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Why Chinese-made electric vehicles and solar panels now face some of America’s highest trade levies.
The United States raised tariffs on a range of Chinese-made climate technologies on Tuesday, including electric vehicles, solar panels, and battery components.
Inspired by the poet Wallace Stevens, here are 13 ways of looking at them:
The biggest tariffs in the bunch are for Chinese-made electric vehicles. The Biden administration has more than quadrupled them, imposing a 100% tariff on all vehicle imports. That means that Chinese-made EVs now face higher tariff levels than any other imported goods.
Right now, the U.S. imports relatively few electric vehicles from China, and the few vehicles that we do import — which are made by the Chinese-owned brands Volvo and Polestar — may not be affected by these levies because of how imports are counted under tariff law. (Neither Volvo nor Polestar has commented on the new rates.)
What’s more, the White House suggested in February that it would use national security law to prevent EVs from Chinese companies from coming into the United States at all — even if the cars were made in a country with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement, such as Mexico. So despite the eye-popping headline figure, the tariffs on Chinese EVs do relatively little to change the decarbonization calculus in the United States. America wasn’t going to import Chinese-made EVs before, and it’s not going to do so now.
While these EV tariffs may be more for show than anything else, that is not true for the other tariffs on clean technologies. Many of these categories already faced trade levies imposed by the Trump administration, and Biden has now raised them, effectively doubling down on his electoral rival’s policy.
Starting immediately:
The solar cell figure looks impressive — and has been the source of wrangling in the solar industry — but it matters less than it looks. The United States already imports more than 80% of its solar panels from Chinese companies operating in other Asian countries.
A second round of tariffs is scheduled to kick in in 2026. Even though these hikes won’t take effect immediately, they may counterintuitively matter more, because they affect sectors where China now dominates the global industry. The longer timeline suggests that the White House is trying not to disrupt the near-term market too much; in effect, it’s giving companies a deadline to diversify their supply chains. This second round includes:
Whether you love them or hate them, you shouldn’t see these tariffs as a standalone measure. They complement the aggressive subsidies that the Biden administration has already passed on EVs, batteries, and critical minerals in the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s often lost that the IRA subsidizes EVs and their constituent parts in two ways — not only with the somewhat convoluted $7,500 personal vehicle tax credit, but with the more important 45X production tax credit, which pays companies $35 for each kilowatt-hour of EV batteries that they produce in the United States. (There are similar 45X bounties for other manufactured goods, including solar panels.)
These policies now add up to classic industrial policy in the mold of Alexander Hamilton: The U.S. is hiking tariffs on high-value imports while subsidizing their domestic production, while also providing cheap credit via the Department of Energy to companies that want to participate in these new industries. The Environmental Protection Agency has also issued new rules that will encourage U.S. consumers to buy from these new domestic producers. The one element of the classic model the U.S. has not yet adopted — except in some states — is provisioning cheap land and easy permitting for new factories.
China, it should be said, followed a similar playbook to develop its own electric vehicle industry. That should let us dispel with one foolish idea right away: the premise that tariffs never work. On the contrary, tariffs sometimes do work; as the economist Brad Setser pointed out on the social network X, America only finds itself in its current position because of how well tariffs worked. Through a range of policies including tariffs and joint ventures, China walled off its domestic market and encouraged domestic industry. That industry has now grown to challenge the world.
But they do not always work. Another important aspect of Hamiltonian industrial policy is certainty: To make forward-looking investment decisions, companies need to know policies that exist today will still be around when the production line starts whirring. This China has in gobs, and the United States lacks. You may have noticed that the front-runner in this year’s presidential election is promising to repeal many of these policies that are now rolling out — just about everything but the tariffs.
These tariff rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon. There is no party in American politics advocating for free trade with China. The choice, in the near-term, is between Biden’s vision of free trade with democracies and developing countries, plus climate and defense-driven industrial policy at the margins, versus Trump’s vision of fossil-fueled populism that aspires to autarky.
