Month: October 2017

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending Oct. 27, 2017 follows.  Please forward the Roundup to anyone you think might be interested.  For an archive of prior posts visit the CAAV website.  It also contains news of events in the Central Shenandoah Valley as well as activities in which CAAV is involved.

Policy and Politics

A new report by the Government Accountability Office says that the extreme weather events of the last decade that scientists say were exacerbated by climate change added more than $350 billion in costs to taxpayers.  Furthermore, those costs threaten to increase by $12 billion to $35 billion each year by the middle of the century.  The Trump administration said Tuesday that next March it will sell leases for some 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, the largest sale of offshore leases in U.S. history.  Monday was the deadline for filing opening comments with FERC on Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to boost coal and nuclear power, and the Commission was swamped with negative comments.  According to a new study published by Yale scientists in Environmental Research Letters, Americans are willing to pay a carbon tax that would increase their household energy bills by $15 per month.  Surprisingly, they would prefer that the money be spent to support the development of solar and wind energy or to fund infrastructure improvements, rather than having it returned to taxpayers.

A conference entitled “State of Narragansett Bay and Its Watershed” began Monday in Providence, RI.  It was newsworthy in part because at the 11^th hour EPA prohibited two of its scientists (one the keynote speaker) and one contractor from speaking at the conference.  EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has claimed that the U.S. leads the world in the reductions of its CO₂ footprint.  The Washington Post Fact Checker has given him three Pinocchios for that claim.  You may recall that Pruitt wants to subject climate science to a “red team/blue team” debate.  Well, the Heartland Institute has submitted a list of over 200 people they consider qualified to serve on the red team.  Nineteen Democratic senators issued a letter to Pruitt on Thursday, questioning his methodology and logic for repealing the Clean Power Plan.  Meanwhile, on Monday Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo announced that her country is set to join the Paris Climate Agreement, leaving the U.S. and Syria as the only nations outside the pact.

Climate

Three new research articles were published this week dealing with the melting of ice sheets and their impacts on sea level rise.  Writing in The Washington Post, Chris Mooney summarized them this way: “So in sum — new research is affirming that seas have risen quite rapidly in the planet’s past, and that major glaciers have retreated quickly because their enormous size makes them potentially unstable. Meanwhile, additional modeling projects these kinds of observations forward and suggests that the century in which we are now living could — could — see similar changes, at least in more severe global warming scenarios in which the world continues to burn high volumes of fossil fuels.”  On the subject of sea level rise, Climate Central has ranked the U.S. cities most vulnerable to major coastal floods using three different metrics.  No matter which metric is used, at least 20 of the top 25 cities are in Florida.  Naval Station Norfolk is particularly susceptible to “sunny day flooding”, but according to reporting by Inside Climate News, little is being done about it.  Rolling Stonepublished an excerpt from Jeff Goodell’s new book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, which was released on Tuesday.  The excerpt deals with Lagos, Nigeria, which is a delta city on the forefront of sea level rise.

A study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used computer modeling to examine the possible future impacts of hurricanes on New York City.  One conclusion was that flood height return periods that were ∼500 years during the preindustrial era have fallen to ∼25 years at present and are projected to fall to ∼5 years within the next three decades.  Brian Resnick had some questions about the 2017 hurricane season, such as was it normal to have so many strong storms in a row and what was the impact of climate change.  So, he called several climate and hurricane experts.  The answers he got were complicated.  Because of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, reinsurer Munich Re will report a fourth quarter loss of $1.7 billion and only a “small profit” for the year.

Calling droughts “misery in slow motion”, the World Bank said in a new report that droughts have “shockingly large and often hidden” consequences.  Furthermore, they annually destroy enough food to feed more than 80 million people every day for a year.  Sadly, droughts and hotter temperatures in India have been linked to suicides by farmers.  In a photo essay for The New York Times, Geeta Anand and Vikram Singh presented the stories of two Indian families.

According to the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles, Southern California has been scorched by an unseasonable heat wave, with temperatures in some areas breaking records by double-digit margins.  On Tuesday, a report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council said that daily summertime high temperatures in the decade from 2007 through 2016 were hotter than the decades of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.

