Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #23
In this edition, we talk about Portugal's 6 day 100% renewable energy streak, Kenya's 1st national holiday for tree plantation, The Great Climate divide, UAEs violations and a Taylor Swift concert!
This is a fortnightly news digest covering climate news. In every edition, I will bring to you 5 stories about the changing climate and its impact on us!
3 stormy ones - concerning stories that are a source of alarm
2 sunny ones - green shoots that tell you that all is not yet lost
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Sunny news
Portugal ran on 100% renewable energy for 6 days!
The Bemposta dam in Portugal, which helped provide part of the renewable energy. Between 4:00AM on 31 October and 9:00AM on 6 November 2023, the nation of ten million relied on only renewable energy, as 1102 GWh was generated.
All appliances in homes and industries that used electricity, ran only on renewable power for these 6 days
This happened because there was a lot of wind and it was raining a lot helping the wind farms and hydropower plants generate more electricity than average.
As has happened in other countries when renewable power generation surges, the prices of electricity dropped almost to 0!
But this is only 6 days, not the full year. So why does this matter?
It shows that the Portuguese grid is prepared for very high shares of renewable electricity and for its expected variation: They were able to manage both the sharp increase of hydro and wind production, and also the return to a lower share of renewables, when natural-gas power plants were requested again to supply some of the country’s demand.
Proof of Portugal’s commitment to increase renewable usage and reach net zero by 2050 showing results
Portugal’s last coal plants shut down in 2022
Leaders want gas generation, which made up 21% of electricity consumption from January through October, to end completely by 2040
The trend line is the thing to watch out for. Portugal broke its own 2019 record of 5 consecutive days of renewable power to set this one. As more wind and solar capacity comes online, Portugal expands its arsenal for running entirely on renewables.
Sources to read further:
Kenya’s tree plantation day - A national holiday to plant trees!
Students plant tree seedlings at a school playground in Nairobi during the nationwide tree planting public holiday on 13 November. Photograph: Luis Tato/AFP/Getty Images On November 13 this year, Kenya had a new national holiday. The entire country of ~50 mn people was given a holiday to plant trees.
The government’s objective is to create awareness to tackle the climate crisis and deforestation.
The goal is to plant 100 mn trees in the first edition this year and 15 bn trees by 2032.
What did they do?
Government officials led tree-planting activities in different areas of the country
Seedlings were available to the public through local forest agencies and chiefs’ offices across the country.
Overall, the initiative got a good response from people seeing participation from families, environmental groups, students, government officers and forest rangers.
The govt. launched an app called JazaMiti (Swahili for “fill with trees”) where users can document their planting activity and find real-time updates on nationwide tree-planting efforts.
However, there was some criticism as well
The president, Ruto has faced some criticism for what environmental groups see as double-speak on conservation issues. He removed a six-year logging ban earlier this year, allowing old trees to be cut down for economic activity, saying that a number of old trees were wasting away.
Source to read further:
Stormy news
“The richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%” says new Oxfam report.
An image from ‘The Great Carbon Divide’ Oxfam (a global non profit) published one of the most comprehensive reports on climate inequality last week and collaborated with The Guardian on a piece called ‘The Great Carbon Divide'
We know that the contribution to greenhouse gases is not uniform, with the rich emitting a lot more than the poor, but the extent of the gap is mind boggling.
Key findings on where Carbon emissions come from:
The Carbon emission concentration by income group
The wealthiest 1% emitted 16% of global carbon emissions.
The next 9% emitted 34% of global carbon emissions
The next 40% emit ~43%
The poorest 50% emit only a total of 8% of emissions
So on a per capital level, the richest 1% emit 100 times as much as the bottom 50%
The impacts of climate change are also not equal, but in the opposite way. The worst impacts of climate change are felt by vulnerable island nations and poor populations who are contributing the least to the emissions.
Example: The climate-vulnerable migrant labour force, mostly from India, the Philippines and north Africa in UAE. They work on construction sites, in restaurants and as office cleaners, with monthly incomes ranging from $300 to $750, barely enough to cover rent. Their carbon consumption is marginal and their climate exposure is dangerously high. Many labour outside where temperatures frequently exceed 40C, including as part of the Cop28 preparations, and they make up a disproportionate number of heatstroke cases.
It is becoming clearer that the climate crisis worsens inequality and inequality worsens the climate crisis.
“We are not equally to blame for these emissions, nor for the damage they cause,” the climate activist Greta Thunberg writes in the preface to Oxfam’s report. “Either we safeguard living conditions for all future generations or we let a few very rich people maintain their destructive lifestyles and preserve an economic system geared towards short-term economic growth and shareholder profit.”
Source for further reading:
‘The Great Carbon Divide' (Guardian)
Who are the polluter elite and how can we tackle carbon inequality? (Guardian)
Routine flaring observed in UAE oil refineries in violation of its own pledge almost 2 decades ago.
What is routine flaring and why is it bad?
Routine flaring is when the gas that is coming out of the refinery is not captured but is burnt and allowed to release into the atmosphere.
It is ‘wasteful and polluting’
Flaring allows the escape of some unburned methane gas, which is a powerful greenhouse gas (Methane is considered to be almost 80x more potent than CO2)
The UAE is pledged to have stopped routine flaring almost 2 decades ago, however satellite data shows that several of the refineries in UAE had active flares on as many as 97% days where satellite data was available.
One field, Adnoc LNG, flared gas on more than 99% of the days monitored by satellite from 2018 to 2022
The World Bank runs an initiative to achieve zero routine flaring by 2030. The UAE and Adnoc are not members.
“Flaring of gas has a massive impact, about 1-2% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, and the vast majority of it is avoidable,” an expert said. “We have the technology to reduce all flaring and we can pretty much eliminate non-emergency flaring at moderate cost.”
Source to read further:
Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in Rio: A fan dies of a heatstroke; Swift rescheduled concert in light of everyones safety.
Ana Clara Benevides, 23, collapsed inside Rio de Janeiro’s Nilton Santos stadium on Nov. 17 where Swift was performing and died later in hospital. The report on cause of death is expected in 30 days.
Accounts by several fans suggest organizers didn’t adequately respond to warnings of extreme heat by Brazilian meteorological agencies. “They were not distributing water despite the heat, the prices were abusive and there were almost no sellers in the stadium,” said Julia Matos, a 23-year-old fan who attended the concert on Nov. 17. “The amount of people was insane, there weren’t chairs for everyone, people were all over each other.”
During the concert, some attendees started chanting for water, holding up empty bottles in the air to catch the singer’s attention. Swift halted the show multiple times, making requests from the stage for the organizers to distribute water.
Thermometers in the city hit a peak of 43.8C (110.8F) on Nov. 18, the highest temperature recorded since at least 2014. The heat was made worse by high humidity, which made it feel closer to 60 deg C.
The second show scheduled for Nov 18, was postponed due to extreme temperatures according to an Instagram message posted from Taylor’s account.
"I'm writing this from my dressing room in the stadium. The decision has been made to postpone tonight's show due to the extreme temperatures in Rio," the singer said in a handwritten note on Instagram. "The safety and well being of my fans, fellow performers, and crew has to and always will come first."
