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A practical guide to using the climate law to get cheaper solar panels, heat pumps, and more.
Today marks the one year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest investment in tackling climate change the United States has ever made. The law consists of dozens of subsidies to help individuals, households, and businesses adopt clean energy technologies. Many of these solutions will also help people save money on their energy bills, reduce pollution, and improve their resilience to disasters.
But understanding how much funding is available for what, and how to get it, can be pretty confusing. Many Americans are not even aware that these programs exist. A poll conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland in late July found that about 66% of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the law’s incentives for installing rooftop solar panels, and 77% have heard little or nothing about subsidies for heat pumps. This tracks similar polling that Heatmap conducted last winter, suggesting not much has changed since then.
Below is Heatmap’s guide to the IRA’s incentives for cutting your carbon footprint at home. If you haven’t heard much about how the IRA can help you decarbonize your life, this guide is for you. If you have heard about the available subsidies, but aren’t sure how much they are worth or where to begin, I’ll walk you through it. (And if you’re looking for information about the electric vehicle tax credit, my colleague at Heatmap Robinson Meyer has you covered with this buyer’s guide.)
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There’s funding for almost every solution you can think of to make your home more energy efficient and reduce your fossil fuel use, whether you want to install solar panels, insulate your attic, replace your windows, or buy electric appliances. If you need new wiring or an electrical panel upgrade before you can get heat pumps or solar panels, there’s some money available for that, too.
The IRA created two types of incentives for home energy efficiency improvements: Unlimited tax credits that will lower the amount you owe when you file your taxes, and $8.8 billion in rebates that function as up-front discounts or post-installation refunds on equipment and services.
The tax credits are available now, but the rebates are not. The latter will be administered by states, which must apply for funding and create programs before the money can go out. The Biden administration began accepting applications at the end of July and expects states to begin rolling out their programs later this year or early next.
The home tax credits are available to everyone that owes taxes. The rebates, however, will have income restrictions (more on this later).
“The Inflation Reduction Act is not a limited time offer,” according to Ari Matusiak, the CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Rewiring America. The rebate programs will only be available until the money runs out, but, again, none of them have started yet. Meanwhile, there’s no limit on how many people can claim the tax credits, and they’ll be available for at least the next decade. That means you don’t need to rush and replace your hot water heater if you have one that works fine. But when it does break down, you’ll have help paying for a replacement.
You might want to hold off on buying new appliances or getting insulation — basically any improvements inside your house. There are tax credits available for a lot of this stuff right now, but you’ll likely be able to stack them with rebates in the future.
However, if you’re thinking of installing solar panels on your roof or getting a backup battery system, there’s no need to wait. The rebates will not cover those technologies.
A few other caveats: There’s a good chance your state, city, or utility already offers rebates or other incentives for many of these solutions. Check with your state’s energy office or your utility to find out what’s available. Also, it can take months to get quotes and line up contractors to get this kind of work done. If you want to be ready when the rebates hit, it’s probably a good idea to do some of the legwork now.
If you do nothing else this year, consider getting a professional home energy audit. This will cost several hundred dollars, depending on where you live, but you’ll be able to get 30% off or up to $150 back under the IRA’s home improvement tax credit. Doing an audit will help you figure out which solutions will give you the biggest bang for your buck, and how to prioritize them once more funding becomes available. The auditor might even be able to explain all of the existing local rebate programs you’re eligible for.
The Internal Revenue Service will allow you to work with any home energy auditor until the end of this year, but beginning in 2024, you must hire an auditor with specific qualifications in order to claim the credit.
Let’s start with what’s inside your home. In addition to an energy audit, the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit offers consumers 30% off the cost (after any other subsidies, and excluding labor) of Energy Star-rated windows and doors, insulation, and air sealing.