New research, published in Nature Communications, has found that eradicating extreme poverty globally (by moving the 770 million people in extreme poverty up into “poor”) would add only 0.05°C to global temperatures by 2100.  However, moving them and the current poor into a “global middle class” income group, which earns a modest $2.97-8.44 a day, could add 0.6°C.

A team of international scientists has studied the impact that 20 “natural climate solutions” (NCS) could have on meeting the goal of keeping warming below 2°C.  As reported in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that NCS can provide over one-third of the climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to meet that goal.

An eight-year study, carried out by the Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification group, a German network of researchers, has found that many organisms that could withstand a certain amount of acidification are at risk of losing this adaptive ability because of pollution from plastics and the extra stress from global warming.

Energy

An analysis published Thursday by the nonprofit ShareAction argued that BP and Shell continue to put both their businesses and shareholder capital at risk by failing to grasp the pace of change as the world moves towards a low carbon economy.  Nevertheless, the world’s major oil companies more than doubled the number of acquisitions, project investments, and venture capital stakes in renewable energy, to 44 in 2016 from 21 the year before, according to research published Tuesday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Full lifecycle analyses by Belgium’s VUB University have revealed that electric vehicles (EVs) have significantly less greenhouse gas emissions than diesel-powered cars, even when the EVs are charged with the most carbon intensive electricity.

A new paper in the journal Reviews on Environmental Health, written by scientists at the non-profit Center for Environmental Health who reviewed studies on chemicals found at fracking sites, said that the presence of pollutants ranging from airborne particulates to heavy metals could affect the neurodevelopment of babies and children in the area.  However, researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a comparative analysis of the harmful health effects of electricity produced by both shale gas and coal and found that the lifetime toxic chemical releases were 10 to 100 times greater from coal than shale gas.

In a commentary released Monday, the International Energy Agency concluded that about 40% to 50% of current methane emissions from the oil and gas sector worldwide could be avoided at no net cost.

MHI Vestas Offshore Wind and Clemson University have announced that all testing and verification of the V164-9.5 MW offshore wind turbine’s gearbox and main bearings will be carried out at the university’s 15 MW test bench in North Charleston, SC.

According to projections released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top-growing job classification over the next nine years will be solar photovoltaic installers.  Wind turbine service technicians came in at No. 2.  The median worker employed installing solar panels made $39,340 last year, while the median salary for a wind turbine technician was $52,260.

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending Oct. 20, 2017 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

California recently enacted the Buy Clean California Act, which will serve as a first attempt to address the question of how best to handle the emissions imbedded in goods transferred over state lines or national borders.  The act requires the state to set a maximum “acceptable lifecycle global warming potential” for different building materials, such as steel, glass, and insulation, and prohibits the purchase of materials with imbedded emissions above that potential.  It is odd, therefore, that the oil produced in California has a carbon footprint almost equal to that of the oil from the Alberta tar sands.  Perhaps cleaning it up would have as big an impact as the Buy Clean California Act.  Speaking of California, five of the state’s biggest newspapers published editorials clearly connecting the dots between this year’s out-of-control wildfire season and climate change.

Beginning on Nov. 6, representatives from the nearly 200 countries that signed the Paris Climate Accord will gather in Bonn, Germany, for the annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  The U.S. plans to send a small delegation, but what exactly they will do there is unclear.  In contrast to President Trump’s actions, at the opening of the Communist Party congress in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China has taken a “driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change.”  DOE Secretary Rick Perry evidently wants the U.S. to drive backwards.  In response, eight former members of FERC, including five former chairmen, have filed a letter with the commission opposing his proposal that would give coal and nuclear power plants credit for resilience, so that they would have a better chance of beating solar, wind, and natural gas competitors.  EPA is also looking backwards, having removed dozens of online resources that could help local governments adapt to climate change.  Not to be outdone, GOP leaders in the House and Senate explored ways to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) through budget rules that allow them to pass major policy changes on simple majority votes.  For example, on Thursday the Senate rejected an amendment that sought to block the Energy and Natural Resources Committee from raising revenue through drilling in ANWR.  Finally, if you wish President Trump would resign and let Mike Pence take over, you might consider that he was a strong proponent of the “No Carbon Tax” pledge that led to the scuttling of cap and trade legislation in 2009.

