Concentration of CO2 in the Atmosphere
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Headline News:
- “World Bank Unveils $5 Billion Renewable Energy Plan For Africa” • The World Bank will allocate $5 billion to deliver “reliable, affordable, renewable electricity” to 100 million Africans by the end of the decade, its president said. The World Bank estimates that around 600 million people in Africa do not have access to reliable electricity. [Macau Business]
- “At COP28, Countries Launch Declaration Of Intent On Clean Hydrogen” • More than thirty countries launched the COP28 Declaration of Intent on the Mutual Recognition of Certification Schemes for Renewable and Low-Carbon Hydrogen and Hydrogen Derivatives. Endorsers of the declaration seek to help facilitate a global market. [CleanTechnica]
- “US Departments Of Energy And Transportation, Along With Transport Canada, Are Taking Action To Reduce Rail Sector Emissions” • On the margins of COP28, the US Secretaries of Energy and Transportation, and Canada’s Minister of Transport issued a statement saying the two countries have created a Rail Decarbonization Task Force. [CleanTechnica]
- “Solar Poised For Record-Setting 2023 While Economic Challenges Mount” • The US solar industry added 6.5 GW of new electric generating capacity in Q3 2023, for a 35% increase, year-over-year, as federal clean energy policies begin to take hold. The US is expected to add a record 33 GW of solar capacity in 2023. [Solar Energy Industries Association]
- “Tripling Renewable Energy By 2030 Is Possible And Essential” • If we are serious about phasing out fossil fuels, we must replace them with renewable energy as soon as we can. At COP 28, some climate activists want to see an agreement to triple the amount of renewable energy in the world by 2030. That’s ambitious, but it’s entirely possible according to Bloomberg. [CleanTechnica]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Headline News:
- “Is the world about to promise to ditch fossil fuels?” • COP28 may be close to a big breakthrough on reducing the gases heating our planet, its UAE hosts believe. Showing “cautious optimism”, the UAE negotiating team believes COP28 is getting ready to commit to phasing down fossil fuels over coming decades. Or even ditching them altogether. [BBC]
- “EVs Take 90.6% Share In Norway” • November saw plugin EVs take 90.6% share in Norway, up from 89.3% year on year. Petrol-only vehicles saw record low share of 0.6% of the auto market. Overall auto volume was 10,348 units, somewhat below seasonal norms. The Tesla Model Y was again September’s bestseller, and several new models debuted. [CleanTechnica]
- “Are The Solutions To Fight Climate Change Making Progress?” • It’s not all doom and gloom at the COP28 climate summit. The Earth’s climate is changing rapidly and urgent action is needed to avoid the most damaging consequences for people and nature. But there is hope, and delegates in Dubai are discussing several very concrete ways to limit warming. [BBC]
- “‘Our Future Is Electric,’ But GM’s Chief Sustainability Officer Wants More EV Infrastructure Support” • Kristen Siemen, chief sustainability officer at General Motors , appealed for EV policy support and infrastructure to help make our transportation all electric. A robust EV infrastructure is needed for of profitable plug-in passenger vehicles. [CleanTechnica]
- “Approved Oil Company Secures Deal To Power All NYC Agencies With Renewable Diesel” • New York City’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services has awarded Approved Oil Company a multi-year contract. Under this contract, the company will supply renewable diesel to the fleets of various New York City agencies. [Biomass Magazine]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Headline News:
- “Fossil Fuel Industry Nearly Quadrupled Registrations At Climate Summit Since Last Year, Watchdog Report Says” • More than 2,400 people connected to the fossil fuel industry registered to attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai. That’s nearly four times the number that signed up for last year’s climate gathering, according to an analysis. [CNN]
- “Autonomous Electric Truck Transports GE Appliances” • Einride is one of many startups that have been built on big goals regarding autonomous, electric transport. Most of them never get far and never make much of an impact. Einride got a deal actually putting its autonomous truck to work … in Selmer, Tennessee, of all places. [CleanTechnica]
- “New York Developer Launches $1.2 Billion Renewable Energy Fund For USA” • Fresh off the launch of the New York Climate Exchange, New York City is becoming an epicenter of renewable energy development. Though space for new wind turbines and solar panels within the city is limited, the $1.2 billion fund will set up clean power assets across the US. [CleanTechnica]
- “Native Americans Are Building Their Own Solar Farms” • Tribes struggled to tap into the billions in renewable energy incentives offered by the government. They’ve struggled to have any access to electricity. When Two Bears left politics in 2017, he formed Indigenized Energy, a native-led energy company that installs solar farms for tribal nations, free of charge. [BBC]
- “BMW iX With ONE Battery Pack Drives 978 Km On Single Charge” • ONE (Our Next Energy), a battery company, said it had equipped a BMW iX with one of its Genesis battery packs. The car then drove for 978 km (608 miles) on a single charge, using the European WLTP testing standard. But this was no ordinary battery pack. [CleanTechnica]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Headline News:
