CLEE and the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) are pleased to release today the new report “Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply: Priorities to Improve the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain.” The report identifies key challenges and solutions to ensure battery supply chain sustainability through a multi-stakeholder approach, based on our outreach to experts in the field.
The global transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to battery electric vehicles (EVs) will require the production of hundreds of millions of batteries. This massive deployment frequently raises questions from the general public and critics alike about the sustainability of the battery supply chain, from mining impacts to vehicle carbon emissions.
To address these questions, CLEE and NRGI are conducting a stakeholder-led research initiative focused on identifying strategies to improve sustainability and governance across the EV battery supply chain. CLEE and NRGI convened leaders from across the mining, battery manufacturing, automaker, and governance observer/advocate sectors, to develop policy and industry responses to human rights, governance, environmental, and other risks facing the supply chain.
“Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply” identifies the following key challenges to ensuring battery supply chain sustainability:
- Lack of coordinated action, accountability, and access to information across the supply chain hinder sustainability efforts
- Inadequate coordination and data sharing across multiple supply chain standards limit adherence
- Regulatory and logistical barriers inhibit battery life extension, reuse, and recycling
The report recommends the following priority responses that industry, government and nonprofit leaders could take to address these challenges:
- Industry leaders could strengthen mechanisms to improve data transparency and promote neutral and reliable information-sharing to level the playing field between actors across the supply chain and between governments and companies
- Industry leaders and third-party observers could ensure greater application of supply chain sustainability best practices by defining and categorizing existing standards and initiatives to develop essential criteria, facilitate comparison and equivalency, and streamline adherence for each segment of the supply chain
- Governments and industry leaders could create new incentives for supply chain actors to participate in and adhere to existing standards and initiatives, which may include sustainability labeling and certification initiatives
- Industry leaders could design batteries proactively for disassembly (enabling recycling and reuse), and industry leaders and governments could collaborate to build regional infrastructure for battery recycling and transportation and create regulatory certainty for recycling
We hope the responses to the supply chain challenges outlined in this report will provide guidance on the initial actions stakeholders can take to make this broader vision of implementation a reality, ensuring a more robust future for communities around the globe as well as for all-important electric vehicle adoption to meet climate change goals.
To learn more about this issue and the new report, join our 9am PT / Noon ET webinar today, featuring:
- Patrick Heller, Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) & Advisor, Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI)
- Michael Maten, Automotive Public Policy, Electrification, Portfolio Planning and Strategy, General Motors
- Daniel Mulé, Senior Policy Advisor for Tax and Extractive Industries, Oxfam
- Payal Sampat, Mining Program Director, Earthworks
You can register for the webinar; read our recent FAQ on EV batteries for more information on current supply chain impacts on human rights, climate change and the local environments; and download the new report “Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply: Priorities to Improve the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain.”
Building a low-carbon economy will rely on a transition from gasoline-powered automobiles to electric vehicles, which will require a significant increase in production of component minerals. Extracting and refining these minerals, like cobalt and lithium, can often entail challenges related to governance, human rights, and environmental quality in host countries.
To help launch a forthcoming CLEE and Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) report on this topic, join our upcoming webinar on Thursday, July 23rd, at 9am PT/noon ET/6pm CET. Panelists will discuss mechanisms to address sustainability concerns and build a better supply chain for this key emission reduction technology, as well as summarize findings from the new report.
Speakers include:
- Patrick Heller, Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) & Advisor, Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI)
- Michael Maten, Automotive Public Policy, Electrification, Portfolio Planning and Strategy, General Motors
- Daniel Mulé, Senior Policy Advisor for Tax and Extractive Industries, Oxfam
- Payal Sampat, Mining Program Director, Earthworks
You can register here and read our recent FAQ on EV batteries for more information on current supply chain impacts on human rights, climate change and the local environments.
Has the time come for reparations for slavery? Tonight on City Visions on 91.7 FM KALW San Francisco at 6pm, we’ll explore the history of the reparations movement in the United States and discuss what can be done to bridge the racial wealth divide.
Joining us will be:
- Angela Glover Blackwell, founder in residence of PolicyLink; co-author of the June New York Times Op-Ed “Banks Should Face History and Pay Reparations”
- Dr. Charles Henry, professor emeritus of African American Studies at the UC Berkeley; author of “Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations”
- Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, associate professor in the Department of History at UC Berkeley ; author of “They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South”
We’ll also get the latest on COVID in the Bay Area, with:
- Erin Allday, health reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
- Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor and infectious disease specialist, UCSF Medical School
Call us during the show at 6pm with your questions at 866-798-TALK or send an email to cityvisions@kalw.org. We’re airing on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco and streaming live. Hope you can join us!
