Climate Progress Takes a Hit From Trump

Current conditions: The Garnet Fire has scorched nearly 55,000 acres in Sierra National Forest, east of Fresno, California, and now threatens 2,000-year-old sequoia trees • Hurricane Kiko is losing intensity as it reaches Hawaii • Tropical Storm Tapah has made landfall over China, forcing evacuations and school closures.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump’s rollbacks could halve U.S. emissions cuts

U.S. emissions cuts under Trump's current policy versus the Biden-era policies. Rhodium Group

The United States’ output of planet-heating pollution is on track to continue double-digit declines through 2040, even if the Trump administration successfully eliminates all the policies it’s targeting to cut greenhouse gas emissions. That’s according to the latest assessment from the Rhodium Group consultancy. A new report published Wednesday morning found that U.S. emissions are set to decline by 26% to 43% relative to 2005 levels in 2040. While that sounds like a significant drop, it’s a “meaningful shift” away from Rhodium’s estimates last year, which showed a steeper decline of 38% to 56%. In all, as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote, the Trump administration’s policies could halve U.S. emissions cuts.

“Perhaps the only bright side in the report is a section on household energy costs,” Emily added. “The loss of tax credits for renewables and home efficiency upgrades will raise electricity bills compared to the projections in last year’s report. But despite that, Rhodium expects overall household energy costs to decrease in the coming decades — in all scenarios. That’s primarily due to the switch to electric vehicles, which lowers transportation costs for EV drivers and puts downward pressure on the cost of gasoline for everyone else.”

2. Rick Perry’s data center company plans push for his former agency

Fermi America, the company former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry founded to build one of the world’s biggest data center complexes in Texas, plans to push the Department of Energy for loans to finance its project, E&E News reported. In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission for its initial public offering on Monday, the developer laid out its vision for a 5,263-acre gas and nuclear complex in Amarillo, Texas, on land owned by the Texas Tech University. The company said it was in “pre-approval” process with the Energy Department’s loan office, which it hoped would “finance key components” of its energy infrastructure. The company has filed an application for up to four Westinghouse nuclear reactors at the site, which federal regulators confirmed they’re reviewing. In his executive orders on nuclear power in May, Trump directed the Energy Department to approve at least 10 new large-scale reactors. “We believe the Trump Administration’s renewed focus on expedited permitting and the expansion of nuclear infrastructure in the United States presents a favorable backdrop for Fermi to replicate its business model,” the filing said.

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3. Solar developer Pine Gate enlists advisers to help deal with Trump’s anti-renewables push

Solar developer Pine Gate Renewables has started consulting advisers to deal with liquidity constraints amid the Trump administration’s push to derail the clean energy industry, Bloomberg reported. The company is working with Lazard Inc. and Latham & Watkins. It has some high-profile backers with loans from Brookfield Asset Management and Carlyle Group, while Blackstone provided preferred equity.

The move to enlist advisers is a sign of the challenges ahead for renewables. With new restrictions on imported solar panels coming into force, solar prices could soon rise. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported in April, that could erode solar’s price advantage over gas. With tariffs staying in place and tax credits going away, Morgan Stanley analysts warned that power purchase agreement prices for solar could go up as high as $73. That’s just a few dollars off from the cost of natural gas.

4. Forest Service reverses decades-old ban on firefighting masks

For decades, the U.S. government banned wildfire fighters from wearing masks that officials deemed too cumbersome, allowing only bandannas that offer no protection against toxins in wildfire smoke. But the Forest Service proposed new guidance Monday acknowledging for the first time that masks can protect firefighters against harmful particles in the smoke, The New York Times reported. The move came as part of a series of safety reforms meant to improve conditions for firefighters. In its reversal, the agency said it has now stockpiled some 80,000 N95 masks and will include them in standard equipment packs for all large fires.

Keeping firefighters employed has been difficult as blazes grow with each passing year. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange wrote last year, “retirements and defections from skill-based work like firefighting are especially damaging because with every senior departure goes the kind of on-the-job expertise that green new hires can’t replace. But that’s if there are new hires in the first place. Rumors abound that the agencies are struggling to fill their openings even this late in the training cycle, with a known vacancy rate of 20% in the Forest Service force alone.” As I reported last week in this newsletter, the Trump administration’s arrest of immigrant firefighters battling the largest blaze in Washington last month has spurred blowback from lawyers who say the move jeopardized the effort to contain the disaster.

5. Europe’s heat pump industry faces a ‘structural problem’

After booming in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European heat pump sales are slumping. It’s part of what one of the world’s largest manufacturers of the appliances called a “structural problem,” as demand dropped to a third of previous projections. In an interview with the Financial Times, Daikin president Naofumi Takenaka said orders for heat pumps have fallen as the economy has weakened and subsidies have decreased. “When we compare the market demand we had projected for 2025 at the time to the current market, it has stopped at roughly one-third of that, so it will take three to five years to return to such levels,” Takenaka said, speaking at Daikin’s headquarters in Osaka. “This is a structural problem.”

THE KICKER

Beaked whales are considered one of the least understood mammals in the world due to their cryptic behavior and distribution in offshore waters, diving deeper than any other mammals on record and going below the surface for more than two hours. But scientists at Brazil’s Instituto Aqualie, Juiz de Fora Federal University, Mineral Engenharia e Meio Ambiente, and Santa Catarina State University set out to record the elusive whales. By doing so, they identified at least three different beaked whale species. “The motivation for this research arose from the need to expand knowledge on cetacean biodiversity in Brazilian waters, with particular attention to deep-diving species such as beaked whales,” author Raphael Barbosa Machado said in a press release.