CANBERRA, Australia — Australian and Singaporean leaders announced Tuesday what they described as a world-first agreement to cooperate in transitioning their economies to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined their so-called Green Economy Agreement between the two countries after an annual meeting in the Australian Parliament House.
The agreement has 17 components that cover facilitating trade and investment in green services, harmonizing standards and building green growth sectors through collaboration between business.
Australia has committed to reducing its emissions to net-zero by 2050 and Singapore is considering adopting the same target.
Albanese described Singapore as “one of the most innovative economies in the world,” while Australia had the potential to become a “renewable energy superpower” due to its vast open spaces and relatively small population.
The agreement “will support clean energy innovation, unlock business opportunities and create jobs, and help deliver our mission’s targets while positioning Australia as a renewable energy superpower,” Albanese said.
Lee foreshadowed further cooperation in cross-border electricity trade and “sustainable aviation” through what he described as the “world’s first such agreement.”
”These are all areas which are of interest to Singapore and to Singapore businesses and we hope with a Singapore-Australia GEA they’ll be able to move forward,” Lee said.
“But we also hope with this GEA will encourage other countries to look at what we have been able to do and to ask whether some of this may not make sense to them to do with Singapore or to do with each other,” Lee added.
Singapore is already planning to use solar power from northern Australia transmitted by a 4,200-kilometer (2,600-mile) submarine cable.
Singaporean company Sun Cable plans to start construction in 2024 of the 30 billion Australian dollar ($19 billion) Australia-Asia PowerLink project that will include 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of solar panels near the northern Australian city of Darwin.
Albanese described the export of Australian solar power to Singapore as an “ultimate win-win.”
“If this project can be made to work — and I believe it can be — you will see the world’s largest solar farm, you will see the export of energy across distances … (and) the production of many jobs here in Australia, including manufacturing jobs,” Albanese said.
Even the second richest man in the world needs to slum it sometimes.
Bernard Arnault, the French CEO of luxury brand LVMH, admitted that he sold the company’s private jet recently, renting private airlines to travel instead.
The reason? Some Twitter accounts have been tracking his travel, and Arnault didn’t like the lack of privacy.
“Indeed, with all these stories, the group had a plane, and we sold it,” Arnault said in a podcast interview with Radio Classique. “The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes.”
Arnault may not be a household name like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, but he is worth $133 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Like other big spenders, he has been the target of several Twitter accounts focused on what they perceive as wasteful air travel.
Now he is trying to fly below the Twitter radar.
Airlines and Co2 Emissions
Climate scientists have said that airlines are responsible for 2.4 percent (around 1 billion tons) of the annual human-generated Co2 emissions. And a report by Oxfam called Confront Carbon Inequality, found that the richest one percent of people were responsible for 15 percent of emissions between 1990 and 2015 – that’s more than twice that of the poorest half of humanity (7 percent).
As a result, private jets have become the target of many social media activists. One Twitter account called Celebrity Jets tracks the private air travel of such celebs as Kylie Jenner, Taylor Swift, and Drake.
Another Twitter account called @laviondebernard (Bernard’s Plane) had been tracking the travel of Bernard Arnault until he sold his plane last September.
Turns out the travel habits of the rich and famous are a big controversy in France, with the French Transport Minister even proposing to ban or tax private jets.
Arnault and Kanye West
This is not the first time Arnault has been in the headlines this month. The otherwise obscure billionaire, at least to Americans, was thrust into the spotlight when Kanye West accused him on Instagram of killing his best friend. The accusation referred to the death of Off-White founder Virgil Abloh, who died last year from cancer.
Wildfires burning in British Columbia and Washington state have triggered an air quality advisory for metro Vancouver, according to a Metro Vancouver district press release.
The smoke is contributing to high concentrations of fine particulate matter in the area, which pose the greatest risk to health, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Local Canadian officials have urged residents to “postpone or reduce outdoor physical activity while PM 2.5 concentrations are high, especially if breathing feels uncomfortable.”
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Fine particulate matter, also known as PM 2.5, refers to airborne solid or liquid droplets with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, the press release explained. That’s 30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, according to the US EPA. PM 2.5 can easily penetrate indoors because of its small size, according to the press release.
Stagnant weather conditions are forecast to persist for at least the next few days, according to Vancouver officials, meaning the air quality is also not likely to change.
“Smoke concentrations may vary widely across the region as winds and temperatures change, and as wildfire behaviour changes,” the Metro Vancouver press release said.
There are currently nine active wildfires in Washington, according to a Friday update from Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. This includes the Cedar Creek Fire, which is 40% contained. It has burned 122,794 acres since it began on August 1, according to the Incident Information System.
There is also smoke from a wildfire on Cypress Mountain, a popular ski area in West Vancouver, “contributing to hazy conditions already being experienced in Metro Vancouver,” said the press release.
