Sign In or Create an Account.

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

AM Briefing

Trump Takes a 5% Stake in Lithium Giant

On a potential deregulatory slowdown, community solar’s dimming, and Pope Leo on climate

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Tropical Storm Imelda is set to gain intensity this week and whip the southeastern U.S. with soaking rain and storm surge • Frigid night air is forecast across northern New England • Typhoon Bualoi is flooding broad swaths of Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos.

THE TOP FIVE

1. EPA’s deregulatory agenda threatened by government shutdown

The federal government is closed.Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. this morning after President Donald Trump and Republicans failed to reach a deal with Democrats in Congress on a bill to keep its funding flowing. That could slow the Environmental Protection Agency’s deregulatory effort, E&E News reported Tuesday. “The political crisis that threatens to shutter much of the federal bureaucracy at midnight comes as Administrator Lee Zeldin is racing to unravel high-profile rules on things like climate science, vehicle pollution, power plants, oil and gas wells, and carbon emissions reporting,” reporter Jean Chemnick wrote. An abrupt halt to the agency’s activities would at the very least set back Zeldin’s reform effort, including an agency reorganization set to begin this month.

The Department of the Interior, meanwhile, sent employees an email Tuesday warning that the agency “has contingency plans in place for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by Congressional Democrats.” Neither Interior nor the EPA had published updated shutdown plans taking into account staff reductions under the current Trump administration as of Tuesday.

2. Trump administration takes 5% stake in nation’s biggest lithium project

When the Department of Defense bought a 15% stake in MP Materials, the continent’s only active rare earths mine, The Economist called it the most significant entry by the federal government into a private market since the railroads were nationalized in World War I. (Biden administration officials were admittedly jealous, as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported.) Now the Trump administration has taken another share of a major mineral project. The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office said Tuesday that it had renegotiated a multi-billion-dollar loan to back construction of Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. The project, on track to become the Western Hemisphere’s largest lithium producer by 2028, will transform a remote stretch of high Nevada desert into a lithium clay mine, harvesting from one of the world’s richest known deposits.

Under the new deal, the federal government will take a 5% equity stake in Lithium Americas and an additional 5% ownership of the company’s joint venture with General Motors. The Energy Department called its stakes “part of the overall collateral package on a loan, helping to reduce repayment risk for taxpayers.” But the announcement said the “revised agreement” includes “robust loan amendments,” notably “more than $100 million of new equity.”

Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:

* indicates required
  • 3. Community solar takes a huge hit under Trump

    Community solar installations are plunging. After a record-breaking 2024, installations of new panels in small-scale cooperative or community solar projects dropped 36% in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed the cumulative five-year outlook for community solar by 8% compared to the outlook before the legislation repealed vast chunks of the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s according to a new analysis from Wood Mackenzie.

    Yet Jeff Cramer, the chief executive of the Coalition for Community Solar Access, said states are stepping up “with historic expansions like New Jersey’s 3,000 megawatts and Massachusetts’ 900 megawatts.” He added: “These bright spots show what’s possible when policymakers work to unlock capacity. At the same time, this report makes clear the challenges ahead — from federal uncertainty to interconnection delays and program caps — that must be addressed to realize the full potential of community solar and deliver the resilient, affordable power communities are asking for.”

    4. Most Americans feel the pinch of high power prices

    Most Americans say that rising electricity prices have at least “a decent amount” of impact on household finances. “Still, for about 40% of the country, those high prices are more a pinch than a pain,” Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer wrote. That’s the finding of a new Heatmap Pro poll on rising rates. The results had some predictable outcomes, including that more than 70% of voters with household incomes below $50,000 said rising bills were a problem with “a lot of" impact on spending. Upward of 62% of voters earning less than $100,000 described similar issues, as did 59% of white voters without a college degree.

    5. Pope Leo to make a statement on climate change

    It’s been difficult for “Vatican-watchers” to pin down Pope Leo XIV’s views on most issues. But “on climate change,” The New York Times wrote on Tuesday, “it is clear that he is moved by the topic, and particularly its disproportionate harm to poor and vulnerable people.” The world is about to get a lot more clarity on his views. On Wednesday, the Pontiff is scheduled to give his first address on climate change at a conference taking place at the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo.

    The remarks come on the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si, a groundbreaking papal document written by the late Pope Francis that overhauled the Catholic Church’s teachings on climate change. The 2015 encyclical was widely credited with pushing forward carbon-cutting negotiations at the global climate summit in Paris that year.

    THE KICKER

    Africa's biggest petrostate is having a solar boom. Nigeria became Africa’s second-largest importer of solar panels over the past year by overtaking Egypt. The imports total 1.7 gigawatts. “It is a response to a problem … You can’t rely on a 24/7 grid in most parts of Nigeria at the moment,” Ashvin Dayal, senior vice-president of power at Rockefeller Foundation, which backed the mini-grid project, told the Financial Times. “Demand is booming for reliable, affordable electricity both for inside the home, but also to run small businesses, to run agricultural appliances, to increase productivity and incomes.

    Blue

    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
    AM Briefing

    Battery Bust

    On Interior’s permitting upset, a nuclear restart milestone, and destroying ‘superpollutants’

    Battery storage.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    A tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean is likely to strengthen into a named storm in the coming days, bringing deadly flooding and powerful winds | Tropical storm Fengshen has killed at least eight in the Philippines as it barrels toward Vietnam and Laos | In Australia, record heat in the eastern Outback hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Energy Department kills $700 million in battery factory funding

    Late last month, the Department of Energy clawed back $7.5 billion from 321 separate grants to clean energy projects. A week later, as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo extensively reported, a list that included three times as many grants, including those that had already been canceled, began circulating. When the agency declined to confirm that the second list as real, speculation mounted that it was either an old document that the Trump administration was using as a threat for political leverage in ongoing negotiations over the government shutdown, or that the White House was staying mum to avoid conflicts over cuts in red districts. Recent events, however, seem to confirm that the longer kill list is precisely what it appears to be. On Monday, the Energy Department told E&E News that it had canceled $700 million in battery manufacturing projects, the first grants off the second list the agency confirmed were on the chopping block. The awards had gone to companies including Ascend Elements, American Battery Technology Co., Anovion, and ICL Specialty Products, as well as the glass manufacturer LuxWall.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Yellow
    Politics

    Public Transit on the Brink

    Riders in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area are staring down budget crises, with deep service cuts not far behind.

    A train going off a cliff.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Three of the country’s largest public transportation systems are facing severe budget shortfalls that have left them near a breaking point. Transit riders in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area of California could see severe service cuts as soon as next year if their representatives don’t secure funding to fill significant gaps in their operations budgets, the result of dwindling ridership and federal aid.

    Should these lawmakers fail or fall short, they could kick off what transit advocates refer to as a “death spiral,” where higher fares and worse service leads to lower ridership, which leads to more cuts, etc., until there’s effectively no service left.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green
    AM Briefing

    ‘Messy’ at Energy

    On Detroit layoffs, critical mineral woes, and China hawks vs. cheap energy

    Chris Wright and Donald Trump.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Two tropical waves are moving westward across the Atlantic, with atmospheric conditions primed to develop into a storm in the Caribbean • Douala, Cameroon’s largest city and economic capital, notched its highest October temperature since records began in the 1800s, at nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit • In Spain, average temperatures have eclipsed 86 degrees every day of this month so far.


    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Energy Secretary Chris Wright may be on the outs with Donald Trump

    Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. Alex Wong/Getty Images

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green