Note: this post is co-authored with Ted Lamm.
California’s electrical grid is at the center of our fight against climate change, with aggressive goals to decarbonize through renewable energy. But the grid is at risk as climate impacts become more severe, particularly from worsening wildfires. To help modernize the grid to be cleaner and more resilient, the state will need deployment of clean technologies such as distributed renewable generation, microgrids, energy storage, building energy management, and vehicle-grid integration.
Part of the vulnerability of the grid stems from its role in exacerbating climate impacts. Most prominently, power lines sparked many of the record-setting wildfires of 2017 and 2018, including the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise. To minimize this threat during high-risk weather conditions, California electric utilities and energy regulators have begun to implement preemptive power shutoffs. In 2019, widespread PSPS events likely contributed to a safer wildfire season, but the days-long shutoffs also left some vulnerable communities and residents without access to essential health and safety services.
At the same time, many residents turn to fossil-fuel backup generators during grid shutoffs, which both polluting (in terms of both greenhouse gases and locally harmful air pollutants) and unaffordable for many Californians. But the alternative—deploying clean, resilient distributed resources, such as home batteries, community solar, or microgrids—will require significant policy and financial support for grid managers, electric utilities, community choice aggregators, and local governments.
To address this need, CLEE and UCLA’s Emmett Institute convened a group of California state energy regulators, local government leaders, grid experts, and clean energy advocates for a convening on California’s electrical grid of the future. CLEE and Emmett are today releasing a new report, Clean and Resilient, based on this expert group’s findings.
The report highlights the top policy solutions the group identified to address the financial, regulatory, and data barriers to clean, resilient grid deployment, including:
- Promoting performance-based regulation at the California Public Utilities Commission, to ensure that the public benefits and necessity of investments in reliable, carbon-free technology are fully accounted for.
- Reforming grid interconnection processes (including CPUC Rules 2 and 21) to create a presumption in favor of new microgrids and other distributed technologies and to equitably share the cost of associated grid upgrades.
- Initiating a new energy data collection and management process at the California Energy Commission to ensure communities, technology providers, and regulators have access to the data that will drive the grid of the future.
You can access the report and its full set of policy recommendations here. Ultimately, developing the clean and resilient electrical grid California needs will rely on a suite of parallel initiatives, from building and vehicle electrification to advanced data and communications development, each of which will require additional support. Given the range of these interconnected efforts, and the urgency of our statewide need for a safe, reliable grid, developing coordinated policy processes to promote them is becoming increasingly essential.
“Defund the Police” by Taymaz Valley, used under CC license, resized and cropped
As protests against racial injustice and police violence continue across the country, Bay Area cities are now considering measures to reform, defund or even dismantle their police forces.
But what will it take to build trust between our communities and law enforcement? Tonight on City Visions on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco at 6pm (our new time and back to Monday evening), I’ll discuss these efforts with:
- Matthew Barge, police practices and civil rights expert at 21CP Solutions; senior consultant with the Policing Project at N.Y.U. School of Law
- Cat Brooks, activist and cofounder of Anti-Police Terror Project; executive director of Justice Teams Network
- Malia M. Cohen, member of the California State Board of Equalization; former president of the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco
We’ll also get an update on the coronavirus pandemic with:
- Erin Allday, health reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
- Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor and infectious disease specialist, UCSF Medical School
And finally we’ll chat with Oakland artist Oree Originol, a visual artist and activist and creator of “Justice For Our Lives” portrait series, depicting individuals killed by police.
Call us during the show with your questions at 866-798-TALK or send an email to cityvisions@kalw.org. We’re airing on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco and streaming live. Hope you can join us!
As the United States grapples with racism and police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, environmentalists need not be bystanders in the debate over solutions. Environmentalism has multiple opportunities to help address institutional racism, and few issues cross cut racism and environmentalism more than housing policy.
Environmentally, housing policy that encourages urban development is crucial to reducing emissions from automobiles through decreased commute times and car dependency, as well as limiting development pressure on open space and agricultural land. And from a racial and economic justice perspective, more inclusive housing policy is vital to undoing pervasive residential segregation in America today.
While the Civil Rights movement and the resulting laws helped make explicit racism illegal in housing, predominantly white local governments and their allies can still legally practice housing racism through restrictive local zoning and permitting processes. As Michael C. Lens and Paavo Monkkonen from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs documented in a recent study, local restrictions on housing density and complex housing approval processes are highly correlated with wealthy residents walling themselves off from those with diverse incomes and of different races. And the more hands-off a state government is on housing policy in favor of “local control,” the more segregated the state will be.
