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On 1.5 degrees Celsius, Chilean fires, and nine straight warmest months
Current conditions: More than a foot of snow fell in the Sierra mountains • It’s 47 degrees Fahrenheit on Italy’s Mount Terminillo, where a popular ski resort is closed due to lack of snow • January was the 9th straight warmest month on record.
The storm that dropped huge amounts of rain on Southern California Sunday and Monday caused at least $11 billion in damages and economic losses, according to Accuweather. Dangerous winds, flooding, and landslides pummeled the region, hitting Los Angeles and its surrounding neighborhoods particularly hard. The University of California at Los Angeles recorded an incredible 12 inches of rain over 24 hours. Landslides swept through high-income communities including Beverly Hills, burying cars and forcing residents to evacuate. Bloombergnoted that insurance policies rarely cover damages from floods or mudslides. President Biden has promised to provide federal aid.
A new study suggests the planet has already warmed by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. In fact, the researchers say humans have raised the global temperature by 1.7 degrees Celsius, or about 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Much of the scientific community puts current warming at about 1.2 degrees Celsius, so this new calculation has climate experts in a tizzy.
The research hinges on observations from six sea sponges in the Caribbean Sea. These sponges are very old, and their skeletons contain what The New York Timescalls “chemical fingerprints” of the ocean temperatures going back to 1700, long before we started measuring in the 1850s. The findings suggest global warming began about 40 years earlier than previously thought, which means the preindustrial base line level to which we compare temperatures today is flawed. The authors say current warming is half a degree Celsius higher than the most common estimates.
Not everyone agrees. Some critics say data from a single location should not upend global temperature assessments. Others slam the authors for confusing the public. “It is the date of the reference period that matters rather than whether it is labelled pre-industrial or not,” said Yadvinder Malhi FRS, professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford. “The period 1850-1900 is a period of relatively reliable global data when industrial era human-caused climate change was likely negligible.” Climate scientist Michael Mann said the research doesn’t “pass the smell test.”
Farmers across the European Union have been protesting for weeks against a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, and it looks like their efforts paid off: A new plan for cutting the bloc’s emissions by 90% by 2040, set to be unveiled today, nixes the call for a 30% reduction in gases like methane and nitrogen, which are linked to farming, the Financial Times reported. The conflict stems from farmers’ concerns that policymakers are ignoring them, and with European Parliament elections just a few months away, center-right politicians are trying to win over every vote they can. But there will be consequences: The agricultural sector is projected to be “the biggest emitter by 2040 unless the EU takes action,” Bloombergreported. The uproar demonstrates the challenges politicians face in rolling out new green policies without losing support from key demographics.
Destroyed houses after the forest fires on February 4, 2024 in Vina del Mar, ChileClaudio Santana/Getty Images
At least 123 people are dead and hundreds more missing in Chile after massive fires left several cities in the Valparaiso region charred. Thousands of homes are destroyed. South America has faced immense heat and enduring drought in recent months, and the vegetation is dangerously dry. “Climate change has made droughts more common,” said Edward Mitchard, a forests expert at the University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences in Scotland. “And that’s especially happened in South America this year.”
A Waffle House restaurant in Lakeland, Tennessee, will become the first restaurant to get EnviroSpark DC fast EV chargers as part of the federal government’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. NEVI provides funding for states to “strategically deploy electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and to establish an interconnected network.” Ideally drivers won’t have to go more than 50 miles without access to a charging point, and while most chargers are located at gas stations or convenience stores, Waffle House restaurants could be a good option in the southeast considering their prevalence:
WaffleHouse.com
They also tick some of the other boxes: They’re open 24/7, have bathrooms, shelter, and food and beverages. Electrekreported that EnviroSpark plans to work with Waffle House again in the future.
“Grandmothers are now at the vanguard of today’s climate movement.” — Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project, on the rise of the “climate grannies”
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.