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 getting hot in here, so close up all your domes ♫

Home runs ain’t the half of it.
Last week, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society issued a widely cited report that found global warming is “juicing” baseballs. The result is an extra 50 or so home runs per year in the major leagues. “It’s basic physics,” The Associated Press explained. “When air heats up, molecules move faster and away from each other, making the air less dense. Baseballs launched off a bat go farther through thinner air because there’s less resistance to slow the ball.”
Baseball fans have long been aware that hot weather makes for more home runs, so it follows that increasing temperatures will have an impact on the game in the years ahead. But MLB has more to worry about than the game becoming boring again because of too many dingers. Here are a few more ways climate change could irrevocably alter the future of America’s favorite past time:
We’ve already covered how the ball will behave differently off the bat. But what about out of the hand?
Heat and high humidity mean less air density, which in turn causes “fastballs to be faster, curveballs to curve less, and spin rates of pitches to be higher,” wrote Lawrence Rocks for SABR’s “Future of Baseball” issue in 2021. Of course, “these factors will cause pitchers to change their usage percentages on their pitch selection.”
As lowland parks grow hotter, we can expect them to behave more like the famously thin-aired Coors Field in Denver — particularly Atlanta, Kansas City, and Houston, which have among the lowest air densities of the Major League stadiums. Heat and humidity will cause baseballs to move more quickly out of the hand while the reduction in the Magnus force will cause them to break more poorly. And if fastballs get faster and curveballs break less, you can naturally expect to see more heaters in the game — and potentially more strikeouts as a result.
At the time of first pitch in Seattle, the Air Quality Index was 220. During the nine innings that followed, it would peak at 240 — more than twice the satisfactory level and “unhealthy for all groups.”
The year was 2020, and wildfires up and down the West Coast were making the empty stadiums even more apocalyptic. Shortly after smoke turned the Bay Area a dystopian orange, MLB decided to move home games from Seattle to San Francisco’s Oracle Park — because the air quality in the Pacific Northwest at that point was too unsafe for athletes.
\u201cA look outside the San Francisco Giants' stadium today.\u201d— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) 1599694410
It won’t be the last time baseball games are moved or even postponed due to air quality from fires. In 2022, perhaps against better judgment, the Mariners played the ALDS against the Astros when the AQI was 158. Though the unwritten rule is to postpone games when the AQI tops 200, players are beginning to push back, saying — rightfully — that prolonged exposure to inhaling smoke is dangerous. “It’s not like if you’re below 200, everything is fine, and if you’re above 200, everybody is severely affected,” a public health official pointed out to The Athletic. “There’s a whole continuum.”
If the Oakland Athletics move to Las Vegas, they’re all but certain to become the ninth Major League baseball team with at least the ability — if not the necessity — to play indoors.
In addition to the fully enclosed Tropicana Dome in Tampa Bay, seven stadiums currently have retractable roofs. And it is in the warmest, sunniest markets where those roofs most often remain closed: “Miami … played under an open roof just five times in the past two seasons — combined,” Fox Weather reports. The Rangers, meanwhile, replaced their only-26-year-old ballpark in 2019 because it had gotten literally too hot to play in Texas without air conditioning.
It’s not uncommon for the remaining open-air ballparks to top 95 degrees in the summer — a miserable experience for players and fans alike. Without covering more ballparks, injuries could climb and attendance could drop. “People might just say forget about it. I’m not going to a baseball game. It’s 105 degrees,” Brad Humphreys, professor of economics at West Virginia University, told Capital News Service.
Triple-A baseball introduced electronic strike zones this season, fueling speculation that the controversial robo-ump system could be coming to the Major Leagues next. But there is one big reason in favor of electronic strike zones that doesn’t often get mentioned in the debate: climate change.
A recent study found that “umpires call pitches less accurately in uncomfortable temperatures, with performance at its worst in extreme heat conditions,” Monmouth University writes. Incorrect calls were made at a rate of about 1% worse when temperatures topped 95 degrees. And while that might seem insignificant, “it is non-trivial for this high-revenue, high-stakes industry,” the study’s author, Monmouth associate professor of economics Eric Fesselmeyer, said. “Moreover, high temperatures cause an even greater decrease in accuracy on close-call pitches along the edges of the strike zone.”
