Taiwan’s failure to clean up industry endangers its net zero pledge
Comment: Taiwan's industry is responsible for more than half of its emissions but the government's new climate policies have no specific plan to tackle them.
After a series of multinational oil companies ruled themselves out of the controversial projects, the government pushed back bidding at the last minute
Portugal agrees to swap Cape Verde’s debt for environmental investment
Cape Verde owes around $150m to the Portugese state - but Portugal says it will write off the debt if the African island nation spends the money on environmental measures
Italy’s climate envoy resigns, leaving diplomacy in doubt
Alessandro Modiano resigned three months into a new far-right government and it is unclear if he will be replaced as climate envoy or if the position will be scrapped
How Illegal Mining Caused a Humanitarian Crisis in the Amazon
The onslaught of illegal miners into Indigenous territory in the Brazilian Amazon has destroyed forest, polluted rivers, and brought disease and malnutrition to the Yanomami people. Now, the new Brazilian government is confronting a health crisis and moving to evict the miners.
Microplastics Are Filling the Skies. Will They Affect the Climate?
Recent studies reveal that tiny pieces of plastic are constantly lofted into the atmosphere. These particles can travel thousands of miles and affect the formation of clouds, which means they have the potential to impact temperature, rainfall, and even climate change.
Cold Water Fish Can Adapt to Climate Change by Breeding With Warm Water Relatives
Temperatures are rising faster than many species can evolve to cope with them, posing a long-term threat to their survival. But new research suggests an evolutionary shortcut to adaptation: breed with closely related species that can better stand the heat.
In Brazil, Forests Returned to Indigenous Hands See Recovery, Study Finds
Granted formal rights to their ancestral lands in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, Indigenous people have stemmed forest loss and improved tree cover, a new study finds.
Clean Energy Saw as Much Investment as Fossil Fuels for the First Time in 2022
Solar, wind, electric vehicles, and other clean energy technologies saw a record-high $1.1 trillion in investment globally last year, matching investment in fossil fuels for the first time ever, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Temperatures Drop in Chinese Cities as Streets Empty for Lunar New Year
There is a mass exodus from Chinese cities during the week-long holiday around the Lunar New Year as locals decamp to visit family. The migration is so large that, as cities empty, they see a measurable drop in temperature, a new study finds.
Portugal to Redirect Cape Verde Debt Payments to New Climate Fund
Under the terms of a new agreement, Portugal will redirect debt payments owed by Cape Verde to a fund that will help the island nation tackle climate change.
Silencing Science: How Indonesia Is Censoring Wildlife Research
Under President Joko Widodo, Indonesia has gained international praise for its conservation policies. But now the government is clamping down on scientists who are questioning official claims that the country’s endangered orangutan and rhino populations are increasing.
In Europe’s Clean Energy Transition, Industry Turns to Heat Pumps
With soaring gas prices due to the Ukraine war and the EU’s push to cut emissions, European industries are increasingly switching to high-temperature, high-efficiency heat pumps. Combined with the boom in residential use, the EU is now hoping for a heat pump revolution.
Growing Dust from Desert Wind Storms Has Curbed Warming, Study Finds
The amount of dust generated by desert windstorms has grown markedly since the mid-19th century, helping to offset the global rise in temperature, new research shows.
Indigenous Lands Among the Amazon's Last Carbon Sinks
Parts of the Amazon managed by Indigenous people removed more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they released, while areas not managed by Indigenous people saw widespread deforestation, producing more carbon dioxide than they removed, a report finds.
Amazon Under Fire: The Long Struggle Against Brazil’s Land Barons
Journalist Heriberto Araujo spent four years reporting on the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his new book, which explores the complex web of issues underpinning the deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest.
After Comeback, Southern Iraq’s Marshes Are Now Drying Up
After recovering from Saddam Hussein’s campaign to drain them, Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes are disappearing as a regional drought enters its fourth year and upstream dams cut off water flows. Marsh Arabs, resident for millennia, are leaving, and biodiversity is collapsing.
Insect Loss Stunting Fruit and Vegetable Production, Leading to More Than 400,000 Early Deaths a Year
The global decline of bees and other pollinators is stunting yields of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Scientists estimate that the loss of these nutritious foods is leading to 427,000 early deaths a year.
New York City Greenery Absorbing All Traffic Emissions on Many Summer Days
On many summer days, trees, shrubs, and grasses across the New York metro area soak up as much carbon dioxide as is generated by all cars, buses, and trucks, according to new research.
Florida Neighborhoods Are Gentrifying in the Wake of Hurricanes, Study Finds
Florida neighborhoods hit by hurricanes have seen little drop in interest from homebuyers. On the contrary, these communities have tended to gentrify, with the price of homes and the income of buyers rising slightly after a storm, a new study reveals.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program will be well represented at the AGU Fall Meeting 2022 from December 12–16 in Chicago, IL. We hope you will join us for the following talks and sessions: All times local (Central Standard Time) Bold denotes session Monday [8:00–9:00 AM] NH11B: Climate and Natural Disaster Risk Management for Human-Natural...
On November 7, 2022, USGCRP released a draft version of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) for public review and comment. To support this important phase of the report's development, USGCRP is hosting two webinars for people interested in learning more about NCA5, why public participation is vital to the process, and how to submit...
Through the efforts of USGCRP, authors, NOAA’s Technical Support Unit, and support staff, the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) has moved from the planning phase to putting pen to paper. Here is a look back at recent accomplishments: Gathering a diverse team of authors. In the spring and summer of 2021, the NCA5 Federal Steering Committee...
Work on the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) is underway. The Congressionally mandated report is the U.S. Government’s premier assessment of the science of climate change and its impacts on the Nation. It is written by hundreds of experts from around the country, who help ensure that the findings are accessible and useful to the widest...
