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Tesla’s Superchargers Just Got a Whole Lot Busier
It’s a strange sight: Ford F-150 Lightning trucks and Mustang Mach-E crossovers lined up at a Tesla Supercharger, plugged into the familiar red-and-white posts. After years of driving a Model 3, and greeting only other Teslas at our charging stops, I can’t quite get used to the visual. Yet I must, because a new phase of EV charging has arrived. In the year-plus since Tesla transformed its proprietary plug into an open standard and invited the other automakers to adopt it, they did. Company after company pledged to adopt the renamed North American Charging Standard (which has since been given...
Biden Just Caved on a Bunch of Climate Rules. Or Did He?
Let’s start with a quick recap: In late-January, the Biden administration turned the energy world on its ear by announcing that it would pause approvals of new export facilities for liquified natural gas — a decision greeted with joy by activists and indignation by lawmakers. A few weeks later, The New York Times reported that the administration was planning to ease up on planned regulations on car tailpipe emissions that would have pushed U.S. vehicle sales to become mostly battery-electric by 2030. Then, on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it planned to delay its proposed regulations to...
Why the EPA is Changing A Major Emissions Rule
Current conditions: England and Wales had their warmest February on record • An avalanche watch has been issued for Tahoe Basin • It will be warm and windy this weekend in the Texas Panhandle, where the Smokehouse Creek Fire is still burning out of control.THE TOP FIVE1. EPA to relax power plant emissions rulesThe Biden administration is making changes to its sweeping plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants while it figures out a new, more ambitious rule. Here’s a TL;DR version of what’s happening.The old plan: Existing coal plants, existing gas-fired plants, and gas plants built...
Congress Might Be on the Verge of Passing the Year’s First Climate Law
Congress appears to be very close to passing the first climate law of 2024. But don’t look for the word ‘climate‘ in it.On Wednesday, the House voted overwhelmingly to pass the Atomic Energy Advancement Act, a bill designed to update nuclear energy laws and regulations to better accommodate newer, advanced nuclear reactor designs. Nuclear plants are the largest source of clean energy in the U.S. and building more of them is one of the rare climate solutions that Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Electricity demand is surging for the first time in decades, thanks in part to the...
Biden Knows Tariffs Won’t Stop Chinese EVs
China’s car industry has been on a tear lately. Last year, China became the world’s largest auto exporter, and its home-grown carmaker BYD recently eclipsed Tesla as the world’s No. 1 maker of electrified vehicles. If China were following a playbook first written by Japanese or Korean automakers, you’d expect them to start selling their cars in the United States pretty soon. But China — unlike Japan or South Korea — is not an American ally, and so it’s going to have to follow a different path. On Thursday, the Biden administration opened an investigation into the national security...
It’s Groundhog Day for New York’s Offshore Wind Industry
New York’s offshore wind industry is back, or at least back in contract. Two offshore wind projects, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind, were awarded, respectively, to developers Equinor and the partnership of Orsted and Eversource. These two projects, which would amount to 1,700 megawatts of capacity in total (enough to power about a million homes, according to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office), had first been bid out in 2019 and then rebid when these same developers were unable to renegotiate their contracts to deal with rising material and interest rate costs. Last year was an annus horribilis for the...
Why Researchers Are Excited About Perovskite Solar Cells
Current conditions: Massive wildfires are still burning in the Texas Panhandle • Thailand’s “Royal Rainmaking” program starts today, in which planes seed clouds to induce artificial rain • It will be cold but sunny in Washington, DC, where a special hearing on the rights of people displaced by climate change is taking place. THE TOP FIVE1. Sierra Nevada braces for huge blizzard A massive blizzard could dump up to 12 feet of snow on parts of the Sierra Nevada over the next few days. “Storm total snowfall from Thursday into early Sunday is currently projected at 5 to 10+ feet for...
Electricity Demand Is Surging for the First Time Since the 1990s
Think of all the stuff you use electricity for that you didn't 20 or 25 years ago — all those devices, maybe even your car — and yet electricity use has barely budged this century. In 2000, the country used about 4 million gigawatt-hours of electricity, according to the International Energy Agency; in 2022, it used about 4.5 million GWh, a growth rate of about 0.5%. In some ways, the purpose of current U.S. climate policy is to reverse this trend. Only about a fifth of all energy produced in the United States is electrical. Removing carbon emissions from...
Why It’s Really, Really Important for Biden to Finalize His Emissions Standards
The Biden administration has a busy spring ahead of it. On the to-do list: finalizing key regulations covering tailpipe and power sector emissions before they become vulnerable to a new Congress that might have, let’s say, different priorities. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows (among other things) just how key those regulations are. The paper considers various future policy scenarios beginning in 2025, including one in which the Inflation Reduction Act is fully repealed and another in which the IRA stays and we get a carbon tax. Here’s what those results look like in a...
The Texas Panhandle Is on Fire
Current conditions: Hundreds of people hunkered down in Chicago O’Hare’s emergency shelter during severe storms • Volcanic ash delayed flights out of Mexico City • The tree pollen count in Washington, DC, has been extremely high. THE TOP FIVE 1. Large wildfires burn out of control in Texas Massive wildfires are burning in the Texas Panhandle, fueled by strong winds and dry conditions. At least four fires have scorched more than 500,000 acres so far in areas surrounding Amarillo, and the flames have crept into neighboring Oklahoma. The biggest blaze is the Smokehouse Creek Fire, which remains out of control. Some communities...
