Department of Energy chief says ‘our hair should be on fire’ after summer of widespread climate disasters

Published

3 years ago

September 22, 2021

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U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks about the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack shut down during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, May 11, 2021.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Climate change became a personal event for a third of Americans this summer, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy Jennifer Granholm said on Wednesday.

“Our hair should be on fire,” Granholm said in an event for Climate Week NYC. “We have lived through a summer — we all have seen it — where nearly one in three Americans have lived through, now, a climate disaster.”

“So there’s no way we can hit the snooze button on climate action. This is not our alarm clock going off. This is a fire alarm code red for humanity, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said,” Granholm said.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post published its own analysis of federal disaster declarations, which showed almost a third of Americans live in a county that was affected by a weather disaster during a three month period. That includes the heat dome in the Northwest, flash floods, drought and wildfires.

It’s not clear whether Granholm was referencing the Post’s analysis or similar findings by the Department of Energy.

Urgent efforts to decarbonize global industries will be expensive and will ultimately create jobs, Granholm underscored on Wednesday.

“By the end of this decade, the global market for clean energy and carbon reduction technologies is going to reach $23 trillion — at a minimum,” Granholm said. “And so we want to corner that market by building clean energy supply chains and solutions here, sourced in America with American labor.”

Those jobs would be located across the U.S. and would vary in required skillset, she said. The Department of Energy is also working to ensure those jobs would be represented by unions, Granholm said.

More from CNBC Climate:

Read more about how businesses and consumers are fighting and adapting to climate change:

At least half of climate finance must be spent on helping countries adapt to climate change, says UN secretary-general

Living on the front lines of climate change: Victims of fire and flood tell their stories

Climate migration is already happening — for homeowners who can afford it

“The president really feels this very deeply that labor built his country, they built the middle class and what we’ve come to learn over the last several decades is that when the labor community is weakened, inequality grows. That’s it,” Granholm said.

Granholm said the U.S. could see clean energy transition jobs opening up for engineers, maintenance workers, pipe fitters, plasterers, painters, plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, boilermakers, autoworkers, ironworkers, linemen and journeymen.

Fossil fuel energy workers will have the opportunity to transition into clean energy jobs, too, she said.

“We believe that clean energy jobs that offer the chance to join a union are going to address that inequality issue,” Granholm said. “It is going to lift millions of families into the middle class.”

And work has to happen fast, she said.

“We had our biggest year last year with respect to installed gigawatts of wind and solar, but we’ve got to double, triple, quadruple that amount,” Granholm said. “So we can not rest, it is all about deployment and getting that clean energy on the grid.”

Environment

Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

Published

8 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla’s Cybertruck is now available in Canada – and, like in the US, there’s no waiting! Plus, we’ve got an “actually” smart summon Tesla that’s actually stuck, GM reaches a sales milestone, and we get a brand-new title sponsor!

Today’s episode is the first with our new title sponsor, BLUETTI – a leading provider of portable power stations, solar generators, and energy storage systems.

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New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonusLucid proves than an EV company can keep its promises while Xiaomi teams up with Chevrolet and Honda to prove – at least conceptually – that records are made to be broken. audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

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Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!

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Environment

This ‘supercharger on wheels’ brings fast charging to you [update]

Published

10 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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This 'supercharger on wheels' brings fast charging to you [update]

Mobile car care company Yoshi Mobility launched a DC fast charging EV mobile unit that it likens to “a supercharger on wheels.”

November 4, 2024 update: Yoshi Mobility will only be charging EVs on the side of the road now – it announced today that it’s selling its fleet fueling operation to EZFill Holdings (Nasdaq: EZFL).

It was originally founded as a direct-to-consumer, mobile fueling business in 2016, but now it’s going to focus on mobile EV charging, virtual vehicle inspections for partners like Uber and Turo, and onsite preventative maintenance.

Bryan Frist, Yoshi Mobility’s CEO & cofounder, said, “By spinning off our fuel business and focusing all of our energy on solving hair-on-fire problems that fleet owners face, we are meeting the changing needs of enterprise customers while making the future of transportation safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.”

May 22, 2024: Yoshi Mobility saw that its existing customers needed mobile EV charging in places where infrastructure has yet to be installed, so the Nashville-based company decided to bring the mountain to Moses.

“We recognized a demand among our customers for convenient daily charging, reliable private charging networks, and proper charging infrastructure to support their fleet vehicles as they transition to electric,” said Dan Hunter, Yoshi Mobility’s chief EV officer and cofounder.

The company says its 240 kW mobile DC fast charger, which can turn “any EV” into a mobile charging unit, is the first fully electric mobile charger available. It can provide multiple charges in a single trip but doesn’t detail how they charge the DC fast charger or who manufactured it. (I asked for more details, and they replied that they won’t disclose client names or the manufacturer of its DC fast charger yet.)

Yoshi is launching its mobile charger on two GM BrightDrop Zevo 600s and will introduce additional vehicles throughout 2024. It aims for full commercialization by Q1 2025. (I wonder if the Zevo 600 ever charges itself? Yes, I asked that too.)

Yoshi Mobility says it’s already deployed its EV charging solutions to service “major OEMs, autonomous vehicle companies, and rideshare operators” across the US. Its initial customers are made up of large EV operators managing “hundreds” of light-duty vehicles requiring up to 1 megawatt of energy per day that don’t yet have grid-connected EV chargers. I’ve asked Yoshi for details of who it’s working with, and will update if they share that info.

The company says pricing is based on location and enterprise charging needs. Once under contract for service, the service will be deployed to US-based customers within 10 days.

To date, Yoshi Mobility has raised more than $60 million, with investments from GM Ventures, Bridgestone, ExxonMobil, and Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley.

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Environment

Marqeta shares plunge more than 30% on big forecast miss

Published

10 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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Marqeta shares plunge more than 30% on big forecast miss

Marqeta celebrates its initial public offering at the Nasdaq on June 9, 2021.

Source: The Nasdaq

Marqeta shares tumbled more than 30% in extended trading on Monday after the company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter.

Here’s how the company did compared with Wall Street estimates, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Loss per share: 6 cents adjusted vs. a loss of 5 cents expected
Revenue: $128 million vs. $128.1 million expected

While third-quarter results showed a slight disappointment on the top and bottom lines, Marqeta’s forecast for the current period was more concerning.

The payment processing firm said revenue in the fourth quarter will increase 10% to 12% from a year earlier. Analysts were looking for growth of more than 17%, according to LSEG.

Marqeta, which primarily functions as a card-issuing platform, attributed the guidance miss to “heightened scrutiny of the banking environment and specific customer program changes.” The company has been struggling for a while, and its stock is now down more than 80% from its peak in 2021, the year it went public. The stock was down 15% for the year prior to the report.

Total processing volume of $74 billion was up more than 30% from a year earlier. Net revenue and gross profit were up 18% and 24%, respectively.

Marqeta’s digital commerce business sells payment technology designed to detect potential fraud and ensure that money is properly routed. It also issues customized physical cards that look like a credit or debit card that can be used for point-of-sale purchases.

The company has been trying to break into the buy now, pay later business with a recently launched product called Marqeta Flex. The service brings BNPL from lenders such as Affirm or Klarna to any credit card wherever Mastercard and Visa are accepted.

“It’s an orchestration layer, but it’s tied to issuing and processing and disputes and chargebacks,” CEO Simon Khalaf told CNBC at Money2020 in Las Vegas last week. “So it is not actually a Wild West in BNPL. It is actually very well established. And there is a reason why a lot of people are jumping to it.”