FIRST LOOK(S): 

The Sabin Center has updated its Report on Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States with new data showing that since September 2021, local policies opposing new wind and solar projects have increased by 17.5%, and the number of renewable projects that have been contested has increased by 23.6%. Read more here. 

UC Irvine and CarbonPlan have released an interactive map explorer for estimating the costs and climate benefits of seaweed farming. Read more here.

DOE Greenlights Expanded LNG Exports Despite Climate, Affordability Concerns: Reducing methane pollution is one of the fastest and most effective means of slowing global warming, along with cutting other climate-heating emissions, would substantially increase the odds of summer Arctic sea ice surviving through the end of the century, new research published in Environmental Research Letters finds. Nevertheless, the Department of Energy authorized more exports of so-called liquified natural gas from two major facilities. The Cheniere Energy terminals at Sabine Pass, Louisiana and Corpus Christi were previously only allowed to export LNG, which is mostly methane, to a limited number of countries that did not include Europe. The decision was made despite concerns that increasing LNG exports to Europe would undermine the Biden administration's climate goals, and are driving up home heating costs. A record number of LNG tankers are currently in the Gulf of Mexico loading or waiting to load. (Arctic ice: Axios; Methane Exports: Reuters, The Hill; Gulf tankers: Reuters)

Lake Powell Drops To Historic Low: The climate change-fueled megadrought parching the American West hit another critical milestone on Tuesday: Lake Powell reached its lowest point since the government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon more than half a century ago. Even more ominously, the worst drought since Charlamagne has pushed water levels to just 35 feet above the point at which the hydroelectric dam can no longer produce electricity, which it supplies to 54 Native American tribes and another 5 million customers across the region. If water is withheld to keep levels higher, that could have dramatic consequences for the even larger Lake Mead, which is only 14 feet above a critical water shortage level. The ongoing drought and falling water levels have boosted calls to decommission and "rewild" the Colorado River. Snowmelt from the Rockies is expected to alleviate Lake Powell's immediate shortage, but hydrology models suggest a 25% chance the lake will be too low to generate electricity as early as 2024. “The continued long-term trend of decline in the reservoir is disturbing,” Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona Department of Water Resources, told the Arizona Republic. (The Colorado Sun, AP, Fox13; Decommissioning: Arizona Republic; Climate Signals background: Drought)

Farm Insurance Program Burdened By Climate Impacts, Stifles Adaptation: US farmers have received tens of billions of dollars in heavily-taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance payouts over the past two decades, with a majority of that damage caused by conditions exacerbated by climate change, Harvest Public Media reports. What's more, farmers and environmentalists say, the USDA crop insurance program disincentivizes adapting to climate change, in part because it only insures a small number of crops, like corn and soybeans. “My grandpa always told me, ‘Never put all your eggs in one basket,’” said Macauley Kincaid of Jasper, Missouri. “So why as farmers do we only want to raise corn and soybeans? If my corn and soybeans are a complete failure, that’s okay because they might only be one-tenth of my income that year.” The program is "not helping [farmers] think about, ‘What if I have a major drought in five years?’” said Anne Schechinger, an extreme weather and agricultural economist and midwest director of the Environmental Working Group. “Because these things like drought and excess moisture are so tied to climate change, as climate change gets worse in the future, crop insurance payments are also going to be growing,” she added. (Harvest Public Media; Climate Signals background: Drought, Extreme precipitation increase, Total precipitation increase)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: How green spaces protect city residents from climate change (NBCLX), The census undercounted people of color. Here's what that means for environmental justice. (Grist), $75 million for residents whose homes were built on landfill (AP)

FOSSIL FUELED WAR: Climate and Russia could combine to create a food crisis (E&E News), Citing a Chevron tanker, Ukraine seeks tougher restrictions at Russian ports (New York Times $), Ukrainian refugees today, climate refugees tomorrow (Atmos)

