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Climate

Trump’s Gift to the Timber Industry

On logging in national forests, fires in the Carolinas, and fusion

Trump’s Gift to the Timber Industry
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Firefighters in Japan are battling the country’s largest wildfire in 30 years • Tropical Cyclone Alfred is hurtling toward Australia’s Queensland coast • Some 170 million Americans are in the path of a storm system that will bring severe thunderstorms and tornadoes to the South and Mid-Atlantic regions through Wednesday.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Wildfires break out across North and South Carolina

More than 175 wildfires erupted across parts of North and South Carolina over the weekend, fueled by dry, windy conditions. About 4,200 acres have burned so far. The largest blaze, known as the Carolina Forest fire, spans about 1,600 acres and is located west of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. It was about 30% contained as of last night. A state of emergency was declared in South Carolina on Sunday. Parts of the region are under fire danger warnings through the rest of today.

X/WBTWNews13

2. Trump aims to ramp up logging

President Trump signed an executive order over the weekend directing the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, as well as the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, to investigate ways to boost timber production across national forests and other public lands. The order slams “onerous” policies that have “prevented full utilization” of U.S. timber resources, likely referring to environmental regulations such as the Endangered Species Act. Last week Trump tapped Tom Schultz, a former Idaho timber executive, to lead the Forest Service, a move seen as a win for the timber industry. The administration is considering tariffs on timber imports, which could raise construction costs. “Taken together with massive staff cuts to the Forest Service that included reductions in wildland firefighters and support personnel, this order may offer a boost to timber industry profits — but carries heavy implications for the climate and for wildfire season in 2025 and beyond,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, representing environmental legal group Earthjustice.

3. China sets sights on commercial nuclear fusion by 2050

China wants to use nuclear fusion for clean power generation at scale by 2050, the country’s state-owned atomic company, China National Nuclear Corp., said on Friday. China’s experimental fusion reactors have been making progress in testing. In January, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak reportedly maintained a loop of plasma for more than 1,000 seconds, which was “a step towards maintaining prolonged, confined plasma loops that future reactors will need to generate electricity,” as LiveScienceexplained. China is planning for a demonstration phase in 2045, before going commercial by 2050. It also plans to build more fission reactors and small modular reactors in the near-term. “China is set to leapfrog the U.S. and France as the owner of the world’s biggest [nuclear] reactor fleet by 2030,” according toBloomberg.

4. Watershed invites proposals from carbon removal suppliers

Climate software company Watershed is issuing its first-ever request for proposals from carbon removal suppliers to fulfill an anticipated demand from its customers for 1 megaton of carbon removal credits over the next 18 months. Watershed is a sustainability platform that helps companies manage and reduce emissions. It claims to currently manage over 2 gigatons of emissions for customers including Walmart, Visa, Airbnb, General Motors, and six U.S. banks. “We are seeking carbon project partners to build a supply pipeline for our customers,” the company said. “We are excited to grow our partner ecosystem with a small group of providers whom we plan to highlight in future buyer cohort announcements.” The company said its new callout is “the first RFP in the market to procure both nature-based and engineered removals together.” Applications are due by March 31.

5. Vineyard Wind set for completion in 2025

The Vineyard Wind project is scheduled for completion this year, according to Spanish power company Iberdrola, whose subsidiary Avangrid is developing the wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts. As E&E Newsreported, Iberdrola’s executive chair Ignacio Galán told investors last week he was confident the company’s renewables investments would go ahead under President Trump. The comments “mark a vote of confidence in U.S. offshore wind at a time when the industry has been rocked by Trump's decision to freeze new wind permits and review existing ones.” Vineyard resumed sending power to the grid in January after a six-month pause following a very public problem with one of its turbine blades.

THE KICKER

“The energy transition is a one-way ticket.”

–Economists Eric Beinhocker and J. Doyne Farmer explain in The Wall Street Journal why the clean energy revolution is unstoppable.

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Politics

AM Briefing: The Vote-a-Rama Drags On

On sparring in the Senate, NEPA rules, and taxing first-class flyers

The Megabill’s Clean Energy Holdouts
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A hurricane warning is in effect for Mexico as the Category 1 storm Flossie approaches • More than 50,000 people have been forced to flee wildfires raging in Turkey • Heavy rain caused flash floods and landslides near a mountain resort in northern Italy during peak tourist season.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Senate Republicans spar over megabill’s clean energy policies

Senate lawmakers’ vote-a-rama on the GOP tax and budget megabill dragged into Monday night and continues Tuesday. Republicans only have three votes to lose if they want to get the bill through the chamber and send it to the House. Already Senators Thom Tillis and Rand Paul are expected to vote against it, and there are a few more holdouts for whom clean energy appears to be one sticking point. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, has put forward an amendment (together with Iowa Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley) that would eliminate the new renewables excise tax, and phase out tax credits for solar and wind gradually (by 2028) rather than immediately, as proposed in the original bill. “I don’t want us to backslide on the clean energy credits,” Murkowski told reporters Monday. E&E News reported that the amendment could be considered on a simple majority threshold. (As an aside: If you’re wondering why wind and solar need tax credits if they’re so cheap, as clean energy advocates often emphasize, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo has a nice explainer worth reading.)

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Yellow
Climate Tech

Lyten Is Acquiring Northvolt’s Energy Storage Manufacturing ​Plant

It’s the largest facility of its kind of Europe and will immediately make the lithium-sulfur battery startup a major player.

A Lyten battery in Poland.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Lyten

Lyten, the domestic lithium-sulfur battery company, has officially expanded into the European market, announcing that it has acquired yet another shuttered Northvolt facility. Located in Gdansk, Poland, this acquisition represents a new direction for the company: Rather than producing battery cells — as Lyten’s other U.S.-based facilities will do — this 270,000 square foot plant is designed to produce complete battery energy storage systems for the grid. Currently, it’s the largest energy storage manufacturing facility in Europe, with enough equipment to ramp up to 6 gigawatt-hours of capacity. This gives Lyten the ability to become — practically immediately — a major player in energy storage.

“We were very convinced that we needed to be able to build our own battery energy storage systems, so the full system with electronics and switch gear and safety systems and everything for our batteries to go into,” Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief sustainability and marketing officer, told me. “So this opportunity became very, very well aligned with our strategy.”

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Energy

If Wind and Solar Are So Cheap, Why Do They Need Tax Credits?

Removing the subsidies would be bad enough, but the chaos it would cause in the market is way worse.

Money and clean energy.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In their efforts to persuade Republicans in Congress not to throw wind and solar off a tax credit cliff, clean energy advocates have sometimes made what would appear to be a counterproductive argument: They’ve emphasized that renewables are cheap and easily obtainable.

Take this statement published by Advanced Energy United over the weekend: “By effectively removing tax credits for some of the most affordable and easy-to-build energy resources, Congress is all but guaranteeing that consumers will be burdened with paying more for a less reliable electric grid.”

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Green