Business
California went big on rooftop solar. It created an environmental danger in the process
California has been a pioneer in pushing for rooftop solar energy, increase the largest photo voltaic market within the U.S. Greater than 20 years and 1.3 million rooftops later, the invoice is coming due.
Starting in 2006, the state, targeted on incentivize folks to take up solar energy, showered subsidies on householders who put in photovoltaic panels however had no complete plan to get rid of them. Now, panels bought below these applications are nearing the top of their 25-year life cycle.
Many are already winding up in landfills, the place parts that comprise poisonous heavy metals similar to selenium and cadmium can contaminate groundwater.
“Individuals simply don’t understand that there are poisonous supplies in these electronics, that it’s effective if it’s simply sitting in a field in your own home,” mentioned Natalie Click on, a doctoral candidate in supplies science on the College of Arizona who research the difficulty. “However as soon as it will get crushed and put into the landfill, a whole lot of these poisonous chemical substances and supplies are going to leak into your groundwater.”
Sam Vanderhoof, a photo voltaic trade professional, says that just one in 10 panels are literally recycled, in accordance with estimates drawn from Worldwide Renewable Vitality Company information on decommissioned panels and from trade leaders.
The looming problem over deal with truckloads of contaminated waste illustrates how cutting-edge environmental coverage can create unexpected hazards down the street.
“The trade is meant to be inexperienced,” Vanderhoof mentioned. “However in actuality, it’s all concerning the cash.”
California got here early to solar energy. Small governmental rebates did little to deliver down the value of photo voltaic panels or to encourage their adoption till 2006, when the California Public Utilities Fee shaped the California Photo voltaic Initiative. That granted $3.3 billion in subsidies for putting in photo voltaic panels on rooftops.
The measure exceeded its targets, bringing down the value of photo voltaic panels and boosting the share of the state’s electrical energy produced by the solar. Due to that and different measures, similar to necessities that utilities purchase a portion of their electrical energy from renewable sources, solar energy now accounts for 15% of the state’s energy.
However as California barreled forward on its renewable-energy program, specializing in rebates and — extra just lately — a proposed photo voltaic tax, questions on deal with the poisonous waste that will accrue years later had been by no means totally addressed. Now, each regulators and panel producers are realizing that they don’t have the capability to deal with what comes subsequent.
“This trash might be going to reach earlier than we anticipated and it will be an enormous quantity of waste,” mentioned Serasu Duran, an assistant professor on the College of Calgary’s Haskayne Faculty of Enterprise in Canada. “However whereas all the main focus has been on constructing this renewable capability, not a lot consideration has been placed on the top of life of those applied sciences.”
Duran co-wrote a latest article within the Harvard Enterprise Evaluation that famous the trade’s “capability is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that’s prone to come.”
It’s not only a drawback in California but additionally nationwide. About 140,000 panels are put in every single day in america, and the photo voltaic trade is predicted to quadruple in dimension between 2020 and 2030.
Though 80% of a typical photovoltaic panel is manufactured from recyclable supplies, disassembling them and recovering the glass, silver and silicon is extraordinarily tough.
“There’s little doubt that there will likely be a rise within the photo voltaic panels coming into the waste stream within the subsequent decade or so,” mentioned AJ Orben, vice chairman of We Recycle Photo voltaic, a Phoenix-based firm that breaks down panels and extracts the dear metals whereas disposing of poisonous parts. “That’s by no means been a query.”
The overwhelming majority of We Recycle Photo voltaic’s enterprise comes from California, however the firm has no services within the state. As a substitute, the panels are trucked to a website in Yuma, Ariz. That’s as a result of California’s rigorous allowing system for poisonous supplies makes it exceedingly tough to arrange store, Orben mentioned.
Recycling photo voltaic panels isn’t a easy course of. Extremely specialised gear and staff are wanted to separate the aluminum body and junction field from the panel with out shattering it into glass shards. Specialised furnaces are used to warmth panels to get well silicon. In most states, panels are categorized as hazardous supplies, which require costly restrictions on packaging, transport and storage.
