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For those looking forward to bidding good riddance to a hot July, I have some bad news for you: Get ready for hot August..
If you thought it couldnât possibly get hotter than July â the month that set a new record for warmest day ever â think again. Forecasters predict August will be just as extreme â and that those records wonât last long.
âIt is something that can't be ruled out, especially over the next week as we deal with the typical peak of summer,â Tyler Roys, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, told me.
According to Roys, the melting glaciers around the Arctic in particular have contributed to the intense heat this summer. As bright glaciers give way to darker land, the Earth absorbs more heat, trapping that energy within the atmosphere instead of bouncing it back out into space.
âThe more areas that are dealing with above the historical average for temperatures, the more likely you are to see the global temperature average record be set,â Roys explained. âFor some areas that have seen prolonged heat this summer, especially in the West in the United States and across southeastern Europe, the heat can create a nasty feedback loop that is extremely hard to break.â
In a well-timed announcement, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres released a call to action last week for countries to respond to extreme heat by investing in low-carbon cooling systems, worker protections, and improved heat-related mortality data, beyond a focus on phasing out fossil fuels. âClimate change is delivering a hotter and more dangerous world for all of us. And we are not prepared,â the report reads.
A wildfire that started in Northern California on Wednesday has grown into one of the largest in the stateâs recent history. The Park Fire prompted evacuations in parts of Butte and Tehama county. Since then, Plumas and Shasta counties have also been affected by evacuations. As of this morning, more than 360,000 acres had burned, and only 12% of the fire had been contained. Almost 5,000 personnel and 33 helicopters are currently attempting to put out the fire.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles called the fireâs behavior âextraordinaryâ in a Thursday live briefing. In less than 24 hours, the fire had scorched through 40 to 50 miles of land. âCalifornia, until very recently, was not really at the epicenterâ of wildfire activity this summer, Swain said. The Park Fire has just changed the game.
Another concern is smoke traveling to other states. In Nevada, which will see minor to moderate extreme heat risk this week, the smoke might impact air quality and visibility. On the other hand, the smoke could also lower temperatures by blocking sunlight. Las Vegas could hit up to 110 degrees on Thursday and Friday â which, while scorching, is still lower than recent temperatures in the city.
Those in the Midwest and eastern Southwest can prepare for an especially sweaty week. Oklahoma, New Mexico, and northern Texas can expect the worst of it until Wednesday, when the heat will move east into Mississippi. Kansas could see temperatures ranging from 100 to 109 degrees on Wednesday, according to Brian Berg, a meteorologist in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationâs Kansas office meteorologist. Wichita could come close to breaking its record of 109 degrees, set in 1934.
On Friday, the heat will be concentrated in the Southeast, but the heat risk will also go back to increasing in the Pacific Northwest.
Cities across Japan can expect temperatures above 100 degrees to persist this week. The number of heat strokes in Japan has been growing consistently since 1995, The Guardianreported, and the countryâs meteorological agency has warned that this yearâs summer temperatures might be even higher than in 2023 â Japanâs hottest summer on record. The data is particularly concerning considering Japanâs large senior population. As of last year, almost 30% of the countryâs population is over 65 years old â the group is more vulnerable to heat illnesses and other health complications brought by extreme temperatures.
Iran was forced to shut down government offices and commercial institutions on Sunday due to extreme temperatures. Over 200 people were hospitalized due to heat strokes. The day before, the government had cut working hours short in its agencies. In Tehran, temperatures went up to 107 degrees, but other provinces in the country saw up to 121 degrees. On Tuesday, Iranâs total energy consumption reached 78,106 megawatts, a record, and the closures were intended to conserve energy in addition to protecting workers. While some clouds and rain are expected today, temperatures will continue at extreme levels.
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The administration is doubling down on an April 20 end date for the traffic control program.
Congestion pricing has only been in effect in New York City for three months, but its rollout has been nearly as turbulent as the 18-year battle to implement it in the first place.
Trumpâs Department of Transportation escalated its threat this week to retaliate against New York if the stateâs Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, does not shut down the tolling program by April 20.
The federal agency reposted a CBS New York story on social media that purported it had agreed to allow congestion pricing to remain in place through October, calling the story âa complete lie.â
âMake no mistake â the Trump Administration and USDOT will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal in response to non-compliance later this month,â the agency said in the post.
