Pioneer of attribution science Geert Jan van Oldenborgh dies, aged 59
The Dutch scientist led research linking climate change to individual extreme weather events in real time and is warmly remembered by his collaborators
The IEA is embracing 1.5C ambition, leaving no excuse for new fossil fuel investment
In a fundamental shift in mainstream thinking, the world's most influential energy body has for the first time put a net zero scenario at the heart of its forecasting
Countries failing to protect forests, 7 years after New York declaration
Of the 32 biggest forest nations, only India has set an ambitious tree planting target and others are falling far short, according to analysis of their latest climate pledges
Turkey ratifies the Paris Agreement after approving a 2053 net zero goal
Documents agreed by parliament included a declaration that Turkey would implement the climate treaty as a developing country, despite its developed nation status
UK’s 2035 zero-carbon electricity goal is a diplomatic trendsetter, analysts say
The ruling Conservative party confirmed the government plans to end generating electricity with unabated gas, putting pressure on other major economies to follow
India’s vulnerability to coal shocks exposed amid surging energy demand and prices
The country's looming energy crisis raises serious questions over India's coal expansion plan as private investors move away from the sector, analysts say
Cop26 must urgently get specific on carbon removal in net-zero pathways
The last IPCC report overlooked the technical, financial, and political limitations of carbon removal techniques and risks informing poor policy choices
GCF considers renewed partnership with UNDP, amid corruption investigations
The Green Climate Fund board has been advised to re-accredit the UN development agency, despite unresolved corruption claims against projects in Samoa and Armenia
UK seeks alliance to end public finance for coal, oil and gas projects overseas
The Cop26 hosts are trying to build a coalition of countries to align public finance with a 1.5C global warming limit, the toughest goal of the Paris Agreement
As Drought Bears Down on Northern Kenya, Millions Face Hunger
For the second consecutive year, Kenya's semi-arid north has experienced meager rainfall, causing a drought that threatens the food supply of 2.4 million people, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, Reuters reported.
Why the World’s Rich Nations Must Pay for Climate Damage
Damage from increasingly extreme weather events is falling especially hard on developing countries, even though they have done the least to contribute to climate change. At the upcoming UN climate talks, rich nations must begin to compensate them for their mounting losses.
China Touts Massive Renewable Energy Buildout, New Funding for Biodiversity
China has broken ground on a massive 100-gigawatt renewable energy project, larger than all solar and wind installations in India combined, President Xi Jinping announced Tuesday, by video link, at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China.
U.S. On Pace for Record Number of Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters
The U.S. has seen 18 weather and climate disasters costing at least $1 billion so far this year, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
At Climate Summit, Can the World Move from Talk to Action?
Negotiators at the Glasgow climate conference will face a critical choice: Set firm emissions targets for 2030, or settle for goals of achieving “net zero” by 2050? The course they set could determine if we have a shot at avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
New Limits on Water Use Spur Conservation Measures Among Farmers in California's Central Valley
A 2014 California law intended to protect the state's depleted aquifers is going into effect, requiring farms not to pump groundwater faster than it can be replenished. The policy is pushing growers to find new ways to refill the state's depleted aquifers, NPR reports.
Ozone Pollution: An Insidious and Growing Threat to Biodiversity
Ground-level ozone has long been known to pose a threat to human health. Now, scientists are increasingly understanding how this pollutant damages plants and trees, setting off a cascade of impacts that harms everything from soil microbes, to insects, to wildlife.
Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds
Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.
Urban Extreme Heat Exposure Has Tripled Since the 1980s, Study Shows
The number of person-days when city dwellers are exposed to extreme heat and humidity has tripled since the early 1980s, according to a new study of more than 13,000 cities worldwide.
New Iron-Based Batteries Offer an Alternative to Lithium
Batteries are needed to store clean power from wind and solar, but the high cost of lithium batteries has slowed their widespread adoption. Companies have long sought to produce alternatives made of cheaper materials, like zinc, and Oregon-based ESS Inc. says it has now developed a more affordable and better-performing battery made with iron, Bloomberg reported.
As the Climate Bakes, Turkey Faces a Future Without Water
No nation in the Mediterranean region has been hit harder by climate change than Turkey. But as heat and drought increase, Turkey is doubling down on water-intensive agriculture and development and spurring a water-supply crisis that is expected to get much worse.
