Dear Friends,
With all the gloomy news about our temperatures and heat waves, it is hard to stay optimistic about meeting the climate change challenge.
It is wise to be concerned. Over the last year, 78% of humanity experienced extreme heat that climate change made at least twice as likely to happen. The last 13 months have all been the hottest of those months ever recorded. And Monday, July 22 was the hottest day ever recorded on the planet. The heat has harmed our economies and health, played havoc with our transportation and energy grid, and created significant challenges to our geopolitical security – not to mention, it has made summer downright miserable for many of us.
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the incredible progress on the other side of the climate change ledger – the innovation that could help us transition to a lower carbon economy, while still maintaining a high quality of life and economic growth.
Despite the highly publicized backlash against ESG or so-called “woke” investing, investment in clean tech is skyrocketing. Clean tech is projected to get twice the investment of fossil fuels this year on a global scale. And in the U.S., this investment is growing jobs at a rapid rate, including in very conservative areas.
The battery segment is also exploding. Batteries are the fastest growing clean energy technology today, and one of the most promising ways to decarbonize both the power and transportation sectors. New smaller, lighter, safer, and more powerful solid-state batteries could transform the EV market in the next five years. Batteries made of sand, brick, or graphite that are superheated with clean energy could replace fossil fuels in many manufacturing applications. Virtual power plants – utilities taking small amounts of energy from our home batteries, EVs, and electric appliances and paying us for it – are providing a new type of storage, allowing us to be part of a virtual “battery” that can back up and stabilize the grid. This is a win-win for the utility (which doesn’t have to build another physical plant to handle peak load periods) and consumers (who receive money for giving back energy to the grid).
On the international front, China – the climate pariah because of its continued and expanding coal usage – is now creating the template for fast decarbonization, installing the equivalent of five large-scale nuclear plants of renewable power every week. In fact, 90% of all of China’s new power added so far this year has been renewables. Because of this rapid growth, China is trending to hit its 2030 renewables target this year, six years early.
And these innovations and investments are making a difference. Experts cautiously project the world could finally be reaching “peak emissions,” when emissions stop their seemingly inexorable march upward, a critical point on our decarbonization path.
We are not trying to be pollyannaish. As we’ve said before, we are in a race between innovation (including how we plan and prepare for changes ahead) and climate change disruption. A lot of pain is baked in, but we still can influence what sort of future we will have.
So pour a glass of ice-cold tea and take a look at some of the recent challenges and good news in the climate world.
Sincerely,
The C-Change Conversations Team
Notable Quote
“Although the relationship between climate change and armed conflict is complex, a growing body of authoritative research and analysis notes that climate change has the potential to contribute to higher levels of conflict, instability, and violence. … ‘Tipping point’ climate events – such as abrupt changes in key oceanic currents, or the collapse of agriculture systems – could fuel a rapid escalation of instability and displacement in regions already experiencing climate stress.”
– NATO Climate Change and Security Impact Assessment,
Third Edition, 2024
News of Hope
Let’s start with some great news: we saw $71B in private investment in clean energy and electric vehicles in the first quarter of the year in the U.S., up about 40% from the first quarter of 2023. Clean tech investment has almost tripled since 2020, a clear indication of how strongly the private sector has reacted to climate policies. A recent study showed that the private sector has spent about $5.50 in clean tech for every $1 the government has invested. At the same time, the U.S. is passing milestones in more than just high temperatures – solar and wind farm electricity generation surpassed nuclear for the first time, another indicator of how rapidly renewable capacity is growing.
This summer, we’ve seen news that big players are continuing to put big money into clean tech. For example, work has begun on a new type of nuclear reactor in Wyoming with Bill Gates’s blessing (and $1B in funding to the company). We’ve long heralded nuclear as an area ripe for innovation – it holds favor with both Republicans and Democrats, and some of the new, smaller scalable reactors show potential for multiple applications on and off the grid, and could bring jobs back to markets that have lost fossil fuel production.