Orben mentioned the economics of the method don’t make a compelling case for recycling.
Solely about $2 to $4 price of supplies are recovered from every panel. Nearly all of processing prices are tied to labor, and Orben mentioned even recycling panels at scale would not be extra economical.
Most analysis on photovoltaic panels is concentrated on recovering solar-grade silicon to make recycling economically viable.
That skews the financial incentives towards recycling. The Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory estimated that it prices roughly $20 to $30 to recycle a panel versus $1 to $2 to ship it to a landfill.
Most specialists assume that’s the place nearly all of panels are ending up proper now. However it’s anybody’s guess. Click on mentioned there is no such thing as a uniform system “for monitoring the place all of those decommissioned panels are going.”
The California Division of Poisonous Substances collected its first information on panels recycled by common waste handlers in 2021. For handlers that accepted greater than 200 kilos or generated greater than 10,000 kilos of panels, the DTSC counted 335 panels accepted for recycling, mentioned Sanford Nax, a spokesman for the company.
The division expects the variety of put in photo voltaic panels within the subsequent decade to exceed a whole lot of tens of millions in California alone, and that recycling will develop into much more essential as cheaper panels with shorter lifespans develop into extra in style.
A scarcity of shopper consciousness concerning the toxicity of supplies within the panels and get rid of them is a part of the issue, specialists mentioned.
“There’s an informational hole, there’s a technological hole, and there’s a monetary hole that we’re engaged on,” mentioned Amanda Bybee, co-founder of SolarRecycle.org, a web site geared toward serving to folks perceive recycle photo voltaic panels and the way the method works.
The web site lists two places in California that recycle panels, however Bybee notes that the web site is predicated on user-submitted data and isn’t complete. No less than one of many California places listed, Fabtech Enterprises, ships panels to confidential off-site recycling companions.
Final yr, new DTSC regulation got here into impact that reclassified the panels, altering the way in which they are often collected and transported. Beforehand, all panels had been required to be handled as hazardous waste upon removing, which restricted transportation and storage.
Each enterprise and residential shoppers, or turbines as they’re referred to as within the recycling trade, had been supposed to move the cells themselves to licensed recycling or hazardous waste disposal services. With little monitoring, it’s unclear how incessantly that occurred.
Now, panels are categorized as common waste and will be collected at greater than 400 common waste handlers in California, the place they’re then assessed and transported to disposal, reuse or recycle services. The brand new rules had been supposed to make it simpler for folks to show of their panels, but it surely doesn’t immediately handle the following step — recycling.
“What that [rule] does is basically simply adjustments how that materials is dealt with, managed, saved, and transported,” mentioned Orben of We Recycle Photo voltaic. “It doesn’t change how that materials is definitely processed.”
In 2016, the Photo voltaic Vitality Trade Assn., a nonprofit commerce affiliation for the U.S. photo voltaic trade, began a recycling program for panels. Robert Nicholson, the supervisor of PV Recycling on the affiliation, mentioned it goals to assist the trade group’s recycling companions — 5 to date — “develop compliant, cost-effective recycling providers for end-of-life modules.”
“Nearly all of recyclers are already present recyclers; they’re primarily doing e-waste or they’re doing glass,” mentioned Jen Bristol, the Photo voltaic Vitality Trade Assn.’s senior director of communications. “So now we have needed to work with them to type of take that leap, to say: ‘We consider that the processes you’re utilizing can accommodate the expertise.’” The affiliation additionally works with regulators to draft laws that decreases the variety of panels heading to landfills.
Authorities subsidies are one option to make photo voltaic panel recycling economically viable for the waste turbines, who now bear a lot of the price of recycling.