You can see this dynamic in stark terms in the San Francisco Bay Area. UC Berkeley researchers Stephen Menendian and Samir Gambhir comprehensively mapped racial demographics throughout the region, and found that whites are the most segregated racial group in the region. Although whites are just under 40 percent of the Bay Area’s population, 184 of 1582 census tracts are more than 75 percent white, with 359 tracts more than 66 percent white and 663 tracts more than 50 percent white (see map below). Contra Costa County alone in the East Bay features some of the most racially segregated white neighborhoods in the entire Bay Area: Walnut Creek (63 percent white) and Martinez (69 percent white), with Lafayette at 77 percent white (a city that was a recent New York Times poster child for exclusionary local land use policies).
The Los Angeles metro area fared no better, as the 10th most segregated metropolitan area in the country, according to one index.
So what can be done to address this fundamental form of racial segregation? Simply put, the state and federal government need to intervene to ensure that local governments cannot practice racially and economically exclusionary local zoning. By limiting the number of apartment buildings and affordable homes that are built in their communities, high-income whites are limiting racial diversity in their communities, while sending a message to people of color with incomes to afford to live in these areas that they are not welcome.
Earlier this year, the California State Senate debated a bill (SB 50 by Sen. Wiener) that would have accomplished just that: making it illegal for high-income areas to prevent apartment buildings and affordable homes near major transit. Yet a majority of state senators — many from these segregated, high-income areas, including Contra Costa, Malibu, West LA, and Silicon Valley — voted against it.
If Black Lives Matter, then surely black neighbors should too. California, like many other states around this nation, needs to address this root cause of segregation — to achieve outcomes of both environmental sustainability and racial justice.
Willie K was more than just a Hawaiian musician. The Maui singer/songwriter and ukulele/guitar master was a world-class artist, with lightning-fast guitar chops, an amazing vocal range, a repertoire that covered everything from Israeli folk tunes to Prince to opera, and a joyful performer who loved to involve the crowd.
He passed away this week at the age of 59, after a two-year battle with cancer. To get a flavor of his music for those unfamiliar, his Hawaiian-themed rendition of Star Spangled Banner is a classic on par with Whitney Houston’s 1991 version (followed by the Hawaiian national anthem):
Overall, his upbeat, rock and reggae-inspired Hawaiian music is a staple of the genre, from the danceable Katchi Katchi Music Makawao to the melodic You Ku’uipo [sweetheart].
Of the many clips of his live performances available on-line, his version of Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” (written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg) stands out. The Hawaiianized version of this song by the late Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (Bruddah Iz) was already internationally known. But Willie K remade it his own way, with a jazzy, high-energy, soulful take in dialogue with the audience. Topping it off, he performed it by the State Capitol in Honolulu at an event for marriage equality:
As they say in the Islands, rest in aloha Willie K. He leaves a musical legacy that will be enjoyed for generations to come.
What can be done to keep COVID-19 out of California’s prisons? On tonight’s City Visions on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco, we look at these high-risk environments, where social distancing is virtually impossible. We’ll hear from doctors on the front lines of this effort.
At the top of the hour, we’ll have a coronavirus update from health and medical experts, and we’ll also hear about how one local theater company, ACT, is handling what it’s calling this “long intermission.”
Our guests include:
- San Francisco Chronicle reporter Erin Allday and USCF’s Dr. Peter Chin-Hong.
- COVID-19 and prisons expert Dr. Alison Pachynksi, Head of Internal Medicine at San Quentin Prison; Adnan Khan, Executive Director of Re:Store Justice; and Dr. Brie Williams, Founder of AMEND at UCSF.
- American Conservatory Theater performance of Rocky Horror Picture Show (prerecorded) and conversation with Pam Mackinnon, Artistic Director of ACT (donate here to support Theatre Bay Area).
Call us during the show with your questions at 866-798-TALK or send an email to cityvisions@kalw.org. We’re airing on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco and streaming live.
Why is California such an environmental leader? The state is famous for its natural beauty and legacy of environmental activism. Major environmental organizations like the Sierra Club started in the state, the U.S. Clean Air Act basically started in California, and more recently, the companies developing climate-fighting technologies, from Tesla to SunPower, along with leading climate investors, are all based here.
David Vogel, professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Department of Political Science, seeks to answer that question in his 2018 book from Princeton University Press, California Greenin’: How The Golden State Became An Environmental Leader.
I’m admittedly delayed in both reading and reviewing it, but for anyone interested in, involved with, or curious about California’s environmental legacy and “secret sauce” to motivate action, the book is a useful and enjoyable read.
At its core, California Greenin’ is a history of some of the big environmental fights in the state’s history, many of which I referenced in my post last week on the Top 10 worst environmental decisions in California. Vogel covers the fights over gold mining pollution, sequoia and redwood clear-cutting, oil exploration along the coast, water pollution, smog in Los Angeles, and energy efficiency and climate change. That’s because out of these tragedies and destruction came lasting environmental action.
