James Lawler: [00:00:00] Welcome to Climate News Weekly. We’re here with Dina Cappiello, Dina, it’s great to have you.
Dina Cappiello: Great to be here. I love these, uh, Friday chats with you, James. They’re always fun.
James Lawler: Yes, likewise, likewise. And we’re coming hot off the, uh, the presidential disaster/debate last night, which we won’t really get into because-
Dina Cappiello: well because they really didn’t talk about climate or energy, except for like, and that’s not what the focus is on this morning, to be honest or today.
James Lawler: That’s right.
Dina Cappiello: There’s actually breaking news actually out of the Supreme Court. It’s all over the internet already, which is, NRDC just posted about this, I’m just going to, to read off of NRDC. For the last four decades, federal judges deferred to expert officials at agencies like the EPA and FDA to reasonably interpret and implement laws that were passed by Congress. It was known as the Chevron [00:01:00] Deference, but today the Supreme Court threw that out, sidelining experts and making the U.S. less safe, this is NRDC’s opinion.
Here’s how it used to work. Congress would write a law, one that would say cut pollution, that crosses state lines and harms communities downwind. Um, because it’s so complicated, Congress left some of the details for the EPA’s air pollution team to figure out, right? They’re the experts. Um, the EPA would come up with a cost-efficient plan, but some judges tried to say that their own preferred policy was required instead. In 2014, the Supreme Court stepped in and said the EPA could determine the plan because of Chevron Deference, this deference is now gone, and judges will easily be able to overrule policy experts.
So how this affects what we’re talking about energy and climate is that judges are going to have much more latitude. Judges that we know can be politically motivated in how laws become regulations and control things like air and [00:02:00] water pollution which are relevant to the climate debate.
James Lawler: Right. Critics of the decision said, reading for the New York Times, that it will empower the courts, not Congress to dictate policy, getting rid of Chevron deference says the courts will be the decider of how to interpret these laws instead of experts who are knowledgeable in the field said Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, who sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.
If we jump to another story here, The Economist published a special issue titled The Dawn of the Solar Age and this is a wonderful piece of work. This article just makes it clear how extraordinary the persistent growth has been of the solar industry. And I just want to read a couple of, just a couple of sentences.
There’s a lot of material, a lot of wonderful work went into this at The Economist to produce this issue. This week marks the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun rising to its highest point in the sky will in decades to come shine down on a world where [00:03:00] nobody need go without the blessings of electricity, and where the access to energy invigorates all those, it touches.
So we’re talking about an era that really is a new age of plentiful, inexpensive energy. We’re not just talking about energy to electrify our homes, anything that people use energy for today will cost less, and that includes pretty much everything. From the materials that we use, the fuels that we use, you know, how we produce our water, all of the computing that increasingly we’re going to rely on into the future. I don’t know if Dina, you happened to see this, but it’s a pretty extraordinary.
Dina Cappiello: Well, I just want to make a public service announcement that I do not give James Lawler any money, but RMI is cited in this article. So we were very thrilled with the article. We’ve been talking about this a little bit on this show and obviously a lot at RMI that despite the bad news, that’s all [00:04:00] around us, there is a really positive story here about the exponential change that’s happening and where we’re getting our energy from globally.
And that’s driven by the fact that it’s now cheaper than its counterparts, um, which are fossil fuels. And so not to bring up last night, but Biden tried to take credit for the largest investment in history in clean energy, which is the Inflation Reduction Act and The Infrastructure Law and The Economist, you know, a publication that’s really devoted to coverage of economic forces pointed that out largely in this article when it comes to solar.
James Lawler: Yeah, and I, I do want to just read a couple of other little bits from this. It does a really nice job of kind of framing the growth and making it more clear. So I’m quoting from page 42 of The Economist, Michael Liebreich, a veteran analyst of clean energy technology and economics, put it this way, in 2004, it took the world a whole year [00:05:00] to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity. So one gigawatt is a billion Watts. Six years later, it took one month to do that. In 2016, it took one week to do that. In 2023, last year, there were single days which saw a gigawatt of installation around the world. It’s just unbelievable when we look at this, and it stems from the interplay of three simple factors.
When industries make more of something, they make it more cheaply. When things get cheaper, that people want, demand grows. When demand grows, more is made. And in the case of solar power, demand is created and sustained by subsidies early on, long enough for falling prices to become noteworthy and soon after predictable. That positive feedback then drives exponential growth.
Dina Cappiello: What you just described, James, is like economics 101, right? And that is exactly what is driving this. And not a lot of everyday people, like, really think about [00:06:00] where their electricity comes from, right? And there’s this massive shift that I think is largely invisible to most that’s happening around the world.
I do think, and to connect, you know, obviously another recent news story about . I think that’s something that is really pertinent to talk about the diversification of supply chains so we don’t put all of our eggs in one basket and geopolitics get in the way, which they have historically and halt progress or put a bump in the road temporarily to halt progress.
And I think that that’s really what this whole tariff debate is. Everybody needs to not only benefit from the source of power and getting clean energy, but also from the development of the market, it just can’t be one entity. Like China could dominate the market and use the market for other purposes.
