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Current conditions: A state of emergency is in effect in Manitoba, Canada, due to multiple wildfires • 17 million people in the south-central U.S. are at risk of severe storms on Tuesday • The Interior Department has reportedly suspended air quality monitoring for National Parks, including California’s Joshua Tree, where the AQI today is moderate.
Attorneys general from 17 Democratic states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging President Trump’s executive order pausing approvals, permits, and loans for onshore and offshore wind projects. The lawsuit argues that Trump exceeds his authority with the indefinite pause, which threatens “thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments, and … is delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet,” in the words of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the coalition.
In a response to the lawsuit, a White House spokesperson told The Associated Press that “the American people voted for the president to restore America’s energy dominance, and Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda.” As my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has written, however, state climate goals “become nearly impossible if no additional [wind] projects are able to get through the permitting process until at least 2029,” with New York state’s especially in jeopardy after the administration ordered the halt of construction on the fully permitted Empire Wind project south of Long Island.
The European Union plans to announce on Tuesday a 2027 deadline for companies to end any remaining energy contracts with Russia, the Financial Times reported Monday. Though the EU’s use of Russian oil and coal virtually ended with sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe still bought 49.5 billion cubic meters of Russian gas through pipelines in 2024, and another 24.2 billion transported on ships as liquified natural gas, per Rystad Energy (though some of that LNG was resold). Another way of looking at it: “The EU purchased a total of [$26 billion] in Russian energy in 2024, exceeding its military assistance to Ukraine last year,” Bloomberg writes, with imports accounting for about 19% of the bloc’s total gas purchases.
The proposed measures will need to be approved by a majority of EU member states and the European Parliament before they can be adopted, according to FT. Without Russian LNG, Europe is expected to turn to the U.S. to meet its energy needs.
Share of European Union gas demand met by Russian supply, 2001-2024
IEA
More than 100 employees at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory lost their jobs in a round of layoffs on Monday, Mother Jones reports. The cuts included non-probationary employees, or those who’ve worked at the Department of Energy division for over two years.
Though NREL has more than 3,000 employees on staff, sources who spoke with Mother Jones described the cuts as “rather haphazard and unorganized,” while others stressed that “if I am suddenly the only person on my team, I can’t handle that work.” The layoffs also notably come after President Trump’s “skinny” budget proposed $15 billion in cuts to Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding. The White House Office of Management and Budget has said that the budget aims to reorient the Department of Energy’s funding away from “unreliable renewable energy” and “toward research and development of technologies that could produce an abundance of domestic fossil energy and critical minerals, innovative concepts for nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuels, and technologies that promote firm baseload power.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to end door-to-door survivor outreach in disaster areas for the upcoming hurricane and wildfire seasons, Wired reported Monday, based on a FEMA memo dated May 2. Previously, the agency would canvass disaster survivors to inform them about how to register for federal aid, a policy that one emergency management coordinator told Wired was critical given how many survivors don’t get adequate information about recovery resources otherwise. Instead, FEMA’s memo said the agency will “focus survivor outreach and assistance registration capabilities in more targeted venues.”
Last year, Republicans on the Oversight Committee singled out FEMA’s outreach program over alleged “widespread discrimination against individuals displaying Trump campaign signs on their property” in the wake of Hurricane Milton. The White House’s budget has also cited FEMA for supposedly “skipping over homes when providing aid.” But the Trump administration has also sought to pare back the agency aggressively: Earlier this year, it denied a request for federal aid from Arkansas’ Republican Governor and former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders after severe tornadoes that left more than 40 people in the region dead, arguing the disaster was not “beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies” to address.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
The Los Angeles Dodgers have faced calls from activists and fans to end their sponsorship deal with Phillips 66’s 76 gas station brand — but the partnership might face a natural end due to the Olympics coming to L.A. in 2028, Legal Planet reports. Dodger Stadium will be an official Olympic venue during the summer games, and its 76 gas ads will violate the Olympic Charter prohibiting “commercial installations and advertising signs … in the stadia, venues or other sports grounds.”
