Cold temperatures, icy blizzards and strong gusts are expected to sweep through cities like Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A “historic winter storm” is forecasted to dump record snowfall on parts of the midwestern United States this week, with local officials warning of “life-threatening travel conditions” in areas expected to receive blizzard conditions.
“A huge swath of the US is currently being, or will be impacted, by potentially dangerous winter weather,” the National Weather Service wrote on its Twitter page Tuesday, projecting heavy snow, sleet and gusts to last through Thursday. An estimated 40 million Americans could be affected by the three-day blast.
Snow could fall as quickly as 5cm (2 inches) per hour, the agency warned, as it anticipated “treacherous, potentially impossible travel conditions and possible power outages”. Southern Minnesota could receive up to 61cm (2 ft) of fresh powder, it added.
This model reflectivity loop gives a general idea of what we’re expecting for timing of the snow through Thursday. Note that this particular model has some rain with the first wave, but this will be ALL SNOW. We are NOT anticipating any mixed precip! #mnwx#wiwxpic.twitter.com/zgl2s0be69
The storm is expected to break records in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, located on the state line between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The cluster of cities, which boasts a total of more than 3.5 million residents, could net up to 50.8cm (1.6 ft) of snow, one of its highest totals in history.
“Snowplow crews will be out working statewide, but this storm could be a doozy,” the Minnesota Department of Transportation tweeted on Tuesday. In anticipation of the extreme weather, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced the city was “planning to declare a snow emergency on Wednesday”.
Public school buildings in the city have been closed through Friday, with students attending class through online “e-learning” facilities.
The winter storm comes as an Arctic air mass moves south from Canada into the US, combining with two “energetic” fronts and pushing eastward across the Great Plains region towards the Great Lakes, the National Weather Service explained.
Vehicles navigate a snowy downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, on February 21 [Abbie Parr/AP Photo]
Winds could whip up to 128.7km per hour (80 mph) in some areas. And temperatures could plunge 20 to 30 degrees below average, with the wind chill making some areas feel like -32C (-25F).
The storm is expected to roll through the region in two waves: the first lasting through Wednesday morning and the second, “more impactful” portion arriving Wednesday afternoon and continuing through Thursday.
Already on Tuesday, conditions were worsening in Great Plains states like Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota. The city of Great Falls, Montana, recorded temperatures of -15C (-5F), according to the National Weather Service.
Winter storms are growing in frequency and intensity, experts warn, as climate change supercharges extreme weather events, from droughts to heavy snow.
As the US Midwestest is pummelled by another onslaught of snow, other parts of the country are also experiencing unusual weather events. The National Weather Service in Jacksonville, Florida, along the southeast coast, tweeted on Tuesday that “near record warmth is forecast into early next week”.
And in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, part of the US west coast, back-to-back storms are expected to yield the possibility of light snowfall — something not seen in San Francisco since 1976.
Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw told CNBC he thinks it’s safe for families to return to East Palestine, Ohio, nearly three weeks after toxic chemicals were released following a train derailment earlier this month.
Asked by CNBC’s Morgan Brennan whether he’d bring his children to the town, Shaw said: “Yes, yes, I’ve come back multiple times. I’m drinking the water here. I’ve interacted with the families here.”
The company will also continue to help residents of the town, as well, Shaw said.
On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed, igniting a dayslong fire. The environmental magnitude of the derailment could remain unknown for years and more testing may be required. Officials have said air levels are safe and the town’s water is free of harmful levels of contaminants, although residents have expressed skepticism about those assurances.
“Our focus right now is on environmental remediation, cleaning up this site, continual air monitoring, water monitoring, financial assistance to the residents of this community, and investing in this community so that the community in East Palestine can thrive,” Shaw said in an interview that aired Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency ordered the company to handle and pay for all cleanup efforts. It will require Norfolk Southern to clean any contaminated soil and water resources, reimburse the EPA for cleaning services and participate in public meetings at the EPA’s request.
A company spokesperson told CNBC Norfolk Southern has been in communication with the agency and in compliance with its requests since the incident.
Ron Fodo, Ohio EPA Emergency Response, looks for signs of fish and also agitates the water in Leslie Run creek to check for chemicals that have settled at the bottom following a train derailment that is causing environmental concerns on February 20, 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio.
Michael Swensen | Getty Images
Three days after the derailment, the company’s independent consultant and the Ohio EPA recommended unified command for a controlled release to burn off toxic chemicals, including known carcinogens.
“The fact that we knew at that time that the pressure relief valves on the cars had failed, temperatures were rising, caused our independent expert to become very concerned about the potential for an uncontrolled explosion that would shoot harmful gas and shrapnel into a populated community,” Shaw said.
The air monitoring picked up no traces of toxic chemicals, officials said, although Shaw acknowledges “how it could scare folks.”
Ohio opened a new health clinic Tuesday to address increasing reports of headaches, nausea and rashes in East Palestine. Worried residents also reported dead fish and chickens as authorities said it’s safe to return. As early as this week, medical teams from the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health are expected to arrive in the community.
Shaw said air monitoring was installed within an hour of the derailment, and water monitoring was in place several hours afterward. He said all tests for air and water have come back clean, but he said the community can get additional air and water testing in their homes.
“If folks are experiencing symptoms with which they’re not accustomed, I would strongly encourage them to go see a trusted medical professional,” Shaw said, acknowledging it has been a “traumatic experience.”
Tests have revealed no signs of carcinogens including vinyl chloride in the environment, officials said. Still, there remains the possibility that the full impact won’t surface until years from now. Shaw said some researchers have said this is not a concern and testing will continue into the future.
Shaw said the company so far removed about 450 cubic yards of contaminated soil and secured about 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water. He said the company will continue to “do the right thing for this community” and see the recovery effort all the way through. He did not lay out a time frame.
Shaw said it’s safe for families to return to the community as environmental remediation with the Ohio EPA is underway. He said Norfolk Southern has reimbursed or committed a “downpayment” of $6.5 million to East Palestine and will continue financial assistance to residents.
The company previously offered residents $1,000 “inconvenience” checks, but a Cleveland attorney cautioned residents these checks would get residents to waive future claims against the company. Shaw in the interview denied the lawyer’s claims after the company made public statements that doing testing absolved Norfolk Southern of no liability.
“I know they’re hurt. I know they’re scared. I know they’re confused. They’re looking for information and who to trust,” Shaw said.
Shaw said Norfolk Southern is fully cooperating with the NTSB and the FRA to come up with the root cause of the derailment. He avoided talking about security footage showing a wheel shooting off sparks about 20 miles before the derailment.
“We’re going to be here tomorrow. We’re going to be here a year from now. We’re going to here five years from now. We’re going to do what’s right for this community and help this community get back on its feet and help this community thrive,” Shaw said.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sent a letter Sunday to Norfolk Southern, warning that the company must “demonstrate unequivocal support for the people” of East Palestine.
Buttigieg wrote that Norfolk Southern and other rail companies have “spent millions of dollars in the courts and lobbying members of Congress to oppose common-sense safety regulations, stopping some entirely and reducing the scope of others.”
Some companies have adopted precision-scheduled railroading, which includes running longer trains, and cutting costs and headcounts to create a more effective network — and potentially profit.
In response, Shaw said Norfolk Southern invests over $1 billion a year in “science-based soutions,” including maintaining tracks, equipment and technology.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a CNN interview that railroads “are simply not investing the way they should in car safety and the rail lines themselves,” resulting in layoffs and stock buybacks.
“It’s pretty clear that our safety culture and our investments in safety didn’t prevent this accident,” Shaw said in response. “We need to take a look at this and see what we can do differently and what we can do better.”
The European Union has drawn up a plan to boost the production of electric cars and renewable energy projects.
The International Energy Agency estimates the global market for mass-produced clean energy will triple to around $650bn a year by 2030.
The world’s biggest economies want a slice of that growing industry.
The United States Congress recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes billions of dollars in grants and loans to boost financing and deployment of clean energy projects. But it has sparked a trade dispute with allies in Europe.
Now the European Union has set out its own plan to compete with the US as a production hub for green products.
Elsewhere, we look at why Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is threatening the central bank’s autonomy.
This photograph taken on May 11, 2022 shows Shivaram, a villager walking through the cracked bottom of a dried-out pond on a hot summer day at Bandai village in Pali district. – Every day dozens of villagers, mostly women and children, wait with blue plastic jerry cans and metal pots for a special train bringing precious water to people suffering a heatwave in India’s desert state of Rajasthan.
Prakash Singh | Afp | Getty Images
Scientists from Africa, Asia and South America are getting a new infusion of $900,000 to study the effects of reflecting sunlight to cool the Earth and mitigate the impacts of global warming. The money comes from Open Philanthropy, a venture funded primarily by billionaire Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook and Asana, and his wife, Cari Tuna.
Sunlight reflection involves releasing aerosols like sulfur dioxide high in the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back into space, temporarily mitigating global warming. (It’s sometimes called solar radiation modification or solar geoengineering.)
The idea has been around for decades, but it is being taken more seriously as the effects of climate change become more apparent. While volcanic eruptions have proven that the technique can work, there are significant risks as well, including damage to the ozone layer, acid rain and increased respiratory illness.
On Tuesday, nonprofit research organization The Degrees Initiative and the United Nation’s World Academy of Sciences announced they are distributing more than $900,000 to scientists across Africa, Asia and South America to study solar radiation modification in a program called “The Degrees Modelling Fund.” The Degrees Initiative has been funded by various donors over the years, but the biggest has been Open Philanthropy and all of the $900,000 disbursement announced Tuesday came from that group, Degrees Initiative co-founder and CEO Andy Parker told CNBC.
The money will go to 81 scientists in Benin, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand and Uganda working on 15 solar geoengineering modeling projects.
Sunlight reflection is getting more attention as scientists have started suggesting that its negative effects may not be as bad as the harm from climate change will be in the future. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is coordinating a five-year research plan into solar geoengineering and in January,the quadrennial U.N.-backed Montreal Protocol assessment reportincluded an entire chapter addressing stratospheric aerosol injection for the first time ever.
“Like anyone else sensible, when I first heard about the idea of blocking out the sun, I thought it was a terrible idea. As time goes by, the view didn’t really change it. It’s a horrible idea,” Parker told CNBC. “But it may prove to be less horrible than not using it and allowing temperatures to keep rising if we don’t cut our emissions far enough.”
I liken the decision to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy to treat cancer is also a horrible idea. It’s very dangerous. It’s unpleasant. It’s risky. And no one would ever consider doing it unless they feared the alternative. might be worse. And so it goes for solar geoengineering.
Andy Parker
CEO of The Degrees Initiative
Sunlight reflection is not a solution to climate change or global warming. It is a relatively fast and inexpensive way to temporarily cool the Earth. We know it works: In the 15 months following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the average global temperature was about 1 degree Fahrenheit lower, according to NASA. Releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere from retrofitted planes would essentially mimic the way a volcano releases large quantities of aerosols into the atmosphere.
“It’s not a pleasant idea. It’s not a fun thing to work on. But it’s potentially important, it could be very, very helpful, it could be disastrous,” Parker told CNBC.
“I liken the decision to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy to treat cancer is also a horrible idea. It’s very dangerous. It’s unpleasant. It’s risky. And no one would ever consider doing it unless they feared the alternative might be worse. And so it goes for solar geoengineering,” he said.
A giant volcanic mushroom cloud explodes some 20 kilometers high from Mount Pinatubo above almost deserted US Clark Air Base, on June 12, 1991 followed by another more powerful explosion. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 was the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century.
One of Parker’s goals with the Degrees Initiative is to ensure that scientists from developing countries in the global south will be part of international conversations about sunlight reflection, he told CNBC.
“If it can work well to reduce the impacts of climate change, then they’ve got the most to gain because they’re on the frontlines of global warming,” he said. “If, on the other hand, it all goes wrong and there are nasty side effects, or perhaps if it’s rejected prematurely, when it could have helped, then developing countries have got the most to lose.”
But without philanthropic donations, research and decisions about solar geoengineering would be primarily relegated to the parts of the world that can afford it, like North America, the European Union and Japan, Parker said.
The $900,000 announced Tuesday is the second round of funding of this kind. In 2018, The Degrees Modelling Fund distributed $900,000 to 11 projects in Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Indonesia, Iran, the Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Philippines and South Africa.
The money goes out in grants of up to $75,000, of which $60,000 is for salary and $15,000 is for the tools that a local research team would need, Parker told CNBC. Each scientific team should suggest its own proposal in the application for the grant money, he said. But broadly, the task for each team is to use computer models to predict the weather and their regional impacts — both with and without sunlight reflection.
“By comparing the two, they can start to generate evidence on what the impact of solar radiation modification might be on things that matter locally,” Parker said.
Scientists who have had their work funded by The Degrees Modelling Fund at a recent research-planning workshop for old and new teams in Istanbul.
Ines Camilloni, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, has received two Degrees Initiative grants and is also getting funded by the government of Argentina. With the funding, Camilloni is researching how solar radiation modification would affect the hydroclimate of La Plata Basin, the fifth largest water basin in the world, covering parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, she told CNBC.
“A large fraction of the economic activities within the basin relies on water availability, including agriculture, river navigability and hydroelectric production, and therefore any variations in the water cycle of the basin could have significant impacts on the economy of each country,” Camilloni told CNBC.
Prof. Inés Camilloni speaking at the 2022 Paris Peace Forum.
Photo courtesy The Degrees Initiative
Camilloni says her research has so far showed that sunlight reflection could be helpful to some parts of the La Plata Basin region, but particularly harmful to others. Large rivers that power hydroelectric dams could see higher flows and increased energy production, balanced by a risk of more flooding.
In Buenos Aires, awareness of sunlight reflection has grown in the oast couple years, and it spurs strong emotions.
“The range of feelings that solar radiation modification generates goes from disbelief to fear. Everyone perceives it to be controversial,” Camilloni told CNBC.
Clear communication is critical, though, because even research proponents do not see it as a climate change silver bullet.
“This is no one’s Plan A for how you deal with climate risk, and whatever happens, we have to cut our emissions,” Parker told CNBC. “But people are finally starting to seriously address the question: What do we do if we don’t do enough with emissions cuts, if they prove insufficient to avoid very dangerous climate change? What are our options? And that leaves people regretfully, but necessarily, to think about things like solar radiation modification.”
Correction: Andy Parker is the co-founder and CEO of The Degrees Initiative. An earlier version didn’t attribute some quotes to him.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his security detail depart the company’s local office in Washington, January 27, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Elon Musk and Tesla were found not liable by a jury in a San Francisco federal court on Friday in a class action securities fraud trial stemming from tweets Musk made in 2018.
The Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO was sued by Tesla shareholders over a series of tweets he wrote in Aug. 2018 saying he had “funding secured” to take the automaker private for $420 per share, and that “investor support” for such a deal was “confirmed.” Trading in Tesla was halted after his tweets, and its share price remained volatile for weeks.
Jurors deliberated for less than two hours before reading their verdict. Plaintiffs’ attorneys told CNBC they were “disappointed with the verdict and considering next steps.”
“I am deeply appreciative of the jury’s unanimous finding,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
“He doesn’t think ahead of time in that rushed moment that this could be interpreted differently and what it means to him,” Musk’s attorney told the jury earlier on Friday. “In that moment he didn’t think, ‘how could my words be interpreted differently by you than it means to me.’”
“You have to assess this in context – he’s considering taking it private and the issue is will it actually take it forward,” Musk’s attorney said. “No fraud has ever been built on the back of a consideration.”
Musk’s lead counsel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The shareholders in the certified class action lawsuit included a mix of stock and options buyers who allege that Musk’s tweets were reckless and false, and that relying on his statements to make decisions about when to buy or sell cost them significant amounts of money.
