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The quest to fix the irony at the heart of every heat pump

News Feed
Friday, April 4, 2025

Heat pumps are essential for ditching fossil fuels. The appliances are many times more efficient than even the best gas furnaces, and they run on electricity, so they can draw power from renewables like wind and solar.  But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas over 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of CO2.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation, and disposal of heat pumps.  But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75 percent less global warming potential. That’s in response to Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating that, starting this year, heat pump refrigerants have a global warming potential of no more than 700. Manufacturers are looking even farther ahead at the possibility of using propane, or even CO2, as the next generation of more atmospherically friendly refrigerants. “The whole industry is going to be transitioning away from R-410A, so that’s good,” said Jeff Stewart, the refrigeration chief engineer for residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning at Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps and gas furnaces. “We’re getting lower global warming potential. The problem is, it still has some, right? So there’s concern about ‘OK, is that low enough to really help the environment?’” To be clear, heat pumps do not release greenhouse gases at anywhere near the scale of burning natural gas to heat homes, so their environmental impact is way smaller. “Even if we lost all the refrigerant, it still actually has a much smaller effect just having a heat pump and not burning gas,” said Matthew Knoll, co-founder and chief technology officer at California-based Quilt, which builds heat pump systems for homes. “I would actually want to make sure that doesn’t hamper the rapid adoption of heat pumps.” But why does a heat pump need refrigerant? Well, to transfer heat. By changing the state of the liquid to a gas, then compressing it, the appliance absorbs heat from even very cold outdoor air and moves it indoors. Then in the summer, the process reverses to work like a traditional air conditioner. The potential for refrigerant leaks is much smaller if the heat pump is properly manufactured, installed, and maintained. When a manufacturer switches refrigerants, the basic operation of the heat pump stays the same. But some formulations operate at different pressures, meaning they’ll need slightly different sized components and perhaps stronger materials. “It’s all the same fundamental principles,” said Vince Romanin, CEO of San Francisco-based Gradient, which makes heat pumps that slip over window sills. “But it does take a re-engineering and a recertification of all of these components.” While Trane has transitioned to R-454B, Gradient and other companies are adopting R-32, which has a global warming potential of 675 and brings it in line with the new regulations. Gradient says that with engineering improvements, like hermetic sealing that makes it harder for refrigerants to escape, and by properly recycling its appliances, it can reduce the climate footprint of heat pumps by 95 percent. “Our math shows R-32, plus good refrigerant management, those two things combined solve almost all of the refrigerant problem,” said Romanin. “Because of that data, Gradient believes the industry should stay on R-32 until we’re ready for natural refrigerants.” Those include CO2, butane, and propane. CO2 has a global warming potential of just 1, but it works at much higher pressures, which requires thicker tubes and compressors. It’s also less efficient in hot weather, meaning it’s not the best option for a heat pump in cooling mode in the summer. Propane, on the other hand, excels in different conditions and operates at a lower pressure than the refrigerants it would replace. It also has a global warming potential of just 3. Propane is flammable, of course, but heat pumps can run it safely by separating sources of ignition, like electrical components, from the refrigerant compartments. “It is kind of perfect for heat pumps,” said Richard Gerbe, board member and technical advisor at Italy-based Aermec, another maker of heat pumps. That’s why Europe is already switching to propane, and why the U.S. may soon follow, Gerbe said. A typical heat pump will run about 10 pounds of propane, less than what’s found in a barbeque tank. Gas furnaces and stoves, by contrast, are constantly fed with flammable natural gas that can leak, potentially leading to explosions or carbon monoxide poisoning. “If you’ve got a comfort level with a gas stove in your house,” Gerbe said, “this is significantly less of a source.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The quest to fix the irony at the heart of every heat pump on Apr 4, 2025.

The appliances are key to ditching fossil fuels, but they rely on powerful greenhouse gases to work. Here’s how to tackle that problem.

Heat pumps are essential for ditching fossil fuels. The appliances are many times more efficient than even the best gas furnaces, and they run on electricity, so they can draw power from renewables like wind and solar. 

But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas over 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of CO2.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation, and disposal of heat pumps. 

