Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Energy

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Climate, the IRA, and a Coming Political Shift

Inside Heatmap’s future of energy security event in D.C.

Heatmap Staff •
03/28/2025
Jael Holtzman and Sheldon Whitehouse.
Mariah Miranda Photography

On Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., Heatmap hosted an evening of discussion on energy innovation and security, featuring special guest Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Guests at Heatmap's discussion on energy innovation and security.Guests at Heatmap's discussion on energy innovation and securityMariah Miranda Photography

We’re in the “era of climate consequences,” Whitehouse told Heatmap senior reporter Jael Holzman. Climate politics has so far largely failed, he said, due to the “malign and corrupting” influence of the fossil fuel industry. Now, things like expensive disaster cleanups and skyrocketing insurance are creating opportunities to talk to voters about climate policy in a new way. And that means largely abandoning the climate politics of the past.

Jael Holtzman and Sheldon Whitehouse.Jael Holtzman and Sheldon WhitehouseMariah Miranda Photography

“The Inflation Reduction Act was fine,” he said. “But nobody believed it put us on a pathway of climate safety. So we have always needed to do more.” Some portions of the IRA may survive the Trump administration’s anti-renewables agenda, particularly those sections that are delivering benefits to Republican-led states, he said. “I think the legislative focus should be on defending that. The parliamentary focus should be on defending that. But the narrative focus shouldn't be on defending that,” Whitehouse said. “The narrative has to move on.”

Senator WhitehouseSenator Whitehouse making a point.Mariah Miranda Photography

Also on Wednesday night, Heatmap CEO and editor in chief Nico Lauricella interviewed Benton Arnett, senior director of markets and policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, which sponsored the event. Their discussion focused on the changing prospects for the nuclear industry. “If we were having this conversation three years ago, we would be talking about which nuclear plant we might shut down next, right?” Arnett said. “It was really a dire time for the industry.”

Nico Lauricella and Benton Arnett.Nico Lauricella and Benton ArnettMariah Miranda Photography

Today, the industry has benefited from a host of converging positive factors, including rising demand for reliable 24/7 energy sources that has brought investor interest into the space, as well as policy changes and incentives — particularly 45U, the IRA’s tax credit for nuclear energy — that have helped clear away some of the barriers to new nuclear development.

Should we call it a nuclear renaissance, Lauricella asked? A revival?

“I just call it a good time,” Arnett said.

Nico Lauricella and Benton Arnett.Nico Lauricella and Benton ArnettMariah Miranda Photography

Guests following the discussion.Guests following the discussionMariah Miranda Photography

Mariah Miranda Photography

Mariah Miranda Photography

Mariah Miranda Photography

Mariah Miranda Photography

Mariah Miranda Photography


Thank you to our sponsors, the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Alliance for Market Solutions, for making the event possible.

Heatmap Staff profile image

Heatmap Staff

Heatmap News is climate news for the real world. We tell the inside story of the race to fix the planet, with deep reporting on emerging decarbonization trends, like electric vehicles, clean hydrogen, and carbon capture, in addition to climate change and its impact on our economy, politics, and society. (You can read more about us here.)

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
Continue with Google
or
Please enter an email address
Continue
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Or try a month of unlimited access to Heatmap for free
Politics

Nearly Half of Americans Are Pessimistic About AI’s Effect on Their Lives

Quiet desperation, meet artificial intelligence.

Jeva Lange
06/04/2026
AI jail.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Like many new parents, I devote considerable time to thinking about sleep and why it’s not happening. Should I have sung the bedtime song and then changed the diaper? Did the baby need a fourth nap, or was the mistake letting her take a third so close to bedtime? It came as a surprise the other day, then, when a fellow parent in my baby group revealed she isn’t overthinking the whole sleep schedule thing at all. “I asked ChatGPT to write my baby’s sleep plan,” she told us. “It’s validating!”

To this author, personally, outsourcing parenting decisions to the world’s most sophisticated Mad Libs respondent seems like one of the signs that we’re doomed. Sleepmaxxing mothers aside, a plurality of Americans agree with me. Per Heatmap Pro’s latest polling, 45% of voters are “pessimistic” about the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on their lives, with just 22% saying they’re “optimistic” and about a third saying they’re unsure.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
AM Briefing

Oklahoma!

On depleted U.S. oil stocks, Taiwan geothermal, and hybrid sales

Alexander C. Kaufman
06/04/2026
Gentner Drummond.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: The southwest monsoon known as “hagabat” has started in the Philippines, dumping up to 4 inches of rain on the archipelago • A strong geomagnetic storm, ranked just two levels below the most powerful type of event of this kind, is underway, threatening radio signals, GPS, and other human instruments that are sensitive to shifts in the Earth’s magnetic fields • San Antonio, where the glorious New York Knicks defeated the Spurs last night, is bracing for rain through the weekend.


THE TOP FIVE

1. U.S. oil stocks drop to the lowest level since 2004

To put it in terms a movie lover could understand, President Donald Trump’s Iran War is drinking the U.S. government’s milkshake. Federal stocks of oil have dropped to their lowest level since 2004. Commercial crude stocks fell by 8 million barrels to 433.7 million last week, according to The Wall Street Journal. Unless the Strait of Hormuz reopens soon — which looks less likely now that Iran has called off negotiations with the U.S. and Israel — prices could hit $200 per barrel by summer, said Bob McNally, president of the Rapidan Energy Group consultancy and a former White House adviser. “You start to raise the risk of spillover into other sectors, the economy and financial system … it detonates fragilities in the broader economy and financial system,” he told the Financial Times.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Daily Briefing

What’s Powering Clean Energy

Notes from Heatmap’s second Energy Entrepreneurship Summit.

Robinson Meyer
06/03/2026
A tokamak.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m writing from Washington, D.C., today, after having the privilege of watching (and moderating) Heatmap’s second Energy Entrepreneurship Summit this morning. We heard from folks leading in a variety of technologies — geothermal, batteries, fusion, conventional nuclear — but I was struck by a few common themes.

The first was the new wave of excitement about fusion energy and how, in some ways, the artificial intelligence boom has reinvigorated the fusion conversation. Much like fusion, AI was a long-prophesied technology that made steady, iterative improvements over time — and then, one day, delivered a transformative product in the form of ChatGPT. I’m not sure if fusion has yet had a raw technological improvement on par with the transformer, the neural network innovation that preceded today’s AI chatbots and agents, but fusion startups have reported significant improvements in recent years. The industry believes — as do some fusion-pilled policymakers — that they will have commercial reactors on the grid by the mid-2030s.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue