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The $1 billion TotalEnergies deal may also stand on shaky ground. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported in back-to-back scoops, documents suggest the Trump administration’s legal argument for drawing on a federal settlement fund rests on shaky ground. Other documents show that TotalEnergies isn't required to make any new investments in U.S. oil and gas under the agreement, contrary to what Trump officials said about the deal.
A lot of Chinese solar panels.CN-STR / AFP via Getty Images
Long accused of maintaining an overcapacity of factories to churn out solar panels, China’s photovoltaic output is now in soaring demand as the world scrambles to cope with the energy shock brought on by the Iran War’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. New data from the think tank Ember shows that China’s solar exports reached a record 68 gigawatts in March, double the previous month. When Ember analyzed the Chinese customs authority data, its researchers found that the exports are equivalent to Spain’s entire solar capacity, surpassing the previous record set in August 2025 by 49%. At least 50 countries — you read that right — set all-time records for Chinese solar imports in March, with another 60 seeing the highest levels in six months. Compared to February numbers (the war began on February 28), Chinese solar exports grew by 141% to India, 384% to Malaysia, 391% to Ethiopia, and 519% to Nigeria.
“Fossil shocks are boosting the solar surge,” Euan Graham, senior analyst at Ember, said in a statement. “Solar has already become the engine of the global economy, and now the current fossil fuel price shocks are taking it up a gear. Countries are importing solar panels at record levels, and building up their own domestic assembly and manufacturing capabilities to address surging global demand.”
Elon Musk is betting even bigger on artificial intelligence. Tesla plans to boost spending to $25 billion this year as the electric automaker cum battery and solar giant invests in self-driving taxis, zero-emissions trucks, robots, and a sweeping new chip factory to power its AI ambitions. During a call with investors on Thursday, Musk said there would be a “very significant increase in capital expenditure” this year, which “will be well justified considering substantially increased revenue streams,” according to the Financial Times. The forecast is nearly triple the $8.5 billion Tesla spent last year.
The shift comes as the U.S. faces what Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman called the “great American EV contraction” that took place after the Trump administration ended federal tax credits for electric vehicles last fall.
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In a nuclear industry filled with startups promising to reinvent the reactor, Blue Energy stands out as a company promising instead to transform how good old-fashioned light water reactors are built. The firm wants to prefabricate its small modular reactors in a factory, making each one as uniform and replicable as possible. “For the first time, a nuclear project is designed so that it doesn’t need to rely primarily on taxpayer dollars and ratepayers to backstop risk,” Jake Jurewicz, Blue Energy chief executive and co-founder, told S&P Global. In a press release, Jurewicz called its forthcoming debut facility, a 1.5-gigawatt complex in Texas, “the first project-financeable nuclear plant.”
Shares in GE Vernova spiked 14% on Wednesday after the energy industrial giant reported surging demand for its gas turbines and nuclear reactors to power the AI boom in its latest quarterly earnings. As I told you yesterday, GE Vernova’s head of government affairs and policy, Roger Martella, said this week that the project to build North America’s first small modular reactor at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington plant was on track to produce power by 2030. In a note to investors, the investment bank Jeffries said soaring gas demand and “green-shoots for nuclear” sent the price upward.
If online gambling services like Kalshi and Polymarket allow people to bet on something, do the incentives for the worse outcome change? Turns out, obviously, the answer is yes. Just consider this example. Polymarket allowed people to bet on daily temperatures from some official weather stations. Now Météo-France, the official French meteorological agency, is accusing someone of using an artificial heat source to manipulate reads at a station and win bets.
The Trump administration’s efforts to paralyze wind and solar permits are once again withering in the cold light of the court room. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper ordered the end to a series of delays on renewable energy permits, delivering a victory to regional trade groups that had argued the administration was violating the Administrative Procedures Act by holding up approvals. Per Heatmap’s Jael Holzman, the ruling “is a potentially fatal blow” to “key methods the Trump administration has used to stymie federal renewable energy permitting.”
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In the race to build North America’s first small modular reactor, GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy is in the lead. Work is already underway on the world’s first deployment of the American-Japanese joint venture’s 300-megawatt boiling water reactor, the BWRX-300. The project at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington plant is 38% done, and it’s on track to produce electricity by 2030, said Roger Martella, GE Vernova’s head of government affairs and policy. The remark, which Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin highlighted on X, came one day before the energy giant reports its latest earnings.
Meanwhile, one of Barack Obama’s early moves as president was to halt construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, effectively blocking any plan by the federal government to deal with radioactive spent fuel. Since then, no state has stepped up as an alternative; either way, federal law stipulates that the site in Nevada must be the United States’ first permanent tomb for nuclear waste. But what if nuclear waste wasn’t treated as waste at all? That was the Trump administration’s new pitch earlier this year when it invited states to submit applications to host so-called nuclear innovation campuses, sites where reactors, fuel enrichers, and waste recyclers can all set up shop. It’s a good sell. At least 28 states have so submitted applications, according to Exchange Monitor.
Project Vault, the effort the Trump administration set up to create a critical minerals reserve for U.S. manufacturers to weather Chinese trade restrictions on key metals, will soon close its first funding tranche. The program, announced in February, will combine $2 billion in private funding with a $10 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. The project “was not designed to be a stockpile alone,” John Jovanovic, the head of the Ex-Im Bank, told Reuters. “What it was designed to do was actually solve problems that the market faces … What we want to do is let it be dynamic and let it help try to solve a bunch of these problems.”
The new California factory. Tandem PV
“Perovskites hold a place of honor in the pantheon of much-heralded clean energy breakthroughs that have yet to actually arrive, alongside small modular nuclear reactors and solid-state batteries,” Canary Media reporter Julian Spector wrote yesterday. “In theory, these crystal structures could radically improve solar panels’ capabilities by absorbing wavelengths of light that conventional silicon cells can’t catch. But the stunning advances in R&D specimens have yet to infiltrate the cold, hard world of commercial solar manufacturing.” Until now, at least. On Tuesday, the startup Tandem PV officially opened its new factory in Fremont, California. The company aims to produce large panels of glass treated with a photovoltaic perovskite crystal coating that can increase how efficiently panels convert the sun’s rays into electricity by nearly 40%.
“We’re going to emphasize quality and speed over cost,” Tandem PV CEO Scott Wharton told Matthew last year. “If we do this right, then the theory is, we’ve become the next First Solar — that’s our intention. We want to take back solar leadership from China, which is a bold statement, but I think we’re on the journey.”
Over the next three nights, an eye-popping 723 million birds are expected to be migrating across the U.S. In Michigan alone, at least 5.3 million birds are likely to fly overhead. “Most of these birds will be in flight while we sleep. They are guided by stars, the magnetic field, and sounds,” a meteorology account called Michigan Storm Chasers wrote on X. “You can help these birds migrate by turning off any unnecessary outdoor lighting, especially between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.!”
