“The worry of the Street is that Musk dedicating so much time—even more than we expected—to Doge takes away from his time at Tesla,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
“In addition, Musk’s Doge-related actions and more powerful alliance with Trump clearly could alienate some consumers to move away from the Tesla brand.”
About 50 to 100 protesters turned out in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, carrying signs saying, “Dethrone Musk” and “If Tesla survives, your country dies.”
Edward Niedermeyer, author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, was one of them. Since Musk’s power is not derived from election to public office, he said, boycotting and divesting from Tesla is the only tool available to curb his agenda.
He argued that Tesla was overvalued and that its core business of making and selling cars was deteriorating. Significant losses could force investors to sell, triggering a drop in the share price and forcing Musk to sell a portion of his shares to meet a margin call.
“Every Tesla sale that you prevent, every dollar not spent servicing a Tesla, not charging at the Supercharger—these further degrade the business,” Niedermeyer said.
“It’s not easy, it’s not guaranteed, but we do have the opportunity to wipe out a huge amount of Elon Musk’s wealth.”
In Chicago, protesters carried a banner saying “Stop buying Nazi cars.”
City resident Lisa Pereira said she came to the demonstration because “you have to do something.” She said she was disturbed by the administration’s attempts to crush diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, its aggressive immigration enforcement, and the power wielded by Musk.
“Everything is a little off the rails,” she said. “So I decided I had to show up. I had to be in cahoots with my soul.”
Chris White said he attended on Saturday because he fears “we’re living through a fascist coup.”
“My kids are trans,” he said. “I’m getting told they don’t exist. I don’t know if their healthcare will exist.”
Though one man yelled from a truck, “Elon’s my hero!” most passers-by in the heavily Democratic city expressed support.
“I’d rather buy a Rivian,” said one, referring to the electric-truck maker whose showroom was a block away from the protest.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
That mission, and the 2020 Chang’e-5 robotic mission before it, are the first to return lunar rocks to Earth since the 1970s. Together they are building on what scientists learned from Apollo-era missions, helping to unravel mysteries about how the Moon was formed and why it looks the way it does today, and providing clues about our solar system’s history.
But big puzzles remain, such as why the far side of the Moon—the half that always faces away from Earth—is so radically different from the near side. And what is behind the surprising finding that lunar volcanoes may have been active much more recently than previously thought? “The more we look at the Moon, the more we’ve discovered—and the more we realize how little we know,” says Clive R. Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in lunar exploration.
China’s 2024 Chang’e-6 robotic lander mission brought more than four pounds of rocks from the far side of the Moon back to Earth. Credit: CNSA / CAS
With NASA planning to send astronauts back to the Moon’s surface in 2027 for the first time since 1972, geologists are excited about what rocks they might find there and the scientific secrets those samples could reveal—along with what resources could be mined for a future Moon base, or for renewable energy back home on Earth.
Origin story
The samples brought home from the Moon in the 1970s by the Apollo missions and the Soviet Union’s Luna missions cleared up quite a lot about the Moon’s history. Because the lunar samples shared strong similarities with Earth rocks, this added weight to the idea that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized object called Theia collided with the proto-Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago.
Debris from the impact was thrown into orbit around Earth and eventually coalesced into the Moon. In its early days, the Moon was entirely molten. As the magma ocean cooled over hundreds of millions of years, the Moon formed a crust and a mantle below. Giant pools of lava filled impact craters and settled into the lunar lowlands, or maria (Latin for “seas”), while highlands and volcanic domes loomed above them. Eventually, the volcanism died out.
Without plate tectonics or weather, the only things left to alter the Moon’s cold, dead surface were meteorites. A lot of the Apollo-era samples were found to have formed from the heat and pressure of impacts around 3.9 billion years ago, suggesting that they were the result of a short period of intense pummeling by space rocks called the Late Heavy Bombardment.
But research since the 1970s has refined or changed this picture. Higher-resolution orbital images have revealed plenty of large impact craters that seem far older than 3.9 billion years, for example. And meteorites found on Earth, thought to have been ejected from various areas of the Moon during big impacts, have been found to span a huge range of ages.
All this work together suggests that the asteroid bombardment didn’t happen in one dramatic spike but rather over an extended period lasting from perhaps 4.2 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. In this scenario, the Apollo samples dated to 3.9 billion years likely all came from just one huge impact that spewed rock over a very wide area that happened to include the Apollo-era landing sites.
The Moon: Dead or alive
Greater mysteries surround volcanism on the Moon. “The canonical thing I learned in school was that the Moon had been geologically dead for billions of years,” says Samuel Lawrence, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The long-held theory was that a small body like the Moon should have lost its heat to space relatively quickly—and a frigid, extinguished Moon shouldn’t have widespread volcanic activity. Apollo-era samples suggested that most of this volcanism stopped 3 billion years ago or earlier, supporting the theory. But research over the past two decades has overturned that view.
In 2014, Lawrence and colleagues posited that some patches of irregular terrain in the middle of the dark plains, or mare, spotted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were the result of volcanism that kept going until less than 100 million years ago. “That is totally, totally surprising,” says cosmochemist Qing-Zhu Yin of the University of California, Davis.
The latest sample-return missions added more concrete evidence for recent volcanism. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 robotic mission landed in Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) — a spot picked in part because it looked geologically young given how few craters had accumulated there. Sure enough, the volcanic rocks brought home by that mission were found to be 2 billion years old, the youngest ever retrieved from the Moon. “That was big news,” says planetary geoscientist Jim Head of Brown University, who worked on NASA’s Apollo missions.
On top of this, when researchers trawled through thousands of glass beads found in the Chang’e-5 soil samples, most of which are thought to have been created by impacts, they identified three that were volcanic—and only 120 million years old. This finding was published just last year and still needs to be verified, but if such recent dates hold up, they suggest that the Moon might still be capable of producing deep magma even today, Yin says.
All this indicates that the Moon might not have cooled as fast as everyone thought it did. It’s also possible that some of the younger volcanism could have been powered by radioactive elements underground, which can generate enough heat to form magma and are known to be prevalent in certain patches of the Moon. This could explain the 120-million-year-old volcanic glass beads, for example. But not all the early volcanism can be explained this way: The Chang’e-5 volcanic rocks, along with some 2.8-billion-year-old volcanic rock brought back from the far side by Chang’e-6, came from source rocks not enriched with these elements.
“It throws up more questions than it answers,” Neal says. “It’s job security for people like me — we now have new questions to address.”
Lunar exploration ahead
Untangling these mysteries is challenging with so much of the Moon unexplored: While about 850 pounds of Moon rock and soil have now been brought back to Earth, it has all been from just a handful of sites.
Chang’e-6 expanded this picture by bringing back the first samples from the Moon’s far side, taken from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the satellite’s largest, deepest and oldest impact crater. Researchers are keen to use these samples to start determining why the far side is so dramatically different from the near side. The questions that remain unanswered are why the far side has a thicker crust and is nearly devoid of mare from ancient lava oceans when compared with the near side.
NASA’s Artemis III mission, planned for 2027 (though that could change), aims to break more new ground by landing astronauts near the Moon’s south pole—in a spot that is more representative of the Moon’s typical geology than the Apollo sites—and bring home a bonanza of 150 to 180 pounds of samples.
This site should provide fresh geological insights, along with more information about lunar water. In 2018, scientists analyzing orbital mapping data confirmed that there is water ice at the poles—but in what form no one yet knows. “Is it frost on the surface? Is it discrete patches underneath the surface? Is it absorbed onto mineral grains? Is it baked into the regolith like cement?” says NASA’s Juliane Gross, who is helping to develop the plans for lunar sample collection and curation for the Artemis science team. “We don’t know.”
What the Artemis astronauts find could inform ongoing projects spearheaded by China and the United States to establish permanent bases on the Moon, which could benefit from the south pole’s water. “That’s stuff you can breathe, that’s stuff you can drink, it’s rocket fuel,” Lawrence says.
Lunar quarry
In addition to water ice, other potentially mineable resources on the Moon have garnered attention, particularly helium-3. This stable isotope of helium is far more plentiful on the Moon than on Earth and could be an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion (if physicists can get that process to work). Commercial enterprises seeking to mine the Moon have popped up, including Seattle-based Interlune, which plans to bring helium-3 back to Earth in the 2030s, followed by other resources such as rare earth elements needed for technologies like batteries. But when lunar mining will be a reality—considering the logistics, the economics and the legal concerns—is an open question, Lawrence says.
While some people find the idea of mining the pristine Moon distasteful, there could be side benefits for mining on Earth, Neal says. With polar temperatures around -230° C (-380° F), lunar mining would have to be done without fluids. Developing the technologies needed for fluid-free mining could mitigate environmental concerns about wastewater and tailing fluids from mining on Earth. “Just think how you could revolutionize mining on this planet,” he says.
But first, researchers need to simply find out more about the Moon, its history, its geology and the possibility of extracting resources—and that requires up-close exploration, which is sure to bring more surprises. “Once you’re on the ground, you’re like, oh … what’s this?” Gross says. She’s hoping the astronauts can bring home a large haul. “The more they return, the more we can do.”
Electric charging projects have been thrown into chaos by the administration’s directive.
