Climate change is already shaping what the future will look like and plunging the world into crisis. Cities are adapting to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, like superstorms and heatwaves. People are already battling more destructive wildfires, salvaging flooded homes, or migrating to escape sea level rise. Policies and economies are also changing as world leaders and businesses try to cut down global greenhouse gas emissions. How energy is produced is shifting, too — from fossil fuels to carbon-free renewable alternatives like solar and wind power. New technologies, from next-generation nuclear energy to devices that capture carbon from the atmosphere, are in development as potential solutions. The Verge is following it all as the world reckons with the climate crisis.
The industry has been navigating choppy waters lately with soaring costs forcing companies to cancel plans to develop offshore wind farms along the east coast of the US. In a big blow to the state’s clean energy plans, Ørsted nixed two major projects off the coast of New Jersey last October. Bouncing back, New Jersey just inked new deals with Leading Light Wind and Attentive Energy Two to develop a couple new offshore wind projects.
Without it, scientists wouldn’t have discovered four new emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica. Satellites were able to spot their guano from orbit — dark spots against the white ice. It’s a bit of good news after record low sea ice led to a “catastrophic breeding failure” in 2022. The penguins need stable sea ice to breed, which is harder to come by in a warming world. One of the colonies spotted from space might even be breeding site thought to have been lost that the penguins have actually re-established.
The OpenAI CEO said during an event in Davos this week that “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology,” which is expected to consume an enormous amount of electricity as it matures. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough. We need [nuclear] fusion or we need like radically cheaper solar plus storage or something at massive scale,” Altman said.
Altman and Microsoft are both backers of the startup Helion, which is trying to develop a nuclear fusion generator — considered the Holy Grail of clean energy. But after more than 70 years of research punctuated with limited breakthroughs, many experts expect that the world will be chasing that Holy Grail for decades longer. Luckily, solar energy is already the cheapest source of electricity in history — the world just needs better batteries to store it.
It expanded a tax credit today that can shave up to 30 percent off the cost of an EV charger in low-income communities and rural areas. The Departments of Transportation and Energy also announced $325 million in investments this week to fix broken EV chargers, train a workforce to expand the network of chargers across the US, and fund R&D for EV technologies.
To crack down on greenwashing, members of the European Parliament adopted a new law that bans “generic environmental claims and other misleading product information.” That includes vague labels like “environmentally friendly,” “natural,” “biodegradable,” “climate neutral,” and “eco” if companies can’t show proof of their environmental benefits. It also stops brands from fooling customers with schemes to offset greenhouse gas emissions, which don’t actually reduce pollution.
After years of opposition from the Havasupai Tribe and environmental advocates, a contested mine near the Grand Canyon started producing uranium in December. It’s one of three mines in Arizona and Utah that started operations thanks to rising uranium prices and increased interest in nuclear energy as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels, despite uranium’s legacy of pollution and contaminated water. Two more mines in Colorado and Wyoming could also start producing uranium over the next year.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced $623 million in grants for electric vehicle charging projects today. The funding comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and will benefit 47 EV charging and alternative-fueling infrastructure projects across 22 states and Puerto Rico. Back in September, DOT authorized another $100 million in funding to fix broken EV chargers that dot the US.
[USDOT]
That’s the record civil penalty diesel engine maker Cummins would pay in a proposed settlement after US and California regulators alleged that “nearly a million” Cummins-equipped 2013 – 2023 RAM pickup trucks used software to cheat on emissions testing and were excessively pollutive in real-world driving.
The company also has to spend over $325 million to offset excess NOx emissions, including by paying to replace 27 out-of-date diesel locomotives across the country.
Insurers are jacking up rates and “quiet quitting” places they deem too risky. (Yeah, it’s climate-change related.) This puts normal people in a bind — their mortgages require home insurance, for instance, or they’re legally required to have car insurance.
Planting too many trees can do more harm than good. The Verge has said this again and again with tree-planting schemes becoming a popular way for brands to paint themselves green. A big part of the problem was an initiative to plant a trillion trees spearheaded by the World Economic Forum and backed by a contested study from the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich. Apparently, the lab’s namesake, Thomas Crowther, took the stage during the recent United Nations climate conference to push countries to protect existing forests instead. “If no one had ever said, ‘Plant a trillion trees,’ I think we’d have been in a lot better space,” Crowther tells Wired.
The group of 18 youth between the ages of 8 and 17 from California say that the EPA “intentionally allows life-threatening climate pollution to be emitted by the fossil fuel sources of greenhouse gases it regulates, harming children’s health and welfare.” The suit follows a major win in Montana, where another group of young people successfully sued the state for violating their right to a clean environment.
[Los Angeles Times]
The new Office of Critical and Emerging Technology is supposed to track developments in AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, and biotech. The DOE also appointed a new Chief Artificial Intelligence, Semafor reports. Joe Biden’s October executive order on AI development established the office.
[www.semafor.com]
President Joe Biden has promised to revitalize American manufacturing. Longtime Silicon Valley residents hope hazardous chemicals won’t be coming back with it.
“There has been an explosion of fossil fuel lobbyists heading to UN talks, with nearly four times more than were granted access last year,” according to a new analysis by a coalition of environmental groups called Kick Big Polluters Out. Lobbyists for coal, oil, and gas got more passes to the conference than the total number of delegates from 10 of the countries most vulnerable to climate change (which includes Somalia, Chad, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Sudan), the Guardian reports.
[The Washington Post]
Demonstrators in inflatable Pikachu costumes showed up at international climate talks in Dubai this weekend to call on Japan to end financing for fossil fuel projects. The photos and video are giving me life this Monday morning.
That includes the US, EU, Brazil, and others that made the pledge during United Nations climate talks taking place in Dubai. Renewables like solar and wind energy are already more affordable than fossil fuels. The bigger question at the international climate talks, though, is whether countries can commit to phasing out coal, oil, and gas to reach goals set in the Paris climate accord.
During a United Nations climate conference, the US joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance. It includes more than 50 other countries that have committed to switch from “unabated coal power generation” to clean energy. But let’s keep it real. The word “unabated” changes everything. It means that power plants can continue to burn coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, as long as they install unproven technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide emissions but not other air pollutants. Such technologies are expected to make electricity more expensive, and have already wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding in failed carbon capture projects. The US recently carved out a similar loop hole for carbon capture in its federal pollution standards for power plants.
The New York Times reported that at the United Nations climate summit, Vice President Kamala Harris said a new final rule put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency will heavily curb energy companies’ methane emissions.
The EPA said in a press release that this rule will mean “a nearly 80 percent reduction” of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
As the Times notes, 50 oil and gas companies pledged similar reductions, though environmental groups are skeptical. In an open letter, 320 organizations signed an open letter criticizing the “voluntary efforts” as a “distraction from the task at hand.”
[The New York Times]