The Dodgers are under mounting pressure to drop the Phillips 66 partnership even earlier. There are 76 gasoline ads “plastered throughout the ballpark, from the visiting team’s bullpen to the ribbon board screens lining the stands … Even the on-deck circles on the field, where batters prepare to hit, are orange-and-blue 76 logos,” the Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth wrote last year in a column calling for the team to break up with the oil company. As of November, the Houston-based energy company was facing six counts of violating the U.S. Clean Water Act by illegally discharging 790,000 gallons of wastewater from its Carson refinery into the L.A. County sewer system. “The lead up to the 2028 Olympic games period would seem to be a natural time for the Dodgers to reset a marquee sponsor for years to come — and to do so on their own terms — or else be forced to by Olympic rules,” Legal Planet writes.
“C’mon Ford, c’mon GM, c’mon Chrysler, let’s roll again/Build something useful that people need, build us a safe way for us to be/Build us something that won’t kill our kids, that runs real clean, that runs real clean.” —Lyrics to Neil Young’s new single “Let’s Roll Again.”
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The delayed vote on a net-zero standard for the International Maritime Organization throws some of the industry’s grandest plans into chaos.
Today, members of the International Maritime Organization decided to postpone a major vote on the world’s first truly global carbon pricing scheme. The yearlong delay came in response to a pressure campaign led by the U.S.
The Net-Zero Framework — initially approved in April by an overwhelming margin and long expected to be formally adopted today — would establish a legally binding requirement for the shipping industry to cut its emissions intensity, with interim steps leading to net zero by 2050.
In the intervening months, however, U.S. opposition has gotten much louder. On Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he’s “outraged that the International Maritime Organization is voting in London this week to pass a global Carbon Tax.” He also took the extraordinary step of threatening not to comply with the rules. “The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form.” If the framework ever does pass, noncompliance could subject U.S. vessels to fines or even denial of entry at the ports of IMO member countries, potentially setting off a cycle of retaliatory measures from all sides.
No specific date has yet been scheduled for the forthcoming vote, which will be taken again a year from now. That throws plans for the world’s largest shipping companies — some of which have already taken expensive measures to decarbonize their fleets — into turmoil. The framework would have marked a major turning point for a sector that’s responsible for 3% of global emissions, of course. But even more importantly, it would have made a range of decarbonization technologies — from advanced batteries and clean fuels to wind-assisted propulsion and onboard carbon capture — far more viable and attractive to investors.
Kate Danaher, managing director of the oceans team at S2G Investments, has a vested interest in the frameworks’ eventual passage. “Over the past two years people have really started investing around the anticipation of something like the Net-Zero Framework being adopted,” Danaher told me. For its part, S2G has invested in Sofar Ocean, which focuses on fuel savings through route optimization, battery company Echandia which is aiming to electrify smaller vessels, and ocean data and monitoring companies Xocean and Apeiron Lab.
The new rules were originally set to take effect in 2028, and would apply to large vessels — ships of 5,000 gross tonnage or more — involved in international voyages. Qualifying ships would be assigned a base target for emissions intensity and a stricter “direct compliance target.” For every metric ton of CO2 equivalent that exceeds the compliance target but falls below the base target, ships must pay $100. For all emissions that exceed the base target, ships must pay $380 per metric ton. Noncompliant ships would pay these penalties by purchasing so-called “remedial units” from a central IMO registry, while the cleanest vessels — those performing better than their compliance targets — would earn surplus units they can sell to others or bank for future use.
Green shipping fuels such as e-methanol, e-hydrogen, and e-ammonia — all produced from green hydrogen using renewable electricity — stand to be the biggest winners, she said. “A new fuel would completely decarbonize the industry. That is 10 years out, and is completely contingent on the IMO,” Danaher said, explaining that if the framework ultimately fails, there’s no economic incentive to adopt these more expensive fuels, which also require costly retrofits for existing fleets. But the framework would effectively cause the cost of conventional fuel to rise just as alternative fuels are scaling up, which would allow them to reach parity around 2035, she said.
