Scientists discover common flower is carnivorous

“We had no idea it was carnivorous,” 

one of the study’s authors said.

Story at a glance

A new study found that a common flower is actually carnivorous.

The flower, the western false asphodel, is a white flower common in the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers found that tiny hairs along the flower’s stem produce a digestive enzyme other carnivorous plants use to trap and eat insects.


A new study has discovered that what was previously considered a common flower is carnivorous.



(Courtesy of UBC and Qianshi Lin)

By Jenna Romaine | Aug. 11, 2021 | NPR

“We had no idea it was carnivorous,” Sean Graham, a botanist with the University of British Columbia and one of the study’s authors, told NPR.

Published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers found that the western false asphodel, a white flower common in the Pacific Northwest and first discovered in 1879, has a genetic deletion, or loss of segment of DNA, as well as features other carnivorous plants have to trap food.

“They have these sticky stems,” Graham said. “So, you know, it was kind of like, hmm, I wonder if this could be a sign that this might be carnivorous.”

The researchers found that tiny hairs along the flower’s stem produce a digestive enzyme other carnivorous plants use to trap and eat insects.

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There are fewer than 1,000 carnivorous plant species, and the new classification is the first carnivorous plant to be discovered in 20 years.

However, given the latest discovery, Graham believes there may be more common plants out there that are actually carnivorous.

“I suspect,” Graham said, “that there might be more carnivorous plants out there than we think”

What are carnivorous plants? 

New meat-eating plant discovered

11 Aug 2021

DANILO LIMA.

Scientists have found a new carnivorous plant in North America.

The white flower might look pretty but botanists discovered that it traps prey with the sticky hairs on its stem.

The plant that traps small insects, is called triantha occidentalis, and is the first carnivorous plant to be identified in 20 years.

What are carnivorous plants?

Carnivorous plants attract, trap and digest animals for their nutrients
There is around 630 species

Most meat-eating plants eat insects but there are some larger plants that can eat reptiles and small mammals

Venus flytrap is one of the most well known carnivorous plants. Their leaves snap shut when prey lands

DR. QIANSHI LIN
The flower traps prey with the sticky hairs on its stem

The meat-eating flower grows in boggy areas on the west coast of North America from California to Alaska.

They are found in major urban cities and the innocent-looking white flower might not be alone in its meaty ways.

It's thought that there may be many more carnivorous plants to be discovered.

Co-author of the study, Dr Sean Graham said: "Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they turn the usual order of things on its head: this is a plant eating animals.

"We're thrilled to have identified one growing right here in our own backyard on the west coast."

DANILO LIMA
Triantha occidentalis is the first new carnivorous plant identified by botanists in 20 years

"What's particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers," said lead author Dr. Qianshi Lin.

"On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don't want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce," he added.

The researchers found that although the hairs on the stem are sticky, they only trap midges and other small insects.

Which means larger bees and butterflies are not captured and they can pollinate the flowers as they pass from plant to plant unharmed.

NEW CARNIVOROUS PLANT SPECIES IDENTIFIED IN NORTH AMERICA
by Matthew Hart
Aug 11 2021 • 9:26 AM

Triantha occidentalis, a flowering plant that thrives in wetlands from Alaska all the way down through California, is common. Even around major cities along the West Coast and inland through Montana. But, like Dexter during daytime, the harmless-looking creature is hiding a deadly secrete: it kills bugs for sustenance. Placing it firmly in the little shop of horrors that consists of real-life carnivorous plants.

Gizmodo reported on the discovery, which a team of botanists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of British Columbia outlined in a study recently published in the journal PNAS. Sean Graham, a botanist at UBC, previously led an analysis of the genomes of Alismatales—a group of largely aquatic flowering plants—when his team noticed that Triantha had lost a gene often missing in carnivorous plants. Combined with its tendency to trap insects, this tipped Graham off to the idea the plant species may be carnivorous

.
Danilo Lima

The study’s lead author, Qianshi Lin, a doctoral student at UBC, performed experiments to determine if T. occidentalis is indeed carnivorous. He and his team did so by labeling fruit flies with the stable isotope, nitrogen-15; a non-radioactive isotope that’s able to act as a tracer, in turn allowing scientists to model chemical and biochemical systems. Lo and behold, the team found that the unassuming plant devoured and processed the nutrients from the bugs it’d trapped.


“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” Lin said in a press release. “On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don’t want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.”


T. occidentalis has managed to thrive with thus duality, however. And the species now stands as the 12th independent evolution of carnivory in the plant kingdom scientists are aware of. As well as the first time they’ve discovered the trait in the Alismatales order. Athough we’re still not sure if Audrey II should be counted as a 13th lineage.

via GIPHY

UBC researchers discover first new carnivorous plant in 20 years

It looks pretty but sucks nutrients from dead insects, too. 😵

a day ago By: Elana Shepert

The plant is called Triantha and it is the first new carnivorous plant to be identified by botanists in 20 years. UBC researchers explain the study. Photo via UBC

It may look like a delicate, pretty white flower — but this newly discovered plant packs a stealthy bite.

The aforementioned flower is a new finding by University of British Columbia and University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Insects get trapped in the flower's sticky hairs and the carnivorous plant sucks nutrients from the dead corpses.

The plant is called Triantha – a species of false asphodel – and it is the first new carnivorous plant to be identified by botanists in 20 years, explains a news release. It is notable for the unusual way it traps prey with sticky hairs on its flowering stem.

“Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they turn the usual order of things on its head: this is a plant-eating animal,” said co-author Dr. Sean Graham, a professor in the department of botany at UBC. “We’re thrilled to have identified one growing right here in our own backyard on the west coast.”

Where does it grow?

Triantha grows in "nutrient-poor, boggy but bright areas" along the west coast of North America, from California to Alaska. For the study, the researchers investigated specimens growing on Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver.

“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” said lead author Dr. Qianshi Lin, a PhD student at UBCbotany at the time of the study. “On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don’t want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.”

“We believe that Triantha is able to balance carnivory with pollination because its glandular hairs are not very sticky and can only trap midges and other small insects, so that the much larger and stronger bees and butterflies that act as its pollinators are not captured,” said co-author Dr. Tom Givnish, a professor in the department of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UBC notes that the research builds on work done previously in Graham's lab, which found that "Triantha lacked a particular gene that is often missing in other carnivorous plants."

Isotopic analysis of Triantha

To find out if the plant was "eating" insects, Lin attached fruit flies labelled with nitrogen-15 isotopes to its flowering stem. The label acted as a tracking device that allowed him to trace changes in nitrogen uptake by the plant.

He then compared the results with those from similar experiments on other species that grow in the same area, including a recognized carnivorous plant (a sundew) and several non-carnivorous plants as controls.

