Here's all about the worst climate news of the year you may have missed

By David Fickling

 

There’s been no shortage of grim climate news to hit the headlines over the past year. In March, the United Nations’ weather agency declared 2023 was the hottest year on record; in November, it said the current 12 months will be even more scorching. In the US, Donald Trump was re-elected, promising more petroleum production and a shredding of support for clean energy. Hype around energy-hungry AI is prompting utilities to slow down on plans to close fossil-fuel generators, in expectations of soaring demand from data centers. 

 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, some of the most troubling trends out there have flown mostly under the radar. Here are three additional things which mostly haven’t hit the headlines in 2024, to keep you up at night.

 

A Dry Patch for Hydro

 

We hear plenty about the travails of nuclear power and the growth of wind or solar, but far too often, the biggest source of clean power, hydroelectricity, is an afterthought. That’s an unfortunate oversight, because it’s going through a worryingly bad patch. Hydro generation hasn’t increased in five years, and in many of the places where we most needed it the failures are even more pronounced.  

 

Electricity production from dams is down in the US by about a fifth since it peaked in 2017. In China, the failure of late-summer rainfall in the Yangtze basin caused output to plummet to drought-like levels, forcing coal generators to ramp higher in September to make up the shortfall. Brazil has been importing record amounts of coal to offset weak production from the dams that dominate its grid. 

 

Hydro is a fundamentally seasonal industry and it’s always possible that a few years of healthier rains will allow it to recover. But the persistent underperformance of late might indicate something worse: The very climate change that renewable power aims to avert is drying up the regular pulse of floodwater hydro requires to play its part in the energy transition.

 

Forest Fuels

 

If you’re concerned about palm oil, it’s probably mostly as an Orangutan-threatening additive in cosmetics and chocolates. News that the world’s fourth-most populous country is planning to switch half its diesel to biofuels, however, sounds… good, right? 

 

Not so fast. The biggest contributor to demand over the past decade, by far, has been Indonesia’s mandates requiring ever-higher shares of biodiesel in road vehicles. The current 35 per cent blend will be raised to 50 per cent by 2028, one of the key policy promises of new President Prabowo Subianto after his election in February. Even palm oil producers don’t think the increased demand, to 18 million metric tons from 11 million tons currently, can be met from existing ageing plantations.

 

A study in August estimated that such a plan would require an additional 5.3 million hectares of forest to be cut down by 2042, an area about 25 per cent larger than Denmark. Over-dependence on biofuel blending also translates into lackluster government support for electrified and public transport.

 

Coal Is Back in India

 

For many years, the future of coal in India’s grid was looking bleak. Too many power plants were built in the early 2010s, leaving the country with a stock of underutilized, loss-making thermal generators. Cheaper solar and wind and lackluster economic growth meant fossil fuels seemed on the verge of being squeezed out.  

 

That looks less the case right now. With Chinese demand barely growing and declines in the US and Europe, India is the only place in the world that’s seen a substantial increase in coal consumption this year. Utilization of plants has now been running at healthy levels for the best part of two years, restoring profitability. Solid fuel generation capacity declined in recent years, but it’s now creeping back, with state-owned Coal India Ltd. planning to invest $8 billion in new plants and the government promising to make the fleet a third larger by 2032. 

 

If the ongoing renewables boom (see below) doesn’t avert those plans, coal’s role in India’s grid looks to be getting back on track.

 

For the sake of accountability, how did what I predicted about 2023’s worst overlooked climate news pan out? You can read the original article to make up your own mind, but here’s my assessment.

 

Carbon offsetting is just getting started: Trading emissions for promised reductions in deforestation suffered a huge reputational blow in 2023 after claims of questionable methodology and greenwashing. As we suspected, it’s looking in much better health now. The UN climate conference in November finally agreed a system for international trade. Critics fear that might undermine the integrity of more robust carbon credits by giving polluters access to a cheap pool of low-quality offsets. Europe’s carbon permits have fallen about 7.2 per cent since.

 

India’s renewables buildout is failing: We are only one year of data into this, but it looks (hearteningly) that our dismay last year was misplaced. At the end of November, 24.5 gigawatts of modern renewables had been connected, close to double 2023’s full-year figure. It’s still well below the 40 GW to 50 GW that’s going to be needed each year to hit ambitious targets for 2030, but for the moment the market is accelerating — though not fast enough to prevent the aforementioned return to coal.

 

The ocean is sucking up less carbon: Science moves more slowly than news headlines, so it will be a while before we have enough evidence to confirm that the seas are reaching a saturation point in their ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Still, there’s been plenty of similar evidence over the past year that the land is also drawing down less carbon, and even belching more methane to heat the planet. Nature has helped slow global warming in recent decades, but its ability appears to be flagging.

 

If that all feels far too gloomy, we’ll have a look at some neglected good news tomorrow.  (Disclaimer: This is a Bloomberg Opinion piece, and these are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper)