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As climate writers, my colleagues and I spend a lot of time telling readers that places are hot. The Arabian Peninsula? It’s hot. The Atlantic Ocean? It’s hot. The southern U.S. and northern Mexico? Hot and getting hotter.
But here’s a little secret: “Hot” doesn’t really mean … anything. The word is, of course, of critical importance when it comes to communicating that global temperatures are the highest they’ve been in 125,000 years because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, or for public health officials to anticipate and prevent deaths when the environment reaches the point where human bodies start malfunctioning. But when you hear it’s “100 degrees out,” what does that really tell you?
Beyond that you’re a fellow member of the Fahrenheit cult, the answer is: not a lot. Humans can “probably avoid overheating” in temperatures of 115 degrees — but only if they’re in a dry room with 10 percent relative humidity, wearing “minimal” clothing, and not moving, The New York Times reports. On the other hand, you have a high chance of life-threatening heat stroke when it’s a mere 90 degrees out … if the humidity is at 95%. Then there are all the variables in between: if there’s a breeze, if you’re pregnant, if you’re standing in the shade or the sun, if you’re a child, if you’re running a 10K or if you’re napping on your couch in front of a swamp cooler.
In order to better specify how hot “hot” is, a number of different equations and techniques have been developed around the world. In general, this math takes into account two main variables: temperature (the one we all use, also known as “dry bulb” or “ambient air temperature,” which is typically measured five feet above the ground in the shade) and relative humidity (the percentage of air saturated with water vapor, also known as the ugly cousin of the trendier dew point; notably Canada’s heat index equivalent, the Humidex, is calculated from the dew point rather than the relative humidity).
In events like the already deadly heat dome over the southern United States and northern Mexico this week, you typically hear oohing and ahhing about the “heat index,” which is sometimes also called the “apparent temperature,” “feels like temperature,” “humiture,” or, in AccuWeather-speak, the “RealFeel® temperature.”
But what does that mean and how is it calculated?
The heat index roughly approximates how hot it “actually feels.”
This is different than the given temperature on the thermometer because the amount of humidity in the air affects how efficiently sweat evaporates from our skin and in turn keeps us cool. The more humidity there is, the less efficiently our bodies can cool themselves, and the hotter we feel; in contrast, when the air is dry, it’s easier for our bodies to keep cool. Regrettably, this indeed means that insufferable Arizonans who say “it’s a dry heat!” have a point.
The heat index, then, tells you an estimate of the temperature it would have to be for your body to be similarly stressed in “normal” humidity conditions of around 20%. In New Orleans this week, for example, the temperature on the thermometer isn’t expected to be above 100°F, but because the humidity is so high, the heat toll on the body will be as if it were actually 115°F out in normal humidity.
Importantly, the heat index number is calculated as if you were standing in the shade. If you’re exposed to the sun at all, the “feels like” is, of course, actually higher — potentially as many as 15 degrees higher. Someone standing in the New Orleans sun this week might more realistically feel like they’re in 130-degree heat.
The heat index graph.NOAA
Here’s the catch, though: The heat index is “purely theoretical since the index can’t be measured and is highly subjective,” as meteorologist Chris Robbins explains. The calculations are all made under the assumption that you are a 5’7”, 147-pound healthy white man wearing short sleeves and pants, and walking in the shade at the speed of 3.1 mph while a 6-mph wind gently ruffles your hair.
Wait, what?
I’m glad you asked.
In 1979, a physicist named R. G. Steadman published a two-part paper delightfully titled “The Assessment of Sultriness.” In it, he observed that though many approaches to measuring “sultriness,” or the combined effects of temperature and humidity, can be taken, “it is best assessed in terms of its physiological effect on humans.” He then set out, with obsessive precision, to do so.
Steadman came up with a list of approximately 19 variables that contribute to the overall “feels like” temperature, including the surface area of an average human (who is assumed to be 1.7 meters tall and weigh 67 kilograms); their clothing cover (84%) and those clothes’ resistance to heat transfer (the shirt and pants are assumed to be 20% fiber and 80% air); the person’s core temperature (a healthy 98.6°F) and sweat rate (normal); the effective wind speed (5 knots); the person’s activity level (typical walking speed); and a whole lot more.
