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On the first night of climate week, I headed over to a happy hour hosted by a bunch of progressive climate advocacy nonprofits, including Climate Cabinet, Data for Progress, and Evergreen Collaborative. The event was called “Progress No Matter What,” and the theme was states’ ability to advance climate action regardless of national politics.
On the packed back patio of a beer garden on the Lower East Side, a handful of speakers took turns climbing atop a picnic bench to address the boisterous crowd. State and federal officials celebrated the billions of dollars flowing to states to decarbonize and pressed attendees not to ignore the down-ballot climate champions running for office in November. Then, to close things out, White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi got up. Over the past year, I’ve heard Zaidi deliver the same impassioned but rehearsed preamble on press call after press call reminding us of President Biden’s climate accomplishments during his term. But here, Zaidi let loose. He said the Wall Street Journal had published a story that morning that started with the line “Climate optimism is fading.” He didn’t think so. “This is popular shit!” he declared, of efforts to fight climate change while reducing pollution, and the audience erupted in cheers. — Emily Pontecorvo
Last weekend, I attended the U.S. premiere of The Here Now Project at the inaugural Climate Film Festival — and was totally wowed. The 75-minute documentary is unnarrated and composed entirely of archival cell phone videos, vlogs, and news clips that were shot during climate disasters in 2021, ranging from the Texas power crisis that left almost 250 people dead after a February cold snap to the “sea snot” that covered Turkey’s Sea of Marmara over that summer.
While it’s harrowing to see all the footage back-to-back — and to learn about disasters I hadn’t paid close attention to at the time, like the subway flooding in Zhengzhou or the dust storms in Brazil — I was even more struck by the seemingly universal urge people have to document the way extreme weather upends their lives, even when those lives are quite immediately at risk.
The movie’s power lies in echoes and patterns of human nature, from our curiosity to our horror to our powerful compassion and self-sacrifice. I spoke to the filmmakers, Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel, for my article about the Climate Film Festival last week, and Jacobs told me they hope to make The Here Now Project an ongoing chronicle of climate change in the style of Michael Apted’s famous Up series; I very much hope they will succeed. — Jeva Lange
At several events this week related to carbon dioxide removal, the conversation turned again and again to the challenge of finance and the scarcity of buyers. During a marine carbon removal panel on Monday, for instance, James Lindsay, the director of investments at the philanthropic Builders Initiative described the tension between simultaneously trying to raise capital for a given carbon removal approach while also trying to prove that it’s safe and actually works. While there are a few buyers, like the Frontier Climate initiative, that accept these conditions and are willing to support nascent approaches that may or may not work out, making one big deal with Frontier doesn’t provide the consistent cash flow that a startup needs to progress, he said.
Later that day, at a mini-conference hosted by the direct air capture company Climeworks, CEO Christoph Gebald declared that the industry simply cannot rely on voluntary purchases if it is going to scale. “We need to transition to regulated markets,” he said. Josh Becker, a California State Senator gave a brief presentation on a bill he introduced this year, SB 308, to do just that. It was a “government-enabled, market led” policy that would have required corporate polluters to begin paying for carbon removal. The bill “died a mysterious death,” he said, but he plans to try again in 2025.
The event closed out with a panel on “the economic opportunity of carbon removal in the U.S.,” and yet the talk once again turned to the economic obstacles. “Demand is an existential challenge,” Giana Amador, executive director of the Carbon Removal Alliance, said. “If we want deployment beyond these 1,000- to 10,000-ton facilities, we need a demand signal that is robust, steady, resilient, growing, in order to make sure these companies can raise the private and public sector funding they need.” — Emily
While most of the energy developers, technologists, and investors I spoke to and/or heard speak this week were excited about artificial intelligence as a way to bring forward demand for clean electrons, there was one interesting note of caution from Katie Rae, chief executive of Engine Ventures, the investment firm that has backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the long-duration battery company Form Energy. “The government has to think about it: Are the people going to get energy? Or are the hyperscalers going to get energy? The pitchforks can come.” — Matthew Zeitlin
On Tuesday morning, I stopped by “Geothermal House,” a day-long event and installation at the Hall des Lumières near City Hall. It’s a former bank building that now hosts “immersive experiences,” which essentially amount to wandering around a room decorated with floor to ceiling projections of art, like the paintings of Chagall. This time, however, the room was made up to bring you miles deep within the Earth’s crust.
The VR lounge at Geothermal House.Emily Pontecorvo
The event was put on by Project InnerSpace, a nonprofit dedicated to transferring skills and knowledge from the oil and gas industry to scale geothermal energy. “This is the first time geothermal has shown up at NY Climate Week,” the group’s executive director, Jamie Beard, declared at the start of a series of panels held in the central hall. Unfortunately, the talks were nearly impossible to hear in the cavernous marble room, but I spent some time wandering around, watching the animated projections of geothermal power plants and hit up the “VR lounge,” which offered a much more convincing immersive experience and taught me about the difference between “enhanced” and “advanced” geothermal.
