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Tag: Pollution

  • A showdown over climate reparations is brewing — and it will determine the success of the COP27 summit

    A showdown over climate reparations is brewing — and it will determine the success of the COP27 summit

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    “Looking at loss and damage as a side issue is not acceptable because this is the reality that millions are facing every single day,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network.

    Fida Hussain | Afp | Getty Images

    The success or failure of the U.N.’s flagship climate conference is likely to depend on getting wealthy countries to deliver on reparations — a highly divisive and emotive issue that is seen as a fundamental question of climate justice.

    The COP27 climate summit gets underway in Egypt from Nov. 6. The annual gathering of the U.N. Climate Change Conference will see more than 30,000 delegates convene in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss collective action on the climate emergency.

    It comes amid growing calls for rich countries to compensate climate-vulnerable nations as it becomes harder for many people to live safely on a warming planet.

    Reparations, sometimes referred to as “loss and damage” payments, are likely to dominate proceedings at COP27, with diplomats from more than 130 countries expected to push for the creation of a dedicated loss and damage finance facility.

    They argue agreement on this issue is imperative as climate impacts become more severe.

    Rich countries, despite accounting for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions, have long opposed the creation of a fund to address loss and damage. Many policymakers fear that accepting liability could trigger a wave of lawsuits by countries on the frontlines of the climate emergency.

    If we lose the agenda fight then we might as well come home and forget about the rest of COP because it will be useless in the face of what is happening in the world on climate change.

    Saleemul Huq

    Director of ICCCAD

    Saleemul Huq, director of the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said he is expecting an “agenda fight” at the start of COP27 — the result of which he said will be critical to the summit’s integrity.

    Finance to address loss and damage is on the provisional agenda for the U.N. climate conference. However, policymakers will need to determine whether to adopt it onto the official agenda at the start of the summit.

    Huq, a pioneer of loss and damage research and advocacy, said it is feared that once again wealthy countries will refuse to endorse financial support for low- and middle-income countries acutely vulnerable to the climate crisis.

    U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Washington would not be “obstructing” talks on loss and damage in Sharm el-Sheikh.

    Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    For instance, at COP26 last year, high-income nations blocked a proposal for a loss and damage financing body, choosing instead to engage in a new three-year dialogue for funding discussions. The so-called “Glasgow Dialogue” has been sharply criticized as a program without a clear plan or an intended outcome.

    Huq said during a webinar hosted by Carbon Brief that the battle to put loss and damage funding on the official agenda “is going to be the big fight coming up in Sharm el-Sheikh.”

    “If we lose the agenda fight then we might as well come home and forget about the rest of COP because it will be useless in the face of what is happening in the world on climate change,” Huq said.

    “It is beyond mitigation and adaptation now,” he added. “Loss and damage [funding] is by far the most important issue that needs to be discussed and if the UNFCCC doesn’t do it then it basically becomes redundant.”

    ‘The litmus test for the success of COP27’

    The push for loss and damage payments differs from climate finance directed toward mitigation and adaptation.

    Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global heating by, for instance, transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Adaptation, meanwhile, means preparing for the adverse effects of the climate crisis by taking action to minimize the damage.

    These are two established pillars of climate action. Loss and damage funding, meanwhile, is recognized by many as the third pillar of international climate policy.

    Anglers fish on the River Sava in heavy smog conditions in Belgrade, Serbia, on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. Smog spewing from ancient coal-fired power plants, outdated automobiles and heating systems running on burning tires and wood is choking the Balkans both literally and economically.

    Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Speaking two weeks ahead of COP27, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Washington would not be “obstructing” talks on loss and damage in Sharm el-Sheikh. His comments mean that, for the first time ever, the U.S. appears willing to discuss reparations at the U.N. climate conference.

    Kerry’s openness to talks on loss and damage funding marked an abrupt change in tone from just one month earlier. Speaking at a New York Times event on Sept. 20, Kerry suggested the U.S. would not be prepared to compensate countries for the loss and damage they’ve suffered as a result of the climate emergency.

    “You tell me the government in the world that has trillions of dollars — because that’s what it costs,” Kerry said. He added that he refused to feel “guilty” for the climate crisis.

    “There’s plenty of time to be arguing, pointing fingers, doing whatever,” Kerry said. “But the money we need right now needs to go to adaptation, it needs to go to building resilience, it needs to go to the technology that is going to save the planet.”

    A man inspects a devastated field in the village of Ramdaspur affected by Cyclone Sitrang in Bhola under Barishal, Division, Bangladesh on October 15, 2022.

    Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

    Advocates of loss and damage funding argue it is required to account for climate impacts — including hurricanes, floods and wildfires or slow-onset impacts such as rising sea levels — that countries cannot defend against because the risks are unavoidable or the countries cannot afford it.

    “This is the litmus test for the success of COP27,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network, which includes more than 1,500 civil society groups.

    “Looking at loss and damage as a side issue is not acceptable because this is the reality that millions are facing every single day,” Singh said during the same webinar event, citing devastating floods in Pakistan and severe droughts in the Horn of Africa.

    Singh said political mobilization over loss and damage funding makes COP27 the most important COP yet. “We now have to make sure it delivers climate justice that we have been demanding by creating a new system of funding so that we can support people who are facing the climate emergency now.”

    What is loss and damage?

    There is no internationally agreed definition for loss and damage, but it is broadly understood to refer to the economic impacts on livelihoods and property, and non-economic loss and damage, such as the loss of life and losses to biodiversity.

    “I think it means different things to different people, but broadly I would see the idea as funding to address the impacts of climate change that can’t be avoided through mitigation and adaptation,” Rachel James, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol, told CNBC via telephone.

    “That ties into why it is so important for climate justice because we don’t have a mechanism or funding to deal with that at the moment — and it’s too late to ignore it.”

    James said that countries from the Global South will be looking for reassurance in Egypt that the $100 billion climate finance pledge by rich nations in 2009 to help low-income nations mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency is going to be met.

    “That’s so crucial because that is a matter of trust,” James said. “If we can’t even get the funding for adaptation and mitigation that has already been promised then that calls into the question the ability to raise additional funds.”

    So far, only one U.N. member state has pledged to offer loss and damage compensation to the most climate-vulnerable areas. Denmark announced in mid-September that it would support low-income nations with over 100 million Danish crowns ($13.3 million).

    Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, which is not a member of the U.N., announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year a symbolic £1 million ($1.15 million) loss and damage investment in an effort to encourage other wealthy countries to follow suit.

    Why does it matter?

    “Loss and damage is happening every single day somewhere in the world — and it will continue to happen every single day from now on,” ICCCAD’s Huq said, citing the damage caused by Hurricane Ian in late September as a recent example.

    “Ian is the biggest storm Florida has had so far. But that’s not going to be true next year, they are going to have a bigger one next year and they are going to one even bigger than that the year after. So, we have now entered the era of impacts from human-induced climate change causing losses and damages.”

    “We need to deal with that — and we are not prepared to do it at all. Even the richest country in the world, the U.S., is not prepared for this,” he added.

    Paddy McCully, senior analyst at non-governmental organization Reclaim Finance, said that although loss and damage funding was highly likely to feature prominently at COP27, nobody is expecting substantial progress.

    “Given the geopolitical situation at the moment and the sharply different positions from the north and south on loss and damage, I think it is going to be hard for countries to achieve a dramatic breakthrough,” McCully told CNBC via telephone.

    “The sign of a successful COP will be that there is at least agreement on a mechanism for providing finance in loss and damage,” he said. “And I think that a moderately successful COP would be that it doesn’t all fall apart in north-south acrimony, and you have at least agreement on further talks on setting up a mechanism.”

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  • UN chief warns planet is heading toward `climate chaos’

    UN chief warns planet is heading toward `climate chaos’

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    UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday that the planet is heading toward irreversible “climate chaos” and urged global leaders at the upcoming climate summit in Egypt to put the world back on track to cut emissions, keep promises on climate financing and help developing countries speed their transition to renewable energy.

    The U.N. chief said the 27th annual Conference of the 198 Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — better known as COP27 — “must be the place to rebuild trust and re-establish the ambition needed to avoid driving our planet over the climate cliff.”

    He said the most important outcome of COP27, which begins Nov. 6 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, is to have “a clear political will to reduce emissions faster.”

    That requires a historical pact between richer developed countries and emerging economies, Guterres said. “And if that pact doesn’t take place, we will be doomed.”

    In the pact, the secretary-general said, wealthier countries must provide financial and technical assistance – along with support from multilateral development banks and technology companies – to help emerging economies speed their renewable energy transition.

    Guterres said that in the last few weeks, reports have painted “a clear and bleak picture” of global-warming greenhouse gas emissions still growing at record levels instead of going down 45% by 2030 as scientists say must happen.

    The landmark Paris agreement adopted in 2015 to address climate change called for global temperatures to rise a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

    Guterres said greenhouse gas emissions are now on course to rise by 10%, and temperatures are on course to rise by as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius under present policies by the end of the century.

    “And that means our planet is on course for reaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible and forever bake in catastrophic temperature rise,” the secretary-general warned.

    He said the 1.5 degree goal “is in intensive care” and “in high danger,” but it’s still possible to meet it. “And my objective in Egypt is to make sure that we gather enough political will to make this possibility really moving forward,” the U.N. chief said.

    “COP27 must be the place to close the ambition gap, the credibility gap and the solidarity gap,” Guterres said. “It must put us back on track to cutting emissions, boosting climate resilience and adaptation, keeping the promise on climate finance and addressing loss and damage from climate change.”