Seth Heald, Chair of the Virginia chapter of Sierra Club, wrote the cover article of the Nov./Dec. issue of Environment.  The subject is climate silence and moral disengagement, a problem that prevents us from having open and candid conversations about the impending climate crisis.  Upon reading it, my wife commented: “Best article I’ve read in a long time…”.  Peter Sinclair has another video at Yale Climate Connections, this one on climate change communication.

Climate

A new study, published in the journal PLOS One, found that the abundance of flying insects in nature reserves all across Germany has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years.  Although the cause of the decline is unclear, it is thought that climate change may have played a role.

Phoenix, Arizona’s, hot season — when temperatures exceed 100°F — starts an average of almost three weeks earlier than it did 100 years ago and lasts two to three weeks longer in the fall.  This has many people hurting and has the city working on ways to reduce the heat island effect, such as planting trees and painting roofs white.

A giant polynya, an ice-free zone surrounded by sea ice, with an area of almost 30,000 square miles appeared in September off of Antarctica.  Scientists are uncertain whether its appearance is related to climate change, but it is releasing a lot of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere.

In a moving piece in The Atlantic about Puerto Rico, author Vann R. Newkirk II wrote: ”Maria blew through the island in a matter of hours, but what was left behind wasn’t just traditional hurricane damage. The storm uncovered and intensified long-term environmental challenges that have long blighted Puerto Rico and now threaten its future.  And securing a viable future for the island will mean more than just rebuilding what was lost from the wind and rain—it will require addressing those challenges in sustainable ways.”  Writing at Yale Climate Connections, Bruce Lieberman reviewed ways in which Puerto Rico’s electrical system could be made more resilient.

According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, planting trees, restoring peatlands, and managing land better could play a major role in limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.  However, managing CO₂through forests can be tricky, as illustrated by the results of a NASA study.  During the 2015 El Niño event, atmospheric CO₂concentrations surged because of increased emissions from three tropical forest regions, each of which responded to the rising temperatures in very different ways.  But then, there are some who argue that increased CO₂ levels will be beneficial because of its stimulatory effect on plant growth.  The bulk of evidence, however, suggests that increased temperatures and altered rainfall patterns will result in a net negative effect.

Solar radiation management (SRM) is a very controversial form of geoengineering to manage climate change.  Most research being done on it is happening in wealthy nations, but now a fund is being set up to provide grant money to scientists in developing nations to investigate the potential impacts of SRM on their countries.

Energy

Even though the number of people without electricity around the world has shrunk by 600 million since 2000, over a billion people still lack access.  A new report on energy access by the International Energy Agency has found that the number will shrink by a third by 2030, with 60% being supplied by renewables.  If the world commits to universal access by 2030, 90% of the additional two-thirds will be supplied by renewables.

On Wednesday, the world’s first floating offshore wind farm began delivering electricity to the Scottish grid.  The 30 MW installation will be coupled with a 1MWh lithium-ion battery to help regulate power delivery and optimize output.  The wind farm employs several innovative technologies, both in the anchoring devices and the turbines.  On a related topic, you’ve heard of the Jones Act and the necessity to wave it to expedite emergency relief to Puerto Rico.  Now Emma Foehringer Merchant has written about how it is hindering development of the U.S. offshore wind industry.  In a rather poetic essay, Paula Cocozza explored various aspects of the wind and our attempts to harness it.

Solar panels have proliferated in California, flooding the grid with power in the middle of the day when the sun’s out, and then quickly vanishing after sunset.  This making it increasingly difficult to maintain the reliability of the transmission system.  Now First Solar Inc. has proposed a pricing scheme that it claims will help solve the problem.  On the subject of solar panels, ConnectDER is a new technology that allows rooftop solar panels to be connected to the grid without the installer having to enter the home and rework the service panel, thereby reducing installation costs.

On Monday of this week, the U.S. State Department approved a permit covering a three-mile segment of Enbridge Inc’s Line 67 crude oil pipeline, allowing the company to nearly double capacity of the Alberta Clipper pipeline.  An Indigenous activist from the Secwepemc Nation in central British Columbia was in Europe this week to deliver a message to European banks based on a report by the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.  She warned that the Secwepemc Nation will oppose expansion of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline through their “unceded” territory.

A new study, published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, used airplane surveys to measure methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure in two regions in Alberta, Canada.  It found that the oil and gas industry could be emitting 25 to 50% more methane than previously believed.  According to energy experts at UK-based Wood Mackenzie, world demand for gasoline will peak by 2030, thanks to the impact of electric cars and more efficient internal combustion engines.

