Month: November 2020

Politics and Policy

President-elect Joe Biden, eager to elevate climate change issues throughout his administration, is already drafting orders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and seeking nominees who will embed climate policy across the government.  Climate policy experts say they expect Biden’s team to focus on five Trump rollbacks in particular: on clean cars, clean power, climate super-pollutants, methane leaks from oil and gas operations, and gas from landfills.  Biden discussed climate change in 12 of his first 14 calls with world leaders, an unprecedented diplomatic focus from a new U.S. president.  Biden’s transition teams include veterans from the Obama administration and others with significant prior experience in domestic and international climate policy battles.  Arun Majumdar is heading the transition team for DOE and many think he is a prime candidate to head the Department.  Biden’s ambitious agenda is sure to expose fault lines in the Democratic Party, between renewable energy advocates who see natural gas as no better than coal and establishment figures who say the fuel still has a role to play in reducing pollution.  Furthermore, Biden will face several legal and political hurdles if he seeks to halt new oil and gas permits on federal land and waters, given existing laws and the enormous sums that drilling royalties generate for the federal and state governments.  The financial sector is moving ahead with plans to begin the transition to a carbon-free economy and acknowledge a new administration that’s eager to tackle the climate crisis.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted on Wednesday to advance the nominations of Allison Clements and Mark Christie to be FERC commissioners, although it is unclear whether they will get a floor vote before the session ends.  More than two dozen automakers, electric utilities, EV-charging firms, and lithium companies are forming a new advocacy group devoted to pushing for electric vehicles (EVs) on Capitol Hill.  It’s called the Zero Emission Transportation Association, or ZETA.  After months of legal back-and-forth, a ruling in the U.S. Court of International Trade has reinstated tariffs on two-sided solar panels.  The American Farm Bureau Federation has joined an alliance of food, forest, farming, and environmental groups that intends to work with Congress and the incoming Biden administration to reduce the food system’s role in climate change. 

Greenhouse gases generated by the U.S. economy will slide 9.2% this year, tumbling to the lowest level in at least three decades.  Last month the Bureau of Land Management finalized the Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, allowing ConocoPhillips to produce up to 590 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years; a coalition of six environmental groups is suing to stop it.  The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies allowing them to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, although legal experts have said the leases may never be issued.

More than three-quarters of countries have indicated they will make stronger commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement by the end of 2020.  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the EU to lead global efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions by setting a new climate change target next month, while the EU unveiled plans to transform its electricity system to rely mostly on renewables within a decade and increase its offshore wind energy capacity 25-fold by 2050.  Russia has no plans to achieve carbon neutrality before the end of the century and is betting on Asian demand to support a huge expansion of its Arctic gas industry.  Furthermore, China’s plan to build more coal-fired power plants “contradicts” its pledge to go carbon neutral by 2060 and risks creating $303.60 billion in stranded assets.  Governments around the world are asking what a green recovery looks like as they decide how to align their $12 trillion worth of coronavirus economic rescue packages with their obligations under the Paris Climate Accord.

Climate and Climate Science

Iota struck the coast of Nicaragua late on Monday, bringing winds of nearly 155 miles per hour and flooding villages still reeling from the impact of Hurricane Eta two weeks ago.  As of Thursday, the death toll had reached more than 40.  The 2020 hurricane season will go down in history for the dominance of rapidly intensifying storms in the Atlantic, raising the question of whether this is the new normal.  Climate scientists say that this year’s record-breaking hurricane season and the “unprecedented” double blow for Central America has a clear link to the climate crisis.  One in five people across the world were affected by extreme weather disasters in the past decade, according to a report from the International Federation of the Red Cross.  Also, Jeff Masters reported that 2020 experienced 40 billion-dollar weather disasters through October, among other records.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications found that Greenland’s largest glaciers are currently melting at levels close to what scientists had previously expected under a future “worst-case scenario”.  As a result, the rate of sea level rise has accelerated to 4.8 millimeters per year, according to a 10-year average compiled for Science by Benjamin Hamlington, an ocean scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

According to a report by a coalition of 25 research and conservation organizations, mines and dams, along with tens of thousands of miles of roads and railways are planned in the forests of South America, Southeast Asia, and Central Africa, thereby potentially pushing the world’s remaining forests past a “dangerous tipping point” and making climate targets unachievable.  Furthermore, the construction or upgrading of some 7,456 miles of Amazon roads in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador over the next five years could lead to 5.9 million acres of deforestation in the two decades after, according to the report by Climate Focus.  Demand for certain mined minerals is projected to increase exponentially in the coming decades as the world shifts to renewable energy.  Experts warn that responsible practices must be in place to reduce environmental and social impacts.

