the reputation of the LPD. He repeatedly dodged questions regarding our family. He made no reference to Karen personally," said a statement from Garner's family. "And just like on June 26, 2020, the inhumane treatment of our mother was ignored and his continued support of the department was the focus. He said that our mother's case has 'hurt him personally.' It is clear that the only thing that has 'hurt him personally' has been the attention this case has brought to his department. Not what happened to our mother. We are disappointed."
Two other officers named in the lawsuit have retained their jobs with the Loveland department. Sgt. Phil Metzler, who responded to the scene of Garner's arrest, was placed on administrative leave; meanwhile, Sgt. Antolina Hill, who was involved in booking Garner, still works her regular duty assignment.
The statement from Garner's family calls for Metzler and Hill to be removed from the force. It also calls for Ticer himself to step down or be removed.
"His decision to not resign, and the City of Loveland's City Manager (Steve Adams) decision to not remove him from that position proves that LPD's leadership and toxic culture problems are just as bad as we suspected when we saw the very first video, if not worse," the statement reads. "And they go all the way through Ticer, to the very top. Because while the world looks on, aghast, and waiting — the City leaves the old guard in place. And it does nothing."
On June 26, 2020, Garner was forcefully arrested by Loveland Police officers after she left a Walmart with $14 of unpaid merchandise. Garner suffered a fractured arm and dislocated shoulder during the arrest, according to the lawsuit. In photos from a press release, the back of Garner's arms and her wrists were badly bruised.
"Our goal at the Loveland Police Department has always been to make our community proud," Ticer said. "We failed, and we are very sorry for that."
An investigation has also been launched by the office of the Eighth Judicial District Attorney Gordon McLaughlin. The district's Critical Incident Response Team, composed of investigators from 10 area agencies in Larimer and Jackson counties, will investigate the incident.
Sunday Song: Scott McKenzie | San Francisco
Scott McKenzie, YouTube
Excerpt: "All across the nation such a strange vibration. People in motion. There's a whole generation with a new explanation. People in motion people in motion."
This early rendition of San Francisco by Scott McKenzie is a classic. The song did a lot to make the Summer of Love the cultural happening it was.
Lyrics Scott McKenzie, San Francisco.
Written by John Phillips (The Mamas & the Papas).
From the 1967 album The Voice of Scott McKenzie.
If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there
For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair
All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion people in motion
For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
Frank Lemos manages regional operations for shipping firm Titan Freight Systems, but still dons a uniform sometimes to move a truck between terminals or train a driver. (photo: Leah Nash/Grist)
Cleaning Up What Can't Plug In
Peter Fairley, Grist and Investigate West
Fairley writes: "It gets the job done just like petroleum diesel, yet generates far less air pollution. That's not just a quality of life benefit. It means Titan's drivers are breathing less toxic fumes and soot, and bringing less of that pollution home."
Cascadia needs cleaner fuels to start decarbonizing heavy vehicles and industry. That means pushing biofuels to the max, and more.
hese days Frank Lemos manages a shipping operation, but the former truck driver still gets behind the wheel occasionally to train new drivers or to fill a staffing hole. When he does, he notices a big difference. The firm recently moved away from conventional diesel fuel, and without it there’s something missing: the permeating petroleum smell that drivers wear after a day inside a big rig.
“You come home and you don’t get to just jump in bed if you’re tired. You have to take a shower, or else someone’s going to kick you out of bed,” said Lemos, who is operations manager for Portland-based Titan Freight Systems.
Since last fall Titan’s rigs, which deliver pallet-loads of goods between Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Idaho, have mostly fueled up with renewable diesel, a biofuel made by refining vegetable oils, livestock tallow, and cooking grease instead of crude oil.
It gets the job done just like petroleum diesel, yet generates far less air pollution. That’s not just a quality of life benefit. It means Titan’s drivers are breathing less toxic fumes and soot, and bringing less of that pollution home.
Lemos isn’t the only who’s noticed. Robert Bennett, Titan’s maintenance supervisor, said his wife quickly realized that she no longer needed to segregate his work clothes when she does the laundry. “There is definitely a big difference,” Bennett said.
Renewable diesel also yields far less of the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases driving climate change. That’s what inspired Titan’s shift.
The firm switched to renewable diesel one year ago, amid the region’s increasingly destructive wildfire seasons. Last year, a fire devastated the town of Phoenix, Oregon, just five miles from one of the firm’s terminals. “Doing nothing is not a course of action,” was how Titan president and owner Keith Wilson described his visceral response to the fires.
Wilson knew that climate change was stoking Cascadia’s fires, and that diesel vehicles produce over a third of Oregon’s transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. Using biofuel cut Titan’s petroleum diesel consumption by 93 percent and cut its carbon footprint by over two-thirds.
