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How Jigar Shah Thinks About Risk
Jigar Shah might have more control over America’s new wave of industrial policy — not to mention its climate policy — than anyone not named Joe Biden. And he’s not even a Cabinet-level official. As director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which is akin to its in-house bank, Shah oversees how roughly $400 billion in lending authority will be spent. That money will help finance new EV factories, geothermal wells, carbon capture sites, and more. On this week’s episode, Rob sits down with Shah to discuss the philosophy that he brings to his role. When financing new...
Elon Musk Would Like to Talk About AI
Tesla doesn’t want to talk about its cars — or at least, not about the cars that have steering wheels and human drivers. Despite weeks of reports about Tesla’s manufacturing and sales woes — price cuts, recalls, and whether a new, cheaper model would ever come to fruition — CEO Elon Musk and other Tesla executives devoted their quarterly earnings call largely to the company's autonomous driving software. Musk promised that the long-awaited program would revolutionize the auto industry (“We’re putting the actual ‘auto’ in automobile,” as he put it) and lead to the “biggest asset appreciation in history”...
Biden’s Climate Cash Is Finally Pouring In
It took a year and a half, but over the past month, money from the Inflation Reduction Act has started to flow out in earnest. Among the grants given just in the past four weeks are:$20 million for ice cream factories in Tennessee and Vermont so they can replace their natural gas boilers with climate-friendly ones.$51 million for a manufacturing plant that makes bathroom faucets and showerheads in Arizona.And $6.97 billion to stand up a new green community bank that will help small farms, small businesses, households, and schools replace fossil fuels in their buildings and install electric vehicle...
What to Expect From Tesla’s Earnings Report
Current conditions: A cold front brought an enduring heat wave in Mexico to an end • Northwest Texas could see large hail this afternoon • It will be 60 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy in Ottawa, where delegates are gathering this week to hammer out a global plastics treaty. THE TOP FIVE1. Investors wait anxiously for Q1 Tesla earnings Tesla will report first-quarter earnings today after the markets close, and expectations are pretty low. Analysts think the EV maker will report at least a 4% drop in revenue compared to Q1 last year. In the earnings call, CEO Elon Musk will...
Are Pollsters Getting Climate Change Wrong?
Climate change either is or isn’t the biggest issue of our time. It all depends on who you ask — and, especially, how.In March, as it has since 1939, Gallup asked Americans what they thought was the most important problem facing the country. Just 2% of respondents said “environment/pollution/climate change” — fewer than those who said “poor leadership” or “unifying the country” (although more than those who said “the media.”) Pew, meanwhile, asked Americans in January what the top priority for the president and Congress ought to be for this year, and “dealing with climate change” ranked third-to-last out...
Biden’s Big Earth Day Agenda
Current conditions: Torrential rains forced Mauritius to shut down its stock exchange • “Once in a century” flooding hit southern China • In the Northern Hemisphere, the Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight. THE TOP FIVE1. Biden kicks off Earth Day with $7 billion for expanding solar access Today is Earth Day, but President Biden and his cabinet are celebrating all week long. Senior members of the administration have scheduled a national tour of events and announcements related to the president’s climate and environmental record. It starts with Biden’s visit to Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Virginia, today, where he...
Biden Hands Out $7 Billion to Expand Solar Access
The great promise of solar panels — in addition to their being carbon-free — is the democratization of energy. Anyone can produce their own power, typically for less than the going utility rate. The problem is that those who stand to benefit the most from this opportunity haven’t been able to access it. That pattern could change, however, with Solar for All, a $7 billion program under the Environmental Protection Agency to support solar in low- to moderate-income communities. On Monday, the Biden administration announced it was awarding the funds to 60 state and local governments, tribes, and national and...
A Big Week for Batteries
While cold winters in the south and hot summers across the country are the most dramatic times for electricity usage — with air conditioners blasting as weary workers return home or inefficient electric heaters strain to keep toes warm from Chattanooga to El Paso before the sun is up — it may be early spring that gives us the most insight into the lower-emitting grid of the future.In California, America’s longtime leader in clean energy deployment, the combination of mild temperatures and longer days means that solar power can do most of the heavy lifting. And in Texas —...
The Cybertruck Recall Is Different
You have to give TikTok user el.chapito1985 credit for not panicking. In a video posted a few days ago, he explained how the cover on his Tesla Cybertruck accelerator pedal came loose and then wedged itself in just the right spot to leave the pedal stuck in floor-it position. The poster said he managed to stop the truck by slamming the brake, which overrode the accelerator, and putting the vehicle in park. But his experience certainly explains Tesla’s newest predicament: It will recall all the Cybertrucks currently on the road to fix the sticky accelerator issue. Today’s mess feels like...
3 More Offshore Wind Projects Bite the Dust
Things are looking down again for New York’s embattled offshore wind industry. The state is abandoning all three of the offshore wind projects it awarded conditional contracts to last October, after failing to secure final agreements with any of the developers, Politico reported Friday. New York officials and the Biden administration had lauded the three projects — which were expected to supply about 12% of New York’s electricity in 2030 — as a key milestone in the nation’s transition to renewable energy. The planned investments in offshore wind were “demonstrating to the nation how to recalibrate in the wake of global...
