Current conditions: A polar vortex is sending Arctic air across the Upper Midwest and Northeast, bringing more than a foot of snow to parts of Michigan • In the Pacific Northwest, an atmospheric river is set to bring rain showers on the coast and snow inland • The death toll from flooding across Southeast Asia has surpassed 1,300.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Calling EVs a ‘scam,’ Trump leans in on gasoline cars
The Department of Transportation is poised to significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday. Heatmap's Robinson Meyer explained: “The United States essentially has two ways to regulate pollution from cars and light trucks: It can limit greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks, and it can require the fuel economy from new vehicles to get a little better every year. Trump is pulling screws and wires out of both of these systems.” Flanked by auto executives in the Oval Office, Trump announced that new vehicles in 2031 would only need to average 34.5 miles per gallon, down from the 50 miles per gallon goal the Biden administration set. While carmakers publicly cheered the move, executives “privately fretted” to The New York Times “that they are being buffeted by conflicting federal policies” after spending billions of dollars to prepare to manufacture electric vehicles.
The administration claimed the rollback would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car. But as Rob noted in August, the administration’s fight against tailpipe emissions could actually end up raising the price of gasoline.
2. Energy Department floats diesel generators as backup for the grid
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright pitched tapping into backup generators at data centers, hospitals, and factories to augment the supply of power on the grid. Speaking at the North American Gas Forum on Tuesday, Wright said the generators — most of which run on diesel, natural gas, or fuels such as propane — could contribute roughly 35 gigawatts of electricity. “We have 35 gigawatts of backup generators that are sitting there today, and you can’t turn them on. That’s just nuts. Emissions rules or whatever … people, come on,” Wright said, according to E&E News. “If we just turn those generators on for a few hours a year, we’ve expanded the capacity of our grid by 35 gigawatts. That’s massive.”
In a post on X, Aaron Bryant, an energy markets analyst at the law firm White & Case, called the proposal “shortsighted at best,” since the generators expose load growth to some measure of commodity risk and “unworkable at worst” because zoning ordinances, air pollution, and noise restrictions may prohibit use of the generators.
3. The federal National Petroleum Council backs pro-wind measure in permitting reform proposal
The National Petroleum Council, an advisory panel at the Energy Department, submitted its recommendations Wednesday for how to reform federal permitting rules. Among the proposals was an endorsement of an idea to bar federal agencies from yanking already-granted permits. Democrats in Congress put forward the concept to prevent the Trump administration from reversing approvals for offshore turbines and other renewable projects targeted by the White House.
The proposal marks a significant step within the executive branch, given that Trump himself is “the biggest wild card in permitting reform,” as Heatmap’s Jael Holzman wrote last month. But legislation is moving in Congress. In the House, the SPEED Act overwhelmingly won a committee vote last month. Now Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, has introduced a new bill in the Senate with its own House version.
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4. China issued its first speeded-up export licenses for rare earths
Following a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, Beijing agreed to overhaul its licensing regime for approving exports of rare earths to allow for streamlined permits to sell the metals overseas. At least three Chinese manufacturers of rare earth magnets have now secured new licenses to speed up exports to some customers, Reuters reported. It’s a sign of easing tensions between Washington and Beijing, offering some reprieve from the Chinese export restrictions that threatened to choke off the U.S. supply of key metals. But it’s still tenuous. China could ratchet up restrictions again, and the U.S. is still looking to increase domestic production of critical minerals to counter the leverage the People’s Republic wields through its near monopoly on the metals.
5. Geothermal CEO says America’s transmission problems are the ‘biggest threat’ to the U.S. economy
If there’s one thing Tim Latimer, the chief executive of the next-generation geothermal company Fervo Energy, wants to see in any permitting reform, it’s measures to making building new transmission lines easier. “The biggest threat to American global competitiveness, and it does not matter if your priorities are climate change, affordability, the AI race, national security or all of the above, is our country’s complete inability to build and upgrade transmission at any meaningful scale,” Latimer wrote in a post on X. Fervo is working on building the nation’s first full-scale next-generation geothermal plant in Utah, and running new transmission lines out to remote parts of the desert where it’s often best to drill for hot rocks is costly.
Fervo isn’t the only geothermal company making news. On Thursday morning, Zanskar, a geothermal startup that uses modern prospecting methods to find new conventional resources, announced that it had made the biggest “blind” discovery in the U.S. in more than 30 years. A “blind” find is a geothermal system that shows no visible signs of what’s below the surface, such as vents or geysers. While companies such as Fervo aim to use fracking technology to create reservoirs in hot rocks located where there aren’t underground aquatic formations to tap into, Zanskar is betting that using artificial intelligence to locate new conventional resources can result in faster, cheaper geothermal plants than next-generation technology can yield.
THE KICKER
Here’s a little exclusive for you to end on: I got a copy of a letter signed by dozens of pro-nuclear advocates calling on New York state and local officials to kickstart an effort to rebuild the Indian Point nuclear plant just north of New York City. Describing the “forced premature closure” of the plant as “a major setback for New York,” the letter said the plant could be restored, noting that rising demand for clean, firm electricity has spurred utilities in Michigan, Iowa, and Pennsylvania to embark on historic restarts of decommissioned reactors. “Recommissioning Indian Point would stabilize electricity prices and deliver one of the fastest and largest returns of clean power available anywhere in the country,” the letter reads.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
