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On big oil emissions, COP updates, and methane fees
Current conditions: The Philippines is bracing for another major storm, the fifth in under a month • Warnings are in place for Guam as Tropical Storm Man-Yi approaches • It is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Washington, D.C., where Congress is back in session.
A Dutch court has overturned a 2021 ruling that ordered oil giant Shell to significantly curb its greenhouse gas emissions. The decision is a “big set back for efforts to use the courts to compel companies to transition faster,” wrote Tom Wilson, an energy correspondent with the Financial Times. The original ruling, issued by a lower court in a case brought by Friends of the Earth and 17,000 Dutch citizens, said Shell had to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. The landmark decision marked the first time a court ordered a private company to align its efforts with the goals of the Paris Agreement. But Shell appealed, arguing that it was already working to reduce its emissions (aiming for a 15-20% reduction by 2030 compared to 2016), that it can’t be held responsible for how customers use its products, and that such rules should be made by governments, not courts. “The Dutch court case may serve as a bellwether, with potential ripple effects on future decisions across the region,” saidBloomberg. The case could go to the Dutch Supreme Court, but it would likely take years to play out.
It’s day two of the COP29 climate summit in Baku. Yesterday began with “more than nine hours of backroom bickering over what should be on the agenda,” The Associated Pressreported. But even so, there has been some noteworthy progress:
COP figureheads are giving forceful keynote speeches in an attempt to set the tone for the summit at the outset. “The sound you hear is the ticking clock,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres. “We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And time is not on our side.” He called 2024 a “masterclass in climate destruction,” and urged countries to deliver on their promise to move away from fossil fuels, accelerate the energy transition, and put forward bold NDCs in line with the Paris Agreement. And he said “developing countries must not leave Baku empty-handed. A [climate finance] deal is a must.”
Ahead of Guterres’ speech, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev slammed Western critics of his country’s fossil fuel industry. As Reutersput it, “the airing of these opposing views on the main stage underscore the challenge at the heart of the climate negotiations: many Western states remain dependent on fossil fuels while at the same time seeking to pressure others who produce them into shifting to greener energy sources.”
President-elect Donald Trump tapped former Long Island Congressman and New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. In his four terms in Congress as the representative from New York’s easternmost congressional district on Long Island, Zeldin did not cut any particular profile on climate, environment, or energy issues, and was best known for his hawkish foreign policy position, reported Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. To the extent Zeldin has defined himself on the environment beyond standard-issue Republican opposition to restrictions on fossil fuels and car purchasing, it’s been in the context of issues specific to his coastal Long Island constituency. During his 2018 congressional campaign, he pointed to his membership in the “shellfish and national estuary caucuses,” as well as federal programs for estuaries and his opposition to expanded offshore drilling exploration at an event hosted by the League of Conservation Voters. Throughout his surprisingly close run against Kathy Hochul for New York’s governor’s mansion in 2022, Zeldin assailed New York’s ban on fracking and criticized New York’s planned phase-out of sales of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, as well as the proposal to institute congestion pricing in Lower Manhattan.
The Biden administration today finalized a rule that sets a fee for excessive methane emissions for major oil and gas producers. Fossil fuel operations are the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the U.S., and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates this rule would prevent 1.2 million metric tons of methane emissions through 2035. The new fees start at $900 per metric ton of methane emitted this year, increasing to $1,200 next year, and $1,500 thereafter. The rule is paired with incentives for companies that fix their leaky infrastructure, and mandated under the Inflation Reduction Act, which CNN reported could make it harder for the incoming Trump administration to revoke.
“Are we facing new headwinds? Absolutely. But we won’t revert back to the energy system of the 1950s. No way.” –U.S. climate envoy John Podesta on the challenges facing the energy transition under a Trump administration.
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Current conditions: A brush fire caused major delays to Amtrak journeys along the East Coast • More flood alerts have been issued for Spain as new storms loom • It’s cloudy in Washington, where President Biden will host President-elect Donald Trump at the White House today.
