On April 8, millions of glasses-clad onlookers will, for the second time in seven years, hold their breath. As the celestial odds align, the Earth and moon will be in the perfect position to blot out the sun across the U.S., along with the solar power that makes up an increasing share of our energy mix. With eclipses anticipated decades in advance, local utilities have had time to prepare for the big day. From little Vermont to hulking Texas, how the eclipse will impact the energy grid paints a picture of energy progress, but also how we still depend on fossil fuels to stay resilient.

During the last full solar eclipse in 2017, an estimated 10 million pounds of extra carbon emissions were released into the U.S. atmosphere as fossil fuel-based power stepped in to replace the loss in solar output, according to Vahe Peroomian, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Southern California. That’s the roughly the annual equivalent of 1,000 gasoline cars. Since then, “our reliance on solar power has increased by about a factor of three,” Peroomian said, meaning the amount of energy to make up for will be greater than any previous eclipse.

Each of the 15 states along the 115-mile path of totality, in which the sun will be completely eclipsed for a short period of time, have a different mix of power sources feeding their grid. From the moment the moon’s shadow begins to block the sun, until it relinquishes its grip, their systems will have to switch it up. 

Even a small loss of sunlight directly translates to less energy. Batteries and other renewable energies, like wind, are expected to pick up some of the slack. However, even a leading clean-energy state like California, which will only experience a partial eclipse, may need to tap into its fossil fuel resources to keep up with demand, said Peroomian. “The impact is going to be nationwide.”

The eclipse is a challenge states can prepare for, highlighting how a renewables-dependent grid might deal with sudden weather changes, equipment failure, and other outage-causing events. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, utilities are also anticipating increased demand from homes and businesses that rely on small-scale solar, which may instead need to draw power from the grid.

Texas is the largest state to experience totality and has a couple of unique factors making it the ultimate testing ground for solar reliance. While other states tap into a larger regional utility system, Texas is an energy island and its grid primarily uses energy produced in-state. It’s also recently become a nationwide leader in solar energy, with nearly a 3,700 percent increase in the last decade. In most of the state, the eclipse will momentarily blot out some ninety percent of that power.

“It is perfectly timed to have maximum impact,” said Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, who says the eclipse will pass over the state at “solar noon”, the time when the sun is highest in the sky and produces the most energy. But having collaborated alongside the state’s utility provider, ERCOT, for 14 years, Rhodes is confident that the grid is ready for the event. “I mean really we do this every day,” he said. “A cloudy day could create the same kind of gap that we’re going to see on Monday.

Following a winter storm in 2021 that caused days of blackouts, Texas invested in grid resilience, emphasizing renewables and giant power-storing batteries, which can provide energy when sources go offline. But the state still relies on fossil fuels for roughly 60 percent of its energy. In 2023, when a partial solar eclipse passed over, the loss of energy caused the amount of natural gas used to almost double momentarily.

Still, while the eclipse offers a look at our continued reliance on fossil fuels to meet demand, the recent prevalence of energy storage indicates a shift towards cleaner resilience. Today, according to the EIA, the U.S. has 15.4 gigawatts of battery storage, capturing solar and wind energy to release when needed. During the 2017 eclipse, the U.S. had only 0.6 gigawatts of these reserves. Even with the lost sunlight, the agency said it expects solar to be the third-largest energy source in the U.S. on eclipse day.

April 8 will also likely see increased emissions from another source: the crowds that will flood into cities along the path of totality, in numbers akin to 50 Superbowls, with most arriving in gas-guzzling planes and cars. In largely rural Vermont, some fear miles of stopped, idling traffic, overwhelming the state’s backroads and highways.

“Our biggest consideration is if someone has an outage or something, you know, how do we actually get to them?” said Andrea Cohen, manager of member relations at Vermont Electric Cooperative, which services 78 towns in the state’s north. But when it comes to sourcing energy, Cohen says the utility is “well prepared” for the eclipse, just as they would be on a bad-weather day.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What the eclipse reveals about the progress and shortfalls of U.S. energy on Apr 6, 2024.

