You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
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:
A deep dive into the union’s demands
It’s time to deliver pumpkin spiced lattes to the picket lines, because Hot Labor Summer is raging into the fall.
The United Auto Workers Union’s contract with General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Stellantis expired at midnight on Thursday, and the union has made the unprecedented decision to strike all three companies at once.
The transition to electric vehicles is a defining issue of the fight. The Big Three say they aspire for 40% to 50% of their U.S. sales to be electric vehicles by the end of this decade. But they argue that ceding to workers’ demands for higher wages would jeopardize their ability to invest in EVs and their competitiveness against Tesla and foreign automakers that operate nonunion plants.
Meanwhile, the automakers are opening new joint venture battery plants that are not covered under the union’s national agreement, and paying workers there less. That trend, plus the fear that electric vehicles will require fewer workers to assemble than gas-powered vehicles, call into question the Biden administration’s key selling point of tackling climate change — that switching to EVs and other clean technologies is an opportunity “to create millions of good-paying, union jobs.”
When it comes to what UAW is trying to do about all of this, it's not entirely clear. Fain has taken a different stance than his predecessors by embracing the transition to EVs. But when you look at the union’s key demands, electric vehicles aren’t mentioned anywhere.
So how is the union actually tackling the transition? The negotiations are largely confidential, and the UAW has only shared the loose outlines of its proposals to the Big Three. But here’s what we know.
Electric vehicles aren’t named directly on the union’s list, but the transition away from gas-powered cars is implicated in multiple proposals.
1. Wages. The union’s top priority is higher pay. Fain went into negotiations asking for a 40% increase in wages over the next four years, equivalent to the raises that Big Three CEOs received over the last four, and cost of living increases to match inflation. This would boost the pay of all its members, including those working on EVs.
2. Ending Tiers. Fain also aims to end the “tier” system which created different pay classes and benefits between workers. Currently, new hires start at $16 to $18 and have to pay their dues for eight years before earning senior-level wages that top out at $32. Temporary workers make even less, and temp workers at Stellantis have no clear path to permanent positions. It’s not entirely clear what the tier system will mean as the automakers ramp up EV production.
3. Right to strike plant closures. One fear is that automakers will shut down existing plants and build new ones elsewhere, forcing workers to relocate and disrupt their lives if they want to keep their jobs. For example, earlier this year, Stellantis idled a plant in Illinois, laying off a workforce of 1,350. The company said it made the decision due to the escalating costs to shift to electric vehicle production. Some of the plant’s workers transferred to other plants in other states. Workers also fear the companies will end up building new EV plants in right-to-work states, and doing so under new ownership structures, like the joint-venture battery plants, enabling them to keep the UAW out entirely.
The union contracts typically contain a “no strike, no lockout” clause that bars workers from protesting. So if one of the automakers decides not to “allocate” any new vehicle models to a particular plant, signaling potential closure, workers have no way to fight the decision. This provision would change that. While it’s unclear how effective a strike at a plant slated for closure would be, it could provide a path for them to open negotiations with the company to try and keep it open, or move one of its planned EV models into the plant.
4. Paid community service. Fain has also proposed a “Working Family Protection Program.” This seems more like a veiled threat than a real protection plan for workers. The details are vague, but the union said it's asking that in the event of a plant closure, companies have to pay UAW members to do community service work. In a speech to UAW members this week, Fain described it as a way to “disincentivize the Big Three from killing jobs.”
This one’s a bit murky. UAW leadership has made it clear it wants jobs at the Big Three’s joint venture battery plants to be union positions. But the UAW leadership hasn’t said publicly whether rolling joint-venture plant workers into the master contract is one of its demands in the negotiations. And it’s not even clear the union can use a joint venture as a bargaining chip in its current talks, as The American Prospect reports.
The automakers have already tried to quash the notion earlier this summer in negotiations between UAW and the Ultium Cells plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which is owned by GM and LG Energy Solutions, a South Korean company. In August, the union reached an interim agreement with Ultium, winning $3 to $4 raises and thousands more in backpay for workers. But the company has resisted the union’s calls to roll plant workers into the national GM contract, insisting it “is a separate legal entity and independent employer from GM or LGES.”
Art Wheaton, director of Labor Studies at Cornell University, told me one thing the automakers could do is agree to a non-compete clause, or pledge neutrality at the joint-venture plants, so that workers could more easily organize and vote to join UAW.
We don’t know what other transition-related provisions the union may have proposed, like job training guarantees. Ultimately, its EV wins could look more like new plant investment announcements than broader protections for workers in the transition.