On several occasions I have provided links to articles about battery chemistries that are alternatives to lithium-ion.  Writing for Greentech Media, Jason Deign explored the possibility that the huge size of the lithium-ion infrastructure will make it impossible for alternative technologies to survive in the marketplace, even when they are less expensive, technologically superior, and more environmentally friendly.

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending Oct. 13, 2017 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed the notice starting the process of scrapping the Clean Power Plan, arguing that it exceeds the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act.  In contrast, on Thursday the UK released its “Clean Growth Strategy”, setting out how it hopes to meet the nation’s legally binding climate goals.  In a portent of things to come, EPA’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan was based on an analysis that greatly reduced the “social cost of carbon” by limiting the benefits of combating climate change to the U.S. alone and sharply increasing the discount rate used to calculate the “opportunity cost” of fighting climate change.

An unusual coalition of business and environmental groups opposes DOE’s plan to boost nuclear and coal power plants, and are pressuring the Trump administration to scrap it.  An energy policy think tank also opposes it.  Frontline has released a documentary entitled War on the EPA, which details the Trump administration’s effort to cater to the fossil fuel industry’s demands and roll back environmental regulations.  In spite of the actions of the Trump administration, the states of the U.S. Climate Alliance are moving forward with plans and actions to reduce their carbon emissions.  And, the recent ten-year extension of California’s cap and trade program gives it important stability.

President Trump has nominated Barry Meyers, the CEO of AccuWeather, to serve as the Commerce Department’s undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere, which oversees NOAA.  Mr. Myers has served as CEO of AccuWeather since 2007, but is not a scientist.  Trump also has nominated Kathleen Hartnett-White, a former chairperson of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which plays a central role in the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Climate

A commentary paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters argues that the temperature limits in the Paris Agreement should be understood as changes in long-term global averages attributed to human activity, which exclude natural variability.  Two of the three authors of the paper had a guest post at Climate Brief to further explain the implications of their paper.  Many scientists believe that it will be impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C, or even 2°C, without removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, which is one type of geoengineering.  While CO₂ removal is not controversial, other forms of geoengineering are, so a conference was held this week in Berlin to discuss what the emerging field of geoengineering might mean for the planet.  Daisy Dunne of Carbon Brief attended and summarized the proceedings.

A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters reported that the Dotson ice shelf, which receives ice from the Kohler and Smith glaciers in Antarctica, is not melting uniformly on its underside, which may speed up its disintegration.  Be sure to watch the short video.

The impacts of climate change take many forms.  Melting ice and permafrost in the Arctic are causing all sorts of problems for coastal villages, requiring expensive actions to protect or relocate them.  Further south, in Japan, the increasing frequency of intense rainstorms has officials concerned that the huge system they have built to protect Tokyo from flooding may not be enough to contain future deluges.

The destructive and deadly wildfires in California are being driven by the Diablo winds, which normally occur this time of year and are a result of the unique geography of California, Nevada, and Utah.  While the impacts of climate change on the winds are uncertain, it is likely that the prolonged drought, followed by a wet winter and a hot dry summer, has contributed to the devastation.  This has caused some to conclude that wildfires will only get worse.  Relatedly, more than half of Americans are linking extreme weather and climate change (either mostly or in part).

Energy

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to eliminate the Production Tax Credit and Investment Tax Credit, both of which greatly benefit wind and solar energy.  David Roberts, writing at Vox, has done a deep dive into the federal subsidies that the fossil fuel industry receives in the U.S.  The findings might surprise you.  On a global scale, according to a report from Oil Change International, funding for fossil fuel projects from the six main international development banks totaled at least $5bn in 2016.  A second report, from analysts at E3G, found that some funding agencies have given similar levels of funding to fossil fuels as to climate-friendly energy projects.  The funding agencies strongly disagreed with the analyses in the reports.

The Washington Post’s Peter Holley listed three developments that make him think 2017 may go down as the year that electric vehicles (EVs) became an industry-wide inevitability.  He then went on to list five ways a shift to EVs will affect our economy and our society.  Certainly, China is counting on EV production as a key component in their plan to transform the country into a high-tech industrial power.  India wants all new passenger car sales to be electric by 2030, but it faces many hurdles in achieving that goal.  Meanwhile, Paris authorities have announced that they plan to prohibit all gasoline- and diesel-fueled cars from the city by 2030.

