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The results of Heatmap’s very first insiders survey.
Most climate insiders don’t expect the Inflation Reduction Act to get repealed. They don’t foresee the world’s temperature rising more than 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, and they are bullish on hot rocks and geothermal.
Those are the findings from our exclusive — and highly unscientific — survey of climate and decarbonization insiders. Over the past few weeks, Heatmap has queried more than 30 climate insiders across policy, science, technology, and economics, including high-profile energy entrepreneurs, high-rolling “climate tech” venture capitalists, and some high-ranking (and very-soon-to-be-former) Biden officials.
We wanted to know what they’re thinking about the era to come — and about how they would handle some of the biggest questions that plagued climate policy during the Biden era: Will Congress pass permitting reform? Is there a trade-off between developing artificial intelligence and decarbonizing the power grid? And how would you balance China’s dominance over certain clean technologies — and the need for the American economy, and the American military, to stay competitive? We got a lot of answers. Here’s what they told us…
Folks were bullish about geothermal, hot rocks, and batteries. Five respondents mentioned Fervo, the advanced geothermal company that borrows techniques (and workers) from the fracking industry. Three said Form Energy, which makes cheap iron-air batteries for the power grid; several mentioned Rondo or Antora, which produce thermal batteries that can store and release huge amounts of heat. “The real answer I can't disclose yet, but there is the one,” said a prominent climate tech investor. Get real, replied a policy researcher: The only “climate tech” company today with a claim to be the most important is Chinese EV juggernaut BYD.
Really good heat pumps, said the most respondents, tied with any way to make chemicals, liquid fuels, or plastics in a low-carbon way. A close second: Virtually anything that could be used to decarbonize apartment or multifamily residential buildings. “From the perspective of an apartment-dweller in a large shared building, it seems almost impossible to get buy-in for building decarbonization,” said one climate scientist. “I know ‘convince a landlord/co-op/condo board to do something’ doesn't have a technological solution, but it's the biggest stumbling block.”
Brown hydrogen, green hydrogen, blue hydrogen — it doesn’t matter, throw them all out. Sixteen percent of respondents, including an energy researcher and a climate tech VC, wanted to ditch “the hydrogen rainbow.” “Tipping points,” said one climate scientist. Another climate scientist told us: “Climate crisis, climate emergency, global heating: anything that implies the primary impediment to cutting emissions is scientists using the wrong word.” “Three pillars,” said a former Biden official. “Levelized cost of energy, or LCOE,” said a climate entrepreneur. “It so oversimplifies the way the grid actually works and how electricity is valued that it does more harm than good.” “Carbon accounting, carbon footprint, and anything else that makes us think our current emissions are the most important thing to our future success,” said another VC.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents, spanning every field we queried, said that AI and data center growth isn’t hindering decarbonization … yet. And among the 35% of insiders who answered yes, most also framed their concerns in future terms. “Perhaps not at present, nor over the last few years, but the trajectory is alarming and I do believe they could derail emissions goals at scale within the next 5 years,” said one climate scientist. “Seems like there are plenty of reports of new gas capacity being added,” agreed another researcher. “On the other hand … we would need so much more capacity for hydrogen, electrification of transport and homes, etc., so I'm not sure why we are so worried about AI in the scheme of all the new and upcoming needs for electricity.” “Hot take: AI isn't worried about energy, but energy is worried about AI,” interjected a climate tech VC.
Exactly half of our insiders said: Nope, this tradeoff almost never actually exists. Among the other half, insiders said policymakers should be pragmatic, and only a few said that they should focus on cutting emissions at all costs. “They should do whatever is required to maintain and accelerate political ambition on climate,” said a climate philanthropist. “They should have prioritized social justice issues less,” said one climate tech CEO. “It is never a fair commercial fight with China since our companies are always up against the Chinese state,” said a former U.S. government official. “But it would be a big mistake to allow China to dominate green tech and supply chains — as they would like to do — since that would create an untenable dependence on a country that never hesitates to weaponize its economic advantage. But the imperative to decarbonize is massively important.”
