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On shareholder proposals, ex-Tesla employees, and extra-hot days.
Thursday
Current conditions: More than 400,000 households are currently without power in storm-battered Texas and the southern Plains • Southeast Louisiana tied a century-old temperature record on Memorial Day, recording a high of 98 degrees Fahrenheit in Baton Rouge • India may have broken its own heat record with a preliminary reading of about 126 degrees Fahrenheit near New Delhi.
ExxonMobil Chairman Darren Woods and Lead Director Joseph Hooley easily won reelection at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, neutralizing a threatened shareholder uprising over its climate policies. Several major pension funds said ahead of the meeting that they would vote to remove most of Exxon’s board after the company sued activist shareholders pushing for stronger emissions reduction targets. Though most of its petrochemical peers have similar targets, the company argued that the activists’ true goal was to “interfere with ExxonMobil’s business and to promote their own interests over those of ExxonMobil’s shareholders.”
The resistance effort “amounted to a test of whether top fund firms would rally to defend the small shareholders whose resolutions have put topics like the environment and workforce diversity at the center of many corporate annual meetings,” Reuters said. “Wednesday’s results suggested the answer was no.” All 12 of Exxon’s director nominees received between 87% and 98% support at the meeting, the company reported. The activists, meanwhile, withdrew their proposal in February, but Exxon is still pursuing the matter in court.
The U.S. electric vehicle sector is snapping up Tesla employees who were laid off when the company gutted its charging team last month. Atlanta-based charging provider EnviroSpark Energy Solutions has hired a dozen of them, E&E News reported, while other charging companies have landed high-profile hires let go by Tesla or are in talks to do so. “It does present an awesome opportunity for other charging operators like us to fill in the gap,” David Jankowsky, CEO of Francis Energy, told E&E News. There is still some trepidation, however, over how Tesla’s tribulations could affect the broader industry’s future. Despite its poor recent performance, Tesla still dominates the U.S. EV market, so a dip in consumer confidence could have negative ripple effects on EV uptake.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development announced Wednesday that the world’s rich countries had met their goal of delivering $100 billion in annual climate finance to poorer countries in 2022 — two years after their self-imposed deadline, the group said. The 2020 target was first set at the 2009 United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, and the delay in meeting it had strained recent climate talks. Developed countries came up with $115.9 billion in climate finance in 2022, OECD data shows, an increase of 30% from 2021. That’s the biggest year-on-year jump so far. “Exceeding this annual commitment materially by more than 15% is an important and symbolic achievement which goes some way towards making up for the two-year delay, which should help build trust,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in a statement.
Climate advocates warned, however, that achieving this aim is not an end point in itself. Transitioning to clean energy and adapting to new climate realities are both expensive processes. “While domestic finance, strong policies and private finance are important, for these countries, international public finance needs to play a lynchpin role,” Melanie Robinson, global climate, economics and finance director at the World Resources Institute, said in a statement. Discussions about setting a new climate finance goal will be a centerpiece of COP29 in Azerbaijan.
New York will be the first state to launch home energy rebates created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The initial phase of New York’s $158 million rebate program will be aimed at single-family homes and multifamily properties with up to four units, while later phases will expand to larger buildings and retailers. It will provide up to $14,000 per housing unit for upgrades such as better insulation, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters. A separate, $159 million IRA home efficiency rebate program is expected to follow. Massachusetts, Michigan and Rhode Island have all applied for the funding to establish their own home energy rebate programs under the IRA — a process that’s turned out to be messier than some had hoped, according to Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo.
The average American experienced 20 more extra-hot days over the past year than would have been expected without climate change, a new scientific analysis found. Globally, the average person experienced 26 more extra-hot days due to climate change, while in a few countries, that number exceeded 120, according to the report by Climate Central, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and World Weather Attribution. The researchers considered temperatures abnormal when they exceeded 90% of a location’s daily readings recorded between 1991 and 2020. Americans experienced 39 such days in total over the last 12 months. Almost 80% of the world’s population experienced 31 or more.
Manila residents swelter during a May heat wave. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
The National Weather Service issued its first-ever warning for hail the size of a DVD — that is, a diameter of approximately 5 inches — in northern Texas on Tuesday.
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The CEO of Cleveland Cliffs is just the latest U.S. voice to affirm the dirtiest fossil fuel’s unexpectedly bright future.
