IPCC Report: Climate Change Is a Generational Justice Issue
Originally published by Union of Concerned Scientists, The Equation.
By Christina Swanson
How many times have we said this before? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) new report, its sixth since 1990, is a “wake-up call.”
The report, authored by more than 200 scientists from across the globe and based on more than 14,000 individual studies, is a comprehensive synthesis of the latest science on the changing state of our climate system. It concludes that it is “unequivocal” that climate change is being caused by human activities, primarily the burning of coal, oil, and gas. Yet, California, a state known for its progressive climate stance, just approved 40,000 new oil wells in Kern County, an area already littered with tens of thousands existing wells and among the most polluted regions in the state.
The IPCC reports that now, decades after scientists’ first warnings, our actions have pushed our climate into an “unprecedented” state. The increase in temperature measured since 1970, when I was a young teenager, is faster than for any other 50-year period going back at least 2000 years.
”It finds that virtually every child on the planet is exposed to at least one climate or environmental hazard right now.”
Adriana Calderón, Farzana Faruk Jhumu, Eric Njuguna and me write in NYT as @UNICEF publish their Children’s Climate Risk Index.https://t.co/J1fc9ZCLMW
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 20, 2021
The IPCC’s report provides graphic descriptions of the human, ecological, and financial costs that we are already paying for climate driven heat waves, droughts, floods, and fires, and which will be worse in the future. According to the report, these types of climate and weather extremes are already affecting every inhabited region of the globe. As I write this, my drought-parched state, California, is burning again, with the Dixie fire consuming nearly 600,000 acres (almost 900 square miles!), destroying whole towns, and forcing thousands to evacuate.
And the IPCC sounds an urgent call for action, warning that we have very little time left if we are to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and avoid the worst, most catastrophic, and irreversible impacts of climate change. Global temperatures have already risen by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.
Reading the report, it is painfully clear that, by our ongoing societal failure to act on our knowledge to slow and reverse climate change, we are not only bringing disasters down upon ourselves, we are jeopardizing our children’s future.
This basically sums up our current situation. The “code red” IPCC report came out a week ago. Since then not one politician has been held accountable. Not one politician has been asked how they are going to act in line with this. 1/4
(Graph by @Peters_Glen ) pic.twitter.com/1r4vljDzJw— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 16, 2021
Climate change is not just an environmental problem that is damaging ecosystems, harming, displacing, and killing people, and driving species toward extinction on land and sea. It is not just an environmental justice problem that is inflicting disproportionate harm on marginalized and vulnerable communities, countries, and regions of the globe. Climate change, and its resultant and escalating environmental, social, and economic harms and costs, is a generational justice problem that my generation — and the nearly 70% of the total cumulative emissions that were generated during my lifetime — is dumping on our children and future generations. That’s not right.
But the report also tells us that there is hope and a path — a very slim and very challenging path — for us to reduce our carbon pollution enough to limit global warming to that critical 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold.
We know, and in fact we have known for decades what we need to do: replace coal, oil, and gas with clean energy alternatives for electricity, transportation, industry, and buildings; change the ways we use land and produce food to protect and regenerate the natural systems, like forests and wetlands, that absorb carbon dioxide; and, because climate impacts are already upon us, we need to change how and where we build, work, and live to adapt to survive our changing climate.
All of these changes are well understood and feasible, some are already in progress, and most of them will provide social and environmental benefits beyond their positive climate effects, like improved health from less air pollution. So why are we failing?
One simplistic answer is that change is hard and often slow because the societies and systems in which we live have the tendency for inertia. At a time when we need different and difficult decisions, by governments, by industries and businesses, by the finance and investment sector, by communities, and by individuals, we are instead intentionally framing and grounding our expectations, planning, and decisions in the context of the status quo, the way things are and have been and in pursuit of short-term outcomes.
And so, informed by the IPCC report, motivated by our own self-interest, and inspired by our moral and ethical responsibilities to our children and future generations, here is one approach that we can take to help guide and facilitate those different and difficult decisions. Rather than making decisions based on the status quo, we could instead evaluate our options and make decisions based on the future and what we want that future to be. For every proposal for a new oil well, pipeline or power plant, or for an expanded highway, urban development, or logging plan, we should be asking “Is this project consistent with the characteristics and constraints of a world in which we meet our climate goal and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius?” If it’s not, we shouldn’t do it.
