World leaders from more than 100 countries will gather next week at the United Nations climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, to discuss the threats of a rapidly warming world.
But the main topic of conversation is likely to be President-elect Donald Trump.
During his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord, promoted the expansion of fossil fuels and renounced American leadership on environmental issues.
Over the past four years, the Biden administration reversed course, rejoined the Paris accord, invested heavily in renewable energy and looked for ways to limit oil and gas production.
Now, whiplash. At the end of what will probably be the hottest year in recorded history, with extreme weather driven by climate change wreaking havoc around the globe, the world is confronting a second Trump term.
On the campaign trail, Trump continued to call climate change a hoax, said he would pull out of the Paris accord again, pledged to expand oil and gas production and roll back pollution controls, and threatened to eliminate federal incentives that promote renewable energy and electric vehicles.
All of this may make it less likely for other countries to spend money and political capital combating climate change.
“What I hope it does not do is create a sense of fear and therefore paralysis,” said Jacqueline Novogratz, chief executive of Acumen, an impact investing fund that works on climate issues. “What I hope it does do is enable everyone to recognize that this work is for all of us. You’re already seeing conversations around the world about our responsibilities, and our need to partner.”
How the world responds
World leaders have been girding for the return of Trump for months now, and many have pledged to keep working to reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions even without U.S. leadership.
“What we have now is actually unstoppable,” Christiana Figueres, who led the U.N. climate change body, told my colleague Lisa Friedman in September. “The direction is unstoppable. What we’re all focused on is scale and speed, but not direction.”
Yesterday, Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank, told me that in the wake of Trump’s victory, making strides in the rest of the world will be more important than ever.
“It was never an America-only game,” he said. “It was always a developed world and middle-income country game.”
But as Somini Sengupta wrote, the election of Trump is a setback to the world’s ability to limit global warming, and a signal to other countries that the U.S. is dismissive of the economic opportunities of cleaner technologies.
“The U.S. has barely got on the court,” Li Shuo, a China specialist with the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Sengupta. “With Trump, it will soon leave the stadium.”
As for China, many now see an opening for that country to step up and assume leadership of international efforts to address climate change.
And even as other countries brace for what’s to come, many world leaders who are outspoken on climate efforts are welcoming Trump back to the Oval Office.
“Barbados stands ready to work together to build an even stronger relationship and stronger region in this new chapter,” said Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados.
What to watch for in Baku
At this year’s COP, as the world adjusts to the United States’ changing role, I’ll be watching for three main things:
Climate finance: This was supposed to be the year that the world figured out how to pour huge amounts of money — estimates range from $100 billion a year to $1 trillion or more — for climate mitigation and adaptation into the developing world. Will the momentum still be there?
Country updates: Every nation at COP will be offering an update on their plans to reduce emissions. Overall, the world is falling short, according to a new U.N. report. Will any countries, especially India, China or Brazil, ratchet up their ambition in the face of an overheating planet?
Sideline diplomacy: With so many world leaders and diplomats in one place, COP is never just about climate. In addition to the next Trump presidency, attendees will also be talking about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
I’ll be in Baku, along with other reporters and editors from The Times, and we’ll bring you updates from the conference starting early next week.
A big geothermal project moves forward
The problem: Decarbonizing the grid means moving away from fossil fuels, which currently make up 60 percent of utility-scale electricity generation in the United States.
The fix: Enhanced geothermal systems (E.G.S.) are an extension of traditional geothermal energy that use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to make cracks in underground rock to access the Earth’s heat as an energy source. Using fracking techniques adapted from the oil and gas industry allows E.G.S. to tap geothermal energy in a wider range of locations.
“They avoid a lot of the drilling problems, and they make their own fractures the way they want them, and it gives them a much more predictable outcome,” said Roland Horne, an earth sciences professor at Stanford University.
Unlike wind and solar energy, geothermal systems can provide power 24 hours a day.
Last month, the Bureau of Land Management approved a plan for an advanced geothermal project in Beaver County, Utah, by Fervo Energy, one of the more well-known startups deploying this technology. (We last wrote about Fervo in 2023.)
The company’s approach is unique: After drilling thousands of feet deep underground, it then drills horizontally to access additional rock.
Fervo’s Utah plan aims to supply as much as two gigawatts’ worth of power starting in 2026, which is enough to power more than two million homes if fully developed. The company recently started constructing the power plant infrastructure it will need to supply energy to customers, the company’s CEO, Tim Latimer, said.
The obstacles: One longtime concern with geothermal energy is its potential to cause earthquakes, what scientists refer to as “induced seismicity.” Some of those earthquakes are so minor that they aren’t felt by humans aboveground, but in certain cases geothermal projects have caused significant damage. Stanford’s Horne says earthquakes remains “the big kind of bugaboo for E.G.S.”
Latimer said that Fervo is monitoring seismic activity deep underground around its operations. If that activity surpasses certain thresholds, the company can halt operations, he said.
Another big obstacle these projects face is access to the electrical grid. In Utah, Fervo chose a location where it will have access to existing transmission lines, Latimer said.
“Probably the thing that’s going to limit our ambitious growth plans the most is going to be access to transmission,” he said.
Geothermal can also be costly. Latimer said Fervo has lowered both drilling costs and the time it takes to drill for a geothermal project by 70 percent.
Environmentalists, the federal government and others have also expressed concerns about geothermal projects negatively affecting air quality, water resources and hot springs.
What’s next: Fervo is planning for the second phase of its Utah project to be running by 2028. Geothermal energy last year only accounted for 0.4 percent of the country’s electricity, but Latimer said he hoped the industry would make up close to 1 percent of the country’s electricity generation by 2030. — Allison Prang
2024 temperatures are on track for a record high, researchers find
This year will almost certainly be the hottest year on record, beating the high set in 2023, researchers announced on Wednesday.
The assessment, by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union agency that monitors global warming, also forecast that 2024 would be the first calendar year in which global temperatures consistently rose 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
That’s the temperature threshold that countries agreed, in the Paris Agreement, that the planet should avoid crossing. Beyond that amount of warming, scientists say, the Earth will face irreversible damage. — Austyn Gaffney
The world isn’t spending nearly enough to adapt to climate shocks, U.N. says
A United Nations group on Thursday warned in a new report that developing nations need hundreds of billions of dollars per year in aid to adapt to a warming planet.
With temperatures on the rise, many more countries are trying to protect themselves from heat waves, floods and other climate shocks, according to the report, from the U.N. Environment Program. At least 171 countries now have at least one national climate adaptation plan in place.
But those efforts remain badly underfunded, particularly in poor countries. While wealthy nations provided $28 billion in aid for climate adaptation in 2022, the report estimates that developing nations need between $187 billion and $359 billion annually in additional funding to cope with climate change disasters. — Brad Plumer
More climate news:
Just hours after Trump’s win, President Biden moved to limit oil drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, The Washington Post reports.
Also in the hours after Trump’s win: Shares of renewable energy firms fell, Bloomberg reports.
Inside Climate News tracked how climate-related ballot initiatives fared across the country on Election Day.
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