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If you care about decarbonization, Trump’s EV comedy routine is actually quite concerning.

“What do you think of electric cars?” It’s a question Donald Trump asks the audience at his rallies these days, and the inevitable response is a chorus of boos. The mini-rant about EVs that follows is now as much a feature of Trump speeches as complaints about immigration or the injustice of his criminal indictments. As he said recently in Dayton, Ohio, “They want to do this all-electric nonsense where the cars don’t go far, they cost too much, and they’re all made in China.”
When Trump chooses to elevate an issue, he inevitably infuses it with questions of identity, the divisions between us and them. He doesn’t just tell you what to believe, he tells you that this is what our kind of people believe, and believing the opposite would make you one of our enemies, contemptible and repugnant.
Of course, EVs were already a means of expressing identity long before Trump started talking about them. None of us, no matter what our political orientation or feelings about capitalism, are immune from the impulse to make a statement to the world about our selfhood and the groups we belong to through our consumer choices, whether it’s the clothes we wear or the phone we carry or the car we drive.
But if we’re ever going to reach the point where the overwhelming majority of vehicles on the road are electric — an indispensable part of reducing carbon emissions — we’ll have to divorce the fuel source that drives a car from those identity questions.
Trump will certainly do what he can to prevent that from happening, even if his position on EVs is less than coherent. “The electric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China,” he says, yet he offers this as a reason to oppose policies that would encourage domestic production of EVs. Part of his interest is surely just about adding EVs to the list of things he can criticize President Biden for. Early in his presidency, Biden set out a goal that by 2030, half of new cars sold in the U.S. would be zero-emission, and though new tailpipe regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency push that goal back by two years, the rules give it teeth in the form of fines if car companies don’t meet the target.
It helps Trump that the target is optimistic, to say the least; only 7.6% of new car sales in 2023 were EVs. And Republicans delight in mocking the slow progress on building a nationwide network of charging stations, presenting it as a case study in both government inefficiency and the folly of taking action on climate change. The clear message to conservative voters is that buying an EV would violate their sense of self in a profound way, putting them on the side of Joe Biden and all those woke enviro-hippies.
From their earliest modern iterations, EVs and hybrids were indeed a statement of identity for liberals: Driving one said that you cared about pollution and climate change, and were willing to sacrifice a certain amount of convenience to lower your personal negative impact on the environment. In the right circles, a Prius could be a kind of status symbol despite its relatively modest price. The reaction from the right was contempt at anyone driving one, for the same reasons.
Though Tesla began to alter that image by marketing their EVs as stylish and technologically advanced, the political division on EVs has remained. According to a recent Gallup poll, 72% of liberals say they either have an EV or might buy one in the future, while an identical 72% of conservatives say they won’t ever buy one.
If you were a car company looking only to boost sales, that might not be too much of a problem, since in a market where around 15 million cars are sold every year, there’s plenty of room for identity segmentation. Auto companies can promote particular models to young people or suburban moms or even lesbians, and still make healthy profits. Everyone can find the car to express their identity; for instance, every year, the three best-selling vehicles in America are pickup trucks (the Ford F-series, the Ram, and the Chevy Silverado), and it isn’t because so many people need them for hauling and towing. It’s because the pickup is associated with a brand of rugged masculinity that millions of men want to present to the world, whether it’s really who they are or not.
But the goal isn’t getting some or even a lot of people to buy EVs, it’s to get nearly every car buyer to choose one. The paradox is that driving an EV may only cease to be a matter of identity when it becomes the default, and that can only happen when people of every partisan and political orientation start buying them.
We can see the glimmers of that transition in accelerating demand for hybrids. Hybrid sales grew an extraordinary 53% from 2022 to 2023, as more models — including low-priced ones — became available. You can even get a Ford Maverick Hybrid pickup, which is proving extremely popular, for under $25,000 (a MotorTrend article from last year was titled “We Bought a 2023 Ford Maverick Hybrid and It’s a Real F***ing Truck, Damn It!”). That greater variety of choices, combined with the increasing availability of EVs, may be depoliticizing hybrids, at least to a degree. As Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer said on a recent episode of Shift Key, “the presence of battery electric vehicles really defangs conventional hybrids because it is no longer the ‘lib car.’”
