More Than 100 Cities Now Mostly Powered By Renewable Energy, Data Shows

The Guardian - Elle Hunt

The number of cities getting at least 70% of their total electricity supply from renewable energy has more than doubled since 2015

The Nesjavellir geothermal plant in Iceland. The capital Rejkjavik gets 100% of its electricity from renewable sources. Photograph: Alamy

The number of cities reporting they are predominantly powered by clean energy has more than doubled since 2015, as momentum builds for cities around the world to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources.
Data published on Tuesday by the not-for-profit environmental impact researcher CDP found that 101 of the more than 570 cities on its books sourced at least 70% of their electricity from renewable sources in 2017, compared to 42 in 2015.
Nicolette Bartlett, CDP’s director of climate change, attributed the increase to both more cities reporting to CDP as well as a global shift towards renewable energy.
The data was a “comprehensive picture of what cities are doing with regards to renewable energy,” she told Guardian Cities.
That large urban centres as disparate as Auckland, Nairobi, Oslo and Brasília were successfully moving away from fossil fuels was held up as evidence of a changing tide by Kyra Appleby, CDP’s director of cities.

“Reassuringly, our data shows much commitment and ambition,” she said in a statement. “Cities not only want to shift to renewably energy, but, most importantly – they can.”
Much of the drive for climate action at city level in the past year has been spurred on by the global covenant of more than 7,400 mayors that formed in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord.
Burlington, Vermont, was the only US city reporting to CDP that sourced all of its power from renewable sources after having fully transitioned in 2015. Research from the Sierra Club states there are five such cities in the US in total.
Burlington is now exploring how to become zero-carbon.
Mayor Miro Weinberger said to CDP that its shift to a diverse mix of biomass, hydro, wind and solar power had boosted the local economy, and encouraged other cities to follow suit. Across the US 58 towns and cities, including Atlanta and San Diego, have set a target of 100% renewable energy.
In Britain, 14 more cities and towns had signed up to the UK100 local government network’s target of 100% clean energy by 2050, bringing the total to 84. Among the recent local authority recruits were Liverpool City Region, Barking and Dagenham, Bristol, Bury, Peterborough, Redcar and Cleveland.

But the CDP data showed 43 cities worldwide were already entirely powered by clean energy, with the vast majority (30) in Latin America, where more cities reported to CDP and hydropower is more widespread.
In the six months to July, Latin American cities reported having instigated $183m of renewable energy projects – less than Europe ($1.7bn) or Africa ($236m). Europe topped the list for projects open for investment, but laid claim to just 20% of the 101 cities to be predominantly powered by clean energy.
The Icelandic capital Reyjkavik, sourcing all electricity from hydropower and geothermal, was among them. It is now working to make all cars and public transit fossil-free by 2040.

Links

• New data gives hope for meeting the Paris climate targets
• Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate
• Energy security not about 'locking in status quo', says chief scientist
• Renewable energy smashes global records in 2015, report shows
• Tasmanian power crisis reveals urgent need for more renewable energy
• Renewable energy won't rid us of the horrors of coal
• Social media explosion powered by dirty energy, report warns

Climate Change Will Accelerate Extreme Weather Events In The Coming Years

Public Radio International - Adam Wernick

This Jan. 4 Geocolor image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-16 satellite captured the record "bomb cyclone" nor’easter that battered the East Coast of the United States in January 2018.  Credit: NOAA

Humanity is now facing an ever-increasing threat of unpredictable and extreme weather, climate scientists warn.

While global warming is creating more powerful storms and record-breaking, drought-driven wildfires, it would be a mistake to view these events as the “new normal,” they say. The planet has not reached a new climate stability, so the years ahead could be quite a lot worse.
“‘New normal’ implies that we reach some new sort of equilibrium and that's where things stay, whereas what we're looking at is an ever-shifting baseline,” says Penn State professor and atmospheric scientist Michael Mann.
“If we continue to emit these warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, then the heat waves will become more frequent and more intense, [along with] droughts, wildfires and floods,” he continues. “We are seeing a taste of what's in store and there's no question in my mind that, in the unprecedented extreme weather that we've seen over the past year, we can see the fingerprint of human influence on our climate.”

El Niño years tend to be warmer than other years, and global average temperatures are rising overall. (Image: NASA Earth Observatory chart by Joshua Stevens, using data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

Scientists have long predicted the type of events that occurred in 2017. A warming Earth and warming oceans would supply more energy to intensify hurricanes and killer storms; more moisture in the atmosphere would increase the amount of heavy rainfall leading to Harvey- and Irma-like floods; and, while it seems paradoxical, as the rainfall events become more intense, they would be fewer and farther between, creating more widespread drought.
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” Mann says. “We are seeing them play out now in the form of these unprecedented events.”

