Climate Now

Since the Industrial Revolution nearly 150 years ago, global average temperatures have increased by more than 1 degree C (1.9 degrees F), with the majority of that warming occurring since 1975. But during these recent decades of accelerated warming, temperatures in the arctic (latitudes above 66 degrees north) have have been rising even faster - nearly four times faster than the average global rate. The most readily observable impact of such intensive localized warming has been the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is significant enough to be turning heads of even stalwart climate skeptics. But a less discussed (and perhaps even more dangerous) positive feedback to the warming planet is the rate at which permafrost is melting due to the quickly elevating arctic temperatures.Dr. Susan Natali, Arctic Program Director and senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, sat down with Climate Now to teach us about permafrost: what it is, why it is disappearing, and the potentially drastic - and so far barely accounted for - impact it can have on greenhouse gas emissions. Listen to find out why tackling decreasing global greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible is likely even more urgent than we thought.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 built environment represents one of society’s largest environmental impacts - contributing nearly one fifth of global GHG emissions, not to mention impacts on natural resources like air and water quality, local ecosystems, and quality of life for residents. Increasingly, policies and public opinion are concentrating on reducing those impacts - creating incentives for new construction and urban development to become more sustainable - to become more “green.”But how do you define whether a building (or a city) is green? Tommy Linstroth is the founder and CEO of Green Badger, a company that provides sustainability accounting services for new construction projects, and Hilari Varnadore is the Vice President for Cities at the U.S. Green Building Council. The two joined Climate Now to explain the globally leading metric for quantifying sustainability of the built environment:  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Tune in to hear how buildings, stadiums and cities can become LEED certified - what the process entails, what the criteria are, and why every new construction project and city planner should want to be certified as “green” through a process like LEED.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.

Every approach to decarbonizing the energy sector comes with its share of costs and benefits: renewables are cheap and clean, but require enormous amounts of land and are not always available when power is needed. Batteries provide useful back up power, but add cost to a renewable-supplied grid and compete with other needs for critical minerals like lithium and cobalt. Carbon capture on fossil fuel power plants can prevent stranded assets, but is expensive and could extend dependence on fossil fuels. Net-zero pathway recommendations, like those from Princeton University, BloombergNEF, and the International Energy Agency, aim to maximize the benefits of these various solutions, while minimizing the costs. But the one technology whose role within this balancing act is the most controversial is nuclear power. In our upcoming episode, we are joined by a panel of energy science and policy experts to understand the present role of nuclear power in our energy sector, why nuclear energy continues to be included in decarbonization scenarios, whether or not it should be, and how the industry would need to evolve for it to play an effective role in a clean energy future. 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.

On March 30, 2023, in partnership with the Livermore Lab Foundation and The Maddy Institute, Climate Now hosted a one day summit in Fresno, CA, examining the intersection of climate change and agriculture. Agriculture is both a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions (contributing nearly one fifth of all global emissions) and a potential solution to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Fresno, located in the heart of California's Central Valley, also illuminates the other side of the agriculture-climate change coin: one of the nation's most valuable agricultural regions, producing over a quarter of the nation's food, is threatened by extreme droughts - and this year, extreme floods - brought on by climate change.At Climate Now's one day summit, farmers, business owners, scientists, policymakers, educators and activists gathered to discuss how to prepare for the changing climate in California and other agriculture producing regions, the challenges inherent to adaptation, and the opportunities that could come with adopting climate friendly technologies and practices.For this week's episode, join us for the key takeaways from this event.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.

Renewable natural gas (RNG), made from the decomposition of organic waste like livestock manure, is not necessarily net-zero if it's burned to run a turbine or drive a car. But what if the RNG is not burned, but is rather pyrolyzed, breaking it down into hydrogen and another product called "carbon black," an essential component of car tires, among other things? Then the hydrogen can be used and the carbon black can be sold in solid form instead of releasing the carbon into the atmosphere. From its Nebraska-based plant, Monolith converts renewable methane into both green hydrogen and carbon black using the world's largest plasma torch (more about that in the episode). Now they are developing a commercial clean hydrogen operation, which they will use to create ammonia to sell for fertilizer. Join us for our conversation with Monolith co-founder and CEO Rob Hanson to learn about methane pyrolysis, the markets for carbon-negative industrial products, and how the Inflation Reduction Act is supporting green (or clean) hydrogen production processes (like Monolith's) in the United States.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.

