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Economy

European Energy Is Worried

On flaring, forests, and boardroom deliberations.

Tuesday.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: At least 45 are dead and many more are trapped in the Indian state of Kerala after heavy rainfall triggered landslides • California’s Park Fire, only 14% contained, is now the sixth-largest in the state’s history • Typhoon Gaemi’s death toll continues to climb as the storm’s remnants batter southern China • A flash flood hit the popular Dollywood theme park in Tennessee.

THE TOP FIVE

1. European clean energy companies weigh their futures in the U.S. ahead of the presidential election

European companies are considering whether to invest in new clean energy projects in the U.S. as November’s election looms, Reuters reported on Monday. The Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives for clean energy, EVs, and hydrogen – which drew many European firms to cross the Atlantic – are perceived to be in jeopardy in the event of a Trump victory. Companies like Thyssenkrupp Nucera, Nel, SMA Solar, and H2Apex, which have undertaken clean energy projects in the U.S. in the last two years, are all delaying investment decisions over worries that tax credits and demand could dry up.

Their concerns are warranted. Donald Trump has pledged to redirect clean energy funding to other priorities like roads and bridges should he win re-election. And the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (widely seen as a policy map for a second Trump term) proposes gutting key climate agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy’s Loans Program Office.

2. Nuclear fusion company concludes giant funding round

Type One Energy closed its seed funding round at $82.5 million, a testament to the hype surrounding the emerging nuclear fusion company. As Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reports, the company uses a reactor design known as a stellarator, which – unlike the traditional tokamak reactor – employs a twisted magnetic field to keep the plasma stabilized inside. The company’s novel technology sparked interest from major funders like Breakthrough Energy, Centaurus Capital, and New Zealand-based GD1. Type One CEO Chris Mowry called the funding round, “one of the largest, if not the largest ever, seed financings in the history of energy.”

3. Gas flaring in Azerbaijan hits a decadal high

The host of the UN COP29 climate summit flared 10.5% more methane in 2023 than it did in 2018, the last time the country reported its emissions, according to recent analysis by nonprofit group Global Witness. Flaring involves burning (rather than capturing) the natural gas produced as a byproduct of oil drilling, and it is responsible for over 381 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually, according to the World Bank. Several of the facilities most at fault for the increase in flaring are owned or operated by British multinational energy company BP.

It’s a new black mark on Azerbaijan’s climate record, already under scrutiny by those who object to holding another climate conference in a major oil and gas-producing country.

4. Wildfires are hurting the U.S. economy

A forthcoming report by economic analysis group IMPLAN finds that wildfires could punch a nearly $90 billion hole in U.S. economic output this year. Wildfires are already displacing entire communities as they rage across much of the American West. That’s going to have an impact, says IMPLAN — potentially eliminating as many as 466,000 jobs by the end of the year. The report notes that some industries may actually benefit from the surge in wildfires. Businesses like electricity, healthcare, and (of course) fire prevention could see elevated spending as climate change increases the frequency of these destructive blazes.

5. A new study casts doubt on forests’ ability to curb emissions

Vegetation isn’t acting as the carbon sponge many had hoped it would. A new study by the French research organization Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Sciences (LCES) found that between 2022 and 2023, the growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased 86%. That’s partly because drought in the Amazon and wildfires in Canada constrained forests’ ability to sequester carbon as they normally do. While the report’s authors noted that carbon uptake changes from year to year, these findings cast doubt on forests’ reliability as a carbon sponge in the future. “We are pumping less carbon from the atmosphere into the land,” one of the study’s authors told Reuters. “Suddenly the pump is choking, and it's pumping less.”

THE KICKER

“Unfortunately, meteorological events beyond our control ... can alter water quality and compel us to reschedule the event for health reasons.” – A joint statement by World Triathlon and Paris 2024 blaming the weekend’s rain storms for the pollution in the Seine that caused them to postpone today’s men’s Olympic triathlon.

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Economy

AM Briefing: Liberation Day

On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Loom
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A rare wildfire alert has been issued for London this week due to strong winds and unseasonably high temperatures • Schools are closed on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Paros after a storm caused intense flooding • Nearly 50 million people in the central U.S. are at risk of tornadoes, hail, and historic levels of rain today as a severe weather system barrels across the country.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump to roll out broad new tariffs

President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.

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Podcast

The Least-Noticed Climate Scandal of the Trump Administration

Rob and Jesse catch up on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund with former White House official Kristina Costa.

Lee Zeldin.
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The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.

It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Since February, Trump’s criminal justice appointees — led by Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — have tried to use criminal law to undo the program. After failing to get the FBI and Justice Department to block the flow of funds, Trump officials have successfully gotten the program’s bank partner to freeze relevant money. The new green banks have sued to gain access to the money.

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Funding Cuts Are Killing Small Farmers’ Trust in Climate Policy

That trust was hard won — and it won’t be easily regained.

A barn.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Spring — as even children know — is the season for planting. But across the country, tens of thousands of farmers who bought seeds with the help of Department of Agriculture grants are hesitating over whether or not to put them in the ground. Their contractually owed payments, processed through programs created under the Biden administration, have been put on pause by the Trump administration, leaving the farmers anxious about how to proceed.

Also anxious are staff at the sustainability and conservation-focused nonprofits that provided technical support and enrollment assistance for these grants, many of whom worry that the USDA grant pause could undermine the trust they’ve carefully built with farmers over years of outreach. Though enrollment in the programs was voluntary, the grants were formulated to serve the Biden administration’s Justice40 priority of investing in underserved and minority communities. Those same communities tend to be wary of collaborating with the USDA due to its history of overlooking small and family farms, which make up 90% of the farms in the U.S. and are more likely to be women- or minority-owned, in favor of large operations, as well as its pattern of disproportionately denying loans to Black farmers. The Biden administration had counted on nonprofits to leverage their relationships with farmers in order to bring them onto the projects.

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Green