Climate – Enviro 360

22 People Are Killed by Tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama.

On Friday, a tornado that ripped through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia claimed at least 22 lives.

One of them was a monster twister with an intensity rating of 4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale of 0 to 5. The three-quarter-mile-wide tornado devastated the city of Rolling Fork and astounded meteorologists with its magnitude and power as it tore through Mississippi for 59 miles and roughly one hour and ten minutes.

Storm chaser Stephanie Cox, who is based in Oklahoma, told BBC News, “I still can’t believe what I saw.

22 People Are Killed by Tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama.

Around 8 p.m. on Friday night, the tornado that had been forming over the Mississippi River made landfall in Rolling Fork. Because of the reduced visibility, tornadoes are particularly dangerous at this time of day and can be twice as deadly. Additionally, The Washington Post noted that about 30% of Rolling Fork’s 2,000 residents reside in mobile homes, which are particularly susceptible to tornadoes.

At least 13 people were killed by the storm, which caused devastation in the town, which is more than 80% Black and has a poverty rate of roughly 21%.

Charles Weissinger, a resident of Rolling Fork for all of his 72 years, told The Washington Post that “the vast majority of all the residential and commercial property in our little village is virtually gone.” The roof is missing where I’m sitting in my office right now. I can see a clear sky.

Even more direct advice came from the mayor of the Mississippi Delta town that Muddy Waters claimed as his birthplace. Also in the path of the tornado was the 200-some Delta community of Silver City, where, as The Washington Post reported, only a few buildings still stand.

The storms that swept across the South on Friday are thought to have killed 21 people in Mississippi and one person in Alabama, where a tornado toppled a mobile home onto a 67-year-old man, trapping him, according to The Weather Channel. Twisters also damaged more than 100 homes and businesses in Georgia.

Following the storms, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves declared a State of Emergency, according to CNN. And President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Mississippi Sunday morning, which will unlock federal aid for residents of Carroll, Humphreys, Monroe, and Sharkey counties, where Rolling Fork is located, as The White House announced.

Meteorologists said to BBC News that the Rolling Fork tornado originated from a supercell storm, which features warm air near the ground and variable wind directions and speeds as you move up in the atmosphere. Although these storms are uncommon, they can last longer than regular storms and result in greater damage.

According to Lance Perrilloux, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi, the conditions were just right for the storm to last a very long time, which is unusual. It caused that tornado to just wreak havoc for a long distance.

Perrilloux further informed NPR that the storm’s duration and power made it one of the rare tornadoes that we’ve seen in documented Mississippi history.

The role that the climate crisis plays in influencing tornadoes is difficult to assess, but there is some evidence that they are becoming more common in the Southeast and Midwest relative to the Great Plains, and that outbreaks of multiple tornadoes are set to become more likely in the South and Mid-South with global warming.

What we’re going to see is more of these disasters, Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini told Axios in 2021, after another tornado cluster struck eight states in the South and Mid-South.

Climate Change and The Growth of Bacteria that Eat Human Body Parts.

According to a recent study, Vibrio vulnificus infections are becoming more prevalent and are moving further north in the United States. Without action to reduce emissions, the pathogen will expand even further in the next decades, according to the experts, who have connected the rising and spreading infections to climate change.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vibrio vulnificus can cause a life-threatening wound infection (CDC). Eating raw or undercooked seafood or coming into touch with saltwater or brackish water can also result in Vibrio genus infections.

Warmer water and lower salinity both help the disease spread. According to James Oliver, co-author of the study and a biology professor at the University of North Carolina, these circumstances become increasingly favorable to Vibrio vulnificus as a result of global warming.

According to the study, up to 18% of infections caused by Vibrio vulnificus result in death and require surgical tissue excision or limb amputation. Within 48 hours of infection, deaths can happen.

Infections with Vibrio vulnificus in the eastern United States increased eightfold between 1988 and 2018, from around 10 infections per year to about 80 infections per year, according to a study that was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Not only did the infection rate rise throughout that period, but the researchers also saw a northward shift in the location of the cases. North of Georgia was traditionally where instances were not detected, but by 2018, cases were routinely being recorded as far north as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By 2060, infections may move further north into densely populated New Jersey and New York, and the number of cases may increase by twofold.

