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Texas repeatedly raises pollution limits for Cheniere LNG plant
- zeristor 4y agoStrange wording, shouldn’t it be that emissions standards are being lowered, allowing more pollution?
- Msw242 4y agoI can't say either way because the hacker news hug of death means I can't read it!
- lkbm 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220625134643/https://newsotg.com/2022/06/25/world-news/texas-raises-emission-standards-for-the-cheniere-lng-project-on-a-regular-basis/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220625134643/https://newsotg.c...
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- sitkack 4y agoThe site is posting here to gain SEO rankings. Use the original Reuters article.
- heretogetout 4y agoIt is Texas so it's safe to assume the worst when it comes to regulating externalities, and you're exactly right: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/texas-repeatedly-raises-pollution-limits-cheniere-lng-plant-2022-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/texas-repeatedl...
- anamexis 4y agoBoth “raises” and “lowers” are potentially confusing. Maybe “relaxes?”
- kzrdude 4y agoWith physics brain, direction of any linear scale is arbitrary and definitions need to be stated.
- _57jb 4y agoI too. The epitome of Hacker News and one of the reasons I find myself laughing enjoyably so much here. I picture this marathon and the first one trips out of the gate with everyone piling up behind them.
- endorphine 4y agoAgreed. This confused me as well.
- vasco 4y agoA "high standard" has a known meaning, so raising and lowering can be derived from there. When you read that the engineering practices in some company are of a high standard, do you also get confused as to if the company operates well or not well? I used to get confused from the meaning too but started thinking about it like this.
- anamexis 4y agoI'm not sure what you're trying to say, but the title of the OP is clearly confusing here and could be made less ambiguous to people who have not started thinking about it like you think about it.
- krisoft 4y ago> A "high standard" has a known meaning, so raising and lowering can be derived from there. It does indeed. And the title does not comport with that derivation. In terms of petro-chemical plants one operating to a "high standard" is clean, and one operating to a "low standard" is polluting. And the plant in the article is polluting. Instead of fixing the plant they decided to raise the emission limits. That is the legal equivalent of "eh, fine I guess" shrug. Does that sound like operating to a "high standard"? So are these people raising the standard? The confusion originates from the fact that in the case of pollution, smaller numbers are better. So "raising the standard" means "lowering the limits". And "raising the limits" are "lowering the standard". Therefore they did not choose the right words. We might as well say that they phrased the title in a confusing way. > I used to get confused from the meaning too but started thinking about it like this. It really sounds like in a rush to educate us you just illustrated how confusing the title is. But here is the thing. It can be worded in such a way to avoid this confusion altogether. They should just wrote "Texas raises emission limit ..." and it is avoided. Or even better, they could write "Polluting plant will avoid fines", or "Plant allowed to pollute".
- toddmorey 4y agoIt's raising the amount of VOCs and other pollutants allowed to be released. (Could be worded better.)
- goodpoint 4y agoIt is ambiguous, but the word "Texas" lets us guess correctly.
- tyingq 4y agoWeirder to me is that the limit being quoted is an absolute limit of tons/year, when the plant has doubled LNG output over time, and has plans to expand further. It's certainly possible something's amiss here, but the detail is scant.
- layer8 4y agoReuters article on which this is probably based: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/texas-repeatedly-raises-pollution-limits-cheniere-lng-plant-2022-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/texas-repeatedl... Salient quote: Cheniere’s massive LNG plant, on the outskirts of the Gulf Coast city, has exceeded its permitted limits for emissions of pollutants such as soot, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) hundreds of times since it started up in 2018, according to a Reuters review of regulatory documents. Instead of levying penalties for such violations, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has responded by granting Cheniere big increases in the plant’s pollution limits, the documents show. The facility is now allowed to chuff out some 353 tons per year of VOCs, double the limit set out in its original permit eight years ago. The state raised limits on four other pollutants by more than 40%.
- sitkack 4y agoSounds like Texas technology on CC (Comission Capture) is "the best available". Is there an open data feed on this? Where is the grafana dashboard showing graft? If one could summon @dang, the story link should be replaced with the reuters article.
- geoduck14 4y ago>If one could summon @dang, You need to speak a little louder and enunciated. Let me help Oh DAAAAANNNNNNGGGGG. Sitkack needs some HEEEELLLLLPPPPP You're welcome
- designium 4y agoThe best technology available is to change the standards...
- cardiffspaceman 4y agoThe current HN title is, "Texas raises emission standards for the Cheniere LNG project on a regular basis". I thought I would be reading and reading about a process of moving the approved standards to "better" levels, which in the case of pollutants, would be lower levels. I imagined that maybe the builders of the plant were facing goal post movement every time they got close to completing the plant or something, moving the date of opening of this useful plant ever further into the future. The word "standards" should probably be replaced with "limits".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 4y agoHow can we expect to fight and win wars if we can't bear trivial negative consequences? US LNG from this port ships to Europe, it replaces the boycotted gas from the Russian pipelines [0,1]. The gas shortage is potentially going to be really bad this winter [2]. If these plants don't keep running, either many people will freeze to death (and the EU economy plunges into recession), or the boycott collapses (and Russia comes back to the negotiating table with extreme leverage). Additional context: multiple European countries are backsliding to coal power right this week [3]. And Biden has waived federal air pollution regulations, to decrease reliance on imported oil [4]. It's not only Texas. This is a no-win scenario: we can't escape the tradeoff between air quality, climate goals, and the immediate war. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/c1b8c308-b189-4a24-af67-6d18902e42c8 https://www.ft.com/content/c1b8c308-b189-4a24-af67-6d18902e4... [1] https://archive.ph/UZlCv https://archive.ph/UZlCv (mirror of [0]) [2] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-germany-government-and-politics-bc7bdf033d249f673275b537bf2d3d19 https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-germany-government... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?&query=coal&dateRange=pastWeek https://hn.algolia.com/?&query=coal&dateRange=pastWeek [4] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-epa-issues-waiver-allow-temporary-sales-summertime-higher-ethanol-fuel-2022-04-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-epa-issues-waiver-allow-...
