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- #4. 🤓 Bill Gates’ climate investment firm | 🇺🇦Ukraine’s renewable energy | ⚡️Foxconn EVs
#4. 🤓 Bill Gates’ climate investment firm | 🇺🇦Ukraine’s renewable energy | ⚡️Foxconn EVs
🌡 CLIMATE CHANGE
This amazing article does a deep dive into the various impacts of climate change on the following facets of life on Earth: weather; environment; agriculture; animals; humans; and the future effects of climate change generally.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service added Emperor Penguins as a threatened species due to receding Antarctic sea ice. Unless global warming is stopped, the estimated 625,000 to 650,000 birds which call Antarctica home could see their populations dwindle to zero by the end of the century.
Bill Gates’ climate investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which has already invested in more than 100 startups focused on reducing greenhouse gases, is now focusing on not only mitigating, but adapting to a warming planet.
🔋 CLEAN ENERGY
As part of Apple’s promise in 2020 to reduce to zero by 2030 its carbon emissions, the Silicon Valley company is now making investments in solar and wind projects across Europe while insisting on decarbonization by its suppliers.
Through an enrollment in MIGreenPower, a voluntary renewable energy program with DTE Energy, the US state of Michigan’s power company, the US retail chain will achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. 7-Eleven had already committed to installing EV chargers at its retail locations.
Renewable energy exports key pillar for Ukraine’s reconstruction — chancellor Scholz (long read)
With assistance from Western investments, Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction efforts will focus heavily on exports of gas, hydrogen, and renewable energy generally, as well as a rebuilt climate-neutral energy system. The World Bank estimates funding needs of around $350 billion, while Ukraine doubles that number to $700 billion.
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đźš— AUTONOMOUS & ELECTRIC VEHICLES
China’s BEV market grew a whopping 62% to 475,000 units shipped in just one month, while accounting for some 26% of all auto sales last month. At this pace, BEV market share should reach 33% of the Chinese market by this time next year, while exceeding 50% by 2025. Tesla still holds the top spot — barely — with nearly 47,000 deliveries last month, with BYD closing in fast just 1,000 registrations behind.
Long known as the maker of Apple’s iPhones, the Taiwanese manufacturer recently showcased two new EVs to validate its intent to move into the EV market. Targeting a 5% market penetration by 2025, the end goal is to one day achieve a 40% to 45% market penetration just like it has in the computer and smartphone markets. To that end, Foxconn already has US partnerships with EV makers Lordstown Motors, Fisker, Inc., and Indi EV, as well as a farm tractor, the Monarch MK-V. Foxconn is also heavily invested in the development of solid state batteries, a perennially “nearly there” technology that would offer a revolutionary step change in EV battery capacity.
After more than a decade of anti-EV rhetoric in favor of its Prius-branded hybrid success, Toyota has made an about face with its just-announced bZ3 sedan as a successor to its recently-released, and unenthusiastically received, bZ4x. A joint venture with BYD, the bZ3 — “beyond zero emissions” — takes direct aim at Tesla’s Model 3, a vehicle projected to overtake the Ford F-150 pickup truck as the number one selling vehicle of North America some time next year.
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