Year: 2020

Politics and Policy

President-elect Joe Biden picked his leadership team to begin the U.S.’s transition to a low carbon economy.  He selected Gina McCarthy, who ran the EPA under President Barack Obama and now leads the Natural Resources Defense Council, to head the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy.  The task facing McCarthy and her foreign affairs counterpart, John Kerry, will be immense.  He also will be nominating former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who has been a strong voice for zero-emissions vehicles, as secretary of energy, and Brenda Mallory to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  Pete Buttigieg will be secretary of transportation, a position important to reducing transportation’s large carbon footprint, and Michael S. Regan, head of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, will be the next EPA administrator.  Biden will nominate Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) to serve as his Interior Secretary, becoming the first Native American Cabinet secretary.  Eliminating CO₂ emissions by 2050 will require a massive effort, as outlined in major reports from Princeton University and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

The U.S. Federal Reserve joined an international group of central banks focused on climate change risk, a signal the Fed could move to incorporate the impacts of global warming into its regulatory actions.  A bipartisan package of programs to boost funding for renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles, carbon capture, and other low-carbon and electric technologies is being considered for inclusion in the omnibus spending bill Congress is set to vote on by Friday.  Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) captured a prized seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, beating out fellow New Yorker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 46-13.

Progressive organizations outlined 25 executive actions the president-elect “must take” to tackle fossil fuels.  The Center for American Progress put out a blueprint for protecting climate researchers and restoring scientific integrity in the federal government.  Washington Gov. Jay Inslee unveiled a new climate-change package that includes a renewed push for a clean fuels standard and capping some greenhouse-gas emissions.  The Southeast’s biggest utilities have filed plans for a Southeast Energy Exchange Market, which could better integrate the region’s growing share of clean power in years to come.  Avangrid Renewables submitted a plan to BOEM for the first 800 MW phase of its Kitty Hawk offshore wind project, the first move in a plan to build 2.5 GW of wind power off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts.  An MIT study found that expanding transmission lines and implementing a national process for coordinating regional grids, could cut the cost of obtaining carbon-free power by 46% compared with a state-by-state decarbonization process.

In a speech at last weekend’s Climate Ambition Summit, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a new set of updated national climate targets for 2030.  In a white paper on energy policy, the British government said it will establish a domestic emissions trading scheme beginning Jan. 1 to replace the current EU regime, which it is leaving.  Canadian P.M. Justin Trudeau released the government’s strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030; its centerpiece is a gradual hike in the federal carbon tax on fuels to $170 a metric ton, increasing the cost of gasoline by $1.11 per gallon.  The European Commission has proposed new rules that batteries placed on the EU market should be “sustainable, high-performing and safe all along their entire life cycle.”

Climate and Climate Science

Scientists affiliated with the UK Met Office presented an updated version of the Hadley Centre global temperature data set, bringing it in line with data sets from NASA and NOAA.  At Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather explained the major changes.  As of the end of November, 2020 is the second-warmest year on the books, a mere 0.02°F behind 2016 at the same point, according to new data released by NOAA.

The Atlantic hurricane season may be over with, but things are still happening in the Pacific where Tonga and Fiji were bracing for potentially catastrophic damage as tropical cyclones Zazu and Yasa intensified off their respective coastlines on Wednesday.  Yasa made landfall Thursday evening.  The frequency of natural disasters in Bangladesh is making life in rural areas increasingly difficult, pushing inhabitants into city slums.

Two articles this week pointed out unexpected consequences of sea level rise.  One reported on the fragmentation of salt marshes because of the expanded burrowing of purple marsh crabs.  The other concerned rising groundwater levels in coastal areas, which can come into contact with subsurface contaminants from long ago, mobilizing them and moving them upward where humans and other life can come into contact with them.  Another discussed saltwater intrusion, which is impacting farmland along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where salt is arriving from underground.

A new report prepared for the Environmental Defense Fund by RTI International says global warming, rising sea levels, and other effects of climate change will bring billions of dollars in short-term costs to North Carolina’s economy and public health in the years ahead.  A new report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health measured states’ vulnerability to public health impacts from climate change and their levels of readiness for such impacts; six of the ten most vulnerable states were in the southeast.

A record-breaking wildfire season in the western U.S. cost insurers a staggering $7 billion to $13 billion in 2020, an illustration of the growing price tag on natural disasters linked to climate change.  On a global scale, natural disasters caused $76 billion in insured losses during 2020.

Energy

Global demand for coal is set to jump 2.6% next year after a record pandemic-led drop this year, as recovering economic activity will increase use for electricity and industrial output.  The new conservative provincial government of Alberta, Canada, has pulled out all stops to increase coal production for export, which could industrialize as much as 400 sq miles of forests, waterways, and grasslands.  Lloyd’s, the world’s biggest insurance market, has set a market-wide policy to stop new insurance coverage for coal, oil sands, and Arctic energy projects by January 2022, and to pull out altogether by 2030.

Ten years ago, a lithium-ion battery pack used in an electric vehicle (EV) cost around $1,110 per kW·hr.  By this year the cost had fallen 89%, to $137 per kW·hr, and by 2023, it is likely to have fallen far enough that car companies can make and sell mass-market EVs at the same cost as conventional cars.  The number of EV models is expected to more than triple in the next three years, from roughly 40 to 127 in the U.S., as battery prices fall, charging infrastructure spreads, and adoption rises.  Mercedes-Benz will begin production of six all-electric models by the end of 2022; two will be assembled at its plant in Tuscaloosa, AL.  Toyota has said that it will have a prototype with a solid-state battery ready by next year.

Utility interest in hydrogen is “beyond staggering” and may soon begin showing up in long-term integrated resource plans, according to GE Gas Power Emergent Technologies Director Jeffrey Goldmeer.  Canada unveiled its hydrogen strategy on Wednesday, calling on investors to spur growth in a clean fuel sector that could help the country achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050.  Clean Technica had an article entitled “Is Hydrogen the Best Option to Replace Natural Gas in the Home? Looking at the Numbers.”  A team at the Clean Energy Group cautioned that combustion of hydrogen (rather than its use in fuel cells) can lead to significant production of nitrogen oxides, which are air pollutants.  Southern California Gas Company will test a technology that allows hydrogen to be transported with natural gas via the natural gas pipeline system, then extracted and compressed at fueling stations to provide hydrogen for fuel cell EVs.

ExxonMobil announced a new “emission reduction plan” on Monday and The Hill examined it relative to other oil and gas companies and the expectations of their critics.  A report released by non-profit thinktank Carbon Tracker found that 27 of the 30 largest listed oil and gas companies still financially reward executives for producing more fossil fuels, despite the companies’ climate goals.

Driven by technological advances, renewable energy facilities are being built with storage systems that can hold enough energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes, thereby addressing a key challenge for green energy — the intermittency of wind and solar.  Since the vanadium flow-battery firms RedT Energy (UK) and Avalon (U.S.) merged in March 2020 to form Invinity, the cost of their batteries has dropped 30% and sales have increased.

Potpourri

New York Times (NYT) reporter John Branch reflected on what it was like reporting on the fires in California that burned a million Joshua trees and charred countless giant sequoias and redwoods.  David Roberts, has left Vox on a full-time basis and started a blog.  If you want to follow him you can read his first entry and subscribe.  In case you haven’t yet had enough of 2020, the NYT brought together some of the best reporting from its Climate Desk and the Washington Post presented the top five climate stories of the year.  Brianna Baker of Grist presented her favorite climate podcasts.

Closing Thought

Climate scientist Tim Lenton explained the shifts in behavior and technology that could soon spur large-scale climate action, suggesting that not all tipping points are bad — and some good ones

Politics and Policy

Planting a trillion trees is an idea that several GOP lawmakers have rallied behind.  The Trump administration finalized new cost-benefit requirements, which instruct the EPA to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise, such as illnesses and deaths avoided by a potential regulation.  Nearly four dozen House Republicans warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell against proceeding with climate risk regulations for the financial system.  Nevertheless, Republican climate champion Bob Inglis made the case that there are Republican Representatives and Senators with whom President-Elect Joe Biden can work.

John Kerry wants to strengthen the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) when he becomes the nation’s climate czar in January.  At the Washington Post, Paul Bledsoe presented five myths about the PCA while at Science, Warren Cornwall sought to determine if it is working.  Many countries will miss a deadline to submit updated climate action plans by 2020 as mandated by the PCA.  Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, and South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa did not meet the ambition benchmark to present their climate plans at a virtual summit on Saturday marking the fifth anniversary of the PCA.  In a video released prior to the meeting, Greta Thunberg said: “We are still speeding in the wrong direction.”  On Friday, EU leaders reached a deal on a more ambitious target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, going from a 40% cut to a 55% cut from 1990 levels.  Brazil has announced it will aim for carbon neutrality by 2060, sparking anger among campaigners who say the pledge is meaningless and a deliberate distraction from Bolsonaro’s destruction of the Amazon rainforest.  Recognizing that by the time net-zero emissions is achieved the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere will be too high for a sustainable climate, groups are now beginning to focus on climate restoration.

Tom Vilsack, who ran the Agriculture Department under President Barack Obama, will return to that role during the Biden administration with the goal of having the department take on a bigger role in fighting climate change.  New York State’s pension fund will drop many of its fossil fuel stocks in the next five years and sell its shares in other companies that contribute to global warming by 2040.  Since the start of 2016, banks have extended more than $1.6 trillion of loans and underwriting services to fossil-fuel companies planning and developing oil, gas, and coal projects.  Thousands of rural Californians have lost homeowners’ insurance in recent years because of rising wildfire claims, forcing them to seek alternative coverage that’s two or three times more expensive; now their rates are about to go even higher.

