The Weekly Anthropocene, July 31 2024
Renewables made up 85% of new electricity capacity in 2023, a lion swim in Uganda, MrBeast + GiveDirectly, DARK OXYGEN, the largest solar R&D center in the Western Hemisphere, and more!
The Big Picture
A new report has found that renewable energy accounted for an incredible 85% of all new electricity-generating capacity built in 2023. That’s 85% of all new electricity projects built everywhere on Earth during the most recent full year! The cleantech revolution advances incredibly quickly: 473 gigawatts (473,000 MW) of renewables capacity were installed in 2023, up from 308 GW in 2022 and just 20 GW in 2002!
The world has changed fast, and the environmental movement needs to change gears to keep up, as building new things now overwhelmingly benefits the fight against climate change. We are well and truly in an era of a green building boom! Great news.
Uganda
Uganda recently saw the longest lion swim ever recorded. On February 4, nocturnal thermal drone footage captured lion brothers Jacob and Tibu successfully swimming a record 1.5 kilometers across the highly dangerous hippo and crocodile-filled Kazinga Channel. Researchers speculated that they were searching for available lionesses.
Interestingly, Jacob had already attained renown as a three-legged lion successfully surviving in the wild against all odds after losing a leg to a poacher’s trap. His recovery and subsequent adventures (aided by his radio collar allowing rangers to find him and clean the wound) provide a fascinating glimpse into the epic lives and extraordinary resilience of individual wild animals in the Anthropocene!
“Jacob has had the most incredible journey and really is a cat with nine lives…
I’d bet all my belongings that we are looking at Africa’s most resilient lion: he has been gored by a buffalo, his family was poisoned for lion body part trade, he was caught in a poacher’s snare, and finally lost his leg in another attempted poaching incident where he was caught in a steel trap…
His swim, across a channel filled with high densities of hippos and crocodiles, is a record-breaker and is a truly amazing show of resilience in the face of such risk.”
-Dr. Alexander Braczkowski
Popular YouTuber and renowned philanthropist Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson recently partnered with world-leading charity GiveDirectly, known for their radically simple yet highly effective model of direct unconditional cash transfers to people living in extreme poverty. (This newsletter recently wrote about how GiveDirectly offers a scalable, efficient means of helping the people most vulnerable to climate change). Beast Philanthropy gave $200,000 directly to 300 households in Karamoja, Uganda (here are more details) and made a video about the process, transforming lives while raising global awareness of this extraordinarily promising form of altruism.
Dark Oxygen
A fascinating new study has found that polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (an area of seafloor between Hawaii and Mexico) appear to be producing oxygen, possibly by forming large networks that catalyze an electrochemical reaction that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. This discovery of “dark oxygen” is a massive paradigm shift with potentially profound implications for our understanding of Earth’s ocean ecosystem1. Interestingly, many seafloor-studying scientists had apparently obtained evidence of this for years but had previously all dismissed it as equipment errors, as everyone knew that you only got oxygen in the wild from photosynthesis.
“We have another source of oxygen on the planet, other than photosynthesis...
If there’s oxygen being produced in large amounts, it’s possibly going to be important for the animals that are living there.”
-Seafloor ecologist Dr. Andrew Sweetman, study coauthor.
This discovery also has immediate policy implications, as these very same polymetallic nodules in the CCZ are considered a top target of controversial deep-sea mining proposals. This newsletter had previously leaned rather in favor of exploring the potential benefits of deep-sea mining for critical battery minerals, particularly the low-impact “tweezers instead of a bulldozer” method being pioneered by Impossible Metals, but this research means that even gently removing the nodules might have much bigger impacts than we think. It’s also possible that studying the nodules in-place could help the renewables revolution in another way, as they seem to have unknown electrochemical properties making them excellent catalysts. The interdisciplinary research potential here is nothing short of astounding.
“It shows us that there is a source of oxygen that hadn’t been identified before, it happens without light…
As a chemist, I’m personally really excited about the fact that there might be a blueprint down there for making catalysts that allow you to do much better electrochemistry for the energy transition up here at the Earth’s surface.”
-Professor Franz Giger, study coauthor
Earth’s oceans still hold many incredible secrets. Fascinating news!
Cambodia
The Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) is critically endangered, with the approximately 400 individuals left mostly living in Cambodia. Now, after years of restoration work, conservationists were thrilled to welcome a full 60 baby Siamese crocodiles born at the end of June 2024, in five nests found in the remote Cardamom Mountains region. Great news!
United States
U.S. cleantech star First Solar just opened the largest solar power research and development facility in the Western Hemisphere. Located in Lake Township, Ohio, the new Jim Nolan Center for Solar Innovation includes a pilot manufacturing setup for accelerating the production of prototype thin-film and tandem solar modules. (“Tandem” solar refers to layering different kind of solar cells on top of each other within the same panel to get more power from different wavelengths of light: developing thin-film cells in the same place is a vital complement). These are the kind of highly promising new solar technologies that could help an Inflation Reduction Act-boosted USA gain ground on China’s current lead solar manufacturing!
“Thin films are the next technological battleground for the solar industry because they are key to commercializing tandem devices, which are anticipated to be the next disruption in photovoltaics.
While the United States leads the world in thin film PV, China is racing to close the innovation gap. We expect that this crucial investment in R&D infrastructure will help maintain our nation’s strategic advantage in thin film, accelerating the cycles of innovation needed to ensure that the next disruptive, transformative solar technology will be American-made.”
-Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar
First Solar also plans to inaugurate a second solar R&D site, this one in Perrysburg, Ohio, and focused on perovskites, in the second half of 2024. Great work!
On July 18, 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office announced a conditional commitment of up to $861.3 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding for two new grid-scale solar plus battery projects to provide power for the American commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Together named Project Marahu, these two projects (which will be the largest ever on the island) will together provide 200 MW of clean electron-generating capacity, enough for 43,000 Puerto Rican homes, with the accompanying grid-scale battery systems ensuring reliability even during future hurricanes.
Smaller community solar projects are also being supported, with an additional $325 million in grants now available from the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund (established by President Biden in December 2022) to fund resilience-boosting solar and battery storage at the building level for for healthcare facilities, community centers, and multifamily housing.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has proven its commitment to helping thousands of Puerto Rican households access affordable solar and battery storage, but households aren't the only place you need power during and after an emergency…
We’re expanding solar access to community healthcare facilities and subsidized multifamily housing, helping bring resilience and safety to even more families on the Island.”
-U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
Notably, the Biden-Harris Administration’s latest investments in clean, reliable energy for the American citizens of Puerto Rico present a particularly sharp contrast to the previous president and current Republican nominee’s woefully slow, incompetent, and horrifyingly corrupt response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico in 2017. Great work on clean power for Puerto Rico!
This newsletter wonders: could this be linked to recent discoveries that there appear to be far more deep-sea fish than previously thought? If there’s a widespread abiotic source of deep-sea oxygen, can the ocean depths simply support more microbes, more plankton, and more of an overall food chain than we think?