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A social scientist explains how people react to disasters like what’s unfolding on the East Coast.
How do people respond to wildfire smoke? This has become an increasingly pressing question for social scientists, with massive wildfires in California in recent years and much of the East Coast this week engulfed in smoke from fires in Canada.
To better understand the issue, I called up social scientist Francisca Santana, who will be take up a role as an assistant professor of environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington this fall. She studies how people respond and adapt to extreme weather and environmental change, including wildfires. Part of that research was a paper written with David J.X. Gonzalez and Gabrielle Wong-Parodi based on interviews with people in Northern California who were exposed to large fires from 2018 to 2020.
While New York City was engulfed by smoke on Wednesday, I asked Santana about how people gather information about wildfires, how the torrent of digital data affects how people respond, and how masking evolved from a wildfire response to a COVID-19 response. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and readability.
My research has mostly focused on folks in the West in California. In the early days of catastrophic wildfires, there weren’t a lot of formal sources of information. We observed that people were really relying on one another, relying on their social contacts, their friends and family to kind of process this risk and understand what to do next.
In recent years, there are now more and more resources out there: more reporting in the media and more official sources from the states and EPA. It gives people guidance on how to behave, how to protect themselves from wildfire smoke.
It’s probably a mix of both using those sources that provide an Air Quality Index, or AQI, and using those social contexts to then translate, “Okay, well, what does that really mean for my life? The AQi is over 150. I’m noticing a lot of people in my neighborhood aren't going out for runs. So maybe I won’t do that either.”
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There’s a pre-COVID and post-COVID story. Before COVID, wildfires and wildfire smoke were quite severe in some places in the West. We observed and talked to folks who were using masks, sometimes N95 masks, to protect their lungs from wildfire smoke.
After the outbreak of the pandemic, some people found the transition to wearing a mask during COVID quite easy, because they had already been wearing them for wildfires. As wildfire smoke continues to be an issue, they may continue to mask. It’s sort of like getting into the habit or having the resources to wear a mask and feeling comfortable with that behavior.
Whereas I think for other folks there is a little bit of a backlash. Wearing masks during COVID was an experience that some people were very ready to stop doing. There may be a little bit of resistance to wearing a mask for wildfire smoke.
[Wildfire smoke] is very disruptive to one’s daily life and routine, especially if a person has habits related to going outside: going on walks, recreating in certain ways. And that can, over time, have a really negative toll on a person’s ability to cope with stress. It removes that regular outlet. A lot of folks have to exercise and socialize with friends and family.
A lot of folks talked about cabin fever, being isolated and cooped up. And that for some time really did overlap and intersect with the pandemic and the inability that folks had to socialize indoors. If they were, you know, abiding by social distancing maybe they weren’t getting together with friends and family in their homes and then wildfire smoke created a situation where they were unable to do that outdoors.
I would say it has that effect on one’s daily life and ability to cope. And I would say there’s also a component that I’ve observed with some folks who have also lived in areas where there are frequent wildfires. So if you live in a wildfire risky area and also have been exposed to smoke, smoke can trigger memories of a fire being nearby.
The smoke can really interfere with one’s ability to cope. It really adds that extra stressor into into your day. There’s a set of concerns and worries that you have to make decisions about that are often very precise. I’ve observed a lot of people will check the air quality multiple times a day. The idea is that they’re trying to decide exactly what moments they can go outside and do the thing they’ve been waiting to do. That kind of hyper vigilance is another layer of stress.
The upsides are pretty major. If someone in your neighborhood has an outdoor air quality monitor, a Purple air monitor, you can have a very real time sense of exactly what the air quality is in your neighborhood. A lot of folks use that to determine what time they may walk their dogs, for example. I think that’s really good, because there can be pretty dramatic shifts throughout the day based on wind and the patterns of the smoke moving. So that’s a huge upside.
Also people use that information to find places to go to “escape the smoke.” If you look at the whole map of California, you might see, “oh, there’s an area by the coast that is not inundated with smoke.” So that could be a good place to go for the afternoon on a Saturday. I think that really provides an outlet for folks who might be feeling very trapped by the smoke, and who also have real health concerns related to asthma and respiratory issues looking for a place to temporarily evacuate to.
