Month: April 2020

Politics and Policy

On Wednesday, activists and scientists worldwide marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with a message of warning: When this health crisis passes, world leaders must rebuild the global economy on a healthier, more sustainable track.  A sampling of other Earth Day news follows.  The New York Times celebrated the 50^th anniversary by highlighting ten big environmental victories and ten big failures.  Pope Francis made an impassioned plea for protection of the environment and praised the environmental movement, saying it was necessary for young people to “take to the streets to teach us what is obvious,…”.  Former UN official Hugh Roberts wrote: “It is time, then, to consider a new kind of declaration.  A declaration of responsibility, acknowledging what we have done and recognizing we were mistaken: a simple expression of collective responsibility for what is wrong.”  Rolling Stone interviewed and profiled Denis Hayes, the person who organized the first Earth Day.  Inside Climate News did a Q&A with Francis Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet, which was published in 1971.  Finally, Scientific American illustrated how the environment has changed in the past 50 years.

On Monday the League of Conservation Voters endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for President.  Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State and former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Mr. Biden on Wednesday, after he signaled he would make fighting climate change a central cause of his administration.  At Politico, Michael Grunwald argued that the climate movement’s recent strategy of deemphasizing personal responsibility while placing the blame on large corporations is a mistake.  While nature-based solutions for stopping climate change are not sufficient, Amanda Paulson argued that they can be an important component when done properly.  New York Times reporter Richard Schiffman visited Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to learn of its decades-old role in understanding climate change.  One of the things he learned is that global warming may be far more dangerous than the pandemic.

In an earlier Roundup I linked to an article about the New York Fed tapping asset manager BlackRock Inc to serve as investment manager for the two new programs for purchasing bonds as part of the effort to sustain the economy.  Now, senators from both parties are pressing the Fed for details about how climate risk will be considered, but from opposite perspectives.  President Trump promised on Tuesday to bail out U.S. oil companies that have been hard hit by a recent historic dive in crude oil prices that have taken futures into negative values.  An alternative, put forth by Oil Change International and the Democracy Collaborative, would be a public takeover of the fossil-fuel industry, which could then implement a managed phase-out of oil, gas, and coal extraction to keep global warming under 1.5°C.  President Trump on Friday expressed opposition to banks’ unwillingness to fund certain fossil fuel projects, after two major banks announced that they wouldn’t directly support oil and gas drilling in the Arctic.  Despite the dire outlook, the American oil and gas sector has plowed ahead at full speed with fossil fuel infrastructure development.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended a nationwide program used to approve oil and gas pipelines, power lines, and other utility work, spurred by a court ruling that last week threw out a blanket permit system the Corps had been using.

Denis Hayes wrote an op-ed in The Seattle Times about the importance of this year’s presidential election.  In an article in Politico, Ryan Heath and coauthors wrote: “If this year’s once-in-a-generation level of public spending isn’t used to change how infrastructure is built, how industry works, and how cars and planes run, green lobbyists say governments will lose their final chance to meet the 2015 global climate target that 195 governments signed up for.”  In its inaugural Global Renewables Outlook, the International Renewable Energy Agency said that governments could chart a path to a fully decarbonized energy system by the middle of the century and revive economies hit by the coronavirus if they tailor stimulus packages to boost clean energy technologies.  At Vox, David Roberts argued that coronavirus stimulus money will be wasted on fossil fuels. 

Climate and Climate Science

There is a 75% chance 2020 will set the record for the warmest year since instrument records began in 1880, NOAA is projecting, beating out 2016 for the distinction.  Carbon Brief provided a more detailed analysis.  2019 was the hottest year on record for Europe, which is warming faster than the rest of Earth.  Over the past five years, global temperatures were, on average, just over 1°C warmer than at the end of the 19th century, whereas, in Europe, temperatures were almost 2°C warmer.  New research, published on-line in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that the Arctic Ocean will likely be ice-free in summer by 2050 even if measures are taken to keep warming below 2°C.

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest lost over 2,000 square miles of forest from August 2019 through March 2020, double the rate for that equivalent period in 2018 and 2019.  Satellite data show regions of the Amazon with severe decreases in soil moisture and groundwater, meaning this year will likely be drier than 2019, making the forest more prone to wildfires.

One thing you may not have thought about is how climate change is altering nature’s sonic landscape.

