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Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Climate: U.S. Clean Energy Investment Boom Is Winding Down
Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. getty The Biden years saw the sharpest increase in U.S. investment in clean energy and clean transportation in the country's history, creating the potential for sizable future progress toward reducing climate-warming emissions and creating tens of thousands of new jobs in the process. The good news is that 2025's first quarter saw solid growth in that space, up 6.9% from a year ago to $67.3 billion, according to data compiled by the Rhodium Group and MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. The bad news is it's probably the year's high-water mark. That's because the budget bill making its way through Congress, if passed in its current form, eviscerates federal support for renewable energy, electric vehicle tax credits and EV charging infrastructure–and all the jobs they've created. Though the quarterly figure rose year over year, it was down 3.8% from the final quarter of 2024, according to the study's authors. Still, clean investment activity accounted for just under 5% of overall private investment in structures, equipment, and durable consumer goods in the first quarter. Most of the gains in the quarter came from consumer spending on things like heat pumps and electric cars. In fact, it would have been stronger had it not been for Tesla's 9% sales drop in the period, even as overall electric vehicles posted an 11% sales gain. However, there was a notable drop in new investments in utility-scale clean power and industrial decarbonization tech, which fell 7.7% from a year ago. New utility-scale solar and battery power projects remained relatively stable, but new industrial decarbonization projects plunged to $79 million in the quarter from $16 billion a year earlier. Additionally, six clean technology manufacturing projects worth about $7 billion were canceled in the first quarter. The controversial 'One Big Beautiful Bill' passed the House by a single vote. If it's not significantly revised in the Senate, the outlook for expanding clean energy gets pretty ugly as the year unfolds. We're once again seeking nominations from founders, policymakers, investors, organizers, artists, scientists and others driving meaningful impact in climate and sustainability efforts around the world. Is this you or someone you know? Sign up here: Sustainability Leaders 2025 Deadline for nominations is 9:00am ET on Friday, June 13, 2025. Courtesy of Rivian Automotive Achieving net zero, or the reduction or off-setting of greenhouse gasses to as close to zero as possible, by 2050 will cost nearly $300 trillion (about 7.5 percent of global GDP annually, on average), according to research by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Not achieving it, though, could cost double that, according to global reinsurance company Swiss Re. 'If we understood that alternative more, the benefits of climate leadership would be more clear, and the markets would be pricing in these risks and these opportunities,' says Vit Henisz, vice dean of the ESG Initiative at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Not addressing emissions, Henisz says, would incur costs 'bigger than the great financial crisis, bigger than the housing crisis, bigger than the dot-com crisis.' To identify which companies have performed best in reducing or offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, Forbes partnered with data providers Sustainalytics and Morningstar to create the third annual Net Zero Leaders list. Roughly 15,000 companies were evaluated for their efforts to achieve their net-zero targets within three ways in which a company can affect greenhouse gasses: emissions within the company's direct control, such as using energy to manufacture a product (known as Scope 1); emissions from purchased energy (Scope 2); and lastly, supply-chain emissions as well as emissions released from consumer use of the company's product (Scope 3). Firms are also assessed on how much of the emissions are managed by the company, their organizational preparedness, governance and financial strength to withstand challenges. At the top of this year's ranking are three electronic vehicle (EV) companies: Lucid Group at No. 1, followed by Rivian and Tesla. (Lucid and Rivian jumped to the top of the list after not even appearing on it last year.) The reason for EVs' dominance is strong Scope 3 emissions performance, says Alex Osborne-Saponja, Sustainalytics' director of ESG methodology and climate solutions. 'Essentially, their product use is close to zero, and we only expect that to continue as they invest in the manufacture of electric vehicles.' Read more here Patrick McMullan via Getty Images What's your take on how the clean energy space will fare if the budget bill passes with its current language that eliminates federal incentives for solar power? This is a big topic of discussion all around. It's really kind of two, two prongs. I think the first is there's a full-on hardcore press with the Senate to get them to do something that's more rational. The good news is Trump has said he wants to sign something by July 4, and the debt ceiling hits in August. So this whole thing is going to be resolved before then. It's really just kind of madness for the next month or two, and then we should have some form of resolution. We've been talking throughout [the process] with Republicans in the House, and they've all said that where it ended up is kind of crazy. But they all voted for it. I