hbet63

Judge hears closing arguments on whether Google's advertising tech constitutes a monopolyDiane Moss lost her home in the Santa Monica Mountains after power lines ignited the apocalyptic Woolsey Fire in 2018. Since then, she’s pressed for a safer electric grid in California. “It’s so easy to forget the risk that we live in — until it happens to you,” said Moss, a longtime clean energy advocate. “All of us in California have to think about how we better prepare to survive disaster, which is only going to be more of a problem as the climate changes.” In recent years, California’s power companies have been doing just that: insulating power lines and burying lines underground, trimming trees, deploying drones and using risk-detection technology. As wildfires across the U.S. intensify , California is on the leading edge of efforts to prevent more deadly and destructive fires ignited by downed power lines and malfunctioning equipment. Customers have shouldered a hefty price for wildfire safety measures. From 2019 through 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission authorized the three largest utilities to collect $27 billion in wildfire prevention and insurance costs from ratepayers, according to a report to the Legislature. And the costs are projected to keep rising: The three companies — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — continue to seek billions more from customers for wildfire prevention spending. Rates are expected to continue outpacing inflation through 2027 . Fire safety projects are a big part of the reason that Californians pay the highest electric rates in the nation, outside of Hawaii. Other reasons include rooftop solar incentives, new transmission systems and upgrades for electric vehicles. High electric bills have helped fuel a statewide affordability crisis alongside soaring housing prices, expensive groceries and costly gasoline. Small businesses are feeling the burden, along with the state’s poorest residents: One in three low-income households served by the three utilities fell behind in paying their power bills this year. California’s three investor-owned utilities are regulated monopolies, so when they spend money on costs related to wildfires, they recover it through customers’ bills. The price of electricity has ignited debate about how much California families should bear for the cost of wildfire prevention, whether utilities are balancing risk and affordability and whether the money is being spent wisely. Loretta Lynch, a former head of the state utilities commission, said lack of oversight is a problem, with the commission “rubber-stamping outrageous costs” and allowing the companies to “address wildfires in the most expensive, least effective way possible.” One of the biggest controversies is whether the utilities should be spending so much on burying power lines, an extremely costly and slow process. Last year, a state audit concluded that the utilities commission and the state’s advocates office must do more to verify whether utilities were completing the work they sought payment for. The three companies say the billions of dollars in spending is necessary as climate change worsens wildfires across the state . Utility equipment has caused less than 10% of the state’s fires but nearly half of its most destructive fires, according to the utilities commission . PG&E, which a few years ago came out of bankruptcy triggered by its liability for several deadly, destructive fires, has adopted the stance that “catastrophic wildfires shall stop.” The company, which serves the most high-risk areas in California, is the state’s largest spender on wildfire prevention. PG&E plans to bury 10,000 miles of power lines in its highest-risk areas — work that is highly contentious because it is costly and slow. The company has buried 800 miles since 2021 , with each mile costing between $3 and $4 million. Last year, the commission approved a $3.7 billion plan for PG&E to bury 1,230 miles of lines through 2026. Sumeet Singh, PG&E’s chief operating officer, told CalMatters that the utility is concerned about rates, too. He said the company is “very committed to stabilizing our customer rates as we go forward without compromising safety. I think that’s clear, that it’s a non-negotiable....There’s a pretty robust process, and oversight, that we are under.” Kevin Geraghty, chief operating officer of SDG&E, called the wildfire spending process “the most highly-scrutinized, regulatory utility process I have ever been involved in, in my life.” Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in October aimed at tackling the high costs of electricity, asking state agencies to evaluate their oversight of wildfire projects and ensure that the utilities are focused on “cost-effective” measures. He is seeking proposals for changes in rules or laws by Jan. 1. The spark for the increased spending came seven years ago, after California suffered one of its worst droughts and a series of devastating wildfires in 2017 and 2018, many ignited by utility equipment. Sixteen fires were caused by PG&E equipment during a rash of October 2017 fires that decimated Napa, Sonoma and other Northern California counties. That December, the Thomas Fire , sparked by Southern California Edison equipment, engulfed parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. But the devastation of 2017 was only a prelude to an even graver year. On Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire leveled the town of Paradise, killing 85 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in state history. The Camp Fire was caused by the failure of an old metal hook attached to a PG&E transmission tower. An intense wind event pushed the fire at a rate of roughly 80 football fields per minute at its peak. The company in 2020 pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for its role in the disaster. The same day as the destruction in Paradise, another fire ignited some 470 miles south. In the Simi Hills of Ventura County, Southern California Edison wires in two separate locations made contact with others, triggering “arc” flashes that rained hot metal fragments and sparks onto the dry brush below. These triggered two blazes, which soon merged to form the Woolsey Fire. Santa Ana winds spread the conflagration across parched terrain, with swaths of the nationally protected Santa Monica Mountains reduced to ash. Moss, the clean energy advocate, evacuated her home with her son that day. Her husband, clinging to hope, stayed until the blaze threatened to swallow him whole. Their neighborhood near Malibu, with its heavily wooded surroundings, was no match for the inferno. “My husband stayed until the last minute, when it just — it looked like it could cost him his life,” Moss said. “Everybody else left, and just about all of us lost.” Three people died. Moss’ home was gone, reduced to a hollowed out structure and charred rubble, along with about 100,000 acres of parkland and wilderness , more than any other fire in recorded history for that area. In 2019, downed PG&E lines ignited Sonoma County’s Kincade Fire . Then two years later, the Dixie Fire , also caused by PG&E equipment, became the second largest wildfire in California history, burning 963,000 acres north of Chico. The 2021 Dixie Fire, which claimed one life and destroyed 1,311 structures, was the last catastrophic wildfire in California confirmed to be caused by utility equipment. The number of fires triggered by the companies’ equipment fluctuates from year to year, driven by the huge variability in California’s weather. But data from 2014 through 2023 indicate there were substantially fewer fires last year than in other recent years. SDG&E equipment caused 16 fires after its high of 32 fires in 2015, Southern California Edison had 90 fires, compared to a 2021 high of 173, and PG&E reported 374 fires after a high of 510 in 2020. PG&E also reported that fires in its highest-risk areas trended down every month of 2023 compared to the same months in previous years. But that progress reversed this year, with 62 fires reported by August in high-risk areas, compared to 65 in all of 2023. (PG&E would not provide 2024 fire data to CalMatters.) Caroline Thomas Jacobs, inaugural director of the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, established in 2021 to oversee utility safety, said progress can be hard to measure. Nevertheless, she said she has seen a cultural shift at electric companies in recent years, with a more focused approach in high-risk areas and an environment that empowers workers to prioritize safety. “It just takes the wrong ignition ... under the right conditions, to have a catastrophic fire,” Thomas Jacobs said. “But are we in a better place? The numbers seem to indicate we’re moving in the right direction.” PG&E has installed more than 1,500 weather stations and 600 AI-enabled cameras to detect severe weather and ignitions, Singh said. Enhanced safety systems now cut power to lines within a tenth of a second. The utility also has cleared vegetation, ordered power shutoffs during high-risk times, insulated lines and buried some lines underground. “Where do we see the greatest risk?” Singh said the company asks itself, and “what is the most cost-effective way to be able to reduce that risk for every dollar that’s spent?” Southern California Edison said since its investments began in 2019, the risk of catastrophic wildfire in its system has dropped between 85 and 90%. The company plans to bury 600 miles of lines in high-risk areas but it is relying much more on less-expensive insulating technology, which already has been used on more than 6,000 miles of lines. SDG&E began prioritizing wildfire prevention, including underground and insulated lines, a decade ahead of the other two utilities, after its lines sparked three major fires in 2007. The company has avoided a catastrophic fire since 2007, despite operating in one of the nation’s most fire-prone regions. “We continue to double down, and do and do more tomorrow than we did yesterday,” said Brian D’Agostino, the utility’s vice president of wildfire and climate science. “We don’t take a single day without a fire for granted.” Critics say the scramble to address the wildfire crisis has left the state vulnerable to overspending by utilities. About two months before the Camp and Woolsey fires, outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 signed a $1 billion plan to thin forests and clear out the tinderbox of California’s dead and dying trees. That measure came too late to prevent the devastation. But it opened the door to increased