Musk later claimed that he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and thought funding would come through at his proposed price based on a handshake. However, the deal never materialized.
During the course of this trial, Musk also said he would have sold shares of SpaceX to finance a going private deal for Tesla, as well as taking funds from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
A Tesla Model Y on display inside a Tesla store at the Westfield Culver City shopping mall in Culver City, California, U.S., on Thursday, April 14, 2022.
Bing Guan | Bloomberg | Getty Images
DETROIT – The U.S. Treasury said Friday it is changing its definition of an “SUV” to make more electric vehicles from Tesla, General Motors and other automakers eligible for up to $7,500 federal tax credits at higher prices.
The decision follows Tesla CEO Elon Musk publicly criticizing the former standards as well as automakers such as GM and Ford Motor lobbying to change the guidelines ahead of final rules being announced next month.
The change raises the retail price cap to $80,000 from $55,000 for vehicles such as the Tesla Model Y, Cadillac Lyriq, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Volkswagen’s ID.4. Previously some or all models of these vehicles did not qualify because they didn’t weigh enough to be considered an SUV by the Treasury’s standards.
The credits are part of the Biden administration’s $437 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which was approved in August. Under the bill, SUVs can be priced at up to $80,000 to qualify for EV tax credits, while cars, sedans and wagons have to be priced at or under $55,000.
It’s unclear how the decision will impact up to 20% pricing cuts announced by Tesla last month that made the Model Y eligible for the credits. Tesla did not immediately respond for comment.
GM, in an emailed statement, thanked the Treasury and hailed the changes: “The alignment on classification will provide the needed clarity to consumers and dealers, as well as regulators and manufacturers.”
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group for most automakers operating in the U.S., also commended the decision.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk smiles as he addresses guests at the Offshore Northern Seas 2022 (ONS) meeting in Stavanger, Norway on August 29, 2022.
Carina Johansen | AFP | Getty Images
Tesla shares surged 33% this week, marking their best weekly performance since May 2013 and second best on record.
The stock rose 11% on Friday to close at $177.88. The rebound followed a six-month period in which Tesla shares had declined more than 40%. The stock’s 65% plunge in 2022 was its worst in Tesla’s 12-plus years as a public company.
Tesla’s rally this week was aided by an upbeat fourth-quarter earnings report. During the call with shareholders and analysts, CEO Elon Musk said the company was on target to potentially produce 2 million vehicles in 2023, and he suggested demand would support sales of those cars as well.
Official guidance called for production of 1.8 million vehicles this year. The company has not revised its longstanding target for 50% compound annual growth rate over a multi-year horizon.
Tesla’s five day performance charted against Rivian and Ford Motor Company.
Tesla beat on both the top and the bottom lines, recording total revenue of $24.32 billion, including $324 million of deferred revenue related to Tesla’s driver assistance systems. The company cut prices for its cars dramatically in December and January, leading to concern about demand and a buildup of inventory.
Analyst reaction to Tesla’s numbers was mixed.
“For bulls, the growth story is alive and well,” Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi, who has an underperform rating on the stock, wrote in a note on Thursday. “For bears, the numbers don’t lie.”
Tesla’s stock jump came amid a broader market rally. The S&P 500 was up 2.2% for the week and the Nasdaq gained 4.3%.
Other U.S.-based electric vehicle makers saw their shares climb higher. Rivian rose 22% during the week, while shares in legacy automakers Ford and General Motors each gained more than 7%.
Rival electric car manufacturer Lucid spiked on Friday as well, rising 43% on reports of rumors that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, intended to take the company private.
Some of Tesla’s underperformance last year was attributed to Musk’s shift of focus to Twitter, which he acquired for $44 billion in October. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter has experienced mass layoffs and fleeing advertisers, gutting morale.
Tesla remains the second most-shorted stock in U.S. markets, behind only Apple, meaning that a large numbers of investors are betting on a decline. Over 94 million of the automaker’s shares are shorted, according to data from S3 Partners.
Despite the rally, active short selling continues, S3 managing director Ihor Dusaniwsky told CNBC. Short sellers view Tesla’s appreciation as having created “an overheated and overbought stock that is due for at least a short-term reversal,” he said. In the last week, S3 Partners said it’s seen a 3.9% increase in total shares shorted, while investors shorting the stock lost $4.3 billion over that stretch.
The pace of change in the modern world is often rapid and dizzying. Technologies that seem integral to our lives can, in what feels like an instant, become redundant and irrelevant.
Energy is one sector where innovation and new ideas matter a great deal, as countries and companies try to find ways to shift to a society based around renewables like wind and solar rather than fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.
During a panel discussion at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, one analyst expressed his fear that the market did not seem to have learned from other technological revolutions.
Thomas Hohne-Sparborth, head of sustainability research at Lombard Odier, highlighted the huge shifts taking place in the field of low and zero-carbon technologies and, by extension, wider society.
“We’ve seen past industrial revolutions, including past energy transitions,” Hohne-Sparborth said. “What we’re really seeing now is the complete transformation of our entire economy.”
“The demand side of our economy, the way we power vehicles, the way we heat our buildings, the way we use energy in industry — all of that needs to be transformed.”
We were, Hohne-Sparborth said, “looking at investment needs in the trillions of dollars.”
When it comes to the energy transition, the sums being discussed are indeed significant. Last year, the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2022” report said clean energy investment could be on course to exceed $2 trillion per year by 2030, an increase of over 50% compared to today.
As the discussion in Davos — which was moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche — progressed, Hohne-Sparborth was asked if clean energy was now affordable at the scale required.
The answer to that question was, he replied, “very rapidly shifting, and today I would say, yes, it has become the cheapest source of energy.”
“What I think the market at large is underestimating is simply the pace at which this transition is unfolding,” he added, explaining that lessons could be learned from history.
“We’ve done some work looking at past technological revolutions, whether it’s the adoption of steamships, of mobile phones — any piece of major sort of new technology of infrastructure.”
All such transitions had, Hohne-Sparborth argued, “tended to follow a very similar pattern. They unfold very slowly … and then the transition completes in a span of 10 to 20 years.”
“Yet if you look today at what the market is anticipating — how long it will take us to electrify our buildings, to electrify our vehicle fleets — the timeframes there are still much longer.”
For Hohne-Sparborth, it didn’t seem to be getting through that, “when a new, superior technology emerges, that becomes cost competitive, that rollout can happen very quickly.”
Dramatic change
Also appearing on the CNBC panel was Andrés Gluski, the CEO of energy firm AES.
“What we’re facing … is a dramatic change,” he said, adding that renewables now represented “the cheapest form of energy, in most cases.”
“The problem is capacity — how do you keep the lights on 24/7 — and that’s where you have to use lithium-ion batteries on a daily basis.”
Expanding on his point, he went on to emphasize the importance of adopting a variety of technologies.
“To really get to a complete decarbonization we’re going to need green hydrogen, we’ll probably need small modular nukes, etcetera.”
“And I also agree very much that what we need is for renewables to be more than just competitive — just better so that we lower costs, [and] equal in quality.”
“And that’s honestly what the corporate sector is demanding very much, and many consumers.”
Most people want to hibernate during the chilly winter months — not Minnesotans. The inhabitants of one of the coldest corners of the U.S. embrace the subzero temperatures. They even have a festival to celebrate it.
The Great Northern festival will return to the Twin Cities from January 25 through February 3, 2023, featuring immersive outdoor activities, such as the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, ice fishing, and something called The Great Northern Sauna Village.
For those interested in thoughtful discussion on climate change, the festival will host a climate series, including a panel series with music legend Brian Eno.
Eric Dayton, the co-founder of The Great Northern and CEO of Askov Finlayson, which fittingly makes winter parkas and vests, says the inspiration for the festival partly came from growing up in Minnesota, hearing people in the east and west coast disparage his hometown.
“My friends thought we were something out of a Garrison Keillor book or the movie Fargo, and it wasn’t a great impression they had,” he said in an interview with Entrepreneur. “We knew what our region, state, and city had to offer, but we weren’t getting credit for it.”
