Tag: Climate

Why tornadoes are more destructive than ever in the U.S.

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May 22, 2011, began as a beautiful day in Joplin, Missouri. Families and friends gathered outside. Suddenly, the sky changed. Troy Bolander, who grew up in nearby Kansas, noticed the clouds beginning to swirl. He began to prepare his crawl space. Ann Leach, a life coach, was also at home. Tornado sirens blared. Ann took cover on her bathroom floor as a massive EF5 tornado descended upon Joplin. Troy sheltered in his crawl space.

One hundred sixty-one people were killed in the Joplin tornado. Both Troy, a city official, and Ann survived. The May 2011 Joplin tornado left behind almost $3 billion in damage, making it the costliest U.S. tornado on record.

Tornadoes are a billion-dollar problem in the United States. From 2018 to 2023, there have been 17 billion-dollar climate disasters involving tornadoes. And the costs are expected to grow.

Billion-dollar disasters

The U.S. sees about 1,200 tornadoes each year. That’s more than anywhere else in the world.

“Tornadoes are a big problem in the United States,” said Anne Cope, chief engineer at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety.

In 2022 alone, the U.S. experienced two separate billion-dollar tornado outbreaks.

Based on estimated wind speeds and damage, tornadoes can range on a scale from EF0 to EF5.

“This rating scale came to us because wind engineers went out into the field to look at the damage,” Cope said. “And then based on the damage, they were trying to predict what the wind speeds are … so we have developed this system based on how the buildings react.”

That means a tornado’s rating is directly related to the resilience of the buildings in the community it hits.

The powerful EF5 tornado that struck Joplin 12 years ago had estimated winds of 200 miles an hour, according to Joplin city records. It was initially one half mile wide and expanded to three-quarters of a mile wide, traveling on the ground for about 13 miles across the city limits and beyond.

“My place was totally destroyed,” Joplin resident Ann Leach said.

In total, 7,500 residential dwellings in the city were damaged or destroyed. According to the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, 553 businesses were destroyed or severely damaged in the tornado.

But Joplin rebuilt.

“It was phenomenal how swiftly the community came together to respond and help their neighbors out,” Leach said.

“Rebuilding is a very long process and it’s one that is arduous,” said FEMA Associate Administrator for Resilience Victoria Salinas. “It oftentimes takes years to be able to rebuild communities, homes, [and] businesses. And it takes communities coming together to really think about the future and what they’re going to do differently to build more resilience into their communities as they move forward.” 

Shifting patterns

The central Great Plains of the U.S., including states like Kansas and Texas, have historically experienced more tornadoes than anywhere else in the nation.

However, experts say tornadoes can occur across the U.S.

“If you were to ask a thousand tornado scientists where Tornado Alley is, they’re all going to give you different definitions,” said Victor Gensini, associate professor in the Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Northern Illinois University. “The reality is, is that all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, receive tornadoes.”

Places in the Southeast and Midwest have seen an increase in tornado frequency.

“That is really important because we have way more people living east of the Mississippi River,” Gensini said. “And so basically, we have more targets, more exposure, more vulnerability as humans, our built environment, where these tornadoes are happening, and that creates more and more tornado disasters.”

Some cities in these regions include Memphis, Indianapolis and Nashville. 

In March 2020, a deadly tornado hit Nashville, leaving behind over $1.5 billion in damage.

“It’s kind of like this two-sided coin, if you will, where we have this change in probability due to climate. But we also have this increasing footprint and exposure and vulnerability that are going to continue to drive the losses in the future,” Gensini said. “And that’s really how we have to look at this problem. It’s a multifaceted issue.”

Investing in resilience

The U.S. is not helpless when it comes to tornado damage. Engineers know how to build stronger structures that can withstand high winds.

“A lot of tornado damage is preventable,” Cope said. “The EF0 and EF1 portion of the storms, that type of damage can be prevented with strong, resilient building construction. Costs a little bit more than typical building construction, but it’s definitely resilient and it prevents that type of damage.”

The IBHS has some specific recommendations for building resiliently, including having a wind-rated garage door and when reroofing, choosing a stronger option.

In the 2011 Joplin tornado, 84% of deaths resulted from building and structural failures. Missouri does not have a mandatory statewide building code, but in the wake of the massive EF5 tornado, the city of Joplin made some changes to protect its buildings and people from damaging winds. The new codes require anchor bolts every four feet and require hurricane clips to connect the roof to the walls, among other provisions.

“When you’re in an EF5 tornado and the winds are over 200 miles an hour, that system is still going to fail,” said Bolander, Joplin’s director of planning, development, and neighborhood services. “But many of the homes that were on the edge of that zone probably could have been spared if we had that in place.”

Not all communities have building codes in place. As of November 2020, 65% of counties, cities and towns in the U.S. are not covered by modern building codes.

“We should have building codes in all of the places in the United States where the wind can impact us, which is the whole of the United States,” Cope said. “But sadly, only 17 states in the U.S. have a statewide building code and many states that don’t have a statewide building code; it’s a patchwork of counties or local municipalities that might have one and then large unincorporated areas that don’t have one.”

Part of the challenge with building tornado resilience in the U.S. is that building codes are generally a local and a financial decision.

“So we’re talking about counties and municipalities who all have to make a choice or not make a choice,” Cope said. “And these are sometimes tough financial decisions.”

“We didn’t want to increase the cost of housing so much that people couldn’t rebuild or some people couldn’t afford to rebuild,” Bolander said. “So that was a debate amongst ourselves, you know, how far do we want to go with these building code changes?”

Federal resources are also available when it comes to building resiliently. In 2022, FEMA released the FEMA Building Codes Strategy to advance its building code efforts and strengthen resiliency nationwide. The Biden administration has also designated billions of dollars for climate resilience and weatherization through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Watch the video above to see how the U.S. can work to try and fix its billion-dollar tornado problem.

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Oil giant led by COP28 boss to spend an ‘eyewatering’ $1 billion a month on fossil fuels this decade, Global Witness says

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Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and president of this year’s COP28 climate summit gestures during an interview as part of the 7th Ministerial on Climate Action (MoCA) in Brussels on July 13, 2023.

Francois Walschaerts | Afp | Getty Images

UAE oil giant ADNOC — run by the president of the COP28 climate conference — is expected to spend more than $1 billion every month this decade on fossil fuels, according to new analysis by international NGO Global Witness.

This is nearly seven times higher than its commitment to decarbonization projects over the same timeframe, the research says.