James Lawler: Yeah, good points there. [00:07:00] And I think something that this article makes clear, and we’ve covered before, you know, it’s, it’s just this sort of like threshold of possibility that gets extended and it seems like, you know, in a world where there, there is vastly more solar, which is sort of in the process of coming into being by the second, that is on the horizon I think. I mean, that’s maybe closer than, than we might think.
Dina Cappiello: Yeah. It’s not just solar. I mean, we talk on this show about the exponential growth that’s happening in electric vehicles and also battery production, battery supply. So I think these are dominoes and they’re falling. And I think we would argue at RMI that some of these trends are irreversible.
James Lawler: Totally. Should we jump to another story here? Given your expertise in this area, Dina? Gassy cows and pigs will be hit by a carbon tax. Denmark is set to introduce the world’s first emissions tax on agriculture from 2030, requiring farmers to pay for greenhouse gases released by their cows, sheep and pigs. Your thoughts, Dina? [00:08:00] Is this maybe something that could be introduced like in homes, in the workplace for colleagues?
Dina Cappiello: I feel like I need my 11- and 14-year-old to be here to like chuckle at fart and burp jokes. Listen, this is a huge issue, I’m not downplaying the issue of methane and my first thought reading this as someone who had covered this issue as a reporter in the U.S. is this is never going to happen here in the U. S., right? Where we all know that farmers are heavily subsidized. This would be a huge cost, right? Without offsets, and I think there’s other ways that we can address methane. One, from the oil and gas sector, where we know that there are readily achievable solutions that are cheap.
James Lawler: Mm hmm.
Dina Cappiello: And also from, you know, landfills, right? I can’t wait to see what happens in Denmark. I think it’s amazing that the farmers were part of the coalition to address this, but I’m [00:09:00] assuming that in Denmark, this is a huge methane source, right? But depending on your country’s footprint, you know, oil and gas infrastructure and production and transmission can be greater.
And in places like India, landfills are the greatest source of methane. So like, listen, methane is a huge issue. I just think politically in other parts of the world, including the U.S. putting a carbon tax on, on livestock is politically unviable. And that’s sad, you know, in a place where we have inflation and rising food costs, that is only going to be passed down to the consumer.
James Lawler: So just a few stats on this. It is kind of interesting that a cow produces over six tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. Also interesting that livestock account for more than 30 percent of human caused methane emissions. So it’s a, it’s a big number. 90 percent of the methane that comes from raising livestock comes from the way they digest it and release it as burps through their [00:10:00] mouths. So cows contribute to most of this belched methane.
Dina Cappiello: And I know there’s been some experimentation with diets, right? And giving them more digestible food that reduces the methane. So there are some strategies. My first reaction, again, seeing this was like, kudos, first of all, to containing a really big source.
Second of all, kind of surprised that they got this over the finish line knowing how politically charged it has been historically in the U.S. this has been a favorite of the Republicans saying we’re going to tax cow burps, that has been a talking point against climate action in the U. .
James Lawler: There’s an interesting story in the Financial Times, um, over the last few days about the insurance, and so we’ve covered the insurance industry. This week’s story is a little bit, comes at it from a slightly different angle, which is the insurance that’ll be required to provide requisite coverage for green energy infrastructure. So the insurance broker [00:11:00] Howden and the Boston Consulting Group concluded that at least 10 trillion of new insurance coverage will be required for the energy, road, transport, and building sectors between 2023 and 2030, including for huge infrastructure projects like offshore wind, solar farms, and the insulation of existing housing stock.
Yeah so the insurance industry has all the challenges that we’ve talked about before, assumptions about disasters being wrong, et cetera, but this is a new pressure, which is that. The market for new coverage is rapidly expanding everywhere in many different directions. It’s certainly a major challenge for project developers because of course to get financing to cover a new industrial project, you have to ensure for all of the different risks that might be present from feedstock risk to environmental risk to damage. These are sort of challenges and scopes that the industry is not equipped to really metabolize yet.
Dina Cappiello: Because they don’t know how it’s vulnerable, right? It’s so [00:12:00] new, it’s, they don’t know what to insure it against or for how much.
James Lawler: I was at a conference in Houston last week for sustainable aviation fuel and renewable natural gas and there was a panel on a pathway to produce sustainable aviation fuel that relies on biomass. So you heat up the fuel. Things like woody biomass, and then you capture the CO2 and you put it underground and you take what’s left and synthesize a fuel out of it. No one’s really doing this yet, but there are projects that have sold their future supply.
So they have offtake agreements and are putting together their financing. And, you know, there’s a question about if you’re relying on wood, you know, feedstock, look at the 33 million acres in Canada that burned last year, that you know, no one predicted that scale. Look at the Texas wildfire last year. How do you know that your feedstock will be there given these huge fires?
And, and the answer that the company gave was, well, this, like all the other things is a risk that [00:13:00] you get comfortable with, and you can insure against. I sat there thinking, can you? Like, who wrote that policy and how comfortable are they sitting with that? I don’t know.