A dearth of truck drivers has slowed deliveries of gasoline in the UK, leading to fuel shortages and panic buying. And with gas in short supply, EV dealers are seeing a surge of interest in electric cars, The Guardian reported.
On the Klamath, Dam Removal May Come Too Late to Save the Salmon
The planned demolition of dams on the Klamath River was expected to help restore the beleaguered salmon on which Indigenous tribes depend. But after a record drought and wildfire this summer, many are worried the salmon could be all but gone before the dams come down.
Children Today to See Far More Weather Disasters Than Their Grandparents
Under current climate policy, the average child born in 2020 will live through around seven times as many heat waves as someone born in 1960. They will also see roughly twice as many droughts and wildfires and close to three times as many crop failures as their grandparents did, according to a new study.
Lake Powell Could Stop Producing Hydropower in 2023 Due to Worsening Drought
Dwindling water levels at Lake Powell could make it impossible for its dam to generate hydropower in 2023, according to new projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Can the World’s Most Polluting Heavy Industries Decarbonize?
The production of steel, cement, and ammonia together emit about one-fifth of all human-caused CO2. Technologies are emerging that promise to decarbonize these problem industries, but analysts warn that big challenges remain before the processes can be cleaned up.
Michigan Plans to Build First U.S. Road Outfitted for Wireless EV Charging
Michigan is planning to build the first public road in the United States where electric vehicles can charge wirelessly while driving, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced Tuesday at the Motor Bella auto show in Pontiac.
As Italy’s Glaciers Recede, a Stunning World of Ice Is Being Lost
Photographer Luigi Avantaggiato has trekked high into the Italian Alps to document the melting of some of the world’s most studied glaciers. His images track the glaciers’ increasingly rapid retreat and capture the stark beauty of a land in transition as the ice disappears.
New Coal Plants Dwindle Amid Wave of Canceled Projects
Some 1,175 gigawatts of new coal projects have been canceled since 2015, an amount greater than the current coal capacity of China, according to a new report from climate think tank E3G.
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...
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is pleased to announce the release of Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) and the 2nd State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2). NCA4 Vol II NCA4 Vol II, Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States , assesses a range of potential climate change-related impacts, with an...
The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) Vol. II remains on track for a December delivery in fulfillment of the Congressional mandate. NCA4 Vol. I, the Climate Science Special Report, is available at science2017.globalchange.gov. Final agency review and comment. Authors have been revising chapters and responding to comments submitted in the...
It’s been a while since our last update, but rest assured that we’ve been hard at work on Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4 Vol. II) in the meantime. Here’s a brief rundown of the goings-on: Public review and comment. This winter (November 3, 2017 through January 31, 2018), the public had the chance to weigh in on the draft...
The September contiguous U.S. average temperature was 67.84 degress Fahrenheit, 2.98 degress Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. The precipitation total was 2.33 inches, 0.16 inches below average.
The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September was 0.9 degrees C (1.62 degress Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average of 15.5 degrees C (59.9 degress Fahrenheit).
During September, the Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent (SCE) was 5.59 million square km (2.16 million square miles), 6.79% above the 1981-2010 average. The global sea ice extent was 23.37 million square km (9.02 million square miles), 6.14% below the 1981-2010 average.
The Atlantic hurricane season remained active in September with 10 active named storms, including the remnants of Hurricane Ida. This count tied 2010 and 2020 for the most active storms in a September on record. Fortunately, most of the storms were weak or short-lived. The two exceptions were Major Hurricanes Larry and Sam. which were long-lived but remained out to sea with minimal impacts.
According to data from NOAA's Storm Prediction Center, during September, there were 31 preliminary tornado reports. This is less than half the 1991-2010 average of 74 tornadoes for the month of September. Of the tornadoes that did form during September, many were focused across the northeastern states, as remnants of Hurricane Ida merged with a frontal boundary at the beginning of the month.
As of September 28th, 47.84% of the Contiguous U.S. was experiencing drought conditions, 36.6% was in severe drought, 23.11% extreme, and 7.27% exceptional.
