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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Most climate insiders don’t expect the Inflation Reduction Act to get repealed.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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A conversation with Mary King, a vice president handling venture strategy at Aligned Capital
Today’s conversation is with Mary King, a vice president handling venture strategy at Aligned Capital, which has invested in developers like Summit Ridge and Brightnight. I reached out to Mary as a part of the broader range of conversations I’ve had with industry professionals since it has become clear Republicans in Congress will be taking a chainsaw to the Inflation Reduction Act. I wanted to ask her about investment philosophies in this trying time and how the landscape for putting capital into renewable energy has shifted. But Mary’s quite open with her view: these technologies aren’t going anywhere.
The following conversation has been lightly edited and abridged for clarity.
How do you approach working in this field given all the macro uncertainties?
It’s a really fair question. One, macro uncertainties aside, when you look at the levelized cost of energy report Lazard releases it is clear that there are forms of clean energy that are by far the cheapest to deploy. There are all kinds of reasons to do decarbonizing projects that aren’t clean energy generation: storage, resiliency, energy efficiency – this is massively cost saving. Like, a lot of the methane industry [exists] because there’s value in not leaking methane. There’s all sorts of stuff you can do that you don’t need policy incentives for.
That said, the policy questions are unavoidable. You can’t really ignore them and I don’t want to say they don’t matter to the industry – they do. It’s just, my belief in this being an investable asset class and incredibly important from a humanity perspective is unwavering. That’s the perspective I’ve been taking. This maybe isn’t going to be the most fun market, investing in decarbonizing things, but the sense of purpose and the belief in the underlying drivers of the industry outweigh that.
With respect to clean energy development, and the investment class working in development, how have things changed since January and the introduction of these bills that would pare back the IRA?
Both investors and companies are worried. There’s a lot more political and policy engagement. We’re seeing a lot of firms and organizations getting involved. I think companies are really trying to find ways to structure around the incentives. Companies and developers, I think everybody is trying to – for lack of a better term – future-proof themselves against the worst eventuality.
One of the things I’ve been personally thinking about is that the way developers generally make money is, you have a financier that’s going to buy a project from them, and the financier is going to have a certain investment rate of return, or IRR. So ITC [investment tax credit] or no ITC, that IRR is going to be the same. And the developer captures the difference.
My guess – and I’m not incredibly confident yet – but I think the industry just focuses on being less ITC dependent. Finding the projects that are juicier regardless of the ITC.
The other thing is that as drafts come out for what we’re expecting to see, it’s gone from bad to terrible to a little bit better. We’ll see what else happens as we see other iterations.
How are you evaluating companies and projects differently today, compared to how you were maybe before it was clear the IRA would be targeted?
Let’s say that we’re looking at a project developer and they have a series of projects. Right now we’re thinking about a few things. First, what assets are these? It’s not all ITC and PTC. A lot of it is other credits. Going through and asking, how at risk are these credits? And then, once we know how at risk those credits are we apply it at a project level.
This also raises a question of whether you’re going to be able to find as many projects. Is there going to be as much demand if you’re not able to get to an IRR? Is the industry going to pay that?
What gives you optimism in this moment?
I’ll just look at the levelized cost of energy and looking at the unsubsidized tables say these are the projects that make sense and will still get built. Utility-scale solar? Really attractive. Some of these next-gen geothermal projects, I think those are going to be cost effective.
The other thing is that the cost of battery storage is just declining so rapidly and it’s continuing to decline. We are as a country expected to compare the current price of these technologies in perpetuity to the current price of oil and gas, which is challenging and where the technologies have not changed materially. So we’re not going to see the cost decline we’re going to see in renewables.
And more news around renewable energy conflicts.
1. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – The SouthCoast offshore wind project will be forced to abandon its existing power purchase agreements with Massachusetts and Rhode Island if the Trump administration’s wind permitting freeze continues, according to court filings submitted last week.
2. Tippacanoe County, Indiana – This county has now passed a full solar moratorium but is looking at grandfathering one large utility-scale project: RWE and Geenex’s Rainbow Trout solar farm.
3. Columbia County, Wisconsin – An Alliant wind farm named after this county is facing its own pushback as the developer begins the state permitting process and is seeking community buy-in through public info hearings.
4. Washington County, Arkansas – It turns out even mere exploration for a wind project out in this stretch of northwest Arkansas can get you in trouble with locals.
5. Wagoner County, Oklahoma – A large NextEra solar project has been blocked by county officials despite support from some Republican politicians in the Sooner state.
