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Technology

Frontier Inks New Carbon Removal Deals

On prepurchase agreements, Al Gore, and Norway’s EVs

Frontier Inks New Carbon Removal Deals
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Ecuador’s government-enforced blackouts will begin tomorrow night as drought threatens hydroelectric plants • Storm Boris is causing flooding in parts of Italy • Montana could see very heavy rainfall and flash flooding today.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Frontier announces new carbon removal prepurchase agreements

Frontier, a coalition of carbon removal buyers, announced this morning a fourth round of prepurchase agreements, worth $4.5 million. The coalition facilitated agreements with nine suppliers to remove carbon from the atmosphere on behalf of five of Frontier’s buyers: Stripe, Shopify, Alphabet, H&M Group, and Match. The removal projects are located across six countries and utilize a range of techniques, including rock weathering, direct air capture, and ocean alkalinity enhancement. In a press release, Frontier said “a significant number of companies in this purchase cycle are integrating carbon removal into existing large-scale industries. This strategy can reduce costs and accelerate scale-up relative to standalone carbon removal projects.”

Frontier

2. Rivers dry up in Amazon as extreme drought worsens

Brazil’s worst drought on record, now in its second year, has caused water levels in the rivers that run through the Amazon to fall to historic lows, and some have even dried up entirely. One key tributary that supplies the mighty Amazon River, the Solimoes, has water levels that are 14 feet below average for the first half of September. The drought is fueling numerous large fires, many of which were started by humans but have plenty of dry vegetation to keep them going.

Plumes of wildfire smoke hang over South America.NASA

According to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, almost half of the Amazon fires are burning pristine forest. This is unusual, The New York Timesreported, and “means fighting deforestation in the Amazon is no longer enough to stop fires.” The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s most important carbon sinks. If it collapses, it could release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating the climate crisis. Researchers with World Weather Attribution say climate change is the main driver of the Amazon’s ongoing drought. “Climate change is no longer something to worry about in the future, 10 or 20 years from now,” Greenpeace spokesperson Romulo Batista toldReuters. “It’s here and it’s here with much more force than we expected.”

3. New coalition will test charging corridor for long-haul heavy-duty electric trucks

A coalition of some of the world’s most prominent shipping and carrier companies is piloting the “first-ever U.S. over-the-road electrified corridor.” Participants include AIT Worldwide Logistics, DB Schenker, Maersk, Microsoft, and PepsiCo, who will drive their long-haul heavy-duty electric trucks along the I-10 corridor between L.A. and El Paso to identify pain points and share learnings in an effort to hasten the decarbonization of land freight. Terawatt Infrastructure will provide the charging infrastructure for the corridor with six of its own charging hubs. Terawatt’s website says it has 14 sites under development, four of which are expected to come online this year. Heavy-duty vehicles account for a quarter of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. The new coalition is supported by the global nonprofit Smart Freight Centre.

4. Gore’s asset management firm calls for speedy grid upgrades

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s green asset management business, Generation Investment Management, put out its eighth annual Sustainability Trends Report this week. The paper is packed full of interesting insights (both uplifting and depressing), but one stands out. It says upgrading the power grid is “the critical issue to get the energy transition moving faster in the big, developed economies.” It includes this graphic showing the cumulative backlog of renewable-energy projects wanting to connect to the grid in the U.S.:

Generation Investment Management

Gore has been doing the media rounds this week. He told the Financial Times that a Trump victory in November “would be very bad.” “Most climate activists that I know in the United States believe that the single most important near-term decision America can make with regard to climate is who is the next president. It’s a bit of a Manichaean choice.” But, he added that the energy transition was, at this point, “unstoppable.”

5. EVs overtake gas-powered cars in Norway

In case you missed it: Norway has become the first country in the world to have more electric vehicles on the road than gas-powered cars. Diesel still reigns supreme in terms of registered vehicles, but the share of fully electric cars registered is now larger than the share of cars that run on gasoline. The director of the Norwegian road federation said he expects EVs will overtake diesel cars, too, by 2026. EVs already make up the vast majority (94%!) of new vehicle sales in Norway, and could very well approach 100% sometime next year.

THE KICKER

A recent study finds that most people have a tendency to grossly underestimate the average carbon footprint of the richest individuals in society, while overestimating the carbon footprint of the poorest individuals.

Yellow

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Politics

AM Briefing: The Megabill Goes to the House

On the budget debate, MethaneSAT’s untimely demise, and Nvidia

House Republicans Are Already Divided on the Megabill
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: The northwestern U.S. faces “above average significant wildfire potential” for July • A month’s worth of rain fell over just 12 hours in China’s Hubei province, forcing evacuations • The top floor of the Eiffel Tower is closed today due to extreme heat.

THE TOP FIVE

1. House takes up GOP’s megabill

The Senate finally passed its version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tuesday morning, sending the tax package back to the House in hopes of delivering it to Trump by the July 4 holiday. The excise tax on renewables that had been stuffed into the bill over the weekend was removed after Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska struck a deal with the Senate leadership designed to secure her vote. In her piece examining exactly what’s in the bill, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo explains that even without the excise tax, the bill would “gum up the works for clean energy projects across the spectrum due to new phase-out schedules for tax credits and fast-approaching deadlines to meet complex foreign sourcing rules.” Debate on the legislation begins on the House floor today. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he doesn’t like the legislation, and a handful of other Republicans have already signaled they won’t vote for it.

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Podcast

Shift Key Summer School: What Is a Watt?

Jesse teaches Rob the basics of energy, power, and what it all has to do with the grid.

Power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

What is the difference between energy and power? How does the power grid work? And what’s the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour?

On this week’s episode, we answer those questions and many, many more. This is the start of a new series: Shift Key Summer School. It’s a series of introductory “lecture conversations” meant to cover the basics of energy and the power grid for listeners of every experience level and background. In less than an hour, we try to get you up to speed on how to think about energy, power, horsepower, volts, amps, and what uses (approximately) 1 watt-hour, 1 kilowatt-hour, 1 megawatt-hour, and 1 gigawatt-hour.

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Green
Electric Vehicles

The Best Time to Buy an EV Is Probably Right Now

If the Senate reconciliation bill gets enacted as written, you’ve got about 92 days left to seal the deal.

A VW ID. Buzz.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

If you were thinking about buying or leasing an electric vehicle at some point, you should probably get on it like, right now. Because while it is not guaranteed that the House will approve the budget reconciliation bill that cleared the Senate Tuesday, it is highly likely. Assuming the bill as it’s currently written becomes law, EV tax credits will be gone as of October 1.

The Senate bill guts the subsidies for consumer purchases of electric vehicles, a longstanding goal of the Trump administration. Specifically, it would scrap the 30D tax credit by September 30 of this year, a harsher cut-off than the version of the bill that passed the House, which would have axed the credit by the end of 2025 except for automakers that had sold fewer than 200,000 electric vehicles. The credit as it exists now is worth up to $7,500 for cars with an MSRP below $55,000 (and trucks and sports utility vehicles under $80,000), and, under the Inflation Reduction Act, would have lasted through the end of 2032. The Senate bill also axes the $4,000 used EV tax credit at the end of September.

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