Green energy and floods on the rise in Asia
Asia is a green energy powerhouse, flooding and heatwaves on the rise, and what we can do about it
I’m just back from one of my bundled trips – this time to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where I packed 31 speaking events, panels, and interviews into just 12 days. It takes a lot of work to plan these trips (and a lot of energy to make it through), but I think it’s worth it, to make every hour and every ounce of carbon count!
While there, I met with educators, policy experts, philanthropists, students, faith leaders, financiers, conservationists, and people concerned about the climate and biodiversity crisis from all walks of life. Everyone had something to share, from how they’d personally been affected by extreme heatwaves or floods to how excited they were about the climate solutions they were working on.
Here’s some of the best good news and the worst not-so-good news I heard about on my trip. If you’re interested in more, I've already been sharing recordings of some of my talks, interviews, and other events on LinkedIn.
GOOD NEWS
One of the most common refrains I hear in North America when I bring up climate action is, “What about China?” These days, I say, yes – let’s talk about what’s happening there.
Last year, China installed 57 percent of all new solar power around the world, and they’re on track to do the same this year. Back in 2020, President Xi Jinping set a goal of 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar by the end of the decade. China has already reached that goal a full six years ahead of schedule. "In a world in which national climate targets are being missed, the speed and scale of expansion in China’s installed renewable capacity is unmatched," Isabel Hilton wrote in Yale Environment 360.
Hong Kong doesn’t have a lot of space for energy – so they’re now purchasing green power from China. Currently, clean energy - from nuclear and other sources - covers 27 percent of Hong Kong's energy needs, a number expected to hit 35 percent by 2025. But by 2035, from 60 to 70 percent of Hong Kong's power will come from zero emission sources.
In Singapore, the government is hard at work implementing an ambitious climate plan that seeks to reach net zero emissions by 2050, set aside 200 hectares for nature parks, and green 80 percent of all buildings over the next decade, among a host of other actions. And Singaporeans are on board with taking climate actions: a majority of respondents in a recent survey are already taking a range of low-cost actions to curb their personal carbon footprint, and a majority said they are likely to take more high-cost and high-effort actions in the future as well.
South Korea is lagging when it comes to clean energy. A recent analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics finds that renewable energy makes up less than 10% of their total, and characterizes their net zero by 2050 plan as "high cost and high risk." As I've talked about before, though, South Korea is a world leader in food waste reduction. They now turn nearly 98% of their food waste into biogas, fertilizer, or livestock feed. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of heat-trapping gases; so this is truly good news that can and should be emulated everywhere!
NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS
While I was there, Super Typhoon Yagi left a swath of devastation and death across the region. The strongest storm to hit Vietnam in 70 years, Yagi killed at least 350 people there. Yagi went on to hit Laos and Thailand, destroying homes and cropland. In Myanmar, at least 226 died as a result of mudslides and flooding. Life in Shanghai came to a standstill as Yagi hit the city, the strongest storm to do so since 1949.
Meanwhile, at the Singapore Grand Prix, temperatures reached 32 degrees Celsius (90 Fahrenheit) with 70 percent humidity, leaving some drivers feeling dizzy and unwell. "Several drivers made little errors in the second half of the 62-lap race due to fatigue from the heat, including race winner Lando Norris, who brushed the wall on several occasions but was lucky enough not to encounter severe damage on his McLaren MCL38,” Sports Illustrated reported.
Everyone I spoke with while I was there had a story about how flooding or extreme heat (or both) over the last year or two had upended their lives: and sadly, these stories are becoming even more common. Just this week, record-breaking floods in Nepal have closed schools, killed at least 100 people, and destroyed towns: at the same time that flooding is destroying homes and upending people’s lives across Tennessee and North Carolina in the United States.
It’s clear these events can no longer be called “natural disasters” – they are unnatural disasters fueled by our carbon pollution, and they will keep getting worse until we stop producing it.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
The good news and the not-so-good news this week highlight the need for both mitigation and adaptation when it comes to climate action. We must adapt to the extremes we can no longer avoid, but we must also transition quickly away from dirty, polluting energy sources. If we don’t, as I discuss here, the coming changes will be too great to adapt to.
Each of us can contribute to climate mitigation in our daily lives. Heatmap News, one of my favorite climate newsletters, recently released a special report on how to do just that. They cover everything from switching to an electric vehicle to installing roof-top solar to making your home more energy efficient to electrifying your appliances, and even how to consider changing what you eat and how you commute.
Even more powerfully, these actions can start conversations that make change contagious – with friends or family, or in our workplaces, schools, or communities.
At the same time, we must prepare for more extreme heat, floods, and storms—and help ensure those around us are prepared, too. In these newsletters from May and June, I discuss practical steps we can take to become more resilient to these risks.
As physicist John Holdren, former US Science Advisor, once said, “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.”
What stands out to me from this quote is that the choice is ours. Our future is literally in our hands and, while we can’t shape it alone, I know we can together.
Nuclear is hardly "clean" energy. Not unless you don't mind a toxic radioactive dump in your neighborhood's decommissioned nuclear power plant.
Glad you enjoyed your time in Asia! I'm originally from Singapore, miss it every day haha. The driver struggles are a yearly occurrence at the Singapore GP (and Malaysia when F1 used to race there). 32c and 100% humidity is just daily life in Singapore - not sure how I lived there for so long. Drivers normally train all year specifically to handle the race in Singapore. I only ever stayed indoors haha.
Their battle with heat has been on the rise though, and I suppose it's the same with athletes all around the world that train or perform outdoors. The number of drivers reporting heat exhaustion at races other than Singapore has been on the rise in recent years, and the issue only grows larger with each year.