Due to unseasonably warm and dry conditions, Metro Vancouver officials have also extended lawn watering restrictions from Saturday until October 31 in order to better conserve the region’s drinking water,” according to a Metro Vancouver water conservation advisory.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s government on Tuesday proposed taxing the greenhouse gasses that farm animals make from burping and peeing as part of a plan to tackle climate change.
The government said the farm levy would be a world first, and that farmers should be able to recoup the cost by charging more for climate-friendly products.
But farmers quickly condemned the plan. Federated Farmers, the industry’s main lobby group, said the plan would “rip the guts out of small town New Zealand” and see farms replaced with trees.
Federated Farmers President Andrew Hoggard said farmers had been trying to work with the government for more than two years on an emissions reduction plan that wouldn’t decrease food production.
“Our plan was to keep farmers farming,” Hoggard said. Instead, he said farmers would be selling their farms “so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute (pickup truck) as they drive off.”
Opposition lawmakers from the conservative ACT Party said the plan would actually increase worldwide emissions by moving farming to other countries that were less efficient at making food.
New Zealand’s farming industry is vital to its economy. Dairy products, including those used to make infant formula in China, are the nation’s largest export earner.
There are just 5 million people in New Zealand but some 10 million beef and dairy cattle and 26 million sheep.
The outsized industry has made New Zealand unusual in that about half of its greenhouse gas emissions come from farms. Farm animals produce gasses that warm the planet, particularly methane from cattle burping and nitrous oxide from their urine.
The government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make the country carbon neutral by 2050. Part of that plan includes a pledge that it will reduce methane emissions from farm animals by 10% by 2030 and by up to 47% by 2050.
Under the government’s proposed plan, farmers would start to pay for emissions in 2025, with the pricing yet to be finalized.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said all the money collected from the proposed farm levy would be put back into the industry to fund new technology, research and incentive payments for farmers.
“New Zealand’s farmers are set to be the first in the world to reduce agricultural emissions, positioning our biggest export market for the competitive advantage that brings in a world increasingly discerning about the provenance of their food,” Ardern said.
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said it was an exciting opportunity for New Zealand and its farmers.
“Farmers are already experiencing the impact of climate change with more regular drought and flooding,” O’Connor said. “Taking the lead on agricultural emissions is both good for the environment and our economy.”
The liberal Labour government’s proposal harks back to a similar but unsuccessful proposal made by a previous Labour government in 2003 to tax farm animals for their methane emissions.
Farmers back then also vehemently opposed the idea, and political opponents ridiculed it as a “fart tax” — although a “burp tax” would have been more technically accurate as most of the methane emissions come from belching. The government eventually abandoned the plan.
According to opinion polls, Ardern’s Labour Party has slipped in popularity and fallen behind the main opposition National Party since Ardern won a second term in 2020 in a landslide victory of historic proportions.
If Ardern’s government can’t find agreement on the proposal with farmers, who have considerable political sway in New Zealand, it’s likely to make it more difficult for Ardern to win reelection next year when the nation goes back to the polls.
BERLIN — Germany wants the question of loss and damage due to global warming to be discussed at this year’s United Nations climate talks, Germany’s foreign minister said Friday.
Vulnerable countries have long demanded that big polluters be held accountable for the effects that their greenhouse gas emissions are having around the world, including the tangible destruction caused by extreme weather and sea level rise resulting from rising global temperatures.
But rich nations that account for the majority of planet-warming emissions since the start of the industrial era have largely opposed efforts to formally debate the ‘loss and damage’ issue for fear they might have to pay climate reparations.
Last year’s U.N. climate talks in Glasgow failed to reach agreement on establishing a special fund for loss and damage.
Speaking after a meeting with her counterpart from Pakistan, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the recent devastating floods in the South Asian nation had shown “what dramatic consequences the climate crisis is having in all regions.”
“As one of the hardest-hit countries worldwide, Pakistan is paying a high price for global CO2 emissions,” Baerbock, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, told reporters in Berlin.
“That’s why Germany will work toward a fair sharing of the costs at the COP27 in Egypt, putting the question of climate adaptation, but in particular also the question of loss and damage, on the agenda,” she said, referring to the U.N. climate talks next month in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Germany is also giving Pakistan a further 10 million euros in flood aid, taking its total commitment to 60 million euros, Baerbock said.
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said the “biblical floods” had affected 33 million people and at one point a third of the country was under water. Many roads, hospitals and farms were destroyed.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Friday that Pakistan was “on the verge of a public health disaster” due to the risk of diseases such as cholera, malaria and dengue fever, while malnutrition also was spiking.
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Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
The UK government could award oil and gas companies more than 100 newlicenses to drill in the North Sea, as it looks for ways to bolster energy security amid a global supply crunch.
Launched Friday, the licensing round won’t lead to new UK production for several years. And when drilling does begin, Britain will still be dependent on energy imports, according to the government, leaving it vulnerable to soaring prices and supply disruptions of the kind that threaten blackouts this winter.
