Climate News by Professor Emeritus Les Grady

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending April 16, 2021 follows.  Please forward the Roundup to anyone you think might be interested.  For an archive of prior posts, visit the CAAV website.  It also contains news of events in the Central Shenandoah Valley as well as activities in which CAAV is involved.

Politics and Policy

President Joe Biden proposed $14 billion in spending on initiatives to fight climate change in his 2022 budget.  More than 300 businesses and investors called on the Biden administration to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.  Getting there is a challenging goal and a new series of briefs by RMI provides insights into how to achieve it.  A panel of international energy company executives said that the move to renewable energy is unstoppable, although investments in nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, energy storage, and transmission will also be required.  Environmentalists are debating how carbon offsets should fit into the goal of reaching “net-zero” emissions by 2050.  The editorial board of The Washington Post called on Biden to seek a carbon tax.  Executives from oil companies, utilities, and some of the world’s biggest companies met virtually with senators and staff to push a carbon-fee-and-dividend proposal, although many environmental groups remain skeptical of the regulatory trade-offs involved.  Meanwhile, 375 state and local elected officials signed a letter calling for an outright ban on new federal permits for fracking and fossil fuel infrastructure.  However, in an essay examining our future, Jeff Goodell wrote: “Fossil fuels are emblematic of a culture, a way of life, a political hierarchy, and an empire of wealth that will not go quietly into the night.”  The Interior Department has become the first big battlefield in the brewing fight over Biden’s climate change agenda.  The Washington State legislature has passed a bill that sets a target for all model-year-2030 passenger vehicles to be electric.

The Senate confirmed Brenda Mallory to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  Top Senate Democrats signaled they may have no choice but to bypass Republicans in order to advance President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package.  Two senators introduced a bipartisan bill to provide billions of dollars to plug oil and gas wells to provide jobs and cut methane emissions.  A coalition of US manufacturers and environmental organizations is calling on the government to quickly phase out the worst climate super-polluting chemicals used in air conditioners, refrigerators, etc.  Proposals to legislatively establish a clean electricity standard are getting attention from lobbyists in both the energy and advocacy sectors.

JPMorgan Chase said it will commit more than $2.5 trillion over the next decade toward long-term solutions that tackle climate change and contribute to sustainable development.  The Ohio River Valley Institute and ReImagine Appalachia released new reports detailing how Appalachian communities can create more than 30,000 new jobs by reclaiming and remediating abandoned coal mines and oil and gas wells.  Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) and house colleagues plan to introduce the Climate Risk Disclosure Act, which would eliminate biases in our financial system that impede efforts to significantly address climate change.

The Biden administration is nearing agreements with Japan, South Korea, and Canada to bolster carbon emission reduction targets ahead of the Earth Day summit, but similar deals with China, India, and Brazil remain elusive.  Climate envoy John Kerry met in Shanghai with his Chinese counterpart to press Beijing on reducing its carbon emissions, but in Beijing’s view, the US still has much ground to recover after walking away from the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA).  Biden’s plan to give $1.2 billion to the Green Climate Fund is “not enough” to make up for missed US payments, campaigners have said.  A majority of residents of European cities support a Europe-wide phaseout of internal combustion engine car sales from 2030 to reduce planet-warming emissions.  French MPs have voted to suspend domestic airline flights on routes that can be travelled by direct train in less than 2.5 hours.  Canada’s opposition Conservative Party dropped its resistance to carbon pricing and adopted a fee on emissions and fuels as part of its own climate plan.  A carbon price that starts low and rises steadily could help Asian countries reach their targets under the PCA over the next decade, according to the International Monetary Fund.  Around 40% of “committed emissions” from coal plants that have been built or proposed in Asia since 2015 could be attributed to the Western banks that financed them — with most of the remainder coming from Chinese banks.

Climate and Climate Science

An assertion by the Climate Council of Australia that the global average temperature rise will likely exceed 1.5°C by the 2030s has been challenged by others in the scientific community.  At NPR, Rebecca Hersher explained why the atmosphere will continue to heat Earth, even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow.  Researchers have found that melting land-based Northern Hemisphere ice, which increased global sea levels, was linked to retreat of the Southern Hemisphere’s Antarctic ice sheet.

More than one-third of the claims payments made last year by the National Flood Insurance Program were for properties located outside areas that FEMA considers at the highest risk of flooding.  Polling and analysis released last week by real estate site Redfin found that a surprisingly high number of Americans weighed climate risks into their decisions about whether or not to move.  Across the globe, the wealthiest 10% of people accounted for nearly half of the growth in CO₂ emissions associated with consumption habits from 1990 to 2015 — with the richest 5% responsible for more than a third.

Summer monsoon rainfall in India could increase by 5% for every 1°C increase in global temperatures, putting millions at greater risk of flooding and crop failure.  As Uganda’s mountain ice caps melt, ethnic groups are losing the traditional belief systems that have sustained them for thousands of years.  In western Canada and the US Upper Midwest, continuing drought has farmers extremely concerned as they approach planting time.  When the black spruce forests that recently burned in interior Alaska began regrowing, aspen and birch trees were mixed in with the spruce and were becoming the dominant species.

California, NASA, satellite company Planet, and others — with the backing of billionaire Michael Bloomberg — will launch their first two satellites in 2023 as part of a $100 million effort to pinpoint large emissions of methane from individual sources like power plants and oil refineries.

In California, incorporating agricultural wastes and by-products into cows’ diets is a key component in the dairy industry’s efforts to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy

A new kind of power plant using an Allam cycle natural gas turbine, which doesn’t add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, will be built in the US, potentially providing a way for utilities to keep burning natural gas without contributing to global warming.  Another new idea for using natural gas is a fuel cell that can be added to a fossil fuel power plant to capture the CO₂ from it while producing additional electricity.

China must shut down nearly 600 of its coal-fired power plants — representing 364GW of capacity — in the next 10 years, replacing them with renewable electricity generation, to meet its goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060.  China hopes to build eight nuclear power plants each year between 2021 and 2025.

For those who want to do a deep dive into energy storage, Canary Media has started a new series of articles by David Roberts, beginning with why lithium-ion batteries are so important and how they work.  It was followed by an article on long-duration storage.  Korean battery companies SK Innovation and LG Chem reached an agreement that will allow the former to continue developing its $2.6 billion lithium-ion battery factory in Georgia.  Ultium Cells, a joint venture between LG Chem and GM, has picked a site in Tennessee for its second EV battery plant.  Hyundai’s upcoming Ioniq 5 electric vehicle (EV) will feature bidirectional charging, which allows its owner to use the vehicle’s battery to power just about anything that can plug into a wall.  QuantumScape is working to produce a semi-solid-state battery that is denser, safer, and faster-charging than today’s lithium-ion batteries; Volkswagen is planning to use it in its new EVs.  Lithium-ion battery recycling specialist Li-Cycle will build its third facility in Arizona.

Gas network operators from 11 countries have joined the European hydrogen backbone initiative, bringing the total network to almost 25,000 miles connecting 21 countries, offering a “technically and economically plausible” way of building a pure hydrogen network.  Canada has launched a Hydrogen Strategy Steering Committee.  China’s largest solar-power-based hydrogen production and energy storage project has been commissioned and put into operation in Ningxia Province.  In Washington State, the Douglas County Public Utility District is making a $20 million investment in an electrolysis system to produce green hydrogen using the excess electricity produced by their Wells Dam hydroelectric facility.

On Thursday, researchers at GridLab, Energy Innovation, and the University of California, Berkeley released a report that outlines the challenges and rewards of having all new cars and trucks sold in the US be powered by electricity by 2035.  DOE unveiled a $100 million funding opportunity, dubbed SuperTruck 3, to enlist truck makers, battery and drivetrain manufacturers, and technology developers in putting electric and fuel-cell-powered trucks to real-world tests over the next four years.

Potpourri

The latest craze in the art world is digital collectibles known as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which have a huge carbon footprint.  The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication announced the second cohort of their Public Voices Fellows on the Climate Crisis.  John Topping, whose work to warn the world of the risks of climate change stretched back to the 1980s and who helped spur the international effort to limit warming, died on March 9.  Google Earth launched a time-lapse feature that lets users wind back the clock and see how the world has changed over several decades.  Maeve Brennan wrote about the health co-benefits of fighting climate change.  Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term “climate emergency” in its coverage of climate change.  The whitest-ever paint reflects 98% of sunlight as well as radiating infrared heat through the atmosphere into space.

Closing Thoughts

Sustainability scientist Kimberly Nicholas, author of, Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World, said: “… we are not going to be able to save all the things we love.”  Instead, we have to “swim through that ocean of grief … and recognize that we still have time to act, and salvage many of the things we care about.”  Staff writer David Montgomery had an extended piece in The Washington Post Magazine entitled: “The Search for Environmental Hope.”

Politics and Policy

The White House infrastructure package contains a number of environmental agenda items high on progressive wish lists, but some fear they could be sacrificed to ensure passage in the 50-50 Senate. (ICYMI, David Roberts had a good summary of what is in the package.)  Republicans have a much narrower view of infrastructure.  The Senate parliamentarian suggested that the Senate could use budget reconciliation twice every fiscal year, rather than just once, possibly giving Democrats a chance to move the infrastructure legislation forward with just 51 votes, although one Democratic senator opposes such an approach.  Furthermore, things are not that rosy in the House, where the Democratic majority slipped to two with the death of one Congressman and the resignation of two to serve in Biden’s cabinet.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen released details of a tax hike proposal that would replace subsidies for fossil fuel companies with incentives for production of clean energy.  The US will need new electric transmission lines to meet Biden’s aim of eliminating the power sector’s net carbon pollution, but public opposition has doomed many such projects.

Karin Kirk examined three questions: how many jobs does each US state have in wind and solar; how much wind and solar potential is there in each state; and how well has each state done in creating jobs in wind and solar, given the size of its potential.  The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that only six of 36 states evaluated have some form of equity mandate for the investment of ratepayer funds to support and expand EV charging infrastructure.  Jeff St. John of Canary Media summarized some of the major findings of their analysis along with other ideas for meeting the electric transportation needs of underserved communities.  According to three journalists at the frontlines of climate and environmental issues, systemic racism and inequity have always run as a powerful undercurrent through climate change impacts.