The Senate is continuing to struggle through negotiations on the American Energy Innovation Act, but still hopes to pass it this year.  Many U.S. states are on track to miss their targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.  Jan Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both of whom need to win the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff elections for the Democrats to control the Senate, have platforms to address climate change.  The Transportation and Climate Initiative, a regional cap-and-invest effort aimed at reducing car and truck emissions, has support from some 70% of voters in member states.  States that are concerned about solar farms displacing agriculture should consider agrivoltaics.

Climate and Climate Science

Last month was the hottest November on record, as the relentlessly warming climate proved too much even for any possible effects of cooler ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean caused by La Niña.  Australia’s hottest spring on record, which saw temperatures more than 2°C above average, would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.  Last Friday I missed a post at Arctic News by Australian climate scientist Andrew Glikson about the migration of climate zones as a result of Earth’s warming and the impact that migration has.  The Atlantic hurricane season ended last week and Bloomberg Green did a recap with some very informative graphics.  So far in 2020, only three states (Alaska, Hawaii, and North Dakota) weren’t part of a billion dollar weather disaster.  Over 75% of Indian districts, which are home to over 638 million people, are hotspots of extreme climate events such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heat, and cold waves.

The new emissions gap report published by the UN Environment Program detailed how the world remains woefully off target in its quest to slow the Earth’s warming.  Carbon Brief had a detailed summary of the report.  Global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel and industry are expected to drop by 7% in 2020, as economies around the world feel the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns.  At Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather projected that the world will likely exceed 1.5°C of warming sometime between 2030 and 2032 if emissions are not rapidly reduced.  On the other hand, a study in Nature Climate Change found that reducing global emissions in line with the PCA’s goals would have a clear impact on global temperatures within two decades.

The 2020 Arctic Report Card points to trends that, with each passing year, have grown more extreme and have far-reaching implications for people living far outside the region, including in the Lower 48 states.  According to the report, this year’s vast wildfires in far northeastern Russia were linked to broader changes in the warming Arctic.  All of this suggests that a “new normal” is settling over the Arctic.

California’s 2018 wildfire season cost the U.S. economy $148.5 billion in losses and killed more than 36 times the official death toll.  This year’s wildfires in California threatened the giant sequoias, Joshua trees, and coast redwoods like never before.  Wildfires alter the makeup of the soil, making it less likely to absorb rainwater, especially during a downpour, thereby making a burned area more prone to mudslides.  An analysis of satellite data from hundreds of California wildfires showed that human-caused blazes spread faster and kill more trees than ones ignited by lightning.

Biochar, a charcoal-like substance made from burning organic materials in a low or zero-oxygen environment, can improve the quality of soil, trap water, and hold CO₂ in the earth for potentially hundreds, or even thousands, of years, but is expensive.  Warming temperatures and human actions, such as draining bogs and converting them for agriculture, threaten to turn the world’s peatlands from carbon reservoirs to carbon sources.

Energy

The plummeting price of renewable sources of electricity has made low-carbon power “cost-competitive” when compared to fossil fuels at a greater speed than once thought possible.  The Rhodium Group estimates that industry will overtake transportation as the largest source of U.S. emissions sometime in the middle of this decade.

Royal Dutch Shell has been hit by the departure of several clean energy executives amid a split over how far and fast the company should shift towards greener fuels.  Exxon Mobil is at a crossroads as demand for oil and gas falls and world leaders and businesses pledge to fight climate change.  The amount of natural gas released or burned at oil-and-gas wells reached a record high in 2019 due to growth in Texas and North Dakota.  The Gulf of Mexico is littered with tens of thousands of abandoned wells, and toothless regulation leaves greenhouse gas emissions unchecked.

QuantumScape has unveiled its solid-state EV battery that has an energy density exceeding 400 Whr/kg and the capability to achieve a 15-minute charge to 80% capacity.  UK firm Gridserve’s first “Electric Forecourt” launched Monday, and with it, we get a bricks-and-mortar view of how EV battery charging could look and feel in the future.  Experts agree that EVs can support a more reliable, resilient, and affordable grid.  Policymakers are scrambling to secure critical minerals to develop cleaner energy.  The Guardian provided a “long read” about the impact of lithium exploration, mining, and processing.

Seven companies launched a coalition with the aim of deploying 25 GW of renewables-based hydrogen production capacity by 2026, while cutting the cost in half.  Snam and Linde have struck a deal for European green hydrogen projects development.  Eni and Enel have partnered to install two pilot-scale electrolyzers near two Eni refineries and will use renewable energy to produce the hydrogen.  Yara has announced plans for a 500,000 metric ton per year green ammonia project in Norway to produce emission-free shipping fuels and fertilizer.  The recent deluge of stories in the media that tout hydrogen as a climate solution and clean form of energy can be linked in part to FTI Consulting — an oil and gas industry public relations firms.

California could need up to 11 GW of energy storage by 2030, and 45 to 55 GW by 2045.  Swedish startup Azelio’s Thermal Energy Storage technology stores energy as heat in a phase change material made of an aluminum alloy heated to 600°C, which is then converted to electricity using a Stirling engine.

Potpourri

Two documentaries, one available on Amazon Prime and the other on Netflix, raise questions about our food system, only from different perspectives and with different priorities.  As reviewer Maddie Oatman wrote: “They make for a useful pair, with Gather showing what’s hiding in the white spaces of Kiss the Ground.”  On the subject of food, at Yale Climate Connections, SueEllen Campbell provided some recent articles on good eats for the holidays.  In China, where any hint of protest is viewed with suspicion, one teenager is trying to draw attention to the dangers human development poses to the world.  With his latest novel, Stillicide, Cynan Jones tells yet another powerful story, this one set in a climate-changed future where water has been commodified; Amy Brady interviewed Jones about the book.  Grist provided 21 predictions for 2021.

Closing Thought

“Opportunity” through clean energy initiatives may be a key to bridging the divide and getting more engagement for climate action.

Politics and Policy

A new report details how to position climate change as a central organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy.  The Alliance for Automotive Innovation vowed to work with President-elect Joe Biden to reduce vehicle emissions, while Ford encouraged other automakers to drop out of the Trump administration’s suit challenging California’s right to set its own emissions standards.  A letter signed by 42 major companies urged Biden to re-enter the U.S. into the Paris Climate Agreement and to enact “ambitious” solutions to tackle climate change.  Unfortunately, Biden’s promise to end U.S. fossil fuel subsidies could be hard to keep due to resistance from lawmakers in a narrowly divided Congress.  At Yale Environment 360, Michael Gerrard maintained that even without strong action by Congress, Biden will have a wide array of tools that could put the U.S. on a trajectory to decarbonizing its electricity sector by 2035.  At Vox, David Roberts wrote: “The only thing Biden will have real control over is his administration and what it does. And his North Star, his organizing principle, should be doing as much good on as many fronts as fast as possible. Blitz.”  Biden named Brian Deese to head the National Economic Council, highlighting plans to use economic policy initiatives to drive climate policy.  Some are pushing Biden to proclaim climate change a national emergency, giving him more power to tackle it, but whether he should do so is complicated.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that he wants to put tackling climate change at the heart of the UN’s global mission and that its central objective next year will be to build a global coalition around the need to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.  A new analysis by Carbon Action Tracker suggests that the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are getting “within reach.”  Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the UK will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 68% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.  Denmark’s government agreed to put an end to all oil and gas exploration and extraction in the North Sea by 2050.  A recent report from international consulting group Wärtsilä demonstrates how using energy-related stimulus investments to support clean energy could speed decarbonization in five key countries: the U.S., the UK, Brazil, Germany, and Australia.  EU nations’ greenhouse gas emissions for 2019 were down 24% compared to their 1990 emissions.

The Bureau of Land Management announced on Thursday that the Trump administration plans to hold an oil leasing sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 6.  The governors of Mississippi, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Arkansas said they would challenge any new federal policies mandating emissions cuts by the power sector.  While the EPA’s career scientists are more openly challenging the Trump administration’s rules and rollbacks, Andrew Wheeler is working to ensure his legacy.  At Slate, two legal scholars examined the impacts of a revitalization of the “non-delegation doctrine” (the constitutional principle that Congress can’t delegate too much lawmaking power to the executive branch) by the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

The New York Times introduced the contenders for positions on Biden’s environment and energy team.  The U.S. Senate voted Monday to confirm the nominations of Mark Christie and Allison Clements to FERC, approving a bipartisan pairing that will bring the agency to a full five members.  At Yale Climate Connections, Dana Nuccitelli argued that moving now to combat climate change is cheaper and better for the economy than postponing action.  During the summer, FERC affirmed that net metering policies should be made by the states, so E&E News examined four states where the status quo on net metering is currently under review.

Climate and Climate Science

In spite of being a La Niña year, 2020 is on track to be the second hottest on record, behind 2016.  Millions of Australians are sweltering through a record-shattering heat wave that has set off hundreds of wildfires in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland.  A new report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies found that natural disasters have been rising in number since the 1960s and that a sharp increase of 35% has been recorded since the 1990s.  Thanks mostly to a combination of human-caused climate change and urbanization, winters in Washington, D.C., are rapidly warming and taking on an entirely new character.  However, the way NOAA reports climate averages can inadvertently conceal long-term changes in temperature.  The Conversation presented a retrospective on the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.

A report, published in The Lancet, presents climate change as a public health risk now, rather than a hazard faced by future generations.  It points to the immediate dangers of extreme heat, wildfires, and air pollution, and makes the case for rapidly shifting to a green economy as a way to improve public health.  Bob Henson did a deep dive into the subject of heat-related deaths at Yale Climate Connections.

Loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings emerging from warmer sands are weaker and slower, meaning they are more likely to be eaten by ghost crabs as they crawl towards the sea.  Europe’s breeding bird populations have shifted on average 0.62 mile north every year for the past three decades, likely driven by climate change.

The amount of affordable housing in the U.S. vulnerable to coastal flooding is set to triple over the next 30 years, according to research conducted by Climate Central, a New Jersey-based science organization.

Forest management, when implemented correctly, can not only reduce the number of devastating wildfires that rage every year but also the billions of tons of CO₂ emissions that result from them as well.  Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has surged to its highest level since 2008, the country’s space agency reported.  Climate change is increasingly damaging the UN’s most cherished heritage sites.

Energy

A new report from the UN Environment Program found that the top producing nations were set to produce twice as much oil, gas, and coal by 2030 as would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.  However, the world’s top energy companies have slashed the value of their oil and gas assets by around $80 billion in recent months.  As the oil and gas industry contracts, one result may well be more abandoned wells; in three states, nonprofits are beginning to plug them.  Bank of America has joined other major U.S. banks in saying that it won’t finance oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.

Most of the U.S.’s existing fossil fuel power plant capacity will reach the end of its typical lifespan by 2035, suggesting that a deadline to decarbonize electricity by then will cost less than previously expected.  Pollinator-friendly solar can boost crop yields, increase the recharging of groundwater, reduce soil erosion, increase solar panel efficiency during summer, and provide long-term cost savings in operations and maintenance.

In an in-depth Q&A, Carbon Brief examined the big questions around the “hydrogen economy” and looked at the extent to which it could help the world avoid dangerous climate change.  One proposal is use the natural gas pipeline network to carry hydrogen, although there are many unanswered engineering questions that must be answered before that becomes a reality.

A new report suggests that solar-plus-storage is already competitive with open cycle gas turbines and could soon be more financially attractive than combined-cycle gas turbines in some markets.  The U.S. energy storage industry had just broken records in the 2^nd quarter, but in the 3^rd quarter it beat that period’s performance by 240%, according to the “Energy Storage Monitor” from Wood Mackenzie and the Energy Storage Association.

The cost of battery cells used for electric vehicles (EVs) has fallen to an average of $110 per kilowatt hour, making EVs competitive with cars using internal combustion engines.  The debunked report casting doubt on the green credentials of EVs was actually written by the companies that commissioned it.  Newly constructed single-family homes and townhouses with garages in Boise, Idaho will be required to have high-voltage circuits to accommodate EV charging.  Carmakers have sold more than 500,000 EVs in Europe during 2020, a milestone in the automotive industry’s move away from fossil fuels.  Volvo Trucks North America’s plant in Pulaski County, VA, will manufacture its new battery-powered class 8 VNR Electric truck model.

Potpourri

Just in time for the holidays, Yale Climate Connection’s Michael Svoboda presented twelve books, both fiction and nonfiction, that address climate change, reassess the challenges, offer hope and guidance for action, and envision very different, climate-changed futures.  In his column in The New Yorker this week, Bill McKibben spotlighted “The U.S. Climate Fair Share” by which we would contribute financially to the greenhouse gas reductions of developing countries because of our large contribution to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  The European Court of Human Rights has told the governments of 33 industrialized countries to promptly respond to a climate lawsuit lodged by six youth campaigners, giving it priority status because of the “importance and urgency of the issues raised.”  People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse.

Closing Thought

EcoTok, a collective of 17 U.S.-based TikTok influencers, stays away from partisan drama and embraces environmental action.

Politics and Policy

President-elect Joe Biden, eager to elevate climate change issues throughout his administration, is already drafting orders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and seeking nominees who will embed climate policy across the government.  Climate policy experts say they expect Biden’s team to focus on five Trump rollbacks in particular: on clean cars, clean power, climate super-pollutants, methane leaks from oil and gas operations, and gas from landfills.  Biden discussed climate change in 12 of his first 14 calls with world leaders, an unprecedented diplomatic focus from a new U.S. president.  Biden’s transition teams include veterans from the Obama administration and others with significant prior experience in domestic and international climate policy battles.  Arun Majumdar is heading the transition team for DOE and many think he is a prime candidate to head the Department.  Biden’s ambitious agenda is sure to expose fault lines in the Democratic Party, between renewable energy advocates who see natural gas as no better than coal and establishment figures who say the fuel still has a role to play in reducing pollution.  Furthermore, Biden will face several legal and political hurdles if he seeks to halt new oil and gas permits on federal land and waters, given existing laws and the enormous sums that drilling royalties generate for the federal and state governments.  The financial sector is moving ahead with plans to begin the transition to a carbon-free economy and acknowledge a new administration that’s eager to tackle the climate crisis.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted on Wednesday to advance the nominations of Allison Clements and Mark Christie to be FERC commissioners, although it is unclear whether they will get a floor vote before the session ends.  More than two dozen automakers, electric utilities, EV-charging firms, and lithium companies are forming a new advocacy group devoted to pushing for electric vehicles (EVs) on Capitol Hill.  It’s called the Zero Emission Transportation Association, or ZETA.  After months of legal back-and-forth, a ruling in the U.S. Court of International Trade has reinstated tariffs on two-sided solar panels.  The American Farm Bureau Federation has joined an alliance of food, forest, farming, and environmental groups that intends to work with Congress and the incoming Biden administration to reduce the food system’s role in climate change.

Greenhouse gases generated by the U.S. economy will slide 9.2% this year, tumbling to the lowest level in at least three decades.  Last month the Bureau of Land Management finalized the Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, allowing ConocoPhillips to produce up to 590 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years; a coalition of six environmental groups is suing to stop it.  The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies allowing them to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, although legal experts have said the leases may never be issued.

More than three-quarters of countries have indicated they will make stronger commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement by the end of 2020.  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the EU to lead global efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions by setting a new climate change target next month, while the EU unveiled plans to transform its electricity system to rely mostly on renewables within a decade and increase its offshore wind energy capacity 25-fold by 2050.  Russia has no plans to achieve carbon neutrality before the end of the century and is betting on Asian demand to support a huge expansion of its Arctic gas industry.  Furthermore, China’s plan to build more coal-fired power plants “contradicts” its pledge to go carbon neutral by 2060 and risks creating $303.60 billion in stranded assets.  Governments around the world are asking what a green recovery looks like as they decide how to align their $12 trillion worth of coronavirus economic rescue packages with their obligations under the Paris Climate Accord.

Climate and Climate Science

Iota struck the coast of Nicaragua late on Monday, bringing winds of nearly 155 miles per hour and flooding villages still reeling from the impact of Hurricane Eta two weeks ago.  As of Thursday, the death toll had reached more than 40.  The 2020 hurricane season will go down in history for the dominance of rapidly intensifying storms in the Atlantic, raising the question of whether this is the new normal.  Climate scientists say that this year’s record-breaking hurricane season and the “unprecedented” double blow for Central America has a clear link to the climate crisis.  One in five people across the world were affected by extreme weather disasters in the past decade, according to a report from the International Federation of the Red Cross.  Also, Jeff Masters reported that 2020 experienced 40 billion-dollar weather disasters through October, among other records.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications found that Greenland’s largest glaciers are currently melting at levels close to what scientists had previously expected under a future “worst-case scenario”.  As a result, the rate of sea level rise has accelerated to 4.8 millimeters per year, according to a 10-year average compiled for Science by Benjamin Hamlington, an ocean scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

According to a report by a coalition of 25 research and conservation organizations, mines and dams, along with tens of thousands of miles of roads and railways are planned in the forests of South America, Southeast Asia, and Central Africa, thereby potentially pushing the world’s remaining forests past a “dangerous tipping point” and making climate targets unachievable.  Furthermore, the construction or upgrading of some 7,456 miles of Amazon roads in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador over the next five years could lead to 5.9 million acres of deforestation in the two decades after, according to the report by Climate Focus.  Demand for certain mined minerals is projected to increase exponentially in the coming decades as the world shifts to renewable energy.  Experts warn that responsible practices must be in place to reduce environmental and social impacts.

Data from Public Health England showed that the three heatwaves in late June, late July, and August in England caused an estimated 2,556 excess deaths, with people aged 65 and over making up the vast majority of those who died.

As the world’s climate warms, parasite-carried wildlife diseases will move north, with animals in cold far-north and high-altitude regions expected to suffer the most dramatic increases, warns a study published on Friday in the journal Science.

Energy

Scottish energy company SSE plans to triple its renewable energy generation by 2030 as it prepares to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm off the northeast coast of England.  Danish renewable energy group Ørsted and North America’s Building Trades Unions announced a deal to train an offshore wind construction workforce to build the firm’s projects up and down the U.S. East Coast.  More than a dozen technology developers are pushing the idea of using floating wind turbine platforms for a variety of generation assets, from wind and wave to solar and ocean thermal energy, arguing that using a single platform for multiple technologies can help improve the energy yield per unit of area and thus reduce the overall cost of electricity.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has announced that a new material for wind turbine blades that can be recycled could render renewable energy more sustainable than ever before while also lowering costs.

