Happy New Year 2024 (and sorry for the forum being offline some hours) /DM
The University of Sydney has revealed its plans to begin divesting from heavy-polluting and fossil fuel companies, in an effort to cut the carbon footprint of its investment portfolio by 20 per cent in three years.The partial divestment plan, released by the University on Monday, brings it in line with a growing number of tertiary, religious and other organisations around the world that have divested over $50 billion in fossil fuel stocks for reasons both environmental and economic – that is, their business models are incompatible with the pledge by the world’s governments to tackle global warming.
Until recently, only a few organizations or governments, including the World Bank, the American state of Massachusetts, and the French region of Île de France, issued green bonds, and generally the amounts involved were modest. But in the past two years, other players have entered the market, and volumes have skyrocketed. In 2014, emissions of green bonds exceeded the total in all previous years combined.Indeed, demand is outstripping supply. The latest bond offers were all oversubscribed – and the trend is likely to continue. The insurance industry has committed to double its green investments, to $84 billion, by the end of 2015. And in September, three major pension funds from North America and Europe announced plans to increase their holdings in low-carbon investments by more than $31 billion by 2020.
A growing number of institutions are committing to divest from fossil fuels. This page lists the commitments from colleges and universities, cities, counties, religious institutions, and other institutions. You can click on each name for more information about the type of commitment they’re making.
The president’s order requires that new federal projects must be built at least two feet above the highest level that floodwaters are projected to reach in a 100-year period. It also mandates that any crucial infrastructure, such as a hospital, must be built an additional foot higher or built to the 500-year floodplain.
Apple Inc. is investing $848 million in a solar farm to harvest electricity in a partnership with First Solar Inc.Apple will receive power from 130 megawatts of First Solar’s California Flats Solar Project in Monterey County, California, under a 25-year power-purchase agreement, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. ...The iPhone maker already powers all of its data centers with renewable energy. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, has advocated taking more steps to combat climate change. He unveiled the initiative during a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. The agreement is the largest in the solar industry for a single commercial customer, he said.
Investors are particularly interested in so-called green bonds, which are issued much like the kinds of bonds that finance government infrastructure projects. The funds raised by the sale of green bonds, however, are earmarked for things like solar power facilities, energy-saving retrofits and commuter rail projects. In 2014, investors worldwide snapped up $36.6 billion in climate-related bonds, more than triple the 2013 total of $11 billion, according to Sean Kidney, chief executive officer of the Climate Bond Initiative (CBI), a non-profit venture focused on steering part of the massive global bond market toward climate solutions. He thinks the market could nearly triple again this year to $100 billion.
The move will be noticed by the UK's European partners working towards a global agreement on climate change at the UN conference in Paris in December. Some of them had been nervous that the UK might soften its leadership position in the talks, given the level of climate scepticism expressed by some newspapers and Conservative backbenchers.The statement will also please investors who have been deterred from sinking money into renewable energy systems because they feared a withdrawal from climate policies.It has been brokered by Matthew Spencer of the think tank Green Alliance, who He told BBC News: "The purpose is to create space for the current and future PM to ensure that the UK can play a full role in securing a good outcome in Paris.He added that another aim was "to reassure investors that agreement remains strong across current leaders on emissions reduction, and that we're unlikely to see a major change in direction whichever party forms the next government".
Investors are starting to think by 2030 the world will be in such a panic about climate change that either by law or by price it will be very hard to burn fossil fuels on anything like the scale we are doing at the moment.”...There may well be national [carbon] performance standards. There may well be caps everywhere. We now have a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, we may have then a coa-fired power station non-proliferation treaty and you can monitor these things externally.
If a state does not submit a plan or submits one that fails to meet the EPA’s requirements, then the federal agency must formulate a plan of its own for the state.
My hope is that the labor movement, the anti-cuts movement, the climate movement will really come together in a coherent demand for a just transition away from fossil fuels, using [the oil] price shock as the catalyst.Because climate change is never going to be that shock. We think it is, that if we scare people enough, then that will shock them. There’s this great group in the Bay Area called Movement Generation that we work with at 350, an amazing group of thinkers and theorists, and they have this presentation that they do called “Shock, Slide, Shift.” It’s about how you have these punctuated shocks and these long slides. A disaster is a shock. Climate change is a slide. Our mission is to harness the shocks and the slides to win the shifts that we want. We’re in a slide, we just got a shock, and now we need to fight for the shift.