Here’s an example of what just one of those many equations looked like:
One of the many equations in “The Assessment of Sultriness: Part I,”R.G. Steadman
Needless to say, Steadman’s equations and tables weren’t exactly legible for a normal person — and additionally they made a whole lot of assumptions about who a “normal person” was — but Steadman was clearly onto something. Describing how humidity and temperature affected the human body was, at the very least, interesting and useful. How, then, to make it easier?
In 1990, the National Weather Service’s Lans P. Rothfusz used multiple regression analysis to simplify Steadman’s equations into a single handy formula while at the same time acknowledging that to do so required relying on assumptions about the kind of body that was experiencing the heat and the conditions surrounding him. Rothfusz, for example, used Steadman’s now-outdated calculations for the build of an average American man, who as of 2023 is 5’9” and weighs 198 pounds. This is important because, as math educator Stan Brown notes in a blog post, if you’re heavier than the 147 pounds assumed in the traditional heat index equation, then your “personal heat index” will technically be slightly hotter.
Rothfusz’s new equation looked like this:
Heat index = -42.379 + 2.04901523T + 10.14333127R - 0.22475541TR - 6.83783x10-3T 2 - 5.481717x10-2R 2 + 1.22874x10-3T 2R + 8.5282x10-4TR2 - 1.99x10-6T 2R 2
So much easier, right?
If your eyes didn’t totally glaze over, it actually sort of is — in the equation, T stands for the dry bulb temperature (in degrees Fahrenheit) and R stands for the relative humidity, and all you have to do is plug those puppies into the formula to get your heat index number. Or not: There are lots of online calculators that make doing this math as straightforward as just typing in the two numbers.
Because Rothfusz used multiple regression analysis, the heat index that is regularly cited by the government and media has a margin of error of +/- 1.3°F relative to a slightly more accurate, albeit hypothetical, heat index. Also of note: There are a bunch of different methods of calculating the heat index, but Rothfusz’s is the one used by the NWS and the basis for its extreme heat alerts. The AccuWeather “RealFeel,” meanwhile, has its own variables that it takes into account and that give it slightly different numbers.
Midday Wednesday in New Orleans, for example, when the ambient air temperature was 98°F, the relative humidity was 47%, and the heat index hovered around 108.9°F, AccuWeather recorded a RealFeel of 111°F and a RealFeel Shade of 104°F.
You might also be wondering at this point, as I did, that if Steadman at one time factored out all these variables individually, wouldn’t it be possible to write a simple computer program that is capable of personalizing the “feel like” temperature so they are closer to your own physical specifications? The answer is yes, although as Randy Au writes in his excellent Substack post on the heat index equation, no one has seemingly actually done this yet. Math nerds, your moment is now.
Because we’re Americans, it is important that we use the weirdest possible measurements at all times. This is probably why the heat index is commonly cited by our government, media, and meteorologists when communicating how hot it is outside.
But it gets weirder. Unlike the heat index, though, the “wet-bulb globe temperature” (sometimes abbreviated “WBGT”) is specifically designed to understand “heat-related stress on the human body at work (or play) in direct sunlight,” NWS explains. In a sense, the wet-bulb globe temperature measures what we experience after we’ve been cooled by sweat.
The Kansas State High School Activities Association thresholds for wet-bulb globe temperature.Weather.gov
The “bulb” we’re referring to here is the end of a mercury thermometer (not to be confused with a lightbulb or juvenile tulip). Natural wet-bulb temperature (which is slightly different from the WBGT, as I’ll explain in a moment) is measured by wrapping the bottom of a thermometer in a wet cloth and passing air over it. When the air is dry, it is by definition less saturated with water and therefore has more capacity for moisture. That means that under dry conditions, more water from the cloth around the bulb evaporates, which pulls more heat away from the bulb, dropping the temperature. This is the same reason why you feel cold when you get out of a shower or swimming pool. The drier the air, the colder the reading on the wet-bulb thermometer will be compared to the actual air temperature.
Wet bulb temperature - why & when is it used?www.youtube.com
If the air is humid, however, less water is able to evaporate from the wet cloth. When the relative humidity is at 100% — that is, the air is fully saturated with water — then the wet-bulb temperature and the normal dry-bulb temperature will be the same.
Because of this, the wet-bulb temperature is usually lower than the relative air temperature, which makes it a bit confusing when presented without context (a comfortable wet-bulb temperature at rest is around 70°F). Wet-bulb temperatures over just 80, though, can be very dangerous, especially for active people.
