Equilibrium/Sustainability — Yoga teachers take aim at Lululemon over coal

Yoga teachers around the world are petitioning athleticwear giant Lululemon to bring its manufacturing practices up to speed with the sustainable attitudes touted in its marketing campaigns. 

In an open letter sent on Wednesday, hundreds of yoga instructors from around the world accused the firm of powering almost half of its textile operations with climate-warming coal. 

“Lululemon’s reliance on coal as a source of energy is extremely harmful to people and the environment, particularly in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where its products are made,” the authors wrote. 

The letter — which was penned by environmental campaigners at Action Speaks Louder and Stand.earth — cited a 2021 Harvard study that found that fossil fuel pollution is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. 

“They really stand out with a huge disconnect between what they say they value and what they do,” Action Speaks Louder head of campaigns Laura Kelly told The Guardian. 

Kelly noted that much of the company’s bottom-up marketing model was built by taking advantage of grassroots networks within the yoga community.  

“Given lululemon’s influence in the market, it’s important for people buying their clothes to understand these two faces,” she said. 

In a statement to the Guardian, Lululemon representatives pointed to steps they had taken to cut fossil fuel use in their stores and offices, while stressing their commitment “to continuing to innovate across the supply chain” and “actively working with industry partners to be a part of the solution.” 

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. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.

Today we’ll start with an EU proposal that aims to reduce the bloc’s soaring energy prices, followed by a look at President Biden’s ongoing push for electric vehicle adoption. Then we’ll explore a new link between air pollution and irregular heart rhythms in teens.  

Nearly $1B announced for EV chargers 

About $900 million in federal funds will be released this week to build electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across 35 states, President Biden announced at the Detroit Auto Show on Wednesday.

• “The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified,” Biden said in remarks in Detroit, The Hill’s Alex Gangitano reported. “Whether you’re driving coast to coast along I-10 or on I-75 here in Michigan, charging stations will be up and easy to find as gas stations are now.”
  
• The money is part of the $7.5 billion the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated to build charging stations across the U.S.

The White House was promoting a sharp increase in federal purchases of electric vehicles, Reuters reported.

“A fully electric transportation sector is going to be made in America,” White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said, according to the outlet.

⚡️  ALL ABOUT THE CREDITS

The president was also in Detroit to promote the extensive package of tax credits in Democrats’ new climate and health care spending package, the Inflation Reduction Act, The Associated Press reported.   

That package is encouraging investment across the economy through several mechanisms:  

A new credit market: Corporations are racing to set up a new matchmaking system, to trade clean energy tax-credits, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

• The clean energy subsidies in the new stimulus package are structured as tax credits, meaning companies can tally their investment in green technologies against their ultimate tax bill. 
  
• But if they’re spending big on new infrastructure, they may not generate enough profits for such credits to confer much benefit. 

Easy ESG: To get around this problem, the law allows energy companies to form long-term partnerships with corporations like banks that trade cash for the tax credits, the Journal reported. 

• That’s a relatively low-risk means for banks to advance their goals around environment, social and governance (ESG) metrics. 
  
• Such corporations can get “certain economics from the credits without taking any construction or operational risk of the project,” Hagai Zaifman of New York’s Sidley Austin LLP told the Journal.  

Better batteries: Massachusetts-based startup Ascend Elements aims to expand its industrial-scale EV battery recycling across the U.S. Southeast — and they’ve received a big boost from the Inflation Reduction Act, company representatives told the Journal. 

• The new bill restricts clean energy tax credits for new cars to those with batteries mined, refined and produced in North America. 
  
• “There’s now an even larger urgency to source these critical battery materials locally,” Ascend Chief Executive Mike O’Kronley said. 

The recycling startup aims to expand existing facilities in Georgia while building a new $1 billion facility in Kentucky, according to a statement issued earlier this month. 

Carbon capture boost: Talos Energy, a small oil company, has been beating out oil majors like Exxon for multibillion-dollar contracts — thanks to the company’s startup carbon capture unit, which injects carbon dioxide into underground cavities, Reuters reported.

• Talos’s investment in carbon capture makes it a major potential beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act. 
  
• “We had to take a leap of faith. We have seismic, we know geology. Who else is going to do it?” CEO Tim Duncan told Reuters. 

Risk of greenwashing? But there’s a risk that carbon capture will simply provide cover for more fossil fuel emissions, and that the technology is “going to become the next generation of ESG tomfoolery,” Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen told Reuters. 

🛢  CLIMATE BILL TO FUEL GULF COAST OIL BOOM  

The new climate and health care bill will require the federal government to release hundreds of millions of acres in Gulf Coast sea and wetland ecosystems for new oil and gas drilling, The New York Times reported. 

 
Gulf shrimpers fear oil increase: It’s not lost on some Louisiana shrimpers that the federal expansion in Gulf oil drilling comes at the same time as extensive efforts to protect the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, according to the Times. 

• “We are water people,” said shrimper Justin Solet of the southern Louisianan United Houma Nation, as he pointed out derelict natural gas equipment that spilled last month, ruining the catch.
   
• “I’m afraid by the time my youngest one is 16 years old, I won’t be able to bring him here. It’s going to be gone,” Solet told the Times.  

