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“Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree

Evidence points to Absolute Standards as the source of a lethal drug the Trump administration used to restart federal executions after 17 years. The post “Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree appeared first on The Intercept.

The Intercept has uncovered new details about the small family business in Connecticut identified as having sold a lethal drug to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for use in the Trump administration’s unprecedented execution spree. Beginning in July 2020, the administration killed 13 people in the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, over the course of six months. Absolute Standards Inc., located on the outskirts of New Haven, produces and sells materials used to calibrate laboratory and research instruments. The company is registered with Connecticut as a “manufacturer of drugs, cosmetics, and medical devices” and employed just 21 people in the lead-up to the executions, records show. John Criscio, the company’s owner, has denied that Absolute Standards played a role in supplying pentobarbital, a barbiturate used for lethal injection. But according to a source The Intercept interviewed last year, Criscio and the company’s director, Stephen Arpie, acknowledged in a meeting that Absolute Standards produced the active ingredient for pentobarbital for use in the federal executions. The person, who met with Criscio and Arpie about the possibility of obtaining lethal injection drugs, asked that their name be withheld because they were not authorized to speak about the interaction. A separate unnamed pharmacy then used the active ingredient, or API, to make an injectable drug that would stop prisoners’ hearts. “They went about explaining to us how they produce the chemical,” the person said of Criscio and Arpie. “They’d been reading about it in the papers. And they saw that people couldn’t get it. They were like, ‘Well, we make the standard, so we know how to make it. So we can just make it.’ They basically bragged about how they built this little home market.” A second person interviewed by The Intercept said they were also told by Arpie and Criscio that Absolute Standards made drugs for executions. Like many of the 27 states capable of carrying out death sentences, the federal government has fought to keep the identity of its supplier hidden from the public. Earlier this month, the comedy news program “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” named Absolute Standards as the Bureau of Prisons’ drug supplier, citing an anonymous source. The segment echoed reporting by Reuters, which noted in 2020 that the House Oversight Committee had sent a letter to Absolute Standards suspecting the business was the source of the drugs. At the time, Arpie told Reuters that he did not always keep track of the final use of his products and couldn’t rule out involvement. Interviews conducted by The Intercept and documents obtained under public records laws bolster evidence that Absolute Standards, located in a state that abolished the death penalty in 2012, helped the Trump administration resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. A Connecticut congressional staffer raised concerns about the company’s role in the executions as early as April 2021, suggesting that states might be looking to follow the federal government’s lead. “As Absolute Standards has been identified as the only possible supplier of pentobarbital ingredients for executions,” the staffer warned, “the risk that Connecticut medicines will imminently fuel the death penalty in executing states across the country is high.” When asked about pentobarbital, Criscio told The Intercept, “We don’t make that material.” Arpie did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the BOP declined to comment. The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., on Aug. 28, 2020. Photo: Michael Conroy/AP In August 2018, Absolute Standards applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration to become a bulk manufacturer of pentobarbital, according to a notice in the Federal Register. The designation allows for the production of chemicals “by means of chemical synthesis or by extraction from other substances.” A few months later, in October, the BOP received its first batch of the API for pentobarbital, according to a declaration by Raul Campos, then-associate warden of the BOP’s Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. The declaration was submitted as part of litigation over the Trump administration’s lethal injection protocol. (The Intercept requested Absolute Standards’ applications to become a bulk manufacturer of pentobarbital in August 2023. On Monday, the DEA declined to hand over those records, stating that they were exempt from disclosure, in part because they included “information that is classified to protect national security.”) For years, pharmaceutical companies refused to sell pentobarbital for use in capital punishment, creating shortages that halted executions in some states that relied on the drug. Acquiring the API marked the end of a yearslong search for the BOP. “We were looking for the drugs domestically and internationally,” a former BOP official with knowledge of the situation told The Intercept last year. The official asked that their name be withheld because they were not authorized to speak about the procurement of execution drugs. “There were a number of leads that looked promising and then ended up being dry.” Read our complete coverage Out for Blood Eager to restart executions, the Trump administration had prioritized locating lethal drugs. But U.S. manufacturers did not want their products to be associated with killing people because they feared it would hurt their bottom line. “There’s such a lobby against the death penalty that any company who becomes identified as providing the drugs gets boycotted,” the BOP official said. “Those companies make more money from legitimate uses of the drug than they do from executions.” It was equally difficult to find drugs internationally, the official added, because of “shady characters” and issues confirming the legitimacy of suppliers. A team within the BOP general counsel’s office, led by then-general counsel Kenneth Hyle, was in charge of vetting potential suppliers. “More often than not, the companies they identified turned out to be nonviable,” the official said. Hyle did not respond to requests for comment. The former official did not remember how the BOP identified Absolute Standards but said there was a team of people calling suppliers off a list. “I know that we had people that were just calling every