The temperature and precipitation anomalies for the U.S. in September were driven by different periods and drivers in each region. A positive PNA during September 6-13 drove warm temperatures over the Southwest that dominated the September mean. A positive EPO during the second half of the month led to a series of atmospheric rivers that brought anomalous moisture to the Pacific Northwest.
For September, 3,202 fires (3rd least since 2000) burned 1,019,822 acres (6th most on record), which is 318.5 acres burned/fire (3rd most on record). For January - September, 46,091 fires (6th least since 2000) burned 5,907,288 acres (10th least on record), which is 128.2 acres burned/fire (7th most on record).
Prince William reveals Earthshot Prize winners in global bid to tackle climate crisis
Five global thinkers were each awarded a grant worth £1m to develop their ideas and technologies
Celebrities have joined Prince William in London for the inaugural awards ceremony of his Earthshot Prize, an ambitious environmental program aimed at finding new ideas and technologies around the world to tackle the climate crisis and Earth’s most pressing challenges.
Actors and activists strode down a green carpet at Alexandra Palace in north London. Emma Watson, Emma Thompson and David Oyelowo joined Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, in handing out the awards, with a £1m going to each winner.
Australia's race to net zero is transformative: those who hesitate are lost | Patrick Suckling
As the Nationals continue to stumble around in the dark against the transition, they are hastening to irrelevance in a world where everyone else is on board with the need to act
The decade to 2030 will be defined by a global structural shift toward net zero emissions. We are at the dawn of epochal change, as we were in the early days of the internet in the 1980s, whose glimmerings lit the way to global transformation. For those Nationals still stumbling around in the dark against a transition to net zero by 2050, there is a hastening to irrelevance.
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report underscored that climate change is already affecting every region on Earth – in multiple ways – and that the decade to 2030 is critical for serious climate action. Action now puts us on a pathway to net zero emissions by 2050, which the IPCC reaffirmed as imperative. This is the work of more than 700 leading scientists from different disciplines drawing upon more than 14,000 cited sources. It has been endorsed by nearly 200 governments.
Gen Z on how to save the world: young climate activists speak out
With courage and ambition, those born into the reality of global heating are leading the way in confronting it. Ahead of the crucial Cop26 conference, we talk to young activists around the world. Introduction by author Olivia Laing
When I was 20, I dropped out of university to live on a road protest. I was terrified by the oncoming apocalypse of climate change, and loathed the short-term, environmentally catastrophic logic that prioritised road-building over trees. The data, even in 1997, was clear: human activity was heating the globe, with increasingly devastating effects. Time was short, and a sea change in behaviour was required.
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since then, and very little has been achieved, thanks in large part to corporate interests invested in maintaining our dependence on non-renewable resources. Far more people understand and accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and yet we seem paralysed by despair, caught in a spell of inertia, even as the most lurid of predictions – floods, fires, plagues – come to pass.
Coal-state Democrat set to scupper Biden clean energy plans
White House forced to rewrite domestic bill as it makes late bid to secure backing for international deal
President Joe Biden is likely to abandon a clean energy programme that was the centrepiece of his efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions at home, US media reported, because of opposition from a swing-vote Democratic senator from a state with a historically large coal industry.
Funding to replace coal- and gas-fired plants with wind, solar and nuclear generation was part of a massive budget bill that Biden is struggling to get through Congress.
An impossible choice: what does the world owe the Pacific?
In the final episode of our three-part series, we speak to Pacific politicians fighting it out with much larger, wealthier and more heavily polluting countries on the world stage; Pacific leaders facing the gargantuan task of attempting to relocate entire villages, infrastructure and even burial grounds as communities are threatened; and legal experts about what options Pacific countries have for compensation, to find out what the future is for the Pacific in the face of the climate crisis
Rising sea levels threaten Marshall Islands’ status as a nation, World Bank report warns
Large parts of Pacific country’s capital would be permanently flooded and islands would disappear, according to new projections
Projected sea level rise would mean 40% of the buildings in the Marshall Islands’ capital of Majuro would be permanently flooded and entire islands would disappear, potentially costing the Pacific country its status as a nation, according to a devastating new report from the World Bank.
The report, Mapping the Marshall Islands, containing grim visualisations of the impact of sea level rise on the Marshall Islands, has been two years in the making and was shared exclusively with the Guardian ahead of its release in coming weeks.
