From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it has assumed responsibility for what it says is the “Largest Lithium-Ion Battery Cleanup in Agency History” at the Moss Landing facility outside San Francisco.

Crews supervised by the EPA entered the facility this week to begin cleaning out the remains of the fire damaged batteries, which the agency says will be recycled at EPA-approved recycling facilities.

As has happened far too frequently, the retired batteries erupted spontaneously in January, leading authors of MIT’s weekly climate newsletter to speculate about what this latest conflagration would mean for the future of the electric vehicle and stationary battery storage industries going forward.

“With the growing number of electric vehicles and batteries for energy storage on the grid,” the authors wrote, “more high-profile fires have hit the news, like last year’s truck fire in LA, the spate of e-bike battery fires in New York City, or one at a French recycling plant last year.”

The parade of troubling incidents related to these batteries has continued throughout 2025. In June, for example, a large container ship called the Morning Midas, operated by Zodiac Maritime, sank into the Pacific Ocean after batteries in EVs it was carrying to Alaska spontaneously combusted, forcing the crew to abandon ship. A month later, U.S.-based shipper Matson announced it would no longer transport EV cargoes due to the obvious dangers involved. Three weeks later, Alaska Marine Lines put a similar policy in place.

All of these inconvenient news stories come at an already troubling time for the U.S. EV industry, given that its huge $7,500 per car federal subsidy expired at midnight, Sept. 30. That subsidy was enacted in the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and subsequently repealed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4 of this year.

Sales have spiked in the run-up to the subsidy expiration, to no one’s real surprise. But EV makers now face the troubling prospect of having to compete in the U.S. market absent that significant price advantage, leading many to anticipate a significant drop-off in sales.

Some carmakers have already begun to scale back operations. Stellantis announced the cancellation of a planned all-electric Dodge Ram pickup model on Sept.12, citing slowing demand for such trucks in a field already dominated by the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Tesla Cyber Truck. The fact that sales of those competing models are already coming in well below projections this year was another obvious motivating factor.

Ford, meanwhile, said in August it would delay the introduction of what it refers to as “next generation” updates to its Lightning pickup and full-sized electric van for two years due to the same challenging market conditions. “F-150 Lightning, America’s best-selling electric truck, and E-Transit continue to meet today’s customer needs,” the company said in what can only be described as an understatement.

Competitor GM announced it would take similar action on Sept. 4, saying it was suspending production of a pair of Cadillac SUVs – the mid-size Lyriq and the full-size Vistiq – at its assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., effective in December. The company also said it would indefinitely delay the start of a second shift at an assembly plant near Kansas City.

Amid the frequent big fire events involving EV batteries and the industry’s fallout from the loss of a federal subsidy, it must be repeated here that the electric vehicle industry is not “new” or even a young one. It is in fact well over a century old, with the first electric cars introduced in the U.S. in the 1890s, during the same period when gas-powered cars started to come onto the market. In those early years, in fact, many experts insisted that electric cars would ultimately render gas-powered cars obsolete and become the dominant force in American transportation.

But makers of EVs then found themselves suffering from the same set of limitations that plague the industry well over a century later: Range anxiety, lack of infrastructure, and persistent unreliability.

The fact that an industry this old has still not solved for the same set of issues after so much time makes it reasonable to question whether it ever will.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

From the Fraser Institute

By Gary Mauser

More than 90 per cent of guns used in crimes are illegally imported into Ontario from the United States, which means the confiscation (or “buyback”) program would not affect these guns. And the program diverts financial and policing resources towards law-abiding Canadians who own firearms

Given the mountain of federal debt, the Carney government’s much-anticipated fall budget should tell us how Ottawa plans to deal with the prime minister’s new priorities. Carney has urged cabinet to find existing programs to cut so Ottawa can afford the new spending he’s promised, such as meeting the NATO 5 per cent commitment and opening up new energy corridors.

