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Climate Change Blog 36

By Carl Howard posted 01-01-2021 05:00 AM

  

Climate Change Blog 36 – Happy New Year! 2021

Facts on the Ground:

Australia suffered catastrophic wildfires in 2020. In early December 2020 the wildfire season began anew, and the question is, ‘how bad will it be?’ The first major blaze blackened roughly half of Fraser Island, an idyllic getaway north of Brisbane, and led to evacuation orders. As temperatures continue to rise, the risk of record-breaking fires not only never goes away, it keeps increasing.

Fraser Island saw fewer thunderstorms in November than usual, and those arid conditions have been exacerbated by heat. It was Australia’s hottest November on record. Forecasts also predict that maximum temperatures from December to February are likely to be above the long-term mean for parts of southeast and far west Australia, as well as along the Queensland coastline.

What that translates to is greater risk. The appearance of a heat wave or two or three this summer could dry out many areas and make whatever fires do emerge even harder to fight.

Scientists observe that this is climate change in action. With average global temperatures having increased by one degree Celsius since the preindustrial era, the variability of weather patterns is intensifying, especially in Australia, the world’s most arid inhabited continent.

What once looked like an anomaly can quickly become the new normal. “With last year’s Australian fires season, combined with the ones in California last year, you can start to say this is what the future is going to look like because of climate change,” said Richard Thornton, who runs the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Council. “The fires of last year were unprecedented, but they are no longer that way. Now that we’ve had those fires, they have to be part of the planning.”

A recent report on last year’s fires from an independent Royal Commission acknowledged that climate change had already significantly increased the risk of natural disasters in Australia. It recommended a wide range of changes to how the country fights fires, calling for more aircraft and better coordination of data and communications equipment.

Very little of what the commission requested has been put into practice or even approved. Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to maintain that his government’s effort to combat climate change — widely viewed as underwhelming and weak by the country’s climate scientists — is enough.

Emergency managers say the broader challenge, whether it’s in the US or Australia, is getting the general population of fire-prone areas to recognize the changed environment and the risks.

Global temperatures again set records in November as the highest ever. Scientists with the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that global temperatures in November were 0.1C (about 0.2F) above the previous record-holders in 2016 and 2019. November 2020 was 0.8C (1.5F) higher than the average from 1981 to 2010.  Warm conditions persisted over large areas of the planet, with temperatures the highest above average across Northern Europe, Siberia, and the Arctic Ocean. Much of the US was warmer than average as well.

 “These records are consistent with the long-term warming trend of the global climate,” the service’s director, Carlo Buontempo, said. “All policymakers who prioritize mitigating climate risks should see these records as alarm bells.”

In September, the world entered La Niña, a phase of the climate pattern that also brings El Niño and affects weather across the world. La Niña is marked by cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean. Last month scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that La Niña had strengthened, meaning that surface temperatures had further declined.

While La Niña can bring warmer conditions to certain regions — notably, the southern US — generally it has an overall cooling effect. Last week, in releasing a World Meteorological Organization climate report that noted that 2020 was on track to be one of the three warmest years ever, the organization’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said that La Niña’s cooling effect “has not been sufficient to put a brake on this year’s heat.”

Marybeth Arcodia, a doctoral student studying climate dynamics at the University of Miami, said there are other elements that affect climate, including natural oscillations of wind, precipitation, air pressure and ocean temperatures over different time scales. “There’s just so many different climate factors at play that could mask that La Niña signal,” Ms. Arcodia said.

But the biggest element, according to Ms Arcodia, is “that the average global temperature is increasing at an unprecedented rate due to human influences. That’s the main factor here. So, we will continue to see these record-breaking temperatures even when we have climate phases, like La Niña, that could bring cooler temperatures.”

Positive Developments Globally for the New Year

It’s a new year, so let’s address some positive trends. Many countries are acting to address climate change. The European Union agreed to cut its collective GHG emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, a critical step toward its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050. The agreement included a $2.2 trillion budget with billions earmarked for the transition to a greener economy (“the Green Deal”).

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other heavily coal-dependent nations said it was unfair that they be held to the same standard as other nations whose economies already drew on a wider mix of energy sources. The compromise is that the target will be reached by the bloc collectively, which gives coal-dependent countries more time to transition to renewables.