David Reichmuth, a senior engineer in the clean transportation program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has said that the environmental concerns about EVs raised in a new paper from the Competitive Enterprise Institute are “…a grab bag of old and misleading claims about EVs.”  Determining the “total cost of electrification” for a particular fleet will be a critical step in pushing EV trucks and buses from the margins to the mainstream, according to a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Defense Fund and its partners.  David Roberts summarized the major lessons from that study along with one by the Electrification Coalition.  Navistar International Corp. and Cummins Inc. have announced that they have partnered to develop an integrated fuel cell electric powertrain that can be used in heavy-duty vehicles such as Class 8 trucks.  GM CEO Mary Barra said her company is accelerating an “all out pursuit of global EV leadership,” with increased spending and sped-up EV production targets.  Likewise, Volkswagen’s CEO said his company is paring back the variety of combustion-engined cars and investing $86 billion to retool more factories to build EVs.  An aggressive China-led shift to EVs is expected to slash growth in global oil demand by 70% by 2030 and help bring an end to the “oil era”, according to research by Carbon Tracker published on Friday.

The Swedish steel industry has developed a new steelmaking technology that uses hydrogen fuel to reduce the need for fossil fuel, thereby reducing the CO₂ emitted from about 3,600 lbs per ton of steel produced to around 55 lbs.

Stocks of oil and gas companies that are investing heavily in renewables are being punished by the markets.

Launched on Tuesday, the Western Green Hydrogen Initiative, is a group representing 11 Western states, two Canadian provinces and key green hydrogen industry players including Mitsubishi and utilities Dominion Energy and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Potpourri

Jeff Bezos is giving $791 million to 16 groups fighting climate change, the first grants from his Earth Fund, saying the money is “just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others.”  Unilever has announced plans to dramatically increase sales of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives over the next seven years.  Michael Svoboda compiled a list of books providing advice for how a new administration might proceed on tackling climate change.  In a feature article, The Hill presented the ten countries most at risk from the impacts of climate change.

Closing Thought

Dan Gearino devoted the bulk of his “Inside Clean Energy” column this week to Arizona’s net-zero plan, writing “Arizona is showing the rest of the country how to set the terms for a transition to clean energy that is substantial and nonpartisan.”  Even though there is one more hoop to jump through, I take hope from this and look forward to seeing more states join the fold.

Politics and Policy

President-elect Joe Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, expanding it beyond environmental agencies.  The Climate 21 Project released a blueprint of how that could be accomplished.  From the Pentagon to the General Services Administration, Biden has implanted climate-minded officials throughout his sprawling transition team.  Early action on climate change from Biden is likely to start with a series of executive orders reversing President Trump’s environmental policies.  Eric Roston at Bloomberg interviewed John Podesta about how the Biden administration should address a warming planet.  Dan Gearino offered four very pragmatic things Biden could do for clean energy without Congress.  Carbon Brief asked an array of climate scientists and policy experts what Biden’s victory will mean for climate action in the U.S. and around the world.  Publicly, environmental groups have claimed success in the election, but privately, they know that much hinges on the two undecided Senate seats in Georgia.  Nevertheless, young activists have said they’re preparing to pressure the incoming Biden administration to keep its word on climate change and other progressive goals.

The damage done by the greenhouse gas pollution unleashed by President Trump’s rollbacks of environmental regulations may prove to be one of the most profound legacies of his single term.  The Trump administration quietly removed Michael Kuperberg from his job as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which prepares the National Climate Assessment, and replaced him with climate change denier David Legates of NOAA with the intent of getting as many authors as possible under contract before January 20, 2021.  Desmog recently profiled Legates.  Analysts are anticipating a potential flurry of last-minute energy rollbacks, permitting decisions, and new rules by the Trump administration that could impinge on a Biden administration’s ability to implement its plans.

The Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Federal Reserve told the Senate Banking Committee that the central bank has sought membership on the Network for Greening the Financial System and hopes to join before spring.  For the first time, the Federal Reserve identified climate change as a risk to financial stability.  Leading scientists, academics, and campaigners have called on governments and businesses to go beyond “net zero” in their efforts to tackle the escalating climate and ecological crisis.  Jonathan Watts profiled four countries that are setting carbon-neutral targets and pushing ahead to meet them.  At Living on Earth, host Steve Curwood interviewed Republican climate champion Bob Inglis about how Republicans and Democrats might work together during a Biden presidency to achieve a clean energy economy.

Despite net zero pledges from the governments of China, Japan, and South Korea, the Asian Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are reluctant to commit to reducing financing of fossil fuels.  Jonathan Watts listed and discussed five post-Trump obstacles to a global green recovery.  Would labeling Brazil a “climate outlaw” influence its behavior for the better?  The latest data from Energy Policy Tracker shows that G20 nations have committed more than $230 billion in COVID-19 recovery funds to support industries that rely heavily on fossil fuels.  According to the New York Times, FTI, a global consulting firm, helped design, staff, and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.

Climate and Climate Science

In the Philippines, Typhoon Vamco killed at least seven people and unleashed some of the worst flooding in years in the capital Manila.  On Monday night, Tropical Storm Theta became the 29^th named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, setting a new record by surpassing the total count from 2005.  On Friday afternoon, Tropical Storm Iota formed in the eastern Caribbean, breaking Theta’s record by becoming the 30^th of the season and threatening areas of the western Caribbean still reeling from Hurricane Eta that hit just last week.  Thus, it is worthwhile to examine how climate change is affecting storms.  A new study looked at what happens after hurricanes make landfall and found that climate change is apparently causing them to weaken more slowly and remain destructive longer.

Two new studies published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience suggest that as Earth warms, clouds are likely to change in ways that will intensify global warming.

A new paper in Scientific Reports reached sweeping conclusions about the possibility that climate change may have already reached a hypothetical ‘point of no return’, conclusions with which most climate scientists disagree.

Two government climate science agencies concluded that Australia’s climate has entered a new era of sustained extreme weather events, such as bushfires and heatwaves, courtesy of rising average temperatures.

As Earth warms, more people will die from heat, so scientists are studying how people respond to excess heat in hopes of lowering the risk and reducing the toll.

Energy

California is setting ambitious goals to phase out vehicles that run on fossil fuels, using $20 million in annual funding from the California Energy Commission to build hydrogen infrastructure.  BP plans to take its first steps into the expanding market for green hydrogen alongside the offshore wind developer Ørsted by developing a hydrogen project at one of its refineries in Germany.  The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded just under $14 million for Xcel Energy to build a hydrogen-energy production facility at a nuclear power plant in Minnesota.  Tidal power will be combined with vanadium flow batteries to continuously produce green hydrogen at the European Marine Energy Center’s tidal energy test site on the island of Eday, Orkney, Scotland.

A prototype GE Haliade-X offshore wind turbine produced 312 MWh of electricity in a single 24-hour period, setting a new world record.  South Korean firm Odin Energy hopes to carve out a new niche with a vertical-axis wind turbine tower designed for urban settings.  Last week I included an article about the need for a more coordinated approach to electric grid upgrades in New England to handle the electricity produced by offshore wind farms.  This week there was an article that came to a similar conclusion for the rest of the East Coast.  As the need for new electrical transmission lines increases in the face of renewable energy expansion, a potential problem will be their siting.  One possible solution is to collocate them with highways and railroads.  A new report from the International Energy Agency anticipates a 1,123 GW increase in wind and solar, which would mean these power sources will overtake gas capacity in 2023 and coal in 2024.  The Agency has revised its expectations for the 2020 global renewable energy market, now projecting that capacity additions will grow 4% from 2019, hitting a record of nearly 200 GW this year.  Six Midwest utilities expect to spend more than a combined $15 billion over the next several years to install or buy roughly 4 GW of solar generation, more than 3.6 GW of wind generation, and just over 1 GW of battery storage.

Ford Motor Co. said it will invest $100 million in its Kansas City Assembly Plant and add 150 jobs there to build the new electric E-Transit van.  General Motors plans to hire 3,000 new employees largely focused on software development for the research, development, and deployment of electric vehicles.  According to a new study, conducted by M.J. Bradley & Associates with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a typical rural driver in the Northeast could save more than $1,900 every year by switching from a conventional gasoline car to a comparable electric vehicle.

The electric utility Arizona Public Service is offering a $169 million deal to the Navaho Nation to help them cope with the repercussions from the closure of coal-fired power plants employing many Native people.  On the other hand, almost half the companies involved in the thermal coal industry globally are expected to defy worldwide climate commitments by deepening their coal interests in the coming years, according to a report by the green campaign group Urgewald.  An opinion piece in the New York Times argued that in planning to build 235 gas-fired power stations at a cost in excess of $100 billion, the U.S. electrical industry is behaving like smokers who really, truly plan to quit, as soon as they finish that last carton of cigarettes.

Research at Colorado State University is showing that solar farms can also be actual farms, particularly for high value crops like leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, etc.  A Canadian company, GHGSat, used satellites to detect what it has called the smallest methane leak seen from space and has begun selling data to emitters interested in pinpointing leaks that previously were harder to spot.  David Roberts provided an overview of the use of geothermal heat to reduce carbon emissions at Vox.

Potpourri

The Dalai Lama, along with German environmental journalist Franz Alt, has written a new book entitled Our Only Home: A Climate Appeal to the World by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  In reviewing Felicia Luna Lemus’ new memoir, Jason Heller wrote “Particulate Matter is a moving example of how to write about climate change, not didactically, but with the deep impact of both personal loss and literary elegance.”  A survey of approximately 26,000 people in 25 countries revealed a significant disconnect between beliefs and actions on climate change.  At Yale Climate Connections, SueEllen Campbell provided links to articles examining the term “net-zero emissions” and what exactly it means.  Although it doesn’t focus on climate, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has an interesting article examining the shifting views of an ideal society in the U.S.

Closing Thought

Bill McKibben wrote that if activists want real progress on climate during the Biden administration, they need to learn how to press their case aggressively without alienating those with whom they must work to get things done.

