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Current conditions: A freak hail storm hit Abu Dhabi • Beaches in Trinidad and Tobago are black after a massive oil spill • It will be another wet week in California.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Study: Many migratory species face extinction
One in five migratory species are at risk of extinction, and humans are mostly to blame, according to a grim new United Nations report. The State of the World’s MIgratory Species report from the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (CMS) is the first to study the many creatures – from elephants to butterflies to birds – that travel thousands of miles every year to breed, eat, or find new climates. The report examined 1,189 of these species and found some 44% are in population decline. Perhaps the most shocking takeaway is the dire state of the world’s migratory fish species: Ninety-seven percent are facing extinction. Migratory reptiles are also in trouble, with 70% threatened. Overexploitation and habitat loss due to human activity are the largest pressures contributing to these losses. “These animals are, first and foremost, part of the ecosystems where they’re found,” CMS executive secretary Amy Fraenkel told CNN. “And we have a lot of evidence showing that if you remove these species, if they decline, it will have impacts on the ecosystems where they’re found, and not in a positive way.” Protecting migrating animals can be a challenge because it requires cross-border cooperation.
2. Another big U.S. oil merger will create Permian Basin drilling giant
Diamondback Energy announced a $26 billion deal to buy Endeavor Energy Resources, the largest private oil company in America’s biggest oil field, the Permian Basin. The deal catapults Diamondback to the third spot on the list of the region’s largest oil and gas producers. This is “the latest in a flurry of large-scale merger and acquisition activity in the U.S. shale patch as companies look to snap up the best remaining drilling acreage,” explained the Financial Times. Last year saw similar acquisitions targeting the region by ExxonMobil and Chevron. Together Diamondback and Endeavor will pump the equivalent of 816,000 barrels of oil per day, Reutersreported.
3. Study raises new concerns about ocean current tipping point
A new study suggests the “conveyor belt” of Atlantic Ocean currents that sends warm water north and cold water south is in danger of collapse. Climate researchers have long worried that global warming could someday cause the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) to slow or stop. This would trigger major shifts in regional climates and devastate ecosystems, but such an event has always been hard to predict, and most forecasts saw it occuring centuries in the future, if at all. For this new study, researchers used a supercomputer to run through potential warming scenarios and were able to trigger a collapse in the model AMOC, confirming there is indeed a point at which the system breaks down. While the team couldn’t pinpoint when this collapse could happen, they say the findings suggest “we are moving in the direction of the tipping point.” If AMOC were to shut down, parts of Europe, North America, and Asia could see temperatures drop, the southern hemisphere could warm, and Atlantic sea levels could rise by a meter, all within a short timespan that would make adaptation almost impossible, The Guardianreported.
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4. John Deere is going electric
Tractor company John Deere plans to start making and selling fully electric farm and construction equipment by 2026, Yale Climate Connections reported. The company said its electric lineup will give farmers more flexibility and help them lower costs. “They can manage yield and plant health on a more frequent basis; enabled by the cost of that pass being so low. They are no longer exposed to fuel costs. Producers can focus on the health of the plants/animals, and truly optimize the material inputs such as fertilizers, chemicals, and feeds.” It mentions reduced CO2 emissions, too, but only briefly, suggesting John Deere thinks the key to encouraging farmers to swap out their legacy equipment is to focus on operational improvements rather than environmental benefits.
5. Twisters trailer debuts
The first trailer for the disaster film Twisters debuted during the Super Bowl last night. The film, which hits theaters in July, isn’t a remake of the 1996 Twister, but more of a follow up. It promises to be just as nightmare-inducing, especially given how extreme weather has become more common in the years since the first film was released. Back in ‘96, “‘climate change’ didn’t quite carry the very real, very doom-laden weight that it does now,” wrote Cheryl Eddy at Gizmodo. “Is Twisters’ apocalyptic weather even in the realm of science fiction anymore?”
THE KICKER
California is considering introducing an
electric bike license for riders who do not already have a regular driver’s license. It would require e-bike drivers to take a course, pass a test, and get a state ID.