Aggression and violence rise with the temperatures. In one study, violent crimes went up by as much as 5.7% on days with a maximum daily temperature above 85 degrees, and as much as 10% on days above about 88.
As dugouts and diamonds get hotter, tempers will too. But there is another reason to believe there will be more bench-clearing brawls beyond heat-induced short-fuses. According to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 1991, “a positive and significant relationship was found between temperature and the number of hit batters per game, even when potentially confounding variables having nothing to do with aggression were partialed out.”
Similarly, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business found in 2011 that “pitchers whose teammates get hit by a pitch are more likely to retaliate and plunk an opposing batter when the temperature reaches 90 degrees than when it is cooler.” Curiously, if no one has been hit in a game, the study found “high temperatures have little effect on a pitcher’s behavior.” As one of the researchers put it, “heat affects a specific form of aggression. It increases retribution.”
Hurricane Ian — the category 4 hurricane that slammed southwest Florida last September — was the state’s costliest storm, inflicting $109 billion in damage including “totally” destroying 900 structures in Fort Meyers Beach alone. Among the damages: CenturyLink Sports Complex, the spring training facility of the Minnesota Twins; Fenway South, the Boston Red Sox’s facility; and Charlotte Sports Park, the Tampa Bay Rays’ spring training home, which sustained damage so extensive that the team had to find another stadium to practice in during the 2023 spring training season.
The lasting damage of the storm extends beyond the physical: “Hurricane Ian’s impact on Lee County likely played a role in depressing the crowds at Red Sox and Twins games this year,” Fort Myers News-Press reports.
There are no murmurs of moving the Grapefruit League’s spring training facilities — yet. But already the rising sea levels and storms of Florida are ruling out new stadium locations, including at least one potential regular-season home for the Rays. “Sites that once appeared to be great places to build a ballpark are now expected to be underwater,” the team president said. With climate already costing teams money and fans, as well as being a deciding factor in new builds, the Grapefruit League could prudently decide to uproot for higher grounds.
Homebuyers are taking into account the future climate conditions of potential properties, and if MLB is wise, it will do the same when considering team expansion.
From a climate standpoint, it already seems egregious to move a team to a desert city that is running out of drinkable water in the summer, though the Oakland A’s potential relocation to Las Vegas is still very much on the table. But when MLB looks at locations to expand to — Portland, Mexico City, North Carolina, Nashville, Montreal, and Vancouver have also been floated — the climate calculus becomes ever more important.
In 60 years, Portland will have a climate similar to Sacramento, complete with the threat of wildfire smoke. Mexico City is getting hotter, drier, and sinking. Charlotte and Raleigh will eventually “resemble the Florida panhandle, specifically Tallahassee, which is 12.6 °F warmer and 10.6% to 14.4% wetter than winter in Charlotte and Raleigh. Nashville is not too far, with Mobile, Alabama serving as its closest projection,” Fangraphs writes in an assessment of the future of ballparks in the climate crisis.
Unsurprisingly, with an eye for the future, it is the northernmost cities that look like the best options to withstand climate change impacts: “Vancouver and Montreal could look toward current day T-Mobile Park and Citizens Bank Park as examples of how to keep fans comfortable during games.”
Over the course of 12 months between 2019 and 2020, 10% of MLB teams switched from real grass to turf. “The three stadiums that replaced their grass share a lot in common,” wrote The Wall Street Journal at the time: “They play in cities with extreme weather and have retractable roofs.”
In Arizona, for example, real grass required sunlight — and thus an open roof — until between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., which meant that players often worked out before games in temperatures of 110 degrees or more. By the time fans arrived, the building would still be sweltering, air conditioning not having yet kicked in. But by switching to turf, “the roof can remain closed all summer.”
Switching to turf also eliminates the demands of watering: Conservatively, about 62,500 gallons of water a week are required to maintain an average field, an amount 89 homes would use in the same amount of time. Though that water is likely negligible in the grand scheme of things, it’s important for teams to take “social responsibility” by “walking the walk,” Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall told The Associated Press.