UK utilities company National Grid
(NGG) warned Thursday that households and businesses could be left without power for up to three hours at a time in a worst-case scenario of very cold weather,low levels of wind, gas shortages and an inability to import electricity from Europe. It said it would take steps to mitigate the risk, including bringing old coal-fired power stations back online if necessary.
Starting November 1, National Grid will also offer financial incentives to customers to reduce power consumption at peak times.
Kathryn Porter, an energy consultant at Watt-Logic, told CNN Business that National Grid was still underestimating the risks to supply, but that blackouts for households were unlikely because it could disconnect large energy users at peak times if necessary.
The latest licensing round won’t improve the immediate supplypicture and could face a legal challenge from environmental activists. Greenpeace said that new oil and gas licenses were “potentially unlawful” and that it would be looking for ways to act.
“New oil and gas licenses won’t lower energy bills for struggling families this winter or any winter soon nor provide energy security in the medium term,” Philip Evans, energy transition campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said in a statement.
“New licenses — and more importantly more fossil fuels — solve neither of those problems but will make the climate crisis even worse,” he added.
Analysis by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the regulator that grants licenses, shows the average time between discovery of oil and gas depositsand first production is close to five years, though that lag is “falling.”
In a statement on Friday, the NSTA said it will prioritize areas in the southern North Sea that can be developed quickly and where gas has already been discovered. Companies have until January 12 to apply for licenses, with permits expected to be issuedas soon as the second quarter of 2023.
The NSTA said the licensing round has been subject to a “climate compatibility check” to ensure it aligns with the UK government’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It added that producing gas domestically has a much lower carbon footprint than importing it from abroad.
The International Energy Agency said last year that investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, including drilling for oil and gas, must stop immediately if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
The UK government set out plans earlier this year to generate 95% of Britain’s electricity from low carbon sources by 2030. The plan, which allows drilling for oil and gas, will also ramp up nuclear power and wind energy.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced that oil refineries could start selling more polluting winter-blend gasoline ahead of schedule to ease soaring fuel prices, directly contradicting his own goals for reducing climate pollutants.
The average cost of a gallon of gas was $6.30 in California on Friday, far above the national average of $3.80, according to AAA. Newsom administration officials said the difference between state prices and the national average has never been larger.
The Democratic governor also called on state lawmakers to pass a new tax on oil company profits and return the money to California taxpayers. Lawmakers don’t return to the Capitol until January, Newsom’s office provided few details on the proposal.
“They’re ripping you off,” he said of the oil industry in a video posted to Twitter.
Oil industry representatives said it is state regulations that cause higher prices in California than the rest of the country. The summer blend of gasoline that refineries are required by law to produce in the hotter months costs more money to make but is designed to limit pollutants like smog. Most refineries can’t switch to the winter blend until November.
Switching from the summer to winter blend would likely save consumers 15 to 20 cents per gallon, said Doug Shupe, a spokesman for the Southern California Automobile Club, an affiliate of AAA. Gas prices in Los Angeles are close to breaking a record of $6.46 set in June, he said.
“If these prices go up to $7 a gallon, a 15-cent drop is not really going to mean much to drivers,” Shupe said.
Prices are spiking in part due to limited supply because some oil refineries are offline due to routine maintenance or other problems, he said. The California Air Resources Board, which regulates refineries, said high prices could also be due to part to a refinery fire and Hurricane Ian.
It’s the latest spat between Newsom and the oil industry, which holds political and economic sway in California despite the state’s aggressive climate policies. But Newsom’s dual actions Friday also illustrate the complicated reality Newsom faces as he tries to wean the state off oil and gas while responding to economic reality.
Earlier this year, for example, Newsom’s administration turned to generators and power plants that run on fossil fuels to help avoid rolling power blackouts during a heat wave.
By urging air regulators to let oil companies switch to a winter blend earlier, Newsom is acknowledging that state rules play a role in prices, said Kara Greene, a spokeswoman for the Western States Petroleum Association.
Refineries typically perform maintenance in the spring or fall as they prepare to switch fuel blends, she said. It will take time for refineries to prepare the winter blend, and Newsom’s order may have little immediate effect, she said. If Newsom truly wanted to lower prices, he could suspend the state’s gas tax or relax other regulations, she said.
“It’s a conscious decision to try and put the responsibility back on the oil industry,” she said.
Newsom said he expected the relaxation of refinery rules to increase supplies by 5% to 10% because refiners have already started to produce and store the gas.
“Any impacts on air quality caused by this action are expected to be minimal and outweighed by the public interest in temporarily relaxing” the limits, the air board said in a statement.
Starting in January, oil companies will be required to disclose their monthly profits to the state under legislation Newsom recently signed. Consumer Watchdog called on Newsom earlier this week to call a special legislative session to approve a tax on those profits.
