Month: February 2019

Politics and Policy

Even though federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office that climate change poses a national security threat, the White House is preparing to assemble a panel under the leadership of William Happer to assess that conclusion.  At a meeting of the Planetary Security Initiative at The Hague on Tuesday, scholars and international officials warned that the Middle East and North Africa are about to be plunged into further chaos because of ongoing climate change and its associated impacts on food and water supplies.

The Trump administration has broken off talks with the California Air Resources Board over vehicle fuel-efficiency standards and is on track to roll back standards set by former President Obama, the White House said in a statement Thursday.  A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by two Pennsylvania boys and an environmental group seeking to stop President Trump from rolling back regulations addressing climate change, saying the court does not have power to tell the White House what to do.  Both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly have passed legislation allowing electric coops to raise their net metering caps from 1% to 7%.  A provision to raise the net metering cap for customers of investor-owned utilities — Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power — didn’t advance into the final legislation.  The Governor is expected to sign the bill.

 Changes in land use to foster more uptake of CO₂ from the atmosphere is an important component of many countries’ pledges under the Paris Climate Agreement.  A recent “Perspective” piece in the journal Nature Climate Change argues that there are many shortcomings associated with those pledges, making it likely that those countries will fail to meet them.  The lead author of the Perspective piece had a guest post about the article at Carbon Brief.  ClimateWise, an initiative of the University of Cambridge that studies climate-related insurance risks, has issued new reports demonstrating how to a more precise look at those risks and their financial impacts.  This is most timely, since according to The Economist, corporate-risk managers are rotten at assessing their exposure to a changing climate.

Janos Pasztor, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General on Climate Change and currently Executive Director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, said: “For the moment, …, the world simply doesn’t know enough to decide [about solar geoengineering].  It doesn’t even know how it should go about making such a decision, how to research solar radiation modification, or even whether to consider the possibility of deployment at all.”  In The Washington Post, Leah C. Stokes, an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, wrote about five things we should know about the Green New Deal (GND).  Lisa Friedman and Trip Gabriel of The New York Times called the GND “an extraordinarily complicated series of trade-offs that could be realized, experts say, with extensive sacrifices that people are only starting to understand.”  Decarbonizing buildings is an important component of any serious plan to reduce CO₂ emissions.  California is beginning to tackle the problem as described by David Roberts at Vox.

Potpourri

Wallace Broecker, the geochemist who popularized the phrase “global warming,” died on Monday at 87.  He was fond of saying “The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.”  On Wednesday, Oliver Krug published an article in The Guardian about some of the artists who are illuminating the impacts of climate change.  Megan Mayhew Bergman had another article about how people in the southern U.S. are responding to climate change.  This one is mainly about Florida.  Journalist and translator Philipp Blom has a new book, entitled Nature’s Mutiny, about the 17^th century’s Little Ice Age (LIA) and how it transformed Europe.  Blom contends that we can learn how climate change might influence society by looking backward at the LIA.  David Wallace-Wells used his New York Magazine article from last year as a starting point for his new book entitled The Uninhabitable Earth.  Kate Yoder of Grist described it as “an immersion in seemingly all of the worst-case climate scenarios.”  Whether that will be helpful or not depends on where you stand on the spectrum of how people react to troubling information, as discussed by climate scientist and psychologist Jeffrey Kiehl.  Wallace-Wells also had a rather long opinion piece entitled “Time to Panic” in The New York Times.  In contrast to Wallace-Wells’ book, the film “2040”, which was inspired by Project Drawdown, focuses on the work that is being done now to steer the right course through the potential hazards of climate change.

Climate

According to NOAA, January 2019 was the third-warmest January in the history of global weather record-keeping, which dates back to the 1880s.  The only warmer global Januaries in the instrumental record were 2016 and 2017.  The impacts of climate change don’t occur in isolation; rather they occur together.  Climate Central has prepared a new report entitled “CLIMATE PILE-UP: Global Warming’s Compounding Dangers” that quantifies those interactions for many cities in the U.S.  You can read either a synopsis or the full report.  Climate change was responsible for the majority of under-reported humanitarian disasters last year, according to an analysis of more than a million online news stories commissioned by Care International.  Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that, as a result of climate change, air pollution is lingering longer over cities and summer storms are becoming more powerful.

