2014 college graduates have never experienced a month that was not warmer than average. These same graduates have seen the fossil fuel divestment movement and anti-Keystone XL activism grow at their schools, as more and more recognize how fossil fuels affect them now and in the future. This year, their commencement speakers — political leaders, scientists, and journalists — realized that too, using their platform to talk climate change.
These five speakers did more than just give a nod to the issue, however. They called for 100 percent clean energy, slammed climate deniers, and linked it to worldwide stability.
2014 Commencement Speakers Call for Action on Climate Change, in 5 Powerful Quotes
It might have the reputation of being rather a dull - some might even say boring – business, but there’s no doubting the insurance industry’s financial muscle.
The Geneva Association - a leading international insurance thinktank, whose members have total assets of nearly US$ 15 trillion - has been meeting in Toronto, Canada. And the focus has been very much on climate change.
The Association, issuing a climate risk statement calling for urgent action by governments and other bodies, said: “The prospect of extreme climate change and its potentially devastating economic and social consequences are of great concern to the insurance industry.”
Those putting their names to the document – 66 chief executives of the world’s leading insurers - commit themselves to a set of guiding principles on what they describe as the substantial role the insurance industry can play in tackling risks related to climate change.
The insurers pledge to market insurance policies aimed at promoting the development of low carbon energy projects. They also say they will work to attract investors to such schemes, and use their combined investment muscle to promote low carbon initiatives.
The commitments made by the Geneva Association members are likely to have considerable impact on the development of low carbon energy projects worldwide. The availability of insurance is often a key ingredient in determining whether or not such schemes are implemented.
Among other pledges in the risk statement, insurers say they will implement measures backing new building codes, with the aim of promoting energy efficiency and sustainability. They will also use their influence to encourage politicians to better understand the potential costs of climate change.
Insurance Leaders Pack Climate Punch
You’re responsible for a historic building, and you’re finding the heating bills an increasing burden? There’s a fairly simple answer - so long as you live near the sea, that is.
Plas Newydd, an 18th-century mansion on the coast of North Wales, is switching to renewable energy supplied by an inexhaustible source – the waters of the Irish Sea, fed by the vast amounts of energy generated by the Atlantic Ocean.
The house is in the care of the National Trust, the charity responsible for the care of historic houses and countryside across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (a separate body does the work in Scotland).
Plas Newydd, which means “new house” in Welsh, was formerly the Trust’s biggest oil consumer. In winter months, it sometimes burned around 1,500 litres of oil a day – as much as a typical house would use in 10 months.
Now it is to be heated by an energy system that pumps a small amount of sea water from the Menai Strait, between the Isle of Anglesey – on which Plas Newydd stands - and the Welsh mainland, through pipes to and from a heat exchanger on the shore, and then 30 metres up the cliff face to the mansion’s boiler house.
The system uses a 300kW marine source heat pump – one of the first in the UK – and cost £600,000 ($1,012,410) to install. But it is expected to save the Trust around £40,000 ($67,500) a year in operating costs (ROI 15 years). It will provide all the power needed to heat the house, including a cricket pavilion on the estate.
Sea Change in Charity’s Energy Policy
“This isn’t just about plants and animals. It’s about people, it’s about societies,” says Gene Takle, a convening lead author of the National Climate Assessment’s Agriculture chapter.
Climate disruptions to our food system have already increased in the last 50 years, and will continue to do so. Many regions will experience declines in crop and livestock production from increased stress due to weeds, diseases, insect pests, and other climate change-induced problems.
When Climate Change Hurts Crops, Everyone Suffers
The failure to persuade a sizeable percentage of Americans that climate change poses a clear and present danger is one of the great failures in marketing and the subject of considerable debate among scientists, academics and politicians. But there is one argument for taking action against global warming that has resonated: health.
When the Koch brothers and two Texas oil companies bankrolled a California ballot initiative in 2010 to gut the state’s landmark global warming law, billionaire activists activist Tom Steyer and his allies defeated the measure in part by arguing not that it would lead to climate catastrophe but would harm Californians’ health by allowing petroleum giants to pollute while keeping smog-creating cars on the road.
Now there are some hard numbers to back up those claims. A study released this week by the Environmental Defense Fund and the California chapter of the American Lung Association analyzed the impact of California’s cap-and-trade emissions program—which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020—as well as the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), which mandates a 10 percent reduction in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels by 2020.
“By 2025, the health benefits of the LCFS and [cap-and-trade] will save $8.3 billion in pollution-related health costs such as avoided hospital visits and lost work days,” the report states. “In addition, these policies will prevent 38,000 asthma attacks as well as 600 heart attacks, 880 premature deaths, and almost 75,000 lost work days—all caused by air pollution.”
Forget Saving the Planet, Driving an Electric Car Will Save Your Life
Writing on the NPD Solarbuzz blog, senior analyst Michael Barker has predicted that the US photovoltaic (PV) market is set to reach a cumulative total of 20 GW by the end of 2014, thanks primarily to continuing declines in cost.
Barker notes that with the US grid reaching a cumulative total of 10 GW during 2013, the country is on course to double that by the end of the year.
In conjunction with declining costs, Barker also notes “a push by project developers to move projects towards completion before a reduction in the federal investment tax credit” as another reason for the growth in the US PV industry.
The growth, as backed by new research featured in the NPD Solarbuzz North America PV Markets Quarterly report, represents “a doubling of cumulative solar PV capacity within two years, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) above 50% since 2006.”
As the solar PV industry has matured it has not only become a highly sought after renewable energy, an alternative to the increasingly unattractive fossil fuel electricity sources, but it has also become a highly profitable investment. As a result, solar PV systems have been classed as a low-risk long-term revenue asset, making it increasingly attractive for installers and utility companies, as well as institutional investors and private owners and municipalities.
United States PV Market Set to Reach 20 GW by End of Year
