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Whether they can continue to do so depends on how long the green freeze lasts.
This story is part of a Heatmap series on the “green freeze” under Trump.
By now I’ve come to expect the responses. “We’re continuing to assess the situation and aren’t able to speak on it at this time.” “We are not able to provide comment on this matter.” Oftentimes, all I’ll receive is a Gmail prompt to an unanswered email: Sent 9 days ago. Follow up?
This week, my colleagues and I are covering the “green freeze,” an economy-wide trend of canceled clean energy projects, a retreat from climate tech investments, and a tightening of purse strings perhaps best epitomized by Breakthrough Energy’s pullback from grantmaking and policy advocacy. I aimed to look more closely at how nonprofits are navigating the new political and economic landscape — with climate no longer a key policy focus of the White House, would related causes lose their appeal to donors? Or would the opposite be true: Given the federal funding gap, would philanthropy surge to fill the vacuum? Would it even be prudent to do so?
“In my experience, when the government takes a step back from a particular impact area — and climate is no different — often philanthropists end up leaning in,” Amy Duffuor, a co-founder and partner at Azolla Ventures, told me. Azolla invests in climate tech start-ups using both traditional venture capital and catalytic capital, the latter of which comes primarily from philanthropists. But for many organizations, especially at the grassroots level or in the environmental justice space, it might not be that simple.
Talking about donors is always delicate and awkward, but I was still surprised by how closed-lipped local and national nonprofits became when I started asking these questions. Many groups that have spoken candidly with Heatmap News in the past declined to talk to me on the topic, even on background. One media relations manager for a conservation organization that receives federal grants delicately implied, while turning down my request for comment, that no one wants to stick their neck out when there’s a climate witch-hunt going on.
“Nonprofits have to be really conscious of where their support comes from and how they protect that,” Cyrus Wadia, the CEO of Activate, a nonprofit that offers fellowship support for early-stage science entrepreneurs looking to launch climate start-ups, told me when I explained what I was seeing.
He’s right that the wariness is understandable. The Trump administration is attempting to claw back some $20 billion in funds awarded to climate nonprofits under President Joe Biden, including hundreds of grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, many of which were earmarked for local environmental justice nonprofits. A number of these nonprofits are, as a result, facing unexpected funding shortfalls, forcing them to consider cuts to staff and programs in the weeks and months ahead. “If this lasts much longer … then we’re going to start seeing more organizations saying this program and that program have to shut down, they’re having to reduce capacity because they can’t make payroll, or they’re closing their doors,” Rick Cohen, the chief communications officer for the National Council of Nonprofits, recently told The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
There is a sense among some in the nonprofit space that the hesitation among donors might be more of a reassessment than an actual freeze. “There is definitely a ‘pause and wait and see and figure out our strategy and maybe start over’ moment that I think a couple of these foundations are having,” Lara Pierpoint, the managing director of Trellis Climate — a 501(c)(3) that helps philanthropists, donors, and foundations invest in climate opportunities that wouldn’t go forward without philanthropic support — told me. A policy director for a national policymaking and advocacy group similarly suggested to me that the election of Trump caught some of their donors flat-footed, adding that they “didn’t have strategies ready to go.”
That doesn’t necessarily indicate a broader trend. “The good news is that we aren’t seeing a huge amount of change just yet among our donor set,” she told me. “I think our donor set tends to be folks who are already very focused on climate,” she went on. “They are not only not afraid of the word ‘climate,’ but I think they really see the need to focus on it, particularly given what’s going on.”
She did note, however, that it’s still early, and that there are two main headwinds she and her peers are facing. “Some of the donors that we’ve spoken to have said, ‘Hey, we can’t really talk right now or commit to anything because we’re doing a wholesale reevaluation of our portfolio and how we approach giving,’” she said. Additionally, philanthropists who think of themselves more as investors might have questions about how viable their investments will be, given what’s happening with both federal priorities and the gyrating economy.