The legal provisions that would ensure compliance must be addressed in coming months and the agreement must be endorsed by the European Commission and the European Parliament, which has been pushing for more ambitious cuts.

Five years ago, 195 nations agreed to the Paris accord. Trump withdrew the US from it, but President-elect Biden plans to rejoin the agreement on his Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. And, two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of severe consequences, coastal inundations, droughts, wildfires and human displacement among other catastrophes, if GHG emissions were not reduced by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and 100% by 2050.

Reaching these goals will require an immense, unified global effort. While the US has been absent at the federal level, thanks to the work of cities, states, businesses and investors, substantial progress has been made despite opposing efforts by the Trump administration. Thirty states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have “renewable portfolio standards” which require electric utilities to obtain a certain amount of their power from renewable sources, and nine of these require 100% clean electricity, mostly by 2050. Many cities have adopted similar goals. At least 260 major corporations have pledged to buy 100% renewable electricity.

The cost of solar panels has fallen 89% in the past decade, and the cost of wind turbines has dropped 59%. The International Energy Agency projects that 90% of all new electricity capacity globally in 2020 will be from clean energy — up from 80% in 2019, when total worldwide investment in wind and solar was already more than three times greater than investments in gas and coal. And, over the next five years, the IEA projects that clean energy will constitute 95% of all new power generation globally. The IEA called solar power “the new king” in global energy supply as it is “the cheapest source of electricity in history.”

This decline in renewable energy costs is pushing utilities to expedite the early retirement of existing fossil fuel plants and replace them with solar and wind, plus batteries. This past summer, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Sierra Club reported that clean energy is now cheaper than 79% of US coal plants and 39% of coal plants in the rest of the world, trends projected to increase rapidly. Other analyses show that solar and wind energy combined with batteries is already less expensive than most new natural gas plants.

Many global investors have seen these developments and are shifting capital from climate-destroying businesses to sustainable solutions. This movement by some of the world’s largest investment firms reflects the fact that fossil fuels have long been extremely poor investments. Thirty asset managers overseeing $9 trillion announced their intention to pursue an agenda of net-zero emissions by 2050.

NY State’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, said that the state would divest its $226 billion employee pension fund from gas and oil companies if they don’t propose a plan within four years aligned with the goals of the Paris climate accord. “Achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 will put the fund in a strong position for the future mapped out in the Paris Agreement.”

NYS has joined the global divestment campaign which includes endowments and portfolios worth more than $14 trillion. Comptroller Scott Stringer announced in 2018 that the NYC pension funds would divest $5 billion in fossil fuel investments from its nearly $200 billion pension fund over five years.

EELS may recall that in 2016, DiNapoli was our luncheon speaker at the annual meeting in NYC. I asked him why he hadn’t used the D-word in his remarks, and he said he preferred having a seat at the table with the fossil fuel companies, working from the inside. But money walking talks louder than words spoken.

Exxon Mobil, long a major funder for grossly unethical climate denial propaganda, recently wrote down the value of its fossil fuel reserves by $20 billion, adding to the unbelievable $170 billion in oil and gas assets written down by the industry in 2020. In 2019 BP also acknowledged that some of its reserves “won’t see the light of day,” and this summer it committed to a 10-fold increase in low-carbon investments this decade to achieve net-zero emissions.

For decades Exxon Mobil has offered empty, deceitful words. In December 2017, after prodding from DiNapoli, he said that Exxon Mobil agreed to “analyze how worldwide efforts to adopt the Paris Agreement goals for reducing global warming might impact its business.” But then Exxon shared its absurd conclusion that the Paris Agreement would have no effect on its business and that it intended to continue business as usual. (Recently leaked documents have revealed that Exxon was secretly planning to significantly increase its emissions and production despite its assurances to the contrary.)

Investors, like the fossil fuel industry, have milked every last dime of profit. But the industry has been the worst-performing sector of the American economy for years and investors are beginning to look elsewhere. With the industry’s decline in profitability, so too is its political clout diminishing.

BP has been as two-faced as Exxon. Before the Deepwater Horizon spill of 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP had brazenly declared that it was going “Beyond Petroleum.” We don’t hear that anymore. What we do hear is the recognition that it will cut its oil and gas production by 40% this decade and invest in renewable energy.

“This coming decade,” BP’s CEO Darren Woods said, “is critical for the world in the fight against climate change, and to drive the necessary change in global energy systems will require action from everyone.”