According to the study’s authors, climate change will likely have a significant impact on the distribution and number of V. vulnificus infections in the Eastern United States due to warming coastal waters that favor the presence of bacteria and higher temperatures that encourage more coastal recreation.

By 2100, the researchers predicted that Vibrio vulnificus infections might be found in every state in the eastern United States if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the effects of global warming. According to Elizabeth Archer, the main author of the study and a postgraduate researcher at the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences, illnesses may only migrate northward to Connecticut if emissions are reduced.

According to Archer, who was quoted by EurekAlert!, greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are altering our climate, and the effects may be particularly severe on the world’s coastlines because they serve as a significant boundary between human populations and natural ecosystems as well as a major source of disease.

The researchers pointed out that this knowledge could assist public health officials in getting ready for the spread of Vibrio infections, including developing educational initiatives for at-risk populations and signs to be placed along coastlines when environmental factors favor greater pathogen spread.

Climate Change Related to The Growth of Flesh-Eating Bacteria.

According to the study, up to 18% of infections caused by Vibrio vulnificus result in death and require surgical tissue excision or limb amputation. Within 48 hours of infection, deaths can happen.

By 2060, infections may move further north into densely populated New Jersey and New York, and the number of cases may increase by twofold.

By 2100, the researchers predicted that Vibrio vulnificus infections might be found in every state in the eastern United States if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the effects of global warming. According to Elizabeth Archer, the main author of the study and a postgraduate researcher at the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences, illnesses may only migrate northward to Connecticut if emissions are reduced.

The Nation’s First Ocean Climate Action Plan Is Unveiled by The Biden Administration.

The Biden administration on Tuesday presented a new approach to cooperate with the ocean to reduce and adapt to the climate issue.

At the White House Conservation in Action Summit, President Joe Biden announced the release of the first Ocean Climate Action Plan in American history. He also officially named two new national monuments and requested the Secretary of Commerce consider creating a national marine sanctuary in American waters near the Pacific Remote Islands.

According to Biden, we can lessen emissions by constructing offshore wind farms, better safeguarding our coastal and fishing towns from severe storms, shifting fisheries, and other effects of climate change

Three Key Objectives of The Ocean Climate Action Plan Are:

Achieve carbon neutrality.
Work with the oceans to develop nature-based solutions to store carbon dioxide, reduce the risk from the climate crisis and protect communities and ecosystems from inevitable changes.
Work with the ocean to boost the resilience of communities to those same changes.

The report outlined eight key activities to achieve these objectives, including increasing offshore wind and other ocean-based renewable energy projects, decarbonizing maritime shipping, protecting and restoring marine and coastal carbon sinks, and establishing more marine protected areas. The Biden administration has already vowed to safeguard 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030.

The Ocean Policy Committee co-chairs Arati Prabhakar and Brenda Mallory wrote in a letter introducing the plan that the actions are guided by a commitment to be responsible stewards of a healthy and sustainable ocean, advance environmental justice, engage with communities, Tribal Nations, and Indigenous Peoples, act based on evidence, science, and Indigenous Knowledge, and integrate and coordinate actions across the Federal Government.

To commemorate World Ocean Day in 2022, the Biden administration first declared its desire to create an ocean climate plan. Ocean advocacy organizations enthusiastically embraced the final release.

According to Ocean Defense Initiative Director Jean Flemma in a statement issued to EcoWatch, this Ocean Climate Action Plan is the first comprehensive strategy the United States has used to harness the power of the ocean in the battle against climate change. As a result of the plan, strong climate action should spread coast to coast, reducing emissions and assisting vulnerable communities. Yet, a plan is only as strong as its implementation.

In order to guarantee that effective ocean climate action policies are adopted by all federal agencies and benefit the areas that need them the most, we look forward to cooperating with the Biden Administration.