The event also had some of the best swag I saw at Climate Week, including a station where you could 3D print your face onto “the core of the Earth.” Jeva was accurate when she compared the resulting object to a Ferrero Rocher. — Emily
Two members of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation — which is considered to be one of the first communities in the U.S. to be displaced by climate change — spoke at an event on Wednesday hosted by EarthRights International. They emphasized the way the state of Louisiana failed to keep the tribe intact during the relocation effort, with Chief Deme Naquin and Tribal Secretary Chantel Comardelle explaining that while their own story is one marked by failure, they hope other communities will be able to learn from it. After all, it’s not just a house or neighborhood that you lose to something like coastal erosion; it’s also the stories and memories of the place you’d called home. “We probably weren’t the first” community to be displaced by climate change, Chief Deme told the room, “but we’re definitely not the last.” — Jeva
And over in D.C., during “National Clean Energy Week,” a more industry-focused panel-ganza, the cofounder and chief executive of the most important company in energy was sharing his thoughts on the sector. That would be Nvidia's Jensen Huang, the head of the company that designs the chips that power many artificial intelligence models and applications.
During his one-hour chat with former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Friday, Huang focused mostly on what good AI could do for energy and grid efficiency, including weather simulation and designing smart grids. While it's true, Huang said, “that AI does take energy,” AI-trained models can predict weather and climate “tens of thousands of times more energy efficiently” than supercomputers. But he was also straightforward about the intense energy demands of training artificial intelligence models.
“These data centers could consume, today, maybe 100 megawatts. In the future it will be 10, 20 times more than that.” To reduce strain on the grid, these data centers could be located “where the energy” is located, Huang suggested. “The AI doesn't care where it goes to school.” And like a student, “it’s okay” if it sometimes has to “take a nap” when the sun’s not out. — Matthew
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And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.
2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.
3. Biden’s parting words – The Biden administration has finished its long-awaited guidance for the IRA’s tech-neutral electricity credit (which barely changed) and hydrogen production credit.
A conversation with J. Timmons Roberts, executive director of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network
This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful research conducted on anti-offshore wind opposition networks. This work is a must-read for anyone who wants to best understand how the anti-renewables movement functions and why it may be difficult to stop it from winning out.
So with Trump 2.0 on the verge of banning offshore wind outright, I decided to ask Roberts what he thinks developers should be paying attention to at this moment. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Is the anti-renewables movement a political force the country needs to reckon with?
Absolutely. In my opinion it’s been unfortunate for the environmental groups, the wind development, the government officials, climate scientists – they’ve been unwilling to engage directly with those groups. They want to keep a very positive message talking about the great things that come with wind and solar. And they’ve really left the field open as a result.
I think that as these claims sit there unrefuted and naive people – I don’t mean naive in a negative sense but people who don’t know much about this issue – are only hearing the negative spin about renewables. It’s a big problem.
When you say renewables developers aren’t interacting here – are you telling me the wind industry is just letting these people run roughshod?
I’ve seen no direct refutation in those anti-wind Facebook groups, and there’s very few environmentalists or others. People are quite afraid to go in there.
But even just generally. This vast network you’ve tracked – have you seen a similar kind of counter mobilization on the part of those who want to build these wind farms offshore?
There’s some mobilization. There’s something called the New England for Offshore Wind coalition. There’s some university programs. There’s some other oceanographic groups, things like that.
My observation is that they’re mostly staff organizations and they’re very cautious. They’re trying to work as a coalition. And they’re going as slow as their most cautious member.
As someone who has researched these networks, what are you watching for in the coming year? Under the first year of Trump 2.0?
Yeah I mean, channeling my optimistic and Midwestern dad, my thought is that there may be an overstepping by the Trump administration and by some of these activists. The lack of viable alternative pathways forward and almost anti-climate approaches these groups are now a part of can backfire for them. Folks may say, why would I want to be supportive of your group if you’re basically undermining everything I believe in?
What do you think developers should know about the research you have done into these networks?
I think it's important for deciding bodies and the public, the media and so on, to know who they’re hearing when they hear voices at a public hearing or in a congressional field hearing. Who are the people representing? Whose voice are they advancing?
It’s important for these actors that want to advance action on climate change and renewables to know what strategies and the tactics are being used and also know about the connections.
One of the things you pointed out in your research is that, yes, there are dark money groups involved in this movement and there are outside figures involved, but a lot of this sometimes is just one person posts something to the internet and then another person posts something to the internet.
