** U.S. efforts to break China’s dominance of the rare earths market and to drive investment in its own industry have moved up a gear with a Washington-backed plan to create a separate, higher pricing system.
** In a sign that range anxiety in electric cars could soon be a thing of the past, US manufacturer Lucid says one of its cars was able to cover 1,205 kilometres on a single battery charge – a new world record.
** More than two-thirds of California’s power grid is now fueled by clean energy sources — marking a new milestone for the Golden State, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Monday, noting that fossil fuel alternatives were the only energy sources used “nearly every day this year for some part of the day.”
** The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people.
** Tesla Inc., the No. 1 electric vehicle company in the United States, is shedding customers as public opinion soured on its polarizing billionaire CEO Elon Musk. The gap it leaves in the market is steadily filling, auto experts say, with products produced by General Motors.
** Chevron Corporation CVX, a Houston, TX-based integrated oil and gas company, has confirmed that the recent start-up of an offshore well led to zinc contamination in the Mars crude oil stream, significantly disrupting supply-chain and refining operations across the U.S. Gulf Coast, according to Reuters.
World
** The Thenpennai, the second-longest river in the state of Tamil Nadu in India, is so polluted with industrial chemicals, heavy metals, plastics, and pharmaceuticals that it’s killing crops and aquatic life.
** Freight rates for Russian oil shipments from the Baltic Sea ports to India have fallen in July-August as more tankers have become available, but this could change if new sanctions are imposed on Moscow, two traders said.
** Efforts to clean up air pollution in China and across East Asia may have inadvertently contributed to a spike in global warming, a new study has found. The decline in aerosol emissions — which can cool the planet by absorbing sunlight — have added about 0.05 degrees Celsius in warming per decade since 2010, according to the study, published on Monday in Communications Earth & Environment.