think the conventional wisdom, which I am choosing to agree with, is that the House just punted on the issue. They felt the pressure just to get something out, kick it over to the Senate, and now they know the Senate is going to come back with a bunch of issues that are different–and more kind of favorable to the IRA. Then the real reconciliation process is going to have to happen. So all that groundwork is what everybody's doing now. I'm going to DC to lobby a few senators, bringing some of the portfolio companies we've invested in. We're putting a lot of money into Pennsylvania, so we're bringing one of our CEOs from the Pennsylvania solar farms we're developing, hoping to meet Senator McCormick and his staff. We've invested in a geothermal company in Texas, XGS, and we're bringing the CEO of that company. Hopefully, we're going to meet with one or two of the Republican senators. That lobbying is going on everywhere. We hope everyone feels we get some positive movement. The overwhelming amount of IRA spending for factories and everything is going into red districts, so there's just the basic economic self-interest of Republicans in those districts. … You have to believe people who believe in rational economic policy, trade policy, tax policy, would somehow come out. They've been awfully quiet so far. But all the discussions we've had, and we're talking to senior Republicans in leadership, they all get it. If the bill were to pass in its current form, I think the answer I'd want to give, which is actually what I believe, is it would just slow down what's happening. It doesn't get in the way of any trends, because 90% of everything built last year was wind, solar and battery in the United States. Everything that was built globally was wind, solar and battery. … Why solar and wind coupled with batteries? It's cheaper, it's cleaner, and it's faster to deploy. That's why there's so much distributed solar going on, which we're very focused on. That's not going to change. Solar is cheaper than gas now on an unsubsidized basis. If all the tax credits are gone, it totally screws up the industry, because you've got guys who are developing projects based on a 30% or 40% [Investment Tax Credit]. A lot of those deals would just are no longer financeable because of what people are going to pay for the assets. So a lot of deals will die. Do startups die if all federal incentives for clean energy go away? It's certainly not good for anything that's dependent on the incentives to get down the cost curve. I was at the Department of Energy when we were having to finance, the government was having to give loans, for utility-scale wind and solar projects because they were out of the money. It cost 20 cents to produce it. For the first offshore wind, the offtake agreement was 25 cents a kilowatt hour. It was too expensive to compete in the marketplace, and they were untried technologies, so people had to get comfortable, but it was too expensive. Wind and solar are now the cheapest, so they're fine. What needs that help are things like nuclear power certainly, and that's kind of under threat too, although they're trying to figure out how to keep some money going for that. But geothermal, hydrogen, nuclear, all those are out of the money and they're the ones that need the tax incentives to get down below the cost curves. So they're the ones that are going to suffer, those technologies. Hurricane season is upon us, but NOAA and FEMA are not ready. The turmoil at key U.S. agencies threatens everything from forecast quality to storm recovery. (Yale Climate Connections) The EU is nearly on track to reach its main climate target for this decade. The European Commission said the region is on course to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 54% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels–just shy of its legally-binding goal of a 55% cut (Reuters) Li-Cycle's quest to recycle lithium-ion batteries ends in bankruptcy. Its collapse is one of many setbacks plaguing the nascent battery recycling sector. (Canary Media) States, environmentalists sue Trump over billions in funding freezes for EV charging (Inside Climate News) Tesla sweetens lease deals for new Model Y Juniper, looking to boost sagging sales (Forbes) Global forest loss hit a record last year as fires raged. Forests around the world disappeared at a rate of 18 soccer fields every minute, a global survey found (New York Times)
Forbes
19-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Making Sustainable Jet Fuel From Clean Hydrogen
Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. Christie Hemm Klok for Forbes The clean hydrogen push in the U.S. has cooled in the past year, but Electric Hydrogen, a maker of highly efficient, cheaper electrolyzers, just snagged a deal to supply a 100-megawatt hydrogen production system to Infinium to make sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at Infinium's new Pecos, Texas, plant. Electric Hydrogen's tech, which splits water molecules using renewable electricity, will produce 45 tons of hydrogen a day, CEO Raffi Garabedian told Forbes. When it begins full operation in 2027 it will be one of the largest electrolytic hydrogen plants in the U.S. The companies aren't disclosing the project's financial details. 'That hydrogen will go into a gas-to-liquids synthesis plant–a chemical plant–which also takes CO2 out of a pipeline that would've otherwise been vented from nearby wellheads,' he said. The elements are combined to make hydrocarbon chains, building blocks of different fuels, including SAF. 'It's pretty cool technology to go from power to gas to liquid fuel that you can put in an airplane.' 