Jamie Court, the group’s president, said he applauded Newsom’s efforts to deal with “an industry that’s out of control.”
Democratic leaders in the state Legislature said a windfall tax on oil profits deserves “strong consideration,” while Republicans said Newsom should immediately suspend the state gas tax to provide relief.
Major oil companies saw record profits this summer, and the price of crude oil has dropped since the end of the summer.
The California Energy Commission on Friday wrote a letter to executives of five major oil companies asking why prices rose so dramatically, what actions the state could take to lower prices and why refinery inventory levels have dropped.
Greene, of the petroleum association, said California regulations raise the price of oil by just under $1 in California, but other observers say its lower. Court, of Consumer Watchdog, says its around 60 cents, while Severin Borenstein, an energy economist with the University of California, Berkeley, says its closer to 70 cents.
Borenstein has also identified an unexplained surcharge that he says has caused Californians billions of dollars since 2015.
Newsom in 2019 directed the state attorney general to look into whether oil companies were overcharging Californians. Attorney General Rob Bonta has said his office is still investigating.
Air pollution spiked to unhealthy levels around the world in 2021, according to a new report.
The report by IQAir, a company that tracks global air quality, found that average annual air pollution in every country — and 97% of cities — exceeded the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines, which were designed to help governments craft regulations to protect public health.
Only 222 cities of the 6,475 analyzed had average air quality that met WHO’s standard. Three territories were found to have met WHO guidelines: the French territory of New Caledonia and the United States territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the countries with the worst air pollution, exceeding the guidelines by at least 10 times.
The Scandinavian countries, Australia, Canada, Japan and United Kingdom ranked among the best countries for air quality, with average levels that exceeded the guidelines by 1 to 2 times.
In the United States, IQAir found air pollution exceeded WHO guidelines by 2 to 3 times in 2021.
“This report underscores the need for governments around the world to help reduce global air pollution,” Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of IQAir North America, told CNN. “(Fine particulate matter) kills far too many people every year and governments need to set more stringent air quality national standards and explore better foreign policies that promote better air quality.”
Above: IQAir analyzed average annual air quality for more than 6,000 cities and categorized them from best air quality, in blue (Meets WHO PM2.5 guildline) to worst, in purple (Exceeds WHO PM2.5 guideline by over 10 times). An interactive map is available from IQAir.
It’s the first major global air quality report based on WHO’s new annual air pollution guidelines, which were updated in September 2021. The new guidelines halved the acceptable concentration of fine particulate matter — or PM 2.5 — from 10 down to 5 micrograms per cubic meter.
PM 2.5 is the tiniest pollutant yet also among the most dangerous. When inhaled, it travels deep into lung tissue where it can enter the bloodstream. It comes from sources like the burning of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires, and has been linked to a number of health threats including asthma, heart disease and other respiratory illnesses.
Millions of people die each year from air quality issues. In 2016, around 4.2 million premature deaths were associated with fine particulate matter, according to WHO. If the 2021 guidelines had been applied that year, WHO found there could have been nearly 3.3 million fewer pollution-related deaths.
IQAir analyzed pollution-monitoring stations in 6,475 cities across 117 countries, regions and territories.
In the US, air pollution spiked in 2021 compared to 2020. Out of the more than 2,400 US cities analyzed, Los Angeles air remained the most polluted, despite seeing a 6% decrease compared to 2020. Atlanta and Minneapolis saw significant increases in pollution, the report showed.
“The (United States’) reliance on fossil fuels, increasing severity of wildfires as well as varying enforcement of the Clean Air Act from administration to administration have all added to U.S. air pollution,” the authors wrote.
Researchers say the main sources of pollution in the US were fossil fuel-powered transportation, energy production and wildfires, which wreak havoc on the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities.
“We are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, especially in terms of transportation,” said Hammes, who lives a few miles from Los Angeles. “We can act smartly on this with zero emissions, but we’re still not doing it. And this is having a devastating impact on the air pollution that we’re seeing in major cities.”
Climate change-fueled wildfires played a significant role in reducing air quality in the US in 2021. The authors pointed to a number of fires that led to hazardous air pollution — including the Caldor and Dixie fires in California, as well as the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, which wafted smoke all the way to the East Coast in July.
China — which is among the countries with the worst air pollution — showed improved air quality in 2021. More than half of the Chinese cities analyzed in the report saw lower levels of air pollution compared to the previous year. The capital city of Beijing continued a five-year trend of improved air quality, according to the report, due to a policy-driven drawdown of polluting industries in the city.
The report also found that the Amazon Rainforest, which had acted as the world’s major defender against the climate crisis, emitted more carbon dioxide than it absorbed last year. Deforestation and wildfires have threatened the critical ecosystem, polluted the air and contributed to climate change.
“This is all a part of the formula that will lead to or is leading to global warming.” Hammes said.
