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Keep an eye on the public utilities commission races in Arizona, Montana, and Louisiana.
On November 5, voters in a handful of states will cast their ballots not just for their next president and state and local lawmakers, but also for the members of an obscure body with outsized influence on the country’s energy mix.
It’s called a public utilities commission. Every state has one, usually composed of three to five officials who regulate the private companies that deliver water, power, gas, and other services to residents and businesses. Their job is to secure reliable energy at affordable rates, which means these power players also preside over how quickly utilities adopt clean energy and adapt to extreme weather, and how much companies can raise customers’ rates to do so. In most of the U.S., utility commissioners are appointed by the governor or legislature. But 10 states leave filling these roles up to the electorate.
Utility commissions are famous for being ignored by the public — until there’s a rate increase. But if the U.S. is to have any chance of cutting emissions in line with its global commitments, ensuring fossil fuel communities aren’t left behind, or improving our resilience to increasing heat waves, fires, and floods, these gatekeepers have to be paid more attention — and held accountable.
Charles Hua, the founder of a new nonprofit called Powerlines that aims to raise awareness about the importance of these regulators, told me his group has found that over the last decade, about one in 10 voters in states with utility commission elections skipped that part of the ballot. “In many of these elections where the margins are only a couple percent, the one in 10 that sit out are deciding the election,” he said.
Apathy or ignorance about utility commissions isn’t unique to states where commissioners are elected, but it’s not helped by the fact that many of these states are deeply red, and the races aren’t much of a competition. This year, although seats are opening up in eight states, many of them are unlikely to see a change from the status quo.
In Alabama and Nebraska, three current commissioners are running for re-election unopposed. There’s a clear frontrunner among the three candidates vying for one open seat in Oklahoma: a former Republican state lawmaker named Brian Bingman, who is endorsed by the governor and has raised nearly $450,000, much of which was donated by energy PACs and oil and gas company executives, according to state filings. He’s up against a lesser-known Libertarian candidate who, as of the last reporting period, had raised less than $2,000, and a 90-year-old Democrat who has raised zero dollars and already run for and lost commission races three times.
Whoever is elected to open seats in North and South Dakota will have a say in approving the permits for a contentious carbon dioxide pipeline — a project that has drawn opposition from both sides of the aisle and could have raised the stakes for the elections — but environmental advocates in those states told me they expected incumbent candidates to win.
But there are three races that are being closely watched by climate and clean energy advocates. In Louisiana, a swing voter on the commission is stepping down, throwing into question recent momentum against business-as-usual operations in the gas-heavy state. In Arizona and Montana, the current commissions have been skeptical of, if not outright hostile to supporting the development of the two states’ big untapped solar and wind resources. In each state, however, momentum is building behind candidates who could change that paradigm.
“If you can unlock Montana's renewable energy potential, you can help the western part of the country decarbonize,” Anne Hedges, the director of policy and legislative affairs at the Montana Environmental Information Center told me. “This is a really important race.”
Here’s what’s at stake.
During the two years since the last election for the Arizona Corporation Commission, the confusing name of the body in Arizona that regulates utilities, its four-to-one Republican majority has been on a tear dismantling what little clean energy policy there was in the state. In February, the group voted to scrap the state’s meager Renewable Energy Standard, which was enacted in 2006 and required utilities to get 15% of their energy from renewables by 2025, as well as energy efficiency standards. According to Autumn Johnson, executive director of the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association, the commission has been more resistant to renewable energy than the utilities. She told me that in a recent proceeding to plan for the closure of the Four Corners coal plant in 2031, the commission tried to prevent the state’s biggest utility from considering renewables paired with batteries as part of the replacement mix.
Solar development has been obstructed at every level. The commission quashed efforts to create a market for community solar, small-scale photovoltaic installations that offer low-income customers and renters access to low-cost clean energy. It adopted a community solar policy that “had so many poison pills in it that it made it impossible for a market to actually form,” said Johnson. “We should for sure have a community solar market. I think it's kind of crazy we wouldn't do that in the sunniest state in the country.” It also gummed up the economics of rooftop solar by decreasing the amount homeowners get paid for exporting solar to the grid and burdening them with fixed fees. Johnson said the market is down 40%, and that “a whole bunch of companies are going bankrupt” because of the commission’s policies.
