A 2023 Hopium Shot: Key areas of climate progress in renewable technologies, fusion and on the legal front!

Sure, we are not where we should be in 2023. But there has been a lot of progress in some key areas and progress brings hope and hope enables action!

In the last post here, I’d noted on the ‘The 10 areas I think offer real hope for the future’ and for this post I wanted to update, from 2023, in some of those areas. This is both a list of some good news, but also shows the momentum these areas have! 

(Image - Commonwealth Fusion's Big Step Toward a Carbon-Free Energy Future)

Let’s jump in!

The huge growth of renewable technologies

Starting with Solar: This great summary of the data from the last few years really show the massive acceleration of solar technology. When I say massive, I mean massive!

In the three years from 2021 through the end of 2023, installed solar capacity skyrocketed from 182 GW to a projected 413 GW. This growth trajectory represents an increase of more than 400% since 2017, nearly tripling since 2020, and more than doubling since 2021. The surge from 2022 to 2023 alone signifies an increase of over 50%.

What is interesting there is we often see the growth of solar over the last 2 decades, but even in just the last 12 months of 2023, the rise is staggering. Interesting that most of that growth is coming from China.

What is often cited as a major ‘downside’ of the rise of solar is the lack of means to recycle older panels and this will become an issue. The BBC reported on it mid-2023. Yet 7 months after that story and one company thinks they’ve mostly cracked the issue. I’m sure there is more to this, but it shows the pace of all solar.

Still on the question of recycling, but now looking at wind: There has been notable progress in the use of Elium resin to manufacture recycled wind turbine blades;

Taking a significant stride towards achieving a circular economy in the wind industry, the ZEBRA (Zero wastE Blade ReseArch) consortium proudly announced on December 15 the production of the second recyclable thermoplastic wind turbine blade and the successful completion of the full-scale validation testing for the first. The second ZEBRA blade, an impressive 77 meters in length, was crafted at LM Wind Power's blade plant in Castellón, Spain. What sets this blade apart is its use of recycled Elium resin in the shear web, a vital component of the blade structure, and the first of its kind in the world.

All of the above are representative the massive investment that is going into the sector;

For every $1 (€0.91) invested in fossil fuels, $1.70 (€1.55) is now spent on clean energy. Five years ago, this ratio was 1:1, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

New Technologies - Fusion

Coming back to fusion for a moment and this story in Interesting Engineering caught my eye. One of the projects that has huge momentum is the US National Ignition Facility who got a lot of headlines when in December 2022 they achieved a world first of having generated more energy from a fusion experiment that it took to run it. In 2023 they not only repeated this landmark achievement, but did it multiple times this last year!

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have reported that their nuclear fusion reactor has managed to achieve repeated "ignition" (net zero or net energy gain) repeatedly over the last year. First achieved about a year ago in December 2022, the NIF has repeated the trick multiple times in 2023. Located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, this is a fantastic achievement and very promising for the future of clean, near-inexhaustible energy.

(Image - The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Labs)

Here I feel it is key to note that during the Trump presidency, there was a push by Trump to defund a number of projects in 2018, this one included. Another key point as to why fighting climate chaos is mostly a political fight!

Climate legal battles

There has been a number of pushes in this area. Let us run them down:

• In Switzerland a group of older women are taking their government to the European Court of Human Rights for not doing enough to fight climate change - and bonus points them - for having the compassion to think of future generations; “Due to their age – the youngest is 64 – they will witness just a fraction of the extreme weather that their generation’s children and grandchildren will see. But these retirees are among those fighting hardest for a livable future.”

• From earlier in 2023, but key still - “The Australian government has agreed to settle what has been described as a world-first court case that accused it of misleading investors by failing to disclose the financial risk caused by the climate crisis.” This is pretty significant as it forces the Australian government, when raising money from bonds, to acknowledge that future administrations will have to deal with rising costs from climate chaos and reduced income from fossil fuels.

• Also from a few months back, a crowdfunded campaign on behalf of 6 young Portuguese claimants are arguing to the European Court of Human Rights that the politics of European nations are not doing enough to stop climate chaos. The case went to the ECHR in September 2023 and judgement is expected in the first half of 2024.

• The UK government is also being taken to court, this time by Greenpeace UK and Uplift who are seeking a judicial review to stop the opening of the Rosebank oil field. The UK has legally binding climate commitments and the plaintiffs argue that this project wrecks them; “If Rosebank goes ahead, the UK will blow its own plans to stay within safe climate limits. It’s that simple. If the government disagrees, it needs to provide evidence and prove it in court.”

There is now global momentum

This article did a good job on this point, reporting on a study by the German non-profit, the NewClimate Institute;

“With emissions still rising and natural disasters wreaking destruction around the world, it’s no wonder that climate anxiety is at an all-time high. But hope is not lost. Five major shifts have taken place since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, a new study asserts.”

You can read the study itself here. I’d also add under this category that there are lots of individual stories that really start to add up to major momentum. For example:

• French city of Montpellier makes public transport free for all residents - Great idea and I think we’ll see more of this!

• Over in the US, the Biden administation launched the ‘Climate Corps’ back in September 2023 and I think we’re going to see a lot of people moved to action by this!

• Heatmap.news had a great article on the push to bring energy generation back into public ownership and I think the linking of democractic control with such a key area is very interesting!

Into 2024!

This will probably be my last post in 2023, so I look forward to carrying on in 2024. Again, I like to point out the purpose here is that hope helps drive action and action is needed!  

On the topic of action, I posted a comment on Reddit that talked to the point of action I think worth repeating here. The question was about, what is the best thing we can do to fight climate chaos. My answer is:

I think the biggest thing an individual can do is get involved in politics. Pick the party that has the best chance of both getting some degree of power and 1) does not deny the reality of climate change 2) has policies that will help, even if not perfect. Then do all you can to bring them to power. Then keep the pressure on them to enact those policies. Yup this is not perfect but the solutions are mass scale ones that come only from the power of government. As things get worse, we'll be in a better position to keep them pushing for more action. There no silver bullet of action and no other personal action has as much potential imho. 

Thanks all and see you in 2024!