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THE TOP FIVE
1. Trump formally repeals the rule undergirding all federal climate policy
President Donald Trump has done what he didn’t dare attempt during his first term, repealing the finding that provided the legal basis for virtually all federal regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions. By rescinding the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which established that planet-heating emissions harm human health and therefore qualify for restrictions under the Clean Air Act, the Trump administration hopes to unwind all rules on pollution from tailpipes, trucks, power plants, pipelines, and drilling sites all in one fell swoop. “This is about as big as it gets,” Trump said alongside Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin at a White House event Thursday.
The repeal, which is sure to face legal challenges, opens up what Reuters called a new front in the legal wars over climate change. Until now, the Supreme Court had declined to hear so-called public nuisance cases brought by activists against fossil fuel companies on the grounds that the legal question of emissions was being sorted out through federal regulations. By eliminating those rules outright, litigants could once again have new standing to sue over greenhouse gas emissions. To catch up on the endangerment finding in general, Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer and Emily Pontecorvo put together a handy explainer here.
2. Ohio weighs a bill that would kill off wind and solar projects
A bill winding its way through Ohio’s Republican-controlled state legislature would put new restrictions on development of wind and solar projects. The state already makes solar and wind developers jump over what Canary Media called extra hurdles that “don’t apply to fossil-fueled or nuclear power plants, including counties’ ability to ban projects.” For example, siting authorities defer to local opposition on renewable energy but “grant opponents little say over where drilling rigs and fracking waste can go.”
The new legislation would make it state policy “in all cases” for new power plants to “employ affordable, reliable, and clean energy sources.” What qualifies as “affordable, reliable, and clean”? Pretty much everything except wind and solar, potentially creating a total embargo on the energy sources at any utility scale. The legislation mirrors a generic bill promoted to states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing policy shop.
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3. China’s flat-or-falling emissions trend keeps going
China’s carbon dioxide emissions fell by 1% in the last three months of 2025, amounting to a 0.3% drop for the full year. That’s according to a new analysis by Carbon Brief. The decline extends the “flat or falling” trend in China’s emissions that started in March 2024 and has now lasted nearly two years. Emissions from fossil fuels actually increased by 0.1%, but pollution from cement plunged 7%. While the grid remains heavily reliant on coal, solar output soared by 43% last year compared to 2024. Wind grew by 14% and nuclear by 8%. All of that allowed coal generation to fall by 1.9%.
At least one sector saw a spike in emissions: Chemicals, which saw emissions grow 12%. Most experts interviewed in Heatmap’s Insiders Survey said they viewed China has a climate “hero” for its emissions cuts. But an overhaul to the country’s electricity markets yielded a decline in solar growth last year that’s expected to stretch into this year.
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4. Rivian’s stock surges on the promise of a 50% hike in deliveries
Rivian Automotive’s shares surged nearly 15% in after-hours trading Thursday when the electric automaker announced earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations. While it cautioned that it would continue losing money ahead of the launch of its next-generation R2 mid-size SUV, the company said it would deliver 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles in 2026, up 47% to 59% compared with 2025. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told CNBC that the R2 would make up the “majority of the volume” of the business by the end of next year. He told investors 2025 was a “foundational year” for the company, but that 2026 would be “an inflection point.”
Another clean energy company is now hot on the stock market. SOLV Energy, a solar and battery storage construction contractor, secured market capitalization eclipsing $6 billion in the two days since it started trading on the Nasdaq. The company, according to Latitude Media, is “the first pure-play solar and storage” company in the engineering, procurement, and construction sector of the industry to go public since 2008.
5. U.S. is planning to build a nuclear-powered industrial park in Israel
A file photo of Israel's nuclear reactor at the Dimona research complex.Getty Images
Israel has never confirmed that it has nuclear weapons, but it’s widely believed to have completed its first operating warhead in the 1960s. Rather than give up its strategic ambiguity over its arsenal, Israel instead forfeited the development of civilian nuclear energy, which would have required opening up its weapons program to the scrutiny of regulators at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. That apparently won’t stop the U.S. from building a reactor in Israel to power a joint industrial complex. Washington plans to develop a campus with an advanced microchip factory and data centers that would be powered by a small modular reactor, NucNet reported. So-called SMRs have yet to be built at a commercial scale anywhere in the world. But the U.S. government is betting that smaller, less powerful reactors purchased in packs can bring down the cost of building nuclear plants and appeal to fearful skeptics as a novel spin on the older technology.
In reality, SMRs are based on a range of designs, some of which closely mirror traditional, large-scale reactors but for the power output, and a growing chorus of critics say the economies of scale are needed to make nuclear projects pencil out. But the true value of SMRs is for off-grid power. As I wrote last week for Heatmap, if the U.S. government wants it for some national security concern, the price doesn’t matter as much.
THE KICKER
Of all the fusion companies racing to build the first power plant, Helion’s promise of commercial electricity before the end of the decade has raised eyebrows for its ambition. But the company has hit a milestone. On Friday morning, Helion’s Polaris prototype became the first privately developed fusion reactor to use a deuterium-tritium fuel source. The machine also set a record with plasma temperatures 150 million degrees Celsius, smashing its own previous record of 100 million degrees with an earlier iteration of Helion’s reactor.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to replace several items from August that ran by mistake.
A file photo of Israel's nuclear reactor at the Dimona research complex.Getty Images
