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Climate

Trump Confirms Wind Ban While Overturning the California Waiver

On Trump’s ‘windmill’ ban, FEMA turnover, and PNW power

Trump Confirms Wind Ban While Overturning the California Waiver
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Physical activity is “discouraged” at the Grand Canyon today as temperatures climb toward 110 degrees Fahrenheit • Tropical Storm Wutip could dump 7 inches of rain in six hours over parts of VietnamInvestigators are looking into whether this week’s triple-digit heat in Ahmedabad, India, was a factor in Thursday’s deadly plane crash.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump confirms his administration is ‘not going to approve windmills’ because they’re eyesores

  Noah Buscher/Unsplash

President Trump said Thursday that his administration is “not going to approve windmills unless something happens that’s an emergency.” The comments — made during the White House East Room signing of legislation overturning California’s authority to set its own car pollution standards — were Trump’s clearest confirmation yet of my colleague Jael Holzman’s reporting, which this week found that “the wind industry’s worst fears are indeed coming to pass.” As Jael went on in The Fight, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have “simply stopped processing wind project permit applications after Trump’s orders — and the freeze appears immovable, unless something changes.”

Trump justified the pause by adding that “we’re not going to let windmills get built because we’re not going to destroy our country any further than it’s already been destroyed,” repeating his long-held grievance that “you go and look at these beautiful plains and valleys, and they’re loaded up with this garbage that gets worse and worse looking with time.” Trump’s aesthetic objections have already blocked at least three wind projects in New York alone — a move that has impacts beyond future energy generation, Jael further notes. According to the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, the policy has impacted “more than $2 billion in capital investments, just in the land-based wind project pipeline, and there’s significant reason to believe other states are also experiencing similar risks.” Read Jael’s full report here.

2. FEMA loses its storm response coordinator 2 weeks into hurricane season

Turnover at the Federal Emergency Management Agency continued this week after the head of the National Response Coordination Center — responsible for overseeing the federal response to major storms — submitted his resignation, CBS News reported Thursday. Jeremy Greenberg, who’s worked various roles at FEMA for nearly a decade, will stay on for another two weeks but ultimately depart less than a month into hurricane season. “He’s irreplaceable,” one current FEMA official told CBS News, adding that “the brain drain continues and the public will pay for it.” Greenberg’s resignation follows comments President Trump made to the press earlier this week about the need to “wean off of FEMA” after hurricane season is over in November. “A governor should be able to handle” disaster response, the president told reporters on Tuesday, “and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”

3. White House blocks Columbia River energy agreement with Pacific Northwest tribes

Also on Thursday, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum revoking a $1 billion Biden-era agreement to restore salmon and invest in tribally sponsored clean energy infrastructure in the Columbia River Basin, The Seattle Times reports. Biden’s agreement had “placed concerns about climate change above the nation’s interests in reliable energy sources,” the White House claimed.

The 2023 agreement resulted from three decades of opposition to the dams on the Lower Snake River by local tribes and environmental groups. While the Biden administration hadn’t committed to a dam removal, it did present a potential pathway to do so, since Washington State politicians have said that hydropower would need to be replaced by another power source before they’d consider a dam removal plan. The government’s billion-dollar investment would have aided in the construction of up to 3 gigawatts of alternative renewable energy in the region. Kurt Miller, the CEO of the Northwest Public Power Association, celebrated Trump’s action, saying, “In an era of skyrocketing electricity demand, these dams are essential to maintaining grid reliability and keeping energy bills affordable.” But Washington Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, vowed to fight the “grievously wrong” decision, arguing, “Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about the Northwest and our way of life — so of course, he is abruptly and unilaterally upending a historic agreement.”

4. The Bolt is back

Two years after we wrote the eulogy for the Chevrolet Bolt EV — “the cheap little EV we need” — General Motors has announced that it will launch the second generation of the car for the 2027 model year. Though “no other details were provided about this next iteration of the Bolt,” Car and Driver wrote that “we expect it to continue as a tall subcompact hatchback, although it could be positioned as a subcompact SUV like the previous generation's EUV model.” A reveal could be coming in the next several months ahead of a likely on-sale date in mid-2026.