But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75 percent less global warming potential. That’s in response to Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating that, starting this year, heat pump refrigerants have a global warming potential of no more than 700. Manufacturers are looking even farther ahead at the possibility of using propane, or even CO2, as the next generation of more atmospherically friendly refrigerants.

“The whole industry is going to be transitioning away from R-410A, so that’s good,” said Jeff Stewart, the refrigeration chief engineer for residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning at Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps and gas furnaces. “We’re getting lower global warming potential. The problem is, it still has some, right? So there’s concern about ‘OK, is that low enough to really help the environment?’”

To be clear, heat pumps do not release greenhouse gases at anywhere near the scale of burning natural gas to heat homes, so their environmental impact is way smaller. “Even if we lost all the refrigerant, it still actually has a much smaller effect just having a heat pump and not burning gas,” said Matthew Knoll, co-founder and chief technology officer at California-based Quilt, which builds heat pump systems for homes. “I would actually want to make sure that doesn’t hamper the rapid adoption of heat pumps.”

But why does a heat pump need refrigerant? Well, to transfer heat. By changing the state of the liquid to a gas, then compressing it, the appliance absorbs heat from even very cold outdoor air and moves it indoors. Then in the summer, the process reverses to work like a traditional air conditioner.

The potential for refrigerant leaks is much smaller if the heat pump is properly manufactured, installed, and maintained. When a manufacturer switches refrigerants, the basic operation of the heat pump stays the same. But some formulations operate at different pressures, meaning they’ll need slightly different sized components and perhaps stronger materials. “It’s all the same fundamental principles,” said Vince Romanin, CEO of San Francisco-based Gradient, which makes heat pumps that slip over window sills. “But it does take a re-engineering and a recertification of all of these components.”

While Trane has transitioned to R-454B, Gradient and other companies are adopting R-32, which has a global warming potential of 675 and brings it in line with the new regulations. Gradient says that with engineering improvements, like hermetic sealing that makes it harder for refrigerants to escape, and by properly recycling its appliances, it can reduce the climate footprint of heat pumps by 95 percent. “Our math shows R-32, plus good refrigerant management, those two things combined solve almost all of the refrigerant problem,” said Romanin. “Because of that data, Gradient believes the industry should stay on R-32 until we’re ready for natural refrigerants.”

Those include CO2, butane, and propane. CO2 has a global warming potential of just 1, but it works at much higher pressures, which requires thicker tubes and compressors. It’s also less efficient in hot weather, meaning it’s not the best option for a heat pump in cooling mode in the summer.

Propane, on the other hand, excels in different conditions and operates at a lower pressure than the refrigerants it would replace. It also has a global warming potential of just 3. Propane is flammable, of course, but heat pumps can run it safely by separating sources of ignition, like electrical components, from the refrigerant compartments. “It is kind of perfect for heat pumps,” said Richard Gerbe, board member and technical advisor at Italy-based Aermec, another maker of heat pumps.

That’s why Europe is already switching to propane, and why the U.S. may soon follow, Gerbe said. A typical heat pump will run about 10 pounds of propane, less than what’s found in a barbeque tank. Gas furnaces and stoves, by contrast, are constantly fed with flammable natural gas that can leak, potentially leading to explosions or carbon monoxide poisoning. “If you’ve got a comfort level with a gas stove in your house,” Gerbe said, “this is significantly less of a source.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The quest to fix the irony at the heart of every heat pump on Apr 4, 2025.

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Climate change could deliver considerable blows to US corn growers, insurers: Study

Federal corn crop insurers could see a 22 percent spike in claims filed by 2030 and a nearly 29 percent jump by mid-century, thanks to the impacts of climate change, a new study has found. Both U.S. corn growers and their insurers are poised to face a future with mounting economic uncertainty, according to the...

Federal corn crop insurers could see a 22 percent spike in claims filed by 2030 and a nearly 29 percent jump by mid-century, thanks to the impacts of climate change, a new study has found. Both U.S. corn growers and their insurers are poised to face a future with mounting economic uncertainty, according to the research, published on Friday in the Journal of Data Science, Statistics, and Visualisation. “Crop insurance has increased 500 percent since the early 2000s, and our simulations show that insurance costs will likely double again by 2050,” lead author Sam Pottinger, a senior researcher at the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Data Science & Environment, said in a statement. “This significant increase will result from a future in which extreme weather events will become more common, which puts both growers and insurance companies at substantial risk,” he warned. Pottinger and his colleagues at both UC Berkeley and the University of Arkansas developed an open-source, AI-powered tool through which they were able to simulate growing conditions through 2050 under varying scenarios. They found that if growing conditions remained unchanged, federal crop insurance companies would see a continuation of current claim rates in the next three decades. However, under different climate change scenarios, claims could rise by anywhere from 13 to 22 percent by 2030, before reaching about 29 percent by 2050, according to the data. Federal crop insurance, distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), provides economic stability to U.S. farmers and other agricultural entities, the researchers explained. Most U.S. farmers receive their primary insurance through this program, with coverage determined by a grower’s annual crop yield, per the terms of the national Farm Bill. “Not only do we see the claims’ rate rise significantly in a future under climate change, but the severity of these claims increases too,” co-author Lawson Conner, an assistant professor in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas, said in a statement. “For example, we found that insurance companies could see the average covered portion of a claim increase up to 19 percent by 2050,” Conner noted. The researchers stressed the utility of their tool for people who want to understand how crop insurance prices are established and foresee potential neighborhood-level impacts. To achieve greater security for growers and reduce financial liability for companies in the future, the authors suggested two possible avenues. The first, they contended, could involve a small change to the Farm Bill text that could incentivize farmers to adopt practices such as cover cropping and crop rotation. Although these approaches can lead to lower annual yields, they bolster crop resilience over time, the authors noted. Their second recommendation would  involve including similar such incentives in an existing USDA Risk Management Agency mechanism called 508(h), through which private companies recommend alternative and supplemental insurance products for the agency’s consideration. “We are already seeing more intense droughts, longer heat waves, and more catastrophic floods,” co-author Timothy Bowles, associate professor in environmental science at UC Berkeley, said in a statement.  “In a future that will bring even more of these, our recommendations could help protect growers and insurance providers against extreme weather impacts,” Bowles added.

Climate
Agriculture
Science

From Greenland to Ghana, Indigenous youth work for climate justice

“No matter what happens we will stand and we will fight, and we will keep pushing for solutions.”

