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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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    Politics

    The Messaging War Over Energy Costs Is Just Beginning

    The new climate politics are all about affordability.

    Donald Trump, a wind turbine, and money.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    During the August recess, while members of Congress were back home facing their constituents, climate and environmental groups went on the offensive, sending a blitz of ads targeting vulnerable Republicans in their districts. The message was specific, straightforward, and had nothing to do with the warming planet.

    “Check your electric bill lately? Rep. Mark Amodei just voted for it to go up,” declared a billboard in Reno, Nevada, sponsored by the advocacy group Climate Power.

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    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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    THE TOP FIVE

    1. EPA plans to gut the Clean Water Act

    The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to propose a new Clean Water Act rule that would eliminate federal protections for many U.S. waterways, according to an internal presentation leaked to E&E News. If finalized, the rule would establish a two-part test to determine whether a wetland received federal regulations: It would need to contain surface water throughout the “wet season,” and it would need to be touching a river, stream, or other body of water that flows throughout the wet season. The new language would require fewer wetland permits, a slide from the presentation showed, according to reporter Miranda Willson. Two EPA staffers briefed on the proposal confirmed the report.

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    Spotlight

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    A golden eagle and wind turbines.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.

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