YouTube's reduced tolerance for misinformation now extends to climate science. The Google service has enacted a new policy barring ads and monetization for content that contradicts the "well-established scientific consensus" surrounding climate change, including videos that claim climate change is a hoax or reject the human link to global warming. YouTube will start enforcing the policy in November.
The company stressed that it would allow ads for videos discussing those bogus claims as well as other climate-related subjects, such as the exact degree of human impact or debates on climate policy. YouTube is basing its judgments on "authoritative" expertise, including contributors to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The firm wasn't shy about the reasoning for the move: advertisers just don't want their ads linked to climate change denial material, and creators don't want those ads on their pages. YouTube is concerned it could lose business, and dropping monetization for bogus science is an easy way to prevent that loss.
This effort stops short of banning climate change denial, although that's not surprising. Unlike anti-vaccine misinformation, climate change denial doesn't carry the risk of short-term harm. YouTube can keep the content visible for the sake of debate and expression without worrying that it will directly lead to illness. This won't stop science deniers from moving to other platforms or using their videos to peddle products like books, but it might discourage 'casual' attempts to profit from climate misinformation.
Google's latest effort to help you make more environmentally friendly decisions is all about your power grid. The new Nest Renew program is a suite of features that look at the times of day when the electricity feeding into your home is cleaner and turning your compatible Nest thermostats on or off accordingly. Renew arrives in a by-invitation preview in the coming weeks, and will be available for free in the continental US when it launches publicly.
At the heart of Nest Renew is the understanding that at any given time, the power grid in your neighborhood contains a mix of clean and traditional energy. In the early afternoon, perhaps, there could be a higher concentration of electricity from solar sources, while a windier day could mean more power from turbines is coming through. Depending on the region, power grids could be getting their electricity from a diverse mix of sources. According to Nest product manager Jeff Gleeson, "a smart dynamic electric grid really needs smart homes."
Nest Renew will not only automate some of this decision-making for you, but it can also give you insights on the type of power coming into your home. First, a new feature called Energy Shift will let those with a Google account and compatible Nest Thermostat automatically activate heating or cooling during times when your grid is cleaner.
Google
Because Google can now see how carbon-intense a grid is, it can start cooling, say, earlier in the day when solar energy is more available (and your home is approaching your temperature limit). Gleeson told Engadget that the company doesn't think people will notice a difference with this change, and stresses that "customers are always in control."
If your thermostat kicks in before you want it to, you can always dial it back down, and you'll know the device is making a Renew-related decision thanks to a green leaf that will appear onscreen. For those whose energy provider charges based on time-of-use, this can also help you save money.
Nest has had the leaf symbol on its product for years as an indicator of more power-efficient temperature control. Now, you can earn leafs by doing things like using Energy Shift, joining monthly challenges to do things like running your laundry on cold. When you accumulate enough leafs to hit milestones, you can vote where Google sends its funds (from a list of its Energy Impact partners starting with non-profits GRID Alternatives and Elevate).
Google
In addition to automatic adjustments via your thermostat, Nest Renew will provide monthly "impact reports" that not only tell you the difference you're making, but also display when the electricity coming into your home is greener. With this data, you can choose to run the laundry, dishwasher or charge your devices earlier or later when your grid is cleaner.
Renew is a free opt-in program and works with the third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, the Nest Thermostat E or the most recent Nest Thermostat. Google is also offering a Premium tier for $10 a month in select parts of the US. It will unlock a Clean Energy Match feature that will exchange renewable energy credits (RECs) for what it estimates to be the same amount of fossil fuel-based electricity you use at home each month. This way, even if clean energy isn't available when you need to use it, you can at least assuage your guilt over using non-renewable power. Premium members will also get a unified bill that shows their monthly subscription to the program as well as their usual utility charges.
Gleeson said Nest has been working on this program for years, and in that time it has teamed up with utilities and energy providers to encourage enrollment in residential programs, among other things. For Nest Renew, it's teamed up with eight Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) providers to help shape the program to meet their respective zero-carbon goals.
Through the Nest Thermostats, increased visibility and marketing and relevant rewards programs, Google hopes to get more people enrolled in green energy utilities offers and programs. The company also wants to help utilities "bring more renewables online" and accelerate the process either by supporting them in building or buying renewable infrastructure, according to head of energy partnerships Hannah Bascomb.
Google's slew of sustainability-minded announcements today demonstrate a continued commitment towards the "carbon-free future" that CEO Sundar Pichai wrote about a year ago. In what Pichai called "our third decade of climate action," Google plans to operate on carbon-free energy 24/7, help more than 500 cities reduce 1 gigaton of carbon emissions and enable its partners to reduce carbon emissions all by 2030. Nest Renew is a part of a wide-ranging set of updates today across Search, Maps and more to help Google's users make more-informed, environmentally friendly decisions.
In the third quarter of 2021 Tesla sold 241,300 cars. That's 102,000 more than the same time period last year. Sure, that's only slightly more than half of the 446,997 cars that GM sold in the last three months. But, that number represents a steep 33-percent decline year-over-year for GM. And (if my math is correct) would mean that it sold more cars than Subaru globally over the last three months.
