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On a crucial — and underappreciated — phrase in the Global Stocktake.
Now it is over. Early on Wednesday morning, negotiators in Dubai reached an agreement at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global meeting otherwise known as COP28.
Their final text for the Global Stocktake — a kind of report card on humanity’s progress on its Paris Agreement goals — is contradictory and half-hearted. Instead of blunt language instructing countries to “phase out fossil fuels,” it instead provides a range of options that could let countries achieve “deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” One of these possibilities is the tripling of global renewable capacity; another is a call for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
So far, this language — this call for leaving fossil fuels — has attracted the most attention by far. Simon Stiell, the UN’s top climate official, said that it marked “the beginning of the end” of the fossil-fuel era, while the climate journalist and activist Bill McKibben has argued that the phrase can become a useful tool for activists, who can now beat it across the head of the Biden administration.
But a separate phrase in the agreement caught my attention. Immediately after calling for transitioning away from fossil fuels, the text makes a different point: that the world must accelerate the development of “zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production.”
This language may rankle some readers because it seems to give pride of place to carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, which would allow fossil fuel-burning plants to catch emissions before they enter the atmosphere. (It also seems to conflate CCS with carbon removal technology, even though they are different.) But I believe that the overarching demand — the call for accelerating climate-friendly technologies — represents a crucial insight, one that I could not stop thinking about at the COP itself, and one that is linked to any realistic demand to phase out fossil fuels. Here is that insight: The world will only be able to decarbonize when it develops abundant energy technologies that emit little carbon and that are price-competitive if not cheaper than their fossil-fueled alternatives.
Just as COP28 began, the Rhodium Group, an energy research firm, published a new study looking at how carbon pollution will rise and fall through the end of the century. Unlike other such studies — which ask either how the planet will fare if no new climate policy passes, or what the world must do to avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming — this new study tried to look at what was likely to happen. Given what we know about how countries’ emissions rise and fall with their economies, and when and how they tend to pass climate policy, how much warming can we expect by the end of the century?
As the report’s authors put it, the study was aimed not at policymakers, but at policy takers — the officials, executives, engineers, and local leaders who are starting to plan for the world of 2100.
Here’s the good news: Global greenhouse gas emissions are likely to peak this decade, the report found. Sometime during the 2020s, humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other climate pollution will reach an all-time high and begin to fall. (Right now, we emit the equivalent of 50.6 billion tons of the stuff every year.) This will represent a world-historic turning point in our species’ effort to govern the global climate system, and it will probably happen before Morocco, Portugal, and Spain host the 2030 World Cup.
And that is roughly where the good news ends. Because unlike in rosy net-zero studies where humanity’s carbon emissions peak and then rapidly fall to zero, the report does not project any near-term pollution plunge. Instead, global emissions waver and plateau through the 2030s and 2040s, falling in some years, rising slightly in others, cutting an unmistakably downward trend while failing to get anywhere close to zero. By 2060, annual emissions will have fallen to 39 gigatons, only 22% below today’s levels.
And — worse news, now — that is as low as emissions will ever get this century, the report projects. Driven by explosive economic growth in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, global emissions begin to rise — slowly but inexorably — starting in the 2060s. They keep rising in the 2070s, 2080s, and 2090s. By the year 2090, emissions will have reached 44 gigatons, only 13% below today’s levels and roughly where emissions stood in 2003.
How Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Fall — Then Rise — in the 21st Century
Rhodium Group
In other words, after a century of work to fight climate change, humanity will find itself roughly where it began. But now, with several thousand additional gigatons of emissions in the atmosphere, the planet will be about 2.8 degrees Celsius warmer (or about 5 degrees Fahrenheit). At its high end estimate, temperatures could rise as much as 4 degrees Celsius, or more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit.
This temperature rise will be caused by legacy emissions from polluters like the United States and China, but as the century goes on, it will increasingly come from Asian and African countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, and others. Why? It’s not like these countries, say, reject renewables or electric vehicles: In fact, Rhodium anticipates that renewables will have grown up to 22-fold by the end of the century.
Instead, emissions rise because fossil fuels are cheap and globally abundant — they remain one of the easiest ways to power an explosively growing society — and because of the growth of the so-called hard-to-abate sectors in these countries are slated to grow just as quickly as the economies themselves. Indonesia, Nigeria, and Vietnam will demand many megatons of new steel, cement, and chemicals to furnish their growing societies; right now, the only economical way to make those materials requires releasing immense amounts of carbon pollution into the atmosphere.
Let’s be clear: Rhodium’s report is a projection, not a prophecy. It should not provoke despair, I think, but determination. Many of the so-called hard-to-abate activities, such as steel or petrochemical making, should more aptly be called activities-that-we-haven’t-tried-very-hard-to-abate yet; people will likely find a way to do them by the middle of the century. (When I asked Bill Gates what he thought about the Rhodium Group’s findings, he replied that predicting the carbon intensity of certain activities in 2060 was all but impossible: We might have safe, cheap, and abundant nuclear fission by then, or even nuclear fusion.)
