Climate Now
James Lawler
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Explaining the key scientific ideas, technologies, and policies relevant to the global climate crisis. Visit climatenow.com for more information, video series, and events.
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Climate News Weekly: Climate Week NYC recap, IEA's new 1.5°C scenario, new geothermal plant, and more
On today’s Climate News Weekly episode, Dina Cappiello recaps her Climate Week NYC experience. We discuss the International Energy Agency’s updated 1.5°C scenario, including an in-depth explanation of what a “scenario” is, China’s strong stance against phasing out fossil fuels, and the potential promises of Fervo Energy’s newest geothermal plant breaking ground.
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Sep 26, 2023
Two views on the future of the US electricity grid
The United States’ aging electricity grid is a problem. Over 70% of the major transmission networks – which transfer electricity from power generation centers to endpoint users in homes and buildings, sometimes in other states – are at least 25 years old, and much of the grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s. As the number of renewable energy projects being built to meet clean energy goals increases, the problem of how to connect them to the grid is only growing larger, as transmission infrastructure projects can take decades to approve and build, and utilities navigate the energy storage landscape.
The US faces an existential question: as it looks ahead to a clean energy future, what should it do about its electricity grid? Should state and regional utility networks be rebuilt, or should they be replaced with more distributed forms of electricity production and storage—like microgrids with rooftop solar and local wind energy projects? Or does the solution lie in a combination of both?
Climate Now posed these questions to two experts whose work examines the future of electricity generation and storage in the United States. Paul Denholm is a senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, specializing in the technical, economic, and environmental impacts and benefits of large scale deployment of renewable electricity generation. Bill Nussey is an author, CEO and venture capitalist whose 2022 book, “Freeing Energy,” examines the disruptive nature of distributed energy generation and its potential to produce cheaper and more reliable electricity, faster. Tune in to hear what they have to say about the future of the US electricity grid.
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Sep 25, 2023
Climate News Weekly: Decarbonizing Heavy Industry, Europe's Deadly Air Quality, Insurance at Risk, and more
From a new White House climate jobs training program that echoes the Civilian Conservation Corp of the FDR era, to UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rolling back carbon reduction targets, global leaders are taking a stance after the UN’s Climate Week in New York. Also, big industry is grappling with finding low-carbon business models that can outlive government subsidies, a close examination of climate risk is imperiling the US home insurance market, and the EU gets a dose of reality about the extent to which they are overdosing on air pollution.
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Sep 18, 2023
Climate News Weekly: Apple's Green Ad, Peak Fossil Fuels, G20, and more
This has been a big week for nations and companies ‘talking the talk’ about reducing their emissions footprints, from updated commitments at the G20 summit, to a carbon-neutral product launch by Apple, and the family that owns the Mærsk shipping company creating its own clean shipping fuel supply chain with a green methanol subsidiary company.
But which of these groups are also ‘walking the walk’ and making real strides in accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels? Climate News Weekly co-hosts James, Dina, and Julio break it down.
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Sep 11, 2023
The IRA Progress Report
When the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022, policy analysts predicted that the incentives it provided for renewable energy deployment, home electrification and EV adoption would put the U.S. on track to reach at least two thirds of its 2030 emissions reduction target. Twelve months later, we can now start to track how well the nation is progressing towards those predictions.
In terms of unlocking private capital and kickstarting new clean energy projects, the IRA is profoundly exceeding expectations, already creating tens of billions of dollars in new investments in what has been dubbed a U.S. “manufacturing renaissance.” But according to Oliver Kerr, North America lead for market analytics company Aurora Energy Research, a national energy transformation requires integration as well as manufacturing. Climate Now spoke with Oliver about the impact of the IRA on renewable energy growth, as well as the policy reforms and grid infrastructure updates that are still needed to ensure that public and private investments being made in clean energy manufacturing will translate to 100% fossil free U.S. electricity in the coming decade.
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Sep 4, 2023
Climate News Weekly
This past week the climate has been busy inundating every aspect of life: Hurricane Idalia caused damages across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, fueled by increased ocean temperatures. Meanwhile insurance companies are leaving, yet Florida's governor refuses to take money from the Inflation Reduction Act to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state. In Ecuador, the Yasuní Referendum was passed, banning more exploration and drilling of oil in the biodiverse Yasuní National Park.
Get caught up on this news and other climate news from this past week in our latest 'This Week in Climate News' segment.
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Aug 28, 2023
Made in America: The next generation of solar
You may recall an Auxin Solar tariff case in which a small domestic solar PV manufacturer, Auxin Solar, alleged that solar cells produced in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam were circumventing U.S. trade duties against China. On August 18th, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued their final ruling in the case, determining that solar cells from those countries were in fact circumventing U.S. trade duties. Companies will now be required to self-certify that they are not circumventing U.S. trade duties against China.
Why was this case such a big deal? Most solar cells sold in the U.S. have been sourced from Asia, so U.S. solar developers will now have to pay more to get their solar panels from those countries. With the tariff, and tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, many solar developers are now looking for domestic solar manufacturers instead. Up to 155 GW of new U.S. manufacturing capacity has been announced over the last year, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA). In this episode, we are joined by Leslie Chang, Director of Strategy and Policy at domestic solar manufacturer Caelux Corporation to understand what this means for business and U.S. solar adoption.
How do we build the capacity to manufacture solar in the US?
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Aug 21, 2023
Building Solar Neighborhoods
There are over 8 billion square meters of rooftops in the US that are viable for solar energy generation, and could produce as much as 40% of national energy needs. And yet, only 8% of US households have installed rooftop solar panels. With so much available space, and with the average cost of energy from solar much lower than the cost of energy from the grid, why aren't more homeowners installing solar?
Climate Now sat down with Solar United Neighbors Executive Director Anya Schoolman to discuss how upfront costs and legacy business models for utilities companies have slowed the adoption of residential solar, and how Solar United Neighbors is working to help homeowners, businesses, communities and even entire cities overcome some of those barriers and go solar.
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Aug 14, 2023
Climate Now Debates: Carbon Capture and Storage
One of the most controversial parts of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act - the most ambitious climate spending bill in history - was the large pot of federal dollars that could now subsidize the nascent Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) industry. The bill provides for the expansion of the 45Q tax credit, which now allocates up to $85 per metric ton of CO2 that is captured from a point source of emissions like power plants or factories, and then is injected deep underground for permanent storage. At this price point, the IRA provides - for the first time ever - a viable revenue stream for most CCS projects.
Proponents of CCS argue that CO2 reductions will need to happen faster than the world can dismantle its dependence on fossil fuels and thus investment in carbon management technologies need to start now. Opponents say that investments in CCS divert funding from lower cost decarbonization efforts, thus slowing net carbon reductions, and that they incentivize polluting industries to continue their operations.
In this episode, Climate Now has brought together four experts to examine the arguments both for and against CCS. Join us and our guests Charles F. Harvey (MIT), Kurt House (KoBold Metals), Sue Hovorka (UT Austin) and George Peridas (LLNL) for a moderated discussion about what role - if any - CCS should play in the path to global net zero.
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Aug 7, 2023
Revolutionizing ammonia production
The Nobel-prize winning discovery of how to create synthetic ammonia has been called the “most momentous technical advance in history,” and for good reason. Today about half of the food consumed worldwide comes from the increased harvest yields resulting from ammonia-based fertilizers. We could not sustain the global population without it.
While ammonia production is critical to modern day global food security, and will need to increase to support a growing population, it is also extremely energy- and emissions-intensive. Ammonia produces twice as much CO2 per metric ton of product than steel, 4 times as much as cement, and accounts for ~2% of global emissions.
Talus Renewables is among a growing number of companies working to change that by creating fossil-fuel free “green ammonia,” and they are the first to have deployed their product in the market. The company provides modular, small-scale ammonia production facilities that can be shipped to remote growing regions and allow farms or groups of farms to produce their own fertilizer using clean energy. Climate Now sat down with Talus Renewables co-founder, Hiro Iwanaga, to discuss how this production system reduces complex supply chain and transportation costs as well as emissions, and how it is helping improve global food security and sustainable agriculture at the same time.
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Jul 24, 2023
What happens after forests burn?
*2020 was a record breaking season for forest fires in California. Over **4 million acres burned**, releasing enough CO2 into the atmosphere to wipe out the prior 18 years of emissions reductions progress in the state. Effective forest restoration and management can make forests **more resilient** to the increasing threats of climate change: drought, fire and insects, and help ensure that the carbon trapped in those forests stays there. But who should pay the cost of restoring and maintaining those forests?*
*Mast Reforestation** is a company that replants and stewards the regrowth of fire-ravaged forests of the western U.S., many of which **cannot grow back** without intervention. Their work is paid for by forest carbon credits, a **contentious practice** of offsetting corporate or personal emissions by paying to grow and/or protect forests that sequester atmospheric carbon via photosynthesis. We sat down with CEO Grant Canary to discuss why active forest regeneration is necessary, whether forest carbon credits are an effective way to pay for that work, and what the alternatives could be.
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Jul 17, 2023
Tracking Methane Leaks for Planet and Profit
In September 2022, two pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia across the floor of the North Sea were sabotaged, rupturing and emitting an estimated 500,000 tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane (the primary component of natural gas) into the atmosphere before they could be sealed again. While the impact of these Nord Stream pipeline explosions on climate change was widely covered in the news, they represent a mere blip (about 0.3%) in the amount of methane unintentionally leaking into the atmosphere each year from oil and gas operations.
This week, we talk with Christophe McGlade of the International Energy Agency about why so much methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure, and why - until now, its climate impact has been so little recognized. We also explore how new methane tracking tools allow companies and corporations to quickly and economically stop methane leaks, and why this could make a powerful dent in global greenhouse gas emissions.
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Jul 11, 2023
Getting on track with home decarbonization
The Biden Administration in the U.S. has set a goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, which among other things means that U.S. households, and the appliances and machines that run within them, will need to be powered almost entirely by carbon-free electricity. A practical implication of that goal is that about 1 billion machines in homes across the nation will need to be replaced or converted from fossil-powered to electric within the next 3 decades. It sounds like a lot - but is it?