company that they could to find out if they were able and willing to produce it.” Only a small group of people knew the name of the API supplier, according to the official, who was only aware that it was a small company based in Connecticut. “I had no reason to ask for the name,” the official said. The API failed its first quality assurance test in October 2018, according to the declaration submitted by Campos. Another batch of the pentobarbital ingredient passed testing in February 2019 and was sent to a compounding pharmacy to be made into an injectable solution. The BOP has not revealed the identity of the compounding pharmacy. The former BOP official told The Intercept that they did not remember the name of the pharmacy, only that it was located somewhere in the South. “The fear was that publicity would result in this company no longer wanting … to do business.” Typically, the government logs payments to vendors in an online database, but there is no public record of any BOP payments to Absolute Standards. “I don’t recall how it was done. It was probably not done through their normal payments process,” the former BOP official said. “Everything was done discreetly, because again, the fear was that publicity would result in this company no longer wanting to be willing to do business.” After learning that the BOP had secured execution drugs, officials from other states started inquiring about whether they could buy from the same company. An official from Nebraska, which was prevented in 2015 from importing drugs from India, asked the BOP about its source. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services did not respond to questions about the communication. In April 2019, an attorney adviser from the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs emailed colleagues to notify them that a staffer from South Carolina Rep. William Timmons’s office had asked about the federal government’s execution drugs. “Specifically, they ask 1. Does the Federal Government have the ‘cocktail’? 2. Could they transfer it to states under existing law?” the email read. Timmons’s deputy chief of staff, Heather Smith, told The Intercept that the employee who inquired with the BOP no longer worked for the representative. Smith did not know whether the employee ever talked to Absolute Standards. South Carolina has not conducted an execution since May 2011 due to drug shortages. But last September, officials announced that the state had secured pentobarbital. After The Intercept requested records detailing communications between the South Carolina Department of Corrections and Absolute Standards, the corrections team replied that such information was exempt from disclosure, citing in part a state secrecy law that shields records disclosing the identity of people and companies involved in executions. The corrections department did not comment when asked whether its response meant that Absolute Standards was providing the state with execution drugs. In the summer of 2020, as the federal executions got underway, Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., started to raise questions about Absolute Standards’ involvement. They sent a letter to the company on July 14, the same day the government killed Daniel Lewis Lee, the first person to die in the execution spree, stating that they’d seen redacted testing reports “indicating that your company has assisted DOJ in securing and/or testing pentobarbital for death penalty executions.” The lawmakers posed a list of 11 questions to Absolute Standards about its work in the executions. The company did not reply, emails obtained by The Intercept show. There is no public record of further investigation by the lawmakers into Absolute Standards. Pressley’s office did not return multiple requests for comment, and Raskin’s press secretary told The Intercept to contact the House Oversight Committee. Nelly Decker, the communications director for Oversight Committee Democrats, wrote in an email that she had “nothing more to add” on the inquiry. “The risk that Connecticut medicines will imminently fuel the death penalty in executing states across the country is high.” In April 2021, Jennifer Lamb, the district director for Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., brought Absolute Standards to the attention of state Attorney General William Tong. “It appears the company may have supplied the US Department of Justice with ingredients used to make pentobarbital for use in federal executions,” Lamb wrote. “There are several states that are now actively looking to follow the federal government’s lead in acquiring this drug and resuming executions,” she continued. Describing Absolute Standards as the only possible supplier of pentobarbital ingredients for capital punishment, Lamb warned that Connecticut could be complicit in clearing the way for executions across the country. The following month, Tong sent a letter to Absolute Standards informing its owners that “Connecticut has a strong public policy against executions.” Providing drugs to carry them out, he wrote, “is contrary to the values and policies of this state.” Tong requested details about the company’s activities, expressing concern that the business might “also be providing pentobarbital, or contemplating providing the drug, for use by individual states in their attempts to execute human beings.” Connecticut Assistant Attorney General Joshua Perry, named in the letter as the point of contact for future correspondence, declined to comment. After John Oliver named Absolute Standards as the BOP’s source, a spokesperson for Tong told CT Insider that the attorney general was reviewing the company but had not launched an investigation. The outlet also reported that state lawmakers are now exploring legislation to ban Connecticut companies from selling lethal injection drugs. Abe Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action protests near the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., on July 15, 2020. Photo: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Absolute Standards is known for its flexibility in the scientific industry. “They can pivot pretty easily as far as what the needs are of whatever industries,” said Meredith Millay, director of product management at Emerald Scientific, a company focused on cannabis science that has worked with Absolute Standards for a decade and sells products made by the Connecticut business. “If you need something and you can’t find what you need … they are small enough to where you can put in a special request and get custom standards made.” Absolute Standards has boasted about the “world class manufacturing” and “internationally recognized quality” of its analytical reference materials and performance