When you order something from Amazon and it arrives, wrapped in plastic inside and out, do you ever wonder, “Why do we use all this plastic?”

A new report by Oceana has found that the amount of waste from plastic packaging produced by Amazon has increased in the United States, even as the online retailer began to phase out plastics in other parts of the globe.

“Amazon’s failure to reduce plastic in the U.S. is troubling. The company has dramatically reduced plastic packaging in other major markets including India and Europe. Why are U.S. customers being left behind? According to research by YouGov, 85% of Amazon customers in the U.S. reported being concerned about plastic pollution. It’s time for Amazon to step up and commit to a global plastic packaging reduction everywhere it operates — including in the U.S.,” said Matt Littlejohn, strategic initiatives senior vice president at Oceana, in a press release from Oceana.

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The report, Amazon’s United States of Plastic, estimated that 208 million pounds of waste from plastic packaging were generated by Amazon U.S. in 2022 — a 9.6 percent jump from the 2021 estimate.

The amount of “air pillows” were enough to circle the planet more than 200 times.

“We are swimming in and breathing in this plastic, and this stuff lasts for an eternity,” Littlejohn said, as The Guardian reported. “I don’t think the general public has caught onto how scary this all is.”

In arriving at their calculations, the researchers used available market data that took into account recent communications made by Amazon to the public regarding changes in the corporation’s use of plastic packaging, the press release said. Amazon disclosed a portion of its worldwide plastic packaging footprint for 2021 and 2022, but has not reported its level of plastic use in particular countries, nor all its transactions, including those satisfied by third-party sellers.

Oceana pointed out that a good portion of the online giant’s plastic waste would be deposited along coastlines or ingested by marine species, reported The Guardian.

“This sort of plastic film is a big problem for the oceans and a lot of it can’t be recycled,” Littlejohn said, as The Guardian reported. “Amazon is one of the most innovative companies on the planet. It has eliminated plastic packaging in Europe and they can clearly do so across the U.S., too, even without regulatory pressure. This is a completely solvable problem. They have just got to get on with solving it. They know what to do.”

Amazon said the overall amount of plastic packaging used for shipping orders through the corporation’s global operations network in 2022 had been reduced by 11.6 percent, in comparison with the previous year. This was mostly attributed to Amazon’s efforts at lowering its use of plastic packaging outside the U.S. In Europe, the company said single-use plastic had been replaced with completely recyclable cardboard and paper packaging in all of its delivery areas.

Oceana looked at data on plastic waste pollution from a 2020 study published in Science and estimated that as much as 22 million pounds of global plastic packaging waste from Amazon from 2022 would find its way into the planet’s oceans and waterways.

“Plastic pollution, including the type of plastic used in Amazon’s packaging, is devastating the world’s oceans. Amazon’s plastic packaging is made from the most common form of marine plastic litter in nearshore ocean areas — plastic film — which is also the deadliest type of plastic to large marine animals,” Oceana said.

Amazon shareholders have asked the online merchant to come up with an outline for a company-wide plan to lower its plastic footprint by a minimum of one-third.

Oceana said a plastic packaging phaseout in Amazon’s biggest market, the U.S., would help it accomplish this goal.

“As one of the biggest retailers on the planet, Amazon is increasingly defining how our goods are packaged. The company can solve its plastic problem on a global basis now and into the future if it commits to do so — and follows through,” Littlejohn said in the press release.

The post Amazon Has Increased Plastic Packaging in U.S. Despite Global Phaseout: Oceana Report appeared first on EcoWatch.

African great apes are some of the most iconic creatures on Earth. Humans’ closest living relative, these majestic primates are becoming increasingly impacted by climate change.

In the next three decades, African apes will experience more extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires and flooding, according to a new study led by Razak Kiribou, a Ph.D. student at Haramaya University’s African Center of Excellence for Climate Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation in Ethiopia.

