The federal Energy Information Administration is out with a new report on electric vehicles and how much the market might grow. The chart below shows EIA's forecast of how much, or how little, of the global auto market that EVs will grab in coming decades.
Sunday is the fifth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy landfall. "[D]isaster planning experts say there is no place in America truly prepared for climate change and the tempests it could bring," AP's Frank Eltman and Wayne Parry write: "That is true even in New York and New Jersey, where cities and towns got slammed by deadly floodwaters that rose out of the Atlantic on the evening of Oct. 29, 2012."
Why it matters: "While billions have been spent to repair the damage, protecting vulnerable infrastructure, people and property across the nation from the more extreme weather that climate change could bring is going to require investment on a staggering scale, easily costing hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions." And some "experts worry also that the ascendance of a climate-change skeptic to the White House may put the brakes on coastal protection efforts."
Although China is increasing its solar energy supply, air pollution is blocking sunlight and reducing energy output in China, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study is the first to calculate how much aerosols in the atmosphere are reducing China's solar energy generating efficiency.
Why it matters: China has set a goal of meeting 10% of the country's electricity needs with solar by 2030, and this shows a potentially intractable obstacle to meeting that milestone. On the flip side, it could encourage countries with emerging solar power to cut emissions or refocus solar panel efforts to more sparsely populated or remote areas, where pollution is less severe.
The Environmental Protection Agency has canceled three of its scientists' speaking engagements at the State of the Narragansett Bay and Watershed conference today in Providence, R.I., per the New York Times' Lisa Friedman. The conference coincides with the release of a 400-page report on the health of Narragansett Bay, which features "significant" discussion of how climate change has affected the bay. The agency helps fund the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program and the agency's scientists were involved in the report.
Why it matters: "The move highlights widespread concern that the EPA will silence government scientists from speaking publicly or conducting work on climate change," writes Friedman. Trump-appointed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has maintained humans are not the main driver of global warming, and has removed most mentions of climate change from the EPA website.
Saudi Aramco's IPO, the world's largest initial public offering, is "on track" for 2018, CEO Amin Nasser says in a CNBC interview. Nasser also denied the oil giant is in talks to sell a stake to China or any other sovereign wealth fund: "Saudi Aramco are not talking, as I said, to the Chinese or others," he said.
Worth noting: "The denial does not exclude the possibility that Saudi's government is having those discussions," writes Axios' Dan Primack.