In Europe, a just lately enacted regulation referred to as the European Union Waste of Electrical and Digital Tools Directive locations accountability on producers for supporting their merchandise by accountable end-of-life disposal. It requires all producers that manufacture panels for nations within the EU to finance end-of-life assortment and recycling.
Comparable laws has been tried in a number of U.S. states, together with Washington, the place the Photovoltaic Module Stewardship and Takeback Program would require photo voltaic panel producers to finance end-of-life recycling. The initiative was handed in 2017 and can start implementation in 2025. It’s the solely producer-responsibility legislation in america.
It’s half of a bigger technique within the recycling trade referred to as prolonged producer accountability, by which the price of recycling is constructed into the price of a product at its preliminary buy. Enterprise entities within the product chain — quite than most of the people — develop into answerable for end-of-life prices, together with recycling prices.
Jigar Shah, co-founder of Generate Capital, a fund that invests in sustainable infrastructure, mentioned the issue will be addressed on the very begin of the product chain — by producers. He mentioned that policymakers must require producers to give you a normal design that makes panels simpler and cheaper to recycle.
“It’s far cheaper for producers to be compelled to work collectively … the place they attempt to drastically cut back the price of all that collectively. That occurs by coverage,” he mentioned. “It doesn’t occur by folks opting in.”
In April 2022, Santa Monica concluded a photo voltaic panel recycling pilot program in partnership with the California Product Stewardship Council, a public-private partnership. The stewardship council surveyed native residential photo voltaic house owners and located that many, at a loss for what to do with end-of-life panels, referred to as up installers for assist.
“We did discover that the photo voltaic installers had been the perfect contact for us to find out about what number of decommissioned panels had been in our area,” mentioned Drew Johnstone, a sustainability analyst for Santa Monica. “Some contractors did find yourself simply having to pile them of their warehouses, as a result of there’s no good answer for the place to deliver them.”
Johnstone says the common waste reclassification has made an enormous distinction, chopping down on value and paperwork wanted for dealing with modules, and extra handlers can settle for the panels from turbines.
“It’s going to be a extremely massive challenge in quite a lot of years,” Johnstone mentioned. “So it might behoove native governments, county, state, and it might probably go federal too, to have a plan in place for all these panels that can attain their finish of life in 10 to fifteen years.”
Kisela is a particular correspondent.
Business
U.S. Sues Southwest Airlines Over Chronic Delays
The federal government sued Southwest Airlines on Wednesday, accusing the airline of harming passengers who flew on two routes that were plagued by consistent delays in 2022.
In a lawsuit, the Transportation Department said it was seeking more than $2.1 million in civil penalties over the flights between airports in Chicago and Oakland, Calif., as well as Baltimore and Cleveland, that were chronically delayed over five months that year.
“Airlines have a legal obligation to ensure that their flight schedules provide travelers with realistic departure and arrival times,” the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, said in a statement. “Today’s action sends a message to all airlines that the department is prepared to go to court in order to enforce passenger protections.”
Carriers are barred from operating unrealistic flight schedules, which the Transportation Department considers an unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive practice. A “chronically delayed” flight is defined as one that operates at least 10 times a month and is late by at least 30 minutes more than half the time.
In a statement, Southwest said it was “disappointed” that the department chose to sue over the flights that took place more than two years ago. The airline said it had operated 20 million flights since the Transportation Department enacted its policy against chronically delayed flights more than a decade ago, with no other violations.
“Any claim that these two flights represent an unrealistic schedule is simply not credible when compared with our performance over the past 15 years,” Southwest said.
Last year, Southwest canceled fewer than 1 percent of its flights, but more than 22 percent arrived at least 15 minutes later than scheduled, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines all had fewer such delays.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In it, the government said that a Southwest flight from Chicago to Oakland arrived late 19 out of 25 trips in April 2022, with delays averaging more than an hour. The consistent delays continued through August of that year, averaging an hour or more. On another flight, between Baltimore and Cleveland, average delay times reached as high as 96 minutes per month during the same period. In a statement, the department said that Southwest, rather than poor weather or air traffic control, was responsible for more than 90 percent of the delays.
