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On the reconciliation bill, power plant regulations, and Climate.gov
Current conditions: Eight to 12 inches of rain could fall in Texas and the southern Plains • Air quality alerts are in place today for the New York metro region due to wildfire smoke from Canada • Parts of Europe will see temperatures up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal on Thursday and Friday, with highs approaching 100 degrees in Florence, Italy.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released its take on the Republican reconciliation bill on Wednesday afternoon, with boasts of “repealing billions in unspent Green New Deal handouts.” Its proposals include:
The draft also includes the details of Republican Senator Mike Lee’s latest proposal to sell off millions of acres of public lands to finance President Trump’s tax cuts. Specifically, the proposal would require the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service to make the “prudent sale” of 0.5% to 0.75% of their lands in 11 western states for “housing, increased timber sales, geothermal leasing, and compensation of states and localities for the cost of wind and solar projects on federal land.” The states named for the selloffs include Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, with Montana — home of Republican Representative Ryan Zinke, who opposed a similar proposal in the House — notably absent from the list.
You can read a section-by-section breakdown of the rest of the ENR’s proposals here.
On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to retract Biden-era regulations on fossil fuel-fired power plant emissions on the grounds that the plants don’t cause or contribute “significantly” to air pollution. EPA’s proposed rule specifically suggests that power plant pollution makes up merely a “small and decreasing part of global emissions,” and therefore does not require regulation under the Clean Air Act.
But as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo reports, electricity usage produces 25% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions each year, and accounted for 5% of the total climate pollution worldwide over the past 30 years — making U.S. power plants the world’s sixth biggest CO2 emitter if they were their own country. The administration’s claim that power plants make up only a small portion of global emissions and thus aren’t worth addressing is akin to “a five-alarm fire that could be put out if you send out all the trucks, and you don’t send any of the trucks because no one truck could put the fire out by itself,” David Doniger, a senior attorney and strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Emily. “We just think that is a wacky reversal and a wacky interpretation of the Clean Air Act.”
Late last month, the Trump administration fired the entire staff of Climate.gov, the main website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office, The Guardian reports. The website had a staff of “about 10,” but it also received editorial content from NOAA scientists in other departments. Climate.gov described its mission as “climate communication, education, and engagement,” but it also took pains to be “politically neutral, and faithful to the current state of the sciences,” The Guardian writes. “It’s targeted, I think it’s clear,” said Tom Di Liberto, a former NOAA spokesperson who was fired earlier this year. “They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for Climate.gov. I mean, that’s a clear signal.”
The World Bank announced Wednesday that it will end its longtime ban on financing nuclear energy projects. “We will support efforts to extend the life of existing reactors in countries that already have them, and help support grid upgrades and related infrastructure,” World Bank President Ajay Banga wrote in an email to staff, per the Financial Times. Though the development bank’s ban has only been formally in place since 2013, it hasn’t funded a nuclear project since 1959. “In the decades since, a few of the bank’s major funders, particularly Germany, have opposed its involvement in nuclear energy,” The New York Times notes, although both Germany and the Trump administration have recently pivoted toward more pro-nuclear positions. In his memo, Banga added that the bank’s ban on funding oil and gas projects, which has been in place since 2017, will also be reconsidered.
Amazon on Wednesday announced a deal to buy enough power from Pennsylvania nuclear plant operator Talen Energy “to sustain a midsize city for years,” Barron’s reports. The agreement will see Talen supplying Amazon with electricity “for operations that support AI and other cloud technologies at Amazon’s data center campus,” while maintaining its “ability to deliver to other sites throughout Pennsylvania,” Talen said in its own announcement, with the companies also agreeing to explore building a new small modular reactor in the state.
The news comes against the backdrop of Congress’ efforts to eliminate the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits, even as tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google continue to pursue ambitious net-zero energy goals. “There’s little doubt the tech companies would prefer an abundant supply of cheap, clean energy,” my colleague Katie Brigham wrote in her recent analysis. “Exactly how much they’re willing to fight for it is the real question.” Amazon’s deal with Talen for nearly 2 gigawatts of nuclear power through 2042 follows Meta signing a nuclear agreement with Constellation Energy last week and Microsoft partnering with Constellation to reopen Three Mile Island last year.
Tesla
“Tentatively, June 22.” —Elon Musk, responding on Twitter to a question about the public launch date of the self-driving Tesla Cybercab robotaxi in Austin, although he added, “We’re being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the level of rescissions from LPO’s budget.
