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A leaked internal memo reveals why the environmental group adopted President Trump’s new name.
The Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, was told by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration it had to rename a major conservation program as the “Gulf of America” or else lose federal funding, according to a leaked internal memo reviewed by Heatmap News.
For the last week, the Nature Conservancy has been pilloried by figures in the climate and environmentalist community for changing the name of its conservation program in the Gulf of Mexico region to being a “Gulf of America” restoration program, brandishing what President Donald Trump declared on his first day in office would be the new official U.S. term for the body of water. Trump’s new name has become a First Amendment firestorm as news organizations find themselves split on whether to adopt the term and the White House is punishing outlets — including the Associated Press — for continuing to use the Gulf of Mexico.
We can now exclusively reveal why the Nature Conservancy adopted this fresh Trump branding: They were allegedly pressured into it.
Jennifer Morris, CEO of the Nature Conservancy, sent an email to all staff at the organization this morning stating that the organization’s conservation program in the Gulf of Mexico was renamed to Gulf of America “after receiving clear directives from a federal agency.” “Please know that we did not make this decision lightly,” Morris wrote. Attached to the email was staff guidance claiming the nonprofit “received specific direction from NOAA that we must change all references to the new nomenclature in association with our NOAA funded work in the Gulf.”
“For example, all maps, reports, and other deliverables must use ‘Gulf of America,’ the memo stated. “We have at least $156 million in active federal grants in the region, including $45 million from NOAA alone.’ Federal funding makes up most of the organization’s work in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the memo.
In addition, the Nature Conservancy has “been advised that new proposals in the Gulf for US federal grants must conform” to Trump’s executive order adopting “Gulf of America” as the official U.S. name for that body of water, the memo stated. State governors in the Gulf region in charge of “disseminating” remaining BP oil spill recovery funds have “followed suit in support of these nomenclature changes” and there is fear a “failure to adjust” could also “jeopardize” state funding.
“Ultimately, this decision was made after reviewing all the facts and looking at what the organization felt was best to ensure we can continue our conservation programs and support our teams on the ground,” the memo stated.
Historically, NOAA has been more insulated than other agencies from political pressures like this, which has helped it maintain a global reputation as a world-class scientific meteorological body.
This ordeal, however, echoes the one other time Trump seemed to put his thumb on NOAA’s scales — an incident best known as Sharpiegate. In 2019 Trump incorrectly proclaimed Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. He went so far as to draw on a giant map with a Sharpie in the White House to show his guestimated pathway for the storm. After the NOAA office in Alabama publicly sought to reassure residents that, no, a hurricane wasn’t on the way, Trump officials pressured NOAA into backing the president, leading to the agency issuing an unsigned statement backing the claim. An inspector general report – which Trump officials reportedly sought to obstruct from seeing the light of day – ultimately found the NOAA statement violated its scientific integrity policy.
If the Gulf of America is the beginning of NOAA subservience, I’m nervous to see what happens when Trump’s version of the agency – which any day now is expected to undergo mass layoffs – pivots to climate change and renewable energy.
The Nature Conservancy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “We can find no evidence of that, so far,” NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said.
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The department creates a seemingly impossible new permitting criteria for renewable energy.
The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.
Hypothetically, this could kill off any solar or wind project going through permitting that is sited on federal lands, because these facilities would technically be less energy dense than coal, gas, and nuclear plants. This is irrespective of the potential benefits solar and wind may have for the environment or reducing carbon emissions – none of which are mentioned in the order.
“Gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects hold America back from achieving U.S. Energy Dominance while weighing heavily on the American taxpayer and environment,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement included in a press release announcing the move. “By considering energy generation optimization, the Department will be able to better manage our federal lands, minimize environmental impact, and maximize energy development to further President Donald Trump’s energy goals.”
Here’s how this new regime, which I and many in the energy sector are now suddenly trying to wrap their heads around, is apparently going to work: solar and wind facilities will now be evaluated based on their “capacity density,” which is calculated based on the ratio of acres used for a project compared to its power generation capacity. If a project has a lower “capacity density” than what the department considers to be a “reasonable alternative,” then it may no longer be able to get a permit.
