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On the struggling e-scooter company, protecting old forests, and drinking wastewater
Current conditions: Southern California is bracing for heavy rain • China's bitter cold is complicating earthquake rescue efforts • Iceland's capital of Reykjavik could be hit by pollution from a volcanic eruption.
E-scooter company Bird, which “put electric scooters onto the sidewalks of major cities,” is filing for bankruptcy in the U.S. Just five years ago the company reached “unicorn” status with a $1 billion valuation faster than any startup ever before. But “Bird grew too quickly — it launched in too many cities before it had a viable model,” one former employee told the Financial Times. “It was losing money on every ride, so the more cities and more rides it was doing the more money it lost.” The company went public in 2021 but its stock plummeted quickly and never really recovered. Other micromobility startups are facing similar financial challenges, and some cities are cracking down on e-scooters.
Bird
President Biden issued a proposal yesterday to protect some of the oldest trees in America’s national forests from commercial logging. The move has climate ramifications because older trees are natural carbon sinks, so keeping them alive prevents that carbon from being released into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. “Older forests provide the most above-ground carbon storage potential on Earth, with mature forests and larger trees driving most accumulation of forest carbon in the critical next few decades,” a group of scientists wrote in a letter to Biden last year. “Left vulnerable to logging, though, they cannot fulfill these vital functions.” The proposal doesn’t protect “mature” trees, which aren’t quite as ancient as “old growth” trees. This concession is “a middle ground between environmentalists and the timber industry,” says Lauren Aratani at The Guardian. The ban is set to come into place in 2025 and comes as part of an executive order, so whether it goes ahead could depend on the outcome of the 2024 election.
California officials yesterday approved regulations allowing wastewater from toilets and showers to be recycled into drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. “As we look to make our communities more resilient to drought, to climate change, this is really going to be an important part of that solution,” Heather Cooley, director of research at water think tank Pacific Institute, tells the Los Angeles Times. Colorado has similar rules in place already, and Arizona and Florida could soon follow suit. The wastewater recycling process has undergone extensive review by scientists and engineers who insist it is clean and safe. The water is filtered, decontaminated, disinfected, and monitored, making it “purer than many drinking water sources we now rely on,” says E. Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the state’s water resources board.
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The British Museum, one of the most popular museums in the world, came under fire this week for accepting £50 million (about $63 million) in new funding from oil giant BP. The deal will last for 10 years and the money is expected to help pay for museum upgrades and refurbishments. The sponsorship isn’t new: BP has partnered with the museum since 1996. But it comes at a time when cultural institutions in Britain and elsewhere are under pressure from climate activists to cut ties with fossil fuel companies. One activist group has threatened legal action in response to the move, and Greenpeace called it “brazen greenwashing.” But, as the Times of London points out, most of Britain’s museums charge nothing for entrance and rely heavily on philanthropy and sponsorship. “Money needs to come from somewhere,” the paper says.
Tesla’s EV plug, the North American Charging Standard (NACS), is one step closer to dominating the industry entirely with the announcement that Volkswagen Group has committed to using the connector starting in 2025. VW says customers will now have access to 15,000 Supercharger locations across North America. The last remaining NACS holdout is Stellantis, but it’s probably only a matter of time before the automaker “bends the knee.”
Five gray wolves were released in Colorado this week as part of a wild wolf restoration project.
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On new 2030 projections, stronger hurricanes, and green hydrogen
Current conditions: Rare rainstorms have flooded parts of the Sahara Desert • Storm Kirk is expected to bring flooding to parts of northern France • Wyoming’s 75,000-acre Elk Fire has been burning for nearly two weeks.
Hurricane Milton, currently a Category 5 storm, is expected to make landfall this evening near Tampa, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph winds, according to the National Weather Service. It will bring between 10 and 15 feet of storm surge (possibly more, depending on which forecast you’re following), plus tornadoes. The conditions have already started to deteriorate and will continue to do so throughout the day. “There is no recent precedent for a major hurricane to take this path toward Florida,” said AccuWeather Director of Forecasting Operations Dan DePodwin. “This is an increasing significant risk of devastating, catastrophic impacts to this region.”
AccuWeather
Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels almost certainly made Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene a lot worse, according to two new rapid attribution studies by World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. A storm like Hurricane Helene is about two-and-a-half times more likely in the region today compared to what would be expected in a “cooler pre-industrial climate,” WWA found. That means Helene, the kind of storm one would expect to see once every 130 years on average, is now expected to develop at a rate of about once every 53 years. Separately, Climate Central looked at Hurricane Milton, which already has the distinction of being the fifth strongest Atlantic storm on record. The nonprofit’s findings show that Milton’s rapid intensification — one of the fastest and most powerful instances of the phenomenon in history — is primarily due to high sea surface temperatures in the weeks before Milton developed, which was made at least 400 times more likely by climate change and up to 800 times more likely.
