Nevada’s Behemoth Solar Megaproject Sunsets After Trump Delays

Current conditions: A possible nor’easter is barreling toward New York City with this weekend with heavy rain, flooding, and winds of up to 50 miles per hour • While Hurricane Priscilla has weakened to a tropical storm, it’s still battering Baja California with winds of up to 70 miles per hour • A heatwave in Iran is raising temperatures so much that even elevations of more than 6,500 feet are nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump cancels Nevada’s largest solar megaproject

The Bureau of Land Management has canceled Nevada’s largest solar megaproject, Esmeralda 7, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman scooped late Thursday. The sprawling network of panels and batteries in the state’s western desert was set to produce a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power — equal to nearly all the power supplied to the southern part of the state by the state’s main public utility. At maximum output, the project could have churned out more power than the country’s largest nuclear plant, the nearly 5 gigawatts from Plant Vogtle’s four reactors in Georgia, and just under the nearly 7.1-gigawatt Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington, the nation’s most powerful electrical station. It would have been one of the largest solar projects in the world.

Backed by NextEra Energy, Invenergy, ConnectGen, and other renewables developers, the project was moving forward at what Jael called “a relatively smooth pace under the Biden administration, albeit with significant concerns raised by environmentalists about its impacts on wildlife and fauna.” The solar farm notched a rare procedural win in the early days of the Trump administration when the Bureau of Land Management advanced its draft environmental impact statement. When the environmental review came out, BLM said the record of decision would arrive in July. “But that never happened,” Jael wrote. Instead, as part of a deal with conservative harderliners in Congress to pass his tax megabill, Trump issued an executive order that, among other actions aimed at curtailing renewables development, directed the Department of the Interior to review its policies toward wind and solar. A series of departmental orders followed that effectively froze all permitting decisions for solar. Fast forward to today, when Esmeralda 7’s status on the BLM website was changed to “cancelled,” normally an indication that the developers pulled the plug.

2. America’s biggest offshore wind farm will be online in six months

The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, a 2.6-gigawatt giant that’s nearly triple the size of the nation’s current largest operating seaborne wind farm, is just six months from coming online, its leadership said. In an August earnings call, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue said the project would start producing electricity in “early 2026.” But on Thursday, the company told Canary Media’s Clare Fieseler that “first power will occur in Q1 of next year,” and “we are still on schedule to complete by late 2026.” As of the end of last month, Dominion had installed all 176 turbine foundations.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has waged what Jael called a “total war on wind power,” halting work on projects that were nearly 80% complete and ordering a half dozen federal agencies to join the effort. But the industry has fought back. Two weeks ago, as I reported in this newsletter, a federal judge lifted the administration’s stop-work order. While Secretary of Energy Chris Wright last month brushed off the targeting of offshore wind as a “one-off complication,” the assault has alarmed even the administration's favored sectors of the energy industry. Earlier this week, Shell’s top executive raised the alarm over what she said could set a precedent that blows back to big oil in the future.

Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:

3. The Chevy Bolt is coming back

A fresh jolt for the Bolt. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Elon Musk’s promise to deliver a Tesla for under $30,000 may — as I wrote here yesterday — remains unfulfilled, but one of his biggest rivals is bringing back its popular affordable electric vehicle. General Motors announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out a new line of Chevrolet Bolts in 2027, starting at $29,990 and later introducing a $28,995 model. “The Chevrolet Bolt was the industry’s first affordable mass-market, long-range EV and it commanded one of GM’s most loyal customer bases thanks to its price, versatility and practicality,” Scott Bell, Chevrolet’s global vice president, said in a statement. “After production ended, we heard our customer’s feedback and their love for this product. So the Bolt is coming back — by popular demand and better than ever — for a limited time.” When Chevy discontinued the Bolt in 2023, the car was popular but had some problems, Andrew Moseman wrote Thursday in Heatmap. And while the 2027 Bolt “is virtually indistinguishable from the old car,” he wrote, “what’s inside is a welcome leap forward.” Notably, the new Bolt’s lithium-ion-phosphate battery delivers a max range of 255 miles and can handle a 100% charge without risking long-term damage to the battery’s lifespan.

Though the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles expired last month, it’s morning in America for battery-powered car drivers. The U.S. is adding charging stations at a record clip, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

4. China ratchets up export controls on rare earths

China’s Commerce Ministry announced a new edict Thursday requiring foreign suppliers to obtain approval from Beijing to export some products with certain rare earths if the metals account for 0.1% of the goods’ total value. Export applications for products with military uses “generally won’t be approved,” The Wall Street Journal reported, and licenses related to semiconductors or artificial intelligence will be granted on a case-by-case basis. “This is a very big deal,” Dean W. Bell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, wrote in a post on X. “China has asserted sweeping control over the entire global semiconductor supply chain, putting export license requirements on all rare earths used to manufacture advanced chips. If enforced aggressively, this policy could mean ‘lights out’ for the US AI boom, and likely lead to a recession/economic crisis in the US in the short term.” The new restrictions even apply to some lithium batteries and equipment used to make them.

5. Nestle quits industry alliance to cut dairy’s carbon footprint

Less than two years ago, Nestle formed an industry alliance with food giants Danone and Kraft Heinz to cut methane emissions from the dairy industry’s hundreds of thousands of suppliers. But last month, Nestle’s logo vanished from the initiative's website. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the Swiss behemoth had abandoned the effort. “We have decided to discontinue our membership of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance,” a company spokesperson told the newswire.

The exit comes as sustainability executives, academics, and carbon-accounting experts spar over how to measure companies’ emissions in what Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo called an “obscure philosophical battle that could reshape the clean energy economy.” With the Trump administration phasing out wind and solar tax credits next year, Emily wrote, “voluntary action by companies will take on even greater importance in shaping the clean energy transition. While in theory, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol solely develops accounting rules and does not force companies to take any particular action, it’s undeniable that its decisions will set the stage for the next chapter of decarbonization.”

THE KICKER

Increasingly extreme weather is driving up insurance costs all over the world, making homes almost impossible to underwrite in fire- or flood-prone places such as California or Florida where climate change is raising recovery costs. But Japan’s largest non-life insurer is taking a different approach than just canceling policies. As the Financial Times reported Thursday, Tokio Marine purchased Integrated Design & Engineering this year for roughly $642 million in a bid to offer the design consultancy’s services to “Japanese companies at risk of landslides, flooding, and natural disasters related to climate change” to upgrade facilities before destruction occurs.