A panel of federal appeals judges nixed a Trump administration rule that would have prevented the EPA from setting greenhouse gas limits on multiple polluting industries.  By the end of July, the EPA will propose stricter emissions standards for vehicles that are sufficient to meet “the urgency of the climate crisis.”  The “Global Trends” report, released by the National Intelligence Council, paints a bleak picture of what Americans can expect over the next 20 years, warning of a planet ravaged by pandemics and climate change.  Many think that the best way to fight climate change is to put a price on carbon, but the authors of the book Making Climate Policy Work argue that such an approach isn’t working.  The Biden administration will not shut down the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline while an environmental review is conducted.

US Climate Envoy John Kerry said he was “not confident, but hopeful” that China would be willing to partner with other countries on meeting carbon emission reduction targets.  A small but growing number of world leaders have begun citing an offense they say poses a threat to humanity similar to genocide: ecocide.  According to a new assessment by the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and others, the combination of debt, climate change, and environmental degradation “represents a systemic risk to the global economy…”.  The WB and the IMF are planning to launch a platform to advise poor countries on funding climate and conservation activities.  Petroleum nations face a perilous future as the world decarbonizes, with declining oil revenues threatening their finances, making a strong case for industrialized countries offering more support to less well-off producer economies.  Brazil’s environment minister wants $1 billion in foreign aid to help reduce deforestation in the Amazon between 30% and 40%.  Greenland’s left-wing environmentalist party won a victory in general elections on Tuesday after campaigning against the development of a rare earths mine partly backed by China.

Climate and Climate Science

It may come as a surprise, given the extensive body of evidence connecting humans to climate change, but directly-observed proof of the human impact had eluded science, until now.  In the study, NASA calculated the individual driving forces of recent climate change through direct satellite observations, and consistent with what climate models have shown for decades, greenhouse gases and aerosols from the burning of fossil fuels are responsible for the lion’s share of warming.  CO₂ and methane emissions surged in 2020 even amid coronavirus shutdowns, according to research from NOAA released Wednesday.

A new study identified three distinct tipping points in model simulations of West Antarctica’s Pine Island glacier, which, if crossed, could lead to its rapid and irreversible retreat.  Another simulation study revealed that because of hydrofracturing, four Antarctic ice shelves will be vulnerable to disintegration at 4°C of warming, but that limiting warming to 2°C will halve the ice shelf area susceptible to collapse.  Meanwhile, direct observations of what’s going on under the ice shelf of the Thwaites glacier revealed that the supply of warm water to the glacier’s base is larger than scientists previously believed.  At the other end of Earth, scientists working in Greenland have refined their understanding of how meltwater flowing down to the base of a glacier increases the rate at which the glacier is sliding toward the sea.

Rainstorms grew more erratic and droughts much longer across most of the US West over the past half-century and the situation is worsening.  Unrelenting drought and years of rising temperatures due to climate change are pushing the long-overallocated Colorado River into new territory, setting the stage for the largest mandatory water cutbacks to date.  Critical April 1 measurements of snow accumulations from mountain ranges across the region show that most streams and rivers will once again flow well below average levels this year.

Analysis of the locations of almost 50,000 marine species between 1955 and 2015 found that species are moving away from the equator, causing scientists to warn that further warming will cut the richness of species in the tropics even further.  Seagrasses play a large role in regulating ocean environments, storing over twice as much CO₂ per square mile than terrestrial forests, but scientists know little about them.  Examination of ocean characteristics with depth revealed that over the past 50 years the intermixing of the upper and lower layers decreased at a rate that was six times faster than scientists were anticipating.  New research has found that even the deepest parts of the Great Lakes are getting warmer.

On May 4, the hotter Earth will officially become the new normal when NOAA releases its once-a-decade update to “climate normals,” which are the 30-year averages for temperature and precipitation that local meteorologists rely on as the baseline for their forecasts.  One recognized impact of climate change is in the pattern of rainfall.  Unfortunately, rainfall atlases in the US have not kept up with the new “normal,” causing stormwater infrastructure to often be inadequate from the moment it is built.  Bipartisan bills pending in Congress would fund NOAA updates of the atlases at least every five years.

Energy

GM has a new battery system that will allow the company to incorporate future advances in battery technology without having to redesign its vehicle platform.  It is testing a variety of battery chemistries, technologies, and manufacturing processes aimed at slashing the cost of EV batteries and reducing dependence on metals like cobalt.  GM will produce an electric version of its popular Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck.  President Biden’s plan to jump-start the US EV market faces a roadblock: a weak supply chain that is making it difficult for automakers to get enough batteries to scale up production.  Nth Cycle has developed a new battery-recycling technology that employs a method called “electro-extraction” to harvest cobalt, nickel, and manganese from old lithium-ion batteries.

Dan Gearino examined the continuing fight over compensation to rooftop solar owners for the electricity they send to the grid.  Meanwhile, United Parcel Service announced it has agreed to purchase ten electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from Beta Technologies to test their use in its Express Air delivery network.

At Energy Monitor, Justin Gerdes discussed the role of large-scale battery storage in the energy transition.  New York-based retail energy provider David Energy plans to enter the Texas retail market and demonstrate how natural-gas microgrids and battery-backed solar can hedge against climate change risk.  Terabase Energy aims to drive down utility-scale solar power prices to less than $0.01 per kW-hr by 2025, by using software, automation, and modeling to optimize power-plant operation.  A team of researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is leading an ongoing analysis of how to manage retiring photovoltaic solar panels in support of a circular economy for energy materials.

Grist, in partnership with the Texas Observer, conducted an in-depth study of nonproductive oil and gas wells in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico and estimated the number that are likely to be abandoned in the future.  (Other articles in the series: Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.)  Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) introduced a bill authorizing $8 billion to plug and clean up abandoned oil and gas wells nationwide.

Many cities in Europe use waste heat from their fossil-fuel power plants to heat their buildings, meaning that new sources of heat must be found as those plants are shut down.  Now, scientists and engineers in the Czech Republic have developed a system for using the heat from spent nuclear fuel rods to do that.

Potpourri

A Gallup poll, published Monday, found that 88% of Democrats believe that increases in Earth’s temperature are primarily caused by human activities, whereas just 32% of Republicans said the same.  Later this month, a three-part BBC documentary about Greta Thunberg will première on PBS.  Experts on land use, climate change, and sustainable agriculture agree that two habits associated with food have the greatest environmental impact: wasting it and eating large amounts of meat.  In concluding an article about what concerns climate scientists the most, the author wrote: “… while we laypeople might be worrying about what the science says, climate scientists are often worrying about us.”  The Biden administration called on the US Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit to reject a second attempt by a group of children to sue the government over climate change.  The EPA and leading appliance manufacturers have finally released key chemical refrigerant information that makes it easier for consumers to purchase climate-friendly refrigerators.

Closing Thought

A surgeon and a psychotherapist offered advice on how to grow more resilient during the climate crisis by providing six ways to stay balanced.

Politics and Policy

A coalition of environmental groups has urged the US to commit to slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030.  On the other hand, a new analysis determined that the US must slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 57% to 63% below 2005 levels by 2030 to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.  The EU and the US need to align to tackle climate change, John Kerry said in Brussels.  The Pentagon announced the creation of a working group to respond to President Joe Biden’s executive orders addressing the climate crisis.  Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the “Methane Emissions Reduction Act,” which directs the Treasury to assess a fee on methane emissions, while Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced a bill to incentivize companies to weatherize the power grid.  With a vote of 66-34, the Senate confirmed Michael Regan as the next EPA administrator, while the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 20-0 to advance the nomination of David Turk to become deputy Energy secretary.  Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the US needs to sustainably boost domestic production of the minerals used to make electric vehicles (EVs).  She also said the administration is aggressively pursuing transportation electrification in part to prevent China from cornering the $23 trillion market in carbon-reducing technologies.  Proposals to form a national clean electricity standard have become a central focus of climate change legislation in the new Congress, with support from both parties.  For almost all cars on the road to be electric by 2050, EV sales must ramp up to 100% by 2035 and new programs should be adopted to get gasoline and diesel vehicles off the road.  GM President Mark Reuss said the government should extend investment tax credits for EV manufacturing and supply chains, and expand consumer incentives for EV purchases.  The Washington Post updated its tracking of Biden’s environmental actions.

Twelve states are suing the Biden administration for trying to establish a new value for the “social cost” of greenhouse gases to use in agency rulemaking.  After a three-member panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that federal judges lacked the power to order a climate recovery plan, as petitioned by the young people in Juliana v. United States, the plaintiffs filed a motion in federal court to amend their suit.  In 2006, Judge Gladys Kessler wrote in her opinion in the trial against tobacco companies, “Over the course of more than 50 years, Defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public.”  Will the same thing be written about the oil companies?  More than 100 cities, counties, and states around the country have enacted ordinances restricting renewable energy projects.

As major corporations seek carbon credits to offset emissions, critics are questioning the value of “legacy” credits, arguing that the credit system needs to be reformed so that so it delivers actual carbon reductions.  Jonathan Foley, the executive director of Project Drawdown, laid out the overlapping stages of technological progress required to meet climate goals.  Among the many goals in Biden’s climate change agenda, protecting 30% of US lands and ocean territories by 2030 is among the most ambitious and among the most complex, as well as the most likely to face substantial political obstacles.  The controversy over a proposed lithium mine near Thacker Pass, NV, highlights a big challenge the Biden administration must grapple with to transition the US economy to carbon-free energy sources: How to acquire the needed mineral resources without sacrificing biodiversity or the health of communities living near mining projects.  Republican state legislators in Florida announced a suite of measures intended to save the state from rising seas, but they don’t tackle the root cause of the problem.  A group of 17 House Democrats introduced legislation to provide $6 billion to the US Postal Service to buy additional electric delivery vehicles.

Governments around the world are failing to match their rhetoric with action in rescuing their economies from the COVID-19 pandemic, with only about 18% of the funding being considered green.  Climate Home News focused on nine countries that are missing their chance at a green recovery.  A nine-country coalition led by the Netherlands and Denmark called on the European Commission to decide on a phaseout date for the internal combustion engine, drawing a withering response from Germany.