The wider impact of some ocean-based climate solutions suggested for investigation is one issue with implementation, according to Inside Climate News. One such initiative would seed portions of the ocean with minerals that would boost the growth of photosynthetic plankton. Although other natural marine cycles would be disturbed, this would reduce carbon dioxide.

Yet, as the ocean already absorbs around 90% of additional warming, supporters of the ocean are generally pleased to see recognition of the role the ocean already plays in reducing the effects of the climate problem.

Oceana Senior Director of Federal Policy Lara Levison told USA TODAY that when talking about climate action and solutions, ocean policy is frequently neglected. There is a great deal of focus on what is happening on land, but the ocean is not given nearly enough attention.

Overall, the group applauded the proposal but encouraged the government to take other steps to restrict offshore oil and gas development. Biden has recently faced criticism for his support of the contentious Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated in its most recent report that the carbon budget for keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels would be consumed by existing fossil fuel projects.

According to Oceana’s Vice President for the United States, Beth Lowell, it is encouraging that President Biden is taking the climate catastrophe seriously and making sure that our oceans are taken into account in the plan to address it. Our seas have so far helped shield humanity from the worst effects of climate change, and we are aware that they have a significant potential to prevent the earth from warming up to catastrophic levels. Yet for that to happen, nations like the US must halt the growth of hazardous and polluting offshore drilling.

According to the group’s calculations, the United States could avoid more than $720 billion in damages and prevent more than 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere if it outlawed offshore drilling in unleased federal waters.

New Research Provides More Clarity on Forest Carbon Offsets.

Another study has questioned the veracity and dependability of the carbon credits that businesses and people buy to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

The groundbreaking peer-reviewed study, which was released in the Tuesday issue of Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, examined over 300 projects, or 11% of the available carbon credits. It was discovered that the procedures for calculating the carbon credits were frequently at odds with accepted scientific norms, which raised the possibility of a project significantly overestimating the amount of carbon it may remove from the atmosphere.

The study was released about two months after a significant investigation revealed that 94 percent of the emissions offset credits confirmed by leading carbon credit registrar Verra were false.

You cannot offset your emissions, according to research leader Barbara Haya from the University of Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Affairs, who spoke with Bloomberg. Other methods of assisting climate change mitigation are required because the current market for offsets is woefully ineffective.

In the new study, credits provided for improved forest management were specifically examined. Certain forestry techniques, such as waiting until trees are older to cut them down or minimizing the use of high-impact infrastructure like roads, may improve a managed woodland’s capacity to store carbon.

According to the study’s authors, such tactics do have the potential to boost carbon storage by carbon stocks by 0.2 to 2.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually across the globe. The researchers discovered that this was not always the case and that for this to occur, a sponsored initiative must really remove more carbon from the atmosphere than would have been removed if the project had not been funded.

This is due to issues with determining the baseline, or what would have happened if the project hadn’t been undertaken, against which emissions offsets are computed. Exaggerating the baseline can be done in a number of ways to increase the carbon storage of a project. For instance, the majority of projects will use tree stands that store more carbon than is typical for the region.

But because the regional average is frequently used as a benchmark, projects will select forest plots that have already departed from it. One research referenced in the paper found that nearly 30% of the projects it examined that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) used for the state’s emissions program underestimated their capacity to store carbon as a result. Projects comparing their methods to intensive clear-cutting when this was never expected to happen is another baseline fallacy.

The authors of the study concluded that altering how baselines are established is the key to preventing over-crediting.

Most of the credits examined in the study were issued through registries used by CARB, including American Carbon Registry (ACR), Climate Action Reserve (CAR), and Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). According to Bloomberg, the registries, CARB, and others have all supported their methods. Yet this isn’t the first time that forest management credits have come under scrutiny.

Bloomberg covered an agreement between the State of Michigan, Blue Source, LLC, and five Wisconsin counties last year to establish forest carbon offset projects on around 800,000 acres, from which 10 million carbon credits were anticipated to emerge over a ten-year period. But, scientists and forest managers believed it was unlikely that forest management methods would truly change, preventing further carbon absorption.

Professor of political science at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, Steven Davis said at the time, “It’s kind of a nothing-burger for the climate.” For seventy years, these woodlands have been managed in the same manner.

