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Amazon & Rivian’s 1,000 EVs 🚎, clean energy slowdown for Q3 👎🏼, and what to expect at COP27 💸

Amazon & Rivian’s 1,000 EVs 🚎, clean energy slowdown for Q3 👎🏼, and what to expect at COP27 💸

November 08, 2022

Hi folks,

Welcome to Tuesday’s issue of the most interesting stories in climate business 📈, tech 🚀, and policy 📜.

Today’s brief includes Amazon and Rivian’s 1,000 EVs, clean energy slowdown for Q3, and what to expect at COP27.

Big Business 👩🏼‍💼

Amazon and Rivian announced an expansion of their electric delivery partnership, bringing the service to over 100 U.S. cities ahead of the holidays.
More than 1,000 custom-designed vehicles all come from Amazon’s initial purchase order in October 2020.
Amazon is looking to have 100,000 Rivian vehicles making deliveries for its network by 2030.

Solar installations fell by 23 percent and wind installations by 78 percent in Q3 2022 compared to Q3 2021.
Storage is on track to have its best year ever, already having added 3 GW this year, close to the 3.2 GW it added during all of 2021.
The backlog of delayed clean energy projects now totals 36 GW of capacity, 63 percent of which are solar projects, according to ACP.
The outlook going forward is positive, thanks in large part to the Inflation Reduction Act.

Xeal, a company providing electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions, raised $40M in Series B funding from Keyframe Capital, ArcTern Ventures, Moderne Ventures, Ramez Naam, Nexus Labs, Wind Ventures and Alpaca VC.
The company intends to use the funds to develop new products and expand its network of real estate partners.
Led by CEO Alexander (Zander) Isaacson, Xeal offers multifamily and commercial real estate owners and operators the ability to install smart EV charging in their communities with little to no infrastructure upgrades.

Protein Evolution, a startup based in New Haven, Connecticut, has created a process that can break down plastic waste into its component parts, which can then be reused to make new plastics.
Until now, it has been cheaper (assuming no cost is assigned to the damage done to the environment by plastic waste) than to recycle existing plastic. Protein Evolution says its technology may be able to help the chemical industry transition to a lower carbon, circular economy.
The company expects to launch its commercial commercial partnership by the end of 2022.
Recycling is an essential step for a circular economy.

COP27 is being held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, for negotiations on mitigating climate change.
The two-week meeting follows a year of devastating floods, storms, heat waves, and droughts. Inflation, conflict, food shortages, supply chain snarls, rising energy prices, and still, the Covid-19 pandemic are also present concerns, even if they aren’t specifically on the agenda.
The United States is awaiting the outcome of midterm elections that could speed up or stall its climate change efforts.

Far-right or populist parties around the world have co-opted climate change into their culture war.
Republicans are eyeing a return to power in one or both houses of Congress in the U.S. in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
The fact this is happening in countries that produce a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions has alarmed some green advocates.

A few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic. Now, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees.
Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.
This is a great long read and visualization of what the real life impact of unchecked climate change.

The German government will introduce a nation-wide transport ticket for 49 euros per month in order to reduce CO2 emissions and help citizens with inflation.
The ticket will cost around 3 billion euros, be financed by the federal and state governments, and succeed the popular 9 euro ticket introduced over summer.
The new ticket is valid on buses and trains, was used for 1 billion trips in just three months, and prevented 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions during that time period.

Indonesia floated the idea this week for the creation of an OPEC-style cartel for battery metals. While unlikely on the whole, it does show how geopolitics is reshaping to factor for the rise post-fossil fuel era.
A battery metals cartel could (hypothetically) create a similar dynamic for critical metals, allowing producing nations to control commodity prices by coordinating supply.