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In this episode of CleanTech Talk, renowned climate author and social movement leader Bill McKibben and I talk about the climate change crisis we’re quickly rolling into, climate grief and how to deal with it, US climate policy, rampant conspiracy theories, the great energy transition, and more. Listen to this first part of a two-part interview via the embedded SoundCloud player below or on your favorite podcast platform (links below).

You can subscribe and listen to CleanTech Talk on: AnchorApple Podcasts/iTunesBreakerGoogle Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket, Podbean, Radio Public, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Stitcher.

We quickly jumped into the core issue society is facing in the 21st century: even though we are quickly deploying and adopting cleantech solutions (solar energy, wind energy, electric cars, electric buses, etc.), we consistently remain a little behind what’s needed in order to stop our growing climate crisis. In fact, at times, it seems like we’re falling further and further behind in our challenge rather than catching up. Unfortunately, one thing we’ve discovered in recent years is that as scary and “alarmist” as climate scientists’ messages were a decade ago, those scientists were largely underestimating the risk and destruction. The situation looks worse today than it did then. The following tweet thread from climate scientist Peter Gleick was not covered in our discussion, as Gleick just published it last night and McKibben and I had recorded the podcast long before that, but it captures the point well:

McKibben, who wrote the first book about climate change for a general audience back in 1989, noted in his introduction of himself that he now spends much of his time “volunteering at the task of failing to save the world.” In response, I said, “Yeah … we’re making so much progress, but it always feels like we’re a sizable distance behind what we need to do to solve the climate challenge.” McKibben’s framing in response was superb: “That’s exactly right, and the reason it’s right and the thing that’s the hardest to get across always to people is this one’s a timed test. And we’re just not used to timed tests in our public life.”

My first question for McKibben came from one of our top writers, Steve Hanley (who McKibben seemed to be a fan of). Steve’s question was about climate grief. He wanted to know McKibben’s take on climate grief, and on how climate grief could be leveraged to create political change. With his characteristic straight honesty, McKibben noted that he’s been feeling more climate grief lately due to all that has been going on this year — extreme flooding in some regions (like Europe and China), extreme wildfires in others (most notably Greece and the US West, which created so much smoke that it actually blew over in large volume to the East Coast). I think many of us have felt the same this year — even, as he noted, with decades of understanding that this was coming.

“In my experience, the only way to deal with that emotional toll — and it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a partial one — is to be as active — as activist — as possible,” he said. “And I think that there are times when the only antidote in my life for that sadness that works is anger, and anger particularly at the forces in our society — the fossil fuel industry above all — that have systematically lied about this for decades and put us in the position where we are.” A Zen master might have said something else, but I think many people can relate to this, especially many CleanTechnica readers and listeners. McKibben did then add, “I’m not sure that that anger is any emotionally healthier than the grief, but it’s probably more productive in terms of getting stuff done, because we’re still at a place where breaking the political power of the fossil fuel industry is crucial to working at the pace where we now need to go.”

Continuing on the topic of climate politics, I brought up Senator Joe Manchin and the fact that he is a huge blockade to climate progress in Congress. Democrats have a slim majority in both the House and Senate and a rare chance to initiate strong climate legislation, but Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema have been blocking progress on this for months. The former, Manchin, has received more campaign funding from fossil fuel industries than any other US senator (Republican or Democrat), and the latter has completely swerved from being a member of the Arizona Green Party to being the opposite of a Green.

“I gotta say, it feels to me like the Biden administration is doing what they can right now […] — not everything, and there’s plenty that I wish they were doing that they could, like stopping big fossil fuel projects and things — but on this front of getting legislation passed, you know, it now looks like we’ve got this bipartisan infrastructure bill, which isn’t particularly good on climate — it includes a lot of stupid giveaways to the fossil fuel industry — but it’s something, and it was the price for getting this other reconciliation $3½ trillion thing that we’re going to be fighting over for the next couple of months, and that really seems to represent the one big chance that America will take a big cut at the climate crisis in this decade. So, I think it’s incumbent on all of us to think how we can help make that happen. It is incredibly frustrating that Prime Minister Manchin gets to sign off on everything that happens, but that’s where we are! It’s a reminder that it would be good to win a few more senate seats next time around, so we weren’t in quite the same hamstrung position.