Citigroup announced on Wednesday a commitment to lend, invest and facilitate $100 billion over the next 10 years to fund activities that mitigate the impacts of climate change.
On Thursday, lawmakers in Illinois introduced legislation that would dramatically improve energy efficiency, bolster the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, and create a market-based strategy for cutting carbon emissions. Endorsed by the newly-formed Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, a broad swath of 26 organizations and 33 businesses, the bill’s supporters also state that the law would create around 32,000 clean energy jobs per year.
Senator Edward J. Markey is calling on coal and oil companies to reveal whether they are funding scientific climate change studies
Deutsche Bank today announced its intention to invest EUR 1 billion into a portfolio of high quality liquid assets in the form of Green Bonds. These will be held as part of the Bank’s Liquidity Reserve investments. Deutsche Bank has already made EUR 200 million in eligible Green Bond investments and plans for this portfolio to reach EUR 1 billion.Green Bonds are fixed income instruments which finance environmentally sustainable projects while offering competitive returns. By establishing this portfolio, Deutsche Bank aims to support the development of the Green Bond segment. Deutsche Bank is one of the founding members of the Green Bond Principles which establish voluntary guidelines for transparency and disclosure for the benefit of both issuers and investors.
Last week the nation’s top nutrition advisory panel unveiled 500-odd pages of advice for the federal agencies tasked with writing the nation’s dietary guidelines. Tucked among the usual recommendations—eat more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains; eat less fat, salt, and sugar—were a few small coffee- and egg-themed surprises and one giant green one. Americans, the panel said, should consider the environment when deciding what to eat and what not to
“The year of 2015 is important, both because this is the year when we need to come together globally and secure a path towards a carbon free society, but in Norway we’re also having local elections, and if there’s any time for local leaders to show what future they want – this is the time. The fact that Oslo is now divesting from coal is a victory for our hard work, and sends a strong signal to the government that is currently reviewing the investments of the national oil fund. We will regard it as poor leadership if the government choose to take a less powerful stand than Oslo when deciding their own strategy for a sustainable future.”
This summer, Pope Francis will issue a papal encyclical on the environment. In a year of unparalleled importance for climate change because of key UN meetings in Paris this December, his timing couldn't be better....What's an Encyclical?The two previous popes wrote extensively on environmental concerns. Pope Francis himself has referred to climate change in numerous speeches. But a papal encyclical, one of the highest forms of Catholic teaching, is different. By addressing these concerns in this format, undiluted by other concerns, the Pope makes the topic unavoidable for Catholics globally.Once the encyclical is released, it will be shared throughout the Roman Catholic Church and incorporated into the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the foundational document for the moral formation of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. The Church will have a high-status statement that engages the entire Catholic community on climate change, putting the environment squarely on the church's agenda for the foreseeable future.Good for Non-Catholics TooAn essential document for Roman Catholics, the encyclical will also be influential for other Christians and people of all faiths and good will. When the encyclical makes headlines, diverse faith leaders globally will want to highlight their own traditions' eco-teachings.
If we agree that climate change is a huge threat that society will act on, then it necessarily follows that divestment will occur to limit losses, that fossil fuel company prices will drop substantially and that institutions with these stocks in their portfolios will experience large losses.
More than $280 million will be provided through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) in the form of grants and loans that can be used to install renewable energy sources such as solar panels, wind turbines, hydroelectric projects as well as improve heating and cooling efficiency and upgrading windows and insulation.
In January, the political machine backed by the brothers told allies that spending across its conservative network would approach $1 billion ahead of 2016's elections.That sum from Freedom Partners would dwarf expected spending from official GOP committees and many of the hopefuls expected to seek the Republican party's presidential nomination in 2016.
The UN’s flagship climate finance body is considering a crowdfunding platform to boost its ability to back a wide range of projects in developing countries, documents show.Green Climate Fund officials argue this approach could help drive investment to small-scale low-emission and climate-resilient projects, in a series of papers released last week.“There is great potential in crowdfunding to complement traditional sources of finance and to channel and mobilize individual contributions into climate-sensitive investments,” they say.“The use of such a platform can mobilize resources from individuals and organisations that are looking for innovative investment opportunities.”