The WBGT is, like the heat index, an apparent temperature, or “feels like,” calculation; generally when you see wet-bulb temperatures being referred to, it is actually the WBGT that is being discussed. This is also the measurement that is preferred by the military, athletic organizations, road-race organizers, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration because it helps you understand how, well, survivable the weather is, especially if you are moving.
Our bodies regulate temperature by sweating to shed heat, but sweat stops working “once the wet-bulb temperature passes 95°F,” explains Popular Science. “That’s because, in order to maintain a normal internal temperature, your skin has to stay at 95°F degrees or below.” Exposure to wet-bulb temperatures over 95°F can be fatal within just six hours. On Wednesday, when I was doing my readings of New Orleans, the wet-bulb temperature was around 88.5°F.
The WBGT is helpful because it takes the natural wet-bulb temperature reading a step further by factoring in considerations not only of temperature and humidity, but also wind speed, sun angle, and solar radiation (basically cloud cover). Calculating the WBGT involves taking a weighted average of the ambient, wet-bulb, and globe temperature readings, which together cover all these variables.
That formula looks like:
Wet-bulb globe temperature = 0.7Tw + 0.2Tg + 0.1Td
Tw is the natural wet-bulb temperature, Tg is the globe thermometer temperature (which measures solar radiation), and Td is the dry bulb temperature. By taking into account the sun angle, cloud cover, and wind, the WBGT gives a more nuanced read of how it feels to be a body outside — but without getting into the weeds with 19 different difficult-to-calculate variables like, ahem, someone we won’t further call out here.
Thankfully, there’s a calculator for the WBGT formula, although don’t bother entering all the info if you don’t have to — the NWS reports it nationally, too.
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On a Justice Department crackdown, net zero’s costs, and Democrats’ nuclear fears
Current conditions: Hurricane Lorena, a Category 1 storm, is threatening Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. with flooding and 80 mile-per-hour winds • In the Pacific, Hurricane Kiko strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it heads toward Hawaii • South Africa’s Northern Cape is facing extremely high fire risks.
The owners of Revolution Wind are fighting back against the stop-work order from President Donald Trump that halted construction on the offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island last month. On Thursday, Orsted and Skyborn Renewables filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the Trump administration of causing “substantial harm” to a legally permitted project that was 80% complete. The litigation claimed that the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “lacked legal authority for the stop-work order and that the stop-work order’s stated basis violated applicable law.”
“Revolution Wind secured all required federal and state permits in 2023, following reviews that began more than nine years ago,” the companies said in a press release. “Revolution Wind has spent and committed billions of dollars in reliance upon this fulsome review process.” The states of Rhode Island and Connecticut filed a similar complaint on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, seeking to “restore the rule of law, protect their energy and economic interests, and ensure that the federal government honors its commitments.” Analysts didn’t expect the order to hold, as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported last month, though the cost to the project’s owners was likely to rise. As I have reported repeatedly in this newsletter over the past few weeks, the Trump administration is enlisting at least half a dozen agencies in a widening attack meant to eliminate a generating technology that is rapidly growing overseas.
After the cleanup in Altadena, California.Mario Tama/Getty Images
The Department of Justice sued South California Edison on Thursday for $77 million in damages, accusing the utility of negligence that caused two deadly wildfires. Federal prosecutors in California alleged the utility failed to maintain infrastructure that ultimately sparked the Eaton fire in January, and the 2022 Fairview fire in Riverside County, The Wall Street Journal reported. The fires collectively killed about two dozen people and charred more than 42,000 acres of land. “Hardworking Californians should not pick up the tab for Edison’s negligence,” said Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. Attorney for California’s Central District, where the lawsuit was filed.
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It sure sounds like a lot of money. In a new research note released this week, the energy consultancy BloombergNEF calculated the total cost to transition the global economy off unmitigated fossil fuels by 2050 at $304 trillion. But that’s only 9% above the cost of continuing to develop worldwide energy systems on economics alone, which would result in 2.6 degrees Celsius of global warming. That margin is relatively narrow because the operating costs of cleaner technologies such as electric vehicles and renewable power generators are lower than the cost of fuel in the long term. The calculation also doesn’t account for the savings from avoided climate disasters in a net-zero scenario that halts the planet’s temperature spike at 1.7 degrees Celsius. While the cost of investing in renewables, grid infrastructure, electric vehicles, and carbon capture technology would add $45 trillion in additional investment, it’s ultimately offset by $19 trillion in annual savings from making the switch.
