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Current conditions: A fire in New Jersey’s Ocean County has grown to 8,500 acres, prompting thousands of evacuations • Parts of South Africa are bracing for “damaging thunderstorms” • It will be almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Moscow today — nearly 30 degrees above average.
Tesla’s profits dropped 71% year-over-year, and its automotive revenue dropped 20% over the same period, the company reported Tuesday. CEO Elon Musk subsequently assured investors and analysts that he plans to spend more time focused on the automaker, reducing his time in Washington to “a day or two per week” for the duration of Donald Trump’s presidency. Tesla sales are down “because of intense competition from Chinese carmakers like BYD, a lack of new models, and Mr. Musk’s support of far-right causes,” The New York Timeswrites, although the company remains the most valuable car maker in the world by market capitalization. Tesla declined to give a specific growth outlook for the rest of the year.
There may, however, be further trouble ahead for the company’s fastest-growing business: its energy storage products. Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja admitted that “the impact of the tariffs on the energy business will be outsized” since it sources battery cells from China. This comes as Tesla’s “energy segment — which includes the company’s battery energy storage businesses for residences (Powerwall) and for utility-scale generation (Megapack) — has recently been a bright spot for the company, even as its car sales have leveled off and declined,” my colleague Matthew Zeitlin writes.
That’s if the tariffs last. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday he anticipates a “de-escalation” with China in the “very near future,” and President Trump added, “We’re going to be very nice and they’re going to be very nice, and we’ll see what happens.”
The White House denied reports that it is considering revoking the tax-exempt status of environmental nonprofits, E&E Newsreported. Despite rumors that the administration would issue an executive order as soon as Tuesday, an official confirmed to the publication that “no such orders are being drafted or considered at this time.”
I spoke to Jillian Blanchard, the vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, earlier on Tuesday about such a hypothetical move by the administration. “The president doesn’t have that authority,” she told me, noting that “there’s an actual law against them directing Treasury to pull tax status.” But Blanchard said that while it isn’t accurate that an executive order could, with the stroke of a pen, take away environmental groups’ tax-exempt status, “part of the process here is trying to fear-monger and get people afraid to give money to 501(c)(3)s.” She suggested nonprofit groups prepare for whatever may be ahead by staying informed, potentially seeking pro bono assistance from groups like Lawyers for Good Government, and getting their tax documentation in order — just in case.
David McNew/Getty Images
Fuel cell cars and space heating are “among the least promising” applications of hydrogen, according to a new study published Tuesday by Nature. The research, which explored the “realistic roles” for hydrogen in the energy transition, found that it should be “deployed strategically in areas where it seems likely to have greatest potential for cost and sustainability benefits” — primarily in industry, long-duration energy storage, and long-haul transport. Other conclusions the researchers made include:
Read the full report at Nature.
New York City created just 2,184 new “green” jobs in 2023, per a new report covered by Inside Climate News. The number significantly undermines claims by Democratic Mayor Eric Adams that the green economy would create 400,000 jobs in the city by 2040.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation has estimated that 40% of the city’s green jobs would come from the decarbonization and electrification of buildings. But as Inside Climate News points out, “If the implementation of Local Law 97, which limits city building emissions, is muted, or renewable energy investments suffer due to the choices made at the federal level, green job growth could be much slower than planned.”
Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, and other major oil companies are offshoring specialized jobs, such as engineering, geology, and environmental science, to countries like India, where they can pay workers a third or a fourth of what they pay their U.S. counterparts, The Wall Street Journalreports. Chevron, for example, has announced plans to cut as many as 8,000 jobs worldwide while simultaneously expanding its global center in India by 600 jobs. “Many managers have told me comments like, ‘Our remote operations are typically 90% as efficient, but 70% of the cost, so it’s a great deal for us,’” Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom explained to the Journal. In the U.S., oil and gas jobs have declined by almost 15% since mid-2019.
“You’re looking at potentially no growth from U.S. oil this year.” —Matthew Bernstein, a senior analyst of upstream research at Rystad Energy, in comments to the Financial Times about how Trump’s tariffs are “one of the biggest headwinds” the shale industry has faced in a long time.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.