Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

What a Vote in Tennessee Would Mean for the UAW

On a unionization effort at Volkswagen, the troubles with LCA, and a Mexican election

Briefing image.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are possible from Nebraska to Baltimore  It’s 109 degrees Fahrenheit in Vadodara, India, currently the hottest city in the worldHeavy rain is forecast for Indianapolis, but won’t dampen celebrations of #1 WNBA draft pick Caitlin Clark to the Indiana Fever.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Tennessee Volkswagen factory poised for historic unionization

The Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will vote this week on whether to join the United Auto Workers, a decision that labor activists say could give the union the momentum it needs for a “legitimate comeback” after its successes last fall — or, if the vote fails, take the wind out of its sails.

If successful, VW would become the only foreign commercial automaker to be unionized in the United States, and it would be the first Southern plant to unionize through an election since the 1940s, Bloomberg and The Washington Postreport. While prior efforts to unionize the Tennessee plant in 2014 and 2019 failed, the current organizing committee claims to have a supermajority heading into the vote. Local Republicans have nevertheless painted the unionization effort as “inconsistent with the people of southeast Tennessee” and as a de facto vote for President Biden, especially as former President Donald Trump has continued to bash electric vehicle manufacturing as a job killer and the UAW as a “hopeless case” on the campaign trail.

2. Life cycle analysis will ‘jeopardize global climate goals,’ researcher warns

Life cycle analysis — the process of measuring all emissions related to a given product or service throughout every phase of its life — has long been the foundation of the climate economy. But in a new paper, Arizona State University climate scientist Stephanie Arcusa claims we’re “kid[ding] ourselves thinking that we’re going to have numbers that we can hang our hats on.”

Speaking with Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo, Arcusa elaborated that the impossibility of collecting all the data necessary for life cycle analysis leads us to get “so far away from reality that we can’t actually tell if something is positive or negative in the end.” As she explains:

[...It’s] almost entirely subjective, which makes one LCA incomparable to another LCA depending on the context, depending on the technology. And yes, there are some standardization efforts that have been going on for decades. But if you have a ruler, no matter how much you try, it’s not going to become a screwdriver. We’re trying to use this tool to quantify things and make them the same for comparison, and we can’t because of that subjectivity.

3. Frontrunner in Mexico’s presidential election plans nearly $14 billion in energy projects

Former Mexico City mayor and leading Mexican presidential nominee Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday outlined a plan to invest $13.57 billion in new energy infrastructure and modernization through 2030, Reuters reports. The proposal focuses largely on increasing wind and solar generation, updating hydroelectric plants, and adding miles of new transmission lines, and notably sets her apart from current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has been criticized for pouring billions into propping up the state oil and gas company, Petroleos Mexicanos.

Sheinbaum’s proposal would not completely abandon fossil fuels, calling for new gas-burning plants as well. But she described it as “the possibility and potential to develop Mexico in a way that generates investment with well-being” and “at the same time … does not have to negatively impact the environment.” Sheinbaum said the proposal would add 13.7 gigawatts of electricity to the grid by 2030.

Mexico’s general election is June 2, and marks one of many national elections this year that put climate front and center on the ballot.

4. California hits major renewable benchmark

Monday marked the 31st time in 39 days that wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower topped 100% of demand on California’s grid, an event that Electrek described as a “major clean energy benchmark.”

Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson, who first shared the finding on Twitter, described it as “unprecedented in California’s history” to The Independent. Though supply did not exceed demand for the length of a full day — Jacobson looked at instances where it topped 100% from a quarter of an hour to six hours per day — it was the consistency that he described as noteworthy, pointing out that until recently, supply did not exceed demand more than a few days in a row. “This is getting so easy, it’s almost boring,” he added. “Just need offshore wind and more solar and batteries to get to 100% 24/7.”

5. Climate change is causing cold water ‘killer events’

You’ve probably already heard about the ocean’s crazy heat. However, cold water “killer events” are causing mass mortality for marine life, too, a new study published Monday in Nature has found.

The researchers report that “climate-change-driven shifts in ocean currents and pressure systems” are increasing and intensifying instances of “upwelling,” when deep, frigid water is pushed to the surface. Such events imperil migratory species like bull sharks, which attempt to avoid colder areas by swimming outside their normal routes or closer to the ocean’s surface. “You’d think they would have swum away but they got squeezed” by the upwellings, Ryan Daly, one of the authors, told The Guardian. “They couldn’t escape.”

iStock / Getty Images

THE KICKER

150,000 years. That’s the combined amount of time New York drivers, bus passengers, and subway riders could have saved if the MTA had adopted congestion pricing back in 2008, when it was first proposed.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate

AM Briefing: Clinging to Coal

On a new IEA report, EV batteries, and some good news about emissions

The World Just Can’t Seem to Quit Coal
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Very windy conditions in the UK have sent wind power generation soaring but electricity prices plummeting • Strong storms are expected to bring heavy rain and possibly tornadoes to Nashville, Tennessee • It’s cloudy in Tokyo, where Nissan shares were up on the news that the automaker is in merger talks with Honda.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Federal land emissions are falling

Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. federal lands peaked in 2009 and have been mostly falling ever since, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Survey. Federal lands make up nearly 30% of all the nation’s land. In 2009, annual emissions from fossil fuel extraction and use on these lands reached 1,430.9 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, but had fallen to 1,118.9 million metric tons in 2022. Emissions saw a particularly steep drop in 2020, likely linked to the pandemic, and have been rising, but it’s not clear if the upward trend will continue. Wyoming is a major emitter: Its federal land CO2 emissions in 2022 made up 41% of the national total.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Ideas

How Covid Shaped Climate Policy

Five years from the emergence of the disease, the world — and the climate — is still grappling with its effects.

A sun made of COVID.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A Great Global Calamity

Five years ago this month, the novel coronavirus that would eventually become known as Covid-19 began to spread in Wuhan, China, kicking off a sequence of events that quite literally changed the world as we know it, the global climate not excepted.

The most dramatic effect of Covid on climate change wasn’t the 8% drop in annual greenhouse gas emissions caused by lockdowns and border closures in 2020, however. It wasn’t the crash in oil prices, which briefly went negative in April 2020. It wasn’t the delay of COP26 and of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. And it wasn’t, sadly, a legacy of green stimulus measures (some good efforts notwithstanding).

Keep reading...Show less
Podcast

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on What Comes After Biden’s Climate Agenda

Rob sits down in New York with the outgoing head of America’s energy apparatus.

Jennifer Granholm.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Jennifer Granholm has long been one of the most interesting figures in the Democratic Party. A former federal prosecutor, she was the governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, leading the state during the Great Recession and subsequent auto bailout. Since 2021, she has been the 16th U.S. Secretary of Energy. While there, she has overseen the department’s transformation from an R&D-focused agency to an aspiring engine of industrial strategy.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob sits down with Secretary Granholm in person in New York to conduct an exit interview, of sorts. What climate policies is she most proud of — and what does she hope Democrats do better next time? What does she wish that Democrats understood about fossil fuels? And what does she think the outlook for clean energy is in the years to come?

Keep reading...Show less
Blue