emissions
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One of California's largest electricity producers recently published a white paper that analyzed how the state will achieve its 2030 greenhouse-gas targets—and it called into question targets set forth by California regulators. Specifically, Southern California Edison (SCE) said the targeted 4 million electric vehicles isn't nearly enough to achieve the states goals for 2030. That number, it suggested, is closer to 7 million electric vehicles. DON'T MISS: How California and China plan to push for millions of zero-emission vehicles According to ChargedEVs, which reported Tuesday on the...
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CAFE proposal coming March 30: automakers hope national rules survive
It's been hanging out there in limbo for more than six months: the answer to the question of what happens to gas-mileage rules under Trump. Given the daily political turmoil emanating from Washington, D.C., the fate of corporate average fuel economy rules may have gotten lost in the noise. But for...
John Voelcker -
How optimistic are you on efforts to address climate-change impacts? Twitter poll results
It remains entirely unclear if the world as a whole will be able to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide fast enough to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees C over the next few decades. That's the level at which scientists say the most dire effects of climate change may be lessened or...
John Voelcker -
California OKs more than half a billion dollars to clean up freight trucks, trains, buses
California is using the growing sums of money it receives from its emission cap-and-trade auction for good, including to tackle up some of the state's most egregious transportation polluters. In mid-December, California announced it would invest $663 million in a plan to clean up particularly dirty...
Mark Stevenson -
Half of all new cars sold in Norway last year are electric or hybrid, as diesel ebbs fast
Norway was one of the earliest nations to set a coherent and broad-based national plan to cut its carbon emissions, and then stick to it. For road transport, it plans to phase out sales of cars with internal-combustion engines by 2025 using a variety of carrots (financial incentives and special...
John Voelcker -
How serious is Norway about climate change? So much that its streetlights self-dim
As children, we're all taught to turn off the lights behind us as we leave an empty room. But it seems Norwegians have taken that lesson one step further. Along a 5.5-mile stretch of road in Hole, Norway, smart streetlights automatically dim when nobody's around—then come back to full power...
Mark Stevenson -
Ten years ago, energy security may have been as much a driving force behind electric cars for U.S. policymakers as climate change. Now, with continuous growth in domestic oil and gas production over that period, you just don't hear energy security discussed as much. Scientists agree that the effects of manmade climate change, on the other hand, are increasingly visible in stronger hurricanes, atypical weather patterns, and the like. DON'T MISS: Most-accurate climate-change models suggest worst effects on global weather The news on climate change has not been particularly good of...
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Is 'Drawdown' the climate-change action map the world needs?
We often speak of methods and technologies we can employ as a society to curb climate change, either by reducing carbon emissions or through other means. But less frequently do we talk about them in real terms, including how much excess carbon these methods and technologies can pratically remove...
Mark Stevenson -
Fossil fuels only part of human carbon emissions; land use, deforestation matter too
In discussions of climate change, much of the focus has been on the combustion of fossil fuels: coal, oil and its gasoline and diesel-fuel derivatives, and natural gas. Collectively, the trillions of tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by man since the start of the industrial...
John Voelcker -
China is serious on fuel economy: 500-plus models to go out of production
China has taken a major step toward cleaning up the new cars sold in the country beginning January 1. As numerous countries debate plans to end sales of fossil-fuel vehicles completely at points in the future, China has now forced the end of production for some 553 models, starting Monday. The...
Mark Stevenson -
2017's most important green car story: internal-combustion engine ban in China
The most important green-car story of 2017 came on September 10, in a report by the Associated Press that covered articles in two Chinese state media outlets on a statement by a deputy industry minister. Speaking at "an auto industry forum," the AP wrote, Xin Guobin said his ministry has begun...
John Voelcker -
China's aggressive plan to counter climate change leaves US government in the dust
As the Trump administration abandons numerous U.S. efforts to rein in emissions of the climate-change gas carbon dioxide over time, another large polluter is pushing ahead with an aggressive plan to slash pollution from energy producers. China, currently the top carbon emitter and largest consumer...
