My Climate Change News

A look at the state of sustainable transportation in 2024 and beyond.

I joined GreenBiz in May 2022 - a decision that profoundly changed my perspective on transport decarbonization. In my role as the director of transportation, I sat at the intersection of many subsectors within transport, able to survey the industry across on-road vehicles and electrification, aviation, maritime shipping and freight rail.

From this vantage point, it has been a privilege to learn from those leading the efforts to decarbonize transportation and share my learnings with you. Sadly, all good things must end as I have already stepped into a new role in the EV industry. My final piece explores just a few of the trends I’ve seen develop over my two years tracking the sector.

During those two years, the electric vehicle subsector has made the most progress toward decarbonization compared with the rest of the transport industry.

The industry is aware of and is addressing the ...

The former vice president spoke to GreenBiz at a Climate Reality roundtable in New York City.

Al Gore speaks in New York City at the 55th Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps training in April 2024. (Credit: Climate Reality Project)

Companies have the power to reach “true net zero” by midcentury, according to former vice president Al Gore, if they “stop using the sky as an open sewer. We've got to get to true net zero, and then we will solve this crisis.”

Gore, who since his controversial defeat in the 2000 presidential election has chaired the ESG-focused Generation Investment Management firm that he co-founded, sat on Apple’s board for two decades and advised Google and Kleiner Perkins, spoke to GreenBiz at this weekend’s 55th Climate Reality Leadership Corps training event in New York City. More than 50,000 people have attended one of Climate Reality’s training events since he launched them in 2006.

“This is a moment unlike any other in human ...

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Is the science settled?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.

Science, in all of its aspects, is an ongoing matter. It is based on making progress. For a familiar example, everyone knows that the dinosaurs died out suddenly, 65 million years ago. They vanished from the fossil record. The science is settled on that. But how and why that happened is still a really interesting research area. We know a monster asteroid smacked into the planet at roughly the same time. But we cannot yet conclude with 100% ...

The auto industry lags behind on both emissions reporting and net zero targets. Here’s what they can do to get on track.

More than 90 percent of automakers' GHG emissions come from Scope 3 -- i.e., buyers driving their cars. Source: Mykhailo Pavlenko via Shutterstock

With the advent of policies such as the European Union’s corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD), set to be phased in over a four-year period beginning in 2025, businesses across all industries are preparing to report on their emissions as never before. A crucial pillar of such policies is the normalization of reporting on Scope 3 emissions - those not directly linked to a company’s operations.

For auto manufacturers, the new requirements have highlighted an alarming amount of emissions previously unknown to much of the general public and investors alike.

"About 98 percent of the total emissions of a car manufacturer are only captured when Scope 3 emissions - primarily the use ...

Sponsored: Discover innovative strategies to reduce supply chain-related emissions and build a more sustainable and resilient energy future.

This article is sponsored by Prologis.

In the coming decades as the world electrifies to decarbonize, global energy demand will surge. Businesses must manage today’s pressures on their operations - such as geopolitical tension and labor disruptions - while investing in future-focused solutions such as renewable energy, electric vehicles and automation alongside artificial intelligence. To find the balance, leaders want to know what they can do to improve their efficiency today while planning for a sustainable tomorrow.

As the global leader in logistics real estate with 1.2 billion square feet under management, we are uniquely positioned to help address supply chain decarbonization. Committed to net-zero emissions by 2030 in operations and by 2040 across our value chain, we've set concrete interim goals, including ...

Nineteen out of 34 countries surveyed failed to fully meet their 2020 climate commitments set 15 years ago in Copenhagen, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, compared the actual net carbon emissions of more than 30 nations to their 2009 pledged emission reduction targets set during the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

The paper led by researchers at UCL and Tsinghua University is the first effort to comprehensively gauge how well countries were able to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution reduction pledges from COP15.

Of the 34 nations analyzed in the study, 15 successfully met their goals while 12 failed outright. The remaining seven countries fell into a category the study authors termed the "halfway group": nations that reduced the carbon emissions within their own borders but did so in part by using trade to shift emissions they would have made to other countries. Known as "carbon leakage" or ...

The cylindrical object that tore through the home in Naples on March 8 was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for analysis.

The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth's atmosphere, but one piece survived.

The chunk of metal weighed 1.6 pounds (0.7 kilograms) and was 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall and roughly 1 1/2 inches (4 centimeters) wide.

Homeowner Alejandro Otero told television station WINK at the time that he was on vacation when his son told him what had happened. Otero came home early to check on the house, finding the object had ripped through his ceiling and torn up the flooring.

