This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A cutting-edge energy storage company is building its main manufacturing plant where a once-thriving West Virginia steel mill once stood in the city of Weirton. According to lawmakers, the much-lauded project was made possible by incentives from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Biden one year ago last week.

For supporters, it’s a sign that climate policies can also breathe life back into deindustrialized coal and steel communities with green jobs. The symbolism is compelling but how much those communities benefit will depend on a wide array of factors.

Form Energy, a Massachusetts-based company helmed by a former Tesla vice-president, broke ground on its iron-air battery manufacturing plant this past May. Workers will produce batteries capable of storing electricity for 100 hours, which will run on iron, water and air instead of the more common but less-abundant metal lithium. The $760 million project will create 750 well-paying permanent jobs, the company said.

The plant is being constructed on the ashes of the old Weirton steel mill, once the beating heart of the steel economy in the Ohio River valley. At its height in the 1940s, the mill was West Virginia’s number one taxpayer and its largest employer, boasting a 13,000-strong workforce.

“You could literally graduate one day from high school and be hired at the steel mill making very good money,” said Mark Glyptis, president of the United Steelworkers Local 2911 and a third-generation steelworker from Weirton.

But Weirton’s economy began to wither in the 1970s. Local industry slowly declined as the market began to prefer cheaper foreign steel – and, Glyptis said, stopped enforcing regulations on the material.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. The fallout, said Glyptis, has been “heartbreaking.”

“It changed the landscape and the community has suffered significantly,” said Glyptis. “Our children, many of whom were planning on staying and living in the valley, have had to leave the valley to seek employment somewhere else.”

After the decline of domestic coal and steel, West Virginia transitioned from a production-based economy to a service-based one. This was a major blow to residents’ economic wellbeing, said Ted Boettner, senior researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute.

The Weirton steel mill paid an average of roughly $16 an hour in the 1970s, which was a “decent wage,” said Boettner. By contrast, in 2013, he found that Walmart, then the state’s biggest employer, paid half of its employees less than $15 an hour – a comparison that does not account for inflation, he said.

Glyptis is optimistic that the new battery plant will help revitalize the community where he grew up. “There’ll be significant opportunities for our children to prosper,” he said.

The IRA’s carbon-cutting incentives were touted as a way to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from 2003 levels while bringing manufacturing jobs back onshore. Since the law’s passage last year, manufacturers have announced 83 new or expanded major clean energy manufacturing facilities, including 14 battery manufacturing facilities, according to the American Clean Power Association.

“They’ve made the US the place for the private sector to invest in clean energy,” Samantha Smith, senior adviser for clean energy jobs at the AFL-CIO, said of the IRA’s incentives.

Form Energy has agreed to provide employees decent wages and working conditions. That is not merely a sign of the company’s altruism. The IRA incentivizes green energy developers to pay workers a prevailing wage and to have a certain share of labor done by workers in registered apprenticeship programs.

By meeting those requirements, companies can get a 30 percent tax credit on qualifying projects. If they fail to meet the standards, that percentage drops to 6 percent. “Those conditions … are great,” said Smith.

The landmark policy also sets aside a share of manufacturing tax credits specifically for facilities based in former coal communities, said Ben Beachy, industrial policy expert at the labor-climate group BlueGreen Alliance. “This law rightly recognizes that an energy transition that is fair for workers and communities will not automatically happen,” he said. “It needs to be a deliberate policy choice.”

Challenges to unionization

At the new battery plant’s well-attended groundbreaking ceremony in May, Form Energy also specifically committed to employing at least some unionized workers, said Glyptis.

But the IRA stops short of directly requiring companies to employ unionized labor. On the campaign trail, Biden indicated support for making union neutrality – wherein companies agree not to contest a union vote – a necessary condition for obtaining federal funding, but that requirement is not in the IRA.

Absent union representation, workers’ ability to protect their working conditions and advocate for better benefits and wages that exceed the federal prevailing wage would be severely muted, said Boettner of the Ohio River Valley Institute.

“I think in order for West Virginia to fully benefit from the clean energy economy, it has to be very focused on rebuilding the labor movement in the state and making it stronger,” he said.

Green industries are less unionized than fossil fuel sectors are. Changing that won’t be easy, said Smith of the AFL-CIO. The US labor movement has faced decades of attacks. And the majority of investment from the IRA has so far gone to states that, like West Virginia, are controlled by Republicans and have passed anti-union “right to work” policies.

“We’ve got some state governments that are determined to drive unions out of their state,” she said. “They even market themselves to employers on that basis.”

