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Culture

It’s Getting Hot in Houston. Thousands Are Without Power.

On trouble in Texas, Tesla’s shareholders, and the pope

It’s Getting Hot in Houston. Thousands Are Without Power.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Schools are closed in Delhi due to intense heat • A freak storm dropped fist-sized hail stones on a city in northern Poland • Forecasters are expecting more tornadoes in the Midwest today.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Houston power outages persist as temperatures soar

Many households remain without power in Houston after the severe storms that tore through the area last Thursday. About 150,000 people were still waiting for the lights to come back on as of Monday night, and the weather is getting hot, with temperatures lingering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the heat index nearing 100F. Anyone without access to power and air conditioning is suffering. The city has opened dozens of cooling centers to help provide relief. The region’s power provider, CenterPoint Energy, said it expects restoration efforts to continue into Wednesday.

X/NWSHouston

2. Tesla shareholder group targets Musk pay package

A group of Tesla shareholders including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, SOC Investment Group, Amalgamated Bank, and others, have written to company investors urging them to vote against CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package next month, The Wall Street Journalreported. “Even as Tesla’s performance is floundering, the board has yet to ensure that Tesla has a full-time CEO who is adequately focused on the long-term sustainable success of our company,” the shareholder group wrote. Shareholders will vote at the company’s annual meeting on June 13 on whether to re-ratify Musk’s 2018 pay package, which a judge voided in January. The letter also says shareholders should not vote to re-elect board members Kimbal Musk (Elon’s brother) and James Murdoch (Elon’s friend), suggesting they are too closely tied to the CEO.

3. Battery fire at California energy storage site finally extinguished

A fire at a battery storage site in San Diego County appears to have been extinguished after burning on and off for multiple days and nights, reported Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. “There is no visible smoke or active fire at the scene,” Cal Fire, the state fire protection agency, said in an update yesterday. The fire started sometime Wednesday at the Gateway Energy Storage facility, a 250 megawatt battery electric storage system in Otay Mesa, which is immediately adjacent both to the eastern border of San Diego and to the northern border of Mexico and near the Richard J. Donovan state prison facility. Fires have been a recurring problem for the battery electric storage industry, which may be one reason why, according to Heatmap polling, it is the form of carbon-free power least popular with the general public.

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  • 4. Pope calls climate change a ‘road to death’

    Pope Francis has called climate change “a road to death” in an interview with CBS Evening News. “Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point of no return,” he said. “It’s sad, but that’s what it is. Global warming is a serious problem.” The pope has been very outspoken about the climate crisis, urging governments to stop using fossil fuels and pitching the state of the environment as a moral issue. Last week the Vatican hosted a climate conference that focused on building resilience as the crisis intensifies. It culminated in the signing of a protocol that urges wealthy nations to finance adaptation and protection for the world’s poorest, and calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, among other priorities.

    5. Light-duty EVs overtake rail on U.S. electricity usage

    Here’s an interesting little statistic for you: In 2023, light-duty electric vehicles consumed more electricity than the nation’s railways, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual railway electricity usage has hovered around 7,000 Gigawatt hours (GWh) since 2003, making it the largest electricity end-use category in the transportation sector. But that changed last year when EVs took the top spot, using 7,596 GWh. The EIA notes this is nearly five times the amount of electricity EVs consumed in 2018. The numbers underscore two trends: the limited expansion of U.S. rail, and the explosive growth of EV sales.

    EIA

    THE KICKER

    “I just watch their jaws drop and the surprise of ‘Where did this come from? This is an hour outside of Boise?’” –Chris Geroro, a fly fisher in southeastern Oregon, describes the beauty of the Owyhee River watershed, one of the country’s largest areas of pristine wilderness that is also prime for green development.

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    Politics

    AM Briefing: Climate Grants Terminated

    On Lee Zeldin’s announcement, coal’s decline, and Trump’s Tesla promo

    The EPA’s $20 Billion Climate Grants Have Been Terminated
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Alaska just had its third-warmest winter on record • Spain’s four-year drought is nearing an end • Another atmospheric river is bearing down on the West Coast, triggering evacuation warnings around Los Angeles’ burn scars.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Zeldin terminates $20 billion in climate grants

    EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said yesterday he had terminated $20 billion in congressionally-approved climate change and clean energy grants “following a comprehensive review and consistent with multiple ongoing independent federal investigations into programmatic fraud, waste, abuse and conflicts of interest.”

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    Climate

    What the NOAA Layoffs Are Doing to Climate Science

    And how ordinary Americans will pay the price.

    A hand in the NOAA logo.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    No one seems to know exactly how many employees have been laid off from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — or, for that matter, what offices those employees worked at, what jobs they held, or what regions of the country will be impacted by their absence. We do know that it was a lot of people; about 10% of the roughly 13,000 people who worked at the agency have left since Donald Trump took office, either because they were among the 800 or so probationary employees to be fired late last month or because they resigned.

    “I don’t have the specifics as to which offices, or how many people from specific geographic areas, but I will reiterate that every one of the six [NOAA] line offices and 11 of the staff offices — think of the General Counsel’s Office or the Legislative Affairs Office — all 11 of those staff offices have suffered terminations,” Rick Spinrad, who served as the NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, told reporters in a late February press call. (At least a few of the NOAA employees who were laid off have since been brought back.)

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    How Trump Has All But Halted Offshore Wind

    Rob and Jesse talk with Heatmap senior reporter Jael Holzman.

    Offshore wind turbines.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Donald Trump’s second term has now entered its second month. His administration is doing much to slow down renewables, and everything it can to slow down offshore wind. Jael Holzman is a senior reporter at Heatmap and the author of our newsletter, “The Fight,” about local battles over renewable permitting around the country.

    On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk to Jael about the bleak outlook for offshore wind, the use of presidential authority to impede energy development, and why solar has been spared — so far. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.

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