Keeping up with the volume of news about climate change and the growing effort to decarbonize the global economy can be overwhelming at times, especially since much news and analysis of substance is behind media paywalls. That’s why the PLM Green Global Alliance prepares the monthly Climate Change Chronicles to offer a quick-to-scan digest of news from around the world about the impact of a changing climate on people and the planet. For different news about the use of Product Lifecycle Management in creating a more sustainable low-carbon circular economy, follow PLM Green on LinkedIn.

There was much good news from the past month that should encourage all. Our good news question of the month is: how many European countries announced they will eliminate CO2 emitting power plants by 2035? Bonus question: can you name those countries? Hint, all but one are EU members. Read on to find out and see what you might have missed in your own news feeds during the year-end holiday break.

👍 The UN COP28 conference concluded in Dubai, UAE, with the most important decision and transformational agreement made since the 2015 Paris Accords. Nearly 200 countries finally agreed that the world needed to transition away from fossil fuels and do so in a just, orderly, and equitable manner. This was remarkable as the first time the conference had actually tackled the most pressing and obvious challenge; phasing out the burning of fossil fuels. Of course, it was only an agreement with few details that was not legally binding and with no penalties for not achieving goals. Yet for the moment, we can be thankful and hope for the best.

👍 The second most important agreement at COP28 was that of tripling renewable energy sources by 2030 to help keep global warming from exceeding 2 deg C, now that blowing past 1.5 deg is all but certain. Economists predict that to meet this goal a $4.5 trillion annual investment in energy will be required by 2050, nearly three times current investment levels.

👍 During the green energy transition, hundreds of billions of dollars will also be needed by the poorer nations and developing economies of the world.  During COP27, an agreement was reached to establish a $100B loss and damage fund for the most vulnerable countries, but the pledges are far behind after a year of negotiations. During this year’s COP, The US pledged an additional $3B for a global Green Climate Fund.

👍 Sixty countries agreed to improve the efficiency of air conditioning by 50%, reducing emissions from cooling by 70%.  Researchers say that if current warming trends continue, the installed capacity of cooling equipment will need to triple by 2025, resulting in 10% of all human-generated emissions.

👍 In a surprise announcement, some of the world’s leading oil and gas companies said they would reduce methane emissions by more than 80% by 2030. Methane is responsible for a quarter of all GHG emissions as it is some 80 times more potent than carbon 20 years after released into the atmosphere.

👍 In another first for COP conferences, a Faith Pavilion was available for attendees of all religions from around the world to meet, share ideas, meditate, and pray. More than 300 religious leaders attended the conference, reminding others that all major religions recognize that nature is an act of the divinity and should be protected.

A new research report presented at COP28 warns that we are in danger of breaching a number of global climate tipping points as emissions continue to rise and global warming accelerates. They referenced some 26 tipping points that included threats to destruction of coral reefs, ice sheets, boreal forests, permafrost, mangroves, and tropical rain forests.

👍The use of clean energy surged in 2023 according to the IEA which predicted that over 400 GW of renewable energy would be added. Solar energy production soared as prices fell by nearly half, making it less expensive than any other form of energy. China was responsible for nearly half of all the new renewables added and is said to be on track to installing 1,200GW of wind and solar power by 2030.

👍 In more good news, the world now has a total a 1 terawatt of solar panel capacity, enough to power the entire EU. Over 1 million EVs have been sold this year in the US out of 14 million worldwide. However, despite all this progress, emissions from fossil fuels are still expected to rise by over 1% this year, when they desperately should be starting to fall.

Yet, the growth in solar production combined with falling prices has some policy markers worried. Massive billion-dollar plants employing thousands have been or are being built across much of the American south, due in part to President Biden’s IRA investment funding. There are worries that an oversupply of production may create chaos in solar manufacturing supply chains.

The Rhodium Group issued an update on its prediction of greenhouse gas emissions which are expected to reach new record highs in 2024. The authors believe that the planet is on track to heat up by 5 degrees F by 2100. While decarbonization progress is being made in electricity generation and transportation, the reduction of emissions in manufacturing industries like cement and steel is proving more difficult, as it is from agriculture to feed a growing global population in developing countries.