- “World’s Largest Floating Solar Power Plant Taking Shape On Hydropower Plant” • The plans for the world’s largest floating solar power plant show how quickly the floating solar field can grow. The project is to expand an existing 145-MW floating solar array at the Cirata hydropower reservoir in West Java, Indonesia, to reach up to 500 MW. [CleanTechnica]
 Floating solar array at Cirata plant (Courtesy of Sungrow)
- “Masdar And EDF Sign Major Agreement With Government Of The Kyrgyz Republic To Develop Up To 3.6 GW Of Hydropower And Renewable Projects” • Masdar and EDF igned an agreement with the Ministry of Energy of the Kyrgyz Republic to explore the development of hydropower and renewable projects with a combined capacity of up to 3.6 GW. [PR Newswire]
- “Indonesia Eyes ‘Phenomenal’ Geothermal Power Potential” • Indonesia is home to 40% of global geothermal resources and is keen to harvest energy from the Earth’s crust. But experts do not agree about whether the industry will be able to hit its ambitious goals to generate large amounts of energy given the costs and lack of incentives. [South China Morning Post]
- “GM Expects Its Electric Vehicles To Become Profitable In 2025” • When GM chief financial officer Paul Jacobson spoke to analysts at a Barclays conference, he admitted the company had not found the pace it had expected to meet its EV making goals. Nevertheless, he expressed confidence that GM’s EVs would be profitable in 2025. [CleanTechnica]
- “An IRA Grant Could Help Low-Income Residents In New Hampshire Go Solar” • The New Hampshire DOE requested a $70 million federal grant to expand community solar programs for low-income residents. Such an infusion of funds could lower energy bills, accelerate decarbonization, and even catalyze affordable housing. [Canary Media]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Headline News:
- “Climate Change Is Costing The US $150 Billion A Year” • In total, extreme weather events cost the US $150 billion per year, due to direct impacts such as infrastructure damage,injuries, and agricultural losses, the authors of a report estimate. And the cost of extreme weather events is expected to grow in the near term as sea levels and temperatures rise. [CNN]
 Storm damage (Chandler Cruttenden, Unsplash)
- “How The US, Oil Industry Plans To Drastically Cut Methane Emissions” • Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Compact requires oil firms to reduce their methane emissions by 80% to 90% over the next five years while providing monitoring records to an international verification body. [ABC News]
- “New CO₂ Energy Storage System Could Blow Past Li-Ion” • Carbon dioxide reaches a liquid state when compressed and it expands with a pop when released, and now the Italian startup Energy Dome is ready to harness the action for a new energy storage system that could provide far more storage at far less cost than lithium-ion batteries. [CleanTechnica]
- “US joins in other nations in swearing off coal power to clean the climate” • US Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for closing the existing plants. [ABC News]
- “Texas Grid Faces Winter After Failed Attempt To Get More Power Online” • The Electric Reliability Council of Texas asked companies if they were willing to bring onlin some shuttered power plants running on gas and coal and, if so, what it would cost ERCOT. As it happened, not a single company thought reviving an old power plant made sense. [KRGV]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Headline News:
- “New England’s Decades-Old Shrimp Fishery, A Victim Of Climate Change, To Remain Closed Indefinitely” • In New England, the shrimp business fell victim to warming waters in 2013 because of a moritorium by regulators. A healthy shimp population needs cold water. The moratorium will remain in place indefinitely, fishery regulators ruled. [ABC News]
- “COP28 Host UAE To Ramp Up National Oil Production” • United Arab Emirates, the country hosting COP28 climate talks aimed at cutting fossil fuel emissions is massively ramping up its own oil production, the BBC has learned. Should this surprise us? Sultan al-Jaber, the president of COP28, is also the chief executive of the UAE’s state oil firm Adnoc. [BBC]
- “Record-Low EV Battery Prices In 2023” • Thanks to a variety of factors, lithium-ion battery packs are at record low prices. After dropping 14%, they are down to $139/kWh. The steep price drop and record low average price come on the heels of price increases in 2022 that had brought battery prices back to 2020 levels. The world changes fast. [CleanTechnica]
- “Lower US CO₂ Emissions Due In Part To Shifts In Power Generation Sources” • A forecast by the US Energy Information Administration is for the US energy sector to emit about 4,790 million metric tons of CO₂ in 2023, a 3% decrease from 2022. Much of this decline results from lower electricity generation from coal-fired power plants. [CleanTechnica]
- “New Jersey Plans To Restart Offshore Wind In 2024 After ‘Bump In The Road’” • The Governor of New Jersey is looking to restart the state’s offshore wind programs reiterating that it is committed to offshore wind as a key component of its renewable energy program. The state is commitment to having 100% clean energy by 2035. [The Maritime Executive]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
Headline News:
- “Vestas 15-MW Prototype Certified” • Vestas has received a type certificate for its V236-15MW offshore wind turbine. The turbine manufacturer installed the first prototype unit at the beginning of the year. After reaching it nominal power rating of 15 MW in April, the turbine broke the world record for power produced by one turbine in a 24-hour period – 363 MWh. [reNews]
