Bitcoin miners at Donald Trump’s closed-door event say he thinks bitcoin can help win AI arms race

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7 months ago

June 13, 2024

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago on June 5, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Now that his criminal trial in New York has wrapped up, the former president has scheduled a number of fundraising events around the country to aid his presidential bid. (Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Getty Images

This past Tuesday night in Palm Beach, Florida, about a dozen bitcoin mining executives and experts sat down with former president Donald Trump for an hour and a half in a small tea room at the Mar-a-Lago Club. As a steady drizzle fell outside, they sipped from Trump-branded water bottles and tried to sell him on the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The meeting marked the first time the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee — recently convicted of 34 felonies in New York — had taken a meeting with the technologists securing the $1.3 trillion bitcoin network.

The intimate gathering brought together a coalition of some of the biggest private and public American miners in the business, including representatives from Riot Platforms, Marathon Digital Holdings, Terawulf, CleanSpark, Core Scientific, Arkon Energy, Cholla Energy and Exacore.

CNBC spoke to half the miners who attended the closed door session on Tuesday, including the CEO of Riot Platforms. Jason Les told CNBC that one of the group’s top talking points was the fact that the U.S. is number one in a lot of things, and it should be number one at bitcoin, especially as the world’s top coin touches new all-time price highs this year. Bitcoin is up 160% to around $67,000 since June 2023.

Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) — who is the ranking member on the Senate’s Banking Committee and Finance Subcommittee, as well as a vocal proponent of the digital asset industry broadly, and bitcoin mining in particular — was also there to help guide what participants described as a free-flowing and wide-ranging discussion on bitcoin, energy, job creation and the push to beat China in the artificial intelligence arms race.

Many agreed that the former president was collaborative, had well-informed questions and seemed genuinely interested in how bitcoin miners could help solve America’s energy deficit problem.

BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey, who organized the mining sit-down with Trump, says that the meeting is part of a larger push to support the former president’s bid to return to the White House.

“Our industry intends to make bitcoin and crypto a defining issue for the 2024 election,” Bailey said of the effort. “As an industry we are committed to raising over $100 million and turning out more than 5,000,000 voters for the Trump reelection effort.”

Less than four hours after Trump’s roundtable wrapped, the former president took to social media to extol the virtues of the bitcoin mining business.

“Bitcoin mining may be our last line of defense against a CBDC,” Trump posted shortly before midnight on Tuesday.

“Biden’s hatred of Bitcoin only helps China, Russia, and the Radical Communist Left. We want all the remaining Bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!! It will help us be ENERGY DOMINANT!!!”

Venture capitalist hope to raise $12 million for Trump campaign

Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies are created through a process known as proof-of-work, in which miners around the world run high-powered computers that collectively validate transactions and simultaneously create new tokens.

The process requires heaps of electricity, leading miners to seek out the cheapest sources of power. Many have begun to set up shop in the U.S. in the last few years, much to the chagrin of a mix of mostly Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“It’s such an easy issue for politicians,” in part because there is “no major ask that we have to change the rules or anything else,” Les, who runs a bitcoin mining company with a market cap of about $3 billion, told CNBC.

“We just want to be treated like everyone else,” Les added, noting that more than one in four people in the U.S. now owns bitcoin, according to a survey recently conducted by bitcoin financial services firm Unchained.

Bitcoin that’s “made in America”

For months, Trump — who recently launched his latest non-fungible token collection on the solana blockchain in April — has been making increasingly bullish comments on crypto.

He is now accepting digital currency donations and has pledged to defend the rights of those who choose to self-custody their coins, meaning that they don’t rely on a centralized entity like Coinbase to hold their tokens and instead, do it themselves in personal crypto wallets, which are sometimes outside the reach of the Internal Revenue Service. Trump also vowed at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington in May to keep Sen. Warren and “her goons” away from bitcoin holders.

In early June in San Francisco, technologists, crypto executives, and venture capitalists paid up to $300,000 per ticket to join a Trump fundraiser that ultimately raised more than $12 million.

And then on Tuesday, Trump declared that all future bitcoin will be minted in the U.S., should he return to the White House.

Geoff Kendrick, who heads up digital assets research at Standard Chartered, recently wrote that he expects bitcoin to reach the $100,000 price threshold as the U.S. approaches the November presidential election and $150,000 by the end of the year if Trump wins.

Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago

It was a no comms and no photographer policy at the mining roundtable on Tuesday.