A recent report from the nonprofit Rewiring America examined how quickly high-efficiency, electric technologies – like heat pumps, EV vehicles and induction stoves – are replacing sales of their fossil-powered counterparts, and compared that to what needs to happen this year, next year, and over the next five years to ensure that American homes are on track to decarbonize. So are we on track? What needs to happen in the near-term to ensure we reach our mid-century decarbonization goal…
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Jun 26, 2023
In the Navy! There is a climate action plan
In 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense released a report entitled, “An abrupt climate change scenario and its implications for United States national security,” which “imagined the unthinkable” – that gradual global warming could lead to relatively abrupt changes in climate patterns, significantly reducing global food production, and with it “the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s environment.” Two decades later, the scenario of abrupt climatic shifts resulting from global warming is not so unthinkable, and the U.S. military now formally regards climate change as a threat, according to Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and the Environment.
In 2022, three branches of the U.S. military (Army, Navy and Air Force) released climate strategies detailing decarbonization goals for their operations. Ms. Berger is responsible for overseeing implementation and execution of the Department of the Navy’s climate strategy, which include…
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Jun 19, 2023
Less waste, more energy
*Landfills emit about 2% of the world's greenhouse gases**, but in terms of lowering global emissions, they represent some of the lowest hanging fruit. When organic waste – like municipal food waste, agricultural waste, and forest residue – is disposed of by burial in a landfill or incineration, the organic material within is broken down to methane or CO2, and released to the atmosphere. But if that organic waste is diverted to other forms of disposal, those emissions could be avoided. *
*Steve Wirtel, the Executive Vice President of Business Development at Kore Infrastructure, joined Climate Now to explain how Kore’s biomass thermal conversion (slow pyrolysis) process can be used to dispose of organic waste, sequester carbon and generate energy. We explore how Kore’s modular design works, how it can be adapted for various feedstock inputs and consumer products (including hydrogen), how this kind of technology is financed, and how slow pyrolysis can align with emission reducti…
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Jun 12, 2023
June 12: This Week in Climate News
Climate Now is taking a break this week - but will be back on June 20 with one more solution we can include in our portfolio of opportunities to tackle climate change. Read more below, and stay tuned.
In the meantime, take a listen to our 'This Week in Climate News' segment, and catch up on some past episodes about how we can all do more to address climate change - from the policy level to grass roots movements, there is always something we can do.
This Week in Climate News: One of the greatest difficulties in addressing climate change has been how invisible the crisis was. You cannot see the 40 billion metric tons of CO2 being added to the atmosphere each year, or necessarily feel that average global temperatures have risen more than 1 degree C since the late 1800's.
But this week, for many parts of North America, the urgency of the climate crisis could be seen and felt – in people's eyes, noses and lungs. Record breaking forest fires have consumed more than 9 million acres in Ca…
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Jun 5, 2023
What could climate instability mean to you?
*Since humans began settling down and building civilizations 10,000 years ago, the Earth's climate has been relatively stable. But before that, the climate was more unstable - unpredictable - and humans were nomads, forced to follow the good climate for food and shelter. Today, the global average temperature is higher than it has ever been since the beginning of civilization. What does this mean for the future of human civilization? Could this mean a return to instability? Can we make civilization resilient to such dramatic changes in climate that we have never before experienced as a society?*
*Dr. Spencer Glendon of** Probable Futures** joins Climate Now to speak about his work to change how we think about, talk about, and plan for the future of society.*
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May 29, 2023
100th episode: How to talk about climate change
A 2022 study by Yale University found that two thirds of Americans (67%) rarely or never talk about climate change, and rarely or never hear people they know talking about it either. Despite the existential threat that it poses, one third of Americans (32%) only hear about global warming in the media a few times a year - or less!
Are these statistics shocking? Or does it matter that people don’t talk much about climate change? How important is public awareness and public discussion in the fight to address climate change? How much does public opinion shape climate policy, or drive individuals to reduce their own climate impacts? And, if climate communication IS important, how do we get more conversations started?
To mark Climate Now’s 100th episode, we partnered with the Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) to take an introspective look at the role of science communication: how does talking about climate change help address it? We are joined by three experts who look at commu…
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May 22, 2023
The evidence for peak fossil electricity
In 1909, headlines declared the U.S. would run out of petroleum by 1940. In 1945, the estimate was that the U.S. had 13 more years of petroleum reserves left. In 1966, we only had 10 more years before the “figurative dipstick in the United States’ oil supplies” came out dry. In the 1970’s United States, alarmist projections about exponential growth of energy demands expected that we would run out of fossil fuels by the year 2000, and yet - since 2000, our consumption of energy from fossil fuels has nearly doubled.
We have a pretty consistent track record of underestimating our available fuel reserves, and how much of those reserves we will consume as technology changes and efficiency increases. In this episode, Kingsmill Bond (Energy Strategist at RMI) and Nat Bullard (Senior Contributor with BloombergNEF) examine why it is so difficult to anticipate our future energy needs and their costs. Kingsmill Bond posits in his recent report that this is the beginning of the end of fos…
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May 15, 2023
Fixing the problems with ESG investing
*According to a **2022 poll from the Associated Press**, although 93% of Americans acknowledge that human activity impacts climate, nearly half of Americans (47%) feel that their actions don’t have an impact on climate change. And yet, we know – it is the collective momentum of tiny particles of snow that drive an avalanche.*
*In our upcoming episode, Climate Now sits down with James Regulinski, co-founder of Carbon Collective, to discuss the role of investing - even among individual, “retail” investors - in determining the pace at which clean energy technologies can replace our global dependence on fossil fuels. We will discuss why investing in your retirement and investing in clean energy technologies can be well-aligned endeavors, why most environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment portfolios aren’t having the impact they should, and why even small investments can make a big difference in accelerating the path to decarbonization.*
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Carbon Collective Disclaime…
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May 8, 2023
What will happen when the permafrost thaws?
*Since the Industrial Revolution nearly 150 years ago, global average temperatures have increased by **more than 1 degree C** (1.9 degrees F), with the majority of that warming occurring since 1975. But during these recent decades of accelerated warming, temperatures in the arctic (latitudes above 66 degrees north) have have been rising even faster - nearly **four times faster** than the average global rate. The most readily observable impact of such intensive localized warming has been the **rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet**, which is significant enough to be turning heads of even **stalwart climate skeptics**. But a less discussed (and perhaps even more dangerous) **positive feedback** to the warming planet is the rate at which permafrost is melting due to the quickly elevating arctic temperatures.*
*Dr. Susan Natali, Arctic Program Director and senior scientist at the **Woodwell Climate Research Center**, sat down with Climate Now to teach us about permafrost: what it is,…
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May 1, 2023
LEED certifying buildings and cities, and why it matters
*The built environment represents one of society’s largest environmental impacts - contributing nearly **one fifth of global GHG emissions**, not to mention **impacts on natural resources** like air and water quality, local ecosystems, and quality of life for residents. Increasingly, policies and public opinion are concentrating on reducing those impacts - creating incentives for new construction and urban development to become more sustainable - to become more “green.”*
*But how do you define whether a building (or a city) is green? Tommy Linstroth is the founder and CEO of Green Badger, a company that provides sustainability accounting services for new construction projects, and Hilari Varnadore is the Vice President for Cities at the U.S. Green Building Council. The two joined Climate Now to explain the globally leading metric for quantifying sustainability of the built environment: **Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)** certification. Tune in to hear how bu…
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Apr 24, 2023
The debate about nuclear's role in the clean energy transition
*Every approach to decarbonizing the energy sector comes with its share of costs and benefits: renewables are **cheap** and **clean**, but require enormous amounts of **land** and are **not always available** when power is needed. Batteries provide **useful back up power**, but **add cost** to a renewable-supplied grid and **compete** with other needs for critical minerals like lithium and cobalt. Carbon capture on fossil fuel power plants can **prevent stranded assets**, but is **expensive** and **could extend dependence** on fossil fuels. *
*Net-zero pathway recommendations, like those from **Princeton University**, **BloombergNEF**, and the **International Energy Agency**, aim to maximize the benefits of these various solutions, while minimizing the costs. But the one technology whose role within this balancing act is the most **controversial** is nuclear power. *
*In our upcoming episode, we are joined by a panel of energy science and policy experts to understand the present role…
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Apr 12, 2023
What is the future of agriculture in California?
On March 30, 2023, in partnership with the Livermore Lab Foundation and The Maddy Institute, Climate Now hosted a one day summit in Fresno, CA, examining the intersection of climate change and agriculture. Agriculture is both a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions (contributing nearly one fifth of all global emissions) and a potential solution to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Fresno, located in the heart of California's Central Valley, also illuminates the other side of the agriculture-climate change coin: one of the nation's most valuable agricultural regions, producing over a quarter of the nation's food, is threatened by extreme droughts - and this year, extreme floods - brought on by climate change.
At Climate Now's one day summit, farmers, business owners, scientists, policymakers, educators and activists gathered to discuss how to prepare for the changing climate in California and other agriculture producing regions, the challenges inherent to adaptation, a…
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Apr 3, 2023
Making hydrogen and carbon black out of renewable natural gas
*Renewable natural gas (RNG), made from the **decomposition of organic waste** like livestock manure, is not necessarily net-zero if it's burned to run a turbine or drive a car. But what if the RNG is not burned, but is rather pyrolyzed, breaking it down into hydrogen and another product called "carbon black," an essential component of car tires, among other things? Then the hydrogen can be used and the carbon black can be sold in solid form instead of releasing the carbon into the atmosphere. From its Nebraska-based plant, **Monolith** converts renewable methane into both green hydrogen and carbon black using the world's largest plasma torch (more about that in the episode). Now they are developing a commercial clean hydrogen operation, which they will use to create ammonia to sell for fertilizer.
Join us for our conversation with Monolith co-founder and CEO Rob Hanson to learn about methane pyrolysis, the markets for carbon-negative industrial products, and how the Inflation Reducti…
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Mar 27, 2023
Minerals discovery and mining for the energy transition
As we transition to a clean energy economy, demand for minerals like copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium is projected to skyrocket. According to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency, the total mineral demand from clean energy technologies will quadruple by 2040 under their “sustainable development scenario” or at least double under stated policies. Where will all those minerals come from and how can they be accessed in a responsible way?
In this episode Kurt House, CEO of KoBold Metals, explains how their company is working to aggregate, digitize, organize, and analyze global geologic data to systematically search the Earth's crust for these four key minerals.
Skip ahead:
00:00 This Week in Climate News
09:21 How much new mining do we need?
