Month: January 2021

Biggest Investment House: Business Needs to Act on Climate or Governments Will

I have a rule of thumb.
Don’t argue with thermometers. Don’t argue with rising oceans.
And don’t argue with investment funds that have 7 trillion dollars under management.

A year ago, the world’s biggest investment fund, Black Rock, put out a letter indicating that climate and sustainability would be their guiding principles going forward.

Then Covid happened.
Under the severe stress test, renewable energy bloomed, and fossil fuels folded.
Now, Blackrock is back and doubling down.

New York Times:

A year ago this month, the BlackRock chief Laurence D. Fink wrote a letter to the world’s C.E.O.s with an urgent message: Climate change will be “a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects.” Underscoring his point, he added, “We are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

Coming from arguably the world’s most powerful investor — BlackRock controls nearly $9 trillion, making it far and away the largest such firm — this letter landed with seismic force in boardrooms across the globe. In the weeks that followed, Microsoft announced a plan to be carbon-negative by 2030, Salesforce pledged to conserve or restore 100 million trees over the next decade and even Delta Air Lines announced a $1 billion effort to be carbon-neutral in 10 years.

Still, skeptics argued that Mr. Fink’s support for the reform-minded E.S.G. movement — which stands for environmental, social and governance — was a marketing gimmick that companies would back in an economic boom but shun in a crisis. If corporate America had to pick between cutting sustainability programs or dividends for investors, the thinking went, sustainability programs would be the first to go.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic arrived and something unusual happened: E.S.G. didn’t collapse, it accelerated. In particular, the emphasis on climate change became an even greater focus within companies and among investors, who piled into the stocks of sustainable companies en masse — driving up the values of companies like Tesla and doubling the money invested in sustainability-oriented mutual funds. This gave fuel to Mr. Fink’s thesis: Green investing is profitable.

That’s why Mr. Fink’s latest annual letter to corporate leaders — which he is sending out Tuesday morning, and which was obtained by The New York Times — will once again grab attention. And this year, with an even more ambitious blueprint for businesses that BlackRock invests in, it may have an even bigger impact.

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Greta Thunberg: Enough Blah, Blah, Blah

Address to the World Economic Forum today.

Watch to the end.

Look Out Below. Solar Prices to Fall Further..

So, I was so freaked out and appalled by the post-election machinations of Republicans, lost in doom scrolling like so many others, as well as screaming through the phone at my election-sabotaging congressperson’s hapless staff, that I got behind on my videos for Yale Climate Connections.
That, plus December is always dicey, with American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (even virtually as this year) and the holidays so close together.

No worries, I told my editor Bud Ward, I’ll just get you two videos in January.
So the first one of those, on arctic sea ice, will be out in coming days. The second one will be envisioning where we might go in the post-climate denial era, with a Science-friendly administration.
There’s so much here that there will have to be a series of short vids in addition to the main one to cover it all.
Start with the above, part of my drinking-from-a-firehose interview with Saul Griffith, MacArthur Genius, energy visionary, and CEO of Otherlab.

Utility Dive:

  • Based on developing technology already in the pipeline, a new report by Wood Mackenzieprojects that solar costs will fall another 15-25% over the next decade, potentially making solar the lowest-cost power resource in all U.S. states by 2030.
  • Rapid adoption of solar energy allowed the industry to scale and cut costs much faster than analysts in the early 2010s expected would be possible, according to Ravi Manghani, head of solar research for Wood MacKenzie.
  • Demand for solar continues to exceed installation capacity, and could continue to do so for some time, according to Manghani. But without affordable storage options, he said, solar installations could end up essentially giving power away.

How cheap could solar power get? So cheap, Wood MacKenzie’s Manghani said, that someday power generators may let solar energy “go to waste” by installing more solar capacity than needed and simply turning off the excess generation when it’s not.

“It’s not a bad thing, because at the end of the day, if the cost is still below the other resources, you might still go with solar,” Manghani said.

In the early 2010s, Manghani said, analysts who watch the solar industry anticipated slow but steady cost reductions as the industry grew. What they didn’t see coming, he said, was the exponential rate at which the industry would reduce costs as it scaled rapidly.

