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This Indigenous Community Created A New Blueprint To Fight Climate Change

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Wednesday, June 12, 2024

This past April, the Métis Nation held the first Youth Summit on Climate Change, highlighting and celebrating just how strong Métis activism still is. I was invited there to speak on a panel about how storytelling is, and has always been, an important tool for mitigating climate change and healing nature.At the summit, I was surrounded by brilliant Métis and First Nations youth activists from across Turtle Island, also known as North America. I felt immersed in the powerful energy of young minds gathering to collaborate, learn, and tell stories that reinforce our commitment to the environment.If you live south of the Canada-U.S. border, it’s entirely possible that you have not heard of the Métis peoples. Any time I’ve spoken this term after moving from Canada to New York City, I’ve been met with confused expressions, whether I’m talking to Natives or non-Natives.The purpose of the Youth Summit was to unveil the Climate Action Strategy that Métis governments across Canada and the Métis National Council had been developing for the past few years.Photo: Métis National CouncilThere was a time when Métis were referred to as halfbreeds. In the U.S., your right to Native identity is measured in blood quantum, a hotly debated concept that the measurement of how much “Indian blood” you have dictates the authenticity of your lineage. Traditional Native communities, however, practiced from kinship systems, which establish community through mutual obligation rather than blood relations. This means that tribes would “adopt” members, so to speak, based on community involvement.In Canada, a distinct cultural group emerged from Natives and European settlers having children together and building community. However, that doesn’t mean anyone with mixed European and Native heritage qualifies. The term “Métis” refers to a distinctive mixed peoples who developed their own customs, language, ways of life, cultural practices and recognizable group identity. There are no blood quantum requirements, but Métis rights holders must have ancestral connections to a historic Métis community.In 1982, Métis peoples were constitutionally recognized as a distinct Indigenous group, alongside the First Nations and Inuit. Originally, Métis were going to be left out of the new constitution because they were not federally recognized as Natives in the Indian Act, a piece of legislation created to control Indigenous peoples in Canada. But Indigenous activists from around the country gathered, demonstrated, and stormed Parliament, demanding recognition. Among those activists was my great-grandmother, waving her Métis flag across the country. Those activists fought against systems of erasure that have always tried to eradicate Indigenous peoples from our lands and extinguish our very existence.The Métis lived in the land that’s now Canada before it was named as such in 1867, and they served as liaisons at the heart of the fur trade, having a foot in both the European and Native worlds. They have always played a pivotal role in land protection and land conservation, and so the work done at the summit felt like an organic space for activism.“The impacts of climate change continue to be keenly felt by the Métis Nation,” said Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council. “Now, more than ever, it is vital that we work together to protect and preserve the land, water, and air, and to develop and advance strategies to deal with the environmental issues that affect us all.”Outside of organizing, the purpose of the Youth Summit was to unveil the Climate Action Strategy that Métis governments across Canada and the Métis National Council had been developing for the past few years. From all over the country, Métis artists, activists, policy workers, local government officials and more all collaborated on plans to find and nurture clean and renewable energy, and encourage international advocacy and climate leadership.One immediate action item was the transition of infrastructure and energy systems to achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2050. Among the initiatives born out of this goal is the Métis Crossing Solar Project in Alberta’s Smoky Lake County ― a collaboration between MNA, the county, and the town of Smoky Lake. While most electricity grids are powered by generators fueled with coal and natural gas, this model for community-scale solar generation reduces greenhouse gas emissions through partnership with Indigenous communities.Métis science and technology adviser Brendan Struthers, who attended the summit, described to me some of the direct effects climate change has had on his community, which led him to relocate.“When I was young, minor events may have happened once every five years,” he told me. “Now, it’s an expectation that nearly every year we will experience a severe wildfire and/or drought. In the Okanagan, it’s now too difficult to live with the smoke, and I could no longer rely on the water because lake levels would be too low or not safe to fish.”The climate strategy aims to address these kinds of disruptions to everyday life ― Struthers’ experience is only one among a sea of people navigating this crisis. It’s an ugly truth that as much displacement as our communities have faced historically, there will be even more to come if our land is robbed of resources.We all walked away with something that made us feel empowered, even amid the chaos of the constant abuse of our planet: a plan to address climate change that is actionable and focused. Its five priorities are economic development and prosperity; nature stewardship; sustainable energy and infrastructure; emergency management and climate resilience; and health and well-being. Each priority outlines long-term outcomes and proposes a list of actions to achieve those goals, to be executed in tandem between community members and government officials.The entire creation of the strategy is a celebration of Métis collaboration and agency. After the climate conversations came parties and performances by members of the community. The artwork displayed at the summit was selected based on an art competition held by the Métis National Council.“I aspire for my artwork to encapsulate the urgency of strategizing against climate change,” said artist Teagan Neufeld, who designed the cover for the climate change action strategy. “We must unite to navigate the flames and emerge on the other side before the fire engulfs us all. I hope future generations will look back on their childhood with the same fondness for nature that I do. There is an abundance we must safeguard and advocate for.”