• MORE IMPORTANT TO RETURN CASH BACK TO THE SHAREHOLDERS: Big Oil catered to shareholders while Americans were hit with surging gas prices (CNN), Schumer vows to make oil companies testify for high prices (E&E News, Roll Call), Why are gasoline prices so high? Ukraine-Russia war sparks price increases across US (Wall Street Journal $)
• US POLITICS: Republicans have a built-in advantage when gas prices rise (NY Mag), Conflict in Ukraine appears to bridge political gap in US on oil and gas production (S&P Global)
• HEAT PUMPS: Heat pumps are a weapon in the EU’s energy face-off with Russia (TIME), A heat pump can help you avoid burning fossil fuels at home (Yale Climate Connections)
• GLOBAL OIL MARKET: Oil market faces biggest supply crisis in decades unless OPEC boosts output, IEA says (Wall Street Journal $, CNBC, Bloomberg $, Axios), Russia's war might mean more drilling — frustrating some climate hawks (Bloomberg $), The global oil market is based on a fiction (The Atlantic)
• EUROPE: EU countries support plan for world-first carbon border tariff (Reuters, E&E News), Italy needs at least 3 years to replace Russian gas imports, minister says (Reuters), Norway to supply more gas to Europe this summer (Reuters), Portugal says Europe must cut use of Russian gas however difficult (Reuters), Balkan states say supply security more pressing than ditching coal (Reuters), Energy trade body [European Federation of Energy Traders] seeks public cash amid Ukraine-linked turmoil (Reuters), For Dutch province, Ukraine war is a call to pump natural gas (Reuters), UK can eliminate need for Russian gas this year, research shows (The Guardian)

CHECK OUT THE DENIER ROUNDUP FOR MORE: Koch Industries stays in Russia, backs groups opposing US sanctions (CBS)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Spending deal undercuts Biden's UN climate pledge (Roll Call), World far short of climate goals during 'decade of action' -report (Reuters)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: The stealth operative for Big Oil who’s out to derail America’s climate fight (The Guardian), Court knocks down Exxon bid to block state climate probes (E&E $), Judges grill Minn. in climate liability fight (E&E $), How climate litigation is shaping ambitious cases for nature (The Guardian), Utah youth allege state’s promotion of fossil energy is harming them and the planet (Casper Star-Tribune), Australia overturns landmark climate change ruling that protected kids from pollution. One teen plaintiff still sees an upside (Fortune, E&E $)

SOCIAL COST OF CO2, CH4, NO2: Appellate court rules Biden can consider climate damage in policymaking (Washington Post $, Politico Pro $)

ART (ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE IN DC): This immersive photography exhibit says just being aware of climate change isn’t enough (Washingtonian Mag)

AGENCIES: EPA: ‘Forever chemicals’ in pesticide barrels may be illegal (E&E News), Deb Haaland marks first year in office (Indian Country Today)

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION: Corporate greenwashing is about to get harder (Quartz), Climate-minded SEC commissioner to step down (E&E $)

FED: Raskin's withdrawal from Fed nomination spells more delays for rule changes (Reuters explainer)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden calls for companies to lower gas prices as oil prices dip (The Hill), Biden team hits stumbling blocks in greening the US financial system (FT $), White House weighs lifting ethanol ban to curb gas prices (E&E $)

THE HILL: Daylight saving push skirts energy debate (E&E News), 

HOUSE: Democrats beg Biden to not give up on his Build Back Better agenda (Salon), Singer Carole King testifies at House hearing on preventing wildfires (NBC, The Hill), Republicans want smoother path for advanced reactor licensing (E&E $)

SENATE: Manchin ‘very reluctant’ on electric cars in ominous sign for Biden’s climate fight (The Guardian), Murkowski scores $230M in earmarks ahead of tough campaign (E&E News), 

POLITICS: The Sarah Bloom Raskin debacle is another strike to Biden’s climate agenda (Grist)

AN OK BOOMER: Jane Fonda launching new climate PAC (The Hill)

ELECTIONS: Battle for N.C. seat could determine Senate control (E&E News)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Senate confirms Shalanda Young for White House budget post (E&E $)

TRIBES: Remote tribe seeks co-management of marine resources (Indian Country Today), Russia's invasion impacts Arctic communities (Indian Country Today)

CITIES & STATES & DISENFRANCHISED COLONIAL TERRITORIES: Texas and other states want to punish fossil fuel divestment (NPR), Massachusetts program seeks to diversify clean energy job opportunities (Energy News Network), Puerto Rico emerges from bankruptcy, but its electric utility is still struggling with $9B in debt (Utility Dive), Puerto Rico is struggling to meet its clean energy goals, despite Biden’s support (Inside Climate News), Washington wants to capture the natural gas leaking from landfills (Crosscut), California’s climate reputation tarnished by inaction and oil money (Inside Climate News)

FERC: Pipeline giants warn FERC of 'fierce legal challenge' (E&E $), ISO-NE's market rules biased toward gas plants, renewable energy groups say in FERC complaint (Utility Dive)

PUBLIC LANDS: Appeals court clears path for Izembek road (E&E News, AP), Uranium mill adjacent to Bears Ears has become a 'radioactive waste dump': report (The Hill)