Attendees, who had an expansive view over thunderstorms on the Atlantic coast that night, forfeited their smartphones to a Radio Frequency Identification pouch that blocked incoming and outgoing signals. As participants lost their sense of time, they convened under a large chandelier listening to the former president actively engage on the nuances of America’s energy deficit, bitcoin mining, and AI — without the aid of a teleprompter — for the duration of the conversation.

“He just really knew his stuff,” said Browder of Marathon.

“We were very impressed by how in the weeds he was on some pretty dense topics when you’re talking about artificial intelligence, data centers, energy buildout, and transmission,” continued Browder, who added that it was the first time bitcoin miners have formally met with the former president to discuss the industry.

CNBC spoke to half a dozen miners who were at the meeting, all of whom converged on the same conclusion; that Trump understood how bitcoin mining complements some of the bigger macro challenges that the U.S. has as a country, most notably the imminent need for the rapid buildout of energy production and transmission infrastructure amid the booming interest in generative AI technologies.

NYSE's Martin: Can't argue with success of Bitcoin ETFs and liquidity it's brought to markets

Schultz of the NASDAQ-traded mining firm CleanSpark said Trump came in, sat down, and got right down to business after grabbing a Diet Coke and a cookie from the four-plate spread of macadamia, chocolate chip, and oatmeal varieties adorning the table.

Trump “actually believes that bitcoin provides value,” said CleanSpark’s executive chairman. “I went there feeling like this is going to be a campaign rally; a highly politicized campaign rally.”

“It was anything but a fundraiser pitch,” continued Schultz.

Exacore president Chris Cook echoed that takeaway, telling CNBC that Trump was “very knowledgeable on the subject” of bitcoin mining and that he understood the significance of the job creation that could come from supporting big data mining in the U.S.

“We’re able to train people that have been displaced from industries that may have evolved or no longer exist — and train them to operate and work in a bitcoin mine,” said Cook. “The coal industry, for example. There’s not nearly as many jobs there anymore, and we can teach them to operate a bitcoin mine.”

Amanda Fabiano, a veteran of the mining industry who is on the board of a publicly traded mining firm and the founder of Fabiano Consulting, came away with a similar impression. She says that the former president seemed especially interested in hearing more about the substantial job creation that the mining industry generates in remote parts of the country in sectors ranging from technology to construction, as well as the financial incentive it provides for the buildout of infrastructure to harness the power of stranded renewable energy sources.

Marathon’s Browder says that a lot of the places where they mine bitcoin are in rural areas of the United States that have been left behind, whether it was a town once known for its coal plants, or factories that have shuttered altogether.

“We’ve come in and revitalized those areas, and I think that resonates very well with former President Trump, his team, and obviously, a lot of voters in rural America that support him,” said Browder.

Exacore’s Cook says the kind of job creation they’re talking about extends well beyond staffing a mine. The mining industry justifies the economic investment to create new power generation infrastructure, which then creates the need for thousands of new roles to make that buildout happen.

“That’s where you’ve got all these ancillary jobs; it’s not just the bitcoin mining directly,” said Cook.

“I think we can about double the amount of power generation in the U.S., which would, by my estimate, add two to three percent to GDP and create close to a million jobs,” continued Cook.

“He’s been speaking more about energy independence, jobs, and technology,” Marathon Digital’s Browder said of Trump. “I think it’s the broader context of what’s happening around the world with the power competition between the U.S. and China.”

Across the U.S. are untapped and stranded sources of renewable energy. In West Texas, for example, there is an idyllic overlap of sun quality and wind speed. But a lot of that renewable energy is concentrated in remote parts of the state, and without a financial incentive, there is little reason to build out renewable infrastructure to harness this energy.

Enter bitcoin miners.

Some have opted to build mining sites where wind and solar are abundant and the transmission system is constrained, meaning that power wants to flow down the line, but the lines are full. These mines act like a large power station but in reverse. The mines will absorb abundant renewable energy at times when supply outpaces demand, thereby monetizing these assets when there are no other buyers. And on the flip side, the mines will incrementally ramp down their energy intake, as demand on the grid rises.

Adding bitcoin miners to the portfolio of energy buyers has helped to improve the core economics of renewable power production. Providing demand to these semi-stranded assets essentially makes renewables economically viable when they might not be otherwise.

Schultz noted, however, that Trump isn’t a huge fan of wind energy, because it’s too expensive to build, maintain, and dispose of when the components go bad, so he doesn’t see it as a long-term solution, but he is apparently a fan of renewables otherwise.