Climate and Climate Science

If governments fail to limit global warming to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, areas in the tropical band that stretches either side of the equator risk changing into a new environment that will hit “the limit of human adaptation.”  Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world’s original tropical rainforest cover, raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing.  The first-ever study to examine all of the gases that affect how the Amazon works — not just CO₂ — suggests that the forest is worsening climate change.

The changing climate is raising concerns about how the saguaro cactus will survive the 21st century in an environment that’s hot and getting hotter, dry and getting drier.  If emissions continue unchecked, summers in the Northern Hemisphere could last nearly six months by 2100, with significant impacts on agriculture, the environment, human health, and the timing of species’ activities such as breeding, feeding, and migration.

A new study suggests that, contrary to previous research, climate change will not cause global drylands to expand.  However, the climate crisis is altering the flow of rivers across the world, with increasing river flows in some regions, such as northern Europe, and decreasing river flows in others, such as southern Europe, southern Australia, and parts of southern Asia.

The downpours that triggered flooding that destroyed homes and bridges in Hawaii and set off mass evacuations on multiple islands this week are an example of the more intense rainstorms officials and climate scientists say are occurring more frequently as the planet warms.  Because of land subsidence due to a number of factors, including groundwater pumping, coastal communities are experiencing an effective sea level rise four times worse than global sea level rise.

Energy

Millions of Americans face the specter of prolonged power outages under the current power grid.  Climate change will have “far-reaching” impacts on the electric grid that could cost billions of dollars.  Investor-owned utilities face a $500 billion capital investment gap to build out resilience efforts and effectively address risks from climate change.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed its environmental review for an 800 MW windfarm 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Vineyard Wind, and said that its preferred alternative would allow up to 84 turbines to be installed in 100 of the 106 proposed blocks for the facility.  China built more new windfarm capacity in 2020 than the whole world combined in 2019.

Solar hydrogen production through a photoelectrochemical water-splitting reaction is an attractive alternative to water electrolysis for green hydrogen production because of its potential for higher conversion efficiency and lower cost.  Its adoption has been hampered by the difficulty of separating the hydrogen from the other gases, but now the Japanese have developed a membrane that may solve the problem.  A Japanese-Australian venture has begun producing hydrogen from brown coal in a pilot project that aims to show that liquefied hydrogen can be produced commercially and exported safely overseas.  If the project goes commercial, the CO₂ produced in the process would be injected underground off the coast.  Hyundai Motor Group has broken ground at its Guangzhou, China, fuel cell system plant, the first the company has constructed outside of South Korea.

FedEx has promised to be carbon-neutral by 2040 and has pledged an initial investment of $2 billion to start electrifying its fleet of more than 180,000 vehicles.  Full EVs are expected to account for more than 70% of Volkswagen’s total European vehicle sales by 2030, compared with a previous target of 35%.  While governments and automakers worldwide are making bold pledges to transition to electric-only vehicles, Japanese car companies and regulators are hedging their bets.  Honda has plans to sell two all-electric SUVs in the US for the 2024 model year, and it soon will offer hybrid gas-electric versions of its top-selling models.  LG Energy Solution says it will invest more than $4.5 billion in its US battery production business by 2025 as automakers ramp up production of EVs.

Analysts have calculated that abandoned oil and gas wells cover more than 2 million acres of the US and determined that if that land is restored, it could deliver billions of dollars in benefits for a fraction of the cost of the restoration.

Global banking giants and investment firms are continuing to bankroll a major driver of the climate crisis: food and farming corporations that are responsible for cutting down vast carbon-storing forests and spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.  “Food systems” were responsible for 34% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.

Potpourri

Amy Brady interviewed poet Kathryn Smith about her latest collection, Self-Portrait with Cephalopod, and why she decided to write about climate change.  Jedediah Britton-Purdy reviewed Vaclav Smil’s new book Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made.  During 2020, the overall climate change coverage on corporate broadcast TV nightly news and Sunday shows plummeted by 53% compared to 2019.  The University of Virginia’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab has produced a publicly available video entitled “God $ Green: An Unholy Alliance”, which addresses decades of what it calls “religious polarization, political propaganda, corporate deal-making, and environmental injustice based on systemic racism.”  Soleil Santana took a long look at the history of solar energy.  Fix recently launched a cli-fi writing contest, so Grist interviewed the judges about their approaches to climate fiction.

Closing Thought

Garner hope from the innovations happening in places like Seattle-based solar start-up BlueDot Photonics.

Politics and Policy

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 11-9 to advance Rep. Deb Haaland’s (D-NM) nomination to head the Interior Department to the full chamber.  Meanwhile, Interior is moving to lock in key parts of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, particularly on oil and gas restrictions.  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said she is ready to reactivate her department’s loan program that went mostly unused in the last four years and has more than $40 billion in funds to boost the transition to clean energy.  She also said the tens of billions of dollars in funding the agency plans to pour into the clean energy sector will likely require companies to create the high-paying jobs promised by Biden.  Ella Nilson of Vox spoke with National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy about how to achieve a clean energy economy, how to put forgotten coal communities back to work, and how to boost unionization rates to ensure that new energy jobs actually do pay high wages.  While policies and proposals in some states acknowledge the writing on the wall for the coal industry and are working for a just transition, others are denying it and fighting against it; the difference is largely due to the absence of a cohesive national energy transition policy.

The American Petroleum Institute is edging closer to endorsing a carbon tax, but as an alternative to federal regulation and policies aimed at slowing climate change.  The US Trade Representative’s office said a carbon border adjustment would be considered as part of an effort to develop market and regulatory approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  US climate envoy John Kerry urged oil and gas companies to do more to diversify and adopt low-carbon technologies to tackle climate change.  Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone discussed with Kerry whether the US will finally lead on climate.  Senior House Energy and Commerce Democrats unveiled a template of their plan to combat climate change this Congress — an expanded version of last year’s “CLEAN Future Act” — that would take a sector-by-sector approach to reach net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050.  On the same day, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) said that he would reintroduce the “Clean Energy Future through Innovation Act of 2020” as an alternative to the “CLEAN Future Act.”

The Biden administration asked the US Court of International Trade to dismiss a complaint from some members of the solar industry arguing that the tariffs on bifacial solar cells are unlawful.  Deputy Transportation Secretary nominee Polly Trottenberg said the department would analyze the ruling of the International Trade Commission that SK Innovation Co misappropriated trade secrets related to electric vehicle (EV) battery technology from LG Chem.  Bloomberg NEF forecast that solar, wind, and batteries will attract $10 trillion in investments through 2050; consequently, US manufacturing of clean energy equipment is gaining traction.  Several states will likely follow California and adopt stricter vehicle emissions standards if the Biden administration greenlights those efforts.  The consortium that oversees the model building codes for much of the US has stripped local governments of their right to vote on future codes, thereby establishing a major roadblock to decarbonizing the US economy.

All planned coal projects around the world must be cancelled to end the “deadly addiction” to the fossil fuel, UN secretary-general António Guterres said at the opening of a summit of the Powering Past Coal Alliance.  China succeeded in lowering its “carbon intensity” (the amount of CO₂ emitted per unit of GDP) by 18.8% in the five years through 2020, and plans to cut it by another 13.5% during the 2021-2025 period.  However, China’s coal consumption is expected to continue rising in 2021.  The British government has been hit by two reports criticizing its performance on climate change — one saying it has “no plan” to meet climate change targets two years after adopting them and the other that the UN climate conference scheduled for November will fail unless its goals are made clear.  Hungary announced that its last coal-fired power plant will be shut down in 2025 instead of 2030.

Climate and Climate Science

Last week I included an article about the weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).  This week, The New York Times (NYT) had an article with excellent graphics explaining current research to better understand the AMOC and the impact of climate change on it.

Officials in Miami-Dade County, where climate models predict two feet or more of sea-level rise by 2060, have released an upbeat strategy for living with more water, although climate experts warned that the plan downplays the magnitude of the threat.  Because climate change is causing heavier rain storms and more flooding, it is a significant concern that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the US’s flood control infrastructure a D grade and estimated the cost of rehabilitating all US dams at $93.6 billion.

A newly released paper in the journal Science concluded that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is very likely an artifact of climate change.  Because of the relationship between the AMO and hurricane activity, this discovery, if true, means that humans — not natural variability — have been the main driving force in the up-and-down cycles of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean.  During the most recent 30-year period — 1991 to 2020 — there has been an increase in Atlantic hurricane activity.

While the US was experiencing some of the coldest weather in a century during February, large areas of the globe were basking in the warmest weather ever observed during winter.  Almost 80% of the Western US is in drought, with nearly 42% of the region in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought.  Hundreds of butterfly species across the American West are vanishing as the region becomes hotter, drier, and more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Researchers reported that climate models with a high “climate sensitivity” overstate the cooling effect that arises from interactions between clouds and aerosols and project that clouds will moderate greenhouse gas-induced warming much more than climate records show actually happens.  Meanwhile, an international team of scientists discovered a new mechanism of cloud formation, not currently included in climate models, that could be important over the poles and affect sea ice melting.

Energy

Volvo says it intends to feature an all EV fleet by the year 2030.  Six major utilities unveiled a plan to add EV fast chargers to connect major highway systems across the US.  If you are thinking of buying an EV, the NYT has a guide to some of the environmental factors that should be considered.  According to an analysis by Transport & Environment, fossil fuel cars waste hundreds of times more raw material than their battery electric equivalents.  The goal of the Electric Highway Coalition, made up of six major electric companies in the Southeast and Midwest, is to build enough direct-current, fast-charging, EV charging stations to connect the Atlantic coast, the Midwest, and the South, as well as the Gulf Coast and Central Plains regions.  In order to supply its expanding EV fleet, GM says it’s looking for a site to build a second US battery factory with joint venture partner LG Chem of Korea.  Japanese industrial manufacturer Hitachi Zosen has developed a solid-state battery claimed to have one of the highest capacities in the industry.

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said that improving economics and government policies are creating opportunities for carbon capture and storage.  He also said that Exxon Mobil would try to set a goal for not emitting more greenhouse gases than it removed from the atmosphere, though it was still difficult to say when that might happen.  Chevron is partnering with Microsoft, Schlumberger, and Clean Energy Systems to build a carbon capture plant in California.  FedEx is investing at least $2 billion toward sustainable energy initiatives, including EVs and carbon capture research, as part of a new pledge to become carbon neutral by 2040.

