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Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. Alan Ohnsman via Forbes C alifornia has been ground zero for the U.
S. shift to zero-emission vehicles since the early 2000s, and the Golden State’s push to build up a new market for non-polluting trucks seemed well on its way last year. That was thanks to a law mandating a phaseout of diesel-powered big rigs by the 2030s–along with generous state incentives.
By the end of 2024, hundreds of battery- and hydrogen-powered semis were hauling loads between the sprawling Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and inland warehouses and distribution centers, creating new opportunities for established and startup truckmakers. Though only a small portion of the 15,000 or so trucks working the port drayage business were electrified, the number was growing and more trucking firms were trying to figure out how to add them to their fleets. But that’s changing this year as California regulators are no longer seeking a Trump Administration waiver to continue its efforts, given the likelihood it would be rejected.
That’s a reasonable conclusion as the previous Trump Administration also worked to take away California’s authority to set air pollution rules that are tougher than those for the nation overall. But many trucking companies, especially in Southern California, aren’t celebrating the change because they’ve already invested heavily in the cleaner new models. “I feel like policymakers make these policies, but I have the hard job, right? I'm the one that has to actually make it a reality,” Jennie Abarca, owner of King Fio Trucking in Long Beach, told LAist .
California’s change is likely to have a financial impact on her company, but it also means the push to shift the heaviest, dirtiest vehicles on the road to powertrains that don’t emit CO2 or tailpipe exhaust is going to take a lot longer than seemed to be the case six months ago. JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES Tesla is in a world of hurt. Sales in California, its main market in the U.
S., plummeted 31% in January from a year ago. European numbers are even worse, dropping 43% in the year’s first two months.
And in China, by far its most important market for profitability, Tesla sales crashed 29% through February. Its stock has tanked, dropping 34% this year. A backlash has grown against part-time CEO Elon Musk–who also leads five other companies–with protests at Tesla stores and the torching of vehicles as he carries out a clumsy attempt to slash government workers and spending as Trump's DOGE master.
But things are about to get worse. Falling sales indicate that the company's financial health is fundamentally faltering as competitors are surging, particularly rival BYD. The Chinese EV and battery maker for the first time topped Tesla in revenue in 2024 and is on pace to leave it in the dust as the global leader in electric vehicle sales this year.
Tesla’s brand is becoming toxic in California, which has nurtured it since the Roadster arrived in 2008. It’s even failing on the technology front, with BYD outpacing it with a super-fast charging battery system and Waymo dominating in self-driving cars, which Musk has bet the company on. The worst by far, though, is what’s happening to Tesla in China, where it opened its Shanghai plant in 2019.
That plant, the first in China wholly owned by a foreign carmaker, marked a turning point for Tesla, fueling a massive sales spike and pushing it into the black consistently thanks to low-cost Chinese labor, parts and logistics. But a decline in that market, where Tesla has seen consistent growth up until this year, threatens to narrow its already shrinking profit margins. A big reason for slower sales: China’s domestic EV companies are starting to beat Tesla on, well, everything.
Read more here OceanWell Desalination has a lot of challenges–high cost, high energy needs and an impact on the ocean environment. Do you categorize what OceanWell is doing as desalination? We call it water harvesting, and there’s a significant difference between what we do and what traditional desalination does. The way that works is to take water from the top of the ocean, which is very biologically active.
It then brings it ashore and filters it so that it gets all of the organic matter out of it. But in doing so, the [aquatic life] mortality is kind of high. It then has to use big electric pumps to pressurize that water to 700 or 800 pounds per square inch, and uses a lot of energy in doing that.
Because they've spent so much on the energy, you need to get as much fresh water wrung out of there as possible to pay for it. And that results in the creation of a lot of brine, usually in the 40% to 50% range. You've got a doubly salty brine that has to go back in the ocean and be dispersed in some manner.
It does create ecological problems. Our approach is passive. It’s driven by natural pressure, so we don't have big pumps.
And we’re in an area of the ocean where there is almost no light. So since there isn't any light, there isn’t any algae, and there's no beginning of the food chain, and there's no oxygen to speak of. It's a very low oxygen part of the ocean, a very clean part of the ocean.
That’s because you plan to operate at a much lower depth of the ocean? How far down are you setting up your pods? Yes, it’s 400 to 500 meters. It’s really not a popular place for life at all. What will the system look like when installed? We have an anchor that holds everything in place.
That's the only thing that touches the sea floor with each one of the pods. They're buoyant and above the sea floor, far enough so that they're not disturbing any of the sea floor life. And since we're using the natural pressure of the water, the hydrostatic pressure, as it's called, which is really just the weight of the water above us, we don't need to pressurize it.
It's already pressurized, and there's as much of it as we need. The benefit of that is that we don't have to squeeze hard to get a lot of water out. We just take a little bit of water as it goes by, so the fresh water ends up where we can then pump it to shore.
One of our advantages is it will be in a farm [of pods]. It will be in a particular location that's served by a single pipeline that goes to shore and a single umbilical, as it's called, that brings the power to the pump that gets the water to shore. That's where our energy use really is, just getting it up 400 to 500 meters and to shore.
And each one of the pods is capable of producing a million gallons per day. And we are able then to scale this easily by simply adding more pods to the pipeline. You’re testing the system at a reservoir near Los Angeles.
Your next step is an ocean-based pilot. If that goes well, when is OceanWell’s first commercial deployment? Our plan, and we're on track to hit it, is to be commercializable at the end of three years. That's something that’s close enough that investors can get a sense for it.
EPA offers a way to avoid clean-air rules: send an email to Trump. Referring to a little-known provision, it said power plants and others could write to seek exemptions to mercury and other restrictions and that “the president will make a decision” ( New York Times ) There's no rulebook for deep-sea mining. The Metals Company and others want to push forward anyway ( NPR ) The U.
S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by 21 young people to revive a novel lawsuit claiming the U.S.
government's energy policies violate their rights to be protected from climate change ( Reuters ) 6 tips for planning sustainable vacations: The ultimate guide ( Forbes ) Startups that set out to fix the climate are now talking about jet fighters. Companies that once touted the green benefits of their work are pivoting to defense and AI ( Wall Street Journal ) NIH ends future funding to study the health effects of climate change. One climate health expert said the directive would have a “devastating” impact on much-needed research ( Pro Publica ) Trump-administration policy changes have cut or delayed 50,265 clean energy jobs, according to the advocacy group Climate Power.
It estimates that more than $56 billion in clean energy investments have been scrapped or stalled in the U.S. since November 2024 ( Semafor ).
