Current conditions: Japan has issued its first-ever “megaquake” caution after a temblor rattled its southern coast yesterday • The remnants of Tropical Storm Debby could bring tornadoes to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast • India’s record heat has been mentioned at least 80 times in quarterly earnings calls.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Solar panel company Qcells secures $1.45 billion DOE loan
The Biden administration announced yesterday a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee of up to $1.45 billion for solar panel maker Qcells to support the construction of the company’s new manufacturing facility in Cartersville, Georgia. The plant would be Qcell’s second in Georgia, but the largest of its kind in the U.S., churning out solar panel components like silicon ingots and wafers, as well as finished solar panels. Its completion will “re-establish critical parts of the domestic solar supply chain and reinforce the United States’ status as a global clean energy leader,” the Department of Energy said in a statement. The plant will create 1,950 jobs, and is expected to make 3.3 gigawatts of panels each year, enough to power half a million homes. And it will be eligible for the IRA’s clean-energy tax credits.
In other government funding news this week, the DOE announced $10.2 million to advance the “cost effective and environmentally responsible” production of critical minerals and materials in the U.S., $85 million to boost domestic heat pump manufacturing, and $2.2 billion to shore up the grid.
2. Glacial dam outburst floods Alaska’s capital
Alaska’s capital of Juneau has been inundated by flooding from a glacial dam outburst this week. More than 100 homes have been damaged in the Mendenhall Valley after the Suicide Basin, which holds meltwater from Suicide Glacier, began to overflow on August 1 and sent water pouring into the Mendenhall River. Climate change is melting glaciers, putting nearby communities in danger. Recent research shows the number of glacial lakes has grown by more than 50% since 1990, and more than 15 million people globally are at risk.
Facebook/Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
3. Canadian nuclear fusion firm gets government backing
Canadian nuclear fusion company General Fusion this week raised about $14.6 million in a Series F funding round from two government agencies, the Business Development Bank of Canada and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. The injection brings the company’s funding total to more than $320 million, with backers including Jeff Bezos. As Bloombergexplained, General Fusion “uses mechanically driven pistons to compress a cloud of plasma as a means to generate energy,” and the company said this money will help it move toward compressing plasmas at large scale, which is “a key milestone on our path to reach transformational results for commercialization.”
4. L.A. could soon get an air taxi network
California-based eVTOL developer Archer Aviation is planning an “air mobility network” that will bring flying electric taxis to Los Angeles as early as 2026. Customers would be able to skip the L.A. traffic by hopping into one of Archer’s Midnight aircraft and travelling in a matter of minutes to one of the company’s vertiports, which will be located near various popular destinations including LAX, USC, and perhaps the SoFi Stadium. Here’s what the network could look like:
Archer Aviation
The Midnight electric aircraft can carry four passengers at a time and travel at 150 mph. The company recently announced plans for a similar network in the San Francisco Bay Area. Stellantis is planning to help Archer ramp up production of the Midnight aircraft by covering some $370 million in labor-related costs.
5. Study reveals how past volcanic eruptions affected climate, plants
A new study published in the journal Science examines how the Earth’s plants and carbon cycle have responded in the past to climate change caused by huge releases in carbon dioxide from volcanic activity. They find that the severity of the fallout depended on how quickly the Earth could sequester the carbon and remove it from the atmosphere, but also how well plants could adapt to the resulting temperature changes. After past volcanic eruptions, some plant species evolved to survive, some migrated to cooler climates, but others were wiped out entirely. The authors found that damages to vegetation made global warming worse in the past. “This study, in my perspective, serves as a ‘wake-up call’ for the global community,” said co-author Loïc Pellissier, a professor of ecosystems and landscape evolution at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research. “We are currently releasing greenhouse gases at a faster rate than any previous volcanic event. We are also the primary cause of global deforestation, which strongly reduces the ability of natural ecosystems to regulate the climate.”
THE KICKER
Satellite data suggests deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is now at its lowest levels since 2016.