The authors of the study suggested that there are techniques to increase the accuracy of carbon credits. They included establishing historical baselines for a specific piece of land rather than the regional average or avoided presuming that the trees would have been cut down regardless.

The authors of the study suggested several modifications to the protocols that would produce more precise and conservative baselines.

However, there is a fundamental problem with relying on offsets to reach net zero emissions when the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes clear that climate pollution must be nearly halved this decade to have a shot at limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees or two degrees Celsius by 2100.

In this fleeting moment, when we must drastically cut our emissions to stop runaway climate change, it gives the impression that we’re doing more than we actually are, Haya told Bloomberg.

According to A Un Report, The Number of City Dwellers Without Access to Clean Drinking Water Will Double by 2050.

A new UN research warns that a worldwide water crisis is on the horizon as the first UN water conference since 1977 gets underway.

According to recent studies, there will be twice as many urban dwellers without access to safe drinking water by the year 2050, and the demand for water in urban areas is expected to rise by 80%.

We must work together to share and manage water responsibly since it is vital to our shared future. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay stated on the UN World Water Development Report website that as the world gathers for the first significant United Nations conference on water in the last 50 years, we have a responsibility to chart a collective course to ensure access to water and sanitation for all.

Almost one billion people globally already experience water scarcity in cities, and within the next 30 years, it is anticipated that this figure will rise to between 1.7 and 2.4 billion. This information comes from the UN World Water Development Report.

According to the study, water shortages affect between two and three billion people for at least one month out of every year, and they are also getting more prevalent in rural regions, according to The Guardian.

According to Azoulay, strong international institutions must be set up immediately to stop the global water problem from getting out of hand.

According to a UN report, almost two billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, and 3.6 billion lack basic sanitation, The Guardian said.

According to the report, financing for water development abroad has risen since 2002, rising from $2.7 billion annually to $8.7 billion annually.

The Global Commission on the Economics of Water found that by 2030, worldwide freshwater demand would outpace supply.

According to the report’s lead author Richard Connor, agriculture uses 70% of the water that is available on Earth.

Connor told reporters at a press briefing at UN Headquarters that uncertainties are mounting, said UN News.

There Will Undoubtedly Be a Global Disaster if We Don’t Address It, Connor Said.

Economic water constraints, including the failure of governments to guarantee secure access to running water in regions like central Africa, are a major problem, according to Connor. Moreover, the Middle East and northern India’s desert regions had the greatest physical water scarcity.

According to UN News, Connor did assert that the use of water as a resource frequently results in harmony and collaboration rather than strife.

Water is ultimately a human right, according to Johannes Cullmann, the president of the World Meteorological Organization’s scientific advisor.

According to Cullmann, cooperation is the key to sustainable development, and water is a remarkably potent link. We should consider water rather than bargain over it.

The UN Water Conference, co-hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, is being held in New York through March 24.

Wetland Methane Emissions in 2020 and 2021 Attained “Exceptional” Levels.

All three greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane—reached record-high atmospheric concentrations in 2021. But there was a mystery in the data. What is the reason behind the increase in methane concentrations since 2007?

Nevertheless, a recent study discovered that wetlands have been releasing more and more methane (CH4) since 2000, with emissions reaching unprecedented levels in 2020 and 2021. The study was published in Nature Climate Change on Monday.

According to the study’s authors, the strong positive wetland CH4 feedback is likely to occur under the current warming and precipitation variations brought on by climate change.

Methane has 84 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide during a 20-year period, which makes it a climate worry. Targeting methane emissions provides a chance to maintain warming within 1.5 to two degrees over pre-industrial levels in the short term, but it also evaporates in the atmosphere after about a decade.

Yet, wetlands that are promoted as carbon sinks start to leak more methane as the temperature warms, according to Carbon Brief. This can occur as tropical wetlands expand under more intense precipitation, as permafrost wetlands in the Arctic melt, as methane-releasing microbial activity rises, or both.

According to a USGS study published in early March, under moderate to extreme warming, methane emissions from freshwater wetlands might rise by two to three times. Governments and scientists must take this into consideration.