Forty-five percent of respondents said that yes, we should let the EV imports rip. A few researchers and former Biden officials added a twist: “Yes, but only if they are made in the USA.” Others thought that the U.S. should import the cars, but only with a carbon adjustment tariff and a huge investment in U.S. EV manufacturing. “If there were CBAM and other tariffs meant to reflect the imbalance of environmental and labor regulations, then yes,” said one VC. “But then the cars wouldn’t be that competitive.” Almost everyone else said no.
NOPE, said 68% of the insiders. (About 17% said yes, and 15% weren’t sure or thought a minority of the grants might get clawed back.) “I expect it will go after some provisions, but there is quite a bit in the IRA that will be very difficult to repeal since large-scale clean energy investments have been made, and a majority of those in red states whose politicians will not want to give them up,” said one former U.S. official. “A lot of money has already gone out, so I'm guessing the money for EJ initiatives and communities is most at risk,” said a climate researcher. One Biden official threw down the gauntlet: “None of the measures will get repealed. Even unspent money will largely be safe.”
YES, said 59% of insiders. NO, said 41%. “I hope not. That bill sucked,” said a researcher.
“Europe pushing ahead with nuclear energy. Paradigm shifts are possible,” said one energy researcher. “Trump's picks for Energy and Interior could have been much worse,” said another. A former Biden official said that the American Petroleum Institute’s decision to back the IRA was a good sign — and an economist noted the dozen House Republicans opposing repeal encouraged him, too. “Corporates’ willingness to procure clean electrons at a ‘green premium’ for their AI energy demands,” said a climate tech VC.
“Oh dear,” said one researcher. The average of insiders’ answers were 2.8 degrees Celsius, with the highest guesses going up to 3.5 degrees Celsius. A few respondents said 2 degrees Celsius, but only because they thought humanity will have the ability to modulate temperatures by then. “If we don't do anything, I think 3 to 4 degrees,” said another. “We will be able to control global temperatures before we achieve net zero, so by 2100 if civilization is still healthy we will have settled at some optimal temperature,” said another VC.
Some experts believe that the world’s biggest polluter has already hit peak greenhouse gas emissions. Our panelists weren’t so sure: 30% of respondents each said that China’s pollution would peak in the 2020s, 2030s, and 2040s, respectively. The remainder would look to 2050 or beyond.
Unlike China, America’s emissions have already peaked. (They did that more than a decade ago, around the Great Recession.) So U.S. policy makers now plan for the arrival of net zero, the hypothesized future date when the American economy will emit roughly as much climate pollution as it absorbs. While respondents were split on when that might happen, most see it emerging in the 2050s or 2060s.
It’s time to focus on climate impacts, which are coming regardless of what happens with emissions, said many. “In the age of Trump, we need to think more about resilience. Preparing ourselves to deal with the weather variability we are seeing already (e.g., California fires, Florida hurricanes, Colorado River drought years) will put us in a much better position to deal with climate change,” a climate scientist added. “I think 2025 is a year that we will start to see adaptation technologies/approaches and solar geoengineering start playing much larger roles in the climate response policy portfolio,” one researcher-activist told us.
But the climate tech industry is upbeat: “It's an optimistic time for climate tech,” one climate tech CEO said. “The return of climate-tech funding in the last 5 years has allowed a lot of ideas to be tried, and there is now enough data on what is working and what is not. The good news is that there is more than enough in the ‘working’ column to move full speed ahead.” And a climate VC agreed: “The second Trump administration will see more acceleration for industrial climate tech than the Biden years.” “The United States has better technology than any country in the world,” said a Biden official. “Biden’s policies combined with America First messaging will forever dispel the myth that China has any sort of technology lead by 2028 … emissions will go down faster during the Trump administration than they did in the Biden administration because deployment has been positioned to reach all time highs starting in 2026.”
Yet some saw risks for the world ahead. “The most important stories for climate action in 2025 have less to do with climate and more to do with geoeconomic competition,” said one public policy expert. Trade fragmentation may drive prices up and slow innovation, greatly delaying technology diffusion and deployment. And there is a major risk of continued or worsened conflict — the greatest risk being China's positioning vis a vis the Pacific and Taiwan.”
