Sign In or Create an Account.

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

Podcast

How to Crash America’s Manufacturing Renaissance

Rob quizzes Jesse on the latest research from the REPEAT Project.

Electric cars.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Republicans in Washington are pushing for at least two big changes to the country’s car-related policies. In Congress, some lawmakers want to repeal the $7,500 tax credit that helps consumers buy or lease a new electric vehicle — as well as a matching tax credit that lets companies buy heavy-duty zero-carbon trucks. And at the Environmental Protection Agency, officials are trying to roll back Biden-era rules encouraging dealerships to sell more EVs through 2032.

What will that mean for the climate — and for the slate of new EV and battery factories popping up around the country? On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk about new research from Jesse’s lab, the REPEAT Project, about what will happen if Congress and the Trump administration get their way. What will happen to America’s factory boom? How soon would the effects be felt? And would tariffs stem the bleeding at all? Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.

Here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Jesse Jenkins: What surprised me, I think, is that even some of the existing capacity that is already operating now, or in the case of battery cells, this huge amount of additional capacity that’s going to be coming online this year, in 2025, could also be unnecessary. And so we found just if you take the cells, for example, that even if the U.S. were to maintain the same market share as it has today — which is about 70%, which is higher than the typical share of content in the auto sector as a whole …

Robinson Meyer: The EV supply chain is more U.S.-based than the general internal combustion vehicle supply chain. Like, a greater share of EVs are produced in the U.S. than a share of overall vehicles.
Jenkins: Yeah, I think it’s about a 70% share for EVs and only about a 50% share for —

Meyer: How much of that is Tesla, right?

Jenkins: Well, yeah, half of the 70% is Tesla. So even if we just maintain that same 70% share and just see the effect of the contraction in the market, we would have more capacity for battery cell assembly online by the end of this year than we would need.

Meyer: Yeah, wow.

Jenkins: And that’s assuming no decline in U.S. share if we lose the 30D requirements to source these batteries from North America. And so, if you assume instead that we only produce the same amount as we currently do, so we don’t see any new investment …

Meyer: That there’s no offshoring.

Jenkins: Then we don’t even need the factories that are opening this year. We have enough capacity already online, 130 gigawatt hours a year. We would only need about 120 in that low-end scenario. So even existing plants could be at risk. And the same is true for the assembly of vehicles. Up to half of the currently operating vehicle assembly capacity for EVs and plug-in hybrids in the U.S. could also be at risk. Those plants would either be idled or even potentially closed in that market contraction scenario, where both effects hit the EV assembly, the decline of 40% in sales and a contraction in U.S. market share.

Meyer: So in other words, the quickest way to close U.S. car factories is to repeal the tax credits in the IRA and the EPA regulations on greenhouse gas pollution.

Jenkins: I hesitate to say the quickest, I’m sure there are other terrible things. But yes.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Yellow

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
Economy

Trumponomics Is Starting to Have Some Ugly Effects

The energy sector — including oil and gas — and manufacturing took some heavy hits in the latest jobs report.

A worker and a graph.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

We got a much better sense of what the American labor market is doing today. And the news was not good.

The economy added only 22,000 jobs last month, far fewer than economists had predicted, according to a new release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The new data also shows that the economy gained slightly more jobs in July than we thought at the time, but that it actually lost 13,000 jobs in June — making that month the first since 2020 to see a true decline in U.S. employment.

Keep reading...Show less
Climate Tech

Everybody Wants to Invest in Critical Mineral Startups

Trump’s enthusiasm for the space has proved contagious — building on what Biden started.

Mining and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s become a well-known adage in energy circles that “critical minerals are the new oil.” As the world pushes — haltingly but persistently — toward decarbonization and electrification, minerals such as lithium, nickel, and copper have only risen in their strategic importance.

These elements are geographically concentrated, largely in spots with weighty implications for geopolitics and national security — lithium largely in South America and Australia, copper in South America, nickel in Indonesia, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and graphite in China. They’re also subject to volatile price swings and dependent on vast infrastructure to get them out of the ground. But without them, there are no batteries, no magnets, no photovoltaic cells, no semiconductors, no electrical wiring. It is no surprise, then, that it’s already been a big year for investment.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Energy

AM Briefing: Revolution Strikes Back

On a Justice Department crackdown, net zero’s costs, and Democrats’ nuclear fears

Revolution Wind Strikes Back at Trump’s Stop-Work Order
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Hurricane Lorena, a Category 1 storm, is threatening Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. with flooding and 80 mile-per-hour winds • In the Pacific, Hurricane Kiko strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it heads toward Hawaii • South Africa’s Northern Cape is facing extremely high fire risks.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Revolution Wind fights back against Trump’s stop-work order

The owners of Revolution Wind are fighting back against the stop-work order from President Donald Trump that halted construction on the offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island last month. On Thursday, Orsted and Skyborn Renewables filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the Trump administration of causing “substantial harm” to a legally permitted project that was 80% complete. The litigation claimed that the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “lacked legal authority for the stop-work order and that the stop-work order’s stated basis violated applicable law.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow