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Breakthrough Energy is winding down its policy and advocacy office, depriving the Inflation Reduction Act of a powerful defender.
This is part of a Heatmap series on the “green freeze” under Trump.
A major chapter in climate giving has ended.
Breakthrough Energy, the climate philanthropy organization founded by Bill Gates, is closing its policy and advocacy office and has laid off much of its staff in Washington, D.C., Heatmap News has learned.
The layoffs will effectively gut an organization central to the effort to enact the package of clean energy tax cuts passed during the Biden administration. They will also silence one of the few environmental nonprofits that supported nuclear energy, direct air capture, and other new zero-carbon energy innovations.
More than three dozen employees across the United States and Europe are affected by the layoffs, including the office’s senior leadership.
The layoffs, first reported by The New York Times, come amid a wider billionaire pullback from donating to climate causes. The president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund departed last month, and the fund has yet to name a permanent replacement. Gates had already significantly diminished his climate giving earlier this year, slashing Breakthrough Energy’s grantmaking budget last month.
Gates’s investments in clean energy companies do not seem affected by the cutback. Breakthrough Energy’s venture capital and investment arm, its fellows program, and its efforts to catalyze new green products remain intact.
“Gates and Breakthrough Energy remain committed to advancing the clean energy innovations needed to address climate change,” a Breakthrough Energy spokesperson told me in a statement. “Our work is focused on accelerating the transition to a cleaner, more prosperous world.”
The closure of Breakthrough’s policy arm — and the presumed end of its grant-making operation — will alter the world of climate nonprofits. Breakthrough Energy was unusual among environmental and energy nonprofits for its enthusiastic support of all forms of zero-carbon energy, including nuclear fission, geothermal power, carbon capture and removal, and nuclear fusion. Many other prominent nonprofits — even some that have shifted to principally fighting against climate change, like the Sierra Club — are more traditional and conservation-minded, and actively oppose the expansion of nuclear power.
“The closure of Breakthrough is indicative of a broader trend that often happens when there’s a change in power in Washington, which is a retreat from federal policy and also often a retreat from the center,” Josh Freed, the senior vice president for climate and energy at Third Way, told me. The Third Way energy team was funded in part by grants from Breakthrough Energy.
“Breakthrough played a critical role in elevating and making clean energy innovation policy very mainstream. That’s going to continue — in part because of … the partners who they brought together, who remain committed to working on this,” Freed added.
The unwinding of Breakthrough Energy’s policy and advocacy arm means that the group will not see the coming battle over the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean tax cuts, which some Republican lawmakers hope to repeal later this year as part of President Trump’s broader package of tax cuts. Gates was seen as instrumental to the lobbying effort to pass the IRA, meeting with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other lawmakers to support the 2022 legislation.
In an exclusive interview with Heatmap News in 2023, Gates warned that re-electing Donald Trump could derail the Inflation Reduction Act’s effectiveness.
“Right now, companies are responding to the IRA incentives. But you know, if you get Trump elected, and he really gets rid of it, there’s a lot of business plans that will [make people] feel foolish,” he said.
Even if Democrats ultimately enact new provisions similar to the IRA after Trump leaves office, Gates said, the damage of repealing the law would be permanent. “People [will] say, ‘Well, you’re asking me to make a 30-year investment. And half the time, I’m stupid.’”
Just over a year and one election later, Gates reportedly had a more than three-hour dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He later told Emma Tucker, The Wall Street Journal’s editor in chief, that he was “frankly impressed” by the president-elect.
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Along with Senator John Curtis of Utah, the Iowa senator is aiming to preserve the definition of “begin construction” as it applies to tax credits.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wants “begin construction” to mean what it means.
To that end, Grassley has placed a “hold” on three nominees to the Treasury Department, the agency tasked with writing the rules and guidance for implementing the tax provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, many of which depend on that all-important definition.
Grassley and other Republican senators had negotiated a “glidepath for the orderly phaseout” of tax credits for renewables, the senator in a statement announcing the hold, giving developers until July 2026 to start construction on projects (or complete the projects and have them operating by the end of 2027) to qualify for tax credits.
Days after signing the law, however, President Trump signed an executive order calling for new guidance on what exactly starting construction means. The title of that order, “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” has generated understandable concern within the renewables industry that, as part of a deal to get conservative House members to support the bill, the Treasury Department will write new guidance making it much more difficult for wind and solar projects to qualify for tax credits.