Lockdowns around the world led to an unprecedented fall in CO₂ emissions of about 7% in 2020, or about 2.6 bn metric tons of CO₂, whereas reductions of between 1 bn and 2 bn metric tons are needed every year for the next ten years to have a good chance of holding the global temperature rise to within 1.5°C or 2°C.  Unfortunately, CO₂ emissions climbed steadily over the second half of 2020, so that by December, emissions were 2% higher than in the same month in 2019.  The US could cut emissions from its electricity grid in half within the next decade through investments in renewables and transmission lines.  Furthermore, a national approach to transmission planning can supposedly deliver large benefits at the speed necessary to meet the challenges of climate change.  Berkshire Hathaway Energy is spending billions to build transmission lines to carry electricity from remote areas where renewable energy is generated to population centers where it is needed.  FERC’s chairman is focused on enabling the construction of long-distance power transmission lines to help bring more renewable power onto the grid.

Governments and energy companies are placing large bets on clean hydrogen playing a leading role in lowering greenhouse gas emissions, although its future uses and costs are highly uncertain.  Shell is moving toward renewable aviation fuel production at its refinery in Rhineland, Germany, where it will conduct research using its bio-power-to-liquid plant and an upgraded hydrogen electrolysis facility.  Siemens Energy announced a US Energy Department grant to study how its electrolyzers could be combined with hydrogen compression and storage, and power plant control technology, to provide long-term energy storage at renewable energy facilities.  By using its tar-sands bitumen as a feedstock for carbon fiber production and by turning its natural gas into blue hydrogen via carbon capture, Alberta hopes to transform its oil and gas industry.

The CEOs of Duke Energy and Xcel Energy have said that natural gas will remain part of their power mix for years to come as they transition to cleaner forms of energy.  A furious industry backlash has greeted moves by cities to ban natural gas in new homes and businesses.

Potpourri

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is joining the Nature Conservancy as its next chief scientist.  The Washington Post Magazine published an interview with her.  The NYT had a review of Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, Under a White Sky.  At GreenBiz, Joel Makower discussed the concept of “net-zero” and why it can be an instrument for greenwashing.  A UN report revealed that people waste over a billion tons of food a year, placing food waste right behind China and the US as a contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.  Environmental Health News released an important series of four articles, Fractured, documenting their investigation of fracking chemicals in the air, water, and people of western Pennsylvania.  Of the roughly 55,000 Indigenous households located on Navajo Nation lands, around 15,000 do not have electricity.  UN human rights officials issued a report condemning environmental racism in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” where the mostly Black population breathes air heavily polluted by an ever-widening corridor of petrochemical plants.

Closing Thought

Climate scientist Michael Mann talked with Jonathan Watts of The Guardian about his new book, The New Climate War, and why he thinks the tide may finally be turning in a hopeful direction.

Politics and Policy

The Senate confirmed Tom Vilsack, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Agriculture Department, by a 92-7 vote.  Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm won Senate confirmation to be energy secretary, by a vote of 64-35.  New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland, Biden’s pick to head the Department of the Interior, appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a contentious confirmation hearing that reflected deep divisions over some of Biden’s climate-focused executive orders.  The Guardian reported that hostile questioning of her was led by senators who have taken large amounts of campaign cash from the oil and gas industry, with some being personally invested in fossil fuels.  If she is confirmed, what will be the major items on her agenda for the Department?

The Economist reviewed techniques whereby policy makers could determine which strategies would lower CO₂ emissions for the lowest unit cost.  Robinson Meyer provided a rundown of what is happening on a Biden climate bill.  Energy Innovation maintained that a strong clean energy standard is among the most vital policy steps needed to push the US toward an entirely decarbonized economy.  Ed Dolan of the Niskanen Center reviewed four papers by writers who are committed to forceful climate action but who have little enthusiasm for carbon pricing as a policy tool.  The administration dramatically altered the way the US government calculates the social cost of carbon.  A new analysis by the Brookings Institution showed that regions with a high share of fossil fuel jobs have a lot of potential to benefit from wind and solar development.  Cities and towns across the country are rewriting local building codes so that new homes and offices would be blocked from using natural gas, but the American Gas Association and its members are campaigning in statehouses to prohibit such ordinances.  Twenty-five House Republicans held a summit to discuss how to position themselves to address climate change in the new Congress.

FERC said on Monday that it will examine threats that climate change and extreme weather events pose to the country’s electric reliability in the wake of last week’s deadly Texas freeze.  The Texas energy emergency provided ammunition for proponents of a single national power grid.  Wade Schauer of Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables examined the question of fuel diversity for the decarbonized grid.  The cost of federal flood insurance will need to increase significantly in much of the country to meet the growing risks of climate change.  The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it will update its guidelines on how publicly traded companies should disclose climate change-related risks to investors.  In the wake of the Texas disaster, four scientists argued that the Biden administration should convene a group to draft a plan for an advanced Earth observation system with the goal of expanding our ability to forecast extreme weather events.

By the time COP26 rolls around, new national targets for long- and short-term emissions cuts will have been tallied by the UN, so unless the organizers come up with a vision for something specific they can agree on, the meeting could end up accomplishing little.  Unfortunately, the combined impact of the new and updated targets submitted by the deadline was “far short of what is required” to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.  Biden said on Tuesday that he and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to work toward achieving net zero emissions by 2050.  The European Commission released a new adaptation strategy designed to ensure the bloc not only ramps up efforts to drastically cut emissions by 2050 but also survives forest fires, heatwaves, droughts, and storms.  Xie Zhenhua, who served as China’s chief negotiator during key climate meetings in Copenhagen and Paris, has been appointed the country’s new special climate envoy.  Speaking before a session of the UN Security Council, US climate envoy John Kerry warned that climate change was making the world a more dangerous place and posed risks to peace and security around the world, but Russia, India, and China argued that it should not be an issue for the Council.  In anticipation of that meeting, Reuters high-lighted five regions of the world where climate change poses significant risks.

Climate and Climate Science

Data from 11 types of proxy evidence have confirmed that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, a system of currents that includes the Gulf Stream, is now “in its weakest state in over a millennium,” with implications for everything from the climate of Europe to the rates of sea-level rise along the US East Coast.  As the planet experiences increased CO₂ concentrations in its atmosphere, its oceans experience three different phenomena: warming, acidification, and deoxygenation.  A recent paper examined how these interact around the world to threaten ocean productivity.

Carbon Brief has updated its map of climate attribution studies, showing that 70% of the 405 extreme weather events included were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change.  Many more homes in Appalachian communities in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia are at risk of flooding than the federal government’s emergency managers have indicated.

During the first week of February, avalanches killed 14 people across the US, and halfway through the avalanche season, 31 people have died across the country.  It appears that avalanche patterns are changing on our warming planet, but a linkage cannot yet be proven.  Polar bears and narwhals are using up to four times as much energy to survive because of major ice loss in the Arctic.  Alaska may need to brace for more thunderstorms — along with the landslides, floods, and wildfires they can bring — if current climate trends continue.

Scientists have just taken a detailed look at the 14 glaciers flowing into the ocean along a 600 mile stretch of the Antarctic coastline known as the Getz region and found that all of them have sped up.

Rising temperatures are shortening the lives of trees in tropical forests and reducing their capacity to absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere, with major implications for our ability to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.  California’s iconic redwoods, sequoias and Joshua trees are increasingly threatened by bigger and more frequent wildfires as the planet warms.

Energy

Texas officials’ repeated failures to act on expert advice for averting grid catastrophes paralleled their long ignoring experts’ warnings about dangers of climate change, leading to last week’s unnatural disaster.  Dual hearings in the Texas House and Senate highlighted shortcomings by grid planners, electric utilities, natural gas suppliers, renewable energy, and transmission operators that led to the grid disaster.  Ezra Klein had an insightful reflection on the Texas crisis in his column at the New York Times.  At Earther, staff writer Dharna Noor argued that the US needs a supergrid.  Dan Gearino provided four lessons he had learned from the debacle, the first of which is particularly important as we move to an electrified economy.

Thanks in large part to reductions in flying and driving associated with COVID-19, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped 4.4% in the 12 months to September last year, falling to the lowest levels since 1995.  Up to five of Australia’s remaining 16 coal-fired power plants could be financially unviable by 2025 due to a flood of cheap solar and wind energy entering the electricity grid.  Fossil fuel companies risk derailing the UK’s climate targets by planning to build a string of 17 new gas-fired power plants with a combined generation capacity of 14 GW.  As of January 2021, global institutional investors, such as pension funds, asset managers, and insurance companies, held investments worth more than $1 trillion in coal, with US investors collectively holding 58% of them.  According to 2020 figures released this week, US renewable energy sources for the first time generated more electricity than coal, although natural gas was far ahead of all other energy sources.

A new “green steel” venture in Sweden has been launched with plans to start production as early as 2024 using green hydrogen to process iron into steel.  Also, a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed for the assessment of the building and operation of a hydrogen powered steel mill in France.  Meanwhile, Enegix Energy from Australia is behind the construction of a green hydrogen hub in Brazil, which will not only support the economic activities of Brazil, but also export hydrogen to Europe and other continents.

Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools awarded a contract to Highland Electric Transportation which will supply it with the country’s largest electric school bus fleet by taking on its financing and management in exchange for a fixed annual leasing fee.  The US Postal Service said on Tuesday it had awarded a $482 million contact to Oshkosh Defense to finalize production plans for the next-generation of postal vehicles, but that only 10% will be electric.  Carbon emissions from passenger cars across Britain have fallen by just 1% since 2011, despite a steep rise in the sale of electric and hybrid vehicles, due to the popularity of SUVs and an increase in road traffic.

Tesla could be shifting more EVs to lithium iron phosphate battery cells over concerns about the long-term availability of nickel, which is required for lithium ion batteries.  Redwood Materials has reached an agreement to recycle scrap and defective battery cells for Envision AESC, which manufactures batteries for the Nissan Leaf in Smyrna, Tennessee.  One use for EV batteries once they are no longer suitable for their original use is for storage of solar energy in houses.  National Geographic explored the role that such batteries could play in averting disasters like that in Texas.