But if you’re in a place that’s inundated with smoke, and there really aren’t many changes that are substantial, it can be a really consuming and distracting to check constantly for changes in the smoke and air quality. I certainly have heard people talk about that. When the smoke becomes bad enough checking the air quality is something they’re compelled to do every five, 10, 15 minutes. It can really affect your productivity.
I won’t speculate beyond that in terms of the psychological effects. But I think it’s akin to the other way that our phones have us hooked. I think that real-time data can give you a sense of control that isn’t really there.
I would say that that’s a finding that has repeatedly popped up across a lot of my interview-based studies. People are using a combination of information from official sources, and then also observations from their social group. And also direction from their social group. There are sometimes individuals and communities that can distribute information and they make suggestions to their friends and family and they can really encourage certain types of behavior. And I think there are other individuals who may resist that based on all sorts of things.
How do responses change over time when people are repeatedly exposed to wildfires? Are they able to accumulate expertise and habits and resources that then make it much easier for them to protect themselves? Or is repeated exposure something that people maladapt to? They might have a response when it first happens and then perceive the threat to be less over time, because it can interfere so much with daily life. That can sometimes happen with folks. They just want to move on.
I’m really interested also in how responses to wildfire smoke exposure might interact with some of the other things that happened during fire seasons. In places like California and the West, for example, there have been power shut offs.
Often the communities that are most affected by those power shut-offs are communities that are simultaneously being affected by smoke, and maybe heat. How do people manage those threats when they happen all at once? If your power is off, how does that affect how you’re able to respond to smoke if you were relying on your air conditioner or air filter? What other sorts of adaptations might people choose to make when faced with those threats, and that could include moving from the area permanently.
I’m not not a biomedical scientist. I’m not a medical researcher. But part of being a social scientist is reading some of the latest science on the health impacts of wildfire smoke, and it’s scary. It’s potentially really dangerous. It’s dangerous for children and for folks with respiratory health issues, but it really is dangerous for everyone.
The science is still evolving but it definitely made me think more about having air filters in my home. I have multiple air filters. It definitely made me think about ensuring that my parents and my other family members also understand the risk and have air filters in their home.
It definitely spurred more diligence during these sorts of events and a responsibility that I feel to make sure that folks understand that the risks are real. And that if we’re going to live in a future where there will likely continue to be fires and smoke, it’s worth it, if you’re able, to invest in some of these more comprehensive strategies like having an air filter in your home. I definitely think I’m more motivated and more aware.
Read more about the wildfire smoke engulfing the eastern United States:
The Smoke Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better
The East Coast’s Wildfire Smoke Is On Par With the West’s Worst Days
How to Prepare for Wildfire Smoke, According to Doctors at Harvard
Wildfire Smoke Is a Wheezy Throwback for New York City
The East Coast Has Been Smokier Than the West Coast This Year
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If the Senate reconciliation bill gets enacted as written, you’ve got about 92 days left to seal the deal.
If you were thinking about buying or leasing an electric vehicle at some point, you should probably get on it like, right now. Because while it is not guaranteed that the House will approve the budget reconciliation bill that cleared the Senate Tuesday, it is highly likely. Assuming the bill as it’s currently written becomes law, EV tax credits will be gone as of October 1.
The Senate bill guts the subsidies for consumer purchases of electric vehicles, a longstanding goal of the Trump administration. Specifically, it would scrap the 30D tax credit by September 30 of this year, a harsher cut-off than the version of the bill that passed the House, which would have axed the credit by the end of 2025 except for automakers that had sold fewer than 200,000 electric vehicles. The credit as it exists now is worth up to $7,500 for cars with an MSRP below $55,000 (and trucks and sports utility vehicles under $80,000), and, under the Inflation Reduction Act, would have lasted through the end of 2032. The Senate bill also axes the $4,000 used EV tax credit at the end of September.
“Long story short, the credits under the current legislation are only going to be on the books through the end of September,” Corey Cantor, the research director of the Zero-Emissions Transportation Association, told me. “Now is definitely a good time, if you’re interested in an EV, to look at the market.”
The Senate applied the same strict timeline to credits for clean commercial vehicles, both new and used. For home EV chargers, the tax credit will now expire at the end of June next year.
