You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
A conversation with the most interesting man on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
It’s not every day that a top regulator calls into question the last few decades of policy in the area they help oversee. But that’s exactly what Mark Christie, a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the interstate power regulator, did earlier this year.
In a paper enticingly titled “It’s Time To Reconsider Single-Clearing Price Mechanisms in U.S. Energy Markets,” Christie gave a history of deregulation in the electricity markets and suggested it may have been a mistake.
While criticisms of deregulation are by no means new, that they were coming from a FERC commissioner was noteworthy — a Republican no less. While there is not yet a full-scale effort to reverse deregulation in the electricity markets, which has been going on since the 1990s, there is a rising tide of skepticism of how electricity markets do — and don’t — reward reliability, let alone the effect they have on consumer prices.
Christie’s criticisms have a conservative bent, as you’d expect from someone who was nominated by former President Donald Trump to the bipartisan commission. He is very concerned about existing generation going offline and has called activist drives against natural gas pipelines and other transportation infrastructure for the fossil-fuel-emitting power sources a “national campaign of legal warfare…[that] has prevented the construction of vitally needed natural gas transportation infrastructure.”
Since renewables have become, at times, among the world’s cheapest sources of energy and thus quite competitive in deregulated markets with fossil fuels (especially when subsidized), this kind of skepticism is a growing issue in the Republican Party, which has deep ties to oil and gas companies. The Texas state legislature, for instance, responded to Winter Storm Uri, which almost destroyed Texas’ electricity grid in 2021, with its own version of central planning: billions in low cost loans for the construction of new gas-fired power plants. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as secretary of energy in the Trump administration, even proposed to FERC a plan to explicitly subsidize coal and nuclear plants, citing reliability concerns. (FERC rejected it.) Some regions that didn’t embrace deregulation, like the Southeast and Southwest, also have some of the most carbon-intensive grids.
But Christie is not so much a critic of renewable resources like wind and solar, per se, as he is very focused on the benefits to the grid of ample “dispatchable” resources, i.e. power sources that can power up and down on demand.
This doesn’t have to mean uncritical acceptance of existing fossil fuel infrastructure. The idea that markets don’t reward reliability enough can help explain the poor winterization for fossil fuel generation that was so disastrous during Winter Storm Uri. And in California, the recognition that renewables alone can’t power the grid 24 hours a day has led to a massive investment in energy storage, which can help approximate the on-demand nature of natural gas or coal without the carbon pollution.
But Christie is primarily interested in the question of just how the planning is done for a system that links together electric generation and consumers. He criticized the deregulated system in much of the country where power is generated by companies separate from the utilities that ultimately sell and distribute that power to customers and where states have less of a role in overall planning, despite ultimately approving electricity rates.
Instead, these markets for power are mediated through a system where utilities pay independent generators a single price for their power at a given time that is arrived at through bidding, often in the context of sprawling multi-state regional transmission organizations like PJM Interconnection, which covers a large swath of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic region, or the New England Independent System Operator. He says this set-up doesn’t do enough to incentivize dispatchable power, which only comes online when demand spikes, thus making the system overall less reliable, while still showing little evidence that costs have gone down for consumers.
Every year, grid operators and their regulators — including Christie — warn of reliability issues. What Christie argues is that these reliability issues may be endemic to the deregulated system.
Here is where there could be common ground between advocates for an energy transition and conservative deregulation skeptics like Christie. While the combination of deregulation and subsidies has been great for getting solar and wind from zero to around 13 percent of the nation’s utility-scale electricity generation, any truly decarbonized grid will likely require intensive government supervision and planning. Ultimately, political authorities who are guiding the grid to be less carbon-intensive will be responsible for keeping the lights on no matter how cold, warm, sunny, or windy it happens to be. And that may not be something today’s electricity “markets” are up for.
I spoke with Christie in late June about how FERC gave us the electricity market we have today, why states might be better managers than markets, and what he’s worried about this summer. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What happened to our energy markets in the 1990s and 2000s where you think things started to go wrong?