The U.S. Global Change Research Program is pleased to announce that Allison Crimmins will serve as Director of the FIfth National Climate Assessment (NCA5). She is detailed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Air and Radiation. As Director, Allison will oversee...
On May 19, 2021, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced that Dr. Mike Kuperberg is returning to USGCRP as Executive Director. This is his second stint in USGCRP leadership, having served previously as Executive Director from 2015 through November 2020. He is detailed from the Department of Energy’s Office of...
NASA, on behalf of USGCRP, issued a Federal Register Notice (FRN) seeking author nominations and scientific/technical inputs for the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5). The FRN, which opened October 15, 2020 and closed the following month on November 14, also served as a notice of planned public engagement opportunities. Prospective authors...
Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, the latest in a series of spacecraft designed to monitor our oceans, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California on Saturday, November 21, 2020. The satellite will be followed in 2025 by its twin, Sentinel-6B. Together, the pair is tasked with extending our nearly 30-year-long record of global sea...
The U.S. Global Change Research Program extends our condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Mike Freilich, a widely respected geoscientist and former director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, and shares the loss of a longtime member of the USGCRP family.
Dr. Anthony Janetos, a longstanding member of the USGCRP community and Director of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, passed away on Tuesday, August 6, 2019. He was 64 years old. Dr. Janetos dedicated his career to interdisciplinary, policy-relevant global change science. Prior to the Pardee...
Novelist Tom Bullough on his XR arrest – and what Welsh saints can teach us about the climate crisis
The writer is passionate about the environment, and Wales, and has fed that passion into a book that attends to ancient lives alongside our own
It is a filthy wet day, rivulets of water streaming down necks as well as hills, yet Tom Bullough is striding up the slippery incline of Fan Frynych, completely unpuffed, while speaking urgently about the challenge of the climate emergency – to writing, to Wales and to life itself.
“How do you make people care about the climate crisis? You have to turn to those things that you care about yourself,” he says, disappearing into a grey veil of rain. “You can’t really choose where you are as a writer, where your heart lies, and it happens that I love Wales and I’m from Wales and therefore my writing about Wales is invested with a passion which I just can’t confect.”
Will Steffen fought passionately for our planet. To honour him we must follow his lead | Penny Sackett
I am filled with grief at losing my friend at a time when we need his calm, direct voice more than ever
This week science lost one of its greatest Earth system experts, Australia lost a skilled, passionate communicator of climate science and the world lost a humble soul of the highest humanity, kindness and integrity. As did scores of others, I lost a colleague and friend when Will Steffen left us on Sunday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
It is impossible to overstate Will’s impact on science. The many tributes to his work can only scratch the surface of his legacy. He led the effort to map the Great Acceleration of human impact on the physical and biological systems of our planet, culminating in consideration of the geological age of humans – the Anthropocene, first proposed by Nobel prize winner Paul Crutzen.
As the climate system continues to spiral towards a potentially uncontrollable state, I am struck with an increasing sense of both anger and apprehension. I’m angry because the lack of effective action on climate change, despite the wealth not of only scientific information but also of solutions to reduce emissions, has now created a climate emergency. The students are right. Their future is now being threatened by the greed of the wealthy fossil fuel elite, the lies of the Murdoch press, and the weakness of our political leaders. These people have no right to destroy my daughter’s future and that of her generation.
I’m apprehensive because the more we learn about climate change, the riskier it looks. Even at a 1 degree C rise in global temperature, extreme weather events are becoming more violent and dangerous than models have predicted. Over the last 5 years, our knowledge of tipping points in the Earth System has advanced rapidly, with many already showing signs of instability. Worse yet, they can interact like a row of dominoes to set off a tipping cascade, driving the Earth to hotter and more unstable conditions. That is my worst fear – that we may reach a ‘point of no return’ where we commit our children to a future of hell on Earth.
Australia’s $528m icebreaking research vessel has suffered another setback and will not resupply the remote Macquarie Island station in coming months as initially planned, with a chartered vessel taking its place.
Earth is on track to exceed 1.5C warming in the next decade, study using AI finds
Researchers found that exceeding the 2C increase has a 50% chance of happening by mid-century
The world is on the brink of breaching a critical climate threshold, according to a new study published on Monday, signifying time is running exceedingly short to spare the world the most catastrophic effects of global heating.
Using artificial intelligence to predict warming timelines, researchers at Stanford University and Colorado State University found that 1.5C of warming over industrial levels will probably be crossed in the next decade. The study also shows the Earth is on track to exceed 2C warming, which international scientists identified as a tipping point, with a 50% chance the grave benchmark would be met by mid-century.
Environmental justice targets needed to cut global inequality, say researchers
Plan unveiled at Davos to find fair limits on impact of climate and other crises, which most affect poorer countries
Countries, companies and cities need to establish environmental justice targets to counter the impact of the climate and other crises on global inequality, according to the authors of the most comprehensive study of the issue to date.
From floods in Pakistan to air pollution in India, the Earth Commission researchers say the poorest parts of the world are being disproportionately harmed by environmental problems, which is adding to global injustice and threatening social stability.
UN's Guterres: oil companies have peddled 'big lie' on climate crisis – video
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, accused big oil companies of peddling 'the big lie', calling for them to be held accountable. 'Today fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production knowing full well that this business model is inconsistent with human survival,' he said.
Guterres said the world was 'flirting with disaster', warning that global temperature pledges were at risk of being breached. 'The commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is nearly going up in smoke. Without further action we are headed to a 2.8-degree increase'
Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023
Scientists say phenomenon coupled with growing climate crisis likely to push global temperatures ‘off the chart’
The return of the El Niño climate phenomenon later this year will cause global temperatures to rise “off the chart” and deliver unprecedented heatwaves, scientists have warned.