As my colleague Katie Brigham has reported, climate tech investment had already started to slow down from the frothy days of the early Biden administration; some companies had started to pivot away from promoting the clean, green climate perks of their business models even before Trump took office. (Bloomberg has labeled this semantic game “greenhushing”; the general wisdom is, “it’s still a great time to start a climate startup. Just don’t call it a climate startup.”) Anxieties about the economy can, as a rule, also impact the giving patterns of donors.
“At the end of the day, for very good reasons, philanthropists want to invest in projects and ideas that are likely to be successful and go forward and do the things they are meant to do,” Pierpoint said. “And all of that is under threat right now because climate tech is hard, it’s expensive, it’s competing with fossil fuels, and counting out government support and tax credits, the picture is daunting.”
Others were similarly cautiously optimistic about the days ahead. “There’s a gap, and philanthropy is often well-suited to close gaps,” said Duffuor, the partner at Azolla Ventures. (Both Azolla Ventures and Trellis Climate are part of Prime Coalition, a nonprofit focused on climate financing.)
Like Pierpoint, Duffuor expects to see a “doubling down” by philanthropists who are motivated by climate. Donors who were more on the cusp to begin with — who saw climate investment as en vogue, or were more driven by financial returns — might back away, she agreed. But it seems unlikely that people who genuinely believe in climate causes will be dissuaded by who’s in the White House. “I think people are waiting to see where the gaps are most effective,” she said.
Wadia, the CEO of the venture capital firm Activate, who spoke with me from the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, agreed that while the language around giving may change, he is still seeing a “momentum for innovation.”
“If we all just step back, what are we really trying to do?” he said, speaking of nonprofits, philanthropists, and start-ups alike. “Everybody might have a different version of how we do it, but we’re all working towards trying to make the planet a better place for people — for all species on this planet. There’s a general consensus that’s a good thing.”
The nonprofit sector is large and diverse, and the impacts of the political and economic moment will not be felt equally. Local environmental justice nonprofits that relied on federal grants will undoubtedly be worse off than the better-insulated climate financing organizations like Activate, although the turbulence at Breakthrough suggests that even the deepest of pockets can still close to climate causes. (Tellingly, companies funded by Breakthrough’s investment arm, Breakthrough Ventures, do not appear to be affected.) The tension and anxiety aren’t likely to break soon; uncertainty and fear remain pervasive.
If anything can be counted on, though, it’s that climate causes — whether local, national, community-focused, or innovation-related — will need their donors more than ever. The people I spoke with expect them to step up. But is that even a good thing?
“It’s not just the immediate impact — the question mark around grant funding and things like that,” Pierpoint of Trellis Climate told me. “It’s also the question of, is this, in the long term, going to reduce trust in the federal government in a way that lowers investment when folks are trying to leverage dollars?” She paused. “I think it would be bluntly catastrophic for climate development if we get into that world.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Activate is a nonprofit, not a venture capital firm.
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On the environmental reviews, Microsoft’s emissions, and solar on farmland
Current conditions: Enormous wildfires in Manitoba, Canada, will send smoke into the Midwestern U.S. and Great Plains this weekend • Northwest England is officially experiencing a drought after receiving its third lowest rainfall since 1871 • Thunderstorms are brewing in Washington, D.C., where the Federal Court of Appeals paused an earlier ruling throwing out much of Trump’s tariff agenda.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that courts should show more deference to agencies when hearing lawsuits over environmental reviews.
The case concerned a proposed 88-mile train line in Utah that would connect its Uinta Basin (and its oil resources) with the national rail network. Environmental groups and local governments claimed that the environmental impact statement submitted by the federal Surface Transportation Board did not pay enough attention to the effects of increased oil drilling and refining that the rail line could induce. The D.C. Circuit agreed, vacating the EIS; the Supreme Court did not, overturning the D.C. Circuit in an 8-0 decision.
The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires the federal government to study the environmental impact of its actions. The D.C. Circuit “failed to afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the Board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court.