The Bramble Cay melomys, a small brown rodent living on a tiny Torres Strait island near Papua New Guinea, has been declared extinct, giving it the distinction of being the first mammal driven to extinction by human-caused climate change.  Climate change also influences where insect populations thrive and in New England large infestations of moose (or winter) ticks are taking a toll on moose calves.

A new paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, reported that laboratory-grown meat may do more damage to the climate in the long run than meat from cattle.  A study from European thinktank IDDRI claims that pesticides can be phased out and greenhouse gas emissions reduced in Europe through agroecological farming, while still producing enough nutritious food for an increasing population.  In an opinion piece at Medium, farmer Alex Heffron argues that we need to stop focusing on what we eat, and start focusing on how the food we eat is produced.

According to a new analysis, there is enough room in the world’s existing parks, forests, and abandoned land to plant 1.2 trillion additional trees, which would have the CO₂ storage capacity to cancel out a decade of emissions.  Older trees have long been thought to be more efficient carbon ‘sinks’, but new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that young trees are actually better at absorbing CO₂ than established tropical rainforests.  The Natural Resources Defense Council and Stand.earth reported that the largest U.S. makers of at-home tissue products use only virgin fiber from Canada’s northern forests — one of the world’s best absorbers of atmospheric CO₂ — in their major brands, thereby making climate change worse.

Data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s Climate Change in the American Mind surveys show that, over the past five years, the proportion of Americans who think global warming is happening and who worry about it has increased sharply.  The program also recently released its 2018 set of “Partisan Climate Opinion Maps.”  They are definitely worth a look.

Energy

Mining company Glencore has promised to cap the amount of the coal it is capable of taking out of the ground.  Glencore made its decision after facing pressure from a shareholder network known as Climate Action 100+, which has the backing of more than 300 investors managing $32 trillion.  Major tech companies are teaming with oil giants to use automation, AI, and big data services to enhance oil exploration, extraction, and production.  The EPA said CO₂ output grew 0.6% in 2018 over the previous year, to 1.93 billion tons, while electricity generated grew 5%, to 23.4 quadrillion BTUs.

The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Tokyo, Simon Denyer, had an article on Wednesday about the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima eight years after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident.  Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis on Thursday outlined the government’s plan to build a number of new nuclear reactors.

In total, 16.7 GW of new wind projects reached a final investment decision last year in Europe — 12.5 GW onshore and 4.2 GW offshore — 45% more than in 2017, according to WindEurope’s annual report.  Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed an executive order ending the moratorium on wind turbine permits imposed one year ago by former Republican Gov. Paul LePage.  Portland General Electric (PGE) plans to build the 380 MW Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility just north of Lexington, Oregon.  It is being touted as the first in the U.S. to combine wind and solar power with battery storage.  A tidal turbine array in the north of Scotland set a new world record for generating power and exporting it into the national grid.

The results of a study published in the journal Energies show that as much as 25% of the increase in the UK’s GDP between 1971 and 2013 was driven by energy efficiency gains.  This suggests that improving energy efficiency has benefits beyond climate policy, given that the delivery of increased energy services can improve various aspects of society.  The EU agreed on Tuesday to reduce CO₂ emissions from new trucks and buses by 30% compared to 2019 levels by 2030.

At Yale Climate Connections, Karin Kirk addressed three myths about renewable energy and provided a “friendly response” to each.  Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables studied the performance of a hypothetical power grid if electricity generation in it was 100% renewable (50% wind and 50% solar) with battery storage and winter conditions like those experienced during the recent polar vortex occurred.  It required a lot of storage.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

 

Politics and Policy

A new study from the Institute for Public Policy Research, a UK-based leftwing thinktank, warns that a gathering storm of human-caused threats to climate, nature, and the economy pose a danger of systemic collapse comparable to the 2008 financial crisis.  On the brighter side, investors are willing to put up the capital to fund the Green New Deal (GND) goals provided they get clarity from Congress, said Jon Powers, president of financial technology company CleanCapital and former chief sustainability officer under President Obama.  “The thing that holds up capital the most is uncertainty,” he said.  “Once you have certainty in that policy, then that capital will know where to go.”  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday the Senate will hold a vote on the GND, although a time has not yet been scheduled.  Joe Romm had an article at Think Progress this week examining what a WWII-scale mobilization might look like.  Amy Harder had an interesting infographic at Axios illustrating what fighting climate change means to different groups.

A paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters, confirmed the conclusions of a study last year by the Environmental Defense Fund: the Trump administration’s “Affordable Clean Energy Rule”, which would replace the Clean Power Plan, would cause more CO₂ emissions than doing nothing in many states.  The Interior Department did not sufficiently consider the climate impacts of expanding a coal mine in Montana and must reexamine its environmental analysis, a federal judge ruled this week.  Energy Transfer Partners sued Greenpeace, BankTrack and Earth First in August 2017 for $1.0 billion, alleging the groups worked to undermine the Dakota Access pipeline that’s now shipping oil from North Dakota to Illinois.  On Thursday a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit saying he found no evidence of a coordinated criminal enterprise.  Pipeline executives are urging President Trump to assert federal authority over interstate pipelines and prevent states from blocking projects that run through their boundaries.  The petroleum industry has been depicting itself lately as the target of a conspiracy by scientists, local government officials, and climate change activists to make it look bad.

More than a dozen Republican senators and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have urged President Trump to back the Kigali Amendment to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, and the U.S. air conditioning and refrigeration industry agrees.  So why won’t the Trump administration do so?  The Democrat-led House Committee on Science, Space and Technology devoted its first hearing to exploring the wide-ranging effects of climate change.  There was a subtle shift among key Republicans toward accepting the prevailing research that points to human-driven global warming.  If you think the divide between the political parties in the U.S. over climate change has been bad, it looks downright cordial compared to the situation in Australia, in spite of the huge climate impacts they have been experiencing.

At The New York Times, Brad Plumer provided an overview of state actions on climate change since the November elections.  Jan Ellen Spiegel wrote at Yale Climate Connections about how the 2018 elections changed the climate for renewable energy in the Northeast.  Plumer and Blacki Migliozzi teamed up with Robbie Orvis and Megan Mahajan of Energy Innovation to prepare a very informative infographic illustrating the CO₂ reduction that the U.S. could achieve if it adopted seven of the most ambitious climate policies already in place around the world.  Climate-related disasters cost the world $650 billion over the last three years, according to a new report from Morgan Stanley.  The cost to North America was $415 billion, or 0.66% of North America’s GDP.  Bloomberg presented a chilling piece entitled “The Pessimist’s Guide to 2019: Fires, Floods, and Famines.”

Potpourri

The 2019 Tyler Prize for environmental achievement (the “Nobel for the Environment) was awarded February 12 to two eminent climate scientists, Warren Washington and Michael Mann.  Sara Peach offered advice for a reader who is worried about the climate impact of air travel.  Peter Sinclair’s latest video focuses on 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg, who virtually stole the show at the recent World Economic Forum.  Rupert Read, a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia in England, wrote that he thought the student climate strikes started by Thunberg “are morally and politically justifiable.”  The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that the percent of people in the U.S. alarmed about climate change has increased to 29%, double the segment’s size in 2013.

Climate

When soot (black carbon) falls from the atmosphere onto the surface of Arctic ice it absorbs energy from the sun, speeding up melting and decreasing the reflection of solar radiation back into space.  A study published Thursday in the journal Science Advances found that the burning of fossil fuels is the main source of black carbon in the Arctic.  Two new papers in the journal Nature suggest that the contributions of Antarctica to sea level rise by the end of this century will not be as great as other recent papers have suggested.

For a variety of reasons, the U.S. Forest Service’s latest aerial survey of federal, state, and private land in California found that 18 million trees throughout the state died in 2018, bringing the state’s total number of dead trees to more than 147 million.  When you add up both their absorption and emission, Canada’s forests haven’t been a net carbon sink since 2001.  Due largely to forest fires and insect infestations, the trees have actually added to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions for each of the past 15 years.  China and India are “leading the world” in “greening” the landscape, a study published in Nature Sustainability found, with the two countries accounting for one-third of the new forests, croplands and other types of vegetation observed globally since 2000.  However, that greening is “not enough to offset” the loss of the world’s tropical rainforests, particularly in Brazil, a scientist told Carbon Brief.

A study conducted at Iowa State University and published in the journal Current Climate Change Reports, identified three ways climate change will increase the likelihood of violence.  In 13 of 26 countries, people listed climate change as the top global threat, with the Islamic State militant group topping the list in eight and cyber attacks in four, according to a new poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center.

Intensive agriculture, particularly the heavy use of pesticides, is the main driver of rapid declines in insect populations according to a new paper in the journal Biological Conservation.  Urbanization and climate change are also significant factors.

