Net Zero

1. Climate hits clean power
2. Not enough renewables
3. Colombia’s hydro problem
4. Oil cools on ceasefire talks
5. The SCOTUS climate docket

How to save the US steel industry, and Princeton permits fossil financing.

Climate comes for clean power

Renewable energy developers may be building solutions to the climate crisis, but as Hurricane Helene showed, they aren’t immune from its impacts.

When the storm hammered North Carolina last month, Ben Catt’s first thoughts were of his staff. His company, the solar farm developer Pine Gate Renewables, is based in Asheville: With power and cell networks down, it took Catt four days to contact all 100 of his employees, some of whose homes were destroyed completely. Catt’s own house was damaged by a fallen tree. Then he started receiving reports from his engineers: About 20 of the company’s solar fields, one-fifth of its fleet, were offline and some sustained minor damage.

All but one of those sites are back online as of this week, Catt said (the last is held up by broader damage to the nearby electric grid). But the fallout will hurt the company financially, and won’t be entirely covered by insurance.

As renewable energy developers find themselves on the front lines of climate change, they’ll need new strategies to stay resilient and solvent. The fossil fuel system has always been exposed to extreme weather; every year some offshore rigs and oil refineries in the US Gulf Coast are knocked out by hurricanes. But those are familiar challenges for operators and their insurers. Even though large-scale renewables are by now commonplace across the world, they are still treated by many insurers as a riskier asset class than conventional infrastructure, raising the costs of project development.

Not enough renewables

Renewable energy installations are poised to skyrocket around the globe in the next few years, but not fast enough for governments to meet their goal of tripling renewables capacity by 2030.

The pace of renewables deployment in the US is set to double in the next six years compared to the previous six, driven by Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, according to the latest International Energy Agency forecast. Growth will be even faster in China. Across all markets, the biggest growth sectors will be solar and onshore wind. Conversely, the supply of green hydrogen will continue to lag, the IEA expects, and make up no more than 4% of global hydrogen supply by 2030. It all adds up to slower-than-need decarbonization: A separate report this week from the Rhodium Group concludes there’s now less than a 7% chance of meeting the Paris Agreement warming targets without a major shift in policy.

Person of interest

Susana Muhamad, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, will lead the biodiversity-focused COP16 this month. Muhamad — who started her career at Shell before resigning over what she said was “greenwashing”— will also helm Colombia’s $40 billion investment plan aimed at weaning the country off fossil fuels. However an ongoing drought may scupper Bogotá’s ambitious goals given that Colombia produces almost two-thirds of its electricity from hydropower.

Muhamad, a minister in Colombia’s leftist government, believes that any progress could also help address inequalities and pacify the historically fractious country. “This energy transition cannot be at the cost of Indigenous peoples, local communities, and biodiversity,” she said last year at COP28 in Dubai.

Oil cools on ceasefire talks

Price per barrel of Brent crude oil on Wednesday. Prices dipped following news of a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah, after climbing for most of last week as intensifying conflict in the Middle East raised the prospect of a major oil supply disruption. Even as conflict around the world’s oil infrastructure continues to heat up — Ukraine is also escalating its attacks on Russian energy installations — prices are most likely to go down next year, not up, the US Energy Information Administration forecast, due to falling demand.

Geopolitical risk also generally has a smaller market impact than many think it will, according to a new Deutsche Bank analysis: “Markets are always grappling with inherent uncertainty.” Gulf nations, meanwhile, have “largely been immune to the turmoil” as their economies grow and development booms, Semafor Gulf editor Mohammed Sergie wrote this week.

The SCOTUS climate docket

The US Supreme Court declined to block a key Biden administration climate policy in one of the first decisions of its new term, but there are still plenty of issues on its upcoming docket to make environmentalists nervous. This term is the first since the justices overturned the so-called “Chevron doctrine,” a precedent that deferred to federal agencies on ambiguous regulatory questions and tended to favor stronger environmental policy.

In handing a decision on Biden’s pollution standards for power plants back to a lower court on Friday, the justices deferred a chance to exercise post-Chevron discretion, but the case will likely reach their desks eventually, with major implications for how Biden’s successor is able to implement, or scale back, climate action.

The court will also rule on whether to constrain federal regulators’ ability to approve nuclear waste storage sites, and whether to limit the scope of environmental reviews for energy projects.

New Energy

• Green hydrogen is unlikely to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels anytime soon, Harvard researchers reported. That will severely limit its usefulness as a climate solution for industries like steel and trucking.

Fossil Fuels

• US utilities are moving too slow to retire coal-fired power plants, a Sierra Club report argues.
• Big Oil executives have an unlikely message for Donald Trump’s campaign: Don’t gut the Inflation Reduction Act.
• Peak global fossil fuel consumption is likely by the end of this decade, prominent forecaster Jarand Rystad believes. His firm also believes the US fracking industry is unlikely to be affected by the presidential election one way or the other.
• BP is dropping a goal to cut its oil output, the latest strategy shakeup by CEO Murray Auchincloss as he aims to scale back the company’s energy transition plans and rebuild confidence with its core shareholders.
• India is racing to develop its oil industry before global demand dries up.

Finance

• Princeton University will reverse a policy blocking its academics from using fossil fuel funding for their research, after some complained that the rules restricted access to important climate research grants.

Tech

• Google is in talks with global utilities to use more nuclear power for its data centers.
• Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt, until recently a darling of the climate tech movement, filed for bankruptcy protection as it runs out of cash.

Mining & Minerals

• Scientists in the UK are urging citizens to go “urban mining” through their old electronics to hunt out valuable bits of copper.

EVs

• EU countries that voted last week in favor of tariffs on EVs imported from China are likely to be hit with retaliatory tariffs.
• Rivian is asking the Biden administration for a loan to restart its stalled EV plant in Georgia.

Personnel

• Former US climate envoy John Kerry is joining forces with billionaire climate tech investor Tom Steyer, taking up a seat as co-executive chair of Steyer’s Galvanize Climate Solutions.

Bill Peduto, former mayor of Pittsburgh. In a new column Peduto argues that better climate policy is necessary to keep the US steel industry afloat.

• Brazilian local elections provide a far-right foothold.
• Kamala Harris struggles to balance ‘change’ and loyalty to Joe Biden.
• The New York Times is testing a new puzzle called Zorse.