Whoever lands on the commission come January will have a big opportunity to change course. The renewable energy and efficiency standards have not yet been fully repealed, and will see another vote early next year. Johnson said the new commission will vote on rules for virtual power plants, which could help get more distributed solar and batteries on the grid. As in many states, Arizona utilities are anticipating large load growth in the coming years and proposing a lot of new natural gas power plant development to meet it — but the commission has a chance to get them to consider alternatives.
The race is competitive, with three Democrats, two Green party candidates, and three Republicans, including one incumbent, running to fill three seats. During a recent debate, the main split between the two major political parties was over support for renewables. Five of them took public funding for their campaigns through the state’s Clean Elections fund, so they're nearly all working with the same amount of capital, which means there is little to help signal who's likely to come out on top. The AFL-CIO has endorsed the three Democrats in the race, but Arizona has one of the lowest union densities in the country. The state Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has endorsed the Republicans running, and one of them, Rachel Waldman, has been endorsed by three current commissioners.
Voters can choose three candidates, and the three with the most votes will be elected.
Montana also has three seats opening up on its five-member Public Service Commission, but the elections there are divided by district, and all eyes are on one of the races in particular. Elena Evans, a geologist who works as the environmental health manager for Missoula County, is running as an Independent to unseat Jennifer Fielder, a Republican incumbent running for her second term. Evans has raised nearly $100,000 since she registered to run in April, while Fielder has raised less than $10,000 since January.
The headline issue in the race is affordability. Last year, the commission approved a 28% rate increase for Northwestern Energy, the biggest utility in the state. Molly Bell, political director for Montana Conservation Voters, told me regulators have been “asleep at the wheel.” She said the commission has been “rubber stamping rate increases, not asking questions about [our utilities’] resource plans, and really not holding our energy companies accountable to making plans for the future.”
Environmental advocates are also worried about Northwestern’s recent decision to acquire a larger stake in the Colstrip power plant, a coal-fired facility built in the 1970s and 80s. Northwestern called the plant “a dependable bridge to a cleaner energy future,” but it will require nearly $200 million in retrofits to comply with new federal air pollution regulations, a cost that Northwestern is now trying to recoup from ratepayers with a new 26% rate increase.
Hedges, of the Montana Energy Information Center, told me the rate increases aren’t just hurting customers — major manufacturers like REC Silicon are leaving the state due to rising energy costs. She wants the commission to force Northwestern to invest in building out the transmission system so that more wind energy can get onto the grid. “We have a ton of wind energy, we have developers who are just clamoring to access that, but they can't because we don't have the transmission system,” she said. “Northwestern has no desire to build out that transmission system because that means competition for them. That’s why our rates are so high.”
Elena Evans isn’t campaigning on a platform of cutting down on fossil fuels or expanding renewables; she’s mainly telling voters she wants to bring costs down and increase transparency. But in interviews, she’s talked about the importance of ensuring utilities are prepared for climate impacts, criticized the sitting commission for being anti-technology, and expressed an interest in solutions such as reconductoring transmission lines to increase their capacity and installing batteries to make the grid more resilient against outages.
The commission is currently fully Republican, and switching out just one of those seats will not bring change overnight. But Stephanie Chase, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, said that having even one person to ask different questions and bring new information to the public record can be meaningful. “Even if they don't have the votes, they still have a platform and ability to raise issues, which I think is really important in states where climate hasn't been at the forefront.”
Louisiana’s recent history proves the value of dissenting voices, even if they don’t have decisive influence. The state’s historically utility-friendly commission saw a big shakeup two years ago when Davante Lewis, a young progressive candidate, dethroned a Democratic incumbent who had held his district’s seat for nearly two decades. Close to 80% of Louisiana’s electricity comes from natural gas, and Lewis campaigned on transitioning the state to renewables, in addition to hardening the grid against storms and lowering fees for customers. He has already made a few small inroads on clean energy, such as advancing an energy efficiency program that had been held up in negotiations with the utilities for more than a decade. The commission also recently approved the biggest expansion of renewable energy in state history.