For the last week,  Indigenous leaders from around the world have converged in New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFI. It’s the largest global gathering of Indigenous peoples and the Forum provides space for participants to bring their issues to international authorities, often when their own governments have refused to take action. This year’s Forum focuses on how U.N. member states’ have, or have not, protected the rights of Indigenous peoples, and conversations range from the environmental effects of extractive industries, to climate change, and violence against women. The Forum is an intergenerational space. Young people in attendance often work alongside elders and leaders to come up with solutions and address ongoing challenges. Grist interviewed seven Indigenous youth attending UNPFII this year hailing from Africa, the Pacific, North and South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Arctic. Joshua Amponsem, 33, is Asante from Ghana and the founder of Green Africa Youth Organization, a youth-led group in Africa that promotes energy sustainability. He also is the co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund which provides funding opportunities to bolster youth participation in climate change solutions.  Since the Trump administration pulled all the funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, Amponsem has seen the people and groups he works with suffer from the loss of financial help. Courtesy of Joshua Amponsem It’s already hard to be a young person fighting climate change. Less than one percent of climate grants go to youth-led programs, according to the Youth Climate Justice Fund.   “I think everyone is very much worried,” he said. “That is leading to a lot of anxiety.”  Amponsem specifically mentioned the importance of groups like Africa Youth Pastoralist Initiatives — a coalition of youth who raise animals like sheep or cattle. Pastoralists need support to address climate change because the work of herding sheep and cattle gets more difficult as drought and resource scarcity persist, according to one report.  “No matter what happens we will stand and we will fight, and we will keep pushing for solutions,” he said. Janell Dymus-Kurei, 32, is Māori from the East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand. She is a fellow with the Commonwealth Fund, a group that promotes better access to healthcare for vulnerable populations. At this year’s UNPFII, Dymus-Kurei hopes to bring attention to legislation aimed at diminishing Māori treaty rights. While one piece of legislation died this month, she doesn’t think it’s going to stop there. She hopes to remind people about the attempted legislation that would have given exclusive Maori rights to everyone in New Zealand. Courtesy of Janell Dymus-Kurei The issue gained international attention last Fall when politician Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke performed a Haka during parliament, a traditional dance that was often done before battle. The demonstration set off other large-scale Māori protests in the country.  “They are bound by the Treaty of Waitangi,” she said. Countries can address the forum, but New Zealand didn’t make it to the UNPFII.  “You would show up if you thought it was important to show up and defend your actions in one way, shape, or form,” she said. This year, she’s brought her two young children — TeAio Nitana, which means “peace and divinity” and Te Haumarangai, or “forceful wind”. Dymus-Kurei said it’s important for children to be a part of the forum, especially with so much focus on Indigenous women. “Parenting is political in every sense of the word,” she said. Avery Doxtator, 22, is Oneida, Anishinaabe and Dakota and the president of the National Association of Friendship Centres, or NAFC, which promotes cultural awareness and resources for urban Indigenous youth throughout Canada’s territories. She attended this year’s Forum to raise awareness about the rights of Indigenous peoples living in urban spaces. The NAFC brought 23 delegates from Canada this year representing all of the country’s regions. It’s the biggest group they’ve ever had, but Doxtator said everyone attending was concerned when crossing the border into the United States due to the Trump Administration’s border and immigration restrictions. Taylar Dawn Stagner “It’s a safety threat that we face as Indigenous peoples coming into a country that does not necessarily want us here,” she said. “That was our number one concern. Making sure youth are safe being in the city, but also crossing the border because of the color of our skin.” The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, protects Indigenous peoples fundamental rights of self-determination, and these rights extend to those living in cities, perhaps away from their territories. She said that she just finished her 5th year on the University of Toronto’s Water Polo Team, and will be playing on a professional team in Barcelona next year.  Around half of Indigenous peoples in Canada live in cities. In the United States around 70 percent live in cities. As a result, many can feel disconnected from their cultures, and that’s what she hopes to shed light on at the forum — that resources for Indigenous youth exist even in urban areas. Liudmyla Korotkykh, 26, is Crimean Tatar from Kyiv, one of the Indigenous peoples of Ukraine. She spoke at UNPFII about the effects of the Ukraine war on her Indigenous community. She is a manager and attorney at the Crimean Tatar Resource Center. The history of the Crimean Tatars are similar to other Indigenous populations. They have survived colonial oppression from both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union — and as a result their language and way of life is constantly under threat. Crimea is a country that was annexed by Russia around a decade ago.  