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The Best Idea From Today’s Big Oil Hearing
It was always a fantasy to think that the Senate Committee on the Budget’s hearing on oil disinformation would actually be about oil disinformation. It was still shocking, though, how far off the rails things ran.The hearing concerned a report released Tuesday by the committee along with Democrats in the House documenting “the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.” This builds on the already extensive literature documenting the fossil fuel industry’s...
Does Carbon Removal Need to Be Dumb To Work?
Most climate solutions are getting smarter. Solar panels can track the sun. Electric vehicles are equipped with the equivalent of an iPad and may soon be able to drive themselves (according to some people). Startups are inventing stoves with batteries that charge when energy is cheap and heat pumps that learn how you use your home and adjust accordingly. But when it comes to permanently removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the market is pushing in a different direction. There, it seems, there’s growing excitement for the dumbest, most primitive solutions companies can come up with.The case in point...
How Biden’s Sustainable Aviation Fuel Tax Credits Will Work
Current conditions: It will be 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Kolkata as Southeast Asia’s heat wave continues • Kansas and Oklahoma are on alert for tornadoes and large hail • The Eta Aquariids meteor shower peaks this week.THE TOP FIVE1. Biden administration outlines rules for sustainable aviation fuel subsidiesThe Treasury Department and IRS yesterday released new details about the subsidy program for producers of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which the Biden administration hopes will help cut emissions from the aviation industry while also supporting farmers. What makes SAF “sustainable” is that it comes from biomass (stuff like corn grain, wood...
How Americans Stopped Caring About Coal
The future of coal played a starring role in the 2016 presidential election. As an industry, an energy supply, and a source of jobs and identity in many communities, coal was both a practical and symbolic issue, one that helped solidify Donald Trump’s support among white working class voters not just in coal country itself but around the nation. It stood in for a deep divide between the parties, one that cast Trump as the champion of what he called “the forgotten men and women of our country,” while Hillary Clinton and her party were supposedly cruel elitists ready...
Tesla’s Identity Crisis Gets Hardcore
Chaos at Tesla is nothing new. But the company now appears to be going through something of an identity crisis, with its future at war with its past.Let’s just recap the past few weeks: First, Tesla released first-quarter delivery numbers that came up well short of even analysts’ most cynical predictions, followed by first-quarter earnings that were, in a word, poor. In between those two events, Reuters reported that Tesla had canceled a long-promised sub-$30,000 electric vehicle (a report CEO Elon Musk denied ... sorta), and the company laid off more than 10% of its workforce.All of which brings...
Did Elon Musk Just Sack Tesla’s Entire Supercharger Team?
Current conditions: Floods in Saudi Arabia forced some schools to close • Nearly 50 fires were reported in Greece over 24 hours • Tornado alley could see more severe storms this afternoon. THE TOP FIVE1. Biden finalizes permitting reform rule The Biden administration today finalized changes to an old environmental law, a move that could speed up the arduous permitting process for new clean energy projects. The 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires that all major federal infrastructure projects undergo an environmental review, but these reviews can run thousands of pages long and take years to finish, explained Heatmap’s Robinson...
Tornadoes Torment Central States
Current conditions: An orange alert for severe thunderstorms is in effect across China’s southern provinces • More rain is expected in Kenya, where extreme flooding has killed at least 70 people • Bangladesh reopened its schools despite an ongoing heat wave.THE TOP FIVE1. Hundreds of tornadoes rip through central U.S.Devastating severe thunderstorms wreaked havoc across the Midwest and Southern Plains over the weekend, spawning hundreds of tornadoes and threatening 47 million people. More than 80 tornadoes were reported across five states on Friday alone. Twisters tore through several towns in Nebraska and Iowa, damaging homes and leaving at least...
The Hidden Cost of EV Ownership: Your Time
My wife used to speedrun to San Francisco. A full tank of gas powered the little truck from Los Angeles to the halfway-point pit stop near Coalinga, California, where the L.A. radio stations have faded into static and the “Mr. Brightside” broadcasts from the Bay Area have yet to reach over the horizon. With just that single stop, the trip could be completed in under six hours. It’s not that way these days in the EV. We stop twice for half-hour recharging sessions — maybe three times if we leave home with a less-than-full battery, and climbing over the Grapevine...
The EPA’s Carbon Crackdown Is Finally Here
One of the most important pieces of the Biden administration’s climate policy has arrived: On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules restricting climate pollution from coal-fired plants and natural gas plants that haven’t been built yet. The rules will eliminate more than a billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution by the middle of the century. They are the long-awaited “stick” in the Biden administration’s carrots-and-sticks climate policy. So how do the rules work? Why do they emphasize carbon capture so much? And is this the end of coal in America? On this special episode of Shift Key, Rob...
Can Biden Ditch Coal Without Killing Coal Country?
There’s no question that coal is on its way out in the U.S. In 2001, coal-fired power plants generated about 50% of U.S. electricity. Last year, they were down to about 15%. On Thursday, however, the Biden administration arguably delivered a death blow. New carbon emission limits for coal plants establish a clear timeline by which America’s remaining coal generators must either invest in costly carbon capture equipment or close. With many of these plants already struggling to compete with cheaper renewables and natural gas, it’s not likely to be much of a choice. If the rule survives legal challenges,...