evaluation samples, compounds used to calibrate lab equipment and increase the precision of scientific analysis conducted by a wide range of entities. Criscio started the business in 1990, later employing his son and daughter. The company is registered with the DEA to manufacture Schedule II through V drugs, according to documents filed with the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. When asked about Absolute Standards and the API for pentobarbital, the DEA said it “does not comment on specific registrants.” In recent years, the company netted contracts with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency, contracts and invoices obtained through records requests show. In 2017, for example, the company sold the Interior Department $88,500 worth of analytes in substances such as ethanol and soil. State agencies such as the California State Water Resources Control Board and the New York Office of Cannabis Management list Absolute Standards as one of a handful of vendors approved to conduct testing to ensure the quality of lab results. Criscio has vehemently denied his company’s role in executions. Last October, The Intercept visited the Absolute Standards office, a small one-story building covered in weathered aluminum siding. When The Intercept inquired about Criscio at the reception desk, a woman said that he was out for the rest of the week. But later in the afternoon, Criscio arrived at the office, wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the NASA logo. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nothing to talk about,” Criscio told The Intercept in the parking lot after being asked whether his company supplied execution drugs. “You’re on private property. If I have to, I’ll call the police. Is that what you want me to do?” He then went inside. After The Intercept approached another man outside to ask about pentobarbital, Criscio reemerged and called the police, telling the operator, “I have two people on my property refusing to leave, harassing my employees.” “I’m ready to have a fucking heart attack right now. Get off my fucking property,” he said, growing increasingly agitated. “I do not know what you’re talking about. That’s all I have to say. I’m not gonna say no more.” The Intercept left a note at an address listed for Arpie, the company’s director. He did not reply and has not answered subsequent phone calls, text messages, or emails. In early April, after the John Oliver segment, Criscio maintained that his company did not supply drugs for the federal executions. “Yeah, no, we don’t make that material,” he told The Intercept. “I’m the owner of the company. I’m telling you there’s no comment. Thank you, goodbye.” This story was supported by a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The post “Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree appeared first on The Intercept.

The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute

A new study, drawing on five years of data collected across 84 countries, proves what seems self-evident.

The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter. In other words, if Coca-Cola is producing one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about a tenth of the identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers, and other ecosystems. That finding “shook me up a lot, I was really distraught,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author. It suggests that companies’ loudly proclaimed efforts to reduce their plastic footprint “aren’t doing much at all” and that more is needed to make them scale down the amount of plastic they produce. Significantly, it supports calls from delegates to the United Nations global plastics treaty — which is undergoing its fourth round of discussions in Ottawa, Canada, through Tuesday — to restrict production as a primary means to “end plastic pollution.” “What the data is saying is that if the status quo doesn’t change in a huge way — if social norms around the rapid consumption and production of new materials don’t change — we won’t see what we want,” Cowger told Grist. Read Next Petrochemical companies have known for 40 years that plastics recycling wouldn’t work Joseph Winters That plastic production should be correlated with plastic pollution is intuitive, but until now there has been little quantitative research to prove it — especially on a company-by-company basis. Perhaps the most significant related research in this area appeared in a 2020 paper published in Environmental Science and Technology showing that overall marine plastic pollution was growing alongside global plastic production. Other research since then has documented the rapidly expanding “plastic smog” in the world’s oceans and forecasted a surge in plastic production over the next several decades. The Sciences Advances article draws on more than 1,500 “brand audits” coordinated between 2018 and 2022 by Break Free From Plastic, a coalition of more than 3,000 environmental organizations. Volunteers across 84 countries collected more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the number of items contributed by specific companies.  About half of the litter that volunteers collected couldn’t be tied to a specific company, either because it never had a logo or because its branding had faded or worn off. Among the rest, a small handful of companies — mostly in the food and beverage sector — turned up most often. The top polluters were Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria — the parent company of Philip Morris USA — and Philip Morris International (which is a separate company that sells many of the same products). More than 1 in 10 of the pieces came from Coca-Cola, the top polluter by a significant margin. Overall, just 56 companies were responsible for half of the plastic bearing identifiable branding. The researchers plotted each company’s contribution to plastic pollution against its contribution to global plastic production (defined by mass, rather than the number of items). The result was the tidy, one-to-one relationship between production and pollution that caused Cowger so much distress. Log-log linear regressions and point plot for the relationship between the percent of global plastic mass produced by companies (x axis) and the mean percent of the total branded plastic found in the audit events (y axis). Courtesy of Win Cowger Many of the top polluters identified in the study have made voluntary commitments to address their outsize plastic footprint. Coca-Cola, for example, says it aims to reduce its use of “virgin plastic derived from nonrenewable sources” by 3 million metric tons over the next five years, and to sell a quarter of its beverages in reusable or refillable