Month: July 2020

Politics and Policy

The Black Lives Matter movement is having an impact on the “big greens”, causing them to look deeply into their history and inclusivity, as well as their unconscious marginalization of minority employees.  When Alaska’s all-white Congressional delegation branded opposition to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge as a form of racial discrimination last month, they were accused by Native organizers of fomenting a hypocritical and misleading narrative.  The Tesoro High Plains Pipeline was ordered shut down after 67 years of operation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for trespassing on land owned by Native Americans.  The Three Percenters, a loosely organized group of far-right militants, appear to have established a significant presence in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield.

The Democratic National Committee released a draft of its 2020 policy platform on Wednesday; Dharna Noor discussed the parts related to climate change at Earther.  Even if Joe Biden wins in November and the Democrats manage to take the Senate, there will still be a giant hurdle facing a climate bill: the Senate filibuster.  Democratic lawmakers are privately talking about their strategies for undoing Trump’s environmental and public health rollbacks should they win in November.  Progressive Democrats led by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Friday introduced a bill to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, among other things.  Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) is sponsoring a bill that would ensure health care coverage for coal workers who lose their jobs as the country shifts to cleaner forms of energy, as well as cover higher education costs for the coal miners and their families.  Climate scientist Allison Crimmins argued at Vox for the creation of a cabinet level Department of Climate.  A U.S. federal district court ruled that California’s coordination with Quebec in a cap and trade carbon emissions market is constitutional.  The Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives and four others have been arrested in connection with an alleged $60 million bribery scheme involving a controversial law passed last year that bailed out two nuclear power plants while gutting subsidies for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

EU leaders reached a recovery deal on Tuesday that included devoting nearly €550 billion to green projects over the next seven years, although some were concerned about the lack of precise guidelines on how the money can be spent.  In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, discussed an issue that has concerned me for some time: “Legal strategies that have derailed pipelines can also be turned against clean energy projects urgently needed to combat climate change.”  Morgan Stanley is the first U.S.-based global bank to join the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials, an international collaboration that aims to “standardize carbon accounting for the financial sector” by tracking how banks’ and investment firms’ assets are contributing to climate change.  A letter from pension funds and other investors representing almost $1 trillion in assets urged the Federal Reserve, the SEC, and other financial regulators to act on climate-change concerns to avoid economic disaster.  At the Independent, Louise Boyle reported on the proliferation of misinformation about climate change on Facebook.

The EPA on Wednesday proposed new regulations to reduce CO₂ emissions from air travel, but the proposal would simply adopt 2017 emissions standards from the International Civil Aviation Organization, which most U.S. airlines already meet.  On Thursday EPA took action to bolster the struggling uranium mining industry that environmentalists warn risks contaminating the West’s limited water supplies.  Emails, recently made public in a lawsuit that 15 states brought against the EPA, suggest that the agency rescinded a reporting requirement on methane at the request of the president of the Western Energy Alliance just weeks after President Trump took office.  A new analysis published in the medical research journal BMJ found that 95% of the world’s dietary guidelines are incompatible with at least one of the goals set by international climate and public health agreements, and that 87% aren’t compatible with emissions pathways to limit global warming to below 2°C.

Climate and Climate Science

A very long review article was published this week in the journal Reviews of Geophysics.  The subject was climate sensitivity, i.e., the warming that would occur from a doubling of CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere.  A major conclusion is that the likely range of sensitivity values has been decreased to 2.6–4.1°C.  (If you have read your allocation of free articles at the NYT, then you can read about the study here, here, or here, none of which is paywalled.)

ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine jointly investigated the question of “Where Will Everyone Go?” as climate conditions change to the point that they will no longer support agriculture and people are forced to move or starve.  Another article in the magazine examined the impacts of the 50-year, $50 billion Louisiana Coastal Master Plan on the people of Plaquemines Parish, illustrating the conflicting interests associated with adaptation to sea level rise.

Scientists have, for the first time, discovered an active leak of methane gas from the sea floor in Antarctica.  As reported in the journal Nature, researchers have found evidence of ice loss from Wilkes Basin in eastern Antarctica during a climate warming event 400,000 years ago, which suggests that parts of the East Antarctic ice sheet could be lost to modern warming trends.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that as the climate warms, birds are not only breeding earlier, but their breeding windows are also shrinking—some by as many as 4 to 5 days. This could lead to increased competition for food that might threaten many bird populations.  In addition, a new study in Nature Climate Change found that under a “business-as-usual” CO₂ emissions scenario, most polar bear subpopulations would either be certain, or very likely, to experience declines in reproduction and cub survival by the end of the century.

