Equilibrium/Sustainability — Achilles heel of the renewables push

The push to decarbonize the U.S. energy system faces a major potential hurdle: Lack of storage space.

Battery storage systems are essential to buffer energy grids at night, when the sun is no longer powering solar panels, and during times when wind isn’t pushing turbines.

But a combination of supply chain and labor issues have led around a dozen battery storage projects to be canceled or postponed — threatening the campaign to get U.S. grids to zero emissions by 2035, Reuters reports.

Under the current system, there’s no alternative for times of low renewable supply other than burning fossil fuels — even in states like California that are ahead of the curve on using renewables to meet grid needs, the nonprofit Earthday.org reported.

But for California to perpetually meet its grid needs using renewables, it would require solar and wind projects to expand three times as fast — and battery storage projects to expand eight times as fast, according to Earthday. 

Also of note: This need for a rapid scale-up is one reason why U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry on Thursday called the energy transition market “the largest market the world has been staring at.”

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. Subscribe here.

Today we’ll look at a chemical cocktail that may be limiting male fertility and examine how a New York City plan to reduce traffic is, well, gridlocked. But first, we’ll look at the lethal heat wave facing the West this weekend and how one city is taking action.

US West faces lethal heat wave

Cities across the country are racing to deal with a high pressure system that is covering the Western U.S. this weekend, leading to record and even potentially deadly temperatures. 

• About 35 million people from California to Texas (a tenth of the U.S. population) are under heat advisories this weekend — and high temperatures are moving east, CNN reported.
  
• Seventy-five cities stand poised to break daily record temperatures. 

The heat wave stems from a colossal high pressure zone that’s settled over the U.S. Southwest, Bloomberg reported.

Then there’s the drought: Water serves as a buffer against wild temperature swings — a reason coastal areas tend to be more temperate than inland ones. 

That means the near-historic lack of water across the West is also contributing to record temperatures, according to a study from Texas A&M. 

“It takes energy from the sun to evaporate water from the ground and from plants,” A&M climate expert John Nielsen-Gammon said in a statement.  

• June in Texas is usually wet — but this year it’s been bone-dry, meaning little relief before the usual July drought, Nielsen Gammon said.
  
• “If there’s no water left, all of the absorbed energy goes into heating the ground and driving up temperatures during the day. So the dry conditions right now are a harbinger of heat for much of the summer,” he added. 

Other parts of the West, however have had wetter Junes — with Colorado even receiving a spate of late-season snow, according to Colorado Springs-based news station KOAA. 

California steaming: California is also expecting temperatures well over 100 degrees — with inland Los Angeles significantly hotter than the coastal city’s richer coastal zones, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The heat is also leading to a dangerous increase in ozone levels, the Times reported.

•  Heat leads to greater emissions of ozone-causing chemicals — used to run, for example, air conditioners.
  
• Higher temperatures also speed up both the evaporation of those chemicals and their reaction with the atmosphere, while stifling winds that would otherwise blow away dangerous fumes, according to the Harvard Gazette. 
  
  

LEARNING FROM PHOENIX

One key metro area leading the country in its handling of dangerous heat is Phoenix, the first U.S. city to create a designated Heat Response and Mitigation Office.

What it’s doing: Phoenix chief heat officer David Hondula told Equilibrium his office has largely been concerned with making sure people living on the street know about cooling centers and water stations to get them through the heat wave alive.

• “We’re doing the best we can to get the word out about the network of 100 or more regional cooling centers and hydration stations,” he said.  
  
• “We have teams of city employees and volunteers who are out streets that are just out every morning trying to put water and heat relief supplies in people’s hands,” Hondula added. 

Sweltering conditions: Phoenix is expected to top 113 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days this weekend, The Guardian reported. The temperature also won’t fall below 80 degrees until next week, according to the newspaper.

• High nighttime temperatures might represent an even greater danger than those in the daytime, because they give the body no time to cool off and reset, heat scientist Ladd Keith of University of Arizona told Equilibrium.
  
• “It’s not the first night — it’s usually like the second or third or fourth night where you start to see the illnesses and deaths,” Keith said. 

