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A report from Heatmap’s San Francisco Climate Week event with Tom Steyer.
Last Thursday at San Francisco Climate Week, Heatmap hosted an event with a lineup of industry leaders and experts to discuss the most promising up-and-coming climate tech innovations amidst a backdrop of tariff and tax credit uncertainty.
Guests at Heatmap's event, Climate Tech's Next Winners.Sean Vranizan
First up, Heatmap executive editor Robinson Meyer sat down with Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and co-founder of Galvanize Climate Solutions, to explore the most promising climate technologies to scale. “No one's going to adopt new technologies to be nice,” Steyer noted. “They're gonna adopt new technologies because they're better, because they're a better deal, because they're cheaper or in some ways solve a pain point for the customer.” Steyer went on to emphasize that there is at least one “transformational and disruptive” idea for every six verticals in the climate industry — for example, measuring carbon sequestration in nature with machine learning andAI, a concept that was “literally unimaginable 5 years ago.”
Tom Steyer and Robinson Meyer.Sean Vranizan
As for the Trump-sized elephant in the room, Steyer encouraged climate tech startups to focus on “good leadership” as well as the willingness to adapt in this uncertain moment. “You’re gonna have hard times, and the world is going to change, and you’re going to have to figure out what to do,“ he said. Steyer also noted that all Americans, not only those working in climate tech, should understand the energy transition as a background condition of their careers. “If you want to be a screenwriter (...) be a screenwriter. But it’s really important that you put [the energy transition] into your screenwriting. If you‘re a banker (...) be a banker with an awareness of this issue. Bank the good stuff, not the bad stuff,” Steyer explained. He finished up the discussion with a remembrance of the late Pope Francis, a “tremendous human being for the planet.”
Sam D'Amico and Nico Lauricella.Sean Vranizan
Also on Thursday was a lightning talk between Nico Lauricella, Heatmap’s CEO and editor in chief, and Sam D’Amico, the founder and CEO of Impulse Labs, which sponsored the event. D'Amico explained that in addition to being an induction stove, Impulse’s Cooktop is “a way to get battery storage into people's homes” — a “concept car” for using batteries in appliances to create a more decentralized grid. Lauricella and D’Amico also discussed the impacts of Trump’s tariffs on clean tech companies like Impulse, with D’Amico advising other founders in the room to build prototypes based on the supply chain and to make sure they have options in terms of where their products are manufactured so they can keep up with changing trade policies.
Impulse's high-power Cooktop on display at the event.Sean Vranizan
Lastly, Heatmap News staff writer Katie Brigham hosted a panel with Gabriel Kra, managing director and co-founder at Prelude Ventures, Clea Kolster, partner and head of science at Lowercarbon Capital, and Rajesh Swaminathan, partner at Khosla Ventures. The group spoke about the unique circumstances facing investors in the climate technology space, what their firms are looking for when investing in the newest climate innovations, and how AI fits into the picture.
Katie Brigham, Clea Kolster, Gabriel Kra, and Rajesh Swaminathan.Sean Vranizan
All three panelists acknowledged that it’s a delicate time for clean tech investors and companies alike. “Volatility and uncertainty are the enemies of running and planning a business,” warned Kra. The true cost of the tariffs is therefore extremely high, Kra explained. Kolster agreed that things are generally gloomy in the investment space, but also highlighted the technologies that are currently thriving. Carbon removal, she pointed out, “is going better than ever. Contracts are being inked right now, in the past few weeks.” The companies and technologies she’s excited about, Kolster added, are building “cheaper, better, faster,” as Steyer pointed out earlier in the evening.
Swaminathan added that there will always be a certain element of risk when it comes to investing in emerging technologies. “Clean tech companies have so many single points of failure,” he said. “And you have to prop up each part with the right leadership team. You have to have strong pillars so that [your company] doesn’t break.”
Guests following the discussion.Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Guests at SFCW
Sean Vranizan
Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Impulse, as well as our supporting sponsor, V2 Communications, and our event host, IndieBio.