14:12 How KoBold aggregates and analyzes data
17:54 Environmental and social responsibility in mining
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Mar 20, 2023
Decarbonizing a city with heat pumps and thermal energy networks
*For a building owner, building decarbonization has **myriad benefits**: lower utility bills, lower maintenance, healthier and more comfortable living. But the barriers to reaching those benefits are large, particularly the **high upfront costs** and **complicated renovation process** (many inspections, many permits, coordinating with many contractors). Scale up to trying to decarbonize every building in a city, and the problems scale up, too - each building has its unique challenges to decarbonization, based on location, age, state of repair, and use. But - it turns out that by decarbonizing buildings on a city level, the solutions can scale up, too.*
*In this final installment of our three-part series examining Ithaca, New York’s road to full building decarbonization, we are joined by the team of people who are identifying solutions to these pain points in Ithaca. We will explore how bulk purchasing power, streamlined contracting, and development of communal clean energy infrastru…
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Mar 13, 2023
Net-zero cities: Making decarbonization work for everyone
Reducing average global temperatures. Preserving biodiversity. Decreasing the risk of droughts, floods and hurricanes. Reducing air pollution. Reducing utility bills. Creating new jobs and opportunities. Building community engagement. Fostering environmental equity and justice.
There doesn’t need to be just one reason to decarbonize a city. And when the specific needs, concerns and goals of communities are accounted for in decarbonization plans, the chances of local buy-in and of an equitable energy transition increase dramatically. Hear why, in the second part of Climate Now’s three-part deep-look into Ithaca, New York’s plans to decarbonize every building in their city. Panelists from a multi-venue live event series, held in Autumn 2022, discuss how Ithaca has approached prioritizing social justice in its plans, and why this is such an integral part of their decarbonization strategy.
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Mar 6, 2023
Low carbon fuel standards: what, why, and how?
On February 15, 2023, the U.S. Senate held a hearing considering a national clean fuels program, modeled after California’s state-wide Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The LCFS sets an annually decreasing standard of net carbon intensity (amount CO2 emissions per unit energy) for all the fuels being sold in the state. Companies that produce fuels or fuel equivalents below the carbon intensity threshold can sell low-carbon fuel credits. Companies that produce and sell fuels above the carbon intensity threshold must buy credits, thus creating a market force to encourage low-carbon fuel production and discourage carbon-intensive fuel production.
Since the California LCFS standard was enacted more than a decade ago, transportation sector emissions in the state have declined by about 10% due to the program, outpacing the scheduled carbon intensity decreases. Other states and nations have taken note, with similar policies being adopted in the EU, Canada, Brazil, and Washington State and O…
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Feb 27, 2023
The road to decarbonized trucking
2022 potentially marked a turning point for the U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market, with new EV car sales increasing by 65% over 2021 sales, and now accounting for nearly 6% of all new vehicle sales. (If EVs maintained a 65% annual growth rate, they would reach 100% of new vehicle sales in about 6 years.) But for medium and heavy duty vehicles, which produce an outsize share of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gasses, the transition to zero-emissions vehicles is still trying to gain traction. In 2021, electric vehicles accounted for about 1% of bus sales, and about 0.1% of all truck sales.
Battery electric vehicles could already replace about half of the freight trips completed each day in the U.S., so it is not technological readiness that is slowing EV adoption in the freight and large vehicle industry. Ray Minjares, Heavy-Duty Vehicles Program Director at the International Council on Clean Transportation, explains what is: the marketplace structure that dictates how freight ve…
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Feb 20, 2023
Updates to the GHG protocol: Scope 1, 2, 3 and more?
More than one third of the world’s 2,000 largest publicly traded companies have made some kind of net-zero commitment, and the list is growing quickly. A critical part of those corporate plans will be securing cleanly sourced electricity for their energy needs, but that requires that there is enough fossil-free electricity available on the grid for every company that prefers to use it. In 2021, renewable energy and nuclear power, combined, accounted for only about 37% of global electricity production. How can a company ensure that their electricity comes from among those fossil-free sources? And how can companies encourage the growth of clean electrical capacity, so that it will meet the growing demand of consumers?
These kinds of questions are exactly what Doug Miller, Deputy Director of Market & Policy Innovation at the Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI), aims to answer. CEBI is a non-profit organization that collaborates with policy makers, leading philanthropies, and energy ma…
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Feb 13, 2023
Decarbonizing diesel: cleaner fuels and engines
Electrification is going a long way in decarbonizing small vehicles (like passenger cars) in the global transportation sector, which produces about 16% of global emissions. But for long-haul transportation: trucking, shipping and the aviation industries, electrification is far from being technologically ready. Enter a controversial solution: biodiesel. Biodiesel is a fuel derived from organic matter like plants, algae or animal fats, which started to popularize globally just this century. However, early generation biodiesel had its drawbacks: first - they are not a perfect replacement for the fuels used in diesel engines, and can only be used as an additive to fossil diesel: decreasing, but not eliminating carbon emissions. Then there was the fact that clearing forest land to grow crops to make biodiesel could produce more emissions than just using fossil diesel.
Two companies: Neste and ClearFlame, are among a growing cohort of energy producers exploring more sustainable replacements…
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Feb 6, 2023
How to decarbonize a city
In November 2021, the City of Ithaca announced the approval of a plan to decarbonize all of its buildings by 2030. In this first-of-its-kind decarbonization plan, Ithaca outlined a pathway to electrify roughly 6,000 homes and buildings as a first step to enacting the city’s own Green New Deal - a resolution established to locally address climate change, economic inequality, and racial injustice. The task is monumental - technically, financially and practically. First, an effective decarbonization plan had to be developed - how do you actually decarbonize 6,000 buildings? Second, the city had to figure out how to finance a ~ $500 million dollar infrastructure investment project with a city budget of ~ $90 million dollars. And finally, the city had to ensure that they had buy-in from building owners and that building retrofits were prioritized equitably and without disadvantaging any groups, particularly those who have been traditionally marginalized in the past.
So how are they doing…
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Jan 30, 2023
Bill McKibben’s take on building a successful climate movement
On April 22, 1970, 20 million people across the U.S. marched, attended speeches and sat in teach-ins, marking the first Earth Day, and spurring on the enactment of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the founding of the EPA, all of which occurred later that year. Then and now, activism has been critical to enacting environmental and climate policy, and in shifting attitudes of the general public to the urgency of mitigating climate change, but why is activism so important, and how can it be done effectively?
Climate Now sat down with Bill McKibben, author, journalist and environmental activist who has led protest movements against development of the Keystone Pipeline Project (which aimed to pipe oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to Nebraska where it could link with other pipelines heading to the refineries of Texas), and for the global divestment from fossil fuels (currently amounting to $40 trillion of lost capital for fossil fuel companies, and counting). Bill joined…
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Jan 23, 2023
How to fix the clean energy bottleneck
In 2021, U.S. President Biden signed an executive order with the directive to achieve 100% carbon-pollution free electricity in the United States by 2030. The goal is certainly achievable: currently wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity generation, the installed capacity of utility-scale solar and wind has increased more than 2000% in the last 15 years, and there are already 1.3 terawatts (TW) of clean energy generation + storage projects seeking to connect to the grid, roughly enough for the grid to reach 80% zero-carbon electricity. But it is one thing to plan clean energy generation facilities, and another to build and connect those facilities into the national power grid, which is done with the oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
FERC is required to regulate the interstate transmission of natural gas, oil, an electricity, which means they work to ensure that a hypothetical wind project in Iowa transmitting electricity to Chicago, Illinois f…
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Jan 16, 2023
Farm to stable CO2 storage
*The agricultural sector produces about a tenth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and while most of that comes from livestock (about 2/3), emissions from crop production still total about **2.2 billion metric tons** of **CO2-equivalent**. Interestingly, we only actually use about half of what we grow: this is not because of food waste (**its own issue**), but because **more than half of any crop is **residue**: the stems, shells, husks and anything else left behind at the end of a crop harvest.*
*Charm Industrial** is a new company with a plan to convert those crop residues (**~ half a billion tons in the US alone**) from a source of greenhouse gas emissions to a sink. Crop residues are usually left on harvested fields to decompose (or are **burned**), partially restoring the soils, and partially returning all the CO2 they absorbed during the growing season to the atmosphere. Charm plans to harvest those residues and convert them into bio-oil and biochar. The biochar returns…
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Jan 9, 2023
Inside the DOE: Understanding the role of the US Department of Energy in the energy transition
“We've built an entire industrial economy around a set of energy sources, and we're now thinking about diversifying way beyond that. And that's a big set of changes.” What will it take to diversify our energy economy, and how do we actually do it? That is the remit of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), according to Kate Gordon, senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy.
In this week's podcast, Ms. Gordon joins us to discuss how the DOE is structured today; how they’re working with states, local governments, and tribes to reduce energy consumption and support an equitable clean energy economy and the new industries that come with it - like hydrogen and carbon removal; and what major pieces of legislation are driving the DOE’s energy transition work - and how.
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Dec 22, 2022
Breaking the link between how much we consume and economic growth
*The carbon footprint of stuff*
For the last two centuries, continuous economic growth (the increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces, per capita) has been recognized as the critical driver in the drastic global decrease in extreme poverty.
The problem is, an ever-increasing "quantity and quality of economic goods and services" - in the current economy at least - requires ever increasing consumption of raw materials: minerals, water, energy, trees, soil. And consumption has its own price. In addition to myriad environmental and biodiversity impacts, an estimated 45% of global greenhouse emissions come from the extraction of raw materials and the production of goods: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the products we use.
So is it possible to break the link between decreasing poverty and increasing consumption? Climate Now sat down with two experts on 'the circular economy' - an idea that hinges on eliminating waste from the pr…
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Dec 19, 2022
An interview with the scientist who achieved fusion ignition
Last week, LLNL's National Ignition Facility successfully 'ignited' a nuclear fusion reaction equivalent to what takes place in the sun: the conversion of hydrogen to helium + energy. In a first, the experiment produced more energy than was needed to initiate the reaction. While the experiment lasted only fractions of a second, it proved what had been hypothesized since the 1960’s: that lasers can be used to induce energy-generating fusion in a laboratory setting. The enormity of this achievement is that it brings the possibility of cheap, clean and safe nuclear fusion energy one step closer to reality. Joined by guest hosts Julio Friedman and Darren Hau, Climate Now sat down with Dr. Annie Kritcher, the principal designer for the successful fusion experiment, to discuss what they have accomplished, why it was so significant, and what the National Ignition Facility will be focusing on next in their work to make nuclear fusion a viable energy source.
Key Questions:
* What was the…
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Dec 12, 2022
What lies beneath? Efficient heating and cooling.