According to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change, as global temperatures continue to rise, farmers in the western U.S. who rely on snowmelt to water their crops could be among the hardest hit agricultural communities. 

The World Resources Institute has found that 147 million people will be hit by floods from rivers and coasts annually by the end of the decade, compared with 72 million people just 10 years ago.  Damages to urban property will increase from $174bn to $712bn per year.  A new report focused on the impacts of a warming planet on North Carolina.  It warns that the state needs to brace for a future of wetter and more intense hurricanes, plus other climate disruptions.  Another impact for coastal communities is increased risk of salt water incursion into their water supplies.

Energy

Methane emissions from the Permian basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico are more than two times higher than federal estimates, a new study published in the journal Science Advances suggests.  In addition, a new study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology looked at almost 600,000 operator reports on methane leaks from both fracking and conventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania from 2014-2018 and found that methane emissions were at least 15% higher than previously thought.

Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, a pilot project comprising two 6-MW turbines developed by Siemens Gamesa in Esbjerg, Denmark, is expected to be online by the end of this year to power 3,000 homes.  While the grid benefits of distributed solar generation are well known for large utilities, less is known about the impacts for rural cooperatives, which tend to serve smaller populations spread out across a large area.  Now a researcher at the University of Minnesota is studying the issue.

Last week, the New England Ratepayers Association filed a petition with FERC asking it to assert control over all state net-metering programs, a move that could lay the groundwork for challenges to the solar net metering policies now in place in 41 states.  There is another item about FERC, this one in Dan Gearino’s “Inside Clean Energy” newsletter.  Scroll down to the second article, which is about FERC affirming its December ruling that states are distorting competition in the PJM Interconnection grid region by passing laws that subsidize power plants that don’t emit CO₂.  Wind generated more electricity nationally than coal on three separate days over the past six weeks, according to an E&E News review of federal data.

A recent article in Nature Climate Change found that, even when only accounting for domestic environmental effects and neglecting the global benefits from slowing climate change, the benefits of phasing out coal electricity generation outweigh the economic costs, thereby making coal phaseout a “no-regret” policy option.  Sweden has become the third European country to complete its phase out of coal power.  Since the coronavirus hit the U.S., coal mines across the country have begun shutting down, laying off workers and slowing production; bankruptcies loom everywhere in the industry.  In West Virginia, as coal mining firm ERP Environmental Fund teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, the state asked a court for control of several abandoned mines, all owned by the firm. 

What is thought to be the world’s largest ‘single-stack’ green hydrogen electrolyzer, a 10MW project in Fukushima, Japan, began operations on schedule last month.  One problem with powering cars with hydrogen is the extremely high pressure required to hold enough hydrogen to drive for a reasonable distance.  Now, researchers have developed a highly porous new material, described as a metal-organic framework, that is capable of holding large quantities of hydrogen at much lower pressure.

Potpourri

There was an interesting piece in The New York Times about Eunice Foote, who may have been the first person to observe that CO₂ makes the atmosphere warmer.  Michael Moore is executive producer of a “refreshingly contrarian eco-documentary from environmentalist Jeff Gibbs,” which has been uploaded for free online viewing on YouTube.  Michael Svoboda provided a compilation of twelve books for the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, on the topics of clean air, clean water, and wildlife protection.  The editors of the Books and Climate Desks at The New York Times have put together a list of books for “The Year You Finally Read a Book About Climate Change.”  The Guardian’s “Books Podcast” was devoted to The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. 

Closing Thought

You’ve heard of Greta Thunberg, but what about Maddie Graham?

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

According to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, if all countries followed their current emissions targets, by 2100 the global economy would lose as much as $600 trillion compared with its likely growth if all countries met the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.  The coronavirus has caused Europe’s carbon market to crash.  IHS Markit notes the market is currently down by around 40% since early March and roughly 66% from 2019’s high point.

