AlleyCat
2024-07-20 02:09:24 UTC
The average lifespan of a solar panel is 25-30 years. Between 2030 and 2060, 9.8 million metric tons of solar panel waste is
expected.
"A study found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants."
The Dark Side of Solar Power
As Interest In Clean Energy Surges, Used Solar Panels Are Going Straight Into Landfill
by Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove
June 18, 2021
Summary.
Solar energy is a rapidly growing market, which should be good news for the environment. Unfortunately there's a catch. The
replacement rate of solar panels is faster than expected and given the current very high recycling costs, there's a real
danger that all...more
It's sunny times for solar power. In the U.S., home installations of solar panels have fully rebounded from the Covid slump,
with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total capacity installed, compared to 13 gigawatts at the close of 2019.
Over the next 10 years, that number may quadruple, according to industry research data. And that's not even taking into
consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and incentives launched by the green-friendly Biden
administration.
Solar's pandemic-proof performance is due in large part to the Solar Investment Tax Credit, which defrays 26% of solar-
related expenses for all residential and commercial customers (just down from 30% during 2006-2019). After 2023, the tax
credit will step down to a permanent 10% for commercial installers and will disappear entirely for home buyers. Therefore,
sales of solar will probably burn even hotter in the coming months, as buyers race to cash in while they still can.
Tax subsidies are not the only reason for the solar explosion. The conversion efficiency of panels has improved by as much
as 0.5% each year for the last 10 years, even as production costs (and thus prices) have sharply declined, thanks to several
waves of manufacturing innovation mostly driven by industry-dominant Chinese panel producers. For the end consumer, this
amounts to far lower up-front costs per kilowatt of energy generated.
This is all great news, not just for the industry but also for anyone who acknowledges the need to transition from fossil
fuels to renewable energy for the sake of our planet's future. But there's a massive caveat that very few are talking about.
Panels, Panels Everywhere
Economic incentives are rapidly aligning to encourage customers to trade their existing panels for newer, cheaper, more
efficient models. In an industry where circularity solutions such as recycling remain woefully inadequate, the sheer volume
of discarded panels will soon pose a risk of existentially damaging proportions.
To be sure, this is not the story one gets from official industry and government sources. The International Renewable Energy
Agency (IRENA)'s official projections assert that "large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s" and
could total 78 million tonnes by the year 2050. That's a staggering amount, undoubtedly. But with so many years to prepare,
it describes a billion-dollar opportunity for recapture of valuable materials rather than a dire threat. The threat is
hidden by the fact that IRENA's predictions are premised upon customers keeping their panels in place for the entirety of
their 30-year life cycle. They do not account for the possibility of widespread early replacement.
Our research does. Using real U.S. data, we modeled the incentives affecting consumers' decisions whether to replace under
various scenarios. We surmised that three variables were particularly salient in determining replacement decisions:
installation price, compensation rate (i.e., the going rate for solar energy sold to the grid), and module efficiency. If
the cost of trading up is low enough, and the efficiency and compensation rate are high enough, we posit that rational
consumers will make the switch, regardless of whether their existing panels have lived out a full 30 years.
As an example, consider a hypothetical consumer (call her "Ms. Brown") living in California who installed solar panels on
her home in 2011. Theoretically, she could keep the panels in place for 30 years, i.e., until 2041. At the time of
installation, the total cost was $40,800, 30% of which was tax deductible thanks to the Solar Investment Tax Credit. In
2011, Ms. Brown could expect to generate 12,000 kilowatts of energy through her solar panels, or roughly $2,100 worth of
electricity. In each following year, the efficiency of her panel decreases by approximately one percent due to module
degradation.