“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction'’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade,” Grassley said. Under these longstanding definitions, “beginning construction” can mean undertaking “physical work of a significant nature,” which can include or buying certain long-lead equipment or components like transformers. Another way to qualify for the credits is to spend 5% of the total cost of the project.
A more restrictive interpretation of “begin construction,” however, could turn the tax credit language into a dead letter, especially when combined with the rest of the administration’s full-spectrum legal assault on renewable energy.
Grassley said that new guidance is expected within two weeks, and that “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent, I intend to continue to object to the consideration of these Treasury nominees.”Grassley has a long history with production tax credits for wind energy, playing a pivotal role in their extension in 2015. “As the father of the first wind energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent,” Grassley said at the time. “The five-year extension for wind energy brings about the best possible long-term outcome that provides certainty, predictability and a responsible phase-down of a tax incentive for a renewable energy source.”
Almost 60% of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind turbines, the highest proportion of any state, according to Energy Information Administration data.
Utah Senator John Curtis has joined Grassley in placing a hold on nominees, delaying their vote before the whole Senate, according to Politico’s Joshua Siegel. Grassley and Curtis, alongside Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were unable to get a meeting with the Treasury Department to discuss the guidance, Siegel reported.
On Puerto Rico’s water crisis, LNG’s tax scam, a nuclear safety scandal
Current conditions: Wildfire smoke in Alberta, Canada, is so thick that the airport had a visibility of just about 650 feet, and the air quality index hit 2241, 10 times higher than “hazardous” levels • At least 10 Chinese provinces are on alert for heavy rainfall this week, with as much as 8 inches deluging Beijing • Prolonged heatwave conditions in southeastern Europe are raising the risk of fires.
A wildfire in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park that has burned for nearly a month has grown into the largest blaze in the continental U.S. so far this year, scorching more than 114,000 acres as of this weekend. The Dragon Bravo fire, near the park’s North Rim, is expected to increase in size in the coming days due to the exceptionally dry, hot weather, The New York Times reported.
It’s far from the only major fire burning out West. The Gifford fire in California grew to nearly 40,000 acres on Sunday within the Los Padres National Forest in south-central California. The fire was just 3% contained as of late Sunday evening, according to the federal wildfire tracker, InciWeb. Last month, my colleague Jeva Lange wrote that the “next big wave” of wildfires out West “could happen any day.” As she reported, “the components for a bad fire season are all there — the landscape just needs a spark.” Lightning has been a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest, where thunderstorms led to 72 fires in two Oregon counties during just one night in June. A lightning strike is the likely cause of the Dragon Bravo fire.
One of many anti-corruption protests in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Jose Jimenez/Getty Images
Nearly eight years after Hurricane María decimated Puerto Rico’s power grid, the United States’ most populous territory still suffers electricity outages every week and faces rising utility bills. But the island of more than 3 million American citizens is reeling this week from yet another utility failure: Water outages. As many as 180,000 households in Puerto Rico lost access to running water last week, and thousands are still without service. The electricity and water issues are combined. Updates on the state-run water utility’s X page indicated that several water pumping stations are out of service due to a lack of electricity. Governor Jenniffer González Colón called in the National Guard to help distribute water.
It’s just the latest crisis afflicting the Caribbean territory’s basic infrastructure as the island enters the peak of hurricane season. The local government last month escalated its battle with New Fortress Energy, the financially troubled New York-based gas company that provides its fuel and operates its power plants. González Colón is considering ending the island’s contract with LUMA Energy, the private consortium that controls the power grid. Faced with ongoing blackouts, the government just scrapped Puerto Rico’s renewable energy targets and extended the life of a highly polluting coal plant, threatening devastating health consequences for the surrounding community, as I reported earlier this summer for the MIT Technology Review. And, despite González Colón’s chummy relationship with President Donald Trump, federal funding for Puerto Rico’s post-María reconstruction is still trickling out almost a decade after the storm.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is bringing tax credits for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles to a swift end on the grounds that the technologies are mature and therefore no longer worth subsidizing. Yet America’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas is seeking “alternative fuel” tax credits simply for running its vessels on the fuel they carry, exactly as they’re designed to do. The tax credit, originally signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2005, was intended to incentivize the switch from gasoline and diesel to biofuels, LNG, and liquid fuels derived from coal. The tankers Cheniere Energy, the nation’s top overseas seller of American LNG, uses to ship its fuel around the world are built to boil off fuel from the tanks that hold its cargo. But the company is seeking federal rewards for using the LNG, according to an investigation by Inside Climate News. If the Internal Revenue Service approves the request, Cheniere could net more than $140 million.