Conservative groups aligned with the oil industry hope to block any aid for the solar and wind industries, which have been decimated by the pandemic.  As energy secretary, Rick Perry regularly said that he favored an all-encompassing energy policy, but during his tenure, the Energy Department repeatedly hamstrung bipartisan efforts to boost spending on clean energy technology.  As the Federal Reserve weighs how to structure its bond-buying program as part of the corporate relief strategy, everyone is watching to see whether it will consider long-term climate risks in determining which companies to help.  Members of the EU are being asked to look ahead to the type of economy they would like to have in the future as they determine how to reopen theirs.  South Korea is on track to set a 2050 carbon neutrality goal and end coal financing after its ruling Democratic Party won an absolute majority in the country’s parliamentary elections on Wednesday.  Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group said on Thursday it would no longer lend to build new coal-fired power plants from May 1, a day after Mizuho Financial Group said it would stop financing new coal power projects.

Former staffers from Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign have formed a new group to promote Inslee’s climate plan to Democrats.  They have also released a roadmap for a green post-coronavirus recovery.  Whether former Vice President Joe Biden listens to that group, or some of the others touting tough climate stances, may determine whether he gets the support of climate action voters in the fall.  There was more interesting information about climate concerns out this week from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, this time involving differences among ethnic/racial groups.

Thirteen states and several environmental groups filed separate lawsuits against the Trump administration on Tuesday seeking to block a rule they say will impede efforts to make a number of products more energy-efficient.  On Tuesday, the administration rejected government scientists’ recommendation that it strengthen the national air quality standard for small particulate matter.  In addition, on Thursday it changed the way the federal government calculates the costs and benefits of regulating dangerous air pollutants, including mercury, a shift that could restrict the ability of regulators to control toxins in the future.  A vocal set of conservative critics has upped its attacks recently on the modeling behind the coronavirus response, and they claim that the flaws also prove the limits of climate change models.  A bill, which Gov. Ralph Northam signed on Sunday, makes Virginia the latest state to require a transition to 100% carbon-free or renewable energy, and the first in the South.  Atlantic Coast Pipeline opponents hope the project will be stopped by a new Virginia law requiring regulators to consider whether gas pipeline capacity is needed for reliability before approving projects.

Climate and Climate Science

NOAA scientists announced Thursday that 2020 has nearly a 75% chance of being the warmest year on record and a 99.9% chance that it will end up among the top five.  National Geographic has an interactive program that allows one to examine what the climate in a given city will look like in 2070 if greenhouse gas emissions follow the worst case scenario set up by the IPCC.  Carbon Brief has updated its map showing climate attribution studies around the world.  The article includes all relevant research published up to the end of 2019, finding that “69% of the 355 extreme weather events and trends included in the map were found to be made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change”.

A vast region of the western U.S., extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years.  Climate change could result in a more abrupt collapse of many animal species than previously thought, starting in the next decade if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, according to a study published this month in Nature.  The island of Anjouan, part of the nation of the Comoros off the East African coast, receives more annual rainfall than most of Europe, but a combination of deforestation and climate change has caused at least half of its permanent rivers to stop flowing in the dry season.

A new paper in the journal The Cryosphere has confirmed that melting of Greenland’s ice sheet occurred at near record amounts in the summer of 2019.  The study also found that the melting was driven by a record number of high-pressure days with clear blue skies, an occurrence not considered in models of ice sheet melt.  A paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that ambient melting, in which a glacier melts directly into the sea, is a much greater contributor to the melting of the LeConte Glacier in southeast Alaska than had been thought. 

According to a paper in the journal Scientific Reports, parts of the U.S. coastline could suffer “once in a lifetime” flooding every five years before 2050, and it could become a daily occurrence by the end of the century.

A second wave of desert locusts is threatening east Africa, with estimates that it will be 20 times worse than the plague of two months ago.

Energy

On Sunday, OPEC, Russia, and other oil-producing nations finalized a production cut of nearly 10 million barrels, or a tenth of global supply, in hopes of boosting prices amid the coronavirus pandemic and a price war.  Nevertheless, oil prices dropped sharply on Tuesday, with U.S. prices sliding back toward $20 a barrel.  At DeSmogBlog.com, Sharon Kelly wrote: “The oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have taken a massive financial blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report from the Center for International Environmental Law concludes, but its financial troubles preexisted the emergence of the novel coronavirus and are likely to extend far into the future….”  Carbon Brief gathered the latest evidence on how the coronavirus crisis is affecting energy use and CO₂ emissions around the world.  Analysis of the data suggests the pandemic could cause a drop in emissions this year of around 5.5% of the global total in 2019.  After four years of continuous decline, the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by about 3% in 2018, according to a new report from the EPA.  Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday announced plans to become a net zero-carbon company by 2050 by selling more green energy to help reduce the carbon intensity of its business.