containers by 2030. By that date the company also aims to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells. Pepsi has a similar target to reduce virgin plastic use to 20 percent below a 2018 baseline by the end of the decade. Nestlé says it had reduced virgin plastic use by 10.5 percent as of 2022, and plans to achieve further reductions by 2025. In response to Grist’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola listed several of the company’s targets to reduce plastic packaging, increased recycled content, and scale up reusable alternatives. “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way,” the spokesperson said. Four of the other top polluting companies did not respond to a request for comment. It’s worth noting that many of the companies’ plans involve replacing virgin plastic with recycled material. This does not necessarily address the problem outlined in the Science Advances study, since plastic products are no less likely to become litter just because they’re made of recycled content. There’s also a limit to the number of times plastic can be recycled — experts say just two or three times — before it must be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. Many plastic items cannot be recycled at all. Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth in the U.K., commended the researchers for making “a very useful contribution to our understanding about the link between production and pollution.” He said the findings could shape regulations to make companies financially responsible for plastic waste — based on the specific amount they contribute to the environment. The findings could also inform this week’s negotiations for the U.N. global plastics treaty, where delegates are continuing to spar over whether and how to restrict production. According to Cowger, if the treaty really aims to “end plastic pollution” — as it states in its mandate — then negotiators will need to think beyond voluntary measures and regulate big producers.  “It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m gonna reduce my plastic by 2030, you’ll see,’” Cowger told Grist. “It’s gonna be a country that says, ‘If you don’t reduce by 2030, you’re going to get hit with a huge fine.’”  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute on Apr 24, 2024.

The children affected by Aliso Canyon’s historic gas leak are voting age. They want California to ban fracking

Many of the Southern California children that were affected by the Aliso Canyon gas leak are now registering to vote for the first time and are looking for election candidates to back an outright ban on fracking.

Earth Day Op-Ed Contest Winner: First Place More than 70 high school students across California submitted opinion pieces to CalMatters’ second annual Earth Day contest. The 2024 contest theme was “What solution should Californians running for office support to help address climate change?” Guest Commentary written by Emma Kavcioglu Emma Kavcioglu is a junior at Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles. She is the opinion editor for her school’s journalism program, the Plaid Press. As I walked out of my third grade classroom on Oct. 23, 2015, I was immediately hit with a potent, suffocating smell. I instantly recognized it: gasoline. Less than a mile away from my home, a faulty well at SoCalGas’ Aliso Canyon storage facility had caused the largest methane leak in U.S. history, releasing more than 100,000 metric tons of the potent greenhouse gas. It lasted over 100 days.  Roughly 8,300 families were forced to abandon their homes, mine being one of them. My school was completely relocated to a different campus, and my family moved into my grandmother’s home.  The worst part? People in my community suffered from heart issues, pneumonia and epilepsy because of these methane emissions. I felt the brunt of the pain when I ended up hospitalized with gastrointestinal issues for weeks after the leak.  Aliso Canyon is a major producer of hydraulically fractured gas. Also known as fracking, it’s a process that uses pressurized water to create cracks in shale rock to release oil and natural gas. While fracking wasn’t the cause of the leak, allowing it so close to residential communities increases the probability of dangerous methane exposure – like what happened at Aliso Canyon.    Despite this, SoCalGas downplayed their negligence and labeled the leak as an inconvenience, rather than a genuine health risk that devastated communities. Like so many other corporations, SoCalGas got a slap on the wrist from the government. They agreed to a $4 million settlement and reopened the plant a few years later. That’s not surprising given how much oil and gas companies spend to convince government officials to support their businesses. In 2021 alone, these industries spent $55.6 million on lobbying to sway votes on environmental policy. In California last year, the Western States Petroleum Association and Chevron spent a combined $15.3 million, the most of any lobbying group. Given the environmental, health and safety implications, we need to support candidates in California who rally behind legislation to ban fracking.  On the environmental level, fracking-produced methane heats up the planet 80 times more than an equal amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span. Fracking sites also cause earthquakes – the Journal of Seismological Research identified 730 sites where fracking activity caused earthquakes over the past 150 years. When experts are predicting a major earthquake will strike California before 2032, fracking increases the likelihood and magnitude of future tremors.  Despite what cynics and special interests say, banning fracking is possible, but anti-fracking legislation continues to be shot down in the state Legislature. Gov. Gavin Newsom is partly to blame because he has never fully supported an outright ban – he’s only halted new permits.  More importantly, fracking poses an inherent danger, and for voters this should be nonnegotiable. The fracking process intrinsically releases radon, a radioactive gas that causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths a year. There is no way to hydraulically frack without releasing radon, which is why it is so important for candidates to support a complete ban, rather than slow reforms like California has adopted.  It’s 2024, and many of the children that were affected by the Aliso Canyon gas leak are now registering to vote for the first time. For candidates to win our votes in upcoming elections, they need to prove that they are willing to fight dangerous oil and gas companies so that what happened in my community will never happen to another. That starts with a statewide ban on fracking. 

