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The eastern and northern United States are suffering under a hazy, poisonous cloud of wildfire smoke, produced by out-of-control forest fires in Quebec and Nova Scotia. The most toxic soot and ash are sitting virtually on top of North America’s most densely populated corridor, clouding the air in New York City; Toronto; Ottawa; Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk, Virginia.
Air pollution alerts are in effect across the United States and Canada, affecting roughly 150 million people.
This is Heatmap’s set of commonly asked questions about the crisis. We’ll keep it updated throughout the event.
Hundreds of wildfires have raged across northern Quebec for the past few weeks, driven by unusually warm and dry conditions.
Then on Monday, a low-pressure system surrounded by counterclockwise winds moved just off New England’s coast. Its strong, dry gusts fanned the flames in Canada, then pushed the resulting smoke and ash into the eastern United States.
Intense Canadian fires are unusual this early in the season, but the fires this year were fed by a warm spring and drought-like condition, Kent Moore, an atmospheric-physics professor at the University of Toronto, told me. Because the fires took hold before the vegetation could “green up” for the spring, the conflagrations grew more rapidly than they normally would, he said.
The dry conditions also helped the fires ignite the soil itself. “Because the soil was so dry — because of the dry winter and the dry spring — the fire got into the ground,” he said. “The vegetation below ground started to burn, and those are much harder to put out.”
This is likely one of America’s worst days for air pollution in several decades, in terms of the number of people affected and the severity of the exposure, Marshall Burke, an economist and sustainability professor at Stanford, told me.
“It’s pretty off the chart,” Burke said. Wildfire smoke is affecting New York City much more acutely — and much earlier in the year — than it has at any time since 2006, when contemporary air-pollution data began to be kept.
It is difficult to attribute a single unprecedented event to climate change, and the climatology of wildfires in eastern North America is particularly challenging. (Climate change has more clearly worsened wildfires out West.) “This is probably an unlucky year for Canada, as far as wildfires go,” Moore, the atmospheric physicist, said.
But wildfires will become more likely across Canada as the climate changes, he said. And while climate change should broadly increase rainfall across Canada, it will also increase the likelihood of heat waves and more extreme spring and summer temperatures, which can make wildfires more likely.
“Nova Scotia has always had wildfires. It’s just they’ve had more wildfires this year than they have on average for the whole year,” he said. “There’s always going to be wildfires, but there’s going to be more of them.” As Canadian cities sprawl into previously uninhabited woodland areas, he added, the human impacts of wildfires will increase — even if the number and intensity of wildfires does not.
First, consult the air quality index at AirNow.gov. The AQI is a unit-less index of air quality running from zero to 500; any reading above 100 would rank as unusually polluted in the United States. On Wednesday afternoon, some air sensors in New York and New Jersey indicated that the AQI exceeded 400.
If it’s higher than 100, then the most vulnerable groups of people — including children, the elderly, anyone with a cardiopulmonary condition, and pregnant women — should limit strenuous activity outdoors. If higher than 150, then people should generally try to limit their outdoor activity; at levels above 200, the air is considered unhealthy and everyone should try to go outside as little as possible.
If you think you might be especially vulnerable, err on the side of caution. Recently, a body of new and large-scale studies have shown that air pollution is generally worse for the body and brain than previously thought.
Then, if you’re in an area with hazardous air pollution, consider how to limit your exposure to the air as much as possible. Keep your doors and windows closed. An air filter outfitted with a HEPA filter can improve the air in a home or apartment. It should generally be closer to the most sensitive people.
“Any pregnant moms — if my wife or anyone I knew was pregnant right now — I would be texting them to stay inside and sit by an air filter,” Burke told me. Exposure to severe air pollution during pregnancy has been shown to increase the risk of preterm birth, and it can reduce a child’s lifelong earnings, cognitive performance, and other indicators, he said.
A KN95 or N95 mask — the type of high-filtration mask used to prevent COVID infection — can also significantly limit your exposure to soot and ash. If you are in a sensitive group or are worried about air pollution’s health effects, you could consider wearing a mask inside if you have no other way to filter the air.
