The Weekly Anthropocene, January 18 2023
Dispatches from the Wild, Weird World of Humanity and its Biosphere
Earth
The healing of the ozone layer (a region of O3 in the stratosphere that shields life on Earth from ultraviolent radiation) is one of the greatest environmental success stories in history. When ozone holes began forming in the 1980s, the world’s governments quickly reacted, signing the Montreal Protocol in 1987 (entering into effect in 1989) phasing out ozone-destroying CFCs, and it started to get better around the year 2000. Now, the UN’s latest quadrennial assessment on the ozone layer reports that progress continues to be excellent: nearly 99% of banned ozone-layer-depleting substances have been phased out, and Earth’s ozone layer is now expected to fully recover to 1980 levels (before the ozone hole) by 2066 over Antarctica, 2045 over the Arctic, and 2040 for the rest of the world. (Here’s the full report). Excellent news!
This also helps in the fight against climate change, for several reasons. UV damage to plant tissues from a thinner ozone layer interferes with plants’ ability to sequester and store carbon; one study calculated that in a “worst case scenario” no-Montreal Protocol world, ozone damage would have likely caused atmospheric CO2 levels to be 30% higher and Earth to be 0.85°C hotter by 2100, on top of non-ozone-related climate change. So we’ve avoided that! Also, the CFCs that were damaging the ozone layer are super-pollutant greenhouse gases in their own right1, and would have added 1.7°C of extra warming by 2100 in addition to the indirect effects. And that’s just the climate effects: UV radiation also directly damages human health, and things would have gotten really bad if we’d kept expanding the ozone hole. A 2020 EPA report found that implementation of the Montreal Protocol is expected to prevent “approximately 443 million cases of skin cancer, 2.3 million skin cancer deaths, and 63 million cases of cataracts for people in the United States born in the years 1890–2100”! Or as National Geographic put it, “Without the ozone treaty you’d get sunburned in 5 minutes.”
Overall, we are living in a much better timeline, safer biosphere, and healthier world as a result of the Montreal Protocol. It’s doing its job well, and the ozone situation is getting better and better. Great work!
United States of America
The Biden Administration (specifically, the Council on Environmental Quality, a division of the Executive Office of the President) has issued new “rule of reason” guidelines on how to review renewables projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). (NEPA is a core US permitting and environmental protection law that mandates that any project receiving federal funds or permits write an in-depth report of the likely environmental impact). Basically, the new renewables project guidelines say that you can greatly simplify reporting of the small, short-term emissions associated with building new renewables projects, given they they obviously have a net emissions benefit. For example, if you’re building a giant solar farm to replace a coal plant, you now don’t have to go into detail calculating the emissions from the use of the construction equipment-clearly a sensible improvement.
This is great news, particularly great because NEPA is increasingly being weaponized by anti-renewables groups to attack and slow down renewables projects, despite this being an obvious perversion of the law’s original intention. The new Biden Administration guidelines restore some common sense to the process, and are likely to substantially speed and streamline clean energy permitting (particularly on federal lands), helping move forward the renewables revolution!
“Absent exceptional circumstances, the relative minor and short-term GHG emissions associated with construction of certain renewable energy projects, such as utility-scale solar and offshore wind, should not warrant a detailed analysis of lifetime GHG emissions.”
-United States Council on Environmental Quality
A massive new full-supply-chain solar panel project has been confirmed for Georgia2, with South Korean solar manufacturer Hanwha Q Cells planning to invest $2.5 billion in building a new Georgia solar plant capable of building 3.3 GW of solar panels per year. They will also be expanding the capacity of their current Dalton, Georgia solar plant (which as recently as a few years ago was the largest in the Western Hemisphere) from 3.1 GW per year to 5.1 GW per year, for a total of 8.4 GW of solar panels per year made in Georgia by 2024. This is the largest clean energy manufacturing project in American history, and will substantially help decouple American solar production from China, with every stage of production down to the raw silicon sourced domestically from the US. Another great result from the Inflation Reduction Act!
“Today secured the largest clean energy manufacturing project in American history, with thousands of solar jobs and billions of dollars on the way to Georgia.”
-Senator Jon Ossoff, D-GA
The Department of Energy has issued a $700 million conditional loan to the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project, a planned lithium and boron mine near Tonopah, Nevada. This project could join California’s nascent Salton Sea lithium/geothermal complex (here’s a great article on how that’s going) as a domestic source of this key battery mineral, helping accelerate the clean energy transition and disentangle American supply chains from China. The Rhyolite Ridge project is particularly interesting as it sits at the intersection of competing climate and biodiversity issues; the proposed mining has been highly controversial due to its location right next to the only known population of Tiehm’s buckwheat, a small flowering plant that evolved to specialize in this exact patch of lithium-rich soils and was designated as endangered in December 2022. (There’s not much chance of moving either the plant or the mine, as they’re both in the same spot for the same reason).