Yet it heralds a shift in climate geopolitics that, while it has not yet happened, is not so far away. Since the modern era of global climate politics began in 1990, most carbon emissions have come from just a handful of countries: China, the United States, and the 37 other rich, developed democracies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. These countries have emitted 55% of climate pollution since 1990, while the rest of the world — the remaining low- and middle-income countries — have emitted only 45%.
But from now to 2100, that relationship is set to reverse. Through the end of the century, China and the OECD countries emit only 40% of total global emissions, according to Rhodium’s projections. The rest of the world, meanwhile, will emit 60% of global emissions.
In other words, decarbonization will soon become a challenge for middle-income countries. These countries will not be able to spend extra to buy climate-friendly technologies, but they are simply too populous for rich countries to subsidize. At the same time, these countries lack an existing fleet of fossil-fuel-consuming equipment, so they will not need to transition away from fossil fuels in the first place. Unlike in the United States, where we will have to shut down our oil-and-gas economy as we build a new one to replace it, Kenya or Indonesia can more or less build a climate-friendly middle-class economy de novo, much in the same way that in the 2000s countries “leapfrogged” landline telephones and adopted cell phones. Yet countries will only be able to leapfrog the fossil-fuel era if the climate equivalent of cell phones exist: if climate-friendly technologies are plentiful, useful, and price-competitive.
That’s not all it will take, of course. The world will have to phase down the production and consumption of fossil fuels, because the existence of climate-friendly technologies will not guarantee their use. Humanity may also have to create and enforce a strong moral taboo around burning fossil fuels, much in the same way that it has created a taboo around, say, child labor. But none of that can happen unless climate-friendly alternatives exist: Otherwise countries will ensure that they gain access to the energy that their development requires.
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Current conditions: Thousands are without power and drinking water in the French Indian Ocean territory of Réunion after Tropical Cyclone Garance made landfall with the strength of a Category 2 hurricane • A severe weather outbreak could bring tornadoes to southern states early next week • It’s 44 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Washington, D.C., where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump today to sign a minerals deal.
The 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, ended this week with countries agreeing on a crucial roadmap for directing $200 billion a year by 2030 toward protecting nature and halting global biodiversity loss. Developed nations are urged to double down on their goal to mobilize $20 billion annually for conservation in developing countries this year, rising to $30 billion by 2030. The plan also calls for further study on the relationships between nature conservation and debt sustainability. “The compromise proved countries could still bridge their differences and work together for the sake of preserving the planet, despite a fracturing world order and the dramatic retreat of the United States from international green diplomacy and foreign aid under President Donald Trump,” wrote Louise Guillot at Politico. The decision was met with applause and tears from delegates. One EU delegate said they were relieved “about the positive signal that this sends to other ongoing negotiations on climate change and plastics that we have.”
The Trump administration yesterday fired hundreds of workers across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, key agencies responsible for monitoring the changing climate and communicating extreme weather threats. The National Hurricane Center and the Tsunami Warning Center both operate under NOAA, and the layoffs come ahead of the upcoming hurricane season. “People nationwide depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.” A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the administration’s mass firings of federal workers, so the status of those affected in this latest round is unclear. Somewhat relatedly, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports that the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, was told by NOAA it had to rename a major conservation program as the “Gulf of America” or else lose federal funding.
The FBI reportedly has been questioning Environmental Protection Agency employees about $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants approved under the Biden administration, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has insisted were issued hastily and without oversight. According toThe Washington Post, the Justice Department has asked several U.S. attorneys to submit warrant requests or launch grand jury investigations, but those efforts have been rejected due to lack of evidence or “reasonable belief that a crime occurred.” “It’s certainly unusual for any case to involve two different U.S. attorney offices declining a case for lack of probable cause and to have the Department of Justice continue to shop it,” Stefan D. Cassella, a former federal prosecutor, told the Post. Several nonprofits said their Citibank accounts holding the funding have been frozen without explanation.
Some Democratic states are apparently freezing out Tesla in response to Elon Musk’s political maneuvers within the Trump administration. Tesla operates on a direct-to-consumer sales model, so it doesn’t have to go through dealerships. More than 25 states ban or restrict direct EV sales in some way. The company has been lobbying to get permission to sell directly in these states, but some Democratic lawmakers are “disgusted” by Musk’s moves in Washington and are rebuffing lobbyists or dropping their support for proposed legislation allowing direct sales.
Apple is in trouble for claiming some of its Apple Watches are “carbon neutral.” A group of customers are suing the company after learning its claims relied on carbon offsetting projects in protected national parks or heavily forested areas, instead of “genuine” carbon reductions. “The carbon reductions would have occurred regardless of Apple’s involvement or the projects’ existence,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint. “Because Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are predicated on the efficacy and legitimacy of these projects, Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false and misleading.” The lawsuit seeks damages, as well as an injunction that prevents Apple from using the carbon neutral claim to market its watches. Apple has a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Researchers in Amsterdam have examined the nests of birds known as common coots and discovered plastic items dating back to the 1990s, including a McDonald’s McChicken wrapper from 1996, and a Mars wrapper promoting the 1994 USA FIFA World Cup. “History is not only written by humans,” said Auke-Florian Hiemstra, who led the research. “Nature, too, is keeping score.”
Auke-Florian Hiemstra
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.