As the year ends, the European Environmental Agency and Copernicus Climate Change Service report that 2023 is on track to be the warmest year on record by a staggering 2.5 deg F above preindustrial averages.

November was the sixth straight month to set a new monthly record for heat. The month was over half a degree F warmer than the previous warmest November.

Climate researchers are looking more closely at the effects from lowering aerosol pollutants in the atmosphere that come from power plants, ships, industry, and vehicles. It seems that some of these aerosol pollutants, while unhealthy to breathe, actually helped to reflect solar radiation, thus reducing global heating.  Some researchers believe that the rapid reduction in pollutants may have an accelerating effect on global warming.

Communities across the US that depended on the coal industry for jobs are seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for clean energy research and manufacturing. A primary goal is to help workers transition into green jobs as the coal industry continues to shed them.

👍 After consecutive years of record heat and heat-related fatalities more states and cities across the US are moving to tackle extreme heat crises.  Deaths from heat have increased by over 50% in the past 4 years with the elderly over 65 counting for nearly half of the fatalities. Legislation has passed or is being proposed that requires more cooling assistance for residents and workers.

The US public is showing more acceptance of using nuclear power as a carbon-free energy source to help address climate change. Less than 20% of the country’s power currently comes from nuclear. Only two giant nuclear units have been built in the US over the past 30 years, and these are costing over $30B and many years late. Now a dozen companies are working on much smaller repeatable nuclear generators of a common design and installation that the industry hope can be replicated much more cost effectively.

Oil production in the US has hit a record of 13 million barrels a day, eclipsing that from Russia and Saudi Arabia. It has tripled in the last decade, and the US now exports nearly 4 million barrels a day. While this has caused gas prices to fall for consumers, climate activists warn that cheap oil feeds further economic dependence on fossil fuels at a time when we should be decreasing oil production, leaving reserves in the ground.

The US Dept. of Interior auctioned off nearly $400M worth of drilling rights over 2,700 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico. It was to be the last auction of oil and gas leases required by the 2022 climate legislation. The Biden Administration lost a court case that would have scaled back the sale, citing protection of endangered whales.

Natural gas has replaced coal as the leading source of power generation in the US. While the burning of gas produces about half as much carbon as that of coal, new research is concluding that the actual reduction in emissions may be far less due to how natural gas, which is mostly methane, is produced, transported, and stored where methane leaks are systemic.

Climate activists are objecting to the construction of yet more billion-dollar natural gas export shipping terminals along the US gulf coast. With an abundance of natural gas from fracking, the US started exporting LNG in 2016, and has now become the world’s largest exporter of LNG. With the completion of new terminals that had been proposed, US exports would increase by another 50%. Some analysis of full-lifecycle emissions of LNG argue that emissions are actually greater than that from burning coal.

NOAA, in its 18th annual assessment of the Arctic, reported that overall  last year was the sixth warmest year on record for the Arctic where temperatures are warming nearly four times as fast as elsewhere in the world. In many areas temperatures were 5-10 degrees F above their average from just a few decades ago.

This past summer was reported to be the hottest on record for the Arctic. rapidly warming temperatures are having dramatic effects on Arctic weather, glaciers, wildlife, fisheries, sea ice, and native communities.

In the Antarctic, marine scientists are using the DNA from octopus to understand how climate change is threatening ice sheets which could raise sea levels by many feet. Warming waters are threatening the underwater boundaries created by ice sheets, allowing disparate groups of octopus to find each other and mate, intermingling their once unique DNA.

High interest rates to slow inflation are also slowing renewable energy projects across the globe. Rising rates are said to hurt renewables more than fossil fuels because the higher initial cost of a green energy project compared to that of a coal plant.  As a result, and so tragically, stock indices of renewable energy companies have declined while those of fossil fuel companies have risen. Windfarms offshore of the US Atlantic coast are being delayed or renegotiated due to the rising cost of capital, among other reasons.

Financing renewable energy projects in developing economies is considered risky by most financial institutions that, short sighted, still give preference to the certainty of the fossil fuel industry. However, to have any hope of slowing climate change, these countries with growing hungry populations must leapfrog over carbon-intensive sources of energy.