So he asked himself, “What if we started thinking about the cold in our winters as an asset rather than something we need to apologize for?”
Dayton and his partners organized a festival to “showcase the best this place has to offer.” That meant an immersive experience of winter sports, food, art, music, and lifestyle. This will be the Great Northern’s seventh year. In 2022, over 300,000 winter enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and curious tourists attended, and organizers expect a bigger turnout tin 2023.
New to the festival this year, the Sauna Village will feature 18 mobile saunas that can accommodate groups of 4 to 12 people at a time. Think of it like a food truck park with saunas instead of grilled cheese trailers. No two saunas will be alike — some will offer yoga, and others will offer guided tours and a live DJ. Ares saunas too hot for you? At Silverwood Park, festivalgoers can plunge into an ice-cold bath and practice the Wim Hof breathing method.
U.S. Pond Hockey Championships
Watch dozens of ice hockey teams from across the country compete on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. ESPN listed this tournament in their “101 Things Sports Fans Must Experience Before They Die.”
Ice Fishing
For a unique variation on this quintessentially Northern pastime, anglers catch – and then remove – the invasive carp species from the lake ecosystem at Silverwood Park. Attendees can also document the carp they’ve caught by making an artistic print of it, inspired by a Japanese printmaking technique called Gyotaku.
Climate talks
Music producer Brian Eno and Prince collaborator Donna Grantis discuss the role of arts in the climate crisis. In another talk, Duluth Mayor Emily Larson lays out the city’s role as a climate refuge city, thanks to its access to clean water from Lake Superior, expansion-ready city infrastructure, and relatively cool climate.
A boon for business
In addition to raising awareness of winter’s wonders, Dayton says The Great Northern will be a boon for the local economy.
“The negative perception of winter here is a real recruiting obstacle for companies trying to attract talent from around the country,” he said. “If we can move winters from the liability to the asset column and start actually selling our winters as a great part of living here, we can show people that this is the winter capital of America, and nobody does it better.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday accused the political and business elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, of prioritizing self-interest and short-term profits over people and the planet.
“We are right now in Davos where basically the people who are mostly fueling the destruction of the planet, the people who are at the very core of the climate crisis, the people who are investing in fossil fuels etcetera, etcetera and yet somehow these are the people that we seem to rely on solving our problems,” Thunberg said.
“They have proven time and time again that they are not prioritizing that. They are prioritizing self-greed, corporate greed and short-term economic profits above people and above planet.”
“These people are going to go as far as they possibly can as long as they can get away with it. They will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under the bus for their own gain,” she added.
Thunberg said it was an “absurd” situation that the world seems to be listening to Davos delegates rather than those on the frontlines of the climate emergency.
The 20-year-old was released by police earlier this week after being detained alongside other climate activists for protesting the expansion of a coal mine in the tiny village of Luetzerath in Germany.
“Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening,” Thunberg said on Wednesday via Twitter. “Climate protection is not a crime,” she added.
Thunberg said it was an “absurd” situation that the world seems to be listening to Davos delegates rather than those on the frontlines of the climate emergency.
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images
Alongside IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, Thunberg took part in the CNBC-moderated panel with youth climate advocates Vanessa Nakate, Helena Gualinga and Luisa Neubauer.
The four climate activists arrived in Davos having recently composed an open letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies through the non-profit website Avaaz. Thunberg, Nakate, Gualinga and Neubauer called on the executives of energy giants to “immediately stop” opening new oil, gas or coal extraction sites and said they intended to keep protesting in the streets in “huge numbers.”
“We know that Big Oil knew for decades that fossil fuels cause catastrophic climate change, misled the public about climate science and risks [and] deceived politicians with disinformation sowing doubt and causing delay,” the letter says.
What haven’t we said? What haven’t we done? What haven’t we communicated enough?
Vanessa Nakate
climate activist
It adds that fossil fuel executives “must end these activities as they are in direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people.”
Failure to act immediately, the activists warn, comes at a time when citizens around the world “will consider taking any and all legal action to hold you accountable.” More than 900,000 people added their names to the letter as of Thursday afternoon.
Luisa Neubauer, climate activist and one of the main organizers of the Fridays for Future movement in Germany, on the same panel Thursday that she spent the last week with Thunberg and many others “defending livelihoods against coal diggers” in western Germany.
“And many people then said ‘oh that is an interesting change in scenery coming from the mud in Luetzerath to Davos.’ We walked through the dirty mud in Luetzerath and now we are in Davos witnessing dirty deals being made so I’m not sure how much of a change that actually is,” Neubauer said.
“We don’t see the sense of urgency reflected in action,” said Helena Gualinga, an Indigenous youth climate advocate from Ecuador.
“Indigenous communities, Indigenous peoples, youth, scientists, we have all been pointing towards a direction [but] the oil industry is not going there, the world leaders are not going there,” she added.
The fossil fuel industry has sought to underline the importance of energy security amid calls for a rapid transition to renewables, typically highlighting that demand for fossil fuels remains high.
To be sure, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate crisis.
“What haven’t we said? What haven’t we done? What haven’t we communicated enough?” Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said on Thursday.
Nakate said it was evident that in most cases, the countries and areas around the world least responsible for the climate emergency were typically the hardest hit.
Asked why new fossil fuel production projects were going ahead despite opposition from both the IEA and climate campaigners, Executive Director Fatih Birol said, “The issue is we have to keep the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. If it goes above that, the rather fragile equilibrium of our planet will be distorted — we will all be in trouble.”
“We need to get energy from clean carbon-free form energy sources and to do that, the magic word is investment.”
Birol said the world currently invests about $1.5 trillion in clean energy, but this needs to increase to $4 trillion in order to be in line with climate targets.
“If we do that … then we don’t need any more coal, we don’t need any more oil and gas. [We don’t need any] new investments there, but the point of departure is making clean energy investments and having a clean, secure energy future for all,” Birol said.
The IEA’s Birol said the world had “never, ever seen an energy crisis of this depth and complexity” following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The climate emergency is one of the main themes for this year’s annual meeting in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos, which brings together roughly 1,500 business leaders.
Addressing delegates during a special address on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned fossil fuel giants for ignoring their own climate science. He accused the oil and gas industry of seeking to expand production despite knowing “full well” that their business model is incompatible with human survival.
“Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie,” Guterres said. “And like the tobacco industry, those responsible must be held to account.”
Thunberg has previously excoriated the climate inaction of the world’s political and business leaders at WEF, saying in Jan. 2019, “Our house is on fire.”
Kerry said he hopes the resumption of diplomatic talks with China can make a “huge difference” in the fight to prevent the worst of what the climate emergency has in store.
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on Wednesday said he hopes that the resumption of diplomatic talks with China can make a “huge difference” in the fight to prevent the worst of what the climate emergency has in store.
“We very much hope to be able to find the pathway to a breakthrough that could make a huge difference,” Kerry told CNBC’s Tania Bryer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Asked whether he had met with China’s Vice Premier Liu He at WEF, Kerry replied, “I know that he is here. I’ve not yet had a chance to either bump into him or see him, but I’d be happy to. It would be something that I would want to do.”
The U.S. and China formally resumed stalled climate talks with China late last year following a meeting between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping.
The announcement came during the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where many delegates had expressed deep concern about the lack of cooperation between the world’s two largest economies and top greenhouse gas emitters.
A White House readout of the meeting at the time said that Biden and Xi had “agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts on these and other issues.”
Kerry said Wednesday that U.S. diplomats had since had several meetings with their Chinese counterparts, “and we will be talking very shortly.”
Government ministers and negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed at COP27 to create a new fund to compensate poor nations for the “loss and damage” they’re experiencing as a result of extreme weather worsened by climate change.
The summit made history as the first to see the topic of loss and damage funding formally make it onto the COP27 agenda — 30 years after the issue was first raised by climate-vulnerable countries.