In the late ‘90s, we had this big push called deregulation. And as I pointed out in the article, it really wasn’t “deregulation” in the sense that in the ‘70s, you know, the trucking and airlines and railroads were deregulated where you remove government price regulation and you let the market set the prices. That’s not what happened. It really was just a change of the price-setting construct and the regulatory construct.
It took what had been the most common form of regulation of utilities, where utilities are considered to be natural monopolies, and said we’re going to restructure these utilities and we’re going to let the generation part compete in these regional markets.
And, you know, from an economic standpoint, okay, so far so good. But there’s been a lot of questioning as to whether there’s really true competition. Many parts of the country also just didn’t do it.
I think there’s a serious question whether that’s benefiting consumers more than the cost of service model where state regulators set the prices.
So if I’m an electricity consumer in one of the markets that’s more or less deregulated, how might reliability become an issue in my own home?
First of all, when you’re in one of these areas that are deregulated, essentially you’re paying the gas price. If it goes up, that’s what you’re going to pay. If it goes down, it looks really good.
But from the reliability standpoint, the question is whether these markets are procuring enough resources to make sure you have the power to keep your lights on 24/7. That is the big question to a consumer in a so-called deregulated state: Are these markets, which are now the main vehicle for buying generation resources, are they getting enough generation resources to make sure that your lights stay on, your heat stays on, and your air conditioning stays on?
Do you think there’s evidence that these deregulated markets are doing a worse job at that kind of procurement?
Well, let’s take, for example, PJM, which came out with an announcement in February that said they were going to lose in the next five years over 40 gigawatts. A gig is 1,000 megawatts, so that’s a lot of power, that’s a lot of generating resources. And the independent market monitor actually has told me it is closer to 50 gigawatts. So all these units are going to retire and they’re going to retire largely for economic reasons. They’re not getting sufficient compensation to stay open.
The essence of restructuring was that generating units are going to have to make their money in the market. They’re not going to get funding through what's called the “rate base,” which is the regulated, traditional cost-of-service model. They have to get it in the markets and theoretically, that sounds good.
But in reality, if they can’t get enough money to pay their cost, they’re going to retire and then you don’t have those resources. Particularly in the RTOs [regional transmission organizations, i.e. the multi-state electricity markets], you’re seeing these markets result in premature retirements of generating resources. And so, now, why is that? It’s more of a problem in the RTOS than non-RTOS because in the non-RTOS, they procure resources under the supervision of a state regulator through what’s called an integrated resource plan or IRP.
The reason I think the advantage and reliability is with the non-RTOS is that those utilities have to prove to a state regulator that their resource plan makes sense, that they’re planning to buy generating resources. Whether they’re buying wind or solar or gas, whatever, they have to go to a state regulator and say, “Here’s our plan” and then seek approval from that regulator. And if they’re shutting down units, the state regulator can say, “Wait a minute, you’re shutting down units that a few years ago you told us were needed for reliability, and now you’re telling us you want to shut them down.” So the state regulator can actually say , “No, you’re not going to shut that unit down. You’re going to keep running it.”
That’s why I think you have more accountability in the non-RTOS because the state regulators can tell the utility, “you need more resources, go build it or buy it,” or “you already have resources, you’re not going to shut them down, we’re not going to let you.”
You don’t have that in an RTO. In an RTO, it’s all done through the market. The market decides, to the extent it has a mind. You know, it’s all the result of market operations. It’s not anybody saying whether it’s a good idea or not for a certain unit to shut down.
I find it interesting that a lot of the criticism of the deregulated system — and a lot of places that are not deregulated — come from more conservative states that would generally not think of themselves as having this kind of strong state role in economic policy. What’s different about electricity? Why do you think the politics of this line up differently than it would on other issues?
I don’t know. That’s an interesting question. I haven’t even thought about it in those terms.
I think it goes back to when deregulation took place in the mid-to-late ‘90s. Other than Texas, which went all the way, the states that probably went farthest on it were in the Northeast. Part of the reason why is because they already had very high consumer prices. I think deregulation was definitely sold as a way to reduce prices to consumers. It hasn’t worked out that way.
