ReportWire

Tag: Climate

  • Ninth severe storm batters California in ‘major disaster’

    Ninth severe storm batters California in ‘major disaster’

    [ad_1]

    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.

    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.”

    A white car sits in floodwater that reaches halfway up its doors in San Diego, California. Emergency vehicles block of the submerged road for a high point in the distance.
    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • IEA says clean energy manufacturing set for substantial growth as world enters ‘new industrial age’

    IEA says clean energy manufacturing set for substantial growth as world enters ‘new industrial age’

    [ad_1]

    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.

    Read more about energy from CNBC Pro

    “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.”

    Read more about China from CNBC Pro

    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.

    How wind power is leading America’s energy transition

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Powell reiterates Fed is not going to become a ‘climate policymaker’

    Powell reiterates Fed is not going to become a ‘climate policymaker’

    [ad_1]

    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.

    — CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed reporting

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The Earth’s ozone layer is slowly recovering, UN report finds

    The Earth’s ozone layer is slowly recovering, UN report finds

    [ad_1]

    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • India is learning to love electric vehicles — but they’re not cars 

    India is learning to love electric vehicles — but they’re not cars 

    [ad_1]

    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.

    related investing news

    CNBC Pro

    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.

    Consumers in India are ready to transition to electric vehicles, says Ola CEO

    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.

    Reducing cost to increase adoption 

    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.

    Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

    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. 

    Government help

    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.

    EV owners are also granted road tax exemption at the time of purchase, and will receive a deduction on their income tax, the Accelerated e-Mobility Revolution for India’s Transportation said.

    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.

    ‘Range anxiety’

    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Inventor in Baja is testing a plan to cool the Earth by mimicking a volcanic eruption

    Inventor in Baja is testing a plan to cool the Earth by mimicking a volcanic eruption

    [ad_1]

    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.

    Luke Iseman

    founder, Make Sunsets

    Whatever you call it, we know the cooling part works. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, temporarily lowering average global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

    The idea of replicating these conditions to fight climate change has generally been dismissed as more science fiction than real science. But as the effects of climate change have grown more dire and obvious, the idea has gotten more serious attention, and the White House is in the process of coordinating a five-year research plan to study it.

    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.”

    Launching balloons in Baja and selling ‘cooling credits’

    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.

    ‘Crazy yes, but perhaps sign of the times?’

    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 a sign 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 for Legal 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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • South Korea fines Tesla $2.2 million for allegedly exaggerating driving range of EVs

    South Korea fines Tesla $2.2 million for allegedly exaggerating driving range of EVs

    [ad_1]

    A Tesla electric vehicle is parked at a Tesla Supercharger station in Suwon, South Korea on Aug. 7, 2022.

    SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    South Korea’s antitrust regulator said it would impose a 2.85 billion won ($2.2 million) fine on Tesla for failing to tell its customers about the shorter driving range of its electric vehicles in low temperatures.

    The Korea Fair Trade Commission said that Tesla had exaggerated the “driving ranges of its cars on a single charge, their fuel cost-effectiveness compared to gasoline vehicles as well as the performance of its Superchargers” on its official local website since August 2019 until recently.

    The driving range of the U.S. EV manufacturer’s cars plunge in cold weather by up to 50.5% versus how they are advertised online, the KFTC said in a statement on Tuesday.

    Tesla could not be immediately reached for comment.

    On its website, Tesla provides winter driving tips, such as pre-conditioning vehicles with external power sources, and using its updated Energy app to monitor energy consumption, but does not mention the loss of driving range in sub-zero temperatures.

    Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

    In 2021, Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty, a South Korean consumer group, said the driving range of most EVs drop by up to 40% in cold temperatures when batteries need to be heated, with Tesla suffering the most, citing data from the country’s environment ministry.

    Last year, the KFTC fined German carmaker Mercedes-Benz and its Korean unit 20.2 billion won for false advertising tied to gas emissions of its diesel passenger vehicles.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Tesla reports 1.31 million deliveries in 2022, growth of 40% over last year

    Tesla reports 1.31 million deliveries in 2022, growth of 40% over last year

    [ad_1]

    Tesla just published its fourth-quarter vehicle production and delivery report for 2022.

    Here are the key numbers.

    Total deliveries Q4 2022: 405,278
    Total production Q4 2022: 439,701
    Total annual deliveries 2022: 1.31 million
    Total annual production 2022: 1.37 million

    Deliveries are the closest approximation of sales disclosed by Tesla. These numbers represented a new record for the Elon Musk-led automaker and growth of 40% in deliveries year-over-year.

    However, the fourth quarter numbers fell shy of analysts’ expectations.

    According to a consensus of analysts’ estimates compiled by FactSet, as of Dec. 31, 2022 Wall Street was expecting Tesla to report deliveries around 427,000 for the final quarter of the year. Estimates updated in December, and included in the FactSet consensus, ranged from 409,000 to 433,000.

    Those more recent estimates were in line with a company-compiled consensus distributed by Tesla investor relations Vice President Martin Viecha. That consensus, published by electric vehicle industry researcher @TroyTeslike, said that 24 sell-side analysts expected Tesla deliveries of about 417,957 on average for the quarter (and about 1.33 million deliveries for the full year).

    Tesla started production at two new factories this year — in Austin, Texas and Brandenburg, Germany — and ramped up production in Fremont, California and in Shanghai, but it does not disclose production and delivery numbers by region.

    In the fourth quarter of 2022, Tesla said deliveries of its entry level Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover amounted to 325,158, while deliveries of its higher end Model S sedan and Model X SUV amounted to 18,672.

    In its third-quarter shareholder presentation, Tesla wrote: “Over a multi-year horizon we expect to achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries. The rate of growth will depend on our equipment capacity, factory uptime, operational efficiency and the capacity and stability of the supply chain.”

    The period ending Dec. 31, 2022 was marked by challenges for Tesla, including Covid outbreaks in China, which caused the company to temporarily suspend and reduce production at its Shanghai factory.

    During the fourth quarter, Tesla also offered steep price cuts and other promotions in the U.S., China and elsewhere in order to spur demand, even though doing so could put pressure on its margins.

    In a recent e-mail to Tesla staff, Elon Musk asked employees to “volunteer” to deliver as many cars to customers as possible before the end of 2022. In his e-mail, Musk also encouraged employees not to be “bothered” by what he characterized as “stock market craziness.”

    Shares of Tesla plunged by more than 45% over the last six months.

    In December, several analysts expressed concern about weakening demand for Tesla electric vehicles, which are relatively expensive compared with an increasing number of hybrid and fully electric products from competitors.

    Along with competitors ranging from industry veterans Ford and GM to upstart Rivian, Tesla is poised to reap the benefits of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act this year, which includes incentives for domestic production and purchases of fully electric cars.

    Retail shareholders and analysts alike attributed some of Tesla’s falling share price in 2022 to a so-called “Twitter overhang.”

    Musk sold billions of dollars worth of his Tesla holdings last year to finance a leveraged buyout of the social media business Twitter. That deal closed in late October. Musk appointed himself CEO of Twitter and has stirred controversy by making sweeping changes to the company and its social media platform.

    Shares of Tesla started to rise again in the final days of December 2022, in anticipation of record fourth-quarter and full-year deliveries.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Gen Z climate activist Greta Thunberg’s putdown of macho troll Andrew Tate has quickly become one of the most-liked tweets ever

    Gen Z climate activist Greta Thunberg’s putdown of macho troll Andrew Tate has quickly become one of the most-liked tweets ever

    [ad_1]

    Greta Thunberg demonstrated once again this week she’s a force to be reckoned with. Known for taking on world leaders over climate change, the 19-year-old environmental activist capped off 2022 by insulting Andrew Tate with what is already one of the most popular tweets of all time.

    Tate, a kickboxer-turned-influencer and self-styled “king of toxic masculinity,” taunted Thunberg on Tuesday, tweeting: “Hello @GretaThunberg. I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start. Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.” 

    Thunberg replied: “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.” 

    Her comeback, posted Wednesday, has over 278 million views, 678,000 retweets, and nearly 4 million likes. That makes it one of the most-liked tweets ever.

