Hi John,

It’s been an ELECTRIC week for climate and energy news. Between the International Energy Agency’s new roadmap for achieving net-zero emissions and the unveiling of the Ford F-150, this week reminded us that no matter how much progress we make toward decarbonizing our economy, we still have a lot of work to do to reach our climate goals. We can’t let up the ambition now.

 INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY RELEASES ROADMAP TO NET-ZERO BY 2050

The International Energy Agency released a groundbreaking report earlier this week that maps out a narrow pathway for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Consequentially, the IEA called for no new investment in fossil fuel supply projects, starting now. For an agency that was initially created with the intent of responding to disruptions in the oil supply and providing timely information on the world’s oil markets, that’s a pretty big deal. 
 
IEA also calls for an enormous increase in public spending to build out clean energy infrastructure, incentivize private investments, and spur technological innovation to develop and deploy next-generation clean energy technologies.
 
Some figures the IEA’s roadmap calls for:

• $820 billion on electric grids annually by 2030. That’s nearly four times the current global spending levels of $260 billion on transmission infrastructure.
• 40 million EV charging stations by 2030—a massive increase from the 1 million charging stations in place today. That would mean adding over 10,000 charging stations every day between now and 2030.
• 6,600 GWh of global EV battery production by 2030, or more than 40 times the current production levels for EV batteries—“the equivalent of adding 20 gigafactories every year for the next 10 years.”

The report also calls for a significant increase in innovation funding—about $90 billion in global public investment annually to reach our demonstration goals. IEA predicts that almost half of the emissions reductions in 2050 will come from “technologies that are currently at the demonstration or prototype phase.”
 
What kind of technological innovation would this funding support?
 
“The biggest innovation opportunities concern advanced batteries, hydrogen electrolysers, and direct air capture and storage,” accompanied by investments in the infrastructure needed to deploy these technologies at scale.

 “MY NAME IS JOE BIDEN AND I’M A CAR GUY”

President Biden visited the Ford Company Rouge Electric Power Plant in Dearborn, Michigan this week to tour the facility where Ford will begin producing its all-new electric F-150, the Lightning.
 
“The future of the auto industry is electric. There’s no turning back,” said President Biden at the event.
 
He even managed to take a joyride in the F-150 Lightning.

Several members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 600, which represents workers at the Rouge Plant, joined President Biden at the visit. The Ford F-150 Lightning will be built by UAW workers, and Biden told them that our effort to electrify the US auto industry is an unprecedented opportunity to create good-paying new jobs for America’s unionized auto workforce.  

President Biden’s American Jobs Plan commits $174 billion to electric vehicle production, which will help build 500,000 EV charging stations nationwide, create new consumer incentives to buy affordable EVs, provide tax credits for EV manufacturing, and incentivize building batteries and other auto parts domestically to secure EV supply chains and secure manufacturing jobs for American workers.

Ford officially unveiled the EV F-150 Wednesday night in a significant moment in US automobile history. The F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the US for over 40 decades; approximately one in every 16 cars on the road in the US is an F-150, and it is the most popular vehicle in 39 out of 50 states. Ford’s F-150 production generates approximately $42 billion in revenue, and F-series manufacturing is responsible for approximately 500,000 US jobs. What’s more, each direct F-Series job supports an additional 13 to 14 American jobs, such as those found in dealerships and local communities around Ford and supplier facilities.

Ford also announced a partnership with Korean battery producer SK Innovation, whose battery cell plant in Commerce, Georgia is expected to create hundreds of new clean energy jobs in the state. The companies plan on producing 60 MWh in traction battery cells and array models starting in 2025.

Electrifying our country’s most popular vehicle reflects an important step forward in our efforts to decarbonize the transportation sector, which contributes more carbon emissions per year than any other sector. Electrifying US transportation also creates an opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of good-paying, union jobs.

 SECRETARY GRANHOLM

On Wednesday, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm testified before the House Committee on Energy Commerce to discuss the President’s FY22 discretionary budget for the Department of Energy.

Rep. Veasey, in his testimony, questioned Secretary Granholm on the use of carbon capture and storage to curb emissions from the hard-to-decarbonize industrial sector. He even quoted a figure from our Decarb America Research Initiative.

Rep. Veasey: “The American Jobs Plan specifically includes funding for these types of projects, which could support 10,000 good-paying jobs per year, according to Decarb America. The President’s FY22 budget request includes funding that could be available for industrial CCUS demonstrations and commercialization projects…

Can you talk more on how reducing emissions in the industrial sector can help us meet our climate goals, but also grow the base of good-paying, manufacturing jobs here in America?”

Secretary Granholm: “There was a study out in January that said there was going to be a $23 trillion market for the products that will reduce carbon emissions. That includes products like carbon capture use and sequestration, like hydrogen, like solar and wind, like geothermal, like nuclear.... [T]here’s going to be a massive global demand. Why would we be importing wind turbines from Denmark when we could be building them here and stamping them “Made In America” and exporting them? Why would we be allowing China to corner the market on critical minerals that make up the batteries for the electric vehicle?

...That whole supply chain, that’s ours for the taking, if we make the right moves. This whole area creates all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people in all pockets of the country. Good paying jobs, union jobs. That includes opportunities for managing carbon in communities that have been left behind.”

Watch the full exchange here.