BloombergNEF’s annual San Francisco summit is on its second and final day today. Below we share some of the big takeaways from the event so far. You can also read and share this story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate, transportation and energy news, please subscribe. 

Four trends shaping the energy transition

By Michelle Ma

The clean energy transition is facing an existential threat as venture funding drops, electric vehicle adoption slows and a trade war between the US and China upends the global economy. Despite these headwinds, though, the world’s net-zero window remains open, if only by a crack. 

Global energy transition investment hit a new record of $2.1 trillion last year, more than doubling since 2020, according to BloombergNEF research. And for those taking the long view, fraught geopolitics may not last.

“Policy changes, politics change and investor sentiment comes and goes,” said Albert Cheung, deputy chief executive officer of BNEF on Tuesday at the group’s San Francisco summit. "Despite the challenges, we don’t think the fundamentals have changed.”

BNEF’s flagship summit on transportation, energy and technology revealed how policymakers and corporate executives plan to keep the energy transition on track. Four key themes emerged on the first day of the gathering, which runs from Feb. 4 to Feb. 5. Here’s what you need to know.

New EV headwinds — but an inevitable transition

Challenges to net zero continue to mount, particularly for the EV sector. Sales continued to grow in 2024, but the pace has slowed, dragged down by a lagging European market. New tariffs and US President Donald Trump’s hostility toward electrification are set to further slow adoption. 

But at least some automakers are forging ahead. “We are staying the course” to roll out more EVs and drive down the cost, said Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery, propulsion and sustainability of General Motors. Kelty said GM is the largest producer of battery cells in North America and it’s continuing to drive down costs and invest in more efficient form factors and chemistries. 

“The electric train has left the station,” said Julia Grinshpun, executive director of clean mobility at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “It just might be moving at a slightly slower speed but keeping the pace.”

A Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle at a dealership in Colma, California. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

China is lapping the EV competition, but the race isn’t over

By almost any measure, China is out-competing the rest of the world on clean transportation. Kelty called the rise of the Chinese EV industry “incredible,” noting that what’s now the world’s leading EV market was “a nonplayer in batteries” only a few decades ago.

EV sales have been so strong that China’s road fuel demand is set to peak this year, according to BNEF’s analysis. The country’s myriad automakers are also making inroads abroad: Nine out of 10 passenger EVs sold in Brazil last year were Chinese, for example, according to Natalia Castilhos Rypl, senior associate, Latin America for BNEF. 

“China's no doubt ahead, but it's certainly not too late for the US to catch up,” said Rachel Muncrief, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation. It’s already cheaper to produce an electric car than an internal combustion engine vehicle in China, due to favorable policies that brought down costs, but Muncrief sees the US getting there by 2028 to 2029.

Traffic on Financial Street in Beijing, China. Photographer: Na Bian/Bloomberg

AI brings opportunity but also challenges

“Electricity is undergoing a renaissance,” JPMorgan’s Grinshpun said, largely due to growing power demand from artificial intelligence and data centers. (Though DeepSeek may throw a wrench in some plans.) With that comes new opportunities to build clean baseload power, modernize the grid and make the system more resilient. 

Meeting new demand can lower energy costs, according to Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission. She echoed PG&E Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe, who argued that adding more demand to the grid spreads out costs, making rates more affordable.

Permitting, interconnection backlogs and supply chain bottlenecks threaten to undermine utilities’ plans, though. 

LA fires tested resiliency and investors

Energy systems have been increasingly prone to climate shocks, with the latest coming during last month’s fires that raged in the Los Angeles metro area. 

The fires drove a nearly $10 billion loss in market capitalization for PG&E Corp. — even though they were outside the utility’s service area — due to investor fears about California’s ability to support the state’s utility wildfire insurance fund, Poppe said.