Politics and Policy

As I was wrapping up this Roundup on Saturday, several news agencies called the presidential election for Joe Biden and Juliet Eilperin and colleagues wrote he “will move to restore dozens of environmental safeguards President Trump abolished and launch the boldest climate change plan of any president in history.”  One thing was clear on Wednesday: The “green wave” that environmentalists had hoped for failed to materialize.  At The New Yorker, Bill McKibben considered what continued Republican control of the Senate will likely mean to the ability of Biden to act on climate change, as did Jeff St. John at GreenTech Media.  But Corbin Hiar at E&E News thinks that lobbyists and insiders believe there may still be opportunities in the coming years for corporations to shape climate policy.  And industry and environmental advocates alike say that Biden is uniquely suited to the challenge of dealing with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  E&E News speculated on why voters in Arizona and Florida had different perspectives on the dangers posed by climate change in their choices for president.  Climate XChange listed a number of wins for climate action in down-ballot races and initiatives.

The U.S. left the Paris Climate Agreement on Wednesday, making it the only country in the world to do so.  At The New York Times, Lisa Friedman looked at “how it happened, what it means and what might happen next”, while at The Hill, the CEOs of the Rocky Mountain Institute and the World Resources Institute reminded us that meeting the goal of the Paris Agreement will not only help countries to innovate and create new economic opportunities, it will also reduce the impacts and associated costs of future climate-related disasters.  Michael Mann told CBC Radio that “There’s still time to do what’s necessary to reduce carbon emissions so that we don’t cross that threshold into catastrophic climate change.”  Chelsea Harvey catalogued the increases in climate-related disasters and scientists’ understanding of climate change during the Trump administration.  In a surprise move, the Trump administration tapped mainstream climate scientist Betsy Weatherhead to lead the next National Climate Assessment, to be released in 2022.

The ranking members of the Natural Resources and the Energy and Commerce Committees in the House both retired, resulting in intense campaigning among House Republicans to replace them.  President Trump replaced Neil Chatterjee, the Republican chairman of FERC, with James Danly, another Republican who has taken a more conservative approach to federal energy policy, such as voting against opening up markets to distributed energy and dissenting on a policy proposal on wholesale market carbon pricing.  The Energy 202 at the Washington Post interviewed Chatterjee about the change and Forbes provided background on how the situation came about.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ordering the Russian government to try to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement, but stressed that any action must be balanced with the need to ensure strong economic development.  However, according to its energy minister, Russia has no plans to rein in its production of fossil fuels in the coming decades.  In order to meet its goal of reducing economy-wide CO₂ emissions in the state to net-zero by 2050, Massachusetts must deal with the fact that roughly one-third of its emissions come from the fuels burned in buildings for heating, hot water, and cooking.  Consequently, last week the Department of Public Utilities opened a new proceeding to start guiding utilities into a decarbonized future while protecting their customers.  From Pope Francis to Greta Thunberg, there are growing calls to make “ecocide”—which literally means “killing the environment”—a recognized crime under international law.  Could such a law ever work?

Climate and Climate Science

Hurricane Eta made landfall in Nicaragua on Tuesday as a Category 4 storm, one of only five Category 4 or 5 Atlantic hurricanes to have ever been seen in November.  It continued on into Honduras as a tropical depression, but continued to dump large amounts of rain, as it had in Nicaragua.  It is expected to head toward Cuba as a tropical storm, but not intensify into a hurricane again.  Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Super Typhoon Goni made landfall in the Philippines on Sunday, with sustained winds of 195 mph and a central pressure of 884 mb, making it the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in world recorded history.

Data from the Brazilian space research agency INPE showed on Sunday that fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest surged in October, with the number of blazes up 25% during the first 10 months of 2020, compared to a year ago.  New research, published in Environmental Research Letters, revealed that Amazon forest fires continue to drive greenhouse gas emissions for up to two decades after burning out, driven by the slow death of trees impacted by the fire.  Research published in Geophysical Research Letters found that the area burned annually by high-severity fires in the western U.S. has increased eight-fold in the past 35 years.

In an opinion piece at The Hill, two scientists from the Atkinson Center for Sustainability at Cornell University and one from The Nature Conservancy argued that a joint platform to address the carbon-nitrogen nexus in soil health management was the only way to develop methods for increasing soil carbon content while also limiting nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture.  A study published in the journal Science showed that for the world to have a chance of preventing significant harm from climate change, all parts of food production need rapid and significant reform — everything from reducing deforestation for new fields to changing our diets.

Europe experienced its hottest October on record, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.  Unusually severe heat also swept across the Arctic region, causing Arctic sea ice to reach its lowest level for October since 1979.  A new study estimated that an average global temperature increase of 2°C would lead to around 230 billion metric tons of carbon being released from the world’s soil, an amount equivalent to more than twice the emissions of the U.S. over the past 100 years.

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change reported on research about polar bear survival in which the scientists created individualized estimates for each of 19 subpopulations to account for the variety of climates, habitats, ecosystems, and sea ice ecoregions bears encounter.  The bottom line?  If you’re a polar bear, your future depends on your location.

Energy

Equitrans Midstream Corp., the lead partner in the joint venture building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, announced that the cost has increased from $3.7 billion to between $5.8 billion and $6 billion, while the completion date has slipped to the second half of 2021.  French gas and power utility Engie has pulled out of a major U.S. liquefied natural gas import deal after government concerns about its environmental implications.  Shell plans to consolidate its refinery portfolio from 14 sites to only six by 2025, with the goal of making the refineries more integrated with their chemical complexes to produce more biofuels, hydrogen, and synthetic fuels.

The global status of green hydrogen as a carbon-free fuel was reviewed at Yale Environment 360.  Air Liquide Group recently released a list of the seven ways hydrogen will contribute to the transition toward renewable energy.  Researchers in Spain have demonstrated a method of hydrogen production without contact electrodes via water electrolysis mediated by the microwave-triggered redox activation of solid-state ionic materials at low temperatures (< 250°C).  Toyota is focusing its hydrogen fuel cell development on marine applications while developers across the world are testing the use of hydrogen to power ships as the maritime industry races to find technologies to cut emissions.

Wind energy will achieve record growth globally over the next five years, the Global Wind Energy Council said on Thursday, projecting that some 348 GW of new onshore and offshore capacity are expected by the end of 2024.  The U.S. wind industry set a record in the third quarter, installing nearly 2 GW of new wind power capacity.  Offshore wind advocates say a more coordinated approach to electric grid upgrades in New England could save money and minimize ecological disruption.  Because of the way they are constructed, wind turbine blades are a challenge to recycle, although recycling opportunities exist, but are not yet widely implemented.

Volvo Trucks will sell a complete range of electric, heavy-duty trucks in Europe starting in 2021.  Daimler Truck AG and Volvo Trucks have entered into a joint venture for the development, production, and commercialization of fuel cells for heavy-duty trucks.  GM will bring its EVs to market faster than it had initially anticipated, thanks to its strategic partnerships and investments in technology which allowed it to speed up product development.

James Gignac of the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed recycling opportunities for photovoltaic solar panels.  Plans to build an innovative new nuclear power plant using small modular reactors have taken a hit as eight of the 36 public utilities that had signed on to help build the plant have backed out of the deal.

Potpourri

A climate poll on Twitter posted by Shell backfired spectacularly, with the oil company being accused of gaslighting the public.  Tim Flannery, author of The Climate Cure, has a very moving essay at The Guardian about the need to communicate the gravity of the climate crisis to young people.  Likewise, DW noted that psychologists suggest that we need to discuss climate change in less abstract terms if we are to truly grasp the significance of the crisis.  In a scenario playing out in many American families, a sense of despair and outrage among young people over global warming is being met with indifference and dismissal among some of their older relatives.  Grist republished five maps developed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication that highlight some positive trends in public opinion on global warming.

Closing Thought

Biden won!

Politics and Policy

During their debate Thursday night, President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden laid out starkly different visions on whether the U.S. needs to transition away from fossil fuels to address climate change.  As might be expected, conservatives pummeled Biden for his position, accusing him of being callous with the economy in his proposals for tackling climate change.  Nevertheless, an article in Market Watch asserted that the U.S. will transition to a clean-energy mix regardless of who wins the White House, although the pace of that change will depend on the election’s outcome.  The Independent asked climate scientists, policy experts, and environmentalists for their takeaways from the climate change portion of the debate.  According to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, 66% support Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan while 26% oppose it.  If Biden wins, the question haunting climate activists is whether this time will be different from President Obama’s first term.  Automakers evidently think it will be because they are gearing up for tough new vehicle emissions rules and policies favoring electric vehicles if Biden wins.

GreenTech Media interviewed Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about areas of agreement and disagreement among legislators on energy reform.  At The New Republic, Kate Aronoff explored the role that conservative West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D) might play in enacting energy and climate legislation should the Democrats take over the Senate.  A new report from the Brookings Institution assessed the greenhouse gas reduction pledges and commitments of the U.S.’s largest cities, tracked the emissions savings that could result from them, and evaluated whether the cities are meeting their goals.  On Wednesday, offshore wind developers said that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management within the Department of the Interior will require additional funding to keep permitting on track for a number of projects.  Climate change isn’t Biden’s sole environmental concern.  His platform calls on the U.S. to set aside 30% of its lands and water for conservation by the end of the decade.