    Musk praises Thunberg

    Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Friday expressed his admiration for Thunberg, writing: “The sheer amount of brand awareness achieved by Greta within a few years is astounding. I think she’s cool tbh.”

    His tweet was directly in response to a piece from satire site Babylon Bee entitled “New Greta Thunberg Thermostat Scowls At You When You Turn The Heat Up,” but it came amid her feud with Tate. 

    Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” has reinstated a number of banned Twitter accounts since his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in late October. Among them are the accounts of Tate and the Babylon Bee. 

    Tate had been banned for misogyny, hate speech, and other violations on a number of social networks, among them Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. In one video that led to him being ousted from the British version of Big Brother, he was seen hitting a woman with a belt. He claimed it had been a consensual act. 

    In a tweet following his reinstatement on Twitter, Tate said he was flying to California to tell Musk he was “a legend.”

    On Thursday, Romanian police arrested Tate and his brother Tristan, along with others, near Bucharest on charges of human trafficking and rape, according to Reuters.

    The arrest followed Tate responding to Thunberg’s well-liked quip with a video in which he had pizza boxes from a restaurant in the Bucharest area. Speculation followed that the boxes tipped off authorities to Tate’s location in Romania—the hashtag #PizzaTate trended—but doubters said that Tate had not been keeping his whereabouts a secret and authorities denied a correlation.

    After Tate’s arrest, Thunberg took another dig at Tate, tweeting: “This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes.”

    Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s executives. Subscribe here.

    [ad_2]

    Steve Mollman

    Source link

  • Hit by climate change, farmers in Cambodia are risking everything on microfinance loans

    Hit by climate change, farmers in Cambodia are risking everything on microfinance loans

    [ad_1]

    The “microfinance” industry — long touted as a way to help poor, rural communities in developing countries — is pushing tens of thousands of farming families into debt traps as they attempt to adapt to a changing climate, according to a report.

    The study, conducted by researchers at a group of U.K. universities, looked at a range of case studies in Cambodia, where it found easy-access loans had caused an “overindebtedness emergency” that was undermining borrowers’ long-term ability to cope with their new environment.

    Modern microfinance institutions (MFIs), which are generally small, locally run organizations with a variety of funding sources such as international investors, banks and development agencies, emerged in the 1970s and grew rapidly in the early 2000s. They were promoted as a way to provide financial services, typically small working capital loans but also savings accounts and insurance, to the traditionally unbanked — such as women and people on very low incomes.

    In Cambodia, around 61% of people live in rural areas, and 77% of rural households rely on agriculture, fisheries, and forestry for their livelihoods, according to development agency USAID.

    Many have seen these traditional livelihoods affected by a mix of climate change, over-development and illegal logging and fishing, with increasing droughts, wildfires and unpredictable rainfall patterns causing crop losses and damage to the ecosystem of Cambodia’s vital Tonle Sap lake.

    The establishment of hundreds of MFI branches since the early 2010s, which can be seen advertising services along roadsides around the country of 17 million people, has often harmed rather than helped those affected, the report published in September found.

    In its survey of around 1,800 borrowers, roughly half cited feeding their family as their primary motivation.

    But the authors say the loans are increasingly being taken up to service existing debt from a mix of formal and informal sources, rather than being put toward climate-adaptive investments. The loans are also seeing farmers put assets including their land up as collateral, even when the loans are high-interest and have short repayment windows.

    A Maxima Microfinance branch in Kandal Province, Cambodia, in July 2018. The establishment of hundreds of local MFI branches since the early 2010s has often harmed rather than helped those affected, a report found.

    Taylor Weidman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    NGOs estimate around 167,000 Cambodians have sold their land to pay microfinance loans over the last five years.

    The level of microfinance indebtedness in Cambodia at the end of 2021 was $4,213 per capita, more than double gross domestic product per capita. Around 2.6 million people have taken out microloans.

    “The debt burden created by the nexus between climate change and microfinance creates enormous challenges for many individuals and communities causing physical and emotional stress,” said Ian Fry, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights within climate change, who also acknowledged microfinance had been promoted by the U.N., World Bank and other international agencies.

    Some oversight of the industry does exist. MFIs are required to register with the National Bank of Cambodia, the country’s central bank, which in December 2021 stopped issuing new licenses and told institutions to improve the “quality, efficiency and affordability” of their services. In 2017, it capped microloan interest rates at 18% annually.

    The Cambodia Microfinance Association, a trade body, maintains that MFI loans have an overall positive impact in increasing income and land ownership, and has issued lending guidelines to “reduce the risk of excessive debt” for consumers. It has also hit back at critiques of the industry by NGOs and in previous reports. The NBC and CMA did not respond to requests for comment.

    Sounding the alarm

    The issues surrounding microfinancing institutions in Cambodia — and around the world, from South Africa to India to Mexico — have been highlighted by NGOs and journalists for nearly a decade.

    Microfinance institutions globally had an estimated gross loan portfolio of $124 billion in 2019.

    In some cases it has been found to have positive effects. A 2016 book published by the World Bank argued microfinance loans had reduced poverty and increased incomes in Bangladesh, and banking giant HSBC still promotes its funding of microfinance in the country.

    But the World Bank, an early and longstanding advocate of microfinance, has also been warning for years of risks including overindebtedness and the growing commercialization of the industry.

    Farmer in rice field. Kep. Cambodia. (Photo by: Pascal Deloche/Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

    Godong | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

    In the 30 years of advocacy done by Cambodian human rights NGO Licadho, land-grabbing has been one of the most prolific problems it addresses on the ground, its director, Naly Pilorge, told CNBC by phone.

    That’s in part a legacy of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, which banned private land ownership when it ran the country from 1975 to 1979 and left survivors without land deeds in the tumultuous years that followed.

    “We started noticing that in rural communities, workers were losing their land because of another problem even when they had secured their land titles — they were losing it to MFIs,” Pilorge said. “How can a farmer farm without land?”

    People were being forced to migrate and look for alternative work, Licadho found, which was difficult in the Cambodian economy, where agriculture makes up around a fifth of GDP, and the biggest employer is the garment factory sector, which has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and EU sanctions.

    Cambodia was badly affected by the pandemic, with revenue from tourism plunging from its all-time high of $4.9 billion in 2019 to just over $184 million in 2021, according to government figures.

    Licadho has done four research projects into issues surrounding microfinance to highlight its risks, including one in 2021.

    Motorists ride past a Sonatra Microfinance Institution Plc branch in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Friday, July 31, 2018.

    Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    “The numbers didn’t make sense. In a country perceived as developing, that struggled with tourism due to Covid, the MFI sector was still growing at 30% each year, and the average loan went from around $3,000 to $4,000,” Pilorge said.

    “Some of the people being offered these amounts have never seen $500 in cash, let alone $4,000, so when someone comes and offers it in exchange for their land as collateral it is tempting.” Cambodia uses both the Cambodian riel and the U.S. dollar.

    Loan forms are complicated to the average person, she added, but “a significant portion are given to ethnic minorities who neither write nor read Khmer. People are signing with a thumb print.”

    In the capital Phnom Penh, she added, she commonly meets people working seven days a week to pay off spiraling MFI loans.

    The 2022 report added its support to prior calls for the establishment of debt relief and interest suspension programs. That should be in tandem with efforts to cancel and restructure the national debt of countries in developing countries, it said.

    International responsibility

    It also said the international development community should redirect support away from microfinance institutions and into more targeted projects, and argued there needs to be more “robust taxation and regulation of profits, dividends, and capital gains generated by the foreign owners of Cambodian microfinance institutions.”

    The U.N.’s Ian Fry called on the international finance community to “take strong heed of the recommendations found in this report and seriously rethink their approach to microfinance.”

    Pilorge also took aim at international governments, financing institutions and investors who fail to prevent funds being funneled toward predatory activities.

    “All these international investors, Asian, European, Americans and so on, still perceive MFIs as a positive thing because of the initial concept. It looks good, you get a high return, everybody thinks they are helping poor people. But there have been red flags on every level for 15 years and they have been ignored,” she said.

