It’s a double-shot of shows on KALW 91.7 FM today, my last two of the year. First, this morning on Your Call’s One Planet Series at 10am PT, we’ll discuss how climate science is being politicized in schools with investigative journalist Katie Worth, author of the riveting new book, Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America.
In the second half of the show, we’ll cover the mental health impacts of air pollution with reporter Kristina Marusic.
Then tonight at 6pm PT, I’ll be co-hosting State of the Bay to assess recent decisions rejecting or delaying housing projects by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. UC Davis Professor of Law Chris Elmendorf will help us understand the statewide legal implications of these anti-housing decisions, in particular the recent delay of a 500-unit housing development near BART.
Then we’ll discuss the state of the Bay Area’s “slow streets” movement, which close streets to most traffic for improved pedestrian and bike safety. What do you think about these measures? Ask our guests Eillie Anzilotti of the SFMTA and community planner Leah Chambers.
Finally, you’ll hear my interview with with Phil Ginsburg, General Manager of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, who will discuss some of the holiday festivities available in the city’s public spaces.
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 these guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On this morning Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss coverage of gerrymandering. From Oregon to Texas, states are finalizing new congressional district maps ahead of the 2022 midterms. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, as of late November, the new maps in 15 states have already netted a double-digit increase in solidly Republican seats compared with previous maps there.
And this week, the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Texas over the state’s redrawn congressional and state legislative districts. The lawsuit alleges that the Texas redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against the state’s “growing minority electorate.” Joining us to discuss will be:
David Daley, journalist, senior fellow for FairVote, and author of Unrigged: How Americans Battled Back To Save Democracy.
Then we’ll cover the Biden administration’s renewable energy policies. According to a new analysis by the nonprofit Public Citizen, the Biden administration’s average monthly permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands are up more than 35% from when Trump took office in 2017. To discuss this and other climate policies, we’ll be joined by:
Sammy Roth, climate and energy reporter at the Los Angeles Times, and writer of the weekly Boiling Point newsletter.
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 these reporters? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
Leafblowers may not seem like a big deal in the fight against climate change, though they’re certainly noisy for those in leafy urban environments and dangerously polluting for those who operate them.
But in fact these and other small engines (including lawn mowers and power washers, among others) number more than 16.7 million in California, or about 3 million more than the number of passenger cars on the road.
Starting in 2024, they’ll be zero emission, per legislation Gov. Newsom signed on Sunday. The California Air Resources Board was already developing a similar rule to be finalized as soon as early next year, but under AB 1346 (Berman), the agency must apply the new rule by January 1, 2024, or later if regulators determine the industry needs more time.
The legislation will help boost a broader market for electrification and the lithium ion batteries that enable it. It will also greatly reduce noise and air pollution. State officials note that a gas-powered leaf blower running for one hour emits the same amount of pollution as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry from Los Angeles to Denver, a distance of about 1,100 miles. And hopefully it will save operators money on fuel by using electricity over gasoline.
AB 1346 is yet one more nail in the internal combustion engine coffin, at least in California. The cleaner alternative is already blowing in the wind.
Last week, President Biden made a major environmental announcement that his administration will be largely restoring Obama-era vehicle fuel economy standards through 2025, which had been rolled back under the Trump administration. It’s a big deal because 30% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation.
Beyond restoring the standards, the president directed his agencies to develop more stringent standards beyond 2025 model years, for light- as well as medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. The goal should be 50% of new vehicles sales as zero emission in 2030.
To discuss the announcement, I appeared on KQED Forum on Tuesday and KTVU Channel 2 News in the San Francisco Bay Area last week. The radio audio is linked above and I’ve included the KTVU video below.
New UC Berkeley/UCLA Law report discusses policy solutions to accelerate investment in nature-based climate solutions in California. Register for a free webinar on Wednesday, June 16 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM Pacific Time with an expert panel to learn about the top findings.
This post is co-authored by Katie Segal and Ted Lamm.
Some of the most promising, cost-effective climate change solutions are in our own backyards. Trees, plants, soils, and ecosystems like wetlands can store and ultimately bury carbon, helping California and other jurisdictions achieve the “negative emissions” needed to meet long-term carbon neutrality goals.
These nature-based solutions also can reduce emissions from the land sector, such as emissions from agricultural practices. In addition, they can generate significant benefits beyond storing carbon, such as cleaning water, enriching biodiversity, providing more equitable access to urban green spaces, improving public health outcomes, and creating opportunities for COVID-19 economic recovery.