A specialized agency within the United Nations, the IMO gets its power to set global regulations from the vastness of the ocean itself. Most of the world’s waters exist outside the jurisdiction of any national government. Because of that, IMO member states — which represent the vast majority of global shipping tonnage — have ratified treaties that empower the organization to set safety, security, and environmental standards on the high seas, which members then implement and enforce through their own national laws. Only member states have a stake in IMO policy. Furthermore, vessels that aren’t IMO-compliant face penalties such as fees and even possible detentions when entering the ports of IMO countries.
While IMO decisions are typically made via negotiated consensus, the contentious nature of these new regulations necessitates a vote. U.S. officials celebrated the delay. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that the postponement represents “another HUGE win for @POTUS,” going on to say that “the United States prevented a massive UN tax hike on American consumers that would have funded progressive climate pet projects.”
Along with Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, Rubio last week issued a statement threatening to punish nations that voted in favor of these “activist-driven climate policies” with actions such as banning their ships from U.S. ports, imposing vessel fees, and even leveling sanctions on officials supportive of the regulations.
Saudi Arabia — the world’s second largest oil producer after the U.S. — also strongly opposed the framework, as did a host of other oil-producing Middle Eastern countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, Russia and Venezuela. Singapore ultimately put forth the motion to delay the adoption vote for a full year and Saudi Arabia called it to a vote. It passed with a simple majority, with 57 countries approving and 49 opposed.
When it comes to costs, Trump officials might actually have a point, Danaher conceded. “Once alternative fuels come online and people are actively paying penalties, it gets a lot more expensive,” she told me. “I don’t see how this isn’t incredibly inflationary to the global market in 10 years.”
Today’s standard low-sulfur fuel, she explained, costs about $500 per metric ton. But reaching the same energy density with e-methanol, for example, could push the price to around $2,000 a metric ton. “That is all going to get passed on, essentially, to the consumer,” she said.
Even so, the framework has the backing of major shipping trade organizations and industry giants alike, from the International Chamber of Shipping to Maersk. As a group of leading international maritime associations put it in an open letter last week, “Only global rules will decarbonise a global industry. Without the Framework, shipping would risk a growing patchwork of unilateral regulations, increasing costs without effectively contributing to decarbonisation.”
Indeed, a universal set of coherent rules is what many in the sector want most, Danaher affirmed. Some voting bodies, such as the EU and Singapore, have already set their own shipping-related emissions requirements, creating a regulatory patchwork that’s both costly and confusing for companies to comply with. “I think most people are like, let’s just do this. Let’s rip the Band-Aid off, and let’s get clarity,” Danaher told me.
In a statement released after the vote’s delay and the conclusion of the IMO’s days-long meeting in London, Thomas A. Kazakos, the shipping chamber’s secretary general, said, “We are disappointed that member states have not been able to agree a way forward at this meeting. Industry needs clarity to be able to make the investments needed to decarbonise the maritime sector, in line with the goals set out in the IMO GHG strategy.”
The delay also risks delegitimizing the power of the IMO as a whole, something the organization’s Secretary-General, Arsenio Dominguez, warned about in the meeting’s opening remarks on Tuesday, when he stated that “Prolonged uncertainty will put off investments and diminish confidence in IMO.”
There would be other ways for shippers to comply with the framework besides switching to e-fuels, Danaher told me. For example, S2G’s portfolio company Sofar Ocean operates a network of ocean sensors designed to improve marine weather predictions and power a route optimization platform that can help ships save time, fuel, and ultimately, emissions.
Software solutions have a pretty low barrier to adoption. But a step up in complexity — and cost — would involve a technology such as wind-assisted propulsion. The companies Norsepower and Anemoi, for example, use a cylindrical “rotor sail” that creates a powerful thrust as it spins, which they say allows for up to 25% to 30% fuel savings. Another approach is the “rigid wing sail,” such as that developed by Bar Technologies. This generates lift in the direction of the ship’s movement with less drag than a normal sail — similar to how an airplane wing works.
Pairing route optimization with wind-assisted propulsion will generate even greater emissions savings, as the software can direct ships towards areas with the most advantageous winds. Given the obvious co-benefits and cost savings stemming from lower fuel use, Danaher thinks this tech could gain traction even if the regulations ultimately fail to pass next year. “I think the adoption curve will still continue without IMO [Net-Zero Framework], but I think it'll be slower,” she told me.
One approach she doesn’t think will be economically viable without the framework is onboard carbon capture. This tech, which traps carbon dioxide from a ship’s exhaust system before it’s released into the atmosphere, is being explored by startups including Seabound — which I reported on last year — and Value Maritime, as well as more established companies such as Mitsubishi and Wartsila. “A lot of the carbon capture technologies have not yet solved for how to turn that captured carbon into a valuable resource, and how to get it off the boat, put it in a pipeline, and sell it,” Danaher told me.”The economic incentive just isn't there without the IMO.”
At the same time, when I talked to one of Seabound’s backers — Clea Kolster, of Lowercarbon Capital — last year, she told me that when it comes to cargo shipping, “carbon capture is probably the only way that you can get a meaningful amount of emissions reductions in any near term way.” And it’s true that alternative fuels will take a while to scale up, so if the framework is ultimately adopted, carbon capture may still have an important role to play — at least that’s what investors and startups alike are banking on. “Everybody's talking about carbon capture in anticipation of this getting adopted,” Danaher told me. “All these vessels are going to be old, they’re going to need to comply, and they’re not going to be able to comply fast enough,” she said.
Amidst the turmoil, one silver lining is that interest in maritime innovation and efficiency appears to be increasing regardless of global frameworks. For one, the surge in global military spending has underscored this tech’s potential for dual-use applications. “A lot of wars happen in and around the oceans, because that’s where we intersect each other the most.” Danaher told me. Many of S2G’s investments in ocean tech have received additional backing from governments and defense agencies looking to make their fleets more efficient, energy resilient, and secure. “Every single one of our ocean tech companies, one of their customers is the government, or many governments,” she said.
It’s an important reminder that there are many practical reasons for investors and states alike to support a decarbonization agenda, regardless of whether the U.S. is on board or not. But a global system of carrots and sticks sure wouldn’t hurt either. And now, we face the uneasy prospect of waiting another year to see whether the shipping industry will resist the Trump-era pushback or abandon its collective ambitions for a decarbonized future.
Amarillo-area residents successfully beat back a $600 million project from Xcel Energy that would have provided useful tax revenue.
Power giant Xcel Energy just suffered a major public relations flap in the Texas Panhandle, scrubbing plans for a solar project amidst harsh backlash from local residents.
On Friday, Xcel Energy withdrew plans to build a $600 million solar project right outside of Rolling Hills, a small, relatively isolated residential neighborhood just north of the city of Amarillo, Texas. The project was part of several solar farms it had proposed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission to meet the load growth created by the state’s AI data center boom. As we’ve covered in The Fight, Texas should’ve been an easier place to do this, and there were few if any legal obstacles standing in the way of the project, dubbed Oneida 2. It was sited on private lands, and Texas counties lack the sort of authority to veto projects you’re used to seeing in, say, Ohio or California.
But a full-on revolt from homeowners and realtors apparently created a public relations crisis.
Mere weeks ago, shortly after word of the project made its way through the small community that is Rolling Hills, more than 60 complaints were filed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission in protest. When Xcel organized a public forum to try and educate the public about the project’s potential benefits, at least 150 residents turned out, overwhelmingly to oppose its construction. This led the Minnesota-based power company to say it would scrap the project entirely.
Xcel has tried to put a happy face on the situation. “We are grateful that so many people from the Rolling Hills neighborhood shared their concerns about this project because it gives us an opportunity to better serve our communities,” the company said in a statement to me. “Moving forward, we will ask for regulatory approval to build more generation sources to meet the needs of our growing economy, but we are taking the lessons from this project seriously.”
But what lessons, exactly, could Xcel have learned? What seems to have happened is that it simply tried to put a solar project in the wrong place, prizing convenience and proximity to an existing electrical grid over the risk of backlash in an area with a conservative, older population that is resistant to change.
