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On nuclear waste, a Nevada solar farm, and lithium-harvesting nanorobots
Strip away the restaurant and the hype, and Tesla Diner is an 80-plug fast-charging station plunked right in the middle of a former charging desert.
On Yucca Mountain, Europe’s inverter boom, and Romanian offshore wind
The company’s latest sustainability report, shared exclusively with Heatmap, shows that carbon intensity per kilometer traveled has dropped 81% since 2019.
A new 60-home pilot program aims to expand vehicle-to-grid charging.
Two former defense officials argue that Rivian may be as important to America’s national security as SpaceX.
For years, policymakers have debated electric vehicles as if they were merely another consumer product. They are not.
Electric vehicles are the largest source of demand for advanced batteries, and batteries are rapidly becoming one of the foundational technologies of the 21st century. They power cars, drones, data centers, grid storage systems, autonomous weapons, military platforms. Over time, they will power most of the wider economy. In strategic terms, batteries are beginning to look less like mere automobile components and more like semiconductors — that is, chokepoint technologies critical to the functioning of modern society.
The future of the U.S. EV industry matters far beyond transportation. Given that electric vehicles remain the primary source of demand for batteries, a healthy U.S. battery sector requires an American auto industry that produces and sells EVs at scale. Without a strategic plan that marshals both public and private sector investment in support of EV uptake by American consumers, the U.S. will leave itself with critical security vulnerabilities — not in some far-distant future that may never come to pass, but in the present.
Right now, China rules the global battery ecosystem. Chinese firms lead not only in battery manufacturing, but also in the upstream processing of critical minerals, the production of midstream cathodes and anodes, and the commercialization of next-generation battery technologies. China also controls most of the global processing capacity for graphite, the key material used in battery anodes, and dominates production of the intermediate components that determine battery cost and performance.
The implications of this imbalance extend well beyond auto production, or even mere economics. As we know well from our time serving in the Pentagon, the Department of Defense’s future force will rely increasingly on electrification. Tactical drones and other autonomous systems, portable power units, communications equipment, unmanned logistics vehicles, and resilient military installations all require advanced batteries. In case any of this remained in doubt, the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated beyond dispute the central importance of battery-powered platforms on the modern battlefield. The same will inevitably prove true in the Indo-Pacific, where the U.S. military is investing heavily in unmanned systems designed to operate across vast distances and obviate risks from lengthy supply lines.
Unfortunately for the Pentagon, defense demand alone is far too small to sustain a globally competitive battery industry. The Department of Defense cannot create the manufacturing scale necessary to compete with China, as military procurement represents only a tiny fraction of battery demand. Only the commercial market can provide the volume needed to drive innovation, lower costs, and sustain domestic production, and the commercial market is driven overwhelmingly by electric vehicles. Here, the loss of consumer tax incentives undermined American automakers’ turn towards EVs, causing them to write off tens of billions of dollars of investments.
This is the strategic reality often missing from America's energy debate. Even a country as large and powerful as the United States cannot maintain a world-class battery industry while undercutting the largest source of battery demand.
Some policymakers appear to believe that the United States can support battery manufacturing for military systems, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and grid storage while simultaneously slowing EV adoption. That is wishful thinking.
Without a robust domestic EV market, battery manufacturers lose the scale that makes investment attractive, and production will inevitably move elsewhere. That's fine for other manufacturing sectors like t-shirts and toys, but unacceptable for technologies with critical national security applications.
The United States has seen this movie before. American firms pioneered many of the technologies behind solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, and lithium iron phosphate batteries, but China ultimately captured much of the manufacturing base for these products. Through sustained investment, patient industrial policy, and relentless focus on scale, Chinese firms drove down costs and built ecosystems that are now extraordinarily difficult to replicate. The result is that companies such as CATL and BYD occupy increasingly dominant positions in the battery sector, akin to those once held by American technology champions.
As a result, China's EV industry is now becoming a global export powerhouse. Chinese automakers are no longer producing low-cost copies of Western vehicles. As we know firsthand from a recent tour of the Xiaomi factory outside Beijing, Chinese factories are now producing technologically sophisticated products that are winning on price, performance, and quality when compared with the best that the United States or Europe have on offer. As a result, companies like BYD are rapidly gaining a larger share of the huge Chinese market and rapidly expanding their footprint internationally.
This matters because automobiles remain one of the world's largest manufacturing industries. The global auto market generates trillions of dollars in economic activity and supports millions of jobs. For more than a century, American prosperity has been tied in part to leadership in transportation manufacturing, but that leadership can no longer be taken for granted.
In China, electric vehicles and hybrids already account for more than half of new vehicle sales. Across Europe, adoption continues to rise. In many developing countries, falling battery prices are making electric transportation increasingly affordable. The direction of travel is unmistakable: The global market is shifting toward electrification.