'The entire process is effectively zero carbon,' he said. 'The plant is powered 100% off of procured renewable power, a combination of solar and wind. The CO2 is 'free' CO2 because it's CO2 that was otherwise vented into the atmosphere.' Electric Hydrogen's goal is to be able to supply affordable clean hydrogen in the absence of subsidies, a wise move as the Trump Administration and Republican Congress move to end federal support for a broad range of clean energy initiatives. And though U.S. policies have changed, international markets, particularly Europe, are powering ahead. 'Our market is primarily in Europe, and Europe is a completely different animal,' Garabedian said. 'Europe is messy; it's slow; it's cumbersome in a lot of ways. But it's also consistently committed to a program of energy transformation.' Along with the EU's efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it's pushing for much greater energy independence and seeking to cut reliance on imported fuels, like LNG, which make energy costs there higher. 'Europe is doing what it's doing not just because it's green, but also because the economics are different there,' Garabedian said. 'As a result, we're focused on the European market and it's pretty good news, honestly.' We're once again seeking nominations from founders, policymakers, investors, organizers, artists, scientists and others driving meaningful impact in climate and sustainability efforts around the world. Is this you or someone you know? Sign up here: Sustainability Leaders 2025 Deadline for nominations is 9:00am ET on Friday, June 13, 2025. tmp5i61axgm General Motors, which sells the biggest lineup of electric vehicles in the U.S., plans to slash the cost of its rechargeable pickups and large SUVs by thousands of dollars thanks to a new type of battery that uses more of the cheap material manganese and much less of expensive metals cobalt and nickel while still offering a long driving range. The lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) cathode, which has been in development by GM and battery partner LG Energy for a decade, will cut the cost of battery packs in electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Hummer and Cadillac Escalade by more than $6,000, GM's vice president of battery propulsion Kurt Kelty told Forbes. It has nearly the same driving range as 'high nickel' lithium-ion cells now used in most EVs while competing on price with cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells from Chinese battery makers that are heavier and offer less range, he said. The new batteries are also durable enough to be recharged frequently for at least eight years. 'We look at this as a game-changing battery for EV trucks, and that's really going to set the new bar for performance in this particular segment,' said Kelty, who built up Tesla's battery operations for over a decade and previously worked for battery maker Panasonic. 'With LMR we can actually deliver over 400 miles of range while reducing our costs.' Read more here Jonathan Silver You're advising cleantech companies, but will Multplier also be an investor? Silver: No. One of the things that makes Multiplier unique is that our interests are aligned completely with the entrepreneurs and initial investors. We're not taking fees or retainers, there's really no cash compensation upfront at all. What we end up with is a modest piece of equity in the company, and then when the company wins, we win. If the company doesn't win, we don't win either. Our interests are completely aligned with their successful outcome. What will that look like? If I have a hydrogen company, a battery company, a solar company, what would multiplier do for me? Shah: We're only selecting companies that we think have a confident pathway by which we can help them get to an exit. Whether they're in hydrogen or solar or EV charging or advanced building materials, there are a lot of sectors that encompass sustainability. The goal for us is to determine that they've achieved enough product and market fit and that they've got enough really excited customers, that we see a pathway to helping them get to an exit within a reasonable amount of time. Silver: We think we can help a certain number of companies in certain industries turbocharge their growth. We want to be working with companies that already have product and take them to additional potential customer relationships. We want to help them avoid some of the things that we refer to as scar tissue that we've seen many companies have to work their way through. We also want to talk to them seriously about the nature of the company they're building. Many of these companies have terrific products, but they're really point solutions. The question is, is the intent to grow a dominant company around a single-point solution? Or is it a better strategy to tuck up under a larger strategic or different platform so that the technology has room to breathe? Shah: One of the things I've found through all the conversations I've had with these companies is that for most they have never actually plotted out their exact course to an exit. If you say to them, who do you want to exit to? They're like, 'oh, I don't have a ready answer.' Is it an IPO? Is it a sale to a company? If it's a sale to a company, do you have three companies in mind that you think would want to buy you? What do they want you to accomplish before they buy you? Part of this is just helping them with that checklist and saying, if they want you to hit these three milestones, are you actually working toward those three milestones so