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00:00This week on Bloomberg Green. One year since Joe Biden moved into the White House how did his promises on the environment stack up. We'll bring his hits and misses. I think he's done exceedingly well. But there's a book 20 21 was one of the hottest year on record. But is the tempo of temperature increases rising. We're going to see these increasingly dramatic rises in average temperatures which nobody really experiences and local temperatures. And could India's push to hit that zero get a financial boost in 2022. We'll meet India's green billionaires. The Reliance Group and the Adani Group have set out an extremely ambitious roadmap for themselves ahead. From Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York I'm Kailey Leinz and this is Bloomberg Green. Twenty twenty one was a year of change. There was a new president a new agreement on climate change and heat records all around the world were broken. In this week's show we'll take a look back and to look ahead to what's to come in 2022. We speak to John Podesta from the Center for American Progress and former Clinton chief of staff about how Joe Biden stacked up in his first year on environmental issues and whether more progress can be made in the next three years of his term. Plus we'll take a look at temperatures as new data uncovered by Bloomberg shows the heat index keeps on climbing. Cold spells are becoming weaker and more rare as global warming increases its grip. And we'll break down the data with our Eric Roston. And India has pledged to reach net zero by 2070 despite its massive reliance on fossil fuels. Its two richest men Mukesh Ambani and go to Madani are competing to dominate that new green economy. But first we'll take a look at Washington. January 20th marked one year since Joe Biden became the 46 president of the United States. And the first year of his term was marked by challenges from the pandemic resurgent inflation and record gains for the S & P. But how much progress did he make on his climate related promises. Bloomberg Sarah Rappaport takes a look at Joseph Robinette. Biden Jr. do solemnly swear. President Biden came to office with some high expectations especially on the environment. We are going to see real evidence that the bided administration is going to be taking climate change seriously. But what has the president done on climate. Over his first year. He rejoined the Paris climate agreement. On the very same day he took office. He canceled permits for the Keystone XL pipeline and pours new leases for oil and drilling at a leaders summit on climate in April. He formally pledged that America would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels. We made great progress in my view so far. I'm grateful to all the leaders who've announced new commitments to help us meet the existential threat of climate change during the Cop 26 summit in Glasgow. The president vowed to lead by example and demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example. But in the end the summit brought some progress but less than many had hoped for. Fossil fuels were included in the agreement but a commitment to phase out coal was changed in the closing moments. To phase down cop president Alex Sharma struck an emotional note. I'm deeply sorry. I also understand the deep disappointment. But I think as you have noted it's also vital that we protect this package. However the biggest challenge the administration faced was its failure to pass build back better. The act had some five hundred and fifty five billion dollars and proposed climate action and was a key part of Biden's environmental agenda. The failure to get Joe Manchin on board means the bill's fate is currently in limbo on Capitol Hill and the midterm elections coming up in November threaten Biden's grip on Congress. The president may only have until the end of the year to cement his legacy on stemming the tide of climate change. And for more on guidance first year and the year ahead I spoke with John Podesta. He is founder and chair of the board of directors for the Center for American Progress. He also served as chief of staff for U.S. President Bill Clinton and a counselor to U.S. President Barack Obama overseeing climate and energy policy. We took stock of how far the Biden administration has gotten on climate and how far it still has to go. Mr. Podesta as you look at the Biden administration one year into it how do you characterize the progress it has or has not made on the climate front. Well look I think they came into office making climate central to his presidency. He campaigned on it. He issued a whole series of executive orders right at the beginning to reverse the worst excesses of the Trump administration. He appointed an all star team including Secretary Kerry and Gina McCarthy in the White House. He rejoined Paris and reestablished global leadership followed that up with the summit that took place on Earth Day. And in terms of organizing the government executive actions by the government making environmental justice a high priority for his government. I think he's done exceedingly well. But there's a but. And that is that he also proposed very substantial investments to move the country rapidly towards a cleaner future to tackle the climate crisis. And that