Whereas you look at the Southeast, which never went in for deregulation. The Southeastern states, which are still non-RTO states, had relatively very low rates, so they didn’t see a problem to be fixed.
The other big trend since the 1990s and 2000s is the explosive growth of renewables, especially wind and solar. Is there something about deregulated electricity markets, the RTO system, that makes those types of resources economically more favorable than they would be under a different system?
Well, if you’re getting a very high subsidy, like wind and solar are getting, it means you can bid into the energy markets effectively at zero. So if you can bid in at zero offering, you’re virtually guaranteed to be a winner. In a non-RTO state, a state that's doing it through an integrated resource plan, the state regulator reviews the plan. That's why I think an IRP approach is better actually for implementing wind and solar because you can implement and deploy wind and solar as part of an integrated plan that includes enough balancing resources to make sure you keep the lights on.
To me an Integrated Resource Plan is a holistic process, where you can look at all the resources at your disposal: wind, solar, gas, as well as the demand side. And you can balance them all in a way that you think, “Okay, this balance is appropriate for us for the next three years, or four years, or five years.” Because you’re typically doing an IRP every three to five years anyway. And so I think it’s a good way to make sure you balance these resources.
In a market there’s no balancing. In a market it’s just winners and losers. And so wind and solar are almost always going to win because they have such massive subsidies that they’re going to get to offer in at a bid price of zero. The problem with that is they’re not going to get paid zero. They’re going to get paid the highest price [that all electricity suppliers get]. So they offer in at zero, but they get paid the highest price, which is going to be a gas price. It’s probably going to be the last gas unit to clear, that’s usually the one that’s the highest price unit. And yet because of the single clearing price mechanism, everybody gets that price. So you can offer it at zero to guarantee you clear, but then you’re going to get the highest price, usually a gas combustion turbine peaker.
Do you think we would see as much wind and solar on the grid if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of the resources are benefiting from the pricing mechanism you describe?
I don’t think you can draw that conclusion because there are non-RTO states that have what’s called a mandatory RPS, mandatory renewable portfolio standard. And so you can get there through a mandatory RPS and a cost to service model just as you can end up in a market. And actually, again, I think you can get there in a more balanced way to make sure that the reliability is not being threatened in the meantime.
To get back to what we’re talking about in the beginning, my understanding is that FERC, where you are now, played a large role in encouraging deregulation in the formation of RTOs. Is this something that your staff or other commissioners disagree with you about? How do you see the role you’re playing, where you’re doing public advocacy and reshaping this conversation around deregulation?
First of all, we always have to give the standard disclaimer, you never talk about a pending case. But FERC was really the driving force behind a lot of this deregulation. So obviously, they decided that that’s what they wanted to push, and they did. And so I think it’s appropriate as a FERC regulator to raise questions. I think raising questions about the status quo is an important thing that we do and should do. Ultimately, you advocate for what you think it ought to be and if the votes come eventually, it might take several years, but it’s important.
One of the things I try to do is, I put the consumer at the center of everything I do. It is absolutely my priority. And I think that it should be every regulator’s priority, particularly in the electric area because most consumers in America — in fact, almost all consumers in America — are captive customers. By captive. I mean, they don’t get to choose their electric supplier.
Like, where do you live, Matthew?
I live in New York City.
You don’t get to choose, right? You’re getting electricity from ConEd. And you don’t have any choice. So you’re a captive customer. And most consumers in America are captive customers. We tried this retail choice in a few states that didn’t work. You know, they’re still doing it. I’m not going to say whether it’s working or not, but I know we tried it in Virginia, and it didn’t work at all because of a lot of reasons.
I always put customers first and say, “Look, these customers are captive. We have to protect them. We have to protect the captive customers by making sure they’re not getting overcharged.” So that’s why I care about these issues. And that’s why I wrote this article. I think that customers in a lot of ways in America are not getting treated fairly. They’re getting overcharged and I think they’re not getting what they should be getting. And so I think a big part of it is some of this stuff that FERC's been pushing for the last 25 years.
