Climate Now

Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Princeton University, and the IPCC have all published proposed climate mitigation pathways: strategies for economically reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century for California, the U.S., and the world, respectively. And they are not alone. Any given pathway to net-zero emissions offers some combination of efficiency improvements, expansion of renewable energy sources, and some amount of so-called "negative emissions," using technologies and natural processes that capture and store carbon. But what determines the ratio of these three decarbonization methods? What determines which particular ratio will produce the lowest-cost and most feasible pathway for society?Climate Now sat down with Dr. EJ Baik, to discuss her research on the least-cost pathway for decarbonizing California’s electrical grid by 2045. EJ explains how major decarbonization pathways are modeled, the assumptions behind those models, and why sometimes the most economical way to reach net-zero is not what you’d expect.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

For years we’ve been hearing that the clean energy transition is going to be expensive. But the recent working paper, Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition, suggests that the high estimates of the expense to transition to renewable energy have been inflated, and that it may in fact be cheaper to transition to renewables than to stay on fossil fuels, regardless of the costs of the changing climate. Using probabilistic cost forecasting methods, the authors of the paper project that because of the exponentially decreasing cost curve of renewables like wind and solar, fossil fuels will become nearly obsolete in just 25 years.Climate Now spoke with co-author of the paper, Dr. Doyne Farmer, to better understand their model and what that might mean for policy and investments. Dr. Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Among the top importers of Russian oil are the EU, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and France. The EU accounted for 71% of oil imports from Russia 2 months after the war in Ukraine began. But cutting off oil and gas imports from Russia completely can pose great challenges. The EU is attempting to wean off of Russian oil dependence in response to the invasion of Ukraine by hastening renewable energy adoption. The 1970’s oil crises led to a flattening of the exponential demand growth for oil globally. It never recovered thanks to improvements in efficiency. What lessons can we learn from the past as we face the current oil and gas crisis brought on by Putin’s war? We spoke with Amory Lovins, co-author of a recent RMI article assessing the geopolitical dynamics driving a pivot away from fossil fuels.Chapters:1:29 The 70’s energy crisis compared to today10:09 Russia’s energy role14:12 Policy change following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.23:15 How might this impact Europe’s energy sources over the next several years?26:48 How might this impact renewable energy adoption around the world?Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

