You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
It’s not just emissions rules. Fuel economy regulations are changing, too, and investments are massive. It may just work.
Two summers ago, the Biden Administration announced a somewhat daunting goal for America’s car industry at the time: to make sure that 50% of all new vehicles sold in 2030 would be zero-emission vehicles.
Evidently, that wasn’t enough of a stunner. With the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement today of vastly more stringent proposed new emissions standards — the strictest ones America has ever seen — the adoption of new all-electric vehicles specifically could be as high as 67% by 2032.
To be fair, a lot has changed in less than two years. Countless new EV models have rolled out since and many more are coming soon. America’s charging network is rapidly expanding, thanks to federal and state investments as well as billions of dollars in grants for private companies. And last year’s Inflation Reduction Act mapped out a robust domestic battery manufacturing supply chain, as well as a modernized tax credit scheme to incentive EV adoption.
But besides seeing more EVs and chargers around, it may not be readily apparent to most people how quickly things are changing. Make no mistake: between those actions, what the EPA is proposing today, and broader global industry trends, the groundwork is being laid right now to transform the car industry into a mostly battery-electric one. Today’s EPA announcement could be seen as the “It’s happening” moment for the wide-scale shift away from gasoline vehicles.
“I think it’s one of the most pivotal climate regulations this administration has rolled out,” said Leilani Gonzalez, the policy director for the nonprofit Zero Emission Transportation Association.
The EPA’s announcement isn’t all that is happening. More changes are expected soon to American fuel economy standards as well that should drive automakers even faster toward an electrified future.
Moreover, some experts say today’s rules could even spur the growth of hybrid cars, specifically plug-in hybrids since the EPA will require automakers to lower emissions but it doesn’t stipulate which powertrain must be used.
Broader industry trends, tough regulations in Europe and China, and the global nature of the car business meant things were likely headed in this direction anyway. But in America, they just feel more official now.
Today’s EPA proposal deals specifically with tailpipe emissions for light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles — in other words, cars, trucks, vans, buses, and large work vehicles. Passenger cars will be the most visible and meaningful example for most people, but these new regulations hit across the board.
According to the proposed rules, vehicles made from 2027 through 2032 will face vastly stricter emissions regulations such that it’s going to be easier for automakers to be in compliance if they mostly sell EVs instead. The EPA even projects as much in its announcement today.
That isn’t all that’s happening. What’s gotten less attention so far are reports that the U.S. Department of Energy is also due to revise how it defines “MPGe” — a somewhat obscure and ill-understood measurement that means the “miles per gallon equivalent” for electric and plug-in hybrid cars. It basically gauges an EV’s energy consumption compared to internal combustion vehicles; you see it on any EV’s spec sheet at the dealership. The rules are about 20 years old.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, MPGe calculations could soon be revised downward to meet a more modern, realistic standard in line with their actual behavior. According to Reuters, this means a Ford F-150 Lighting’s MPGe could drop from 237.1 to 67.1 MPGe, and a Chrysler Pacifica PHEV’s rating will go from 88.2 to 59.5 MPGe.
Fuel economy for automakers is measured in averages for their entire fleets. (You may have heard of Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE.) So by revising MPGe to be more realistic, it keeps automakers from meeting their fuel economy average requirements by sandbagging things with a couple of EVs, like the one person in a group project who does all of the work for everyone. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club have asked for this change for years.
Furthermore, another American auto regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is due to release revised CAFE rules soon as well. Those are expected to get much more strict as well, Reuters reports, even more so than were released last year when the agency reversed the Trump administration’s rollback.
Taken altogether, this means new cars of the late 2020s into the 2030s and beyond must be cleaner, and more fuel efficient, and automakers will not be able to rely on a handful of EVs to carry the weight of their whole fleets. They will have to produce more efficient vehicles with cleaner emissions soon — or no emissions at all. That this is all happening at once does not feel like a coincidence.