ADNOC, which recently became the first among its peers to bring forward its net-zero ambition to 2045, disputes Global Witness’ analysis and says the assumptions made are inaccurate.

It comes ahead of the COP28 climate summit, with Dubai set to host the U.N.’s annual conference from Nov. 30 through to Dec. 12. Viewed as one of the most significant climate conferences since 2015’s landmark Paris Agreement, COP28 will see global leaders gather to discuss how to progress in the fight against the climate crisis.

The person overseeing the talks, Sultan al-Jaber, is chief executive of ADNOC (the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) — one of the world’s largest oil and gas firms. His position as both COP28 president and ADNOC CEO caused dismay among civil society groups and U.S. and EU lawmakers, although several government ministers have since defended his appointment.

Global Witness’ analysis, provided exclusively to CNBC, found that ADNOC is planning to spend an average of $1.14 billion a month on oil and gas production alone between now and 2030 — the same year in which the U.N. says the world must cut emissions by 45% to avoid global catastrophe.

It means that ADNOC is forecast to spend nearly seven times more on fossil fuels through to 2030 than it does on “low-carbon solution” projects.

By 2050, the year in which the U.N. says the entire world economy must achieve net-zero emissions, ADNOC is projected to have invested $387 billion in oil and gas. The burning of fossil fuels is the chief driver of the climate emergency.

A spokesperson at ADNOC told CNBC via email: “The analysis of, and assumptions made, regarding ADNOC’s capital expenditure program beyond the company’s current five-year business plan (2023 to 2027) are speculative and therefore incorrect.”

The Abu Dhabi energy group announced in January this year that it would allocate $15 billion for investment in “low-carbon solutions” by 2030, including investments in clean power, carbon capture and storage and electrification projects.

High-rise tower buildings along the central Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai on July 3, 2023.

Karim Sahib | Afp | Getty Images

Global Witness arrived at its projections by analyzing ADNOC’s forecasted oil and gas capital expenditure, exploratory capital expenditure and operational expenditure for the period from 2023 to 2050. The data was sourced from Rystad Energy’s UCube database.

Rystad’s data is not available to the public, but is widely used and referenced by major oil and gas companies and international bodies.

“Fossil fuels companies like to burnish their green credentials, yet they rarely say the quiet part out loud: that they continue to throw eyewatering amounts at the same old polluting oil and gas that is accelerating the climate crisis,” said Patrick Galey, senior investigator at Global Witness.

“How [al-Jaber] can expect to lecture other nations on the need to decarbonise and be taken seriously is anyone’s guess, while he continues to provide vastly more funding to oil and gas than to renewable alternatives,” he added.

“He is a fossil fuel boss, plain and simple, saying one thing while his company does the other,” Galey said.

Established 30 years ago, Global Witness is a campaign group that receives funding from donors that include The Foundation to Promote Open Society, which is backed by liberal financier and billionaire George Soros, the European Climate Foundation, and the Quadrature Climate Foundation.

Among six campaign promises published last year, Global Witness says it seeks to “stop the oil and gas industry escalating global warming by making us dependent on gas” and to “ensure that the current energy transition is fair and responsible, serving people and the planet.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the analysis conducted by Global Witness. The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC.

Main priority for COP28

Al-Jaber was the founding CEO of Abu Dhabi state-owned renewable energy firm Masdar, which works in more than 40 countries worldwide and has invested in or committed to invest in renewable energy projects with a total value of over $30 billion.

Speaking earlier this year, al-Jaber said the main priority for the COP28 summit will be to keep alive the fight to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Paris Agreement aims to limit the increase in the global average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond the critical temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, it becomes more likely that small changes can trigger dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life support system.

The International Energy Agency says no new oil, gas or coal development is compatible with the goal of curbing global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In response to a request for comment from CNBC, an ADNOC spokesperson said that energy demand is increasing as the world’s population is expanding. “All of the current energy transition scenarios, including by the IEA, show that some level of oil and gas will be needed into the future,” the spokesperson said.

“As such, it is important that, in addition to accelerating investments in renewables and lower carbon energy solutions, we consider the least carbon intensive sources of oil and gas and further reduce their intensity to enable a fair, equitable, orderly, and responsible energy transition. This is the approach ADNOC is taking,” they added.

The spokesperson said its 2022 upstream emissions data confirmed the energy group as one of the least carbon-intensive producers worldwide. The company will seek to further reduce its carbon intensity by 25% and target near zero methane emissions by 2030, they added.

“As we reduce our emissions, we are also ramping up investments in renewables and zero carbon energies like hydrogen for our customers,” the spokesperson said.

A separate report published in April last year by Global Witness and Oil Change International found that 20 of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies were projected to spend $932 billion by the end of the decade to develop new oil and gas fields.

At that time, Russian state company Gazprom was estimated to spend the most on fossil fuel development and exploration projects through to 2030 ($139 billion), followed by U.S. oil majors ExxonMobil ($84 billion) and Chevron ($67 billion).

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No respite for fragile ecosystems as late-summer heatwave pummels France

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A protracted heatwave crawling across much of Europe has brought scorching temperatures to France this week, dealing a further blow to ecosystems already weakened by drought – while also putting human health at risk. 

French authorities placed large swaths of southern France on the highest heat warning level – a “red alert” – on Wednesday as temperatures shot past 40°Celsius (104°F), shattering seasonal records. 

Meteorologists have spoken of a “heat dome” weather pattern settling over the country, with a period of stable high pressure leading to torrid conditions and a lack of wind. 

France as a whole experienced its hottest day ever recorded in the period after August 15 on Monday, according to the national weather service Météo France, which described the current heatwave as “intense, long-lasting” and occurring “particularly late in the season”.  


Since 1947, only six heatwaves have been recorded in France after the August 15 mark, all of them this century.  

“While heatwaves are not exceptional, what is surprising is that they should happen so late,” said climatologist Pascal Yiou, saying it was likely a consequence of climate change. 

“You would normally get these types of temperatures between July 15 and August 15 – not after that,” he added.

Threat to forests, vines and crops 

The latest heatwave is a new blow to fragile ecosystems across Europe, coming on the heels of a summer marked by widespread drought and devastating wildfires in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. 

While France has experienced relatively few forest fires this summer compared to last year, experts have flagged a heightened risk in the coming days, particularly in the country’s south. 

“These high temperatures come at the end of a cycle, when trees are already weakened by the stress of the summer season,” said Serge Zaka, an expert in the ecological impact of climate change. 