While the story of coal demand has been largely about rapid industrialization in Asia — especially India and China — the United States under President Trump has been working hard to make itself a main character.
Case in point is in Middletown, Ohio, where a one-time clean steel project may be refashioned as a standard-bearer for an industry-driven U.S. coal revival. The company behind the project, Cleveland-Cliffs, won a Biden-era award of up to $500 million to develop and deploy hydrogen-based technology for iron and steel production. CEO Laurenco Goncalves began casting doubt on that project as long ago as September, when he told Politico that he was struggling to find buyers willing to pay more for low-carbon materials, and that he wasn’t sure the project “even makes sense with the grants.” Earlier this year, he told investors that the company was working with the Department of Energy to “explore changes in scope to better align with the administration’s energy priorities.”
During an earnings call Monday morning, Goncalves said the company had scrapped the project not because of the DOE, but rather because it was unable to get sufficient hydrogen for use as fuel.
“The very first thing: It’s clear by now that we will not have availability of hydrogen. So there is no point in pursuing something that we know for sure that’s not going to happen,” Goncalves said. “We informed the DOE that we would not be pursuing that project.”
Instead, the company has had “a very good conversation” with the DOE “on revamping that project in a way that we preserve and enhance Middletown using beautiful coal, beautiful coke,” Goncalves said. (Where have we heard that kind of language before?) “We are vertically integrated, and we use American iron ore and American coal and American natural gas as feedstock, all produced right here in the United States of America, employing American workers,” he added.
The evidence for coal’s stubborn persistence globally has been mounting for years. In 2021, the International Energy Agency forecast that by 2024, annual coal demand would hit an all-time high of just over 8,000 megatons. In 2024, it reported that coal demand in 2023 was already at 8,690 megatons, a new record; it also pushed out its prediction for a demand plateau to 2027, at which point it predicted annual demand would be 8,870 megatons.
The IEA largely chalked up the results to the world’s energy needs, writing that “the power sector has been the main driver of coal demand growth, with electricity generation from coal set to reach an all-time high of 10 700 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024.”
More recent analyses confirm that power demand, especially in Asia, could prop up global coal demand possibly for decades.
“Coal-fired power could be a bigger part of the energy mix for longer than expected, scuppering efforts to meet climate change goals,” a pair of Wood Mackenzie analysts, David Brown and Anthony Knutson, wrote in a report last week, echoing the IEA’s findings. China alone is responsible for almost three-quarters of global coal consumption, according to Wood Mackenzie. “New realities for energy markets in recent years have become more, not less, supportive of coal-fired power,” Brown and Knutson write.
The analysts put peak global coal demand a year earlier than the IEA, at 2026. But they also noted that “coal demand has consistently proven more resilient than expected.”
It’s possible that these fast-growing Asian nations could, for reasons of energy security or economy, decide to keep younger coal plants active for decades while extending the life of older plants to keep costs down. In this scenario, much of the world largely transitions away from using coal for power generation, but thanks to persistent Asian demand, global coal demand peaks as late as 2030. That could mean an extra 2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions compared to a base case scenario.
The U.S. federal government, meanwhile, has taken on a role as both a coal-friendly analyst and an active promoter of every facet of the industry
A couple of weeks ago, a Department of Energy report declared that “absent intervention, it is impossible” for the U.S. to power the growth of the artificial intelligence industry “while maintaining a reliable power grid and keeping energy costs low for our citizens.” That energy-poor status quo, the DOE argued, was due in part to scheduled retirements of coal-fired generation.
The DOE has been doing its part to keep that generation online, using its emergency authorities to keep some coal plants open. It has joined President Trump in becoming a kind of all-purpose pitch man for the industry. Over the weekend, the Department’s X account posted an image of Secretary of Energy Chris Wright with a shovel, copied and pasted in front of an open-pit mine, with the words “MINE, BABY, MINE.”
On the supply side, congressional Republicans tucked into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a tax credit specifically for domestic metallurgical coal production, which could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Some of the largest end users of U.S.-mined metallurgical coal are outside the U.S., including the countries driving worldwide coal demand. India imported over 3 million tons of U.S. metallurgical coal in the first three months of 2025, with China just under a million, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
The tie-up between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel authorized in June, meanwhile, grants a “golden share” of the American company to the U.S. government, in part to ensure increased investment and capacity. That deal also explicitly provides for at least $1 billion of investment into U.S. Steel’s existing blast furnace operation, Mon Valley Works, in Western Pennsylvania. The investments “ensure Mon Valley Works operates for decades to come,” the company said in an announcement.