A row of happy EVs charge with no drama, no phone calls to the support line, and no one shuffling spots. Credit: Roberto Baldwin
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
For now, Priester’s will have to stick to its famous pecans in Fort Payne, Alabama. But maybe not for long.
Priester’s Pecans, an Alabama staple, is one of more than half a dozen sites across the state slated to receive millions of dollars in federal funding to expand access to chargers for electric vehicles.
Across the country, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law under then-President Joe Biden, is set to provide $5 billion to states for projects that expand the nation’s EV charging infrastructure.
But in a February 6 letter, a Trump administration official notified state directors of transportation that, effectively, they can’t spend it. The Federal Highway Administration rescinded guidance on the funds, which had been allocated by Congress, and “is also immediately suspending the approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans for all fiscal years,” the letter said.
“Therefore, effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved.”
POLITICO reported on Wednesday that a DOT spokesman said in an email that states were free to use a small portion of the funding—about $400 million—because that was money the states had already “obligated,” or awarded to subcontractors. But that would still leave close to 90 percent of the funding up in the air.
Even before the administration had issued its letter, some Republican-led states, including Alabama, had already announced pauses to their states’ implementation of the national EV charging program.
“In response to Unleashing American Energy, one of several Executive Orders that President Trump signed on January 20, 2025, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs has paused the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program as of January 28, 2025,” the Alabama agency responsible for implementing NEVI posted on its website. “In addition, for applications for funding that were originally due on March 17, 2025, ADECA has closed the application window until further notice.”
Despite the announcement by the Trump administration, however, legal experts and those familiar with the electric charging program at issue say the president does not have the power to permanently nix the NEVI program.
“NEVI funding was appropriated by Congress as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, and it cannot be canceled by the executive branch,” said Elizabeth Turnbull, director of policy and regulatory affairs at the Alliance for Transportation Electrification, a trade group for the electric vehicle industry. “It’s not clear that the secretary of transportation has the authority to revoke states’ NEVI plans, and it’s quite clear that the executive branch lacks the authority to withhold the funding for any sustained period. So, we expect recent executive branch actions to be successfully challenged in court.”
Even under the most aggressive arguments for a strong executive branch, the Supreme Court has stated clearly that the Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate and legislate.
Lawmakers, too, have weighed in on the legality of the Trump administration’s NEVI directive, saying officials acted with “blatant disregard for the law.”
In a letter to administration officials, Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works urged the Department of Transportation to retract its February 6 letter and “implement the law according to your responsibilities.”
The Democrats’ letter also asked for responses to questions about the legal basis for the action and for information about the involvement of individuals associated with Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.” DOGE is not an official department, and multiple reports show that Musk’s team has been dismantling parts or all of some federal agencies.
Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company, currently has the largest network of fast chargers in the country. It’s not yet clear if any new policies on NEVI, or the pause on building out a more robust network for all EV drivers, could benefit Tesla.
The Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration’s parent agency, did not respond to a request for comment.
With or without NEVI, the move toward the electrification of transportation is inevitable, experts say. But they warn that although the administration’s pause of the program will likely be reversed by the courts, even a temporary delay in EV charging infrastructure can harm the nation’s ability to quickly and efficiently transition to electric vehicles. And the Trump administration ignored an earlier court order to lift a broad freeze on federal funds, a federal judge ruled this week.
Meanwhile, Trump’s NEVI freeze has sown confusion across the country, with EV stakeholders and state governments scrambling to figure out what the funding pause will mean and how to respond.
Beyond Alabama, interviews across the country found officials in deep red Wyoming contemplating a possible return of funds, while those in progressive states like Illinois and Maryland remain firmly committed to the EV buildout, with or without federal funding. In purple North Carolina, officials are in limbo, having already spent some NEVI funds, but not sure how to proceed with the next round of projects.
Alabama
In Alabama, officials had already announced plans to fund more than a dozen chargers at sites across the state along interstates and major highways, including installing two dual-port chargers at eight Love’s Travel Stops and another at Priester’s Pecans off I-65 in Fort Deposit.
At the time, state officials, including Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, praised the funding.
“Having strategic electric vehicle charging stations across Alabama not only benefits EV drivers, but it also benefits those companies that produce electric vehicles, including many of them right here in Alabama, resulting in more high-paying jobs for Alabamians,” Ivey said when the funding allocation was announced in July 2024. “This latest round of projects will provide added assurance that Alabamians and travelers to our state who choose electric vehicles can travel those highways and know a charging station is within a reliable distance on their routes.”
In total, Alabama was set to receive $79 million in funding through the program, including $2.4 million to expand training programs for the installation, testing, operation, and maintenance of EVs and EV chargers at Bevill State Community College in the central part of the state. The college did not respond to a request for comment on whether the money had been disbursed to the institution before the announced pause.
In an email exchange this week, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs confirmed what the agency had posted to its website in the wake of Trump’s inauguration—that the state would pause NEVI projects and await further guidance from the Trump administration.
Even with a pause, however, stakeholders in Alabama and across the country have expressed a commitment to continuing the expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
For its part, Love’s Travel Stops, a 42-state chain that had been set to receive more than $5.8 million in funding for EV chargers in Alabama alone, said it will continue to roll out electric chargers at locations nationwide.
“Love’s remains committed to meeting customers’ needs regardless of fuel type and believes a robust electric vehicle charging network is a part of that,” Kim Okafor, general manager of zero emissions for Love’s, said in an emailed statement. “Love’s will continue to monitor related executive orders and subsequent changes in law to determine the next steps. This includes the Alabama Department of Transportation’s Electric Vehicle charging plan timelines.”
The state of Alabama, meanwhile, has its own EV charger program apart from NEVI that has already funded millions of dollars worth of charging infrastructure.
In January, even after its announced pause of NEVI implementation, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs announced the awarding of six grants totaling $2.26 million from state funds for the construction of EV chargers in Huntsville, Hoover, Tuscaloosa, and Mobile.
“The installation of electric vehicle charging stations at places like hotels are investments that can attract customers and add to local economies,” ADECA Director Kenneth Boswell said at the time.
North Carolina
In North Carolina, the full buildout of the state’s electric charging network under NEVI is in limbo just four months after the NC Department of Transportation announced the initial recipients of the funds.
NC DOT spokesman Jamie Kritzer said that based on the federal government’s directive, the agency is continuing with awarded projects but “pausing” the next round of requests for proposals, as well as future phases of the buildout.
If that pause were to become permanent, the state would be forced to abandon $103 million in federal infrastructure money that would have paid for an additional 41 stations to be built as part of Phase 1.
Last September the state announced it had awarded nearly $6 million to six companies to build nine public charging stations. Locations include shopping centers, travel plazas, and restaurants, most of them in economically disadvantaged communities.
NEVI requires EV charging stations in the first phase to be installed every 50 miles along the federally approved alternative fuel corridors, and that they be within one mile of those routes. The state has also prioritized Direct Current Fast Charging (DCFC) stations, which can charge a vehicle to 80 percent in 20 to 30 minutes.
The NEVI program is structured to reimburse private companies for up to 80 percent of the cost to construct and operate electric vehicle charging stations for five years, after which the charging stations will continue to operate without government support, according to the state DOT.
The state estimated it would have taken two to three years to finish Phase 1.
Under Phase 2, the state would award federal funds to build community-level electric vehicle charging stations, farther from the major highways, including in disadvantaged communities.
That is particularly important in North Carolina, which has the second-largest rural population in the US in terms of percentage. A third of the state’s residents live in rural areas, which are underserved by electric vehicle charging stations.
There are already more than 1,700 public electric charging stations and 4,850 ports in North Carolina, according to the US Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. But they aren’t evenly dispersed throughout the state. Alleghany and Ashe counties, in the western mountains, have just one charging station each.
Vickie Atkinson, who lives in the country between Chapel Hill and Pittsboro in central North Carolina, drives a plug-in hybrid Ford Escape, which is powered by an electric engine or gas, unlike full electric models, which have no gas option. Plug-in hybrids typically have fully electric ranges of 35 to 40 miles.
“I try to drive on battery whenever possible,” Atkinson said. But she’s frustrated that she can’t drive from her home to downtown Siler City and back—a 60-mile round trip—without resorting to the gas engine. There are two chargers on the outskirts along US 64—only one of them is a fast charger—but none downtown.
“I really hope the chargers are installed,” Atkinson said. “I fear they won’t and I find that very frustrating.”
Former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, advocated for wider adoption of electric vehicles and infrastructure. In a 2018 executive order, Cooper established a benchmark of 80,000 registered zero-emission vehicles in the state by 2025.
North Carolina met that goal. State DOT registration data shows there were 81,658 electric vehicles and 24,457 plug-in hybrids as of September, the latest figures available.
Cooper issued a subsequent executive order in 2022 that set a more aggressive goal: 1.2 million registered electric vehicles by 2030. At the current pace of electric vehicle adoption, it’s unlikely the state will achieve that benchmark.
The electric vehicle industry is an economic driver in North Carolina. Toyota just opened a $13.9 billion battery plant in the small town of Liberty and says it will create about 5,100 new jobs. The company is scheduled to begin shipping batteries in April.