If American automakers fail to compete in that market, they will steadily lose market share abroad. That would not simply reduce profits. It would weaken one of the country's most important industrial sectors and diminish the manufacturing base that has historically supported national defense in times of crisis.
Recent geopolitical events underscore the stakes. The disruptions to Middle East energy infrastructure because of the Iran conflict and the related threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz served as a reminder that oil remains vulnerable to geopolitical shocks. Electrification is not a complete solution to energy insecurity, but economies (and militaries) with greater electrification, diversified power sources, and advanced battery industries are better positioned to withstand such disruptions.
China understands this. Beijing does not view batteries, EVs, renewable energy infrastructure, and industrial competitiveness as separate issues. It views them as components of a single strategic package. As energy storage, modularity, and transmission become the key enabling technologies of the global economy, the United States must adopt this same holistic approach.
This does not mean attempting to replicate China's economic model or wantonly abandoning domestic fossil fuel production. It simply requires recognizing that batteries are a strategic industry — and that electric vehicles are the primary mechanism through which that industry achieves scale.
During the 20th century, policymakers understood that leadership in steel, automobiles, aerospace, semiconductors, and telecommunications had national security implications, and thoughtful policymakers sought to build U.S. advantages in these key sectors. The same logic applies today.
The question is no longer whether the future of transportation is electric. Most of the world has already answered that question. The issue before us now is whether the United States intends to build the batteries that will power the next era of economic growth, military capability, and industrial strength or import them from China, with all the vulnerabilities that will entail.
On Trump’s gas boom, Germany’s fusion push, and Meta’s Canadian complex
Current conditions: Sandusky, Ohio, just saw 17 inches of rain in one day, smashing the previous state record of just under 11 inches and blowing past the 1-in-1,000-year threshold of less than 9 inches • Another heat dome is forming over the western United States, threatening landlocked desert cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Palm Springs with temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit • An extremely rare tornado touched down in Alaska’s Susitna Valley, one of just 11 recorded in the state since 1950.
The view Monday in front of a coffee shop in Nice, France. Valery HACHE / AFP via Getty Images
The record-shattering heatwave that roasted Europe last month killed thousands — and potentially far more than initially estimated. Last week, the French government released its estimate for the death toll from the elevated temperatures: 2,025 people died who wouldn’t have under average weather conditions. But Le Monde, the nation’s newspaper of record, suggested the tally was undercounting. On Tuesday, Carbon Brief published a new analysis by two scientists suggesting the actual figure surpassed 2,700 deaths. To calculate the difference, the two American researchers compared the observed temperatures from June 12 to 29 with their baseline average from 1980 to 2025 to understand the disparity between the number of deaths during heat waves then versus now. “We found that France experienced around 2,700 heat-related deaths above the average baseline,” the report concluded. “Day-to-day heat-related mortality rates rose from less than 100 to almost 300 on the hottest days of June 24 to 25.” In Germany, meanwhile, the Federal Statistical Office’s preliminary data shows more than 5,000 excess deaths during the late-June heat wave, Bloomberg reported. During the last full week of June, the agency known as Destatis recorded 5,486 more deaths than during the median from the same period from 2022 to 2025. Now yet another extreme heat wave is forming in Europe this week, the third so far this year.
The lethal heat has raised the volume and temperature of Europe’s ongoing debate over air conditioning. Much ink has been spilled over why, exactly, Europeans eschew the cooling appliances Americans adore. My colleague Robinson Meyer offered one of the most interesting explanations I have seen yet: Europe’s otherwise superior window design makes traditional AC units difficult to place. Either way, Europe’s surging far-right parties see a political opportunity in championing AC. France’s Rassemblement National, led by Marine Le Pen, has begun campaigning on expanding access to cooling. Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland, meanwhile, has accused the country’s center-right government of “abstaining from air conditioning” due to “climate hysteria,” leaving people to be “sacrificed on the altar” of energy austerity, per The Guardian.
When President Donald Trump took office at the start of 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that 23 gigawatts of new gas plant capacity would be built in the U.S. between 2026 and 2030. The agency’s latest forecast for that same period is now 66 gigawatts. The boom reflects what E&E News described as both Trump’s energy policies and the rise of artificial intelligence. At the same time, a new International Energy Agency analysis suggests that Trump’s war against Iran dampened forecasts for global gas consumption for only the third time in seven years. Worldwide demand is expected to drop by 0.5% this year in response to major disruptions of liquified natural gas shipments from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Gas demand in Asia in particular softened amid higher prices and government efforts to switch from LNG to other fuels, such as coal. Fresh fighting in the Strait of Hormuz suggests the contraction could continue if the fragile ceasefire signed last month breaks. On Tuesday, two tankers were struck by projectiles while passing through the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The U.S. military accused Tehran of the attacks and launched new strikes on Iran, according to Al Jazeera. Trump told reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey this morning that the ceasefire was “over.”