Toshiba has developed a new anode for its Super Charge ion Battery that allows it to store twice as much electricity per unit weight as the original version.  If incorporated into a compact EV, it would allow for a range of 186 mi after just six minutes of ultra-rapid charging, which is around three times the range offered by a standard, similarly charged lithium-ion battery.  Amazon was granted a patent for roving drones that can latch onto EVs and extend their range with an infusion of energy.

Barclay’s Bank has examined what the boom in EVs, along with gains in fuel efficiency, might mean for oil demand.  Their research suggests that by 2025 oil demand could drop by an amount almost equal to Iran’s total production, and if EVs seize a third of the car market by 2040, the drop in demand would be nearly as much as Saudi Arabia produces.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that wind power generation over some ocean areas can exceed wind power generation on land by a factor of three or more.

Using data up to May 2017 published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Carbon Brief has prepared interactive maps for all states in the U.S. showing the type and capacity of electric power generating facilities.  They have also analyzed the information, including planned facilities.  Also this week, an analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 19% of coal-fired power plants are economically unviable compared to alternative energy sources such as renewables and gas.

Royal Dutch Shell will purchase a top European operator of electric vehicle charging stations, Netherlands-based NewMotion, in a push to roll out the technology at many of its 45,000 service stations around the world.  Colorado and six other western states plan to install fast charging stations along eleven interstate highways.  These developments will require adaptation from the electric power industry according to a report from the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Research on carbon-capture and storage is still moving forward and has reduced the cost of the technology from $100 per metric ton to around $40 per metric ton.  As part of the tax overhaul, advocates would like to increase the carbon-capture tax credits from $10 or $20 per metric ton, depending on use, to $35 or $50.

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending Oct. 6, 2017 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

On Thursday, President Donald Trump named Andrew Wheeler, a coal industry lobbyist and former congressional staffer, as his pick for deputy administrator of the EPA.  Reuters reported that reaction to the nomination was “mixed”.  The EPA will propose repealing the Clean Power Plan, according to an EPA document seen by Reuters.  The agency now intends to issue what it calls an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to solicit input as it considers “developing a rule similarly intended to reduce CO₂ emissions from existing fossil fuel electric utility generating units.”  The New York Times has additional information, including some background.  The CPP joins a long list of environmental regulations (many related to climate change) that the Trump administration has overturned (or tried to).  In contrast, on Thursday Stephen Badger, Chairman of the food company Mars, Inc., published an Op-Ed in The Washington Post that concluded with “This is a call to action for all in business to double down in support of the Paris agreement and the sustainable development goals.”

The Department of Interior was in the news this week.  First, a group that, without invitation, listened-in remotely to an invitation-only Bureau of Land Management meeting and webinar gave their notes to The Washington Post.  Among the items discussed was how to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, a 1970 law that has been called an environmental Magna Carta, to facilitate fossil fuel development.  In addition, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was expected to issue a proposal to delay a BLM rule requiring oil and gas companies operating on federal and tribal lands to capture methane that would otherwise be vented or burned off, using a different legal provision than the one blocked by a federal judge on Wednesday.  Joel Clement, a senior Interior Department official, resigned on Wednesday, stating in his resignation letter to Zinke “You and President Trump have waged an all-out assault on the civil service by muzzling scientists and policy experts like myself.”  You can read his full letter here.  Meanwhile, the Department of Energy announced additional loan guarantees for construction of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia and asked FERC to adopt new regulations concerning the way in which base-load power plants (i.e., coal and nuclear) recover costs.  However, E&E News reported that energy industry experts disputed the claim of the need for such action.

Climate

Yale Climate Connections presented a sobering video of glaciology professor Jorgen Peder Steffensen of the Neils Bohr Institute in Denmark discussing the risks of abrupt climate change.  The most disturbing revelation is that we simply don’t know what will trigger abrupt events like those that occurred in the past.  Even without abrupt changes, however, climate change represents an extreme threat to the future of wildlife, according to Jim Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation.  A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reported on a comprehensive seabed mapping project of Greenland.  A major finding of the study is that the Greenland ice sheet is far more exposed to the warming oceans than previously known.  In fact, more than half of Greenland’s ice lies in or flows through areas that could be influenced by warming seas, accelerating their melting.