The Métis have always played a pivotal role in land protection and conservation. They're not about to slow down now.

This past April, the Métis Nation held the first Youth Summit on Climate Change, highlighting and celebrating just how strong Métis activism still is. I was invited there to speak on a panel about how storytelling is, and has always been, an important tool for mitigating climate change and healing nature.

At the summit, I was surrounded by brilliant Métis and First Nations youth activists from across Turtle Island, also known as North America. I felt immersed in the powerful energy of young minds gathering to collaborate, learn, and tell stories that reinforce our commitment to the environment.

If you live south of the Canada-U.S. border, it’s entirely possible that you have not heard of the Métis peoples. Any time I’ve spoken this term after moving from Canada to New York City, I’ve been met with confused expressions, whether I’m talking to Natives or non-Natives.

The purpose of the Youth Summit was to unveil the Climate Action Strategy that Métis governments across Canada and the Métis National Council had been developing for the past few years.

Photo: Métis National Council

There was a time when Métis were referred to as halfbreeds. In the U.S., your right to Native identity is measured in blood quantum, a hotly debated concept that the measurement of how much “Indian blood” you have dictates the authenticity of your lineage. Traditional Native communities, however, practiced from kinship systems, which establish community through mutual obligation rather than blood relations. This means that tribes would “adopt” members, so to speak, based on community involvement.

In Canada, a distinct cultural group emerged from Natives and European settlers having children together and building community. However, that doesn’t mean anyone with mixed European and Native heritage qualifies. The term “Métis” refers to a distinctive mixed peoples who developed their own customs, language, ways of life, cultural practices and recognizable group identity. There are no blood quantum requirements, but Métis rights holders must have ancestral connections to a historic Métis community.

In 1982, Métis peoples were constitutionally recognized as a distinct Indigenous group, alongside the First Nations and Inuit. Originally, Métis were going to be left out of the new constitution because they were not federally recognized as Natives in the Indian Act, a piece of legislation created to control Indigenous peoples in Canada. But Indigenous activists from around the country gathered, demonstrated, and stormed Parliament, demanding recognition. Among those activists was my great-grandmother, waving her Métis flag across the country. Those activists fought against systems of erasure that have always tried to eradicate Indigenous peoples from our lands and extinguish our very existence.

The Métis lived in the land that’s now Canada before it was named as such in 1867, and they served as liaisons at the heart of the fur trade, having a foot in both the European and Native worlds. They have always played a pivotal role in land protection and land conservation, and so the work done at the summit felt like an organic space for activism.

“The impacts of climate change continue to be keenly felt by the Métis Nation,” said Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council. “Now, more than ever, it is vital that we work together to protect and preserve the land, water, and air, and to develop and advance strategies to deal with the environmental issues that affect us all.”