that you could sell your company to these folks? There's been an assumption in the cleantech sector that it will operate the same as the Silicon Valley traditional approach. I think the reality is that what we do for a living doesn't operate under a go-fast-and-break-things model. We're working in global infrastructure. By definition, people's lives are on the line. Stuff actually has to work. Given moves by the Trump Administration and Republican-controlled Congress isn't this going to be a tough time for cleantech startups? Shah: It's very clear that you have a set of technologies that we've invented and demonstrated here in this country, and for years and years and years, those technologies went to other countries to be scaled up. Then we imported them back in. I think over the last four years, there was a set of policies passed to get people to do big things here in this country. With the uncertainty of this administration and the recent House Bill, you're starting to see some of those technologies revert back to going to other countries. We continue to invent the best stuff in the world, and I think for a short period of time there we tried to get people to commercialize the technologies here. I do think that the message this administration is sending and that the House bill is sending is that [cleantech] commercialization is not something we have the patience for here in this country. Silver: The great tragedy in this is that it's a self-inflicted wound because by pulling away from these technologies, which are inarguably among the fastest-growing industries in the world, we're sort of ceding the field and all the related business opportunities to the rest of the world and especially to China. To circle back, one of the reasons we wanted to do [Multiplier] was to help U.S.-based companies realize the value of the work they've done, get those technologies more deeply embedded in the marketplace and create value for the entrepreneurs, whether that's in the form of a sale or anything else. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating literally nothing at all. Jigar Shah House Republicans stall spending package for steeper cuts to Medicaid and green energy. In a massive setback, Republicans failed to push their big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee as a handful of conservatives joined all Democrats in a stunning vote against it (Associated Press) GOP budget plan contains a massive poison pill for clean energy. 'Totally unworkable' rules could kill manufacturing and clean energy investment by restricting tax credits for any project remotely tied to China, experts warn (Canary Media) A clean energy boom was just starting. Now, a Republican bill aims to end it. The party's signature tax plan would kill most Biden-era incentives, but there's a sticking point: G.O.P. districts have the most to lose (New York Times) Trump officials want to cut limits on PFAS in drinking water – what will the impact be? The EPA is attempting actions that violate the law, some say, and Biden administration's progress can't be fully undone (The Guardian) Polestar's luxury electric SUV has a lower lifetime environmental impact than a tiny petrol car. Yes, the planet should have fewer cars, but small ICE cars are not necessarily cleaner than some large EVs (Forbes) U.S. energy industry trade groups have launched a last-minute lobbying blitz to urge Congress members to spare a slew of former President Joe Biden's clean energy tax credits from the chopping block in the Republican budget plan (Reuters) Texas is failing to fix the grid (again). For more than 25 years, the Texas Legislature has done nothing to address ERCOT's fatal design flaw (Forbes)
Forbes
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Trump Ignites A Fight Over Seabed Mining
Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. Polymetallic sea nodules, containing nickel, manganese and cobalt rich mineral deposits, collected from the seabed. Inhis first 100 days as president, Donald Trump's executive orders have triggered no end of controversy and concern. One of his latest, aimed at encouraging and potentially mining valuable minerals from seabeds, puts the administration on a collision course with both environmentalists and other nations concerned about risks to aquatic life. Trump's April 24 order calls for 'American dominance in offshore critical mineral resources,' not just within the country's territorial waters but 'beyond national jurisdiction.' The order calls on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to set up a process for issuing permits to companies and overseeing a plan to map seabeds where the concentration of valuable materials is likely to be the greatest. Scientists and private companies have been studying the potential to harvest small rock-like nodules resting deep below the surface on the ocean floor because they contain high-value minerals including manganese, nickel, copper, zinc and cobalt–used in batteries, military hardware and advanced electronics. No company currently mines them, but startups like The Metals Company say they're ready to. Most coastal nations joined the International Seabed Authority in the 1990s to determine if and how that might happen, but the U.S. isn't part of that group. The problem is those nodules, formed over millions of years, have laid undisturbed, serving as a home for sensitive forms of aquatic life. Removing them would destroy that unique environment and potentially create sediment plumes that are broadly harmful to sea life. 'Scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,' said Jeff Watters, a vice president with the Ocean Conservancy. 