Germany to up its clean energy target

Rain storms last China’s northeastern rust-belt | Reuters
Heat, drought and wildfires: Torrid spell torments Portugal | AP News
UK heatwave: health alert issued as highs of mid-20Cs forecast | The Guardian
California deepens water cuts amid drought, hitting farms | LA Times
Globe has third-hottest June, with severe heat waves | Axios
Plant-based meat by far the best climate investment, report finds | The Guardian
EU lawmakers back mandatory use of green jet fuel from 2025 | Reuters
German lower house backs 360 GW wind, solar target in 2030 | Montel
UK Maps Out £54 Bil of wiring to Connect Offshore Wind Farmers | Bloomberg
DOT proposal would require states to track carbon emissions | The Washington Post
EPA Describes How It Will Regulate Power Plants After Supreme Court Setback | The NYTimes
Vast Majority of Financial Institutions Have No Policies Restricting Oil and Gas Expansion | DeSmog
Dutch farmers’ protests over emission cuts resume after police fire shots | DW
Dutch government move to buy out farmers | Farmers Journal
Under Bolsonaro policy, invaders seize control of 250,000 hectares of Indigenous lands | Mongabay

Source list- https://heavenly-sceptre-002.notion.site/Climate-Recap-July-11-a3be19d0b59b487595cb043d65f4290d
SCOTUS made a new cheat code to cut (climate) regulations | Beckisphere Climate Corner: https://youtu.be/ssuVaoSp68k 

Transcript

How beneficial is choosing plant-based meats and dairy over animal products? And what does the EU consider to be sustainable aviation fuel? Welcome to The Climate Recap from the Beckisphere Climate Corner. Your go-to place for international and US-based climate news. I’m Becky Hoag, a science writer. Today is Monday, July 11. Let’s jump right into the news you need to start your day.

Let’s start with some extreme weather events. Intense rains and subsequent flooding continued in China’s rust belt this weekend. Red tier alerts were issued at the capital of the Liaoning province Thursday. In agricultural areas in that province and the Jilin province, croplands were flooded.

In Europe, Portugal hit 109ºF (43ºC) this weekend as heat and drought continue to grip the country. A third of the country is at high risk of forest fires, so officials are on high alert.

Meanwhile, the UK is expected to see a heatwave this week and next weekend as temperatures there will hit the mid-90Fs (mid-30Cs). This is warmer than usual for this time of year, which could be because it’s drier than usual. Southern and eastern England is on a level 2 heat alert.

Over in the US, California imposed more water restrictions Thursday, this time along the Sacramento River. It curtails about half of the existing water rights given to farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds. This is actually slightly less than the number of water rights curtailed last year. Many cities like San Francisco, Sacramento, and Redding have been told to stop diverting water as well.

Let’s check out some climate studies. June was the third-hottest June on record despite the cooling effect of La Niña, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The first and second hottest Junes were 2019 and 2020. Many parts of the world still saw records, such as parts of the Southwest US, parts of Spain and France, and parts of China and Japan. It was the second-hottest June in Europe. 

A new report by the Boston Consulting Group, one of the world’s largest consultancy firms, found that every dollar invested in plant-based meat and dairy options results in three times more carbon emissions reductions compared to if that dollar was invested in green cement, seven times compared to that investment in green buildings, and 11 times compared to that investment in zero-emissions cars. Granted, all of those industries should continue to be invested in, but that just shows the environmental benefits of picking plant alternatives over animal-based versions. For example, beef produces six to 30 times more greenhouse gas emissions than tofu. The consulting group also sees cell-based meats and fermented products jumping from representing 2% of the market now to 11% by 2035, which will further help reduce emissions. Meat and dairy production uses 83% of farmlands and causes 60% of agriculture-associated emissions, which is a lot considering it only provides 18% of our calories and 37% of our protein. A separate BCG report released last year expects Europe and North America’s meat consumption to peak in 2025. Overall, many scientists have concluded that reducing your meat and dairy intake might be the single biggest move you can make to reduce your environmental impact. Countries need to increase their funding for reducing agriculture emissions, as decarbonizing the building sector currently receives 4.4 times the amount of funding as agriculture, despite agriculture representing a bigger portion of emissions.

Time for some climate victories. The European Parliament backed a landmark plan to require sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to be added to airplane kerosene to reduce overall emissions. The aviation sector is responsible for 3% of global emissions and honestly, the best way to reduce emissions is to reduce flying. But since that’s a more difficult thing to get people behind, and removing flying completely is not a viable option in our globalized economy, biofuel can be used to reduce flight emissions. If this plan goes through, it will require suppliers to have at least 2% SAF in their fuel by 2025 to get to it representing 85% of the fuel by 2050. This is more ambitious than the EU’s original target of having SAF represent 63% of the fuel by that same time. The biggest part of this news story, in my mind, is that the definition of what constitutes a SAF got changed to include recycled carbon fuels produced from waste-producing gas and biofuels produced from animal fat or distillates, and exclude the use of food crops and palm oil. This is a big deal because crop-based SAFs have been linked to increased deforestation and take agricultural land away from producing food for humans. The plan now needs to be approved by EU nations.