Clearly, if the government wants to cut waste, it should axe the Trudeau-era gun ban and confiscation program, which—according to reports—the government plans to fully rollout this fall.

First, some background. In 2020, with the stroke of a pen, the Trudeau government instantly made it a crime for federally-licenced firearms owners to buy, sell, transport, import, export or use hundreds of thousands of formerly legal rifles and shotguns. According to the government, the ban targets “assault-style weapons,” which are actually classic semi-automatic rifles and shotguns used by hunters and sport shooters for more than 100 years. When announcing the ban, the prime minister said the government would confiscate the banned firearms and provide “fair compensation” to owners. That hasn’t happened.

In fact, the government has revealed no plans about how it will collect the banned firearms nor has it included compensation costs in any federal budget. The amnesty period (to allow compliance with the ban), which the government has extended in the past, is set to expire on Oct. 30, 2025.

The program faces stiff opposition from several key players.

For example, the provincial governments in Ontario and Saskatchewan don’t want to participate. As noted by Ontario’s solicitor general, more than 90 per cent of guns used in crimes are illegally imported into Ontario from the United States, which means the confiscation (or “buyback”) program would not affect these guns. And the program diverts financial and policing resources towards law-abiding Canadians who own firearms and are already heavily regulated and screened.

The National Police Federation, which represents 20,000 RCMP members, has said the program is a “misdirected effort when it comes to public safety.”

Canada Post, which has been tasked by Ottawa to receive and warehouse firearms, wants nothing to do with the program due to fear of conflicts between staff and gun owners, and the ability of Canada Post to safely store potentially hundreds of firearms in postal substations.

And the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, which represents firearms retailers, said it will have “zero involvement” in helping confiscate these firearms.

Meanwhile, there’s no evidence the program will improve public safety.

In fact, Canadian firearms owners are exceptionally law-abiding and less likely to commit murder than other Canadians—and that shouldn’t be surprising. To own a firearm in Canada, you must obtain a Possession and Acquisition Licence (PAL) from the RCMP after initial vetting and daily monitoring for possible criminal activity. Between 2000 and 2020, an average of 12 PAL holders per year were accused of homicide, out of approximately 2 million PAL holders. The number of PAL holders increased from 1,979,054 to 2,206,755 over this same time period, so the PAL holder firearms homicide rate over 20 years was 0.63 per 100,000 PAL holders. But the firearms homicide rate for adult Canadians is 0.72 per 100,000—that’s 14 per cent higher than the rate for PAL holders.

Even the minister in charge of the program—Gary Anandasangaree, the Carney government’s public safety minister—seems to think it’s a bad idea. In an audio recording released online, he said: “I just don’t think municipal police services have the resources to do this” before adding that the program’s goals may be more about politics than sound policy.

So, with a federal budget looming, how much will the gun ban/confiscation program cost taxpayers?

The plain answer: we don’t know. But back in 2020, the Trudeau government said it would cost $200 million to compensate firearms owners for confiscating their now-banned firearms, although the Parliamentary Budget Officer said compensation costs could reach $756 million. The federal government recently said the program’s administrative costs (safe storage, destruction of hundreds of thousands of firearms, etc.) would reach an estimated $1.8 billion. My estimate, based on a similar program in New Zealand in 2019, for only compensation costs and the collection phase is closer to $6 billion.

Today, more than 150 employees of the Department of Public Safety in Ottawa are working full time on the program, yet few firearms (12,195) have been collected to-date. The program spent $67.2 million by 2024, before it collected a single gun, and is now projected to cost $459.8 million in 2025/26 alone, mainly on public opinion surveys and planning. Basically, they’re trying to figure out how to confiscate and destroy hundreds of thousands of guns from across Canada. Apparently, this planning costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

In sum, Ottawa’s gun ban/confiscation (“buyback”) program is very expensive and likely won’t achieve its stated goals of improving public safety. If the Carney government wants to find savings, the program is good place to start.