GM’s affordable electric car, Crypto’s energy impact and Rotary’s battery recycling

by Arthur · September 10, 2022

This week’s Current climatewhich every Saturday brings you the latest news about the sustainability industry. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Eearlier this week, the city of Sacremento, CA broke a new heat record: 116 degrees. Across the West this week, previous temperature records have been broken – in the month of September, which is not usually the warmest month of the year in the region. Write for Forbes, meteorologist Dr. Marshall Shepherd notes that heat waves like the one in the West this week and the one in Europe a few weeks ago will become increasingly common due to climate change. And it raises questions about the human cost of global warming.

“How many workers are exposed to that heat? How many homeless or impoverished communities have inadequate opportunities to cool down or seek medical attention for heat-related illnesses? How will the energy grid hold up?” Shepherd writes. “These are questions that face our new climate reality and, ultimately, why it matters.”

Table of Contents

The big read

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The White House wants crypto mining companies to share how much energy they use with regulators

The White House announced Thursday that crypto mining in the United States is on track to consume as much energy as all of the nation’s home computers, requiring formalized measures to curb the industry’s power needs. A new report issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy addressed environmental concerns that industrial-scale cryptominers could strain local and federal power grids, undermining global climate change efforts.

Discoveries and innovations

Researchers have found that out family farms can reduce carbon emissions in a very simple way: just give the cows more grazing time.

Technology company Breezometer has launched an API platform called Cleanest Route, which uses GPS to give people driving directions for routes with the least exposure to air pollution.

New research data shows that the massive Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could retreat even faster than previously thought, which could dramatically raise global sea levels.

This week’s sustainability offer

100% renewable: Social media giant Pinterest announced that it plans to make all of its facilities powered by 100% renewable energy by next year.

Gigawatts of solar energy: Earlier this week, clean energy startup Arcadia Power announced that it had become the first community solar provider to have over 1 gigawatt of available energy generation.

Sustainable transition: On Sunda, CMA CGM Group announced that it is creating a fund budgeted at 1.5 billion dollars for the next five years, which will invest in solutions to transfer the supply chain and logistics services in more sustainable directions.

On the horizon

On September 20Forbes will bring together the boldest business leaders who are driving a new wave of sustainable growth through disruptive processes, products, policies and people. Join us in New York City to learn from and meet the change makers who are taking the economy into the next century and into a greener, healthier world. Confirmed speakers include: Michel Doukeris, CEO of AB InBev; Lisa Dyson, CEO of Air Protein; and Roger Martella, Chief Sustainability Officer at GE.

What else are we reading this week

Are solar panels headed for space? (popular science)

Climate change is ravaging the Colorado River. It is a model for averting the worst. (New York Times)

It’s Time to Make Cities More Rural (Wired)

Green transport update

Chevrolet

Tesla has set the standard for electric cars over the past decade, but there’s one important thing it hasn’t yet mastered: affordability. It’s the cheapest vehicle, a base version of the Model 3 sedan, costs almost $50,000 before taxes (and the price of the $15,000 autopilot/FSD option) and the top-selling Model Y hatchback starts at $66,000. So it’s surprising that General Motors, the company that inspired Tesla’s creation after it killed its first EV 20 years ago, is rushing past Elon Musk with a new electric version of the Equinox crossover with a base price less than half the Y’s and up to 300 miles of range per charge.

The great history of transport

Redwood materials

Rotary Club Collects E-Waste to Help JB Straubel’s Redwood Materials Make Electric Car Batteries

Civic organizations like the Rotary Club regularly hold a variety of events to help the community, schools and hospitals, but now the group wants to keep used batteries, cell phones and various electronics out of landfills and, ideally, help get the valuable materials they continue to be recycled . Redwood Materials, the recycling and battery materials company led by Tesla’s co-founder, is expanding a program with Rotary across the U.S. that it believes will help it collect tens of thousands of pounds of additional e-waste from which it can extract lithium, nickel, cobalt and other high-value metals which it can turn into new EV batteries.