    Rich countries, especially the United States, have emitted far more than their share of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, data shows. Poor nations like Pakistan, where recent floods left a third of the country under water, have been hurt far more than their share of global carbon emissions.

    Loss and damage has been talked about for years, but richer nations have often balked at negotiating details about paying for past climate disasters, like Pakistan’s flooding this summer.

    “Loss and damage have been the always-postponed issue,” Guterres said. “There is no more time to postpone it. We must recognize loss and damage and we must create an institutional framework to deal with it.”

    The secretary-general said Thursday that “getting concrete results on loss and damage is the litmus test of the commitment of the governments to close all of these gaps.”

    “COP27 must lay the foundations for much faster, bolder climate action now and in this crucial decade, when the global climate fight will be won or lost,” Guterres said.

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  • ‘Shut schools, safety of children a matter of concern’: NCPCR writes to Delhi govt as air quality plunges

    ‘Shut schools, safety of children a matter of concern’: NCPCR writes to Delhi govt as air quality plunges

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    The air quality of Delhi and in the parts of the national capital region (NCR) is close to breaching the 500-mark and remained in the severe category throughout Thursday, revealed the Central Pollution Control Board data. Once the air quality index reaches above the 500-mark it will be in the ‘hazardous’ category.

    According to the experience in the previous few years, the two weeks between November 1 and November 15 are usually the most polluted air days in Delhi NCR. This suggests that the pollution levels will likely rise in the next few days.

    Amid concerns from many residents, especially parents of school-going children, several schools have taken several measures to protect children and have suspended outdoor activities along with introducing breathing exercises in classes.

    Anshu Mital, Principal of MRG School, Rohini said they are planning to distribute a manual or written guide to teach students what types of foods, drinks and behaviour they should adopt to ameliorate the situation we are living in.

    Sangeeta Hajela, Principal of DPS Indirapuram, said air pollution has become very rampant, especially during this season. “We have administered many steps to safeguard students. Teachers encourage students to have a balanced diet with nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables to increase the stability and viability of the lungs and liver,” Hajela added.

    “Anti-pollution masks are being distributed to students. Air purifiers have been placed at strategic locations to purify the environment. These steps will surely ensure good attendance and safeguard the health of our students,” she said.

    According to Alka Kapur, Principal of Modern Public school, Shalimar Bagh, the school has restricted outdoor activities. “Given the severity of the surge in hazardous pollution, we have temporarily restricted outdoor activities such as sporting events, cultural events, and assemblies,” Kapur added.

    “Likewise, we will place a greater emphasis on indoor activities such as indoor assemblies, cultural events, and extracurricular activities,” she said.

    The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) had also asked the Delhi government to shut schools till air quality in the capital improves.
    Many schools have already ruled out a shutdown, saying it will disturb the pace of academic learning.

    Priyank Kanoongo, Chairperson of NCPCR, in a tweet, has urged the Delhi government to consider shutting schools in the interest of children.

    He tweeted, “The safety of school children is a matter of concern due to the dangerous level of pollution in Delhi, so far no decision has been taken by the state government of Delhi. Children are in the wrath of toxic air on their way to school, in playgrounds. This negligence is wrong, @NCPCR_ is issuing notice on it.”

    Even the Delhi BJP has demanded the closing of schools for physical classes and conducting online teaching to protect children from air pollution.
    Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta, in a letter to Delhi Lt Governor VK Saxena, raised the demand for the closing of schools.

    In addition to this, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) had also suggested that “state governments may consider additional emergency measures like closure of schools/ colleges/ educational institutions, closure of non-emergency commercial activities and plying of vehicles on odd-even basis etc.”

    However, the Delhi government still hasn’t asked to close schools and colleges but is expected to close schools and colleges as the AQI level rises.

    The CAQM also said that the next comprehensive review is to be held on November 6, 2022, and further appropriate decisions on GRAP measures are to be taken based on the air quality forecast and other meteorological parameters.

    GRAP is a set of anti-air pollution measures followed in Delhi. It classifies the air quality in the Delhi-NCR under four stages: Stage I – ‘Poor’ (AQI 201-300); Stage II – ‘Very Poor’ (AQI 301-400); Stage III – ‘Severe’ (AQI 401-450); and Stage IV – ‘Severe Plus’ (AQI >450).

    The Air Quality Index (AQI) in Delhi on Thursday stood at 408 (‘Severe’) at 7 am and 364 (in the ‘Very Poor’ category) at 8 am, as per ANI. Usually, closure of the school is mandated when the AQI reaches the ‘Severe Plus’ category.

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  • Ian ruins man-made reefs, brings algae bloom to Florida

    Ian ruins man-made reefs, brings algae bloom to Florida

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Hurricane Ian not only ravaged southwest Florida on land but was destructive underwater as well. It destroyed man-made reefs and brought along red tide, the harmful algae blooms that kill fish and birds, according to marine researchers who returned last week from a six-day cruise organized by the Florida Institute of Oceanography.

    Researchers who used the cruise to study marine life in the Gulf of Mexico following the hurricane say it left in its wake red tide and destroyed artificial reefs from as far away as 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the coast of southwest Florida.

    “The one-time vibrant reefs are now underwater disaster sites themselves,” said Calli Johnson, safety dive officer for the research cruise. “Where there used to be a complete ecosystem, there are now only fish that were able to return after swimming away.”

    Before the Category 4 storm made landfall a month ago, southwest Florida had a reputation for being one of the best saltwater fishing destinations in the U.S. Saltwater and freshwater fishing in Florida has an economic impact of around $13.8 billion, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

    “Time will tell how this affects our greater economy, because changes in the fishing industry and tourism will come from changes in our underwater world,” Johnson said.

    The marine researchers on the cruise found high counts of the naturally-occurring algae that causes red tide offshore Punta Gorda, Boca Grande and southwest of Sanibel Island. It will be several weeks before researchers can analyze water samples that were collected to determine the threat to sea life off the Florida coast.

    The red tide outbreak also is threatening manatees off Sarasota and Charlotte counties that rely on seagrass for food, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

    “Florida is at a crossroads, with a record number of manatees dying,” said J.P. Brooker, director of Florida conservation for the Ocean Conservancy. “We must keep this issue at the forefront, so leaders statewide will invest in solutions to improve water quality—protecting natural habitats to save our beloved manatees.”

    Through mid-October, there have been 719 manatee deaths recorded by Florida wildlife officials. There were 982 manatee deaths last year.

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  • Toxic air returns to haunt India’s smog-choked capital

    Toxic air returns to haunt India’s smog-choked capital

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    TOPSHOT-INDIA-ENVIRONMENT-POLLUTION
    A man carries a sack down a road through dense smog in front of India Gate in New Delhi, India, November 1, 2022.

    MONEY SHARMA/AFP/Getty


    New Delhi — Indian authorities were scrambling on Tuesday to address deteriorating air quality as farmers burning crop stubble and calmer winter winds turned the capital city into a smog chamber. On Monday, the Delhi government halted all construction and demolition work in the city as India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data showed air quality deteriorating to “severe” levels.

    At that level, air pollution “affects healthy people and seriously impacts those with existing diseases,” according to the board’s categorization system.

    Delhi’s 24-hour average air quality index (AQI), which measures the concentration of very fine particles know as PM2.5 in the air – particularly harmful pollutants, as they’re easily inhaled and can settle deep in the lungs – crossed 403 on Monday per the CPCB’s data. On Tuesday, the AQI in New Delhi even hit 600 in some places. Anything over 300 is classed as “hazardous” on the international AQI rating system.

    screenshot-2022-11-01-at-10-51-27-am.png
    Data from India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) showed air quality deteriorating to “severe” levels on the morning of November 1, 2022, as smog blanketed the city. 

    CPCB


    Even the air quality monitors installed at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi, which sits in one of the cleanest and greenest patches in the city, registered an AQI of 337 for a while on Tuesday morning.

    Residents of the Indian capital weren’t likely to see much improvement over the next week, with weather conditions expected to remain calm and the seasonal crop stubble burning likely to continue.

    The Delhi government sent fire fighting teams to about a dozen air pollution hot spots on Tuesday to douse the ground with water, hoping to control dust contamination. Already there were more than 500 water sprinklers and 350 anti-smog mist guns in operation around the capital, deployed amid the Hindu Diwali festival last week, which brought the usual blanket of smoke from fireworks.

    The anti-smog guns create an ultra-fine fog of water droplets that adhere to dust particles in the air, ideally leaving them to fall to the ground.

    Air Quality Worsens To Severe In Delhi-NCR, Delhi Govt Bans Construction Work
    Commuters near Anand Vihar pass through a dense blanket of smog in the early hours of the day, October 30, 2022, in New Delhi, India.

    Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times/Getty


    The Delhi government is following a Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to combat air pollution in the city. Under the plan, construction activities are banned at stage three — when the air quality hits the “severe” level.

    Stricter measures can be taken if the average air quality worsens to “Severe Plus,” with an AQI of more than 450, including shutting down schools and offices and limiting the number of vehicles allowed on the city’s roads.

    Weather forecasters warned that the air quality was likely to worsen from Tuesday, as wind speeds will drop further, moving less of the smog out of the region.

    “It is the responsibility of all of us to take initiative at every level to stop pollution,” said Delhi’s environment minister Gopal Rai, announcing a proposal for drivers to switch off their vehicles engines while they wait at traffic lights.