Turf remains controversial — it can affect the bounce of balls and result in higher rates of injuries. Recent advances in turf technology, though, are making it more appealing for teams and the planet.
Anyone who’s ever watched nine innings of live baseball knows the kind of mess fans leave behind: peanut shell piles; beer cups; burger trays; plastic ice cream bowls shaped like hats; abandoned bobbleheads. Overall, baseball audiences create more than 1,000 tons of waste every season, according to the Green Sports Alliance.
A growing number of stadiums are now aspiring to contribute less to landfills, including by using compostable serving items and reducing food waste. But one place waste is still frequently overlooked is in promotional giveaways.
Every year, MLB gives away around four million bobbleheads in addition to other tchotchkes like branded visors, T-shirts, sunglasses, and bags. While some of these end up as treasured pieces of home collections, the vast majority are junk destined for landfills.
Though teams show no sign of forgoing giveaways anytime soon, the more environmentally conscious parks may begin to consider new ways of reducing their waste — including by curbing handouts of cheaply made petroleum products and environmentally taxing garments that no one actually needs.
Every year, athletes end up on the Injured List for reasons ranging from benign to ridiculous. Now there is a new reason to be pulled from a game: heat illness. During one 2018 game at Wrigley Field with a heat index of 107, four players ultimately left the field for temperature-related causes, including three who had to be treated with IV fluids. During another game in 2021, a 28-year-old pitcher vomited on the mound in New York City. Diagnosis? Heat exhaustion.
Normal sports injuries also spike as it gets warmer. “We always had what seemed to be a lot more soft-tissue leg injuries than some of the other clubs. Hamstrings, calf injuries, from guys running the bases,” a former Rangers trainer told The Atlantic in 2016, prior to the construction of the team’s new air-conditioned stadium. “Our staff attributed that to the excessive heat and the fatigue.”
The prevalence of naturally occurring injuries could go up too because as players get dehydrated, their brain, thought capacity, and reflexes “are affected and the player is not able to react immediately on the field,” a 2021 study by the International Journal of Physical Education found. “The player will be injured due to a fall or collision with another player or being hit by a ball.”
Tragically, rising temperatures also are known to contribute to an increased number of deaths, a pattern already observable in high school football. Baseball fans and minor league athletes have already died due to heat-related causes — an awful pattern that isn’t likely to abate.
In 2017, the mercury during the first game of the World Series in Los Angeles hit 103 degrees after 5 p.m.; the same year, the Oakland A’s Triple-A affiliate played in 111-degree heat in Las Vegas. On average, the temperature across the 27 Major League Baseball cities has risen over two degrees since 1970. And “the difference in home run rates between a 90-degree day and a 40-degree day is roughly equivalent to the difference between hitting in Citizens Bank Park” — which is small — “versus Citi Field,” which is comparatively huge, ESPN reports.
In our hotter, damper future, baseball will be a markedly different game than it was 50 years ago — or even now. Heat will affect players’ reflexes and focus. Balls will move differently through thinner, warmer air. Fielding could change ever so slightly as turf becomes more common, and pitchers might switch up their pitches as electronic strike zones come into use and curveballs become less effective.
All good statistical comparisons need context, and that is especially true in the ever-changing sport of baseball. But in the next century of the sport, it is all but certain that the literal environment of the games — from the weather to the air density to the AQI — will be a necessary asterisk beside unusual home runs and IL designations. One day, announcers may even reminisce about “open air” stadiums from their climate-controlled booths during downtime on broadcasts. Perhaps we’ll even have a name for the days of comparatively thicker air: the “cool-ball era.”
Get the best of Heatmap in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter:
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
The lost federal grants represent about half the organization’s budget.
The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a decades-old nonprofit that provides technical expertise to cities across the country building out renewable clean energy projects, issued a dramatic plea for private donations in order to stay afloat after it says federal funding was suddenly slashed by the Trump administration.