Our time is running out. So I will leave with a question that is topical: It’s already been quite hot in Texas, but outside of Texas and in FERC-land, where are you concerned about reliability issues this summer?
Well, I’m concerned about everywhere. It’s not a flippant remark. I read very closely the reliability reports that we get from NERC and we have reliability challenges in many, many places. It’s not just in the RTOs. I think we have reliability challenges in the South. Fortunately, the West this year, which has been a problem the last couple of years, is actually looking pretty good because all the rain last winter — even flooding — really was great for hydropower.
I’m from California, and I think it’s the first time in my adult life that I remember stories about dams being 100 percent, if not more than 100 percent, full.
The rains and snowfall were so needed. It’s filled up reservoirs that have been really dry for years. And from an electrical standpoint, it’s been really good for hydro. So they’re looking at really good hydro availability this summer in ways they haven't been for the last several years. So the West actually, because of all the rain and the greater available of hydro, I think is in fairly good shape.
There’s a problem in California with the duck curve, the problem is still there. If you have such a high solar content, when the sun goes down, obviously the solar stops generating and so what do you do you know for the next four to five hours? Because the air conditioners are still running, it’s still hot, but that solar production has just dropped off the table. So they’ve been patching with some battery storage and some gas backup.
But I’m worried about everywhere. I watch very closely the reports that come out of the RTOs and you can’t be shutting down dispatchable resources at the rate we’re doing when you’re not replacing them one to one with wind or solar. The arithmetic doesn’t work and it’s going to catch up to us at some point.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
The company says its first Optimus robots will start rolling off the line in “2026.”
Tesla is a car company everywhere except Wall Street. It delivered some 1.7 million cars in 2024, which were built in factories in Texas, California, Germany, and China. These car sales (and leases and sales of regulatory credits) generated some $77 billion in revenue. Its gross margin on these cars is about 18.5%, or around $14 billion.
When Tesla reported its first quarter earnings, it announced a more than 70% decline in profits, continued falling sales, and ahit to its business from the trade war with China. But its stock climbed the next day, and is now trading at around $350 a share, from $238 before the report, giving it an overall value of over $1 trillion. By some metrics, Tesla makes up more than half of the overall value of the automotive industry.
That’s because it’s not valued like a car company. The company’s investors are putting a huge stake on future innovations that largely spring from the head of Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive. These include promised self-driving cars and a self-driving taxi service, as well as the Optimus humanoid robot, which Musk has said could turn into a $10 trillion business. (For reference, Walmart’s annual revenue is just under $650 billion; Walmart is also worth less than Tesla today.) So far, all we know about the Optimus is that it can dance.
One reason analysts and shareholders cheered its most recent results is because Musk committed to spending less time in Washington trying to reshape the federal government and more time with the company that makes up the lion’s share of his immense personal wealth. But just getting more of Musk’s time is the easy test. A more consequential challenge for the thesis that Tesla can be more than just a company that sells cars to people who drive them is its upcoming robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, scheduled for next month.
While Google’s Waymo already has a fully autonomous taxi system available in a few areas of a few cities, Musk has repeatedly promised that Tesla could reach full autonomy globally far more cheaply than Waymo — or, as he puts it, “Waymo needs ‘way mo’ money to succeed 😂.”
But the initial rollout of the robotaxi may be modest. Adam Jonas, a bullish Tesla analyst with Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to clients on Friday after a conversation with Tesla’s head of investor relations that the Austin debut will “have 10-20 cars” and “plenty of tele-ops to ensure safety levels.”
Another future Tesla business, its Optimus robot, might be able to open up its factory to tours for investors sometime in the last three months of the year, Jonas reported, with commercialization coming by the middle of 2026 at a cost of around $20,000 per unit. The company aims to produce “several thousand” robots by the end of this year, he said. (Though you should be skeptical of any and all dates and deadlines given by Tesla — Musk has been promising an imminent fleet of autonomous Teslas for over five years.) Right now, Jonas wrote, about 12 are being produced at a time, more or less by hand.