That means more coal: Mon Valley Works is the “largest coke manufacturing facility in the United States,” according to U.S. Steel, producing 4.3 million tons of the coal product both for its own operations and for sale to other steelmakers.
In an interview with Japanese media, Nippon Steel’s chief executive Eiji Hashimoto said that the newly expanded company will likely build a new steel mill in the U.S., as part of its goal to catch up in steel production with its Chinese rival China Baowu Steel Group Corp, while also using more of its existing capacity to increase production, hoping to eventually more than double its output by the middle of next decade.
(For what it’s worth, Japan is also a major importer of metallurgical coal from the United States, taking in just over a million tons in the first three months of 2025.)
While the future of coal will be determined in Asia, the U.S. steel industry is happy to work with the Trump administration and the coal industry to keep things burning.
“They see the value in blast furnaces just as we at Cleveland Cliffs do,” Cleveland-Cliffs’ Goncalves said of the U.S. industry’s new Japanese partners.
On betrayed regulatory promises, copper ‘anxiety,’ and Mercedes’ stalled EV plans
Current conditions: Typhoon Wipha is barrelling through southern China, making its way across the mainland after pummeling Hong Kong with heavy rain • More than 60 million Americans are facing heat alerts as temperatures surge • The unusually warm 21-degree Fahrenheit temperature recorded at Summit Station in Greenland is just a few degrees off a record high.
EPA Administrator Lee ZeldinKevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images
The Environmental Protection Agency announced plans on Friday afternoon to shut down its research arm and fire hundreds of biologists, chemists, toxicologists, and other scientists whose work helps determine safe pollution levels for regulations. The announcement comes after months of denials from EPA administrator Lee Zeldin that he planned to close the division in question, the Office of Research and Development, which studies the threat from climate change, toxic chemicals, and air and water pollution on human health, and funds university research programs.
The closure comes as part of deep job cuts at the agency. In a statement on Friday, Zeldin said the more than 500 layoffs — which, combined with voluntary buyouts, will slash the EPA’s workforce by nearly one-quarter compared to January’s numbers — would save taxpayers nearly $750 million. The nation’s biggest chemical manufacturers’ lobby agreed, arguing to NPR that the cuts would “ensure American taxpayer dollars are being used efficiently and effectively.” But environmentalists warned that the cuts would “not only cripple EPA’s ability to do its own research, but also to apply the research of other scientists.”
Shares in non-Chinese producers of graphite surged on Friday after the Trump administration slapped new anti-dumping duties of 93.5% on imports of the key mineral for batteries, the Financial Times reported. Combined with existing tariffs on Chinese materials, the new trade levies total more than 160%, according to the consultancy Benchmark Minerals. In response, the stock price for Australia-listed Syrah Resources, the world’s largest non-Chinese graphite miner and the developer behind a key Inflation Reduction Act-funded project in Louisiana, shot up 22%. Canada’s Nouveau Monde Graphite spiked 26%. The dual-listed Australian-U.S. producer Novonix surged 15%.
Not all of President Donald Trump’s mineral tariffs are causing excitement for U.S. allies. Earlier this month, the White House announced 50% tariffs on copper to begin in August, but it has yet to clarify whether those tariffs will apply to refined metal, semi-refined products, or copper ore. The uncertainty is causing “anxiety,” Máximo Pacheco, the chairman of Chile’s state-owned copper miner, told the FT. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote when the tariffs were first announced, they have the potential to “provide renewed impetus to expand copper mining in the United States. But tariffs can happen in a matter of months. A copper mine takes years to open — and that’s if investors decide to put the money toward the project in the first place.”
Regulators in Virginia last week ordered electricity and natural gas provider Dominion to lay out a clearer blueprint for meeting the state’s legally-enshrined carbon-free electricity targets. But the State Corporation Commission still accepted the monopoly utility’s plans to build out more fossil fuel generation, Canary Media reported.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, requires Dominion to generate 100% of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045. The accepted plan runs up to 2039, leaving just six years to sort out the details of decarbonization. The regulators cautioned that “acceptance does not express approval.” While the statement stopped short of calling into question a proposed 944-megawatt gas complex just south of Richmond, Virginia’s capital, the commission said it would debate plans for another roughly 5 gigawatts of gas-burning power plants before approving construction..