“It’s a race against the rest of the world building this infrastructure, so we don’t want the United States to be left behind in this regard,” added Riot’s Les.

Tech for Trump: Silicon Valley investors turn against Biden

AI meets bitcoin mining

Demand for AI compute and infrastructure surged after OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT in November 2022, setting off a rush of investment in AI models and startups.

Data centers alone could use up to 9% of the country’s power by the end of the decade, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. That’s more than double today’s demand across the U.S today.

“When you talk about the grid and energy production, a lot of the conversation was around AI and the amount of energy that’s going to be needed there,” said Marathon’s Browder.

Exacore’s Cook noted that Trump “was very much aware of how much energy AI needs.”

Bitcoin miners do two things especially well.

When miners partner with utility companies, they turn off their data centers almost instantly when there is too much power demand and give energy back. This helps to stabilize the grid, and miners are then compensated for curtailing their consumption.

In some cases, bitcoin miners also make it more cost effective to build the infrastructure necessary to bring renewables onto the grid.

Both those things are important when it comes to building out energy infrastructure across the country.

“These are synergies that I think the Trump administration understands very well in this context of, we need more energy, and there’s a grid power competition between the U.S. and China,” said Marathon’s Browder.

“Those are the high level pieces that I think the Trump administration are thinking about and developing policies around,” added Browder. “They’re very forward thinking.”

In the closed-door meeting, Trump also spoke about the fact that fossil fuels are likely to make a comeback as they are in several other countries, due to the demand for increased energy capacity for data centers around the world.

Tapping into nuclear energy is seen by many as a cleaner alternative and the answer to meeting these ballooning power demands.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have invested in nuclear plants in recent years, as has Sam Altman, who is best known for being the CEO of his $80 billion start-up OpenAI. Altman told CNBC last year that he’s a big believer in nuclear when it comes to serving the needs of AI workloads. He’s also backed two different nuclear power start-ups, one of which just listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May.

“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman said. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”

TeraWulf powers its mining sites with nuclear energy, and is looking to get into machine learning.

The company’s chief strategy officer, Kerri Langlais, tells CNBC that whether it’s bitcoin mining or AI, the reliance solely on intermittent renewables, whether it be solar or wind, which are fluctuating, is not going to be enough to support the tremendous projections for the amount of energy that is going to be required to support build out over the next five to ten years.

“We definitely talked about nuclear,” Langlais said of the sit-down with Trump.

“We need to think about that in the context of how we’re operating, how the grid is operating, the role that bitcoin mining plays in that, because we can provide a pretty valuable service to the grid in that sort of fluctuating supply environment.”

— CNBC’s Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.

Environment

The days of superfast SUPER73 e-bikes are over… sort of

Published

9 hours ago

January 12, 2025

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The days of superfast SUPER73 e-bikes are over... sort of

Even if you’re not knee-deep into electric bikes like many of us, you very likely may have heard of the e-bike brand SUPER73. The company’s motorcycle culture-inspired electric bikes have proven incredibly popular among teens and young adults, but the heyday of fast and questionably (or clearly) illegal e-bike modes seems to be coming to an end for the brand.

SUPER73 didn’t invent the moped-style electric bike, but it is often credited for kickstarting the boom. The name has become so ubiquitous that even other brands of moto-inspired electric bikes are often erroneously referred to as SUPER73 e-bikes.

Technically, SUPER73s were always intended to be perfectly street-legal electric bikes, and they always shipped in what was known as “Class 2 Mode”. That meant the bikes could top out at 20 mph (32 km/h) and largely met most electric bicycle regulations around the US for the last few years.

However, SUPER73 e-bikes could be quickly and easily unlocked via the company’s own smartphone app, letting riders access Class 3 mode of up to 28 mph (45 km/h) on pedal assist, or even an Off-Road Mode that basically removed all restrictions and allowed faster speeds on throttle-only riding as well. Despite the name, Off-Road Mode was largely used for street riding and turned the bike into something of a mini-motorcycle.

But those days of easily unlocking higher performance are officially gone, with SUPER73 now reacting to new California regulations that put stricter interpretations of e-bike classification laws on the books. Those new regulations, which took effect on January 1, 2025, required any e-bike with a functional throttle to limit its motor assist to just 20 mph. If an e-bike was designed to be modified for faster speed or higher power (such as via a setting change on the bike’s display or in the smartphone app), the bike would no longer be considered a street-legal electric bicycle in California.

