Morning Brief: Trump lies about fracking employment, Feds revive and seek input on west energy corridor

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Fracking employs millions of Americans? No way. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette claims eliminating fracking would cost 19 million jobs, a sharp increase from the 10 million jobs previously claimed by the Trump administration based on a questionable industry analysis. Economists dismiss President Trump’s claims that fracking supports 300,000 jobs in Wisconsin, a state that has no oil and gas reserves but does supply sand for drilling. Trump claimed during a recent speech that there are currently 940,000 natural-gas jobs in Pennsylvania. According to a March analysis of federal employment data by environmental group Food & Water Watch, there were approximately 636,000 jobs directly related to oil and natural gas extraction from 2016-2018 nationally. Sources: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Fox Business, The Conversation, Pittsburgh City Paper)

Feds revive, seek input on West ‘energy corridor’: Federal officials are seeking input on a revised plan to use Western federal lands to create a network of energy infrastructure pathways. “Federal officials are seeking input on a revised plan to use Western federal lands to create a network of energy infrastructure pathways that would likely provide a big boost to renewable project development. The West-wide Energy Corridor — really a series of corridors — would wind through seven states, including California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and Department of Energy introduced the proposal in September 2005 under the authority of Section 368 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The proposed West-wide Energy Corridor would run through seven Western states and increase the potential for developing new renewable projects.  Source: RTO Insider

Too cheap to keep: How throwing away power is the best way to balance the grid: Don’t build a battery that costs $1 billion, only works 2% of the time and only moves around 100 GWh of electricity. Instead, build an Energy Imbalance Market or an Extended Day Ahead Market for $100 million that moves around hundreds of GWh of electricity. Souce: pv magazine

Logan Burke, executive director of the Louisiana Alliance for Affordable Energy, detailed the work underway at the New Orleans City Council to authorize community solar, which means “that rather than depending on the utility itself to procure renewables, a community can invest in and own solar resources and other renewable resources and reduce their bills, lock[ing] in the cost of that energy over time.” In Louisiana, seen as “America’s very own petrostate,” racialized disparities in exposure to environmental toxins from energy infrastructure and the “fiscal geographies” of asset stripping, through tax evasion and subsidization, shape the spaces of energy extraction, production, and use. Source: Project Muse

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