“This is normally the time when trees start getting a little respite,” Zaka added. “Instead, they are drying up further, meaning they become even more flammable.”  

Météo France’s daily forest bulletin placed much of southeast France at high risk of fire on Wednesday. Local authorities have also closed most forest parks to the public as a precautionary measure. 

The unseasonal heat comes at a critical time for farmers in areas famed for their wines and fruit production.  

“As with the forests, this time of year usually marks the end of a cycle for vines and other fruit trees such as apples, pears, peaches and kiwis,” Zaka explained. “It’s the time when the grape harvest and picking begin. But the plants suffer if temperatures continue to exceed 35°C.” 

The heatwave has forced these wine growers in the Ardèche area of south-central France to harvest their grapes at night.
The heatwave has forced these wine growers in the Ardèche area of south-central France to harvest their grapes at night. © Clotaire Achi, Reuters

In places where temperatures are reaching 42°C, such as the wine-growing Rhône Valley, crops are already showing signs of weakness. 

“Leaves exposed to the sun are turning brown and fruit is burning,” Zaka said. “It’s too early to draw any conclusions, but there will certainly be yield losses.” 

The heat could also affect sunflowers and maize, he warned, while leading to a fall in the milk yield of dairy cows that are particularly sensitive to high temperatures.

“What’s most worrying is that this will be another blow to crops and ecosystems after a catastrophic 2022 and two difficult years before then,” Zaka said. “With each new extreme weather event, they emerge a little weaker.” 

Water stress

The heatwave is also likely to exacerbate an ongoing drought that has left businesses and households grappling with water shortages.  

According to the latest figures from the French Geological and Mining Research Bureau (BRGM), 72% of water tables remained below normal seasonal levels last month. Nearly 90 municipalities in the south are currently without drinking water and have to be supplied by tankers.   

On Monday, the government ordered 15 industrial sites to cut back the amount of water they use to operate. Part of a wider water-saving plan unveiled earlier this year, the measure is designed to reduce groundwater and river abstraction in France by 10% by 2030.   

Meanwhile, local authorities in several French departments have announced tighter rules on water use, including restrictions on nautical sports and bans on watering gardens, parks and golf courses. 


Electricity operator EDF, which runs France’s nuclear power stations, has also issued warnings about its plants on the Rhone River amid concern that the water they rely on to cool the reactors is getting too hot.

Nuclear reactors use vast quantities of cooling water before dumping it back into rivers at much higher temperatures, potentially damaging local ecosystems.  

France’s nuclear plants are legally required to slow down their output when the water temperature crosses a certain threshold – a risk EDF has so far ruled out.  

‘Cannot lower our guard’

The heatwave’s impact on human health – both physical and mental – is another concern as millions return to work and schools prepare to reopen following the summer break. 

“When the outside temperature rises, our body needs to adapt to ensure its temperature remains at around 37°C,” said Bruno Megarbane, head of the intensive care unit at Lariboisière Hospital in Paris. “That involves using certain regulatory mechanisms, such as sweat.” 

However, extreme heat can cause such mechanisms to fail among vulnerable people, including children, the elderly and those with cardiovascular problems, putting them at risk of heat strokes.

Across Europe, at least 62,000 people died “prematurely” as a result of record heat in 2022, including more than 5,000 in France, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Medicine.  

“Fortunately, since 2003 we have understood the need for preventive measures to cope with extreme heat,” said Megarbane, referring to the severe heatwave 20 years ago that was blamed for tens of thousands of deaths across Europe.  

Such measures include the creation of cooling areas in cities, adapting work hours to avoid the hottest hours, and cancelling certain outdoor events. 

“This late spell of heat is a reminder that we cannot lower our guard now that the summer holidays are over, and that we must be ready to put such measures in place at any time,” Megarbane said. 

He also warned of the possible repercussions on people’s mental health, noting that heatwaves lead to sleep deprivation, “with negative effects on memory and concentration”. 

He said other ailments – including “growing anxiety, parasitic thoughts and mood disorders” – all threaten to become more acute as heatwaves grow in frequency and intensity. 

This article was translated from the original in French.

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Fervo Energy hits milestone in using oil drilling technology to tap geothermal energy

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Fervo Energy’s full-scale commercial pilot, Project Red, in northern Nevada.

Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

Geothermal startup Fervo Energy announced a key technical milestone on Tuesday, paving the way for geothermal energy to play a bigger role in the transition to clean energy.

Fervo drills deep wells and pumps water into them. The water grows hot from the heat of the earth, then Fervo pumps it back to the surface, where a turbine converts that heat to electricity.

Fervo successfully completed a 30-day test, considered an industry standard for geothermal, at its commercial pilot plant in northern Nevada, the company said in a statement. In the test, Fervo drilled down drilled down to 7,700 feet and then turned to drill another 3,250 feet horizontally, and internal temperatures reached roughly 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

The test at its pilot plant achieved conditions that would generate 3.5 megawatts of electricity production, the company said. A single megawatt is roughly enough electricity to meet the demand of 750 homes at once.

Fervo has just started construction on a 400-megawatt project that it expects to be online by 2028, which would power approximately 300,000 homes.

“Fervo’s successful commercial pilot takes next-generation geothermal technology from the realm of models into the real world and starts us on a path to unlock geothermal’s full potential,” Jesse Jenkins, macro-scale energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton, said in a written statement.

Currently, most geothermal energy resources are located near tectonic plate boundaries where magma gets close to the earth’s surface, heating up water trapped in the earth’s surface nearby. In the United States, geothermal energy supplies only 0.4% of electricity right now.

Instead of relying on naturally occurring conditions, Fervo is using drilling technology developed by the oil and gas industry with hydraulic fracturing to create reservoirs in rocks deep underground.

“By applying drilling technology from the oil and gas industry, we have proven that we can produce 24/7 carbon-free energy resources in new geographies across the world,” Tim Latimer, the CEO of Fervo Energy, said in a written statement.   

Fervo Energy co-founders, Jack Norbeck (left) and Tim Latimer.

Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

Leveraging oil and gas drilling technology

A decade ago, Latimer was working in the oil and gas industry as a drilling engineer.

“I loved the work, but I was passionate about climate change. I saw all the tech advancement around me and realized that it could be used for geothermal energy,” Latimer said in a thread he posted on Twitter on Tuesday. Developments in oil and gas drilling, like the development of the polycrystalline diamond cutter, “changed the game,” Latimer said.

“With dramatically lower drilling costs, it would now be possible to drill down to depth and then drill horizontally for enhanced geothermal, significantly increasing the productivity of the resource, and enabling development anywhere,” Latimer wrote on Twitter.

