Great news: IMO agrees to first-ever global carbon price on shipping
The International Maritime Organization, a UN agency which regulates maritime transport, has voted to implement a global cap on carbon emissions from ocean shipping and a penalty on entities that exceed that limit.
After a weeklong meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the IMO and decades of talks, countries have voted to implement binding carbon reduction targets including a gradually-reducing cap on emissions and associated penalties for exceeding that cap.
Previously, the IMO made another significant environmental move when it transitioned the entire shipping industry to lower-sulfur fuels in 2020, moving towards improving a longstanding issue with large ships outputting extremely high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions, which harm human health and cause acid rain.
Today’s agreement makes the shipping industry the first sector to agree on an internationally mandated target to reduce emissions along with a global carbon price.
The agreement includes standards for greenhouse gas intensity from maritime shipping fuels, with those standards starting in 2028 and reducing through 2035. The end goal is to reach net-zero emissions in shipping by 2050.
Companies that exceed the carbon limits set by the standard will have to pay either $100 or $380 per excess ton of emissions, depending on how much they exceed limits by. These numbers are roughly in line with the commonly-accepted social cost of carbon, which is an attempt to set the equivalent cost borne by society by every ton of carbon pollution.
Money from these penalties will be put into a fund that will reward lower-emissions ships, research into cleaner fuels, and support nations that are vulnerable to climate change.
That means that this agreement represents a global “carbon price” – an attempt to make polluters pay the costs that they shift onto everyone else by polluting.
Why carbon prices matter
The necessity of a carbon price has long been acknowledged by virtually every economist. In economic terms, pollution is called a “negative externality,” where a certain action imposes costs on a party that isn’t responsible for the action itself. That action can be thought of as a subsidy – it’s a cost imposed by the polluter that isn’t being paid by the polluter, but rather by everyone else.
Externalities distort a market because they allow certain companies to get away with cheaper costs than they should otherwise have. And a carbon price is an attempt to properly price that externality, to internalize it to the polluter in question, so that they are no longer being subsidized by everyone else’s lungs. This also incentivizes carbon reductions, because if you can make something more cleanly, you can make it more cheaply.
Many people have suggested implementing a carbon price, including former republican leadership (before the party forgot literally everything about how economics works), but political leadership has been hesitant to do what’s needed because it fears the inevitable political backlash driven by well-funded propaganda entities in the oil industry.
For that reason, most carbon pricing schemes have focused on industrial processes, rather than consumer goods. This is currently happening in Canada, which recently (unwisely) retreated from its consumer carbon price but still maintains a price on the largest polluters in the oil industry.
But until today’s agreement by the IMO, there had been no global agreement of the same in any industry. There are single-country carbon prices, and international agreements between certain countries or subnational entities, often in the form of “cap-and-trade” agreements which implement penalties, and where companies that reduce emissions earn credits that they can then sell to companies that exceed limits (California has a similar program in partnership with with Quebec), but no previous global carbon price in any industry.
Carbon prices opposed by enemies of life on Earth
Unsurprisingly, entities that favor destruction of life on Earth, such as the oil industry and those representing it (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the bought-and-paid oil stooge who is illegally squatting in the US Oval Office), opposed these measures, claiming they would be “unworkable.”
Meanwhile, island nations whose entire existence is threatened by climate change (along with the ~2 billion people who will have to relocate by the end of the century due to rising seas) correctly said that the move isn’t strong enough, and that even stronger action is needed to avoid the worse effects of climate change.
The island nations’ position is backed by science, the oil companies’ position is not.
While these new standards are historic and need to be lauded as the first agreement of their kind, there is still more work to be done and incentives that need to be offered to ensure that greener technologies are available to help fulfill the targets. Jesse Fahnestock, Director of Decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, said:
While the targets are a step forward, they will need to be improved if they are to drive the rapid fuel shift that will enable the maritime sector to reach net zero by 2050. While we applaud the progress made, meeting the targets will require immediate and decisive investments in green fuel technology and infrastructure. The IMO will have opportunities to make these regulations more impactful over time, and national and regional policies also need to prioritise scalable e-fuels and the infrastructure needed for long-term decarbonisation.
