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As the world tries to move away from fossil fuels, the oil supermajor acquires one of the Permian Basin’s biggest players. Here’s why.
ExxonMobil has long been considered by observers as something more akin to a state than a mere oil company. Its signature massive overseas projects, which can take over a decade to go from idea to getting oil out of the ground, require not just billions of dollars of investment, but the type of on-the-ground convincing and conniving typical of interstate diplomacy.
Exxon executives even got the awards typically reserved for statesman, as when the company’s former chief executive (and future secretary of state) Rex Tillerson received the Russian Order of Friendship as a commendation for the work ExxonMobil did with the Russian state oil company Rosneft in the Arctic.
But ExxonMobil now sees the future of the oil business in its relative backyard — namely, the Permian Basin, the massively productive oil field that stretches from western Texas to eastern New Mexico, and specifically its western stretch, the Midland basin. The move represents an acknowledgement that the world’s energy markets have changed and the ability to start — and stop — production quickly may be more valuable than securing massive new projects.
ExxonMobil and Pioneer Natural Resources announced a planned stitch-up on Wednesday, combining the supermajor with one of the Permian’s biggest players. The deal is worth almost $60 billion, making its ExxonMobil’s biggest deal since its purchase for, well, Mobil in 1999.
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The combined companies will, in less than five years, be producing 2 million barrels of oil per day in the Permian (out of over 5 million total), ExxonMobil’s chief executive Darren Woods said Wednesday morning. Today, merged production would represent some 1.3 million barrels per day, about half of Exxon Mobil’s total in 2022. Exxon will own some 1.4 million acres in the Permian, thanks to Pioneer’s 850,000.
The average cost of extracting the oil in territory controlled by Pioneer will be $35, Woods said, well below where oil prices have ranged in the last year.
Now, much of Exxon’s oil portfolio will be in so-called “short-cycle” oil, meaning that the time that elapses between deciding to drill and getting oil out of the ground is shorter.
“Where new, major conventional fields cost billions of dollars, take several years to begin, and a decade or more to produce from, a hydraulic fracturing well costs $10 million or less, takes a few months to set up, and produces the majority of its oil within a few years. It provides a flexible means by which investors can extract oil, distinct from the mainstream industry,” explained University of California geographer Gabe Eckhouse in 2021.
These investments can swing dramatically in response to oil prices. When ExxonMobil slammed the brakes on oil production in the early months of the pandemic, it even announced a 75% cut in its Permian rigs.
ExxonMobil is not positioning itself to a world where the fossil fuel business dries up, but one where demand becomes more unstable. When oil executives can forecast that demand will steadily grow over time, they can justify billion-dollar-investments in massive new oil projects.
“All that Big Oil needed was the geological acumen to find the next reservoir and the political skills to sign a contract with a government in a far-flung corner of the world. Its cash and prowess to build marvels of engineering mega-projects would do the rest for the next 50 years or so,” Bloomberg’s Javier Blas wrote when the deal first came into focus last week.
With a portfolio more heavily weighted towards domestic assets that are cheaper to operate, ExxonMobil can now more nimbly respond to wild swings in energy policy across the globe — whether it’s a major oil exporter disappearing from the legitimate Western market, or countries in the industrialized world deliberately reducing their oil consumption — and more precisely scale its investment to oil demand.
“When commodity markets have downcycles, the short-cycle assets provide additional capital flexibility as shale assets require less long-term capital commitments, compared to conventional operation,” Woods said, essentially explaining to investors that ExxonMobil would be able to conserve cash when oil prices dropped and return it to them when oil prices go back up.
ExxonMobil isn’t the only company buying in the Permian. Pioneer itself previously swallowed up DoublePoint Energy, which had almost 100,000 Midland Basin acres, as well as Parsley Energy. Occidental, which has been a leader in investing in carbon management, bought Andarko in a massive $55 billion deal in 2019. The Pioneer acquisition could be a sign that new wave of consolidation is upon the Permian.