A new study in Nature Communications illustrated the impacts of climate change on U.S. cities by examining which locations now have climates like those the cities will experience in 2080 under two CO₂ emissions scenarios.

Energy

A paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A describes initial studies on a new type of wave energy device that, because of its mechanical simplicity, may someday solve many of the problems associated with extracting electrical energy from the oceans.

Los Angeles will abandon a plan to replace three aging gas power plants along its coast with newer natural gas technology and will instead invest in renewable energy as it seeks to move away from fossil fuels.  In addition to being good for the climate, this may be a sound economic move if Justin Mikulka of Desmog is correct.  According to him, North American natural gas producers desperately need higher prices, making gas less competitive with renewables.  Dominion Energy of Virginia says it will cut methane emissions from its natural gas system by about 25% over the next decade to help fight climate change.

Wind, solar, and other renewables will account for about 30% of the world’s electricity supplies by 2040, up from about 10% today, according to BP’s annual energy outlook.  Simon Evans provided a detailed analysis of the report at Carbon Brief.  Spain aims to close all seven of its nuclear power plants between 2025 and 2035 as part of plans to generate all the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2050.  German power and gas grid firms Amprion and Open Grid Europe said on Monday they would apply to build the country’s first large hydrogen plant that can convert wind power to alternative fuels that are easier to store and transport.

Described as a project of “strategic importance” for India’s energy sector, the country’s first grid-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage system officially went into service this week.  Oregon utility Portland General Electric said Wednesday that together with power producer NextEra Energy it plans to construct and connect a 300MW wind park, 50MW solar farm, and 30MW of battery energy storage.  U.S.-firm Hydrostor will convert a disused zinc mine in South Australia into a below-ground air-storage cavern for a 5MW/10MWh compressed air energy storage demonstration project.  As Americans buy more electric vehicles (EVs), the need for charging stations is increasing, but important questions exist around the issues of who should own them and who should set the charging rates.  David Thill of Energy News Network discussed the experience of Illinois in dealing with them.

A 2018 study in the Journal of Advanced Transportation looking at transit in Europe reported “a remarkable advantage of high-speed trains compared to aircraft”, with regard to direct CO₂ emissions per [passenger-mile].  In spite of that, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced he was scaling back plans for high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

This week’s Roundup was prepared by Joy Loving and Bishop Dansby.

Politics and Policy

This week saw the President give a “state of the union” address.  Per this Washington Post item, three areas he didn’t mention:  coal, renewable energy, and climate change.

There may be some narrowing of the partisan divide over whether and how to address climate change risks.  This Green Tech Network/Energy News Network podcast offers some insights.

What to do about transportation sector contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and how to do it is a big question.  Southeast Energy News says Virginia could be on a path to addressing this question. The Transportation Research Board of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has issued a policy snapshot, “Critical Issues in Transportation 2019” takes a broad and long-term view of 12 areas needing attention.

The Register-Herald, Beckley WV, reported that VA Tech researchers will use U.S. Department of Energy grant money to study ways to “reduce the stress of renewables on the nation’s power grid”.  Hopefully, their results will lead to more favorable federal and state policies on renewable energy.

Several recent articles covered a study that concluded “Climate change skeptics live where its effects are hurting economy most”; this headline is from CBS News.  The Hill put it this way:  “Climate change likely to hit red states hardest”.  Brookings weighed in also:  “How the geography of climate damage could make the politics less polarizing”.

You will recall that a favorite trope of conservative talk show hosts was the Obama restriction on incandescent lightbulbs (actually, energy standards that affected inefficient bulbs). Now, the U.S. Department of Energy has a proposal to roll back standards on lightbulbs that will cost consumers billions. Further, the proposal sets up all sorts of barriers designed to slow progress and compromise the highly successful standards program that saves the average household more than $500 off their energy bills every year.

When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined members of the Sunrise Movement and the Justice Democrats at a sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office pushing a Green New Deal in November, she framed the proposal, which few had then heard of, as the only way for the Party and the country to seriously address climate change. “We do not have a choice,” she told them. “We have to get to one hundred per cent renewable energy in ten years. There is no other option.” The Green New Deal resolution as now drafted some three months later has language that leaves open the possibility of sustaining or expanding nuclear energy, which had been rejected in an open letter last month from over six hundred environmental groups, including the Sunrise Movement. The resolution also does not rule out the possibility of a carbon tax—an idea favored by centrists but viewed as inadequate by many climate activists.

