Month: September 2020

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.

Politics and Policy

While visiting California on Monday President Trump was briefed on the raging wildfires, during which he declined to acknowledge the role climate change likely played in fueling the flames, which greatly concerned some members of his party and reaffirmed a profound misunderstanding, or denial, of the way that greenhouse gases affect the Earth’s atmosphere.  Trump’s denial prompted former Vice President Joe Biden call him a “climate arsonist”.  The Rhodium Group has estimated that the Trump administration’s rollback of climate-related regulations, if allowed to stand, will result in an additional 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2035.  David Legates, a controversial geography professor who rejects climate science, was hired by NOAA to oversee climate observation and prediction.  For the first time in its 175 year history, Scientific American is endorsing a presidential candidate, and it is Joe Biden.  Several business and environmental groups are calling for Congress to pass the American Energy Innovation Act, which would modernize the nation’s energy laws for the first time in more than 12 years.  On Tuesday, Democrats introduced the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act in the House, which parallels a similar Senate bill, allowing the two bodies to conference.  The staff of Greentech Media wrote: “The reality is there’s no bad outcome for clean energy in the upcoming election, though the impact on the climate is another story.”

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on governments not to “throw away” economic stimulus funds by supporting fossil fuel industries that contribute to global warming.  In a speech to the European Parliament, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU should set a target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, the minimum effort needed to put the EU on track to reach net zero emissions by 2050.  The International Monetary Fund endorsed an EU proposal to impose carbon levies on imports, if the countries from which the imports originate do not adopt a minimum carbon price.  Former Dow CEO Andrew Liveris, a special advisor to the Australian government, said that Australia could get to net zero CO₂ emissions by 2050 by using natural gas as a bridge fuel to decrease the use of coal.  The difference between the EU and Australia is similar to the split that some see occurring in the oil and gas industry over what the future holds for them.  Following a virtual summit with EU leaders, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said that China is considering carbon neutrality as part of its long-term climate plan.

Based on two new reports, David Roberts at Vox concluded that five basic reforms are needed to develop an innovation system capable of supplying the technologies required to decarbonize the U.S. by midcentury.  The conclusion of the latest report by the Energy Transitions Commission is that a net-zero carbon global economy is technically and economically possible by the middle of this century.  A “Perspective” piece in The Washington Post argued that stopping climate change could cost less than fighting COVID-19.  A coalition of environmental and tribal groups sued the EPA over its rollback of two rules meant to limit the amount of methane emitted by the oil and gas sector.  Interestingly, EPA bowed to White House pressure during interagency review of the rules by reducing the frequency of measurements.  A court has temporarily halted the rollback, although the pause was simply procedural and said nothing about the merits of the rules.

E&E News summarized six energy-related law suits that are likely to be decided this fall.  Opponents of the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline have submitted 43,000 signatures urging FERC not to grant more time to complete the pipeline.  FERC has passed a long-awaited order to open up the country’s wholesale energy markets to distributed energy resources like rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries, and electric vehicles.  The nominees to fill the two vacancies on FERC appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  The Business Roundtable is endorsing a “market-based mechanism” as part of a plan to sharply curb greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

Climate and Climate Science

The U.S. West is still burning, spreading haze across the country, but so are many other places in the world.  Indeed, rising global temperatures and worsening droughts mean that the world has entered a new era of megafires for which traditional methods of firefighting are inadequate.  The fires in California this year through mid-September burned enough forest to put about 90 million metric tons of CO₂ into the air.  Robinson Meyers explained how the “vapor pressure deficit”, that is, the difference between the amount of water vapor that’s in the air and the amount of water vapor that the air can possibly hold, is a major driver of the intensity of the fires.  Meanwhile, slow-moving hurricane Sally blasted onto the U.S. Gulf Coast on Wednesday, unleashing massive floodwaters and powerful winds from the Florida Panhandle to Mobile, AL.  As if that weren’t enough, several new storms are brewing in the Atlantic.

