[Nov 21-Nov 27’22] RIP BPDeezNuts 🪦

More junk offsets, 10% drop in UK electricity usage, detailed COP27 recap and how the fossils influenced COP27.

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

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

Lots of post-COP27 analysis this week and of course we mourn the loss of Mary Annaïse Hegglar and Amy Westervelts wonderful greentrolling fake twitter account BPDeezNuts. May it rest in peace🪦🙏.

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‼️News you can’t miss

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

🙀 Here’s another group of offsets that might actually make the problem worse

😻 Great (and a bit scary) news of a 10% drop in household electricity use in the UK.

😼 In case you missed COP27, this article covers pretty much everything that happened

💩 How the fossil fuel industry influenced the outcome at COP27

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👩‍⚕️ Status: Climate & Science

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

[#lossanddamage] — The new loss and damage fund that was agreed upon at COP27 might face a problem which is that climate scientists have warned that there may not be enough data from countries in Africa to be able to conclude that a certain catastrophe was related to climate change. This is interesting in a number of ways: First of all, it’s a great loop hole that will be exploited by politicians world wide. Secondly, why aren’t we tracking climate change detailed enough on one of the continents in the world that are bound to be hit hard by climate change?

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📰 The 7 Grand Challenges

⚡️Decarbonize Electricity

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

[#tidalturbine] — The UK are looking a lot to harvest the potential of tides around the country. Although costs have dropped by 40% since 2018 it will take until 2035 to drop below nuclear generation in the country. Currently the cost of one MWh produced by the Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power plant is 92GBP and in 2035 the cost of tidal turbines is expected to drop to 72.5GBP.

[#offsets] — Aaah carbon offsets. The great idea that we can solve the climate crisis by continuing to do as we’ve always done as long as somebody plants some trees or put up a wind turbine. Here’s a great investigation by Akshat Rathi into some of these junk carbon offsets in particular offsets and credits in relation to renewable energy and how they might actually make the problem worse.

🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas

Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.

[#energycrisis] — The two largest electricity suppliers in the UK have reported a 10% decrease in household power consumption since October this year — people are really taking the energy crisis serious. There must be a lesson in there somewhere from the climate movement…

[#EV] — As an EV owner I’m fortunate enough to get a lot of questions from friends and family around how living with an EV works. And in short: It’s great. But it might not be so obvious to everyone. So it’s great to see Colorado launching an official EV education program to help people make the right decision. Remember, the next car you buy will be in use for the next 12 years on average so you need to make the right decision today, not your next car.