While the deal is not at all consistent with a world without fossil fuels, it’s not entirely inconsistent with where we are today, where much of the rich world at least has some kind of climate policy. Earlier this year, ExxonMobil announced that it would buy Denbury Inc., which operates a massive set of pipelines for transporting carbon dioxide. They could be used in the oil giant’s emerging carbon-management business, which includes deals for carbon capture for its Louisiana ammonia plant, a Nucor steel plant, and a hydrogen plant it’s working on in Texas. Woods said Thursday morning on an investor call that the deal “strengthens our low-carbon solutions business by increasing the volume of low-cost and lower-carbon Permian feed into our planned Baytown low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia facilities,” and that it would use its technology to reduce emissions from its oil operations in the territory it acquired from Pioneer.
But ExxonMobil itself isn’t being reduced. It’s only getting bigger.
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Energy Innovation has some bad news for House Republicans.
House Republicans are racing to overcome intraparty disagreements and deliver their “one big, beautiful” budget bill to the Senate before the Memorial Day weekend. As currently written, the bill would render the nation’s clean energy tax credits largely inaccessible, severely impairing clean energy development.
We now have a more detailed picture of what’s at stake if this bill or something like it makes it all the way to the president’s desk. The research firm Energy Innovation modeled all of the energy and environment provisions in the version of the bill that passed the House Budget Committee on Sunday night. It found that the proposed changes to oil and gas leasing, greenhouse gas emissions standards, and tax credits, could cost the United States more than $1 trillion in GDP over the next decade compared to a world where these policies remain untouched.
That number is a reflection of the narrow subset of policies the group modeled and does not take into account Trump’s tax cuts. In theory, those could have a positive effect on GDP that offsets some of the loss. But the effects on energy costs and jobs on their own tell a grim story.
By 2030, the average American would spend $120 more per year on transportation and home energy costs than they otherwise would. By 2035, the increase would climb to more than $230. Lower demand for clean technologies like electric vehicles and solar panels would kill more than 700,000 potential jobs across the economy in 2035.
Energy Innovation isn’t the only group warning of dire consequences. The bill “represents a crisis for America’s ability to build the energy infrastructure we need to meet surging demand,” Abigail Ross Hopper, the CEO and president of the Solar Energy Industries Association said in a statement yesterday. The group estimates that the bill would put 287 factories that serve the solar industry at risk of closing or never opening in the first place. Most of those are in red states.
The forecasts stem from key changes the GOP is proposing to make to tax credits that incentivize wind and solar development, domestic manufacturing, and consumer adoption of electric vehicles and energy efficiency upgrades. The bill would end these subsidies earlier than currently planned (though how much earlier is currently in flux), and impose stricter materials sourcing requirements, tighter development timelines, and more rigid project finance rules for the years they remain in effect, making it nearly impossible to use them.
As a result, fewer wind, solar, and energy storage projects would get built. Those that did get built would cost more, meaning that natural gas would set the price in energy markets more frequently. Natural gas would also be more expensive because of higher demand. The Energy Information Administration already expects natural gas costs to rise this year and next, even without changes to tax incentives. Altogether, generating electricity would cost about 50% more in 2035 than it otherwise would, according to Energy Innovation, which would translate to roughly 17% higher bills for consumers.
Budget hawks in the House are now pushing for an even more aggressive phase-out of the green tax credits before they agree to send their legislation to the Senate, and the Republican leadership can afford to lose just three votes on the floor, giving them a narrow window to please everyone. But the earlier phase-out would have little impact on Energy Innovation’s findings, Robbie Orvis, the senior director for modeling and analysis for the group, told me. The existing provisions in the bill that prevent companies from sourcing materials from China would be so difficult to meet that the model assumes the affected credits would be unclaimable beginning next year.