Data from Public Health England showed that the three heatwaves in late June, late July, and August in England caused an estimated 2,556 excess deaths, with people aged 65 and over making up the vast majority of those who died.

As the world’s climate warms, parasite-carried wildlife diseases will move north, with animals in cold far-north and high-altitude regions expected to suffer the most dramatic increases, warns a study published on Friday in the journal Science.

Energy

Scottish energy company SSE plans to triple its renewable energy generation by 2030 as it prepares to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm off the northeast coast of England.  Danish renewable energy group Ørsted and North America’s Building Trades Unions announced a deal to train an offshore wind construction workforce to build the firm’s projects up and down the U.S. East Coast.  More than a dozen technology developers are pushing the idea of using floating wind turbine platforms for a variety of generation assets, from wind and wave to solar and ocean thermal energy, arguing that using a single platform for multiple technologies can help improve the energy yield per unit of area and thus reduce the overall cost of electricity.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has announced that a new material for wind turbine blades that can be recycled could render renewable energy more sustainable than ever before while also lowering costs.

David Reichmuth, a senior engineer in the clean transportation program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has said that the environmental concerns about EVs raised in a new paper from the Competitive Enterprise Institute are “…a grab bag of old and misleading claims about EVs.”  Determining the “total cost of electrification” for a particular fleet will be a critical step in pushing EV trucks and buses from the margins to the mainstream, according to a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Defense Fund and its partners.  David Roberts summarized the major lessons from that study along with one by the Electrification Coalition.  Navistar International Corp. and Cummins Inc. have announced that they have partnered to develop an integrated fuel cell electric powertrain that can be used in heavy-duty vehicles such as Class 8 trucks.  GM CEO Mary Barra said her company is accelerating an “all out pursuit of global EV leadership,” with increased spending and sped-up EV production targets.  Likewise, Volkswagen’s CEO said his company is paring back the variety of combustion-engined cars and investing $86 billion to retool more factories to build EVs.  An aggressive China-led shift to EVs is expected to slash growth in global oil demand by 70% by 2030 and help bring an end to the “oil era”, according to research by Carbon Tracker published on Friday.

The Swedish steel industry has developed a new steelmaking technology that uses hydrogen fuel to reduce the need for fossil fuel, thereby reducing the CO₂ emitted from about 3,600 lbs per ton of steel produced to around 55 lbs.

Stocks of oil and gas companies that are investing heavily in renewables are being punished by the markets.

Launched on Tuesday, the Western Green Hydrogen Initiative, is a group representing 11 Western states, two Canadian provinces and key green hydrogen industry players including Mitsubishi and utilities Dominion Energy and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Potpourri

Jeff Bezos is giving $791 million to 16 groups fighting climate change, the first grants from his Earth Fund, saying the money is “just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others.”  Unilever has announced plans to dramatically increase sales of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives over the next seven years.  Michael Svoboda compiled a list of books providing advice for how a new administration might proceed on tackling climate change.  In a feature article, The Hill presented the ten countries most at risk from the impacts of climate change. 

Closing Thought

Dan Gearino devoted the bulk of his “Inside Clean Energy” column this week to Arizona’s net-zero plan, writing “Arizona is showing the rest of the country how to set the terms for a transition to clean energy that is substantial and nonpartisan.”  Even though there is one more hoop to jump through, I take hope from this and look forward to seeing more states join the fold.