“Primates play an important role within their ecosystems; they contribute to forest community structure by aiding seed dispersal and plant pollination, ecosystem services that could be threatened by climate change impacts,” the research team wrote in the study. “Most African apes have experienced population decline (except mountain gorillas) and all are either listed as Endangered or Critically endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Climate projections show that across Africa, 61% of primate habitat is likely to be exposed to increases in maximum temperatures of more than 3°C by 2050 and to changes in precipitation patterns.”

In order to better understand the effects of climate change on African great apes, the researchers looked at past and future climate at 363 sites in Africa, estimating the rainfall and temperature at each from 1981 to 2010, a press release from the Public Library of Science said.

“Through literature and some institution reports, we noticed that there is evidence that climate change impacts biodiversity. However large gaps remain in the vulnerable wildlife, particularly in the African Great Ape,” Kiribou told EcoWatch in an email. “The method is based on the climate data and the identification of those extreme events that have already affected Apes that we found in the literature… it has identified six types of extreme events for which there is evidence that they can negatively impact African apes.”

The researchers used two climate change scenarios to project the frequency with which great apes would experience climate change impacts from 2021 to 2050, as well as from 2071 to 2099. They estimated the probability of extreme events like droughts, wildfires and crop failure that could affect apes directly or indirectly.

“Extreme events can affect apes, for example, by reducing food resources and sources of drinking water, or by the destruction of ape habitat,” the authors wrote in the study.

Nearly half the sites examined in the study from 2007 to 2016 had been exposed to temperatures that were higher than average, with eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) experiencing the most extreme temperatures.

“This part of Africa has registered the strongest temperature anomalies (up to 0.56˚C) with consecutive dry days and maximum daily temperatures in the past period,” Kiribou told EcoWatch.

Temperatures were predicted to increase at all locations under both climate scenarios, and nearly all sites would see crop failures and frequent wildfires in the near future.

“[C]rop failure in areas surrounding an ape site can lead to increased destruction of ape habitat by humans looking for food in the forest… climate events are ‘the main drivers of internal displacement, with an annual average of 23 million people displaced between 2009 and 2019’,” Kiribou explained. “[C]rop failure considers different types of crops: corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat.”

If global heating were to be limited to two degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, 78 percent of sites were expected to be exposed to infrequent flooding and 84 percent to frequent heat waves in the next three decades.

In a scenario where global heating rose to three degrees Celsius, the affected number of sites increased.

The study, “Exposure of African ape sites to climate change impacts,” published in PLOS Climate, was the first to demonstrate that great apes have already begun to be affected by climate change, and that more frequent extreme events will likely happen in the near future.

“The ways extreme events affect Apes are their behavior during the event. For example, we noticed that in some of the sites, Apes are drinking more water during hot periods, and others are moving out of their habitat looking for water. This is the case in Senegal with chimpanzees coming to drink water where breeders made a borehole to pump water for their animals,” Kiribou told EcoWatch.

Kiribou pointed out that education and understanding are key aspects of effective conservation strategies.

“[A]t the individual level, there is a need to raise people’s awareness. Introduce biodiversity conservation aspects in schools and associate or involve the local population in the Ape’s site conservation,” Kiribou said.

The researchers emphasized that conservation action plans should strive to bolster the resilience of African great apes to climate change.

“Regarding the type of conservation improvement, we provided climate impact information for each of more than 300 sites to help decision-makers take action. But for better planning, it is good to investigate how sensitive Apes are to extreme events. We just study the exposure, but the sensitivity to the events has to be explored for better conservation,” Kiribou told EcoWatch. “Despite some species being declared endangered by the IUCN, many conservationists did not include climate change impact in their conservation approaches. There is a hope of improving the Ape’s habitat by including climate change impacts effects in the conservation. This can facilitate Ape’s adaptation to the effects of climate change.”

The post Africa’s Great Apes Are Already Feeling the Effects of Climate Change, First-of-Its-Kind Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

A new study has found that 58 banks in the United States are “sabotaging” their own net-zero commitments by providing financing to meat, dairy and animal feed corporations.

