[July 4-10’22] Biggest political act of greenwashing in history

Fossil gas IS GREEN?!, the downfall of gasoline, cool solar project solving housing and solar problem, why fossil fuels are hard to kill.

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.

🙀 Fossil gas voted “green” by EU politicians

😻 The downfall of gasoline in five charts

😼 Cool solar project in the US combines solving the housing crisis with solar power

💩 Why fossil fuels are hard to kill? Tax revenues, look at Norway or this small county in California.

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👩‍⚕️ Status: Climate & Science

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

[#extremeweather] — Here’s a crazy little slideshow with an overview of the last week of extreme weather from heat waves just about every where to green storms (green storm: a storm that is the color green).

[#ozonehole] — A new big ozone hole have been found over the tropics. And apparently it’s been there for quite a while. What’s interesting about this one is that it has been found to be important in order to regulate and cool stratospheric temperatures, which might have an impact on climate change (and of course an increase in skin cancer in those areas).

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📰 The 7 Grand Challenges

⚡️Decarbonize Electricity

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

[#china] — Here’s a very detailed analysis of China’s latest 5 year plan which outlines the country’s renewable energy plan. It looks at whether they are likely to achieve it and whether it’s good enough.

[#housingsolar] — This is a great project! MCE (something as rare as a non-profit electricity supplier) and Grid Alternatives (a solar installer) is buying lands and abandoned homes, retrofitting them, slapping solar on and selling them to not only help bring more solar power on the grid but also help solve the housing crisis in the US.

[#100%renewable] — A new study by Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson shows us how 145 countries around the world can easily handle the loads on their grids with 100% renewable energy. He excludes nuclear power for some reason which is not very well explained in the article though. Having heard interviews with Mark before I think it’s mostly a matter of that he don’t think we need it.

[#nuclear] — Despite Mark’s study it appears that nuclear is gaining political favor in the US as a clean energy source, which might be a good thing. Nuclear still has a lot of problems in terms of cost- and schedule overruns that need to be solved, but keeping old generators open should be a no brainer.

🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas

Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.