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On low expectations, global EV demand, and heat domes
Current conditions: A cold front brought an enduring heat wave in Mexico to an end • Northwest Texas could see large hail this afternoon • It will be 60 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy in Ottawa, where delegates are gathering this week to hammer out a global plastics treaty.
Tesla will report first-quarter earnings today after the markets close, and expectations are pretty low. Analysts think the EV maker will report at least a 4% drop in revenue compared to Q1 last year. In the earnings call, CEO Elon Musk will probably be keen to talk about his big plans for the robotaxi, but investors will want him to elaborate on more pressing issues, like waning demand, steep price cuts, the Cybertruck recall, and whether plans for a $25,000 Tesla have really been scrapped. They’ll be looking for Musk to be “the adult in the room,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst. As well as setting out a clear vision for the company’s future, investors may want Musk to acknowledge his recent missteps as a sign he’s ready to turn things around. But as Nick Winfield wrote at The Information, “expecting the truculent Tesla CEO to admit his mistakes is probably too much to ask for.” Tesla’s stock is down 41% this year. The company frantically cut prices on several models in the last few days and announced a round of big layoffs, which apparently included the entire U.S. marketing team and part of the design team.
Tesla might be flailing, but the International Energy Agency (IEA) seems to think the overall EV market is in good shape. In its latest Global EV Outlook report, the agency said it expects global demand for EVs to “remain robust” this year, “despite near-term challenges in some markets.” It anticipates that one in five cars sold worldwide in 2024 will be electric, and points to first-quarter sales, which grew by 25% compared to the same period of 2023. China will see incredible EV growth this year, with EVs accounting for about 45% of car sales. As EV prices continue to fall and supply chains improve, global demand will continue to rise. By 2035, “every other car sold globally is set to be electric” if today’s policies hold, the IEA said. “Rather than tapering off, the global EV revolution appears to be gearing up for a new phase of growth,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “This shift will have major ramifications for both the auto industry and the energy sector.” The report calls for growing charging networks to keep pace with EV sales.
Asia was the region hit hardest by climate change-related disasters in 2023, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. The most deadly hazard last year was storm flooding.
WMO
The WMO says Asia (including sub-regions like the Middle East, Central Asia, and East Asia) is warming faster than the global average, and has experienced more than 3,600 natural disasters over the last 50 years, with losses soaring above $1 trillion. The new report comes as tens of thousands are being evacuated from Guangdong, China’s most populous southern province, due to extreme rainfall, and the United Arab Emirates works to repair the damage left by unprecedented flooding. This photo of abandoned vehicles in Dubai after last week’s storm is incredibly striking:
Francois Nel/Getty Images
A new study connects the dots between the record-breaking 2021 North American wildfire season and the “one-in-a-thousand-year” heat dome that settled over the Pacific Northwest in June of that year. The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, found that human-caused climate change increased both the size and longevity of the 27-day heat dome, the former by about 34%, and the latter by 60%. About one-third of the area that burned was covered by the dome. The authors note that the heat wave would have been 150 times less likely to happen without climate change. “Climate change will continue to magnify heat dome events, increase fire danger, and enable extreme synchronous wildfire in forested areas of North America,” they wrote.
Speaking of heat, the National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday launched an experimental online heat warning system ahead of what is expected to be one of the warmest summers on record. The HeatRisk tool is a seven-day forecast for potentially dangerous heat across the country. Regions are assigned one of five colors based on just how risky the temperature could get: green (little to no risk), yellow (minor risk), orange (moderate risk), red (major risk), magenta (extreme risk). Here’s the forecast for April 27, for example:
NOAA
Heat kills about 1,200 Americans every year, making it the top weather-related cause of death. In 2023, the hottest year on record, emergency rooms saw an uptick in visits from sweltering patients. The Weather Service is already forecasting above-average May – June temperatures for many parts of the country.
Construction has officially begun on Brightline West, the high-speed rail line that will connect Las Vegas to Southern California.
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Inside a wild race sparked by a solar farm in Knox County, Ohio.
The most important climate election you’ve never heard of? Your local county commissioner.
County commissioners are usually the most powerful governing individuals in a county government. As officials closer to community-level planning than, say a sitting senator, commissioners wind up on the frontlines of grassroots opposition to renewables. And increasingly, property owners that may be personally impacted by solar or wind farms in their backyards are gunning for county commissioner positions on explicitly anti-development platforms.
