Apparel retailers gearing up for climate-conscious consumers haven’t found them yet. From Bloomberg March 15, 2023: In its 2021 annual report, Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz AB identified one trend as a “high” risk to its business for the first time, higher-risk even than increased energy costs or availability of raw materials. Should […]
A comprehensive new report from BNEF lays out 2022’s mixed bag of wins and losses on EVs, emissions, energy storage, climate disasters and much more. March 1, 2023 by Jeff St. John, Canary Media In key sectors of the U.S. economy, the transition to clean energy is well underway. It’s just not happening fast […]
Solar power, electric cars, grid-scale batteries, heat pumps—the world is crossing into a mass-adoption moment for green technologies. We’re painfully aware of geophysical climate tipping points and political climate policy tipping points, but there’s hope when we pass clean-energy tipping points. One of the main drivers of clean energy is […]
The federal IRA massively moves the climate needle from despair to hope. The massive $370 billion act opens a new chapter for US climate leadership. The IRA accelerates US decarbonization from about 24% to about 39% reductions by 2030, significantly delivering on President Biden’s target of cutting US greenhouse gas […]
A year after Biden promised to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030, experts say the goal is virtually out of reach now. From Bloomberg, April 27, 2022: President Joe Biden came into office with more aggressive plans to fight what he called the “existential threat” of climate change than […]
The past few years have been ripe with exciting news of new electric vehicle models hitting the market. Recently, the anticipated release of electric light-duty trucks has dominated consumers’ attention. From the more esoteric designs of Tesla’s Cybertruck to Ford’s true-blue F150 Lightning to Rivian’s R1T that invokes the outdoor utility of a Patagonia backpack, it […]
That’s one conclusion of a new study the looks at the emissions by income in all countries. Instead of focusing on the emissions of rich vs poor countries, it illuminates how the rich and ultra-rich are responsible for massive emissions. How the World’s Richest People Are Driving Global Warming It’s […]
Nebraska turned more than a few heads recently when public officials there adopted net-zero carbon goals across the electricity sector. After all, clean energy has often been framed as a partisan issue, and solidly Republican Nebraska looks nothing like most of the other states that have staked out timelines for clean power, […]
Global EV sales doubled in 2021 and 2022 is forecast to grow another 60%. From Bloomberg Hyperdrive 1/25/2022: At the beginning of each year, our analyst team at BloombergNEF pauses to reflect on what happened in our industry and gather our thoughts on what to expect in the coming 12 months. Here […]
Nov. 17, 2021: Today the Eugene City Council moved to support policies to transition the City’s buildings to 100% clean electricity. Specifically, council voted to advance two motions: the first (passed 5-2) to direct staff to begin examining changes to City Code in order to implement first-in-the-state policy mandating that […]
The striking thing is not the bad news, which is not really news for those who have followed the science closely. It’s the report’s insights on possibilities for cautious optimism. From The Guardian August 13, 2021: The first response many of us have to a cancer diagnosis is terror, horror […]
The Trump nightmare is over, and it’s difficult to adjust to good news coming from DC. On Earth Day Biden announced his plan for US climate leadership. It’s a giant and overdue step in the right direction, but there’s still a huge lift ahead of us. Here are excerpts from […]
The election of Democrat Jon Ossoff to the U.S. Senate from Georgia conjures a scenario absent from the U.S. for more than a decade: Senate control by a party motivated to enact climate policy. From Bloomberg Green, Jan.11, 2021: President-elect Joe Biden campaigned aggressively on climate change and racial justice. In mid-July he […]
Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions. In a decade full of big talk and epic battles, they all failed. See Grist, Jan. 11, 2021 With dozens of people killed by wildfires in the western U.S., millions of acres scorched, and choking smoke spreading far into […]
EVs sales up 40% in 2020; Europe more than doubles The IEA reports that new EV sales increased 40% in 2020 over 2019. There are over 10 million EVs on the road. If car sales continue to increase by 40% annually, then essentially all light vehicle sales will be EVs […]
New research shows that most fossil fuel plants will have reached the end of their expected lives by 2035, making it easier to envision Joe Biden’s climate plan. From Inside Climate News, Dec. 10, 2020: What if President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to get to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 […]
Call your legislator and have them try this very simple spreadsheet that illustrates the big actions necessary to cut emissions at the IPCC rate. State legislators, agencies, and NGOs continue to offer incremental policy measures to decarbonize Oregon and Washington. More often than not, the sum total of these increments […]
We have a problem. We don’t know what we want. We complain to anyone about how things are going wrong, but we can’t seem to share a vision of what it is we really want. We haven’t learned to envision the world that could be. On the contrary, we are […]
The UK will cut greenhouse gas emissions further and faster than any other major economy in the next decade, according to a new carbon target set out by the prime minister. There will be a reduction of 68% in annual carbon emissions by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, a significant […]
Joe Biden often calls climate change an “emergency.” Soon he will have to decide whether to officially declare it one when he takes office. Some environmentalists are pushing the president-elect to proclaim global warming a national emergency, giving him more power to take executive actions to tackle it. “The reason […]
Both the San Jose City Council and Oakland City Council on Tuesday approved measures to prohibit natural gas infrastructure in newly constructed buildings, adding to the growing list of more than 40 California cities to pass such ordinances. More about Bay Area cities banning new gas hookups here. See recent […]
A rule of thumb in election years is that presidential candidates woo their political base with bold policies in primaries, then take the partisan edge off to court undecided voters in the fall. From Bloomberg Green newsletter Oct. 26, 2020: So why did Democratic candidate Joe Biden wait until general election season to introduce […]
Wind, solar, batteries, and now green hydrogen are disrupting incumbent grid technologies, especially coal, nuclear, and gas for electricity generation. Such technology disruptions became common since the 1980s, when personal computers started replacing mainframe computers, then cell phones obsoleted wireline phones, then the internet disrupted numerous industries, and smart phones–first […]
As we experience compounding effects of a warmer atmosphere, warmer and more acidic oceans, political sabotage of mitigation efforts, and generally disturbing news reports, we also need to be aware of the positive forces and progress being made on the financial and technology fronts. It’s debilitating to feel powerless, but […]
We already have all the tools we need to fix climate change. We just need to use them. This broad, authoritative, and positive podcast with MacArthur fellow Saul Griffith is about decarbonizing our energy and why that future will be better. It’s 1.5 hours and well worth the time, recorded […]
Can countries transform the global energy system using a mechanism fundamentally at odds with expert views on how systems actually change? At the international climate change negotiations in Madrid, we’re giving it a shot. Trading carbon is widely said to make emissions cuts cheaper. But for whom? And why is it dominating climate […]
The December Strid Energy Report investigates what it takes for the US to decarbonize light vehicles fast enough to meet the physical requirement. Spoiler alert: it’s a giant bargain. Maybe this is how the Carbon Bubble bursts. Download the pdf here.
Another article about how much we subsidize fossil fuels to destroy our ecosystems, this one in a magazine catering to ultra-rich, Forbes: In November, I wrote that fossil fuel subsidies worth $700 billion are stalling the energy transition. Many readers emailed me asking for specific examples of these subsidies. Others pointed out […]
Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.” On the basis of this obligation more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally display data showing that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. Do you […]
The Strid Energy Report for November 2019 addresses EV policy design. Electric vehicles (EVs) are approaching cost tipping points that will trigger rapid adoptions. Mainstream EVs will reach purchase-price parity in the 2020’s. The co-benefits of vehicle decarbonization include huge cost savings on fuels, healthcare, and maintenance; plus benefits to […]