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The decarbonization benefits abound.
Electric vehicles? Really?
Is it really true that Heatmap looked at every way that you can decarbonize your life, meditated upon the politics, did the math, and concluded … that you should buy an EV? Are EVs really that important to fighting climate change?
You’ll find more thorough answers to all those questions throughout Decarbonize Your Life (plus our guide to buying an EV), but the short answer is: Yes. If you really need a car, then switching from a gas car to an electric vehicle (or at least a plug-in hybrid) is the most important step you can take to combat climate change. And it’s not only good for your personal carbon footprint, it’s good for the entire energy system.
Here is why we make that recommendation — and why you should trust us:
The best reason to use an electric vehicle is the most straightforward one: Driving an EV produces fewer greenhouse gases than driving a gasoline- or diesel-burning car. The Department of Energy estimates that the average EV operating in the U.S. produces 2,727 pounds of carbon dioxide pollution each year, while the average gasoline-burning car emits 12,594 pounds of carbon dioxide. Even a conventional hybrid vehicle — like a Toyota Prius — emits 6,800 pounds of CO2, or roughly 2.5 times as much as an EV.
These gains hold almost regardless of how you analyze the question. Even in states where coal makes up a large share of the power grid — such as West Virginia, Wyoming, or Missouri — EVs produce half as much CO2 as gasoline vehicles, according to the DOE. That’s because EVs are much more energy efficient than internal combustion vehicles. So even though coal is a dirtier energy source than gasoline or diesel, EVs need to use far less of it (in the form of electricity) to drive an additional mile.
EVs retain this carbon advantage even when you take into account their full “lifecycle” emissions — the cost of mining minerals, refining them, building a battery, and shipping a vehicle to its final destination. Across the full lifetime of a vehicle, EVs will release 57% to 68% less climate pollution than internal-combustion cars in the United States, according to a landmark analysis from the International Council on Clean Transportation. (As the publication Carbon Brief has shown, many analyses of EVs versus gas cars fail to take into account the full lifecycle emissions of the fossil-fuel system: the carbon pollution produced by extracting, refining, and transporting a gallon of gasoline.)
Even if you only care about emissions math, two more important reasons justify switching to an EV.
First, when you switch to an EV, you cut down enormously on the marginal environmental cost of driving an additional mile. Most of an EV’s environmental harm is “front-loaded” in its lifetime; that is, it is associated with the cost of producing and selling that vehicle. (Most electronics, including smartphones and laptops, have a similarly front-loaded carbon cost.)
But the carbon emissions of driving an additional mile are relatively low. In other words, converting an additional kilowatt of electricity into a mile on the road is relatively benign for the climate.
That’s not the case for an internal combustion vehicle. In a conventional gasoline- or diesel-powered car, every additional mile you drive requires you to burn more fossil fuels.
Don’t overthink it: There is no way to operate a gasoline or diesel car without burning more fossil fuels. Conventional ICE cars are machines that turn fossil fuels into (1) miles on the road and (2) greenhouse gas pollution. This means that — importantly — using an internal combustion vehicle, or even a conventional hybrid vehicle, will never be climate-friendly.
That’s why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that switching to an electrified transportation system — in other words, switching from gas cars to EVs — is “likely crucial” for cutting climate pollution and meeting the Paris Agreement goals. As the International Council on Clean Transportation concluded recently, “There is no realistic pathway for deep decarbonization of combustion engine vehicles.”
This calculus is likely to improve over time. Over the past decade, the U.S. power grid’s climate pollution has plunged while emissions from the transportation sector have slightly risen; we anticipate that, over the next decade, the U.S. power grid’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely to decline at least moderately. Energy experts also expect more renewables to get built, and that natural gas will continue to drive coal off of the grid. These changes mean that the per-mile cost of driving an EV will likely fall. (If you’re in the market for an EV, Heatmap is here to guide you.)
When you switch to an EV, you do something else, too — something that may sound self-evident but is actually quite important: You increase demand for EVs and for the EV ecosystem.
To be painfully direct about why this is important, this means that you stop spending so much money into the gasoline-powered driving system — the network of car dealers, gas stations, and oil companies that subsist on fossil fuels — and begin paying for products and services from the car dealerships, charging stations, and automakers who have invested in the new, low-carbon future.
This is more important than it may seem at first. In the United States, automakers have struggled to ramp up their EV production in part because consumers haven’t been buying their EVs. EVs are a manufactured good, and the world is betting on their continued technological improvement. The more EVs get made at a company or industry level, the cheaper they should get. When you buy an EV, you prime the pump for further improvements in that manufacturing chain.