The court’s decision could sharply limit the ability of the judicial branch to question environmental reviews by agencies under NEPA, and could pave the way for more certain and faster approvals for infrastructure projects.
At least, that’s what Kavanaugh hopes. The current NEPA process, he writes, foists “delay upon delay” on developers and agencies, so “fewer projects make it to the finish line. Indeed, fewer projects make it to the starting line.”
Map of the approved railway route.Source: Uinta Basin Railway Final Environmental Impact Statement
The Department of Agriculture is planning to retool a popular financing program, Rural Energy for America, to discourage solar development on agricultural land, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman exclusively reported.
“Farmland should be for agricultural production, not solar production,” a USDA spokesperson told Heatmap. The comments echoed a USDA report released last week criticizing the use of solar on agricultural land. The report said that the USDA will “disincentivize the use of federal funding at USDA for solar panels to be installed on productive farmland through prioritization points and regulatory action.” The USDA will also “call on state and local governments to work alongside USDA on local solutions.”
The daughter of a woman who died during the Pacific Northwest “Heat Dome” in 2021 sued seven oil and companies for wrongful death in Washington state court, The New York Times reported Thursday.
“The suit alleges that they failed to warn the public of the dangers of the planet-warming emissions produced by their products and that they funded decades-long campaigns to obscure the scientific consensus on global warming,” according to Times reporter David Gelles.
Several cities and states have brought suits making similar claims that oil and gas companies misled the public about the threat of climate change. Earlier this week, a German court threw out a suit from a Peruvian farmer against a German utility, which claimed that the utility’s commissions helped put his town at risk from glacial flooding.
The seven companies named in the lawsuit are Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and Olympic Pipeline Company, a subsidiary managed by BP. None of them commented on the suit.
Tech giant Microsoft disclosed in its annual sustainability report that its carbon emissions have grown by 23.4% since 2020, even as the company has a goal to become “carbon negative” by 2030. The upside to the figures is that the growth in emissions was due to a much larger increase in energy use and business activity, not from using dirtier energy. In that same time period, Microsoft’s revenue has grown 71%, and its energy use has grown 168%.
“It has become clear that our journey towards being carbon negative is a marathon,” the report read. The company said it had contracted 34 gigawatts of non-emitting power generation and had agreements to procure 30 million metric tons of carbon removal.
The company has set out to reduce its indirect Scope 3 emissions “by more than half” by 2030 from the 11.5 million metric tons it reported in 2020, as its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions fall to close to zero. It will become “carbon negative,” it hopes, by purchasing carbon removal.
Microsoft attempts to reduce emissions in its supply chain by procuring low- or no-carbon fuels and construction materials. Last week the tech giant signed a purchasing agreement with Sublime Systems for 600,000 tons of low-carbon cement.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it had approved a 77-megawatt small modular reactor design. This is the second SMR design approved by the NRC, following approval of a smaller design in 2020. Both are products of the SMR company NuScale, and neither has yet been deployed. A project to build the earlier design in Idaho was abandoned in 2023.
The NRC review was set to be completed in July of this year. Coming in ahead of scheduled demonstrates “the agency’s commitment to safely and efficiently enable new, advanced reactor technology,” the Commission said in a press release.
Congress and the Biden and Trump administrations have pushed the NRC to move faster and to encourage the development of small modular reactors. No SMR has been built in the United States, nor is there any current plan to do so that has been publicly disclosed. NuScale’s chief executive told Bloomberg that he hopes to have a deal signed by the end of the year and an operational plant by the end of the decade.
Tesla veteran Drew Baglino’s Heron Power raised a $38 million round of Series A funding for a new product designed to replace “legacy transformers and power converters by directly connecting rapidly growing megawatt-scale solar, batteries, and AI data centers to medium voltage transmission,” Baglino wrote on X.
A conversation with Mike Hall of Anza.
This week’s conversation is with Mike Hall, CEO of the solar and battery storage data company Anza. I rang him because, in my book, the more insights into the ways renewables companies are responding to the war on the Inflation Reduction Act, the better.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity. Let’s jump in!
