THE GOOD NEWS
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In 2021 Nanaimo became the first Canadian city to officially adopt a policy of Doughnut Economics, based on the influential economist Kate Raworth’s 2017 book. The theory is based on the acknowledgment that our environment and resources have fundamental limits, and that our economic plans must work within these limits or a fatal crash is inevitable.
getinvolvednanaimo.ca
kateraworth.com -
The new CleanBC Local Government Climate Action Program will provide predictable, stable funding for municipalities, regional districts and Modern Treaty Nations to accelerate local climate projects.
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Lloyd’s of London syndicate Aspen Insurance announced April 21 it will cut ties with Trans Mountain when its insurance policy expires this summer, making it the 17th company to do so. “The fact that 17 insurers have now ruled out Trans Mountain should alarm any financial institution considering investing in this project,” said Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas program director for Stand.earth. “This pipeline is a risk to the climate, a risk for communities it runs through, and too great a risk for investors and insurers.”
thenationalobserver.com -
The City Council in Trail, B.C., home of one of the largest zinc and lead smelters in the world, has unanimously voted to transition the community to 100% renewable energy no later than 2050. Trail is now the 13th community in the Kootenays to commit to a healthy, safe, and secure community powered by clean and renewable energy. Members of the West Kootenay EcoSociety and Neighbours United knocked on doors and called residents to talk about climate change and the clean energy transition. Through 1181 conversations, they identified over 1000 residents who were supportive of Trail transitioning to 100% renewable energy.
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Alberta has seen a massive increase in corporate investment in renewable energy since 2019, and capacity from those deals is set to increase output by two gigawatts — enough to power roughly 1.5 million homes. “Our analysis shows $3.7 billion worth of renewables construction by 2023 and 4,500 jobs,” Nagwan Al-Guneid, the director of Business Renewables Centre Canada, says.
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Despite the pandemic, the growth rate in the world's renewable energy capacity jumped 45% in 2020, part of "an unprecedented boom" in wind and solar energy. An exceptional 90% rise in global wind capacity additions led the expansion.
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Fossil fuel divestment now (2021) involves 1,495 institutions in 71 countries that have made public commitments, representing $39.2 trillion of assets under management. These commitments are for both full and partial divestment. This is a 75,000% increase since the first report in 2014. This only includes public divestment announcements, and institutional money. The actual number is even higher.
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Gas stations are environmental liabilities and hugely expensive to remediate. Electric cars are making gas stations obsolete. In 2021, Petaluma in California became the first city in the world to prohibit new gas stations. Since then, four more cities have prohibited new gas stations permanently and six including Los Angeles are developing policies.
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The Dutch government intends to ban new fossil fuel-centric heating system installations as of 2026, while introducing the mandatory use of heat pumps or connections to heat networks. In 2018, fossil gas covered 71% of residential demand, while the liberal use of greenhouses in agriculture further adds to the situation.
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Despite the recent discovery of potentially significant oil reserves off the island’s east coast, the country’s government says the costs for our planet far outweigh any potential financial gains: “The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect, we have much more to gain.” www.optimistdaily.com
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Consumer demand in both regions is now driving sales, not just public policy, BNEF says. In China and Europe, electric cars accounted for about 4% of new vehicle sales at the end of 2019. Last year, their proportion hit 15% in China and 20% in Europe. www.bloomberg.com
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Electric cars made up 14.8% of Chinese car sales in 2021, compared with 4.1% in the U.S.. The latest data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that total passenger EV sales in jumped 169.1% to nearly 2.99 million: about half of all EVs sold globally. Out of every 100 passenger cars sold in China last year, 15 were "new energy vehicles" (NEVs) — a mix of battery-electric vehicles and hybrids.
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For some homeowners and apartment dwellers, driving an EV gets tricky without home charging infrastructure. Seattle is making it easier for EV owners to power their vehicles by installing chargers to local utility poles.