Isotopic analysis showed significant uptake of nitrogen by Triantha, which obtained more than half its nitrogen from prey –comparable to sundews in the same habitat, and other carnivorous plants elsewhere.

The study also found that the sticky hairs on the Triantha flower stalk produce phosphatase, a digestive enzyme used by many carnivorous plants to obtain phosphorous from prey.

The proximity of Triantha to major urban centres in western Canada and the Pacific coast in the United States suggests that other carnivorous plants – and many other ecological surprises – remain to be discovered, even in well-studied ecosystems.

But if you’re tempted to recreate the film Little Shop of Horrors or bring Triantha home to deal with pesky summer fruit flies, the researchers warn the plant doesn’t do well outside of its natural environment and advise admiring its quirks from a distance.

The full paper, “A new carnivorous plant lineage (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap,” will be published on Aug. 13 in PNAS.

North Shore bog plant is a meat eater, UBC study finds
Brent Richter 

Tiny bugs are trapped in the sticky hairs of carnivorous Triantha occidentalis.▲

The flower of Triantha occidentalis may be beautiful but the stem is deadly to small bugs▲

Six-leggeds beware: UBC scientists have discovered a plant common in the bogs of the North Shore Mountains that traps and digests insects.

“It’s a big surprise. Many people who hike in Vancouver or B.C. will be familiar with this plant,” said Sean Graham, UBC professor and co-author of a newly published study. “No one ever thought that it was a carnivore. This is the shocking thing about it.”

Like other carnivorous plants, Triantha occidentalis, tends to live in boggy areas where the soil lacks important nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous.

The UBC researchers had a suspicion it may be a meat-eater after a previous genetic survey found Triantha occidentalis is missing a gene that often is absent in carnivorous plants. To test out the theory, the study’s lead author Qianshi Lin designed an experiment using fruit flies that had been raised in an environment full of nitrogen-15 isotopes. The flies were then humanely killed and attached to tiny hairs on the plants’ stems, which exude a sticky secretion that traps bugs.

“If the plant is carnivorous and digests the insect, which it appears to do, you can track to see if that nutrient-level nitrogen flows into the plant,” he said. “And indeed it does.”

They estimate as much as half or two-thirds of the Triantha occidentalis’ intake of nitrogen, which is a necessity for making proteins and DNA, comes from bugs, not the soil.

This is the first time a plant has been discovered to be carnivorous in 20 years. In Canada, there are now only 19 confirmed carnivorous species, and around the world, there are about 600 – a tiny proportion of our overall fauna.

“It's not every day that you have a completely new sort of instance of a carnivorous plant. This probably has evolved independently of other ones,” Graham said.

“Carnivorous plants” may call to mind David Attenborough narrating as small rodents disappear into the gaping maw of a tropical pitcher plant, or perhaps Little Shop of Horrors, a dark musical comedy about an extraterrestrial plant named Audrey II that demands human blood for its survival.

But the ones on the North Shore and other bogs along the West Coast are unlikely to devour anything bigger than a midge. The hairs on the stem simply aren’t big enough to trap larger bugs like bees or butterflies, which is likely an evolutionary strategy as the plant relies on those species for pollination.

Carnivorous plants have been a point of fascination for Western botanists and horticulturalists since the Victorian era, Graham said.

“Frankly they're a bit creepy. I mean it’s kind of ghoulish to have a plant that eats animals right?” he said. “I think that’s what gathers the attention of the public – the idea that the tables can be turned sometimes.”

While it’s anyone’s guess whether the discovery will have applicability outside botany, it will open the door to more research into the “extreme adaptations” of plants.

“We’re hoping that by looking into the genome in the future, we can actually see some of these changes and answer the question of what does it take to be a meat-eating plant?” Graham said.

Lin and Graham’s paper will be published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this month.

“I hope it inspires other people to think about plants more and the fact that we found this basically living in Vancouver. It's pretty remarkable,” Graham said.

New Lineage of Carnivorous Plants Discovered

Aug 10, 2021 by News Staff / Source

The newly-identified lineage of carnivorous plants is represented by the western false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis), a species of flowering plant from North America; its trap is unique among carnivorous plants and, unexpected based on theory, in placing all of its prey-capture sites next to its insect-pollinated flowers.

Flower of the western false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis) at Cypress Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. Image credit: Danilo Lima.

“Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they turn the usual order of things on its head: this is a plant eating animals,” said Professor Sean Graham, a researcher in the Department of Botany and the Botanical Garden at the University of British Columbia.

“We’re thrilled to have identified one growing right here in our own backyard on the west coast.”

Triantha occidentalis can be found in the wetlands and bogs from Alaska to California and inland to Montana.

In the summer, it shoots up tall flowering stems coated with sticky hairs that trap small insects like gnats and midges.

“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” said Qianshi Lin, a doctoral student in the Department of Botany and the Botanical Garden at the University of British Columbia.

“On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don’t want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.”

“However, the plant appears to be capable of sorting out friend from food.”

“We believe that Triantha occidentalis is able to do this because its glandular hairs are not very sticky, and can only entrap midges and other small insects, so that the much larger and stronger bees and butterflies that act as its pollinators are not captured,” said Professor Tom Givnish, a researcher in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In their study, the reseachers discovered that Triantha occidentalis acquires more than half of its nitrogen (N) by digesting these ensnared insects, a welcome treat in its nutrient-poor habitat.

“We tested the hypothesis that Triantha occidentalis is carnivorous by doing a field experiment with 15N-labeled insects to demonstrate nutrient uptake,” they said.

“We demonstrated significant N transfer from prey to Triantha, with an estimated 64% of leaf N obtained from prey capture in previous years, comparable to levels inferred for the cooccurring round-leaved sundew, a recognized carnivore.”

“N obtained via carnivory is exported from the inflorescence and developing fruits and may ultimately be transferred to next year’s leaves.”

“Glandular hairs on flowering stems secrete phosphatase, as seen in all carnivorous plants that directly digest prey.”

This is the 12th known independent evolution of carnivory in the plant kingdom.

It is the first time the trait has been discovered in the Alismatales order, a group of largely aquatic flowering plants.

It is also just the fourth established instance of carnivory in the monocots, one of the major groups of flowering plants.

Some other species in the Triantha genus also have sticky hairs that trap insects. The authors plan to study these species to see how widespread carnivory might be in the genus.

“It seems likely that there are other members of this group that will turn out to be carnivorous,” Professor Givnish said.

“The fact that Triantha’s carnivorous lifestyle escaped notice for so long despite the plant’s abundance and its growth near large cities suggests that more carnivorous plants are waiting to be discovered off the beaten path.”

The team’s paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

_____

Qianshi Lin et al. 2021. A new carnivorous plant lineage (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap. PNAS 118 (33): e2022724118; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2022724118

PHOTO ESSAY

The Apache community running to rescue its holy mountain

Indigenous spiritual leaders say the Vatican’s observatory is searching for something it doesn’t understand.