According to research co-author and USGS Research Ecologist Sheel Bansal, if we determine how much to cut our methane emissions without taking into consideration how warming is altering the processes producing natural emissions, we risk falling short when accounting for our mitigation efforts.

The Nature Climate Change study examined both current events and potential future developments. According to Carbon Brief, researchers developed a model that predicts future emissions from both permafrost and tropical wetlands using both field measurements and reanalysis data that merged observations and models.

They found that since 2000, wetland methane emissions have increased by 1.2 to 1.4 million tonnes annually, exceeding the worst-case scenario emissions pathway’s projection of 0.9 million tonnes annually.

Compared to the years 2000 to 2006, emissions climbed significantly more in 2020 and 2021, reaching four to 26 million tonnes in 2020 and 13 to 23 million tonnes in 2021. The thawing permafrost is still a problem for the future even if tropical wetlands are currently responsible for most of the emissions increases.

The findings are especially alarming given that wetland methane emissions rise with warming in none of the major publications, including the most recent study from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The authors of the study concluded that coordination between the scientific community on integrating rapidly changing biospheric processes within remaining carbon budgets is a need if we are to stay below 1.5 C and 2.0 C. The advent of a wetland climate feedback underscores this point.

According to Dr. Gabrielle Dreyfus, chief scientist at the nonprofit Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development who was not involved in the study, the data may require more than just the rapid and significant cuts in human methane emissions that the IPCC claims are required to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to Dreyfus, the study’s shortcomings suggest that in the future, methods for removing methane may need to be adopted in addition to limiting human-caused methane emissions.

The findings coincide with another paper that was published in Nature Climate Change on the same day. It examined the behavior of all three major greenhouse gases in 167 wetlands throughout the Northern Hemisphere between 1990 and 2022 and discovered that even a warming of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius increased the potential for 100-year global warming by 57 percent.

According to the study’s authors, their findings demonstrate that even for a modest temperature increase of 1.5–2.0 C, the major objective of the Paris Agreement, warming diminishes the mitigation capability of pristine wetlands.

Government Sends $2.4 Million to Nevada for Cloud Seeding.

A geoengineering method called cloud seeding includes utilizing planes and cannons to fire silver iodide into clouds, which causes a response that increases precipitation by 5 to 15%.

Since several years ago, New Mexico has been awarding cloud seeding permits. Utah and Colorado have been seeding clouds in the Upper Colorado River Basin for decades, costing between $1 and $1.5 million a year.

Frank McDonough, a scientist at the nonprofit Desert Research Institute, tells AP that the research that s come out over the last 10 years or so really seems to have convinced [states] that cloud seeding is a legitimate way to increase snowpack and subsequent water resources.

The federal investment comes at a crucial time when the main reservoirs in the Colorado River basin are at historic lows and Western communities and industry are scrambling to save water even as supplies are further depleted.

Researchers Warn that By 2030, Global Freshwater Demand Would Outpace Supply by 40%.

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge first published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798, the lyrics “Water, water, everywhere, / Ne any drop to drink” sound particularly relevant today.

According to Csaba Krsi, the president of the 77th United Nations General Assembly, during a news conference on the impending UN Water Conference, the world is currently experiencing an unprecedented water crisis, with the demand for freshwater expected to outpace availability by 40% by 2030.

There is a water issue, according to the scientific findings. Through what we are doing to the climate, we are wasting water, polluting water, and altering the entire global hydrological cycle. It s a triple catastrophe, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Johan Rockstrom, who is co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW), told The Guardian.

At the UN meeting taking place from March 22 to 24 in New York, a Water Action Agenda voluntary pledge by nations and stakeholders to achieve sustainable development goals is anticipated to be established.

The GCEW study Changing the Tide: A Collective Call to Action outlines crucial steps that everyone must take to avert the impending water crisis. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and global climate action, in general, will fail, according to the commission, the GCEW reported in a press statement.

Governments must stop subsidizing agricultural water extraction and usage, according to the report, according to The Guardian. Heavy industry activities like mining and manufacturing must also stop being dangerous and wasteful.