“That’s the most fascinating part,” he said. “The industry, or even industry observers such as [Wood Mackenzie] underestimated the potential of scaling.”

These cost declines might make one think that the age of falling solar prices is behind us, Manghani said, but he doesn’t believe that is the case.

“The cost decline trend is not slowing down any time soon,” he said. “Yes, there are some externalities that may change, on a short-term basis, but the level of innovation we’ve seen in the industry makes us feel good about the cost reduction possibilities that exist.”

But the industry must also manage a balancing act, Manghani said. Until the industry has an affordable, viable solution to storing and shifting the availability of variable solar energy, there is a chance that solar could essentially grow itself out of a job. In this scenario, Manghani said, demand for solar could plummet and drag prices along with it.

At present, Manghani said, this scenario seems unlikely, with storage on track to fill the coming need. But in the meantime, he said, the industry will experience another growing pain: there is currently greater demand for solar than there is capacity to deploy it, and bottlenecks have begun to build up around permitting and interconnection. Consequently, although the actual equipment and technology continues to grow more affordable, Manghani said overall PPA prices have actually begun to rise.

Florida GOP will Look at Climate Change, Sea Level Rise

It’s 2021.
I’ll be exploring the possibilities in the Post-Trump world in coming posts and videos, but just to give a flavor, there’s this.

Florida Politics:

Sen. Ray Rodrigues and Rep. Chip LaMarca are spearheading legislation aimed at preparing the state for rising sea levels due to climate change.

The bills (SB 514 and HB 315) will create an Office of Resiliency under the executive branch and set up a nine-person Sea Level Rise Task Force.

“I’m grateful to have a partner in Rep. LaMarca who, like me, has been a tireless champion on the environment,” said Rodrigues, an Estero Republican, in a statement Thursday promoting the plan.

“Together, we can address the emerging threat of flooding in our great state and become a leader for resiliency. Flooding not only impacts our beautiful natural resources but also our property values and our tourism economy.”

The nine-person task force would include the state’s Chief Resilience Officer and Chief Science Officer. The Senate President and House Speaker would each name one member. Various other agency members would make up the remainder of the commission. 

“The task force shall develop official scientific information, from appropriate sources as determined by the task force, necessary to make recommendations on consensus baseline projections, or a range of projections, of the expected rise in sea level along the state’s coastline for planning horizons designated by the task force,” the legislation reads. “The projections may address various geographic areas of the state, as determined by the task force.” 

The task force would then submit those projections by Jan. 1, 2022. Those projections “must be used for the purpose of developing future state projects, plans, and programs.” 

–

“Climate change isn’t a tomorrow issue, it’s a right now issue. Banning offshore drilling, investing in shore protection and beach renourishment projects, and supporting clean energy solutions are important, but we need smarter investment so that we can develop science-based solutions to this growing problem. Resiliency is a climate issue, it’s an environmental issue, and it’s a financial issue. It’s time that Florida becomes a leader on climate change.”

Below, more from Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell.

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Climate Denial and the Coup

Climate denial a reliable proxy for treason.

If you have not yet read the New York Times piece about the attempted coup within the US Justice Department, follow the link below.

Turns out, the Attorney who hatched an election fraud plot within the Justice Department (that was thwarted only when a number of senior officials threatened to resign en masse) – was also an attorney representing BP in the Gulf Oil Spill case, and a consistent, prominent voice for climate denial.

Climate denial a reliable proxy for treason.

New York Times:

The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?
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As December wore on, Mr. Clark mentioned to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet — a comment that alarmed them because they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won the election. Mr. Clark also told them that he wanted the department to hold a news conference announcing that it was investigating serious accusations of election fraud. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue rejected the proposal.

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Inside Climate News – 2017:

Jeffrey Bossert Clark, a lawyer who has repeatedly challenged the scientific foundations of U.S. climate policy and was part of a legal team that represented BP in lawsuits stemming from the nation’s worst oil spill, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, was nominatedby President Donald Trump on Tuesday to serve as the Justice Department’s top environmental lawyer.

Clark, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis, has represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in lawsuits challenging the federal government’s authority to regulate carbon emissions. In court he has repeatedly argued that it is inappropriate to base government policymaking on the scientific consensus presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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