Does that make things harder when it comes to addressing the anti-renewables movement?
Absolutely. Social media’s really been devastating for developing science and informed, rational public policymaking. It’s so easy to create a conspiracy and false information and very slanted, partial information to shoot holes at something as big as getting us off of fossil fuels.
Our position has developed as we understand that indeed these are not just astro-turf groups created by some far away corporation but there are legitimate concerns – like fishing, where most of it is based on certainty – and then there are these sensationalized claims that drive fears. That fear is real. And it’s unfortunate.
Anything else you’d really like to tell our readers?
I didn’t really choose this topic. I feel like it really got me. It was me and four students sitting in my conference room down the hall and I said, have you heard about this group that just started here in Rhode Island that’s making these claims we should investigate? And students were super excited about it and have really been the leaders.
Kettle offers parametric insurance and says that it can cover just about any home — as long as the owner can afford the premium.
Los Angeles is on fire, and it’s possible that much of the city could burn to the ground. This would be a disaster for California’s already wobbly home insurance market and the residents who rely on it. Kettle Insurance, a fintech startup focused on wildfire insurance for Californians, thinks that it can offer a better solution.
The company, founded in 2020, has thousands of customers across California, and L.A. County is its largest market. These huge fires will, in some sense, “be a good test, not just for the industry, but for the Kettle model,” Brian Espie, the company’s chief underwriting officer, told me. What it’s offering is known as “parametric” insurance and reinsurance (essentially insurance for the insurers themselves.) While traditional insurance claims can take years to fully resolve — as some victims of the devastating 2018 Camp Fire know all too well — Kettle gives policyholders 60 days to submit a notice of loss, after which the company has 15 days to validate the claim and issue payment. There is no deductible.
As Espie explained, Kettle’s AI-powered risk assessment model is able to make more accurate and granular calculations, taking into account forward-looking, climate change-fueled challenges such as out-of-the-norm weather events, which couldn’t be predicted by looking at past weather patterns alone (e.g. wildfires in January, when historically L.A. is wet). Traditionally, California insurers have only been able to rely upon historical datasets to set their premiums, though that rule changed last year and never applied to parametric insurers in the first place.
“We’ve got about 70 different inputs from global satellite data and real estate ground level datasets that are combining to predict wildfire ignition and spread, and then also structural vulnerability,” Espie told me. “In total, we’re pulling from about 130 terabytes of data and then simulating millions of fires — so using technology that, frankly, wouldn’t have been possible 10 or maybe five years ago, because either the data didn’t exist, or it just wasn’t computationally possible to run a model like we are today.”
As of writing, it’s estimated that more than 2,000 structures have burned in Los Angeles. Whenever a fire encroaches on a parcel of Kettle-insured land, the owner immediately qualifies for a payout. Unlike most other parametric insurance plans, which pay a predetermined amount based on metrics such as the water level during a flood or the temperature during a heat wave regardless of damages, Kettle does require policyholders to submit damage estimates. The company told me that’s usually pretty simple: If a house burns, it’s almost certain that the losses will be equivalent to or exceed the policy limit, which can be up to $10 million. While the company can always audit a property to prevent insurance fraud, there are no claims adjusters or other third parties involved, thus expediting the process and eliminating much of the back-and-forth wrangling residents often go through with their insurance companies.
So how can Kettle afford to do all this while other insurers are exiting the California market altogether or pulling back in fire-prone regions? “We like to say that we can put a price on anything with our model,” Espie told me. “But I will say there are parts of the state that our model sees as burning every 10 to 15 years, and premiums may be just practically too expensive for insurance in those areas.” Kettle could also be an option for homeowners whose existing insurance comes with a very high wildfire deductible, Espie explained, as buying Kettle’s no-deductible plan in addition to their regular plan could actually save them money were a fire to occur.
But just because an area has traditionally been considered risky doesn’t mean that Kettle’s premiums will necessarily be exorbitant. The company’s CEO, Isaac Espinoza, told me that Kettle’s advanced modeling allows it to drill down on the risk to specific properties rather than just general regions. “We view ourselves as ensuring the uninsurable,” Espinoza said. “Other insurers just blanket say, we don’t want to touch it. We don’t touch anything in the area. We might say, ’Hey, that’s not too bad.’”
Espie told me that the wildly destructive fires in 2017 and 2018 “gave people a wake up call that maybe some of the traditional catastrophe models out there just weren’t keeping up with science and natural hazards in the face of climate change.” He thinks these latest blazes could represent a similar turning point for the industry. “This provides an opportunity for us to prove out that models built with AI and machine learning like ours can be more predictive of wildfire risk in the changing climate, where we’re getting 100 mile per hour winds in January.”