But Lewis is one of two Democrats on the commission, and has been helped by a swing voter — a moderate Republican named Craig Greene — who’s stepping down this year.
Three candidates are vying for Greene’s spot, but one — State Senator Jean Paul Coussan — has a clear fundraising advantage. The big question around the election seems to be less about who will win, and more about what Coussan would do on the commission. In interviews with local media outlets, he has said he wants to ensure the state can keep pace with demand growth while keeping rates down. He’s expressed openness about renewables but also emphasized the importance of the state’s “abundant supply of natural gas.”
The clean energy advocates I spoke to weren’t sure what to make of him. “You just can’t tell based on what Coussan’s saying now,” Daniel Tait, who researches Southern utilities for the Energy and Policy Institute, a consumer watchdog, told me. He said that of the two Republicans running, Coussan seemed more willing to talk about clean energy and find common ground. But it’s unclear how he will compare to the outgoing commissioner.
Hua, of PowerLines, emphasized that whatever happens, it will have ripple effects through the region. “What Louisiana does is an indicator, in some ways, of what the rest of the Southeast can do,” he told me. “And the Southeast is a particularly important region because that's where we're seeing all this load growth, this gas build out, energy burden and environmental injustice challenges. What the Southeast does will make or break what the U.S. does in terms of the clean energy transition.”
Editor's note: A previous version of this article misstated the percentage of voters who skip utility commission elections. It also misidentified the party of the incumbent whom Davante Lewis defeated. Both mistakes have been fixed. We regret the errors.
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Reading between the lines of Governor Kathy Hochul’s big nuclear announcement.
With New York City temperatures reaching well into the 90s, the state grid running on almost two-thirds fossil fuels, and the man who was instrumental in shutting down one of the state’s largest sources of carbon-free power vying for a political comeback on Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Monday that she wants to bring new, public nuclear power back to the state.
Specifically, Hochul directed the New York Power Authority, the state power agency, to develop at least 1 gigawatt of new nuclear capacity upstate. While the New York City region hasn’t had a nuclear power plant since then-Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down Indian Point in 2021, there are three nuclear power plants currently operating closer to the 49th Parallel: Ginna, FitzPatrick, and Nine Mile Point, which together have almost 3.5 gigawatts of capacity and provide about a fifth of the state’s electric power,according to the nuclear advocacy group Nuclear New York. All three are now owned and operated by Constellation Energy, though FitzPatrick was previously owned by NYPA.
Hochul’s announcement did not specify a design or even a location for the new plant, but there were some hints. The press release describes “at least one new nuclear energy facility with no less than one gigawatt of electricity.” While 1 gigawatt is the capacity of a Westinghouse AP1000, the large, light-water reactor built at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the explanation seems to leave room for the possibility of multiple, smaller plants.
Then there was where Hochul chose to make the announcement, in front of the monumental Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant, which, when it was built in 1961, was the largest hydropower plant in the western hemisphere. The release includes an intriguing reference to the country just on the other side of the river, saying that the plan “will allow for future collaboration with other states and Ontario, building on regional momentum to strengthen nuclear supply chains, share best practices, and support the responsible deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.”
To me at least, all this points to the possibility that we could actually be talking about a small modular reactor, specifically GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300, one of a handful of SMR designs vying for both regulatory approval and commercial viability in the U.S. Canada’s Ontario Power Generation recently approved a plan to build one, with the idea to eventually build three more for a total 1.2 gigawatts of generating capacity, i.e. roughly the amount Hochul’s targeting. The Tennessee Valley Authority, America’s largest public power provider, is also looking at building a BWRX-300. Whichever is completed first will become the first operating SMR in North America. (A NYPA spokesperson told me there has been “no determination on technology yet,” nor on location.)
There are a few policy conclusions we can draw from the announcement, as well, one being that Hochul has determined New York’s energy needs do not match up with its current, renewables-heavy energy roadmap set out more than five years ago. The 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (signed by Cuomo) set out a goal for New York to supply 70% of its electricity with renewables by 2030; about a year ago, the Hochul administration said that it would likely not meet that target, which has only slipped farther from view under the Trump administration’s assault on the offshore wind industry, which was supposed to anchor the state’s renewables supply — especially near New York City, where land is scarce but shoreline is plentiful.