“While hurricane seasons eventually end, global temperatures haven’t stopped going up,” wrote Heatmap’s Jeva Lange. “That, perhaps, is the more terrifying subtext of the attribution studies: There will be more Miltons and Helenes.”
There are several big energy reports out this week, and taken together, their findings tell a nuanced story of an energy transition that’s well underway, but still moving too slowly. Let’s start with the big one: The International Energy Agency’s Renewables 2024 report, published this morning. It says that the world is on track to add 5,500 gigawatts of new clean energy capacity by 2030, 80% of which will come from solar PV alone. That means renewables will account for half of global electricity generation by the end of the decade.
IEA
While this is huge progress (the report notes that 5,500 GW is roughly equal the power capacity of China, the European Union, India, and the U.S. combined), it is not enough to meet the COP28 goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030. But! The IEA stresses that it is “entirely possible” to meet this target if governments can get their acts together, set bold new emission reduction targets in the coming months, and work together to lower the energy transition costs for poorer countries. “The market can deliver on renewables, and now governments need to prioritize investing in storage, grids, and other forms of clean flexibility to enable this transformation,” said Dave Jones, director of global insights at energy think tank Ember. “The next half decade is going to be one heck of a ride.”
So, that’s renewables. Let’s look at what all this means for emissions and, most importantly, warming.
An energy transition report published this morning from Norwegian risk management company DNV concludes, rather remarkably, that energy-related emissions are set to peak this year and begin a steady decline thanks to the plummeting costs of solar and batteries, especially in China. “Emissions peaking is a milestone for humanity,” said Remi Eriksen, group president and CEO of DNV. However, the projected rate of emission reduction is only enough to limit warming to 2.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. “We must now focus on how quickly emissions decline and use the available tools to accelerate the energy transition,” Eriksen added.
The Rhodium Climate Outlook 2024 report, out yesterday, concluded that there is a less than 7% chance of the world limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius “if current trends in policy and technology development continue.” In fact, it projected a “very likely” increase between 2 degrees Celsius and *gulp* 3.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end. However, odds of limiting warming to 2 degrees jump to 96% if all countries can get to net-zero emissions by 2070. To date, 149 countries (representing 88% of global emissions) have made net-zero or carbon neutrality commitments, though it remains to be seen if and when they’ll meet those goals.
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The cost of “green” hydrogen – that which is produced with clean energy – is likely to remain “prohibitively expensive,” according to a new study published yesterday in the journal Joule. The fuel is seen as key to curbing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors (industry, for example), and many are banking on the price of production falling. But the researchers say the high storage and distribution costs are often overlooked. Taking those costs into consideration, carbon capture and storage is cheaper than green hydrogen when it comes to curbing emissions, the researchers found. “Even if production costs decrease in line with predictions, storage and distribution costs will prevent hydrogen being cost-competitive in many sectors,” said lead author Roxana Shafiee, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. “Our results challenge a growing idea that hydrogen will be the ‘Swiss army knife of decarbonization’ and suggest that the opportunities for hydrogen may be narrower than previously thought.”
“After 40 years in a career, hopefully, I get a little leeway from the folks who are accustomed to seeing me cool as a cucumber. But the truth is that with climate-driven extremes putting us in a place that we haven’t been before, it’s very difficult to stay cool, calm, and collected.” –Meteorologist John Morales on his emotional on-air reaction to Hurricane Milton’s rapid intensification.
Rob and Jesse talk with Heatmap staffers about why — and how — consumer choices matter.
How can you fight climate change in your daily life? Last month, Heatmap published our attempt at answering that question: Called Decarbonize Your Life, it’s a series of stories and guides to help you make better, smarter decisions to nudge the energy system away from fossil fuels. We consulted studies, ran our own analysis (with a little help from some friends), and used our expert judgment to arrive at six big, high-leverage actions you can take to fight climate change and cut carbon pollution.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Heatmap’s deputy editor Jillian Goodman and founding staff writer Emily Pontecorvo about what those six big actions are, how the guide came together, and why big choices matter so much more than small ones. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: So it’s more than just the carbon impact which is the key here, right? This systemic leverage point that you’re trying to make is that you’re trying to think about — beyond just reducing emissions, which is important — how is that actually having some kind of systemic impact on reorienting the global capitalist system, right? That we all live in, towards where we want to go, towards what a net zero emissions lifestyle and society looks like.