There’s a maximum amount you can claim for each type of equipment each year:
$600 for windows
$500 for doors
$1,200 for air sealing and insulation
The Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit also covers heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and electrical panel upgrades, including the cost of installation for those systems. You can get:
$2,000 for heat pumps
$600 for a new electrical panel
Yes, homeowners can only claim up to $3,200 per year under this program until 2032.
Also, one downside to the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit is that it does not carry over. If you spend enough on efficiency to qualify for the full $3,200 in a given year, but you only owe the federal government $2,000 for the year, your bill will go to zero and you will miss out on the remaining $1,200 credit. So it could be worth your while to spread the work out.
The other big consumer-oriented tax credit, the Residential Clean Energy Credit, offers homeowners 30% off the cost of solar panels and solar water heaters. It also covers battery systems, which store energy from the grid or from your solar panels that you can use when there’s a blackout, or sell back to your utility when the grid needs more power.
The subsidy has no limits, so if you spend $35,000 on solar panels and battery storage, including labor, you’ll be eligible for the full 30% refund, or $10,500. The credit can also be rolled over, so if your tax liability that year is only $5,000, you’ll be able to claim more of it the following year, and continue doing so until you’ve received the full value.
Geothermal heating systems are also covered under this credit. (Geothermal heat pumps work similarly to regular heat pumps, but they use the ground as a source and sink for heat, rather than the ambient air.)
Here’s what we know right now. The IRA funded two rebate programs. One, known as the Home Energy Performance-Based Whole House Rebates, will provide discounts to homeowners and landlords based on the amount of energy a home upgrade is predicted to save.
Congress did not specify which energy-saving measures qualify — that’s something state energy offices will decide when they design their programs. But it did cap the total amount each household could receive, based on income. For example, if your household earns under 80% of the area median income, and you make improvements that cut your energy use by 35%, you’ll be eligible for up to $8,000. If your household earns more than that, you can get up to $4,000.
There’s also the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program, which will provide discounts on specific electric appliances like heat pumps, an induction stove, and an electric clothes dryer, as well as a new electrical panel and wiring. Individual households can get up to $14,000 in discounts under this program, although there are caps on how much is available for each piece of equipment. This money will only be available to low- and moderate-income households, or those earning under 150% of the area median income.
Renters with a household income below 150% of the area median income qualify for rebates on appliances that they should be able to install without permission from their landlords, and that they can take with them if they move. For example, portable appliances like tabletop induction burners, clothes dryers, and window-unit heat pumps are all eligible for rebates.
It’s also worth noting that there is a lot of funding available for multifamily building owners. If you have a good relationship with your landlord, you might want to talk to them about the opportunity to make lasting investments in their property. Under the performance-based rebates program, apartment building owners can get up to $400,000 for energy efficiency projects.
For the most part, yes. But the calculus gets tricky when it comes to heat pumps.
Experts generally agree that no matter where you live, switching from an oil or propane-burning heating system or electric resistance heaters to heat pumps will lower your energy bills. Not so if you’re switching over from natural gas.
Electric heat pumps are three to four times more efficient than natural gas heating systems, but electricity is so much more expensive than gas in some parts of the country that switching from gas to a heat pump can increase your overall bills a bit. Especially if you also electrify your water heater, stove, and clothes dryer.
That being said, Rewiring America estimates that switching from gas to a heat pump will lower bills for about 60% of households. Many utilities offer tools that will help you calculate your bills if you make the switch.
The good news is that all the measures I’ve discussed in this article are expected to cut carbon emissions and pollution, even if most of your region’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels. For some, that might be worth the monthly premium.
Tax Credit #1 offers 30% off the cost of energy audits, windows, doors, insulation, air sealing, heat pumps, electrical panels, with a $3200-per-year allowance and individual item limits.
Tax Credit #2 offers 30% off the cost of solar panels, solar water heaters, batteries, and geothermal heating systems.
Rebate Program #1 will offer discounts on whole-home efficiency upgrades depending on how much they reduce your energy use, with an $8,000 cap for lower-income families and a $4,000 cap for everyone else.