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

President-elect Joe Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, expanding it beyond environmental agencies.  The Climate 21 Project released a blueprint of how that could be accomplished.  From the Pentagon to the General Services Administration, Biden has implanted climate-minded officials throughout his sprawling transition team.  Early action on climate change from Biden is likely to start with a series of executive orders reversing President Trump’s environmental policies.  Eric Roston at Bloomberg interviewed John Podesta about how the Biden administration should address a warming planet.  Dan Gearino offered four very pragmatic things Biden could do for clean energy without Congress.  Carbon Brief asked an array of climate scientists and policy experts what Biden’s victory will mean for climate action in the U.S. and around the world.  Publicly, environmental groups have claimed success in the election, but privately, they know that much hinges on the two undecided Senate seats in Georgia.  Nevertheless, young activists have said they’re preparing to pressure the incoming Biden administration to keep its word on climate change and other progressive goals.

The damage done by the greenhouse gas pollution unleashed by President Trump’s rollbacks of environmental regulations may prove to be one of the most profound legacies of his single term.  The Trump administration quietly removed Michael Kuperberg from his job as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which prepares the National Climate Assessment, and replaced him with climate change denier David Legates of NOAA with the intent of getting as many authors as possible under contract before January 20, 2021.  Desmog recently profiled Legates.  Analysts are anticipating a potential flurry of last-minute energy rollbacks, permitting decisions, and new rules by the Trump administration that could impinge on a Biden administration’s ability to implement its plans.

The Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Federal Reserve told the Senate Banking Committee that the central bank has sought membership on the Network for Greening the Financial System and hopes to join before spring.  For the first time, the Federal Reserve identified climate change as a risk to financial stability.  Leading scientists, academics, and campaigners have called on governments and businesses to go beyond “net zero” in their efforts to tackle the escalating climate and ecological crisis.  Jonathan Watts profiled four countries that are setting carbon-neutral targets and pushing ahead to meet them.  At Living on Earth, host Steve Curwood interviewed Republican climate champion Bob Inglis about how Republicans and Democrats might work together during a Biden presidency to achieve a clean energy economy.

Despite net zero pledges from the governments of China, Japan, and South Korea, the Asian Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are reluctant to commit to reducing financing of fossil fuels.  Jonathan Watts listed and discussed five post-Trump obstacles to a global green recovery.  Would labeling Brazil a “climate outlaw” influence its behavior for the better?  The latest data from Energy Policy Tracker shows that G20 nations have committed more than $230 billion in COVID-19 recovery funds to support industries that rely heavily on fossil fuels.  According to the New York Times, FTI, a global consulting firm, helped design, staff, and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.

Climate and Climate Science

In the Philippines, Typhoon Vamco killed at least seven people and unleashed some of the worst flooding in years in the capital Manila.  On Monday night, Tropical Storm Theta became the 29^th named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, setting a new record by surpassing the total count from 2005.  On Friday afternoon, Tropical Storm Iota formed in the eastern Caribbean, breaking Theta’s record by becoming the 30^th of the season and threatening areas of the western Caribbean still reeling from Hurricane Eta that hit just last week.  Thus, it is worthwhile to examine how climate change is affecting storms.  A new study looked at what happens after hurricanes make landfall and found that climate change is apparently causing them to weaken more slowly and remain destructive longer.

Two new studies published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience suggest that as Earth warms, clouds are likely to change in ways that will intensify global warming.

A new paper in Scientific Reports reached sweeping conclusions about the possibility that climate change may have already reached a hypothetical ‘point of no return’, conclusions with which most climate scientists disagree.

Two government climate science agencies concluded that Australia’s climate has entered a new era of sustained extreme weather events, such as bushfires and heatwaves, courtesy of rising average temperatures.

As Earth warms, more people will die from heat, so scientists are studying how people respond to excess heat in hopes of lowering the risk and reducing the toll.

Energy

On Monday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) across about 1,000 waterbodies in West Virginia and Virginia.  On Thursday, Montgomery County, VA, Circuit Judge Robert Turk issued a temporary injunction ordering three unidentified tree-sitters and 10 of their supporters to be gone from the right-of-way of the MVP by Monday.  The Harrisonburg, VA, city council agreed to lease nine acres of city-owned land to the Virginia Municipal Electric Association for the purpose of building a PV solar array to produce electricity for the city.  Several Bedford County, VA, residents encouraged county supervisors on Monday to keep moving forward with solar ordinance reviews and research that may allow solar farms in the County.  In its second quarter earnings presentation, Dominion Energy Virginia laid out plans to increase nearly tenfold its renewable energy generation, from 2.9 GW of solar and some hydropower (excluding pumped hydro), to 28.3 GW of solar, wind, storage, and hydro by 2035.  A coalition of Virginia lawmakers filed comments Nov. 4 requesting revisions to a series of new State Corporation Commission rules setting interim goals for the acquisition of energy storage under the state’s Clean Economy Act.

