It’s game night, and I’m crossing my fingers, hoping for a hurricane. 

I roll the die and it clatters across the board, tumbling to a stop to reveal a tiny icon of a tree stump. Bad news: I just triggered deforestation in the Amazon. That seals it. I failed to stop climate change—at least this board-game representation of it.

The urgent need to address climate change might seem like unlikely fodder for a fun evening. But a growing number of games are attempting to take on the topic, including a version of the bestseller Catan released this summer.

As a climate reporter, I was curious about whether games could, even abstractly, represent the challenge of the climate crisis. Perhaps more crucially, could they possibly be any fun? 

My investigation started with Daybreak, a board game released in late 2023 by a team that includes the creator of Pandemic (infectious disease—another famously light topic for a game). Daybreak is a cooperative game where players work together to cut emissions and survive disasters. The group either wins or loses as a whole.

When I opened the box, it was immediately clear that this wouldn’t be for the faint of heart. There are hundreds of tiny cardboard and wooden pieces, three different card decks, and a surprisingly thick rule book. Setting it up, learning the rules, and playing for the first time took over two hours.

Daybreak is full of details, and I was struck by how many of them it gets right. Not only are there cards representing everything from walkable cities to methane removal, but each features a QR code players can use to learn more.

In each turn, players deploy technologies or enact policies to cut climate pollution. Just as in real life, emissions have negative effects. Winning requires slashing emissions to net zero (the point where whatever’s emitted can be soaked up by forests, oceans, or direct air capture). But there are multiple ways for the whole group to lose, including letting the global average temperature increase by 2 °C or simply running out of turns.

 In an embarrassing turn of events for someone who spends most of her waking hours thinking about climate change, nearly every round of Daybreak I played ended in failure. Adding insult to injury, I’m not entirely sure that I was having fun. Sure, the abstract puzzle was engaging and challenging, and after a loss, I’d be checking the clock, seeing if there was time to play again. But once all the pieces were back in the box, I went to bed obsessing about heat waves and fossil-fuel disinformation. The game was perhaps representing climate change a little bit too well.

I wondered if a new edition of a classic would fare better. Catan, formerly Settlers of Catan, and its related games have sold over 45 million copies worldwide since the original’s release in 1995. The game’s object is to build roads and settlements, setting up a civilization. 

In late 2023, Catan Studios announced that it would be releasing a version of its game called New Energies, focused on climate change. The new edition, out this summer, preserves the same central premise as the original. But this time, players will also construct power plants, generating energy with either fossil fuels or renewables. Fossil fuels are cheaper and allow for quicker expansion, but they lead to pollution, which can harm players’ societies and even end the game early.

Before I got my hands on the game, I spoke with one of its creators, Benjamin Teuber, who developed the game with his late father, Klaus Teuber, the mastermind behind the original Catan.

To Teuber, climate change is a more natural fit for a game than one might expect. “We believe that a good game is always around a dilemma,” he told me. The key is to simplify the problem sufficiently, a challenge that took the team dozens of iterations while developing New Energies. But he also thinks there’s a need to be at least somewhat encouraging. “While we have a severe topic, or maybe even especially because we have a severe topic, you can’t scare off the people by making them just have a shitty evening,” Teuber says.

In New Energies, the first to gain 10 points wins, regardless of how polluting that player’s individual energy supply is. But if players collectively build too many fossil-fuel plants and pollution gets too high, the game ends early, in which case whoever has done the most work to clean up their own energy supply is named the winner.

That’s what happened the first time I tested out the game. While I had been lagging in points, I ended up taking the win, because I had built more renewable power plants than my competitors.

This relatively rosy ending had me conflicted. On one hand, I was delighted, even if it felt like a consolation prize. 

But I found myself fretting over the messages that New Energies will send to players. A simple game that crowns a winner may be more playable, but it doesn’t represent how complicated the climate crisis is, or how urgently we need to address it. 

I’m glad climate change has a spot on my game shelf, and I hope these and other games find their audiences and get people thinking about the issues. But I’ll understand the impulse to reach for other options when game night rolls around, because I can’t help but dwell on the fact that in the real world, we won’t get to reset the pieces and try again.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

There’s often one overlooked member in a duo. Peanut butter outshines jelly in a PB&J every time (at least in my eyes). For carbon capture and storage technology, the storage part tends to be the underappreciated portion. 

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) tech has two main steps (as you might guess from the name). First, carbon dioxide is filtered out of emissions at facilities like fossil-fuel power plants. Then it gets locked away, or stored.  

Wrangling pollution might seem like the important bit, and there’s often a lot of focus on what fraction of emissions a CCS system can filter out. But without storage, the whole project would be pretty useless. It’s really the combination of capture and long-term storage that helps to reduce climate impact. 

Storage is getting more attention lately, though, and there’s something of a carbon storage boom coming, as my colleague James Temple covered in his latest story. He wrote about what a rush of federal subsidies will mean for the CCS business in the US, and how supporting new projects could help us hit climate goals or push them further out of reach, depending on how we do it. 

The story got me thinking about the oft-forgotten second bit of CCS. Here’s where we might store captured carbon pollution, and why it matters. 

When it comes to storage, the main requirement is making sure the carbon dioxide can’t accidentally leak out and start warming up the atmosphere.

One surprising place that might fit the bill is oil fields. Instead of building wells to extract fossil fuels, companies are looking to build a new type of well where carbon dioxide that’s been pressurized until it reaches a supercritical state—in which liquid and gas phases don’t really exist—is pumped deep underground. With the right conditions (including porous rock deep down and a leak-preventing solid rock layer on top), the carbon dioxide will mostly stay put. 

Shooting carbon dioxide into the earth isn’t actually a new idea, though in the past it’s largely been used by the oil and gas industry for a very different purpose: pulling more oil out of the ground. In a process called enhanced oil recovery, carbon dioxide is injected into wells, where it frees up oil that’s otherwise tricky to extract. In the process, most of the injected carbon dioxide stays underground. 

But there’s a growing interest in sending the gas down there as an end in itself, sparked in part in the US by new tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. Companies can rake in $85 per ton of carbon dioxide that’s captured and permanently stored in geological formations, depending on the source of the gas and how it’s locked away. 

In his story, James took a look at one proposed project in California, where one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers has secured draft permits from federal regulators. The project would inject carbon dioxide about 6,000 feet below the surface of the earth, and the company’s filings say the project could store tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide over the next couple of decades. 

It’s not just land-based projects that are sparking interest, though. State officials in Texas recently awarded a handful of leases for companies to potentially store carbon dioxide deep underwater in the Gulf of Mexico.

And some companies want to store carbon dioxide in products and materials that we use, like concrete. Concrete is made by mixing reactive cement with water and material like sand; if carbon dioxide is injected into a fresh concrete mix, some of it will get involved in the reactions, trapping it in place. I covered how two companies tested out this idea in a newsletter last year.

Products we use every day, from diamonds to sunglasses, can be made with captured carbon dioxide. If we assume that those products stick around for a long time and don’t decompose (how valid this assumption is depends a lot on the product), one might consider these a form of long-term storage, though these markets probably aren’t big enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of climate change. 

Ultimately, though of course we need to emit less, we’ll still need to lock carbon away if we’re going to meet our climate goals.  

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For all the details on what to expect in the coming carbon storage boom, including more on the potential benefits and hazards of CCS, read James’s full story here.

This facility in Iceland uses mineral storage deep underground to lock away carbon dioxide that’s been vacuumed out of the atmosphere. See all the photos in this story from 2022. 