The new nuclear plan also has a distinctively upstate appeal, which is not surprising considering Hochul’s Buffalo roots. (She said during the announcement that she had visited the Niagara plant, which is just outside Buffalo, “so many times.”) The upstate power grid is less carbon intensive than the downstate grid and is due to receive much of the wind and solar development necessary to meet New York’s climate goals. But the northern reaches of the state are also more politically conservative and more rural, making it both an inviting target for renewables development and a potential wellspring of opposition.
“The fundamental challenge of wind, solar, and storage across upstate is that it’s subject to a lot of local opposition,” Ben Furnas, who served as director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability in New York City, told me. “Something that’s remarkable about nuclear power is that the land footprint is more modest.” (The NYPA spokesperson said that NYPA’s own plans for renewable development were not being altered.)
Nuclear power plants can also be economic lifelines — especially in rural areas — due to the permanent, high-paying jobs they support and direct economic benefits to the surrounding communities.
“There’s a lot of real win-win deals to be struck,” Furnas said. “It’s not an unknown, radical, alien notion. Plenty of people work in those plants and live near them. It’s a very different politics than what was happening in Hudson Valley around Indian Point,” where environmental groups like Riverkeeper (long associated with former Cuomo associate and current Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), had worked for years to shut down the plant.
Monday’s nuclear announcement included supportive quotes not just from the usual suspects of state energy and environmental officials and union leaders, but also from the chief executive of Micron, which is set to start working on a semiconductor fabrication facility in the central part of the state. “A critical factor in the success of the semiconductor ecosystem is access to affordable, reliable energy. We commend New York State for advancing an all-of-the-above energy strategy — including nuclear power,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
“To power this one facility, Micron is going to need so much power — so much incredible power — and there’s only one commercially viable option that can deliver that much clean, renewable, reliable power, and that’s what’s been operating in New York for decades: nuclear energy,” Hochul said Monday. “Harnessing the power of the atom is the best way to generate steady zero-emission electricity, and to help this transition.”
The mainstream environmental groups that supported the renewables-focused 2019 law (many of which either oppose nuclear power or are at best neutral towards it) were nowhere to be found during today’s announcement, however, and the plan has already drawn skepticism from some progressives.
Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the New York state senate’s finance committee, said in a statement that she had “significant concerns” about the nuclear plan, including its cost effectiveness, how to dispose of nuclear waste, the time required to site and build the project, whether other renewable options could fill the gap instead, and whether it has the “full informed consent from impacted communities.”
“I have yet to see any real-world examples of new nuclear development” that have met all these concerns, Krueger said. New York has a checkered history of nuclear development: Long Island ratepayers spent decadespaying for the completed but never operational Shoreham nuclear plant, whose costs ballooned by billions of dollars as construction dragged on from 1973 to 1984.
But the announcement comes at a time when the federal regulatory and tax balance is tipping toward nuclear regardless. The Trump administration issued a fleet of executive orders looking to speed up nuclear construction and regulatory approvals, and Senate Republicans’ version of the mega budget reconciliation bill includes far more generous treatment of nuclear development compared to wind and solar.
Public Power NY, an advocacy group that supports renewables development by NYPA, expressed skepticism about the nuclear plan in spite of these supportive signs.
“Hochul’s decision to step in based on promises from Donald Trump shows just how unserious she is about New Yorker’s energy bills and climate future. NYPA should be laser focused on rapidly scaling up their buildout of affordable solar and wind which is the only way to meet the state’s science-based climate goals and lower energy bills,” the group said in a statement.
For his part, Furnas was more pragmatic. “It’s really good that Governor Hochul is putting everything on the table when it comes to ensuring reliable generation for New York State and to meet clean air and carbon emission goals,” he said. “It would be foolish and unfortunate to not look at everything she can.”
Hochul herself appears determined to push through.
During the announcement, referring to the buzzing power plant behind her, Hochul said that “belief in sometimes impossible ideas” can bring people together. The power plant currently standing on that site was built in less than three years after an earlier plant on the Niagara collapsed. New nuclear power in New York may have seemed impossible, but it might still happen.