“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
This quote is perhaps overused by many of us in the environmental community, but it has always been one of my favorites. It resonates with my deep personal connection with nature, my training as a biologist, and my commitment to apply my professional efforts and talents to better protect our planet. But, with each passing year, as I have watched with joy and pride the next generation of my family grow to adulthood, it feels gloomier and more ominous, an accusation rather than inspirational rallying cry.
The new IPCC report is telling us — again — that we are trashing the planet we have borrowed from our children. We know we are doing it, we know what we need to do to stop it, and we don’t have much time left before the damage becomes catastrophic and irreversible. We are all responsible. We all have the responsibility to act. Most importantly (and most impactfully), policymakers at all levels of government, but especially those in Washington, must take decisive steps to confront the climate crisis. Not next year: now. And that means Congress should advance President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, which weds an equitable recovery from the pandemic-drive downturn with the climate action we need now.
So please, let’s all of us wake up and get to work.
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A worker repairs a power line in Austin, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2021.
Thomas Ryan Allison | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The rapid expansion of data centers in Texas is driving electricity demand higher during the winter, compounding the risk of supply shortfalls that could lead to blackouts during freezing temperatures.
The Lone Star state is attracting a huge amount of data center requests, driven by its abundant renewable energy and natural gas resources as well as its business friendly environment. OpenAI, for example, is developing its flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, about 150 miles west of Dallas-Forth Worth. The campus could require up to 1.2 gigawatts of power, the equivalent of a large nuclear plant.
The North American Electric Relibaility Corporation warned this week that data centers’ round-the-clock energy consumption will make it more difficult to sustain sufficient electricity supply under extreme demand conditions during freezing temperatures like catastropic Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
“Strong load growth from new data centers and other large industrial end users is driving higher winter electricity demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls,” NERC said of Texas in an analysis published Tuesday. Texas faces elevated risk during extreme winter weather, but the state’s grid is reliable during normal peak demand, NERC said.
During Uri, demand spiked for home heating in response to the freezing temperatures at the same time power plants failed in large numbers due to the same weather. Texas grid operator ERCOT ordered 20 gigawatts of rolling blackouts to prevent the system from collapsing, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report. The majority of the power plants went offline ran on natural gas.
It was the “largest manually controlled load shedding event in U.S. history” resulting 4.5 million people losing power for several days. At least 210 people died during the storm. Most of the fatalities were connected to the outages and included cases of hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and medical conditions exacerbated by freezing termperatures, according to FERC.
Data center requests surge
In the years since Uri, Texas has received a staggering amount of requests from data centers, crypto mining facilities and industrial customers seeking a grid conenction. More than 220 gigawatts of projects have requested connection as of this month, a 170% increase over the 83 gigawatts of project requests back in January, according to data published Wednesday by ERCOT.
About 73% of the projects requesting connection are data centers, according to ERCOT.
If all of those projects were actually built, they would be equivalent to the average annual power consumption of nearly 154 million homes in Texas, according to a CNBC analysis based on 2024 household electricity data. But the Lone Star state only has a population of about 30 million people.
Beth Garza, a former head of ERCOT’s watchdog, said she is very skeptical these projects will all get built, describing the scale of the numbers as “crazy big.” More than half the projects have not submitted planning studies, according to ERCOT.
“There’s not enough stuff to serve that much load on the equipment side or the consumption side,” said Garza, who served as director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor from 2014 through 2019. “There’s just so much stuff in the world to make those kinds of numbers work.”
Phantom data centers are showing up in grid connection requests across the U.S. as developers shop the same projects around to mutliple jurisdictions, said John Moura, the director of NERC’s reliability assessments. This makes it difficult for utilities to forecast future demand conditions.