Another thing

When an earthquake struck Taiwan in April, the electrical grid faced some hiccups—and an unlikely hero quickly emerged in the form of battery-swap stations for electric scooters. In response to the problem, a group of stations stopped pulling power from the grid until it could recover. 

For more on how Gogoro is using battery stations as a virtual power plant to support the grid, check out my colleague Zeyi Yang’s latest story. And if you need a catch-up, check out this explainer on what a virtual power plant is and how it works. 

Keeping up with climate  

New York was set to implement congestion pricing, charging cars that drove into the busiest part of Manhattan. Then the governor put that plan on hold indefinitely. It’s a move that reveals just how tightly Americans are clinging to cars, even as the future of climate action may depend on our loosening that grip. (The Atlantic)

Speaking of cars, preparations in Paris for the Olympics reveal what a future with fewer of them could look like. The city has closed over 100 streets to vehicles, jacked up parking rates for SUVs, and removed tens of thousands of parking spots. (NBC News)

An electric lawnmower could be the gateway to a whole new world. People who have electric lawn equipment or solar panels are more likely to electrify other parts of their homes, like heating and cooking. (Canary Media)

Companies are starting to look outside the battery. From massive moving blocks to compressed air in caverns, energy storage systems are getting weirder as the push to reduce prices intensifies. (Heatmap)

Rivian announced updated versions of its R1T and R1S vehicles. The changes reveal the company’s potential path toward surviving in a difficult climate for EV makers. (Tech Crunch)

First responders in the scorching southwestern US are resorting to giant ice cocoons to help people suffering from extreme heat. (New York Times)

→ Here’s how much heat your body can take. (MIT Technology Review)

One oil producer is getting closer to making what it calls “net-zero oil” by pumping captured carbon dioxide down into wells to get more oil out. The implications for the climate and the future of fossil fuels in our economy are … complicated. (Cipher)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

There are two things I love to do at social gatherings: play board games and talk about climate change. Don’t I sound like someone you should invite to your next dinner party?

Given my two great loves, I was delighted to learn about a board game called Catan: New Energies, coming out this summer. It’s a new edition of the classic game Catan, formerly known as Settlers of Catan. This version has players building power plants, fueled by either fossil fuels or renewables. 

So how does an energy-focused edition of Catan stack up against the board game competition, and what does it say about how we view climate technology?

Catan debuted in 1995, and today it’s one of the world’s most popular board games. The original and related products have sold over 45 million copies worldwide. 

Given Catan’s superstar status, I was intrigued to learn late last year that the studio that makes it had plans in the works to release this new version. I quickly got in touch with the game’s co-creator, Benjamin Teuber, to hear more. 

“The whole idea is that energy comes to Catan,” Teuber told me. “Now the question is, which energy comes to Catan?” Power plants help players develop their society more quickly, amassing more of the points needed to win the game. Players can build fossil-fuel plants, represented by little brown tokens. These are less resource-intensive to build, but they produce pollution. Alternatively, players can elect to build renewable-power plants, signified by green tokens, which are costlier but don’t have the same negative effects in the game. 

As a climate reporter, I feel that some elements of the game setup ring true—for example, as players reach higher levels of pollution, disasters become more likely, but there’s still a strong element of chance involved. 

One aspect of the game that didn’t quite match reality was the cost difference between fossil fuels and renewables. Technologies like solar and wind have plummeted in price over the last decade—today, building new renewable projects is generally cheaper than operating existing coal plants in the US.

I asked if the creators had considered having renewables get cheaper over time in the game, and Teuber said the team had actually built an early version with this idea in place, but the whole thing got too complicated. Keeping things simple enough to be playable is a crucial component of game design, Teuber says. 

Teuber also seemed laser focused on not preaching, and it feels as if New Energies goes out of its way not to make players feel bad about climate change. In fact, as a story by NPR about the game pointed out, the phrase “climate change” hardly appears in any of the promotional materials, on the packaging, or in the rules. The catch-all issue in the game’s universe is simply “pollution.” 

Unlike some other climate games, like the 2023 release Daybreak, New Energies isn’t aimed at getting the group to work together to fight against climate change. The setup is the same as in other versions of Catan: the first player to reach 10 victory points wins. In theory, that could be a player who leaned heavily on fossil fuels. 

“It doesn’t feel like the game says, ‘Screw you—we told you, the only way to win is by building green energy,’” Teuber told me. 

However, while players can choose their own pathway to acquiring points, there’s a second possible outcome. If too many players produce too much pollution by building towns, cities, and fossil-fuel power plants, the game ends early in catastrophe. Whoever has done the most to clean up the environment does walk away with the win—something of a consolation prize. 

I got an early copy of the game to test out, and the first time I played, my group polluted too quickly and the game ended early. I ended up taking the win, since I had elected to build only renewable plants. I’ll admit to feeling a bit smug. 

But as I played more, I saw the balance between competition and collaboration. During one game, my group came within a few turns of pollution-driven catastrophe. We turned things around, building more renewable plants and stretching out play long enough for a friend who had been quicker to build her society to cobble together the points she needed to win. 

Board games, or any other media that deals with climate change, will have to walk a fine line between dealing seriously with the crisis at hand and being entertaining enough to engage with. New Energies does that, though I think it makes some concessions toward being playable over being obsessively accurate. 

I wouldn’t recommend using this game as teaching material about climate change, but I suppose that’s not the point. If you’re a fan of Catan, this edition is definitely worth playing, and it’ll be part of my rotation. You can pre-order Catan New Energies here; the release date is June 14. And if you haven’t heard enough of my media musings, stay tuned for an upcoming story about New Energies and other climate-related board games. 

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Google DeepMind can take a short description or sketch and turn it into a playable video game. 

Researchers love testing AI by having models play video games. A new model that can play Goat Simulator could be a step toward more useful AI.

Dark Forest shows how advanced cryptography can be used in video games.

Keeping up with climate  

Direct air capture may be getting cheaper and better. Climeworks says that the third generation of its technology can suck up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with less energy. (Heatmap)

A Massachusetts town will be home to a new pilot project that basically amounts to a communal heating and cooling system. District energy projects could help energy go farther in cities and densely populated communities. (Associated Press)

Sublime Systems uses an electrochemical process to make cement without the massive emissions footprint. The company just installed its first commercial project in a Boston office park. (Canary Media)

→ According to the Canary story, one of the company’s developers heard about Sublime from a story in our publication! Read my deep dive into the startup from earlier this year. (MIT Technology Review)

A rush of renewable energy to the grid has led to some special periods with ultra-cheap or even free electricity. Experts warn that this could slow further deployment of renewables. (Bloomberg)

Natural disasters, some fueled by climate change, are throwing off medical procedures like fertility treatments, which require specific timing and careful control. (The 19th)

Take an inside look at Apple’s recycling robot, Daisy. The equipment can take apart over a million iPhones per year, but that’s a drop in the bucket given the hundreds of millions discarded annually. (TechCrunch)

Canada’s hydroelectric dams have been running a bit dry, and the country has had to import electricity from the US to make up the difference. It’s just one more example of how changing weather patterns can throw a wrench into climate solutions. (New York Times) 

Check out five demos from a high-tech energy conference, from batteries that can handle freezing temperatures to turbines that can harness power from irrigation channels. (IEEE Spectrum)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

SUVs are taking over the world—larger vehicle models made up nearly half of new car sales globally in 2023, a new record for the segment. 