When Latimer first had the idea to use developments in oil and gas drilling to tap into geothermal energy, he faced a lot resistance. The one place he found an interested ear was at Stanford’s geothermal program, where he went to grad school and in 2017 co-wrote and published a paper on the topic. That paper was the foundation for Fervo Energy, which Latimer launched in 2017 with Jack Norbeck, also from Stanford’s geothermal program.

“The last six years have been quite a journey. I never expected how much skepticism and pushback we would receive for what we thought was an obvious idea,” Latimer said in his Twitter thread. “So we set out to systematically prove this was a truly revolutionary, and viable, way of doing geothermal.”

They did find believers, though, and have since raised over $200 million in investment, Latimer said on Twitter.

Fervo’s partnership with Google and looking to the future

Google has been a leader in its commitment to operate on 24-7 carbon-free energy by 2030. “Solving climate change is humanity’s next big moonshot,” Google GEO Sundar Pichai has said.

To deliver on its goal to operate on 24-7 carbon-free energy by 2030, Google has had to buy a lot of renewable energy to support all of its energy-hungry computing processes.

In 2021, Google singed a partnership with Fervo to develop a geothermal power project.

Unlike wind and solar energy, which are intermittent, geothermal energy is an “‘always-on’ carbon-free resource that can reduce our hourly reliance on fossil fuels,” Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director for energy and climate, wrote in 2021 when the partnership was first announced.

“Achieving our goal of operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy will require new sources of firm, clean power to complement variable renewables like wind and solar,” said Terrell in a statement published Tuesday. “We partnered with Fervo in 2021 because we see significant potential for their geothermal technology to unlock a critical source of 24/7 carbon-free energy at scale.”

Fervo Energy’s full-scale commercial pilot, Project Red, in northern Nevada.

Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

As part of the partnership, Google is developing the artificial intelligence and machine learning systems to improve Fervo’s efficiency, and Fervo is adding clean energy to the grid in Nevada, where Google is a large clean energy customer.

The U.S. Department of Energy has also launched what it calls the “Enhanced Geothermal Shot,” which is an effort to reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal energy by 90% to to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035. The Department of Energy says it hopes enhanced geothermal systems can potentially provide clean energy to 65 million American homes.

Fervo still has a long road ahead from building a pilot plant to commercializing geothermal energy at scale, but Wilson Ricks, who works in Jenkins’ lab at Princeton and cowrote a paper on the role of geothermal energy in future decarbonized energy systems, says Fervo’s technical milestone is a real milestone.

“This is a very significant milestone in enhanced geothermal systems development. It is the first application of the advanced drilling and well stimulation techniques developed in the shale oil and gas boom to geothermal, and has demonstrated that these can be used to create artificial geothermal reservoirs delivering high flow rates,” Ricks told CNBC. “There is still more development to be done on the path to large-scale and cost-competitive commercial systems, but the significance of this achievement shouldn’t be understated.”

The kind of enhanced geothermal energy systems, like those that Fervo is developing, “could do double-duty as a form of long-duration energy storage, enhancing their ability to complement wind and solar in a decarbonized grid,” Ricks told CNBC.

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With oil production in freefall, Alaska, America’s worst state for business, chases a new carbon boom

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An oil pipeline stretches across the landscape outside Prudhoe Bay in North Slope Borough, Alaska, May 25, 2019.

The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Alaska can be a rugged and unforgiving place, and that’s not just its landscape. Its economy is prone to big booms and wrenching busts. Lately, it has seen more busts.

More than any other state, Alaska is dependent on oil. As much as 85% of the state’s unrestricted general fund revenue comes from oil production, according to state estimates. In some years, it has been well over 90%. But oil production has been in long-term decline in the state, which was once America’s No. 1 producer of crude but has been surpassed by several shale oil boom states, including Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota. Alaska’s crude production in 2022 was roughly equal to that of Oklahoma, and it hit the lowest level since 1976, according to Energy Department data.

This trend helps explain why Alaska‘s economy performed worse than any other state last year, according to the Commerce Department, shrinking by 2.4%. And it explains why the Last Frontier finished dead last in CNBC’s 2023 America’s Top States for Business rankings.

In addition to a last-place finish in the Economy category, Alaska ranks 49th in the Infrastructure, Education, and Access to Capital categories. It finished 48th in Cost of Doing Business. This is the seventh time since 2007 that Alaska has finished at the bottom, and the third time in the last five studies.

Alaska’s carbon turnaround plan for the future

Alaska isn’t giving up on crude. Recent approvals such as the controversial Willow Project have led state officials to forecast an increase in production in the years ahead. But Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state legislature have a plan that they hope will reverse Alaska’s fortunes once and for all, by making the state less susceptible to gyrations in the oil market.

“Alaska was built on a promise that we would be north of the future. That we would be visionary,” Dunleavy, a Republican, said at a news conference May 23.

Dunleavy was marking the signing of SB 48, legislation that officially puts the state in the carbon business.

“Just like oil, just like gas, just like our timber, this is a commodity that can be monetized now,” he said.

The Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, July 2, 2021.

The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Under the new law, Alaska will be able to sell so-called “carbon offset credits,” capitalizing on the state’s vast public forest lands. Companies that emit carbon will be able to buy the credits, effectively paying the state to preserve and protect its forests, thereby canceling out, or offsetting, those emissions.

What the state doesn’t spend on maintaining its forests, it can keep as revenue.

Alaska Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle, who is working on the rules to implement the program, said in an interview with CNBC that the market for the new credits could be huge as companies discover the limits of carbon reduction technology.

“Across America, and in the rest of the world, you see a number of companies that have set very aggressive net zero (emission) targets for themselves,” he said. “Ultimately, in order for a lot of these companies to be able to hit the targets that they’ve set for themselves, they’re going to need to look for other options for offsets.”

The emissions offset market is growing

Carbon offset programs are already gaining popularity around the world. The California Air Resources Board operates an extensive offset program that the state says is an essential part of its program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

When Dunleavy unveiled the legislation in January, he noted that Alaska’s Native Corporations have generated $370 million in revenue selling offset credits since 2019.

The state has not offered any estimates of how much revenue its program could generate, but Boyle said it could begin making money soon.

“I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the state fully anticipates seeing revenue within a relatively short period of time, likely within the next 12 to 18 months,” Boyle said. “We fully expect to see some new revenues coming in as companies acquire our leases and do other things to prepare themselves to develop carbon offset projects.”