Taylar Dawn Stagner In 2021, President Zelensky passed legislation to establish better rights for Indigenous peoples, but months later Russia continued its campaign against Ukraine.  Korotkykh said Crimean Tatars have been conscripted to fight for Russia against the Tatars that are now in Ukraine.  “Now we are in the situation where our peoples are divided by a frontline and our peoples are fighting against each other because some of us joined the Russian army and some joined the Ukrainian army,” she said.  Korotkykh said even though many, including the Trump Administration, consider Crimea a part of Russia, hopes that Crimean Tatars won’t be left out of future discussions of their homes.  “This is a homeland of Indigenous peoples. We don’t accept the Russian occupation,” she said. “So, when the [Trump] administration starts to discuss how we can recognize Crimea as a part of Russia, it is not acceptable to us.” Toni Chiran, 30, is Garo from Bangladesh, and a member of the Bangladesh Indigenous Youth Forum, an organization focused on protecting young Indigenous people. The country has 54 distinct Indigenous peoples, and their constitution does not recognize Indigenous rights.  In January, Chiran was part of a protest in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, where he and other Indigenous people were protesting how the state was erasing the word “Indigenous” — or Adivasi in Hindi — from text books. Chiran says the move is a part of an ongoing assault by the state to erase Indigenous peoples from Bangladesh. Courtesy of Toni Chiran He said that he sustained injuries to his head and chest during the protest as counter protesters assaulted their group, and 13 protesters sustained injuries. He hopes bringing that incident, and more, to the attention of Forum members will help in the fight for Indigenous rights in Bangladesh. “There is an extreme level of human rights violations in my country due to the land related conflicts because our government still does not recognize Indigenous peoples,” he said.  The student group Students for Sovereignty were accused of attacking Chiran and his fellow protesters. During a following protest a few days later in support of Chiran and the others injured Bangladesh police used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd.  “We are still demanding justice on these issues,” he said. Aviaaija Baadsgaard, 27, is Inuit and a member of the Inuit Circumpolar Council Youth Engagement Program, a group that aims to empower the next generation of leaders in the Arctic. Baadsgaard is originally from Nuunukuu, the capital of Greenland, and this is her first year attending the UNPFII. Just last week she graduated from the University of Copenhagen with her law degree. She originally began studying law to help protect the rights of the Inuit of Greenland.. Recently, Greenland has been a global focal point due to the Trump Administration’s interest in acquiring the land and its resources – including minerals needed for the green transition like lithium and neodymium: both crucial for electric vehicles. “For me, it’s really important to speak on behalf of the Inuit of Greenland,” Baadsgaard said. Taylar Dawn Stagner Greenland is around 80 percent Indigenous, and a vast majority of the population there do not want the Greenland is around 80 percent Indigenous, and a vast majority of the population there do not want the U.S. to wrest control of the country from the Kingdom of Denmark. Many more want to be completely independent.  “I don’t want any administration to mess with our sovereignty,” she said.  Baadsgaard said her first time at the forum has connected her to a broader discussion about global Indigenous rights — a conversation she is excited to join. She wants to learn more about the complex system at the United Nations, so this trip is about getting ready for the future. Cindy Sisa Andy Aguinda, 30, is Kitchwa from Ecuador in the Amazon. She is in New York to talk about climate change, women’s health and the climate crisis. She spoke on a panel with a group of other Indigenous women about how the patriarchy and colonial violence affect women at a time of growing global unrest. Especially in the Amazon where deforestation is devastating the forests important to the Kitchwa tribe.  She said international funding is how many protect the Amazon Rainforest. As an example, last year the United States agreed to send around 40 million dollars to the country through USAID — but then the Trump administration terminated most of the department in March. Courtesy of Cindy Sisa Andy Aguinda “To continue working and caring for our lands, the rainforest, and our people, we need help,” she said through a translator. Even when international funding goes into other countries for the purposes to protect Indigenous land, only around 17 percent ends up in the hands of Indigenous-led initiatives. “In my country, it’s difficult for the authorities to take us into account,” she said.  She said despite that she had hope for the future and hopes to make it to COP30 in Brazil, the international gathering that addresses climate change, though she will probably have to foot the bill herself. She said that Indigenous tribes of the Amazon are the ones fighting everyday to protect their territories, and she said those with this relationship with the forest need to share ancestral knowledge with the world at places like the UNPFII and COP30.  “We can’t stop if we want to live well, if we want our cultural identity to remain alive,” she said. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline From Greenland to Ghana, Indigenous youth work for climate justice on Apr 25, 2025.