Now imagine that in the year 2026, halfway through the life cycle of her equipment, Ms. Brown starts to look at her solar
options again. She's heard the latest generation of panels are cheaper and more efficient - and when she does her homework,
she finds that that is very much the case. Going by actual current projections, the Ms. Brown of 2026 will find that costs
associated with buying and installing solar panels have fallen by 70% from where they were in 2011. Moreover, the new-
generation panels will yield $2,800 in annual revenue, $700 more than her existing setup when it was new. All told,
upgrading her panels now rather than waiting another 15 years will increase the net present value (NPV) of her solar rig by
more than $3,000 in 2011 dollars. If Ms. Brown is a rational actor, she will opt for early replacement. And if she were
especially shrewd in money matters, she would have come to that decision even sooner - our calculations for the Ms. Brown
scenario show the replacement NPV overtaking that of panel retention starting in 2021.
The Solar Trash Wave. According to our research, cumulative waste projections will rise far sooner and more sharply than
most analysts expect. A line graph shows the cumulative capacity of solar panel waste from 2020 to 2050 in three different
scenarios. Assuming that no faults occur over the 30-year life cycle of the equipment, waste does not begin to accumulate
until around 2040 and then rises sharply to nearly 20 gigawatts by 2050. A second scenario shows the official forecast from
the International Renewable Energy Agency, known as IRENA, which allows for some replacements earlier in the life cycle. In
this case, solar panel waste begins to accumulate around 2030, rising steadily to about 15 gigawatts by 2050. A third
scenario, which represents waste projections predicted by our model and is based on early replacement of solar panels, shows
waste beginning to accumulate almost immediately, by 2023, and rising sharply to reach nearly 20 gigawatts by 2040. Source:
International Renewable Energy Agency, Electricity Data Browser, Global Solar Atlas. See more HBR charts in Data and Visuals
If early replacements occur as predicted by our statistical model, they can produce 50 times more waste in just four years
than IRENA anticipates. That figure translates to around 315,000 metric tonnes of waste, based on an estimate of 90 tonnes
per MW weight-to-power ratio.
Alarming as they are, these stats may not do full justice to the crisis, as our analysis is restricted to residential
installations. With commercial and industrial panels added to the picture, the scale of replacements could be much, much
larger.
The High Cost of Solar Trash
The industry's current circular capacity is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that is likely to come. The
financial incentive to invest in recycling has never been very strong in solar. While panels contain small amounts of
valuable materials such as silver, they are mostly made of glass, an extremely low-value material. The long life span of
solar panels also serves to disincentivize innovation in this area.
As a result, solar's production boom has left its recycling infrastructure in the dust. To give you some indication, First
Solar is the sole U.S. panel manufacturer we know of with an up-and-running recycling initiative, which only applies to the
company's own products at a global capacity of two million panels per year. With the current capacity, it costs an estimated
$20-$30 to recycle one panel. Sending that same panel to a landfill would cost a mere $1-$2.
The direct cost of recycling is only part of the end-of-life burden, however. Panels are delicate, bulky pieces of equipment
usually installed on rooftops in the residential context. Specialized labor is required to detach and remove them, lest they
shatter to smithereens before they make it onto the truck. In addition, some governments may classify solar panels as
hazardous waste, due to the small amounts of heavy metals (cadmium, lead, etc.) they contain. This classification carries
with it a string of expensive restrictions - hazardous waste can only be transported at designated times and via select
routes, etc.
The totality of these unforeseen costs could crush industry competitiveness. If we plot future installations according to a
logistic growth curve capped at 700 GW by 2050 (NREL's estimated ceiling for the U.S. residential market) alongside the
early-replacement curve, we see the volume of waste surpassing that of new installations by the year 2031. By 2035,
discarded panels would outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times. In turn, this would catapult the LCOE (levelized cost of
energy, a measure of the overall cost of an energy-producing asset over its lifetime) to four times the current projection.
The economics of solar - so bright-seeming from the vantage point of 2021 - would darken quickly as the industry sinks under
the weight of its own trash.
Who Pays the Bill?
