Cyclone Freddy Hits Madagascar, Heads Toward Mozambique: Cyclone Freddy slammed into Madagascar late Tuesday and was headed for Mozambique after leaving a wake of death and destruction across the island nation. At least five people have been confirmed dead and officials said more than 16,700 people were displaced by the storm. Freddy made landfall on the island north of Mananjary, the coastal town still devastated by last year's Cyclone Batsirai, which killed more than 130 people. Freddy brought stronger wind, but less rain than that storm. Cyclone Freddy is expected to make landfall on the mainland on Friday. (Le Monde with AFP, AP, BBC, Reuters, The Guardian; Climate Signals background: Intense cyclone increase)

DOI Proposes First Gulf Offshore Wind Leases: The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed the first-ever sale of offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico, a significant step toward achieving its goal of building 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030. The proposed lease areas off the coasts of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas make up nearly 200,000 acres. These areas have the potential to generate about 3.6 GW of electricity, according to the Department of the Interior, enough to power almost 1.3 million homes. In its announcement of the 60-day lease tract comment period, DOI is also seeking public comments on whether lease winners should be required to provide reporting on their interaction with Native tribes and other Gulf users, and whether they should be required to support worker training and domestic supply chain development. (AP, E&E $, Politico Pro $, Reuters, The Hill, CNBC, CNN, Power)

Tanzania Approves EACOP: The Tanzanian government gave approval for the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline earlier this week, paving the way for the 900-mile project to be built. Once built, the heated underground pipeline — the longest of its kind — will carry crude oil from one of the world's most biodiverse regions along Lake Albert in Uganda to a port on the Tanzanian coast. The Ugandan government approved the pipeline last month. The pipeline, which will require displacing at least 13,000 households, threatens the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people along the pipeline's route. Advocates criticize the project as merely another example of foreign extraction of African resources with little-to-no regard for local communities. Backed by French oil major TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, EACOP backers have struggled to secure financial backing, with at least 21 major insurance and reinsurance firms refusing to underwrite the project. (AFP via Barron's, Business Insider - Africa)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Europe supported Ukraine with not just tanks, but heat pumps too (Bloomberg $), 3 questions answered on the Ukraine war’s impact on energy (E&E News), How Europe ditched Russian fossil fuels with spectacular speed (Bloomberg $), The environmental scars of Russia’s war in Ukraine (Politico EU), India averse to discussing new Russia sanctions at G20 (Reuters), Healthy gas storage warms Europe, but not enough (Reuters)

🐦🗑️🔥: Russian propagandists are buying Twitter blue-check verifications (Washington Post $)

9:37 🚂 TO THE PETROCHEMICAL DYSTOPIA: Trump’s Ohio visit puts spotlight on rail-safety rules he ended (Bloomberg $, E&E News, Politico Pro $, Washington Post $), Rail safety plans likely to hit wall of industry lobbying (E&E News), Meet the players managing the Ohio train wreck (E&E $)

DENIAL & GREENWASHING: Trump’s climate denial shapes House GOP backbench (E&E News), HSBC says greenwash risks have potential to impede market access (Bloomberg $), UK lawmakers clash with fund industry over plan to tackle greenwashing (Reuters)

MEDIA: Fossil fuel ads galore (LA Times $)

SCOTUS: Supreme Court rules Helix Energy oil rig worker who makes $200,000 is entitled to overtime (CNBC)

DOI: Pay and plug: Federal funds spur cleanup of lost oil wells (New York Times $)

EPA: EPA administrator says officials won’t ‘second-guess’ East Palestine people’s symptoms (The Hill)

DOE: Hundreds of Energy Department officials hold stocks related to agency’s work despite warnings (Wall Street Journal $)

DOT: Buttigieg to travel to East Palestine on Thursday amid criticism Biden administration isn’t doing enough (The Hill, E&E $, Politico Pro $), NTSB to release early Ohio derailment findings as Buttigieg visits (Washington Post $)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden speaks with Ohio, Pennsylvania officials on East Palestine train derailment (The Hill)

POLITICS: Republicans in the US ‘battery belt’ embrace Biden’s climate spending (The Guardian), Inside Heritage's plans for a 2025 GOP administration (E&E $), Voter skepticism of GOP congressional investigations spikes: poll (The Hill)

ELECTIONS: US Sen. Jon Tester announces he will seek re-election in 2024 (Missoula Current, Bloomberg $), Democrat Jennifer McClellan wins special election; first Black woman from Virginia in Congress (USA Today, Virginia Mercury, NPR, NewsOne, CBS, Essence, NBC, The 19th* News, CNN, Wall Street Journal $, ABC, Black Wall Street Times, The Hill, Politico, WWBT, New York Times $, People)

TRIBES: March for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives draws hundreds (Indian Country Today), Special events will mark Wounded Knee 50th anniversary (Indian Country Today), Yakama seeking to remove causeway that impedes salmon migration (Indian Country Today)