    “Investors are happy, they get the interest, the agents get a base salary and commission, and the people who suffer are the poorest.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The world’s in a ‘polycrisis’ — and these countries want to quash it by looking beyond GDP

    The world’s in a ‘polycrisis’ — and these countries want to quash it by looking beyond GDP

    [ad_1]

    “The need for a new economic model has never been clearer,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told CNBC. “Which I think is why we’re seeing such growing interest in the well-being economy approach, both here in Scotland and around the world.”

    Jane Barlow – Pa Images | Pa Images | Getty Images

    LONDON — For a small but growing network of countries, the world’s go-to metric of economic health is no longer fit for purpose.

    Mostly led by women, Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand are all members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership. The coalition, which is expected to expand in the coming months, aims to transform economies around the world to deliver shared well-being for people and the planet by 2040.

    That means abandoning the idea that the percentage change in gross domestic product is a good indicator of progress, and instead reframing economic policy to deliver quality of life for all people in harmony with the environment.

    “The need for a new economic model has never been clearer,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told CNBC. “Which I think is why we’re seeing such growing interest in the well-being economy approach, both here in Scotland and around the world.”

    Encouraging other policymakers to consider an economic approach centered on well-being, Sturgeon said multiple global crises, such as the climate emergency, biodiversity loss and the cost-of-living crisis, “raise fundamental questions about what we value — and what our economies are actually for.”

    “Building a wellbeing economy is a huge challenge for any country, at any time, and the current crises we are facing make it harder — but they also underline why we need to make this transformation as a matter of urgency,” Sturgeon said. “We’ve made progress over the past five years, but we still have much more to do.”

    I often say that we need to shift from power, profit and patriarchy to people, planet and prosperity.

    Sandrine Dixson-Declève

    Co-president of the Club of Rome

    In just the last few months, New Zealand published its first national Wellbeing Report; the European Union recognized the need to shift to a well-being economy; and the World Health Organization launched an initiative that calls for well-being to be at the heart of economic recovery.

    Australia, Canada and Costa Rica are among some of the countries to have worked closely with the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership in recent months, and “post-growth” advocates believe it is just a matter of time before more countries embrace the well-being movement. A post-growth society is one that resists the demand for constant economic growth.

    ‘Building the plane as we fly it’

    Dominick Stephens, chief economic advisor at the Treasury in New Zealand, hailed the country’s first well-being report as a “landmark moment,” saying it aims to provide lawmakers with a big-picture view of what life is like in the South Pacific nation.

    “We want to look beyond GDP to understand progress, but we don’t have a singular measure of wellbeing — so we need to look across a range of indicators and evidence to understand progress in this broader sense,” Stephens told CNBC.

    “This helps us all to understand where New Zealand is doing well, where we are lagging and how wellbeing is experienced differently for different people in our country.”

    Among the findings published on Nov. 24, the report highlighted the wide and growing gap between the well-being of older citizens and that of younger citizens, with older citizens faring better on a range of metrics.

    Mostly led by women, Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand are all members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership.

    Fiona Goodall | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    The Treasury identified three priority areas in need of improvement: mental health; educational achievement; and housing affordability and quality.

    Stephens said that while the report would not be the final word, it’s now up to New Zealanders to decide on the extent to which they are concerned about those issues and the actions needed to address them.

    “We do not have a silver bullet in New Zealand on how to do Wellbeing Reporting well,” Stephens said. “Different countries have taken different approaches. We are, in some ways, building the plane as we fly it.”

    “More countries trying different approaches to integrating wellbeing analysis into policy means more opportunities for New Zealand, and other countries, to learn from the experiences of others,” he added.

    The ‘Limits to Growth’ — 50 years on

    The gathering momentum for a transformation of the current economic system comes half a century after the Club of Rome think tank published its groundbreaking “Limits to Growth” report.

    The 1972 book warned that the planet’s resources would not be able to support the exponential rates of economic and population growth and would therefore collapse before the end of this century. Broadly speaking — and following a sharp backlash to its dire predictions at the time — the world has gone down the path that the book’s authors predicted it would.

    Academics and economists told CNBC that an ultimatum from the world’s top climate scientists about the dangers of exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating — a critically important temperature threshold beyond which dangerous tipping points become more likely — underscores the need to end an obsession with growth at all costs.

    “If they hadn’t realized it 50 years ago that we already needed to shift, I think now is the time because we are confronted with a polycrisis,” Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome think tank, told CNBC via telephone.

    The term “polycrisis” refers to crises that occur in multiple global systems and become entangled in such a way that they produce harms greater than those crises would in aggregate.

    “Not only is our planet sick from continued growth scenarios, because we have gone way beyond a healthy use of natural resources, but our people are getting increasingly sick, and our young people are making less and less money,” Dixson-Declève said.

    When asked whether that means she believes there is no alternative to a well-being strategy, Dixson-Declève replied, “Yes, absolutely. I often say that we need to shift from power, profit and patriarchy to people, planet and prosperity.”

    Just how important is GDP?

    U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy once said a country’s GDP measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”

    Critics of GDP, which represents the total value of goods and services over a specific time period, argue that the indicator is misleading because it measures “the good, the bad and the ugly” of economic activity and calls it all good.

    GDP does not, for instance, take into account unpaid work, nor does it distinguish between economic activity which contributes positively or negatively to the health and well-being of people and the natural environment.

    I think it just shows our lack of imagination. We can’t even imagine an economy that is better than growth.

    Katherine Trebeck

    Co-founder of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance

    In the U.K., Rishi Sunak said in his first speech as prime minister that his predecessor Liz Truss was not wrong to want to improve economic growth in the country. “It is a noble aim,” Sunak said outside Downing Street on Oct. 25.

    Three months earlier, opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said Britain needed three things to fix its broken social contract. “Growth. Growth. And growth.”

    “I think it just shows our lack of imagination. We can’t even imagine an economy that is better than growth,” said Katherine Trebeck, co-founder of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a network of academics, businesses and social movements.

    “The best we can do is put some nice adjectives in front of growth — sustainable growth, green growth, inclusive growth, shared growth — but we are almost not allowed to entertain the prospect that a growing economy is a 20th-century recipe,” she added.

    “High-income nations have got enough in overall terms but there are huge profound inequalities within the richest countries. So, what they need to do is think about how to share and cherish those resources,” Trebeck said.

    Why poorer countries want rich countries to foot their climate change bill

    “I use the phrase that they need to recognize that they’ve arrived. The job of growth has been done and they need to now move to a second project which is about making themselves at home.”

    Trebeck described well-being economics as a “picnic blanket term,” which encompasses movements such as “degrowth,” “doughnut” economics or circular and regenerative models rather than an alternative policy.

    “I think there is a profound moral obligation [on high-income countries] because they are taking up more than their ecological fair share which is implicitly saying that countries around the world that don’t have enough to meet the basic material needs of their citizens are effectively going to stay there,” Trebeck said.

    “It is about really saying how do we live fairly on this one finite planet?”

    ‘GDP is not a way to measure richness’

    The push to look beyond economic growth comes at a time of growing calls to end fossil fuel production worldwide.

    “Basically, with a growth commitment, you have a commitment to more energy and material use which then consequently results in environmental impacts — and it makes decarbonization harder,” Julia Steinberger, ecological economist at the University of Lausanne, told CNBC via telephone.

    “What you need to do for decarbonization is you need to stop using all fossil fuels and replace energy demand with renewable or low or zero-carbon energy sources and that is harder to do [and] it is going to take longer to do if we have constantly growing energy demand,” Steinberger said. “That’s the climate case for it.”

    The South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu last month became the first country to use the U.N.’s annual climate summit to push for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. The European Parliament, the Vatican and WHO have all backed the proposal.

    But only a handful of small countries have endorsed the initiative to date, and the fossil fuel industry has typically sought to underline the importance of energy security in the planned transition to renewables.

    The burning of fossil fuels — such as coal, oil and gas — is the chief driver of the climate emergency.

    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

    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also recently joined a chorus of voices calling for GDP to be dropped as the world’s go-to indicator of economic growth, pushing instead for policymakers to shift to a circular economy.

    This refers to an economic system that is based on the reuse and repair of materials to extend the life cycle of products for as long as possible and moves away from the world’s current “take, make, throw away” model.

    “We need to change course — now — and end our senseless and suicidal war against nature,” Guterres said at a major international environmental meeting in early June.

    “We must place true value on the environment and go beyond Gross Domestic Product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing,” Guterres said. “Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP. GDP is not a way to measure richness in the present situation in the world.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bill Gates: ‘Our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off’ if we don’t fix climate change

    Bill Gates: ‘Our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off’ if we don’t fix climate change

    [ad_1]

    Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates delivers his speech at the National Assembly on August 16, 2022 in Seoul, South Korea.

    Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    The idea of becoming a grandparent is emotional for Bill Gates to even write about.

    “I started looking at the world through a new lens recently—when my older daughter gave me the incredible news that I’ll become a grandfather next year,” Gates writes a letter published just past midnight on Tuesday on his personal blog, Gates Notes.

    related investing news

    CNBC Pro

    Gates’ 26-year-old daughter, Jennifer and her husband, Nayel Nassar, are expecting their first baby in 2023.

    “Simply typing that phrase, ‘I’ll become a grandfather next year,’ makes me emotional,” Gates writes. “And the thought gives a new dimension to my work. When I think about the world my grandchild will be born into, I’m more inspired than ever to help everyone’s children and grandchildren have a chance to survive and thrive.”

    Gates goes on, over 12 pages, to summarize the work his namesake philanthropic organization, the Gates Foundation, is doing for children living in global poverty, to improve education, pandemic preparedness and the fights against polio and AIDS.

    Gates also talks about the work he is doing to combat climate change, both through the Gates Foundation on a philanthropic basis and in supporting early-stage climate companies with his investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

    How well the current generation of leaders respond to climate change will impact future generations, which is the first point Gates makes in the section of his letter where he addresses climate change.

    “I can sum up the solution to climate change in two sentences: We need to eliminate global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050,” Gates writes. “Extreme weather is already causing more suffering, and if we don’t get to net-zero emissions, our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off.”

    Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever done.

    Bill Gates

    Co-founder of Microsoft, climate investor

    Approaching ‘the hardest thing humans have ever done’ with philanthropy and for-profit companies

    And while the implications of meeting that challenge are clear, so too is the size of the challenge.

    “I can sum up the challenge in two sentences: Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever done,” Gates writes. “We need to revolutionize the entire physical economy—how we make things, move around, produce electricity, grow food, and stay warm and cool—in less than three decades.”

    Gates got started in working on climate change when he learned about the struggles of small farmers in countries where his namesake philanthropic organization was doing work. The Gates Foundation funds climate adaptation work, as in, helping people adjust to the implications of a warming world, where there is no profit to be made by a commercial enterprise.

    “It starts from the idea that the poorest are suffering the most from climate change, but businesses don’t have a natural incentive to make tools that help them,” Gates writes.

    “A seed company can earn profits from, say, a new type of tomato that’s a nicer shade of red and doesn’t bruise easily, but it has no incentive to make better strains of cassava that (a) survive floods and droughts and (b) are cheap enough for the world’s low-income farmers,” Gates writes. “The foundation’s role is to make sure that the poorest benefit from the same innovative skills that benefit richer countries.”

    Why poorer countries want rich countries to foot their climate change bill

    Not all of Gates’ climate work is philanthropic. Breakthrough Energy Ventures funds early stage companies that are working to build and grow companies to decarbonize various sectors of the economy. Building for-profit companies to address a problem that impacts the wellbeing of the global population may come across as unsavory coming from Gates, who himself already has a small fortune to his name — $103.6 billion according to Forbes as of Monday.

    Gates says decarbonizing global industry is too large a problem even for his deep pockets.

    “Philanthropy alone can’t eliminate greenhouse gases. Only markets and governments can achieve that kind of pace and scale,” Gates said. Any profits Gates makes on investments he makes in Breakthrough Energy Companies will go back into climate work or into the philanthropic foundation, he said.

    And, if companies that are working to address climate change can be self sustaining and sufficient, then they will get other investors to put money into them besides those like Gates who is, as he has stated publicly, working to give away his vast resources.

    “Companies need to be profitable so they can grow, keep running, and prove that there’s a market for their products,” Gates writes. “The profit incentive will attract other innovators, creating competition that will drive down the prices of zero-emissions inventions and have a meaningful impact on emissions from buildings.”

    Greenhouse gas emissions and money going into climate tech are both still going up

    The bad news is that greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing.

    “Unfortunately, on near-term goals, we’re falling short. Between 2021 and 2022, global emissions actually rose from 51 billion tons of carbon equivalents to 52 billion tons,” Gates writes.

    On Monday, the secretary general of the United Nations also underscored the grim reality of the current moment in climate change.

    “Climate change is another area where good news can be hard to find. We are still moving in the wrong direction,” António Guterres said on Monday. “The global emissions gap is growing. The 1.5-degree goal is gasping for breath. National climate plans are falling woefully short.”

    Despite the bleakness of the current climate moment, one area of optimism for Gates is investment in decarbonization technologies.

    “We’re much further along than I would have predicted a few years ago on getting companies to invest in zero-carbon breakthroughs,” Gates writes.

    Public money for climate research and development has gone up by one third since the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and in the United States, laws passed this year will put $500 billion towards a transition of the energy infrastructure away from fossil-fueled based sources, according to Gates.

    Private money is also going into climate technologies at a good clip. Venture capital firms have put $70 billion in clean energy startups in the past two years, Gates writes.

    Watch CNBC's full interview with Breakthrough Energy Founder Bill Gates

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • EV maker Lucid closes $1.5 billion raise from the Saudi public wealth fund and other investors

    EV maker Lucid closes $1.5 billion raise from the Saudi public wealth fund and other investors

    [ad_1]

    Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson claps after ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite as Lucid Motors (Nasdaq: LCID) begins trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange after completing its business combination with Churchill Capital Corp IV in New York City, July 26, 2021.

    Andrew Kelly | Reuters

    Electric vehicle maker Lucid Group said Monday that it has completed a planned $1.5 billion equity offering. The company first announced the offering in November, when it reported its third-quarter results.

    Lucid raised the majority of that cash, about $915 million, via a private sale of nearly 86 million shares to an affiliate of its largest investor, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The remaining $600 million was raised via a traditional secondary stock offering, in which Lucid sold an additional 56 million shares.

    The funding round was structured to keep the Saudi public wealth fund’s stake in Lucid at its previous level, about 62%.

    Lucid plans to use the proceeds to “further strengthen its balance sheet and liquidity position,” the company said in a statement.

    Lucid had about $3.85 billion in cash as of September 30, its most recent report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rooftop solar: How homeowners should do the math on the climate change investment

    Rooftop solar: How homeowners should do the math on the climate change investment

    [ad_1]

    Solar panels create electricity on the roof of a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, U.S., June 6, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. 

    Brian Snyder | Reuters

    When Josh Hurwitz decided to put solar power on his Connecticut house, he had three big reasons: To cut his carbon footprint, to eventually store electricity in a solar-powered battery in case of blackouts, and – crucially – to save money.

    Now he’s on track to pay for his system in six years, then save tens of thousands of dollars in the 15 years after that, while giving himself a hedge against utility-rate inflation. It’s working so well, he’s preparing to add a Tesla-made battery to let him store the power he makes. Central to the deal: Tax credits and other benefits from both the state of Connecticut and from Washington, D.C., he says.

    “You have to make the money work,” Hurwitz said. “You can have the best of intentions, but if the numbers don’t work it doesn’t make sense to do it.” 

    Hurwitz’s experience points up one benefit of the Inflation Reduction Act that passed in August: Its extension and expansion of tax credits to promote the spread of home-based solar power systems. Adoption is expected to grow 26 percent faster because of the law, which extends tax credits that had been set to expire by 2024 through 2035, says a report by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industry Association. 

    Those credits will cover 30 percent of the cost of the system – and, for the first time, there’s a 30 percent credit for batteries that can store newly-produced power for use when it’s needed.

