WIND: A developer begins site investigation surveys for its proposed 1,600 MW Canopy offshore wind farm off Humboldt County. (Windpower). [350 Humboldt has met with Canopy and attended a presentation about the site survey to begin this summer. If you are interested in being involved in monitoring and promoting floating offshore wind please email Dan at [email protected] ]
The California Service Corps includes the climate jobs program as well as California College Corps, which began in 2022 and offers $10,000 in tuition subsidies to low-income college students in exchange for part-time work on climate change, food insecurity and tutoring programs. And there’s the Youth Job Corps, which employs underserved young people in community service. These programs, along with California’s longstanding AmeriCorps program, enroll 10,000 service members a year, making it the nation’s largest service force — even bigger than the Peace Corps, said Josh Fryday, the state’s chief service officer and head of California Volunteers.
Florida is in a state of emergency after downpours flooded Miami streets, soaked Fort Lauderdale with its rainiest June day ever, grounded hundreds of flights and forced officials to issue rare emergency flood warnings. And on Thursday more rain is on the way, likely pushing losses over $1 billion. “It’s uncanny how this event resembles the epic flooding in Fort Lauderdale from April 2023,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and author with Yale Climate Connections. “Getting two events in less than 15 months should be wake-up call for anyone who’s been dozing through the overlapping insurance and climate crises in South Florida.”
Let them eat heat. Reuters reports that, ahead of this year’s United Nations climate summit, countries can’t agree on the size of a package to help the developing world adapt to climate change, or how to fund it.
DROUGHT RIOTS: Riots have erupted over water shortages in the drought-stricken Algerian city of Tiaret, according to the Associated Press. It described the fossil-fuel-rich nation as being in “among the world’s worst-hit regions by climate change”.
The nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently announced that it will spend millions of dollars on studying geoengineering strategies to combat climate change, reports The New York Times. Though the group has previously expressed skepticism around geoengineering, EDF’s associate chief scientist Lisa Dilling told the Times that “this is something that I don’t think we can just ignore.”
California regulators find a botched oil and gas pipeline pressure test contaminated a city’s drinking water with petroleum last week.(Bakersfield Californian)
Banks, insurers and asset managers seem ever more convinced that they will not achieve ambitious net-zero targets by 2050, according to an energy consultant who specializes in sustainability. Garrett Delk of Pickering Energy Partners cites the fact that financial firms are quitting multinational climate associations like the Net Zero Banking Alliance and Net Zero Insurance Alliance and that energy security has become a major theme in geopolitics. He also foresees a growing dichotomy between Europe and the U.S., with American regional banks increasing their lending to oil and gas companies while their European rivals pull back from that sector.
Another Giant Bank Says It Won’t Issue Bonds for Oil and Gas
Crédit Agricole recently joined its French competitor BNP Paribas in announcing that it would no longer get involved in issuing bonds for oil and gas companies. The move was hailed by climate activists since the bank is one of the largest in the world and Crédit Agricole has financed projects by energy giants TotalEnergies and Eni.
Some American banks stand out for their climate friendly policies. These are the banks that made the list at Business Insider:
- Amalgamated Bank — which has pledged “to not lend to fossil fuel companies” and says that 32% of its loan portfolio goes to “climate solutions.”
- Atmos Financial — which says that it allocates 100% of its loans to clean energy projects.
- Clean Energy Credit Union — it has vowed not to invest in fossil fuel projects and says that it finances a plethora of clean-energy projectsfrom solar PV projects to electric vehicles.
- Spring Bank (NYC) — which says that it recently went carbon neutraland offset over 192,874 kg of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).
Two of the largest wind farms currently under construction will be made possible by massive transmission lines stretching hundreds of miles. On Wyoming, the 3.5 GW Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind project will produce power and send it more than 700 miles to Arizona, Nevada, and California via the TransWest Express transmission line. Another 3.5 GW project under construction in New Mexico—SunZia Wind—will send power 500 miles to Arizona and California.
The average 5 to 20 MW solar project cost $1.26 per watt in 2022, according to an analysis by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). By comparison, large-scale projects—those ranging from 100 to 400 MW—cost $0.82 per watt. In other words, building a big project can get you 46% more watts of capacity for every dollar spent. (Researchers have found similar economies of scale in utility-scale wind and battery projects).
The European Green Party suffered losses and far-right parties made gains in last week’s European Parliament elections. The outcome suggests that climate change is less of a priority for voters across the bloc amid the cost-of-living crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the new parliament is unlikely to dismantle Europe’s key climate goals, say researchers. “When you look at polling data, there’s not much climate scepticism left in Europe,” says environmental economist Aurélien Saussay. Nature | 5 min read
Regulators in the South Coast Air Quality Management District voted to approve a first-in-the-nation measure that aims to sharply reduce emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) from more than 1 million large water heaters, small boilers, and process heaters in the area. The district includes large sections of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, and it encompasses the most ozone-polluted region in the country. The rules are designed to ramp up over time. Starting in 2026, smaller units in new buildings must meet zero-emission limits. The last required to make the switch are existing facilities with high-temperature units, which have until 2033. The drawn-out timeline is meant, in part, to give manufacturers of electric heat pumps and thermal-storage solutions enough time to scale up their production to meet the new demand.
The Biden administration on Friday backed off its proposal for a dramatic rise in fuel economy requirementsfor SUVs and pickup trucks, in yet another move that risks deflating the climate activists whose enthusiasm could hold the key to the president’s reelection. The new Department of Transportation rule still calls for passenger vehicles to get more than 50 miles from each gallon of gasoline — but the improvements for the industry’s popular gas-guzzlers will be significantly less than the department had proposed a year ago. The difference will cause an estimated 200 million more metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide to be spewed into the atmosphere through 2050, compared with the previous plan.
The big picture…
