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On liquified natural gas exports, BYD vs. Tesla, and heat protections
Current conditions: Raging wildfires are forcing evacuations on several Greek islands • More rain is forecast for China’s sodden rice growing regions • Temperatures in Death Valley could reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit early next week.
A federal court last night blocked President Biden’s pause on permits for new liquefied natural gas export terminals. The administration issued a temporary moratorium on new LNG approvals in January, allowing the Energy Department to study what effect terminals have on the climate, a move seen as a big win for climate activists. But it was quickly followed by a lawsuit from 16 states accusing the administration of violating federal law. A Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana agreed that the pause was hurting states, and said it was “completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy [sic].” The Energy Department disagreed with the ruling and is considering its next steps. Some early reaction and analysis to the news:
Hurricane Beryl has strengthened into a monster category 5 storm, the earliest storm of that magnitude ever to form in the Atlantic in recorded history. The system slammed into Grenada’s Carriacou Island, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines, leaving catastrophic damage in its wake. “In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said. The National Hurricane Center said the storm had maximum sustained winds of 165 miles per hour and was “still intensifying” this morning as it headed toward Jamaica. “Hurricane Beryl could never have formed where and when it did were it not for the unprecedented heat in the Atlantic Ocean,” wrote Jake Bittle at Grist, noting that surface temperatures are as much as 3 or 4 degrees Fahrenheit above average.
Tesla is expected to report Q2 deliveries today. Analysts think the EV maker will show a 6% drop in deliveries compared to the same period last year, marking the second declining quarter in a row. The company has “few excuses for its sales slowdown,” wrote Dana Hull and Kara Carlson at Bloomberg. The problem is straightforward, they added: “Tesla’s older lineup of vehicles is having a harder time keeping up with fresher offerings from rival EV manufacturers.”
Meanwhile, Chinese EV powerhouse BYD just reported its highest ever monthly sales of new energy vehicles, and a 21% rise in EV sales for the second quarter. The total number of vehicles sold (426,039) is about 12,000 short of what is expected from Tesla, but the gap is closing.
The Biden administration today put forward a proposal to “establish the nation’s first-ever federal safety standard addressing excessive heat in the workplace.” The rules would require employers to identify heat hazards, have response plans for heat illness and heat emergencies, and provide access to shade, water, and rest breaks. New workers would also need to be acclimatized to higher temperatures. A White House official toldThe Associated Press that we’d see more penalties for heat-related violations in workplaces. If finalized, the rule would apply to about 36 million workers and reduce heat-related health problems in the workplace significantly. The plan is “likely to face legal challenges from businesses and lobbying groups that have staunchly opposed such a measure,” The Guardianreported.
Also today, the EPA will publish a new report outlining how climate change continues to affect the U.S., so be on the lookout for that.
An international fusion mega-project long in the making has received a delivery of 19 massive, 56-foot-tall magnets that are essential for controlling and confining the reactions that will take place inside its tokamak. Here is a rendering of the magnets surrounding the tokamak (human for scale!):
ITER
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which is under construction in southern France, will be the world's largest experimental fusion facility once completed. It is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power, which is the process by which stars produce energy and, if harnessed on Earth, could provide abundant clean energy. While the delivery of the magnets is a big step, the ITER project is struggling with delays and mounting costs. Its first fusion reaction was slated to happen next year but that timeline was recently pushed back by 10 years to 2035. Another large fusion reactor called JT-60SA fired up last October in Japan.
A new bill set to be signed into law in Michigan will prohibit the state’s homeowners’ associations from banning projects that improve a home’s energy efficiency, like rooftop solar or EV chargers.
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The Loan Programs Office is good for more than just nuclear funding.
That China has a whip hand over the rare earths mining and refining industry is one of the few things Washington can agree on.
That’s why Alex Jacquez, who worked on industrial policy for Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, found it “astounding”when he read in the Washington Post this week that the White House was trying to figure out on the fly what to do about China restricting exports of rare earth metals in response to President Trump’s massive tariffs on the country’s imports
Rare earth metals have a wide variety of applications, including for magnets in medical technology, defense, and energy productssuch as wind turbines and electric motors.
Jacquez told me there has been “years of work, including by the first Trump administration, that has pointed to this exact case as the worst-case scenario that could happen in an escalation with China.” It stands to reason, then, that experienced policymakers in the Trump administration might have been mindful of forestalling this when developing their tariff plan. But apparently not.
“The lines of attack here are numerous,” Jacquez said. “The fact that the National Economic Council and others are apparently just thinking about this for the first time is pretty shocking.”
And that’s not the only thing the Trump administration is doing that could hamper American access to rare earths and critical minerals.
Though China still effectively controls the global pipeline for most critical minerals (a broader category that includes rare earths as well as more commonly known metals and minerals such as lithium and cobalt), the U.S. has been at work for at least the past five years developing its own domestic supply chain. Much of that work has fallen to the Department of Energy, whose Loan Programs Office has funded mining and processing facilities, and whose Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains hasfunded and overseen demonstration projects for rare earths and critical minerals mining and refining.
The LPO is in line for dramatic cuts, as Heatmap has reported. So, too, are other departments working on rare earths, including the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains. In its zeal to slash the federal government, the Trump administration may have to start from scratch in its efforts to build up a rare earths supply chain.
The Department of Energy did not reply to a request for comment.
This vulnerability to China has been well known in Washington for years, including by the first Trump administration.
“Our dependence on one country, the People's Republic of China (China), for multiple critical minerals is particularly concerning,” then-President Trump said in a 2020 executive order declaring a “national emergency” to deal with “our Nation's undue reliance on critical minerals.” At around the same time, the Loan Programs Office issued guidance “stating a preference for projects related to critical mineral” for applicants for the office’s funding, noting that “80 percent of its rare earth elements directly from China.” Using the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration also issued a grant to the company operating America's sole rare earth mine, MP Materials, to help fund a processing facility at the site of its California mine.
The Biden administration’s work on rare earths and critical minerals was almost entirely consistent with its predecessor’s, just at a greater scale and more focused on energy. About a month after taking office, President Bidenissued an executive order calling for, among other things, a Defense Department report “identifying risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and other identified strategic materials, including rare earth elements.”
Then as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Biden administration increased funding for LPO, which supported a number of critical minerals projects. It also funneled more money into MP Materials — including a $35 million contract from the Department of Defense in 2022 for the California project. In 2024, it awarded the company a competitive tax credit worth $58.5 million to help finance construction of its neodymium-iron-boron magnet factory in Texas. That facilitybegan commercial operation earlier this year.
The finished magnets will be bought by General Motors for its electric vehicles. But even operating at full capacity, it won’t be able to do much to replace China’s production. The MP Metals facility is projected to produce 1,000 tons of the magnets per year.China produced 138,000 tons of NdFeB magnets in 2018.
The Trump administration is not averse to direct financial support for mining and minerals projects, but they seem to want to do it a different way. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has proposed using a sovereign wealth fund to invest in critical mineral mines. There is one big problem with that plan, however: the U.S. doesn’t have one (for the moment, at least).
“LPO can invest in mining projects now,” Jacquez told me. “Cutting 60% of their staff and the experts who work on this is not going to give certainty to the business community if they’re looking to invest in a mine that needs some government backstop.”
And while the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act remains very much in doubt, the subsidies it provided for electric vehicles, solar, and wind, along with domestic content requirements have been a major source of demand for critical minerals mining and refining projects in the United States.
“It’s not something we’re going to solve overnight,” Jacquez said. “But in the midst of a maximalist trade with China, it is something we will have to deal with on an overnight basis, unless and until there’s some kind of de-escalation or agreement.”
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.