IMPACTS: Disaster management is a key tool for climate adaptation (Southerly Mag), Dust from Sahara turns sky in Spain to ‘Bladerunner’ orange (The Independent, CNN), Yemeni city looks to ancient past to survive climate change (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Why we still don’t yet know how bad climate migration will get (Vox)

HEAT: How much of the heat can we blame on the heat island? (Arizona Republic), Humpback whale population declined after massive heat wave — study (E&E $)

WILDFIRES: US fires larger, more frequent in past two decades, study finds (The Hill)

Wildfires are getting worse, CU study finds (ABC-7 Denver)

WATER: Climate-driven water woes spark Colorado rush to conserve 'liquid gold' (Reuters)

DEFORESTATION: The war for the rainforest (New York Times $)

EASY PEASY: How to get past despair to powerful action on climate change (Yes Magazine)

RENEWABLES: How a breakthrough in geothermal could change our energy grid (Grist), Shell vies with Adani, Greenko for Actis’s Sprng Energy (Bloomberg $), Storms and sea level rise could cost ports billions (The Verge), Want more solar panels? Good luck connecting to the grid (E&E News)

STORAGE: Michigan will need 4,000 MW of energy storage by 2040: report (Utility Dive)

OIL & GAS: Shell directors sued for ‘failing to prepare company for net zero’ (The Guardian), China’s COVID resurgence is part of the reason oil prices plummeted from record highs (CNBC), Occidental loses bid to throw out green investor resolution (FT $)

ORPHANED WELLS: Money flows to states for cleaning up environmentally hazardous orphaned wells (ABC)

COAL (& CRYPTO): Coal stocks are burning up again (Wall Street Journal $), The gold rush bringing Bitcoin miners to Kentucky (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Power company plans to exit Ohio, W.Va. coal plants next year (E&E $)

HYDROGEN: Australian researchers claim ‘giant leap’ in technology to produce affordable renewable hydrogen (The Guardian), Hydrogen-powered train a step closer to passenger service in Germany (CNBC), Hydrogen-capable natural gas turbines gain traction in power sector (S&P Global)

UTILITIES: As Duke and Dominion ramp up their net zero goals, the supply chain comes into view (Utility Dive), This federally owned public utility company is run by a former fossil fuel executive who makes $10 million (New Republic)

GRID: How a smarter grid can prevent blackouts (E&E News)

EVs: There’s a push to get more electric school buses on the streets — moms are driving it (The 19th* News), High gas prices have a lot more people searching for electric vehicles (Grist), BYD follows Tesla in hiking prices on rising raw materials costs (Bloomberg $), Mining lithium for electric vehicle batteries may threaten flamingos, a study finds (Smithsonian Magazine), Toyota unveils project for India’s first fuel cell electric car (Bloomberg $), Will owning an electric vehicle save you money? (NBC), Push for mining metals for electric vehicles splits Democrats, environmentalists (Washington Post $)

TELEWORK: How the return of workers to the office could impact climate change (Yahoo)

AVIATION: COVID’s effect on long-haul flights will have a big impact on aviation emissions (Energy Monitor)

SPORTSWASHING: Qatar starts long-delayed natural gas plant ahead of World Cup (E&E $)

BUSINESS: Starbucks plans to phase out paper cups in the US and Canada (NPR)

CARBON REMOVAL: Can small seaweed farms help kelp scale up? (Civil Eats)

SHIPPING: Microsoft heads up $34M investment in software platform to cut cargo ship emissions (Canary Media), UK focuses on green tech as it seeks to revive shipbuilding sector (FT $)

FINANCE: A breakdown of how much capital is actually going to fight climate change (Greenbiz), Carney steps into advisory role in overhaul of carbon offsets group (FT $), Carney’s bid to grow carbon market rejigged amid controversy (Bloomberg $), Corporate venture investors boost climate-tech spending (Wall Street Journal $), Lawmaker group asks EU to withdraw green investment label for gas (Reuters), Standard Bank aims for net zero by 2050, activists press for more (Reuters), Standard bank to raise $20 billion to fund green projects (Bloomberg $)

GEOENGINEERING: Could spraying chemicals into the atmosphere 15 miles up reverse climate change? (Yahoo)

INTERNATIONAL: Morrison government yet to release 2019 report on vulnerability of Australia’s fuel supplies (The Guardian)

• UK: Deadline to abandon fracking wells ‘could be extended by a year’ (The Independent), Michael Gove ‘not convinced’ by case for more fracking in UK (The Guardian), Labour MP Graham Stringer to join Nigel Farage at anti-net zero rally (The Guardian), Scotland not adapted to climate crisis, says advisory committee (The Guardian)

