Tesla on Wednesday abandoned its federal lawsuit against Alameda County, California, over pandemic-related restrictions on business operations that affected its factory in Fremont.
Details: Tesla did not provide immediate comment. But the case filed May 9 appears to be a fait accompli at this point.
The history of low oil prices juicing the U.S. economy was broken during the pandemic-fueled price collapse, Dallas Fed economists argue in a new commentary.
Why it matters: "[O]n balance this oil price decline has weakened rather than strengthened the U.S. economy, making this event different from past episodes of falling oil prices," they write.
The coronavirus pandemic is slowing growth of wind and solar electricity projects, but the renewables sector is "more resilient than other fuels" and slated to bounce back quickly, the International Energy Agency said.
Why it matters: It's on track to be the first year-over-year decline in 20 years, IEA said in a report that offers their downward revision in expected 2020–2021 capacity growth.
Google will no longer develop new artificial intelligence tools to help oil and gas companies extract crude, the company announced Tuesday.
Why it matters: The tech giant is breaking away from Microsoft and Amazon, both of which have also developed AI in recent years to expedite oil production and make services more efficient for companies like Chevron and GE Oil & Gas. Google's 2018 contract with Total was in place as of February, a Total spokesperson confirmed to Axios at the time.
The world's daily carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 17% in April — the peak of global lockdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus — when compared to 2019 levels, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Tuesday.
The big picture: Though researchers say CO2 emission levels are again increasing as lockdowns are gradually lifted, they estimate that total emissions this year will be between 4% and 7% lower than 2019's total, which would be the largest annual decrease since the end of World War II.
The payment tech company Stripe is funding four carbon dioxide removal projects as part of its plan announced last year, which advocates had called a pioneering corporate foray into these nascent markets.
Why it matters: Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere — not only cutting new emissions — will be an important tool for limiting global temperature rise, a major UN-led scientific report concluded in late 2018.
New analyses about electric vehicles underscore two things: the pandemic is creating unprecedented turmoil for all kinds of energy technologies, and attempts to assess the fallout are more art than science.
Driving the news: A brand new analysis from the research firm BloombergNEF projects that global electric vehicle sales will drop 18% this year, which would end 10 years of growth but represents a smaller decline than their estimated cut to sales of traditional cars.