There are forces within the country that wouldn’t hate to see a return of more open trade relations with China — you can see factions within the environmental movement, the Chamber of Commerce, and Big Tech pushing for it, to name a few — but they do not control a partisan coalition.
There is no equivalence between what the Biden administration announced today and the 10% across the board tariff on all imported goods from all countries that Donald Trump has proposed. Biden’s new tariffs focus on certain strategic sectors that American officials believe the country must cultivate to stay at the technological frontier, coupled with pre-existing subsidies meant to spur domestic production of those goods. Some of the tariffs only kick in beginning in 2026 — far enough in the future, policymakers hope, for the market to prepare. Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, would intentionally and chaotically hike prices.
We’re only here because China has won Round 1 on electric vehicles. It has created a thriving, competitive domestic EV industry that includes the BYD Seagull, an $11,000 hatchback that gets up to 250 miles of range; the Zeekr 009, a $70,000 minivan with more than 500 miles of range; and the Xiaomi SU7, a sleek $29,000 coupe. As the car journalist Kevin Williams has written, China’s EV market is far deeper, more varied, and more sophisticated than many realize. Beijing has built a Silicon Valley-style industrial cluster that produces cheap electric vehicles for the domestic market and the world — and the Biden administration can do almost nothing about that.
This dominance has emerged out of China’s economic agglomeration and its successful climb up the technological value chain. As I’ve written, China once made textiles and toys; then it made smartphones and computers; now it makes EVs and commercial jetliners. This agglomeration of economic complexity is not an academic observation; in many cases, the companies now producing China’s most competitive EVs emerged directly from its electronics industry. Xiaomi, after all, makes 15% of the world’s smartphones. CATL — now widely seen as the world’s best EV battery maker — began as a spin-off of Amperex Technology Limited, or ATL, which makes smartphone batteries. The iPhone is, in a sense, the younger sister of the Chinese-made Volvo EX30: Both are Western-designed consumer electronics that are made in Chinese factories, through Chinese engineering expertise.
Does one need to spell out precisely why American officials might care about staying even vaguely competitive with China in the EV industry? Do I need to mention the role that American-made motor vehicles have played in world history? But the motorization of war — which has now gone on for nearly a century — requires getting fossil fuels to the front lines in dangerous convoys; by one estimate, more than half of the 36,000 casualties suffered by American troops in Iraq were on fuel or water resupply missions. Wind and solar are not now so potent that they could liberate armies from these serpentine supply chains, but energy technologies can drive surprising military innovations anyway: In Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, we have already seen how e-bikes and drones powered by small, lightweight batteries have transformed modern warfare.
Perhaps this kind of thinking is premature, or too dire. Nonetheless, this is what makes this moment so different from the 1970s, when Japanese-made cars changed the American car market, or the 1980s and ‘90s, when the Korean brands arrived. For the first time, a country outside the American security umbrella — a country that, in fact, aims to compete as a geopolitical hegemon with the U.S. — has attained the cutting edge of motor vehicle production. Even if Michigan and Wisconsin were not so important in the Electoral College, even if climate change did not require the rapid decarbonization of the global car fleet, that fact alone would distinguish this moment from what has come before. This is why the Chinese EV industry poses such a profound challenge to American policy.
This challenge for the U.S. also requires conjuring an entire value chain from nothing. A thoroughly classic Hamiltonian industrial policy would involve reducing tariffs on commodity and low-value inputs, such as the minerals that make up batteries, while increasing them on high-value imports, such as completed batteries and cars. But China controls so much of the critical mineral supply chain — it is “the dominant player” in global minerals refining — that American officials feel like they must diversify; they must try to spin up low value supply chains for graphite, lithium, and rare earths at the same time that they encourage the construction of EV factories.
One of the most important aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act is that it pursues two simultaneous industrial policies: In some sectors (EVs, solar, batteries), it aims for America to catch up to its technological rivals; in others (carbon capture, hydrogen), it aims to preserve America’s pre-existing position at the technological frontier. Notice what industries aren’t affected by today’s tariffs — not carbon capture, not anything to do with fossil fuels, not even anything hydrogen-related, even though China makes 61% of the world’s electrolyzers. (That is because the Biden administration has shaped its hydrogen policy so it does not automatically favor the type of electrolyzer that Chinese firms make.)
