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No matter where you live, you should be prepared to live without power during extreme heat.
What keeps emergency management officials up at night? Terrorist attacks. The Big One. A direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane.
But when it comes to climate-related disasters, one fear often rises above the rest: a blackout during a heat wave.
According to new research published this spring, a two-day citywide blackout in Phoenix during a heat wave could lead to half the population — some 789,600 people — requiring emergency medical attention in a metropolitan area with just 3,000 available beds. As many as 12,800 people could die, the equivalent of more than nine Hurricane Katrinas.
Power outages can happen during a heat wave for a number of reasons. The most obvious is because of strain on the power grid, as everyone cranks up their air conditioning at the same time. By one estimate, “two-thirds of North America is at risk of energy shortfalls this summer during periods of extreme demand.” Blackouts can be both city- and state-wide, like when 11 million people were without power following a deadly grid failure in Texas in 2021; or rolling, to prevent a more catastrophic failure; or localized, like when a wildfire takes down transmission lines.
Storms can also knock out power, cutting off access to life-saving air conditioning. Excessive heat killed 12 nursing home residents in Florida in the aftermath of a 2017 hurricane, the same year that hundreds died in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria lead to a months-long blackout.
There’s another possibility that has been quietly discussed by emergency officials, too: a malicious cyberattack that takes down the grid during a time of extreme heat. “What happens when a cyberattack disables access to electricity for weeks, coordinated with record-breaking heatwaves, which are significant public health concerns in themselves?” a 2021 piece in The American Journal of Medicinemused, only to conclude that “the impact on the health-care system” — including hospitals, which can run on generators but would be quickly overwhelmed — “would be catastrophic.”
So if the power goes out during a heat wave, what do you do?
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No, you’re not psychic: You can’t predict when a power outage will leave you without your AC. But you are an informed person who’s aware that heat waves are becoming more common and intense and that extreme heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States. Virtually every American can benefit from having a plan in place for how to deal with extreme heat in the absence of AC, since nowhere is climate-proof.
At the most basic, the emergency agencies that informed this article — primarily American Red Cross, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Ready.gov, all of which can be consulted for further resources — say you should have an emergency kit prepared and up to date in your home, and sign up for emergency alerts. (Also prepare a separate emergency kit for your pets if you have any.) This should include directions to your local cooling center in addition to a hospital.
Next, “Take an inventory of your essential electrical needs,” advises the American Red Cross. “Then consider how you would live without them when the power goes out.” That list might include backup batteries for phones, fans, CPAP machines, or any other medical devices.
Also consider buying misting spray bottles (we’ll get to those later) and a cooler where you can stash food if the refrigerator goes down. Battery-operated fans can additionally be useful to have on hand, particularly in humid areas, despite many public health organizations warning against them. Extra gallons of water are a part of every emergency kit, and important to have on hand as well.
Finally, make a habit of checking in on the vulnerable people in your life ahead of time — in particular, older people who live alone — and confirm they have air conditioning units that are working. Of the 72 people who died in Oregon's Multnomah County, which makes up the bulk of the city of Portland, during a heat wave in 2021, only three were found to have a functioning AC unit.
The first thing you want to do if the power goes out during a heat wave, regardless of how severe you anticipate the situation being, is prevent the loss of whatever cool air there still is inside your house. At the most basic, this means covering your windows to keep out sunlight by drawing the blinds.
If you anticipate the power being out for more than a few hours — perhaps because one of the emergency alerts you signed up for warns you the blackout could last for days — take more dramatic measures, like using blackout curtains if you have them, or reflective, foil-covered pieces of cardboard in the windows to bounce heat off your home. The most important thing, though, is to get the windows covered with something; even a towel will do if you don’t have drapes or blinds. If you have a multi-story home and anticipate a long-lasting power outage, begin to shut upstairs doors (hot air rises!) with plans on keeping those rooms closed off for the duration of the blackout. Any particularly drafty doors or windows can be further sealed with a rolled-up towel. In a worst-case-scenario event, you’ll be staying downstairs until your air conditioning turns back on, so keep that in mind as you move through the rooms.
As you’re making your sweep, also snag any medications you have stored, since heat can alter their efficacy. Many meds will become less potent or altered when exposed to high temperatures; aspirin, for example, breaks down into acetic acid and salicylic acid, which can upset the stomach.
Preventatively turn off and disconnect appliances, too, in order to avoid damage from a surge when the power returns (this is generally good advice no matter what the blackout conditions are). Then establish yourself in your darkest, coolest room — it’s likely on the north side of your home or apartment. Generally avoid south-facing rooms, followed by east- and west-facing rooms, since they get the most sunlight. Hunkering down in the basement is also potentially a good option.