It will almost certainly fall to regulators to decide who will bear the cleanup costs. As waste from the first wave of early
replacements piles up in the next few years, the U.S. government - starting with the states, but surely escalating to the
federal level - will introduce solar panel recycling legislation. Conceivably, future regulations in the U.S. will follow
the model of the European Union's WEEE Directive, a legal framework for the recycling and disposal of electronic waste
throughout EU member states. The U.S. states that have enacted electronics-recycling legislation have mostly cleaved to the
WEEE model. (The Directive was amended in 2014 to include solar panels.) In the EU, recycling responsibilities for past
(historic) waste have been apportioned to manufacturers based on current market share.
A first step to forestalling disaster may be for solar panel producers to start lobbying for similar legislation in the
United States immediately, instead of waiting for solar panels to start clogging landfills. In our experience drafting and
implementing the revision of the original WEEE Directive in the late 2000s, we found one of the biggest challenges in those
early years was assigning responsibility for the vast amount of accumulated waste generated by companies no longer in the
electronics business (so-called orphan waste).
In the case of solar, the problem is made even thornier by new rules out of Beijing that shave subsidies for solar panel
producers while increasing mandatory competitive bidding for new solar projects. In an industry dominated by Chinese
players, this ramps up the uncertainty factor. With reduced support from the central government, it's possible that some
Chinese producers may fall out of the market. One of the reasons to push legislation now rather than later is to ensure that
the responsibility for recycling the imminent first wave of waste is shared fairly by makers of the equipment concerned. If
legislation comes too late, the remaining players may be forced to deal with the expensive mess that erstwhile Chinese
producers left behind.
But first and foremost, the required solar panel recycling capacity has to be built, as part of a comprehensive end-of-life
infrastructure also encompassing uninstallation, transportation, and (in the meantime) adequate storage facilities for solar
waste. If even the most optimistic of our early-replacement forecasts are accurate, there may not be enough time for
companies to accomplish this alone. Government subsidies are probably the only way to quickly develop capacity commensurate
to the magnitude of the looming waste problem. Corporate lobbyists can make a convincing case for government intervention,
centered on the idea that waste is a negative externality of the rapid innovation necessary for widespread adoption of new
energy technologies such as solar. The cost of creating end-of-life infrastructure for solar, therefore, is an inescapable
part of the RandD package that goes along with supporting green energy.
It's Not Just Solar
The same problem is looming for other renewable-energy technologies. For example, barring a major increase in processing
capability, experts expect that more than 720,000 tons worth of gargantuan wind-turbine blades will end up in U.S. landfills
over the next 20 years. According to prevailing estimates, only five percent of electric-vehicle batteries are currently
recycled - a lag that automakers are racing to rectify as sales figures for electric cars continue to rise as much as 40%
year-on-year. The only essential difference between these green technologies and solar panels is that the latter doubles as
a revenue-generating engine for the consumer. Two separate profit-seeking actors - panel producers and the end consumer -
thus must be satisfied in order for adoption to occur at scale.
...
None of this should raise serious doubts about the future or necessity of renewables. The science is indisputable:
Continuing to rely on fossil fuels to the extent we currently do will bequeath a damaged if not dying planet to future
generations. Compared with all we stand to gain or lose, the four decades or so it will likely take for the economics of
solar to stabilize to the point that consumers won't feel compelled to cut short the life cycle of their panels seems
decidedly small. But that lofty purpose doesn't make the shift to renewable energy any easier in reality. Of all sectors,
sustainable technology can least afford to be shortsighted about the waste it creates. A strategy for entering the circular
economy is absolutely essential - and the sooner, the better.
=====
July:
Antarctica Nears July Record Low With -82.1C (-115.8F)
European Glaciers Remain Covered In Snow
UK Met Office Reports a Cool Summer So Far
July Cold Wave To Grip Much Of U.S.