OUR PANEL INCLUDED… Gavin Schmidt, British climatologist | Jennifer Wilcox, University of Pennsylvania chemical engineering professor and former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management | Kim Cobb, coral scientist and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society | Tim Latimer, chief executive of Fervo Energy | Clay Dumas, founding partner at Lowercarbon Capital | Holly Jean Buck, environment professor at University at Buffalo | J. Mijin Cha, environmental studies professor at UC Santa Cruz | Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist | Ken Caldeira, senior scientist emeritus at Carnegie Science | Apoorv Bhargava, chief executive at Weavegrid | Todd Stern, former U.S. special envoy for climate change | Jigar Shah, U.S. Loan Programs Office director | Jesse Jenkins, energy systems professor at Princeton | Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Charm Industrial | Amy Francetic, managing general partner at Buoyant Ventures | Jane Flegal, executive director at Blue Horizons Foundation | Shuchi Talati, executive director at the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering… and many more …
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It’s already conquered solar, batteries, and EVs. With a $2 billion new turbine factory in Scotland, it may have set its next target.
Batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles. The story of renewable energy deployment globally is increasingly one of China’s fiercely competitive domestic industries and deep supply chains exporting their immense capacity globally. Now, it may be wind’s turn.
The Chinese turbine manufacturer Ming Yang announced last week that it plans to invest $2 billion in a factory in Scotland. The facility is scheduled to start production in late 2028, churning out offshore wind equipment for use in the United Kingdom, which has over 15 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, as well as for export, likely in Europe.
The deal comes as China finds itself at a kind of domestic clean energy crossroads, in terms of both supply and demand. On the former, the country has launched a campaign aimed at softening the cutthroat domestic competition, overproduction, and price wars that have defined many of its green industries, especially electric vehicles.
At the same time, China is setting out to alter its electricity markets to put renewable energy on a more market-based footing, while also paying coal-fired power plants to stay on the grid, as University of California, San Diego researcher Michael Davidson explained on a recent episode of Shift Key. These changes in electricity markets will reduce payments to solar and wind producers, making foreign markets potentially more attractive.
“We anticipate Chinese original equipment manufacturers will intensify their push toward international expansion, with Mingyang’s planned investment a signal of this trend,” Morningstar analyst Tancrede Fulop wrote in a note to clients. “This poses a challenge for Western incumbents, as Chinese players can capitalize on their cost advantages in a market driven by price.”
Ironically, Fulop said, the market changes will make the Chinese market more like Europe’s, which has become more price conscious as the market has matured and reductions in cost have slowed or outright stopped. “The transition is expected to make renewable developers increasingly price-sensitive as they seek to preserve project returns, ultimately weighing on wind turbine manufacturers’ profitability,” he wrote.
There’s a “cliff” coming in Chinese renewable energy deployment, Kyle Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, told me. “Overall, the net effect is expected to be a pretty sharp drop, and we’re already starting to see some of the effects of that.”
And turbine manufacturers would not be the first Chinese renewable industry to show up in Europe.
“There’s already an existing model” for Chinese manufacturers to set up shop in Western countries, Chan said. Chinese companies are already planning to manufacture solar modules in France, while Chinese EV maker BYD’s is planning factories in Hungary, Turkey, and potentially Spain.
China as a whole is responsible for over half of all new offshore wind capacity added in 2024, according to Global Energy Monitor, and has been growing at a 41% annual rate for the past five years. The energy intelligence firm Rystad estimates that China will make up 45% of all offshore wind capacity by 2030. Ming Yang itself claims to be behind almost a third of new offshore wind capacity built last year.
Meanwhile, offshore wind projects in the West — especially the United States — have faced the omnicrisis of high interest rates, backed-up supply chains, and Donald Trump. News of Ming Yang’s Scotland factory sent yet another shock through the ailing Western offshore wind market, with shares in the Danish company Vestas down 4% when the market opened Monday.
But with Chinese products and Chinese investment comes controversy and nerves among European political leaders. “There’re questions about tech transfer and job creation,” Chan said. “They also face some security issues and potential political backlash.”
In August, the German asset manager Luxcara announced that it would use Siemens Gamesa turbines for a planned offshore wind project instead of Ming Yang ones after backlash from German defense officials. “We see this as further evidence that a Chinese entry into the European wind market remains challenging,” analysts at Jefferies wrote to clients in August.
They were right to be skeptical — Chinese turbines’ entry into the European market has been long predicted and yet remains unrealized. “China’s increasingly cheap wind turbines could open new markets,” S&P Global Insights wrote in 2022, citing the same cost advantages as Morningstar did in reference to the Ming Yang factory announcement.