spending by utilities beyond limits set in the highly deliberative process known as their general rate cases, which determine what Californians pay. Newsom and the Legislature in 2019 created a $21 billion wildfire fund paid for by Wall Street investors and California ratepayers to help PG&E exit bankruptcy and protect utilities from being financially threatened by the wildfires they cause. The utilities cannot access the state’s $21 billion fund unless their wildfire plans are approved by the energy safety office. One problem, critics say, is that the safety plans are approved by one government entity while the spending to carry them out is approved by another. “We now have this very odd system,” said Lynch, who served on the utilities commission from 2000 through 2004. “The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety reviews the plans, puts out guidelines, but then the (commission) still has to ratify the plans, so that the utilities can take money from their ratepayers.” On a temperate, clear morning in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Placerville in October, a PG&E construction crew donned yellow jackets and safety helmets and went about the work of burying power lines along a narrow, wooded road. Overhead lines snaked through thick trees in this area — prime fire risk territory. The workers buried the lines in a trench that had been dug using a heavy piece of equipment designed to cut hard concrete and soil. Once those power lines are buried and activated, their risk of fires are all but eliminated. Burying lines in high-risk areas improves reliability amid rising wildfire risks and extreme weather, PG&E’s Singh said. Though it’s pricier up front, it eliminates the yearly expense of trimming trees and vegetation, which makes it a better, long-run value for customers, he said. “Underground is a no-brainer when you look at it from that lens,” Singh said. But the high cost and the time it takes to do the work has left some skeptical. The company has buried 800 miles of wires underground since 2021, and plans to bury more than 1,600 by the end of 2026. It aims to get the cost per mile down to $2.8 million by the end of 2026 from $3 million at the end of 2023. Michael Campbell, assistant deputy director of energy for the public advocates office, a state entity that represents utility customers, said PG&E should consider other means of preventing wildfire, like insulated wires, otherwise known as “covered conductors.” This can be deployed more quickly and at a lower cost, he said, and is effective when combined with operational techniques like fast trip settings and power safety shutoffs. “In some areas, (burying power lines) really is the correct approach to minimize risk. But it’s also very slow and very expensive, and so there’s a need to address safety in as many miles as quickly as possible, to reduce overall risk,” Campbell said. The utilities commission has taken a proof-of-concept approach: The commission scaled back PG&E’s plan to bury 2,000 miles through 2026 to 1,230. The commission approved installing covered conductors, or insulated power lines, over 778 miles. Lynch is skeptical of utilities and their big projects because they can profit from them, and Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, says too much spending is going unchecked. The sense of urgency following fires paved the way for the multi-billion surge in spending. The commission authorized PG&E, for instance, to spend $4.66 billion on wildfire costs from 2020 through 2022, but the company ultimately spent $11.7 billion and is seeking payment through utility bills, according to The Utility Reform Network. Audits of nearly $2.5 billion in 2019 and 2020 wildfire spending found some costs from PG&E , Southern California Edison and SDG&E may already have been covered by previously approved rates, or more documentation was needed to confirm they had not been covered. The utilities challenged many of the findings, saying they didn’t plan to claim some of the costs, and disputed the auditor’s conclusions as well as some of their calculations. In interviews with CalMatters, representatives for all three utilities said the process in place to oversee wildfire spending at the utilities commission was robust and thorough. Geraghty, of SDG&E, said the process is transparent, with public comment periods and hearings. Regarding critics who say wildfire prevention should be cheaper and faster, “every one of them had that voice, had that say, had that transparency through this entire process,” he said. Some expenses, such as operating costs, have an immediate impact on how much people pay in their bills. But other costs, such as long-term investments in insulating or burying power lines, are stretched out over years, meaning they add to bills for decades to come . Over time, these capital costs are growing due to factors like depreciation and the returns utilities are allowed to generate. This creates a compounding effect, meaning wildfire-related capital costs will take up an increasing share of what California customers are charged in the future. The burden of the rising bills is hitting many Californians hard. Roshonda Wilson, of Oakland, couldn’t afford to pay her power bill even though she said she watches television only after sunset, refrains