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:
There are lots of reasons why that might seem like a good idea, but I urge you to learn from my mistakes.
On mineral funding, Harold Hamm’s Argentina bet, and South Korea’s offshore wind
On America’s Great Corridors of Commerce, Texas geothermal, and North Dakota carbon capture
On electrolyte factories, Josh Shapiro's flip, and Canadian clean power
On Trump’s mineral deals, the gas turbine backlog, and Turkic offshore wind
Current conditions: Tropical Storm Lala could strengthen into a hurricane before hitting Hawaii’s Big Island, becoming the first such storm to make landfall there since 1900 • A glacial outburst at Suicide Basin near Juneau, Alaska, is raising the Mendenhall River • Temperatures surpassed 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Zaragoza, the inland capital of Spain’s Aragon region.
Getting fracked up. EIA
The United States is rapidly approaching a two-decade streak as the world’s No. 1 producer of natural gas. The country held the top spot between 2009 and 2024, the latest year for which the U.S. Energy Information Administration has data. But America pumped record volumes of natural gas last year. And now the federal energy research agency forecasts 2026 will be another record year. Marketed natural gas production — the total volume that actually makes it to market, minus what’s burned off or leaks as waste — is set to reach an average of 122.5 billion cubic feet per day in 2026, up from 2025’s record of 118.5 billion cubic feet per day. The new milestone is the result of expanded drilling in the Permian region that straddles Texas and New Mexico, and in the Haynesville area, between Texas and Louisiana.
When the Trump administration first started buying up equity stakes in mining companies, former officials from the Biden administration told my colleague Matthew Zeitlin they were “jealous” that the Republican White House had the guts to try something novel to compete with China on the metals needed for defense and energy technologies. Now, however, top Democrats are asking federal watchdogs to probe whether the American taxpayer is actually getting good deals. New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Representative Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, called on the Government Accountability Office to open an investigation into potential conflicts of interest. In a letter sent last week to Acting U.S. Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown and published Thursday on E&E News, the lawmakers accused the White House of violating rules to assess the financial risk of federal purchases. “These equity acquisitions also create potential conflicts of interest for federal agencies because a significant portion of the planned mining operations are located on federal lands,” they wrote. “With the executive branch now holding direct financial equity in these private mining operations, the federal government is required to act simultaneously as a mining investor and land-use regulator, an inherent conflict of interest.”
Mitsubishi’s backlog of orders for large-frame gas turbines is now more than twice its output from last year. In the 2025 fiscal year, the Japanese industrial giant delivered 16 gigawatts of gas turbines and had a backlog of 23 gigawatts. Just halfway through 2026, that backlog has ballooned to 35 gigawatts, executives told investors on the latest quarterly earnings call. The update, announced in Japan last week and covered in English by Utility Dive on Thursday, shows that “demand for large-frame gas turbines remains broadly in line with, or slightly above, the strong level we had anticipated,” Hiroshi Nishio,the chief financial officer of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Power electronics maker Heron Power, meanwhile, unveiled plans for a $100 million factory in Morgan Hill, California. The startup, led by a former Tesla executive, aims to produce next-generation transformers that can patch more solar panels and batteries on the grid and help ease some of the issues that arise from the direct current-based electricity sources. The first factory is designed to churn out 40 gigawatts of Heron Links, the transformer product, per year. “America's grid has to grow faster than it has in decades. We’re seeing new demand from AI and EVs, and at the same time new supply from solar and storage,” Drew Baglino, Heron Power’s chief executive and founder, said in a statement. “The equipment running the grid hasn’t changed in 50 years. Heron Factory One in Morgan Hill is how we fix that. We’re manufacturing the leapfrog technology our grid needs, at scale, in America first.”
Sign up to receive Heatmap AM in your inbox every morning:
Offshore wind is in retreat in the U.S., where, as my colleague Robinson Meyer wrote this week, the Trump administration is paying billions to kill projects that were already dead or dying. The industry’s tide is also ebbing in Japan, where the new right-wing government of Sanae Takaichi is putting a heightened focus on nuclear power. Elsewhere, however, offshore wind is booming. Europe is only expanding its plans. China is steadily dominating the industry. And East Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan are expanding their sectors.
