Net Zero

1. Tariffs hit drivers
2. Renewables boom
3. Climate’s not a threat
4. Climate jobs axed
5. Nuclear negotiations

Europe is importing more Russian gas, and China is exporting more EVs.

Tariffs hit drivers

US President Donald Trump’s latest trade war tactics are causing fresh headaches for US drivers.

On Wednesday, Trump announced a 25% tariff on cars and car parts imported to the US: Most US automakers rely heavily on trade between Canada and Mexico for manufacturing and assembly, so the measure will drive car prices up. That’s especially true for some of the electric models offered by Ford and General Motors, which are made in Mexico. Tesla, however, already makes all of its cars for US buyers in the US, so the tariffs will offer a major advantage to Trump ally Elon Musk. (The company’s share price is still down for the year, however, because of problems in Europe and other markets, and Musk has acknowledged that increasing prices for car parts mean “the cost impact is not trivial.”) Meanwhile, the price of oil climbed this week over concerns that new Trump tariffs targeting Venezuela’s oil industry will cut into US supplies.

Renewables boom

Global renewable energy capacity increased 15.1% year-on-year in 2024, the largest expansion ever recorded but still short of the pace needed to achieve the COP28 goal of tripling capacity by 2030, the International Renewable Energy Agency warned in a report.

With six years to go, annual capacity additions of more than 1,120 GW will now be needed to keep the planet on a 1.5°C warming trajectory, IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera said, noting that “significant disparities remain”: China alone accounted for nearly 64% of the total growth, adding more than eight times as much capacity as the US and five times that of Europe. Besides, raw wind and solar deployment numbers only tell one part of the story, said the Breakthrough Institute’s Seaver Wang. China’s rapid buildout, for example, is “impressive” but just beginning to cover growing energy demand and not yet significantly altering its emissions profile, he told Semafor.

Climate’s not a threat

For the first time in a decade, climate change was wiped from the flagship US intelligence report on national security threats the country faces. The National Threat Assessment released on Tuesday cites drug cartels as a major threat, but doesn’t mention any link between climate change and mass migration, resource shortages, economic stagnation, and other impacts that US spy and defense agencies have previously identified as “threat multipliers.” In a Senate hearing Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that “we’re aware of occurrences within the environment and how they may impact operations, but we’re focused on the direct threats to Americans’ safety, well-being, and security.”

“Intelligence officers will know that warnings about climate risks are unwelcome, which means the US will almost certainly miss things or get things wrong,” one former intelligence official told Axios.

Climate jobs axed

Clean energy jobs “lost, delayed, or threatened” because of Trump-administration policy changes, according to the advocacy group Climate Power. According to the group’s analysis, first shared with Semafor, more than $56 billion in clean energy investments have been scrapped or stalled in the US since last November. The reasons include executive orders that favor fossil fuels, the cutoff of federal research and commercialization funding, and the possible cutoff of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

Nuclear negotiations

Russia’s foreign ministry said it would be “impossible” to return the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Ukrainian control, or hand it to the US as President Donald Trump suggested.

The plant, Europe’s largest, has been under Russian control since 2022, though it hasn’t functioned since then. Kyiv and Moscow, for their own reasons, both oppose Trump’s plan, and most nuclear safety experts agree that while the plant is a liability in its current condition, carving out a chunk of occupied territory to reintegrate it into Ukraine’s grid would pose a wide range of engineering and security challenges. On Wednesday, Raphael Grossi, head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog agency — whose inspectors were recently attacked by a Russian drone, had been trapped inside the plant from December until March, and were then replaced by a new team that entered the plant through Russian-occupied territory without Ukraine’s permission, the first time they’ve done so — said that if a ceasefire deal is reached, he would support efforts at restarting the plant by Russia.

Meanwhile, broader talks to enact a ceasefire on energy targets appear stalled; although both sides say they are open to a limited truce, mutual energy attacks continued on Wednesday. US control of the Zaporizhzhia plant wasn’t included in the latest version of a US-Ukraine deal on critical minerals, presented to Kyiv this week, which reportedly aims to speed up the establishment of a jointly-controlled recovery fund to be seeded by natural resource revenue.

New Energy

• Emirati state-owned renewable energy giant Masdar is reportedly considering an initial public offering.

Fossil Fuels

• Imports of natural gas from Russia to the European Union increased 18% in 2024 from the previous year, despite a plan to end them entirely by 2027. The allure of cheap gas is simply too strong to look for alternative sources, Ember analyst Pawel Czyzak said.

• The Trump administration’s chaotic tariff policies and quest to drive down energy prices are threatening US oil output, shale executives warned.

Finance

• Some insurers are hoping that AI-driven risk assessments will help them better predict surging losses from extreme weather events.
• China will expand its carbon trading market into the steel, cement, and aluminium smelting industries, forcing a further 1,500 firms to cover their emissions with credits.

Tech

• Energy management and automation firm Schneider Electric plans to invest over $700 million in its US operations through 2027.

EVs

• Chinese giant BYD wants to double overseas sales this year with a particular focus on Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the UK, and will try to overcome tariffs by assembling cars locally.

Personnel

• Lane Genatowski will lead the Department of Energy’s loan office, which is responsible for deploying around $400 billion in public financing for energy and manufacturing projects.
• Former longtime US senator J. Bennett Johnston, often dubbed the “man to see” on energy policy, has died aged 92.

The new partnership between DoorDash and Klarna to offer installment loans for food delivery is the latest effort to turn normal commerce into Wall Street-bound cash flows, wrote Semafor’s Liz Hoffman.

It’s all “a bit spicy,” even for one executive who does it for a living. But if the economy cracks, Hoffman wrote, how eager will consumers be to stay current on their burrito bonds?