from running unnecessary appliances and is hyper-aware of every energy-consuming action in her household. At one point PG&E turned her power off this year. “I couldn’t catch up,” she said. On the other hand, Moss — who has weathered not just the trauma of losing her home near Malibu but also the difficult process of rebuilding — says the expensive wildfire prevention work is critical to prevent more tragedies. “Even though (burying power lines) is costly and time-consuming, the cost and time of not doing it is starting to seem more devastating to a broader swath of people,” Moss said. Nevertheless, the rate hikes have alarmed climate activists who fear rising power bills in California may trigger a backlash against the state’s effort to switch to renewable energy, and influence other states, too. “The state, we fear, will start to lose the political will to keep pushing on,” said Mohit Chhabra, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The problem with that is not that California will be a few years late — we can handle that. But the impact on all the other states who are looking at California.” Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett and Miguel Gutierrez Jr. contributed to this report.hbet63 。

4 easy, comforting bean dishes for fallGrey Market Labs announces $8M Series A funding led by Capri Ventures to accelerate growth of its Replica Platform - First of its kind "Secure Environment as a Service"

Broadcom soared to its biggest single-day gain on record Friday after the chipmaker beat Wall Street's fourth-quarter profit target and predicted a strong start to 2025, fueled by demand for artificial intelligence. Broadcom earned $1.42 per share in the period, just slightly better than the $1.39 per share analysts forecast. In 2024, California-based Broadcom's revenue jumped 44% to a record $51.6 billion, boosted in part by its integration of VMware, the cloud technology company it bought a year ago. Another big factor in those soaring sales was AI revenue, which more than tripled from a year ago to $12.2 billion. For the first quarter of 2025, Broadcom is forecasting sales of $14.6 billion, which would be a 22% year-over-year increase. Broadcom also raised its quarterly dividend by 11% to 59 cents per share.To really narrow digital divides, Canada should consistently fund adult education programsForexlive Americas FX news wrap: Bonds buy Bessent, Middle East peace hopes weigh on oil

Camosun students offer solutions to Victoria businessesBiologist explores why humans have sex—and sexes—in a world where life requires neither

Israeli strikes on a Gaza tent camp kill at least 21 people, hospital saysNoneA hypersonic underwater tunnel connecting the UK to the United States could see trains travelling at speeds of 3,000mph. But the dream of a trans-Atlantic train connecting London and New York would come at a price - almost $20tn. The idea of a "Transatlantic Tunnel" has existed for a while. But developments in technology mean it may one day be possible. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, is one of those who has championed vacuum tube technology. He once proposed sending capsules through a vacuum environment to reduce air resistance. Currently a flight between the two cities takes around eight hours. Trains powered by conventional technology running underneath the ocean would not be able to make the journey fast enough to justify the cost of construction. The distance between the two global cities is more than 3,000 miles, and it would take years to build. Stunning European town so sick of overcrowding that tourists fined $300 for taking selfies Optical illusion reveals if you're strong-willed or kind-hearted - what do you see? But Musk and others say vacuum tube technology could hold the key and make the concept viable. The multi-billionaire introduced the concept in a white paper in 2013, and has also been a proponent of the field, organising student competitions and founding The Boring Company, focused on tunnelling technology. It would work by creating a vacuum within the tunnel and using pressurised vehicles. Trains would not face any air resistance within the tunnel. In theory, they could reach far higher speeds than conventional trains. Capsules darting along the structure could theoretically reach speeds of more than 3,000 mph. If that was to happen then a journey between the two great cities would barely take a hour. This design is sometimes called a "hyperloop". It might seem like the stuff of fantasy sci-fi but the age of hyperloop technology might be closer than we think, reports Newsweek . Trials of the technology are underway in India and China, with plans to integrate it into their high-speed rail systems nationwide. A Transatlantic Tunnel would be much more efficient and environmentally friendly than flying. Proposals for a tunnel are still unclear. While some have suggested a route underneath the ocean floor, others have favoured stilts or a floating tube, held in place by cables attached to the ocean floor. And judging by how long it took to build the Channel Tunnel linking France to the UK it won't be something we see in our lifetime. The link between Britain and France took more then six years to build. If the trans-Atlantic tunnel were built at the same speed, it would take 782 years.