Molly Peters

Image credit: Molly Peters

PHOTOS Aug. 10, 2021


Dził Nchaa Si’an in present-day Arizona is a mountain where the deities live. That means it must be approached through the proper corridors, geographically and mentally. Elders teach younger generations to approach prayerfully, through suffering, remembering the ancestors. Wendsler Nosie Sr., who is Chiricahua Apache and enrolled in the San Carlos Apache Tribe, says the mountain is a fixture in Apache religion. “If we were to write the Bible,” he said, “this would be in there.”

Mount Graham, the colonial name for Dził Nchaa Si’an, was part of the San Carlos Apache Reservation until 1873, when the federal government seized it by presidential executive order, deeming it public lands and subsequently placing it under the management of the U.S. Forest Service. Access to the mountain, however, fell under the control of the University of Arizona. In 1990, George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory in Italy, who was at the time also a professor at the university, broke ground for a new observatory on Mount Graham. Neither the Vatican, the Forest Service, the university, nor any of the observatory’s other collaborators ever sought the Apache people’s approval. Coyne himself was dismissive of the objections that were made.



Portrait of Wendsler Nosie Sr. at Treasure Park on Mt. Graham. Nosie said, “It’s always amazing when I’m on Mt. Graham to think about the history of our people and what they knew as freedom, remembering over 30 years of this particular struggle against religious discrimination. Knowing in this current generation that we’re coming home to what is holy and sacred, our church, is powerful.”
Molly Peters

"After extensive, thorough investigations by Indian and non-Indian experts,” Coyne wrote in a statement, “there is to the best of our knowledge no religious or cultural significance to the specific observatory site.”

In response, starting in 1991, Nosie and about a dozen others, including his daughter, Vanessa Nosie, ran to Dził Nchaa Si’an from the San Carlos Reservation — a distance of more than 100 miles. The runners took turns, relaying the distance, to protest the desecration of the holy mountain. They’ve been running every year since.




Wendsler Nosie Sr sits in the back of his truck on the San Carlos Apache Reservation following one of his daily runs to train for the Mt. Graham Sacred Run, with smoke in the air from the Mescal Fire raging nearby.
Molly Peters

Nosie Sr. says the Vatican won’t leave because it has tapped into something. “They found something spiritual there that they don’t quite understand yet,” he said. “We Apaches already know what it is.”

This July was the 30th anniversary of the original Dził Nchaa Si’an run. It was also the first year Vanessa led the event, under her father’s guidance. Starting before dawn, the runners completed one-mile stretches, followed by a truck carrying water and the relief runners. After nine hours, the team reached Dził Nchaa Si’an. There, they rested, prayed and drank the holy spring water, which Nosie Sr. likens to “the breast of the mother.”
“The one thing that we don’t want to ever give them is our spirit.”

They run along the highway rather than on trails for greater visibility. “In order to educate the people, we’ve got to be seen,” said Nosie Sr. “Physically, we are all captives of America,” he added, speaking not just of the Apache community but of other Natives and non-Natives alike. “The one thing that we don’t want to ever give them is our spirit.”

The run is a way to heal, to teach the youth religion, and to tell the truth about what’s happened. “All people need this,” says Vanessa Nosie, who is carrying on the three-decade tradition for the children, including her 10-month-old daughter. “Will there be change in her favor?” she wondered. “Our future generations have a right to live and a right to pray.” – Brian Oaster (they/them) is an editorial intern at High Country News and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.


Waya Brown, who is Apache and Pomo, runs towards the Bylas district of the San Carlos Apache Reservation. It was his fourth time running to Mt. Graham. His first time participating in the sacred run was when his cousin, Baase Pike, had her sunrise dance on Mt. Graham following the run that year. Baase was only the second Apache girl, after her older sister Naelyn, to have her sunrise dance on their sacred mountain in over 150 years.
Molly Peters


Molly Peters is a Los Angeles-based photographer and visual storyteller whose work often deals with spirituality, memory and human connection to the natural world. She completed a BA in photography and Italian studies at Bard College in 2010, and she earned an MFA in photography from the Hartford Art School in 2018.

The Biggest U.S. Electrical Grid Braces for Green Energy

David R Baker and Naureen Malik
Tue., August 10, 2021


(Bloomberg Markets) -- The decision that could open the floodgates to renewable power across much of the eastern U.S. came in early July after months of closed-door haggling within an organization many Americans don’t know exists.

PJM Interconnection LLC runs the country’s biggest electricity grid, a vast web of wires spanning parts of 13 states from the Jersey Shore to the Mississippi River and covering much of coal country. Its low profile is a measure of its success. PJM prides itself on keeping the lights on at a time when blackouts have plagued power grids in California and Texas, sometimes with deadly results.

That reliability comes at a cost. Critics say PJM’s capacity auctions, which require utilities to secure power three years in advance as a type of blackout insurance, have propped up inefficient fossil fuel energy suppliers and led to billions of dollars in excess costs for customers. The switch to clean energy transforming other U.S. grids has barely touched PJM—it gets only 6% of its power from renewable sources such as wind and solar, compared with more than 40% in California and more than 25% in Texas. That disparity is likely to get more attention after climate scientists warned this week that the planet is likely to warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next two decades, with more severe heating to follow if the world doesn’t take drastic measures to cut fossil fuel use.

Hundreds of electric utilities, power plant operators, and energy traders who belong to PJM and vote on its decisions have been fighting over renewable power for years. Some, serving states with ambitious climate change goals, want to push forward on solar, wind, and batteries. Others want to keep their old gas- and coal-burning power plants alive as long as possible.

But the July decision, aided by the Biden administration’s regulatory support, looks set to give the climate advocates a boost. The result could be a massive buildout of offshore wind on the Atlantic Coast, from Virginia north. That would not only revamp PJM’s entire system, but it could also dethrone natural gas as the country’s No. 1 power plant fuel by 2028, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd. About 27,000 megawatts of offshore wind—roughly the capacity of 27 nuclear reactors—are being planned, and 33% of that is in PJM territory, he says. Renewables’ share of U.S. power production will go from 10% this year to 27% by 2030.

“More states want to take control of their destiny and achieve a certain mix of power plants, with the whole goal of decarbonizing,” Byrd says. “They are going to do that, plow through regardless of the market rules, and it’s clear they have that legal right to do that.”

PJM’S PRIMARY MISSION is straightforward enough: keep electricity flowing, without fail, to 65 million people—one-fifth of the U.S. population. The ways it does so can be incredibly complex, and not all of them are open to public view.

