Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Adaptation

Trump Is Downsizing Disaster Aid

On job cuts, long-term planning, and quarterly profits.

Trump Is Downsizing Disaster Aid
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions:Schools in South Sudan are closing for two weeks due to a heatwave that has caused students to collapse • Unusually heavy snow in Virginia and North Carolina led to hundreds of car accidents • An atmospheric river will bring heavy rain to the Pacific Northwest this weekend.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump slashes disaster recovery team

The Trump administration plans to dramatically cut staff at a key office responsible for dispensing disaster recovery aid. The Office of Community Planning and Development, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will be cut to 150 people, down from 936, according to The New York Times. The news follows hundreds of personnel cuts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which are expected to hamper disaster relief disbursements and rebuilding efforts around the country. NPR is also reporting that FEMA will no longer weigh in on the development of building codes and has taken its name off recommendations it made under the Biden administration.

A member of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force in Asheville, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.A member of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force in Asheville, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.Mario Tama/Getty Images

2. Oxy CEO talks up DAC

Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub talked up the opportunity to use carbon captured from the air to get more oil out of the ground during the company’s earnings call this week. Hollub told investors that the use of captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery would be similar to the shale revolution in unlocking billions of barrels of oil. “There's not enough organic CO2 in the country to be able to flood all the things that we're going to need to flood to get that 50 billion to 70 billion barrels,” she said. “And so taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is a technology that needs to work for the United States.” Hollub didn’t speak to the status of Occidental’s $500 million Department of Energy award to build a direct air capture hub in Texas, but she asserted that “President Trump knows the business case” for subsidizing these projects.

3. Regulators rule on Illinois gas pipeline program

Utility regulators ordered the Chicago utility People’s Gas to scale back its pipeline replacement program on Thursday and only replace the highest-risk infrastructure. The ruling came after a yearlong investigation into the program, which had run over-budget and behind schedule and had yet to reduce pipeline failure rates. At the rate it was going, the program wouldn’t have been completed until 2049, “right around the time that a lot of us think we should be stopping to use the gas system,” Abe Scarr of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group told me in 2023 when the investigation commenced. Scarr applauded Thursday’s ruling, stating that regulators “directed Peoples Gas to run a program that costs less, makes us safer, and facilitates the transition to cleaner energy.”

4. Xcel Energy is ahead of schedule

Xcel Energy, the largest utility in Minnesota, says it will deliver 100% carbon-free electricity to customers in the state five years ahead of the state’s 2040 deadline. The utility’s long-term plan, which Minnesota regulators approved on Thursday, involves shutting down coal plants, extending the life of its two nuclear plants, and building more wind, solar, and batteries, including a pilot program with the heat battery company Rondo Energy. Xcel had originally proposed building six new natural gas plants, but the plan was pared back to building just one that will operate 5% to 10% of the year to meet peak demand. The state’s clean energy law allows Xcel to burn natural gas as long as it also generates enough carbon-free power to cover its customer demand.

The plan is expected to save customers money compared to Xcel’s original proposal, but that calculus includes the tax credits for renewable energy that the Trump administration may or may not kill.

5. Grok update includes climate denial

Grok 3, the latest iteration of the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, appears to have been trained to spew climate denial. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, posed the same question — “Is climate change an urgent threat?” — to the beta version of Grok 3 and to its predecessor Grok 2. Dessler posted screenshots of the two responses on Bluesky. Grok 2 responded, “Yes, climate change is widely regarded by scientists, governments, and international organizations as an urgent threat to the planet,” and went on to provide evidence of climate change and its impacts. Grok 3, meanwhile, said that climate change was “a complex issue.” While “the mainstream scientific consensus…says it's a big deal," the chatbot said, “some argue the urgency is overhyped,” and that climate change is “more of a manageable shift we’re overreacting to.”

THE KICKER

U.S. electric vehicle maker Rivian achieved its first quarterly gross profit of $170 million in Q4 of last year, beating expectations.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate

AM Briefing: Hurricane Erick’s Rapid Intensification

On storm damage, the Strait of Hormuz, and Volkswagen’s robotaxi

Hurricane Erick Intensified Really, Really Quickly
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A dangerous heat dome is forming over central states today and will move progressively eastward over the next week • Wildfire warnings have been issued in London • Typhoon Wutip brought the worst flooding in a century to China’s southern province of Guangdong.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Hurricane Erick slams into Mexico after rapid intensification

Hurricane Erick made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Mexico’s Pacific coast yesterday with maximum sustained winds around 125 mph. Damages are reported in Oaxaca and Guerrero. The storm is dissipating now, but it could drop up to 6 inches of rain in some parts of Mexico and trigger life-threatening flooding and mudslides, according to the National Hurricane Center. Erick is the earliest major hurricane to make landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast, and one of the fastest-intensifying storms on record: It strengthen from a tropical storm to a Category 4 storm in just 24 hours, a pattern of rapid intensification that is becoming more common as the Earth warms due to human-caused climate change. As meteorologist and hurricane expert Michael Lowry noted, Mexico’s Pacific coast was “previously unfamiliar with strong hurricanes” but has been battered by epic storms over the last two years. Acapulco is still recovering from Category 5 Hurricane Otis, which struck in late 2023.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Politics

It’s Chris Wright’s Worldview. They’re Just Legislating It.

The energy secretary's philosophy is all over the Senate mega-bill.

Chris Wright.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As the Senate Finance Committee worked on its version of the reconciliation bill that would, among things, overhaul the Inflation Reduction Act, there was much speculation among observers that there could be a carve out for sources of power like geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear, which provide steady generation and tend to be more popular among Republicans, along the lines of the slightly better treatment received by advanced nuclear in the House bill.

Instead, the Senate Finance Committee’s text didn’t carve out these “firm” sources of power, it carved out solar and wind, preserving tax credits for everything else through 2035, while sunsetting solar and wind by 2028.

Keep reading...Show less
Wires and panels.
Heatmap Illustration | Abbr. Projects

When I reached out to climate tech investors on Tuesday to gauge their reaction to the Senate’s proposed overhaul of the clean energy tax credits, I thought I might get a standard dose of can-do investor optimism. Though the proposal from the Senate Finance committee would cut tax credits for wind and solar, it would preserve them for other sources of clean energy, such as geothermal, nuclear, and batteries — areas of significant focus and investment for many climate-focused venture firms.

But the vibe ended up being fairly divided. While many investors expressed cautious optimism about what this latest text could mean for their particular portfolio companies, others worried that by slashing incentives for solar and wind, the bill’s implications for the energy transition at large would be categorically terrible.

Keep reading...Show less