There are a lot of reasons to be nervous about the ever-expanding footprint of vehicles, from pedestrian safety and road maintenance concerns to higher greenhouse-gas emissions. But in a way, SUVs also represent a massive opportunity for climate action, since pulling the worst gas-guzzlers off the roads and replacing them with electric versions could be a big step in cutting pollution. 

It’s clear that we’re heading toward a future with bigger cars. Here’s what it might mean for the climate, and for our future on the road. 

SUVs accounted for 48% of global car sales in 2023, according to a new analysis from the International Energy Agency. This is a continuation of a trend toward bigger cars—just a decade ago, SUVs only made up about 20% of new vehicle sales. 

Big vehicles mean big emissions numbers. Last year there were more than 360 million SUVs on the roads, and they produced a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. If SUVs were a country, they’d have the fifth-highest emissions of any nation on the planet—more than Japan. Of all the energy-related emissions growth last year, over 20% can be attributed to SUVs. 

There are several factors driving the world’s move toward larger vehicles. Larger cars tend to have higher profit margins, so companies may be more likely to make and push those models. And drivers are willing to jump on the bandwagon. I understand the appeal—I learned to drive in a huge SUV, and being able to stretch out my legs and float several feet above traffic has its perks. 

Electric vehicles are very much following the trend, with several companies unveiling  larger models in the past few years. Some of these newly released electric SUVs are seeing massive success. The Tesla Model Y, released in 2020, was far and away the most popular EV last year, with over 1.2 million units sold in 2023. The BYD Song (also an SUV) took second place with 630,000 sold. 

Globally, SUVs made up nearly 50% of new EV sales in 2023, compared to just under 20% in 2018, according to the IEA’s Global EV Outlook 2024. There’s also been a shift away from small cars (think the size of the Fiat 500) and toward large ones (similar to the BMW 7-series). 

And big-car obsession is a global phenomenon. The US is the land of the free and the home of the massive vehicles—SUVs made up 65% of new electric-vehicle sales in the country in 2023. But other major markets aren’t all that far behind: in Europe, the share was 52%, and in China, it was 36%. (You can see the above chart broken down by region from the IEA here.)

So it’s clear that we’re clamoring for bigger cars. Now what? 

One way of looking at this whole thing is that SUVs offer up an incredible opportunity for climate action. EVs will reduce emissions over their life span relative to gas-powered versions of the same model, so electrifying the biggest emitters on the roads would have an outsize impact. If all gas-powered and hybrid SUVs sold in 2023 were instead electric vehicles, about 770 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be avoided over the lifetime of those vehicles, according to the IEA report. That’s equivalent to all of China’s road emissions last year. 

I previously wrote a somewhat hesitant defense of large EVs for this reason—electric SUVs aren’t perfect, but they could still help us address climate change. If some drivers are willing to buy an EV but aren’t willing to downsize their cars, then having larger electric options available could be a huge lever for climate action. 

But there are several very legitimate reasons why not everyone is welcoming the future of massive cars (even electric ones) with open arms. Larger vehicles are harder on roads, making upkeep more expensive. SUVs and other big vehicles are way more dangerous for pedestrians, too. Vehicles with higher front ends and blunter profiles are 45% more likely to cause fatalities in crashes with pedestrians. 

Bigger EVs could also have a huge effect on the amount of mining we’ll need to do to meet demand for metals like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. One 2023 study found that larger vehicles could increase the amount of mining needed more than 50% by 2050, relative to the amount that would be necessary if people drove smaller vehicles. Given that mining is energy intensive and can come with significant environmental harms, it’s not an unreasonable worry. 

New technologies could help reduce the mining we need to do for some materials: LFP batteries that don’t contain nickel or cobalt are quickly growing in market share, especially in China, and they could help reduce demand for those metals.

Another potential solution is reducing the demand for bigger cars in the first place. Policies have historically had a hand in pushing people toward larger cars and could help us make a U-turn on car bloat. Some countries, including Norway and France, now charge more in taxes or registration for larger vehicles. Paris recently jacked up parking rates for SUVs. 

For now, our vehicles are growing, and if we’re going to have SUVs on the roads, then we should have electric options. But bigger isn’t always better. 

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I’ve defended big EVs in the past—SUVs come with challenges, but electric ones are hands-down better for emissions than gas-guzzlers. Read this 2023 newsletter for more. 

The average size of batteries in EVs has steadily ticked up in recent years, as I touched on in this newsletter from last year. 

Electric cars are still cars, and smaller, safer EVs, along with more transit options, will be key to hitting our climate goals, Paris Marx argued in this 2022 op-ed. 

Keeping up with climate  

We might be underestimating how much power transmission lines can carry. Sensors can give grid operators a better sense of capacity based on factors like temperature and wind speed, and it could help projects hook up to the grid faster. (Canary Media)

North America could be in for an active fire season, though it’s likely not going to rise to the level of 2023. (New Scientist)

Climate change is making some types of turbulence more common, and that could spell trouble for flying. Studying how birds move might provide clues about dangerous spots. (BBC)

The perceived slowdown for EVs in the US is looking more like a temporary blip than an ongoing catastrophe. Tesla is something of an outlier with its recent slump—most automakers saw greater than 50% growth in the first quarter of this year. (Bloomberg)

This visualization shows just how dominant China is in the EV supply chain, from mining materials like graphite to manufacturing battery cells. (Cipher News)

Climate change is coming for our summer oysters. The variety that have been bred to be eaten year round are sensitive to extreme heat, making their future rocky. (The Atlantic)

The US has new federal guidelines for carbon offsets. It’s an effort to fix up an industry that studies and reports have consistently shown doesn’t work very well. (New York Times)

The most stubborn myth about heat pumps is that they don’t work in cold weather. Heat pumps are actually more efficient than gas furnaces in cold conditions. (Wired)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Tech companies keep finding new ways to bring AI into every facet of our lives. AI has taken over my search engine results, and new virtual assistants from Google and OpenAI announced last week are bringing the world eerily close to the 2013 film Her (in more ways than one).

As AI has become more integrated into our world, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the technology’s rising electricity demand. You may have seen the headlines proclaiming that AI uses as much electricity as small countries, that it’ll usher in a fossil-fuel resurgence, and that it’s already challenging the grid.  

So how worried should we be about AI’s electricity demands? Well, it’s complicated. 

Using AI for certain tasks can come with a significant energy price tag. With some powerful AI models, generating an image can require as much energy as charging up your phone, as my colleague Melissa Heikkilä explained in a story from December. Create 1,000 images with a model like Stable Diffusion XL, and you’ve produced as much carbon dioxide as driving just over four miles in a gas-powered car, according to the researchers Melissa spoke to. 

But while generated images are splashy, there are plenty of AI tasks that don’t use as much energy. For example, creating images is thousands of times more energy-intensive than generating text. And using a smaller model that’s tailored to a specific task, rather than a massive, all-purpose generative model, can be dozens of times more efficient. In any case, generative AI models require energy, and we’re using them a lot. 

Electricity consumption from data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency could reach double 2022 levels by 2026, according to projections from the International Energy Agency. Those technologies together made up roughly 2% of global electricity demand in 2022. Note that these numbers aren’t just for AI—it’s tricky to nail down AI’s specific contribution, so keep that in mind when you see predictions about electricity demand from data centers. 

There’s a wide range of uncertainty in the IEA’s projections, depending on factors like how quickly deployment increases and how efficient computing processes get. On the low end, the sector could require about 160 terawatt-hours of additional electricity by 2026. On the higher end, that number might be 590 TWh. As the report puts it, AI, data centers, and cryptocurrency together are likely adding “at least one Sweden or at most one Germany” to global electricity demand. 