And that’s just the mechanics. The software for humanoid autonomy also isn’t there yet: “Tesla admits both intelligence and cost ‘need to come a long way’ to unlock the true potential of humanoid robots,” Jonas wrote. “The neural nets for Optimus are far larger than for cars given greater degrees-of-freedom and far more open-ended tasks.”
Tesla also has more prosaic worries for these next generation businesses. Company officials told Jonas that they’re in an “incredibly competitive” hiring market, especially compared to Chinese companies, which “own the supply chain” for advanced technologies.
While Tesla and Musk are eager to tell the public that the company is orienting itself toward an AI-driven robotic future, some of its other corporate actions may reflect the more present-day concerns of brand management. Tesla sales have declined sharply overseas, and its showrooms have become sites for protest, driven by anger over Musk’s role in the Trump administration.
The company said Friday that it would welcome a new member of its board: Jack Hartung, president and chief strategy officer of Chipotle, a brand with its own history of crisis, stock market volatility, and precarious executive leadership. While it’s unlikely Tesla will get involved in the food business anytime soon, it may benefitfrom learning from Chipotle’s struggles over the last few years of giving people what they expect.
At least one target of Chris Wright’s grant review may run into some sticky statutory issues.
The Department of Energy announced on Thursday that it’s reviewing some 179 awards made by the Biden administration worth $15 billion to ensure they were “consistent with Federal law and this Administration’s policies and priorities.”
But what happens when federal law and Trump’s priorities are at odds?
In the case of at least one awardee, the major U.S. steel producer Cleveland Cliffs, the DOE’s review process may become a mechanism to take funding that is statutorily designated for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and channel it into long-lived fossil fuel assets.
Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Cleveland Cliffs, a major U.S. steel producer, said on an earnings call last week that the company was in the process of renegotiating its $500 million award under the Industrial Demonstrations Program. The DOE program funded 33 projects to decarbonize heavy industry, including cement, steel, aluminum, and glass production, with first-of-its-kind or early-scale commercial technologies.
Cleveland Cliffs was originally going to use the money to replace its coal-fired blast furnace at a steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, with a new unit that ran on a mix of hydrogen and natural gas as well as new electric furnaces. Now, the company is working with the Department of Energy to “explore changes in scope to better align with the administration’s energy priorities,” Goncalves told investors. The project would no longer assume the use of hydrogen and “would instead rely on readily available and more economical fossil fuels.”
The CEO later clarified that the company planned to “reline” its blast furnace at Middletown, extending its life, “now that the project is changing scope.”
But the Inflation Reduction Act, which created the Industrial Demonstrations Program, says the funds must be used for “the purchase and installation, or implementation, of advanced industrial technology,” which it defines as tech “designed to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reduction progress to net-zero.”
“I don’t know at this point what Cleveland Cliffs can confidently say they’re going to do to substantially reduce greenhouse gasses and also deliver gains in public health and jobs to local communities, which is a prerequisite for IDP grant money,” Yong Kwon, a senior advisor for the Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation Campaign, told me.
The memo announcing the Department of Energy’s review says that it has already reached some “concerning” findings, though it does not describe what was concerning or provide any further detail about the awards under review.
Compared to his peers at other agencies, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been noticeably quiet about the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to slash funding across the Department of Energy. But in March, Axiosobtained documents that said more than 60% of grants awarded under the Industrial Demonstrations Program were being targeted. The following month, CNN reported that Cleveland Cliffs’ Middletown project was on the list slated for termination, noting that it would have secured 2,500 jobs and created more than 100 new, permanent jobs in JD Vance’s hometown.
At the time, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN that “no final decisions have been made” about the funding and that “multiple plans are still being considered.” Now it appears the Department may be negotiating with Cleveland Cliffs to develop a cheaper and more politically palatable project.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have also introduced a bill that would rescind any money from the Industrial Demonstrations Program that isn’t obligated, meaning that if the Department of Energy can find a way to legally terminate its contracts with companies, Congress may claw back the money.
