FtF News #210 – 25th August 2024

Far-reaching flooding, the world’s biggest pumped hydro and how tech companies obfuscate their emissions

An interesting story popped up last week talking about green hydrogen – whilst nearly 1,600 plants have been planned globally, very few have any customers. I find green hydrogen fascinating, as whilst there’s definitely areas where it can help – green steel or aviation for example – it comes with a host of trade-offs, and often feels like a solution searching for a problem. Like so many climate solutions, it’s an area that requires vast investment to scale properly, but in this nascent phase it’s hard to tell the boondoggles from the winners. What gets funding more often depends on who can lobby hardest, rather than what is most likely to work.

Whilst I think there should always be some funding going to more radical or longer-term solutions (clean aviation being one that’s close to my heart), we have proven and scalable solutions to so much of the climate crisis, and it’s more about committing politically to those than throwing cash at shiny ideas.

If you spot any stories you’d like to share, you can submit them here.

Wild Weather

Mother nature’s reactions to the ever-warming world

• 15 countries have broken their national heat records this year – a record in itself – with at least 10 countries recording temperatures over 50°C so far this year.

• The 13 month streak of hottest ever months has now ended, though July 2024 was just 0.04°C cooler than July 2023.

• The Mediterranean Sea reached a median temperature of 28.9°C this week – a new record, beating the previous record set just last July.

• A wildfire near Athens burned an area twice the size of Manhattan, destroying dozens of homes, with flames burning up to 25m high.

• Botswana is struggling with its worst drought in 40 years, and is paying out $97m to help farmers survive the crisis.

• Flooding in Yemen continues to escalate, with 60 dead and 268,000 affected.

• Flash floods have hit southern Pakistan, where the death toll from this monsoon season alone has risen to 209.

• At least 68 people have been killed by flooding in Sudan, with 27,000 displaced by the heaviest rainfall since 2019.

• Bangladesh has also seen massive flooding, with 3m people stranded by rains across 8 districts.

• Parts of Austria saw most of a typical summer’s rain fall in just an hour, causing flooding and transport disruption.

• The third hurricane of the Atlantic season formed some three weeks earlier than the average, suggesting an extremely active storm season to come.

It’s Science!

The latest from in climate research and analysis

• Research has found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, meeting 1.5°C is far more dependent on government policy than on technology.

• Wildfires in Canada, Amazonia and Greece were all made more likely by climate change, according to the first annual assessment of wildfires.

• The rainfall that triggered a massive landslide in Kerala last month was made 10% heavier by climate change, though deforestation in the area likely also contributed.

• Excess heat likely contributed to 47,000 deaths in Europe last year, but adaptation methods cut that number 80% over what it could have been otherwise.

• A study from GFI found that if the US ate half as much meat, 47.3m acres of cropland could be freed up – an area roughly equivalent to that of South Dakota.

Party Political Broadcast

Climate politics are a special creature indeed

• A study looking at the impact of the US Inflation Reduction Act found that most Americans don’t know its association with the climate, and 4 in 10 US voters have heard ‘nothing at all’ about it, despite the huge funding it has unlocked.

Money makes the world go around

The machinations of climate finance

• Concern is growing around so-called catastrophe bonds, after Jamaica’s bond failed to pay out despite the impacts of Hurricane Beryl, as the bond is tied to a very specific air pressure trigger which was not met.

• 25 of the biggest lenders in the world are failing to stop financing climate change, and are pushing back on net zero in order to increase profits.

Haha, Business!

Climate happenings in the corporate world

• Tech companies’ use of renewable energy certificates means that they are likely vastly under-reporting their emissions, in some cases by millions of tons of CO2.

• Whilst many airlines have set ambitious sustainable fuel goals for 2030, it’s becoming clear that only regulation will actually cause change, with leading European airlines (where airlines must use 2% SAF by next year) using 6+ times the SAFs of their US counterparts.

• The UN has called out a massive mis- and disinformation campaign from fossil fuel companies, designed to make countries slow their adoption of renewable energy.

The Future is Electric

EVs and all things electrification

• Global EV and plug-in hybrid sales rose 21% year-on-year, thanks to China, which saw sales grow 31%, which offset falling demand in Europe.

• BMW has pulled ahead of Tesla to become the leader in European EV sales for the first time, even as other European carmakers struggle to electrify.

• Ford is backing away from electrification, cancelling plans for a fully electric SUV and writing down $1.9bn as a result, alongside reducing spending on EV efforts.

• Oakland, California has become the first school district in the US to fully electrify its school bus fleet, going with vehicles that can also supply power back to the grid.

Clean Green Energy Machine

Renewables versus coal – a look at the changing energy system

• China has cut the number of permits for new coal plants by 80% in the first half of this year, according to Greenpeace, commissioning around 10GW of capacity.

• At the same time, the country’s combined wind and solar capacity of 11.8TW exceeded that of coal for the first time in the same period, and was 84.2% of all new grid-connected power capacity.

• China is also continuing to invest into nuclear power, with 11 new nuclear reactors approved recently – it is likely to become the world’s biggest nuclear power generator by 2030.

• The country’s State Grid Corp has also completed the world’s largest pumped hydro storage facility, a 3.6GW facility that cost around $2.6bn.

• The first stage of an ambitious plan to send solar power from Australia to Singapore on a vast scale has passed environmental approval.

Breakthroughs

New inventions to inspire hope

• Form Energy has received $147m in funding from the US Department of Energy to build a vast battery in Maine that will be able to supply 85MW to the grid for up to 10 hours – it will be bigger than any battery in existence today.

• An Australian startup is planning to test its vanadium flow battery at an off-grid mine site in an important test for the technology.

Climate Inequity

A hard look at the inequities of the climate crisis

• New research shows that ¾ of English and Welsh prisons face a high risk of overheating, with more than ⅓ at risk of flooding.

Long Reads

Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics

• Johannesburg faces serious power issues, with those who can afford it going off-grid, leaving the poorest at the mercy of rising bills and constant power outages.

• Much of Europe is coming to terms with sewerage issues, with combined sewer and rainwater systems often overflowing, causing persistent water quality issues.

• Food prices have been on the rise since the pandemic, but more and more, research is linking this to the instability caused by climate change.

• Biochar is once again gaining attention as a reliable way to store carbon long-term – it’s cheap, simple and has a host of co-benefits.