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Brazil’s Displacement Fears
Current conditions: More storms and possible tornadoes are forecast to hit Texas and the Plains, where millions of people are still without power • Cyclone Remal, the first tropical storm of the season, killed at least 23 people in India and Bangladesh • Brazilian authorities are investigating up to 800 suspected cases of waterborne illness following unprecedented flooding over the past month.THE TOP FIVE1. Biden administration invests in carbon removalThe Department of Energy on Tuesday gave $1.2 million to companies competing for a chance to sell carbon removal credits to the federal government. These 24 semifinalists, which were each...
These Carbon Removal Companies Got the Energy Department’s Stamp of Approval
The Department of Energy is advancing its first-of-a-kind program to stimulate demand for carbon removal by becoming a major buyer. On Tuesday, the agency awarded $50,000 to each of 24 semifinalist companies competing to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere on behalf of the U.S. government. It will eventually spend $30 million to buy carbon removal credits from up to 10 winners.The nascent carbon removal industry is desperate for customers. At a conference held in New York City last week called Carbon Unbound, startup CEOs brainstormed how to convince more companies to buy carbon removal as part of...
Tom Steyer Is Baffled By Warren Buffett’s Oil Bets
If you’re looking for a relatively optimistic read on the fight against climate change, Tom Steyer’s new book is out today. Called Cheaper, Better Faster: How We’ll Win the Climate War, it dives into the billionaire’s perspective on the state of the climate crisis and the clean energy solutions helping the world decarbonize. Steyer’s perspective is informed by the many hats he wears — investor, philanthropist, long shot 2020 presidential candidate, Yale man, and co-founder of the investment firm Galvanize Climate Solutions. I chatted with Steyer a few weeks ago about his book, his guiding investment principles, and how...
How Floods Are Contributing to Pregnancy Loss in India
Ashwini Khandekar was in her first few months of pregnancy when the flood came. This was July 2021, the peak of the annual monsoon season, when a downpour destroyed more than 300 houses in Ganeshwadi, a village 400 kilometers south of Mumbai in India’s Maharashtra state. Authorities instructed Khandekar and her husband to evacuate, she told me, “but I couldn’t leave my house because all the evacuation centers were full. I had nowhere to go.” Though in the end her home was spared, for the next 15 days, Khandekar lived in constant fear, praying until the waters finally abated....
A Weekend of Deadly Weather
Current conditions: Early summer heat wave threatens the South • Temperatures climb to a near-record 125 degrees Fahrenheit in Pakistan • It’s 60 degrees and rainy in Paris where the French Open is underway.THE TOP FIVE1. Over 2,000 people buried by landslide in Papua New GuineaA massive landslide reportedly buried alive more than 2,000 people in northern Papua New Guinea on Friday. Over 670 people have already been reported dead but experts warn the death toll will rise far higher as rescuers pick through the devastation. Aid workers have also reportedly struggled to reach the affected area with roads...
Why Republicans Grilled the Energy Secretary About UFOs
When Donald Trump met with a group of oil executives at Mar-a-Lago last month, his message was somewhere between “refreshingly blunt” and “blatant shakedown.” Attendees spilled to The Washington Post that Trump told the executives they should raise a billion dollars for his campaign so he could make them even richer by reducing their taxes and removing regulations on their industry. One can’t help but wonder if any of them thought to themselves that as appealing as that kind of deal might be, there’s no reason for them to be desperate. After all, the Biden years have actually been quite...
Biden’s Long Game on Climate
Here’s the problem with President Joe Biden’s climate policy: From a certain point of view, it makes no sense.Take his electricity policy. At the top level, Biden has committed to eliminating greenhouse-gas pollution from the power sector by 2035. He wants to accomplish this largely by making clean energy cheaper — that’s the goal of the Inflation Reduction Act, of course — and he has also changed federal rules so it’s slightly easier to build power lines and large-scale renewable projects. He has also added teeth to that goal in the form of new Environmental Protection Agency rules cracking...
Let There Be Cloud Brightening
Current conditions: Battered Midwest in for more bad weather this weekend • Tornadoes keep hitting the Great Plains • A heat wave in New Delhi that pushed temperatures above 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday is expected to last several more days.THE TOP FIVE 1. Red states challenge climate lawsuitsNineteen Republican-led states are asking the Supreme Court to stop Democrat-led states from trying to force oil and gas companies to pay for the impacts of climate change. Rhode Island in 2018 became the first state to sue major oil companies for climate damages and has since been joined by California,...
If You Want a Small EV Box, You’re in Luck
Sometimes, a car’s name tells you all you need to know.When Kia turned out its first electric vehicles in the 2010s, the models amounted to gasoline cars retrofitted for battery power. The names, like Soul EV and Niro EV, implied as much. But once the Korean automaker started to make purpose-built electrics, it adopted a very literal naming system — one that outlines its vision to dominate the electric car industry.First came the EV6. With racy styling and impressive power numbers, EV6 was built to compete in the increasingly crowded space of two-row electric crossovers that start north of...
We’re Worrying About Hurricanes Wrong
When is an announcement less an announcement than a confirmation? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2024 hurricane season outlook, issued Thursday morning, might be one such case. For the past several weeks, hurricane agencies around the country have been warning of an extremely active, potentially historic season due to a confluence of factors including the record-warm water in the Atlantic Main Development Region and the likely start of a La Niña, which will make the wind conditions more favorable to Atlantic storm formation. With the Atlantic Hurricane Season set to start a week from Saturday, on June 1,...
