This story was originally published by Canary Media.
A next-generation geothermal plant backed by Google has started sending carbon-free electricity to the grid in Nevada, where the tech company operates some of its massive data centers.
On Tuesday, Google and geothermal developer Fervo Energy said that electrons began flowing from the first-of-a-kind facility earlier this month. The 3.5-megawatt project, called Project Red, is now supplying power directly to the Las Vegas–based utility NV Energy.
The announcement comes more than two years after Google and Fervo signed a corporate agreement to develop the “enhanced geothermal” plant. Unlike conventional geothermal plants, which tap into heat found close to the earth’s surface, Houston-based Fervo uses advanced drilling techniques to access resources that are deeper or trickier to reach than hot springs or geysers.
The pilot project’s completion is a meaningful step in the growing global effort to harness the Earth’s heat.
In the United States, geothermal energy supplies only about 3,700 megawatts (3.7 gigawatts) of electricity, or 0.4 percent of total U.S. electricity generation last year. But according to the U.S. Department of Energy, geothermal could provide potentially 90 gigawatts of firm and flexible power to America’s grid by 2050 — assuming that enhanced systems like Fervo’s catch on as a widespread renewable energy option.
Fervo’s project has a relatively small capacity: enough to power roughly 2,600 U.S. homes at once. Still, that’s more electricity than any of the world’s 40-some enhanced geothermal systems have previously achieved, according to the company.
Fervo uses horizontal drilling techniques to tap the Earth’s heat. Courtesy of Fervo
Google said it inked the agreement in May 2021 as part of a larger strategy to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. The prior year, the search-engine giant set a target of operating all of its power-hungry data centers and office campuses worldwide on “24/7 carbon-free energy” by 2030, a goal that requires not just purchasing renewable power but also accelerating the development of innovative energy technologies.
“When we began our partnership with Fervo, we knew that a first-of-a-kind project like this would require a wide range of technical and operational innovations,” Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director of energy and climate, wrote in a November 28 blog post.
“The result is a geothermal plant that can produce round-the-clock [carbon-free energy] using less land than other clean energy sources,” he said, adding that Google “worked closely with Fervo to overcome obstacles and prove that this technology can work.”
Google declined to share financial details about its agreement with Fervo or the cost of the electricity that Project Red is producing.
Drilling deep for clean energy
Geothermal resources are available virtually everywhere underground, representing a potentially vast supply of clean electricity and industrial heat. Yet most of those resources are too deep or technically complicated to reach cost-effectively using traditional methods.
Fervo, which has raised more than $180 million since 2017, is among dozens of companies in the U.S. and worldwide that are striving to develop easier and cheaper ways of unleashing this geothermal potential.
The startup uses horizontal drilling techniques and fiber-optic sensing tools gleaned from the oil and gas industry. Technicians create fractures in hard, impermeable rocks found far below the Earth’s surface, then pump the fractures full of water and working fluids. The super-hot rocks heat those liquids, eventually producing steam that drives electric turbines. The idea is to create geothermal reservoirs in places where naturally occurring resources aren’t available.
A worker inspects pipes at the Project Red site.
Courtesy of Fervo
In recent years, enhanced geothermal projects in a handful of other countries were shut down after triggering earthquakes and rattling surrounding cities. Since then, companies have stepped up efforts to monitor and mitigate induced seismicity. Fervo said it had adopted a protocol developed by DOE to avoid causing seismic events at its project sites.
The startup first began drilling in Humboldt County, Nevada in early 2022. Project Red was initially anticipated to be a 5-megawatt facility that would come online last year.
At the geothermal site, two wells reach 7,700 feet deep and then connect with horizontal conduits stretching some 3,250 feet long. Fervo’s team flows fluid into the project’s artificial reservoir, where the liquid can reach temperatures of up to 376 degrees Fahrenheit. In July, Fervo announced that it successfully completed a full-scale well test in Nevada that confirmed the commercial viability of its next-generation technology.
Roughly four months later, its first power plant is officially up and running.
“We did what we set out to do,” Sarah Jewett, Fervo’s vice president of strategy, said in an email to Canary Media.
Through the agreement with Google, “We proved our drilling technology, established Project Red as the most produced enhanced geothermal system in history, and delivered carbon-free electrons to the grid at a time when competing clean, firm energy developers have struggled to execute their projects,” she said.
To boost America’s geothermal capacity, the DOE has set a goal of slashing the cost of power from enhanced geothermal systems to $45 per megawatt-hour by 2035 — a 90 percent drop from today’s prices. Fervo currently produces power at a “significantly” higher cost than the DOE’s target, Tim Latimer, the company’s CEO, told Utility Dive in July. Still, he said the startup remains on track to hit $45 per MWh in the coming years as it scales its technology.
On that point, Fervo is already getting started on a 400-megawatt geothermal power plant in Beaver County, Utah, called Cape Station. This summer, Fervo began drilling the first of what will become 100 geothermal wells for the project, which is expected to start delivering 24/7 electricity to the grid in 2026 and reach full-scale production in 2028, Jewett said.
Google, for its part, said it will continue working with Fervo and other companies to accelerate the commercialization of advanced clean energy technologies. In September, the tech giant formed a partnership with Project InnerSpace, a nonprofit that aims to expand the use of geothermal energy worldwide. Google said it will lend its data and software capabilities to help develop a tool for mapping and assessing global geothermal resources.
