Panicking about the UN’s scary Emissions Gap Report is a waste of time – here’s what to do instead

Published

2 years ago

October 27, 2022

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The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) just released its Emissions Gap Report 2022 – and let’s just say, the news isn’t good. So brace yourselves: You’re likely to see a slew of frightening, doom-mongering headlines about it today, unleashing a fresh wave of terror over those of us who care about the planet. But rather than panicking, here’s what to do instead.

What the UN’s Emissions Gap Report says

The 99-page report’s title is: “The Closing Window: Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies.”

The UNEP really isn’t messing around with that title, is it?

It undoubtedly wants to light a fire under the bottoms of world leaders ahead of November’s 2022 UN Climate Change Conference, aka COP27, in Egypt. But my heart sank when I read that the UNEP views the year between COP26 and now as “a wasted year.”

Inger Andersen, the UNEP’s executive director, states in the report’s foreword that nations are procrastinating action to fight climate change, and this is what all countries must do:

To get on track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we would need to cut 45% off current greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. For 2°C, we would need to cut 30%.

A stepwise approach is no longer an option.

And then Andersen summarizes the part where hope lies – in action:

This report tells us how to go about such a transformation. It looks in-depth at the changes needed in electricity supply, industry, transport, buildings and food systems. It looks at how to reform financial systems so that these urgent transformations can be adequately financed.

She then says something that I found deeply jarring:

Is it a tall order to transform our systems in just eight years? Yes. Can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions by so much in that timeframe? Perhaps not. But we must try.

“Perhaps not.”

An alternative to panic

So after I read over the UNEP’s embargoed report documents, I could feel the climate change anxiety setting in, so I do what I usually do on such occasions: I went into the forest near my house in Vermont to regroup. I dug in the soil and the leaves with my bare hands, getting gloriously dirty. It’s incredibly cathartic to get earth on my face and under my fingernails. And as I was doing that, and taking deep, slow breaths, I thought about how to approach this rather overwhelming UN report.

This report, which asserts that “the international community is still falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid an accelerating climate disaster.”

And it also says really scary things like this:

Policies currently in place, without further strengthening, suggest a 2.8°C hike.

I won’t lie. I initially wanted to hide in the woods and not write this. I felt intimidated. But giving up is a form of passive panic. And the UN report most definitely does not say, “Do nothing.” Rather, I thought about what I choose to do instead of panic every day. I learn and write about clean energy and electric vehicles and batteries. I easily find inspirational things to write about (such as solar over canals, pictured above) because I regularly discover innovative scientific breakthroughs, or big milestones that inspire delight.

I drive an electric car. I am working to electrify my house with solar and storage. And as I do these things, I then share what I learn in my stories in order to make it easier for others to navigate the path to electrification.

I am also a dual US/UK citizen, and I vote in both places. I vote only for people who want to fight for our planet. Thank you, Joe Biden, for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which are catalysts for climate action in the US now. (Doesn’t that count in the “wasted year,” UNEP?) And Boris Johnson, you are a hot mess, but I appreciated you championing clean energy. Rishi Sunak, you must now do the right thing.

Look for the helpers

However – I’m not a scientist. So while digging furiously in the dirt and the leaves, I decided to “look for the helpers,” so to speak. (What can I say? I find Fred Rogers comforting.)

The expert I really wanted to talk to was Michael Mann. He is the presidential distinguished professor and director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media, at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s a climatologist and geophysicist, and he also thinks panic is a waste of time.

Here is Professor Mann’s take on UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2022:

Hi Michelle,

I would quibble with some of the claims made. They just don’t stand up to the actual peer-reviewed literature.

The claim that “Climate pledges leave the world on track for a temperature rise of 2.4-2.6°C by the end of this century” is misleading if not outright false.

The most comprehensive peer-reviewed work on this, published by a leading team of modeling experts in April in the leading journal Nature, shows that COP26 commitments can keep warming below 2C if they are kept in full and on time.

Where the report is correct is that more work clearly needs to be done if warming is to be kept below 1.5C.

Just months ago, however, nobody foresaw the major policy advances in both Australia and the US with the election of a pro-action Labor government in the former case, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act by a 50/50 Senate in the latter case. It is estimated that the legislation will lower US emissions by 40% this decade, which puts us very close to our emissions reduction target. And with US leadership, we can expect other major emitters to now come to the table at COP27.