But she said the AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions are “pouring a lot of resources” into organizing green sectors. She feels optimistic that they’re up to the challenge.

One thing that could help: the US Department of Energy has issued guidance saying IRA investments for businesses that have a unionized workforce should sign binding legal agreements with unions.

“It’s critical that those rules be enforced,” Beachy of the BlueGreen Alliance said.

‘A pioneer’

The new battery plant alone likely cannot singlehandedly revive the Ohio River valley’s economy. While Weirton Steel employed thousands of workers, Form Energy’s plant will employ fewer than 1,000.

But Patrick Ford, a director at the Frontier Group, the firm that paid to remediate the former Weirton steel mill site and prepare it for new development with additional incentives from the IRA, said he expects the battery facility will spark further investment.

“You need a pioneer,” he said.

Seeing a developer break ground on a formerly contaminated site, he said, will encourage developers to come to the region, too. He noted that there are still more than 2,000 acres (810 hectares) of the old Weirton steel plant’s footprint available for new businesses. He estimated the site could support thousands of additional jobs and billions of dollars in further investment.

Boettner said the battery plant could lead to the creation of a cluster of battery plants in the Ohio River valley. However, the Biden administration has not required power grids to use batteries and absent such mandates, battery power will have to prove it can compete in the market, he said.

“That’s a question mark,” Boettner said.

Other battery developers have announced plans to locate plants in West Virginia, but there’s no guarantee they will all get built, said Boettner. Even if they do, the state won’t see the full benefits unless it taxes the new developments to pay for public services, he said.

Historically, West Virginia has not adequately taxed fossil fuel producers for extraction, Boettner said. “That’s the story of Appalachia: never fully benefiting from the rich natural resources that are there,” he said.

The state is at risk of repeating the same mistake, he said, noting that it has already poured more than $250m into the project and that Form Energy won’t have to pay any property taxes on it.

“I imagine at least for the first 10 years of this battery factory’s life, they’re not going to pay any state corporate income tax, very little state taxes at all,” he said.

Despite the many questions ahead, Glyptis of the United Steelworkers said he feels hopeful that the battery plant could help hard-hit Appalachian communities recover from years of disinvestment. He said the Weirton steel mill is an attractive site for developers, located close to highways, a river and an airport, and within a community of skilled tradespeople.

“I think we’ll see this community reinvent itself,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A renewable energy battery plant will rise in West Virginia where a steel mill once stood on Aug 26, 2023.

What is the role of buyers in scaling high-quality carbon dioxide removal? In this webinar, experts from Carbon Direct and Microsoft will discuss the challenges in the voluntary carbon market and the unique role that buyers have to play in helping to address those challenges.

In a meeting of the Global Environment Facility (GEF)’s Seventh Assembly in Vancouver, Canada on Thursday, representatives from 185 countries agreed to launch a new global conservation fund, with Canada pledging 200 million Canadian dollars and the United Kingdom contributing 10 million pounds.

The United Nations is seeking contributions for the protection of 30 percent of terrestrial and coastal areas by 2030.

“The new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) has been designed to mobilize and accelerate investment in the conservation and sustainability of wild species and ecosystems, whose health is under threat from wildfires, flooding, extreme weather, and human activity including urban sprawl,” a press release from the Global Environment Facility said.

The GBFF is seeking monetary support from governments, philanthropic donations and the private sector.

As a trustee of the World Bank, the GBFF has not yet raised the $200 million it needs to get up and running by the end of the year, reported Reuters.

“The time for half-measures has passed,” said Oscar Soria, director of global activist nonprofit Avaaz. “Surely donors can come up with the paltry $40 million” still needed, as Reuters reported.

The GEF Assembly was attended by 1,500 people, including representatives of government, academia and business, Indigenous Peoples and environmental leaders.

The meeting, which is held every four years, comes during what is predicted to be an active hurricane season and the record wildfire season in Canada, which have been influenced by global heating and rising ocean temperatures.

“Countries have come together in Vancouver to turn things around for the health of the planet and its people. This is a hugely positive moment that will be remembered far into the future. We have shown at the Seventh GEF Assembly that even in difficult conditions – with wildfire smoke as our backdrop – we can move forward to build a more biodiverse planet for everyone’s benefit,” said Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of GEF, in the press release.

The GBFF was set up in order to fund the implementation of the Kunming-Montréal Biodiversity Framework — ratified in December of 2022 — in order to tackle the intertwined biodiversity and extinction crises.