    INDIA-AGRICULTURE-POLLUTION
    A farmer burns straw stubble after harvesting a paddy crop in a field on the outskirts of Amritsar, in India’s Punjab state, October 20, 2022.

    NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty


    The Indian capital is choked with toxic air almost every winter thanks to a confluence of factors, but a significant proportion of the smog comes from the huge farm fires in the neighboring states of Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh. 

    Many farmers burn off the remains of their crops, the stubble left sticking out of the ground, to prepare their fields for the next crop. It’s a much cheaper option than transporting the stubble for proper disposal.


    India blames farmers for dangerous air pollution

    02:02

    The practice has been formally banned by the country’s Supreme Court, and farmers were warned they would face fines for violating the decree, but it has served as a weak deterrent.

    Between September 15 and October 31 this year, Punjab state alone recorded 16,004 farm fires – almost 3,700 more than during the same period last year. Haryana state has recorded 1,921 farm fires this year.

    Satellite imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Rescue Management System showed a dense patch of red dots on Tuesday, which indicate live fires, in Haryana over the past 24 hours. 

    firms-24hrs76-030-47z.jpg
    A satellite image from NASA’s Fire Information for Rescue Management System shows a dense patch of red dots, indicating fires, in India’s Haryana state, in the 24 hours leading up to November 1, 2022.

    NASA FIRMS


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  • PVCs Are Polluting Our Planet. This Startup Has a Solution.

    PVCs Are Polluting Our Planet. This Startup Has a Solution.

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    About 40 million tons of Polyvinyl chloride, most commonly known as PVC, are produced each year. The plastic can be found in everything from tents, toys, pipes, flooring, and billboards.

    But PVC is highly toxic, spewing chlorine into the air and damaging the ozone layer. According to Greenpeace, “PVC is the single most environmentally damaging of all plastics.”

    A startup out of Golden, Colorado, called Renegade Plastics, has invented a new toxic-free, recyclable fabric solution for dangerous PVCs. The polypropylene-based material is free of lead, dioxin, and phthalates and has a 33 to 49% lower carbon footprint than PVC-coated and laminated fabrics. It’s also recyclable.

    National Prize Winner

    Last week, Renegade competed at the Cleantech Open pitch competition in San Jose, CA, and won a $50,000 prize.

    Cleantech Open is the largest clean technology accelerator in the world. More than 90 companies joined their program this year. After six months of mentorship, business training, and networking with investors and partners, eighteen finalists progressed to compete at the national level.

    Renegade Plastics came out on top. “It will set us up for success in building a circular economy for the plastic fabrics industry,” said Tony Ehrbar, CEO of Renegade Plastics.

    The runner-up in the competition was Verde Technologies Incorporated, which develops a thin-film solar panel that is lightweight, flexible, affordable, and easily installable due to its adhesive backing.

    Verde Technologies Incorporated also won the National People’s Choice Award.

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  • Real-time space readings of ‘super emitter’ power plants leaves nowhere to hide for big polluters

    Real-time space readings of ‘super emitter’ power plants leaves nowhere to hide for big polluters

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    Summary: Under the Paris Agreement, countries will need to track greenhouse gas emissions at the level of individual ‘super-emitters’, such as power plants, in close-to real time. Researchers show for the first time that this is already possible with data from existing satellites and instruments like NASA’s OCO-2 and OCO-3 (attached to the International Space Station), both designed to measure emissions at much larger spatial scales. This proof-of-principle indicates that the EU’s ‘CO2M’ pair of satellites, planned for 2025 or 2026, with a joint coverage a hundred times greater than OCO-2 and OCO-3, should be able to deliver on future needs.  

    Newswise — Countries signed up to the 2015 Paris Agreement have committed themselves to keep the rise in average global temperature ‘well below’ 2 °C. Every five years, they are to issue so-called ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs), describing their actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. 

    Countries will thus need to track their carbon emissions, not only at a national level, but also at the scale of individual ‘super-emitters’ such as power plants, megacities, refineries, and giant factories — together responsible for nearly half of humanity’s total output of GHGs.

    In late 2025 or 2026, the EU plans to launch its ‘CO2M’ (Copernicus Anthropogenic CO2 Monitoring Mission) pair of satellites, whose job will be to help with this. 

    Important proof-of-principle for CO2M

    But now, scientists have shown that such tracking-at-the-source is already possible, even with existing satellites, for ‘super-emitters’ like the Bełchatów power plant in Poland. For this proof-of-principle, they used five years of measurements from NASA’s satellite ‘Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2’ (OCO-2; launched in 2014) and the instrument OCO-3, attached since 2019 to the International Space Station (ISS).

    This success is an important achievement, as the OCO missions were designed to measure carbon emissions at much larger spatial scales.

    “Here we show for the first time that it’s already possible to measure changes in CO2 emissions from a large power plant, with observations from existing CO2-tracking satellites,” said Dr Ray Nassar, an atmospheric scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto, and the study’s first author, published in Frontiers in Remote Sensing.

    Largest power plant in Europe 

    The Bełchatów lignite-fired (brown coal) power plant is the largest thermal power station in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. Here, units are sometimes decommissioned and new ones put in service, while more often, units shut down temporarily for maintenance. To be of use, satellites and instruments like OCO-2 and OCO-3 should immediately detect changes in CO2 emissions due to these changes in operation — and here, Nassar and colleagues show for the first time that they can.

    CO2 is emitted by the 300 meter-high stacks at Bełchatów and carried by the wind in the form of an invisible plume, approximately 10-50 km long and 550 meters above Earth. OCO-2, which orbits the Earth at an altitude of 705 km, passes every 16 days close by or directly over Bełchatów. OCO-3 orbits at an altitude of 420 km and passes over or near Bełchatów more frequently. OCO-3 has the added capability to scan back and forth across a region, giving better local coverage or a wider view.

    Not every flyby or overpass is suitable

    Satellites can assess the CO2 ‘enhancement’ — extra CO2 emitted by a source — only in the absence of clouds and when the plume doesn’t pass over large water bodies or mountains. They measure ‘XCO2’, the average CO2 concentration across a column directly below, subtracting the current background value (locally, on average 415 ppm) around the plume. 

    Together, OCO-2 and OCO-3 yielded 10 suitable datasets about the CO2 plume above Bełchatów between 2017 and 2022.

    Excellent agreement between observed and predicted data 

    The researchers compared the measurements from space to estimates for Bełchatów’s emissions, based on its known daily power generation output. The measurements turned out to closely track the daily predictions. This proves that even today, existing satellites can track emissions in close-to-real time for installations like Bełchatów. For example, OCO-2 detected a pronounced but transient dip in emissions from Bełchatów between June and September 2021, due to shutdowns for maintenance.

    All clear for CO2M 

    The results are promising: they indicate that CO2M, with a joint spatial coverage about a hundred times greater than OCO-2 and OCO-3, will be able to deliver on future needs. 

    “The capacity to get the most precise information about CO2 emissions from ‘super-emitters’, such as the Bełchatów power plant, across the globe will boost transparency in carbon accounting and hopefully, it will ultimately help to reduce these emissions,” said Nassar.

    “This future capacity will lead to improved CO2 emission information at the scale of countries, cities or individual facilities, enhancing transparency under the Paris Agreement and supporting efforts to reduce emissions causing climate change.”

    ###    

    For editors / news media:

    Please link to the open access original research article “Tracking CO2 emission reductions from space: A case study at Europe’s largest fossil fuel power plant” in Frontiers in Remote Sensing in your reporting:

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsen.2022.1028240/full

     

     

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  • More kids to ride in ‘clean’ school buses, mostly electric

    More kids to ride in ‘clean’ school buses, mostly electric

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

    The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities.

    Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced the grant awards Wednesday in Seattle. The new, mostly electric school buses will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money and better protect children’s health, they said.

    As many as 25 million children ride yellow buses each school day, and they will have a healthier future with a cleaner fleet, Harris said.

    “We are witnessing around our country and around the world the effects of extreme climate,” she said. “What we’re announcing today is a step forward in our nation’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gases, to invest in our economy … to invest in building the skills of America’s workforce. All with the goal of not only saving our children, but for them, saving our planet.″

    Only about 1% of the nation’s 480,000 school buses were electric as of last year, but the push to abandon traditional diesel buses has gained momentum in recent years. Money for the new purchases is available under the federal Clean School Bus Program, which includes $5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed last year.

    The clean bus program “is accelerating our nation’s transition to electric and low-emission school buses while ensuring a brighter, healthier future for our children,” Regan said.

    The EPA initially made $500 million available for clean buses in May but increased that to $965 million last month, responding to what officials called overwhelming demand for electric buses. An additional $1 billion is set to be awarded in the budget year that began Oct. 1.

    The EPA said it received about 2,000 applications requesting nearly $4 billion for more than 12,000 buses, mostly electric. Some 389 applications worth $913 million were accepted to support purchase of 2,463 buses, 95% of which will be electric, the EPA said. The remaining buses will run on compressed natural gas or propane.

    School districts identified as priority areas serving low-income, rural or tribal students make up 99% of the projects that were selected, the White House said. More applications are under review, and the EPA plans to select more winners to reach the full $965 million in coming weeks.