The post did not say what those tools might be, but a previous post from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on March 20 made a veiled threat to withhold funding from the state if it did not shut down the tolling program. âThe billions of dollars the federal government sends to New York are not a blank check,â he said.
Duffy notified the MTA on February 19 that he was rescinding federal approval of its congestion pricing program, which charges a $9 fee for drivers who enter New York Cityâs central business district. The toll had only just gone into effect in early January, but there was already evidence that it was reducing traffic. The MTA immediately filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging Duffyâs actions.
The CBS New York story reported on a joint letter that the MTA and USDOT submitted to the presiding judge mapping out a timeline for the case to proceed. The MTA agreed to file an amended complaint by April 18, and the DOT agreed to respond to it by May 27. Following that, the timeline allows for the back-and-forth over evidence leading up to a ruling to potentially stretch until late October. Both parties called for the judge to reach a decision based on written arguments, without a formal trial.
Despite agreeing to this timeline for the case â the whole point of which is to determine the legality of DOTâs order to terminate congestion pricing â the DOT maintains that New York City must stop charging drivers by April 20.
The MTA refuses to do so. âCongestion pricing is in effect,â Regina Kaplan, the attorney for the MTA, said during a pretrial conference call on Wednesday. âWe believe it's working, and as we stated in our complaints, we don't intend to turn it off unless there's an order from your honor that we need to do so.â
In response, Dominika Tarczynska, from the U.S. attorneyâs office, told the judge that Duffy is âstill evaluating what DOTâs options are if New York City does not comply, and there has been no final decision as to, what, if anything will occur on April 20.â
The presidentâs executive order is already too late to save at least one Arizona plant.
The Trump administration is trying to save coal again. But despite the presidentâs seemingly forceful actions, thereâs little indication heâll be any more successful at it this time than he was the last time around.
Backed by coal miners in hard hats and high visibility jackets, Trump on Tuesday announced a series of executive orders meant to boost âbeautiful, clean coal.â The orders lift barriers to extracting coal on public lands, ask the Department of Energy to consider metallurgical coal a critical mineral, push out compliance with some air quality rules by two years, instruct the Department of Energy to use emergency authorities to keep coal plants open, and direct theattorney general to go after state climate laws that Trump claimed âdiscriminateâ against greenhouse gas-emitting energy sources like coal.
Whatâs not clear is how much these orders will boost the coal industry, let alone save it. Itâs not even clear whether the specific plant Trump said he was saving will burn coal again.
During the announcement, Trump said that his administration would keep open the Cholla Generating Station, an Arizona coal plant that began operating in 1962. The plantâs final two units were slated to be retired this year.
âWe will ensure our nationâs critical coal plants remain online and operational,â Trump said. âTo that end, Iâm instructing Secretary Wright to save the Cholla coal plant in Arizona.â
But according to Arizona Public Service, the utility that co-owns the plant, the plant has already stopped generating power. A spokesperson told me the utility was âawareâ of the presidentâs statement and is âevaluating what it means for the plant.â APS plans on preserving the site, possibly for nuclear power and has âprocured reliable and cost-effective generation that will replace the energy previously generated by Cholla Power Plant,â the spokesperson said.
The Department of Energy didnât return a request for comment.
Trumpâs orders repeatedly cite Section 202 of the Federal Power Act, which allows the Secretary of Energy âduring a continuance of a war in which the United States is engaged or when an emergency existsâ to allow energy facilities to continue to operate on a temporary basis that otherwise would not.
In 2017, the first Trump administration used Section 202 to allow two coal plant units in Virginia to continue operating occasionally when necessary for grid reliability, despite their having been due to close to comply with air quality regulations. Two years later, the electricity market PJM told the Department of Energy that a new transmission line had rendered the emergency authorization unnecessary, and the plants closed in 2019.
The executive orders âdonât seem to realize that natural gas killed coal and if they arenât banning fracking, none of this matters,â Grid Strategies president Rob Gramlich wrote on X. âNothing here seems to change the economics, and itâs the economics that have held coal-fired power production down.â (Gramlich is also a Heatmap contributor.)
Of course, the United States has plenty of coal. But many of its uses â including electricity generation â can be easily substituted with other sources, such as natural gas. Thatâs why U.S. coal production has been falling since 2008.
