The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) would make significant strides in limiting and cutting methane pollution. Methane has proven to be a significant part of the climate problem; the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP) notes that over a 20-year period, methane is 80 times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide. Studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) further show that the rate of methane emissions is only worsening, with 2020 recording the largest annual increase since 1983. By implementing a Methane Emissions Reduction Program, the IRA takes a significant step towards reducing methane-related warming. This program implements a carrot-and-stick regulatory regime, whereby the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rewards methane reduction efforts with financial assistance, and penalizes excess methane waste with a set fee.
global warming
A Few Thoughts from Davos…
By Thomas Reilly on
Like many governments around the world, UK politics currently appear somewhat unstable. And the UK’s problems are a reflection of the world, where established views and beliefs are suddenly no longer the unassailable certainties they have seemed to be for decades.
Davos met this week for the first time in two years against this very unsettled backdrop. A few thoughts and reflections on discussions there follow……
The IPCC and The Ukraine Crisis
By Thomas Reilly on
As the world struggles to adjust to the harsh new reality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the most recent instalment of the Sixth IPCC Report slipped out almost unnoticed. And that is worrying, since the assessment in this section of the Report is even starker than previous assessments – noting in particular that in order to avoid global temperatures increasing by greater than 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels, the world needs to halve its emissions this decade: a reduction that the world does not currently appear to be remotely on course to do.
However, whilst the IPCC Report and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are not linked, Russian aggression in Ukraine may serve as a catalyst to speed up the European energy transition and accelerate its retreat from dependency on Russian gas and exposure to volatile international oil markets, which could in turn deliver a more rapid reduction in European emissions. In the process, perhaps setting the world on a path to achieving an outcome that currently seems unattainable.…
X-Treme Weather and the Need for Climate Resiliency
By Inside Energy on
Posted in Biden Administration, Electricity Grid
This is the twenty-fourth in our series, “The ABCs of the AJP.”
In 2020 alone, the United States suffered 22 separate extreme weather and climate-related disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, for a total of more than $100 billion in losses. That staggering statistic is not an anomaly, as climate change continues to result in more and more extreme weather events every year. For example, the Texas freeze that rocked the state earlier this year and killed more than one hundred people, also shut down the state’s significant petrochemical industry, disrupting supply chains nationwide, and caused an estimated $80 billion to $130 billion in direct and indirect economic losses. Hundreds of deaths are attributed to the unprecedented and record-breaking heat wave of the Pacific Northwest, and a British Columbia village where the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada was devastated by wildfire. Taking into account these and other weather-related tragedies, the losses become inestimable on a human scale. …
Continue Reading X-Treme Weather and the Need for Climate Resiliency