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On explosive blazes, Panama’s plan to keep cargo moving, and Tesla in India
Current conditions: A searing heatwave in Thailand means even nighttime temperatures won’t go below 86 degrees Fahrenheit for all of April • The streets of New Orleans flooded yesterday • Severe weather in Georgia delayed the start of The Masters golf tournament.
Canada is preparing for this year’s wildfire season to be “catastrophic,” following a warm and dry winter. “The temperature trends are very concerning,” said Harjit Sajjan, the country’s minister for emergency preparedness. “With the heat and dryness across the country we can expect that the wildfire season will start sooner and end later and potentially be more explosive.” Last year’s wildfire season was the worst ever: More than 37 million acres burned, 230,000 people were evacuated, and wildfire smoke drifted across large parts of the U.S.
Panama will create a new “special customs jurisdiction” to serve as a “dry” transport alternative to the Panama Canal. The canal serves as a key shipping channel between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and typically moves about $270 billion worth of cargo every year, but has had to limit its capacity due to severe drought in the region. Yesterday Panama unveiled plans for the Multimodal Dry Canal project, which will use existing infrastructure like roadways, railways, and ports to move cargo and relieve the shipping bottleneck. As AFPpointed out, Panama’s neighbors, including Mexico and Honduras, have seen opportunity in the canal’s plight and proposed transport alternatives.
America’s utility companies think data centers will cause electricity demand to surge, Reutersreported. Nine out of 10 of the country’s top utilities said the centers, which power technologies like generative AI, are a main driver of customer growth. Power use from data centers is expected to triple globally this year, according to Morgan Stanley research. The question is whether utility companies can keep up. Growing electricity demand will “stress utility company balance sheets as capital spending escalates to upgrade the infrastructure and integrate renewable energy resources,” Morningstar analysts said recently. This week the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the country’s power consumption was expected to grow to record highs in the next two years, and that renewables would make up 24% of the energy mix in 2024, up 3% from last year.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday teased an upcoming trip to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BBC reported the meeting is scheduled for the end of April in New Delhi. Two sources toldReuters Musk plans to announce a factory in the country and major investment. Earlier this week Musk posted on X that “India should have electric cars like every other country has electric cars. It's a natural progression to provide Tesla electric vehicles in India.” EVs make up about 2% of sales in India but the government wants to grow that to 30% by 2030. Tesla’s potential push into the country comes as EV growth slows in the U.S. and Tesla is struggling to meet expectations on sales and deliveries.
The United Nations climate chief yesterday urged the leaders of G20 nations to abandon “business as usual” and take “bold climate action” before it’s too late. “For those who say that climate change is only one of many priorities, like ending poverty, ending hunger, ending pandemics, or improving education, I simply say this: none of these crucial tasks … will be possible unless we get the climate crisis under control,” Simon Stiell, who heads up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told a crowd in London. He called for a “quantum leap” in climate finance commitments at this year’s COP29. “Sidelining climate isn’t a solution to a crisis that will decimate every G20 economy and has already started to hurt,” he said. Stiell finished the speech by urging “people everywhere” to raise their voices for climate action.
Last month, Texas generated more electricity from solar than from coal for the first time ever.
Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
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On resuming rare earth shipments, hurricane tracking, and EV tax credits
Current conditions: The Ohio Valley is still sweltering through the last remnants of this week’s brutal heat wave • The death toll from recent floods in South Africa has risen to 101 • It’s 90 degrees in Venice, Italy, where the world’s rich and famous are gathering for the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.
The U.S. and China have hammered out the details of a trade deal, including an agreement that China will resume rare earth shipments to the U.S. Rare earth materials are essential for everything from planes to EVs to wind turbines. China controls most of the world’s rare earth production and halted exports in April in response to President Trump’s tariff hike, and China’s chokehold on rare earths threatened to derail trade talks between the two countries altogether. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a deal has now been “signed and sealed.” “They’re going to deliver rare earths to us,” Lutnick said, adding that the U.S. will then “take down our countermeasures.” Lutnick also indicated that Trump plans to announce further trade deals with other nations in the coming two weeks.
As climate talks in Bonn, Germany, wind down, negotiators there have agreed to increase the budget for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by 10% over the next two years to 81.5 million euros ($95.4 million). The UNFCCC runs some of the world’s largest climate negotiations and tries to ensure countries follow through on their climate commitments. Its budget is funded by government contributions. China will account for 20% of the new budget, Reuters reported. The U.S. is supposed to cover 22%, but President Trump has pulled international climate funding. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic arm has stepped in to cover the missing U.S. contributions. UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the budget increase was “a clear signal that governments continue to see UN-convened climate cooperation as essential, even in difficult times.”
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Hurricane forecasting is about to get a little bit more difficult. At the end of June, the federal government is going to stop distributing readings from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, a tool forecasters all over the world have been using to track and predict hurricane development. As retired federal meteorologist Alan Gerard told Bloomberg, this particular satellite program is unique because it lets forecasters peer inside storms and monitor for rapid intensification. As the planet warms, hurricanes are strengthening much faster than they did in recent decades. Hurricane expert Michael Lowry says the Department of Defense seems to be concerned that the satellite data poses a security concern. Its termination “will severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines,” Lowry wrote.
A group of U.S. car dealers penned a letter urging senators to “reject provisions in the budget reconciliation process that would abruptly eliminate EV-related tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act,” warning that sudden changes would bring about market uncertainty, damage businesses, and hurt Americans. The signatories – including EV Auto, Carmax, and Caravan – instead call for a “gradual sunset” of the EV tax credits to avoid disruption to the used car market. “A multi-year transitional period would also provide the opportunity for Americans to continue adopting cleaner vehicles more affordably,” they add. The tax and budget bill put forward by Senate Republicans would end the $7,500 EV tax credit within 180 days after the law’s passage.
A report out today from the International Council on Clean Transportation estimates that the world’s private jets produced more greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 than all the flights that took off from Heathrow Airport — the world’s fourth busiest airport — that same year. Emissions from private jets increased 25% over the past decade. A few more interesting (though perhaps not surprising) tidbits from the report:
International Council on Clean Transportation
Solar power accounted for more than 10% of U.S. electrical output in April, while wind provided about 14%. As Michelle Lewis at Electreknotes, “solar is now producing more electricity than hydropower, biomass, and geothermal combined.”
Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.