Our appliances are more efficient than ever. Why doesn’t it feel like it?

Rachel Victoria Hillis for Vox You actually can use less energy and have more convenience in your home. Are you ready to defend the honor of your dishwasher? Are you prepared to fight for your stove? Are you stockpiling light bulbs? Because according to many Republicans, your kitchen, your laundry room, your bathroom, and more are now battlefronts in the Biden administration’s “war on appliances.” “First it was gas stoves and then it was water heaters and now it’s icemakers,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) said on the floor of the House last year. “Overreaching, burdensome regulations from the Energy Department, like those on gas stoves, ceiling fans, and refrigerators, force our job creators to play defense and take time away from their core mission,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), who chairs the House Committee on Small Business. In the past year, House Republicans introduced bills to limit the government’s ability to set new efficiency standards and block a ban on gas stoves. Fox News even made a custom splash screen for its ongoing conflict coverage. Where is this coming from? The Department of Energy does set efficiency standards for more than 60 categories of appliances ranging from home ceiling fans to commercial vending machines. It has also been raising the bar for things like stoves and refrigerators in recent months as part of a suite of new, climate-friendly regulations (the agency also said claims that it was banning gas stoves are “absurd”). But a war? Of all the things that get people worked up, it is a bit surprising at first glance that home appliances and fixtures can get people so heated. But it makes sense: These are the devices and products we encounter every day. They make a direct impact on our lives, saving us time and effort when they work well — and causing grief and frustration when they don’t. And when the government gets involved, suddenly laundry day has political stakes. At the same time, appliances and fixtures are a direct way individuals encounter policies to address climate change. Our domestic tools contribute to a significant share of world energy use. Residential appliances account for about 15 percent of global electricity demand, and that doesn’t include furnaces and air conditioners, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The energy intensity — the amount of energy used per device — has grown on average by more than 10 percent between 2000 and 2018 in the 31 IEA member countries. And globally, that need is growing as more parts of the world seek out essential functions like cooling and conveniences like cleaning. In the US, about half of household energy use on average goes toward heating and cooling while roughly a quarter powers things like microwaves, televisions, and personal electronics. The average US family also uses 300 gallons of water per day at home, more than half through bathroom fixtures like toilets, faucets, and showerheads. But the flip side is that small improvements in electricity and water consumption across home appliances can add up to big benefits for the environment. Doing more with less is one of the most important and cheapest tactics for limiting climate change, but it’s easily overlooked. Energy efficiency across the economy — not just in appliances, but in vehicles, factories, and grid infrastructure — could get the US halfway to its climate goals by 2050, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research group. But the pace has to speed up. The IEA estimates that in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the rate of energy efficiency improvement must triple this decade compared to the rate over the past 20 years. So it makes sense that having appliances use less water and electricity is a key plank in the White House’s strategy to limit global warming through the Inflation Reduction Act, including up to $8.8 billion in rebates to help families buy more efficient appliances. There are lasting benefits for buyers too: Efficiency also saves money, for businesses, governments, and individuals. Since 1980, the energy intensity of the US economy has been cut in half because of increasing efficiency, delivering more than $2,000 in savings per person. The Energy Department said the regulations it announced last year will save Americans $652 million per year when they go into effect. “At the end of the day, something that’s more energy efficient is more efficient for your wallet,” said Shanika Whitehurst, associate director for product sustainability, research, and testing at Consumer Reports. So on paper, the case for more efficiency is compelling. Yet in practice, it can be a tough sell, especially when manufacturers overpromise and underdeliver. There are definite trade-offs in some cases, and some new machines have indeed been letdowns, which is why some people are reluctant to let go of their old showerheads, toilets, and stoves. That’s what makes it so personal. It’s one thing to impose tougher pollution limits on a power plant miles away, but if your dishwasher takes longer than you’d like or the compressor in your fridge breaks down, it can feel like quite the intrusion. Is it then possible to live in a more comfortable, cost-effective home that’s also better for the environment? Yes, but it requires thinking carefully about priorities and sorting out what’s an upgrade and what’s just another thing that can break. In a world where lots of things are getting worse, we’re living in a Golden Age of efficiency The products we encounter like clothes and electronics have generally become more affordable over time, but in many cases quality has declined as the companies that make them look to cut costs and turn around new product lines. However, appliances and home fixtures have become measurably better in key metrics as technologies have advanced and regulations have tightened. The LED light bulb, for example, uses 90 percent less electricity and lasts 25 times longer than the incandescent bulbs that reigned for a century prior. The size of the average washing machine tub has increased by almost 50 