You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Europe could teach America a thing or two about interconnection.
As the invasion of Ukraine raged last year, all eyes were on Europe’s power grid. Gas prices skyrocketed, Scandinavia’s water levels fell, and France’s trusty nuclear power plants went offline. It was a test of whether the world’s most interconnected energy grid could keep the lights on under extreme stress — and Europe passed. Today, as increasingly volatile weather patterns wreak havoc on infrastructure, the grid is proving to be more important than ever.
“Climate change is going to make us rely on the grid more,” Michael Pollitt, a professor of economics at Cambridge and an expert in energy economics, told me. “It’s not just gas price effects across Europe, it’s low water years and low wind years that will have impacts everywhere.”
This summer’s extreme heat could have been the next greatest threat to the power grid following the invasion of Ukraine. But instead, the stresses posed by recent weather have shown the strength of Europe’s power grid, proving the importance of interconnection in an era of global warming.
Europe’s power grid is made up of a series of interconnected localized grids. The primary one is the continental grid, where about 15% of the continent’s energy is traded across borders every year. This grid serves 400 million consumers across 24 countries, including most of the European Union countries, plus the Balkans and Turkey. These 24 countries are also connected to several other grids: the Nordic grid, the British grid, the Irish grid, and, as of August this year, the Baltic grid. Those additions bring electricity to more than 600 million consumers. In addition, there are discussions about connecting North Africa’s power grid, and especially Morocco, which would provide a rich source of solar energy.
Each country invests in what they do best: Norway champions hydropower, France has nuclear power plants, the U.K. invests in wind turbines, Spain does solar, etc. And each one can sell the excess energy to the grid to assist other countries. When water levels are low in the summer months, Norway relies on countries like Spain, who have ample power from their solar fields. In the cloudier winter months, Norway returns the favor. There is a call for faster progress on interconnection and transmission to make this into an even more reliable “Super Grid.”
This tool provides an interactive map of the grid today, and the expected changes up until 2040.
This single market allows for an energy security not seen in the United States, which has several disconnected state or regional grids with much more limited interconnection. This not only restricts the distribution of renewable energy in the U.S., but it can lead to blackouts, most famously in Texas in 2021.
One reason that Europe’s grid has proved remarkably resilient is that mutual reliance also means mutually assured destruction.
“If a country were to reduce exports, it would reduce costs in their country,” said Pollitt, referring to fears last year that European countries would unplug from the interconnected grid to safeguard their own energy supplies. “But you barely think about that for too long before you realize it’s a nuclear option to keep prices down.”
EU countries came together to agree on a gas price cap to contain the energy crisis in December 2022. But the rise in gas prices was a powerful incentive for countries to increase their reliance on renewables. Wind and solar generated 10% more energy compared with the same period in 2021-2022, saving the region 12 billion euros in gas imports (about the same in dollars), according to Ember, an energy think tank.
“I’m very happy to see European solidarity manifest itself and be resilient even though there was some temptation to go it alone,” Kristian Ruby, the secretary general for Eurelectric, the association for the electricity sector in Europe, told me. “By standing together and doubling down on solutions, we’ve seen them keep the lights on during an extremely difficult time.”
Extreme weather is the next big hurdle for the grid to overcome. “There’s no doubt that extreme weather events are becoming a strain on electricity operators,” said Ruby. A recent report from Eurelectric says that all power systems are exposed to the effects of extreme weather, including generation, transmission, and distribution. For hydropower, low water levels are detrimental and extreme cold can cause ice and blockages. Geothermal and nuclear energy become less efficient during heat waves because they require water and cold air for cooling. Many of these plants are also vulnerable to coastal and inland flooding.
This summer in particular, the grid was put to the test. Extreme heat in Spain and Italy pushed the grid to its upper limit. Using power from places like Britain, Norway and Switzerland, Spain was able to provide the power needed. It also benefited from investments in solar panels, which supplied 20 percent more solar power than in the summer of 2022.
The grid’s strength is in its variability. “Different types of weather phenomena call for different coping strategies. Resilience is about diversity. It’s about having a mix of different things. One technology will not solve it alone,” said Ruby.