Climate
Indigenous
Culture

Harris County commissioners approve climate justice plan

Nearly three years in the works, the Harris County Climate Justice Plan is a 59-page document that creates long-term strategies addressing natural resource conservation, infrastructure resiliency and flood control.

Sarah GrunauFlood waters fill southwest Houston streets during Hurricane Beryl on July 8, 2024.Harris County commissioners this month approved what’s considered the county’s most comprehensive climate justice plan to date. Nearly three years in the works, the Harris County Climate Justice Plan is a 59-page document that creates long-term strategies addressing natural resource conservation, infrastructure resiliency and flood control in the Houston area. The climate justice plan was created by the Office of County Administration’s Office of Sustainability and an environmental nonprofit, Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience. The plan sets goals in five buckets, said Stefania Tomaskovic, the coalition director for the nonprofit. Those include ecology, infrastructure, economy, community and culture. County officials got feedback from more than 340 residents and organizations to ensure the plans reflect the needs of the community. “We held a number of community meetings to really outline the vision and values for this process and then along the way we’ve integrated more and more community members into the process of helping to identify the major buckets of work,” Tomaskovic told Hello Houston. Feedback from those involved in the planning process of the climate justice plan had a simple message — people want clean air, strong infrastructure in their communities, transparency and the opportunity to live with dignity, according to the plan. It outlines plans to protect from certain risks through preventative floodplain and watershed management, land use regulations and proactive disaster preparation. Infrastructure steps in the plan include investing in generators and solar power battery backup, and expanding coordination of programs that provide rapid direct assistance after disasters. Economic steps in the plan including expanding resources with organizations to support programs that provide food, direct cash assistance and housing. Tomaskovic said the move could be cost effective because some studies show that for every dollar spent on mitigation, you’re actually saving $6. “It can be cost effective but also if you think about, like, the whole line of costs, if we are implementing programs that help keep people out of the emergency room, we could be saving in the long run, too,” she said. Funds that will go into implementing the projects have yet to be seen. The more than $700,000 climate plan was funded by nonprofit organizations, including the Jacob & Terese Hershey Foundation. “Some of them actually are just process improvements,” Lisa Lin, director of sustainability with Harris County, told Hello Houston. “Some of them are actually low-cost, no-cost actions. Some of them are kind of leaning on things that are happening in the community or happening in the county. Some of them might be new and then we’ll be looking at different funding sources.” The county will now be charged with bringing the plan into reality, which includes conducting a benefits and impacts analysis. County staffers will also develop an implementation roadmap to identify specific leaders and partners and a plan to track its success, according to the county. “This initiative is the first time a U.S. county has prepared a resiliency plan that covers its entire population, as opposed to its bureaucracy alone," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement. "At the heart of this plan are realistic steps to advance issues like clean air, resilient infrastructure, and housing affordability and availability. Many portions of the plan are already in progress, and I look forward to continued advancement over the years."

Climate
Conservation
Resources

A forthcoming Supreme Court decision could limit agencies’ duty to consider environmental harms

The ruling could allow federal agencies to skip climate analysis when approving major projects — with wide-reaching consequences.