The modeling shows a similar effect in transportation costs. Terminating the tax credit for electric vehicles would lower demand for EVs and increase demand for gasoline, causing prices at the pump to go up. Less demand for EVs would also mean fewer domestic jobs producing them, and fewer jobs producing the components that go into them. Then there’s the overall tightening of purse strings that would come as a result of higher energy costs, which could reduce hiring still further.
Orvis said the estimates for job loss are likely conservative, as the model looks at changes in demand for EVs and other clean technologies but doesn’t do a good job accounting for the changes in supply that would result from early repeal of 45X, the clean manufacturing tax credit.
Notably, energy costs go up in the model despite provisions in the bill that are designed to lower the cost of oil and gas. Those include more frequent lease sales and lower royalty rates for companies that pay to drill on federal lands and waters. But Energy Innovation found that demand-driven price increases more than offset any price declines resulting from these measures.
The tax credit termination also isn’t the only factor here. Energy Innovation included the House’s proposed repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions standards for cars and trucks, which amplified the effects. This provision may not make it into the final text, however, as the special rules governing the budget reconciliation process in the Senate prohibit policies that aren’t budgetary in nature. As the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund put it in a memo to reporters, the regulations were issued to protect public health, and while they do result in costs and benefits for Americans and companies, they do not change the federal budget. “Even if Republican leadership tries to claim any budgetary impacts here, they would be clearly incidental to the main purpose of the proposed legislation,” the group said.
Of course, at least seven Senate Republicans have been vocal about their disapproval of the House’s treatment of the tax credits, so the whole thing may still be subject to change.
“This is what you’d expect from China,” a veteran mining industry lobbyist told Heatmap.
President Donald Trump is chasing a new American mining boom. In the process, he’s making quick bets on projects that haven’t completed routine financial analyses or would be situated in environmentally sensitive areas with significant legal risk — and occasionally both at the same time.
In March, Trump issued an executive order that changed the landscape of American mining for the foreseeable future, commanding agencies to approve permits for individual mines as quickly as possible and requesting government funds go toward domestic mining. The Interior Department has also taken strides to hasten the environmental review process for mining on federal lands, asserting that it will complete comprehensive analyses in less than 30 days, a truncated time-table the likes of which mining industry lobbyists have long sought.
So far in his second term as president, Trump’s administration has claimed to have approved, expedited, or publicly endorsed at least 28 different mines and mineral exploration projects, according to a review of Bureau of Land Management notices and federal permitting databases, with more likely in the offing. Many of these projects may very well produce minerals required for key energy or defense purposes, and some of them are guaranteed to do so. But at least a few have not yet been proven to be economically viable in the way investors typically expect from mining companies.
Conservationists have decried these actions as an unnecessary risk to sensitive landscapes, which could be irrevocably changed without a guarantee of improved energy security. And even some in the mining industry are quietly noting these examples, saying they could represent a paradigm shift in how America treats the mining industry.
“This is what you’d expect from China,” a former veteran mining industry lobbyist told me, requesting anonymity to protect their current business from retribution. “The U.S. prides itself on mines that are good neighbors. The U.S. doesn’t have a perfect record, but those are things that it values.”
“I’m not saying the companies are going to do something wrong here,” the source continued, “but we don’t know that.”
The most headline-grabbing example of this rush to permit came last week, when the Interior Department said it would for the permitting of a large uranium mine in Utah known as Velvet-Wood. The department said it would complete Velvet-Wood’s environmental review within two weeks — a process that has historically taken years.
On first blush, abbreviating the approval process for a mine that will produce energy fuel for nuclear power plants resembles the sort of permitting reform that climate hawks and centrist policy wonks have craved for years. Velvet-Wood’s developer, Anfield Energy, claims the site will also produce vanadium, a strategic mineral used in defense-grade steel.
A deeper examination, however, exposes signs of haste that go beyond all deliberate speed.
