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AM Briefing: Tesla’s Big Test
On low expectations, global EV demand, and heat domes
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On low expectations, global EV demand, and heat domes
On the “Transmission Interconnection Roadmap,” solar tariffs, and AI
The U.S. just made permitting easier for geothermal, but industry and lawmakers say we should be going farther.
On Musk’s workforce cuts, Appliance Week, and flooding in Russia
Current conditions: Temperatures in Sapporo, Japan, surpassed 77 degrees Fahrenheit today, earlier than ever before • Gale-force winds are blasting Britain • The weather is looking greatfor the Boston Marathon.
Tesla has reportedly laid off “more than 10%” of its global workforce, according to Jameson Dow at Electrek. In an internal company-wide email, CEO Elon Musk said “this will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.” The exact headcount isn’t clear but Dow calculates a 10% cut would bring the number of workers newly out of a job to about 14,000. The news wasn’t unexpected – employees had been whispering about potential layoffs for a few weeks, and their angst was fueled by the announcement last Thursday that Cybertruck production shifts at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Texas would be shortened, starting today. Dow notes the layoffs will hurt morale, “which is a shame, because we do need Tesla to keep pushing things forward, and to keep attracting the best and brightest.”
House Republicans canceled a plan to put forward six new bills related to household appliances and energy standards this week and will focus instead on responding to rising tensions between Iran and Israel. The bills were going to be a “coordinated legislative offensive on the Department of Energy’s efficiency standards,” reportedE&E News. It’s not clear if or when the bills will be heard.
In case you missed it: The Biden administration late last week moved to hike fees for drilling for oil and gas on public lands. The New York Times explained it nicely: “The nation’s largest property owner, the federal government, effectively charges rent to oil and gas companies that exploit public land for private profit.” Now it is hiking its rates. The new rules, which could take effect in 60 days, raise royalty rates, lease rents, minimum auction bids, as well as “bonding rates,” which are upfront payments “to cover the cost of plugging abandoned oil and gas wells,” Reutersreported. The new minimum lease bonds will be $150,000 per lease, up from $10,000. Royalty rates will rise from 12.5% to 16.67%. The government estimates the rules would increase costs for fossil fuel companies by about $1.5 billion through 2031. Some of the money will go toward cleaning up old abandoned oil and gas wells.
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Flooding continues along the Russia-Kazakhstan border, where huge amounts of snowmelt from the Ural Mountains, coupled with heavy rain, overwhelmed the Ob-Irtysh river system, the world’s seventh largest. The Tobol River, which is usually frozen this time of year, rose by 9 inches in just four hours this morning. More than 125,000 people have been evacuated since the flooding began earlier this month. Flooding is common for the region in the spring, but this year has been particularly bad. Experts say the soil was already saturated before winter, and higher-than usual snowfall followed by a burst of warm weather made for ideal flood conditions. Maria Shahgedanova, a professor of climatic science at Reading University, said extreme flooding is likely to become more common because climate change is causing heavier snowfall in the area. “We’re looking at a 7% increase in (snow) precipitation where there is one degree temperature change,” she said.
Indiana has broken ground on a pilot project that will allow electric vehicles to charge wirelessly as they drive down the highway. The technology was developed by Purdue University and is being put to the test on a quarter-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 52 in West Lafayette, Indiana, Inside Climate Newsreported. It will charge cars as they travel up to speeds of 65 miles per hour. “If you have a cellphone and you place it on a charger, there is what’s called magnetic fields that are coming up from the charger into that phone,” said Steve Pekarek, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue. “We’re doing something similar.” Cars would have to be equipped with special receivers to be compatible with the wireless charging, so even when the system is up and running next summer it won’t yet benefit existing EV drivers. “This is a simple solution,” Pekarek said. “There are complicated parts of it, and that we leave to the vehicle manufacturers.” The state’s Department of Transportation hopes the project will help in the quest to ease range anxiety for would-be EV buyers, and electrify long-haul trucking.
Researchers say they’ve found a way to make the common pain-reliever acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) from compounds found in wood, instead of from chemicals derived from crude oil.
There is a theme here.
Late last year, I wrote about an overlooked but potentially transformative program in the Inflation Reduction Act called the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. Administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, it offered all 50 states, plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, an initial $3 million each for climate policy planning, spurring many states to develop emissions-cutting strategies for the first time. Later, cities and states will be able to apply for competitive grants from a $4.6 billion fund to implement elements of their plans.
States that accepted the planning money — i.e. all of them except Iowa, South Dakota, Florida, Wyoming, and Kentucky — agreed to submit an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions and a list of actions they would prioritize to the EPA by March 1. All together, the plans ran to nearly 7,000 pages, which are now available on the EPA’s website for anyone to peruse. While I haven’t yet had a chance to read through them all myself, a new high-level analysis of the plans by the nonprofits Evergreen Collaborative, RMI, and Climate XChange shows where most states said they would focus their efforts.
The groups counted the number of “priority measures” listed in each plan and tracked the source of greenhouse gases each measure would address. By far the most prominent climate problem states want to tackle, with 186 measures across the plans, is transportation. As transportation is now the largest source of U.S. emissions, and states have a lot of influence over the biggest drivers of vehicle emissions, this is a good sign.
For example, Texas said that in the near term, it could build electric vehicle chargers and hydrogen fueling stations, introduce lower-emissions support equipment at its airports, and use more sustainable jet fuel. In the longer term, out to 2050, it could expand programs to deploy zero-emissions medium- and heavy-duty trucks and decarbonize its ports. West Virginia said it would try to reduce vehicle miles traveled, a measure of how much people drive, by implementing programs to get people on bikes and increasing transit options.
Every single plan included measures to reduce emissions from buildings, with some focused on basic energy efficiency upgrades and others that mention switching from fossil fuel heating to electric heat pumps. The biggest gap the analysis identified concerned industrial emissions, which only 27 of the plans included measures to address. About a quarter of U.S. climate pollution comes from industry, much of which is considered “hard to abate” — although, solutions are emerging.
Some states that had yet to develop comprehensive climate plans, like Texas, listed dozens of broad measures. Others that were further along listed just a handful of specific ones. New York, for example, included just nine priority actions that it wanted to use the forthcoming implementation grants for.
Another theme that emerged was a lack of regulatory measures in the plans, which focused more on incentives and voluntary action. That may be due to the wealth of federal funding to create “carrots” versus sticks, or because the states interpreted the planning grant as an opportunity to focus on “shovel-ready” projects that will make them better candidates for the competitive implementation grants.
Though there’s no requirement to implement these plans, the prospect of additional funding from the EPA to carry them out means that many of the measures could actually happen. The states participating are home to 90% of the U.S. population, and the same fraction of U.S. emissions. Applications for implementation grants were due April 1.
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