🌱 Revving Up

Happy Tuesday. Revving up the fight against climate change, the US unveils new emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles.

In today’s edition:
⚡️ US sets new emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles
🚜 Tesco & Natwest to support 1,500 farmers transition to sustainable practices
🌳 EU members call for revision of anti-deforestation law

🔋 Energy (1-Min Read)
 US sets new emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles in effort to fight climate change

Last week: Biden announced a new rule for car emissions to boost the EV sector

And now:  The Environmental Protection Agency has finalised additional tailpipe standards for heavy trucks, another prong in the Biden administration's push to slash emissions on the roads.

Why it matters: Semi-trucks, school buses, and other big trucks are major polluters crucial to decarbonizing transportation, the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Details: The new rule for model years 2027-2032 allows manufacturers to use various technologies, including electric vehicles, hybrids, and hydrogen fuel cells, to reduce emissions in their fleets.

The big picture: The rules are intended to work with other efforts to cut shipping and heavy freight emissions and build out charging infrastructure. There's a whole bunch of funding on the table to clean up heavy freight via the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including a large tax credit for the purchase of commercial clean vehicles. California has also moved to electrify heavy trucks by the mid-2030s. That's all helped drive private sector investment in shipping electrification and truck chargers.

Yes, but: Unlike vehicle policy last week, the path to the outcome here is far less clear. Electric heavy trucks are a small share of the market today, and there isn't much charging infrastructure to support a whole bunch of electric trucks. The future of the hydrogen industry is also in flux and dependent on federal incentives.

What's next: Hill Republicans immediately launched an effort to nix the emissions rules for cars and light trucks. Expect the same here, and potential lawsuits from red states.

 🚜 AgriTech (1-Min Read)
Tesco and NatWest's Farm-Friendly Finance

What happened: Tesco has partnered with NatWest to launch a new discounted finance scheme for its farmers, providing them with preferential rates on finance to help them switch to sustainable farming methods. 

Details: The aim is to assist 1,500 Tesco-affiliated farmers in transitioning to sustainable practices by facilitating access to targeted finance. Research by the retailer found that over 50% of its farmers wanted to reduce their environmental footprint but faced challenges accessing financial support for the necessary investments. This voluntary programme—which will target beef, lamb, and dairy farms—will support farmers to adopt solar panels, wind turbines, biomass boilers, and battery storage. 

Farm Finance: Lambard, the UK’s largest asset funder and a division of NatWest, will facilitate the scheme. Farmers will also be able to use Lombard’s asset knowledge and sector expertise to support the transition towards decarbonising their farms. (Full story here).

🐘 Nature (1-Min Read)
EU members call for revision of anti-deforestation law

What Happened: A group of twenty EU countries led by Austria is calling for urgent revisions to the bloc's anti-deforestation law set to go into effect at the end of the year, saying it could hurt European farmers.

Details: The EU law aims to root deforestation out of supply chains for beef, soy and other agricultural products sold in Europe, so that European consumers are not contributing to the destruction of global forests from the Amazon to Southeast Asia. 

Changes: Austria's demands include that the burden for certifying products as deforestation-free within the EU be "drastically reduced" to save significant compliance costs and that the Dec. 30 deadline for countries to start complying with the law be delayed.

Why it matters: The wicked problem of balancing policies that support agriculture, food security and nature 

(Full story here)

💭 Little Bytes (1-Min Read)

💬 Quote: “Global warming has proceeded to the point that its effects are showing up in how fast the whole Earth rotates.” Duncan Agnew, a professor of geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography

📊 Stat: Food waste inflicts $1trn economic loss on a global scale - UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

📺️ Watch: Climate change sends cocoa prices soaring

🛗 Snippets for your lift conversations (1-Min Read)

• The Biden administration restored some protections under the Endangered Species Act, which was rolled back under former President Donald Trump, giving the federal government more leeway to designate plants or animals as threatened or endangered.

• Battery recycler Li-Cycle plans to lay off 17% of its staff - including three senior executives - as it pares its ambitious global growth plans to save cash and focus on building a crucial processing facility in New York.

• The U.S. government is finalising tighter tailpipe emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles like semi-trucks and buses. Still, the new rules would not be as strict as initially proposed in 2023.

• This year, a hot winter in Canada has delayed the opening of a 400-kilometre (250-mile) ice road that is rebuilt yearly as the main conduit for major diamond miners to access their diamond mines in the remote Arctic region.

• There could be a record number of bee farms in the U.S. right now, according to a new analysis from the Washington Post. Unusually high hive losses in the early 2000s ignited fears that the domesticated western honey bee, an integral part of the world's food system, was headed for widespread population collapse.

• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's stemwinder on "energy pragmatism" contained a kernel of truth about the global shift away from fossil fuels.

 🎣 Gone Phishing (1-Minute Read)

Three of these stories are true, one we've made up. Guess which:

• Journalists told to stop stealing souvenirs from Air Force One

• Robot disguised as a coyote will scare wildlife away from Alaska airport

• Scientists develop AI Octopus to clean up ocean pollution

• Newly discovered Australian beetle almost mistaken for bird poo