Speaking ahead of COP27, Kerry said Washington would not be “obstructing” talks on loss and damage in Sharm el-Sheikh. His comments meant that, for the first time ever, the U.S. was finally willing to discuss reparations at the U.N. climate conference.
Asked how much the loss and damage fund is worth and where the money will come from, Kerry replied, “Those questions are legitimate, but they were all left specifically to the process this year to try and provide the answers to those things.”
Kerry said it is typically the case that the countries least responsible for the climate crisis were being hit the hardest by its impacts.
“You don’t have to work hard, unless you have no heart and no brain, to understand the degree to which justice is critical, inclusivity is critical, and action is critical. Urgent action to begin to reduce those emissions fast enough that we do what the scientists are telling us we must do which is avoid the worst consequences of the crisis,” Kerry said.
“We only avoid the worst consequences if we can hold the Earth’s temperature increase to 1.5 degrees — and we’re on the edge,” he continued.
“There are some scientists who will tell you we have already blown past it, there are some who will tell you, ‘no, we may be to have a little overshoot but we can do a claw back and come back and hold onto the 1.5.’ All I know is we’re not on track for 1.5, we should be, we need to be, and we need to do everything in our power to move in that direction,” Kerry said.
Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said Wednesday that current efforts to produce a set of official global standards on ESG issues were vital to “align capitalism with what society wants from it.”
Asked by CNBC’s Karen Tso at the World Economic Forum in Davos whether stakeholder capitalism needed a reboot through the creation of common standards for corporate disclosures, Moynihan said he was converted to the idea after seeing hundreds of companies sign up to the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals in 2017, followed by ongoing debate over what concepts like sustainability actually mean, and accusations of greenwashing.
“Without that definition, without that convergence, what you had is everybody defined it their own way. Somebody would think this issue’s important or this way to talk about it is important,” he said.
Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives are increasingly discussed in corporate results and by senior business figures, though they have also proven controversial. Critics have included both those who claim they are a PR exercise and, recently, those who argue ESG investment funds will provide weaker returns.
In 2020, Moynihan — who is also chair of WEF’s International Business Council — and WEF founder and chair Klaus Schwab worked with the big four accountants to create a set of common stakeholder metrics for companies to follow.
He said it was now important to “go to the official side” and was supporting the new International Sustainability Standards Board set up by non-profit the IFRS.
On Wednesday’s panel, IFRS Chair Erkki Liikanen said that since setting up the board they had consolidated their work with that of other groups with niche expertise, and were working on a final standards publication to be released in the middle of 2023.
This is due to comprise a set of general non-financial sustainability disclosure requirements for companies, and a set specifically on climate. Liikanen said it would then need adoption and endorsement around the world.
Moynihan also said it was crucial that sustainability and ethical standards became official and global.
He said informal standards-setting meant companies could hide poor sustainability practices “further down the stream” of their supply chains or divest certain assets, or else claim they are too small to carry out checks.
But with standardized, cross-jurisdiction rules that are part of companies’ annual reports and audited, he continued, “then frankly, an investment manager, a consumer, society, others can sit there and say, here’s a line that is acceptable and you’re either above it or below it.”
“If you’re below it we shouldn’t do business with you, and if you’re above it, tell us how you’re making progress along these important things.”
“Which, at the end of the day, will align capitalism with what society wants from it and get us going faster.”
Correction: The headline on this story has been updated to better reflect a quote by Brian Moynihan.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that without further action, humanity was on course for a global temperature increase of 2.8 degrees Ceslius.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday condemned fossil fuel giants for ignoring their own climate science, accusing the oil and gas industry of seeking to expand production despite knowing “full well” that their business model is incompatible with human survival.
“Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie,” Guterres said during a special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And like the tobacco industry, those responsible must be held to account.”
His comments come shortly after research showed how Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies, accurately forecast global heating as long ago as the 1970s only to then spend decades publicly contradicting their own research.
Research papers have previously found that Exxon was aware of the dangers of global heating since the late 1970s, while other oil industry bodies knew of the risks associated with burning fossil fuels since at least the 1950s.
The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate emergency.
“Every week brings a new climate horror story,” Guterres said, warning that the commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels was “going up in smoke.” This temperature threshold is the aspirational target set in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.
It is recognized as crucial because beyond this level, so-called tipping points become more likely. These are thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life support system.
Guterres said that without further action, humanity was on course for a global temperature increase of 2.8 degrees Celsius.
“The consequences will be devastating. Several parts of our planet will be uninhabitable. And for many, this is a death sentence,” he said.
“But it is not a surprise,” Guterres said. “The science has been clear for decades. I am not talking only about U.N. scientists. I am talking even about fossil fuel scientists.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently called out what he described as the “massive public relations machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny.”
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Referring to the research published in Science last week, Guterres said, “Just like the tobacco industry, they rode rough-shod over their own science.”
“Today, fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production, knowing full well that this business model is inconsistent with human survival,” he continued.
“Now, this insanity belongs in science-fiction, yet we know the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific fact.”
The world’s leading climate scientists warned last year that the fight to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius had reached “now or never” territory. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reaffirmed calls for a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use to curb global heating.
home is being built in in Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, U.S. on January 7, 2023.
The Washington Post | Getty Images
Developers planning to build homes in the desert west of Phoenix don’t have enough groundwater supplies to move forward with their plans, a state modeling report found.
Plans to construct homes west of the White Tank Mountains will require alternative sources of water to proceed as the state grapples with a historic megadrought and water shortages, according to the report.
Water sources are dwindling across the Western United States and mounting restrictions on the Colorado River are affecting all sectors of the economy, including homebuilding. But amid a nationwide housing shortage, developers are bombarding Arizona with plans to build homes even as water shortages worsen.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources reported that the Lower Hassayampa sub-basin that encompasses the far West Valley of Phoenix is projected to have a total unmet demand of 4.4 million acre-feet of water over a 100-year period. The department therefore can’t move to approve the development of subdivisions solely dependent on groundwater.
“We must talk about the challenge of our time: Arizona’s decades-long drought, over usage of the Colorado River, and the combined ramifications on our water supply, our forests, and our communities,” Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a statement last week.
Developers in the Phoenix area are required to get state certificates proving that they have 100 years’ worth of water supplies in the ground over which they’re building before they’re approved to construct any properties.
The megadrought has generated the driest two decades in the West in at least 1,200 years, and human-caused climate change has helped to fuel the conditions. Arizona has experienced cuts to its Colorado River water allocation and now must curb 21% of its water usage from the river, or roughly 592,000 acre-feet each year, an amount that would supply more than 2 million Arizona households annually.
Despite warnings that there isn’t enough water to sustain growth in development, some Arizona developers have argued that they can work around diminishing water supplies, saying new homes will have low flow fixtures, drip irrigation, desert landscaping and other drought-friendly measures. More than two dozen housing developments are in the works around Phoenix.
As the west coast of the United States withstands its ninth major storm in three weeks, California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new executive order to “further bolster the emergency response” as his state contends with widespread flooding and mudslides.
In a statement on Monday, Newsom’s office said that the onslaught of atmospheric rivers — relatively intense, narrow bands of moisture that can bring heavy precipitation and strong gusts — “resulted in at least 20 fatalities and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents”.
The latest executive order comes two days after US President Joe Biden declared the situation in California “a major disaster” and ordered additional federal aid for the waterlogged state.
Cleanup efforts are underway as California continues to endure the effects of the storms, with flood warnings and evacuation orders still in effect for areas including Monterey County, a region famous for its rugged coastline and scenic, cliff-hugging highways.
Lingering showers are expected “through midweek”, according to the governor’s office.
“Even 6 inches [15cm] of fast-moving flood water can knock you off your feet,” the National Weather Service warned on Monday. “And a depth of 2 feet [60cm] will float your car.”
Powerful storms over the weekend flipped a big-rig truck travelling across San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday and led to roads buckling and crumbling across the state.