• Zelensky says ‘Peace is more important than profit.' Koch Industries disagrees. (Washington Post, Dana Milbank column $)
• Growing up Maasai and the art of healing the Earth (Vox, Kimaren ole Riamit interview)
• Fossil fuel barons killed Biden’s Fed pick because she talked sense on climate change (LA Times, Michael Hiltzik column $)
• We must accelerate the energy transition to untangle Europe from Russian dependency (Fortune, Beth Thoren op-ed)
• We are not doomed to climate chaos (Boston Globe, Edward R. Carr op-ed $)
• How an environmental educator tries to live sustainably: saving water, thrifting and building a plant collection (Washington Post, Elizabeth Teo perspective $)
• Planned ballot initiative would restore clean air by reducing emissions (CAL Matters, Mary Creasman and Joel Barton)
• A power test for Texas voters (Texas Tribune, Ross Ramsey column)
• What the Ukraine war means for the future of climate change (New York Times, Spencer Bokat-Lindell op-ed $)
• Manchin just delivered another blow on climate. He's a threat to humanity. (Truthout, William Rivers Pitt op-ed)
• Biden's climate alarmist nominees send a chilling message to financial institutions, the energy industry (The Hill, Sen. Kevin Cramer op-ed)

Koch Still Plenty Invested In Russia — Don’t Expect That To Change, The Company Was Built With Hitler and Stalin’s Money

Yesterday, we suggested that if the GOP really cared about Russian funds influencing American politics and energy, as they claim when falsely attacking green groups, then there’s another place they should look to root out energy interests raking in the Rubles, and it’s a little closer to home. 

As Pam and Russ Martens wrote on their Wall Street on Parade blog last Tuesday, even when BP, Shell and ExxonMobil(!) stopped (or at least promised to stop) doing business in Russia, Charles Koch “has been unusually quiet about his plans for his sprawling Russian operations.”

Koch Industries has three companies in Russia, an electric component producer Molex, pollution control equipment manufacturer Koch Engineered Solutions, and Guardian Industries, which makes glass and auto parts. (If you’ve ever tried to go to the Guardian newspaper’s website and accidentally typed it as guardian.com and not theguardian.com, you may be familiar with the company!)

The Koch network’s is not likely to reply to the Martens’ blog, but Judd Legum’s Popular.Info substack has a pretty good history of forcing companies to not be absolutely horrible, and covered the issue as well, adding that the Guardian company provided a statement to USGlass magazine that they will continue “to closely monitor the tumultuous events in Eastern Europe.” Molex offered similar statements, going so far as to remove “Russia and Ukraine” from a version of a Feb 25 statement when reposting it on March 1st, they’d changed it to “Eastern Europe,” like Guardian. 

In a follow-up post, Legum reported that various nodes of the Koch influence network here in the U.S. are acting in exactly the manner one would expect from people dependent on the profits from business done in Russia, among other places: opposing economic sanctions on Russia. AIER, Reason, Stand Together, and Concerned Veterans for America have all had their stooges downpay, dismiss or otherwise disparage the economic sanctions (but not for hitting their benefactors’ bottom line, of course!). 

And lo and behold, this morning Legum reported that Koch Industries released a statement Wednesday saying that it’s in Ukraine’s best interest for the Guardian glass company to continue operations in Russia, because if they left, the Russian government would just take over. Legume ends with a quote from Jane Mayer: “all Koch’s talk of rights and liberty means nothing… making money is what they value.” 

Now, we aren't surprised the Koch conglomerate didn’t suddenly find a reason not to work with brutal authoritarians waging illegal wars in Eastern Europe. After all, the Koch fortune exists solely because Koch went to Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia to sell his services. 

Jane Mayer’s Dark Money revealed that the vast fortune the Koch sons would spend on building the Tea Party was generated by their father’s build-up of Nazi Germany’s oil refining capacity. Per Mayer in an interview, the Winkler-Koch Co.'s Hamburg Oil Refinery “became key, according to several German historians I talked to, to Hitler’s war efforts.” Specifically, “one of the things [Hitler] was unable to do was to refine high-octane oil for warplanes.” 

And that was only after “Fred Koch had worked for Stalin, where — under Stalin's first five-year plan — Fred Koch helped build up the Russian, the Soviet oil refineries and really gave huge muscle to the oil industry in the Soviet Union.” 

Fast forward, and Koch Industries, which built up the USSR and fueled Nazi warplanes, is giving over a million dollars per year to Republicans, not to mention the hundreds of millions to their conservative front group network. 

If the GOP is looking to revive McCarthyism with Russian-money witch-hunts, maybe they should start with their own campaign coffers.

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