Analysis from the Center for Law, Energy & Environment at the University of California, Berkeley shows that disaster costs, health impacts, lost wages and more are disproportionately affecting California households, businesses and the public sector, with no sign of abatement. San Francisco — While costs in the immediate aftermath of ... [continued]
The post Hidden Costs of Climate Change Fueling Affordability Crisis in California — New Report appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Seek More is Zeekr’s first major brand campaign designed to highlight its vision of “New Luxury.” Three cinematic hero films will showcase how the new all-electric Zeekr 7X, Zeekr 001, and Zeekr X enable people to escape from the relentless pace of city life. The campaign was developed in collaboration ... [continued]
The post Zeekr Launches “Seek More” — European Brand Campaign appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Growth in distributed solar generation capacity has driven growth in total electricity generation capacity in Brazil since 2019. Distributed solar generation capacity grew from less than 1 gigawatt (GW) in 2018 to 40 GW in 2025 through June, accounting for 43% of all electricity capacity additions over that period. In ... [continued]
The post Distributed Solar Generating Capacity Is The Fastest-Growing Power Source In Brazil appeared first on CleanTechnica.
This is expected to be a giant quarter for electric vehicle sales in the USA. After September 30, the $7,500 tax credit for new EVs and the $4,000 tax credit for used EVs are going to be eliminated. As a result, everyone has been expecting that people would rush to ... [continued]
The post I’m Confused — Tesla Hasn’t Sold Out Of Cars Yet In USA? appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The US startup Parallel Systems is on the way to commercializing a railcar-based electric train solution, with an assist from the US Department of Energy.
The post Electric Trains To Challenge Electric Trucks For Short-Haul Deliveries appeared first on CleanTechnica.
NPR is seeking to prevent CPB from distributing funds for satellite interconnection to any entity other than NPR.
The post NPR seeks restraining order against CPB distribution grant appeared first on Current.
Canada has taken a major step forward in its approach to public transit funding. The new Canada Public Transit Fund, announced last year and going into effect in 2026, replaces the Zero Emission Transit Fund with a permanent, predictable framework that will shape investments for decades. Instead of short-term envelopes ... [continued]
The post New Canadian Transit Fund Aligns Housing & Mobility, Retires Flawed Hydrogen Push appeared first on CleanTechnica.
CEO Neal Shapiro said in a memo that the organization is “carefully reducing some programs and services to create meaningful savings, while also rethinking how we work and where we can best focus our energy for future growth.”
The post WNET will cut staff, costs following loss of federal funding appeared first on Current.
Ryan Air in Alaska has ordered an electric plane from BETA Technologies and will install storage batteries for charging.
The post Alaska’s Ryan Air Orders BETA Technology Electric Plane For Cargo Duty appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The man who would be King, Donald J. Trump, railed at leaders from across the planet at the United Nations this week. Extending his allotted 15 minutes into an hour-long address before the UN General Assembly on September 23, Trump contradicted leaders who promote “the green energy agenda.” He concluded ... [continued]
The post King Trump The Fool Railed At The UNiverse, While Clean Energy Stood Waiting In The Wings appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Maxion Wheels, the producer and supplier of wheels for passenger and commercial vehicles, and Terra Firma, one of South Africa’s leading commercial and industrial (C&I) solar and storage solutions providers, recently announced that a 2.9 MWp solar project powering Maxion’s manufacturing plant in Johannesburg is now live. The energisation was ... [continued]
The post Maxion Wheels Factory In South Africa Gets Solar To Cut Costs appeared first on CleanTechnica.
But we don’t seem to want that money. Information from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs speaks to the commitments made to how interested the world is in renewable energy and human well-being. It says: “New commitments to boost renewable energy and increase access to electricity and ... [continued]
The post Finance Commitments Under Energy Compacts Reach $1.6 Trillion appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Ford, Sunrun and the utility BGE have demonstrated that EV owners can earn incentives by hooking up to a distributed power plant, helping to offset the loss of the $7,500 federal tax credit.
The post Ford F-150 Lightning Featured In First-Of-Its-Kind Distributed Power Plant appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Some think residential solar will come back stronger then ever afte federal subsidies for residential solar disappear December 31.
The post Ending The Solar Tax Credit May Have Hidden Benefits appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The California Energy Commission just announced there are over 201,000 public and shared EV charging ports operating in California now. This total is huge and obviously much more than in other US states. In March of this year, the CEC announced that the total number of EV charging ports in ... [continued]
The post Over 201,000 Public EV Charging Ports Are Available In California Now appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Production of iPhone took a hit as Ragasa battered tech hubs
Did you hear the one about the space lasers starting forest fires? Fringe conspiracy theories like this still swirl in certain parts of the internet. But some climate change disinformation is harder to spot—it’s subtle, sophisticated and circulated by trusted sources.
Response from leaders and key climate figures comes after PM’s aides advised non-attendance over concerns Reform may attack him
Leading climate figures and Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to attend the crucial Cop30 climate summit this November, after aides advised him not to attend for fear of attracting the ire of the Reform party.
Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said: “Cop30 is where leaders are expected to come and roll up their sleeves, make deals to help their nation’s economy transition faster, creating more jobs, and guide the world on what next steps we take together.”
Continue reading...Survey finds 70% of people would support a fare-cutting rail fund – but taxes on beef and flying are less popular
Putting in place policy on the issue of the climate and how we deal with it is a political decision. However, generally politicians seem to want to avoid measures that might make them unpopular in the short term, even if action would mean saving voters’ children from destructive weather later this century.
But an EU-wide survey on taxes and subsidies showing the popularity of various fiscal measures to meet climate goals could be a useful guide to chancellors who want to be popular and do the right thing by the next generation.
Continue reading...The gleaming brutalist structures of BYD’s global headquarters rise from Shenzhen’s Pingshan district — a monument to the company’s leadership in China’s electric vehicle ambitions. Walking through the sprawling complex, past rows of pristine EVs and technology exhibits, as well as its own monorail traversing the company facilities (they also ... [continued]
The post Touring BYD’s HQ and Realizing the Technology Arsenal It Has (Part 1) appeared first on CleanTechnica.
XPENG expands its over 2.4 million charging pile partner networks globally with another public 3,800 with Charge Plus in Asia Pacific. The 1st batch of co-branded XPENG charging stations in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand will feature as high as 350kW class-leading charging power. XPENG owners will enjoy further charging convenience as well as exclusive discount across the networks in ... [continued]
The post XPENG’S Leap Forward In Asia–Pacific Charging Landscape With Over 2.4 Million Charging Piles Globally appeared first on CleanTechnica.
If you’ve been following Tesla for long, you probably know that CEO Elon Musk said in 2016 that they would do a completely autonomous drive from Los Angeles to New York City in 2017. Funny enough, the tech wasn’t even close to ready for that — not even close to ... [continued]
The post Coast-to-Coast Tesla Full Self-Driving Trip Comes With $22,000 Bill After 60 Miles, Sort Of … appeared first on CleanTechnica.
There’s been a bit of talk this week about how Europe is still buying fossil fuels from Russia. As usual, a bit of a lying has been going on, but there’s also a bit of truth to it. Funny enough, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) just put out a ... [continued]
The post Russia’s Natural Gas Exports to Europe Have Dropped a Ton, But … appeared first on CleanTechnica.
20 inventors begin Kakezan (‘multiplication’) co-creation Singer-songwriter Naoto Inti Raymi joins Woven City as an Inventor The first group of residents, known as Weavers, officially move in TOKYO, Japan — Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Woven by Toyota, Inc. (“WbyT”) today announced the official launch of Toyota Woven City (“Woven City”), first ... [continued]
The post Toyota Woven City Officially Launches as a Test Course for the Future of Mobility appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The cavernous halls of Brussels Expo will be humming with electric energy next week, and it won’t just be the charged atmosphere of Europe’s premier bus and coach exhibition. At Busworld 2025, the industry’s electric revolution will reach a decisive inflection point, with manufacturers set to unveil vehicles that will ... [continued]
The post Busworld 2025 May Signal the End of Range Anxiety for Public Transport appeared first on CleanTechnica.
China just answered that question with a massive flying machine that could change everything about how we think about electricity costs. Picture this: A football field-sized blimp floating 1,000 meters above the ground, silently harvesting electricity from winds that blow 24/7 and are several times more powerful than anything we ... [continued]
The post China’s Floating Power Plants — Tapping Super High Winds appeared first on CleanTechnica.
August sales figures are in and BYD outsold Tesla in Europe for the second month in a row as the US company continues to struggle.
The post BYD Outsells Tesla In Europe In August appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Starting with the shelved monorail project in Iloilo The sleek monorail car glides silently along BYD headquarters, its sleek alloy skin in black shimmers under the afternoon sun. Standing in this sprawling complex in Shenzhen, watching the latest generation of SkyRail technology in action, I’m struck by a sobering thought: ... [continued]
The post Reconsidering The Skyrail Project In The Philippines appeared first on CleanTechnica.
A plan to send renewable energy from Morocco to Germany is moving forward, thanks to new developments in HVDC technology.
The post Morocco To Send Solar Power To Germany Via 4800 Km Undersea Cable appeared first on CleanTechnica.
If you’ve never visited Block Island, you definitely need to put it on your bucket list. Located sixteen miles across Block Island Sound from the mainland’s nearest point at Point Judith, Rhode Island, the vacation destination has many appealing features. Envision long white sand beaches, Victorian inns that are a ... [continued]
The post Life Is Lovely Now That Block Islanders Have Offshore Wind Power appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Quite young Chinese EV company Leapmotor has just reached a major milestone. It has produced its one millionth car — all plugin vehicles, of course, but not all BEVs. The company also started delivering EREVs in 2023. Leapmotor is just under 10 years old, founded in December 2015. One million ... [continued]
The post Leapmotor Produces Its 1 Millionth Electric Car appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Forest is ‘remarkably resilient to climate change’, but remains under threat from fires and deforestation
The biggest trees in the Amazon are growing larger and more numerous, according to a new study that shows how an intact rainforest can help draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in bark, trunk, branch and root.