 Vestas prototype turbine (Vestas image)
- “Why Hold UN Climate Talks 28 Times? Do The Talks Even Matter?” • The Conference of Parties process gives every nation in the world, whether rich or poor, large or small, a seat at the table to discuss how climate change is impacting them and how they believe the world should confront it. And ultimately, COP is the only game in town. [ABC News]
- “The Global Impact of Renewable Electricity On Energy Security and Economy” • According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the adoption of renewable energy sources in 2022 resulted in a remarkable $521 billion saving, primarily by reducing the reliance on expensive fossil-fuel imports. [EnergyPortal.eu]
- “COP28: Poor Countries Win 30-Year Fight For Climate Cash” • In a surprise, COP28 delegates agreed to launch a long-awaited fund to pay for damage from storms and drought worsened by climate change. Such deals are normally sealed last minute after days of negotiations, but COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber put the decision on the floor on day one. [BBC]
- “Renewable Energy Power In China Reached Record High” • Installed capacity of China’s renewable energy power generation surpassed 1.4 billion kilowatts (1,400 GW) as of end-October, accounting for 49.9% of the country’s total, according to the National Energy Administration. This marks a year-on-year growth of 20.8%. [China Daily]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
reprinted from Bloomberg Green – Bloomberg
By Victoria Cuming
With tens of thousands of delegates planning to attend this year’s UN climate summit in Dubai, there’s expected to be a flood of new pledges, projects and initiatives announced. It’ll be easy to lose focus on the most important task at hand: Nearly 200 countries have 13 days to reach a new, unanimous agreement on how to tackle climate change.
To help cut through the noise, BloombergNEF has identified 10 areaswhere governments need to make headway at COP28 in order to take a meaningful step toward the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Each area is scored out of 10 based on expected level of progress in Dubai and assigned a weighting based on importance and urgency. Overall, COP28 is expected to score just 3.9 out of 10, marking a slight increase (0.3 points) since BloombergNEF’s report published on Nov. 2.
 Top of the agenda this year will be the first formal “stocktake” on global progress toward the Paris targets. It’s pretty much a fait accompli that the technical assessment will make for depressing reading, as parties’ current targets are most likely not enough to limit the increase in global average temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by end of the century. If countries achieve their existing climate plans, warming this century could be as much as 2.8C, based on the latest UN analysis. So the pressure is on for parties in Dubai to agree on bold, specific recommendations that drive governments to ratchet up their climate commitments by 2025. If history is anything to go by, the recommendations will probably be more tentative than bold, meaning BloombergNEF scores this part of the process just 1 out of 10.
Read More: What Is COP28 and Why Is It Important?
At the other extreme, the most likely area to yield progress in Dubai is a package of commitments to further the energy transition. This is expected to include a pledge to triple global renewables capacity by 2030, though it could be watered down, as seen at the Group-of-20 summit. With over 60 countries now pushing for this target to be included in the COP28 decision, the score for this metric has risen to 8 out of 10 — two points more than in BloombergNEF’s Nov. 2 report.
In practice, tripling renewables by 2030 will be hard but achievable based on a recent BloombergNEF report. Meeting such a target would require a doubling of the rate of renewables investment to an average of $1.18 trillion per year through 2030, compared with $564 billion in 2022. It would also entail nearly three times as much power-grid investment in 2030 as was spent in 2022, and deploying 16.1 times as many batteries by the end of the decade as were installed at the end of last year.
 The most contentious topic at COP28 will likely be finance. Yet BNEF considers it relatively likely — 7 out of 10 — that developed nations will make good on their 2009 pledge to annually provide $100 billion in climate finance to developing economies. They may have missed the original 2020 deadline, but data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that developed countries had provided $89.6 billion in 2021 and that the $100 billion goal looks likely to have been met last year. Delivering on this commitment should start to rebuild trust between developed and developing economies. Ultimately that trust could convince some burgeoning emitters to increase their climate targets.
One of the areas where parties are expected to make only modest progress in Dubai is the new global carbon offset mechanism known as “Article 6.4.” Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covers how parties can cooperate to achieve their climate commitments and is the only part of the pact that directly engages with the private sector. In particular, Article 6.4 establishes the market mechanism that enables governments and companies to trade carbon credits. Unlike voluntary CO2 markets, Article 6.4 will be overseen by a UN supervisory body comprising parties to the Paris Agreement and is meant to be more robust in terms of delivering actual environmental benefits.