*Can Earth’s geothermal heat warm - and cool - your home?*
The hottest day ever recorded on Earth was on July 10, 1913. Thermometers in California’s Death Valley measured 134oF. The coldest day ever recorded on land (not on an Antarctic ice sheet) was in the tiny Siberian settlement of Oymyakon, which got as cold as -90oF on February 6, 1933. But anyone standing in either of these locations, on these days of extreme hot and cold, were a mere 30 feet away from much more reasonable temperatures - about 50-60oF. They only needed to dig down. Bedrock is not a very good conductor of heat, and as such - even when atmospheric temperatures fluctuate wildly, geothermal temperatures - the temperature of the subsurface - remains relatively constant.
Climate Now sat down with Kathy Hannun, co-founder and president of Dandelion Energy to learn how geothermal heat pumps take advantage of stable subsurface temperatures to produce highly efficient and low-cost heating and cooling systems for bui…
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Dec 5, 2022
The role of microgrids in the energy transition
A micro-grid is a local grid. That means that energy generation occurs locally (no giant transmission lines) to support local energy demand, and it has the option to operate independently from a traditional regional power grid. These kinds of grids are attractive because they can take advantage of growing renewable energy infrastructure like rooftop solar, and they can create resiliency against regional grid failures, which are becoming increasingly frequent with the climate change-related uptick of extreme weather events.
But wouldn’t utility companies, whose revenue is generated from conventional grid use, and who control more than 99% of the nation’s electricity supply, use their enormous lobbying weight to prevent the proliferation of microgrids?
Not necessarily, according to Cecilia Klauber, an engineer working on the security and resilience of power system infrastructure at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Cecilia provides a business case for why regional utility com…
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Nov 28, 2022
Battery power: the future of grid-scale energy storage
*Is the battery revolution here? Or have we already been living in it for three decades?
*
Renewable energy sources - wind and solar - have become the cheapest and fastest growing form of electricity generation. But the industry has not yet escaped the perennial criticism that keeps many from believing that the world could run entirely on renewable energy: what happens when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing? To date, batteries have not been a particularly convincing answer, due both to their cost and their limited ability to store industrial scale electricity for more than a few hours at a time.
But that might be changing. After more then three decades of remarkable innovation, the price of lithium batteries has dropped 97%, and the power storage potential of a battery has increased 3.4-fold. Nate Blair, who manages the Distributed Systems and Storage Analysis Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), joined Climate Now to discuss where we are today i…
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Nov 21, 2022
What is the future of carbon capture technology?
*Since its founding in 1952, the mission of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been to **meet urgent national security needs** through scientific and technological innovation. Expanding from its focus on nuclear weapons science at the height of the Cold War, LLNL has become a national research leader in counterterrorism, intelligence, defense, and **energy**, with its emphasis in the latter being to advance national energy security while also reducing its impact. And critical to reducing the environmental impact of the national energy sector is determining how to remove historical greenhouse gas emissions (what has already been released) from the atmosphere in parallel with ongoing global decarbonization efforts.*
*Climate Now’s James Lawler was invited to tour LLNL’s Carbon Capture Lab, home to a team of scientists working to reduce the cost and bottlenecks of implementing large-scale carbon capture facilities, to learn how this research is developed, where the sta…
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Nov 14, 2022
The financial value of healthy ecosystems
*How many crises can we address at once?*
In October of this year, headlines broke that the global animal population in 2018 is 69% smaller than it was a half century ago, in 1970. It is the latest bad news in a string of studies on biodiversity loss, which is happening at a rate not seen on this planet since the last mass extinction. It also follows on the heels of an analysis from the U.N. World Food Program, estimating that due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, a record 345 million people are at risk of starvation this year, and that it is likely that by the end of this decade, the cumulative progress made in reaching the U.N.’s 2015 goal of eradicating hunger by 2030 will be 0%.
Conservation of natural lands and freshwater ecosystems are critical to biodiversity preservation efforts, but how do you feed the world without agricultural development, and how do you stem the impact of climate change without developing land-intensive clean energy solutions like wind and solar? It turns o…
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Nov 7, 2022
Making buildings smarter, greener and healthier
*The side benefit of reducing building emissions? Increasing quality of life.*
Building operations (heating, cooling and electrification) account for 27% of global CO2 emissions, but represent some of the lowest-hanging fruit in the challenge of global decarbonization. With efficient design and transitioning to cleanly-sourced electricity, like solar panels, building-related emissions could be decreased by as much as 80%.
Katy McGinty, vice president and chief sustainability officer of Johnson Controls and Ian Harris, business development manager at BlocPower, joined Climate Now to discuss how implementing smart control technologies, more insulated building envelopes, and clean-energy technologies like solar power and heat pumps, aren’t just critical to reaching global net-zero goals, they also make homes and buildings safer, more comfortable, and more affordable to live and work in. And with smart business approaches and community buy-in, building decarbonization can be a tool for…
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Oct 24, 2022
Making waves with marine carbon capture
The global shipping industry emits ~1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, about as much as the sixth highest emitting nation in the world. In hopes of changing course, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has mandated that starting in 2023, most commercial vessels will have to document their CO2 emissions, and demonstrate progress towards reaching the IMO objective of an industry-wide 40% reduction in emissions by 2030.
But that is easier said than done. As we learned in earlier conversations on maritime shipping (here and here), low-emission alternatives to the cheap and extremely dirty bunker fuels that ships currently use are far from ready to deploy at scale. So what can ship owners do to start cutting their emissions as soon as next year?
We spoke with Co-founder and CEO of the start-up Seabound, Alisha Fredriksson, about her teams' proposed solution: equipping ships with carbon capture devices that trap and store CO2 from fuel exhaust. The CO2 can be brought to…
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Oct 17, 2022
An electrifying look at the future of steel
For some sectors of our economy, electrification as a decarbonization strategy is a whole lot easier said than done. Take the steel industry - which is responsible for 11% of global CO2 emissions. A large part of those emissions come from the ‘coking’ process - where coal-fired furnaces burning at up to 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) are used to break the bonds between iron and oxygen in the ore materials used to make steel. Driving this reaction with electricity, instead of a coal furnace, is an enormous challenge - but one that Boston Metals are taking the lead on.
Climate Now sat down with Adam Rauwerdink, senior vice president of Boston Metals, to better understand the landscape of developing clean steel technologies, and why the electrification process they are developing - “molten oxide electrolysis” - could be the decarbonization solution that the steel industry needs.
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Oct 3, 2022
The solarcoaster: adoption curves and business models
Mitigating climate change is a race against time, requiring “rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” according to the IPCC, who says we need to halve global emissions by 2030. But Tom Dinwoodie of Epic Institute argues that this kind of rapid change actually isn’t unprecedented, when compared to technologies of the 19th and 20th centuries, which repeatedly went from expensive and obscure to globally adopted in the course of a few decades: electricity, automobiles, aviation, television, computers, the internet.
In this episode, we are joined by Tom, who explains why he thinks clean energy technologies like wind and solar are on a similar path of exponential growth, and John Witchel, CEO of King Energy, who provides a ‘boots-on-the-ground’ perspective of how these industries are changing. Through the lens of his company’s work, incentivizing rooftop solar installation in multi-tenant commercial buildings, John explains why the capitalistic a…
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Sep 19, 2022
Follow the carbon trail: quantifying a corporate carbon footprint
Calls for transparent information on the carbon footprint of a product, service, company or government are getting louder from consumers and investors, and will likely be soon codified in regulations like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule on climate risk reporting for publicly traded companies. But how do you actually account for all the emissions released in the production process or in a company activity? Is it even possible to accurately quantify?
Charles Cannon, a manager of RMI’s climate intelligence program, investigates ways to improve the quality of product level greenhouse gas information (like how much CO2 was released to manufacture your new refrigerator?). He sat down with Climate Now to explain the challenges involved in carbon accounting - the term for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions - and how those challenges might be addressed.
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Sep 5, 2022
What’s in the Inflation Reduction Act for climate?
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into U.S. law by President Joe Biden on August 16th, might be the biggest climate investment in history, but it does not look much like the kinds of policies that have been most championed by climate activists and economists. There is no carbon tax, no cap and trade program, no specific emissions targets. Instead, the law combines a slew of incentives like rebates and tax credits aimed to encourage significant growth of the clean energy and electric vehicle sectors.
To understand what is in the IRA, and what exactly its impact could be on reducing national greenhouse gas emissions, we spoke with Dr. Jesse Jenkins, who leads the REPEAT Project at Princeton University. Dr. Jenkins’ team performed an independent climate and economic impact analysis of the IRA, and he walked us through the details of the climate mitigation measures in this package: what decarbonization strategies are being employed, who is most impacted by the measure, and how m…
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Aug 22, 2022
Can oceans save us? Part III: The laws of the sea
International waters don’t belong to anybody, but everybody is connected to them. Like the global burden created by greenhouse gas emissions from any one country, company or individual, what a single country or corporation chooses to put into the ocean as a climate change solution could be felt by the global community, if it turns out to have negative consequences on ocean chemistry or ecosystems.
In this final installment of our deep dive into the potential and risks of ocean carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques, we consider how this nascent industry should be monitored and regulated. We will take a look at the existing international legal frameworks relevant to ocean CDR - how they originated, how they apply, who is responsible for enforcing them, and what oversight needs to be put in place before these technologies start to scale up.
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Aug 22, 2022
Can oceans save us? Part II: The tricky science of ocean carbon capture
Did you know plastic bags were originally intended to be an environmental solution? The idea was to replace paper bags in an effort to reduce deforestation. In 1935, cane toads were another fix - they were introduced to Australian sugarcane plantations to control insect pests. But, the ecological disaster this invasive species created far outweighed their agricultural benefit. It is often hard to anticipate the downstream environmental impacts of our actions, even when we are working in good faith to solve a problem. Given the globally interconnected nature of the oceans, and the reality that oceans are so underexplored that we have better maps of other planets in our solar system than we do of the ocean floor, ocean carbon dioxide removal technologies are a category ripe for unintended consequences.
So does it make sense to proceed, to continue developing ocean CDR technologies? What are start-ups doing to determine whether their approaches will be safe and effective? What kind of re…
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Aug 22, 2022
Can oceans save us? Part I: Using oceans to pull more CO2 from the air
More than 4 billion years ago, when Earth was still in its infancy, the atmosphere held more than 100,000 times the amount of CO2 it does today. Ever so slowly, that CO2 was absorbed into the oceans, where it reacted with rocks of the seafloor or was scavenged by organisms, eventually becoming trapped in sediment and slowly sequestered into Earth’s deep interior. This is the Earth’s deep-carbon cycle - nature’s way of regulating greenhouse gasses.
