Climate Now

This week we're joined by Dina Capiello and Julio Friedmann to talk about the latest climate news. The IEA released its global warming emissions report for 2023, and emissions continue to rise, but at a slower rate than in previous years. Meanwhile, to better track those emissions, EDF launched its long-anticipated MethaneSAT on March 4th, a satellite that will measure methane pollution worldwide.  And on March 6th the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) released its final rules to require companies to disclose their climate risk.

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Today, given route lengths and cargo capacity, it is possible to electrify 65% of medium-duty and 49% of heavy-duty trucks. Commercial fleets’ are responding to this promise, with announced commitments to electrification surpassing 140,000 vehicles in 2022 in the United States alone. Still, the number of electric fleet trucks currently on the road in the US is well under 1% of all medium and heavy duty trucks, and companies are facing a dearth of EV charging infrastructure to support the expansion of these commercial fleets. 

 The good news is, companies are emerging to fill the gaps in charging infrastructure, assuage concerns from prospective EV fleet owners, and make commercial adoption not just a possibility but an advantage. In this episode, the second installment of a three-part series on the state and future of electric fleet charging, Climate Now is joined by three industry leaders: Anthony Harrison (TeraWatt Infrastructure), Jonathan Colbert (Voltera), and Jeffrey Prosserman (Voltpost). Anthony, Jonathan, and Jeffrey join Climate Now’s James Lawler and Darren Hau to discuss what factors prospective EV fleet adopters are considering, what their companies are doing to facilitate buildout of charging infrastructure, and how that buildout means growth for many industries – not just EV charging. 

You can find the full transcript as well as sources mentioned in this episode here: https://climatenow.com/charging-electric-fleets-2-3

These interviews were recorded in Summer 2023. Since then, Voltera has published additional playbooks, which you can find here: Playbook 1, Playbook 2, Playbook 3.

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In this week's episode of Climate News Weekly, James Lawler, Julio Friedmann, and Darren Hau discuss falling natural gas prices and the impact of that on the energy transition, how leasing companies are responding to the EV industry, the need for more sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and more. 

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In the United States, nearly one quarter of national greenhouse gas emissions come from the 280 million vehicles that drive on the nations roads each year. And while fleet vehicles – including the ~5 million buses, garbage trucks, law enforcement vehicles and more that make up public fleets, and the ~6.5 million rental cars, taxis, delivery trucks, long-haul trucks, and more that make up commercial fleets – represent only a small fraction of those vehicles, they are an excellent target for early electric vehicle (EV) adoption, by virtue of their affordability through bulk pricing, their ability to demonstrate EV technology to a wide audience, and the outsized impact fleet electrification could have in reducing air pollution that stems from auto emissions. 

 But critical to the wide-spread adoption of electric fleets, is wide-spread development of charging infrastructure that will support those fleets, which have unique charging demands in comparison to the personal EV. In this first installment of a three-part series examining the state and future of electric fleet charging, Climate Now is joined by EV charging entrepreneurs Nathan King (itselectric), and Arcady Sosinov and Rob Anderson (Freewire Technologies) to explore the current EV charging landscape in the US, what makes fleet charging a challenge, and new strategies and technologies that are helping existing infrastructure meet the growing demand for EV charging. 

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On today's episode of Climate News Weekly, James Lawler and Julio Friedmann discuss the IEA's 50th anniversary, Siemens' plans to open a US-based transformer plant, Ireland's energy woes, and more.

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In the late 1970’s, English chemist Dr. James Lovelock and American biologist Dr. Lynn Margulis published a research paper hypothesizing that living organisms – without intention or agency – could have a regulatory effect on their environment that helped ensure their continued habitability. While the Gaia hypothesis they originated has remained controversial for the last four decades, it has provided a provocative explanation for why the Earth remained more or less clement over its ~4 billion year history, even though the sun that warms it has grown about 30% brighter over that time span. Of course, there have been notable catastrophic exceptions to Earth’s habitable stability – in the form of cataclysmic Snowball Earth events that froze the entire planet at least twice in its first 3.5 billion years of existence. 

