Ford Pump the Brakes on the F-150 Lightning

Current conditions: New York City, Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley, along with much of the Northeast Corridor, are under red flag warnings for fire after a month of dry weather • Typhoon Kong-rey made landfill in Taiwan with winds over 125 miles per hour, injuring more than 500 and killing two • The first snow of the year showed up in Iowa and, yes, Hawaii.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Ford hits pause on the F-150 Lightning factory

Ford is planning a temporary shutdown of the plant that produces its fully electric truck, the F-150 Lightning. The shutdown will last seven weeks, Bloomberg reported. Earlier this week, Ford told investors that its profits had fallen in part due to a $1 billion charge it had taken after overhauling its electric vehicle strategy earlier this year. Ford sold just over 7,000 Lightnings in the third quarter of this year, more than double its sales in the third quarter of last year, but just about 3.5% of its total F-150 sales. Overall, electric vehicle sales rose in the third quarter, but when it came to trucks, consumers preferred the Tesla Cybertruck to the Lightning.

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2. New support for battery recycling

The Department of Energy announced Thursday that it would award $45 million in funding for eight electric vehicle battery recycling programs. The projects “will advance research, development, and demonstration of recycling and second-life applications for batteries once used to power EVs,” the DOE said. The programs include money for diagnostics, automatic sorting for used batteries, and automated battery dissembling. The projects being funded are in Southern California, Michigan, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Tennessee.

3. Microsoft tries to reduce its data centers’ climate impact

Microsoft will use wood to build two data centers in Northern Virginia, the company announced Tuesday. Use of “cross-laminated timber” will reduce the carbon footprint of the data centers’ construction by about a third compared to steel and almost two-thirds compared to concert, the company said. This is just the latest move by Microsoft to try to reduce emissions associated with construction — the company is also working on developing a market for buying environmental attributes of low-carbon cement, Heatmap reported earlier this month. Microsoft’s “indirect” emissions of greenhouse gases rose by over 30% last year, largely thanks to the massive data center building binge it’s been on, along with the rest of Big Tech.

4. New York, at least, will be able to meet its energy needs, report says

While plans to build data centers are creating electricity demand anxiety all over the country, the boom may not disrupt or strain New York’s grid, at least for a while, New York Focus reports. “Despite mounting pressures due to the state’s climate law and a burst in new manufacturing and tech facilities, New York has enough power plants operating or planned to meet statewide demand over the next decade,” the news nonprofit reported, citing an analysis by NYISO, which operates New York’s electricity market.

This finding is important because it means that not every carbon-emitting power plant has to stay open to meet new demand, which may let New York get closer to achieving its emissions targets. The reason for the more optimistic forecast is that some of the largest loads in the state like crypto mining or hydrogen told NYISO they can shut down during times of high demand on the grid.

5. Europe’s emissions fall

European Union greenhouse gas emissions fell 8.3% in 2023, according to the European Commission’s annual climate report. It was the largest fall in emissions “in several decades,” not counting 2020, when economic activity plummeted due to Covid-19. Annual emissions have fallen by more than a third since 1990, while economic activity has increased by two-thirds since then. The report attributed much of the drop to the continent’s energy sector, whose emissions dropped 18%.

“This drop was due to a substantial increase in renewable electricity production (primarily wind and solar), at the expense of both coal and gas and, to a lesser extent, a decrease in both electricity and heat supply compared with 2022, and to the recovery of hydro and nuclear power.” The drop in EU emissions stands in contrast to rising emissions globally in 2023, according to the United Nations.

THE KICKER

To the delight of energy nerds, the Energy Information Administration has published a new Sankey diagram showing how energy gets used in the U.S. economy.