Tesla has big expansion plans for its first Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. The automaker has announced that it's investing $3.6 billion to build two new factories in the complex and hire 3,000 additional workers. That's bigger than the company's initial investment ($3.5 billion) when it made a commitment to build the facility back in 2014. One of the new Nevada factories will manufacture its 4680-type batteries, while the other will be Tesla's first factory to mass produce the Semi. 

The automaker delivered its first production Semis to Pepsi in December 2022, five years after it first showed off the electric rig and following several delays. Tesla currently manufactures the truck in limited quantities only, but it has long been planning to start volume production in Nevada. The company's Semi truck uses less than 2 kWh per mile of energy and can go between 300 and 500 miles on a single charge. Tesla claims owners will enjoy an estimated fuel savings of up to $200,000 within the first three years. 

While the Semi factory will finally allow Tesla to mass produce its trucks, its 4680 battery factory will help it achieve its goals of slashing battery costs by half and ramping up production to be able to sell 20 million electric vehicles by 2030. Tesla introduced the 4680 battery — named as such because its cells measure 46mm by 80mm — as a higher-capacity-but-cheaper option to power its vehicles. According to Reuters, though, the company has been having issues scaling up its production due to the dry-coating technique used to coat its cells. Tesla didn't say how it's addressing those issues, but it did say that the new factory will have the capacity to produce enough 4680 batteries for 1.5 million light duty vehicles every year.

Electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell vehicles accounted for 18.8 percent of all new car sales in California this past year, according to data shared on Friday by the state’s Energy Commission (CEC). In 2022, California residents bought 345,818 zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), a 38 percent increase from a year ago and a 138 percent jump compared to 2020. In what should come as no surprise, Tesla vehicles made up most of the ZEVs people in California bought last year. About two-thirds of the 345,000 ZEVs sold in the state in 2022 were made by the automaker, per France’s AFP News Agency.

With EVs and other zero-emission vehicles making up nearly one-fifth of new car sales in California, the state still has some work to do on the adoption front. In Norway, for instance, electric vehicles made up 65 percent of new car sales in 2021 and 79.3 percent in 2022. That said, the country’s largest car market did some heavy lifting relative to the rest of the US. The CEC says 40 percent of all ZEVs sold in the US were sold in California. It’s also worth taking a moment to point to the scale of the California car market. When EVs made up 65 percent of new car sales in Norway, the country’s dealerships sold 113,715 EVs. That’s about a third of the number of zero-emission vehicles sold in California last year.

In any case, EV adoption in California is likely to increase significantly over the next few years. Ahead of the state’s 2035 ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered cars, the CEC announced last month it would spend about $2.6 billion to build 90,000 new chargers across the state. The California Air Resources Board set aside another $2.6 billion to incentivize consumers and companies to switch to electric vehicles.

Researchers say they have determined a way to make agrivoltaics — the process of growing crops underneath solar panels — more efficient. They found that red wavelengths are more efficient for growing plants, while the blue part of the spectrum is better for producing solar energy. Solar panels that only allow red wavelengths of light to pass through could enable farmers to grow food more productively while generating power at the same time.

Previous studies have found that agrivoltaics can reduce the amount of water required for crops, since they're shaded from direct sunlight. Researchers at Michigan Technological University determined in 2015 that shading can reduce water usage by up to 29 percent. Majdi Abou Najm, an associate professor at University of California, Davis' department of land, air and water resources, told Modern Farmer that by splitting the light spectrum, crops can get the same amount of carbon dioxide with less water while shielding them from heat.

The researchers put the idea to the test by growing tomatoes under blue and red filters, as well as a control crop without any coverings. Although the yield for the covered plots was about a third less than the control, the latter had around twice the amount of rotten tomatoes. Abou Najm noted that the filters helped to reduce heat stress and crop wastage.

Majdi Abou Najm/UC Davis

For this approach to work in practice, though, manufacturers would need to develop translucent solar panels that capture blue light and allow red light to pass through. Matteo Camporese, an associate professor at the University of Padova in Italy and lead author of a paper on the topic, suggested that translucent, carbon-based organic solar cells could work. These cells could be applied onto surfaces such as glass.