Again, the zero-emission car revolution has been in the works for many years. Automakers are largely global enterprises now that don’t like to sell multiple types of vehicles in different markets for cost reasons (though Americans specifically do love their big trucks) and they’re staring down an all-EV market in China and outright ICE bans in Europe. These rules now put America on the same trajectory as other nations and regions — or even some of its own states, like California. They also seem to limit the number of America-specific cars that could be out of compliance with strict global standards.
But it all begs the question: Can it be done? Even Loren McDonald, the head of EV marketing and research firm EVAdoption, said he has his doubts.
“When I looked at the 50% target, I think that was actually achievable,” McDonald said. “Sixty-seven percent by 2032 is a whole other level.”
He said that hitting this goal would require 80%-90% zero-emission vehicle adoption in some of the most populous U.S. states like California. For these reasons and more, including income, various cultural factors and the scarcity of charging, he sees this as a tougher ask in more rural states.
Among his concerns are the still-high cost of EVs, which need to be brought down considerably; the obvious need to grow the public charging infrastructure; the fact that many of the ICE cars on the road now could stay on the road for decades to come; and the ongoing lack of charging options for people in multi-family homes.
On the upside, McDonald said he thinks these new rules could spur some novel innovations that we haven’t seen yet.
“The best thing about this is they haven’t dictated the powertrain,” McDonald said. Future zero- or lower-emission cars could mean a variety of things, although battery EVs remain the most likely long-term solution for passenger cars.
“That will help the GOP [critics of Biden], the automakers, the lobbying groups and so on,” he said. “They’ve said these cars don’t have to be EVs. They recognize that’s probably the way to get there, but it does encourage innovation — maybe long-range hybrids or even other types of fuels.”
Typically, automakers throw a fit whenever they are faced with strict new standards, before developing new technologies to meet these challenges. But switching from a century of gasoline-powered car infrastructure to a battery-centric one does have legitimate, realistic challenges.
These are the concerns expressed by one of the auto industry’s largest lobbying groups, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation — but not without a surprising degree of optimism too.
“The question isn’t can this be done, it’s how fast can it be done, and how fast will depend almost exclusively on having the right policies and market conditions in place to achieve the shared goal of a net zero carbon automotive future,” said the alliance’s president and CEO John Bozzella in a blog post after today’s news.
Many of Bozzella’s concerns show what a long-game approach this will require, from ramping up EV production to increasing chargers to bringing all involved costs down. Taken altogether, it feels almost like the Biden Administration’s equivalent of President Kennedy ordering a moon landing by the end of the decade in 1961.
But Gonzalez, of Zero Emission Transportation Association, said she views today’s news on a much more positive note. She said that the eventual goal is to build an infrastructure where batteries can be recycled over and over again, their minerals repurposed for new uses, so that they cannot be depleted the way gasoline eventually will be.
Gonzalez added that even if Biden loses the White House in 2024 or the Republicans gain power over the Senate, these proposed EPA rules could go into effect in 2027. That means the earliest a new administration could make changes is by 2026, and by then, the auto industry will have already spent years moving toward these aggressive goals. At the same time, she thinks significant growth in charging, battery manufacturing, and more is needed to support zero-emission transportation.
“I think we’re going to get there,” Gonzalez said. “I think folks are doing everything they possibly can to get there.”
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
While they’re getting more accurate all the time, they still rely on data from traditional models — and possibly always will.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has had a bruising few weeks. Deep staffing cuts at the hands of Elon Musk’s efficiency crusaders have led to concerns regarding the potential closure of facilities critical to data-gathering and weather-forecasting operations. Meteorologists have warned that this could put lives at risk, while industries that rely on trustworthy, publicly available weather data — from insurance to fishing, shipping, and agriculture — are bracing for impact. While reliable numbers are difficult to come by, the agency appears to have lost on the order of 7% to 10% of its workforce, or more than 1,000 employees. NOAA’s former deputy director, Andrew Rosenberg, wrote that Musk plans to lay off 50% of the agency, while slashing its budget by 30%.
