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A Chinese worker inspects polysilicon at a Wuhan factory. Feature China/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The Trump administration is preparing to impose new tariffs and minimum import prices on polysilicon in a bid to prop up a domestic supply chain for the primary ingredient in semiconductors and solar panels. The decision, due out after the market closes today, will set a tariff of at least 15% on imported polysilicon and set baseline prices for each component in the supply chain, from the raw material derived from purified quartz to solar wafers, cells, and modules, sources familiar with talks told me, confirming broad details first reported by Reuters and Bloomberg. The Department of Commerce plans to delay implementation to allow domestic manufacturers that rely on imported components time to adjust, and provide offsets to companies that make major investments in the U.S. The policy will serve as a key lifeline to solar manufacturers, who lost one of their main incentives to buy made-in-America panels when the investment and production tax credits for solar effectively ended last month. But industry sources told me that the new trade restrictions would likely fall short of incentivizing new manufacturing, and would require more support on the demand side. The dynamic mirrors what my colleague Matthew Zeitlin called the “paradox of Trump’s critical mineral crusade,” whereby the administration pulled out all the stops to boost mining of rare earths and lithium while eliminating the landmark electric vehicle tax credit that ensured a domestic market for those metals.
It’s hardly the only protectionism the Commerce Department is attempting this month. On Thursday, the agency plans to publish a temporary final rule that would block exports of battery scraps and tungsten waste without a special waiver from the Bureau of Industry and Security. Producers of the materials, E&E News reported, would be required to sell in the U.S. for one year. The move comes a week after President Donald Trump signed a memo blocking exports of mineral-rich waste as the White House seeks to shore up supplies of metals for weapons production. Tungsten, as the Bloomberg “Odd Lots” podcast explained nicely in a recent episode, has a very high melting point, making it ideal for artillery and ammunition. While it’s typically in demand in low amounts during peace time, soaring interest is a sign of widening global conflicts.
For retail investors, Oklo emerged as the face of the small modular reactor industry in 2024 after the Silicon Valley nuclear darling debuted on the stock market. But the company hadn’t yet split atoms. Last night, the company’s low-power test reactor in Texas sustained a reaction for the first time. The milestone makes Oklo the fifth company in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program to achieve criticality, but the first to do so on private land. Oklo boasted that the company had erected the facility at a previously undeveloped greenfield site in less than a year, demonstrating that “American nuclear deployment timelines can be measured in months rather than years,” the company said in a press release.
The move comes five months after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which notoriously rejected Oklo’s first attempt at gaining approval for its power plant reactors, approved the company’s plans to produce medical isotopes from low-powered reactors, as I exclusively reported in this newsletter at the time.
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Two House Democrats formally referred Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution, accusing him of lying to Congress when asked whether the agency canceled green grants for partisan reasons. In a letter published Wednesday in The Hill, Representatives Zoe Lofgren of California and Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, alleged that Wright lied when he testified his blocking of billions in climate spending had nothing to do with the money going to states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. In a federal lawsuit related to the same award terminations, Energy Department lawyers admitted that “the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” Wright previously testified that politics had no role in the decisions. “Secretary Wright lied to the Committee with his statements, which sought to prevent us from learning the truth: that the October award terminations were an act of political retaliation,” Lofgren and Amo wrote in the letter, addressed to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “In doing so, he violated 18 USC §1001, which bars individuals from making ‘any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation’ to Congress. We have no choice but to refer Secretary Wright to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution in this matter.”
In 1978, the U.S. used millions more tons of coal than today. Yet miners in Appalachia are facing rates of pneumoconiosis — the incurable, fatal disease known as black lung — at exactly the same levels today. That’s the finding of new data published Wednesday in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Miners in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia who had spent at least 25 years working underground had by far the worst rates, with one in three testing positive in X-rays conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency. “I’m disgusted,” Scott Laney, a NIOSH research epidemiologist who is the lead author of the research letter, told NPR. “This is not going to get better because of all the disease that’s already in the pipeline. These guys are being treated like disposable widgets, not human beings. … We’re watching them die right before our eyes.”
Your humble correspondent is due for a series of flights this afternoon. I lose little sleep over my personal carbon footprint; I don’t find it a useful metric, and even if I did, I live in New York City, so my family’s life in dense housing and reliance on public transit already places me well below most Americans. But I can’t help but think of it when I’m riding multiple planes in one day. Which makes this new Bloomberg feature so exciting. In Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, more than 200 researchers are working to commercialize jet fuel made from the oil-rich fruit of the macauba palm tree. Across 356,000 acres, the Abu Dhabi-based biofuels producer Acelen Renováveis plans to start processing macauba oil as part of a $3 billion project. The effort is meant to help the push to reduce airlines’ carbon intensity, but — as with biofuels in general — it’s worth considering the climate benefits with healthy doses of skepticism until detailed analyses come out.