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More than 2,500 employees have applied for a buyout program. The departures, if approved, could gut the agency’s in-house bank and manufacturing office.
The Trump administration is overseeing a chaotic set of changes at the U.S. Department of Energy that could gut its in-house bank and transform one of the government’s key scientific and technology development agencies.
In the coming days, the department could see thousands of its employees — nearly one-fifth of its staff — resign in one of the largest headcount reductions in memory. At the same time, it could cancel billions of dollars in next-generation energy R&D projects in Ohio and other states.
Some of these changes have been planned for weeks. But in recent days, department officials have appeared to grow anxious behind the scenes about the scale of the transformation. Some Trump officials have reached out to individuals, offering them financial incentives in order to discourage them from taking the buyout, according to administration documents and accounts from multiple department employees who were not authorized to speak publicly.
If the full set of changes goes through, then the Department of Energy may be so depleted that it will be unable to carry out the Trump administration’s goals, such as bolstering the power grid or building new power plants.
The upheaval is a result of two policies coming to a head: the department’s “deferred resignation program,” which offers federal employees the equivalent of a severance deal to stop working immediately; and an internal effort to cancel or hinder major industrial policy projects initiated by the Biden administration.
It also arises from agency workers’ confusion and fear over who will ultimately make personnel decisions at the Energy Department, the agency’s own leadership or employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In a statement, an Energy Department spokesperson said the agency was acting in accordance with the president’s executive order creating the government efficiency department.
“The Department of Energy is conducting a department-wide review of its organizational structures to ensure operations are best positioned to accomplish the DOE mission and align with the Trump administration’s priorities,” Andrea Woods, the spokesperson, said. “No final decisions have been made and multiple plans are still being considered.”
The deferred resignation program, which was started by Musk earlier this year, allows employees to resign immediately but receive full pay and benefits through the end of September.
When the resignation program was first made available in February, relatively few department employees took the offer, which resembles a buyout. Many were unsure that they would actually get paid if they accepted the deal.
But employees who took that deal have been getting paid — and at the end of March, Energy Secretary Chris Wright reopened the program and encouraged more employees to accept the resignation deal. He warned that President Donald Trump had ordered the department to conduct a mass “reduction in force” and said that accepting the buyout now could “mitigate the effect of potential involuntary separations.”
This time, the response has been very different. More than 2,700 Energy Department employees have applied for the voluntary resignation program, according to multiple employees who weren’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly. The department recently extended the program’s deadline to this Friday.
If those resignations are accepted, they could reduce the department’s head count by as much as 17%. More resignations are anticipated before the final deadline. The Department of Energy had 15,795 full-time employees as of last year, according to government data.
Some offices have been harder hit than others. The agency’s in-house bank, the Loan Programs Office, could lose half its permanent employees, according to one person who wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly. Analysts have said that the office is essential to countering the low-cost loans that China gives its industrial firms.
Other offices — including those meant to bolster domestic manufacturing and strengthen the power grid — could also lose as much as half their permanent staff.
Many of these cuts are so deep that they could damage the agency’s ability to implement Trump’s agenda. The president has spoken about supporting the nuclear, natural gas, and coal industries — as well as spurring a new mining boom — but he will struggle to meet these goals if the agency is understaffed. The Office of Policy, which directly supports the administration’s agenda, is likely to lose dozens of staff to the program.
Some department leaders have seemingly realized that they may soon manage empty rooms. In some offices, Trump appointees have offered promotions or retention bonuses to career staff to discourage them from leaving, according to employees who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The bonuses can run to as much as 25% of an employee’s annual salary, according to an internal email reviewed by Heatmap.
But many employees are worried that a coming round of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency could override the preferences of the Energy Department’s own officials, terminating even favored employees. The Musk-led efficiency department hopes to cut more than half of the loan office’s full-time staff, according to one individual. It has placed commissars inside most federal agency buildings, including the Energy Department headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Woods, the Energy Department spokesperson, declined to comment on the number of employees who have applied for the resignation program because it is still open for applications. The department will review and approve each resignation request individually, she said, and it will retain employees working in “public safety, national security, law enforcement” and other “essential” roles.