California is setting ambitious goals to phase out vehicles that run on fossil fuels, using $20 million in annual funding from the California Energy Commission to build hydrogen infrastructure.  BP plans to take its first steps into the expanding market for green hydrogen alongside the offshore wind developer Ørsted by developing a hydrogen project at one of its refineries in Germany.  The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded just under $14 million for Xcel Energy to build a hydrogen-energy production facility at a nuclear power plant in Minnesota.  Tidal power will be combined with vanadium flow batteries to continuously produce green hydrogen at the European Marine Energy Center’s tidal energy test site on the island of Eday, Orkney, Scotland.

A prototype GE Haliade-X offshore wind turbine produced 312 MWh of electricity in a single 24-hour period, setting a new world record.  South Korean firm Odin Energy hopes to carve out a new niche with a vertical-axis wind turbine tower designed for urban settings.  Last week I included an article about the need for a more coordinated approach to electric grid upgrades in New England to handle the electricity produced by offshore wind farms.  This week there was an article that came to a similar conclusion for the rest of the East Coast.  As the need for new electrical transmission lines increases in the face of renewable energy expansion, a potential problem will be their siting.  One possible solution is to collocate them with highways and railroads.  A new report from the International Energy Agency anticipates a 1,123 GW increase in wind and solar, which would mean these power sources will overtake gas capacity in 2023 and coal in 2024.  The Agency has revised its expectations for the 2020 global renewable energy market, now projecting that capacity additions will grow 4% from 2019, hitting a record of nearly 200 GW this year.  Six Midwest utilities expect to spend more than a combined $15 billion over the next several years to install or buy roughly 4 GW of solar generation, more than 3.6 GW of wind generation, and just over 1 GW of battery storage.

Ford Motor Co. said it will invest $100 million in its Kansas City Assembly Plant and add 150 jobs there to build the new electric E-Transit van.  General Motors plans to hire 3,000 new employees largely focused on software development for the research, development, and deployment of electric vehicles.  According to a new study, conducted by M.J. Bradley & Associates with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a typical rural driver in the Northeast could save more than $1,900 every year by switching from a conventional gasoline car to a comparable electric vehicle.

The electric utility Arizona Public Service is offering a $169 million deal to the Navaho Nation to help them cope with the repercussions from the closure of coal-fired power plants employing many Native people.  On the other hand, almost half the companies involved in the thermal coal industry globally are expected to defy worldwide climate commitments by deepening their coal interests in the coming years, according to a report by the green campaign group Urgewald.  An opinion piece in the New York Times argued that in planning to build 235 gas-fired power stations at a cost in excess of $100 billion, the U.S. electrical industry is behaving like smokers who really, truly plan to quit, as soon as they finish that last carton of cigarettes.

Potpourri

The Dalai Lama, along with German environmental journalist Franz Alt, has written a new book entitled Our Only Home: A Climate Appeal to the World by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  In reviewing Felicia Luna Lemus’ new memoir, Jason Heller wrote “Particulate Matter is a moving example of how to write about climate change, not didactically, but with the deep impact of both personal loss and literary elegance.”  A survey of approximately 26,000 people in 25 countries revealed a significant disconnect between beliefs and actions on climate change.  At Yale Climate Connections, SueEllen Campbell provided links to articles examining the term “net-zero emissions” and what exactly it means.  Although it doesn’t focus on climate, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has an interesting article examining the shifting views of an ideal society in the U.S.

Closing Thought

Bill McKibben wrote that if activists want real progress on climate during the Biden administration, they need to learn how to press their case aggressively without alienating those with whom they must work to get things done.