legislation as you know is still pending in the Senate. If build back better is not passed if that agenda item does not make it through Congress. Is that 2030 goal not achievable. I you know I think there's people debate this question but my view is we cannot hit that 50 to 52 percent reduction target without the investments that are included in the build back better package. If you think about the consumer credits for electrification of vehicles the very substantial support of to move towards cleaner renewable energy that's included in that bill. The support for clean buildings that the. The reduction of support for fossil fuels. There's just tremendous need for those investments. And I think it would accelerate progress. Finally Mr. Podesta President Biden has three more years in office. I have kind of a two part question for you. How optimistic are you on the next three years. And B if the U.S. can't make adequate progress on climate in this administration will we be too far gone. And that's a problem that can't be fixed by future one. Well look I think I let you know that the president's announced he's going to give the State of the Union on March 1st. I think that's kind of a deadline for these major climate investments that are pending in Congress. So if he gets those I think he can make good on his 50 to 50 to 52 percent. I think that will really give momentum. He can work in collaboration and cooperation with the European Union U.K. Canada other countries that are at the forefront of trying to transform their own modern industrialized economies get some support to do more in partnership with places like India pressure China. So am I optimistic. I I am optimistic but we got to get these investments in place. And so a lot is riding on that if we don't do that. I think not only will the United States lag but I think the rest of the world will look at what's happening in United States and saying look if they can't get it done how are we going to possibly transform our economy. You know that might be a little bit different in in Europe but that's certainly going to be true in China and India and places and in in you know in Mexico and other countries. They're going to they're going to look at our failure to get Congress to make those substantial investments and say look if that's happened in the United States what's what. What about us. And look if we missed this moment we're already seeing the disasters across the board the fires in the west those stronger storms the unique tornado patterns that are hitting the Midwest in December. The unit that's happening here in the United States it's actually it's happening all across the globe. And so the question is how much worse is it going to be. And if we don't if we don't essentially get to that place where we're taking as much carbon out of the atmosphere as we're putting into it then you know we're going to go from disaster to apocalypse. That was John Podesta founder of the Center for American Progress coming up. We all know the world is heating up but it's the pace of warming that we should be focusing on after 2021 rounded out a succession of the seven hottest years of all time. Our sustainability editor Eric Roston will join us next. This is Bloomberg Daybreak. Welcome back to Bloomberg Green. I'm Kailey Leinz Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York. Let's get to the green news you need to know this week. Here's Jennifer ISE. Yeah. Hey Kelly. Thanks so much. So here's all the news you need to know. Let's start off in France. A new law banning the use of single use plastics for fruits and vegetables has come into effect. The measure bans the sale of carrots bananas and other items wrapped in plastic. Environmental campaigners have urged other countries to follow France's lead. Also green fashion claims will be targeted by the UK government. The competition watchdog will review potentially misleading environmental claims made by clothing retailers. This part of an ongoing investigation into greenwashing. And Sylvia Earle the first female chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the author of the new book National Geographic's Ocean A Global Odyssey tells Bloomberg that we need to do more to protect the oceans. Take a listen. In the ocean we should be looking at wildlife with new respect and new understanding. There's a cost that we haven't been accounting for. Call it the carbon cost but it's also almost the ethical moral responsibility that we have to protect the living systems. With all these components from shrimp to oysters to crew in Antarctica make earth habitable for us as well as the rest of life on Earth. And I'm Jennifer ISE a sergeant in New York. And that's your green brief. Kelly. Well I thought that story about oceans was so interesting because when we think about oceans we think about plastic in terms of environmental issues like the single used ones they're branding in France. But also you have to think about overfishing and rising temperatures as well because that can trickle down the entire food chain and the entire ecosystem. Absolutely. Rising temperatures rising sea levels contributing to all of these confluence of factors that are really complicating the situation for our global environment right now. Kelly. Yeah. The global environment not just our oceans. Thank