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New Zealand and Australia are at two very different stages in the energy transition.
I’ll drop any notion of journalistic objectivity for a moment: I would really, really like to see the United States win the Women’s World Cup.
Abby Wambach’s miracle goal in 2011, Carli Lloyd’s 2015 hat trick in the final, and Megan Rapinoe’s dominant 2019 tournament are all ineffable memories in my journey of soccer fandom. This year, as Alyssa Thompson, Sophia Smith, and Trinity Rodman take the baton for a new generation, I’ll be watching the tournament intently as it takes place in New Zealand and Australia.
But it’s also not lost on me that major sporting events like this are also often major emitting events. While all 10 host stadiums are LEED or Green Star certified (no new stadiums were purpose-built for the tournament), these tournaments are a test of every piece of a country’s infrastructure — and a barometer for nearly every element of their respective energy transition. Stadiums need electricity to keep floodlights on and beer refrigerators cold; fans fly from around the world for the tournament; cities construct new stadiums or retrofit old ones; countless tchotchkes are produced; and public transit systems snap into high gear.
Hosting the World Cup completely sustainably is probably impossible right now, in spite of what FIFA falsely claimed about its tournament in Qatar last fall, according to Swiss regulators. What this World Cup does offer, though, is a case study in two very different stages of paths towards decarbonization.
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Earlier this month, my colleague Robinson Meyer made a point about the diminishing marginal returns towards the end of the energy transition. As challenging as it is to get shovels in the ground, incentivizing new solar arrays and wind farms is in some ways easier than solving wicked problems: Cross-country travel, transitioning heavy duty vehicles away from fossil fuels, catalyzing a clean steel industry.
New Zealand is in the enviable — and somewhat unusual — position of starting its work on decarbonization in the world of wicked problems.
World Cups have had sustainably powered hosts before — France (Women’s World Cup 2019) boasts a nearly decarbonized grid in large part due to nuclear, and Canada’s electricity is primarily powered by hydropower and nuclear. Other hosts have had more mixed climate impacts. The 2014 host Brazil has an electricity sector dominated by hydropower, but it also built a brand new stadium in the middle of the rainforest that was effectively abandoned the moment the tournament ended.
New Zealand can make a case as one of the most climate-friendly hosts of a World Cup ever. (This requires a key caveat from the outset: You need to consider hydropower an environmentally friendly renewable. Right now, most people in the energy world do — though researchers have raised questions about methane emissions from reservoirs and the broader impacts of disrupting an ecosystem.)
The country’s electricity sector is overwhelmingly supplied by hydropower. Renewables in total generated 81% of the country’s electricity in 2021. Hydropower has made up a significant piece of New Zealand’s electric generation for more than a century — and while installing new facilities requires significant investment, the cost of generation itself is low. By one analysis, “business as usual” would still mean that 98% of the country’s generation will come from renewables by 2030, in large part driven by wind and solar.
The country has also made significant climate pledges, albeit ones that have raised questions about their enforcement — including an emissions budget for 2022-2025 and net zero by 2050 (excluding biogenic methane). And its carbon credits have spurred the transformation of farmland to forestry.
That leaves questions about energy and other emissions that most other countries have yet to act on. Watching a game in New Zealand is a reminder of the questions that remain: How can fans get between host cities without flights? How fast can the country kick its reliance on fossil fuels for heating and industry? And perhaps most importantly, how can New Zealand slash emissions from its extensive agriculture sector — especially when levying a tax on methane emissions from cows has proven a third rail among farmers?
Still, if New Zealand has moved to the most challenging part of decarbonization, Australia is at the outset of its process — the easy part, in some ways. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed the goal of the country becoming a “renewable energy superpower,” but that process is just starting.
The country has made some progress: 29% of electricity generation came from renewables in 2021, largely driven by solar and wind, better than the United States’ 21% but a far cry from New Zealand, much less France. Australia, thanks to friendly government policy, easy permitting and speedy grid connections, has also enjoyed a particularly robust deployment of rooftop solar. And recently, the country established its own emission reduction commitments (43% by 2030) that leave room for more action in later years — their most recent try at comprehensive climate policy, following the passage and repeal of a carbon tax in the 2010s.
Australia, though, does not only rely on fossil fuels: It is also the world’s second-largest producer of coal, significantly ahead of any other country save for Indonesia. Coal dominates their energy use, with oil and natural gas making up the other major sources. And while Australia has signaled that they will transition away rapidly from coal, that transition could prove bumpy for both the grid and workers.
