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Climate

The Case of the Missing Climate Money

On the World Bank’s bad record keeping, Trump’s town hall, and sustainable aviation fuel

The Case of the Missing Climate Money
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Parts of southwest France are flooded after heavy rains • Sydney’s Bondi Beach is closed because lumps of toxic tar are washing ashore • A winter storm warning is in effect for parts of Montana.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Report: Large chunk of World Bank climate funds unaccounted for

Nearly 40% of the climate finance funds that have been distributed by the World Bank over the last seven years are unaccounted for due to poor record keeping, according to a new report from Oxfam International. That’s up to $41 billion that is untraceable. “There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible,” the report said. “It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy.”

The World Bank is the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, and has a goal of directing 45% of its total financing toward climate projects by 2025. The report noted that climate finance will be a key issue at the upcoming COP29, where countries will put forward a new global climate finance goal. “The lack of traceable spending could undermine trust in global climate finance efforts at this critical juncture,” Oxfam said.

2. Trump pressed on climate change during Univision town hall

During a town hall event hosted by Univision last night, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked by a veteran construction worker – who had seen first-hand “the devastating impacts of climate change” – if he still believed global warming was a “hoax.” In his response, Trump claimed to be an environmentalist, saying he’d won “many awards over the years” for the way he’d constructed his buildings, “the way I used the water, the sand, the mixing of the sand.” But, he said, “we can’t destroy our country” for the sake of saving the climate. He said the U.S. is competing against China, which “doesn’t spend anything on climate change.” According to the International Energy Agency, last year China alone accounted for one-third of the world’s clean energy investments.

Needless to say, Trump didn’t really answer the question about whether he thought climate change was real, but he did cast doubt on sea level rise and claimed “the real global warming we have to worry about is nuclear.”

I’ll just take this opportunity to remind you that Heatmap’s Jeva Lange put together an exhaustive fact-check on Trump’s climate and weather claims going back to 2001.

3. SCOTUS says Biden’s power plant rules can stay — for now

The Supreme Court yesterday allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with its rule restricting climate pollution from power plants, meaning that one of the Biden administration’s key climate policies can stay in place. For now. The high court’s decision will allow the EPA to defend the rule in a lower court over the next 10 months. Whether the Biden administration’s new attempt at regulating climate pollution will survive depends on the outcome of next month’s election. The Trump campaign has said that it will overturn the EPA’s new climate rules. Should Harris win, the rule will still have to survive the lower court challenge. That case is scheduled to be heard in front of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this term.

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  • 4. DOE announces loans for sustainable aviation fuel

    The Department of Energy yesterday announced its first two loans for sustainable aviation fuel. The roughly $3 billion in funding will go to two companies:

    • Montana Renewables – which makes biofuels from vegetable oils and discarded animal fats – would use the money to expand its facilities and produce 315 million gallons of biofuels per year. Canary Media noted this is “nearly eight times the country’s total SAF production capacity” last year.
    • Gevo – which makes biofuels from corn ethanol – would put the funding toward building a new refinery called Net-Zero 1 in South Dakota. Each year the facility would produce up to 60 million galls of SAF, and Gevo plans to capture the carbon produced and transport it to storage via the yet-to-be-constructed Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline.

    “As the aviation sector aims to meet its decarbonization goals, SAF will become increasingly vital,” the DOE said in a statement. “SAF is the only viable near-term option to decarbonize the airline industry.”

    5. Canadian court to rule on youth climate lawsuit

    A Canadian court’s ruling on a climate lawsuit today could influence similar cases in Canada and other countries. Seven young people are suing the Ontario government over its emissions targets, which they say are inadequate and violate their human rights. If the case heads to Canada’s Supreme Court, and the plaintiffs win, that would “dramatically open the door to new litigation,” constitutional law expert Emmett Macfarlane toldReuters. “That would be explosive. It would have immediate ramifications for all governments.”

    THE KICKER

    The University of California, San Diego, is the first major public university to require all its undergraduate students to complete a climate change course.

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    Politics

    AM Briefing: Climate Grants Terminated

    On Lee Zeldin’s announcement, coal’s decline, and Trump’s Tesla promo

    The EPA’s $20 Billion Climate Grants Have Been Terminated
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Alaska just had its third-warmest winter on record • Spain’s four-year drought is nearing an end • Another atmospheric river is bearing down on the West Coast, triggering evacuation warnings around Los Angeles’ burn scars.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Zeldin terminates $20 billion in climate grants

    EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said yesterday he had terminated $20 billion in congressionally-approved climate change and clean energy grants “following a comprehensive review and consistent with multiple ongoing independent federal investigations into programmatic fraud, waste, abuse and conflicts of interest.”

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    Climate

    What the NOAA Layoffs Are Doing to Climate Science

    And how ordinary Americans will pay the price.

    A hand in the NOAA logo.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    No one seems to know exactly how many employees have been laid off from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — or, for that matter, what offices those employees worked at, what jobs they held, or what regions of the country will be impacted by their absence. We do know that it was a lot of people; about 10% of the roughly 13,000 people who worked at the agency have left since Donald Trump took office, either because they were among the 800 or so probationary employees to be fired late last month or because they resigned.

    “I don’t have the specifics as to which offices, or how many people from specific geographic areas, but I will reiterate that every one of the six [NOAA] line offices and 11 of the staff offices — think of the General Counsel’s Office or the Legislative Affairs Office — all 11 of those staff offices have suffered terminations,” Rick Spinrad, who served as the NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, told reporters in a late February press call. (At least a few of the NOAA employees who were laid off have since been brought back.)

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    Podcast

    How Trump Has All But Halted Offshore Wind

    Rob and Jesse talk with Heatmap senior reporter Jael Holzman.

    Offshore wind turbines.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Donald Trump’s second term has now entered its second month. His administration is doing much to slow down renewables, and everything it can to slow down offshore wind. Jael Holzman is a senior reporter at Heatmap and the author of our newsletter, “The Fight,” about local battles over renewable permitting around the country.

    On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk to Jael about the bleak outlook for offshore wind, the use of presidential authority to impede energy development, and why solar has been spared — so far. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.

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