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Climate

Exxon Triumphs Over Activists

On shareholder proposals, ex-Tesla employees, and extra-hot days.

Sunrise over a field.

Thursday

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: More than 400,000 households are currently without power in storm-battered Texas and the southern Plains • Southeast Louisiana tied a century-old temperature record on Memorial Day, recording a high of 98 degrees Fahrenheit in Baton Rouge • India may have broken its own heat record with a preliminary reading of about 126 degrees Fahrenheit near New Delhi.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Exxon board members clinch reelection

ExxonMobil Chairman Darren Woods and Lead Director Joseph Hooley easily won reelection at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, neutralizing a threatened shareholder uprising over its climate policies. Several major pension funds said ahead of the meeting that they would vote to remove most of Exxon’s board after the company sued activist shareholders pushing for stronger emissions reduction targets. Though most of its petrochemical peers have similar targets, the company argued that the activists’ true goal was to “interfere with ExxonMobil’s business and to promote their own interests over those of ExxonMobil’s shareholders.”

The resistance effort “amounted to a test of whether top fund firms would rally to defend the small shareholders whose resolutions have put topics like the environment and workforce diversity at the center of many corporate annual meetings,” Reuters said. “Wednesday’s results suggested the answer was no.” All 12 of Exxon’s director nominees received between 87% and 98% support at the meeting, the company reported. The activists, meanwhile, withdrew their proposal in February, but Exxon is still pursuing the matter in court.

2. EV charging companies hire former Tesla employees

The U.S. electric vehicle sector is snapping up Tesla employees who were laid off when the company gutted its charging team last month. Atlanta-based charging provider EnviroSpark Energy Solutions has hired a dozen of them, E&E News reported, while other charging companies have landed high-profile hires let go by Tesla or are in talks to do so. “It does present an awesome opportunity for other charging operators like us to fill in the gap,” David Jankowsky, CEO of Francis Energy, told E&E News. There is still some trepidation, however, over how Tesla’s tribulations could affect the broader industry’s future. Despite its poor recent performance, Tesla still dominates the U.S. EV market, so a dip in consumer confidence could have negative ripple effects on EV uptake.

3. Rich countries meet $100 billion aid target two years late

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development announced Wednesday that the world’s rich countries had met their goal of delivering $100 billion in annual climate finance to poorer countries in 2022 — two years after their self-imposed deadline, the group said. The 2020 target was first set at the 2009 United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, and the delay in meeting it had strained recent climate talks. Developed countries came up with $115.9 billion in climate finance in 2022, OECD data shows, an increase of 30% from 2021. That’s the biggest year-on-year jump so far. “Exceeding this annual commitment materially by more than 15% is an important and symbolic achievement which goes some way towards making up for the two-year delay, which should help build trust,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in a statement.

Climate advocates warned, however, that achieving this aim is not an end point in itself. Transitioning to clean energy and adapting to new climate realities are both expensive processes. “While domestic finance, strong policies and private finance are important, for these countries, international public finance needs to play a lynchpin role,” Melanie Robinson, global climate, economics and finance director at the World Resources Institute, said in a statement. Discussions about setting a new climate finance goal will be a centerpiece of COP29 in Azerbaijan.

4. An IRA rebate roll-out

New York will be the first state to launch home energy rebates created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The initial phase of New York’s $158 million rebate program will be aimed at single-family homes and multifamily properties with up to four units, while later phases will expand to larger buildings and retailers. It will provide up to $14,000 per housing unit for upgrades such as better insulation, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters. A separate, $159 million IRA home efficiency rebate program is expected to follow. Massachusetts, Michigan and Rhode Island have all applied for the funding to establish their own home energy rebate programs under the IRA — a process that’s turned out to be messier than some had hoped, according to Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo.

5. Study: Extra-hot days are on the rise

The average American experienced 20 more extra-hot days over the past year than would have been expected without climate change, a new scientific analysis found. Globally, the average person experienced 26 more extra-hot days due to climate change, while in a few countries, that number exceeded 120, according to the report by Climate Central, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and World Weather Attribution. The researchers considered temperatures abnormal when they exceeded 90% of a location’s daily readings recorded between 1991 and 2020. Americans experienced 39 such days in total over the last 12 months. Almost 80% of the world’s population experienced 31 or more.

Manila residents swelter during a May heat wave. Manila residents swelter during a May heat wave. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

THE KICKER

The National Weather Service issued its first-ever warning for hail the size of a DVD — that is, a diameter of approximately 5 inches — in northern Texas on Tuesday.

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Politics

The Messaging War Over Energy Costs Is Just Beginning

The new climate politics are all about affordability.

Donald Trump, a wind turbine, and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

During the August recess, while members of Congress were back home facing their constituents, climate and environmental groups went on the offensive, sending a blitz of ads targeting vulnerable Republicans in their districts. The message was specific, straightforward, and had nothing to do with the warming planet.

“Check your electric bill lately? Rep. Mark Amodei just voted for it to go up,” declared a billboard in Reno, Nevada, sponsored by the advocacy group Climate Power.

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Green
Climate

AM Briefing: EPA Muddies The Waters

On fusion’s big fundraise, nuclear fears, and geothermal’s generations uniting

EPA Prepares to Gut Wetland Protections
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: New Orleans is expecting light rain with temperatures climbing near 90 degrees Fahrenheit as the city marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina • Torrential rains could dump anywhere from 8 to 12 inches on the Mississippi Valley and the Ozarks • Japan is sweltering in temperatures as high as 104 degrees.

THE TOP FIVE

1. EPA plans to gut the Clean Water Act

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to propose a new Clean Water Act rule that would eliminate federal protections for many U.S. waterways, according to an internal presentation leaked to E&E News. If finalized, the rule would establish a two-part test to determine whether a wetland received federal regulations: It would need to contain surface water throughout the “wet season,” and it would need to be touching a river, stream, or other body of water that flows throughout the wet season. The new language would require fewer wetland permits, a slide from the presentation showed, according to reporter Miranda Willson. Two EPA staffers briefed on the proposal confirmed the report.

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Spotlight

Birds Could Be the Anti-Wind Trump Card

How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.

A golden eagle and wind turbines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.

As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.

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