Natron Energy is building a plant in Edgecombe County, east of Raleigh, to manufacture sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. Experts say they are cheaper and environmentally superior to lithium-ion batteries and less likely to catch fire, although they store less energy.
The global company Kempower opened its first North American factory in Durham, where it builds charging infrastructure. Jed Routh, its vice president of markets and products for North America, said that while “the rapidly shifting market is difficult to forecast and interest in electric vehicles may slow at times over the next four years, we don’t expect it to go away. We believe that the industry will remain strong and Kempower remains committed to define, produce, and improve EV charging infrastructure throughout North America.”
North Carolina does have a separate funding source for electric charging stations that is protected from the Trump administration’s program cuts and cancellations. The state received $92 million from Volkswagen, part of the EPA’s multi-billion-dollar national settlement in 2016 with the car company, which had installed software in some of its diesel cars to cheat on emissions tests.
The Department of Environmental Quality used the settlement money to pay for 994 EV charging ports at 318 sites in North Carolina. The agency expects to add more charging stations with $1.8 million in unspent settlement funds.
Electrify America was created by the Volkswagen Group of America to implement a $2 billion portion of the settlement. It required the car company to invest in electric charging infrastructure and in the promotion of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Electrify America operates 20 charging NEVI-compliant, high-speed stations in North Carolina, using the settlement money. However, the funding pause could affect the company because it works with potential site developers and small businesses to comply with the NEVI requirements.
The company is still reviewing the details in the federal memo, company spokeswoman Tara Geiger said.
“Electrify America continues to engage with stakeholders to understand developments impacting the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program,” Geiger wrote in an email. “We remain committed to growing our coast-to-coast Hyper-Fast network to support transportation electrification.”
Wyoming
In Wyoming, Doug McGee, a state Department of Transportation spokesperson, said the agency is taking a wait and see approach to NEVI moving forward, and is not ruling out a return of funding. About half a dozen people at the department handle NEVI along with other daily responsibilities, McGee said, and it will be easy for them to put NEVI on hold while they await further instruction.
The department was in the process of soliciting proposals for EV charging stations and has not yet spent any money under NEVI. “There was very little to pause,” McGee said.
Across 6,800 miles of highway in Wyoming, there are 110 public EV charging stations, making the state’s EV infrastructure the third-smallest in the country, ahead of charging networks in only North Dakota and Alaska.
Illinois
More progressive states, including Illinois, have explicitly said they will redouble their efforts to support the expansion of EV charging infrastructure in the wake of the Trump administration’s NEVI pause.
The state of Illinois has said it remains committed to the goal of helping consumers and the public sector transition to EVs in 2025 through state funding sources, even if some NEVI projects are halted.
Commonwealth Edison Co. (ComEd), the largest electric utility in Illinois and the primary electric provider in Chicago, also announced a $100 million rebate program on Feb. 6 at the Chicago Auto Show, funds that are currently available to boost EV adoption throughout the state.
The funds are for residential EV charger and installation costs, all-electric fleet vehicles, and charging infrastructure in both the public and private sectors.
According to Cristina Botero, senior manager for beneficial electrification at ComEd, the rebate is part of a total investment of $231 million from ComEd as part of its Beneficial Electrification plan programs to promote electrification and EV adoption.
While the $231 million won’t be impacted by the Trump administration’s order, other EV projects funded by NEVI are halted. In 2022, for example, $148 million from NEVI was set to be disbursed in Illinois over the course of five years, focusing on Direct Current Fast Charging to fulfill the requirement to build charging stations every 50 miles, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
“We are still in the process of reviewing the impacts of last week’s order and evaluating next steps going forward,” said Maria Castaneda, spokesperson at IDOT, in an emailed statement.
The NEVI funds were also set to help achieve Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s goal to have 1 million EVs on Illinois roads by 2030. Officials estimated that at least 10,000 EV charging stations are needed in order to achieve this 2030 goal. Last fall, there were 1,200 charging stations open to the public.
In January, Illinois was awarded federal funds totaling $114 million from the US Department of Transportation to build 14 truck charging hubs, adding to the statewide charging infrastructure.
According to Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the Respiratory Health Association, most of that funding is either frozen or at risk.
However, programs like the recent ComEd rebate will not be impacted. “This is at the state level and not dictated by federal policy,” Botero said.
Maryland
In Maryland, state officials are trying to assess the fallout and find alternative ways to keep EV infrastructure efforts alive. The outcome hinges on new federal guidance and potential legal battles over the suspension.
Maryland is allocated $63 million over five years under NEVI. The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) launched the first $12.1 million round last summer to build 126 fast-charging ports at 22 sites across many of the state’s counties. At least some are expected to be operational by late 2025.
In December, MDOT issued a new call for proposals for building up to 29 additional highway charging stations, expecting stable federal support. At the time, senior MDOT officials told Inside Climate News they were confident in the program’s security since it was authorized under law.
But Trump’s funding pause has upended those plans.
“The Maryland Department of Transportation is moving forward with its obligated NEVI funding and is awaiting new guidance from the U.S. Department of Transportation to advance future funding rounds,” said Carter Elliott, a spokesperson for Gov. Wes Moore, in an emailed statement.
The Moore administration reaffirmed its commitment to EV expansion, calling charging essential to reducing consumer costs and cutting climate pollution. “Gov. Moore is committed to making the state more competitive by pressing forward with the administration’s strategy to deliver charging infrastructure for clean cars to drivers across the state,” the statement added.
In written comments, an MDOT spokesperson said the agency is determining its options for future funding needs and solicitations.
Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All program, said that freezing the EV charging funds was an unsound and illegal move by the Trump administration. “This is an attack on bipartisan funding that Congress approved years ago and is driving investment and innovation in every state,” she said.
She said that the NEVI program is helping the US build out the infrastructure needed to support the transition to vehicles that don’t pollute the air.
The Sierra Club’s Josh Stebbins lamented the slow pace of the EV charger buildout across the state. “We are not sure when Maryland’s NEVI chargers will be operational,” he said. “States must move faster and accelerate the installation of NEVI stations. It has been frustratingly slow, and the public needs to see a return on its investment.”
Maryland EV ambitions are high stakes. Transportation remains the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and public officials and advocates see EV adoption as critical to meet its net-zero carbon goal by 2045. NEVI is also a key plank of the state’s broader Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Planning initiative, designed to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
What happens next
As litigation is brought over the Trump administration’s pause on NEVI funds, experts like Turnbull of the Alliance for Transportation Electrification believe the United States remains, despite this bump, on the road toward electrification.
“We are not shifting into reverse,” Turnbull said. “The EV market will continue to grow across all market segments driven by market innovation and consumer demand, both within the United States and globally. By pretending the EV transition doesn’t exist, this administration risks the US’s global competitiveness, national security, and economic growth.”
Cambridge-headquartered Arm has more than doubled in value to $160 billion since it listed on Nasdaq in 2023, carried higher by explosive investor interest in AI. Arm’s partnerships with Nvidia and Amazon have driven its rapid growth in the data centers that power AI assistants from OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic.
Meta is the latest big tech company to turn to Arm for server chips, displacing those traditionally provided by Intel and AMD.
During last month’s earnings call, Meta’s finance chief Susan Li said it would be “extending our custom silicon efforts to [AI] training workloads” to drive greater efficiency and performance by tuning its chips to its particular computing needs.
Meanwhile, an Arm-produced chip is also likely to eventually play a role in Sir Jony Ive’s secretive plans to build a new kind of AI-powered personal device, which is a collaboration between the iPhone designer’s firm LoveFrom, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and SoftBank.
Arm’s designs have been used in more than 300 billion chips, including almost all of the world’s smartphones. Its power-efficient designs have made its CPUs, the general-purpose workhorse that sits at the heart of any computer, an increasingly attractive alternative to Intel’s chips in PCs and servers at a time when AI is making data centers much more energy-intensive.
Arm, which started out in a converted turkey barn in Cambridgeshire 35 years ago, became ubiquitous in the mobile market by licensing its designs to Apple for its iPhone chips, as well as Android suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek. Maintaining its unique position in the center of the fiercely competitive mobile market has required a careful balancing act for Arm.
But Son has long pushed for Arm to make more money from its intellectual property. Under Haas, who became chief executive in 2022, Arm’s business model began to evolve, with a focus on driving higher royalties from customers as the company designs more of the building blocks needed to make a chip.
Going a step further by building and selling its own complete chip is a bold move by Haas that risks putting it on a collision course with customers such as Qualcomm, which is already locked in a legal battle with Arm over licensing terms, and Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chipmaker.
“We anticipated that people wouldn’t want to be discriminated against because of the power train,” Goller said. “We’ve gone the path which others are now following.”
Analysts say BMW is better positioned than rivals to meet the EU’s tougher emissions targets without selling EVs at deep discounts. It is also less exposed to Trump’s tariff war since 65 percent of its cars sold in the US are built locally, and it is also a net exporter from the US.
“From an operational standpoint, I think BMW, outside China, is very well placed,” said UBS analyst Patrick Hummel. “They’re pretty much where they need to be in terms of the EV share in the mix.”
Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois has described BMW, which has in the past drawn criticism from investors for hedging its bets on power train technology, as “the most thoughtful [original equipment manufacturer] over the years.”