Lethal for the poor and unhoused: While those temperatures are inconvenient for those with functional air conditioning, they can be lethal for those without it — generally either because they are without housing, can’t afford their bills or need repairs, Hondula told Equilibrium.

“Our best estimate is that somebody who is unsheltered has approximately a two times higher risk of suffering a heat-associated death than somebody who has regular stable housing,” Hondula said. 
 

This year is already deadly: Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, is already investigating 30 potential heat-related deaths.

Chemical combo impacting sperm count: study 

A blend of chemicals found in most people’s bodies may be associated with a widespread plunge in male fertility, a new study has found.

Sperm counts have dropped by more than a half in the past 40 years, according to the study.

Authors attributed the drop to “daily exposure to a mix of hormone-disrupting chemicals,” or those that increase or decrease the body’s hormonal activity.

• This combination of compounds — found in items like milk cartons, canned tuna, receipts and acetaminophen — have a “cocktail effect way more dangerous than any single substances,” according to the scientists, who published their findings in Environment International on Friday.

The toxicologists involved in the study, based at British and Danish institutions, analyzed levels of mixtures of chemicals like bisphenols, dioxins, phthalates and paracetamol in the urine of 98 Danish men ages 18 to 30.

• They found that every single man tested had concentrations that were higher than those considered safe, with some up to 100 times higher than safe levels. 

The danger starts in-utero: Because important steps in male sexual development begin during the mother’s pregnancy, the authors warned in a statement that “developing babies are most at risk.”

While France specifically bans bisphenol A — known commonly as BPA — from coming into contact with food, the researchers stressed the importance of extending this ban to apply to all bisphenols in all countries.

Read more here

NYC congestion pricing program faces further delays

Manhattan’s notorious traffic issues aren’t going away anytime soon, with a long-awaited congestion pricing plan facing further delays.

“We submitted our plans on time to Washington in February, and by March, the federal government came back with over 400 questions and areas they want us to make adjustments,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) told reporters Thursday, according to Reuters.

“It’s probably not going to happen right now because we cannot get the necessary approvals from the federal government,” she added.  

What’s the congestion plan, again? New York wants to charge a daily toll for vehicles in Manhattan’s “Central Business District,” a zone that stretches from 60th Street in Midtown down to the island’s southern tip in Battery Park, Reuters reported.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) would receive 80 percent of the fees, which would be used to improve the city’s subways and buses, while 10 percent each would go to the Long Island Railroad and Metro-North, according to the outlet.

A big delay: While state lawmakers approved the plan in April 2019, with intentions of launching it in January 2021, it requires federal sign-off. Asked by reporters if the toll program would begin by December 2023 — a new date set by the MTA last year — she responded that deadline would not likely be met, The Daily News reported.

• The Transportation Department’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) must agree to New York’s plans because the state receives federal funding to maintain many Manhattan streets, The New York Daily News noted.
    
• FHWA’s deputy administrator, Stephanie Pollack, told reporters that the agency was working to resolve questions and that it had found “a path forward or a resolution” to almost all such issues, according to Reuters.
  
  

SPECIAL FEATURE

This week The Hill is exploring what’s next for electric and autonomous vehicles in the series “Driving Into the Future.“ Articles from Hill reporters and opinion contributors can be found here.

Friday Follow-up

Taking another look at issues from the week.

Monarch butterflies alive and well in North America

• A Galápagos tortoise believed to be extinct made headlines this week when researchers confirmed that it was actually alive. In other promising animal news, a University of Georgia team has found that monarch butterflies — which had previously been dying off —  are now thriving in North America. 

Goldman Sachs invests $100 million in sustainable textile firm 

• We took a look at a $250 million investment from major brands into sustainable fashion. Goldman Sachs’s asset-management branch has now announced a $100 million investment in sustainable textile company Recover, personal finance site Mint reported. 

Forest Service struggling to pay people to fight fires, chief says

• We explored earlier this week an escaped Forest Service burn in New Mexico doesn’t justify abandoning the practice. On Thursday, Chief Randy Moore told the Senate that a major handicap the service is facing — for both planned and unplanned blazes — is a chronic shortage of manpower, WildfireToday reported.
  
  

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you next week.

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