For example, going into the last UAW strike in 2019, GM had four “unallocated” plants that were likely to close. But the union negotiated with GM to save one of the plants — the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly factory. The final contract contained a promise from GM to invest $3 billion to retool it for electric truck and van assembly. In 2021, the plant reopened as Factory ZERO, the company’s first dedicated EV assembly plant, and began producing the 2022 GMC Hummer EV Pickup.
It should be noted that the Big Three are not Fain’s only target. The union boss has also withheld his support for Biden’s re-election, putting pressure on the administration to do more to support organized labor.
We’re unlikely to see a big spending package like the Inflation Reduction Act that could premise subsidies on union labor anytime soon. But Ian Greer, another professor at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told me there’s a lot more policymakers can do to protect workers. He pointed to a federal program called Trade Adjustment Assistance, which provided aid to workers who lost their jobs, including training opportunities. The program expired in 2022.
“Congress could just reauthorize that, and that would release a lot of resources to support these workers who are going to lose their jobs,” said Greer. “Our institutions create so few tools and levers that unions can use to manage this transition and protect their members. I think this is a really important bit of context about why there's a strike that very few Americans are talking about.”
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Renewables developers may yet be able to start construction before the One Big Beautiful Bill deadlines hit.
The Trump administration issued new rules for the wind and solar tax credits on Friday, closing the loop on a question that has been giving developers anxiety since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in early July.
For decades, developers have been able to lock in tax credit eligibility by establishing that they have officially started construction on a project in one of two ways. They could complete “physical work of a significant nature,” such as excavating the project site or installing foundational equipment, or they could simply spend 5% of the total project budget, for instance by purchasing key components and putting them in a warehouse. After that, they had at least four years to start shipping power to the grid before stricter work requirements kicked in.
Shortly after signing the OBBBA, however, Trump issued an executive order directing the Treasury Department to revise its definition of the “beginning of construction” of a wind or solar project. Under the new law, this definition can make or break a project. OBBBA established new deadlines for wind and solar development, allowing projects that start construction before the end of this year to qualify for the tax credits as they currently stand. But projects that start construction between January 1 and July 4 of 2026 will have to follow stringent new rules limiting the use of materials with ties to China in order to qualify.
The start construction date also affects how long a developer has to complete a project and still qualify for credits. Projects that start before July 4 of next year have at least four years, while those that start after must meet an impossibly short timeline of being up and running in just a year and a half, by the end of 2027.
Some worried the new guidance would narrow that four year timeframe or affect project eligibility retroactively. Neither happened. The only major change the Treasury department made to the existing guidance was to get rid of the 5% safe harbor provision. While this is not nothing, and will certainly disqualify some projects that might otherwise have been able to claim the credits, it is nowhere near as calamitous for renewables as it could have been.
Projects can still establish they have started construction by completing “physical work of a significant nature,” and the definition of physical work still includes off-site work, such as the manufacturing of equipment. That means it’s still possible for a company to simply place an order for a custom piece of equipment, like a transformer, to establish their start date — as long as they have a binding contract in place and can demonstrate that the physical production of the equipment is underway.
The new guidance also contains a carve-out that allows solar projects that are less than 1.5 megawatts to use the 5% rule, which will help rooftop solar and smaller community-scale installations.
Trump’s executive order came after a reported deal he made with House Freedom Caucus Republicans who wanted to axe the tax credits altogether. The order directed the Treasury to prevent “the artificial acceleration or manipulation of eligibility” and restrict “the use of broad safe harbors unless a substantial portion of a subject facility has been built.”
Treasury’s relative restraint, then, comes as something of a relief. “It’s not good, it’s not helpful, but from my perspective, the guidance could have been a lot worse,” David Burton, a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright who specializes in energy tax credits, told me. “Utility-scale solar and wind developers should be able to plan around this and not be that harmed.”
That doesn’t mean clean energy groups are happy about the changes, though. “At a time when we need energy abundance, these rules create new federal red tape,” Heather O’Neill, president and CEO of the industry group Advanced Energy United, said in a statement. “These rules will make it more difficult and expensive to build and finance critical energy projects in the U.S.”
The changes don’t go into effect until September 2, so for the next two weeks, all projects can still utilize the 5% safe harbor.
Even though the rules are not the death-blow for projects that some anticipated, there’s still one big unknown that could squeeze development further: The Treasury department has yet to put out guidance related to the new foreign sourcing rules created by the OBBB. One of the big fears there is that companies will have to prove their lack of ties to China so far up their supply chains that compliance becomes impossible.
We probably won’t be left wondering for long, though. Trump’s executive order asked for those rules within 45 days, putting the due date on Monday.
