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Heatmap Turns 1

A look back at a year of distinct climate and energy coverage.

A slice of Heatmap cake.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I can’t quite believe it: Today is the one-year anniversary of Heatmap. And what a year it’s been.

When I left my old job as editor of The Week, climate change had a reputation among journalists as being the one scary subject that nobody wanted to read. It was too depressing, too technical, too boring to sustain dedicated coverage. That misperception is finally ending — and I like to think Heatmap put some nails in the coffin.

Heatmap’s mission is to tell the inside story of the race to fix the planet. We think this is the most important and interesting issue of our time, so we strive to make Heatmap punchy and personable as well as informative and trustworthy. It’s why you’ll find that Heatmap’s writers follow the facts where they lead and tell you — in hopefully engaging, elevated ways — what they see and hear.

Heatmap is also a bet that readers want to go deep into the nuances and tradeoffs at the heart of the energy transition. We love works in progress — how policymakers are thinking about a particularly thorny problem, how a geothermal company is trying to bring down costs fast, why a community is skeptical of a wind farm. It can be upsetting. It can be inspiring. We hope it’s always fascinating and helpful. After all, this is how the planet gets fixed.

But I’m preaching to the choir. If you’re reading this note, you are probably shaping the future of the planet yourself, whether through your work or the choices you make at home or both. I hope we’ve helped you understand what’s actually happening and make more informed decisions.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll be hearing from our writers about some of their favorite stories to get a behind-the-scenes look at the process behind them.

I hope you’ll also consider supporting our work if you haven’t already. Paid subscribers get full access to our two daily newsletters, our weekly podcast, and all the original reporting we publish on the site every day. They also receive the unending gratitude of our newsroom. (As a party favor for our birthday, you can also get 20% off an annual subscription with the code ANNIVERSARY.)

We know there are other outlets covering climate and energy, and we don’t take your trust or interest for granted. Thank you for your continued support.

Nico Lauricella
Founder and editor in chief

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Spotlight

The Moss Landing Battery Backlash Has Spread Nationwide

New York City may very well be the epicenter of this particular fight.

Moss Landing.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

It’s official: the Moss Landing battery fire has galvanized a gigantic pipeline of opposition to energy storage systems across the country.

As I’ve chronicled extensively throughout this year, Moss Landing was a technological outlier that used outdated battery technology. But the January incident played into existing fears and anxieties across the U.S. about the dangers of large battery fires generally, latent from years of e-scooters and cellphones ablaze from faulty lithium-ion tech. Concerned residents fighting projects in their backyards have successfully seized upon the fact that there’s no known way to quickly extinguish big fires at energy storage sites, and are winning particularly in wildfire-prone areas.

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Hotspots

The Race to Qualify for Renewable Tax Credits Is on in Wisconsin

And more on the biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects in Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. St. Croix County, Wisconsin - Solar opponents in this county see themselves as the front line in the fight over Trump’s “Big Beautiful” law and its repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

  • Xcel’s Ten Mile Creek solar project doesn’t appear to have begun construction yet, and like many facilities it must begin that process by about this time next year or it will lose out on the renewable energy tax credits cut short by the new law. Ten Mile Creek has essentially become a proxy for the larger fight to build before time runs out to get these credits.
  • Xcel told county regulators last month that it hoped to file an application to the Wisconsin Public Services Commission by the end of this year. But critics of the project are now telling their allies they anticipate action sooner in order to make the new deadline for the tax credit — and are campaigning for the county to intervene if that occurs.
  • “Be on the lookout for Xcel to accelerate the PSC submittal,” Ryan Sherley, a member of the St. Croix Board of Supervisors, wrote on Facebook. “St. Croix County needs to legally intervene in the process to ensure the PSC properly hears the citizens and does not rush this along in order to obtain tax credits.”

2. Barren County, Kentucky - How much wood could a Wood Duck solar farm chuck if it didn’t get approved in the first place? We may be about to find out.

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Q&A

All the Renewables Restrictions Fit to Print

Talking local development moratoria with Heatmap’s own Charlie Clynes.

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s conversation is special: I chatted with Charlie Clynes, Heatmap Pro®’s very own in-house researcher. Charlie just released a herculean project tracking all of the nation’s county-level moratoria and restrictive ordinances attacking renewable energy. The conclusion? Essentially a fifth of the country is now either closed off to solar and wind entirely or much harder to build. I decided to chat with him about the work so you could hear about why it’s an important report you should most definitely read.

The following chat was lightly edited for clarity. Let’s dive in.

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