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

As I was wrapping up this Roundup on Saturday, several news agencies called the presidential election for Joe Biden and Juliet Eilperin and colleagues wrote he “will move to restore dozens of environmental safeguards President Trump abolished and launch the boldest climate change plan of any president in history.”  One thing was clear on Wednesday: The “green wave” that environmentalists had hoped for failed to materialize.  At The New Yorker, Bill McKibben considered what continued Republican control of the Senate will likely mean to the ability of Biden to act on climate change, as did Jeff St. John at GreenTech Media.  But Corbin Hiar at E&E News thinks that lobbyists and insiders believe there may still be opportunities in the coming years for corporations to shape climate policy.  And industry and environmental advocates alike say that Biden is uniquely suited to the challenge of dealing with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  E&E News speculated on why voters in Arizona and Florida had different perspectives on the dangers posed by climate change in their choices for president.  Climate XChange listed a number of wins for climate action in down-ballot races and initiatives.

The U.S. left the Paris Climate Agreement on Wednesday, making it the only country in the world to do so.  At The New York Times, Lisa Friedman looked at “how it happened, what it means and what might happen next”, while at The Hill, the CEOs of the Rocky Mountain Institute and the World Resources Institute reminded us that meeting the goal of the Paris Agreement will not only help countries to innovate and create new economic opportunities, it will also reduce the impacts and associated costs of future climate-related disasters.  Michael Mann told CBC Radio that “There’s still time to do what’s necessary to reduce carbon emissions so that we don’t cross that threshold into catastrophic climate change.”  Chelsea Harvey catalogued the increases in climate-related disasters and scientists’ understanding of climate change during the Trump administration.  In a surprise move, the Trump administration tapped mainstream climate scientist Betsy Weatherhead to lead the next National Climate Assessment, to be released in 2022.

The ranking members of the Natural Resources and the Energy and Commerce Committees in the House both retired, resulting in intense campaigning among House Republicans to replace them.  President Trump replaced Neil Chatterjee, the Republican chairman of FERC, with James Danly, another Republican who has taken a more conservative approach to federal energy policy, such as voting against opening up markets to distributed energy and dissenting on a policy proposal on wholesale market carbon pricing.  The Energy 202 at the Washington Post interviewed Chatterjee about the change and Forbes provided background on how the situation came about.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ordering the Russian government to try to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement, but stressed that any action must be balanced with the need to ensure strong economic development.  However, according to its energy minister, Russia has no plans to rein in its production of fossil fuels in the coming decades.  In order to meet its goal of reducing economy-wide CO₂ emissions in the state to net-zero by 2050, Massachusetts must deal with the fact that roughly one-third of its emissions come from the fuels burned in buildings for heating, hot water, and cooking.  Consequently, last week the Department of Public Utilities opened a new proceeding to start guiding utilities into a decarbonized future while protecting their customers.  From Pope Francis to Greta Thunberg, there are growing calls to make “ecocide”—which literally means “killing the environment”—a recognized crime under international law.  Could such a law ever work?

Climate and Climate Science

Hurricane Eta made landfall in Nicaragua on Tuesday as a Category 4 storm, one of only five Category 4 or 5 Atlantic hurricanes to have ever been seen in November.  It continued on into Honduras as a tropical depression, but continued to dump large amounts of rain, as it had in Nicaragua.  It is expected to head toward Cuba as a tropical storm, but not intensify into a hurricane again.  Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Super Typhoon Goni made landfall in the Philippines on Sunday, with sustained winds of 195 mph and a central pressure of 884 mb, making it the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in world recorded history.

Data from the Brazilian space research agency INPE showed on Sunday that fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest surged in October, with the number of blazes up 25% during the first 10 months of 2020, compared to a year ago.  New research, published in Environmental Research Letters, revealed that Amazon forest fires continue to drive greenhouse gas emissions for up to two decades after burning out, driven by the slow death of trees impacted by the fire.  Research published in Geophysical Research Letters found that the area burned annually by high-severity fires in the western U.S. has increased eight-fold in the past 35 years.

In an opinion piece at The Hill, two scientists from the Atkinson Center for Sustainability at Cornell University and one from The Nature Conservancy argued that a joint platform to address the carbon-nitrogen nexus in soil health management was the only way to develop methods for increasing soil carbon content while also limiting nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture.  A study published in the journal Science showed that for the world to have a chance of preventing significant harm from climate change, all parts of food production need rapid and significant reform — everything from reducing deforestation for new fields to changing our diets.