    “The main thing the law does is give the industry, and consumers, assurance that the tax credits will be there today, tomorrow and for the next 10 years,” said Warren Leon, executive director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of state government energy agencies. “Rooftop solar is still expensive enough to require some subsidies.”

    California’s solar energy net metering decision

    Certainty has been the thing that’s hard to come by in solar, where frequent policy changes make the market a “solar coaster,” as one industry executive put it. Just as the expanded federal tax credits were taking effect, California on Dec. 15 slashed another big incentive allowing homeowners to sell excess solar energy generated by their systems back to the grid at attractive rates, scrambling the math anew in the largest U.S. state and its biggest solar-power market — though the changes do not take effect until next April.

    Put the state and federal changes together, and Wood Mackenzie thinks the California solar market will actually shrink sharply in 2024, down by as much as 39%. Before the Inflation Reduction Act incentives were factored in, the consulting firm forecast a 50% drop with the California policy shift. Residential solar is coming off a historic quarter, with 1.57 GW installed, a 43% increase year over year, and California a little over one-third of the total, according to Wood Mackenzie.

    For potential switchers, tax credits can quickly recover part of the up-front cost of going green. Hurwitz took the federal tax credit for his system when he installed it in 2020, and is preparing to add a battery now that it, too, comes with tax credits. Some contractors offer deals where they absorb the upfront cost – and claim the credit – in exchange for agreements to lease back the system. 

    Combined with savings on power homeowners don’t  buy from utilities, the tax credits can make rooftop solar systems pay for themselves within as little as five years – and save $25,000 or more, after recovering the initial investment, within two decades.  

    “Will this growth have legs? Absolutely,” said Veronica Zhang, portfolio manager of the Van Eck Environmental Sustainability Fund, a green fund not exclusively focused on solar. “With utility rates going up, it’s a good time to move if you were thinking about it in the first place.”

    How to calculate installation costs and benefits

    Here is how the numbers work.

    Nationally, the cost for solar in 2022 ranges from $16,870 to $23,170, after the tax credit, for a 10-kilowatt system, the size for which quotes are sought most often on EnergySage, a Boston-based quote-comparison site for solar panels and batteries. Most households can use a system of six or seven kilowatts, EnergySage spokesman Nick Liberati said. A 10-12 kilowatt battery costs about $13,000 more, he added.

    There’s a significant variation in those numbers by region, and by the size and other factors specific to the house, EnergySage CEO Vikram Aggarwal said. In New Jersey, for example, a 7-kilowatt system costs on average $20,510 before the credit and $15,177 after it. In Houston, it’s about $1,000 less. In Chicago, that system is close to $2,000 more than in New Jersey. A more robust 10-kilowatt system costs more than $31,000 before the credit around Chicago, but $26,500 in Tampa, Fla. All of these average prices are as quoted by EnergySage. 

    The effectiveness of the system may also vary because of things specific to the house, including the placement of trees on or near the property, as we found out when we asked EnergySage’s online bid-solicitation system to look at specific homes.

    The bids for one suburban Chicago house ranged as low as $19,096 after the federal credit and as high as $30,676.

    Offsetting those costs are electricity savings and state tax breaks that recover the cost of the system in as little as 4.5 years, according to the bids. Contractors claimed that power savings and state incentives could save as much as another $27,625 over 20 years, on top of the capital cost.

    Alternatively, consumers can finance the system but still own it themselves – we were quoted interest rates of 2.99 to 8.99 percent. That eliminates consumers’ up-front cost, but cuts into the savings as some of the avoided utility costs go to pay off interest, Aggarwal said. 

    The key to maximizing savings is to know the specific regulations in your state – and get help understanding often-complex contracts, said Hurwitz, who is a physician.

    Energy storage and excess power

    Some states have more generous subsidies than others, and more pro-consumer rules mandating that utilities pay higher prices for excess power that home solar systems create during peak production hours, or even extract from homeowners’ batteries.

    California had among the most generous rules of all until this week. But state utility regulators agreed to let utilities pay much less for excess power they are required to buy, after power companies argued that the rates were too high, and raised power prices for other customers.

    Wood Mackenzie said the details of California’s decision made it look less onerous than the firm had expected. EnergySage says the payback period for California systems without a battery will be 10 years instead of six after the new rules take effect in April. Savings in the years afterward will be about 60 percent less, the company estimates. Systems with a battery, which pay for themselves after 10 years, will be little affected because their owners keep most of their excess power instead of selling it to the utility, according to EnergySage. 

    “The new [California rules] certainly elongate current payback periods for solar and solar-plus-storage, but not by as much as the previous proposal,” Wood Mackenzie said in the Dec. 16 report. “By 2024, the real impacts of the IRA will begin to come to fruition.”

    The more expensive power is from a local utility, the more sense home solar will make. And some contractors will back claims about power savings with agreements to pay part of your utility bill if the systems don’t produce as much energy as promised. 

    “You have to do your homework before you sign,” Hurwitz said. “But energy costs always go up. That’s another hidden incentive.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Planned wind farm told it will need to shut down for five months a year to protect parrots

    Planned wind farm told it will need to shut down for five months a year to protect parrots

    [ad_1]

    An Orange-Bellied Parrot perched on the edge of a feeding bowl. The species is listed as being critically endangered.

    Margot Kiesskalt | Istock | Getty Images

    Plans for a major new wind farm in Australia were given the thumbs up this month — on the provision its turbines go offline for five months a year to protect a parrot species.

    In an environmental assessment report of the Robbins Island Renewable Energy Park, Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority said its board had “determined to approve the proposal” for the project, which could have as many as 122 wind turbines and is overseen by ACEN Australia.

    One of the approval conditions relates to the Orange-bellied parrot, which the Australian government says is critically endangered.

    “Unless otherwise approved in writing by the EPA Board, all WTG [wind turbine generators] must be shut down during the northern OBP migration period (1 March to 31 May inclusive) and the southern OBP migration period (15 September to 15 November inclusive),” the EPA document says.

    Read more about energy from CNBC Pro

    In a statement last week, EPA board chair Andrew Paul said the organization had concluded that “significant mitigation measures” were needed in relation to “potential impacts on the orange-bellied parrot population.”

    This was due to “the limited knowledge about the importance of Robbins Island in the annual northern and southern migrations” as well as a need to account for a National Recovery Plan for the species.

    “This has led to the inclusion of [project approval] condition FF6 which imposes shutdown periods during the migrations totaling five months when the turbines cannot operate,” Paul added.

    Robbins Island is located in waters off the northwest coast of Tasmania, a large island and Australian state. If all goes to plan, the total capacity of the proposed wind farm could be as much as 900 megawatts.

    CNBC contacted ACEN Australia via the Robbins Island project’s website, but did not receive a response prior to publication. The Ayala Corporation, parent company of ACEN Australia majority-owner ACEN Corporation, did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

    In a Facebook post, project developers said they welcomed approval from the EPA, adding that further approvals were needed from the Circular Head Council and the Commonwealth Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. These were expected in early 2023, they said.

    In comments reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ACEN Australia Chief Operating Officer David Pollington described the switch-off condition as “completely unexpected.”

    The firm would “need to consider our options going forward,” the ABC report quoted Pollington as saying.

    Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:

    Amid global plans to ramp up wind power capacity in the years ahead, the interaction of wind turbines with the natural world — including marine and bird life — is likely to become a key area of debate.

    The U.K.-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warns that wind farms “can harm birds through disturbance, displacement, acting as barriers, habitat loss and collision,” adding that “impacts can arise from a single development and cumulatively multiple projects.”

    The U.S. Energy Information Administration has said that some wind projects and turbines can result in bat and bird casualties.

    “These deaths may contribute to declines in the population of species also affected by other human-related impacts,” it notes. “The wind energy industry and the U.S. government are researching ways to reduce the effect of wind turbines on birds and bats.”

    Brussels-based industry body WindEurope says the effects of projects can be prevented “by adequately planning, siting, and designing wind farms.”