Research for the report, Bull in the Climate Shop: Industrial livestock financing sabotages major U.S. banks’ climate commitments, was conducted by U.S. environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth and Profundo, a research group based in the Netherlands.

From 2016 to 2023, $134 billion in loans and underwriting was provided to meat, dairy, food processing, animal feed and agri-commodity corporations by 58 U.S. banks, according to the report. More than 50 percent of the financing the researchers investigated came from three major lenders: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, a press release from Friends of the Earth said.

“Since 2021, banks across the globe have pledged to slash financed and facilitated emissions. As signatories to the Net Zero Banking Alliance, U.S. banks — including Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase — committed to ‘transition the operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net zero by 2050 or sooner,’” the report said. “To meet these commitments, major U.S. banks have prioritized reducing GHG emissions from fossil fuel related financing and yet, year over year, they have continued to finance the sector. These banks also continue to finance high-emitting industrial livestock production.”

Of the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with the banks’ financing, 11 percent was from lending to meat, dairy and animal feed corporations, even though the companies make up only a small portion of the banks’ portfolios — 0.25 percent. This means the financing represents a disproportionate barrier to banks achieving their climate targets.

“Banks have committed to pathways to net zero, but they are ignoring a huge ‘cow-shaped hole’ in their plans,” said Monique Mikhail, the study’s lead author and director of the Agriculture & Climate Finance program at Friends of the Earth, in the press release. “Big Meat & Dairy exerts a vastly disproportionate impact on the banks’ total emissions, putting their own stated climate commitments at risk.”

The report’s recommendations for the banks included stopping all new financing that supports the growth of industrial livestock production and requiring that meat, dairy and feed corporations disclose verified 1.5-degrees Celsius goals and action plans for third-parties that are in agreement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or a comparable science-based pathway.

“Our research finds that by eliminating their financing of high-emitting corporations involved in meat, dairy, and feed production — a relatively small change in how they allocate their capital — these big banks can affect a sharp emissions reduction,” said co-author of the study Ward Warmerdam, Profundo’s senior financial researcher, in the press release. “According to our research, defunding industrial livestock production is one of the most climate-positive choices these banks could make.”

The study found that the 56 largest meat, dairy and feed production corporations examined in the study generated more carbon-equivalent emissions annually than Japan — the eighth biggest emitter in the world.

Banks in the U.S. financed and facilitated the equivalent of 69.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022 through their lending and underwriting of corporations involved in meat, dairy, food processing, animal feed and agri-commodities. That is roughly equal to 14 million cars being on the road for a year — the same as all the registered cars in California.

The lending and underwriting of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup alone have resulted in 26.9 million tons of carbon emissions.

“Methane impact is worse for warming than CO2: Up to 70% of the 58 U.S. banks’ total meat and dairy related financed and facilitated emissions are methane (using GWP20), which has 80X the warming potential of carbon dioxide. This means reducing methane will have an outsized impact on portfolio emissions,” Friends of the Earth said.

The researchers found that actual emissions from the corporations may be as much as four times higher than the reported numbers.

“Meat, dairy and feed corporations omit or understate their emissions by millions of tons a year, masking their impact on U.S. banks’ Scope 3 totals,” the press release said. “More than half of the corporations assessed in the study do not report emissions at all, and only 22% disclose Scope 3 (value chain) emissions. Scope 3 emissions account for up to 90% of agribusiness corporations’ total carbon footprint.”

Nestlé, Cargill and Bunge made up most of the financed emissions, while underwriting of global food giant JBS by Bank of America accounted for the majority — 87 percent — of meat and dairy corporations’ facilitated methane emissions.

“We weren’t expecting to see the banks sabotaging their own climate commitments to this level,” Mikhail said, as The Guardian reported.

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In a new test commissioned by the Mamavation consumer activist website, results show the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in a majority of bandage brands tested. 

Mamavation tapped an EPA-certified laboratory to test 40 different types of bandages from 18 brands, including top brands like Band-Aid, CVS, Curad and Walmart. Most of the bandages, 65%, showed indications of PFAS. Similarly, 63% of the tested bandages that were marketed to people with black or brown skin had indicators of PFAS.