Early forecasts suggest El Niño will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it “very likely” the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño.
Australian Antarctic division set to drill for oldest ice on record after 19-day journey – video
After a 19-day journey over snow and ice, Australian scientists have arrived at a site where they will drill for the oldest ice on record as part of the Million Year Ice project. They hope this will give them a better understanding of how the climate has changed over time. By 2027, they hope to have drilled down to a depth of 2.7km. The project has been in the planning for six years after the idea to hunt for ice at least a million years old was first raised a decade ago. The oldest record of the Earth’s climate comes from an ice core drilled at Dome Concordia that was 800,000 years old
Time tunnel: why an Australian expedition is drilling through 2.6km of Antarctic ice
Ancient air trapped deep below the surface could unlock secrets of the Earth’s past and help understand what lies ahead as CO2 in the atmosphere keeps rising
When it reaches about 2.6km beneath the Australian camp at Antarctica’s Little Dome C, the drill will hit ice with tiny pockets of air about 1.5m years old.
The last time those molecules were in the planet’s atmosphere, our human ancestor homo erectus was just working out how to harness fire to cook and stay warm.
A UN report has found the Earth’s ozone layer is on course to be healed within the next 40 years. What was once humanity’s most feared environmental peril is now an example of how the world can take collective action. Madeleine Finlay speaks to atmospheric scientist Paul Newman about this momentous achievement and whether it really is the end of the story
The ozone layer is an important part of the Earth’s atmosphere that absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun. After alarm over the loss of the ozone layer in the 1980s, governments signed the Montreal protocol in 1987, an international agreement that has helped eliminate 99% of ozone-depleting chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons that were used as solvents and refrigerants.
Since then, scientists have been monitoring levels of CFCs in the atmosphere and ozone depletion. This week, a UN report found that it is set to be completely healed by 2066. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Paul Newman, the chief scientist for earth sciences at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, about how this was achieved and what it means for the climate crisis.
Robots could soon collect tissue samples from whales off the coast of Antarctica or fly long distances over the icy continent with surveillance cameras, allowing Australian scientists to observe dangerous and previously inaccessible areas.
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has partnered with Prof Peter Corke, a robotics expert, to develop a shortlist of new technologies that could improve safety and scientific research on the continent.
The Guardian view on Europe’s heatwave: the door is closing – but there is a way out | Editorial
Temperature records have toppled across the continent. Governments must not delay any longer
Warm winter days do not instinctively feel like an extreme weather event. Unlike the freezing bomb cyclone endured by the US at Christmas, or the floods that swept through the Philippines, they are unlikely to cause immediate widespread death and devastation. At a time when soaring energy costs have pushed so many into poverty, many will have welcomed the warmth that has been felt across Europe, especially the millions in Ukraine suffering due to Russia’s attacks on its power infrastructure.
Yet the heatwave should alarm us all. Though it may have been less punitive to experience than last summer’s record temperatures, which led to thousands of deaths, it has spread across many more countries. “We can regard this as the most extreme event in European history,” said one climatologist. Poland, where the average January temperature is around 1C, saw the thermometer climb to 19C on New Year’s Day. At least seven more European countries have seen record highs. Ski resorts closed slopes or resorted to artificial snow. Though the weather might seem mild, it is disrupting crops and wildlife, and of course sudden thaws can lead to avalanches or floods.
UK’s record hot 2022 made 160 times more likely by climate crisis
Without global heating, such warm temperatures would be expected only once every five centuries, Met Office says
The record-breaking heat in the UK in 2022 was made 160 times more likely by the climate crisis, indicating the dominant influence of human-caused global heating on Britain.
Last year has been confirmed as the UK’s hottest on record, with the average annual temperature passing the 10C mark for the first time. Scientists at the Met Office calculated that such heat is now expected every three to four years. Without the greenhouse gases emitted by humanity, such a warm year would be expected only once every five centuries.
Australian researchers have set off on their most ambitious polar expedition in two decades, aiming to drill down into million-year-old ice to learn about climate change.
A convoy of five specially designed tractor trains intends to traverse 1,200km to Little Dome C in Antarctica, where – if successful – they will set up a camp for scientists to start drilling as early as next summer.
In mid-November Dr Meganne Christian was cycling home from her work at the Italian National Research Agency in Bologna when her phone rang.
“I wasn’t going to answer because I was riding,” the Australian scientist says. Then she noticed the incoming number had a French country code. “I stopped everything, just stopped my bike in the middle of the bike path and answered.”
Country diary: An ocean of cloud obscures the valley and villages | Carey Davies
Beamsley Beacon, Wharfedale: The legacy of vast ice leviathans is still vividly evident
Wharfedale is dreaming of the ice age again. The shape of the glacier that once scraped its way through the valley is recreated in the form of a river of cold cloud that, for today at least, has eradicated 10,000 years of human civilisation.
Everything below the 200-metre contour is lost under the blanket of freezing fog, but the tops of the surrounding hills and moors poke free, and from Beamsley Beacon I look out across an archipelago of upland islands above an ocean of cloud. The “sea” has momentarily obliterated the pastoral patchwork of the valley below, the villages, the Augustinian abbeys, the A59; Leeds and Bradford, to the south-east, have been swamped too.
Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast
The Biden administration is developing a controversial solar geoengineering research plan to the dismay of many experts
As global heating escalates, the US government has set out a plan to further study the controversial and seemingly sci-fi notion of deflecting the sun’s rays before they hit Earth. But a growing group of scientists denounces any steps towards what is known as solar geoengineering.
The White House has set into motion a five-year outline for research into “climate interventions”. Those include methods such as sending a phalanx of planes to spray reflective particles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, in order to block incoming sunlight from adding to rising temperatures.
