I’m double hosting today on KALW. First, on Your Call’s One Planet series at 10am PT, we’ll dig into what’s been a tumultuous few months for the electric vehicle industry. Between Trump’s threats to defund EVs, fluctuating tariffs, and Elon Musk advising the White House, what’s the future looking like? John Voelcker, contributing editor at Car and Driver, will join us.
Then we’ll hear about proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that could drastically reduce data about ocean temperature and health. Joining us will be Bob Berwyn, reporter for Inside Climate.
Then on State of the Bay at 6pm PT, we’ll break down the plan for the first 100 days for former Congresswoman and now Oakland’s mayor-elect Barbara Lee. Joining us will be Shomik Mukherjee of East Bay Times.
Plus, the Trump administration is once again targeting California’s climate policies with a sweeping executive order that could derail the state’s environmental goals. We’ll discuss the legal and political battles ahead with Blanca Begert, California climate and energy reporter at Politico; Yana Garcia, California Secretary for Environmental Protection; and Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at Natural Resources Defense Council.
And finally we’ll take a deep dive into the muscles that move us. Author Bonnie Tsui shares insights from her book “On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters.”
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT for Your Call and then again at 6pm PT for State of the Bay. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
I’ll be on KQED Forum today at 9am PT talking about Trump’s sweeping executive order taking aim at efforts by states, including California, to set their own environmental policies. At risk are key components of California’s fight against climate change, including its cap-and-trade program to control carbon emissions and efforts to promote electrical vehicles.
Trump’s order is just the latest in his moves to reverse climate change policies, including halting government research funding and gutting environmental agencies. As his head of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin has said, the administration is “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” We’ll talk about the impact of Trump’s approach to the environment and how California could respond.
I’ll be joined on the panel with:
- Sonia Aggarwal, CEO, Energy Innovation – a non partisan think tank based in San Francisco that provides research and analysis on energy and climate policy; special assistant, to the President for Climate Policy, Innovation, and Deployment in the Biden administration.
- Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk, New York Times
- Abigail Dillen, president, Earthjustice – a public interest law group focused on the environment
Hope you can tune in on KQED or stream live at 9am PT!
Back in 2012, Berkeley Law’s CLEE and UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment released a report called “Electric Drive by ’25,” with the bold subtitle “How California Can Catalyze Mass Adoption of Electric Vehicles by 2025.”
The report cited 2011-12 EV sales as reason for optimism on achieving mass adoption by 2025:
Early results from the introduction of new electric vehicles to the U.S. market have been promising, with sales of both Nissan LEAFs and Chevy Volts outselling the popular hybrid Toyota Prius in its first year of sales, 9,674 (LEAF) and 7,671 (Volt) to 5,562 (first-year Prius sales). As of May 2012, plug-in electric vehicles comprised approximately 30,000 of the cars in the United States, more than four times as many as the year before.
13 years later, the plug-in hybrid Volt is no more and the LEAF is revamped and a relatively minor player, while the Tesla Model Y was the best-selling vehicle in the world in 2024, outselling the Toyota Corolla.
And what would “mass adoption” look like for the then relatively distant year of 2025 in California? The California Air Resources Board at the time:
…predicted that the new [Advanced Clean Cars] program and ZEV regulations would result in over 1.4 million ZEVs on the road by 2025, comprising over 15 percent of vehicles sales that year.
And now that it’s actually 2025, how is the state doing? Did it live up to its goal?
Turns out the state was way too pessimistic. According to the nonprofit Veloz that tracks EV sales, California in fact had 2,213,296 electric vehicles on the road by the end of 2024:
So what lessons can we draw from this 2012 time capsule report review? First, and most obviously, electric vehicles have taken off better than a lot of people thought. Second, regulators in California, at least at the time, were clearly aiming too low with their goals!
There’s a ways to go to get EVs to 100% of new vehicles sales (the new goal is to achieve that percentage by 2035 in the state). But the market has reached critical tipping points. And while action on climate change is urgent and we still need faster deployment of EVs, it’s important to celebrate wins where we can, especially on something as monumentally important as reducing emissions from transportation.
On today’s Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll discuss the importance of environmental journalism with:
- Mark Hertsgaard, executive director of Covering Climate Now, environment correspondent for The Nation, and author of Big Red’s Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America.
- Sammy Roth, climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of the paper’s Boiling Point newsletter
How should journalists cover the Trump administration’s moves to stop climate action?
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
From cars and trucks to buses and trains, electric vehicles are playing an increasingly vital role in decarbonizing mobility and reducing oil dependence. However, this transition brings with it a significant challenge: immense pressure on battery supply chains. As demand for EVs increases, consumer countries will need to develop and implement policies that address the environmental and social impacts of the supply chain, while ensuring a stable supply of these transition minerals.
A new report I co-authored that is released today by UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) outlines a framework for building a more responsible battery supply chain, drawing insights from the European Union’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation (2023). This regulation is designed to reduce the carbon footprint of batteries, limit the use of hazardous materials, decrease reliance on raw materials from outside the EU, and promote high rates of collection, reuse, and recycling. By advancing a circular economy, it strengthens supply chain security, supports energy resilience, and enhances the EU’s strategic autonomy.