Will that actually happen? Who the heck knows. But what we can look at are the small cracks that are already emerging, and who could step in to fill that void.
One thing that’s certain is that the National Weather Service, a division of NOAA, announced last week that it is suspending operations at a weather balloon launch site in Alaska, due to staffing shortages. The data gathered at this remote outpost helped inform the agency’s weather forecasts, which are relied upon by hundreds of millions of people, as well as many of the world’s largest companies and public agencies.
Perhaps to Musk’s department, this looks like a prime opportunity for the private sector to step up and demonstrate some nimble data gathering prowess — and indeed a startup that I’ve covered before, WindBorne, has already offered its services. The company, which makes advanced weather balloons, has offered to provide NOAA with data from its own Alaska launches for six months, at no cost. WindBorne is also one of a number of private companies creating AI-based weather models that have outperformed NOAA’s traditional, physics-based models on key metrics such as temperature, wind speed and direction, precipitation, humidity, and pressure.
All this raises the question, though, of what kind of role the private sector could and should play in the weather forecasting space overall. If the architects of Project 2025 have their way, NOAA would be “broken up and downsized,” and its National Weather Service division would “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.” If the Trump administration achieves these goals, “the Weather Service would cease to function in a way that it could meet its mandate to protect American life and property,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told me.
But given that heavyweights like Google, Huawei, and Nvidia are already in the AI-based weather prediction game, along with startups such as WindBorne and Brightband, which is making weather predictions tailored to the needs of specific industries such as insurance, agriculture, or transportation, it wasn’t clear to me whether, if NOAA were to crumble, the accuracy of weather forecasts necessarily would, too. I thought that perhaps Musk, the White House’s most notorious AI enthusiast, might be thinking the same thing. So I asked around.
“There’s actually a very good argument that I think would be very uncontroversial to expand the role of the private sector, even to offload certain parts of the workflow to the private sector,” Swain told me, with regards to NOAA and its adoption — or lack thereof — of AI-based weather forecasting. But what nobody wanted was to get rid of free, publicly available government forecasts completely.
“I don’t want to have to figure out what company to trust. I just want to be able to go and open the National Weather Service and know what’s going on,” John Dean, the CEO and co-founder of WindBorne, told me.
Julian Green, the CEO and co-founder of Brightband, agreed. “The government doesn’t just forecast the weather, but it gives people alerts. And there’s regulation around whether [it tells you that] you should evacuate, or shut your factory down, or so on.” It’s not hard to imagine the ethical quandaries that could arise from a private company with a profit motive deciding who can access potentially life-saving forecasts, and for how much.
WindBorne’s and Brightband’s AI models, as well as those from tech giants such as Google, are significantly less computationally intensive to operate than those from NOAA or the other leading weather forecasting agency, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. These traditional models rely on supercomputers crunching complicated atmospheric equations based on the laws of physics to make their predictions.
But this doesn’t mean the physics-based models are getting replaced by AI now, or potentially ever. Government data and traditional forecasts still make up the backbone of advanced AIs, which are trained on decades of data largely gathered by NOAA satellites, weather balloons, and radar systems, and then interpreted through the lens of standard physics-based models. After training is complete, the AI models can predict what weather patterns will develop, much like ChatGPT predicts the next word in a sequence, but only after being fed a snapshot of initial weather conditions — also pulled from traditional physics-based models.
Essentially, these AI forecasts are built on the backs of the giants, and while their outcomes are hugely promising, they could not exist without that solid foundation. While one day, it might be possible to operate AI forecasting models without relying on traditional models, Dean and Green told me that physics-based models might always be critical for training the AI. So while their companies’ respective models have yielded impressive results, both Dean and Green nixed the idea that their companies could wholly replace the predictions made by the National Weather Service.
