Mosseri, in an opening statement, said he sincerely believes Instagram can help teens in critical moments. “We all want teens to be safe online,” he said. Shortly before the hearing, Instagram said it would apply new tools on the app to protect teens, with controls for parents to curtail their children’s use, limits on tagging or mentioning teen users, and the ability to bulk delete photos, video and other content.

The hearing highlights the blowback Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
FB,
+2.40%
faces for the foreseeable future over one of its most popular properties. The bombshell disclosures of internal data from whistleblower Frances Haugen, detailing how Facebook ignored clear signs of the damage Instagram can do to teens, has led to hearings, legislation and bruised the company’s stock.

Meta’s stock, which has skidded 12% the past three months but rebounded of late, closed up 2% in trading Wednesday.

As with so many congressional panels on Big Tech, the proceeding took on the rhythm of executives promising sweeping changes and cooperation with the federal government and regulators that contrasted with threats of antitrust-altering bills from members of the House and Senate doing the questioning.

“The hearing is well-intentioned but it interferes with Facebook’s ability to compete in the free market,” Mark Weinstein, founder of MeWe.com, an ad- and algorithm-free social network that promotes itself as only for those 16 and older, told MarketWatch.

Mosseri’s testimony, his first on Capitol Hill, comes amid intensifying scrutiny from federal and state lawmakers.

Last month, a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general led by California, Florida, New Jersey, and four other states announced an investigation into whether Meta violated consumer protection laws by promoting Instagram and other social networking products to children and teens.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the allegations “false and demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the facts.” He said the company is working on developing parental supervision controls.

Americans are not canceling flights as omicron variant spreads — at least, not yet

Not all locations are seeing a downturn in travel demand as a result of the latest variant. Read More

‘My girlfriend is a busy woman’: She told me to manage her investments and generate 10% returns — she got angry when I refused

‘She said that if she can’t trust me with her money, she can’t trust me at all.’ Read More

The 2022 BMW 5 series: This talented, luxury sedan is for people who love to drive

This is a car for those who want luxury and technology but also tune into what the steering tells them, and revel in an engine’s effortless power. Read More

Google’s 2021 Year in Search: AMC and GME stocks, Dogecoin, stimulus checks and shortages dominated queries

These were the most Googled news stories and financial topics of 2021 — and how MarketWatch covered them Read More

My late mother’s will was signed under ‘suspicious circumstances.’ My father ransacked $2M from her estate — he now lives with his much younger wife.

‘Her will — in my opinion fake, but I can’t prove it — was signed weeks before her death under suspicious circumstances, and creates a trust.’ Read More

MarketWatch asked doctors to if they’d accept New Year’s Eve party invitations. Here’s what they said.

‘Would you and I go into a building where we can see smoke and hear fire alarms? That’s what omicron is,’ said vaccinologist Gregory Poland. Read More

Household electricity and gas bills are on the rise — here’s how to reduce your monthly costs

These increases come as more than 11% of employed Americans continue to work from home because of coronavirus. Read More

Mom, 48, admits stealing her daughter’s identity to run up nearly $20K in student debt. She even posed as a student in her 20s to evade detection

Prosecutors say Laura Oglesby, 48, attended classes at Southwest Baptist University, using her daughter’s federal student loans and grants. Read More

One country topped GoFundMe’s list of most generous nations for the third year in a row — and it’s not the U.S.

The most generous user on the fundraising platform made 434 donations in 2021, according to GoFundMe’s 2021 giving report. Read More

Friends who started getting into cryptocurrency in the last couple of years believe the old rules of economics no longer apply. Although I have been a vocal bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+0.39%
believer and holder since 2013, I don’t agree with them.

Here’s one rule that won’t change: It’s not enough to have demand for something; that thing must be scarce to have value. For example, air has infinite demand, but has little value because most people just get by breathing the air around them.

That’s partly why more than 95% of the current batch of 15,000 cryptocurrencies traded on nearly 500 exchanges are silly or fraudulent. To be clear, nearly all of the silly cryptocurrencies will head to zero and all of the fraudulent cryptocurrencies will head to zero. That leaves about 5% of the current batch of cryptos that will eventually still have value and probably increase in value in coming years.