So, even while EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt personally oversees the scrubbing of the term “climate change” from federal government websites, states, cities, towns and municipalities are planning for climate change’s costs and consequences. And taxpayers are paying the tab: $306 billion in 2017 alone — and that number is expected to increase.
“If you talk to the leading economists who study climate change mitigation, they will tell you that the cost of inaction is already far greater than the cost of action — which is to say, doing something about the problem, imposing a price on carbon emissions, is a much cheaper option than the option of not doing anything and experiencing more of these devastating $300 billion or greater annual tolls from climate change,” Mann says.
The Trump administration’s actions, through the EPA and the Departments of the Interior and Energy, increase the risk of incurring even higher costs, in lives and money, from the effects of extreme weather, Mann believes.
“Right now, here in the United States, we don't have the support at the executive level that we'd like to see for climate action,” Mann says. “The risks are clear. They're not subtle anymore. We're seeing them play out. [The] extreme weather and climate-related damage this last year … had the fingerprint of human impact on climate. It doesn't stop there. If we continue not to act, then the damages accrue.”
“Pretty soon, we commit to the melting of much of the Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” he continues, “and sea level rise, that thus far had been limited to less than a foot, starts to become measured in feet and then pretty soon in meters and yards.”
“So, there isn't a new normal,” he concludes. “Things get continually worse if we go down this highway. What we need to do is to take the earliest exit ramp that we can in the form of decreasing our emissions and transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

Links

• Extreme Weather Likely to Increase (audio + transcript)
• Extreme hurricanes and wildfires made 2017 the most costly U.S. disaster year on record
• Changing Climate, Changing Language
• Living on Earth: Climate Change and Your Health
• The Best and Worst Cities Preparing For Climate Change

Health Savings Outweigh Costs Of Limiting Global Warming: Study

AFP

To date, the average global temperature is thought to have increased by 1 C since the Industrial Revolution. AFP/File / Jorge Guerrero

The estimated cost of measures to limit Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions can be more than offset by reductions in deaths and disease from air pollution, researchers said on Saturday.
It would cost $22.1 trillion (17.9 trillion euros) to $41.6 trillion between 2020 and 2050 for the world to hold average global warming under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a team projected in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.
For the lower, aspirational limit of 1.5 C, the cost would be between $39.7 trillion and $56.1 trillion, they estimated.
But air pollution deaths could be reduced by 21-27 percent to about 100 million between 2020 and 2050 under the 2 C scenario, the team estimated, and by 28-32 percent to about 90 million at 1.5 C.
"Depending on the strategy used to mitigate climate change, estimates suggest that the health savings from reduced air pollution could be between 1.4-2.5 times greater than the costs of climate change mitigation, globally," they wrote.
Health costs from air pollution include medical treatment, patient care, and lost productivity.
The countries likely to see the biggest health savings were air pollution-ridden India and China, said the researchers, who used computer models to project future emissions, the costs of different scenarios for curbing them, and the tally in pollution-related deaths.
"The health savings are exclusively those related to curbing air pollution," study co-author Anil Markandya of the Basque Centre for Climate Change in Spain told AFP.
"Other health benefits are not included, which of course makes our figures underestimates of the total benefits."
The costs of limiting warming, Markandya explained, included higher taxes on fossil fuels like oil and coal, which in turn raise the costs of production.

Climate change: The countries likely to see the biggest health savings were air pollution-ridden China and India, said the researchers. Image source: Reuters

The world's nations agreed on the 2 C limit in Paris in 2015, and undertook voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
These pledges, even if they are met, place the world on a 3 C trajectory, scientists say.
To date, the average global temperature is thought to have increased by 1 C since the Industrial Revolution.
"We hope that the large health co-benefits we have estimated... might help policymakers move towards adopting more ambitious climate policies and measures to reduce air pollution," said Markandya.
Air pollution from fossil fuel emissions, particularly fine particulate matter and ozone, has been linked to lung and heart disease, strokes, and cancer.

Links

• The health and economic benefits of climate mitigation and pollution control
• Health co-benefits from air pollution and mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study
• A safe operating space for humanity
• The Lancet Commission on pollution and health
• Climate change: It would cost $41.6 tn to hold average global warming under 2 degrees Celsius