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Ask a Scientist: How Close Are We to a Clean Energy Transition?

Union of Concerned Scientists

After the hottest summer on record, the world continues to witness extreme weather fueled by the burning of fossil fuels. We need to stop burning fossil fuels immediately. Thankfully, we are in the midst of a much-needed transition away from fossil fuels and towards a future powered by more renewables.

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Storm Elliott Knocked Out Fossil-Fuel Power. We’ve Been Here Before.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Utilities and grid operators prepared for the storm as it was coming down the pike, but they still underestimated the energy demand it would trigger, as well as the number of outages at fossil fuel power plants—mainly natural gas-fired, plus some coal-fired plants.

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New, Updated Carbon Majors Dataset Holds Promise for Researchers, Litigators

Union of Concerned Scientists

That 2013 headline resulted from the first effort to quantify emissions from the ‘carbon majors’ —fossil fuel companies and cement manufacturers whose businesses have contributed an outsized amount of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. Nearly two-thirds of industrial heat-trapping emissions can be traced to just 90 entities.

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Don’t Believe the Lies: Five Facts to Consider as the UN’s COP27 Comes to a Close

Union of Concerned Scientists

Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) research shows that top fossil fuel producers’ emissions are responsible for as much as half of global surface temperature increase. of the observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and 52 percent of the rise in global average temperatures between 1880 and 2015.

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Ask a Scientist: Gas Plants Disproportionately Harm Marginalized Communities

Union of Concerned Scientists

Responsible for 12 percent of all US global warming emissions from human activities, methane traps significantly more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide, making it 86 times more harmful for the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. EN: What needs to be done to make the electric grid more equitable—and reliable?

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Don’t hamstring carbon removal

Legal Planet

Assessments by the IPCC have made clear that the most feasible way for the world to meet its target of restricting climate change to below two degrees Celsius of warming includes rapid and massive expansion of carbon removal technologytechnology that would extract carbon dioxide and permanently sequester that carbon dioxide underground.

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Something Stinks: California Must End Manure Biomethane Accounting Gimmicks in its Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Union of Concerned Scientists

CARB has proposed to rapidly increase the stringency of the standard to increase demand for credits, but it should also address the supply of credits, to make sure the fuels supported by the LCFS help move California towards a clean transportation future. Each credit one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent pollution below the standard.