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Climate

The IEA Has Good News and Bad News About Renewables

On new 2030 projections, stronger hurricanes, and green hydrogen

The IEA Has Good News and Bad News About Renewables
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Category 5 Hurricane Milton approaches Florida

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

2. Studies link Helene and Milton to climate change

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.”

3. IEA: Renewable capacity growth not enough to triple by 2030

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.

4. Rhodium and DNV forecast 2100 warming levels

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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  • 5. Study suggests green hydrogen will remain ‘prohibitively expensive’

    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.”

    THE KICKER

    “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.

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    Adaptation

    The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

    Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

    Homes as a wildfire buffer.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

    More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

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    Spotlight

    How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

    A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

    Massachusetts and solar panels.
    Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

    A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

    Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

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    Hotspots

    The Midwest Is Becoming Even Tougher for Solar Projects

    And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.

    The United States.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.

    • Late last week, this county was teed up to potentially advance a new restrictive solar ordinance that would’ve cut off zoning access for large-scale facilities. That’s obviously bad for developers. But it would’ve still allowed solar facilities up to 50 acres and grandfathered in projects that had previously signed agreements with local officials.
    • However, solar opponents swamped the county Area Planning Commission meeting to decide on the ordinance, turning it into an over four-hour display in which many requested in public comments to outright ban solar projects entirely without a grandfathering clause.
    • It’s clear part of the opposition is inflamed over the EDF Paddlefish Solar project, which we ranked last year as one of the nation’s top imperiled renewables facilities in progress. The project has already resulted in a moratorium in another county, Huntington.
    • Although the Paddlefish project is not unique in its risks, it is what we view as a bellwether for the future of solar development in farming communities, as the Fort Wayne-adjacent county is a picturesque display of many areas across the United States. Pro-renewables advocates have sought to tamp down opposition with tactics such as a direct text messaging campaign, which I previously scooped last week.
    • Yet despite the counter-communications, momentum is heading in the other direction. At the meeting, officials ultimately decided to punt a decision to next month so they could edit their draft ordinance to assuage aggrieved residents.
    • Also worth noting: anyone could see from Heatmap Pro data that this county would be an incredibly difficult fight for a solar developer. Despite a slim majority of local support for renewable energy, the county has a nearly 100% opposition risk rating, due in no small part to its large agricultural workforce and MAGA leanings.

    2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.

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