Day and night, PJM orchestrates the flow of electrons over 85,100 miles of high-voltage cables connecting the Illinois prairie, the Rust Belt cities of Ohio, Appalachia’s coal and shale gas country, Washington, D.C., the New Jersey suburbs, and the northern edge of North Carolina. Some 1,400 generators supply the energy, all of it tracked on walls of video screens in a control room at PJM’s Valley Forge, Pa., headquarters. Each state can help supply the others. Contrast that with Texas, which has largely blocked off its grid from its neighbors. The Lone Star State paid the price for its isolation in February, when a deep freeze plunged millions of customers into the dark and cold for nearly a week, causing at least $20 billion in economic damage and leaving more than 200 people dead.

Managing the grid isn’t the only way PJM keeps the lights on. The organization also runs markets in which its 1,000-plus members buy and sell electricity. In 2007, PJM created a capacity market for utilities to buy contracts that ensure the delivery of power even during peak demand and supply disruptions. Texas has nothing like it. But consumer advocates say PJM’s obsession with always having more than enough juice jacks up homeowners’ monthly bills. One estimate, from Wilson Energy Economics, pegs the overspending at as much as $4.4 billion a year. (A PJM spokesperson disputes that figure, saying it fails to account for savings that result from the extra capacity and adds that PJM is working with stakeholders to address their concerns about procurement.)

FOR PJM, THE MARKETS CAME FIRST. The organization was born as a cross-border experiment at a time when electricity grids were still spreading across the nation. In 1927 three utilities—one in New Jersey and two in Pennsylvania—formed a joint power pool in which each company could buy electricity from the others’ plants. The world’s first such venture, it meant that those plants able to supply power at the lowest price would be tapped first, cutting costs for all three utilities. The experiment proved a success and began to expand. Baltimore’s utility signed up in 1956, and with it, the arrangement became the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection: PJM.

Curiously, for most of its existence, PJM was operated by a department of just one of its member utilities. It wasn’t until 1997 that it became fully independent, the same year it opened its first bid-based energy market and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved it as the nation’s first independent system operator, or ISO. In 2002, after a series of new regulations intended to encourage increased competition in power markets, FERC would dub PJM the country’s first regional transmission organization, or RTO.

Think of the RTOs and ISOs (there are seven, total) as the nation’s Grid Keepers: They oversee everything from trans mission of electricity to the markets and auctions that set prices, and even the regional advanced planning for estimated power use (and distribution) in the years ahead. They decide who’s in and who’s out when it comes to supplying our electricity. No new plant, whether powered by sunshine or coal, can plug into the grid without the grid operator’s permission.

PJM has since grown into an odd hybrid. It’s technically a private corporation, but it functions as a membership organization. Its more than 500 voting members can set policy through votes on internal committees, but it also has a staff and governing board that make their own decisions. Member companies often have wildly divergent interests, and their debates—sometimes held in private—can get heated. One participant described it as having not just one 800-pound gorilla in the room, but a dozen, each used to getting its way.

“Every now and again, you’ll get some really passionate advocacy in those settings,” says Asim Haque, PJM’s vice president for state policy and member services. “They can yell at each other and then go eat lunch together. I’ve seen that happen multiple times.”

PJM’s geographic expanse has long been one of its biggest strengths. But now states with conflicting agendas are jockeying for position. Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia—coal country states—are often at odds with Maryland, New Jersey, and other places that see offshore wind farms as big new job generators.

“Unfortunately with PJM, what they have probably done is sunk to the lowest common denominator, to only having to meet the needs of the least aggressive state in their footprint” in terms of adding renewables, says Jon Wellinghoff, FERC’s chairman under President Barack Obama.

That tension finally came to a head in 2018 over the capacity market’s “minimum offer price rule,” known by the dismal acronym of MOPR. The rule set a price floor on power plants that receive state support, to prevent them from gaining an unfair advantage against unsubsidized plants in the capacity auction bidding.

First implemented more than a decade ago, MOPR was designed to prevent large energy companies from artificially depressing prices in the market, and it specifically targeted new natural-gas-fired power plants being built across the mid-Atlantic at the time. In 2016 several power plant operators petitioned FERC to expand MOPR to counter the potential advantage gained by nuclear plants that were receiving subsidies from Ohio and Illinois. In 2018, PJM pitched its own MOPR overhaul to FERC to include the increasing number of state-subsidized plants—particularly nuclear plants. But that proposal specifically exempted renewable power plants that were being built to meet state climate goals. A few months later, in June 2018, FERC ordered PJM to extend the MOPR price floors to renewable power such as wind and solar.

Clean power advocates said the move was an attempt by Trump appointees to block new renewable projects from the capacity market. Incensed, officials in Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey threatened to pull out of that market. Some members grumbled that PJM was propping up coal plants and picking a pointless fight with the states. The fight proved so contentious that, after FERC granted approval to the revised MOPR rule in 2019, PJM’s annual capacity auction was delayed for two years as members quarreled over it. Virginia’s utility, Dominion Energy, did actually exit PJM’s capacity market before the delayed auction was finally held in May.

“Instead of using the last five years to try to find a way to use the markets to assist the states—and really the planet—in making a dent in carbon pollution, we’ve been working on ways to make clean energy more expensive,” Kathleen Barrón, executive vice president for government affairs and public policy at power plant company Exelon Corp., said at a March meeting with FERC about the rule.

The backroom fight included not just Exelon, with its large fleet of nuclear plants, but American Electric Power, Calpine, FirstEnergy, NRG Energy, Public Service Enterprise Group, Vistra, and other power giants—which were all looking to protect their own plants and plans.

Neil Chatterjee, who served as FERC chairman under President Trump, defends the rule as an important means of maintaining PJM’s prized reliability. He says California—whose grid now veers close to blackouts when the sun sets on its solar power plants during heat waves—shows what can happen when a state government pushes the switch to renewables too quickly. “What is happening in California in particular you could very easily see happening in PJM if politicians make decisions about PJM’s future resources,” Chatterjee says.

And, in fact, the one auction held under the expanded MOPR wasn’t so bad for renewable power after all. Overall auction prices plunged. Nuclear plants suffered as expected, with some operators saying they might have to close reactors. Renewable power generators fared better than predicted, and the low prices did little to help coal. Chatterjee says the results disprove “some of the ‘sky is falling’ rhetoric” from MOPR opponents. “I find it very difficult to justify a wholesale market change in the immediate aftermath of an auction that quite frankly didn’t reflect those concerns,” he says.

But Richard Glick, the new FERC chairman, says the impact of MOPR on new renewable power generators, especially offshore wind, would become evident in future auctions if it isn’t changed. Fixing the rule now “matters a lot,” he says. States won’t be able to achieve their climate goals “if FERC keeps on adopting barriers to markets in terms of achieving greenhouse gas emissions reductions.”

ONE VOICE GENERALLY not in those internal PJM debates? State governments. They do have some say within PJM’s decision- making system, but it’s largely advisory. Each state has a consumer advocate who can cast a vote, but they’re easily drowned out by the hundreds of companies. An association of state utility regulators, the Organization of PJM States, acts as a liaison to the various capitals, but it has no formal power.