There are other issues, including the fact wavelength-selective agrivoltaic systems may need to account for different crop types. Harvesting those crops efficiently might require some out-of-the-box thinking too. Still, the research seems promising and, with a growing global population, it's important to consider different approaches to using our resources more productively.

“We cannot feed 2 billion more people in 30 years by being just a little more water-efficient and continuing as we do,” Abou Najm said. “We need something transformative, not incremental. If we treat the sun as a resource, we can work with shade and generate electricity while producing crops underneath. Kilowatt hours become a secondary crop you can harvest.”

What could become only the second lithium mine in the US received backing from the Biden administration this week. In an announcement spotted by Bloomberg, the Department of Energy said it would provide mining company Ioneer with a conditional loan valued at up to $700 million to develop the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada’s Esmeralda County. Once operational, the mine is expected to produce enough lithium for about 370,000 electric vehicles annually. Ioneer already has supply agreements with automakers like Ford and Toyota, though the project likely won’t start producing lithium until 2026.

The Biden administration made the funding available through the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. To secure the money, Ioneer must obtain all the necessary permits from relevant state and federal agencies. The Center for Biological Diversity has come out against the project due to the risks it poses to a species of endangered wildflower in the area known as Tiehm’s buckwheat. The US Interior Department has yet to bless the project for that same reason. The Department of Energy said Ioneer revised its plans for the site to avoid direct impacts on the plant. However, it’s worth noting lithium mining requires a lot of water to carry out.

Still, the mineral is essential to many technologies needed to transition the world to a zero-emissions future. What’s more, lithium supply is expected to fall short of global demand by 2030. That gap will make it difficult for the Biden administration to meet its goal of ensuring half of all cars sold in the US by the end of the decade are electric vehicles.

The sleep mode on modern consoles lets them wake up quickly, but it also consumes a significant amount of energy as the system never really shuts off. Microsoft thinks it can offer a compromise, however. It's releasing an Insider test that gives Xbox Series X, Series S and One owners an "active hours" sleep option. Choose that and your console will shut down at times when you aren't likely to use it, cutting your energy use. You can manually schedule the hours if you know when you play, but an automatic option is available if you want the console to adapt to your habits.

The feature will be automatically enabled and scheduled on Xbox Series X/S systems. The Xbox One will default to always active, and you'll have to configure the hours yourself.

The company is also introducing a "shutdown (energy saving)" option that reportedly uses up to 20 times less power than sleep while still allowing overnight updates to your Xbox and its games. If you don't mind the longer startup times and the absence of remote wake, you can reduce your energy footprint and potentially shrink your bills. The update will be automatic for Xbox Series X/S users in the Insider program, and it should be available as early as today for One models.

The Xbox is also borrowing "carbon aware" downloads from Windows 11. If carbon intensity data is available in your region, the machine will schedule OS and game updates for those times when it's most likely to rely on local renewable energy, rather than simply grabbing files in the early morning. Insiders will have this perk right away if the Xbox Series X/S is configured for automatic updates, while the One will have multiple test options to help with feedback.

It's unclear how much energy these features might save in the real world. Microsoft estimates that two Xbox consoles using the eco-friendly shutdown feature will save carbon equivalent to that a tree removes in a decade, but that also assumes your device is powered down for 20 hours per day. Carbon aware downloads only matter if renewables have a significant presence in your area, we'd add. Combined with Apple's Clean Energy Charging, though, it's evident tech brands now see software as a way to advance their environmental goals.

The humble honeybee hasn’t had an easy go of things recently. Between climate change, habitat destruction, pesticide use and attrition from diseases, one of the planet’s most important pollinators has seen its numbers decline dramatically in recent years. All of that bodes poorly for us humans. In the US, honeybees are essential to about one-third of the fruit and produce Americans eat. But the good news is that a solution to one of the problems affecting honeybees is making its way to farmers.

This week, for the first time, the US Department of Agriculture granted conditional approval for an insect vaccine. A biotech firm named Dalan Animal Health recently developed a prophylactic vaccine to protect honeybees from American foulbrood disease. The drug contains dead Paenibacillus larvae, the bacteria that causes the illness.

Thankfully, the vaccine won’t require beekeepers to jab entire colonies of individual insects with the world’s smallest syringe. Instead, administering the drug involves mixing it in with the queen feed worker bees eat. The vaccine then makes its way into the “royal jelly” the drones feed their queen. Her offspring will then be born with some immunity against the harmful bacteria.