Global temperatures in 2023 set to be among hottest on record
Average temperatures next year will be about 1.2C above what they were before humans started to drive climate change, the Met Office says
Next year is forecast to be one of the hottest on record with global average temperatures forecast to be about 1.2C above what they were before humans started to drive climate change, the UK Met Office predicts.
If correct, it would be the 10th year in a row to see global average temperatures reach at least 1C above what they were in pre-industrial times, measured as the period 1850-1900.
This affecting documentary follows Swiss biochemist Jacques Dubochet as he turns the sudden fame provided by his Nobel win into a force for change
Here is an invigorating portrait of one of Europe’s most distinguished scientists, caught at the very point of morphing into a public intellectual and vehement campaigner. In 2017, Swiss biophysicist Jacques Dubochet won the Nobel prize in chemistry – jointly with Richard Henderson of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and Joachim Frank of Columbia in New York – for his work on cryo-electron microscopy, freezing biomolecules in mid-movement and so rendering them visible for the first time; this was a great leap forward for pharmacy and medicine.
The snowy-haired Dubochet, who did his important work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg before returning to Lausanne, is shown to be at first bemused and a little flustered by the hordes of excitable photographers who descend on his tranquil campus, clamouring for interviews and demanding a soundbite explanation of his work for the TV news. But Dubochet is no innocent: he was a committed anti-nuclear campaigner in Germany in the “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” era of the 80s, and the film shows it dawning on Dubochet that he can use his new platform to campaign on the new issue that he’s passionate about – the climate crisis.
What archaeologists discovered about climate change in prehistoric England
DNA analysis shows gradual changes to landscape and vegetation are not what future generations can expect
A key element of human existence and the prospects for people surviving or thriving was the weather and general climate.
Archaeologists have always been able to tell us something about this when digging up Roman or bronze age settlements by using animal bones and burnt seeds as clues. It shows what farmers grew or hunters could catch. But further back in time this becomes more difficult.
All but one of the countries’ coal-fired power plants cost more to operate than they would if their output was replaced with wind and solar energy. The sole economically viable plant is Dry Fork Station in Wyoming—a positive distinction for that plant, but a damning one for coal-fired electricity in general.
More of our coverage of the biggest story on the planet:
New Zealand’s recently departed prime minister led on climate change at a time when many others dismissed the challenge. But postures on the world stage do not always reflect what is happening at home.
Confronting California’s Water Crisis BY LIZA GROSS State officials should protect water as a public resource and rein in corporate water abusers to deal with its increasingly uncertain water future, a new report says.
The Red Sea Could be a Climate Refuge for Coral Reefs BY BOB BERWYN A large new marine protected area could help some of the world’s most heat-tolerant corals survive the century, if the pressures from resorts, industry and other development ease.
Climate change poses an “existential threat” to archaeological and cultural heritage sites like Whitney Plantation, a museum dedicated to the history of slavery.
By Kiley Bense
When I visited Whitney Plantation in Louisiana last year, I was surprised to find that the museum’s tour, which is focused on the history and legacy of slavery, also discussed climate change. Amid twisty live oaks draped in Spanish moss, as green dragonflies buzzed in the heavy heat, I stopped to read a sign entitled, “Climate Change and Threats to Preservation.”
It’s a return to Washington’s biggest energy debate, with Democrats and climate advocates divided among themselves, and mostly at odds with Republicans.
By Dan Gearino, Kristoffer Tigue
The construction of a new interstate power line near Phoenix has become the latest symbol in the debate over federal permitting reform.
Today's Climate - Dark Money Is Fueling Climate Denial and Delaying Action, Watchdogs Warn
Today's Climate - Dark Money Is Fueling Climate Denial and Delaying Action, Watchdogs Warn
A twice-weekly digest of the most pressing climate-related news, released every Tuesday and Friday, written by Kristoffer Tigue.
Dark Money Is Fueling Climate Denial and Delaying Action, Watchdogs Warn
Dark money groups have become a critical roadblock to meaningful climate action by propagating misinformation about climate science and clean energy, while propping up politicians who support fossil fuels through massive donations, according to a series of recent investigations and reports.
Dark money refers to spending meant to influence elections or policy where the source of the money isn’t disclosed. In many cases, the money is hidden from the public by being channeled through politically active nonprofits such as 501(c)(4)s, which generally aren’t required to disclose donors, or through the use of shell companies.
Spanning from last May to as recently as this week, a slew of news investigations and watchdog reports have revealed a bevy of dark money campaigns aimed at safeguarding the finances of fossil fuel energy companies. Most of the campaigns focused on spreading misleading information about the benefits of fossil fuels and the potential harms of clean energy, as well as funding campaigns for politicians that are friendly to oil and gas development, the reports found.
Two particularly alarming revelations sprang from a joint-investigation by NPR and Floodlight, published in December, and another investigation by The Washington Post published Thursday. The December investigation found that at least $900,000 tied to utility company Alabama Power had been funneled to news websites that wrote articles that promoted the utility’s business interests. Thursday’s report found that a nonprofit created by a half-dozen gas companies was hiring prominent Democratic politicians and pollsters for the purpose of improving the reputation of natural gas among liberal voters.
The investigations suggest that, at least to some degree, money collected from ratepayers is being used to influence public debate surrounding elections and policies that fossil fuel companies view as a threat to their bottom line, such as recent speculation over a nationwide natural gas ban in new construction.
“America’s monopoly electric and gas utilities are using the money that they collect from customers’ monthly bills to fund political machines that push legislation, curry favor with regulators and alter the outcomes of elections, sometimes even breaking laws in the process,” David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, wrote in a new report released last week.
