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One big automaker is questioning whether hybrids are a stepping stone on the way to zero-emission vehicles — or something more permanent.
With a lot of the country still lacking high-speed charging stations, range anxiety can be a real concern for rural Americans. And if you don’t have a driveway or accessible place to plug in, charging at home isn’t easy either.
The Biden administration is working on the first part of that dilemma, including with a new round of funding to build EV chargers announced last week. In the meantime, many automakers and experts see plug-in hybrids that combine a taste of electric driving with a combustion engine as a stepping stone to fully electric cars.
Consumers seem to agree: U.S. hybrid sales shot up 45% in the first quarter of this year, while EV sales slowed a tad, according to MotorIntelligence.com. But at a conference last week, Ford CEO Jim Farley suggested those surging sales are changing his long-term view of hybrids, Reuters reports.
“We should stop talking about it as transitional technology,” Farley said of hybrids. “Many of our hybrids in the U.S. are now more profitable than their non-hybrid equivalent.”
But there’s a big problem with sticking with hybrids for too long, as General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra noted at the same conference. “It’s not the end game because it’s not zero emission,” Barra said, doubling down on her company’s promise to fully transition to EVs.
On average, gas cars emit more than 350 grams of carbon per mile driven over their lifetime, while hybrids emit around 260 grams per mile, MIT researchers have found. EVs are meanwhile responsible for about 200 grams per mile, when you take into account the emissions tied to building a car and producing the electricity they run on.
And even better? Swapping out as much driving as possible for walking, public and public transit.
🏭 We’re good on fossil fuels: The world already has enough planned fossil fuel projects in the pipeline to cover predicted energy demand through 2050, a study finds, suggesting countries should halt new permits. (The Guardian)
🚌 Jumpstarting electric school buses: The Biden administration announces nearly $900 million for 500 school districts across the country to buy clean buses, most of them electric, in the latest round of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding. (Canary Media)
💰 Investing in green: Clean energy and transportation investments totaled a record high of $71 billion in the first quarter of the year. (Utility Dive)
🚧 Clean innovation’s holdup: The CEO of the nation’s largest residential solar company discusses how the company is trying to innovate in a sector held back by the utility industry’s “slow and no” culture. (Energy News Network)
💨 No excuses on methane cuts: A study of U.S. EPA data finds reported methane emissions from U.S. gas extraction dropped 37% between 2015 and 2022 even as production surged, suggesting the industry can curb leaks without limiting production. (Canary Media)
🚗 Problematic EV origins: U.S. environmental justice advocates turn their attention to the Congo, where the industry mining cobalt essential to electric vehicle batteries is ripe with worker exploitation. (Capital B)
🌡️ Heating up: An analysis of death certificates finds that 2023 was a record year for heat-related deaths and illnesses, especially in Arizona, Texas and other southern states. (Associated Press)
🏠 Hey, I’m weatherizin’ here: New York launches the country’s first energy rebate program supported by federal Inflation Reduction Act funds, which will help low-to-moderate-income homeowners make energy efficient upgrades. (Utility Dive, Gothamist)
TRANSPORTATION: Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin declares the state will no longer tie its vehicle emissions standards to California’s more restrictive rules — which phase out the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — but critics argue he doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally roll back a law passed by the Democratic legislature in 2021. (Washington Post)
ALSO: The small city of Charlottesville, Virginia, moves to grow its bus fleet over the next decade and phase out diesel buses entirely by 2040, matching much larger cities in its commitment to an emissions-free transit system. (Energy News Network)
UTILITIES: As Alabama courts more companies that want to power their operations with renewables, Alabama Power looks for ways to incorporate more clean energy into its portfolio. (Lagniappe)
EMISSIONS: Dominion Energy asks Virginia regulators to remove a monthly fee from its bills for participation in a regional carbon market from which the state has withdrawn. (Virginia Mercury)
WIND: Dominion Energy meets with residents of a Virginia community about construction of a facility to bring power onshore from its planned offshore wind farm. (WTKR)
HYDROPOWER: An Alabama-based company plans an expansion in Knoxville, Tennessee, after acquiring a firm that makes water-powered generators. (Knoxville News Sentinel)
PIPELINES:
COAL ASH: Testing at a growing North Carolina sinkhole where coal ash is used as filler material indicates it hasn’t contaminated a town’s drinking water, but concerns remain. (WFAE)
OIL & GAS:
CLEAN ENERGY: A North Carolina bill would provide a new financing mechanism for commercial property improvements such as solar installations and energy efficiency upgrades, but the state treasurer argues the program is unconstitutional. (Port City Daily)
CLIMATE: U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says Florida’s insurance industry appears to be “swirling the drain” as insurers dramatically increase premiums or pull out of the state altogether because of its climate risks. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
COMMENTARY: West Virginia policymakers’ insistence on keeping the state reliant on coal while dismissing renewables and energy efficiency programs is driving electric rates higher, writes an environmentalist. (West Virginia Watch)
By gradually nudging aside its diesel buses, Charlottesville’s transit agency is punching above its weight.