"I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage," ...

NASA's plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth is on hold until there's a faster, cheaper way, space agency officials said Monday.

Retrieving Mars soil and rocks has been on NASA's to-do list for decades, but the date kept moving forward, as costs ballooned. A recent independent review put the total cost at $8 billion to $11 billion, with an arrival date of 2040, about a decade later than advertised.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that's too much and too late. He's asking private industry and the space agency's centers to come up with other options to revamp the project. With NASA facing across-the-board budget cuts, he wants to avoid gutting other science projects to finance the Mars sample project.

"We want to get every new and fresh idea that we can," he said at a news conference.

NASA's rover Perseverance already has gathered 24 core samples in tubes since landing in 2021 at Mars' Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta. The goal is more ...

Nissan expects to mass produce electric vehicles powered by advanced next-generation batteries by early 2029, the company said Tuesday during a media tour of an unfinished pilot plant.

Japan's legacy automakers have fallen behind newer rivals like America's Tesla and China's BYD in the emerging all-electric auto sector.

But Nissan, like other companies, sees a chance to catch up and perhaps leap ahead with a new kind of battery that promises to be more powerful, cheaper, safer and faster to charge than the lithium-ion batteries in use today.

Solid-state batteries, which replace the corrosive liquids found in conventional batteries with solid metals, are widely seen as the next step for EVs, and leading automakers are racing to develop versions that can be mass produced.

Rivals like Volkswagen and Toyota have also announced efforts to produce solid-state EVs, with Toyota setting a date of 2027-28 to begin bringing them to market.

But substantial ...

Climate Home reveals that the World Bank Group has counted support for luxury hotels as climate finance, which experts say fails the most vulnerable

Fishers in Mbour, Senegal, just miles from the hotel resort of Saly, unload the day's catch. (Photo: Jack Thompson)

The spotless white-sand beach of Le Lamantin luxury resort in Saly, about 90 kilometres south of Senegal’s capital Dakar, is lined with neat rows of sun loungers and parasols. Here, holidaymakers enjoy jet-skiing, catamaran-sailing and spa therapy, unaware that their hotel is benefiting from international climate finance channelled through the World Bank Group.

Just a few kilometres further south, however, local fishermen in Mbour, the country’s second-largest fishing port, are struggling. The beaches where they keep their boats are being progressively eaten away by rising seas that also threaten their homes.

The stark contrast between the neighbouring coastal areas highlights how global ...

In a webinar on April 19, we'll explore how climate organizations are currently using storytelling in their work, the impacts of these stories, and lessons learned from other movements.

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Yale Climate Connections

Fossil fuels can be hard to quit. They’re woven into our society and are endemic in energy sources, plastics, and countless other products. They’ve even infiltrated our language.

The other day while teaching skiing, I was describing the performance benefit of putting one’s weight on the downhill ski. “It’s like stepping on the gas pedal,” I said. I caught myself - I don’t even have a gas pedal in my car anymore. But still, the metaphor rolls reflexively off the tongue.

Society is accelerating efforts to decarbonize transportation, electricity, heat, industry, and food systems. Why not clean up our language while we clean up the atmosphere?

So ...

Sponsored: Empowering employees to champion sustainability initiatives requires a culture where sustainability is ingrained in everyday operations.

A warm embrace between two Sodexo colleagues. Image courtesy of Sodexo.

This article is sponsored by Sodexo.

Employees form the backbone of most organizations - and what they do or don’t do affects progress toward sustainability milestones. Engaging employees on sustainability is an opportunity that organizations must embrace if they hope to succeed with sustainability goals and climate-conscious initiatives.

Organizations of all sizes can bridge the gap between corporate goals and individual actions by recognizing the power employees hold and providing them with the tools and motivation to drive sustainability initiatives forward.

At Sodexo, we have seen this firsthand - that the everyday actions of our frontline employees have accelerated our success and ability to meet sustainability targets. From ...

Mr. Gore spoke at a climate leadership conference hosted by his nonprofit organization.

Former Vice President Al Gore was in New York City over the weekend for a leadership training convened by the Climate Reality Project, his nonprofit organization.

On Saturday, before thousands of attendees, Mr. Gore highlighted mounting climate perils but also spoke of progress. He slammed fossil fuel companies for ramping up plastics production and promoting technology to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which he called “utterly preposterous.”

Afterward, Mr. Gore explained in an interview why he was not surprised that major oil and gas companies have walked back their pledges to decarbonize. And he said he believed that former President Donald J. Trump would lose his campaign to return to the White House. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited and condensed for clarity.