Hawaii is on track to pass legislation this year requiring the state to go 100 percent renewable by 2040.Earlier this month, committees in the Hawaii House and Senate both unanimously recommended bills that would raise the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) from the current target of 70 percent by 2030 to the ultimate goal of 100 percent by 2040. Hawaii has had an RPS since 2001, and right now the state gets just over 21 percent of its power from renewable sources — a 12 percent increase in just six years.This is huge for our state’s future.“Even our utility is saying we can hit 65 percent by 2030, so 100 percent is definitely doable,” Sen. Mike Gabbard (D), sponsor of the Senate bill, SB 2181, and chair of Hawaii’s Energy and Environment Committee, told ThinkProgress. “This is huge for our state’s future. Each year, we spend $3 to $5 billion importing fossil fuels to power our economy. Our electricity bills are roughly three times the national average.”...As recently six years ago, more than 90 percent of Hawaii’s yearly electricity generation came from coal and oil. With renewable technologies rapidly advancing, Hawaii’s abundant solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal sources are moving in quickly as replacements for costly fossil fuels.“We are on the leading edge of the 21st century renewable energy transformation,” Chris Lee (D), Sponsor of the House version of the bill, HB 623, and chair of the House Energy and Environment Committee, told ThinkProgress. Lee said he’s been pushing for a 100 percent RPS bill for three years, but that this is the first year there’s been overwhelming support to move forward.
For these investors the ideal final agreement in December would ensure not only public financing for climate-friendly projects around the world but the ramp-up of government mechanisms like co-investing and derisking to encourage the private sector to get involved. Steps toward establishing carbon pricing in various markets would help provide the certainty that many investors seek to decarbonize their portfolios....“Public finance needs to derisk; it needs to coinvest; it needs to absorb some volatility in the energy and emission reductions domains,” he says. Fabian thinks the dollar amounts contributed by individual countries will be less important than the wording around how that capital encourages private investment.ERAFP’s Desfossés stresses that investors like his fund would be eager to allocate to low-carbon infrastructure such as upgrades to the energy grid if government policy made it easier. Until last month ERAFP wasn’t even allowed to invest in infrastructure funds, he notes. “We have a unique opportunity to fix this now.”
The Obama Administration has announced plans to nearly triple the size of two major marine sanctuaries off the coast of Northern California. ... Extending north of San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge, the sanctuaries will now be permanently off-limits to drilling.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/15/3630404/nasa-hottest-12-months-record/I don't believe that this pattern is a coincidence of natural forces.
Stop frustrating ambition.Talk to us about how you will play your part in a 2C transition.Tell us the inspirational story of that transition, backed by your knowledge and experience. The electrification of vehicles and heating; the decarbonization of electricity; new frontiers in efficiency. A new golden age of energy.And don’t tell us through crocodile tears that this will all take a long time. Tell us what you will do to hasten it, and what you need from government to do it faster.Come clean on your 2C carbon risk, and get out of investments that would increase it.Stop pretending that gas is part of the answer to climate change, rather than a necessary stage in a transition to be kept as short as possible. Stop pretending that gas will always crowd out coal rather than renewables, that it won’t blur the political focus we need on efficiency.
"If you look at the greenest sources of energy, which would be waste reduction and renewables, by 2025 between 30% of our energy and 40% of our energy can come from the cleanest sources, which are renewables and elimination of our energy waste," he said.
Having reached the mainstream with new backing from the United Nations, the global fossil fuel divestment campaign continues to gain momentum. On Monday, the Guardian news agency launched a campaign calling on the world's two largest charitable foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to follow the lead of the Rockefeller Foundation and nearly 200 other prominent universities and institutions by divesting their holdings from the fossil fuel industry.
President Obama signed an executive order Thursday to cut the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent over the next decade.The effort will save taxpayers as much as $18 billion due to energy savings, the White House said....Obama will also push federal agencies to get 30 percent of their power from renewable sources like wind and solar energy. Several major federal contractors and suppliers are announcing emissions reduction goals of their own....Taken together, the actions will be the equivalent of taking 5.5 million average cars off the road for a year, saving 26 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in carbon dioxide-equivalent terms, according to the administration. The reduction goal is based on a 2008 starting point.As the top energy consumer in the nation, the federal government’s actions can make a huge dent. They can also represent a major part of Obama’s goal of reducing the United States’s total greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
The linked article states that beginning next year states will need to have a climate change plan if they are going to receive disaster preparedness funds from FEMA. This will put pressure on states with denalist governors like Scott, Jindal and Christie:http://insideclimatenews.org/news/18032015/fema-states-no-climate-planning-no-money