Dominion Energy South Carolina’s new 15 year plan reports that shuttering two coal-fired power plants and converting a third to natural gas is the best option by multiple measures.  It also participated in a hearing before the Public Service Commission regarding the establishment of new solar choice metering tariffs in the state, which critics contend will do more harm than good to the solar industry in South Carolina.

Potpourri

Peter Sinclair’s latest video focused on the question of whether capitalism and free-market forces could supplant political expediency as a major factor in advancing bipartisan support for renewable energy.  Determining how hard companies are trying to meet climate pledges can be very difficult when there are no regulatory standards that require uniform disclosures of important information like emissions.  Corporations were also the focus of Bill McKibben’s column this week.  More than a third of all food grown for human consumption in the US never makes it to someone’s stomach, and the carbon footprint of that waste is greater than that of the airline industry.  Being a person who spent many years loving road trips (and for way too long being oblivious to the climate impacts), I couldn’t resist including this column by Amy Brady, even though it didn’t come out this week.

Closing Thought

Jeremy Lent, author of the forthcoming book The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, addressed the question “What does an ecological civilization look like?” in Yes! magazine.

Politics and Policy

President Joe Biden’s next legislative package is expected to center on major infrastructure investments, while also tackling things such as clean energy.  The Economist said “what is about to unfold in Washington will set the course in America for the next decade – and quite possibly beyond.”  Biden has set the stage for a flourishing US offshore wind industry by ordering the federal government to find ways to speed up environmental and other reviews.  Since the EPA will not reactivate the Obama Clean Power Plan, what are the Biden administration’s options?  The administration said it would scrap a Trump-era proposal to weaken environmental protections for millions of acres of California desert.  It also rescinded draft guidance from the Trump administration that would limit the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions in infrastructure decisions.  Biden announced the formation of a climate innovation working group “to advance his commitment to launching an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Climate.”  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on electric grid reliability and resilience after millions were left without power in Texas and elsewhere amid a winter storm.

Line 3, another tar-sands pipeline from Canada to the US, is being built as a replacement for an existing pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy.  How the Biden administration deals with it will be an early test of its environmental justice policies.  Putting a price on carbon emissions is a policy that has received support outside of government by advocates on both sides of the aisle, but if and when it will be brought forward as legislation are very much in question.  In an opinion piece and a new report, Nicholas Stern and Joseph E. Stiglitz argued that “The Biden administration must put a high enough price on carbon pollution to encourage the scale and urgency of action needed to meet the commitments it has made to Americans and the rest of the world.”  Yahoo!news provided some background.  At the Niskanen Center, Joseph Majkut et al. wrote about “A Carbon Tax in the Context of Budget Reconciliation.”

All companies in which BlackRock invests will be expected to disclose direct emissions from operations and from energy they buy, while fossil fuel extractors should base targets for emissions cuts on the carbon released when their products are burned.  IBM is pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of the decade.  Climate activist and author Bill McKibben presented arguments against starting experimentation on solar geoengineering.  A recent study explored the health opportunities of ambitious climate policies and found that the co-benefits of reducing air pollution, improving diets, and encouraging more active lifestyles would save millions of lives across the world every year.  Environmental and community groups have come together on an action plan for the Biden administration on plastics, which are seen as the nexus of climate change, fracking, air and water pollution, toxic landfills, and the disproportionate burden of pollution on communities of color.

The US has officially returned to the Paris Climate Agreement, raising expectations for a new national commitment setting an emissions target for 2030.  A group of states, cities, and companies launched a new coalition to push the Biden administration toward a more aggressive cut to greenhouse gas emissions.  During a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers and central bankers, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed strong support for G7 efforts to tackle climate change, stating that her colleagues should expect the Treasury Department’s engagement on this issue to change dramatically relative to the last four years.  The outgoing head of the OECD said in an interview that the environment, climate change, and the protection of nature must be the defining tasks of rich and major developing countries now and in the years to come.  In a break with precedent, the UN issued a report Thursday that is prescriptive, using the word “must” 56 times and “should” 37 times to tell world leaders what is needed to solve the interconnected problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Climate and Climate Science

The extreme cold weather in Texas and the central US was covered extensively in the press this week.  The main cause was the wavy jet stream, which allowed cold Arctic air to penetrate deeply into the mid-latitudes.  Although still an area of active study, many climate scientists think such waviness is due to the warming Arctic resulting from climate change.  (In January 2019 Carbon Brief had a Q&A on this topic.)  At the New York Times, climate reporter John Schwartz answered questions about this week’s weather.

US greenhouse gas emissions fell by 9.2% last year amid the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.  On the other hand, a related drop in tiny aerosol particles from industrial sources boosted regional temperatures.  Greenhouse gas emissions from material production, such as steel and cement, more than doubled from 1995 to 2015.  Some supermarkets have been found to be leaking climate-damaging HFC refrigerants at an even higher rate than regulators have assumed.

Scientists say that improving water quality by reducing sediments, fertilizers, and chemicals running into the Great Barrier Reef’s waters will give it a greater chance of recovering from future bleaching events.  Climate change is shaping the lives of children of color before they take their first breath, and once born, there is a good chance they will live in a neighborhood that is more polluted and will get hotter than nearby, whiter neighborhoods.

The salient issues concerning drilling in Area 1002 of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are what happens to caribou summer movements throughout the area and to the near-surface soil carbon that risks becoming released to the atmosphere as CO₂ and methane due to terrestrial permafrost thawing.  On a related subject, the amount of carbon locked in Arctic submarine permafrost is more than humans have released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, yet little is known about such permafrost and how it will react as oceans warm, sea levels rise, and meltwater alters Arctic Ocean circulation patterns.

Energy

As a result of the winter storm, the Texas power grid failed, leaving millions of people in the dark and cold.  (For an explanation of the Texas power grid, go here.  For insights from a historian of energy, technology, and the environment, read this.)  In fact, the grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months.  While fossil fuel proponents were quick to blame the large amount of renewable energy in Texas for the failure, in reality fossil fuel generation was largely to blame.  In the future, such wild and unpredictable weather linked to global warming will very likely push grids beyond their limits.  Using the Texas grid failure as a spring board, Bob Henson addressed the broader problems of the US power grid, closing with a quote from Urooj Raja of the University of Colorado, Boulder: “No infrastructural relic may be as vulnerable as the US electric grid.”

Amid a historic economic contraction, renewable resources grew to account for one-fifth of all electricity produced in the US in 2020.  This was achieved because solar power and wind power accounted for 77.1% of new utility-scale power capacity in the US in 2020.  Hawaiian Electric achieved 34.5% renewable energy production in 2020.  The US Department of Energy announced last week that it will invest $100 million into transformative clean energy research and development, with more to come.

While the production of cement, steel, paper, aluminum, chemicals, and other heavy-duty industrial materials is responsible for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, the biggest firms in these sectors remain underprepared for the net zero transition, having largely failed to roll out credible corporate climate strategies.

Most of the world’s planned hydrogen projects and related investments this decade are expected to be in Europe, as the EU races to scale up the low-carbon fuel to meet its climate goals.  Model homes in which boilers, stoves, and ovens are fueled exclusively by hydrogen are due to be opened by April in the UK, providing the public with “a glimpse into the potential home of the future.”  As hydrogen gains more emphasis, ammonia is seen by some as the safest and easiest way to capture and transport the energy in hydrogen.

Ford Motor Co. said that its European division would soon begin to phase out vehicles powered by fossil fuels so that by 2026 it will offer only electric and plug-in hybrid models, and by 2030 all passenger cars will run solely on batteries.  Jaguar Land Rover said its luxury brand Jaguar will be fully electric by 2025 and it will release its first all-electric Land Rover in 2024 with five other electric vehicles (EVs) expected by 2025.  GM unveiled a Chevrolet Bolt Electric Utility Vehicle on Sunday.  You can learn more about it here.  At the New York Times, columnist Farhad Manjoo had a very thought-provoking column about the one big problem with EVs.

Demand for batteries for EVs already outstrips supply, causing a global rush to develop the technology and build the factories needed to power millions of electric cars, prompting Jakub Reiter, head of science at InoBat, to say “Twenty years ago, nobody cared much about batteries,” but now, there is intense competition, and “it’s a big fight.”

Potpourri

“Meltdown”, an intimate exploration of art and science, beauty and tragedy, the personal and the global, set amidst the massive and spectacularly beautiful icebergs breaking off of Greenland at an accelerating rate, is available for streaming on several platforms.  Bill McKibben reviewed Bill Gates’ new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, as did former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown who tied it to the upcoming COP 26 in Glasgow.  Emma Brocks had a far-ranging interview with Gates at The Guardian while Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic focused on “the Gates rule.”  Smithsonian Magazine had a feature article about polar bears and the scientists who track them to better understand how the environment is shaping their chances of survival.  Grist writer Adrienne Day decided to try out some of the alt seafood available today for its taste and texture appeal.  Walmart, Costco, and Kroger are selling Brazilian beef products imported from JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which has been linked to Amazonian deforestation.

Closing Thought

Nonprofit American Forests is partnering with Tazo Tea to form the “Tazo Tree Corps,” which will train and hire people to plant and care for trees in targeted neighborhoods in Detroit, Minneapolis, the Bronx, the Bay Area, and Richmond, VA.

Politics and Policy

The White House convened cabinet secretaries and the acting heads of 21 federal agencies to begin fulfilling President Joe Biden’s promise to mobilize the federal government to confront climate change.  Some think that Biden wants to rethink the country’s economic posture: seeking to promote certain sectors so as not to cede them to Europe and Asia.  Gina McCarthy said in an interview that President Biden is likely to issue more executive orders on climate change.  At the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin and colleagues updated their report tracking President Biden’s environmental actions and Dino Grandoni looked ahead to coming climate legislation.  Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee voted 14-6 to advance to the full Senate the nomination of Michael Regan to lead the EPA.  The Biden administration indicated that it would look for its own solution to limit power plant CO₂ emissions rather than reuse the Clean Power Plan from the Obama administration.  Frustration among Republicans with Biden’s climate policies has coalesced around Interior Secretary nominee Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM).