Yet nature-based climate solutions can be difficult to deploy because of various funding and financing barriers, despite the potential for reliable returns for a range of stakeholders. Resource managers and landowners may have high-quality projects in mind—from sustainable forest and vegetation management to urban greening—but struggle to connect with the right financing or funding pathways to development. Similarly, investors may wish to direct resources toward environmentally beneficial projects but lack sufficient information to identify best-fit vehicles and model returns.
Specific barriers to investment include failure of markets to recognize the benefits of nature-based carbon sequestration, lack of adequate data and metrics to inform investment decisions, and misalignment between project structures, public processes, and investment needs. As a result, despite rapidly growing understanding of the need to fund nature-based climate and resilience projects, experts have identified a biodiversity funding gap in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
A new report released today by UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and the UCLA Law Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Seeding Capital, proposes several policy solutions and innovations to tackle these challenges, including:
- Aligning nature-based investment products with existing international standards and labels
- Leveraging California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) mitigation to fund projects on natural and working lands
- Standardizing accounting practices for measuring greenhouse gas impacts, environmental impacts, and community impacts
- Conducting advance planning and permitting for multiple potential projects to create “portfolios” for grantors and investors to finance
The report is sponsored by Bank of America and informed by an expert stakeholder convening facilitated by the law schools. Ultimately, implementing these solutions will require consistent and strategic alignment among various sectors, including financial leaders, state and local leaders, philanthropy, and various utility districts, among others.
To discuss the report’s findings and recommendations to bolster investment in nature-based solutions, Berkeley and UCLA Law will host a free webinar on Wednesday, June 16 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM Pacific Time with an expert panel, including:
- Newsha Ajami – Director of Urban Water Policy and Senior Research Scholar at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
- Amanda Hansen – Deputy Secretary for Climate Change at the California Natural Resources Agency
- Zach Knight – CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Forest Conservation
You can RSVP for the webinar here.
Download the report here.
This week, Ford unveiled an electric “lightning” version of its best-selling F-150 truck. Why is this potentially a big deal? This truck is America’s most popular vehicle, and has been for 40 years. Ford sold more than 203,000 F-series trucks in the first quarter of this year, compared with a combined total of 98,000 electric vehicles in the same period.
Perhaps more significantly, electric vehicles have yet to be introduced for the truck market, although Tesla, GM, and start-up Rivian all plan to introduce one. So this vehicle finally fills an important void in the market.
There are two other significant upsides to the vehicle. First, it’s relatively low priced, at least the basic model, at about $40,000. Add in $7,500 in federal tax credits, plus possibly $2,000 in saved fueling costs each year, and the vehicle is competitive with most low-end gas-powered trucks. Of course, the high-end version is almost $90,000.
Another potential upside is the fact that Ford is partnering with solar-and-battery installer Sunrun to allow the vehicle to provide backup power to homes. That means the battery in the vehicle can also power your house during outages, a topic of greater interest after recent outages in California due to wildfires and extreme heat and in Texas due to record cold. Automakers have otherwise been reluctant to provide this customer access to the vehicle’s batteries, out of concern over impact to battery life and potentially, at least for Tesla, due to its possible negative impact on sales of their stationary batteries (the PowerWall).
This added home-backup feature could help jump start competition among EV automakers to allow vehicle batteries to power buildings, which would be a good thing. It taps into an additional benefit of EVs, so consumers can assume they’re not just buying a car but a home generator. It also can help build in society-wide resilience to extreme weather and potentially help reduce grid emissions if people power their homes off the vehicle during times of electricity supply constraints that might otherwise be met by dirty power.
But two concerns remain with the F-150. First, some customers buy trucks to haul heavy stuff. But these big loads can greatly reduce battery range. Ford is trying to be transparent in calculating how weight will impact range. But given the lack of public fast-power charging infrastructure, will this inhibit sales? Truck buyers may not want to wait around 30 minutes to repower the vehicle every 100 miles, if they can even conveniently find a charging station.
Second, while the home battery backup option is intriguing, will it become functionally impractical for most consumers, if it requires expensive upgrades to building electrical panels? The truck power will require at least 80 amps of available capacity on a home service box, but most homes have between 100 and 200 amp capacity to start. So there may be little extra capacity available for wiring in a load of that size, without a costly upgrade.
We’ll have to wait and see, but it’s encouraging that a new type of electric vehicle model is now on the market. Especially one that can appeal to a much broader range of consumer, such as those in conservative states that have historically been anti-EV and generally opposed to clean energy technology. Yet it’s just the tip of the iceberg on electric trucks, as Ford will soon find itself competing head-to-head with Tesla, Rivian and GM in this lucrative e-truck market.