Buenos Aires' Coldest First Half Of July On Record
Great Barrier Reef Sets All-Time Record In 2024
Argentina Continues To Freeze
Hurricane Lull
U.S. Still Mostly Run On Fossil Fuels
New Zealand's Cold Start To Winter
79% Chance Of A Winter La Nina
Australia's East To Shiver Some More, With Widespread Snow Inbound
China Commissions New Icebreaker (WHY? There's No Ice!)
Historic, All-Time Cold Hits Argentina
South Africa Hit by Cold Fronts And Heavy Snow
La Niña Forecast: Heavy Snow Ahead
Exceptional Snow-Year In Northern Italy
Winter Begins With a Bang In South America
Tasmania Freezes
"Tonga Volcano Prime Suspect"
Scottish Ski Centers Report Rare July Snowfall
Brits Asking "Where Is Summer?"
Europe's Lowest Burn Acreage On Record
Tasmania's Second-Coldest Temperature Ever
America's "Historic June Heatwave" Was a Lie
Historic, All-Time Cold Hits Argentina
South Africa Hit by Cold Fronts And Heavy Snow
La Niña Forecast: Heavy Snow Ahead
Exceptional Snow-Year In Northern Italy
Winter Begins With a Bang In South America
Tasmania Freezes
Scottish Ski Centers Report Rare July Snowfall
Brewing SSW Event In The Southern Hemisphere?
101 Scientists: Claims Of Man-Made Global Warming Are Exaggerated
Brits Asking "Where Is Summer?"
Europe's Lowest Burn Acreage On Record
Tasmania's Second-Coldest Temperature Ever
America's "Historic June Heatwave" Was a Lie
Unprecedented Snowfalls in Argentina Threaten 1 Million Livestock
Aussie Cold
Record Stratospheric Water Vapor
Global Temperatures Took Another Step Down In June
Greenland Gaining Gigatons Of Mass In Summer
Global CO2 Emissions Tracking Well Below 'Scary' Climate Scenarios
Avalanche At Kedarnath Temple
Australia's Bitter Cold And Low Wind Leads To Power Concerns
Greenland's Record Summer Gains
expected.
"A study found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants."
The Dark Side of Solar Power
As Interest In Clean Energy Surges, Used Solar Panels Are Going Straight Into Landfill
by Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove
June 18, 2021
Summary.
Solar energy is a rapidly growing market, which should be good news for the environment. Unfortunately there's a catch. The
replacement rate of solar panels is faster than expected and given the current very high recycling costs, there's a real
danger that all...more
It's sunny times for solar power. In the U.S., home installations of solar panels have fully rebounded from the Covid slump,
with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total capacity installed, compared to 13 gigawatts at the close of 2019.
Over the next 10 years, that number may quadruple, according to industry research data. And that's not even taking into
consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and incentives launched by the green-friendly Biden
administration.
Solar's pandemic-proof performance is due in large part to the Solar Investment Tax Credit, which defrays 26% of solar-
related expenses for all residential and commercial customers (just down from 30% during 2006-2019). After 2023, the tax
credit will step down to a permanent 10% for commercial installers and will disappear entirely for home buyers. Therefore,
sales of solar will probably burn even hotter in the coming months, as buyers race to cash in while they still can.
Tax subsidies are not the only reason for the solar explosion. The conversion efficiency of panels has improved by as much
as 0.5% each year for the last 10 years, even as production costs (and thus prices) have sharply declined, thanks to several
waves of manufacturing innovation mostly driven by industry-dominant Chinese panel producers. For the end consumer, this
amounts to far lower up-front costs per kilowatt of energy generated.
This is all great news, not just for the industry but also for anyone who acknowledges the need to transition from fossil
fuels to renewable energy for the sake of our planet's future. But there's a massive caveat that very few are talking about.
Panels, Panels Everywhere
Economic incentives are rapidly aligning to encourage customers to trade their existing panels for newer, cheaper, more
efficient models. In an industry where circularity solutions such as recycling remain woefully inadequate, the sheer volume
of discarded panels will soon pose a risk of existentially damaging proportions.