    Districts set to receive money range from Wrangell, Alaska, to Anniston, Alabama, and Teton County, Wyoming, to Wirt County, West Virginia. Besides the District of Columbia, big cities that won grants for clean school buses include New York, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

    White House adviser Mitch Landrieu said he expects many buses to be delivered by the start of the next school year, with the remainder likely to be in service by the end of 2023. The billion dollars being spent this year — along with an additional $4 billon expected over the next four years — should “supercharge” a domestic manufacturing boom for electric school buses, said Landrieu, a former New Orleans mayor tapped by Biden to oversee spending in the massive infrastructure law.

    “These buses will be made in America — real jobs with real wages,″ Landrieu said in an interview. “We are going to ramp up manufacturing in this country.″

    Environmental and public health groups hailed the announcement, which comes after years of advocacy to replace diesel-powered buses with cleaner alternatives.

    “It doesn’t make sense to send our kids to school on buses that create brain-harming, lung-harming, cancer-causing, climate-harming pollution,″ said Molly Rauch, public health policy director for Moms Clean Air Force, an environmental group. “Our kids, our bus drivers and our communities deserve better.″

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  • GM says its U.S. facilities will be powered by renewables by 2025

    GM says its U.S. facilities will be powered by renewables by 2025

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    General Motors said Wednesday that it has secured all of the renewable energy it needs to power all of its U.S. facilities by 2025, 25 years ahead of earlier projections.

    The Detroit automaker, which initially targeted the year 2050 to achieve its all-renewables goal, said it secured sourcing agreements from 16 renewable energy plants across 10 states.

    In early 2021, GM moved up its all-renewables target date to 2030, then advanced that goal by five years this week.

    The five-year difference will help erase an estimated 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions, equal to the emissions produced by burning 1 billion pounds of coal, GM said.

    “We believe it is critical — to ourselves, to our customers and to the future of the planet — to step up our efforts and reach ambitious targets that move us closer to a more sustainable world,” said Kristen Siemen, the company’s chief sustainability officer. “Securing the renewable energy we need to achieve our goal demonstrates tangible progress in reducing our emissions in all aspects of our business, ultimately moving us closer to our vision of a future with zero emissions.”


    General Motors CEO Mary Barra predicts EV dominance by mid-decade

    04:44

    $35 million investment in carbon-neutral vision

    In recent years, the Detroit automaker has committed to invest $35 billion into electric and autonomous vehicle production with the goal of eliminating tailpipe emissions from its U.S. light-duty autos by 2035. By 2040, the company plans to become carbon neutral, according to a GM press release. 

    “General Motors has been a trailblazer in corporate clean energy procurement for manufacturing facilities for over a decade,” said Miranda Ballentine, CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association. “Today’s announcement of securing the energy needed to achieve their 2025 goal is another example of their leadership.”

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  • California carbon emissions fell 9% in pandemic’s 1st year

    California carbon emissions fell 9% in pandemic’s 1st year

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s planet-warming emissions dropped nearly 9% in 2020 compared to the year before as pandemic restrictions kept people at home, out of their cars and away from the workplace for much of the year.

    The data released Wednesday marks California’s largest single-year emissions drop and tracks with a similar reduction nationwide. An official cautioned that the data can’t be used as a marker for future trends because the pandemic caused unprecedented yet temporary economic changes.

    “This year will be looked at as an outlier,” Steven Cliff, executive officer for the California Air Resources Board, told reporters ahead of the data’s release.

    Indeed, data from the Global Carbon Project pointed to a rebound in global emissions 2021 once pandemic restrictions across the world began to ease.

    Much of the drop came from fewer people driving in the first months of the pandemic, when schools and office buildings shut down and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered people to stay home. Emissions from passenger cars, delivery trucks and other forms of transportation are by far California’s largest source and the most stubborn to crack. But they fell by 16% in 2020, according to the air board.

    Miles driven in light-duty passenger cars dropped a steep 44% in April 2020 compared to the same month the year before, said Nicole Dolney, head of the air board’s emissions inventory branch.

    Elsewhere, industrial emissions fell 9% as demand for oil and gas production and refining fell. Residential and commercial emissions fell 4%, likely because warmer weather meant homes and businesses turned their heaters on less, she said.

    California is at the forefront in many areas of U.S. climate policy, adopting some of the earliest and most aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. By 2045, the state has committed to carbon neutrality, to be achieved by drastically lowering emissions from vehicles, buildings and other sources, and relying on technology to suck the remaining carbon out of the air.

    At Newsom’s direction, the air board recently passed a policy to end the sale of most new gas-powered cars in the state by 2045.

    Altogether, California has some of the lowest per capita emissions among states. In 2020, the state accounted for about 6% of total U.S. emissions, based on comparisons to EPA data. But the state, with roughly 39 million people, is home to 12% of the country’s population.

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  • Saudi oil giant Aramco unveils $1.5B sustainability fund

    Saudi oil giant Aramco unveils $1.5B sustainability fund

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    Saudi oil and gas company Aramco unveiled a $1.5 billion fund on Wednesday for sustainable investments, part of efforts to burnish the state-owned company’s green credentials in an announcement ahead of the U.N. climate conference next month in Egypt.

    Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia that the fund will focus on “breakthrough technologies that are important and startups that will help us to address climate change.”

    Nasser billed the fund as one of the world’s biggest sustainability-focused venture capital funds and said it would invest globally and launch immediately. He spoke at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative meeting, sometimes known as “Davos in the Desert,” a comparison to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of corporate bigwigs and world leaders in the Swiss Alps.

    Aramco is one of the largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters. Environmentalists have long accused oil and gas companies of using climate-friendly pledges to “greenwash” their polluting activities.

    One area Aramco’s fund will focus on is carbon capture and storage, which involves sucking heat-trapping carbon dioxide from factory smokestacks and storing it underground.

    Climate experts, however, warn the technology is risky, unproven and expensive and could be used to delay the phaseout of fossil fuels. Others say all untested solutions should be pursued given how little time there is left to meet U.N. emissions-cutting goals.

    Other investment themes the fund will target include greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, nature-based climate solutions, digital sustainability, hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic fuels.

    Aramco has committed to reaching net zero operational emissions by 2050, but that only accounts for a fraction of the company’s total emissions. It does not include the carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels that the company produces.

    Oil companies have been using “green-sounding ‘net-zero by 2050’ pledges” to justify technological fixes that will allow them to “keep on digging up and selling oil and gas,” said Pascoe Sabido, a researcher specializing in the energy and climate sector at Corporate Europe Observatory, which investigates European Union business lobbying.

    “Aramco’s sustainability fund has nothing to with fighting climate change and everything to do with extending the life of its fossil fuel business,” he said.

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to diversify the economy away from oil revenue, though the government continues to rely heavily on crude exports.

    The U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, will hold negotiations aimed at limiting global temperature increases next month in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • EPA awarding nearly $1 billion to schools for electric buses

    EPA awarding nearly $1 billion to schools for electric buses

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    WASHINGTON — Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

    The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities.

    Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan are set to announce the grant awards Wednesday in Seattle. The new, mostly electric school buses will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money and better protect children’s health, the White House said.

    As many as 25 million children ride familiar yellow school buses each school day and will have a “healthier future” with a cleaner fleet, Regan said. “This is just the beginning of our work to … reduce climate pollution and ensure the clean, breathable air that all our children deserve,” he said.

    Only about 1% of the nation’s 480,000 school buses were electric as of last year, but the push to abandon traditional diesel buses has gained momentum in recent years. Money for the new purchases is available under the federal Clean School Bus Program, which includes $5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed last year.

    The clean bus program “is accelerating our nation’s transition to electric and low-emission school buses while ensuring a brighter, healthier future for our children,” Regan said in a statement.

    The EPA initially made $500 million available for clean buses in May but increased that to $965 million last month, responding to what officials called overwhelming demand for electric buses across the country. An additional $1 billion is set to be awarded in the budget year that began Oct. 1.

    The EPA said it received about 2,000 applications requesting nearly $4 billion for more than 12,000 buses, mostly electric. A total of 389 applications worth $913 million were accepted to support purchase of 2,463 buses, 95% of which will be electric, the EPA said. The remaining buses will run on compressed natural gas or propane.

    School districts identified as priority areas serving low-income, rural or tribal students make up 99% of the projects that were selected, the White House said. More applications are under review, and the EPA plans to select more winners to reach the full $965 million in coming weeks.

    Districts set to receive money range from Wrangell, Alaska, to Anniston, Alabama; and Teton County, Wyoming, to Wirt County, West Virginia. Besides Washington, major cities that won grants for clean school buses include New York, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Seattle.

    Environmental and public health groups hailed the announcement, which comes after years of advocacy to replace diesel-powered buses with cleaner alternatives.

    “It doesn’t make sense to send our kids to school on buses that create brain-harming, lung-harming, cancer-causing, climate-harming pollution,” said Molly Rauch, public health policy director for Moms Clean Air Force, an environmental group. “Our kids, our bus drivers and our communities deserve better.”

    Harris and Regan are expected to announce the awards at an event in Seattle with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Gov. Jay Inslee. Murray is running for reelection against Republican Tiffany Smiley.

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  • Ukraine alleges Russian dirty bomb deception at nuke plant

    Ukraine alleges Russian dirty bomb deception at nuke plant

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said Tuesday that Russian forces were performing secret work at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, activity that could shed light on Russia’s claims that the Ukrainian military is preparing a “provocation” involving a radioactive device.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made an unsubstantiated allegation that Ukraine was preparing to launch a so-called dirty bomb. Shoigu leveled the charge over the weekend in calls to his British, French, Turkish and U.S. counterparts. Britain, France and the United States rejected it out of hand as “transparently false.”

