1 big thing: History curving on energy and climate change

Illustration of a Biden/Harris flag on top of an iceberg

2. Big this week: Biden order, DOE hearing, Tesla earnings

3. Europe's electricity inflection point

4. Shell buys another European EV charging player

5. Lucid Motors' EV manufacturing plan

Lucid Motors manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Good morning. It’s with a bittersweet heart I share that today is my last day at Axios. I’m joining BreakthroughEnergy, an organization founded by Bill Gates that supports society’s shift to cleaner energy. I will lead a new journalism initiative there that tells stories about the opportunities and challenges of the energy transition. Please read more in my LinkedIn post. 

This isn’t a complete goodbye. As we work to launch the project, I’m going to continue my Harder Line column for Axios on a monthly basis as an outside contributor.

Let's dive into my last weekly scheduled column for Axios, where I take a big, historical view on where we're with energy and climate change. I'll share that, and then Ben Geman will get you up to speed on other news. 

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,245 words, 4.7 minutes.

Axios Generate: The big climate shift — Busy week ahead — EU inflection point

Generate

darkTeal

Untangle the energy industry’s biggest news stories

Axios Generate

Standard

1 big thing: How tech and data boost cleaner energy

Illustration of soap suds on a sparkling clean oil barrel.   

2. Exxon reviewing political giving after Capitol attack

3. The (limited) U.S. drilling revival 

4. On our radar: General Motors' electric plans

5. Preventing an EV battery shortage

Illustration of a battery with a low charge shaped like a car

Bonus chart: The lithium supply challenge

Good morning, my latest Harder Line column dives deep into a complicated but essential topic that melds two of Axios' core areas: tech and climate. 

I share a glimpse of that, and then Axios' Ben Geman gets you up to speed on the rest of today's news. 

Today's Smart Brevity Count: 1,194 words, 4½ minutes.

Axios Generate: Climate data rush — Capitol riot fallout — GM's electric plans

1 big thing: Climate change boosts support for divisive tech 

Illustration of a nuclear power plant tower with steam in the shape of a white flag

2. A big EV sales rebound may be coming

3. European trucking players to speed up climate plans

Illustration of a commercial electric truck leaving lighting bolt tracks behind it

4. China's latest pledge on CO2 emissions

5. Where it stands: Biden's potential climate picks

6. Quote of the day

Good morning, my latest Harder Line column looks at a trend on topics we cover a lot here in Generate and in my column: nuclear power and carbon capture. 

I'll share a glimpse of that and then Ben Geman will get you up to speed on the rest of the news. 

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,141 words, 4 minutes.

Axios Generate: Climate tech politics — EV sales projections — Biden's potential picks

1 big thing: What we’re watching this year

Illustration of a telescope reflecting the earth

2. Company interest in ANWR will be shown Jan. 6

3. Oil climbs but companies see hurdles ahead

4. Catch up fast: China, Biden, EVs, lobbying

5. Capitol Hill's year-end climate and energy frenzy

6. ICYMI: Spotlight on states

Illustration of a map of the United States comprised of solar panels

Happy New Year! My latest column is my fourth annual outlook on energy and climate issues. I’ll share a glimpse of that, and then Ben Geman will get you up to speed on other news.

🚨Situational awareness: Tomorrow brings the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will decide which party narrowly controls the chamber.

Why it matters: Big Capitol Hill climate or energy deals will face huge hurdles no matter what. But Democratic wins would boost the odds that President-elect Biden can steer some of his priorities through Congress.

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,342 words, 5 minutes.

Axios Generate: 2021 energy predictions — ANWR lease drama — Oil patch outlook

1 big thing: Biden’s new climate diplomacy

Illustration of United Nations-like flags flying the pages of the Paris Climate Accord

2. Why Biden's HHS pick matters for the climate

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra speaking outside the U.S. Supreme Court  in November 2019

3. The workaday path to the EV era

4. Petro-number of the day: 8.4%

5. Catch up fast: Exxon, Nissan, EVs, Saudi Arabia

Good morning. Today's Smart Brevity Count: 1,089 words, 4 minutes.

🗓 To mark the Paris Agreement's 5th anniversary, I explore how the president-elect may navigate climate diplomacy in my latest Harder Line column.

I share a glimpse of that, and then Ben Geman will bring you the other news. 