percent since the 1980s, yet the machines use a quarter of the electricity and water per cycle. Heat pumps are more than four times as efficient as gas heaters. In the 1970s, refrigerators used 75 percent more electricity to cool 20 percent less storage space than those in showrooms today. The US government has been advancing its efficiency goals through mandatory regulations, which affect every product on the market, as well as voluntary certifications, like the Energy Star program launched by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 to highlight top performers. For instance, a new dishwasher with an Energy Star certification uses half the energy of washing dishes by hand and saves 8,400 gallons of water per year. Many of these appliances are also doing their jobs better. More efficient clothes washers tend to be better at cleaning and less damaging to apparel. That has helped drive down costs too. “We also find that much of the price index decline can be attributed to standards-induced innovation,” wrote the authors of a 2019 study on the impact of efficiency standards published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. “What we’ve seen over time is that as products have gotten more efficient, product performance has generally stayed the same or improved as manufacturers continue to offer new features to consumers,” said Joanna Mauer, deputy director at the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. Take air conditioners, for example. “The vast majority of Energy Star-certified room air conditioner models now feature a variable speed compressor, which means they are not only much more efficient, but much quieter,” EPA spokesperson Remmington Belford said in an email. The program recently raised its benchmarks so ACs with the Energy Star label are up to 35 percent more efficient than those without the certification. “This means Energy Star models for sale this summer will provide double or triple the energy and cost savings from Energy Star room air conditioners that were available last summer,” Belford said. As technology advances, these devices are poised to consume even less electricity and water. There are trade-offs, however Changing how devices use electricity and water does require changing how they work, and that’s where some homeowners and apartment dwellers have run into trouble. Tim Carll, owner and head technician of Presidential Appliance Repair in Northern Virginia, noted that the new generation of appliances has become more affordable, making them more common, but that in his experience, washing machines, refrigerators, and stoves break down more often, don’t last as long, and are often more complicated to repair because of all the electronics needed to optimize energy and water use. Older devices were much simpler, using mechanical timers and switches that were more durable as well as easier to diagnose and repair. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone say, ‘Oh God, I just love this new energy-efficient appliance that I got,’” Carll said. “It’s usually like, ‘This washer doesn’t use enough water, some of my clothes come out, and they’re not even wet’ or ‘My dishwasher runs for three or four hours now.’” Add to that features like touchscreen interfaces on refrigerators or Bluetooth connectivity in stoves and you have more things that can go wrong. It isn’t uncommon to see devices that once lasted 20 to 30 years start to break down in less than 10 due to these small problems rather than something catastrophic. “It’s all these breaks throughout the years. I think in the first 10 years it’s pretty normal to have at least three repairs on almost any appliance you buy. At $200 or $300 minimum for repair, you’re putting several hundred dollars into a machine in the lifespan of it.” And when new efficiency regulations go into effect, appliance repair technicians start getting ready for more repair calls. Carll said he’s part of a closed Facebook group where repair pros chat (the question you have to answer to join: “What appliances use 220VAC and what is the part number for the most popular dryer belt ever?”), and whenever someone posts an article about new efficiency standards, the replies are filled with eye-rolling emojis as they anticipate more breakdowns in newer devices. “From our professional standpoint, most of us just look at it like [appliances] are going to get worse,” Carll said. For owners, there’s also often a learning and expectation curve. Using less water and electricity often means machine cycles take longer, but it also means they need a lot less detergent to do their work. Many users often add too much to high-efficiency washing machines and dishwashers, which can clog ports and impair cleaning performance. They might not realize that they don’t need to pre-rinse their dishes, or that garments will come out just as clean in cooler water. With electric stoves, manufacturers are trying to counter decades of advertising that extolled the virtues of cooking with gas. “From 2008 to 2013, I owned and operated an appliance retail store, and I can’t count the number of times a customer would purchase a high-efficiency washing machine only to return a week later to complain that the drum would not fill to the top with water,” Dustin Steward, global industry director in the appliances, HVAC and lighting group at UL Solutions, which tests and certifies products for safety and performance, said in an email. “They were skeptical that their clothes could be cleaned with such a small amount of water.” Users are also demanding more from their devices. It’s not enough for a refrigerator to cool your food; it must also dispense water and ice, defrost itself, and not make too much noise. Price is another factor. Appliances have generally fallen in price over the decades, and efficiency regulations are part of why. The IEA notes that countries with energy efficiency regulations generally see the average prices of appliances fall 2 to 3 percent per year. But the laws of supply and demand are at work too. The supply chain snarls during the Covid-19 pandemic caused major appliance prices to spike and made it harder to find more affordable machines. Higher-end