Things seem to be on the way to a win-win resolution, though, as Ioneer, the company behind the Rhyolite Ridge mine, has developed an in-depth Tiehm’s buckwheat protection plan, committing to fence off all Tiehm’s buckwheat patches to protect them from intrusion and to stockpile “extra” lithium-rich soils displaced by their mining for potential future use in creating new Tiehm’s buckwheat patches elsewhere. (They’ll also be using much less water than most American mines and getting most of its operational power from clean energy). This writer is really hoping that the Rhyolite Ridge project can become a showcase of coexistence, providing both ongoing habitat for an endangered species and critical minerals for the renewables revolution!
“Ioneer fully supports the listing of Tiehm’s buckwheat as an endangered species and critical habitat designation. We are committed to the protection and conservation of the species and have incorporated numerous measures into our current and future plans to ensure this occurs. Our operations have and will continue to avoid all Tiehm’s buckwheat populations.”
-Bernard Rowe, Ioneer managing director.
In another Inflation Reduction Act tax credits-funded new endeavor, a project in Texas hopes to become America’s first large-scale producer of green hydrogen by 2027, planning to power its electrolysis process with giant new renewables projects: 900 MW of wind and 500 MW of solar. Hydrogen, unlike other renewables technologies, is still controversial, in large part due to its energy inefficiency: for example, this project would use more energy than the city of Austin. However, while hydrogen doesn’t make sense as a fuel for cars (EVs are much better) or electricity generation, it might be key to decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors like shipping and aviation. (Check out this great review of hydrogen’s pitfalls and potential from economist Noah Smith).
The US Department of Energy has updated and relaunched its Geospatial Energy Mapper, a software tool that uses over 190 data layers to help identify optimal new sites for energy infrastructure. This’ll be useful in helping site new renewables projects!
A new startup based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is turning decommissioned wind turbine blades into concrete-reinforcing fiber. Another example of setting up a recycling system for the clean energy economy!
The state of New York announced on January 10th a landmark “cap and invest” emissions reduction program to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, in line with its 2019 law legally requiring the state to reach a 40% reduction in GHG emissions below 1990 levels by 2030 and an 85% reduction by 2050. Similar to Californian and EU cap and trade programs, there will be a steadily declining “cap” on maximum allowable emissions, large-scale emitters like fossil fuel plants will need to purchase allowances for their emissions, and proceeds will both support state decarbonization investments and fund a new Climate Action Rebate directly returning money to New Yorkers. (Here’s the state announcement). This would have blown everyone’s minds as a gigantic climate action in, say, 2014, and now it barely makes the news. Another sign of rapid progress!
The EPA has proposed tightening the primary annual air quality standard for PM2.5 (small particulate matter, e.g. soot, which causes lots of health problems) from 12 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3) to 9 or 10 µg/m3. This would help hasten the retirement and replacement of coal plants, and would save a lot in healthcare costs: the EPA estimates that tightening the standard to 10 µg/m3 would save $17 billion in healthcare costs by 2032, and to 9 µg/m3 would save $43 billion! Public comments are open3, and a decision is expected in August 2023. Let’s hope this happens!
Bolivia
The Wildlife Conservation Society recently released unprecedented footage of the world’s largest hatching of baby turtles: the simultaneous emergence of hundreds of thousands of young giant South American river turtles (Podocnemis expansa) on the banks of the Guaporé/Inténez River on the Brazil/Bolivia border. Around 80,000 female giant South American river turtles laid eggs on these beaches in September 2022, and their offspring are now ready to roam the rivers on their own. The turtles are key to the seed dispersal of riverside vegetation across Amazonia, and were suffering from overhunting in recent years. Recent conservation programs appear to be robustly succeeding. Awesome news!
“The annual nesting and hatching of the giant South American river turtle is one Earth’s great natural spectacles. It is visually stunning, but also extremely important ecologically to the western Amazon ecosystem.”
-Camila Ferrara, Aquatic Turtle Specialist for the WCS Brazil Program
The hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, that replaced CFCs in refrigeration were OK for ozone but were also pretty bad greenhouse gases; fortunately the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol replaced them too. And that’s a locked-in done deal since the US signed it in 2022, as covered by this newsletter. Great news!
According to this notice, you can submit public comments by emailing “a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov. Include the Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0072 in the subject line of the message”
Great issue! You're always in the vanguard of encouraging climate news sources. Governor Kemp reminds me of Socrates's question to Meletus in the Apology of whoever heard of someone who approved of horsemanship but didn't believe in horses!