“For geothermal to grow over the coming decades, we need big players with global scale and breakthrough technological solutions focused on this massive clean energy resource beneath us,” Jamie Beard, executive director of Project InnerSpace, said in an earlier statement about the Google partnership.
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are rising, and the oil and gas industry is responsible for nearly a third of global methane emissions. The greenhouse gas is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over its first 20 years in the atmosphere, and it’s responsible for a quarter of the temperature increase that has already taken place. At COP28, the annual United Nations climate conference taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the United States announced that it has finalized regulations to tackle this pressing problem.
On Saturday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule to reduce methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas industry, which is responsible for about 12 percent of global methane emissions from the sector. Methane is the main component of natural gas, and it leaks from every phase of oil and gas production, from extraction to transport to refining. The new rule requires oil field companies to monitor for leaks, fix them promptly, and phase out the practice of burning off natural gas into the atmosphere — a process called flaring. They must also minimize venting, the deliberate release of natural gas, during certain processes. The rule allows third parties, including environmental and watchdog groups, to monitor oil and gas sites and report violations.
The EPA estimates that the long-awaited rule will prevent 58 million tons of methane emissions between 2024 and 2038, the emission reductions equivalent to taking 28 million cars off the road every year. Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate advisor, said the rule will slash almost 2 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, which the Biden administration has committed to halving by 2030.
The rule will help “close that gap even further and mov[e] us along the trajectory we need to be on,” said Zaidi at a press conference at Expo City in Dubai, where world leaders and climate negotiators have gathered to eke out new climate agreements. “Even as we try to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels, we must work to clean up existing operations rapidly and rigorously, and today’s announcement does just that.”
The International Energy Agency estimates that more than two-thirds of the methane released from fossil fuel operations can be eliminated. The requirements in the new EPA regulation will help achieve those reductions. They’re also expected to have profound effects on public health. Nearly 18 million people live within a mile of an oil and gas field in the U.S., breathing in a host of toxic chemicals that are released along with methane. Proximity to oil and gas sites has been linked to a host of health effects, including lower lung function, high-risk pregnancies, and preterm birth.
“It’s especially important to recognize that a lot of that public health burden in the United States is falling on low-income communities and Black and brown communities,” said Rachel Cleetus, a policy director and lead economist with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “On both fronts — public health and climate — this is a win.”
Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 president and chief of the United Arab Emirates’ national oil company, announces a raft of climate initiatives, including methane pledges by oil and gas operators. Sean Gallup / Getty Images
The Biden administration’s rule is one of several methane-related announcements at COP28. Separately, COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber, who is also the head of the UAE’s national oil company, announced that 50 oil companies responsible for 40 percent of global oil production had signed onto a pledge to reduce emissions directly tied to their operations by 90 percent. The companies include ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP, as well as the national oil companies of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Brazil, and about two dozen other countries. Al-Jaber has positioned himself as a dealmaker who can bring oil and gas companies to the table and convince them to make or strengthen climate pledges. “Methane is the low-hanging fruit,” said Al-Jaber at a summit announcing the pledges. “It is an easy and quick way.”
In concert, the International Energy Agency, the United Nations Environment Programme, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and a group of other nonprofit organizations launched a new effort to track oil and gas companies’ methane emissions. The Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit that has produced a body of research on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, is planning to launch a $90 million satellite that will detect emissions from fossil fuel production sites around the world. Data from the satellite will be made available “to every human on the planet who has access to the Internet,” Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said on a press call.
“We need comprehensive, real-time awareness of specific sources of methane,” Krupp said. “Getting that information is indispensable for holding the oil and gas industry accountable for the pledges that they’ve made.”
Other environmental groups have dismissed such pledges as “a trojan horse for Big Oil and Gas greenwash” because none of the corporate commitments announced so far address the emissions that come from burning fossil fuels. Cleetus, the Union of Concerned Scientists economist, warned that corporate commitments are voluntary and inadequate. “This is an industry that has actively fought against climate action,” she said.
Get caught up on COP28
What is COP28? Every year, climate negotiators from around the world gather under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to assess countries’ progress toward reducing carbon emissions and limiting global temperature rise.
The 28th Conference of the Parties, or COP28, is taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, between November 30 and December 12 this year.
What happens at COP? Part trade show, part high-stakes negotiations, COPs are annual convenings where world leaders attempt to move the needle on climate change.
While activists up the ante with disruptive protests and industry leaders hash out deals on the sidelines, the most consequential outcomes of the conference will largely be negotiated behind closed doors. Over two weeks, delegates will pore over language describing countries’ commitments to reduce carbon emissions, jostling over the precise wording that all 194 countries can agree to.
What are the key issues at COP28 this year?
Global stocktake: The 2016 landmark Paris Agreement marked the first time countries united behind a goal to limit global temperature increase. The international treaty consists of 29 articles with numerous targets, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing financial flows to developing countries, and setting up a carbon market. For the first time since then, countries will conduct a “global stocktake” to measure how much progress they’ve made toward those goals at COP28 and where they’re lagging.