The operators of the UK’s gas network have set the ambitious target of delivering the world’s first zero carbon gas grid by transitioning away from natural gas to hydrogen (H₂).  Things are going another way in the U.S. where the “electrify everything” movement is working to outlaw natural gas connections in communities across the country.  Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group has produced a free e-book about H₂ as a powerful ally for renewable energy and tool for decarbonization.  The book provides the Group’s market insight into the technologies that will support hydrogen’s growth. 

A U.S. court on Wednesday ruled against the Corps of Engineers’ use of a permit that allows new energy pipelines to cross water bodies, in the latest setback to plans to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline.  A group of 29 House Democrats is asking the FERC to stop approving new natural gas pipeline projects and new liquefied natural gas export facilities amid the coronavirus outbreak.  A preliminary estimate from NOAA finds that levels of methane in the atmosphere have hit an all-time high.  A new study in the journal Environmental Research Communications finds that by bringing already available technologies and techniques into wider use, we could avoid nearly 40% of the projected methane emissions by 2050. 

Globally, cheap fossil fuels and the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus risk are hampering a shift to renewable energies.  In the U.S., more than 106,000 jobs in the clean energy sector were lost in March amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Rivian, Lordstown Motors, Lucid, Bollinger Motors, Faraday Future, and Fisker are among startups that see a future of battery-powered sedans and trucks, but the pandemic threatens the capital flows and customer base they need to survive.  Despite COVID-19, an economic slowdown, and low gas prices, Volvo is pushing forward with its electrification plans. 

Potpourri

The annual Earth Day event has been extended throughout the week of April 20th so as to deliver a series of online broadcasts and interactive digital events.  The organizers promise to deliver the world’s largest online climate conference.  In the U.S., digital events are being concentrated on the three days beginning April 22.  In recent months, the notion of family planning as a means of fighting climate change has emerged from the eco-warrior fringe and entered mainstream public conversation.  Peter Sinclair’s latest video compares the progression of climate change and the coronavirus and concludes “The broad shape of the story is the same.”  Business reporter and author Christopher Leonard, has a new book that chronicles the rise of Koch Industries and shows how it has shaped American society.  The Washington Post featured photographer Jonathan Blaustein and his new book Extinction Party.  S. Fred Singer, a physicist whose efforts to refute established climate science earned him the enmity of experts, died on April 6 at a nursing facility in Rockville, Md. He was 95.  Sir John Houghton, an eminent British physicist and climate researcher who served as lead editor for the first three landmark reports from the IPCC, died Wednesday from COVID-19 at the age of 88.  This week I’m closing with the musings of Heather Hansman on “Lessons from Wendell Berry, Wallace Stegner, and my neighborhood trees.”

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

Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) has suspended his campaign for the Democratic nominee for president (You can read or watch his speech ICYMI.) and some climate activists have said that former Vice President Joe Biden will have to work hard and be bolder on climate change to fill the void left by Sanders’ departure.  The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication just had a paper published in the journal Energy Policy.  It explored and contrasted the reasons Republicans and Democrats support renewable energy.

In an opinion piece in Scientific American, author and activist Solomon Goldstein-Rose wrote “Rather than [trying to] convince other nations to ‘do their part,’ the U.S. should develop clean energy technologies and make them cheap enough for everyone to adopt.”  At Yale Environment 360, Fred Pearce examined what might happen after the coronavirus pandemic: Some policy experts think that victory over the virus will generate an appreciation for what government, science, and business can do to tackle climate change, but others believe the economic damage caused by the virus will set back climate efforts for years to come.  Nature published an interview with a co-chair of the IPCC working group on the physical science of climate change about how the scientists are coping with the pandemic as they try to finish their report by next year.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit restored a regulation that had prohibited businesses from upgrading to HFCs in large refrigeration systems as they discontinued use of ozone-depleting refrigerants.  The regulation requires that they upgrade to refrigerants, such as hydrofluoroolefins, that have small greenhouse effects.  The Trump administration’s rollback of the Obama-era automotive fuel economy standards will face challenges in the courts.  Rebecca Beitsch of The Hill examined the many grounds on which it can be challenged.

Chile has committed to peaking its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, in an updated national plan presented virtually to the UN climate chief on Thursday.