More coverage of the 2023 America’s Top States for Business

Carbon credits are controversial

Alaska is all in on the plan. The bill passed the state Senate unanimously; only two members of the House voted against it.

But outside Alaska, there is no shortage of skepticism.

“Multiple lines of evidence suggest that Alaska’s forest carbon offsets program could produce carbon credits that don’t represent real climate benefits,” wrote Freya Chay and Grayson Badgley of the climate research group CarbonPlan in a commentary published in May. 

They note that while the program promises to protect Alaska’s forests and the climate benefits they provide, it also promises not to reduce timber harvests. The researchers said the credits appear to be structured to “simply reward a landowner for doing what they already planned on doing.”

“Although this could be a win for the State budget, it would be a loss for the climate — and for the credibility of the voluntary carbon market,” they wrote.

Boyle argues that the funding from the offset credits will allow the state to manage its forests more effectively and efficiently. That way, he said, the state will eventually have larger forests — with more trees to capture carbon, and more timber left over to harvest.

“That gives you a margin by which, if you choose, you can do some selective timber harvesting, as long as you maintain a level that is appropriate with the baseline that’s been established,” he said.

Carbon credits are just the beginning of Alaska’s plan to transform its economy. Dunleavy has also proposed creating a “carbon sequestration” program, where the state would capture its carbon emissions — or accept shipments of carbon captured elsewhere — and inject them into underground storage beneath Alaska’s huge expanses of open land.

“There’s a real ability here to move the needle in managing the world’s carbon and storing it for geologically significant periods of time,” Boyle said.

They believe that there is also an ability to diversify Alaska’s economy and make it competitive again, while helping the planet at the same time.

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#oil #production #freefall #Alaska #Americas #worst #state #business #chases #carbon #boom

Hottest global temps ever shatter records for two consecutive days, preliminary data show

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The planet’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to its hottest day in decades and likely centuries, and Wednesday could become the third straight day Earth unofficially marks a record-breaking high. It’s the latest in a series of climate-change extremes that alarm but don’t surprise scientists. 

The globe’s average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool based on satellite data, observations, and computer simulations and used by climate scientists for a glimpse of the world’s condition. On Monday, the average temperature was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 degrees Celsius), setting a record that lasted only 24 hours.

For scientists, it’s a sweaty case of I-told-you-so.

“A record like this is another piece of evidence for the now massively supported proposition that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the calculations.

On Wednesday, 38 million Americans were under some kind of heat alert, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Sarah Kapnick. She said the global heat is from a natural El Nino warming of the Pacific that heats up the planet as it changes worldwide weather on top of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Read moreEl Nino is back, and it’s brought the threat of extreme weather with it

Even normally cooler communities are feeling the heat. In North Grenville, Ontario, the city turned ice-hockey rinks into cooling centers as temperatures Wednesday hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), with humidity making it making it feel like 100.4 degrees (38 degrees Celsius).

“I feel like we live in a tropical country right now,” city spokeswoman Jill Sturdy said. “It just kind of hits you. The air is so thick.”

University of Maine climate scientist Sean Birkle, creator the Climate Reanalyzer, said the daily figures are unofficial but a useful snapshot of what’s happening in a warming world. Think of it as the temperature of someone who’s ill, he said: It tells you something might be wrong, but you need longer-term records to work like a doctor’s exam for a complete picture. 

While the figures are not an official government record, “this is showing us an indication of where we are right now,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Sarah Kapnick. And NOAA indicated it will take the figures into consideration for its official record calculations.

Even though the dataset used for the unofficial record goes back only to 1979, Kapnick said that given other data, the world is likely seeing the hottest day in “several hundred years that we’ve experienced.”

Scientists generally use much longer measurements — months, years, decades — to track the Earth’s warming. But the daily highs are an indication that climate change is reaching uncharted territory.

With many places seeing temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), the new average temperatures might not seem very hot. But Tuesday’s global high was nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (a full degree Celsius) higher than the 1979-2000 average, which already tops the 20th- and 19th-century averages.

High-temperature records were surpassed this week in Quebec and Peru. Beijing reported nine straight days last week when the temperature exceeded 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). Cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon, to Tampa, Florida, have been hovering at all-time highs, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Alan Harris, director of emergency management for Seminole County, Florida, said that they’ve already exceeded last year in the number of days they’ve had their extreme weather plan activated, a measure initiated when the heat index will be 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42.22 degrees Celsius) or greater.

“It’s just been kind of brutally hot for the last week, and now it looks like potentially for two weeks,” Harris said.

In the U.S., heat advisories include portions of western Oregon, inland far northern California, central New Mexico, Texas, Florida and the coastal Carolinas, according to the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. Excessive heat warnings are continuing across southern Arizona and California.

Higher temperatures translate into brutal conditions for people all over the world. When the heat spikes, humans suffer health effects — especially young and elderly people, who are vulnerable to heat even under normal conditions.

“People aren’t used to that. Their bodies aren’t used to that,” said Erinanne Saffell, Arizona’s state climatologist and an expert in extreme weather and climate events. “That’s important to understand who might be at risk, making sure people are hydrated, they’re staying cool, and they’re not exerting themselves outside, and taking care of those folks around you who might be at risk.” 

Overall, the heat means something a little different to everyone. 

In West Texas, it’s cool wraps and Gatorade for construction workers, said Joe Staley, a job site superintendent for a company that builds wastewater treatment plants. In Portland, it’s extra water on backyard vegetable gardens, said Martha Alvarado. In Minnesota, it’s a difficult workout on the family vineyard thanks to extra humidity for Joe Roisen. 

In Dallas, the heat also means a sense of camaraderie for musician Sam Cormier, who often plays outdoors. Apartment dwellers with their windows open step out to bring him a drink. People are still walking around outside, even with the weather, and he plays with just his guitar, which is lighter than other equipment. He’d rather be outside sweating, he said, than inside on a computer. 

NOAA’s Kapnick said the global heat is from a natural El Nino warming of the Pacific that heats up the globe as it changes worldwide weather on top of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

“Not all records are meant to be broken. In almost every corner of our planet, people are facing the brunt of unprecedented heat waves,” said United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen. “We ignore science at our own peril. … It is the poorest and most vulnerable that continue to suffer from our inaction.”

The highs come after months of “truly unreal meteorology and climate stats for the year,” such as off-the-chart record warmth in the North Atlantic, record low sea ice in Antarctica and a rapidly strengthening El Nino, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado. 