All of this is in flux of course, but as Green put it to me in an email, “a good mechanic doesn't throw away good older tools just because you get new tools.” Plus, as Dean explained, there are still conditions under which physics-based models tend to outperform AI, such as “really small-scale and high-res phenomena — let’s say convective events, let’s say severe thunderstorms in the Plains, or tornado formation.”
Even Project 2025’s authors point out that private industry forecasters rely on publicly available NOAA data, though it doesn’t make any reference to AI models or physics models. The document simply says that the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services” and the “efficient delivery of accurate, timely, and unbiased data to the public and to the private sector.”
There are also questions around whether AI models, trained on data from the past, will be able to predict the types of unusual and extreme weather events that are becoming more and more common in a warming world, Swain told me. “Does it fully capture those?” he asked. “There’s a lot of evidence that the answer is no.”
Lastly, NOAA’s weather model, the Global Forecast System, is simply measuring much more than the AI models do today. “It predicts so many different phenomena, like different types of snow, hail, mixing ratios, turbulence,” Dean said. “We’re building up over time to add more and more variables. But for both WindBorne and other models, it’s not the same currently as what GFS does.”
So while the Heritage Foundation might want to delegate all forecasting responsibilities to private companies, the vision I heard from the startups I talked to looked more like a mutually beneficial arrangement than the full commercialization of weather prediction, or even a clean division of labor. “It’s not privatized weather, it’s a public-private partnership,” Dean said of his ideal future, “where you get freely available forecasts from a public institution like NOAA, but they work with our industry to iterate faster and to drive more innovation.”
What everyone seems to want is simply for the government to forecast better, and today that means moving quickly to build AI-based models. NOAA has taken some steps forward, prototyping some models, bolstering its computing capabilities, and even recently partnering with Brightband to optimize its observational data to train AI models. But it remains behind other agencies in this regard. “The Chinese government and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts have done a far better job at adopting AI-based weather forecasts than NOAA has,” Dean told me. “So something does need to change at NOAA to get them to move faster.”
Indiscriminately laying off hundreds of the agency’s employees may not be the best place to start. But if there’s anything we know Musk loves, it’s AI and private sector ingenuity. So maybe, just maybe, this administration will be able to forge the kind of partnerships that can supercharge federal forecasting, while keeping NOAA’s weather predictions free and open for all. Or maybe we’ll all just be paying the big bucks to figure out when a hurricane is going to hit.
On energy transition funds, disappearing butterflies, and Tesla’s stock slump
Current conditions: Australians have been told to prepare for the worst ahead of Cyclone Alfred, and 100,000 people are already without power • Argentina’s Buenos Aires province has been hit by deadly flooding • Critical fire conditions will persist across much of west Texas through Saturday.
Many foreign aid programs have reportedly received a questionnaire from the Trump administration that they must complete as part of a review, presumably to help the government decide whether or not the groups should receive any more federal funds. One of the questions on the list, according toThe New York Times, is: “Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?” Another asks if the project will “directly impact efforts to strengthen U.S. supply chains or secure rare earth minerals?” President Trump issued an executive order freezing foreign aid on his first day back in office. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that aid must be released. The Times notes that “many of the projects under scrutiny have already fired their staff and closed their doors, because they have received no federal funds since the review process ostensibly began. … Within some organizations, there are no staff members left to complete the survey.”
The United States has withdrawn from a global financing program aimed at helping poorer nations ditch fossil fuels and shift to clean energy. A spokesperson from the Treasury Department said the Just Energy Transition Partnership does not align with President Trump’s vision of American economic and environmental values. The program was launched in 2021 and has 10 donor nations, including many European countries. Its first beneficiaries were Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, and Vietnam. The U.S. had committed more than $3 billion to Indonesia and Vietnam and nearly $2 billion to South Africa under the initiative. “The U.S. withdrawal is regrettable,” said Rachel Kyte, the U.K.’s climate envoy. “The rest of the world moves on.” In January, the Trump administration canceled $4 billion in pledges to the Green Climate Fund. “We have to plan for a world where the U.S. is not transfusing funds into the green transition,” Kyte added.