Corporations like Amazon continue to push utilities and states to up their games as well,
by demanding that renewable power be available before choosing where to locate manufacturing and other business operations. For a wide range of reasons, many states in the South have been slower to develop clean energy resources, so companies are stepping into the fray. Amazon, which claims to be on track to power its entire operation with clean energy by 2025 and is the world’s largest corporate renewable energy buyer, has built 30 renewable energy projects across the Southeast, and recently announced the first utility-scale construction of a new wind farm in Mississippi.
While many are pushing for a complete end to fossil fuel use, some big spenders are placing their bets on technologies that would decarbonize fossil fuels instead. For example, after making his fortune in natural gas, one billionaire is investing in creating “green” natural-gas-fired power plants that capture and use carbon dioxide to spin turbines to generate electricity – effectively eliminating emissions.
Those are just the tip of the investment iceberg. There’s even major money now aimed at addressing some of our biggest polluters like steel, cement, and chemicals – heavy industries that emit about one-fifth of our carbon emissions each year.
Here’s a new project that really excites us: the federal government is funding the recovery of rare earth metals from the groundwater of abandoned coal mines. Not only will this project boost our supply of the valuable metals that are crucial for rechargeable batteries and EVs, it will abate both emissions and environmental toxins. Not only that, but it will also create jobs in areas where coal has been the major economic player. Win-win-win.
Finally, one last bite of very good news. We worry quite a bit about losing our favorite foods as climate change reshapes our growing seasons and farmland. Foods nourish us, body and soul, and that’s why we are thrilled to learn that scientists may have found a way to “climate-proof” chocolate. And truly, can you imagine going through this transition without chocolate?!
News of Concern
We chose to focus on hope this time around – and it abounds. But we must acknowledge that the last two months have brought some challenges.
As much as we’d like to hope that the heat we saw in June and July was an aberration, it isn’t. As hot as it’s been in the U.S., it’s been even hotter in other parts of the world – tragically so, as we saw during the horrifically hot Hajj in Saudi Arabia, in India where there have been over 40,000 cases of heatstroke this summer so far, in Greece, in Mexico, in Mali, in Ukraine. It’s heat that the human body can’t survive in for very long and it’s not coming – it’s here.
And as hot as it’s been, this is only a precursor to what’s ahead for our health, economy, and global security if we don’t slash our greenhouse gases. We’ve seen harbingers these past months as nature tosses the old boundaries to the curb. Hurricanes, like Beryl, that arrive earlier and intensify faster. Rain that overwhelms dams and infrastructure that has held up for so many years, resulting in massive flooding in places that never expected it. Alerts of spreading mosquito-borne diseases, like dengue fever, not in far-off locales but right here on our shores. Flight disruptions as extreme heat grounds planes and increased clear air turbulence causes unexpected bumps that can lead to inflight injuries. We’re seeing risks even in places where we have always felt safe – and we need to take notice.
Finally, we’re going to have to keep an eye on the fallout from the Supreme Court’s Chevron ruling in June to limit federal agencies’ regulation authority. The ruling puts decisions into the hands of judges rather than the regulators who have the expertise on the issue. How this plays out over the next few years could have major ramifications for our economy, health, and safety – at a time when climate change is adding dangerous pressures to those very arenas – and could make our ability to adapt and prepare much more difficult.
At the end of the day, our climate change battle looks like this: innovation vs. natural destruction and economic loss. We’re winning in one area and losing in the other. The economics are clear – it’s cheaper to transition in order to lessen climate change than to stick with the status quo. Yes, we remain concerned, but we are holding onto the promise that human ingenuity will come out on top.
Notable Graph
Source: National Energy Assistance Directors Association and Center for Energy, Poverty, and Climate
We talk a lot about how global warming will affect our personal finances. One aspect of that is the cost of heating and cooling our homes. As temperatures rise, so will those bills – to the tune of a 7.9% (projected) increase this summer for households across the country. Keep in mind, these projections come with an asterisk – true costs may end up being much higher if the heat we’ve experienced so far persists.
Notable Video
The heat could be a major player in the Olympic games in Paris. As the temperature climbs to dangerous highs, it poses a significant health risk to athletes (as well as spectators), from anything from heat exhaustion to heart attacks. Experts say major adaptations will be needed as global warming affects the whole world of sports. Here’s hoping that the heat of these Summer Games comes from just the competition, not the climate.