Microsoft has signed a series of deals that tighten the tech giant’s grip on the nascent carbon removal market. With new agreements that involve direct air capture in North American and burning garbage for energy in Oslo, Microsoft now accounts for 80% of all credits ever purchased from tech-based carbon removal projects. The company made up 92% of purchases in the first half of this year, the Financial Times reported, citing the data provider AlliedOffsets. By comparison, Amazon made up 0.7% of the market and Google comprised 1.4%.
We are still far from where carbon removal needs to be to make an impact on emissions. All the Paris Agreement-consistent scenarios modeled in the scientific literature require removing between 4 billion and 6 billion metric tons of carbon per year by 2035, and between 6 billion and 10 billion metric tons by 2050, as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote recently. “For context, they estimate that the world currently removes about 2 billion metric tons of carbon per year over and above what the Earth would naturally absorb without human interference.”
At a hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the two Democrats left on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Congress they feared Trump would fire them if they raised safety concerns about new reactors. Matthew Marzano said the “NRC would not license a reactor” that didn’t pass safety standards, but that it’s a “possibility” the White House would oust him for withholding approval. “I think on any given day, I could be fired by the administration for reasons unknown,” Crowell told lawmakers, according to a write-up of the hearing in E&E News.
Hitachi Energy announced more than $1 billion in investments to expand manufacturing of electrical grid infrastructure in the U.S. That includes about $457 million for a new large power transformer facility in Virginia. “Power transformers are a linchpin technology for a robust and reliable electric grid and winning the AI race,” Andreas Schierenbeck, chief executive of Hitachi Energy, said in a press release. “Bringing production of large power transformers to the U.S. is critical to building a strong domestic supply chain for the U.S. economy and reducing production bottlenecks, which is essential as demand for these transformers across the economy is surging.”
All of the administration’s anti-wind actions in one place.
The Trump administration’s war on the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry has kicked into high gear over the past week, with a stop work order issued on a nearly fully-built project, grant terminations, and court filings indicating that permits for several additional projects will soon be revoked.
These actions are just the latest moves in what has been a steady stream of attacks beginning on the first day Trump stepped into the White House. He appears to be following a policy wishlist that anti-offshore wind activists submitted to his transition team almost to a T. As my colleague Jael Holzman reported back in January, those recommendations included stop work orders, reviews related to national security, tax credit changes, and a series of agency studies, such as asking the Health and Human Services to review wind turbines’ effects on electromagnetic fields — all of which we’ve seen done.
It’s still somewhat baffling as to why Trump would go so far as to try and shut down a nearly complete, 704-megawatt energy project, especially when his administration claims to be advancing “energy addition, NOT subtraction.” But it’s helpful to see the trajectory all in one place to understand what the administration has accomplished — and how much is still up in the air.
January 20: Trump issues a presidential memorandum temporarily halting all new onshore and offshore wind permitting and leasing activities “in light of various alleged legal deficiencies underlying the Federal Government’s leasing and permitting of onshore and offshore wind projects,” while his administration conducts an assessment of federal review practices. The memo also temporarily withdraws all areas on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf from offshore wind leasing.
March 14: The Environmental Protection Agency pulls a Clean Air Act permit for Atlantic Shores, which was set to deliver power into New Jersey.
April 16: The Department of the Interior issues a stop work order to Empire Wind, a New York offshore wind farm that began construction in 2024. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum accuses the Biden administration of giving the project a “rushed approval” that was “built on bad and flawed science,” citing feedback from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
May 1: The Interior Department withdraws a Biden-era legal opinion for how to conduct permitting in line with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that advised the Secretary to “strike a rational balance” between wind energy and fishing. The Department reinstated the opinion issued under Trump’s first term, which was more favorable to the fishing industry.
May 2: Anti-offshore wind group Green Oceans sends a 68-page report titled “Cancelling Offshore Wind Leases” to Secretary Burgum and acting Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals Management Adam Suess, according to emails uncovered by E&E News. The report “evaluates potential violations of Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and related Federal laws in addition to those generally associated with environmental protection.”
May 5: Seventeen states plus the District of Columbia file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s January 20 memo halting federal approvals of wind projects.