The San Francisco-based watchdog and clean energy advocacy group has released several reports over the last year connecting fossil fuel money to ad campaigns that downplayed or denied the threats of climate change, as well as efforts to thwart the United Kingdom’s net zero emissions policy. Its latest report, “Getting Politics Out of Utility Bills,” summarizes how dark money from energy companies has pervaded the political arena and emerged as a major obstacle for meaningful climate action—specifically the rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
“A combination of vague and outdated rules ridden with loopholes, a lack of visibility into utility political influence activities for regulators and the public, and an abdication of enforcement by regulators has meant that utilities have had free reign to use their customers’ money toward their political operations,” the report said.
The report also suggests three things that policymakers could do to help address those issues, namely by adopting new rules or passing legislation that:
Explicitly prohibits utilities from using ratepayer money for any political activity, including through nonprofits;
Requires utilities to disclose all spending in relation to political spending to ensure ratepayer money isn’t involved;
Establishes new offices or other regulatory bodies to enforce compliance and issue penalties for infractions.
In fact, the Energy and Policy Institute released those recommendations the same week former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder began his federal racketeering trial. The former state lawmaker, along with four other men, were charged last year with accepting some $61 million in bribes from Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy in exchange for a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout of two struggling nuclear power plants controlled by the energy company.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors began laying out key details of their case, including how money involved in the alleged scheme was funneled through dark money groups and into political action committees and limited liability companies that then supported Householder’s political campaigns.
The Householder scandal also represents the type of misuse of public money that Energy and Policy Institute’s recommendations aim to address. Many climate advocates even believe that special interests are, above all else, the largest hurdle to the international effort to curb the planet’s rising greenhouse gas emissions.
“The fundamental actions to address climate change are not being taken, and the reason they aren’t has a lot to do with a basic underlying problem: the role of money in government,” James Hansen, the prominent climate scientist who elevated the issue of global warming when he famously testified in front of Congress in the 1980s, wrote in a blog post last year. “Young people, indeed, all people, need to understand that they cannot solve the energy and climate problem without addressing the special interest problem in Washington.”
That’s it this week for Today’s Climate. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday—but before you go:
Hot Gossip
Kal Penn, known best for playing Kumar in the early 2000s stoner comedy, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” is hosting a new show on Bloomberg’s streaming platform that “goes beyond the gloom and doom of global warming reporting in search of solutions.”
The thought behind the show, titled “Getting Warmer,” falls into a larger debate within the climate movement over how to manage skyrocketing climate anxiety, especially among children. So how do you feel about climate solutions journalism? Do news outlets need more positive coverage? Can too much optimism be dangerous? We want to hear from you.
Today’s Indicator
That’s how much of Portugal’s electrical grid was powered by wind and solar energy last month, government officials announced this week, allowing the country to drastically reduce the use of its natural gas-fired power plants.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a new bill Thursday that would prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning gas stoves. The agency is considering stricter regulations amid a series of studies linking gas stoves to increased health risks.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake could go completely dry in as soon as five years if more isn’t done to address the state’s drought issues, a recent scientific report from Brigham Young University warned. Scientists have largely attributed the state’s dry conditions to climate change and rapid population growth.
The recent spate of powerful storms gave a major boost to California’s depleted mountain snowpack, officials said this week. But experts worry that critical water supply won’t last, given the impact of climate change, saying it’s still too soon to tell.
The complex in Beaver County “blew through” permit limits in its first few months of operation, the advocates say.
By Jon Hurdle
Two environmental groups said on Thursday they intend to sue Shell Chemical Appalachia, operator of a big new petrochemical plant near Pittsburgh, for its violation of federal and state air-quality standards.
Six of the seven states that rely on the Colorado River proposed protecting the system’s major reservoirs with downstream reductions. But California, the biggest user, has its own plan under which it would avoid taking cuts.
By Wyatt Myskow
In 2007, the seven states that rely on the Colorado River for water reached an agreement on a plan to minimize the water shortages plaguing the basin. Drought had gripped the region since 1999 and could soon threaten Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the largest reservoirs in the nation.
The move comes after an E. coli outbreak last year in Baltimore’s drinking water and “catastrophic failures” at its two wastewater treatment facilities.
By Aman Azhar
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Thursday he is committed to filling vacancies as quickly as possible at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), the state’s troubled regulator of drinking water and wastewater treatment, which has been plagued by staff shortages and extensive backlogs of expired pollution control permits.
A new book looks at why big projects fail and finds that solar, wind and transmission lines are some of the best kinds of big projects, while nuclear power is among the worst.
By Dan Gearino
In the late 1980s, Denmark’s government announced plans for a massive bridge and tunnel project, the largest infrastructure plan in the history of a country that had little experience building tunnels. Bent Flyvbjerg watched the announcement on the news with his father, who had worked in bridge and tunnel construction.
McBride Operating LLC and owner Joseph McBride contributed to the political campaigns of the three sitting commissioners of the Texas Railroad Commission now considering his request.
By Martha Pskowski
A company seeking to build an oilfield waste dump near wells and waterways in East Texas has showered regulators with upwards of $50,000 in political contributions since 2019.
The Willow Project would pump more than 600 million barrels of oil from a fragile ecosystem. Environmental advocates are calling on President Biden to block a final permit.
By Nicholas Kusnetz
The Biden administration cleared the way on Wednesday for a controversial Arctic oil project, recommending that drilling proceed in an undeveloped section of the Alaskan tundra.
What Lego—Yes, Lego—Can Teach Us About Avoiding Energy Project Boondoggles
What Lego—Yes, Lego—Can Teach Us About Avoiding Energy Project Boondoggles
Clean energy stories behind the headlines reported by Dan Gearino
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In the late 1980s, Denmark’s government announced plans for a massive bridge and tunnel project, the largest infrastructure plan in the history of a country that had little experience building tunnels. Bent Flyvbjerg watched the announcement on the news with his father, who had worked in bridge and tunnel construction.
