Area Climate News
The JMU Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Energy is hosting a local tour as part of The American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour. The tour will take place on Saturday, October 5th from 1pm to 4pm. Click here for more information and to register.
The JMU Environmental Management Club is organizing a climate march on Friday, September 20 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Marchers will meet in front of Wilson Hall on JMU’s campus, march to the Rockingham County Courthouse in downtown Harrisonburg, listen to a few speakers, allow time for an open mic, and return to campus. People from the community are invited to participate.
Steven David Johnson is a conservation photographer and a professor of visual and communication arts at Eastern Mennonite University. He described his conservation photography as “nature photography, PLUS.” The “plus” part is environmental advocacy, and an ecosystems approach. His photographs have appeared in the Nature Conservancy and Virginia Wildlife magazines as well as the children’s magazine Ranger Rick.
Shenandoah Valley Faith & Climate and Climate Resilience Trainings organized a viewing of The Grab, a documentary film at Court Square Theatre in Harrisonburg on Sunday, August 18. The film exposes how governments, private investors, and mercenaries are reacting to our climate crisis by seizing food and water resources at the expense of entire populations. The group of 22 people then met in an outdoor setting to discuss the film and propose concrete actions.
Our Climate Crisis
While we have become preoccupied with severe summer heat and drought, winter is actually warming considerably faster over most of the earth. Here in the central Shenandoah Valley winter is warming about 1.8 times faster than summer. Our summer temperatures are warming about 0.36 degrees per decade while our winter temperatures are warming about 0.64 degrees per decade.
Vermont keeps flooding and experts say the state could see catastrophic events like these for the foreseeable future. Climate change is fueling stronger, more persistent storms and a combination of factors leaves the state susceptible. Among them are random, short-term natural weather patterns fueled by a warming atmosphere, water saturated soil, and mountainous terrain.
Politics and Policy
The US is now pumping more oil than any country ever has even though President Biden had campaigned on a pledge of “no more drilling.” No president since 2008 has slowed the U.S. oil boom. While Donald Trump argues that Biden and Harris have waged “a war on energy,” the Biden administration actually gave more permits to drill on federal lands than the Trump administration had, partially because a federal judge blocked efforts to pause permits.
Kamala Harris brings hope for a new chapter in climate action if she wins the presidential election. At a campaign event in North Carolina she said, “When we invest in climate, we create jobs, we lower costs, and we invest in families.
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz quietly emerged as one of the nation’s most forceful advocates for tackling climate change. As governor of Minnesota, he signed a law requiring the state to get all of its electricity from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources by 2040.
World leaders are worried about the US climate role if Donald Trump wins the presidential election. They are, therefore, strategizing to maintain climate initiatives and international agreements in his potential second term. “He will be a domestic and international climate wrecking ball. It would be malpractice to be unprepared,” says climate advocate Alden Meyer.
The U.S. Congress has 100 representatives and 23 senators who are climate deniers. Together, they wield significant influence on public perceptions of climate change as well as on the speed and direction of climate policy in the United States. They have received $52 million in lifetime campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
Eighteen House Republicans recently wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson, warning him against fully gutting IRA clean energy incentives as their party works to repeal the law. They’re concerned that doing so could upend energy projects already under construction and jeopardize billions of dollars of investments, including some in their districts.
The 2024 Democratic Party platform makes the case that addressing climate change is not only vital for the environment but also crucial for economic growth. Framing climate action as an economic win could attract voters wary of environmental regulations. This is in sharp contrast to Republican arguments that addressing climate change will hurt the middle class.
Energy
Supercharged by the IRA climate law, public and private clean energy investment in the US soared in the first half of this year—hitting $147 billion, more than a 30% jump from the first half of 2023. The yearly total grew from $78 billion in 2018 to $247 billion in 2023. Clean energy jobs grew at more than twice the rate of overall US employment.
Wind generated more electricity than coal across the US in March and April, outstripping the dirtiest fuel for two consecutive months for the first time. From 2000 to 2024, total coal capacity in the United States dropped by nearly half, while wind capacity increased by more than 60 times. Natural gas capacity nearly tripled during that time as it started to replace coal.
Solid-state batteries—which pack more energy into each unit of volume than current lithium-ion batteries—have long felt just out of reach. Samsung has now announced that it will produce solid-state batteries for use in high-end vehicles by 2027. The vehicles would be able to travel more than 600 miles before needing to be recharged.