May 19: The Interior Department lifts the stop work order on Empire Wind after closed-door meetings between New York governor Kathy Hochul and President Trump, during which the White House later says that Hochul “caved” to allowing “two natural gas pipelines to advance” through New York. Hochul denies reaching any deal on pipelines during the meetings.
June 4: Atlantic Shores files a request with New Jersey regulators to cancel its contract to sell energy into the state.
July 4: Trump signs the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which imposes new expiration dates on tax credits for wind and solar projects, including offshore wind, as well as on the manufacture of wind turbine components.
July 7: The Environmental Protection Agency notifies the Maryland Department of the Environment that the state office erred when issuing an air permit to the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, also known as MarWin, because the state specified that petitions to review the permit would go to state court rather than the federal agency. The state later disagrees.
July 17: New York regulators cancel plans to develop additional transmission capacity for future offshore wind development, citing “significant federal uncertainty.”
July 29: The Interior Department issues an order requesting reports that describe and provide recommendations for “trends in environmental impacts from onshore and offshore wind projects on wildlife” and the impacts that approved offshore wind projects might have on “military readiness.” The order also asserts that the Biden administration misapplied federal law when it approved the construction and operation plans of offshore wind projects.
July 30: The Interior Department rescinds all designated “wind energy areas” on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, which had been deemed suitable for offshore wind development.
August 5: The Interior Department eliminates a requirement to publish a five-year schedule of offshore wind energy lease sales and to update the lease sale schedule every two years.
August 7: The Interior Department initiates a review of offshore wind energy regulations “to ensure alignment with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and America’s energy priorities under President Donald J. Trump.”
August 13: The Department of Commerce initiates an investigation into whether imports of onshore and offshore wind turbine components threaten national security, a precursor to imposing tariffs.
New Jersey regulators also decide to delay offshore wind transmission upgrades by two years. They officially cancel their contract with Atlantic Shores.
August 22: The Interior Department issues a stop work order on Revolution Wind, an offshore wind project set to deliver power to Rhode Island and Connecticut, citing national security concerns. The 65-turbine project is already 80% complete.
Interior also says in a court filing that it intends to “vacate its approval” of the Construction and Operations Plan for the Maryland Offshore Wind Project.
August 29: The Interior Department says in a court filing that it “intends to reconsider” its approval of the construction and operations plan for the SouthCoast wind project, which was set to deliver power to Massachusetts.
The Department of Transportation also withdraws or terminates $679 million for 12 offshore wind port infrastructure projects to “ensure federal dollars are prioritized towards restoring America’s maritime dominance” by “rebuilding America’s shipbuilding capacity, unleashing more reliable, traditional forms of energy, and utilizing the nation’s bountiful natural resources to unleash American energy.” The grants include:
September 3: The Interior Department says in a court filing that it intends to vacate its approval of the construction and operations plan for Avangrid’s New England Wind 1 and 2, which were set to deliver power to Massachusetts.
The New York Times also reports that the White House has instructed “a half-dozen agencies to draft plans to thwart the country’s offshore wind industry,” including asking the Department of Health and Human Services to study “whether wind turbines are emitting electromagnetic fields that could harm human health,” and asking the Defense Department to probe “whether the projects could pose risks to national security.”
September 4: The states of Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as Orsted, file lawsuits challenging the stop work order on Revolution Wind.
At the start of all this, the U.S. had three offshore wind projects that were fully operational and five that were under construction. As of today, the Trump administration has halted just one of those five, but it has threatened to rescind approvals for each and every remaining fully permitted project that hasn’t yet broken ground.
The tumult has rippled out into the states, where regulators in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are delaying plans to sign contracts to procure additional energy from offshore wind projects.
Looking ahead, we can expect a few things to happen over the next few weeks. We’ll see the Interior Department formally begin to rescind permits, as it indicated it would do in numerous court filings. We’ll also likely get an opinion from a federal court in Massachusetts in the case that states filed fighting Trump’s Day One memo. Orsted also said it intends to ask for a temporary injunction, so it’s possible that Revolution Wind could resume construction soon.
It’s been barely a month since Jael dubbed the Trump administration’s tactics a “total war on wind.” While the result hasn’t been a complete shutdown of the industry, it seems he might still be in the early stages of his plan.
The Nimbus wind project in the Ozark Mountains is moving forward even without species permits, while locals pray Trump will shut it down.
