To start off today I want to share with you some information that may be of great interest to you or someone you know. Many of you know that my wife Debbie has asthma. For some time now we have been receiving from Sierra Club text messages when the air quality is dangerous for her so she can act accordingly…stay inside and use air conditioning and filters. Here’s the link where you can sign up for this service or pass it on to others.
https://coal.sierraclub.org/the-problem/sign-mobile-air-alerts
We’ll send you a text message any time the EPA issues a smog warning within 50 miles of your zip code. We’ll also send you no more than four messages each month from the Sierra Club.
You can unsubscribe from Sierra Club mobile air alerts by replying STOP to any message. Message and data rates may apply.
Tell your friends and family!
Invite your friends and family to receive the alerts, too!
Now on to today’s main topic. You know I continuously say, “follow the money”. And it is money, profits, that are going to fuel the increasingly rapid transformation of our economy and thus our society to a carbon free future at exponentially faster speed. Don’t buy the baloney that it is going to take decades. Ten years from now you’re going to look back on now and say, yes, of course, this transformation was obvious. Why was I so blind not to see it happening. Well, by paying attention to what I send you you won’t have to say that. You’ll be ahead of the game.
I’ve often posted about how the insurance and finance business is pushing the transformation by increasingly declining to insure and/or finance fossil fuel projects or entities and properties. Regulations, of course, are also incentivizing change. Profits for the businesses that are building the fossil free economy are thriving while those that aren’t making the investments to survive in a fossil free world are or will be devastated eventually if not already.
And then there’s this from E&E News on January 25th…
Amazon Says it Might Quit Groups ‘Not Aligned’ on Climate
“Amazon is committed to taking bold actions to address climate change,” the spokesperson wrote. “Amazon has a strong record of supporting policies that advance climate solutions at all levels, and our lobbying and advocacy activities are tightly aligned with the Paris Agreement goals.”
Amazon is by no means perfect in its own operations or in forcing those with whom it does business with to be fossil free. BUT, it is clearly moving in that direction. When organizations like Amazon or Walmart and other huge retailers force their suppliers to change, well, people listen. What choice do they have? Shareholder demands and social pressure are accelerating these behaviors and making it impossible NOT to change. Buyers will have little choice but to buy products and services from fossil free companies and companies will have little choice if the intend to get financing, insurance or sell in the mass market without changing.
On January 27th Axios published this article…
Global Spending on Energy Transition Nears $1 trillion
https://www.axios.com/global-spending-energy-transition-1-trillion-cbc30984-1a8d-4031-9f85-24991e67e637.html?mc_cid=c86d8e8586&mc_eid=8f4760cc57
Why it matters: This report provides a crucial snapshot of where public and private sector money is helping to shift economies away from their reliance on fossil fuels and meet climate goals.
The big picture: The report shows that global energy investment for the deployment of clean energy totaled $755 billion last year, up from $595 billion in 2020, while finance for new climate tech came to $165 billion…
“We are moving in the right direction, we are accelerating. And yet there’s a huge mountain to climb very shortly actually to get on track.”
And we’re increasingly climbing that mountain. Just take the auto industry. Each week reveals increasing commitments and faster time frames to all electric products. Two major factors in this are competition and social pressure. Look at the headlines from just this week. First from Bloomberg Hyperdrive on January 27th.
Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi presented a joint 23 billion-euro ($26 billion) electrification plan on Thursday as the struggling Franco-Japanese auto alliance tries to prove it’s still a force to reckon with.
The push entails rolling out 35 new battery-powered cars by the end of the decade
And concludes with this.
Musk has turned Tesla into the world’s most valuable automaker and made inroads in Europe, where the Model 3 overtook the Renault Zoe as the best-selling EV last year. VW and Toyota have laid out plans to splurge a combined $170 billion over the coming years to preserve their claim on an industry they’ve dominated for decades. Tech giants including Apple and Google are working on autonomous-driving technology as they try to disrupt the sector.
I’ve highlighted in red the passage above to reiterate the competitive pressure the auto manufacturers are under to be the premier EV auto company so as to have a stake in the future. Here’s more evidence of how fast, much faster than anticipated by most, the auto industry is moving to all EVs. First, GM continues to step up its commitment. It seem like every week they announce some new development in this regard. This from E&E News January 25th.
GM to Invest $7B in Electric Vehicle Plants
General Motors Co. today announced it will invest $7 billion to build a new electric vehicle battery factory in Michigan and convert an existing plant outside Detroit.
The auto giant plans to produce 600,000 electric vehicles a year by 2025, and the investment should create 4,000 jobs, the company said.
“We have said we aim to be the market leader in EVs by middecade, and today’s news is a big step forward to achieving that goal,” said GM CEO Mary Barra
Even Lamborghini is getting in on the act.
Bloomberg Green 12/22/2022
Lamborghini to Bid Farewell to Pure Combustion Cars This Year
Lamborghini is gearing up for the final lap of combustion engines powering coveted models like the Aventador as the sports-car maker switches its lineup to plug-in hybrids.
The Volkswagen AG brand with the track-focused Aventador, Huracan and Urus SUV models will unveil its first production car with a plug next year before electrifying its full offering by 2024.
Some dates in history become legendary. Like December 2, 1942 when under Stag Field at the University of Chicago Enrico Fermi and a group of other scientists he led conducted the first man made self-sustaining controlled nuclear chain reaction. The Manhattan Project changed the world. You probably missed this huge development that could signal the real beginning of a paradigm shift in our future. From E&E News on January 27th,
DOE Lab Achieves Key Milestone for Fusion Energy
Scientists at a Department of Energy national laboratory are reporting a significant milestone in their pursuit of the distant quest to generate limitless, carbon-free electricity from fusion energy reactors.
The researchers at DOE’s National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used a barrage of beams from the world’s most powerful laser to fuse hydrogen atoms together in a “burning plasma” reaction — a key threshold in reaching carbon-free fusion. They reported details in the journal Nature Physics this week, following a series of experiments in 2020 and last year that achieved more powerful sustained reactions, if only for fractions of a second.
“In these experiments we achieved, for the first time in any fusion research facility, a burning plasma state where more fusion energy is emitted from the fuel than was required to initiate the fusion reactions, or the amount of work done on the fuel,” physicist Annie Kritcher said in a statement from the national laboratory.
I’ll end with that bit of astonishing news and see what this next week brings. I am continually surprised and astonished at how increasingly faster and faster development in some many diverse fields are unfolding. I am having a hard time keeping you informed of them all!