🚨Don't miss tonight’s Season 3 finale of “Axios on HBO” at 11pm ET/PT on all platforms:

HHS Secretary Alex Azar talks to Mike Allen about "vaccine hesitancy." (Clip) 

Chris Krebs talks about "one type of threat" from President Trump. (Clip) 

Tune in for the results of a yearlong Axios national security investigation.

Axios Generate: Biden's diplomatic challenge — HHS' climate role — Electric truck growth

National

Like the curve of Earth we can’t see from the ground, we’re on a curve in history that we won’t fully recognize until decades in the future.

Driving the news: The inauguration of President Biden completes an economic and political consensus that climate change is an urgent threat the world should aggressively address. Whether this consensus produces action remains deeply uncertain.

The big picture: Sometimes history is recognized instantly, like the Capitol insurrection or the pandemic. Because climate change is inherently gradual, history happens so subtly that we may miss it in a world gripped by faster-moving crises.

I asked Daniel Yergin, an energy expert famous for writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the history of oil, how he thinks historians in 2050 will look back on this time for energy and climate change.

“History curving,” answered Yergin, whose consulting firm, IHS Markit, has traditionally been most focused on the oil and gas sector but whose fastest growing business today focuses on climate change.

2050 is a common benchmark year by which climate change progress is measured. It’s a generation away for us humans, but a blip for our planet.

Flashback: This historical curve began with the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, which prompted investors, corporations, the public and politicians to prioritize the problem.

Those shifts cemented the curve in history, despite President Trump vowing in 2017 to withdraw America.

Biden, who officially announced on his first day in office that the U.S. is rejoining the accord, will accelerate policies and technologies that have been growing over the last six years.

Investments into clean energy technologies broached $500 billion last year for the first time ever.

Venture capital investments into climate technologies broke records. 

Investors poured a record $27.4 billion into exchange-traded funds that are billed, among other things, as environmentally sustainable, per the WSJ.

Sustainable debt broke records, per Bloomberg.

But, but, but: All this evidence indicating the world is beginning to address climate change doesn’t actually make the challenges easier. In fact, some are getting bigger and others are merely becoming clearer.

Where it stands: Oil, natural gas and coal accounted for 81% of the world's energy consumption in 1990. Thirty years later — in 2020 — that figure dropped to 80%, mainly because of the pandemic, according to the International Energy Agency.

For all the money flowing to cleaner energy, we have a 1% drop in fossil-fuel consumption's share to show for it. It's questionable whether it would have dropped at all were it not for a terrible public health crisis.

This percentage hasn’t dropped more because of, among other reasons, growing energy demand in rapidly expanding economies like India.

The challenges are many and overlapping. Let’s look at two foundational ones: Politics and technology.

Politics: To say we live in a polarizing democracy would be an understatement after recent events. Political polarization makes everything harder, but especially climate change, whose impacts are long-term and diffuse and whose solutions are unevenly distributed and uncharted.

Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist think tank, compares the failures around the eventually successful moon launch to that of Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that got a federal loan guarantee in the Obama administration and then went bankrupt.

“Three astronauts burned to death on the launch pad. And we went forward. A solar company defaulted on its loans, and a nation melted down,” Grumet said. “The tolerance for failure in our current political system is very low, and success requires taking some big risks.”

Technology: Let’s get back to 2050. Both the U.S. under Biden and the European Union are setting goals that their economies will emit, on net, zero greenhouse gases within 30 years. New research shows just how daunting this is.

“Today, there are no cement plants that bury their emissions underground, and there are no facilities sustainably producing hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel,” writes the NYT about a recent Princeton study. “By the mid-2020s, several such plants would need to be operating to prepare for wider deployment.”

For Europe to meet its target, "per capita emissions will have to decline to the level of India, where the per capita income is about $2,000 a year, compared to Europe’s $38,000,” Yergin writes in his new book “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.”

The only way to close this gap without lowering standards of living is with new technologies widely deployed.

The bottom line: We’re on the curve, but we don’t know its destination.

“Optimistically, historians will say that the Biden administration was able to create a sense of collective urgency that enabled the U.S. to take the kinds of risks that ultimately solved the problem,” Grumet says.

"The other path would be that the U.S. squandered its last opportunity to change the structure of its economy in time to avoid the worst effects of climate change.” 

Editor’s note: This is Amy Harder’s final column as an Axios employee. She will be continuing Harder Line on a monthly basis in the coming weeks as an outside contributor.

Biden ushers in historical turn on clean energy and climate change

Clean energy costs are dropping and political will is growing.