Ice cover across the entire Arctic Ocean is currently at its lowest mid-July extent on record.  New research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans shows that maximum wave heights across the Arctic Ocean, which encompasses the Beaufort Sea, could be upward of six meters higher on average within this century, leading to even more erosion and flooding of indigenous villages.  Virginia coastal communities in 2019 saw two to five times more nuisance flooding than the national average.

Energy

Green energy, which includes wind, solar, hydro, and bioenergy, generated 40% of EU electricity in the first half of 2020, compared to fossil fuels generating 34%.  Europe has a long history with hydroelectric power, but there are questions about its appropriate role in a carbon-free energy future.

A number of articles recently have touted hydrogen as a major component in the UK’s low carbon future.  Tom Baxter, a Senior Lecturer in chemical engineering at the University of Aberdeen took issue with that assessment.  American industrial gas giant Air Products & Chemicals announced its intention to construct a massive green hydrogen plant in Saudi Arabia that would be powered by 4 GW of the country’s wind and solar energy and produce 650 tons of hydrogen per day.

Five wholesale electric power market executives agree that natural gas will continue to play an essential role on the electric power grid.  A $350 million natural gas project spanning much of eastern Virginia has been put on hold by Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, in part due to environmental justice concerns.

New York on Tuesday issued a request for proposals for up to 2.5 GW of offshore wind capacity.  The Georgia Public Service Commission agreed on Tuesday to let Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric utility, accept bids for a new 50 MW biomass generation plant.  There is a new organization called the Good Energy Collective that is making the progressive case for advanced nuclear power.  Four of its five board members are women, as are its cofounders.

According to a study published in the journal Applied Energy, energy storage displaces other capacity investments in three major ways: (i) reducing variable renewable investments; (ii) replacing thermal generators; and (iii) deferring transmission upgrades.

Potpourri

Bill McKibben fell off of his bicycle last week, breaking six ribs and a shoulder blade, as well as incurring a severely separated shoulder.  Nevertheless, he had some interesting comments about the significance of Joe Biden’s climate plan in his weekly New Yorker column.  This one came out a couple of weeks ago, but I missed it: Amy Brady presented five books about climate change at Literary Hub.  An art project being planned for Burning Man 2021 aims to help participants imagine what life might be like 100 years from now if CO₂ emissions followed each of three different scenarios.  As part of its climate issue, The New York Times Magazine profiled teenage climate activist Jamie Margolin.  Greta Thunberg has been awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity and will donate the one-million-euro prize money through her foundation to different projects aimed at fighting the climate crisis.  At The Guardian, Jonathan Watts interviewed James Lovelock, best known as the father of Gaia Theory, on the eve of his 101st birthday.

Closing Thought

As the pandemic and extreme weather disrupt electricity supplies for many, alternative energy sources are coming to the fore in rural Kenya.

Politics and Policy

Former Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a proposal Tuesday to transform the nation’s energy industry, pledging to eliminate carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 and spend $2 trillion to turbocharge the clean energy economy.  In a speech Wednesday, President Trump displayed just how far apart he and Biden are ideologically on infrastructure and environmental matters.  As might be expected, the oil and gas lobby was not thrilled with several parts of Joe Biden’s new climate plan.  Author David Wallace-Wells interviewed Washington Governor Jay Inslee about Biden’s embrace of so many of Inslee’s ideas about tackling climate change.  Some of the world’s leading climate scientists have written to EU leaders demanding they act immediately to avoid the worst impacts of the unfolding climate and ecological emergency.  Their letter said that the response to COVID-19 has made it clear that “…the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, neither from the politicians, media, business nor finance.”

On Wednesday, the White House finalized its rollback of one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act.  Later that day a federal judge in California blocked the rollback of a rule requiring reduction of methane emissions from oil and gas operations on federal and tribal lands.  The administration has been systematically underestimating the damage caused by carbon pollution according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.  At Yale Environment 360, Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow Jonathan Mingle wrote: “The demise or delay of several major oil and gas pipelines in recent weeks, including the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, demonstrate how the Trump administration’s zeal for fossil fuel projects and flaunting of environmental laws has backfired and handed key victories to environmentalists.”  A lower court last week ordered the temporary shutdown of the Dakota Access pipeline, but an appeals court on Tuesday stalled that order.