you so much to Jennifer ISE. Now speaking of rising temperatures 2022 is likely to continue the trend of them going up. Analysis from NASA shows that last year it was the sixth hottest on record. And the World Meteorological Organization predicts that there's a 90 percent chance that the hottest year ever occurs between now and 2025. Let's dig deeper into the issue of global warming with our sustainability editor Eric Roston. So Eric you write that 30 years ago NASA scientists warned that 1998 was going to be the hottest year on record. And yet now that doesn't even rank in the top twenty five. Where do the trends suggest we're going from here. Unfortunately no place but up in nineteen eighty eight when global warming first became a major public issue in the United States NASA's climate chief James Hansen said that that year to date was can be the hottest on record. And it was. And now which 28 and that perspective apply that to the future and without dramatic changes in our carbon emissions. That's where we're going unfortunately. So you in particular are concerned not just with warming but the pace of warming that it's not just getting warmer it's getting warmer faster. What can we expect for the years to come. Well the idea is there's one number that really matters. And it's our carbon dioxide emissions are emissions of methane and some other industrial gases. And as long as those will go up we're going to see these increasingly dramatic rises both in average temperatures which nobody really experiences. And local temperatures are local average temperatures wherever you live the extreme temperatures wherever you live. And one interesting paper that came out in August was the jumps in extreme temperatures are going to themselves increase. We saw that very dramatically last year in the Pacific Northwest in the Canadian southwest heat wave in June in August in Europe and around the Mediterranean. Very dramatic leaps in temperature records. And what effect do those really rapidly rising temperatures have on people on people like you and I. Heat itself can be dangerous. That's the bad news. The good news is no one ever has to die of heat as long as we have good cooling infrastructure whether it's air conditioning or other structures that prevent people from heat. Physically we can. We can protect ourselves from it. But it also has dramatic knock on effects on the world around us on how we grow food on our infrastructure our transportation infrastructure things are the things that we have built or not built for the kinds of weather we're increasingly experiencing. All right. Thanks very much to our sustainability editor Eric Roston. Thank you. Up next India will be in focus in 2022 as the world looks to the type of pollution to solidify its net zero targets. But could the country's freshly minted mega rich push it in the right direction. This is one Berkeley. Welcome back to Bloomberg Green. I'm Kailey Leinz Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York. India's role in the climate change battle will be a key concern in 2022 despite a surprise announcement at COP 10 feet tucked into a pot of money. By 2030 India will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45 percent. And fifthly by 2070 India will achieve the target of net zero emissions though it committed to hit net zero by 2017. India pushed back against the UK's ambition to consign coal to history. A key stumbling block was finance and to India's two richest men go to Madani and Mukesh Ambani who have mass fortunes of nearly 200 billion dollars. Collectively could they provide both the impetus and the money to kickstart India's green transition. This year. The Indian city of Jam NIKKEI is a money making machine for Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani. His company Reliance has the world's biggest or refinery complex here in the city producing one point five million barrels of crude every day. Jam NIKKEI is also where Ambani is making his newest bet a 10 billion dollar investment in green energy. His ambition is closely aligned with the Indian government's plan to reach net zero emissions by 2017 and expand its renewable energy to record capacities. But Ambani is not alone. India's second richest man Gautam Adani has committed 20 billion dollars of investment over the next decade. The impact of two biggest business tycoons entering into renewable will create a lot of competition. It will bring in lots of investment. It will create plenty of jobs. And it will push prime minister's target of financing into a greener energy by 2030. But India's massive dependence on fossil fuels and plans to obtain more coal from abroad have some environmental advocates questioning the realism and sincerity of those green ambitions and those of its two biggest billionaires with the power to drive India one of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters towards a green energy future. Are these two billionaires ready to abandon their fossil fuel fortunes. These two conglomerates the Reliance Group and the Adani Group have set out an extremely ambitious roadmap for themselves ahead. Now the real test of the pudding will be in the eating. Some attribute the success of these billionaires to their relationship with the government Ambani and Adani have aligned their business strategies