Interior Launches a Witch Hunt on Pro-Renewable Policies

Current conditions: The U.S. Northeast faces more flash flooding as cooling temperatures usher in rainfall • Scandinavia’s weeks-long heatwave continues, with temperatures reaching nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit • The death toll from China’s heavy rains rose to 34, with as many as 80,000 people displaced.

THE TOP FIVE

1. The Fed holds rates steady in a hit to renewables

The U.S. Federal Reserve board decided on Wednesday to hold interest rates steady at between 4.25% and 4.5%, in defiance of President Donald Trump’s call for looser policy. This also added to the headwinds facing renewables developers.

When borrowing costs are higher, it’s harder to lure investors to back projects. That dynamic is even more challenging for construction projects that take even longer and therefore accrue more interest, such as nuclear reactors or hydroelectric upgrades. “Developers rushing to build solar and wind energy between now and next summer to take advantage of tax credits will have to pay out these higher interest costs as they build,” Advait Arun, senior associate of energy finance at the Center for Public Enterprise and a Heatmap contributor, told my colleague Charu Sinha.

2. Interior chief orders agency to weed out pro-renewables policies

Interior Secretary Doug BurgumJohn McDonnell/Getty Images

In a secretarial order on Tuesday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum directed his department to eliminate policies that give “preferential treatment” to wind and solar. The directive also orders the agency to consider withdrawing “areas onshore with high potential for wind energy development” from federal leasing and to ramp up studies on the effects of wind turbines on migratory birds.

“These policy changes represent a commonsense approach to energy that puts Americans’ interests first,” Burgum said in a statement. “Leveling the playing field in permitting supports energy development that’s reliable, affordable, and built to last.” The move “will result in higher energy costs, increased blackouts, job loss, and billions of dollars in stranded investments, further delaying shovel-ready projects supported by a domestic heavy manufacturing supply chain renaissance that spans 40 states,” said Stephanie Francoeur, a spokesperson for the green group Oceantic Network. “Crippling affordable and reliable wind energy makes no economic sense and undermines the administration’s ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy.”

3. Ford teases building ‘breakthrough’ EVs in the U.S.

Ford’s vehicle sales rose 14% to more than 612,000 in the last quarter, according to earnings that bested analysts’ expectations on Wednesday. But EV sales dropped 31% to just 16,438. The company told Electrek that demand for its F-150 Lightning had slumped and the Mustang Mach-E faced a recall, preventing the spike in Ford’s EV sales GM saw in the last quarter. But that isn’t stopping the Detroit giant from investing more in EVs.

Ford CEO Jim Farley teased an upcoming announcement about the company’s “plans to design and build breakthrough electric vehicles in America.” Farley said Ford wouldn’t compete with South Korean or Japanese brands in the mass-market EV space, but rather would invest in the truck and SUV market. More details are set to come at an event in Kentucky on August 11.

4. Trump nominates a new nuclear regulator

The White House nominated an executive from Southern Company to serve in the open seat on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ho Nieh, who serves as the utility giant’s vice president of regulatory affairs, previously led the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation before joining Southern right as the company completed work on the only two new reactors built from scratch in the U.S. in a generation, the pair of Westinghouse AP1000s at the Alvin W. Vogtle Generating Station in northern Georgia.

The nomination, now subject to Senate approval, came a month after Trump fired Democratic Commissioner Christopher Hanson in a move that critics said violated the NRC’s legal independence from the White House. Trump will now have another seat to fill. On Tuesday, Annie Caputo, a Republican commissioner who Trump initially appointed in 2017, abruptly resigned amid a series of dramatic overhauls at the agency that include demands from the Trump administration that the regulators “rubber stamp” new reactors. In her farewell email to NRC staff – a copy of which I obtained and published on my Substack newsletter, Field Notes – she said she planned to focus on her family.

5. Helion starts construction on the first nuclear fusion power plant

Helion has started work on what could be the world’s first nuclear fusion power plant in Washington State. The Microsoft-backed startup broke ground on the facility, called the Orion plant, in Chelan County, east of Seattle, and set a goal to deliver power to the tech giant’s data centers in the state by 2028. Microsoft and Helion made history in May 2023 with the world’s first power purchase agreement for nuclear fusion, with Helion promising to deliver up to 50 megawatts of electricity following a ramp-up period of one year. The project is set to hook onto the Washington grid.

Helion isn’t the only fusion startup in the race to deliver power first. In December, Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced plans to build its debut power plant in Virginia. Those ambitious promises explain why investors have pumped $2.5 billion into fusion energy over the past two years, according to newly released industry data.

THE KICKER

Physicists have at last developed a device precise enough to catch neutrinos, the subatomic particles that are at least a million times smaller than an electron, from a nuclear reactor. According to Nature, the discovery “opens new ways to stress-test the known laws of physics and to detect the copious neutrinos produced in the hearts of collapsing stars.” Calling the result “beautiful,” Kate Scholberg, a Duke University physicist, was elated: “They finally did it.”