But I would once again emphasize that more has to be done, and those who care about the defining challenge of our time — the climate crisis — need to turn out in droves in the upcoming midterm elections. The president is constrained in what he can do, particularly given the punitive agenda of the current conservative majority on the US Supreme Court. That means it is necessary for Congress to take a leadership role.

The Inflation Reduction Act represents real progress, but only with a larger climate-friendly majority in the Senate will it be possible to pass even more aggressive climate legislation in the US.

Don’t hesitate to let me know if any of this can use further elaboration.

Thanks,

Mike

The UN and Michael Mann align on the fact that more needs to be done.

But not panicking doesn’t mean resting on your laurels. It means actually doing your part. No more “blah blah blah.” And that’s not just a directive for world leaders. That’s a responsibility everyone has to take.

Insulate your house. Get an electric bike. Turn your heating down. Tap into the Inflation Reduction Act rebate for money for a heat pump. Go solar, as it’ll also save you money on your electric bill. Write your representative. Vote for the candidate who will fight climate change. Compost. Never stop learning. Drive an EV sooner rather than later.

Every small change makes a difference.

UnderstandSolar is a free service that links you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates. Tesla now offers price matching, so it’s important to shop for the best quotes. Click here to learn more and get your quotes. — *ad.

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Bidirectional charging may be required on EVs soon due to new CA law

Published

4 hours ago

September 29, 2024

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Bidirectional charging may be required on EVs soon due to new CA law

Chevy 2024 Silverado EV lease — Photo: GM

It’s an exciting week for grid resiliency-lovers in California, as Governor Gavin Newsom followed up his earlier smart grid law and signed another law this week which may require bidirectional charging on EVs in the future – though the law has no hard timeline attached, so it may be a while before we see this happen.

Bidirectional charging refers to the capability of electric vehicles to not just take electricity from the grid to charge, but to output electricity in various forms, whether this be vehicle-to-load (plugging in devices, like the 1.8kW capability on the Kia Niro EV), vehicle-to-home (like Ford’s “Intelligent Backup Power” system), or vehicle-to-grid (like the Nissan Leaf is capable of).

While these applications may seem like a party trick, widespread use of bidirectional charging could lead to huge benefits for efficiency, grid resiliency, and enable much greater penetration of renewable electricity generation.

Most electric grids don’t really have trouble meeting the regular everyday needs of electricity consumers, it’s when big spikes happen that things get difficult. Either on a hot day when everyone is using air conditioning, or a day when electricity generation is curtailed for some reason or another, that’s when things get difficult.

And as climate change makes temperatures hotter, California’s grid is often overtaxed on the hottest summer days, which are becoming more numerous. Even worse, methane-burning fossil gas peaker plants are the highest-polluting form of electricity California consumes, and these are currently used at peak times in order to deal with high demand.

One solution to this problem is adding energy storage to the grid which can be dispatched when needed, and which can fill up when the grid is oversupplying electricity. This helps to balance out supply and demand of electricity and make everything a little more predictable.

This is why there has been a push for grid-based storage like Tesla megapacks, which represent a large source of rapidly-dispatchable energy storage.

But there’s another source of grid-connected batteries out there which was right under our nose the whole time: electric cars.

EVs, which are mostly connected to the internet anyway, could be used as a distributed energy storage device, and even called upon to help provide electricity when the grid needs it. We already see this happening with Virtual Power Plants based on stationary storage, but if cars had V2G, theoretically cars could contribute in a similar way – both saving the grid, and perhaps making their owners some money along the way via arbitrage (buying electricity when its cheap and selling it when its expensive).

The problem is, not many automakers have included V2G capabilities in their cars, and in the cars that do have it, not many manufacturers have made V2G-capable equipment, and the ones who have built it haven’t seen that many customers who are interested in spending the extra money to upgrade their electrical systems with V2G-capable equipment.

So there needs to be something to jumpstart all of that, and California thinks it might just have the thing.

New CA law might require bidirectional charging… eventually.

The idea started in 2023 when state Senator Nancy Skinner introduced a bill which would require EVs to have bidirectional charging by 2027.

As this bill made its way through the legislative process, it got watered down from that ambitious timeline. So the current form of the bill, which is now called SB 59, took away that timeline and instead gave the California Energy Commission (CEC) the go-ahead to issue a requirement whenever they see it fit.

The bill directs the CEC, the California Air Resources Board, and the California Public Utilities Commission to examine the use cases of bidirectional charging and give them the power to require specific weight classes of EVs to be bidirectional-capable if a compelling use case exists.