A forthcoming Supreme Court decision is poised to weaken a bedrock law that requires federal agencies to study the potential environmental impacts of major projects. The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, concerns a proposed 88-mile railroad that would link an oil-producing region of Utah to tracks that reach refineries in the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups and a Colorado county argued that the federal Surface Transportation Board failed to adequately consider climate, pollution, and other effects as required under the National Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA, in approving the project. In 2023, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the challengers. The groups behind the railway project, including several Utah counties, appealed the case to the highest court, which is expected to hand down a decision within the next few months.  Court observers told Grist the Supreme Court will likely rule in favor of the railway developers, with consequences far beyond Utah. The court could limit the scope of environmental harms federal agencies have to consider under NEPA, including climate impacts. Depending on how the justices rule, the decision could also bolster — or constrain — parallel moves by the Trump administration to roll back decades-old regulations governing how NEPA is implemented. “All of these rollbacks and attacks on NEPA are going to harm communities, especially those that are dealing with the worst effects of climate change and industrial pollution,” said Wendy Park, senior attorney at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, a party in the Supreme Court case.  Since 1970, NEPA has required federal agencies to take a “hard look” at the environmental effects of proposed major projects or actions. Oil and gas pipelines, dams, mines, highways, and other infrastructure projects must undergo an environmental study before they can get federal permits, for example. Agencies consider measures to reduce potential impacts during their review and can even reject a proposal if the harms outweigh the benefits.  NEPA ensures that environmental concerns are “part of the agenda” for all federal agencies — even ones that don’t otherwise focus on the environment, said Dan Farber, a law professor at the University of California Berkeley. It’s also a crucial tool for communities to understand how a project will affect them and provide input during the decision-making process, according to Park.  Oil tanker railway cars in Albany, New York, in 2014. John Carl D’Annibale / Albany Times Union via Getty Images In 2021, the Surface Transportation Board, a small federal agency that oversees railways, approved a line that would connect the Uinta Basin to the national rail network. The basin, which contains large deposits of crude oil, spans about 12,000 square miles across northeastern Utah and northwestern Colorado and is currently accessible only by truck. The proposed track would allow companies to transport crude oil to existing refineries along the Gulf Coast, quadrupling waxy crude oil production in the basin. According to the agency’s environmental review, under a high oil production scenario, burning those fuels “could represent up to approximately 0.8 percent of nationwide emissions and 0.1 percent of global emissions” — about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Environmental groups and a Colorado county challenged the board’s approval at the D.C. Circuit Court. The groups argued that the agency had failed to consider key impacts in its NEPA review, including the effects of increased oil refining on communities already burdened by pollution along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas, and the potential for more oil spills and wildfires along the broader rail network. In August 2023, the D.C. Circuit largely agreed, finding “numerous NEPA violations” in the agency’s environmental review. In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the developers of the railway initially argued that an agency shouldn’t have to consider any environmental effects of a project that would fall under the responsibility of a different agency. In this case, for example, the Surface Transportation Board wouldn’t have to consider air pollution impacts of oil refining on Gulf Coast communities because the Environmental Protection Agency, not the Surface Transportation Board, regulates air pollution.  By oral arguments in December, however, the railway backers had walked away from this drastic interpretation, which contradicts decades of NEPA precedent. It’s standard practice for one agency’s environmental review to study impacts that fall under the responsibility of other agencies, said Deborah Sivas, a law professor at Stanford University. The railway proponents instead proposed that agencies shouldn’t have to consider impacts that fall outside of their authority and are “remote in time and space.” That would include the effects on Gulf Coast communities residing thousands of miles away — as well as climate impacts like greenhouse gas emissions. Park, from the Center for Biological Diversity, argued that overlooking those impacts would undermine the intent of NEPA, which is to inform the public of likely harms. “The entire purpose of this project is to ramp up oil production in Utah and to deliver that oil to Gulf Coast refineries,” she said. “To effectively allow the agency to turn a blind eye to that purpose and ignore all of the predictable environmental harms that would result from that ramped-up oil production and downstream refining is antithetical to NEPA’s purpose.”  Lawyers for the railway’s developers didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment. A coalition of Utah counties backing the project has previously underlined the economic potential of the project. “We are optimistic about the Supreme Court’s review and confident in the thorough environmental assessments conducted by the STB,” said Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, said in a statement after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. “This project is vital for the economic growth and connectivity of the Uinta Basin region, and we are committed to seeing it through.” The Supreme Court has historically always ruled in favor of the government in NEPA cases, and legal experts told Grist the decision will likely support the railway developers in some manner. But during oral arguments, several justices seemed skeptical of positions presented by railway supporters. Chief Justice John Roberts noted that imposing such severe limits on NEPA review could open agencies up to legal risk.  Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts poses for an official portrait in 2022. Alex Wong / Getty Images The court could reach some kind of middle ground in its decision — not going as far as the D.C. Circuit to affirm the legitimacy of considering a wide range of climate and other risks, but also not excluding as many impacts as the railway developers had hoped, said Farber.  Any decision will ultimately serve as an important guide for agencies as the Trump administration introduces even more uncertainty in the federal permitting process. In February, the administration issued an interim rule to rescind regulations issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which oversees NEPA implementation across the federal government. The council’s rules have guided agencies in applying the law for nearly five decades. Now, Trump officials have left it up to each individual agency to develop its own regulations by next February.  In developing those standards, agencies will likely look to the Supreme Court’s decision, legal experts said. “What the Supreme Court rules here could be a very important guide as to how agencies implement NEPA and how they fashion their regulations interpreting NEPA,” said Park. If the court rules that agencies don’t need to consider climate impacts in NEPA reviews, for example, that could make it easier for Trump appointees to ignore greenhouse gas emissions, said Sivas. The White House has already instructed agencies not to include environmental justice impacts in their assessments. On the other hand, a more nuanced opinion by the Supreme Court could end up undercutting efforts by the Trump administration to limit the scope of environmental reviews, said Farber. If justices end up affirming the need to consider certain impacts of the Utah railway project, for example, that could limit how much agencies under Trump can legally avoid evaluating particular effects. Agencies need to design regulations that will withstand challenges in lower courts — which will inevitably rely on the Supreme Court’s ruling when deciding on NEPA challenges moving forward. In the meantime, however, legal experts say that Trump’s decision to have each agency create its own NEPA regulations will create even more chaos and uncertainty, even as the administration seeks to “expedite and simplify the permitting process” through sweeping reforms.  “I think that’s going to just slow down the process more and cause more confusion, and not really serve their own goals,” said Farber. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A forthcoming Supreme Court decision could limit agencies’ duty to consider environmental harms on Apr 24, 2025.

