Economists are urging the U.S. government to adopt a higher number for the social cost of carbon emissions.
Why it matters: The social cost of carbon might be the single most important number on climate change, one that helps decide how much we're willing to invest to slow global warming — and how much we actually value the future.
Nearly 3 million Texans are without power and more than 20 are dead, due to a perfect storm of extreme weather, poor planning and an antipathy toward regulation.
Axios Re:Cap digs into what this experience should teach Texas and other states about the future, with Andrew Freedman, deputy weather editor of The Washington Post.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing on Wednesday that the Biden administration is sending emergency generators to Texas amid ongoing power outages and freezing weather.
Why it matters: Huge swaths of Texas have been without electricity for days due to critical failures in the state's power grid. The outages come while a winter storm continues to pummel the state, causing unsafe conditions and a desperate need for heat.
Experts say that communities of color were hit with blackouts in Texas first and are likely to face more hurdles getting help or being able to recover financially.
Why it matters: "These are communities that have already been hit hardest with COVID," Robert Bullard, a professor and expert on wealth and racial disparities related to the environment, told The New York Times. "They’re the households working two minimum wage jobs, the essential workers who don’t get paid if they don’t go to work."
These are busy days for the California-based electric vehicle tech company Proterra, which is soon to go public as part of the SPAC-wave sweeping the sector.
Driving the news: This morning the European company Volta Trucks announced that Proterra will supply batteries for its "Volta Zero" urban freight delivery vehicle.
The clean energy think tank Ember finds India's coal demand may have peaked in 2018 and might never fully return from further declines during the pandemic.
Driving the news: That would break with projections that India's coal thirst will keep rising for a long time as the growing nation's overall energy demand surges.
The crisis gripping Texas' power grid is very different from California's fiery emergencies in recent years, but there's connective tissue there: Electricity grids and infrastructure need to be better equipped for a changing climate or they can have deadly consequences.
Driving the news: Texas is reeling after a bitter blast of Arctic air and a related demand surge led to widespread outages, causing millions of customers to lose power that as of this morning is only partially restored.
More than 5 million people remained without power on Tuesday as a series of deadly winter storms brought snow to Houston and historically low temperatures across the plains states.
The latest: At least 20 people are reported dead, per AP, and snow, sleet and freezing rain pounded the Northeast, leaving icy damage in its wake. Temperatures throughout the middle portion of the U.S. fell to century-lows.
Why it matters: Over 3 million customers in Texas are still without power, as more freezing rain, sleet, and snow is forecast for western Texas until 9 p.m. CST, per the National Weather Service.
More than 4.3 million Texas homes and businesses are without power as of Tuesday morning, per the tracking service poweroutage.us.
Why it matters: Bitter cold temperatures and winter storms are wreaking havoc on the power system in Texas and its refineries, and affecting other states too.
The VC arms of Chevron and BP are funding Eavor, a startup looking to commercialize a form of geothermal energy that it says can provide large-scale power in many regions worldwide.
Why it matters: It's the latest sign of momentum and investor interest behind technology that could significantly scale up geothermal.
IBM is pledging to eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, becoming the latest tech giant to unveil a target that will require tangible near-term steps to succeed.
Why it matters: The tech industry has a big energy footprint thanks to power-hungry data centers and other operations.
The Texas city of Abilene has had all of its water services shut off, as a deadly winter storm continues to pummel the state.
The latest: Over 4 million people across Texas were without power early Tuesday, as most of the state faced single-digit temperatures and sub-zero wind chill, according to the national utility tracker poweroutage.us.
Over 150 million Americans are under winter storm warnings, as a subfreezing cold snap sweeps across the U.S., bringing with it heavy snow and dangerous, icy conditions.
The big picture: Hundreds of flights have been canceled and millions were without power across the U.S. Monday. Controlled outages were scheduled to take place in 14 central states to prevent uncontrolled cuts amid record freezing conditions. At least two people have died in Texas during the storm.