Climate and Climate Science

A new study, published in the journal Nature, addressed the question of when the effects of climate change will begin to overwhelm ecosystems.  The results suggest that unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions would expose tropical ocean ecosystems to potentially catastrophic temperature rise by 2030 and tropical forests by 2050.  A study published in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal found that the ability of the North Atlantic to take up and sequester CO₂ appears to be smaller than has been assumed in climate modeling.  The average level of methane in the atmosphere increased last year by the highest amount in five years, according to preliminary data released by NOAA on Sunday.  Exxon Mobil is testing new equipment to reduce methane emissions at 1,000 sites in the Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

Two weeks ago, I linked to an article about the latest bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  An article this week reported that the bleaching was the most widespread outbreak ever witnessed.  Graham Readfearn of The Guardian spoke to Australian scientists about what could be done to save the reef.  Their replies caused him to write: “What seems clear is that without some human intervention, the magic of the world’s greatest coral reef system will be lost.”  Unlike other coral reefs around the world, those in the Gulf of Aqaba appear to be “content” with the increasing ocean temperatures.

The UK government’s advisers on the economic value of the natural environment (Natural Capital Committee) said that badly-planned tree planting could increase greenhouse gas emissions.  The destruction of forests into fragmented patches is increasing the likelihood that viruses and other pathogens will jump from wild animals to humans, according to a paper published this month in the journal Landscape Ecology.

Some populations of robins are starting their northward migration about five days earlier per decade, in order to keep up with the rapid changes that global warming is bringing to their breeding grounds in northern Canada and Alaska.  New research published in the journal Environmental Research Letters shows that their flights follow trails of melting snow.  Climate change is remaking the Himalayan region, pushing mountain dwellers in northern Nepal, home to the world’s highest peaks, to build new settlements at lower altitudes.

In a paper that has been accepted and is awaiting publication in Environmental Research Letters, scientists reported that the observed frequency of autumn days with extreme fire weather has more than doubled in California since the early 1980s.

Energy

OPEC, Russia, and other countries reached a tentative agreement on Thursday to temporarily cut oil production by 10 million barrels a day — about 23% of their production levels — in May and June.  A new forecast from DOE’s Energy Information Administration says that the U.S. is likely to become a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products later this year.  The massive ConocoPhillips Willow project is moving full speed ahead at the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The public comment period is currently open.  In a very strongly worded opinion piece in The Guardian, Bill McKibben called out those responsible for the start of construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S.

Building a new nationwide transmission system to carry renewable energy from where it is generated to where it is needed will require government regulators at all levels to work together, as demonstrated by recent experiences.  Sooner or later, changes are coming to our electrical grids, depending upon how forward thinking our electric utilities are.  One concept is a “virtual power plant”, which is under trial in Basalt Vista, a new affordable housing project in the small town of Basalt, CO, just north of Aspen.  Daniel Oberhaus explained what its all about at Wired.  In South Australia, home batteries delivered significant revenues from their first six months of participation in a virtual power plant to help balance the grid.  Such grid balancing can also be achieved using the uninterruptable power supplies at data centers. 

German utility Uniper has signed a cooperation deal with Siemens to look at using H₂ at its gas-fired power plants and producing the H₂ with power from its wind turbines.  On Wednesday. Norway approved Equinor’s $466 million plan to build floating offshore wind turbines to provide electricity to North Sea oil and gas platforms.

Dan Gearino’s “Inside Clean Energy” newsletter had two important items this week.  The first concerned a ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that struck down a surcharge by the major electric utilities that inflated the bills of rooftop solar customers sufficiently to make the economics of installing solar panels questionable.  The second dealt with a report in Applied Energy about how industrial energy use could be made carbon free. 

According to a new analysis by Carbon Tracker of 6,696 existing coal-fired power plants worldwide and 1,046 in the pipeline, 46% will be unprofitable this year, up from 41% in 2019.  Renewable energy represented nearly three-quarters of new electricity generation capacity built worldwide in 2019, an all-time record, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.  In addition, utility-scale renewables produced more power than coal in the U.S. for the first time on a quarterly basis in the first three months of 2020.  While the oil and gas sector is generally pessimistic about its outlook during and after the pandemic, the renewable energy sector is more optimistic, as described by Ivan Penn at The New York Times.  However, all is not good for clean energy at present, as indicated by E&E News’s examination of clean energy’s job crash.

