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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Most climate insiders don’t expect the Inflation Reduction Act to get repealed.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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Defenders of the Inflation Reduction Act have hit on what they hope will be a persuasive argument for why it should stay.
With the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits for building and producing clean energy hanging in the balance, the law’s supporters have increasingly turned to dollars-and-cents arguments in favor of its preservation. Since the election, industry and research groups have put out a handful of reports making the broad argument that in addition to higher greenhouse gas emissions, taking away these tax credits would mean higher electricity bills.
The American Clean Power Association put out a report in December, authored by the consulting firm ICF, arguing that “energy tax credits will drive $1.9 trillion in growth, creating 13.7 million jobs and delivering 4x return on investment.”
The Solar Energy Industries Association followed that up last month with a letter citing an analysis by Aurora Energy Research, which found that undoing the tax credits for wind, solar, and storage would reduce clean energy deployment by 237 gigawatts through 2040 and cost nearly 100,000 jobs, all while raising bills by hundreds of dollars in Texas and New York. (Other groups, including the conservative environmental group ConservAmerica and the Clean Energy Buyers Association have commissioned similar research and come up with similar results.)
And just this week, Energy Innovation, a clean energy research group that had previously published widely cited research arguing that clean energy deployment was not linked to the run-up in retail electricity prices, published a report that found repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would “increase cumulative household energy costs by $32 billion” over the next decade, among other economic impacts.
The tax credits “make clean energy even more economic than it already is, particularly for developers,” explained Energy Innovation senior director Robbie Orvis. “When you add more of those technologies, you bring down the electricity cost significantly,” he said.
Historically, the price of fossil fuels like natural gas and coal have set the wholesale price for electricity. With renewables, however, the operating costs associated with procuring those fuels go away. The fewer of those you have, “the lower the price drops,” Orvis said. Without the tax credits to support the growth and deployment of renewables, the analysis found that annual energy costs per U.S. household would go up some $48 annually by 2030, and $68 by 2035.
These arguments come at a time when retail electricity prices in much of the country have grown substantially. Since December 2019, average retail electricity prices have risen from about $0.13 per kilowatt-hour to almost $0.18, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Massachusetts and California, rates are over $0.30 a kilowatt-hour, according to the Energy Information Administration. As Energy Innovation researchers have pointed out, states with higher renewable penetration sometimes have higher rates, including California, but often do not, as in South Dakota, where 77% of its electricity comes from renewables.
Retail electricity prices are not solely determined by fuel costs Distribution costs for maintaining the whole electrical system are also a factor. In California, for example,it’s these costs that have driven a spike in rates, as utilities have had to harden their grids against wildfires. Across the whole country, utilities have had to ramp up capital investment in grid equipment as it’s aged, driving up distribution costs, a 2024 Energy Innovation report argued.
A similar analysis by Aurora Energy Research (the one cited by SEIA) that just looked at investment and production tax credits for wind, solar, and batteries found that if they were removed, electricity bills would increase hundreds of dollars per year on average, and by as much as $40 per month in New York and $29 per month in Texas.
One reason the bill impact could be so high, Aurora’s Martin Anderson told me, is that states with aggressive goals for decarbonizing the electricity sector would still have to procure clean energy in a world where its deployment would have gotten more expensive. New York is targetinga target for getting 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, while Minnesota has a goal for its utilities to sell 55% clean electricity by 2035 and could see its average cost increase by $22 a month. Some of these states may have to resort to purchasing renewable energy certificates to make up the difference as new generation projects in the state become less attractive.
Bills in Texas, on the other hand, would likely go up because wind and solar investment would slow down, meaning that Texans’ large-scale energy consumption would be increasingly met with fossil fuels (Texas has a Renewable Portfolio Standard that it has long since surpassed).
This emphasis from industry and advocacy groups on the dollars and cents of clean energy policy is hardly new — when the House of Representatives passed the (doomed) Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill in 2009, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told the House, “Remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.”
More recently, when Democratic Senators Martin Heinrich and Tim Kaine hosted a press conference to press their case for preserving the Inflation Reduction Act, the email that landed in reporters’ inboxes read “Heinrich, Kaine Host Press Conference on Trump’s War on Affordable, American-Made Energy.”
“Trump’s war on the Inflation Reduction Act will kill American jobs, raise costs on families, weaken our economic competitiveness, and erode American global energy dominance,” Heinrich told me in an emailed statement. “Trump should end his destructive crusade on affordable energy and start putting the interests of working people first.”
That the impacts and benefits of the IRA are spread between blue and red states speaks to the political calculation of clean energy proponents, hoping that a bill that subsidized solar panels in Texas, battery factories in Georgia, and battery storage in Southern California could bring about a bipartisan alliance to keep it alive. While Congressional Republicans will be scouring the budget for every last dollar to help fund an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a group of House Republicans have gone on the record in defense of the IRA’s tax credits.
“There's been so much research on the emissions impact of the IRA over the past few years, but there's been comparatively less research on the economic benefits and the household energy benefits,” Orvis said. “And I think that one thing that's become evident in the last year or so is that household energy costs — inflation, fossil fuel prices — those do seem to be more top of mind for Americans.”
Opinion modeling from Heatmap Pro shows that lower utility bills is the number one perceived benefit of renewables in much of the country. The only counties where it isn’t the number one perceived benefit are known for being extremely wealthy, extremely crunchy, or both: Boulder and Denver in Colorado; Multnomah (a.k.a. Portland) in Oregon; Arlington in Virginia; and Chittenden in Vermont.
On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.