Keep your refrigerator closed until about four hours have passed, at which point you should move the contents and stash them in a cooler. A full freezer can stay at a safe temperature for up to 48 hours, but as FoodSafety.gov will remind you, “when in doubt, throw it out.”
We know dangerously little about how indoor heat works. But we know that it kills — studies have found that people are most likely to succumb to heat-related illnesses in their own homes.
As a rule of thumb, if your body is exposed to temperatures of 90 degrees or higher, you are potentially at risk of heat exhaustion, which can lead to heat stroke, the National Weather Service notes. Keep in mind, though, that it can “feel like” 90 degrees when the temperature on the thermometer is as low as 86 degrees, because of humidity. If your home starts to feel hot, pay close attention to both the indoor heat and humidity and consult the NWS’s heat index to understand your risk.
Prolonged exposure to high temperatures increases the strain on your body and the danger of heat illness. While 90 degrees might be technically survivable for a healthy adult, “the temperature needs to drop to at least 80 degrees for” the body to begin to recover from extreme heat, CNN reports — part of why overnight highs can actually be deadlier than daytime highs.
Keep in mind your own vulnerabilities to heat, too: The elderly and the prepubescent are most at risk, but people taking antidepressants, antipsychotics, anticholinergics, diuretics, and ACE inhibitors can all have severe heat intolerance, too, Yale Climate Connection observes. Additionally, the publication notes, certain diabetes medications, including insulin, can be less effective when exposed to high heat. People with heart disease, kidney issues, or diabetes should be especially cautious about their health during heat waves because of the intense strain on these systems.
If the temperature starts to climb inside your home during a power outage, it is imperative to act quickly to stay healthy. Drink lots of water, but do so consistently, not in guzzling bursts; we’re limited in how much water we can absorb by how fast our kidneys can function. In extreme conditions, the body can absorb up to a liter of water per hour, but it’s often much less. It’s more important, then, to sip continually throughout the day.
If you have the option to do so, spend as much time in air-conditioned spaces as possible, particularly in the afternoon — movie theaters, malls, public libraries, community lake or pool, and friends’ and family’s homes in an area with power are all potential options. Cooling centers are also a terrific option since they are free, can be equipped with backup generators, and may have other resources handy to help you beat the heat.
But let’s assume, for whatever reason, these options are unavailable. Many cooling centers, including most of those in Los Angeles, for example, do not have backup generators, and they can quickly become crowded — one study that looked at Atlanta, Detroit, and Phoenix found that at most, 2 percent of the city population could be accommodated by existing cooling facilities.
Water, then, becomes your best friend. The evaporation of water from our skin helps pull heat away, so begin a regime of keeping a sheen of water on your skin, whether that’s by using a handheld mister or by placing cool wet towels on your body (the head and neck, armpits, and groin are the warmest parts of our bodies, so focus your efforts there). This is an especially good technique if you have a battery-powered fan to sit in front of. Though fans get a bad rap for creating “a false sense of comfort,” in the words of Ready.gov, used properly they can absolutely help — just keep in mind they stop working very effectively once it’s above about 95 degrees.
Showers can help keep you cool too, just don’t be tempted to take an especially cold one; as Popular Science explains, you don’t want to reach the point of shivering, a response that counterproductively increases our internal temperature.
Switch into light, airy clothes and avoid physical activity as much as you can. At night, keep an eye on the temperature; if it’s cool enough outside, open all your windows to create a cross-flow of air, but be sure to close your windows up after temperatures begin to climb again in the morning.
Pay attention to how your body is responding and know the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke (we have a guide for that here). Typically the first signs are cramps, headaches, or dizziness.
If you begin to feel too hot or sick, it’s time to evacuate your home. Heat illness can go from “uncomfortable” to deadly within 90 minutes, so it’s better to act decisively and get to safety rather than wait and get sicker, when your decision-making abilities begin to erode.
Check what heat relief options exist in your area. Many cities now have programs designed to protect people during extreme heat events, such as the Heat Relief Network in Phoenix, which offers everything from hydration sites to air-conditioned respite centers. Urban areas frequently offer free air-conditioned bus rides to cooling centers, too. But because some of these sites might be unavailable during a major power outage, check local government websites for information.
Before leaving your home, collect any medications and important documents you might need. Also bring any animals you have at home — as the Red Cross emphasizes, “If it’s not safe for you to stay behind then it’s not safe to leave pets behind either.”
If you believe you have the symptoms of heat exhaustion, seek medical attention immediately. But keep in mind, hospitals will likely be overwhelmed during a major power outage — it’s better to have a plan for dealing with the heat long before you ever get sick, rather than try to deal with illness after it’s already set in.