IREC’s executive director Chris Nichols said in an email to all of the organization’s supporters that it has “already been forced to lay off many of our high-performing staff members” after millions of federal dollars to three of its programs were eliminated in the Trump administration’s shutdown-related funding cuts last week. Nichols said the administration nixed the funding simply because the nonprofit’s corporation was registered in New York, and without regard for IREC’s work with countless cities and towns in Republican-led states. (Look no further than this map of local governments who receive the program’s zero-cost solar siting policy assistance to see just how politically diverse the recipients are.)
“Urgent: IREC Needs You Now,” begins Nichols’ email, which was also posted to the organization’s website in full. “I need to be blunt: IREC, our mission, and the clean energy progress we lead is under assault.”
In an interview this afternoon, Nichols told me the DOE funding added up to at least $8 million and was set to be doled out over multiple years. She said the organization laid off eight employees — roughly a third of the organization’s small staff of fewer than two-dozen people — because the money lost for this year represented about half of IREC’s budget. She said this came after the organization also lost more than $4 million in competitive grant funding for apprenticeship training from the Labor Department because the work “didn’t align with the administration’s priorities.”
Nichols said the renewable energy sector was losing the crucial “glue” that holds a lot of the energy transition together in the funding cuts. “I’m worried about the next generation,” she told me. “Electricity is going to be the new housing [shortage].”
IREC has been a leading resource for the entire solar and transmission industry since 1982, providing training assistance and independent analysis of the sector’s performance, and develops stuff like model interconnection standards and best practices for permitting energy storage deployment best practices. The organization boasts having worked on developing renewable energy and training local workforces in more than 35 states. In 2021, it absorbed another nonprofit, The Solar Foundation, which has put together the widely used annual Solar Jobs Census since 2010.
In other words, this isn’t something new facing a potentially fatal funding crisis — this is the sort of bedrock institutional know-how that will take a long time to rebuild should it disappear.
To be sure, IREC’s work has received some private financing — as demonstrated by its solar-centric sponsorships page — but it has also relied on funding from Energy Department grants, some of which were identified by congressional Democrats as included in DOE’s slash spree last week. In addition, IREC has previously received funding from the Labor Department and National Labs, the status of which is now unclear.
The delayed vote on a net-zero standard for the International Maritime Organization throws some of the industry’s grandest plans into chaos.
Today, members of the International Maritime Organization decided to postpone a major vote on the world’s first truly global carbon pricing scheme. The yearlong delay came in response to a pressure campaign led by the U.S.
The Net-Zero Framework — initially approved in April by an overwhelming margin and long expected to be formally adopted today — would establish a legally binding requirement for the shipping industry to cut its emissions intensity, with interim steps leading to net zero by 2050.
In the intervening months, however, U.S. opposition has gotten much louder. On Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he’s “outraged that the International Maritime Organization is voting in London this week to pass a global Carbon Tax.” He also took the extraordinary step of threatening not to comply with the rules. “The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form.” If the framework ever does pass, noncompliance could subject U.S. vessels to fines or even denial of entry at the ports of IMO member countries, potentially setting off a cycle of retaliatory measures from all sides.
No specific date has yet been scheduled for the forthcoming vote, which will be taken again a year from now. That throws plans for the world’s largest shipping companies — some of which have already taken expensive measures to decarbonize their fleets — into turmoil. The framework would have marked a major turning point for a sector that’s responsible for 3% of global emissions, of course. But even more importantly, it would have made a range of decarbonization technologies — from advanced batteries and clean fuels to wind-assisted propulsion and onboard carbon capture — far more viable and attractive to investors.
Kate Danaher, managing director of the oceans team at S2G Investments, has a vested interest in the frameworks’ eventual passage. “Over the past two years people have really started investing around the anticipation of something like the Net-Zero Framework being adopted,” Danaher told me. For its part, S2G has invested in Sofar Ocean, which focuses on fuel savings through route optimization, battery company Echandia which is aiming to electrify smaller vessels, and ocean data and monitoring companies Xocean and Apeiron Lab.
The new rules were originally set to take effect in 2028, and would apply to large vessels — ships of 5,000 gross tonnage or more — involved in international voyages. Qualifying ships would be assigned a base target for emissions intensity and a stricter “direct compliance target.” For every metric ton of CO2 equivalent that exceeds the compliance target but falls below the base target, ships must pay $100. For all emissions that exceed the base target, ships must pay $380 per metric ton. Noncompliant ships would pay these penalties by purchasing so-called “remedial units” from a central IMO registry, while the cleanest vessels — those performing better than their compliance targets — would earn surplus units they can sell to others or bank for future use.
Green shipping fuels such as e-methanol, e-hydrogen, and e-ammonia — all produced from green hydrogen using renewable electricity — stand to be the biggest winners, she said. “A new fuel would completely decarbonize the industry. That is 10 years out, and is completely contingent on the IMO,” Danaher said, explaining that if the framework ultimately fails, there’s no economic incentive to adopt these more expensive fuels, which also require costly retrofits for existing fleets. But the framework would effectively cause the cost of conventional fuel to rise just as alternative fuels are scaling up, which would allow them to reach parity around 2035, she said.
A specialized agency within the United Nations, the IMO gets its power to set global regulations from the vastness of the ocean itself. Most of the world’s waters exist outside the jurisdiction of any national government. Because of that, IMO member states — which represent the vast majority of global shipping tonnage — have ratified treaties that empower the organization to set safety, security, and environmental standards on the high seas, which members then implement and enforce through their own national laws. Only member states have a stake in IMO policy. Furthermore, vessels that aren’t IMO-compliant face penalties such as fees and even possible detentions when entering the ports of IMO countries.
While IMO decisions are typically made via negotiated consensus, the contentious nature of these new regulations necessitates a vote. U.S. officials celebrated the delay. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that the postponement represents “another HUGE win for @POTUS,” going on to say that “the United States prevented a massive UN tax hike on American consumers that would have funded progressive climate pet projects.”
Along with Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, Rubio last week issued a statement threatening to punish nations that voted in favor of these “activist-driven climate policies” with actions such as banning their ships from U.S. ports, imposing vessel fees, and even leveling sanctions on officials supportive of the regulations.
Saudi Arabia — the world’s second largest oil producer after the U.S. — also strongly opposed the framework, as did a host of other oil-producing Middle Eastern countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, Russia and Venezuela. Singapore ultimately put forth the motion to delay the adoption vote for a full year and Saudi Arabia called it to a vote. It passed with a simple majority, with 57 countries approving and 49 opposed.
When it comes to costs, Trump officials might actually have a point, Danaher conceded. “Once alternative fuels come online and people are actively paying penalties, it gets a lot more expensive,” she told me. “I don’t see how this isn’t incredibly inflationary to the global market in 10 years.”
Today’s standard low-sulfur fuel, she explained, costs about $500 per metric ton. But reaching the same energy density with e-methanol, for example, could push the price to around $2,000 a metric ton. “That is all going to get passed on, essentially, to the consumer,” she said.
Even so, the framework has the backing of major shipping trade organizations and industry giants alike, from the International Chamber of Shipping to Maersk. As a group of leading international maritime associations put it in an open letter last week, “Only global rules will decarbonise a global industry. Without the Framework, shipping would risk a growing patchwork of unilateral regulations, increasing costs without effectively contributing to decarbonisation.”
Indeed, a universal set of coherent rules is what many in the sector want most, Danaher affirmed. Some voting bodies, such as the EU and Singapore, have already set their own shipping-related emissions requirements, creating a regulatory patchwork that’s both costly and confusing for companies to comply with. “I think most people are like, let’s just do this. Let’s rip the Band-Aid off, and let’s get clarity,” Danaher told me.
In a statement released after the vote’s delay and the conclusion of the IMO’s days-long meeting in London, Thomas A. Kazakos, the shipping chamber’s secretary general, said, “We are disappointed that member states have not been able to agree a way forward at this meeting. Industry needs clarity to be able to make the investments needed to decarbonise the maritime sector, in line with the goals set out in the IMO GHG strategy.”
The delay also risks delegitimizing the power of the IMO as a whole, something the organization’s Secretary-General, Arsenio Dominguez, warned about in the meeting’s opening remarks on Tuesday, when he stated that “Prolonged uncertainty will put off investments and diminish confidence in IMO.”