Based on research by The Rhodium Group, ProPublica published a very interesting set of interactive maps illustrating how several environmental factors are likely to change in the future under two emissions scenarios.  Such changes will lead to migrations within the U.S.  ProPublica will present a webinar on the subject on September 29.  Also, the New York Times presented an analysis of climate risks across the U.S. in a graphical format.

An international team of scientists has published in the journal Atmospheric Environment a comprehensive study of the complex climate impact of aviation emissions, reaffirming that contrail clouds produce more warming than the CO₂ emitted.

Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in Antarctica are breaking free from the restraints that have hemmed them in, increasing the threat of large-scale sea-level rise.  An enormous chunk of Greenland’s ice cap has broken off in the far northeastern Arctic.  Between 1966 and 2015, all of the 26 named glaciers in Glacier National Park got smaller.  Some lost as much as 80% of their area, but the average loss was 40%.

In the northern hemisphere, June, July and August were 1.17°C (2.11°F) above the 20th-century average, according to NOAA, setting a new record for the hottest summer.  A study published in Nature Climate Change has found that the Arctic region is moving into a new climate regime, with the rate of change depending on future CO₂ emissions.  Such changes are already impacting the fisheries in Alaska.

Energy

The Economist had a special issue Thursday about “The new energy order.”  The editorial introducing the issue provided an overview of the most important issues.  (You can read the editorial for free by signing up and logging in.)  BP’s “Energy Outlook 2020” revealed that global oil demand will not regain the levels seen last year and that demand could soon fall rapidly in the face of stronger climate action – by at least 10% this decade and by as much as 50% over the next 20 years.

Over the past three years, some of the U.S.’s biggest electric utilities have committed to weaning themselves off carbon-emitting generation by 2050.  Jeff St. John at Greentech Media examined the five largest (by market capitalization) that have set net-zero targets so far.  Julian Spector looked at five that haven’t.  Google on Monday pledged that by 2030 it will run its entire business on carbon-free energy — every hour of every day of the year.  Facebook expects to eliminate or offset all of its own emissions this year, while completely decarbonizing its supply chain by 2030.  As much as 80% of the EU’s electricity could be fossil fuel-free by 2030, industry association Eurelectric said on Monday.

Scottish Power is starting a project to use green hydrogen to run buses, ferries, and trains as part of a pioneering partnership to develop the UK’s nascent hydrogen economy.  In Texas, Frontier Energy, in collaboration with 10 partners, announced on Sept. 15 the launch of three-year projects that are meant to show that green hydrogen can be a cost-effective fuel for multiple end-use applications.  Alstom hydrogen passenger train service has launched in Vienna, Austria, using onboard fuel cells for the conversion of hydrogen into electricity.

America’s air would become cleaner and its citizens more healthy if the country accelerated its transition to electric cars, the American Lung Association said in a new report.  Ford announced plans Thursday for a new plant to build the electric and plug-in hybrid versions of its bestselling vehicle, the F-150 pickup.  The plant, located in Ford’s Rouge complex in Dearborn, MI, will also assemble batteries.  The U.S. bus maker Blue Bird says its electric school buses sell so well, they will increase production capacity to 1,000 units a year.

Plans to build the nation’s first freshwater wind farm in Lake Erie northeast of Cleveland took a major step forward Thursday, as state regulators reversed their decision to limit the nighttime operation of the proposed wind turbines.  The University of Tennessee is developing a technology that would enable the recycling of wind turbine blades into new composites.

Potpourri

In an interactive Q&A, Carbon Brief explored how greenhouse gas emissions from meat, dairy, and other diets compare, as well as whether changes to the production and transportation of meat could help to reduce its climate impact.  I Am Greta, a documentary that follows Greta Thunberg from her first Friday school strikes in Stockholm to her 2019 UN speech in New York City, was reviewed by Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian.  Peter Dykstra of The Daily Climate compiled a list of some of the classic books and authors from the late 20th Century that helped define the environmental movement.

Closing Thought

Ambitious and expanded climate action by U.S. states, cities, and businesses can reduce emissions up to 37% by 2030.

