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The repeal, which is sure to face legal challenges, opens up what Reuters called a new front in the legal wars over climate change. Until now, the Supreme Court had declined to hear so-called public nuisance cases brought by activists against fossil fuel companies on the grounds that the legal question of emissions was being sorted out through federal regulations. By eliminating those rules outright, litigants could once again have new standing to sue over greenhouse gas emissions. To catch up on the endangerment finding in general, Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer and Emily Pontecorvo put together a handy explainer here.
A bill winding its way through Ohio’s Republican-controlled state legislature would put new restrictions on development of wind and solar projects. The state already makes solar and wind developers jump over what Canary Media called extra hurdles that “don’t apply to fossil-fueled or nuclear power plants, including counties’ ability to ban projects.” For example, siting authorities defer to local opposition on renewable energy but “grant opponents little say over where drilling rigs and fracking waste can go.”
The new legislation would make it state policy “in all cases” for new power plants to “employ affordable, reliable, and clean energy sources.” What qualifies as “affordable, reliable, and clean”? Pretty much everything except wind and solar, potentially creating a total embargo on the energy sources at any utility scale. The legislation mirrors a generic bill promoted to states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing policy shop.
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China’s carbon dioxide emissions fell by 1% in the last three months of 2025, amounting to a 0.3% drop for the full year. That’s according to a new analysis by Carbon Brief. The decline extends the “flat or falling” trend in China’s emissions that started in March 2024 and has now lasted nearly two years. Emissions from fossil fuels actually increased by 0.1%, but pollution from cement plunged 7%. While the grid remains heavily reliant on coal, solar output soared by 43% last year compared to 2024. Wind grew by 14% and nuclear by 8%. All of that allowed coal generation to fall by 1.9%.
At least one sector saw a spike in emissions: Chemicals, which saw emissions grow 12%. Most experts interviewed in Heatmap’s Insiders Survey said they viewed China has a climate “hero” for its emissions cuts. But an overhaul to the country’s electricity markets yielded a decline in solar growth last year that’s expected to stretch into this year.
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Rivian Automotive’s shares surged nearly 15% in after-hours trading Thursday when the electric automaker announced earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations. While it cautioned that it would continue losing money ahead of the launch of its next-generation R2 mid-size SUV, the company said it would deliver 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles in 2026, up 47% to 59% compared with 2025. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told CNBC that the R2 would make up the “majority of the volume” of the business by the end of next year. He told investors 2025 was a “foundational year” for the company, but that 2026 would be “an inflection point.”
Another clean energy company is now hot on the stock market. SOLV Energy, a solar and battery storage construction contractor, secured market capitalization eclipsing $6 billion in the two days since it started trading on the Nasdaq. The company, according to Latitude Media, is “the first pure-play solar and storage” company in the engineering, procurement, and construction sector of the industry to go public since 2008.
A file photo of Israel's nuclear reactor at the Dimona research complex.Getty Images
Israel has never confirmed that it has nuclear weapons, but it’s widely believed to have completed its first operating warhead in the 1960s. Rather than give up its strategic ambiguity over its arsenal, Israel instead forfeited the development of civilian nuclear energy, which would have required opening up its weapons program to the scrutiny of regulators at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. That apparently won’t stop the U.S. from building a reactor in Israel to power a joint industrial complex. Washington plans to develop a campus with an advanced microchip factory and data centers that would be powered by a small modular reactor, NucNet reported. So-called SMRs have yet to be built at a commercial scale anywhere in the world. But the U.S. government is betting that smaller, less powerful reactors purchased in packs can bring down the cost of building nuclear plants and appeal to fearful skeptics as a novel spin on the older technology.
In reality, SMRs are based on a range of designs, some of which closely mirror traditional, large-scale reactors but for the power output, and a growing chorus of critics say the economies of scale are needed to make nuclear projects pencil out. But the true value of SMRs is for off-grid power. As I wrote last week for Heatmap, if the U.S. government wants it for some national security concern, the price doesn’t matter as much.
Of all the fusion companies racing to build the first power plant, Helion’s promise of commercial electricity before the end of the decade has raised eyebrows for its ambition. But the company has hit a milestone. On Friday morning, Helion’s Polaris prototype became the first privately developed fusion reactor to use a deuterium-tritium fuel source. The machine also set a record with plasma temperatures 150 million degrees Celsius, smashing its own previous record of 100 million degrees with an earlier iteration of Helion’s reactor.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to replace several items from August that ran by mistake.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, meanwhile, announced plans to keep two coal-fired plants operating beyond their planned retirement dates. In a move that seems laser-targeted at the White House, the federally-owned utility’s board of directors — or at least those that are left after President Donald Trump fired most of them last year — voted Wednesday — voted Wednesday to keep the Kingston and Cumberland coal stations open for longer. “TVA is building America’s energy future while keeping the lights on today,” TVA CEO Don Moul said in a statement. “Taking steps to continue operations at Cumberland and Kingston and completing new generation under construction are essential to meet surging demand and power our region’s growing economy.”
