FtF News #151 – 11th May 2022

The South Asian heatwave continues, California sees a new renewables record, and offsets continue to throw up unpleasant surprises

Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.

It’s been another busy week for me, so apologies if this week’s newsletter is a little shorter than some! Climate ambition is something that’s often on my mind, so this piece by Bill McKibben feels relevant here – he argues back against Vaclav Smil, who has recently called major emissions reduction targets unrealistic. Whilst Smil might be right that the speed of change to achieve such targets is unlikely, it’s hard to see that backing away from such hard-won targets achieves anything other than yet more delay.

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

Northeast India and Pakistan continue to melt under the onslaught of the heatwave striking the region, with New Delhi seeing 7 consecutive days over 40°C – 3 degrees over the April average. Parts of the Yamuna river in the city have dried up entirely in the heat, which is particularly affecting labourers and other people who are still expected to continue working outside. Cases of heatstroke are on the rise, and even animals are starting to succumb. One of Delhi’s landfills even spontaneously combusted, worsening the air pollution yet further. Nawabshah in Pakistan saw 50°C briefly, and a number of other cities in the area were not far off.

Meanwhile, severe sandstorms are sweeping Iraq, with thousands made sick from the choking dust, which has affected six of the country’s 18 provinces. Dust storms are on the rise in the region in recent years, fueled by soil degradation and droughts amongst other causes.

Perhaps fittingly in a week dominated by a heatwave, Carbon Brief covered a new study that found that ocean heat waves can now be predicted up to a year in advance. Historically they have proved more tricky to foretell than their land-based counterparts, but models have advanced significantly. However, some regions are more predictable than others – the Southern Ocean proves particularly tricky – but even so, the forecasts could prove invaluable for mitigating the impact of future heatwaves.

Food is always a big impact area, and a recent study found that swapping just 20% of beef for quorn or similar microbial proteins could halve deforestation, as well as halving emissions from the global food system. Livestock continue to have an outsize contribution to agriculture emissions, so any change that reduces the demand for meat has vast potential.

Planet positives

Moving towards a greener and more equitable world

Pleasing Progress

For a brief period last weekend, California’s grid reached nearly 100% renewable power, setting a new record. The state’s electricity load peaked at 99.87% renewables, of which nearly ⅔ was from solar power. Of course, such a short duration change is a long way from a fully decarbonised grid, thanks to the intermittency of renewables, but nevertheless represents a significant milestone on that pathway.

On the other side of the Pacific, Tokyu Railways, a significant rail operator in the Japanese capital, has shifted to run entirely on renewable power. However, the shift in energy has been obtained through the purchase of clean energy certificates, so the company is still in some ways dependent on the overall energy mix of the Japanese grid.

Adverse circumstances

Events that move the needle in the wrong direction

Middle men

The offset world continues to turn up more murky business practices amidst the general lack of regulation. A Greenpeace investigation has shown how offset brokers, acting as go-betweens for project developers and offset buyers, can often massively ramp up the price of offsets for very little gain. In some cases, brokers charged seven times the price they paid out to developers, pocketing the difference as profit. This means much of the money intended for projects ends up disappearing long before it reaches the source of emissions removals, even leaving aside the validity of projects’ environmental benefits.

Regulatory Capture

Whilst a lack of regulation plagues the offsets sector, the US continues to demonstrate problems with the opposite issue. In Wisconsin, residents and smaller farmers are trying to push back against CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – essentially factory farms). The operations can often inflict massive waste and groundwater pollution issues on their immediate locales, but are protected by state laws that impose few restrictions on operation, and also prevent counties from passing their own stricter rules.

In Louisiana, Amtrak is trying to reopen a coastal passenger service out of New Orleans that has remained closed since Katrina, but is facing pushback from freight companies that own the lines. In theory, passenger traffic has priority, but the freight companies say it will interfere with their operation, and are demanding hundreds of millions from Amtrak to add line upgrades. If they win their case, it could set back efforts to boost train travel nationwide.

Long Reads

Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics

I’ve touched before upon China’s vast planned roll-out of renewables in the coming years – the country plans to add at least 570GW of wind and solar during its 14th 5-year plan period. However, with continued Chinese reliance on coal, and more coal power capacity still being added, what does this mean for the country’s climate ambitions? The answer is complex, and a lot depends upon how fast the country wants to scale. Nevertheless, it seems like China is planning to shift more and more to renewables, moving coal into a ‘supporting’ role. The big question is how fast it does so.

The New Yorker took a lovely dive into the world of dendrochronology – the science of determining historic climate data from tree rings. Trees can show a lot more than just how old they are, and by studying samples from a host of trees, scientists can reconstruct a picture of weather hundreds of years in the past. However, sometimes this can involve sourcing samples from unusual locations, including wooden beams built into historic buildings!

Quick Headlines

Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite

• New Zealand has set out a series of carbon budgets that ramp down its emissions steadily to 2035 to help reach its 2050 net-zero goal.

• US plastic recycling rates have plummeted to just 5-6% in the last three years, versus a global rate of around 9%.