Nine years after Michael Mann filed a defamation lawsuit against the Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review, he wants the court to affirm the truth of his science.  Laura Tenenbaum, who was the senior science editor for NASA’s Global Climate Change website and witnessed firsthand the impact of science suppression during the Trump administration, wrote about her experiences.  Lawyers for the 21 children and young adults in Juliana v. United States announced plans to file a Supreme Court petition after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to revive their claims that the federal government has violated their constitutional right to a stable climate system.  The chairman of FERC said that the panel will create a senior position on environmental justice.  Following a request from the Biden administration, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., paused litigation on whether California can set its own vehicle emissions standards.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee put forward a sweeping green energy bill.  Wyoming is waking up to the possibility that the use of fossil fuels must come to an end, causing consternation about the future funding of local and state government.  Bill McKibben made the case for not building any new fossil fuel infrastructure.  A battle is underway in Arizona about who has authority to establish the types of electricity generation that utilities in the state may use.  Democrats plan to go through the Securities and Exchange Commission to impose financial disclosure rules on climate risk that would force thousands of businesses to divulge information to investors, although pushback is likely.  The Federal Reserve is beginning to incorporate the impacts of climate change into its regulatory writ.

Canada sees hydropower exports as an opportunity in Biden’s push to achieve a carbon-free US electrical grid by 2035.  China will force regional grid firms to buy at least 40% of their power from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030 to meet the country’s climate targets.  Big-emitting Australian businesses that export to Europe could soon face carbon levies of more than $70 a metric ton unless the federal government imposes emissions reduction policies.  A new study came to the unsettling conclusion that many adaptation projects can make people more, rather than less, vulnerable to climate change.  The International Energy Agency has projected that even though India’s CO₂ emissions are expected to grow by 50% during the next 20 years, a combination of solar, hydrogen, and carbon capture could get its energy sector to net-zero emissions by the mid-2060s.  The pledges countries made to reduce emissions as part of the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) are woefully inadequate, and the world must nearly double its greenhouse gas-cutting goals to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

Climate and Climate Science

On Sunday February 7, a sudden flood devastated a Himalayan valley in the Indian province of Uttarakhand.  While news reports said that collapse of a glacier into a glacial lake was the cause, subsequent analysis suggested that a landslide actually was to blame.  As the world warms and glaciers melt, the collapse of debris dams holding back glacial lakes poses a severe risk for those downstream.

Pollution from the burning of fossil fuels causes one in five premature deaths globally, suggesting the health impacts may be far higher than previously thought.  The North American pollen season is now starting 20 days earlier and lasting eight days longer than in 1990; climate change is responsible for roughly half of the change.

Northern California remains stuck in one of the worst two-year rainfall deficits seen since the 1849 Gold Rush, with current precipitation at only 30% to 70% of what the state would expect during a normal year.  Heating of the oceans has led young great white sharks to move 370 miles northwards off the coast of California since 2014, with a dramatic rise in the number of sea otters killed by them.

After being banned in 2010, an unexpected and persistent increase in global atmospheric concentrations of CFC-11 (which is 7,000 times more effective at warming the planet than CO₂) was detected in 2018.  An investigation concluded that roughly half of the observed increase resulted from its illegal production in Eastern China, leading the Chinese government to crack down.  Two businessmen argued that the Senate should ratify an amendment to the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which sets targets for the global phase-down of HFCs.

Energy

Renewable sources’ share of the national electricity generation mix is set to double from 21% in 2020 to 42% in 2050.  The integration of wind, solar, and storage into the US grid systems will bring many changes and Jeff St. John provided a glimpse of them in his report on last week’s Energy Storage Association policy forum.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory launched its “Storage Futures Study” to create a framework for a “dramatic increase in deployment” and “answer the big questions around the role of storage in our future grid.”

Many challenges face auto companies, both old and new, in moving to a world of EVs.  Dan Gearino recounted how Norway became the world leader in EV sales as a percent of new vehicles sold.  Global sales of zero emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles will outstrip those of vehicles with internal combustion engines for the first time in 2047, although global oil demand will fall by just under a quarter by 2050 due to the slow phase-out of fossil fuel vehicles.  Amazon’s new electric delivery vans will hit the road in 15 more cities starting this year.  Toyota will roll out two new battery-electric vehicles and one plug-in gas-electric hybrid in the US this year.  A Spanish company will build a plant in Chattanooga, TN, to make axle components for VW’s electric car production in the same city.

The US has fallen behind Asia and Europe in the race to produce the high-tech batteries that power electric cars and store solar and wind energy.  The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that SK Innovation (SKI) was making lithium-ion batteries with trade secrets stolen from LG Chem and restricted SKI from importing certain batteries and components for the next 10 years.  Microvast, which builds rapid-charging lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, will renovate and expand a facility in Clarksville, TN.

Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas announced the launch of its new offshore wind turbine, the V236-15.0MW, which displaces GE’s 14MW Haliade-X as the world’s largest offshore wind turbine.  Europe invested $31.9 billion in new offshore wind farms in 2020, providing 7.1 GW of new capacity.  South Korea unveiled a $43.2 billion plan to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm by 2030.  One of Europe’s most abundant bats may be attracted to wind turbines and this could be why so many are found dead around the continent’s wind farms.

Several companies are developing the capability to produce “turquoise” hydrogen, i.e., hydrogen made from natural gas by pyrolysis, which converts the carbon in the gas to solid elemental carbon while freeing the hydrogen as a gas.  Global Energy Ventures (GEV) and Ballard Power Systems have signed a memorandum of understanding in which Ballard will design and develop a hydrogen fuel cell system for GEV’s compressed hydrogen shipping vessel.

The oil and gas industry has been the worst-performing sector on Wall Street for a decade; in 2020 it had the worst performance of any sector going back to before the Great Depression.  Royal Dutch Shell outlined the details of its near-term and long-term plans to transition to cleaner energy, saying its oil production and total carbon emissions have already peaked.  Conversely, the world’s state-owned oil companies are poised to invest about $1.9 trillion during the next decade in projects that would destroy any prospect of meeting the goals of the PCA.

Potpourri

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has found that Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not by a ratio of more than 5 to 1 (72% versus 13%).  Last week I included an interview in Rolling Stone with Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future; this week, Ezra Klein interviewed her on his podcast, with a focus on solar geoengineering, while Shannon Osaka at Grist focused on human’s inclination to mess with nature.  Astrophysics professor Adam Franks reviewed the book for NPR.  Amy Brady interviewed Julie Carrick Dalton about her debut novel, Waiting for the Night Song, a mystery in which climate change is almost like a character.  Lisa Colton organized a virtual “Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest” and over 5500 people showed up.  Bill McKibben wrote of Connor DeVane who hiked the Continental Divide Trail and talked with people working on climate action, stating: “The resulting movie is free to stream online, and lovely.”  Yale Climate Connections compiled a list of five climate-related documentaries from the Wild & Scenic Film Festival.

Closing Thought

Politics and Policy

President Joe Biden has created the position of senior climate advisor at NASA to guide its administrator and other top government leaders on issues related to Earth’s climate.  SueEllen Campbell compiled several articles examining what can be done legislatively on climate in a closely divided Congress.  The Biden administration has started discussions with the utility and automobile sectors about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Automakers have abandoned their legal fight for a Trump-era rule blocking California from setting its own emissions standards.  The administration is asking the courts to pause litigation over that rule and one rolling back methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 13-4 on Wednesday to advance to the full Senate the nomination of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) to be secretary of Energy.  Michael Regan, Biden’s choice to lead the EPA, told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing that he would “restore” science and transparency at the agency, focus on marginalized communities, and move “with a sense of urgency” to combat climate change.  Lawmakers want to block further drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by designating its coastal plain as wilderness.  Legislation was introduced that would require the president to declare a national emergency on climate change.  The new Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources met to establish a “baseline of global climate facts,” but the only facts they agreed on were that climate change is real and “largely” caused by humans.

This was the week for reports.  Achieving net-zero carbon emissions in the US by 2050 is not only feasible, but would build a more competitive economy, increase high-quality jobs, and help address social injustice in the energy system, says one from the National Academies.  In addition, a report from consulting firm Evolved Energy Research and others said that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 could be “surprisingly feasible,” with costs running just 0.4% of the US GDP.  Evolved Energy Research also provided the modeling for a report on the impact on each state of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.  Evergreen Action and Data for Progress released a report outlining how Congress could set the US on a path to 100% clean electricity by 2035.  Continuing to ignore the value of the services provided by nature in our global economy threatens humanity itself, according to a report on biodiversity and economics, commissioned by the British government.

Republicans introduced bills in both chambers that would give permission for the Keystone XL pipeline to be constructed and operate across the U.S.-Canada border.  Republicans who object to Biden’s agenda for addressing climate change are focusing on John Kerry and Gina McCarthy.  However, Benji Backer, president and founder of the American Conservation Coalition, called on Republicans “to resist the urge to once again become obstructionists and, instead, continue to come to the table with our own perspective on tackling climate change.”  A federal judge ruled that US officials downplayed climate change impacts from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, giving the government until October to do a new analysis.  The Biden administration is delaying a rule finalized during Trump’s last days in office that would have drastically weakened the government’s power to protect most wild birds.

Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said rich countries must step up with fresh financial commitments to help the developing world tackle the climate crisis while Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, said dependency on coal is preventing a global green recovery from taking off.  Nearly six out of 10 US voters said the Biden administration should work directly with China to address climate change.  China has reinstated Xie Zhenhua, one of its most respected climate experts and a broker of the Paris Agreement, as climate envoy.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is giving climate change a prominent role in her talks with her counterparts around the world.  France’s government must do more to combat climate change, a French court said on Wednesday.  One year after Australia’s devastating wildfires, anger is growing at climate change inaction.  However, senior ministers of Australia’s National Party — the junior partner in the ruling coalition — have poured cold water on adopting a concrete commitment to net zero emissions by 2050.  Climate Home News previewed the November COP26 meeting in Glasgow by focusing on the people setting the agenda on seven key issues.

Climate and Climate Science

Flooding rains and record snow in California last week were the result of an atmospheric river originating over the Pacific Ocean.  They are part of California’s “whiplash” climate future, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with NCAR.  The start of California’s rainy season has been getting progressively later in recent decades, and now begins a month after it did just 60 years ago, shifting from November to December.  Climate change ravaged the west with heat and drought last year; many fear 2021 will be worse.  The number of heat-related deaths in Arizona soared to a new high last year as people endured the hottest summer on record.