That grates on lawmakers like Lorig Charkoudian, a member of Maryland’s state legislature who serves on the public utilities subcommittee. She promised her voters action on clean power. But PJM answers to only one government agency—FERC—and not to her or her colleagues. “What they keep saying is, ‘We’re neutral on state policies,’ and technically, that’s accurate,” Charkoudian says. “But it’s obviously undermining our policies.”

Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., one of PJM’s three founding members, is trying to build a 1,100MW wind farm 15 miles off the coast of New Jersey’s southern tip. Under MOPR, that farm and others planned nearby wouldn’t be able to compete in the capacity market, says PSEG Chief Executive Officer Ralph Izzo. They’d lose an important source of income. Plus, the state’s utilities would still have to buy capacity contracts from other power plants to meet PJM’s reserve requirements, even though they wouldn’t actually need those contracts, because they’d be getting their power from the wind farms.

“It’s structured to ignore offshore wind, as if it’s not there,” says Izzo, who doesn’t like being at odds with an organization his own company helped create. “New Jersey will end up paying twice for that capacity.”

President Joe Biden’s election—and his administration’s commitment to a carbon-free grid by 2035—altered the conversation. Leadership of FERC passed to Glick, who didn’t agree with MOPR in the first place. “The fact is, we have to figure out if the commissioners believe the current approach is just and reasonable, and if not, we have to change it,” Glick says. “My opinion is that it’s probably not.”

It became clear that regulators would change PJM’s rule if PJM didn’t do it first. So in a series of votes in June and July, PJM’s members and board gutted the rule.

If approved by FERC, the decision could end up driving many coal plants out of business and pave the way for row after row of offshore wind turbines along the mid-Atlantic shore, creating a whole new industry for coastal states.

There are still hurdles. PJM’s process for vetting new power plants that want to connect to the grid was designed for a time when it would receive maybe 250 connection requests in a year, almost all for plants burning natural gas, says Ken Seiler, PJM’s vice president for planning. Now the number has jumped to almost 1,000 projects per year, 93% of them renewable, he says. Many don’t have financing yet and may never get built. The company is looking for ways to streamline the process, perhaps analyzing projects in batches.

“You don’t quadruple a queue and expect to turn out the same results as quickly,” Seiler says. “I would argue yes, it takes more time, but we usually get the answers right.”

And another fight is already brewing within PJM over who will get to build the transmission lines serving all these new clean power facilities, where they’ll get built, and how they’ll be paid for. Many states that rely on PJM’s grid have grand plans for carbon-free power, and they’ll need PJM’s cooperation, like it or not. “Your average person who cares deeply about these issues doesn’t know that there’s this almost shadow government—this shadowy body that has all this authority,” says Maryland’s Charkoudian.

Some state officials say that under new CEO Manu Asthana, who took over last year, the company is making more of an effort to work with states. PJM has formed a partnership with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to plan and approve transmission lines linking some of those wind farms to the grid. It’s also created an office of state policy solutions, under Haque.

“They obviously have a different philosophy than the previous administration,” says Joseph Fiordaliso, president of New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities. “It’s much more conducive to team play.”

Baker and Malik cover power and renewable energy for Bloomberg News in San Francisco and New York, respectively.

(Corrects 13th paragraph to say the meetings are sometimes held in private.)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

CODE RED REDUX

UN report 'must sound death knell' for fossil fuels as Canada faces climate urgency

Christopher Reynolds
The Canadian PressStaff
Monday, August 9, 2021

OTTAWA -- The secretary-general of the United Nations says a new report "must sound the death knell for coal and fossil fuels," raising renewed questions about Canada's climate plan and the long-term viability of its traditional energy sector.

The UN scientific paper says Earth is heating up so quickly due to human activity that temperatures in about a decade will blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent.

Released Monday, the landmark study amounts to a "'code red' for humanity" as increasingly extreme heat waves, droughts, flooding and wildfires threaten the globe, said UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson acknowledged that parts of Western and Northern Canada are warming at three times the global average, with the ramifications playing out in a cycle of floods and wildfires in British Columbia and elsewhere.

The Liberal government has taken "aggressive climate action" through carbon pricing and a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, he said in a statement.

Amara Possian, Canada campaign director for 350.org, said the report is a "clarion call" that the country's climate plan falls far short.

"With an election around the corner and climate-fuelled wildfires still raging across this country, the real question is if our politicians are listening and if any of them will step up and be the climate champions that we need," she said in a statement.

The advocacy group (named for a "safe" level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) is demanding a moratorium on fossil-fuel expansion and a halt to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada sought to dampen any echoes of a death knell.

"At the end of the day we cannot go to renewables overnight, and the world still needs fossil fuels," Gurpreet Lail, head of the Calgary-based trade group, said in an email.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney pointed to carbon-capture technology as helping ring in a cleaner oilpatch, but deemed the idea of abandoning hydrocarbons "utopian."

"The flick of a switch is patently unrealistic," he told reporters Monday. "The cost to human life would be incalculable."

The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which calls climate change clearly caused by humans and "unequivocal," makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than it did last time it was issued in 2013.

Each of five scenarios for the future, based on how much carbon emissions are cut, passes the more stringent of two thresholds set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. World leaders agreed then to try to limit warming to 1.5 C above levels in the late 19th century because problems mount quickly after that. The world has already warmed nearly 1.1 C since then.

Under each scenario, the 3,949-page report said, the world will cross the 1.5-C warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than some past predictions. Warming has ramped up in recent years, data shows.

Canada, along with the United States and Australia, is among the top three biggest carbon-dioxide emitters per capita in the world.

Eddy Perez from Climate Action Network said the report shows that limiting global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels is "simply not negotiable."

"It is the only choice for a safe and healthy future, and it's still possible. We need to fight to restore our broken relationship with nature and with ourselves; we need to fight back against any delays to urgent climate action."

Opposition leaders weighed in Monday, with a stress on green jobs as a path to emissions reductions and economic stability.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole sidestepped a question on whether the bell tolls for fossil fuels and coal, but called climate change an "urgent threat" for Canada.


"We will meet our Paris targets, we will reduce emissions, but we will also get people working," he told reporters.

O'Toole cited the Tories' carbon-price policy on fuel -- announced in April, after Conservative MPs spent years fighting a so-called carbon tax -- stating that their climate plan will cut emissions by the 30 per cent committed to under the Paris Agreement while supporting more jobs.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of letting big polluters off easy, referring to the government's decision in 2018 to relax proposed carbon-price limits on large emitters.

"That price on pollution exempts the biggest polluters. People are asking, what's the point of that?" Singh said.

"The only way forward is to make sure workers are the heart of the solution," he added, citing building retrofits, electric vehicles and public transit.

