Extreme Heat Hits Americans' Wallets, Maui Wildfires One Year On, and More

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Today in Climate Proof:

Finance:

• High Temperatures, High Electricity Bills

• WaterConnect Eyes Infra Investments

Policy:

• Maui Wildfires One Year On

• New Yorkers Urge Action on Climate Superfund Act

• Boston Debuts Dedicated Resilience Office

Tech:

• Nissan Trials ‘Cool Paint’ 

• A Climate Risk Model for the Children

Research:

• Another round-up of papers and journal articles on all things climate adaptation

High Temperatures, High Electricity Bills

Planet Earth may have come to the end of a record-breaking hot streak, but the financial toll is still coming into focus. 

A new poll by AP-NORC finds that 69% of Americans have seen extreme heat impact their electricity bills over the past year — 39% in a major way.  Furthermore, 40% say they had “unexpected expenses” on their utility bills due to extreme weather events, like storms, floods, and heatwaves. One-quarter say their homeowner’s insurance premiums increased.

Estimates by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association suggest the average cost of home energy this summer will surge 8% for June to September compared to 2023, from US$661 to US$719.

Majority say Heat has Impacted Their Electricity Bills and Outdoor Activities

A series of heat waves has assailed the US this year. Late June saw over 100 million Americans placed under an excessive-heat advisory and temperature records fall in many states and cities. Scorching conditions persisted throughout July, pushing the mercury above 110°F in parts of California and to 120°F in Las Vegas, Nevada.

July also bore witness to four more billion-dollar weather disasters, including Hurricane Beryl and the New Mexico wildfires. June’s number of billion-dollar disasters was also four.

The AP-NORC poll also canvassed public opinion on government climate action. Fifty-five percent say the federal government is doing too little to reduce climate change, and 23% that it’s doing the right amount. Around one-fifth believe the feds are doing too much. There is a partisan divide — 41% of Republicans think the government is doing too much, compared to just 5% of Democrats and 15% of Independents.

The survey was conducted July 25-29 with 1,143 adults.

WaterConnect Eyes Infra Investments

Ensuring access to water and sanitation in the midst of the escalating climate crisis is a humanitarian priority. Global nonprofit Water.org has a plan to help.

Last week, it spun out WaterConnect, a project development company that will bring early-stage financing and technical expertise to climate-resilient water infrastructure in developing countries.

In a press release, the company said access to capital is “the greatest barrier to solving the global water crisis.” The risks involved in standing up water and sanitation projects turn off investors, leading to a shortage of bankable projects. WaterConnect intends to bridge this capital gap by de-risking promising investments, which should in turn help to crowd in private investors. The company will start by prioritizing projects in water-stressed markets including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and South Africa. WaterConnect will also provide technical expertise and management services to project co-developers. 

John Moyer has been appointed president of WaterConnect. He previously served as chief investment officer of Water.org’s asset management unit, WaterEquity, and led Water.org’s venture into Southeast Asia.

Other Stuff

Climate adaptation market size projected to grow US$40.4bn by 2030 (MarketsandMarkets)

Debt-for-Nature swaps are failing the Global South (PassBlue)

Disaster response must keep up with climate change (Taipei Times)

The state of climate finance in India (Climake)

Maui Wildfires One Year On

One year ago, hell came to Maui. Deadly wildfires razed huge swathes of the Hawaiian island, killing over 100 people and obliterating Lahaina, the former royal capital of Hawaii and a major tourist destination.

The disaster’s price tag is likely to exceed US$12bn, making it the costliest in the state’s history. On August 2, Governor Josh Green announced that US$4bn — a third of the costs — would be recouped through a settlement with seven defendants held liable for the wildfires: the state of Hawaii, County of Maui, Hawaiian Electric, Kamehameha Schools, West Maui Land Co., Hawaiian Telcom and Spectrum/Charter Communications.

Last week, the Biden administration said it would extend relief to Maui residents whose homes were burned down in the wildfires and are looking to rebuild or buy new properties. Eligible borrowers can get up to 100% financing for new or reconstructed houses. The mortgages are insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), reducing the risk to mortgage lenders. Individuals wanting to access the relief now have until August 10, 2025 to apply. Typically, access ends one year after a disaster’s declaration. 

The federal government has provided around US$3bn in support since the disaster, and is also bankrolling efforts to make the island more wildfire-resilient. This includes the deployment of 80 early-warning sensors to help first responders contain blazes before they spread and provide at-risk communities with additional time to evacuate. The Department of the Interior is also investing US$20mn to strengthen Hawaii's climate resilience. The funds will be used to bolster native ecosystems and plants and enhance food security.

Business recovery remains challenging, however. Tourism is Hawaii’s biggest revenue generator, and the state estimates it has lost US$1bn from holidaymakers staying away. Visitor numbers to Maui were down 24% for the first half of 2024 relative to 2023, and visitor spending dropped to US$2.6bn from US$3.5bn.

The statewide impact was lower, however. Hawaii as a whole saw 4% fewer visitors in the first half of the year, and a 5% slippage in spending.

New Yorkers Urge Action on Climate Superfund Act

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is under pressure to sign a bill that would force fossil fuel companies to pay US$3bn a year into a climate adaptation fund for the Empire State.

The Climate Change Superfund Act was approved by the state legislature in June, and is awaiting the Governor’s signature. Similar to the Vermont bill approved earlier this year, this would require oil and gas majors like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips to pay for damages in proportion with the climate pollution they pumped into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2018.

The aggregate assessment would be capped at US$3bn a year, which the bill says is a “small percentage” of the recovery, adaptation, and resilience costs expected to be borne by New Yorkers over the next 25 years. In 2023, New York taxpayers spent US$2.2bn, or about US$300 per household, for infrastructure repairs and resilience projects, according to the nonprofit Food & Water Watch. 

