Will Pollution Pauses Have a Lasting Impact?
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The world is experiencing a sudden, dramatic drop in all kinds of air pollution. The skies are dramatically different. People can hear birds they didn’t even know were there, and see landscapes that have been shrouded for decades.
It’s saved thousands of lives in averted asthma and heart attacks. When this is all over, will people clamor for cleaner air? We discuss the potential long-term impacts on this week’s episode.
Then: the 2020 climate summit is postponed. Could that be a good thing? What are the political benefits and diplomatic drawbacks?
Finally, we’ll assess curtailments of solar and wind energy as electricity consumption drops around the world.
Recommended reading:
- Clean Air Memes from India: You Can See Los Angeles from Mumbai Now
- Reuters: Biggest fall in carbon emissions since World War Two
- WSJ: Coronavirus Lockdowns Clear the Air But the Effect Could be Fleeting
- Twitter: Katharine Hayhoe’s Most Recent Cool Explainer
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Will the coronavirus have a lasting impact on carbon emissions?
- Forbes: Why Offering “Home-Office” Balance Leads to the Most Productive Employees
- Bloomberg: What It Means to Have a Year Without Climate Diplomacy
- E&ENews: Pandemic Delays Global Climate Summit
- Climate Action Tracker: How the Pledges of Each Nation Stack Up
- GTM: California Curtailment Surge as Coronavirus Cuts Demand
- ITWeb: Eskom’s COVID-19 power curtailment bid stuns wind sector
- GTM: 2017 Primer–Too Much of a Good Thing? An Illustrated Guide to Solar Curtailment on California’s Grid
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Every week brings more uncertainty and if you're running a company that means uncertainty about your energy decisions |
| 0:07.9 | Sea Power is here to help. |
| 0:10.0 | Sea Power has been helping organizations like yours chart a path to the uncertain energy future |
| 0:16.4 | since the first open energy markets were created in the US. They've got a range of energy experts |
| 0:21.4 | who will help you figure out how to make your investments |
| 0:25.3 | and control your spend on energy. |
| 0:28.6 | Visit the Seepower Way.com. future to learn how Seepower can guide you across the bridge to |
| 0:34.0 | energy's future. From Green Tech Media this is is the Energy Gang, weekly debates and discussions about the fast-changing world of energy. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm Stephen Lacey, a contributing editor at GTM. Welcome to the show. |
| 0:52.0 | This week, you can pause it, but you can't shut it down. We look at |
| 0:56.6 | pauses in air pollution in renewables and in international climate talks. We're going to |
| 1:01.8 | look at several contrasts in this episode. Clear blue |
| 1:06.0 | skies were created by this economic disaster. What do they mean for controlling |
| 1:10.8 | air pollution and climate long term. Then if diplomats can't |
| 1:15.1 | physically assemble in November to strengthen country's climate pledges could |
| 1:19.4 | that actually be a good thing? And then what happens when sun and wind produced lots of power and it |
| 1:25.0 | doesn't get used. The gang is with me from their respective rooms and their households. |
| 1:31.7 | Catherine Hamilton is the chair and co-founder of 38 North Solutions. |
| 1:36.5 | She is in Arlington, Virginia. |
| 1:38.2 | Hello, Catherine. |
| 1:39.5 | Good morning, no broken bones this week. |
| 1:43.0 | Good. I was waiting for your dramatic update. |
... |
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