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Culture

It’s Getting Hot in Houston. Thousands Are Without Power.

On trouble in Texas, Tesla’s shareholders, and the pope

It’s Getting Hot in Houston. Thousands Are Without Power.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Schools are closed in Delhi due to intense heat • A freak storm dropped fist-sized hail stones on a city in northern Poland • Forecasters are expecting more tornadoes in the Midwest today.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Houston power outages persist as temperatures soar

Many households remain without power in Houston after the severe storms that tore through the area last Thursday. About 150,000 people were still waiting for the lights to come back on as of Monday night, and the weather is getting hot, with temperatures lingering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the heat index nearing 100F. Anyone without access to power and air conditioning is suffering. The city has opened dozens of cooling centers to help provide relief. The region’s power provider, CenterPoint Energy, said it expects restoration efforts to continue into Wednesday.

X/NWSHouston

2. Tesla shareholder group targets Musk pay package

A group of Tesla shareholders including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, SOC Investment Group, Amalgamated Bank, and others, have written to company investors urging them to vote against CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package next month, The Wall Street Journalreported. “Even as Tesla’s performance is floundering, the board has yet to ensure that Tesla has a full-time CEO who is adequately focused on the long-term sustainable success of our company,” the shareholder group wrote. Shareholders will vote at the company’s annual meeting on June 13 on whether to re-ratify Musk’s 2018 pay package, which a judge voided in January. The letter also says shareholders should not vote to re-elect board members Kimbal Musk (Elon’s brother) and James Murdoch (Elon’s friend), suggesting they are too closely tied to the CEO.

3. Battery fire at California energy storage site finally extinguished

A fire at a battery storage site in San Diego County appears to have been extinguished after burning on and off for multiple days and nights, reported Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. “There is no visible smoke or active fire at the scene,” Cal Fire, the state fire protection agency, said in an update yesterday. The fire started sometime Wednesday at the Gateway Energy Storage facility, a 250 megawatt battery electric storage system in Otay Mesa, which is immediately adjacent both to the eastern border of San Diego and to the northern border of Mexico and near the Richard J. Donovan state prison facility. Fires have been a recurring problem for the battery electric storage industry, which may be one reason why, according to Heatmap polling, it is the form of carbon-free power least popular with the general public.

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  • 4. Pope calls climate change a ‘road to death’

    Pope Francis has called climate change “a road to death” in an interview with CBS Evening News. “Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point of no return,” he said. “It’s sad, but that’s what it is. Global warming is a serious problem.” The pope has been very outspoken about the climate crisis, urging governments to stop using fossil fuels and pitching the state of the environment as a moral issue. Last week the Vatican hosted a climate conference that focused on building resilience as the crisis intensifies. It culminated in the signing of a protocol that urges wealthy nations to finance adaptation and protection for the world’s poorest, and calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, among other priorities.

    5. Light-duty EVs overtake rail on U.S. electricity usage

    Here’s an interesting little statistic for you: In 2023, light-duty electric vehicles consumed more electricity than the nation’s railways, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual railway electricity usage has hovered around 7,000 Gigawatt hours (GWh) since 2003, making it the largest electricity end-use category in the transportation sector. But that changed last year when EVs took the top spot, using 7,596 GWh. The EIA notes this is nearly five times the amount of electricity EVs consumed in 2018. The numbers underscore two trends: the limited expansion of U.S. rail, and the explosive growth of EV sales.

    EIA

    THE KICKER

    “I just watch their jaws drop and the surprise of ‘Where did this come from? This is an hour outside of Boise?’” –Chris Geroro, a fly fisher in southeastern Oregon, describes the beauty of the Owyhee River watershed, one of the country’s largest areas of pristine wilderness that is also prime for green development.

    Yellow

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    Climate

    AM Briefing: COP Coming into View

    On Azerbaijan’s plans, offshore wind auctions, and solar jobs

    What’s in the COP29 ‘Action Agenda’
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Thousands of firefighters are battling raging blazes in Portugal • Shanghai could be hit by another typhoon this week • More than 18 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours in Carolina Beach, which forecasters say is a one-in-a-thousand-year event.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Azerbaijan unveils COP29 ‘action agenda’

    Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s COP29, today put forward a list of “non-negotiated” initiatives for the November climate summit that will “supplement” the official mandated program. The action plan includes the creation of a new “Climate Finance Action Fun” that will take (voluntary) contributions from fossil fuel producing countries, a call for increasing battery storage capacity, an appeal for a global “truce” during the event, and a declaration aimed at curbing methane emissions from waste (which the Financial Times noted is “only the third most common man-made source of methane, after the energy and agricultural sectors”). The plan makes no mention of furthering efforts to phase out fossil fuels in the energy system.

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    Decarbonize your life

    Decarbonize your life intro

    Welcome to Decarbonize Your Life, Heatmap’s special report that aims to help you make decisions in your own life that are better for the climate, better for you, and better for the world we all live in. This is our attempt, in other words, to assist you in living something like a normal life while also making progress in the fight against climate change.

    That means making smarter and more informed decisions about how climate change affects your life — and about how your life affects climate change. The point is not what you shouldn’t do (although there is some of that). It’s about what you should do to exert the most leverage on the global economic system and, hopefully, nudge things toward decarbonization just a little bit faster.

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    A California Port Gambles on Dirty Hydrogen

    The small hydrogen plant at the Port of Stockton illustrates a key challenge for the energy transition.

    Dirty Hydrogen.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Officials at the Port of Stockton, an inland port in the Central Valley of California, were facing a problem. Under pressure from California regulators to convert all port vehicles to zero-emissions models over the next decade or so, they had made some progress, but had hit a wall.

    “Right now we only have one tool, and that is to electrify everything,” Jeff Wingfield, the port’s deputy director, told me. The Port of Stockton has actually been something of a national leader in electrifying its vehicles, having converted about 40% of its cargo-handling equipment from diesel-powered to battery-electric machines to date. But there aren’t electric alternatives available for everything yet, and the electric machines they’ve purchased have come with challenges. Sensors have malfunctioned due to colder weather or moisture in the air. Maintenance can’t be done by just any mechanic; the equipment is computerized and requires knowledge of the underlying code. “We’ve had a lot of downtime with the equipment unnecessarily. And so when we’re trying to sell that culture change, you know, these things can set back the mindset and just the overall momentum,” said Wingfield.

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