Wednesday may bring another unofficial record, with the Climate Reanalyzer again forecasting record or near-record heat. Antarctica’s average forecast for Wednesday is a whopping 4.5 degrees Celsius (8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1979-2000 average. 

Because humanity hasn’t stopped pumping heat-trapping gases into the air, future generations will look back at the summer of 2023 as “one of the coolest of the rest of your life,” said Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler.

(AP)

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#Hottest #global #temps #shatter #records #consecutive #days #preliminary #data #show

Dr. Pradheep Shanker explains what law prof *really* means when he talks about ‘[saving] the planet’

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , ,

Noah Rothman’s cover story for the most recent issue of National Review is all about the radical Left’s “War on Things That Work.” The Left, in the name of fighting climate change, is on a mission to take away modern-day conveniences that are convenient because they work and replace them with stuff that not only doesn’t work, but is quite often worse in many ways than the stuff they’re trying to replace.

This a really important story about a really important topic. So, it’s only natural that radical leftists would strongly object to it. Which brings us to Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor and political scientist at the Georgia State University College of Law. Kreis sees the War on Things That Work a bit differently from how Rothman sees it, i.e. Kreis either doesn’t get it or is deliberately ignoring the truth in order to deceive his followers:

In other words, Anthony is willing to debate the merits of Rothman’s argument with “reasonable minds,” but any mind that would disagree with Anthony is clearly not reasonable. Pretty neat trick, huh?

Anyway, it’s pretty hilarious that Anthony is suggesting to his followers that the Left’s climate agenda is just some innocent careful regulation of just a few little things. Nothing to get concerned about.

*Coughs*

We rather like this rebuttal to Kreis’ BS from Dr. Pradheep Shanker. Aside from actually understanding Rothman’s point, Dr. Shanker is also a hell of a lot more honest than Kreis about what’s really going on here:

And don’t forget the cloth bags teeming with bacteria!

Not only do they not want to solve the problem, but they want to create a bunch of new problems. Because then they can use those problems to justify “carefully regulating” even more aspects of our lives.

***

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How Timberland, Vans, VF Corp. are making sure their cotton isn’t ‘greenwashed’

Post By Business , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Smallholder Farmers Alliance purchase of organic cotton from farmer member.

Norielle Thomas, Smallholder Farmers Alliance

As the harvest season finished at the end of January in Haiti, retail giant VF Corp. made a notable purchase: what is believed to be the first-ever verified regenerative cotton crop grown in the country. 

For the holding company behind brands like Timberland, The North Face, Supreme and Vans, the purchase was significant. For one, it signaled a broader approach to sustainable farming, evolving from an earlier focus on organic cotton — where the emphasis is on the elimination of inputs including pesticides and synthetic fertilizers — to regenerative cotton agriculture practices, which place greater importance on soil health, water retention, and local economic benefits, in addition to the chemical input management.

Timberland had already reintroduced cotton to Haiti following a 30-year absence from the country in collaboration with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, a nonprofit that establishes farmer cooperatives. After five years of study and field experiments, the company introduced its first products made with Haitian-grown organic cotton in the spring of 2021, including two types of sneakers and a tote bag. But the focus quickly moved to regenerative agriculture, a practice more activist shareholders are pressing with big consumer companies. 

“Regenerative agriculture is really important to Timberland and VF because it’s about restoring the soil,” said Atlanta McIlwraith, Timberland’s director of social impact and activation. “We feel like it’s a way to directly address climate change. I think a lot of brands talk about sustainability, and we do as well, but if you think about sustainability, it’s really about doing no harm and maintaining things as they are. And regenerative is really drawing a line that’s higher.”

Behind the scenes, there is another notable aspect to the agricultural first related to technology. With support for Timberland, VF Corp. and VF Foundation, the Smallholder Farmers Alliance worked with Terra Genesis — a Thailand-based firm that VF just announced this week it has a collaboration with on sourcing regenerative rubber — and the Data Economics Company to create a farm data tracking service to verify regenerative cotton crops.

When a farmer decides to work with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, a local agronomist will start coming to their farm and collecting data on regenerative farming, as well as establishing the standards that these farms must meet. If a farm passes the survey, farmers profit not only from the cotton sale, but from the data that verifies the cotton is regenerative.

VF Corp’s efforts with regenerative cotton in Haiti come at a time of growing pressure from consumers for companies to adopt more sustainable practices.

Three out of five consumers in a recent survey claimed that at least half of their last purchase consisted of socially responsible or sustainable products, according to the IBM Institute for Business Value. 

“This consumer demand drives the brands and big companies to want to use more of these products produced in that way,” said Jennifer Hinkel, managing director and CGO of the Data Economics Company.

Consumer brands facing greater ‘greenwashing’ scrutiny

But corporate sustainability claims are being more aggressively challenged by regulators and politicians.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission charged Kohl’s and Walmart with falsely advertising their rayon products as bamboo since 2015, with the companies agreeing to pay $5.5 million in combined penalties.

The FTC is weighing even stiffer penalties for “greenwashing” and is currently contemplating a revised set of rules for environmental marketing claims, with a public comment period set to end later this month.

“If there’s no traceability, there’s no evidence that it is what you say it is,” said Patricia Jurewicz, founder and CEO of the human rights nonprofit organization Responsible Sourcing Network. “People want to know. You don’t want to be saying that there’s better cotton in this product, if in reality, there’s cotton in there that could be contributing to forced labor or other harmful practices,” she added.

This data collection process also gives smallholder farmers a greater say in their relationship with big brands, shifting the balance of power a little in an industry that long favored the consumer companies, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, especially with food crops. The Rockefeller Foundation is currently looking at similar regenerative verification for food agriculture around the world.

The way that the data is collected and packaged is designed to give ownership to the farmer for licensing. “You don’t actually get ownership of the data as VF or a customer. You get to license it and use it for specific purposes,” said Data Economics Company managing director and CTO Arka Ray. 

Data Economics Company serves as the operating system for the entity managing the effort for farmers, Smallholder Data Services, and the farm level data traceability all the way through to the end purchasers, such as VF, and traceability back to compensating the farmers. Empowering small farms in direct connection with larger brands and markets, will be important to bringing sustainability through to the consumer end market, Hinkel said. 

Taking regenerative agriculture global will be a challenge

Applying this approach to the cotton industry and associated products will be complicated. Most cotton is blended with other cotton crops based on characteristics of the cotton, including color, strength, length, and price point, “and what’s realistic for some of the fast fashion that’s out there,” Jurewicz said. “What’s harder is applying these technologies to conventional cotton, to all the cotton that’s out there, rather than just to the real responsible cotton,” she said.