Reliability at risk
The projects that ERCOT has approved to actually connect to the grid is much smaller at 7.5 gigawatts, but this is still a subsantial amount of new demand. By comparison, the six county region in southeastern Pennsylvania that includes Philadelphia, with a population of 1.7 million people, had a peak demand of about 8.6 gigwatts in 2024, according to the state utility board.
Texas’ supply and demand balance can become tight during winter and potentially fall into deficit. The state has 92.6 gigawatts of available resources and peak demand in an extreme Uri-like scenario could reach about 85.3 gigawatts, according to NERC.
But avalaible power could fall to around 69.7 gigawatts in extreme winter weather, leaving a supply deficit of more than 15 gigawatts. This is due to typical power plant maintainence and forced plant outages as well as reductions in power capacity due to winter conditions.
“What’s important to understand is the tightness we’re seeing,” Moura said. NERC’s winter assessment only included data center facilities that have reached certain milestones to filter out speculative projects, he said.
“I can’t stress enough how much of a monumental change this is for the electric industry,” Moura said of the data center requests. One solution is for data centers to show flexibility in their electricity consumption to help keep demand and supply in balance during extreme winter scenarios, he said.
In the case of Uri, natural gas plants made up 58% of all the unplanned outages in Texas, according to FERC. Freezing tempartures reduced gas production, led to challenges delivering fuel and problems transmitting electricity as power lines fell.
Texas has adopted rules to harden natural gas infrastructure for extreme winters in the wake of the storm.
When gas plants go out in such a large way, solar and battery storage also face challenges, according to NERC. Peak demand in winter is in the early morning hours when sunlight is lower and batteries may not have had enough time recharge, Moura said.
With data centers running around the clock, “maintaining sufficient battery state of charge will become increasingly challenging for extended periods of high loads, such as a severe multi-day storm like Winter Storm Uri,” NERC said in its analysis.
“Power shortfalls and rolling outages really could happen in the next few years in certain regions” of the U.S. as demand from facilities like data centers outstrips supply, said Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies. “Those are unacceptable to everybody in the United States.”
Garza said she’s confident that the reliable demand from data centers will bring new supply. “Plants love that kind of of opportunity,” she said. “My expectation is that then attracts additional private capital investment to meet those supply needs.”
Environment
Activist Ananym Capital sees upside if Baker Hughes spins off its oilfield services business
First Solar just cut the ribbon on a huge new factory in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, and it dwarfs the New Orleans Superdome. The company’s $1.1 billion, fully vertically integrated facility spans 2.4 million square feet, or about 11 times the size of the stadium’s main arena.
The factory began production quietly in July, a few months ahead of schedule, and employs more than 700 people. First Solar expects that number to hit 826 by the end of the year. Once it’s fully online, the site will add 3.5 GW of annual manufacturing capacity. That brings the company’s total US footprint to 14 GW in 2026 and 17.7 GW in 2027, when its newly announced South Carolina plant is anticipated to come online.
The Louisiana plant produces First Solar’s Series 7 modules using US-made materials — glass from Illinois and Ohio, and steel from Mississippi, which is fabricated into backrails in Louisiana.
The new factory leans heavily on AI, from computer vision that spots defects on the line to deep learning tools that help technicians make real‑time adjustments.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry says the investment is already a win for the region, bringing in “hundreds of good-paying jobs and new opportunities for Louisiana workers and businesses.” A new economic impact analysis from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette projects that the factory will boost Iberia Parish’s GDP by 4.4% in its first full year at capacity. The average manufacturing compensation package comes in at around $90,000, more than triple the parish’s per capita income.
First Solar CEO Mark Widmar framed the new facility as a major step for US clean energy manufacturing: “By competitively producing energy technology in America with American materials, while creating American jobs, we’re demonstrating that US reindustrialization isn’t just a thesis, it’s an operating reality.”
This site joins what’s already the largest solar manufacturing and R&D footprint in the Western Hemisphere: three factories in Ohio, one in Alabama, and R&D centers in Ohio and California. Just last week, First Solar announced a new production line in Gaffney, South Carolina, to onshore more Series 6 module work. By the end of 2026, the company expects to directly employ more than 5,500 people across the US.
Read more: First Solar pours $330M into a new South Carolina solar factory
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