Happening now – @SDLifeguards and copter 2 searching for victims in the SD River near 4700 Pacific Hwy. So far 5 victims out of the water with two more possibly still in. #rescuespic.twitter.com/TAonVkTND1
In San Diego County, close to the state’s border with Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reported that at least nine people were rescued from fast-moving water resulting from the continuous rainfall.
And even as precipitation tapered off on Monday in some parts of the state, loose soil — brittle from a years-long drought and saturated from three straight weeks of rain — continues to pose a threat.
Mudslides forced 10 homes in Berkeley Hills in northern California to be evacuated on Monday morning. And in southern California, more rock, mud and debris poured onto state highways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, forcing further delays in areas already stalled by collapsing hillsides over the weekend.
Floodwaters from the Russian River rise up around buildings in Guerneville, California, on January 15, 2023 [Fred Greaves/Reuters]
High in the Sierra Nevada mountains that form the state’s eastern rim, the Central Sierra Snow Lab run by the University of California, Berkeley, reports that its research station has received 126cm (49.6 inches) of snow since Friday, with more falling on Monday.
The lab had previously documented that the snowpack around its research centre was approximately 3 metres (10 feet) deep as of Saturday.
The National Weather Service has issued a “winter storm warning” for the mountains through Tuesday, predicting most of the snowfall will happen on Monday.
“Travel will be extremely difficult or impossible. If you plan to travel, consider alternate strategies,” the agency’s bureau in Hanford tweeted.
White-out conditions in the mountains had previously forced the closure of Interstate 80, a major east-west artery, over the weekend. But traffic over the Sierra Nevada resumed on Monday, with cars required to use tyre chains to navigate the snow and ice.
Other roadways remain closed “due to heavy snow [and] avalanche control”, the state transportation authority Caltrans tweeted.
While nearby Santa Cruz and Monterey counties continued to face flood warnings, the city of San Francisco and other municipalities in the north and east of the San Francisco Bay Area started to see drier conditions on Monday after a soggy morning.
The overnight rainfall in San Francisco pushed the total precipitation since October to 516mm (20.3 inches), surpassing the yearly average in a matter of months, according to the National Weather Service.
Federal disaster relief is available for hard-hit counties like Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Merced, where the small agricultural town of Planada was largely submerged by floodwaters.
“All of this was underwater,” local activist Alicia Rodriguez told the Merced Sun-Star newspaper as she made visits to a residential neighbourhood last week. “A resident was telling me it was 4 feet [1.2 metres] in some places.”
Water from the San Diego River submerges a vehicle in San Diego, California, on Monday [Mike Blake/Reuters]
Monday’s executive order from the governor’s office has called for state agencies to waive their fees for residents seeking to replace vital records, like birth certificates, and it provides resources for health care facilities to remain open during the severe weather.
The California National Guard reported on Sunday that its 649th Engineer Company had removed 1,800 cubic yards (1376 cubic metres) of debris from San Ysidro Creek alone, “enough to cover an entire football field in 12 inches [30cm] of debris”.
“And they’re just getting started,” the National Guard said in a tweet.
Meteorologists continue to monitor a developing storm over the Pacific Ocean to see if it will become a 10th atmospheric river. It is expected to make landfall on Wednesday.
Wind turbine blades photographed at a facility in China’s Hebei Province on July 15, 2022. The world’s second largest economy is a major force in technologies crucial to the planned energy transition.
VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images
The world is moving into “a new age of clean technology manufacturing” that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of the decade, generating millions of jobs in the process, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.
Published Thursday morning, the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2023 report — which referred to “the dawn of a new industrial age” — looked at the manufacturing of technologies including wind turbines, heat pumps, batteries for electric vehicles, solar panels and electrolyzers for hydrogen.
In a statement accompanying its report, the IEA said its analysis showed that “the global market for key mass-manufactured clean energy technologies” would be worth roughly $650 billion per year by 2030, a more than three-fold increase from today’s levels.
There is a caveat to the Paris-based organization’s forecast, in that it’s based on countries around the world implementing, in full, pledges related to energy and the climate — a significant task that will require both political will and financial muscle.
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“The related clean energy manufacturing jobs would more than double from 6 million today to nearly 14 million by 2030,” the IEA said, “and further rapid industrial and employment growth is expected in the following decades as transitions progress.”
Despite the above, the IEA noted there were potential headwinds related to supply chains, a long-standing issue that heightened geopolitical tensions and the coronavirus pandemic have thrown into sharp relief in recent years.
Its report highlighted “potentially risky levels of concentration in clean energy supply chains — both for the manufacturing of technologies and the materials on which they rely.”
China, it said, was dominating both the production and trade of “most clean energy technologies.”
When it came to mass-manufactured technologies such as batteries, solar panels, wind, heat pumps and electrolyzers, the IEA said the three biggest producer countries represented “at least 70% of manufacturing capacity for each technology — with China dominant in all of them.”
“Meanwhile, a great deal of the mining for critical minerals is concentrated in a small number of countries,” it added.
“For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo produces over 70% of the world’s cobalt, and just three countries — Australia, Chile and China — account for more than 90% of global lithium production.”
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Commenting on the report, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said the planet “would benefit from more diversified clean technology supply chains.”
“As we have seen with Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, when you depend too much on one company, one country or one trade route — you risk paying a heavy price if there is disruption,” he added.
This is not the first time Birol has spoken about the geopolitical dimension of the world’s shift to a future centered around lower-carbon technologies.
In October, Birol told CNBC that the main driver of clean energy investment was energy security rather than climate change.
Namechecking the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. and other packages in Europe, Japan and China, Birol said a “major increase in clean energy investment, about [a] 50% increase,” was being seen.
“Today it’s about 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars and it will go up to about 2 trillion U.S. dollars,” Birol told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum.
“And as a result, we are going to see clean energy, electric cars, solar, hydrogen, nuclear power, slowly but surely, replacing fossil fuels.”
“And why do governments do that? Because of climate change, because of the greenness of the issues? Not at all. The main reason here is energy security.”
Birol went on to describe energy security as being “the biggest driver of renewable energies.” He also acknowledged the importance of other factors, including those related to the climate.
“Energy security concerns, climate commitments … industrial policies — the three of them coming together is a very powerful combination,” he said.
Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Jerome H. Powell participates in a panel during a Central Bank Symposium at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, January 10, 2023.
Claudio Bresciani | TT | via Reuters
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday said the central bank will not get involved in issues like climate change that are beyond its congressionally established mandate, and vowed the institution will not become a “climate policymaker.”
Powell’s remarks, delivered at a conference hosted by Sweden’s central bank, follow calls from some Democrats for the Fed to play a more active role in addressing climate change and ensuring the country’s financial system is prepared for climate-related risks.
Powell has reinterred that climate change is not a main consideration for the Fed when developing monetary policy, noting that climate-related issues are more for the federal government than for his institution.
“Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through elections,” Powell said on Tuesday.
“Without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals,” Powell said. “We are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policymaker.’”
In recent years, the Fed has tiptoed into addressing climate change, including creating of two internal committees focusing on the issue. It’s also joined the Network for Greening the Financial System, a group of global central banks aimed at addressing the systemic risk climate change poses to the financial sector.
But Powell on Tuesday said the Fed’s regulatory powers give it a “narrow” role to ensure financial institutions “appropriately manage” climate-related risks. He added the Fed should “not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities.”
And while the Fed has requested big banks to examine their financial readiness in the event of climate-related disasters, Powell said this is as involved as the institution should be in addressing climate-related issues.
“The public reasonably expects supervisors to require that banks understand, and appropriately manage, their material risks, including the financial risks of climate change,” Powell said.
The Fed is set to launch a pilot program this year for six of the country’s largest banks to take part in a climate scenario analysis exercise that would examine the firms’ ability to manage major climate events.
In this NASA false-color image, the blue and purple shows the hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer over Antarctica on Oct. 5, 2022. Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says.
NASA | AP
The Earth’s protective ozone layer is on track to recover within four decades, closing an ozone hole that was first noticed in the 1980s, a United Nations-backed panel of experts announced on Monday.
