Climate News Weekly: Coal and wind on the rise; advances in home insulation; a climate reality check
[Music]
welcome to climate news weekly I’m here
with our hosts Darren how and Julio
Friedman great to see you hey guys
pleasure as always we’ve had a busy week
a lot of Stories on a lot of topics we
are going to do our best to cover
everything while being intelligent about
each item the first story that we’d like
to touch on is in the EU where Fati BAU
has made some comments about the need
for Europe to adopt a new master plan
when it comes to the industrial sector
to reach that Region’s decarbonization
goals you know in the past he’s been
very sort of optimistic and
complimentary of the the progress of
Europe in its transition away from
Russian gas this time he’s saying that
their Reliance on it was a major
historical mistake and a new plan is
required so I’m I’m curious what what
should we understand about the
transition in the EU based on these
messages right so FTI is a numbers guy
first and foremost
and his message here basically said
Freds don’t let friends buy Russian gas
and part of the reason why he’s saying
that is because this is coming back
people are wondering in particularly
Germany which uses a lot of heavy
industry and uses gas in that industry
they’re finding that green hydrogen is
harder to buy than they thought building
and electrifying things is harder than
they thought like building transmission
uh and so forth so they’re slowly sort
of walking back so in part it was that
in part his message was also saying hey
Europe you guys talk a good game but
you’re getting
lapped China’s beating you us is beating
you how though like in what in what
respect you mean so the inflation
reduction Act and the bipartisan INF
infrastructure law in the United States
have basically made it a candy store and
so people are not investing in Europe
they’re investing in the US in China
they’re just doing industrial policy at
Goliath global scale and Europe can’t
compete
so f specifically said uh you guys say
that you want to have a domestic solar
panel production industry an
electrolyzer industry hey those are good
things but you’re losing on price and
you’re not investing what needs to be
invested in to do that and you’re
backsliding to Russian
gas interesting so what we’ve read
previously though is that they managed
to shift their dependence on Russian gas
you know and countries like Norway and
the United States have supplied a lot of
their Russ their a lot of their gas
needs what’s the reality like what
what’s actually happening to be clear
FTI said this in his story and this is
also true Europe has made immense
progress they’ve made immense progress
on uh Renewables they’ve made immense
progress in switching gas
supplies and they have made poor
progress on other parts of the
recommendations like they’ve made poor
progress on building efficiency as just
one topic but what he’s worried about is
things one the backsliding
part that when you’re desperate that’s
what happens this could arguably also be
tied to the US LG pause if the US
doesn’t increase LG export Supply then
Germany can’t buy it so where are they
going to go okay MH are they going to go
to Iran are they going to go to Russia
like these are these are the questions
he’s asking he’s like you need to double
down on the reduction part as well as
you need to double down on the incentive
stack for domestic production of these
things and part of the reason he said
this message about you’re getting kicked
is that you know correctly Europe is
being financially responsible about this
but they’re not building a competitive
context at the end of the day people are
going to buy cheap Chinese electrolyzers
or less cheap Korean electrolyzers and
they’re not going to buy European
electrolyzers mhm yeah for hydrogen
production for for hydrogen production
and often Europe is good at sort of hand
ringing and proc iing not so good at
actually building and delivering there
are exceptions to that Spain’s done a
great job Denmark’s done a great job but
uh and you are correct they have used us
and natural gas to backfill the Russian
supplies but 40% of Europe’s gas is
still coming from Russia 20% from
pipelines 20% from LG what are you doing
about that guys mhm right so we often
focus on the supply side of the energy
transition equation but there is also
the demand side and there’s an
interesting story that we saw a couple
of days ago this week about a company
called Aeros seal uh this is reported in
Bloomberg Darren can you share what is
Aeros seal and what are they doing to
help change the equation on the demand
side in terms of energy usage yeah well
hulio actually G A gave a great segue to
this he mentioned the challenges with
building efficiency in Europe well this
is a global challenge right in the US
homes lose 20 to 30% of their hot and
cold air because of leaks in their house
so that’s a major driver of energy
demand if you can find a way to stop
that then you can just have a much more
efficient home which is of course the
best uh source of clean energy is the
energy you never consume in the first
place um so what this company Aeros seal
does is it makes it a lot easier to go
fix some of these leaks uh traditionally
what is done is a very manual process an
inspector or a contractor has to come
and figure out where that leak is
happening manually plug it up what this
company has done based off of Technology
out of one of our national Labs is they
will first wrap this like home in a
bubble and then they’ll pressurize the
home from the inside and then they’ll
release this non-toxic aerosol which
because of this pressure difference just