While EVs were on the road well before the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, what the new tax credit did was help build out a truly domestic electric vehicle market, Cantor said. “You have a bunch of refreshed EV models from major automakers,” Cantor told me, including “more affordable models in different segments, and many of them quality for the credit.”
These include cars produceddomestically by Kia,Hyundai, and Chevrolet. But of course, the biggest winner from the credit is Tesla, whose Model Y was the best-selling car in the world in 2023.
Tesla shares were down over 5.5% in Tuesday afternoon trading, though not just because of Congress. JPMorgan also released an analyst report Monday arguing that the decline in sales seen in the first quarter would accelerate in the second quarter. President Trump, with whom Tesla CEO Elon Musk had an extremely public falling out last month, suggested on social media Monday night that the government efficiency department Musk himself formerly led should “take a good, hard, look” at the subsidies Musk receives across his many businesses. Trump also said that he would “take a look” at Musk’s United States citizenship in response to reporters’ questions about it.
Cantor told me that he expects a surge of consumer attention to the EV market if the bill passes in its current form. “You’ve seen more customers pull their purchase ahead” when subsidies cut-offs are imminent, he said.
But overall, the end of the subsidy is likely to reduce EV sales from their previously expected levels.
Harvard researchers have estimated that the termination of the EV tax credit “would cut the EV share of new vehicle sales in 2030 by 6.0 percentage points,” from 48% of new sales by 2030 to 42%. Combined with other Trump initiatives such as terminating the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program for publicly funded chargers (currently being litigated) and eliminating California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act that allowed it to set tighter vehicle emissions standards, the share of new car sales that are electric could fall to 32% in 2030.
But not all government support for electric vehicles will end by October 1, even if the bill gets the president’s signature in its current form.
“It’s important for consumers to know there are many states that offer subsidies, such as New York, and Colorado,” Cantor told me. That also goes for California, New Jersey, Nevada, and New Mexico. You can find the full list here.
Editor’s note: This story has been edited to include a higher cost limit for trucks and SUVs.
Excise tax is out, foreign sourcing rules are in.
After more than three days of stops and starts on the Senate floor, Congress’ upper chamber finally passed its version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tuesday morning, sending the tax package back to the House in hopes of delivering it to Trump by the July 4 holiday, as promised.
An amendment brought by Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska that would have more gradually phased down the tax credits for wind and solar rather than abruptly cutting them off was never brought to the floor. Instead, Murkowski struck a deal with the Senate leadership designed to secure her vote that accomplished some of her other priorities, including funding for rural hospitals, while also killing an excise tax on renewables that had only just been stuffed into the bill over the weekend.
The new tax on wind and solar would have driven up development costs by as much as 20% — a prospect that industry groups said would “kill” investment altogether. But even without the tax, the Senate’s bill would gum up the works for clean energy projects across the spectrum due to new phase-out schedules for tax credits and fast-approaching deadlines to meet complex foreign sourcing rules. While more projects will likely be built under this version than the previous one, the basic outcomes haven’t changed: higher energy costs, project delays, lost jobs, and ceding leadership in artificial intelligence and manufacturing to China.
"This bill will hit Americans hard, terminating credits that have helped families lower their energy and transportation costs, shrinking demand for American-made advanced energy technologies, and squeezing new domestic energy production at a time of rising demand and prices,” Heather O’Neill, the CEO and president of the trade group Advanced Energy United, said in a statement Tuesday. “The advanced energy industry will endure, but the downstream effects of these rollbacks and punitive policies will be felt by American families and businesses for years to come.”
Here’s what’s in the final Senate bill.
The final Senate bill bifurcates the previously technology-neutral tax credits for clean electricity into two categories with entirely different rules and timelines — wind and solar versus everything else.
Tax credits for wind and solar farms would end abruptly with no phase-out period, but the bill includes a significant safe harbor for projects that are already under construction or close to breaking ground. As long as a project starts construction within 12 months of the bill’s passage, it will be able to claim the tax credits as originally laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act. All other projects must be “placed in service,” i.e. begin operating, by the start of 2028 to qualify.
That means if Trump signs the bill into law on July 4, wind and solar developers will have until July 4 of 2026 to “start construction.” Otherwise, they will have less than a year and a half to bring their projects online and still qualify for the credits.