The findings of the scientific assessment, which is published every four years, follow the landmark Montreal Protocol in 1987, which banned the production and consumption of chemicals that eat away at the planet’s ozone layer.
The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere protects the Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, which is linked to skin cancer, eye cataracts, compromised immune systems and agricultural land damage.
Scientists said the recovery is gradual and will take many years. If current policies remain in place, the ozone layer is expected to recover to 1980 levels — before the appearance of the ozone hole — by 2040, the report said, and will return to normal in the Arctic by 2045. Additionally, Antarctica could experience normal levels by 2066.
Scientists and environmental groups have long lauded the global ban of ozone-depleting chemicals as one of the most critical environmental achievements to date, and it could set a precedent for broader regulation of climate-warming emissions.
“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done — as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.”
Scientists said that global emissions of the banned chemical chlorofluorocarbon-11, or CFC-11, which was used as a refrigerant and in insulating foams, have declined since 2018 after increasing unexpectedly for several years. A large portion of the unexpected CFC-11 emissions originated from eastern China, the report said.
The report also found that the ozone-depleting chemical chlorine declined 11.5% in the stratosphere since it peaked in 1993, while bromine declined 14.5% in the stratosphere since it peaked in 1999.
Scientists also warned that efforts to artificially cool the Earth by injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight could thin the ozone layer, and cautioned that further research into emerging technologies like geoengineering is necessary.
Researchers with the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Commission contributed to the assessment.
Electric vehicle charging stations from Tata Power can be found on 350 of the 600 highways in India.
Puneet Vikram Singh, Nature And Concept Photographer, | Moment | Getty Images
When most people think about electric vehicles, they think cars.
From brands like Tesla and Rivian in the United States, to Nio and XPeng in China, global sales of electric vehicles have surged. Two million EVs were sold in just the first quarter of 2022 — that’s a significant jump from a decade ago when sales hit only 120,000 cars worldwide, the International Energy Agency reported.
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India’s different. The United States and China have focused on the adoption of EV cars. But in India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, two-wheel vehicles such as scooters, mopeds and motorbikes, dominate the market.
James Hong, head of mobility research at Macquarie Group, said two-wheel vehicles are in higher demand than cars in India, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Underdeveloped road infrastructure and lower personal incomes make it more convenient and affordable for people to own scooters, motorbikes or mopeds, rather than cars, Hong said.
Still, adoption remains low.
EVs make up only around 2% of total automobile sales, but the Indian government has ambitious targets to increase EV adoption in the next decade, focusing on raising purchases of two-wheel vehicles.
Sales in India are expected to rise by between 40% and 45% by 2030, at which point 13 million new vehicles will be sold annually, according to projections from Bain & Company published in December.
India’s four-wheel vehicle sector is poised to grow by only 15% to 20% by 2030, with 1 million new vehicles sold annually, the consulting firm said.
Growth of India’s four-wheel EV segment is expected to be smaller because the cars are mostly owned only by drivers who travel out of the city on longer routes, said Arun Agarwal, deputy vice president of equity research at Kotak Securities.
Bain & Co. predicts that total revenue across the full supply chain of India’s EV industry will generate $76 billion to $100 billion by 2030.
People in India have long preferred two wheels to four, and the country is home to more than 10 startups serving the market, Agarwal said.
For India to increase purchases of two-wheel vehicles, they need to be cheaper, and more charging infrastructure needs to be in place, Jinesh Gandhi, equity research analyst at Motilal Oswal Securities, told CNBC.
Gandhi said that 90% of two-wheel vehicles with internal combustion engines cost between 70,000 rupees ($845) and 140,000 rupees ($1,690). The starting price of electric two-wheel vehicles can be as high as 160,000 rupees.
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The cost of EVs will come down if battery prices drop, Kotak’s Agarwal said.
High inflation and disrupted supply chains have driven batter prices higher in 2022, Bain & Co. said. The cost would have to fall by an additional 20% to 30% for EVs to compete with internal combustion engine vehicles.
Arun Kumar, chief financial officer of two-wheel EV manufacturer Ola Electric, said it’s a “myth” that EVs are more expensive than internal combustion vehicles because the “lifecycle cost of ownership of an EV is lower” than a two- or four-wheel vehicle that runs on fuel.
Ola Electric’s two-wheel scooters, and upcoming motorbike and four-wheel passenger car, all range between $1,000 and $50,000.
Ola Electric
That means the amount of money EV owners can save in fuel and maintenance costs can offset the higher initial purchase price, he said.
Ola’s two-wheel scooters, an upcoming motorbike, and four-wheel passenger car range between $1,000 and $50,000, he said.
“There’s no coming back to [internal combustion engine] vehicles. It’s a single direction,” Kumar added.
Central and state governments in India have been providing incentives to encourage consumers in India to make the switch to EVs, Kotak’s Agarwal said.
According to the International Energy Agency, government programs have provided funding to ramp up production of EV public buses and taxis, as well as increase charging stations around India.
Including taxes, owners of two-wheel internal combustion engine vehicles in India typically pay 3,000 rupees a month for their vehicle, Kumar said. Government initiatives coupled with money saved on petrol would therefore mean that the monthly installment on a vehicle becomes largely free to a customer, he said.
As the adoption of electric vehicles is set to increase, so will charging infrastructures around the country. That remains a factor deterring people from making the switch away from carbon-intensive vehicles, Kotak’s Agarwal said.
“If you are stranded on the road, you don’t have any option but to get the vehicle towed to the nearest charging station, which is time- as well as a cost-consuming,” Gandhi said.
India’s charging infrastructure will need to significantly expand to support the number of EV companies that are set to come on the roads, the Bain & Co. report said, noting that several companies have made early investments and are committed to increasing the availability of chargers.
Tata Power claimed that it has built about 2,500 charging stations over 300 cities and towns in India.
Tata Power
One of them is Tata Power, India’s largest privately owned power generation company.
Tata Power claimed it has built about 2,500 charging stations in 300 cities and towns in India. They can be found on 350 of 600 highways in the country, said Virendra Goyal, the firm’s head of business development.
Many EV owners suffer from “range anxiety” when the distance between charging stations is too far, and bridging the gap would encourage more drivers to migrate to e-mobility, he said.
The company aims to have 25,000 chargers across India by 2028, Goyal said.
Correction: This article has been updated to accurately report where India ranks among the world’s biggest economies. An earlier version misstated its ranking.
Luke Iseman conducting his balloon launch in Apr. 2022, before Make Sunsets was formally incorporated.
When Luke Iseman was thinking of launching a solar geoengineering startup, he talked to experts in the field. The strongest advice they gave him was not to use the word “geoengineering.”
The term refers to manipulating the Earth’s climate for human benefit, but in recent years it’s been used as shorthand for “solar geoengineering,” a theoretical process of releasing chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth and mitigate the effects of global warming. It’s controversial because it hasn’t been studied comprehensively, and we don’t know whether the unintended side effects will be better or worse than the impacts of climate change.
Iseman’s startup Make Sunsets, which has raised at least half a million dollars in venture capital, mostly skates around the hot-button word on its website.
“We make reflective, high-altitude, biodegradable clouds that cool the planet. Mimicking natural processes, our ‘shiny clouds’ are going to prevent catastrophic global warming,” reads the site’s About page. On the FAQ page, Make Sunsets calls what it is doing “albedo enhancement,” a scientific term for reflecting sunlight.
But Iseman confronted it head-on in an interview.
“I’m very opposed to geoengineering. I want no geoengineering to occur,” Iseman told CNBC. “Unfortunately, I was born into a world with a poorly geoengineered atmosphere where I, and everyone before me for the last couple hundred years, were emitting huge quantities of carbon dioxide to build the modern world. So I want to do as little geoengineering as necessary to fix that.”
I’m doing this because it needs to be done. And no one else is.
On the downside, injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere could damage the ozone layer, cause respiratory illness and create acid rain. It would also cost as little as $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, UCLA environmental law professor Edward Parson told CNBC in 2022. That’s remarkably cheap compared to other mitigation techniques.