automatically goes and finds the leaks
and then once it is hits those cracks
that cause the leak it coagulates and
then seals it so it’s just a much more
efficient way and lowcost way to fix
some of these issues apparently their
claims are pretty good they can reduce
leakage by you know 80 to 95% which is
pretty awesome wow that is amazing so so
this I’m assuming you can’t have
furniture in your house or anything that
you know where this aerosol might get
stuck between things that you actually
want to use or look at and then
solidifies there or am I understanding
it incorrectly yeah it sounds like most
of this uh if they’re doing the whole
house method it’s going to be on new
build so you’re not going to have people
living there you’re not going to have
the furniture if you use it on existing
homes you can at least uh deal with
leaks in the Ducks so again not the
whole home with existing furniture and
so on yeah Julio so first of all I love
the fact that we keep getting better at
these things Innovation changes the
landscape of what you think is possible
and we really do need to do a whole lot
more of that and the National Labs are
very good at it so when the National
Labs come out of their sort of
priesthood mode and then get into let’s
try something mode good things happen
Julio mentioned that National Labs you
know going and actually getting stuff in
the world aerosal was a great example of
that but I believe they also worked with
RMI to release this uh pretty cool
residential home energy tool essentially
one of the biggest bottlenecks uh is you
know for contractors trying to sell
energy retrofits or Energy Technologies
is what’s your economics and so
different for every home this is not
going to be the most detailed in
granular one because ultimately every
home is super bespoke that’s one of the
challenges of the space But even having
like a
comprehensive um overview which shows
how different things can interact with
each other like hey I’m G to buy an
electric vehicle hey I’m gonna you know
make my HVAC more efficient these are
really important interactions that you
want to at least have a first Passover
and at least use as communication tool
to show homeowners what you might get
out of it so that’s really cool to see
RMI our friends over there working on
this sort of stuff I encourage folks to
uh check it out yeah it’s too bad Dena
is not here this
week right I will say that it’s kind of
surprising that we haven’t had a tool
like this earlier a lot of people who
are like I want to understand the cost
trade-offs for like putting solar on my
house I want to understand what
like what are the climate benefits for
adding insulation there hasn’t been a
tool we’ve been working this for a long
time so I I very much applaud RMI for
stepping into this space and saying hey
here’s something that we hope will help
yeah there are platforms that that
aggregate quotes and all of that but the
space is is fairly intractable if you’re
if you’re a homeowner at least that’s
what I found so any tools are most
welcome so shifting a little bit we had
some news this week as reported in the
financial times based on new data from
Global energy monitor that looks at the
deployment of capacity of a variety of
Energy Technologies that coal Rose 2% in
2023 wind also Rose Julio do you want to
give us a summary of what what these
results were and how we should
understand them right so for long time
participants in the energy transition we
have have to be accustomed to keeping
two things in our mind at the same time
you can build out a bunch of Renewables
and that’s necessary but people have
energy demand increases MH and those are
often met by fossils so you can have
years of record investment in Renewables
and also have years of record fossil
growth and both those things can be true
so we are seeing that this week in very
clear terms coal use grew around the
world and coal capacity meaning the
number of plants grew I think just in
China it was something like 47 gaw of
coal right that’s a lot of coal it was
dwarfed by the amount of wind wind was
something like 130 gws worldwide which
was awesome mhm but we still added 50
gwatt of coal yeah the capacity
factors that is China but it’s
everywhere it’s also in India it’s also
in Bangladesh it’s also in Southeast
Asia it’s also in Germany which is
adding coal capacity they’re not adding
more plants but they increasing ing the
capacity factor of coal plants and in
the US mhm we have also been not adding
coal plants but increasing coal
capacities and when the weather is cold
we turn on the coal plants so coal use
is up q1 right so we have to be serious
about these things and that means moving
from $ 1.7 trillion of clean investment
to $4
trillion worldwide every year for a long
time time but that also means holy cow
we have to be serious about the fact
that people need energy they get it from
all sorts of places and we got to keep
our eyes on the carbon
emissions yeah it’s pretty unfortunate
in China the financial times published
an interesting graphic showing that you
know they’re showing as you said Julio
47.4 gaw of coal capacity came online in
2023 and that there’s you know uh a lot
of additional um plants that are that
are in the Pipeline and they’re
clustered in the most populous regions
in the Eastern provinces in China
so not great for climate not great for
air pollution for you know lots and lots
of people well it’s part of the reason
why I spend so much time talking about
carbon capture looks like we’re going to
need it yeah um so Simon steel who is
the UN climate Chief made a statement
this year that bounced around social
media feeds and headlines the key phrase