In a diatribe against U.S. climate policies, China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry blamed Trump’s “negative stance” and “retrogression on climate change” for undermining progress on the Paris climate accord.  EU environment ministers were set to agree this week to make the bloc’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2050 legally binding, but the agriculture lobby and agriculturally dominant countries stand as a potential obstacle to the pledge.  Nevertheless, EU agriculture ministers agreed on Wednesday to set aside part of the farming policy budget for programs that protect the environment.  Coal played a very important part in Poland’s rise from the ashes of WWII, but pressures are mounting for the country to move on.  In an interesting coincidence, Yale Environment 360 published a retrospective about Poland and coal in the same week the country’s largest power company announced that it wants to become 100% renewable by 2050.  The French government stepped in to force a domestic company to delay signing a potential $7 billion deal with a U.S. liquefied natural gas company over concerns that its U.S. shale gas was too dirty.  After modelling a ‘green recovery’ plan against a ‘return-to-normal’ plan across the UK, Germany, Poland, the U.S., India, and globally, researchers from Cambridge Econometrics concluded that the impact of a green recovery strategy would be “consistently larger” than that delivered through a standard stimulus package.

Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor of Law and director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, examined the impact on environmental and climate law of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s possible elevation to the Supreme Court.  Three years after Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes published research finding “a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public,” Vijay Swarup, Exxon’s vice president of research and development, published a comment in the same journal that seeks to rebut the research.  A key step in the progress of the National Climate Assessment—the solicitation for authors to work on the project—was delayed for months, but after public outcry, NASA restarted the process, publishing a Federal Register notice Thursday seeking authors.

Climate and Climate Science

The North Complex fire wiped out the town of Berry Creek, CA, in September.  A multimedia article in The Washington Post explained the contribution of climate change to that fire.  Northern California faces days of ‘critical’ fire risk as strong, dry winds will keep fire danger high this week and next.  The Cameron Peak Fire near Rocky Mountain National Park became the largest wildfire in Colorado history, growing to almost 207,000 acres this week, while the East Troublesome Fire forced closure of the park.  An NPR analysis found that most wildfire-prone states have no requirements for disclosing fire risk to someone who buys or rents a home; only California and Oregon do.

According to a new study, dust storms on the Great Plains have become more common and more intense in the past 20 years, because of more frequent droughts in the region and an expansion of croplands.  In 2003 my wife and I hiked into Canyon de Chelly, in the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, on a trail that was worn into the sandstone from the many feet that had walked it over centuries.  Thus, it was especially painful to read about the impacts of the extreme drought that is occurring there.

Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer published an important essay on the danger posed by multiple, simultaneous disasters in Foreign Affairs (note, you can read it for free just by signing up).

Hurricane Epsilon rapidly intensified Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly becoming a major Category 3 hurricane and claiming two records as it cruised northwest over the open Atlantic.  For the first time since records began, the surface waters of the Laptev Sea in Siberia, the main nursery of Arctic sea ice, have yet to start freezing in late October.

“Global Safety Net” is the first global-scale analysis of land areas requiring protection to solve the twin crises of biodiversity and climate change.  Brianna Baker interviewed Eric Dinerstein, the wildlife scientist who led the project.

Energy

An aggressive push towards 100% renewable energy would save Americans as much as $321bn in energy costs, while also slashing planet-heating emissions, according to a new report from Rewiring America.  Corporate buyers of renewable energy will drive the development of 44 GW to 72 GW of new wind and solar projects in the U.S. over the next decade, according to a new report from IHS Markit.  If you are thinking of converting your home to all-electric, you might be interested in the experiences of Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Cinnamon Energy Systems.

Inside Climate News reviewed concerns about NuScale Power’s small modular nuclear reactors that have been approved for construction in Idaho.  As global warming climbs and humanity’s water consumption increases, nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants that rely on freshwater for cooling may not be able to perform at their peak capacity or could be forced to shut down temporarily.

Vox energy reporter David Roberts described the basics of geothermal energy and explained why its time may finally have come.  Another couple of educational pieces came this week from Greentech Media where Jason Deign explained the concept and applications of “virtual power plants” and floating wind turbines.

The extra cost of manufacturing battery electric cars versus their internal combustion engine equivalents will diminish to just $1,900 per car by 2022, and disappear completely by 2024, according to research by the investment bank UBS.  A large part of Dan Gearino’s column this week was devoted to EVs, prompted in part by GM’s introduction of the new electric Hummer.  An Associate and a Managing Director at RMI made the case for why the U.S. should assert EV leadership.

The International Maritime Organization agreed on Friday to require shipping to reduce its CO₂ emissions per unit of economic activity by 40% compared with 2008 levels in the next 10 years.  Green groups said this could still result in an increase in CO₂ emissions.

Potpourri

Michael Svoboda reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel, The Ministry of the Future.  SueEllen Campbell provided readings to shed some light on the question of growth versus de-growth as solutions for the climate crisis.  Philip K. Verleger reviewed Daniel Yergin’s new book, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.  What does a former Renaissance scholar have to teach us about how the media should talk about climate change?  Lizzie Widdicombe wanted to know, so she interviewed Genevieve Guenther for The New Yorker.  At Grist, Kate Yoder looked at the growing field of climate-fiction, paraphrasing social scientist Matthew Schneider-Mayerson: “In the near future, …, we may get to the point that any story that doesn’t touch on climate change might as well be considered either historical fiction or other-worldly fantasy.”

Closing Thought

Although I missed it earlier this month when it was released, I’m including Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, titled “Fratelli Tutti” (We are all brothers and sisters), which contains ten ideas about caring for our common home and the importance of rethinking the way we connect with each other.  The Pope has also produced a TED talk that makes the point in much sharper terms.

Politics and Policy

A proclamation released by the White House last weekend would increase tariffs on imported solar cells and modules in the final year of the tariffs and eliminate an exemption for two-sided solar panels.  While the Trump administration has tried to revive the coal industry, the German government set an exit date and made a plan to help coal communities survive, thereby providing lessons the U.S. could benefit from.  President Trump signed an executive order initiating the formation of the “United States One Trillion Trees Interagency Council.”  Several conservative climate groups have attempted to wrench the issue of climate change from the hands of the Democrats and shore up climate concern on the right, in part because of the impact of The Green New Deal and the fact that Americans are now nearly four times more likely to say they’re alarmed about the climate crisis than to be dismissive of it.  Vox’s Umair Irfan asked the Biden campaign six key questions about his climate change plans while GreenTech Media asked clean-energy experts and advocates what’s most likely to get done in the first 100 days of a Biden presidency.  Politico asserted that Biden and some Congressional Democrats want to use trade agreements to combat global warming, breaking from decades of U.S. trade policy that largely ignored climate change.

President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, said late during her confirmation hearing Tuesday that while she has read up on the issue of climate change, she did not have “firm views” on the subject.  However, her efforts to play it safe created perhaps the most tangible backlash of her hearings.  FERC issued a proposed policy statement on Thursday saying the panel has the authority and willingness to consider potential grid operators’ requests to incorporate a carbon tax into their rate structures.  DOE has awarded $80 million each to X-energy and TerraPower, with the potential for billions more in federal funding as they strive to build their smaller scale, more flexible advanced nuclear reactor designs by 2027.

According to recent research on adaptation to sea level rise in coastal communities, shoreline armoring is more common in areas that have low racial diversity and higher home values, household incomes, and population densities, whereas measures based around home buyout programs correlate with high racial diversity and low home values, household incomes, and population densities.  A paper published Monday at the National Bureau of Economic Research reported a decline in sales of houses in low-lying coastal areas of Florida beginning in 2013, followed a few years later by a drop in prices compared with houses in safer areas.  New research compiled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac showed housing markets are beginning to respond to damages from climate change-fueled floods, storms, and disasters.  An executive board member of the Australian insurance regulators said in a speech that the cost of pre-emptive action to avoid the impact of disasters exacerbated by the climate crisis was far cheaper than dealing with the aftermath.

A new paper in the journal Science found that the world could get on track to avert catastrophic climate change by investing 10% of the planned $12 trillion in pandemic recovery packages to reducing dependence on fossil fuels.  JPMorgan Chase aims to support its clients in expanding investment in clean energy and work towards net zero-emissions by 2050, while HSBC will target net zero carbon emissions across its entire customer base.  A group of China’s top climate researchers released a plan whereby the country could meet the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.  A proposal by leading maritime nations to curb the shipping industry’s carbon footprint falls far short of both the International Maritime Organization and Paris Agreement climate goals, shipping experts have warned.

Climate and Climate Science

New research published in Nature showed that a holistic, global approach to healing ecosystems would be a big step in stopping the twin threats of extreme climate disruption and biodiversity loss.  Research published in Environmental Research Letters reported that protecting intact peatlands and restoring degraded ones are crucial steps if the world is to counter climate change.

Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that recent Atlantic warming is “unparalleled” in the past three millennia.  In addition, scientists have taken hourly temperature measurements in the deep (4762 to 15,600 ft) Atlantic over a ten year period, documenting heat buildup there.  With oceans absorbing more than 90% of global warming, marine heatwaves are becoming hotter, larger, and longer lasting, with major ecological consequences.  Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, half the corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have died over the past 25 years, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

This year, roughly a quarter of the vast Pantanal wetland in Brazil, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, burned in wildfires worsened by climate change.  Furthermore, almost half the land belonging to Indigenous people was among that burned.  According to ProPublica’s climate maps project, with climate change, California’s summer and fall fire seasons are growing longer and melding into each other, overlapping in time and space.  In northern Colorado, the Cameron Peak wildfire is officially the largest ever observed in the state.  Fires are becoming more frequent on Mt. Kilimanjaro, impacting the plant and animal species there.

