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On DeSantis’s latest legislation, solar tariffs, and brain disease
Current conditions: Areas surrounding Milan, Italy, are flooded after intense rainfall • Chile is preparing for its most severe cold snap in 70 years • East Texas could see “nightmare” flash flooding today and tomorrow.
The Biden administration is expanding existing solar panel tariffs to include the popular two-sided (or bifacial) modules used in many utility-scale solar installations. The solar manufacturing industry and elected representatives in states that have seen large solar manufacturing investments have been pushing to end the tariffs exclusion. With this move, the Biden administration is decisively intervening in the solar industry’s raging feud on the side of the adolescent-but-quickly-maturing domestic solar manufacturing industry, wrote Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. Bifacial modules are estimated to account for over 90% of U.S. module imports. That amounted to some $4.3 billion of incoming orders in the first six months of last year. Developers who have contracts to buy bifacial panels that will be shipped within 90 days will still be able to import them without duties, and the tariffs also allow a quota of solar cells, which are later assembled into modules, to be imported without charges.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis yesterday signed legislation that will result in most references to climate change being removed from state law. While the scrubbing of climate change is leading most headlines, the law does a few other important things, too:
Florida is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, from deadly heat waves to stronger and more frequent storms and sea level rise. And most Floridians support state action to tackle the issue. The law will come into effect on July 1.
The North American electric grid has “adequate anticipated resources for normal summer peak load and conditions,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said yesterday. The nonprofit reliability organizaton’s chief executive officer Jim Robb said there are “fewer areas at risk than last year, but significant concerns remain at the system’s ability to perform under extreme conditions.” The report lays out summer reliability risks by region, including nuclear plant outages in Ontario, Canada, less-than-expected wind power generation in the middle of the U.S., and a heat wave affecting western states and Mexico.
Meanwhile, Texas’s main grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), warned that the state could face an electricity emergency this weekend, with power demand expected to creep up toward max supply levels starting Friday night and stretching into Saturday night.
The International Energy Agency has lowered its forecast for oil demand growth for 2024. In its May report, the agency projects oil demand will grow by 1.1 million barrels per day (BPD), down 140,000 BPD from April’s report. “Poor industrial activity and another mild winter have sapped gasoil consumption this year,” the agency said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) released its own monthly report on Tuesday, projecting that oil demand will rise by 2.25 million BPD in 2024. “The gap between the IEA and OPEC is now even wider than it was earlier this year,” Reuterssaid.
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A new study found that extreme heat from climate change is making certain conditions involving the brain and the nervous system worse, including Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and even migraines and strokes. “Many of the components of the brain are, in fact, working close to the top of their temperature ranges, meaning that small increases in temperature or humidity may mean they stop working so well together,” the authors, from University College London, explained. “When those environmental conditions move rapidly into unaccustomed ranges, as is happening with extreme temperatures and humidity related to climate change, our brain struggles to regulate our temperature and begins to malfunction.” The authors note that 20% of the excess deaths that resulted from the 2003 European heat wave were among people with neurological conditions.
Massachusetts is launching a $10 million Climate Careers Fund that will provide no-interest loans to help people pay for training in climate-related jobs from heating and cooling to electric vehicle mechanics.
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On life-threatening temperatures, New York’s nuclear ambitions, and cancelled clean energy projects
Current conditions: Monsoon conditions are bringing flash floods to New Mexico • A heat warning has been issued in Beijing as temperatures creep toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit • It's hot and dry in Tehran today as a tenuous ceasefire between Iran and Israel comes into effect.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Monday that she wants to bring new, public nuclear power back to the state. She directed the New York Power Authority, the state power agency, to develop at least 1 gigawatt of new nuclear capacity upstate. Hochul did not specify a design or even a location for the new plant, but based on a few clues in the press release and where Hochul chose to make the announcement, Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin speculates that the project could be a small modular reactor, specifically GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300, one of a handful of SMR designs vying for both regulatory approval and commercial viability in the U.S. “Canada’s Ontario Power Generation recently approved a plan to build one,” Zeitlin notes, “with the idea to eventually build three more for a total 1.2 gigawatts of generating capacity, i.e. roughly the amount Hochul’s targeting.”
The announcement comes at a time when the federal regulatory and tax balance is tipping toward nuclear. The Trump administration issued a fleet of executive orders looking to speed up nuclear construction and regulatory approvals, and Senate Republicans’ version of the mega budget reconciliation bill includes far more generous treatment of nuclear development compared to wind and solar.
