Growing amounts of cash are pouring into electric vehicle development that is underway via startups and legacy players.
What's new: A report out this morning indicates GM will be announcing an expanded strategy to take on Tesla, plus the U.K. electric van and bus company Arrival announced it is going public.
"U.S. environmental activists are heaping pressure on Democratic president-elect Joe Biden to avoid Cabinet appointees with fossil fuel ties," Reuters points out.
Why it matters: The incoming Biden administration is starting to announce important personnel picks, with Cabinet choices looming, and activists are keen to see advocates of aggressive climate policies.
Jeff Bezos’ $100 million grant to the Environmental Defense Fund is tied as the biggest donation the group has ever received in its more than 50-year history, its president Fred Krupp told Axios Tuesday.
Driving the news: The Bezos Earth Fund, the $10 billion fund Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos unveiled early this year, officially revealed its first recipients this week. They will receive a total of nearly $800 million.
A bunch of huge oil companies told the Supreme Court in a new brief that state and local climate lawsuits against them belong in the federal court system.
Why it matters: The brief addresses the city of Baltimore's litigation seeking damages for climate-related harms — but it's relevant to roughly a dozen similar lawsuits nationwide that plaintiffs want litigated in state courts.
The Interior Department on Tuesday is publishing a formal solicitation for tracts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to lease for oil drilling.
Driving the news: The bureaucratic timelines — starting with a 30-day comment period — mean that an actual auction of drilling rights could occur just a few days before President-elect Biden's inauguration.
A new coalition is launching— with Tesla, Uber, power giants like Southern Company, and others — that will push for electric models to account for 100% of new U.S. vehicle sales by 2030.
Why it matters: While electric vehicles are a growing technology, new corporate lobbying efforts — especially by powerful companies — could help spur faster growth in what remains a largely niche market.
Hurricane Iota made landfall in Nicaragua late Monday as an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm, packing maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, per the National Hurricane Center.
Why it matters: The storm is the most powerful of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, with "life-threatening storm surge, catastrophic winds, flash flooding, and landslides expected across portions of Central America," the NHC said.