It was a close call at COP27 as to whether negotiators would reach any form of agreement on Article 6.4. However, the eventual deal deferred many issues to COP28, and the supervisory body has made little headway in its meetings this year. As a result, there is a 3-out-of-10 chance that countries can resolve all the outstanding issues in Dubai for an environmentally robust mechanism to be ready to launch in early 2024.
To give an idea of how the talks are going, BloombergNEF will update the scores for the 10 areas throughout COP28 when there are significant developments. Then once the summit is over, we will assess to what extent parties were able to achieve meaningful progress, or whether it ends up being another damp squib as seen at climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh last year.
Read more of BloombergNEF’s analysis on this year’s climate summit via the COP28 theme page.
Some may say that books are a thing of the past, but at COVER, books are building community.
COVER has been fostering hope and building community for 25 years by bringing together volunteers and trained staff to complete urgent home repairs for low-income homeowners in the Upper Valley. COVER also operates a reuse store in downtown White River Junction that resells building materials and household goods at affordable prices, to help fund its home repair program.
Cover to COVER Books is COVER’s newest enterprise at 158 South Main Street in downtown White River Junction and will open its doors on Friday, December 1. Cover to COVER Books will accept and sell quality used and new books in a neighborhood that lacks a bookstore and town library.
More importantly, the bookstore will further COVER’s mission of “fostering hope and building community.” Although COVER’s home repair program is known for building and repairing ramps, porches and roofs, COVER’s mission is to foster hope and build community by strengthening community ties – between strangers who may meet on a repair jobsite or in the COVER store, and now at Cover to COVER Books. A bookstore can be an inviting space (books don’t judge!) where folks can linger without feeling rushed out the door. Everyone will be welcome regardless of their age, income or how they look to browse through a curated collection of books and perhaps find a book or two to take home.
Cover to COVER Books will be run primarily through volunteers who are devoted to books, different forms of literature and how reading can expand one’s world. Our volunteers are community members who perhaps were not able to or interested in volunteering on a home repair site, but found a sense of community through volunteering at Cover to COVER Books. If you would like to join this community of volunteers, qualifying and sorting donations or staffing the bookstore, please email Jen Roby at jen@coverhomerepair.org or visit https://coverhomerepair.org/volunteer/.
A Cover to COVER Books volunteer, Peter Money, who is also a publisher and library director shares: “Personally, volunteering at Cover to COVER Books offers a chance to be with my community in a way that is mutually supportive. Every village should have at least one used-book store, in my estimation…. I feel good about putting the best books we can find on the shelf for just the right reader. We know there’s going to be something for everyone to uncover at COVER!”
Ribbon cutting: Friday, December 1, at 11:00, at Cover to COVER Books, 158 South Main Street, White River Junction.
Media contact: Helen Hong at director@coverhomerepair.org or 802-296-7241 ext 5.
COP28: UN Climate Talks Have a Surprisingly Smooth Start
Notes from the ground
The COP28 climate summit could have hardly had a better start.
Delegates from nearly 200 countries agreed on details for running a new fund designed to help vulnerable countries deal with more extreme weather stoked by global warming. It’s a major breakthrough, coming just a year after countries first agreed to set up a loss and damage fund.
Countries almost immediately began pledging money to start the program. COP28 host, the United Arab Emirates, said it would contribute $100 million, alongside an identical offering from Germany, $50 million from the United Kingdom and $10 million from Japan. The US also said it would provide $17.5 million to the fund — which, interestingly, has yet to get a proper name.
One major hurdle still remains, however. Developed countries have called on high emitting, yet not fully developed, nations — chiefly China and Saudi Arabia — to also contribute. The UAE’s pledge toward the fund may be seen as a symbolic acknowledgement that the divide between the developed and developing world is very different from when the COP process started three decades ago.
The first day at COP28 also managed to avoid a fight over the agenda for the two weeks of negotiations, which frequently mars such summits. The EU dropped its push to get an item on aligning all financial flows to the goals of the Paris Agreement. In return, Brazil, China, South Africa and India abandoned their call to debate unilateral trade measures like the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.
The most heated point today may have been an exchange between Russia and the US over the George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the National Democratic Institute. A delegate for Russia accused the NGOs of interfering with the affairs of sovereign states and said their presence at COP harmed negotiations. John Kerry, US special presidential envoy for climate, responded by saying that there was no basis to question the climate credentials of the two non-profits.
And of course, key challenges remain: getting nearly 200 countries to agree on how to slash emissions by nearly 50% this decade, which includes consensus on the phase out of fossil fuels. At the end of the summit, that’s how the COP Presidency will be judged.
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