Potpourri

Grist has set up “Climate 101” on its website to provide “hands-on activities, videos, and discussion questions” about climate change to help parents who are having to home-school their kids for the first time.  The Conversation presented five ways to teach children about climate change.  Guardian journalist Jonathan Watts joined a Greenpeace scientific expedition in Antarctica and wrote about his experiences.  The newspaper also presented photographs by the two winners of the Getty Images Climate Visuals grant competition.  James Hansen is using this time of social distancing to finish his new book, entitled Sophie’s Planet.  He is making the chapters available in draft as he completes them.  The Preface and Chapter 1 can be accessed here.  Even though only one or two have the environment as their cause, I thought we might end on a positive note by focusing on the work of 12 amazing kids from around the world.

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

The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic has forced the UNFCCC and the UK to postpone COP26 scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland.  A main focus of COP26 was to have been on new pledges for greenhouse reductions by the participating countries.  Unfortunately, as Bloomberg Green warned, postponing COP26 may reduce political pressure for nations to stiffen their goals to cut greenhouse gases.  However, others thought that the delay would allow world leaders to recalibrate their plans in light of the coronavirus pandemic and avoid the uncertainty surrounding the next U.S. presidential election.  On Monday, Japan became the first industrialized nation to submit an updated Nationally Determined Contribution in preparation for COP26.  It merely reaffirmed its existing plan, drawing criticism from architects of the Paris Climate Agreement for failing to set tougher targets.

Inside Climate News published a retrospective on the stimulus bill entitled “Polluting Industries Cash-In on COVID, Harming Climate in the Process.”  House Democrats have not given up on using green infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy, despite Republican pushback.  On the other hand, a paper published Thursday in the journal Science, suggests that governments and investors around the world should prioritize small-scale, low carbon technologies — such as solar panels, smart appliances, and electric bicycles — in policy design in order to reduce emissions responsible for climate change in a more efficient and just way.  Barclays has pledged to align all of its financing activities with the goals and timelines of the Paris Climate Agreement, starting with the energy and power sectors.  At Gizmodo, Yessenia Funes examined whether the climate movement could successfully reimagine itself in a time of pandemic.  The city council of Takoma Park, MD, would like for the community to be fossil fuel-free by 2045.  How it will achieve that may serve as a case study for the rest of the nation.

The Trump administration on Tuesday weakened one of the nation’s most aggressive efforts to combat climate change, releasing new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks that handed a victory to the oil industry.  Inside Climate News called the action the “largest anti-climate rollback ever” and former President Obama urged voters to “demand better” of the government.  David Roberts provided some history on the change at Vox.  California announced it would sign a deal with yet another automaker (the fifth) to produce cars meeting stricter standards.  Reuters reported on the expected court challenge to the announcement, saying it “could delay implementation until after the 3 November election”.  In fact, lawsuits over the new standards have already been occurring.  On Wednesday, the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA was wrong to withhold information about how it devised the new fuel efficiency standards. 

Rob Jackson, chair of the Global Carbon Project, said CO₂ emissions could fall by more than 5% year-on-year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, although others warned that without structural change, the emissions declines could be short-lived and have little impact on the CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere.  The COVID-19 outbreak came at a particularly critical time for the EU, which had just started its push toward net-zero by 2050.  This raises the question of whether their green transition will survive the pandemic.  Here in the U.S., Dan Gearino provided answers to seven questions about how the pandemic will influence the clean energy transition.  Carbon Brief asked scientists, analysts, and policy experts from a range of disciplines for their thoughts on how the lifestyle changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic could affect global CO₂ emissions in the short and long term.  At E&E News, Adam Aton sought to answer the question “Does climate change still matter in the election?”.

Climate and Climate Science

A review article published Wednesday in the journal Nature concluded that despite the damage that has been done to Earth’s oceans, they are sufficiently resilient to recover by 2050 provided certain actions are taken, particularly on climate change.  Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell also published a comprehensive piece on the oceans.  Rising ocean temperatures could have pushed the world’s tropical coral reefs over a tipping point where they are hit by bleaching on a “near-annual” basis, according to Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at NOAA.  The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season could see a greater than average number of major hurricanes because of warmer seas and favorable weather patterns, forecasters from Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project said on Thursday.

