DeSmog
Sep 5, 2018 @ 09:38
The City of South Portland, Maine, won a major legal victory at the end of August when a federal judge ruled that the city’s effective ban on tar sands oil did not violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The decision, like a similar one in Portland, Oregon, has potentially widespread implications for other communities fighting fossil fuel infrastructure projects within their borders.
In 2014 South Portland passed the Clear Skies Ordinance, which prohibited loading crude oil onto tankers in the city’s harbor. The ordinance was a response to efforts to reverse the direction of the Portland Montreal pipeline, which would allow its owner, Portland Pipe Line Corporation, to import tar sands oil from Canada and export it from the city of about 25,000 via ship.
A German Initiative Seeks to Curb Global Emissions of a Climate Super-Pollutant
The nitrous oxide emissions from hundreds of chemical plants globally, 300 times more warming than carbon dioxide, are the greenhouse equivalent of 45 million cars.
December 30, 2020
The Navoiyazot chemical plant in Navoiy, Uzbekistan uses a chemical reactor to eliminate 97 percent of its emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Credit: Casale
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The Donaldsonville Nitrogen Complex in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and the Navoiyazot chemical plant in Navoi, Uzbekistan, have a lot in common. Both tap an abundance of low-cost natural gas to produce nitric acid, a chemical used to make fertilizer, and both have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in their plants in recent years to boost fertilizer exports.