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Climate

Clean Energy Investment Is Eclipsing Fossil Fuel Funding

On a new IEA report, Hochul’s congestion pricing u-turn, and the heat dome

Clean Energy Investment Is Eclipsing Fossil Fuel Funding
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Unseasonably cool temperatures brought snow to parts of Scotland • New South Wales in Australia recorded more than a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours • Multiple tornadoes were reported across Maryland.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Gov. Hochul pauses NYC congestion pricing ‘indefinitely’

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced yesterday that she will “indefinitely pause” the long-awaited NYC congestion pricing program that was set to start on June 30. The policy would have charged drivers for entering some of the city’s busiest areas, raising $1 billion annually for the transit authority, cutting pollution, and easing traffic congestion. It would have been the first such program in the nation. But, no more. Hochul said it risked “too many unintended consequences.”

Environmental groups, state budget hawks, and transit advocates are outraged by the u-turn. Her decision “will be a generational setback for climate policy in the United States,” wrote an incensed Robinson Meyer for Heatmap. “New York was bushwhacking a trail for everyone else to follow: If congestion policy was a success there, then other American cities could experiment with it in some form. By pausing that trial before it has even begun, Hochul has essentially frozen our ability to experiment with congestion pricing anywhere else in the country.”

2. IEA: Clean energy investment set to double fossil fuels in 2024

Global investment in clean energy is on track to reach $2 trillion in 2024, double the $1 trillion expected to be invested in fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. In its new World Energy Investment report, out today, the IEA said global spending on renewables surpassed the amount invested in fossil fuels last year for the first time. Most of the money is going toward solar power. Here’s a look at recent annual investment in solar PV (light blue) compared to all other power generation sources (dark blue):

IEA

China accounts for the largest share of clean energy investment by a long shot, and China, the U.S., and Europe make up more than two thirds of the world’s clean energy investment. “More must be done to ensure that investment reaches the places where it is needed most, in particular the developing economies where access to affordable, sustainable and secure energy is severely lacking today,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. Even as clean energy funds are flowing, spending on oil and gas is set to rise this year and remains far too high to meet the world’s climate goals, the report said. Just 4% of oil and gas companies’ 2023 investments went toward clean energy.

3. UN secretary-general calls for global ban on fossil fuel ads

António Guterres yesterday urged nations to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies in a speech at the American Museum of Natural History. The UN secretary-general called the fossil fuel industry “the Godfathers of climate chaos,” and said advertising and PR agencies that take Big Oil on as clients are “enablers to planetary destruction.” He said the end of the fossil fuel age was an economic inevitability, but that global emissions need to fall 9% every year until 2030 to keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius alive. The next 18 months will be key to deciding our future, he said. “I call on leaders in the fossil fuel industry to understand that if you are not in the fast lane to clean energy transformation, you are driving your business into a dead end – and taking us all with you,” Guterres said.

The speech coincided with a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concluding there is an 80% chance that the global annual average temperature will exceed the 1.5C degree increase in one (or more) of the next five years. That’s up from a 66% chance last year, and as Guterres noted, “in 2015, the chance of such a breach was near zero.”

4. Southwestern states bake under intense heat dome

Temperatures across much of the American Southwest are between 20 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than usual for this time of year, according to the National Weather Service. Residents in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas are roasting under a heat dome that has settled on the region and will likely peak in severity today. In Phoenix, where temperatures will hit 111 degrees Fahrenheit today, all fire department vehicles are being kitted out with large ice bags in which people suffering from heat stroke can be submerged to lower their temperatures. In California’s Death Valley, the mercury will hit 120 degrees today. The heat wave is expected to boost emissions from California’s power sector as customers crank up their air conditioners. Below is a snapshot of the region today from the NWS HeatRisk tool. Regions in red are experiencing “major” heat-related impacts; purple regions are under extreme heat conditions.

NWS HeatRisk

5. GM records best month for North American EV sales

In case you missed it: General Motors just had its best month ever in terms of EV sales. During a shareholder meeting on Tuesday, CEO Mary Barra said May was the company’s “best month ever for EV sales in North America,” adding that “we’re seeing profit improvement in our EV portfolio as we scale production of the broadest EV portfolio on the market, a portfolio purposely built to win new customers.” Demand was particularly strong for the Cadillac Lyric and the new Chevrolet Blazer EV. The news would have been unfathomable even last year, when GM reported cratering EV sales after it discontinued the Chevy Bolt EV, wrote Patrick George at Inside EVs. The new numbers are “an outstanding development for GM and for the wider EV market,” he said.

THE KICKER

A Department of Energy initiative will repurpose two former nuclear test sites in Idaho by using the land to install 400 megawatts of solar power with battery storage.

Yellow

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Politics

AM Briefing: The Megabill Goes to the House

On the budget debate, MethaneSAT’s untimely demise, and Nvidia

House Republicans Are Already Divided on the Megabill
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: The northwestern U.S. faces “above average significant wildfire potential” for July • A month’s worth of rain fell over just 12 hours in China’s Hubei province, forcing evacuations • The top floor of the Eiffel Tower is closed today due to extreme heat.

THE TOP FIVE

1. House takes up GOP’s megabill

The Senate finally passed its version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tuesday morning, sending the tax package back to the House in hopes of delivering it to Trump by the July 4 holiday. The excise tax on renewables that had been stuffed into the bill over the weekend was removed after Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska struck a deal with the Senate leadership designed to secure her vote. In her piece examining exactly what’s in the bill, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo explains that even without the excise tax, the bill would “gum up the works for clean energy projects across the spectrum due to new phase-out schedules for tax credits and fast-approaching deadlines to meet complex foreign sourcing rules.” Debate on the legislation begins on the House floor today. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he doesn’t like the legislation, and a handful of other Republicans have already signaled they won’t vote for it.

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Yellow
Podcast

Shift Key Summer School: What Is a Watt?

Jesse teaches Rob the basics of energy, power, and what it all has to do with the grid.

Power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

What is the difference between energy and power? How does the power grid work? And what’s the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour?

On this week’s episode, we answer those questions and many, many more. This is the start of a new series: Shift Key Summer School. It’s a series of introductory “lecture conversations” meant to cover the basics of energy and the power grid for listeners of every experience level and background. In less than an hour, we try to get you up to speed on how to think about energy, power, horsepower, volts, amps, and what uses (approximately) 1 watt-hour, 1 kilowatt-hour, 1 megawatt-hour, and 1 gigawatt-hour.

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Green
Electric Vehicles

The Best Time to Buy an EV Is Probably Right Now

If the Senate reconciliation bill gets enacted as written, you’ve got about 92 days left to seal the deal.

A VW ID. Buzz.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

If you were thinking about buying or leasing an electric vehicle at some point, you should probably get on it like, right now. Because while it is not guaranteed that the House will approve the budget reconciliation bill that cleared the Senate Tuesday, it is highly likely. Assuming the bill as it’s currently written becomes law, EV tax credits will be gone as of October 1.

The Senate bill guts the subsidies for consumer purchases of electric vehicles, a longstanding goal of the Trump administration. Specifically, it would scrap the 30D tax credit by September 30 of this year, a harsher cut-off than the version of the bill that passed the House, which would have axed the credit by the end of 2025 except for automakers that had sold fewer than 200,000 electric vehicles. The credit as it exists now is worth up to $7,500 for cars with an MSRP below $55,000 (and trucks and sports utility vehicles under $80,000), and, under the Inflation Reduction Act, would have lasted through the end of 2032. The Senate bill also axes the $4,000 used EV tax credit at the end of September.

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Blue