The announcement came as President Donald Trump faced a particularly grim economic milestone. Thanks to inflation from the Iran War, the price per gallon of diesel in the U.S. has averaged $4.09 since Trump returned to office in January 2025, according to a Financial Times analysis of Energy Information Administration data. That compares to $4.08 during Biden’s four years in office, when the Ukraine war triggered a price shock on diesel.
When the Trump administration brokered an $80 billion deal to support construction of at least 10 more Westinghouse AP1000 reactors in the U.S., the agreement came with a measure that would allow the federal government to request that the company’s owners offer shares of the legendary developer behind much of the American nuclear fleet on the stock market. It now appears that won’t be necessary. Last week, Westinghouse, a co-venture between Canadian uranium giant Cameco and Toronto-headquartered investment giant Brookfield, filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, laying the groundwork for a possible IPO.
The move came just two weeks after Holtec International, another long-standing stalwart in the industry that’s looking to play a central role in the next U.S. reactor buildout, filed its own S-1 paperwork with the SEC. At present, retail investors have limited options to bet on the nuclear renaissance. Startups such as X-energy, Oklo, and Hadron Energy — none of which has yet built a reactor or won Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval of its design — have dominated the market. Established firms such as the nuclear utility Constellation Energy, fuel maker Centrus Energy, and GE Vernova, whose joint venture with Japanese conglomerate Hitachi is a leading reactor developer, have also benefited. But Westinghouse and Holtec would be among the most serious “pure play” contenders on the market with real balance sheets.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham took power last month after Labour leader Keir Starmer stepped down amid plummeting support within his own party, clearing the way for the populist former Manchester mayor’s democratic socialist reforms. Among the changes Burnham is expected to make on energy is giving the government an even greater role in developing fusion energy. “Because Burnham is committed to greater public control over utilities like energy, but within existing fiscal rules, his impact on fusion is likely to be about governance and ownership structures — for example stronger public or community stakes in fusion projects and more explicit links to regional development — rather than changing the headline national targets for fusion deployment themselves,” analyst Michael Heumann wrote in The Fusion Report.
It’s the type of intervention for which Japan’s fusion industry is pining. As you may recall, Japan’s conservative new “Iron Lady” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is going all in on reviving her country’s nuclear industry. But the FT reports that Japan’s fusion industry is now lobbying for more government support to get off the ground.
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Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is progressing toward coming online by the end of next year. The timeline for the 2.6-gigawatt facility off Virginia’s shores to install its 176th and final turbine pushes back the start date from early 2027. But Dominion said the schedule “reflects additional contingency for weather, vessel maintenance, loadout operations, and extended jacking activities, rather than changes to the base turbine installation rate, which has been two days per turbine so far,” according to offshoreWIND.biz. The update comes after Trump conceded defeat in his battle to use the Department of Justice to wrestle back federal permits issued to offshore wind projects under the previous administration, my colleague Emily Pontecorvo wrote in June.
On Tuesday evening, meanwhile, 10 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld an earlier injunction that said the Environmental Protection Agency could not cancel $20 billion in climate grants, ruling in a split decision that recipients should have access to the funds.
Renewables made up 54.1% of Spain’s electricity generation in July — and it’s even higher when you count Spaniards who generated solar at home for self-consumption. That’s according to the latest data the national grid operator Red Electric de España published Tuesday. Generation from renewables surged nearly 6% year-over-year to a record 14,699 gigawatt-hours last month, according to Renewables Now. Solar made up by far the largest share for the fourth consecutive month, accounting for more than 28% of the mix in July.
Women snooze on the Havana waterfront on Sunday.YAMIL LAGE / AFP via Getty Images
I’m always fascinated by the parallels between Cuba and Puerto Rico, which — despite shared colonial histories and struggles — took divergent paths in the mid-20th Century, only to both end up with aging grids that can’t keep the lights on. I was reminded of conversations I have had with Boricuas who have spent nights sleeping on balconies and porches when the electricity is out, leaving air conditioners and fans idled on hot nights. In Cuba, that’s now happening en masse as the summer heat collides with the ongoing U.S. oil embargo. “Things are only getting worse. Tomorrow it’ll collapse again ... and we’ll be back to sleeping on the Malecón,” Alexey Ríos García told the Associated Press as he used a piece of yellow foam as a pillow to cushion his head from the tough concrete.