Fossil fuel phaseout or phasedown: Countries have agreed to reduce carbon emissions at previous COPs, but have not explicitly acknowledged the role of fossil fuels in causing the climate crisis until recently. This year, negotiators will be haggling over the exact phrasing that signals that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels. They may decide that countries need to phase down or phase out fossil fuels or come up with entirely new wording that conveys the need to ramp down fossil fuel use.
Loss and damage: Last year, countries agreed to set up a historic fund to help developing nations deal with the so-called loss and damage that they are currently facing as a result of climate change. At COP28, countries will agree on a number of nitty-gritty details about the fund’s operations, including which country will host the fund, who will pay into it and withdraw from it, as well as the makeup of the fund’s board.
Companies have an economic incentive to cut methane emissions. The natural gas that doesn’t leak away can be used to power equipment on-site or sold on the market. In fact, the EPA expects an estimated $820 to $980 million worth of natural gas will be recovered each year as a result of its new rule. Jason Arceneaux, president of ARC Energy, a Louisiana-based company that works with oil and gas companies to reduce methane emissions, told Grist that operators are increasingly seizing those cost savings. They’re also responding to market signals, he said.
“The ultimate belief of a lot of industry is that there’s going to be carbon footprint measurements,” said Arceneaux. “Some of the customers in Europe and others are wanting those measurements, and so I think customers are driving that decision.”
This is the first year since the Paris Agreement was ratified in 2016 that countries are formally measuring their progress against the climate goals they agreed to — a process referred to as “global stocktake” in negotiation parlance. Most countries’ commitments only quantify carbon dioxide reductions, but negotiators are beginning to raise the need to include specific targets for methane and other greenhouse gases in national emission reduction pledges.
The EPA’s methane rule is also being finalized as climate negotiators hash out whether all 198 countries party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change can agree to language on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Options include “phasing out” or “phasing down” fossil fuel use or the “substitution” of renewables for fossil fuels.
“We can’t at this moment when the climate crisis is spiraling out of control avoid addressing the root cause,” said Cleetus. “It’s not just emissions, but it’s the use of fossil fuels, and we can’t dodge that issue. That’s the crux of it.”
This story was originally published by the Nevada Current.
A federal analysis released Tuesday confirmed Southern California’s Salton Sea contains enough lithium to meet the nation’s needs for decades.
Salton Sea has the potential to produce an estimated 375 million lithium batteries for electric vehicles — more than the total number of vehicles currently on U.S. roads, according to the analysis commissioned by the Department of Energy.
Those numbers dwarf the estimated lithium deposits available in Nevada’s Thacker Pass, long touted as the largest known source of lithium in the nation.
The long-awaited analysis was conducted by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It’s the most comprehensive analysis to date quantifying the domestic lithium resources in California’s Salton Sea region.
If the Salton Sea lithium can be extracted, it could give the U.S. the ability to produce domestically sourced lithium, ending the nation’s dependence on rival countries for a supply of the metal.
“Lithium is vital to decarbonizing the economy and meeting President Biden’s goals of 50 percent electric vehicle adoption by 2030,” said Jeff Marootian, DOE secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. “This report confirms the once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a domestic lithium industry at home while also expanding clean, flexible electricity generation.”
But that opportunity hinges on whether emerging technologies can make extracting lithium from brine cost-effective on a commercial scale. Over the last 12 months, the price of lithium has plummeted from roughly $85,000 per metric ton to less than $19,000, a plunge attributed to increased global production and unexpectedly soft demand.
Generating electricity from the Salton Sea, a geothermal hot spot, requires extracting hot brine from underground aquifers to produce steam that drives turbines. Brine used for geothermal energy also happens to be rich in lithium that can theoretically be extracted in a more environmentally friendly closed system.
The Salton Sea is believed to have the highest concentration of lithium, contained in geothermal brines, in the world.
Some researchers say integrating lithium extraction into geothermal operations can minimize the environmental impact of conventional lithium mining practices, like open-pit mining or evaporation ponds.
Three companies — Berkshire Hathaway Energy, EnergySource, and Controlled Thermal Resources — have been working for years on plans to extract lithium by taking advantage of the Salton Sea’s rich geothermal resources.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy, the sprawling holding company with multiple subsidiaries, including NVEnergy, already operates 10 geothermal power generating plants on the southern shore of the Salton Sea, and recently commissioned a pilot facility to test the feasibility of extracting lithium from brine.
Estimates for lithium in the Salton Sea were modeled using the average annual brine production from existing geothermal plants in the region and the concentration of lithium in the brine, according to the report.
However, the DOE warns that those findings are based on existing companies’ ability to access the entire Salton Sea geothermal reservoir for electricity production, and their ability to fully extract lithium resources from geothermal brines.
In recent years, the federal government has invested in brine lithium extraction, providing $11 million in DOE funding to develop and accelerate technologies for extracting and converting battery-grade lithium from geothermal brines.
The state of California is also leaning into the development of lithium extraction in the Salton Sea.
In 2020, the California State Legislature established a commission to investigate and analyze lithium extraction in California, including recommendations to expand lithium extraction from geothermal brines in the region.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has referred to the Salton Sea as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium production,” and the state last year established a lithium extraction tax of up to $800 a ton.