    Ukraine also dismissed Moscow’s claim as an attempt to distract attention from the Kremlin’s own alleged plans to detonate a dirty bomb, which uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror.

    Energoatom, the Ukrainian state enterprise that operates the country’s four nuclear power plants, said Russian forces have carried out secret construction work over the last week at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.

    Russian officers controlling the area won’t give access to Ukrainian staff running the plant or monitors from the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog that would allow them to see what the Russians are doing, Energoatom said Tuesday in a statement.

    Energoatom said it “assumes” the Russians “are preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at” the plant. It said there were 174 containers at the plant’s dry spent fuel storage facility, each of them containing 24 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel.

    “Destruction of these containers as a result of explosion will lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometers (miles) of the adjacent territory,” the company said.

    It called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to assess what was going on.

    The U.N. Security Council held closed-door consultations Tuesday about the dirty-bomb allegations at Russia’s request.

    Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia sent a five-page letter to council members before the meeting claiming that according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Ukraine’s Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv and Vostochniy Mining and Processing Plant “have received direct orders from (President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy’s regime to develop such a dirty bomb” and “the works are at their concluding stage.”

    Nebenzia said the ministry also received word that this work “may be carried out with the support of the Western countries.” And he warned that the authorities in Kyiv and their Western backers “will bear full responsibility for all the consequences” of using a “dirty bomb,” which Russia will regard as “an act of nuclear terrorism.”

    Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky was asked by reporters after the council meeting what evidence Russia has that Zelenskyy gave orders to develop a “dirty bomb.” He replied, “it is intelligence information.”

    “We shared it in our telephone conversation with counterparts who have the necessary level of clearance,” he said. “Those who wanted to understand that the threat is serious, they had all the possibilities to understand that. Those who want to reject it as Russian propaganda, they will do it anyway.”

    Polyansky said the IAEA can send inspectors to investigate allegations of a “dirty bomb.”

    Britain’s deputy U.N. ambassador James Kariuki told reporters after the meeting that “we’ve seen and heard no new evidence” and the U.K., France and the U.S. made clear “this is a transparently false allegation” and “pure Russian misinformation.” He said, “Ukraine has been clear it’s got nothing to hide” and “IAEA inspectors are on the way.”

    In a related matter, Russia asked the Security Council to establish a commission to investigate its claims that the United States and Ukraine are violating the convention prohibiting the use of biological weapons at laboratories in Ukraine.

    Soon after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, its U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, claimed that secret American labs in Ukraine were engaged in biological warfare — a charge denied by the U.S. and Ukraine.

    Russia has called a Security Council meeting Thursday on Ukraine’s biological laboratories and its allegations.

    The Kremlin has insisted that its warning of a purported Ukrainian plan to use a dirty bomb should be taken seriously and criticized Western nations for shrugging it off.

    The dismissal of Moscow’s warning is “unacceptable in view of the seriousness of the danger that we have talked about,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    Speaking during a conference call with reporters, Peskov added: “We again emphasize the grave danger posed by the plans hatched by the Ukrainians.”

    At the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden was asked Tuesday if Russia is preparing to deploy a tactical nuclear weapon after making its claims that Ukraine will use a dirty bomb.

    “I spent a lot of time today talking about that,” Biden told reporters.

    The president was also asked whether the claims about a Ukrainian dirty bomb amounted to a false-flag operation.

    “Let me just say, Russia would be making an incredibly serious mistake if it were to use a tactical nuclear weapon,” Biden said. “I’m not guaranteeing you that it’s a false-flag operation yet … but it would be a serious, serious mistake.”

    Dirty bombs don’t have the devastating destruction of a nuclear explosion but could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Putin scrambles to boost weapons production for Ukraine war

    Putin scrambles to boost weapons production for Ukraine war

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing military production delays and mounting losses, urged his government Tuesday to cut through bureaucracy to crank out enough weapons and supplies to feed the war in Ukraine, where a Western-armed Ukrainian counteroffensive has set back Russia’s forces.

    In other developments, Ukrainian authorities asked citizens not to return home and further tax the country’s battered energy infrastructure, and Western countries mulled how to rebuild Ukraine when the war ends.

    The Russian military’s shortfalls in the eight-month war have been so pronounced that Putin had to create a structure to try to address them. On Tuesday, he chaired a new committee designed to accelerate the production and delivery of weapons and supplies for Russian troops, stressing the need to “gain higher tempo in all areas.”

    Russian news reports have acknowledged that many of those called up under a mobilization of 300,000 reservists Putin ordered haven’t been provided with basic equipment such as medical kits and flak jackets, and had to find their own. Other reports have suggested that Russian troops are increasingly forced to use old and sometimes unreliable equipment and that some of the newly mobilized troops are rushed to the war front with little training. Last week, Putin tried to show all is well by visiting a training site in Russia where he was shown well equipped soldiers.

    To substitute for increasingly scarce Russian-made long-range precision weapons, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia was likely to use a large number of drones to try to penetrate Ukrainian air defenses. Russia’s “artillery ammunition is running low,” the British report said Tuesday.

    The Institute for the Study of War, in Washington, added that “the slower tempo of Russian air, missile, and drone strikes possibly reflects decreasing missile and drone stockpiles and the strikes’ limited effectiveness of accomplishing Russian strategic military goals.”

    The Russian military has still managed to inflict heavy damage and casualties, ruining homes, public buildings and Ukraine’s power grid. The World Bank estimates the damage to Ukraine so far at 350 billion euros ($345 billion).

    Recent Russian attacks have focused largely on Ukraine’s energy facilities, especially electricity generation and transmission. Electricity shortfalls are so severe that Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk on Tuesday asked citizens living abroad not to return this winter to avoid placing further strain on the power supply.

    “We need to survive the winter but, unfortunately, the (electricity) networks will not survive,” Vereshchuk said on Ukrainian television. “We understand that the situation will only get worse, and this winter we need to survive.”

    In Berlin, European Union leaders brought together experts to work on a “new Marshall Plan” for rebuilding Ukraine — a reference to the U.S.-sponsored plan that helped revive Western European economies after World War II.

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the meeting is addressing “how to ensure and how to sustain the financing of the recovery, reconstruction and modernization of Ukraine for years and decades to come.”

    Scholz, who co-hosted the meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, said he’s looking for “nothing less than creating a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century — a generational task that must begin now.”

    On the diplomatic front, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters in Kyiv after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday that his country will continue to stand by Ukraine’s side in this war and support its people as long as it takes — by helping to rebuild the destroyed country and sending more weapons.

    “Reconstruction is not waiting for the war to end. It must begin now,” the German president said, adding that “not only is Germany helping with the reconstruction, but we’re also helping Ukraine to prevent the brutal destruction, to make sure that the population is protected in the best possible way.”

    He promised that Germany would help rebuild destroyed towns immediately and send two more MARS Medium Artillery Missile Systems and four type 2000 self-propelled howitzers.

    On the battlefront, Russian missiles set a gas station on fire late Tuesday in the south-central city of Dnipro, killing at least two people and wounding at least three, Ukrainian news agencies reported.

    In the southern city of Mykolaiv, residents lined up for water and essential supplies Tuesday as Ukrainian forces advanced on the nearby Russian-occupied city of Kherson.

    One of Moscow’s allies on Tuesday urged Russia to step up the pace and scale of Ukraine’s destruction.

    Ramzan Kadyrov, the regional leader of Chechnya who has sent troops to fight in Ukraine, urged Moscow to wipe off the map entire cities in retaliation for Ukrainian shelling of Russia’s territory. Authorities in Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions that border Ukraine have repeatedly reported Ukrainian shelling that has damaged infrastructure and residential buildings.

    “Our response has been too weak,” Kadyrov said on his messaging app channel. “If a shell flies into our region, entire cities must be wiped off the face of the Earth so that they don’t ever think that they can fire in our direction.”

    Kyiv wants to step up the fight, but says it needs more war materiel.

    “We need more weaponry, we need more ammunition to win this war,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters in Berlin. He added: “We need tanks from our partners, from all of our partners; we need heavy armored vehicles, we need additional artillery units, howitzers.”

    ————

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Renters face charging dilemma as U.S. cities move toward EVs

    Renters face charging dilemma as U.S. cities move toward EVs

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    PORTLAND, Ore. — Stephanie Terrell bought a used Nissan Leaf this fall and was excited to join the wave of drivers adopting electric vehicles to save on gas money and reduce her carbon footprint.

    But Terrell quickly encountered a bump in the road on her journey to clean driving: As a renter, she doesn’t have a private garage where she can power up overnight, and the public charging stations near her are often in use, with long wait times. On a recent day, the 23-year-old nearly ran out of power on the freeway because a public charging station she was counting on was busy.

    “It was really scary and I was really worried I wasn’t going to make it, but luckily I made it here. Now I have to wait a couple hours to even use it because I can’t go any further,” she said while waiting at another station where a half-dozen EV drivers circled the parking lot, waiting their turn. “I feel better about it than buying gas, but there are problems I didn’t really anticipate.”

    The great transition to electric vehicles is underway for single-family homeowners who can charge their cars at home, but for millions of renters like Terrell, access to charging remains a significant barrier. People who rent are also more likely to buy used EVs that have a lower range than the latest models, making reliable public charging even more critical for them.

    Now, cities from Portland to Los Angeles to New York City are trying to come up with innovative public charging solutions as drivers string power cords across sidewalks, stand up their own private charging stations on city right-of-ways and line up at public facilities.