5. Scale Microgrids passes $1 billion in financing

Energy developer Scale Microgrids announced Thursday that its latest round of financing, which closed at $275 million, has brought its total to date to over $1 billion. KeyBanc Capital Markets, Cadence Bank, and New York Green Bank led the round, with Greg Berman, the managing director in KeyBanc Capital Markets Utilities, saying in a statement, “We value our relationship with Scale and congratulate their team as they execute on their strategy to deliver high-quality distributed energy assets to the market.” Scale Microgrids said the financing will “support 140 megawatts of distributed generation projects, including microgrids, community-scale solar and storage, and battery storage installations,” many of which are already under construction in the Northeast and California.

THE KICKER

“Our best chance is to get a group of critical mass of Republican senators to go to [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune and [Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike] Crapo and say, You’ve got to change this. We can’t vote for it the way it is.” —Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in conversation with Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer about the Senate math and strategy behind saving the Inflation Reduction Act.

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Politics

AM Briefing: Big Oil's Green Contrarian

On abandoning Antarctica, an EV milestone, and this week’s big earnings

An Oil Giant Makes a Contrarian Bet on Clean Energy
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Heavy rainfall in China has left at least 30 dead as forecasters predicts more days of downpours ahead • Severe thunderstorms are hitting the Midwest as a cold front suppresses the heat dome • The wildfires blazing across Canada are stretching into Alaska, with dozens of fires raging in the foothills of the Brooks Range.


THE TOP FIVE

1. An oil giant bucks the majors by betting on green energy

Last year, oil giants Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP either abandoned their decarbonization goals or dialed down investments in green energy. Last week, the Financial Times also reported that the oil industry had put its effort to establish a net-zero emissions standard on pause as major companies quit the initiative. But at least one oil titan is doubling down on clean energy. On Monday, the Italian oil giant Eni said it expects its green business to rival revenues from oil and gas within a decade.

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A heat dome.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Like a bomb cyclone, a polar vortex, or an atmospheric river, a heat dome is a meteorological phenomenon that feels, well, a little made up. I hadn’t heard the term before I found myself bottled beneath one in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, where I saw leaves and needles brown on living trees. Ultimately, some 1,400 people died from the extreme heat in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon that summer weekend.

Since that disaster, there have been a number of other high-profile heat dome events in the United States, including this week, over the Midwest and now Eastern and Southeastern parts of the country. On Monday, roughly 150 million people — about half the nation’s population — faced extreme or major heat risks.

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Climate

AM Briefing: Congress Saves Energy Star

On betrayed regulatory promises, copper ‘anxiety,’ and Mercedes’ stalled EV plans

Congress Balks at Trump’s Bid to Shoot Down Energy Star
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: New York City is once again choking on Canadian wildfire smoke • Torrential rain is flooding southeastern Slovenia and northern Croatia • Central Asia is bracing for the hottest days of the year, with temperatures nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Uzbekistan’s capital of Tashkent all week.


THE TOP FIVE

1. Congress pushes back on Trump’s plan to kill Energy Star

In May, the Trump administration signaled its plans to gut Energy Star, the energy efficiency certification program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. Energy Star is extremely popular — its brand is recognized by nearly 90% of Americans — and at a cost to the federal government of just $32 million per year, saves American households upward of $40 billion in energy costs per year as of 2024, for a total of more than $500 billion saved since its launch in 1992, by the EPA’s own estimate. Not only that, as one of Energy Star’s architects told Heatmap’s Jeva Lange back in May, more energy efficient appliances and buildings help reduce strain on the grid. “Think about the growing demands of data center computing and AI models,” RE Tech Advisors’ Deb Cloutier told Jeva. “We need to bring more energy onto the grid and make more space for it.”

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