[Oct 24-30’22] We’re headed for 2.6C

1.5C is definitive out of reach, energy generation carbon emission peak in 2025, Ukraine war to speed up clean energy transition, fossil fuel addiction detrimental to global health

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

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

Got another pretty substantial member increase this week. So welcome to all and thank you for subscribing to The Weekly Climate everyone 🙏

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‼️News you can’t miss

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

🙀 No longer possible to reach 1.5C says the UN’s new Emission Gap report

😻 Carbon emissions from energy generation likely to peak in 2025

😼 War in Ukraine likely to speed shift to clean energy

💩 Global health is at the mercy of our own fossil fuel addiction

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👩‍⚕️ Status: Climate & Science

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

[#emissiongap] — The latest emissions gap report from the UN was released last week. And yeah.. If you’ve been following this newsletter for a year you might as well just read last years newsletter about this. Because it’s pretty much the same, except worse. The report concludes that it’s now no longer possible to reach the 1.5C nor the 2C scenario on this century. “Incremental action is no longer an option” it says. It looks like we’re headed for 2.6C by 2100. If countries reach their NDCs under the Paris Agreement we’re heading for 2.2C to 2.4C by 2100. But yeah.. We’ll see. The above may sound negative, but it’s actually a sign of at the very least some progress (if implemented obviously). Here’s David Wallace-Wells positive spin on the situation.

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📰 The 7 Grand Challenges

⚡️Decarbonize Electricity

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

[#war] — There’s been a lot of hints towards this but now even the IEA says so: The war in Ukraine will (surprisingly) speed the shift to clean energy. They even go so far as predicting that carbon emissions from energy generation will peak in 2025. Let me repeat this: The historically fossil fuel friendly IEA predicts that carbon emissions from energy generation will peak in 2025! 2025?! That’s a little over 2 years away! Let’s hope they’re right. This is probably the best news you’re going to read.

[#landfillsolar] — Landfill-to-Solar power plants are becoming a thing at least in the US in which former landfills will be transformed into solar power plants. This article looks at one such case.

🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas

Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.

[#euban] — EU approves a ban on new ICE cars by 2035 which by all standards are obviously far too late. But I guess better than nothing. But the headline doesn’t say it all. Automakers are also required to reduce carbon emissions on ICE cars by 55% by 2030 before a complete ban in 2035 and that is really not going to be a very easy task, if it’s possible at all. So that should hopefully push the practical ban to 2030 instead of 2035. So all in all good news.

[#ev101] — Working in the EV space I get asked a lot of questions about EVs regularly, like what’s an KWh, and then what is a KW? What is regenerative breaking? And what’s a PHEV? For the latter I just tell people that it’s fossil fuel car, but the others are actually really good questions that can be confusing for many people looking to get an EV. This article does a good job at explaining all of these.