The host of Cop26 needs to be a master of diplomacy. Unfortunately, it’s Boris Johnson | Andrew Rawnsley
Having promised he could save the world, there’s very little time left to rescue this critical summit from failure
The Queen is not amused. “We only know about people who are not coming,” the monarch was overheard saying. “It is very irritating when they talk, but they don’t do.”
It is not the turnout for a Buck House party that is exasperating her, but the unanswered invitations to the Cop26 climate summit that will meet in Glasgow in November. With just a fortnight to go, it is still not clear whether the leaders of China, India or Russia will even turn up, never mind agree to do anything meaningful to address the climate crisis.
Insulate Britain might be floundering but eco extremism is here to stay | Nick Cohen
Doomist demonstrators might not have the best idea of how to win fights. But they are the future
Insulate Britain’s use of civil disobedience to fight the climate catastrophe was a catastrophe in itself. Search for the pressure group on YouTube and you see clips of delighted rightwing journalists taking apart its leaders. Sympathisers will say that a right wing that has barely recovered from its climate change denial was always going to lay into the activists. But Insulate Britain did not have to make life so easy for its foes.
The physical courage of demonstrators who walked into the speeding traffic on motorways counted for no more than the urgency of their cause. They targeted ordinary people, who were just trying to get to work or take their sick relatives to hospital, rather than fossil fuel companies and the finance industry that supports them. Their tactical stupidity left them wide open to attack.
The fight against climate change goes beyond reducing CO2 emissions
An insider talks about efforts to cut methane, one of the most prevalent greenhouse gases but which has had little attention
While global climate efforts have tended to focus on the fight against carbon dioxide, many other threats that attract less attention are just as dangerous to our planet.
Negotiations over these more granular issues take place away from the limelight. But the policies and agreements that emerge are some of the most vital steps in the fight against climate change.
Every week we’ll hear from negotiators from a developing country that is involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations and will be attending the Cop26 climate conference.
Boris Johnson’s climate credibility at stake in run-up to Cop26 summit
Campaigners fear net zero strategy is being hamstrung by Rishi Sunak, who refuses to provide adequate funding
Boris Johnson faces a significant test of his leadership before the Cop26 climate summit as the chancellor and business secretary are at war over the imminent plan for reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions.
The government is poised to publish its long-awaited net zero strategy on Monday, setting out how the UK will meet its targets to cut CO2 emissions by 78% by 2035 and reach net zero by 2050. This will also include the heat and buildings strategy for insulating draughty homes and phasing out gas boilers, along with a massive expansion of offshore wind, and building electric vehicle charging networks.
An impossible choice: leave your island or fight to stay?
In the second part of our special podcast series, we travel across the Pacific to islands in Papua New Guinea where people are being forced to leave due to rising sea levels, and to the tiny nation of Tuvalu where people are fighting to remain. We speak to islanders who have been forced to make devastating decisions due to a climate crisis not of their making
Both bad climate policy and no policy will see Australia lose jobs and investment overseas | Innes Willox
Australia’s economic security depends on the government acting now to set clear and ambitious climate goals
Agreement within the federal government on strong climate ambitions and a sensible strategy for achieving them will set Australia up for greater economic success this decade.
The case for action has been strengthening rapidly. The costs of action to reduce emissions are turning out to be lower than expected. The costs and risks of climate change itself are becoming increasingly clear and serious. And as Australia’s most important trading partners set their own economies on a course to net zero emissions via deep 2030 reductions, their demand for minerals, energy and other goods will shift. We can make the most of their energy transition – and join it ourselves – or we can be run over by a hydrogen-powered truck as others rush to supply our region’s needs.
Queen says world leaders' inaction on tackling the climate crisis is 'irritating' – video
The Queen has criticised world leaders’ inaction on addressing the climate crisis, saying she was 'irritated' by individuals who 'talk but don’t do'. She made the remarks, which were picked up on a livestream, at the opening of the Welsh parliament in Cardiff on Thursday during a conversation with the Duchess of Cornwall and Elin Jones, the parliament’s presiding officer. The Queen also referred to the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow starting on 31 October, saying: 'I’ve been hearing all about Cop ... still don’t know who is coming. No idea'
Queen ‘irritated’ by world leaders talking not doing on climate crisis
Overheard comment suggests anger at possible no-shows at Cop26 by leaders of countries with worst CO2 emissions
The Queen has criticised world leaders’ inaction on addressing the climate crisis, admitting she is “irritated” by individuals who “talk but don’t do”.
