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By Arne
Delfs,
Michael Nienaber and Kamil
Kowalcze
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s
ruling alliance agreed on new purchase
incentives for zero-emission vehicles worth €3
billion ($3.5 billion) through 2029 as part of
his government’s broader effort to support the
nation’s ailing carmakers.
Merz announced the
measures — targeted at low- and middle-income
households — earlier today after talks with his
Social Democrat partners in Berlin. The
conservative leader is hosting top auto
executives and labor officials today to discuss
the future of the industry, a key sector of
Europe’s biggest economy that is struggling with
increasing competition from China and
uncertainty around US trade tariffs.
“We agree that we
want to do everything we can in the coalition
under the responsibility of the federal
government to ensure a bright future for the
German automotive industry,” Merz said.
A
Mercedes-Benz AG Electric G Class vehicle Photographer:
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
The coalition,
which took office in May, had been expected to
unite behind Merz’s push for the European Union
to water down its 2035
ban on new combustion-engine vehicles. The
chancellor said there will be further
discussions with carmakers on the ban and
hopefully an agreement on a joint coalition
stance.
Read the full
story on Bloomberg.com.
Layoffs
hit Generate Capital
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By Mark Chediak and Coco Liu
Generate Capital
PBC, an investment firm that has raised more
than $14 billion since 2014 to bankroll largely
US-based sustainable projects, has
cut staff as the withdrawal of US policy
support upends the clean energy investing
landscape.
The majority of job
cuts were in administrative and corporate
operation positions, said Tina Wadhwa, a
spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Generate.
Dozens of people were impacted, according to a
person familiar with the matter. The company
declined to comment on the number of layoffs and
said it currently employs 200.
Last month,
Generate brought in David Crane, an industry
veteran who served at the Energy Department
under former President Joe Biden, to replace
co-founder and former CEO Scott Jacobs. In a
Sept. 25 post on the firm’s
site, Crane said that Generate “made mistakes
rooted in the euphoria of the early 2020s” — a
period when federal incentives and low interest
rates led a boom in clean energy financing.
Deviating from the company’s “operational roots”
led to “poor performance in one component of our
investment portfolio,” Crane wrote.
Solar
panels in San Francisco, California. Photographer:
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
US clean energy
investors have been trying to find stable
footing following a flurry of policy moves by
President Donald Trump’s administration. Those
include the withdrawal of billions
of dollars handed out during the Biden
administration, phasing
out of clean energy credits, and halting
and delaying permits for renewable energy
projects.
Investments in
renewable energy fell by $20.5 billion in the US
for the first half of the year, according
to BloombergNEF. That’s a 36% dip compared
to the second half of 2024. Roughly $22 billion
in clean energy projects and factories were
canceled in the first half of the year as
well, according to a report from the nonpartisan
group E2.
Read the full
story on Bloomberg.com and
subscribe to Green Daily for more
exclusive content on clean technology
companies.
Greg
Jackson Photographer: Chris
Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
The UK used to be a
shining example of how to act on climate change.
It created one of the world’s first climate laws
in 2008, which bound the government to reduce
emissions on tight deadlines. That law used to
have cross-party support, but that’s no longer
the case with politicians trying to make climate
a wedge issue. Greg Jackson, chief executive
officer of the UK’s largest energy retailer,
Octopus Energy, joins Akshat Rathi on the
Zero podcast to discuss his plan to bring down
bills and keep the public on the green side.
Listen
now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new
episodes of Zero every Thursday.
Americans just lost federal
tax credits for buying an electric vehicle, but
charging one has grown more convenient in recent
months with about 780
public high-speed charging stations opened
in the US in the third quarter.
Microsoft
Corp. warned that it is competing for
limited
supplies of clean electricity in parts of
East Asia, even as its window to achieve a key
2030 climate target narrows.
The US and Finland
will sign a deal to kickstart the expansion of
the American
icebreaker fleet due to the rising
geopolitical importance of the Arctic.
A
battery-electric e-Truck on the production
line in Munich, Germany Photographer: Alex
Kraus/Bloomberg
BloombergNEF’s
annual Pioneers awards are open to
startups working on transformational
technologies to cut emissions. This year’s
categories include building more sustainable
data centers; flattening the duck curve; and
developing low-carbon solutions for shipping and
heavy-duty transport. There’s also a wildcard
category for startups that don’t fit neatly into
those three boxes.
Work at a startup
or know someone who does? Submissions of
interest are due by October 17. Read our
coverage of this
year’s Pioneers winners for inspiration.
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