Outside of organizing, the purpose of the Youth Summit was to unveil the Climate Action Strategy that Métis governments across Canada and the Métis National Council had been developing for the past few years. From all over the country, Métis artists, activists, policy workers, local government officials and more all collaborated on plans to find and nurture clean and renewable energy, and encourage international advocacy and climate leadership.

One immediate action item was the transition of infrastructure and energy systems to achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2050. Among the initiatives born out of this goal is the Métis Crossing Solar Project in Alberta’s Smoky Lake County ― a collaboration between MNA, the county, and the town of Smoky Lake. While most electricity grids are powered by generators fueled with coal and natural gas, this model for community-scale solar generation reduces greenhouse gas emissions through partnership with Indigenous communities.

Métis science and technology adviser Brendan Struthers, who attended the summit, described to me some of the direct effects climate change has had on his community, which led him to relocate.

“When I was young, minor events may have happened once every five years,” he told me. “Now, it’s an expectation that nearly every year we will experience a severe wildfire and/or drought. In the Okanagan, it’s now too difficult to live with the smoke, and I could no longer rely on the water because lake levels would be too low or not safe to fish.”

The climate strategy aims to address these kinds of disruptions to everyday life ― Struthers’ experience is only one among a sea of people navigating this crisis. It’s an ugly truth that as much displacement as our communities have faced historically, there will be even more to come if our land is robbed of resources.

We all walked away with something that made us feel empowered, even amid the chaos of the constant abuse of our planet: a plan to address climate change that is actionable and focused. Its five priorities are economic development and prosperity; nature stewardship; sustainable energy and infrastructure; emergency management and climate resilience; and health and well-being. Each priority outlines long-term outcomes and proposes a list of actions to achieve those goals, to be executed in tandem between community members and government officials.

The entire creation of the strategy is a celebration of Métis collaboration and agency. After the climate conversations came parties and performances by members of the community. The artwork displayed at the summit was selected based on an art competition held by the Métis National Council.

“I aspire for my artwork to encapsulate the urgency of strategizing against climate change,” said artist Teagan Neufeld, who designed the cover for the climate change action strategy. “We must unite to navigate the flames and emerge on the other side before the fire engulfs us all. I hope future generations will look back on their childhood with the same fondness for nature that I do. There is an abundance we must safeguard and advocate for.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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EPA Eliminates Mention of Fossil Fuels in Website on Warming's Causes. Scientists Call It Misleading

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed references to fossil fuels from its online page about climate change causes