'Areas of the U.S. seafloor where test mining took place over 50 years ago still haven't fully recovered. The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn't restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it.' And it's not just environmentalists who don't like Trump's order. It 'violates international law and harms the overall interests of the international community," said Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry. Trump's obsession with critical minerals isn't new and the seabed mining push is of a piece with his fixation on Greenland and Canada as additional suppliers of those resources. Meanwhile, many startups and materials companies think recycling, tapping existing resources and developing alternative materials are a faster, less controversial alternative to scraping up the sea floor. Trevor Paulhus for Forbes Since China retaliated against President Trump's tariffs by restricting exports of rare earth minerals — crucial to making the magnets that go into electric motors, used for cars, electronics, robots and wind turbines — MP Materials founder and CEO Jim Litinsky's phone has been ringing off the hook from companies desperate for new suppliers. 'The sense of urgency, I've never seen anything like it,' he told Forbes. 'It's pretty wild and exciting–and daunting.' Litinsky runs the only U.S. rare earths mine, Mountain Pass in California's Mojave Desert, supplying elements like neodymium and praseodymium that industries like defense, automotive and electronics rely on to build efficient electric motors. Once Litinsky's staff of over 800 engineers, technicians and miners harvest the minerals from the earth, MP refines them, turning them into metals, which companies like General Motors need for EV motors. Starting this year, MP will also make high-powered magnets with those metals at a new plant in Texas, a market China currently dominates. Ninety percent of all rare earth metals are processed in China. The country produces nearly 95% of all rare earth magnets–prized for their strength and long-term retention of magnetic properties–and virtually all of the 7,000 tons the U.S. imports each year came from China — a clear vulnerability in American companies' supply chains that rely on them for their products. As Trump's tariff war escalated, China on April 4 announced it was restricting U.S.-bound exports of 'heavy' rare earths, shutting down imports of magnets made with them. 'The problem for almost every industry that uses a motor that requires magnets is that China has this massive strategic flex on rare earth minerals,' said a board member for a U.S.-based carmaker who asked not to be publicly named. 'The stuff China just put export controls on is a freaking big deal. We won't be able to make motors anymore or anything that has a spinning magnet in it. Game over.' Read more here MediaNews Group via Getty Images One of the things you look at is effective strategies to cut automotive carbon emissions. How has that effort been impacted by the change in U.S. administration? The answer, surprisingly, is not very much at all. And the reason is that we look at the timescale of climate change and the timescale of carbon staying in the atmosphere. The political cycle, the swinging of the pendulum back and forth, is happening at a very short timescale compared to the evolution of these things. Climate change has been going on for decades, and it's going to keep on going. The slope of the curve has accelerated. It's on this kind of rapid slope up now, and it's staying the same. We think it's essential to mitigate net CO2 emissions or to somehow have other mitigations if we're going to have any hope of reducing climate change. The laws of physics don't care what we think. They don't care about politics. They don't care what we wish for. They are what they are. We've learned that every time nature teaches us a lesson. Our goal remains to be carbon neutral by 2050. That's what we've always said. The question is what's the best way to impact that? The answer is not to do wishful thinking about customers following the edicts of the government to act in a certain way. That's because we know customers, at worst, resent it, but typically they go their own way. If we push too hard, and it doesn't matter who does it, the result is going to be people will hold onto older cars that will emit far more than if we gave them a choice to improve by lowering their CO2 emissions with a newer car that would both have lower CO2 output, maybe not as much as an EV with renewable generation to charge it, but far better than the car that they have now. And the car will be safer also. There are lots of reasons to not try to lead the target too much and not artificially constrain customer choice. On the other hand, we should work as hard as we can, which is what we are doing, to lower the carbon emissions of every powertrain type that we have. By doing that, we're actually allowing the system to do what it's going to do, but trying to make the result as good as possible. The Trump administration terminated State Department employees in charge of U.S. global climate policy and climate aid as part of its reorganization of the country's diplomatic focus. The career employees had played a lead role in U.S. negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Reuters) More power grid connectivity in the Western U.S. could supercharge clean energy. Better coordination among states could save the region up to $3.25 billion per year in energy system costs (UC San Diego study) Tesla's fastest-growing business is about to get screwed by tariffs. 'Rapidly evolving trade policy' could weigh on demand for the company's energy storage products (Heatmap) The U.S. set duties as high as 3,521% on solar imports from four Southeast Asian countries, delivering a win for domestic manufacturers while intensifying headwinds already threatening the country's renewable power development (Bloomberg) Al Gore's real-time climate data just went live. Here's why it matters (Forbes) The government's chemical disaster tracking tool just went dark. The chemical lobby demanded Trump make the locations of high-risk chemical plants secret. The EPA did just that (The Lever)