The treatment represents a breakthrough for a few reasons. As The New York Times explains, scientists previously thought it was impossible for insects to obtain immunity to diseases because they don’t produce antibodies like humans and animals. However, after identifying the protein that prompts an immune response in bees, researchers realized they could protect an entire hive through a single queen. The vaccine is also a far more humane treatment for American foulbrood. The disease can easily wipe out colonies of 60,000 bees at once, and it often leaves beekeepers with one choice: burn the infected hives to save what they can.

Dr. Annette Kleiser, the CEO of Dalan, told The Times the company hopes to use the vaccine as a blueprint for other treatments to protect honeybees. “Bees are livestock and should have the same modern tools to care for them and protect them that we have for our chickens, cats, dogs and so on,” she said. “We’re really hoping we’re going to change the industry now.”

Five-year-old pool cleaning company Aiper is launching the Seagull Pro, which the company says is the world’s first quad-motor pool-cleaning robot. The flagship vacuum is a CES 2023 Innovation Award Honoree.

The Seagull Pro’s quad-motor system moves the robot around your pool by sucking and quickly exhausting water. Aiper says it can “suck in dirt, sand, leaves, hairs and other particles on the pool’s floor more efficiently than other models.” It can clean in- or above-ground pools (up to 3,200 sq. ft.) for up to three hours per charge and offers three modes: floor cleaning, wall cleaning and auto, which cleans both. Aiper says the device’s WavePath Navigation follows “a unique wave shape” while cleaning to increase its coverage compared to vacuums that wander randomly. The Seagull Pro will cost $900 when it launches in March.

Aiper

Additionally, Aiper has new cheaper models, including the $400 Seagull Plus. It’s made for pools up to 1,300 sq. ft. and helps reduce its cost by trading the quad motor for a dual-motor system. It lasts an estimated 110 minutes while recharging in two and a half hours. Meanwhile, the Aiper Elite Pro skips the Seagull branding while offering high-end features at a slightly lower price than the Seagull Pro (although one big tradeoff is that the Elite Pro only covers 1,300 sq. ft.) It has a lightweight design, wall-cleaning capabilities and a dual-motor system. It can clean for two hours, the same time it takes to recharge. The Elite Pro arrives this Thursday for $800.

Aiper also highlights the Seagull SE, a budget water vacuum released in November. Although it only supports pools up to 850 sq. ft., it has dual drive motors and can run for 90 minutes (recharging in two and a half hours). The Seagull SE costs $300.

The Canadian government has announced enforceable quotas for zero-emission vehicle sales. By 2026, a fifth of all new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the country will need to be zero-emission models, such as electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 

"We're moving forward with a regulated sales target that requires at least 20 percent of new vehicles sold by 2026 to be zero emission, increasing that to 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035," Julie Dabrusin, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, said at a press conference.

It's estimated that, between 2026 and 2050, the quotas will lead to Canadians saving almost $34 billion CAD in energy costs. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will be equivalent to Ontario's entire emissions for three years. Currently, passenger vehicle emissions account for around 10 percent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions.

While Canada already had zero-emission vehicle sales targets, those aren't yet enforceable nationwide, though some provinces, including Quebec and British Columbia, have their own mandates. The final regulations should be published in 2023. According to the Canadian Press, importers and manufacturers that don't meet the quotas may be penalized under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The country will use credits to track vehicle sales.

There's still some way to go until Canada can meet the proposed sales targets. In the first six months of 2022, EVs (including plug-in hybrid models) made up 7.2 percent of new car registrations. That was up from 5.2 percent for all of 2021. In British Columbia, almost 15 percent of new vehicles registered between January and June were EVs. In Quebec and Ontario, the proportions were 11.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. In all other provinces, EVs accounted for less than four percent of new vehicle sales.

Infrastructure improvements should help to increase EV adoption, as should incentives. Dabrusin noted that, by 2027, 85,000 federally funded public chargers will be installed across the country. She added that Canada has long offered rebates on new zero-emission vehicle purchases of up to $5,000 for individuals and up to $10,000 for businesses. More than 180,000 Canadians and businesses in the country have benefitted from those incentives, which have been renewed. The government also plans to invest in EV manufacturing.