Yet it is possible to estimate the number of employees who have asked to resign because the department creates a numbered receipt for each employee who enrolls in the program. The numbers, which have increased sequentially, now exceed 2,700, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the receipts who aren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The resignation turmoil comes as the agency considers making other big changes to its policies. Trump officials are in the process of reviewing more than 30 advanced energy demonstration projects slated to be built nationwide, according to documents obtained by Heatmap News. The 2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act spent more than $6 billion to fund demonstration programs focused on carbon capture, clean hydrogen, and re-industrialization.
CNN reported this week that one of the projects on the chopping block is a $500 million grant to build a next-generation steel mill in Middletown, Ohio — the hometown of Vice President JD Vance.
The Energy Department has already been experimenting with revoking contracts that the government had previously signed. It remains unclear whether the department can suspend these contracts legally.
Last week, China announced more than 100 new industrial-scale demonstration projects to support clean steel production and carbon capture. The country created 47 new advanced energy demonstration projects last year.
On the National Climate Assessment, data centers, and tornadoes
Current conditions: Californians who live near the site of January’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires are being urged to get tested for lead poisoning • The Ohio River in waterlogged Louisville, Kentucky, crested at 37 feet on Wednesday • It will be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Brussels today, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU is pausing its retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. for 90 days following a similar move from President Trump.
1. Trump takes aim at national climate report
The Trump administration is making moves to gut the program responsible for compiling the National Climate Assessment, a report published every four years examining how climate change is affecting the United States that helps shape government response. The administration is reportedly canceling contracts with the consulting firm that provides most of the staff for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the federal group responsible for coordinating the report across agencies. The report is required by Congress, but “it’s hard to see how they’re going to put out a National Climate Assessment now,” Donald Wuebbles, a professor in the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois who has been involved in past climate assessments, toldThe New York Times.
2. IEA: Electricity consumption from data centers to double by 2030
The International Energy Agency published a big report Thursday on how the rise of artificial intelligence will affect energy demand over the next five years. The analysis finds that global electricity consumption from the data centers that power AI will more than double by 2030, and that the U.S. will be the key driver of this growth. “By the end of the decade, the country is set to consume more electricity for data centers than for the production of aluminium, steel, cement, chemicals, and all other energy-intensive goods combined,” the report said. Other key findings as they related to energy and climate:
IEA
3. This year’s tornado reports are off the charts
We’re less than four months into 2025, but already there have been way more tornadoes in the U.S. than what’s considered normal, according to AccuWeather. More than 470 tornadoes have been reported since the start of the year, compared to the historical average of roughly 260. “The frequency and severity of extreme weather in America this year has been alarming,” said Dan DePodwin, AccuWeather’s senior director of forecasting operations. Just two other years in the 16-year record had more tornadoes reported by this time in the season. Tornadoes were reported every day from March 26 through April 7. “A 12-day streak might be typical in May, which is the peak of tornado activity, but it is uncommon for March and early April,” AccuWeather said in a press release.
AccuWeather
4. Trump to New York: End congestion pricing, or else
President Trump’s Department of Transportation escalated its threat this week to retaliate against New York if the state’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, does not shut down congestion pricing by April 20. The tolling program, which charges a $9 fee for drivers who enter New York City’s central business district, has only been in effect for three months.
“Make no mistake — the Trump Administration and USDOT will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal in response to non-compliance later this month,” the agency said in a social media post. The post did not say what those tools might be, but a previous post from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on March 20 made a veiled threat to withhold funding from the state if it did not shut down the tolling program. “The billions of dollars the federal government sends to New York are not a blank check,” he said. Duffy notified the MTA on February 19 that he was rescinding federal approval of its congestion pricing program, despite early evidence that it was reducing traffic. The MTA immediately filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging Duffy’s actions.