Under the federal climate plan, the number of jobs in clean energy is expected to grow by nearly 50 per cent to 639,200 by 2030, in step with a sector GDP jump of 58 per cent, according to a June report from Clean Energy Canada.

Green party Leader Annamie Paul called the UNreport's results "frightening" and "sad," but said she hopes it will firm up Canadians' resolve on climate change.

"It's not just altruism or a concern for the planet that is moving the EU and the U.S. and China and all other major economies towards a green economy. What's moving them toward that is the competitive advantage that is going to give them, the jobs that is going to create," she said in a phone interview.

Paul also said Canada has failed to hit a single climate target and seen its greenhouse gas emissions rise each year since 2015. The Liberal goal of up to 45 per cent reduction by 2030 falls short of the 60 per cent she has her sights on.

"The top note of the report is really that climate change is here, its impacts are already being felt. And the question now is, how bad do we want it to get?"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 9, 2021.

UN report 'must sound death knell' for fossil fuels as Canada faces climate urgency | CTV News

-- With files from The Associated Press

POLLUTER PAYES

BHP shareholders to vote on fossil fuel production detail at AGM
Reuters | August 11, 2021 | 

Mount Arthur thermal coal mine in Australia. (Image courtesy of BHP.)

BHP Group Ltd said on Wednesday it would allow a vote at its next shareholder meeting on whether the world’s biggest listed miner should disclose details such as capital allocation and life of its fossil fuel assets.


The resolution, proposed by activist investor Market Forces, requests BHP detail how its capital spending in coal, oil and gas assets will align with a scenario in which global energy emissions reach net-zero by 2050.

It also seeks production guidance for the lifetime of those assets and information about expected costs of decommissioning and rehabilitating the sites at the end of their life.

THE RESOLUTION REQUESTS BHP DETAIL HOW ITS CAPITAL SPENDING IN COAL, OIL AND GAS ASSETS WILL ALIGN WITH A SCENARIO IN WHICH GLOBAL ENERGY EMISSIONS REACH NET-ZERO BY 2050

It comes after BHP last week approved $802 million in development spending on oil projects in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

“Be it coal, oil, or gas, BHP remains in expansion mode,” said Market Forces campaigner Will van de Pol.

“While the company’s own analysis shows a rapid low-carbon transition makes good business sense, it is simply failing to align its strategy with this outcome,” he said in a statement. “Instead, BHP is betting billions against the Paris climate goals.”

Market Forces said it had lodged the resolution on behalf of more than 100 shareholders including members of the net zero asset managers initiative who have committed to the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner.

BHP, which will hold AGMs on Oct. 14 in London and Nov. 11 in Perth, said in a filing the proposed resolutions were filed by shareholders representing less than 1% of its holdings.

The global miner last week received a separate resolution to increase oversight of lobby groups it associates with to make sure that policies they advocate are in line with the Paris climate accord.

(By Anushka Trivedi and Melanie Burton; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Tomasz Janowski)

Now Climate Activists Want BHP to Keep Hold of Its Fossil Fuels

James Thornhill
Wed, August 11, 2021, 



(Bloomberg) -- BHP Group, the world’s top miner, should abandon plans for multi-billion dollar sales of fossil fuels assets and instead responsibly close down the operations, according to an environmental campaign group.

A proposal tabled on behalf of about 100 small investors by Market Forces, which coordinates groups of shareholders on climate issues, calls on the company to wind down production in line with international targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and to focus on helping communities to find alternative jobs.

“By providing a leading example of responsibly managing down fossil fuel assets, BHP can preserve and realize the genuine value that exists in these assets, align with global climate goals, and support its workers in the transition to a decarbonized economy,” the group said in a statement. Market Forces and the BHP investors have tabled resolutions to be considered at the company’s annual meeting in Australia later this year.


BHP’s board will set out a response ahead of the meeting, the company said in a statement Wednesday. The investors hold less than 0.01% of BHP’s Australia-listed entity and about 0.006% of the combined group, which includes the miner’s London-traded shares, according to the statement.

BHP is considering an exit from the oil and gas sector and reviewing options including a trade sale, people familiar with the matter said last month. The producer in June agreed to sell its one-third share in a Colombian coal mine and is also progressing plans to offload a thermal coal operation and some metallurgical coal assets in Australia.

Activists who previously had urged the biggest miners and oil majors to rid their portfolios of fossil fuels operations are increasingly changing approach, in recognition that assets are often sold to smaller producers or government-backed firms that operate with far less transparency and typically seek to boost volumes.

While shareholder resolutions seldom win large support, they’re among tools being used by small campaign groups to pressure companies. Lawsuits have been effective too, with Royal Dutch Shell Plc ordered to slash emissions faster than planned in a recent ruling and Australia’s government instructed to consider climate change in mine approvals.

“There’s an increasingly deep and sophisticated understanding of the steps big companies and their investors need to take to play their part in bringing down emissions,” said Will van de Pol, a campaigner at Australia-based Market Forces. “Companies and investors can no longer get away with green-washing and shirking their responsibilities.”

BP Plc is among firms that have faced criticism for pursuing divestment deals that will help the company meet its own net-zero goals, though likely won’t result in lower emissions from the assets that have been sold.

“While divestment addresses stranded asset risk exposure, it fails to manage the reputational risk associated with avoiding responsibility for employee transition support and site rehabilitation,” Market Forces said in its statement.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

 

 

Wave Energy Could Slash Our Use of Fossil Fuels

Aug 11, 2021

VICE News

According to the DOE, the waves along the US coast could cover 64% of our nation's energy needs. So why haven’t we harnessed them? Well, it's annoyingly complicated; but this renewable technology is about to make waves in the new green economy.

AFTER THIRTY YEARS THE BAY OF FUNDY TIDAL TURBINE IS READY TO GO ONLINE

BLOOMBERG GREEN EXPOSE

How to Sell ‘Carbon Neutral’ Fossil Fuel That Doesn’t Exist

Energy companies are starting to pitch the idea that planet-warming natural gas can be erased by paying villagers to protect forests. Experts can’t make the math work.

Volunteers clear vegetation that would otherwise stoke wildfires in forests around their village near Mbire, Zimbabwe. Their work is funded, in part, by the sale of fossil fuel thousands of miles away.
Photographer: Cynthia Matonhodze/Bloomberg

By Stephen Stapczynski, Akshat Rathi, and Godfrey Marawanyika
August 10, 2021, 

The junior traders at TotalEnergies SE were essentially winging it last September by orchestrating the French energy giant’s first shipment of “carbon-neutral” natural gas. It’s the greenest-possible designation for fossil fuel and an important step in making the company’s core product more palatable in a warming world. Nailing down the deal involved googling and guesswork.