Under the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has adopted rules that could make EVs more than half of all new cars sold by 2032. But those rules are somewhat flexible — automakers could also meet them by selling a lot of conventional and plug-in hybrids — and they are under legal threat. If Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election, then he will almost certainly roll them back, much as he reversed the Obama administration’s less ambitious car rules. And even if Kamala Harris wins, then the zealously conservative Supreme Court could easily throw out the rules.
Under most future scenarios, in other words, American consumers will have considerable power over how rapidly the country switches to electric vehicles. Even in a world where the federal government keeps subsidizing EV manufacturing and offers a $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers, the country’s transition to EVs will still depend on ordinary American families deciding to make a change and buy the cars.
So if you want to decarbonize your life, switching to an EV — provided that you drive enough for it to make sense — is one of the most important steps that you can take.
When you switch to an electric vehicle, you are doing several things. First, you are cutting off a source of demand for the oil industry. Second, you are creating a new source of demand for the EV industry. Third, you are generating new demand for the companies and infrastructure — such as charging stations — that will be needed for the entire transition.
Buying an EV is a climate decision that makes sense if you want to cut your carbon footprint and if you want to change the American energy system. That’s why it’s Heatmap’s No. 1 recommendation for how to decarbonize your life.
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Along with Senator John Curtis of Utah, the Iowa senator is aiming to preserve the definition of “begin construction” as it applies to tax credits.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wants “begin construction” to mean what it means.
To that end, Grassley has placed a “hold” on three nominees to the Treasury Department, the agency tasked with writing the rules and guidance for implementing the tax provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, many of which depend on that all-important definition.
Grassley and other Republican senators had negotiated a “glidepath for the orderly phaseout” of tax credits for renewables, the senator in a statement announcing the hold, giving developers until July 2026 to start construction on projects (or complete the projects and have them operating by the end of 2027) to qualify for tax credits.
Days after signing the law, however, President Trump signed an executive order calling for new guidance on what exactly starting construction means. The title of that order, “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” has generated understandable concern within the renewables industry that, as part of a deal to get conservative House members to support the bill, the Treasury Department will write new guidance making it much more difficult for wind and solar projects to qualify for tax credits.
“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction'’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade,” Grassley said. Under these longstanding definitions, “beginning construction” can mean undertaking “physical work of a significant nature,” which can include or buying certain long-lead equipment or components like transformers. Another way to qualify for the credits is to spend 5% of the total cost of the project.
A more restrictive interpretation of “begin construction,” however, could turn the tax credit language into a dead letter, especially when combined with the rest of the administration’s full-spectrum legal assault on renewable energy.
Grassley said that new guidance is expected within two weeks, and that “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent, I intend to continue to object to the consideration of these Treasury nominees.”Grassley has a long history with production tax credits for wind energy, playing a pivotal role in their extension in 2015. “As the father of the first wind energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent,” Grassley said at the time. “The five-year extension for wind energy brings about the best possible long-term outcome that provides certainty, predictability and a responsible phase-down of a tax incentive for a renewable energy source.”
Almost 60% of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind turbines, the highest proportion of any state, according to Energy Information Administration data.
Utah Senator John Curtis has joined Grassley in placing a hold on nominees, delaying their vote before the whole Senate, according to Politico’s Joshua Siegel. Grassley and Curtis, alongside Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were unable to get a meeting with the Treasury Department to discuss the guidance, Siegel reported.
On Puerto Rico’s water crisis, LNG’s tax scam, a nuclear safety scandal
Current conditions: Wildfire smoke in Alberta, Canada, is so thick that the airport had a visibility of just about 650 feet, and the air quality index hit 2241, 10 times higher than “hazardous” levels • At least 10 Chinese provinces are on alert for heavy rainfall this week, with as much as 8 inches deluging Beijing • Prolonged heatwave conditions in southeastern Europe are raising the risk of fires.
A wildfire in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park that has burned for nearly a month has grown into the largest blaze in the continental U.S. so far this year, scorching more than 114,000 acres as of this weekend. The Dragon Bravo fire, near the park’s North Rim, is expected to increase in size in the coming days due to the exceptionally dry, hot weather, The New York Times reported.