“On a technology-neutral basis,” the order states, “wind and solar projects use disproportionate Federal lands relative to their energy generation when compared to other energy sources, like nuclear, gas, and coal.” The document going on to give an example, claiming that data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows an advanced nuclear plant uses less federal acreage than an offshore wind farm and “thus, when there are reasonable alternatives that can generate the same amount of or more energy on far less Federal land, wind and solar projects may unnecessarily and unduly degrade Federal lands.” The order also includes a chart comparing the capacity density of wind and solar facilities to conventional nuclear, gas, and coal, as well as geothermal, and claims that these sources are superior as well. The document does not reference hydropower.
There’s also a whole host of other implications in this order. Crucially, does the Interior expect that by choking off the flow of permits, cities and companies will just pony up to build what the Trump administration considers “reasonable alternatives” instead? Is the federal government going to tell communities in Nevada, for example, that they must suddenly build gas plants in the desert instead of solar farms to meet their increasing energy needs?
In any case, much more is coming, as this order simply built off of a separate secretarial order earlier this week commanding staff to prepare a litany of recommendations on ending alleged “preferential treatment” for solar and wind facilities. In other words hold my beer – and hold onto yours, too.
That’s okay for clean energy firms, terrible for manufacturers, and a big risk for everyone.
Over the past few months, you could put together three different — and somewhat conflicting — pictures of the American economy.
For companies exposed to the AI boom, business has been good — excellent, even. The surge in ongoing capital investment into data centers and electricity has been larger than other recent booms, such as the telecom buildout. Electricity demand is soaring, especially in Texas and the Mid-Atlantic. Technology companies have signed power offtake deals with nuclear and hydroelectricity companies. If anything, companies exposed to artificial intelligence are more afflicted by congested supply chains and shortages than by slack demand — see the yearslong waiting lists to get a new transformer or natural gas turbine.
Outside of the AI economy, though, the economy has been a fair bit colder. You might even say it’s been frozen by indecision. When you talk to business leaders, they confess confusion about where things are heading. President Trump’s constantly changing tariffs — and his administration’s mercurial policy shifts — have made it difficult for non-AI-exposed businesses to plan long-term capital investment.
You could hear this view from clean energy manufacturing and traditional fossil firms alike. When I talked to John Henry Harris, the CEO of the medium-duty truck maker Harbinger Motors, for an episode of Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast in June, he told me that his company was just about to shift a production process to Mexico when a last-minute Trump change made it cheaper to keep it in China. Meanwhile, an oil and gas executive recently told the Dallas Federal Reserve: “The Liberation Day chaos and tariff antics have harmed the domestic energy industry. Drill, baby, drill will not happen with this level of volatility.”
But the data contradicted that tepid view. This was the third picture that we were getting of the economy. Through the summer, federal surveys showed an economy that was performing okay. In May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 139,000 jobs; it gained another 147,000 jobs, apparently, in June. The AI boom was clearly contributing to those robust reports. But how could an economy that business leaders otherwise described as difficult be going so well?
Now we can finally square these disparate pictures.
On Friday, the federal government released its newest tranche of job numbers. The headline number was mediocre — the U.S. added a mere 73,000 jobs in July — but the guts of the report were worse. The government revised down its estimate of the May and June reports by a total of 258,000 jobs. With these new numbers in hand, it’s clear that the labor market has essentially stalled out since Liberation Day in April.
The unemployment rate slightly rose to 4.2%, which was in line with what economists predicted.
These new reports clarify that the broader American economy wasn’t actually thriving. Its summer strength was a mirage the whole time. Outside of AI, things are downright frigid. And as President Trump continues to shuffle tariffs and increase trade uncertainty, we can expect conditions to worsen. Trump seems hellbent even on clouding our ability to understand the underlying economy: on Friday afternoon, he fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, a career civil servant.
If you squint, you can see a hazy “AI sector” versus “non-AI sector” distinction in the data, even among the energy and decarbonization companies we cover at Heatmap. But it’s not obvious. Contrary to what you might expect when power demand is surging, utility employment was basically flat last month. Heavy and civil engineering construction jobs were up by 6,000, and “nonresidential specialty trade contractors” — a category that can include electricians — gained nearly 2,000 jobs.
But manufacturing lost 11,000 jobs last month, with the motor vehicles industry driving 2,600 of those losses. Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas jobs were down. The Institute of Supply Management report, a private survey of U.S. manufacturing activity, showed the sector shrank in July for the fifth month in a row.
And even though the Department of Government Efficiency’s deferred buyout program for more than 150,000 people has yet to hit, the federal government bled 12,000 jobs.