This year, the group will launch its Neue Klasse platform for its next generation of EVs, with longer range, faster charging, and upgraded software capabilities, which Houchois said would “consolidate a lead in software-defined vehicles, multi-energy power train, and battery sourcing.”
But China has proved challenging to the Munich-based carmaker. BMW and Mini sales in the world’s largest automotive market fell more than 13 percent last year to 714,530 cars, a more severe slump than rivals such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi.
Analysts at Citigroup have warned that BMW remains vulnerable to China, where intensifying price pressure in an overcrowded market has been forcing carmakers to discount prices. Sliding sales in the country, where BMW still delivers just under a third of its cars, “remains our key concern,” the Citi analysts said.
Goller acknowledged China was unlikely to return to the explosive economic growth that first attracted foreign carmakers to flood into the country.
“But we still see a growing market… and therefore, our ambition is clearly that we want to participate in a growing market,” he said.
Goller added that it shouldn’t come as “a shock” that Chinese brands were rapidly taking domestic marketshare from foreign carmakers.
“The cars are really good from a technology perspective,” he said. “But we are not afraid.”
“There is no legal basis for funds that have been apportioned to states to build projects being ‘decertified’ based on policy,” says Andrew Rogers, a former deputy administrator and chief counsel of the Federal Highway Administration.
The US DOT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear how the DOT’s order will affect charging stations that are under construction. In the letter, FHWA officials write that “no new obligations may occur,” suggesting states may not sign new contracts with businesses even if those states have been allocated federal funding. The letter also says “reimbursement of existing obligations will be allowed” as the program goes through a review process, suggesting states may be allowed to pay back businesses that have already provided services.
Billions in federal funding have already been disbursed under the program. Money has gone to both red and blue states. Top funding recipients last year included Florida, New York, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent the last few weeks at the head of the federal so-called Department of Government Efficiency directing “audits” and cuts to federal spending. But his electric automobile company has been a recipient of $31 million in awards from the NEVI program, according to a database maintained by transportation officials, accounting for 6 percent of the money awarded so far.
The Trump administration has said that it plans to target electric vehicles and EV-related programs. An executive order signed by Trump on his first day in office purported to eliminate “the EV mandate,” though such a federal policy never existed.
NEVI projects have taken longer to get off the ground than other charging station construction because the federal government was deliberate in allocating funding to companies with track records, that could prove they could build or operate charging stations, says Ryan McKinnon, a spokesperson for Charge Ahead Partnership, a group of businesses and organizations that work in electric vehicle charging. If NEVI funding isn’t disbursed, “the businesses that have spent time or money investing in this program will be hurt,” he says.
North America’s largest bird disappeared from the wild in the late 1980s.
The spring morning is cool and bright in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park in Baja California, Mexico, as a bird takes to the skies. Its 9.8-foot wingspan casts a looming silhouette against the sunlight; the sound of its flight is like that of a light aircraft cutting through the wind. In this forest thick with trees up to 600 years old lives the southernmost population of the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the only one outside the United States. Dozens of the scavenging birds have been reintroduced here, to live and breed once again in the wild.
Their return has been captained for more than 20 years by biologist Juan Vargas Velasco and his partner María Catalina Porras Peña, a couple who long ago moved away from the comforts of the city to endure extreme winters living in a tent or small trailer, to manage the lives of the 48 condors known to fly over Mexican territory. Together—she as coordinator of the California Condor Conservation Program, and he as field manager—they are the guardians of a project whose origins go back to condor recovery efforts that began in the 1980s in the United States, when populations were decimated, mainly from eating the meat of animals shot by hunters’ lead bullets.
In Mexico, the species disappeared even earlier, in the late 1930s. Its historic return—the first captive-bred condors were released into Mexican territory in 2002—is the result of close binational collaboration among zoos and other institutions in the United States and Mexico.
Beyond the number on the wing that identifies each individual, Porras Peña knows perfectly the history and behavior of the condors under her care. She recognizes them without needing binoculars and speaks of them as one would speak of the lives of friends.
She captures her knowledge in an Excel log: a database including information such as origin, ID tag, name, sex, age, date of birth, date of arrival, first release, and number in the Studbook (an international registry used to track the ancestry and offspring of each individual of a species through a unique number). Also noted is wildlife status, happily marked for most birds with a single word: “Free.” Names such as Galan, Nera, Pai Pai, La Querida, Celestino, and El Patriota stand out in the record.
The California condor, North America’s largest bird, has taken flight again. It’s a feat made possible by well-established collaborations between the US and Mexico, economic investment, the dedication of many people, and, above all, the scientific understanding of the species—from the decoding of its genome and knowledge of its diseases and reproductive habits to the use of technologies that can closely follow each individual bird.
But many challenges remain for the California condor, which 10,000 years ago dominated the skies over the Pacific coast of the Americas, from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Researchers need to assemble wild populations that are capable of breeding without human assistance, and with the confidence that more birds are hatched than die. It is a tough battle against extinction, waged day in and day out by teams in California, Arizona, and Utah in the United States, and Mexico City and Baja California in Mexico.
A shift in approach to conservation
The US California Condor Recovery Program, initiated in the 1970s, represented an enormous change in the strategy of species conservation. After unsuccessful habitat preservation attempts, and as a last-ditch attempt to try to save the scavenger bird from extinction, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission advocated for a decision as bold as it was controversial: to capture the last condors alive in the wild and commit to breeding them in captivity.
Some two dozen condors sacrificed their freedom in order to save their lineage. On April 19, 1987, the last condor was captured, marking a critical moment for the species: On that day, the California condor became officially extinct in the wild.
At the same time, a captive breeding program was launched, offering a ray of hope for a species that, beyond its own magnificence, plays an important role in the health of ecosystems—efficiently eliminating the remains of dead animals, thus preventing the proliferation of diseases and environmental pollution.
This is what is defined as a refaunation project, says Rodolfo Dirzo, a Stanford University biologist. It’s the flip side to the term defaunation that he and his colleagues coined in a 2014 article in Science to refer to the global extinction or significant losses of an animal species. Defaunation today is widespread: Although animal diversity is the highest in the planet’s history, modern vertebrate extinction rates are up to 100—even 1,000—times higher than in the past (excepting cataclysmic events causing mass extinctions, such as the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs), Dirzo and colleagues explain in an article in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics.
Refaunation, Dirzo says, involves reintroducing individuals of a species into areas where they once lived but no longer do. He believes that both the term and the practice should be more common: “Just as we are very accustomed to the term and practice of reforestation, we should do the same with refaunation,” he says.
The map shows the regions where the California condor is currently found: northern Arizona, southern Utah, and California in the United States and Baja California in Mexico.
Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service
The map shows the regions where the California condor is currently found: northern Arizona, southern Utah, and California in the United States and Baja California in Mexico. Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service
The California Condor Recovery Program produced its first results in a short time. In 1988, just one year after the collection of the last wild condors, researchers at the San Diego Zoo announced the first captive birth of a California condor chick.
The technique of double or triple clutching followed, to greater success. Condors are monogamous and usually have a single brood every two years, explains Fernando Gual, who until October 2024 was director general of zoos and wildlife conservation in Mexico City. But if for some reason they lose an egg at the beginning of the breeding season—either because it breaks or falls out of the nest, which is usually on a cliff—the pair produces a second egg. If this one is also lost or damaged, they may lay a third. The researchers learned that if they removed the first egg and incubated it under carefully controlled conditions, the condor pair would lay a second egg, which was also removed for care, leaving a third egg for the pair to incubate and rear naturally.
This innovation was followed by the development of artificial incubation techniques to increase egg survival, as well as puppet rearing, using replicas of adult condors to feed and care for the chicks born in captivity. That way, the birds would not imprint on humans, reducing the difficulties the birds might face when integrating into the wild population.
Xewe (female) and Chocuyens (male) were the first condors to triumphantly return to the wild. The year was 1992, and the pair returned to freedom accompanied by a pair of Andean condors, natural inhabitants of the Andes Mountains in South America. Andean condors live from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego and have a wingspan about 12 inches larger than that of California condors. Their mission here was to help to consolidate a social group and aid the birds in adapting to the habitat. The event took place at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in the Los Padres National Forest in California. In a tiny, tentative way, the California condor had returned.
By the end of the 1990s, there were other breeding centers, such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Oregon Zoo, the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Then, in 1999, the first collaboration agreements were established between the United States and Mexico for the reintroduction of the California condor in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park. The number of existing California condors increased from just over two dozen in 1983 to more than 100 in 1995, some of which had been returned to the wild in the United States. By 2000, there were 172 condors and by 2011, 396.
By 2023, the global population of California condors reached 561 individuals, 344 of them living in the wild.
Genetics: Key ally in the reintroduction of the condor
In a laboratory at the San Diego Zoo in Escondido, California, a freezer full of carefully organized containers with colored labels is testament to the painstaking scientific work that supports the California Condor Recovery Program. Cynthia Steiner, a Venezuela-born biologist, explains that the DNA of every individual California condor is preserved there. This includes samples of birds who have died and those that are living, some 1,200 condors in total.
This California condor was hatched in 2004 as part of a breeding program and released in Arizona in 2006. In the 1980s, just 27 of the birds remained in existence. A recovery program has boosted the species’ numbers to more than 500, with several hundred living once more in the wild.
This California condor was hatched in 2004 as part of a breeding program and released in Arizona in 2006. In the 1980s, just 27 of the birds remained in existence. A recovery program has boosted the species’ numbers to more than 500, with several hundred living once more in the wild. Credit: Mark Newman via Getty Images
“If science wasn’t behind the reintroduction and recovery program it would have been very complicated, not only to understand what the most important hazards are that are affecting condor reproduction and survival, but also to do the management at the breeding centers and in the wild,” says Steiner, who is associate director of the Genetic Conservation Biology Laboratory at the Beckman Center for Conservation Research.
As she and colleagues outlined in an article in the Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, genomic information from animals at risk of extinction can shed light on many aspects of wildlife biology relevant to conservation. The DNA can reveal the demographic history of populations, identify genetic variants that affect the ability of populations to adapt to changing environments, demonstrate the effects of inbreeding and hybridization, and uncover the genetic basis of susceptibility to disease.
Genetic analysis of the California condor, for example, has led to the identification of inherited diseases such as chondrodystrophy—a disorder that causes abnormal skeletal development and often leads to the death of embryos before eggs can hatch. This finding served to identify carriers of the disease gene and thus avoid pairings that could produce affected offspring.
Genetic research has also made it possible to accurately sex these birds—males are indistinguishable from females to the naked eye—and to determine how individuals are related, in order to select breeding pairs that minimize the risk of inbreeding and ensure that the new condor population has as much genetic variability as possible.
Genetics has also allowed the program to determine the paternity of birds and has led to the discovery that the California condor is able to reproduce asexually using parthenogenesis, in which an embryo develops without fertilization by sperm. “It was an incredible surprise,” says Steiner, recalling how the team initially thought it was a laboratory error. They later confirmed that two chicks had, indeed, developed and hatched without any paternal genetic contribution, even though the females were housed with fertile males. It was the first record of this phenomenon in a bird species.
The complete decoding of the California condor genome, published in 2021, also revealed valuable information about the bird’s evolutionary history and prehistoric abundance. Millions of years ago, it was a species with an effective population of some 10,000 to 100,000 individuals. Its decline began about 40,000 years ago during the last ice age, and was later exacerbated by human activities. Despite this, Steiner says, the species retains a genetic variability similar to birds that are not endangered.
A problem with lead
Despite these great efforts and a renewed understanding of the species, threats to the condor remain.
In the 1980s, when efforts to monitor the last condors in the wild intensified, a revealing event took place: After 15 of them died, four were necropsied, and the cause of death of three of them was shown to be lead poisoning.
Although these Cathartiformes—from the Greek kathartes, meaning “those that clean”—are not usually prey for hunters, their scavenging nature makes them indirect victims of hunter bullets, which kill them not by their impact, but by their composition. Feeding on the flesh of dead animals, condors ingest fragments of lead ammunition that remain embedded in the carcasses.
Once inside the body, lead—which builds up over time—acts as a neurotoxin that affects the nervous, digestive, and reproductive systems. Among the most devastating effects is paralysis of the crop, the organ where condors store food before digesting it; this prevents them from feeding and causes starvation. Lead also interferes with the production of red blood cells, causing anemia and progressively weakening the bird, and damages the nervous system, causing convulsions, blindness, and death.
Efforts in the United States to mitigate the threat of lead to the condors have been extensive. Since the 1970s, several strategies have been implemented, such as provision of lead-free food for condors, campaigns to educate hunters about the impact of lead bullet use on wildlife, and programs showing conservation-area visitors how important birds are to the ecosystem. Government regulations have also played a role, like the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act of 2007, which mandates the use of lead-free ammunition for big-game hunting within the condor’s range in California. However, these efforts have not been sufficient.
According to the 2023 State of the California Condor Population report, between 1992 and 2023, 137 condors died from lead poisoning—48 percent of the deaths with a known cause recorded in that period. The only population partially spared is in Baja California, where hunting is much less common. Only 7.7 percent of the deaths there are attributable to lead, according to Porras Peña’s records.
Will the condors become self-sufficient again?
The 1996 California Condor Recovery Plan notes that a self-sustaining condor population must be large enough to withstand variations in factors such as climate, food availability, and predators, and permit gene flow among the various clans or groups. The document establishes the objective of changing the status of the California condor from “endangered” to “threatened” under the US Endangered Species Act. To achieve this, there must be two reintroduced populations and one captive population, each with at least 150 individuals, including a minimum of 15 breeding pairs to ensure a positive growth rate—meaning that more condors are born than die.
Today, released California condor populations are distributed in several regions: Arizona and Utah are home to 90 birds in the wild, while California has 206. In Baja California, 48 condors fly in the wild. According to the calculations of Nacho Vilchis, associate director of recovery ecology at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, it will take 10 to 15 years to have a clearer picture of how long it will take for the reintroduction program to be a complete success—to make condor populations self-sustaining.
So far, the reality is that all populations depend on human intervention to survive. It is a task carried out by biologists, technicians and conservationists, who face steep cliffs, rough terrain, and other obstacles to closely monitor the progress of the released birds and, above all, the development of chicks born in the wild.
Juan Vargas Velasco tells epic stories of how he has rappelled down steep cliffs in San Pedro Mártir National Park, facing attacks from the nest’s parent defenders in order to examine the chicks. “There is a perception that when you release a condor it is already a success, but for there to be real success, you have to monitor them constantly,” he says. “We follow them with GPS, with VHF telemetry, to make sure that the animals are adapting, that they find water and food. To release animals without monitoring is to leave them to their fate.”
The costs of managing the species in the field are not small. For example, the GPS transmitters needed to track the condors in their natural habitat cost $4,000, and subscription to the satellite system costs $80 per month per bird, Vilchis says. Other costs associated with the project, he adds, involve the construction of pre-release aviaries, laboratory analyses to monitor the birds’ health, and the provision of supplementary food in the initial stages of reintroduction. A key to ensuring the survival of the California condor is to secure funding for the species’ recovery program, notes the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s five-year report.
Each of the California Condor Recovery Program’s breeding and release sites in the United States operates as a nongovernmental organization that raises funds to finance the program. On the other side of the border, the program receives logistical support and equipment from US organizations, as well as funding from the philanthropic program “I’m Back BC Condor,” which helps to support the birds in the wild through private donations.
From Chapultepec to the San Pedro Mártir Mountain Range
A California condor hatchling peeks timidly through the protective mesh of the aviary at the Chapultepec Zoo, as one of its parents spreads its vast wings and flies over the enclosure. This space in the heart of Mexico City, one of the largest and most populated metropolises in the world, is part of the condor reintroduction effort in Mexico, a program that has been key to the recovery of the population in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir in Baja California.
In 2002, the first condors released in Mexico came from the Los Angeles Zoo. In 2007, the Chapultepec Zoo received its first two male condors, with the goal of implementing an outreach and environmental education program while the team learned to handle the birds. After an assessment in 2014, it was confirmed that the zoo met the requirements for reproduction, permitting the arrival of two females. Breeding pairs were successfully formed, and, in 2016, the first hatchlings were born.
Today, Chapultepec Zoo not only houses a breeding center but also has built its own “frozen zoo,” formally known as the Genomic Resource Bank, which stores sperm, ovarian tissue, and DNA samples from nearly 100 wild animal species, many of them endangered. “More than a zoo, it’s a library,” says Blanca Valladares, head of the Conservation Genomics Laboratory within the Mexico City Conservation Centers.
Collaboration between Mexican institutions, such as the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas and the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, has been key in the development of the project in Baja California. What began in the United States has expanded across borders, creating a binational effort in which Mexico has taken an increasingly prominent role. This cooperative approach reflects the very nature of the species, which does not recognize borders in its historical habitat.
The hatchling in the aviary is preparing for its trip to Baja California. Over the next few months, it will be transported through air and over land, under the care of dozens of people, to the pre-release aviary in San Pedro Mártir, where it will spend a period of adaptation before being released. Baja California has been recognized by specialists as one of the best places for the recovery of the species, thanks to its pristine forest, a human population a tenth the size of California’s (4 million versus 40 million), and a low level of lead and diseases. Porras Peña says that the condor population in the region seems to have reached a point of stability: It remained stable for seven years without the need to release new condors bred in captivity.
Despite titanic efforts, strict protocols, and painstaking care at every stage of reintroduction, things don’t always go smoothly. In 2022, a puma attacked a pre-release aviary in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, where four condors, two from San Diego and two from Mexico City, were being prepared for release. The puma found a weak spot in the mesh and, with its claws, managed to reach the two condors from the United States. Porras Peña sadly describes the desperate efforts the team made to save the life of one of the injured birds, but in the end, it died. It was a devastating blow for the team, who saw years of work lost in an instant.
The incident is an ironic lesson from nature: While for decades condors were decimated as a consequence of human activity, today a natural predator snatches in seconds what has taken tireless efforts to recover—a brutal reminder that even if we rebuild a species by dint of science and sacrifice, nature will always have the last word.