Forever Chemical Enforcement Just Got Even Stronger
Last week, I reported on the Environmental Protection Agency’s monumental new restrictions on “forever chemicals” in Americans’ drinking water. At the time, I stressed that the issue doesn’t end with the water that flows out of our kitchen and bathroom taps — the government also has a responsibility to hold polluters accountable at the source. On Friday, the EPA did just that, designating perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, a.k.a. PFOA and PFOS, as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, more commonly known as the Superfund law. PFOA and PFOS are two of the most commonly...
Tesla Just Recalled Nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks
Current conditions: Unseasonably heavy rainfall killed at least 130 people across Pakistan and Afghanistan • Temperatures will soar to 111 degrees Fahrenheit today in Mali • It will be cool and cloudy in NYC, where thousands of high school students are expected to leave class to join a climate strike. THE TOP FIVE1. Tesla recalls Cybertrucks over sticky accelerator pedals Tesla is recalling 3,878 Cybertrucks due to potentially faulty accelerator pedals. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “the accelerator pedal pad may dislodge and become trapped by the interior trim,” causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally. Or, as Rob...
Want to Solve Climate Change? First Fix Muni Bonds.
Decarbonizing the global economy requires replacing stuff that emits carbon dioxide with stuff that doesn’t. At its heart, this challenge is financial: All these high-emitting assets ― coal plants, gas stoves, airplanes ― were at some point financed into existence by investors seeking returns. Climate policymakers’ greatest challenge is not just figuring out how to phase out existing, dangerous capital investments in fossil fuels, but also how to finance into existence new, climate-stabilizing clean assets. This is all much easier said than done. Central banks’ high interest rates are strangling clean energy and adaptation infrastructure investments in the United States...
The Hurricane Bookies
Are you feeling lucky?Americans are. Close to two-thirds say they’ve gambled in the past year; the sports pages are filled with headlines detailing the fallout of various investigations and scandals. But while there isn’t exactly a bookmaker for something like the Atlantic hurricane season, meteorologists around the country are feeling pretty good about their bets this time around.“We could be extremely wrong and only have two hurricanes,” Philip Klotzbach, one of the authors of the Colorado State University’s 2024 forecast, which came out earlier this month and predicted a whopping 23 named storms, told me. “But I think the...
The DOE Has a Plan to Speed Up New Grid Connections
Current conditions: Parts of Dubai remain waterlogged after this week’s epic rainfall • A volcanic eruption in Indonesia produced a 1.6-mile ash column • Severe thunderstorms are headed for the Midwest and Southern Plains. THE TOP FIVE1. DOE unveils roadmap to speed up clean energy grid connections The Department of Energy yesterday unveiled its plans to help solve a problem plaguing the clean energy sector: the backlog of grid connections. According to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, nearly 12,000 solar, wind, and storage projects are ready and waiting to be connected to the grid. “The high volume of projects and inadequate...
We Can’t Drill These Holes Fast Enough
The federal government is really excited about geothermal: A Department of Energy report published in March said that geothermal can “become a key contributor to secure, domestic, decarbonized power generation for the U.S.” — particularly the kind of clean, always available power that grids love.Big companies are really excited about geothermal: A group comprised of Google, Microsoft, and Nucor, the steel company, together put out a request in March for power projects that could generate clean power 24 hours a day, including “next-generation geothermal” (i.e. projects that don’t require finding hot water or steam underground, but instead use drilling...
Tesla Shareholders Will Vote Again on Musk’s Pay
Current conditions: It was 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit in Mumbai yesterday, the warmest April day recorded in a decade • Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology declared El Niño over • It will be rainy today in Washington, D.C., where negotiators will be pushing for more climate investment at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. THE TOP FIVE1. Tesla asks shareholders to re-ratify Musk pay package that judge voided Tesla shareholders will get a second chance to approve CEO Elon Musk’s pay package at the company’s upcoming June 13 annual meeting. In January, a Delaware court voided Musk’s 2018 pay deal, which was...
Climeworks Is Becoming a Carbon Trader
Climeworks made a name for itself as the first company to launch a commercial-scale facility that sucks carbon out of the air and buries it deep underground. The Swiss startup is widely recognized as a global leader in direct air capture technology.But on Wednesday, Climeworks made a surprising move away from hard tech and into carbon trading with the launch of an offshoot called Climeworks Solutions. Under the new banner, it will purchase carbon removal credits from other providers, package them into portfolios that include its own direct air capture credits, and sell the bundles to buyers looking for...
The U.S. Has a Tesla Problem
It isn’t just bad vibes: Electric vehicle sales are slumping in the United States. Fewer than 300,000 EVs were sold nationwide during the first three months of 2024 — although it could be more than 350,000, depending on how you count and whose data you trust. That’s a slight decline from last quarter at a time when EV sales need to be accelerating. What caused the slump, and what can be done about it? And could hybrids or plug-in hybrids help solve the problem? In this week’s episode, Rob and Jesse chat with Corey Cantor, an EV analyst at BloombergNEF....
Is AI Really About to Devour All Our Energy?
Twenty-five years ago, computers were on the verge of destroying America’s energy system.Or, at least, that’s what lots of smart people seemed to think.In a 1999 Forbes article, a pair of conservative lawyers, Peter Huber and Mark Mills, warned that personal computers and the internet were about to overwhelm the fragile U.S. grid. Information technology already devoured 8% to 13% of total U.S. power demand, Huber and Mills claimed, and that share would only rise over time. “It’s now reasonable to project,” they wrote, “that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next...
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