The Industrial Demonstrations Program was the Biden administration’s “missing middle” grant program, designed to support projects that were past the early experimental stage, in which case they were no longer candidates for funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, but were also not ready for mass deployment, like those supported by the Loan Programs Office. In the case of Cleveland Cliffs, the funding was also aimed at making the U.S. a leader in the future of steelmaking, retaining thousands of jobs, saving the company money, and enabling it to command a higher price for its products.
“If you’re going to maintain blast furnaces, it means you have one foot in a technology that is now quickly becoming outdated that the rest of the global steel industry is transitioning away from,” Kwon told me.
David Super, an expert in administrative law at Georgetown University, told me in an email that if the Department of Energy provides and Cleveland Cliffs accepts funding that does not comply with statute, “the Department officials involved could be in violation of the Antideficiency Act and Cleveland Cliffs could be required to return the money, a modified contract notwithstanding.” The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal employees from obligating funds for projects that are not authorized by law.
Super added that the law also specifies that the money be awarded “on a competitive basis.” As Cleveland Cliffs won the competition with its hydrogen project, allowing it to use the money for a different project at the company’s plant “would thus violate the requirement of competitive awards and would allow the unsuccessful bidders to challenge this funding award.”
Neither Cleveland Cliffs nor the Department of Energy responded to a request for comment.
Leaks to the press have signaled that the Department of Energy may be taking a similar approach with the hydrogen hubs, potentially terminating contracts to develop renewable energy-based projects — all of which are in blue states — while allowing natural gas-based projects in red states to continue.
It is still not clear how the agency will handle its $3.5 billion direct air capture hubs, which news outlets have reported may also be under threat. On Friday, however, the oil and gas company Occidental, which was awarded a contract to develop a DAC hub in Texas, announced that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is considering investing up to $500 million in the project as part of a new joint-venture agreement. The press release notes that the agreement was signed during President Trump’s visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Last week, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said during a confirmation hearing for Kyle Haustveit, the nominee to head the Office of Fossil Energy, that two carbon capture projects in her state were “in limbo” due to the agency’s spending review. The same day, in another hearing, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida accused Wright of having frozen $67 billion worth of funds and asked him to commit to releasing it.
Wright denied this. “We’re not withholding any funds and we’ve paid every invoice we’ve had for work done and funds that are due,” he replied. But he went on to clarify that the agency is “engaging with” recipients “to make sure American taxpayer monies are being spent in thoughtful, reasonable ways.”
According to efficiency department data, the DOE has “terminated” 39 contracts worth $60 million and five grants worth $3.4 million. The contracts include news subscriptions, various technical support services, and a $22 million contract with consulting firm McKinsey for “rapid response deliverables” for the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the department that runs the Industrial Demonstrations Program. The grants include three Advanced Research Projects Agency awards to explore using geologic stores of hydrogen, and another to reduce methane emissions from natural gas flares.
On budget negotiations, Climeworks, and DOE grants
Current conditions: It’s peak storm season in the U.S., with severe weather in the forecast for at least the next six days in the Midwest and East• San Antonio, Texas, is expected to hit 108 degrees Fahrenheit today• Monsoon rains have begun in Sri Lanka.
The House Budget Committee meeting to prepare the reconciliation bill for a floor vote as early as next week appears to be a go for Friday, despite calls from some Republicans to delay the session. At least three GOP House members, including two members of the Freedom Caucus, have threatened to vote no on the budget because a final score for the Energy and Commerce portion of the bill, which includes cuts to Medicaid, won’t be ready from the Congressional Budget Office until next week. That is causing a “math problem” for Republicans, Politico writes, because the Budget Committee “is split 21-16 in favor of Republicans, and Democrats are expecting full attendance,” meaning Republicans can “only lose two votes if they want to move forward with the megabill Friday.” Republican Brandon Gill of Texas is currently out on paternity leave, further reducing the margin for disagreement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is also contending with discontent in the ranks over cuts to clean energy tax credits. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty bad,” New York Republican Andrew Garbarino, a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, told Politico on Thursday. But concerns about the cuts, which would heavily impact Republican state economies and jobs, do not appear to be a “red line” for many others, including Georgia’s Buddy Carter, whose district benefits from Inflation Reduction Act credits for a Hyundai car and battery plant that is among the targets for elimination. You can learn more about the cuts Republicans are proposing to the IRA in our coverage here.
