FIRST LOOK

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Racism, Climate Change, And COVID-19 Cause Compounding Harm: The neighborhoods hit hardest by the novel coronavirus pandemic are virtually the same neighborhoods hit hardest by extreme heat, Politico reports. The overlap is a striking illustration of the compounding harms of environmental racism. The legacy of racist redlining policies, including the dearth of green space that worsens heat islands, exacerbates extreme heat in neighborhoods predominantly populated by people of color. Extreme heat, made more intense and more frequent by human-caused climate change, kills more people than any other type of extreme weather — and that's before COVID-19 is taken into account. Not only can heat worsen pre-existing conditions, but extreme heat increases behaviors that increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission, like in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, where its predominantly Latinx residents would gather multiple generations into the one room with air conditioning. Those in rural areas, especially farmworkers, also suffer in the vicious cycle of extreme heat and COVID-19 because the cool areas that are (too infrequently) available often become places where workers gather in close proximity. (Politico; Climate Signals Background: Extreme heat and heatwaves)

A $16 Billion 'Oops': An independent market monitor says ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, left wholesale electricity prices at the legal maximum for two days longer than necessary, and overcharged power companies $16 billion in the process during the winter storm that caused massive grid and gas system failures and left more than 4 million Texans without electricity. Potomac Economics, the firm hired by the state to assess ERCOT's performance, recommended to regulators that the charges be reversed ts. The move could help alleviate stress on Texas power providers facing shortfalls, default, or bankruptcy following the massive price spikes. The "error" and potential reversal could also have major implications for the Texas wind energy industry. Due to the nature of the financial instruments used by Texas wind firms, those that were unable to produce power during the storm were forced to pay the legal maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour (the average price in 2020 was $22.18) for four days. At that rate, wind companies could be forced into bankruptcy, owing their counterparties more than their entire wind farm is worth. (ERCOT error: Bloomberg $, Texas Tribune, The Hill, FT $, Politico Pro $; Power companies: Reuters; Wind industry: Wall Street Journal $; Climate Signals background: February 2021 polar vortex breakdown and central US winter storms)

Building Code Process Change Alarms Climate Advocates: The private, international entity that sets model building codes for much of the U.S. and parts of the Caribbean and Latin America released a new framework on Thursday that removes local governments of their ability to vote on future energy efficiency standards.The move is widely opposed by architects, environmental advocates, and local governments. HuffPost reports the American Gas Association and the National Association of Home Builders praised the changes by the International Code Council, which critics argue will shift decision making power to industry interests. The changes highlight potential limitations on the Biden administration's ability to decarbonize the buildings sector, which use approximately 40% of all energy produced in the U.S.. “This is a classic example of leaving the fox to guard the hen house,” Kim Havey, the Minneapolis sustainability director told HuffPost. “City leaders and their supporters will be meeting to discuss our options. One may be to ask the White House and Congress to throw the ICC in the compost bin of history and create a new oversight body to develop an energy code that works for the benefit of the people and our planet.” (HuffPost)

ANALYSIS: Dakota Access Pipeline builder Energy Transfer LP making $7B acquisition after tax bailout, mass layoffs (BailoutWatch), federal watchdog probes Ted Cruz’s oil bailout lobbying (BailoutWatch)

STIMULUS: Private equity chiefs get bumper payouts on back of Fed stimulus (FT $)

OIL: Exxon scales back shale ambitions to focus on lower costs, dividend preservation (Reuters, CNBC)

GLOBAL: European officials urge World Bank to exclude fossil-fuel investments (Reuters)

OPINION: Congress’s infrastructure plan must put climate first (Bloomberg, Peter Orszag op-ed $)

ACTIVISM: Citizens' Climate Lobby hires president, expands staff (E&E $), Sunrise Movement gets into lobbying (E&E $), court loosens hold on attorney who beat Chevron in Ecuador (E&E $), [NWF] calls for $208B in conservation, cleanups (E&E $)

NET-ZERO FOMO: Goldman follows rivals in setting net-zero emissions targets (Bloomberg $, The Hill)

WATER: Want to save energy and fight climate change? Try using less water (LA Times $)

ANTHROPOGENIC ATLANTIC MULTIDECADAL OSCILLATION: Humans, not nature, are the cause of changes in Atlantic hurricane cycles, new study finds (CBS), a 20-year-old climate mystery has finally been explained (Bloomberg $) 

FOOD WASTE: ‘Massive’ impact of food waste on climate with nearly a billion tons binned each year, finds UN report (The Independent, AP, Bloomberg $, The Guardian, Reuters, Al Jazeera, BBC, The Hill)

TEXAS: Where did the money go?' Grid crisis sparks investigations (E&E $), Texas could pay generators to boost power reliability: executives (Reuters), Texas farm losses seen topping $600 million after winter blast (Bloomberg $), what happens to labor protections during a natural disaster (On the Media), Texas will have to winterize its grid or interconnect with neighbors: experts (Reuters)

