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While the surge in gasoline costs “likely peaked,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright warned that the price at the pump could remain above $3 a gallon until 2027 during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.
The Trump administration pitched its deal to pay TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to cancel the company’s offshore wind leases as a win-win: The government would reimburse the French energy giant for every penny it spent to acquire the leases, and in exchange, Total would “redirect” the money to U.S. oil and gas development. But new document released Friday and analyzed by Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo show that “Americans’ side of the bargain appears to be worthless” given that “Total did not have to make any new investments to get its check.” Indeed, the company was already planning investments in the U.S. that would likely qualify under the deal.
Offshore wind investments are, meanwhile, moving forward. Danish developer Orsted has installed the first wind turbine at its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York, offshoreWIND.biz reported. The turbine is the first of what’s expected to be 84 turbines totaling nearly a gigawatt of maximum capacity. It comes just weeks after Wind Scylla, the Cadeler-owned vessel specially designed to deploy turbines, completed work on Revolution Wind, Orsted’s flagship first project off the coast of Rhode Island. That the project is moving ahead as normal is a victory unto itself. The Trump administration pulled out every stop to halt construction of all offshore wind projects.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that energy companies facing lawsuits over environmental damage to the Louisiana waterfront from oil and gas production can move those cases from state to federal court, where more favorable outcomes are expected. In a unanimous decision in favor of Chevron, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “Congress has long authorized” the transfer from state to federal courts. The New York Times described the ruling as “a significant victory for oil companies.”
The decision comes two months after the Supreme Court agreed to hear Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which concerns jurisdiction for “public nuisance” claims. It’s still awaiting a hearing date. But the litigation, which dates back to 2018, came when the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, sued the oil giants Exxon Mobil and Suncor for damages from climate change, bringing charges under state law. “The oil companies tried repeatedly to get the case dismissed, arguing that it belonged in federal court. But time and again, the courts disagreed. The Supreme Court already rejected an earlier petition to review the question of whether the case belonged in state or federal court in 2023,” Emily wrote in February. “Now it has agreed to consider a slightly different petition, filed last summer, over whether federal law preempts Boulder’s state-law claims.”
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Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has agreed to work with the state of Indiana to build out “a future pathway for nuclear energy solutions” including “small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear technologies.” The drugmaker behind antidepressant Prozac and erectile dysfunction treatment Cialis signed a letter of intent with the state last month. The deal, first reported by Axios on Friday, marks the latest example of a big corporate power user laying out plans for atomic energy investments for something other than data centers. In 2022, the steelmaker Nucor signed a deal with nuclear developer NuScale to explore building a small modular reactor near one of its electric arc furnaces, and last year forged an alliance with The Nuclear Company to consider backing the startup’s efforts to establish a supply chain for building fleets of reactors. In 2023, Dow Chemical inked a deal with X-energy to use the next-generation nuclear developer’s high-temperature gas-cooled reactors to potentially swap out fossil fuels for splitting atoms as its industrial heat source.
Not all is looking rosy for the nuclear industry. Fermi America, the startup led by former Texas Governor Rick Perry and which promised to build a giant data enter complex backed by, isn’t just “faltering, it’s imploding,” according to a report by independent energy journalist Robert Bryce. But other projects are advancing. On Friday, the next-generation reactor startup Kairos Power broke ground on its demonstration project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Then, on Saturday, Bloomberg reported The Nuclear Company was moving forward with a bid to finish construction of either South Carolina's abandoned V.C. Summer nuclear plant or one of two other potential locations in the state.
The Brucutu iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil.ALEXANDRE MOTA/CVRD/AFP via Getty Images
Brazil is racing to develop its critical minerals as the U.S. looks for new sources in the hemisphere that can help Washington loosen China’s grip over the metals. Just how to regulate the nascent industry is a hot topic in Brazilian politics right now. Lawmakers who back left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are pushing to form a state-owned mining company. In a Sunday post on X, Lula boasted that Brazil “already holds the world’s largest reserve of niobium, the second largest of graphite and rare earths, and the third largest of nickel” — and “only 30% of the mineral potential” is mapped out as of yet. Following the lead of mineral-rich countries in Asia and Africa, Brazil said it would look to make deals for processing and refining. “We will not repeat the role of mere exporters of mineral commodities,” Lula wrote. “We are open to international partnerships that include stages of higher value added and technology transfer.”
That could be an opening for deals with China, which dominates the processing industry. Countries such as Indonesia and Zimbabwe banned exports of raw ore in a bid to capture more of the industrial supply chain. “There are a lot of countries that want something like this right now,” Tim Puko, a minerals analyst at the Eurasia Group, told me on X. “Brazil is one of the few with a good chance of pulling it off.”
Japan may be facing record gas prices as the Iran War squeezed shipments of liquified natural gas. But it’s got some backup coming onto the grid from two sources of clean firm power. Unit 6 of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, a 1,356-megawatt Advanced Boiling Water Reactor shut down after Fukushima, has resumed commercial operation, World Nuclear News reported. Furusato Thermal Power has announced that the roughly 5-megawatt Waita No. 2 geothermal power plant, located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, has officially started commercial operations, just two years after construction started, ThinkGeoEnergy reported.
Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to include other sites The Nuclear Company is considering in South Carolina.
When Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer visited SunZia’s construction site in August 2024, he observed that, once it started running at full blast, the project would “generate roughly 1% of the country’s electricity needs.” Its success in the face of the Trump administration’s attacks on wind could “lay the model” for a new paradigm in which “clean energy buildings and environmental protectors work together to find the best solution for the environment and the climate,” Rob wrote. “We will need many more success stories like it if America is to meet its climate goals — 99 more, to be exact.”
The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 on Thursday to repeal a mining ban on land near the Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, declaring what Heatmap’s Jeva Lange called “open season” on public lands. In what the public lands news site Public Domain called “an unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act,” the vote slashes protections for the iconic nature preserve. Inspiring even fiercer political pushback is the fact that Republicans championed the effort largely to benefit an overseas corporation: Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, which has for years sought to establish a copper-nickel mine on national forest land near the wilderness area. “The Boundary Waters belong to everyone,” Julie Goodwin, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement. “They should be protected and enjoyed by all, not jeopardized to benefit a wealthy foreign company.”
At the same time, global demand for both nickel and copper are surging — and a successful effort to decarbonize the world economy through greater electrification will require a lot more of both metals.
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The good news: The Department of Energy is allowing the Direct Air Capture hub program started under the Biden administration to move forward. In documents submitted to Congress this week, the agency listed as approved the up to $1.2 billion the program awarded to two projects: Occidental Petroleum’s South Texas DAC Hub, and Climeworks and Heirloom’s joint Project Cypress in Louisiana. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo noted: “This fate was far from certain.” After the Energy Department cut funding for 10 of the original 21 projects last fall, a leaked list of projects suggested the Louisiana and Texas hubs would be targeted in a second wave of rescissions. The bad news: Last week, Rob had a scoop that Microsoft — whose carbon removal buying made up roughly 80% of the industry — was pausing its purchases. And as he wrote yesterday, even if it’s just temporary, the pause will ripple through the nascent market.
Other technologies that once seemed like science fiction are, in fact, moving forward. In an exclusive for Heatmap, I reported that Clean Core Thorium Energy, a Chicago-based company designing thorium fuel bundles that works in existing reactors, inked a deal to manufacture its first four units. In addition to assembling the bundles, the Canadian National Laboratories will supply the small amount of a special kind of uranium fuel needed to be blended into Clean Core’s mix and that serves as a spark plug for the reaction.
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Last October, the Energy Department asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to set rules for patching data centers, advanced factories, and other large loads onto the grid. The move, as Utility Dive reported at the time, sparked controversy over whether it represented a Washington power grab given that the landmark Federal Power Act gives states jurisdiction over retail electricity interconnections. Now FERC has said it plans to respond. On Thursday, Robin Millican, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, posted on X that FERC announced a notice of intent to act on the Energy Department’s request, with a ruling expected in June. “Good,” she wrote. “Ensuring interconnection costs from data centers, advanced manufacturing, and big electrification projects aren’t passed to retail customers is overdue.”
Back in January, I told you that two geothermal startups raised a combined $212 million: Zanskar, which uses artificial intelligence to hunt down previously undetected conventional geothermal resources underground; and Sage Geosystems, a next-generation startup using fracking technology to drill for geothermal heat in places that conventional resources can’t tap. This week we saw two geothermal companies once again net a nine-digit number. Once again, Zanskar — considered by experts Heatmap surveyed to be one of the most promising climate-tech companies in the game right now for a reason, after all — announced the closing of another $40 million fundraise. Just Capital and Spring Lane Capital led the round, with an additional investment from Tierra Adentro Growth Capital. Zanskar said the round was a development capital facility, a type of deal that usually involves equity or debt to fund a company’s growth. It is “among the first ever structured for early-stage geothermal development, drawing on the best practices from the renewables and natural resource sectors,” the company said Thursday in a press release. The financing will help establish a revolving line of credit “designed to accelerate project development.”
On Wednesday, another competitor in the next-generation geothermal space, Mazama Energy, pulled in a fresh round of capital. The Frisco, Texas-based company, which last year boasted a system that reached hotter temperatures than any other geothermal company, just raised $100 million, according to Axios.
San Diego H2O. Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images
San Diego, once the poster child for a drought-parched Southern Californian city, is now looking to become a water exporter, The Wall Street Journal reported. North America’s largest desalination plant is producing so much freshwater for the San Diego County Water Authority that the city is working on a deal to sell millions of gallons to Arizona and Nevada. The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which opened in 2015 and is owned by an infrastructure investment firm, may produce more expensive than average water, but “it is important to note that it is more reliable than other sources,” Keith R. Solar, a water attorney from the seaside neighborhood of Point Loma, wrote in the Voice of San Diego last year. “Its value as insurance against disruption of supplies from other sources makes it a critical part of our future.”