Current conditions: After a two-inch dusting over the weekend, Virginia is bracing for up to 8 inches of snow • The Bulahdelah bushfire in New South Wales that killed a firefighter on Sunday is flaring up again • The death toll from South and Southeast Asia’s recent floods has crossed 1,750.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Federal judge rules Trump’s executive order banning wind energy illegal
The Block Island Wind Farm, North America's first offshore turbines.John Moore/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s Day One executive order directing agencies to stop approving permitting for wind energy projects is illegal, a federal judge ruled Monday evening. In a 47-page ruling against the president in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Patti B. Saris found that the states led by New York who sued the White House had “produced ample evidence demonstrating that they face ongoing or imminent injuries due to the Wind Order,” including project delays that “reduce or defer tax revenue and returns on the State Plaintiffs’ investments in wind energy developments.” The judge vacated the order entirely.
Trump’s “total war on wind” may have shocked the industry with its fury, but the ruling is a sign that momentum may be shifting. Wind developers have gathered unusual allies. As I wrote here in October, big oil companies balked at Trump’s treatment of the wind industry, warning the precedents Republican leaders set would be used by Democrats against fossil fuels in the future. Just last week, as I reported here, the National Petroleum Council advised the Department of Energy to back a national permitting reform proposal that would strip the White House of the power to rescind already-granted licenses.
2. Energy Department puts up $134 million for refining rare earths
Back in October, I told you about how the head of the world’s biggest metal trading house warned that the West was getting the critical mineral problem wrong, focusing too much on mining and not enough on refining. Now the Energy Department is making $134 million available to projects that demonstrate commercially viable ways of recovering and refining rare earths from mining waste, old electronics, and other discarded materials, Utility Dive reported. “We have these resources here at home, but years of complacency ceded America’s mining and industrial base to other nations,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement.
If you read yesterday’s newsletter, you may recall that the move comes as the Trump administration signals its plans to take more equity stakes in mining companies, following on the quasi-nationalization spree started over the summer when the U.S. military became the largest shareholder in MP Materials, the country’s only active rare earths miner, in a move Heatmap's Matthew Zeitlin noted made Biden-era officials jealous.
3. Google and NextEra partner on data centers
NextEra Energy is planning to develop data centers across the U.S. for Google-owner Alphabet as the utility giant pivots from its status as the nation’s biggest renewable power developer to the natural gas preferred by the Trump administration. The Florida-based company already had a deal to provide 2.5 gigawatts of clean energy capacity to Facebook-owner Meta Platforms, and also plans gas plants for oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. and gas producer Comstock Resources. Still, NextEra’s stock dropped by more than 3% as investors questioned whether the company’s skills with solar and wind can be translated to gas. “They’ve been top-notch, best-in-class renewable developers,” Morningstar analyst Andy Bischof told Bloomberg. “Now investors have to get their head around whether that can translate to best-in-class gas developer.”
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4. Another U.S. gas plant is getting carbon capture
In October, Google backed construction of the first U.S. commercial installation of a gas plant built from the ground up with carbon capture. The project, which Matthew wrote about here, had the trappings to work where other experiments in carbon capture failed. The location selected for the plant already had an ethanol facility with carbon capture, and access to wells to store the sequestered gas. Now the U.S. could have another plant. In a press release Monday, the industrial giant Babcock and Wilcox announced a deal with an unnamed company to supply carbon capture equipment to an existing U.S. power station. More details are due out in March 2026.
5. Fusion energy leaders meet with Energy Department
Executives from at least 14 fusion energy startups met with the Energy Department on Monday as the agency looks to spur construction of what could be the world’s first power plants to harness the reaction that powers the sun. The Trump administration has made fusion a priority, issuing a roadmap for commercialization and devoting a new office to the energy source, as I wrote in a breakdown of the agency’s internal reorganization last month. It is, as Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has written, “finally, possibly, almost time for fusion” as billions of dollars flow into startups promising to make the so-called energy source of tomorrow a reality in the near future. “It is now time to make an investment in resources to match the nation’s ambition,” the Fusion Industry Association, the trade group representing the nascent industry, wrote in a press release. “China and other strategic competitors are mobilizing billions to develop the technology and capture the fusion future. The United States has invested in fusion R&D for decades; now is the time to complete the final step to commercialize the technology.” Indeed, as I wrote last month, China has forged an alliance with roughly a dozen countries to work together on fusion, and it’s spending orders of magnitude more cash on the energy source than the U.S.