    “The impact of wind farms on birds and bats is extremely low compared to the impact of climate change and other human activity,” it adds.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • California cuts payments to homeowners for solar panels feeding energy back to the grid

    California cuts payments to homeowners for solar panels feeding energy back to the grid

    [ad_1]

    Save A Lot Solar contractors install LG Electronics solar panels on a home in Hayward, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022.

    David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday passed a proposal that will reduce compensation provided to households for the surplus electricity their rooftop solar panels contribute to the electric grid.

    Utilities and consumer groups have argued the incentive payments have unfairly favored wealthier consumers and harmed poor and low-income households. But solar companies and renewable advocates have said that lowering the compensation would slow solar installations and hinder the state’s goals to address climate change.

    related investing news

    CNBC Pro

    The proposal, which California utility regulators unveiled last month, will change a net metering policy by paying solar owners for extra power at a lower rate, which is determined by the cost the utility would need to spend to purchase clean power from an alternative source. The solar industry has said the plan would amount to a 75% cut in average payment rates to customers.

    Today’s unanimous vote by the five-member commission was monitored across the country, since California is widely viewed as a leader in the renewable energy buildout. The impact of today’s decision will likely extend beyond the state and have implications for the solar industry nationwide, particularly companies in the residential solar space like Sunrun, SunPower, Sunnova, and Tesla.

    More than 1.5 million homes, businesses and other utility customers in California have rooftop solar panels. The utilities commission estimates that these installations can collectively produce 12 gigawatts of electricity.

    The proposal would have no impact on existing rooftop solar customers and would maintain their current compensation rates, and would also encourage consumers to install batteries with their solar panels, the commission said.

    Affordable Clean Energy For All, a nonprofit funded by California’s utilities, has argued that the rooftop solar program is outdated and that utilities have to pass along the costs of subsidies, creating higher bills for millions of customers who don’t install solar, including those least able to pay for electricity costs.

    However, solar companies have argued that the existing net metering system is necessary to spur people to choose rooftop solar.

    The changes to the state’s solar incentive program could cut California’s solar market in half by 2024, according to a report released earlier this year from energy research firm Wood Mackenzie.

    “This misguided decision, which undervalues solar’s numerous benefits for all Californians, will dim the lights on the growth of solar in the Golden State,” said Laura Deehan, state director for Environment California, following the vote.

    Roger Lin, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program, said in a statement that the commission “has taken a step backward by widening the divide between those who can afford solar and those who can’t.”

    “It’s an affront to low-income communities who are hit by the climate crisis first and worst, and we’ll do everything we can to convince the commission to fix the deep flaws in its proposal,” Lin said.

    California, which is grappling with wildfires and drought fueled by climate change, has a goal to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045.

    Solar stock surge after California lessens its subsidy rollback

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • SensoRy AI, Founded by Teen Inventor, Receives Funding and Partners With Irvine Ranch Conservancy and Orange County Fire Authority to Test Climate Solution

    SensoRy AI, Founded by Teen Inventor, Receives Funding and Partners With Irvine Ranch Conservancy and Orange County Fire Authority to Test Climate Solution

    [ad_1]

    Ryan Honary to work with organizations to further evaluate his “AI-Driven Wireless Mesh Sensor Network for Early Detection and Growth Prediction of Environmental Hazards”

    Press Release
    –

    Dec 14, 2022


    IRVINE, Calif., December 14, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    At a time when many teens are planning for the near future, 15-year-old Ryan Honary is looking further ahead. He is passionate about saving the planet, and thanks to a new partnership between his company, Sensory AI, the nonprofit Irvine Ranch Conservancy (IRC) and, most recently, the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA), he’s closer to creating a better future for humankind.

    “I am grateful and excited for the opportunity to work alongside Dr. Nathan Gregory and Chief Brian Fennessy,” said Honary. “This new partnership with IRC and OCFA advances the SensoRy AI solution with the goal of protecting lives and the environment throughout California and around the globe.”

    The Newport Beach teen invented an AI-driven early wildfire detection system. Utilizing a wireless mesh network of sensors and AI capable of predicting spread patterns, Honary’s low-cost network can be deployed anywhere and communicate in real-time via an app. A research grant from the U.S. Navy enabled SensoRy AI to build a team and further develop and test the technology in rugged environments. Honary was recently invited by OCFA Chief Brian Fennessy to present the SensoRy AI solution at UC San Diego’s WiFire Lab and received favorable feedback. 

    Honary began working with Nathan Gregory, Ph.D., Chief Conservation Officer of IRC, in 2021 to develop field applications for his concept. IRC manages 30,000 acres of fire-prone urban wildlands in Orange County. The system was field tested at IRC’s Native Seed Farm earlier this year with successful results.

    “Ryan’s solution will enable us to monitor key factors that contribute to preservation and stewardship of our local wildlands. We believe this technology has applications that can potentially change conservation and land management everywhere,” said Dr. Gregory.

    IRC sees such broad potential in this technology that it recently invested $250,000 of its own funds that will allow the network to be tested more broadly. In addition, Dr. Gregory will be joining the SensoRy AI Technical Advisory Board.

    In November, OCFA Chief Fennessy also joined SensoRy AI as an advisor, and his team of fire-fighting professionals are assisting Ryan in further developing his platform.

    “This technology has enormous potential to keep our first responders and our communities safe by helping predict, detect, and suppress wildfires,” said Fennessy.

    Honary was recently selected to present his story and vision at the upcoming UNESCO Learning Planet Festival on Jan. 23-28, 2023, in Paris, France. His presentation is titled “The Future of Artificial Intelligence-Driven Environmental Solutions.” The Learning Planet Festival brings together hundreds of pioneering organizations and activists learning to take care of oneself, others and the planet.

    About Ryan Honary

    Ryan Honary is an award-winning 15-year-old student at Stanford Online High School, who has been putting his STEM-fueled passion for people and the environment into real action for years. While not developing science-based solutions to local and global climate challenges, Honary loves playing competitive tennis and, in support of a local not-for-profit, teaching it to autistic youth; singing and shredding on guitar; and surfing in his hometown of Newport Beach, CA. Follow him on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

    Honary’s solution was originally developed in response to the devastation of the 2018 Camp Fire, including the deaths of 85 people and the destruction of over 18,000 structures at a cost of more than $16.5 billion. The invention earned him Grand Prize at the 2019 Ignite Innovation Student Challenge and established the Early Wildfire Detection Network, for which he was named the 2020 American Red Cross Disaster Services Hero for Orange County. He also earned a spot in the Top 30 Finalists at the 2020 Broadcom Masters.

    About Sensory AI

    In March 2020, Ryan Honary’s early wildfire detection system won the prestigious Office of Naval Research (ONR) Naval Science grant. This grant led to the formation of Sensory AI. The company has since received multiple rounds of funding from ONR for continued research and development.

    About Irvine Ranch Conservancy

    Irvine Ranch Conservancy is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to restore, protect, and enhance the ecological health of urban wildlands in a way that fosters compatible human behaviors and inspires connections and partnerships. The Conservancy manages and restores approximately 30,000 acres of rare wildlands in Orange County, California, in partnership with public landowners.

    About Orange County Fire Authority

    Orange County Fire Authority is a regional fire service agency that serves 23 cities and all unincorporated areas in Orange County. OCFA protects over 2 million residents from its 77 fire stations located throughout Orange County. OCFA, founded in 1995, is a premier public safety agency providing superior fire protection and medical emergency services to our communities.

    Source: SensoryAI

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Scientists generate more power than used to create reaction

    Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Scientists generate more power than used to create reaction

    [ad_1]

    The National Ignition Facility target chamber at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is where scientists shoot lasers and watch and measure what happens when those lasers collide on a fuel source. Temperatures of 100 million degrees and pressures extreme enough to compress a target up to 100 times the density of lead are created in this facility.

    Photo by Damien Jemison/ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

    On Tuesday, the head of the Department of Energy and other federal scientific leaders announced that a fusion reaction run at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved net energy, meaning the reaction generated more energy than was put in to initiate the reaction. It is the first time humankind has achieved this landmark.

    Fusion is the way that the sun makes power, but recreating a useful fusion reaction here on earth has eluded scientists for decades. Achieving net positive energy paves the way for fusion to move from a lab science to a usable energy source, although large scale commercialization of fusion could still be decades away.