Residents of Niland, California — the closest community to a geothermal plant — said they believed a combined lithium extraction and geothermal energy production facility would have a positive impact on the local community, with slightly higher scores for geothermal compared to lithium extraction, according to a survey conducted by the DOE. However, surrounding communities in additional surveys did express concern about environmental impacts and air quality.
Lithium extraction in the Salton Sea may represent a rare consensus among conservationists, local populations, and industry, as mining projects face substantial community concern and backlash in Nevada and other parts of the country.
In Nevada, several Native American tribes have filed lawsuits against the proposed Thacker Pass mine, arguing the mine would desecrate a sacred site and violate federal preservation law and land policy.
Conservation groups have also fiercely opposed a planned lithium mine at Rhyolite Ridge in Esmeralda County, overlapping the only known population of the Tiehm’s buckwheat plant, a rare wildflower listed as endangered by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service last year.
The announcement earlier this week — that the EPA wants to get rid of lead pipes that provide drinking water within the next decade — sounded like good news, especially in Chicago, which has the most lead water pipes of any city in the United States.
But the fine print is disappointing: Because of a loophole or “carve-out” in the proposed rule, some residents there could still end up waiting another 40 years for the lead pipes to be removed.
The EPA mandate makes an exception for places where it would be almost impossible to replace all of the lead pipes within 10 years. It would be a colossal challenge to remove Chicago’s nearly 400,000 lead water pipes. Cities and towns that are in a similar position to Chicago could instead replace 10,000 pipes a year until all lead pipes are removed. That means Chicago could theoretically take more than 40 years to solve the problem and still be in compliance with the rule, which is expected to be finalized next year.
Lead can cause a host of health issues, including damage to the brain and nervous system. In children, lead can severely disrupt their development and lead to issues with hearing or speech as well as learning or behavioral issues.
The new rule would also lower the limit of lead from 15 to 10 parts per billion, or ppb. The World Health Organization has said that there is no safe level of exposure to lead.
For drinking water in particular, the long-term consumption of lead is a problem, said Adrienne L. Katner, director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Program at Louisiana State University in New Orleans.
“The one big difference is that you’re ingesting water on a daily basis and it’s a chronic exposure. So even if it’s low dose, it is a concern,” said Katner.
In Chicago, the problem is so acute that a Guardian analysis of city data found that 1 in 20 taps have water that exceeds the current EPA minimum of 15 parts per billion. The analysis also found that lead levels are higher in the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods.
While Gina Ramirez, Midwest outreach manager at the National Resources Defense Council, was delighted to hear the announcement of the rules, she’s also concerned that they don’t go far enough.
“That 10 year rule is not going to apply to Chicago, which as an [environmental justice] advocate, as a parent, as an expectant mother, is really concerning to me,” said Ramirez. “I would love to see lead service line replacement within my children’s generation. And if we’re going by a [longer] timeline, that’s not acceptable.”
Previous attempts to solve the problem from the city have so far been unsuccessful. A Chicago Sun-Times investigation found that despite former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s promise to make significant inroads on the issue, there were only 280 pipes that were replaced by the end of her tenure.
Ramirez is also personally invested in the fight against lead in drinking water. She helped her mother apply for a city program that helps residents replace those same lead service lines at no cost, but the onerous paperwork and long wait times left her wanting.
“My mom, you know, part of the process of getting her line removed was to test her water, she still has not gotten the results,” said Ramirez. “She did have her lead service line replaced, but she still doesn’t know if she had 15 parts per million or even higher in her water previously.”
Those concerns are not unfounded, since Ramirez’s mother lives on the city’s Southeast side, a place that has historically been polluted by multiple heavy industrial plants that operate in the area and where a higher percentage of lead in drinking water was found.
Lead can take 20 years to fully dissipate from someone’s body, which means it can cause health issues decades after exposure, from the cardiovascular system to pregnancy, according to Katner in New Orleans.
“Chicagoans have given the ultimate sacrifice, which is our health,” added Ramirez.
The city’s plan to tackle the issue is one of several environmental justice problems facing current Mayor Brandon Johnson, who campaigned on the issue.
It would be a monumental task for the city, which only stopped installing lead pipes in 1986, after the federal government outlawed it. Megan Vidis at the Department of Water Management in Chicago noted that if the city was held to the 10 year rule, it would have to replace 40,000 service lines a year. This would be a massive leap from the current 8,000 lead pipes it replaces each year.
“There are not enough plumbers in Illinois, much less the Midwest to do that,” said Vidis.
Additionally, the price tag for replacing lead service lines in Chicago is an estimated $12 billion. The total amount of money offered by the Biden Administration to replace every service line in the country is $15 billion.
As residents are waiting for the city to ramp up its efforts, Katner urges people to buy pitcher filters or filters mounted to their taps in the kitchen. The low-cost solution is much more affordable than the billions needed to replace lead water lines and can start protecting residents’ health today.
“I think that the rule is a good move in the right direction,” said Katner. “Is it perfect? No, but you know, it’s a good move in the right direction.”
Editor’s note: TheNRDC is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers play no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
New research has found that California’s coastal redwoods have the remarkable capacity to recover from severe wildfires.
