Climate Action Alliance of the Valley Climate, Energy News Summary: Week of June 6th

Published Sunday, June 6, 2021, 10:10 am

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The following is the excerpt of the weekly climate and energy news summary for the week ending June 6th. Forward it to anyone interested. The CAAV website contains an archive of previous contributions.

Politics and politics

President Biden’s First Budget Proposal Adds 14 Billion To Climate Change Policies and Programs Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) predicted the Senate would see a “big battle” over carbon pricing, but believes lawmakers will in will make progress on this issue this year. He added, “I think there is a significant group of senators in the Democratic Group who will insist that our climate action is robust, real, and pointing to 1.5 ° C, and we will do whatever is necessary to achieve this Achieving goal. ”James Hansen and Daniel Galpern alleged that Biden had the power under the Independent Offices Appropriations Act to instruct the EPA to collect a greenhouse gas (GHG) fee. Biden announced $ 1 billion in disaster risk reduction resources for communities, states and tribal governments. The Biden government has suspended all oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until the environmental impact of the drilling in the sensitive region is investigated more closely; The Republican-controlled Congress passed a law in 2017 that obliges the president to carry out another hire purchase there before the end of 2024.

ARPA-E’s SCALEUP program puts a greater emphasis on bringing emerging clean technologies to commercial scale – and finding private sector partners to help. Ella Nilsen from Vox wrote about green banks and their potential for promoting green infrastructure development. To electrify every home in America as quickly as possible, up-front costs or power constraints shouldn’t deter a homeowner from choosing an electrical appliance to replace a fossil fuel appliance. Federal Reserve Chairman Powell made it clear that the institution’s role in the climate crisis is limited to overseeing banks and the rest of the financial system, rather than setting public policy.

Sarah Steinberg, Head of Politics at an industry association for clean energy companies, summarized the ten most important energy issues that are driving legislative activity across the country. The American Conservation Coalition is holding the first Conservative Climate Change Rally in Miami on June 5th. Virginia lawmakers have committed to phasing out diesel-powered school buses and replacing them with electric ones within a decade, with no funding for the law; state and local officials are everywhere looking for funds. Legislators in a dozen or so states used strikingly similar arguments when they sparked a wave of legislation to outlaw municipalities from banning natural gas in buildings. Power for Tomorrow, the organization that recently sent postcards to many Virginians, is a front line utility group “based in Virginia and affiliated with Dominion Energy.” A blow to the oil and gas industry, Texan lawmakers have not re-approved the property tax exemption.

In preparation for COP 26, officials around the world began three weeks of climate talks to address sensitive political issues. The world must rebuild and restore an area the size of China to meet its nature and climate commitments and to make efforts equivalent to the space race. Rich countries are falling behind in their promises to help poorer people cope with the climate crisis. Development aid organization Tearfund and partners claimed that the G7 countries have pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than into clean energy since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The EU’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by almost 4% in 2019. Emissions from coal mined in Australia but exported and burned abroad were nearly double the country’s domestic greenhouse gas footprint in 2020. The New York Times reported that the International Maritime Organization “repeatedly delays climate regulations and has watered down, although emissions from merchant shipping continue to rise ”.

Climate and Climate Science

Wildlife – from bluebells and bumblebees to snow leopards and emperor penguins – are threatened when global warming exceeds 1.5 ° C. A study of 45,000 dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature profiles from nearly 400 freshwater lakes worldwide found a widespread decline in DO levels due to rising temperatures.

Dangerously hot conditions and three-digit temperatures are forecast for the western United States this week. The drought in the Klamath Basin, along the California-Oregon border, is so severe that violence could break out as farmers are extremely angry that they are cut off from their main water source.

Over a third of heat-related deaths in many parts of the world can be attributed to the additional warming associated with climate change. Over 32 million homes on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts valued at $ 8.5 trillion are at risk of hurricane wind damage.