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The test identified organic fluorine at an amount over 10 parts per million (ppm) as an indicator of PFAS. Leah Segedie, creator of Mamavation, explained that organic fluorine is considered a PFAS indicator because PFAS chemicals are made up of carbon-based compounds containing fluorine. In the tests, the amounts of organic fluorine ranged from 11 ppm to 328 ppm.

“Because bandages are placed upon open wounds, it’s troubling to learn that they may be also exposing children and adults to PFAS,” Linda Birnbaum, scientific reviewer of the testing and Scientist Emeritus and Former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, said in a statement.

PFAS, also known as forever chemicals because of their inability to break down in the environment, may be used in bandages for their waterproofing or water-resistant properties. In Mamavation’s tests, they weren’t able to separate the adhesive part of a bandage from the rest of the bandage materials, but there were higher indicators of PFAS specifically within the absorbent pads and the adhesive backing on bandages.

PFAS in the absorbent pads of the bandages could be used to help prevent blood or other bodily fluid from soaking through the pad and the outer material of bandages, The Guardian reported.

“It is discouraging to find yet another important product space, bandaids or bandages, containing PFAS compounds where transfers into users are conceivable,” Terrence Collins, scientific reviewer for the testing and the Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry and director of the Institute for Green Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a statement. “PFAS compounds deserve the ‘forever chemicals’ name, such that when PFAS-containing bandaids and bandages are discarded post-use, the final resting places will be contaminated into the indefinite future.”

While several of the bandages tested detected over 100 ppm of organic fluorine, the Mamavation team reported nine types of bandages, only one of which was marketed to people of color, as “better” bandage options with less than 100 ppm of organic fluorine. Fourteen of the tested brands, including six marketed to people of color, were considered the “best” bandage options, with less than 10 ppm.

“It’s obvious from the data that PFAS are not needed for wound care, so it’s important that the industry remove their presence to protect the public from PFAS and opt instead for PFAS-free materials,” Birnbaum said.

The post Major Bandage Brands in the U.S. Contain PFAS, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

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Christian Diaz hates a boxy, six-story brick building with blue and gray paneling in Logan Square, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago. 

“It looks boring and uninspired,” said Diaz, the housing director at Palenque LSNA, formerly known as the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. “When people think gentrification, this is the building that comes to mind.”

The building is an example of what urban planners call Transit-Oriented Development, or TOD. The idea is that developing near transit stations leads to interconnected communities and fewer cars emitting carbon dioxide. Developers get incentives and neighbors get a walkable community. But Diaz said buildings like this — dense, tall developments catering to wealthy tenants — are accelerating gentrification in the once working-class, largely Latino neighborhood. Only 3 of the 60 units qualify as affordable housing.

“This building, thumbs down — 100 percent thumbs down,” Diaz said.

Instead, housing advocates like Diaz want TOD to evolve and become a tool to make Logan Square accessible for everyone — and to help reclaim it for people pushed out by gentrification. 

“The irony is that in the pursuit of more walkable cities, we’re actually making it so that people of color in general have to be more reliant on cars,” Diaz said. As longtime residents are pushed farther and farther from the city, he points out, access to public transportation becomes limited and cars become inevitable. 

Developing residential buildings near transit stops was seen by planners as a shortcut to greener, more efficient cities. But across the country the idea has been slow to take off. A recent analysis from the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, found that while growth near transit has expanded over the past 20 years compared to previous decades, it’s still not enough.  

The analysis found that almost nine times as many housing units were added far from transit stations as opposed to near them over the past two decades.

“There are two big reasons for that: One is we haven’t built enough public transportation for the people who need it,” said Yonah Freemark, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute. “And the second is, we continue to allow development far out into the suburbs, suburban areas.” 

Suburban and exurban sprawl will mean more driving, more congestion and more carbon emissions in Chicago and other major cities, according to Freemark.