“Biodiversity is the critical foundation of our well-being and the health of our planet. The new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund will play a key role in addressing biodiversity loss. It will address it in developing countries, where the impacts of nature loss are highest; it will address it in a gender-responsive manner, including through cross-sectoral partnerships; it will address it in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples, the original guardians of the lands and seas. Canada is making a significant contribution to this new fund and continuing to show our support for the GEF’s eighth replenishment to ensure the protection of our planet’s biodiversity for generations to come,” said Canada’s Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen in the press release.

Contributions to the GBFF will go toward stopping and reversing biodiversity loss globally by 2030, as well as placing nature on a path to recovery by 2050.

“As we confront the critical challenge of halting and reversing biodiversity loss around the world, working together has never been more important. Our initial contribution to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund showcases the United Kingdom’s ongoing dedication to protecting our planet’s natural diversity – and through vital international cooperation we are paving the way for a more sustainable future for our planet,” said Trudy Harrison, UK environment minister, in the press release.

Up to 20 percent of the GBFF’s resources will be dedicated to supporting initiatives led by Indigenous Peoples, as well as to protecting and preserving biodiversity. More than one-third of its resources will go to supporting Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

“The creation of this fund and its commitment to supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities is an important and clear recognition of the fundamental role they have had for generations protecting biodiversity. We will only achieve the shared vision of a healthy planet and healthy people with collective, inclusive actions, and a human rights approach where we all hold hands together,” said Lucy Mulenkei, co-chair of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, in the press release.

The post Environmental Leaders From 185 Countries Launch Biodiversity Protection Fund appeared first on EcoWatch.

The first tribally nominated marine sanctuary has been proposed by the Biden administration in collaboration with the Chumash tribe. The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary would span 5,600 square miles off the coast of central California. The project is now undergoing a public comment period.

The sanctuary would include an area off a 156-mile stretch of coastline between Cambria in San Luis Obispo County and Gaviota Creek in Santa Barbara County. The area includes Lisamu’, a sacred Chumash site, along with a 3,000-meter-deep submarine canyon and feeding and migration areas for 13 whale and dolphin species.

“Sanctuaries uplift local participation in ocean management, and this sanctuary will put Indigenous communities in partnership with NOAA,” Violet Sage Walker, chairwoman of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council and a nominator of the sanctuary, said in a statement. “The collective knowledge of the Central Coast’s First Peoples, as well as other local stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers, will create a strong foundation to have a thriving coast for generations to come.”

The Northern Chumash Tribal Council first began preparing a proposal in 2013 and submitted a finalized proposal for a 7,600-square-mile marine sanctuary in 2015. But as NPR reported, the application didn’t receive attention for years. Walker explained that her father, Fred Collins, had initially submitted the proposal. Collins died one month before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced it would consider the proposed region for dedication in 2021.

The proposal was reduced from 7,600 square miles to 5,600 square miles, because NOAA said the original proposed area may be used for wind energy development. The sanctuary protections would prevent energy and oil development within the boundary, but commercial fishing would still be allowed. 

The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary may be managed via the Intergovernmental Policy Council, a group including federally-recognized tribes and potentially the California Natural Resources Agency and NOAA. This management plan was based on the IPC developed for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

“This sanctuary has support from the federal and state governments, but most importantly from the communities that have lived on its shores for thousands of years,” said Steve Palumbi, professor at Stanford Hopkins Marine Station who is working with the Northern Chumash Tribal Council for conservation efforts in the proposed sanctuary. “Combining Traditional Ecological Knowledge with new data from western science is a journey that enriches our view of the ocean and ourselves.”

NOAA has opened the project to public comment through Oct. 25, 2023 and is targeting the finalized designation in 2024.

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The European Union recently passed the Deforestation Regulation, a groundbreaking law that requires companies to…

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Today’s inspiration is from writer, biologist, and environmentalist, Rachel Carson: “The more clearly we can focus…

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This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live.

A massive heat dome covered the central part of the United States on Thursday, stretching  from Omaha down to New Orleans, putting 143 million people in 19 states under heat alerts. 

In Chicago, temperatures reached 100 degrees F with a heat index of 120 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, which is the highest heat index the city has recorded, according to CBS Chicago. Hot weather that dangerous hasn’t roasted Chicago since its infamous 1995 heat wave, which killed more than 500 people over five days. This comes after a record-breaking hot day on Wednesday at 98 degrees F with a heat index of 116 degrees F. 

It feels as if most of the United States has been under a heat advisory at one point or another this summer, with Arizona and Texas especially hard hit. Temperatures have been breaking records all over the world, with July setting records as the hottest month that the planet has seen in 120,000 years. 