The heat dome that’s moving slowly across the U.S. is bringing dangerous conditions to millions of Americans. Multiple cities across the Midwest and East Coast felt hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, including Chicago, Nashville, and Raleigh. Roads buckled in Missouri. In New York’s Staten Island, the heat index hit 113 degrees. “This is life-threatening,” NYC Emergency Management said in a post on X. “At this level, the human body struggles to cool itself. Prolonged exposure or physical activity can quickly lead to heat stroke.” Power outages were reported in parts of the city. New York Mayor Eric Adams urged residents to help relieve the strain on the electric grid by avoiding using large appliances in the middle of the day, turning off lights, and limiting unnecessary air conditioning use. Wholesale energy prices soared as use skyrocketed. According to AccuWeather, more than 160 daily high temperature records could fall this week before things cool down Wednesday. Nearly 150 million people are affected by some kind of heat alert, and about 10% of the nation’s population will endure temperatures at or above 100 degrees today.
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About $1.4 billion in clean energy projects were cancelled last month as policy uncertainty mounts and the GOP’s budget reconciliation megabill hacks away at clean energy tax credits and permitting reform. According to a new report from clean energy business group E2, $15.5 billion in new factories and electricity projects have been nixed since the start of 2025, along with the 12,000 new jobs those projects were expected to create. “Republican congressional districts are losing the most,” the report finds. “More than $9 billion in investments and almost 10,000 jobs have been cancelled, delayed, or closed in Republican districts so far in 2025.”
The world added 741 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity last year, according to the new Renewables Global Status Report from Paris-based think tank REN21. That’s a new record, but it still falls far short of the COP28 goal to triple renewables capacity by 2030. In fact, “current trajectories suggest a shortfall of 6.2 terawatts – more than all renewables deployed to date,” the report finds. Here are some other key takeaways:
REN21
The Trump administration will roll back protections for nearly 60 million acres of pristine national forest, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Monday. Rescinding the 2001 “Roadless Rule” will open vast swathes of the nation’s forests — including Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which is North America’s largest temperate rainforest — to industrial activities. The administration called the rule “overly restrictive,” and said rolling it back will allow for better fire prevention and “responsible” timber production. The logging industry applauded the announcement; conservation groups condemned it. The rollback is likely to be challenged in court.
“I now believe that cleaning up methane leaks from the production and shipping of oil and gas — one of the most significant sources of these emissions — is the best hope we have to avoid triggering some of the most consequential climate tipping points in the next decade. I think realistically it is our only hope.” –Carl Pope, former executive director of the Sierra Club, on his biggest regrets as an environmentalist.
Reading between the lines of Governor Kathy Hochul’s big nuclear announcement.
With New York City temperatures reaching well into the 90s, the state grid running on almost two-thirds fossil fuels, and the man who was instrumental in shutting down one of the state’s largest sources of carbon-free power vying for a political comeback on Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Monday that she wants to bring new, public nuclear power back to the state.
Specifically, Hochul directed the New York Power Authority, the state power agency, to develop at least 1 gigawatt of new nuclear capacity upstate. While the New York City region hasn’t had a nuclear power plant since then-Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down Indian Point in 2021, there are three nuclear power plants currently operating closer to the 49th Parallel: Ginna, FitzPatrick, and Nine Mile Point, which together have almost 3.5 gigawatts of capacity and provide about a fifth of the state’s electric power,according to the nuclear advocacy group Nuclear New York. All three are now owned and operated by Constellation Energy, though FitzPatrick was previously owned by NYPA.
Hochul’s announcement did not specify a design or even a location for the new plant, but there were some hints. The press release describes “at least one new nuclear energy facility with no less than one gigawatt of electricity.” While 1 gigawatt is the capacity of a Westinghouse AP1000, the large, light-water reactor built at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the explanation seems to leave room for the possibility of multiple, smaller plants.
Then there was where Hochul chose to make the announcement, in front of the monumental Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant, which, when it was built in 1961, was the largest hydropower plant in the western hemisphere. The release includes an intriguing reference to the country just on the other side of the river, saying that the plan “will allow for future collaboration with other states and Ontario, building on regional momentum to strengthen nuclear supply chains, share best practices, and support the responsible deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.”