Even as Iran retaliated against U.S. airstrikes, prices have stayed calm.
Oil prices have stayed stable so far following the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend, and President Donald Trump wants to keep it that way.
In two consecutive posts on Truth Social Monday morning, the president wrote “To The Department of Energy: DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!! And I mean NOW!!!” and “EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!”
While Iran, of course, does not yet have an actual nuclear weapon, it does have a kind of “nuclear option” to retaliate: closing off the Strait of Hormuz, which separates the oil-rich countries like Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq (and Iran’s own largest ports) from the Indian Ocean, and by extension all of global shipping. Iran’s parliament approved closing off the strait, but any real effort to do so would have to come from Iran’s most senior leadership, which has not so far seemed inclined to torpedo its own economy.
Markets, at least so far, do not see much more risk today than they did before the U.S. airstrikes. West Texas Intermediate oil price benchmark sat at just over $74 a barrel Monday morning, up substantially from its low of just over $57 in early May, but up only mildly from its $68 a barrel level on June 12, the day before Israel began bombing Iran. Prices are basically flat since Friday, even after Iran said it had launched a strike on an American base in Qatar.
“Multiple oil tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz this morning, both in and outbound,” Bloomberg’s Javier Blas wrote on X Monday morning. “No[t] even a hint of disruption. Oil loading across multiple ports in the Persian Gulf appears normal. If anything, export rates over the last week are higher than earlier in June.”
As Greg Brew, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, told me, “The Hormuz risk is generally overstated. The Iranian threats are mostly rhetoric and meant for domestic political consumption. Hardliners in particular will use threats to close the strait as a means of letting off steam following the U.S. bombing of Fordow.”
“In reality,” he went on, “Iran faces a massive disparity in forces in the Gulf. A move to close Hormuz would be near suicidal as it would expand the scope of the war, drag in the Gulf states as well as the U.S., and imperil Iran’'s own energy exports at a time when the regime will need every financial and economic lifeline it can get.”
Inasmuch as oil prices have moved in the past few weeks, it’s been in response to the perceived increased risk of some kind of cataclysm to the world oil trade — even if the actual chances of the strait being entirely closed to tanker traffic remains low.
“Prices remain elevated on account of the regional risk, and are likely to remain in the $70s or low $80s until we see a pathway toward broader de-escalation,” Brew said.
For the American oil industry, however, a more nervous market might be a more profitable one.
Aniket Shah, an analyst at Jefferies, wrote a note to clients over the weekend attributing the increase since May to “rising tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, which channels ~20% of global oil shipments.”
“While the US imports less Middle Eastern oil than in past decades, global price shocks still drive up domestic fuel and transport costs,” he wrote.
In the months running up to the recent oil price increase, American drillers were facing an unpleasant combination of tariffs, increased production overseas (encouraged by Trump), and low prices at home, which wrecked their capital planning. Some domestic oil and gas drillers like Matador in April and Diamondback in May told their investors they planned to decrease their planned capital expenditures; over the past two months, drillers have been slowly but steadily taking rigs offline, according to the widely watched Baker Hughes rig count.
Conflict in the Middle East could therefore provide some relief (at least for the oil and gas industry) at home. “U.S. producers are among the winners here,” Brew told me. “A few months of higher prices will offer a nice hedge for shale drillers and ease their plans to reduce expenditure and output for the year.”
But higher profits for oil drillers will not necessarily translate into increased production, as Trump has commanded. “Since this is all based on risk premium and does not reflect a change in fundamentals, shale drillers are likely to deliver the gains to shareholders rather than pumping the money back into production,” Brew explained. “An overall drop in U.S. onshore output in 2025 is probably still in the cards.”
In that scenario, oil company profits would rise while production would fall year-over-year. And that would likely mean an even more infuriated Trump, who has also recently reignited his campaign to push Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, citing several months of low inflation.
“Elevated oil prices risk stalling recent disinflation trends and complicates the Fed’s path to rate cuts,” Shah wrote.
Even if the strait remains open, if oil prices don’t fall, expect more Truths.
