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Sparks

Marc Benioff and Bill Gates Are Feuding About Trees

Trees are wonderful, but Gates is probably right.

Marc Benioff.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

This got me:

The background here is that Bill Gates recently said trees are “less proven” as reliable carbon offsets and it’s “complete nonsense” to think planting trees could single-handedly solve climate change. Both are accurate statements. He also said, “Are we the science people or are we the idiots?” which Marc Benioff, the tech billionaire who’s trying to plant a trillion trees, might have taken personally.

As Alan Buis wrote in a 2019 NASA feature, while existing trees do indeed sequester incredible amounts of carbon, planting trees on the scale needed to negate the impacts of fossil fuels will take billions of acres of more land than the forested area that exists on our planet. Besides which those trees will take a century or more to mature.

Benioff is right to want to protect trees, but focusing on trees instead of a reduction in fossil fuels is exactly the kind of red herring Republicans and oil executives have been pushing for years. Plus, tree-based carbon offsets are often fake.

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Sparks

Don’t Look Now, But China Is Importing Less Coal

Add it to the evidence that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may be peaking, if they haven’t already.

A Chinese coal worker.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Exactly where China is in its energy transition remains somewhat fuzzy. Has the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases already hit peak emissions? Will it in 2025? That remains to be seen. But its import data for this year suggests an economy that’s in a rapid transition.

According to government trade data, in the first fourth months of this year, China imported $12.1 billion of coal, $100.4 billion of crude oil, and $18 billion of natural gas. In terms of value, that’s a 27% year over year decline in coal, a 8.5% decline in oil, and a 15.7% decline in natural gas. In terms of volume, it was a 5.3% decline, a slight 0.5% increase, and a 9.2% decline, respectively.

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Sparks

Rewiring America Slashes Staff Due to Trump Funding Freeze

The nonprofit laid off 36 employees, or 28% of its headcount.

Surprised outlets.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s funding freeze has hit the leading electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, which announced Thursday that it will be cutting its workforce by 28%, or 36 employees. In a letter to the team, the organization’s cofounder and CEO Ari Matusiak placed the blame squarely on the Trump administration’s attempts to claw back billions in funding allocated through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

“The volatility we face is not something we created: it is being directed at us,” Matusiak wrote in his public letter to employees. Along with a group of four other housing, climate, and community organizations, collectively known as Power Forward Communities, Rewiring America was the recipient of a $2 billion GGRF grant last April to help decarbonize American homes.

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Sparks

Sunrun Tells Investors That a Recession Could Be Just Fine, Actually

The company managed to put a positive spin on tariffs.

A house with solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Sunrun, Getty Images

The residential solar company Sunrun is, like much of the rest of the clean energy business, getting hit by tariffs. The company told investors in its first quarter earnings report Tuesday that about half its supply of solar modules comes from overseas, and thus is subject to import taxes. It’s trying to secure more modules domestically “as availability increases,” Sunrun said, but “costs are higher and availability limited near-term.”

“We do not directly import any solar equipment from China, although producers in China are important for various upstream components used by our suppliers,” Sunrun chief executive Mary Powell said on the call, indicating that having an entirely-China-free supply chain is likely impossible in the renewable energy industry.

Hardware makes up about a third of the company’s costs, according to Powell. “This cost will increase from tariffs,” she said, although some advance purchasing done before the end of last year will help mitigate that. All told, tariffs could lower the company’s cash generation by $100 million to $200 million, chief financial officer Danny Abajian said.

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