Energy

Harder Line

Column / Harder Line

Climate change

Like the curve of Earth we can’t see from the ground, we’re on a curve in history that we won’t fully recognize until decades in the future.Driving the news: The inauguration of President Biden completes an economic and political consensus that climate change is an urgent threat the world should aggressively address. Whether this consensus produces action remains deeply uncertain.

Ominous forecasts about the impact of climate change serve as the backdrop for the world — led by U.S. lawmakers and companies — to debate big action on the problem, which could upend energy systems and our way of life.

Energy & Environment

Data: FactSet; Note: XOP is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) of U.S.-based oil and gas stocks. ICLN is an ETF of global clean energy stocks. Chart: Axios Visuals

After booming in 2020, stocks of clean-energy companies are poised to keep going up with President Biden pushing policies favorable to their bottom lines. 

Where it stands: Cleantech stocks have blown past their last high in the mid-2000’s, which burst in the 2008 financial crisis. Not so far this time despite the pandemic crushing economies everywhere — and the oil industry.

The intrigue: The offshore wind sector could see enormous and quick growth. The Trump administration was slow in reviewing several proposed projects across the Eastern Seaboard, but Biden has signaled he will move swiftly here.

“We are in the sweet spot of where this country is going to continue to go from a clean energy perspective,” said Dennis Arriola, CEO of Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish energy company Iberdrola.

Avangrid is working with Denmark’s Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to build what could be America’s first large-scale offshore wind farm, Vineyard Wind, located off the coast of Massachusetts.

It plans to resubmit a federal application for that project soon, Arriola told Axios and Reuters.

The big picture: “I thought the pandemic would have a bigger negative effect on investments in the energy transition than it did have,” said Angus McCrone, chief editor of BloombergNEF, which issued a report this week finding that investments last year into such technologies broached a half-trillion dollars for the first time ever.

“A number of aspects probably served to influence investors and governments toward wanting to take more action more quickly on this issue than the other way around,” he said.

This includes places like Europe, which the report found led much of the spending growth, prioritizing clean energy and climate in recovery packages, McCrone said. 

Yes, but: McCrone says investments should be at least 50% higher, if not twice as high as $500 billion within the next decade.

Avangrid is facing permitting challenges that beset many other cleantech companies, all of which will make it harder to rapidly increase such investments.

The developer tangled with President Trump’s Interior Department, which governs energy production in federal waters, over its wind farm application. It has also faced criticism for how it worked with the commercial fishing industry upset by the proposal.

Go deeper: Global investments in clean-energy tech reach record high

After a banner 2020, cleantech poised to accelerate under Biden

Clean-energy companies had a banner 2020.

Renewable energy

Business

Alternative energy

After booming in 2020, stocks of clean-energy companies are poised to keep going up with President Biden pushing policies favorable to their bottom lines. Where it stands: Cleantech stocks have blown past their last high in the mid-2000’s, which burst in the 2008 financial crisis. Not so far this time despite the pandemic crushing economies everywhere — and the oil industry.

Two of Washington’s biggest lobbying groups say they support the Biden administration’s plan to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas wells.

Why it matters: The shift, instigated by the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute, is one of the most concrete signs of how corporations are beginning to support action on climate change in the face of pressure from investors, politicians and the public.

Catch up quick: The organizations have for years opposed any direct regulation of methane, a greenhouse gas that’s the primary component of natural gas.

Methane makes up about 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, but its warming impact on the planet is more potent over a shorter period than carbon dioxide, the most common heat-trapping gas.

Methane, an invisible gas, leaks in the production and transportation processes of the fuel.

Investors have increasingly called on oil and gas producers to cut methane emissions, and President Biden has vowed to regulate them no matter what the industry thinks.

“We support the direct regulation of methane for new and existing sources in accordance with the Clean Air Act,” Mike Sommers, API’s president and CEO, told Axios Tuesday.

The Chamber of Commerce updated its website Wednesday to say it supports cutting methane emissions, including “by direct regulation under the Clean Air Act.” 

But, but, but: The organizations are couching their support around an additional process within the Clean Air Act, America’s bedrock pollution law, that could add many months to writing a regulation. Environmental advocates dispute this position.

How it works: Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president at API, says that to comply with the law, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency must go through a scientific process confirming that methane from oil and gas wells contributes to endangering the public’s health and welfare.

The Obama administration issued a broader scientific finding in 2009 concluding that all greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, did that.