👍 The Asian Development Bank said that their member countries must stop subsidizing fossil fuels and instead invest more in clean energy. Asia accounts for 94% of all new coal-fired plants under construction or being planned.

Christmas tree farms are having to adapt to a changing climate. Farms across the Pacific Northwest are reporting more outbreaks of fungal disease due to changing soil temperatures and moisture levels.  Some researchers have reported that soil heat extremes are rising faster than that of the air.

The sale of EVs in the US will hit 1 million vehicles this year. However, a carbon-free grid with a nationwide network of fast, or even slow, charging stations is falling years behind the demand. Only two state transportation departments of Ohio and New York have opened stations using the federal funding provided by the Biden Administration.

👍 Canada announced that all new cars sold by 2035 will have to be zero-emission.  The transportation sector in Canada is responsible for nearly a quarter of the country’s emissions. Previously the country committed to 20 percent of all new car sales be zero emissions by 2026. However, emissions from burning forests in Canada this year have dwarfed those from other sources

The production of batteries for EVs is raising new environmental controversies in US states, like North Carolina, that have rich deposits of the minerals needed such as lithium. The mining and processing of minerals needed for batteries is raising many of the same concerns that fossil fuels did for decades.

👍 Good news that deforestation in Brazil has fallen to a five-year low according to the country’s National Institute of Space Research. Clear-cutting in the Amazon decreased by nearly a quarter last year. The world lost over 10 million acres of primary forests in 2022 with Brazil accounting for 40% of that total.

A new study published in the journal Nature says that restoring forests could help capture over 225 gigatons of carbon emissions, about a third of the total emissions humans have released. However, saving or expanding forests by planting trees, such as that espoused by the trillion-tree movement, will not be adequate nor fast enough to save the planet from the worst effects of climate change.

To help with the effort to save forests, scientists are using space-based laser technology to measure the biomass of forests around the world. The Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation project from NASA will help to calculate the amount of carbon held by forests and other vegetation, and thus the amount of carbon lost if the forests are cut down.

As both carbon emissions and the effects of climate change continue to rise, carbon capture and storage continues to receive interest as a strategy to lower net emissions. Yet after billions of investments in CC&S technologies, there is little to show for it. Currently, less that 45 million tons are being captured, not even 1/10 of a percent of total human GHG emissions. The IEA’s net zero emissions roadmap projects that by 2050 about half of the remaining fossil fuel emissions could be abated by carbon capture.

Just under half of America’s corn crop is used to produce ethanol as a biofuel for vehicles and soon aircraft. Scientists have long questioned if growing corn is actually that much better in overall lifecycle emissions and pollution than that from fossil fuels. Now others are making the argument that biofuels are not sustainable due to the huge amount of water acquired from rivers and aquifers across the US Midwest that are being depleted.

US spending on renewable energy is reported to have set off a competitive global race in clean energy tech investments. The Biden Administration has touted that it is inciting over $3 trillion dollars of investment over the next decade. That leaves some European countries claiming that the US is unfairly subsidizing renewables to the detriment of its EU trading partners.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have come under fire for not doing enough to address the risks of climate change and the financial needs of developing countries who are most vulnerable. But now the World Bank’s new president, Ajay Banga, is responding by pausing debt payments from countries hurt by climate-fueled natural disasters. And almost half of the bank’s new lending is now targeted at climate-related projects.

Climate activists have taken aim at the US Federal Reserve Bank. Protesters claim the Fed is shamefully behind its global peers by not being more proactive in policy to prepare financial systems for the risks and costs of climate change

Australia has agreed to accept climate refugees from the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu. Australia was one of the few countries to have already accepted climate change as grounds for migrants to seek asylum.

Human-driven climate change is speeding up the spread of one tropical disease across mid-latitude regions of the world. According to the CDC, the number of cases of Valley Fever from the flesh-eating fungus Coccidioides have quadrupled over the past two decades. This fungus thrives in the dry soils of droughts which have become more prevalent with climate change.

👍 Seven European countries announced a pledge that electricity generated by their power plants would product no carbon emissions by 2035. They countries are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Switzerland which are collectively responsible for about half of the EU’s power generation.

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Featured image credit from the  NOAA at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series.