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Current conditions: A storm lurking off the coast of Australia could soon become a tropical cyclone • Bangkok's 11 million workers have been told to stay home today to avoid harmful air pollution • Washington, D.C., could see up to four inches of snow this weekend – or none at all.
Car sellers sold more than 25,000 tax credit-eligible electric vehicles between January 1 and February 6, according to new Treasury data. That’s an average of more than 675 EVs sold at a government-sponsored discount per day, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo calculated. To put that in perspective, about 1.08 million cars were sold in total in the month of January, according to Cox Automotive, or about 34,840 per day. So the tax credit-supported EVs were only about 2% of the total cars sold. But 25,000 discounted EVs is nothing to scoff at considering that fewer models are eligible now than last year. Also, the Treasury said it has paid approximately $135 million in advance payments to dealers for about 19,000 of the EVs sold this year. “So even with fewer options available, buyers are still taking advantage of the new instant rebate and finding vehicles that work for them,” Pontecorvo said.
The Department of Energy (DoE) yesterday announced it was making an additional $63 million available to speed up the adoption of residential heat pumps across the country. This is on top of the $169 million in federal funding announced in November of last year. The goal is to boost manufacturing of heat pump systems, but with this new influx of cash, it seems the DoE also wants to wake Americans up to the benefits of using a heat pump to heat and cool water. Its announcement notes that heat pump water heaters can be up to three times more energy efficient than conventional water heaters. “Basically, the federal funding is aiming to nix the use of gas in a home wherever possible,” wrote Matt Simon at Wired. Ali Zaidi, assistant to the president and national climate adviser, told Simon that “we’re really seeing, I think, a sea change across the country in terms of how people heat and cool their homes.” Data shows that in 2023, heat pumps outsold furnaces for the second year in a row.
Google is teaming up with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to help track methane emissions from space. The MethaneSAT – a satellite developed specifically to monitor methane emissions – will launch into orbit next month. Google will use artificial intelligence to create a map of oil and gas infrastructure locations across the world. “Once we have that map, then we can overlay methane data,” said Yael Maguire, head of Google’s Geo Sustainability team. This will offer a “far better understanding of the types of machinery that contributes most to methane leaks.”
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that’s far more warming than carbon dioxide. But it breaks down in the atmosphere more quickly that CO2, so slashing it is seen as “one of the cheapest, fastest ways to curb global warming in the short term,” explainedBloomberg. Fossil fuel operations tend to dramatically underreport their methane releases, so the hope is that more transparency about emissions will encourage reduction efforts from producers, but reductions “can increase costs in the short term and slow output,” Bloomberg noted.
India wants to take its relationship with one of the world’s leading energy authorities to the next level. The country has applied to become a full member of the International Energy Agency (IEA), joining 31 other member countries, and ministers are deciding whether or not to say yes. India is already an “association country,” but full membership would boost its role in tackling climate change. It could also help the IEA “strengthen cooperation in Asia to stabilize energy supplies,” as the region emerges as a key source of new global energy consumption, The Nikkeireported. The IEA noted that energy demand is expected to grow more in India than in any other country over the next 30 years. “The world cannot plan for its energy future without India at the table,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
The latest development in the enduring quest to create a meat substitute that people will actually eat is “beef rice.” Yes, you read that right. Researchers in South Korea have grown rice grains in a lab that contain cow muscle and fat cells. The beef rice is pink, firm, and high in protein and fat. Unlike some other meat alternatives, it uses ingredients that are widely available, affordable, and have a lower carbon footprint per gram of protein than beef, leading its creators to declare it “a novel food ingredient that can overcome humanity’s food crisis.” But the proof will be in the (rice) pudding: “A critical test is around public appetite for these sorts of lab-developed foods,” Neil Ward, an agri-food and climate specialist and professor at the University of East Anglia, told CNN.
America’s 16,000 golf courses soak up 1.5 billion gallons of water per day.
Editor's note: This article has been changed to correct the number of EVs Americans are buying each day.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.