This week, Climate Now takes you on a special three-part podcast series that explores a novel suite of technologies, termed Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), that aims to speed up Earth’s natural GHG regulator by enhancing the biogeochemical processes already happening in the oceans. In our first episode, we are joined by a suite of entrepreneurs who see the climate-saving and profit-making potential of Ocean CDR, who walk us through what these technologies are, how they work, and why they could be so valuable to mitigating climate…
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Aug 8, 2022
Understanding EPA v. West Virginia: How will the Supreme Court’s ruling impact GHG regulation?
On June 30, 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision on the case “EPA v. West Virginia,” ruling in a 6-3 vote that the EPA exceeded its statutory authority by setting greenhouse gas emissions standards that would effectively require utilities to shift away from fossil fuel-sourced power generation to renewables.
At the time of the decision, it was met with a raft of alarmist headlines, forecasting that it would be a disaster for climate change mitigation, and that it threatens the future regulatory authority of all federal agencies. Is it really that bad?
In this episode, Michael Gerrard, professor of professional practice in climate change law and policy at Columbia University, helps us understand exactly what the EPA v. West Virginia decision said, and what its impact is likely to be.
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Jul 25, 2022
Do we need nuclear power to solve climate change? Amory Lovins says no
In 2017, the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant expansion - meant to hail the renaissance of nuclear power in the US - came screeching to a halt. The project, to build two new reactors at an existing South Carolina facility, was canceled after being delayed more than a year, costing $9 billion USD, and still being only 40% complete. Now, the only new nuclear project in the works in the U.S. is the Vogtle Plant expansion in Georgia; a project also more than a year behind schedule, and billions of dollars over budget. Still, nuclear projects remain a focus of government and think tank decarbonization strategies. Why?
Dr. Amory Lovins, adjunct professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, and international authority on the clean energy transition, joins Climate Now to explain why he thinks nuclear should no longer be considered as a source of energy. For Amory, it's not just the chance of environmental catastrophe or nuclear proliferation that make it a non-starter, it'…
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Jul 11, 2022
How can you save money while decarbonizing your building?
Heating, cooling and electrifying buildings produces nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, but by employing existing energy efficient technologies and switching to renewables, we could cut 87% of building-related emissions by 2050. So, how do we get there?
Climate Now speaks with two companies working to eliminate the barriers to decarbonizing buildings. Andy Frank, founder of Sealed, explains how Sealed makes it easier for homeowners to implement energy efficiency improvements by reducing upfront costs and managing the improvement project. Jeff Hendler and Zohra Roy of Logical Buildings share how their company empowers real estate managers and building owners with the data they need to optimize their energy usage.
00:00 Andy Frank, Sealed
15:58 Jeff Hendler and Zohra Roy, Logical Buildings
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Jun 20, 2022
Is there a profitable approach to carbon capture and storage?
In the international carbon offset market, the average price of removing one tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere is still below $15 USD, nowhere near enough to cover the costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS). As Dr. Sheila Olmstead (University of Texas, Austin) explained in a recent Climate Now podcast episode, this is why CCS is one of the few climate technologies not experiencing exponential growth. “Unless there's a market for captured CO2, then it doesn't make economic sense… to adopt these carbon capture technologies.”
But what if, instead of making captured CO2 the only marketable product, the capture is accomplished while also producing other goods and services?
Climate Now spoke with three pioneers developing startup programs in California that plan to use biowaste (that is, agricultural residues or vegetation cleared from forests to increase their resiliency to drought, fire or infestation) to produce hydrogen fuel and CO2. The technique is called 'bioenergy and carbo…
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Jun 13, 2022
Concrete, steel and plastics: Paths to a greener industrial sector
Each year, we produce about 30 billion tonnes of concrete globally. That’s nearly 10,000 pounds, or more than 2 entire cars-worth of concrete, per person, per year. We produce enough steel to build more than 2700 Empire State Buildings annually. We produce more than 100 pounds of plastic per person, each year. And with all of this material production, we also produce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
Nearly one-third of global GHG emissions come from industry, with steel, concrete, and chemical manufacturing (i.e. plastics) being the largest contributors. These industries are tough to decarbonize because they require performing chemical reactions at high temperatures, not easily achieved through electrification, and because they emit greenhouse gasses as a by-product.
Climate Now sat down with Dr. Rebecca Dell of the ClimateWorks Foundation, the largest philanthropic program in the world dedicated to reducing and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions that come from the material eco…
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Jun 6, 2022
Are we undervaluing energy efficiency as a decarbonization strategy?
*Are we underestimating the potential of increased efficiency? It wouldn’t be the first time.*
In 2021, the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasted a 50% increase in global energy demand by 2050. Such forecasts have echoes of the 1970’s, when – in the middle of a global energy crisis – forecasters were anticipating as much as a 300% increase in energy demand over the next 3 decades. Those forecasters missed the mark by about 250%, because they didn’t count on the significant efficiency improvements in home appliances, vehicle fuel economy, industry and home energy demands that kickstarted in the 1980’s.
In this episode, featuring Dr. Amory Lovins of RMI and Dr. Roger Aines of Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), we explore whether energy forecasters are missing the mark again: projecting only incremental efficiency gains in the next 30 years, despite the fact that we already have the technologies and smart design approaches…
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May 31, 2022
Financial innovations for climate and clean energy impact
*“Inertia is a hell of a thing. Inertia is there, and there is very little motivation for an incumbent to change course. So you have to have that disruption from the outside. The same thing with financial services.”** - Marilyn Waite, Climate Finance Fund*
*In the 2019/2020 fiscal year, the global climate finance sector reached a record **632 billion US dollars**. Unfortunately - that is a little short of the **more than $3 trillion US dollars** needed each year to keep warming under 2 degrees C, according to the IPCC. The Climate Finance Fund (CFF) is a philanthropic organization whose mandate is to close that gap by mobilizing capital towards climate solutions.*
*How do they do that? CFF focuses on bringing creative climate solutions to market with early investing, and supporting industry-led initiatives and regulatory changes that encourage financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels and invest in clean technology. Managing Director Marilyn Waite joined Climate Now to s…
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May 23, 2022
How to meet electricity demand while greening the grid
*Lawrence Livermore National Lab**,** Princeton University**, and the** IPCC** have all published **proposed climate mitigation pathways**: strategies for economically reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century for California, the U.S., and the world, respectively. And they are not alone. Any given pathway to net-zero emissions offers some combination of efficiency improvements, expansion of renewable energy sources, and some amount of so-called "negative emissions," using technologies and natural processes that capture and store carbon. But what determines the ratio of these three decarbonization methods? What determines which particular ratio will produce the lowest-cost and most feasible pathway for society?*
*Climate Now sat down with Dr. EJ Baik, to discuss her research on the least-cost pathway for decarbonizing California’s electrical grid by 2045. EJ explains how major decarbonization pathways are modeled, the assumptions behind those models, and why sometimes the most econo…
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May 16, 2022
Will the clean energy transition be cheaper than we thought?
For years we’ve been hearing that the clean energy transition is going to be expensive. But the recent working paper, *Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition,* suggests that the high estimates of the expense to transition to renewable energy have been inflated, and that it may in fact be cheaper to transition to renewables than to stay on fossil fuels, regardless of the costs of the changing climate. Using probabilistic cost forecasting methods, the authors of the paper project that because of the exponentially decreasing cost curve of renewables like wind and solar, fossil fuels will become nearly obsolete in just 25 years.
Climate Now spoke with co-author of the paper, Dr. Doyne Farmer, to better understand their model and what that might mean for policy and investments. Dr. Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Ins…
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May 9, 2022
Diluting dependence on Russian oil: How renewable energy can defund a war
*Among **the top importers of Russian oil** are the EU, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and France. The EU accounted for **71% of oil imports from Russia** 2 months after the war in Ukraine began. But cutting off oil and gas imports from Russia completely **can pose great challenges**. The EU is attempting to wean off of Russian oil dependence in response to the invasion of Ukraine by hastening renewable energy adoption. *
*The 1970’s oil crises led to a flattening of the exponential demand growth for oil globally. It **never recovered thanks to improvements in efficiency**. What lessons can we learn from the past as we face the current oil and gas crisis brought on by Putin’s war? We spoke with Amory Lovins, co-author of a **recent RMI article** assessing the geopolitical dynamics driving a pivot away from fossil fuels.*
*Chapters:*
*1:29 The 70’s energy crisis compared to today*
*10:09 Russia’s energy role*
*14:12 Policy change following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.*…
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May 2, 2022
The bottom line on sustainable shipping: Can the shipping industry reach zero emissions?
*If the international shipping sector were a country, it would be** the sixth largest CO2 emitting nation in the world**. Every year,** 11 billion tons of goods** - about 80% of all the goods we use or consume - reach us by ship, emitting** nearly a billion tons of CO2** into the atmosphere in the process. And, about** 40% of those goods** - nearly 4.5 billion tons - are fossil fuels.*
*Unlike switching to renewable energy and electric road vehicles, there is not an obvious short-term economic benefit to decarbonizing shipping, which makes even the simplest solutions (like slowing down the ships!) difficult to incentivize. Climate Now sat down with Bryan Comer, Marine Program Lead at The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), to discuss the shipping industry's decarbonization goals, the policy changes needed to reach them, and the future of sustainable shipping.*
*1:02 What is the ICCT?
3:17 Overview of the shipping industry
6:49 What are the emissions reduction goals…
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Apr 25, 2022
Buried treasure: Unearthing the power of the soil carbon bank
S*oil - that mixture of degraded bedrock, decomposing organic matter, and microorganisms, that nourishes the root systems of plants and trees - already has a soil carbon bank 4x that of vegetation. And, by changing how we manage our soils, it is possible to increase their capacity for trapping CO2 in the form of organic carbon**and** enhance the agricultural productivity** of a region.*
*Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at University of California, Merced, is a global leader in the carbon storage potential of soils. She sat down with Climate Now to explain why soils are so good at trapping carbon, how much they could hold, and what we can do to increase soil carbon storage. *
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Apr 19, 2022
How can water reuse help solve the global water crisis?