 In our latest episode, Probable Futures founder Spencer Glendon explores another application of the Gaia Hypothesis, as it applies to human civilizations. In a December 2023 newsletter, Mr. Glendon examines how for much of the last 12,000 years, humans have been agents in shaping the stable global climate from which we are a beneficiary, through the expansion of agriculture and its related deforestation. By releasing CO2 at rates that balanced the cooling effects of various planetary orbital shifts, humans helped avoid the planet plunging into another Ice Age. But, much like the Snowball Earth events of the Precambrian Era, the advent and acceleration of fossil fuel combustion then shifted people’s relationship with climate from stabilizing to potentially catastrophic. The difference between the ancient and modern examples is that now – with awareness of the problem – humans can impact their environment with intention and agency. Join us as we examine how past climate stability has shaped much of humanity’s world view, and how that might impact our approach in responding to climate change now.  

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In this episode of Climate News Weekly, James Lawler sits down with Julio Friedmann and Darren Hau to discuss potential responses to California's most recent torrential rains, how both California and the UK are responding to heat pumps, the EU's new emission targets and plan, and more.

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Passage of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022 was a game changer in the United States’ effort to address climate change. The hundreds of billions of dollars the IRA has made available for clean energy and climate mitigation projects will likely double the pace of U.S. decarbonization. While this rapid expansion in clean energy development is tied to the sheer scale of the IRA (it is the largest climate spending bill ever passed), how climate spending from this bill is taking place is also a critical.  

Most of the IRA funding for climate change mitigation is in the form of generous tax credits for developing a new project, or producing clean energy. But, most developers that could receive credits for large capital projects don’t have enough tax liability to use them. As a solution, for the first time ever, IRA tax credits for clean energy development were made transferable, meaning that the credits can be sold for cash to third parties. To understand what this finance rule change means, Climate Now sat down with Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, whose startup company provides a comprehensive platform for buyers and sellers in this new transferable tax credit market. Alfred explains how tax credit transfers work, why they are so important to unlocking the financing potential of the IRA, and Crux’s role in cultivating the clean energy tax credit ecosystem. 

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On this week's episode of Climate News Weekly, James Lawler and Julio Friedmann discuss the consequences of the Biden administration's decision to delay the approval of a LNG export plant in Louisiana, some European countries' plans to transition away from coal, what happens when storms super charge windmills, and more.

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This week on Climate News Weekly, host James Lawler is joined by Julio Friedmann, Darren Hau, and Canary Media Reporter Julian Spector. They discuss the various issues facing EV users and owners during the US' recent cold snap, new developments in British carbon capture projects, concerns that recent US electricity demand will strain the grid, and the latest developments in Hawaii's newest virtual power plant. 

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Since 2019, the cost of wind and solar electricity production has been lower than that from fossil fuels, and costs are projected to continue falling well into the next decade. But for renewable energy to truly dominate the electricity market, it needs to be cheap and reliable, even when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. That means the battery market needs to grow, too.

So far, short-duration lithium batteries have dominated the market of grid-scale battery storage, but a recent report from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has highlighted the importance of developing longer-duration and lower cost storage options as a key to greater integration of renewable energy into the national grid.

 So what types of long-duration batteries are emerging as contenders for widespread, gridscale storage? And what needs to happen to incorporate these batteries into the grid? Climate Now sat down with two leaders in the emerging grid storage market: Jeff Chapin, co-founder of Haven Energy, and Antonio Baclig, founder of Inlyte Energy, to get a read on the state and future of the quickly growing battery storage industry.

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Julio Friedmann, Dina Cappiello, Darren Hau and Eric Wesoff  join James Lawler to discuss this week's climate news. Why is the Auxin solar tariff case still a thing? How did we manage to reduce global emissions while increasing GDP last year? China works to establish a vehicle-to-grid (VTG) case study.  Meanwhile, more of Biden's 2020 voters now list climate change as their top priority.  What does this mean for the 2024 election?  Nathaniel Stinnett also joins Climate Now again to explain some key climate election news.

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In this week’s episode of Climate News Weekly, Julio Friedmann, Dina Cappiello, and Darren Hau join James Lawler to discuss the US Treasury’s new guidance for what can qualify for a "green hydrogen" tax credit, Tesla no longer being the world's largest EV manufacturer, the EPA granting Louisiana the right to manage applications for deep geologic storage of CO2, and an update on a proposed Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) project in the Gulf Coast.

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In January of 2023, a headline from Boston Consulting Group read: The voluntary carbon market [VCM] is thriving. Their evidence? A 4-fold increase in the value of the market in the course of a year, to a valuation over $2 billion USD and growing. Nine months later, Reuters headlined a very different take: Carbon credit market confidence ebbs as big names retreat, citing the first dip in the number of credits used by companies in at least 7 years. What was causing such rapid growth in the VCM? What caused the decline? And, what is the chance of the VCM recovering? 