CITIES AND STATES: A New Mexico tax break to help subsistence farmers is also going to wealthy homeowners in the state’s largest county (Inside Climate News), Advocates push for housing money for residents displaced by KY floods: ‘People can’t wait’ (Lexington Herald-Leader), N.J. taps new authority to overrule offshore wind opposition (E&E $), California bill penalizing oil profits makes little progress (AP)

FERC: FERC approves controversial PJM auction fix to combat price spike (Politico Pro $, Utility Dive)

IMPACTS: Calif. dry spell threatens snowpack health (E&E $), Climate change is increasing the risk of infectious diseases worldwide (Yale Climate Connections), Wild weather pattern brings record warmth — and cold — across the country (Washington Post $, Gizmodo), The angels of the Nile are dying (Atmos), The Canadian super pigs are here (Gizmodo), Venice canals run dry as lingering weather system mires tides, and Alps snow shortage fuels concerns for Italy's summer (CBS), Why is Tunisia struggling to stop its beaches vanishing? (Context)

BOOZE: Why the climate crisis may be coming for your margarita next (CNN)

WATER: Scottsdale proposes a plan to provide Rio Verde foothills with water. But the details remain murky (Inside Climate News)

DEFORESTATION: Investigation faults Liberian agency protecting rainforest (AP)

RENEWABLES: Republican operatives are astroturfing opposition to solar power (Gizmodo), Marine commission: Whale deaths not linked to wind prep work (AP), Top ten renewables dealmakers since 2020 (Energy Monitor), How bald eagles could become key in political battle over wind turbines (Newsweek), Iberdrola to fight Spanish windfall tax in courts (FT $), Solar industry facing whiplash from volatile material prices (Bloomberg $), How AI can help protect whales from a wind farm boom (Bloomberg $), New technology helps avoid whale-ship collisions (CBS), The US could soon produce a majority of the solar panels it uses, but for SEMA, that’s just the beginning (Utility Dive), Thin-film solar sparks a manufacturing boom in the Midwest (Canary Media), When do many people decide to go solar? When they’re referred by a friend or neighbor. (Yale Climate Connections), How this company plans to use Earth’s heat to cool the planet (Washington Post $)

BATTERIES: Battery installations soared in 2022, reshaping grids (E&E $), Chinese lithium prices fall 30% as demand for electric vehicles weakens (FT $)

BUILDINGS: Heat pumps are taking off in Maine, one of the coldest states (Grist)

LNG: Feds tell Texas LNG plant it can restart after explosion (E&E $, OilPrice), After explosion, Freeport LNG rejoins the Gulf Coast energy export boom (Inside Climate News)

METHANE: It would take less than 3% of big oil’s profits to clean up methane emissions (Grist), Energy industry fails to tackle methane emissions despite soaring profits, IEA says (FT $), Energy sector's methane emissions near all-time high (E&E $)

OIL & GAS: Drilling giant Chesapeake cuts rigs amid plunge in US gas prices (OilPrice), Chemical giant enters US shale with $1.4 billion acquisition (OilPrice), European gas reaches tipping point to price out coal in power (Bloomberg $), Gas prices poised to rise again as sanctions on Russia take effect (Wall Street Journal $), Natural-gas prices plunge, and drillers dial back (Wall Street Journal $)

PLASTICS: Less plastic or more recycling – nations split ahead of treaty talks (Climate Home)

COAL: Mine collapse in China kills five, 48 miners still missing (Reuters, New York Times $)

NUKES: A nuclear reactor was melting down. Jimmy Carter came to the rescue. (Washington Post $), PSEG to consider nuclear plant investments, capitalizing on the IRA’s production tax credits, CEO says (Utility Dive)

UTILITIES: EEI calls for ‘urgency’ in siting and permitting reform to aid booming energy industry (Utility Dive, E&E $), Duke to build ‘first-of-its-kind’ facility to accelerate fleet electrification with partners Daimler, Electrada (Utility Dive), Iowa utility pursued wind after concluding solar was cheap (E&E $)

GRID: Why it’s so hard to build new electrical transmission lines in the US (CNBC)

EVs: Bentley phases out 12-cylinder engine as electric switch gathers pace (FT $), Carmakers prepare for electric future (FT $), Elon Musk picks California for Tesla’s global engineering headquarters (Wall Street Journal $), EV charging infrastructure is ‘inadequate and plagued with non-functioning stations’: J.D. Power (Utility Dive), EV startup Lucid aims to nearly double production in 2023 (Wall Street Journal $), Silicon Valley startup charts a path to cheaper EV batteries (Bloomberg $), Tesla scales back German battery plans, won over by US incentives (Reuters), The EV question for auto executives: How fast to make the shift? (Wall Street Journal $), This EV battery recycling plant in Ohio is planning a huge expansion (Canary Media)

PFAS: Alarming toxic ‘forever chemicals’ found in animals’ blood – study (The Guardian), Wildlife species worldwide exposed to ‘forever chemicals,’ survey shows (The Hill)

AVIATION: Airline creates venture capital fund for sustainable fuel (E&E $)

BOOKS: As Louisiana’s coast disappears, its historic communities are disappearing too (Grist)