The rise in sea level is likely to be faster and greater than previously thought, according to researchers who say recent predictions are inconsistent with historical data.  If global warming continues unabated, the surface of the Greenland ice sheet may start losing more mass than it gains every year by 2055, although if strong mitigation measures are taken to curb the rise of global temperatures, the ice sheet may not reach this threshold.

The global food system is the biggest driver of destruction of the natural world, and a shift to predominantly plant-based diets is crucial in halting the damage, according to a new report by thinktank Chatham House, financed by the UN Environment Program.

A surprising amount of the water from the planet’s melting mountain glaciers is building up behind unstable piles of rubble left behind by the retreating ice, posing a hazard for everything downstream.

Energy

Big oil companies lost billions in 2020 because of the pandemic.  According to Justin Guay, a finance community committed to net-zero carbon by 2050 is exposing itself to trillions of dollars in stranded oil and gas assets.  ExxonMobil shareholders are trying to force it to address climate change and the weaker oil market in more aggressive ways, but investors have not been impressed with the company’s actions so far.  The US oil industry wants to forge an alliance with the nation’s corn growers and biofuel producers to lobby against the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles (EVs).  US crude oil production is expected to rebound to a new record in 2023, the EIA said in its annual energy outlook, although it also projected that US gasoline demand has already peaked.

Electrification of the US’s light vehicle fleet by 2030, along with replacement of coal-fired power plants by renewables and gas turbines, could decrease our total primary energy usage by 13%.  At RMI, Britta Gross argued that for the US to reap the benefits of transportation electrification, the Biden administration must communicate a bold vision of what transport will look like in 2030.  The transition to EVs will have sweeping implications for the companies that produce and sell electricity and manage the grid; Brad Plumer discussed four things that need to happen.  The TVA and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation will add about 50 new EV fast charging stations, located every 50 miles along the state’s interstates and major highways, each with up to four chargers.  Ford said it was “doubling down” on EVs and will invest $22 billion in electrification through 2025, nearly twice what it had previously committed.

Central government inspectors have slammed China’s energy authority for failing to apply environmental standards on coal power expansion across the country.  China put 38.4 GW of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world.  However, they are expected to add about 140 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity this year, representing around 47.3% of their energy mix.

A new report from Morgan Stanley projects that coal-fired power generation is likely to disappear from the US power grid by 2033, replaced by renewable energy resources.  Speaking last week with analysts, Jim Robo, CEO of NextEra Energy, said “There is not a regulated coal plant in this country that is economic today, full period and stop.”  Last week, NRG Energy, which owns the Petra Nova carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Texas, announced that it would be shut down indefinitely, leaving the US with no operating CCS projects.

The owner and operator of the Empire State Building and 13 other buildings, announced Wednesday a major purchase of wind power, making it the nation’s biggest real estate user of entirely renewable energy.  The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it would resume an environmental review of the Vineyard Wind project, stopped by the Trump administration.  Utilities and developers are repowering wind turbines with bigger, better blades years ahead of the end of their original life expectancies as they take advantage of technology improvements and expiring federal tax credits.  IdentiFlight’s smart cameras, which spot birds of prey and then halt wind turbines to protect them, can result in a large reduction of bird deaths.

Green hydrogen is set to play a substantive role in the overall energy mix, with its development likely to happen faster than anyone predicts, according to Wood Mackenzie.  A team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Dresden, Germany, has developed a new strategy for storing and transporting hydrogen fuel — a magnesium hydride-based paste.  To meet the goal of zero carbon emissions, industries such as steel production must wean themselves from coal; Maria Gallucci reviewed current efforts at Grist.  Also at Grist, Emily Pontecorvo wrote about the “Mission Possible Partnership,” which is bringing together members of seven carbon-intensive industries to collaborate on how to reduce carbon emissions.

Potpourri

At Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell interviewed Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.  Genevieve Guenther, the founder of End Climate Silence, has said “… part of the reason that oil and gas propaganda is so effective is that there is always a grain of truth to it.”  She was interviewed on Vox.  Michael Patrick F. Smith, a Kentucky folk singer and playwright, reflected on what his time working on oil rigs in North Dakota taught him about America’s fossil fuel addiction — and how to curb it.  In The Atlantic, science writer Peter Brannen took us on a trip into deep time that warns of possible catastrophic surprises ahead.  David Owen published a long, but totally absorbing, article in The New Yorker about a young woman who is using geographic information systems to help the Catholic Church use its land to better the environment.  The Donors of Color Network launched a new initiative, challenging the nation’s climate philanthropists to shift 30% of their donations toward environmental efforts led by Black, Indigenous, Latino, and other people of color.

Closing Thought

Environmentalists are so good at emphasizing worst-case scenarios that when we look to the future, apocalypse often feels inevitable.  Nevertheless, Emma Marris argues that hope for the future is a reasonable and necessary prerequisite for action.

Politics and Policy

Prioritizing environmental justice, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday establishing a White House interagency council on environmental justice, created an office of health and climate equity at the Health and Human Services Department, and formed a separate environmental justice office at the Justice Department.  Other actions were also taken, causing immediate pushback from the fossil fuel industry and its allies in Congress.  Among those actions was a commitment to an ambitious conservation goal and a redetermination of the social cost of carbon.  Greentech Media noted that Wednesday’s orders centered on directing federal agencies to shift existing spending because passing new legislation will be difficult.  Biden also said climate change should be regarded as “an essential element of US foreign policy,” while Defense Secretary Llyod Austin announced that climate change “is a national security issue, and we must treat it as such.”

Greentech Media staff writer Julian Spector considered how budget reconciliation could be used to pass a bill requiring electric utilities to produce 100% clean energy by 2035.  A FEMA proposal could free up funds to support infrastructure such as seawalls and relocating homes prone to flooding.  At her Senate confirmation hearing, Biden’s nominee for energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, defended the administration’s push for a clean energy transition.  Meanwhile, opposition against Biden’s Interior Department nominee, Deb Haaland, became more vocal.  A new report from Americans for a Clean Energy Grid called on FERC to launch a new rulemaking effort aimed at boosting an interregional electric transmission buildout, a goal shared by both former and current FERC chairs.  However, S&P Global pointed out that opponents to infrastructure projects for renewables may be able to deploy some of the same legal tactics that upended the pipeline sector.

The Federal Reserve announced the creation of a new committee to deepen the central bank’s understanding of the risks that climate change poses to the financial system.  Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to eliminate subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, but it included a key phrase, “as consistent with applicable law.”  Grist unpacked this phrase and its implications for what can be done.  Twitter accounts run by machines are a major source of climate change disinformation that might drain support from policies to address rising temperatures.

The UN Development Program questioned 1.2 million people in 50 countries about climate change and found that two-thirds think it is a “global emergency”.  Climate envoy John Kerry made it clear that the US wasn’t just increasing its own efforts to reduce oil, gas, and coal pollution, but that we intend to push everyone in the world to do more, too.  World leaders met at a virtual summit to discuss the need for rich nations to spend more on helping developing countries adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.  Global supply chains, remittances, and migration mean global warming risks in one place can hit others — but improving efforts to adapt can bring shared benefits, researchers say.  The leaders of two UK environmental charities have written to Mark Carney, the UN climate envoy, to raise concerns over a blueprint for carbon offsetting that could result in billions of new carbon credits being sold around the world.  Australia will effectively be abandoning the Paris Climate Agreement unless it makes at least a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reaches net zero well before 2050, according to an analysis by policymakers and scientists.

Climate and Climate Science

In a commentary in the journal Nature, climate scientist Richard Betts argued that because scientists have developed techniques to attribute disasters to human-caused climate change, they should be applied routinely to help governments act on their responsibilities and improve resilience to extreme weather.  A new study in the journal Nature Sustainability incorporated the damages that climate change does to healthy ecosystems into standard climate-economics models, leading to the conclusion that the standard models have been underestimating the cost of climate damages to society by a factor of more than five.

Emphasizing that the point of recognizing existential threats is to avoid them, ecologist and MacArthur Fellow Carl Safina discussed the stark “perspective” article by 17 of the world’s leading ecologists in last week’s issue of Frontiers in Conservation Science.  The New York Times published an interesting infographic that showed the vulnerabilities of countries all over the world to climate disasters.  Nearly a half-million people, mostly from the world’s poorest countries, died over the past two decades from conditions associated with climate disasters, according to this year’s “Global Climate Risk Index” report.  In 2020, Earth was besieged by a record 50 weather disasters costing a billion dollars or more, the most such disasters ever recorded, said insurance broker Aon in its annual report issued Monday.

Earth is hotter now than it has been for at least 12,000 years, a period spanning the entire development of human civilization, according to research published in the journal Nature.

The melting of ice across the planet is accelerating and is now in line with the worst-case scenarios of the IPCC, according to a paper published in the journal The Cryosphere.  Furthermore, NASA-led research showed that the undercutting of glaciers by relatively mild ocean waters explains why so many of Greenland’s glaciers have sped-up their movement into the ocean.  Scientists have determined that the blooms of algae on the surface of the ice in Greenland are triggered by wind-blown dust containing phosphorus, a limiting nutrient for the microbes.  Last week, for the first time, three liquified natural gas tankers travelled the Northern Sea Route to Asia without icebreaker escorts.  The decline of sea ice in the Bering Sea is changing almost everything about the region.  Peter Sinclair’s latest “This is not Cool” video is about the ice jams at the entrance to Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, through which the Arctic’s oldest and thickest sea ice flows to the Baffin Bay, the Labrador Sea, and then the Atlantic Ocean.

An area the size of Israel was deforested in the Amazon biome last year as destruction surged 21% in the region, suggesting that without a reduction in deforestation, the Amazon rainforest will reach a tipping point in 10 to 20 years, after which it will enter a sustained death spiral as it dries out and turns into a savanna.

Energy

Biden signed an executive order to “Buy American”, which he says will include replacing hundreds of thousands of vehicles in the federal government fleet, including the Postal Service, with US-made electric vehicles  (EVs), raising the question of how he will achieve it.  General Motors announced Thursday that it will end the sale of all gasoline- and diesel-powered passenger cars and light sports utility vehicles by 2035.  Nissan Motor Co said all its “new vehicle offerings” in key markets would be electrified by the early 2030s, as part of its efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.  Toyota Motor Corp. is increasing the manufacturing of parts for hydrogen fuel call vehicles, following the December unveiling of its second generation Mirai, a hydrogen-powered sedan.  National Geographic examined the question of whether all of this means that EVs’ moment has arrived.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called on all companies “to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net-zero economy.”  Over 400 companies across some of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitting industries — from shipping to steelmaking — have agreed to work together on plans to decarbonize by 2050, according to a coalition of climate advocacy groups that set up the partnership.