That Tesla has surged while other automakers are struggling isn't a huge surprise once you start digging into the details, though. While other manufacturers have felt the brunt of the global chip shortage Tesla has begun sourcing different silicon, according to The Verge, and rewriting its software to work with those new components.
Additionally the company only recently began selling its popular Model Y in Europe and it's still relatively new to the Chinese market as well, giving it plenty of room for growth.
EV automaker Nikola has signed a memorandum of understanding with Opal Fuels to build and operate hydrogen fueling stations across North America. Under the preliminary agreement, the two companies will work to co-develop the technology necessary to accelerate the adoption of fuel-cell electric vehicles. They also plan to explore the use of renewable natural gas.
Initially, they say they plan to focus on infrastructure for private shipping companies before looking at whether it makes sense to make something similar available to the public. To date, Opal has built more than 350 renewable natural gas stations.
“Today marks another important step forward in Nikola’s stated energy infrastructure plans and its focus on providing hydrogen fueling services to customers,” said Pablo Koziner, the president of Nikola’s energy and commercial operations.
The announcement comes just months after federal prosecutors indicted Nikola founder and former executive chairman Trevor Milton of fraud. Among other allegations, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Milton of falsely claiming the company was producing hydrogen at four times less than the market rate.
Swiss company ABB, which supplies EV chargers to Ionity and Electrify America, has unveiled what it calls the "world's fastest electric car charger," Reuters has reported. As its name suggests, the Terra 360 has a 360 kW capacity, meaning it could fully charge a (theoretical) EV in 15 minutes. More realistically, it can charge four vehicles simultaneously, saving space at charging stations.
The Terra 360 isn't the most powerful charger by much, as companies like Electrify America, Ionity and EVGo have been using 350 kW chargers manufactured by ABB and others since at least 2018. However, it's the "only charger designed explicitly to charge up to four vehicles at once," the company said. "This gives owners the flexibility to charge up to four vehicles overnight or to give a quick refill to their EVs in the day." They also have a relatively small footprint, allowing installation in small depots or parking lots.
There aren't a lot of EVs that can handle that kind of charge. The fastest-charging EV available is Hyundai's Ioniq 5, which supports DC fast-charging at up to 350 kW, in theory. The only two approaching that are Porsche's Taycan, with 270 kW of charging capacity and the new Lucid Air, which allows for up to 300 kW fast-charging. Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y EVs can charge at up to 250 kW.
Such high charging levels aren't necessarily great for an EV's battery. Porsche, for instance, has a battery preservation setting on its Plug & Charge Taycan feature that lowers voltage to 200 kW from the maximum 270 kW allowed — so it's essentially acknowledging that faster charging degrades the battery. On top of that, extreme charging levels don't necessarily save you much time, as Car and Driver found. Tesla recently promised to upgrade its own Supercharger V3 network from 250kW to 300kW.
ABB's new chargers will be able to add 100 km (62 miles) of range in less than three minutes. They'll arrive in Europe by the end of the year and start rolling out in the US and elsewhere in 2022.
Starting in 2030, California will require all light-duty autonomous vehicles that operate in the state to emit zero emissions. Signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday, SB 500 represents the latest effort by the state to limit the sale of new internal combustion vehicles with an eye towards reducing greenhouse emissions. In 2020, Newsom signed an executive order that effectively banned the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. That same year, the state’s Air Resources Board mandated that all new trucks sold in California emit zero emissions by 2045.
“We’re grateful for California’s leadership in ensuring this will be the industry standard,” said Prashanthi Raman, head of global government affairs at Cruise, in a statement to Engadget. “The AV industry is primed to lead the way in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in cities, and it’s why we’ve operated an all-electric, zero-emissions fleet from the start.” Cruise backed SB 500 through its involvement with the Emission Zero Coalition, a group that also includes autonomous delivery startup Nuro.
Per the Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation sector has been the single largest source of greenhouse emissions in the US since 2019, with light-duty vehicles accounting for more than half of that output. However, autonomous cars currently represent only a tiny fraction of the nearly 15 million vehicles on California roads. Moreover, both Cruise and Waymo, two of the most prominent companies testing fully autonomous taxi services in the state, utilize fleets made almost exclusively of electric and hybrid vehicles. This latest move from California then is about preventing autonomous vehicles from becoming major polluters in the future, particularly if driverless taxi services become popular among commuters.
Researchers have created a winged microchip around the size of a sand grain that may be the smallest flying device yet made, Vice has reported. They're designed to be carried around by the wind and could be used in numerous applications including disease and air pollution tracking, according to a paper published by Nature. At the same time, they could be made from biodegradable materials to prevent environmental contamination.
The design of the flyers was inspired by spinning seeds from cottonwood and other trees. Those fall slowly by spinning like helicopters so they can be picked up by the wind and spread a long distance from the tree, increasing the range of the species.