While New Zealand is a climate leader with caveats to sort out, games hosted in Australia will take place in a country that has fallen well behind its neighbor and most other high-income countries in addressing climate change. On the other hand, Sam Kerr is likely to be so dominant that fans will have little time to think about anything else.
Practically, what does this mean for the World Cup? In truth: Not much. As long as the lights stay on and the TV cameras work, we almost certainly won’t hear about the electric grid — and given that it’s winter in the southern hemisphere, the topic of climate change might not come up at all save for player-led activism. But as tournaments take place, they’ll offer a chance to check in on a given host country’s decarbonization efforts.
The next World Cup after this? The 2026 men’s tournament — in Mexico, Canada, and the United States.
Read more about climate and sports:
Home Runs Are One Way Climate Change Affects Baseball. Here Are 11 More.
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On Trump’s ‘windmill’ ban, FEMA turnover, and PNW power
Current conditions: Physical activity is “discouraged” at the Grand Canyon today as temperatures climb toward 110 degrees Fahrenheit • Tropical Storm Wutip could dump 7 inches of rain in six hours over parts of Vietnam • Investigators are looking into whether this week’s triple-digit heat in Ahmedabad, India, was a factor in Thursday’s deadly plane crash.
Noah Buscher/Unsplash
President Trump said Thursday that his administration is “not going to approve windmills unless something happens that’s an emergency.” The comments — made during the White House East Room signing of legislation overturning California’s authority to set its own car pollution standards — were Trump’s clearest confirmation yet of my colleague Jael Holzman’s reporting, which this week found that “the wind industry’s worst fears are indeed coming to pass.” As Jael went on in The Fight, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have “simply stopped processing wind project permit applications after Trump’s orders — and the freeze appears immovable, unless something changes.”
Trump justified the pause by adding that “we’re not going to let windmills get built because we’re not going to destroy our country any further than it’s already been destroyed,” repeating his long-held grievance that “you go and look at these beautiful plains and valleys, and they’re loaded up with this garbage that gets worse and worse looking with time.” Trump’s aesthetic objections have already blocked at least three wind projects in New York alone — a move that has impacts beyond future energy generation, Jael further notes. According to the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, the policy has impacted “more than $2 billion in capital investments, just in the land-based wind project pipeline, and there’s significant reason to believe other states are also experiencing similar risks.” Read Jael’s full report here.
Turnover at the Federal Emergency Management Agency continued this week after the head of the National Response Coordination Center — responsible for overseeing the federal response to major storms — submitted his resignation, CBS News reported Thursday. Jeremy Greenberg, who’s worked various roles at FEMA for nearly a decade, will stay on for another two weeks but ultimately depart less than a month into hurricane season. “He’s irreplaceable,” one current FEMA official told CBS News, adding that “the brain drain continues and the public will pay for it.” Greenberg’s resignation follows comments President Trump made to the press earlier this week about the need to “wean off of FEMA” after hurricane season is over in November. “A governor should be able to handle” disaster response, the president told reporters on Tuesday, “and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”
Also on Thursday, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum revoking a $1 billion Biden-era agreement to restore salmon and invest in tribally sponsored clean energy infrastructure in the Columbia River Basin, The Seattle Times reports. Biden’s agreement had “placed concerns about climate change above the nation’s interests in reliable energy sources,” the White House claimed.
The 2023 agreement resulted from three decades of opposition to the dams on the Lower Snake River by local tribes and environmental groups. While the Biden administration hadn’t committed to a dam removal, it did present a potential pathway to do so, since Washington State politicians have said that hydropower would need to be replaced by another power source before they’d consider a dam removal plan. The government’s billion-dollar investment would have aided in the construction of up to 3 gigawatts of alternative renewable energy in the region. Kurt Miller, the CEO of the Northwest Public Power Association, celebrated Trump’s action, saying, “In an era of skyrocketing electricity demand, these dams are essential to maintaining grid reliability and keeping energy bills affordable.” But Washington Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, vowed to fight the “grievously wrong” decision, arguing, “Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about the Northwest and our way of life — so of course, he is abruptly and unilaterally upending a historic agreement.”
Two years after we wrote the eulogy for the Chevrolet Bolt EV — “the cheap little EV we need” — General Motors has announced that it will launch the second generation of the car for the 2027 model year. Though “no other details were provided about this next iteration of the Bolt,” Car and Driver wrote that “we expect it to continue as a tall subcompact hatchback, although it could be positioned as a subcompact SUV like the previous generation's EUV model.” A reveal could be coming in the next several months ahead of a likely on-sale date in mid-2026.
