Climatebase

Most of Asia is well ahead of the U.S. when it comes to green energy, and this week, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has revitalized an old vision: Creating a single regional power-sharing grid, called a "super grid" that would interconnect countries’ electricity networks to help bolster renewable energy exchange across borders.

A report from The Global Carbon Project last week notes that methane emissions are increasing faster than ever, and it's largely due to human activities. Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps up to 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide, and it's rising at a rate that's setting off alarm bells around the world. While there are plenty of companies trying to track and mitigate methane all over the world, this recent report indicates that things might be worse than we had previously imagined.

Last year, the EPA announced $4.6 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program (CPRG) as part of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and as of last week, more than 45 states and large metro areas submitted their plans for ways to “reduce harmful pollution and address environmental justice concerns.” This is just one step in many needed to move America’s cities and municipalities toward a greener future, and while it certainly represents a tremendous move in the right...

This week, the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission finally adopted rules that could force large companies to disclose both emissions and the climate-related risks that they face. While the rule is far from set in stone and expected to face a lot of legal issues, it offers a small glimmer of hope that big business will be required to get its climate house in order. Here’s what you need to know about the new SEC rules and how they came to be. The New Rule vs. the Proposed Rule: What’s Changed?

Before we had blue bins and sorting stations, human beings were recycling. When garbage collection began in the late 19th century, workers sorted through refuse bound for the landfill and those things that were reusable. Then plastics came on the scene and became more widely used in the 1960s and 70s because they were cheap, easy to manufacture, sanitary, and, in theory, disposable or recyclable. It turns out that the last part about plastic being recyclable is, in fact, a lie.

This week, Google announced a project, in conjunction with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), to map the global methane emissions using satellites. With the goal of pinpointing the largest and most egregious methane leaks, the MethaneSAT satellite will survey levels of methane emitted by the world's top oil and gas-producing regions to get a better handle on just how much methane is being emitted.

1. Explain what Enduring Planet does and how it supports solutions for the climate crisis. At Enduring Planet, our mission is to ensure that every climate entrepreneur has the money they need to be successful. Our platform provides founder-friendly working capital and financial advisory services to climate startups and small/medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the US.

A few weeks ago, the former White House Chief of Staff Sam Cass held a “Last Supper,” in Minneapolis to highlight the foods that could change or completely disappear from the planet in the next few years thanks to the warming globe and climate change. Foods like chocolate, coffee, champagne, oysters, salmon, and more could be deeply affected by the warming planet.

Two massive broods of noisy Cicadas, insects that spend most of their lives underground and emerge every 13 to 17 years, are getting ready to erupt to the surface everywhere from Texas to Rhode Island this spring. Some researchers think that climate change may be causing them to emerge earlier than in previous years and perhaps even confuse them on timing. Cicadas are only one canary in the coal mine of climate change.

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you know that on Friday last week, climate researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA announced that 2023 was the hottest year on record. According to the report, the global land and sea temperatures were 2.12 degrees F (1.18 degrees C) above those of the mid-19th century.