On today’s Climate News Weekly episode, Dina Cappiello recaps her Climate Week NYC experience. We discuss the International Energy Agency’s updated 1.5°C scenario , including an in-depth explanation of what a “scenario” is, China’s strong stance against phasing out fossil fuels , and the potential promises of Fervo Energy’s newest geothermal plant breaking ground . Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn , Facebook , and Instagram . Contact us at contact@climatenow.com Visit our website for all of our co...
Oct 02, 2023•20 min•Season 1Ep. 117
The United States’ aging electricity grid is a problem. Over 70% of the major transmission networks – which transfer electricity from power generation centers to endpoint users in homes and buildings, sometimes in other states – are at least 25 years old, and much of the grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s. As the number of renewable energy projects being built to meet clean energy goals increases, the problem of how to connect them to the grid is only growing larger, as transmission infrastru...
Sep 26, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 116
From a new White House climate jobs training program that echoes the Civilian Conservation Corp of the FDR era, to UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rolling back carbon reduction targets , global leaders are taking a stance after the UN’s Climate Week in New York. Also, big industry is grappling with finding low-carbon business models that can outlive government subsidies, a close examination of climate risk is imperiling the US home insurance market, and the EU gets a dose of reality about the ex...
Sep 25, 2023•12 min•Season 1Ep. 115
This has been a big week for nations and companies ‘talking the talk’ about reducing their emissions footprints, from updated commitments at the G20 summit , to a carbon-neutral product launch by Apple, and the family that owns the Mærsk shipping company creating its own clean shipping fuel supply chain with a green methanol subsidiary company. But which of these groups are also ‘walking the walk’ and making real strides in accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels? Climate News Weekly ...
Sep 18, 2023•19 min•Season 1Ep. 114
When the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022, policy analysts predicted that the incentives it provided for renewable energy deployment, home electrification and EV adoption would put the U.S. on track to reach at least two thirds of its 2030 emissions reduction target . Twelve months later, we can now start to track how well the nation is progressing towards those predictions. In terms of unlocking private capital and kickstarting new clean energy projects, the IRA i...
Sep 11, 2023•42 min•Season 1Ep. 113
This past week the climate has been busy inundating every aspect of life: Hurricane Idalia caused damages across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas , fueled by increased ocean temperatures . Meanwhile insurance companies are leaving, yet Florida's governor refuses to take money from the Inflation Reduction Act to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state. In Ecuador, the Yasuní Referendum was passed , banning more exploration and drilling of oil in the biodiverse Yasuní National Park. G...
Sep 04, 2023•15 min
You may recall an Auxin Solar tariff case in which a small domestic solar PV manufacturer, Auxin Solar, alleged that solar cells produced in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam were circumventing U.S. trade duties against China. On August 18th, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued their final ruling in the case , determining that solar cells from those countries were in fact circumventing U.S. trade duties. Companies will now be required to self-certify that they are not circumventing U....
Aug 28, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 111
There are over 8 billion square meters of rooftops in the US that are viable for solar energy generation, and could produce as much as 40% of national energy needs. And yet, only 8% of US households have installed rooftop solar panels. With so much available space, and with the average cost of energy from solar much lower than the cost of energy from the grid, why aren't more homeowners installing solar? Climate Now sat down with Solar United Neighbors Executive Director Anya Schoolman to discus...
Aug 21, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 110
One of the most controversial parts of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act - the most ambitious climate spending bill in history - was the large pot of federal dollars that could now subsidize the nascent Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) industry. The bill provides for the expansion of the 45Q tax credit , which now allocates up to $85 per metric ton of CO2 that is captured from a point source of emissions like power plants or factories, and then is injected deep underground for permanent storage. ...
Aug 14, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 109
The Nobel-prize winning discovery of how to create synthetic ammonia has been called the “ most momentous technical advance in history ,” and for good reason. Today about half of the food consumed worldwide comes from the increased harvest yields resulting from ammonia-based fertilizers. We could not sustain the global population without it. While ammonia production is critical to modern day global food security, and will need to increase to support a growing population, it is also extremely ene...