Forbes
21-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Trump's Policy Pivot Kills $8 Billion Of Clean Energy Plans
Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. Getty Images President Trump has played up his plans to boost U.S. energy production, though so far his priority is doing that with fossil fuels instead of renewable power. And his efforts to eliminate federal subsidies for clean power created by the Inflation Reduction Act and other policies enacted during the Biden Administration are quickly having an impact on that industry. Since January, investments totalling $7.9 billion for 16 large-scale factories and other projects have been cancelled, closed or downsized in the first quarter of 2025, according to a study by E2, a nonpartisan interest group that promotes policies that are environmentally and economically beneficial. The study cites increasing market uncertainty and the potential that Congress will repeal tax credits and other incentives that boosted renewable energy. Scrubbing those investment plans will eliminate 7,800 new clean energy-related jobs that would have been added, according to the analysis. The pace of cancellations jumped up in February and March, ending projects including a $200 million hydrogen fuel cell factory Bosch planned to open in South Carolina and a $2.5 billion Freyr Battery plant in Georgia. The industry isn't only seeing cancellations, though– more than $1.6 billion was invested in new solar, EV and grid and transmission equipment factories, E2 said. 'Clean energy companies still want to invest in America, but uncertainty over Trump administration policies and the future of critical clean energy tax credits are taking a clear toll,' E2 spokesman Michael Timberlake said. 'If this self-inflicted and unnecessary market uncertainty continues, we'll almost certainly see more projects paused, more construction halted, and more job opportunities disappear.' Anadolu via Getty Images California, Tesla's biggest U.S. market since it began delivering electric vehicles in 2008, soured on the brand in the first quarter, with sales there dropping 15% amid stiffer competition and as protests at the company's stores statewide amped up over CEO Elon Musk's unpopular government-slashing DOGE efforts. The Austin-based company that has been a top beneficiary of the Golden State's environmentally conscious consumers and regulations sold 42,322 vehicles there this year through March, down from 49,875 in the same period last year, according to data released by the California New Car Dealers Association on Wednesday. The drop in volume cut its market share to 49.3% in the period, down from 55.5% a year ago. It was also the first time it's been below 50% of overall EV sales in the state. Tesla's fall in California, like its overall U.S. sales in the quarter, went against a broader growth trend for battery-powered cars. Total EV sales in the state rose 7.3% to 96,416, according to the report. Big gainers included GM, which saw a 62% jump for Chevrolet-brand EVs, Hyundai and Honda, whose new Prologue was the third-best seller behind Tesla's Model Y and 3. Last week, Cox Automotive said Tesla's sales fell 8.6% nationwide even as U.S. sales jumped 11.4% in the quarter. Globally, the company saw a 13% drop in the year's first three months. Read more here © 2021 Bloomberg Finance LP Sila will soon start production of silicon anodes at your new plant in Moses Lake, Washington. What does the next year look like for the business? We're starting to turn on the tools. We're finishing major phases of construction, but this is a first of a kind plant in the world. No one operates a plant like this anywhere else. To commission it, you have to do it very systematically and you have to make sure you do it safely. We'll start commissioning this quarter and next quarter we'll start producing some materials at the plant. In Q3 we'll start to dial in all the recipes and with production once we've safely brought up all the tools. Then in Q4 we'll hit what I would call qualified production–quality, consistency, throughput, all of it. Those materials, as soon as they're available, will go to automotive customers. They'll go to consumer electronics battery customers. There'll be drone applications for them as well, and likely some kind of e-bike applications. We have a number of customers waiting to take qualified product from this plant at the back end of this year. Within 12 to 18 months of that we'll be in vehicles that you can buy. We'll likely be in consumer electronics devices you can buy with materials from this plant sooner–sometime next year–but vehicles late next year and or stretching into 2027. What's the advantage of silicon anodes cells over graphite anode cells? At the material level, silicon anodes are about five to seven times better. We can replace a hundred kilos of graphite in the car with 20 kilos of silicon. What that translates to, because that's one of the key components in a battery, in a battery is about a 