It’s easy to get ahead of oneself here. Just because China has created a superior EV industry, that doesn’t mean it will have one forever; just because China makes better EVs, that doesn’t mean that America lags on all climate technologies. But make no mistake: America is trying to do something very difficult, and it has no guarantee of success.
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On the IEA’s latest report, flooding in LA, and Bill Gates’ bad news
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms tomorrow could spawn tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama • A massive wildfire on a biodiverse island in the Indian Ocean has been burning for nearly a month, threatening wildlife • Tropical Cyclone Zelia has made landfall in Western Australia with winds up to 180mph.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has learned. Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide,” Brigham writes. “But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.”
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“This letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind,” Holzman writes. “Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president's executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine. If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.”
Heavy downpours triggered flooding and debris flows across Los Angeles County yesterday. A portion of the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most iconic roadways in America, is closed indefinitely due to mudslides near Malibu, an area devastated in last month’s fires. Duke’s Malibu, a famous oceanfront restaurant along the PCH, was inundated. The worst of the rain has passed now and many flood alerts have been canceled, but the cleanup has just begun.
Rain flows down a street outside a burned home.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Global electricity use is set to rise by 4% annually through 2027, “the equivalent of adding an amount greater than Japan’s annual electricity consumption every year,” according to the International Energy Agency’s new Electricity 2025 report. Here are some key points:
IEA
JPMorgan Chase clients have apparently been demanding more guidance about the climate crisis. As a result, the bank launched a new climate report authored by its global head of climate advisory, Sarah Kapnick, an atmospheric and oceanic scientist who was previously chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report seeks to build what Kapnick is calling “climate intuition” – the ability to use science to assess and make strategic investment decisions about the shifting climate. “Success in the New Climate Era hinges on our ability to integrate climate considerations into daily decision-making,” Kapnick writes. “Those who adapt will lead, while others risk falling behind.” Here’s a snippet from the report, to give you a sense of the tone and takeaways:
“Adhering to temperatures below 1.5C will require emissions reductions. Depending on your definition of 1.5C, they may require historic annual reductions and potentially carbon removal. Conversely, if you have a technical or financial view that carbon dioxide removal will not scale, you should assume there is a difficult path to 1.5C (i.e. emissions reductions to zero depending on your definition in 6, 15, or 30+ years). If that is the case, you need to plan for the physical manifestations of climate change and social responses that will ensue if your investment horizons are longer.”
Greenhouse gas leaks from supermarket refrigerators are estimated to create as much pollution each year as burning more than 30 million tons of coal.
Grantees told Heatmap they were informed that Bill Gates’ climate funding organization would not renew its support.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap has learned.
Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Bill Gates and Breakthrough Energy remain as committed as ever to using our voice and resources to advocate for the energy innovations needed to address climate change,” the Breakthrough spokesperson told me in a written statement. “We continue to believe that innovation in energy is essential for achieving global climate goals and securing a prosperous, sustainable world for future generations.”
Gates founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to help develop and deploy technologies that would help the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The organization made more than $96 million in grants in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
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Among its beneficiaries was the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based think tank that promotes technological solutions to climate change. (Despite having a similar name, it is not affiliatedwith Breakthrough Energy.) Last week, a representative from Breakthrough Energy told the institute’s executive director, Ted Nordhaus, that its funding would not be renewed. The Breakthrough Institute had previously received a two-year grant of about $1.2 million per year, which wrapped up this month.
“What we were told is that they are ceasing all of their climate grantmaking — zeroed out immediately after the USAID shutdown because Bill wants to refocus all of his grantmaking efforts on global health,” Nordhaus told me on Monday, referring to the Trump administration’s efforts to defund the United States Agency for International Development. “But it’s very clear that this wasn’t brought on solely by USAID. I had heard from several people that there was a big reassessment going on for a couple of months.”
