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Electric Vehicles

Tesla Shareholders Will Vote Again on Musk’s Pay

On CEO compensation, Climework’s next move, and Dubai floods

Tesla Shareholders Will Vote Again on Musk’s Pay
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: It was 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit in Mumbai yesterday, the warmest April day recorded in a decade • Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology declared El Niño over • It will be rainy today in Washington, D.C., where negotiators will be pushing for more climate investment at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Tesla asks shareholders to re-ratify Musk pay package that judge voided

Tesla shareholders will get a second chance to approve CEO Elon Musk’s pay package at the company’s upcoming June 13 annual meeting. In January, a Delaware court voided Musk’s 2018 pay deal, which was originally approved by 73% of shareholders and could have seen Musk’s stock award soar to $55 billion based on meeting financial targets (which he subsequently met). The judge said the approval process for that package had been “deeply flawed” and rife with conflicts of interests. “The company’s board is effectively asking shareholders, now armed with all of the information that was revealed about the negotiations in court, to make the court’s ruling moot,” The New York Timesexplained, adding that the vote will no doubt raise tensions between investors and governance experts. The company also said it will let shareholders vote on the plan to move the incorporation from Delaware to Texas.

2. Climeworks to become a carbon trader

Climeworks, the Swiss startup that became the first company to launch a commercial-scale facility that sucks carbon out of the air and buries it deep underground, is getting into carbon trading with the launch of an offshoot called Climeworks Solutions, reported Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo. Under the new banner, Climeworks will purchase carbon removal credits from other providers, package them into portfolios that include its own direct air capture credits, and sell the bundles to buyers looking for “high quality” carbon removal. Adrian Siegrist, the company’s vice president of climate solutions, said the credits will have “the stamp of Climeworks quality.”

There are already more than half a dozen companies promising to source only the highest quality carbon removal credits for buyers, and Climeworks is relying on its name as a trusted brand to set itself apart. Siegrist said Climeworks is already in talks with more than 50 other companies interested in working with them. “But it’s unclear where all of this carbon removal is going to come from,” Pontecorvo wrote. “The company’s direct air capture credits are already sold out through 2027.”

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  • 3. White House launches task force to tackle global trade emissions

    The White House yesterday announced the creation of a new Climate and Trade Task Force aimed at reining in emissions from global trade. Speaking at the Columbia Global Energy Summit in New York, White House climate adviser John Podesta said the lack of widespread standards for tracking embodied emissions from traded goods – aka the emissions that come from their production – has led to a global “race to the bottom” to set up supply chains in countries with low emissions standards. “If the global trade of goods was its own country, it would be the second-largest carbon polluter in the world after [China],” Podesta said. The new task force will focus on developing a policy toolkit on climate and trade, measuring emissions to help inform and enforce climate-smart trade policies, and supporting producers to clean up their manufacturing processes.

    4. Dubai records 2 years worth of rain in 24 hours

    A massive storm this week dropped unprecedented amounts of rain on the United Arab Emirates, turning streets into rivers and causing widespread chaos. The government described the event as the largest amount of rainfall seen in the last 75 years. In Dubai, at least 6 inches fell over 24 hours on Tuesday, which is about two years worth of rain. Flash floods inundated highways and halted flights. In neighboring Oman, flooding has killed at least 18 people. There’s some debate over how big of a role the UAE’s cloud seeding practices (which are an attempt to induce rain by dispersing tiny particles into clouds) played in worsening the storm. Bloombergreported that the state’s National Center of Meteorology dispatched seeding planes on Monday and Tuesday.

    Christopher Pike/Getty Images

    5. Team Japan’s Paris Olympics uniforms will display carbon footprint stamp

    Team Japan unveiled its official uniforms for the upcoming Paris Olympics today, and said the clothing items would include a stamp that shows their carbon footprint. “By figuring out the carbon footprint of each item and labeling it on the products, we hope to boost transparency as well as raise awareness among athletes towards the environment,” said Makoto Ohori, manager of Asics’ apparel and equipment development. The company said it had cut the overall emissions needed to produce the uniforms by 34% since the Tokyo Games by switching to renewable energy and working with recycled and lighter material. The Paris Games aim to have half the carbon footprint of the typical Summer Olympics.

    THE KICKER

    “Finance is the golden thread through all climate action.”Rachel Kyte, professor in practice of climate policy at Oxford University

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    Economy

    AM Briefing: Liberation Day

    On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts

    Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Loom
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: A rare wildfire alert has been issued for London this week due to strong winds and unseasonably high temperatures • Schools are closed on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Paros after a storm caused intense flooding • Nearly 50 million people in the central U.S. are at risk of tornadoes, hail, and historic levels of rain today as a severe weather system barrels across the country.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Trump to roll out broad new tariffs

    President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.

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    Yellow
    Podcast

    The Least-Noticed Climate Scandal of the Trump Administration

    Rob and Jesse catch up on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund with former White House official Kristina Costa.

    Lee Zeldin.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.

    It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Since February, Trump’s criminal justice appointees — led by Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — have tried to use criminal law to undo the program. After failing to get the FBI and Justice Department to block the flow of funds, Trump officials have successfully gotten the program’s bank partner to freeze relevant money. The new green banks have sued to gain access to the money.

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    Adaptation

    Funding Cuts Are Killing Small Farmers’ Trust in Climate Policy

    That trust was hard won — and it won’t be easily regained.

    A barn.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Spring — as even children know — is the season for planting. But across the country, tens of thousands of farmers who bought seeds with the help of Department of Agriculture grants are hesitating over whether or not to put them in the ground. Their contractually owed payments, processed through programs created under the Biden administration, have been put on pause by the Trump administration, leaving the farmers anxious about how to proceed.

    Also anxious are staff at the sustainability and conservation-focused nonprofits that provided technical support and enrollment assistance for these grants, many of whom worry that the USDA grant pause could undermine the trust they’ve carefully built with farmers over years of outreach. Though enrollment in the programs was voluntary, the grants were formulated to serve the Biden administration’s Justice40 priority of investing in underserved and minority communities. Those same communities tend to be wary of collaborating with the USDA due to its history of overlooking small and family farms, which make up 90% of the farms in the U.S. and are more likely to be women- or minority-owned, in favor of large operations, as well as its pattern of disproportionately denying loans to Black farmers. The Biden administration had counted on nonprofits to leverage their relationships with farmers in order to bring them onto the projects.

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