{"id":88883,"date":"2026-07-08T00:47:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T00:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/88883\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T00:47:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T00:47:27","slug":"how-china-and-europe-are-fueling-teslas-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/88883\/","title":{"rendered":"How China and Europe Are Fueling Tesla\u2019s Comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news came just days after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan dismissed<\/a> a lawsuit challenging the procedure by which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Palisades\u2019 restart. Started under the Biden administration, the revival project was one of the first the Trump administration allowed to move forward after taking office, part of a broader effort<\/a> by the Department of Energy to spur a resurgence of reactor construction in the U.S.<\/p>\n

2. Federal court upholds California\u2019s air pollution rules on industrial boilers<\/p>\n

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked a challenge to California\u2019s rules on emissions from industrial boilers, the latest legal victory for local regulations on planet-heating pollution from buildings. In 2024, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the air pollution agency in charge of broad swaths of Southern California, set new restrictions on smog-causing nitrogen oxide from industrial boilers, appliances that either burn a fossil fuel such as gas or oil or use electricity to heat up water. The policy \u2014 which would slash the equivalent of half the nitrogen oxide produced by every car in Los Angeles combined \u2014 is part of the state\u2019s long-standing effort to curb pollution. It\u2019s not the only win for the fight to curb emissions from buildings. Since 2024, federal courts have repeatedly upheld local and state authority to regulate pollution from buildings in New York, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, meanwhile, the Trump administration proposed a new rule to gut money-saving standards for appliances nationwide. \u201cWhile the agency portrayed the move<\/a> as bringing an end to appliance standards writ large, that is not, in fact, what it is doing,\u201d Heatmap\u2019s Emily Pontecorvo wrote<\/a> last week. \u201cThe proposal would update the DOE\u2019s so-called \u2018Process Rule,\u2019 which governs how the agency develops standards, adding onerous requirements that will make it much more difficult to make any changes at all.\u201d When I spoke to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy about the changes, the advocacy group told me the proposal would set minimum savings thresholds below which the new rule wouldn\u2019t find federal support. It would also add a mandatory 180-day waiting period between before proposing new appliance standards based on novel testing procedures, require the Energy Department to show deference to industry-established standards, and force regulators to carry out extra analyses and rulemaking processes before enacting new rules.<\/p>\n

3. Maine\u2019s independent senator comes out against the NextEra-Dominion merger<\/p>\n

Senator Angus King, the independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, has urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject the proposed utility megamerger between NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy. In a letter last week to the agency, King said the combination of the two giants risked putting too much power in the hands of one company. \u201cThe combination would create the largest electric utility in the United States, concentrating an unprecedented mix of merchant generation, rate-based generation, and transmission assets in the hands of a single company with a documented record of using its market position and political resources to suppress competition that threatens its merchant revenues,\u201d King said in the letter, according to Utility Dive<\/a>. Specifically, he cited NextEra\u2019s lobbying to derail the New England Clean Energy Connect project in 2021, a transmission line to connect the Northeast\u2019s grid to the almost entirely renewable hydroelectric system in Quebec.<\/p>\n

Sign up to receive Heatmap AM in your inbox every morning:<\/p>\n

4. Trump pardons six for tampering with vehicles\u2019 emissions controls<\/p>\n

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency put out new<\/a> regulatory guidance on the president\u2019s \u201cfreedom to fix\u201d agenda, reminding automakers of their \u201clong-standing legal obligation to release the service information, training information, and tools necessary to diagnose and repair vehicles,\u201d even if the driver could use what they learn to tamper with the emissions controls. Meanwhile, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced that he\u2019d pardoned six people \u201cwho were persecuted by the Biden administration\u201d and were either in prison or headed there for violating Clean Air Act prohibitions against rigging the vehicles\u2019 emissions control systems. \u201cWhile I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden,\u201d he wrote in a post<\/a> on his Truth Social platform. \u201cI AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!\u201d<\/p>\n

In non-emitting vehicle news, Rivian is eyeing a better sales year than expected. While the electric automaker previously said it would ship between 62,000 and 67,000 vehicles this year, it told investors on Thursday that it now expects to deliver between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles, in what TechCrunch<\/a> called \u201ca small but potentially meaningful bump.\u201d The announcement came the same week BYD crushed Tesla\u2019s deliveries yet again, as I told you in my last<\/a> newsletter.<\/p>\n

5. Chile shifts gears on green hydrogen <\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Chilean President Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast. Santiago Mazzarovich \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Back in March, I told you that<\/a> Chile\u2019s most right-wing president since the fall of dictator Augusto Pinochet could take the country\u2019s budding green hydrogen business in a different direction. Now President Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast is doing just that. Last week, Chile\u2019s state-owned Production Development Corporation, known by its Spanish acronym CORFO, announced plans to refocus the country\u2019s strategy for green hydrogen on domestic use rather than exports, Hydrogen Insight<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

China, as I have reported for you<\/a> many times before, is going hard on green hydrogen, especially since the Iran War forced Beijing to ramp up efforts to find alternatives to imported fossil fuels. Here\u2019s yet another data point: China just laid out plans<\/a> to build the world\u2019s largest green hydrogen plant using solid-oxide electrolyzers, which operate at<\/a> higher temperatures. The facility will also produce, methanol, which uses hydrogen as a key ingredient. At peak capacity, the facility in rural Gansu province will produce 100,000 metric tons of renewable methanol per year for use in international shipping. Meanwhile, Spain is investing nearly $21 million<\/a> into grants for hydrogen projects as the country seeks to make use of its booming solar industry. As I wrote last week<\/a>, the surge in solar panels is creating problems for Spain, since its grid can\u2019t handle all that power during peak daytime hours. Funneling that electricity into electrolyzers to make molecules that can be cleanly burned later may offer a solution.<\/p>\n

THE KICKER<\/p>\n

Last month, I told you about<\/a> a catchier term for the very small-scale solar panels being legalized to go on windowsills and balconies, opening the door to more apartment dwellers generating a small share of electricity themselves. That term, which I first read in Inside Climate News<\/a>, is \u201cguerilla solar.\u201d Well, that solar rebel mindset is coming to the \u201cLive Free or Die\u201d state. On Thursday, New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, put out a list of 74 bills<\/a> she signed into law before Fourth of July weekend. Among them was SB-540, legalizing plug-in solar panels. The law will take effect on July 27, according to PluginSolarUS<\/a>, an advocacy group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The news came just days after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan dismissed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[81,3598,4,20420,7405,1099,3985,43570,43571,3984,46867,46869,46868,332,291],"class_list":["post-88883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-europe","tag-china","tag-elon-musk","tag-europe","tag-general-motors","tag-hyundai","tag-kia","tag-model-3","tag-model-s","tag-model-x","tag-model-y","tag-model-y-l","tag-r2","tag-rivian","tag-tesla","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}