On the worsening transformer shortage, China’s patent boom, and New York’s nuclear embrace
Current conditions: Tropical Storm Erin is still intensifying as it approaches the Caribbean • Rare August rainstorms are deluging the Pacific Northwest with a month’s worth of precipitation in 24 hours, threatening floods • Hong Kong has issued its highest-level “black” rainstorm warning multiple times this month as Tropical Storm Podul lashes southern China.
President Donald Trump’s order to keep large fossil-fueled power stations scheduled to retire between now and 2028 operating indefinitely will cost ratepayers across the United States $3.1 billion per year, according to new research from the consultancy Grid Strategies on behalf of four large environmental groups. If the Department of Energy expands the order to cover all 54 fossil fuel plants slated for closure in the next three years, the price tag for Americans whose rates fund the subsidies to keep the stations running would rise to $6 billion per year.
The problem may only grow. The agency’s existing mandates “perversely incentivize plant owners to claim they plan to retire so they can receive a ratepayer subsidy to remain open,” the report points out.
With electricity consumption hitting new records in the U.S., demand for transformers is surging. The years-long supply shortage for power and distribution transformers is now set to hit a deficit below demand of 30% and 10%, respectively, in 2025, according to a new report from the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Complicating matters further for manufacturers scrambling to ramp up supply, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is throwing clean-energy projects into jeopardy and sending mixed signals to factories on what kinds of transformers to produce. At the same time, tariffs are raising the price of materials needed to make more transformers.
“The U.S. transformer market stands at a critical juncture, with supply constraints threatening to undermine the nation's energy transition and grid reliability goals,” Ben Boucher, a senior supply chain analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said in a statement. “The convergence of accelerating electricity demand, aging infrastructure and supply chain vulnerabilities has created constraints that will persist well into the 2030s.”
Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:
A worker in a Chinese electric vehicle factory. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
For years, China was known for ripping off the West’s technology and patenting cheaper but more easily manufactured copies. Not anymore. China applied for twice as many high-quality clean energy patents as the U.S. in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of the most recently available public data. The European Patent Office, which supplied data to the Times, defines a “high quality” patent as one that has been filed in two or more countries, indicating that the company or individual involved has a strong competitive interest in protecting its idea.
The growth in China’s intellectual property ambitions is a sign that Beijing’s strategic push to ramp up academic research and industrial innovation is maturing. “It is the opposite of an accident,” said Jenny Wong Leung, an analyst and data scientist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which created a database of global research on technologies that are critical to nations’ economic and military security, including clean energy.
In June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul directed the New York Power Authority, the nation’s second-largest government-owned utility after the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, to support the construction of the state’s first new nuclear plant since the 1980s. Albany has plenty to sort out between now and the 15-year deadline for completing the project, including selecting a site, picking from one of the many new reactor designs, and finding a private partner. But one thing isn’t a problem, at least for now: Public support.
New Siena polling I covered in my Substack newsletter yesterday shows that 49% of registered voters in New York support the effort, with just 26% opposed. Both sides of the political spectrum are largely in lockstep, with Republican support outpacing that of Democrats by a margin of 55% to 49%. That’s lucky for Hochul, who will need support from the more politically conservative upper reaches of the state where the facility is likely to be built. For more on the technical and political considerations in play, here’s Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin on the plan.
It seems like everyone is abandoning their net zero goals. But not insurer Aviva. The company’s chief executive, Amanda Blanc, said the British giant remained committed to its carbon-cutting goals in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, The Guardian reported. With rising profits propelling shares in the company to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, Blanc said, “extreme weather conditions, climate change, and the impact that that has on our insurance business that actually insures properties” meant Aviva needed to “remain committed to our ambition.”
The red-headed wood pigeon once seemed on the verge of extinction. The population, endemic to Japan’s Ogasawara Islands, fell to below 80 individuals in the 2000s. But once its main predator, the feral cat, was removed, the bird made a remarkable comeback. A team of researchers at Kyoto University set out to find out why the expected problems from inbreeding never occurred. Per a press release: “Their results revealed that the frequency of highly deleterious mutations in the red-headed wood pigeon was lower than in the more widespread Japanese wood pigeon. This suggests that, rather than hindering it, the pigeon's success was likely rooted in its long-term persistence in a small population size prior to human impact.”
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Lawrence County, Alabama – We now have a rare case of a large solar farm getting federal approval.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – It’s time to follow up on the Coastal Virginia offshore wind project.
3. Fairfield County, Ohio – The red shirts are beating the greens out in Ohio, and it isn’t looking pretty.
4. Allen County, Indiana – Sometimes a setback can really set someone back.
5. Adams County, Illinois – Hope you like boomerangs because this county has approved a solar project it previously denied.
6. Solano County, California – Yet another battery storage fight is breaking out in California. This time, it’s north of San Francisco.