It’s far from the only major fire burning out West. The Gifford fire in California grew to nearly 40,000 acres on Sunday within the Los Padres National Forest in south-central California. The fire was just 3% contained as of late Sunday evening, according to the federal wildfire tracker, InciWeb. Last month, my colleague Jeva Lange wrote that the “next big wave” of wildfires out West “could happen any day.” As she reported, “the components for a bad fire season are all there — the landscape just needs a spark.” Lightning has been a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest, where thunderstorms led to 72 fires in two Oregon counties during just one night in June. A lightning strike is the likely cause of the Dragon Bravo fire.
One of many anti-corruption protests in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Jose Jimenez/Getty Images
Nearly eight years after Hurricane María decimated Puerto Rico’s power grid, the United States’ most populous territory still suffers electricity outages every week and faces rising utility bills. But the island of more than 3 million American citizens is reeling this week from yet another utility failure: Water outages. As many as 180,000 households in Puerto Rico lost access to running water last week, and thousands are still without service. The electricity and water issues are combined. Updates on the state-run water utility’s X page indicated that several water pumping stations are out of service due to a lack of electricity. Governor Jenniffer González Colón called in the National Guard to help distribute water.
It’s just the latest crisis afflicting the Caribbean territory’s basic infrastructure as the island enters the peak of hurricane season. The local government last month escalated its battle with New Fortress Energy, the financially troubled New York-based gas company that provides its fuel and operates its power plants. González Colón is considering ending the island’s contract with LUMA Energy, the private consortium that controls the power grid. Faced with ongoing blackouts, the government just scrapped Puerto Rico’s renewable energy targets and extended the life of a highly polluting coal plant, threatening devastating health consequences for the surrounding community, as I reported earlier this summer for the MIT Technology Review. And, despite González Colón’s chummy relationship with President Donald Trump, federal funding for Puerto Rico’s post-María reconstruction is still trickling out almost a decade after the storm.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is bringing tax credits for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles to a swift end on the grounds that the technologies are mature and therefore no longer worth subsidizing. Yet America’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas is seeking “alternative fuel” tax credits simply for running its vessels on the fuel they carry, exactly as they’re designed to do. The tax credit, originally signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2005, was intended to incentivize the switch from gasoline and diesel to biofuels, LNG, and liquid fuels derived from coal. The tankers Cheniere Energy, the nation’s top overseas seller of American LNG, uses to ship its fuel around the world are built to boil off fuel from the tanks that hold its cargo. But the company is seeking federal rewards for using the LNG, according to an investigation by Inside Climate News. If the Internal Revenue Service approves the request, Cheniere could net more than $140 million.
The Trump administration has vowed to cut back and streamline nuclear regulations to make building new reactors easier, potentially compromising safety. The effort has stirred enough drama at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a Republican commissioner resigned last week. Now a scandal at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in Florida is providing a timely reminder of why strict oversight exists over atomic energy stations. An inspection report on the plant, owned by Florida Power & Light, revealed that workers feared reporting safety problems to upper management lest they face retaliation. And that comes right as a database shows safety violations soared over the past year, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The investigation came as the Department of Energy discovered four radioactive wasp nests at the defunct Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina. The finding suggested that environmental contamination at the site, which previously developed weapons-grade material for the U.S. government, is more extensive than previously understood. While advocates of nuclear energy draw clear distinctions with the military-related sites, political upheaval at the federal agency that oversees radioactive materials could put the growing bipartisan consensus on building more reactors at risk.
Tesla’s board approved a $30 billion payout of shares to Elon Musk in a new compensation deal, according to a regulatory filing on Monday that followed the billionaire's threat to leave the electric automaker if he didn't receive more stock.
The move came days after a jury in Florida found flaws in Tesla’s self-driving software partly responsible for a crash that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend, The New York Times reported. If Friday's verdict holds, Tesla will be on the hook for as much as $243 million in damages to the parents of the woman and her boyfriend. The jury decided that Tesla bore 33% of the blame for the crash. Tesla said it would appeal. It’s a setback for Musk’s driverless ambitions. As Tesla’s human-driven automotive offerings stalled out last year, Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman wrote that, “sure, maybe it will be the one to crack full autonomous driving. But in practical terms, that tech is not close to reality, and Tesla’s version of it has encountered its fair share of bugs and been sued over crashes.”
New research from Stanford University has “upended conventional wisdom about electric vehicle battery management. Contrary to popular belief, a more dynamic driving style could significantly extend the lifespan of EV batteries,” including not charging the units to 100%.
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.