SUPER73, which has often found itself at the center of the debate around faster e-bikes, reacted quickly. A major change now results in the higher performance modes being removed from SUPER73’s app. According to a notice on the company’s website, “In light of newly implemented regulations, customers who download and pair the SUPER73 app after January 1, 2025, will not have the ability to access modes other than the Class 2 mode in which the product is sold.”

While the bikes still have the mechanical ability to go faster, SUPER73’s new update basically removes the ability to access that higher performance, essentially limiting its e-bikes to 20 mph on both throttle and pedal assist.

Is there a workaround?

No, SUPER73 has developed an ironclad solution to prevent their e-bikes from being operated in illegal ways.

Just kidding. No, of course this isn’t a perfect solution, but not really due to any fault by SUPER73. There are multiple apps already available that can be used instead of the company’s app, which allow riders to re-access that higher performance. I won’t list them here, but it’s not exactly hard for anyone with an e-bike and internet connection to figure it out.

That doesn’t mean that every SUPER73 e-bike out there is going to be back in its former 30 mph form, and a significant number of riders will likely simply be stuck with new 20 mph speed limits. But we shouldn’t pretend like this is a foolproof system that can’t be defeated. As long as the e-bikes are built in a way that they are physically capable of higher performance (like a chunky 2,000W motor that is software-limited to 750W and 20 mph), the possibility remains that they will be somehow unlocked to access that performance.

It should be noted that such unlocking would still fall outside the regulations of California’s new electric bike laws, but at that point the punishment would likely fall upon the riders themselves instead of the e-bike maker, if it did its part to remove performance unlocking from its native app.

Electrek’s Take

I think that a lot of us could see this as an inevitability, though I’m not sure we expected to see companies come around this quickly, or rolling out updates that covered their e-bikes nationwide instead of just in California.

I agree that in the short term, this will likely have a positive effect on the few bad apples who ruin it for everyone – basically the roving gangs of teens on illegally fast e-bikes. People who ride e-bikes in dangerous ways around other cyclists and pedestrians are a danger, plain and simple.

In the long run though, I still don’t think this is the proper route to go. When you can buy a 125 mph car that weighs as much as a military vehicle and yet it is simply the responsibility of each driver to never exceed barely half of its performance, it seems silly to put so much effort into reducing the speed of bicycles from 28 mph to 20 mph. Is this really the major public safety threat to spend our time and legislative resources on?

I still believe that the better solution combines education and enforcement. It’s simply not that hard. If some snot-nosed kid is riding dangerously in the bike lane, street, or sidewalk, confiscate the bike and slap a fine on his or her parents. But don’t tell me that a responsible adult who is simply trying to get to work efficiently is a menace to society on an e-bike that goes 28 mph instead of 20 mph.

My wife and I riding a pair of SUPER73 e-bikes. She’s a menace, alright. But it’s unrelated to the e-bike.

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Environment

Why Trump and GOP attacks on IRA can’t score a clean sweep in red states

Published

9 hours ago

January 12, 2025

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Why Trump and GOP attacks on IRA can't score a clean sweep in red states

Volkswagen U.S. assembly of all-electric ID.4 flagship in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2022.

Volkswagen

The new Republican-majority Congress has wasted no time in making its energy priorities clear. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said from the House floor minutes after his reelection, “We have to stop the attacks on liquefied natural gas, pass legislation to eliminate the Green New Deal. … We’re going to expedite new drilling permits, we’re going to save the jobs of our auto manufacturers, and we’re going to do that by ending the ridiculous E.V. mandates.”

Data from the auto industry shows a more complicated story. There are more investments in EVs and related battery technologies in states under the control of Republican governors than in states run by Democrats. The top 10 states for total investments in EV technology, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, are either solidly red or swing states such as Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada. Far from help the fortunes of automakers, Trump confidante Elon Musk is on record as saying that repealing EV incentives would be a pill he could swallow, even as CEO of Tesla, because it would hurt other automakers even more.

Amending or possibly repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s sweeping 2022 law that allocates approximately $369 billion over the next decade to clean-energy and climate-related projects, has been a talking point for President-elect Trump and many members of the GOP. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill — saying its subsidies, tax credits, grants and loans are wasteful government overreach — and the party and Trump have since railed against it.

On this year’s campaign trail, Trump said he will “rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”

He and fellow Republicans have also talked about eliminating the IRA’s $7,500 federal personal tax credit for buying a new electric vehicle, as well as various incentives for private companies investing in manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, EV batteries, heat pumps and other clean-energy products.