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The European Parliament has thrown its weight behind a proposed ban on selling new cars with combustion engines by 2035, seeking to step up the fight against climate change by speeding development of electric vehicles.
https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/06/10/eu-backs-2035-ban-on-new-combustion-car-sales /
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Singapore gets all its power from burning natural gas. The new idea is to build the world’s largest solar array in the Australian outback and connect it to Singapore with a 3,750-kilometres undersea cable.
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Since 2012 fossil fuel executives from dozens of companies, including Kinder Morgan, Pembina Pipeline Corporation and Enbridge have schemed 55 large projects to export coal, oil, gas, or their derivatives from Cascadia’s coast in British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. 40 have been cancelled. Had all of the projects gone ahead, it would have spelled disaster for the climate. https://www.sightline.org/research_item/a-decade-of-successes-against-fossil-fuel-export-projects-in-cascadia
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Zurich is shutting down its natural gas network in whole sections of the city to fight climate change - and save money. Residents are being encouraged to install alternatives to natural gas heating, and where this is already taking off, Zurich’s city-owned utility company is shutting down gas supply networks. The current shutdown is due to be completed in 2024 with more areas of Zurich set to see the end of natural gas between now and 2040 as more distance heating projects are rolled out.
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When reckoning with the culturally and environmentally devastating effects of colonialism, the oil spill, and climate change, the resilience of the Haíłzaqv Nation stems from the reconnection to their ancestral worldviews. When it comes to climate action, Leona encourages Indigenous communities to link arms and do the heavy lifting, ensuring that it “aligns with our worldviews as Indigenous people to create a sustainable future for our children yet to come.” https://icenet.work/articles/catalysts-in-action/6130/catalyst-in-action-ha%C3%ADłzaqv-climate-action-team
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Currently, 40% of the EU’s gas is imported from Russia at a cost of $110 million a day. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Commission is turbocharging their original green energy transition with the aim of producing nearly half of the bloc’s energy from renewables by 2030 – double the current amount - with a phased-in obligation to install solar panels on all new public commercial and residential buildings by 2029.
https://earth.org/eu-set-to-make-solar-panels-mandatory-on-all-new-buildings
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The State Building Code Council voted 11-3 in April to adopt a revised energy code that requires most new commercial buildings and large multifamily buildings to install electric heat pumps. The council is expected to consider a similar proposal for smaller residential buildings later this year.
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Reaching zero-emissions electricity by 2035 is not only possible; it can also be reliable and affordable. The report, Shifting Power: Zero-Emissions Electricity Across Canada by 2035, is the first in Canada to show a pathway to zero-emissions electricity by 2035 that prioritizes renewables, energy storage, energy efficiency and grid upgrades.
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Aki Energy is an award-winning First Nations social enterprise that has installed 500 ground source heat pumps on Manitoba First Nations. Aki is an Anishinewmin word meaning Earth, which turned out to be an appropriate name, given the technology is very Earth-friendly and we’ve installed 200 kilometres of loop in the ground.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/05/24/opinion/making-heat-pumps-ordinary-aki-energy-story
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Lisbon city council almost unanimously approved the proposal of free public transport for young people up to 18 years old, higher education students up to 23 years old, and people over 65 years old who are residents of the city. “This step is social justice, for those who want to change the world, who really want to make the world a better place,” said Mayor Carlos Moedas.
https://www.archdaily.com/982336/lisbon-approves-free-public-transport-for-young-and-eldery
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Diet transformation would free up an area larger than the European Union, says new study. The first dividend is easy to understand. A plant-based burger from a company such as Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods carries a carbon footprint one-20th that of a beef burger. https://www.corporateknights.com/food-beverage/flexitarian-diet-could-cut-agriculture-emissions
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Norway’s biggest city is charting a path forward for the world. Oslo has committed to making all municipal construction projects zero-emission by 2025. All of these separate interventions, with their impacts regularly quantified and monitored, are aimed at reducing the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions ninety-five per cent from their 2009 levels by 2030.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/how-oslo-learned-to-fight-climate-change
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In Ireland, public transport fares are being slashed. Germany’s ‘9 for 90’ offers public transport tickets for €9 per month for 90 days. In Italy students and workers earning less than €35,000 will get €60 to help with bus, train or metro fares.