The city of 45,000 at the edge of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains is matching the likes of larger counterparts in New York, Chicago and San Diego with a carbon-curbing proposal to convert to a zero-emission public transit fleet by 2040. By then, its routes will be served by electric buses.
Granted, some environmental advocacy organizations urged a speedier transition and are disappointed the city won’t retire its last diesel bus until 2039.
However, groups aligned with the Community Climate Collaborative (C3) — which emphasizes social justice in its work to reduce emissions — are relieved the city was willing to address route and ridership issues in addition to a commitment to wean itself off diesel and avoid compressed natural gas as a power source altogether.
“I think this is a victory,” said Caetano de Campos Lopes, C3’s director of climate policy. “We are very pleased that the city’s approach was so thorough and holistic.”
As it stands now, Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) plans to double the size of its fleet from 38 to 76 by 2034. That peak fleet will be a blend of diesel and electric buses.
CAT is on track to roll out a pair of pilot programs to add at least two battery electric buses and then at least two hydrogen-electric fuel cell models by 2029. The transit agency will stop ordering diesel buses in 2027, meaning the last ones will come into service by 2028 or 2029.
While CAT is owned and operated by the city, the University of Virginia and Albemarle County contribute a small amount of its non-capital budget.
De Campos Lopes was reassured in late February when the Charlottesville City Council voiced unanimous support for advancing zero-emission fuel choices, because compressed natural gas was still under consideration the previous year. At its June 17 meeting, the council is scheduled to take a final vote on CAT’s Transit Strategic Plan.
C3 had collaborated with several dozen private companies and environmental, social justice and faith groups to pressure the council to adopt a measure in favor of zero-emission buses, particularly battery electric. It submitted a petition with 640-plus signatures last autumn.
Ben Chambers started his position as the city’s transportation planning manager in November 2022, when the community was in the thick of a back-and-forth exercise about its fleet makeup. The University of Virginia graduate is no stranger to the region or its routes, as he drove a University Transit Service bus while earning a religious studies undergraduate degree in 2006.
Over the last several years, he said, his most difficult task had been explaining to the public that CAT can’t turn on a dime to purchase zero-emission buses and upgrade their accompanying charging and fueling infrastructure.
He praised the council for conducting its deliberations openly so the public could better understand the process.
“For a long time, the constant refrain in the community has been ‘Get cleaner buses,’” Chambers said. “We’ve come to a solution that may not please everybody, but at least people understand how it’s going to work. We’re in a much better place now.”
C3, which released a transit equity and climate report in 2021, prodded the city to think beyond financial considerations when it found out that same year that CAT was on the verge of studying how to fuel its future buses.
The nonprofit and its allies feared the city would lean toward a known entity, compressed natural gas, and shy away from less time-tested technologies such as battery electric and hydrogen fuel cells.
That choice, de Campos Lopes said, wouldn’t align with the city’s ambitious target set in 2019 to curb greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. The transportation sector is a leading source, with an estimated 30% of total emissions.
Indeed, a recent analysis for CAT by the Northern Virginia-based Kimley-Horn engineering firm revealed that running CNG buses would amount to only a slight drop in emissions when compared to diesel.
In contrast, that same Kimley-Horn report stated that switching to battery electric buses or fuel cell buses powered with green hydrogen would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 99.4% and 99%, respectively, compared to the baseline diesel fleet.