To be sure, this is not the story one gets from official industry and government sources. The International Renewable Energy
Agency (IRENA)'s official projections assert that "large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s" and
could total 78 million tonnes by the year 2050. That's a staggering amount, undoubtedly. But with so many years to prepare,
it describes a billion-dollar opportunity for recapture of valuable materials rather than a dire threat. The threat is
hidden by the fact that IRENA's predictions are premised upon customers keeping their panels in place for the entirety of
their 30-year life cycle. They do not account for the possibility of widespread early replacement.
Our research does. Using real U.S. data, we modeled the incentives affecting consumers' decisions whether to replace under
various scenarios. We surmised that three variables were particularly salient in determining replacement decisions:
installation price, compensation rate (i.e., the going rate for solar energy sold to the grid), and module efficiency. If
the cost of trading up is low enough, and the efficiency and compensation rate are high enough, we posit that rational
consumers will make the switch, regardless of whether their existing panels have lived out a full 30 years.
As an example, consider a hypothetical consumer (call her "Ms. Brown") living in California who installed solar panels on
her home in 2011. Theoretically, she could keep the panels in place for 30 years, i.e., until 2041. At the time of
installation, the total cost was $40,800, 30% of which was tax deductible thanks to the Solar Investment Tax Credit. In
2011, Ms. Brown could expect to generate 12,000 kilowatts of energy through her solar panels, or roughly $2,100 worth of
electricity. In each following year, the efficiency of her panel decreases by approximately one percent due to module
degradation.
Now imagine that in the year 2026, halfway through the life cycle of her equipment, Ms. Brown starts to look at her solar
options again. She's heard the latest generation of panels are cheaper and more efficient - and when she does her homework,
she finds that that is very much the case. Going by actual current projections, the Ms. Brown of 2026 will find that costs
associated with buying and installing solar panels have fallen by 70% from where they were in 2011. Moreover, the new-
generation panels will yield $2,800 in annual revenue, $700 more than her existing setup when it was new. All told,
upgrading her panels now rather than waiting another 15 years will increase the net present value (NPV) of her solar rig by
more than $3,000 in 2011 dollars. If Ms. Brown is a rational actor, she will opt for early replacement. And if she were
especially shrewd in money matters, she would have come to that decision even sooner - our calculations for the Ms. Brown
scenario show the replacement NPV overtaking that of panel retention starting in 2021.
The Solar Trash Wave. According to our research, cumulative waste projections will rise far sooner and more sharply than
most analysts expect. A line graph shows the cumulative capacity of solar panel waste from 2020 to 2050 in three different
scenarios. Assuming that no faults occur over the 30-year life cycle of the equipment, waste does not begin to accumulate
until around 2040 and then rises sharply to nearly 20 gigawatts by 2050. A second scenario shows the official forecast from
the International Renewable Energy Agency, known as IRENA, which allows for some replacements earlier in the life cycle. In
this case, solar panel waste begins to accumulate around 2030, rising steadily to about 15 gigawatts by 2050. A third
scenario, which represents waste projections predicted by our model and is based on early replacement of solar panels, shows
waste beginning to accumulate almost immediately, by 2023, and rising sharply to reach nearly 20 gigawatts by 2040. Source:
International Renewable Energy Agency, Electricity Data Browser, Global Solar Atlas. See more HBR charts in Data and Visuals
If early replacements occur as predicted by our statistical model, they can produce 50 times more waste in just four years
than IRENA anticipates. That figure translates to around 315,000 metric tonnes of waste, based on an estimate of 90 tonnes
per MW weight-to-power ratio.
Alarming as they are, these stats may not do full justice to the crisis, as our analysis is restricted to residential
installations. With commercial and industrial panels added to the picture, the scale of replacements could be much, much
larger.