Ordinarily, mines take years to develop for reasons wholly unrelated to the federal permitting process. Usually a project requires years of exploration and study to verify that the area where digging will happen holds proven “resources” and then “reserves.” Think of resources vs. reserves as the difference between lukewarm and high levels of confidence that minerals are not only present but also economic to mine and process. It is unusual for any mine to be built without proven resources, let alone reserves, and feasibility studies are the way companies usually communicate that level of proof to investors. These studies have also been a primary mode of conveying a project’s value and design to the government.
Until our present policy moment, the permitting process was so lengthy that it made little sense to pursue it without first giving investors the certainty brought by a feasibility study. Anfield and other companies appear to have found a work-around to demonstrate that certainty, however, at least to the government: Asking to dig in places where mines used to be decades ago.
Anfield has not yet completed a feasibility study for Velvet-Wood, which would include the site of a former underground uranium mine. The most recent study of the project was a 2023 “preliminary economic assessment” that documented some of the old mining infrastructure and otherwise largely referenced historical data about mineralization. The company stated in the report that the study was “too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them,” and that “there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.”
In Anfield’s own press release announcing the Trump administration’s decision to quickly permit the project, the company states that it “has not done sufficient work to classify these historic estimates” for uranium and vanadium at the site. Anfield did not respond to requests for comment on why the company requested government permits before finishing a feasibility study.
Under the Velvet-Wood deposit’s previous owner, Russian mining company Uranium One, a draft feasibility study did find economically viable uranium. But that study is more than a decade old and was not made public, according to press materials at the time.
In order to become operational, Anfield expected to have to update the decades-old plan of operations for Velvet-Wood, according to the 2023 economic assessment, which also said BLM would need to take into account the impacts of restarting a formerly operational mine, as well as mining in areas that have not previously been mined before. That’s quite a lot of work to complete in only two weeks. While it’s possible that staff at Interior got a head start on their review when Anfield submitted its mine plan last year, they have not confirmed anything to that effect since the department’s announcement about permitting the project.
Aaron Mintzes, senior policy counsel for the mining reform advocacy group Earthworks, told me the practice of approving a mine before feasibility studies have been done carries the risk of painting a misleading portrait to investors about a project’s viability.
“Every mining company does this. All of them. If you’re a publicly traded mining company and you want investors to give your mine money, you must provide a feasibility study. That’s how you know they’re telling the truth,” Mintzes said of this approach. “Investors should be upset about this.”
In an email, BLM press secretary Brian Hires told me that “feasibility studies are not legally required by BLM for mining projects.”
“The BLM continues to ensure appropriate environmental oversight including coordination with other agencies, balancing mineral development rights and responsible public lands management,” Hires stated.
On Velvet-Wood, Hires said the agency acted under “recently established emergency procedures” created under the Trump administration to quickly approve new resource projects. “The expedited review is expected to significantly contribute to meeting urgent energy demands and addressing key threats to national energy security.”
Velvet-Wood is not the first mine Trump’s Interior Department has expedited so early in the approval process.
On April 8, the Trump administration gave Dateline Resources, an Australian company, a green light to build a large mine inside of the Mojave National Preserve. Like Velvet-Wood, the project, known as Colosseum, got this approval without a feasibility study. Colosseum would be a gold mine, according to Dateline’s website, which also states that the project is “prospective” for producing rare earth elements as a byproduct. The company cites previous radiomagnetic reviews by the U.S. Geological Survey and the project’s proximity of roughly 8 kilometers — or about 6 miles — from an operating rare earths mine, Mountain Pass. The company also cites decades-old information about the site from when it used to be an operating gold mine in the 1970s and 1980s.
Are there rare earths at the Colosseum dig site? There may be — but how much and how commercially useful they’d be are normally determined through a feasibility study process.
BLM approved Colosseum without any new environmental review, or at least nothing that was public at the time it made the decision known. Instead, it said in a five-sentence press statement that Dateline could rely entirely on a construction and operations plan from the previous mine, which shut down in the 1990s.
BLM’s press release also referred to Colosseum as a rare earths mine, with no mention of gold.