“But, look, our political machine is clearly geared to prevent change, not to accelerate it. It’s an antiquated system in every way, from the filibuster and the Electoral College on down. Right now, in an era when we need incredibly urgent action, that’s particularly frustrating. But, that said — what a difference a year has made! At least the country is no longer run, for the moment, by absolute jackasses. The fact that we came into 2020 with a president of the United States who believed that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese — I mean, if you were sitting on a bus next to someone who was muttering that, you’d get up and change seats, but this was the guy who was running our country.”

I took the opportunity to point out that the first article I wrote about Donald Trump running for president was “Could The US Really Elect A Conspiracy Theorist?” Unfortunately, the country’s propensity for dangerous, idiotic conspiracy theories was even much greater than I anticipated.

I also asked McKibben if he thought the extreme weather events we’ve been seeing lately have been bringing more people into the climate action cause and could make the difference we need. To hear McKibben answer this question and talk more about the positive trends of the past few years, listen to the whole podcast chat. Of course, we also talked more about the urgency of the matter and the challenges we’re facing. Part two will be coming soon too, so stay tuned to CleanTechnica. I will preview that it covers significantly more complicated and nuanced matters within the US and global climate solutions community.

 

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Oil giant Saudi Aramco posts 15% drop in third-quarter profit but maintains dividend

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Oil giant Saudi Aramco posts 15% drop in third-quarter profit but maintains dividend

Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal

Ahmed Jadallah | Reuters

Saudi state oil giant Aramco reported a 15.4% drop in net profit in the third-quarter on the back of “lower crude oil prices and weakening refining margins,” but maintained a 31.05 billion dividend.

The company reported net income of $27.56 billion in the July-September period, topping a company-provided estimate of $26.9 billion. The print is also a 5% drop from the previous quarter, which came in at $29.1 billion, as lower global oil prices, weaker demand and prolonged OPEC+ production cuts led by Saudi Arabia continue to impact crude prices.

The average selling price of oil for the second quarter of 2024 stood at $85 per barrel, but dropped to $78.7 per barrel during the third quarter, according to Saudi-based bank Al Rajhi capital, as non-OPEC supply volumes grew.

The oil firm said its year-on-year decline was partly offset by a “reduction in selling, administrative and general expenses primarily driven by a gain from derivative instruments, and a decrease in production royalties largely reflecting lower crude oil prices and a lower average effective royalty rate compared to the same quarter last year.”

Aramco’s dividend includes a base payout of $20.3 billion and an atypical performance-linked one of $10.8 billion. The Saudi government and the kingdom’s sovereign wealth vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, are the main beneficiaries of the dividend, holding stakes of roughly 81.5% and 16% in the company.

The remaining shareholding trades freely on Saudi Arabia’s Tadāwul stock exchange, with the company having finalized its second public share offering back in June.

Aramco’s earnings before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) came in at $51.45 billion in the third quarter, down 17% year-on-year. Aramco’s capital expenditure guidance was brought up 20% to $13.23 billion.

The company was trading at 27.45 riyals following the announcement, down 0.18% on the previous day.

The earnings align with a broader trend across oil majors, whose third-quarter profits have also suffered from declines in crude prices and refining margins. Aramco said it achieved average realized crude price of $79.3 per barrel in the third quarter, compared with $89.3 per barrel in the same period of last year.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter who produces roughly 9 million barrels per day of crude at present, serves as the de facto leader of the OPEC+ oil producers’ alliance, a subset of whom agreed over the weekend to delay a planned December output hike by one month.

OPEC chief says delayed December output hike is 'nothing unusual'

“Aramco delivered robust net income and generated strong free cash flow during the third quarter, despite a lower oil price environment,” CEO Amin Nasser said in a statement. “We also progressed our upstream developments, strengthened our downstream value chain, and advanced our new energies program as we continue to invest through cycles.”

The revenues will be a boon to the Saudi economy, which is currently undergoing a diversification process under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s legacy Vision 2030 scheme spanning a slew of high-cost infrastructure “gigaprojects.”

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance cut the kingdom’s growth forecast to 0.8% in 2024, in a steep decline from a previous projection of 4.4%, and raised the outlook for the national budgetary shortfall to roughly 2.9% of GDP, from a prior indication of 1.9%.

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

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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.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

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!

Got news? Let us know!
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!

Read more: Renewables now make up 30% of US utility-scale generating capacity

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

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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.

Read more: Mercedes-Benz just opened more DC fast chargers at Buc-ee’s in Texas


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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –ad*

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