Robinson Meyer: And instead of every dollar you spend going to the task of taking oil out of the ground, and the task of building more internal combustion cars, it’s going to the task of building more EVs and harvesting electricity. Anyway, Jillian, I interrupted you.
Jillian Goodman: I was just going to add — and again, I’m just paraphrasing you — every time you drive, it’s a marginal impact. Every single time you use the device. Not only are you emitting less in the short term, you’re emitting less in the long term. And as the grid gets cleaner, every time you drive your EV, your EV will get cleaner, as well.
Emily Pontecorvo: One other thing that we were thinking about a little bit is thinking about these actions in terms of, which ones are you, as an individual, you’re literally the one who’s burning the fossil fuels. When you drive your car, you are burning the gas. When you’re lighting your stove, you’re burning natural gas. And not to put it all on the individual, but you’re the one who has the power to say, Okay, I’m not gonna burn fossil fuels in my home anymore. And whereas with a few other actions — like with rooftop solar, with efficiency improvements — those are extremely important, and those are very high on our list for other reasons. But they’re more indirect.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
And made Helene so much worse, according to new reports from Climate Central and World Weather Attribution.
Contrary to recent rumor, the U.S. government cannot direct major hurricanes like Helene and Milton toward red states. According to two new rapid attribution studies by World Weather Attribution and Climate Central, however, human actors almost certainly made the storms a lot worse through the burning of fossil fuels.
A storm like Hurricane Helene, which has killed at least 227 people so far and caused close to $50 billion in estimated property losses across the southeast, is about two-and-a-half times more likely in the region today compared to what would be expected in a “cooler pre-industrial climate,” WWA found. That means Helene, the kind of storm one would expect to see once every 130 years on average, is now expected to develop at a rate of about once every 53 years. Additionally, WWA researchers determined that extreme rainfall from Helene was 70% more likely and 10% heavier in the Appalachians and about 40% more likely in the southern Appalachian region, where many of the deaths occurred, due to climate change.
“Americans shouldn’t have to fear hurricanes more violent than Helene — we have all the knowledge and technology needed to lower demand and replace oil, gas, and coal with renewable energy,” Friederike Otto, the lead of WWA and a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “But vitally, we need the political will.” Alarmingly, the attribution study found that storms could drop an additional 10% or more rain on average as soon as the 2050s if warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius.
WWA’s study is not the first to be released on Hurricane Helene, but it was still produced incredibly quickly and has not been peer reviewed. Just a few weeks ago, the group issued a correction on a report estimating the contribution of climate change to recent flooding in Europe.
Separately, Climate Central looked at Hurricane Milton, which already has the distinction of being the fifth strongest Atlantic storm on record. The nonprofit’s findings show that Milton’s rapid intensification — one of the fastest and most powerful instances of the phenomenon in history — is primarily due to high sea surface temperatures in the weeks before Milton developed, which was made at least 400 times more likely by climate change and up to 800 times more likely. (WWA relied on Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index for oceans for its research, but found “climate change made the unusually hot sea surface temperature about 200-500 times more likely.”)
Attribution science is incredibly tricky, especially for a storm system like a hurricane that has variables ranging from wind shear to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation to ocean temperatures and jet stream variations. When I spoke to a member of the WWA team earlier this year, I was told the organization specifically avoids attributing the intensification of any individual hurricane — in theory, one of the more straightforward relationships — to climate change because of the relatively limited historical modeling available. Even something like rainfall “is not necessarily correlated to the magnitude of the floods that you see because there are other factors,” WWA’s Clair Barnes previously told me — for example, the steep-sided mountains and hollows of western North Carolina, which served as funnels for rainfall to an especially devastating effect.
But regarding the relationship between hurricanes and climate change more generally, “We’re relatively confident that storms will get more intense” in a warming world, Gabriel Vecchi, a Princeton geoscientist, explained on a recent episode of Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast. “And we’re really confident that storms will get wetter.”
Helene and Milton hammer that point home: once-in-a-generation storms can now arrive on back-to-back weekends. You can almost understand the impulse to devise a zany explanation as to why. Only, the truth is far simpler than cloud seeding or space lasers: a warmer atmosphere makes for warmer oceans, which make for wetter, more intense storms. And while hurricane seasons eventually end, global temperatures haven’t stopped going up. That, perhaps, is the more terrifying subtext of the attribution studies: There will be more Miltons and Helenes.