Read more about heat waves:
This Is How You Die of Extreme Heat
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On the environmental reviews, Microsoft’s emissions, and solar on farmland
Current conditions: Enormous wildfires in Manitoba, Canada, will send smoke into the Midwestern U.S. and Great Plains this weekend • Northwest England is officially experiencing a drought after receiving its third lowest rainfall since 1871 • Thunderstorms are brewing in Washington, D.C., where the Federal Court of Appeals paused an earlier ruling throwing out much of Trump’s tariff agenda.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that courts should show more deference to agencies when hearing lawsuits over environmental reviews.
The case concerned a proposed 88-mile train line in Utah that would connect its Uinta Basin (and its oil resources) with the national rail network. Environmental groups and local governments claimed that the environmental impact statement submitted by the federal Surface Transportation Board did not pay enough attention to the effects of increased oil drilling and refining that the rail line could induce. The D.C. Circuit agreed, vacating the EIS; the Supreme Court did not, overturning the D.C. Circuit in an 8-0 decision.
The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires the federal government to study the environmental impact of its actions. The D.C. Circuit “failed to afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the Board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court.
The court’s decision could sharply limit the ability of the judicial branch to question environmental reviews by agencies under NEPA, and could pave the way for more certain and faster approvals for infrastructure projects.
At least, that’s what Kavanaugh hopes. The current NEPA process, he writes, foists “delay upon delay” on developers and agencies, so “fewer projects make it to the finish line. Indeed, fewer projects make it to the starting line.”
Map of the approved railway route.Source: Uinta Basin Railway Final Environmental Impact Statement
The Department of Agriculture is planning to retool a popular financing program, Rural Energy for America, to discourage solar development on agricultural land, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman exclusively reported.
“Farmland should be for agricultural production, not solar production,” a USDA spokesperson told Heatmap. The comments echoed a USDA report released last week criticizing the use of solar on agricultural land. The report said that the USDA will “disincentivize the use of federal funding at USDA for solar panels to be installed on productive farmland through prioritization points and regulatory action.” The USDA will also “call on state and local governments to work alongside USDA on local solutions.”
The daughter of a woman who died during the Pacific Northwest “Heat Dome” in 2021 sued seven oil and companies for wrongful death in Washington state court, The New York Times reported Thursday.
“The suit alleges that they failed to warn the public of the dangers of the planet-warming emissions produced by their products and that they funded decades-long campaigns to obscure the scientific consensus on global warming,” according to Times reporter David Gelles.
Several cities and states have brought suits making similar claims that oil and gas companies misled the public about the threat of climate change. Earlier this week, a German court threw out a suit from a Peruvian farmer against a German utility, which claimed that the utility’s commissions helped put his town at risk from glacial flooding.
The seven companies named in the lawsuit are Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and Olympic Pipeline Company, a subsidiary managed by BP. None of them commented on the suit.
Tech giant Microsoft disclosed in its annual sustainability report that its carbon emissions have grown by 23.4% since 2020, even as the company has a goal to become “carbon negative” by 2030. The upside to the figures is that the growth in emissions was due to a much larger increase in energy use and business activity, not from using dirtier energy. In that same time period, Microsoft’s revenue has grown 71%, and its energy use has grown 168%.
“It has become clear that our journey towards being carbon negative is a marathon,” the report read. The company said it had contracted 34 gigawatts of non-emitting power generation and had agreements to procure 30 million metric tons of carbon removal.
The company has set out to reduce its indirect Scope 3 emissions “by more than half” by 2030 from the 11.5 million metric tons it reported in 2020, as its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions fall to close to zero. It will become “carbon negative,” it hopes, by purchasing carbon removal.
Microsoft attempts to reduce emissions in its supply chain by procuring low- or no-carbon fuels and construction materials. Last week the tech giant signed a purchasing agreement with Sublime Systems for 600,000 tons of low-carbon cement.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it had approved a 77-megawatt small modular reactor design. This is the second SMR design approved by the NRC, following approval of a smaller design in 2020. Both are products of the SMR company NuScale, and neither has yet been deployed. A project to build the earlier design in Idaho was abandoned in 2023.
The NRC review was set to be completed in July of this year. Coming in ahead of scheduled demonstrates “the agency’s commitment to safely and efficiently enable new, advanced reactor technology,” the Commission said in a press release.
Congress and the Biden and Trump administrations have pushed the NRC to move faster and to encourage the development of small modular reactors. No SMR has been built in the United States, nor is there any current plan to do so that has been publicly disclosed. NuScale’s chief executive told Bloomberg that he hopes to have a deal signed by the end of the year and an operational plant by the end of the decade.