The fossil fuel companies’ payments would finance “climate change adaptive infrastructure projects” like restoring coastal wetlands, upgrading storm water drainage systems, and modernizing roads, bridges, and subways. 

Congressman Jerry Nadler (NY-12), who represents a broad swathe of Manhattan, urged Governor Hochul to sign the bill in an August 9 letter. “With heatwave after heatwave and extreme weather event after extreme weather event impacting communities, this Act couldn’t be more critical to the efforts to hold the largest oil companies accountable for the damages that they have caused to New Yorkers,” wrote the Congressman. 

His intervention followed a rally by climate activists in front of Governor Hochul’s Manhattan office.

Oil and gas lobby group the American Petroleum Institute (API) is likely to contest the New York law, too. In a March 27 letter, the API said Vermont’s superfund law was “bad public policy” that “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law.”

Boston Debuts Dedicated Resilience Office

Beantown is getting a climate resilience office all of its own. 

Last Monday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced a new Office of Climate Resilience (OCR) to turbocharge the city’s climate-proofing efforts. The unit will spearhead initiatives to tackle coastal flooding, stormwater flooding, and extreme heat, among others.

The OCR will be staffed by an existing team from the city’s Environment Department and will be led by Chris Osgood, who also serves as a senior advisor to Mayor Wu. Climate Ready Boston, a 2016 report identifying the city’s climate vulnerabilities and laying out mitigating measures, will be used by the office as a blueprint for action.

The creation of the OCR comes out of a restructuring of the Environment, Energy and Open Space (EEOS) Cabinet, which leads the city’s climate and environmental justice agenda.

Other Stuff

Roadmap to Resilience: USAID’s Updated Resilience Policy (Center for Strategic & International Studies)

CA Prop 4 includes historic investments in food & farm resilience (NRDC)

As drought threats continue, government’s financial-climate risk from livestock forage disaster program expected to increase (USDA)

SEC defends its authority for climate disclosure rule in court (ESGDive)

Is bluelining the ‘new’ redlining? How insurance discrimination deepens climate disparities (Center for International Environmental Law)

Taiwan President Lai presides over first meeting of the National Climate Change Response Committee (Office of the President)

Nissan Trials ‘Cool Paint’ 

Nissan hopes heat-beating paint could make driving in high temperatures more comfortable.

The Japanese carmaker is trialing a new coating developed with Radi-Cool, a cooling tech solution provider, which tests show could lower the temperature inside a vehicle by up to 5°C (9°F) — and by up to 12°C (22°F) on the outside surface.

The paint uses “metamaterial”, a synthetic composite that behaves differently from materials found in nature. One particle reflects a property of sunlight that causes traditional paint to generate heat. Another particle creates electromagnetic waves that deflects sunlight energy away from the vehicle. 

A car treated with the cooling paint, parked at Tokyo International Air Terminal at Haneda in direct sunlight, hit a lower max temperature than a neighboring car treated with regular paint. Nissan said the results were particularly noticeable through periods of extended direct sunlight.

Though the results are promising, there’s a ways to go before the paint is ready for primetime. Right now, the cooling paint is six times thicker than typical automotive coatings, making commercialization difficult.

A Climate Risk Model for the Children

Climate risk assessments often feel depersonalized. Sure, understanding how many dollars could be lost because of an extreme weather event or how long a building has until sea-level rise swamps its foundations is useful and important. But as a motivator for action, such analyses can be found wanting. 

A new online platform co-created by UNICEF seeks to change this. The Children’s Climate and Disaster Risk Model (CCDRM), launched last week in Kenya, spotlights the climate and natural disaster threats faced by children and their homes at the county level, providing policymakers with the kind of provocative data needed to incentivize adaptation and resilience action.

Analysis by the CCDRM shows that 2.4 million children in Kenya live in counties with very high levels of climate and disaster risk. Moreover, around 9 million children are exposed to droughts and water scarcity, while 1.3 million are at risk from flooding.

The model’s purpose is to unearth data that helps support child-centered climate adaptation and resilience building. The insights from the platform can be used to prioritize interventions by risk and location. It can also help track the efficacy of adaptation actions over time. 

UNICEF cooked up the CCDRM in partnership with the Climate Change Directorate of the Kenyan government. It can be accessed here.

Other Stuff

UN-ESCAP advocates for dedicated center for climate change adaptation technology (The Hindu)

As wildfire season becomes more threatening, experts are turning to AI (States Newsroom)

The new technology helping Vietnamese coffee farmers adapt to a changing climate (ABC Asia)

Small farmers feeling climate change heat find little support from the state (Inter Press Service)

NOAA and India team up to create life-saving tropical cyclone forecast model for nation of a billion (NOAA)

University of Georgia supports African research network breeding climate-adapted peanuts (CAES Media Newswire)

RESEARCH

Research coordination network for a university-community climate action network (US National Science Foundation)

Aon-Columbia University collaboration warns climate models may underestimate future impacts of Atlantic hurricanes and US severe storms (Aon)

Climate change and public health in California: A structured review of exposures, vulnerable populations, and adaptation measures (PNAS)

Unraveling the hydropower vulnerability to drought in the United States (Environmental Research Letters)

Significant challenges to the sustainability of the California coast considering climate change (PNAS)

Stress-tolerant trees for resilient cities: Tree-ring analysis reveals species suitable for a future climate (Urban Climate)

Physicochemical characterization of the particulate matter in New Jersey/New York City area, resulting from the Canadian Quebec wildfires in June 2023 (American Chemical Society)

A fight on two fronts: Adapting to climate change and reducing GHG emissions in New Zealand (OECD)

From trade-offs to payoffs: CEOs on creating value with climate action (PWC)

Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall
Editor