Diaz’s fight in Chicago isn’t easy, but his group is starting to score some wins with new affordable housing and public spaces. In the end, success will mean marrying a drive for affordable housing to the increasingly clear need for sustainable and climate-resistant cities. 

TOD as a solution picked up in earnest in Chicago around 2013 after the City Council passed an ordinance encouraging developers to build near transit. It was a race-neutral policy that resulted in little activity on the South and West sides. But off the train stations in Logan Square, for example, that meant luxury housing that left out moderate- and low-income families. In 2019, the city updated the ordinance to ensure a racial analysis is baked into any project. 

“We don’t want walkable neighborhoods only for affluent individuals,” said Jannice Newson, coordinator for Elevated Chicago, a coalition of nonprofits and city agencies trying to advance equity in Transit-Oriented Development by making sure affordable housing is part of the equation. 

TOD has thrived in hot markets, according to Kate Lowe, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois Chicago. 

“That’s the thing,” Lowe said. “When we rely on the private sector, we’re going to see profit-driven actions.” 

The market in Logan Square is hot. The price of a single-family home can cost $1 million. Upscale retail dots the Milwaukee Avenue corridor, a diagonal roadway that bisects the neighborhood. Since 2001, nearly half of Logan Square’s Latino population has been displaced and replaced by mostly white and upwardly mobile residents. To count as affordable housing, resident incomes must be at or below 60 percent of the area median income. In Chicago, for a family of four that comes to $66,180. 

Logan Square is still gentrified, but parts of the neighborhood are now closer to transit and beginning to feel like home again. Soon the streetscape is going to be redesigned around the Logan Square Blue Line train station. 

“We’re going to have more green space, we’re going to have La Placita,” Diaz said.   

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La placita — Spanish for plaza — emerged out of conversations with residents who wanted a Latin American-inspired public square. The development is part of a major traffic redesign of the neighborhood that was years in the making. Construction is set to begin in the coming months. 

“I can’t wait, in two years, to call my mom on a Sunday morning and say, ‘Hey mom, vamos a la placita,’ and we can just walk down the street in Logan Square,” Diaz said. 

It’s not just green space. Palenque LSNA is also working on developing 10 murals across neighborhood schools that commemorate the history and culture of the neighborhood. 

“As we’re developing this new open, walkable space for the community, our hope is that the children will eventually come to La Placita and say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s the mural from my school. This plaza is for me.’” 

Diaz is proud of the work his organization and other local partners have accomplished. He said it’s proof that it’s possible to fight — and possible to win. 

“We’re here to stay part of the neighborhood,” Diaz said. “A significant part of the neighborhood, especially in the center, along the Logan Square Blue Line station, will always be working-class people and people of color.”

Right near where La Placita will sit, Diaz fixed his glasses and pointed toward a modern, seven-story building. On a former parking lot, close to a train stop, a development called the Lucy Gonzalez Parsons apartment building has 100 units — all affordable housing.  

“This one gets two thumbs up,” Diaz said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Chicago, one neighborhood is fighting gentrification and climate change at the same time on Apr 5, 2024.

The idea of a national “green bank,” which would lend public money to help cash-strapped businesses and individuals invest in things like solar panels and energy-efficiency upgrades, has been kicked around since at least the first Obama administration. But it wasn’t until President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022 that the federal government set aside money, through the bill’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, for this express purpose.

On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris and EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced that the administration is ready to start signing checks. But rather than centralizing the funding in a single bank, the administration is routing the money — $20 billion of the total so far — to eight selected applicants, representing more than a dozen local nonprofits. The idea is that these trusted intermediaries, which have track records investing in local projects already, can better inject the loans directly into communities, with the vast majority of funding going to low-income and disadvantaged recipients. The hope is to provide communities with access to the capital they need to invest in a clean local economy — according to a vision recipients define for themselves.

“We have the capacity with this approach to empower communities to decide which projects they want that will have the greatest impact from their perspective in the place they call home,” Vice President Harris said at the announcement event in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We can invest in those projects in a way that will actually have value for the people that live there — instead of us from Washington, DC, telling us what you need.”