Take the case of newly-elected Ohio county commissioner – and Christian social media lifestyle influencer – Drenda Keesee.
In March, Keesee beat fellow Republican Thom Collier in a primary to become a GOP nominee for a commissioner seat in Knox County, Ohio. Knox, a ruby red area with very few Democratic voters, is one of the hottest battlegrounds in the war over solar energy on prime farmland and one of the riskiest counties in the country for developers, according to Heatmap Pro’s database. But Collier had expressed openness to allowing new solar to be built on a case-by-case basis, while Keesee ran on a platform focused almost exclusively on blocking solar development. Collier ultimately placed third in the primary, behind Keesee and another anti-solar candidate placing second.
Fighting solar is a personal issue for Keesee (pronounced keh-see, like “messy”). She has aggressively fought Frasier Solar – a 120 megawatt solar project in the country proposed by Open Road Renewables – getting involved in organizing against the project and regularly attending state regulator hearings. Filings she submitted to the Ohio Power Siting Board state she owns a property at least somewhat adjacent to the proposed solar farm. Based on the sheer volume of those filings this is clearly her passion project – alongside preaching and comparing gay people to Hitler.
Yesterday I spoke to Collier who told me the Frasier Solar project motivated Keesee’s candidacy. He remembered first encountering her at a community meeting – “she verbally accosted me” – and that she “decided she’d run against me because [the solar farm] was going to be next to her house.” In his view, he lost the race because excitement and money combined to produce high anti-solar turnout in a kind of local government primary that ordinarily has low campaign spending and is quite quiet. Some of that funding and activity has been well documented.
“She did it right: tons of ground troops, people from her church, people she’s close with went door-to-door, and they put out lots of propaganda. She got them stirred up that we were going to take all the farmland and turn it into solar,” he said.
Collier’s takeaway from the race was that local commissioner races are particularly vulnerable to the sorts of disinformation, campaign spending and political attacks we’re used to seeing more often in races for higher offices at the state and federal level.
“Unfortunately it has become this,” he bemoaned, “fueled by people who have little to no knowledge of what we do or how we do it. If you stir up enough stuff and you cry out loud enough and put up enough misinformation, people will start to believe it.”
Races like these are happening elsewhere in Ohio and in other states like Georgia, where opposition to a battery plant mobilized Republican primaries. As the climate world digests the federal election results and tries to work backwards from there, perhaps at least some attention will refocus on local campaigns like these.
And more of the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Madison County, Missouri – A giant battery material recycling plant owned by Critical Mineral Recovery exploded and became engulfed in flames last week, creating a potential Vineyard Wind-level PR headache for energy storage.
2. Benton County, Washington State – Governor Jay Inslee finally got state approvals finished for Scout Clean Energy’s massive Horse Heaven wind farm after a prolonged battle over project siting, cultural heritage management, and bird habitat.
3. Fulton County, Georgia – A large NextEra battery storage facility outside of Atlanta is facing a lawsuit that commingles usual conflicts over building these properties with environmental justice concerns, I’ve learned.
Here’s what else I’m watching…
In Colorado, Weld County commissioners approved part of one of the largest solar projects in the nation proposed by Balanced Rock Power.
In New Mexico, a large solar farm in Sandoval County proposed by a subsidiary of U.S. PCR Investments on land typically used for cattle is facing consternation.
In Pennsylvania, Schuylkill County commissioners are thinking about new solar zoning restrictions.
In Kentucky, Lost City Renewables is still wrestling with local concerns surrounding a 1,300-acre solar farm in rural Muhlenberg County.
In Minnesota, Ranger Power’s Gopher State solar project is starting to go through the public hearing process.
In Texas, Trina Solar – a company media reports have linked to China – announced it sold a large battery plant the day after the election. It was acquired by Norwegian company FREYR.What happened this week in climate and energy policy, beyond the federal election results.
1. It’s the election, stupid – We don’t need to retread who won the presidential election this week (or what it means for the Inflation Reduction Act). But there were also big local control votes worth watching closely.
2. Michigan lawsuit watch – Michigan has a serious lawsuit brewing over its law taking some control of renewable energy siting decisions away from municipalities.