I expect the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to send cease-and-desist letters to the founders of thousands of cryptocurrencies over the next few weeks or months. Any cryptocurrency or token for which the creators received founder’s tokens or any other benefits are going to be classified as securities when the SEC looks at them. If the founders got economic and/or financial benefits but didn’t register with the SEC from the beginning, they’re probably in violation of regulations.

Crypto crackdown

I imagine the SEC will give a grace period to most of them to get registered and that most of the good ones and many of the bad ones will end up being registered as securities. But there will be a lot of pain for even the best cryptos as this process plays out. I am generally cautious on crypto for the near/mid-term because of this risk and because the crypto market feels so crowded.

As we have worked to create a space-debris-cleaning cryptocurrency, we’ve made sure SKTL is not a “security,” as defined by the SEC. For example, there are none of those aforementioned “founder tokens” or any other financial benefit for the creators.

Almost all of of the 15,000 cryptocurrencies out there right now have large stakes of ownership held by each of their respective creators. On the other hand, SKTL tokens are being airdropped to the first 100,000 people with a U.S. or Canada cell phone who register at the SKTLs Airdrop Registration page, with an equal amount reserved for donations to clean up space debris and an equal amount reserved to be paid out as the space economy expands with new satellite and astronaut launches.

This is where those new incentives and organizational structures enabled by DAO start to come in. One of the reasons it’s so important to try to be empathetic as an analyst is because you have to understand incentives if you want to understand economics and financial markets. And the creation of new incentives built upon the open blockchain network of smart contracts is where cryptos — or more specifically blockchain and the smart contracts that blockchain enables — change everything.

Until cryptos enabled trustless distributed autonomous and anonymous transactions to exist, there were three major categories of finance: Ownership (equity), lending (bonds), and taxation.

That is, if you had money at any other time in the history of humankind and you didn’t want to just put it under your mattress, you either bought something with it or you lent it to someone or you were forced to give it to the government.

If you bought ownership in a business, you wanted it to grow its cash flow to create more money for you over time. If you lent money to a business, you wanted it to generate at least enough cash flow to pay you back with interest over time. And if you sent it to the government, it meant that most of it would be wasted or used in corrupt ways and that hopefully a penny or two from each dollar would actually provide some protection or benefit for society.

The incentive economy

But suddenly, as with our SKTLs Space Crypto, the incentives aren’t about cash flows or interest payments (taxes don’t go away). For the SKTLs crypto to create value, the space economy has to grow, space debris has to be cleaned up and people have to accept that a transparent and open cryptocurrency can use people’s profit motive to do social good. I talked all about this in a recent radio interview that you can listen to here.

Another example of how these new incentives are created by cryptocurrencies comes from Helium tokens. The Helium token incentivizes people to help build a 5G network. This is done by connecting a Helium mining node referred to as a hotspot to your home or business Wi-Fi network. Once connected to your Wi-Fi network, you are rewarded when the network talks to your node or when someone uses the data from your node. This incentivization system means that Helium has created a 5G network where end users are putting the nodes in place to run the 5G network instead of the wireless companies having to do that themselves. Indeed, Dish Network has partnered with Helium to help Dish reach a critical mass of 5G nodes.

During the history of mankind, economic incentives have slowly evolved from barbarism to nomadism to bartering to salt to gold to centrally controlled currencies to cryptocurrencies. And that’s exciting in its own right — we’re living through the latest fundamental economic revolution in currency. And it’s not just the currency revolution; it’s an Incentive Revolution and that’s where so much opportunity now lies.

Blockchain-based DAOs

In 20 years, these new organizational structures and incentives that create wealth over time are going to make ownership of stocks and bonds less important. Blockchain-based DAOs will compete with the traditional corporate and not-for-profit organizational structures. 

This is what I mean when I say that we shouldn’t underestimate the changes that cryptocurrencies, blockchain and smart contracts are creating for our society and economy — and our pocketbooks. The investment opportunities are here for us to make a lot of wealth in coming years and decades as we figure out ways to make the world a better place through profit-motives. But don’t forget that there will be a lot of pain and a lot of losses in a lot of cryptocurrencies along the way.

Cody Willard is a columnist for MarketWatch and editor of the Revolution Investing newsletter. Willard or his investment firm may own, or plan to own, securities mentioned in this column.