British energy giant BP is selling off its U.S. onshore wind business as the Trump administration appears ready to smother the industry. On Friday, New York-based developer LS Power said it agreed to buy BP’s share of 10 wind projects totaling 1,700 megawatts of capacity. As part of the deal, LS Power plans to fold the wind projects into its renewable energy subsidiary, Clearlight Energy, increasing its fleet to 4,300 megawatts.
BP’s exit comes as the Trump administration has vowed to crack down on the expansion of wind and solar power in the U.S. Trump has long personally opposed wind energy, dating back to his unsuccessful fight against turbines erected near his golf course in Scotland before entering politics. Last week, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reported on a memo from the Department of the Interior calling for political reviews of essentially all solar and wind developments in the U.S. This would at minimum stretch out the already challenging development timeline for projects, a problem especially as developers rush to qualify for federal tax credits.
Mercedes-Benz is pumping the brakes on U.S. production of its EQ line of electric vehicles as the Trump administration winds down federal tax credits to support purchases of battery-powered cars. The German automaker told InsideEVs that, by the start of September, it planned to temporarily pause assembly lines of all variants of its EQE and EQS sedans and SUVs that are either located in the U.S. or producing vehicles bound for the American market. The manufacturer is no longer taking orders from dealers for the cars.
Reviewers had criticized the EQ models for lacking the quality and sophistication of similar gas-powered lines of Mercedes vehicles. Even before Republicans in Congress rolled back the federal government’s landmark $7,500 tax credit for EVs, Mercedes faced trouble finding buyers. Sales of the EQS sedan and EQS SUV were down 52% in the U.S. in 2024 compared to the previous year. China’s biggest electric automakers, meanwhile, are racing to build factories in Brazil, the largest car market in South America.
Like tiny winged Magellans measuring barely an inch in size, the Bogong moth of Australia regularly travels more than 600 miles using celestial navigation, according to a new study in Nature. “The moths really are using a view of the night sky to guide their movements,” a researcher told Euronews.
From the Inflation Reduction Act to the Trump mega-law, here are 20 years of changes in one easy-to-read cheat sheet.
The landmark Republican reconciliation bill, which President Trump signed on July 4, has shattered the tax credits that served as the centerpiece of the country’s clean energy and climate policy.
Starting as soon as October, the law — which Trump has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — will cut off incentives for Americans to install solar panels, purchase electric vehicles, or make energy efficiency improvements to their homes. It’s projected to raise household energy costs while increasing America’s carbon emissions by 190 million metric tons a year by 2030, according to the REPEAT Project at Princeton University.
The loss of these incentives will in part offset the continuation of tax cuts that largely benefit wealthy Americans. But the law as a whole won’t come close to paying for those cuts in their entirety. The legislation is expected to swell federal deficits by nearly $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. This explosive deficit expansion could make it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, possibly further constraining energy development.
President Trump has described the law as ending Democrats’ “green new scam,” and conservative lawmakers have celebrated the termination of Biden-era energy programs. The law is particularly devastating for programs encouraging electric vehicle sales, as well as wind and solar energy deployment.
But the act is more complicated than a simple repeal of Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In one case, Trump’s big law ends a federal energy incentive that has been in place, in some form, since the 1990s. In others, Republicans have tied up existing energy incentives with new restrictions, regulations, and red tape.
Some parts of the IRA have even remained intact. GOP lawmakers opted to preserve Biden’s big expansion of incentives to support nuclear energy and advanced geothermal development. That said, the Trump administration could still gut these tax credits by making them effectively unusable through executive action.
It can be confusing to keep the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s many changes to federal energy law in your head — even for experts. That’s why Heatmap News is excited to publish this new reference “cheat sheet”on the past, present, and future of federal energy tax credits, compiled by an all-star collection of analysts and researchers.
The summary takes each clean energy-related provision in the U.S. tax code and summarizes how (and whether) it existed in the 2000s and 2010s, how the Inflation Reduction Act changed it, and how the new OBBBA will change it again. It was compiled by Shane Londagin, a policy advisor at the think tank Third Way; Luke Bassett, a former Biden administration official and Senate Energy committee staffer; Avi Zevin, a former Biden official and a partner at the energy law firm Roselle LLP; and researchers at the REPEAT Project, an energy analysis group at Princeton University. (Note that I co-host the podcast Shift Key with Jesse Jenkins, who leads the REPEAT Project.)
You can find the full summary below.