[Aug 1-7’22] Sea turtle sex change

Rebooting coal power plants, great barrier reef is thriving (in some places), the gender gap for EVs and 15 countries attempts to get off coal.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Climate 🎉

References: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6].

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‼️News you can’t miss

Here’s one important scary/bad (🙀), good (😻), interesting (😼) and fossil (💩) news item.

🙀 Germany has fired up an otherwise closed coal power plant due to gas crisis

😻 The central and northern most part of the Great Barrier reef is thriving

😼 A look at the gender gap for EVs

💩 Deep dive into 15 countries attempts to get off coal power

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👩‍⚕️ Status: Climate & Science

Let’s look at how we’re doing this week!

[#asia] — Recent heatwaves, rains and floods have killed 300 people in Pakistan, submerged over 2000 villages in India and affected more than 7.2 million people in Bangladesh.

[#heat] — It’s not just Asia and Europe who have had an insane July in terms of temperatures, but also the US. This heat map shows it pretty clear. Most of the US have been blanketed in temperatures well above 30C with a number of heat records being broken.

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📰 The 7 Grand Challenges

⚡️Decarbonize Electricity

Clean electricity is the one do-or-die challenge we must solve.

[#coal] — An interesting study by Carbon Brief has looked at 15 countries and their “attempts” to phase out coal. Despite all the heavy political language to phaseout coal the Carbon Brief study tells a different story as there are still plenty of political drivers (such as continued investments) that allows it’s continued use and even growth. The analysis is too detail to refer in much more detail here so I highly recommend checking it out.

🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas

Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.

[#gender] — I was not aware of this but apparently there’s an EV gender gap. EVs are largely driven by men and not women. Right now the gap is 53% vs 47% which is better than it used to be just in the 2010s where women weren’t even considered a target to own an EV. The article lists a number of theory’s for what’s causing the gap (which to my mind seems a little outdated.. but I’m not the expert here).

[#WFH] — During the pandemic a lot of people was working from home and that trend seems to continue with some workplaces opting for the hybrid model of working some days in the office and some days at home. Other companies are ditching the office altogether. However, this new WFH-style of working is affecting or energy system in a lot of ways. This article looks at how.