The Next Big Climate Tool: Little Chunks of Rock
When we talk about carbon removal, we often focus on “direct air capture” facilities — big factories that suck carbon dioxide out of the ambient air. But a simpler and easier way to remove carbon from the atmosphere may exist. It’s called “enhanced rock weathering” — grinding up rocks, spreading them out, and exposing them to the ambient air — and it works, essentially, by speeding up the Earth’s carbon cycle. Enhanced rock weathering recently got a major vote of confidence from Frontier, a consortium of tech and finance companies who have teamed up to support new and experimental carbon...
Electric Semis Are Hitting the Road in California
Deep in the Inland Empire, the vast sprawl of suburbia that extends eastward from Los Angeles, the battery-powered semi trucks are about to start their run. They navigate the congested freeways of L.A. County to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, load or unload, and then complete the round trip to trucking company NFI’s warehouse in Ontario, California. When the day’s run is done, the truck adjourns to the brand-new charging depot next door to fill up its battery for tomorrow’s trip.These trucks are part of a project called the Joint Electric Truck Scaling Initiative, or JETSI....
Everyone Agrees Wildland Firefighters Deserve a Raise. Why Can’t Congress Make It Happen?
There is basically no original way left to complain about Congress. Bemoaning our elected officials is the most American of pastimes; pretty much as long as we’ve been a country, we’ve been cringing at the people who run it. Lately, though, things have felt bleakly unfunny. Gerrymandering and tribalism have cleaved Congress into warring halves, making bipartisanship politically suicidal. The three-week House Speaker vacancy last fall exposed the legislative branch as the most dysfunctional it’s been in its quarter-millennium of existence. Lawmakers accomplished less in 2023 than any other time in the past 50 years, and experts predict 2024 will...
Even Warren Buffett Thinks the Era of Private Utilities Is Over
Warren Buffet, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and investing folk hero, has long had a rule for picking which companies to invest in. “The most important thing [is] trying to find a business with a wide and long-lasting moat around it … protecting a terrific economic castle with an honest lord in charge of the castle,” he told a CNBC crowd in 1995. He has embellished the metaphor over the years — in some versions, sharks populate the moat — but the idea is the same. Seek out companies with a natural competitive advantage, even an inherent monopoly, and prosperity...
Brace for Weather Whiplash
Current conditions: The Northern Sierra mountain range could see up to 12 feet of snow • Raging bushfires are forcing 30,000 people in Australia’s Victoria state to evacuate • It will be unusually warm across much of Michigan today as voters participate in the state’s presidential primaries. THE TOP FIVE 1. End of February brings weather whiplash This week has already been a wild one for U.S. weather, as what is expected to be the warmest February on record comes to a close. Many states in the Midwest and South experienced a heatwave yesterday that brought record high winter temperatures. It...
Why the SEC’s New Climate Rules Matter
A new era of transparency for corporate sustainability is coming — finally. After two years of deliberation, the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to issue a final rule requiring public companies to make climate-related disclosures to investors. The decision could come as soon as next week.The rule considers two categories of climate-related information relevant to investors: greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to climate-related risks like extreme weather or future regulations. While many companies voluntarily disclose this kind of information in other ways, the rules will both require and standardize climate-based reporting as a core part of a company’s...
Flood Risk Is Hurting Texas Home Prices
Current conditions: Mexico City’s iconic jacaranda trees have bloomed early • More than half of Australia’s Victoria state is under an extreme bushfire danger alert • It could hit 63 degrees Fahrenheit in Green Bay, Wisconsin, tomorrow. The average February high is 29 degrees. THE TOP FIVE1. Study: Mandatory flood risk disclosures hit Texas property prices New research offers a glimpse into how climate change continues to alter the real estate landscape in America. A recent study from Fannie May examined a Texas law, enacted in 2019 after Hurricane Harvey, that requires properties at risk of flooding be listed as such....
Trump, Haley, and the Climate Primary That Wasn’t
As a climate-concerned citizen, one of the most discouraging things about Donald Trump’s all-but-inevitable confirmation as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee has been thinking about parallel universes.I don’t just mean the ones where the conservative Supreme Court has a shocking change of heart and disqualifies him from the presidential ballot, or where Nikki Haley, against all odds, manages to win her home state primary on Saturday and carry the momentum forward to clinch the Republican nomination. I’m talking about an even greater fantasy: A world in which Trump doesn’t dominate the news cycle, in which South Carolina conservatives have...
Transcript: Is Biden’s Climate Law Actually Working?
This is a transcript of episode three of Shift Key: Is Biden's Climate Law Actually Working?ROBINSON MEYER: Hi, I'm Rob Meyer. I'm the founding executive editor of Heatmap News and you are listening to Shift Key, a new podcast about climate change and the shift away from fossil fuels from Heatmap. My co-host Jesse Jenkins will join us in a second and we'll get on with the show. But first a word from our sponsor. [AD BREAK] MEYER: Hi, I'm Robinson Meyer. I'm the founding executive editor of Heatmap News. JESSE JENKINS: And I'm Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton University...
The Ukraine War Blew Up the World’s Energy Economy
It’s an open secret in U.S. climate policy circles that the Inflation Reduction Act got its name for purely political reasons. It’s a climate bill, after all. Calling it “Inflation Reduction Act” was just the marketing term to help sell it to a skeptical public more worried about rising prices than temperatures in August 2022. Temperatures have only risen since, while inflation is down, and the Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with either. But to see why the name was more than appropriate only takes going back a further six months. On February 24, 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin...
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