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We didn’t know it was coming. We didn’t know where it came from. We still can’t nail its climate change connection.
What happened?
No, seriously — what happened?
Last week, the American megalopolis, that string of jewels on the old Atlantic coast, found itself shrouded by wildfire smoke. New York City’s air turned ashen and dun, then glowed a supernatural amber. For the first time in who-knows, sightseers standing at the U.S. Capitol Building could not see the Washington Monument, a mile and change down the Mall.
You could list the sports games canceled or flights delayed, but what was oddest about the event was the sheer ubiquity of it. This was one of the few news stories I can remember where you could look up from whatever article you were reading and see the story itself, softly lapping at your window.
And then it was gone. By Friday, the haze had blown out to sea.
It was, in retrospect, a strange time — deeply strange, humblingly strange, strange before almost any other quality. More than 128 million Americans were under an air-quality alert on Wednesday night — roughly the population of Germany and Spain combined — but scarcely 36 hours earlier, nobody had known to prepare for anything worse than a moderate haze. The country’s biggest wildfire-pollution event on record arrived essentially out of nowhere.
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One of the main modes of journalism today — but also, frankly, one of the main frames of our whole cultural apparatus, from TikToks that lightly gloss Wikipedia articles to rampant right-wing conspiracism — is that of the explanation. Everyone explains what’s happening to each other, as it happens, at all times, and therefore makes the world seem rational, empirical, and less frightening. Yet with the wildfire smoke, what is so striking is how little we understood. Nearly every important step in the story was misapprehended as it happened.
We didn’t know that the smoke was coming, for instance. On Tuesday morning, meteorologists predicted that the same moderate haze that has hung around all season would again hit the East Coast. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation put out an alert saying that the air quality index, or AQI, might rise to 150 across the state.
They did not forecast — nobody, as far as I can tell, did — that the worst air pollution in decades would soon wallop the state. By Tuesday night, New York City’s AQI had already reached 174, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. As I walked home in D.C., I could see tendrils of visible smoke hugging the upper stories of apartment buildings.
This prediction failure gave the ensuing response a halting, confused quality. How could such a massive event come out of nowhere? Not until Thursday afternoon — when the smoke had nearly passed — did the federal government advise its workers that they could telework or take vacation time to avoid the bad air. On Friday, New York closed in-person schools, just in time for blue sky to return.
I find it hard to blame them. This was an unprecedented event in part because the fires were so far from where they affected. Everyone had seen the videos of smoke besieging Portland and San Francisco in 2020, but back then, the fires had been near those cities — a couple hundred miles away at most. Where was the smoke coming from now? The Adirondacks were fine. Vermont was’t burning.
Here, we misunderstood again. Many outlets — including this one, at first — initially reported that the smoke came from Nova Scotia, where large and destructive fires had raged the week before. But those fires had been doused over the weekend by some of the same weather pattern that was now ferrying smoke to us. In fact, the smoke had come from the boreal forests of northern Quebec, more than 500 miles from New York City.
Why were these fires raging? Not even Canadians could give a good answer. With fires in Alberta and Nova Scotia gobbling attention and resources, the Quebec fires had seemingly been an afterthought until their smoke blew into Toronto and Ottawa, which happened only a few hours before it arrived in New York. Suddenly, a secondary event had become the main event.
On Wednesday, I talked to a Canadian climatologist who seemed hazy about why Quebec was burning in the first place. “I think this situation is kind of similar to Nova Scotia,” he told me, blaming that province’s warm, dry spring for the blazes. But this explanation — which appeared in many outlets — was only somewhat true: While Quebec had suffered a warm May, it was not in drought.
We did not understand why these fires are burning — and honestly, we still don’t. President Joe Biden said that the smoke provided “another stark reminder of the impacts of climate change.” I am not so sure. There’s no doubt, to be clear, that climate change will make wildfires worse across North America: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that hot, dry “fire weather” will increase throughout the 21st century. But, again, Quebec is not in drought. As for today, no climate-change signal has appeared in eastern Canadian wildfire data. Their connection to climate change is far less clear cut than it is in, say, California’s blazes.
Yet neither would I condescend to someone who does blame climate change here. When something like this happens, how can you not cite the planet’s biggest ongoing physical transformation? If climate change makes flukey weather more likely, shouldn’t we at least consider it being responsible for some of the flukiest weather in decades? The thing about unprecedented events is that you lack precedent for them.
Not that we completely lack an example for this. In 1780, the sun was blotted out across New England. Nocturnal animals came out; people fretted in the streets and abandoned their work; the Connecticut state legislature considered adjourning for doomsday. Not until a decade ago did we finally learn that the “dark day” was caused by Canadian wildfire smoke drifting south.
Which suggests that this might be a once-in-250-year event. But maybe it’s not any more. Maybe with climate change, it’s a once-a-century event. Or a once-in-a-decade event. For now, the sample size is two.
So I wonder: If it wasn’t climate change, would it matter? The pandemic has already taught us that indoor air quality matters, that unseen particles floating in the air can do serious harm. No matter what happens with the climate, Canada is too large and unpopulated to fight every wildfire; neither can it manage the same kind of labor-intensive forest management that California might attempt. East Coasters should come away from our own dark days with new compassion for people out West — and those across the world — who must deal with wildfire smoke on a seasonal basis, not to mention the fires themselves. Regardless of climate change’s role in this fire, it makes wildfires more likely: We should continue to try to decarbonize as fast as we can.
But as for local policy, perhaps our aims should be humbler. We now know (again) that a great cloud of wildfire smoke can blow up on the East Coast at any moment and poison our air. We don’t need to know everything to protect ourselves and our neighbors from that. Air filters cost hundreds of dollars, but not thousands; in new multi-family buildings, they are built into the ventilation system itself. Perhaps the right lesson from this outbreak should be to change our expectations, and think of indoor air filtering like brushing your teeth — a habit essential to our hygiene, to be used by all, and to be provisioned for those who cannot afford one at the public expense.
Maybe that’s prudent climate adaptation. Or maybe — in the wake of COVID, Canadian smoke, and who-knows-what-comes-next — it’s just new common sense.
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The department creates a seemingly impossible new permitting criteria for renewable energy.
The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.
Hypothetically, this could kill off any solar or wind project going through permitting that is sited on federal lands, because these facilities would technically be less energy dense than coal, gas, and nuclear plants. This is irrespective of the potential benefits solar and wind may have for the environment or reducing carbon emissions – none of which are mentioned in the order.
“Gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects hold America back from achieving U.S. Energy Dominance while weighing heavily on the American taxpayer and environment,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement included in a press release announcing the move. “By considering energy generation optimization, the Department will be able to better manage our federal lands, minimize environmental impact, and maximize energy development to further President Donald Trump’s energy goals.”
Here’s how this new regime, which I and many in the energy sector are now suddenly trying to wrap their heads around, is apparently going to work: solar and wind facilities will now be evaluated based on their “capacity density,” which is calculated based on the ratio of acres used for a project compared to its power generation capacity. If a project has a lower “capacity density” than what the department considers to be a “reasonable alternative,” then it may no longer be able to get a permit.
“On a technology-neutral basis,” the order states, “wind and solar projects use disproportionate Federal lands relative to their energy generation when compared to other energy sources, like nuclear, gas, and coal.” The document going on to give an example, claiming that data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows an advanced nuclear plant uses less federal acreage than an offshore wind farm and “thus, when there are reasonable alternatives that can generate the same amount of or more energy on far less Federal land, wind and solar projects may unnecessarily and unduly degrade Federal lands.” The order also includes a chart comparing the capacity density of wind and solar facilities to conventional nuclear, gas, and coal, as well as geothermal, and claims that these sources are superior as well. The document does not reference hydropower.
There’s also a whole host of other implications in this order. Crucially, does the Interior expect that by choking off the flow of permits, cities and companies will just pony up to build what the Trump administration considers “reasonable alternatives” instead? Is the federal government going to tell communities in Nevada, for example, that they must suddenly build gas plants in the desert instead of solar farms to meet their increasing energy needs?
In any case, much more is coming, as this order simply built off of a separate secretarial order earlier this week commanding staff to prepare a litany of recommendations on ending alleged “preferential treatment” for solar and wind facilities. In other words hold my beer – and hold onto yours, too.
That’s okay for clean energy firms, terrible for manufacturers, and a big risk for everyone.
Over the past few months, you could put together three different — and somewhat conflicting — pictures of the American economy.
For companies exposed to the AI boom, business has been good — excellent, even. The surge in ongoing capital investment into data centers and electricity has been larger than other recent booms, such as the telecom buildout. Electricity demand is soaring, especially in Texas and the Mid-Atlantic. Technology companies have signed power offtake deals with nuclear and hydroelectricity companies. If anything, companies exposed to artificial intelligence are more afflicted by congested supply chains and shortages than by slack demand — see the yearslong waiting lists to get a new transformer or natural gas turbine.
Outside of the AI economy, though, the economy has been a fair bit colder. You might even say it’s been frozen by indecision. When you talk to business leaders, they confess confusion about where things are heading. President Trump’s constantly changing tariffs — and his administration’s mercurial policy shifts — have made it difficult for non-AI-exposed businesses to plan long-term capital investment.
You could hear this view from clean energy manufacturing and traditional fossil firms alike. When I talked to John Henry Harris, the CEO of the medium-duty truck maker Harbinger Motors, for an episode of Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast in June, he told me that his company was just about to shift a production process to Mexico when a last-minute Trump change made it cheaper to keep it in China. Meanwhile, an oil and gas executive recently told the Dallas Federal Reserve: “The Liberation Day chaos and tariff antics have harmed the domestic energy industry. Drill, baby, drill will not happen with this level of volatility.”
But the data contradicted that tepid view. This was the third picture that we were getting of the economy. Through the summer, federal surveys showed an economy that was performing okay. In May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 139,000 jobs; it gained another 147,000 jobs, apparently, in June. The AI boom was clearly contributing to those robust reports. But how could an economy that business leaders otherwise described as difficult be going so well?
Now we can finally square these disparate pictures.
On Friday, the federal government released its newest tranche of job numbers. The headline number was mediocre — the U.S. added a mere 73,000 jobs in July — but the guts of the report were worse. The government revised down its estimate of the May and June reports by a total of 258,000 jobs. With these new numbers in hand, it’s clear that the labor market has essentially stalled out since Liberation Day in April.
The unemployment rate slightly rose to 4.2%, which was in line with what economists predicted.
These new reports clarify that the broader American economy wasn’t actually thriving. Its summer strength was a mirage the whole time. Outside of AI, things are downright frigid. And as President Trump continues to shuffle tariffs and increase trade uncertainty, we can expect conditions to worsen. Trump seems hellbent even on clouding our ability to understand the underlying economy: on Friday afternoon, he fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, a career civil servant.
If you squint, you can see a hazy “AI sector” versus “non-AI sector” distinction in the data, even among the energy and decarbonization companies we cover at Heatmap. But it’s not obvious. Contrary to what you might expect when power demand is surging, utility employment was basically flat last month. Heavy and civil engineering construction jobs were up by 6,000, and “nonresidential specialty trade contractors” — a category that can include electricians — gained nearly 2,000 jobs.
But manufacturing lost 11,000 jobs last month, with the motor vehicles industry driving 2,600 of those losses. Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas jobs were down. The Institute of Supply Management report, a private survey of U.S. manufacturing activity, showed the sector shrank in July for the fifth month in a row.
And even though the Department of Government Efficiency’s deferred buyout program for more than 150,000 people has yet to hit, the federal government bled 12,000 jobs.
In a way, the clean energy industry — or at least solar, battery, nuclear, and geothermal developers — might consider themselves lucky. Despite the best efforts of Trump’s officials, and despite the chaos of President Trump’s policies, they have been able to eke through the past few months because of the AI boom. Nearly 70% of all new power-generating capacity added to the U.S. grid in the first quarter of this year came from solar panels, and the government has thrown its weight behind next-generation nuclear and geothermal technologies. A tepid jobs report might even bring some interest rate relief from the Federal Reserve.
But if that AI boom slows down, we should all watch out below.
A conversation with Heather O’Neill of Advanced Energy United.
This week’s conversation is with Heather O’Neill, CEO of renewables advocacy group Advanced Energy United. I wanted to chat with O’Neill in light of the recent effective repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean electricity tax credits and the action at the Interior Department clamping down on development. I’m quite glad she was game to talk hot topics, including the future of wind energy and whether we’ll see blue states step into the vacuum left by the federal government.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
During Trump 1.0 we saw blue states really step into the climate role in light of the federal government. Do you see anything similar taking place now?
I think this moment we’re in – it is a different moment.
How are we handling load growth? How are we making sure consumers are not paying for expensive stranded assets? Thinking about energy affordability? All of those challenges absolutely present a different moment and will result in a different response from state leaders.
But that’s where some of the changes our industry has gone through mean we’re able to meet that moment and provide solutions to those challenges. I think we need aggressive action from state leaders and I think we’ll see that from them, because of the challenges in front of them.
What does that look like?
Every state is different. Take Virginia for example. Five years after we passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act – a big, bold promise of action – we’re not on track. So what are the things we need to do to keep the foot on the accelerator there? This last legislative session we passed the virtual power plant legislation that’ll help tremendously in terms of grid flexibility. We made a big push around siting and permitting reform, and we didn’t quite get it over the finish line but that’s the kind of thing where we made a good foundation.
Or Texas. There’s so much advanced energy powering Texas right now. You had catastrophic grid failure in Hurricane Uri and look at what they’ve been able to build out in response to that: wind, solar, and in the last few years, battery storage, and they just passed the energy waste reduction [bill].
We need to build things and make it easier to build – siting and permitting reform – but it’s also states depending on their environment looking at and engaging with their regional transmission organization.
You saw that last week, a robust set of governors across the PJM region called on them to improve their interconnection queue. It’s about pushing and finding reforms at the market level, to get these assets online and get on the grid deployed.
I think the point about forward momentum, I definitely see what you’re saying there about the need for action. Do you see state primacy laws or pre-emption laws? Like what Michigan, New York, and California have done…
I’m not a siting expert, but the reform packages that work the best include engagement from communities in meaningful ways. But they also make sure you’re not having a vocal minority drowning out the benefits and dragging out the process forever. There are timelines and certainty attached to it while still having meaningful local engagement.
Our industry absolutely has to continue to lean into more local engagement and community engagement around the benefits of a project and what they can deliver for a community. I also think there’s a fair amount of making sure the state is creating that pathway, providing that certainty, so we can actually move forward to build out these projects.
From the federal government’s perspective, they’re cracking down on wind and solar projects while changing the tax credits. Do you see states presenting their own incentives for renewables in lieu of federal incentives? I’ve wondered if that’ll happen given inflation and affordability concerns.
No, I think we have to be really creative as an industry, and state leaders have to be creative too. If I’m a governor, affordability concerns were already front and center for me, and now given what just happened, they’re grappling with incredibly tight state budgets that are about to get tighter, including health care. They’re going to see state budgets hit really hard. And there’s energy impacts – we’re cutting off supply, so we’re going to see prices go up.
This is where governors and state leaders can act but I think in this context of tight state budgets I don’t think we can expect to see states replacing incentive packages.
It’ll be: how do we take advantage of all the flexible tools that we have to help shape and reduce demand in meaningful ways that’ll save consumers money, as well as push on building out projects and getting existing juice out of the transmission system we have today.
Is there a future for wind in the United States?
It is an incredibly challenging environment – no question – for all of our technologies, wind included. I don’t want to sugar-coat that at all.
But I look at the whole picture, and I include wind in this: the technologies have improved dramatically in the past couple of decades and the costs have come down. When you look around at what resources are around to deploy, it’s advanced energy. We’re seeing it continue to grow. There’ll be headwinds, and it’ll be more expensive for all of us. But I look at what our industry and our technologies are able to offer and deliver, and I am confident we’ll continue to see growth.