“Bad idea,” his father said. “If I were digging a hole that big, I would hire someone who had done it before.”
The Great Belt project, as it was called, would go on to face years of delays and the equivalent of billions of dollars in cost overruns. It provided inspiration for Flyvbjerg, now a professor of management at Oxford University, to spend much of his career studying why big projects often go horribly wrong.
This is one of the opening anecdotes in Flyvbjerg’s new book, How Big Things Get Done, written with journalist Dan Gardner. It’s a breezy summary of decades of research into big projects, with a lot to say about the transition to clean energy.
Flyvbjerg told me in an interview this week that his findings about wind and solar give him optimism about the transition to clean energy.
Wind and solar are the kinds of technologies that tend to have predictable costs and finish on time. The key is modularity, which means that a gigantic project is really a series of smaller parts that can be mass produced. Mass production leads to improvements over time, with opportunities to refine construction methods and reduce costs.
He uses the analogy of Lego, the construction toys, to explain modularity. In short, if a big project can be broken down into modular units like Lego pieces, then a project manager has a decent chance of finishing on time and on budget. If not, then headaches are ahead.
“It turns out that humans are actually very bad at getting things right the first time. This is just not what we are made for,” Flyvbjerg said, speaking in a video call from Oxford. “Our sort of learning system is designed for trial and error."
Bent Flyvbjerg
Flyvbjerg’s project database includes just about every kind of power plant and related infrastructure. He found that solar power projects were the leader—not just among energy projects, but all projects—in terms of avoiding cost overruns. Electricity transmission lines are second best, followed by wind power projects. Fossil fuel power plants also do well in terms of coming in close to their budgets, falling just behind wind power projects.
Meanwhile, he found that nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams are both prone to going wildly over budget. Nuclear’s lack of modularity is one of the reasons that so many projects turn into financial disasters. Each nuclear plant is its own complicated thing, and because of safety concerns, everything needs to be close to perfect right away.
Hydropower suffers from some of the same problems as nuclear, with each project highly customized and a lack of modularity.
The nuclear projects that he studied had, on average, cost overruns of 120 percent; hydroelectric dams were 75 percent; fossil fuel plants were 16 percent; wind power was 13 percent; transmission lines were 8 percent and solar power was 1 percent.
The figures come from Flyvbjerg’s database of about 16,000 projects in 136 countries over several decades. He only includes projects that are complete, so current megaprojects, like the long overdue Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia, are not yet part of the mix.
The nuclear industry is focusing on small modular reactors as the potential next generation of nuclear power, with several startups working to develop equipment that they say will be cheaper and safer than existing reactors.
While the idea of mass producing nuclear reactors would seem to be right in line with the lessons of Flyvbjerg’s research, he is skeptical.
“If we could solve the nuclear waste storage problem and get small modular reactors to work, there might be a good future for nuclear, but it’s completely unclear at this stage whether that’s going to happen,” he said.
He looks at the history of nuclear projects facing long delays and cost overruns and thinks it’s reasonable to expect more of the same, at least initially, for the first projects that use small modular reactors. If that happens, then new plants wouldn’t be coming online until the 2030s, which means this technology wouldn’t be contributing at all during this crucial decade for making a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
Still, there is value for having nuclear as an option when looking at a longer time horizon, like 2050. But he thinks planners need to have their eyes wide open about what they are getting into when they look at costs and timelines for nuclear.
“Nuclear is so difficult, almost like it's obstinately difficult,” he said.
Flyvbjerg spends much of the book talking about some of the principles that underlie successful projects and unsuccessful ones. One of the keys is the idea that organizations should be slow and careful with their planning, and then move quickly when they are putting those plans into action.
“Planning is a safe harbor. Delivery is venturing across the storm-tossed seas,” he writes.
When projects go bad, it’s often when the action phase gets bogged down in delays. Flyvbjerg calls this the “window of doom,” when unforeseen circumstances fly through the open window of a partially finished project.
He is not an energy scholar, and some of his conclusions are not going to be new to people familiar with energy industries. We who are enmeshed in the world of energy already know that wind and solar are among the best resources in terms of affordability and predictability, and nuclear is among the worst by those same measures. We also know that nuclear can be an essential resource, whose ability to run around the clock and lack of carbon emissions make some planners willing to endure the financial risks.
What I find interesting is the way Flyvbjerg puts big energy projects in a broader context with other kinds of big projects, from highways to rollouts of new IT systems.
The upshot is that the energy transition is likely going to be financially workable. In a world prone to boondoggles, this isn’t one, at least not so far.
“We’re actually very lucky that the technology that we need in order to decarbonize is the least risky,” he said.
Top Photo Credit: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Other stories about the energy transition to take note of this week:
Minnesota Moves Toward Landmark Clean Energy Bill. But What About Those Incinerators?: Minnesota Democrats, newly in control of both houses of their legislature, are moving toward passing a bill that would require the state’s utilities to get 100 percent of their electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040. But some environmental justice advocates are raising concerns that the bill doesn’t do enough to protect the communities that stand to lose from projects that are defined as clean energy, as my colleague Aydali Campa reports. Some of this pushback may have led to changes in the bill. For example, the bill no longer counts electricity generated from all trash incinerators as clean energy, although power from some of those plants is still included. “Throughout the course of my work on the bill, we have tried hard to center environmental justice concerns and be in touch with advocates and communities,” said Rep. Jamie Long, the author of the bill and House majority leader. The bill has passed the House and is scheduled for debate in the Senate today.