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has removed any mention of fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming — from its popular online page explaining the causes of climate change. Now it only mentions natural phenomena, even though scientists calculate that nearly all of the warming is due to human activity.Sometime in the past few days or weeks, EPA altered some but not all of its climate change webpages, de-emphasizing and even deleting references to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, which scientists say is the overwhelming cause of climate change. The website's causes of climate page mentions changes in Earth’s orbit, solar activity, Earth's reflectivity, volcanoes and natural carbon dioxide changes, but not the burning of fossil fuels. Seven scientists and three former EPA officials tell The Associated Press that this is misleading and harmful.“Now it is completely wrong,” said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain, who also noted that impacts, risks and indicators of climate change on the EPA site are now broken links. “This was a tool that I know for a fact that a lot of educators used and a lot of people. It was actually one of the best designed easy access climate change information websites for the U.S.”“It is outrageous that our government is hiding information and lying,” said former Obama National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief and Oregon State oceanographer Jane Lubchenco. “People have a right to know the truth about the things that affect their health and safety, and the government has a responsibility to tell the truth.”An October version of the same EPA page, saved by the internet Wayback Machine, said: “Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have released large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which has changed the earth’s climate. Natural processes, such as changes in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions, also affect the Earth’s climate. However, they do not explain the warming that we have observed over the last century.”That now reads: “Natural processes are always influencing the earth’s climate and can explain climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. However, recent climate changes cannot be explained by natural causes alone.”“Unlike the previous administration, the Trump EPA is focused on protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback, not left-wing political agendas,” said Brigit Hirsch, EPA spokesperson, in an email. “As such, this agency no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult. Plus, for all the pearl-clutchers out there, the website is archived and available to the public.” Clicking on “explore climate change resources” on the EPA archived website leads to an error message that says: “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it.”Former Republican Governor Christie Todd Whitman, who was EPA administrator under George W. Bush, said, “You can refuse to talk about it, but it doesn't make it go away. And we're seeing it. Everybody's seeing it.”“We look ridiculous, quite frankly,” Whitman told The Associated Press in an interview. “The rest of the world understands this is happening and they're taking steps... And we're just going backwards. We're knocking ourselves back into the Stone Age.”Democratic EPA chief Gina McCarthy blasted current EPA chief Lee Zeldin, calling him “a wolf in sheep's clothing, actively spiking any attempt to protect our health, well-being and precious natural resources.”Nearly 100% of the warming the world is now experiencing is from human activity, and without that, the Earth would be cooling and dropping in temperatures until the Industrial Revolution, Swain and other scientists said. The EPA listed natural causes “might be causing a very tiny amount of warming or cooling at the moment,” he said.Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist and president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that there is consensus among experts from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, or NASEM, on the causes of climate change. “Numerous NASEM reports from the nation’s leading scientists confirm that the climate is changing as a result of human activities,” McNutt said. “Even the EPA acknowledges that natural causes cannot explain the current changes in climate. It is important that the public be presented with all of the facts.”Former EPA climate advisor Jeremy Symons, now a senior advisor for Environmental Protection Network of former EPA officials, said: “Ignoring fossil fuel pollution as the driving force behind the climate changes we have seen in our lifetime is like pretending cigarettes don’t cause lung cancer.”Michael Phillis contributed to this report.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – December 2025

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The EPA is wiping mention of human-caused climate change from its website

Some pages have been tweaked to emphasize ‘natural forces’; others have been deleted entirely.

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed references to human-caused climate change from its website — tweaking some pages to focus on the “natural processes” driving climate change and wiping other pages from the internet.

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Contributor: The left's climate panic is finally calming down

Millions of Americans may still believe warming exists, but far fewer view it as an imminent existential threat.