The most fascinating insight of the book is that this environmental protection was successful only when citizen activists found allies in the business community. For example, agricultural interests successfully opposed hydraulic gold mining because of runoff despoiled their lands and business. Realtors and other real estate interests wanted action to decrease smog in Los Angeles and oil exploration along the coast, which was depressing property values. And tourist businesses wanted to preserve natural resources in national parks, such as the giant sequoias.
In some cases, no natural alliance between citizens and businesses existed, such as with the case of California’s extreme water infrastructure, which has destroyed wetlands and ecosystems to deliver water to agricultural interests and cities. Without any specific industries harmed by this development, no real mobilization occurred to fight it.
Of course, other factors contribute to California’s environmental successes, such as a populace attracted to the state by its beauty and therefore willing to vote and fight to preserve it, and strong expertise in state government to implement environmental programs. Vogel convincingly details these factors.
The book is enjoyable to read largely because it traces environmental conflicts with heroes and villains and largely positive outcomes (my only quibble is that he misspelled the last name of my cousin Sarah Elkind in quoting her work at San Diego State University). It’s heavy on the history and policy, without bogging down in too many details or theories.
California Greenin’ ultimately leaves an important message for today’s environmental fights: coalitions, particularly with the business community, and strong leadership can mobilize long-lasting action to protect the environment. In California, the proof is the natural beauty saved from destruction.
It might seem obvious that phasing out oil and gas production in California would benefit the climate. But the reality is much more complicated, in terms of emissions, economics and even geopolitics.
CLEE just released the report Legal Grounds with policy options to reduce in-state production, but the question of how much a phase out would benefit the climate was mostly beyond the scope of our analysis (which we’ll be discussing in more detail on a free webinar on Tuesday, May 12th, at 11am). However, it’s a question worth examining in more detail.
The challenge is that demand for fossil fuels in the state will remain for the foreseeable future, even if local production ceases. If we stop producing oil here, we’ll start importing more from elsewhere.
While California’s oil demand is already decreasing due to market and policy factors, until consumers completely transition to zero-emission vehicles and find alternatives to petroleum-based products like plastic and asphalt — and until refineries in the state stop exporting to markets around the Pacific — the supply will still find its way to the state. If that oil comes from out-of-state sources, the carbon footprint may even be higher than if California produced it domestically due to shipping emissions.
However, economic theory indicates that a decrease in California production will mean some decrease in consumption, as global prices will rise slightly from reduced overall supply. One study indicated it could lead to global emission reductions of 8 to 24 million tons of CO2 per year. And any oil left in the ground is oil not burned in the long run, meeting one of the highest priorities of climate activists. So a California phase-out could help avoid some emissions, though the rate is unclear.
What about the political implications of phasing out oil and gas consumption for climate policy? One argument is that a phase-out here might inspire other jurisdictions to follow suit. As most climate models indicate that some percentage of fossil fuels will have to remain untapped as an imperative for avoiding the worst of climate change, why not start in California, a state committed to climate action? It might be hard to imagine that top oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran (or other U.S. states) would be so inspired, but perhaps places like Norway or Colorado might be more politically open to it. And if the oil industry in California phased out, its lobbying power might also wane, allowing the state to pursue more aggressive policies on the demand side.
The economic impacts of a phase-out for climate policy are also complicated. As Severin Borenstein at UC Berkeley Energy Institute at Haas blogged in 2018, a phase-out in California would mean slightly higher worldwide oil prices, which would in turn enrich the major oil producing companies and countries who are still providing supply. As he summarized:
One could think of this as similar to a very small worldwide carbon tax, except in this case the revenue is not rebated to the population as a whole or used to reduce other taxes, but rather handed to those who own and control the world’s oil production
But there is one clear benefit from phasing out in-state oil and gas production in California: improved health and safety of surrounding communities. Scientists have linked drilling for oil and gas to numerous public health challenges, including increased rates of asthma, cancer, and other health threats. And much of the drilling in California occurs in or near residents of disadvantaged communities, adding to the urgency.
Another certainty is that California is firmly committed to reducing demand for fossil fuels, through boosting zero-emission vehicles, requiring lower-carbon fuels, and pricing carbon through cap and trade. As this activity increases, it will put pressure for corresponding reductions on the supply side, regardless of any other uncertainties involved.
So while the benefits of a phase-out of California production may be somewhat unclear in terms of avoided carbon emissions, the health and safety value is clear. California’s ability to manage the process with a careful, just transition could demonstrate a viable path forward for this long-term climate effort.