Energy developer Scale Microgrids announced Thursday that its latest round of financing, which closed at $275 million, has brought its total to date to over $1 billion. KeyBanc Capital Markets, Cadence Bank, and New York Green Bank led the round, with Greg Berman, the managing director in KeyBanc Capital Markets Utilities, saying in a statement, “We value our relationship with Scale and congratulate their team as they execute on their strategy to deliver high-quality distributed energy assets to the market.” Scale Microgrids said the financing will “support 140 megawatts of distributed generation projects, including microgrids, community-scale solar and storage, and battery storage installations,” many of which are already under construction in the Northeast and California.
“Our best chance is to get a group of critical mass of Republican senators to go to [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune and [Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike] Crapo and say, You’ve got to change this. We can’t vote for it the way it is.” —Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in conversation with Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer about the Senate math and strategy behind saving the Inflation Reduction Act.
And more of the week’s top news about renewable energy fights.
1. Jefferson County, New York – Two solar projects have been stymied by a new moratorium in the small rural town of Lyme in upstate New York.
2. Sussex County, Delaware – The Delaware legislature is intervening after Sussex County rejected the substation for the offshore MarWin wind project.
3. Clark County, Indiana – A BrightNight solar farm is struggling to get buy-in within the southern region of Indiana despite large 650-foot buffer zones.
4. Tuscola County, Michigan – We’re about to see an interesting test of Michigan’s new permitting primacy law.
5. Marion County, Illinois – It might not work every time, but if you pay a county enough money, it might let you get a wind farm built.
6. Renville County Minnesota – An administrative law judge has cleared the way for Ranger Power’s Gopher State solar project in southwest Minnesota.
7. Knox County, Nebraska – I have learned this county is now completely banning new wind and solar projects from getting permits.
8. Fresno County, California – The Golden State has approved its first large-scale solar facility using the permitting overhaul it passed in 2022, bypassing local opposition to the project. But it’s also prompting a new BESS backlash.
A conversation with Robb Jetty, CEO of REC Solar, about how the developer is navigating an uncertain environment.
This week I chatted with REC Solar CEO Robb Jetty, who reached out to me through his team after I asked for public thoughts from renewables developers about their uncertain futures given all the action in Congress around the Inflation Reduction Act. Jetty had a more optimistic tone than I’ve heard from other folks, partially because of the structure of his business – which is actually why I wanted to include his feelings in this week’s otherwise quite gloomy newsletter.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. Shall we?
To start, how does it feel to be developing solar in this uncertain environment around the IRA?
There’s a lot of media out there that’s oftentimes trying to interpret something that’s incredibly complex and legalese to begin with, so it’s difficult to really know what the exact impacts are in the first place or what the macroeconomic impacts would be from the policy shifts that would happen from the legislation being discussed right now.
But I’ll be honest, the thing I reinforce the most right now with our team is that you cannot argue with solar being the lowest cost form of electrical generation in the United States and it’s the fastest source of power generation to be brought online. So there’s a reason why, regardless of what happens, our industry isn’t going to go away. We’ve dealt with all kinds of policy changes and I’ve been doing this since 2002. We’ve had lots of changes that have been disruptive to the industry.
You can argue some of the things that are being discussed are more disruptive. But there’s lots of things we’ve faced. Even the pandemic and the fallout on inflation and labor. We’ve navigated through hard times before.
What’s been the tangible impact to your business from this uncertainty?
I would say it has shifted our focus. We sell electricity to our customers that are both commercial customers, using that power behind the meter and on site for their own facilities, or we’re selling electricity to utilities, or virtually through the grid. Right now we’ve shifted some of our strategy toward the acquisition of operating assets instead of buying projects from other developers that could be more impacted by the uncertainty or have economics that are more sensitive to the timing and uncertainty that could come out of the policy. It’s had an impact on our business but, back to my earlier comment, the industry is so big at this point that we’re seeing lots of opportunity for us to provide value to an investor.
As a company that works in different forms of solar development – from small-scale utility to commercial to community solar – do you see any changes in terms of what projects are developed if what’s in the House bill becomes law?
I’m not seeing anything at the moment.
I think most of the activity I’ve been involved in is waiting for this to settle. The disruption is the volatile nature, the uncertainty. We need certainty. Any business needs certainty to plan and operate effectively. But I’m honestly not seeing anything that’s having that impact right now in terms of where investment is flowing, whether its utility scale to the smaller behind-the-meter commercial scale we support in certain markets.
We are seeing it in the residential side of the solar industry. Those are more concerning, because you only have a short amount of time to claim the [investment tax credit] ITC for a residential system.