FEMA’s Controversial Head Steps Down

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms will bring winds of up to 85 miles per hour to parts of the Texarkana region • A cold front in Southeast Asia is stirring waves up to three meters high along the shores of Vietnam • Parts of Libya are roasting in temperatures as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

THE TOP FIVE

1. FEMA head is out

David Richardson, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, resigned Monday after just six months on the job. Richardson had no experience in managing natural disasters, and Axios reported, he “faced sharp criticism for being unavailable” amid the extreme floods that left 130 dead in Central Texas in July. A month earlier, Richardson raised eyebrows when he held a meeting in which he told staff he was unaware the U.S. had a hurricane season. He was, however, a “loyalist” to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, CNN reported.

With hurricane season wrapping up this month, President Donald Trump was preparing to fire Richardson in the lead up to an overhaul of the agency, whose resources for carrying out disaster relief he wants to divvy up among the states. When FEMA staffers criticized the move in an open letter over the summer, the agency suspended 40 employees who signed with their names, as I wrote in the newsletter at the time.

2. EPA slashes wetland protections

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed stripping federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams. The New York Times cast the stakes of the rollback as “potentially threatening sources of clean drinking water for millions of Americans” while delivering “a victory for a range of business interests that have lobbied to scale back the Clean Water Act of 1972, including farmers, home builders, real estate developers, oil drillers and petrochemical manufacturers.” At an event announcing the rulemaking, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin recognized that the proposal “is going to be met with a lot of relief from farmers, ranchers, and other landowners and governments.” Under the Clean Water Act, companies and individuals need to obtain permits from the EPA before releasing pollutants into the nation’s waterways, and permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before discharging any dredged or fill material such as sand, silt, or construction debris. Yet just eliminating the federal oversight doesn’t necessarily free developers and farmers of permitting challenges since that jurisdiction simply goes to the state.

3. Power outages are getting longer across the U.S.

A chart from the report shows how much worse this year is than previous ones.J.D. Power

Americans are spending greater lengths of time in the dark amid mounting power outages, according to a new survey by the data analytics giant J.D. Power. The report, released last month but highlighted Monday in Utility Dive, cited “increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events” as the cause. The average length of the longest blackout of the year increased in all regions since 2022, from 8.1 hours to 12.8 by the midpoint of 2025. Ratepayers in the South reported the longest outages, averaging 18.2 hours, followed by the West, at 12.4 hours. While the duration of outages is worsening, the number of Americans experiencing them isn’t, J.D. Power’s director of utilities intelligence, Mark Spalinger, told Utility Dive. The percentage of ratepayers experiencing “perfect power” without any interruptions is gradually rising, he said, but disasters like storms and fires “are becoming so much more extreme that it creates these longer outage events that utilities are now having to deal with.”

The problem is particularly bad in the summertime. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin explained back in June, “the demands on the grid are growing at the same time the resources powering it are changing. Between broad-based electrification, manufacturing additions, and especially data center construction, electricity load growth is forecast to grow several percent a year through at least the end of the decade. At the same time, aging plants reliant on oil, gas, and coal are being retired (although planned retirements are slowing down), while new resources, largely solar and batteries, are often stuck in long interconnection queues — and, when they do come online, offer unique challenges to grid operators when demand is high.”

Another chart shows the causes of prolonged outages. J.D. Power

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4. A solar manufacturer says it’s opening another factory thanks to Trump

You win some, you lose some. Earlier this month, solar developer Pine Gate Renewables blamed the Trump administration’s policies in its bankruptcy filing. Now a major solar manufacturer is crediting its expansion plans to the president. Arizona-based First Solar said last week it plans to open a new panel factory in South Carolina. The $330 million factory will create 600 new jobs, E&E News reported, if it comes online in the second half of next year as planned. First Solar said the investment is the result of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Administration’s trade policies boosted demand for American energy technology, requiring a timely, agile response that allows us to meet the moment,” First Solar CEO Mark Widmar said in a statement. “We expect that this new facility will enable us to serve the U.S. market with technology that is compliant with the Act’s stringent provisions, within timelines that align with our customers’ objectives.”

If you want to review what actually goes into making a solar panel, it’s worth checking out Matthew’s explainer from the Climate 101 series.

5. France’s oil giant is making a big bet on electricity

French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies said Monday it would make a $6 billion investment into power plants across Europe, expanding what The Wall Street Journal called “a strategy that has set it apart from rivals focused on pumping more fossil fuels.” To start, the company agreed to buy 50% of a portfolio of assets owned by Energeticky a Prumyslovy Holding, the investment fund controlled by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. While few question the rising value of power generation amid a surge in electricity demand from the data centers supporting artificial intelligence software, analysts and investors “question whether investment in power generation — particularly renewables — will be as lucrative as oil and gas.” Rivals Shell and BP, for example, recently axed their renewables businesses to double down on fossil fuels.

THE KICKER

The world has successfully stored as much carbon dioxide as 81,044,946 gasoline-powered cars would emit in a year. The first-ever audit of all major carbon storage projects in the U.S., China, Brazil, Australia, and the Middle East found over 383 million tons of carbon dioxide stored since 1996. “The central message from our report is that CCS works, demonstrating a proven capability and accelerating momentum for geologic storage of CO2,” Samuel Krevor, a professor of subsurface carbon storage at Imperial College London’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said in a press release.