    The Biden administration last month approved plans from all 50 states to roll out a network of high-speed chargers along interstate highways coast-to-coast using $5 billion in federal funding over the next five years. But states must wait to apply for an additional $2.5 billion in local grants to fill in charging gaps, including in low- and moderate-income areas of cities and in neighborhoods with limited private parking.

    “We have a really large challenge right now with making it easy for people to charge who live in apartments,” said Jeff Allen, executive director of Forth, a nonprofit that advocates for equity in electric vehicle ownership and charging access.

    “There’s a mental shift that cities have to make to understand that promoting electric cars is also part of their sustainable transportation strategy. Once they make that mental shift, there’s a whole bunch of very tangible things they can — and should — be doing.”

    The quickest place to charge is a fast charger, also known as DC Fast. Those charge a car in 20 to 45 minutes. But slower chargers which take several hours, known as Level 2, still outnumber DC fast chargers by nearly four to one, although their numbers are growing. Charging an electric vehicle on a standard residential outlet, or Level 1 charger, isn’t practical unless you drive little or can leave the car plugged in overnight, as many homeowners can.

    Nationwide, there are about 120,000 public charging ports featuring Level 2 charging or above, and nearly 1.5 million electric vehicles registered in the U.S. — a ratio of just over one charger per 12 cars nationally, according to the latest U.S. Department of Transportation data from December 2021. But those chargers are not spread out evenly: In Arizona, for example, the ratio of electric vehicles to charging ports is 18 to one and in California, which has about 39% of the nation’s EVs, there are 16 zero-emissions vehicles for every charging port.

    A briefing prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy last year by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory forecasts a total of just under 19 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, with a projected need for an extra 9.6 million charging stations to meet that demand.

    In Los Angeles, for example, nearly one-quarter of all new vehicles registered in July were plug-in electric vehicles. The city estimates in the next 20 years, it will have to expand its distribution capacity anywhere from 25% to 50%, with roughly two-thirds of the new power demand coming from electric vehicles, said Yamen Nanne, manager of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s transportation electrification program.

    Amid the boom, dense city neighborhoods are rapidly becoming pressure points in the patchy transition to electrification.

    In Los Angeles, the city has installed over 500 electric vehicle chargers — 450 on street lights and about 50 of them on power poles — to meet the demand and has a goal of adding 200 EV pole chargers per year, Nanne said. The chargers are strategically installed in areas where there are apartment complexes or near amenities, he said.

    The city currently has 18,000 commercial chargers — ones not in private homes — but only about 3,000 are publicly accessible and just 400 of those are DC Fast chargers, Nanne said. Demand is so high that “when we put a charger out there that’s publicly accessible, we don’t even have to advertise. People just see it and start using it,” he said.

    “We’re doing really good in terms of chargers that are going into workplaces but the publicly accessible ones is where there’s a lot of room to make up. Every city is struggling with that.”

    Similar initiatives to install pole-mounted chargers are in place or being considered in cities from New York City to Charlotte, N.C. to Kansas City, Missouri. The utility Seattle City Light is also in the early stages of a pilot project to install chargers in neighborhoods where people can’t charge at home.

    Mark Long, who lives in a floating home on Seattle’s Portage Bay, has leased or owned an EV since 2015 and charges at public stations — and sometimes charges on an outdoor outlet at a nearby office and pays them back for the cost.

    “We have a small loading area but we all just park on the street,” said Long, who hopes to get one of the utility’s chargers installed for his floating community. “I’ve certainly been in a few situations where I’m down to 15, 14, 12 miles and … whatever I had planned, I’m just suddenly focused on getting a charge.”

    Other cities, like Portland, are working to amend building codes for new construction to require electrified parking spaces for new apartment complexes and mixed-use development. A proposal being developed currently would require 50% of parking spaces in most new multi-family dwellings to have an electric conduit that could support future charging stations. In complexes with six spaces or fewer, all parking spaces would need to be pre-wired for EV charging.

    Policies that provide equal access to charging are critical because with tax incentives and the emergence of a robust used-EV market, zero-emissions cars are finally within financial reach for lower-income drivers, said Ingrid Fish, who is in charge of Portland’s transportation decarbonization program.

    “We’re hoping if we do our job right, these vehicles are going to become more and more accessible and affordable for people, especially those that have been pushed out of the central city” by rising rents and don’t have easy access to public transportation, Fish said.

    The initiatives mimic those that have already been deployed in other nations that are much further along in EV adoption.

    Worldwide, by 2030, more than 6 million public chargers will be needed to support EV adoption at a rate that keeps international emissions goals within reach, according to a recent study by the International Council on Clean Transportation. As of this year, the Netherlands and Norway have already installed enough public charging to satisfy 45% and 38% of that demand, respectively, while the U.S. has less than 10% of it in place currently, according to the study, which looked at electrification in 17 nations and government entities that account for more than half of the world’s car sales.

    Some European cities are far ahead of even the most electric-savvy U.S. cities. London, for example, has 4,000 public chargers on street lights. That’s much cheaper — just a third the cost of wiring a charging station into the sidewalk, said Vishant Kothari, manager of the electric mobility team at the World Resources Institute.

    But London and Los Angeles have an advantage over many U.S. cities: Their street lights operate on 240 volts, better for EV charging. Most American city street lights operate on 120 volts, which takes hours to charge a vehicle, said Kothari, who co-authored a study on the potential for pole-mounted charging in U.S. cities.

    That means cities considering pole-mounted charging must also come up with other solutions, from zoning changes to making charging accessible in apartment complex parking lots to policies that encourage workplace fast-charging.

    There also “needs to be a will from the city, the utilities — the policies need to be in place for curbside accessibility,” he said. “So there is quite a bit of complication.”

    Changes can’t come fast enough for renters who already own electric vehicles and are struggling to charge them.

    Rebecca DeWhitt rents a house but isn’t allowed to use the garage. For several years, she and her partner strung a standard extension cord 40 feet (12 meters) from an outlet near the home’s front door, across their lawn, down a grassy knoll and across a public sidewalk to reach their Nissan Leaf on the street.

    They upgraded to a thicker extension cord and began parking in the driveway — also a violation of their rental contract — when their first cord charred under the EV load. They’re still using their home outlet and it takes up to two days to fully charge their new Hyundai Kona. As of now, their best alternative for a full charge is a nearby grocery store which can mean a long wait for one of two fast-charging stations to open up.

    “It’s inconvenient,” she said. “And if we didn’t value having an electric vehicle so much, we wouldn’t put up with the pain of it.”

    ————

    Associated Press Climate Data Reporter Camille Fassett in Denver, AP Video Journalists Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles and Haven Daley in San Francisco and AP Business Editor Courtney Bonnell in London contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter: @gflaccus

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • France enters ‘white gold’ rush as top producer aims to supply Europe with lithium

    France enters ‘white gold’ rush as top producer aims to supply Europe with lithium

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    A Lithium-ion battery photographed at a Volkswagen facility in Germany. The EU is looking to increase the number of electric vehicles on its roads in the coming years.

    Ronny Hartmann | AFP | Getty Images

    Paris-headquartered minerals giant Imerys plans to develop a lithium extraction project that it’s hoped will help meet demand and secure supply for Europe’s emerging electric vehicle market.

    In a statement Monday, Imerys said its Emili Project would be located at a site in the center of France, with the company targeting 34,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide production each year from 2028.

    According to the business, this level of production would be enough to “equip approximately 700,000 electrical vehicles per year.”

    Alongside its use in cell phones, computers, tablets and a host of other gadgets synonymous with modern life, lithium — which some have dubbed “white gold” — is crucial to the batteries that power electric vehicles.

    The project being planned by Imerys is taking shape at a time when major economies like the EU are looking to ramp up the number of electric vehicles on their roads.

    The EU plans to stop the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars and vans from 2035. The U.K., which left the EU on Jan. 31, 2020, is pursuing similar targets.

    With demand for lithium rising, the European Union — of which France is a member — is attempting to shore up its own supplies and reduce dependency on other parts of the world.   

    In a translation of her State of the Union speech last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “lithium and rare earths will soon be more important than oil and gas.”

    As well as addressing security of supply, von der Leyen, who switched between several languages during her speech, also stressed the importance of processing.

    “Today, China controls the global processing industry,” she said. “Almost 90% … of rare earth[s] and 60% of lithium are processed in China.”

    “So we will identify strategic projects all along the supply chain, from extracting to refining, from processing to recycling,” she added. “And we will build up strategic reserves where supply is at risk.”

    Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

    Back in France, Imerys said it was finalizing what it described as a “technical scoping study” in order to “explore various operational options and refine geological and industrial aspects relating to the lithium extraction and processing method.”

    The site selected for the project has, since the end of the 19th century, been used to produce a type of clay called kaolin for use in the ceramics industry.

    The construction capital expenditure of the proposed lithium project is estimated to be around 1 billion euros (roughly $980 million), Imerys added.

    “Upon successful completion, the project would contribute to the French and European Union’s energy transition ambitions,” the company said. “It would also increase Europe’s industrial sovereignty at a time when car and battery manufacturers are heavily dependent on imported lithium, which is a key element in the energy transition.”

    In recent years, a range of factors has created pressure points when it comes to the supply of the materials crucial for EVs, an issue the International Energy Agency highlighted earlier this year in its Global EV Outlook.

    “The rapid increase in EV sales during the pandemic has tested the resilience of battery supply chains, and Russia’s war in Ukraine has further exacerbated the challenge,” the IEA’s report noted, adding that prices of materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel have soared.

