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Tthe Trump administration is making good on the president’s “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric with a new plan to open vast swathes of the US coastline to offshore oil drilling projects. And although it will be years before it becomes operational, there are signs that both red and blue states don’t want it because of the potential for environmental damage.
“The Biden administration has put the brakes on offshore oil and gas leasing and crippled America’s long-term offshore production pipeline,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. he said last week. “By moving forward with the development of a strong, proactive leasing plan, we are ensuring that America’s offshore industry remains strong, our workers remain employed and our nation remains energy dominant for decades to come.”
Among the areas it would make available to major energy companies to lease for new drilling are parts off the coast of California as well as Florida, home to President Trump’s beach home. Not surprisingly, the plan was immediately attacked as “idioticby California Governor Gavin Newsom and members of the Golden State’s congressional delegation. But it’s not faring much better with conservative Republican leadership in Florida, which suffered billions of dollars in damage in its Panhandle region from the disastrous Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010.
Molly Best, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis, issued a statement noting that Trump had opposed offshore drilling in his first term, signing a presidential memorandum in 2020 “withdrawing new financing for oil and gas development off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina through 2032.” Tallahassee Democrat. The DeSantis administration “supports the 2020 Presidential Memorandum and urges the Department of the Interior to review and comply with the Trump administration’s 2020 policy.”
Similarly, Representative Jimmy Patronis and other Florida Republicans released a letter opposing offshore drilling plans for the state according to the “Big Beautiful Gulf Lease sale” due to potential negative impacts on military installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
At the very least, the new drilling plans will face federal court challenges from several states that don’t want offshore rigs popping up near sensitive coastal areas. Since it exists there is no shortage of oil worldwideand expectations that demand may peak and begin to decline over the next decade as clean energy and electric vehicle use grow rapidly, the risk-to-reward ratio of a large, expensive 20th-century expansion of coal power doesn’t seem like the wisest move.
Putting aside the fact that fossil fuels are a leading source of planet-cooking carbon emissions, extensive offshore drilling is an especially bad idea given how dangerous oil is when it leaks and spills into the ocean. Because while Trump repeats false claims about offshore wind turbines killing whales – a buffoon cooked up by groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry with no scientific credibility – doesn’t talk about it devastating effects oil spills have on whales, as well as fish, shellfish, turtles, birds, sea otters and the entire aquatic ecosystem.
The big read
Elon Musk can’t legally sell the electric Tesla Cybercab as promised
Minutes after winning approval from Tesla shareholders for an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package at its annual meeting, a dapper Elon Musk took the stage at the Austin factory to cheers from fans of investors and board members to lay out his plans for the next two years. Chief among them: the Cybercab, his vision of a dedicated, fully driverless, electric taxi and Tesla’s play for autonomous global transportation dominance.
Unlike the top-selling Model Y crossover, the Model 3 sedan or even the Cybertruck — which has fallen far short of the billionaire CEO’s lofty goals — the Cybercab will be sold solely as an autonomous vehicle, with no standard controls, according to Musk. It will be priced under $30,000, making it the company’s most affordable model. And according to Musk, it will be on the market soon.
“We have the first car that is purpose-built for full unsupervised self-driving, which is a robotaxi. It’s called the Cybercab. It doesn’t even have pedals or a steering wheel. There are no side mirrors,” he said. “And that production is happening right here in this factory. We’re going to start production in April of next year.”
Whether Tesla is ready to sell a vehicle that is actually capable of driving itself safely is debatable. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently conducting an extensive investigation into Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving system due to numerous reports of accidents. But that aside, the company seems to be heading for an unforced error. As of this writing, such a vehicle would not comply with federal vehicle safety rules that require certain types of equipment in passenger vehicles, including mirrors, pedals, steering wheels, windshields, and windshield wipers. And while there’s an effort to update those rules for autonomous vehicles, which don’t use those parts, they won’t be in place before Musk’s target date for the new car.
Read more here
Hot topic
Sam Wevers, product manager for Lunar Energy, on using AI to optimize home batteries and solar power systems
How does Lunar’s service, offered through Sunrun, differ from competing solar and storage facilities?
So, in addition to the hardware, we make machine learning predictions of each home’s solar output and household consumption multiple times a day. Thus we learn how two houses on the same street have different patterns. … We take a very personalized approach to AI testing people’s batteries, taking into account their price plan, and we do it every day. By doing this, we can add a lot of value compared to the battery that is just in its normal self-consumption modes.
We saw, for example, in 2025 that customers saved an average of $340 more from Lunar AI software control compared to if their battery was in self-consumption mode. This means we automatically optimize price plans, especially in California. Additionally, which is a bill saver, Lunar and its Gridshare platform provide VPP services for companies such as Ava, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Peninsula Clean Energy. We provide VPP services for Sunrun. We have done 9 gigawatt hours of VPP services. We have connected 130,000 third-party batteries with our platform. And because we have this blend of behind-the-meter and VPP experience for Lunar customers, we can provide this end-to-end service where we not only do really smart battery control, based on the customer’s billing plan, but they can then sign up for a VPP in our app. We ran this entire process end-to-end and these customers earned an average of $460.
In addition to providing the battery system and software, Lunar also adds a component to the boards to draw more power for the battery. How does this work?
It’s called the Lunar Maximizer and it’s unit level power electronics. Essentially what it does is it maximizes the amount of solar energy that can be received from each panel. If you have a string maximizer, if you imagine lining up 10 solar panels and you have an inverter, you’re limited to the worst performing panel at that current in terms of the amount of power coming out of those 10 panes. While we take it unit by unit, solar panel by solar panel, so you get the best possible output from each panel, which means over the life of the cell you’re creating more juice with essentially the same panels in the same place.
Since you deal with battery system, AI software, inverter and power module, do you have a direct competitor in the home solar market?
We clearly have competitors in the hardware space that make batteries and have software to control those batteries and sometimes work with those batteries as well, but they do it with their hardware. There are companies that provide these VPP services or other services, connected to various third-party devices that we compete with on the software side. But these software companies don’t build their own hardware and therefore can’t use that hardware to demonstrate how smart their software is as they develop it. I think we’re unique in that we both make hardware that’s intelligently controlled, but we also have a software platform that does these intelligent things with patchwork fleets of other devices. This is the unique one.
What else are we reading?
COP30 ends with a whimperfailing to target fossil fuel reduction (The Economist)
Tesla tops a survey of electric vehicle buyers worldwide of brands that would be avoided for political reasons (Global EV Alliance)
Electric and hybrid cars are the leading source of growth in car sales worldwideaccounting for 45%; Sales of internal combustion engine vehicles peaked in 2017 and fell to 30% (IEA)
Trump’s anti-climate agenda could lead to 1.3 million more deaths worldwide, study finds (The Guardian/Pro Publica)
The US Department of Energy is providing a $1 billion loan to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor (Associated Press)
How does climate change affect insect biodiversity (Entomology Today)
The climate crisis needs a new phrase. “Two degrees” doesn’t cut it (Shale)
Lead recycling for US car batteries poisons people in Africa (New York Times)