A research paper published Tuesday in Global Change Biology reported on the biological impacts of the first recorded heat wave in East Antarctica, which occurred January 23-26, 2020 at Casey Research Station.  A study published in Nature Geoscience found that melting sea ice in Antarctica is influencing weather patterns as far away as the equatorial Pacific, warming ocean surface temperatures, delivering more rain, and potentially creating El Niño-like effects.

At Yale Environment 360, Gabriel Popkin addressed the question “Can ‘Carbon Smart’ Farming Play a Key Role in the Climate Fight?”.

Researchers in Spain have discovered that over the past 20 years the wingspan of nightingales has shortened.  They believe this is related to changes in temperatures seen in the Mediterranean region.

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change reports the widespread existence of methanotrophic bacteria in upland Arctic soils.  Methanotrophic bacteria use methane as a food source, destroying it in the process.  The finding suggests that net methane emissions in the Arctic may be much less than predicted because of the presence of these bacteria.

Energy

According to Reuters, crude oil futures jumped 10% on Thursday after President Trump said he expected Saudi Arabia and Russia to reach a deal soon to end their oil price war.  Reuters also reported that the oil refining industry will need to cut output by 30% or more in response to declining demand as the world reacts to the coronavirus pandemic.  The International Energy Agency said the oil industry is facing “a shock like no other in its history” as a result of the combined effects of the oil price war and the pandemic.  Texas oil regulators are likely to hold a hearing in April on whether to take the historic step of curbing the state’s oil production amid the global market collapse fueled by the coronavirus.

A TC Energy spokesman told The Hill in an email that pre-construction activities on the Keystone XL pipeline have been ongoing for several weeks and that the company expects to begin building the pipeline this spring.  Seven Texas oil and gas industry associations and approximately 40 Texas-based producing companies announced Tuesday the formation of a new coalition to address flaring and methane emissions.

BloombergNEF issued a new report entitled “Hydrogen Economy Outlook.”  It concluded that a move toward a H₂ economy using clean H₂ could reduce up to 34% of industrial and fossil fuel-caused greenhouse gas emissions.  The report found that governments need to provide $150 billion of subsidies over the next decade to scale up the technology.  Also, a new report from Rocky Mountain Institute concluded that industrial H₂ applications to replace fossil fuels will be essential for reaching net-zero carbon emissions targets for 2050.  Five companies from Singapore and two from Japan have entered into an agreement to explore H₂ as a low-carbon alternative to power Singapore’s energy future, the companies said in a statement on Monday.

Offshore wind in the U.S. will exceed 1 GW of capacity by 2024 and add more than 1 GW annually by 2027, according to a report released last week by Navigant Research.  It all depends on approvals from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.  Scotland’s first floating tidal turbine farm is set to be built off Orkney.  The first of two turbines is expected to be connected to the grid by the end of this year.

One improvement that would advance the sale of electric vehicles is a reduction in charging time.  Several battery manufacturers are developing technologies to do just that.  An article in Wired explains how they are going about it.  California-based startup Ubiquitous Energy has developed transparent solar cells to create its ClearView Power windows, a kind of “solar glass” that can turn sunlight into energy without blocking the view.

Potpourri

Systems-thinker John Harte provided a roadmap on how we can use the same interconnectedness that is spurring catastrophe to instead promote health and sustainability.  Providence, RI, issued a climate change resilience plan that melds carbon neutrality by 2050 with specific targets to cut direct emissions in the most polluted communities and slash child asthma, a model that other cities should follow as they seek environmental justice.  The April issue of Wired magazine is devoted to the climate crisis and how we will solve it.  The editor’s introduction to the issue can be found here.  At Yale Climate Connections, Michael Svoboda presented 12 books to help you get through the coronavirus pandemic.  The plastics industry advocated for recycling despite knowing the process was not effective in order to sell more plastic products, a new investigative partnership between NPR and Frontline has found.  A paper in the journal Nature Food revealed that textured soy protein can provide scaffolding for bovine skeletal muscle cells to adhere to and form meat-like 3D cell cultures, thus advancing the generation of cultured meat without the reliance on animal agriculture.  The BBC’s Justin Rowlatt wrote an introspective essay accompanied by amazing photos after his visit to Antarctica.

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.