|
Sustainability
|
Sustainability
|
|
|
States across the country pounded by winter weather
|
A coast-to-coast winter storm began pummeling the country early on Wednesday, with snow piling up in the Rockies and a blizzard battering much of the Midwest.
|
© The Daily News-Sun via AP
|
The widespread winter weather is the result of a “large arctic air mass” that swooped into the U.S. from Canada, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
That air mass will be shuttling multiple storm systems across the country this week, with nearly all Americans “experiencing some form of notable weather,” said NWS’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md.
Heavy snow was blanketing the West on Wednesday, with total accumulation expected to climb to up to 2 feet in most of the region’s mountain ranges, the forecast predicted.
Meanwhile, moderate to heavy rain and some thunderstorms are expected to move from the Pacific Northwest to California on Thursday.
Much of the Midwest was coping with potential blizzard and possible whiteout conditions on Wednesday, the NWS said.
- Snow totals expected to approach 2 feet in southern Minnesota.
- The forecasters warned that travel could become “treacherous to impossible.”
- Scattered power outages could leave areas without electricity or heat.
Snow will likely settle into the Interior Northeast and New England late Wednesday, with about 4 to 8 inches accumulating in Upstate New York by Thursday, the meteorologists stated.
Yet while much of the country copes with winter weather hazards, the Southeast will be sweating, as “anomalous warm temperatures” bake the region, according to the weather service.
Highs on Wednesday and Thursday will climb to the 70s and 80s from the Southern Plains east into the Southeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.
Highs will be particularly unusual in the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic on Thursday — soaring more than 40 degrees above seasonal averages to “feel more like June than February.”
In New Orleans, where celebrants are enjoying Mardi Gras, temperatures climbed to 83 degrees, tying 1932 and 1917 for the warmest Mardi Gras on record.
|
Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, we’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.
|
|
|
Latest news impacting sustainability this week and beyond:
|
|
|
As arid Arizona scrambles to quench the thirst of a rapidly expanding population, officials are eying the Sonoran seaside in Mexico as a potential wellspring for future demand.
But whether the Mexican state and federal governments would be on board with the arrangement — and the hefty infrastructure such a project would require — remains to be seen.
|
|
|
|
Wildlife from around the world — from polar bears, to monkeys, to dolphins — may be exposed to cancer-linked “forever chemicals,” a new survey has found. A comprehensive map curated by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) provides a window into just how many kinds of animals, including some that are endangered or threatened, may be contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Hundreds of studies have already …
|
|
|
|
More than 100 activist groups are calling on California’s state legislature to adopt Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) proposal to penalize oil companies for “price gouging.” The groups maintained in a letter Tuesday that expediting the proposal — introduced by state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D) — is necessary “to hold the oil industry accountable and protect Californians from the industry’s greed and profiteering.” “While Californians paid …
|
|
|
|
Demand for U.S. offshore wind nearly doubled last year while investments in the sector tripled, a new report has found. These achievements marked not only a “transformative year” for the industry, but also “an inflection point” that enabled its transition to commercial-scale operations, according to the 2023 U.S. Offshore Wind Market Report. The annual survey, produced by the nonprofit Business Network for …
|
|
|
|
Investing in clean energy’s hard problems
|
Supporting early-stage energy research taking shape across the U.S. will be critical to solving the big, unanswered questions that plague America’s renewable sector, a federal agency chief told The Hill.
“We often look at where are the white spaces — are there things that we can do that will make the most impact in the energy space?” said Evelyn Wang, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), part of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Her agency’s goal is to get ideas from “the proof-of-concept stage to something polished enough for investors — or other government incubators” to then pick up “and get closer to deployment.”
Here are three big problems Wang hopes to solve at the agency:
1. Bringing grids underground: Burying electric transmission lines would help protect cities from outages caused by extreme weather — but doing so is expensive and comes with new risks.
- It’s “very dangerous because of the high voltages,” Wang said. “Can we have that imagine a world by which this could be fully autonomous?”
- The hardest and most dangerous part of that job is connecting the cables together at their junctions, Wang said. She described a potential future in which robots would pull wire through a new system of underground conduits.
- Underlying it all is an economic question, she said: “What’s the cost point that will make it commercially viable?”
2. Keeping the ocean’s carbon books: Investors see enormous potential for the ocean and its connected ecosystems to suck down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — slowing global heating while making money for whoever can track those carbon credits.
- But carbon markets require reliable carbon tracking — something that has lagged in oceanic carbon capture. ARPA-E’s SEA-CO2 project seeks to bring new rigor to tracking how much carbon is actually being stored in these projects.
- Wang framed this as an audit of sorts. “There’s been a lot of discussions about these various marine carbon dioxide removal techniques — but actually, how well are these technologies doing?” she said.
3. Finding the cleanest path: The freight industry accounts for 8 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions as it moves goods across a complex network of ships, buses and trains, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But much of these emissions are avoidable, according to Wang.
- ARPA-E is funding research to ensure that goods are taking advantage of the most efficient pathways across roads, rails and waterways — which Wang said would also help route goods around disruptions caused by extreme weather.
- “As we think about this, there is an opportunity to ask: how can we quickly redirect now the different modes of transport to now still enable the supplies that you need?” she said.
|
|
|
Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
|
- Tuesday, Feb. 28: First Street Foundation — a nonprofit that gives free estimates of extreme weather risk for property in the U.S. — will publish a new round of forecasts. Past First Street tools have analyzed the risk individual homes face from wildfire, floods and extreme heat.
|
|
|
Branch out with different reads from The Hill:
|
|
|
Exposure to “forever chemicals” interferes with several critical biological processes — including the metabolism of fats and amino acids — in children and young adults, a new study has found.
|
|
|
Local and state headlines on sustainability issues:
|
- Before and after images show incredible impact of storms on California reservoirs (San Francisco Chronicle)
- Miami’s hidden high ground: What sea rise risk means for some prime real estate (Miami Herald)
- Climate change imperils lake ice skating in Vermont (The Washington Post)
|
|
|
Sustainability news we’ve flagged from other outlets:
|
- A Sudden Rush to Make Sustainable Aviation Fuel Mainstream (The New York Times)
- Venezuela’s Oil Industry, Reopening to Investors, Is Major Polluter (The Wall Street Journal)
- Why the climate crisis may be coming for your margarita next (CNN)
- It would take less than 3% of Big Oil’s profits to clean up methane emissions (Grist)
|
|
|
Most read stories on The Hill right now:
|
|
|
Story at a glance The 42 percent of workers who reported feeling burned out marks the highest total measured since May 2021. Younger employees and women were more likely to report burnout. Greater workplace and schedule flexibility may help reverse the trend, results showed. Over 40 percent of the global workforce feels burned out, … Read more
|
|
Ford Motor Co. has suspended production and halted shipments of the F-150 Lightning electric pickup after a battery caught fire during a pre-delivery quality check. Read more
|
|
|
Opinions related to sustainability submitted to The Hill:
|
|
|
You’re all caught up. See you next week!
|
|
|
|