In the final episode of our 3 part examination of VCMs, we take a look at how these markets have evolved in terms of their growth and their efficacy, how they are operating right now, and what their future could look like. To shape our conversation, we are joined by a group of VCM buyers, sellers, consultants and skeptics: Katie Sierks (Microsoft), Laura Zapata (Clearloop), Dr. Colin McCormick and Alex Dolginow (Carbon Direct), and Dr. Joe Romm (Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media).

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Join us for the second of our three-part series on voluntary carbon offset markets, where we take a look at three companies that have very different strategies for removing carbon from the atmosphere. Vesta aims to increase the amount of atmospheric carbon that the ocean can absorb by infusing coastal systems with sand composed of naturally reactive minerals like olivine. Mast Reforestation generates carbon offsets by maintaining and protecting forests in wildfire-prone areas. And Climeworks uses a mechanical system to filter carbon straight from the atmosphere to sequester it underground.

For each of these companies, we will explore how their company's carbon removal techniques work, and examine whether (and how) they can provide measurable and verifiable offsets to ensure that the carbon credits they sell are providing a viable benefit to climate mitigation.

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The voluntary carbon offset market (VCM) – in which customers can pay for third-parties to avoid emitting CO2 or remove it from the atmosphere on their behalf – has existed for over 30 years, and has been controversial for nearly as long. On the one hand, the VCM can provide a path for hard-to-decarbonize sectors or businesses to reach net-zero emissions goals, and it can help finance development of important carbon removal technologies, like direct air capture. On the other hand, the market is rife with opportunities for exploitation and the sale of ineffective carbon credits.

In the first of a three-part episode exploring the current and future state of the voluntary carbon offset market, Climate Now is joined by Dr. Colin McCormick, Alex Dolginow, Derik Broekhoff and Dr. Mark Trexler – four experts in the VCM space, to examine why it is so difficult to create an effective and reliable carbon offset market, and whether there is a path forward for doing so.

For a full transcript and sources, go here: https://climatenow.com/podcast/episode-1-of-3-the-voluntary-carbon-offset-market/ 

Editor's note: At 30:12, Derik Broekhoff mentions "carbon credit rating agencies." Here are some of these which he shared with us after the recording:

• Calyx Global (https://calyxglobal.com/)
• BeZero (https://bezerocarbon.com/)
• Sylvera (https://www.sylvera.com/)

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For our last episode of Climate News Weekly this year, we're reviewing the top climate space stories of 2023 according to our series regulars Julio Friedmann, Dina Cappiello, and Darren Hau. Climate Now Host James Lawler and Managing Producer Emma Crow-Willard moderate a conversation spanning the latest COP28 deal, new developments in methane regulation and tracking, the climate crises that struck the world, EV growth, and more. Thank you for joining us, and see you next year!

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Today in Climate News Weekly, we continue our coverage of COP28 with three people who each covered a different aspect of the conference. First, we speak with Julian Moore of Climatebase to discuss this COP's focus on how climate change impacts global health, while Julio Friedmann, regular contributor, sent us an updated on-the-ground recording of this experiences in Dubai. Finally, we invited Dina Cappiello to sit down with us after her return from the conference to give us her post-COP28 reflections and a look at what we should be tracking as the conference winds down.

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How much CO2 is it possible to remove in the United States and at what cost? Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and researchers from more than a dozen institutions have completed a first-of-its-kind national assessment of carbon dioxide removal options, ranging from the role of cropland soils, carbon capture, CO2 transport, and more. In today’s episode, Climate Now interviewed several of the report’s authors to provide an overview of the negative emissions pathways—ones that physically remove CO2 from the atmosphere—that can help the United States reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, or sooner. 
 
You can read the new report and learn more at https://livermorelab.info/Roads2Removal

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On this week's episode of Climate News Weekly, host James Lawler sits down with Dr. Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Senior Staff Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, to discuss an upcoming report on carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, titled "Roads to Removal: Options for Carbon Dioxide Removal in the United States." Additionally, two of our regular Climate News contributors, Dina Cappiello and Julio Friedmann, share their impressions, thoughts, and reactions to COP28, which is taking place in Dubai in the UAE this year. Both Dina and Julio joined us both from the ground at the conference.

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