To me at least, all this points to the possibility that we could actually be talking about a small modular reactor, specifically GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300, one of a handful of SMR designs vying for both regulatory approval and commercial viability in the U.S. Canada’s Ontario Power Generation recently approved a plan to build one, with the idea to eventually build three more for a total 1.2 gigawatts of generating capacity, i.e. roughly the amount Hochul’s targeting. The Tennessee Valley Authority, America’s largest public power provider, is also looking at building a BWRX-300. Whichever is completed first will become the first operating SMR in North America. (A NYPA spokesperson told me there has been “no determination on technology yet,” nor on location.)
There are a few policy conclusions we can draw from the announcement, as well, one being that Hochul has determined New York’s energy needs do not match up with its current, renewables-heavy energy roadmap set out more than five years ago. The 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (signed by Cuomo) set out a goal for New York to supply 70% of its electricity with renewables by 2030; about a year ago, the Hochul administration said that it would likely not meet that target, which has only slipped farther from view under the Trump administration’s assault on the offshore wind industry, which was supposed to anchor the state’s renewables supply — especially near New York City, where land is scarce but shoreline is plentiful.
The new nuclear plan also has a distinctively upstate appeal, which is not surprising considering Hochul’s Buffalo roots. (She said during the announcement that she had visited the Niagara plant, which is just outside Buffalo, “so many times.”) The upstate power grid is less carbon intensive than the downstate grid and is due to receive much of the wind and solar development necessary to meet New York’s climate goals. But the northern reaches of the state are also more politically conservative and more rural, making it both an inviting target for renewables development and a potential wellspring of opposition.
“The fundamental challenge of wind, solar, and storage across upstate is that it’s subject to a lot of local opposition,” Ben Furnas, who served as director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability in New York City, told me. “Something that’s remarkable about nuclear power is that the land footprint is more modest.” (The NYPA spokesperson said that NYPA’s own plans for renewable development were not being altered.)
Nuclear power plants can also be economic lifelines — especially in rural areas — due to the permanent, high-paying jobs they support and direct economic benefits to the surrounding communities.
“There’s a lot of real win-win deals to be struck,” Furnas said. “It’s not an unknown, radical, alien notion. Plenty of people work in those plants and live near them. It’s a very different politics than what was happening in Hudson Valley around Indian Point,” where environmental groups like Riverkeeper (long associated with former Cuomo associate and current Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), had worked for years to shut down the plant.
Monday’s nuclear announcement included supportive quotes not just from the usual suspects of state energy and environmental officials and union leaders, but also from the chief executive of Micron, which is set to start working on a semiconductor fabrication facility in the central part of the state. “A critical factor in the success of the semiconductor ecosystem is access to affordable, reliable energy. We commend New York State for advancing an all-of-the-above energy strategy — including nuclear power,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
“To power this one facility, Micron is going to need so much power — so much incredible power — and there’s only one commercially viable option that can deliver that much clean, renewable, reliable power, and that’s what’s been operating in New York for decades: nuclear energy,” Hochul said Monday. “Harnessing the power of the atom is the best way to generate steady zero-emission electricity, and to help this transition.”
The mainstream environmental groups that supported the renewables-focused 2019 law (many of which either oppose nuclear power or are at best neutral towards it) were nowhere to be found during today’s announcement, however, and the plan has already drawn skepticism from some progressives.
Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the New York state senate’s finance committee, said in a statement that she had “significant concerns” about the nuclear plan, including its cost effectiveness, how to dispose of nuclear waste, the time required to site and build the project, whether other renewable options could fill the gap instead, and whether it has the “full informed consent from impacted communities.”
“I have yet to see any real-world examples of new nuclear development” that have met all these concerns, Krueger said. New York has a checkered history of nuclear development: Long Island ratepayers spent decadespaying for the completed but never operational Shoreham nuclear plant, whose costs ballooned by billions of dollars as construction dragged on from 1973 to 1984.
But the announcement comes at a time when the federal regulatory and tax balance is tipping toward nuclear regardless. The Trump administration issued a fleet of executive orders looking to speed up nuclear construction and regulatory approvals, and Senate Republicans’ version of the mega budget reconciliation bill includes far more generous treatment of nuclear development compared to wind and solar.
Public Power NY, an advocacy group that supports renewables development by NYPA, expressed skepticism about the nuclear plan in spite of these supportive signs.
“Hochul’s decision to step in based on promises from Donald Trump shows just how unserious she is about New Yorker’s energy bills and climate future. NYPA should be laser focused on rapidly scaling up their buildout of affordable solar and wind which is the only way to meet the state’s science-based climate goals and lower energy bills,” the group said in a statement.