In total, the IEA projects, the world will add about 3,500 TWh of electricity demand over that same period—so while computing is certainly part of the demand crunch, it’s far from the whole story. Electric vehicles and the industrial sector will both be bigger sources of growth in electricity demand than data centers in the European Union, for example. 

Still, some big tech companies are suggesting that AI could get in the way of their climate goals. Microsoft pledged four years ago to bring its greenhouse-gas emissions to zero (or even lower) by the end of the decade. But the company’s recent sustainability report shows that instead, emissions are still ticking up, and some executives point to AI as a reason. “In 2020, we unveiled what we called our carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion in artificial intelligence,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, told Bloomberg Green.

What I found interesting, though, is that it’s not AI’s electricity demand that’s contributing to Microsoft’s rising emissions, at least on paper. The company has agreements in place and buys renewable-energy credits so that electricity needs for all its functions (including AI) are met with renewables. (How much these credits actually help is questionable, but that’s a story for another day.) 

Instead, infrastructure growth could be adding to the uptick in emissions. Microsoft plans to spend $50 billion between July 2023 and June 2024 on expanding data centers to meet demand for AI products, according to the Bloomberg story. Building those data centers requires materials that can be carbon intensive, like steel, cement, and of course chips. 

Some important context to consider in the panic over AI’s energy demand is that while the technology is new, this sort of concern isn’t, as Robinson Meyer laid out in an April story in Heatmap.

Meyer points to estimates from 1999 that information technologies were already accounting for up to 13% of US power demand, and that personal computers and the internet could eat up half the grid’s capacity within the decade. That didn’t end up happening, and even at the time, computing was actually accounting for something like 3% of electricity demand. 

We’ll have to wait and see if doomsday predictions about AI’s energy demand play out. The way I see it, though, AI is probably going to be a small piece of a much bigger story. Ultimately, rising electricity demand from AI is in some ways no different from rising demand from EVs, heat pumps, or factory growth. It’s really how we meet that demand that matters. 

If we build more fossil-fuel plants to meet our growing electricity demand, it’ll come with negative consequences for the climate. But if we use rising electricity demand as a catalyst to lean harder into renewable energy and other low-carbon power sources, and push AI to get more efficient, doing more with less energy, then we can continue to slowly clean up the grid, even as AI continues to expand its reach in our lives. 

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Related reading

Check out my colleague Melissa’s story on the carbon footprint of AI from December here. 

For a closer look at Microsoft’s new sustainability report and the effects of AI, give this Bloomberg Green story from reporters Akshat Rathi and Dina Bass a read. 

Robinson Meyer at Heatmap dug into the context around the AI energy demand in this April piece. 

Another thing

Missed our event last week on thermal batteries? Good news—the recording is now available for subscribers!

For the latest in our Roundtables series, I spoke with Amy Nordrum, MIT Technology Review executive editor, about how the technology works, who the crucial players are, and what I’m watching for next. Check it out here. 

Keeping up with climate  

Changing how we generate heat in industry will be crucial to cleaning up that sector in China, according to a new report. Thermal batteries and heat pumps could meet most of the demand. (Axios)

Form Energy is known for its iron-air batteries, which could help unlock cheap energy storage on the grid. Now, the company is working on research to produce green iron. (Canary Media)

The NET Power pilot in Texas is working to generate electricity with natural gas while capturing the vast majority of emissions. But carbon capture technology in power plants is far from proven. (Cipher News)

MIT spinoff Electrified Thermal Solutions is working to bring its thermal battery technology to commercial use. The company’s product is roughly the size of an elevator and can reach temperatures up to 1,800 °C. (Inside Climate News)

Mexico City has seen constant struggles over water. Now groundwater is drying up, and a system of dams and canals may soon be unable to provide water to the city. (New York Times)

Sodium-ion batteries could offer cheap energy storage while avoiding material crunches for metals like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. China has a massive head start, leaving other countries scrambling to catch up. (Latitude Media)

→ Here’s how this abundant material could unlock cheaper energy storage. (MIT Technology Review)

Biochar is made by heating up biomass like wood and plants in low-oxygen environments. It’s a simple approach to carbon removal, but it doesn’t always get as much attention as other carbon removal technologies. (Heatmap)

This startup wants ships to capture their own emissions by bubbling exhaust through seawater and limestone and dumping it into the ocean. Experts caution that some components of the exhaust could harm sea life if they’re not handled properly. (New Scientist)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

I’m ready for summer, but if this year is anything like last year, it’s going to be a doozy. In fact, the summer of 2023 in the Northern Hemisphere was the hottest in over 2,000 years, according to a new study released this week. 

If you’ve been following the headlines, you probably already know that last year was a hot one. But I was gobsmacked by this paper’s title when it came across my desk. The warmest in 2,000 years—how do we even know that?

There weren’t exactly thermometers around in the year 1, so scientists have to get creative when it comes to comparing our climate today with that of centuries, or even millennia, ago. Here’s how our world stacks up against the climate of the past, how we know, and why it matters for our future. 

Today, there are thousands and thousands of weather stations around the globe, tracking the temperature from Death Valley to Mount Everest. So there’s plenty of data to show that 2023 was, in a word, a scorcher. 

Daily global ocean temperatures were the warmest ever recorded for over a year straight. Levels of sea ice hit new lows. And of course, the year saw the highest global average temperatures since record-keeping began in 1850.  

But scientists decided to look even further back into the past for a year that could compare to our current temperatures. To do so, they turned to trees, which can act as low-tech weather stations.

The concentric rings inside a tree are evidence of the plant’s yearly growth cycles. Lighter colors correspond to quick growth over the spring and summer, while the darker rings correspond to the fall and winter. Count the pairs of light and dark rings, and you can tell how many years a tree has lived. 

Trees tend to grow faster during warm, wet years and slower during colder ones. So scientists can not only count the rings but measure their thickness, and use that as a gauge for how warm any particular year was. They also look at factors like density and track different chemical signatures found inside the wood. You don’t even need to cut down a tree to get its help with climatic studies—you can just drill out a small cylinder from the tree’s center, called a core, and study the patterns.

The oldest living trees allow us to peek a few centuries into the past. Beyond that, it’s a matter of cross-referencing the patterns on dead trees with living ones, extending the record back in time like putting a puzzle together. 

It’s taken several decades of work and hundreds of scientists to develop the records that researchers used for this new paper, said Max Torbenson, one of the authors of the study, on a press call. There are over 10,000 trees from nine regions across the Northern Hemisphere represented, allowing the researchers to draw conclusions about individual years over the past two millennia. The year 246 CE once held the crown for the warmest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,000 years. But 25 of the last 28 years have beat that record, Torbenson says, and 2023’s summer tops them all. 

These conclusions are limited to the Northern Hemisphere, since there are only a few tree ring records from the Southern Hemisphere, says Jan Esper, lead author of the new study. And using tree rings doesn’t work very well for the tropics because seasons look different there, he adds. Since there’s no winter, there’s usually not as reliable an alternating pattern in tropical tree rings, though some trees do have annual rings that track the wet and dry periods of the year. 

Paleoclimatologists, who study ancient climates, can use other methods to get a general idea of what the climate looked like even earlier—tens of thousands to millions of years ago. 

The biggest difference between the new study using tree rings and methods of looking back further into the past is the precision. Scientists can, with reasonable certainty, use tree rings to draw conclusions about individual years in the Northern Hemisphere (536 CE was the coldest, for instance, likely because of volcanic activity). Any information from further back than the past couple of thousand years will be more of a general trend than a specific data point representing a single year. But those records can still be very useful. 

