Steve Hanley

Hyundai has invested another $1 billion in Motional, a robotaxi company that wants to be first to market with a successful business model.

I read a comment recently from a CleanTechnica reader who said that sea level rise happens uniformly all around the globe. That seems perfectly logical. If you have a bath tub full of water, the surface level is the same at both ends. Pour in a bucket of water and the surface quickly adjust to the increased volume. Once again, the level is the same at both ends of the tub.

If you are a regular CleanTechnica reader, you are familiar with the term “untaxed externalities,” which economists use to describe financial impacts of human behavior that are not figured into the costs of doing business. Here’s an example. Let’s say you are in the business of drilling holes in the Earth looking for oil or methane. All wells stop producing eventually and need to be capped. But decommissioning old wells costs money, so you set up a shell corporation to buy your old wells.

Words have consequences, especially when uttered by someone who has an enormous public following. For almost ten years, regulators have been wrangling with Elon Musk over his claims that Tesla automobiles can drive themselves with little to no input from human drivers. The name “Autopilot” has been controversial from the start, as many contend it lulls drivers into a false sense of security. Musk, in his own inimitable fashion, has refused to consider changing the name to something less controversial.

Are Hansen, the head of CleanTechnica’s news bureau in Norway, filed two reports this week that show how well the country’s push to lower its carbon emissions is working. Item one is a report by Elbil, the official publication of Norway’s Electric Car Association, that says of the 2.8 million registered passenger cars in Norway today, a quarter are now electric. No other country in the world has such a high share of electric vehicles. In total there are about 715,000 electric cars on Norwegian roads today — just fifty thousand fewer than the number of registered petrol cars.

I didn’t want to write this article. It has been on my to-do list, but it is so troubling, and dire, and strange that I wanted to ignore it. Part of my daily routine is to read the US edition of The Guardian, which in my opinion does the best job of any international news organization of covering environmental issues and climate science. Many of the stories I find on The Guardian become the basis of articles for CleanTechnica.

Donald Trump has made a prophet out of Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford. Four weeks ago, he told New York Times contributor Thomas Edsall that some of the conservative victories in campaign finance law — particularly Citizens United — have strengthened “the power of elected officials to coerce donations out of the donors.” He added there has always been “an element of hostile dependency built into campaign fundraising. Businesses have always given money to gain access or avoid bad things happening to them if the people in power feel that certain supporters let them down.”

Ember is a UK-based nonprofit that provides data about renewable energy to clients worldwide. Every year, it publishes a global electricity report that provides a snapshot of where we are and where we are headed when it comes to clean energy. Its report for 2024 has just been released and it contains some good news for renewable energy advocates. Here is the preamble to the report:

The Chevy Malibu is the Rodney Dangerfield of cars — it gets no respect. (Apologies to any readers who drive a Malibu.) For decades, the Malibu has been the automotive equivalent of Wonder Bread — a basic transportation device that was pretty good, fairly reliable, with the emotional appeal of vanilla ice cream. It moves forward when asked, stops when necessary, has windshield wipers that work, and comes standard with an AM/FM radio. What’s not to like? My Mom had a Chevy Malibu in the 70s — I think. There was absolutely nothing memorable about that car. People would look at it and yawn.

Electric cars and solar panels from China will be hit with higher tariffs by the Biden administration this week.