On record-breaking temperatures, oil prices, and Tesla Robotaxis
Current conditions: Wildfires are raging on the Greek island of Chios • Forecasters are monitoring a low-pressure system in the Atlantic that could become a tropical storm sometime today • Residents in eastern North Dakota are cleaning up after tornadoes ripped through the area over the weekend, killing at least three people.
A dangerous heat wave moves from the Midwest toward the East Coast this week, and is expected to challenge long-standing heat records. In many places, temperatures could hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit and feel even warmer when humidity is factored in. “High overnight temperatures will create a lack of overnight cooling, significantly increasing the danger,” according to the National Weather Service. Extreme heat warnings and advisories are in effect from Maine through the Carolinas, across the Ohio Valley and down into southern states like Mississippi and Louisiana. “It’s basically everywhere east of the Rockies,” National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Gehring told The Associated Press. “That is unusual, to have this massive area of high dew points and heat.”
AccuWeather
Regional grid operator PJM Interconnection, which covers 13 states, issued an energy emergency alert for today. The alert urges power transmission and generation owners to delay any planned maintenance so that no grid sources are out of commission as temperatures soar. A heat wave of this nature is rare this early in the summer. The last time temperatures hit 100 degrees in June in New York City, for example, was in 1995, according to AccuWeather. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and more intense as the climate warms. Here’s a look at how these events have changed over the past 60 years or so:
Oil markets are jittery this morning after Iran’s parliament endorsed a measure to block the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. About 20% of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas shipments travel through the shipping route, and as The Wall Street Journalexplains, the supplies “dictate prices paid by U.S. drivers and air travelers.” Oil prices rose to five-month highs this morning on the news. Tehran has long threatened to close the strait, but such a move is seen as unlikely because it would disrupt Iran’s own energy exports, which are its “sole global energy revenue stream,” one analyst told the Journal.
A handful of climate-related provisions in the GOP’s reconciliation bill are in limbo after the Senate parliamentarian advised that the policies violated the “Byrd Rule,” i.e. were deemed extraneous to budgetary matters, and thus were subject to a 60-vote threshold instead of the simple majority allowed for reconciliation. The provisions include:
The Senate Finance Committee is set to meet with the parliamentarian today.
In case you missed it: The Supreme Court on Friday gave the green light for fuel producers to challenge a Clean Air Act waiver issued by the EPA that lets California set tougher vehicle emissions standards than those at the federal level. A lower court rejected the lawsuit from Diamond Alternative Energy and other challengers last year, but as Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, California’s ambitious Zero-Emission Vehicle Program is hurting fuel producers, so they have standing to sue. The vote was 7 to 2, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
As Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has explained, if the EPA waiver is eliminated, Tesla could take a big financial hit. That’s because the zero-emissions vehicle program lets automakers earn credits based on the number and type of ZEVs they produce, and since Tesla is a pure-play EV company, it has always generated more credits than it needs. “The sale of all regulatory credits combined earned the company a total of $595 million in the first quarter [of 2025] on a net income of just $409 million,” Brigham reported. “That is, they represented its entire margin of profitability. On the whole, credits represented 38% of Tesla’s net income last year.”
Tesla launched its Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, over the weekend. A small number of rides were doled out to hand-picked influencers and retail investors, and a Tesla employee sat in the front passenger seat of each autonomous Model Y to monitor safety. The rollout was “uncharacteristically low-key,” Bloombergreported, but CEO Elon Musk said the company is being “super paranoid about safety.” San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Antonio are rumored to be the next cities slated for Robotaxi service. “Tesla is still behind Waymo, by several years,” wrote Jameson Dow at Electrek. “But Waymo has also not been scaling particularly quickly, and certainly both are slower than a lot of techno-optimists would have liked. So we’ll have to see which tortoise wins this race.” The stakes are pretty high: Investment management firm ARK Invest projected that Robotaxis could bring in $951 billion for Tesla by 2029 and make up 90% of the company’s earnings.
A new report from energy think tank Ember concludes that in the world’s sunniest cities, it’s now possible (and economically viable) to get at least 90% of the way to constant solar electricity output for every hour of the day, 365 days a year.