What’s driving these changes, is reality. In 2013 Exxon was the world’s largest company, but this past Fall it wasn’t even the biggest energy company as it was briefly surpassed in market capitalization by NextEra Energy, a Florida-based renewables provider.

Exxon intends to slash its exploration and capital expenditure budget from a planned $30-35 billion in 2021 to barely half that. The company said it would reduce emissions by 15 to 20% by 2025 compared with 2016 levels and eliminate “routine” flaring by 2030 to reduce CO2 emissions from the burning of unwanted natural gas released during oil production. Such a rapid decline follows the path of the coal industry over the past decade. DiNapoli jumped on that wagon too by divesting the NYS pension fund from coal this past summer.

The final sighting of the power and influence of the coal industry was seen in the brief take-over of EPA headquarters behind Trump who promised to bring back coal. So too we may be seeing the decline of the influence of the oil and gas lobby in most states and nationally. Biden’s election reflects this loss of power and influence and perhaps his ability to steer the US in a new direction will be newly free of this long-lasting misdirection as well.

Youthful climate activists, such as Greta Thunberg, are marching and striking every week (even virtually during the pandemic). In the US, more than 50 college conservative and Republican organizations have petitioned the Republican National Committee to recognize the reality of climate change or risk losing younger voters.

President Xi Jinping has pledged that China will achieve net-zero carbon emissions in 2060. Leaders in Japan and South Korea said that their countries will reach net-zero emissions in 2050. Denmark, the EU’s largest producer of gas and oil, has banned further exploration for fossil fuels. Britain has pledged a 68% reduction by 2030, along with a ban on sales of vehicles powered only by fossil fuels.

The cost of batteries for electric vehicles has dropped by 89% over the past decade, and these vehicles will cost roughly the same as internal-combustion vehicles within two years in key segments of vehicle markets in the US, Europe and Australia, followed soon by China and much of the rest of the world. Sales of internal-combustion passenger vehicles worldwide may have peaked in 2017.

Biden’s Path Forward

Biden intends to pursue the decarbonization of the US electricity grid by 2035, indeed it is the centerpiece of his economic plan. If the US accelerates its conversion to EVs and ends subsidies for fossil fuels, the nation has a shot at achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. But much more must be done.

A recent study in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy noted that investments in sustainable energy produces three times as many new jobs as investments in fossil fuels. Between 2014 and 2019, solar jobs grew five times as fast in the US as average job growth. Many more jobs would be created if the country begins building the staggering amount of new energy infrastructure necessary over the next 10 years, including laying down steel and concrete at an unprecedented pace.

A Princeton University study released mid-December concluded that reaching net zero by 2050 was technically feasible and affordable. One path relies solely on renewable energy, another includes developing technologies for nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration. Each approach carries different social and economic trade-offs.

The researchers identified a common set of drastic changes that the US would need to make over the next decade to achieve zero emissions. That initial groundwork must start now, and existing work must accelerate.

Energy companies will install record-breaking 42 gigawatts of new wind turbines and solar panels in 2020. This annual pace needs to nearly double over the next decade, and beyond, transforming the landscapes in states like Florida or Missouri.

The capacity of the nation’s electric grid must expand roughly 60% by 2030 to handle vast amounts of wind and solar power, which requires thousands of miles of new power lines crisscrossing the country.

Car dealerships must transform. EVs are 2% of new sales. By 2030, over 50% of new cars sold must be battery-powered, with that share rising thereafter.

Most homes today are heated by natural gas or oil. In the next decade nearly 25% must utilize efficient electric heat pumps, double today’s numbers.

Virtually all the 200-remaining coal-burning power plants must close by 2030.

No cement plant currently sequesters its carbon emissions underground, and there are no facilities sustainably producing hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel. By the mid-2020s, this must change.

“The scale of what we have to build in a very short time frame surprised me,” said Christopher Greig, a senior scientist at Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. “We can do this, we can afford this, but now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and figure out how to get it done.”

To achieve net-zero, 90% of the US energy supply must derive from renewable sources by 2050. More progress must be made over the next decade by rapidly scaling up the above-noted solutions. Doing so would require $2.5 trillion in additional investments by governments and industry by 2030.

