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Climate

GM Announces the Return of the Hybrids

On an automaker rerouting, crypto carbon accounting, and more.

Briefing image.

AM Briefing: Return of the hyrids.

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: The city of Oakland, California opened two emergency shelters for unhoused residents ahead of storms that brought the threat of floods to the state • Dense fog is disrupting flights and trains in Delhi, which is experiencing its coldest January in 13 years • A heat wave in Australia, where it’s currently the summer, is breaking temperature records.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Podesta to become new climate envoy

Senior Biden advisor John Podesta will take over from former Secretary of State John Kerry as the U.S. special envoy for climate change, the White House announced. Kerry, who’s stepping down this spring, was the first person to hold the position; while his role was based at the State Department, Podesta will instead remain at the White House, reports Maxine Joselow in the Washington Post, with his title changing to “senior adviser to the president for international climate policy.”

The appointment marked an expansion of Podesta’s current role implementing Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. He’s going to continue that work — which, Joselow writes, probably means he’ll travel less often than Kerry — but will now also be tapped to help Biden manage relationships with foreign powers.

If you’d like some insight into how Podesta thinks about climate change and the IRA, our interview with him from the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai might be a good place to start.

2. Climate laws begin at home

The IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (better known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, or BIL) are filled with subsidies to help with the clean energy transition. But, as I wrote on the site yesterday, a new study shows that while the share of funds for household improvements in each act is relatively small — about 12% in the IRA and 5.7% in the BIL — the impact those improvements could have on emissions is proportionally huge. Household emissions, the study authors write, could decrease by as much as 40% by 2030.

3. GM’s bringing back hybrids

In the face of dealer protests, GM CEO Marry Barra told investors this week that the automaker would bring back plug-in hybrids. That's a reversal from the company’s stance of just a few years ago, reports David Ferris at E&E News, when GM said it was “all in” on electric vehicles, and is a sign of the difficulties automakers have faced in trying to switch over to EVs.

The announcement comes the same week as new data showing EVs and hybrids made up more than 16% of total light-duty vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2023, up from 12.9% in 2022. Italian luxury automaker Lamborghini also announced that it will start producing hybrid versions of all its models.

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  • 4. Crypto mines face an energy accounting

    Next week the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration will start collecting data on the energy use of cryptocurrency mining, reports Justine Calma in The Verge. It’s a win for activists and lawmakers who have long warned of the climate impacts of crypto projects, which are so energy-hungry that they’ve spurred the reopening of some shuttered fossil fuel plants.

    “We intend to continue to analyze and write about the energy implications of cryptocurrency mining activities in the United States,” said EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis in a press release. “We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, identify geographic areas of high growth, and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.”

    A crypto mining rig.luza studios/Getty Images

    5. Ford to give away Tesla charger adapters

    Ford will send free Tesla charging adapters to owners of its Mustang Mach-E and Ford F-150 Lightning EVs in the U.S. and Canada, announced CEO Jim Farley on X. The adapters will allow Ford owners to access one of the largest and most reliable charging networks in the country. They’re also another nail in the coffin of the Combined Charging Standard or CCS, which Ford and other automakers defaulted to before Ford — followed shortly after by practically every other automaker in the country — announced it would switch to the Tesla plug, which is now known as the North American Charging Standard.

    THE KICKER

    The Sun’s magnetic poles are due to flip starting this year, writes Brian Resnick in Vox. The flip could cause solar storms that disrupt communications satellites, but will also lead to more vivid auroras. So start planning your aurora trips now — just maybe don’t count on having GPS the whole way.

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    Politics

    Here Are the Grants EPA Canceled

    The agency provided a list to the Sierra Club, which in turn provided the list to Heatmap.

    Lee Zeldin.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency remain closed-lipped about which grants they’ve canceled. Earlier this week, however, the office provided a written list to the Sierra Club in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, which begins to shed light on some of the agency’s actions.

    The document shows 49 individual grants that were either “canceled” or prevented from being awarded from January 20 through March 7, which is the day the public information office conducted its search in response to the FOIA request. The grants’ total cumulative value is more than $230 million, although some $30 million appears to have already been paid out to recipients.

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    Energy

    The New Campaign to Save Renewables: Lower Electricity Bills

    Defenders of the Inflation Reduction Act have hit on what they hope will be a persuasive argument for why it should stay.

    A leaf and a quarter.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    With the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits for building and producing clean energy hanging in the balance, the law’s supporters have increasingly turned to dollars-and-cents arguments in favor of its preservation. Since the election, industry and research groups have put out a handful of reports making the broad argument that in addition to higher greenhouse gas emissions, taking away these tax credits would mean higher electricity bills.

    The American Clean Power Association put out a report in December, authored by the consulting firm ICF, arguing that “energy tax credits will drive $1.9 trillion in growth, creating 13.7 million jobs and delivering 4x return on investment.”

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    Green
    Politics

    AM Briefing: A Letter from EPA Staff

    On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits

    EPA Workers Wrote an Anonymous Letter to America
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Trump issues executive order to expand critical mineral output

    President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”

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