The past few days have seen heat creep up into uncharted territory, with places like Lawrence, Kansas recording a heat index of 134 degrees F, earlier this week. An analysis of data from the nonprofit research organization, the First Street Foundation, found that the next few decades will see the emergence of an “extreme heat belt” stretching from Northern Texas up through Illinois and parts of Wisconsin. By 2053, these areas will experience temperatures above 125 degrees F, according to the research.

In pockets of Chicago though, the heat is bringing people together with neighbors who are looking out for one another and offering water, fans, and information about the city’s cooling centers. This is despite the fact that cooling centers have been historically underutilized. 

In Pilsen, a Latino neighborhood on the city’s Near West Side, a bookstore offered up their space as an unofficial cooling center. 

Mandy Medley, a co-owner and worker at Pilsen Community Books, said that it was intrinsic to the bookstore’s mission to provide resources in a city which has few public restrooms and rest areas. 

“I think it’s a natural extension of the role we try to play in the community,” said Medley. “We’re open to the public, we have one of the very few public restrooms available in the neighborhood.” 

Medley also mentioned that the store regularly tries to remain open to community members — even when there isn’t record-breaking heat outside. 

“In general, the store is a place where people can come hang out, it doesn’t have to just be doing extreme weather,” said Medley. “We don’t force people to spend money or stay here only a certain amount of time. It really is open anytime.”

Elsewhere in Pilsen, Rabbit Schoen, an organizer with Rising Tide Chicago, an organization focused on fighting climate change, helped hand out frozen water bottles to people who were unhoused living under a highway underpass. 

“So the main things are just getting items to people who are in our neighborhoods and communities that are unhoused, who are at most risk of heatstroke, or heat exhaustion, or even heat death,” said Rabbit Schoen. “The simplest way to do that is give people cold water.” 

Additionally, Rising Tide volunteers have been working with homeless people to allocate necessary resources beyond the heat wave, since people who are unhoused remain vulnerable to other climate events, like wildfire smoke, long after the heat has subsided.

While scientists are hesitant to say that individual climate events like this one are tied to climate change, heat waves in general are highly correlated with the global warming caused by burning fossil fuels, according to Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The climate crisis from burning fossil fuels that’s heating the planet, this is exactly what you expect: more frequent and more intense heat waves, said Patz. “All these extremes have been anticipated from human-induced climate warming for decades, you know, so we’ve been talking about this for a long time.”

During the scorching hot temperatures, a community group called My Block, My Hood, My City had volunteers that were crisscrossing the city’s neighborhoods on the South and West sides to pass out cases of water bottles and box fans to elderly folks who were in need. 

“Our main thing is, taking care of people no matter what. And we know that some of the most vulnerable people in our communities are the senior citizens.” said Stephen Gilbert, Director of Youth and Community Development at My Block, My Hood, My City. 

The group had nearly 400 requests for water and fans across the city, which they pivoted all their resources to try to meet. 

“We don’t have a capacity to drop off 400 fans and waters today alone, we dropped off as many as we could,” said Gilbert. “And we’ll be back out there tomorrow doing the same thing.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Chicago broils, neighbors find ways to keep each other cool on Aug 24, 2023.

Japan has begun discharging treated water containing radioactive tritium from the decommissioned Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. The move led to China announcing an immediate ban on all aquatic products from the island nation.

China’s customs bureau said in a statement that it was “highly concerned about the risk of radioactive contamination brought by… Japan’s food and agricultural products,” reported Reuters.

Last month, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave its approval for Japan to discharge the radioactive water. An earthquake and a tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011.

China called Japan’s release of the water a “selfish and irresponsible act,” CNN reported.

The purpose of the Chinese customs department ban on all imports of aquatic products from Japan was to prevent “the risk of radioactive contamination of food safety caused by Japan’s Fukushima nuclear contaminated water discharge,” the department said.

China accused the Japanese government of not proving that the radioactive water was safe.

“The Japanese side should not cause secondary harm to the local people and even the people of the world out of its own selfish interests,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement, as reported by Reuters.

Japan said the water being released is safe, that the IAEA had concluded the water’s impact on the environment and humans would be “negligible” and that China was spreading “scientifically unfounded claims.”

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that Japan had asked China to lift its aquatic products import ban immediately and would like to discuss the impact of the water’s release from a science-based perspective.

Japanese exports of aquatic products to China are Japan’s biggest exports market, worth about $600 million in 2022. According to government data, Japanese aquatic exports to Hong Kong and China made up 42 percent of the total last year.

Fukushima Daiichi plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said no abnormalities had been identified with the release of the water so far, Reuters reported.