Fortunately, visitor numbers are trending upward, and while things aren’t quite what they used to be pre-pandemic for both tourist and leisure travel, New York City’s $5 billion tourism industry has been buoyed by a number of major developments, including the return of Broadway shows in September and the reopening of borders to international visitors in November. 

Anchoring a sense of optimism and excitement across the local hospitality market is the crucial holiday season, which—barring any new restrictions surrounding the spread of the omicron variant—is shaping up nicely, much to the surprise of some hotel operators.

“It’s remarkable how the environment has evolved throughout the year,” said Mitchell Hochberg, president of Lightstone, a real-estate investor and developer whose portfolio includes three New York properties: Moxy Times Square, Moxy Chelsea and Moxy East Village. “Back when we were locked up at home in January, if you had told me all of our New York City hotels would be 100% occupied throughout the month of December, I would not have believed you.”

See: Americans are not canceling flights as omicron variant spreads — at least, not yet

A make or break season for the hospitality industry 

As with pre-COVID times, the 2021 holiday season is proving to be the most anticipated time of the fiscal calendar, with hotels hoping a successful December will make up for earlier losses in the year. 

“The fourth quarter overall is the most crucial for the hotel,” explained Pradeep Raman, general manager of the Baccarat Hotel, which sits across from the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown. “We expect to be full pretty much through all of December, and for the Christmas holiday we will be busier than we historically have been.”

Also read: NYC to impose COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private-sector workers

Commonly heard among hoteliers are stories of travelers eager to make up for lost time while reuniting with family or experiencing the holidays in New York.

“We draw visitors in from everywhere no matter the season, but this winter will be one for the books,” said Hochberg, who is opening Moxy Hotels next year in Williamsburg and the Lower East Side. “People haven’t been able to celebrate in Manhattan for the ball drop in over two years, or go to Broadway shows, and now they can again.”

NYC & Company, the city’s marketing, tourism, and partnership organization, projects around 36 million international and domestic visitors for 2021—down from 66.6 million in 2019, but an improvement from 22.3 million in 2020. The city is heavily investing in this recovery and promoting inbound visitors through different market promotions and travel campaigns. Domestic travel is expected to return almost to pre-pandemic levels by 2023, but the outlook for business travel remains softer, with most industry data pointing to 2024 or later for a full recovery. 

Figures provided by the Hotel Association of New York City demonstrate just how damaging the pandemic has been on the local hotel industry. NYC hotel occupancy for 2020 ended at 46.8% compared to 86.3% for 2019; the average room rate for 2020 was $151 compared to $254 for 2019. The association expects total occupancy numbers for 2021 to come in around 55%, with an average room rate around $175.

“We don’t expect a return to pre-pandemic levels until 2025, as conferences and conventions have a long horizon for booking,” said Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the hotel association, which represents nearly 300 hotels with more than 80,000 rooms and approximately 50,000 employees. “Furthermore, business travel is at about 25% of pre-pandemic levels, and very few corporations are permitting travel.” 

The struggle to return NYC’s hotel industry to its pre-COVID glory

Beyond the owners and stakeholders anxiously waiting for occupancy numbers to rebound to pre-pandemic levels, there are industry players such as hotelAVE, a consultancy made up of former hotel owners, operators, and financial professionals that provides asset management and advisory services to lenders and owners of hospitality assets.

According to hotelAVE, the pandemic caused the permanent closure of more than 12,000 hotel rooms in Manhattan, and it’s anticipated that at least 20% of the NYC hotel supply will close permanently due to COVID, mostly in the upscale and luxury segments.  

“Despite the pandemic, New York has re-emerged to become the destination it used to be pre-pandemic for both tourism and leisure travel,” said hotelAVE Vice President Silvie Cohen. “This fall, NYC started to see more market compression which has allowed properties to yield rates and drive revenue.”

The Langham, New York, Fifth Avenue, is an example of a well-established hotel that saw a dramatic shift in the balance of its clientele during the pandemic. 

“Our business model changed quite drastically over the last 18 months—we went from being a hotel that enjoyed a 60/40 split between business travelers and leisure travelers to being 80/20, with leisure travelers leading the pack,” said Richard Bussiere, the hotel’s managing director. “We were practically the only luxury hotel to stay open throughout the pandemic, so we had no choice but to keep things going.” 

