After announcing a commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2040, GM became the nation’s largest automaker to make such an aggressive pledge. Geraldine Barnuevo, environmental strategies and sustainability senior manager at GM, said the company’s work toward zero emissions through electrification was years in the making.
“GM established its triple zero vision in 2017, however, we have been working in the electric vehicle area since 1996,” Barnuevo told Cheddar. “We are embracing the science behind climate change, aiming to reduce carbon emissions in line with the level of decarbonization that the Paris agreement requires.”
By 2035, the company’s fleet is expected mostly to be made up of electric vehicles. Barnuevo called the plan one of the company’s most ambitious, and by 2025, the automaking giant expects to mark a milestone in its journey, expecting to offer 30 all-electric models worldwide.
Also, in an effort to ramp up toward a greener future, she said that GM is investing more than $27 billion over the next five years into electrification and autonomous technologies.
“Business must play a leading role in this transformation of the global economy to one that prioritizes and rewards innovative solutions to the climate crisis,” Barnuevo said.
On the political side, President Joe Biden recently signed executive orders aimed at aggressively reducing the nation’s carbon output by no longer providing federal dollars for oil and fossil fuel programs. According to Barnuevo, GM is “encouraged” by the president’s commitment to climate change.
“We look forward to working with the Biden administration to help advance policies like incentives for consumers that reflect a vision of an all-electric future for America,” she said.
While GM has committed to achieving carbon neutrality, Barnuevo said in order to affect real change on the climate front, it has to be a joint effort by businesses across the globe. GM and several hundred other companies have committed to the Business Ambition for 1.5°C that calls on firms to set climate targets to limit global temperature rise.
“We are encouraging others to come along with us in this journey. We are working with our suppliers to bring them along. We are setting science-based targets to achieve our carbon neutrality goal, and we are working with the community, stakeholders, NGOs including EDF to make this a reality,” Barnuevo said.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