The oldest glaciers on the planet are at least a million years old, and scientists can drill down into the ice for samples. By examining the ratio of gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen inside these ice cores, researchers can figure out the temperature of the time corresponding to the layers in the glacier. The oldest continuous ice-core record, which was collected in Antarctica, goes back about 800,000 years. 

Researchers can use fossils to look even further back into Earth’s temperature record. For one 2020 study, researchers drilled into the seabed and looked at the sediment and tiny preserved shells of ancient organisms. From the chemical signatures in those samples, they found that the temperatures we might be on track to record may be hotter than anything the planet has experienced on a global scale in tens of millions of years. 

It’s a bit sobering to know that we’re changing the planet in such a dramatic way. 

The good news is, we know what we need to do to turn things around: cut emissions of planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane. The longer we wait, the more expensive and difficult it will be to stop warming and reverse it, as Esper said on the press call: “We should do as much as possible, as soon as possible.” 

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Related reading

Last year broke all sorts of climate records, from emissions to ocean temperatures. For more on the data, check out this story from December.

How hot is too hot for the human body? I tackled that very question in a 2021 story.  

Another thing

Readers chose thermal batteries as the 11th Breakthrough Technology of 2024. If you want to hear more about what thermal batteries are, how they work, and why this all matters, join us for the latest in our Roundtables series of online events, where I’ll be getting into the nitty-gritty details and answering some audience questions.

This event is exclusively for subscribers, so subscribe if you haven’t already, and then register here to join us tomorrow, May 16, at noon Eastern time. Hope to see you there! 

Keeping up with climate  

Scientists just recorded the largest ever annual leap in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The concentration of the planet-warming gas in March 2024 was 4.7 parts per million higher than it was a year before. (The Guardian)

Tesla has reportedly begun rehiring some of the workers who were laid off from its charging team in recent weeks. (Bloomberg)

→ To catch up on what’s going on at Tesla, and what it means for the future of EV charging and climate tech more broadly, check out the newsletter from last week if you missed it. (MIT Technology Review)

A new rule could spur thousands of miles of new power lines, making it easier to add renewables to the grid in the US. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will require grid operators to plan 20 years ahead, considering things like the speed of wind and solar installations. (New York Times)

Where does carbon dioxide go after it’s been vacuumed out of the atmosphere? Here are 10 options. (Latitude Media)

Ocean temperatures have been extremely high, shattering records over the past year. All that heat could help fuel a particularly busy upcoming hurricane season. (E&E News)

New tariffs in the US will tack on additional costs to a wide range of Chinese imports, including batteries and solar cells. The tariff on EVs will take a particularly drastic jump, going from 27.5% to 102.5%. (Associated Press)

A reporter took a trip to the Beijing Auto Show and drove dozens of EVs. His conclusion? Chinese EVs are advancing much faster than Western automakers can keep up with. (InsideEVs)

Harnessing solar power via satellites in space and beaming it down to Earth is a tempting dream. But the reality, as you might expect, is probably not so rosy. (IEEE Spectrum)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Tesla, the world’s largest EV maker, laid off its entire charging team last week. 

The timing of this move is absolutely baffling. We desperately need many more EV chargers to come online as quickly as possible, and Tesla has been a charging powerhouse. It’s in the midst of opening its charging network to other automakers and establishing its technology as the de facto standard in the US. Now, we’re already seeing new Supercharger sites canceled because of this move. 

The charging meltdown at Tesla could slow progress on EVs overall, and ultimately, the whole situation shows why climate technology needs a whole lot more than Tesla. 

Tesla first unveiled the Supercharger network in 2012 with six locations in the western US. As of 2024, the company operates over 50,000 Superchargers worldwide. (By the way, I want to note that I briefly interned at Tesla in 2016. I don’t have any ties to or financial interest in the company today.) 

The Supercharger network helped make Tesla an EV juggernaut. Fast charging speeds and a navigation system that took the guesswork out of finding charging stations helped ease the transition for people buying their first EVs. Tesla operates more fast chargers than anyone else in the US, and the reliability of those chargers is leagues better than that of competitors. For a long time, this was all exclusive to Tesla drivers. 

Over the past year, Tesla has begun cracking open the doors to its charging network. The company made some of its stations available to all EVs, in part to go after incentives designated for private companies building public chargers. 

In the US, Tesla has also persuaded other automakers to adopt its charging connector, which it standardized and named the North American Charging Standard. In May 2023, Ford announced a move to adopt the NACS, and nearly every other automaker selling EVs in the US has followed suit.

Then, last week, Tesla laid off its 500-person charging team. The move came as part of wider layoffs that are expected to affect 10% of Tesla’s global workforce. Even interns weren’t immune.

Tesla “still plans to grow the Supercharger network,” though the focus will shift to maintaining and expanding existing locations rather than adding new ones, according to a post from CEO Elon Musk on the site formerly known as Twitter. (How does the company plan to expand or even maintain existing locations with apparently no dedicated charging team? Your guess is as good as mine. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

But the effects from losing the charging team were immediate. Tesla backed out of a handful of leases for upcoming Supercharger locations in New York. In an email, the company told suppliers to hold off on breaking ground on new construction projects. 

The move is a concerning one at a crucial time for EV charging infrastructure. Right now, there are nowhere near enough chargers installed in the US to support a shift to electric vehicles. If EVs make up half of new-car sales by the end of the decade, we’ll need roughly 1.2 million public chargers installed by then, according to a 2023 study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Today, the country has 170,000 charging ports available. 

In a recent poll, nearly 80% of US adults said that a lack of charging infrastructure is a primary reason for not buying an EV. That was true whether they lived in a city, in the suburbs, or in more rural areas.

In a way, it does make sense that Tesla appears to be uninterested in being the one to build out a public charging network. Chargers are costly to build and maintain, and they might not be all that profitable in the near term. 

According to analysis by BNEF, Tesla pulled in about $1.7 billion from charging last year, only about 1.5% of the company’s total revenue. Opening up chargers to vehicles from other automakers could help push revenue from this source up to $7.4 billion annually by the end of the decade. But that’s still a relatively small piece of Tesla’s total potential pie. 

Musk seems more interested in pursuing buzzy ideas like robotaxis than doing the difficult and expensive work of providing EV charging as a public service. 

Honestly, I think this move is a wake-up call for the EV industry. Tesla has played an undeniable role in bringing EVs to the mainstream. But we’re in a new stage of the game now, one that’s less about sleek sports cars and more about deploying known technologies and keeping them working. 

Other companies may step in to help fill the charging gap Tesla is opening. Revel expressed interest in taking over those canceled leases in New York City, for instance. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for a shiny new company to be our charging hero. 

Cutting emissions and remaking our economy will require buckling down to deploy and maintain solutions that we already know work, whether that’s in transportation or any other sector. For EV charging, and for climate technology as a whole, we need more than Tesla. Here’s hoping we can get it. 

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Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

Perhaps the single biggest remaining barrier to EV adoption is a lack of charging infrastructure, as I wrote in a newsletter last year.

We need way more chargers to support the number of new EVs that are expected to hit the roads this decade. I dug into how many for a news story last year.

New battery technology could help EV batteries charge even faster. Learn what could be coming next in this story from August.

Another thing

Meat is a major climate problem. Whether solutions come in the form of plant-based alternatives or products grown in the lab, we shouldn’t expect them to solve every problem under the sun, argues my colleague James Temple, in a new essay published this week. Give it a read! 