Rating agency S&P has warned 13 oil and gas companies, including some of the world’s biggest, that it may downgrade them within weeks because of increasing competition from renewable energy.  BP’s oil exploration team has been cut to less than 100 from a peak of more than 700 a few years ago, part of a climate change-driven overhaul triggered last year by CEO Bernard Looney.

According to a new report, EU countries generated more electricity from renewables than from coal and gas for the first time ever in 2020, but the pace of deployment through the 2020s will need to more than double that of the 2010s if the EU is going to hit its target of a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030.  A new report from the Sierra Club found that almost no U.S. utilities are on track to reduce CO₂ emissions by 80% by 2030 compared to a 2005 baseline; rather, most utilities’ plans put them on a path to much more modest carbon reductions.  Not surprisingly, the utility sector defended its approach to the decarbonization process.

RMI’s newest report, Seeds of Opportunity, addresses the question of what the growth of the renewable energy industry means for rural America.  Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) called on the state legislature to implement a 10-year moratorium on offshore wind projects in state-managed waters, citing a need to keep the fishing industry engaged in ongoing talks about such development.

Potpourri

In “The Shortlist” at The New York Times, Tatiana Schlossberg presented three books that offer new ways to think about environmental disaster.  At Literary Hub, Amy Brady recommended five inspiring books for 2021.  Maxine Joselow interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann about his new book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.  Jeff Masters reviewed it at Yale Climate Connections.  The 36-year-old Canadian musician Tamara Lindeman’s piercing new album, “Ignorance,” explores the emotional impacts of climate change.  Climate scientists are dealing with a strange new feeling now that Biden is president: optimism.  Kate Yoder argued at Grist that the way we talk about science makes it a polarizing topic.  Salla, Finland, has released a video promoting its bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics!  Enjoy.

Closing Thought

For our “Closing Thought” this week, watch and listen to Amanda Gorman’s December 2018 recitation of her poem “Earthrise.”

Politics and Policy

During his first moments in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Joe Biden returned the US to the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) and ordered federal agencies to review scores of climate and environmental policies enacted during the Trump years and, if possible, quickly reverse them.  (An article without a paywall is here.)  He also revoked the construction permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, prompting indigenous leaders to call for him to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline.  The new administration also reestablished an interagency working group and ordered it to update the social cost of carbon within 30 days.  Inside Climate News presented a compilation of the major actions on Day One, but legal experts warned that it could take two to three years to put many of the old rules back in place.  In addition, Biden is expected to announce a second round of executive orders focused on combating climate change next Wednesday and to convene an international climate summit in April to help accelerate emissions cuts.  The Washington Post has started tracking the Biden administration’s unwinding of Trump’s climate change “legacy.”  For example, Biden elevated Richard Glick, a Democrat, to chair of FERC.

On Tuesday, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, paving the way for the enactment of new and stronger restrictions on power plants.  In a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Treasury secretary nominee Janet Yellen said she planned to start a new Treasury “hub” that would examine financial system risks arising from climate change.  The new administration will likely use the Congressional Review Act to reverse some of the Trump administrations rules, but they must jump through several hoops to do so.  President Biden wants to use an infrastructure bill to simultaneously boost the economy and act on climate, but there will be obstacles to such an effort.  The Interior Department took swift action to block oil and gas drilling on public lands, freezing such leases for the next 60 days.

By interviewing more than 20 officials and advocates around the globe, Politico sought to determine what the world wants from John Kerry on climate.  Meanwhile, Kerry vowed during an appearance at an Italian climate conference that the Biden administration would make up for the past four years of climate inaction.  Environmental advocates want the Biden administration to use US trade agreements to fight climate change by conditioning future agreements on partners’ ability to meet their targets under the PCA.  Coal mining will continue to generate wealth for Australians for decades to come, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared in a statement fending off calls to phase out fossil fuels and toughen action on climate change.  However, pressure from the US and Australian states could cause him to change his tune.  China’s coal output rose last year to its highest since 2015, despite Beijing’s climate change pledge to reduce coal’s consumption.  The president of the European Investment Bank announced that the bank intends to end all funding for fossil fuels before the end of the year.  Along with promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, under the PCA world leaders also agreed to prepare for the unavoidable and mounting impacts of climate change, but adaptation efforts are lagging.

On its final full day in office, among other things, the Trump administration finalized lease sales to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  The US Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday on whether a lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore against oil and gas companies belongs in state courts, where the plaintiffs want it, or the federal courts, where the oil companies want it.  Amy Coney Barrett was among the justices who heard the arguments, despite her father’s longstanding ties to Shell Oil Company, one of the defendants in the case.  In a change of position, the US Chamber of Commerce said Congress should pass laws pushing companies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, declaring “We believe that durable climate policy must be made by Congress.”  They also endorsed a market-based approach.  The clean energy sector in the US lost 429,000 jobs last year due to the economic impacts of COVID-19 and 70% have yet to be recovered.

Climate and Climate Science

A paper in Communications Earth and Environment presented an integrated approach to accounting for uncertainties in estimating the remaining carbon budget associated with a given temperature rise.  For a 1.5°C rise above preindustrial temperatures they estimated the remaining budget to be 230 Gt CO₂ for a 66% chance of staying below a 1.5°C rise and 440 Gt CO₂ for a 33% chance.  An attribution study published in Nature Climate Change found that greenhouse gas emissions released by humans accounted for the vast majority of global temperature rise observed from pre-industrial times to today, while natural factors had a “negligible” effect.  Methane leaking out of the more than 4 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the US and Canada is a far greater contributor to climate change than government estimates suggest, according to a new paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The World Economic Forum published a surprisingly frank essay by Peter Giger, Group Chief Risk Officer of the Zurich Insurance Group, in which he said humans were playing a game of Jenga with Earth’s climate system.  Because of the importance of modeling in charting a course through the climate crisis, a team of climatologists, oceanographers, and computer scientists on the East and West US coasts has launched a bold effort to develop a new generation of climate models.  For those who like to keep up with how well current models are doing in projecting Earth’s temperature in response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, RealClimate has updated its model-observation comparison page with an additional annual observational point for 2020.

Heat-related illnesses are soaring in Arizona and Florida as the planet warms and poor communities are bearing the brunt of the impact.  A paper in Nature Climate Change found that climate change will dramatically shift the globe’s tropical rain belt, threatening the food security of billions of people.

Research, published in Nature, found that lake heatwaves could become between three and 12 times longer by the end of this century – and between 0.3°C and 1.7°C hotter.  Of the 14 species of salmon and steelhead trout in Washington State that are endangered, ten are lagging recovery goals and five of those are considered “in crisis.”

A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that beneath the surface layer of waters circling Antarctica, the seas are warming much more rapidly than previously known, and this relatively warm water is rising toward the surface at a rate three to 10 times previous estimates, endangering the stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Energy

In a 9% increase over 2019, the world spent a record $501.3 billion in 2020 on renewable power, electric vehicles (EVs), and other technologies to cut the global energy system’s dependence on fossil fuels.  Global sales of EVs accelerated in 2020, rising by 43% to more than 3 million.  Unfortunately, the reduction in CO₂ emissions associated with those EVs was more than cancelled out by the increased sales of SUVs.  A team at MIT calculated both the CO₂ emissions and full lifetime cost for nearly every new car model on the market.  They found that EVs were easily more climate friendly than gas-burning ones and were often cheaper, too.  Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been manufactured on a production line in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step toward EVs becoming as fast to charge as filling up gasoline or diesel vehicles.

A venture part-owned by Toyota Motor Corp. and Air Liquide SA, plans to persuade 10,000 Paris taxi drivers to switch to hydrogen fuel cell powered cars by the time the Olympic Games come to town in 2024.  The MIT Startup Exchange showcased five startups developing emerging hydrogen production technologies.  According to a new report by Deloitte, hydrogen will be the key energy source for heavy-duty and long-route medium-duty freight vehicles in Europe, but battery electrification will be the most economic and environmental solution for smaller delivery vehicles.  South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group has announced its intentions to build its first overseas fuel cell factory in China.  The green hydrogen production division of Thyssenkrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers will install an 88 MW water electrolysis plant for Hydro-Québec.

A growing number of corporations are pouring money into direct air capture of CO₂ to offset emissions they can’t otherwise cut.  Elon Musk has promised a $100 million prize for development of the “best” technology to capture CO₂ emissions.

China added 71.67 GW of wind power capacity in 2020, along with 48.2 GW of solar power.  Unfortunately, it also added 56.37 GW of new thermal power capacity.  Meanwhile, Germany increased its offshore wind capacity in the North Sea.  Data from the US Energy Information Agency revealed that natural gas will supply just 16% of new power capacity this year in the US as cheap wind and solar power take over the market.

Energy company Total and solar-plus-storage developer 174 Power Global have formed a joint venture to develop utility-scale solar and storage projects in five states with a total capacity of 1.6 GW.  Hawaiian Electric won regulatory approval for a $25 million plan to harness solar and batteries at 6,000 homes across the islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Oahu to form a virtual power plant.  The lion’s share of new funding announced this week by the DOE’s ARPA-E program to help scale-up potentially disruptive technologies will go to battery and smart grid technologies.

Potpourri

Michael Svoboda provided descriptions of twelve new books that explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action.  The Biden administration has the largest team of climate change experts ever assembled in the White House, but there will be pressure from multiple directions by members of the coalition that got Biden elected.  In his regular weekly newsletter at The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer laid out a primer for watching the Biden administration’s first 100 days, while in his weekly New Yorker column, Bill McKibben argued that humans need to stop burning things.  The Washington Post had a feature article on Friday about regenerative agriculture and the controversy around its ability to sequester carbon in the long term.  Grist examined the latest research on how to lessen public opposition to the placement of wind farms.

Closing Thought

In response to Biden’s inauguration, Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute wrote: “…our nation can now return to the international community where major countries are shifting into high gear on the clean energy transition.”