There are two critical impediments to a similar change happening for EVs: price and battery range. At the moment, going fully electric still means paying more up front compared to buying a comparable internal combustion vehicle, even if subsidies significantly lower that premium. But if getting an EV involved no extra initial cost, and charging stations were as common as gas stations, buying an EV wouldn’t say “I am willing to sacrifice to address climate change.” And it may be that the less your EV says about you — or at least, the less the fact that it’s an EV says about you — the better.
An increase in the number of EV models (which is already happening) will help too: If there are small and large EV pickups, EV sedans, EV sports cars, and critically, cheap EVs — which at the moment are only being manufactured in China — then there will be enough room to make a variety of identity statements with an EV that have nothing to do with its fuel source.
If he wins in November, Trump will probably try to reverse Biden’s tailpipe emission standards and roll back some of the EV subsidies that are now in place. But he may encounter more resistance than he thinks. Despite a recent slowdown in the growth rate of EV sales, the auto companies are still committed to transitioning to zero-emission fleets (even if they’d like to take their time getting there). And some red parts of the country are now deeply invested in EVs, especially in the “Battery Belt” in the Southeast, where EV technology companies are hiring thousands of workers and auto companies are opening EV plants.
One signal that mass adoption of EVs is imminent will be when car companies barely mention the fact that they’re electric in marketing them. When all the ads feature masculine men doing manly things with their manly electric trucks, hip and beautiful young people heading to the beach in their fun electric convertibles, and safety-conscious moms carpooling to soccer practice in their comfy electric SUVs, none of whom seem concerned about the climate, then we’ll know we’re on our way.
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On EV investments hitting the brakes, Google’s nuclear restart, and a new data center consensus
Current conditions: Cyclone Montha is poised to make landfall over the Andhra Pradesh coast in eastern India with winds of up to 62 miles per hour • South Africa’s Northern Cape faces extremely high fire risks • Southwest California is also facing high risk of wildfires amid Santa Ana winds and dry, warm conditions today and tomorrow.
 
Hurricane Melissa has strengthened into a major storm, threatening to make landfall over Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba as a Category 5 hurricane in the next few hours, with winds up to 180 miles per hour and more than four feet of rainfall. It’s likely to be the strongest storm to hit Jamaica since records started in 1851, with storm surge lapping the coast with waves of up to 15 feet. Already the storm has killed at least six people in the northern Caribbean. Evacuations started on Monday. “This can quickly escalate into a humanitarian crisis where a large number of people are in need of basic supplies such as food, safe drinking water, housing and medical care,” AccuWeather forecasters warned on Monday. “The prolonged nature of impacts can result in entire communities being cut off from aid and support for multiple days.”
The U.S. is just weeks away from reviving a shuttered nuclear plant for the first time, as Holtec International’s Palisades plant in Michigan nears its restart. Once that’s done, the Microsoft-backed project to revive the still-operable reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island facility is likely the next nuclear site to come back from permanent decommissioning. Add another to the list. On Monday, Google inked a deal to back the restart of NextEra’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant, Iowa’s only atomic power station. As I reported in this newsletter back in August, NextEra was already considering a restart of the station, which shut down in 2020. It is, as my colleague Katie Brigham wrote in August, the zenith of the "nuclear dealmaking boom.”
The move comes as the U.S. finally embraces large-scale reactors again after years of pegging all future hopes of new nuclear construction on as-yet-unbuilt small modular reactors. On Tuesday, the U.S. government announced an $80 billion deal with Westinghouse to build a fleet of at least eight new power plants with a mix of gigawatt-sized AP1000s and some smaller versions, the Financial Times reported.
Heatmap’s Jael Holzman has breaking news on New York’s energy future: Swiftsure, a 650-megawatt battery energy storage development planned for New York’s Staten Island, was quietly scuttled in August. Rather than make a public announcement, the developer, Fullmark Energy (formerly Hecate), instead wrote a letter to the New York State Department of Public Service withdrawing the proposal. As Jael wrote, “nobody in Staten Island seems to have known until late Friday afternoon when local publication SI Advance first reported the withdrawal.” The project faced heavy opposition, including from New York Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa. The campaigns of Democrat Zohran Mamdani and independent Andrew Cuomo did not respond to requests for comment.
In other local news, Heatmap’s Jeva Lange is out with a remarkable new series called The Aftermath, a look at surviving the infernos that are increasingly a fact of life in parts of the U.S., especially out West. The series includes stories on the challenges involved in evacuation, why relocation can be impossible, the stories of wildfires that don’t capture national attention, the limits of what the public knows and doesn’t know about wildfires, and the buffers towns such as the fire-scorched Paradise, California, are trying to establish.