“China was already trying to angle into the European market,” Chan told me, seeing it as comparable to the U.S. in size and potentially more open to Chinese investment. “If they were kind of thinking about it before, now it’s gotten a greater sense of commercial urgency because I think the expectation is that their profit margins are really going to get squeezed.”
While China leads the world in building out renewable energy capacity domestically and exporting technology abroad, it has “decided not to decide” on pursuing a rapid, near-term decarbonization, Johns Hopkins University China scholar Jeremy Wallace recently argued in Heatmap.
While that means that the Paris Agreement goals are even farther out of reach, it may be fine for Chinese industries, including wind, as they look to sell abroad.
“Chinese firms have lots of reasons to want to build things abroad: Diversification away from the Chinese market, the zero or negative profits from selling domestically, and geopolitical balancing,” Wallace told me.
“If Brits want to have their citizens making the turbines that will power the country,” Wallace said, “this seems like a reasonable opportunity.”
Current conditions: A major Pacific storm is drenching California and bringing several inches of snow to Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming • A tropical storm in the Atlantic dumped nearly a foot of water on South Carolina over three days • Algeria is roasting in temperatures of more than 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Department of Energy notified workers in multiple offices Friday that they were likely to be fired or reassigned to another part of the agency, E&E News reported Tuesday. Staffers at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office of State and Community Energy Programs received notices stating that the offices would “be undergoing a major reorganization and your position may be reassigned to another organization, transferred to another function or abolished.” Still, the notice said “no determination has been made concerning your specific position” just yet.
At least five offices received “general reduction in force notices,” as opposed to official notification of a reduction in force, according to a Latitude Media report. These included the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Office of State and Community Energy Plans, and the Office of Fossil Energy. Nearly 200 Energy Department employees received direct layoff notices.
Catastrophic floods brought on by the remnants of a typhoon devastated the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk on Sunday. Five months ago, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant intended to protect the community against exactly this kind of extreme flooding, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The grant from the Environmental Protection Agency was meant to stabilize the riverbank on which Kipnuk is built. But in May, the agency yanked back the Biden-era grant, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said was “no longer consistent” with the government’s priorities. In a post on X, Zeldin said the award was part of "wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants,” suggesting the funding was part of an ideological push for diversity, equity, and inclusion rather than a practical infrastructure boost to an Indigenous community facing serious challenges.
Zealan Hoover, a Biden-era senior adviser at the EPA, accused Zeldin of using “inflammatory rhetoric” that misrepresented the efforts in places like Kipnuk. “For decades, E.P.A. has been a partner to local communities,” Hoover said. “For the first time under this administration, E.P.A. has taken an aggressively adversarial posture toward the very people and communities that it is intended to protect.”
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Late last Thursday, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman observed that the status of the 6.2-gigawatt Esmeralda 7, the nation’s largest solar project, had changed on the Bureau of Land Management’s website to “canceled.” The news sent shockwaves nationwide and drew blowback even from Republicans, including Utah Governor Spencer Cox, as I reported in this newsletter. Now, however, the bureau’s parent agency is denying that it made the call to cancel the project. “During routine discussions prior to the lapse in appropriations, the proponents and BLM agreed to change their approach for the Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada,” a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told Utility Dive. “Instead of pursuing a programmatic level environmental analysis, the applicants will now have the option to submit individual project proposals to the BLM to more effectively analyze potential impacts.”
That means the project could still move forward with a piecemeal approach to permitting rather than one overarching approval, which aligns with what one of the developers involved told Jael last week. A representative for NextEra said that it is “in the early stage of development” with its portion of the Esmeralda 7 mega-project, and that the company is “committed to pursuing our project’s comprehensive environmental analysis by working closely with the Bureau of Land Management.” Still, the move represents a devastating setback for the solar installation, which may never fully materialize.
Ethane exports are rising as export capacity soars.EIA
U.S. exports of ethane, a key petrochemical feedstock extracted from raw natural gas during processing, are on track for “significant growth” through 2026, according to new analysis from the Energy Information Administration. Overseas sales are projected to grow 14% this year compared to the previous year, and another 16% next year. Ethane is mostly used as a feedstock for ethylene, a key ingredient in plastics, resins, and synthetic rubber. China has been the fastest growing source of demand for American ethane in recent years, rising to the largest single destination with 47% of exports last year.