6. Skagit County, Washington – If you’re looking for a ray of developer sunshine on a cloudy day, look no further than this Washington State county that’s bucking opposition to a BESS facility.
7. Orange County, California – A progressive Democratic congressman is now opposing a large battery storage project in his district and talking about battery fire risks, the latest sign of a populist revolt in California against BESS facilities.
Permitting delays and missed deadlines are bedeviling solar developers and activist groups alike. What’s going on?
It’s no longer possible to say the Trump administration is moving solar projects along as one of the nation’s largest solar farms is being quietly delayed and even observers fighting the project aren’t sure why.
Months ago, it looked like Trump was going to start greenlighting large-scale solar with an emphasis out West. Agency spokespeople told me Trump’s 60-day pause on permitting solar projects had been lifted and then the Bureau of Land Management formally approved its first utility-scale project under this administration, Leeward Renewable Energy’s Elisabeth solar project in Arizona, and BLM also unveiled other solar projects it “reasonably” expected would be developed in the area surrounding Elisabeth.
But the biggest indicator of Trump’s thinking on solar out west was Esmeralda 7, a compilation of solar project proposals in western Nevada from NextEra, Invenergy, Arevia, ConnectGen, and other developers that would, if constructed, produce at least 6 gigawatts of power. My colleague Matthew Zeitlin was first to report that BLM officials updated the timetable for fully permitting the expansive project to say it would complete its environmental review by late April and be completely finished with the federal bureaucratic process by mid-July. BLM told Matthew that the final environmental impact statement – the official study completing the environmental review – would be published “in the coming days or week or so.”
More than two months later, it’s crickets from BLM on Esmeralda 7. BLM never released the study that its website as of today still says should’ve come out in late April. I asked BLM for comment on this and a spokesperson simply told me the agency “does not have any updates to share on this project at this time.”
This state of quiet stasis is not unique to Esmeralda; for example, Leeward has yet to receive a final environmental impact statement for its 700 mega-watt Copper Rays solar project in Nevada’s Pahrump Valley that BLM records state was to be published in early May. Earlier this month, BLM updated the project timeline for another Nevada solar project – EDF’s Bonanza – to say it would come out imminently, too, but nothing’s been released.
Delays happen in the federal government and timelines aren’t always met. But on its face, it is hard for stakeholders I speak with out in Nevada to take these months-long stutters as simply good faith bureaucratic hold-ups. And it’s even making work fighting solar for activists out in the desert much more confusing.
For Shaaron Netherton, executive director of the conservation group Friends of the Nevada Wilderness, these solar project permitting delays mean an uncertain future. Friends of the Nevada Wilderness is a volunteer group of ecology protection activists that is opposing Esmeralda 7 and filed its first lawsuit against Greenlink West, a transmission project that will connect the massive solar constellation to the energy grid. Netherton told me her group may sue against the approval of Esmeralda 7… but that the next phase of their battle against the project is a hazy unknown.
“It’s just kind of a black hole,” she told me of the Esmeralda 7 permitting process. “We will litigate Esmeralda 7 if we have to, and we were hoping that with this administration there would be a little bit of a pause. There may be. That’s still up in the air.”
I’d like to note that Netherton’s organization has different reasons for opposition than I normally write about in The Fight. Instead of concerns about property values or conspiracies about battery fires, her organization and a multitude of other desert ecosystem advocates are trying to avoid a future where large industries of any type harm or damage one of the nation’s most biodiverse and undeveloped areas.
This concern for nature has historically motivated environmental activism. But it’s also precisely the sort of advocacy that Trump officials have opposed tooth-and-nail, dating back to the president’s previous term, when advocates successfully opposed his rewrite of Endangered Species Act regulations. This reason – a motivation to hippie-punch, so to speak – is a reason why I hardly expect species protection to be enough of a concern to stop solar projects in their tracks under Trump, at least for now. There’s also the whole “energy dominance” thing, though Trump has been wishy-washy on adhering to that goal.
Patrick Donnelly, great basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, agrees that this is a period of confusion but not necessarily an end to solar permitting on BLM land.
“[Solar] is moving a lot slower than it was six months ago, when it was coming at a breakneck pace,” said Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity. “How much of that is ideological versus 15-20% of the agencies taking early retirement and utter chaos inside the agencies? I’m not sure. But my feeling is it’s less ideological. I really don’t think Trump’s going to just start saying no to these energy projects.”