Month: October 2019

New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Home values could fall significantly.

Banks could stop lending to flood-prone communities.

Towns could lose the tax money they need to build sea walls and other protections.

These are a few of the warnings published on Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco regarding the financial risks of climate change. The collection of 18 papers by outside experts amounts to one of the most specific and dire accountings of the dangers posed to businesses and communities in the United States — a threat so significant that the nation’s central bank seems increasingly compelled to address it.

The Federal Reserve has been slow to talk about climate risks compared with central banks in other countries. That could be partly because the topic is more politically polarized in the United States than many other places, so talking about it exposes the Fed — which is meant to be politically independent — to accusations that it is straying into partisan territory. Already, the central bank is a frequent target of President Trump, who has criticized its interest-rate decisions for hindering economic growth.

Yet the Fed has recently started speaking up on global warming and the dangers it poses to the financial system.

In a letter to Senator Brian Schatz this year, Chair Jerome H. Powell wrote that the Fed takes “severe weather events” into account in its role as a financial supervisor. Meanwhile, the San Francisco branch of the Federal Reserve — responsible for banking oversight across a major swath of the American West — has been more blunt, writing this past March that volatility related to climate change has become “increasingly relevant” as a consideration for the central bank.

With Thursday’s actions, the San Francisco Fed has taken a further step. The research, conducted by 38 academics and practitioners from around the country and published with the knowledge of the Fed’s board of governors, presents in precise language a dire picture of the risks of a changing climate, and warns that local governments don’t have the means to deal with them.

Continue reading “Banks See Major Climate Risk: “The New Abnormal is Already Here””

Market Watch:

Axis Capital Holdings Ltd AXS, +0.35%  is the latest insurer to give up profit potential from coal and oil sands, a departure it says supports the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Axis said Wednesday it will not provide new insurance or facultative reinsurance for construction and infrastructure for new thermal coal plants or mines, nor for oil sands extraction and pipeline projects.

Specifically, Axis will not insure companies that generate 30% or more of their revenue from thermal coal mining or hold more than 20% of their reserves in oil sands. Renewals, however will be on a case-by-case basis.

“We believe insurers have an important role to play in mitigating climate risk and transitioning to a low-carbon economy,” said Axis President and CEO Albert Benchimol in a release. For oil sands production, oil is forced from sand at intense temperatures, using water and natural gas to separate out the extremely thick bitumen. Impure and too viscous to flow, it goes through an “upgrading” process before traveling via pipeline to an oil refinery.

“This policy is in line with our broader strategies such as reducing investments in lines that do not align with our long-term approach; investing in growth areas, such as renewable energy insurance, where we are a top five global player; and growing our corporate citizenship program, a core focus of which is creating a positive environmental impact,” Benchimol said.

The Unfriend Coal campaign said in a report last year that global losses tied to coal hit $337 billion in 2017, including insured losses of $144 billion.

Teen Vogue:

You don’t hear climate activists talk much about the insurance industry.

To be fair, it’s not the sexiest dimension of an already-grim subject — far less compelling, on its face, than polar bears floating adrift on ice floes or people being driven from their homes by flooding.

But as I learned over the past few months, changing how the insurance industry operates could be critical to addressing the climate crisis.

It all started back in May, when I attended the Risk Management Society 2019 national conference in Boston. As a senior in the risk management and insurance program at the University of North Texas, I was there, along with hundreds of other students from universities all across the country, to do three things: shake hands, make connections, and learn as much as possible about the insurance industry. One night I was making my rounds at a social event when I met a group of people from the Insure Our Future campaign who weren’t there to find new opportunities. They were there to get information and send a message.

“When are US insurance companies going to get serious about climate change and stop supporting coal and other fossil fuels?”

Continue reading “Insurance Industry Wavering on Fossil Fuels”

Sacramento Bee:

Jennifer Burt knows she lives in a fire-prone community. That’s why she’s done everything she can to fire-proof her home in Meadow Vista, in the bushy, densely wooded Placer County foothills, even installing a sprinkler system on the roof.

Yet a few weeks ago, her insurance carrier — Lloyd’s of London, known for insuring high-risk properties — told her it was declining to renew her homeowners’ policy. Lloyd’s also dropped coverage on two rental properties Burt owns in Graeagle, a heavily forested community northwest of Truckee.

Burt was already paying a lot for insurance — $6,300 a year for the three homes — and now fears that her premiums could double or triple as she shops for replacement coverage. Rising premiums are also hurting her livelihood as a real estate agent: Burt lost a sale in Colfax recently because the buyers couldn’t find insurance for less than $6,900, and their lender backed out of the deal.

Two consecutive disastrous wildfire seasons have created a budding insurance crisis for thousands of Californians who live in and around fire-prone areas. Stung by $24 billion in losses, insurers are imposing rate hikes or dumping customers altogether, leaving homeowners to seek replacement policies that can be two or three times as expensive.