On September 22, Australia experienced its hottest September day since records began more than a century ago, reaching an average maximum temperature across the continent of 92.2°F, breaking the previous record set nine years ago.  In a special climate statement, the Bureau of Meteorology said climate change played a role.  Even worse, a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters has found that even if the Paris Agreement goal of limiting average global warming to 2°C is met, summer heat waves in major Australian cities are likely to reach highs of 122°F by 2040.

Zeke Hausfather at Carbon Brief examined how well climate models have projected future warming and concluded: “Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming.  While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred, especially when discrepancies between predicted and actual CO₂concentrations and other climate forcings are taken into account.”

Data published on Thursday by the EPA showed that greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S.’s largest industrial facilities fell 2% in 2016, to 2.99 billion tonnes, led by a large cut from the power sector.  On the other hand, an analysis by an Australian think-tank revealed that Australia’s annual emissions reached an all time high.

Scientists at the U.S. Marine Biological Laboratory, with contributions from scientists at the Universities of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, conducted a 26-year study in the Harvard Forest of the impact of soil warming on CO₂ emissions from the soil.  The results supported projections of a long-term, positive, carbon feedback loop wherein warming leads to more carbon emissions, which increases warming, leading to more emissions, etc.

The Associated Press analyzed 167 years of federal storm data and found that no 30-year period in history has seen this many major hurricanes, this many days of hurricanes in the Atlantic, or this much overall energy generated by those powerful storms.

A report released Tuesday by the Food Climate Research Network at the University of Oxford found that cattle fed on grass release more greenhouse gas emissions than are offset through soil carbon sequestration by root growth associated with the plants on which they feed.  In other words, grass-fed beef is “in no way a climate solution”, according to the lead author of the report.

Writing at Yale Environment 360 about the connection between climate change and increased wildfires, Nicola Jones stated: “Globally, the length of the fire weather season increased by nearly 19 percent between 1978 and 2013, thanks to longer seasons of warm, dry weather in one-quarter of the planet’s forests.  In the western United States, for example, the wildfire season has grown from five months in the 1970s to seven months today.”

Energy

The International Energy Agency issued a new forecast indicating that global renewable energy capacity will rise by 43% by 2022.  This forecast is largely driven by increasing expansion of solar energy in China and India.  The report also said that in 2016, almost two-thirds of new power capacity came from renewables.  Illustrating this is the increased interest in battery-backed local energy systems, such as solar, in response to the recent spate of hurricanes.

A new study, published in the journal Nature Energy, found that, at recent oil prices of $50 per barrel, tax preferences and other subsidies at the state and federal level push nearly half of new, yet-to-be-developed oil investments into profitability, potentially increasing U.S. oil production by 17 billion barrels over the next few decades.  Using that oil would put the equivalent of 6 billion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.  This is one of the reasons Tim McDonnell argued in The Washington Post that the solution to climate change is in the U.S. tax code.

For the past two weeks, I have included articles about the decision of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in the Suniva/SolarWorld America solar panel trade case.  This week, Bloomberg Technology reported that the trade dispute has stalled solar-energy projects across the U.S.  However, Bloomberg Technology also reported that “[g]rowing demand for more resilient power supplies will spur $22.3 billion of global investment in battery-backed local energy systems over the next decade, according to Navigant Research.”

Two items from Rocky Mountain Institute dealt with energy efficiency in homes and the real estate market.  One was about an mpg-like rating for homes that are for sale.  It provides insights into things like the expected cost of maintaining the home, the environmental impact of the home, and how comfortable the home is likely to be.  The other explained how residential property assessed clean energy (R-PACE) financing could be used to allow people to buy net-zero energy homes with no additional upfront costs.

On Monday General Motors announced that it would rollout at least 20 all-electric vehicles by 2023, including two within the next 18 months.  The new models will be a mix of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.  In addition, Ford Motor Co has formed a team to accelerate global development of electric vehicles.  A current impediment to adoption of battery electric vehicles is a lack of charging stations and charging time.  This situation is changing, however, with a big push underway to install more stations with fast chargers.