The Cochrane Collaboration has a policy excluding suspect studies from its analyses of medical evidence and is developing a tool to spot problematic medical trials. And publishers have begun to share data and technologies among themselves to combat fraud, including image fraud.
Technology startups are also offering help. The website Argos, launched in September 2024 by Scitility, an alert service based in Sparks, Nevada, allows authors to check collaborators for retractions or misconduct. Morressier, a scientific conference and communications company in Berlin, offers research integrity tools. Paper-checking tools include Signals, by London-based Research Signals, and Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm.
But Alam acknowledges that the fight against paper mills won’t be won as long as the booming demand for papers remains.
Today’s commercial publishing is part of the problem, Byrne said. Cleaning up the literature is a vast and expensive undertaking. “Either we have to monetize corrections such that publishers are paid for their work, or forget the publishers and do it ourselves,” she said.
There’s a fundamental bias in for-profit publishing: “We pay them for accepting papers,” said Bodo Stern, a former editor of the journal Cell and chief of Strategic Initiatives at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research organization and funder in Chevy Chase, Maryland. With more than 50,000 journals on the market, bad papers shopped around long enough eventually find a home, Stern said.
To prevent this, we could stop paying journals for accepting papers and look at them as public utilities that serve a greater good. “We should pay for transparent and rigorous quality-control mechanisms,” he said.
Peer review, meanwhile, “should be recognized as a true scholarly product, just like the original article,” Stern said. And journals should make all peer-review reports publicly available, even for manuscripts they turn down.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. This is a condensed version. To learn more about how fraudsters around the globe use paper mills to enrich themselves and harm scientific research, read the full version.
Flaws also allowed access to one year of location history.
About a year ago, security researcher Sam Curry bought his mother a Subaru, on the condition that, at some point in the near future, she let him hack it.
It took Curry until last November, when he was home for Thanksgiving, to begin examining the 2023 Impreza’s Internet-connected features and start looking for ways to exploit them. Sure enough, he and a researcher working with him online, Shubham Shah, soon discovered vulnerabilities in a Subaru web portal that let them hijack the ability to unlock the car, honk its horn, and start its ignition, reassigning control of those features to any phone or computer they chose.
Most disturbing for Curry, though, was that they found they could also track the Subaru’s location—not merely where it was at the moment but also where it had been for the entire year that his mother had owned it. The map of the car’s whereabouts was so accurate and detailed, Curry says, that he was able to see her doctor visits, the homes of the friends she visited, even which exact parking space his mother parked in every time she went to church.
A year of location data for Sam Curry’s mother’s 2023 Subaru Impreza that Curry and Shah were able to access in Subaru’s employee admin portal thanks to its security vulnerabilities.
Credit: Sam Curry
A year of location data for Sam Curry’s mother’s 2023 Subaru Impreza that Curry and Shah were able to access in Subaru’s employee admin portal thanks to its security vulnerabilities. Credit: Sam Curry
“You can retrieve at least a year’s worth of location history for the car, where it’s pinged precisely, sometimes multiple times a day,” Curry says. “Whether somebody’s cheating on their wife or getting an abortion or part of some political group, there are a million scenarios where you could weaponize this against someone.”
Curry and Shah today revealed in a blog post their method for hacking and tracking millions of Subarus, which they believe would have allowed hackers to target any of the company’s vehicles equipped with its digital features known as Starlink in the US, Canada, or Japan. Vulnerabilities they found in a Subaru website intended for the company’s staff allowed them to hijack an employee’s account to both reassign control of cars’ Starlink features and also access all the vehicle location data available to employees, including the car’s location every time its engine started, as shown in their video below.
Curry and Shah reported their findings to Subaru in late November, and Subaru quickly patched its Starlink security flaws. But the researchers warn that the Subaru web vulnerabilities are just the latest in a long series of similar web-based flaws they and other security researchers working with them have found that have affected well over a dozen carmakers, including Acura, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Kia, Toyota, and many others. There’s little doubt, they say, that similarly serious hackable bugs exist in other auto companies’ web tools that have yet to be discovered.
In Subaru’s case, in particular, they also point out that their discovery hints at how pervasively those with access to Subaru’s portal can track its customers’ movements, a privacy issue that will last far longer than the web vulnerabilities that exposed it. “The thing is, even though this is patched, this functionality is still going to exist for Subaru employees,” Curry says. “It’s just normal functionality that an employee can pull up a year’s worth of your location history.”
When WIRED reached out to Subaru for comment on Curry and Shah’s findings, a spokesperson responded in a statement that “after being notified by independent security researchers, [Subaru] discovered a vulnerability in its Starlink service that could potentially allow a third party to access Starlink accounts. The vulnerability was immediately closed and no customer information was ever accessed without authorization.”
The Subaru spokesperson also confirmed to WIRED that “there are employees at Subaru of America, based on their job relevancy, who can access location data.” The company offered as an example that employees have that access to share a vehicle’s location with first responders in the case when a collision is detected. “All these individuals receive proper training and are required to sign appropriate privacy, security, and NDA agreements as needed,” Subaru’s statement added. “These systems have security monitoring solutions in place which are continually evolving to meet modern cyber threats.”
Responding to Subaru’s example of notifying first responders about a collision, Curry notes that would hardly require a year’s worth of location history. The company didn’t respond to WIRED asking how far back it keeps customers’ location histories and makes them available to employees.
Shah and Curry’s research that led them to the discovery of Subaru’s vulnerabilities began when they found that Curry’s mother’s Starlink app connected to the domain SubaruCS.com, which they realized was an administrative domain for employees. Scouring that site for security flaws, they found that they could reset employees’ passwords simply by guessing their email address, which gave them the ability to take over any employee’s account whose email they could find. The password reset functionality did ask for answers to two security questions, but they found that those answers were checked with code that ran locally in a user’s browser, not on Subaru’s server, allowing the safeguard to be easily bypassed. “There were really multiple systemic failures that led to this,” Shah says.
The two researchers say they found the email address for a Subaru Starlink developer on LinkedIn, took over the employee’s account, and immediately found that they could use that staffer’s access to look up any Subaru owner by last name, zip code, email address, phone number, or license plate to access their Starlink configurations. In seconds, they could then reassign control of the Starlink features of that user’s vehicle, including the ability to remotely unlock the car, honk its horn, start its ignition, or locate it, as shown in the video below.
Those vulnerabilities alone, for drivers, present serious theft and safety risks. Curry and Shah point out that a hacker could have targeted a victim for stalking or theft, looked up someone’s vehicle’s location, then unlocked their car at any time—though a thief would have to somehow also use a separate technique to disable the car’s immobilizer, the component that prevents it from being driven away without a key.
Those car hacking and tracking techniques alone are far from unique. Last summer, Curry and another researcher, Neiko Rivera, demonstrated to WIRED that they could pull off a similar trick with any of millions of vehicles sold by Kia. Over the prior two years, a larger group of researchers, of which Curry and Shah are a part, discovered web-based security vulnerabilities that affected cars sold by Acura, BMW, Ferrari, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Rolls Royce, and Toyota.
More unusual in Subaru’s case, Curry and Shah say, is that they were able to access fine-grained, historical location data for Subarus going back at least a year. Subaru may in fact collect multiple years of location data, but Curry and Shah tested their technique only on Curry’s mother, who had owned her Subaru for about a year.
Curry argues that Subaru’s extensive location tracking is a particularly disturbing demonstration of the car industry’s lack of privacy safeguards around its growing collection of personal data on drivers. “It’s kind of bonkers,” he says. “There’s an expectation that a Google employee isn’t going to be able to just go through your emails in Gmail, but there’s literally a button on Subaru’s admin panel that lets an employee view location history.”
The two researchers’ work contributes to a growing sense of concern over the enormous amount of location data that car companies collect. In December, information a whistleblower provided to the German hacker collective the Chaos Computer Computer and Der Spiegel revealed that Cariad, a software company that partners with Volkswagen, had left detailed location data for 800,000 electric vehicles publicly exposed online. Privacy researchers at the Mozilla Foundation in September warned in a report that “modern cars are a privacy nightmare,” noting that 92 percent give car owners little to no control over the data they collect, and 84 percent reserve the right to sell or share your information. (Subaru tells WIRED that it “does not sell location data.”)
“While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the Internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines,” Mozilla’s report reads.
Curry and Shah’s discovery of Subaru’s security vulnerabilities in its tracking demonstrate a particularly egregious exposure of that data—but also a privacy problem that’s hardly less disturbing now that the vulnerabilities are patched, says Robert Herrell, the executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, which has sought to create legislation for limiting a car’s data tracking.
“It seems like there are a bunch of employees at Subaru that have a scary amount of detailed information,” Herrell says. “People are being tracked in ways that they have no idea are happening.”
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Last week, the CMA opened its first such case, reviewing Google’s dominance in search and advertising.
The CMA is already in the process of probing Google and Apple in a separate investigation into mobile web browsers and cloud gaming, which has provisionally found the two companies were “holding back competition” in browsers.
“Android’s openness has helped to expand choice, reduce prices, and democratize access to smartphones and apps. It’s the only example of a successful and viable open source mobile operating system,” said Oliver Bethell, Google’s senior director of competition.