In Charlotte, Vice President Harris visited Grier Heights, a historically Black neighborhood where a community bank called Self-Help has facilitated investments to insulate, weatherize, and electrify nearly 50 homes. The vice president highlighted that these efforts not only created jobs for the contractors who did the work and reduced the carbon footprint of each of the homes, but they also improved the lives of families inhabiting them. When she visited the Grier Heights home of one father and small business owner, the resident told Harris that his combined gas and electric bill had been cut from $600 a month down to around $100 a month after he moved into one of Self-Help’s energy-efficient homes. Those savings allow him and his spouse to spend more on childcare and set aside savings for their children.

Self-Help and another community-based lender have partnered with the nonprofit Climate United Fund to invest the nearly $7 billion they were awarded through the green bank program in projects that hope to support families, schools, small businesses, community organizations, and other local institutions. They intend to invest at least 60 percent of those funds in low-income and disadvantaged communities, 20 percent in rural communities, and 5 percent in tribal communities.

The other community-based financial institutions that will receive the remaining $14 billion announced on Thursday — which will be facilitated by the National Clean Investment Fund and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator — have similar goals for the kinds of projects and communities they support. One awardee, the Native CDFI Network, intends to focus its efforts in reservations and native communities.

These grants, along with a $7 billion “Solar for All” grant expected to be announced later this Spring, represent “the single largest climate investment in the Inflation Reduction Act,” according to a press release quoting Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat who supported the law.

The funds are designed to do far more than simply inject public funds into communities that need them — they are also intended to catalyze further investment. The EPA expects every dollar of federal investment to spur seven dollars in private spending. If this projection is correct, then this multiplier would exceed the similar effect observed in separate Inflation Reduction Act provisions. (A recent analysis found that the law’s tax credits drummed up $5.50 of private investments for every $1 in credits.) This means that the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund could lead to nearly $200 billion in green investment.

Though the idea is that these sorts of effects will make the program a win-win-win for the climate, local communities, and the government, the green bank project is not without its critics. One member of Congress, a Republican representing Alabama, called the effort a “Green ‘slush fund’” when he tried to repeal the green bank program earlier this year, saying that the program has insufficient accountability and oversight to ensure money is not wasted. In a vote cast almost entirely along party lines, the bill passed the House of Representatives and was sent to the Senate. While it has yet to receive a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate, President Joe Biden issued a statement making clear that he would veto the attempted repeal.

“When we expand access to capital and give every person in our nation — no matter who they are or where they live — the opportunity to pursue their dreams,” the vice president said on Thursday, “we build a cleaner, healthier, and more equitable and more prosperous future for everyone.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline These ‘green banks’ are getting billions to decarbonize disadvantaged communities on Apr 4, 2024.

The rate of carbon emissions cuts in the United States has doubled since the passage of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to a new report by Clean Investment Monitor.

Since the IRA was passed in 2022, more than 80 wind, solar and energy storage projects have made use of the law’s tax credits and direct payments, reported Reuters.

“Clean energy and transportation investment in the US set another record in Q4 of 2023, reaching $67 billion — a 40% increase from the same period in 2022. Clean investment now accounts for 5% of all private investment in structures, equipment, and durable consumer goods in the United States, up from 3.7% at the end of 2022,” a press release from Clean Investment Monitor said.

Together, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the IRA supplied $239 billion for electric vehicles (EVs), green energy, carbon management and electricity for buildings in the U.S. last year — a 38 percent increase from 2022, the report said, as Reuters reported.

“Retail investment accounted for nearly half of this total, driven by robust growth in electric vehicle sales (a 52% increase year-on-year). Investment in the deployment of utility-scale solar and storage systems also grew robustly over 2023, up more than 50% year-on-year to $53 billion,” the report said. “But the fastest investment growth last year occurred in the deployment of emerging climate technologies — up ten-fold from $0.9 billion in 2022 to $9.1 billion in 2023 — and in the manufacturing of clean technology, up 153% from $19 billion in 2022 to $49 billion in 2023.”

