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Climate

How Hurricane Idalia Swamped Florida, in 9 Striking Photos

The region faces a long road to recovery.

While it appears that Hurricane Idalia may not have been as destructive as initally feared, the storm still incurred plenty of damage, with heavy rains and flash flooding stretching from Florida’s Gulf Coast to eastern North Carolina. Nearly 300,000 customers have been left without power, scores of homes were lost, and as these photos show, the region will face a long road to recovery.

Flooded Tarpon Springs.A fire burns as flood waters inundate downtown Tarpon Springs, Florida, after Hurricane Idalia. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A woman and her dog walking through floodwaters.A woman and her dog walk through floodwaters in Tarpon Springs.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A man walking his bike through floodwaters.A man walks his bike past his flooded apartment in Crystal River, Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

People kayaking through flooded streets.People kayak through flooded streets in Crystal River.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A submerged car.A car that crashed after hitting a fallen tree sits in a gully in Perry, Florida.Sean Rayford/Getty Images

A storm-damaged gas station.A storm-damaged gas station in Perry.Sean Rayford/Getty Images

A storm-damaged Dollar Tree.A storm-damaged Dollar Tree store in Perry.Sean Rayford/Getty Images

A storm-damaged McDonald's sign.A storm-damaged McDonald's sign in Perry.Sean Rayford/Getty Images

People working to clear Interstate 10 of fallen trees.People work to clear Interstate 10 of fallen trees near Madison, Florida.Sean Rayford/Getty Images

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Energy

If Wind and Solar Are So Cheap, Why Do They Need Tax Credits?

Removing the subsidies would be bad enough, but the chaos it would cause in the market is way worse.

Money and clean energy.
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In their efforts to persuade Republicans in Congress not to throw wind and solar off a tax credit cliff, clean energy advocates have sometimes made what would appear to be a counterproductive argument: They’ve emphasized that renewables are cheap and easily obtainable.

Take this statement published by Advanced Energy United over the weekend: “By effectively removing tax credits for some of the most affordable and easy-to-build energy resources, Congress is all but guaranteeing that consumers will be burdened with paying more for a less reliable electric grid.”

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Green
Politics

The Megabill’s Most Bizarre Fossil Fuel Handout

A new subsidy for metallurgical coal won’t help Trump’s energy dominance agenda, but it would help India and China.

The Capitol.
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Crammed into the Senate’s reconciliation bill alongside more attention-grabbing measures that could cripple the renewables industry in the U.S. is a new provision to amend the Inflation Reduction Act to support metallurgical coal, allowing producers to claim the advanced manufacturing tax credit through 2029. That extension alone could be worth up to $150 million a year for the “beautiful clean coal” industry (as President Trump likes to call it), according to one lobbyist following the bill.

Putting aside the perversity of using a tax credit from a climate change bill to support coal, the provision is a strange one. The Trump administration has made support for coal one of the centerpieces of its “energy dominance” strategy, ordering coal-fired power plants to stay open and issuing a raft of executive orders to bolster the industry. President Trump at one point even suggested that the elite law firms that have signed settlements with the White House over alleged political favoritism could take on coal clients pro bono.

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Yellow
Ideas

The GOP Megabill Is Playing Right Into China’s Hands

Two former Department of Energy staffers argue from experience that severe foreign entity restrictions aren’t the way to reshore America’s clean energy supply chain.

Xi Jinping and solar panels.
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The latest version of Congress’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” claims to be tough on China. Instead, it penalizes American energy developers and hands China the keys to dominate 21st century energy supply chains and energy-intensive industries like AI.

Republicans are on the verge of enacting a convoluted maze of “foreign entity” restrictions and penalties on U.S. manufacturers and energy companies in the name of excising China from U.S. energy supply chains. We share this goal to end U.S. reliance on Chinese minerals and manufacturing. While at the U.S. Department of Energy and the White House, we worked on numerous efforts to combat China’s grip on energy supply chains. That included developing tough, nuanced and, importantly, workable rules to restrict tax credit eligibility for electric vehicles made using materials from China or Chinese entities — rules that quickly began to shift supply chains away from China and toward the U.S. and our allies.

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