Tesla veteran Drew Baglino’s Heron Power raised a $38 million round of Series A funding for a new product designed to replace “legacy transformers and power converters by directly connecting rapidly growing megawatt-scale solar, batteries, and AI data centers to medium voltage transmission,” Baglino wrote on X.
A conversation with Mike Hall of Anza.
This week’s conversation is with Mike Hall, CEO of the solar and battery storage data company Anza. I rang him because, in my book, the more insights into the ways renewables companies are responding to the war on the Inflation Reduction Act, the better.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity. Let’s jump in!
How much do we know about developers’ reactions to the anti-IRA bill that was passed out of the House last week?
So it’s only been a few days. What I can tell you is there’s a lot of surprise about what came out of the House. Industries mobilized in trying to improve the bill from here and I think a lot of the industry is hopeful because, for many reasons, the bill doesn’t seem to make sense for the country. Not just the renewable energy industry. There’s hope that the voices in Congress — House members and senators — who already understand the impact of this on the economy will in the coming weeks understand how bad this is.
I spoke to a tax attorney last week that her clients had been preparing for a worst case scenario like this and preparing contingency plans of some kind. Have you seen anything so far to indicate people have been preparing for a worst case scenario?
Yeah. There’s a subset of the market that has prepared and already executed plans.
In Q4 [of 2024] and Q1 [of this year] with a number of companies to procure material from projects in order to safe harbor those projects. What that means is, typically if you commence construction by a certain date, the date on which you commence construction is the date you lock in tax credit eligibility, and we worked with companies to help them meet that criteria. It hedged them on a number of fronts. I don’t think most of them thought we’d get what came out of the House but there were a lot of concerns about stepdowns for the credit.
After Trump was elected, there were also companies who wanted to hedge against tariffs so they bought equipment ahead of that, too. We were helping companies do deals the night before Liberation Day. There was a lot of activity.
We saw less after April 2nd because the trade landscape has been changing so quickly that it’s been hard for people to act but now we’re seeing people act again to try and hit that commencement milestone.
It’s not lost on me that there’s an irony here – the attempts to erode these credits might lead to a rush of projects moving faster, actually. Is that your sense?
There’s a slug of projects that would get accelerated and in fact just having this bill come out of the House is already going to accelerate a number of projects. But there’s limits to what you can do there. The bill also has a placed-in-service criteria and really problematic language with regard to the “foreign entity of concern” provisions.
Are you seeing any increase in opposition against solar projects? And is that the biggest hurdle you see to meeting that “placed-in-service” requirement?
What I have here is qualitative, not quantitative, but I was in the development business for 20 years, and what I have seen qualitatively is that it is increasingly harder to develop projects. Local opposition is one of the headwinds. Interconnection is another really big one and that’s the biggest concern I have with regards to the “placed-in-service” requirement. Most of these large projects, even if you overcome the NIMBY issues, and you get your permitting, and you do everything else you need to do, you get your permits and construction… In the end if you’re talking about projects at scale, there is a requirement that utilities do work. And there’s no requirement that utilities do that work on time [to meet that deadline]. This is a risk they need to manage.
And more of the week’s top news in renewable energy conflicts.
1. Columbia County, New York – A Hecate Energy solar project in upstate New York blessed by Governor Kathy Hochul is now getting local blowback.
2. Sussex County, Delaware – The battle between a Bethany Beach landowner and a major offshore wind project came to a head earlier this week after Delaware regulators decided to comply with a massive government records request.
3. Fayette County, Pennsylvania – A Bollinger Solar project in rural Pennsylvania that was approved last year now faces fresh local opposition.
4. Cleveland County, North Carolina – Brookcliff Solar has settled with a county that was legally challenging the developer over the validity of its permits, reaching what by all appearances is an amicable resolution.
5. Adams County, Illinois – The solar project in Quincy, Illinois, we told you about last week has been rejected by the city’s planning commission.
6. Pierce County, Wisconsin – AES’ Isabelle Creek solar project is facing new issues as the developer seeks to actually talk more to residents on the ground.
7. Austin County, Texas – We have a couple of fresh battery storage wars to report this week, including a danger alert in this rural Texas county west of Houston.
8. Esmeralda County, Nevada – The Trump administration this week approved the final proposed plan for NV Energy’s Greenlink North, a massive transmission line that will help the state expand its renewable energy capacity.
9. Merced County, California – The Moss Landing battery fire is having aftershocks in Merced County as residents seek to undo progress made on Longroad’s Zeta battery project south of Los Banos.