Startup company Solarix plans to invest $63 million to build a solar panel manufacturing facility in Bedford County outside of Lynchburg. The company hopes to support Virginia’s renewable energy needs and reduce reliance on solar panels from other countries. CEO Carlos Class said, “As a 100% American-owned and managed company, we are immensely proud to contribute to our nation’s energy independence.”
United Airlines is starting to use a small percentage of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for its operations around the world. It recently purchased up to 1 million gallons for flights at the Chicago airport, a meaningful expansion of SAF use in the U.S. Despite this progress, only 0.1 percent of United’s overall fuel use currently comes from SAF.
Despite its efforts to expand renewable energy, India is relying on its coal-fired plants in response to major energy demand from its growing population and greater cooling needs because of extreme heat. It also has plans to add more coal plants. The country’s coal demand rose nearly 10% in 2023, the biggest jump by percentage for any country.
Northern Virginia will benefit from tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for grid battery energy storage for data centers. Clean energy advocates hope this program can help address the rising energy demand from data centers without the need for new energy generation from fossil fuels.
Dominion Energy’s wind farm project, off the coast of Virginia, will be the largest U.S. offshore wind project when completed—it is expected to be operational in 2026. The project has helped to build out the weak US supply chain and jump-start the flagging offshore wind industry.
Generative A.I. can do a lot but also needs a lot of energy. A query to ChatGPT requires nearly 10 times as much electricity as a regular Google search. Data centers account for about 1-2% percent of total electricity demand, which is estimated to increase to 3-4% by 2030. Yet some make the case for A.I. as a green technology that, if used wisely, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5-10% by 2030.
Climate Justice
Progress toward expanding global food access is backsliding—a big reason is our warming world. About one in 11 people worldwide went hungry last year, while one in three struggled to afford a healthy diet. Governments are increasingly challenged to achieve the goal of eradicating hunger.
Psychiatrist Lise van Susteren began thinking about climate anxiety and mental health almost 20 years ago. She has helped organize two professional organizations, surveyed thousands of children and concluded that it’s perfectly normal to be freaked out. “On a good day, I’m angry,” she says . “Being angry is actually one of the healthiest emotions that you can have.”
Appalachian Community Capital in Southwest Virginia is using half a billion dollars in funding from the EPA to launch the Green Bank for rural America. It will leverage that money to fund more than 2,000 green energy projects, creating 13,000 jobs. Projects will be prioritized in Appalachia as well as other rural areas, including those with communities of color and Native populations.
Climate Action
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says up to 31% of all food gets wasted. Food waste is estimated to cause between 6 to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, calls it, “One of the biggest — and dumbest — environmental problems we have today.”
Virginia is receiving two federal grants to capture climate changing emissions. The funds, about $150 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are focused on capturing methane from mined lands and on promoting natural solutions to capture carbon. This is part of a collaborative effort going to The Nature Conservancy’s operations in Virginia.
A big challenge in the clean energy transition is mining the minerals needed to manufacture the batteries for EVs, electric grid batteries, and other applications. Even so, mining for these minerals does not even get close to our extraction of fossil fuels. An analysis lays out a path from extraction to circularity where we may even avoid mineral extraction altogether by 2050.
A huge EV battery recycling facility came online in Ohio and another wing of the facility is slated to be operational by 2026. At full scale, the recycling plant will be able to churn out enough battery-grade metal salts to power 250,000 new electric vehicle batteries every year.
Loam Bio, an Australian start-up, is hoping fungi can pull carbon dioxide from the air and stash it underground. As they sow their crops, farmers are adding a pulverized dust of fungal spores. The fungus latches on to the crop roots, takes carbon that is absorbed by the plants from the air and locks it away in the soil.
Using sheep to mow and maintain solar installations is a booming business in Texas. One company is scrambling to get 6,000 sheep to maintain 10,000 acres of solar fields. Using sheep as a vegetation maintenance crew is a win-win. It is a profitable business that reduces the cost of maintenance, while improving the soil and increasing biodiversity.
The Chinese company COSCO Shipping has launched what it calls the “world’s largest” river-to-sea fully electric container ship. It can save 8,600 pounds of fuel for every 100 nautical miles traveled, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 12.4 tons. This is good news because shipping is currently responsible for 3% of global emissions annually and could easily triple by 2050 if nothing is done.
Earl Zimmerman is a member of the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley Steering Committee.
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