Meanwhile, all other sources of zero-emissions electricity, including batteries, advanced nuclear, geothermal, and hydropower, will be able to continue claiming the tax credits for nearly a decade. The credits would start phasing down for projects that start construction in 2034 and terminate in 2036.
While there are some potential wins in the bill for clean energy development, many of the safe harbored projects will still be subject to complex foreign sourcing rules that may prove too much of a burden to meet.
The bill requires that any zero-emissions electricity or advanced manufacturing project that starts construction after December of this year abide by strict new “foreign entities of concern,” or FEOC rules in order to be eligible for tax credits. The rules penalize companies for having financial or material connections to people or businesses that are “owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of” any of four countries — Russia, Iran, North Korea, and most importantly for clean energy technology, China.
As with the text that came out of the Senate Finance committee, the text in the final bill would phase in supply chain restrictions, requiring project developers and manufacturers to use fewer and fewer Chinese-sourced inputs over time. For clean electricity projects starting construction next year, 40% of the value of the materials used in the project must be free of ties to a FEOC. By 2030, the threshold would rise to 60%. Energy storage facilities are subject to a more aggressive timeline and would be required to prove that 55% of the project materials are non-FEOC in 2026, rising to 75% by 2030. Each covered advanced manufacturing technology gets its own specific FEOC benchmarks.
Unlike the text from the Finance Committee, however, the final text includes a clear exception for developers who already have procurement contracts in place prior to the bill’s enactment. If a solar developer has already signed a contract to get its cells from a Chinese company, for example, it could exempt that cost from the calculation. That would make it easier for companies further along in the development process to comply with the eligibility rules.
That said, these materials sourcing rules come on top of strict ownership and licensing rules likely to block more than 100 existing and planned solar and battery factories with partial Chinese ownership or licensing deals with Chinese firms from receiving the tax credits, per a BloombergNEF analysis I reported on previously.
Once again, the details of how any of this will work — and whether it will, in fact, be “workable” — will depend heavily on guidance written by the Treasury department. That not only gives the Trump administration significant discretion over the rules, it also assumes that the nTreasury department, which is now severely understaffed after Trump’s efficiency department cleaned house earlier this year, will actually have the bandwidth to write them. Without Treasury guidance, developers may not have the cost certainty they need to continue moving forward on projects.
Up until today, the Senate and House looked poised to destroy the business model for companies like Sunrun that lease rooftop solar installations to homeowners and businesses by cutting them off from the investment tax credit, which can bring down the cost of a solar array by as much as 70%. The final Senate bill, however, got rid of this provision and replaced it with a much more narrow version.
Now, the only “leasing” schemes that are barred from claiming tax credits are those for solar water heaters and small wind installations. Companies that lease solar panels, batteries, fuel cells, and geothermal heating equipment are still eligible. SunRun’s stock jumped nearly 10% on Tuesday.
Other than the new FEOC rules, which will have truly existential consequences for a great many projects, there aren’t many changes to the advanced manufacturing tax credit, or 45X, than in previous versions of the bill. The OBBBA would create a new phase-out schedule for critical mineral producers claiming the tax credit that begins in 2031. Previously, critical minerals were set to be eligible indefinitely. It would also terminate the credit for wind energy components early, in 2028.
One significant change from the Senate Finance text is that the bill would allow vertically integrated companies to stack the tax credit for multiple components.
But perhaps the biggest change, which was introduced last weekend, is a twisted new definition of “critical mineral” that allows metallurgical coal — the type of coal used in steelmaking — to qualify for the tax credit. As my colleague Matthew Zeitlin wrote, most of the metallurgical coal the U.S. produces is exported, meaning this subsidy will mostly help other countries produce cheaper steel.
It looks like the hydrogen industry’s intense lobbying efforts finally paid off: The final Senate bill is the first text we’ve seen since this process began in May that would extend the lifespan of the tax credit for clean hydrogen production. Now, projects that begin construction before January 1, 2028 will still qualify for the credit. This is shorter than the Inflation Reduction Act’s 2033 cut-off, but much longer than the end-of-year cliff earlier versions of the bill would have imposed.