The High Cost of Solar Trash
The industry's current circular capacity is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that is likely to come. The
financial incentive to invest in recycling has never been very strong in solar. While panels contain small amounts of
valuable materials such as silver, they are mostly made of glass, an extremely low-value material. The long life span of
solar panels also serves to disincentivize innovation in this area.
As a result, solar's production boom has left its recycling infrastructure in the dust. To give you some indication, First
Solar is the sole U.S. panel manufacturer we know of with an up-and-running recycling initiative, which only applies to the
company's own products at a global capacity of two million panels per year. With the current capacity, it costs an estimated
$20-$30 to recycle one panel. Sending that same panel to a landfill would cost a mere $1-$2.
The direct cost of recycling is only part of the end-of-life burden, however. Panels are delicate, bulky pieces of equipment
usually installed on rooftops in the residential context. Specialized labor is required to detach and remove them, lest they
shatter to smithereens before they make it onto the truck. In addition, some governments may classify solar panels as
hazardous waste, due to the small amounts of heavy metals (cadmium, lead, etc.) they contain. This classification carries
with it a string of expensive restrictions - hazardous waste can only be transported at designated times and via select
routes, etc.
The totality of these unforeseen costs could crush industry competitiveness. If we plot future installations according to a
logistic growth curve capped at 700 GW by 2050 (NREL's estimated ceiling for the U.S. residential market) alongside the
early-replacement curve, we see the volume of waste surpassing that of new installations by the year 2031. By 2035,
discarded panels would outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times. In turn, this would catapult the LCOE (levelized cost of
energy, a measure of the overall cost of an energy-producing asset over its lifetime) to four times the current projection.
The economics of solar - so bright-seeming from the vantage point of 2021 - would darken quickly as the industry sinks under
the weight of its own trash.
Who Pays the Bill?
It will almost certainly fall to regulators to decide who will bear the cleanup costs. As waste from the first wave of early
replacements piles up in the next few years, the U.S. government - starting with the states, but surely escalating to the
federal level - will introduce solar panel recycling legislation. Conceivably, future regulations in the U.S. will follow
the model of the European Union's WEEE Directive, a legal framework for the recycling and disposal of electronic waste
throughout EU member states. The U.S. states that have enacted electronics-recycling legislation have mostly cleaved to the
WEEE model. (The Directive was amended in 2014 to include solar panels.) In the EU, recycling responsibilities for past
(historic) waste have been apportioned to manufacturers based on current market share.
A first step to forestalling disaster may be for solar panel producers to start lobbying for similar legislation in the
United States immediately, instead of waiting for solar panels to start clogging landfills. In our experience drafting and
implementing the revision of the original WEEE Directive in the late 2000s, we found one of the biggest challenges in those
early years was assigning responsibility for the vast amount of accumulated waste generated by companies no longer in the
electronics business (so-called orphan waste).
In the case of solar, the problem is made even thornier by new rules out of Beijing that shave subsidies for solar panel
producers while increasing mandatory competitive bidding for new solar projects. In an industry dominated by Chinese
players, this ramps up the uncertainty factor. With reduced support from the central government, it's possible that some
Chinese producers may fall out of the market. One of the reasons to push legislation now rather than later is to ensure that
the responsibility for recycling the imminent first wave of waste is shared fairly by makers of the equipment concerned. If
legislation comes too late, the remaining players may be forced to deal with the expensive mess that erstwhile Chinese
producers left behind.
But first and foremost, the required solar panel recycling capacity has to be built, as part of a comprehensive end-of-life
infrastructure also encompassing uninstallation, transportation, and (in the meantime) adequate storage facilities for solar
waste. If even the most optimistic of our early-replacement forecasts are accurate, there may not be enough time for
companies to accomplish this alone. Government subsidies are probably the only way to quickly develop capacity commensurate
to the magnitude of the looming waste problem. Corporate lobbyists can make a convincing case for government intervention,
centered on the idea that waste is a negative externality of the rapid innovation necessary for widespread adoption of new
energy technologies such as solar. The cost of creating end-of-life infrastructure for solar, therefore, is an inescapable
part of the RandD package that goes along with supporting green energy.