There would be other ways for shippers to comply with the framework besides switching to e-fuels, Danaher told me. For example, S2G’s portfolio company Sofar Ocean operates a network of ocean sensors designed to improve marine weather predictions and power a route optimization platform that can help ships save time, fuel, and ultimately, emissions.
Software solutions have a pretty low barrier to adoption. But a step up in complexity — and cost — would involve a technology such as wind-assisted propulsion. The companies Norsepower and Anemoi, for example, use a cylindrical “rotor sail” that creates a powerful thrust as it spins, which they say allows for up to 25% to 30% fuel savings. Another approach is the “rigid wing sail,” such as that developed by Bar Technologies. This generates lift in the direction of the ship’s movement with less drag than a normal sail — similar to how an airplane wing works.
Pairing route optimization with wind-assisted propulsion will generate even greater emissions savings, as the software can direct ships towards areas with the most advantageous winds. Given the obvious co-benefits and cost savings stemming from lower fuel use, Danaher thinks this tech could gain traction even if the regulations ultimately fail to pass next year. “I think the adoption curve will still continue without IMO [Net-Zero Framework], but I think it'll be slower,” she told me.
One approach she doesn’t think will be economically viable without the framework is onboard carbon capture. This tech, which traps carbon dioxide from a ship’s exhaust system before it’s released into the atmosphere, is being explored by startups including Seabound — which I reported on last year — and Value Maritime, as well as more established companies such as Mitsubishi and Wartsila. “A lot of the carbon capture technologies have not yet solved for how to turn that captured carbon into a valuable resource, and how to get it off the boat, put it in a pipeline, and sell it,” Danaher told me.”The economic incentive just isn't there without the IMO.”
At the same time, when I talked to one of Seabound’s backers — Clea Kolster, of Lowercarbon Capital — last year, she told me that when it comes to cargo shipping, “carbon capture is probably the only way that you can get a meaningful amount of emissions reductions in any near term way.” And it’s true that alternative fuels will take a while to scale up, so if the framework is ultimately adopted, carbon capture may still have an important role to play — at least that’s what investors and startups alike are banking on. “Everybody's talking about carbon capture in anticipation of this getting adopted,” Danaher told me. “All these vessels are going to be old, they’re going to need to comply, and they’re not going to be able to comply fast enough,” she said.
Amidst the turmoil, one silver lining is that interest in maritime innovation and efficiency appears to be increasing regardless of global frameworks. For one, the surge in global military spending has underscored this tech’s potential for dual-use applications. “A lot of wars happen in and around the oceans, because that’s where we intersect each other the most.” Danaher told me. Many of S2G’s investments in ocean tech have received additional backing from governments and defense agencies looking to make their fleets more efficient, energy resilient, and secure. “Every single one of our ocean tech companies, one of their customers is the government, or many governments,” she said.
It’s an important reminder that there are many practical reasons for investors and states alike to support a decarbonization agenda, regardless of whether the U.S. is on board or not. But a global system of carrots and sticks sure wouldn’t hurt either. And now, we face the uneasy prospect of waiting another year to see whether the shipping industry will resist the Trump-era pushback or abandon its collective ambitions for a decarbonized future.
Amarillo-area residents successfully beat back a $600 million project from Xcel Energy that would have provided useful tax revenue.
Power giant Xcel Energy just suffered a major public relations flap in the Texas Panhandle, scrubbing plans for a solar project amidst harsh backlash from local residents.
On Friday, Xcel Energy withdrew plans to build a $600 million solar project right outside of Rolling Hills, a small, relatively isolated residential neighborhood just north of the city of Amarillo, Texas. The project was part of several solar farms it had proposed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission to meet the load growth created by the state’s AI data center boom. As we’ve covered in The Fight, Texas should’ve been an easier place to do this, and there were few if any legal obstacles standing in the way of the project, dubbed Oneida 2. It was sited on private lands, and Texas counties lack the sort of authority to veto projects you’re used to seeing in, say, Ohio or California.