Dina Cappiello: This is just one of those examples where this transition that we’re talking about, right, starting with a solar story and this, there’s now this insurance story is just so comprehensive, right? And so multi-dimensional that it was really going to just affect everything.
James Lawler: Yeah.
Dina Cappiello: It’s not just a climate story or an energy story or a technology story. It’s a story about literally how we operate in like all quadrants of our life, right?
James Lawler: Yeah. Uh, the article makes the point that you’re seeing new collaboration between insurers and industry to reduce the risks of new technologies and projects such as adjusting the positions of solar panels when bad weather is forecast after recent episodes of heavy hailstorm damage. So, everyone’s sort of on this learning curve together.
Dina Cappiello: Yeah. So a couple of days ago, this is out of a Bloomberg [00:14:00] news, is a story talking about how lawsuits targeting climate washing, which is a phrase I haven’t heard. We would call it greenwashing, but climate washing works too, are becoming increasingly frequent.
They cite that. 233 new claims were filed worldwide in 2023 against companies accused of misrepresenting their progress on climate change and about 70 percent of the cases that ended between 2016 and 2023 were ruled in the claimant’s favor. The fact that we’re seeing success on holding companies accountable for claims that may not be accurate, I think could really help change the tide to getting more accurate and factual information out in the world about this.
I do think that people are confused about whether or not these promises that companies make end [00:15:00] up becoming reality. So I just think it’s really interesting that people are litigating on this. And it’s also, I think, another sign that the impacts of climate change are now, and there is validity for a case.
And so I think worth putting out, not only how many, but I think more importantly is the sub headline here, which is that they are being successful.
James Lawler: Right, 70 percent win rate for these kinds of lawsuits globally is a pretty strong rate. And if you’re a company, you’re paying attention to that. This week, it seems like we have maybe a couple more positive stories than usual, which is always nice.
Dina Cappiello: Well, you know, accountability in this is like essential, right? Environmental issues have a long track record of citizen lawsuits as an enforcing and an accountability mechanism, and I think it’s a natural evolution that it’s being applied to climate. Bloomberg, uh, had a story, another Bloomberg story this week about how well Mexico’s grid is handling [00:16:00] a increase in Nearshoring.
And that term basically means that Mexico has been building industrial plants, warehouses, for obviously the delivery economy to serve the U.S. market. So it’s about the resiliency of the grid and we know that this is a huge issue for the transition, not just in Mexico, but in the U S and elsewhere where we really need what we call grid enhancing technologies GETs to make a stronger grid. It’s a huge issue and it’s one of those issues, like frankly, that it’s a little not sexy, but it’s absolutely essential, right? It’s like the veins running through your body. These are the veins that connect electricity from the producers to the users and we’re struggling and we’ll continue to struggle.
James Lawler: So, interestingly, Mexico has an incoming new president, so President Claudia Sheinbaum. She’s a climate scientist with a PhD in energy engineering, and she’s pledged 13. 6 billion in energy [00:17:00] investment and sees a role for the private sector as a minority partner in expanding wind and solar power generation and modernizing hydroelectric stations. The outgoing president, Andres Manuel López Obrador, changed regulations to cement state control over the oil, gas, and power sectors and stopped public tenders for new energy projects and set a cap on private sector involvement in power generation to 46 percent, and we’ll see if that changes in the years ahead.
Karachi, Pakistan, sees a surge in deaths as heat wave sears Pakistan. This news ties in to stories that we’ve reported on every week, it seems, but the Earth has posted an 11th consecutive month of record-breaking heat in April, with warmer conditions prevailing in Asian countries, including India, and there are a lot of concerns about a scorching summer in Europe.
And of course, this is mostly the poorest people who are hit the hardest by heat stroke amid prolonged power outages in the city.
Dina Cappiello: Yeah, first and [00:18:00] foremost, it’s tragic and it follows on the news earlier of the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, which by the way, there’s a slew of news stories out actually today, where European scientists have concluded that during that pilgrimage and without human caused climate change temperatures would have been approximately 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. This is happening in parts of the world that don’t have the luxury of, of climate controls, and it’s a tragedy. And now this is evidence that it’s happening now. It’s in the here and now, and I think that sometimes out of tragedy comes great effort. And I’m hoping that coming into COP this year, climate week in September, really gravitates people around the singular mission of, of accelerating this transition.
And then the other issue is right, we, we have solutions to it, passive cooling being one of them, AKA white roofs, but things like air conditioning can actually [00:19:00] exacerbate the problem unless they are efficient because they’re going to increase energy load and still having fossil fuels on the grid could exacerbate the problem. So all of these things, again, are just so interconnected, but you’re totally right, James. This is happening in parts of the world where people are already disenfranchised and struggling, bearing the brunt of a problem that, as we all know, was created by the global north with their emissions driven by the industrial age.
James Lawler: Yeah, indeed. That’s it for this episode of Climate News Weekly. Thanks for joining us, Dina, as always, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. Hope you can join us for our next conversation.