that has been quoted is that the world
has 2 years to save itself and in in
making that claim he’s referencing you
know a framework for understanding
climate change and its impacts what’s he
talking about so first and foremost what
he’s talking about is the UN
process so when he’s talking about two
years he’s really talking about cop 29
and cop 30 and he’s talking about the
time that Nations have to update their
nationally determined contributions he’s
really trying to
push the accelerator hard and say we
need to be more ambitious about the
climate commitments that is true and so
when he frames it this way we have two
years to save the world he’s talking
about this framework he’s not talking
about some climate threshold that we’re
going to hit and everybody dies like
that’s not why he’s saying what he’s
saying but he is trying to you know Ring
the Alarm Bell and explain to people why
we should be urgent about greater
ambition in climate I will also say that
he is also responding to news we saw
this week which is that climate is
warming faster than we thought the
impacts are manifesting faster and
bigger than we thought so it’s not
necessarily wrong to be
alarmed mhm yeah so this is the ipcc 6
assessment impacts report so that’s what
he was referring to but there’s a new
study that came out in nature that is
showing things like the March
temperature record is already at 1.6 8°
above pre-industrial MH that we we might
be pushing into a new phase of a sort of
a new equilibrium in a non-stable
dynamic context and we are seeing things
we’ve never seen before in terms of
Arctic Ice loss in terms of ice melt uh
in parts of the world in terms of
Seasons starting earlier in terms of
ocean temperatures like we’re seeing
things we really haven’t seen before
right that look like something bigger
than an incremental change and that
nature paper talks about these things
right irreversible loss of ecosystems
irreversible loss of the Arctic
permafrost Glacier loss all of these
things that we really cannot walk back
from I am personally a little bothered
by these sort of two-year kind of
Frameworks because what happens is in
year three everybody goes oh I guess
we’re screwed and that’s not a very
helpful framing either uh the climate
scientists keep saying over and over
again every tenth of a degree matters we
had been trending to a 4 degree warming
world now we’re on a .7 trajectory if we
meet our obligations we’re on a 1.7
degree trajectory so it’s really about
doing the work now of implementing these
climate
Solutions there’s a headline this week
in Financial Times JP Morgan warning of
the need for a reality check on phasing
out fossil fuels the bank says that
higher interest rates inflation and
global conflict have dented the outlook
for the energy transition what does this
what does this mean exactly like this
this is sort of confusing right so this
is Jamie Diamond has been saying these
sorts of things for a while although I
guess he’s Goldman um but but yeah like
this is not exactly news and it’s funny
because it comes at the same time as a
story that Scotland is pushing pulling
back on some of their more ambitious
climate targets it sort of reflects that
reality check come to that in a minute
but a lot of clean energy deployment
especially uh wind and solar are capital
intensive right so they cost a lot of
money up front but there’s no fuel cost
so over time they are lower cost like
that’s the way these things work however
if interest rates go up if Capital costs
go up then that means those Technologies
deployment gets slowed and there is some
of that going on for real and in fact
we’ve seen renewable costs going up on
that basis this also taxes Supply chains
so when he says you got to be cleare
eyed about
uh get a reality
check we are seeing people are
backfilling their energy needs with
fossil fuels that’s lamentable perhaps
but it’s real that’s what’s actually
happening so I would like to find a way
to talk through this story that is not
inherently sort of
confrontational because a lot of people
are like well JP Morgan’s just saying
that because they invest in a bunch of
fossil fuels it is true they invest a
bunch of fossil fuels it is also true
that their profits are up and fuel use
is growing so what are you going to do
about it like you have to be cleare eyed
about what this means and the fact that
they are saying that it’s harder than
people think and that macroeconomic
headwinds and energy demand growth are
compounding that problem that is true
how how do you square the fact that in
most places um renewable energy is
cheaper you know more efficient easier
to deploy faster to deploy than fossil
fuel infrastructure that question with a
question M with with two questions one
of them is that really true mhm it’s not
in California they had Renewables the
cost go up the cost the rate payer the
highest energy bills in the world maybe
second only to Germany which has done
the same thing right so on a levelized
cost of electricity basis what you’re
saying is true but in fact is it really
but this idea that it’s cheap and
therefore everybody should do it isn’t
playing out in markets for real mhm the
other thing is when he said it’s faster
to deploy it’s easier to deploy in what
world we have 12,000 interconnect
projects in the US that are not being
hooked up it is not easier to deploy it
is not faster to deploy which is why
people are deploying natural gas plants
which are easier and faster to deploy
well I I think aren’t you aren’t you
conflating several things there like
like in terms of interconnect a natural
gas plant also needs an interconnect
right like that like being in the queue