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Electricity produced from the 5 MW floating park will cost a third of that produced from a gas-fired plant. The panels on the Alqueva reservoir, which is used to generate hydropower, will produce 7.5 GWh of electricity a year, and be complemented by lithium batteries to store 2 GWh.
Denver’s electric bike rebates are making car alternatives cheaper. Other cities should listen up
From Electrek: $400 point-of-sale rebate for most e-bikes; up to $900 for electric cargo bikes. Low-income residents can get a rebate of up to $1,200.
https://electrek.co/2022/04/28/denvers-electric-bike-rebates-are-making-car-alternatives-cheaper-other-cities-should-listen-up/
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A Mercedes-Benz AG electric car drove more than 1,000 kilometers from Germany to the French Riviera on a single charge, taking the fight to seize the technology limelight from Tesla Inc. to the next level. The sedan’s lightweight chassis and aerodynamic profile allowed it to complete the trip with a battery half the size of Mercedes’s EQS flagship electric vehicle. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/mercedes-ev-breaks-1-000-kilometer-range-barrier-to-outdo-tesla
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Nearly every week, there seems to be news regarding all-electric buses and North American school districts abandoning diesel for more sustainability. In the past year alone, we’ve seen states like New York call for 100% electric buses by 2035 to spread across the country and deploy tens of thousands more. https://electrek.co/2022/03/18/electric-school-buses-are-reaching-cost-parity-with-diesel-and-a-california-district-will-deploy-one-of-the-largest-e-bus-fleets-in-the-state
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There are over 100 cities worldwide that have complete FREE transit and over 1000 cities that have partial FREE transit. We need the BC govt to mandate that all transit systems have uniform fare programs to help Low Income ( 19 to 64 ) and all seniors over 65.
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Once completed, the hub will serve as a transmission center for 600 wind turbines that surround it and cater to the electricity needs of the entire country - 10 million homes. The construction project looks set to be the largest in Denmark’s history, with an estimated cost of $34 billion. The island will be the size of 18 soccer pitches and eventually be capable of producing 10 GW — almost 1.5 times Denmark’s current energy needs. https://www.thomasnet.com/insights/denmark-is-building-an-artificial-island-to-prower-10-million-homes-using-wind-power/
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No other country has more heat pumps per capita. When Karen Byskov Lindberg bought a house in Oslo in 2018, she set about a refurbishment that would drastically transform her energy consumption. After removing the house’s old oil boiler system, she installed improved wall insulation, new window fittings, an air recovery system and, importantly, a heat pump. As a result, she says the structure’s average energy use has dropped from 35,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year to just 8,500 kWh. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/heat-pumps-norway-efficiency-emissions
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The Heiltsuk First Nation's 10-year path to carbon neutrality is ambitious in scope, aiming to eliminate 24,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of more than $19 million. During the consultation process, members identified solar, wind and bioenergy as their top choices for clean energy. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/03/30/protecting-our-world-hikila-qnts-nalaaxv
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Sweden’s steel industry has set out plans to achieve “fossil-free” operations by 2045. SSAB in January brought forward its own plans to largely eliminate carbon dioxide emissions in its steel-making processes by the end of the decade. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/green-steel-heating-up-in-sweden-s-frozen-north/ar-AAVPbRI
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Shenzhen has reached a future the U.S. can only dream about. The city, home to about 12 million people, has made a wholesale conversion to electric transportation, with 16,000 Electric Buses and 22,000 Electric Taxis. Shenzhen is the home base of BYD, one of the largest electric vehicle makers in the world.
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Demand for solar PV in China could “effortlessly” surpass 100 GW in 2022, following a year of “flat” demand in 2021. It adds that a “massive overcapacity” situation is looming.