General Motors to Help Lithium Americas Develop Nevada’s Thacker Pass Mine: General Motors said this week that it will invest $650 million in Lithium Americas Corp. to help develop the Thacker Pass lithium mining project in Nevada. GM said the mine holds enough lithium to make batteries for 1 million electric vehicles per year, as Ernest Scheyder reports for Reuters. The mine is controversial because of concerns that the mining process will cause environmental damage that exceeds the benefits of being able to build more EVs, as ICN reported in 2021.
Ford Drops the Price of Its Tesla Competitor, Showing Signs of a Price War in EV Market: Ford has dropped the price of its Mustang Mach-E, an electric SUV, soon after Tesla reduced the price of its vehicles. The Mach-E, a midsize family SUV, now costs $46,000 for its least-expensive version, which is $900 less than before, as Peter Valdes-Dapena reports for CNN. The model competes with the Tesla Model Y, which has a starting price of $53,490 following its own price cut. However, base prices are only part of the equation as both models come in a variety of configurations with different features. Some versions of both vehicles qualify for federal tax credits, which require sticker prices of $55,000 or below. The price changes are happening at a time of rising competition in the EV market as automakers are ramping up production of EVs and trying to balance the supply with demand following a time when some customers had to endure long waits to get popular models.
Proposed Transmission Line Would Link Eastern and Western Interconnections: Allete and Grid United are proposing to build a 385-mile interstate power line that would more than double the capacity for moving electricity between the Eastern and Western interconnections of the U.S. grid. The $2.5 billion project would go from North Dakota to Colstrip, Montana, as Ethan Howland reports for Utility Dive. The line, which would need approval from federal and state regulators, would have 3,000 megawatts of bi-directional capacity. It would be a small step toward increasing the flow of electricity between two grid regions that are almost completely cut off from each other. Energy analysts and clean energy advocates have long called for an increase in connections between the two regions because it would allow for renewable energy in areas rich with sun and wind to be quickly transported across the country.
New Wind and Solar Are Cheaper Than the Costs to Operate All But One Coal-Fired Power Plant in the United States: Dry Fork Station, a coal-fired plant near Gillette, Wyoming, stands alone in the nation on one measure of economic viability—a positive distinction for that plant, but a damning one for coal-fired electricity in general. Dry Fork Station is the only coal plant in the country that costs less to operate than it would take to replace the plant’s output by building new wind or solar plants in the same communities or regions, according to a new report issued Monday by the think tank Energy Innovation, as I reported for ICN. But even that plant is barely competitive with new wind and solar, said Michelle Solomon, one of the report’s co-authors.
Inside Clean Energy is ICN’s weekly bulletin of news and analysis about the energy transition. Send news tips and questions to dan.gearino@insideclimatenews.org.
After 12 years of Republican control in the state, the election of Gov. Josh Shapiro represents a sea change.
By Jon Hurdle
On Christmas Day 2022, part of a natural gas processing plant in Washington County, Pennsylvania caught fire, igniting a vapor cloud and prompting a response by the local fire department, a shutdown by the owner and notification of the incident to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The fire burned itself out by about 5 p.m.
State officials should protect water as a public resource and rein in corporate water abusers to deal with its increasingly uncertain water future, a new report says.
By Liza Gross
Californians are still grappling with the aftermath of powerful storms that triggered dangerous flooding and mudslides across the state, even as the West’s unprecedented megadrought persists.
The Biden administration’s move protects the world’s most abundant sockeye salmon run and a vital commercial fishery. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, said the veto “sets a dangerous precedent.”
By Max Graham
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday a move to protect one of the world’s largest salmon runs—in Alaska’s Bristol Bay—by vetoing a controversial plan for a copper and gold mine in the region.
Electric utilities are likely responsible for the nation’s higher than expected emissions of sulfur hexafluoride, a greenhouse gas 25,000 times worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.
By Phil McKenna
While emissions of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), the world’s most potent greenhouse gas, have fallen sharply in the U.S. in recent decades, actual emissions are significantly higher than the official government estimates, a new study concludes.
Today's Climate - Exxon and Chevron Made Their Highest-Ever Profits in 2022. What Does It Mean for Clean Energy?
Today's Climate - Exxon and Chevron Made Their Highest-Ever Profits in 2022. What Does It Mean for Clean Energy?
A twice-weekly digest of the most pressing climate-related news, released every Tuesday and Friday. Today's edition was written by Kristoffer Tigue and Nicholas Kusnetz.
Exxon and Chevron Made Their Highest-Ever Profits in 2022. What Does It Mean for Clean Energy?
ExxonMobil and Chevron, the nation’s largest oil companies and two of the biggest energy corporations globally, posted a combined profit of $92 billion for 2022, more money than either company has ever made.
Exxon’s annual profit for 2022 reached $55.7 billion, the company reported Tuesday, with Chevron posting on Friday a net profit of $36.5 billion for the year. Their European counterparts are expected to report similarly high results soon. The profits were driven by soaring oil and gas prices last year, which were a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine paired with lingering effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, and have helped the oil companies pay off debts and sent their stock prices soaring—a full turnaround from a few years ago.
More than anything, those historic profits are a reminder of how dependent the global economy remains on oil and gas, even as calls for more urgent climate action grow and scientific research continues to suggest that the consequences of global warming are accelerating far quicker than previously believed.
On Monday, researchers published yet another peer-reviewed study warning that the more ambitious 1.5 degree target of the Paris Agreement could now be beyond reach. The study, which used artificial intelligence and was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, predicted that average global warming will rise and stay above 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels within a decade and 2 degrees Celsius by midcentury, far earlier than previously forecasted, even if greenhouse gas emissions are substantially cut.