The Breakthrough spokesperson disputed this characterization, and denied that cutbacks were due to the USAID shutdown or a shift in funding from climate to global health initiatives. The spokesperson also told me that some grantmaking budget remains, though they would not reveal how much.
As for Breakthrough Institute, the funding cut will primarily impact its agricultural program, which received about 90% of its budget from Breakthrough Energy. Nordhaus is trying to figure out how to keep that program afloat, while the institute’s other three areas of policy focus — energy and climate, nuclear innovation, and energy and development — remain largely unaffected.
Multiple other organizations confirmed to Heatmap that they also will not receive future grants from Breakthrough Energy. A representative for the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment, a trade organization for sustainability professionals, told me that Breakthrough had recently informed the group that it would not renew a $400,000 grant, which is set to wrap up this May. (ACLCA’s spokesperson also noted that the grant had not come with any indication that it would be renewed.) Another former grantee told me that while their organization is currently wrapping up a grant with Breakthrough and does not have anything in the works with them for this year, they expected that future funding would be impacted, though they did not explain why.
Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide. Foundations and individuals around the world gave a total of $9 billion to $15 billion to climate causes in 2023, according to an analysis from the Climateworks Foundation.
But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.
“Their presence will be missed,” said the CEO of another climate nonprofit who was notified by Breakthrough that its funding would not be renewed. Breakthrough Energy “was one of the few funders supporting pragmatic research and advocacy work that pushed at neglected areas such as the need for zero-carbon firm power and accelerated energy innovation,” they added.
"Even if it’s a drop in the bucket, it still makes a difference,” another former grantee with a particularly large budget told me. This organization recently sent Breakthrough an inquiry about partnering up again and is waiting to hear back. “But for small organizations, it’s make it or break it.”
Speculation abounds as to the rationale behind Breakthrough’s funding cuts. “I have heard that one of the reasons that Bill decided to stop funding climate was that he concluded that there was so much money in climate that his money really wasn’t that important,” Nordhaus told me. But that is not true when it comes to agriculture, he said, which comprises about 12% of global emissions. ”There’s very little money for advocating for agriculture innovation to address the climate impacts of the ag sector,” Nordhaus told me.
Gates, who privately donated to a nonprofit affiliated with the Harris campaign in 2024 but did not endorse the Democrat, dined with Trump and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, for more than three hours at Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Day, he told Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker. He said that Trump was interested in the possibility of eradicating polio or developing an HIV vaccine. “I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation,” he told her, days before the inauguration.
Since then, Trump’s war on USAID has frozen funding to a polio eradication program and shut down the phase 1 clinical trial of an HIV vaccine in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda.
The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.
Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.
The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“It is with a sense of real urgency we write you today,” the letter states, referencing Trump’s executive order targeting the offshore wind industry to ask that he go further. “[E]leven projects have already received approvals with four of those under construction. Leasing and permitting will be reviewed for these approved projects but may take time.”
I obtained the letter from Paul Kamenar, a longtime attorney in conservative legal circles currently with the D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, who told me the letter had been sent to the department this week. Kamenar is one of multiple attorneys involved in a lawsuit filed last year by Heartland and CFACT challenging permits for Dominion’s Coastal Virginia project over alleged potential impacts to the endangered North Atlantic right whale. We reported earlier this week that the government signaled in proceedings for that case it will review approvals for Coastal Virginia, the first indication that previous permits issued for offshore wind could be vulnerable to the Trump effect.
Kamenar described the request to Burgum as “a coalition letter,” and told me that “the new secretary there is sympathetic” to their complaints about offshore wind permits. “We’re hoping that this letter will basically reverse the letter[s] of authorizations, or have the agency go back,” Kamenar said, adding a message for Dominion and other developers implicated by the letter: “Just because the company has the approval doesn’t mean it’s all systems go.”
The Interior Department does not directly oversee NOAA – that’s the Commerce Department. But it does control the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which ultimately regulates all offshore wind development and issues final approvals.
Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Some signees of the document are part of a constellation of influential figures in the anti-renewables movement whose voices have been magnified in the new administration.