The Langham went from a standard of 70%-80% occupancy, with an emphasis on business travelers due to its central Midtown location, to as low as 1%-5% at the very start of the pandemic. The hotel used that period to beta test cleaning and safety protocols, created staycation offerings, and developed new partnerships with local attractions.

“At the moment, we are routinely enjoying very high occupancies thanks to the holiday season and the return of international travelers to New York City. Our anticipation for success in 2022 is very high, as we are starting to see the return of both groups and business travelers,” Bussiere said. “Judging by how quickly the international audience started to visit our website and make booking inquiries, we are confident that New York City is indeed back as a destination for travelers from Europe, Canada, South and Central America and Australia and the Pacific. There does seem to be a prevailing feeling of security among travelers based on the city’s vaccination rates and overall safety as a destination.”

Be sure to read: ‘Should I visit family?’ 3 ways to protect against COVID-19 omicron variant during the holiday season

The Crowne Plaza HY36 Midtown reopened in April after a 13-month closure due to the pandemic. After a slow return, the hotel experienced a spike in visitation during the summer months as attractions welcomed guests and outdoor dining emerged as the new normal. September saw ComicCon and Broadway return, and in light of a successful fourth quarter—booked solid over Thanksgiving week, Christmas week, and New Year’s Eve—the hotel is now anticipating its 2022 occupancy to be level with 2019 numbers.

“One thing we have learned through the pandemic is how to quickly pivot, whether it be changing market segmentation to repurposing the physical space in the building. I think hotels will continue to adapt their growth strategies based on industry conditions,” said John Beck, the hotel’s general manager.

The hotel industry hasn’t been immune to the staffing issues that have plagued businesses across the city, forcing operators to take a creative approach to retaining current employees while also hiring new staff.  

“Hotels have seen success offering different retention incentives as well as hiring bonuses,” said hotelAVE’s Cohen. “There are also other non-monetary ways to motivate employees, such as providing school supplies for employees’ children, which we have seen go a long way.”

Perezic of The Kimberly Hotel is among those who are proceeding with caution heading into the near year. 

“2022 is promising, but the first quarter in this business is always tough,” he said. “So we will have to see what curveballs are thrown at us: what will the weather be like; will other variants threaten cancellations?”

Mirroring those concerns is Hochberg, of Lightstone.

“We’re not out of ‘pandemic times’ just yet. Business travel across our hotels has tripled this month from the previous month, accelerating ahead of our expectations for the year. It’s hard to assess whether that persists into 2022, but we are encouraged to see a wider variety of companies booking beyond just our top accounts,” he said. “And while international travel has shown new signs of life since the reopening of borders, the list of restricted countries is lengthy and there is still global hesitancy around return to travel.”

Also read: In the long run, New York’s recovery needs its restaurants

Still, despite the myriad challenges, hotel owners and operators are excited for the industry outlook moving into 2022. 

“As a rule, New York City sees a lull in visitors in January and February but we are hopeful that, due to the pent-up demand of travelers who weren’t able to visit New York earlier in the year, that might be a bit different in 2022, and the rest of the year is firming up to be strong as well,” said The Langham’s Bussiere. 

But reusing plastic in the auto industry “is a strong example of a circular economy, and while these clips are small, they are an important first step in our explorations to use recycled ocean plastics for additional parts [and on additional models] in the future,” said Jim Buczkowski, vice president of research at Ford.

The strength and durability of the nylon material equals that of previously used petroleum-based parts, but with a 10% cost savings and less energy required to produce them, the company said.

Ford partnered with DSM Engineering Materials, which collects the plastic material from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. Items produced using plastics collected from the oceans include a wide range of consumer goods, but until now excluded automotive parts.

Recently, the automaker used recycled water bottles to produce lightweight, aerodynamic-enhancing, noise-reducing underbody shields on its 2020 Ford Escape.

Don’t miss: Recycling is confusing — how to be smarter about all that takeout plastic

Up to 13 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, threatening marine life and polluting shorelines, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. Much of that is attributed to the fishing industry, which has come to rely on plastic fishing nets and other equipment because of the durability, light weight, buoyancy and low cost of the material.

Those same qualities contribute to creating ghost nets, a fatal and growing threat to marine life. Ghost gear comprises nearly 10% of all sea-based plastic waste, entangling fish, sharks, dolphins, seals, sea turtles and birds.