“For too long, the United States has depended on foreign adversaries like China for rare earth elements for technologies that are vital to our national security,” the release stated. “By recognizing the mine’s continued right to extract and explore rare earth elements, Interior continues to support industries that boost the nation’s economy and protect national security.”
Hires, the BLM press secretary, told me that the agency made this claim to highlight “the project’s potential to produce rare earth elements, which are required for economic and national security.”
On April 21, investors were informed that a “bankable feasibility study” was now “underway.” But that didn’t stop Trump from jumping far ahead of the usual process a few days later, publicly calling the project “America’s second rare earths mine” on Truth Social.
There’s a big reason this area stopped being mined, by the way: According to the National Park Conservation Association, the area is heavily restricted from mineral development under a law Congress passed in the early 1990s, the California Desert Protection Act.
There is a separate law that provides companies the ability to mine in national preserves and parks under very specific and limited conditions, and with the approval of the National Park Service, the association told me. Kelly Shapiro, an attorney representing Dateline, told E&E News in a story published last week that Interior told the company its mine plan of operations was “valid.” Shapiro also told the news outlet that “rare earths have been found at the Colosseum mine site.”
Dateline has now begun work at the mine site and conservation activists are sounding public alarms. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Asked why BLM gave Colosseum the right to construct a new operating mine, Hires said the project site, which has not been active for decades, “is not a new mine.” He said the facility was granted the “right” to “continue mining operations” under the plan from when the site was active in the 1980s, which the agency said “includes exploration for rare earth minerals.”
Before I came to Heatmap, I spent years writing about the mining industry. One of the stories I’m proudest of was an investigation into the amount of mining needed to build the vastly different energy and transportation systems we’ll need to fully decarbonize. So I can safely say this: We truly will need more minerals like lithium, copper, nickel, graphite and cobalt to decarbonize, and we might need to open more mines to get them, although recycling and technological innovation could easily reduce the tonnage required over time.
The Trump team has a different argument for mining this much. It says our country needs to wean off foreign sources of metals because relying on imports is a weakness in the eyes of hawkish security experts.
For the past decade, U.S. policymakers of both parties have rallied behind the basic notion that the country should stop relying as much on minerals from nations considered to be adversaries by the national defense apparatus, including China and Russia, as well as companies perceived to be substantially controlled by those nations. The idea first gained traction under Trump 1.0, leading to the creation of a list of so-called “critical minerals” that the military and domestically essential businesses rely on but are generally mined or refined in other countries.
Under Joe Biden, the “critical mineral” concept was magnified by multiple signature laws, including the 2021 infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which together established large grant and tax credit programs intended to stimulate a new American mining economy.
Trump has sped up the federal permitting process for some copper, nickel, and lithium mining and exploration projects. These commodities markets are ones in which China genuinely has an outsized influence, per national security experts, through market share and existing business relationships held by Chinese state-owned mining and refining companies.
Some of these U.S. mining projects likely would’ve been permitted no matter the outcome of last year’s election, either because their environmental impacts would be relatively limited or because they’d produce metals crucial for the energy transition that a Democrat-led government would have supported as a trade-off. Take South32’s Hermosa copper mine in Arizona, which the Biden administration fast-tracked and Trump 2.0 has signaled it will approve. A handful of these mines would supply a meaningful amount of defense minerals for which we currently rely on China, such as the Stibnite gold mine in Idaho, which would yield antimony for military-grade ammo as a byproduct.
Then there are special cases like the Resolution copper mine in Arizona, where the government’s hands are essentially tied under federal legal requirements to approve the conveyance of land to a mining company.
Other “transition metal” mining projects fast-tracked or endorsed by Trump 2.0, however, likely would not have been given priority — or even a second look — under a more neutral federal regulator. That’s because they are located in areas that officials under previous administrations fretted would produce outsized pollution risk and potentially run afoul of environmental laws.