Rebate Program #2 is only for low- and moderate- income households, and will offer discounts on specific electric appliances, with a $14,000 cap.
Read more about the Inflation Reduction Act:
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Inside Heatmap’s future of energy security event in D.C.
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 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 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 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 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 ArnettMariah Miranda Photography
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.
The South Korean automaker just opened an EV factory in Georgia. It’ll take a lot longer for others to catch up to Trump’s latest tariffs.
President Trump has introduced yet another round of tariffs that could upend the car industry. The newest volley in his trade war promises to slap an extra 25% tax onto any automobile imported into the U.S. It’s a measure meant to sound like a safeguard for American industry against foreign incursion. The reality, as usual, is a lot more complicated. These tariffs will punish many of the most promising EVs on the market, including those sold by Detroit.
The automotive toll of Trump’s tariffs was startling the last time around, when the administration said it would place a 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, as well as 10% on Chinese imports. That proposal was particularly problematic for the car industry because automakers use a well-established North American production pipeline to reduce costs. Lots of vehicles, whether gasoline, electric, or hybrid, are built in Mexico before being sold in the United States, while plenty of auto parts manufacturing occurs in Canada.
On the electric side, that list of affected vehicles includes the Chevrolet Blazer EV and Equinox EV, as well as the Honda Prologue, which is based on a General Motors platform. All three are strong EV entries by legacy manufacturers trying to grab a chunk of the electric market as industry leader Tesla takes on water amid global rage at Elon Musk. But all three are manufactured at a GM plant in Mexico. So is the Mustang Mach-E, Ford’s flagship EV.
Heatmap has previously highlighted the Equinox, in particular, because the price of its entry-level version — around $35,000 before tax credits — makes it a compelling option for buyers who are shopping on price but interested in going electric. With a price marked up by 25%, it’s no longer competitive with gasoline-powered rivals. The Prologue has found an impressive niche in the market, especially for the many buyers who were waiting for a Honda-badged EV. But its broad appeal may not survive such a markup.
The newest Trump maneuver, a tariff on cars imported from any foreign country, creates another layer of economic chaos for EVs. These rules would target Japanese-made electric cars like the Toyota bZ4x and Subaru Solterra, German-built ones like those from BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and plenty more. Hyundai’s Kona EV, one of the more affordable electric models, is built abroad. Volkswagen moved assembly of its ID.4 electric crossover to Tennessee, but the ID.Buzz, the battery-powered revival of the classic VW bus, is not made in the USA.
Many of those foreign-owned companies were already moving manufacturing to the United States for basic economic reasons, and also to conform to the rules the Biden administration put in place governing eligibility for the $7,500 EV tax credit, which require that many key parts be sourced at home. Toyota and Honda have opened American plants; so have the German automakers. This could help them adjust to a new and convoluted reality. Hyundai’s new Georgia “metaplant” just opened and will produce the Korean automaker’s Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 EV crossovers. Its partner brand, Kia, makes the EV6 and EV9 in West Point, Georgia. These Southern factories will have a huge impact on the Korean brands’ ability to survive Trump-era tariffs and maintain their position as the biggest EV challengers to Tesla.
Trump ally Elon Musk stands to benefit most from this move, since Tesla does most of its manufacturing in the United States. Teslas aren’t 100% American; Musk estimates that 20% of what goes into his EVs comes from Mexico, and that the impact of Trump tariffs on Tesla is “not trivial.” This is a dodge. Yes, Tesla would be impacted by the 25% tariffs, but much less so than its rivals. It’s a bit like the EV price wars of a couple years ago, when Musk kept cutting the prices of his cars because he knew how hard it would be for legacy competitors to keep pace. It’s okay to take a punch if your enemies take a bigger one.