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On DOJ lawsuits, reconciliation, and solar permitting
Current conditions: A month out from the start of hurricane season, the North Atlantic Ocean is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it was this time last year• Passenger ferry crossings between New Zealand’s North and South Island remain suspended through Friday afternoon due to a severe windstorm• Thunderstorms are expected to settle over Louisville, Kentucky, this afternoon, leading to a potentially wet Kentucky Derby on Saturday at Churchill Downs.
The Justice Department filed lawsuits this week against Hawaii, Michigan, New York, and Vermont to block the states’ climate-motivated lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. The government’s lawsuit against Hawaii and Michigan, filed on Wednesday, seeks to block the states from suing major oil and gas companies over alleged climate damages, which the DOJ argues obstructs the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. On Thursday, the DOJ also filed suit against New York and Vermont over their climate superfund laws, which would require fossil fuel companies to pay for damages caused by climate change, calling it a “transparent monetary-extraction scheme.” Attorney General Pamela Bondi argued all four laws are “burdensome and ideologically motivated” and “threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security.”
The House Natural Resources Committee released its portion of Republicans’ budget package on Thursday evening. The proposal goes to markup next week, and is subject to change, but includes several significant measures across its 96 pages. Some include:
In a statement slamming the bill, Lydia Weiss, the senior director of government relations at The Wilderness Society, said the proposals in sum will “fund tax cuts for the rich while doing nothing to help the average American taxpayer.” You can read the full contents of the bill here.
The Bureau of Land Management has approved a new solar project in Yuma County, Arizona, after a temporary halt on permitting. The move “appears to be the first utility-scale solar facility on federal acreage approved by the Trump administration,” my colleague Jael Holzman writes in The Fight. The BLM additionally released a draft environmental review of a separate solar project, also in Arizona.
As Jael notes, “The fact BLM is willing to admit other solar projects could advance later on is significant after the sputtering seen in the earliest days of the Trump administration.” Her caveat, however, is that it’s unclear if this means solar permitting is a beneficiary of the president’s “energy dominance” agenda, or if “at any moment, a news cycle or disgruntled legislator could steal the president’s ear and make him angry at solar power.”
A view of Punta Gorda, Florida, in 2024 after Hurricane Milton.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The major reinsurance company Swiss Re has released a lengthy report about the upward trend of insured losses in the United States. Among its findings:
Read more of Swiss Re’s findings in the report here.
The Trump administration has ordered the National Science Foundation to stop awarding new grants or supplying funds for existing grants “until further notice,” according to an email reviewed by Nature. Before the funding freeze, NSF leadership had recently directed its staffers to return grant proposals concerning “topics or activities” not “in alignment with agency priorities” to their applicants.
In the past two weeks, the NSF has terminated $739 million worth of grants, Nature adds. As one NSF staffer told the publication, the Trump administration is “butchering the gold standard merit review process that was established at NSF over decades.” Colin Carlson, who is researching pandemic-causing viruses at Yale University with a team of 50 funded by a $12.5 million NSF grant, said the freeze will “destroy people’s labs.” The NSF has also contributed enormously to climate science over the years, including funding the first major ice core drilling project in Greenland in 1980 to study historical carbon dioxide data, and more recently, using advanced climate modeling to predict extreme weather events better.
“Saying that the U.S. is striving for energy dominance except in the clean energy sector is like opening a steakhouse and forgetting the meat.” —Former Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, writing for Heatmap about why real energy dominance requires preserving the IRA.
The Trump administration appears to be advancing solar projects through the permitting process now.
After a temporary halt to permitting for solar projects, the Bureau of Land Management told me a few weeks ago that it had lifted the pause, but I had told you I would wait for confirmation to see whether projects could actually move through government permitting. On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management publicly confirmed that federal solar permitting can happen again, formally approving the Leeward Renewable’s Elisabeth solar project in Yuma County, Arizona – what appears to be the first utility-scale solar facility on federal acreage approved by the Trump administration.
The Elisabeth project is located in a remote part of southwestern Arizona in the Agua Caliente Solar Energy Zone, an area designated for solar energy leasing that has existed for more than a decade, and is adjacent to other large solar projects that have been previously approved according to BLM.