The team from Northwest University ran with that idea but made it better, and smaller. "We think we've beaten biology... we've been able to build structures that fall in a more stable trajectory at slower terminal velocities than equivalent seeds," said lead Professor John A. Rogers. "The other thing... was that we were able to make these helicopter flyer structures that are much smaller than seeds you would see in the natural world."
They're not so small that the aerodynamics starts to break down, though. "All of the advantages of the helicopter design begin to disappear below a certain length scale, so we pushed it all the way, as far as you can go or as physics would allow," Rogers told Vice. "Below that size scale, everything looks and falls like a sphere."
The devices are also large enough to carry electronics, sensors and power sources. The team tested multiple versions that could carry payloads like antenna so that they could wireless communicate with a smartphone or each other. Other sensors could monitor things like air acidity, water quality and solar radiation.
The flyers are still concepts right now and not ready to deploy into the atmosphere, but the team plans to expand their findings with different designs. Key to that is the use of biodegradable materials so they wouldn't persist in the environment.
"We don't think about these devices... as a permanent monitoring componentry but rather temporary ones that are addressing a particular need that’s of finite time duration," Rogers said. “That's the way that we're envisioning things currently: you monitor for a month and then the devices die out, dissolve, and disappear, and maybe you have to redeploy them."
Ford has announced a partnership with Redwood Materials to recycle electric vehicle batteries. The automaker is investing $50 million in the startup, whose co-founder and CEO is Tesla's former chief technology officer JB Straubel. Redwood, which also recycles batteries for e-bike company Specialized, will use the funds to expand its manufacturing facilities.
The companies say the deal will make EVs more sustainable and affordable by bringing the battery supply chain closer to home. They plan to increase battery production in the US, something the Biden administration is looking to do to reduce dependency on imports from countries such as China.
Recycling batteries in a closed loop will help reduce costs and benefit the environment, as Ford will rely less on imports and the mining of raw materials. Redwood claims it can recover 95 percent of elements such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper on average using its recycling technology. The company reuses those materials to make anode copper foil and cathode active materials for new batteries.
Ford announced the financial backing as part of its plan to invest over $30 billion in electrification by the end of 2025. The company recently said it would spend another $250 million to ramp up production of the in-demand F-150 Lightning EV.
In May, Ford revealed plans to make EV batteries at BlueOvalSK plants in North America by the middle of this decade. BlueOvalSK is a joint venture Ford plans to form with SK Innovation, pending approval.
If you were hoping to score a few thousand Supercharging miles from Tesla referrals, we're afraid you may already be too late. In a notice on its website spotted by Electrek, Tesla said that "vehicle products and solar panels are no longer eligible for Referral awards" as of September 18th. The company's only active program at the moment is for the Solar Roof, which awards referrers with monetary rewards of up to $500 and free Powerwalls.
Tesla's referral program has changed tremendously over the years. The automaker used to promise new Roadsters for top referrers and up to six months of free Supercharging. That eventually became too expensive to be sustainable, so the company decided to axe the program. Tesla introduced a new one with more reasonable rewards shortly after that, though, promising at least 1,000 miles of free Supercharging.
When it relaunched the program with updated terms, the company said that it "heard from... customers that the Referral Program was one of their favorite reasons to tell their friends about Tesla." It's unclear if it would come back again this time for the same reason, but we wouldn't be surprised if it does. Take note, however, that Tesla has yet to fulfill some of its bigger promises to referrers. As Electrek notes, it hasn't delivered the Roadsters its top referrers earned yet, and people have been complaining on online forums about not receiving free Powerwalls and other rewards from years ago.
The world's largest direct-air carbon capture plant is up and running, although you might want to keep your expectations in check. Bloombergreports Climeworks has started operations for Orca, a plant in Iceland that grabs CO2 from the air, storing it underground and using a Carbfix solution to mix the chemical with water and (in two years) trap it in stone. The facility will capture 4,000 tons of CO2 per year, and it's 'permanently' removed from the environment, not recycled.
A carbon offset isn't a trivial purchase. It currently costs $600 per ton for bulk requests, and as high as $1,200 for eco-friendly individuals. Climeworks hopes to shrink the cost to $300 or less per ton by 2030 as it ramps up its overall capacity.
While Orca represents an important milestone for actively reducing humanity's carbon footprint, it's not much to brag about at this stage — if anything, it reveals just how far the technology has to go. That 4,000 tons of capture is equal to just 250 US residents, half the total capture output in the world, and nowhere near matching Climeworks' initial plan to capture 300 million tons (1 percent of the world's emissions) by 2025. The company now expects to reach 500,000 tons per year by 2030.
There are still reasons to be optimistic. Demand is very high, according to Climeworks, to the point where the company plans to expand Orca tenfold in the next three years. Lower carbon reduction prices could also accelerate adoption by tempting companies that would otherwise pay penalties when they can't meet emissions targets. This won't be a true substitute for reducing CO2 output, but it could help mitigate the impact in the short term.