Both technologies come close to achieving carbon neutrality, assuming the Virginia Clean Economy Act is heeded. Dominion Energy is supposed to achieve a carbon-free electric grid by 2045, with Appalachian Power following suit by 2050.
Both types of buses use batteries to power their electric motors. Fuel cell models use hydrogen to charge a battery, while the other uses electricity from the grid.
Initially, CAT had eyed compressed natural gas as one option because it’s cleaner than diesel and the gas buses didn’t cost that much more, Chambers said. Plus, both Richmond and Williamsburg had demonstrated success with gas buses, which qualified for funding under the federal government’s low- and no-emissions grant program.
“That CNG option caused a lot of mistrust,” he continued. “People thought CAT was trying to get around their request for clean energy buses. We dropped CNG mostly because of the feedback we got from the environmental community.”
In addition, some green groups said the transit agency was acting in bad faith by keeping diesel as part of its fuel mix.
The timing for looking beyond all fossil fuels was right, Chambers said, when usage data about electric buses was becoming available from other transit agencies and funding opportunities became abundant.
“We could finally have that conversation about electric buses, but we weren’t just responding to what the mob wants us to do,” he said. “We want to balance the hue and cry for alternative fuel with the need for reliable bus service.”
The transit agency is in the midst of devising a zero emission transition plan to submit to the Federal Transit Administration this fall, Chambers said. The document includes details such as a turnover timeline and specifics about bus storage and storage infrastructure.
On the pilot program front, the city is set to order as many as five battery electric buses this summer — each one roughly twice the cost of a $500,000 diesel model — that are scheduled to join the fleet in 2027. CAT will wrestle with details such as driving range, maintenance requirements, and whether it makes sense to install on-site solar to charge the buses.
“I have serious concerns about longer routes and the impact of terrain because we’re quite a hilly town,” he said. “We’re talking about big heavy machines and the details can get technical.”
Bringing up to five hydrogen-powered buses on board by 2029 — at between $1.2 million and $1.3 million each — will be trickier. Most pressing is finding a nearby source of hydrogen fuel that doesn’t contribute to emissions of heat-trapping gases.
“We’re investigating the idea of on-site generation,” Chambers said. “But if we need to truck it in, where would it come from?”
CAT won’t necessarily choose one technology over the other as it replaces its diesel models, he said, adding that having both choices available provides an added benefit of resiliency.
Money for the pilot programs is a mix of federal, state and local dollars, with the bulk of it from the federal government. The exact funding formula is still in the works, he said.
“Lucky for us, we won’t be the first out of the blocks,” Chambers said about gaining insights from transit agencies “on the bleeding edge to learn about the headaches they had to deal with.”
For instance, neighboring Blacksburg has put battery electric buses on the road, and leaders in Oakland, California; the Champaign-Urbana region of Illinois; and Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, D.C.; have experience with hydrogen fuel cell buses.
He admitted that Charlottesville was a bit leery about delving into alternative technologies because of continued hassles with the 10 hybrid diesel buses it purchased about 15 years ago. Some of those models are still in the fleet. Parts of the hybrid drivetrain failed regularly and replacement parts were often on back order. As well, CAT had problems fully charging battery packs that didn’t last as long as promised.
“CAT couldn’t keep them on routes,” he said. “We didn’t want to end up with that same scenario.”
Susan Kruse, C3’s executive director, said she recognized that some groups focused solely on climate issues were frustrated by the city’s plans to boost greenhouse gas emissions in the short term by not pivoting away from diesel immediately.
Her group tried to play the role of mediator because “it was best to take the time to get everyone literally and figuratively aboard the bus,” she said.
“Sure, we would rather see buses move to zero emissions faster. But this is a great example of how moving toward a carbon-neutral community is difficult. This issue is complicated and we have to take the time to get it right.”
Generally, diesel buses cycle out of use after 12 years of service or accumulating 500,000 miles on the odometer.
It’s vital that CAT’s strategic plan calls for addressing shortcomings that frustrated riders, Kruse said. CAT will be doubling the amount of service, adding routes on nights and weekends, and limiting wait times between buses to 30 minutes.