Climate Change Made Dubai’s Deluge Worse
Current conditions: Flash floods killed at least 155 people in Tanzania • Dry conditions are spawning dust devils in western Canada • Ongoing thunderstorms are set to pummel the central U.S. with hail and possible sporadic tornadoes through the weekend. THE TOP FIVE1. Climate change worsened Dubai flooding Rising global temperatures due to carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere exacerbated the deadly flooding in Dubai earlier this month, scientists at the international research initiative World Weather Attribution concluded. Much of the United Arab Emirates lacks drainage infrastructure because rain there is so infrequent, and the unrelenting downpour that inundated the country...
Air Quality Data for the Rich
Everyone loves a public good, and one of the classic examples is clean air. When I breathe in clean air, no one else gets any less of it, and you can’t exclude people from enjoying it. But how do we know whether the air we’re breathing is clean? And is that information a public good? A team of economists from universities across the U.S. published some answers to those questions this week in a working paper via the National Bureau of Economic Research. As their research subject, the economists looked at PurpleAir, which promises more localized and frequently updated air quality...
It’s Never Too Early to Start Thinking About COP
The United Nations’ climate summit in Dubai ended last December with a mad dash to lock in a location for this year’s gathering. Which is how we wound up with yet another petrostate — Azerbaijan — as the host. On Thursday at a climate conference in Berlin, Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources and COP29’s President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev outlined his vision for the November get-together. “Our previous promises now need to be delivered, not re-interpreted. Fulfilled, not re-negotiated,” he told participants in the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, according to a transcript of his prepared remarks. “Everyone has a duty to...
Climate Investors Aren’t Buying Your AI Startup
At San Francisco Climate Week, everyone wanted to talk about artificial intelligence. “I was looking through all of the events on SF Climate Week, and it seemed like every single one of them had AI somewhere in the name,” joked (sort of) Rohan Nuttell of OpenAI last week, while moderating a panel called AI for Climate. Sure, with over 300 events, there were opportunities for climate nerds to learn about carbon dioxide removal or sustainable fashion or grid infrastructure. But AI was inescapable. I heard from companies using AI to monitor flood risk, model forest carbon sequestration, and help...
Biden’s Big Energy Moves
Current conditions: Heavy rains this spring have reinvigorated the drought-stricken wetlands at Spain’s Doñana National Park • Severe thunderstorms are taking shape above the central and southern U.S. • Flooding in Kenya kills at least 32 people and displaces over 40,000.THE TOP FIVE 1. EPA releases final power plant rulesThe Environmental Protection Agency finalized its power plant emissions limits on Thursday, imposing the first federal standards on carbon pollution from the electricity sector since the Obama administration’s unsuccessful 2015 Clean Power Plan. “The rules require that newly built natural gas plants that are designed to help meet the grid’s...
The New EPA Power Plant Rules Are Out — and Could Change the Calculus for Gas
Utilities all over the country have proposed to build a slew of new natural gas-fired power plants in recent months, citing an anticipated surge in electricity demand from data centers, manufacturing, and electric vehicles. But on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized new emissions limits on power plants that throw many of those plans into question. The rules require that newly built natural gas plants that are designed to help meet the grid’s daily, minimum needs, will have to slash their carbon emissions by 90% by 2032, an amount that can only be achieved with the use of carbon...
The White House Also Has Some Transmission News
The Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rules were not the only big energy policy announcement from the Biden administration Thursday. The White House also announced a bevy of initiatives and projects meant to bolster infrastructure throughout the country.Transmission arguably sits at the absolute center of the Biden administration’s climate policy. Without investments to move new renewable power from where it’s sunny or windy but desolate and remote to where it’s still and cloudy but densely populated, the Inflation Reduction Act is unlikely to meet its emissions reduction potential. While the most important transmission policy changes will likely come from...
American Solar Is in a Trade War With Itself
The American solar industry is in a tizzy over tariffs. On one side are the companies that develop, finance, and install solar systems. On the other, the American (or American-located) companies that manufacture them.China’s solar panel industry has been a combination of boon and bugaboo for American renewable energy efforts for years. On the one hand, the solar development sector has benefitted from the cheap panels they have happily put up on roofs and in fields across the country, underpinning the massive growth of solar power in the past decade.And then on the other there’s the still-nascent American...
Give Us the Dumbphone EV
If you haven’t heard, the dumbphone is back. Vexed by their emotionally ruinous smartphone addiction, plenty of people, including those of the tech-savvy younger generations, are turning their backs on iPhones and Androids to embrace internet-free cellphones that walked right out of the 1990s. The impossibility of TikTok is not the dumbphone’s only winning feature. Flagship smartphones are expensive and delicate. Despite Apple’s soft cooing about the iPhone’s beautiful facade, you must shield that design behind a plastic case at all times, lest you drop your $1,200 investment and ruin it. Dumbphones, though, are rugged and cheap. They do their...
Biden’s Plan to Jumpstart Offshore Wind
Current conditions: A Saharan dust storm turned skies red in Greece • More heavy rain is expected in China’s flooded Guangdong province • Red Flag fire weather warnings are in place across much of New Mexico. THE TOP FIVE 1. Key takeaways from Tesla’s quarterly earnings report Tesla reported first quarter earnings yesterday. The electric car company’s profits fell 55%, and revenue fell 9%. But shares rose more than 10% in after-hours trading following the shareholder update and earnings call. Here are a few things we learned from the report: CEO Elon Musk said Tesla “should be thought of as an AI/robotics company,”...
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