Renewable energy sources differ based on the conditions in which they are built, which can make the electricity supply more adaptable. If there’s enough interconnection to bring power from, say, where it’s sunny or windy to where it’s needed, countries are much less likely to experience blackouts during severe weather. Whereas with fossil fuel based energy like coal plants, the energy supply is concentrated and more susceptible to shocks.
Despite the success, some experts are concerned that transmission isn’t growing fast enough to handle electrification. People are buying more heat pumps and using electric vehicles, but NGO WindEurope says that the grid itself is not expanding at the same pace. Experts also say that as loads increase, electricity flows will become more complex. Ruby advocates more digitalization in order to handle these complex flows.
The EU Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson wrote an op-ed piece in the Financial Times this month saying that Europe must sustain a fast pace in rolling out renewables and electrifying the economy. She references the need to integrate intermittent renewable power and adapt more decentralized electricity systems. She says the emphasis needs to be on transmission and distribution grids.
The EU reduced the length of time needed for permitting electricity transmission. It also introduced new emergency legislation last year to accelerate the authorization of renewable projects.
Despite concerns about pace, experts seem generally optimistic about the EU's grid. “EU energy and climate policy are really a success story in European coordination and interdependence,” said Pollitt.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
It’s known as the 50% rule, and Southwest Florida hates it.
After the storm, we rebuild. That’s the mantra repeated by residents, businesses and elected officials after any big storm. Hurricane Milton may have avoided the worst case scenario of a direct hit on the Tampa Bay area, but communities south of Tampa experienced heavy flooding just a couple weeks after being hit by Hurricane Helene.
While the damage is still being assessed in Sarasota County’s barrier islands, homes that require extensive renovations will almost certainly run up against what is known as the 50% rule — or, in Southwest Florida, the “dreaded 50% rule.”
In flood zone-situated communities eligible to receive insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program, any renovations to repair “substantial damage” — defined as repairs whose cost exceeds 50% of the value of the structure (not the land, which can often be quite valuable due to its proximity to the water) — must bring the entire structure “into compliance with current local floodplain management standards.” In practice, this typically means elevating the home above what FEMA defines as the area’s “base flood elevation,” which is the level that a “100-year-flood” would reach, plus some amount determined by the building code.
The rule almost invites conflict. Because just as much as local communities and homeowners want to restore things to the way they were, the federal government doesn’t want to insure structures that are simply going to get destroyed. On Siesta Key, where Milton made landfall, the base flood elevation ranges from 7 feet to 9 feet, meaning that elevating a home to comply with flood codes could be beyond the means — or at least the insurance payouts — of some homeowners.
“You got a 1952 house that’s 1,400 square feet, and you get 4 feet of water,” Jeff Brandes, a former state legislator and president of the Florida Policy Project, told me on Wednesday, explaining how the rule could have played out in Tampa. “That means new kitchens and new bathrooms, all new flooring and baseboards and drywall to 4 or 5 feet.” That kind of claim could easily run to $150,000, which might well surpass the FEMA threshold. “Now all of the sudden you get into the 50% rule that you have the entire house up to current code levels. But then you have to do another half-a-million above what [insurance] paid you.”
Simple probability calculations show that a 100-year flood (which is really a flood elevation that has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring every year) has a more than 25% chance of occurring during the lifetime of a mortgage. If you browse Siesta Key real estate on Zillow, much of it is given a 100% chance of flooding sometime over the course of a 30-year mortgage, according to data analysis by First Street.
Sarasota County as a whole has around 62,000 NFIP policies with some $16.6 billion in total coverage (although more than 80% percent of households have no flood insurance at all). Considering that flood insurance is required in high-risk areas for federally-backed mortgages and for new homeowners insurance policies written by Florida’s state backed property insurer of last resort, Citizens, FEMA is likely to take a close interest in whether communities affected by Milton and Helene are complying with its rules.
If 2022’s Hurricane Ian is any indication, squabbles over the 50% rule are almost certain to emerge — and soon.