Global fossil fuel emissions are projected to rise again this year, and there is “no sign” of a peak, according to the Global Carbon Project. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil, gas, and coal in 2024 will hit about 37.4 billion metric tons, up 0.8% from 2023. Total CO2 emissions – including from land-use changes like deforestation and wildfires – will rise to 41.6 billion metric tons, up from 40.6 billion metric tons last year. Projected emissions vary on a regional level: China’s are expected to rise by 0.2%, while U.S. emissions are expected to fall 0.6%. India’s will be up 4.6%, while the EU’s will be down by nearly 4%. Notably, emissions from land-use changes have been falling for a decade but are set to rise this year. And then there’s this sobering reminder: “Current levels of technology-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (excluding nature-based means such as reforestation) only account for about one-millionth of the CO2 emitted from fossil fuels.” The research team behind the project estimates that the 1.5 degrees Celsius target will be breached in six years.
Relatedly, in a speech at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, asked: “What does it mean for the future of the world if the biggest polluters continue as usual? What on Earth are we doing in this gathering, over and over and over, if there is no common political will on the horizon to go beyond words and unite for meaningful action?”
In other news from Baku, nations have been debating the draft text for a new climate finance goal, the most anticipated initiative at this year’s conference. Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss reported that the text had “ballooned” from 9 pages to 34. “Before there were just 3 options for what the goal would look like – now there are also 13 ‘sub-options,’” he said. A large number of developing countries reportedly rejected the original document, asking for at least $1.3 trillion in adaptation finance and saying they don’t want to broaden the contributor base to include China and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, developed countries “are indicating that they don’t want to commit to providing more than $100 billion a year unless the contributor base is expanded,” Climate Home Newsreported. A new draft text on the finance goal is expected later today.
The $5 billion deal between Rivian and Volkswagen Group, announced back in June, was finalized this week. And it’s about 16% bigger than initially thought, according toTechCrunch. Volkswagen will actually invest up to $5.8 billion in the electric pickup maker through 2027. The partnership will provide an influx of capital for Rivian, while VW gets access to the EV company’s technology. The joint venture kicks off today.
The most important legal challenge for the renewables industry in America may have just been filed in Michigan, reported Jael Holzman in a Heatmap exclusive. On Friday afternoon, about 70 towns and a handful of Michigan counties appealed the rule implementing part of a new renewable energy siting law – PA 233 – providing primary permitting authority to the Michigan Public Services Commission and usurping local approval powers in specific cases. The law was part of a comprehensive permitting package passed last year by the state legislature and seen by climate advocates as a potential model for combatting NIMBYs across the country. The appeal challenges multiple aspects of the law’s implementation, saying it went beyond statute, as well as the rulemaking procedure itself, claiming it failed to follow proper processes. “The lawsuit aims to effectively undo the law going into effect,” Holzman explained, “or at least enjoin what opponents say are the most onerous restrictions on municipalities and county governments.”
Forecasters are watching a tropical development in the western Caribbean that is expected to strengthen into Sara, the 18th named storm of the season and the 12th hurricane. The storm could strike Florida as a hurricane next week, according to AccuWeather, just weeks after Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck the state. “Should the feature become a hurricane, it would be the 12th of the season, which is a testament to the supercharged nature of the season, where the historical average is seven hurricanes,” said AccuWeather’s hurricane expert Alex DaSilva said.
AccuWeather
“There is no national security, there is no economic security, there is no global security, without climate security.” –U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking at COP29.
Jesse and Rob download with Johns Hopkins professor Jeremy Wallace.
The rollbacks are coming. Donald Trump’s incoming administration is expected to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, weaken the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules for power plants and tailpipe pollution, and — potentially — rewrite or repeal big swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act. Each of those actions would seem to provide an opening for the world’s No. 1 polluter — China — to assert global leadership and zip ahead in the next generation of clean energy technology.
How will it respond? On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse chat with Jeremy Wallace, the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Wallace, a Heatmap contributor, helps us understand how China is thinking about Trump, the current state of China’s economy, and why China sometimes flexes its climate leadership — but just as often doesn’t. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: While we have no idea what is in Trump’s head, he does have a set of voices around him. To the degree that you can see and briefly summarize those camps, Jeremy, what, what do you … What is he going to be hearing? What are the dominant intellectual threads, or self-interested economic-motivated threads that he’s likely to hear from different parts of his coalition?