Extreme weather events have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, taking a heavy human and economic toll worldwide, and are likely to wreak further havoc, the UN said in a report.  Also, the UN humanitarian chief warned that daunting problems in Africa’s Sahel region are getting worse and the region “is very close to a tipping point,” with climate change among the factors contributing to the situation.  Gloria Dickey reported in The Guardian that the Arctic is unravelling faster than anyone could once have predicted.  A study published in Science Advances showed that only a few degrees of warming in the Arctic is enough to abruptly activate large-scale permafrost thawing, which can release greenhouse gases at a massive scale.

The planet just recorded its hottest September since at least 1880, according to three temperature-tracking agencies.  Furthermore, 2020 is likely to be the hottest year when a La Niña event was present in the tropical Pacific Ocean.  On Wednesday, the temperature in Phoenix climbed to at least 100°F for the 144th time in 2020 (out of 288 days), surpassing 143 days in 1989 for the most instances on record.  Nearly half of the continental U.S. is gripped by drought, government forecasters said, and conditions are expected to worsen this winter across much of the Southwest and South.

Energy

According to the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2020”, the world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest … electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries.  In an update of its 2018 analysis, The Economics of Electrifying Buildings, RMI found that in every city they analyzed, a new all-electric, single-family home is less expensive than a new mixed-fuel home that relies on gas for cooking, space heating, and water heating.

The industry that operates America’s hydroelectric dams and several environmental groups announced an agreement to work together to get more clean energy from hydropower while reducing the environmental harm from dams.  Pumped storage has the ability to provide around-the-clock reliability for renewable energy projects, but is notoriously difficult to site.  Lithium-ion batteries now dominate energy storage at renewable energy installations, but competitors such as other battery types and nonchemical approaches could be better for intermediate-term storage, while hydrogen may be the answer for seasonal storage.  DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Dutch Government have issued a statement of intent for a hydrogen technology collaboration.  Japan plans to create a commercial hydrogen fuel supply chain by around 2030.

Sales of EVs in Europe are growing at such a pace that the continent looks increasingly likely to outpace China in the near future.  Arrival, a UK-based EV startup backed by Hyundai and Kia that’s preparing to make electric delivery trucks for UPS, is building a factory in South Carolina that will be able to make as many as 1,000 battery-powered buses per year.

According to satellite imagery analyzed by Paris-based private data firm Kayrros, so far this year the global number of methane hot spots has soared by 32%, while methane leaks in Algeria, Russia, and Turkmenistan have grown by more than 40%.  A study published in AGU Advances found that the warming associated with such leaks negates the benefits of shifting electricity production from coal-fired power plants to gas-fired plants.  The EU is considering binding standards to limit methane leaks throughout the natural gas supply chain, but some question whether they go far enough.

The CEO of MHI Vestas Offshore Wind said that the company is developing a new wind turbine that will rival those by competitors Siemens Gamesa and General Electric.  Mitsubishi Corp. continues to explore the possibility of building an offshore wind project in Lake Erie to deliver power for New York state.

Potpourri

The Atlantic is launching “Planet”, a new section devoted to climate change, along with “The Weekly Planet”, a new newsletter.  In reviewing the documentary “I Am Greta”, BBC News chief environment correspondent wrote: “What Grossman has made is a coming of age movie wrapped up in a super-hero flick.  This is the story of how a troubled and lonely child discovers her hidden powers and uses them to change the course of the world.”  At The Daily Climate, Peter Dykstra proposed his list of missteps by the film industry when making eco-films.  Emily Atkin interviewed Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, the editors of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis.  Guardian environment correspondent Fiona Harvey recalled all of the successes of the environmental movement, arguing that it can also win the fight against the climate crisis.

Closing Thought

Here is an encouraging story from the intersection of philanthropy and technology, demonstrating how a unique type of foundation is helping new technologies bridge the chasm between invention and use.

Politics and Policy

The Editorial Board of the New York Times (NYT) has endorsed former Vice-President Joe Biden for president.  Biden’s transition team is considering appointing a climate and energy “czar” to help direct sweeping changes across federal agencies if he wins next month’s election.  A Biden administration would also take aim at the Trump administration’s rollbacks of many major environmental protections, but because of complexities in the rulemaking process, undoing just some of them could take years.  During the only vice-presidential debate, Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly falsely asserted that a Biden administration plans to ban fracking and adopt the Green New Deal.  Consequently, Dino Grandoni of the Washington Post compared Biden’s climate plan to the Green New Deal, as did David Roberts of Vox.  The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to consider a case that will determine how much leeway appeals courts get in deciding the best venue for climate lawsuits brought by states and cities.  NPR’s Jeff Brady examined how Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is likely to impact climate action if confirmed.

The Trump administration is behind schedule in putting out a call for scientists to produce the Fifth National Climate Assessment.  A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia appeared divided Thursday on President Trump’s effort to repeal his predecessor’s regulations on planet-warming emissions from the power sector and replace them with far weaker controls.  Marianne Lavelle summarized some of the arguments presented.  A federal court on Thursday struck down an Obama-era regulation targeting methane leaks from drilling on public lands, arguing that it went beyond the reach of the BLM, which promulgated the rule.  When it comes to acting on climate change, a new study suggests that people don’t like to feel that their freedom of choice is being threatened and would prefer ‘upstream’ solutions that target the producers rather than consumers of carbon-intensive goods.

The European Parliament has voted in favor of a legally binding target for the EU to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2030 (relative to 1990 levels), which is more ambitious than the emissions cut proposed by the European Commission and may be difficult to get ratified by the member nations.  China’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 would require investments of more than $5 trillion, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie.  Although any explicit reference to net zero carbon emissions was vehemently opposed at the Paris Climate Talks in 2015, more than a third of global emissions are now covered by net zero targets, demonstrating how quickly things can change, even with the U.S. opting out.

Investigative reporting by ProPublica revealed how the Virginia legislature succumbed to intensive lobbying by Dominion Energy, in spite of pledges to trim its power.  The Virginia Manufacturers Association is suing Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality and State Air Pollution Control Board over the state’s revision of regulations that will allow it to join a regional cap-and-trade market for carbon.  The Sierra Club and seven other environmental groups filed petitions late Monday asking the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay recently issued permits allowing the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to burrow under streams and wetlands until the court can hear their challenge of the authorizations.  The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday adopted the county’s first “Climate Action Plan”.  A legal principle embraced by Virginia that strictly curtails local powers is hampering cities from making progress on clean energy goals, according to a report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.  An expanding wood pellet market in the Southeast has fallen short of climate and job goals, instead bringing air pollution, noise, and reduced biodiversity in majority Black communities.

Climate and Climate Science

September was the warmest on record globally, according to the weather service Copernicus.  In interviews with CBS News, both James Hansen and Michael Mann stressed that the worst effects of climate change don’t have to happen, but humans’ actions in the near future will determine if they do.  Emissions of nitrous oxide, a climate super-pollutant hundreds of times more potent than CO₂, have increased by 30% since 1980, according to a new paper in the journal Nature.

As of October 7th, 16 billion-dollar weather/climate disasters have impacted the U.S., tying the annual records that occurred in 2011 and 2017, with three months left to go.  As hurricane Delta bore down on the U.S. Gulf Coast, it was the latest in a recent flurry of rapidly intensifying Atlantic hurricanes that scientists largely blame on global warming.  As of Tuesday morning, the August Complex Fire in the northern part of California had burned at least a million acres, while the total area burned set a new record twice as large as the old one, set 2018.

Although I have put several articles recently about the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers in West Antarctica, this article from Yale Climate Connections does an excellent job of summarizing recent research there.  Reuters had a very interesting and informative infographic and article about permafrost and its possible impacts in a warming world.

Because of the climate crisis, much of the Amazon could be on the verge of losing its distinct nature and switching from a closed canopy rainforest to an open savannah with far fewer trees.  The total area of Brazilian Amazon rainforest that has been degraded — through selective logging, understory fire, destruction of forest edges, and fragmentation — is larger than the total deforested area.

A top Trump official released a polar bear study by government scientists last Friday that highlights the endangered animals’ vulnerability to climate change and the fact that proposed oil drilling in Alaska would probably encroach on their habitat, causing more stress.

Energy

JPMorgan Chase & Co will support its clients in expanding investment in clean energy and work towards net zero-emissions by 2050.  Europe’s top oil companies are still not aligned with UN-backed targets to combat climate change, even after outlining ambitious plans to slash carbon emissions and pivot to renewable energy.  U.S. oil firms are doubling down on efforts to extract oil and gas, while pursuing technologies to capture and store carbon emissions.  Leaked documents revealed that ExxonMobil’s growth strategy will increase its annual carbon emissions by 17% between 2017 and 2025.  Within one week of each other, Ameren and Entergy pledged to cut CO₂ emissions to nothing by 2050.  The American public is facing a potential bill of $280 billion for the cleanup of 2.6 million unplugged oil and gas wells (not including an estimated 1.2 million undocumented orphan wells).

As Ford Motor Co., General Motors, and Volkswagen have unveiled new electric cars, they have admitted that electric models will in some ways be superior to models using internal combustion engines.  Toyota and Hino Trucks are developing their first Class 8 hydrogen fuel-cell electric truck for the North American market.  Developing a lithium industry using brine from California’s Salton Sea could help set up a multi-billion dollar domestic supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.

A new report concludes that the U.S. needs a massive green hydrogen industry to decarbonize its electricity, transportation, and industrial sectors, as well as major investments and policy changes to enable it to grow to its full potential.  Three analysts at Rocky Mountain Institute looked at the role hydrogen might play in powering gas turbines during periods when wind and solar production were low in a decarbonized economy.