The Trump administration has vowed to cut back and streamline nuclear regulations to make building new reactors easier, potentially compromising safety. The effort has stirred enough drama at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a Republican commissioner resigned last week. Now a scandal at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in Florida is providing a timely reminder of why strict oversight exists over atomic energy stations. An inspection report on the plant, owned by Florida Power & Light, revealed that workers feared reporting safety problems to upper management lest they face retaliation. And that comes right as a database shows safety violations soared over the past year, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The investigation came as the Department of Energy discovered four radioactive wasp nests at the defunct Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina. The finding suggested that environmental contamination at the site, which previously developed weapons-grade material for the U.S. government, is more extensive than previously understood. While advocates of nuclear energy draw clear distinctions with the military-related sites, political upheaval at the federal agency that oversees radioactive materials could put the growing bipartisan consensus on building more reactors at risk.
Tesla’s board approved a $30 billion payout of shares to Elon Musk in a new compensation deal, according to a regulatory filing on Monday that followed the billionaire's threat to leave the electric automaker if he didn't receive more stock.
The move came days after a jury in Florida found flaws in Tesla’s self-driving software partly responsible for a crash that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend, The New York Times reported. If Friday's verdict holds, Tesla will be on the hook for as much as $243 million in damages to the parents of the woman and her boyfriend. The jury decided that Tesla bore 33% of the blame for the crash. Tesla said it would appeal. It’s a setback for Musk’s driverless ambitions. As Tesla’s human-driven automotive offerings stalled out last year, Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman wrote that, “sure, maybe it will be the one to crack full autonomous driving. But in practical terms, that tech is not close to reality, and Tesla’s version of it has encountered its fair share of bugs and been sued over crashes.”
New research from Stanford University has “upended conventional wisdom about electric vehicle battery management. Contrary to popular belief, a more dynamic driving style could significantly extend the lifespan of EV batteries,” including not charging the units to 100%.
The department creates a seemingly impossible new permitting criteria for renewable energy.
The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.
Hypothetically, this could kill off any solar or wind project going through permitting that is sited on federal lands, because these facilities would technically be less energy dense than coal, gas, and nuclear plants. This is irrespective of the potential benefits solar and wind may have for the environment or reducing carbon emissions – none of which are mentioned in the order.
“Gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects hold America back from achieving U.S. Energy Dominance while weighing heavily on the American taxpayer and environment,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement included in a press release announcing the move. “By considering energy generation optimization, the Department will be able to better manage our federal lands, minimize environmental impact, and maximize energy development to further President Donald Trump’s energy goals.”
Here’s how this new regime, which I and many in the energy sector are now suddenly trying to wrap their heads around, is apparently going to work: solar and wind facilities will now be evaluated based on their “capacity density,” which is calculated based on the ratio of acres used for a project compared to its power generation capacity. If a project has a lower “capacity density” than what the department considers to be a “reasonable alternative,” then it may no longer be able to get a permit.
“On a technology-neutral basis,” the order states, “wind and solar projects use disproportionate Federal lands relative to their energy generation when compared to other energy sources, like nuclear, gas, and coal.” The document going on to give an example, claiming that data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows an advanced nuclear plant uses less federal acreage than an offshore wind farm and “thus, when there are reasonable alternatives that can generate the same amount of or more energy on far less Federal land, wind and solar projects may unnecessarily and unduly degrade Federal lands.” The order also includes a chart comparing the capacity density of wind and solar facilities to conventional nuclear, gas, and coal, as well as geothermal, and claims that these sources are superior as well. The document does not reference hydropower.
There’s also a whole host of other implications in this order. Crucially, does the Interior expect that by choking off the flow of permits, cities and companies will just pony up to build what the Trump administration considers “reasonable alternatives” instead? Is the federal government going to tell communities in Nevada, for example, that they must suddenly build gas plants in the desert instead of solar farms to meet their increasing energy needs?
In any case, much more is coming, as this order simply built off of a separate secretarial order earlier this week commanding staff to prepare a litany of recommendations on ending alleged “preferential treatment” for solar and wind facilities. In other words hold my beer – and hold onto yours, too.