Keeping up with climate  

Alternative jet fuels have a corn problem. The crop can be used to make fuels that qualify for tax credits in the US, but critics are skeptical about just how helpful they’ll be in efforts to cut emissions. (MIT Technology Review)

This startup is making fuel from carbon dioxide. Infinium’s Texas facility came online in late 2023, and its synthetic fuels could help clean up aviation and trucking—but only if the price is right. (Bloomberg)

New York City pizza shops are going electric. A citywide ordinance just went into effect that requires wood- and coal-burning ovens to cut their pollution, and many are turning to electric ovens instead of undertaking the costly upgrade. (New York Times)

Building a new energy system happens one project at a time. I loved this list of 10 potentially make-or-break projects that represent the potential future of our grid. (Heatmap)

→ The list includes a new site from Fervo in Utah, expected in 2026. Get the inside look at the company’s technology in this feature story from last year. (MIT Technology Review)

Funding for climate-tech startups in Africa is growing, with businesses raising more than $3.4 billion since 2019. But there’s still a long way to go to help the continent meet its climate goals. (Associated Press)

One very big, and very simple, thing is holding back heat pumps: a lack of workers. We need more people to make and install the appliances, which help cut emissions by using electricity to efficiently heat and cool spaces. (Wired)

→ Heat pumps are booming, and they’re on our list of 2024 Breakthrough Technologies. (MIT Technology Review)

Compressing air and storing it underground could help clean up the grid. Yes, really. Canadian company Hydrostor is close to breaking ground on its first large long-duration energy storage project later this year in Australia. (Inside Climate News)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Batteries are on my mind this week. (Aren’t they always?) But I’ve got two extra reasons to be thinking about them today. 

First, there’s a new special report from the International Energy Agency all about how crucial batteries are for our future energy systems. The report calls batteries a “master key,” meaning they can unlock the potential of other technologies that will help cut emissions. Second, we’re seeing early signs in California of how the technology might be earning that “master key” status already by helping renewables play an even bigger role on the grid. So let’s dig into some battery data together. 

1) Battery storage in the power sector was the fastest-growing commercial energy technology on the planet in 2023. 

Deployment doubled over the previous year’s figures, hitting nearly 42 gigawatts. That includes utility-scale projects as well as projects installed “behind the meter,” meaning they’re somewhere like a home or business and don’t interact with the grid. 

Over half the additions in 2023 were in China, which has been the leading market in batteries for energy storage for the past two years. Growth is faster there than the global average, and installations tripled from 2022 to last year. 

One driving force of this quick growth in China is that some provincial policies require developers of new solar and wind power projects to pair them with a certain level of energy storage, according to the IEA report.

Intermittent renewables like wind and solar have grown rapidly in China and around the world, and the technologies are beginning to help clean up the grid. But these storage requirement policies reveal the next step: installing batteries to help unlock the potential of renewables even during times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. 

2) Batteries are starting to show exactly how they’ll play a crucial role on the grid.

When there are small amounts of renewables, it’s not all that important to have storage available, since the sun’s rising and setting will cause little more than blips in the overall energy mix. But as the share increases, some of the challenges with intermittent renewables become very clear. 

We’ve started to see this play out in California. Renewables are able to supply nearly all the grid’s energy demand during the day on sunny days. The problem is just how different the picture is at noon and just eight hours later, once the sun has gone down. 

In the middle of the day, there’s so much solar power available that gigawatts are basically getting thrown away. Electricity prices can actually go negative. Then, later on, renewables quickly fall off, and other sources like natural gas need to ramp up to meet demand. 

But energy storage is starting to catch up and make a dent in smoothing out that daily variation. On April 16, for the first time, batteries were the single greatest power source on the grid in California during part of the early evening, just as solar fell off for the day. (Look for the bump in the darkest line on the graph above—it happens right after 6 p.m.)

Batteries have reached this number-one status several more times over the past few weeks, a sign that the energy storage now installed—10 gigawatts’ worth—is beginning to play a part in a balanced grid. 

3) We need to build a lot more energy storage. Good news: batteries are getting cheaper.

While early signs show just how important batteries can be in our energy system, we still need gobs more to actually clean up the grid. If we’re going to be on track to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to zero by midcentury, we’ll need to increase battery deployment sevenfold. 

The good news is the technology is becoming increasingly economical. Battery costs have fallen drastically, dropping 90% since 2010, and they’re not done yet. According to the IEA report, battery costs could fall an additional 40% by the end of this decade. Those further cost declines would make solar projects with battery storage cheaper to build than new coal power plants in India and China, and cheaper than new gas plants in the US. 

Batteries won’t be the magic miracle technology that cleans up the entire grid. Other sources of low-carbon energy that are more consistently available, like geothermal, or able to ramp up and down to meet demand, like hydropower, will be crucial parts of the energy system. But I’m interested to keep watching just how batteries contribute to the mix. 

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Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

Some companies are looking beyond lithium for stationary energy storage. Dig into the prospects for sodium-based batteries in this story from last year.

Lithium-sulfur technology could unlock cheaper, better batteries for electric vehicles that can go farther on a single charge. I covered one company trying to make them a reality earlier this year.

Another thing

Thermal batteries are so hot right now. In fact, readers chose the technology as our 11th Breakthrough Technology of 2024.

To celebrate, we’re hosting an online event in a couple of weeks for subscribers. We’ll dig into why thermal batteries are so interesting and why this is a breakthrough moment for the technology. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so subscribe if you haven’t already and then register here to join us on May 16 at noon Eastern time.

You’ll be able to submit a question when you register—please do that so I know what you want to hear about! See you there! 

Keeping up with climate  

New rules that force US power plants to slash emissions could effectively spell the end of coal power in the country. Here are five things to know about the regulations. (New York Times)

Wind farms use less land than you might expect. Turbines really take up only a small fraction of the land where they’re sited, and co-locating projects with farms or other developments can help reduce environmental impact. (Washington Post)

The fourth reactor at Plant Vogtle in Georgia officially entered commercial operation this week. The new reactor will provide electricity for up to 500,000 homes and businesses. (Axios) 

A new factory will be the first full-scale plant to produce sodium-ion batteries in the US. The chemistry could provide a cheaper alternative to the standard lithium-ion chemistry and avoid material constraints. (Bloomberg)

→ I wrote about the potential for sodium-based batteries last year. (MIT Technology Review)

Tesla has apparently laid off a huge portion of its charging team. The move comes as the company’s charging port has been adopted by most major automakers. (The Verge)

A vegan cheese was up for a major food award. Then, things got messy. (Washington Post)

→ For a look at how Climax Foods makes its plant-based cheese with AI, check out this story from our latest magazine issue. (MIT Technology Review)

Someday mining might be done with … seaweed? Early research is looking into using seaweed to capture and concentrate high-value metals. (Hakai)

The planet’s oceans contain enormous amounts of energy. Harnessing it is an early-stage industry, but some proponents argue there’s a role for wave and tidal power technologies. (Undark)

Political fights over mining and minerals are heating up, and there are growing environmental and sociological concerns about how to source the materials the world needs to build new energy technologies. 

But low-emissions energy sources, including wind, solar, and nuclear power, have a smaller mining footprint than coal and natural gas, according to a new report from the Breakthrough Institute released today.

The report’s findings add to a growing body of evidence that technologies used to address climate change will likely lead to a future with less mining than a world powered by fossil fuels. However, experts point out that oversight will be necessary to minimize harm from the mining needed to transition to lower-emission energy sources. 

