LOS ANGELES – Businesses, cities and the state of California are using their collective power to push automakers toward an electric future.
This week, the Climate Group, an international organization dedicated to fighting global climate change, launched the "Zero Emission Vehicle Challenge" in cities around the world, including Los Angeles, London, New York and Paris.
Lauren Faber O'Connor, chief sustainability officer for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, says her city is well on its way to electrifying its vehicle fleet. She says cities will be better poised to influence the auto industry if they join forces.
"If you have cities acting together, you can make a real impact on the market and tell automakers that if they provide these vehicles, we will buy them," says Faber O'Connor.
Faber O'Connor notes that Los Angeles already has met its goal of electrifying at least half the city's vehicles. The city also plans to have an all-electric bus fleet by 2030.
The ZEV Challenge is calling on automakers to commit a large percentage of their sales to be zero-emission vehicles by 2025. The state of California has joined the challenge, along with major businesses around the world.
Mary Nichols, who chairs the California Air Resources Board, says a comprehensive effort is under way to move the market toward electric vehicles.
She says the state's public utilities commission recently approved more than $700 million dollars in public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in pursuit of California's ambitious plans for the future.
"We believe that by 2050, every new car sold in California needs to be electric,” says Nichols. “And to get to that point, we obviously have to scale up rapidly from where we are now."
Opponents of this goal say the higher cost of electric cars is a barrier that could end up hurting families and businesses' budgets.
Faber O'Connor says Los Angeles has the largest electric-vehicle charging network in the country, with more than 1,500 chargers spread throughout the city. She says curbing the effects of climate change underpins all of this.
"We're a car culture, but we've always been ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new transportation technologies and new transportation strategies,” says Faber O'Connor. “This is no different. We are throwing ourselves full on into zero-emissions transition because of our responsibility to lead on climate change."
get more stories like this via email
As Coloradans begin to weigh their options in this year's presidential election, a new Carbon Brief analysis projects that a second Biden term would help reduce climate pollution - but the administration will still fall short of meeting its 2030 goals.
Report co-author Simon Evans - senior policy editor at Carbon Brief - said by contrast, a second Trump term that successfully rolls back Biden initiatives, including the Inflation Reduction Act as promised, would add four billion extra tons of fossil fuel pollution.
"That's equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan," said Evans. "That amount of extra emissions, four billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, would cause global climate damage worth something like $900 billion."
Trump has repeatedly claimed that climate change is a hoax, and advanced policies that increased crude oil drilling in order to maintain American energy dominance.
Researchers project a second Trump term would wipe out all emission-reduction gains made over the past five years by installing wind turbines, solar panels, and other clean energy technologies across the globe twice over.
In the 20th century, Evans said nations controlling large fossil fuel reserves did hold significant economic and other advantages.
But in the 21st century and beyond, he said he believes countries with large portfolios of clean energy will have the advantage.
"Actually, clean energy technologies are a great way of bringing energy security," said Evans. "Because you're not relying on import, you're just relying on the wind and the sun that you have in your own country. And the U.S. is certainly very well endowed with wind and solar resources."
Four billion tons is also equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the world's 140 countries with the smallest carbon footprints.
Evans noted that people who can't afford air conditioning to survive extreme heat, or move away from areas prone to flooding and wildfire, will continue to face the biggest threats.
"The people around the world that are least responsible for climate change," said Evans, "whether that's in the poorest countries in the world, or the poorest people in the richest countries - those tend to be the people that are most exposed to the negative impacts of climate change."
get more stories like this via email
Environmental groups in Virginia are among those looking at how to improve and modernize electrical grid transmission.
Experts said the grid's age and current state aren't conducive to the boom in renewable energy projects being developed. The lack of preparation is being felt all over the country but particularly in Virginia, where the latest report card gives the state's grid operator the lowest score.
Quentin Scott, federal policy director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said grid operators' long-term planning needs to consider increasing renewable energy.
"They don't really account for high usage of renewables," Scott pointed out. "They're not accounting for the popularity of the Inflation Reduction Act. They're not accounting for state policies that require states to be 100% clean energy by 2050 or 2040."
Other experts feel grid operators like Virginia's PJM Interconnections need to hire more people to deal with interconnection requests. But increased demand for those jobs makes it harder to address the problem. Virginia's General Assembly passed House Bill 862 to make the process more efficient.
If grid operators cannot make the changes in time, around 80% of the emissions reductions outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act might not happen. Scott and other environmental advocates are worried about losing ground. Along with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission being a backstop authority for such projects, he noted microgrids can help improve the grid's efficiency.
"Solar panels that are on your roof or community solar projects; small businesses that erect you know, a wind turbine near their business," Scott explained. "Microgrids allow those sort of localized communities to have more planning, more control over their local resources."
Microgrids are also known to be weather resilient. Given the strong effects climate change is having on states' electrical infrastructure, it can be prudent to prevent blackouts. Research has shown if Texas had more connections with the Southeastern U.S., there would not have been as many power outages during the deadly 2021 winter storm.
Disclosure: The Chesapeake Climate Action Network contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, and Sustainable Agriculture. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
click here.
get more stories like this via email
The first satellite launched by a nonprofit organization is now circling the globe, getting ready to deliver data on methane pollution from oil and gas facilities worldwide.
The MethaneSAT satellite backed by the Environmental Defense Fund will help track methane emissions, a major contributor to global warming.
Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the fund, said the advocacy group is focused on making the data transparent, accessible to anyone, and actionable.
"It's going to help the government, it's going to help industry, and it's going to help communities that want to know, 'What's going on in my backyard?'" Goldstein explained. "They'll have this publicly accessible, online data source."
Goldstein emphasized data collected should provide accountability from the more than 50 oil and gas companies that pledged at last year's Dubai "COP-28" climate summit to "zero-out" methane and eliminate routine gas flaring.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency published new methane regulations adopted in 2023. New Mexico adopted its own rules in 2021 to crack down on leaks, particularly from smaller facilities.
The new satellite is designed to measure known sources of methane and discover and quantify previously unknown sources. Goldstein noted it would allow companies and countries to take action sooner to help reverse the Earth's rising surface temperature.
"It is a very powerful greenhouse gas; more than 80 times more powerful, pound-for-pound, than carbon dioxide at driving climate change," Goldstein outlined. "That makes it a huge opportunity for folks that want to address this problem quickly, to get out there and get these leaks fixed."
New Mexico is second only to Texas as the largest oil-producing state in the U.S. MethaneSAT was launched last week from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Disclosure: The Environmental Defense Fund contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Energy Policy, Environment, and Public Lands/Wilderness. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
click here.
get more stories like this via email