The question looming over all of Tesla’s rivals is how to survive this ever-shifting landscape of tariffs and penalties. Changes in the car industry are a long time in the making: It takes years to bring a new vehicle to fruition, to build a new factory, or to retool an old plant so it can manufacture a different vehicle. GM has spent years refitting a Kansas factory that once built the now-retired Chevy Malibu for the purpose of making the revived Bolt EV coming in 2026. It cannot, at the drop of a hat, suddenly begin to source and build the Equinox EV entirely within the borders of the United States of America. That’s why you’ll see plenty of lobbying over the course of the next month as the car industry tries to convince the administration to back off — or, if not that, to at least give their company a tariff exemption.
The impact for potential EV buyers is clear. New car prices will soar by thousands of dollars with Trump tariffs in place. That will be particularly troublesome for EVs, which are staring down the prospect of this administration trying to remove federal tax credits for Americans who buy electric. Used cars — the pathway to EV ownership for those who can’t afford the steep price tag of a new one — will get more expensive, too, thanks to rising demand from those priced out of new vehicles. If you really want to get into an EV, the best bet might be to act right now before any of this madness takes effect in April.
People near the site of the disaster say they’re sick. But officials haven’t recognized any link between those symptoms and the fire.
People say they can still taste the metal from the Moss Landing fire. But no one in the local, state, or federal government is able to say why.
The story of Moss Landing got little attention compared to the scale of the disaster. On January 16 — days before Trump reentered office, and as fires continued to burn in and around Los Angeles, when tempers and attention spans were already strained — the Moss Landing Power Plant ignited. We still don’t know what caused the fire, but we do know a few crucial facts: Nearly all of the batteries at the 300 megawatt facility, one of the world’s largest, burned up in the fire, sending a colossal plume of black smoke soaring up from the site for days.
Two months after the blaze was extinguished, many people who live in the vicinity of Moss Landing, a couple hours south of San Francisco, say they’re still sick from the fire. Community organizers on the ground say the number of sick people is in the hundreds, at least. The symptoms range, but there are a few commonalities. Many report having bloody noses in the days immediately following the fire. In the long weeks that followed, they’ve had headaches that don’t respond to pain medications, rashes that resemble burns, and a recurring metallic taste in their mouths. They all say their symptoms go away if they leave their homes and go further away from the site. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California state regulators have given the all clear.
I have spent weeks trying to get to the bottom of what happened at Moss Landing. I’ve interviewed people who lived in the area and say they’ve experienced breathing issues and other difficulties, many of whom have gathered on Facebook to share photos, stories, and symptoms. Others have offered testimony about these illnesses in public fora and town halls. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Vistra, the company that runs Moss Landing, over the fire, citing these health issues. Vistra denies the existence of evidence proving pollution from the fire is making people sick, and told me in a statement that the company is “committed to doing everything we can to do right by our community.”
“Moss Landing is not only home to our facility, it’s home to our employees and neighbors,” the statement reads.
And yet, the people say, their symptoms persist. One of the people who told me about their condition is Sheryl Davidson, a former receptionist who lives in the rural nearby town of Prunedale. One of her joys used to be doing Medieval cultural re-enactments, but since the fire she’s been unable to participate.
“My nose just started bleeding. It was traumatic,” she told me. “And I had asthma, but my asthma was miniscule. My whole life, I just had an inhaler. But the inhaler wasn’t working.”
Davidson has other symptoms, including headaches. She says a lump also developed in her face beneath one of her eyes, of which she sent me photos. Despite concerns that something in the air from the fire may have made her sick, she hasn’t left her home, a house she’d lived in since she was a child.
Part of the reason: No one is telling her to leave.
Officials in Monterey County, where Moss Landing is located, acknowledged to me in a statement that they received reports from medical providers that local residents sought care for symptoms related to the battery fire. The EPA said on January 20 that air monitoring throughout the fire incident found no substantial releases of hydrogen fluoride, a fatal pollutant released from battery fires. Records indicate that EPA tested for the particulate matter as well, but there’s no evidence it monitored specifically for heavy metals in the air. Vistra told me it has been doing environmental observations since the incident and is sharing the results with regulators, but said in a statement that it “has not detected risks to public health at this time.”
