From Bloomburg Daily Green: 17 things we learned this year

This year we learned

2. Europe’s housing is not heat-ready. Heat waves in the region are becoming more frequent and more intense, creating livability issues in cities where homes aren’t built for high temperatures.

3. The climate dads have arrived. Like sports dads, grill dads and car dads before them, climate dads are a little bit nerdy, a little bit obsessive and 100% focused on saving the planet.

Sam Balto, a 37-year-old physical education teacher in Portland, Oregon, started a weekly “bike bus” for student cyclists. Photographer: Thomas Teal/Bloomberg

4. AI is going to eat up electricity. Artificial intelligence uses more power than other forms of computing, but nobody knows how much of that will come from coal and gas-fired power plants.

5. Animals shed genetic material. Startups are using “environmental DNA” science to help big companies measure their biodiversity impact. It could be an accountability breakthrough — or greenwashing.

6. LNG wasn’t built for extreme weather. Natural gas plants, now the top source of electricity in the US, are to blame for a disproportionate share of outages when the weather gets rough.

7. Tesla owners are souring on Elon Musk. Tesla’s most ardent early adopters still rave about their Model 3s, but many feel a sense of betrayal when Musk picks fights and downplays climate change.

8. Oil and gas hubs are pivoting to clean energy. Along the Louisiana and Texas coasts, experienced oil and gas workers are happily picking up jobs in the growing wind industry.

A worker welds steel for the construction of the 262-foot Eco Edison vessel at a shipyard in Houma, Louisiana. Photographer: Bryan Tarnowski/Bloomberg

9. Rising temperatures wreak havoc year-round. From hotter summers curtailing nuclear power output to milder winters helping a forest pest spread, this is life on a planet 1.2C warmer.

10. America’s loneliest road is finally EV-ready. As the US adds thousands of charging stations, a pioneering traveler can now traverse the entirety of Route 50 on public fast chargers alone.

11. Wind turbines keep falling down. People in the industry cite the race to add ever-bigger turbines as a major culprit in the rash of malfunctions seen across the US and Europe.

12. A psychedelics boom is minting environmentalists. Proponents of a new wave of interest in hallucinogens say the right trip can change how people think about the natural world.

13. The world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood is here. If it can scale, the process promises to deliver energy-efficient and climate-resilient homes that can be built faster and with less waste.

14. Disruptive climate protests have a big financial backer. The Climate Emergency Fund, itself supported by Hollywood, is quietly financing a new generation of in-your-face activists.

A Just Stop Oil protester throws orange powder over a table during the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield, UK, on April 17. Photographer: Mike Egerton/PA Wire

15. “Recyclable” snack wrappers often aren’t. A plastic drop-off program embraced by 12,000 retail locations and more than 500 brands in the US has been putting packaging into landfills.

16. America’s fastest-growing job is wind-turbine technician. Experienced technicians can make about $80,000 a year, though they must be willing to travel and lug heavy gear up long ladders.

17. China’s abandoned EVs are piling up in cities. The pools of unwanted battery-powered vehicles are a striking representation of the excess that can happen when capital floods into a new industry.

Abandoned EVs on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Hangzhou. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg