FtF News #135 – 12th January 2022
US climate inaction, caveats on car ads and the future of nuclear power in a decarbonised world
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
Well, here we are, firmly in 2022. I’m still adjusting to the fact that somehow 2021 has been and gone, but here’s to hoping this year doesn’t disappear in quite the same fashion! It’s still early days, but it does feel like climate is just automatically part of the news narrative on a level that simply wasn’t the case a year or two ago. Whilst that doesn’t automatically translate into climate action, more knowledge and awareness can only be a good thing.
Once again, this week’s issue was ably assisted by Syuan Ruei Chang, who contributed a number of the articles and stories featured this week.
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
This week saw a flood of analyses of 2021’s weather, with the year clocking in as the fifth hottest ever, thanks to a second year of La Niña depressing global temperatures slightly. However, it’s worth putting that in context – the last seven years have been the seven hottest on record, and 21 of the 22 hottest years have occurred since 2000. In many ways, what happens in a single year pales next to the overall trend, which is firmly upwards.
Even on a much shorter scale, we’re still seeing records fall left, right and centre, with Alaska recording a record December temperature of 19.4°C, causing chaos as rain then flash froze. Meanwhile, the UK saw 16.2°C on New Year’s Day, another new record. Over in Brazil, massive floods have hit the northeast, killing at least 20 and driving over 50,000 people from their homes as two dams collapsed. The region has been suffering from severe drought for years, and now flooding on a scale described as unprecedented by authorities.
The numbers are also in for annual emissions, and the US saw a major 6.2% increase over 2020. This was mostly driven by the economy partially recovering from the ravages of COVID-19, but was particularly severe as coal-fired power generation rose 17% amidst a gas crunch which sent prices sky-high. Fortunately, this is unlikely to be a long-term trend, as overall coal-fired generation capacity in the US is very much still on the decline.
Climate attribution has accelerated hugely in the last few years, with the time to produce studies declining from months to weeks or days, in part due to improvements in modelling of extreme events. A new research effort looks at using weather forecast models to improve attribution still further. Weather forecast models are much more accurate and detailed than most climate models, and thanks to an existing infrastructure used for, well, weather forecasting, attribution could be run more quickly and produce more accurate results than ever.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Advertising a better world
France has implemented new legislation, to come into force from March, that will force all car advertisements to include a message encouraging the audience to take an alternative mode of transport. Advertisers have to choose from three statements, either encouraging car-pooling, active transport like cycling or walking, or taking public transport. Those who don’t comply face fines of up to $56,000. The move follows similar measures in the country for food adverts, and echoes techniques used to discourage smoking. Adverts must also include a vehicle’s CO2 emissions class, and ads for the most polluting vehicles will be banned from 2028.
Whilst much reporting around this has focused on the seemingly contrary idea of telling people to bike in a car advert, this is a big step in that it recognises the need for alternatives to the car in a decarbonised world. EVs are a huge part of decarbonising transport, but simply replacing all cars with electrified equivalents will only go so far. Public transport and active travel not only lowers the number of EVs needed (and the electricity needed to charge them), it promotes a more equitable society where car ownership is not a necessary prerequisite for life.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
The Need for Nuclear
Nuclear has had a troubled history in the environmental movement, as I’ve covered here before. However, it provides a vital option for low-carbon baseload grid power that is sorely needed. Despite this, nuclear power output is dropping across the world – the UK’s nuclear output dropped 9% last year thanks to plant retirements and outages, and Germany just shut down half of its six remaining plants, with the rest to follow later this year. Whilst renewables are taking up an ever larger wedge of demand, their intermittent nature means some form of supplementation is required, and until large scale energy storage is perfected, that generally means another form of power plant. Without nuclear, that means some form of fossil fuel plant, presenting a tricky situation for plans to decarbonise electricity grids in the next decade or two.
The EU has announced plans to allow some gas and nuclear projects to be counted as sustainable investments, drawing heavy criticism, including from Germany’s Green Party. Whilst I’m suspicious of conflating gas and green (especially given fossil fuel firms’ attempts to brand gas as a ‘bridge’ fuel), nuclear seems a sound option for baseload power. Indeed, an EU commissioner suggested that the bloc could need as much as €500bn in investment in new nuclear power between now and 2050 to meet emissions targets, an amount not helped by countries like Germany shuttering their fleets early.
Oh America…
The USA seems to have thoroughly bogged down on climate action, with the Build Back Better act still dragging its feet through the mud. Analysis suggests that in its original form, it could’ve delivered half of the targeted 50% emissions cuts by 2030, but with Joe Manchin still refusing to sign on, the USA risks losing its already limited international climate credibility. The structure of US politics has so many veto points that whilst it’s not impossible to pass major bills, it’s very, very hard.
In addition, the US often seems to promote commercial interests to a far greater degree than in many other countries, often with dire consequences – much of the human toll of the December tornadoes could’ve been averted with changes to building codes, but those were blocked by the building trade, which has prioritised costs over safety again and again. Similarly, following moves to ban gas in new buildings, the gas industry is pushing numerous states to pass laws actively forbidding cities from passing similar measures. Perhaps the best hope lies in the US’ federal system, where individual states can still act even as central government wallows in inaction.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
Chile sits atop some of the largest reserves of lithium in the world, and is currently the world’s second largest producer. However, there’s a major political shift afoot in the country, with a new constitution being written by 155 members of the Chilean public. High on the agenda is rewriting the country’s relationship with the extractive mining industry, which has brought wealth but also massive environmental devastation. The debate in Chile mirrors a wider discussion in the climate space – to what extent is further environmental degradation justified in global decarbonisation, and who bears that cost?
El Paso, Texas is a city that has long lived with drought. Indeed it has an impressive panoply of water saving and recycling solutions, making it one of the cities best adapted to the heavy drought hitting the US currently. However, the cost of those adaptations is starting to bear on residents – each new solution to save or recycle a little more water comes at an ever steeper price, begging the question: where do you draw the line between adaptation and withdrawal?
The environmental impact of plastic is something I’ve covered both directly here and in various articles over the past few years, but this piece by The Atlantic is excellent, in showing both the complex history of the plastics industry, and how the fossil fuel sector is increasingly looking to plastic as the future in an age where direct demand for fuels is likely to wane.
Shipping is an industry that has struggled to decarbonise thus far, thanks to huge capital costs, many disparate stakeholders and a lack of a clear single fuel solution. A new report suggests that a route forward might be to build ‘green corridors’, where fuel providers, shipping companies and customers all work together to build supply and demand together on key routes. This seems like an interesting idea for an industry whose international nature has often meant it slips under the radar of national policies and initiatives.
Quick Headlines
Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite
The price of ‘nature-based’ carbon offsets has tripled since June 2021, from $4.65 to $14.40/tonne, driven by massive commercial demand.
Hornsea 2, which will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when it officially opens (at over 1.3GW), has sent its first power to the grid.
Denmark has unveiled a new target to make domestic flights fossil fuel free by 2030, though no concrete measures to support this have been announced.