Official dietary advice across the world is harming both the environment and people’s health, according to scientists who have carried out the most comprehensive assessment of national dietary guidelines to date.  C40 Cities, a network of mayors committed to meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, has released a report arguing that urban economies need to prioritize green investments in order to create a more resilient society that can withstand global shocks.  COVID-19 is having a climate impact as commuters reject mass transit and embrace their cars.  At the Virginia Mercury, Sarah Vogelsong examined the question of how a network of electric vehicle charging stations in Virginia should be developed and managed, by the regulated electric utilities or a competitive marketplace.  Two clean energy advocates, CAAV Steering Committee member Sally Newkirk and Virginia Sierra Club’s Seth Heald, are challenging incumbents in electric utility co-op board elections this summer.

On Thursday, FERC unanimously rejected a petition from the New England Ratepayers Association to declare all state solar net-metering policies illegal.  Some states and cities have adopted carbon neutrality goals, requiring the phase out natural gas.  Using New England as a case study, Emily Pontecorvo examined the complex interrelated questions that must be addressed while doing so.  Results from a study published in Environmental and Resource Economics showed that countries with carbon prices on average had annual CO₂ emissions growth rates that were about two percentage points lower than countries without a carbon price.  Biomass currently represents almost 60% of the EU’s “renewable energy”, more than solar and wind power combined.  This makes it important that the biomass burned to get that energy is appropriate, so the EU is working on stricter sustainability criteria for bioenergy.  Ironically, in the U.S., the EPA is expected to propose a new rule declaring that burning biomass from forests can be considered carbon neutral, thereby loosening the sustainability criteria.

Climate and Climate Science

Papers published in the journals Earth System Science Data and Environmental Research Letters by researchers with the Global Carbon Project reported that from the 2000-2006 period to 2017, methane emissions from fossil fuel production and use increased by nearly 15% to 108 million tons per year while emissions from agriculture increased by almost 11% to 227 million tons per year.

Both NASA and NOAA agree that the first half of 2020 was the second hottest on record, trailing the first half of 2016 by only 0.05°C.  They also estimated that 2020 has a 36% chance of becoming the hottest year on record and a 99.9% chance of being among the top five.  According to a new report from NOAA, the increase in high-tide flooding along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the U.S. since 2000 has been “extraordinary.”

Researchers with the World Weather Attribution project have determined that the prolonged January-to-June heat wave across the Siberian Arctic was made at least 600 times more likely by human-caused climate change.  On the subject of heat, science editor David Shukman wrote at the BBC about impacts of extreme heat on humans and the role of “wet bulb globe temperature” as a guideline to recognizing unsafe conditions.  The official weather observing station in Death Valley, CA reached 128°F on Sunday, the hottest temperature anywhere on Earth since 2017 and only 1°F behind what experts say is likely the hottest temperature ever recorded.

The impact of climate change on wildfires is complex.  At Carbon Brief, Daisy Dunne examined how wildfires around the world are changing, the influence of global warming on them, and how risks might multiply in the future.

According to a paper published in the journal Nature, grinding up basalt rock and spreading the resulting powder across agricultural fields can accelerate Earth’s natural rate of CO₂ absorption by “enhanced rock weathering.”

Energy

The International Energy Agency has issued its latest “Clean Energy Innovation” report, which seeks to determine whether the tools available for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions are capable of doing so.  David Roberts did a good job of dissecting and summarizing the report at Vox.

In his “Inside Clean Energy” column this week, Dan Gearino covered several topics, two of which I found to be particularly interesting.  The lead article is about energy company PacifiCorp and their move toward more clean energy, an undertaking that requires them to satisfy regulators in a very diverse array of states.  The second article addressed the topic of what to do with solar panels when they reach the end of their useful life and referenced a paper that recently appeared in the journal Nature Energy.

In 2019, California utilities implemented preventative blackouts as a way to eliminate the risk of grid equipment sparking fires.  Greentech Media examined the use of microgrids as an alternative strategy for reducing risk.  Also, a recent study by California’s three investor-owned utilities found that solar backed by four hours of storage can achieve nearly 100% reliability during the daytime.  Dutch scientists collaborated with the power company Liander to study the impacts of clouds on electricity production by solar panels and found that the highest power peaks occurred under partly cloudy conditions.  Rocky Mountain Institute issued a new report on reimagining grid resilience as we transform our electrical energy system.  And for a tutorial on changing energy markets, you might read this article by Gordon Feller.