Climate
CO2
Pollution

The World's Biggest Companies Have Caused $28 Trillion in Climate Damage, a New Study Estimates

A new study estimates that the world’s biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, which is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world's biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, a new study estimates as part of an effort to make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable, like the tobacco giants have been.A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel providers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation.For comparison, $28 trillion is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.At the top of the list, Saudi Aramco and Gazprom have each caused a bit more than $2 trillion in heat damage over the decades, the team calculated in a study published in Wednesday's journal Nature. The researchers figured that every 1% of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere since 1990 has caused $502 billion in damage from heat alone, which doesn't include the costs incurred by other extreme weather such as hurricanes, droughts and floods.The study is an attempt to determine “the causal linkages that underlie many of these theories of accountability,” said its lead author, Christopher Callahan, who did the work at Dartmouth but is now an Earth systems scientist at Stanford University. The research firm Zero Carbon Analytics counts 68 lawsuits filed globally about climate change damage, with more than half of them in the United States.“Everybody’s asking the same question: What can we actually claim about who has caused this?” said Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, co-author of the study. “And that really comes down to a thermodynamic question of can we trace climate hazards and/or their damages back to particular emitters?”The answer is yes, Callahan and Mankin said.The researchers started with known final emissions of the products — such as gasoline or electricity from coal-fired power plants — produced by the 111 biggest carbon-oriented companies going as far back as 137 years, because that's as far back as any of the companies' emissions data go and carbon dioxide stays in the air for much longer than that. They used 1,000 different computer simulations to translate those emissions into changes for Earth's global average surface temperature by comparing it to a world without that company's emissions.Using this approach, they determined that pollution from Chevron, for example, has raised the Earth’s temperature by .045 degrees Fahrenheit (.025 degrees Celsius).The researchers also calculated how much each company's pollution contributed to the five hottest days of the year using 80 more computer simulations and then applying a formula that connects extreme heat intensity to changes in economic output. Mankin said that in the past, there was an argument of, “Who's to say that it's my molecule of CO2 that's contributed to these damages versus any other one?” He said his study “really laid clear how the veil of plausible deniability doesn't exist anymore scientifically. We can actually trace harms back to major emitters.”Shell declined to comment. Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and BP did not respond to requests for comment.“All methods they use are quite robust,” said Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists who try rapid attribution studies to see if specific extreme weather events are worsened by climate change and, if so, by how much. She didn't take part in the study. “It would be good in my view if this approach would be taken up more by different groups. As with event attribution, the more groups do it, the better the science gets and the better we know what makes a difference and what does not,” Otto said. So far, no climate liability lawsuit against a major carbon emitter has been successful, but maybe showing “how overwhelmingly strong the scientific evidence” is can change that, she said.In the past, damage caused by individual companies were lost in the noise of data, so it couldn't be calculated, Callahan said. “We have now reached a point in the climate crisis where the total damages are so immense that the contributions of a single company's product can amount to tens of billions of dollars a year,” said Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist who didn't take part in the research.This is a good exercise and proof of concept, but there are so many other climate variables that the numbers that Callahan and Mankin came up with are probably a vast underestimate of the damage the companies have really caused, said Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist who wasn't involved in the study.Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Climate
CO2
Government

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