Is the American left finally waking up from its decades-long climate catastrophism stupor? For years, climate alarmism has reigned as political catechism: The planet is burning and only drastic action — deindustrialization, draconian regulation, even ceasing childbearing — could forestall certain apocalypse. Now, at least some signs are emerging that both the broader public and leading liberal voices may be recoiling from the doom and gloom.First, recent polling shows that the intensity of climate dread is weakening. According to a July report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, while a majority (69%) of Americans still say global warming is happening, only 60% say it’s “mostly human-caused”; 28% attribute it mostly to natural environmental changes. A similar October study from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that “belief in human-driven climate change declined overall” since 2017. Interestingly, Democrats and political independents, not Republicans, were primarily responsible for the decline.Moreover, public willingness to countenance personal sacrifice in the name of saving the planet seems to be plummeting: An October 2024 poll from the Pew Research Center found that only 45% said human activity contributed “a great deal” to climate change. An additional 29% said it contributed “some” — while a quarter said human influence was minimal or nonexistent.The moral panic is slowly evaporating. Millions of Americans may still believe warming exists, but far fewer view it as an imminent existential threat — let alone embrace sweeping upheavals in energy policy and personal lifestyle.The fading consensus among ordinary Americans matches a more dramatic signal from ruling-class elites. On Oct. 28, no less an erstwhile ardent climate change evangelist than Bill Gates published a remarkable blog post addressing climate leaders at the then-upcoming COP30 summit. Gates unloaded a blistering critique of what he called “the doomsday view of climate change,” which he said is simply “wrong.” While acknowledging the serious risks for the poorest countries, Gates insisted that humanity will continue to “live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.” He added that “using more energy is a good thing, because it’s so closely correlated with economic growth.” One might be forgiven for suffering a bit of whiplash.The unraveling of climate catastrophism got another jolt recently with the formal retraction of a high-profile 2024 study published in the journal Nature. That study — which had predicted a calamitous 62% decline in global economic output by 2100 if carbon emissions were not sufficiently reduced — was widely cited by transnational bodies and progressive political activists alike as justification for the pursuit of aggressive decarbonization. But the authors withdrew the paper after peer reviewers discovered that flawed data had skewed the result. Without that data, the projected decline in output collapses to around 23%. Oops.The climate alarm machine — powered by the twin engines of moral panic and groupthink homogeneity — is sputtering. When the public grows skeptical, when billionaire techno-philanthropists question the prevailing consensus and when supposedly mainstream scientific projections reverse course, that’s a sign that the days of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” propaganda documentary and John Kerry’s “special presidential envoy for climate” globe-trotting vanity gig are officially over.Ultimately, no one stands to benefit more from this incipient trend toward climate sanity than the American people themselves. In an era when optimism can be hard to come by, the professed certitude of imminent environmental apocalypse is pretty much the least helpful thing imaginable. If one is seeking to plant the seeds of hope, nothing could be worse than lecturing to the masses that one is a climate change-“denying” misanthrope if he has the temerity to take his family on an airplane for a nice vacation or — egad! — entertain thoughts of having more children. Even more to the point, given the overwhelming evidence that Americans are now primarily concerned about affordability and the cost of living, more — not less — hydrocarbon extraction has never been more necessary.There are green shoots that liberals and elites may be slowly — perhaps grudgingly — giving up on the climate catastrophism hoax to which they have long stubbornly clung. In America’s gladiatorial two-party system, that could well deprive Republicans of a winning political issue with which to batter out-of-touch, climate-change-besotted Democrats. But for the sake of good governance, sound public policy and the prosperity of the median American citizen, it would be the best thing to happen in a decade.Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer This article generally aligns with a Right point of view. Learn more about this AI-generated analysis The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content. Ideas expressed in the pieceThe author contends that climate catastrophism has dominated progressive political discourse for decades but is now experiencing a notable decline in public support and credibility. Recent polling demonstrates weakening consensus on climate risks, with only 60% of Americans attributing warming primarily to human causes compared to 28% citing natural environmental changes, while belief in human-caused climate change has declined particularly among Democrats and independents since 2017. The author notes that public willingness to accept personal sacrifices for climate goals has diminished substantially, with only 45% of Americans saying human activity contributed “a great deal” to warming. The author highlights prominent figures like Bill Gates questioning the “doomsday view of climate change” and emphasizing that humanity will continue to thrive, arguing that increased energy consumption correlates with economic growth. The retraction of a 2024 Nature study that had predicted a 62% decline in global economic output by 2100—which peer reviewers found used flawed data—serves as evidence, according to the author, that catastrophic projections lack credibility. The author maintains that climate alarmism has been counterproductive to American well-being, fostering pessimism about the future and discouraging people from having children or pursuing economic development, and that moving away from this narrative will allow policymakers to address concerns Americans prioritize, particularly affordability and cost of living, through expanded hydrocarbon extraction.Different views on the topicScientific researchers have documented substantive health consequences from climate-related extreme events that suggest legitimate grounds for public concern rather than baseless alarmism. A comprehensive peer-reviewed literature review identified extensive evidence linking climate change to measurable increases in anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation following extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and droughts[1]. The research demonstrates that approximately 80% of the global population experiences water and food insecurity resulting from climate impacts, with particularly acute effects in rural areas facing drought and agricultural disruption[1]. Scientific studies indicate that anthropogenic warming has contributed to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with vulnerable populations—including elderly individuals, low-income communities, women, and disabled persons—facing disproportionate risks due to limited access to resources and protection[1]. Rather than representing unfounded catastrophism, documented mental and physical health outcomes following extreme weather suggest that public concern about climate impacts reflects genuine public health challenges warranting policy attention and resource allocation for adaptation and mitigation strategies.