One of the letter’s two lead signatories is David Stevenson, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the Caesar Rodney Institute, an organization involved in legal battles against offshore wind projects under development in the Mid-Atlantic. The Institute says on its website it is a member of the State Policy Network, a broad constellation of think tanks, legal advocacy groups, and nonprofits.
Multiple activists who signed onto the letter work with the Save Right Whales Coalition, a network of local organizations and activists. Coalition members have appeared with Republican lawmakers at field hearings and rallies over the past few years attacking offshore wind. They became especially influential in GOP politics after being featured in a film by outspoken renewables critic and famous liberal-turned-conservative Michael Shellenberger, who is himself involved in the Coalition. His film, Thrown to the Wind, blew up in right-wing media circles because it claimed to correlate whale deaths with offshore wind development.
When asked if the Coalition was formally involved in this request of the administration, Lisa Linowes, a co-founder of the Coalition, replied in an email: “The Coalition was not a signer of the request.”
One cosigner sure to turn heads: John Droz, a pioneer in the anti-wind activist movement who for years has given talks and offered roadmaps on how best to stop renewables projects.
The letter also includes an endorsement from Mandy Davis, who was involved with the draft anti-wind executive order we told you was sent to the Trump transition team before inauguration. CFACT also co-signed that draft order when it was transmitted to the transition team, according to correspondence reviewed by Heatmap.
Most of the signatories to the letter list their locations. Many of the individuals unrelated to bigger organizations list their locations as in Delaware or Maryland. Only a few signatories on the letter have locations in other states dealing with offshore wind projects.
On its face, this letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind.
Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president’s executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine.
If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.
Beyond that, reversing these authorizations could represent a scandal for scientific integrity at NOAA – or at least NOAA’s Fisheries division, the National Marine Fisheries Service. Heeding the letter’s requests would mean revisiting the findings of career scientists for what developers may argue are purely political reasons, or at minimum arbitrary ones.
This wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened under Trump. In 2020, I used public records to prove that plans by career NOAA Fisheries employees to protect endangered whales from oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic were watered down after a political review. At the time, Democratic Representative Jared Huffman — now the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee — told me that my reporting was evidence of potential scientific integrity issues at NOAA and represented “blatant scientific and environmental malpractice at the highest order.”
It’s worth emphasizing how much this mattered, not just for science but literally in court, as the decision to allow more seismic testing for oil under Trump was challenged at the time on the grounds that it was made arbitrarily.
Peter Corkeron, a former NOAA scientist with expertise researching the North Atlantic right whale, reviewed the letter to Burgum and told me in an email that essentially, the anti-offshore wind movement is exploiting similar arguments made by conservationists about issues with the federal government’s protection of the species to target this sector. The federal regulator has for many years faced the ire of conservation activists, who’ve said it does not go far enough to protect endangered species from more longstanding threats like fishing and vessel strikes.
If NOAA were to bow to this request, Corkeron wrote, he would interpret that as the agency’s failure to fully protect the species in good faith instead becoming “suborned by the hydrocarbon exploitation industry as a way of eliminating a competing form of energy production that should, in time, prove more beneficial for whales than what we’re currently doing.”
“The point on cumulative impacts is, on face value, fair,” he said. “The problem is its lack of context. Cumulative impacts on North Atlantic right whales from offshore wind are possible. However, in the context of the cumulative impacts of the shipping (vessel strike kills, noise pollution), and fishing (death, maiming, failure to breed) industries, they’ll be insignificant. Because NOAA has never clearly set out to address ways to offset other impacts while developing the offshore wind industry, these additive impacts place a burden on this new industry in ways that existing, and more damaging, industries don’t have to address.”
CFACT responded to a request for comment by sending me a press release with the letter attached that was not publicly available, and did not respond to the climate criticisms by press time. David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute sent me a statement criticizing offshore wind energy and questioning its ability to “lower global emissions.”
“The goal is to pause construction until everything is reviewed,” Stevenson said. When asked if there was an outcome where a review led to projects being built, he said no, calling offshore wind an “environmental wrecking ball.”
Well, we’ll soon find out what the real wrecking ball is.