How Bad Will Hurricane Season Be?
Current conditions: Thousands of people in the Midwest are still without power in the aftermath of this week’s severe thunderstorms • A heat wave along the Gulf Coast could break temperature records over Memorial Day weekend • The UN says droughts, floods threaten a “humanitarian catastrophe” in southern Africa. THE TOP FIVE1. NOAA to release its Atlantic hurricane forecastThis morning, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will announce their predictions for the coming storm season in the Atlantic Ocean. Based on what we know already, it’s shaping up to be a doozy.Researchers at Colorado State University, which has...
The Venture Capitalist Bullish on AI for Climate Change
Last month I wrote about potential overhype in the artificial intelligence space, asking a series of investors whether the hubbub around generative AI had current, tangible implications in the climate sphere. What I mostly heard was: Not yet. Many acknowledged that generative AI could plausibly do fundamental scientific research — creating new chemical and molecular formulations that could have broad implications for climate tech and beyond — but most didn’t think we were there yet.Not everyone shares that perspective. Obvious Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that focuses on the three pillars of planetary, human, and economic health,...
Biden’s Heat Pump Rebates Are Actually 100 Different Programs
It’s been nearly two years since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, and two of its programs designed to encourage home electrification and energy efficiency — worth a combined $8.8 billion — are still not operational. The delay has already caused consternation among homeowners who can’t understand why they still don’t know when the rebates will be available or what they will cover. Now it’s becoming apparent that these programs could look quite different state by state. This is, to some extent, by design. The rebates will be distributed by state governments, who must first apply to the Department of...
There’s an Odd Bipartisan Coalition Growing Behind a Particular Type of Carbon Tax
While climate policy has become increasingly partisan, there also exists a strange, improbably robust bipartisan coalition raising support for something like a carbon tax.There are lots of different bills and approaches floating out there, but the most popular is the “border adjustment” tax, basically an emissions-based tariff, which, as a concept, is uniquely suited to resolve two brewing trade issues. One is the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will force essentially everybody else to play by its carbon pricing system. Then there’s the fact that China powers its world-beating export machine with coal, plugged into an electrical...
Heatmap News Announces New Pro Platform for Clean Energy Developers and Investors
New York, NY – Heatmap News today announced it is doubling down on coverage of clean energy project development and investment with the launch of Heatmap Pro, a new professional platform for clean energy sponsors, decision makers, and stakeholders. Heatmap Pro will offer two subscription tiers, including a premium news subscription featuring reporting and analysis of the major projects and political trends shaping the clean energy development landscape. In tandem, a subscription to the Pro platform integrates 15+ data sources to forecast local support and opposition facing clean energy projects anywhere in the United States. “The projects that will...
The Rich Get Richer Off of Climate Aid
Current conditions: Strong thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail on Tuesday killed multiple people and knocked out power across the Midwest • Heavy rain is exacerbating ongoing flooding in southern Brazil • Miami is having its hottest May on record. THE TOP FIVE1. Rich countries are enriching themselves with climate aid The world’s developed countries have pledged to spend $100 billion per year helping developing nations grapple with the effects of climate change, but many of them are channeling economic benefits back to themselves, according to a new report from Reuters. France, Japan, and Germany — the three countries that reported issuing the...
The U.S. Has Gotten 3 Direct Air Capture Plants in 13 Months
A new direct air capture facility built by the Alphabet-backed 280 Earth is officially plucking carbon dioxide from the surrounding air along the Columbia River in Oregon, the company announced on Monday. It’s the third-largest “direct air capture” plant operating in the United States and the latest entrant in the race to design the cheapest, most efficient machine to strip the heat-trapping gas from the atmosphere. The small-scale demonstration project, which neighbors a Google data center in a city called The Dalles, is expected eventually to capture carbon at a rate of 500 tons per year. The two other U.S....
How to Unlock Super Cheap Rooftop Solar
Why isn’t rooftop solar cheaper in America? In Australia in 2024, a standard rooftop system can cost as little as 90 cents per watt. In the U.S., a similar system might go for $4 per watt. If America could come even close to Australia’s rooftop solar prices, then we would be able to decarbonize the power system much faster than we are now. Mary Powell has the answers. She is the chief executive officer of Sunrun, a $2.6 billion company that is the country’s largest rooftop solar and battery installer. Sunrun has set up or managed more than 900,000 rooftop...
Biden Has Already Lost the Climate Debate to Trump
At 9 p.m. ET on June 27, Americans who haven’t already set their out-of-office responders or hit the road to beat summer weekend traffic or otherwise made plans more exciting than watching two old men insult each other might find themselves tuning into the first presidential debate.It does not promise to be a particularly productive evening of television, however. Weekly Economist/YouGov polls conducted online since last April show that of the 49,000 voters who responded, just 3% of respondents voted for one candidate in 2020 and plan to vote for the other in 2024. (Of those swing voters, two-thirds...
It’s Getting Hot in Houston. Thousands Are Without Power.
Current conditions: Schools are closed in Delhi due to intense heat • A freak storm dropped fist-sized hail stones on a city in northern Poland • Forecasters are expecting more tornadoes in the Midwest today. THE TOP FIVE1. Houston power outages persist as temperatures soar Many households remain without power in Houston after the severe storms that tore through the area last Thursday. About 150,000 people were still waiting for the lights to come back on as of Monday night, and the weather is getting hot, with temperatures lingering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the heat index nearing 100F. Anyone without...
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