Aug 07, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 108
2020 was a record breaking season for forest fires in California. Over 4 million acres burned , releasing enough CO2 into the atmosphere to wipe out the prior 18 years of emissions reductions progress in the state. Effective forest restoration and management can make forests more resilient to the increasing threats of climate change: drought, fire and insects, and help ensure that the carbon trapped in those forests stays there. But who should pay the cost of restoring and maintaining those fore...
Jul 24, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 107
In September 2022, two pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia across the floor of the North Sea were sabotaged, rupturing and emitting an estimated 500,000 tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane (the primary component of natural gas) into the atmosphere before they could be sealed again. While the impact of these Nord Stream pipeline explosions on climate change was widely covered in the news, they represent a mere blip (about 0.3%) in the amount of methane unintentionally leaking into th...
Jul 17, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 106
The Biden Administration in the U.S. has set a goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 , which among other things means that U.S. households, and the appliances and machines that run within them, will need to be powered almost entirely by carbon-free electricity. A practical implication of that goal is that about 1 billion machines in homes across the nation will need to be replaced or converted from fossil-powered to electric within the next 3 decades. It sounds like a lot - but ...
Jul 11, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 105
In 2003 , the U.S. Department of Defense released a report entitled, “ An abrupt climate change scenario and its implications for United States national security ,” which “imagined the unthinkable” – that gradual global warming could lead to relatively abrupt changes in climate patterns, significantly reducing global food production, and with it “the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s environment.” Two decades later, the scenario of abrupt climatic shifts resulting from global warming is not...
Jun 26, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Landfills emit about 2% of the world's greenhouse gases , but in terms of lowering global emissions, they represent some of the lowest hanging fruit. When organic waste – like municipal food waste, agricultural waste, and forest residue – is disposed of by burial in a landfill or incineration, the organic material within is broken down to methane or CO2, and released to the atmosphere. But if that organic waste is diverted to other forms of disposal, those emissions could be avoided. Steve Wirte...
Jun 20, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 103
Climate Now is taking a break this week - but will be back on June 20 with one more solution we can include in our portfolio of opportunities to tackle climate change. Read more below, and stay tuned. In the meantime, take a listen to our 'This Week in Climate News' segment, and catch up on some past episodes about how we can all do more to address climate change - from the policy level to grass roots movements, there is always something we can do. This Week in Climate News: One of the greatest ...
Jun 12, 2023•19 min
Since humans began settling down and building civilizations 10,000 years ago, the Earth's climate has been relatively stable. But before that, the climate was more unstable - unpredictable - and humans were nomads, forced to follow the good climate for food and shelter. Today, the global average temperature is higher than it has ever been since the beginning of civilization. What does this mean for the future of human civilization? Could this mean a return to instability? Can we make civilizatio...
Jun 05, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 101
A 2022 study by Yale University found that two thirds of Americans (67%) rarely or never talk about climate change, and rarely or never hear people they know talking about it either. Despite the existential threat that it poses, one third of Americans (32%) only hear about global warming in the media a few times a year - or less! Are these statistics shocking? Or does it matter that people don’t talk much about climate change? How important is public awareness and public discussion in the fight ...
May 29, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 100
In 1909, headlines declared the U.S. would run out of petroleum by 1940. In 1945, the estimate was that the U.S. had 13 more years of petroleum reserves left. In 1966, we only had 10 more years before the “figurative dipstick in the United States’ oil supplies” came out dry. In the 1970’s United States, alarmist projections about exponential growth of energy demands expected that we would run out of fossil fuels by the year 2000, and yet - since 2000, our consumption of energy from fossil fuels ...
May 22, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 99
According to a 2022 poll from the Associated Press , although 93% of Americans acknowledge that human activity impacts climate, nearly half of Americans (47%) feel that their actions don’t have an impact on climate change. And yet, we know – it is the collective momentum of tiny particles of snow that drive an avalanche. In our upcoming episode, Climate Now sits down with James Regulinski, co-founder of Carbon Collective, to discuss the role of investing - even among individual, “retail” investo...
