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Climate

Interior Plans to Rescind Drilling Ban in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve

On Alaskan oil, CCS, and ‘zombie plants’

Interior Plans to Rescind Drilling Ban in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Flights have resumed to and from Sicily after Mt. Etna’s most powerful eruption in four years on MondayThere have already been almost half as many wildfire ignitions in the U.S. in 2025 as there were in all of 2024More than 700 people are feared dead in central Nigeria after heavy rains and flash floods.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Interior plans to reverse Biden ban on drilling in Alaskan wilderness

USGS

The Department of the Interior announced Monday that it plans to rescind President Biden’s 2024 ban on drilling in more than half of the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The reserve holds an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil, but it is also some of the “last remaining pristine wilderness in the country,” The New York Times writes.

“Congress was clear: the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska was set aside to support America’s energy security through responsible development,” Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement announcing the proposed rule, further arguing that Biden’s ban had “ignored that mandate, prioritizing obstruction over production and undermining our ability to harness domestic resources at a time when American energy independence has never been more critical.” While the department’s announcement — which Burgum shared on Sunday at a heritage center in Utqiagvik, the largest city of the North Slope — was greeted with applause by attendees, Alaska’s senior manager for the Wilderness Society, Matt Jackson, said, “Everyone who cares about public lands and is concerned about the climate crisis should be outraged by this move to exploit America’s public lands for the benefit of corporations and the president’s wealthy donors.”

2. Carbon capture and storage applications have fallen 50% under Trump

Applications for carbon capture and storage projects fell by 50% in the first quarter of the year as compared to last year, with no new permits having been approved since President Trump took office, the Financial Times reports. Industry experts blamed the uncertainty over the fate of federal grants and tax credits for the lowest application submissions since 2022 — a concern that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, since the Energy Department canceled nearly $4 billion in clean energy grants last week, including carbon capture and sequestration projects proposed by Heidelberg Materials and Calpine, as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has reported. By BloombergNEF’s projections, an estimated 35% of the 152 million metric tons of announced carbon capture capacity expected to come online by 2035 will be canceled before then.

3. Trump admin orders another power plant to stay open to prevent summer blackouts

The Department of Energy has ordered Constellation Energy to continue operating its Eddystone power plant through the end of the summer to prevent potential electricity shortfalls on the mid-Atlantic grid, the Associated Press reports. The oil and gas plant, located south of Philadelphia, had been scheduled to shut down its last remaining units this weekend, before Constellation received the DOE’s emergency order.

Late last month, the DOE similarly ordered a coal-fired plant in Michigan to continue operating past its planned May 31 shutdown date, although the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission said at the time that no energy emergency existed, Bloomberg reports. By contrast, the decision to order Eddystone’s continued operation followed PJM Interconnection expressing concerns about summer grid reliability; the operator has since voiced support for the DOE’s order. But the move also has its critics: “The Department of Energy’s move to keep these zombie plants online will have significant public health impacts and increase electricity costs for people in Michigan and Pennsylvania,” argued Kit Kennedy, a managing director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

4. EU warned not to tiptoe on 2040 emissions goal

The European Union’s climate science advisers have warned the bloc against softening its 2040 emission goals, arguing that such a move could “undermine domestic value creation by diverting resources from the necessary transformation of the EU’s economy.” The European Commission is set to propose a binding target for member nations to cut emissions by 90% by 2040 from 1990 levels, but it is also considering allowing countries to set lower targets for their domestic industries and make up the gap using carbon credits, Reuters reports. The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which issued its warning against the carbon credit loophole on Monday, described the original 90% emission reduction goal as achievable and necessary for both the health of Europeans as well as improving security by limiting the bloc’s reliance on foreign fossil fuel sources.

5. Battery storage integrator Powin warns it may cease operations before August

Oregon-based battery energy storage system integrator Powin has filed a notice with the state warning that it could lay off 250 employees and shut down operations by the end of July. Per the notification, the layoffs would include the company’s chief executives, and “it is presently contemplated that the affected employees will be permanently terminated.”

Powin has the third most gigawatt-hours of batteries installed in the U.S. and the fourth most worldwide. Still, turbulence due to tariffs and the Inflation Reduction Act incentives has reverberated through the industry, Latitude notes. In a statement provided to the publication, Powin described “navigating a period of significant financial challenge, reflective of ongoing headwinds in the broader energy storage industry.”

THE KICKER

The partial shading of Colorado grasslands by solar arrays could decrease water stress and increase plant growth during dry years by 20% or more, a new study in Environmental Research Letters has found.

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Climate

AM Briefing: NAACP, SELC Threaten to Sue Musk’s xAI

On xAI, residential solar, and domestic lithium

NAACP, SELC Threaten to Sue Musk’s xAI
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Indonesia has issued its highest alert level due to the ongoing eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki10 million people from Missouri to Michigan are at risk of large hail and damaging winds today Tropical Storm Erick, the earliest “E” storm on record in the eastern Pacific Ocean, could potentially strengthen into a major hurricane before making landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, on Thursday.

THE TOP FIVE

1. NAACP, SELC threaten to sue Elon Musk’s AI company over Memphis pollution

The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center said Tuesday that they intend to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over alleged Clean Air Act violations at its Memphis facility. Per the lawsuit, xAI failed to obtain the required permits for the use of the 26 gas turbines that power its supercomputer, and in doing so, the company also avoided equipping the turbines with technology that would have reduced emissions. “xAI’s turbines are collectively one of the largest, or potentially the largest, industrial source of nitrogen oxides in Shelby County,” the lawsuit claims.

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Energy

Residential Solar’s No Good, Very Bad Day

Shares in Sunrun, SolarEdge, and Enphase are collapsing on the Senate’s new mega-bill draft.

Sad solar panels on a roof.
Heatmap Illustration/Abbr. Projects

The residential solar rescue never happened. Shares in several residential solar companies plummeted Tuesday as the market reacted to the Senate Finance Committee’s reconciliation language, which maintains the House bill’s restriction on investment tax credits for residential solar installers and its scrapping of the tax credit for homeowners who buy their own systems.

The Solar Energy Industries Association, a solar trade group, criticized the Senate text, saying that it had only “modest improvements on several provisions” and would “pull the plug on homegrown solar energy and decimate the American manufacturing renaissance.”

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Politics

AM Briefing: Senate Finance Puts Its Spin on IRA Tax Credit Cuts

On the Senate Finance Committee’s budget proposal, the NRC, and fossil-fuel financing

Senate Finance Puts Its Spin on IRA Tax Credit Cuts
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A brush fire that prompted evacuations in Maui on Sunday and Monday is now 93% containedThe Des Moines metro area issued its first-ever ban on watering lawns due to record nitrate concentrations in nearby riversFor only the fourth time since 1937, Vancouver, British Columbia got no rain at all in the first half of June. The dry streak may finally break tonight.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Senate Slightly Softens House’s Cuts to the IRA

The Senate Finance Committee published its portion of the budget reconciliation bill on Monday night, including details of its highly anticipated plan to revise the nation’s clean energy tax credits. Though the Senate version slightly softens the House’s proposed phase out of tax credits, “the text would still slash many of the signature programs of the Inflation Reduction Act,” my colleagues Emily Pontecorvo and Robinson Meyer write in their breakdown of the bill. Other changes to be aware of include:

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