CARBON PRICING: Indonesia launches carbon trading mechanism for coal power plants (Reuters)

FINANCE: China mulls mandatory ESG disclosures for domestic public firms (Bloomberg $), Climate finance group [GFANZ] faces criticism after major bank exits (E&E $)

INTERNATIONAL: ‘Unpredictable’ election in Africa’s largest economy is set to resonate around the world (CNBC), EU talks to speed up renewables hamstrung by fight over trees (Bloomberg $), South Africa offers tax breaks to counter energy crisis (Bloomberg $), Sri Lanka investment board approves $442 mln Adani Green wind power plants (Reuters), UK will speed up grid connections to boost clean power capacity (Bloomberg $), Venezuela’s oil industry, reopening to investors, is major polluter (Wall Street Journal $)

• EV battery recycling has boomed too soon (Bloomberg, Adam Minter op-ed $)
• A vital moment for World Bank reform (FT Editorial Board $)
• California, stop parching your neighbors (New York Times, John Fleck op-ed $)
• Today’s climate activist ‘criminals’ are tomorrow’s heroes: silencing them in court is immoral (The Guardian, George Monbiot op-ed)
• Jimmy Carter continues to teach us what it means to live a good life (The Hill, Glenn Altschuler op-ed)
• Germany’s Kazakh oil deal won’t release Russia’s grip (Bloomberg, Julian Lee column $)
• The big bet on hydrogen vehicles (FT, June Yoon column $)
• US secession is a great idea — for Russia (The Hill, Rachel Kleinfeld op-ed)
• The World Bank needs American leadership (The Hill, William Danvers op-ed)

Whether Insetting or Offsetting, There's No Forgetting it's Mostly Greenwash

You’ve heard of carbon offsetting, but get ready for its even more dubious sibling, carbon insetting. “Insetting” is a net zero buzzword that has been gaining traction as an alternative to the reputationally damaged concept of carbon offsetting, but experts are saying it’s a greenwashing tactic that’s actually even worse than offsetting.

If you haven't heard of carbon offsetting or just need a refresher, it's when an institution compensates for its carbon dioxide emissions by funding a project to make equivalent reductions in atmospheric CO2 levels. In theory, offsetting can fund important reforestation and renewable energy projects without having to address a company's possibly difficult-to-reduce emissions. In practice, though, offsetting has become “a scammer’s dream scheme” and a major greenwashing tactic, according to Greenpeace, which considers it “a licence to keep polluting, [that] distracts us all from the real work of cutting emissions.” Just last month, an investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial revealed that over 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by Verra, the leading certifier of carbon credits, “are likely to be ‘phantom credits’ and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.”

Insetting, by contrast, sounds in theory like companies are doing the hard work of carbon reduction or removal within their own supply chains, instead of outsourcing these key efforts. Unfortunately, in practice, this too seems to be little more than greenwash, according to a new report by NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch that evaluated the emission reduction and net-zero targets of 24 major multinational companies. Report co-author Silke Mooldijk told Climate Home News, “The impression is that offsetting has gained a bad reputation, so companies are moving to a different term to avoid criticism, rather than abandoning it altogether. This distracts from the need for real emission reductions.”

What's the problem with companies doing emission reductions in-house, instead of contracting them out? Well, the report warns, “Offsetting under the guise of ‘insetting’ is gaining traction and legitimacy, although this practice leads to low credibility offsetting claims and the double counting of emission reductions.”

For insetting that involves emission reduction projects, companies could claim credit for reducing emissions and then also count that "insetting" (again) as though it offsets their remaining emissions.

On top of the double-counting issue, there's the pesky problem of whether or not these reductions are real and long-term. For insetting that involves carbon dioxide removals in the supply chain, not only are there issues with “the lack of permanence of the carbon storage and the scarcity of nature-based solutions for carbon dioxide removals,” but also, “the companies implementing an insetting approach may not seek independent measurement and verification of the carbon dioxide removals.”

So, instead of offsetting by making verifiable transactions with independent bodies open to public scrutiny and governed by third-party standards, companies are just telling us to trust that they're doing it themselves. It's more or less the same as offsetting, but with less transparency and lower standards. What could go wrong?

According to the new report, companies like Nestlé and PepsiCo are lobbying to legitimize insetting and have succeeded in getting the Science Based Targets initiative (a partnership of the UN Global Compact, CDP, the World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature) to recognize the greenwash-on-greenwash terminology.

In place of offsetting and insetting, NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch recommend the climate contribution approach, which is defined as “finance provided by a company to support climate change action beyond the company’s own value chain, without claiming to neutralise its own emissions.” Climate contributions are more transparent than offsetting strategies because they don’t claim to cancel out a company’s emissions, and they are also more constructive and ambitious, as they encourage companies to compete to voluntarily provide as much concrete financial support as possible.

Given the urgent need for climate action, one can only hope that more companies decide to implement climate contribution approaches and commit to actually reducing their carbon emissions, instead of just changing up the buzzwords that they use to greenwash their climate strategies.

Offsetting, insetting… more like upsetting! 

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