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By Zahra Hirji
The Environmental
Protection Agency will no longer calculate the
monetary value of saving human lives, among
other health impacts, when setting new clean air
rules.
The agency quietly
debuted this updated approach to weighing the
costs and benefits of two air pollutants — small
particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or
smaller, called PM 2.5, and ozone — in a
preliminary version of a new
final rule for power plant emissions published
late last week on the agency’s website.
An oil
refinery in Louisiana. Photographer: Barry
Lewis/In Pictures
This change
represents a radical departure from how the
nation’s top environmental regulator has long
conducted these so-called cost-benefit analyses
for dangerous air pollutants. The new approach
was first reported by the New York Times.
The EPA said it is
still considering the impacts of PM2.5 and ozone
on human health. But it’s not assigning a
monetary value to them at this time.
“Not monetizing
DOES NOT equal not considering or not valuing
the human health impact. EPA is fully committed
to its core mission of protect[ing] human health
and the environment,” Carolyn Holran, an agency
spokesperson, wrote in an emailed statement.
Former EPA
officials and environmental groups decried the
move, arguing that the agency is abandoning its
central responsibility.
“Air pollution
rules exist to protect human health and the
environment. That is the entire mission of the
EPA,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of
the nonprofit Evergreen Action, in a statement.
“This decision will make people sicker, make
communities less safe, do nothing to lower
skyrocketing utility bills and lead to more
preventable deaths.”
Read the full
story to see what other concerns experts
have raised.
By Olivia Raimonde
US greenhouse gas
emissions ticked higher last year following two
years of declines, according to an estimate
released today by the Rhodium Group, a research
firm. They rose more than the country’s gross
domestic product, reversing the earlier
decoupling of emissions from economic growth.
The 2.4% jump was
driven by the buildings and power sectors,
according to the new report. Colder winter
temperatures increased demand for space heating,
while data
centers and cryptocurrency mining pushed
electricity usage higher. Coal generation jumped
13% last year compared to 2024 — the second time
in the past decade that the fuel’s use increased
in the US, reflecting higher natural gas prices.
The increased
demand for heating drove up emissions from
buildings by 56 million metric tons, or 6.8%,
according to the report. The power sector’s
emissions rose by 3.8%, reflecting higher
electricity usage and more coal burning.
Since President
Donald Trump returned to the White House last
January, his administration has rolled back
clean energy and EV tax incentives, tried
to block some renewable projects and
pushed to accelerate fossil fuel production. But
analysts said that Trump administration policies
did not meaningfully impact emissions for 2025.
That could change in the coming years, though,
“particularly if data center electricity demand
continues to surge and the grid responds with
more output from existing fossil generators
instead of new, clean resources,” Gaffney and
his coauthor Ben King wrote.
Tracking future
emissions will also be more difficult following
moves by the administration to stop
collecting certain data related to climate
change.
“The loss of this
data means we are heading into murkier waters
when it comes to understanding the
second-largest emitter of GHGs in the world,”
Gaffney and King wrote.
Read the full
story on Bloomberg and subscribe to
Green Daily for more data and analysis on the
climate impacts of the Trump administration’s
policies.
A rendering
of Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse. Image
courtesy of Oklo
Next-generation
nuclear companies Oklo Inc. and TerraPower
LLC will need to invest more than $14 billion in
new reactors to support Meta Platforms Inc. data
centers, according to estimates from
BloombergNEF.
That spending would
deliver about 690 megawatts of fission capacity
from TerraPower and 1.2 gigawatts from Oklo over
the next decade, projects included in the
hyperscaler’s
sweeping set of nuclear deals announced last
week. Neither Oklo nor TerraPower currently has
regulatory approval to build a commercial
system, and they’ve yet to prove they’re able
produce power at a commercial scale.
The price tag
underscores the technology industry’s growing
interest in nuclear power as US electricity
demand surges and data center operators scramble
to ensure reliable supply. While next-generation
reactors promise carbon-free energy around the
clock, they’re also expected to be expensive and
time-consuming to build in their early
iterations.
Read the full
story to get the full details on Meta’s
nuclear deals.
Never before
has the insurance industry faced such
big losses tied to floods, severe
thunderstorms and wildfires, according to a
study linking rising temperatures to
increasingly dangerous weather patterns.
JPMorgan Chase &
Co. warned that the outlook for the
global energy transition is likely to be more
volatile than investors may have expected
Trillions of dollars
are needed to meet
the world’s climate targets, and a sizable
share of that money may already be sitting
inside corporate balance sheets.
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