The study found plausible options for remaining obstacles in ridding the economy of its reliance on fossil fuels. Wind and solar power can be stored in batteries for use at night and windless days. Nuclear power can be used from operating plants until retirement and natural-gas plants run as needed may be modified to burn clean hydrogen (this technology does not yet exist at scale). Millions of acres of farmland could grow switchgrass, a more sustainable source of biofuels instead of currently used corn-based ethanol. Biden intends to promote investment into devices that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

To capture CO2 emitted by cement factories, the study concluded, manufacturers will need to construct demonstration plants this decade, and thousands of miles of pipelines to transport the captured gas to burial sites in states like Texas.

The study found that achieving net-zero is affordable due in part from the decline in costs relating to wind and solar. In all the scenarios analyzed, energy costs would remain smaller as a share of the economy than they were during the 2000s. But there are significant hurdles, including potential conflicts over land use.

The amount of energy that must come from solar and wind is so enormous that they could cover land roughly the size of Wyoming and Colorado combined. Offshore wind farms could run the Atlantic Coast from Massachusetts to Florida. If we rely entirely on such renewables, twice as much land may be required.

“It’s not a question of whether we have enough land, because we do,” said Eric Larson, a senior research engineer at Princeton. “But with that many new projects, you have to ask if they’ll run into local opposition.”

In fact, some wind and solar projects have provoked protests from landowners. If such projects run into significant opposition, the study concluded that we’d need to rely on advanced nuclear power or natural gas plants with carbon capture, technologies still in their infancy.

Net zero requires transitioning hundreds of thousands of jobs from coal, oil and gas to renewables. Millions of new green jobs are predicted from retrofitting homes, building wind farms, installing solar panels, maintenance and parts. Those jobs may be in different regions and involve disruptions.

While the US has lowered its emissions in recent years, those efforts would need to accelerate dramatically to stay on pace for zero emissions by 2050.

A report by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network outlined dozens of policies the federal government could adopt. Many are steps Biden has endorsed, like a nationwide clean-electricity standard or financing for green technologies.

But all levels of society would have to work together, the report said, such as cities rewriting building codes to encourage electric heating, or states reducing car dependency by expanding public transit. Politicians would need to figure out how to gain public acceptance for the sweeping changes unfolding, while protecting vulnerable Americans from harm. Given the near-total inability of Congress to function, especially on climate change, this is a tall order.

“One question is whether net zero by 2050 can become a consensus national goal, the way building the interstate highway system or going to the moon were,” said Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University who led the report.

What both studies illustrate is that there’s no time to waste. Fossil fuel-based cars and factories built today will pollute for decades. If they’re not replaced soon, it’s vastly more challenging to cut emissions later.

“It may seem like 2050 is a long way off,” said Dr. Jenkins. “But if you think about the timelines for policies, business decisions and capital investments, it’s really more like the day after tomorrow.”

Mike Gerrard, Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, and my Co-chair of the Global Climate Change Committee (NYSBA), wrote an article for Daedalus (Fall 2020) noting that even without Congress, there are many steps Biden can take, from expanding renewables on federal lands to pushing the financial industry on climate change, to pursuing the decarbonization of the US electricity sector by 2035.

That sector is 38% decarbonized, 19% from nuclear, 18% from renewables. The challenge of moving from 38% to 100% in 15 years is daunting given the upcoming retirement of nuclear power plants (no new nuclear plants are planned except for two units in Georgia, both late and grossly over budget).

Mike wrote that Biden does not need Congressional support to expand solar and wind power installations on federal lands. He can direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to favor renewable energy development over fossil fuels. He can push the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which administers much of these federal lands, to speed up leasing for renewables and charge lower rents, while also slowing down leasing for fossil fuel extraction. He can expedite the reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act by following Obama’s example of performing regional studies rather than project by project studies.

FERC issued a directive in 2010 (Order No. 1000), to encourage regional planning of transmission lines to advance public policy goals such as fighting climate change. This was not pursued by Trump, but Biden likely will embrace it and can do so without Congressional action. This is important because the renewable energy that is expected to be generated will need to be moved via large new networks of transmission lines the siting of which is controlled by the states. States have a history of opposing lines that do not benefit them. In 2005 Congress gave DOE authority to designate “national interest electric transmission corridors” where new lines are needed, and empowered FERC to override state inaction on lines in these corridors.