“Holding out these chronically delayed flights disregarded consumers’ need to have reliable information about the real arrival time of a flight and harmed thousands of passengers traveling on these Southwest flights by causing disruptions to travel plans or other plans,” the department said in the lawsuit.
The government said Southwest had violated federal rules 58 times in August 2022 after four months of consistent delays. Each violation faces a civil penalty of up to $37,377, or more than $2.1 million in total, according to the lawsuit.
The Transportation Department on Wednesday also said that it had penalized Frontier Airlines for chronically delayed flights, fining the airline $650,000. Half that amount was paid to the Treasury and the rest is slated to be forgiven if the airline has no more chronically delayed flights over the next three years.
This month, the department ordered JetBlue Airways to pay a $2 million fine for failing to address similarly delayed flights over a span of more than a year ending in November 2023, with half the money going to passengers affected by the delays.
Business
California drops zero-emission truck rules after inaction by Biden's EPA
California government’s plan to phase out heavy-duty diesel trucks and diesel locomotives has been derailed.
The ambitious plan aimed at reducing local pollution and global greenhouse gases required special waivers from the federal government. The Biden administration hadn’t granted the waivers as of this week, and rather than face almost certain denial by the incoming Trump administration, the state withdrew its waiver request.
That means the far-reaching regulations issued by the California Air Resources Board in 2022 to ban new diesel truck sales by 2036 and force fleet owners to take them off the road by 2042 won’t be enforced. Known as the Advanced Clean Fleets rule, the idea was to replace those trucks with electric and hydrogen-powered versions, which dramatically reduce emissions but are currently two to three times more expensive.
“While we are disappointed that U.S. EPA was unable to act on all the requests in time, the withdrawal is an important step given the uncertainty presented by the incoming administration that previously attacked California’s programs to protect public health and the climate and has said will continue to oppose those programs,” CARB Chair Liane Randolph said in a prepared statement.
Environmentalists reacted with deep disappointment.
“To meet basic standards for healthy air, California has to shift to zero-emissions trucks and trains in the coming years. Diesel is one of the most dangerous kinds of air pollution for human health,” Paul Cort, director of Earthjustice’s Right to Zero campaign, said in a prepared statement. “We’ll be working tirelessly in the coming years — and calling on Gov. [Gavin] Newsom, state legislators, and our air quality regulators to join us — to clean up our freight system and fix the mess [U.S.] EPA’s inaction has created.”
The trucking industry is pleased at the result, but hopes to continue working with California on environmental issues.
“This rule was flawed, and was not reflective of reality,” said Matt Schrap, chief executive at the Harbor Trucking Assn. “Ideally this is an opportunity to take a step back and look at a program that would be more sustainable.”
Trucking representatives had filed a lawsuit to block the rules, arguing they would cause irreparable harm to the industry and the wider economy. Train operators said no zero-emission locomotives exist on the commercial market.
Schrap said “the most important thing is the EPA could have issued the waiver and they didn’t.”
The EPA said it acknowledges California’s withdrawal of the waiver requests “and as a result is taking no further action on CARB’s prior requests and considers these matters closed.”
President-elect Donald Trump is a champion of the fossil fuel industry, making it unlikely that his administration would have approved the California waivers. The state could, however, pursue waivers at some point in the future.
Under the federal Clean Air Act, California is allowed to set its own air standards, and other states are allowed to follow California’s lead. But federal government waivers are required. Most of California’s waivers have been granted, including approval in December of a California ban on new sales of gas-powered cars and light trucks by 2035.
Business
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos to Attend Trump’s Inauguration
Bezos, Zuckerberg and Coke at the inauguration
Corporate America had already raced to donate big sums to Donald Trump’s record-breaking inaugural fund. Now some of its leaders appear eager to jockey for prominent positions at the inauguration next week.
