Build Back Better Redux, "The Atlas of Disappearing Places," & Carbon 2021
The newsletter for independent thinkers on carbon and climate.
(source: The Guardian)
Issue No. 103
Welcome to the latest issue of Carbon Creed - a curated newsletter for independent thinkers on carbon and climate.
Overall, 2021 was a good year for climate policy.
Yes, I know it hardly feels that way. But when you step back and think about how much was actually accomplished, the decade got off to a decent start. Below is my short list of three (3) big accomplishments on carbon and climate policy in 2021:
1. United States reenters the Paris Agreement
Shortly after being sworn into office in late January, President Biden signed an executive order kicking off a 30-day process for the U.S. to re-enter the Paris climate accord. The U.S. was the first country to formally leave the agreement, which aims to protect the planet from the worsening impacts of climate change, in late 2020 on the orders of former President Trump.
2. United Nations Delegates pledge to end Deforestation
Diplomats from about 200 countries met this fall to discuss the future of climate change mitigation efforts at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. By far the biggest accomplishment of the Summit was the pledge by delegates to end deforestation by 2030 and the commitment to provide $12 billion in funding to “help unleash the potential of forests and sustainable land use.”
3. U.S. Congress Passes Infrastructure Bill
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law this fall includes historic funding to protect the country against the detrimental affects of human-caused climate change. Investments in the legislation include:
$65 billion for clean energy and grid-related investments
$7.5 billion to build a national network of charging stations for electric vehicles
$55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water
$21 billion to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites and cap orphaned oil and gas wells.
Build Back Better 2022?
Of course the big letdown in 2021 was the failure to pass Build Back Better legislation. The bill - which would have provided more than $555 billion in climate investments - was passed in the House of Representatives, but failed in the U.S. Senate.
The odds are high that Build Back Better will be resurrected in some form during the first quarter of 2022. A leaner version of the Senate bill can still accomplish much of what the President wants, but will warrant a new team and a new message. Stay tuned.
We’ll keep you posted on the latest carbon policy and market insights as they happen.
If you have an opinion on any topic covered in this newsletter, please feel free to send me an email at mcleodwl@carboncreed.com.
Thank you for your viewpoint and the value of your time.
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QUOTES
Words that will inspire you for the new year…
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start.”
~ Nido Qubein
BOOKS
The Atlas of Disappearing Places
by Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros
The Atlas of Disappearing Places is a visually stunning, hand-painted look at the impact of the climate crisis on our most precious coastal communities by authors Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros.
“We come from the sea,” it contends, so protecting the sea is a collective responsibility. Acidification, declining fish populations, and plastic pollution have put the oceans at great risk. From New York City to Shanghai, metropolises are threatened by rising sea levels—a gradual hazard, as opposed to “‘fast’ emergencies,” like the hurricanes that ravage New Orleans and Puerto Rico.
This book’s hopeful vignettes are positioned in 2050, showing what might change per high-end Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, and what preventative or adaptive measures might be taken. The metaphor of the ocean as a body that’s suffering from chronic inflammation and trauma is effective. Statistics and expert quotes are used to lend support to the book’s models without overwhelming its storytelling.
Painted with water-soluble inks on sheets of dried sea lettuce, the book’s maps are textured, attractive, and informative. They complement its suggestions for practical ways to reduce climate impact, like cutting single-use plastics, eating less meat, and getting involved in climate advocacy.
In our time of constant doom-and-gloom news, it can be difficult to find new ways to make the climate crisis feel vital again. The Atlas of Disappearing Places succeeds by approaching the subject from a place of hope and beauty, combining place-based storytelling and scientific data with exquisitely-rendered maps of twenty vulnerable locations across the globe. The rare coffee table book that’s also a call to arms.
Creed Comments: This book is a work of art. Christina Conklin painted these awe-inspiring maps on sheets of dried “sea lettuce,” members of the genus Ulva, a group of green macroalgae found in many parts of the world. The process involved hauling forty pounds of wet, briny seaweed back to her studio and washing and laying each sheet out to dry in an iteration of “women’s work,” such as basketmaking or weaving, in which materials have to be seasonally gathered and processed before the artwork can be made.
The sheer creativity of the maps is enough to make this book a worthwhile investment of time and money.