Now two of the richest countries in the Turkic world are laying plans for more offshore turbines. Turkey announced plans this week for its first offshore wind tender in the first quarter of 2027, Renewables Now reported. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, this week formally designated a 275-square-mile section of water in the Caspian Sea for offshore wind development, per offshoreWIND.biz. The moves highlight the extent to which the U.S. government stands alone in its view that offshore wind has no role in a modern electricity mix. Turkey, after all, is doubling its domestic production of gas and completing its first nuclear plant. Azerbaijan is famously rich in natural gas and produces a decent amount of hydropower. Yet both countries are still charging ahead on offshore wind.
Deep-sea mining isn’t yet technically legal in international waters. But the Trump administration isn’t waiting, creating the regulatory frameworks for domestic approvals and opening the area around one of America’s Pacific territories to exploration. Japan has been eager to follow suit. Now Washington and Tokyo are planning to meet “centuries’ worth of industrial demand” by establishing what Mining.com called the world’s deepest undersea mine in a bid to take on China’s mineral dominance. The mineral extraction would take place more than 1,000 miles southeast of Tokyo on an uninhabited speck of land called Minamitorishima, where Japanese scientists carried out tests pulling rare earths out of mineral-rich mud.
China is actively building more reactors at home than all other countries combined and singlehandedly restarted the race for novel technologies after hooking the world’s only commercial high-temperature gas-cooled reactors up to the grid in 2023. So far, Beijing’s two state-owned nuclear companies have remained focused on building light water reactors. Just one new high-temperature gas-cooled unit, designed to have more than twice the output of the first version, is currently underway at a facility where the fourth-generation, helium-cooled technology will be paired with third-generation, water-cooled reactors. Now the developer, the China National Nuclear Corporation, has made plans to procure a contract for the reactor for the first time, laying the groundwork for future deals to purchase units specifically designed to reach high temperatures. The “first concrete” for the plant is expected to be poured by the end of 2026, World Nuclear News reported.
Investment in zero-carbon energy and transportation surged this spring, driven by consumer EV and battery buying.
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.
Ready to be surprised? Clean energy and transportation investment surged in the second quarter of this year, rising to more than $75 billion in total, according to new data released earlier this week.
In fact, this spring was the second biggest quarter for U.S. clean investment in nominal terms since at least 2018, when data started to be kept. More than 5% of overall investment in the United States went into a clean energy or transportation industry.
That’s according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Rhodium Group, a private research firm. The monitor tracks nationwide investment across a number of sectors that make up the new electricity economy, including critical mineral refining, battery manufacturing, solar and wind installation, and electric vehicle and heat pump purchases by consumers (among other variables).
Outside of a promising headline number, the story is a mixed one. Investment in America’s clean manufacturing sector started growing again last quarter after falling for 18 months; it remains about 24% below where it was a year earlier, according to the project. The new growth came overwhelmingly from investment in the EV supply chain — defined as “critical minerals, batteries, vehicle assembly, and charging equipment” — driving a staggering 88% of all clean manufacturing investment. That subsector alone made up more than 9% of all U.S. clean investment.
The more interesting story — and what leaps out from the chart — is that retail activity drove the spring resurgence. High gasoline prices helped here, pushing consumers to buy all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in larger numbers. (Rivian, Tesla, and other automakers started to see an EV rebound last quarter, too, after Republicans ended EV incentives in 2025.) But the real boom came in residential batteries, which surged to an all-time high of $11 billion in quarterly sales. Consumer activity hasn’t made up such a large share of national clean investment since 2023.
This trend wasn’t just happening in the United States. We’ve talked a lot at Heatmap about whether the Strait of Hormuz crisis will drive a clean energy boom. But it's now clear the oil price shock really did encourage global EV adoption. Some 50 countries set new EV sales records in 2026’s second quarter, according to Kelley Blue Book. India, Brazil, and Australia all set record highs. That's a lot of demand destruction.