Data on the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories, cargo ships, controlled burns and every other human source on Earth could soon be part of the public domain, according to “ClimateTrace”, a consortium of technology companies and climate change nonprofits.  Recently, companies in the oil industry have announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  While the pledges sound impressive, many are misleading and misrepresent how much the oil giants are changing.  In fact, no company has committed to shrink its oil output this decade.

The continued availability of lithium is essential to the development of electric vehicles, electricity storage, and multiple other activities dependent on lithium-ion batteries.  Although most lithium is obtained by mining today, the oceans contain a vast amount of it, although at very low concentration.  Now scientists at Stanford University have devised a technique for extracting lithium from seawater, although it will require additional development before it can be applied.

Potpourri

Economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz reviewed Bjorn Lomborg’s new book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, concluding with “…Lomborg’s work would be downright dangerous were it to succeed in persuading anyone that there was merit in its arguments.”  MacArthur Fellow and National Academy of Sciences member Peter Gleick reviewed Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, stating “In short, what is new in here isn’t right, and what is right isn’t new.”  In July 2018, sustainability leadership professor Jem Bendell (Univ. of Cumbria, UK) self-published an article entitled “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy” after its rejection by a sustainability policy journal.  The article has been downloaded more than 600,000 times and has significantly impacted the ideology and strategy of climate movement organizations like Extinction Rebellion (ER).  Now, three young scientist members of ER have reviewed the science and conclusions of “Deep Adaptation” and found them to be deeply flawed.  U.S. ranchers are upset with Burger King over a video it released touting the benefits of lemongrass as a dietary additive for reducing methane emissions from cattle.  David Kaiser, who steered the Rockefeller Family Fund into a pitched confrontation with Exxon Mobil, died on Wednesday at a family home on Mount Desert Island, ME.

Closing Thought

Catherine Coleman Flowers is a senior fellow of environmental justice and civic engagement at the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, a rural development manager for the Equal Justice Initiative, and the only Black woman to serve on the Biden task force on climate change.

Special Event: Chautauqua Institution

The theme at the Chautauqua Institution this week was climate change.  Because of COVID-19 all of the lectures and other activities were moved online, instead of in-person.  If you go to https://assembly.chq.org/ you can start a 90-day free trial, which provides plenty of time to see what happened this week, as well as what will be going on this summer.  Once you are in, go to the Assembly and then scroll down to “Weekly Themes” where Climate Change will be the first one.  Click on it to go to the video library.  The main lectures are “Government, Economics, and the Climate”; “The Ocean and the Climate”; “How to Reduce Greenhouse Gases” (which was super); and “The State of Global Environmental Action.”  There are lots of other videos from the week to explore.  Enjoy the Chautauqua experience virtually.

Politics and Policy

Carbon Brief has updated its tracker of government “green stimulus” measures launched in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Preliminary findings from a study by 14 research groups showed that as of 1 July, more public money commitments in response to COVID-19 went to fossil fuels than to cleaner energies in the U.S. and several others.  The 36 countries that sit on the council of the International Civil Aviation Organization agreed to postpone the date airlines have to start paying for carbon credits to offset a portion of their climate impact.

Prominent environmentalists and Democratic activists said Facebook is “allowing the spread of climate misinformation to flourish, unchecked” and urged the company’s external oversight board to intervene.  At her blog, climate reporter Emily Atkin described the actions of the natural gas industry when trying to defeat the all-electric housing plan of the town of San Luis Obsipo, CA.  The group claiming status as a ratepayer advocacy group in its attempt to get FERC to override state net-metering rules has finally revealed the identity of one of its members.

On Thursday, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in a statement that “The message is very clear: in the absence of much faster clean energy innovation, achieving net-zero goals in 2050 will be all but impossible.”  House Democrats’ “Climate Crisis Action Plan” lays out a blueprint for moving the U.S. toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  At Vox, David Roberts discussed its twelve policy “pillars”.  House Democrats passed a $1.5 trillion green infrastructure plan that would increase funding to repair the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges while setting aside funds for broadband, schools, and hospitals.  In response, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “Naturally this nonsense is not going anywhere in the Senate.”  In an essay in The Guardian, Columbia University professor and Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz argued for investing in the green economy.  Ireland’s new coalition government has set an ambitious goal to deliver steep greenhouse gas emission cuts every year to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.  The collapse of oil and gas prices has had a major negative impact on countries that depend on the industry for a large percent of their income, providing a preview of what can happen as the world moves away from fossil fuels.  In The Atlantic, the former U.S. Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs argued that the international community must be prepared to manage the fallout from such change in those countries.