She and her colleagues are especially pleased by the local environmental impact of battery electric and fuel cell buses powered by green or “gray” hydrogen produced using natural gas. A transition would improve air quality and reduce noise levels, according to the Kimley-Horn report.
For instance, the changeover would eliminate emissions of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and volatile organic compounds, all gases that are harmful to humans. For example, nitrogen oxides can irritate airways, aggravate asthma and other respiratory diseases, and lead to emergency room visits and hospital admissions.
As well, cleaner buses would reduce the tiniest bits of particulate matter by 25% when compared to diesel. The microscopic particles endanger human health because they can deeply embed in lungs and also enter the bloodstream. Regardless of bus technology, particulate matter is still produced by wear and tear on a vehicle’s brake pads and tires.
C3 advocates and Chambers agree that Charlottesville’s achievements can be a model for smaller municipalities shifting to carbon-free buses. After all, the timeline for its proposed transition is ahead of Denver and Washington, D.C.
Setting an example doesn’t just apply to public transit, Chambers said, emphasizing that other communities view the university city as a test bed for plucky endeavors.
“In Charlottesville, we tend to think a bit bigger than our britches when it comes to policy decisions,” he said. “We do new bold things because we like to see if we can get it done.”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration announces nearly $900 million for 500 school districts across the country to buy clean buses, most of them electric, in the latest round of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding. (Canary Media)
ALSO: Electric vehicle charging companies see opportunity in Tesla’s Supercharger team layoffs, including by hiring former Tesla employees and building charging stations in lots whose owners previously planned to allow Superchargers. (E&E News)
SOLAR:
POLITICS: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which opposed the Inflation Reduction Act before its passage, are now preparing to defend it if former President Trump wins the election this fall. (Politico)
WIND:
ELECTRIFICATION: Helping lower-income Americans electrify their homes could dramatically reduce fossil fuel use and drive $2 trillion in avoided health and social costs by 2050, an energy efficiency group finds. (Canary Media)
CLIMATE: The average person on Earth faced 26 more days of abnormal heat last year than they would’ve without human-caused climate change, a study finds. (New York Times)
GRID:
OIL & GAS: ConocoPhillips announces it will acquire Marathon Oil in an all-stock transaction worth $22.5 billion. (news release)
GEOTHERMAL: Utah’s geothermal industry says the federal Bureau of Land Management’s decision to defer 177,000 acres of energy leases until next year could imperil investments and development. (Deseret News)
CARBON CAPTURE: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he will sign legislation that bans carbon pipelines until federal regulators adopt new safety regulations and that create more extensive monitoring at storage sites. (Capitol News Illinois)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: China’s plans to scale up production and dominate the electric vehicle market threatens Michigan’s marquee industry and poses an economic and national security threat to the U.S., experts say. (Bridge)
ALSO:
SOLAR: At least 27 Ohio counties have passed resolutions to block utility-scale solar projects as part of a state law that the state chamber of commerce says has “chased away investment in this state.” (WCMH)
PIPELINES:
GRID: Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin are among 21 states to join a Biden administration initiative that will provide financial and technical assistance to expand grid capacity and modernize existing transmission and distribution lines. (States Newsroom)
CLEAN ENERGY: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says $367 million in federal clean energy funding will help 28,000 low-income households with energy efficiency and solar upgrades. (Michigan Advance)
OIL & GAS: The National Transportation Safety Board is now investigating a deadly natural gas explosion that killed one person and injured seven others in downtown Youngstown, Ohio. (ABC News)
COAL: Alliant Energy plans to convert a coal plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to run on natural gas in 2028. (WPR)
NUCLEAR: An Ohio nuclear plant closed for two days late last week so inspectors could find and repair a coolant leak before bringing the plant back online. (Cleveland.com)
COMMENTARY:
For all of the mobility they offer, cars, in general, spend most of their time sitting still. The average American spends around an hour a day driving, according to AAA, and in a country with roughly one vehicle per person, that’s a lot of cars just sitting around doing nothing.
Electric vehicles create an opportunity to put that downtime to use. While EVs can already serve as a backup battery for homes, engineers have long been pursuing technology to tie all of those batteries to the grid, serving as a massive virtual power plant to help manage fluctuations in electricity production and demand.
