Current conditions: At least eight tornadoes touched down Wednesday between central Iowa and southern Wisconsin, and more storms are on the way • Temperatures in Central Park, where your humble correspondent sweltered in a suit jacket yesterday afternoon, hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the previous record of 87 degrees • Mount Kanloan, a volcano on the Philippines’ Negros island, is showing signs of looming eruption with dozens of ash emissions.
THE TOP FIVE
1. New documents raise questions about Trump’s $1 billion offshore wind kill fee
The Trump administration appears to be tapping an essentially bottomless but highly restricted pool of federal money at the Department of Justice to pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies the $1 billion the Department of the Interior promised in exchange for abandoning two offshore wind projects. Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo got her hands on a document that suggests the fund, which is typically reserved for helping federal agencies pay out legal settlements, may have been improperly used for the deal. Tony Irish, a former solicitor in the Department of the Interior who unearthed a letter in the public docket from his former agency to TotalEnergies and shared the document with Emily, told her that the terms of the French energy giant’s lease are such that a lawsuit requiring monetary damages couldn't have been reasonably imminent. Without that, there would be no credible reason to dip into the Judgment Fund for the payout.
This morning, Emily published another banger. While listening to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright speak before the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday, she noticed the cabinet chief say that “well over 80%” of the 2,270 awards reviewed by agency were now moving forward. But there are “big holes” in that number, which doesn't account for several grants to blue states that a judge mandated be reinstated, or for energy efficiency rebates that are still in limbo.
2. Louisiana regulators fast-track Meta’s giant data center
Louisiana’s Public Service Commission voted 4-1 to fast-track a proposal from Facebook-owner Meta and the utility Entergy to build seven new gas-fired power plants, in a $16 billion investment into fossil fuel infrastructure. The project is, according to the watchdog group Alliance for Affordable Energy, one of the largest single power requests in state history. The timeline established under the vote today requires a final vote on the application by December.
The federal government, meanwhile, is getting interested in how much power data centers use. The Energy Information Administration is planning to implement a mandatory nationwide survey of data centers focused on their energy use, Wired reported, calling the move the first such effort to collect basic data on the server farms’ power demands.
3. The Northern Mariana Islands suffers widespread blackouts from powerful typhoon
The American Pacific. Encyclopaedia Britannica/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Super Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into the Northern Mariana Islands as the most powerful storm on Earth so far this year, plunging the U.S. territory into darkness. It’s unclear just how many of the remote Pacific archipelago’s 45,000 residents lost grid connections amid the storm. But reports indicate island-wide blackouts. Local officials told the Associated Press it could take weeks to restore power and water service across the territory. Even if cellphones were charged, Pacific Daily News reported that wireless networks were overloaded and slow throughout the storm. Saipan, the capital, and neighboring Tinian were plunged into “total darkness,” according to Pacific Island Times.
The incident highlights the particular risk that the five populated U.S. territories face from extreme weather. All five — Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa in the Pacific — are island chains vulnerable to hurricanes, typhoons, and rising seas. And all five depend on increasingly costly imports of oil and gas to generate electricity. This September will mark nine years since Hurricane Maria laid waste to Puerto Rico’s aging grid system.
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4. Interior Department missed a legally mandated deadline for giving an update on energy permitting
Over at NOTUS, reporter Anna Kramer found that the Interior Department “has blown past a congressionally-mandated deadline to report its progress on energy projects.” Per a letter from Senate Democrats, the agency failed to submit two required reports to Congress on its reviews and approvals of energy projects, which wind and solar developers say reflects the administration’s ongoing de facto embargo on permits for renewables.
5. Zero-emissions medium-duty trucks just saw a surge
Overall, 2025 was a worse year for zero-emissions trucks than 2024. Annual total registrations of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles that don’t run on gasoline or diesel fell by 7.6%, according to new data from the International Council on Clean Transportation. But the decline wasn’t uniform across all segments: The medium-duty truck, such as a box truck or a delivery truck, saw a 61.7% surge in zero-emission vehicle registrations year over year. That held even as buses fell 32.8% and heavy-duty trucks, such as flatbeds and dump trucks, declined 20.7%.
THE KICKER
The times, they are a-changing over at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Once a stalwart opponent of nuclear power and supporter of stricter and more onerous environmental rules, the conservation-focused litigation nonprofit first embraced the need to restart existing nuclear plants, in a major shift. Now the NRDC has thrown its weight behind permitting reform, calling on lawmakers to speed up the process for approving clean energy projects. Green groups like NRDC once derided an overhaul of the landmark U.S. environmental laws as a deregulatory assault on nature. What’s going on here? The Foundation for American Innovation’s Thomas Hochman put it simply: “Vibe shift.”
The American Pacific. Encyclopaedia Britannica/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