She made the remarks, which were picked up on a livestream, at the opening of the Welsh parliament in Cardiff on Thursday.
It was January 2013, and as we drove to the hospital, we passed the wreckage left by Cyclone Evan which had devastated my home island weeks earlier. Evan had been the worst tropical cyclone to hit Samoa in over two decades. There were huge holes in the road. Debris where homes once stood.
An impossible choice: when climate change arrives at your door
In the first episode of this three-part series, we look at how families, communities and Pacific leaders are facing huge decisions about the future of their islands and trying to figure out if they can stay on their land – land that defines their identity, on which their ancestors are buried – or whether they’ll be forced to leave
Prince William: great minds should focus on saving Earth not space travel – video
The Duke of Cambridge has criticised the space race and space tourism, saying the world’s greatest minds need to focus on fixing the Earth instead. In an interview with Newscast on BBC Sounds before his Earthshot prize awards, Prince William also warned about a rise in ‘climate anxiety’ among younger generations. His comments come the day after William Shatner, 90, made history by becoming the oldest person in space
Prince William criticises space race and tourism’s new frontier
Duke of Cambridge says world’s greatest minds need to focus on trying to fix the Earth instead
The Duke of Cambridge has criticised the space race and space tourism, saying the world’s greatest minds need to focus on trying to fix the Earth instead.
Prince William’s comments, in an interview with Newscast on BBC Sounds, will be aired the day after William Shatner made history by becoming the oldest person in space.
Walrus from Space census seeks public help to spot animals in satellite images
Project aims to give scientists a better understanding of how global heating is affecting the species
Conservationists are on the hunt for “citizen scientists” to spot walruses from their own home to help track populations of the creatures and give scientists an understanding of how many are left in the wild.
Keen-eyed members of the public are being asked to scour images of the Arctic taken from space for the blubbery mammals and report any sightings to WWF and the British Antarctic Survey, as part of a census of Atlantic walrus and walrus from the Laptev Sea.
At next month’s climate talks in Scotland, Britain can’t get serious about reducing emissions without considering how much wood it burns for power, activists say.
By James Bruggers
When a British company decided two years ago to locate a wood pellet manufacturing plant in North Carolina’s Robeson County, with its large Black and Indigenous population, it came as no surprise to Shalonda Regan.
In the native language of the people of Alaska’s North Slope, Sagavanirktok means “strong current.” But to managers of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Sagavanirktok River means a growing flood threat to the pipeline that pulses with an average of 20 million gallons of crude oil a day from Prudhoe Bay. Increasing rain and snowmelt at the headwaters of the Sag River, which parallels the pipeline for 67 miles in northern Alaska’s Brooks Range, has pipeline officials seeking permission from the state to construct massive flood control barriers to protect the pipeline from the river’s surges. The mitigation work foreshadows what scientists, pipeline consultants and environmental advocates say is a future where infrastructure like the Trans-Alaska Pipeline will face increasing threats from climate change-generated assaults.
Also this week, dozens of Indigenous climate activists were arrested and removed from the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington on Thursday after taking over a lobby of the department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs for several hours. The protests were part of a week of Indigenous-led demonstrations in which activists called on President Biden to declare a national climate emergency and stop approving fossil fuel projects, such as the Line 3 pipeline that was recently completed in Minnesota despite fierce opposition by Indigenous communities.a
On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled a government-wide roadmap to address the systemic threat climate change poses to all sectors of the economy, such as accounting for how warming will affect the companies people are invested in, CNBC reports. The plan is part of the White House’s larger agenda to drastically slash domestic greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a clean economy by 2050.
Demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency and stop approving fossil fuel projects, dozens of Indigenous climate activists were arrested and removed from the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington on Thursday after taking over a lobby of the department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs for several hours. Will Deb Haaland, the first Native Secretary of the Interior, listen?