Jeremy Wallace: I would say three different camps. There will be as many as different advisors, but I think summarizing it into three different camps is helpful. There’s a Lighthizer camp that … Lightizer comes out of the steel industry, and thinking about domestic steel manufacturing and national security. So that’s a camp, and that’s a tariff, tariff, tariff world. We can China decouple in order to reduce their power.
There’s a Musk camp, who is probably just singular, that is simultaneously extremely kind of right-wing in its orientation, but also runs a multi-trillion-dollar company that is principally Chinese-produced, and Chinese demand — not only, by any means, but is a major portion of that business. And then there is the, there are the Wall Street billionaires that we’re talking about as Treasury Secretary, where there is an interest in continued economic relations and not destroying U.S. credibility to pay its own debts, to make sure that the economy continues to run.
And I think all of those would have very different views about what U.S.-China policy should be. There’s a Pentagon wing, right? There’s all kinds of other voices, as well. But I think from Trump world, I think those are probably the three principal voices that he actually cares about. And I don’t know what the right … I don’t know what the policies will be, other than my guess is that there would be a lot of cycling between those three different views.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
The state’s landmark legislation to overrule local opposition to renewable energy is being challenged by over 70 local jurisdictions.
The most important legal challenge for the renewables industry in America may have just been filed in Michigan.
On Friday afternoon, about 70 towns and a handful of Michigan counties appealed the rule implementing part of a new renewable energy siting law – PA 233 – providing primary permitting authority to the Michigan Public Services Commission and usurping local approval powers in specific cases, Heatmap can first report. The law was part of a comprehensive permitting package passed last year by the state legislature and seen by climate advocates as a potential model for combatting NIMBYs across the country.
The appeal challenges multiple aspects of the law’s implementation, saying it went beyond statute, as well as the rulemaking procedure itself, claiming it failed to follow proper processes. The lawsuit aims to effectively undo the law going into effect, or at least enjoin what opponents say are the most onerous restrictions on municipalities and county governments.
Some of the places involved in the litigation have solar, wind, or battery storage proposed in their backyards. But while it’s certainly the case that some opponents may just want to stop projects from being built, one of the attorneys behind the litigation – Michael Homier at Michigan law firm Foster Swift – told me the case represents how these laws inflame broader tensions between communities and their governments.
“[Renewables have] to be sited appropriately, because each community has unique priorities and circumstances that relate to them,” Homier said. “I think what it says is that local voices matter and when you try and implement policy on a one-size fits all approach with all of these local communities, they don’t like it.”
Local control laws like Michigan’s exist because, well, climate change is an imperative that calls for rapid action. Delays stemming from dissent at the municipal or county level can totally gum up the works, as we’ve shown you time and time again. Michigan’s no stranger to this problem. Opponents of the Michigan law sought to repeal it via ballot initiative before the lawsuit was filed, but that effort failed, and some ballot petition backers have since gotten a campaign finance complaint.
But it’s important to note these laws feel like shots to the heart of small-d democracy, and the notion of locally-controlled land use planning, too. As these policies become a go-to for anxious Democratic politicians trying to get shovels into the ground to bring down carbon emissions, one should hardly expect towns and counties to take it lying down.
Take Maryland, where legislators have sought to pass bills similar to Michigand’s. Despite the state’s ambitious climate goals, the Maryland Association of Counties has vociferously opposed bills to ban counties and towns from setting ordinances that restrict renewable development and let community-scale solar advance without strenuous local review. Or take New Jersey, where transmission cables for offshore wind may produce similar litigation to what’s in Michigan, testing the constitutionality of the state’s local control law.
In Michigan, it’ll take upwards of a year or two for the case to wind its way through court proceedings. Until then, we’ll pour one out for any developer or climate wonk who thought that the state's stab at “permitting reform” was going to help.