Crypto News: A new urban war on fires

Southern California residents are facing another day of tinderbox conditions after an exhausting week of wildfires. Follow the latest updates. Plus, Bloomberg reporters will answer questions about how climate disasters are impacting the US home insurance market during a live Live Q&A Wednesday at 10:45am EST. Join here.

Today's newsletter looks at how the disaster in Los Angeles is prompting a rethink on tactics for fighting future urban wildfires. Later, read the latest report from BloombergNEF on the impact trade wars are having on battery prices. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe.

A new urban war on fires

By Todd Woody

The out-of-control wildfires that are decimating Los Angeles demand cities rethink how to fight urban conflagrations, according to fire experts.

Fast-moving wildfires have ravaged rural California for years, but this speed and scale in an urban environment is new. The hurricane-force winds that have driven the Los Angeles firestorms would have overwhelmed any fire-fighting force, said Joe Ten Eyck, the wildfire interface programs coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters, a labor union. But he said the LA fires have underscored the need to train urban firefighters accustomed to extinguishing building fires how to combat multiple fast-moving wildfires that suddenly erupt in a city.

"Only 40% of them really get training in the wildland-urban interface and a lot of that training is insufficient," said Ten Eyck, a former operations chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "We really need to invest in professional fire service staffing and that will help us in the initial response and in the secondary response to these wildfires."

Firefighters work to contain the the Palisades Fire in the Mandeville Canyon on Jan. 12. Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg

Ten Eyck's association offers training that teaches municipal firefighters strategies for containing wildland blazes while protecting homes and evacuating residents.

Colin Arnold, interim assistant chief for the wildland-urban interface for the Berkeley Fire Department in Northern California, said the LA wildfire disaster "serves as yet another wakeup call, and it's a big one."

Berkeley, a city of about 120,000 residents, is wedged between heavily vegetated and densely populated foothills and San Francisco Bay. The hills burned to the edge of downtown in 1923 and ignited again in 1991 in the Oakland-Berkeley hills firestorm that killed 25 people and destroyed some 3,000 homes.

Arnold oversees annual inspections of the 8,000 houses in the Berkeley hills to encourage residents to harden their homes against wildfire and ensure they're complying with vegetation rules to prevent structures from igniting. "We're hopeful that out of the Los Angeles fire there's the opportunity to pursue more aggressive code enforcement in areas where it's really important," he said.

As wildfires grow in frequency and intensity, Berkeley has adopted a strategy to encourage residents to voluntarily evacuate the hills when a severe fire warning is issued. "We know that the street system is not capable of handling a mass evacuation at the scale and speed that's required given the presence of a wildfire moving like what we're seeing down in LA right now," Arnold said. Preliminary evacuations also free up resources to fight a wildfire and protect homes rather than rescue residents.

Fire scientist Jennifer Balch, however, said the extreme events such as the LA wildfires should force focus onto what a community can do before an unstoppable blaze breaks out. "I think it's too much to ask firefighters to try and fight fires in hundred mile-an-hour winds. The battle is lost when the fire starts," said Balch, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "There are ways to build homes that are much less flammable and way more fire resistant."

A destroyed home caused by the Palisades Fire. Photographer: Michael Nigro/Bloomberg

The best way to prevent neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades from burning to the ground in the next inevitable firestorm, said Balch and other experts, is to harden homes to prevent wind-blown embers from setting them or surrounding vegetation alight. Among the few homes that survived in the Palisades were newer construction designed to withstand wildfires.

California law has strict building codes for new homes built in high-risk fire zones but about 75% of the state's housing stock, like many Pacific Palisades homes, was built before 1978. Regulations mandate vegetation be thinned from five to 100 feet around around such dwellings, but enforcement depends on the vigilance of local authorities. A California law called Zone Zero requires the creation of ember-resistant zones within five feet of homes in wildfire zones, but regulations have yet to be issued more than four years after its passage.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. For weather insights sent straight to your inbox, subscribe to the Weather Watch newsletter.

Worrying trends

400%

This is how much fast-growing wildfires increased in California between 2001 and 2020. Quick-moving blazes like the Palisades and Eaton fires are becoming common as climate-driven swings between drought and deluge intensify.

Sacrifice for safety

" I have an emotional relationship to my trees and, and it's very difficult to let go. I'm going to have to take them out, it's killing me."

Michel Thouati

Berkeley hills homeowner

Berkeley, California isn't waiting for state regulations on home fire protection to take effect. City residents have been asked to cut back high-risk vegetation from their homes.

Tariffs will prevent a major battery price plunge: BNEF

By Will Mathis

Battery prices are set to fall for a third straight year — though not nearly as much as in the past, due to rising trade tensions and metals prices, according to analysts at BloombergNEF.

Lithium-ion battery prices are forecast to drop 3% to around $112 per kilowatt-hour, the analysts found. That compares to a decline of 20% in 2024 and 13% the year prior.

Ever-cheaper batteries are key to help drive demand for electric vehicles and improve the efficiency of power grids, reducing the need for fossil fuels that cause climate change. Improvements in battery technology and manufacturing, as well as rising market competition, have contributed to the price decline.

This year, however, a key variable will be the degree of protectionism in trade policies pursued by President-elect Donald Trump after he takes office next week. Any additional tariffs would add to those imposed by President Joe Biden, who targeted areas including batteries, solar cells and EVs.

If Trump were to follow through on a campaign pledge to impose 60% tariffs on imports from China, it would lead to a 16% increase in the price of US energy storage systems, BNEF found. Even with those added costs, imported batteries from China would still be more economical than those made in the US, the researcher said.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com.

Donald Trump defended his plan for tariffs during an interview with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, at the Economic Club of Chicago in October. Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg

More from Green

Donald Trump's choice for Energy secretary said the US must remove bureaucratic barriers and "unleash" production of nuclear power as well as liquified natural gas, according to written testimony before his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

"The security of our nation begins with energy," Chris Wright said in remarks prepared for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "Previous administrations have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is."

Wright, the founder of Liberty Energy Inc., an oil and natural gas fracking services company, said his priorities would also include a focus on innovation and technology breakthroughs.

As Liberty's chief executive officer, Wright has been an unapologetic advocate for his industry, proclaiming the moral virtues of fossil fuels and even drank fracking fluid to refute opponents who questioned its safety.

Chris Wright Photographer: Andy Cross/Denver Post/Getty Images

China is set for a green spending surge. State Grid Corp. of China, the nation's largest power network operator, plans to raise investments to a record as it seeks to keep pace with surging renewable generation.

Barclays memo reveals talking points on net zero. The London-based lender has sent a memo to staff in anticipation of questions regarding its status inside a climate alliance that's been abandoned by Wall Street's biggest banks.

A $12 billion climate fund issued its first bonds. The Climate Investment Funds Capital Markets Mechanism just tapped the capital markets for the first time, selling $500 million of bonds after receiving bids for more than six times that amount.

Listen live

The devastating wildfires still burning around Los Angeles threaten to upend the fragile balance between climate risk and home insurance in California. As house-demolishing storms and fires become increasingly common across the country, more Americans will find themselves without a safety net. What questions do you have about the climate impacts to the residential insurance industry? Join Bloomberg's Leslie Kaufman, Alexandre Rajbhandari, Eric Roston and Tim Stenovec for a Live Q&A on Wednesday, January 15 at 10:45am EST. This live audio conversation is free and available for everyone. Bloomberg digital subscribers and Terminal clients are invited to sign in and ask our team questions. For the full experience visit: Live Q&A: Will Climate Disasters Topple US Insurance Markets?