The study led by researchers from Northern Arizona University (NAU) looked at the ancient trees’ recovery from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which burned thousands of acres in California’s Big Basin State Park in the summer of 2020, a press release from NAU said. Some of the redwoods affected by the fire were over 1,500 years old.
“Recent fire in California damaged coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) groves, consuming all foliage on some of the tallest and oldest trees on Earth. Burned trees recovered through resprouting from roots, trunk and branches, necessarily supported by nonstructural carbon reserves,” the authors of the study wrote. “Nonstructural carbon reserves can be many years old, but direct use of old carbon has rarely been documented and never in such large, old trees. We found some sprouts contained the oldest carbon ever observed to be remobilized for growth.”
The research team found that many of the burned trees had not actually succumbed to the fire, as it seemed at first, the press release said. Because of their enormous ability to store carbon, the reserves provided the energy the redwoods needed to resprout. As the forest began to regenerate after the fire, new leaves sprang from buds that had been buried for hundreds of years.
“It remains to be determined if redwood’s old reserves and ancient cell lines are an exception in the plant kingdom or an exceptional example of an insurance strategy common to long-lived plants,” said George Koch, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor at NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), in the press release.
The study, “Old reserves and ancient buds fuel regrowth of coast redwood after catastrophic fire,” was published in the journal Nature Plants.
Plants store carbon for various lengths of time, but most models look at periods of no more than a year. This study used models to examine how long reserves could be stored for future use. They did so by inhibiting the natural process of photosynthesis in order to stop new carbon from being stored while using radiocarbon dating to estimate how old the carbon being used for energy was.
“This study was really exciting for us because we used measurements at the atomic level — counting the amount of carbon-14 relative to carbon-12 —to understand what these sprouts, which start as tiny green shoots, are telling us about the growth strategy of these enormous trees, among the largest living organisms on earth,” said Regents’ professor Andrew Richardson with Ecoss, who was a co-author of the study, in the press release.
The researchers found that, in a few trees, it was likely that carbon reserves were decades or perhaps even a century old.
“As far as we know, these are some of the oldest carbon reserves ever measured,” said Drew Peltier, lead author of the study and an assistant research professor at NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, in the press release. “Sugars photosynthesized perhaps 100 years ago were used to grow new leaves in 2021. Although coast redwood is clearly a superlative species, it is likely that other long-lived trees also harbor carbon reserves that are much older than previously recognized.”
Many of the redwoods and other tree species in Big Basin State Park did not survive the catastrophic fire, and though the coastal redwoods were able to resprout, it could take centuries for the Big Basin forest ecosystem to regenerate completely.
“For certain trees, simulations estimate up to half of sprout carbon was acquired in photosynthesis more than 57 years prior, and direct observations in sapwood show trees can access reserves at least as old,” the study’s authors wrote. “For organisms with millennial lifespans, traits enabling survival of infrequent but catastrophic events may represent an important energy sink. Remobilization of decades-old photosynthate after disturbance demonstrates substantial amounts of nonstructural carbon within ancient trees cycles on slow, multidecadal timescales.”
Hadeel Ikhmais left her home in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem at 5 a.m. on Tuesday to catch her 5 p.m. flight to Dubai. Ikhmais is the head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority, or EQA, and for months she and her colleagues had been planning to attend COP28, the annual United Nations climate conference taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this year. Encouraged by the fact that an Arab nation was hosting the conference for the second year in a row, the Palestinian government had paid the United Nations tens of thousands of dollars to secure a pavilion for the first time ever. Pavilions serve as spaces for press conferences, delegate meetings, and venues to showcase a country’s climate priorities to COP attendees. Palestinian delegates spent months designing visuals for the pavilion, securing funds for travel, and preparing materials for the conference. Nearly 50 delegates planned to attend.
Then, on October 7, Hamas launched an assault on towns and villages in southern Israel, and the Israeli military responded with a bloody bombing campaign across Gaza.
Overnight, traveling to Dubai became more dangerous. Bethlehem is located in the West Bank, an area of Palestine that has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. The region does not have an airport, and Ikhmais would have to make the trek to the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan, about 60 miles away. The journey to Jordan had always been exhausting, but after October 7, the Israeli checkpoints that dotted the road to the border became treacherous. Lines were long, travelers were forced to wait for hours, Israeli soldiers conducted intrusive physical searches, and rumors were swirling that the Israeli government might close the checkpoints. Being out in the streets at all was frightening; In recent weeks, the Israeli military has killed civilians in raids on the occupied West Bank.
“I was scared to leave my house because to go to another city during these situations, it’s not an easy thing,” said Ikhmais. “You are going to travel somewhere that you don’t know what is going on.”
Ultimately, Ikhmais passed through the Jericho checkpoint and successfully made her flight to Dubai. In total, fewer than 10 Palestinian delegates made it to Dubai, each facing long and challenging journeys. Her colleague Ahmed Abuthaher, for instance, had a similar experience the previous day coming from Ramallah.
The entrance to Palestine’s pavilion at COP28 in Dubai.
Grist / Naveena Sadasivam
But both Ikhmais and Abuthaher said that despite the daunting travel challenges, it was important to have Palestinian representation at COP28. Gaza is experiencing the impacts of sea-level rise on its Mediterranean coast, and Palestinian farmers are contending with flooding, drought, and drastic fluctuations in temperatures. Additionally, Palestine’s recognition as a member under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, and its subsequent participation in COPs is an assertion of its statehood.