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A longtime climate messaging strategist is tired of seeing the industry punch below its weight.
The saga of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains at least one clear lesson for the clean energy industry: It must grow a political spine and act like the trillion-dollar behemoth it is. And though the logic is counterintuitive, the new law will likely provide an opportunity to build one.
The coming threat to renewable energy investment became apparent as soon as Trump won the presidency again last fall. The only questions were how much was vulnerable, and through what mechanisms.
Still, many clean energy leaders were optimistic that Trump’s “energy abundance” agenda had room for renewables. During the transition, one longtime Republican energy lobbyist told Utility Dive that Trump’s incoming cabinet had a “very aggressive approach towards renewables.” When Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper introduced would-be Secretary of Energy Chris Wright at the fracking executive’s confirmation hearing, he vouched for Wright’s clean energy cred. Even Trump touted Wright’s experience with solar.
At least initially, the argument made sense. After all, energy demand is soaring, and solar, wind, and battery storage account for 95% of new power projects awaiting grid connection in the U.S. In red states like Texas and Oklahoma, clean energy is booming because it’s cheap. Just a few months ago, the Lone Star State achieved record energy generation from solar, wind, and batteries, and consumers there are saving millions of dollars a day because of renewables. The Biden administration funneled clean energy and manufacturing investment into red districts in part to cultivate Republican support for renewables — and to protect those investments no matter who is president.
As a result, for the past six months, clean energy executives have absorbed advice telling them to fly below the radar. Stop using the word “climate” and start using words like “common sense” when you talk to lawmakers. (As a communications and policy strategist who works extensively on climate issues, I’ve given that specific piece of advice.)
But far too many companies and industry groups went much further than tweaking their messaging. They stopped publicly advocating for their interests, and as a result there has been no muscular effort to pressure elected officials where it counts: their reelection campaigns.
This is part of a broader lack of engagement with elected officials on the part of clean energy companies. The oil and gas industry has outspent clean energy on lobbying 2 to 1 this year, despite the fact that oil and gas faces a hugely favorable political environment. In the run up to the last election, the fossil fuel industry spent half a billion dollars to influence candidates; climate and clean energy advocates again spent just a fraction, despite having more on the line. My personal preference is to get money out of politics, but you have to play by the rules as they exist.
Even economically irresistible technologies can be legislated into irrelevance if they don’t have political juice. The last-minute death of the mysterious excise tax on wind and solar that was briefly part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a glaring sign of weakness, not strength — especially given that even the watered-down provisions in the law will damage the economics of renewable energy. After the law passed, the President directed the Treasury Department to issue the strictest possible guidance for the clean energy projects that remain eligible for tax credits.
The tech industry learned this same lesson over many years. The big tech companies started hiring scores of policy and political staff in the 2010s, when they were already multi-hundred-billion dollar companies, but it wasn’t until 2017 that a tech company became the top lobbying spender. Now the tech industry has a sophisticated influence operation that includes carrots and sticks. Crypto learned this lesson even faster, emerging almost overnight as one of the most aggressive industries shaping Washington.
Clean energy needs to catch up. But lobbying spending isn’t a panacea.
Executives in the clean energy sector sometimes say they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Democrats and the segment of potentially supportive Republicans at the local and federal levels talk and think about clean energy differently. And the dissonance makes it challenging to communicate honestly with both parties, especially in public.
The clean energy industry should recognize that the safest ground is to criticize and cultivate both parties unabashedly. The American political system understands economic self interest, and there are plenty of policy changes that various segments of the clean energy world need from both Democrats and Republicans at the federal and state levels. Democrats need to make it easier to build; Republicans need to support incentives they regularly trumpet for other job-creating industries.
The quality of political engagement from clean energy companies and the growing ecosystem of advocacy groups has improved. The industry, disparate as it is, has gotten smarter. Advocates now bring district-by-district data to policymakers, organize lobby days, and frame clean energy in terms that resonate across the aisle — national security, economic opportunity in rural America, artificial intelligence, and the race with China. That’s progress.
But the tempo is still far too low, and there are too many carrots and too few sticks. The effects of President Trump’s tax law on energy prices might create some leverage. If the law damages renewable energy generation, and thereby raises energy prices as energy demand continues to rise, Americans should know who is responsible. The clean energy sector has to be the messenger, or at least orchestrate the messaging.