Switching wasn’t a sacrifice. Wilson is getting renewable diesel at the same price. And the cleaner burn cuts maintenance costs, so he figures he’s actually saving about 2 cents a mile — over $20,000 a year.
Titan’s move is part of a Pacific coast wave driven by clean fuels standards enacted in California, Oregon, and British Columbia. Their mandates and fees provide a $1 to $2 per gallon subsidy to renewable diesel and other low-carbon fuels, and their production is multiplying as fleets seek them out.
Washington state looks set to be next. After several failed attempts, the state’s House and Senate both approved a comparable program this spring, and were reconciling their bills at InvestigateWest’s press time.
To decarbonize, as climate science calls for, Cascadia will need an even stronger clean fuels push.
Recent research guiding Cascadia’s policymakers and industries finds that switching to battery-powered vehicles is the cheapest long-term solution to eliminate use of fossil fuels by 2050. Electrification can do it all for cars, energy planners say, edging out all but a fraction of conventional car sales within a decade.
However, electrification of fuel-thirsty heavy vehicles could take decades longer, and Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia need to significantly trim carbon emissions by 2030. For those near-term carbon cuts, cleaner fuels — and lots of them — will be crucial.
Washington has mandated a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. To get there, it needs to both electrify vehicles as rapidly as possible and meet over a third of the remaining fuel demand with low-carbon alternatives to petroleum, according to recent research for the state. That translates to over 1.7 billion gallons of clean fuels in 2030.
Energy experts call that a staggering volume.
“The scale is huge,” said John Holladay, who directs biofuels research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. “It’s a very aggressive scenario.”
Cascadia’s clean fuels need dwarfs what’s now commercially available. Meeting the challenge means rapidly scaling up biofuels like renewable diesel and then doing more, because there simply is not enough plant- and animal-based material to support the volume required, say experts such as Holladay.
Making up the difference will require new fuels that are just beginning to take off — fuels such as hydrogen and low-carbon “synthetic” fuels. Governments and industries in Europe and Asia are beginning to push these next-generation fuels into their markets, while the U.S. and Canada lag behind.
Producing low-carbon fuels presents an opportunity for the region’s refineries, several of which have already begun to retool to make them. And energy experts say producing them locally will improve the reliability of Cascadia’s energy system.
But can clean fuels production ramp up as fast as the region’s climate action ambition demands?
On the road to electric trucks
Electrifying vehicles, homes, and industries is the cheapest way to provide the bulk of the greenhouse gas reductions required by 2050. Cars will shift quickly, thus cutting gasoline demand. Manufacturers such as General Motors have vowed to stop producing gasoline-fueled vehicles by 2035 or earlier, and the Washington Legislature just passed a 2030 target date for that transition.
But heavier vehicles such as buses, trucks, ferries, and planes are harder to electrify. Production of battery-powered heavy vehicles remains limited, and the early models cost more and often carry less than conventional vehicles. Then there’s the need to build charging stations, which a report this month from the Environmental Defense Fund called “the greatest challenge of electrifying heavy-duty trucks.”
Wilson has extensively researched electric trucks, and hopes to introduce one to Titan’s fleet this year to learn more. But he figures it could take 20 years to turn over his diesel-fueled fleet. “Is it a short-term solution? My answer was no,” said Wilson.
Electrifying even beefier vehicles will take longer. Vancouver, B.C.-based Harbour Air vows to start operating its first electric seaplane in just a year or two. But even Harbour Air bets that it will be “decades” before battery-powered jumbo jets are crossing the continent.
“It’s still an emerging technology,” said Tyler Bennett, who manages decarbonization projects for Portland-area transit authority TriMet, which operates over 700 diesel buses.
Bennett said electric buses cost close to twice as much as diesel models and have shorter range. The first five buses TriMet acquired were mostly out of service last year, thanks to software and charging glitches.
So TriMet continues to add new diesel buses faster than it adds electrics. TriMet plans to cease purchasing diesel buses after 2025. Nevertheless, given the rate that equipment turns over — after 16 years of service for TriMet’s buses — Bennett expects diesels to still make up more than half of the fleet in 2030.
Which is why TriMet, like Titan, set its sights on switching to renewable diesel. Or, to be precise, “R99”: renewable diesel with 1 percent petroleum diesel added to help lubricate engines and to nab a $1 per gallon federal tax credit for fuel blends.
Bennett said tests on 32 TriMet buses in 2019 confirmed that using R99 cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent. It also cut air pollution. That especially benefits lower-income and Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color historically targeted for transportation corridors and therefore exposed to more diesel pollution. (Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality has estimated that diesel pollution kills about 460 Oregonians every year.)