But at least one consumer already seems sold on the electric F-150. Here’s President Biden taking a spin on Ford’s test track this week:
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California regulators are in the process of revising the state’s incentives for rooftop solar installations and other small-scale renewables. The current incentives, known as “net energy metering,” compensate local producers for surplus energy fed back into the grid with a full retail credit, rather than a less-expensive wholesale or “avoided cost” rate.
Ratepayer advocates believe this full retail credit is a subsidy for wealthy homeowners who disproportionately have rooftop solar, while some environmental and solar groups argue they are a necessary tool to achieve California’s ambitious climate agenda and promote economic growth.
We’ll hear a debate tonight on the state’s approach to subsidizing this type of renewable energy tonight on State of the Bay at 6pm PT. Joining us will be:
- Severin Borenstein, Director of the Energy Institute at Haas School of Business
- Loretta Lynch, former President of the California Public Utilities Commission
Plus, as the Bay Area starts to emerge from the pandemic, will hunger finally subside? Tanis Crosby, Executive Director of the San Francisco Marin Food Bank, we’ll give us the latest.
And finally, we’ll hear from State of the Bay frequent contributor Lara Bazelon, Director of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law, about her new novel, “A Good Mother.”
Tune in tonight at 6pm PT on KALW 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. Call 866-798-TALK with questions during the show!
If you follow the press releases of some traditional automakers these days, you might think they are fully committed to an all-electric vehicle future. Since the election of President Biden, companies like General Motors and Ford for example have pledged billions toward electrifying their entire lineup of vehicles.
Yet sales data, company behavior, and policy advocacy reveal a different story. They show a legacy auto industry struggling to compete in a future of all-electric vehicles, with EV products that are falling behind industry-leader Tesla and a generally weak commitment to the needed policies and infrastructure investment.
First, look at the sales data. Legacy automakers badly trail Tesla, both in California and nationwide. As a snapshot in California during the first quarter of 2021, as compiled from state agency data by the nonprofit Veloz, Tesla’s Model Y (see photo below) was the top-selling electric vehicle model in the state at 15,265 units sold, with the Model 3 second at 14,536. Next up is the Chevrolet Bolt EV, a vehicle that has remained virtually unimproved since its debut four years ago (though slated to get a minor upgrade this year), at a distant third with 5,252 units sold. The plug-in hybrid (not a true all-electric model) Toyota Prius Prime was fourth at 4,081 sales.
Nationwide, the sales gap is just as stark, according to Car and Driver. The Model Y was again the number one selling EV at 33,629 units in first quarter 2021, more than all other non-Tesla EVs combined. Next was Tesla’s Model 3 at 23,110 units. The Chevy Bolt came in a distant third again at 9,025 units, with the newcomer Ford Mustang Mach-E fourth at 6,614 units sold. Next was Tesla’s Model X at 5,106 (potentially seeing a demand pause ahead of an anticipated update), Audi e-tron and e-tron Sportback at 4,324, and then the Tesla Model S at 4,155 (also ahead of an update and range boost). Notably, the once market-leading EV Nissan Leaf, which like the Bolt has seen little improvement in the decade since it was introduced, clocked in at just 2,925 units sold.
Why are legacy automakers so far behind Tesla in this crucial new technology? Unfortunately, their products and technology are not keeping up with Tesla, though they do tend to have superior reliability and build quality. Most of the traditional automakers’ EV products have shorter range on a single charge, slower charging, and more limited access to EV charging stations. And yet some of these vehicles are actually priced higher than lower-priced Tesla’s, with the companies relying instead on continued access to federal EV tax credits, which have reached their limit for Tesla buyers.
By contrast, Tesla’s leadership had the vision and commitment early on to develop electric vehicle products that consumers want, while investing aggressively in electric vehicle infrastructure and battery and charging technology innovation. For example, Tesla paid for their high-powered Supercharger stations as loss leaders to help sell the vehicles, recognizing that concern over limited access to public charging was a major issue for potential customers. And these Supercharger stations can typically charge the vehicles at a much faster rate than what most non-Tesla EVs can handle.
Despite the press releases on EVs, legacy automakers continue to invest heavily in manufacturing and selling large gas-guzzling SUVs. As General Motors CEO Mary Barra commented recently via Reuters:
Barra added the No. 1 U.S. automaker was focused on maximizing production of high-demand vehicles like the full-sized Chevrolet Silverado pickup, and GMC Yukon, Chevy Suburban and Cadillac Escalade SUVs.
Those polluting trucks and SUVs are a far cry from the all-electric, clean future Barra promises to other audiences. And on infrastructure, these automakers have largely refused to help pay for the charging stations needed to compete in this new field to sell their vehicles, instead relying on third parties and public subsidies.