Spain’s electricity-grid operator shrugged off concerns of another major blackout after detecting two sharp voltage variations in recent weeks. Red Electrica, which operates Spain’s grid, said that what The Wall Street Journal described as “recent voltage swings” didn’t threaten to knock out the grid because they stayed within acceptable limits. But the operator warned that variations could jeopardize the electricity supply if the grid didn’t overhaul its approach to managing a system that increasingly relies on intermittent, inverter-based generating sources such as solar panels. Red, which is 20% owned by the Spanish government, acknowledged that the high penetration of renewables was responsible for the recent fluctuations. Among the changes needed to improve the grid: real-time monitoring, which Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin noted in April “is necessary because traditionally, grid inertia is just thought of as an inherent quality of the system, not something that has to be actively ensured and bolstered.”
It’s not just Spain facing blackouts. New York City will have a power deficiency equivalent to the energy needed to power between 410,000 and 650,000 homes next summer — and that number could double by 2050, the state’s grid operator warned this week in its latest five-year report. “The grid is at a significant inflection point,” Zach Smith, senior vice president of system and resource planning for NYISO, said in a statement to Gothamist. “Depending on future demand growth and generator retirements, the system may need several thousand megawatts of new dispatchable generation within the next 10 years.”
Sodium-ion batteries are all the rage, as Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reported yesterday about the commercial breakthrough by the startup Alsym. But a major challenge facing sodium-ion batteries compared to lithium-ion rivals is the stability of the cathode material in air and water, which can degrade the battery’s performance and lifespan. A new study by researchers at Tokyo University of Science found that one ingredient can solve the problem: Calcium. By discovering the protective effects of calcium doping in the batteries, “this study could pave the way for the widespread adoption” of sodium-ion batteries.
Rob talks with the author and activist about his new book, We Survived the Night.
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. His first book, We Survived the Night, was released this week — it uses memoir, reporting, and literary anthology to tell the story of Native families across North America, including his own.
NoiseCat was previously an environmental and climate activist at groups including 350.org and Data for Progress. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob talks with Julian about Native American nations and politics, the complexity and reality of Native life in 2025, and the “trickster” as a recurring political archetype.
Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University. Jesse is off this week.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: What were lessons that you took away from the writing of the book, or from the reporting of the book, that changed how you thought about climate or the environment in some way that maybe wasn’t the case when you were working on these issues full time?
Julian Brave NoiseCat: I would say that while I was working on climate issues, I was actually, myself, really changing a lot in terms of my thoughts on how politics worked and did not work. I think I came into my period of my life as a climate activist really believing in the power of direct action, and protest, and, you know, if you get enough people in the streets and you get enough politicians on your side, you eventually can change the laws. And I think that there is some truth to that view.
But I think being in DC for four years, being really involved in this movement, conversation — however you want to put that — around the Green New Deal, around eventually a Biden administration and how that would be shaped around how they might go about actually taking on climate change for the first time in U.S. history in a significant way, really transformed my understanding of how change happens. I got a greater appreciation, for example, for the importance of persuading people to your view, particularly elites in decision-making positions. And I also started to understand a little bit more of the true gamesmanship of politics — that there is a bit of tricks and trickery, and all kinds of other things that are going on in our political system that are really fundamental to how it all works.
And I bring that last piece up because while I was writing the book, I was also thinking really purposefully about my own people’s narrative traditions, and how they get at transformations and how they happen in the world. And it just so happens that probably the most significant oral historical tradition of my own people is a story called a coyote story, which is about a trickster figure who makes change in the world through cunning and subterfuge and tricks, and also who gets tricked himself a fair amount.
And I think that in that worldview, I actually found a lot of resonance with my own observations on how political change happened when I was in Washington, D.C., and so that insight did really deeply shape the book.
Mentioned:
We Survived the Night, by Julian Brave NoiseCat
How Deb Haaland Became the First Native American Cabinet Secretary
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
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A warmer world is here. Now what? Listen to Shocked, from the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, and hear journalist Amy Harder and economist Michael Greenstone share new ways of thinking about climate change and cutting-edge solutions. Find it here.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.