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Climate

Why FEMA Is Teaming Up with the NFL

On emergency shelters, Biden’s climate legacy, and Europe’s deadly floods

Why FEMA Is Teaming Up with the NFL
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Large hail stones pelted Oklahoma City • A month’s worth of rain fell over 24 hours in parts of England, with more rain on the way • A wildfire is raging near the capital of Ecuador, which is experiencing the worst drought in six decades.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Biden touts his climate legacy at Climate Week

President Biden touted his administration's climate legacy yesterday at the Bloomberg Global Business forum as part of Climate Week. The speech was a comprehensive list of his climate and clean energy accomplishments, starting with the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden called the most significant climate law ever passed in the history of the world. “We were told it couldn’t get done but we did it,” he said. He tied climate policy to economic growth and job creation. “In just two years since the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve created more than 330,000 clean energy jobs,” he said. Some other crowd pleasers from the speech:

  • Companies have announced “nearly $1 trillion of investments in U.S. clean energy manufacturing over the last three years.”
  • The U.S. is on track to “add more electric capacity this year than in the last two decades, and 96% of that will be clean energy.”
  • “American solar panel manufacturing is up four times what it was four years ago.”

Biden closed his remarks with a warning that former President Donald Trump would undo much of this progress if elected again in November. He urged the business leaders in the room to keep the momentum going. “It’s a perfect time to go big. The market for clean energy is booming … I’m doing my part and I’m calling on other companies and the capital in the room to invest more and do more. Now’s the time. We can do this. We really can. We owe it to our children.”

2. Evacuations begin ahead of Hurricane Helene

Tropical Storm Helene is forecast to strengthen into a large, major hurricane later today and make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast tomorrow. A hurricane warning is in effect for Florida's Big Bend. Some coastal regions are evacuating, and flooding is expected in Georgia and Alabama, as well. Reutersreported that oil producers including BP, Chevron, Equinor, and Shell are evacuating staff from platforms in the Gulf.

NOAA/NWS

3. NFL and FEMA partner to turn football stadiums into disaster shelters

The NFL and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are partnering to make football stadiums available as emergency disaster shelters year-round, according toThe Washington Post. The NFL reportedly approached FEMA with the idea three years ago. “It just made perfect sense,” said FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell. “We have all of these existing venues. How do we better coordinate during these blue sky days to better understand what they bring to the table and what we can use them for in the future?” Three stadiums are already on board: New York’s MetLife Stadium, Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium, and Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. The Post reported that L.A.’s SoFi Stadium is expected to sign on soon, and Criswell hopes the MLB and other sports leagues will also join the initiative.

4. Study: Europe must balance ‘ambition with adaptability’ to meet climate goals

European Union emissions targets “often lack the flexibility necessary for effective decarbonization at the national level,” according to a report released today by Third Way’s Carbon-Free Europe and Evolved Energy Research. By mapping existing clean energy infrastructure for each member state “down to each kilometer,” the researchers found that “hitting sector- and tech-specific deployment targets does not necessarily equate to hitting emissions targets,” Lindsey Walter, the co-founder of the Carbon-Free Europe initiative, told Heatmap.

For example, the report found that EU policy needs to be more aggressive in deploying solar energy, while other 2030 targets, such as clean hydrogen, are likely to outpace demand as the transport and industry uses continue to develop and petroleum refineries, one of the primary uses today, are in decline. By looking more deeply at various net-zero pathways for each member state, the report proposes a “more flexible framework” for keeping countries competitive via individualized net-zero strategies. “Ultimately, we think the future energy mix will be determined strictly by economics,” Walter said. “What our study is finding is that land use trade-offs will likely be just as big — if not a bigger — factor in the ultimate energy mix in Europe.” Particularly in countries like the U.K., France, and Italy, there is the potential for significant on- and off-shore wind and solar in some of the models: “We’re not talking about building the next 10 wind or solar farms — we’re talking about the next 1,000,” Walter went on. “And it is quite significant when you look at it on the ground.”

5. Climate change contributed to recent European floods

In case there was any doubt, researchers from World Weather Attribution confirmed that climate change contributed to the severity of the heavy rain and flooding that Storm Boris brought to central Europe this month. The group analyzed climate models and historical data and found that human-caused climate change has made rainfall events like these twice as likely and 20% more intense since the pre-industrial era. The rain was “by far the heaviest ever recorded” in the area, and left at least 24 people dead. “Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial College London and one of the contributors to the report.

THE KICKER

“A lot of energy performance improvements to houses right now are on sale, and they're going to be on sale until the end of the decade.” –Eric Werling, former national director of the Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Homes program, speaking to Heatmap’s Katie Brigham about the benefits of home weatherization.

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Politics

AM Briefing: The Vote-a-Rama Drags On

On sparring in the Senate, NEPA rules, and taxing first-class flyers

The Megabill’s Clean Energy Holdouts
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A hurricane warning is in effect for Mexico as the Category 1 storm Flossie approaches • More than 50,000 people have been forced to flee wildfires raging in Turkey • Heavy rain caused flash floods and landslides near a mountain resort in northern Italy during peak tourist season.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Senate Republicans spar over megabill’s clean energy policies

Senate lawmakers’ vote-a-rama on the GOP tax and budget megabill dragged into Monday night and continues Tuesday. Republicans only have three votes to lose if they want to get the bill through the chamber and send it to the House. Already Senators Thom Tillis and Rand Paul are expected to vote against it, and there are a few more holdouts for whom clean energy appears to be one sticking point. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, has put forward an amendment (together with Iowa Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley) that would eliminate the new renewables excise tax, and phase out tax credits for solar and wind gradually (by 2028) rather than immediately, as proposed in the original bill. “I don’t want us to backslide on the clean energy credits,” Murkowski told reporters Monday. E&E News reported that the amendment could be considered on a simple majority threshold. (As an aside: If you’re wondering why wind and solar need tax credits if they’re so cheap, as clean energy advocates often emphasize, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo has a nice explainer worth reading.)

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Yellow
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Lyten Is Acquiring Northvolt’s Energy Storage Manufacturing ​Plant

It’s the largest facility of its kind of Europe and will immediately make the lithium-sulfur battery startup a major player.

A Lyten battery in Poland.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Lyten

Lyten, the domestic lithium-sulfur battery company, has officially expanded into the European market, announcing that it has acquired yet another shuttered Northvolt facility. Located in Gdansk, Poland, this acquisition represents a new direction for the company: Rather than producing battery cells — as Lyten’s other U.S.-based facilities will do — this 270,000 square foot plant is designed to produce complete battery energy storage systems for the grid. Currently, it’s the largest energy storage manufacturing facility in Europe, with enough equipment to ramp up to 6 gigawatt-hours of capacity. This gives Lyten the ability to become — practically immediately — a major player in energy storage.

“We were very convinced that we needed to be able to build our own battery energy storage systems, so the full system with electronics and switch gear and safety systems and everything for our batteries to go into,” Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief sustainability and marketing officer, told me. “So this opportunity became very, very well aligned with our strategy.”

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If Wind and Solar Are So Cheap, Why Do They Need Tax Credits?

Removing the subsidies would be bad enough, but the chaos it would cause in the market is way worse.

Money and clean energy.
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In their efforts to persuade Republicans in Congress not to throw wind and solar off a tax credit cliff, clean energy advocates have sometimes made what would appear to be a counterproductive argument: They’ve emphasized that renewables are cheap and easily obtainable.

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