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The World’s Most Polluted Countries
Current conditions: Flash floods inundated parts of northern Iraq • Fire weather watches are in effect across several states, from Iowa to Maryland • Today marks the official start of spring. THE TOP FIVE1. Just 7 countries met WHO pollution limits in 2023 A region’s air should contain no more than 5 micrograms per cubic meter of the dangerous pollutant known as PM2.5, according to World Health Organization recommendations. In Bangladesh last year, the average concentration was 79.9 micrograms, making it the most polluted country in the world. Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, and Burkina Faso also had alarmingly high levels of PM2.5,...
This Carbon Removal Startup Is Eyeing a Major Price Milestone
Pretty much every startup that’s building machines to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stash it underground has claimed it will be able to get its costs down to less than $100 per ton — eventually. But a new contender in the race, a San Francisco-based company called Spiritus, is making a compelling case that it could get there faster. On Tuesday, Spiritus announced plans to build its first direct air capture, or “DAC” project in central Wyoming, nicknamed Orchard One. The company will start small but ultimately wants to expand the facility to capture 2 million tons...
8 Down-Ballot Races That Could Shape America’s Climate Future
In 2015, just one state had a goal of reaching 100% clean energy; today, over half the American population lives in states that do. That progress is thanks in large part to voters, who’ve prioritized electing candidates that support renewable energy, electric vehicles, climate justice, and other green policies. And who’s making those policies? The people at the bottom of the ticket — candidates for the kind of local and state-level offices that do most of the nitty-gritty climate policymaking in this country. Here is a representative, albeit far from exhaustive, list of eight I’ll be keeping my eye on...
Is It Better to Save Your Solar, or Sell It?
The early adopters of DIY solar had to pay a premium to put panels on their rooftops, sure — but at least they had a simple way to recoup that investment. Every kilowatt of self-generated sun power was one they didn’t have to buy from the power company. And for houses with big solar setups, so big they could satisfy their own needs and then some, selling their excess electricity back onto the grid could even be lucrative. This strategy, called net metering, turned lots of homeowners and businesses into little power plants. These days, though, utilities are pushing back....
Here Come the EPA’s New Tailpipe Rules
Current conditions: Freeze warnings are in place across many states in the south east • Troplical Cyclone Megan made landfall in Australia • A neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro reportedly recorded a temperature of 144 degrees Fahrenheit as Brazil swelters in an extreme heat wave. THE TOP FIVE1. EPA’s new tailpipe emissions rules expected this week The Environmental Protection Agency this week is expected to officially announce new tailpipe emissions rules that will dramatically reshape the transportation sector over the coming years. If carmakers are to meet the EPA’s new rules, electric vehicles would need to make up a much larger...
Why D.C. Is Hot for Geothermal
The political coalition that has been assembled in support of advanced geothermal is bipartisan, but uni-regional: If you drew a broad strip from Las Vegas to Albuquerque and then dragged it north to the Canadian border, you would envelop Utah and Idaho (not to mention Arizona and big chunks of Wyoming and Montana). This stretch of John McPhee country includes some of biggest swaths of federal land — and some of the hottest rocks beneath it — in the country. And so Senators Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Mike Lee of Utah, and James Risch...
Why Geothermal Is the Carbon-Free Energy Democrats and Republicans Can Agree On
The political coalition that has been assembled in support of advanced geothermal is bipartisan, but uni-regional: If you drew a broad strip from Las Vegas to Albuquerque and then dragged it north to the Canadian border, you would envelop Utah and Idaho (not to mention Arizona and big chunks of Wyoming and Montana). This stretch of John McPhee country includes some of biggest swaths of federal land — and some of the hottest rocks beneath it — in the country. And so Senators Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Mike Lee of Utah, and James Risch...
A Conversation With Biden’s Former Top Economic Advisor, Part 2
Few people have shaped Bidenomics more than Brian Deese. From 2021 to 2023, Deese led the National Economic Council at the White House, serving as President Joe Biden’s top economic aide. He’s now an Innovation Fellow at MIT, where he helps lead the new Clean Investment Monitor project. In part two of Shift Key’s conversation with Deese, we discuss electric vehicles, the future of U.S.-China trade relations, and whether the Big Three automakers can survive. Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also add the show’s RSS feed...
Rivian Is Turning Into the Subaru of EVs
When the Rivian R3 rolled onto the stage in Orange County, car fans saw a flicker of the past. The truncated EV reminded automotive Twitter and Threads of throwback off-road hatchbacks with unusual shapes — the Lancia Delta, AMC Gremlin, Lada Niva, and even the maligned Yugo. It reminded me, in spirit more than silhouette, of the Subaru Outback from a quarter-century ago. Remember the old Outback? Before it blew up and became just another crossover in a sea of indistinguishable cars, the Outback was a two-tone granola wagon with lesbian cred and font stylings borrowed from Raiders of the...
Hybrid Sales Are Booming
Current conditions: Deadly tornadoes ripped through Ohio and Indiana overnight • Thai tourist hotspot Chiang Mai is the most polluted city in the world today • The Indian Wells tennis tournament in California was suspended after a swarm of bees descended on the court. THE TOP FIVE 1. Construction is complete on South Fork Wind farm The first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the United States is finally up and running. South Fork Wind’s 12th and final turbine was installed last month, and the project is now delivering power to the Long Island grid, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced yesterday. At...