Butterfly populations in the U.S. are rapidly declining due to a combination of climate change, habitat loss, and pesticide exposure, according to a “catastrophic and saddening” new study published in the journal Science. “Butterflies are vanishing from the face of the earth,” one of the study’s co-authors told The Washington Post. The research analyzed data from 77,000 butterfly surveys and found that butterfly numbers have fallen by 22% in just 20 years across the entire country. Of the 342 butterfly species that could be analyzed for trends, 107 plummeted by more than 50% and 22 by more than 90%. Just nine species saw their numbers rise. The researchers say these numbers are likely an underestimate.
The findings underscore the crisis facing all the small, underappreciated insects that pollinate flowers and crops, control pests, maintain soil health, and play a vital role in the food chain. According to the World Wildlife Fund, up to 40% of the world’s insect species may disappear by the end of the century. The study’s lead author, ecologist Collin Edwards, said there is some hope. “Butterflies have fast life cycles,” he said. “At least one generation per year, often two or three. And each of those generations lays a ton of eggs. This means that if we make the world a more hospitable place for butterflies, butterfly species have the capacity to respond very quickly and take advantage of all our efforts.”
The Government Accountability Office yesterday said that Congress can’t review (or repeal) the Environmental Protection Agency’s waiver that lets California set its own vehicle emissions standards. The decision derails plans being spearheaded by Republicans and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to use the congressional review process to overturn the waiver. California’s aggressive emissions standards, which have been adopted by many other states, would effectively end the sale of fully gas-powered cars by 2035. Republicans are mulling their next move.
Tesla’s stock price has been taking a beating as resentment grows around CEO Elon Musk’s political meddling. The company’s valuation soared from around $800 billion to $1.5 trillion in December, when it became clear Musk would become the president-elect’s right hand man. Since that moment, the company’s value has fallen by more than $600 million, effectively erasing the bump in Tesla’s market cap. Shares fell by 5.6% yesterday alone, and sales are cratering abroad and in key U.S. markets like California.
As Andrew Moseman explains for Heatmap, a big drop in sales could be a double-whammy for Tesla revenue. “Recall that the company’s most reliable revenue stream is not really its sales of electric cars, but rather the carbon credits generated by those EVs under California’s auto emissions regulatory scheme, which it can sell to other automakers who’ve yet to meet their emissions targets,” Moseman says. “Tesla’s tumbling sales in the wake of Musk’s antics could reduce the amount of credits it could sell to others, since the credits are tied to sales of low-emissions vehicles.” There was more bad news for Musk today: A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a test flight, sending flaming debris flying across a large area and disrupting air traffic in Florida.
A new report shows that a year after London expanded its low-emissions zone, air quality in the city has improved, with nitrogen dioxide levels across 2024 down significantly:
State legislatures are now a crucial battleground for the future of renewable energy, as Republican lawmakers seek massive restrictions and punitive measures on new solar and wind projects.
Once a hyperlocal affair, the campaign to curtail renewable energy development now includes state-wide setbacks, regulations, and taxes curtailing wind and solar power. As we previously reported, Oklahoma is one of those states – and may as soon as this year enact mandatory setback requirements on wind power facilities, despite getting nearly half its electricity from wind farms. According to a Heatmap Pro analysis, these rules would affect 65 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties.
