Month: December 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.