A crew from Faith Electric works on power lines in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California on Jan. 13. Photographer: Benjamin Fanjoy/Bloomberg

Investors need to trust that California policymakers will “do the right thing” to support the state’s utilities, and policymakers need to trust that doing so will be good for the state’s net zero goals, Poppe added. Without that, decarbonizing the grid will be an even bigger uphill battle.

-- With assistance from Mark Chediak

A key year

Used car geopolitics

Worth a listen

On the latest episode of Zero, Albert Cheung shares highlights from BNEF’s new report on global investment in the energy transition, and reflects on the role international competition will play in this next phase of reaching net zero.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple,  Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

By Mark Chediak

Enphase Energy Inc., a US solar and battery systems supplier, is in the process of moving its battery cell manufacturing out of China to avoid tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump as part of a wider trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

“We need to be making cell packs outside of China and that’s what we are going to be focusing on the next year,” Chief Executive Officer Badri Kothandaraman said in an interview with Bloomberg News. He did not specify where the company would move its operations.

While a third of Enphase’s battery assembly operations is currently based in the US, the company gets battery cell packs, a key component, from China, he said.

Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese imports on Tuesday, in what he says is part of an effort to stop the flow of fentanyl into the country. China retaliated with levies on US energy and other measures including tightened export control on critical minerals. China accounts for nearly 70% of US battery imports, according to BloombergNEF.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. 

The Trump administration is exploring legal options to cancel loans issued under a $400 billion program to finance clean-energy technology as it considers overhauling the initiative, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The newly installed director of the Energy Department’s loan program, John Sneed, told agency officials in a meeting last week the effort will be retooled to focus on technologies favored by the new administration such as nuclear power and liquefied natural gas, according to the person who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Sneed also has said he’s exploring canceling existing financing deals, although it remains to be seen if that would be legally viable and no decisions have been made, the person said.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. 

A cooling tower at the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania. Photographer: Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg

The US has dramatically new priorities for transport. According to a set of US Department of Transportation memos, places with higher marriage and birth rates should get preference for federal transportation grants and initiatives. The policies also seek to carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda by ending support for projects that involve climate change, or racial and gender inequality. 

Bezos’ fund has reportedly cut ties with a climate standards group. Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos’ $10-billion Earth Fund has ended its backing for the Science Based Targets initiative, the main verifier of corporate climate targets, according to a story in the Financial Times.

The UK is committing £2.65 billion to tackle rising flood risks. The investment on upgrading and repairing flood infrastructure will be spent by March next year on projects including improved tidal barriers and river and sea defenses.

By Joe Wertz and Brian K Sullivan

Last month was the hottest January on record, with global average temperatures climbing 1.75C above pre-industrial levels.

The temperature in January averaged 13.2C (55.8F), according to preliminary data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, a UK-based research institute supported by 35 states. The ECMWF data was published by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine.

In a post detailing the new data, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said he was surprised to see another all-time high, given expectations that La Niña would make 2025 cooler than a record-hot 2024. “This means that January 2025 stands out as anomalous, even by the standards of the last two years,” he wrote.

A firefighter works during the Palisades Fire near the Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles, California on Jan. 12. Photographer: Benjamin Fanjoy/Bloomberg

After back-to-back record years in 2023 and 2024, the world has been holding onto heat even as the new year began. December was the second-warmest on record, both on land and in the ocean, the US National Centers for Environmental Information said. Despite a weak La Niña cooling the equatorial Pacific from that month, records are being set in the Caribbean Sea, as well the Indian Ocean and other parts of the Pacific.

Record warm temperatures covered 6.6% of the world’s surface in December, the agency said.

If the record is confirmed, it bolsters research showing warming across the planet is not just increasing, it’s accelerating.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. 

• Hyperdrive for expert insight into the future of cars
• Energy Daily for a daily guide to the energy and commodities markets that power the global economy
• CityLab Daily for top stories, ideas and solutions, from cities around the world
• Tech In Depth for analysis and scoops about the business of technology

Explore all Bloomberg newsletters.