Rethinking parts isn’t the only climate-minded move at Ford, which is responding to shifting demand and anticipating stronger regulations and incentives on the path to cutting fossil-fuel emissions.

Ford CEO Jim Farley took to Twitter earlier this month to tout the company’s plans to become the second largest electric-vehicle maker behind Tesla
TSLA,
+1.12%.

Farley, a longtime Ford executive who took the top job in October 2020, said then that the company is approaching EVs the same way it approached building ventilators and PPE for COVID-19: “Whatever it takes, find a way.”

Read: Chasing Tesla: Here are the current electric vehicle plans of every major car maker

Farley said at the time that Ford was making “final preparations” to launch the F-150 Lightning, the all-electric version of its best-selling F-150 pickup, which had more than 160,000 reservations. The electric Mustang Mach-E is a hit with customers, he said, and Ford will soon start production of the new electric Transit commercial van.

Ford’s stock is up 126% in the year to date, with the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.20%
up nearly 25% over the same stretch.

The idea, restaurant-industry experts say, is simple: By partnering with a snack-food brand, particularly a highly popular or buzzworthy one, a dining chain can potentially entice some of that brand’s fan base to eat at one of its locations. “You tap into those folks,” says Dan A. Rowe, chief executive of Fransmart, a franchise-development company that works with restaurants.

And in a broader sense, the chain can attach some of the snack-y buzz to its own identity.

I couldn’t help but think the latter idea had to be foremost in the minds of executives with Dine Brands
DIN,
+2.39%,
the parent company of Applebee’s. Applebee’s may have its share of fans: It ranks among the top 25 restaurant chains in the U.S., according to the annual survey by market researcher Technomic, and has enjoyed robust sales of late, including a solid third quarter, as it emerges from the darkest days of the pandemic. But I’d hardly call Applebee’s a brand with a contemporary or cutting-edge sensibility. It’s more of a suburban-minded, take-your-family-for-a-simple-dinner place, as exemplified by how it was portrayed, with mocking affection, in the Will Ferrell comedy “Talladega Nights.”

Cheetos, on the other hand, is about as hip as a snack food gets, especially for its Flamin’ Hot version, which has been celebrated in rap songs, TikTok videos and even clothing items. In other words, Cheetos, which is part of PepsiCo’s
PEP,
-0.02%
Frito-Lay division, has the street cred that Applebee’s lacks. It’s “the Red Bull of snack foods,” says Thomas Donohoe, a veteran marketing consultant.

Normally, I might be cynical about a restaurant chain’s efforts to suddenly make inroads with the cool crowd. (To wit: I’m not a fan of “celebrity meal” promotions, a la the recent McDonald’s / Saweetie one.) But I have to say: Those Cheetos boneless wings are pretty tasty.

I ordered the wings earlier this week to be delivered to my New York City home and found they fulfilled their essential promise. These are Applebee’s fairly meaty tenders — need I remind you, there’s no such thing as a boneless “wing” — with a sauce that has the cheesy zest of, yes, Cheetos (and some added crunch by way of actual Cheetos pieces). The Flamin’ Hot ones have the requisite kick, though I actually wish they were slightly spicier, as their admittedly unnatural deep-red color suggests.

The items also represent a relatively good value: I paid $12.99 for an order of 10, which is easily shareable as an appetizer. (In markets outside New York City, pricing can be as low as $9.99.) And trust me, for the sake of your waistline, you really don’t want to consume a full order, which packs 1,150 calories (and that’s before you start dipping the wings into the provided bleu-cheese or ranch sauce). I suppose you could offset some of your guilt by munching on the celery sticks that come with the wings, but my local Applebee’s failed to include them with my order, saying they had run out of the veggies. (Applebee’s officials assured me there isn’t a chainwide celery shortage, however.)

There may be reasons beyond the Cheetos buzz for Applebee’s to add the new menu items, which are limited-time offerings. Eric Gonzalez, an analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets who tracks restaurant companies, says it’s a way for the chain to distinguish itself from such wing-centric competitors as Buffalo Wild Wings and Atomic Wings. “There are a lot of wings out there,” he says.

Applebee’s officials also note that the Cheetos wings, while seemingly new, have actually been on the menu of its Cosmic Wings brand, a ghost-kitchen concept run out of Applebee’s restaurants, since early this year. Which means Applebee’s is basically leveraging a delivery-only item — and one that has proved popular with consumers, they note — by making it part of the company’s larger footprint.