It’s a new reminder that for some of the nation’s biggest businesses, forging close ties to a president-elect who is promising hard-hitting policies like tariffs is a priority this time around.
Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are expected to be on the inauguration dais, according to NBC News, alongside Elon Musk and several cabinet picks.
The presence of Musk isn’t a surprise, given the Tesla chief’s significant support of and huge influence over Trump. But the other tech moguls have only more recently been seen as supporters of the administration. (Indeed, Bezos frequently sparred with Trump during his first presidential term.)
It’s the latest effort by Bezos and Zuckerberg to burnish their Trump credentials. At the DealBook Summit in December, Bezos — whose Amazon has faced scrutiny under the Biden administration and whose Blue Origin is hoping to win government rocket contracts — said that he was “very hopeful” about Trump’s efforts to reduce regulation.
And Zuckerberg recently announced significant changes to Meta’s content moderation policy, including relaxing restrictions on speech seen as protecting groups including L.G.B.T.Q. people that won praise from Trump and other conservatives. On the inauguration front, Zuckerberg is also co-hosting a reception alongside the longtime Trump backers Miriam Adelson, Tilman Fertitta and Todd Ricketts.
Both tech moguls have visited Mar-a-Lago since the election, with Zuckerberg having done so more than once.
Coca-Cola took a different tack. The drinks giant’s C.E.O., James Quincey, gave Trump what an aide called the “first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke bottle.”
More broadly, business leaders want a piece of the inauguration action. The Times previously reported that the Trump inaugural fund had surpassed $170 million, a record, and that even major donors have been wait-listed for events.
Others are throwing unofficial events around Washington, including an “Inaugural Crypto Ball” that will feature Snoop Dogg, with tickets starting at $5,000, The Wall Street Journal reports.
It’s a reminder that C.E.O.s are reading the room, and preparing their companies for a president who has proposed creating an “External Revenue Service” to oversee what he has promised will be wide-ranging tariffs.
David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser who’s hosting a pre-inauguration event, told The Journal, “This is the world order, and if we’re going to succeed, we need to get with the world order.”
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In other Trump news: The president-elect is expected to appear via videoconference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which starts on Inauguration Day, according to Semafor.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Investors brace for the latest inflation data. The Consumer Price Index report, due out at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, is expected to show that inflation ticked up last month, most likely because of climbing food and fuel costs. Global bond markets have been rattled as slow progress on slowing inflation has prompted the Fed to slash its forecast for interest rate cuts.
More Trump cabinet picks will appear before the Senate on Wednesday. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the choice for secretary of state, is expected to field questions about his views on the Middle East, Ukraine and China, but is expected to be confirmed. Russell Vought, the pick to run the Office of Management and Budget, will most likely be asked about his advocacy for drastically shrinking the federal government, a key Trump objective. And Sean Duffy, the Fox Business host chosen to lead the Transportation Department, will probably face questions on how he would oversee matters including aviation safety and autonomous vehicles, the latter of which is a priority for Elon Musk.
Meta plans to lay off another 5 percent of its employees. Mark Zuckerberg, the tech giant’s C.E.O., told staff members to prepare for “extensive performance-based cuts” as the company braces for “an intense year.” The social media giant faces intense competition in the race to commercialize artificial intelligence.
A new bill would give TikTok a reprieve from a ban in the United States. Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he planned to introduce the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, which would give the video platform 270 additional days to be divested from its Chinese parent, ByteDance before being blacklisted. It’s the latest effort to buy TikTok time, as the app faces a Jan. 19 deadline set by a law; President-elect Donald Trump has opposed the potential ban as well.
A question of succession
JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, the giant money manager, just reported earnings. (In short: Both handily beat analyst expectations.)
But the Wall Street giants are likely to face questioning on a particular issue on Wednesday: Which top lieutenants are in line to replace their larger-than-life C.E.O.s, Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink.