“Even with the difficulties that we face on the ground — the war in Gaza or the Israeli aggression in the West Bank — we are part of the world,” said Abuthaher, who is a director general at the EQA and Palestine’s lead contact on climate change with the United Nations. “And even though our emissions are very, very limited, we are part of this fight. We have to do our part to help others combat climate change.”
That Palestine is even a member of the UNFCCC is the result of a long and hard-fought battle. The government was interested in signing onto the treaty in the late 2000s, but its experience with a different arm of the U.N. held back its admission. It hit a roadblock in 2011 when UNESCO, the U.N. agency that aims to further international peace and security through the promotion of education and culture, voted overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as a full member. In response, the United States withdrew a huge sum of funding from UNESCO, citing a 1994 law that bars Congress from providing capital to any U.N. body that “grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.”
After the U.S.’s decision, “We were very reluctant to join any international platform,” so as “not to cause any harm to developing countries who were looking for that kind of financial support,” said Nedal Katbeh-Bader, who worked as a minister at the EQA from 1999 until his retirement earlier this year.
Nonetheless, the agency recognized the importance of joining the UNFCCC. Entering the treaty would afford Palestine equal recognition among the world’s countries and, Katbeh-Bader emphasized, unlock funding opportunities for climate adaptation efforts that the EQA was struggling to get off the ground. In addition to the restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation, Palestine’s attempts to thwart climate change have been stymied by its location in the Eastern Mediterranean, where temperatures are rising at almost twice the rate of the global average. With the UNESCO fiasco a fresh memory, environment officials in Palestine began meeting with other governments to build a case for admission to the UNFCCC. They won the support of Arab states and, in the lead-up to COP21 in Paris, the French government.
Hadeel Ikhmais speaks to a visitor in Palestine’s pavilion at COP28 in Dubai.
Grist / Naveena Sadasivam
Shortly after the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, establishing the goal of keeping the global average temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, Palestine was admitted to the UNFCCC. “The French presidency helped us a lot,” recalled Abuthaher. “After the finalization of the COP, we submitted our application, and there was no objection.”
Palestine was the first U.N. member from the Arab world to sign the agreement, and among the first 15 globally. When its membership was announced in early 2016, a State Department official said that the decision would not impact the U.S.’s participation in the UNFCCC. But upon joining, Palestinian officials immediately ran into challenges trying to secure funding.
Get caught up on COP28
What is COP28? Every year, climate negotiators from around the world gather under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to assess countries’ progress toward reducing carbon emissions and limiting global temperature rise.
The 28th Conference of Parties, or COP28, is taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, between November 30 and December 12 this year.
What happens at COP? Part trade show, part high-stakes negotiations, COPs are annual convenings where world leaders attempt to move the needle on climate change.
While activists up the ante with disruptive protests and industry leaders hash out deals on the sidelines, the most consequential outcomes of the conference will largely be negotiated behind closed doors. Over two weeks, delegates will pore over language describing countries’ commitments to reduce carbon emissions, jostling over the precise wording that all 194 countries can agree to.
What are the key issues at COP28 this year?
Global stocktake: The 2016 landmark Paris Agreement marked the first time countries united behind a goal to limit global temperature increase. The international treaty consists of 29 articles with numerous targets, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing financial flows to developing countries, and setting up a carbon market. For the first time since then, countries will conduct a “global stocktake” to measure how much progress they’ve made toward those goals at COP28 and where they’re lagging.
Fossil fuel phase-out or phase-down: Countries have agreed to reduce carbon emissions at previous COPs, but have not explicitly acknowledged the role of fossil fuels in causing the climate crisis until recently. This year, negotiators will be haggling over the exact phrasing that signals that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels. They may decide that countries need to phase-down or phase-out fossil fuels or come up with entirely new wording that conveys the need to ramp down fossil fuel use.
Loss and damage: Last year, countries agreed to set up a historic fund to help developing nations deal with the so-called loss and damage that they are currently facing as a result of climate change. At COP28, countries will agree on a number of nitty-gritty details about the fund’s operations, including which country will host the fund, who will pay into it and withdraw from it, as well as the makeup of the fund’s board.
Developing nations often rely on global institutions funded by wealthy nations to finance climate projects. One of the main climate funds is the Global Environment Facility, an intergovernmental body headquartered in Washington, D.C. The U.S. is its biggest shareholder. In the summer of 2016, EQA Chair Adalah Atteerah contacted the Global Environment Facility’s then-CEO, Naoko Ishii, to request funding, but months passed with no response. Repeated attempts to reach the organization over the following year were ignored. (The Global Environment Facility declined to comment in time for publication, citing time constraints.)
“We have two challenges facing us to be able to implement these climate action plans: the Israeli Occupation and the lack of financial resources,” wrote Atteerah in a letter to world leaders before COP24 in Poland in 2018. Palestine had signed onto the UNFCCC in “good faith,” she said, but the funding it needed to fulfill its duties to the convention was being withheld by “some entities.”
All UNFCCC members are required to develop a document called a Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, which outlines their annual greenhouse gas emissions and their plans to reduce them.
Palestine submitted its first NDC to the UNFCCC in 2017 and an updated version in October 2021. The document cites adaptation to climate change as its main goal, since Palestine contributes minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions. Both that report and Palestine’s National Adaptation Plan, which it submitted to the U.N. in 2016, name numerous challenges stemming from the Israeli government’s strict control over Palestinian land and natural resources. One of the focuses of both documents is the agricultural sector, which the vast majority of Palestinians rely on for their livelihoods. Rain-fed agriculture accounts for more than 80 percent of farming in Palestine, and increasingly frequent dry spells and soil evaporation from high temperatures are degrading the quality of the harvest. The National Adaptation Plan notes that the Israeli occupation has limited Palestinians’ ability to develop wastewater treatment plants, which could provide an alternative form of irrigation to save desiccated crops.
Palestinian children collect watermelons from their field in northern Gaza in July 2017.
Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Another focus of the reports is the electricity sector, which currently only fulfills 2 percent of domestic demand, according to the EQA. The Israeli government effectively controls the lights in Palestine, with the majority of Palestinians’ electricity coming from the Israel Electric Corporation. As a result, electricity outages are common, particularly in times of heightened tension and violence such as the Israeli military’s ongoing campaign in Gaza. Before the war, approximately 25 percent of Gaza’s power came from rooftop solar, significantly more than in Israel. The NDC outlines multiple goals, such as the expansion of solar power and the establishment of a national high-voltage grid, but the authors cited complications to these ambitions, too. Israel has historically rejected most of Palestinians’ permit applications for solar development.
Abuthaher said that the EQA submitted a permit request about five years ago to the Israeli government for just 500 square meters of space — about a tenth of a football field — near Jericho to erect solar panels to power a few households. But the land was in Area C, a region in the West Bank administered by Israel, and the EQA was denied permission. “In Area C, we face huge difficulties,” Abuthaher said. “We need their permits.”
In some instances, Israel has also bombed solar panels. In 2018, Palestine received funding from the World Bank to build a 7-megawatt rooftop solar project in Gaza. But the $11.2 million project, celebrated as one of “Gaza Strip’s brightest beacons of promise,” was bombed by the Israel Defense Forces in May 2021. The airstrikes damaged 5,000 of the 21,000 solar panels and caused an estimated $5 million in damage.
Ikhmais and Abuthaher said that in the past, there was an informal understanding that the Israeli government wouldn’t target projects built with foreign funding. “It was a trust that Israel would not harm any project with donor funding,” said Abuthaher. “But that is not the case on the ground.”
The Green Climate Fund, which was established under the UNFCCC to help developing countries finance climate projects, has greenlit several projects in Palestine, including a water banking project in Gaza, a national platform for its climate initiatives, and making water infrastructure more climate resilient. Some of these projects — like the water banking project — were operational before the recent conflict, but Abuthaher said he doesn’t know whether they’ve been bombed in the last couple of months.
“Everything that helps to protect the environment is damaged and destroyed,” Katbeh-Bader said. “Whatever you can imagine in your worst dreams, you will find it in Gaza.”
When the current crisis ends, Ikhmais said the EQA will need to conduct a wide-ranging and detailed assessment of the damage. “We are just waiting for these horrible things to end,” she said.
President of the World Bank Ajay Banga has announced that the international development lender will devote 45 percent of its yearly financing budget to climate-related causes for the fiscal year July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, a press release from the World Bank said.
The financial institution added that, in the event of climate disasters, it would extend debt repayment pauses.
“We’re putting our ambition in overdrive and putting to work more than $40 billion per year – around $9 billion more than the original target,” Banga said, as Reuters reported.
Two years ago, the bank announced an average climate-related financing goal of 35 percent by 2025 and has been running at 36.3 percent since July of last year, according to the press release.
Banga announced the increased commitment on Friday at the United Nations COP28 climate conference as part of a revamping of the World Bank to make it better able to respond to the climate crisis and other emergencies around the world, reported Reuters.
Banga said financial resources would be directed in equal parts to climate adaptation and mitigation by the bank’s main branch, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as its fund for countries with the most need, the International Development Association.
Banga added that the bank would expand the scope of its loans’ Climate Resilient Debt Clauses to cover its existing loans for the most vulnerable nations facing the aftermath of climate-related calamities like floods or hurricanes.
Banga said the repayment pauses would now cover debt interest payments rather than just principal repayments, which gives nations more resources to maintain access to water, food, power and additional necessities.
“In October, the World Bank secured an ambitious — and expanded — mandate to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet,” the press release said. “In addition to boosting resilience and adaptation among those hardest hit by the effects of climate change, World Bank Group projects also will focus on safeguarding ecosystems and biodiversity to protect the health of people and planet.”
Under Banga, the World Bank, founded in July of 1944, aims to expand its initiatives to assist with global hunger and the climate crisis.
“Having pledged to squeeze more from its balance sheet to fund the fight against climate change, the Bank will continue to deliver on adaptation to help countries devastated by climate shocks and on mitigation to help reduce the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change,” the press release said.
On Wednesday, 95,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the coastal waters of Laguna Beach in Southern California, prompting the closure of over two miles of the coastline.
The closure spans from Laguna Avenue to Blue Lagoon, according to the announcement from the Orange County Health Care Agency. The area will be closed until further notice.