As we transition to a clean energy economy, demand for minerals like copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium is projected to skyrocket. According to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency, the total mineral demand from clean energy technologies will quadruple by 2040 under their “sustainable development scenario” or at least double under stated policies.  Where will all those minerals come from and how can they be accessed in a responsible way? In this episode Kurt House, CEO of KoBold Metals, explains how their company is working to aggregate, digitize, organize, and analyze global geologic data to systematically search the Earth's crust for these four key minerals.Skip ahead:00:00 This Week in Climate News09:21 How much new mining do we need?14:12 How KoBold aggregates and analyzes data17:54 Environmental and social responsibility in miningFollow 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 a building owner, building decarbonization has myriad benefits: lower utility bills, lower maintenance, healthier and more comfortable living. But the barriers to reaching those benefits are large, particularly the high upfront costs and complicated renovation process (many inspections, many permits, coordinating with many contractors). Scale up to trying to decarbonize every building in a city, and the problems scale up, too - each building has its unique challenges to decarbonization, based on location, age, state of repair, and use. But - it turns out that by decarbonizing buildings on a city level, the solutions can scale up, too.In this final installment of our three-part series examining Ithaca, New York’s road to full building decarbonization, we are joined by the team of people who are identifying solutions to these pain points in Ithaca. We will explore how bulk purchasing power, streamlined contracting, and development of communal clean energy infrastructure can clear the pathway to the city’s net-zero goals, and how these principles might serve as a blueprint to other cities in the U.S.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.

Reducing average global temperatures. Preserving biodiversity. Decreasing the risk of droughts, floods and hurricanes. Reducing air pollution. Reducing utility bills. Creating new jobs and opportunities. Building community engagement. Fostering environmental equity and justice.There doesn’t need to be just one reason to decarbonize a city. And when the specific needs, concerns and goals of communities are accounted for in decarbonization plans, the chances of local buy-in and of an equitable energy transition increase dramatically. Hear why, in the second part of Climate Now’s three-part deep-look into Ithaca, New York’s plans to decarbonize every building in their city. Panelists from a multi-venue live event series, held in Autumn 2022, discuss how Ithaca has approached prioritizing social justice in its plans, and why this is such an integral part of their decarbonization strategy. 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.

On February 15, 2023, the U.S. Senate held a hearing considering a national clean fuels program, modeled after California’s state-wide Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The LCFS sets an annually decreasing standard of net carbon intensity (amount CO2 emissions per unit energy) for all the fuels being sold in the state. Companies that produce fuels or fuel equivalents below the carbon intensity threshold can sell low-carbon fuel credits. Companies that produce and sell fuels above the carbon intensity threshold must buy credits, thus creating a market force to encourage low-carbon fuel production and discourage carbon-intensive fuel production. Since the California LCFS standard was enacted more than a decade ago, transportation sector emissions in the state have declined by about 10% due to the program, outpacing the scheduled carbon intensity decreases. Other states and nations have taken note, with similar policies being adopted in the EU, Canada, Brazil, and Washington State and Oregon. Climate Now sat down with Colin Murphy, Deputy Director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy at University of California, Davis, to learn the details of how and why this emission reduction policy works, what impact it has had, and how energy companies are responding.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.

2022 potentially marked a turning point for the U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market, with new EV car sales increasing by 65% over 2021 sales, and now accounting for nearly 6% of all new vehicle sales. (If EVs maintained a 65% annual growth rate, they would reach 100% of new vehicle sales in about 6 years.)  But for medium and heavy duty vehicles, which produce an outsize share of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gasses, the transition to zero-emissions vehicles is still trying to gain traction. In 2021, electric vehicles accounted for about 1% of bus sales, and about 0.1% of all truck sales.Battery electric vehicles could already replace about half of the freight trips completed each day in the U.S., so it is not technological readiness that is slowing EV adoption in the freight and large vehicle industry. Ray Minjares, Heavy-Duty Vehicles Program Director at the International Council on Clean Transportation, explains what is: the marketplace structure that dictates how freight vehicles are bought and sold. Ray sat down with Climate Now to examine how this marketplace works today, the policies and financing alternatives that could make zero-emission vehicles easier to adopt, and the climate and air quality impacts that would come with decarbonization of the trucking industry.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.