FtF News #124 – 20th October 2021
Unexpected net-zero pledges, renewables on a massive scale, and the import of climate court cases
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
I’ve been thinking a lot about balancing positive and negative in the news realm recently. In putting together this newsletter each week, I’m immersed in climate stories, and it can get overwhelming. I don’t believe in saccharine positivity in news, but holding on to hope can be tricky at times (as my repeated return to this topic probably indicates!). What do you think? How do you retain hope amidst the chaos of the climate crisis? Let me know!
You probably saw my dive into rail infrastructure this weekend, and I thought this Wired piece is an interesting follow-up – looking at Austria’s new Klimaticket, offering cheap public transport for all, and what it would take to see something similar in the UK. Infrastructure is complicated, but so crucial for our shared well-being.
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
Heavy floods have hit the coastal region of Kerala, India, resulting in massive landslides that have cut off entire communities and left at least 25 people dead. Thousands more have been evacuated as the situation continues to unfold.
A new report from the WHO ahead of COP26 says that climate change is now the single biggest threat to the health of humanity. 9 out of 10 people worldwide breathe overly polluted air, and the burning of fossil fuels causes millions of premature deaths each year.
A new study has used AI to perform a meta-analysis of 100,000 climate studies, and found that research is twice as likely to focus on wealthier nations in Europe or North America. This is completely mismatched with where the worst climate impacts are likely to fall, and reflects a continuing global divide along wealth boundaries.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
A change of heart
This week has seen a series of net-zero declarations from rather unexpected sources – Turkey, Russia and the UAE. Putin announced that Russia plans to be carbon neutral no later than 2060, in a U-turn from his previous stance on climate change. Meanwhile, as part of ratifying the Paris Agreement, Turkey has approved a 2053 net-zero goal – bringing the country to carbon neutrality on the 130th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. Finally, the UAE has announced it will reach net zero by 2050 – the first Middle Eastern petrostate to make such a target. However, as it isn’t counting emissions from the fossil fuels it exports, perhaps not so much should be read into that one.
Thinking big
The IEA has released the latest edition of its World Energy Outlook, centring 1.5°C as the primary scenario for the first time. It’s a mixed bag, suggesting that the world needs to triple spending on clean energy, but also saying that fossil fuel demand will peak by 2025 if countries meet their climate pledges.
The week also saw a €30bn infrastructure announcement from France – the money will be put towards a number of sectors over the next five years, but those include small nuclear reactors, green energy, agriculture and cleaner vehicles. Not to be outdone, China has announced that it is already constructing the largest renewables project in the world, at least double the size of the next biggest planned development. Details are sketchy thus far, but it is to have a capacity of at least 100GW of wind and solar, potentially rising to 400GW. For scale, that’s over ten times the UK’s current total power demand!
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Out of sight, out of mind
Private equity is spending huge amounts of money on energy infrastructure, the vast majority of which is fossil fuel-based. Since 2010, private equity firms have invested at least $1.1tn into the energy sector, of which only 12% went to renewable energy. As big energy firms have come under increasing pressure to cut emissions, they’ve been shedding their most polluting assets (something I covered back in April), and private equity has been happily snapping them up. Private equity is very willing to run riskier and less desirable assets for profit, and weak disclosure rules mean it’s very hard to figure out who owns what, and the resulting impacts. Essentially, significant amounts of polluting infrastructure is not being retired, but simply moving out of the public eye and becoming largely unaccountable.
Hollow victories?
This week saw two more court victories of sorts for climate cases. In France, the Paris administrative tribunal has ordered the state to honour its commitments to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030 versus 1990 levels. However, the court imposed no fines or penalties, ultimately making the judgement a paper victory.
Meanwhile, the UN has ruled on a petition brought by 16 young adults in 2018, including Greta Thunberg. The petition stated that five major emitting nations (Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey) were violating their rights as children. The UN committee recognised that their rights had indeed been violated, that there’s a causal link between emissions and the harms suffered, and that the nations in question did have an obligation to prevent harm to children outside their borders. However, despite all this, they declined to pass judgement, instead recommending cases be filed within each respective country.
“an abstract victory is a hollow victory”
These rulings are not entirely empty – they do establish legal precedent, and are indicative of a gradual change in opinion. However, if the judgements fail to impose any form of punishment, then there is little incentive for polluters to change their tune until it is too late.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
One of the more visible effects of climate change has been the melting of glaciers worldwide, with most seeing significant reductions in mass in the past decades. Wired took a look at glaciers in Trentino, Italy, both examining the science of measuring their slow demise, as well as commercial efforts by ski resorts to try and preserve what they can, through the use of albedo-increasing blankets and snow cannons. The efforts work, but are hugely expensive in money, time and energy, meaning that whilst a few glaciers may be saved this way, it’s unlikely to be a solution for most.
Amidst the ongoing global energy crunch, some attention has been on China, which has been experiencing electricity shortages and blackouts in recent weeks. Twin announcements this week seemed to suggest that the country might be leaning back towards coal as a way of dealing with the crisis, but Carbon Brief interviewed various experts who think that in fact, the energy crisis may do the opposite – prompting China to accelerate its move away from coal and towards low-carbon energy sources.
Quick Headlines
Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite
The S&P Global Clean Energy Index has dropped Drax over concerns about the green credentials of its biomass burning business.
The US is pushing to expand offshore wind development in federal waters off almost every coast by 2025.