The Swiss carbon removal company Climeworks is preparing for significant cuts to its workforce, citing the larger economic landscape and the Trump administration’s lack of consistent support. The company currently has 498 employees, but is undergoing a consultation process, indicating it is looking to cut more than 10% of its workforce at once, SwissInfo.ch reports. “Our financial resources are limited,” Climeworks’ co-founder and managing director Jan Wurzbacher said in comments on Swiss TV.
Though Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is a known proponent of carbon capture, and there had been excitement in the industry that Trump’s attempts to expedite federal permitting would benefit carbon storage sites, the administration has also hollowed out the Department of Energy’s carbon removal team, my colleague Katie Brigham has reported. The ongoing funding cuts and uncertainty have made it difficult to get information from the government that could affect Climework’s Project Cypress in Louisiana, although Wurzbacher stressed that “we are not currently aware that our project would be stopped.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced in a Thursday memo that the department will be reviewing at least $15 billion worth of grants awarded to “power grid and manufacturing supply chain projects” under the Biden administration, Reuters reports. “With this process, the Department will ensure we are doing our due diligence, utilizing taxpayer dollars to generate the largest possible benefit to the American people and safeguarding our national security,” Wright said in his statement.
The memo goes on to note that the DOE plans to prioritize “large-scale commercial projects that require more detailed information from the awardees for the initial phase of this review, but this process may extend to other DOE program offices as the reviews progress.” Projects that don’t meet the DOE’s standards could be denied, as could projects of grantees who fail to “respond to information requests within the provided time frame, does not respond to follow-up questions in a timely manner.” As of last week, Wright told lawmakers, “we’ve canceled zero” existing projects so far, E&E News writes; the agency will reportedly be reviewing at least 179 different awards during its audit.
The number of National Weather Service offices ending 24-hour operations and severe weather alerts is increasing. On Thursday, The San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that California’s Sacramento and Hanford offices, which provide information to more than 7 million people in the Central Valley, have been forced to reduce service due to “critically reduced staffing.”
Eliminating 24-hour service is especially concerning for the Central Valley and surrounding foothills, where around-the-clock weather updates can be critical. “These are offices that have both dealt with major wildfire episodes most of the past 10 years, and we are now entering fire season,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, told the Chronicle. “That’s a big, big problem.” Swain additionally shared on LinkedIn a map he’d put together of regions in the U.S. that no longer have full-service weather coverage, including “a substantial chunk of Tornado Alley during peak tornado season and the entirety of Alaska’s vast North Slope region.” The NWS is additionally seeking to fill 155 vacancies in coastal states that could face risks as the Atlantic hurricane season begins at the end of the month, The Washington Post reports. An estimated 500 of 4,200 NWS employees have been fired or taken early retirements since the start of Trump’s term.
Heatmap’s “most fascinating” EV of 2025 just got pushed back to 2026. The Ram 1500 Ramcharger — which has a 140-mile electric range as well as a V6 engine attached to a generator to power the car when the battery runs out — is now set to launch in the first quarter of next year due to “extending the quality validation period,” Crain’s Detroit Business reported this week. Parent company Stellantis also pushed back the launch of its fully electric Ram 1500 REV until summer 2027, with a planned model year of 2028. “Our plan ensures we are offering customers a range of trucks with flexible powertrain options that best meet their needs,” Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson told Crain’s in an email. Though you now have even longer to wait, you can read more about the car Jesse Jenkins calls “brilliant” here.
GMC
The 2026 GMC Hummer EV just got even more ridiculous. “Thanks to the new Carbon Fiber Edition,” the 9,000-pound car “can zoom to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds,” InsideEVs reports.