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Electric Vehicles

Rivian’s Next-Gen R1 EVs Are Here

On the R1S and R1T, fusion, and a copper shortage

Rivian’s Next-Gen R1 EVs Are Here
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: China just experienced its warmest spring on record • Some residents in Sydney, Australia, are evacuating after excessive rainfall caused a dam to overflow • Eleven people suffered from heat exhaustion while waiting outside a Trump rally yesterday in Phoenix, Arizona, where temperatures reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

THE TOP FIVE

1. DOE announces plan to speed up fusion research

The Department of Energy wants to to “accelerate” the development of commercial fusion energy. It will put $180 million toward funding fusion research from universities, nonprofits, national labs, and also private companies. The department also plans to create a public-private consortium framework that will utilize funding from state and local governments, private companies, and philanthropies. President Biden has a goal of developing commercial fusion within a decade. Nuclear fusion, the process by which stars produce energy, is seen as a sort of holy grail for the future of clean power, but research into harnessing this reaction has so far been slow and costly, hence the DOE’s new strategy to ramp things up.

2. Rivian rolls out new flagship R1 EVs

EV maker Rivian unveiled the next generation of its flagship R1 vehicles this week: the R1S SUV and the R1T pickup. To survive what may be the defining year of its life, the company is trying to cut the costs of these vehicles without hurting their performance, and it plans to do so by swapping out 600 under-the-hood components for new parts that improve efficiency and in-house manufacturability. For example, the company says it managed to remove 1.6 miles of wiring from each R1 vehicle just by revamping the electrical system. “Rivian has focused its efforts on reworking the guts,” wrote Kirsten Korosec at TechCrunch, “changing everything from the battery pack and suspension system to the electrical architecture, interior seats, and sensor stack.” The new R1S will start at $75,900 and the R1T will start at $69,900, but considering the company is losing something like $38,000 per vehicle right now, Fred Lambert at Electrek is correct when he notes “the bigger question is how much it costs Rivian to build them.”

R1S SUVRivian

R1T pickupRivian

3. AI data centers threaten global copper supply

The rise of artificial intelligence is putting added pressure on the supply of copper, a metal that is key to the renewable energy transition. A recent report from the International Energy Agency concluded that existing and planned copper mines will only meet 80% of global needs by 2030. Analyzing forecasts from JP Morgan and Bank of America, The Wall Street Journal reports that by that same year, the power-hungry AI data centers will exacerbate a predicted global copper deficit of 4 million metric tons by another 2.6 million tons. The IEA has called for expanding critical mineral supplies, and improving recycling. Copper recycling rates are low currently, but the WSJ said “that could change as AI data centers add to strained demand.”

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  • 4. Last month was the hottest May ever as 2024 breaks more heat records

    The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service yesterday released its analysis of global temperatures for May 2024, finding that the month was warmer than any prior May on record, coming in at 1.52 degrees Celsius (almost 3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial May averages. The average sea surface temperature, too, was the highest on record for the 14th straight month. The graphic below gives a sense of just how unusual the sea surface temperatures have been over the last year. The increase observed over 2023 and 2024 is in red – you can’t miss it.

    Copernicus

    5. Researchers use ‘charcoal sponge’ to remove CO2 from the air

    Researchers at the University of Cambridge say they’ve discovered a new, energy efficient way of removing carbon dioxide from the air using low-cost materials. Their direct air capture process utilizes activated charcoal, a cheap material often used to help filter and purify water. Using a similar process to charging a battery, the charcoal is “charged” in such a way that makes certain ions accumulate in its pores. Those ions bond with CO2, removing the gas directly from the air. Once the CO2 has been collected, it has to be released from the “charcoal sponge” and stored. This is done by heating the charcoal to about 100 degrees Celsius. This relatively low temperature is important, because it can be achieved using renewable electricity, whereas “in most materials currently used for CO2 capture from air, the materials need to be heated to temperatures as high as 900°C, often using natural gas,” the team wrote. They’ve filed a patent for their technology and are working on commercialization. The research was published in the journal Nature.

    THE KICKER

    Tesla is selling new “Tesla Mezcal” in the U.S. One bottle costs $450.

    X/tesla_na

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    Climate

    Trump Resumes Wind War

    On EPA’s CO2 math, the British atom, and Ram’s reversal

    Donald Trump.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: A prolonged heatwave in Mississippi is breaking nearly century-old temperature records and driving the thermometer up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit again this week • A surge of tropical moisture is steaming the West Coast, with temperatures up to 10 degrees higher than average • Heavy rainfall has set off landslide warnings in every major country in West Africa.


    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Trump asks court to revoke permits for Maryland offshore wind project

    The Trump administration asked a federal judge on Friday to withdraw the Department of the Interior’s approval of a wind farm off the coast of Maryland, Reuters reported. Known as the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, the $6 billion array of as many as 114 turbines in a stretch of federal ocean was set to begin construction next year. Developer US Wind — a joint venture between the investment firm Apollo Global Management and a subsidiary of the Italian industrial giant Toto Holding SpA — had already faced pushback from Republicans. The town of Ocean City sued to overturn the project’s permits at the federal and state levels. When the Interior Department first announced it was reconsidering the permits in August, Mary Beth Carozza, the Republican state senator representing the area, welcomed the move but warned in a statement the news site Maryland Matters cited that opponents’ campaign against the project, known as Stop Offshore Wind, “won’t stop fighting until the Maryland offshore wind project is completely dead.”

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    Green
    Energy

    The EPA’s Backdoor Move to Hobble the Carbon Capture Industry

    Why killing a government climate database could essentially gut a tax credit

    Lee Zeldin.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The Trump administration’s bid to end an Environmental Protection Agency program may essentially block any company — even an oil firm — from accessing federal subsidies for capturing carbon or producing hydrogen fuel.

    On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed that it would stop collecting and publishing greenhouse gas emissions data from thousands of refineries, power plants, and factories across the country.

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    Blue
    Adaptation

    The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

    Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

    Homes as a wildfire buffer.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

    More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

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