How much do we know about developers’ reactions to the anti-IRA bill that was passed out of the House last week?
So it’s only been a few days. What I can tell you is there’s a lot of surprise about what came out of the House. Industries mobilized in trying to improve the bill from here and I think a lot of the industry is hopeful because, for many reasons, the bill doesn’t seem to make sense for the country. Not just the renewable energy industry. There’s hope that the voices in Congress — House members and senators — who already understand the impact of this on the economy will in the coming weeks understand how bad this is.
I spoke to a tax attorney last week that her clients had been preparing for a worst case scenario like this and preparing contingency plans of some kind. Have you seen anything so far to indicate people have been preparing for a worst case scenario?
Yeah. There’s a subset of the market that has prepared and already executed plans.
In Q4 [of 2024] and Q1 [of this year] with a number of companies to procure material from projects in order to safe harbor those projects. What that means is, typically if you commence construction by a certain date, the date on which you commence construction is the date you lock in tax credit eligibility, and we worked with companies to help them meet that criteria. It hedged them on a number of fronts. I don’t think most of them thought we’d get what came out of the House but there were a lot of concerns about stepdowns for the credit.
After Trump was elected, there were also companies who wanted to hedge against tariffs so they bought equipment ahead of that, too. We were helping companies do deals the night before Liberation Day. There was a lot of activity.
We saw less after April 2nd because the trade landscape has been changing so quickly that it’s been hard for people to act but now we’re seeing people act again to try and hit that commencement milestone.
It’s not lost on me that there’s an irony here – the attempts to erode these credits might lead to a rush of projects moving faster, actually. Is that your sense?
There’s a slug of projects that would get accelerated and in fact just having this bill come out of the House is already going to accelerate a number of projects. But there’s limits to what you can do there. The bill also has a placed-in-service criteria and really problematic language with regard to the “foreign entity of concern” provisions.
Are you seeing any increase in opposition against solar projects? And is that the biggest hurdle you see to meeting that “placed-in-service” requirement?
What I have here is qualitative, not quantitative, but I was in the development business for 20 years, and what I have seen qualitatively is that it is increasingly harder to develop projects. Local opposition is one of the headwinds. Interconnection is another really big one and that’s the biggest concern I have with regards to the “placed-in-service” requirement. Most of these large projects, even if you overcome the NIMBY issues, and you get your permitting, and you do everything else you need to do, you get your permits and construction… In the end if you’re talking about projects at scale, there is a requirement that utilities do work. And there’s no requirement that utilities do that work on time [to meet that deadline]. This is a risk they need to manage.
And more of the week’s top news in renewable energy conflicts.
1. Columbia County, New York – A Hecate Energy solar project in upstate New York blessed by Governor Kathy Hochul is now getting local blowback.
2. Sussex County, Delaware – The battle between a Bethany Beach landowner and a major offshore wind project came to a head earlier this week after Delaware regulators decided to comply with a massive government records request.
3. Fayette County, Pennsylvania – A Bollinger Solar project in rural Pennsylvania that was approved last year now faces fresh local opposition.
4. Cleveland County, North Carolina – Brookcliff Solar has settled with a county that was legally challenging the developer over the validity of its permits, reaching what by all appearances is an amicable resolution.
5. Adams County, Illinois – The solar project in Quincy, Illinois, we told you about last week has been rejected by the city’s planning commission.
6. Pierce County, Wisconsin – AES’ Isabelle Creek solar project is facing new issues as the developer seeks to actually talk more to residents on the ground.
7. Austin County, Texas – We have a couple of fresh battery storage wars to report this week, including a danger alert in this rural Texas county west of Houston.
8. Esmeralda County, Nevada – The Trump administration this week approved the final proposed plan for NV Energy’s Greenlink North, a massive transmission line that will help the state expand its renewable energy capacity.
9. Merced County, California – The Moss Landing battery fire is having aftershocks in Merced County as residents seek to undo progress made on Longroad’s Zeta battery project south of Los Banos.