*Today, **26% of the global population** - about 2 billion people - live without reliable access to safe drinking water. And, as climate change worsens, the availability of fresh water will only decrease. By 2050, as many as **3.2 billion people** could live in severely water-scarce regions of the world. More than half the global population will experience water scarcity for at least one month a year.*
*Options for mitigating this crisis are limited: we can use less water, discourage population growth in urban centers, or find new water sources.*
*On World Water Day 2022, Jon Freedman, Senior Vice President of Global Governmental Affairs for SUEZ Water Technology Solutions, joined Climate Now to make the case for water reuse as one of those alternative sources. Technology already exists to purify and safely use recycled water - Israel reuses **nearly 90% of its wastewater effluent**, primarily for irrigation. The question that remains is how to encourage adoption of water reuse as pa…
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Apr 12, 2022
Explaining the SEC's proposed climate disclosure rules
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to standardize climate disclosures for publicly traded companies. What does that mean?
On March 21, 2022 the SEC released a proposal for a new rule: publicly traded companies will have to provide disclosures about how the changing climate will affect their business, and how their business is affecting climate.
This move would formalize a reporting system for climate-related disclosures that investors are increasingly demanding. Climate Now sat down with Nir Kaissar, a market economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and portfolio manager, to understand what these proposed disclosure requirements entail, how they fit into the scope of the SEC's mandate, and what the impact of their adoption will be for businesses, investors, policymakers and the public.
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Mar 29, 2022
Can ammonia or wind propel carbon-free shipping?
In the race for decarbonization, the shipping industry faces major challenges. Fuel is cheap, almost half the price of gasoline. And, most ships last between 20-25 years, meaning that the turnover to cleaner shipping could take far longer than road transportation, where the average car is only 12 years old.
But there is some wind in the sails of maritime decarbonization initiatives.
Maria Gallucci, a climate journalist with Canary Media, has spent the last 5 years investigating the challenges and opportunities of decreasing maritime emissions. She spoke with Climate Now about why it is so hard to decarbonize this sector, and the diversity of approaches that are being explored, with a focus on ammonia and wind-powered propulsion.
Chapters:
00:00 Maria's background
02:08 Why is shipping so hard to decarbonize?
05:43 How is shipping regulated?
08:20 What technologies and alternative fuels for shipping could replace fossil fuels?
11:08 Ammonia:
- 11:08 Pros and cons of ammonia for shipp…
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Mar 22, 2022
How the electricity grid works
One of the most efficient ways to get to a net-zero economy is to generate electricity from renewable sources, and then make as many things run on electricity as possible. But, as more end-use services (transportation, heating, industry) are electrified, and the source of electricity transitions from fossil fuels to renewables like solar and wind, the electricity supply chain - the pathway from electricity producers to consumers - will need to evolve, too.
In this episode, we spoke with *Monica Varman*, a clean energy technology investor at G2 Venture Partners who specializes in investments in grid resilience. We spoke with Monica about how the electricity sector works and how it is evolving: What is the pathway from creating electricity from a renewable or fossil fuel source, to being able to flip a switch in our home and have the light come on? And how are companies innovating the electricity generation-transmission-distribution supply chain to prepare us for a carbon-neutral future…
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Mar 8, 2022
A venture capitalist’s perspective on the evolution of green transportation
*In 2021 alone, **more than $32 billion dollars** were invested in green-technology startups, a four-fold increase from five years earlier. But how far will those dollars go? **Only about 25% of venture-backed startups** actually make the transition from an innovative idea to a successful business. *
*And when we are considering green technology, choosing which companies will have the biggest impact means much more than a return on investment. It will determine how fast we can reach a carbon-free global economy, and how dire the impact of climate change will be. *
*So how do investors pick the startups with the most potential? We spoke with G2 Venture Partners' Brook Porter, a chemical engineer-turned environmental technology investor with over two decades of experience in sustainability and technology development, about which companies are leading the way, how they succeeded, and what to be looking for among the up-and-comers in the green technology sector.
Episode breakdown:
00:40…
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Feb 22, 2022
Can We Achieve 100% Electric Car Sales by 2030?
*What will it take to get 100% of new car sales to be electric by 2030? Is it consumer demand? Is it political pressure? How about we just increase both? *
The Zero Emission Transportation Association (ZETA) is the first industry-backed coalition advocating for 100% EV sales by 2030, and they have devised a federal roadmap for reaching that goal. Joe Britton of ZETA and Dr. Sweta Chakraborty of Pioneer Public Affairs sat down with us to outline the ZETA roadmap, with a focus on the role of public policy in incentivizing manufacturers to go electric, and the role of public messaging to increase consumer confidence in electric vehicles.
Listen now to learn about the six policy initiatives needed to electrify road transportation in the U.S.
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Feb 18, 2022
How to Scale Up Carbon Capture and Storage
*Decarbonizing our global economy is critical to staying below the 1.5C threshold of warming, but so is reducing the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. By 2050, we will need to remove **about ten billion tonnes of CO2 every year**. Currently, we are capturing and sequestering **about 40 million tonnes a year** - about 0.4% of what’s needed by 2050, and less than 0.1% of the CO2-equivalent of** global energy and industry emissions**.*
*For comparison, renewable electricity has ramped up to **12% of global electricity consumption**. Electric vehicles now make up **nearly 9% of all new car sales**. These climate-friendly tech sectors are growing quickly, but carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is not keeping pace.*
*Environmental economist Dr. Sheila Olmstead, professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, set out to discover what is holding back rapid growth in CCUS, and how to overcome those obstacles. She sat down with Climate Now to s…
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Feb 8, 2022
Is micromobility the future of urban transportation?
There is a lot of focus within climate tech on how to decarbonize cars—whether that be via electric batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, or other emerging technologies—but what about eliminating the need for cars altogether?
How can we better design our cities and suburbs so that they are centered around humans, not cars? Cars do not need to be the primary method of urban transportation, and alternatives such as public transportation and micromobility have benefits far beyond simply reducing carbon emissions.
Listen now to our conversation with Dr. Meredith Glaser, urban mobility researcher and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, and Dr. Kevin Krizek, professor of Environmental Design at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
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Feb 1, 2022
An insider's perspective on advancing US climate policy
Climate policy at the federal level is integral to mitigating the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the United States has had a hard time so far passing ambitious climate legislation. Why is that?
From the outside, the situation often seems hopeless. But what does it look like from inside Washington? To find out, Climate Now spoke with Alex McDonough.
Alex started his career as a policy advisor for Senator Harry Reid, co-founded Clean Energy for America, and is now a policy advisor and partner at Pioneer Public Affairs, a clean energy lobbying firm.
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Jan 25, 2022
Re-imagining Heavy-Duty Trucking with Hydrogen and Carbon Capture
Heavy-duty, long-haul trucks - known as Class 8 trucks - account for more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year.
Electrification, while a practical option for most of the trucking industry (see last week's episode), is not yet as feasible for long-haul Class 8 trucks. |
What options might exist to decarbonize heavy-duty trucking in the short and medium term, if not with electrification?
Climate Now spoke with two entrepreneurs whose companies are developing alternative technologies to reduce heavy-duty transport emissions: Bav Roy, co-founder and COO of Verne, a start-up optimizing hydrogen storage for fuel cell trucks; and Paul Gross, the co-CEO and co-founder of Remora, a startup that captures carbon from the exhaust pipe of trucks.
Listen now as we explore the challenges and growth opportunities for these two technologies, infrastructure considerations, and more.
Chapters:
00:15 Heavy-duty emissions
1:44 Verne Hydrogen introduction
6:03 Remora Carb…
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Jan 18, 2022
The trucking industry needs to go green. Are electric trucks the answer?
In 2019, medium- and heavy-duty trucks accounted for about a quarter of U.S. transportation emissions while representing less than 4% of vehicles on the road, according to the U.S. EPA.
It is clear the trucking industry must decarbonize in order for the transportation sector, and the economy as a whole, to reach net-zero emissions, but which emerging technologies will move freight vehicles into climate-friendly territory is not yet clear, though electric is making great strides.
Climate Now spoke with the North American Council for Freight Efficiency's (NACFE) Executive Director Mike Roeth and Director of Emerging Technologies Rick Mihelic, as well as former RMI Senior Associate for Carbon-Free Mobility's Jessie Lund (now at CALSTART), about why electric trucks are leading the carbon-free trucking game.
Chapters:
2:03 What is NACFE?
4:20 Current state of the trucking industry
9:35 Technologies for decarbonizing trucking
15:25 Are hydrogen fuel cell vehicles scalable?
17: 20 Understa…
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Jan 11, 2022
Why all ride-sharing should go electric. And autonomous, with Dave Rubin
Ride-sharing services currently result in 69% more emissions, on average, than the trips they displace, according to a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But, if the ride-sharing vehicles were electric, it's a whole different story. Replacing one gasoline-powered ride-sharing car with an electric vehicle (EV) has three times the climate benefit as replacing a personal car with an EV.
Some companies like Cruise and Aurora go even further, developing electric autonomous fleets, which could further reduce the carbon footprint of ride-share vehicles.
Climate Now spoke with Dave Rubin, Head of Policy Research at Cruise, a self-driving, ride-sharing service, to understand how electric and autonomous vehicles could help us decarbonize road transportation, and the challenges ahead for wide-scale adoption.
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Jan 4, 2022
The sustainability conundrum of electric vehicles: Making and recycling EV batteries, with Andy Stevenson
Climate Now is kicking off our Decarbonizing Transportation series by addressing a question that looms over the electric vehicle market: how can we sustainably manufacture and recycle EV batteries?
To learn about electric vehicle battery trends and challenges, we are joined by Andy Stevenson, former Special Projects Associate at Tesla and former Chief Financial Officer of Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company.
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Dec 21, 2021
Green banks: How they unlock funding for climate solutions, with Bryan Garcia
The Connecticut Green Bank, the first green bank in the US, has unlocked over $2 billion in capital toward clean energy projects and other climate solutions since it was established by the state legislature in 2011.
So, what is the green bank model? How does it compare to other methods of clean energy finance? And what are their impact?
Climate Now speaks with Connecticut Green Bank President and CEO Bryan Garcia to find out.
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Dec 17, 2021
Ocean-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal and Geoengineering, with Wil Burns
Earth's oceans play a key role in slowing climate change, absorbing nearly a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
And they could, potentially, absorb more.
In this episode, Climate Now explores developing methods to enhance ocean-based carbon dioxide removal. What do we know about each technique, and what are the associated risks?
Learn more in our conversation with Dr. Wil Burns, visiting professor at Northwestern University's Environmental Policy and Culture Program and emeritus co-founding director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University.