The current battery supply chain faces several pressing challenges. Mining critical minerals can lead to human rights violations, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and soil degradation. Refining processes, particularly in countries with lax environmental regulations, emit greenhouse gases and toxic waste. In addition, many battery materials pass through complex global supply chains, making it difficult to trace their origins and ensure responsible sourcing due to lack of transparency and traceability. Finally, end-of-life management remains a pressing issue, as current recycling rates for lithium-ion batteries are low and too many batteries end up in landfills or inefficient recycling systems.
Based on the EU’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation and the Critical Raw Materials Act, the report offers actionable recommendations for policymakers and industry leaders worldwide to address these battery supply chain challenges. Some key recommendations for government leaders include:
- Mandating transparency and traceability requirements for sourcing critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, through regulations and supply chain audits to ensure responsible mining practices and minimize human rights and environmental impacts
- Developing rules to minimize the environmental footprint of both domestic mineral processing and imported minerals, including limits on water usage, energy consumption, and pollutant emissions, as well as mandating the use of best available techniques.
- Implementing mandatory due diligence requirements aligned with international standards, ensuring they are integrated into supplier contracts for key transition minerals to identify and address social and environmental risks in battery production.
By drawing inspiration from the European Union’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation, other jurisdictions can adapt and tailor these policies to fit their specific challenges. A unified approach within the major consumer countries to responsible battery sourcing, processing, and recycling can reduce environmental harm and ensure a fair and ethical transition to a clean energy future.
Access the full report here: A Policy Blueprint for Ensuring Sustainable Battery Supply Chains
This post was co-authored by CLEE Climate Fellow Shruti Sarode.
As the market for the electric buses, cars, trucks, and trains that help curb the climate crisis continues to grow globally, the battery supply chain faces increased scrutiny. Minerals like lithium, nickel, graphite, and cobalt are too often mined and processed in ways that contribute to harming communities and ecosystems, while the batteries often face wasteful end-of-life disposal.
To address this challenge and identify solutions, Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and ClimateWorks Foundation founded in 2022 the Global Forum for Sustainable Batteries, a worldwide network of nonprofit leaders, experts, and advocates committed to transportation electrification and mining justice.
In 2024, the Forum developed a 2040 Sustainable Battery Vision that we’re releasing publicly today, with the aim of guiding policymakers, organizations, companies, and the general public on the key elements of what a truly sustainable battery should be by 2040. The 2040 Sustainable Battery Vision covers all aspects of the supply chain and beyond, including:
- Sourcing of raw and recovered minerals and materials
- Battery manufacturing
- Battery end-of-life
- Battery value chain traceability
The Vision has received the endorsement of leading environmental and mining justice organizations from around the world, along with supportive quotes. You can view the full list of signatories and their quotes here. And if you represent an organization that would like to endorse it as well, please contact me.
Our hope is that pursuing this 2040 Vision will not only benefit affected communities and stakeholders, it holds the promise of ensuring that the world can meet the transportation electrification challenge both more sustainably and rapidly.
Trump is promising to roll back the $7500 tax credit for electric vehicles. CBS News covered the story last night, where I talked about the potential impact:
I appeared on CBS News Bay Area last week talking about what the Trump administration might do to try to gut California’s electric vehicle requirements:
And a similar story on Monday from CBS News Sacramento:
Yesterday I appeared on two radio shows, now available for streaming or podcast download. First, on KQED Forum, I was on a panel discussing what climate efforts may look like during a Trump Administration, and how California will respond. Joining me was:
- Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk, New York Times
- Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor, engineering, Princeton University
- Aru Shiney-Ajay, Executive Director, Sunrise movement, a grassroots organization of students and young people focused on climate change
You can stream it here.
Then last night I hosted State of the Bay on KALW, where I spoke to UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry Omar Yaghi about a newly developed carbon-capturing material that has the potential to transform how we address climate change.
Then, we broke down local election results and discussed what they tell us about the priorities and concerns of Bay Area residents with San Francisco Chronicle opinion columnist and editorial writer, Emily Hoeven.
And finally, we talked with Rae Black of Oakland’s For the Win Boxing, a boxing gym that offers professional coaching for women and non-binary people who want to pursue “the sweet science” of boxing.
You can listen to that show here.
Americans love big cars. But a new data analysis by the Economist finds the bigger the cars, the deadlier they are for pedestrians, for people driving smaller cars, and for our roads and infrastructure. I’ll be a guest on KQED Forum at 10am PT today for our In Transit series, discussing why this trend is happening.
As my co-panelist, the Economist’s Daniel Knowles, writes, “for every life the heaviest 1% of SUVs or trucks saves in America, more than a dozen lives are lost in smaller vehicles.” Regulators are starting to consider ways car design could be safer for pedestrians and other drivers. But advocates say more needs to be done.
Joining me and Daniel on the panel to discuss will be Angie Schmitt, journalist and author of “RIGHT OF WAY: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America.”
Tune in on KQED 88.5 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT!