25% increase in energy density over state-of-the-art [graphite] today. That means much longer runtime or a much smaller battery pack for the same runtime. That's today. We see that being pushed up to 30% or 40% over the next coming years as we continue to push higher performing products in the field. Will tariffs cause any problems for the key materials in your supply chain? They're almost entirely domestic, so we don't have a whole lot of exposure. We have some things that come from overseas, but nothing from China, so it's a very modest impact. For us, it's more of a question of our exports. We do export to various countries in Asia, including China, so tracking the retaliatory tariffs is definitely on our mind. Sila's Mose Lake anode plant China has had success with LFP batteries for EVs, which are heavier than traditional lithium-ion batteries but cheaper. Is that chemistry a long-term winner? I think LFP makes much less sense in the U.S. than it does in China, especially if we are looking for domestic supply chains. Our view is higher performance will be the best way to drive better EVs. I think higher performance materials like silicon anodes paired with recycled nickel cathodes will actually lead to one of the lowest cost structures possible because you'll produce battery packs that are half the size compared to an LFP pack. And if you use a battery pack half the size then as you kind of squeeze all the costs out, it's going to be cheaper than one twice the size; the vehicles will be lighter and they'll be more efficient. But you do have to have very high quality cathodes made with recycled nickel where you're not mining primary nickel, which is quite expensive, and you need a much larger scale silicon energy production, which we will take care of. We will absolutely do that. Donald Trump's crusade against offshore wind just got more serious. The Trump administration forced a permitted offshore wind project to halt construction. (The Verge) Massive cuts at the National Weather Service spark fears about forecast quality, public safety. The agency announced last week that staffing limitations may further reduce or suspend the launch of weather balloons (Los Angeles Times) Solar could lose its cost advantage over gas. Tariffs and the loss of Inflation Reduction Act incentives could realign new power pricing (Heatmap) Trump moves to allow commercial fishing in a vast, protected ocean reserve. The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument comprises more than 490,000 square miles of some of the Earth's last pristine maritime environments (Washington Post) By redefining 'harm' agencies aim to end longstanding wildlife protections. Trump officials have proposed changing a decades-old interpretation of a key word in the Endangered Species Act, which would make it much easier to log, build or drill for oil. (New York Times) Cleaner cars can't offset pollution from faster driving. A University of California, Riverside study shows that higher speed limits can make city air dirtier (UC Riverside)
Forbes
14-04-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Current Climate: Curbing Cow Farts With Selective Breeding
Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. getty Much of the news on climate has been discouraging of late. Europe had its warmest-ever March. President Trump is pushing to ramp up mining and use of coal, the most carbon-intense energy source. His administration is also gutting environmental rules, curbing climate research and trying to stop state programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas pollution. But there's promising news on efforts to cut down on harmful methane emissions generated by cows and other livestock. Globally, cattle are the single largest source of agricultural methane emissions, and efforts are underway to reduce that problem with new types of feeds and improved management of their manure. But the Bezos Earth Fund and Global Methane Hub kicked off a $27.4 million program that's aimed at breeding cattle and other farm animals that are naturally less gassy. The initiative will provide grants in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Oceania to identify and prioritize the breeding of animals with biological traits that cause them to produce less methane. Within every herd, some animals produce up to 30% less methane than others and selecting and breeding for these traits could lead to substantial cuts in emissions. This means farmers won't have to change how they feed and raise their animals, making it an easy, no-cost pathway to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 'Reducing methane from cattle is one of the most elegant solutions we have to slow climate change,' Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund's Future of Food program, said in a statement. AFP via Getty Images Tesla's stock has slid steadily this year, hurt by declining sales and widespread protests over CEO Elon Musk's leadership of President Trump's DOGE initiative, which is making haphazard staffing and budget cuts to federal agencies. The electric vehicle maker's sharp-edged Cybertruck is also sliding, posting sharply lower sales in the year's first quarter. The Austin-based company delivered just 6,406 Cybertrucks this year through March, according to Cox Automotive. That's more than double its volume in the year-earlier period, when it was slowly starting to make the hard-to-build model. But the quarterly figure was less than half of what it sold in either the third or fourth quarter of 2024–14,416 and 12,991 units, respectively–as its production ramped up. Musk had previously forecast