Even with progress made in recent years on organic cotton production, it’s still a tiny piece of the global industry. The 2020/21 global harvest of certified organic cotton was up 37% year over year, according to the Textile Exchange, but that represents 1.4% of all cotton grown globally. And Haiti, in particular, plays a very small role in global production, having only reinitiated cotton farming in recent years. The top five cotton-producing nations — India, China, the U.S., Brazil and Pakistan — control 77% of the global output, according to OECD data.

Nevertheless, while regenerative agriculture may be an emerging concept in developed markets like the United States and Europe, it isn’t new to Haitian farmers.

“When it’s introduced to smallholder farmers, we don’t really say, ‘Oh, here’s a new thing called regenerative’ because they recognize each of the practices of regenerative agriculture as things they’ve done in the past, things their parents did,” said Hugh Locke, senior editor president and co-founder of Smallholder Farmers Alliance and Smallholder Data Services.

VF Corp. was introduced to Haiti through Timberland, which started its efforts in the country in 2010 when the footwear company became the founding corporate sponsor for the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. Originally, Timberland and the Smallholder Farmers Alliance worked together on a tree planting operation under which smallholders were rewarded with credits for helping to reach the goal of planting 5 million trees, and they could then use those credits in exchange for seed, tools, training and other agricultural services.

McIlwraith says that Timberland and the Smallholder Farmers Alliance saw unexpected benefits from that program back on the farm, producing a 40% increase in smallholder farmers’ organic crop yields and 50% to 100% increases in farmers’ incomes.

“Haiti is so degraded, environmentally talking, and because of that any other project cannot be sustainable. So, we tackle the problem from its roots, which is environmental degradation in the country,” said Timote Georges, executive director and co-founder of Smallholder Farmers Alliance.

Tracking and verifying this data has encouraged more farmers to switch to regenerative cotton farming.

“There is a positive community kind of peer pressure that emerges and encourages farms to participate in this data network. … And which then by osmosis gets more and more farms to adopt regenerative practices because the ROI loop is very clear,” Ray said.

As brands create stricter goals tied to production practices, they will need to be able to demonstrate that they’re meeting them. “So I think all of that together, it will continue to incentivize this type of data tracking traceability,” Jurewicz said.

Sustainable development goals are hopelessly off track, World Bank senior managing director says

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Zipline unveils P2 delivery drones that dock and recharge autonomously

Post By Business , , , , , , , , , ,

Logistics startup Zipline has flown more than 38 million miles with its autonomous electric delivery drones since the company was founded in 2014. Zipline put its first fleet to work in Rwanda, delivering blood and other health supplies to clinics and hospitals. Since then, the Silicon Valley startup has expanded its service in six other countries, with limited delivery service and distribution centers in three states.

On Wednesday, Zipline showed off its next-generation aircraft, which it hopes will make rapid aerial deliveries an everyday convenience for customers throughout the U.S., even in densely populated urban areas.

Zipline’s new drone, dubbed the Platform 2 or P2 Zip, is capable of carrying up to eight pounds worth of cargo within a ten-mile radius, and can land a package on a space as small as a table or doorstep.

“The reason that number is important,” says Zipline CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, “is that when you look at e-commerce in the US, a vast majority of packages weigh five pounds or less.”

Zipline cofounders, CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton and CTO Keenan Wryobek

Zipline

The P2 Zip can travel ten miles in ten minutes, and the company can make a delivery approximately seven times faster than any typical service you may order from today, the CEO said. Rapid deliveries by drone may put an end to “porch pirates,” Rinaudo Cliffton said, referring to the theft of packages left on a doorstep while the customer is away from home.

While Zipline’s original drone, the P1 Zip, features a fixed wing or glider-like design, the P2 employs both lift and cruise propellers and a fixed wing. These help it maneuver precisely and quietly, even in rainy or windy weather.

To deliver cargo to a customer’s door, the P2 Zip hovers around 300 feet above ground level and dispatches a kind of mini-aircraft and container called the “droid.” The droid descends on a long thin tether, and maneuvers quietly into place with fan-like thrusters before setting down for package retrieval.

Zipline’s original P1 drones will remain in production and in wide use, says Rinaudo Cliffton. The P1 Zip can fly a longer distance, delivering up to five pounds of cargo within a 60-mile radius, but it requires a larger space for take off, landings and “the drop.”

The P1 Zip lets cargo down with a parachute attached, so its payload lands within a space about the size of two car parking spots. After a P1 Zip returns to base, an employee needs to disassemble it, then set up a new one, dropping in a freshly charged battery for the next flight.

Zipline’s new P2 Zip can dock and power up autonomously at a charging station that looks something like a street lamp with an arm and a large disc attached to that arm:

A rendering of P2 Zips charging at a docking station.

Zipline

Zipline docks can be installed in a single parking spot or alongside a building depending on zoning and permits. Zipline envisions the docks set up by restaurants in a downtown shopping district, or alongside the outer wall of a hospital, where the droid can be inserted into a window or dumbwaiter, retrieved, and reloaded by healthcare workers indoors.

Setting up one of these docks takes about as much work as installing an electric vehicle charger, Rinaudo Cliffton said.

Before developing the P2 Zip, Zipline had established logistics networks in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda already. It is operating some drone delivery networks in the US, in North Carolina, Arkansas and Utah — but the P2 will help it expand that network.

Partners who plan to test deliveries via P2 Zip include the healthy fast-casual restaurant Sweetgreen, Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, Michigan Medicine, Multicare Healthcare System in Tacoma, Wash., and the government of Rwanda.

Zipline is not alone in its ambitions. Zipline is part of a program with other startups like DroneUp and Flytrex to make deliveries for Walmart. Amazon, meanwhile, has been working on making drone deliveries a reality here for nearly a decade, although that business has struggled to overcome a thicket of regulation and low demand from test customers.

Quiet and green is the goal

Zipline head of engineering Jo Mardall told CNBC the company focused much of its engineering on making sure the drones were not just safe and energy-efficient, but also quiet enough that residents would embrace their use. 

“People are worried about noise, rightly. I’m worried about noise. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s a bunch of loud aircraft flying above my house,” he said. “Success for us looks like being in the background, being barely audible.” That means something closer to rustling leaves than a car driving by. 

The droid component of the P2 Zip is designed to enter distribution centers through a small portal, where it’s loaded up with goods for delivery.