“It’s really sticker shock for people to see their homeowners’ (premium) go from $1,200 to $3,600,” said Richard Harris of Harris Insurance Services, an independent agency in Grass Valley. “They can’t afford these increases, and they leave crying. We can’t help them. You can only have so many people leaving your office crying.”

State officials know they have a problem on their hands, though lax insurance industry reporting requirements make it difficult to determine just how widespread it is. A task force advising Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature reported in June that homeowners’ insurance costs at least 50 percent more in wildfire zones than elsewhere.

Continue reading “Emerging Climate Crisis for Home Insurance”

Just subbed the Houston Chronicle, so as to have a better window on the collapse of the Oil industry.  Turns out it’s a great paper with a wealth of stories.

Houston Chronicle:

President Donald Trump called a potential coastal spine system to protect Houston and its shipping channels a “crazy thing” and scoffed at the price tag on Thursday.

During his campaign rally at the American Airline Center in Dallas, Trump said he gave billions and billions of dollars already to the state for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts.

“You made a fortune on the hurricane,” Trump said of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston and much of Southeast Texas in 2017, killing more than 100 people and destroying or damaging more than 100,000 homes.

But Trump — speaking with a smile as the crowd laughed — said all that money that wasn’t enough for U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and state officials such as Gov. Greg Abbott, whom he said came to him asking for more.

“‘Sir, we want one more small request,’” Trump said recalling the conversations. “‘It’s not much and we appreciate you listening to us. We want to build a dam in the ocean.’”

Trump said he asked them how much it would cost.

“They say it’s only $10 billion, I’m supposed to be happy,” Trump said. “Oh, let’s see can we give Texas an extra $10 billion for some crazy thing that may work or it may not?”

Since Hurricane Ike hit Texas in 2008, state and federal officials have been studying the idea of a 70-mile coastal barrier aimed at protecting Houston’s shipping channel from hurricanes. Often called the Ike Dike, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated it could cost up to $31 billion to build.

The “dam” Mr Trump is talking about is a massive barrier designed to protect the Houston/Galveston area from increasing storm damage as sea level rises.

Video below describes what is at risk as Hurricane surges rise. Specs on the Coastal Barrier start at about 7:08. Continue reading “Trump: “Texas Made a Fortune on Hurricane Harvey””

Below, Beyond Meat is the year’s best performing stock.

Continue reading “Wall Street Bets on Meatless Meat”

Jeff Masters in Scientific American:

Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes are rare. Only 7% of the 243 hurricanes observed since accurate satellite measurements began in 1983 have reached that catastrophic intensity. And it is truly exceptional to see a category 5 hurricane as strong as Hurricane Dorian, which powered ashore on Great Abaco Island in The Bahamas on September 1, 2019, with sustained winds of 185 mph and gusts up to 220 mph. Winds of this strength would make Dorian worthy of a category 6 rating, if it existed. (For those of you unfamiliar with me, know that there is already a Category 6—it’s the name of a blog I co-author with Bob Henson over at Weather Underground, specializing in daily updates of global tropical cyclone activity).

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which is used to rank hurricane winds on a scale of one to five, stops at category 5: sustained 1-minute average wind speeds of at least 157 mph (70 m/s). If we were to add a category 6 to the scale, we must consider that the scale is not quite linear. Winds for a category 2 hurricane span a range of just 15 mph, for example, but winds for a category 4 storm span a range of 27 mph. Regardless of this non-linearity, a one-category increase in intensity on the scale results in approximately four times more wind damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.

If we graph the scale (Figure 1 below), it is apparent that a category 6 should probably start at winds of 180 – 185 mph. A category 7 hurricane would have winds of at least 210 – 215 mph. By this logic, Hurricane Dorian would rate as a category 6 hurricane. Only one hurricane in world history would rank as a category 7: Hurricane Patricia of 2015, which peaked with 215-mph sustained winds off the Pacific coast of Mexico.

Continue reading “New Video: Dorian’s Deadly Stall – How Climate Change is Weaponizing Hurricanes”

Utility Dive:

Ask people how they segment the energy storage industry, and you’ll often hear them divide it between customer-sited or behind-the-meter storage and “utility-“or “grid-scale storage.” But if you then ask them what they mean by “utility-scale,” you can’t get a clear answer. Is it 5 MW, 10 MW, more than 20 MW? Do they mean “front-of-meter”? Or connected to the bulk transmission system?

And whatever “scale” threshold they use rarely relates to the “utility” part of “utility-scale.” What about the size of the storage installation makes it relevant to a utility or the grid?

The reality is that energy storage of all sizes can provide useful services to utilities or grid operators. And it is past time for regulators and market operators to update their policies and programs to realize the full potential grid value from storage that hasn’t been considered “utility-scale” before.

No, we’re not calling for the end of the large-scale storage industry. We’re saying that distributed, smaller-scale storage can provide all the same value to the grid that large-scale storage can and should be explicitly encouraged to compete on playing fields that policymakers have leveled everywhere.