This fall, Oakland, California’s school district is making that vision a reality.
The district recently announced it is replacing all of its diesel buses with electric ones equipped with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology that will allow the buses to serve as a resource for utility Pacific Gas & Electric.
As Matt Simon of Wired explains, the buses provide an ideal platform. They operate on a predictable schedule, can charge during the day when solar power peaks and at night when demand is low, and are usually sitting idle during the evening, when solar generation plummets and the need for stored energy is highest.
For school districts, that also provides a new source of revenue, helping to offset the much higher cost of the buses.
So what about those millions of cars? That’s a little more complicated.
Willett Kempton, a University of Delaware professor, has been working on that problem for decades. While the concept is simple, a vast array of vehicles, charging configurations, and usage times can create a lot of uncertainty for utilities.
“When something’s pushing power onto the grid, they want to know what that is,” Kempton told Canary Media in February. “They don’t want to be like, ‘We’re 95 percent sure which car it is.’”
Kempton reached a significant breakthrough this year in developing a V2G standard that was recently adopted by SAE International, which provides guidance on universal standards for automakers on everything from tires to oil viscosity.
Major car companies are now rushing to produce models with V2G capability.
“This is a real thing,” an executive from a British V2G company told Reuters. “It’s no longer a theoretical, academic discussion.”
🚗 Speaking of electric vehicles: The Biden administration last week announced a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, which some critics say could jeopardize climate goals; an editorial board says U.S. automakers have only themselves to blame for not being globally competitive. (E&E News, Los Angeles Times)
🔧 When getting there isn’t half the fun: As the Biden administration offers billions to ramp up hydrogen production, the fuel is dangerous and costly to transport and there are no clear rules for pipeline siting. (E&E News)
☀️ Solar’s staggering growth: The U.S. has surpassed 5 million solar installations, with more than half of those coming online since 2020, according to a new industry report. (Power Magazine)
🏭 Rust belt revival: Midwest states have received nearly $30 billion in private investments to boost clean energy manufacturing since Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in late 2022. (Inside Climate News)
👷 Green jobs: Community colleges around the country are offering training programs in clean energy technology, in response to a surge in job demand since the passage of federal climate legislation. (Associated Press)
🛢️ Questionable commitments: In separate reports, advocacy groups this week have called efforts to decarbonize air travel a “huge greenwashing exercise,” and said “there is no evidence that big oil and gas companies are acting seriously to be part of the energy transition.” (The Guardian)
⚖️ Energy justice: Advocates say Minnesota regulators should reinstate a moratorium on utility shutoffs after researchers found racial disparities in disconnections by Xcel Energy, even after accounting for income and other factors. (Energy News Network)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration is expected to announce new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles this week, extending Trump-era policies aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing. (New York Times)
ALSO:
POLITICS: A $6.6 million fuel industry ad campaign is targeting President Biden and Democratic Senate candidates over support for tougher emissions standards for cars. (NBC News)
GRID:
TRANSPORTATION: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calls for developers to emulate the public-private, transit-oriented real estate approach behind a high-speed rail line under construction between Las Vegas and southern California. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
SOLAR: A northern Maine community of around 11,400 homes and businesses was able to run on only solar power last week for about 12 cumulative hours, a first-ever occurrence for utility Versant. (Maine Public Radio)
To understand the stakes of cleaning up the most-polluting vehicles on our roads, look no further than Charlotte.
The largest city in North Carolina, it’s at the crossroads of two major trucking routes, with 17,000 trips per day spewing smog- and soot-forming pollutants that consistently rank the metro area among the nation’s 100 worst for air quality.
It’s also a burgeoning epicenter for electric vehicle manufacturing and research, home to many of the state’s 40-plus businesses that are already playing a role in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain.
Clean transportation advocates say the air quality and economy in Charlotte and throughout the state stand to benefit from new Biden administration tailpipe emission rules for heavy-duty trucks, which account for an outsized share of the region’s climate emissions and air pollution.
“The Heavy Duty Rules are a critical step forward in establishing a ‘federal floor’ for clean trucks all across the country,” said Aaron Viles, campaigns director with the Electrification Coalition.