“In many ways, we talk so much about the mining of clean energy technologies, and we forget about the dirtiness of our current system,” says Seaver Wang, an author of the report and co-director of Climate and Energy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center.  

In the new analysis, Wang and his colleagues considered the total mining footprint of different energy technologies, including the amount of material needed for these energy sources and the total amount of rock that needs to be moved to extract that material.

Many minerals appear in small concentrations in source rock, so the process of extracting them has a large footprint relative to the amount of final product. A mining operation would need to move about seven kilograms of rock to get one kilogram of aluminum, for instance. For copper, the ratio is much higher, at over 500 to one. Taking these ratios into account allows for a more direct comparison of the total mining required for different energy sources. 

With this adjustment, it becomes clear that the energy source with the highest mining burden is coal. Generating one gigawatt-hour of electricity with coal requires 20 times the mining footprint as generating the same electricity with low-carbon power sources like wind and solar. Producing the same electricity with natural gas requires moving about twice as much rock.

Tallying up the amount of rock moved is an imperfect approximation of the potential environmental and sociological impact of mining related to different technologies, Wang says, but the report’s results allow researchers to draw some broad conclusions. One is that we’re on track for less mining in the future. 

Other researchers have projected a decrease in mining accompanying a move to low-emissions energy sources. “We mine so many fossil fuels today that the sum of mining activities decreases even when we assume an incredibly rapid expansion of clean energy technologies,” Joey Nijnens, a consultant at Monitor Deloitte and author of another recent study on mining demand, said in an email.

That being said, potentially moving less rock around in the future “hardly means that society shouldn’t look for further opportunities to reduce mining impacts throughout the energy transition,” Wang says.

There’s already been progress in cutting down on the material required for technologies like wind and solar. Solar modules have gotten more efficient, so the same amount of material can yield more electricity generation. Recycling can help further cut material demand in the future, and it will be especially crucial to reduce the mining needed to build batteries.  

Resource extraction may decrease overall, but it’s also likely to increase in some places as our demands change, researchers pointed out in a 2021 study. Between 32% and 40% of the mining increase in the future could occur in countries with weak, poor, or failing resource governance, where mining is more likely to harm the environment and may fail to benefit people living near the mining projects. 

“We need to ensure that the energy transition is accompanied by responsible mining that benefits local communities,” Takuma Watari, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies and an author of the study, said via email. Otherwise, the shift to lower-emissions energy sources could lead to a reduction of carbon emissions in the Global North “at the expense of increasing socio-environmental risks in local mining areas, often in the Global South.” 

Strong oversight and accountability are crucial to make sure that we can source minerals in a responsible way, Wang says: “We want a rapid energy transition, but we also want an energy transition that’s equitable.”

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

From toaster ovens that work as air fryers to hair dryers that can also curl your hair, single tools that do multiple jobs have an undeniable appeal. 

In the climate world, hydrogen is perhaps the ultimate multi-tool. It can be used in fuel cells or combustion engines and is sometimes called the Swiss Army knife for cleaning up emissions. I’ve written about efforts to use hydrogen in steelmaking, cars, and aviation, just to name a few. And a new story for our latest print issue explores the potential of hydrogen trains. 

Hydrogen might be a million tools in one, but some experts argue that it can’t do it all, and some uses could actually be distractions from real progress on emissions. So let’s dig into where we might see hydrogen used and where it might make the biggest emissions cuts. 

Hydrogen could play a role in cleaning up nearly every sector of the economy—in theory. The reality today is that hydrogen is much more of a climate problem than a solution.

Most hydrogen is used in oil refining, chemical production, and heavy industry, and it is almost exclusively generated using fossil fuels. In total, hydrogen production and use accounted for around 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022.

There are technologies on the table to clean up hydrogen production. But global hydrogen demand hit 95 million metric tons in 2022, and only about 0.7% of that was met with low-emissions hydrogen. (For more on various hydrogen sources and why the details matter, check out this newsletter from last year.) 

Transforming the global hydrogen economy won’t be fast or cheap, but it is happening. Annual production of low-emissions hydrogen is on track to hit 38 million metric tons by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. The pipeline of new projects is growing quickly, but so is hydrogen demand, which could hit 150 million metric tons by the end of the decade. 

Basically every time I report on hydrogen, whether in transportation or energy or industry, experts tell me it’s crucial to be smart about where that low-emissions hydrogen is going. There are, of course, disagreements about what exactly the order of priorities should be, but I’ve seen a few patterns.

First, the focus should probably be on cleaning up production of the hydrogen we’re already using for things like fertilizer. “The main thing is replacing existing uses,” as Geert de Cock, electricity and energy manager at the European Federation for Transport and Environment, put it when I spoke with him earlier this year for a story about hydrogen cars.  

Beyond that, though, hydrogen will probably be most useful in industries where there aren’t other practical options already on the table. 

That’s a central idea behind an infographic I think about a lot: the Hydrogen Ladder, conceptualized and updated frequently by Michael Liebreich, founder of BloombergNEF. In this graphic, he basically ranks just about every use of hydrogen, from “unavoidable” uses at the top to “uncompetitive” ones at the bottom. His metrics include cost, convenience, and economics. 

At the top of this ladder are existing uses and industries where there’s no alternative to hydrogen. There, Liebrich agrees with most experts I’ve spoken with about hydrogen. 

On the next few rungs come sectors where there’s still no dominant technical solution for cleaning up emissions, like shipping, aviation, and steel production. You might recognize these as famously “hard to solve” sectors. 

Heavy industry often requires high temperatures, which have historically been expensive to achieve with electricity. Cost and technical challenges have pushed companies to explore using hydrogen in processes like steelmaking. For shipping and aviation, there are strict limitations on the mass and size of the fueling system, and batteries can’t make the cut just yet, leaving hydrogen a potential opening. 

Toward the bottom of Liebreich’s ladder are applications where we already have clear decarbonization options available today, making hydrogen a long shot. Take domestic heating, for example. Heat pumps are breaking through in a massive way (we put them on our list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year), so hydrogen has some stiff competition there. 

Cars also rank right at the bottom of the ladder, alongside two- and three-wheeled vehicles, since battery-powered transit is becoming increasingly popular and charging infrastructure is growing. That leaves little room for hydrogen vehicles to make a dent, at least in the near future.

I’m not counting hydrogen out as a fuel for any one use, and there’s plenty of room to disagree on particular uses and their particular rungs. But given that we have a growing number of options in our arsenal to fight climate change, I’m betting that as a general rule, hydrogen will find its niches rather than emerge as the magic multi-tool that saves us all.

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Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

A fight over hydrogen trains reveals that cleaning up transportation is a political problem as much as it is a technical one. Read more in this story from Benjamin Schneider, featured in our latest magazine issue. 

Where hydrogen comes from matters immensely when it comes to climate impacts. Read more in this newsletter from last year.

Hydrogen is losing the race to cut emissions from cars, and I explored why for a story earlier this year. 

Another thing

It’s here! The Build issue of our print magazine just dropped, and it’s a good one. 

Dive into this story about how artificial snowdrifts could help protect seal pups from climate change. Volunteers in Finland brave freezing temperatures to help create an environment for endangered seals to thrive. 

Or if you’re feeling hungry, I’d recommend this look at how Climax Foods is using machine learning to create vegan cheeses that can stand up to discerning palates. (I have tasted these and can attest that some of them are truly uncanny.) 

Find the full issue here. Happy reading! 