Total had proposed the trade after learning a client had already purchased two carbon-neutral cargos from rivals at Royal Dutch Shell Plc, according to people with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be named discussing a private transaction. One of these insiders said that only after getting the go-ahead did the inexperienced team attempt to figure out how to neutralize the emissions contained in a hulking tanker full of liquified natural gas. Their first step was to search the internet for worthy environmental projects that might offset the pollution.

‘This whole bush can be razed to the ground if we don’t do what we’re doing,’ says Kembo Magonyo, one of the volunteers.
Photographer: Cynthia Matonhodze/Bloomberg

Thousands of miles away, a Zimbabwean volunteer named Kembo Magonyo would spend the spring months clearing stubborn jumbles of branches near the thickly forested border with Mozambique. Wildfires tend to leap between the two countries, laying waste to trees before anyone can respond. “This whole bush can be razed to the ground if we don’t do what we’re doing,” Magonyo says, hacking away with his machete. His work is organized by a group partly funded by Total’s carbon-neutral deal.

In the complicated new math of climate solutions, villagers clearing brush in southern Africa can end up redefining networks of global commerce worth billions of dollars. Environmental projects stand as shadow partners to emission-heavy energy trades happening far away.

What Total’s gas cargo puts into the atmosphere, the machete-wielding villagers will remove. That’s the theory.

But to make it work Total’s pioneers of carbon neutrality first needed to find green projects capable of meeting two requirements: generate carbon credits backed by an international organization, without costing too much. After struggling to come up with an answer, the team set up a meeting with South Pole, a project developer based in Zurich that came recommended by rival traders. That’s how $600,000 from a $17 million LNG transaction ended up, in part, paying for forest protection in Zimbabwe.

The resulting trade looks like a win for everyone. Total kept its promise to investors to shrink its carbon footprint. Impoverished communities received financial support. And the buyer, China National Offshore Oil Corp., cited the shipment as one of the steps it’s taking to “provide green, clean energy to the nation.” But climate experts and even a crucial organizer behind the deal say it will do virtually nothing to decrease carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, falling far short of neutral.

“The claim that you can market the sale of fossil fuels as carbon neutral because of a meager few dollars you put into tropical conservation is not a defensible claim,” says Danny Cullenward, a Stanford University lecturer and policy director at CarbonPlan, a nonprofit group that analyzes climate solutions for impact.

At best, Cullenward says, efforts to prevent deforestation by stopping wildfires can only avoid additional heat-trapping gas released when trees burn. Rural villagers can’t do anything to counteract the large-scale pollution from natural gas, other than making energy traders and consumers feel good for supporting green causes in regions where money is scarce.

Total said in a statement that it conducts due diligence on offset projects and confirmed that it split the cost of offsets in the LNG transaction with Cnooc. The French company declined to discuss details, including prices paid for carbon credits, citing a non-disclosure agreement. Cnooc didn’t respond to requests seeking comment. Total also said it doesn’t count carbon credits in its companywide emissions reports or as part of its plan to reach net zero by 2050. “While an important tool,” the company said, “offsetting cannot be considered as a substitute for direct emissions reductions by corporates, but as a complement.”

WATCH: Energy Giants Sell 'Carbon Neutral' Natural Gas That Doesn't Exist

The use of scientifically defined terms like “carbon neutral” and “net zero” in marketing language introduces additional confusion. Both terms mean balancing any emissions added to the atmosphere with an equivalent amount of removal. Most experts agree that avoiding deforestation isn’t the same as removing greenhouse gases. “This paradigm,” warns Cullenward, “is encouraging a fictitious engine that doesn’t help advance our net-zero goals.”

That view isn’t reserved for outside critics. The leader of South Pole, which helped develop the Zimbabwe project and sold its carbon credits to Total, doesn’t believe forest protection can rectify pollution from natural gas. “It’s such obvious nonsense,” says Renat Heuberger, co-founder of South Pole. “Even my 9-year-old daughter will understand that’s not the case. You’re burning fossil fuels and creating CO₂ emissions.”

The Ichthys LNG terminal in Darwin, Australia,  one of the first steps in the long journey made by Total’s supposedly ‘carbon neutral’ natural gas. 

Source: Copernicus Sentinel-2 Satellite Image; Sept. 11, 2020

LONG READ CONTINUE HERE The Fictitious World of ‘Carbon Neutral’ Fossil Fuel - Bloomberg

The green economy in the U.K. is now four times larger than its manufacturing sector

The report comes as the government faces criticism for a lack of policy details regarding net-zero goals

Author of the article: Daniel Johnson
Publishing date: Aug 11, 2021 

Wind turbines stand at Whitelee Windfarm, the U.K.'s largest onshore windfarm, operated by ScottishPower Renewables, a unit of Iberdrola SA, on Eaglesham Moor near Glasgow, U.K., on Monday, Aug. 11, 2014. Scottish independence risks undermining investment in low-carbon energy because the smaller nation wouldn't be able to afford the same level of subsidies as Britain combined, the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change said in April. PHOTO BY PHOTOGRAPHER: SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG
Article content

U.K.’s green economy is now worth about £200 billion ($346.65 billion CAD), four times larger than the country’s manufacturing sector, according to a report, with the green economy expected to continue growing.

Experts say the low carbon sector could help mitigate the climate crisis, the Guardian reported, while creating sustainable jobs and improving the quality of life, by providing benefits like cleaner transportation, better-insulated homes and reduced air pollution. The report found that over 75,000 businesses from green industries like turbine manufacturing and recycling plants employ over 1.2 million people in the country.
“This data, by examining the full extent of the low carbon economy from the grassroots up, shows us just how important it already is for the UK economy and the progress already made,” said Sarah Howard, the report’s author.

The report was created by kMatrix Data Services, which creates yearly assessments of the low carbon economy in the U.K., and is based on 900 data sources from the government, private sector and academia.

The research found that the country’s manufacturing sector is worth about £55.6 billion ($96.37 billion CAD), while the construction sector is worth about £132.9 billion ($230 billion CAD).

The report indicates that wave and tidal, wind and solar power all grew at a rapid pace in recent years. The country’s low carbon industry grew by 7.4 per cent during the 2018-19 fiscal year, but contracted by nine per cent during the 2020-21 fiscal year. However, the industry is expected to bounce back following COVID-19 recovery efforts.

“It also illustrates (that) the chains and networks of supply are present and scalable, enabling the significant growth required in the wider sector,” said Howard regarding the report. “What we need now is a comprehensive policy framework and the required rapid growth can be achieved.”

The report highlights that the green economy has grown, despite insufficient government support.

The U.K. government has also faced criticism for not putting forward a detailed policy that will allow it to meet its own climate targets.

In July, Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee said the “progress was illusory.”

Ed Miliband, the head of the Labour party’s climate team, said the government’s failure to grasp the challenge and potential opportunities from transitioning to a low carbon economy is hindering communities across the U.K..