A handful of deep-pocketed oil companies are racing to enter the offshore wind market, banking that their decades of experience with ocean drilling can turn them into clean energy giants, E&E News reports. But environmentalists worry the move is a token investment, something to burnish the companies’ reputations while they continue to pour vast resources into oil and gas projects.
The Biden administration’s recently released plan to build offshore wind off of almost every U.S. coastline is pitting the commercial fishing industry against clean energy advocates, The Hill reports. For years, commercial fishers have complained that offshore wind developments will cost the industry jobs and displace fishers from areas they depend on for their livelihoods.
Queen Elizabeth II appeared to criticize the global lack of action on climate change in comments caught on microphone as the 95-year-old British monarch visited Cardiff to open the Welsh parliament on Thursday, the Associated Press reports. On the recording, which officials said weren’t meant to be public, the queen appears to say it’s “irritating” when world leaders “talk, but they don’t do.”
Consumers and investors alike have gobbled up plant-based protein products, such as Beyond Meat, with the idea that they’re better for the environment. But some analysts say they’re not sure that’s true, since the plant-based food companies aren’t being transparent about their emissions, including from their supply chains, and aren’t disclosing how their products impact forests or water supplies.
Skirmishes outside resulted in “multiple injuries” to security personnel, with one officer hospitalized, and the tasing of activists.
By Phil McKenna, Video by Aman Azhar
Dozens of Indigenous climate activists were arrested and removed from the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington on Thursday after taking over a lobby of the department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs for several hours.
The new law sets far-reaching climate targets, but critics say the main point is to boost utility company profits.
By Dan Gearino
In a year of landmark energy actions by states, the law signed this week in North Carolina is notable for the way clean energy advocates have responded with faint praise or even criticism rather than adulation.
Seven major offshore wind farms would be developed on the East and West coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico under a plan announced Wednesday by the Biden administration, the Associated Press reports. The projects are part of President Biden’s plan to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, generating enough electricity to power more than 10 million homes.
In what has been a rare occurrence for Southern states, North Carolina will require its power sector to slash its carbon emissions by 70 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve zero-net emissions by 2050, under new climate legislation, the Associated Press reports. “This is a new beginning,” said Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who signed the bill into law Wednesday alongside Republicans.
Global energy storage this year will triple to 12.4 gigawatts, up from a previous record-high of 4.9 gigawatts last year, according to a new forecast by the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie. So, what led to this storage boom and where will it go from here? That and more in the latest Inside Clean Energy by Dan Gearino.
The Biden administration on Thursday began a process to amend federal procurement rules to require the U.S. government—the world’s largest buyer of goods and services—to factor the risks of climate change into its contracts, Reuters reports. The move aims to fulfill an executive order President Biden issued in May to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s supply chains.
Crucial U.N. climate talks next month could end short of the global target for cutting coal, gas and oil emissions, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told the Associated Press in an interview. The admission comes after nearly a year of climate diplomacy that helped win deeper cuts from allies but has so far failed to move some of the world’s biggest polluters to act fast enough.
A French court has ordered the country’s government to honor its commitments to repair ecological damage and tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent compared to 1990 levels over the next decade, Reuters reports. It’s one of several legal cases around the world where citizens are using the judicial system to force governments to act on global warming.
Taking Stock of the Energy Storage Boom Happening Right Now
Taking Stock of the Energy Storage Boom Happening Right Now
Clean energy stories behind the headlines reported by Dan Gearino
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Global energy storage development is increasing so quickly and on such a large scale that it’s sometimes difficult to grasp the significance of what’s happening.
The energy research firm Wood Mackenzie reports in its most recent forecast that, globally, 12.4 gigawatts of energy storage capacity will come online in 2021, up from 4.9 gigawatts in 2020, which was then a record. Almost all the new storage systems are batteries.
To help put that into perspective, the world reached a landmark 1 gigawatt of new energy storage capacity in 2016. Five years later, that record year is what happens in a good month.
The growth in energy storage is just getting started. Wood Mackenzie projects that new global storage capacity will increase each year, to 70 gigawatts in 2030.
So, we’re looking at a near-tripling of new storage capacity in 2021, and a 14-fold increase from 2020 to 2030.