    “In May 2022, lithium prices were over seven times higher than at the start of 2021,” it added. “Unprecedented battery demand and a lack of structural investment in new supply capacity are key factors.”

    Read more about energy from CNBC Pro

    In a recent interview with CNBC, the CEO of Mercedes-Benz sketched out the current state of play, as he saw it when it came to the raw materials required for EVs and their batteries.

    “Raw material prices have been quite volatile in the last 12 to 18 months — some have spiked and actually some have come back down again,” Ola Kallenius said.

    “But it is true as we become electric, all-electric and more and more automakers go into the electric space, there is a need to increase mining capacities and refining capacities for lithium, nickel, and some of those raw materials that are needed to produce electric cars.”

    “We have everything that we need now, but we need to look into the mid to long-term and work with the mining industry here to increase capacities.”

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  • COP27’s Coke sponsorship leaves bad taste with green groups

    COP27’s Coke sponsorship leaves bad taste with green groups

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    LONDON — This year’s United Nations climate summit is brought to you by Coke.

    Soft drink giant Coca-Cola Co.’s sponsorship of the flagship U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, sparked an online backlash and highlighted broader concerns about corporate lobbying and influence.

    The COP27 negotiations aimed at limiting global temperature increases are set to kick off next month in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Egyptian organizers cited Coca-Cola’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and key focus on climate when they announced the sponsorship deal in September, which triggered immediate outrage on social media.

    Activists slammed the company for its outsized role contributing to plastic pollution and pointed to the deal as an example of corporate “greenwash” — exaggerating climate credentials to mask polluting behaviors. An online petition calling for Coke to be removed as a sponsor has garnered more than 228,000 signatures, while hundreds of civil society groups signed an open letter demanding polluting companies be banned from bankrolling or being involved in climate talks.

    Coca-Cola said its participation underscores its ambitious plans to cut its emissions and clean up plastic ocean trash.

    Critics say corporate involvement goes against the spirit of the meetings, where tens of thousands of delegates from around the world gather to hammer out global agreements on combating climate change to stop the earth from warming to dangerous levels. This year, the focus is on how to implement promises made at previous conferences, according to the Egyptian presidency.

    At COP meetings, “the corporate presence is huge, of course, and it’s a slick marketing campaign for them,” said Bobby Banerjee, a management professor at City University of London’s Bayes Business School, who has attended three times since 2011.

    Over the years, the meetings have evolved to resemble trade fairs, with big corporations, startups and industry groups setting up stalls and pavilions on the sidelines to lobby and schmooze — underscoring how a growing number of companies want to engage with the event, sensing commercial opportunities as climate change becomes a bigger global priority.

    IBM, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group and Vodafone also have signed up as sponsors or partners but have drawn less flak for their participation than Coca-Cola.

    The United Nations Climate Change press office referred media inquiries to the organizers, saying it was a matter between Egypt and the company. The Egyptian presidency didn’t respond to email requests for comment. U.N. Climate Change’s website says it “seeks to engage in mutually beneficial partnerships with non-Party stakeholders.”

    Georgia Elliott-Smith, a sustainability consultant and environmental activist who set up the online petition, said she’s calling on the U.N. “to stop accepting corporate sponsorship for these events, which simply isn’t necessary, and stop enabling these major polluters to greenwash their brands, piggybacking on these really critical climate talks.”

    Environmental groups slammed the decision to let Coca-Cola be a sponsor, saying it’s one of the world’s biggest plastic producers and top polluters. They say manufacturing plastic with petroleum emits carbon dioxide and many of the single-use bottles are sold in countries with low recycling rates, where they either end up littering oceans or are incinerated, adding more carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

    In a statement, Coca-Cola said it shares “the goal of eliminating waste from the ocean” and appreciates “efforts to raise awareness about this challenge.” Packaging accounts for about a third of Coke’s carbon footprint, and the company said it has “ambitious goals,” including helping collect a bottle or can for every one it sells, regardless of maker, by 2030.

    Coca-Cola said it will partner with other businesses, civil society organizations and governments “to support cooperative action” on plastic waste and noted that it signed joint statements in 2020 and 2022 urging U.N. member states to adopt a global treaty to tackle the problem “through a holistic, circular economy approach.”

    “Our support for COP27 is in line with our science-based target to reduce absolute carbon emissions 25% by 2030, and our ambition for net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” the company said by email.

    Experts say sponsorships overshadow a bigger problem behind the scenes: fossil fuel companies lobbying and influencing the talks in backroom negotiations.

    “The real deals are handled indoors, you know, in closed rooms,” said Banerjee, the management professor. At the first one he attended — COP17 in Durban, South Africa, in 2011 — he tried to get into a session on carbon emissions in the mining industry, a topic he was researching.

    “But guess what? They turned me away, and who walks into the room to discuss, to develop global climate policy? CEOs of Rio Tinto, Shell, BP, followed by the ministers,” Banerjee said, adding that a Greenpeace member behind him was also blocked. “This group of people — mining companies and politicians — are deciding on carbon emissions.”

    Elliott-Smith, the environmental activist, attended last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, as a legal observer to the negotiations. While she’s not naive about corporate-political lobbying, she was “really shocked at the amount of corporates attending the conference, (and) of the open participation between CEOs and climate negotiating delegations in these conversations.”

    In Glasgow, retailers, tech companies and consumer goods brands were signed up as partners, but fossil fuel companies were reportedly banned by the British organizers. Still, more than 500 lobbyists linked to the industry attended, according to researchers from a group of NGOs who combed through the official accreditation list.

    This year, oil and gas companies might feel more welcome because Egypt is expected to spotlight the region and attract a big contingent from Middle Eastern and North African countries, whose economies and government revenue depend on pumping oil and gas.

    Egypt historically sided with developing countries resisting pressure to cut emissions further, which say they shouldn’t have to pay the price for rich countries’ historical carbon dioxide emissions.

    Ahead of the meeting, U.N. human rights experts and international rights groups criticized the Egyptian government’s human rights track record, accusing authorities of covering up a decade of violations, including a clampdown on dissent, mass incarcerations and rollback of personal freedoms, in an attempt to burnish its international image. The country’s foreign minister told The Associated Press earlier this year that there would be space for protests.

    Against this backdrop, “it will be that much easier to censor, prohibit or silence attempts by civil society seeking to hold the process accountable to delivering the needed outcomes,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at watchdog group Corporate Accountability. “It will also make the polluter PR and greenwashing surrounding the talks that much more effective.”

    ———

    Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Plastic recycling a

    Plastic recycling a

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    Washington — Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as “fiction.”

    Titled “Circular Claims Fall Flat Again,” the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West’s plastic waste in 2018.

    Virgin production — of non-recycled plastic, that is — meanwhile is rapidly rising as the petrochemical industry expands, lowering costs.

    “Industry groups and big corporations have been pushing for recycling as a solution,” Greenpeace USA campaigner Lisa Ramsden told AFP.

    “By doing that, they have shirked all responsibility” for ensuring that recycling actually works, she added. She named Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and Nestle as prime offenders.


    Studies find microplastics in human lungs, blood stream; scientists investigating possible health risks

    06:19

    According to Greenpeace USA’s survey, only two types of plastic are widely accepted at the nation’s 375 material recovery facilities.

    The first is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is commonly used in water and soda bottles; and the second is high density polyethylene (HDPE), seen in milk jugs, shampoo bottles and cleaning product containers. These are numbered “1” and “2” according to a standardized system in which there are seven plastic types.

    But being recyclable in theory doesn’t mean products are being recycled in practice.

    The report found that PET and HDPE products had actual reprocessing rates of 20.9 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively — both down slightly from Greenpeace USA’s last survey in 2020.

    Plastic types “3” through “7” — including children’s toys, plastic bags, produce wrappings, yogurt and margarine tubs, coffee cups and to-go food containers — were reprocessed at rates of less than five percent.

    Despite often carrying the recycling symbol on their labels, products that use plastic types “3” through “7” fail to meet the Federal Trade Commission classification of recyclable.

    This is because recycling facilities for these types aren’t available to a “substantial majority” of the population, defined as 60 percent, and because the collected products are not being used in the manufacturing or assembly of new items.


    Vinyl goes green

    01:42

    According to the report, there were five main reasons why plastic recycling is a “failed concept.”

    First, plastic waste is generated in vast quantities and is extremely difficult to collect — as becomes clear during what the report called ineffective “volunteer cleanup stunts” funded by nonprofits such as “Keep America Beautiful.”  

    Second, even if it were all collected, mixed plastic waste cannot be recycled together, and it would be “functionally impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of consumer plastic waste produced each year,” the report said.

    Third, the recycling process itself is environmentally harmful, exposing workers to toxic chemicals and itself generating microplastics.

    Fourth, recycled plastic carries toxicity risks through contamination with other plastic types in collection bins, preventing it from becoming food-grade material again.

    Fifth and finally, the process of recycling is prohibitively expensive.

    “New plastic directly competes with recycled plastic, and it’s far cheaper to produce and of higher quality,” said the report.

    Ramsden called on corporations to support a Global Plastics Treaty, which United Nations members agreed to create in February, and move toward refill and reuse strategies.

    “This isn’t actually a new concept — it’s how the milkman used to be, it’s how Coca-Cola used to get its beverages to people. They would drink their beverage, give the glass bottle back, and it would be sanitized and reused,” she said.