    Fusion is particularly attractive given the increasing urgency of climate change because if it can be commercialized at scale, it produces no carbon emissions, nor does it produce the long-lasting nuclear waste associated with nuclear fission, which is the type of nuclear energy used to make energy today.

    “Monday, December 5, 2022 was an important day in science,” Jill Hruby, the National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator, said at a press conference announcing the news on Tuesday in Washington D.C. “Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering and experimentation.”

    Reaching ignition means the fusion experiment produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy that used to drive the reaction. Since the experiment, the team has been analyzing data to be able to make this official announcement.

    “This is important. Earlier results were records, but not yet producing more energy out than was put in,” Andrew Holland, the CEO of the industry’s trade group, the Fusion Industry Association, told CNBC. “For the first time on Earth, scientists have confirmed a fusion energy experiment released more power than it takes to initiate, proving the physical basis for fusion energy. This will lead fusion to be a safe and sustainable energy source in the near future.”

    In the experiment on Dec. 5, about two megajoules (a unit of energy) went into the reaction and about three megajoules came out, said Marvin Adams, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. “A gain of 1.5,” Adams said.

    For the experiment, super high powered lasers are all directed at a very tiny fuel target at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “During experiments, 192 high energy lasers converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn heating a capsule of deuterium and tritium to over 3 million degrees Celsius and briefly simulating the conditions of a star,” Hruby said.

    The main mission of the National Lab is studying nuclear power for use in national defense, and this nuclear fusion research is part of an effort established in 1996 by then President Clinton to maintain confidence in the safety of nuclear weapons stockpiles without full-scale nuclear testing.

    But this discovery has massive implications for clean energy, too. In addition to the national security work, “we have taken the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world,” Hruby said.

    While this scientific breakthrough that is being celebrated at the highest levels of government, it will be many years before fusion power plants are likely to provide clean abundant energy.

    “This is one igniting capsule, one time. And to realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things. You have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute,” Kim Budil, the director of the Lawrence Livermore Lab, said on Tuesday.

    “You have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that. So, you know, probably decades. Not six decades, I don’t think. Not five decades, which is what we used to say. I think it’s moving into the foreground and probably, with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.”

    Omar A. Hurricane, Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program at Lawrence Livermore, explained, “What remains to be done from here is largely engineering, of increasing the laser energy efficiency and increasing the target energy gain with further target optimizations.”

    Hurricane added, “This new result does indeed bring commercial fusion closer, as it demonstrates that there are no fundamental physics obstacles. It is starting to feel like we are entering the ‘Fusion Age.’”

    One step forward in the ‘Fusion Age’

    Interest in fusion has increased dramatically in recent years as concerns about climate change and energy security have become more acute.

    More than 90 nuclear power reactors currently operate in the United States, but those nuclear reactors employ nuclear fission, which is when a neutron smashes into a larger atom, causing it to split into two smaller atoms and releasing a lot of energy. Nuclear fission reactions do not release any carbon dioxide emissions and therefore are considered clean energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

    The United States got approximately 19 percent of its utility-scale electricity generation from those nuclear power plants in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the energy from nuclear fission reactors represents half of the clean power generated in the United States, according to the Department of Energy.

    However, those reactors generate long-lasting nuclear radioactive waste, and most countries, including the United States, currently have no long-term storage facilities for that waste. Efforts to build a permanent, underground geologic storage facility for nuclear waste have thus far been stymied in the United States.

    Fusion happens when two atoms slam together to form a heavier atom, releasing huge amounts of energy without generating carbon dioxide emissions or long-lasting nuclear waste. But it’s proven extremely challenging to sustain a fusion reaction here on earth, and scientists have been trying for decades. In particular, it requires massive amounts of energy to generate fusion on reactions, and until this experiment, nobody had demonstrated the ability to get more energy out of the reaction than it takes to power it.

    “Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy out than is put in since the 1950s,” plasma physicist Arthur Turrell told CNBC.

    “During those decades, every time anyone has asked for funding for developing fusion power, the response has always been ‘first, you must show that it works in principle,’” said Turrell, who is also the author of The Star Builders. “That is, you must show that a fusion experiment can produce more energy than it uses. The researchers at Lawrence Livermore have done this for the first time ever.”

    Fusion is already a hot space for climate and energy investors — so far, investors have poured almost $5 billion in investment into private fusion energy startups, according to the Fusion Industry Association, and more than half of that has been since since the second quarter of 2021.

    “Everyone in the laser fusion (or inertial confinement fusion) community has been focused on getting to more energy out than in on a single experiment, because that is the key to showing the proof of principle and unlocking further investment and interest,” Turrell told CNBC.

    Indeed, the private fusion industry is seeing this as a win.

    “Now, the privately funded fusion industry will take the next steps, turning experimental results like this into a viable source of clean, safe energy,” Holland told CNBC. “In short, this will show the world that fusion is not science fiction: it will soon be a viable source of energy. Of course there are still many steps between these experimental results and fusion power plants, but this is an important milestone that brings us closer to the day when fusion will provide the world with clean, safe, and abundant energy.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • With Tesla battery packs and largest hydrogen tank in Japan, Panasonic tests a factory of the future

    With Tesla battery packs and largest hydrogen tank in Japan, Panasonic tests a factory of the future

    [ad_1]

    As a bullet train speeds by in the background, a liquid hydrogen tank towers over solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells at Panasonic’s Kusatsu plant in Japan. Combined with a Tesla Megapack storage battery, the hydrogen and solar can deliver enough electricity to power the site’s Ene-Farm fuel cell factory.

    Tim Hornyak

    As bullet trains whiz by at 285 kilometers per hour, Panasonic’s Norihiko Kawamura looks over Japan’s tallest hydrogen storage tank. The 14-meter structure looms over the Tokaido Shinkansen Line tracks outside the ancient capital of Kyoto, as well as a large array of solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells and Tesla Megapack storage batteries. The power sources can generate enough juice to run part of the manufacturing site using renewable energy only.

    “This may be the biggest hydrogen consumption site in Japan,” says Kawamura, a manager at the appliance maker’s Smart Energy System Business Division. “We estimate using 120 tons of hydrogen a year. As Japan produces and imports more and more hydrogen in the future, this will be a very suitable kind of plant.”

    Sandwiched between a high-speed railway and highway, Panasonic’s factory in Kusastsu, Shiga Prefecture, is a sprawling 52 hectare site. It was originally built in 1969 to manufacture goods including refrigerators, one of the “three treasures” of household appliances, along with TVs and washing machines, that Japanese coveted as the country rebuilt after the devastation of World War II.

    Today, one corner of the plant is the H2 Kibou Field, a demonstration sustainable power facility that started operations in April. It consists of a 78,000-liter hydrogen fuel tank, a 495 kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell array made up of 99 5kW fuel cells, 570kW from 1,820 photovoltaic solar panels arranged in an inverted “V” shape to catch the most sunlight, and 1.1 megawatts of lithium-ion battery storage.

    On one side of the H2 Kibou Field, a large display indicates the amount of power being produced in real time from fuel cells and solar panels: 259kW. About 80% of the power generated comes from fuel cells, with solar accounting for the rest. Panasonic says the facility produces enough power to meet the needs of the site’s fuel cell factory — it has peak power of about 680kW and annual usage of some 2.7 gigawatts. Panasonic thinks it can be a template for the next generation of new, sustainable manufacturing. 

    “This is the first manufacturing site of its kind using 100% renewable energy,” says Hiroshi Kinoshita of Panasonic’s Smart Energy System Business Division. “We want to expand this solution towards the creation of a decarbonized society.”

    The 495kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell array is made up of 99 5KW fuel cells. Panasonic says it’s the world’s first site of its kind to use hydrogen fuel cells toward creating a manufacturing plant running on 100% renewable energy.

    Tim Hornyak

    An artificial intelligence-equipped Energy Management System (EMS) automatically controls on-site power generation, switching between solar and hydrogen, to minimize the amount of electricity purchased from the local grid operator. For example, if it’s a sunny summer day and the fuel cell factory needs 600kW, the EMS might prioritize the solar panels, deciding on a mixture of 300kW solar, 200 kW hydrogen fuel cells, and 100kW storage batteries. On a cloudy day, however, it might minimize the solar component, and boost the hydrogen and storage batteries, which are recharged at night by the fuel cells.