For his part, Furnas was more pragmatic. “It’s really good that Governor Hochul is putting everything on the table when it comes to ensuring reliable generation for New York State and to meet clean air and carbon emission goals,” he said. “It would be foolish and unfortunate to not look at everything she can.”
Hochul herself appears determined to push through.
During the announcement, referring to the buzzing power plant behind her, Hochul said that “belief in sometimes impossible ideas” can bring people together. The power plant currently standing on that site was built in less than three years after an earlier plant on the Niagara collapsed. New nuclear power in New York may have seemed impossible, but it might still happen.
Even as Iran retaliated against U.S. airstrikes, prices have stayed calm.
Oil prices have stayed stable so far following the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend, and President Donald Trump wants to keep it that way.
In two consecutive posts on Truth Social Monday morning, the president wrote “To The Department of Energy: DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!! And I mean NOW!!!” and “EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!”
While Iran, of course, does not yet have an actual nuclear weapon, it does have a kind of “nuclear option” to retaliate: closing off the Strait of Hormuz, which separates the oil-rich countries like Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq (and Iran’s own largest ports) from the Indian Ocean, and by extension all of global shipping. Iran’s parliament approved closing off the strait, but any real effort to do so would have to come from Iran’s most senior leadership, which has not so far seemed inclined to torpedo its own economy.
Markets, at least so far, do not see much more risk today than they did before the U.S. airstrikes. West Texas Intermediate oil price benchmark sat at just over $74 a barrel Monday morning, up substantially from its low of just over $57 in early May, but up only mildly from its $68 a barrel level on June 12, the day before Israel began bombing Iran. Prices are basically flat since Friday, even after Iran said it had launched a strike on an American base in Qatar.
“Multiple oil tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz this morning, both in and outbound,” Bloomberg’s Javier Blas wrote on X Monday morning. “No[t] even a hint of disruption. Oil loading across multiple ports in the Persian Gulf appears normal. If anything, export rates over the last week are higher than earlier in June.”
As Greg Brew, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, told me, “The Hormuz risk is generally overstated. The Iranian threats are mostly rhetoric and meant for domestic political consumption. Hardliners in particular will use threats to close the strait as a means of letting off steam following the U.S. bombing of Fordow.”
“In reality,” he went on, “Iran faces a massive disparity in forces in the Gulf. A move to close Hormuz would be near suicidal as it would expand the scope of the war, drag in the Gulf states as well as the U.S., and imperil Iran’'s own energy exports at a time when the regime will need every financial and economic lifeline it can get.”
Inasmuch as oil prices have moved in the past few weeks, it’s been in response to the perceived increased risk of some kind of cataclysm to the world oil trade — even if the actual chances of the strait being entirely closed to tanker traffic remains low.
“Prices remain elevated on account of the regional risk, and are likely to remain in the $70s or low $80s until we see a pathway toward broader de-escalation,” Brew said.
For the American oil industry, however, a more nervous market might be a more profitable one.
Aniket Shah, an analyst at Jefferies, wrote a note to clients over the weekend attributing the increase since May to “rising tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, which channels ~20% of global oil shipments.”
“While the US imports less Middle Eastern oil than in past decades, global price shocks still drive up domestic fuel and transport costs,” he wrote.
In the months running up to the recent oil price increase, American drillers were facing an unpleasant combination of tariffs, increased production overseas (encouraged by Trump), and low prices at home, which wrecked their capital planning. Some domestic oil and gas drillers like Matador in April and Diamondback in May told their investors they planned to decrease their planned capital expenditures; over the past two months, drillers have been slowly but steadily taking rigs offline, according to the widely watched Baker Hughes rig count.
Conflict in the Middle East could therefore provide some relief (at least for the oil and gas industry) at home. “U.S. producers are among the winners here,” Brew told me. “A few months of higher prices will offer a nice hedge for shale drillers and ease their plans to reduce expenditure and output for the year.”
But higher profits for oil drillers will not necessarily translate into increased production, as Trump has commanded. “Since this is all based on risk premium and does not reflect a change in fundamentals, shale drillers are likely to deliver the gains to shareholders rather than pumping the money back into production,” Brew explained. “An overall drop in U.S. onshore output in 2025 is probably still in the cards.”
In that scenario, oil company profits would rise while production would fall year-over-year. And that would likely mean an even more infuriated Trump, who has also recently reignited his campaign to push Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, citing several months of low inflation.
“Elevated oil prices risk stalling recent disinflation trends and complicates the Fed’s path to rate cuts,” Shah wrote.
Even if the strait remains open, if oil prices don’t fall, expect more Truths.