But a full-on revolt from homeowners and realtors apparently created a public relations crisis.
Mere weeks ago, shortly after word of the project made its way through the small community that is Rolling Hills, more than 60 complaints were filed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission in protest. When Xcel organized a public forum to try and educate the public about the project’s potential benefits, at least 150 residents turned out, overwhelmingly to oppose its construction. This led the Minnesota-based power company to say it would scrap the project entirely.
Xcel has tried to put a happy face on the situation. “We are grateful that so many people from the Rolling Hills neighborhood shared their concerns about this project because it gives us an opportunity to better serve our communities,” the company said in a statement to me. “Moving forward, we will ask for regulatory approval to build more generation sources to meet the needs of our growing economy, but we are taking the lessons from this project seriously.”
But what lessons, exactly, could Xcel have learned? What seems to have happened is that it simply tried to put a solar project in the wrong place, prizing convenience and proximity to an existing electrical grid over the risk of backlash in an area with a conservative, older population that is resistant to change.
Just ask John Coffee, one of the commissioners for Potter County, which includes Amarillo, Rolling Hills, and a lot of characteristically barren Texas landscape. As he told me over the phone this week, this solar farm would’ve been the first utility-scale project in the county. For years, he said, renewable energy developers have explored potentially building a project in the area. He’s entertained those conversations for two big reasons – the potential tax revenue benefits he’s seen elsewhere in Texas; and because ordinarily, a project like Oneida 2 would’ve been welcomed in any of the pockets of brush and plain where people don’t actually live.
“We’re struggling with tax rates and increases and stuff. In the proper location, it would be well-received,” he told me. “The issue is, it’s right next to a residential area.”
Indeed, Oneida 2 would’ve been smack dab up against Rolling Hills, occupying what project maps show would be the land surrounding the neighborhood’s southeast perimeter – truly the sort of encompassing adjacency that anti-solar advocates like to describe as a bogeyman.
Cotton also told me he wasn’t notified about the project’s existence until a few weeks ago, at the same time resident complaints began to reach a fever pitch. He recalled hearing from homeowners who were worried that they’d no longer be able to sell their properties. When I asked him if there was any data backing up the solar farm’s potential damage to home prices, he said he didn’t have hard numbers, but that the concerns he heard directly from the head of Amarillo’s Realtors Association should be evidence enough.
Many of the complaints against Oneida 2 were the sort of stuff we’re used to at The Fight, including fears of fires and stormwater runoff. But Cotton said it really boiled down to property values – and the likelihood that the solar farm would change the cultural fabric in Rolling Hills.
“This is a rural area. There are about 300 homes out there. Everybody sitting out there has half an acre, an acre, two acres, and they like to enjoy the quiet, look out their windows and doors, and see some distance,” he said.
Ironically, Cotton opposed the project on the urging of his constituents, but is now publicly asking Xcel to continue to develop solar in the county. “Hopefully they’ll look at other areas in Potter County,” he told me, adding that at least one resident has already come to him with potential properties the company could acquire. “We could really use the tax money from it. But you just can’t harm a community for tax dollars. That’s not what I’m about.”
I asked Xcel how all this happened and what their plans are next. A spokesperson repeatedly denied my requests to discuss Oneida 2 in any capacity. In a statement, the company told me it “will provide updates if the project is moved to another site,” and that “the company will continue to evaluate whether there is another location within Potter County, or elsewhere, to locate the solar project.”
Meanwhile, Amarillo may be about to welcome data center development because of course, and there’s speculation the first AI Stargate facility may be sited near Amarillo, as well.
City officials will decide in the coming weeks on whether to finalize a key water agreement with a 5,600-acre private “hypergrid” project from Fermi America, a new company cofounded by former Texas governor Rick Perry, says will provide upwards of 11 gigawatts to help fuel artificial intelligence services. Fermi claims that at least 1 gigawatt of power will be available by the end of next year – a lot of power.
The company promises that its “hypergrid” AI campus will use on-site gas and nuclear generation, as well as contracted gas and solar capacity. One thing’s for sure – it definitely won’t be benefiting from a large solar farm nearby anytime soon.