THE KICKER
Founded by a former Google worker, the startup Quilt set out to design chic-looking heat pumps sexy enough to serve as decor. Investors like the pitch. The company closed a $20 million Series B round on Monday, bringing its total fundraising to $64 million. “Our growth demonstrates that when you solve for comfort, design, and efficiency simultaneously, adoption accelerates,” Paul Lambert, chief executive and co-founder of Quilt, said in a statement. “This funding enables us to bring that experience to millions more North American homes.”
It’s easy to feel jaded about America’s car culture when you travel abroad. Visit other countries and you’re likely to see a variety of cool, quirky, and affordable vehicles that aren’t sold in the United States, where bloated and expensive trucks and SUVs dominate.
Even President Trump is not immune from this feeling. He recently visited Japan and, like a study abroad student having a globalist epiphany, seems to have become obsessed with the country’s “kei” cars, the itty-bitty city autos that fill up the congested streets of Tokyo and other urban centers. Upon returning to America, Trump blasted out a social media message that led with, “I have just approved TINY CARS to be built in America,” and continued, “START BUILDING THEM NOW!!!”
He’s right: Kei cars are neat. These pint-sized coupes, hatchbacks, and even micro-vans and trucks are so cute and weird that U.S. car collectors have taken to snatching them up (under the rules that allow 25-year-old cars to be imported to America regardless of whether they meet our standards). And he’s absolutely right that Americans need smaller and more affordable automotive options. Yet it’s far from clear that what works in Japan will work here — or that the auto execs who stood behind Trump last week as he announced a major downgrading of upcoming fuel economy standards are keen to change course and start selling super-cheap economy cars.
Americans want our cars to do everything. This country’s fleet of Honda CR-Vs and Chevy Silverados have plenty of space for school carpools and grocery runs around town, and they’re powerful and safe enough for road-tripping hundreds of miles down the highway. It’s a theme that’s come up repeatedly in our coverage of electric vehicles. EVs are better for cities and suburbs than internal combustion vehicles, full stop. But they may never match the lightning-fast road trip pit stop people have come to expect from their gasoline-powered vehicles, which means they don’t fit cleanly into many Americans’ built-in idea of what a car should be.
This has long been a problem for selling Americans on microcars. We’ve had them before: As recently as a dozen years ago, extra-small autos like the Smart ForTwo and Scion iQ were available here. Those tiny cars made tons of sense in the United States’ truly dense urban areas; I’ve seen them strategically parked in the spaces between homes in San Francisco that are too short for any other car. They made less sense in the more wide-open spaces and sprawling suburbs that make up this country. The majority of Americans who don’t struggle with street parking and saw that they could get much bigger cars for not that much more money weren’t that interested in owning a car that’s only good for local driving.
The same dynamic exists with the idea of bringing kei cars for America. They’re not made to go faster than 40 or 45 miles per hour, and their diminutive size leaves little room for the kind of safety features needed to make them highway-legal here. (Can you imagine driving that tiny car down a freeway filled with 18-wheelers?) Even reaching street legal status is a struggle. While reporting earlier this year on the rise of kei car enthusiasts, The New York Timesnoted that while some states have moved to legalize mini-cars, it is effectively illegal to register them in New York. (They interviewed someone whose service was to register the cars in Montana for customers who lived elsewhere.)
If the automakers did follow Trump’s directive and stage a tiny car revival, it would be a welcome change for budget-focused Americans. Just a handful of new cars can be had for less than $25,000 in the U.S. today, and drivers are finally beginning to turn against the exorbitant prices of new vehicles and the endless car loans required to finance them. Individuals and communities have turned increasingly to affordable local transportation options like golf carts and e-bikes for simply getting around. Tiny cars could occupy a space between those vehicles and the full-size car market. Kei trucks, which take the pickup back to its utilitarian roots, would be a wonderful option for small businesses that just need bare-bones hauling capacity.