“The spill volume is an estimated total of 94,500 gallons, and was caused by a break in a force main sewer line in Laguna Beach,” the agency said, as reported by KTLA. The exact location of the break has not been announced.
The affected area will remain closed for swimming, surfing and other recreational activities that involve water contact. Ongoing monitoring of water quality will determine when the water meets “acceptable standards,” and can be considered for reopening, the agency said, as reported by The Associated Press.
The Orange County Health Care Agency will offer updated information on its website, www.OCBeachInfo.com, or by phone at 714-433-6400. The agency has also asked that any sewage spills be reported by calling 714-433-6419.
Sewage spills put human health at risk, as they allow bacteria to contaminate the water. This bacteria can lead to various health impacts for those who come in contact with it.
“Gastroenteritis is the most common illness associated with swimming in water polluted by sewage. It occurs in a variety of forms that can have one or more of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, diarrhea, headache and fever,” a California government website noted. “Other minor illnesses that can result from swimming in polluted water include ear, eye, skin, nose and throat infections. In highly polluted water, swimmers may occasionally be exposed to more serious diseases like dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and typhoid fever.”
Aside from the negative health impacts for humans, sewage spills pose great risks to the environment. Sewage spills can increase risk of algal blooms, which can block sunlight and oxygen for aquatic life, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
According to Surfrider Foundation, around 900 billion gallons of under-treated sewage spill into surface waters around the world per year. The organization explained that spills can often be attributed to aging and poorly maintained infrastructure that cannot keep up with the wastewater needs of rapidly growing populations.
“Climate change will make this situation worse as more frequent and more severe coastal storms will occur, dumping high volumes of rain, causing flooding and sewers to overflow,” Surfrider Foundation shared. “Sea level rise in some coastal cities like Miami is also already causing sunny day flooding and problems within the stormwater and wastewater systems.”
We’ve all seen cigarette butts on the sidewalk, on the beach or lying in the grass, but may not have realized the toll those cotton-like plastic fibers take on the environment.
The cost of marine ecosystem damage and waste management related to the plastics in cigarette packaging and butts is approximately $26 billion per year, or $186 billion each decade, according to a new analysis conducted by Deborah K. Sy, a global health lawyer who is the head of global public policy and strategy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, a press release from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said.
Sy emphasized that, while the costs of cigarette waste may seem minute in proportion to the overall human and economic toll of tobacco, the impacts, which are cumulative, can be avoided.
“Although this amount is small compared with the annual economic losses from tobacco (US$1.4 trillion per year) and may appear insignificant compared with the 8 million deaths attributable to tobacco each year, these environmental costs should not be downplayed as these are accumulating and are preventable,” Sy said in the press release.
Sy pointed out that, while progress has been made to develop policies banning or reducing single use plastics globally, plastics in cigarettes have been left out.
It’s a big oversight, however, as cigarette filters — which consist of single-use plastic — are the most prevalent waste item collected in the world.
The analysis, “Tobacco industry accountability for marine pollution: country and global estimates,” was published in the journal Tobacco Control.
“Efforts to reduce plastic pollution should address cigarette filters as toxic, widespread and preventable sources of marine pollution. Countries may develop specific estimates of waste management and ecosystem costs in order to assign tobacco industry accountability for this pollution,” Sy wrote in the study.
Sy used publicly sourced data for cigarette sales, marine and terrestrial plastic waste from cigarettes and clean-up costs in an attempt to measure the economic toll of the toxic waste of cigarette products worldwide in order to better inform environmental protection agencies and tobacco control, BMJ said.
Data sources for the study included the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund and The Tobacco Atlas.
“Cigarette filters have been polluting our oceans and land for at least five decades, and these trash items may have a carrier effect with the toxic chemicals leached from them. Human and ecosystem impacts of this toxic chemical accumulation are unknown,” Sy wrote.
The weight of each plastic cigarette filter, along with the weight of the package, was included in Sy’s calculations.
Sy estimated the yearly and decade-long predictions of the economic costs to the environment of cigarettes based on tonnage. Projections for an entire decade were used because cigarette butts reportedly take a decade to break down.
The total reflects estimates of the expense of cleaning up and disposing of the overall amount of plastic generated by sales of filtered cigarettes that end up in landfills, the ocean or out in the environment.
The total annual cost estimate of $26 billion from cigarette plastics waste consists of $5 billion for waste management and $20.7 billion in damage to marine ecosystems, or $186 billion per decade.
The greatest number of cigarette butts that end up as waste are found primarily in low and middle income countries, and the estimates suggest that the cigarette plastics pollution-related costs are likely highest in Indonesia, China, Japan, the Philippines and Bangladesh.
Sy said that, though the figures are estimates, they are most likely conservative due to the fact that chemicals and toxic metals found in cigarette butts were not taken into account and accumulate over time, which makes them more toxic than most plastic waste.
“The general estimates provided here could provide fiscal evidence of the need to mitigate tobacco plastic waste pollution,” Sy suggested, and the data could aid “in assigning industry responsibility for these losses, including that of the [tobacco industry],” according to BMJ.
Sy added that policies to put the responsibility for cleaning up tobacco waste on the tobacco industry are being considered by the European Union, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
