Decarbonized Buildings & Vehicles Create Good Missouri Jobs
Originally published on the NRDC Expert Blog.
By Gabrielle Habeeb & Ashok Gupta
Eliminating carbon emissions from our building and transportation sectors will be critical to maintaining a healthy and livable climate. This week’s IPCC report makes it clear that heat waves will continue to worsen — so we must rise to the challenge in addressing and living with extreme heat events. The good news is that decarbonizing these sectors is also good for our economy. Today, Missouri is home to more than 50,000 clean energy jobs.
This employment sector was growing steadily prior to the economic stress induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, with clean energy jobs growing more than 3 times faster than the rest of the state’s jobs on average in 2019. Despite an overall decrease in the number of clean energy jobs in 2020, this employment sector is recovering quickly from the pandemic lull, with more than 9 percent job growth documented in the latter half of the year. This resilience demonstrates the incredible potential for clean energy jobs to employ an ever-increasing number of Missourians.
While cities like Kansas City and Saint Louis house many of the clean energy jobs in the state, nearly a quarter of jobs were found in rural areas in 2020 — illustrating that these jobs are everywhere and benefit folks all over the state.
Clean Energy Jobs Missouri. CleanJobsMidwest.com 2021
Decarbonizing Buildings
Just under three quarters of Missouri’s clean energy jobs are in the energy efficiency sector. Think: buildings and construction. This means jobs in heating, cooling, lighting — the things that makes our homes more comfortable and reduce utility bills. Buildings make up a whopping 63 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the Kansas City metro region. Large metropolitan areas, suburban cities, and rural areas are all rife with opportunities when it comes to energy efficiency.
Decarbonizing the building sector can be a daunting task. It involves a combination of different energy efficiency measures, low and zero carbon space heating (e.g., heat pumps), and distributed renewable energy generation. Such initiatives support local jobs, improve air quality, enhance affordability, and increase property value — all while combating climate change!
NRDC
That is why we have prioritized the creation of building energy hubs in the Saint Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas, modeled after the Building Energy Exchange (BE-Ex). Once fully operational, BE-Ex KC and STL will provide building owners, especially those in low-income communities, with technical assistance, financing help (including accessing utility incentives), and hand holding. BE-Ex will also work with partners on policy strategies that can help reduce the urban heat island effect.
Projects like BE-Ex compliment NRDC’s traditional building decarbonization policy toolkit (i.e., utility efficiency investments, building codes, and appliance standards) with strategies to help speed up market transformation and support community partners on the ground. In both Kansas City and Saint Louis, we will work to advance the IECC 2021 building codes with amendments that strengthen the requirements for building envelopes.
These amendments will help us prepare our buildings for extreme temperatures in both the summer and winter, as well as ensuring buildings are zero-emission ready. This will result not in only cost savings and comfort for occupants but will also be less taxing on the electric grid during times of peak usage, increasing reliability.
Decarbonizing Transportation
After energy efficiency, the next largest clean energy employment sector in Missouri is advanced transportation. In fact, advanced transportation was Missouri’s fastest growing sector of 2020! These are the people who work in electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturing — driving us toward a future with fewer planet warming emissions and cleaner air along our roads and highways.
Electric vehicles are going to play a pivotal role in combating the climate crisis as, nationwide, transportation is the end-use sector responsible for the greatest amount of climate change causing carbon dioxide emissions. Eliminating emissions from our cars and busses will go a long way toward reaching our national and regional climate goals.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Tables 11.1 to 11.6, April 2021, preliminary data.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are growing in popularity and presence on the road, though too slowly. Policies to support EV adoption and charging infrastructure will be critical to ensuring the advanced transportation sector continues to employ a growing number of workers in Missouri, while supporting a smooth transition to these cleaner modes of travel.
This transition will be good for local air quality, human health, the climate, and driver’s wallets; though, without policy support to incentivize domestic manufacturing, EV adoption has the potential to disrupt the current automotive manufacturing industry. Europe and China currently lead on EV adoption and the manufacturing that goes along with it, while the U.S. lags in both respects. If the U.S. waits until the last minute to invest in the domestic EV supply chain, consumers will have fewer domestic car buying options and the U.S. automotive manufacturing industry will find themselves behind the competition.
Thankfully, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, recently passed by the Senate, invests $7.5 billion in EV infrastructure with explicit goals of accelerating EV adoption and supporting domestic manufacturing jobs. If states like Missouri can position themselves as leaders in EV supply chain manufacturing, it will further support existing and new Missouri workers as they create the vehicles and their components that will move us forward into a cleaner, healthier future.