- jhallenworld 4y ago> if we can't bear trivial negative consequences? Instead of we, how about you move right next to this plant.. But if the only consequence is price, I agree with you. I speculate that the Freeport LNG fire was sabotage. Of course I have no evidence, but many interests are served.. Russia, but also industrial natural gas users in the USA trying to limit the price.. The fire reduced our exposure to the global natural gas market, and the price in the USA immediately plunged: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas
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- micromacrofoot 4y agoQuestion that might not have an answer: do people in places that are already unbearably hot not care about global warming? kind of like telling a fish it’s wet. That’s not to say they shouldn’t care because it’s going to matter, but is it some kind of special cognitive dissonance?
- wonderwonder 4y agoIn general I think people probably care about global warming but specifically this is Texas and in Texas everything is a 2 part question. 1. Will this be terrible for us? 2. But if we let it happen will it own the libs? If part 2 is ever yes, then part 1 is allowed to go forward.
- tyingq 4y agoThe limit seems based not on some percentage of LNG produced, but a fixed figure of tons/year. Is it possible they've also increased the production capacity of the plant? The story is very short, so I can't tell what they are saying. Is it producing more emissions per "unit" than expected, or just producing more output? Edit: Answering my own question, they have increased capacity significantly over time: https://www.gem.wiki/Corpus_Christi_LNG_Terminal https://www.gem.wiki/Corpus_Christi_LNG_Terminal https://www.offshore-energy.biz/cheniere-starts-lng-production-from-corpus-christi-train-2/ https://www.offshore-energy.biz/cheniere-starts-lng-producti...
- tiffanyh 4y agoOnly US exporter. Key info is missing from this article - that’s Cheniere is the only US company permitted to export LNG. With the global energy crisis underway due in part to the Russian / Ukrainian war, it’s expected law makers would allow Cheniere to exceed thresholds in order to satisfy global demand.
- j_walter 4y agoI've worked with clean air agencies before at both the state and federal level and this information is useless without context. Sometimes you can exceed short term thresholds for emergency reasons and still stay within your long term thresholds. If you have added capacity or other reasons why you aren't under current permit limits then you can get a new limit. The last 2 years of COVID have slowed every response down...that includes official testing (which is a joke really), changes to what is being checked as well as permit reviews (our normal routine permit lapsed because the agency is so far behind). We self reported an overflow spill on the ground of ~10K gallons of water that had come directly from city water (this is a violation...it is not allowed in our waste water permit) over 18 months ago and it still hasn't been reviewed.
- UkrainianJew 4y agoThe whole concept of emission standards and carbon taxes only makes sense if it's applied and enforced globally and uniformly. If an extra tonne of CO2 costs $1 in U.S. and $0 in China, the incentive isn't to reduce pollution - the incentive is to move business to China. Europe has been playing the blind green eye politics for a decade - all pretending to be green and environmentally friendly, while in fact largely replacing locally sourced coal with imported Russian gas. North America has been doing the same with declaring many industries too dirty, and happily moving them out to China along with the jobs, knowledge and capital. The planet doesn't give a damn which meridian that CO2 comes from. The effect is global and cumulative, and there are many ways to actually lower it without killing local jobs - nuclear, biodiesel, decentralized production requiring less transportation. But the media never considers that - instead the public is weaponized against the remaining local businesses, largely ignoring the big picture. It's almost like they are owned by the people heavily benefiting from moving production overseas...
- V__ 4y agoI wonder whether a carbon taxes with tariffs, from countries which don't have them, could solve this. Let's say a product get produced in China and imported into the EU. If it's not carbon-neutral, slap a tariff on.
- guerrilla 4y ago> I wonder whether a carbon taxes with tariffs, from countries which don't have them, could solve this That sounds perfect actually but how do you plan to actually check. China will can just lie, but I guess if they do get caught lying there can be penalties.
- V__ 4y agoMake the companies importing the products responsible with heavy fines. I assume it would take a week until there are multiple companies run and overseen by non-Chinese employees which would certify how much carbon was created during production.
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- shawkinaw 4y agoWhat a bad headline. “Raises emission standards” sounds like a good thing, i.e. making the standard more strict, but actually the article is about Texas raising emission limits.
- seltzered_ 4y agoSee also regarding TCEQ possibly being a 'reluctant' regulator at times: https://twitter.com/erinmdouglas23/status/1539631192181559298 https://twitter.com/erinmdouglas23/status/153963119218155929... And regionally related to Texas (but more about EPA) on poisons in the air: https://www.propublica.org/article/toxmap-poison-in-the-air https://www.propublica.org/article/toxmap-poison-in-the-air
- swayvil 4y agoThat's a weirdly misleading title. Use "relaxes" instead of "raises".
- jquery 4y agoI saw the thread title and knew a typo was more likely than Texas actually doing the right thing. I still get no satisfaction from being correct.
- ayoolafoodsng 4y ago[dead]