Several automakers have pledged to switch entirely to making EVs and/or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, with GM setting a deadline of 2035 and Honda aiming to fully make the transition by 2040. Some jurisdictions — such as California, New York and the UK — will ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

“The regulated sales targets for zero emission vehicles announced today will reduce emissions by helping more drivers get behind the wheel of an electric car," Anna Kanduth, a senior research associate at the Canadian Climate Institute, said. "Right now, more than half of Canadians want their next car to be an electric vehicle but they face long wait times, with scarce supply going to provinces like British Columbia and Quebec, where sales mandates are already in place. The federal regulations will help shorten wait times for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids by increasing supply in all provinces and territories."

Nearly 200 countries have agreed to protect 30 percent of Earth's lands and oceans by 2030. The deal was reached early this morning at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal following two weeks of negotiations. The only holdouts to the deal were the US and the Vatican, though the Biden administration has a domestic plan to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030. 

With the agreement, each participating country agrees to hitting over 20 environmental targets by the end of the decade. A key condition is the so-called 30x30 plan to protect at least 30 percent of land, inland water and coastal areas by 2030. That forms the basis of an international agreement similar to the 2015 Paris climate accord. 

Along with the protection of habitats, nations have pledged to reduce pesticide risks by 50 percent, reduce nutrient runoff from farms and the rate at which invasive species are introduced to ecosystems.

Nations now have eight years to stop the loss of biodiversity being driven by humans due rainforest destruction, species exploitation, pollution and more. Previous agreements, like the biodiversity targets set at Aichi, Japan in 2010, saw nations fail to achieve the goals set. This time, though, there's a monitoring framework to keep track of progress. 

In addition to protecting species, the draft COP15 agreement urges nations to recognize and respect "the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories." However, Amnesty International wrote that the deal was a "missed opportunity to protect indigenous peoples' rights," as it didn't explicitly recognize their lands and territories as a separate category of conserved area.

Another point of disagreement was between wealthy and poor countries over funds. Nations in South America and Africa that house the world's largest rainforests wanted assurances from rich countries that they'll receive money to battle poaching, illegal deforestation and other issues, according to The Washington Post. 

At one point in negotiations, delegates from developing countries walked out of on talks over funding issues. The agreement must "align the resources and the ambitions," said Columbia's environmental minister Susana Muhamad. The Democratic Republic of Congo's environment minister, Ève Bazaiba, added that "when it comes to fauna, we need to have the means to achieve this objective." 

The COP15 agreement follows a breakthrough deal at the COP27 climate conference, approving a climate damage fund for developing nations. How well the plan will be implemented remains to be seen, though. "While agreements are great, if we’re going to save life on Earth, now we have to roll up our sleeves and do it," the Center for Biological Diversity's Tanya Sanerib wrote. "The planet faces an extinction crisis like none ever before witnessed by humankind, with 28 percent of species across the global facing extinction."

The California Energy Commission (CEC) will spend $2.9 billion to accelerate the state’s zero-emission transportation strategy. In an announcement spotted by Reuters, the agency detailed an investment plan it estimated would result in California building about 90,000 new chargers over the next four years, a move that would more than double the number of chargers available across the state.

About $900 million will go toward chargers designed for light-duty EVs, with another $1.7 billion earmarked for infrastructure that supports medium and heavy-duty zero-emissions vehicles, including those powered by hydrogen fuel cells. When you add in funding from utilities and other programs, the commission says it expects California to hit its goal of deploying 250,000 chargers by 2025.

“This transformative investment will deploy charging and refueling infrastructure swiftly and equitably to make sure drivers of zero-emission cars and trucks feel confident they can refuel wherever they go,” said CEC Lead Commissioner for Transportation Patty Monahan. “The plan will increase access to charging and hydrogen fueling for individuals, businesses and public agencies, while supporting our emerging manufacturing ecosystem and creating jobs.”

Building enough charging infrastructure to support a growing number of EVs will be critical to California’s climate change plan. Earlier this year, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), following an order from Governor Gavin Newsom, said it would require all cars sold in the state by 2035 to be either fully electric or plug-in hybrids. More recently, the agency approved a $2.6 billion investment to incentivize consumers and companies to switch to electric vehicles.