Buildings and transportation are two sectors that are putting Missourians to work while investing in a cleaner, more climate resilient future. Supporting and enhancing this investment will be critical to minimizing the worst impacts of climate change and making Missouri a safe and prosperous place to live for years to come.
According to a Tesla Semi customer, the electric truck program is suffering more delays and a price increase that is described as “dramatic.”
Tesla Semi has seen many delays, more than any other vehicle program at Tesla.
It was initially unveiled in 2017, and CEO Elon Musk claimed that it would go into production in 2019.
In late 2022, Tesla held an event where it unveiled the “production version” of the Tesla Semi and delivered the first few units to a “customer-partner”: PepsiCo.
More than 3 years later, the vehicle never went into volume production. Instead, Tesla only ran a very low volume pilot production at a factory in Nevada and only delivered a few dozen trucks to customers as part of test programs.
But Tesla promised that things would finally happen for the Tesla Semi this year.
Tesla has been building a new high-volume production factory specifically for the Tesla Semi program in a new building next to Gigafactory Nevada.
The goal was to start production in 2025, start customer deliveries, and ramp up to 50,000 trucks yearly.
Now, Ryder, a large transportation company and early customer-partner in Tesla’s semi truck program, is talking about further delays. The company also refers to a significant price increase.
California’s Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (MSRC) awarded Ryder funding for a project to deploy Tesla Semi trucks and Megachargers at two of its facilities in the state.
Ryder had previously asked for extensions amid the delays in the Tesla Semi program.
In a new letter sent to MSRC last week and obtained by Electrek, Ryder asked the agency for another 28-month delay. The letter references delays in “Tesla product design, vehicle production” and it mentions “dramatic changes to the Tesla product economics”:
This extension is needed due to delays in Tesla product design, vehicle production and dramatic changes to the Tesla product economics. These delays have caused us to reevaluate the current Ryder fleet in the area.
The logistics company now says it plans to “deploy 18 Tesla Semi vehicles by June 2026.”
The reference to “dramatic changes to the Tesla product economics” points to a significant price increase for the Tesla Semi, which further communication with MSRC confirms.
In the agenda of a meeting to discuss the extension and changes to the project yesterday, MSRC confirms that the project went from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks while the project commitment is not changing:
Ryder has indicated that their electric tractor manufacturer partner, Tesla, has experienced continued delays in product design and production. There have also been dramatic changes to the product economics. Ryder requests to reduce the number of vehicles from 42 to 18, stating that this would maintain their $7.5 million private match commitment.
In addition to the electric trucks, the project originally involved installing two integrated power centers and four Tesla Megachargers, split between two locations. Ryder is also looking to now install 3 Megachargers per location for a total of 6 instead of 4.
The project changes also mention that “Ryder states that Tesla now requires 600kW chargers rather than the 750kW units originally engineered.”
Tesla Semi Price
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2023. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
New diesel-powered Class 8 semi trucks in the US today often range between $150,000 and $220,000.
The combination of a reasonable purchase price and low operation costs, thanks to cheaper electric rates than diesel, made the Tesla Semi a potentially revolutionary product to reduce the overall costs of operation in trucking while reducing emissions.
However, Ryder now points to a “dramatic” price increase for the Tesla Semi.
What is the cost of a Tesla Semi electric truck now?
Electrek’s Take
As I have often stated, Tesla Semi is the vehicle program I am most excited about at Tesla right now.
If Tesla can produce class 8 trucks capable of moving cargo of similar weight as diesel trucks over 500 miles on a single charge in high volume at a reasonable price point, they have a revolutionary product on their hands.
But the reasonable price part is now being questioned.
After reading the communications between Ryder and MSRC, while not clear, it looks like the program could be interpreted as MSRC covering the costs of installing the charging stations while Ryder committed $7.5 million to buying the trucks.
The math makes sense for the original funding request since $7.5 million divided by 42 trucks results in around $180,000 per truck — what Tesla first quoted for the 500-mile Tesla Semi truck.
Now, with just 18 trucks, it would point to a price of $415,000 per Tesla Semi truck. It’s possible that some of Ryder’s commitment could also go to an increase in Megacharger prices – either per charger or due to the two additional chargers. MSRC said that they don’t give more money when prices go up after an extension.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the 500-mile Tesla Semi ends up costing $350,000 to $400,000.
If that’s the case, Tesla Semi is impressive, but it won’t be the revolutionary product that will change the trucking industry.
It will need to be closer to $250,000-$300,000 to have a significant impact, which is not impossible with higher-volume production but would be difficult.
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