“We favor a way forward that avoids stifling choice and opportunities for UK consumers and businesses alike, and without risk to UK growth prospects,” he added.
Apple, which says its app platform supports hundreds of thousands of UK jobs, said it would “continue to engage constructively” with the CMA.
“Apple believes in thriving and dynamic markets where innovation can flourish,” the company said. “We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction where we operate, and our focus is always the trust of our users.”
The CMA’s probe will add to the worldwide scrutiny that both companies are already facing over their dominance of the smartphone market.
Apple clashed with Brussels several times last year over the implementation of the Digital Markets Act, making changes to its platform after the European Commission accused the iPhone maker of failing to comply with its “online gatekeeper” rules.
If designated, the UK’s “strategic market status” lasts for a five-year period, and companies can be fined up to 10 percent of global turnover for breaching conduct rules.
Even species that evolved with wildfires, like mountain lions, are struggling.
A family of deer gather around burned trees from the Palisades Fire at Will Rogers State Park on Jan. 9 in Los Angeles. Credit: Apu Gomes/Getty Images
As fires spread with alarming speed through the Pacific Palisades region of Los Angeles Tuesday, Jan. 7, a local TV news crew recorded a mountain lion trailed by two young cubs running through a neighborhood north of the fire. The three lions were about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest open space. Another TV crew captured video of a disoriented, seemingly orphaned fawn trotting down the middle of a street near the Eaton Fire in Altadena, her fur appearing singed, her gait unsteady.
Firefighters are still struggling to contain fires in Los Angeles County that have so far destroyed thousands of homes and other structures and left more than two dozen people dead. Fires and the notorious Santa Ana winds that fuel their spread are a natural part of this chaparral landscape.
But a warming world is supercharging these fires, experts say. Climate change is causing rapid shifts between very wet years that accelerate the growth of scrubland grasses and brush, leading to what’s known as “excessive fuel loading,” that hotter summers and drier falls and winters turn into easily ignited tinderbox conditions. The area where the fires are burning had “the singularly driest October through early January period we have on record,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain during an online briefing last week.
It’s too soon to know the toll these fires have taken on wildlife, particularly wide-ranging carnivores like mountain lions. But biologists worry that the growing severity and frequency of fires is outpacing wildlife’s ability to adapt.
State wildlife officials don’t want people to provide food or water for wild animals, because it can alter their behavior, spread disease, and cause other unintended effects. What wildlife need right now, they say, is to reach safe habitat as fast as they can.
Wildlife living at the interface of urban development already face many challenges, and now these fires have deprived them of critical resources, said Beth Pratt, California National Wildlife Federation regional executive director. Animals that escaped the flames have lost shelter, water, and food sources, all the things they need to survive, she said. The fires are even wiping out many of the plants butterflies and other pollinators need to feed and reproduce, she noted.
Connecting isolated patches of habitat with interventions like wildlife crossings is critical not only for building fire resilience, Pratt said, but also for protecting biodiversity long term.
Mountain lions and other wildlife adapted to the wildfires that shaped the Southern California landscape over thousands of years.
Many animals respond to cues that act as early warning signs of fire, using different strategies to avoid flames after seeing or smelling smoke plumes or hearing tree limbs crackle as they burn. Large animals, like mountain lions and deer, tend to run away from advancing flames while smaller species may try to take cover.
But now, with major fires happening every year around highly urbanized areas like LA, they can’t simply move to a nearby open space.
Daniel Blumstein, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and others have exposed animals to fire-related sensory cues in experiments to study their responses.
“A variety of different species, including lizards, hear or smell these cues and modify their behavior and take defensive action to try to survive,” said Blumstein.
If you’re a lizard or small mammal, he said, getting underground in something like a burrow probably protects you from fire burning above you.
“But the magnitude and rapidity of these sorts of fires, and the rapidity of these fires particularly, you can’t do anything,” said Blumstein. “I expect lots of wildlife has been killed by this fire, because it just moved so fast.”
Helping wildlife during emergencies
Wildlife experts urge California residents not to provide food or water for wildlife during emergencies like the LA fires. Attracting wildlife to urban areas by providing food and water can have several unintended negative consequences.
Fire events often leave many concerned citizens wondering what they can do to help displaced or injured wildlife, said California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Krysten Kellum. The agency appreciates people wanting to help wild animals in California, she said, offering the following recommendations to best help wildlife during emergencies:
Please DO NOT provide food or water to wildlife. While this may seem well intentioned, the most critical need of wildlife during and after a wildfire is for them to find their way to safe habitat as quickly as possible. Stopping for food or water in fire zones and residential areas poses risks to them and you. Finding food and water in a specific location even one time can permanently alter an animal’s behavior. Wildlife quickly learns that the reward of receiving handouts from humans outweighs their fears of being around people. This often leads to a cycle of human-wildlife conflicts, which can easily be avoided.
CDFW also advises leaving wild animal rescue to trained professionals. If you find an orphaned, sick, or injured wild animal after a fire event, report the sighting to local CDFW staff by emailing details to R5WildlifeReport@wildlife.ca.gov. You can also contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. For a list of licensed rehabilitators, visit the CDFW website.
Just as human defenses didn’t work against flames fanned by winds moving 100 miles an hour, he said, “things animals might do might not be effective for something traveling so fast.”
Tuesday night, Jan. 7, Blumstein saw the Eaton Fire burning in the mountains around Altadena, about 30 miles northeast of his home in the Santa Monica Mountains. When he woke up later in the night, he saw that the “whole mountain” was on fire.
“You can’t run away from that,” he said.
An evolutionary mismatch
The Los Angeles region is the biggest metropolitan area in North America inhabited by mountain lions. City living has not been kind to the big cats.
If they don’t die from eating prey loaded with rat poison, lions must navigate a landscape so fragmented by development they often try to cross some of the busiest freeways in the world, just to find food or a mate or to avoid a fight with resident males.
It’s a lethal choice. About 70 mountain lions are killed on California roads every year, according to the UC Davis Road Ecology Center. The Los Angeles region is a hotspot for such deaths.
“Roads are the highest source of mortality in our study area,” said Jeff Sikich, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service who has been studying the impacts of urbanization and habitat fragmentation on mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains for more than two decades.
Sikich and his team track adults and kittens that they implant with tiny transmitters. In 2023, one of those transmitters told him a three-month-old kitten had been killed on a road that cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains.
The kittens caught on video following their mom near the Palisades Fire are probably about the same age.
Lions living in the Santa Monica Mountains are so isolated from potential mates by roads and development, Sikich and other researchers reported in 2022, they face a high risk of extinction from extremely low levels of genetic diversity.
“We don’t have many lions radio collared now, but there is one adult male that uses the eastern Santa Monica Mountains, where the Palisades Fire is,” Sikich said. “I located him on Monday outside the burn area, so he’s good.”
Most of the animals don’t have radio collars, though, so Sikich can’t say how they’re doing. But if they respond to these fires like they did to previous conflagrations, they’re likely to take risks searching for food and shelter that increase their chances of fatal encounters and—if these types of fires persist—extinction.
“We learned a lot after the Woolsey Fire that happened in 2018 and burned nearly half of the Santa Monica Mountains and three-quarters of the Simi Hills,” said Sikich.
Sikich and his team had 11 lions collared at the time and lost two in the Woolsey Fire. One of the cats “just couldn’t escape the flames,” Sikich said. A second casualty, tracked as P-64 (“P” is for puma), was a remarkably resourceful male nicknamed “the culvert cat” because he’d managed to safely navigate deadly roadways to connect three different mountain ranges within his home range.
P-64, an adult male mountain lion, travels through a tunnel under Highway 101, heading south toward the Santa Monica Mountains in 2018.
Credit: National Parks Service
P-64, an adult male mountain lion, travels through a tunnel under Highway 101, heading south toward the Santa Monica Mountains in 2018. Credit: National Parks Service
The cat traversed a long, dark tunnel under Highway 101, used by more than 350,000 cars a day, to reach a small patch of habitat north of the Santa Monica Mountains. Then he used another tunnel, made for hikers and equestrians, to reach a much larger open space to the north. But when the fire broke out, he didn’t have time to reach these escape routes.
Sikich could see from P-64’s GPS collar that he was in the Simi Hills when the fire started. He began heading south, but ran smack into a developed area, which adult males do their best to avoid, even without the chaos of evacuations and fire engines.
“So he had two options,” Sikich said. “He could have entered the urban area or turned around and go back onto the burnt landscape, which he did.”
A few weeks later, Sikich got a mortality signal from P-64’s radio collar. “We didn’t know at the time, of course, but when we found him, he had burnt paws,” he said. “So he died from the effects of the fire.”
The cat was emaciated, with smoke-damaged lungs. His burnt paws hindered his ability to hunt. He likely starved to death.
When the team compared collared cats 15 months before and after the fire, they saw that the surviving cats avoided the burned areas. Lions need cover to hunt but the area was “just a moonscape,” Sikich said. The loss of that habitat forced the cats to take greater risks, likely to find food.
Mountain lions tend to be more active around dawn and dusk, but after the fire, collared cats were more active during the day. That meant they were more likely to run into people and cross roads and even busy freeways, Sikich and his team reported in a 2022 study.