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the Trump administration plans to appeal a series of court rulings that blocked federal efforts to halt construction on offshore wind farms. “Absolutely we are,” the agency chief said Wednesday on Bloomberg TV. “There will be further discussion on this.” The statement comes a week after Burgum suggested on Fox Business News that the Supreme Court would break offshore wind developers’ perfect winning streak and overturn federal judges’ decisions invalidating the Trump administration’s orders to stop work on turbines off the East Coast on hotly-contested national security, environmental, and public health grounds. It’s worth reviewing my colleague Jael Holzman’s explanation of how the administration lost its highest profile case against the Danish wind giant Orsted.
Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s sales of electrolyzers for green hydrogen projects halved in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period last year. It’s part of what Hydrogen Insight referred to as a “continued slowdown.” Several major projects to generate the zero-carbon fuel with renewable electricity went under last year in Europe, Australia, and the United States. The Trump administration emphasized the U.S. turn away from green hydrogen by canceling the two regional hubs on the West Coast that were supposed to establish nascent supply chains for producing and using green hydrogen — more on that from Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo. Another potential drag on the German manufacturer’s sales: China’s rise as the world’s preeminent manufacturer of electrolyzers.
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The artificial intelligence giant Anthropic said Wednesday it would work with utilities to figure out how much its data centers were driving up electricity prices and pay a rate high enough to avoid passing the costs onto ratepayers. The announcement came as part of a multi-pronged energy strategy to ease public concerns over its data centers at a moment when the server farms’ effect on power prices and local water supplies is driving a political backlash. As part of the plan, Anthropic would cover 100% of the costs of upgrading the grid to bring data centers online, and said it would “work to bring net-new power generation online to match our data centers’ electricity needs.” Where that isn’t possible, the company said it would “work with utilities and external experts to estimate and cover demand-driven price effects from our data centers.” The maker of ChatGPT rival Claude also said it would establish demand response programs to power down its data centers when demand on the grid is high, and deploy other “grid optimization” tools.
“Of course, company-level action isn’t enough. Keeping electricity affordable also requires systemic change,” the company said in a blog post. “We support federal policies — including permitting reform and efforts to speed up transmission development and grid interconnection — that make it faster and cheaper to bring new energy online for everyone.”
A nickel mine in Indonesia. Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images
Syria’s oil reserves are opening to business, and Western oil giants are in line for exploration contracts. In an interview with the Financial Times, the head of the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company listed France’s TotalEnergies, Italy’s Eni, and the American Chevron and ConocoPhillips as oil majors poised to receive exploration licenses. “Maybe more than a quarter, or less than a third, has been explored,” said Youssef Qablawi, chief executive of the Syrian Petroleum Company. “There is a lot of land in the country that has not been touched yet. There are trillions of cubic meters of gas.” Chevron and Qatar’s Power International Holding inked a deal just last week to explore an offshore block in the Mediterranean. Work is expected to begin “within two months.”
At the same time, Indonesia is showing the world just how important it’s become for a key metal. Nickel prices surged to $17,900 per ton this week after Indonesia ordered steep cuts to protection at the world’s biggest mine, highlighting the fast-growing Southeast Asian nation’s grip over the global supply of a metal needed for making batteries, chemicals, and stainless steel. The spike followed Jakarta’s order to cut production in the world’s biggest nickel mine, Weda Bay, to 12 million metric tons this year from 42 million metric tons in 2025. The government slashed the nationwide quota by 100 million metric tons to between 260 million and 270 million metric tons this year from 376 million metric tons in 2025. The effect on the global price average showed how dominant Indonesia has become in the nickel trade over the past decade. According to another Financial Times story, the country now accounts for two-thirds of global output.
The small-scale solar industry is singing a Peter Tosh tune: Legalize it. Twenty-four states — funny enough, the same number that now allow the legal purchase of marijuana — are currently considering legislation that would allow people to hook up small solar systems on balconies, porches, and backyards. Stringent permitting rules already drive up the cost of rooftop solar in the U.S. But systems small enough for an apartment to generate some power from a balcony have largely been barred in key markets. Utah became the first state to vote unanimously last year to pass a law allowing residents to plug small solar systems straight into wall sockets, providing enough electricity to power a laptop or small refrigerator, according to The New York Times.