From non-wires solutions in New York (Brooklyn Queens Demand Management or BQDM) and local capacity in Los Angeles (Southern California Edison Local Capacity contracts), to resource adequacy (RA) and Reliability Must Run (RMR) replacement at the California ISO and forward capacity in ISO New England (SunRun’s 20 MW residential aggregation contract), distributed storage developers and operators are proving that the technology works and can be cost competitive. Where markets have been opened to allow distributed energy storage to compete, ratepayers benefit with lower energy costs.

Recognizing this, FERC first issued Order 841, requiring the wholesale markets to open up to individual storage installations as small as 100 KW, regardless of interconnection point (transmission, distribution or behind-the-meter). This immediately nullified anyone’s previous threshold for “grid-scale” storage, making the term itself meaningless. The next step for FERC will be an Order on DER aggregation, which presumably will require the ISO/RTOs to allow distributed storage aggregations to compete head-to-head with larger scale, single-site storage installations and all other wholesale market resources.

Continue reading “What is “Grid Scale” Storage?”

I know I am.

Houston Chronicle:

WASHINGTON – A decade after environmentalists championed natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to get the United States off fossil fuels and combat climate change, cities across the country are beginning to question whether gas’s time has come.

Earlier this summer the California cities of Berkeley and San Jose adopted bans preventing new buildings from hooking into their natural gas distribution systems. And now communities across the country, including Seattle, Minneapolis and Cambridge, Mass., are considering similar bans.

Carolyn Berndt, program director for sustainability at the National League of Cities, which represents 19,000 cities and towns across the country, said worsening storms and flooding across many regions of the country are driving cities to promote the use of electric powered-appliances such as furnaces and stoves over gas models.

“More and more cities are committing to renewable energy goals and targets,” she said. “All-electric buildings are proving to be safer, healthier, and more affordable.”

The rising call for gas bans adds to an already difficult political climate for the natural gas industry, a mainstay of the Texas economy. Gas utilities in the New York City suburbs have put a moratorium on new gas hookups after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to block the construction of pipelines has left them struggling to meet existing demand.

The push back comes amid a surge in U.S. gas production, driving billions of dollars in investment into new pipelines, power plants and other infrastructure designed to be in operation for decades to come. Along with a surge in wind and solar energy, the natural gas boom has pushed many coal power plants out of business, helping to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade.

But as scientists warn that if the world is to avoid the worst consequences of climate change greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced to net-zero by 2050, the future of even lower-carbon natural gas is falling into question.

Pacific Gas and Electric, the Northern California utility, came out in support of Berkley’s gas ban as in line with the state’s climate goals.

“These are huge headwinds for this industry,” said Karen Harbert, president of the American Gas Association, a trade group representing gas utilities. “The industry needs to take all this seriously and figure out what it means. We need to help people understand the costs and trade offs if we go down the route of electrify everything.”

Continue reading “Heating Season has Many Considering Gas Alternatives”

I’m damn proud my 2014 video includes the clip from Dr. Jim White, who reveals that Florida state employees were not allowed to use the words “climate change” – about 4 months before the mainstream press looked into it.

With their heads so far into the Fox News universe, Republicans have been incapable of  acknowledging the rising seas, even as they lap around their ankles.  Agonizingly slowly, that’s changing.

Cowardly, ignorant bastards.

Miami Herald:

For the first time in a decade, a Florida Senate committee scheduled a meeting Monday to discuss the impact of climate change on the peninsula state.

What did senators learn?

“We lost a decade,’’ said Sen. Tom Lee, the Thonotosassa Republican who chairs the Committee on Infrastructure and Security.

He began the 90-minute hearing with three words that have not come from the lips of a Republican state senator in years: “Sea level rise.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of conversation about this. I understand that, and I understand why,’’ he continued, leaving unsaid that the words “climate change” were banned from the lexicon for much of the eight-year tenure of former Gov. Rick Scott, and the state’s response to it was not considered a priority.

But Lee, who served in the Senate for the last six years of Scott’s term, said he believes there has been “a paradigm shift” with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — who followed the lead of local governments in Florida and appointed a “chief resilience officer” to start talking about the effects of global warming on the state.

The new landscape comes with new political realities, Lee said. “There’s a younger generation of conservatives in this state that aren’t as much in denial.”

“The world is changing and so is the leadership in state government,’’ he said. But he stopped short of saying the Republican governor and the GOP leadership of the House and Senate, as well as the development, utility and insurance industries that finance them, will support the “paradigm shift.”

Just as Scott set the tone for little climate talk in Florida, President Donald Trump has derided climate change, avoids uttering the phrase, and has directed his top officials to reject the science. Will the Florida Legislature be willing to talk about climate change, let alone address the issue with legislation?

“It’s a little too early to predict this,’’ Lee said. “I think reality is going to set in and, if it doesn’t, it’s going to hit us right in the face.”

According to a Pew Research Center analysis, nearly 60% of Republicans between the ages of 23 and 38 say that climate change is having an effect on the United States, and 36% believe humans are the cause. Republicans over age 52 agree with those statements at half the rate.

Continue reading ““We Lost a Decade”: Florida Repubs Start to whisper “Climate Change”..”