Daniel Yergin, a long-time student of energy and energy policy, wrote about the impacts of COVID-19 on “the sprint away from fossil fuels”.  The Guardian’s Oliver Milman reviewed the status of carbon capture and utilization or storage.  A clutch of wave power developers is hoping to shake off the technology’s “forever-round-the-corner” reputation with commercial-scale arrays that could be in the water next year.  Linking floating solar panels with hydropower could generate anywhere from 16% to 40% of the world’s electricity, according to a new study by researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has just released its 2020 “Clean Energy Scorecard” for U.S. cities.  The organization that develops model building codes adopted by most cities and states in the U.S. met this week, pitting officials trying to go greener against real estate developers and the natural gas industry.

Potpourri

Terra Nostra, a 30-minute multimedia symphony about climate change is now available on-line.  At Yale Climate Connections, Spencer Weart reviewed Climate Change and the Nation State: The Case for Nationalism in a Warming World by Anatol Lieven.  In The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert published an excerpt from her afterward to a new compendium entitled The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change.  Advertisements on Facebook denying the reality of the climate crisis or the need for action were viewed by at least 8 million people in the U.S. in the first half of 2020.  An increasing number of psychologists believe the trauma that is a consequence of climate breakdown is also one of the biggest obstacles in the struggle to take action against rising greenhouse gas emissions.  The Yale and George Mason Universities’ programs on climate change communication have released a new report entitled “Climate Change in the Minds of U.S. News Audiences”.  Members of the Rockefeller family are leveraging their fortune and network of wealthy friends to pressure major U.S. banks to stop investing in fossil fuels.

Closing Thought

As some of you know, I am an engineer by nature and by training.  Consequently, the article that most boosted my optimism this week was one about Aaswath Raman and his team at UCLA, who have developed a passive cooling system that can help reduce energy use in a warming world.

Politics and Policy

Speaking via video to the UN General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Tuesday that his country would reach its peak greenhouse gas emissions ahead of its 2030 goal and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.  Steven Lee Myers analyzed what it means at the New York Times (NYT) and research consortium Carbon Action Tracker determined that, if achieved, the pledge could curb global warming by 0.2-0.3°C this century.  Furthermore, CAT also said that a change in U.S. leadership, combined with China’s new pledge and a European “green recovery”, could get the world two-thirds of the way to meeting its climate goals.  As part of Climate Week, Morgan Stanley, AT&T, and Walmart made fresh commitments and adopted more aggressive timetables for reducing emissions while GE announced that it will no longer build new coal-fired power plants.  Citing a rising threat to public health and the environment, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday signed an executive order aiming to make the state’s economy carbon-neutral by 2050.

More than 60 deep-pocketed donors asked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to commit to a moratorium on all new coal, oil, and natural gas development — and to select advisers who are “free from fossil fuel influence.”  Biden won the endorsement of progressive climate group 350 Action and two former Republican heads of the EPA, Christine Todd Whitman and William K. Reilly, backed him.  Public Policy Polling asked voters in eight battle ground states which candidate’s views on climate aligned more with their own; 55% chose Biden, 28% Trump, and 15% neither.  For some young conservatives, Trump’s position on climate change is a problem.  Nearly half of Americans think addressing climate change will help the economy while only 29% believe that climate policy will harm it.  Seven in ten voters support government action to address climate change, with three-quarters wanting the U.S. to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind within 15 years.  Democratic lawmakers have called on the Commission on Presidential Debates to include climate change in the debates.  There were two interesting opinion pieces this week about our choice in the Presidential election, one by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone and the other by Thomas Friedman in the NYT.

When asked whether he believed that human-caused carbon emissions are fueling hotter temperatures, DOE Secretary Dan Brouillette said: “No one knows that.”  EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said on Tuesday that there is “scientific debate” on whether hurricanes and other natural disasters are exacerbated by climate change.  The Trump administration’s pick to become the new chief scientist of NOAA is a meteorologist who frequently criticizes “climate alarmists”.  WBUR examined the politics of off-shore wind on the East Coast and how the election might impact it.  Even though many lawmakers from both sides of the aisle favor putting a price on carbon, two California academics argue that it is “ineffective”.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last Friday, helped establish the critical Supreme Court precedent that empowered the EPA to address the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.  Her death may eventually result in a reassessment of that decision.  If President Trump is able to replace Justice Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, he may stymie climate action for generations to come, while a second term could save some of his biggest environmental rollbacks.  The Congressional Budget Office has projected that because of climate change, the U.S. GDP will be 1% smaller in 2050 than it would have been otherwise.  The House on Thursday passed a broad bill that aims to boost energy efficiency and renewable energy sources as part of an attempt to combat climate change.

Climate and Climate Science

A new study examined “dry-hot extremes” (years with concurrent drought and heatwaves) across the contiguous U.S. from 1896-2017, finding that they have increased substantially in frequency in the past decades and are expanding spatially at an alarming rate.  John Branch and Brad Plumer of the NYT spoke with two dozen climate experts about this year’s cascading climate impacts and found that the most sobering message was that the world still hasn’t seen the worst of it.  Also at the NYT, a team has provided a retrospective analysis of this year’s West Coast fire season.  A group of scientists has conducted an extensive review of the literature and found an “unequivocal and pervasive” role for global warming in boosting the conditions for fire in the U.S. West Coast and other locations around the world.  Stanford University scientists estimate that smoke from the fires on the West Coast may have caused at least 1,200 excess deaths.

Since 2016, more than 1 million disaster-related displacements have occurred each year on average in the U.S.  Some people never return home.  In The New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote of the displacements of Californians by the wildfires.

From 1990 to 2015, the wealthiest 1% of the world’s population emitted more than twice as much CO₂ as the poorer half of the world.  Cows, pigs, and other farm livestock in Europe are producing more greenhouse gases every year than all of the EU’s cars and vans put together, according to a new analysis by Greenpeace.

New research suggests that even if the goals of the Paris agreement are met, melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will cause sea level to rise about eight feet.  The melting is likely to take place over a long period, beyond the end of this century, but is almost certain to be irreversible.  Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent on or around September 15, covering 1.44 million square miles, second only to 2012 at 1.32 million square miles.  Melting Arctic ice destabilizes the weather from the north, while the warming tropics move northward from the south, pressing the mid-latitudes, which have been climate sweet spots for humanity.

Bob Henson explained why the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has spun out of control.  Tornadoes are increasingly occurring in the Southeast, where they are twice as deadly as tornadoes elsewhere in the U.S.  A study found that climate change is making severe marine heat waves much more likely.

Energy

Saying “We can’t continue down this path,” California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order adopting a goal for all new passenger vehicle sales in the state to be zero-emission by 2035.  The L.A. Times said “Goodbye and good riddance.”  Energy analysts noted that it would change the nature of the load on the grid, but “not in an earth-shaking way”.  The Trump administration called the plan anti-consumer.

The lead story at Inside Clean Energy covered a compromise in South Carolina between advocates of solar power and a utility that may offer a blueprint for other states trying to resolve the debate over net metering.

At Tesla’s Battery Day, CEO Elon Musk outlined changes to lithium-ion battery design that the company is implementing.  When fully employed they will extend range by 54% and decrease the per kilowatt-hour (kWh) pack price by 56%.  The average cost of a lithium-ion battery cell is expected to fall below $100/kWh in the next three years, according to a new analysis by IHS Markit, and is expected to decline further through the end of the decade, to as low as $73/kWh in 2030.  In addition, according to an analyst with IHS Markit, it will be in the interests of just about everybody involved in the “broader lithium-ion battery supply chain” to establish effective recycling systems.  Jack Ewing has a fascinating article in the NYT on the race to dominate the battery market and to get electric cars on price-parity with gasoline ones.  A consortium of six electric utilities has pledged to bring the largest interstate electric vehicle charging network in the U.S. to the Midwest within two years.

Hyundai has announced plans to sell hydrogen fuel cell-powered trucks in the U.S. by 2022.  Daimler has revealed its new design for a long haul hydrogen fuel cell-powered truck that will start its customer trials in 2023.  Ballard Power Systems announced this week that it was working on a new Audi hydrogen fuel cell stack technology with the automaker.  Trevor Milton, founder and executive chairman of electric truck start-up Nikola, quit on Monday, but GM is sticking by them.  If you have questions about hydrogen as a fuel, this article in The Washington Post will probably answer them.

While BP and other European oil companies are investing billions in renewable energy, Exxon and Chevron are committed to fossil fuels and betting on moonshots.  The world is on course to sail past the recognized “safe” level of 2°C of warming to as much as 3°C, according to the latest Wood Mackenzie “Energy Transition Outlook”.  The International Energy Agency said that governments and major polluters must take urgent action to develop technologies that can capture and store carbon emissions or it will be “virtually impossible” for the world to meet its climate targets.  Nevertheless, Southern Company intends to try to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while still keeping natural gas as a central part of its business, both to generate electricity and to sell to its customers.

Potpourri

Columbia Journalism Review stated that “Some major U.S. media coverage of the [climate] crisis is finally getting better.”  Brian Kahn reviewed the new climate anthology All We Can Save at Earther while Bill McKibben had a conversation with the editors in the “Passing the Mic” section of his column, as did Phoebe Neidl at Rolling Stone.  David Roberts of Vox had a conversation with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, authors of the new book Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal.  At Yale Climate Connections, SueEllen Campbell covered several recent articles about the importance of “sliding baselines.”  United under Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, young people rallied worldwide on Friday to demand urgent action to halt climate change.

Closing Thought

Katharine Hayhoe: Giving people a sense of agency for fighting climate change means giving people hope.