Who’s out:
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Daniel Pinto, who had long been Dimon’s right-hand man, said he would officially drop his responsibilities as JPMorgan’s C.O.O. in June and retire at the end of 2026. Jenn Piepszak, the co-C.E.O. of the company’s core commercial and investment bank, has become C.O.O.
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And Mark Wiedman, the head of BlackRock’s global client business and a top contender to succeed Fink, is planning to leave, according to news reports.
What Wall Street is gossiping about JPMorgan: Even in taking the C.O.O. role, JPMorgan said that Piepszak wasn’t interested in succeeding Dimon “at this time.” DealBook hears that while she genuinely appears not to want to pursue the top job, the phrasing covers her in case she changes her mind.
For now, that means the most likely candidates for the top spot are Marianne Lake, the company’s head of consumer and community banking; Troy Rohrbaugh, the other co-head of the commercial and investment bank; and Doug Petno, a co-head of global banking.
The buzz around BlackRock: Wiedman reportedly didn’t want to keep waiting to succeed Fink and is expected to seek a C.E.O. position elsewhere. (So sudden was his departure that he’s forfeiting about $8 million worth of stock options and, according to The Wall Street Journal, he doesn’t have another job lined up yet.)
Fink said on CNBC on Wednesday that Wiedman’s departure had been in the works for some time, with the executive having expressed a desire to leave about six months ago.
Other candidates to take over for Fink include Martin Small, BlackRock’s C.F.O.; Rob Goldstein, the firm’s C.O.O.; and Rachel Lord, the head of international.
But Dimon and Fink aren’t going anywhere just yet. Dimon, 68, said only last year that he might not be in the role in five years. And Fink, 72, said in July that he was working on succession planning: “When I do believe the next generation is ready, I’m out.”
The S.E.C. gets in a final shot at Musk
Another battle between Elon Musk and the S.E.C. erupted on Tuesday, with the agency suing the tech mogul over his 2022 purchase of Twitter.
It’s unclear what happens to the lawsuit once President-elect Donald Trump, who counts Musk as a close ally, takes office. But the agency’s reputation as an independent watchdog may be at stake.
A recap: The S.E.C. accused Musk of violating securities laws in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.
The agency said that Musk had failed to disclose his Twitter ownership stake for a pivotal 11-day stretch before revealing his intentions to purchase the company. That breach allowed him to buy up at least $150 million worth of Twitter shares at a lower price — to the detriment of existing shareholders, the agency argues.
The S.E.C. isn’t just seeking to fine Musk. It wants him to pay back the windfall. “That’s unusual,” Ann Lipton, a professor at Tulane Law School, told DealBook.
Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, called the latest action a “sham” and accused the agency of waging a “multiyear campaign of harassment” against him.
The showdown sets up a tough question for the S.E.C. Will Paul Atkins, the president-elect’s widely respected pick to lead the agency, drop the case? Such a move could call the bedrock principle of S.E.C. independence into question.
Jay Clayton, who led the agency during Trump’s first term, earned the respect of the business community for running it in a largely drama-free manner. It was under Clayton that the S.E.C. sued Musk over his statements about taking Tesla private.
Musk, who is set to become Trump’s cost-cutting czar and is expected to have office space in the White House complex, has called for the “comprehensive overhaul” of agencies like the S.E.C. The billionaire said he would also like to see “punitive action against those individuals who have abused their regulatory power for personal and political gain.”
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In related news: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Capital One, accusing it of cheating its depositors out of $2 billion in interest payments.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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DAZN, the streaming network backed by the billionaire businessman Len Blavatnik, is closing in on funding from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund as the kingdom continues to expand its sports footprint. (NYT)
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The Justice Department sued KKR, accusing the investment giant of withholding information during government reviews for several of its deals. KKR filed a countersuit. (Bloomberg)
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OpenAI added Adebayo Ogunlesi, the billionaire co-founder of the infrastructure investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners, to its board. (FT)
Politics and policy
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