The companies’ behavior on policy similarly mirrors this weak commitment to EVs. Most if not all traditional automakers have resisted zero emission vehicles policies from the get-go, including fighting California’s landmark zero-emission vehicle mandate from its inception in the 1990s. Up until the most recent presidential election, companies like General Motors and Toyota were eager to side with Trump Administration’s attempted rollbacks of national clean vehicle policy (though notably Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW sided with California). That rollback (now stopped by Biden) would have been a significant setback to the pace of vehicle electrification and climate policy in this country.
But is it all doom and gloom for these companies? Yes and no. Some may now be so far behind on electrification that they might eventually go the way of Kodak and Radio Shack, as hard as it may be to believe now. Others are rapidly trying to pivot and adapt. For example, Volkswagen, after getting caught cheating on its vehicle emissions data, has now been forced to develop new EV product lines, and its new ID 4 crossover vehicle may hold some promise. Other new models, including electric trucks, may also soon prove popular.
But it’s difficult to imagine where the U.S. and the broader electric vehicle industry would be on transportation electrification without Tesla. If not for Tesla, EV sales would be paltry. Legacy companies would likely continue to build the bare-minimum “compliance” cars needed to meet California’s zero-emission vehicle mandate. Automakers would probably still be complaining that EVs are unrealistic, infeasible and not want consumers want. As a result, it would be impossible to meet long-term climate goals, given how much the transportation sector contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Fortunately, we’re in a better place now with electric vehicles. Plug-in electric vehicles constituted 9 percent of new car sales in California, the largest EV market in the U.S., with approximately half of nationwide sales (see chart below). It’s decent progress toward a statewide goal of 100% zero-emission vehicles sales by 2035. By comparison, 20% of new car sales in China’s major cities are plug-in vehicles, as Bloomberg reported, with the European Union as a whole at 6.7% market share in 2020, projected to rise to 8.5% this year, per Forbes.
Thanks to this progress, EVs have now broken into the mainstream, providing the credibility to underpin Biden’s new infrastructure plan for boosting them, which includes significant new subsidies and incentives for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.
But we’ll need many companies to get in on vehicle electrification, including the legacy automakers, both to provide sufficient products for the market and also ensure competition to keep prices low and encourage innovation. At this rate, it’s an open question whether traditional automakers can rebound for the long haul, or if the automakers of the future will instead come from new EV players that follow in Tesla’s footsteps.
Because while the electrification of vehicles is inevitable, the future of the auto industry is decidedly not.
President Biden yesterday unveiled his “infrastructure” plan, but it’s really his best and greatest shot to address climate change. I’ll be speaking about the plan and what it means for the climate at 10:20am PT on KQED’s Forum. You can also hear my thoughts on the electric vehicle charging aspect of the plan on yesterday’s NPR Marketplace.
The proposal calls for transformational investments in rail, bridges, and road repair, along with a decarbonized electricity grid, incentives for electric vehicles, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and home energy retrofits, among other goals. The plan even seeks to end single-family zoning.
Tune in this morning to hear more!
All-electric buildings may soon become the norm, bringing benefits for indoor air quality, public safety, and greenhouse gas emissions. The technology has greatly improved to make this transition feasible: electric heat pumps, electric water heaters and induction cooktop appliances are widely available and becoming increasingly affordable.
But as communities phase out natural gas in buildings, who will be left paying for the existing natural gas infrastructure? For those unable to make the transition, costs will go up. As a result, states like California have an urgent need to develop a strategy for building decarbonization, as our January Berkeley/UCLA Law report on this subject described.
In a new op-ed published yesterday by CalMatters, Ted Lamm and I argue for such a strategy:
Policymakers should begin with high-priority communities, targeting incentives and programs for lower-income communities with the least financial resources and the most to gain from improved air quality; areas with new construction and/or aging gas infrastructure already in need of replacement; communities with an expressed willingness to transition; and areas rebuilding from wildfire damage.
This strategy should include a firm timeline for the transition to complete electrification, in order to limit the risk of developing stranded assets in the natural gas distribution network. Otherwise, these assets could increase costs for a shrinking group of customers who can’t afford to make the switch quickly and could undermine the long-term viability of utility investments and system maintenance.
State leaders should also develop a structured plan for a just transition for gas system workers, including funding and retraining support in fields that pay sustainable wages.
And for more discussion on the topic, here is a recording of a webinar that Berkeley / UCLA Law hosted last month with Michael Colvin of Environmental Defense Fund, California Public Utilities Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen, and Abigail Solis of Self Help Enterprises.
