Climate Now

🎧🎙️NEW EPISODE - SEASON FINALE! https://hubs.li/Q02Tt18-0 Our Season One finale brings you a debate about the pace of the energy transition that was recorded live at NYC Climate Week three weeks ago. How fast is the transition progressing, really? And why might there be divergent opinions on the subject? The debate was co-moderated by James Lawler and Dina Cappiello (RMI), and features RMI’s Kingsmill Bond and Bain & Company's Aaron Denman. We hope you enjoy! And now, a message from Host James Lawler and Executive Producer Emma Crow-Willard: Dear Climate Now Listeners, Today’s episode, our 177th, will be the final episode of what we are calling Season One of the Climate Now podcast. We have been publishing continuously, nearly every week, since we began producing this podcast 3.5 years ago, with the goal of going deeper than other outlets into the ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ of the energy transition, climate science, climate change mitigation, and adaptation. We have spoken with hundreds of climate and energy experts, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and so many others. We have decided to take a pause, with plans to return for a second season at some point in 2025, with a new focus that will reflect the evolving energy transition and climate landscape. As we bring Season One to a close, we want to thank all of you, our listeners, for being interested and engaged in understanding climate and energy transition solutions. Thank you also for your countless comments, episode ideas, and guest suggestions. We look forward to being in touch with all of you again in 2025. Sincerely, James Lawler and Emma Crow-Willard

Is the clean energy transition happening faster than we thought? Climate Now's James Lawler will be at #ClimateWeekNYC to co-host a discussion with RMI's Dina Cappiello around the pace of the clean energy transition. In the spotlight will be former Climate Now podcast guest Kingsmill Bond, who will share his research on the underestimated speed of the energy transition, and Bain & Company's Aaron Denman, who will share survey results of business leader sentiment around the speed of the energy transition. (Hint: they don't align.) Listen to our podcast interview with Bond before the event, and get energized! https://lnkd.in/gbNRTZdf #energytransition #peakfossil #cwny #nycw #cwnyc #RMI Climate Now #climate #energymodels #cleanenergy #kingsmillbond #bain

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🎧🎙️NEW EPISODE - PARTNER CONTENT! https://hubs.li/Q02LZYdh0 As a Climate Now listener, we know you appreciate frank and thoughtful debate about the climate crisis. So we'd like to share an episode from a podcast that looks at how climate change is changing our energy systems. Energy vs Climate Podcast features energy experts David Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon and Ed Whittingham. They break down the hard truths and tough choices posed by the energy transition from the heart of Canada’s oil country. Through their topics and their guests, David, Sara, and Ed bring new honesty around the sharp trade-offs between climate action and economic progress . The episode we're sharing with you is called, "Buzzkill: Understanding the Shift in Media Perception Towards EVs," with special guest Dr. Simon Evans, deputy editor and policy editor at Carbon Brief. Together, they tease apart EV fact from fiction. We think you'll really enjoy it. Listen to Energy vs Climate wherever you get your podcasts and check out https://hubs.li/Q02L-02H0 for their next live webinars, where you too can join in on the discussion.

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🎧🎙️NEW EPISODE! https://hubs.li/Q02KsMty0 The United States’ Renewable Fuel Standard Program requires a certain volume of renewable fuel be used to replace or reduce fossil fuel use. Each gallon of renewable fuel is assigned a Renewable Identification Number or RIN, which allows renewable fuel volumes to be tracked, traded, bought, and sold. These multifunctional numbers affect the entire fuel industry, including both conventional and renewable fuel producers. According to one of our next guests in the series, RINs are little-known and poorly understood – even in the renewable fuel industry. Discover how RINs function as a subsidy, mandate, tax, and a financial asset all at once. Tune in as we dissect the “most complex environmental credit ever written” with two experts in the field: George Hoekstra, President of HoekstraTrading LLC and Brooke Coleman the Executive Director of the Advanced Biofuels Business Council.

🎧🎙️NEW EPISODE! https://hubs.li/Q02HCrCL0 Ethanol-to-jet is one pathway to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Until recently, this pathway was out of reach for commercial production. That changed this year when LanzaJet opened the world’s first ethanol-to-SAF plant, the Freedom Pines Fuels Plant, in Soperton, Georgia. LanzaJet projects that the plant will produce nine million gallons of SAF in its first year in operation. In our third installment of our sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) series, we sat down with LanzaJet’s Vice President of Commercial, Stéphane Thion. Tune in to hear from Stéphane about drop-in fuel standards, SAF supply chains, LanzaJet’s offtakers and partners, and the company’s plans for ethanol-to-SAF plants around the world.

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This week, we discussed several climate-related headlines with Julio Friedmann and Darren Hau. One such story was the Financial Times' report that the planet is headed for a 12th straight month above the 1.5C Paris Agreement limit. Carbon Direct's Julio Friedmann, who joined us from the Bloomberg Green Conference in Seattle, shared why this story is so unsettling for climate scientists: "I saw a talk yesterday by the climate scientist Johan Rockström, and he pointed out this exact data, and what is alarming is that we can't explain the jump in atmospheric temperature or ocean temperatures or ice failure. We can't predict these. We can't understand them. El Nino plays a role, but it's only a partial role. It can't fully explain the dramatic jump we're seeing. That part of it is as alarming as anything else. It's not just the jump and the trends, we are off the map.” [03:39]

In Climate News Weekly, we discuss the largest direct air capture purchase to date (500,0000 tons of CO2). Here’s Julio Friedmann's analysis on the implications of this deal: “This represents the maturation of these projects in the market. It's a big step forward. We don't know the actual price, but it's got to be well above a billion dollars and could be cinching in on $2 billion. It's the largest ever direct air capture purchase, by a lot. Importantly in their terms, Microsoft said that they are just doing saline formation storage. There is no associated oil or gas production from this, by contract. It also reflects the fact that the market is valuing the CO2 removal higher than the oil production, and that is an important signal, both to send and receive. It's a very big deal. It is also far, far away from the volumes we need to hit our 2030 climate targets, we need over 1.6 billion tons of removal a year and we are not on that trajectory yet.” [14:16]