Politics and Policy

Many nations are using government spending to stimulate their economies in response to COVID-19.  Properly structured, such spending can also fight climate change, although the U.S. Senate has been unwilling to adopt such measures.  In a pair of articles, reporters addressed what is being done to assist both big cities and rural areas.  The U.S. should establish a price on carbon and push financial institutions to be better prepared for the economic instability likely to be caused by climate change, according to a new report from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.  Bank of England executive director Anna Sweeney said on Wednesday that adapting to climate change is likely to be a far greater challenge for insurers than coping with COVID-19.  Economist Steve Keen argued at The Conversation that Nobel laurate William Nordhaus incorporated wrong assumptions in his modeling, leading him to erroneously conclude that the economic impacts of climate change will be small.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) introduced a resolution called THRIVE (Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy), which would bolster union jobs while tackling climate change and racial injustice.  In an analysis of the fight for the Senate, Inside Climate News reporter Marianne Lavelle wrote that a harsh reality for advocates of climate action is that “If Democrats do flip the Senate, it will be due to victories by a slew of climate moderates.”  Fossil fuel-friendly language at a Wisconsin roundtable is the latest sign that Democrats remain divided over how to reduce CO₂ emissions if they win power.  The Senate has agreed to an amendment to the American Energy Innovation Act that would reduce the use of hydrofluorocarbon gases by 85% over a 15-year period.  A growing number of lawmakers and green groups is asking the moderators for the presidential debates to include questions on climate change policy.  Most of our governmental systems are set up to handle one problem at a time, whereas climate change can cause cascading effects, as California is experiencing.  Just as the EPA has been in a mad dash to rescind environmental regulations in the lead-up to November’s election, BLM now seems to be embarking on a fire sale of public lands to oil and gas drillers.  Beginning September 18 and continuing each Friday until the election, Yale Climate Connections will address one of seven key climate messages.

China and many of the world’s other big greenhouse gas emitters (but not the UK or EU) are waiting for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election before deciding whether — and by how much — to boost their climate pledges.  Vox is producing a series of videos aimed at the elections.  One deals with decarbonizing the U.S. energy and is much easier to follow than the various articles on the subject.  It is only 11 minutes long and is well worth your time.  Europe’s largest and most influential political faction, the center-right European People’s Party, has rallied behind an EU objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 55% by 2030, while the European Parliament’s environment committee voted in favor of a 60% cut.

Writing on the RMI blog, Senior Principal Thomas Blank addressed the need to begin decarbonizing industry now.  Charleston, SC, officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 24 fossil fuel companies, claiming that because they contributed to climate change — and misled the public about the danger their products posed to the environment — they should have to bear the cost of repairing the damage caused by flooding in the city.  Duke Energy announced a new pledge on Wednesday to convert most of its current 10,000-vehicle fleet to electric or another zero-carbon alternative.  Americans support aggressive government regulation to fight the effects of climate change, including outright bans on building in flood- or fire-prone areas.

Climate and Climate Science

The big news story this week was the wildfires in the western U.S., which experts say are unprecedented.  They prompted New York Times (NYT) opinion writer-at-large Charlie Warzel to write “The point of this column isn’t to guilt people for where they live or what they’ve experienced, but to convey the desperation that so many Americans are feeling right now. … It’s a psychological toll, as much as it is physical.  One that, while you’re living through it, renders it difficult to see a healthy future for the earth through all the smoke.”  Also at the NYT, John Schwartz explored “The ‘straightforward’ link between climate and California’s fires.”  Furthermore, in recent weeks, the world has seen peat fires in the Arctic, torrential rains in Africa, weirdly warm temperatures on the surface of tropical oceans, and record heat waves from California to the Siberian Arctic, all of which are consistent with climate change.  All of this is prompting climate scientists to remind us that this is what they were warning of ten years ago and to warn of what will happen ten years from now.  Climate forecasters said Thursday that the world has entered La Niña, which has the potential this winter to worsen what are already severe drought conditions in the American Southwest.  Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest worsened in the first week of September and are increasingly spreading into areas of untouched forest.

Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) is the difference between the heat entering Earth’s atmosphere from the sun and the amount of heat being radiated to space by Earth.  It is the fundamental thing driving global heating; as long as it remains above zero, Earth will warm.  A new study has measured EEI and found that it has increased by 16% in five years.  In a relatively long essay, climate scientist James Hansen commented on the significance of the findings, while Clean Technica author Steve Hanley summarized Hansen’s comments.  In the next five years, the world has nearly a 1-in-4 chance of the global average temperature exceeding 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial times, according to a new update released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and others.  Meanwhile, concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere hit a record high this year, according to the WMO, as the economic slowdown from the coronavirus pandemic had little lasting effect.  Two geoscientists and a philosopher at the University of Chicago have estimated that climate change will ultimately cost humanity $100,000 per ton of carbon emitted.

Scientists continue to learn about the channels that allow warm ocean water under Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier, melting it from below.  While the channels are not as large as previously thought, they are widening, but at an unknown rate.  A study published in Nature Climate Change found that ice melt, rather than thermal expansion, is now the major contributor to sea level rise and that the rate of melt now matches the IPCC’s worst-case scenario.

More than 1 billion people face being displaced within 30 years as the climate crisis and rapid population growth drive an increase in migration with “huge impacts” for both the developing and developed worlds, according to an analysis by the Institute for Economics and Peace.  In addition, nature is being destroyed by humans at a rate never seen before, with the result that wildlife populations have fallen by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years, according to a major report by the WWF.

Scientists have now succeeded in estimating Earth’s temperature back 65 million years, putting today’s global average temperature into a long term perspective.  The data show that the path we are on today does not bode well.  New research has confirmed that trees that grow rapidly have a shorter lifespan, which means that their ability to tie up CO₂ may be too short-lived to help tackle the climate crisis.

Energy

The transformation of the power sector to carbon-free generation will only get the world one third of the way to the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century, a report by the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.  It also said that a “dramatic” scaling up of clean energy technologies will be required if the world is to reach its climate goals.  It is now time for Washington to become more aggressive in weaning the U.S. off of fossil fuels and settling into a carbon-free future, a panel of electric utility and environmentalist leaders said on Wednesday at the Edison Electric Institute Virtual Leadership Summit.  However, a Reuters survey of top U.S. power producers found that they thought that rapid advances in nascent technologies — such as batteries, carbon capture, and advanced nuclear reactors — will be critical to reaching net-zero CO₂ emissions.

Dominion Energy announced last Friday it has filed with the NRC for a 20-year extension of its license to operate two generating units at the North Anna nuclear power plant in Louisa County, VA.

On Wednesday, General Motors announced the development of a new wireless battery management system that could eliminate up to 90% of the battery’s physical wiring and 15% of its volume, and allow the automaker to more easily modify its batteries to any type of vehicle, from sports cars to heavy-duty trucks.  On Tuesday, GM said it will invest $2 billion in Nikola Corp., giving it an 11% stake in the electric truck startup.  However, on Thursday, an investment firm, Hindenburg Research, reported that Nikola fraudulently claimed its vehicles could do things they can’t, like drive.

The number of leading automotive companies committed to cutting emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement continued to rise this month, with Germany’s BMW Group being the latest global car maker to commit to setting a goal through the Science Based Target initiative.  Since it is likely that gasoline-powered internal combustion engines will be around for a while, engineers continue to investigate ways to make them more efficient and less polluting.  One technique is to replace conventional spark plugs with plugs that generate ultrafast bursts of blue plasma.

European oil majors BP and Equinor will partner for the U.S. offshore wind market, with BP paying $1.1 billion for a 50% stake in Equinor’s Empire Wind project off New York and its Beacon Wind project off southern New England.

Potpourri

Ted Halstead, founder, chairman and CEO of the Climate Leadership Council, was killed in a hiking accident in Spain.  Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, wrote the organization’s tribute to him.  Peter Sinclair’s latest “This Is Not Cool” video features a new University of California, Berkeley, study that showed that it is possible to achieve 90% carbon-free electricity by 2035 with no additional cost to consumers.

