How hydrogen subsidies could cause a 'doom loop' for the climate
with research by Vanessa Montalbano Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Happy Friday. As a scheduling note, the newsletter wont publish on Monday or Friday next week, with Congress out of town. Well be back in your inbox on Tuesday. Not a subscriber? Sign up for The Climate 202 to get scoops and sharp analysis in your inbox each morning. In todays edition, well cover the World Bank s announcement that poor countries will be able to pause their debt repayments after being hit by a climate disaster. But first: The Biden administration is making a big bet on green hydrogen, a fuel that can be used to power factories or ships without any greenhouse gas emissions. But as the administration prepares to issue guidance on how hydrogen producers can qualify for lucrative tax credits, provided through the Inflation Reduction Act , energy firms and environmentalists have waged an unprecedented lobbying campaign. Some of the worlds biggest energy firms want to make the credits available to companies that use fossil fuels to produce hydrogen. But environmentalists warn this would trigger a disastrous cycle in which fossil-fuel-fired power plants help firms produce dirty hydrogen that then causes dirty power plants to run more often undercutting limits on carbon pollution proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The cycle would release hundreds of millions of metric tons of carbon emissions all under the auspices of implementing President Bidens signature climate policies. Theres a doom loop, said Craig Segall , vice president of policy at Evergreen Action , a climate advocacy group. Theres a world in which our marquee climate law funds huge amounts of climate pollution that then undercuts the EPA climate rules. Newer methods of making green hydrogen rely on electrolyzers, or devices that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The process requires an enormous amount of electricity. Under the climate law, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have until Aug. 15 to issue guidance on how truly clean this electricity must be for hydrogen to qualify for the tax breaks. Many industry groups have warned that overly strict rules would prevent the nascent hydrogen industry from getting off the ground. For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce s Global Energy Institute wrote in a letter to Treasury that stringent restrictions ... could cripple investment in this burgeoning sector. The administration should avoid needlessly restricting the opportunity to build what we all agree we need in the end: a robust hydrogen economy, Marty Durbin , president of the institute, said in an interview. In contrast, green groups are pushing for tight guardrails on what counts as green hydrogen under the climate law. Their demands are highly wonkish and technical. But they can be broken down into three pillars, said Eric Gimon , a policy adviser with Energy Innovation and the co-author of a recent report on the subject. The third concept has proven the most contentious. Environmentalists want to phase in hourly matching by 2026 or 2027, while hydrogen developers want to stick with annual matching, a looser standard. To some, this might all sound like accounting games, Gimon said. But this is real physics, and significant emissions hang in the balance. The American Clean Power Association , a trade group for renewable energy companies, recently released recommendations that attempted to forge a compromise between the demands of environmentalists and energy developers. Yet the group broke with environmentalists in saying hourly matching shouldnt be phased in for most of the decade. NextEra Energy , a utility with plans to invest in hydrogen and an influential member of the trade group, praised the move. It strikes the right balance for the nascent sector, Phil Musser , NextEras vice president and head of government affairs, said in a statement. But Rachel Fakhry , policy director for emerging technologies at the Natural Resources Defense Council , said it was disappointing to see the trade group take a harmful position. Fakhry warned that if Treasury issues looser guidelines, it would jeopardize the success of the EPA power plant rules arguably Bidens most significant climate regulations before theyre even finalized. The EPA rules are all about reducing emissions on the power grid, she said. So it would be truly outrageous if those rules end up increasing emissions on the grid. And thats a real risk because hydrogen emissions could be very, very large if the Treasury guidelines are very weak. The World Bank announced yesterday that developing countries will now be able to pause their debt repayments if they are hit by climate-change-fueled extreme weather events, Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian. The international development bank said it would insert new clauses into agreements with developing countries, allowing them to suspend repayments in the event of climate disasters. The plan, announced during a two-day global finance summit in Paris, would only apply to new loans, and it stops short of the debt forgiveness that many developing countries have requested. Some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries often face the most intense consequences of climate change, despite contributing least to the problem. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley , who co-hosted the summit with French President Emmanuel Macron , told attendees the world needs an absolute transformation of the global financial system to reach net-zero emissions and to help developing countries deal with the impact of the climate crisis. That transformation is required because, while the world knew since the 1890s that we were facing warming of the climate, we chose not to heed the advice of scientists, she said. Climate envoy John F . Kerry : We need incredible levels of investments & resources to keep 1.5 degrees alive. Today I was honored to join President Macron in co-chairing the 2023 One Planet Sovereign Wealth Fund Summit, an unparalleled group of asset owners & managers who recognize the urgency of this crisis. pic.twitter.com/vcntpchbgD The ocean waters surrounding the United Kingdom and much of Europe are simmering in an unprecedented marine heat wave made worse by human-caused climate change, Dan Stillman reports for The Washington Post. Scientists say the heat wave poses a threat to marine life and could intensify spurts of heat over land this summer. It comes as global waters have been warming rapidly since March. Ocean surface temperatures in the North Atlantic are running as high as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, the warmest in more than 170 years. Scientists say they are not only concerned about how much the waters have warmed over the past month, but also about how early in the year the heat wave is occurring. The unusually warm waters in the tropical Atlantic are already influencing the hurricane season, having helped Tropical Storm Bret form the farthest east of any storm on record so early in the season. Longer-term effects of warming oceans could include depleted fisheries, higher sea levels, more intense storms with heavier rain, and more frequent regional marine heat waves like the one surrounding Europe now. The trend is expected to continue through at least August. Extreme heat events kill more people in the United States than any other weather hazard, with 36 million people across the nation potentially exposed to threatening heat as of 4 a.m. today. The risk of longer and more frequent heat waves will only increase as climate change worsens, The Posts Naema Ahmed and John Muyskens report as part of a series tracking dangerous heat this summer. The Post is basing its analysis on the heat index, which accounts for the combined effect of temperature and humidity on the human body. The higher the humidity, the more difficult it is for the body to cool itself off through perspiration or other means. Health conditions such as heatstroke, cramps and exhaustion are possible with any extended exposure to a heat index at or above 90 degrees. Infants and children up to age 4, adults 65 and older, and people who are overweight, ill or on certain medications are at the highest risk for heat-related illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Outdoor workers and athletes are also at greater risk. This beaver was orphaned and rescued as a newborn. Watch the incredible instinct to build a dam, even though its never seen its parents build one.. pic.twitter.com/XoySrcycSy Thanks for reading!