2040 IS THE NEW 2050: More than 50 companies have vowed to be carbon-neutral by 2040 (Washington Post $)

AGENCIES: EPA pressured to toss Trump PFAS decision (E&E $, Politico Pro $), [NFIP] faces $2B annual shortfall from climate change (E&E $), SEC enforcement task force will scrutinize ESG and climate (Politico Pro $, The Hill), Vilsack says ‘no time to waste’ on farm climate initiatives (Bloomberg $), Vilsack is back at USDA after 4 years of Trump. The world has changed. (Politico)

DOE: Energy Dept to restart Obama-era loans to renewable energy companies (The Hill)(The Guardian), Granholm vs. GOP on lost fossil fuel jobs. Who's right? (E&E $)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: 'Opportunity of a lifetime': investment at heart of Biden climate strategy, McCarthy says (Reuters), Gina McCarthy to industry: 'clean energy is winning' (Politico Pro $), McCarthy offers glimpse of 2030 climate goal (E&E $), McCarthy: U.S. 'lost a lot of time' and 'credibility' on climate (Houston Chronicle), Biden climate envoy John Kerry talking to banks, asset managers about mobilizing capital for clean energy (CNBC)

THE HILL: Grid bill would complement Dem climate package (E&E $), Republican bill takes aim at bank fossil fuel pledges (E&E $), [Oregon Rep.] DeFazio sets spring timeline for infrastructure bill (Washington Post $), [Nevada Sen.] Cortez Masto pushes major conservation, oil and gas bills (E&E $)

POLITICS: White House infrastructure meeting ends with calls for bipartisanship, but few details (Politico Pro $, The Hill, Bloomberg $), Biden's promise to unions: 'I'm all for natural gas' (E&E $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: 5 takeaways from the CEQ, EPA nominees hearing (E&E $), State [Dept.] picks vow climate action, get grilled on [Nord Stream 2] pipeline (E&E $)

DEB HAALAND: [Haaland] will likely be confirmed. But when? (Indian Country Today), Haaland survives hearing, next full Senate (Navajo Times, New York Times $, AP, E&E $, Politico Pro $, Bloomberg $, The Hill), Haaland holds her own in heated hearing (Navajo Times), Haaland: Biden conservation goal 'not about locking up land' (E&E $), Diné leaders: Haaland good for Navajo (Navajo Times), Republicans used oil industry-backed study to criticize Deb Haaland (The Guardian) 

TRANSITION, PERSONNEL: New Biden economic hires point toward infrastructure, manufacturing emphasis (Reuters), solar pioneer [Jigar Shah] to head DOE loan office (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: New Texas confronts the old with debates about mask mandates and winter storm response (Washington Post $), Kansas to loan up to $100M to cities with huge energy costs (AP), 'mired in incrementalism': climate action council proceedings alarm climate advocates (New York Focus)

FERC: FERC pipeline eminent domain fight heats up (E&E $), Glick says prospective pipelines must assess demand, fuel alternatives (Politico Pro $), US energy regulator focuses on access to renewable power to reduce climate impact (Reuters)

IMPACTS: Miami readies for rising seas (E&E $), butterflies are vanishing out West. Scientists say climate change is to blame. (Washington Post $), NOAA to release new climate 'normals' for temperature and precipitation (CNN)

RENEWABLES: Offshore wind could be a big-dollar boon for N.C. — report (E&E $)

BATTERIES: One bright side of 2020: A surge in battery storage (Grist, E&E $)

EV battery-maker’s misconduct said ‘extraordinary’ by ITC (Bloomberg $), Storage integrator Flexgen gains new leadership at crucial time (Greentech Media)

OIL & GAS: The fight over the future of natural gas (NPR), activist climate investors pose new threat to oil companies (Houston Chronicle), US oil production won’t return to pre-pandemic levels, says Occidental CEO (CNBC), US utilities to keep gas in power mix for years in green transition (Reuters)

TRASH GAS: Giant landfill in tiny Washington hamlet turns trash to natural gas, as utilities fight for a future (Seattle Times)

PLASTICS: 'It's a disaster': Plastic exports pile up (E&E $), Mississippi River cities join project to map plastic litter (AP)

UTILITIES: Duke energy faces challenges to its push for new natural gas plants (Greentech Media)

EVs: EVs could make dealerships a thing of the past, too (Bloomberg $), GM looking to build second battery factory in U.S. (Wall Street Journal $)

USPS TRUCKS: Workhorse sees ‘prolonged process’ to challenge postal award (Bloomberg $)

CARBON CAPTURE: Why a political philosopher is thinking about carbon removal (The Atlantic), Chevron to build California carbon capture plant with Microsoft, Schlumberger (Reuters)

INFRASTRUCTURE: New report: US dams, levees get D grades, need $115 billion in upgrades (Yale Climate Connections)