And unlike earlier biofuels, using renewable diesel doesn’t require engine modifications. As Bennett puts it: “You pick up the phone and the company drops off R99 instead of diesel that day and you’re good to go.”
A renewable diesel price spike in 2019 prompted some early adopters to temporarily use more petroleum diesel. And that higher cost prompted TriMet to scuttle a long-term R99 purchase contract that was in the works last March when the pandemic struck. The transit operator tells InvestigateWest that it’s still assessing when it will make the switch, citing COVID-19’s “major impact on our finances.”
Renewable boom and limits
Growing experience of fleet owners — and the Pacific Coast’s clean fuel standards — have biofuels production ramping up. Renewable diesel dominates that growth. Production capacity under construction will roughly quintuple output in the U.S., and many more are in the works, according to a recent biofuels industry survey.
Much of the action is at oil refineries, including several in Cascadia, that are retooling to refine renewable feedstocks. In 2018, BP began mixing a little livestock tallow and vegetable oil into crude at its Blaine, Washington, refinery to make a lower-carbon diesel that’s 5 percent renewable — blending that could scale up and spread to Washington’s four other refineries if Governor Jay Inslee signs a clean fuels bill this year as expected.
Calgary-based Parkland Fuel already blends in renewable feedstocks on a larger scale at its Vancouver-area refinery, where it expects to process over 600,000 barrels of tallow and canola oil this year — enough to make Parkland’s diesel up to 15 percent renewable.
Canada’s Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure, meanwhile, is among a growing number of refiners gearing up to produce pure renewable diesel. By 2023, a Canadian $215 million to $235 million ($171 million to $187 million U.S.) expansion underway at its Prince George, British Columbia, refinery should be turning 3,000 barrels of renewable feedstocks per day into renewable diesel.
Dedicated “biorefineries” are also multiplying. A $1.5 billion-plus plant proposed for Columbia County, Oregon, not far from Portland, would turn up to 50,000 barrels per day of waste oils and fats into more than 500 million gallons per year of renewable diesel. Its proponent, NEXT Renewable Fuels, has applied to be exempted from siting approval under a state law incentivizing low-carbon biofuels.
The question is how many refineries can be sustainably supplied with oils and fats. “The amount we need is not consistent with the amount that’s available,” according to Holladay.
So, where to turn? As the supply of waste fats taps out, biofuels producers will rely more heavily on vegetable oils. That may drive up food prices and reduce the climate benefit.
Making fuel from waste fats provides a double benefit by preventing those wastes from simply decomposing, a process that releases the potent climate pollutant methane. In contrast, turning to harvested plant oils could drive consumption of palm oil, whose rising production has led to rainforest destruction in countries such as Indonesia. Clearing forests for palm plantations undercuts climate benefits.
Operators such as NEXT Renewable Fuels have explicitly sworn off using “virgin” palm oil. But tracking the palm oil supply chain is difficult.
To hydrogen and beyond
Experts project that meeting clean fuels demand in 2030 will take clean fuels producers into new technologies and ingredients that are on the cusp of commercial production today.
One potential source of future fuels are abundant biomass materials such as wheat chaff and other agricultural leftovers, sludge from sewage treatment plants, and small trees from thinned-out forests. Biomass can be converted to methane gas and compressed to fuel vehicles. Alternatively, superheated water and catalysts — materials that accelerate chemical reactions — can turn biomass into an oily mix known as “biocrude” that refineries can take on.
Holladay and collaborators at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University are working to demonstrate the feasibility of the biocrude fuels chain. They are making biocrude from a blend of sources including wastewater sludge from Detroit and food wastes from a prison and an army base in Washington state.
Last month, they reported continuous conversion of biocrude to renewable diesel for over 2,000 hours with no damage to the particularly pricey catalysts that refineries employ.
The PNNL-WSU research could play a small role in the set of next-generation clean fuels endorsed by Washington state’s 2021 energy strategy: hydrogen gas made with renewable power, and liquid fuels produced by reacting that “green” hydrogen with a range of materials.
Cascadia’s first green hydrogen project broke ground in March at the Douglas County Public Utility District in central Washington. The plant will use hydropower generated at the utility’s Columbia River dam to split water into hydrogen gas and oxygen.
Such hydrogen can replace natural gas and coal that fuel industries, or be used to propel electric vehicles that get their power from fuel cells instead of batteries. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices comparable to Douglas PUD’s hydrogen plant, but running in reverse to combine hydrogen and oxygen and thus generate electricity.
