From peak to plummet in 15 years: Coal continues its precipitous decline". This is not an economic cycle that is simply going to go away. It is a real phaseout across the industry of the use of coal."   Over the last decade, the U.S. energy sector has made a dramatic pivot away from the greenhouse gas-spewing fossil fuel. Research shows it continues to do so at an astonishing pace. Nearly half of the generating capacity seen in 2011 is expected to vanish by the end of 2026, according to a report published Monday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit think-tank focused on the global energy transition. The analysis also found that coal use by U.S. electric-power producers could hit just 400 million tons this year. And roughly 40 percent of the country’s current coal-fired capacity is set to close by 2030.  “People were not predicting it was going to happen that quickly,” Seth Feaster, the report’s author and a data analyst at the institute, told Grist. “This is a long-term structural decline. This is not an economic cycle that is simply going to go away. It is a real phaseout across the industry of the use of coal.” Coal’s precipitous decline has resulted in large part from the natural gas boom and the rise of renewable energy. Their falling costs — owing to technological innovations and government incentives, like those in the Inflation Reduction Act — have made it cheaper to replace 99 percent of operating U.S. coal plants with solar and wind farms, according to a recent study from climate and energy think-tank Energy Innovation. Last year, more electricity came from renewables than from coal for the first time in U.S. history.  “Coal is unequivocally more expensive than wind and solar resources. It’s just no longer cost-competitive with renewables,” Michelle Solomon, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, told the Guardian.             https://grist.org/climate-energy/from-peak-to-plummet-in-15-years-coal-continues-its-precipitous-decline/       

Ahead of talks on a new plastics treaty, nations are split over whether to target reductions in the amount of plastic that is produced or just to try and stop it from polluting land and sea. In their submissions to talks taking place in Paris in May, the majority of European and African countries push for cuts to the supply of plastic while the US and Saudi Arabia focus instead on tackling plastic pollution. The European Union’s submission says: “While measures on the demand side are expected to indirectly impact the reduction of production levels, efforts and measures addressing supply are equally needed, to cope with increasing plastic waste generation.” It suggested several options to cut plastic production, including global targets to cut a certain percentage by a given year or nations putting forward their own targets. The UK calls for governments to adopt legally binding targets to “restrain” plastic production and consumption while the African group lists restraining plastic production and use as an objective. A group of countries calling themselves the “high-ambition coalition” echo the EU’s suggestion of a global target to reduce production.                        https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/02/22/less-plastic-or-more-recycling-nations-split-ahead-of-treaty-talks/?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-02-24&utm_campaign=Daily+Briefing+23+02+2023   

CANADA- But it's no Difference in Other Countries!.......Investigation: Big Oil lobbyists outgun environmentalists with access to the most powerful federal ministries. Despite a mammoth lobbying push in recent years, culminating in a record number of meetings with federal government officials in 2022, environmental groups still find themselves in an impossible race with fossil fuel lobbyists who are similarly upping their lobbying game, according to our investigation. Getting a foot through the door to make your voice heard does not necessarily mean your advice will be heeded. The considerable lobbying push from environmental and climate advocacy groups to rein in the world’s most polluting industries has so far failed to stop the expansion of fossil fuel extraction. In Canada, the fossil fuel industry is responsible for about a third of the country’s planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions at a time when scientists are stressing we need to start phasing out fossil fuels to limit global temperature rise. An important aspect of lobbying is who you’re able to meet with, explained Julia Levin, national climate program manager with Environmental Defence, which registered 155 meetings with federal officials in 2022. Federal officials meet with oil & gas lobbyists more than environmental lobbyists, but in recent years that gap has begun to close Despite a mammoth lobbying push in recent years, environmental groups still find themselves in an impossible race with fossil fuel lobbyists. We repeatedly reached out to the Department of Finance for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Our investigation examined who both camps met with and found significant inequities in access to some of the most influential ministries. In 2022, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) had 318 reported meetings with oil and gas lobbyists and only 59 with environmental groups. Finance Canada accepted 104 meetings with oil and gas lobbyists in the same year and only 22 with environmental groups. fossil fuel companies have an "army of lawyers" to support their lobbying efforts. Also, they have an inherent leg up because "politicians tend to listen to [the industry] that produces money, not that costs money."                   https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/02/07/news/lobbying-powerful-oil-and-gas-still-wins-over-environmental-groups                            Special Report- The Influencers   The Influencers looks at lobbying, and who stands in the way of stronger climate policy.......TEN MORE ARTICLES ON THIS ISSUE......https://www.nationalobserver.com/special-reports/influencers 

The Oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found. A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years. Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”. Geoffrey Supran, whose previous research of historical industry documents helped shed light on what Exxon and other oil firms knew, said it was “breathtaking” to see Exxon’s projections line up so closely with what subsequently happened. “This really does sum up what Exxon knew, years before many of us were born,” said Supran, who led the analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We now have the smoking gun showing that they accurately predicted warming years before they started attacking the science. These graphs confirm the complicity of what Exxon knew and how they misled.” The analysis found that Exxon correctly rejected the idea the world was headed for an imminent ice age, which was a possibility mooted in the 1970s, instead predicting that the planet was facing a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”. Company scientists also found that global heating was human-influenced and would be detected around the year 2000, and they predicted the “carbon budget” for holding the warming below 2C above pre-industrial times. Armed with this knowledge, Exxon embarked upon a lengthy campaign to downplay or discredit what its own scientists had confirmed. As recently as 2013, Rex Tillerson, then chief executive of the oil company, said that the climate models were “not competent” and that “there are uncertainties” over the impact of burning fossil fuels.                 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research