Parts Per Billion

California's power companies are trying to stop wildfires by imposing targeted blackouts in high risk areas. Their hope is that this will prevent a downed live wire from sparking a conflagration.

This strategy was effective a tamping down fires last year, but in the year of Covid-19, many worry the solution will be nearly as bad as the problem.

On this episode of our podcast, Parts Per Billion, California correspondent Emily C. Dooley talks about how power companies are struggling to ensure people fighting the pandemic don't lose power, and also about whether there may be a long-term solution that doesn't require ad hoc power shutoffs.

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Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a decades-long dream of the energy industry, is closer to reality than ever before after the Trump Administration announced it will start auctioning off drilling rights as early as this year.

But these drilling rights could easily be slow-rolled—or even outright canceled—if Democratic nominee Joe Biden becomes President next year, according to Jennifer A. Dlouhy, an environmental reporter with Bloomberg News. And beyond that, the oil industry is facing record-low prices, with many firms struggling to simply stay in business, Dlouhy said. Will anyone even want to drill in the Arctic?

Dlouhy joins our podcast, Parts Per Billion, to talk about what exactly the Trump Administration did with ANWR and why so much of the refuge's future depends on the outcome of this November's elections.

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Here's yet another complicated and confusing question about the transition to a post-greenhouse gas world: Is what's billed as low-carbon gasoline good or bad for the environment?

That's the question lawmakers in several Democratic-led states are asking themselves, and no easy answers are appearing.

New Mexico, New York, and Minnesota, to name a few, have debated new standards that would encourage the adoption of more climate-friendly auto fuels, either through blending with ethanol or with another type of biofuel. But in all of these states, these measures failed amid opposition from environmentalists, who say a new fuel standard would simply delay the abandonment of fossil fuels altogether.

On today's Parts Per Billion, our biweekly environmental law podcast, we hear from reporter Zach Bright about why low-carbon fuel standards are struggling to gain traction at the state level, despite support from high-level Democrats. Bright also talks about the states that have managed to adopt their own standard, and how they did it.

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Because it's so effective, PFAS-laden firefighting foam isn't easy to replace. However, there are indications that PFAS alternatives might finally be ready for prime time.

The Department of Defense is expected to change its policies early next year to allow for the use of non-PFAS foams, while some states are also pushing civilian firefighters to phase in the use of these new foams.

On this episode of our environmental policy podcast, Parts Per Billion, Bloomberg Law reporters Pat Rizzuto and Andrew Wallender talk about why this may not be as big of a breakthrough in the fight against PFAS contamination as it may seem. They say the PFAS alternatives will at least initially be hard to come by—especially if the military uses its massive purchasing power to buy them all up. There's also the matter of safely disposing of existing stocks of firefighting foam, which will be a challenging task in itself.

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The 117th Congress is coming to a close at the end of this year and, now that most of the midterm races have been called and partisan control of both chambers decided, we have a pretty good idea of what the dynamics will be in the new 118th.

Bloomberg Government energy reporter Kellie Lunney joins this episode of Parts Per Billion, our environmental policy podcast, to talk about what to expect on Capitol Hill for the next two years. For one, she says, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) will maintain considerable influence over the chamber as his party's surprising performance in the midterms means he'll continue to lead the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Even if Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) wins the December runoff against Republican Herschel Walker and becomes the Senate's 51st Democrat, Manchin could still jam things up for his party on any number of issues.

Lunney also talks about what could happen during the lame duck session currently under way, and specifically about whether any environmental provisions will hitch a ride on two huge pieces of must-pass legislation.

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