No repairs in sight: There is also no money in the new climate law to repair more than 8,600 miles of offshore pipelines through the area, the Times reported. 

EU official unveils proposals to battle energy crisis 

The European Commission proposed emergency measures on Wednesday aimed at quelling an energy crisis that is rattling the continent amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. 

Market manipulation: The plans — which EU member states must still approve — would serve to tackle soaring prices exacerbated by “a severe mismatch between energy demand and supply,” according to the commission.  

“Russia keeps on actively manipulating our energy market,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday, while announcing the proposal in a State of the European Union address. 

Reducing demand: Chief among the proposed actions — which von der Leyen said could raise more than $140 billion for member states — are measures to reduce energy demand.  

• Nations would need to decrease consumption by at least 5 percent during peak hours.  
  
• The commission did not detail exact measures for reducing demand, though suggested these could include “financial compensation.” 

More action needed: While the EU has diversified its supplies away from Russia — now importing 9 percent of its gas from Moscow rather than last year’s 40 percent — von der Leyen stressed that these steps have proved insufficient. 

“Gas prices have risen by more than 10 times compared to before the pandemic,” she said.  

U.S. has pledged to help: Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed that the U.S. “is doing everything in its power” to offer support.   

• “We won’t leave our European friends out in the cold,” Blinken said at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. 
  
• It remains to be seen, however, how much liquefied natural gas the U.S. will be able to shuttle to its European allies across the Atlantic. 

Proposed profit cap: As the bloc braces for difficult months ahead, the European Commission also recommended a profit cap on energy producers — pitched as aiming to help consumers. 

“In these times it is wrong to receive extraordinary record profits benefitting from war and on the back of consumers,” von der Leyen said. 

Broken markets: Public policy experts emphasized the plan’s focus on demand and the need for emergency measures amid the ongoing energy crisis. 

• “As a proposal, it is not a done deal, and I imagine there will be pushback on some aspects — especially the idea to tap producer profits,” Morgan Bazilian, of the Colorado School of Mines, told Equilibrium. 
  
• Bazilian stressed that the need for such a proposal “belies a rather broken set of markets, not just natural gas, but also power.” 

‘Better late than never’: Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, said that the proposed price interventions serve to reduce the burden on both consumers and businesses. 

• “What’s striking is how late these interventions are coming,” Wagner said. 
  
• “Where were the efforts to decouple electricity from gas prices in the spring, when it was clear that Putin was using energy — and especially gas — as a weapon?” he asked. “Better late than never.” 

To find out more details about the EU’s proposal, please click here for the full story. 

Air pollution may spur arrhythmias in teens: study 

Breathing in tiny particles of air pollution may trigger irregular heart rhythms in otherwise healthy teenagers and increase their risk of sudden cardiac death, a new study has found.  

Raising risk: The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on Wednesday, investigated the impact of inhaling fine particulate matter — also known as PM 2.5 — on heart rhythms of adolescents.  

• Such particles, which are smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, are key pollutants in wildfire smoke and vehicle exhaust and can irritate the blood vessels of the heart.  
  
• “Our findings linking air pollution to irregular heart rhythms suggest that particulate matter may contribute to the risk of sudden cardiac death among youth,” lead author Fan He of the Penn State College of Medicine said in a statement.    

Measuring exposure and rhythms: The researchers analyzed health data from 2010-13 for 322 central Pennsylvania adolescents, all of whom were free of major cardiovascular conditions and were considered at low risk for irregular heart rhythms.  

They measured exposure to fine particulate matter in the air each teen breathed for 24 hours, while tracking their heart rhythms via a small wearable device.  

What did they find? The average PM 2.5 concentration measured was about
17 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air — well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the study.  

• Nonetheless, the researchers found that 79 percent of the participants had at least one irregular heart rhythm during the 24-hour study period.  
  
• “It is alarming that we were able to observe such a significant impact of air pollution on cardiac arrhythmias when the air quality remained well within the health-based standards established by the EPA,” He said. 

To read more details about their findings, please click here for the full story. 

Water Wednesday

Why Beijing won’t be going to the mat against mosquitos, the U.S. Census reveals new “center of population’” and China’s top nuclear scientist says fusion power is closer than many think. 

Chinese authorities nix plans to eradicate mosquitoes 

• A proposal to China’s top legislature that called for the elimination of mosquitoes has been dismissed as technically impossible, the South China Morning Post reported, citing the country’s National Health Commission. While breakthroughs have occurred on mosquito-borne pathogen testing, progress “on innovative mosquito control techniques remains relatively weak,” the Commission stated, per the Post.     

US Census, NOAA announce new US ‘center of population’  

• The U.S. Census Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have declared the country’s new “center of population” in the Ozark Mountain town of Hartville, Mo. This is the fifth time in a row that the center — of “an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States that would balance perfectly if everyone were of identical weight” — has fallen in Missouri, the agencies said. 

Chinese expert promises fusion power within decade 

• China’s leading nuclear weapons scientist said his country is within six years of developing power from fusion, the South China Morning Post reported. Fusion — a still-emerging, energy-intensive technique that brings atoms rather than splitting them and doesn’t generate radioactive waste — is considered “the jewel in the crown of science and technology,” Peng Xinjue of the Chinese Academy of Engineering told the Post. 

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

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