On the same day, BLM released a draft environmental review of a separate solar project in Arizona that the agency segregated land for late last year at the same time as Elisabeth: the Avantus’ Pinyon solar-plus-storage project, which is open for public comment through late May. Tucked on page 37 of that draft document was a list of other solar projects in the nearby vicinity on federal lands that have yet to enter the federal permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act, which BLM dubbed as “reasonably foreseeable” impacts to the cumulative environment.
The fact BLM is willing to admit other solar projects could advance later on is significant after the sputtering seen in the earliest days of the Trump administration. We’d seen hints of progress seeping through updates to BLM webpages. In mid April, we reported the agency quietly updated the timetable for the Esmerelda 7 mega-solar project in Nevada to say the agency would issue a final decision on the project this summer. I took a peek through the BLM data and found other examples of the same thing, including the Bonanza solar farm, which is now expected to receive its final environmental impact statement in June according to the project website.
BLM has also moved forward with transmission lines on federal lands that would go to solar projects off federal lands, indicating a level of agnosticism about connecting solar farms to the grid if the energy is generated on private property.
It’s still not clear whether solar permits will be a steady trickle for the foreseeable future or if this form of renewable energy could benefit from the Trump administration’s desires to maximize energy generation. Take all of this with a grain of salt because at any moment, a news cycle or disgruntled legislator could steal the president’s ear and make him angry at solar power.
But in times as chaotic as these for U.S. renewables developers, we’ll take this ray of sunshine.
Let’s play out what could happen as the House Ways and Means Committee does its work.
One of the most important fights over the Inflation Reduction Act’s survival has finally arrived. But it’s not playing out in the open. It’s happening behind the closed doors of a powerful House committee in charge of tax policy.
The House Ways and Means Committee is writing its version of Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. The committee could release that text as soon as mid-May. And other than a few broad outlines — the text will extend Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, and it will increase the deficit by no more than $2.8 trillion — nobody has any idea what it will say.
Whatever the final text, though, will give us the first real sense of how likely the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits are to survive in the Trump tax bill. After months of speculation and tea leaf-reading, the House Ways and Means Committee’s draft will represent an opening position of sorts for Republican leadership — and illustrate just how close to repeal the majority is willing to get.
The committee could take a scorched-earth approach, cutting essentially every IRA tax credit in order to force members to fight to get policies back into the final bill. Or it could reform some tax credits so significantly that it effectively repeals the IRA, even if many policies remain on the books.
It could also reform some credits — such as the electric vehicle and clean electricity tax credits — while leaving most others untouched.
The most important suggestion of what will be in the final version came on Thursday in a new letter addressed to Jason Smith, the Ways and Means Committee chairman, and signed by 38 House Republicans. The letter demands the IRA’s full repeal — essentially heralding a potential new “anti-IRA” caucus within the GOP.
“We are deeply concerned that President Trump’s commitment to restoring American energy dominance and ending what he calls the ’‘green new scam’ is being undermined by parochial interests and short-sighted political calculations,” the letter says.
The letter writers focus their ire on subsidies for “wind and biofuel[s] … carbon capture and hydrogen … [and] solar and electric vehicles” that they say form the backbone of the bill.
So far, House Republicans have largely written letters about the IRA to call for its preservation. Last summer, 18 House Republicans wrote to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to ask him to move gingerly around any “repeal or reform” of the tax credits should Republicans win the November election.
“We must reverse the policies which refine American families while protecting and refining those that are making our country more energy independent and America more energy secure,” the letter said.
Since then, the number of pro-IRA voices in the GOP has risen. Last month, 21 House Republicans wrote to Johnson again in support of the law. But their language was slightly changed, advising that any reforms proceed in a “targeted and pragmatic fashion.” They did, however, oppose “premature credit phase outs” or restrictions on transferability.
Speaking earlier this week at a Semafor event, the Illinois Republican and Ways and Means member Darin LaHood imagined phasing out some of the energy tax credits earlier.
“The approach we’'re looking at now is how you have an appropriate ramp-down [of IRA tax credits] that allows for businesses and companies to continue to be active in this space, but also saves money," LaHood said.
He added that there is a “bullseye” on the clean energy law, and said that “we’ll see” whether any of its provisions are preserved.
Whatever form the final law takes, this legislative vehicle will likely determine the fate of the IRA’s energy tax credits and other climate spending. Trump has lambasted the IRA, and some Republicans believe that its tax credits should be repealed to pay for their tax cuts for wealthy earners.