On Dec. 3, 2018, National Park Service researchers discovered the remains of P-64, who survived the flames of the Woolsey Fire but died a few weeks later. The lion was emaciated and likely starved to death, unable to hunt with burnt paws.
Credit: National Park Service
On Dec. 3, 2018, National Park Service researchers discovered the remains of P-64, who survived the flames of the Woolsey Fire but died a few weeks later. The lion was emaciated and likely starved to death, unable to hunt with burnt paws. Credit: National Park Service
“We expect animals, in the long run, to adapt to the environments in which they live,” said Blumstein, who contributed to the study. In California, they adapted to coastal chaparral fires but not to fires in a fragmented habitat dominated by development. And when animals adapt to something, there can be mismatches between what they see as attractive and what’s good for them, he explained.
“Historically, being attracted to dense vegetation might have been a good thing, but if the only dense vegetation left after a fire is around people’s houses, that may not be a good thing,” he said.
Two cats tracked after the fire died of rodenticide poisoning and another was killed by a vehicle.
The cats also traveled greater distances, which put young males at greater risk of running into older males defending their territory. The cat who died on the road was the first to successfully cross the 405 interstate, the busiest in the nation, from the Santa Monica Mountains into the Hollywood Hills. Sikich knew from remote cameras that an adult male had lived there for years. Then after the fire, surveillance footage from a camera in a gated community caught that dominant male chasing the young intruder up a tree, then toward the freeway.
“He tried to head back west but wasn’t lucky this time as he crossed the 405,” Sikich said.
Add climate change-fueled fires to the list of human activity that’s threatening the survival of Southern California’s mountain lions.
Counting on wildlife crossings
When the Woolsey Fire took out half of the open space in the Santa Monica Mountains, it placed considerable stress on animals from mountain lions to monarchs, said Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation. These massive fires underscore the urgent need to connect isolated patches of habitat to boost species’ ability to cope with other stressors, especially in an urban environment, she said.
Studies by Sikich and others’ demonstrated the critical need for a wildlife crossing across Highway 101 to connect protected habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains with habitat in the Simi Hills in the north. It was at a tunnel underneath the 101 connecting those two regions that Sikich first saw the “culvert cat,” the lion with burnt paws who perished in the Woolsey Fire.
More than 20 years of research highlights the importance of connectivity in these fire-prone areas, he said, so animals can safely get across the freeways around these urban areas.
Pratt helped raise awareness about the need for a wildlife crossing through the #SaveLACougars campaign. She also helped raise tens of millions of dollars to build the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, aided by P-22, the mountain lion who became world-famous as the “Hollywood cat.” P-22 lived his life within an improbably small 8-square-mile home range in LA’s Griffith Park, after crossing two of the nation’s busiest freeways.
The crossing broke ground in 2022, the same year wildlife officials euthanized P-22, after they determined the 12-year-old cat was suffering from multiple serious injuries, likely from a vehicle strike, debilitating health problems, and rodenticide poisoning.
Wildlife crossing and connectivity projects don’t just address biodiversity collapse, they also boost fire and climate resilience, Pratt said, because they give animals options, whether to escape fire, drought, or roads.
Thinking of fire as something to fight is a losing battle, she said. “It’s something we have to coexist with. And I think that we are making investments that are trying to take out a reliance on fossil fuels so that the conditions for these fires are not so severe,” she said, referring to California’s targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions within the next 20 years.
Even with the inbreeding and lethal threats from cars and rat poison, Sikich sees reason to be hopeful for the Santa Monica lion population.
For one thing, he said, “we’re seeing reproduction,” pointing to the mom with kittens seen above the Palisades fire and new litters among the females his team is following. “And the amount of natural habitat we do have is great,” he said, with plenty of deer and cover for hunting. “That’s why we still have lions.”
A growth in electricity demand is leading to talk of delayed closures.
A house is seen near the Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio. Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
There is renewed talk of a coal power comeback in the United States, inspired by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency and forecasts of soaring electricity demand.
The evidence so far only shows that some plants are getting small extensions on their retirement dates. This means a slowdown in coal’s rate of decline, which is bad for the environment, but it does little to change the long-term trajectory for the domestic coal industry.
In October, I wrote about how five of the country’s 10 largest coal-fired power plants had retirement dates. Today, I’m revisiting the list, providing some updates and then taking a few steps back to look at US coal plants as a whole. Consider this the “before” picture that can be judged against the “after” in four years.
Some coal plant owners have already pushed back retirement timetables. The largest example, this one from just before the election, is the Gibson plant in Indiana, the second-largest coal plant in the country. It’s set to close in 2038 instead of 2035, following an announcement in October from the owner, Duke Energy.
But the changes do not constitute a coal comeback in this country. For that to happen, power companies would need to be building new plants to replace the many that are closing, and there is almost no development of new coal plants.
That said, there have been some changes since October.
As recently as a few months ago, Southern Co. was saying it intended to close Plant Bowen in Georgia by 2035 at the latest. Bowen is the largest coal plant in the country, with a summer capacity of 3,200 megawatts.
Southern has since said it may extend the plant’s life in response to forecasts of rising electricity demand. Chris Womack, Southern’s CEO, confirmed this possibility when speaking at a utility industry conference in November, saying that the plant may need to operate for longer than previously planned because of demand from data centers.
Southern has not yet made regulatory filings that spell out its plans, but this will likely occur in the next few weeks, according to a company spokesman.
In October, I reported that the Gavin plant in Ohio was likely to get a 2031 date to retire or switch to a different fuel once the plant’s pending sale was completed. The person who shared that information with me was involved with the plans and spoke on condition of anonymity because the sale was not final.
Since then, the prospective buyer of the plant has said in federal regulatory filings that it has no timetable for closing the plant or switching to a different fuel. The plant is changing hands as part of a larger deal between investment firms, with Lightstone Holdco selling to Energy Capital Partners, or ECP. Another company, coal exporter Javelin Global Commodities, is buying a minority share of the Gavin plant.
I went back to the person who told me about the 2031 retirement date. They said forecasts of rising electricity demand, as well as the election of Trump, have created enough uncertainty about power prices and regulations that it makes sense to not specify a date.
The 2031 timeline, and its abandonment, makes some sense once you understand that the Biden administration finalized power plant regulations last spring that gave coal plant operators an incentive to announce a retirement date: Plants closing before 2032 faced no new requirements. That incentive is likely to go away as Trump plans to roll back power plant pollution regulations.
Gavin’s sale is still pending. Several parties have filed objections to the transaction with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, arguing that the sellers have not been clear enough about their plans.
An ECP spokesman said the company has no comment beyond its filings.
Other than the changes to plans for Bowen and Gavin, the outlook has not shifted for the rest of the plants among the 10 largest. The Gibson and Rockport plants in Indiana still have retirement dates, as do Cumberland in Tennessee and Monroe in Michigan, according to the plants’ owners.
The Amos plant in West Virginia, Miller in Alabama, Scherer in Georgia, and Parish in Texas didn’t have retirement dates a few months ago, and they still don’t.
One example is the 1,157-megawatt Baldwin plant in Illinois, which was scheduled to close this year. Now the owner, Vistra Corp., has pushed back the retirement to 2027.
A few extra years of a coal plant is more of a stopgap than a long-term solution. When it comes to building new power plants to meet demand, developers are talking about natural gas, solar, nuclear, and other resources, but I have yet to see a substantial discussion of building a new coal plant.
In Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has said the state may build two coal plants to provide power in remote mining areas, as reported by Taylor Kuykendall of S&P Global Commodity Insights. Flatlands Energy, a Canadian company, has also talked about building a 400-megawatt coal plant in Alaska, as Nathaniel Herz reported for Alaska Beacon. These appear to be early-stage plans.
The lack of development activity underscores how coal power is fading in this country, and has been for a while.
Coal was used to generate 16 percent of US electricity in 2023, down by more than half from 2014. In that time, coal went from the country’s leading fuel for electricity to trailing natural gas, renewables, and nuclear. (These and all the figures that follow are from the US Energy Information Administration.)
The United States had about 176,000 megawatts of coal plant capacity as of October, down from about 300,000 megawatts in 2014.
The coal plants that do remain are being used less. In 2023, the average capacity factor for a coal plant was 42 percent. Capacity factor is a measure of how much electricity a plant has generated relative to the maximum possible if it was running all the time. In 2014, the average capacity factor was 61 percent.
Power companies are burning less coal because of the availability of less expensive alternatives, such as natural gas, wind, and solar, among others. The think tank Energy Innovation issued a report in 2023 finding that 99 percent of US coal-fired power plants cost more to operate than the cost of replacement with a combination of wind, solar, and batteries.
The Trump administration will arrive in Washington with promises to help fossil fuels. It could extend the lives of some coal plants by weakening environmental regulations, which may reduce the plants’ operational costs. It also could repeal or revise subsidies that help to reduce the costs of renewables and batteries, making those resources more expensive.
I don’t want to minimize the damage that could be caused by those policies. But even in extreme scenarios, it’s difficult to imagine investors wanting to spend billions of dollars to develop a new coal plant, much less a fleet of them.