Take for example the NewRange copper mine in Minnesota, which the company says would be the state’s only active copper mine if approved and constructed. NewRange is better known in the mining industry as PolyMet, which was its moniker for most of the nearly two decades it has been in the works. NewRange/PolyMet has struggled to get requisite permits, to the point of being referred to by its opponents as a “zombie” project, because it’s situated in an especially porous area of northern Minnesota covered in protected wetlands.
In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden said the Army Corps of Engineers should rescind a water permit issued under Trump 1.0 because the project would violate the pollution standards of the Fond du Lac Tribe, which relies on the wet ecosystem to cultivate wild rice for subsistence and cultural practices.
At the beginning of May, the Trump administration added NewRange/PolyMet to a federal “transparency” dashboard that it says will soon have a timetable for approving the project under the same authority it fast-tracked Resolution. Representative Pete Stauber of Minnesota, whose congressional district includes the mining project, reacted in a statement that said the designation shows Trump “understands the vital importance of this project,” and that he looks forward to “seeing NewRange meet and exceed every permitting standard in a timely manner.”
This is an example of mine that, if approved hastily, would probably create new litigation just as fast.
At the risk of repeating myself, it’s not the only example of such a case, and there are more examples where the Trump administration has opened the door to new, legally risky directions on a mine.
Most notable in that pile is the Pebble mine in Alaska, which Trump halted during his first term but may be given what appears to be a last shot at survival under his new government. Decades of battle between a would-be gold mine and the denizens of Bristol Bay have dominated conversations around American mining. Opponents across the political spectrum have tried to stop the project because they fear construction would pollute the bay and its world-class fishing grounds.
The first Trump administration actually opposed Pebble after a private lobbying campaign by Donald Trump, Jr. and other conservative conservation advocates. Under Biden, the EPA issued a rare veto of the project area under a provision of the Clean Water Act. This was a step beyond simply rejecting the permit as it would, in the view of advocates, be a permanent restriction against development.
In February, the Trump 2.0 Justice Department requested a stay on the federal lawsuit filed against the veto by Pebble’s developer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, alongside top political leaders in the state of Alaska, who have argued that the agency overstepped its authority. On Wednesday, Justice Department attorneys filed a status report asking that the stay be extended for at least another month because while officials had been briefed on the subject, they “require additional time to determine how they wish to proceed.”
This indicates the government is still not ready to state its position, and leaves open a door for the Justice Department to flip sides. Northern Dynasty Minerals hopes a flip will happen. “This is an important position in any negotiation between a project proponent and a regulator, and for a process that could, hopefully, remove the veto and re-start the permitting process,” the company’s CEO Ron Thiessen said in a public statement made after the stay extension request.
It may be that even Pebble Mine is a bridge too far for Trump 2.0. But after all these other projects have gotten the skids greased, we must all wait with bated breath for the next shoe — er, pebble — to drop.
On a surprise agreement, DOE loans, and pipeline permitting
Current conditions: More than 7 million Americans are under risk of tornadoes Tuesday, including in the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee valleys • There is “dreary” weather ahead for the Northeast as rain and cold return • It will feel like 107 degrees Fahrenheit today in Xingtai, China, where the average this time of year is 86 degrees.
The Trump administration has lifted its stop-work order on Empire Wind, an offshore wind project by Equinor that had already started construction south of New York’s Long Island when the Department of the Interior ordered it paused on April 16. New York’s governor, Democrat Kathy Hochul, apparently secured the agreement for construction to resume after three “roughly one-hour calls with President Donald Trump, the most recent on Sunday,” in which she emphasized the energy and job-creating benefits of the project, The Washington Post reports. In a statement, Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy, cheered the move, saying, “Today, I am reminded how proud I am to be a New Yorker. We thank Governor Hochul for being an early and continuous champion for offshore wind and for bringing her advocacy to the highest levels of government.”