One potential solution could be IMO’s “green corridors,” attempts to establish net-zero-emission shipping routes well in advance of the IMO’s 2050 net-zero target.
And, of course, this is only one industry, and one with a relatively low contribution to global emissions. While the vast majority of global goods are shipped over the ocean, it’s still responsible for only around 3% of global emissions. To see the large emissions reductions we need to avoid the worst effects of climate change, other more-polluting sectors – like automotive, agriculture (specifically animal agriculture), construction and heating – all could use their own carbon price to help add a forcing factor to drive down their emissions.
Lets hope that the IMO’s move sets that example, and we see more of these industries doing the right thing going forward (and ignoring those enemies of life on Earth listed above).
The agreement still has to go through a final step of approval on October, but this looks likely to happen.
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Drive Electric Month kicks off this week with nearly 200 online and in-person events celebrating electric vehicles over the course of the next month. Events will be held for the next several weekends all across the US, plus a few in Canada and one in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Drive Electric Month is an annual event organized by Plug In America, the Electric Vehicle Association, EVHybridNoire, Drive Electric USA, and the Sierra Club. This is the event’s 15th year. It started in the US as National Drive Electric Week, but for the last few years, some events have been hosted in other countries as well, and now the event has expanded to cover most of the month of September, with a few events in October as well.
These events are an opportunity for prospective EV buyers to talk directly with EV owners about the experience of owning an electric car, and EV owners to network with each other and share tips. The dealership experience is not ideal for many EV shoppers, so unfiltered conversations with EV owners can be a great way to learn.
Each event is organized by local EV advocates, and they range in size from small parking lot meetups and local EV parades to large festivals with lots of booths from nearby car dealers and green businesses. Many events have live music, family-friendly activities, food trucks and the like.
Drive Electric Month has a map and list of events happening over the course of the month. Most events are in-person, but there are some webinar-style online events that you can attend to hear about various topics related to electric vehicles if you can’t get to any local evels. You can also search for events near you.
Be sure to click through to each individual event’s page to see what your local events will look like, what types of EVs might be in attendance, and register your interest.
Here’s a sample of some of the events happening over the course of the month:
- Oregon Electric Vehicle Association (OEVA) Test Drive & Information Expo in Portland, Oregon on September 13, 10am-4pm: Along with the standard test drives and car displays, this event will have a number of gas to electric conversions and antique EVs on display. It’s happening at the Daimler Truck North America headquarters, and some of the space will be used for seminars and presentations.
- Drive Electric Month Oahu in Aiea, Hawaii on September 13, 10am-2pm: The largest Hawaiian event is just outside of Honolulu, but there are events on four Hawaiian islands this year, with the others in Lihue on Kauai on Sep13, Hilo on the Big Island on Sep27, and Kahului on Maui on Oct11.
- Mesa EV Ride & Drive in Mesa, Arizona on September 20, 8am-12pm: A veteran group of organizers is bringing the EV experience to Mesa Community College on Saturday, Sept. 20. People can test drive a variety of models, talk to real owners and learn how and where to charge.
- Jimmy Buffett Son of a Sailor Festival in Mobile, Alabama on September 20, 2pm-7pm: There will be EV displays at this festival which celebrates Jimmy Buffett and Gulf Coast culture. The free festival features live music, local restaurants, parrot-head costume contests and EV drivers who can answer all your questions about driving electric.
- Electric Avenue at the Downtown Car Show in Grand Junction, Colorado on September 20, 9am-3pm: At the 23rd annual downtown car show, EVs will have their own block. Spectators will visit with drivers and can participate in a friendly competition for great prizes.
- Knoxville Drive Electric Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee on September 27, 10am-3pm: This event bills itself as the largest NDEM event in the Southeast. Along with EV displays and ride-and-drive, the live music stage will be powered by a Ford F-150 Lightning using its vehicle-to-load capabilities.
- Plug In America Ride and Drive at Space Coast Pride Parade & Festival in Melbourne, Florida on September 27, 12pm-4pm: Plug In America itself is hosting a ride-and-drive at the Space Coast Pride Parade & Festival on Saturday, Sept. 27. The public can test drive EVs from different manufacturers, engage with local EV owners and ask questions of the organization’s EV experts.