“Tackling the climate emergency could transform our society and our economy, creating new jobs wherever people live, growing British industries and making our businesses more competitive,” said Miliband. “To truly transform our economy, we need the government to show leadership and bring forward a green investment plan equal to the scale of the emergency we face and the task of economic transformation.”

Nick Molho, the executive director of Aldersgate Group, said that the U.K. government’s net-zero strategy should include collaborating with local authorities and community groups to help the net-zero transition with local jobs.

Molho said that a country-wide body could help the country support its workforce as the economy transitions to net-zero emissions, aided by local bodies of industry, government, union, and educational representatives.

“[They] could be tasked with carefully planning the changes needed in their areas to support a successful transition to net zero emissions,” Molho said.

The green energy arms race is underway
By: Paddy Ryan   2 days ago

(imaginima/Getty Images)


Energy is woven into the fabric of modern geopolitics. The oligopolistic stranglehold OPEC nations enjoyed over global energy supply was made clear in the 1970s when embargoes almost brought the West to its knees. Today, the United States and its allies continue to indulge Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other OPEC members despite divergences on human rights, democracy and support for extremists. For OPEC+ leader Russia, the transit of gas provides a weapon against neighboring Ukraine, while the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany allows Moscow to divide and conquer Europe.

The geopolitical leverage derived from hydrocarbon exports is motivating the development of alternative energy resources among the world’s heaviest energy consumers. After the first oil embargo, France built a formidable nuclear reactor fleet to maximize its energy autonomy. As wind and solar power each nears cost parity with traditional sources, fuel importers have new opportunities to wean themselves off foreign hydrocarbon dependence.

But the transition to renewables, if poorly managed, may not be as conducive to energy independence as policymakers might hope. Alternative energy resources, as well as technical know-how and industrial inputs, obey the same established geopolitical logic. As the transition gathers pace, beware the advent of green geopolitics.

A recent book, “The Prologue: The Alternative Energy Megatrend in the Age of Great Power Competition,” by Dr. Alexander Mirtchev describes how an alternative energy “megatrend” — a confluence of interconnected trends transforming the global zeitgeist — is revolutionizing international relations.


With climate concerns, economic motives and energy security imperatives fashioning the megatrend, professor Mirtchev details a “green gold rush” as nations race to control renewable resources.


The unequal distribution of solar and wind power — and advances in cross-border power transmission — will entail uneven energy trade. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pledge to make Britain the “Saudi Arabia of wind” implies significant export potential, while European Union plans to develop North African solar, wind and hydrogen power for European consumption could recreate the patron-client relations currently experienced by weaker fossil fuel suppliers. Other alternative energy resources could precipitate conflict: Ethiopia’s building of a hydroelectric dam risks Egyptian military intervention if downstream water flow is curtailed.

In the United States, a vast and varied geography, combining a sun-drenched Southwest with a wind-swept northeast coast, seems to make energy independence a simpler proposition. Estimates suggest the U.S. could easily meet its total electricity demand through wind and solar alone. Yet harvesting wind and solar energy requires turbines and solar panels built with rare earth elements — a group of metals used to create permanent magnets — which are also needed for portable electronics, electric vehicles and even advanced military hardware.

Sections of pipe lie at a pipe depot for construction of the Eugal gas pipeline on March 26, 2019, near Wrangelsburg, Germany. The pipeline is meant to transport natural gas arriving from Russia through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The metals’ rarity is a misnomer; they are abundant within Earth’s crust. Yet, extracting them is costly and exacts a steep environmental toll. While the U.S. once mined its own rare earths, environmental neglect as well as low and subsidized production costs helped China conquer about 85 percent of the global market for rare earth oxides by 2019. Beijing’s dominance became clear in 2010 when a maritime dispute with Tokyo prompted a rare earths embargo, stifling Japan’s technology-intensive economy.

According to Mirtchev, the Sino-Japanese rare earths dispute presages increasing great power competition over critical green technology components.

Diversification of rare earth supplies has become a priority outside China. The U.S., the EU, Japan, Canada and Australia have drafted critical materials lists, all of which include rare earths. North America and Australia have ample deposits, but capital-intensive extraction may fall victim to Chinese price fixing, whereby markets are flooded with below-cost supply to bankrupt competing miners.

The U.S. Department of Defense has countered by pumping tens of millions of dollars into domestic rare earth production. Meanwhile, the State Department launched an Energy Resource Governance Initiative supporting extraction elsewhere. The Biden administration is reviewing America’s supply chain security, which includes reliable and affordable access to inputs vital to national security.

Solar power shares the same issue. Nearly four-fifths of the panels installed in the U.S. come from Chinese companies. Beijing subsidizes the industry heavily, and costs may be kept low in some cases through forced labor in Xinjiang — little wonder the United States’ own subsidized suppliers, like ill-fated Solyndra, find it difficult to compete.

Today, using a stick rather than former President Barack Obama’s carrot, the Biden administration has sanctioned Chinese firms linked to forced labor, a clear move of green economic statecraft.

A view of the headgear at the rare earth mind Steenkampskraal on July 29, 2019, about 80 kilometers from the Western Cape town of Vanrhynsdorp, South Africa. (Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images)

In this alternative energy race, technology — like natural resources — is part of the game. Innovation is key to making the transition work; for solar and wind to fulfill their energy independence promise, reducing intermittency is crucial.

Advances in battery technology are required for storing excess power generated during periods of intense sun and wind. The country delivering these breakthroughs could control the grid-scale battery market.

As Mirtchev noted, technology is a vital component of green great power competition. In this megatrend, the intersection of geopolitics, economy and innovation creates a world where everything is a security matter.

In this universally securitized world, cooperative policies among democracies are desperately needed. Australia and Canada seek partnership with the U.S. on alternative mineral supply chains, while the U.S. kills the Keystone XL pipeline vital for Canadian oil exports.

In the North Sea, Britain, Norway and Denmark are integrating hydro and offshore wind transmission to create viable alternative power markets. Similarly, Western research should be collaboratively scaled up to compete with China.

Will collaboration prevail? The G-7 summit produced plenty of talk, including of a green rival to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, but relations among Western countries remain strained. The EU and the U.K. are in an uneasy “Sausage War” cease-fire, and American allies doubt if Washington can be trusted again.

Though former President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy has been softened to Biden’s “Buy American” version, in the post-pandemic “green recovery” and energy transition, every nation remains for itself.

As such, as Dr. Mirtchev warned, a fractured West could remain at the mercy of a politically minded energy cartel — only this time from China. We have yet to see how the green energy megatrend will unfold, but the geostrategic pieces are already ominously in motion.


Paddy Ryan is a climate editor at Global Risk Insights and an alumnus of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center’s Young Global Professionals Program. He has a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics, and has written for The Spectator, the Atlantic Council and Energy Post.