refrigerators and washing machines often use less water and power, but it takes longer for those savings to offset the higher upfront costs. Yet because of their shorter lifecycles, people can end up paying more over time for cheaper appliances. As for the benefits, people can easily see how clean their clothes get or how long a wash cycle lasts. It’s harder to pick up on the benefits of efficiency. A more fuel-efficient car flexes every time you fill up its gas tank or juice up its battery, but the dividends from fans and lights that use less power are buried in your monthly bills. More efficient appliances can also have a rebound effect. If an AC is cheaper to run, you might run it longer or at a higher setting. Devices like refrigerators and washers have grown in size too, eating into their performance gains. Manufacturers also appear to be cutting corners, not due to efficiency, but competition and a business strategy that favors replacement over repair. So the calculation behind the decision to switch to a newer, leaner device isn’t always straightforward. How to smooth the transition to a more comfortable, efficient home It’s normal for newer technologies to hit some bumps on the road to widespread adoption and that goes for devices trying to hit new efficiency goalposts. Still, few homeowners scout appliance showrooms with their electricity and water bills as the highest priority. “Most people do not buy technology for technology’s sake; they are looking to solve a problem,” Steward said. “Thinking about reducing energy, saving water, or minimizing gas usage may or may not be a priority in every household.” But there are good options out there that deliver more convenience and comfort at a lower cost to the climate. One strategy is to look for devices that deliver the most measurable benefits over their lifetime, often labeled on a sticker on showroom models. Look for more durable materials, a robust warranty, and simpler interfaces. There are also tools to help sort the worst and best performers, like Consumer Reports’ recently updated appliance reliability guide, ranking brands in different categories based on their testing and surveys. Often, the more feature-packed device isn’t the better one over the long term. The Energy Department, for instance, advises consumers to pick refrigerators with fewer doors and the freezer on top, and to not necessarily spring for the biggest model in the budget. Efficiency and comfort in the home aren’t just about machines either. Better insulation, improved door seals, adequate ventilation, and sufficient plumbing bring out the best in appliances and make homes more livable, efficient, and better for the environment. But it’s also important to be realistic about what we can accomplish just with what we buy for our kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Even the most efficient appliance still needs energy, and the sources of that energy need to zero out their greenhouse gas emissions. “There’s a lot of reports on the decarbonization of the home and full electrification in the home, [but] we have to get these electrical grids right,” Whitehurst said. Particularly with the shift away from gas appliances toward those that run on electricity, there are mounting demands on power networks. It will take careful planning to ensure there’s enough power and policies to make sure the new capacity doesn’t make climate change any worse. It’s only when all these parts fit together that we’ll stay at a comfortable temperature on our home planet.

Data centers want clean electricity. Can Georgia Power deliver it?

Last week, Georgia Power won regulatory approval to fast-track construction of 1.4 gigawatts of fossil-fueled power plants and to contract for nearly a gigawatt more power from coal- and fossil-gas-fired power plants owned by other utilities. The reason? Fear that skyrocketing power demand from power-hungry data…

Last week, Georgia Power won regulatory approval to fast-track construction of 1.4 gigawatts of fossil-fueled power plants and to contract for nearly a gigawatt more power from coal- and fossil-gas-fired power plants owned by other utilities. The reason? Fear that skyrocketing power demand from power-hungry data centers and factories soon to be built in Georgia could overwhelm its grid unless it expands new generation as quickly as possible. The plan has drawn the ire of environmental groups and consumer advocates, who say that choosing fossil-fueled power over cleaner alternatives will worsen climate change and increase electricity rates for customers. But it has also sparked concern from some of the same big companies planning the data center and factory expansions that Georgia Power says will cause its looming power crunch. That’s the message that Priya Barua, director of market and policy innovation for the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) — a trade group that includes major data center operators with aggressive clean energy goals, such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — delivered to Georgia Power in deliberations over the proposed plan earlier this year. CEBA is concerned that ​“some of the new load Georgia Power is forecasting may not materialize if Georgia Power increases the carbon intensity of its resource mix,” Barua stated in February testimony to the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), ​“since many of the customers bringing new load have clean energy targets” and want to locate in regions with cleaner energy options. If CEBA members choose to build data centers or factories elsewhere in search of cleaner electricity supplies, that could undercut the whole premise of the utility’s rush to build more fossil-fueled power plants — and drive up costs and emissions for existing Georgia Power customers, she warned. In the end, CEBA supported the stipulated agreement that Georgia Power and Georgia PSC staff reached last week — largely because the utility included a last-minute promise to create a program for companies to contract for solar and wind power, batteries to store clean power, and other carbon-free resources. Many other utilities across the country offer this kind of program, but it’s ​“a