So which of these two scenarios is less bad? Most scientists who study the problem aren’t sure, but they think it’s important to begin studying the ramifications.
Iseman doesn’t want to wait for those studies. There isn’t time, he says.
“There is not really anything that I’ve been able to find, other than albedo enhancement, that even has a chance of keeping us below more than two degrees Celsius of climate change. And that’s a that’s a pretty terrifying world to imagine,” Iseman told CNBC. “Basically, long answer short, I’m doing this because it needs to be done. And no one else is.”
In January, Make Sunsets plans to launch three latex weather balloons that will release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide. The balloons will include a flight tracking computer, a geo-locating tracking device, and a camera, mostly provided by hobbyist suppliers. Within a week of each flight, Make Sunsets will publish data on its website about what it was able to find.
Iseman is an experienced doer. He has designed, invented, built and deployed biochar kilns in rural Kenya, a solar-powered wifi-connected garden sensor, and tiny homes made out of shipping containers, among other projects. For a year and a half, Iseman worked as the director of hardware at the leading Silicon Valley startup shop, Y Combinator.
He is currently living off the grid in Baja, Mexico, on land he bought a couple years ago, where he continues to tinker. He has a publicly viewable Google document with 40 ideas he wants to build or test, including a solar-assisted composting toilet with time and temperature monitoring, freediving safety gear and a floating solar panel.
Make Sunsets started as simply an idea to test solar geoengineering in a quick, cheap way.
Iseman says the academic consensus starts with spending $20 billion over 10 years to build a high-altitude plane, or to put mirrors high in space.
That wasn’t practical enough for him. “Here in reality, I was like, ‘OK, what can I buy, ideally, on my credit card, ideally on Amazon, to see if I can even do this?’ Maybe I’m missing something fundamental about how hard this is.”
Back in April, Iseman did his own rudimentary experiment with a 6-foot weather balloon, sulfur, a stainless steel kitchen pot with a lid, a pump that he took out of a water dispenser, and a tank of helium. (That experiment can been seen in the photo here.)
Luke Iseman launching a balloon in April 2022 on his property in Baja, California.
Photo courtesy Luke Iseman
He gave himself until the end of 2022 to raise money to run more tests, or just publish a description of what he had done. Eventually, he got a bite for a half-million dollars, and incorporated on Oct. 1.
Make Sunsets is also selling what it calls “cooling credits,” starting at $10, which companies will be able to buy to offset the effects of their carbon emissions.
Iseman has been wary of the the idea of companies or individuals paying to remove carbon or mitigate global warming effects. “Initially, I was really skeptical entirely of the of the voluntary carbon credit market,” Iseman told CNBC. “I thought it was either really expensive for very legit things that in 50 to 200 years will save the world, hopefully. Or it was inexpensive things where you’re like trading the right to not cut down a future tree. Basically, most of the credits that I’ve found below $50 per ton feel very scammy.”
But Iseman believes future carbon markets will evolve to include two things that actually work: permanent carbon dioxide removal, which will be expensive, and sunlight reflection technology, which Iseman says will be incredibly inexpensive at scale. The primary cost of sunlight reflection technology efforts at scale is sulfur dioxide.
Apart from the unknown side effects, there’s another moral conundrum with solar geoengineering: If there’s a cheap and easy way to mitigate climate change, then there’s no incentive to do the hard work of eliminating carbon emissions.
“That’s a real concern philosophically and academically. However, back here in the real world, people are dying, right? Maybe 20 years ago should have had those discussions and had the time to think about that. And if we had a magical world government that could organize all of these things, then yeah, that would be great,” Iseman told CNBC. “If international law for that matter held meaningful teeth, or if we didn’t have a land war in Europe, then maybe we could have an adult conversation about this — that’s not the reality that we live in, unfortunately.”
Brayton Williams, a co-founder of San Mateo-headquartered venture capital firm BoostVC, told CNBC the firm invested $500,000 in Make Sunsets because they were impressed with Iseman’s dedication, and because tackling climate change is the kind of big, complicated problem the firm likes to tackle.
“We have invested in companies working on banking the unbanked of Latin America, eradicating heart disease, abundant nuclear energy, one-hour global travel and many, many more,” Williams told CNBC. “These are moonshot opportunities, but if they work they really do make a huge positive impact on the world.”
Williams knows the investment is a bit of a risk, but cautions that the firm is still at a very early stage and the details could change along the way.
“I always encourage people to not judge an early stage two-person startup like you might a public entity,” Williams said. “If nothing else, I hope Make Sunsets helps encourage a bunch more founders to take action to really make a positive impact on our planet.”
Make Sunsets has also received venture capital funding from Pioneer Fund, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, mostly disparaged the idea of Make Sunsets because there are no international governance standards for solar geoengineering yet.
But he’s not surprised someone’s trying it.
“This all sounds crazy. A for-profit company trying to make money by cooling the planet. Crazy, yes, but perhaps asign of the times?” Pasztor told CNBC. “The climate crisis is getting worse by the day. The world is getting — and will continue to get — warmer. Governments are not taking their responsibilities seriously enough. And we live in a capitalist society where actors make money in many different ways, like it or not. So how surprising is this?”
UCLA’s Parson wasn’t particularly surprised either, as he wrote in a blog post forLegal Planet. “Those following debates on active climate interventions have been expecting — and worrying about — something like this for a few years.”
The climate crisis is getting worse by the day. The world is getting – and will continue to get — warmer. Governments are not taking their responsibilities seriously enough. And we live in a capitalist society where actors make money in many different ways, like it or not. So how surprising is this?
Janos Pasztor
Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative
Unsurprising or not, experts in the field object to what they see as rogue and dangerous boundary pushing.
“It makes no sense as a business nor as a statement,” said Harvard professor David Keith, who has been working on the topic since the late 1980s.
The critical issue with solar geoengineering is trust and that trust must be earned carefully, Keith said on Twitter after the MIT Technology Review earlier wrote about Make Sunsets.
“There is no reasonable doubt that commercial-off-the-shelf tech could be adapted to cool the planet at a tiny cost using strat aerosols. Science suggests benefits could be far larger than risks,” Keith wrote. “But the research community is thin and distrust is widespread. Trust must be earned with a far broader, more inclusive research effort, one that makes systematic efforts to look for errors and uncertainty.”
Kelly Wanser, the executive director of SilverLining, an organization promoting research and governance of climate interventions, says that it’s impossible to measure the effects of solar geoengineering accurately enough to sell cooling credits.
“Currently, the effect of releasing quantities of particles into the atmosphere cannot be attributed or quantified, due to two major areas of uncertainty in related climate science: the effects of particles (aerosols) on clouds and climate, and uncertain side effects of specific approaches, for which any credits would have to be adjusted,” Wanser told CNBC. “No one who supports meaningful climate outcomes or healthy credit markets should engage with this now.”
Pasztor objects because the impacts of solar geoengineering are global, so he believes it’s inappropriate for a single entity to be moving forward without careful governance structures and buy-in from a wide group of stakeholders.
Parson thinks the balloon launches aren’t codified enough for providing real research answers. He also believes injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere shouldn’t be the work of a private company.
“There is plenty of incentive for self-interested actors, particularly those with revenues on the line, to misrepresent these. Nothing about this process, except perhaps specific aspects of implementation under some hypothetical future governmental or intergovernmental control, can be entrusted to private firms,” he wrote.
Iseman isn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of solar geoengineering being managed by a private company, either. But he doesn’t think international governments will cooperate and coordinate in enough time.
“While we don’t have meaningful enough international cooperation for something like the UN to run this right now, we do have plenty of companies that dominate their category worldwide. So as as depressing philosophically as that sounds, the most likely way that I think this will happen is that one company gets the social permission and government sign off — or at least turning a blind eye — to do this worldwide,” Iseman told CNBC.
“That is millions of lives and hundreds of thousands of species saved — compared to not doing this at all,” Iseman said.