The new 2021 capacity can discharge 28 gigawatt-hours of electricity before needing to recharge, up from 10 gigawatt-hours for the new capacity in 2020, the report says.
The new storage systems can, on average, run for longer than before, with a duration of 2.26 hours (gigawatt-hours divided by gigawatts) in 2021, up from 2.04 hours in 2020. The increase means that many of the new battery systems can fill longer gaps when other resources are unavailable.
There are still big unknowns about how the market will develop, the extent of government aid and the emergence of new battery technologies, making it challenging for forecasters.
“We’re in an experimental moment,” David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at University of California, San Diego, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We’re testing a lot of stuff, and the hypothesis that storage adds huge value to the grid is being sustained.”
He told me that much of the value of energy storage comes from the way it can work alongside wind and solar, at the grid level or in projects where renewable energy sources and battery storage are placed next to one another.
But project developers and grid operators mostly have to guess at how much storage they need to build, or how to determine the right mix of various kinds of storage, he said.
Most of the batteries being used today can run for two to four hours on a charge, but a grid that relies on much more storage is likely to need a mix of short-duration and long-duration batteries.
And batteries are not the only energy storage technology. For example, pumped hydroelectric storage is an old, and still vital, contributor to the grid. One of these days, I’ll write about pumped hydro, systems that pump water to a high reservoir at times of low electricity demand and then release it at times of high demand, allowing gravity to push the water through a turbine and produce electricity.
“People can see a future where there’s a much bigger—like 10-fold, 20-fold—increase in storage services over a decade,” he said. “That future is starting to come into focus, but it’s really still a murky vision because there’s a lot of experimentation continuing to be done.”
Still, in 2021, we can say with certainty that we’ve entered an era of super-size energy storage projects. Two examples:
Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California went online in December 2020, with 300 megawatts of capacity, and then added 100 megawatts in August of this year, which I’ve written about a fewtimes. The project, which operates under a contract with the utility Pacific Gas & Electric, is the largest battery storage facility in the world. PG&E has said the batteries are a cost-effective way to make the grid more efficient, by storing renewable energy, and more reliable, by being available at times when other resources are not.
Manatee Energy Storage Center in Florida is on track to be completed before the end of the year. When that happens, it will be the largest battery storage facility in the world in terms of capacity, with 409 megawatts. Florida Power & Light, which will operate the project, told me it has installed about 30,000 of the facility’s 50,000 battery modules. The project was designed to store electricity from the neighboring Manatee Energy Solar Energy Center, allowing the utility to be more flexible in how it uses solar power.
Another recurring theme with energy storage is that this is an aspect of the energy economy in which the United States has a head start. The United States and China have a large majority of the existing capacity, and Wood Mackenzie is projecting that the two countries will have 73 percent of the world’s total capacity in 2030.
The Biden Administration recognizes that the country has an interest in continuing to be a leader in battery technologies, which can be an asset for grid storage and for electric vehicles. The U.S. Department of Energy announced in June a goal to reduce the costs of long-duration energy storage by 90 percent by 2030, which covers technologies that can discharge electricity for at least 10 hours on a charge.
The energy storage boom is here, and even with my decade-plus of experience covering energy, I have little certainty about where this ride is heading.
Victor said the uncertainty about the path of energy storage’s growth is like a Rorschach test, where different people see different things, and there is no right answer.
“What you can see are the pieces of a storage industry coming together in a huge deployment into the future,” he said.
Photos Courtesy of Florida Power & Light
Other stories about the energy transition to take note of this week:
North Carolina Passes Energy Bill Calling for Carbon Neutrality by 2050: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has signed a bill passed by the state legislature last week that has some big benefits for electric utilities and also says that state regulators must set rules to make the electricity sector carbon neutral by 2050. The bill came together in fits and starts because of the dueling priorities of Duke Energy, which wanted legislation that would allow it to increase rates more easily, and Cooper, who wanted the bill to include a pathway for cutting emissions. The result is a compromise, but the specifics about carbon reduction are being kicked to the North Carolina Utilities Commission which will propose the rules, as Adam Wagner reports for The News & Observer of Raleigh. The bill also includes an interim goal that utilities must cut emissions 70 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Environmental groups are pleased with the legislation because they were able to get some of their priorities addressed, but consumer advocates are warning that the result may be a big increase in electricity costs for the public.