Oil and gas companies recently gathered in Houston for the industry’s annual ...

However, ethylene production consumes massive amounts of energy; by some estimates, methods used to purify gases like ethylene are responsible for about 0.8% of the world's total carbon emissions. Ethylene must be separated from unwanted byproducts through steam cracking, a process that breaks down hydrocarbons by refining petroleum or natural gas.

A team of UTA chemists led by Rasika Dias, professor and chair of chemistry and biochemistry at The University of Texas at Arlington, has found a method that could make these processes more sustainable.

In their recent findings, published in the journal Chemical Science, Dias reports on a type of silver containing material that can absorb ethylene in its solid state, while undergoing remarkable changes in its structure. Such shape-shifting molecules could lead to sustainable ways to catch, purify and release gaseous ethylene.

"My team and I have been hard at work trying to find more sustainable ways to separate, ...

In a study published in Science Advances, scientists have used new lithium isotope (δ7Li) data to show that continental clay export promoted organic carbon burial and thus atmospheric oxygenation during the Cambrian period.

Animals depend on oxygen for respiration. Thus, the emergence and proliferation of early animals from the late Neoproterozoic to the early Paleozoic era (~600–500 million years ago or mya) has traditionally been attributed to a significant increase in marine oxygen levels. However, geochemical tracers and numerical models suggest that both atmospheric and marine oxygen levels during the Late Neoproterozoic–Early Paleozoic were significantly lower than today, with highly variable marine redox states.

During this period, marine oxygenation occurred under conditions of low atmospheric oxygen, attributed to an enhanced marine biological pump. However, the role of other factors, such as the mineral carbon pump promotion of organic matter burial ...

Over the past decade, power grids have played roles in wildfires in multiple states, including California, Hawaii, Oregon and Minnesota. When wind speeds are high and humidity is low, electrical infrastructure such as aboveground power lines can blow into vegetation or spark against other components, starting a fire that high winds then spread.

Under extreme conditions, utilities may opt to shut off power to parts of the grid in their service areas to reduce wildfire risk. These outages, known as public safety power shutoffs, have occurred mainly in California, where wildfires have become larger and more destructive in recent decades.

On April 5-6, 2024, Colorado utility Xcel Energy carried out that state's first public safety power shutoff, cutting power to thousands of customers ahead of an intense windstorm. Public officials and Xcel customers complained that they had not received enough warning or explanation. Gov. Jared Polis has directed state regulators to ...

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who was recently a staunch critic of Donald Trump, changed his tune on the former president as he backed his 2024 campaign in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

“No other president in American history has contributed to an insurrection so please explain, given the fact that you believe he contributed to an insurrection, how you can say we should have him back in the Oval Office,” Stephanopoulos asked on ABC News’ “This Week.”

“Because for me it’s not about him as much as it is having a Republican administration ...,” said Sununu, who predicted that Trump wouldn’t be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee but didn’t rule out voting for him.

The GOP governor, who described himself as a “Trump guy through and through” in 2019, has repeatedly bashed the former president following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.

He’s referred to Trump as “crazy,” “not a real Republican,” “worried about jail time,” called on GOP ...

One obstacle that researchers face is that current fuel-cell technology relies on the use of expensive metal catalysts like platinum to convert hydrogen into energy; however, a team from the University of Virginia's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences has identified an organic molecule that could be an effective and less costly substitute for conventional metal catalysts.

The fuel cells that make electric vehicles and industrial and residential generators possible and that are needed to store energy generated by wind or the sun use metals like platinum to trigger the chemical reaction that splits fuel sources like hydrogen gas into protons and electrons that are then harnessed as electricity.

Until now, organic substitutes for rare-metal catalysts were not considered practical because the catalysis process causes them to break down into component parts that are no longer useful. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, ...

Plans by SpaceX and other companies to boost the number of rocket launches sometimes seen streaking across San Diego County's skies have prompted the California Coastal Commission to question the environmental effects.

Residents near Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the state's Central Coast, say the launches shake their homes and rattle their nerves. People don't know when to expect them because the lift-off time varies and can be delayed by weather conditions.

"I find it difficult to believe that there are no impacts on (wildlife) species due to SpaceX launches," said Carpinteria resident Rebecca Stebbins in an April 5 letter to the Coastal Commission.

"I, along with thousands of other residents of the South Coast, am significantly impacted with each launch, including being woken up from a deep sleep on occasion, while my dogs are terrified, my house shakes, and the sonic booms are felt physically, with a deep shock."

Conservationists say the noise ...