Dear Friends,
Sometimes it is hard to read the climate tea leaves. There are so many countervailing trends: breakthroughs and setbacks, public recognition of the danger and public rejection of action, burgeoning political acceptance and reignited political denial.
This month was especially hard, in part because two very different narratives are being pushed through our media. One, that the energy transition has stalled – our government and regulators are pushing the transition too hard and too fast, and consumers and investors are rebelling against clean energy, EVs, ESG, and anything that smacks of “woke,” “anti-American,” “anti-capitalist” climate action.
The other narrative is that the energy transition is unstoppable and accelerating, with EV sales skyrocketing around the world and in our country, and clean energy supplanting natural gas as the preferred replacement for coal. Renewables are providing a much greater share of our energy – even in conservative places in the U.S. – and clean “firm” energy that can be available to augment renewable energy when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining is being developed at a rapid pace. Embracing these new technologies is critical to American competitiveness.
Which narrative do you hear? Which one do you believe?
Our take falls more to the latter. While pushback is real and obstacles formidable, the transition has launched. As you will see below, great strides are being made. The opposition will slow it, but not stop it. ESG may be out of favor, but evaluating investments for “material risks” continues, with climate risks growing in importance. EVs may be sucked into the culture wars for a while, but as they continue to drop in price (their battery cost is forecast to decrease a whopping 40% by 2025), their charging infrastructure is built out, and their batteries charge faster and travel farther, they will soon provide a better ride at a cheaper price. And in the vast majority of the world, green energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels even without subsidies, and is projected to be almost half the costs of fossil fuels by decade’s end.
We recognize the transition will not be linear. Public opposition may rise in an election year as anti-climate rhetoric heats up. But temperatures are also expected to heat up – with most climate experts expecting 2024 to be hotter than 2023. They also expect a continuation, or increase, in the high numbers of climate-related natural disasters.
And people around the world are taking notice. The great majority of global citizens – as much as 86% in a recent world Gallup Poll of people in 126 countries – want their governments to do more to fight climate change. Even in the U.S., where our citizens are more divided than in most peer countries, more than 70% report they want more government action.
It’s shaping up to be a very interesting year.
Take a look below for articles from the swirling cauldron of the climate world and let us know how you read the tea leaves.
Sincerely,
The C-Change Conversations Team
Notable Quote
“A war of attrition on the Amazon rainforest is being waged through human-caused climate change and deforestation, which is sending this irreplaceable jewel of the planet to the brink. These critical effects … are compounded by continued destruction of forest for agriculture, settlement, and industry.”
– Richard Allan, professor in climate science at the University of Reading (UK)
News Of Concern
We hear a great deal about how China is increasing its coal production – in fact, the country’s increased investment in coal puts it at risk of missing its 2025 climate change goals. But China continues to knock it out of the park when it comes to renewables, adding more solar panels last year than the United States has – ever. That focus on clean energy is good for the world, but there are real geopolitical threats ahead if the country continues to cement its dominance in new technology. It’s a double-edged sword that we must keep in mind.
Speaking of clean tech, it seems hard to get a clear picture of the state of EVs in the U.S. these days. Depending on where you get your information, the industry is in demise or it’s on track to support national decarbonization goals. Even if EVs are on track, we won’t meet our ambitious clean electricity goals without massive, rapid grid improvements. Delays in connection and permitting are slowing down our use of the energy we’re producing from solar and wind, and EVs alone won’t get us to our goal of having a carbon-neutral electricity supply by 2035.
Our grid simply isn’t prepared for the transition, in part because power demand, which has been flat for years, is now growing rapidly due to the recent renaissance in American manufacturing, growth from data centers (many using power-hungry AI), and bitcoin mining, as well as the increasing electrification of cars, heating systems, and other appliances. One budding concern: winter energy shortages, like what Texas experienced in 2021, will become more common. Experts are divided on how to fix it, some calling for more natural gas, others for more distributed local sources like rooftop solar and a more-integrated grid to bring energy from far-flung places. How we solve this conundrum will be a deciding factor in whether we can reach our climate goals.