- National Drive Electric Month Waterloo 2025 in Waterloo, Ontario on October 4 from 11am-3pm: This will once again be the largest event in Canada. There are 5 other Canadian events scheduled (all at different times), in Winnipeg (Sep13, today!), Courtenay (Sep14), Saskatoon (Sep21), Toronto (Sep27), and Regina (Sep27).
- ELECTRATON DEM’25 in Guadalajara on October 4 from 9am-5pm: This is once again the sole event in Mexico, hosted at Oscar Casillas Karting Track, where there will also be a 4th annual race of student-built electric karts alongside the EV exhibition and test drives. (Here are some photos from last year’s event, including the student kart races and a Cybertruck on track).
Not all the events are large or hosted in big cities. There are also smaller events happening in town centers, church parking lots, and so on, often with just a handful of EV owners who are typically happy to stand around and have a frank discussion with members of the public about what it’s like to own an EV, or to network with other local EV owners.
Many of these events are happening in conjunction with Sun Day, a global day of action calling for a sun-powered planet on September 21 this year. These events will focus on how solar has become a drastically cheaper form of energy, and highlight ways that everyone can benefit from more solar and by electrifying whatever uses energy in our lives – whether that be vehicles, appliances, etc.
On that front, one notable Drive Electric/Sun Day event will be in Whittier, CA on Sep. 20th (not the 21st) from 11am-3pm, with test drives, an electrified home tour, and an eco scavenger hunt. It’s being organized by one of the original founders of National Drive Electric Week, so expect to see some EV oldtimers at this one.
If you’d like to attend any of these events, either to show your vehicle, to volunteer to help run the event, or just to show up and look around, you can check out the list of events, then go to each event’s page to find more information. Remember to click the “RSVP” or “Volunteer” links near the top to register your interest (or register at the links mentioned in the event description).
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Tesla has discontinued the cheapest version of the Cybertruck just a few months after launching it.
No one wanted the gutted electric truck.
There’s no hiding it. The Cybertruck is a commercial flop.
Tesla claimed to have over 1 million reservations for the vehicle. It planned for a production capacity of up to 250,000 units per year, and CEO Elon Musk even said that he believes it could increase to 500,000 units per year.
Meanwhile, Tesla is currently selling the Cybertruck at a rate of roughly 20,000 units per year.
The primary reason for the significantly lower-than-anticipated sales is that Tesla launched the Cybertruck at a higher price and with worse specifications than initially announced.
To address this, Tesla introduced a more affordable version of the electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck rear-wheel-drive, in April 2025.
Instead of starting at $80,000, like the Cybertruck AWD, the Cybertruck RWD started at $70,000.
However, it was an even worse deal because Tesla had essentially stripped the vehicle of its most valuable features, including active air suspension, a motorized tonneau cover, and even the power outlets in the bed, in addition to removing a motor.
Less than 5 months after launching the new vehicle, Tesla has discontinued the Cybertruck RWD.
The automaker updated the Cybertruck’s online configurator to remove the option:
Tesla hasn’t replaced the variant with a new one. It just stopped taking orders.
Electrek’s Take
I don’t know of anyone who ordered this. It was such a bad deal. There’s already only a small pool of potential Cybertruck buyers, but none of them want to lose all those essential features for $10,000.
Where does the Cybertruck go from there? Does Tesla keep the vehicle program at just ~20,000 units per year?
I think they may try to do an upgrade next year to bring it closer to what they originally promised and see if there’s more demand as a result.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to members of the media as he arrives at a lodge for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Oracle‘s historic stock surge this week marked the latest chapter in the story of a single private company that’s dominated the tech landscape for almost three years: OpenAI.
In Oracle’s blowout earnings report, OpenAI was a key catalyst due to a massive amount of money the artificial intelligence startup expects to spend on cloud computing technology in the coming years.
It’s becoming a familiar theme.