Besides convincing size-obsessed Americans that small is cool, there is a second problem with bringing kei cars to the U.S., which is figuring out how to make little vehicles fit into the American car world. Following Trump’s declaration that America should get Tokyo-style tiny cars ASAP, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said “we have cleared the deck” of regulations that would prevent Toyota or anyone else from selling tiny cars here. Yet shortly thereafter, the Department of Transportation clarified that, “As with all vehicles, manufacturers must certify that they meet U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, including for crashworthiness and passenger protection.”
In other words, Ford and GM can’t just start cranking out microcars that don’t include all the airbags and other protections necessary to meet American crash test and rollover standards (not without a wholesale change to our laws, anyway). As a result, U.S. tiny cars couldn’t be as tiny as Japanese ones. Nor would they be as cheap, which is a crucial issue. Americans might spend $10,000 on a city-only car, but probably wouldn’t spend $20,000 — not when they could just get a plain old Toyota Corolla or a used SUV for that much.
It won’t be easy to convince the car companies to go down this road, either. They moved so aggressively toward crossovers and trucks over the past few decades because Americans would pay a premium for those vehicles, making them far more profitable than economy cars. The margins on each kei car would be much smaller, and since the stateside market for them might be relatively small, this isn’t an alluring business proposition for the automakers. It would be one thing if they could just bring the small cars they’re selling elsewhere and market them in the United States without spending huge sums to redesign them for America. But under current laws, they can’t.
Not to mention the whiplash effect: The Trump administration’s attacks on EVs left the carmakers struggling to rearrange their plans. Ford and Chevy probably aren’t keen to start the years-long process of designing tiny cars to please a president who’ll soon be distracted by something else.
Trump’s Tokyo fantasy is based in a certain reality: Our cars are too big and too expensive. But while kei cars would be fantastic for driving around Boston, D.C., or San Francisco, the rides that America really needs are the reasonably sized vehicles we used to have — the hatchbacks, small trucks, and other vehicles that used to be common on our roads before the Ford F-150 and Toyota RAV4 ate the American car market. A kei truck might be too minimalist for mainstream U.S. drivers, but how about a hybrid revival of the El Camino, or a truck like the upcoming Slate EV whose dimensions reflect what a compact truck used to be? Now that I could see.
Current conditions: In the Pacific Northwest, parts of the Olympics and Cascades are set for two feet of rain over the next two weeks • Australian firefighters are battling blazes in Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania • Temperatures plunged below freezing in New York City.
THE TOP FIVE
1. New defense spending bill makes nuclear power a ‘strategic technology’
The U.S. military is taking on a new role in the Trump administration’s investment strategy, with the Pentagon setting off a wave of quasi-nationalization deals that have seen the Department of Defense taking equity stakes in critical mineral projects. Now the military’s in-house lender, the Office of Strategic Capital, is making nuclear power a “strategic technology.” That’s according to the latest draft, published Sunday, of the National Defense Authorization Act making its way through Congress. The bill also gives the lender new authorities to charge and collect fees, hire specialized help, and insulate its loan agreements from legal challenges. The newly beefed up office could give the Trump administration a new tool for adding to its growing list of investments, as I previously wrote here.
2. MAHA activists push Trump to fire EPA chief
EPA chief Lee Zeldin, on the far right, eyes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the health secretary, to the right of President Trump. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The “Make America Healthy Again” wing of President Donald Trump’s political coalition is urging the White House to fire Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin over his decisions to deregulate harmful chemicals. In a petition circulated online, several prominent activists aligned with the administration’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., accused Zeldin of having “prioritized the interests of chemical corporations over the well-being of American families and children.” As of early Friday afternoon, The New York Times reported, more than 2,800 people had signed the petition. By Sunday afternoon, the figure was nearly 6,000. The organizers behind the petition include Vani Hari, a MAHA influencer known as the Food Babe to her 2.3 million Instagram followers, and Alex Clark, a Turning Point USA activist who hosts what the Times called “a health and wellness podcast popular among conservatives.”