5. Tapestry and PJM partner on AI for the interconnection queue
Google X’s Tapestry project, which focuses on innovations for the electric grid, and grid operator PJM on Thursday announced a partnership that will use artificial intelligence to develop a unified model of the grid’s electricity network. The model will bring in data from dozens of disparate tools into one simplified “Google Maps for electrons,” Page Crahan, Tapestry’s general manager, told Heatmap’s Katie Brigham. The model will give grid operators and project developers the ability to toggle on and off different layers of grid information — a vast improvement over the technical boondoggle grid planners face today. PJM is facing a slew of retiring fossil fuel resources just as electricity demand is ramping up, largely thanks to AI data centers. Meanwhile, PJM has a years-long waitlist full of wind and solar projects seeking permission to connect to the grid that are languishing in no small part due to its slow approval process. Tapestry plans to deliver solutions that PJM can start rolling out this year. The two entities will work together to develop new processes “over the next several quarters “ and “perhaps even the next several years,” Crahan said.
The largest data center currently under construction could consume as much electricity as 2 million households.
The project from Google’s internal incubator program aims to help speed approvals to get more renewables on the grid.
The country’s largest electricity market, PJM, has a problem: It’s facing a slew of retiring fossil fuel resources just as electricity demand is ramping, largely thanks to AI data centers. Meanwhile, PJM has a years-long waitlist full of wind and solar projects seeking permission to connect to the grid that are languishing in no small part due to its slow approval process.
Enter Tapestry, the so-called “moonshot for the electric grid,” as Page Crahan, Tapestry’s general manager, put it on a press call Wednesday. The initiative is a part of Google’s internal project incubator, known simply as X. Today, the tech company and the grid operator announced a partnership that will use artificial intelligence to develop a unified model of the grid’s electricity network, bringing in data from dozens of disparate tools into one simplified “Google Maps for electrons,” as Crahan put it.
The model will give grid operators and project developers the ability to toggle on and off different layers of grid information — a vast improvement over the technical boondoggle grid planners face today. As Crahan explained, they might use one software program that tracks where grid equipment is located, another that models power flow, another that measures the equipment’s thermal capacity, and yet another that runs an economic impact analysis. Then, Crahan said, “each of these software programs will generate a file which creates its own unique model of the grid. And every time a change is made to that one model, it needs to be applied to all of the other models in consideration.” Overall, the siloed nature of these different programs makes it a headache to keep information consistent and up to date across the entire system.
This convoluted process is partially at fault for PJM’s backlogged queue, which in recent years has seen a deluge in new interconnection requests, largely for renewable energy projects. Due to this system overwhelm, PJM put a pause on reviewing new applications in 2022, initially expected to last for two years. Now, it’s expected to lift early next year.
Aftab Khan, an executive vice president at PJM, said on the press call that the grid operator knows there’s still more work to be done. “Even though we've made significant progress with tools and automation to manage large numbers of projects in an interconnection cycle, it’s still, end-to-end, about a two-year process,” he said. To expedite this, Tapestry plans to deliver solutions that PJM can start rolling out this year. The two entities will work together to develop new processes “over the next several quarters “ and “perhaps even the next several years,” Crahan said.
Tapestry was formed in 2017 with the mission to “bring the grid out of the industrial age and into the age of intelligence.” In addition to creating a coordinated model of PJM, Tapestry is also developing an AI tool that automates much of the review process for grid interconnection applications, thereby helping to more efficiently validate the feasibility of proposed projects. It’s as simple as dropping a PDF into Tapestry’s AI analytics tool, which can then automatically check the data in the application against other reliable sources.
“By automating and improving the data verification process for things like land rights, equipment and grid impacts, we aim to reduce the burden on the PJM planning team and the energy developers,”Crahan said. She said this will help “reduce the time it takes to evaluate these projects so that capacity can come online faster.”
All of this work builds on previous projects and pilots that Tapestry has been running both domestically and abroad. For example, Tapestry has partnered with the U.S.-based utility and power company AES to develop a vision for the digital, AI-powered grid of the future. And in Chile, Tapestry worked with the national grid operator to deploy planning tools that enable speedy, long-term simulations, allowing operators to make informed decisions about energy needs decades into the future.
“We have been able to take a process that took the planners several days and turn it into a few hours,” Crahan said of the Tapestry’s work expediting grid simulations in Chile. Though she couldn’t cite specific targets for speeding up PJM’s grid interconnection process, “we're looking for significant order of magnitude improvement to support the PJM planners,” Crahan said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify details concerning PJM's interconnection application review process.