Davidson may have stayed, but others have left Prunedale, including Brian Roeder, who remembers seeing the fire break out while at home and deciding to leave town with his wife and son out of an abundance of caution. When they got back days later, the fire had been put out. But Roeder told me his wife, who he said is immunocompromised, began reporting breathing issues shortly after they returned. His son started coughing, as well. They quickly left home again, and have been living out of short-term rental apartments far away from the battery plant for weeks.
“This community has been significantly damaged, and they are not coming in to help anybody,” Roeder told me. “There’s been behind the scenes efforts, there’s been some work, but nothing commensurate with the size of this disaster.”
“I know that L.A. caught on fire at the exact same time,” Roeder continued. “That was the huge focus for the state. I know that planes were going down and we had a change in administration. But the fact remains that we, here, cannot explain the absence of support for what is happening from the state. And there’s been a pronounced absence.”
Roeder also started a community organization called Never Again Moss Landing, which has been collecting its own samples of the environment in consultation with a professional lab. In doing so, Roeder became part of a broader effort in the U.S. to create public safeguards for battery storage technology in the wake of Moss Landing. Ground zero for this push is, fittingly, California, where the state Public Utility Commission has responded to the fire by requiring battery storage facility owners to make emergency response plans and adhere to modern fire codes for battery storage.
Some Democratic lawmakers in California want to go further, empowering localities to be the final decisionmakers on whether storage projects get built, as opposed to state regulators.
In some pockets of the U.S., this push for battery safety risks morphing into a threat to the energy transition. For my newsletter, The Fight, I’ve chronicled how towns and counties across the U.S., from New York City to rural Texas, are now banning battery storage, citing the Moss Landing fire and the fear another battery fire could happen in their backyards.
By many metrics, Moss Landing is an outlier. The Moss Landing facility was a giant field of batteries inside a former factory, essentially trapping all these combustible mini-bombs prone to “thermal runaway,” a phenomenon where rising heat from a fire leads to a chain reaction of chemical ignition, inside an insulated box. Concerns about thermal runaway are a reason why almost all battery storage today is installed in storage containers and with an appropriate distance between individual batteries.
But Moss Landing is also a crucial test case for the future of battery storage and public trust.
This morning, the renewables sector took a big stride towards attempting to calm the rage against battery storage. American Clean Power, the leading renewables trade group, released an analysis of 35 battery storage fires in the U.S. from 2012 through the end of last year. Many of the incidents involved “early-generation” battery tech, it said, adding that “improved safety measures, such as advanced thermal management, suppression systems, and containment enclosures, significantly reduc[ed] the likelihood of large-scale incidents.”
The analysis does not speculate as to what may have caused the fire at Moss Landing, simply noting investigations into the incident are ongoing. But at the same time, ACP released a new blueprint for safe battery storage development. In the blueprint, the association acknowledges that some of its recommendations — including a requirement that all battery storage facilities meet a new fire safety standard produced years after Moss Landing was commissioned — are aimed at “holistically addressing concerns generated by the Moss Landing Fire.”
Residents are deeply suspicious of the official assessments denying what, to them, are obvious health impacts. To be candid, I can’t blame them. It strains credulity to imagine a battery fire of this size and scope right next door to you somehow creating no pollution worthy of public concern.
“When you burn [batteries] it moves toxic chemicals into the air,” said Tracey Woodruff, a former EPA senior scientist and policy advisor specializing in chemical contamination of the environment, who now works at the University of California San Francisco. “If this is an uncontrolled burn, you can’t just say there isn’t going to be fallout from that or exposure to the population.”