Zipline

The P2 Zips have a unique propeller design that makes this possible, Mardall explained, adding, “The fact that the Zip delivers from from 300 feet up really helps a lot.”

Mardall and Rinaudo Cliffton emphasized that Zipline aims to have a net-beneficial impact on the environment while giving business a better way to move everything from hot meals to refrigerated vaccines just in time to customers. 

Unmanned aerial vehicles, they explained, avoid worsening traffic congestion by going overhead. And since Zipline’s drones are electric, they can be powered with renewable or clean energy, without the emissions from burning jet fuel, gasoline, or diesel.

But most importantly, the CEO said, Zipline’s drone delivery allows companies to “centralize more inventory,” and “dramatically reduce waste.”

A study published by Lancet found that hospitals using Zipline services were able to reduce their total annual blood supply waste rate by 67%, the CEO boasted.

“That is a mind-blowing statistic, and a really big deal. It saves health systems millions of dollars, by reducing inventory at the last mile and only sending it when it’s needed.”

Zipline is aiming to bring that efficiency to every corner of commerce, the CEO said. It’s also aiming to keep the cost of drone delivery competitive with existing services, like FedEx and UPS, or food delivery apps like Uber Eats and Instacart.

But first, the startup plans to conduct more than 10,000 test flights using about 100 new P2 Zips this year. With its existing P1 drones, Zipline is already on track to complete about 1 million deliveries by the end of 2023, and by 2025 it expects to operate more flights annually than most commercial airlines.

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Rise in space tourism, rocket launches pose new threat to ozone layer, researchers warn

Post By World , , , , ,

New research shows that increased space travel could undo efforts to repair the hole in the ozone layer. Successful global coordination to ban harmful chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gasses and restore the ozone was a rare climate triumph – but can it be replicated in the face of a potential new threat? 

Researchers in New Zealand have warned that expected increases in space travel are likely to damage the Earth’s ozone layer if coordinated action is not taken. 

Although emissions from rocket launches are currently relatively small compared to other human activities, they could grow to rival emissions from the aviation industry in coming decades, researchers from the University of Canterbury wrote in a new article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 

“Many emissions products from rocket launches are ozone-depleting, and the threat to the ozone layer could be significant,” they wrote. 

The ozone is a protective layer of the atmosphere that sits 15 to 50km above the Earth’s surface and absorbs almost all of the sun’s UV light, which can be harmful to humans and wildlife. 

CFCs and other harmful chemicals have depleted the ozone layer, notably over both the Arctic and Antarctic. But the degradation is most pronounced in the southern hemisphere, where a significant hole in the ozone layer has formed every spring since 1979.      

A billion-dollar industry 

Rocket launches pose a danger to the Earth’s protective layer as they emit damaging gasses and particles “directly into the middle and upper atmosphere, where the protective ozone layer resides”, the researchers wrote. 

In addition to harmful substances released by burning rocket fuel, space debris from parts that burn up upon their return to Earth also disperses damaging particles into the atmosphere.    

Without developments in rocket and fuel technologies, these emissions are set to increase as the space sector grows rapidly in every region of the world.  

Around 70 nations now have space agencies and private space companies are also becoming more common. The “billionaire space race” – led by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX – is pushing satellite and space tourism initiatives that “suggest an upwards trend in global launch totals”, the researchers wrote.     

“We’ve seen rocket launches almost doubling in three years and there are missions aiming towards launching up to as many as three rockets a day, which is just unprecedented,” said Dr. Eloise Marais, associate professor in physical geography at University College London.  

“With the potential for growth in the space sector, there is reason to be concerned; the pollution coming from rocket launchers and disposal of space junk isn’t regulated under any framework.”

Globally, smaller companies are also proliferating. India alone had a total of total of 368 space tech businesses as of May 2021, due to heavy investment in its own commercial space industry. 

The global space launch market was valued at almost $14.5 billion in 2022 and is expected to almost triple, to close to $43 billion, by 2030. 

An environmental success story 

There is strong precedent for introducing regulatory framework to protect the atmosphere.  

In 1987, the international Montreal Protocol aimed to reduce damage to the ozone layer by phasing out harmful CFCs, which were widely used for refrigeration, solvents, in aerosols and for industrial activities. 

“It’s been quoted as the most successful global environmental treaty there’s ever been,” says Martyn Chipperfield, professor at the University of Leeds and senior researcher at the UK’s National Centre for Earth Observation. Adoption of the treaty has avoided “catastrophic ozone depletion”, he said.  

A UN report in January confirmed the global phase-out of nearly 99 percent of banned ozone-depleting substances. As a result, the hole in the ozone is shrinking and is on track to recover within four decades.   

Without the protocol it is estimated that two-thirds of the ozone layer would have been destroyed by 2065, and the amount of damaging solar radiation reaching the Earth would have more than doubled. 

This rare success story has been touted as an example for other environmental progress. “Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” said the World Meteorological Organization’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency – to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.” 

Goodwill and action? 

However, the circumstances of the Montreal treaty made it uniquely poised for widespread adoption and success. “Industry was on board with the controls, because they could see there was a move to control CFCs and they had alternatives, and there was a multilateral fund which enabled non-developed countries to transition to other alternatives without financial penalties,” Chipperfield said. 

“And the initial protocol was very modest in its aims; it said, as the science becomes clearer, we can have amendments to make it stronger. And in due course, there were these amendments.”  

By contrast, there is no obvious clean replacement for rocket fuels currently in use and little impetus to regulate a small – but rapidly expanding ­– sector, even though there are pressing environmental concerns to consider. 

One of these is the black carbon that is released into the atmosphere in the form of soot particles as a result of each rocket launch. These particles can linger in the higher levels of the atmosphere, where there is no rain to wash them out, for two and a half years before they settle back to earth.  

“They are very, very efficient at absorbing the sun’s rays, so they warm up the local atmosphere and they offset the energy balance of the earth and impact climate,” said Marais. 

As the space industry grows, researchers in New Zealand are calling for coordinated global action to measure emissions from launch vehicles and share data to build a picture of the environmental risk rocket launches may pose.  

They also suggest that effects on ozone should be incorporated into industry best-practices for rocket design and development. 

“Ozone recovery has been a global success story. We want to ensure that future rocket launches continue that sustainable recovery,” said a co-author of the research, Dr. Laura Revell, an associate professor in environmental physics. 

There is hope among experts that more steps can be taken. “People do care about the ozone layer,” said Chipperfield. “You’d hope there would be some goodwill and action taken like there was last time it was threatened.” 

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