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| | | | |  | | By Gloria Gonzalez, Debra Kahn and Jordan Wolman | | | | |  Puerto Rico's power grid was already in poor shape before the storm hit, as this Sept. 15 photo shows. | AP | BAD PR — What's going on with Puerto Rico's power grid? The island-wide blackout Sunday showed how fragile the U.S. territory's power system is — and how its privatization hasn't helped. Puerto Rico's grid has never recovered from the devastation wreaked five years ago by Hurricane Maria, which caused an estimated 2,975 deaths and decimated the power, water and health care systems. Since then, residents have suffered from frequent outages, with the grid so fragile that every one of the island’s 1.5 million electricity customers lost power even before Hurricane Fiona — only a Category 1 storm when it reached the island — made landfall. The struggles go back years, stemming partly from under-investment in basic maintenance by the bankrupt, government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, as well as the slow flow of billions of dollars in federal disaster aid. But the predominantly Spanish-speaking island’s problems are also rooted in its status as a U.S. territory with no voting representation in Congress and no electoral votes for the presidency. LUMA Energy, the private entity that took over the grid in June 2021, hasn't done any better than PREPA, at least in terms of the duration of outages. Some activists are pushing for the Puerto Rican government to take steps to terminate LUMA's control of the grid as soon as November. “The sad part is that we knew a lot of this would happen,” said Julio López Varona, co-chief of campaigns for the Center for Popular Democracy. “It’s kind of a reckoning, and it was a bad one.” Read more from Gloria here. | | | |  Florida's property insurers are being swamped by flood damage claims. | AP | FLORIDA, MAN — Meanwhile, Florida hasn't had a major hurricane since 2018, but its property insurance market is crumbling due to storm damages, Thomas Frank reports for POLITICO's E&E News. Four Florida insurers have gone bankrupt this year. Insurers that expanded into Louisiana were hammered by Hurricane Laura in 2020 and Hurricane Ida in 2021, and lawsuits from customers challenging claims settlements aren't helping either. Customers are swamping the state-created insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which might not have enough money to pay out claims after the next big storm hits. The value of Citizens-insured properties has nearly tripled since September 2020, to $360 billion from $133 billion. The growth has been concentrated in hurricane-prone southeastern Florida, which has some of the state’s highest property values. “One major hurricane event or a series of hurricane events like Louisiana had in the past few years could easily wipe out Citizens’ reserves to pay claims,” said Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the industry-funded Insurance Information Institute, which calculates that Florida has the country's highest property insurance premiums at an average of $4,231 annually — nearly triple the U.S. average of $1,544. Read more from Tom here. CCR REVIVAL — Carbon removal and reduction companies are going to be hot for at least the next five years, according to new research released by the financial data firm PitchBook. PitchBook predicts that the sector will be worth $905 billion by the end of this year, growing to $1.4 trillion by 2027. That makes the global climate tech sector relatively small — collectively worth less than electric vehicle maker Tesla. But its projected rapid expansion of 8.8 percent over the next five years is thanks to “increasing global focus on aggressive emissions targets and consumer interest in emissions reduction.” The most valuable group of companies in the space are those working to reduce greenhouse gases in buildings. They're currently worth almost $459 billion and are expected to increase to $650 billion by 2027, according to the report. Read more from POLITICO'S E&E News' Corbin Hiar here. CALIFORNIA DREAMS ON — California has been on a climate policy tear for the past few weeks, and it's still going. Regulators are set to approve a resolution Thursday to end the sale of new gas-powered furnaces and water heaters by 2030. It's part of a laundry list of policies the state is planning to use to meet federal ozone standards — but it's also projected to have big climate benefits. The nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute estimates it could save 154 million metric tons of CO2 between 2030 and 2045. "It would set a pathway that would enable us to transition buildings away from fossil fuels," said Leah Louis-Prescott, a senior associate at RMI.
| | | | JOIN THURSDAY FOR A GLOBAL INSIDER INTERVIEW : From climate change to public health emergencies and a gloomy global economic outlook, the world continues to deal with overlapping crises. How do we best confront all of these issues? Join POLITICO Live on Thursday, Sept. 22 at 10:30 a.m. EDT for a virtual conversation with Global Insider author Ryan Heath, featuring World Bank President David Malpass, to explore what it will take to restore global stability and avoid a prolonged recession. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | SETTING THE STANDARDS – The International Sustainability Standards Board will look to hammer out some of the remaining details of its proposed climate-related and sustainability-related disclosure standards at meetings this week. What’s on tap? The board is set to consider a few specific sore spots raised in public comments, including proposed requirements to disclose emissions from a company's supply chain. Another point of discussion will be the potential for adding four industry-specific metrics for commercial banks, investment banks, insurers and asset managers. The board has said it hopes to finalize both standards by the end of the year, after which governments will be free to adopt them. In other international business: The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body is meeting this week to nail down details on how to implement a carbon credit scheme under Article 6 of the Paris Climate Accords. Plus, world leaders are in New York for the U.N. General Assembly. And it's Climate Week in NYC, so get ready for an avalanche of climate pledges. And don’t forget: The business sector is anxiously awaiting the Security and Exchange Commission’s final rule on climate disclosure for publicly traded companies. OFFSETS, BUT LAST — Salesforce Inc. is having its big Dreamforce confab in San Francisco this week with a hefty serving of sustainability alongside Jane Goodall, Alex Honnold, Al Gore and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The customer-data software giant is unveiling a new website, aimed at increasing transparency in the voluntary carbon market, where businesses can buy offsets starting next month. It will start with offerings from nearly 90 projects across 11 countries. Customers will have to sign an attestation saying that they won't resell the credits and that they understand offsets should be used only after reducing their own emissions. "Hopefully we see the adoption of this as in line with the way Salesforce would do it, which is thinking about compensation last," said Patrick Flynn, the company’s global head of sustainability. Salesforce itself is buying about 1 million tons of offsets per year as part of having reached net zero across its Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Big picture: “The elephant in the room is the continued production of fossil fuels,” said Rob Schuwerk, the executive director of Carbon Tracker North America, at a press event Monday unveiling a registry of fossil fuel reserves. The U.S. and Russia each have enough oil and gas reserves on their own to ensure the world heats up more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, Heather Richards reports for POLITICO's E&E News.
| | | GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. We deliver data-driven storytelling, compelling interviews with industry and political leaders, and news Tuesday through Friday to keep you in the loop on sustainability. Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn and reporter Jordan Wolman. Reach us all at gmott@politico.com, dkahn@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com. Want more? Don’t we all? Sign up for the Long Game. Four days a week and still free!
| | | — Republicans plan to investigate not just ESG if they take the House, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for embracing it, the Intercept reports. — An investment manager that touts ESG was also sponsoring the State Financial Officers Foundation, which attacks ESG. It's stopping after European pension funds made inquiries, the FT reports.
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