Biden’s climate law fines oil companies for methane pollution. The bill is coming due.
grist.org
Recent research suggests that the IRA’s methane fee could batter the oil and gas industry to the tune of more than $1 billion.
  • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
    29·
    9 months ago

    People are complaining that this isn’t enough, but no one is celebrating that we’re fining them over a billion more now? A billion is a big number. I’m glad we’re doing more to fight these industries than we were before

    • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
      21·
      9 months ago

      The fossil fuel industry in the U.S. is subsidized to the tune of $20 billion per year. I probably don’t have to point it out but 1 billion is just 5% of the free money they get from the government anyway.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
      20·
      9 months ago

      A billion to the industry as whole? Man they might have to fish in the couch cushions to come up with that kind of money.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      101·
      9 months ago

      What matters here is that this is expensive enough that it suddenly makes financial sense to stop emitting in a lot of cases. That’s a big deal.

    • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
      1·
      9 months ago

      It really should be more. The fossil fuel industry in the U.S. is subsidized to the tune of $20 billion per year. I probably don’t have to point it out but 1 billion is just 5% of the free money they get from the government anyway.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    9 months ago

    I’ll believe it when I see it. If there is one thing I’ve learned in the past decade is that rules and laws are only as good as their enforcement.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      5·
      9 months ago

      It kicks in this year, and there are few people out there more dogged than a tax collector who knows they’re owed.

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
          3·
          9 months ago

          What I can say for sure is that the regulations around paying them have been issued. So I’m expecting to see them paid

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
    91·
    9 months ago

    A billion dollars is chump change. How do we fine people the cost if doing business for something that is going to cost us the habitabiloty of the planet if we don’t fix it. Am I living in crazy town or something, bcz that seems insane to me.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      91·
      9 months ago

      It’s expensive enough that it’s cheaper to prevent emissions in most cases. That’s the idea.

      • underisk@lemmy.ml
        2·
        9 months ago

        I think throwing them in prison would be a far more effective, if you’re looking for deterrents. If its good enough for drug dealers and petty criminals, why wouldn’t it work for a smaller group of people who have a way more negative impact on society?

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
          3·
          9 months ago

          It would surely be more effective, but we didn’t have the political power to do something like that. So we got a fine.

  • evenglow@lemmy.world
    4·
    9 months ago

    Diversified, which has become the largest owner of oil and gas wells in the U.S., has some 70,000 such old and potentially leaky wells — making it potentially one of the biggest methane emitters in the industry as well.

    According to Geofinancial, Diversified would be liable for as much as $184 million if its annual excess methane emissions are equivalent to what it released over the year ending in September 2023. While the satellite results are a snapshot in time and contain some uncertainty, the overall finding that Diversified is probably facing catastrophically steep methane fees likely holds regardless of the potential variation.

    • clover@slrpnk.netEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      If diversified goes under, I doubt it has enough in escrow to close all of those wells. Will the government allow it to use the money from the fine to close the leakiest wells as a compromise?

      • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
        2·
        9 months ago

        Yea, a company like Diversified that buys old wells really gets hit hard with this, while big companies that just drill new wells (and create new problems when the wells get old) have much less methane emission and don’t get penalized that much, if at all.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      I’d rather see things fixed so that they don’t leak methane. That’s a kind of tax avoidance I can get behind.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      5·
      9 months ago

      The thing about methane is that it only lasts a few years in the atmosphere before breaking down. This means that its impact is determined by the rate of release, unlike CO2, which accumulates, so that total cumulative emissions are what matter.

      Cut the release rate for methane, and we can make a big difference, no matter when we do it.