INTERNATIONAL: Africa urged to embrace wind power to create jobs and go green (Thomson Reuters Foundation), UK lacks plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050, say MPs (FT $)

CHINA: China sets moderate new energy goals for climate change (AP), China sets growth target ‘over 6%,’ tightening HK control (AP)

OH. CANADA?: Canada's environment minister says he wants to see net-zero climate bill passed before next election (Politico Pro $), Canadian officials: 'we are fighting for Line 5 on every front' (Politico Pro $)

• President Biden must confirm climate crisis affecting Indigenous communities (Indian Country Today, Stephanie BadSoldier Snow and Shaina Oliver op-ed)
• Oil and gas investors need to start asking tough questions (Barron's, Bianca Taylor op-ed)
• The dark side of Bill Gates’s climate techno-optimism (New Republic, Kate Aronoff column)
• Exxon’s new roadmap: flat ground and dragons (Bloomberg, Liam Denning column $)
• The Biden era of climate-aware forest policy (The Hill, Mike Domnbeck and Jim FUrnish op-ed)
• The Biden administration is planning for climate migration. Do Americans support helping climate migrants? (Washington Post, Sabrina B. Arias and Christopher W. Blair analysis $)

Let Them Drink Gas: Fossil Fool Exploits Ethiopian Child To Sell Dirty Energy, Attack Biden

While our last dip in the dirty energy-funded climate denial cesspool that is RealClearEnergy surfaced a relatively new denial group, on Wednesday the site published a somewhat new take from a group infamous for once claiming coal ended slavery. And the content here is similarly themed, exploiting Black bodies to sell fossil fuels — this time, poverty. 

The “energy poverty” angle of climate disinformation has been a favorite of dirty energy advocates, allowing them to pretend to care about poverty by promoting their product as its cure. But Katie Tahuahua of the (industry-funded) Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Life:Powered project has put a bizarre and even more shameless twist on it in her op-ed attacking Biden’s clean energy agenda. 

Tahuahua opens her piece by describing how “Aysha,” a 13-year-old Ethiopian girl, spends every day trekking four hours to get water and then another four to bring it back home to her family. “The water there is dirty and brown and unsanitary,” Tahuahua writes as though she actually travelled there, and isn’t just describing a 2 minute UNICEF video of a day in Aysha’s life, “but it’s water, and her family needs it to survive.” 

Playing up the pity factor, Tahuahua notes that “Aysha doesn’t get back home until the sun is already setting. Meanwhile, her brother has gone to school.” Except the video, which very clearly shows the time of day, shows Aysha getting home in the middle of the afternoon, well before sunset. The point here isn't that Aysha's trek isn't grueling and tragic, or that access to clean water isn't a problem. The point is that Katie Tahuahua is not only a shameless exploiter of a child’s tragic situation, she’s also a flat-out liar. 

Having preyed on readers’ compassion by deliberately misleading them about a child’s situation that needed no embellishment, and using Aysha as a convenient framing device for her political propaganda about how only fossil fuels can provide electricity to the poor, Tahuaha gets to the point. 

President Biden’s climate agenda “will deny Aysha … a self-actualized life of equality and opportunity.” Specifically, his executive order to stop the US from funding dirty energy projects apparently means that Aysha won’t be receiving “funding that could have offered clean running water flowing right into her home.” 

But, uh, for starters the UNICEF video of Aysha is from 2017, when Donald Trump was just getting started with a fully fossil-fueled agenda. (We don't know if Trump knows where Ethiopia is, but we're reasonably certain that if he saw Aysha, he'd asume she was from a shithole country.) So how, exactly, did President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order barring dirty energy spending abroad deprive Aysha of clean water in 2017? 

Even if Tahuahua weren’t criticizing the president for not time travelling, what’s clean water got to do with dirty fuels? Last we checked, oil, gas, and coal pollute clean water. They certainly don’t provide it! Sure, pumps and filters and such need electricity, and electricity is vital to development and safety, but — in addition to the fact that Ethiopia has huge renewable energy resources — blaming Aysha's lack of access to clean water on efforts to fight climate change is a mind-bogglingly reductionist red herring. (Also, the country needs massive grid and transmission investment to get electricity to rural areas. Did we mention this is complicated?) All this is in addition to the incalculable suffering brought on by repeated drought, so it’s pretty dishonest to suggest that the problem of clean water access in Ethiopia could be solved by just building some power plants burning your fossil fuel of choice. 

And of course, she’s wrong to claim that renewables aren’t a viable option for getting places electrified that have been so far overlooked by fossil fuel power plants — in fact, developing countries started installing more renewables than coal back in 2018.

But obviously accuracy isn’t important here. What’s important is that the fossil fuel industry’s spokespeople will eagerly and misleadingly exploit an African child’s 8-hour day collecting water in order to collect their paycheck.

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