OCTOBER 2, 2024

Whew, what a week! Great to see many of you in New York, and those we didn’t — next time!

In this week’s edition:

• Cipher’s team shares key takeaways from Climate Week NYC;
• A Voices author shares ways to meet rising energy demand without investing in fossil fuels;
• Anca sails through a Data Dive on floating offshore wind. 

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Send your energy photos, story tips and more to news@ciphernews.com.

Traffic in New York City on Thursday, September 26 during New York Climate Week and the United Nations General Assembly. Transportation accounts for 43% of the New York state's emissions, the most of any category. Photo by Amy Harder.

Progress under a microscope at New York Climate Week

BY: CIPHER STAFF

NEW YORK CITY – Last week, thousands of climate and clean energy nerds descended on this city, attending close to a thousand events across the concrete jungle.

New York Climate Week, which ran from September 22 until September 29 this year, is a major annual gathering full of networking, lectures, workshops and much more. Coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly, it often sets the scene ahead of a busy fall that culminates in the U.N.’s annual climate conference, scheduled for this November in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Cipher’s team was on the ground in the Big Apple. Here’s what stood out to our reporters at Climate Week NYC 2024.

Key takeaways:

• Biden on Trump on climate: In a speech at a Climate Week event, President Biden touted the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act and warned of former President Trump’s climate denial. — Cat Clifford
• Geoengineering skepticism: John Kerry, former U.S. climate envoy and Secretary of State expressed skepticism at deploying a controversial technology called solar geoengineering to (at least temporarily) cool global temperatures. He didn’t say he was opposed to research into it, though. — Amy Harder
• Headwinds abating: Declining interest rates are vital for renewable energy, Mads Nipper, CEO of the world’s largest offshore wind producer, Ørsted, said during a fireside chat I conducted. After the U.S. Federal Reserve lowered interest rates earlier this month, the industry is getting back on firmer footing, Nipper said. — Amy Harder
• Protest interruption: A New York Times-sponsored Climate Week event was disrupted and moved online for its last hour when anti-fossil fuel protestors took over the stage as Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, entered. — Bill Spindle
• Water-energy nexus: The CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ national energy company talked about how as climate-fueled droughts increase and freshwater resources dwindle, countries in the Middle East and North Africa will need to remove salt from seawater to produce clean fuels like hydrogen. — Amena H. Saiyid
• Electricity in Africa: Providing modern energy access to hundreds of millions of Africans by 2030 will require a ground-up approach where local communities and national governments shape their own innovative electricity systems. A new partnership between the World Bank, the African Development Bank and others will focus on this goal. — Anca Gurzu

Read more takeaways from our reporters at Climate Week here.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

Britain’s last coal-fired electricity plant is closing. It ends 142 years of coal power in the UK — AP News

Anca’s take: The shutdown makes the United Kingdom the first country from the Group of Seven major economies to phase out coal — though some other European nations, including Sweden and Belgium, got there sooner.

Climate-Techs Want to Save the Planet. First They Need to Save Themselves. — The Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Amy’s take: A somber and important reminder that climate tech investing is down from a recent high a couple of years ago, though I do think it was almost more negative than it needed to be.

How the US Lost the Solar Power Race to China — Bloomberg

Bill’s take: More than subsidies or trade protections, China’s big advantage has been a singular focus on competition and manufacturing innovation to relentlessly cut costs.

Renewables Off Pace for Global Tripling, but the Goal is Still Within Reach — BloombergNEF

Amena’s take: Early signs of investment in 2024 look "fairly promising," Oliver Metcalfe, head of BloombergNEF’s Wind Research, said at Climate Week NYC. Maintaining and accelerating that momentum is crucial for tripling global renewable capacity by 2030.

Conspiracy Theorists and Vaccine Skeptics Have a New Target: Geoengineering — The New York Times

Cat’s take: Geoengineering opposition is coming from the same pockets of conspiracy theorists as vaccine opposition. What's so clear from this story is fear and mistrust are blocking productive conversation.

White House, DOE to test measuring industrial emissions — E&E News (subscription)

Amena’s take: With the U.S. Energy Department's assistance, the study is meant to track and propel emissions reductions and shore up the competitiveness of U.S products.

The CAT rates COP29 host Azerbaijan’s climate action “Critically insufficient” — Climate Action Tracker

Anca’s take: "Azerbaijan appears to have abandoned its 2030 emissions target," the analysis found, as its total greenhouse gas emissions are projected to continue rising by around 20% by the end of the decade.

EV sales have not fallen, cooled, slowed or slumped. Stop lying in headlines. — Electrek

Bill’s take: EV sales may be below what some dreamy CEOs expected, especially in the U.S. But they’re growing at a pace that should please any executive other than those betting on an absolute torrent of demand.

More of what we’re reading:

• China pumped in over $100 bln overseas in cleantech since 2023, research group says — Reuters

• Hurricane Helene’s Devastation Shows No Region Is Safe from Climate-Fueled Disaster — Scientific American
• Donald Trump’s plan to gut the climate law would be self-harm, US energy chief says — Financial Times (subscription)

We denote ‘(subscription)’ when publications don’t provide any complimentary articles, but many others may ultimately allow you to read only a limited number each month before subscribing. We encourage those who can afford it to support the journalism you love most!

To address surging power demand, let’s value all clean energy

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

BY: MCGEE YOUNG

Young is the CEO and founder of WattCarbon, an energy procurement platform that’s cutting emissions by unlocking corporate investment into distributed energy resources. You can reach him at mcgee@wattcarbon.com.

We stand at an energy crossroads.

Surging demand from data centers, electric vehicles and other new loads has utilities clamoring to build new natural gas power plants. If built, we will sacrifice our long-term climate goals in favor of short-term utility profits, locking in long-term emissions and guaranteeing we will fall short of even our most modest climate goals.

The good news is we have other tools at our disposal. To unleash them, we need to embrace new zero-carbon energy technologies — and new market mechanisms to finance them.

Read the full article on Cipher’s website.

Europe to lead floating offshore wind growth 

Source: Rystad Energy • Excludes mainland China.

BY: ANCA GURZU

The deployment of floating offshore wind is expected to pick up in the next decade, with Europe set to dominate the market, according to a recent analysis from Oslo-based consultancy Rystad Energy. 

Offshore wind installations, including both traditional or ‘bottom-fixed’ wind turbines and floating ones, will exceed 520 gigawatts (GW) by 2040, the analysis found.

Europe will play a crucial role in the growth of the still-nascent floating wind industry as it strives to meet ambitious national targets. By 2040, Europe is expected to account for 70% of floating wind turbines installed outside of China. The United Kingdom, France and Portugal are leading developments. 

The analysis does not include developments in mainland China, which already dominates the offshore wind market, to better understand the rest of the international scene. The world’s floating wind capacity, excluding China, is expected to reach 90 GW by 2040. 

Notably, Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind producer, has “deprioritized” floating wind for the time being because the floating platforms are not yet “industrialized," CEO Mads Nipper said at a Dynamo Energy Hub event at New York Climate Week last week, referring to the fact that the tech is not yet produced at scale. But he did say floating turbines could take off in the future.  

Rystad’s analysis found the floating wind sector is grappling with supply chain constraints that could hinder its advancement in the short term, as reflected in the chart above. 

Floating wind calls for completely new construction logistics. Most offshore wind turbines today are assembled largely at sea and fixed to the seabed in shallow waters, hence the name bottom-fixed. Floating wind turbines, in contrast, are mostly constructed in sheltered waters near ports before being towed to deeper waters, as Cipher has reported. 

AND FINALLY...
Follow the rainbow

This photo was taken by Cipher reader and my sister(!) Danielle Harder. She took it cresting over Vantage Hill in Kittitas County, Washington in mid-September. Instead of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow there’s… renewable energy!

Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.

Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.