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has issued a new series of maps that compare the views of Democrats and Republicans on several aspects of climate change.  In a commentary for the Orlando Sentinel, the president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship argued that conservatives should follow the example set by President Reagan, who, when faced with the destruction of the ozone layer, listened to the scientists, weighed all the facts, and chose to act.  Top House Republicans are backing a climate policy framework, the “American Climate Contract”, outlined by the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative youth climate group.

Climate and Climate Science

Recently, I’ve provided links to articles noting that many of the newest climate models project higher future warming than older models.  A frequently offered explanation lies in how they incorporate clouds.  Now, CBS News Meteorologist and Climate Specialist Jeff Berardelli has examined clouds and why they are so complex at Yale Climate Connections.  At Carbon Brief, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather has provided an explanation of how the rise and fall of atmospheric CO₂ levels influenced the ice ages.

Climate change will make it much harder for tropical plants around the world to germinate, with temperatures becoming too hot for the seeds of 20% of them by the year 2070.  Also, a new study in the journal Science found that with medium-level climate change, by the end of the century the world’s oceans, rivers, and lakes will be too hot for about 40% of the world’s fish species when in their spawning or embryonic life stages.

Miami just experienced its hottest week on record, rounding out its warmest first half of the year ever observed.  Two out of every three days this year have featured a broken record of some sort somewhere in South Florida.  Also, a potentially historic heat wave is expected to hit more than two-thirds of the continental U.S. in the first several weeks of July.  The Northeast U.S. is the fastest warming region among the contiguous 48 states.  An examination of temperature reconstructions during the Holocene Epoch (the last 12,000 years) revealed that Earth started cooling about 6,500 years ago, but all of it has been erased by the warming since 1850.

An exhaustive report released Monday by the First Street Foundation shows that nationally, there are at least 6 million households that are unaware they’re living in homes that have a 1% chance of flooding each year.  Furthermore, the chance is increasing each year due to climate change.

Scientists said on Monday that the South Pole is one of the most rapidly warming places on Earth, with surface air temperatures rising since the 1990s at a rate that is three times faster than the global average.

Energy

At Inside Climate News, Dan Gearino took issue with Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette’s op-ed about coal in the Harrisburg, PA, Patriot-News.  Two more utilities, in Arizona and Colorado, are moving to accelerate closure of coal plants and replace them with renewable energy backed by batteries, joining a broader push in both states to shift to more cost-effective clean energy.

During the first half of this year, solar, wind, biomass, and hydroelectric generation together produced 55.8% of Germany’s electricity.  German lawmakers have finalized plans for the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, which will make them the first major economy to phase out both coal and nuclear energy.  Battery manufacturer Varta will receive $338 million of German government funding to develop large format lithium-ion cells.

Utilities that are transitioning away from coal are starting to view the creation of a natural gas “bridge” to renewable energy as an unnecessary step.  The assumed useful life of utility-scale solar projects now averages 32.5 years, up from 21.5 years in 2007, thereby helping lower the levelized cost of energy from them.  More than 500 residential energy storage batteries will be aggregated into a virtual power plant by utility Portland (Oregon) General Electric.

The UK business secretary gave the green light on Wednesday evening to the 1.8 GW Norfolk Vanguard windfarm project, which will be more than 40 miles off the Bacton coast of England.  Meanwhile, in the U.S., Dominion Energy and its partner Ørsted have completed installation of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot located 30 miles off Virginia Beach.

Norwegian oil firm Equinor plans to build a plant in Britain to produce hydrogen from natural gas in combination with carbon capture and storage, so-called blue hydrogen.  With the EU set to announce its long-term hydrogen strategy in mid-July, one question has emerged at the heart of the debate: Should blue hydrogen be excluded from the plans?  China has developed its latest draft of the regulations that will govern the storage and transportation of hydrogen for powering vehicles.  The Economist published a very clear-eyed evaluation of the potential role of hydrogen in a carbon-free economy.

Potpourri

In her “Climate Curious” column at the Washington Post, Sarah Kaplan addressed the link between climate change and racial justice.  The Economist has a new series of “The world if” articles, focusing on climate change.  Each of the eight pieces is fiction, but “grounded in historical fact and real science”.  In a video at Inside Climate News, author James Edward Mills addresses the idea that access to nature and outdoor recreation are critical, underappreciated environmental justice issues.  Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau’s film 2040 has been called the “most upbeat documentary about climate change” in several years.  It is available for pay-for-view streaming until the end of July.

Closing Thought

How two nuns helped Southern Co. wake up to climate change.