But they also say there’s still a need for other policies to usher in a new generation of electric trucks and buses, including a state-based rule scuttled by the GOP-controlled legislature last year.
The transportation sector is the largest source of global warming pollution and the country. Cleaning it up, experts say, means phasing in new electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes, reducing our use of passenger vehicles overall, and powering the grid with renewable energy.
The transition is not without hurdles. Would-be electric vehicle owners and fleet managers worry about a lack of charging infrastructure. And while the costs of electric-powered vehicles are falling steadily and the price of operating them is minimal, potential consumers still balk at their relatively high sticker price.
What’s more, many of the vested interests that revolve around gas and diesel vehicles prefer the status quo, and they extend well beyond the oil industry — including dealers who make money from oil changes and other routine repairs, fueling stations, and manufacturers of engine components.
But climate advocates say overcoming these obstacles has rewards beyond just reducing greenhouse gasses and avoiding catastrophic global warming. In North Carolina, that’s especially true when it comes to cleaning up heavy duty vehicles.
Though trucks, buses and the like make up a tiny fraction of all vehicles on the road, they account for over a quarter of the North Carolina transportation sector’s smog-forming pollutants and nearly a third of its soot-forming emissions, per state officials. Zero-emission vehicles would help curb this pollution.
The transition to heavy-duty electric vehicles could also benefit North Carolina’s economy, with dozens of industries across the state already invested in component production, assembly, or other aspects of the supply chain, according to a 2021 database compiled by the Environmental Defense Fund.
“When you look at where the electric vehicle supply chain investments are going, it’s really clustered in a number of leading states,” said Will Scott, Southeast climate and clean energy director with Environmental Defense Fund. “And North Carolina is among those.”
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is term-limited after this year, had sought first to garner these benefits with the Advanced Clean Truck rule. Initiated with an October 2022 executive order, the measure requires manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of electric trucks, buses, and other large vehicles. California pioneered the standard, and it has been adopted by 10 other states.
But after prodding from the North Carolina Chamber, Republicans who control the General Assembly balked, passing a provision in the state budget to prevent the rule.
“Government mandates and intervention into the market would stifle… innovation and investment,” the Chamber wrote on its website after the budget language prevailed, “as well as increase costs in new trucks, on which nearly all of our members rely.”
The new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency measure, issued this spring, is less ambitious than the California one. But with the Advanced Clean Truck rule essentially dead in the state, advocates say the federal regulation is welcome.
“States that don’t have ACT will now have a federal policy that can support cleaning up our medium- and heavy-duty transportation sectors,” said Stan Cross, transportation director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
In an effort to mollify the industry, Biden officials made their rule “technology neutral,” meaning it would require manufacturers meet a certain tailpipe pollution limit rather than sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles.
The Electrification Coalition says that means the federal rule will result in lower overall electric sales for most classes of vehicles. For instance, the Biden rule is expected to result in as little as 5% of new tractor cab sales bring electric by 2032, depending on class on weight. The California standard, by contrast, requires 40% of all heavy-duty tractor sales to be zero-emitting – and most likely electric, though other technologies qualify.
Still, when it comes to less air and global warming pollution, cleaning up trucks and buses nationwide has an obvious advantage over a patchwork of states doing so. Overall, the Biden administration expects its rule to avoid 1 billion tons of greenhouse gasses.
There’s also value in Biden attacking transportation sector pollution nationally, piece by piece, Cross said. The administration has already promulgated similar rules for passenger cars and trucks, and standards for port equipment, off-road vehicles, and more are still forthcoming.
“They’re doing the math, and they’re thinking about these standards in a comprehensive and holistic way,” said Cross. “They can look at all of our ports, all of our marine traffic, all of our airports, all of our plane traffic, all of our off-road construction — and set standards that will get us where we need to be.”
In a state like North Carolina, home to several major interstates and their truck traffic, cleaning up trucks beyond state borders will also help reduce health-threatening air pollution. An American Lung Association analysis of states with major trucking routes, for example, found that if all heavy-duty vehicle sales were electric by 2040, the state could avoid over 1,700 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of lost work days.
Those benefits would be crucial for Charlotte, which consistently ranks among the 100 most polluted cities in America for smog-and soot-forming pollution in the Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report.