first for customers of Georgia Power,” Barua told Canary Media in an interview last week. Georgia Power made a number of other commitments to expand clean energy options in last week’s agreement. These include calling on third-party developers to propose thousands of megawatts of solar, wind, and battery projects over the coming years and creating programs that will support commercial and residential customers who want to install solar and batteries on their businesses and homes. Now the big question is whether Georgia Power will follow through on these alternatives to fossil power as it takes on longer-term planning for what it expects will be even greater demand growth from big commercial and industrial customers through 2035. As of now, the utility is ​“willing to work with us” on these cleaner options, Barua said. ​“We’re holding them to that for the 2025 IRP.” Georgia Power’s 2025 IRP and the bigger battle to come across the Southeast Barua was referring to Georgia Power’s next integrated resource plan, or IRP. That’s the master plan that utilities revise every two or three years to detail how much new generation capacity they anticipate needing over the coming 10 to 15 years and what mix of energy resources they will use to supply it. The plan approved last week, which was proposed in October and rushed through regulatory review, covers only the next three years. The load growth forecasted for the next decade — and the infrastructure that will need to be built to meet it — is roughly three to five times as much as what that plan contends with. Georgia Power will publish a draft of its 2025 IRP next January. That’s the ​“elephant in the room” in terms of how dirty or clean the utility’s future resource mix may end up becoming, said Simon Mahan, executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association. ​“Looking a decade out is what 2025 will be a fight about.” That same fight will be playing out across the Southeast over utility plans that could commit the region to a major expansion of fossil-gas-fueled power over the next 10 years or so in response to rising demand from data centers, factories, and the electrification of vehicles and buildings. Duke Energy, one of the country’s biggest utilities, is seeking to build nearly 9 gigawatts of fossil-gas plants to serve North Carolina and South Carolina customers through 2032, nearly triple what it planned back in 2022. The federal power entity Tennessee Valley Authority is expected to propose a plan sometime soon for up to 6.6 gigawatts of new gas-fired power plants to replace closing coal plants and meet rising electricity demand through the end of the decade. Environmental and consumer groups say that the Southeast is already falling behind on decarbonizing its power generation at a pace needed to meet the country’s Paris Agreement commitments and to combat climate change. Any new gas plants in the region threaten to put those goals further out of reach, they warn, by displacing the opportunity for cleaner resources to fill the gaps. As of 2023, Georgia Power generated 48 percent of its power from fossil gas, 23 percent from nuclear power, 15 percent from coal, 2 percent from hydropower, and 7 percent from other renewables. Its 2023 IRP update noted that it plans to add about 10 gigawatts of new renewable resources by 2035, nearly double the 6 gigawatts it planned back in 2022. But those estimates could change when Georgia Power releases its 2025 IRP proposal early next year. Between the unveiling of the new IRP and a final decision expected next summer, clean power advocates plan to push Georgia Power and regulators to make good on the clean-power promises set out in last week’s agreement. “We’d like to use this as an opportunity to have something more concrete in the next full IRP,” Barua said, ​“so we aren’t in this position again with utilities where they aren’t really considering solutions [to rising power demand] beyond peaker plants.” The critique of Georgia Power’s approach to solar and batteries  When it comes to the fine print in last week’s agreement, Southeast environmental groups are less sanguine than CEBA is. They especially object to the way that the Georgia PSC’s decision allows the utility to fast-track more fossil-fueled generation than batteries and solar. The agreement permits Georgia Power to build only 500 megawatts of batteries in the next three years and procure another 500 megawatts of energy storage from independent power developers. What’s more, the agreement stripped out the relatively small amount of solar — 200 megawatts — that Georgia Power had proposed. In a statement last week, the nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy blasted both Georgia Power and the Georgia PSC, calling the agreement a giveaway to the utility, which can expect to earn a healthy rate of return on the fossil-fueled power plants it was authorized to build, and saying it does ​“little to protect ratepayers and even less to advance clean energy like solar and wind.” “Frankly, most of the utility plans are backward-looking,” Bryan Jacob, the alliance’s solar program director and Georgia liaison, said in an interview last week. ​“They’re the same type of centralized generation resources that our parents and grandparents had and don’t look at alternative ways to meet this new load growth with a new set of technologies.” In particular, Georgia Power has so far largely given short shrift to the potential for solar power and batteries to serve as an alternative to gas-fired power plants, he said — even though the economics favor the cleaner option. Subscribe to receive Canary's latest news Across the Southeastern U.S., utilities are experiencing growing peaks in electricity demand, especially during cold winter mornings and hot summer evenings, when customers’ heating and cooling needs outstrip supply. Gas-fired power plants that can be ramped up quickly to meet these peaks in grid demand are the go-to resource for utilities. But solar power stored in batteries can also do the job — not only without emitting carbon and other pollution, but also at a cost that’s often cheaper than building and fueling gas-fired power plants over their lifetimes.