Inside Climate News

MAY 16, 2023

A study finds one plastics recycling plant in the U.K. produces as much as 3 million pounds of microplastics a year—and that’s with filtering. By James Bruggers Research out of Scotland suggests that the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic in recycling facilities may turn as much as six to 13 percent of incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

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Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 17, 2023

President Biden's Investing in America agenda is pushing to boost U.S. competitiveness, rebuild infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, and implement clean energy.

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Legal Planet

MAY 16, 2023

On a per capita basis, Australia’s carbon emissions are even higher than the United States. A decade ago, Australia had a climate tax. That was repealed in 2014, and the ensuing period saw little progress. In the past two years, however, the things have started trending upward after years of inaction by conservative governments. More is needed, but hopefully the tide has turned.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 16, 2023

The US wildfire season used to last about four months, beginning in late summer or early autumn. These days, it stretches six to eight months, according to the US Forest Service, and in some places it’s now a year-round affair. In just five years, from 2018 through 2022, wildfires scorched 38.3 million acres across the country. That’s nearly 60,000 square miles, slightly bigger than the state of Georgia.

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Speaker: Kevin Kai Wong, President of Emergent Energy Solutions

In today's industrial landscape, the pursuit of sustainable energy optimization and decarbonization has become paramount. Manufacturing corporations across the U.S. are facing the urgent need to align with decarbonization goals while enhancing efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, the lack of comprehensive energy data poses a significant challenge for manufacturing managers striving to meet their targets.

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Yale E360

MAY 18, 2023

A new study reaffirming that global climate change is human-made also found the upper atmosphere is cooling dramatically because of rising CO2 levels. Scientists are worried about the effect this cooling could have on orbiting satellites, the ozone layer, and Earth’s weather.

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Cooling Atmosphere Ozone Climate Change 364

Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 18, 2023

The ABB Energy Industries is driving the move toward renewable hydrogen with an offshore wind project: SoutH2Port – a project that has two key hurdles, which include the cost of making hydrogen from wind and solar and building offshore wind farms.

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Renewable Energy 359

Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 17, 2023

During a California State Assembly informational hearing earlier this year, there seemed to be consensus that California’s 19 th century water rights system is not well suited to the social context and climate of the 21st century. Change is necessary and may be coming.  This outdated water rights system is based on historic and continued disenfranchisement and dispossession.

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Yale E360

MAY 16, 2023

Emissions from the world's 88 largest fossil fuel firms and cement makers are responsible for 37 percent of the forest burned in the western U.S. and Canada since 1986, according to a new study.

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Fossil Fuels 240

Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 18, 2023

The new criteria will contribute to supply chain decarbonization and Scope 3 emission reductions and will allow suppliers as well as consumers to make informed decisions on the products they produce.

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Circle of Blue

MAY 15, 2023

Refresh A Great Lakes News Collaborative series investigating the region’s water pollution challenges. This series explores the Clean Water Act’s shortcomings in the Great Lakes, and how the region can more completely address water pollution in the next 50 years. The collaborative’s four newsrooms — Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now, and Michigan Radio — work collaboratively to report on the most pressing water issues in the Great Lakes region.

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Speaker: Antoine M. Thompson, Executive Director of the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition

Diversity, Equity, Justice, and Inclusion (DEJI) policies, programs, and initiatives are critically important as we move forward with public and private sector climate and sustainability goals and plans. Underserved and socially, economically, and racially disadvantaged communities bear the burden of pollution, higher energy costs, limited resources, and limited investments in the clean energy and transportation sectors.

Clean Energy

Legal Planet

MAY 18, 2023

New York has enacted what may be the country’s most stringent environmental justice law. The state deserves credit for its commitment to remedying the unfair pollution burdens placed on disadvantaged communities. The law is so broadly worded, however, that it may have the potential to prevent economic development that would aid those communities, or even new facilities like hospitals that are urgently needed by the community.

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Yale E360

MAY 17, 2023

Deadly heat and humidity across India, Bangladesh, Laos, and Thailand in late April was made significantly more likely by climate change, scientists say.

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Climate Change 251

Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 15, 2023

With airlines trying to meet sustainability goals, many are allocating funds for sustainability and carbon impact reductions, such as finding efficient means to obtain SAF.

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Renewable Energy 264

Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 19, 2023

Earlier this month, I provided testimony to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at a public hearing on the proposed rule on sterilization facilities that emit ethylene oxide (EtO), a cancer-causing gas. These facilities use EtO to sterilize medical equipment, as well as some dried spices and herbs. About half of all sterile medical equipment in the US is sterilized with EtO.

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Speaker: Laurie Schoeman Director, Climate & Sustainability, Capital

As households and communities across the nation face challenges such as hurricanes, wildfires, drought, extreme heat and cold, and thawing permafrost and flooding, we are increasingly searching for ways to mitigate and prevent climate impacts. During this event, national climate and housing expert Laurie Schoeman will discuss topics including: The two paths for climate action: decarbonization and adaptation.

2022

Legal Planet

MAY 19, 2023

Monterey County Oil Field (credit: Monterey County Weekly) For the first two decades of this century, and under the able leadership of former Chief Justices Ronald George and Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the California Supreme Court was quite active in interpreting and shaping California environmental law. That trend had abated in the last few years–coincidentally or not during the height of the COVID epidemic–with only a couple of relatively minor environmental law decisions being issued b

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Yale E360

MAY 19, 2023

New York City is sinking under the weight of its massive buildings, leaving it more vulnerable to rising seas, a new study finds.