A week earlier, Broadcom shares popped almost 10% after the chipmaker and software vendor said it forged a $10 billion deal to build custom processors for a customer that analysts said was OpenAI.
Among tech’s megacaps, Microsoft has the closest link to OpenAI, having invested more than $13 billion in the company and serving as its key cloud partner for six years. Nvidia’s march to becoming the world’s most valuable company is intimately tied to OpenAI, as its graphics processing units (GPUs) sit at the heart of large language model development and are essential for running big AI workloads.
Those four companies alone — Oracle, Broadcom, Microsoft and Nvidia — have seen their combined market caps swell by over $4.5 trillion since OpenAI burst into public view with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. And those gains are a big reason why the Nasdaq and S&P 500 have sustained sharp rallies, with both benchmarks closing at a record on Friday.
OpenAI’s outsized influence has some market experts understandably concerned. It remains a cash-burning startup that’s governed by a nonprofit parent.
The company’s $500 billion valuation is supported by a small number of investors betting that OpenAI will prevail in the face of hefty competition from the likes of Meta and Google as well as other highly-valued newcomers like Anthropic and any number of players out of China.
“While we love ChatGPT, OpenAI is still a not for profit limited in its ability to raise capital,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in an interview with CNBC.
Luria, who recommends holding Oracle shares, dug into the company’s numbers as the stock was in the midst of a 36% jump on Wednesday, its biggest gain since 1992.
In its quarterly earnings report late Tuesday, Oracle said it signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers during the period. One of those was with OpenAI, which said previously that it agreed to develop 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity with Oracle.
Investors knew, based on a filing with the SEC in June, that Oracle signed a $30 billion cloud contract with an unnamed company that’s set to begin in two years. CNBC confirmed a Wall Street Journal report from Wednesday that OpenAI has agreed to spend $300 billion in computing power over about five years, starting in 2027.
In the two trading days after its historic pop, Oracle’s stock retreated, dropping more than 6% on Thursday and another 5% on Friday, as other investors began sharing Luria’s concerns.
The new revelations about OpenAI’s massive cloud commitment provided a clearer sense of Oracle’s expanding backlog. Oracle said its performance obligations, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, surged 359% from a year earlier to to $455 billion.
Luria said the concentration of Oracle’s backlog with a single customer “significantly reduces” enthusiasm, particularly if “more than 90% came from OpenAI.”
Oracle didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Altman’s open wallet
OpenAI has made big commitments to several other cloud providers, including CoreWeave and Google, and reportedly plans to put $19 billion toward Stargate, a project President Donald Trump announced in January to bolster AI infrastructure investments in the U.S. Stargate is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, which is separately leading a planned $40 billion investment in OpenAI.
Luria said the takeaway is that “Sam Altman has the gumption to sign very large checks without needing to worry about whether those can ever be cashed.”
OpenAI declined to comment.
While OpenAI will be losing money for the foreseeable future, the company is expecting revenue growth to continue at a breakneck pace. After hitting $10 billion in annual recurring revenue in June, OpenAI is on pace for that number to reach $125 billion by 2029, CNBC confirmed.
And on Thursday, OpenAI got a step closer to formalizing its transition to a for-profit entity. The company said its nonprofit parent will continue to have oversight over the business and will own an equity stake of more than $100 billion as the commercial entity becomes a public benefit corporation.
OpenAI needs the restructuring to take place by year-end in order to secure the entirety of the $40 billion from its latest financing round.
For Oracle, the massive increase in OpenAI spending has landed the company within shouting distance of the trillion-dollar club, which currently includes eight tech peers. Oracle’s market cap climbed to about $930 billion on Wednesday before retreating to $830 billion to close the week.
Byron Deeter, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, told CNBC’s “Money Movers” that he’s still skeptical of Oracle’s prospects in AI. The company has spent years trying to play catchup in cloud infrastructure, where it trails Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Deeter said Oracle remains a “B-level hyperscaler” without meaningful positions in AI software or chips.
“Two days ago, we all thought Oracle was essentially nowhere in AI,” Deeter said, following the earnings report. “They announce this mega-deal, people think they’re the next great hyperscaler – and I don’t buy that part.”
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