According to TEPCO’s test results released today, the first discharge of 7,800 cubic meters — which will happen over about 17 days — contained approximately up to 63 becquerels (a becquerel is one unit of radioactivity) of tritium per liter, which is well below the drinking water limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Additionally, a statement released by the IAEA said its own on-site analysis showed the concentration of tritium was well below the WHO limit of 10,000 becquerels per liter.

“There are not going to be any health effects… There is no scientific reason to ban imports of Japanese food whatsoever,” said Geraldine Thomas, a former London Imperial College professor of molecular pathology, as reported by Reuters.

Japanese fishing groups opposed the water’s release, their reputations having been damaged by years of radiation fears.

Macau and Hong Kong also instigated bans of seafood imports from 10 regions in Japan.

The area surrounding the release of the water will be monitored by Japan. It is estimated that the total discharge of the water will take about three decades, and Japan’s Minister of the Environment Akihiro Nishimura said weekly results will be published.

According to some experts, nuclear power plants — including in China — have been discharging diluted tritium into the ocean for years without issues, The Guardian reported.

“Nuclear power plants worldwide have routinely discharged water containing tritium for over 60 years without harm to people or the environment, most at higher levels than planned for Fukushima,” said Tony Irwin, an Australian National University honorary associate professor, as reported by The Guardian.

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Tropical forests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet, as well as some of the biggest climate regulators. Now, a new study by an international team of researchers finds that the planet’s tropical forest canopies could be closer to crucial high-temperature thresholds than was previously believed.

For the study, the researchers used data from warming experiments conducted across Earth’s tropical forests, along with high-resolution thermal imaging data from an instrument located on the International Space Station, a press release from the UK’s University of Plymouth said.

The researchers discovered that some tropical leaves are beginning to reach, and sometimes even exceed, temperatures that stop them from functioning, and that as the climate crisis wears on, whole tree canopies could die.

“If we adopt a do-nothing response to climate change and tropical forest air temperatures increase by greater than 4C, there could be massive leaf death, possible tree mortality and species turnover across all tropical forests,” said Chris Doughty, a Northern Arizona University associate professor of ecoinformatics and the lead author of the study, as reported by The Guardian.

The research team said the findings of their study could have dire consequences since tropical forests are one of the main climate regulators and house almost all of the biodiversity on Earth, the press release said.

Data from the work of Dr. Sophie Fauset — an associate professor in terrestrial ecology at University of Plymouth and one of the authors of the study — on leaf temperatures in West Africa, Brazil, China and the UK showed that the temperatures of individual leaves could get as warm as 18 degrees Celsius above the air temperature in a montane forest in Brazil.

“Trees are a critical part of our planet’s response to climate change, and tropical forests play a key role in housing species diversity and regulating the planet’s climate. If they are damaged by increases in temperatures, we are losing a key line of defence and limiting nature’s ability to mitigate the impacts of human activity,” Fauset said. “Other research I have been involved in has looked at the sensitivity of tropical forests to climate, and shown that tree carbon stock is reduced at maximum temperatures above 32°C during the hottest part of the year. If we don’t do more to address climate change, the consequences could be severe.”

The study, “Tropical forests are approaching critical temperature thresholds,” was published in the journal Nature.

From their understanding of current leaf temperatures in tropical forests around the globe, the research team was able to model how the leaves might respond to ongoing human-caused global heating.

In order to estimate what proportion of leaves might come close to critical temperatures if air temperatures increase by two, three and four degrees Celsius, the researchers combined data on canopy top leaf warming from experiments in Puerto Rico, Brazil and Australia.

The results revealed that greater than one percent of the canopy’s leaves exceeded critical threshold temperatures — estimated to be 116.06 degrees Fahrenheit — a minimum of once each year.

“We should do all we can to avoid high-emissions scenarios. Under low-emissions scenarios, almost all tropical forest tree leaves can avoid death from overheating and the trees will survive,” said Simon Lewis, a global change science professor at University College London, as The Guardian reported.

The researchers also simulated how tropical forests would fare under future planetary warming scenarios and explored the impact of hotter temperatures and more frequent droughts.

The results showed that the plants’ ability to cool themselves with evaporation would be reduced, and that the hotter, drier temperatures would speed up leaf temperature increases and potential tree mortality.

“Given that tropical forests’ key role in housing species diversity and regulating the planet’s climate, insights into their future can build an understanding of the trajectory of the planet. But our model is not fate. It suggests that with some basic climate mitigation, we can address this issue, and helps pinpoint a few key areas that need further research,” Doughty said in the press release. “It also shows that by avoiding high-emissions pathways and deforestation, we can protect the fate of these critical realms of carbon, water, and biodiversity.”

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