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Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 16, 2023

According to the Brattle Group, which prepared a study for Google, a virtual power plant (VPP) is as reliable as a conventional one, costing 40% to 60% of alternatives.

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Renewable Energy 263

Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 15, 2023

If there’s one thing I’m hearing over and over again from the activists, teachers, counselors, and fellow parents in my life, it’s that our kids aren’t all right. This observation is backed by the U.S. Surgeon General, who issued a warning in late 2021 that today’s challenges—including climate change, racial injustice and more—are wreaking “devastating effects” on our young people’s mental health.

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Climate Change Fossil Fuels 2021 Politics 197

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Sustainable Development

Cleannovate

MAY 19, 2023

I sat still in the lab waiting for the synthesis I was working on to come through. My tools of trade were a basic… A burette (remember from high school titration experiments?)… Some conical flasks, beakers etc – I won’t bore you with chemistry. What was my mission here?

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Energy & the Law

MAY 17, 2023

You might recall our posts on litigation by states, counties, and cities blaming a host of calamities, real and imagined, past and future, on Big Oil. The producers tried their best to remove the cases to federal court. In a two-sentence ruling, the United States Supreme Court refused to consider defendants’ Hail-Mary to have the cases remain in federal court.

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Fossil Fuels Climate Change Natural Gas Government 130

Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 18, 2023

Rate design is a complex challenge, but utilities across the country have started implementing commercial EV rates to accelerate transportation electrification in their regions.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 15, 2023

New research led by the Union of Concerned Scientists and released today quantifies the contribution of heat-trapping emissions from the world’s largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers to worsening wildfires across western North America. The first-of-its-kind study has two main findings, which we detail in a peer-reviewed study and a short report : Nearly 20 million acres of the total area burned by forest fires across the western US and Canada since 1986 can be attributed to the

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Fossil Fuels Climate Change Climate Scientist Sea Level 188

NRDC

MAY 15, 2023

In the Rose Garden celebration of conservation achievements, President Joe Biden elevates the Pebble Mine veto—calling the Bristol Bay fishery “a marvel,” citing scientific consensus of unacceptable risk from large-scale mining, and thanking Alaska Natives and the broad-based coalition for their 20-year opposition to the proposed mine.

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Conservation 116

PA Environment Daily

MAY 19, 2023

Highlights of the environmental and energy notices in the May 20 PA Bulletin -- -- Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Weekly Compliance Dashboard - May 13 to 19 [PaEN] -- PA Oil & Gas Industrial Facilities: Permit Notices/Opportunities To Comment - May 20 [PaEN] -- The Department of Environmental Protection published notice in the May 20 PA Bulletin inviting comments on draft changes to the NPDES General Permit for Discharges from Petroleum Product Contaminated Groundwater Remediation Systems (PAG-0

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Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 18, 2023

Increasing recycling rates in the United States presents a significant opportunity to address the growing issue of plastic waste.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 16, 2023

Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study that really caught my attention. I usually try to stay in my cozy power sector bubble, plugging away on electricity grid decarbonization. But this new study from my colleagues working on climate change and fossil fuel accountability couldn’t be ignored. The reason: the findings of this study could ultimately have significant consequences for western electric utilities and the communities they serve.

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Fossil Fuels Climate Change Electricity Regulations 184

Enviromental Defense

MAY 15, 2023

ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE, WOMEN’S EARTH AND CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK Indigenous Leaders, Environmental Groups, and Concerned Citizens Call on Canada to Shut Down Enbridge’s Line 5 Pipeline Ottawa | Traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People – Today, Indigenous, civil society, and environmental groups from the Great Lakes region delivered a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau and members of his cabinet, calling for Canada to withdraw its use of the 1977 pipeline treaty and

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Scientific American

MAY 19, 2023

The last caldera-forming eruption at Yellowstone “was much more complex than previously thought,” according to the annual report about activity at the supervolcano

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Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 18, 2023

Natural gas serves as a flexible resource, capable of swiftly responding to changing system needs in ways that other energy sources cannot.

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Inside Climate News

MAY 18, 2023

A new global study of lakes shows water levels falling and finds a global warming fingerprint. By Bob Berwyn Water storage in many of the world’s biggest lakes has declined sharply in the last 30 years, according to a new study, with a cumulative drop of about 21.5 gigatons per year, an amount equal to the annual water consumption of the United States.

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Climate Change 103

PA Environment Daily

MAY 18, 2023

The House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee is scheduled to meet on May 23 to consider legislation to restore DEP’s authority to review conventional oil and gas well plugging bonding amounts to help prevent the routine abandonment of 561 conventional oil and gas wells a year, authorize streambank fencing and designate Chesapeake Bay Awareness Week.

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Cool Green Science

MAY 15, 2023

There are some invasive species that get a lot of press. Many others, though, are more mundane. And you might not realize they're invasive. The post 8 Invasive Animals You Didn’t Know Were Invasive appeared first on Cool Green Science.

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Cooling 101

Environment + Energy Leader

MAY 16, 2023

The funding will be used for the decarbonization of gas networks and the distribution and production of clean hydrogen.

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Clean Energy 264