Google Launches ‘Operation Blue Skies’ to Tackle Contrails

Current conditions: Firefighters are encircling Belgium’s largest fire on record, just the latest blaze in Europe as historic heat waves roast the continent • The Canadian wildfire smoke that billowed into Michigan this summer cost the state nearly $6.7 billion • The string of storms that now includes the habagat, or southwest monsoon, hammering the Philippines has displaced 5.2 million Filipinos so far.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump pushes to open 45 million acres of national forests to logging

The Trump administration is barreling forward with a plan to open close to 45 million acres of wilderness in national forests to road construction and logging, removing protection The New York Times said has been in place for a quarter century. The U.S. Forest Service’s proposal would rescind a Clinton-era rule enacted in 2001 to bar roadways from routing through certain areas. The repeal is a major victory for Republican states and industry groups that lobbied for years to revoke the protections, and even unsuccessfully sued more than a dozen times to strike down the so-called roadless rule.

The new push comes a day after Customs and Border Protection paused work on a border barrier in Big Bend National Park after a flurry of videos showing bulldozers marring the protected landscape drove what the public lands-focused news site Public Domain called “a furious backlash.”

2. Google launches Operation Blue Skies to tackle ‘contrails’

You know those thin white lines that trail behind airplanes? If you’re among the hordes of internet-poisoned conspiracy theorists, you may be certain these are called chemtrails, deliberately sprayed aerosols containing some secret mind control substance. In reality, these are condensation trails, or “contrails,” clouds of vapor that condense around soot particles from jet engine exhaust. Though they are not spreading any nefarious biochemical agents, contrails do take a climate toll, trapping outgoing infrared radiation like a blanket and adding to the greenhouse gas effect. Now Google is stepping in with a new program called Operation Blue Skies, in which the tech giant will partner with the British government and airlines to deploy its artificial intelligence technology to help create a zone in the North Atlantic free of any contrails. “While they may seem harmless, these warming contrails account for roughly one third of aviation’s total climate impact,” the two program managers in charge of effort, Paul Hodgson and Chaim Langermann, wrote in a blog post. “Our AI-powered forecasts have enabled flight crews and air traffic controllers to make targeted adjustments that avoid contrail-sensitive regions while remaining within normal flight operations. Now, we’re taking the next major step: expanding beyond individual airline trials to coordinated contrail mitigation across an entire flight corridor.”

The technology could, in theory, lay the groundwork for solar radiation management. Some conspiracists, without real evidence, suggest that contrails are, in fact, already a furtive government experiment to modify the atmosphere with aerosols that reflect the sun’s light back into space, a leading concept for how to artificially cool the planet and buy more time to tackle the causes of climate change. Those efforts are inching closer to reality — just read my colleague Robinson Meyer’s reporting on the world’s first major private geoengineering company’s fundraising or my reporting on when the startup revealed its proprietary reflective particle. Technology that could help coordinate flights to spray aerosols in the atmosphere, or can deliberately keep planes out of certain airspace, may prove central to deploying geoengineering at any real scale. Perhaps a public effort to explain contrails and deal with their actual downsides will earn more trust to experiment with things like solar radiation management. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

3. Anthro Energy breaks ground on Kentucky electrolyte factory

Solid-state technology could revolutionize batteries by making them charge faster, last longer, and pack more energy into less space. But the electrolytes needed for the ceramic or polymer interior that store and deliver the battery’s charge are not widely produced in the U.S. On Tuesday, the startup Anthro Energy broke ground on a new factory in Louisville, Kentucky, that is designed to produce enough battery materials for more than 300,000 electric vehicles. The facility is scheduled to start production in 2028, and will provide a definitive domestic source of materials that are otherwise largely sold by Chinese companies, David Mackanic, co-founder and CEO of Anthro Energy, told TechCrunch. The plant itself is a testament to the success of the Biden administration’s two landmark laws. It received $24.9 million from the Department of Energy under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and another $18.4 million in investment tax credits under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

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4. Shapiro flips on data centers

Back in February, I told you about Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s middleground approach on data centers. Instead of advocating a full-on moratorium on building the facilities, as progressives Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a month later, the centrist Democrat laid out “selective” new conditions for large data centers seeking Harrisburg’s approval, including recycling of cooling water, as the state became a hotbed for projects. Now Shapiro is making an about face. In what The Philadelphia Inquirer called “a major shift from his initial embrace of the increasingly unpopular projects,” the governor signed a sweeping executive order Tuesday requiring local approval for data centers to receive state permits. The move is not a moratorium. But the extent of the backlash — seven in 10 Americans now oppose data centers in their backyards, per Heatmap Pro’s polling — may mean the need for a local green light serves as an effective ban. The order also removes Amazon’s controversial $20 billion data center complex between Luzerne and Bucks counties from the state’s fast-track permitting program, which is now unavailable to any such projects. “I have no other choice than but to take this executive action to protect the good people of Pennsylvania from these predatory developers and from these projects that would negatively impact our communities,” Shapiro said after signing the order.

5. Canada unveils sweeping clean energy investment plan

Seeking Canadian energy dominance.ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced plans Monday to invest roughly $50.2 billion into upgrading the nation’s hydroelectric fleet and building new wind turbines, part of the Liberal government’s effort to build “a stronger, more independent, and more sustainable country.” Under the pact with provincial governments, Ottawa will upgrade and expand the behemoth hydroelectric Churchill Falls Generating Station, develop another hydroelectric project on Gull Island in Labrador, build onshore wind turbines, and construct new transmission lines. “Canada is extending its unique advantage in clean, reliable, and affordable power. Because when we master energy, we master our destiny,” Carney said in a statement. The investment comes as Canada is refurbishing and expanding its fleet of CANDUs, a natively-designed type of pressurized heavy water reactor that can run on raw uranium, as I previously reported here.

Romania, one of only seven countries with a pressurized heavy water reactor as part of its fleet, is struggling to generate electricity from its nuclear plants as the rivers Europe depends on for cooling water run low amid the latest heat wave. On Monday, the country’s Ministry of Energy brought a giant coal plant back online to meet surging demand as the nuclear stations idle, according to the Romanian news site Economedia.

THE KICKER

Octopus Energy is, by its own press release’s pun, “stretching its tentacles beyond the home and onto the open road.” The U.S. subsidiary of the British renewable energy giant is making Octopus Charge, Europe’s largest electric vehicle charging platform, a public network in the U.S. The company’s app will allow drivers to chargers on the go. “Driving electric should be simple, wherever the journey leads,” Nick Chaset, chief executive of Octopus Energy U.S., said in a statement. “Drivers shouldn’t have to juggle multiple apps and accounts just to charge their cars.”