Carbon Removal Is Getting Gamified
The Department of Energy wants YOU to purchase carbon removal. Well, maybe not you, personally, but your city, state, or employer. And as an incentive, it’s turning the buying process into the equivalent of an arcade game, inviting companies to try to make it to the top of a new carbon removal buyers leaderboard.The agency soft-launched the concept on Thursday under the banner of the “Voluntary Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Challenge.” There’s no prize money associated with the challenge — it’s not even clear whether there will be any winners. The goal is to encourage companies to make “bigger...
Biden’s Climate Agenda Is Actually Popular
As President Joe Biden prepares to run for re-election, one fact has eluded much notice: His climate change policies are pretty popular. In an exclusive Heatmap poll of 1,000 Americans conducted by Benenson Strategy Group late last year, most respondents backed the core ideas behind Biden’s climate policies. They expressed the most support of ideas meant to beef up the country’s manufacturing economy and build more renewable electricity.Nearly 90% of Americans, for instance, support encouraging domestic manufacturing. They also support using tax incentives to make homes more energy efficient (85%), funding research into carbon dioxide removal (81%), investing in...
24 Hours In a City Being Invaded By Rhinos
Ganesh Paudel packs a wad of chewing tobacco as he talks about the rhinoceros attack. “When the rhino charged, we were in a boat,” he tells me. “The rhino was sitting in the water, then it hit me and broke my knee, broke the hand of another guide and gored a tourist” — he points — “through an eye.”As we chat, another rhino wades in a stream just a short way away. Paudel works as a nature guide, but we’re not in nature today — we’re standing under a bridge that connects to a busy highway in Chitwan, a...
The DOE Is Putting More Money into Clean Hydrogen
Current conditions: New wildfires are spreading along Chile’s Pacific Coast • Flooding has killed more than 60 people in Afghanistan over the last three weeks • It will be 70 degrees Fahrenheit today in Indianapolis, Indiana, where signs of spring have emerged 14 days early. THE TOP FIVE1. DOE announces $750 million for clean hydrogen R&D The Department of Energy announced yesterday a $750 million injection into 52 hydrogen research and development projects aimed at bringing down the price of clean hydrogen and making it a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Most of the money will go toward electrolyzers, the devices...
What Does Amazon Want With Nuclear?
When Talen Energy, which owns a 90% interest in the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Northeastern Pennsylvania, announced it was selling a data center site adjacent to its power plant to Amazon Web Services, it raised some eyebrows in the energy world. The surprise was not because a large tech company made a big deal with a carbon-free power provider, or even that a tech company made a deal to buy power generated by a nuclear power plant. It was because Amazon was making this deal. Amazon is a massive buyer of renewable power — it claims to be...
When Will Methane Emissions Fall?
Current conditions: Storms dropped hail stones big enough to leave craters in the ground in Argentina • Denver is expecting more than a foot of snow • A wildfire outbreak is possible in Texas and Oklahoma. THE TOP FIVE1. IEA: Methane emissions from energy still high but could fall soon Methane emissions from energy production around the world reached a record high in 2019, and have remained at that level ever since, with 2023 being no exception, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2024 Global Methane Tracker. Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps more heat than carbon dioxide, and is...
A Conversation With Biden’s Former Top Economic Advisor, Part 1
Few people have shaped Bidenomics more than Brian Deese. From 2021 to 2023, Deese led the National Economic Council at the White House, serving as President Joe Biden’s top economic aide during such events as the post-pandemic recovery, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Before that, Deese was global head of sustainable investing for Blackrock and a senior political advisor to President Barack Obama. He’s now the Institute Innovation Fellow at MIT, where he helps lead the Clean Investment Monitor, a project that tracks investment in climate technology and infrastructure across the U.S. economy. On this...
Knitting a Fuzzy Record of Climate Change
Trina Messer knew the weather in Dallas-Forth Worth had been unusually warm this year, but she hadn’t anticipated needing her clay-colored yarn in February. “Today we are expecting a high in the 90s!!!,” she marveled in a Facebook update last week, adding regretfully, “I was hoping for more blues, but it is what it is.” Messer, a retired educator of 30 years, started crocheting in 2022, the natural evolution of a knitting habit she’d picked up while bored during the pandemic. So far, she has made several scarves and hats, a big cardigan “almost like a coat,” and even a...
Biden Raved About EVs to the Special Counsel: ‘Damn, They’re Quick’
It is the great Faustian bargain of the American presidency: To lead the world’s most powerful nation, you have to give up driving forever.For some leaders, this sacrifice can be excruciating. Given the opportunity to climb behind the wheel of a Mack truck in 2017, then-President Trump honked the horn, mimed driving, and was reported generally looking like “he wanted to steal it.” Later, in 2020, during a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the president gazed longingly at some “nice trucks” nearby and wondered aloud, “You think I could hop into one of them and drive it away? I’d love...
Heatmap News Named Hottest in Sustainability on Adweek’s 2024 Media Hot List
New York, NY: Climate news website Heatmap News was named Hottest in Sustainability on Adweek’s 2024 Media Hot List, released today. Adweek’s Hot List honors the best in media across TV, media, digital, and tech. Writing about Heatmap, Adweek wrote: “Less than a year later, it’s become a critical part of the climate news landscape – boasting 2.5 million unique online readers, around half a million monthly readers and over 50,000 newsletter subscribers.” Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Nico Lauricella said: "On behalf of Heatmap, we are grateful to Adweek for this incredible recognition. Over the past year, Heatmap has carved out...
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