There’s data making people afraid too. In late January, researchers at San Jose State University alerted the public that they’d discovered “unusually high concentrations of heavy-metal nanoparticles” and a “hundreds- to thousand-fold” increase in nickel, manganese, and cobalt — metals all present in Moss Landing’s batteries — in soil two miles from the power plant in the Elkhorn Slough Reserve, one of the state’s biggest estuaries. Exposure to these metals can cause serious health issues, some of which mirror the symptoms described by residents in the area who are sick.
Exposure to dust with heavy metals can be dangerous at even relatively low levels. A county health advisory shared with local medical professionals in February urged doctors to complete a comprehensive physical of anyone concerned about the impacts of the fire on their health. It noted that breathing or coming into direct skin contact with “heavy metal dusts and other particulate matter from smoke” can result in a metallic taste and difficulty breathing, as well as exacerbate underlying conditions like asthma.
Discovering the metals’ omnipresence in the Slough after the fire led Ivano Aiello, a researcher at SJSU who collected that data, to conclude that the contamination is probably more widespread than is publicly understood.
“I freaked out [after the study] because I was breathing the stuff. I was out there for days and I had no idea,” he told me. “Then I alerted the authorities … and they did their own investigation.”
Subsequent studies conducted by county and state environmental officials, including within the Elkhorn Slough, found no level of these heavy metals that they said could be conclusively tied to the fire. On March 19, farm advisors at the University of California Cooperative Extension undertook a “limited study” that found a “slight deposition of metals (copper and manganese) may have occurred in one agricultural field closest to the battery fire site,” but that the “concentration of metals measured were within normal ranges for all soil types evaluated.” Dole, the giant produce company, which has operations in the area, told me that on its end “no health impacts have been reported and no soil contamination has been detected as a result of the Moss Landing battery fire.”
But Roeder and many other members of the surrounding communities are worried there isn’t enough testing being done to find out whether contaminants entered the atmosphere, especially since air pollution is rarely spread evenly. Like Covid-19, the only way we will ever know the extent of the problem is with more testing, testing, testing.
Roeder is trying to do this work himself. On what he says is his own dime, he and other members of Never Again Moss Landing have collected dust samples across the region in consultation with a credentialed lab in the state, BioMax, which he told me reached out after the fire.
On Wednesday, a local NBC affiliate reported that Don Smith, a toxicologist at the University of California San Diego, confirmed elevated levels of nickel, cobalt, and manganese in the dust samples collected by Never Again Moss Landing. “There is reason to be concerned,” Smith told the TV station, adding that people living near the plant should wear masks regularly if they’re interacting with dust in their homes and be careful not to disturb soil in their yards. “Both manganese and, to a lesser extent, cobalt are known to be neurotoxins. And nickel, of course, is recognized as a carcinogen.”
Frustratingly, though, there is no solid proof to date of a conclusive link between the illnesses and metal exposure — just a lot of people with symptoms, a study that hasn’t been replicated in other pieces of research, and samples collected by residents who are also involved in litigation against the company. Still, that’s a lot of evidence of a problem. Medical mysteries are also common in environmental catastrophes like the Flint water crisis and the infamous DuPont PFOA debacle in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in which obviously sick residents butted heads with regulators for years, demanding information and testing.
What’s next for Moss Landing? The three counties most impacted — Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito — just concluded a community health survey that solicited comments from potentially impacted residents and received more than 1,500 responses, according to figures I reviewed that were shared at a recent Monterey County public meeting. When that study is out, we’ll have a comprehensive view of the locations where the sick live to see where it lines up with the plume that emitted from Moss Landing.
Taking a wider view, any society that’s going to rely primarily on intermittent energy sources like solar and wind needs battery storage to keep the lights on. That will require winning the public’s trust in battery technology. The Moss Landing fire was bad, and over time risks becoming an East Palestine moment for the energy transition. But the lack of a loud, sizable government response to calm the nerves of people publicly claiming illness is likely to be even more damaging to the future of the battery sector.