Meanwhile, the natural world is reeling from climate change shifts that seem downright biblical. We’ve seen the rain, the floods, the heat – now all we need are the locusts. And it looks like we might see them sooner than later as the planet becomes hotter and stormier, conditions that are just perfect for scourges of the crop-destroying insects. Scientists say locusts may swarm an additional 25% of the globe, putting our food supply further at risk.
The rain and the floods will continue to come in buckets as climate change causes shifts in ocean temperatures and jet streams, creating bigger, more intense hurricanes. So intense, in fact, that we may need a new category for our tropical cyclones – category 6 – as scale designations we’ve used for the past 50 years are no longer adequate to describe extreme hurricanes and typhoons. We’ve already experienced these massive storms – Hurricane Patricia, which slammed into Mexico in 2015, for example – and some scientists say it’s time to acknowledge that we will see them again.
And to underscore how climate impacts can directly contribute to economic pain, the drought in Panama provides a cautionary tale. Low water levels in the Panama Canal (which draws from a freshwater lake that has been depleted by erratic rainfall) are forcing cargo ships to take much longer routes, snarling the supply chain and adding costs for businesses and consumers. To try to compensate, ships are moving faster – and that combination of distance and speed is increasing their emissions, compounding the effects of climate change, which has exacerbated the drought in the first place.
Climate change impacts are so diverse and widespread – from a category 6 hurricane to a three-inch locust to the potential collapse of the Amazon, which has withstood climate changes for 65 million years. A new study says humans have caused enough stress to the ecosystem that the Amazon forest will hit its tipping point by 2050, with devastating global consequences.
Putting it all together, it’s a sobering reminder of what is at stake and why we have to make this transition work.
News of Hope
And yet – we’ve said it before, and we are happy to say it again: hope lies in the ingenuity of the human spirit and the innovations we are seeing all around us as we continue to push the envelope and find ways to get value from unexpected places. We’re turning fat, sugar, and trash into aviation fuel, using wastewater to power cities, and refining livestock manure into renewable gas and clean water. We’re using clean tech to power long-standing traditions like the Super Bowl, which was powered by a Nevada desert solar farm this month.
We continue to refine and improve the clean tech we’re already using, making it more efficient and more appealing, like these “wind trees” that can be used in urban areas instead of large wind turbines. And we’re even seeing some unexpected bonuses in this transition process. Our increasing use of soy-based biodiesel for airplanes is resulting in a glut of soymeal, which is used in chicken feed. It’s driving down the cost of farming, which lowers the price of our dinners.
The U.S. government is using incentives to make our communities more resilient to the growing number of disasters linked to climate change. Specifically, it will fund a large part of adding solar panels to hospitals and schools when they are rebuilt after disasters. The move will make public buildings more resilient to power outages and turn them into community hubs with power and heating/cooling to keep people safe in the next disaster. A double win in our book.
Renewables are not only here to stay, they are poised to take over the market. Solar, battery, wind, and nuclear power are forecast to provide 96% of all new power capacity constructed in the U.S. this year. It’s an astounding figure and it’s one that simply can’t be ignored either by business or politics.
And while we need to build out our grid to handle the increase in demand, we have new technology that includes sensors, power flow controls, and analytical tools that enable us to get more energy out of the grid we have now. These new grid-enhancement technologies (GETs) help maximize electricity over the short term while we build out the grid.
We should also note that while the rise in EVs will put more demand on the grid, they are also expected to help stabilize it. Why? Because each EV is a battery storage unit that can be used to take in clean energy when it is cheap to produce and give it back to the grid when clean energy is scarce. These types of “virtual battery” networks are already in use in Texas and Vermont, accessing energy from home batteries and solar rooftops while providing income to participants. EVs could provide an even bigger stabilizing network in the future.
We’ll likely hear that back and forth on EVs for some time – but we don’t have to look far for proof that they’re here to stay. Almost 1,100 new fast-charging stations became available to the public during the last half of 2023 – one for about every 16 gas stations across the nation. The road ahead might be full of potholes, but there’s no denying we’re paving our way to a cleaner future.
Notable Graph
Despite the ups and downs of the energy transition, we only need look at this graphic to see that we are indeed making progress.
Notable Video
Forest regrowth is helping to lower temperatures – by as much as 9°F – in the southeast United States. This short Weather Channel video explains why this happens and how it is slowing the impacts of climate change in the region.