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South Australian bus ads misled public by claiming gas is ‘clean and green’, regulator finds

Ads to be removed from Adelaide Metro buses after advertising regulator rules they breach its environmental claims codeSign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereSouth Australia’s transport department misled the public by running ads on buses claiming “natural gas” was “clean and green”, the advertising regulator has found.The SA Department for Transport and Infrastructure has agreed to remove the advertising that has been on some Adelaide Metro buses since the early 2000s after Ad Standards upheld a complaint from the not-for-profit organisation Comms Declare.Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

South Australia’s transport department misled the public by running ads on buses claiming “natural gas” was “clean and green”, the advertising regulator has found.The SA Department for Transport and Infrastructure has agreed to remove the advertising that has been on some Adelaide Metro buses since the early 2000s after Ad Standards upheld a complaint from the not-for-profit organisation Comms Declare.The ads have appeared on the side of buses that run on “compressed natural gas”, or CNG. In its complaint, Comms Declare said describing gas as clean and green was false and misleading as it suggested the fuel had a neutral or positive impact on the environment and was less harmful than alternatives.It said in reality gas was mostly composed of methane, a short-lived but potent fossil fuel.The Ad Standards panel agreed the ads breached three sections of its environmental claims code.It said CNG buses were originally introduced to provide more environmentally responsible transport than diesel buses, but transport solutions had evolved dramatically over the past 20 years and now included cleaner electric, hydrogen and hybrid alternatives.Comms Declare said multiple studies from across the globe had found buses that ran on CNG resulted in a roughly similar amount of greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere as buses that ran on diesel. It highlighted Adelaide Metro was now replacing its bus fleet with electric vehicles that it described as “better for the environment”.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Clear Air AustraliaAdam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisisPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionComms Declare’s founder, Belinda Noble, said the decision was “another warning to any advertisers that want to make claims about gas products being good for the environment”. She said it followed similar rulings against Hancock Prospecting and Australian Gas Networks ads.“Methane gas creates toxic pollution at all stages of its production and use and is a major cause of global heating,” Noble said.Ad Standards said the Department for Transport and Infrastructure had “reviewed the decision and will take the appropriate action to remedy the issue in the near future”.A department spokesperson said it had received a direction from the Ad Standards panel to remove messaging from “a small number” of Adelaide Metro buses.The spokesperson argued that CNG was a “cleaner burning alternative to diesel” when it was purchased, offering about a 13% cut in greenhouse gas emissions and a “considerable reduction in harmful emissions” of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and particulates.

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What’s the best way to expand the US electricity grid?

A study by MIT researchers illuminates choices about reliability, cost, and emissions.