The intraparty conflict comes as one of Zeldin’s more controversial rollbacks of a Biden-era pollution rule, a regulation that curbs public exposure to soot, is facing significant legal challenges. A lawyer told E&E News the EPA’s case is a “Hail Mary pass.”
3. Congo curbs cobalt exports
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, by far the world’s largest source of cobalt, has slapped new export restrictions on the bluish metal needed for batteries and other modern electronics. As much as 80% of the global supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, where mines are notorious for poor working conditions, including slavery and child labor. Under new rules for cobalt exporters spelled out in a government document Reuters obtained, miners would need to pre-pay a 10% royalty within 48 hours of receiving an invoice and secure a compliance certificate. The rules come a month after Kinshasa ended a months-long export ban by implementing a quota system aimed at boosting state revenues and tightening oversight over the nation’s fast-growing mining industry. The establishment of the rules could signal increased exports again, but also suggests that business conditions are changing in the country in ways that could further complicate mining.
With Chinese companies controlling the vast majority of the DRC’s cobalt mines, the U.S. is looking to onshore more of the supply chain for the critical mineral. Among the federal investments is one I profiled for Heatmap: an Ohio startup promising to refine cobalt and other metals with a novel processing method. That company, Xerion, received funding from the Defense Logistics Agency, yet another funding office housed under the U.S. military.
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4. China and France tighten ties over nuclear energy
Last month, I told you about China’s outreach to the rest of the world, including Western European countries, to work together on nuclear fusion. The U.S. cut off cooperation with China on traditional atomic energy back in 2017. But France is taking a different approach. During a state visit to Beijing last week, French President Emmanuel Macron “failed to win concessions” from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, France24 noted. But Paris and Beijing agreed to a new “pragmatic cooperation” deal on nuclear power. France’s state-owned utility giant EDF already built a pair of its leading reactors in China.
The U.S. has steadily pushed the French out of deals within the democratic world. Washington famously muscled in on a submarine deal, persuading Australia to drop its deal with France and go instead with American nuclear vessels. Around the same time, Poland — by far the biggest country in Europe to attempt to build its first nuclear power plant — gave the American nuclear company Westinghouse the contract in a loss for France’s EDF. Working with China, which is building more reactors at a faster rate than any other country, could give France a leg up over the U.S. in the race to design and deploy new reactors.
5. A bellwether coal plant in Indonesia seeks a life extension
It’s not just the U.S. backpedaling on climate pledges and extending operations of coal plants set to shut down. In smog-choked Indonesia, which ranks seventh in the world for emissions, a coal-fired plant that Bloomberg described as a “flagship” for the country’s phaseout of coal has, rather than shut down early, applied to stay open longer.
Nor is the problem reserved to countries with right-wing governance. The new energy plan Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a liberal, is pursuing in a bid to leverage the country’s fossil fuel riches over an increasingly pushy Trump means there’s “no way” Ottawa can meet its climate goals. As I wrote last week, the Carney government is considering a new pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast to increase oil and gas sales to Asia.
THE KICKER
There’s a new sheriff in town in the state at the center of the data center boom. Virginia’s lieutenant governor-elect Ghazala Hasmi said Thursday that the incoming administration would work to shift policy toward having data centers “pay their fair share” by supplying their own energy and paying to put more clean power on the grid, Utility Dive reported. “We have the tools today. We’ve got the skilled and talented workforce. We have a policy roadmap as well, and what we need now is the political will,” Hashmi said. “There is new energy in this legislature, and with it a real opportunity to build new energy right here in the Commonwealth.”
Proportion of species classified in risk areas
The Block Island Wind Farm, North America's first offshore turbines.John Moore/Getty Images
EPA chief Lee Zeldin, on the far right, eyes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the health secretary, to the right of President Trump. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images