with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's goals and made huge fortunes. Adani Ambani and Modi all three of them hailed from the western Indian state of Gujarat. Ambani while he is now Mumbai based has a lot of assets like the world's biggest refinery. The twin complex of John NIKKEI in Gujarat and Adani still has their base in Gujarat and they have popped loans and bought a lot of infrastructure since none of them really took charge in 2014. His government has given tremendous impetus on clean energy. India's energy mix is extremely deplores fossil fuels. Around 45 percent comes from coal. Around 35 percent comes from poison gas. Again fossil fuel look slightly cleaner. Fossil fuel has about 6 percent. Biomass has a significant portion. And the balance that remains is shared by hydropower. Renewable energy and nuclear power. So these are still very very small infractions in the overall energy mix. It is this is that at the new. To limit. Incremental global warming will seek God the largest opportunities over the next several decades. Adani Green Energy is one of the top players in this field. The company's main business is solar energy generation and it has a portfolio of about 15 gigawatts of renewable energy 15 percent of the country's total renewable capacity. That has added strength and billion dollar to his record. But the billionaire wants more. Adani Green Energy aims to become the world's largest renewable energy company. An Adani said he will invest 20 billion dollars into the sector over the next decade. But his journey to domination might not be easy. As Mukesh Ambani joins the game the world is entering a new energy era which is going to be highly disruptive. Ambani says he will invest 10 billion dollars in solar green hydrogen batteries and fuel cells in the next three years overlapping with a Dani's plan. Both billionaires are also focusing on manufacturing and making solar panels could be one area in which they compete fiercely. Another battleground could be manufacturing electrolysis electrolysis used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. If the process uses electricity generated by renewable energy the hydrogen produced is called green hydrogen. No one in India at least has started producing green hydrogen so far. But that's going to be the ultimate will which everyone would love to have. A green hydrogen where cars they'll tailpipes will only emit some little bit of distilled water. Gas money has gone on record saying that he targets to produce green hydrogen at for one dollar. But gauging the current rate is extremely costly. All over the world if Reliance can target one dollar for kids of hydrogen that's going to be a big game changer. Adani has plans to produce cheap hydrogen as well as strongly produced on the produce the world's least expensive hydrogen. On the face of it this is a sharp pivot from Barney's fossil fuel and palm oil is still king contributing nearly 60 percent of the alliance's 73 billion dollars in annual revenue. A report has shown that Adani is also boosting fossil fuel assets despite vowing to be carbon neutral. So we found that Adani is looking to roughly double its coal fired power capacity as well as 24 gigawatts through the construction of four new coal fired power stations and the expansion of at least two existing plants. But it also has green projects on the anvil. So the real question is that can be drawn but the green projects to the point where they can be carbon neutral that's the objective and that's where the real tightrope walk will go. Moving away from fossil fuels is hard not just from Bonnie and Adani but to India as a whole. Modi has committed to reach net zero by 2017 but that's a big task. Nearly 70 percent of the country's electricity came from coal power plants last year in the very short domain. India has lost population and the lower end may not immediately benefit by the green initiatives announced by the two tycoons. The only benefit that we can think of is maybe more jobs coming through these projects because it'll take time for these projects to come on line. It depends on how good executed and how they perform how to deliver. Those are the Wadia boots and other middlemen. The road map for these conglomerates how successful they are how they create wealth or destroy it. So from Joe Biden's green agenda to India's billionaires taking the lead on green investment. That's it for this week's edition of Bloomberg Green. You can keep the conversation going by following us on YouTube Instagram and Twitter at Climate. I'm Kailey Leinz from Bloomberg's global headquarters in New York. And this is Bloomberg Green.

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Bloomberg Green: What Next for Biden's Green Agenda?

One year since President Biden entered the White House -- how far has he come with his ambitious climate goals? We'll break down the President's achievements and speak to former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta. Plus, following the sixth hottest year on record, we look into the pace of global warming and what we can do to slow it down. And: we focus on India's megabillionaires: Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani as they go big on green. (Source: Bloomberg)

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