INSIGHTS
(source: Twitter)
2021: A Year of Carbon in Review
At the start of each new year, I always try to reflect on the key carbon and climate themes from the prior year. With help from the acclaimed journalist Nathaniel Bullard [the narrative is mostly his] and the talented writers at Bloomberg Green, I’ve chosen five themes that capture where we are right now in our efforts to deeply decarbonize the global economy. Topics range from capital formation to corporate boardroom composition to electricity demand outlooks from seven decades ago. I hope you enjoy the picks!
1. The Boardroom Battles for ESG Talent
Earlier this year, Bloomberg Green’s Tim Quinson highlighted research from Tensie Whelan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, on how few corporate board members have a background in environmental, social, and/or governance subjects. Unfortunately, the data are pretty grim. As of April 2018, 5% of the nearly 1,200 board members of Fortune 100 companies had experience with workplace diversity, and 2.6% had experience with accounting oversight. Barely 1% had any experience with energy or conservation, the two highest-ranked categories in Whelan’s study. Three-tenths of a percent of the Fortune 100’s board members had experience with ESG investing; 0.2% had experience with climate.
Corporate boards should probably gain some client fluency, and soon. If it happens, it will be a culture shift for the world’s corporate giants. That’s a big if, though, because it will almost certainly mean bringing in new board members. These will very likely wind up being younger, more academic, more entrepreneurial, more racially diverse and more experienced in what did and did not work in the last wave of early-stage climate technology than the grandees, semi-retired business leaders, or otherwise noteworthy senior figures that pack today’s boardrooms. That’s going to be a challenge. Boards don’t generally include 40-year-old climate scientists because they don’t generally include many 40 year-olds, period — or many scientists, for that matter.
2. Booming Climate Tech Investments
Early-stage investment in climate tech companies has skyrocketed. A decade ago, climate-focused companies were able to raise a few billion dollars, max, across asset classes, deal stages, and technologies. Now, climate tech companies are raising that much in a month, and at every stage, from pre-seed funding to billion-dollar pre-IPO rounds. Through November, climate tech companies have raised more than $49 billion for early-stage activity. Seems likely that the last few weeks of investing activity will tip that over $50 billion for 2021.
3. Renewables — The Only Growing Power Generation Source
Wind generation has a 16.6% compound growth rate in the past decade; solar, a 38.8% rate. That means that generation from each technology doubles in less than five years and less than two years, respectively. If wind generation were to grow at its current 10-year rate for just one more year, it would become the single biggest source of new power generation since 2010. If solar were to grow in the same fashion, it would be the biggest contributor to power generation growth by 2023.
4. Electric Vehicles Surpass 10% of Passenger Car Sales
In the first quarter of 2010, 395 electric vehicles total were sold worldwide. Last quarter, 1.7 million were sold, of which more than half were in Asia. That sales growth has taken EVs from 0.002% of passenger car sales to 10.8% of sales globally, and more than that in both Europe and Asia.
China’s electric vehicle sales growth in particular is extraordinary. The world’s largest car market is now nearly 20% EV sales on a monthly basis. To put its sales in perspective: U.S. buyers have picked up 2.2 million EVs to date. China’s vehicle buyers have bought more than that many EVs from February through October of this year.
5. Our Faltering Energy Forecasts
The energy sector loves its long-term forecasts, and for good reason: assets have long financial and technological lives, they can cost billions of dollars, and they take years or decades to build. This summer Nathaniel picked up the first volume of the United Nations’ 1956 10-volume opus, Proceedings of the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. It is not actually the nuclear aspect he found of interest, but rather the vision of what electricity demand would look like in 1975 and 2000.
Writing more than six decades ago, the UN slightly underestimated actual electricity demand in 1975, and significantly overestimated demand in 2000.
Re-reading old studies like this is an exercise in questioning one’s contemporary priors. It’s hard to guess what a group of mid-1950s scientists and bureaucrats would imagine about electricity demand in 2020, but “India will generate more power than the entire world today and China will generate seven times more, at the same time that global electricity demand growth will be less than half what it is now” is probably not it.
[This post was adapted from the original written by Nathaniel Bullard, BloombergNEF's Chief Content Officer]
RESOURCES
The Keeling Curve a daily record of global atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Congressional Policy Tracker a summary of current federal energy legislation.
Click Clean your favorite apps and tech company clean power rankings.
Advancing Inclusion Through Clean Energy Jobs a report by the Brookings Institute.
Currents a podcast featuring in-depth discussions with experts on clean energy and sustainability, published by Norton Rose Fulbright.
Matter of Fact, a weekly newsmagazine that focuses on socioeconomic and climate issues in America, hosted by veteran journalist Soledad O'Brien.
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