Technology

There is a lot of buzz about a “green new deal” for America.  Architectural Digest discusses what this might mean for building design.

GM and other car makers have said that they are going ‘all-electric,” and yet GM has discontinued their Chevy Volt and continues to crank out conventional vehicles. Nevertheless, GM CEO Barra repeated Wednesday GM’s intent to go all-electric, but it doesn’t expect to make money off battery-powered cars until early next decade.

Railroads have long been the most efficient form of transport. Global transport emissions could peak in the 2030s if railways are “aggressively” expanded, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Tesla has acquired Maxwell Technologies, a company you probably have never heard of. Maxwell is a capacitor manufacturer, including something called the ultra-capacitor. It is well known that batteries have limitations that ultra-capacitors do not have, and vice versa. Tesla’s Elon Musk has been quoted as having a personal fascination with ultra-capacitors. Tesla’s purchase of Maxwell might signal an interest in using ultra-capacitor to power electric cars.

 Climate

A recent New York Times article in its “Climate Forward” series warns in stark terms that shrinking glaciers mean less water for human consumption and for agriculture, affecting millions of people.  And The Guardian reporter David Wallace-Wells tells us that after researching the already-happening and likely-future effects of global warming, he’s no longer a doubter about what the world will be like in 2100—again, a gloomy perspective with a chilling image of an August 2018 Portugal wildfire.  The Washington Post reminds us, through stories about real people and communities called “Gone in a Generation”, that the U.S. isn’t immune from climate calamities and, indeed, that they’re already happening.

How about a wall to combat climate change?  “The Navy Wants to Build a Wall to Stave Off Climate Change”, according to a Bloomberg report.  Perhaps this barrier will actually keep unwanted water out.

An intriguing study reported in ScienceDirect examines whether carbon dioxide reductions in the late 1500s were connected to human explorations in the “new world”.

A research team working on Baffin Island in Northeastern Canada has uncovered evidence that today’s Earth looks a lot like it did 115,000 years ago. All we’re missing is the much higher sea level that was present at that time. New research suggests the planet is already paralleling the most recent major warm period in its past. Now the only question is how fast Antarctica could collapse to raise sea level.

If climate change changed the color of the oceans, would that get the world’s attention? The changes in color are in part a function of the fluctuating populations of phytoplankton, or algae — the microscopic plants that, across their thousands of different species, do some rather heavy lifting for the global ecosystem.

When we think about all that climate change imperils, we don’t always think about art and history.  Maybe we should, given that “9 Famous Sites from Art History Are in Danger of Destruction”, according to this Artsy article.

Energy

Nary does a week go by without an article, or 6, about the Atlantic Coast (ACP) and/or Mountain Valley Pipelines (MVP).  Here’s one from Reuter’s about rising costs because of construction delays.  And here’s a WHSV-TV item about one type of delay.  The current General Assembly is trying to decide how much authority the State Corporation Commission has on the subject of Dominion claims for ratepayer-reimbursement for the ACP.  Here’s Bacon’s Rebellion’s piece on a recent House vote on HB 1718.  And, as has been true from the beginnings of the ACP and MVP, the thorny issue of eminent domain continues to matter to many—as indicated in this Reuter’s item and in this Roanoke Times piece.

Many rural counties struggle with the pros and cons of large solar farms.  Here’s an interesting article about a win-win approach that doesn’t actually reduce agricultural use while allowing solar panels.

The World Economic Forum recently heard from CEOs Jules Kortenhurst of Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and Cristina Lampe-Onnerrud of Cadenza Innovation about the urgent need to move more quickly to reduce carbon emissions.  And RMI did a piece about China’s efforts in this regard, as did Renewable Energy World (REW).

There have been a number of recent articles about the changing relationship between utilities and their customers and about changing utility business models.  REW ran an article titled “How Utilities and Consumers Can Join Forces to Power the Sustainable Future”.  REW did another article, “Why Community Solar Is the Future of the Industry”.  And Green Tech Network offered up this item:  “Utilities ‘Need to Be More’ Than Electricity Providers, Entergy and ComEd Execs Declare”.  Chron published “University of Houston courts oil and gas for work on carbon management”.  And of all corporations, “BP will link bonuses for 36,000 workers to climate targets”, according to CNN Business item.

During the 2019 Virginia Assembly session, there was no lack of renewable energy and energy efficiency bills to alter the barriers in current laws.  Ivy Main’s blog Power for the People provided a Feb 4 status update on how these bills fared.  The picture she paints shows Virginia legislators have a way to go.