Investments in electric vehicle-related infrastructure, including batteries factories, vehicle assembly plants, and charging stations, tumbled by nearly a third to $8.1 billion in the three months leading to September compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the Financial Times. The analysis, based on data from the U.S. Clean Investment Monitor, found that about $7 billion of planned EV investments were abandoned between April and September. The pullback could define the West’s place in the EV industry for years to come, widening China’s lead over production of battery-powered cars. “We need to … be quicker in development to compete with the Chinese,” Hakan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars, told the newspaper. “As soon as you weaken these signals, everything will slow down,” he added, referring to the knock-on effect of policy changes emanating from the White House.
When Secretary of Energy Chris Wright last week directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to fast-track interconnection request for large new energy users, he also endorsed the somewhat controversial idea that big electricity users such as data centers should dial back their operations from time to time when the grid is stressed, Latitude Media’s Lisa Martine Jenkins reported last week. On Monday, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI threw its weight behind the idea. In a letter to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, Christopher Lehane, OpenAI’s chief government affairs officer, called on regulators to “expand use of curtailable load resources and modernize interconnection policy.” Lehane said “we welcomed the news last week that” Wright had expressed support for the policy. “To strengthen grid reliability and expand capacity for AI and other flexible loads, FERC should allow more demand-side participation in wholesale markets and speed up interconnection for large loads that can curtail,” he added.
The idea has been gaining momentum since Duke Energy researcher Tyler Norris put out a landmark paper in February identifying up to 100 gigawatts of additional load the grid could absorb if data centers simply adopted a policy of reducing power consumption when there was a shortage of electrons. Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin called it “one weird trick for getting more data centers on the grid.”
Carbon removal startup Rewind has launched DMS Georgia, the first commercial-scale carbon removal operation using deep mine storage. It’s the first time a certified carbon credit will be delivered by plant-based carbon in naturally oxygen-free underground environments. The project aims to bury carbon-emitting biomass in environments where the lack of oxygen makes decomposition impossible. By 2030, Rewind aims to remove one million metric tons of carbon per year.
Fullmark Energy quietly shuttered Swiftsure, a planned 650-megawatt energy storage system on Staten Island.
The biggest battery project in New York has been canceled in a major victory for the nascent nationwide grassroots movement against energy storage development.
It’s still a mystery why exactly the developer of Staten Island’s Swiftsure project, Fullmark Energy (formerly known as Hecate), pulled the plug. We do know a few key details: First, Fullmark did not announce publicly that it was killing the project, instead quietly submitting a short, one-page withdrawal letter to the New York State Department of Public Service. That letter, which is publicly available, is dated August 18 of this year, meaning that the move formally occurred two months ago. Still, nobody in Staten Island seems to have known until late Friday afternoon when local publication SI Advance first reported the withdrawal.
Second, Swiftsure was going to be massive. It was the largest planned battery storage project in New York State, according to public records, with the ability to store upwards of 650 megawatts of electricity — enough to power more than half a million homes. That makes Swiftsure likely one of the largest battery projects in the country, with more capacity than any other energy storage project currently facing opposition in the U.S., according to our very own Heatmap Pro database. This is the second Fullmark project to totally flop in recent months. We reported last week that one of the company’s projects outside of Los Angeles had its permits voided in a court ruling that also blocked battery storage development in unincorporated areas outside the city.
Third, and potentially most significant for energy developers in New York City: Swiftsure’s death will almost certainly embolden the anti-storage activist movement.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee in next week’s New York mayoral election, was one of many local politicians who opposed Swiftsure and rallied with residents close to the proposed site in May. He’s part of a broader trend of Republican politicians becoming skeptical of battery storage sites near where people live and work, including in Democrat-ruled New York.
Putting batteries in the five boroughs has always been a challenge, but January’s Moss Landing battery fire in California created a PR frenzy in the city, as conservative figures seized on the online panic created by the blaze. Once-agnostic GOP members of Congress from New York City are now anti-battery storage in their backyards, including Anthony D’Esposito, Nicole Malliotakis and Mike Lawler. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin — a former NYC congressman — is now weighing in against individual battery projects on Long Island and Staten Island.