In a way, the clean energy industry — or at least solar, battery, nuclear, and geothermal developers — might consider themselves lucky. Despite the best efforts of Trump’s officials, and despite the chaos of President Trump’s policies, they have been able to eke through the past few months because of the AI boom. Nearly 70% of all new power-generating capacity added to the U.S. grid in the first quarter of this year came from solar panels, and the government has thrown its weight behind next-generation nuclear and geothermal technologies. A tepid jobs report might even bring some interest rate relief from the Federal Reserve.
But if that AI boom slows down, we should all watch out below.
A conversation with Heather O’Neill of Advanced Energy United.
This week’s conversation is with Heather O’Neill, CEO of renewables advocacy group Advanced Energy United. I wanted to chat with O’Neill in light of the recent effective repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean electricity tax credits and the action at the Interior Department clamping down on development. I’m quite glad she was game to talk hot topics, including the future of wind energy and whether we’ll see blue states step into the vacuum left by the federal government.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
During Trump 1.0 we saw blue states really step into the climate role in light of the federal government. Do you see anything similar taking place now?
I think this moment we’re in – it is a different moment.
How are we handling load growth? How are we making sure consumers are not paying for expensive stranded assets? Thinking about energy affordability? All of those challenges absolutely present a different moment and will result in a different response from state leaders.
But that’s where some of the changes our industry has gone through mean we’re able to meet that moment and provide solutions to those challenges. I think we need aggressive action from state leaders and I think we’ll see that from them, because of the challenges in front of them.
What does that look like?
Every state is different. Take Virginia for example. Five years after we passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act – a big, bold promise of action – we’re not on track. So what are the things we need to do to keep the foot on the accelerator there? This last legislative session we passed the virtual power plant legislation that’ll help tremendously in terms of grid flexibility. We made a big push around siting and permitting reform, and we didn’t quite get it over the finish line but that’s the kind of thing where we made a good foundation.
Or Texas. There’s so much advanced energy powering Texas right now. You had catastrophic grid failure in Hurricane Uri and look at what they’ve been able to build out in response to that: wind, solar, and in the last few years, battery storage, and they just passed the energy waste reduction [bill].
We need to build things and make it easier to build – siting and permitting reform – but it’s also states depending on their environment looking at and engaging with their regional transmission organization.
You saw that last week, a robust set of governors across the PJM region called on them to improve their interconnection queue. It’s about pushing and finding reforms at the market level, to get these assets online and get on the grid deployed.
I think the point about forward momentum, I definitely see what you’re saying there about the need for action. Do you see state primacy laws or pre-emption laws? Like what Michigan, New York, and California have done…
I’m not a siting expert, but the reform packages that work the best include engagement from communities in meaningful ways. But they also make sure you’re not having a vocal minority drowning out the benefits and dragging out the process forever. There are timelines and certainty attached to it while still having meaningful local engagement.
Our industry absolutely has to continue to lean into more local engagement and community engagement around the benefits of a project and what they can deliver for a community. I also think there’s a fair amount of making sure the state is creating that pathway, providing that certainty, so we can actually move forward to build out these projects.
From the federal government’s perspective, they’re cracking down on wind and solar projects while changing the tax credits. Do you see states presenting their own incentives for renewables in lieu of federal incentives? I’ve wondered if that’ll happen given inflation and affordability concerns.
No, I think we have to be really creative as an industry, and state leaders have to be creative too. If I’m a governor, affordability concerns were already front and center for me, and now given what just happened, they’re grappling with incredibly tight state budgets that are about to get tighter, including health care. They’re going to see state budgets hit really hard. And there’s energy impacts – we’re cutting off supply, so we’re going to see prices go up.
This is where governors and state leaders can act but I think in this context of tight state budgets I don’t think we can expect to see states replacing incentive packages.
It’ll be: how do we take advantage of all the flexible tools that we have to help shape and reduce demand in meaningful ways that’ll save consumers money, as well as push on building out projects and getting existing juice out of the transmission system we have today.
Is there a future for wind in the United States?
It is an incredibly challenging environment – no question – for all of our technologies, wind included. I don’t want to sugar-coat that at all.
But I look at the whole picture, and I include wind in this: the technologies have improved dramatically in the past couple of decades and the costs have come down. When you look around at what resources are around to deploy, it’s advanced energy. We’re seeing it continue to grow. There’ll be headwinds, and it’ll be more expensive for all of us. But I look at what our industry and our technologies are able to offer and deliver, and I am confident we’ll continue to see growth.