The report also unveiled some inequalities: Monitoring stations remain scant in some developing countries in Africa, South America and the Middle East, resulting in a dearth of air quality data in those regions.
“When you don’t have that data, you’re really in the dark,” Hammes said.
Hammes noted the African country of Chad was included in the report for the first time, due to an improvement in its monitoring network. IQAir found the country’s air pollution was the second-highest in the world last year, behind Bangladesh.
Tarik Benmarhnia, a climate change epidemiologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who has studied the health impact of wildfire smoke, also noted that relying only on monitoring stations can lead to blind spots in these reports.
“I think it is great that they relied on different networks and not only governmental sources,” Benmarhnia, who was not involved in this report, told CNN. “However, many regions do not have enough stations and alternative techniques exist.”
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its 2021 report that, in addition to slowing the speed of global warming, curbing the use of fossil fuels would have the added benefit of improving air quality and public health.
Hammes said the IQAir report is even more reason for the world to wean off fossil fuel.
“We’ve got the report, we can read it, we can internalize it and really devote ourselves to taking action,” she said. “There needs to be a major move towards renewable energy. We need to take drastic action in order to reverse the tide of global warming; otherwise, the impact and the train that we’re on (would be) irreversible.”
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release strict new proposed federal emissions standards for light-duty vehicles that, if implemented, would move the US car market decisively toward electric vehicles over the next decade.
The EPA is considering emissions standards that could make up to two-thirds of new passenger vehicles sold in the US electric by 2032, according to a source familiar with the proposal.
If implemented, the new greenhouse gas performance standards would start for light-duty vehicles that are model year 2027 and gradually increase through model year 2032.
By 2032, the rules would ensure that 64% to 67% of all new-car sales in the US would be electric vehicles, according to the source.
The EPA’s proposal, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes after California air regulators voted last year to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and set interim targets to phase these cars out.
EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll did not comment on the specifics of the proposal but said the agency is working on developing new standards “to accelerate the transition to a zero-emissions transportation future, protecting people and the planet,” as directed by a previous executive order from President Joe Biden.
“Once the interagency review process is completed, the proposals will be signed, published in the Federal Register, and made available for public review and comment,” Carroll said.
The new rules could come as soon as Wednesday.
The EPA proposal is a monumental step toward zero-emissions vehicles, coming as the US tries to keep up with other countries racing toward EV adoption, one expert told CNN.
“I believe it’s pretty doable,” said Margo Oge, chair of the International Council on Clean Transportation and a former Obama EPA official. “The industry is there. Europe is ahead of the US, China is ahead of Europe, and these companies are global companies.”
Oge noted that in the US, California is already proposing 70% new zero-emissions vehicle sales by 2030 and other states are planning to adopt California’s rules – meaning much of the US car industry will be transitioning ahead of any proposed federal rule.
Still, the EPA’s proposal takes a different approach from California’s policy. Whereas California is mandating car companies sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles, the EPA would gradually raise greenhouse gas emissions standards to increasingly stringent levels from 2027 to 2032, pushing the industry toward electric vehicles to meet those high standards.
The EPA rule would ensure that the rest of the country and the US car industry would follow California’s lead, Oge said.
Biden has made electrifying the cars that Americans drive a key part of his climate goals. In 2021, the president set a new target that half of all vehicles sold in the US by 2030 would be battery electric, fuel-cell electric or plug-in hybrid.
The US Treasury Department is set to release rules for new federal electric vehicle tax credits on April 18. While these tax credits are complex and could take time for consumers to take full advantage of, experts hope they will help accelerate the transition to EVs in the US.
“Given the industry, the [Inflation Reduction Act] and what companies are doing globally, I just don’t see this number as being out of reach,” Oge said.
The proposed EPA rules will go through a lengthy public comment process and could be changed before they are finalized.
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CNN
—
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to remake the way car-obsessed Americans live, using public safety rules to accelerate the shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles.
Just a fraction of the current auto market is EVs, but under standards announced by the EPA Wednesday,up totwo-thirds of newvehicles sold in the US would be zero-emission or plug-in hybrid within a decade.
The rules, which are not yet final, would use authority under the Clean Air Act to force auto companies to cut pollution and slash vehicle emissions by more than half. They wouldphase in with model year2027 vehicles and be fully implemented by 2032. Read CNN’s full report.
While ambitious, the goals are not unprecedented. They put the federal government on track to catch up with state governments, led by California, that want to stop allowing the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2035. Read this report from CNN Business about why that’s not as crazy as it seems.
There is a very big legal question mark looming behind California’s action and the EPA’s effort, which still has a public comment and revision period.
The current Supreme Court, dominated by conservative justices, has already shown its scorn for EPA rulemaking and its indifference to addressing climate change. Last year, the court nixed the Biden administration’s plan to curb emissions from existing power plants.