Swiftsure was proposed in 2023 and permitted by the state last year. Fullmark was given a deadline of this spring to submit routine paperwork demonstrating how it would comply with conditions of the site’s permit, including how the battery storage project would be decommissioned. In August, the New York Department of Public Service gave Fullmark an extension until October 11.
Instead of meeting that October deadline, it seems Fullmark quietly withdrew its Swiftsure proposal.
It’s unclear how Democrat Zohran Mamdani or independent Andrew Cuomo would handle the rise of the anti-battery movement if either of them wins the November 4 mayoral election. That’s partially because energy policy and climate change have been non-issues in the campaign, saving small mentions of nuclear power, heat pumps, or gas prices in one-off debate answers or social media posts.
Sliwa, who has referred to Swiftsure as a “mini Chernobyl,” told me that he anticipates this victory will lead to more protests at more battery sites, no matter who wins the mayoral election. “The cancellation of this lithium-ion battery warehouse will reverberate throughout the boroughs,” Sliwa told me Monday. “It’ll be a rallying cry [because] it’s not a fait accompli that these facilities will be complete and operational.”
The Mamdani and Cuomo campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on Swiftsure’s cancellation.
On China’s rare earths, Bill Gates’ nuclear dream, and Texas renewables
Current conditions: Hurricane Melissa exploded in intensity over the warm Caribbean waters and has now strengthened into a major storm, potentially slamming into Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica as a Category 5 in the coming days • The Northeast is bracing for a potential nor’easter, which will be followed by a plunge in temperatures of as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit lower than average • The northern Australian town of Julia Creek saw temperatures soar as high as 106 degrees.
Exxon Mobil filed a lawsuit against California late Friday on the grounds that two landmark new climate laws violate the oil giant’s free speech rights, The New York Times reported. The two laws would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to calculate and report the greenhouse gas pollution created by the use of their products, so-called Scope 3 emissions. “The statutes compel Exxon Mobil to trumpet California’s preferred message even though Exxon Mobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided,” Exxon complained through its lawyers. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said the statutes “have already been upheld in court and we continue to have confidence in them.” He condemned the lawsuit, calling it “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”
China will delay introducing export controls on rare earths, an unnamed U.S. official told the Financial Times following two days of talks in Malaysia. For years, Beijing has been ratcheting up trade restrictions on the global supply of metals its industry dominates. But this month, China slapped the harshest controls yet on rare earths. In response, stocks in rare earth mining and refining companies soared. Despite what Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin called the “paradox of Trump’s critical mineral crusade” to mine even as he reduced demand from electric vehicle factories, “everybody wants to invest in critical minerals startups,” Heatmap’s Katie Brigham wrote. That — as frequent readers of this newsletter will recall — includes the federal government, which under the Trump administration has been taking equity stakes in major projects as part of deals for federal funding.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission rewarded Bill Gates’ next-generation reactor company, TerraPower, with its final environment impact statement last week. The next step in the construction permit process is a final safety evaluation that the company expects to receive by the end of this year. If everything goes according to plan, TerraPower could end up winning the race to build the nation’s first commercial reactor to use a coolant other than water, and do so at a former coal-fired plant in the country’s top coal-producing state. “The Natrium plant in Wyoming, Kemmerer Unit 1, is now the first advanced reactor technology to successfully complete an environmental impact statement for the NRC, bringing us another step closer to delivering America’s next nuclear power plant,” said TerraPower president and CEO Chris Levesque.
A judge gave New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration until February 6 to issue rules for its long-delayed cap-and-invest program, the Albany Times-Union reported. The government was supposed to issue the guidelines that would launch the program as early as 2024, but continuously pushed back the release. “Early outlines of New York’s cap and invest program indicate that regulators were considering a relatively low price ceiling on pollution, making it easier for companies to buy their way out of compliance with the cap,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote in January.
 
The Texas data center boom is being powered primarily with new wind, solar, and batteries, according to new analysis by the Energy Information Administration. Since 2021, electricity demand on the independent statewide grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has soared. Over the past year, wind, solar, and batteries have been supplying that rising demand. Utility-scale solar generated 45 terawatt-hours of electricity in the first nine months of 2025. That’s 50% more than the same period in 2024 and nearly four times more than the same period in 2021. Wind generation, meanwhile, totaled 87 terawatt-hours for the first nine months of this year, up 4% from last year and 36% since 2021. “Together,” the analysis stated, “wind and solar generation met 36% of ERCOT’s electricity demand in the first nine months of 2025.”