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Dec 14, 2021
Unpacking COP 26: Are we on track to solve the climate crisis, with Megan Darby
In November 2021, representatives from around the world gathered to update their climate commitments at the 26th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in Glasgow, Scotland.
The conference received substantial attention from media and climate groups around the globe, the likes of which we haven't seen since COP 21 - the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
So why was there so much anticipation leading up to this year's COP? What were the expectations, and were they met? And do the new commitments made at COP 26 put us on track to meet global climate targets?
Megan Darby, Editor of Climate Home News, a UK-based news organization that covers the international politics of the climate crisis, joined Climate Now to unpack the key results from COP 26.
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Dec 10, 2021
Scaling wind energy: What it will take to reach global net-zero, with Simon Watson
Wind energy is one of the cheapest sources of energy today, but it accounts for only ~6% of global electricity generation.
To limit global warming to 2 degrees C or less, wind energy will need to scale up to about 5 times its current size. |
So, how can this be achieved? What are the challenges to scaling wind energy to this degree? How does off-shore wind fit into this equation? And what needs to happen this decade to put us on track?
Climate Now is joined by Dr. Simon Watson, Director of the Delft University of Technology Wind Energy Institute, to discuss the role of wind energy in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
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Nov 30, 2021
Adaptation in North America: What's happening and what needs to happen, with Beth Gibbons
Much of the focus surrounding climate action is on mitigation: how do we reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and avoid catastrophic climate change in the coming decades?
But the reality is the climate is already changing - and will continue to change even under the most optimistic mitigation scenarios. So what is being done to adapt and prepare for these changes?
Beth Gibbons, Executive Director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, joined Climate Now to discuss how - and whether - North American cities are adapting to a changing climate, and what still needs to happen to ensure people and places are protected.
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Nov 22, 2021
How to Ensure Climate Impact Investing Actually Has an Impact with Amit Bouri
"The [investment market] we have in place now is not working for people, it's not working for the planet, and it's actually not working for most investors."
This is according to Amit Bouri, Co-founder and CEO of the Global Impact Investing Network (the GIIN), an international community dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing.
Impact investments are made with the intention of producing a positive change, for example in addressing the climate crisis, while simultaneously earning financial returns. And it appears more and more investors are showing interest, as the impact investment market reached $715 billion in 2020, according to the GIIN, and is expected to keep rising.
Climate Now sat down with Amit Bouri to discuss the growing impact investment market and its drivers, how climate change plays a role, and how investors can measure the impact of their dollars.
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Nov 16, 2021
Water Strategy and Climate-Induced Drought: How to mitigate and prepare with Will Sarni
A growing population, groundwater depletion, poor water infrastructure, overuse, and water waste threaten our global freshwater supply.
Throw climate change into the mix, and the water crisis is exacerbated, as precipitation becomes less reliable and average global temperatures rise.
The water crisis, like the climate crisis, is projected to get worse, but there are solutions both corporations and governments can adopt to mitigate the negative impacts and prepare.
Climate Now spoke with Will Sarni, Founder and CEO of Water Foundry and a global thought leader on water challenges, to learn about the strategies and technologies available to assuage the water crisis.
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Nov 2, 2021
Improving Climate Models with Machine Learning with Laure Zanna
Most climate models in use today are based upon large-scale, well-understood physical relationships that drive global temperature and precipitation trends.
But the effects of complicated interactions that occur on smaller scales, which may still be significant, are harder to capture in these models.
That is why Dr. Laure Zanna of New York University and her colleagues are employing machine learning techniques, which can "learn" the effects of these interactions without explicitly solving the physics, to improve climate modeling. Climate Now spoke with Dr. Zanna to learn more.
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Oct 26, 2021
Trash to treasure: One man's journey to make CO2 waste a usable product
What does it take to turn an idea that could help fight climate change into a self-sustaining business? We often hear the glamorous stories of startups that have made it, but little about the struggles, the learning, and the luck required to get there.
Pol Knops, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Green Minerals, joined Climate Now to share his ongoing journey to design, develop and market a process that transforms carbon dioxide emissions into a useful product.
Green Minerals speeds up the natural process of mineralization, in which CO2 chemically reacts with iron, magnesium or calcium-rich minerals to form a new mineral, permanently trapping the CO2.
The Green Minerals mineralization process uses olivine to react with captured CO2 to create feedstocks for the concrete and paper industries.
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Oct 19, 2021
Pricing carbon around the globe: Why it's so difficult
How do we finance the cost of mitigating climate change, while discouraging continued use of fossil fuels? The largest public statement of economists in history argues for a carbon tax - which would charge a fee for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted.
But, if one country charges a different carbon tax than another, what would happen to international trade? Would fossil fuel use and emissions-intensive industrial processes actually decrease, or just move to a country without a carbon tax?
Carbon border adjustments attempt to address these issues, and come with their own legal, economic and practical complexities.
Listen to Climate Now's new podcast episode featuring conversations with Dr. Adele Morris, former Policy Director for Climate and Energy Economics at the Brookings Institution, Dr. David Weisbach, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, Dr. Brian Flannery, Visiting Fellow for Resources for the Future, and Shuting Pomerleau, Climate Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Cent…
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Oct 12, 2021
Do you get what you pay for? Monetizing Forests via Carbon Credits
A rapidly expanding list of companies have announced plans to go "carbon neutral" or "net zero". Often, these plans include at least some offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing credits from forest carbon offset programs.
But buyers beware: our look into how forest carbon offsets are determined and sold suggests that there is a lot of work to be done before we will be able to monetize the carbon absorptive power of trees in our effort to reduce net emissions.
Climate Now spoke with four experts: Dr. Charles Canham of The Cary Institute, Dr. Danny Cullenward, Policy Director of CarbonPlan, Dr. Grayson Badgley of Black Rock Forest and Columbia University, and Christine Cadigan of the American Forest Foundation to better understand what is and is not working in the forest carbon offset market.
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Sep 24, 2021
Climate impacts profits: How businesses should report climate risk
For businesses, a changing climate is not just about worsening weather patterns. Businesses must be prepared for what is likely to be an era of rapidly accelerating change to many dimensions of their operations, including changes in shareholder expectations, supply chains, multi-dimensional risks to physical assets, and impacts on labor, among others.
A critical dimension to preparing for these changes is risk assessment and reporting. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) was established in 2015 to provide businesses with guidance on how to disclose both financial risks and opportunities that are associated with our changing climate.
Emily Wasley runs WSP USA's Corporate Climate Resilience practice. We spoke with Emily to gain a better understanding of the TCFD guidelines, and some perspective on the growing interest from businesses seeking to become resilient to a changing climate.
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Sep 17, 2021
Measuring CO2 from space: the science of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions
In the first episode of our two-part series, we learned how NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory made it to space despite overwhelming odds from David Crisp, the mission's principal investigator.
Today, we released the sequel, where we explore the science of carbon dioxide remote sensing, and how the data collected by the OCO missions 2 and 3 can be used to address the climate crisis.
Dr. David Crisp returns, and with Dr. Annmarie Eldering, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Project Scientist for the OCO-3 mission, explains what we have learned so far from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions.
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Sep 14, 2021
Measuring CO2 from space: a journey of perseverance, heartbreak, and scientific breakthrough with David Crisp
On the 24th of February, 2009, David Crisp was in the control center at Vandenberg Air Force base counting down the seconds for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory to launch.
It was a project he had led for a decade - and it was the first NASA mission that would measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space.
Hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work had gone into that moment, but David and his team had yet to face their greatest challenge...
This week, Climate Now is releasing a two-part series on NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) missions, including the saga of its multi-decadal journey to completion and the impact it could have on the fight to end climate change.
David Crisp, Senior Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shares his experience as the Principal Investigator for the OCO missions with Climate Now in this episode.
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Sep 10, 2021
Saving two birds with one stone: tackling biodiversity and climate together
Many climate change mitigation proposals are land-use intensive. Are these proposals feasible without negatively impacting biodiversity? Can we develop solutions for both the climate and biodiversity crises?
There has been an historic lack of collaboration between climate and conservation efforts. To address this, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) produced their first-ever joint report in June to determine solutions that benefit both biodiversity and climate change.
Dr. Pete Smith, a co-author of the IPBES/IPCC report and professor of Soils and Global Change at the University of Aberdeen, joined Climate Now to explain why biodiversity should not be forgotten in the climate fight.
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Sep 7, 2021
Calculating Climate Financial Risks with Tory Grieves
The climate crisis has myriad effects on American businesses, from where properties are located and their likelihood of encountering extreme weather, to where materials are sourced and potential supply-chain complications. These effects inevitably carry with them financial risks and opportunities which can impact pensions, stock markets, and business operations.
So how can businesses begin to calculate their financial risk from the effects of climate change? And why is this seemingly impossible task important?
We'll address this question with Tory Grieves, Vice President of Analytics for The Climate Service, a company that provides businesses the tools to calculate their climate-related financial risks and opportunities.
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Sep 3, 2021
Building stars on Earth: the potential of nuclear fusion
Is there such a thing as "perfect" energy? With nuclear fusion, the answer is maybe.
Fusion energy would be safe to human health, environmentally clean, and essentially limitless.
But, developing a sustainable fusion reaction still faces significant engineering hurdles and is likely decades away from becoming a reality.
So, where are we in the development of fusion technology? What technical challenges remain? And what practical challenges must be overcome to make fusion a competitive energy source?
Sir Steven Cowley, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Dr. Aneeqa Khan, Research Fellow in Nuclear Fusion at The University of Manchester, answer these questions in this episode.
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Aug 27, 2021
Nuclear Energy: What are the real risks? with David Keith
Despite being a reliable, zero-emissions alternative to energy derived from fossil fuels, nuclear energy remains mired in controversy.
Opponents often cite four reasons not to include nuclear in the portfolio of alternative energy sources that will replace fossil fuels: its cost, what to do with radioactive waste, the increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, and environment and health impacts resulting from accidents or meltdowns.
But how are these risks quantified and how do they compare to other energy sources, including carbon-intensive energy? As the climate crisis worsens, can we really afford to exclude nuclear from the list of solutions?
Dr. David Keith, internationally-recognized climate and energy scientist and entrepreneur out of Harvard University, helps us understand how the risks of employing nuclear compare to the risks of not using it.
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Aug 20, 2021
Investing in the Energy Transition with Salim Samaha
Transitioning to a sustainable energy economy will require significant input of investment capital. But how do investors decide which companies and technologies to back as society moves toward a carbon neutral future?