The tax credits for electric vehicles and energy efficiency building improvements would end almost immediately. Consumers will have to purchase or lease a new or used EV before September 30, 2025, in order to benefit. There would be a slightly longer lead time to get an EV charger installed, but that credit (30C) would expire on June 30, 2026.
Meanwhile, energy efficiency upgrades such as installing a heat pump or better-insulated windows and doors would have to be completed by the end of this year in order to qualify. Same goes for self-financed rooftop solar. The tax credit for newly built energy efficiency homes would expire on June 30, 2026.
The bill would make similar changes to the carbon sequestration (45Q) and clean fuels (45Z) tax credits as previous versions, boosting the credit amount for carbon capture projects that do enhanced oil recovery, and extending the clean fuels credit to corn ethanol producers.
The House Rules Committee met on Tuesday afternoon shortly after the Senate vote to deliberate on whether to send it to the House floor, and is still debating as of press time. As of this writing, Rules members Ralph Norman and Chip Roy have said they’ll vote against it.
On sparring in the Senate, NEPA rules, and taxing first-class flyers
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.
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.)
At the same time, Utah’s Senator John Curtis has proposed an amendment that tweaks the new excise tax to make it more “flexible.” The amendments are “setting up a major intra-party fight,” Politicoreported, adding that “fiscal hawks on both sides of the Capitol are warning they will oppose the bill if the phase-outs of Inflation Reduction Act provisions are watered down.” Senators have already defeated amendments proposed by Democrats Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and John Hickenlooper of Colorado to defend clean energy and residential solar tax credits, respectively. The session has broken the previous record for most votes in a vote-a-rama, set in 2008, with no end in sight.
The Department of Energy on Monday rolled back most of its regulations relating to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and published a new set of guidance procedures in their place. The longstanding NEPA law requires that the government study the environmental impacts of its actions, and in the case of the DOE, this meant things like permitting and public lands management. In a press release outlining the changes, the agency said it was “fixing the broken permitting process and delivering on President Trump’s pledge to unleash American energy dominance and accelerate critical energy infrastructure.” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the agency was cutting red tape to end permitting paralysis. “Build, baby, build!” he said.
Nearly 300 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency signed a letter addressed to EPA head Lee Zeldin declaring their dissent toward the Trump administration’s policies. The letter accuses the administration of:
“Going forward, you have the opportunity to correct course,” the letter states. “Should you choose to do so, we stand ready to support your efforts to fulfill EPA’s mission.” It’s signed by more than 420 people, 270 being EPA workers. Many of them asked to sign anonymously. In a statement to The New York Times, EPA spokesperson Carolyn Horlan said “the Trump EPA will continue to work with states, tribes and communities to advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment and administrator Zeldin’s Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative, which includes providing clean air, land and water for EVERY American.”
At the fourth International Conference on Financing for Development taking place in Spain this week, a group of eight countries including France and Spain announced they’re banding together in an effort to tax first- and business-class flyers as well as private jets to raise money for climate mitigation and sustainable development. “The aim is to help improve green taxation and foster international solidarity by promoting more progressive and harmonised tax systems,” the office of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a statement. Other countries in the coalition include Kenya, Barbados, Somalia, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Antigua & Barbuda. The group said it will “work towards COP30 on a better contribution of the aviation sector to fair transitions and resilience.” Wopke Hoekstra, who heads up the European Commission for Climate, called for other countries to join the group in the lead-up to COP30 in November.
In case you missed it: Google announced on Monday that it intends to buy fusion energy from nuclear startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Of course, CFS will have to crack commercial-scale fusion first (minor detail!), but as The Wall Street Journal noted, the news is significant because it is “the first direct deal between a customer and a fusion energy company.” Google will buy 200 megawatts of energy supplied by CFS’s ARC plant in Virginia. “It’s a pretty big signal to the market that fusion’s coming,” CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard told the Journal. “It’s desirable, and that people are gonna work together to make it happen.” Google’s head of advanced energy Michael Terrell echoed that sentiment, saying the company hopes this move will “prove out and scale a promising pathway toward commercial fusion power.” CFS, which is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, aims to produce commercial fusion energy in the 2030s.
All the public property owned by Britain’s King Charles earned a net profit of £1.15 billion ($1.58 billion) last year. The biggest source of income? Offshore wind leases.