Europe experienced its hottest October on record, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.  Unusually severe heat also swept across the Arctic region, causing Arctic sea ice to reach its lowest level for October since 1979.  A new study estimated that an average global temperature increase of 2°C would lead to around 230 billion metric tons of carbon being released from the world’s soil, an amount equivalent to more than twice the emissions of the U.S. over the past 100 years.

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change reported on research about polar bear survival in which the scientists created individualized estimates for each of 19 subpopulations to account for the variety of climates, habitats, ecosystems, and sea ice ecoregions bears encounter.  The bottom line?  If you’re a polar bear, your future depends on your location.

Energy

Equitrans Midstream Corp., the lead partner in the joint venture building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, announced that the cost has increased from $3.7 billion to between $5.8 billion and $6 billion, while the completion date has slipped to the second half of 2021.  French gas and power utility Engie has pulled out of a major U.S. liquefied natural gas import deal after government concerns about its environmental implications.  Shell plans to consolidate its refinery portfolio from 14 sites to only six by 2025, with the goal of making the refineries more integrated with their chemical complexes to produce more biofuels, hydrogen, and synthetic fuels.

The global status of green hydrogen as a carbon-free fuel was reviewed at Yale Environment 360.  Air Liquide Group recently released a list of the seven ways hydrogen will contribute to the transition toward renewable energy.  Researchers in Spain have demonstrated a method of hydrogen production without contact electrodes via water electrolysis mediated by the microwave-triggered redox activation of solid-state ionic materials at low temperatures (< 250°C).  Toyota is focusing its hydrogen fuel cell development on marine applications while developers across the world are testing the use of hydrogen to power ships as the maritime industry races to find technologies to cut emissions.

Wind energy will achieve record growth globally over the next five years, the Global Wind Energy Council said on Thursday, projecting that some 348 GW of new onshore and offshore capacity are expected by the end of 2024.  The U.S. wind industry set a record in the third quarter, installing nearly 2 GW of new wind power capacity.  Offshore wind advocates say a more coordinated approach to electric grid upgrades in New England could save money and minimize ecological disruption.  Because of the way they are constructed, wind turbine blades are a challenge to recycle, although recycling opportunities exist, but are not yet widely implemented.  To comply with the Virginia Clean Economy Act passed earlier this year, Appalachian Power will acquire or contract for 210 MW of solar power and 200 MW of wind power over the next five years.  A permit for the “Rocky Forge Wind” windfarm was recently approved by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, according to Apex Clean Energy, which plans to build up to 22 turbines on a remote ridgeline in Botetourt County, VA.

Hampton Roads Transit’s six electric buses will be deployed on the route between Norfolk and Virginia Beach.  Volvo Trucks will sell a complete range of electric, heavy-duty trucks in Europe starting in 2021.  Daimler Truck AG and Volvo Trucks have entered into a joint venture for the development, production, and commercialization of fuel cells for heavy-duty trucks.  GM will bring its EVs to market faster than it had initially anticipated, thanks to its strategic partnerships and investments in technology which allowed it to speed up product development.

Dominion Energy Virginia will enter into six power purchase agreements and build three new solar facilities, for a total of 500 MW of new renewable energy.  James Gignac of the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed recycling opportunities for photovoltaic solar panels.  Plans to build an innovative new nuclear power plant using small modular reactors have taken a hit as eight of the 36 public utilities that had signed on to help build the plant have backed out of the deal.

Potpourri

A climate poll on Twitter posted by Shell backfired spectacularly, with the oil company being accused of gaslighting the public.  Tim Flannery, author of The Climate Cure, has a very moving essay at The Guardian about the need to communicate the gravity of the climate crisis to young people.  Likewise, DW noted that psychologists suggest that we need to discuss climate change in less abstract terms if we are to truly grasp the significance of the crisis.  In a scenario playing out in many American families, a sense of despair and outrage among young people over global warming is being met with indifference and dismissal among some of their older relatives.  Grist republished five maps developed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication that highlight some positive trends in public opinion on global warming.

Closing Thought

Biden won!

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.