Closing Thought

If you would like a regular dose of good climate and clean-energy news, SueEllen Campbell has a list of weekly email newsletters that are worth a look.

Politics and Policy

In a letter Wednesday to the Commission on Presidential Debates, 70 House Democrats stressed that their constituents must hear from the candidates about how they plan to tackle climate change.  Joe Biden was unequivocal Monday in Pittsburgh: “I am not banning fracking.  Let me say that again.  I am not banning fracking.  No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me.”  The green movement’s left flank released an open letter Tuesday calling for a ban on all “fossil fuel executives, lobbyists, and representatives from any advisory or official position on [Biden’s] campaign, transition team, cabinet, and administration.”  Seventy-four-year-old incumbent Sen. Ed Markey beat out 39-year-old Rep. Joseph Kennedy III in the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary, in large part due to the work of climate activists on behalf of Markey.  According to Dan Shreve, research director at Wood Mackenzie, “If Biden’s bid fails, the U.S. will forfeit four more years in the fight against climate change.  This would dramatically reduce the possibility of eliminating carbon emissions from the region’s power grid before 2050.”

In a speech on the 50^th anniversary of the EPA, Administrator Andrew Wheeler accused Democrats of hurting the poor with policies aimed at fighting climate change, and said the agency would keep supporting development and deregulation if President Donald Trump is re-elected.  The Trump administration’s escalating threats of sanctions against Europe over Russian gas ties are threatening to blow back against U.S. energy companies.  On Monday the Trump administration weakened a 2015 regulation that would have forced coal-fired power plants to treat their wastewater with more effective methods to prevent toxic metals from contaminating lakes, rivers, and streams near their facilities.  Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has counted 159 actions since Trump took office “to scale back or wholly eliminate climate mitigation and adaptation measures.”  A court has for the second time struck down a Trump administration attempt to limit the penalties faced by automakers who do not meet mileage standards.  Inside Climate News took a look at Vice President Mike Pence’s efforts to block climate action.

A group of economists and scientists has proposed five science questions to be asked at the presidential debates.  How to account for the risk from rising sea level in the mortgage market is complicated, because the solution must also consider equality and equity.  And on a related note, insuring homes in areas subject to flooding and/or wildfires is becoming an increasingly difficult problem because of the conflicting needs of insurers and insureds.  In an article at RMI about tackling industrial CO₂ emissions, Ned Harvey wrote: “To limit global warming to 1.5°C we must engage the real economy and work directly with the leaders in the most carbon-intensive sectors in a way that hasn’t been done before.”  UN secretary general António Guterres has taken aim at India’s coal sector, warning that expansion plans make “no commercial sense” and would harm human health.

UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa told Climate Home News that she expects only about 80 out of 197 signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement to submit updated or more ambitious climate plans in 2020.  In the first climate case to be filed with the European Court of Human Rights, six Portuguese young people have filed a legal action accusing 33 countries (the 27 European member states, as well as the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine) of violating their right to life by not doing their fair share to tackle the climate crisis.  Norway’s $1.2 trillion wealth fund will ask the companies in its portfolio that emit the most CO₂ for more detailed climate-related data in order to understand the risk to its investments.

Climate and Climate Science

Last year, Earth’s land areas were 1.43°C warmer than the 20^th century average, while the oceans were 0.77°C warmer.  Why is that the case?  If you’re interested in knowing, Carbon Brief has an explanation.  New Zealand had its warmest winter since records began more than 100 years ago, according to official climate data.  Excessive heat watches and warnings were in effect across parts of Arizona, Nevada and much of California beginning on Friday and continuing through Labor Day, and may need to be extended.

The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as the global average and that this summer will go down for leaving a “deep wound” there.  Spokeswoman Clare Nullis said “The rapid decline of sea ice in turn contributes to more warming, and so the circle goes on and the consequences do not stay in the Arctic.”  The Bering Sea ice cover during the winters of 2018 and 2019 hit new lows not seen in thousands of years, scientists reported on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

Glacier melting over the last three decades has led to a 50% increase in the size of glacial lakes that form behind natural dams created by debris pushed along at the front of glaciers and left behind as glacier fronts retreat.  It also has led to more lakes.  Both suggest that there will greater numbers of glacial lake outburst floods when those dams collapse.  A guest post in Carbon Brief said that Greenland has had a relatively “normal” year with regard to ice changes at its surface, although losses by the breaking off of icebergs remain at the high end.