Applebee’s Chief Marketing Officer Joel Yashinsky also doesn’t deny that the Cheetos items play to a younger market, though he thinks they appeal to all ages. “We saw an opportunity to speak to everyone with this idea,” he said.

Still, I can’t help but question if this attempt by Applebee’s reeks of a little desperation. It’s a gimmick, after all. One wonders what’s next on chain menus: Pringles in your burger? (Actually, that already sorta exists.)

Either way, it’s hard to imagine a day when Applebee’s will be seen as the hip-and-happening place to dine — it’s just not in the chain’s DNA. But I’d gladly order those Cheetos boneless wings again. Maybe even for dinner tonight.

The Fast Foodist is a new MarketWatch column that looks at restaurant menu items through a critical and business-minded lens. Send suggestions of products that you think should be critiqued to cpassy@marketwatch.com.

Schnabel’s comments, which also suggested the ECB’s asset purchases increased moral hazard, was delivered as a part of the fifth annual conference of the European Systemic Risk Board. It comes as the Federal Reserve is set to hold its a monetary policy meeting on Dec. 14-15, with the pace of reduction of its asset purchases likely to be an issue for the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee headed by Jerome Powell, who was last month nominated for a second term as Chairman.

Powell hasn’t been so vocal about the creation of asset bubbles, but the ECB executive’s remarks might likely be running in the back of the minds of the members of the U.S. central bank next week.

That is particularly as the 10-year Treasury notes
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.509%,
as well as stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.02%,
the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.21%
and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+0.53%,
appear to be richly valued by some measures.

Financial markets have been on a roller-coaster ride given the uncertainty surrounding the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but it is Fed policy that may be more significant now.

Economists think Powel recently opened the door for the central bank to announce it is doubling of the monthly pace of asset purchases to $30 billion from $15 billion—consistent with quantitative easing ending in mid-March instead of mid-June.

For its part, the ECB next gathers on Dec. 16, a day after the Fed, and it may signal its desire to cut its monetary stimulus for Europe.

The Biden administration will create a federal fleet of electric vehicles, upgrade federal buildings and change how the government buys electricity. The president’s team predicts this effort will would add at least 10 gigawatts of clean electricity to the national grid.

Under the new approach, federal operations would run entirely on carbon-free electricity by 2030. By 2035, the government would stop buying gas-powered vehicles for its own fleet, switching to zero-emission heavy-duty trucks and cars, the administration detailed in a fact sheet.

Speaking earlier this week at an American Clean Power Association conference, Biden’s national climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, said the administration hopes the effort will enhance “the ability of states and localities to build off those contracts and take advantage of the breadth of the purchasing power of the federal government.”

Biden has said private-sector help and state and local efforts are key to his net-zero vision beyond what the federal government can do.

Biden’s legislative efforts toward sharply curbing emissions and taking other steps to slow global warming remain hard-fought in a narrowly divided Congress, but the Democratic leadership has said it hopes for a vote on a sweeping spending proposal before the Christmas break.

That Build Back Better bill includes $555 billion marked for tax credits, spending and other incentives to promote wind and solar power
ICLN,
+0.34%
  electric vehicles
TSLA,
+1.20%,
climate-minded agriculture and forestry programs and other clean energy ideas, some at the federal and community level and some earmarked for American homes.

Read: Solar tax credits and heat pump rebates: All the ways Build Back Better could incentivize cleaner energy at home

How the administration will pay for the federal clean-energy plans further detailed Wednesday wasn’t immediately clear. The infrastructure bill Biden signed into law last month contains $7.5 billion to build a network of electric vehicle chargers, for instance, but other aspects of the administration’s plan may be constrained by agency budget allocations.

Supply-chain shortages have also been an issue when it comes to select EV and solar components, for instance.

Read: Pete Buttigieg fires back after Elon Musk blasts federal spending on EVs, saying there are ‘things that don’t happen on their own’

Environmental watchdog Climate Action Tracker has warned that under current policies, excluding proposals, the world is on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, pushed there largely by the emissions created by burning fossil fuels for electricity and vehicles. Scientists have said the planet should stay below a 1.5-degree increase to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis, including droughts, shore erosion, flooding, wildfires and more.