Just ask John Coffee, one of the commissioners for Potter County, which includes Amarillo, Rolling Hills, and a lot of characteristically barren Texas landscape. As he told me over the phone this week, this solar farm would’ve been the first utility-scale project in the county. For years, he said, renewable energy developers have explored potentially building a project in the area. He’s entertained those conversations for two big reasons – the potential tax revenue benefits he’s seen elsewhere in Texas; and because ordinarily, a project like Oneida 2 would’ve been welcomed in any of the pockets of brush and plain where people don’t actually live.
“We’re struggling with tax rates and increases and stuff. In the proper location, it would be well-received,” he told me. “The issue is, it’s right next to a residential area.”
Indeed, Oneida 2 would’ve been smack dab up against Rolling Hills, occupying what project maps show would be the land surrounding the neighborhood’s southeast perimeter – truly the sort of encompassing adjacency that anti-solar advocates like to describe as a bogeyman.
Cotton also told me he wasn’t notified about the project’s existence until a few weeks ago, at the same time resident complaints began to reach a fever pitch. He recalled hearing from homeowners who were worried that they’d no longer be able to sell their properties. When I asked him if there was any data backing up the solar farm’s potential damage to home prices, he said he didn’t have hard numbers, but that the concerns he heard directly from the head of Amarillo’s Realtors Association should be evidence enough.
Many of the complaints against Oneida 2 were the sort of stuff we’re used to at The Fight, including fears of fires and stormwater runoff. But Cotton said it really boiled down to property values – and the likelihood that the solar farm would change the cultural fabric in Rolling Hills.
“This is a rural area. There are about 300 homes out there. Everybody sitting out there has half an acre, an acre, two acres, and they like to enjoy the quiet, look out their windows and doors, and see some distance,” he said.
Ironically, Cotton opposed the project on the urging of his constituents, but is now publicly asking Xcel to continue to develop solar in the county. “Hopefully they’ll look at other areas in Potter County,” he told me, adding that at least one resident has already come to him with potential properties the company could acquire. “We could really use the tax money from it. But you just can’t harm a community for tax dollars. That’s not what I’m about.”
I asked Xcel how all this happened and what their plans are next. A spokesperson repeatedly denied my requests to discuss Oneida 2 in any capacity. In a statement, the company told me it “will provide updates if the project is moved to another site,” and that “the company will continue to evaluate whether there is another location within Potter County, or elsewhere, to locate the solar project.”
Meanwhile, Amarillo may be about to welcome data center development because of course, and there’s speculation the first AI Stargate facility may be sited near Amarillo, as well.
City officials will decide in the coming weeks on whether to finalize a key water agreement with a 5,600-acre private “hypergrid” project from Fermi America, a new company cofounded by former Texas governor Rick Perry, says will provide upwards of 11 gigawatts to help fuel artificial intelligence services. Fermi claims that at least 1 gigawatt of power will be available by the end of next year – a lot of power.
The company promises that its “hypergrid” AI campus will use on-site gas and nuclear generation, as well as contracted gas and solar capacity. One thing’s for sure – it definitely won’t be benefiting from a large solar farm nearby anytime soon.
And more of the most important news about renewable projects fighting it out this week.
1. Racine County, Wisconsin – Microsoft is scrapping plans for a data center after fierce opposition from a host community in Wisconsin.
2. Rockingham County, Virginia – Another day, another chokepoint in Dominion Energy’s effort to build more solar energy to power surging load growth in the state, this time in the quaint town of Timberville.
3. Clark County, Ohio – This county is one step closer to its first utility-scale solar project, despite the local government restricting development of new projects.
4. Coles County, Illinois – Speaking of good news, this county reaffirmed the special use permit for Earthrise Energy’s Glacier Moraine solar project, rebuffing loud criticisms from surrounding households.
5. Lee County, Mississippi – It’s full steam ahead for the Jugfork solar project in Mississippi, a Competitive Power Ventures proposal that is expected to feed electricity to the Tennessee Valley Authority.