The campaigns write themselves: Paid media targeting members of Congress who praised clean energy job growth in their districts and then voted to gut jobs and raise prices; op-eds in local papers calling out that hypocrisy by name; energy workers showing up at town halls demanding their elected officials fight for an industry that’s investing billions in their communities; activating influencers to highlight the bright line between Trump’s law and higher electricity bills; and more.
If renewable energy is going to grow consistently in America, no matter which way the political wind blows, there must be a political cost to crossing the sector. Otherwise it will always be vulnerable to last-minute backroom deals, no matter how “win-win” its technology is.
On IRA funds, rescissions, and EV battery technology
Current conditions: The National Weather Service is advising Americans in 11 states affected by heat waves to avoid coffee and alcohol due to dehydration risk • There have been more wildfires in London this summer than in all of 2024 • We’re at the halfway point in climatological summer and the United States’ hottest day of the year — 124 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley, California, on Monday — may now be behind us.
It has long been a “big mystery” how much grant funding from the Inflation Reduction Act the Biden administration ultimately got out the door before leaving the White House. Previously, the administration had announced awards for about 67% of the $145.4 billion in grants. Still, it wasn’t until Republicans in Congress began their rescissions of the bill’s unobligated funds that a fuller picture began to emerge.
According to reporting by my colleague Emily Pontecorvo, the Biden administration spent or otherwise obligated about $61.7 billion before leaving office, with President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill clawing back $31.7 billion from 47 IRA programs. Programs that had the greatest proportion of their funding obligated include:
There’s a lot more in the data to dig through, too, which Emily does here.
Senate Republicans voted narrowly Tuesday evening to advance President Trump’s $9.4 billion rescissions package, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. Three Republican senators — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — joined Democrats in opposing the package. Congress must vote to approve the rescissions by Friday to meet a statutory 45-day deadline that began when President Trump sent his proposal on June 3. The vote-a-rama is set to begin Thursday afternoon.
The proposed package would eliminate $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR, as well as large portions of foreign assistance programs. (A controversial plan to cut $400 million from the country’s AIDS relief program, known as PEPFAR, was ultimately removed to convince Republican holdouts.) But as I’ve written before, the package also takes aim at $1.7 billion of the $3.6 billion appropriated for the Economic Support Fund, which has historically been used to work with international partners to mitigate the impacts of climate change, as well as $125 million from the Clean Technology Fund, which provides financial resources for developing countries to invest in clean energy projects. The White House has said the programs do not “reflect America’s values or put the American people first.”
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China announced Tuesday that to protect the valuable breakthroughs that have allowed it to produce inexpensive electric vehicles, it will begin to restrict “eight key technologies for manufacturing [EV] batteries,” The New York Times reports. The move, which is effective immediately, will require a license from the Chinese government before any technologies can be transferred overseas “through trade, investment or technological cooperation.”
The move follows pressure by the European Union on Chinese EV and battery manufacturers to build factories within the bloc. As I covered in Heatmap AM yesterday, electric vehicle sales are booming in China in large part due to their affordability, with the nation being the “only large market where EVs are on average cheaper to buy than comparable combustion cars,” BloombergNEF has found. Though lithium-ion phosphate battery technology originated in the United States more than three decades ago, Chinese companies BYD and CATL have “figured out a way to further increase the number of recharges, making it comparable to more traditional battery chemistries,” in addition to advances in mass-production and capacity, the Times adds.
The third quarter of 2025 will “likely” see record sales of electric vehicles in the United States as would-be buyers rush to use the $7,500 tax credit before it expires on September 30, Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book reported this week. Electric vehicle sales were lower in Q2 of 2025 than in 2024 by 6.3%, with 310,839 new EVs sold, marking “only the third decline on record, and a sign of a more mature market,” Stephanie Valdez Streaty, senior analyst at Cox Automotive, said in a statement. Additionally, sales of used EVs — only a third of which had qualified for government incentives anyway before those were eliminated — are up, with 100,000 units sold in Q2. But the real story will be what happens in Q3, where there’s “about to be a fire sale” as consumers race against the clock, Andrew Moseman writes for Heatmap. If you’re among the shoppers, he’s got the scoop on EV deals here.
The United States will either “reform” the International Energy Agency or “withdraw,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Bloomberg Tuesday during the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University. The IEA, which was originally established to focus on oil security during the 1970s, has been characterized by Republicans as becoming a “cheerleader” for the renewable energy transition, in the recent words of Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. Wright echoed those concerns in his conversation with Bloomberg, telling the publication that the IEA’s projections that oil demand will plateau this decade are “total nonsense.” Despite the threats, Wright stressed that his “strong preference” for handling the IEA is “to reform it.”