According to experts, much more will need to be done to reach net-zero by 2050.

“The IRA doubles the pace of reductions but should have tripled it to hit our 2030 climate goals and get on the path to net-zero by 2050,” said Jesse Jenkins, who participated in the study and is an energy systems engineer with Princeton University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, as reported by Reuters.

The report was a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and independent researcher Rhodium Group.

Asian and European companies were motivated by the IRA to increase their investments in the U.S., which led Europe to develop its Green Deal Industrial Plan.

Challenges to implementation of the IRA in some sectors have included state and local regulations hampering the development of transmission lines to connect renewable energy projects to the grid and the pace of expansion of EV charging stations.

Jigar Shah, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan programs office, said the IRA has been slow to encourage some projects like carbon sequestration, hydrogen, geothermal and nuclear energy.

Last month in Houston, Shah commented that the sectors “continue to struggle around figuring out how exactly to put all the pieces together,” as Reuters reported.

Oil companies have complained that projects like oil well carbon capture and hydrogen plants have faced regulatory hurdles, said Roman Kramarchuk, who is in charge of climate markets and policy analytics at S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Kramarchuk added that another wave of development would happen when there was “more certainty” concerning financing and “what it takes to get a deal done.”

The IRA has contributed to a reduction in U.S. carbon emissions of four percent annually — twice the pace of the year before passage of the law — according to an article published last year by researchers from across the country.

“We estimate a total of $34 billion in federal investment — including tax credits, grants, and the fiscal cost of government loans — went to clean energy and transportation projects nationwide in fiscal year 2023,” the report said. “There was $220 billion in total investment in clean energy and transportation projects during the same period.”

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State lawmakers in Florida have passed a bill, HB321, to ban intentional balloon releases and charge intentional balloon releases as littering infractions.

The bill passed with overwhelming support in the state’s House of Representatives and Senate in March. Now it awaits signing into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“What goes up must come down, and when it comes to balloons, that can have deadly consequences for marine life,” Jon Paul Brooker, director of Florida Conservation at Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement. “The ingestion of a single piece of balloon has the potential to kill a seabird, which shows why even one intentionally released balloon is one too many.”

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A study by Ocean Conservancy scientists found that about one in three seabirds that consumed just a single piece of a balloon would die from eating that debris. 

Ingested balloons can block the digestive tracts of animals or simply keep them from feeling hungry, leading to starvation. Balloons also pose an entanglement risk to wildlife. Balloons are the top cause of marine debris-related death for seabirds, Ocean Conservation Society found.

In Florida, several communities have already enacted local legislation preventing intentional balloon releases, and there were existing state statutes that limited balloon releases. However, there were exemptions that allowed for releasing fewer than 10 balloons per 24-hour period and for releasing balloons considered biodegradable or photodegradable that do not have any strings, ribbons or other attachments, Surfrider Foundation reported.

HB321 addresses these exemptions, removing the release of a specified number of balloons within a certain timeframe as well as the exemptions for biodegradable or photodegradable balloons.

“Florida made the right call today in banning intentional balloon releases. Balloons are one of the deadliest forms of plastic pollution for ocean wildlife,” Hunter Miller, Oceana Field Campaigns Manager, said in a statement. “It’s great to see state legislators from both sides of the aisle come together to support a commonsense bill and get it passed. We call on Governor DeSantis to quickly sign this into law.”  

While environmental organizations have praised the passing of HB321, they noted that Florida has much more work to be done in terms of addressing plastic pollution by limiting plastic production.

“These victories are particularly significant in Florida, which has been paralyzed from addressing plastic pollution at the source at the state level for years,” Emma Haydocy, Florida policy manager at Surfrider Foundation, wrote on the Surfrider Foundation website. “While the existing preemption has been the status quo for over a decade, this year’s actions to prohibit balloon releases and the full stop of an attempt to expand and entrench plastic preemption is a leap in the right direction.”

Once signed, the bill is slated to take effect this July 1.

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