But in an interview with CNBC last fall, Speaker Johnson hinted at the potential problem for the GOP now that investments have been made, and job growth continues to climb, across Republican states. He said it would be impossible to “blow up” the IRA, and it would be unwise, since some aspects of the “terrible” legislation had helped the economy. “You’ve got to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall,” Johnson said.

The economic boost that hundreds of IRA-funded projects have given the country, beyond just the EV industry, are predominantly in red states — and the hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs linked to the IRA as well as the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. A vast portion of that workforce voted for Republicans in November, and jeopardizing their livelihoods could fuel a balloting backlash.

House Speaker Mike Johnson: We want to expand upon Trump-era tax cuts & do massive regulatory reform

“The IRA is the quintessential policy that can create jobs, drive economic growth and improve our economy,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group comprising about 10,000 business leaders and investors, “while at the same time giving us the tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the clean energy jobs market remains small relative to a total U.S. employment market of roughly 160 million Americans, it has become more than just a blip in the jobs picture. Data for the full year 2024 is not yet available, but according to E2’s Clean Jobs America 2024 report released in September, more than 149,000 clean-energy jobs were created in 2023, accounting for 6.4% of new jobs economy-wide and nearly 60% of total employment across the entire energy sector. Over the past three years, E2 reported, clean-energy jobs increased by 14%, reaching nearly 3.5 million workers nationwide. “Our members and businesses across a lot of sectors are very concerned about the potential of repealing” the IRA, Keefe said.

In the two years since the IRA passed, E2 has tracked private-sector clean-energy projects, including solar, wind, grid electrification, clean vehicles and EV and storage batteries. To date, it has identified 358 major projects in 42 states and investments of nearly $132 billion. More than 60% of the announced projects — representing nearly 80% of the investment and 70% of the jobs — are located in Republican congressional districts.

In November, the Net Zero Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University released a study focused on the domestic and global impacts of tinkering with Biden’s climate bills, in particular, the IRA. “Our scenario analysis shows that U.S. repeal of the IRA would, in the most likely scenario, harm U.S. manufacturing and trade and create up to $80 billion in investment opportunities for other countries, including major U.S. competitors like China,” the study said. “U.S. harm would come in the form of lost factories, lost jobs, lost tax revenue and up to $50 billion in lost exports.”

The fallout of gutting the IRA has not been lost on GOP lawmakers whose states and counties are benefiting from the law’s largesse. In August, 18 House Republicans sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, urging him not to axe the tax credits that have “created good jobs in many parts of the country — including many districts represented by members of our conference.”

Coincidentally, one of the signees, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, is Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor. Another, Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia, has touted the eight clean-energy projects, totaling $7.8 billion in investments and creating 7,222 jobs, the IRA has brought to his district. And the tiny town of Dalton, Georgia, home of the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in the western hemisphere and source of about 2,000 jobs, is in the district represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a vociferous climate-change skeptic who has nonetheless cheered the factory.

The QCells solar panel manufacturing plant in Dalton, Georgia, U.S., on Monday, May 3, 2021.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In a survey of nearly 930 business stakeholders conducted in August by E2 and BW Research, more than half (53%) said they would lose business or revenue as a direct result of an IRA repeal and 21% would have to lay off workers.

If Republicans fully repeal the IRA, which would require congressional approval, they “would be shooting themselves in the foot and hurting their own constituents,” said Andrew Reagan, executive director of Clean Energy for America, a nonprofit that advocates for the clean-energy workforce. “You would see not only projects canceled, but job losses,” he said.

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who will chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee this year, talked in a recent interview with Politico about a focus on rolling back elements of the IRA, including “frivolous” spending, while pushing to keep parts that have created clean-energy jobs. In her state, “some people have taken advantage of this tax relief and are now employing 800 and 1,000 people,” Capito said, “and that’s what this should be all about.”

Union organizing at EV and battery plants

In addition to spurring new job growth, the IRA, Infrastructure Act and CHIPS Act each have provisions ensuring that a significant portion of jobs created go to union members or provide prevailing wages and benefits, apprenticeships and job training to non-union workers. So it’s no surprise that unions are also on the front line in the battle to protect the bills.

Unionization rates in clean energy have surpassed traditional energy employment for the first time, reaching 12.4%, according to a recent Department of Energy report. “That’s a really big deal for us and we want to keep building on that,” said Samantha Smith, strategic advisor for clean energy jobs for the AFL-CIO, which represents more than 12.5 million U.S. workers in manufacturing, construction, mining and other sectors. “We’re going to work to make sure that every job and clean-energy project with this federal funding can be a good union job,” she said. “That is our focus when looking at this legislation and what Congress might do.”

