In today’s edition:

⚡️ Whitehouse reforms for new energy projects

🚜 Carbon soil sequestration on shaky ground

🌳 Food companies worried about deforestation laws

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⚡️ Energy (1-minute read)

Remix to Transmission’ Hot and Fresh Out the White House Kitchen

The Problem: White House climate adviser John Podesta told reporters that the US needs 60% more high-voltage transmission by 2030, to keep on track to meeting Biden’s clean energy and infrastructure goals. But the permitting process for clean energy infrastructure, including transmission, is currently plagued by delays and bottlenecks (right now, it’s often easier to permit fossil fuel infrastructure than clean energy infrastructure)

What’s New: The White House on Friday proposed reforms to the environmental review process for new energy projects that would help speed up permitting for electric transmission and encourage more streamlined processes.

Details: The proposal would encourage more "programmatic" environmental reviews of multiple projects rather than individual reviews and a streamlined process. It would also limit the need for environmental reviews for projects federal agencies deem significant and long-lasting positive impacts.

🚜 AgriTech (1-minute read)

Company paying farmers to trap carbon in their soils could be on shaky ground

Headline: Boston-based company, Indigo, is paying farmers in the US to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Indigo then sells the sequestered carbon to companies, like IBM and JPMorgan Chase, in the form of carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Details: Farmers sequester this carbon by adopting regenerative practices (incl. using cover crops, reduced tillage, and rotating crops), which increase organic matter in the soil leading to more carbon storage in the form of soil organic carbon.

Scepticism: Researchers criticise the effectiveness of soil carbon capture programs, especially the model companies like Indigo use to predict the total carbon sequestered by farmers, citing uncertainties in measuring soil carbon gains and losses

The bigger picture: Soil-based carbon capture could offset 5-15% of global GHG emissions, while the soil carbon market could be worth $50bn by 2030. To succeed, Indigo and other soil carbon capture programmes need more than the blessing of researchers. They also need thousands of farmers to rethink practices that go back generations.

🌳 Nature (1-minute read)

Chocolate and coffee makers brew concerns over deforestation law

What happened: Chocolate and coffee makers, including Italy's Lavazza and Cadbury-maker Mondelez, are concerned about the "practicalities" of a new European Union law to stop deforestation.

Details: The pushback follows the law, which is expected at the end of 2024. Importers of coffee, cocoa, beef, soy, rubber and palm oil must prove their supply chains aren't contributing to the destruction of forests, a cause of climate change, or be fined up to 4% of their turnover in the bloc.

Pushback:

• Timeframe: Characteristics of some supply chains, like the coffee supply chain, make traceability at the product level a huge challenge. Often information on geolocation and contacts may not be currently available for small plantations. Therefore companies who have not been making conscious efforts towards transparent supply chains may struggle to develop adequate systems in time for 2025

• Guidance: Lack of clarity over how the EU authorities will control or implement the law and a lack of specific guidance on compliance for each commodity because supply chains vary greatly between them

• Risk: Several major investors have even highlighted concerns that their exposure to the issue could lead them to quit consumer goods makers with "risky" supply chains.

Elsewhere in the Amazon: Not only has deforestation dropped by 34% in Brazil under the current government, but President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has made an ambitious pledge to end illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by 2030.

💭 Little Bytes

Quote: “There is a distressingly growing gap between the level of greenhouse gas reductions the world needs to achieve in order to meet its temperature targets and the actions that governments are actually taking to lower emissions.” Colombia University’s Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law faculty director Michael Gerrard

Stat: 43% of plastics manufactured this year will end up as pollution — Earth Action (EA).

Watch: A startup that’s making recycling household batteries easier

🗞 In other news…

• NASA Administrator Bill Nelson visited the Brazilian space research centre INPE on Wednesday and proposed extending satellite partnerships with the United States to help monitor and prevent the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. NASA will have a satellite in January that can even render images of what is happening below the forest canopy.

• The European Union will shrink the supply added to its carbon market next year as it presses ahead with reforms to strengthen Europe's main policy for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. A total of 1,386 billion CO2 permits will be added to the EU carbon market next year, the Commission said, down from the 1.486 billion permits added this year.

• Italy’s cheesemakers and dairy farmers are having to cool down cows using giant fans and sprinklers to help the animals cope with extreme heat and keep the milk flowing

• Walmart is partnering with California startup, Rubi Laboratories, to test CO2 removal tech for its supply chain. Future plan includes converting captured CO2 into clothing yarn, with the pilot project targeting factories in Walmart's supply chain for testing Rubi's systems.

• The US nuclear energy industry has reached a watershed moment. Plant Vogtle unit 3 began delivering commercial electricity to the Georgia power grid, becoming the first nuclear reactor the country has built from scratch in more than three decades.

• The UK Government recently announced changes to the UK’s carbon trading scheme, including offering more allowances than expected to polluting industries. The move has pushed carbon prices to trade at a steep discount compared with those in Europe, sparking warnings from industry that it will undermine green investments and increase fossil fuel use.

🎣 Gone Phishing

Three of these stories are true, one we've made up. Guess which:

• Chinese Zoo denies its bears are humans dressed in costumes

• Elon Musk surprises office with costume for Twitter's name change

• Florida woman makes jewellery from cremation ashes

• Manager invents fake employee, pays themself $20k

🌞 Climate meme of the week

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