Macchiarola says that finding applied to mobile sources, not stationary sources like oil and gas wells, and was in a different part of the law.

He says calling for this review isn’t tantamount to a delay and that such a finding is needed to stand up to legal scrutiny.

The other side: Peter Zalzal, an expert at the Environmental Defense Fund, says the EPA already made an additional scientific finding on this matter in 2016 as part of the Obama administration’s early work regulating methane.

“There’s broad agreement that methane significantly contributes to harmful climate pollution and EPA has already made this finding in 2016, so let’s get going,” Zalzal said.

Go deeper: In aggressive climate plan, Biden’s position on natural gas is fuzzy

Big business backs key climate change regulations

The move comes as corporations face political and investor pressure.

Illustration of a flower made out of dollar bills growing out of a crack in pavement

Methane

Two of Washington’s biggest lobbying groups say they support the Biden administration’s plan to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas wells.Why it matters: The shift, instigated by the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute, is one of the most concrete signs of how corporations are beginning to support action on climate change in the face of pressure from investors, politicians and the public.

Venture capital investment into technologies aimed at combating climate change reached a record high in 2020, according to PitchBook, a private-market data firm.

Why it matters: Clean-energy technologies must increase substantially to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years. It’s also notable that the pandemic didn’t dampen the trend.

By the numbers: The climate technology market amounts to around $2.5 trillion, per PitchBook. 

In 2020, VC deals amounted to $16.4 billion, which barely surpassed 2018’s total of $16.3 billion.

However, 2018 saw more deals (448) compared to 2020 (416).

As the chart shows, venture capital investments in this space started increasing significantly in 2016 and 2017, despite President Trump’s dismissal of the problem.

For context, the overall amount of global venture capital investment in 2019 was a little more than $300 billion, per PitchBook.

How it works: PitchBook broadly defines climate technology as including energy, transportation, agriculture, buildings, industry, materials, resources and adapting to the impacts of a warming world.

The big picture: Moves by major emitting nations, such as China, Japan and the United States (under President-elect Joe Biden), to commit to aggressively cutting emissions over the next 30 years are set to drive even more investment in the coming years, the report states.

The impacts of a warming world is also a big factor, it says. 

“Whether it be water scarcity or flash flooding, people around the world are feeling the effects of climate change more viscerally, putting their plight in greater focus and spurring governments to take the issue more seriously,” states a report PitchBook wrote on this topic last year, which was updated with complete 2020 data at Axios’ request.

Go deeper: Why clean energy isn’t enough to tackle climate change

VC investments into climate change technology reach record high

VC deals amounted to $16.4 billion in 2020.

Venture capital funding

Venture capital investment into technologies aimed at combating climate change reached a record high in 2020, according to PitchBook, a private-market data firm.Why it matters: Clean-energy technologies must increase substantially to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years. It’s also notable that the pandemic didn’t dampen the trend.

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Reproduced from BloombergNEF; Chart: Axios Visuals

Investments into clean-energy technologies totaled more than $500 billion for the first time ever, according to a BloombergNEF report released Tuesday. 

Why it matters: Technologies making energy and other material cleaner needs to expand rapidly if the world is to adequately address climate change in the coming decades. 

Where it stands: If this sounds familiar, that's because it is. 

This report comes on the heels of another one we wrote about last week that showed another record broken, specifically looking at venture capital investments. 

Investments are accelerating due to a series of overlapping factors, such as falling costs and increasing political goals, including here in the U.S. under President-elect Joe Biden.

By the numbers: Global investment in the low-carbon energy transition was $501.3 billion in 2020, up 9% from 2019 despite the pandemic driving the world into a recession.

This tally includes investments in renewables, energy storage, electric vehicle charging stations, hydrogen production, carbon capture projects and more. 

The largest areas of investment are renewable energy and electrified transportation.

Yes, but: The report also reflects another broader trend, which is that investment often lags in technologies beyond renewable electricity and electric cars. This includes carbon capture and most industrial processes like cement, according to the International Energy Agency.

Go deeper: VC investments into climate change technologies reach record high

Global investments into clean-energy technology reach record high

Falling costs and growing political ambition is accelerating this trend

Science

Investments into clean-energy technologies totaled more than $500 billion for the first time ever, according to a BloombergNEF report released Tuesday. Why it matters: Technologies making energy and other material cleaner needs to expand rapidly if the world is to adequately address climate change in the coming decades.

Amy Harder

Stories