In contrast, Dominion Energy has been supporting the education of Virginia teachers about solar energy so they can in turn educate students.  The Dickenson Star reported on a southwest Virginia event, as did the Bluefield WV Telegraph.  Closer to home, The Citizen reported recently in two articles about the Harrisonburg school board’s efforts to put solar panels on schools and the dilemma posed for the city’s municipal electric utility (Harrisonburg Electric Commission–HEC) and city officials and staff.  Other nearby schools’ systems (Albemarle and Augusta Counties) have managed to make this happen, but it appears HEC and Harrisonburg have a financial interest in their schools’ not going solar.  Two other Citizen articles, one about a sustainability effort in the city and the other about the city council’s vision for Harrisonburg by 2039 provide further context about the challenges the city faces.

Australia has been experiencing record high temperatures.  Yale Environment 360 published an article about how renewables helped keep the grid operating.

Policy and Politics

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) are planning to unveil legislation for a Green New Deal (GND) in the coming days.  Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer explained why the “task is enormous, and the path is narrow” to passing the GND through Congress.  Dana Nuccitelli expressed concern about some aspects of the letter sent to Congress by 626 organizations urging lawmakers to consider a number of principles when crafting climate legislation like the GND.  Last week I included articles about AOC’s 12-year deadline comment.  This week Joe Romm explained where it came from.  The 2018 midterms saw several green-minded governors either elected for the first time or reelected.  David Roberts reviewed their early actions on climate change at Vox.  The nation’s intelligence community warned in its annual assessment of worldwide threats that climate change poses risks to global stability because it is “likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.”

Acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler put eight new members on the agency’s main board of external science advisers, including John Christy, an atmospheric science professor at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.  Christy is an outspoken climate skeptic who argues that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than the scientific consensus has found.  Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur says she will not seek a third term after being told by Senate leaders she would not be renominated.  Bill Gates is making the rounds on Capitol Hill to persuade Congress to spend billions of dollars over the next decade for pilot projects to test new designs for nuclear power reactors.  The Navy is considering erecting a 14-foot flood wall around the Washington Navy Yard to protect it from rising sea levels.  A series of new reports shows how climate change is intertwined with the world’s worsening health, and suggests changes in the global food production system.

The Energy Information Administration issued its Annual Energy Outlook on January 24, but Dan Gearino argued that its projections underestimate both the rate at which coal will decline and the rate at which wind power will grow.  The gap between Canada’s proposed climate efforts and its 2030 Paris Agreement target has grown even wider in the last year.  A report from the N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center found that 47 states and the District of Columbia took some type of distributed solar policy action during 2018.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality will host “Brightfields 2019 — Virginia”, a solar energy development conference, April 9-10 at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in Richmond.  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday stayed a previous court decision against Forest Service permits that allowed construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) across national forests and the Appalachian Trail.  A bill designed to wean Virginia’s electricity sector off of fossil fuels failed on a partisan vote in the state House of Delegates late Thursday afternoon.  Another piece of legislation advancing through the General Assembly would add new restrictions on Dominion Energy’s ability to pass along costs of transporting gas from the ACP to its Virginia-based power stations.

Potpourri

At Yale Climate Connections, SueEllen Campbell presented a short compilation of realistic but optimistic clean energy news mostly from 2018 and Amy Brady interviewed Dominican novelist Rita Indiana about her book Tentacle.  A few of artist Katherine Wolkoff’s black and white photographs from her exhibit in New York City can be viewed at The Cut.  Michael Svoboda presented a list of 2018’s most significant climate change reports at Yale Climate Connections.  The latest video from Peter Sinclair is about the “methane time bomb” and whether we should be concerned about it.  Climate Interactive posted a video of climate scientist Beth Sawin’s TEDx talk about multisolving.  Kaelyn Lynch reviewed James Balog’s (Chasing Ice) latest film, The Human Element, for Outside magazine.  Sam Wall of The Roanoke Times interviewed Radford University English professor Rick Van Noy about his new book: “Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South”.  In an opinion piece at CNN, author Mark Lynas wrote: “I am currently working on an updated edition of Six Degrees.  It’s a scary task because many of the impacts that I had previously put in later chapters — equating to three or more degrees of global warming — have had to be moved forwards, because they are happening already.”