Seven of the ten largest floods in the Amazon basin occurred in the past 13 years; This year, the rivers surrounding the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest have swelled to levels never seen in more than a century of record. In the past few weeks, nine major fires have ignited in previously deforested areas in the Brazilian Amazon region, heralding the start of another fire season that, according to experts, could be a bad one after a particularly dry year.

New research has shown that clouds could have a greater cooling effect on the planet than the CMIP6 climate models suggest, as the models simulate too much precipitation and underestimate the lifespan and cooling effect of the clouds. The relationships between four massive Earth systems (Greenland, West Antarctic Ice Sheets, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, and Amazon Rainforest) could be destabilized by moderate climate change, which could lead to cascading effects of accelerated sea level rise and species loss. Coastal Arctic sea ice may be thinning much faster than scientists thought, likely because previous research did not fully account for the impact of climate change on snow.

energy

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has completed and published its final report “Electrification Futures Study”; Dan Gearino reviewed what it said about the feasibility of electrifying the entire US economy. A key takeaway from a whitepaper by FERC staff is that there are several potential benefits to combining power generation and energy storage. The US network operators still have a way to go to accommodate such “hybrid resources” in the best possible way. The coal-fired 522 MW Nord-Valmy generating station is to be closed; The energy supplier NV Energy from Nevada wants to replace it with 600 MW solar and 480 MW battery storage at two planned locations. Bill Gates’ progressive nuclear reactor company TerraPower LLC and Berkshire Hathaway’s PacifiCorp have selected Wyoming to launch the first sodium nuclear reactor project, which includes a 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage.

A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) says investment in clean energy will have to more than triple this decade to maintain the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5 ° C. Twenty-three nations will invest $ 248 million over the next decade to determine how best to respond to the fluctuations associated with solar and wind power. A study by the US think tank Global Energy Monitor found that the world’s coal producers are planning up to 432 new mining projects with an annual production capacity of 2.28 billion tons.

A third supporter of the climate secured a seat on the board of Exxon Mobil Corp. Oil company BP is investing $ 220 million in 9 GW solar projects in the US to expand its renewable energy portfolio. Energy consultancy MJ Bradley & Associates announced that five of the top ten methane emitters are little-known oil and gas producers with a large ecological footprint for their production.

Rhode Island Coastal Regulatory Authorities approved certification of the South Fork wind farm, bringing the second major US offshore wind project one step closer to reality. Dominion Energy Builds Charybdis, the First Jones Act Certified US Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel; Ørsted and Eversource said they will charter it to build Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, two of their planned offshore wind farms in the northeast. The wind industry must train more than 480,000 people by 2026 in order to safely meet the global demand for wind power. The start-up Vortex Bladeless showed its wingless wind turbine, which generates electricity through vibration. Flower Turbines, whose turbines look like tulips, want to turn small wind farms into a leading player in the green electricity industry.

Worldwide sales of EV batteries have more than doubled so far in 2021, with Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology taking 32.5% of the market share. Biden’s strategy to make the US an electric vehicle powerhouse includes encouraging domestic recycling of batteries to reuse lithium and other metals. A recent report from the Pew Research Center found that 47% of US adults support a proposal to phase out gasoline-powered cars and trucks; 51% are against it.

potpourri

Some news agencies are reporting on the climate crisis; most still underestimate their threats. Ana Teresa Fernández’s work “On the Horizon”, which was erected on a beach, tries to show passers-by what a sea level rise of two meters would look like. According to the IEA, about 2/3 of the energy savings needed to reach net zero by 2050 will require people to change their behavior. By understanding that people with different worldviews actually construct different mental images of how climate change and the world work, climate communicators can better shape their messages. The Netflix series Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet documents “the most important scientific discovery of our time – that humanity has pushed the earth beyond the limits that have kept the earth stable for 10,000 years since the beginning of civilization”. Geoscientist Johan Rockström helped create the series.

Final thought

Since the release of Donut Economics in 2017, breakaway British economist Kate Raworth has become a phenomenon that mainstream economics largely fails to acknowledge, but increasingly cannot ignore.

Compiled by Les Grady, CAAV Steering Committee

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