    “The most important thing to make manufacturing greener is an integrated energy system including renewable energy such as solar and wind, hydrogen, batteries and so on,” says Takamichi Ochi, a senior manager for climate change and energy at Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting. “To do that, the Panasonic example is close to an ideal energy system.”

    With grey hydrogen, not totally green yet

    The H2 Kibou Field is not totally green. It depends on so-called grey hydrogen, which is generated from natural gas in a process that can release a lot of carbon dioxide. Tankers haul 20,000 liters of hydrogen, chilled in liquid form to minus 250 Celsius, from Osaka to Kusatsu, a distance of some 80 km, about once a week. Japan has relied on countries like Australia, which has greater supplies of renewable energy, for hydrogen production. But local supplier Iwatani Corporation, which partnered with Chevron earlier this year to build 30 hydrogen fueling sites in California by 2026, has opened a technology center near Osaka that is focused on producing green hydrogen, which is created without the use of fossil fuels.

    Another issue that is slowing adoption is cost. Even though electricity is relatively expensive in Japan, it currently costs much more to power a plant with hydrogen than using power from the grid, but the company expects Japanese government and industry efforts to improve supply and distribution will make the element significantly cheaper.

    “Our hope is that hydrogen cost will go down, so we can achieve something like 20 yen per cubic meter of hydrogen, and then we will be able to achieve cost parity with the electrical grid,” Kawamura said. 

    Panasonic is also anticipating that Japan’s push to become carbon-neutral by 2050 will boost demand for new energy products. Its fuel cell factory at Kusatsu has churned out over 200,000 Ene-Farm natural gas fuel cell for home use. Commercialized in 2009, the cells extract hydrogen from natural gas, generate power by reacting it with oxygen, heat and store hot water, and deliver up to 500 watts of emergency power for eight days in a disaster. Last year, it began selling a pure hydrogen version targeted at commercial users. It wants to sell the fuel cells in the U.S. and Europe because governments there have more aggressive hydrogen cost-cutting measures than Japan. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy launched a so-called Hydrogen Shot program that aims to slash the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per 1 kilogram over 10 years. 

    Panasonic doesn’t plan to increase the scale of its H2 Kibou Field for the time being, wanting to see other companies and factories adopt similar energy systems.

    It won’t necessarily make economic sense today, Kawamura says, “but we want to start something like this so it will be ready when the cost of hydrogen falls. Our message is: if we want to have 100% renewable energy in 2030, then we must start with something like this now, not in 2030.”

    Japan's nuclear energy reversal 'is very good and encouraging news,' IEA director says

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Kansas oil spill the biggest in Keystone pipeline history, data shows

    Kansas oil spill the biggest in Keystone pipeline history, data shows

    [ad_1]

    A ruptured pipe dumped enough oil this week into a northeastern Kansas creek to nearly fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, becoming the largest onshore crude pipeline spill in nine years and surpassing all the previous ones on the same pipeline system combined, according to federal data.

    The Keystone pipeline spill in a creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City, also was the biggest in the system’s history, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data. The operator, Canada-based TC Energy, said the pipeline that runs from Canada to Oklahoma lost about 14,000 barrels, or 588,000 gallons.

    The spill raised questions for environmentalists and safety advocates about whether TC Energy should keep a federal government permit that has allowed the pressure inside parts of its Keystone system — including the stretch through Kansas — to exceed the typical maximum permitted levels. With Congress facing a potential debate on reauthorizing regulatory programs, the chair of a House subcommittee on pipeline safety took note of the spill Friday.

    A U.S. Government Accountability Office report last year said there had been 22 previous spills along the Keystone system since it began operating in 2010, most of them on TC Energy property and fewer than 20 barrels. The total from those 22 events was a little less than 12,000 barrels, the report said.

    “I’m watching this situation closely to learn more about this latest oil leak and inform ways to prevent future releases and protect public safety and the environment,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr., of New Jersey, tweeted.

    TC Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the spill has been contained. The EPA said the company built an earthen dam across the creek about 4 miles downstream from the pipeline rupture to prevent the oil from moving into larger waterways.

    Randy Hubbard, the county’s emergency management director, said the oil traveled only about a quarter mile and there didn’t appear to be any wildlife deaths.

    The company said it is doing around-the-clock air-quality checks and other environmental monitoring. It also was using multiple trucks that amount to giant wet vacuums to suck up the oil.

    Past Keystone spills have led to outages that lasted about two weeks, and the company said it still is evaluating when it can reopen the system.

    The EPA said no drinking water wells were affected and oil-removal efforts will continue into next week. No one was evacuated, but the Kansas Department of Health and Environment warned people not to go into the creek or allow animals to wade in.

    “At the time of the incident, the pipeline was operating within its design and regulatory approval requirements,” the company said in a statement.

    The nearly 2,700-mile (4345-kilometer) Keystone pipeline carries thick, Canadian tar-sands oil to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas, with about 600,000 barrels moving per day from Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma. Concerns about spills fouling water helped spur opposition to a new, 1,200 mile (1,900 kilometers) Keystone XL pipeline, and the company pulled the plug last year after President Joe Biden canceled a permit for it.

    Environmentalists said the heavier tar sands oil is not only more toxic than lighter crude but can sink in water instead of floating on top. Bill Caram, executive director of the advocacy Pipeline Safety Trust, said cleanup even sometimes can include scrubbing individual rocks in a creek bed.

    “This is going to be months, maybe even years before we get the full handle on this disaster and know the extent of the damage and get it all cleaned up,” said Zack Pistora, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club at the Kansas Statehouse.

    Pipelines often are considered safer than shipping oil by railcar or truck, but large spills can create significant environmental damage. The American Petroleum Institute said Friday that companies have robust monitoring to detect leaks, cracks, corrosion and other problems, not only through control centers but with employees who walk alongside pipelines.

    Still, in September 2013, a Tesoro Corp. pipeline in North Dakota ruptured and spilled 20,600 barrels, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.

    A more expensive spill happened in July 2010, when an Enbridge Inc. pipeline in Michigan ruptured and spilled more than 20,000 barrels into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. Hundreds of homes and businesses were evacuated.

    The Keystone pipeline’s previous largest spill came in 2017, when more than 6,500 barrels spilled near Amherst, South Dakota, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released last year. The second largest, 4,515 barrels, was in 2019 near Edinburg, North Dakota.

    The Petroleum Institute said pipelines go through tests before opening using pressures that exceed the company’s planned levels and are designed to account for what they’ll carry and changes in the ground they cover. An arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation oversees pipeline safety and permitted TC Energy to have greater pressures on the Keystone system because the company used pipe made from better steel.

    But Caram said: “When we see multiple failures like this of such large size and a relatively short amount of time after that pressure has increased, I think it’s time to question that.”

    In its report last year to Congress, the GAO said Keystone’s accident history was similar to other oil pipelines, but spills have gotten larger in recent years. Investigations ordered by regulators found that the four worst spills were caused by flaws in design or pipe manufacturing during construction.

    TC Energy’s permit included more than 50 special conditions, mostly for its design, construction and operation, the GAO report said. The company said in response to the 2021 report that it took “decisive action” in recent years to improve safety, including developing new technology for detecting cracks and an independent review of its pipeline integrity program.

    The company said Friday that it would conduct a full investigation into the causes of the spill.

    The spill caused a brief surge in crude prices Thursday. Benchmark U.S. oil was up more modestly — about 1% — on Friday morning as fears of a supply disruption were overshadowed by bigger concerns about an economic downturn in the U.S. and other major countries that would reduce demand for oil.

    The pipeline runs through Chris and Bill Pannbacker’s family farm. Bill Pannbacker, a farmer and stockman, said the company told him that the issues with the pipeline there probably will not be resolved until after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

    The hill where the breach happened was a landmark to locals and used to be a popular destination for hayrides, Pannbacker said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link