I asked CNN climate reporter Ella Nilsen for her takeaways from the EPA announcement. She offered these key points:
► The standards are ambitious, but doable
If enacted, the newly proposed EPA emissions standards would be one of the Biden administration’s most aggressive climate-change policies yet – moving the US auto market decisively toward electric vehicles in the next decade.
However, multiple experts said the standards are doable, and even lag slightly behind the California standards, which will completely phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 to usher in electric vehicles. The US is also following countries including the EU and China, which are moving more aggressively toward electric vehicles.
► Charging infrastructure and consumer incentives could be tricky
This new proposed rule won’t happen overnight; it would be gradually phased in over the next decade. At the same time, the US needs to build up a network of electric charging stations in addition to the ubiquitous gas station. Federal officials have also talked about needing to incentivize more Americans to buy EVs by bringing the cost down, with federal tax credits.
However, the new $7,500 tax credits (passed last yearby Democrats in the Inflation Reduction Act) are incredibly complex due to manufacturing requirements. The credits could actually shrink the eligible number of cars that qualify (however, leased vehicles have more leeway under the new system). Regardless, it will take years for the EV infrastructure, incentives and supply to fall into place to make electric vehicles available to most Americans.
► This is a big deal for US climate policy
This rule will impact the US economy, but it’s also major climate policy. The proposed EPA tailpipe standards would cut planet-warming pollution from US cars in half. Combined with the agency’s medium and heavy-duty vehicles standard, the proposals could cut nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2055.
Given Americans’ reliance on cars, transportation is a big part of overall US emissions – it accounts for nearly 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US, according to the EPA. Cutting down on tailpipe pollution from gas-powered cars and trucks is a big part of decarbonizing the US.
While the federal government and key states are all in on moving toward EVs, and auto companies are spending big to get competitive in the market, Americans generally are not yet completely embracing the idea.
Just 4% of Americans currently own an EV, and a scant 12% are seriously considering buying one, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Less than half, 43%, say they would consider buying an EV in the future, and a sizable 41% are completely closed off to the idea.
The expected partisan breakdown applies to those figures. Most of the interest in EVs is among Democrats. Most of the staunch opposition is among Republicans. Younger Americansand those making $100,000 and aboveare also more interested in buying an EV in the future.
There are also key regional disparities. In the West, where states are already working to phase in EVs,only 28% say they would not buy an EV. Compare that to half of Southerners who would not consider buying an EV.
A majority of the country is skeptical that EVs will even have an effect on the climate, according to the poll, with 61% saying EVs will help address climate change only a little or not at all.
In a separate AP-NORC poll released this week, the most-cited major reasons for not wanting to purchase an EV – out of eight offered in the poll – were expense (60% said they cost too much) and convenience (50% said there aren’t enough charging stations available).
Access and affordability should be addressed as inventory increases, writes CNN’s Peter Valdes-Dapena, who covers the auto industry. A decade from now, charging should be quicker and easier, EV ranges should be longer and prices should be at or below the cost of an internal combustion vehicle. Read his full report.
Rather than fighting the rules, as the fossil fuel industry is sure to do, the auto industry is already investing heavily in EVs, responding to tougher regulation already imposed around the world and by California, which moved to ban the sale of new gas and diesel powered vehicles by 2035.
California actually took the lead on pushing for EVs in the years when the Trump administration was dialing back on federal climate policy. Other states, like Oregon, Washington and Minnesota, have tied their standards to California’s.
Valdes-Dapena notes that car companies with loyal customer bases are slowly making the switch. He writes:
Currently, Toyota offers only one electric model in the United States, the BZ4X SUV, but more are planned. Honda, another Japanese brand with a loyal following, offers no EVs currently but the company is gearing up factories in Ohio to build future EV models. Honda expects to offer its first EV next year. General Motors also has a number of EV models coming in the next year or two.
He also notes that GM has pledged to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.
And no, this does not mean internal combustion vehicles will be banned. They will still make up the vast majority of vehicles on the road in a decade even if this rule is finalized and withstands challenges in court. But it would represent a tectonic shift.
Tucked into President Joe Biden’s ambitious, sweeping climate commitments is a crucially important goal that dates back to his campaign: Transforming the US electric grid to run entirely on clean energy by 2035.
The goal could make or break Biden’s pledge to slash the country’s planet-warming emissions in half by 2030. And if successful, 100% clean electricity could energize vast sectors of the US economy: electric vehicles, home and office heating and cooling, and appliances. It could even power heavy industry and manufacturing, which is currently reliant on fossil fuels.
“When you have a fully clean grid, versus a grid that either is a quarter or a half clean, that makes a significant difference in terms of the greenhouse gas performance of the things you’re plugging in to that grid,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told CNN. “That electric vehicle now is twice or three times cleaner when you shift to a fully clean grid.”