Donald Trump crowned Time’s Person of the Year againNancy Mace launches merch line for Capitol Hill bathroom fight

President-elect Donald Trump’s “America First” plan to enact huge tariffs on imported goods threatens to jack up the cost and slow down the development of US cleantech projects. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to enact 10% to 20% across-the-board tariffs on all overseas products, 60% to 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, and 25% to 100% tariffs on products from Mexico—the last in part to prevent the flow of goods from Chinese companies setting up manufacturing plants there and in part to force Mexico to halt migration into the US. These plans could easily add billions of dollars to the prices that US companies—and therefore consumers—pay for batteries and electric vehicles, as well as the steel used to build solar farms, geothermal plants, nuclear facilities, transmission lines, and much more. “This is going to raise the cost of clean energy and that will slow down the revolution,” says David Victor, a professor of public policy at the University of California, San Diego, in reference to the otherwise accelerating development of low-emissions industries. Trump’s campaign rhetoric certainly hasn’t always translated into enacted policies. But he has consistently asserted that tariffs will force companies to produce more goods on American soil, restoring US manufacturing, creating jobs, and easing the federal deficit—while inflicting economic pain on international economic rivals like China. “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,’’ Trump proclaimed at a rally in Flint, Michigan, in September. But despite what Trump says or understands about tariffs, they are effectively a domestic tax paid by the US businesses purchasing those goods and passed on to American consumers in the form of higher prices. (Plenty of Republicans agree.) Many economists and international affairs experts argue that such trade restrictions should be applied judiciously, if at all, because they can boost inflation, trigger retaliatory trade policies, chill investment, and stall broader economic growth. The precise impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs on any given sector will depend on how high the incoming administration ultimately sets those fees, how they compare to existing tariffs, where else the goods in question can be purchased, how companies and nations respond over time, and what other policies the administration enacts. But here are three areas where the costs of materials and products that are crucial to the energy transition could rise under the plans that Trump sketched out on the campaign trail. Batteries China is one of the world’s largest producers of EVs, batteries, solar cells, and steel, but in part due to previous trade restrictions, the US doesn’t rely heavily on the nation for most of these products (at least not directly). “But there’s one exception to that, and it’s batteries,” says Antoine Vagneur-Jones, head of trade and supply chains at BloombergNEF, a market research firm. China absolutely dominates the battery sector. According to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency, the country produces around 85% of the world’s battery anodes, 70% of its cathodes, and 75% of its battery cells. In addition, more than half of the global processing of lithium, cobalt, and graphite, key minerals used to produce lithium-ion batteries, occurs in China. The US imported some $4 billion worth of lithium-ion batteries from China in the first four months of this year, according to BloombergNEF. The US already has a variety of tariffs on Chinese goods in place. President Biden preserved many of the ones that Trump enacted during his first term, and he even increased a number of them earlier this year. The White House said the action was taken in response to what it described as China’s “unfair trade practices.” But it was just the latest action in a long-running, bipartisan quest to counter China’s growing economic strength and grip on key components of the high-tech and cleantech sectors. Still, Trump’s proposed 60% to 100% tariffs would far exceed the ones currently set on batteries, which stand at 28.4% for EV batteries. On a $4 billion purchase, those border fees would add up to $2.4 billion at the low end, more than double the added cost under the current tariff rate, or (perhaps obviously) $4 billion at the high end, all else being equal. Vagneur-Jones notes that even with a 60% tariff, Chinese batteries are so inexpensive that they would remain cost competitive with US-produced ones. But this would still represent a big jump over current costs for companies that need to buy batteries for EVs, home solar systems, or grid storage plants. And because China is such a dominant producer, US businesses would have limited paths for purchasing those batteries from other sources at similar volumes. Steel Steel is used in just about every single cleantech or climate-tech project today. Strong and durable, it forms vital parts of wind turbines, hydropower plants, and solar farms. All that steel has to come from somewhere, and for the most part, it’s not the US. Last year, the US imported 3.8 million tons of “steel mill products” valued at $4.2 billion from Mexico, according to data from the International Trade Administration’s Global Steel Trade Monitor. Steel imported to the US from Mexico, the nation’s second-largest supplier of the metal alloy, generally isn’t subject to significant tariffs, so long as it was originally melted and poured in Mexico, Canada, or the United States. So a 25% to 100% tariff on the same value of steel would cost US companies an extra $1.1 billion to $4.2 billion (all else being equal and without accounting for fees on certain steel products.) (Earlier this year, the Biden administration did impose a 25% tariff on imports of steel from Mexico that were originally melted and poured in other nations, as part of an effort to prevent major suppliers like China from sidestepping tariffs. But those taxes apply only to a small fraction of shipments.) Meanwhile, Trump’s 10% to 20% tariff on all nations could add up to that same amount to the cost of steel from other suppliers around the world, depending on how those compare to each nation’s existing tariffs. That may, for example, lump up to $1.6 billion onto the nearly $8 billion worth of steel the US imported last year from Canada, the nation’s largest source (all else being equal and without accounting for fees on certain steel products.) Those fees would boost the costs for any US company that uses steel that isn’t supplied by domestic producers, including cleantech businesses