Mark Stevenson -
A scrappage scheme in Germany launched by Volkswagen to take the dirtiest diesels off the road has been extended beyond its planned end date of this month. Two years after the diesel emissions scandal that cost it over $25 billion, Volkswagen is extending an incentive program aimed at owners of diesels certified under the older Euro 1 through Euro 4 standards. The program—which is open to Germans scrapping vehicles of all makes, not just Volkswagens—has been extended through March 31, 2018. READ MORE: VW, Mercedes, Opel, Fiat launch buybacks of dirtiest diesels in Europe In a...
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Most-accurate climate-change models suggest worst effects on global weather
The denial of accepted climate science by the Trump Administration has now put the U.S. at odds with essentially every other nation in the world. Meanwhile, the news on the effects of higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is, if anything, getting worse. A recent analysis of...
John Voelcker -
Preventing the next Dieselgate: EU can now oversee, overrule new-car approval by member countries
With the exception of California's longstanding ability to set its own tougher emission standards, any car legal to sell in one state of the U.S. is legal to sell in all of them. And aside from a handful of differences—daytime running lights, speedometers marked in km/h—Canadian-market...
John Voelcker -
Why China will beat U.S. in electric-car battle: urgency, regulations
As the electric-vehicle market matures and more global automakers commit to building battery-powered cars, one driving force has emerged to lead the pack. With apologies to the title of a comedy from half a century ago ... The Chinese Are Coming. That's the assertion made by old China hand Michael...
Mark Stevenson -
Renewable-fuel mandate ruling leaves no one happy: the best compromise?
As they say, the best compromise is usually the one that leaves all parties equally dissatisfied. When it comes to the Environmental Protection Agency's renewable-fuel mandate, it seems regulators have reached equilibrium. The latest skirmish in the long-running battle over the U.S. renewable-fuel...
Mark Stevenson -
Trump EPA: less enforcement of laws, more leeway for polluters
In grade school, students commonly ran through the halls when teachers or other school staff weren't looking. Signs forbidding the act of sprinting past lockers did little to deter the practice, since there was no incentive not to run unless someone present was enforcing the rule. The same can be...
Mark Stevenson -
One of the interesting side effects of plug-in electric cars turns out to be a greater awareness of energy sources and uses. A 2012 California study, for instance, showed roughly four out of 10 electric-car drivers either had or were considering solar panels to provide electricity to their home. And because electric cars everywhere in the U.S. have lower wells-to-wheels carbon-dioxide emissions than the average new vehicle, their ability to slow those emissions that contribute to climate change is huge. DON'T MISS: Scientists debate: could renewable energy entirely replace fossil fuels in...
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EPA chief Scott Pruitt: 'environmentalism' is use rather than preservation
EPA head Scott Pruitt will likely go down as one of the most controversial agency chiefs in that agency's history of almost 50 years. The former Oklahoma attorney general, who sued the EPA 14 times on behalf of fossil-fuel interests during the Obama administration, has a radically different view of...
Sean Szymkowski -
CARB steps up shadow-EPA role with new building, vehicle testing lab
For 45 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been charged with protecting the U.S. from pollution in its air, water, and land. Under the Trump Administration, its administrator Scott Pruitt is aggressively muzzling and removing scientists, eradicating climate-science from its activities...
John Voelcker -
EPA head: new report that climate change is manmade has 'no bearing' on plans to end climate action
When top U.S. scientists released the fourth National Climate Assessment, it spelled out one blunt conclusion: human activity in releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere caused the climate change that has warmed the globe. Mandated for release every four years, the report will apparently have...
Sean Szymkowski -
EU to slash vehicle carbon emissions one third more from 2021 through 2030
Europe already has tough standards for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions in current and future vehicles. Now they're going to get significantly tougher between 2021 and 2030. At its weekly cabinet meeting, held Wednesday, the European Union formally adopted far more stringent requirements for...
John Voelcker -
Electric cars emit less carbon than average U.S. new car, everywhere in the world
When electric cars first arrived in 2011, it was a reasonable question: Aren't you just shifting emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack? The answer is yes, but the carbon emissions per mile of an electric car—properly measured on a wells-to-wheels basis—are virtually always lower...
John Voelcker