Toyota, which along with Hyundai and Honda already sells fuel cell vehicles in California and British Columbia, is teaming up with Douglas PUD to open a market in Washington by building the state’s first hydrogen fueling station near Centralia.
Douglas PUD expects to get an extra boost from its hydrogen production: flexibly adjusting the plant’s operation to keep the power supply and demand in balance. (See Using hydrogen to back up the grid)
Another way to use hydrogen to beat climate change is to produce low-carbon liquid fuels. Those include diesel for use in heavy vehicles and jet fuel for jet engines. A firm in Quebec is building one of the world’s largest green hydrogen plants, about 17 times bigger than the one at Douglas PUD. It will convert nonrecyclable municipal waste and wood waste into biofuels.
Decarbonization modeling supporting Washington’s new energy strategy found that hydrogen-derived fuels could account for four-fifths of the state’s clean fuels supply in 2030. Projections like that are new for North America, but they are the new normal in Europe and Asia where large renewable hydrogen projects are multiplying.
A Danish renewable energy giant, Ørsted, is laying plans for a hydrogen plant 200 times larger than Douglas PUD’s, to be powered by a dedicated offshore wind farm.
Banning petroleum
Cascadia’s clean fuel standards have started a transition to low-carbon fuels. But those programs are not sufficient to deliver the hydrogen and clean fuels industries needed by 2030.
Big investments promised by the Biden Administration could help. An infrastructure plan unveiled by Biden last month promises $15 billion toward large demonstration projects for emerging energy technologies, including 15 hydrogen projects.
The uncertain cost of hydrogen-based fuel processes means it is hard to predict which fuel pathways will ultimately scale up, according to Jeremy Hargreaves, the energy systems modeler with San Francisco-based Evolved Energy Research who led the recent research for Washington state.
What’s certain, said Hargreaves, is that the hydrogen fuels will cost considerably more than today’s commercial fuels, such as renewable diesel. Which is why electrifying as fast as possible rose to the top of the strategy menu that Hargreaves’ firm evaluated for Washington state, and in similar studies for British Columbia and Oregon. It makes sense to electrify as many cars and trucks as possible before turning to the more-expensive green hydrogen fuels.
Environmentalists worry that expanding clean fuels production will actually undermine that effort, undercutting the early market adoption of electric vehicles.
“You are providing an incentive to continue using fossil-powered trucks and ferries, rather than shifting to electrified equivalents,” said Patrick Mazza, a Seattle-based environmental activist and energy analyst.
Many worry that hydrogen-based fuels could also spur new fossil fuel production. Right now, green hydrogen is pretty expensive. It’s much cheaper for the time being to continue using a climate-unfriendly process using natural gas that is responsible for over 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Even if some of the carbon emissions could be captured, making more hydrogen from natural gas would spur continued fossil gas drilling and the associated methane leaks.
“You are giving a new market to fracked gas, with all its air and water pollution problems, as well as questionable carbon benefits,” said Mazza.
In contrast, the concern of trucking mini-magnate Wilson at Titan Freight Systems is about ensuring that Cascadia starts getting trucks off petroleum today.
Wilson spent this winter educating fellow carriers and the Oregon Trucking Associations on renewable diesel’s advantages. Then, hot off an unsuccessful 2020 bid for Portland City Commission, Wilson leapt back into politics this year, proposing a state law to phase out petroleum diesel by 2028.
Wilson’s bill got a frosty reception from Oregon Republicans, who have made a habit of fleeing the Oregon State Capitol to block climate legislation. The trucking association raised fears of renewable diesel shortages and price spikes. So Wilson and Democratic State Representative Karin Power, who formally introduced the bill last month, added several safety valves to the bill designed to head off steep price hikes.
Wilson positions his bill as a cost-saving measure that can improve health, grow jobs, and reverse nearly a decade of rising carbon emissions in Oregon. And, he says, those wildfires are costing him customers. “We’re being compromised when we lose entire communities because of fire or smoke in the summer, because people aren’t buying fishing gear,” said Wilson.
Frank Lemos, Titan’s operations manager, says his concern is managing the backlash that’s likely to come from Wilson’s proselytizing for climate action. He wants a cleaner workplace for his drivers, and he accepts that getting off fossil fuels is important for his drivers’ grandkids.
But he also needs to protect his drivers from the inevitable blowback from their industry counterparts, whether it’s chatter on the CB radio or at the truck stops. He expects those conversations to go sideways, with their drivers hearing that costs will rise and Titan will have to cut their wages, or their jobs.
“You don’t want to be thought of as that guy from that company who’s trying to change the way trucking is done,” said Lemos. “Nobody wants to be that scapegoat that makes the difference. But somebody has to be.”
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