Scientists said the paper, published in Nature Plants on Thursday, was welcome confirmation that big trees are proving more climate resilient than previously believed, and undisturbed tropical vegetation continues to act as an effective carbon sink despite rising temperatures and strong droughts.
Continue reading...BESSEMER, Ala.—Residents living around the site of a proposed 4.5 million-square-foot data center campus have a new ally in their fight against what they say is an unwanted and unneeded development: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Plug & Charge capability is important for convenient on-the-road charging. It’s very helpful, especially to people new to EVs, to just be able to plug into a charging station and have the charging start — without fumbling with RFID cards, apps, telephone operators when the charging won’t work, etc. A ... [continued]
The post Kia EV6 & EV9 Getting Plug & Charge Capability appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The design of transportation taxation has long been a critical issue in public finance, with policymakers seeking systems that are both efficient and equitable. In the United States, the federal gas tax—a longstanding mechanism for funding transportation infrastructure—has faced increasing scrutiny due to its declining revenues and concerns about fairness. This decline is largely driven by improvements in fuel efficiency and the accelerating adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), which do not contribute to gas tax revenues. As EV adoption grows, particularly in urban areas and coastal states, federal gas tax revenues are falling and are projected to continue falling. By law, revenues from this tax are earmarked for the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which finances a major portion of state and federal roadwork in the United States. This has led policymakers and analysts to explore options for replacing the gas tax. One option gaining traction is a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax, which charges drivers based on the distance they travel rather than the fuel they consume. Our research examines the winners and losers from transitioning the federal gas tax to a revenue-equivalent VMT tax, focusing on the distributional impacts across geography and political affiliation. The analysis is done at the census tract level.
For the highly disaggregated geographic analysis we undertake, we need to generate a prediction of household travel at the census tract level. There are about 80,000 census tracts in the United States with an average of 4,000 households per tract. Unfortunately, a measure of vehicle miles traveled at the census tract level does not exist. Instead, we predict household level annual vehicle miles at the census tract level using data from the 2017 National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS 2017), a nationally representative household travel survey, that provides household-level data on annual vehicle miles traveled and other household demographic characteristics, such as income, age, race, education, and employment for about 7,000 households. The survey also includes information on the number of vehicles owned by the household, the type of vehicles, and the use of public transport to travel to work.
The 2017 NHTS only provides geographic information at the nine Census division levels. Using household-level variables common to the NHTS and to the American Community Survey (ACS 2022), we construct a best-fit model from the 2017 NHTS and use that model to predict average household vehicle miles traveled at the tract level in the 2022 ACS.
Given the large number of possible variables available to us to predict household-level vehicle miles traveled, we use machine learning techniques to identify a best-fit model to apply to the ACS data.
Our first result is that the shift is modestly progressive in terms of income. The bars in Figure 1 report the average change from the tax swap and show that lower income groups (measured in deciles) on average gain from the tax swap while upper income groups in general pay more taxes. The whiskers report the range from the 25th to the 75th percentiles and demonstrate considerable heterogeneity within deciles while preserving the trend in negative burdens for lower-income households and positive burdens for higher-income households.
Figure 1: Change in Tax Payments by Income Decile
Our disaggregated analysis finds striking disparities emerge across geography, as seen in Figure 2. Rural areas and the center of the United States, which tend to experience lower average fuel efficiency, experience substantial benefits from a revenue-neutral VMT-Gas Tax swap. This effect is closely tied to the uneven geographic distribution of EV adoption: urban areas and coastal regions, where EV penetration is highest, are less reliant on the gas tax and benefit less from a shift to VMT-based taxation.
Figure 2: Changes in Tax Collections from Gas-VMT Swap.
Note: Census tract average data are winsorized at 95%.
Additionally, Figure 3 shows Republican-leaning districts, which overlap significantly with rural areas, see marked advantages compared to Democratic districts. The results highlight the potential for a VMT tax to address longstanding inequities in transportation funding while offering a politically salient narrative. By documenting the geographic and political implications of this policy shift, this study contributes to the broader debate on how to design equitable and effective transportation taxation systems in a rapidly evolving mobility landscape.
Figure 3: Change in Tax Collections from Gas-VMT Tax Swap by Political Party Affiliation.
Note: Party affiliation based on affiliation of the House Members in the 118th Congress.
Our focus here has been on the distributional implications of a tax swap to address the ongoing erosion of the tax base of the motor vehicle fuel excise tax. We should emphasize that we have not made a case on theoretical grounds for efficiency improvements from such a tax swap. Whether we should think of the gas (or VMT) tax as a benefit tax or as an externality-correcting tax, there are a number of factors to take into consideration. A benefits perspective argues for a VMT tax on the grounds that those using roads should bear the cost of their upkeep (as financed through the Highway Trust Fund). But this begs the question of the appropriate sharing of costs between personal and commercial transportation, and especially long-haul trucking in the latter category. From an externalities perspective, considerations of local pollution, road wear, congestion, and accidents all come into play. Innovation and network failures that impede the penetration of electric vehicles are also a consideration. An ideal set of policies likely combines a VMT tax with a subsidy for EVs to address pollution, innovation, and network failures.