Yet while renewable energy has exploded over the past decade, bringing Biden’s cornerstone climate goal to fruition by 2035 could be beyond his grasp.
As of this year, about 44% of America’s electricity was powered by zero-emissions sources like wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, according to the Department of Energy. The rest comes from fossil fuels like methane gas and coal.
After the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year – legislation that aimed to supercharge clean energy in the US – an analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts the US will get to around 80% clean electricity by 2030, a number that includes renewables, nuclear energy and carbon capture on fossil fuel plants.
By 2035, the federal analysis shows clean and renewable sources will make up about 86% of US energy, spurred in large part by the IRA. (That analysis did not include the Biden administration’s proposed pollution rules for power plants, which could increase the adoption of clean energy.)
“That’s a doubling from today, which is huge,” Ben King, an associate director at the nonpartisan think tank Rhodium Group, told CNN. But it’s also short of Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by that date.
Decarbonizing the last portion of the power sector will be the most difficult, federal officials and experts told CNN. The closer you get to 100% percent clean electricity, the harder it is to go all the way.
“We’ve known that the last 10% – maybe the last 20 to 25% – is going to be challenging,” Zaidi said. “And the reason is because you’re not just trying to deliver clean electrons onto the grid. You’re trying to deliver cleaner electrons when you want them, where you want them. That’s a hard thing to do.”
Not only does the power need to come from clean sources, it also needs to be readily available to energize the US economy during peak demand.
But wind and solar are still variable – especially without massive, costly battery storage. And newer technologies, like green hydrogen, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors haven’t yet been built to a large enough scale.
That could mean some fossil fuels plants outfitted with carbon capture would need to remain connected to the grid to provide power that can brought online quickly, King said.
There are also big infrastructure hurdles for renewables to take the lead. Even if massive amounts of wind and solar are developed by the end of this decade, the US may not have enough electrical transmission infrastructure to move all of that renewable energy around the grid.
“The bottlenecks of a lack of transmission are very real,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, told CNN. There also needs to be significant investment in massive batteries to store the power generated by wind and solar to be used at all hours, she said.
While companies and the federal government are racing to scale up new zero-carbon technologies, traditional wind and solar will largely power this clean electricity transition.
They are the most reliable and trusted clean energy sources for utilities and developers, and they have quickly become cheaper than fossil fuels – so inexpensive that it is becoming more cost-effective for some utilities to build new wind and solar, rather than constructing new fossil plants or even running existing ones, experts told CNN.
Wind and solar are also mature technologies that developers know they can finance and get huge tax breaks on through the Inflation Reduction Act.
They are the “natural choice for developers who are looking for those low risk and very cost-effective projects to develop,” Sonia Aggarwal, a former White House senior advisor for climate policy and CEO of nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, told CNN. “We will see them play a large role because of how good they look from an economic perspective.”
By the end of 2021, wind and solar together made up about 228 gigawatts of power. By 2034, NREL predicts that number – including offshore wind – will grow by more than four times to over 1 terawatt, or 1 trillion watts of power.
“Where we are now is very different from even 5 or 10 years ago as far as the costs of clean energy, particularly renewables, being significantly lower than they’ve been in the past,” Carla Frisch, acting executive director of the US Energy Department’s Office of Policy, told CNN. “So just a really rapid acceleration that we’re already experiencing right now.”
While getting new clean technologies to scale will be difficult, it’s work worth doing, Zaidi said.
“Let’s deploy the stuff we have right now, right away,” he said. “And let’s work hard as we can to innovate on the stuff that we need in the future.”
In mid-July at the construction site at 1 Java Street in Brooklyn, New York, the outside temperatures can reach sweltering highs in the 90s. But 500-feet underground, it’s 55 degrees all year round.
That stable, underground temperature will be key to making life comfortable in the residential building that will soon sit on the site, a scenic spot in the Greenpoint neighborhood along Brooklyn’s waterfront.
With 834 rental apartments plus commercial space, 1 Java Street is set to be the largest multifamily, residential building with “geothermal” heating and cooling system in New York State — and potentially the country — when it’s completed in late 2025, according to developer Lendlease.
Geothermal technology is essentially a more eco-friendly version of an HVAC system, allowing the building spaces and water to be cooled and heated more efficiently, without traditional window AC units and natural gas. Lendlease says the technology will make it possible for the nearly 790,000-square foot building to release around 55% less carbon and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
With summer temperatures reaching record highs around the world, experts say finding ways to cool buildings that are less taxing on the environment could be crucial in fighting climate change. Even back in 2018, air conditioning and electric fans accounted for around 20% of total global electricity use, according to a report cpublished that year by the International Energy Agency. Now, energy and urban development experts are urging cities and developers to implement new solutions to keep buildings cooler. And both New York City and the Biden administration have identified geothermal systems as one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Whenever we look at a site, we consider how we can make it more sustainable,” Layth Madi, Lendlease’s senior vice president and director of development, told CNN, adding that the development firm is aiming to reach net zero by 2025 and be fully decarbonized by 2040.