Climate

A report published in Nature last week, projects that the planet’s capacity to take in CO₂ could begin to decline starting in 2060.  If those projections prove true, it would create a feedback loop that could accelerate the worst effects of global warming.  New research from the Brookings Institution suggests that areas where Americans are the most skeptical about climate change will be the hardest hit by its effects.  Furthermore, over the coming years and decades, climate change will harm much of the inland U.S., causing billions of dollars in losses by 2100.

Zoeann Murphey and Chris Mooney published a four-part multimedia series in The Washington Post about how climate change is impacting American’s lives.  The New York Times had an article about the polar vortex and its effects on extremely cold weather.  The article had a very interesting and descriptive animation of what happens.  At Carbon Brief, Robert McSweeney spoke with a number of climate scientists about how changes in the Arctic can cause extreme weather across the mid-latitudes.

New research, published in Science, challenges the long-held view that the strength of the “Atlantic Conveyer Belt” (ACB) is primarily driven by processes in the Labrador Sea, which is in the northwest Atlantic.  Instead, the strength of the ACB is most linked to processes in waters between Greenland and Scotland.  Chris Mooney discussed the significance of this to climate change.

On Friday, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology released its climate summary for January and said that the month was Australia’s hottest on record.  The Berkeley Earth scientific team has reported that in 2018, 29 countries plus Antarctica set individual records for the hottest year ever, while no country saw a record cold year.  Arctic summers may be hotter now than they have been for 115,000 years, according to new research published in Nature Communications.

A massive cavity two-thirds the size of Manhattan and almost 1,000 ft tall has been discovered in the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica.  Jeff Goodell is accompanying a team of scientists to Antarctica whose mission is to better understand the risk of catastrophic collapse of Thwaites Glacier.  He will be writing a series of dispatches during his trip.  The first is here.

Energy

A new report, from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s One Earth initiative, lays out a blueprint to keep warming in check without relying on nuclear power or new technologies to capture CO₂ that haven’t yet been proven at scale.  If technologies to capture CO₂ are required, researchers have found a way to do so using a chemical technique similar to one scuba divers and submarines use to “rebreathe” CO₂-rich exhalations.

A panel appointed by the German government has recommended that Germany stop burning coal to generate electricity by 2038 at the latest.  New wind, solar, and biomass power generation displaced hard coal last year according to a review of 2018 European electricity statistics.  China’s renewable power capacity rose 12% in 2018 compared to a year earlier.  In the UK, Cornwall Insight’s new projections suggest the emergence of a new generation of giant offshore wind turbines, coupled with on-going planned restrictions for onshore turbines, could see offshore projects undercut their onshore equivalent on a levelized cost of energy basis by around 2028.  Brazil’s new government announced plans to build a bridge over the Amazon River in Pará state to begin developing what he called an “unproductive, desertlike” region – a reference to the Amazon rainforest.

In the U.S., companies and government agencies last year signed contracts to buy 13.4 GW of clean power.  That easily shattered the prior record of 6.1 GW that was set in 2017.  New information from Texas grid operator ERCOT showed that carbon-free resources made up more than 30% of its 2018 energy consumption, and a slightly larger percentage of its 2019 generation capacity.  NextEra Energy’s CEO Jim Robo said that even after federal tax credits expire, electricity from wind will be 2–2.5¢/kw-hr and from large-scale solar 2.5–3¢/kw-hr.  Storage will add 0.5–1¢/kw-hr.  This would put these resources slightly below the current cost of natural gas-fired generation.  An estimated $8 billion in savings could be achieved in five years if just a third of all major electricity transmission projects across the nation were opened up to competition, according to a report by the Brattle Group.

Tesla has posted profits in consecutive quarters for the first time since going public in 2010.  Shell New Energies, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, acquired EV charging startup Greenlots.  In 2018, Ingka Group, the parent company of Ikea, pledged that Ikea will deliver every item worldwide by electric vehicle by 2025.  It started by promising a switch to EVs in five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Amsterdam, and Shanghai) by 2020.  As of January 23, it had already reached that goal in Shanghai.

The International Council on Clean Transportation released a study on the climate impacts of a creating a new commercial supersonic aircraft network Wednesday.  A new report from the International Energy Agency has found that urban and high-speed rail hold “major promise to unlock substantial benefits”, which include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, congestion, and air pollution.  Carbon Brief examined eight key charts from the report showing the status of rail in the world today and how it could reduce emissions in future.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.