Oklahoma is far from alone in potentially restricting land use. In Arizona, the State House last month passed legislation that according to one analysis would lock wind developers off more than 90% of all land in the state. Roughly half of the remaining available acreage would be on Native tribal lands and in or near national parks, which are especially tough areas to build wind turbines. The bill is currently pending before the state Senate. There isn’t much wind energy in Arizona but utilities, who’ve been mostly mum on the legislation so far, have been trying to build more wind and solar in order to wean off coal and gas power. Unfortunately, according to the Arizona Republic, this legislation was reportedly prompted by the backlash to a specific new wind project: Lava Run, a 500-megawatt wind project in the state’s White Mountains opposed by nearby residents.
When asked if the project would ultimately be built, Repsol – Lava Run’s developer – simply told me the company “believes that wind energy in Arizona represents an opportunity to benefit local communities and the state as a whole.”
Republican states have passed legislation to restrict renewables development in certain areas before, so this isn’t exactly a novel development. Florida last year banned all offshore wind projects, and in Ohio, a recent law empowering localities to block solar and wind projects has significantly curtailed industry investment in the state. Wisconsin Republicans are trying to enact similar legislation as soon as this year.
But the sweeping quickness of this legislative effort is striking – and transcends land use rules. Elsewhere, development restrictions may come in the form of tax increases, like in Idaho where the chief revenue committee in the state House has unanimously approved legislation that would institute a per-foot excise tax on individual wind turbines taller than 100 feet without local approval. (The average wind turbine is 320-feet tall.) In Missouri, Republican state legislators are advancing legislation that would create additional taxes for building solar projects on agricultural land, a proposal that echoes an effort underway in the U.S. Congress to strip tax benefits from such projects. And Ohio Republicans have introduced plans to axe all existing state subsidies for solar project construction and operation.
Then there’s the situation in Texas, where state Republican lawmakers are expected to revive a bill requiring solar and wind projects to get express approval from the Public Utilities Commission – a process that fossil fuel projects do not have to go through. The state is the nation’s top producer of renewable energy, generating over 169,000 gigawatt-hours last year.
The legislation passed one legislative chamber in the previous session and environmental activists are starting to sound the alarm that it could get even greater traction this go-around. Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment America’s Texas division, told me that if it becomes law, it would likely undermine investor confidence in developing solar and wind in Texas for the foreseeable future. “It’s very unclear if they could get a permit” under the bill, Metzger said. “If some wealthy Texans didn’t want a solar farm near their ranch, they could convince the PUC to reject their permit.”
Metzger said he is also worried that Texas acting to restrict renewables would produce similar regulation in other parts of the country given the state’s legacy role as a conservative policy braintrust.
“You could have this ripple effect that could end the industry,” Metzger said, “at least in several other states.”
The aggressive and rapid approach sweeping state legislatures has yet to get a national spotlight, so I'm curious how the renewables trade groups are handling these bills.
I asked American Clean Power and the Solar Energy Industries Association if they have any data on the rise of anti-renewables legislation and whether they have comments on this trend. Neither organization responded with data on how many states may soon pass renewables restrictions, but they did get back to me quite fast with comments. SEIA provided a statement from Sarah Birmingham, their vice president of state affairs, noting that energy demand “is rising across the country and we need all the electricity we can get, fast.” The group also pointed to polling it commissioned on solar energy popularity in Texas and a report it just happened torelease in January touting the benefits solar can provide to the state’s revenue base.
ACP meanwhile provided me with a similar statement to SEIA’s, defending renewables and criticizing state bills restricting solar and wind project development.
“Reducing their growth at state and local levels stifles innovation, raises consumer energy costs, and hinders a cleaner, more reliable grid, leaving communities vulnerable to energy shortages,” said spokesman Jason Ryan.
It’s clear some legislators agree with ACP. In Montana, legislation targeting wind turbine height is stuttering after a large cadre of industry representatives and property owners complained it would kill development entirely and kneecap tax revenue to the sparsely populated state. And in Mississippi, lawmakers appear to have abandoned efforts to enact a one-year moratorium on wind turbines for a study on the industry’s impacts on agriculture.
But it’s only March. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how aggressive – and how public – the fight over these bills this year will become.