âCoal is increasingly uncompetitive in deregulated electricity markets,â Seaver Wang, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, told me. Thatâs because operating a coal-fired power plant comes with all sorts of extra costs that natural gas doesnât, including the transportation and storage of coal â compare the barges and trains required to move rocks to the neat pipelines gas flows through. The energy research group Energy Innovation has foundthat nearly all coal plants are more expensive to run than the combinations of wind, solar, and storage that might replace them.
âI donât see the demand drivers for this to remotely bring coal back. I have no idea who would ever invest as a result of this executive order or related policies,â Wang said.
While existing coal plants may stick around for another few years as a result of heightened demand or relaxed regulatory burdens, thatâs a far cry from building new coal plants or opening new coal mines. A large coal plant hasnât opened in the United States since 2013. In 2024, wind and solar generation surpassed coal generation on the grid, according to Ember.
Some 12.3 gigawatts of coal capacity are scheduled to be retired in 2025, according to the Energy Information Administration, making up two-thirds of planned retirements by capacity this year. But coal retirements have also been slowing down, according to EIA data. The 7.5 gigawatts retired last year was the least since 2011.
Jefferies analysts estimated that over 12 gigawatts of coal capacity is due for retirement in 2028. That could be pushed back thanks to the relaxation of the mercury and air toxics rules the president announced Tuesday.
âThere is logic to delaying coal retirements to serve incremental high-density load customers like data centers,â the Jefferies analysts wrote. âNot all coal retirements are alike, and the economic-driven transitions will continue to draw support, but the calculus will change with more expensive renewables and natural gas alternatives from tariffs and potential changes to the Inflation Reduction Act.â
This is not the first time a Trump White House has tried to rescue this declining industry. During his first term, then Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed that coal and nuclear plants at risk of closing because of low demand have guaranteed payments, known as cost recovery, in order to stay open. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with a Republican majority, said no to Perry by a vote of 5-0.
Despite the presidentâs promises throughout his campaign, the coal industry shrunk by a huge degree during his first term, part of a longer trend that brought down coalâs share in the electricity generating sector from about half in 2007 to 16% in 2023. During Trumpâs time in office, coal mining jobs declined from 51,000 to 38,000 during the pandemic, and have recovered only to 40,000 today.
When it comes to mines, Wang said, investors would likely be leery of putting money into the sector, given the strong likelihood that a future Democratic administration would be far less friendly to coal. Coal investors âare going to be accounting for the fact that any policy swings are short lived,â Wang told me.
âWe all know that lead times for mines are long. Everyone knows this administration only has four years in office. I donât really expect that this will drive a lot of investment interest,â Wang said.
The critical mineral designation for coal, if it makes it through the Department of Energyâs process, may not change much initially, Wang explained. It could lead to some âbeneficial outcomes in terms of agency prioritization,â he said. But much critical minerals policy is still being worked out, and there are few programs that specifically and programmatically target the critical minerals included on lists maintained by either the Department of Energy or the United States Geological Service.
âA lot of the politicking over critical minerals designation is about the expectation of future outcomes that would arise from broad bipartisan interest in critical minerals as a category,â Wang said.
And unlike with other critical minerals, the U.S. is essentially self-sufficient for coalâs industrial and energy uses. Weâre not talking about graphite here, let alone praseodymium.
At least so far, the coal industry has not thrilled to having a more friendly figure in the White House, although the share prices of some coal companies are up in afternoon trading. Coal exports in January, the most recent month for which there is data, stood at 7.7 million short tons, compared to 8.4 million short tons a year prior. Central Appalachia coal prices stand at $78 per short ton, compared to $77.35 a year ago.
If nothing else, the announcements provided Trump with the type of photo-op he craves. He even got the opportunity to bash Hillary Clinton. âOne thing I learned about the coal miners ⊠they want to mine coal. She was gonna put them in a high-tech industry where you make little cell phones and things,â he told the audience in the White House. Of course, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday touted the âarmy of millions and millions of people screwing in little, little screws to make iPhonesâ that Trumpâs tariffs will also help generate. But no matter what the president says or does, the coal industry may still be screwed.
Current conditions: States left flooded from recent severe storms are now facing freezing temperatures âą Firefighters are battling blazes in Scotland due to unusually warm and dry weather âą Hospitals in India are reporting a 25% rise in heat-related illnesses compared to last year. Yesterday the countryâs northern state of Rajasthan reached 115 degrees Fahrenheit, about 13 degrees higher than seasonal norms.
