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Climate

The World’s Most Polluted Countries

On air quality, Ford’s pivot, and solar geoengineering

The World’s Most Polluted Countries
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Flash floods inundated parts of northern Iraq • Fire weather watches are in effect across several states, from Iowa to Maryland • Today marks the official start of spring.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Just 7 countries met WHO pollution limits in 2023

A region’s air should contain no more than 5 micrograms per cubic meter of the dangerous pollutant known as PM2.5, according to World Health Organization recommendations. In Bangladesh last year, the average concentration was 79.9 micrograms, making it the most polluted country in the world. Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, and Burkina Faso also had alarmingly high levels of PM2.5, which comes primarily from burning fossil fuels and is linked to 4 million premature deaths every year. The findings come from Swiss company IQAir, which uses 30,000 air quality monitors to understand pollution levels across the world. “The number of countries and regions with air quality monitoring has steadily increased over the past six years,” the company said in a press release.

IQAir

IQAir

In 2023 just seven countries had air quality that met the WHO guidelines: Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand. Average PM2.5 concentration across the U.S. was 9.1 micrograms, and Columbus, Ohio, was the most polluted major city in America.

2. DOE expects geothermal boom by 2050

A report from the Department of Energy projects geothermal energy deployment in the U.S. will grow dramatically by 2050, so long as developers can bring down costs. The DOE says geothermal could account for up to a third of the additional clean energy the country will need by 2050 to hit President Biden’s emissions targets and meet growing electricity demand, E&E News explained. Geothermal energy harnesses the heat from beneath the Earth’s surface for around-the-clock clean energy. Innovations in drilling technology are expected to bring the price of geothermal power down from $100 per megawatt-hour to as low as $60 per megawatt-hour by 2030, which would put it roughly in line with other energy sources, the DOE said. And new geothermal sites will need to be tapped: The report said 18 states will likely have geothermal operations by 2050, up from seven now.

3. Report: Ford pivoting to small EVs

Ford is reportedly “pivoting” from big electric vehicles to smaller, cheaper EVs in an attempt to keep up with Chinese manufacturers like BYD. Bloomberg reported the company has put together a team to work on a new electric platform for its small EVs, with the first vehicle slated to arrive in 2026 and cost around $25,000. “Plans for an electric three-row SUV have been delayed,” Bloomberg added.

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  • 4. Saudi Aramco CEO says fossil fuel phase out is a ‘fantasy’

    In case you were wondering how things are going at CERAWeek, the big oil and gas conference taking place in Houston this week, Reuters reported that “top oil executives took to the stage … to vocally oppose calls for a quick move away from fossil fuels.” “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas, and instead invest in them adequately,” said Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco. His remarks were reportedly met with applause and echoed by leaders from Shell, Petrobras, and Exxon Mobil. Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates warned rushing the energy transition will create a “crisis that we will never forget.” Meg O’Neill, CEO of Woodside Energy, said the debate had become too “emotional,” and claimed the market for clean fuel technologies is some decades away. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm pushed back, pointing to projections showing oil and gas peaking demand by 2030, and called the transition “an undeniable, inevitable, and necessary realignment of the world’s energy system.”

    5. Harvard pulls the plug on solar geoengineering experiment

    Researchers at Harvard have abandoned a plan to conduct what would have been one of the first solar geoengineering experiments in the stratosphere. Solar geoengineering – also known as “solar radiation management” – involves reflecting sunlight back into space by spraying aerosols into the stratosphere in an attempt to cool temperatures on Earth. It has long been a somewhat fringe idea among scientific circles – a sort of option of last resort – but interest has grown as global emissions climb and the Earth gets hotter. While most solar geoengineering research has happened in labs, Harvard’s Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) was going to launch a high-altitude balloon to release aerosols and observe their behavior. But the project was controversial from the start and encountered multiple delays. In the end its lead investigator walked away. “The platform developed for SCoPEx is expected to be repurposed for basic scientific research in the stratosphere unrelated to solar geoengineering,” the university said in a statement.

    THE KICKER

    Penn State University/YouTube

    A new study suggests using virtual reality to depict worst-case environmental scenarios like mass coral bleaching events can help motivate people to support climate policies.

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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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