The Laborers’ International Union of North America represents about 530,000 workers in the energy and construction industries. Executive director Brent Booker noted that LIUNA members voted for both Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, but that “none voted to take their jobs away.” And while “cautiously optimistic that the IRA is going to stay in place,” the union “will hold to account this administration to make sure” it does.

A recent report from the Center for Automotive Research outlines the critical workforce needs to meet the demand for EV batteries, which is expected to grow six-fold in the U.S. by 2030. There are a significant skills gaps in the battery industry, the report stated, which will require increased recruitment and training of workers — especially engineers, technicians and assemblers — for years to come.

This paves the way for unions to organize workers at battery plant factories, many of which are joint ventures located in the so-called “battery belt” that stretches from Michigan down to Georgia. In February of last year, the United Auto Workers committed $40 million through 2026 in funds to support non-union autoworkers and battery workers who are organizing across the country, and particularly in the South.

“In the next few years, the electric vehicle battery industry is slated to add tens of thousands of jobs across the country,” the UAW said in announcing the investment. “These jobs will supplement, and in some cases largely replace, existing powertrain jobs in the auto industry. Through a massive new organizing effort, workers will fight to maintain and raise the standard in the emerging battery industry.”

Indeed, just this week, workers at Ford’s $6-billion BlueOval SK EV battery plant in Glendale, Kentucky, a joint venture with South Korea’s SK On, filed with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election.

Clean Energy for America’s Reagan said he assumes that Trump will be true to his America First platform: to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and supply chains, cut consumers’ energy bills in half by increasing domestic energy production and reduce reliance on foreign trade, especially with China. “He can’t do any of those things if he repeals the tax credits or tries to stifle American companies that are creating jobs,” Reagan said. “If he’s going to be successful, he can’t take an adversarial approach to a huge part of our economy.”

Environment

Volvo DD25 Electric compactor gets to work in Yolo County, California

Published

23 hours ago

January 12, 2025

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Volvo DD25 Electric compactor gets to work in Yolo County, California

California County Adds First Electric Volvo DD25 Compactor to Fleet

Yolo County, California depends on its climate for continued agricultural success. As such, the county’s leaders are taking environmental stewardship seriously by aiming for full carbon neutrality by 2030. To help achieve that goal, they’re putting zero-emission machinery like the Volvo DD25 Electric compactor to work.

We got our first chance to sample the DD25 Electric at Volvo Days last summer, where the all-electric tandem roller’s vibrating drums impressed dealers and end users alike. It was no surprise, then, that when Yolo Country fleet superintendent, Ben Lee, when shopping for a compactor the DD25 Electric was high on his list.

“The DD25 Electric will help us achieve our goals in several ways,” explains Lee. “By reducing emissions, lowering noise levels, being more energy-efficient, improving working conditions and promoting environmentally friendly practices … we’ll use it to compact soil, gravel and other base materials for road and foundation projects, as well as rolling out and leveling asphalt during road construction and resurfacing.”

To help Lee handle those various projects, the Volvo’s drum frequency can be adjusted from 3500 vpm (55 Hz) to 4000 vpm (67 Hz) to cater to different applications and materials.

The DD25 Electric offers other benefits, as well – like a 20 kWh 48V battery that offers up between six and eight hours of continuous operation. That’s could be several shifts in the kind of conditions Yolo’s work crews will encounter, meaning it will only have to get put to bed (Volvo recommend overnight AC charging) two or three times a week.

Getting power to the compactor, too, is something Yolo is considering. “There are some remote areas in the county, so we’re looking into a mobile, self-contained charging unit as well,” explains Lee, apparently referencing the Volvo PU130 mobile battery. “So we wouldn’t have to bring the machine back to the yard each night during a long-term project.”

Yolo County views electric equipment as an essential step in reducing emissions and energy consumption, especially as communities work towards stricter regulations and sustainability goals.

Electrek’s Take

Ed Galindo, E-Mobility Product Manager at VCES, educates Yolo employees; via Volvo CE.

This press release came to us ahead of the devastating wild fires in Southern California that are dominating headlines right now – so much so that I effectively sat on the news for a few days, debating whether or not we should even be talking about a California news story that isn’t about the fires right now.

But I realized: this story is about the fires. Climate change driven by combustion and carbon emissions is driving climate change and that’s making fires like these possible … and I should have run it sooner.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo CE.

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