“I think many residents will choose to live in this building because of its green credentials,” Madi said. “We know a lot of people are thinking about climate change and our impact on the planet.”
Geothermal plumbing works by sending water from a building deep into the ground below it to take advantage of the earth’s naturally stable internal temperature — on hot days, the underground temperature will reduce the temperature of warm water from the building to help with cooling; on cold days, it will warm up cold water to help with heating.
At 1 Java Street, construction crews are drilling 320 holes, each around 4 inches in diameter and 499-feet deep, to create the building’s geothermal piping system through which the water will be pumped.
“Your thermostat turns on and it tells your building, ‘I need heating or cooling.’ And it energizes pumps, and those pumps flow fluid through the [geothermal] circuit that we’ve established here on site,” said Adam Alaica, director of engineering and development at Geosource Energy, the Canadian firm that’s installing and drilling the vertical geothermal piping at 1 Java Street.
For now, the process doesn’t come cheap. Installing the building’s geothermal system increased construction costs by around 6%, according to Madi, and required securing equipment and trained manpower that remains relatively scarce.
“We’re seeing rapid growth — I would say approaching that of exponential growth year over year in interest in the technology, which is very exciting for the industry as a whole,” Alacia said. “The bottlenecks to that growth have always been, and will continue to be in the years to come, specialty machinery to implement this infrastructure and the people resources it takes to do this.”
Eventually, though, as more developers invest in geothermal and more companies provide the specialty training needed to install the technology — Geosource operates its own training program — Madi said he expects the costs to come down. And once the building is up and running, it should be more cost efficient to heat and cool.
Lendlease didn’t specify whether residents of 1 Java Street will experience any cost savings on utilities thanks to the geothermal system (the units themselves will be priced at market rate, with 30% of them set aside as affordable housing). “Ultimately, it will be up to tenants to manage their power consumption and work with the utility company on billing,” the company told CNN.
While 1 Java Street will be one of relatively few geothermal buildings in the state, the companies behind its development say New York — and the world — could use more buildings like it.
“Geothermal is not a new technology … there’s kind of a primitive component to it, using the earth as a heat source and heat sink,” Alacia said. “In general, geothermal can really be used anywhere you have ground under your feet … The cost and the business case can vary, but technically it has strong credentials really anywhere in the country.”
ILDERTON, Ontario, October 12, 2017 (Newswire.com)
– BreatheCLEAN Inc. routinely reviews and posts health-related information from around the world on the health effects of air pollution, with emphasis on fine particulate matter, and concludes that focusing on climate change is the wrong approach for governments. Rather, if governments focused on eliminating the negative human health effects of air pollution better decisions on climate change would result.
Some examples of global studies; New York University (Premature births, Low birth weight) – German Research Centre for Environmental Health (Acute Coronary Events) – Harvard University, MIT (Premature death) – National Institutes of Health (Cardiopulmonary disease) – University of Southern California (Dementia) – Harvard University (Autism) – Lancaster University (Alzheimer’s) – Physicians for Social Responsibility (Chronic Diseases) – Umea University (Adolescent Mental Illness) – American Academy of Pediatrics (Asthma, Lung Development, Atopy) – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Children’s Lung Development) – The Lancet (Heart Disease) – Environmental Health Perspectives (Lung Cancer).
Many of these studies have multiple documented references and all link air pollution to issues of human health globally. The World Health Organization cites Air Pollution as the fourth leading cause of mortality on the planet today in part because Air Pollution is transboundary and therefore ubiquitous to all people everywhere. Early mortality results from exacerbation and acceleration of many chronic diseases in addition to being a contributing factor to disease onset.
“We began BreatheCLEAN to market simple washable filters to drastically reduce levels of fine particulate matter inside commercial and residential buildings,” said Peter Bruijns, President of breatheCLEAN a Canadian technology company. “It became very clear that air pollution as it relates to human health should be of far greater concern to governments than climate change.”
When asked how that would improve responses for climate change Bruijns added, “Governments are focusing on simplistic models for reducing carbon emissions which causes the government to focus primarily on energy efficiency and power generation allowing far too many industrial and automotive emissions to continue. In Ontario, Canada, the Green Energy Act, diverts limited government funds to projects which have no further effect on climate change while many other emissions continue unabated, continuing to harm human health.”
If Governments set climate change policies around air emissions that factor into human health they would not only improve human health (reducing health care costs) but also make better progress in reducing climate change.
About BreatheCLEAN Inc.
BreatheCLEAN was founded in 2016 and is a Canadian technology company focused on the sustainable removal of fine particulate matter inside residential and commercial buildings. The company uses advanced nanotechnology media in its filters which is recyclable and filter frames which are reusable and ultimately recyclable.
