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On Volkswagen’s Scout revival, an IRA status report, and carbon removal rules
Current conditions: Canada’s Alberta province has declared an early start to wildfire season • The air quality is “unhealthy” today in Milan, recently named the world’s third most polluted city • It will be 50 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in National Harbor, Md., for the kickoff of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
A year and a half ago, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which will spend an estimated $500 billion in grants and tax credits to incentivize people and businesses to switch from burning fossil fuels to using cleaner, zero-carbon technologies. Is it working? In the third episode of Heatmap’s podcast “Shift Key,” hosts Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins dive into a new report from a coalition of major energy analysts — including MIT, the Rhodium Group, and Jenkins’ lab at Princeton — that looks at data from the power and transportation sectors and concludes that yes, the law is starting to decarbonize the American economy. But it isn’t working in the way many people might expect. While the transportation sector came in at the upper end of what modelers projected for this year, the power sector is lagging behind largely because of a drop in new onshore wind projects. As a result, the power sector is not on track to cut emissions 40% by 2030, as compared to 2005 levels, as the bill’s supporters have hoped.
“Unfortunately, we're just not building out at the pace that would be economically justified,” Jenkins told Meyer. “And that is really an indicator that there are a substantial number of other non-economic frictions or barriers to deployment of wind in particular at the pace that we want to see.”
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find the episode on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Volkswagen wants to double its market share in the United States by 2030, and it’s hoping a little bit of nostalgia will help do the trick, according toThe New York Times. The German company is reviving the iconic Scout brand with a line of electric pickups and sport utility vehicles, and leaning hard on its electric ID.Buzz, which resembles the Microbus – aka the Hippie Van. And Pablo Di Si, president of Volkswagen Group of America, hinted at an EV Beetle revival. Last week the company inaugurated a new factory site in South Carolina where the electric Scout vehicles will be built. “This market is turning electric, and everybody’s starting from scratch,” Arno Antlitz, the chief financial officer of Volkswagen, told the Times. “This is our unique opportunity to grow.” The paper notes that Volkswagen has been trying since the 1970s to grow in the U.S., with little success. The first electric Scouts will go on sale in 2026.
An old Scout modelScout Motors/Instagram
The Biden administration is putting $500 million toward wildfire prevention in 21 areas that the Agriculture Department has identified as being high risk. Those include forests like Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon, but also 4 million acres in southern California. The money comes from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and the U.S. Forest Service’s Collaborative Wildfire Risk Reduction Program. The total IRA and BIL funding for wildfire resilience sits at $2.4 billion, The Hill reported. More than 2.6 million acres were burned in wildfires last year.
The first chemical tanker to be retrofitted with wind “sails” has set out on its first wind-assisted voyage. The MT Chemical Challenger left Antwerp on Friday, headed for Istanbul. Along its journey the ship will test out four newly installed giant aluminum sails that are meant to help reduce fuel consumption by up to 20%. Last year Cargill put “WindWings” made by BAR Technologies on one of its cargo ships, so the Chemical Challenger isn’t breaking entirely new ground, but the project does represent growing interest within the shipping industry to reduce carbon emissions. The International Maritime Organization last year said shipping emissions must drop by at least 40% by 2030, and be eliminated by around 2050, to be in line with Paris Agreement targets. But there are no legally binding measures to implement these guidelines. International shipping accounted for about 2% of global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.
The European Union is considering implementing a carbon removals certification process that could help legitimize and police an industry that’s still nascent, but growing fast. Companies claiming to remove planet-warming CO2 from the atmosphere have so far been left to police themselves, wrote Justine Calma at The Verge. “Lax rules — or no rules at all — could give companies a way to keep polluting while misleadingly promising to draw down those emissions later.” The EU’s proposed framework sets definitions for “permanent” removal vs. “temporary” carbon storage, and identifies different methods like wood-based construction, forest restoration, soil management, and others. It does not include “activities that do not result in carbon removals or soil emission reductions,” such as “avoided” deforestation or renewable energy products. To be certified in the eyes of the EU, projects will need to be quantifiable, long term, sustainable, and must capture carbon that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere. The framework has been approved by the European Parliament and the Council and Commission – it now needs formal government adoption. “If adopted, the certification process would be voluntary for carbon removal companies,” Calma explained. “But only certified projects would count toward a country’s progress in meeting the European Union’s climate goals.”
Matt Brady, The University of Texas at El Paso
This is the first known photo of the Yellow-crested Helmetshrike, a bird species thought to have been lost, but recently stumbled upon by researchers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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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 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.