Several major beauty brands, including L’Oréal Paris and Neutrogena, are set to include environmental impact ratings on their packaging. “The EcoBeautyScore” — which runs from A to E — “indicates the environmental footprint of beauty products based on its entire lifecycle, from ingredients to packaging and how it is disposed of,” Cosmetics Business reports.
Rob does a post-vacation debrief with Jesse and Heatmap deputy editor Jillian Goodman on the One Big Beautiful Bill.
It’s official. On July 4, President Trump signed the Republican reconciliation bill into law, gutting many of the country’s most significant clean energy tax credits. The future of the American solar, wind, battery, and electric vehicle industries looks very different now than it did last year.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, we survey the damage and look for bright spots. What did the law, in its final version, actually repeal, and what did it leave intact? How much could still change as the Trump administration implements the law? What does this mean for U.S. economic competitiveness? And how are we feeling about the climate fight today?
Jillian Goodman, Heatmap’s deputy editor, joins us to discuss all these questions and more. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: I want to ask a version of the Upshift / Downshift question of both of you, which is, how are you feeling?
Jillian Goodman: Dizzy. I’m feeling dizzy.
Jesse Jenkins: I would like a break. Yes.
Meyer: You both had your faces up against the coalface of this policy change over the past two weeks. And I’m not someone who thinks how we feel about climate change is always the most salient question. At some point of working on it professionally, I think one just kind of is like, well, this is the thing I work on, and I get up in the morning and I try to make it better, and it doesn’t really matter whether I’m optimistic or pessimistic at the moment because you just keep pushing. That’s how it works.
Jenkins: I think it’s how you survive in this game this long, is adopting an attitude like that to some degree.
Meyer: The U.S. just went through a kind of clattering change to its energy and climate policy and got rid of a number of policies that, although flawed, were pushing the U.S. energy system in the right direction, and were a real vote of confidence and of good faith in the energy transition. Has watching the events of the past two weeks made you feel pessimistic about the energy transition to come? Or are you feeling like, you know, for a world where Trump won, for a world where the U.S. faced the constraints and the political environment that it did in 2023 and 2024 and 2025, we can work with this and there’s gonna be new stuff coming down the pipeline and we’re gonna keep deploying.
Goodman: I will say, kind of similar to you, Rob, doing this work is sort of my way of processing my climate anxiety, or at least putting some kind of wall of professionalism between that climate anxiety and my daily life. Like, this is my contribution, and I think about it as a professional, and I don’t really think about it as a human as often.
I will say, it’s shocking to me how much of a … you know, it is not a 100% policy reversal, but the extent to which the government of the United States was willing to throw out its existing climate policy that took however many years and decades to get to just really kind of floors me. And it’s the kind of thing that we can’t do again, at least not in this way. It’s not that U.S. companies will never again trust a climate-oriented tax credit. I think that’s a bit of an overstatement. But this approach has been tried, and then it’s been undone. And so whatever approach is tried in the future will have to be something new, and it’ll have to be motivated by different arguments, and it will have to have different structures. And that project, I think, is also kind of daunting.
Jenkins: Yeah, so look, this is a terrible piece of policy for the United States, and for the world. And so on the one hand, I’m mad as hell about it, right? I mean, we haven’t even talked about the broader effects beyond climate of this bill. It’s going to kick nearly one in 20 Americans off of their health insurance. It’s going to explode the deficit so that we can mostly give tax cuts to wealthy people and corporations who don’t need it. It’s going to reduce food stamp spending for people who can’t afford to eat so that people who can afford first class flights can have another vacation. Like, this is just bad policy, and it is a bad way to do energy policy, to completely reverse course just because the other guy won the election, rather than to have a more thoughtful rationalization of the tax code for energy investment.
I think it’s particularly scary to think about the implications for our automotive sector, having basically replaced a pretty thoughtful and fairly successful domestic industrial strategy around EVs and batteries with basically nothing except for some subsidies that build a wall around the United States is really concerning.I don’t know that we’re gonna have a globally relevant auto industry in five years …
Mentioned:
The REPEAT Project report on what the OBBBA will mean for the future of American emissions
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s foreign entities of concern explainer
The new White House executive order about renewables tax credits
And here’s more of Heatmap’s coverage from the endgame of OBBBA.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
The Yale Center for Business and the Environment’s online clean energy programs equip you with tangible skills and powerful networks—and you can continue working while learning. In just five hours a week, propel your career and make a difference.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.