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On EV trends, Rivian’s factory fire, and West Nile Virus
Current conditions: The Midwest is bracing for a brutal heat wave • California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range received a dusting of snow over the weekend • It will be 85 degrees and cloudy today in Flushing Meadows for the start of the U.S. Open tennis championship.
A fire broke out in the parking lot at Rivian’s Normal, Illinois, plant on Saturday, damaging dozens of cars before being extinguished. The plant itself was not affected, according to the Normal Fire Department, and no one was injured. The source of the blaze is under investigation. Rivian’s Normal factory produces all of the EV company’s current models. Last week Rivian got the city’s approval to expand the plant by about 1.3 million square feet to manufacture the upcoming mass-market R2 SUV. EVs catch fire less often than gas-powered cars, but they burn hotter and are harder to put out once alight.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is recovering from West Nile Virus, a spokeswoman said. Fauci was hospitalized with fever, chills, and fatigue but is now at home and is expected to make a full recovery. According to Dr. Jonathan LaPook, the chief medical correspondent for CBS News, Fauci thinks he was infected after being bitten by a mosquito in his backyard. West Nile is the most common mosquito-borne disease in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far this year 216 cases have been confirmed. About one in five infected people develop symptoms. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change is one of many factors that increase the risk of human exposure to West Nile by accelerating mosquito development, biting rates, and disease incubation.
The Wall Street Journalexplores what’s going on with plug-in hybrid cars, which have been on the market for more than a decade but are experiencing a bit of a revival as of late. The number of models on sale in the U.S. has nearly doubled over the last five years, to 47, and sales were up 60% in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2024. While conventional hybrids come with a small battery and motor that helps power the car’s engine to reduce fuel use, plug-in hybrids have a bigger battery that’s strong enough to run the vehicle exclusively on electricity for a little while before the gas engine takes over. The recent rise in sales is attributed in part to automakers being forced to comply with new tailpipe emissions rules, and drivers being EV curious but not quite ready to abandon gas entirely. “Plug-in hybrids balance the need to reduce vehicle emissions and offer consumers an entry point to electrified vehicles,” a Stellantis spokesperson told the Journal. GM is bringing back plug-in hybrids in 2027 after axing the Chevrolet Volt. Toyota, Volkswagen, and Ford are all either considering rolling out a plug-in hybrid in the U.S. or expanding existing lineups.
A U.K.-based startup called Promethean Particles recently closed an £8 million ($10.5 million) Series A funding round to make tiny, super absorbent particles that the company says can soak up greenhouse gases. Promethean Particles produces metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are “composed of metal ions interconnected by organic molecules to form a porous, lattice-like structure.” These nanoparticles have huge surface area, and the size of their pores can be customized to trap different gases and liquids. So the technology is being eyed as an option for capturing carbon at source for storage and transport, but like many CCS technologies, it is very expensive. The company’s MOFs are already being used in a prototype project in the U.K. Promethean Particles will use the new funding round (which was led in part by Aramco Ventures) to create a bigger manufacturing facility and work to improve affordability.
In case you missed it last week: The U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation recently got to work on its mission to repair roughly 4,500 EV charging ports across the country. It’s starting with an out-of-service charging station in Washington, D.C., that will get new infrastructure and added charging capacity at faster speeds. The upgrades are made possible by a $150 million grant program through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which was created as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Almost all (97%) of the new electricity generation capacity the U.S. added in the first half of 2024 came from carbon-free sources including wind, solar, battery storage, and nuclear.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.