building demo projects or commercial-scale facilities. Plenty of projects will be spared, though. Those that are receiving various federal loans, grants, or tax incentives are generally already required to source their steel from the US, in which case they wouldn’t be affected by such tariffs, explained Derrick Flakoll, a North America policy associate at BloombergNEF, in an email. But competition to secure limited supplies of domestic steel is likely to get more intense. The US dominated global steel production during much of the last century, but it’s now ranked a distant fourth, generating about one-twelfth as much as China last year, according to the World Steel Association. “We went down the path of globalization,” says Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures, a climate-focused venture firm in San Francisco. “We are now utterly dependent on all the other parts of the world.” Electric vehicles The US is the world’s largest importer of EVs, purchasing nearly $44 billion dollars worth of battery, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid cars and trucks last year, according to the World Trade Organization. It’s the biggest export market for Germany and South Korea, according to BloombergNEF. If Trump enacted a 10% to 20% tariff on all foreign goods, it would add between $4.4 and $8.8 billion in costs on the same volume of EV purchases (all else being equal and without adjusting for nation-by-nation fees already in place). His still higher proposed tariffs on Mexico would add substantially bigger premiums on vehicles built in the country, which exported more than 100,000 EVs produced by auto giants including Ford and Chevrolet last year, according to the Mexican Automotive Industry Association. Meanwhile, BMW, Tesla and Chinese companies BYD and Jetour have all announced plans to produce EVs in Mexico. While China is the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs, Trump’s hopes of levying a 60% to 100% tariff on the nation’s goods probably wouldn’t have a huge impact on that sector. That’s because the nation already imports very few Chinese EVs. Plus, President Biden himself recently ratcheted up the tariff rate to 100%. The broader impacts on EVs will likely be further complicated by the incoming Trump administration’s reported plans to roll back federal rules and subsidies supporting the sector, including parts of the Inflation Reduction Act. Repealing key provisions of Biden’s signature climate law would work against the goal of countering China’s dominance, as those federal incentives have already triggered a development boom for US-based battery and EV projects, says Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association. “It would undercut a lot of investment into manufacturing across the United States,” he says. The ‘big concern’ Applied sensibly, tariffs can help certain domestic industries, by enabling companies to compete with the lower costs of overseas producers, catch up with manufacturing innovations or product improvements, and counter unfair trade practices. Some US cleantech companies and trade groups, including solar manufacturers like First Solar and Swift Solar, have argued in favor of stricter trade restrictions. Earlier this year, those and other companies represented by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee petitioned the federal government to investigate “potentially illegal trade practices” in Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. They alleged that China and Chinese-based companies have circumvented trade restrictions by shipping goods through distribution hubs in those countries and dumped goods priced below production costs in the US to seize market share. Neither the companies nor the trade association responded to inquiries from MIT Technology Review concerning their view of Trump’s proposals before press time. Nor did the American Clean Power Association, which represents developers of solar farms and has opposed recent duty increases, which can drive up the costs of such projects. Over time, Trump’s tariffs may indeed compel companies to bring more of their manufacturing operations back to the US and help diversify the global supply chain for crucial goods, UC San Diego’s Victor says. The tariffs are likely to fuel more mining and processing of critical minerals like lithium and nickel in the US, too, given both the increased costs on imported materials and the administration’s plans to roll back environmental and permitting rules. “They love extractive sectors,” says Jonas Nahm, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. But the “big concern” is that Trump’s plans to boost tariffs, cut government spending, and enact other policy changes could stall the broader economy, says Rachel Slaybaugh, a partner at DCVC, a San Francisco venture firm. Indeed, the combined effects of Trump’s proposals, including his pledge to deport hundreds of thousands to millions of workers, may drive up US inflation more than 4% by 2026 while cutting gross domestic product by at least 1.3%, according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan research firm in Washington, DC. The tariffs alone could cost typical households an extra $2,600 per year. They may also trigger retaliatory measures by other nations, including China, which could impose their own steeper fees on US products or cut off the flow of crucial goods. Slaybaugh expects to see a continued slowdown in venture investments into cleantech companies in the coming months, as investors wait to see how aggressively the Trump administration implements the various pledges he made on the campaign trail. That pause alone will make it harder for startups to secure the capital they need to scale up or sustain operations. Even if the tariffs do eventually push US businesses to produce more of the goods currently being delivered cheaply and efficiently from elsewhere, it leaves a big problem when it comes to the clean energy transition: Given the higher expenses of US labor, land, and materials, it will simply cost far, far more to build the modern, low-emissions energy and transportation systems the nation now needs, Nahm says. At this point, after China has spent decades and vast sums locking down global supply chains, scaling up production, and driving down manufacturing costs, it’s foolhardy to believe that US businesses can easily step in and crank out these essential goods in relative global isolation, as Victor and his colleague, Michael Davidson, argued in a recent Brookings essay. “Collaboration and competition, not hostility, are how we can catch up to the world’s largest supplier of clean technology products,” they wrote. Source: MIT Technology Review