Ways and Means will not automatically control the final product. Ultimately, they will have to reconcile their version of the text with what’s written by their counterpart, the Senate Finance Committee. Other committees will oversee the IRA’s environmental grants and loans. (My colleague Emily Pontecorvo wrote about the first markup — from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee — on Tuesday.) But the Senate has a more forgiving budget target than the House does, which means the Ways and Means Committee is where the IRA could go to die. That’s because it oversees tax policy — and therefore manages the IRA’s all-important tax credits.
The committee also has a spending problem. The legislative process Republicans have chosen to pass their budget bill, known as reconciliation, begins with establishing binding spending limits for committees in both the House and the Senate. That process wrapped up last month.
Under the guidelines passed by the House earlier this year, the Ways and Means Committee can expand the deficit by as much as $4.5 trillion. But simply extending the 2017 tax cuts’ expiring provisions will cost $4.4 trillion — and the committee wants to do more besides, including expanding the deductions that people can claim for their local and state taxes. The committee will struggle to pay for everything it wants to do — and it could look to repealing parts of the IRA to fix it.
It doesn’t help that Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the Ways and Means chairman, has called the IRA “welfare for the wealthy and well-connected.”
The committee’s conservative bent — and the fact that GOP lawmakers broadly want to stay on track to pass a bill by the end of the summer — mean that the IRA tax cuts are especially vulnerable during this period.
Most of the IRA’s tax credits are due to sunset in 2032. But one measure — a technology-neutral credit to support new clean electricity generation — could run for much longer than that.
Under the law as it stands today, that credit is supposed to last until the United States eliminates much of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by its power grid as compared to 2022 levels. Even if the credit remains in place, that could take another 30 or 40 years to happen, by one estimate — making the tech-neutral tax credit one of the most important climate policies in the law. The IRA’s power sector policies are responsible for more than 80% of the law’s emissions-reducing impact.
That also makes it among the most expensive policies in the law. When Republicans talk about ending tax credits early, the tech-neutral tax credit is an obvious target. Two lawmakers from North Dakota — Representative Julie Fedorchak and Senator Kevin Cramer — are working on language to phase out some tax credits in five years, Axios Pro has reported.
That would shut down the credit by 2030. But ending the credit by then could reshape what kind of energy technologies the law supports. Republicans tend not to see all zero-carbon electricity equally — while they often champion nuclear and advanced geothermal generation, many look less favorably on wind and solar power.
But by terminating the tech-neutral tax credit at the end of the decade, Republicans could help essentially the very technologies they don’t want. There are no new nuclear or geothermal projects in the development pipeline across the country, and new ones are unlikely to crop up until the late 2020s at the earliest. Under the law, energy projects must be “placed in service” by the time a tax credit expires, meaning that virtually no new nuclear or geothermal projects could qualify.
New nuclear projects will face especially serious trouble if the Trump administration guts the Department of Energy’s in-house bank, the Loan Programs Office, as now seems likely.
At the same time, there are plenty of new solar and battery projects planned across the country. Developers of these projects could rush to get them into service before a potential 2029 sunset date. The industry even has experience hurrying projects to completion: It often had to do so during the 2010s, when the solar investment tax credit faced repeated expirations.
Other Republicans have suggested terminating the law’s transferability clause. Under the IRA as it stands today, companies can sell their tax credits to other firms that can better use the subsidy. Depending on how it’s implemented, that reform could hurt the IRA by reducing the value of its tax credits, because companies will have to adopt more complicated financial structures in order to claim a given subsidy. Historically, solar and wind developers have more experience adopting these arcane structures than the nuclear or geothermal industries, which have fewer projects under their belt.
Speaking at a Heatmap event on Thursday, Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah said he was still hopeful that the IRA would survive without significant cuts.
“I don’t think that makes it through the House,” he said when asked if the Ways and Means Committee could slash the IRA tax credits outright. “There’s a lot of insecurities in the Republican Party about not cutting and about where the boundaries are.”
We’ll have a much better sense of where those boundaries are soon.
Editor’s note: Updates to reflect Ways and Means delaying its markup.