FtF News #119 – 15th September 2021
DAC, greenwashing using ESG, and the climate cost of bitcoin
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
I’m sure most of you saw my post this weekend about the ins and outs of plastic recycling, but if not, please do check it out if it sounds up your street! I’ve been meaning to put out a few extra non-news posts for quite some time, but this last year has been a heck of a time. Hopefully I’ll be able to find time for more going forward, though I don’t yet want to commit to any sort of schedule as yet. If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered, please do suggest it though, and I’ll see what I can do! Anyhow, onto this week’s news...
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
The year’s extreme weather continues apace, with major storms on both sides of the planet this week. Texas and Louisiana are bracing for the landfall of Hurricane Nicholas, which threatens heavy rain and high winds, in some cases to areas still reeling from the impact of Hurricane Ida only a week or two prior. Meanwhile, Shanghai has shut down trains and planes ahead of the impact of Typhoon Chanthu.
The Dixie Fire continues to grow in California, and is close to becoming the largest fire in California history, having now burned around 960,000 acres as of Tuesday. Of the 20 largest fires since 1932, 17 have occurred since 2000, 11 since 2016, with five in 2020 and three more this year. Spain is also tackling fire at the moment, with 2,500 in Málaga evacuated as firefighters attempt to manage a blaze that has burned nearly 7,000 hectares so far, and was described as ‘out of control’.
A study of the impacts of wildfire smoke has found that more than 33,000 people are killed by smoke each year, not including longer term exposure impacts. The study is the first of its kind, and examined wildfire smoke exposure and death rates in 749 cities globally between 2000 and 2016. The study notes that risks are far from even across the world, with relatively low mortality in Ireland and the USA, but significantly higher in places like Thailand, Paraguay and Guatemala.
The cost of carbon could be over $3,000 per tonne according to a new report which looks at the impact on the global economy of climate change. The world could see a 37% drop in GDP by the end of the century – twice the economic impact of the Great Depression. The value is higher than previous estimates as it takes into account the impact of disasters such as fires, floods and droughts on economic growth, which were previously discounted.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Turning to stone
Climeworks, a Swiss firm specialising in direct air capture of CO2, has opened Orca, the world’s largest DAC plant, in Iceland. The operation is capable of capturing up to 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and sequestering it in nearby rock formations. Whilst significantly larger than previous efforts, it is a drop in the ocean versus the billions of tonnes of CO2 removal thought necessary. Hopefully it will prove a stepping stone to help scale up the technology whilst bringing prices down.
Huge Hydro
China never does anything by halves, and its latest plans for pumped hydroelectric storage are no exception. The country aims to increase its current 32GW of capacity to 62GW by 2025, and 120GW by 2030, to back up its equally large expansions of renewable energy like wind and solar. Large scale pumped storage, as with any large hydroelectric infrastructure, is not without its own environmental impact, but is nevertheless one of the only cost-effective electricity storage mediums available right now, and makes up 94% of all such storage worldwide.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Is there anything to ESG?
ESG (short for Environmental, Social and corporate Governance) is rapidly becoming the go-to mechanism for balancing profit and environmental motives. However, with a lack of clear regulations, many have courted accusations of greenwashing. A new report from EDHEC, a Paris-based business school, looked into greenwashing in climate investing and found that climate factors affected on average 12% of determinant factors when weighting stocks in ESG funds, with many of the largest funds differing very little from the S&P 500.
Clearer regulation and standards on what exactly constitutes a green fund will certainly help with much of this initial messiness, but there’s also a need to consider how to provide incentives for companies to act on climate change. One of the report’s authors suggested that funds should focus on ways to put pressure on industries to invest in technologies that radically decrease emissions, rather than gaming metrics of fund-level carbon intensity or similar.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
I’ve tended to avoid talking about crypto and bitcoin here, as it’s a complex topic and one I’m generally loath to give airtime to. However, I enjoyed this interactive NYT piece covering the environmental impact of bitcoin, nicely balancing the purported benefits of the currency with the enormous cost it incurs.
Another great long read from the New York Times looked at the declining fortunes of many small towns in the US caught in the midst of climate disasters. More and more towns face a downward spiral as repeated disasters drive people and businesses away, leaving the towns with less and less money to rebuild and repair. As a result, they slowly slide into ruin, not only losing their identity and history, but often leaving residents in dire straits. Managed retreat, this is not.
AI and machine learning has become a buzzword in tech circles over the past few years, but behind the hype is real power. A Carbon Brief post takes a look at the increasing role such tools are playing in climate science, and the challenge of balancing the explainability of rule-based systems with the more accurate black-box approaches offered by machine learning.
Quick Headlines
Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite
The world’s first commercial ship powered by hydrogen has been launched – a 70 passenger ferry bound for service in the Bay Area.
Hundreds of oil spills, many from abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure, have been reported across the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Ida.
Japanese industrial giant Hitachi has committed to net-zero by 2050.
UK sales of BEVs outstripped diesel cars in August figures, despite overall car sales falling due to ongoing chip shortages.
The Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizard, has been upgraded to ‘endangered’ from ‘vulnerable’ due to threats from sea-level rise and human activity.