Trump can slow — but not stop — the shift to EVs, experts say

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Auto industry experts say rapidly falling battery prices and improving technology will prevent the incoming Trump administration and Republican Congress from stopping the country’s transition to electric vehicles. (New York Times)

ALSO:

• Clean transportation advocates worry President-elect Trump will roll back the Biden administration’s ​“transformational” efforts on reducing pollution from large trucks and buses. (Inside Climate News)
• The Biden administration on Friday announced another $635 million in federal funding to help states, tribes, and the District of Columbia build out local electric vehicle charging networks. (E&E News)
• Volkswagen announces that an electric SUV made at its Tennessee plant no longer qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit because of escalating requirements for domestic sourcing of battery components and other materials. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

CLIMATE:

• U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell by just 0.2 percent last year despite record clean energy production, as soaring demand for electricity and transportation fuel cut into the country’s climate progress. (Canary Media)
• BlackRock is the latest Wall Street firm to officially abandon a voluntary climate initiative, though experts speculate it was mostly a ​“political show” for President-elect Trump that won’t affect its investment strategies. (Washington Post)
• President Biden’s senior international climate advisor says the Los Angeles wildfires show ​“you have to take the science seriously.” (Associated Press)

OFFSHORE WIND:

• A New Jersey congressman says he was tasked with drafting an executive order for the Trump administration to freeze offshore wind development for six months. (NJ Spotlight)
• Virginia offshore wind leaders say they aren’t worried about Trump’s anti-wind energy threats because projects in the state already have federal funding or are on timelines longer than his four-year term. (Virginian-Pilot)
• Developers are expected to sign agreements this week with New England utilities for two offshore wind farms, but the fate of a second phase of the Vineyard Wind project, which lacks federal approval, remains unclear. (WCAI)

NATURAL GAS: A group that claimed a Maryland climate bill would be harmful to Black residents had backing from a group with ties to the fossil fuel industry, which a spokesman defends as ​“something that happens every day in advocacy.” (Washington Post)

GRID:

• Investigators looking into the cause of one of the Los Angeles-area fires focus on a Southern California Edison transmission tower where witnesses saw flames, but the utility says there’s no evidence its equipment sparked the blaze. (Los Angeles Times, KQED)
• A report identifies peaker plants in Massachusetts that advocates say should be replaced with clean energy resources in order to meet the state’s 2050 climate target. (CommonWealth Beacon)

COMMENTARY: A climate scientist writes that in order to solve the climate crisis, humanity needs to confront ​“billionairism,” the system that extracts wealth from the poor to the rich and perpetuates racism, patriarchy, and suffering. (The Guardian)