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On conditional loans, China’s emissions, and primary care clinics
Current conditions: Storm Conall brought more heavy rain and flooding to sodden England • Flash floods killed at least 20 people on Indonesia’s Sumatra island • The northern Plains will be hit with an “arctic outbreak” on Thanksgiving day.
The Department of Energy yesterday agreed to loan Rivian $6.6 billion to resume construction on its factory in Georgia, where the company will produce the upcoming R2 and R3 electric pickups. The loan is conditional, meaning it hasn’t been finalized just yet. “If finalized, the loan will support construction of a 9 million square foot facility to manufacture up to 400,000 mass-market electric sport utility vehicles and crossover vehicles,” the DOE said in a statement. “At full capacity, the EVs manufactured at the facility are expected to yield an annual fuel consumption savings of approximately 146 million gallons of petroleum.” Whether the loan will be completed before the incoming Trump administration takes over – or whether Trump would try to axe the loan – remains to be seen. The Biden administration set a goal for zero-emission vehicles to make up half of new U.S. car sales by 2030.
China’s CO2 emissions will rise slightly this year due to a surge in energy demand, according to new research published today from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “The growth in energy consumption and electricity consumption is faster than in the transition pathways,” the report said. Even as China rapidly rolls out renewables and EVs, emissions will rise by 0.4% in 2024. Less than half – 44% – of the experts polled by CREA said China’s emissions have already peaked, or will peak next year. Two years ago, just 15% of experts believed that to be the case. And 36% of experts said China’s coal consumption has peaked, up from 20% who said that last year. China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and coal is its main source of emissions.
Porsche this week joined a growing list of car manufacturers that are pumping the brakes on the shift to EVs. Instead of rolling out new EV models to accompany the luxury Taycan and Macan, Porsche now plans to produce new gas and hybrid models instead as it feels the effects of a slowdown in EV sales. “We are currently looking at the possibility of the originally planned all-electric vehicles having a hybrid drive or a combustion engine,” the company’s CFO said. “What is clear is that we are sticking with the combustion engine for much longer.” Earlier this year Porsche watered down its goal for 80% of sales to be electric by 2030.
Maine is suing oil giants Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, Sunoco, and the American Petroleum Institute, accusing them of knowingly deceiving the public about the role of fossil fuels in the climate crisis. It becomes the ninth state to do so. The new lawsuit claims the oil companies have long known that fossil fuels cause climate change, and that the resulting rising sea levels are especially harmful in Maine because so many of the state’s communities and industries are located near the coastline. The state wants unspecified damages from the companies as well as funds for adaptation and mitigation.
A recent study published in the journal BMC Primary Care examines how climate change is affecting primary care clinics serving “low-income and socially disadvantaged communities.” Surveys were sent to more than 400 staff members at clinics across 43 states. Nearly 85% of the staffers who responded reported that climate change – and especially extreme heat – is affecting their patients’ health. Many said extreme weather events were harming their clinic’s ability to provide care due to effects like power outages and staff shortages. About 16% of respondents said extreme weather contributed to loss or spoilage of vaccines. But just one-third of respondents said they’d spoken to patients about the increasing health risks associated with climate change, saying they had more important topics to discuss in the limited amount of time available during consultations. And 61% cited their own lack of knowledge about the connection between climate change and health. Interestingly, just 34% said politics or polarization were stopping them from bringing up climate change when discussing health risks.
BMC Primary Care
Renewables accounted for 24% of electricity generation in the first three quarters of 2024, up from 22.8% in the same period last year.
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Current conditions: Thousands are without power and drinking water in the French Indian Ocean territory of Réunion after Tropical Cyclone Garance made landfall with the strength of a Category 2 hurricane • A severe weather outbreak could bring tornadoes to southern states early next week • It’s 44 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Washington, D.C., where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump today to sign a minerals deal.
The 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, ended this week with countries agreeing on a crucial roadmap for directing $200 billion a year by 2030 toward protecting nature and halting global biodiversity loss. Developed nations are urged to double down on their goal to mobilize $20 billion annually for conservation in developing countries this year, rising to $30 billion by 2030. The plan also calls for further study on the relationships between nature conservation and debt sustainability. “The compromise proved countries could still bridge their differences and work together for the sake of preserving the planet, despite a fracturing world order and the dramatic retreat of the United States from international green diplomacy and foreign aid under President Donald Trump,” wrote Louise Guillot at Politico. The decision was met with applause and tears from delegates. One EU delegate said they were relieved “about the positive signal that this sends to other ongoing negotiations on climate change and plastics that we have.”
The Trump administration yesterday fired hundreds of workers across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, key agencies responsible for monitoring the changing climate and communicating extreme weather threats. The National Hurricane Center and the Tsunami Warning Center both operate under NOAA, and the layoffs come ahead of the upcoming hurricane season. “People nationwide depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.” A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the administration’s mass firings of federal workers, so the status of those affected in this latest round is unclear. Somewhat relatedly, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports that the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, was told by NOAA it had to rename a major conservation program as the “Gulf of America” or else lose federal funding.
The FBI reportedly has been questioning Environmental Protection Agency employees about $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants approved under the Biden administration, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has insisted were issued hastily and without oversight. According toThe Washington Post, the Justice Department has asked several U.S. attorneys to submit warrant requests or launch grand jury investigations, but those efforts have been rejected due to lack of evidence or “reasonable belief that a crime occurred.” “It’s certainly unusual for any case to involve two different U.S. attorney offices declining a case for lack of probable cause and to have the Department of Justice continue to shop it,” Stefan D. Cassella, a former federal prosecutor, told the Post. Several nonprofits said their Citibank accounts holding the funding have been frozen without explanation.
Some Democratic states are apparently freezing out Tesla in response to Elon Musk’s political maneuvers within the Trump administration. Tesla operates on a direct-to-consumer sales model, so it doesn’t have to go through dealerships. More than 25 states ban or restrict direct EV sales in some way. The company has been lobbying to get permission to sell directly in these states, but some Democratic lawmakers are “disgusted” by Musk’s moves in Washington and are rebuffing lobbyists or dropping their support for proposed legislation allowing direct sales.
Apple is in trouble for claiming some of its Apple Watches are “carbon neutral.” A group of customers are suing the company after learning its claims relied on carbon offsetting projects in protected national parks or heavily forested areas, instead of “genuine” carbon reductions. “The carbon reductions would have occurred regardless of Apple’s involvement or the projects’ existence,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint. “Because Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are predicated on the efficacy and legitimacy of these projects, Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false and misleading.” The lawsuit seeks damages, as well as an injunction that prevents Apple from using the carbon neutral claim to market its watches. Apple has a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Researchers in Amsterdam have examined the nests of birds known as common coots and discovered plastic items dating back to the 1990s, including a McDonald’s McChicken wrapper from 1996, and a Mars wrapper promoting the 1994 USA FIFA World Cup. “History is not only written by humans,” said Auke-Florian Hiemstra, who led the research. “Nature, too, is keeping score.”
Auke-Florian Hiemstra
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.