Growing energy demand means the U.S. will almost certainly have to expand its electricity grid in coming years. What’s the best way to do this? A new study by MIT researchers examines legislation introduced in Congress and identifies relative tradeoffs involving reliability, cost, and emissions, depending on the proposed approach.The researchers evaluated two policy approaches to expanding the U.S. electricity grid: One would concentrate on regions with more renewable energy sources, and the other would create more interconnections across the country. For instance, some of the best untapped wind-power resources in the U.S. lie in the center of the country, so one type of grid expansion would situate relatively more grid infrastructure in those regions. Alternatively, the other scenario involves building more infrastructure everywhere in roughly equal measure, which the researchers call the “prescriptive” approach. How does each pencil out?After extensive modeling, the researchers found that a grid expansion could make improvements on all fronts, with each approach offering different advantages. A more geographically unbalanced grid buildout would be 1.13 percent less expensive, and would reduce carbon emissions by 3.65 percent compared to the prescriptive approach. And yet, the prescriptive approach, with more national interconnection, would significantly reduce power outages due to extreme weather, among other things.“There’s a tradeoff between the two things that are most on policymakers’ minds: cost and reliability,” says Christopher Knittel, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who helped direct the research. “This study makes it more clear that the more prescriptive approach ends up being better in the face of extreme weather and outages.”The paper, “Implications of Policy-Driven Transmission Expansion on Costs, Emissions and Reliability in the United States,” is published today in Nature Energy.The authors are Juan Ramon L. Senga, a postdoc in the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Audun Botterud, a principal research scientist in the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems; John E. Parson, the deputy director for research at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Drew Story, the managing director at MIT’s Policy Lab; and Knittel, who is the George P. Schultz Professor at MIT Sloan, and associate dean for climate and sustainability at MIT.The new study is a product of the MIT Climate Policy Center, housed within MIT Sloan and committed to bipartisan research on energy issues. The center is also part of the Climate Project at MIT, founded in 2024 as a high-level Institute effort to develop practical climate solutions.In this case, the project was developed from work the researchers did with federal lawmakers who have introduced legislation aimed at bolstering and expanding the U.S. electric grid. One of these bills, the BIG WIRES Act, co-sponsored by Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Rep. Scott Peters of California, would require each transmission region in the U.S. to be able to send at least 30 percent of its peak load to other regions by 2035.That would represent a substantial change for a national transmission scenario where grids have largely been developed regionally, without an enormous amount of national oversight.“The U.S. grid is aging and it needs an upgrade,” Senga says. “Implementing these kinds of policies is an important step for us to get to that future where we improve the grid, lower costs, lower emissions, and improve reliability. Some progress is better than none, and in this case, it would be important.”To conduct the study, the researchers looked at how policies like the BIG WIRES Act would affect energy distribution. The scholars used a model of energy generation developed at the MIT Energy Initiative — the model is called “Gen X” — and examined the changes proposed by the legislation.With a 30 percent level of interregional connectivity, the study estimates, the number of outages due to extreme cold would drop by 39 percent, for instance, a substantial increase in reliability. That would help avoid scenarios such as the one Texas experienced in 2021, when winter storms damaged distribution capacity.“Reliability is what we find to be most salient to policymakers,” Senga says.On the other hand, as the paper details, a future grid that is “optimized” with more transmission capacity near geographic spots of new energy generation would be less expensive.“On the cost side, this kind of optimized system looks better,” Senga says.A more geographically imbalanced grid would also have a greater impact on reducing emissions. Globally, the levelized cost of wind and solar dropped by 89 percent and 69 percent, respectively, from 2010 to 2022, meaning that incorporating less-expensive renewables into the grid would help with both cost and emissions.“On the emissions side, a priori it’s not clear the optimized system would do better, but it does,” Knittel says. “That’s probably tied to cost, in the sense that it’s building more transmission links to where the good, cheap renewable resources are, because they’re cheap. Emissions fall when you let the optimizing action take place.”To be sure, these two differing approaches to grid expansion are not the only paths forward. The study also examines a hybrid approach, which involves both national interconnectivity requirements and local buildouts based around new power sources on top of that. Still, the model does show that there may be some tradeoffs lawmakers will want to consider when developing and considering future grid legislation.“You can find a balance between these factors, where you’re still going to still have an increase in reliability while also getting the cost and emission reductions,” Senga observes.For his part, Knittel emphasizes that working with legislation as the basis for academic studies, while not generally common, can be productive for everyone involved. Scholars get to apply their research tools and models to real-world scenarios, and policymakers get a sophisticated evaluation of how their proposals would work.“Compared to the typical academic path to publication, this is different, but at the Climate Policy Center, we’re already doing this kind of research,” Knittel says. 

Climate
Energy
Nature

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Plants

Resilience

In 1998, a vast power grid serving 5 million people in Canada was destroyed by an ice storm. Twenty years later researchers of that disaster are developing a new kind of resilient power grid. Based in part on the book The Grid and the Village, the film explores how to protect grids and the people they serve from war, terrorist attack, and extreme weather.

Energy
Climate
Crisis

Reboot

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

Animation
Crisis
Cosmos

Heimat - Requiem For The World As We Know It

Four theater-makers from Belgium travel to the melting glaciers on Greenland. Their goal: to play a new composed requiem and say goodbye to the world as we know it.

Music
Culture
Climate

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