It's Not Just Solar
The same problem is looming for other renewable-energy technologies. For example, barring a major increase in processing
capability, experts expect that more than 720,000 tons worth of gargantuan wind-turbine blades will end up in U.S. landfills
over the next 20 years. According to prevailing estimates, only five percent of electric-vehicle batteries are currently
recycled - a lag that automakers are racing to rectify as sales figures for electric cars continue to rise as much as 40%
year-on-year. The only essential difference between these green technologies and solar panels is that the latter doubles as
a revenue-generating engine for the consumer. Two separate profit-seeking actors - panel producers and the end consumer -
thus must be satisfied in order for adoption to occur at scale.
...
None of this should raise serious doubts about the future or necessity of renewables. The science is indisputable:
Continuing to rely on fossil fuels to the extent we currently do will bequeath a damaged if not dying planet to future
generations. Compared with all we stand to gain or lose, the four decades or so it will likely take for the economics of
solar to stabilize to the point that consumers won't feel compelled to cut short the life cycle of their panels seems
decidedly small. But that lofty purpose doesn't make the shift to renewable energy any easier in reality. Of all sectors,
sustainable technology can least afford to be shortsighted about the waste it creates. A strategy for entering the circular
economy is absolutely essential - and the sooner, the better.
=====
July:
Antarctica Nears July Record Low With -82.1C (-115.8F)
European Glaciers Remain Covered In Snow
UK Met Office Reports a Cool Summer So Far
July Cold Wave To Grip Much Of U.S.
Buenos Aires' Coldest First Half Of July On Record
Great Barrier Reef Sets All-Time Record In 2024
Argentina Continues To Freeze
Hurricane Lull
U.S. Still Mostly Run On Fossil Fuels
New Zealand's Cold Start To Winter
79% Chance Of A Winter La Nina
Australia's East To Shiver Some More, With Widespread Snow Inbound
China Commissions New Icebreaker (WHY? There's No Ice!)
Historic, All-Time Cold Hits Argentina
South Africa Hit by Cold Fronts And Heavy Snow
La Niña Forecast: Heavy Snow Ahead
Exceptional Snow-Year In Northern Italy
Winter Begins With a Bang In South America
Tasmania Freezes
"Tonga Volcano Prime Suspect"
Scottish Ski Centers Report Rare July Snowfall
Brits Asking "Where Is Summer?"
Europe's Lowest Burn Acreage On Record
Tasmania's Second-Coldest Temperature Ever
America's "Historic June Heatwave" Was a Lie
Historic, All-Time Cold Hits Argentina
South Africa Hit by Cold Fronts And Heavy Snow
La Niña Forecast: Heavy Snow Ahead
Exceptional Snow-Year In Northern Italy
Winter Begins With a Bang In South America
Tasmania Freezes
Scottish Ski Centers Report Rare July Snowfall
Brewing SSW Event In The Southern Hemisphere?
101 Scientists: Claims Of Man-Made Global Warming Are Exaggerated
Brits Asking "Where Is Summer?"
Europe's Lowest Burn Acreage On Record
Tasmania's Second-Coldest Temperature Ever
America's "Historic June Heatwave" Was a Lie
Unprecedented Snowfalls in Argentina Threaten 1 Million Livestock
Aussie Cold
Record Stratospheric Water Vapor
Global Temperatures Took Another Step Down In June
Greenland Gaining Gigatons Of Mass In Summer
Global CO2 Emissions Tracking Well Below 'Scary' Climate Scenarios
Avalanche At Kedarnath Temple
Australia's Bitter Cold And Low Wind Leads To Power Concerns
Greenland's Record Summer Gains