The state already estimates that integrating EVs into the grid could save $1 billion in costs annually, so there’s definitely a use case there, but the question is the cost and immediacy of building those vehicles into the grid.

The reason this can’t be done immediately is that cars take time to design, and while adding bidirectional charging to an EV isn’t the most difficult process, it also only really becomes useful with a whole ecosystem of services around the vehicle.

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A recent chat Electrek had with DCBEL, making bidirectional chargers simpler for consumers

Even Tesla, which for years has touted itself a tech/energy company and sold powerwalls, inverters, solar panels and so on, is still only gradually trickling its bidirectional Powershare feature out onto its vehicles.

And that ecosystem has been a bit of a hard sell so far. It’s all well and good to tell someone they can make $500/year by selling energy to the grid, but then you have to convince them to buy a more expensive charging unit and keep their car plugged in all the time, with someone else managing its energy storage. Some consumers might push back against that, so part of CEC’s job is to wait to pull the trigger until it becomes apparent that people are actually interested in the end-user use case for V2G – otherwise, no sense in requiring a feature that nobody is going to use.

Electrek’s Take

Given all of these influences, we wouldn’t expect CA to require bidirectional charging any time soon. But it still gives the state a powerful trigger to pull if other efforts, like the recently-signed smart grid law, turn out not to be enough as California works to, grow, clean up, and make its grid more affordable all at the same time.

But having the force of law behind it could turn V2G into less of a parlor trick and more into something that actually makes a difference the way us EV nerds have been dreaming of for decades now (true story: Electrek once turned down Margot Robbie for an interview and instead talked to some engineers about V2G for an hour).

So, telling manufacturers that California may start mandating bidirectional charging soon means that those manufacturers will perhaps start taking V2G more seriously, particularly given the size and influence of CA’s car market. Even if the CEC doesn’t make it a requirement, the threat of it eventually becoming one means that EV-makers will probably start getting ready for it regardless.

There’s no real point to a single person discharging their car into the grid, but when millions of cars are involved, you could work to flatten out the famous “duck curve,” which describes the imbalance between electricity supply and demand. We hear a lot about “intermittency” as the problem with wind and solar, and grid storage as the solution to that, so being able to immediately switch on gigawatt-hours worth of installed storage capacity would certainly help to solve that problem. And we hope this law helps us get just a little closer to that potential future.

And if you want to sell power back to the grid today, you can already do that with home solar panels! In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. – ad*

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Environment

Industry first: Komatsu reveals power agnostic 320 ton haul truck

Published

9 hours ago

September 28, 2024

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Industry first: Komatsu reveals power agnostic 320 ton haul truck

Komatsu Reveals Power-Agnostic 930E Hauler – for Diesel, Electric, Hydrogen

Japanese equipment giant Komatsu dropped its new, 320-ton Power Agnostic 930E mining truck at MinsExpo trade show in Las Vegas, calling it a future-ready solution that can run on diesel, hydrogen, or pure electric power.

Komatsu continues to develop alternative engine technology with the release of its first commercial rigid-frame dump truck with a “power agnostic” platform for running on diesel, hydrogen, or even battery electric power.

That’s because the platform is designed around the concept of a modular powertrain. The design not only gives the Komatsu assembly line an easy way to build diesel, BEV, and hydrogen fuel cell rigid haulers on the same line, but also enables customers to upgrade from diesel to battery electric or hydrogen down the road, if and when whatever logistical obstacles that are preventing them from running an electric or hydrogen solution today are overcome.

“This platform enables mining companies to start with conventional diesel engines and gradually transition to cleaner energy sources as needed, including utilization of trolley assist for diesel or as one of the future dynamic charging solutions for battery trucks to reduce fuel consumption and emissions,” reads Komatsu’s press material. “Whether adopting battery technology, hydrogen fuel cell technology or a combination of energy systems, the Power Agnostic 930E provides the infrastructure and adaptability necessary to meet evolving sustainability goals.”

Potential customers got a sneak peek at the concept truck, which they were apparently allowed to test at Komatsu’s Arizona proving grounds ahead of MineExpo (I wasn’t invited). The first pre-production Power Agnostic 930E prototype will make its way to Sweden in the coming months, where it will be put to work alongside other electric Komatsu machines in Boliden’s Aitik copper mine, one of the largest such operations on the European continent.

Electrek’s Take

Komatsu Power Agnostic 930E; via Komatsu.

Converting gas and diesel-fueled cars to electric at scale is a concept that’s fraught with problems. Far too many to list here, in fact. But heavy equipment?

Everything from excavators to loaders to heavy trucks are already built to be powertrain agnostic, and manufacturers will often offer the same basic vehicle with Cummins, Detroit Diesel, or Volvo Pentapower, so there’s a degree of openness baked into those systems already. Komatsu is just taking that to the next level by adding a modularity of energy storage (fuel tanks, hydrogen cells, or battery packs) to the mix. And, if the project is successful, it could be the first of many.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Komatsu; Equipment World.

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isinwheel has an electric ride for everyone – check out these 6 standouts

Published

13 hours ago

September 28, 2024

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isinwheel has an electric ride for everyone – check out these 6 standouts

isinwheel’s terrific personal EVs “bring all the things you want closer to you.” Whether it’s an electric scooter, an e-bike, or an e-skateboard, the three things you’re guaranteed to get no matter which you choose are fun, safety, and affordability.

We’re taking a closer look below at six of isinwheel’s personal EVs – could one of these be your next electric ride?

isinwheel S9Pro commuting electric scooter

Meet the isinwheel S9Pro, the best value-for-money electric scooter that zips you through your day at speeds up to 19 mph with a range of 19 miles – perfect for your daily commute.

The S9Pro‘s powerful 350W motor delivers a smooth, efficient ride without breaking the bank. With a lightweight, foldable aluminum frame, it’s easy to carry, store, and even pop into your car trunk or onto public transport. Plus, the quick one-step folding mechanism makes it the ultimate on-the-go companion.

You can find the S9Pro on Amazon here.

isinwheel S10Max long-range electric scooter

The isinwheel S10Max is your ultimate high-performance ride, powered by a beastly 1000W motor that conquers any terrain with ease. With an impressive range of up to 37 miles, you can enjoy long-distance adventures without worrying about recharging.

The S10Max‘s all-terrain 10-inch off-road tires, paired with dual shock absorption, provide unbeatable grip and stability whether you’re cruising through city streets, on country paths, or on muddy trails.

You can find the S10Max on Amazon here.

isinwheel GT2 off-road electric scooter

Unleash your adventurous side with the isinwheel GT2. With a powerful 1000W motor, it rockets up to 28 mph, effortlessly conquering steep hills and challenging landscapes for a thrilling ride every time.

Its 11-inch off-road tires are built for all terrains, whether you’re cruising through the city or tackling rugged countryside paths. Plus, with four advanced shock absorbers, every ride is smooth and stable, no matter where your journey takes you. Get ready to ride the GT2 and experience performance like never before!

You can find the GT2 on Amazon here.

isinwheel M10 electric commuter bike

The isinwheel M10 electric commuter bike blends style with power. Crafted from lightweight, rust-resistant aluminum alloy, this sleek ride weighs just 47 pounds, making it easy to carry and tough enough to last.

With a professional 35-speed transmission, the M10 adapts to your every need, whether you’re accelerating, cruising downhill, or conquering steep inclines. With a 500W motor capacity, a top speed of 20 mph, 374 Wh battery capacity, and four hours of charging time, it’s the perfect blend of performance and convenience for your daily commute!

You can find the M10 on Amazon here.

isinwheel U1 folding electric bike

Say hello to the versatile isinwheel U1! With folding handlebars, pedals, and a height-adjustable seat, it’s perfect for easy storage and transport. The U1’s 500W motor comes with a smart chip that instantly adapts to give you that extra boost when you hit an incline, face a headwind, or carry more weight.

The U1 has a top speed of 18 mph, 280 Wh of battery capacity, and three hours of charging time. Whether you’re zipping through city streets or tackling hills, the U1 has you covered with power and portability.

You can find the U1 on Amazon here.

Check out isinwheel’s V8, V6 and V10 electric skateboards

The isinwheel V8 electric skateboard is your ticket to thrilling rides, featuring a top speed of 28 mph and a range of up to 12 miles. Its removable, detachable batteries allow for quick swaps, so you can extend your adventure with ease. Choose from four riding modes and let the gorgeous ambient lights make you stand out, whether you’re cruising in daylight or lighting up the night. With its powerful dual 540W motors and regenerative braking system, the V8 delivers a ride that’s as exhilarating as it is stylish.

The V8 is isinwheel’s first-gen electric skateboard, and we’ve also taken it to the next level. The V6 is perfect for teens and beginners, and the high-performance V10 is for those who crave more power. But we’re not stopping there – this September, we’re launching the V6 PRO, the ultimate cool ride for young skaters and newbies. Stay tuned; it’s going to be epic!