In Germany, the lower parliament approved a new plan to triple the nation’s wind and solar capacity to 360 GW by 2030, compared to the previous goal of 117 GW by that time. This helps offset the fact that the country is bringing coal plants back online to reduce its gas reliance as Russia squeezes its supply. The new clean energy target will mean that 80% of Germany’s energy supply will come from clean energy by 2030. The government will likely release more clean energy subsidies to reach that goal.

Meanwhile, the UK’s National Grid Plc announced it will make its largest investment in upgrading the grid since the 1950s, £54 bil, to connect offshore wind farms. This is so the country can reach its goal of 50 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, which is more than triple what is available now. So that means a ton of new undersea transmission lines, pylons, and sub-stations. The £54 billion investment figure includes £32 billion for the offshore network to connect 23 gigawatts of capacity and £22 billion from the Network Options Assessment to enable the full 50 gigawatts. The company hopes this will help provide more security to potential offshore investors to know that their projects will be properly integrated into the grid. While this investment is expensive on its own, making the move will save consumers £5.5 billion, the equivalent of £2.18 per year on the average customer electricity bill, according to the report.

And over in the US, the Department of Transportation proposed a plan Thursday that would require states and metropolitan areas to track carbon emissions coming from interstate highways and other major roads to increase data and data transparency. The department would then requires state and local officials to create better emissions reduction targets using this data. The goal is to reduce transportation emissions by half compared to 2005 levels by 2030 to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Naturally, Republicans are already calling this move government overreach even though the National Highway System says it’s had the authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for years. Transportation is the US’s largest emitting sector.

Now for some climate fails. The Oil and Gas Policy Tracker’s Reclaim Finance arm revealed that only 13 out of 369 financial institutions around the world have placed restrictions on oil and gas funding. That means 96% of the financial sector is slacking on this. 158 financial groups committed to carbon neutrality in their investment portfolios by 2050 by joining the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero last November during the UN conference, COP26; however, more than ⅔ of these companies have yet to adopt any concrete policies towards this end. According to the 2022 report “Banking on Climate Chaos,” the top 60 financial groups have funneled $4.6 tril into the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016. The four top US companies JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are responsible for a quarter of that money. One of the top 50 financial companies that did stick to its word is the French bank La Banque Postale, which, last year, immediately suspended financial services for all companies with oil and gas expansion plans and committed to dropping the oil and gas sector from its portfolios entirely by 2030.

In Europe, tens of thousands of Dutch farmers have protested the Netherlands proposed nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions reductions for over a week now. The government wants to reduce these emissions by half by 2030, and that could mean that 30% of livestock farmers will have to shut down their businesses. Nitrous oxide is the third most prevalent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane, and ammonia is bad for human health and the environment. Scientists have seen a drop in biodiversity because there are too many of these chemicals in the environment. Both of them can be reduced by switching to more sustainable agriculture practices and reducing livestock ranching in general. The farmers say their perspective hasn’t been taken into account in this decision-making, even though the government has allocated over €25 bil to help farmers switch to sustainable practices, shorten supply chains, forgive loan debt, and, as a last-ditch effort, buy land from farmers for conservation. Protesting farmers blocked the Groningen airport and a highway entry with their tractors. Police fired warning shots and arrested several protestors. The farmers have also disrupted several food distribution centers in the country. The Dutch Prime Minister ruled out negotiating with the protesting farmers after they became violent outside the environmental minister’s personal home. 

And over to South America where Brazil president Bolsonaro has allowed private landowners to seize more than 620,000 acres (250,000 hectares) of Indigenous land from April 2020 to now. Most of that private land ends up being deforested and used for ranching. This is due to a rule Bolsonaro made in 2020 called Normative Instruction 9, which allows large landowners to obtain federal property certificates for areas in any Indigenous territory that has not been officially recognized or demarcated. This has impacted 49 Indigenous nations. Over half the land stolen is in the state of Maranhão where the Porquinhos Indigenous nation has been fighting for recognition since 2009.

Let’s finish today’s episode with an update on what the US Environmental Protection Agency’s thinking after the disappointing West Virginia v EPA Supreme Court verdict. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I recently did a video on the Beckisphere YouTube channel about the case. Now the agency’s getting creative. It thinks that it can still achieve a 40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction by the end of this decade by regulating mercury, acid gases, and particulate matter from power plants. This will indirectly force the plants to reduce emissions or change how they create energy. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes.

And that was your climate news for Monday, July 11. If you like the work I do, please follow this podcast, give it a five-star rating, leave a review, and consider checking out The Beckisphere Climate Corner YouTube channel. 

Remember to talk about the climate crisis every single day and to support your local news organizations. Bye for now!