is that different for a natural gas
plant it would be for a solar project
you are correct in that response but
there but that doesn’t make it easier to
deploy Renewables that makes it exactly
as hard to deploy as
Renewables well I mean then it’s the
easy the easy or hard part comes down to
the complexity of the installation and
the cost and the cap human Co the you
know Capital costs of doing so a solar
plan but you can’t get you can’t get the
permit for the wind farms you can’t get
the permit for the big and you know
utility scale solar projects it’s easier
inst on your roof but that doesn’t
deliver the Future IT delivers a portion
of the
future right right so this is what
exactly JP Morgan means when they say
you need a reality check because in
reality costs of Renewables are going up
not down and cost the in reality they
are not being deployed at speed in scale
and this idea that it’s easy and
frictionless and cheap is
incorrect right so you can have two
different responses to that one of them
can be let’s work harder to change that
story let’s go back to the point where
Renewables were getting cheaper let’s
make it easier to deploy them that is a
very good thing to
Doh right but but a reality check is not
saying you’re wrong a reality check is
not saying your position is invalid a
reality check is not saying we shouldn’t
decarbonize faster it is literally a
reality check where are we actually what
are we actually doing and as part of
that reality check the last story I
wanted to talk about was Scotland yeah
Scotland set very ambitious targets 75%
reduction by
2030 that’s the right kind of Target to
set that matches Simon Steel’s wish like
that is exactly the sort of thing you
should be doing and they just said oops
we can’t do it that’s a reality check
they are already bringing onshore huge
amounts of offshore wind from the North
Sea the best place in the world to do it
and the UK deploys these things faster
than almost any other country yeah and
there they’re not going to hit their
Target in part because buildings are not
insulated in part because they’re still
using coal and gas for heavy industry
right in part because it’s taking longer
and more expensive than they thought
yeah in part because energy demand is
growing for things like server farms and
Industrial heat pumps and green hydrogen
like so it’s harder than they thought
yeah and I think it’s I I think it’s
important also when digesting this news
if you if you look at kind of the
reasons why and all the this is an
incredibly comp licated transition right
fossil fuels permeate every single
aspect of our of our economy and Supply
chains and and so the idea that we can
set targets within a certain number of
years March toward them in a linear
fashion and you know tick off the you
know reductions in carbon intensity year
after year after year and get there when
we say we will is reality is never that
simple and you know we’re we’re facing
that I think there’s there’s a danger
right with some of with the stories and
reading them and saying oh I guess the
whole idea doesn’t work right which is I
I think one a message that I want to
make sure we don’t lose here like that
that is not what these stories are about
yeah true we talked about this exactly
in the past about uh EV growth right
people are saying oh man EES are
actually not going to work look at how
bad the you know results are for Eevee
makers and it’s like no like consumers
have been adopting them at record Paces
just not as fast as we thought it was
and that’s not to say that they’re right
or wrong it’s that there are legitimate
challenges to be solved on the charging
front the cost front so on
right right and it’s also if Scotland
ends up hitting a 70% reduction instead
of a 75% reduction that’s also a win
right so even if they hit a 60%
reduction they’re over 50% so like we
shouldn’t lose that it’s not like
they’re oh it’s business as usual let’s
forget it correct and uh the UK has done
more than almost any Nation to achieve
in real terms their decarbonization
goals they just have
and and that is to be celebrated but
going from 50% reduction to 75%
reduction is really hard cuz it means
you’ve done all the cheap and easy stuff
and that takes longer and it’s more
expensive you can’t lose that either the
fact that the first 50% may have been
relatively straightforward if you happen
to live in the North Sea great like that
like that’s good and we should
celebrated and Amy Harter had a story in
Cipher this week saying hey let’s
celebrate our wins we’re doing pretty
good and that’s a good thing to do too
mhm but as we saw today it’s harder than
we thought
mhm we got through a lot today thank you
guys it’s great to see you and we’ll
we’ll be tracking these stories in the
weeks to come until next time we missed
you Dina
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This week, Julio Friedmann and Darren Hau join James Lawler to talk about the latest climate news. The news of the week covers Executive Director of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol’s latest comments on Europe’s energy plans, a new innovation in home insulation with Aeroseal that could help reduce energy use (born from a U.S. National Lab), RMI’s new home energy tool, the increase of coal capacity, but also of wind in 2023, JP Morgan’s reality check on fossil fuel phase-out, and Scotland’s realization that its 2030 climate goals were ‘out of reach.’
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Click here for the complete list of sources and a transcript: https://climatenow.com/podcast/coal-and-wind-on-the-rise-advances-in-home-insulation-a-climate-reality-check-and-more/