    Some countries are leading the way, including India, which recently banned 19 single-use plastic items. Austria has set reuse targets of 25 percent by 2025 and at least 30 percent by 2030 for beverage packaging, while Portugal has also set the 30 percent by 2030 goal. Chile is moving to phase out single-use cutlery and mandating refillable bottles.

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  • What are green crackers and how to identify them? Check here

    What are green crackers and how to identify them? Check here

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    Due to pollution, many states have banned bursting firecrackers on Diwali. However, some cities have allowed the sale and use of green crackers. The green firecrackers do not contain harmful chemicals and cause less air pollution, as per experts.

    The CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR NEERI) has defined green crackers as firecrackers made with a reduced shell size, without ash, and/or with additives such as dust suppressants to reduce emissions with specific reference to particulate matter. These crackers come without barium compounds through which crackers get the green colour. It is a metal oxide that contributes to air and noise pollution.

    In India, green crackers were launched in 2019 and currently, there are three types of green crackers: SWAS (Safe Water Releaser), STAR (Safe Thermite Cracker), and SAFAL (Safe Minimal Aluminium). To identify green crackers, customers can look for the CSIR NEERI logo on the fireworks packaging.

    According to reports, green crackers cause 30 per cent lesser particulate matter pollution as compared to traditional crackers. On bursting green crackers, water vapour is released which helps in settling down the dust emitted. While regular firecrackers emit around 160 decibels of sound, green crackers produce between 110 and 125 decibels of sound.  

    As per the Air Quality Life Index, in northern India, 510 million residents or nearly 40 per cent of the country’s population are expected to lose 7. 6 years of life expectancy on average if current pollution levels persist. People in Delhi would lose 10 years of their lives if they do not adhere to the new WHO standards, an AQLI analysis stated.

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  • Advanced recycling: Plastic crisis solution or distraction?

    Advanced recycling: Plastic crisis solution or distraction?

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    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The plastics industry says there is a way to help solve the crisis of plastic waste plaguing the planet’s oceans, beaches and lands— recycle it, chemically.

    Chemical recycling typically uses heat or chemical solvents to break down plastics into liquid and gas to produce an oil-like mixture or basic chemicals. Industry leaders say that mixture can be made back into plastic pellets to make new products.

    “What we are trying to do is really create a circular economy for plastics because we think it is the most viable option for keeping plastic out of the environment,” said Joshua Baca, vice president of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade association for American chemical companies.

    ExxonMobil, New Hope Energy, Nexus Circular, Eastman, Encina and other companies are planning to build large plastics recycling plants. Seven smaller facilities across the United States already recycle plastic into new plastic, according to the ACC. A handful of others convert hard-to-recycle used plastics into alternative transportation fuels for aviation, marine and auto uses.

    But environmental groups say advanced recycling is a distraction from real solutions like producing and using less plastic. They suspect the idea of recyclable plastics will enable the steep ramp up in plastic production to continue. And while the amount produced globally grows, recycling rates for plastic waste are abysmally low, especially in the United States.

    Plastic packaging, multi-layered films, bags, polystyrene foam and other hard-to-recycle plastic products are piling up in landfills and in the environment, or going to incinerators.

    Judith Enck, the founder and president of Beyond Plastics, says plastics recycling doesn’t work and never will. Chemical additives and colorants used to give plastic different properties mean that there are thousands of types, she said. That’s why they can’t be mixed together and recycled in the conventional, mechanical way. Nor is there much of a market for recycled plastic, because virgin plastic is cheap, she said.

    So what is more likely to happen than actual recycling, said Enck, a former regional administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is the industry will shift to burning plastics as waste or as fuel.

    Lee Bell, a policy advisor for the International Pollutants Elimination Network, thinks chemical recycling is a public relations exercise by the petrochemical industry. The purpose is to dissuade regulators from capping plastics production. Making plastic could become even more important to the fossil fuel industry as climate change puts pressure on their transportation fuels, Bell said.

    The industry has made roughly 11 billion metric tons of plastic since 1950, with half of that produced since 2006, according to industrial ecologist Roland Geyer. Global plastic production is expected to more than quadruple by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Programme and GRID-Arendal in Norway.

    The international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says the share of plastic waste that is successfully recycled is projected to rise to 17% in 2060 from 9% in 2019 if no additional policies are enacted to restrain plastic demand and enhance recycling, but that wouldn’t begin to keep up with the projected growth in plastic waste. With more ambitious policies, the amount of plastic waste that is recycled could rise to 40% to 60%, according to OECD.

    Two groups working to reduce plastic pollution, the Last Beach Clean Up and Beyond Plastics, estimated that the U.S. rate for recycling plastic waste in 2021 was even lower — 5% to 6%, after China stopped accepting other countries’ waste in 2018.

    The U.S. national recycling strategy says no option, including chemical recycling, should be ruled out. The way to think of these new plants, the industry says, is as manufacturing plants. They should be legally defined that way, and not as waste management. About 20 states have adopted laws in the past five years consistent with that wish. Opponents say it’s a way to skirt the more stringent environmental regulations that apply to waste management facilities.

    EXISTING PLANTS

    The U.S. facilities currently recycling plastic into new plastic are small — the largest is a 60-ton-per-day plant in Akron, Ohio, Alterra Energy, according to the ACC.

    Alterra Energy says it takes in the hard-to-recycle plastics, like flexible pouches, multi-layered films and rigid plastics from automobiles — everything except plastic water bottles since those are recycled mechanically, or plastics marked with a “3” since they contain polyvinyl chloride, or PVC.

    “Our mission is to solve plastic pollution,” said Jeremy DeBenedictis, company president. “That is not just a tag line. We all truly want to solve plastic pollution.”

    The Ohio facility typically takes in 40 tons to 50 tons per day, heating and liquifying the plastic to turn it back into an oil or hydrocarbon liquid, about 10,000 gallons to 12,000 gallons daily. About 75% of what comes into the facility can be liquified like that. Another 15% is turned into a synthetic natural gas to heat the process, while the remainder — paper, metals, dyes, inks and colorants — exit the reactor as a byproduct, or carbon char, DeBenedictis said. The char is disposed of as nonhazardous waste, though in the future some hope to sell it to the asphalt industry.

    The process doesn’t involve oxygen so there’s no combustion or incineration of plastics, DeBenedictis said, and their product is trucked as a synthetic oil to petrochemical companies, essentially the “building blocks on a molecular level for new plastic production.”

    The materials they take in, that haven’t been able to be recycled until now, should not be sent to landfills, dumped in the ocean or incinerated, DeBenedictis said.

    “That next level has to be a new technology, what you call chemical recycling or advanced recycling. That’s the next frontier,” he said.

    “Let’s not kid ourselves here. This is the right time to do it,” added company CEO Fred Schmuck. “There is absolutely no way we can meet our climate goals without addressing plastic waste.”

    DeBenedictis said he’s licensing the technology to try to grow the industry because that’s the “best way to make the quickest impact to the world.” A Finnish oil and gas company, Neste, is currently working to commercialize Alterra’s technology in Europe.

    The main chemical recycling technologies use pyrolysis, gasification or depolymerization. Neil Tangri, the science and policy director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, is skeptical. He says he has been hearing that pyrolysis is going to change everything since the 1990s, but it hasn’t happened. Instead, plastic production keeps climbing.

    GAIA views chemical recycling as a false solution that will facilitate greater production of virgin plastic — a high-energy process with high-carbon emissions that releases hazardous air pollutants, Tangri said. Instead, GAIA wants plastic production to be dramatically scaled back and only recyclable plastics to be produced.

    “Nobody needs more plastic,” Tangri said. “We keep trying to solve these production problems with recycling when really we need to change how much we make and what we make. That’s where the solution lies.”

    EQUITY ISSUES IN SITING PLANTS

    In Rhode Island, state lawmakers considered a bill this year to exempt such facilities from solid waste licensing requirements. It was vigorously opposed by environmental activists and residents near the port of Providence who feared it would lead to a new plant in their neighborhood. State environmental officials sided with them.

    Monica Huertas, executive director of The People’s Port Authority, helped lead the opposition. The neighborhood is already overburdened by industry, she said, so much so that she sometimes has asthma attacks after walking around.

    Dwayne Keys said it’s unfair that he and his neighbors always have to be on guard for proposals like these, unlike residents in some of the state’s wealthy, white neighborhoods. The port area has enough environmental hazards that residents don’t benefit from economically, he added. Keys calls it environmental racism.

    “The assessment is, we’re the path of least resistance,” he said. “Not that there’s no resistance, but the least. We’re a coalition of individuals volunteering our time. We don’t have wealth or access to resources or the legal means, as opposed to our white counterparts in higher income, higher net worth communities.”

    The chemistry council’s Baca said the facilities operate at the highest standards, the industry believes everyone deserves clear air and water, and he would invite any detractors to one of the facilities so they can see that firsthand.

    U.S. plastics producers have said they will recycle or recover all plastic packaging used in the United States by 2040, and have already announced more than $7 billion in investments in both mechanical and chemical recycling.

    “I think we are on the cusp of a sustainability revolution where circularity will be the centerpiece of that,” Baca said. “And innovative technologies like advanced recycling will be what makes this possible.”

    Kate O’Neill wrote the book on waste, called “Waste.” A professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, she has thought a lot about whether chemical recycling should be part of the solution to the plastic crisis. She said she has concluded yes, even though she knows saying so would “piss off the environmentalists.”

    “With some of these big problems,” she said, “we can’t rule anything out.”

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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