Earlier this year, FEMA told Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Cape Coral, that it was rescinding the discount its residents and a handful of towns within it receive on flood insurance because, the agency claimed, more than 600 homeowners had violated the 50% rule after Hurricane Ian. Following an outcry from local officials and congressional representatives, FEMA restored the discount.
In their efforts to avoid triggering the rule, homeowners are hardly rogue actors. Local governments often actively assist them.
FEMA had initiated a similar procedure in Lee County the year before, threatening to drop homeowners from the flood insurance program for using possibly inaccurate appraisals to avoid the 50% rule before eventually relenting. The Fort Myers News Press reported that the appraisals were provided by the county, which was deliberately “lowering the amount that residents could use to calculate their repairs or rebuilds” to avoid triggering the rule.
Less than a month after Ian swept through Southwest Florida, Cape Coral advised residents to delay and slow down repairs for the same reason, as the rule there applied to money spent on repairs over the course of a year. Some highly exposed coastal communities in Pinellas County have been adjusting their “lookback rules” — the period over which repairs are totaled to see if they hit the 50% rule — to make them shorter so homeowners are less likely to have to make the substantive repairs required.
This followed similar actions by local governments in Charlotte County. As the Punta Gordon Sun put it, “City Council members learned the federal regulation impacts its homeowners — and they decided to do something about it.” In the Sarasota County community of North Port, local officials scrapped a rule that added up repair costs over a five-year period to make it possible for homeowners to rebuild without triggering elevation requirements.
When the 50% rule “works,” it can lead to the communities most affected by big storms being fundamentally changed, both in terms of the structures that are built and who occupies them.The end result of the rebuilding following Helene and Milton — or the next big storm to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast — or the one after that, and so on — may be wealthier homeowners in more resilient homes essentially serving as a flood barrier for everyone else, and picking up more of the bill if the waters rise too high again.
Florida’s Gulf Coast has long been seen as a place where the middle class can afford beachfront property. Elected officials’ resistance to the FEMA rule only goes to show just how important keeping a lid on the cost of living — quite literally, the cost of legally inhabiting a structure — is to the voters and residents they represent.
Still, said Brandes, “There’s the right way to come out of this thing. The wrong way is to build exactly back what you built before.”
The trash mostly stays put, but the methane is another story.
In the coming days and weeks, as Floridians and others in storm-ravaged communities clean up from Hurricane Milton, trucks will carry all manner of storm-related detritus — chunks of buildings, fences, furniture, even cars — to the same place all their other waste goes: the local landfill. But what about the landfill itself? Does this gigantic trash pile take to the air and scatter Dorito bags and car parts alike around the surrounding region?
No, thankfully. As Richard Meyers, the director of land management services at the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County, assured me, all landfill waste is covered with soil on “at least a weekly basis,” and certainly right before a hurricane, preventing the waste from being kicked up. “Aerodynamically, [the storm is] rolling over that covered waste. It’s not able to blow six inches of cover soil from the top of the waste.”
But just because a landfill won’t turn into a mass of airborne dirt and half-decomposed projectiles doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Because landfills — especially large ones — often contain more advanced infrastructure such as gas collection systems, which prevent methane from being vented into the atmosphere, and drainage systems, which collect contaminated liquid that’s pooled at the bottom of the waste pile and send it off for treatment. Meyers told me that getting these systems back online after a storm if they’ve been damaged is “the most critical part, from our standpoint.”
A flood-inundated gas collection system can mean more methane escaping into the air, and storm-damaged drainage pipes can lead to waste liquids leaking into the ground and potentially polluting water sources. The latter was a major concern in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed a landfill’s waste liquid collection system in the Municipality of Juncos in 2017.
As for methane, calculating exactly how much could be released as a result of a dysfunctional landfill gas collection system requires accounting for myriad factors such as the composition of the waste and the climate that it’s in, but the back of the envelope calculations don’t look promising. The Southeast County Landfill near Tampa, for instance, emitted about 100,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2022, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (although a Harvard engineering study from earlier this year suggests that this may be a significant underestimate). The EPA estimates that gas collection systems are about 75% effective, which means that the landfill generates a total of about 400,000 metric tons of CO2-worth of methane. If Southeast County Landfill’s gas collection system were to go down completely for even a day, that would mean extra methane emissions of roughly 822 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. That difference amounts to the daily emissions of more than 65,000 cars.