In a more direct analysis of the effect of Trump’s energy policies on actual prices Americans pay, the think tank Energy Innovation found that the administration’s overall spending cuts and changes would force U.S. households to pay an additional $650 billion for energy between 2026 and 2040. That’s an average of $460 per household in 2035 and $490 in 2040. By eliminating incentives for electrification and green-energy manufacturing, the report concluded, the administration’s policies cost the U.S. a cumulative $2.3 trillion in lost gross domestic product through 2040.
Germany may have infamously abandoned nuclear fission, sending electricity prices soaring and making the country more reliant on coal and Russian gas imports. But Berlin wants fusion. On Tuesday, the Germany-based Proxima Fusion announced that it had raised nearly $469 million in its latest funding round, increasing its valuation to nearly $2.9 billion and establishing the startup as Europe’s best-funded fusion company. Among the backers were Google and the German utility giant RWE. “Google’s investment underscores continued interest in fusion as a potential source of abundant, carbon-free, firm energy over the long-term,” Proxima said in a press release. “One of the largest private investments in European technology this year — and the largest ever in European fusion — the round reflects growing recognition of fusion power as a strategic technology for energy security, economic resilience, and industrial competitiveness.”
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A major new mining project in Arizona that promises to increase the domestic supplies of at least five critical minerals just received final approval of its environmental review. On Tuesday, the U.S. Forest Service gave the developer South32’s Hermosa Critical Minerals Project the green light on the last step of its yearslong National Environmental Policy Act study. The completion of the NEPA process paves the way for the project to build key infrastructure beyond privately held property onto the federal land that’s part of the Coronado National Forest, including a primary access road, a tailing facility, and allowing the local utility to build a portion of a 138-kilovolt power line. It’s also a symbolic win for the Trump administration. The project was the first mine included in the federal FAST-41 permitting program to speed up approvals for key projects. South32 secured its place on that list due to the mine’s potential to generate zinc, silver, and manganese — all of which are needed for modern energy and military technologies. “From the beginning, we designed Hermosa to be a different kind of mine, and the federal review process helped make it even better,” Pat Risner, South32’s president in charge of Hermosa, said in a statement. Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nod in 2028, praised the project for “producing critical minerals that will power our 21st Century energy economy.”
Meanwhile, the American lithium-mining startup EnergyX just pulled in a significant new investment to complete its giant project in Chile. Already a top global producer of the metal needed for batteries and electric vehicles, the South American nation’s new right-wing government is trying to draw in more private investment as it rethinks the country’s domestic energy policies, as I reported last week. On Monday, EnergyX unveiled a $225 million strategic investment from the Italian oil giant Eni. As I told you last year, Eni has bucked other oil majors’ downsizing the ambitions of their greener ventures, even investing $1 billion into Commonwealth Fusion Systems last fall.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill approved a suite of legislation Tuesday to overhaul the process for siting data centers in the state, placing a new tariff on large loads, requiring companies to disclose water and energy use, and scaling back tax credits for server farms themselves. It’s no surprise: Sherrill, a Democrat, won last year after campaigning on cracking down on soaring power rates in a state Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin described last week as “ground zero for the political backlash to high electricity prices.” In a statement, Sherrill blamed “poor oversight, outdated policies, and rising demand on our electric grid by unchecked actors” for the price spike. “This is a breakthrough moment,” Rewiring America cofounder Ari Matusiak, who served on Sherrill’s transition team, said in a statement. “For the first time, a state has created a policy pathway for data centers to fund verified demand flexibility, including energy efficiency, demand response, behind-the-meter storage, and managed electrification. That means rising electricity demand can become an opportunity to invest in homes, businesses, and communities instead of shifting costs onto families and small businesses.
Hyperscalers, meanwhile, are now looking northward. On Tuesday, the Canadian outlet Juno News published a scoop identifying Meta as the mystery developer behind a $10 billion data center complex in Alberta, the western province of Canada also known for its tar sand oil fields. The Facebook parent company’s project is tied to a 932-megawatt gas-fired power plant.
The UAE’s oil and gas shipments are just starting to flow again — a reality that could remain tenuous as fighting renews in the Strait of Hormuz. But one thing has changed for sure: Abu Dhabi’s crude production is now unleashed. Since quitting the OPEC oil cartel in April, the UAE’s output of oil topped 3.8 million barrels per day, unnamed sources told Reuters. That’s a six-year high, apparently vindicating Abu Dhabi’s push against OPEC’s restrictions on pumping.