If the international shipping sector were a country, it would be the sixth largest CO2 emitting nation in the world. Every year, 11 billion tons of goods - about 80% of all the goods we use or consume - reach us by ship, emitting nearly a billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in the process. And, about 40% of those goods - nearly 4.5 billion tons - are fossil fuels.Unlike switching to renewable energy and electric road vehicles, there is not an obvious short-term economic benefit to decarbonizing shipping, which makes even the simplest solutions (like slowing down the ships!) difficult to incentivize. Climate Now sat down with Bryan Comer, Marine Program Lead at The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), to discuss the shipping industry's decarbonization goals, the policy changes needed to reach them, and the future of sustainable shipping.1:02 What is the ICCT?3:17 Overview of the shipping industry6:49 What are the emissions reduction goals of the shipping industry?9:36 Strategies to reach these reduction goals14:10 Challenges to accomplish the emissions reduction goalsFollow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Soil - that mixture of degraded bedrock, decomposing organic matter, and microorganisms, that nourishes the root systems of plants and trees - already has a soil carbon bank 4x that of vegetation.  And, by changing how we manage our soils, it is possible to increase their capacity for trapping CO2 in the form of organic carbonand enhance the agricultural productivity of a region.Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at University of California, Merced, is a global leader in the carbon storage potential of soils. She sat down with Climate Now to explain why soils are so good at trapping carbon, how much they could hold, and what we can do to increase soil carbon storage. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Today, 26% of the global population - about 2 billion people - live without reliable access to safe drinking water.  And, as climate change worsens, the availability of fresh water will only decrease.  By 2050, as many as 3.2 billion people could live in severely water-scarce regions of the world.  More than half the global population will experience water scarcity for at least one month a year.Options for mitigating this crisis are limited: we can use less water, discourage population growth in urban centers, or find new water sources.On World Water Day 2022, Jon Freedman, Senior Vice President of Global Governmental Affairs for SUEZ Water Technology Solutions, joined Climate Now to make the case for water reuse as one of those alternative sources. Technology already exists to purify and safely use recycled water - Israel reuses nearly 90% of its wastewater effluent, primarily for irrigation. The question that remains is how to encourage adoption of water reuse as part of regional and national conservation strategies, and how to finance the necessary infrastructure developmentListen wherever you like to get your podcasts, or listen with the transcript at our website!Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to standardize climate disclosures for publicly traded companies. What does that mean?On March 21, 2022 the SEC released a proposal for a new rule: publicly traded companies will have to provide disclosures about how the changing climate will affect their business, and how their business is affecting climate.This move would formalize a reporting system for climate-related disclosures that investors are increasingly demanding. Climate Now sat down with Nir Kaissar, a market economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and portfolio manager, to understand what these proposed disclosure requirements entail, how they fit into the scope of the SEC's mandate, and what the impact of their adoption will be for businesses, investors, policymakers and the public.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In the race for decarbonization, the shipping industry faces major challenges. Fuel is cheap, almost half the price of gasoline. And, most ships last between 20-25 years, meaning that the turnover to cleaner shipping could take far longer than road transportation, where the average car is only 12 years old. But there is some wind in the sails of maritime decarbonization initiatives.Maria Gallucci, a climate journalist with Canary Media, has spent the last 5 years investigating the challenges and opportunities of decreasing maritime emissions. She spoke with Climate Now about why it is so hard to decarbonize this sector, and the diversity of approaches that are being explored, with a focus on ammonia and wind-powered propulsion.Chapters:00:00 Maria's background02:08 Why is shipping so hard to decarbonize?05:43 How is shipping regulated?08:20 What technologies and alternative fuels for shipping could replace fossil fuels?11:08 Ammonia: - 11:08 Pros and cons of ammonia for shipping-14:25 What needs to happen to convert shipping to ammonia-powered?-17:18 Addressing the challenges of ammonia23:10 What startups are tackling shipping's emission problem?25:25 Wind-powered propulsion in the shipping industry28:12 Battery-electric shipping and carbon captureCheck out our other episodes and video series at www.climatenow.com!Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

One of the most efficient ways to get to a net-zero economy is to generate electricity from renewable sources, and then make as many things run on electricity as possible.  But, as more end-use services (transportation, heating, industry) are electrified, and the source of electricity transitions from fossil fuels to renewables like solar and wind, the electricity supply chain - the pathway from electricity producers to consumers - will need to evolve, too.In this episode, we spoke with Monica Varman, a clean energy technology investor at G2 Venture Partners who specializes in investments in grid resilience. We spoke with Monica about how the electricity sector works and how it is evolving: What is the pathway from creating electricity from a renewable or fossil fuel source, to being able to flip a switch in our home and have the light come on? And how are companies innovating the electricity generation-transmission-distribution supply chain to prepare us for a carbon-neutral future?Subscribe to our podcast to be notified of new releases, and visit us at climatenow.com.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In 2021 alone, more than $32 billion dollars were invested in green-technology startups, a four-fold increase from five years earlier.  But how far will those dollars go?  Only about 25% of venture-backed startups actually make the transition from an innovative idea to a successful business.  And when we are considering green technology, choosing which companies will have the biggest impact means much more than a return on investment. It will determine how fast we can reach a carbon-free global economy, and how dire the impact of climate change will be.  So how do investors pick the startups with the most potential?  We spoke with G2 Venture Partners' Brook Porter, a chemical engineer-turned environmental technology investor with over two decades of experience in sustainability and technology development, about which companies are leading the way, how they succeeded, and what to be looking for among the up-and-comers in the green technology sector.Episode breakdown: 00:40 Brook's background04:30 What type of company will succeed?10:00 Wright's Law of innovation11:20 Is there a template for low-risk, high yield investment in climate tech?13:13 VC typical startup failure rate14:18 What trends is G2V following?27:00 How does policy impact venture investments?29:13 Hydrogen vs Electric cars33:54 Technologies to decarbonize aviationClimate Now is made possible, in part, by science partners like the Livermore Lab Foundation. The Livermore Lab Foundation supports climate research and carbon cleanup initiatives underway at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, which is a Department of Energy applied science and research facility. More information about the Foundation's work can be found at livermorelabfoundation.org.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.