May 15, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 98
Since the Industrial Revolution nearly 150 years ago, global average temperatures have increased by more than 1 degree C (1.9 degrees F), with the majority of that warming occurring since 1975. But during these recent decades of accelerated warming, temperatures in the arctic (latitudes above 66 degrees north) have have been rising even faster - nearly four times faster than the average global rate. The most readily observable impact of such intensive localized warming has been the rapid melting...
May 08, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 97
The built environment represents one of society’s largest environmental impacts - contributing nearly one fifth of global GHG emissions , not to mention impacts on natural resources like air and water quality, local ecosystems, and quality of life for residents. Increasingly, policies and public opinion are concentrating on reducing those impacts - creating incentives for new construction and urban development to become more sustainable - to become more “green.” But how do you define whether a b...
May 01, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 96
Every approach to decarbonizing the energy sector comes with its share of costs and benefits: renewables are cheap and clean , but require enormous amounts of land and are not always available when power is needed. Batteries provide useful back up power , but add cost to a renewable-supplied grid and compete with other needs for critical minerals like lithium and cobalt. Carbon capture on fossil fuel power plants can prevent stranded assets , but is expensive and could extend dependence on fossi...
Apr 25, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 95
On March 30, 2023, in partnership with the Livermore Lab Foundation and The Maddy Institute, Climate Now hosted a one day summit in Fresno, CA, examining the intersection of climate change and agriculture. Agriculture is both a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions (contributing nearly one fifth of all global emissions ) and a potential solution to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fresno, located in the heart of California's Central Valley, also illuminates the other side of the...
Apr 12, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 94
Renewable natural gas (RNG), made from the decomposition of organic waste like livestock manure, is not necessarily net-zero if it's burned to run a turbine or drive a car. But what if the RNG is not burned, but is rather pyrolyzed, breaking it down into hydrogen and another product called "carbon black," an essential component of car tires, among other things? Then the hydrogen can be used and the carbon black can be sold in solid form instead of releasing the carbon into the atmosphere. From i...
Apr 03, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 93
As we transition to a clean energy economy, demand for minerals like copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium is projected to skyrocket. According to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency, the total mineral demand from clean energy technologies will quadruple by 2040 under their “sustainable development scenario” or at least double under stated policies. Where will all those minerals come from and how can they be accessed in a responsible way? In this episode Kurt House, CEO of KoBold Me...
Mar 27, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 92
For a building owner, building decarbonization has myriad benefits : lower utility bills, lower maintenance, healthier and more comfortable living. But the barriers to reaching those benefits are large, particularly the high upfront costs and complicated renovation process (many inspections, many permits, coordinating with many contractors). Scale up to trying to decarbonize every building in a city, and the problems scale up, too - each building has its unique challenges to decarbonization, bas...
Mar 20, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 91
Reducing average global temperatures. Preserving biodiversity. Decreasing the risk of droughts, floods and hurricanes. Reducing air pollution. Reducing utility bills. Creating new jobs and opportunities. Building community engagement. Fostering environmental equity and justice. There doesn’t need to be just one reason to decarbonize a city. And when the specific needs, concerns and goals of communities are accounted for in decarbonization plans, the chances of local buy-in and of an equitable en...
Mar 13, 2023•23 min•Season 1Ep. 90
On February 15, 2023, the U.S. Senate held a hearing considering a national clean fuels program, modeled after California’s state-wide Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The LCFS sets an annually decreasing standard of net carbon intensity (amount CO2 emissions per unit energy) for all the fuels being sold in the state. Companies that produce fuels or fuel equivalents below the carbon intensity threshold can sell low-carbon fuel credits. Companies that produce and sell fuels above the carbon inten...
Mar 06, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 89
2022 potentially marked a turning point for the U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market, with new EV car sales increasing by 65% over 2021 sales, and now accounting for nearly 6% of all new vehicle sales. (If EVs maintained a 65% annual growth rate, they would reach 100% of new vehicle sales in about 6 years.) But for medium and heavy duty vehicles, which produce an outsize share of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gasses, the transition to zero-emissions vehicles is still trying to gain tractio...
Feb 27, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 88