Salim Samaha heads energy project investments in the Americas for Global Infrastructure Partners. GIP is a national leader in private equity investments in renewable energy, with ownership stakes in over 90 gigawatts of operating or developing renewable energy projects.
In this episode, Mr. Samaha explains the role of private equity investments in the clean energy transition and the types of projects GIP is funding.
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Aug 17, 2021
Optimizing reforestation to mitigate climate change with Susan Cook-Patton
Trees are an incredible resource for mitigating climate change, with myriad environmental benefits - not least their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it for hundreds to thousands of years.
Reforestation - the process of replanting trees in depleted areas - should be included in the array of climate solutions, but it isn't as simple as merely planting any tree anywhere.
Dr. Susan Cook-Patton and her colleagues created the Reforestation Hub, which provides county-level information about the best regions and geographic areas to plant trees to maximize CO2 uptake via reforestation.
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Aug 13, 2021
Will China reach net-zero emissions by 2060?
China currently produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the next three biggest emitters - the United States, European Union, and India - combined, making a commitment from China to decarbonize its economy essential to reaching global carbon neutrality.
But given China is the manufacturing epicenter of the world, the path to decarbonization is not straight forward. So, what targets were set in China's most recent 5-year plan and does this put them on track to meet their goal of net-zero emissions by 2060?
How does China's political landscape affect its ability, and willingness, to transition to clean energy? And where is China currently investing its resources?
We explore these topics with Georgetown University's Joanna Lewis, Center for American Progress' Laura Edwards, and Sustainable Finance Institute's Johnny Huang (Huang, Zhong).
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Aug 10, 2021
Carbon Dioxide Removal with Roger Aines
How do we reach global net-zero emissions by 2050, when there is almost no chance of completely ending our dependence on fossil fuels by that time? The solution will require Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) – a host of natural and technological techniques for drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere, effectively producing ‘negative emissions’.
We spoke with Dr. Roger Aines, the Energy Program Chief Scientist and lead of the Carbon Initiative at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to learn about the various carbon dioxide removal methods, their advantages, costs and challenges, and who is helping advance them.
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Aug 6, 2021
Carbon Sequestration with Julio Friedmann
In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we must (in addition to reducing emissions) capture carbon and permanently store it where it cannot be released, a process known as carbon sequestration.
So, what is currently being done to advance carbon sequestration? What policy and economic levers need to be implemented to incentivize its wide-scale deployment?
To answer these questions, Climate Now spoke with Dr. Julio Friedmann, Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA and previously the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy.
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Aug 3, 2021
Clean Aviation Fuel with Steve Csonka
What incentives are needed for airlines to adopt sustainable aviation fuel (#SAF) and decarbonize air travel? How does SAF get tested and approved for use in commercial aviation?
Who are the players in this space now and how much SAF is already being used? Steve Csonka joins Climate Now to discuss this important new technology.
Steve Csonka is the Executive Director of the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI), where he connects a coalition of airlines, aircraft manufacturers, energy producers, researchers, and U.S. government agencies to advance sustainable jet fuel for commercial use.
Note: This podcast was recorded on April 13, 2021, and there have been a few updates since then. In addition to World Energy, Gevo, and Neste, Eni and Air BP are now also producing SAF, and Fulcrum completed construction of its waste-to-fuel facility in Nevada and will likely be producing fuel by the end of 2021.
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Jul 30, 2021
What's Wrong with Carbon Offsets? with Mark Trexler and Derik Broekhoff
As the climate crisis worsens, more and more companies are committing to go "net-zero". Most of these commitments include the purchase of carbon offsets or investment in negative emissions projects, designed to offset the emissions resulting from companies' operations.
The carbon offset market is in high demand due to this surge of net-zero pledges, but does the market actually work? How can companies be sure their dollars are removing carbon that otherwise wouldn't be removed from the atmosphere? And what are the risks of a market that doesn't uphold its promise of truly offsetting emissions?
Dr. Mark Trexler of the Climatographers and Derik Broekhoff of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) joined Climate Now to discuss the carbon offset market, what's wrong with it, and what its future could be.
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Jul 27, 2021
Hydrogen Electrolysis with Ben Wiley
Declining renewable energy costs have sparked a renewed interest in green hydrogen, which has the potential to decarbonize sectors that are harder to electrify.
Because hydrogen doesn't occur by itself on Earth, it must be separated from other elements, such as oxygen in water. Electrolysis is the process of using electricity from renewable energy to extract hydrogen from water.
Dr. Ben Wiley, Duke University Professor of Chemistry, joins Climate Now to explain hydrogen electrolysis, where it makes sense to integrate into the energy economy, and the technology he is helping develop to improve its productivity.
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Jul 20, 2021
Bioenergy Conversion with Jerry Tuskan
How exactly are plants converted into liquid transportation fuel? And what obstacles does bioenergy need to overcome in order to displace fossil fuels in the US energy economy and abroad?
Jerry Tuskan is the CEO of the Center for Bioenergy Innovation and Group Lead for Plant Systems Biology in the Biosciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he has been since 1990.
He also holds a joint appointment at the Joint Genome Institute - a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility - where he helps lead the Plant Science Program.
Dr. Tuskan joined Climate Now to help us understand the biomass to biofuel process and how the sector can expand to meet our net-zero emissions targets.
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Jul 13, 2021
Biomass Availability with Matthew Langholtz
Bioenergy is a renewable energy for its carbon neutrality - plants absorb CO2 during photosynthesis and emit the same amount when combusted for energy. But to significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, substantial amounts of biomass, or organic matter, are required.
What types of biomass can sustainably and economically be used for energy? What policy or market adjustments can be made to allow bioenergy to compete with more affordable oil or gasoline?
Climate Now hosts James Lawler and Katherine Gorman spoke with Matthew Langholtz, Natural Resource Economist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to better understand biomass availability and the role bioenergy could play in the transition away from fossil fuels.
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Jul 9, 2021
Climate Modeling with Joeri Rogelj
Climate impact assessment models carry significant weight when developing mitigation and adaptation strategies. So, what climate models exist, and what factors do they include? What scenarios are they projecting, and what should we make of these projections?
We had the opportunity to ask these questions to Dr. Joeri Rogelj, a lead author of the IPCC's forthcoming sixth assessment report. Dr. Rogelj is Director of Research and Lecturer in Climate Change and the Environment at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.
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Jul 6, 2021
Climate Policy with Danny Richter
National governments are best-suited to provide the bold, swift action required by the climate crisis through policy. But which policies, exactly, should be passed? What are the pros and cons of each, and which are already proven to be effective in other countries?
In this episode, we talk with Danny Richter, Vice President of Government Affairs at Citizens' Climate Lobby, to discuss some of these questions, including what a price on carbon might look like in the United States.
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Jun 29, 2021
Net-Zero by 2050 with Eric Larson
What are the possible paths and necessary steps to achieve net-zero emissions in the United States by 2050? Which energy sources could sufficiently decrease our reliance on natural gas and oil to meet that target? And how much will those new energy sources need to scale from where they are today?
Dr. Eric Larson is a lead author of the Net-Zero America Report - a Princeton University research initiative that presents five possible pathways to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 - and Senior Research Engineer at Princeton's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
In this episode, Dr. Larson takes Climate Now hosts James Lawler and Katherine Gorman through the various pathways to net-zero, including the technologies that could help us achieve it.
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Jun 22, 2021
Carbon Capture 101 with Howard Herzog
According to the IPCC's 2018 report, carbon capture and storage - in addition to a significant reduction in emissions - will be necessary in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
But what is carbon capture, how does it work, and what is its potential?
Dr. Howard Herzog, MIT Energy Initiative Senior Research Engineer, and a pioneer of carbon capture technology, joined Climate Now to help us understand carbon capture and storage and its role on our path to net-zero emissions.
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Jun 11, 2021
The US Housing Market's Exposure to Climate Risk with Amine Ouazad
Sea levels are rising, storms are worsening, and flooding is consistently exceeding FEMA's 100-year floodplain maps. Yet, an increasing percentage of new mortgages are used to purchase homes in at-risk areas. And lenders are selling mortgages in areas hit by hurricanes at higher rates to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who are backed by American taxpayers, according to research done by Dr. Amine Ouazad, Professor of Economics at HEC Montreal.
Dr. Amine Ouazad speaks with Climate Now about his research, and how these conditions could spark the next financial crisis.
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Jun 8, 2021
Climate Projections with Sergey Paltsev
Dr. Sergey Paltsev, Deputy Director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, spoke with Climate Now hosts James Lawler and Katherine Gorman about climate projections and the tools he and his colleagues at MIT use to communicate projected outcomes to policymakers and the public.
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Jun 1, 2021
The Cost of Climate Change with Ian Bolliger
Dr. Ian Bolliger, Climate Data Scientist at Rhodium Group and affiliate of the Climate Impact Lab, joins Climate Now podcast hosts Katherine Gorman and James Lawler to explain how we measure the costs of climate change (in dollar terms) across sectors and communities. Putting a number on these costs can help businesses, governments, and communities better allocate funding towards adaptation and prevention.
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May 25, 2021
Government's Role in Climate Action with Caroline Spears
Hosts Katherine Gorman and James Lawler discuss how politicians can create climate campaigns and what role regional, state, and the federal governments play in advancing climate action.
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May 11, 2021
Social Cost of Carbon with Tamma Carleton
How do we determine the real cost of a ton of carbon? Listen to find out.
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Apr 27, 2021
Sea Level and Social Cost of Carbon with Bob Kopp
Hosts Katherine Gorman and James Lawler interview Dr. Bob Kopp, Climate Scientist at Rutgers University and Director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, about sea level change and how we estimate the costs of climate damages.
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Apr 20, 2021
Climate 101 with Kerry Emanuel
Dr. Kerry Emanuel, professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT and co-founder of the MIT Lorenz Center discusses how we can solve climate change.
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Mar 31, 2021
Climate Now Introduction
Hi and welcome to the Climate Now podcast, hosted by Katherine Gorman and James Lawler! Climate Now is a multi-platform resource on the science of climate change, covering the key scientific theories underpinning our understanding of how and why the climate is changing; our global energy system and the emissions we produce; the various approaches to addressing and reversing climate change and their respective costs; policy opportunities and pitfalls; energy and climate-related technologies; and other topics. Check out our videos, articles, and podcasts at climatenow.com
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Contact us at contact@climatenow.com
Visit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.
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