GE Offshore Wind Turbines Reaches Record 14 Megawatts: GE Renewable Energy said that its largest offshore wind turbine is now operating with a capacity of 14 megawatts, which is a record. A power plant’s capacity—a wind turbine is a power plant—is the amount of power it can produce when running at full intensity. The company announced last week that its Haliade-X turbine can operate at 14 megawatts following fine-tuning on a design that was previously going to top out at 12 megawatts, as Emma Penrod reports for Utility Dive. The Haliade-X is set to be used in the Vineyard Wind 1 project off Massachusetts, among others. The model is about 850 feet tall, which is taller than the Statue of Liberty. By increasing the turbine’s capacity, developers can generate more electricity using fewer turbines, and reduce the costs of installation and maintenance.
GM Gets Battery Maker to Pick Up Most of Recall Costs: General Motors said it has reached an agreement with the battery manufacturer LG in which the battery company will pay $1.9 billion of the $2 billion in costs associated with a recall of Chevrolet Bolt models because of risks of battery fires. The agreement allows the companies to move on from an embarrassing episode and remain partners in an ongoing expansion of EV models, as David Welch reports for Bloomberg. GM has said there were 13 fires and no fatalities because of a flaw in the batteries.
No, the Costs of a Wind Turbine Are Not More than the Value of the Energy It Produces: An image being widely shared on social media shows a wind turbine on fire and says that the costs of a turbine are more than the energy it produces. This is false, based on data that is old and out of context, as Jon Greenberg reports for Politifact.com. He classifies the false statement as a “zombie claim” because a version of it was circulating in 2019. “Every study of the lifecycle of wind turbines finds that they produce more energy than it took to produce them,” Greenberg writes. “Most analyses put the energy payback period at about a year or so.”
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.
A new forecast shows a near-tripling of global storage capacity in 2021 compared to 2020, which also was a record year.
By Dan Gearino
Global energy storage development is increasing so quickly and on such a large scale that it’s sometimes difficult to grasp the significance of what’s happening.
Clean energy technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles are advancing so rapidly that the global use of fossil fuels is now expected to peak by the mid-2020s and then start declining, the International Energy Agency said in its latest annual report. But the transition away from fossil fuels isn’t happening fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, the report warned.
A global pledge to reduce methane emissions saw serious progress yesterday when 24 countries said they would join the effort and donors committed $200 million to the cause, according to an E&E News report in Scientific American. If the pledge is successful, it could reduce warming by at least 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2050, according to the White House, which initiated the pledge with the EU last month.
North Carolina’s $40 billion poultry industry produces more waste laden with nitrogen and phosphorus than the state’s massive commercial hog farms but operates with virtually no regulation. That’s bad news for North Carolina’s communities of color, activists said, because they are disproportionately affected by the air and water pollution coming from those farms.
Private equity firms, a class of investors that are hyper focused on maximizing profits, are buying up risky fossil fuel assets and therefore propping up the industry, as well as the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, new research shows. Since 2010, the private equity industry has invested at least $1.1 trillion into the energy sector, with the vast majority put into fossil fuel assets, the study found.
England will be hit hard by floods like those that devastated Germany this summer, as well as worsening heat waves and higher demand on water supplies, if the country does not improve its defenses against more extreme weather driven by climate change, the U.K.’s Environment Agency said in a new report. “Significant climate impacts are inevitable,” so it’s “adapt or die,” the agency’s top official said.
A rise of 3 degrees Celsius in average global temperatures could mean many famous landmarks around the world will end up partially or fully underwater, according to a new map by the nonprofit science communication group Climate Central. The map, along with accompanying images, simulates how the sites will look under different warming scenarios as sea levels rise, The Verge reports.
The state’s massive poultry industry is largely unregulated, leaving the state to guess about the number and location of giant production facilities producing millions of chickens.
By Aman Azhar
The legislation aimed at regulating North Carolina’s huge and largely unregulated poultry industry seemed modest in scope, requiring commercial chicken farms to submit waste management plans to environmental regulators so the public would know where millions of tons of chicken “litter” ends up.
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