Today:  Oil and gas giant cites free speech as it asks court to halt the new regulations; America's hot new investment is rare-earth companies; the CEO who wants your car to power your home, Total's greenwashing ruling.

Welcome back: ExxonMobil says rules requiring it to disclose climate risks infringe on the company’s right to free speech.

The oil-and-gas giant made the argument in a suit Friday against the state of California, which is rolling out requirements for businesses to report their climate risks as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The climate risk reporting rule will come into effect in a matter of weeks.

ExxonMobil asked the court to halt the rules, arguing that they would violate free speech protections by forcing the business to use frameworks that put “disproportionate blame on large companies” such as the energy giant itself, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Clara Hudson reports.

The company will have “to serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees,” ExxonMobile said in the complaint, which was submitted to the U.S. Eastern District Court for California. “The statutes compel ExxonMobil to trumpet California’s preferred message even though ExxonMobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided.”

The California regulations were set up by state laws SB 253 and SB 261: the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act and the Climate-Related Financial Act. The first requires companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, while the second mandates disclosures of climate-related financial risks. The rules are specific to California but their oversight reaches businesses across the globe.

A cascade of billion-dollar deals is reshaping the once-dormant Western critical-minerals industry, which the U.S. and its allies hope will act as a bulwark against aggressive trade practices by China.

Since China began restricting exports of rare earths in April—causing auto factories to halt production and rare-earth prices to shoot up—a wave of private and government funding has flowed into rare-earth companies.

In recent days, Orion Resource Partners announced a $1.8 billion investment consortium, seeded in part with U.S. government money, to secure critical minerals for the U.S. and its allies. Last week, Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed an agreement to fund critical-mineral and rare-earth projects, the WSJ's Jon Emont reports.

JPMorgan Chase said earlier this month it would invest $10 billion in companies important to national security, including rare-earth companies.

The funding boom suggests China’s shock tactics have catalyzed a revival of the Western rare-earth industry, much as U.S. efforts to restrict advanced semiconductor exports to China have turbocharged Chinese efforts to catch up with the U.S. in chips.

When a power blackout swept across Spain earlier this year, millions of homes went dark. Enric Asuncion’s wasn’t one of them.

From his house on the outskirts of Barcelona, the 40-year-old chief executive kept the lights on, the air conditioning humming and even managed to charge his car. The reason: a box bolted to his garage wall that he insists is the future of energy, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business writes.

The device is called a Quasar 2, a bidirectional electric-vehicle charger made by technology startup Wallbox, the company Asuncion founded. It allows an EV not just to draw power from the grid, but also to feed it back.

Bidirectional charging, where your car’s battery provides backup power to the grid or your home, is on the cusp of transforming how EVs interact with the grid. The technology turns your car into a mobile energy storage unit—effectively a huge battery on wheels—allowing electricity to flow both ways.

Six Quasar 2 units are being tested in homes in a newly built solar- and battery-powered community in Menifee, Calif. The project marks the first U.S. residential installations of these bidirectional chargers. 

TotalEnergies won’t appeal a French ruling that found online statements by the energy company misrepresented its environmental bona fides.

Last week, the Paris tribunal told TotalEnergies to take down statements from its corporate website that said it was aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050, and that it was a major player in the energy transition, Clara Hudson reports for Dow Jones Risk Journal.

The energy giant said on Friday that it would remove the statements and replace them with a factual description of what the company has achieved to date to clear up any confusion among its customers.

The lawsuit was brought by nonprofit organizations including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. The ruling was the first time France’s greenwashing rules have been applied to a fossil fuel producer.

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• A corruption investigation is underway at Rio Tinto's Oyu Tolgoi copper-mining operation in Mongolia. (WSJ)
   
• Google to develop a large-scale natural gas power plant integrated with carbon capture and sequestration technology in the U.S. (ESG Today)
   
• Chinese electric-vehicle maker Seres aims to raise up to $1.70 billion in a Hong Kong stock offering. (WSJ)
   
• U.S. risks losing more ground to China in EV race as White House backing for petrol-based cars poses dilemma for automakers. (FT)
   
• American Water Works and Essential Utilities to merge, creating a water-and-wastewater utility company worth about $40 billion. (WSJ)
   
• Interpreting PepsiCo’s new emissions reductions targets is complicated by its decision to move its baseline year from 2015 to 2022. (Trellis)
   
• Construction firms across the Nordic region made a high stakes bet on struggling green steel company Stegra. (Bloomberg)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at perrycp, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.