Although data are still incomplete, it is likely that fires in the Brazilian Amazon during August will be the worst in ten years, putting indigenous people at risk.  Wetlands in the Parana River delta region of Argentina are extremely drive and are experiencing the worst wildfires in at least ten years.  The amount of CO₂ emitted by Arctic wildfires this year is already 35% higher than the figure for the whole of 2019.

Last Saturday, Bob Berwyn looked back at the ten day period from August 16 to 25, which encompassed extraordinary climate events from the Death Valley heat record to hurricane Laura.

Energy

Combined, solar and wind accounted for more than two-thirds of new global power generation capacity additions in 2019.  Solar is now the fourth-largest source of power-generation capacity worldwide, having overtaken wind.  A new initiative announced Wednesday will install up to 12 MW of solar power in Virginia’s historic coalfield region over the next three years.  In an effort to become carbon neutral by 2024, Duke University will partner with Pine Gate Renewables to build three new solar farms with a total capacity of 101 MW.  Ørsted, a developer synonymous with offshore wind, is now moving into the development of solar farms and battery energy storage systems as it seeks to diversify its renewable energy activities, particularly in the U.S.  The U.S. currently has seven offshore wind turbines, all located on the East Coast.  However, the Department of the Interior has approved 16 projects altogether and has an additional seven proposals under review.  Companies that make and install offshore turbines see this as just the beginning.

A new study of 3,000 power companies has found that only a handful have been cutting their fossil fuel capacity.  Much of the new renewable capacity is being offset by new coal and gas capacity.  A study published in the journal Nature Communications said that while switching from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy was critical for mitigating against climate change, the mining necessary to produce the infrastructure for that energy could exacerbate threats to biodiversity.

A unique pilot plant in Luleå, Sweden, is a first step in decarbonizing the steel industry, which today accounts for 7% of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions.  Unilever will invest $1.2 billion to replace petrochemicals in its cleaning products with ingredients made from plants and marine sources, such as algae, by 2030.  The most comprehensive analysis so far of how much warming is caused by airplanes has found that flying’s contribution to global warming nearly doubled between 2000 and 2018.

Agreements to deploy 1 GWh of novel aqueous zinc battery energy storage in Texas and 500 MWh in California have been struck by technology provider Eos Energy Storage.  During California’s recent electricity crisis, more than 30,000 batteries located all over the state supplied as much power as a midsize natural gas power plant.  A hybrid energy storage system combining lithium-ion batteries with mechanical energy storage in the form of flywheels has gone into operation in the Netherlands.

BMW Group is the latest global car maker to commit to setting a science-based target that would allow them to determine how much and how quickly they need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.  Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have developed a new catalyst for automotive fuel cells that requires only a fraction of the platinum required in current fuels cells, thereby lowering their cost.

Potpourri

Because my magazine was late in coming, I missed an article about environmental justice in last week’s C&EN.  It provides some history of the movement as well as an update on activities in communities of color near petrochemical plants.  Washington Post climate and science reporter Sarah Kaplan had a conversation with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, editors of a collection of essays, poetry, and art by 41 women in the climate movement.  More information about the mysterious craters that have been appearing in the Siberian tundra is becoming available.  Ultramafic wastes are the calcium- and magnesium-rich rock in which diamonds, nickel, platinum, and palladium are found.  Scientists have found that such wastes, which are highly alkaline, have an extraordinary ability to react with CO₂, forming highly insoluble carbonates that can lock away the CO₂ essentially forever.

Closing Thought

More and more businesses are taking steps to address their own role in the climate crisis and offering solutions to help mitigate its impacts, said Vanderbilt Law School’s Michael Vandenbergh at Inside Climate News.