The state of Arkansas is quickly becoming an important bellwether for the future of renewable energy deployment in the U.S., and a single project in the state’s famed Ozark Mountains might be the big fight that decides which way the state’s winds blow.
Arkansas has not historically been a renewables-heavy state, and very little power there is generated from solar or wind today. But after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the state saw a surge in project development, with more than 1.5 gigawatts of mostly utility-scale solar proposed in 2024, according to industry data. The state also welcomed its first large wind farm that year.
As in other states – Oklahoma and Arizona, for example – this spike in development led to a fresh wave of opposition and grassroots organizing against development. At least six Arkansas counties currently have active moratoria on solar or wind development, according to Heatmap Pro data. Unlike other states, Arkansas has actually gone there this year by passing a law restricting wind development and requiring all projects to have minimum setbacks on wind turbines from neighboring property owners of at least 3.5-times the height of the wind turbine itself, which can be as far as a quarter of a mile.
But activists on the ground still want more. Specifically, they want to stop Scout Clean Energy’s Nimbus wind project, which appears to have evaded significant barriers from either the new state law or a local ordinance blocking future wind development in Carroll County, the project’s future home. This facility is genuinely disliked by many on the ground in Carroll County; for weeks now, I have been monitoring residents posting to Facebook with updates on the movements of wind turbine components and their impacts to traffic. I’ve also seen the grumbling about it travel from the mouths of residents living near the project site to conservative social media influencers and influential figures in conservative energy policy circles.
The Nimbus project is also at considerable risk of federal intervention in some fashion. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, Nimbus applied to the Fish and Wildlife Service for incidental take approval covering golden eagles and endangered bats throughout the course of its operation. This turned into a multi-year effort to craft a conservation plan in tandem with permitting applications that are all pending approval from federal officials.
Scout Clean Energy still had not received permission by the time FWS changed hands to Trump 2.0, though – putting not only its permit but the project itself in potential legal risk. In addition, activists have recently seized upon risks floated by the Defense Department during development around the potential for the turbines to negatively impact radar capabilities, which previously resulted in the developer planning towers of varying heights for the blades.
These risks aren’t unique to Nimbus. Some of this is a reflection of how wind projects are generally so large and impactful that they wind up eventually landing in a federal nexus. But in this particular case, the fact that it seemed nothing could halt this project made me wonder if Trump was on the minds of people in Carroll County, too.
That’s how I wound up on the phone with Caroline Rogers, a woman living on Bradshaw Mountain near the Nimbus project site, who told me she has been fighting it since she first learned about it in 2023. Rogers and I chatted for almost an hour and, candidly, I found her to be an incredibly nice individual. When I asked her why she’s against the wind farm, she brought up a bunch of reasons I couldn’t necessarily fault her for, like concerns about property values and a lack of local civil services to support the community if there were a turbine failure or fire at the site.
“I still pray every day,” she told me when I asked her about whether she wants an outside force – à la Trump – to come in and do something to stop the facility. “There have been projects that have been stopped for various reasons, and there have been turbines that have been taken down.”
One of the things Rogers hopes happens is that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s bird crackdown comes for the Nimbus project, which is under construction even as it’s unclear whether it’ll ever get the take permits under the Trump administration. “Maybe it can be more of an enforcement [action],” she told me. “I hope it happens.”
This is where Trump’s unprecedented approach to energy development – and the curtailment of it – would have to cross a new rubicon. The Fish and Wildlife Service has rarely exercised its bird protection enforcement abilities against wind projects because of a significant and recent backlog in the permitting process related to applications from the sector. Bill Eubanks, an environmental attorney who works on renewables conflicts, told me earlier this week that if a developer is told by the agency it needs a permit, then “they’re on notice if they kill an eagle.” But while enforcement powers have been used before, it is “not that common.”
Even Rogers knows intervention from federal species regulators would be a potentially unprecedented step. “It can never stop a project that I’ve seen,” she told me.
Yet if Trump were to empower FWS to go after wind projects for violating species statutes, it is precisely this backlog that would make projects like Nimbus a potential target.
“They got so many applications from developers, and each one takes so much staff time to finalize,” Eubanks told me. “Even before January 20, there was already a significant backlog.”
Scout Clean Energy did not respond to requests for comment. If I hear from them or the Fish and Wildlife Service, I will let you know.