Mike opined that Biden should be able to secure a Democratic majority on FERC by mid-2021 and thereafter affect numerous changes and reverse various fossil fuel friendly actions taken by Trump. Biden should be able to promote distributed renewable energy (energy from sources near the point of use instead of from a centralized source such as a power plant) and discontinue natural gas projects. He may approve carbon pricing in the wholesale electricity markets if proposed by regional market operators, improve energy storage, and advance demand response (which could enable utilities to change the settings on air conditioners and reduce power to certain appliances in participating households during peak demand).

Biden can also expedite offshore wind projects in areas controlled by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). Trump was hostile to these projects and BOEM moved slowly in its reviews. This too likely will change dramatically.

All these expedited federal actions likely will be aided by the FAST Act, a 2015 statute intended to provide better coordination among federal agencies reviewing infrastructure projects such as renewable energy installations.

Biden’s larger goal is “net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050.” That’s the deadline set by the IPCC. And that requires all new passenger cars to be EVs, the total electrification of all new buildings (heating and cooling and hot water), and the elimination of oil, natural gas, and coal from other economic activities. The US will need to vastly increase the generation of renewable energy from the current 1,100 gigawatts to 3,000 GWS (roughly 100 GWS per year between now and 2050; note that a good-sized nuclear power plant generates about 1 GW, most big wind and solar farms generate less than half that).

The federal government annually purchases 54 terawatt hours of electricity, but only 10% of this is from renewables. Biden could direct the government to purchase renewable energy wherever possible. Such federal agreements to purchase power could help renewable facilities obtain financing.

Similarly, the federal government’s purchasing power includes vast numbers of vehicle (and boats and helicopters), computers, and appliances, and the feds occupy 2.8 billion square feet of space. Such power and influence could create markets for energy-efficient items and promote and support renewable endeavors.

Biden may rescind Trump’s tariffs on the importation of solar panels and wind towers. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, such tariffs cost more than 62,000 US jobs and $19 billion in private sector investment and harmed the wind industry.

Biden intends to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-C) to advance clean energy including grid-scale electricity storage, small modular nuclear reactors, zero net-energy buildings, the production of carbon-free hydrogen from renewable energy, and carbon capture and storage or reuse. These may be long-term projects but the pay-off could be significant.

In September, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a report stating that “climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the US financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.”  The Federal Reserve also highlighted the risks that climate change poses to financial stability. Janet Yellin recognized the risks of climate change in 1997. Biden nominated her for Secretary of the Treasury.

Biden may act to inhibit investments in fossil fuels and related infrastructure, such as proposed natural gas pipelines and power plants. Climate risk could be grounds for financial regulators to require bank holding companies, insurers, and asset managers to divest from companies that produce carbon emissions. As noted, the Biden administration has many paths to the decarbonized electricity sector.

Washington:

As its final environmental roll-back, the Trump administration announced a final rule weakening federal authority to issue clean air and climate change rules by recalculating the costs of pollution to human health and safety and the benefits of reducing pollution. I will not dwell on this as it will be reversed by Biden.

“A Biden administration could just come in and propose a different rule,” said Steven J. Milloy, an informal environmental policy adviser to the Trump administration  “Ultimately these final Trump rules won’t really matter, other than that they’ll have some political rhetorical value for people like me.”

It may take about six months to reverse the new cost-benefit rule.

“It’s like breaking all the calculators on the way out the door,” said Jack Lienke, the director of regulatory policy at NYU School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “The people coming in can buy new calculators. It’s just a hurdle and takes some time. It’s just another annoyance for the incoming administration to deal with.”

Biden nominated Michael S. Regan, North Carolina’s top environmental regulator since 2017, to lead the EPA, elevating for the first time a Black man to lead the agency, which is central to achieving Biden’s climate change agenda.

 “He faces a massive reconstruction and rebuilding operation,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard University law professor who served as White House counselor in the Obama administration. Regan “has to go in and restore the morale of the career staff,” she said. “He has to make it clear that science and integrity are back. He’s got a raft of rules that he’s got to rescind and replace and strengthen.”

Biden’s climate team will be led by two political heavyweights: Gina McCarthy, who was Obama’s EPA chief, will lead a new White House Office of Climate Policy to coordinate domestic efforts, and John Kerry, the former secretary of state, will be Biden’s international climate envoy.

