Current Climate: Biden Administration Pushes For Better Fuel ... - Forbes

Current Climate: Biden Administration Pushes For Better Fuel Economy

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.
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The Biden Administration has tried to turbocharge the U.S. shift away from fossil fuels for transportation by incentivizing consumers with tax credits to buy electric vehicles and providing generous incentives to auto and battery makers to build plants to produce them. Now it’s proposing aggressive new fuel economy rules that, if enacted, would raise the average efficiency of new passenger vehicles to at least 58 miles per gallon by 2032. Automakers may balk at the proposal and at least one environmental group that wanted an even higher target says “it doesn’t knock our socks off.” Still, government regulators estimate the rules could eliminate 900 million tons of CO2 and say drivers a cumulative $50 billion in fuel costs.

The Big Read
Ethan Pines For Forbes

Chop Down Forests To Save The Planet? Maybe Not As Crazy As It Sounds

Bill Gates and other investors are betting Kodama Systems can reduce carbon dioxide in the air by chopping down and burying trees otherwise at risk of being consumed by wildfires. The goal is to help slow climate change and to reap salable carbon offsets (and maybe, someday, tax credits too).

Discoveries And Innovations

This month is likely to be the hottest July ever recorded, researchers suggest, and the heat waves currently roiling through North America and Europe would be “virtually impossible” without human driven climate change, says a new report.

South Florida water temperatures hit triple digits this week–their highest temperatures ever this week, and as other parts of the world’s oceans witness record-high temperatures, the risk of higher sea levels and severe storms looms.

Conservationists in Madagascar are working with local communities to reduce forest fires and preserve the country's iconic lemur species.

Scientists were able to reanimate a nematode that had laid dormant in Siberian permafrost for approximately 46,000 years—adding to fears that more dangerous organisms, such as disease-inducing pathogens, could emerge from melting ice as climate change warms the Earth’s permafrost.

The Big Transportation Story

AFP via Getty Images

Tesla Exaggerated Its Cars’ Driving Range—And Canceled Service Appointments If Drivers Complained, Report Says

Ford lowered the base price of some versions of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck this week by as much as $10,000, reversing a series of price hikes for the battery-powered model over the past two years. The automaker is also getting ready to ramp up production of Lightnings to help beat back competition from electric vehicle giant Tesla, which is preparing to finally start selling its polarizing version of a pickup: the Cybertruck.

Sustainability Deals Of The Week

EV Charging: General Motors, BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and Stellantis are forming a joint venture that aims to install at least 30,000 new fast electric car charging stations across North America by 2030.

Lunar Solar Power: NASA awarded a partnership with Jeff Bezos-owned space company Blue Origin with a goal of giving future Moon astronauts the technology to turn lunar rocks into solar power systems.

Earthbound Solar Power: First Solar announced that it will be investing up to $1.1 billion to build a fifth manufacturing facility for its photovoltaic solar modules.

What Else We’re Reading This Week

Warming Could Push the Atlantic Past a ‘Tipping Point’ This Century (The New York Times)

Tesla under investigation by California attorney general over Autopilot safety, marketing (CNBC)

California has new weapons to battle summer blackouts: Battery storage, power from record rain (Los Angeles Times)

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