“Our predictions … show a high probability of reaching the 2°C threshold by mid-century,” the study’s authors wrote, “suggesting that even with substantial greenhouse gas mitigation, there is still a possibility of failing to achieve the U.N. Paris goal.”
Those findings are prompting fresh calls from climate scientists to more rapidly slash the world’s rising greenhouse gas emissions, caused predominantly by the continued combustion of fossil fuels.
“We need to accept that this is an emergency, and we haven’t done that yet,” Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab who wasn’t involved with Monday’s study, said in an interview. “I just don’t know what it will take for the majority of people to really understand that, because the kinds of climate disasters we’re seeing now, which were unheard of 10 years ago—the heat dome and flooding in South Asia, people dying in their basements in New York City, the kinds of wildfires and flooding and drought that California and the West are experiencing—is just insane.”
The planet has already warmed between 1.1 to 1.2 degrees on average since the Industrial Revolution, data shows, fueling the kind of destructive storms, wildfires and floods that have become noticeably more common in recent years. At 1.5 degrees, scientists warn that a cascade of climate tipping points will boost the likelihood of such extreme weather events even more, with catastrophic and irreversible consequences—including billions of people facing chronic water scarcity and accelerating mass extinctions—becoming highly probable once temperatures exceed 2 degrees of warming.
Now as oil companies report record-high profits, it’s resparking the debate over what role—if any—the fossil fuel industry should take in the clean energy transition and whether oil majors will use their windfalls to speed the development of renewables or slow them down.
Increasingly, the leading oil companies seem to have accepted that some form of energy transition is inevitable. The question is how fast fossil fuels will be replaced, and whether or not oil and gas will continue to be used throughout the rest of the century, even if in diminished form. On Monday, British oil major BP released its annual Energy Outlook, the company’s long-term forecast of global energy trends, which said the war in Ukraine has likely accelerated the transition off of fossil fuels as countries have sought to lessen their dependence on energy imports.
The company framed its report in surprising terms for an oil major, warning that the world’s carbon budget is running out, and that “the longer the delay in taking decisive action to reduce emissions on a sustained basis, the greater are the likely resulting economic and social costs.”
But many in the climate movement, including Kalmus, don’t trust that the oil companies are being sincere when they talk about addressing climate change, pointing to a growing body of evidence that shows that industry executives have known for decades that their petroleum products were causing harmful climate change but engaged in public relations campaigns that downplayed and denied those threats. Some activists have even accused oil and gas companies of pretending to take climate change seriously as a tactic to delay the phase out of fossil fuels and continue profiting from them as long as possible.
The oil majors continue to devote the vast majority of their spending on their core businesses and, increasingly, on rewarding their investors. Last week, Chevron announced it would spend $75 billion to buy back its own shares and increase stock prices, a step that Exxon had also taken last year. It’s unclear how Exxon plans to spend its current windfall, but the company did release new details of a plan to build what would be the world’s largest “low-carbon” hydrogen plant—a technology that has been criticized by climate activists as a distraction from more proven climate solutions like wind and solar energy.
Kalmus, however, still believes that the energy transition would go quicker without fossil fuel companies involved, pointing to the outcome of last year’s COP27 global climate talks, which failed to produce a deal on how nations would phase down their use of fossil fuels. Without such a plan, scientists say the world will remain on track to warm upwards of nearly 3 degrees by the end of the century.
“Look at what they’ve done in the last 40 years, look at the evidence,” Kalmus said, referring to oil companies and their interest groups. “They’ve shown the world that they will put profit above us and above the planet, and so we would be fools to trust them.”
Thanks for reading Today’s Climate, and I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday.
Today’s Indicator
That’s how many of the nation’s 210 remaining coal power plants are now less cost-effective than wind and solar farms of similar generating capacity, a new analysis from think tank Energy Innovation found. Just one coal plant, in Wyoming, was found to be cost-competitive.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday blocked a proposed copper and gold mine in a remote region of southwest Alaska that hosts the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. Environmentalists hailed the decision, though the move also reduces domestic sources of clean energy materials.
Democratic lawmakers in California have introduced a package of climate bills that would require companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, limit state pension investments in fossil fuels and create a group to analyze climate-related financial risks for corporations. Can it pass?
Ford Motor says it will cut prices and increase production for its top-selling electric vehicle, the Mustang Mach-E, the latest sign that competition over EVs is heating up. The move follows a recent decision by Tesla to slash prices of its cars by 20 percent.
A large new marine protected area could help some of the world’s most heat-tolerant corals survive the century, if the pressures from resorts, industry and other development ease.
By Bob Berwyn
When Lina Challita dives along Egypt’s coast, she doesn’t just see a colorful array of corals and fish. She sees hope. Against the grim backdrop of climate models that project most coral reefs dying by the end of this century in overheating oceans, the northern end of the Red Sea may end up being one of the last places on Earth where those critical ocean ecosystems can survive, at least at least for a while, and perhaps longer if countries of the world manage to cap global warming and stabilize the climate.
Environmental justice advocates applaud the legislation, but say there’s more work to do on environmental justice and energy equity.
By Aydali Campa
A bill that would require Minnesota’s utilities to generate 100 percent clean energy by 2040 passed in the House last week and is expected to be signed into law in the coming weeks. The legislation garnered wide support from environmental advocacy groups, who succeeded in pushing some provisions in favor of communities disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards—but some argue that the bill still isn’t attentive enough to environmental justice concerns.
New analysis shows that renewables beat existing coal plants 99 percent of the time, thanks to long-term trends and an assist from the Inflation Reduction Act.
By Dan Gearino
A coal-fired plant near Gillette, Wyoming stands alone in the nation on one measure of economic viability—a positive distinction for that plant, but a damning one for coal-fired electricity in general.
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