As my colleagues Emily Pontecorvo and Jael Holzman previously reported, the stop-work order on Empire Wind had seriously jeopardized New York State’s chance of meeting its climate and clean energy goals, with offshore wind viewed as the route away from New York City’s reliance on fossil fuels. In AM yesterday, I also covered a report that the offshore wind industry was preparing to respond “with strength” to the roadblocks and opposition from the Trump administration. It reportedly cost Equinor $50 million per week to hold the project while the Trump administration deliberated its merits.
The Department of Energy plans to cancel seven major loans and loan guarantees, including a New Jersey transmission project and a low-income rooftop solar program, Semafor reports, per a “former DOE official close to the process.” The programs had all been conditionally approved under Biden, and also included a low-carbon ammonia factory by Monolith Nebraska, as well as a battery factory, a plastics recycling facility, and two others that had already been canceled by their developers. In sum, the canceled financing amounts to nearly $8.5 billion — which admittedly isn’t much of the roughly $41 billion in Biden-era LPO agreements that were yet unfinalized when Trump took office. At the same time, “it’s revealing that the administration would let these projects — most of which are in sectors where the U.S. is already far behind China — fall by the wayside, rather than take steps to prop them up,” Semafor’s Tim McDonnell notes.
A House Rules Committee document points to potential changes to the reconciliation bill as negotiations continue — including, perhaps, to permitting. The original bill stipulated that CO2, hydrogen, and petroleum pipelines could pay a $10 million fee to bypass the standard permitting process, a move that critics decried as a “pay-to-play privilege for gas pipelines.” Activists and Democrats had slammed the provision, with Evergreen Action arguing it “makes a farce of our permitting process and essentially legalizes corruption,” and that “Americans will be severely impacted by gas pipelines built through their communities.” But in the new version of the bill, the language describing the expedited pipeline permitting “is gone,” Notus writes.
There is still a long way to go in negotiations, as hardliners and moderates remain at odds. The Rules Committee’s vote on a final version of the reconciliation bill is scheduled for 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, in order to stay on track for a possible floor vote this week — although others are skeptical of the feasibility of that timeline.
Clean power manufacturing is expected to grow from supporting 122,000 American jobs today to more than 575,000 by 2030 if all announced manufacturing facilities become operational, a new report by the American Clean Power Association found. The report similarly expects the economic output generated by those facilities to grow from contributing $18 billion to the U.S. GDP today to $86 billion by the end of the decade. “Today’s report shows that the manufacturing activities across the clean energy sector drive a ripple effect of economic growth that extends far beyond factory walls, reaching every corner of the country,” Jason Grumet, the CEO of ACP, said in a statement.
While clean energy manufacturing has taken a hit under the Trump administration, with more than $8 billion in projects canceled, closed, or downsized in the first quarter of 2025 due to concerns about access to Inflation Reduction Act tax credits and loan financing, as well as greater economic turbulence, ACP found that many investments are concentrated in rural areas and Republican states. With 200 manufacturing facilities in the pipeline, the report calls for preserving energy tax credits, “facilitating a true all-of-the-above energy strategy,” and creating “a stable and strategic trade environment,” among other policies.
An anti-nuclear protest near Lingen, Germany, in 2023.David Hecker/Getty Images
Germany’s longtime opposition to treating nuclear power on par with renewables in EU energy policy appears to have ended. France, which gets about 70% of its power from atomic energy, had long pushed for broader adoption in Europe — and been stymied by Germany’s former chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who was skeptical of labeling atomic energy “green.” But the nation will pivot to join France under Germany’s new conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, leaving Austria as the last remaining holdout in the EU, Reuters reports. “When France and Germany agree, it is much easier for Europe to move forward,” Lars-Hendrik Röller, who served as chief economic adviser to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told the Financial Times. The pivot is not just about meeting energy needs, however; as one German official also told FT, “We are now actually finally open to talk to France about nuclear deterrence for Europe. Better late than never.”
“I only drained about 25 miles of range from the battery after powering my fridge and other devices for days.” —Scooter Doll, writing for Electrek about how he used his Rivian R1S as a backup energy source for three days after last week’s tornadoes knocked out his power.