The report’s authors make the point that since most nations rely on one another for this critical resource and its pollution and excessive usage endanger the world’s water resources, countries must start managing water as a common good.

We require a common good strategy that is far more proactive and ambitious. According to Mariana Mazzucato, co-chair of the GCEW and lead author of the study at University College London, we need to place justice and equity at the center of this; it’s not only a technology or financial problem.

According to Rockstrom, most countries acquire around half of their water from neighboring countries’ green water, which is produced when trees’ leaves emit water vapor while transpiring. Nevertheless, most of these countries are unaware of this link.

Seven important recommendations are made in the GCEW report, including managing the planet’s water cycle as a common good, ending the undervaluation of water, eliminating the $700 billion in water and agriculture subsidies, and establishing Just Water Partnerships to facilitate investments in water sustainability, access, and resilience in low- and middle-income countries.

The research recommended that the restoration of wetlands, depleted groundwater supplies, and other freshwater systems, as well as clean and sufficient water for all vulnerable people, be given top priority.

According to Rockstrom, there won’t be an agricultural revolution until the water problem is solved, according to The Guardian. There is always water behind all of the difficulties we encounter, but we never bring it up.

Since the initial water summit in 1977, the UN has not convened for a water-related discussion until next week’s conference. If we are to have a hope of solving our climate crisis, our biodiversity crisis, and other global challenges on food, energy, and health, we need to radically change our approach in how we value and manage water, Henk Ovink, a special envoy for international water affairs for the Netherlands, told The Guardian. The best chance we have to ensure that people, crops, and the environment continue to have access to the water they require is now.

Despite Requests from The Government to Remain on Standby, Two Aging UK Coal Plants Will Close in March.

Despite efforts from the government to keep them operating, two outdated UK coal facilities will close at the end of the winter.

The facilities were initially slated to close in 2022, but the government requested that they stay on standby for the winters of 2022 and 2023 to fill in amid the prolonged energy crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

West Burton’s two remaining units According to the agreement made last year, a coal-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire will shut down as scheduled on March 31st, 2023, according to Electricite de France (EDF), which runs one of the plants, as reported by the Press Association.

The only time EDF’s West Burtonplant was utilized this winter was on March 7 during a cold snap. The other plant is a Drax facility in North Yorkshire, which has not yet been used this winter.

According to BBC News, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero instructed the National Grid’s Electricity System Operator (ESO) on Wednesday to make sure that there were backup energy plans in place for the winters of 2023 and 2024.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero requested that we investigate the procurement of winter contingency contracts, for additional non-gas-fired capacity over the winter of 2023–2024 that would not otherwise have been available, in a letter that was received and acknowledged at the Operational Transparency Forum this morning, according to the Press Association.

But, According to Both Operators, that Would Not Be Feasible.

According to EDF, as reported by the Press Association, extending the life of West Burton A once again is exceedingly difficult due to a variety of staffing and operational issues. For instance, keeping local, appropriately qualified employees on staff to ensure the safe operation was a huge difficulty last year and, going forward, becomes impossible given that a large portion of the workforce has already continued to work well past their scheduled retirement dates.

By the second quarter of this year, around half the workforce will be retiring. Around half of these have already received notices, and they depart in early April. A sizable portion of the station leadership team is included in this.

Moreover, Drax announced that it would be difficult to continue operating for another year and that its plant would be shut down at the end of March.

[W]ith a number of certifications expiring on the coal-fired units, the units would not be able to operate compliantly for winter 2023, aDraxspokesperson said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

According to BBC News: ESO said that it was unable to comment on ongoing negotiations.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero stated in a statement that the choice will ultimately be a commercial one for the coal generators, and ESO will notify the market in due course.

As part of its effort to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to solve the climate issue, Britain has previously committed to closing all of its coal-fired plants by October 2024, according to Reuters. According to Carbon Brief, although coal is infamous for being the dirtiest fuel used for energy, its use has dropped significantly in the UK in recent years, reaching levels last seen before the commencement of the industrial revolution in 1757.