Biden also nominated Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico to lead the Department of Interior. She would be the first Native American to lead the department and is expected to curtail the oil and gas leasing on federal lands that Trump favored. Brenda Mallory, a former federal lawyer, will lead the Council on Environmental Quality.

Regan was a key figure in helping Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, carry out his pledge to achieve carbon neutrality in North Carolina by 2050, and oversees the state’s climate change interagency council, a working group of state agencies established to meet that goal. In 2018 he created an environmental justice and equity board at the state’s environmental agency.

“He has navigated well through really tough terrain,” said Megan Mullin, associate professor of environmental politics at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “North Carolina is as tough a place as any to uphold environmental laws in the face of opposition from utilities, the farm lobby, and hostile legislators.”

Supporters of Regan said he improved low morale at the state agency and emphasized the role of science. Several called it an obvious parallel to what he would be expected to do at EPA where Administrator Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, has blocked the agency from working on climate change, and where independent auditors have identified a “culture at the top” of political interference in science.

In late December, Trump belatedly signed the Coronavirus relief deal which includes climate change legislation. It authorized $35 billion in spending on wind, solar and other clean power sources while curtailing the use of a planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. This is the first significant climate change law since 2009.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the effort “the single biggest victory in the fight against climate change to pass this body in a decade.” Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), a leading opponent of most climate change policies, also celebrated: “This agreement protects both American consumers and American businesses,” he said. “We can have clean air without damaging our economy.”

The coolant phase-down would be one of the most significant federal policies ever taken to cut GHG emissions. By 2035, the law would help avoid the equivalent of 949 million tons of CO2 which is similar in scope to the extra emissions from Trump’s rollbacks on vehicle pollution and methane from oil and gas projects.

The new legislation requires the nation’s chemical manufacturers to phase down the production and use of coolants (hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs). They are a small percentage of GHG in the atmosphere, compared with CO2 from the fossil fuels, but they are 1,000 times more potent trapping heat.

In a 2016 accord signed in Kigali, Rwanda, during the Obama administration, 197 nations agreed to phase out HFCs in favor of alternatives that are less dangerous to the climate. The Kigali agreement was an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the landmark 1987 treaty designed to close the hole in the ozone layer.

Once the Kigali amendment is implemented by all nations, scientists say it would stave off an increase of atmospheric temperatures of nearly 1F. That would be a major step toward averting an atmospheric temperature increase of 3.6 F, the point at which many experts think the world will be locked into a future of catastrophic events. But the Trump administration never ratified the Kigali pact, and instead proposed to roll back federal regulations curbing the use of HFCs in the US.

Trump had little choice in signing the current bill that will require the US to follow the terms of the Kigali agreement (but the US still will not have ratified it), which requires companies to phase down production and consumption of HFCs to about 15% of 2012 levels by 2036. The phase-down will be administered by EPA. The chief US negotiators of the Kigali amendment were Kerry and McCarthy.

The push by industry brought along numerous Senate Republicans, at least 16 of whom signed on as sponsors to the legislation, which was jointly written by Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. John Kennedy, (R-LA). Louisiana is home to hundreds of chemical manufacturing facilities: “To create thousands of jobs, save billions of dollars and safeguard the environment, we must invest in alternatives to HFCs,” said Sen. Kennedy.

In addition to the HFC bill, the larger package included a bipartisan renewable energy bill co-sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Joe Manchin III (D-WV), the chairwoman and ranking Democrat of the Senate Energy Committee.

The bill does not appropriate new government spending, but it authorizes $35 billion in existing government funding to be spent on clean energy programs over the next five years, including $1 billion for energy storage technology perhaps for batteries for wind and solar power, $1.5 billion for demonstration projects for new solar technology, $2.1 billion for advanced nuclear energy technology and $450 million for technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

The bill would also direct federal agencies to update the government programs that oversee renewable energy spending.

“Some of these will be the first updates to these programs since the iPhone was first in use,” said Josh Freed, an energy policy analyst with Third Way, a research organization. “It’s critically important because energy systems looked a lot different 10 years ago. There were almost no EVs on the road, very little solar panels on roofs, Tesla didn’t exist.” It’s a new year. We can do this. Enjoy!

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The views expressed above are my own.

Carl Howard, Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee
NYS Bar Association, Environmental and Energy Law Section

Follow me on Twitter @Howard.Carl

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