A Booming Sector Grappling with Diversity, Global Instability, & Climate Change

The global energy system is in a constant state of change. Prices and cost go up and down, geopolitical relationships ebb and flow, and technology and infrastructure are developed, deployed, and eventually retired. However, there are trends that have emerged over the last decade – including much greater U.S. oil and gas production and more investor and advocate pressure on companies with respect to sustainability – that have created a fundamental shift in the global energy system and that are likely to come into conflict with each other in the near future. The U.S. oil and gas industry is booming, …

Setting the Standards: How Performance Standards Can Get the US to 0x50

Among climate policy advocates there is a growing consensus around using performance standards to eliminate carbon pollution from the United States. We agree that performance standards should be a central piece to the federal government’s plan to fight climate change. Here’s why.

A national climate plan needs to check many boxes. It must provide guaranteed emissions cuts to ensure we meet net-zero by 2050 at the absolute latest. It must set clear, tangible goals and provide long-term policy certainty to spur full buy-in from businesses and investors. It must be affordable and fair to all Americans. It must be paired …

Accelerating America’s Pledge: Going All-In to Build a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Economy for the United States

Accelerating America’s Pledge is the first analysis to take the current momentum towards climate leadership among U.S. states, cities, and businesses, and project how far that leadership, without Washington, can take the U.S. by 2030. It then layers onto those projections an analysis of a federal administration that has applied the policies developed and tested at the state and local level on a national scale. The report projects these two emissions reductions scenarios based on city, state, business, and federal adoption of ambitious climate action policies:

1. Bottom-Up: The first scenario involves a coalition of states, cities, and businesses deploying …

300 and Counting: State AGs Lead the Fight for Health and the Environment

Attorneys general reach 300 legal and regulatory actions, blunting many severe consequences of the Trump administration’s worst rollbacks, but more actions lie ahead.

The report examines the AGs’ response to some of the administration’s most serious assaults on the environment in six key areas:

The Failure to Confront Climate Change The Reversion to Dirtier, Unhealthy Air Quality The Weakening of Clean Water Protections The Exploitation of Our Public Lands & Wildlife The Undermining of Clean Energy & Energy Efficiency The Failure to Keep Americans Safe from Chemical Accidents and Dangerous Toxics

Oil, Gas and Climate: An Analysis of Oil and Gas Industry Plans for Expansion and Compatibility with Global Emission Limits

This data briefing analyzes the expansion plans of the oil and gas industry and assesses the compatibility with Paris climate goals. We primarily focus on the global expansion threat over the next five years (2020 to 2024). This short-term focus illustrates the urgent need for government, investor, business, and civil society action to chart a different course – to stop licensing and permitting new production and infrastructure and instead manage a swift and just phase-out of oil and gas extraction.

In terms of the global threat, three different metrics are summarized:

1. The investment the oil and gas industry intends …

Persistent Fossil Fuel Growth Threatens the Paris Agreement and Planetary Health

Amidst declarations of planetary emergency and reports that the window for limiting climate change to 1.5 °C is rapidly closing, global average temperatures and fossil fuel emissions continue to rise. Global fossil CO2 emissions have grown three years consecutively: +1.5% in 2017, +2.1% in 2018, and our slower central projection of +0.6% in 2019 (range of –0.32% to 1.5%) to 37 ± 2 Gt CO2 (Friedlingstein et al 2019 Earth Syst. Sci. Data accepted), after a temporary growth hiatus from 2014 to 2016. Economic indicators and trends in global natural gas and oil use suggest a further rise in emissions …

An Assessment of the GREEN Act: Implications for Emissions and Clean Energy Deployment

The Growing Renewable Energy and Efficiency Now (GREEN) Act, a discussion draft distributed to Congress on November 19th, proposes to extend several tax credits for clean energy deployment and expand several others. Given the current political climate and numerous competing priorities facing Congress, a tax credit extension package may possibly be the best chance in this Congress to enact measures that can accelerate clean energy deployment and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This independent analysis quantifies the combined impact of most major provisions of the proposal on both technology deployment and GHG emissions, through 2030.…

Global Carbon Budget 2019

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the “global carbon budget” – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land use change data and bookkeeping models. …

2019 National Preparedness Report

The National Preparedness Report evaluates annual preparedness progress and challenges facing the whole community. The 2019 National Preparedness Report highlights the diverse range of preparedness challenges the Nation faces—from terrorism and active shooter incidents, to cyber attacks, to natural disasters, as well as how stakeholders across the Nation are using preparedness grant funding to invest in preparedness improvements. The 2019 Report also presents cross-cutting trends from the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) and Stakeholder Preparedness Review (SPR), which provide insights into preparedness progress and gaps. Read the 2019 National Preparedness Report.…

People’s Summary of Roadmap to Nowhere: The Myth of Powering the Nation with Renewable Energy

People’s Summary of “Roadmap to Nowhere: The Myth of Powering the Nation with Renewable Energy”

by Timothy Maloney and Mike Conley
Prepared by Leonard Rodberg, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies,
Queens College/CUNY…