that annual sales of the electric pickup might average 250,000 a year, though it delivered only about 39,000 last year. A combination of multiple recalls–including one last month to fix stainless steel body panels that fell off due to faulty glue–and the likelihood of sharply higher costs for steel, aluminum and imported auto parts due to Trump's tariffs, suggest Tesla will struggle to boost sales of a model that can sell for about $100,000. Weak demand has also led to an inventory of about 2,400 unsold new Cybertrucks, according to auto news site Jalopnik. Read more here World Economic Forum/Mattias Nutt It's easy to recognize water scarcity in times of drought, but how can we manage rising demand for it from things like data centers and manufacturing as well as population growth? It's often invisible, but water is vital for industry and society in terms of our health and running our economies and our cities. Just starting to think about the wider water or hydrological cycle being off-kilter, which science is showing us that it is, has a far-reaching impact in ways I think people haven't properly understood. When you're thinking about trends in the consumption of water, you have to look at the bigger picture and say we're experiencing the water cycle being off-kilter–through too much due to flooding and unpredictable weather patterns, extreme weather, or too little water, both in the form of scarcity and in the changing ways in which we can access it. And then, too, polluted water, which in developing countries can be in the form of wastewater that's going untreated and in developed countries can be in the form of contamination of drinking water. It's really touching on literally every industry, every community, every country. Having that wider narrative on the issues around water is important. When you start to get into the consumption trends, 70% plus of water consumption is going into producing our food. The rest is being pushed around for industrial use, and that has challenges. The third is really around cities. If you go industry by industry and start to look at what that means, there is the kind of classic competition for almost every basin on earth from industries like mining and agriculture and manufacturing. Then you have some of these emerging industries that are starting to both operate in water-stressed regions and use water within the ingredients of their business model, like fast fashion, AI and data centers. There's growing pressure, and we know now that in the next five years, by 2030, we're going to exceed our supply of water with an increased 40% in demand. So how do we reconcile the kinds of solutions that help us reinvent water management and also use much more circular thinking in the way we are approaching some of those problems? What's the answer? Companies have been more and more cognizant of their footprint, not only in terms of the water they're using within their supply chains but the fact that the communities and the basins where they now need to go and operate are so under stress that they're just not going to have that access. So even though [government] policy may or may not be addressing some of that, you are starting to see it on the industry side, whether it's concrete, whether it's energy or manufacturing, I think they have a little bit more of a real understanding of the cost of water and maybe in a better version of this in the future, the value of water. We need to look at this both around the governance of water, around the fit for purpose finance needed for water, the basin level or sort of waterway specific partnerships that need to happen, at least on the industry side in a pre-competitive way. Then also looking at the tools and the technologies, the policy nexus that can help enable new early-stage tech, but also innovation more broadly toward those outcomes. In terms of sparks of hope, where we're seeing good innovation, I think it's on a number of fronts. One is less sexy, which is that we need cooperation to happen. It isn't some breakthrough, deep-tech solution. We just need people to recognize that they have skin in the game, and they need to come around the table and solve for this. Global breakthrough on treaty to tackle climate emissions from shipping. The agreement covers the vast majority of the world's commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines (BBC) Trump issues order to block state climate change policies. The move is part of efforts by the administration to pump up domestic production of fossil fuels and came just hours after Trump issued orders to increase coal production (Reuters) Trump moves to hobble major US climate change study. The cuts are a potentially fatal blow to the National Climate Assessment that Congress mandated to ensure the government understands the threats posed by rising temperatures (Politico) Inside the EV startup secretly backed by Jeff Bezos. EV startup Slate Auto, based in Michigan, could start production as soon as next year (TechCrunch) So much for 'drill, baby, drill.' Oil prices tumble further as Trump's tariffs weigh on economic outlook. Crude oil now costs 15% less than before he revealed his tariff plans–making more drilling economically unsound. (New York Times) World surpasses 40% clean power as renewables see record rise. Solar is the main driver of the growth in renewable electricity, with generation doubling in the past three years (Ember) U.S. electricity demand will grow 50% by 2050, study finds. Data centers and transportation electrification will drive U.S. electricity demand about 2% higher each year for the next quarter century (Utility Dive)