President Trumpâs sweeping new tariffs came into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, rattling the worldâs markets and raising the risk of a global trade war. The levies, which include a 104% tariff on Chinese imports, triggered a mass sell-off in U.S. Treasury bonds, hiking yields as investors worry about a potential recession and flock to alternative safe-haven investments. The price of oil fell for the fifth day in a row to its lowest since 2021, with Brent futures at about $61 per barrel, well below the $65 level that oil producers need in order to turn a profit drilling new wells nationwide. As Heatmapâs Robinson Meyer explained recently, the tariffs are an outright catastrophe for the oil industry because they threaten a global downturn that would hurt oil demand at a time when oil cartel OPEC+ is increasing its output. Trumpâs slate of tariffs will impact the cost of just about everything, from gasoline to e-bikes to LNG to cars. China imposed retaliatory tariffs, increasing them from 34% to 84% in response to the U.S. escalation. Meanwhile, the European Union will vote today on whether to impose its own retaliatory fees. European shares plummeted, as did Asian and Australian stocks.
As Heatmapâs Emily Pontecorvo reported today, a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that the transition to clean energy could create a world that is less exposed to energy price shocks and other energy-related trade risks than the world we have today. âWe have such a concentration of fossil resources in a few countries,â Steven Davis, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study, told Pontecorvo. Transition minerals, by contrast, are less geographically concentrated, so âyou have this ability to hedge a little bit across the system.â
The White House issued several executive orders on Tuesday aimed at boosting U.S. coal production and use, pointing to rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence. The series of orders direct federal agencies to:
Trump also said he plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to spur mining operations, âa move that could put the federal purse behind reviving the fading industry,â Reutersreported. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, and its use has been in decline since 2007. As of last year, wind and solar combined surpassed coal for U.S. electricity generation.
President Trump signed a separate executive order on Tuesday that targets climate laws at the state level and seeks to remove threats to U.S. âenergy dominance,â including âillegitimate impediments to the identification, development, siting, production, investment in, or use of domestic energy resources â particularly oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, geothermal, biofuel, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.â The order references âstate overreachâ and suggests that some state and local governments are overstepping their constitutional authority in regulating energy through interstate trade barriers or fines on energy producers. It calls out New York and Vermont for their climate change superfund laws that require fossil fuel companies to pay for their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. And it mentions Californiaâs carbon cap-and-trade system.
The executive order directs the U.S. attorney general to compile a list of all state and local laws âpurporting to address âclimate change,ââ along with ESG, environmental justice, carbon taxes, and anything involving âcarbon or âgreenhouse gasâ emissions,â and put a stop to their enforcement. âThe federal government cannot unilaterally strip statesâ independent constitutional authority,â New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement. âWe are a nation of states â and laws â and we will not be deterred. We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americansâ fundamental right to clean air and water, create good-paying jobs, grow the clean energy economy, and make our future healthier and safer.â
Wood Mackenzie issued its annual U.S. wind energy report this week. It finds that 2024 marked the worst year for new onshore wind capacity in the past decade, with just 3.9 gigawatts installed. Through 2029, the firm expects developers to install another 33 gigawatts of onshore capacity, 6.6 gigawatts of offshore capacity, and carry out 5.5 gigawatts of upgrades and refurbishings. The five-year outlook marks âa 40% decrease quarter-on-quarter from a previous total of 75.8 gigawatts.â The report warns of enduring âuncertaintyâ thanks to the Trump administrationâs attacks on the wind industry. âGrowth will happen, but itâs going to be slower,â wrote Michelle Lewis at Electrek. â[Trump] has managed to get some projects canceled, and heâll make things more of a slog over the next few years.â
President Trump has pulled the U.S. out of international talks to decarbonize the shipping industry and vowed to reciprocate against any fees on U.S. ships, Politicoreported. The International Maritime Organization's Maritime Environmental Protection Conference is unfolding this week in London, where negotiators are trying to agree on a policy to curb shipping pollution through carbon taxation. Shipping accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Trump reportedly sent a letter to the conference saying âthe U.S. rejects any and all efforts to impose economic measures against its ships based on GHG emissions or fuel choice. Should such a blatantly unfair measure go forward, our government will consider reciprocal measures so as to offset any fees charged to U.S. ships and compensate the American people for any other economic harm from any adopted GHG emissions measures.â
âWhatâs next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?â
âKit Kennedy, a managing director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in response to Trumpâs executive orders aimed at revitalizing the U.S. coal industry.