The Earth is in for severe impacts by 2030, and worse by 2050

From an Announcement by FirstEnergy Corp., Akron, Ohio, November 9, 2020

AKRON, Ohio, Nov. 9, 2020 — Aligned with its mission to help build a brighter and more sustainable future for the communities it serves, FirstEnergy Corp. today announced a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The company also set an interim goal for a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases within the company’s direct operational control by 2030, based on 2019 levels.

“We believe climate change is among the most important issues of our time,” said President and Acting Chief Executive Officer Steven E. Strah. “We will help address this challenge by building a more climate-resilient energy system and supporting the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Our ambitious new carbon goal and comprehensive climate strategy are fully aligned with our regulated business strategy and support our commitments to our customers, communities and investors, as well as environmental stewardship.”

FirstEnergy’s comprehensive Climate Position and Strategy Statement outlines the company’s aggressive, business-wide plans to mitigate risks from climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable its customers and communities to thrive in a carbon-neutral economy. Actions to achieve these goals include:

>>> Hardening its transmission and distribution systems to reduce the physical risks of climate change
>>> Replacing conventional utility trucks with electric and hybrid vehicles and responsibly replacing other aging equipment that emits greenhouse gasses
>>> Reducing emissions at its small regulated generation fleet, while preparing for the transition away from coal-fired power in West Virginia by 2050
>>> Supporting renewable and distributed energy resources, including seeking approval in 2021 to construct a solar generation source of at least 50 megawatts in West Virginia
>>> Utilizing advanced technology to enable customers to manage their energy use
>>> Integrating carbon pricing into financial forecasting
>>> Empowering employees to identify opportunities that drive environmental responsibility
>>> Oversight, accountability and risk mitigation for the climate policy will be provided by an executive steering committee in partnership with the Board and company leadership.

In 2015, FirstEnergy announced plans to achieve a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2005 levels by 2045. To date, the company has reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 80% by implementing new technologies and retiring or transferring generation assets. The new goals represent a significant expansion of this target and reflect FirstEnergy’s transformation to a fully regulated utility.

FirstEnergy is dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company’s transmission subsidiaries operate more than 24,500 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Follow FirstEnergy online at www.firstenergycorp.com

The temperature in Siberia reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit

Interview by Bobby Bascomb, Living on Earth, July 15, 2020

Siberia hit a record-high temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit on June 20 in the town of Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle. Scientists say it is an ominous sign of things to come. “I was shocked at the magnitude of it …” says Susan Natali, Arctic program director at Woods Hole Research Center.

The town of Verkhoyansk in Siberia hit a record-high temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit on June 20, the highest temperature ever recorded within the Arctic Circle — and scientists are worried.

“I was shocked at the magnitude of it, but perhaps not necessarily completely surprised to see these types of spikes in temperature because this has been happening for a number of years now.”

“I was shocked at the magnitude of it, but perhaps not necessarily completely surprised to see these types of spikes in temperature because this has been happening for a number of years now,” says Susan Natali, Arctic program director at Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. “The average temperature for June [was] 68 degrees Fahrenheit, so it’s quite a bit warmer than the average.”

The Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the planet. This is due primarily to a phenomenon called regional amplification, Natali says.

Sea ice is a white surface that reflects the sun’s energy; seawater is a dark surface that absorbs the sun’s energy. The energy absorbed by surface water gets slowly released into the Arctic, causing the regional amplifying effect, Natali explains.

This feedback loop will continue to create more and more warming in the future, which will affect both the region’s sea ice and, perhaps more alarming, its permafrost — that is, the soil that is typically frozen year-round. If the Arctic melts and releases all that carbon, suddenly the global carbon budget looks a lot more difficult to achieve.

Permafrost soil, which is basically peat, holds more carbon dioxide than all of the world’s rainforests. If the Arctic melts and releases all that carbon, suddenly the global carbon budget — the amount of carbon the world’s nations can release in order to keep global warming below 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius — looks a lot more difficult to achieve.

“Carbon emissions as a result of permafrost thaw are essentially going to use up anywhere from 25 to 40% of our remaining fossil fuel emissions budget,” Natali explains. “So it’s going to make it really challenging to keep to these temperature targets that were set out in these international climate agreements.”

Permafrost thaws in a couple of different ways, Natali says. There’s gradual thaw when permafrost thaws from the top down, and abrupt thaw, which occurs at extreme temperatures and can lead to complete ground collapse. A single summer like the one affecting the region can now lead to rapid thawing that is measured in tens of meters per year, instead of centimeters per year.

During these extremely warm summer months, the area also gets very dry, which raises the risk of wildfire, Natali adds. Wildfire, in turn, places the permafrost at greater risk because it removes the insulation that the ground provides.

There is also a phenomenon in the Arctic called “zombie fires,” which sounds like something out of a science fiction film but is quite real.

“There’s so much organic matter below the ground that the fires in the Arctic don’t just burn vegetation above ground, they burn peat in the organic material below ground,” Natali explains. “So, you can see a fire burning in August and September below ground, and then it resurfaces…in the spring. It just had been smoldering throughout the winter below the ground.”

Thawing permafrost recently made international headlines when an oil tank collapsed in the town of Norilsk, creating an environmental mess that could take 10 years to clean up.

The oil tank collapse got a lot of attention because of its magnitude, but communities in the far north are dealing with impacts of thawing permafrost on their infrastructure all the time, Natali says.

“The ground structure in the Arctic is maintained because there’s frozen ground below it, but when the ice that’s in the permafrost melts you get ground collapse, you get subsidence, you can get very extreme, abrupt events,” Natali says. “But even gradual events are enough to cause cracks in a building, or to cause gas tanks or other types of infrastructure to fall and to crack, and this is what’s happening in some areas of the Arctic.”

“These other incidents that don’t get these big headlines are really concerning because they are impacting people’s cultures and their health and their livelihoods,” she adds.

Many of us still tend to think about climate change as something that’s going to happen in the future, in 2050 or 2100, but in the Arctic, it’s happening now.

Many of us still tend to think about climate change as something that’s going to happen in the future, in 2050 or 2100, but in the Arctic, it’s happening now, Natali says.

“There are people being impacted by this now and there’s infrastructure that’s being impacted by this now,” she warns, “There are global implications for permafrost thaw and there are feedbacks on global climate that may be happening now and are expected to continue to happen into the future. But there are also these regional impacts, as you see ground collapsing on the people who are living in the Arctic.”

Natali does not like to think of climate change as an insurmountable problem, but some regions of the Arctic have already experienced “pretty extreme permafrost thaw,” she says.

“The actions that we take now in terms of our fossil fuel emissions will really have a big difference on how much of the Arctic will thaw and how many of these communities will be impacted, and how much economic cost there will be,” she cautions. “So it’s not an all or nothing situation in the Arctic. It’s recognizing that, yes, we’ve already bought in for some of these changes that are already happening [and] that are going to happen, but let’s act now and act soon to reduce that impact for people in the Arctic and globally.”

>>>>> This article is based on an interview by Bobby Bascomb that aired on Living on Earth from PRX.

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Related: Melting polar ice poses a serious global risk, November 11, 2017

Related: A bold plan to slow the melt of Arctic permafrost could help reverse global warming, April 30, 2017