Keeping up with climate  

A solar giant is moving manufacturing to the US. Tariffs and tax incentives are reshaping the solar market, but things could get challenging fast, as my colleague Zeyi Yang reported this week. (MIT Technology Review)

In a new op-ed, Daniele Visioni makes the case that proposals to crack down on geoengineering are misguided. He calls for more research, including outdoor experiments, to make better decisions about climate interventions. (MIT Technology Review)

Americans have some surprising feelings about EVs. And in a recent survey, fewer than half of US adults said they think EVs are better for the climate than gas-powered ones. (Sustainability by numbers)

An Australian supplier of fast charging equipment for EVs is in financial trouble. Tritium told regulators that it’s insolvent, and it’s unclear whether the company will be able to fill orders or service existing chargers. (Canary Media)

Offshore wind has faced its fair share of challenges, but the death of a mega-turbine may have played a major role. GE Vernova canceled plans for a 18-megawatt machine, causing ripples that ended in New York’s move to cancel contracts for three massive projects last week. (E&E News)

The UK’s final coal power station is set to close within the year. Here’s a look at the last site generating what used to be the country’s main source of energy. (The Guardian)

Is it time to retire the term “clean energy”? The term is a convenient way to roll up energy sources that cut emissions, like renewables and nuclear power, but some argue that it glosses over environmental harms. (Inside Climate News)

California saw batteries become the single largest source of power on the grid one evening last week—a major moment for energy storage. (Heatmap News)

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

The votes have been tallied, and the results are in. The winner of the 11th Breakthrough Technology, 2024 edition, is … drumroll please … thermal batteries! 

While the editors of MIT Technology Review choose the annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies, in 2022 we started having readers weigh in on an 11th technology. And I don’t mean to flatter you, but I think you picked a fascinating one this year. 

Thermal energy storage is a convenient way to stockpile energy for later. This could be crucial in connecting cheap but inconsistent renewable energy with industrial facilities, which often require a constant supply of heat. 

I wrote about why this technology is having a moment, and where it might wind up being used, in a story published Monday. For the newsletter this week, let’s take a deeper look at the different kinds of thermal batteries out there, because there’s a wide world of possibilities. 

Step 1: Choose your energy source

In the journey to build a thermal battery, the crucial first step is to choose where your heat comes from. Most of the companies I’ve come across are building some sort of power-to-heat system, meaning electricity goes in and heat comes out. Heat often gets generated by running a current through a resistive material in a process similar to what happens when you turn on a toaster.

Some projects may take electricity directly from sources like wind turbines or solar panels that aren’t hooked up to the grid. That could reduce energy costs, since you don’t have to pay surcharges built into grid electricity rates, explains Jeffrey Rissman, senior director of industry at Energy Innovation, a policy and research firm specializing in energy and climate. 

Otherwise, thermal batteries can be hooked up to the grid directly. These systems could allow a facility to charge up when electricity prices are low or when there’s a lot of renewable energy on the grid. 

Some thermal storage systems are soaking up waste heat rather than relying on electricity. Brenmiller Energy, for example, is building thermal batteries that can be charged up with heat or electricity, depending on the customer’s needs. 

Depending on the heat source, systems using waste heat may not be able to reach temperatures as high as their electricity-powered counterparts, but they could help increase the efficiency of facilities that would otherwise waste that energy. There’s especially high potential for high-temperature processes, like cement and steel production. 

Step 2: Choose your storage material

Next up: pick out a heat storage medium. These materials should probably be inexpensive and able to reach and withstand high temperatures. 

Bricks and carbon blocks are popular choices, as they can be packed together and, depending on the material, reach temperatures well over 1,000 °C (1,800 °F). Rondo Energy, Antora Energy, and Electrified Thermal Solutions are among the companies using blocks and bricks to store heat at these high temperatures. 

Crushed-up rocks are another option, and the storage medium of choice for Brenmiller Energy. Caldera is using a mixture of aluminum and crushed rock. 

Molten materials can offer even more options for delivering thermal energy later, since they can be pumped around (though this can also add more complexity to the system). Malta is building thermal storage systems that use molten salt, and companies like Fourth Power are using systems that rely in part on molten metals. 

Step 3: Choose your delivery method

Last, and perhaps most important, is deciding how to get energy back out of your storage system. Generally, thermal storage systems can deliver heat, use it to generate electricity, or go with some combination of the two. 

Delivering heat is the most straightforward option. Typically, air or another gas gets blown over the hot thermal storage material, and that heated gas can be used to warm up equipment or to generate steam. 

Some companies are working to use heat storage to deliver electricity instead. This could allow thermal storage systems to play a role not only in industry but potentially on the electrical grid as an electricity storage solution. One downside? These systems generally take a hit on efficiency, the amount of energy that can be returned from storage. But they may be right for some situations, such as facilities that need both heat and electricity on demand. Antora Energy is aiming to use thermophotovoltaic materials to turn heat stored in its carbon blocks back into electricity. 

Some companies plan to offer a middle path, delivering a combination of heat and electricity, depending on what a facility needs. Rondo Energy’s heat batteries can deliver high-pressure steam that can be used either for heating alone or to generate some electricity using cogeneration units. 

The possibilities are seemingly endless for thermal batteries, and I’m seeing new players with new ideas all the time. Stay tuned for much more coverage of this hot technology (sorry, I had to). 

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Related reading

Read more about why thermal batteries won the title of 11th breakthrough technology in my story from Monday.

I first wrote about heat as energy storage in this piece last year. As I put it then: the hottest new climate technology is bricks. 

Companies have made some progress in scaling up thermal batteries—our former fellow June Kim wrote about one new manufacturing facility in October.

Another thing

The state of Louisiana in the southeast US has lost over a million acres of its coast to erosion. A pilot project aims to save some homes in the state by raising them up to avoid the worst of flooding. 

It’s an ambitious attempt to build a solution to a crisis, and the effort could help keep communities together. But some experts worry that elevation projects offer too rosy an outlook and think we need to focus on relocation instead. Read more in this fascinating feature story from Xander Peters.

Keeping up with climate  

It can be easy to forget, but we’ve actually already made a lot of progress on addressing climate change. A decade ago, the world was on track for about 3.7 °C of warming over preindustrial levels. Today, it’s 2.7 °C with current actions and policies—higher than it should be but lower than it might have been. (Cipher News)

We’re probably going to have more batteries than we actually need for a while. Today, China alone makes enough batteries to satisfy global demand, which could make things tough for new players in the battery game. (Bloomberg) 

2023 was a record year for wind power. The world installed 117 gigawatts of new capacity last year, 50% more than the year before. (Associated Press)

→ Here’s what’s coming next for offshore wind. (MIT Technology Review)

Coal power grew in 2023, driven by a surge of new plants coming online in China and a slowdown of retirements in Europe and the US. (New York Times)

People who live near solar farms generally have positive feelings about their electricity-producing neighbors. There’s more negative sentiment among people who live very close to the biggest projects, though. (Inside Climate News)

E-scooters have been zipping through city streets for eight years, but they haven’t exactly ushered in the zero-emissions micro-mobility future that some had hoped for. Shared scooters can cut emissions, but it all depends on rider behavior and company practices. (Grist)

The grid could use a renovation. Replacing existing power lines with new materials could double grid capacity in many parts of the US, clearing the way for more renewables. (New York Times) 

The first all-electric tugboat in the US is about to launch in San Diego. The small boats are crucial to help larger vessels in and around ports, and the fossil-fuel-powered ones are a climate nightmare. (Canary Media)