That’s a lot of math. But the takeaway is: Big landfills in the pathway of a destructive storm could end up spewing a lot of methane into the atmosphere. And keep in mind that these numbers are just for one hypothetical landfill with a gas collection system that goes down for one day. The emissions numbers, you can imagine, start to look much worse if you consider the possibility that floodwaters could impede access to infrastructure for even longer.
So stay strong out there, landfills of Florida. You may not be the star of this show, but you’ve got our attention.
On the storm’s destruction, wildlife populations, and shipping emissions
Current conditions: Large parts of Pennsylvania are under a frost advisory today and tomorrow • The remnants of Hurricane Kirk killed at least one person in France • A severe solar storm is expected to hit Earth today.
Hurricane Milton is headed out to the Atlantic after raking across Florida overnight, and as the sun comes up, residents are assessing the damage left in its wake. Milton made landfall near Sarasota as a Category 3 storm, bringing heavy rainfall, dangerous winds, and flooding. St. Petersburg reported 16 inches of rain, which meteorologists say is a 1-in-1,000-year event. The storm also triggered more than 130 tornado warnings, possibly a new record. The Tropicana Field Stadium in Tampa sustained significant damage. While deaths have been reported, it’s not yet clear how many. More than 3 million people are without power.
Before the storm hit, the Florida Department of Financial Services issued a rule that requires insurance claims adjusters to provide an explanation for any changes they make to a claimant’s loss estimate, The Washington Postreported, calling the move “a groundbreaking win for policyholders.”
The World Wide Fund for Nature published its 2024 Living Planet Report yesterday, which tracks nearly 5,500 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles all over the world. It found that wildlife populations plummeted by about 73% between 1970 and 2020, as illustrated in this rather bleak but very effective chart:
WWF
Latin America, which is home to some of the most biodiverse regions in the world, saw the worst losses, at 95%. Freshwater species experienced the greatest decline at 85%. There are some success stories, such as a 3% increase in the mountain gorilla population, and the incredible comeback of the European Bison, but generally the report is pretty heartbreaking. It underscores the interconnected nature of the climate crisis and nature destruction. “It really does indicate to us that the fabric of nature is unraveling,” said Rebecca Shaw, WWF’s chief scientist. The report comes days ahead of the start of the UN COP16 biodiversity summit in Colombia, where delegates will discuss concrete ways to stop biodiversity loss.
More than 100 CEOs from some of the world’s biggest corporations have published a letter urging governments and the private sector to boost efforts to keep Paris Agreement goals alive. The letter, signed by the heads of companies including Ikea, AstraZeneca, A.P. Moller-Maersk, Bain & Company, Iberdrola, Orsted, and Volvo Cars, calls for governments to:
The head of the International Maritime Organization this week called on the shipping industry to do more to cut emissions from the sector. Shipping accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The IMO recently set a new industry-wide target of a 20% emissions reduction by 2030, and net-zero by 2050. But the IMO’s Arsenio Dominguez said there is more to be done to hit these goals. That includes “low hanging fruit” like reducing ship speed, charting routes according to the weather, and cleaning the hulls of ships to reduce friction, The Associated Pressreported. But in the long-term, he said, the industry will need to switch to cleaner fuels, which have yet to scale.
Long-duration energy storage startup Form Energy, closed a $405 million Series F funding round this week, bringing its total funding to more than $1.2 billion. Form uses a novel method for storing energy, combining iron and oxygen to make rust, a process that the company claims can be used to store and discharge up to 100 hours of battery power. As renewable energy production ramps up, new ways of storing variable energy from wind and solar is essential, and Form’s latest fundraising underscores this need. Canary Mediareported that Form’s technology isn’t proven at utility scale yet but the company is working on commercial deployments and broke ground on a project in August to provide energy to a utility in Minnesota.
Some dragonfly species have evolved to have darker wing spots as a breeding advantage. A new study finds these dragonflies have also evolved to be able to withstand higher temperatures.
Noah Leith