“Charlotte advocates for clean air, which includes using electric transportation,” Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said in a written statement praising the new rules.
And for North Carolina businesses in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain, the prospect of a national market is clearly better than customers in a smattering of states.
Anything that accelerates the trend toward electric vehicles, Scott said, will come back to the state in the form of jobs and economic activity.
“North Carolina has put itself in a good position to capture a lot of those benefits,” he said.
Still, the nationwide rule has a major downside for fleet managers from North Carolina cities and corporations that have commitments to go all-electric. The supply of heavy-duty electric vehicles is still relatively low, and the states who have adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule will get first dibs on it.
The problem could be especially acute in the near term, during which manufacturers can satisfy national requirements just by catering to the 11 states with the more advanced rule.
“ACT puts your state in pole position for the limited amount of zero-emission, trucks and buses that are going to be coming off of assembly lines,” Cross said.
Indeed, that’s part of why advocates supporting the federal standard say they’ll keep looking for opportunities to pass the Advanced Clean Truck Rule in the state.
And though it has little chance of passage, Cooper’s budget this year removes last year’s prohibition on the stronger clean truck standard and includes funding for electric vehicle infrastructure.
“We applaud the governor for taking these steps to end oil’s monopoly on our transportation systems,” said Anne Blair, the Electrification Coalition’s vice president of policy. “But there is still much more that needs to be done to ensure North Carolina and the country are not left behind as the world shifts to electric transportation.”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Tesla reportedly lays off its entire 500-person supercharger team throwing into uncertainty an EV charging industry that had started to rely on Tesla’s technology. (The Information, subscription; E&E News)
ALSO: The developers of an electric truck charging corridor across the Southwest struggle to site remote chargers where they can connect to the grid. (E&E News)
GRID:
PIPELINES: Mountain Valley Pipeline officials say the cost of the nearly completed project has grown to $7.85 billion, more than $220 million higher than its previous estimate in February. (Roanoke Times, Cardinal News)
OFFSHORE WIND:
CLIMATE: Students at three universities file legal complaints alleging their schools’ fossil fuel investments are illegal and violate their commitments to climate action and research. (Guardian)
CLEAN ENERGY: Three Energy Department-funded research projects investigate whether seaweed can be mined for minerals critical to clean energy projects. (Hakai)
OIL & GAS: The U.S. House overwhelmingly passes a bill that would direct the Energy Department to research abandoned oil and gas wells’ environmental risks. (The Hill)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department institutes stricter energy efficiency standards for residential water heaters. (New York Times)
STORAGE: A 2,000 MW battery storage system under construction in southern California is expected to be one of the world’s largest such facilities when completed next year. (Whittier Daily News)
CARBON CAPTURE: A carbon dioxide removal startup has injected more than 2,000 metric tons of a carbon-rich biomass slurry for sequestration in subterranean salt caverns below Kansas as it scales up its operations. (Canary Media)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Rivian receives $827 million in state incentives to build the company’s mid-sized electric SUV in Normal, Illinois, and add at least 550 jobs over the next five years. (WIFR)
ALSO: North Dakota’s two U.S. senators sponsor legislation to eliminate federal tax incentives for electric vehicles. (North Dakota Monitor)
RENEWABLES:
CLIMATE: A public speaker, podcast host and environmental justice advocate discusses creating a bigger Black, Brown and Indigenous presence in the climate movement at a recent event in Chicago. (Energy News Network)
COAL:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES:
BIOFUELS: Updated federal guidance on a biofuel carbon credits program could provide a path to profitability for the developer of a large sustainable jet fuel plant in South Dakota. (South Dakota Searchlight)
MANUFACTURING: The developer of a low-emissions aluminum plant receiving $500,000 in federal funding is considering sites in Kentucky and surrounding states, which could mean a huge influx of jobs and nearby renewable energy development. (Grist)
WIND: Ameren shuts down a northeastern Missouri wind project to determine why a turbine broke apart and fell to the ground last week. (KTVO)
OIL & GAS: A pipeline leak releases about 10 barrels of oil into nearby waterways in western North Dakota. (Dickinson Press)
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