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“Energy dominance” has to start with energy reliability.
As we sat down to write this essay in mid-March, hundreds of thousands of people in Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and Texas were without electricity for days after heavy late-season snows and high winds took down power lines. Then just days ago, more powerful storms swept through the Midwest, leaving thousands more in the dark. Both events were stark reminders that America's grid is careening toward its breaking point.
“Energy dominance” is the Trump Administration's energy motto, which we interpret as producing enough reliable and affordable domestic energy to meet our increasing needs. We’re missing a piece of the puzzle. While domestic oil and natural gas production continues to rise, the U.S. electricity system is in decline.
After two decades of relatively level electricity consumption, demand is growing again. By 2050, our electricity needs are projected to nearly double, according to the Department of Energy. Advanced manufacturing plants, electric vehicles, and data centers processing artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency mining are among the major drivers of this growth.
A modern grid can restore power in minutes, meet growing manufacturing and AI electricity needs, and protect against cyberattacks. Our grid isn't prepared for this challenge. We lack sufficient high-voltage transmission lines to safely carry additional electricity to large-load consumers. Much of our existing infrastructure is outdated. Most of our grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, approaching the end of its useful life. We continue to rely on lines across communities on wooden poles vulnerable to increasingly severe weather. While we've automated energy distribution systems for efficiency, this has made them more susceptible to cyberattacks.
Soon, activating a new data center might feel like a dangerous gamble. That area's grid could remain functional — or not.
America needs a national plan to rescue our grid. In February, we got together with more than 80 top energy experts, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, for a meeting at Stanford University to explore how to meet critical U.S. electricity challenges. That meant coming up with ideas that were both technically feasible and politically palatable.
The resulting report outlines six big ideas for achieving an affordable, reliable, and secure grid:
1. Ensure American security remains at the heart of the nation’s energy strategy.
2. Advance a true all-of-the-above energy strategy.
3. Create a new federal and state grid investment trust fund.
4. Reform permitting processes to expedite grid infrastructure projects.
5. Promote and scale innovative, flexible grid policies.
6. Prioritize affordability through modernized utility operations and business models.
One place we drew inspiration is from the Highway Trust Fund, which has financed much highway construction and maintenance since 1956. A similar endowment dedicated to strengthening the grid could cover the costs of building additional transmission lines and renovating aging ones. Congress might consider financing this grid infrastructure trust fund with proportional contributions from the largest electricity users.
Such financing can succeed only alongside meaningful national permitting reform. New transmission lines are frequently delayed for a decade or more because states hesitate to issue permits. When developers seek to build transmission lines on federal lands, they face cumbersome environmental reviews that can halt projects entirely. Major permitting reform failed to pass Congress as recently as last year, but bipartisan negotiators can bring a successful bill to the floor in the current session.
Transmission lines are agnostic about the source of the energy flowing across them, and our energy policy should be the same. The keyword should be, as it has long been in many political circles, “all of the above.” We shouldn't undermine any energy source ready to deploy today. Few new natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants can be constructed by 2030. In the near term, renewables and energy storage are more ready to deploy, and regardless of what is best, these are what utilities are relying on for the next few years.
We want technology companies developing the world's most sophisticated AI models in America. We want manufacturing plants building cutting-edge products in our communities. Producing enough energy to power these industries is fundamental to our national and economic security. If AI systems can enable new weapons development, support offensive cyber operations, or facilitate mass surveillance, we should oversee and regulate those systems within our borders.
New manufacturing plants are already creating good-paying American jobs while bringing supply chains for semiconductors and other critical technologies back home. Turning away these businesses because we can't meet their energy needs would mean surrendering our technological and economic advantage to overseas competitors.
Alongside drinkable water, clean air, and paved roads, Americans expect reliable electricity. We can build and repair our transmission systems while producing more energy. We can permit new high-voltage lines while supporting data centers and manufacturing plants. We can incentivize power production, simplify bureaucracy, and strengthen national security.
Our hope is that these six ideas spark a conversation about how we can rescue our grid and, as a result, our economic growth, technological leadership, and national security. Advancing them will require working across the aisle, across sectors, and in partnership across federal, state, and local levels.
Done right, America can fortify its transmission infrastructure against grid overload, natural disasters, and cyberattacks. Large corporate consumers would access the electricity they need, while homeowners and small businesses would enjoy reliable power from a modernized grid.
Congress can make our energy economy the envy of the world. The work starts by rescuing our grid.
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On Wall Street’s wipeout, more severe weather, and hurricane season predictions
Current conditions: The U.K. is on high alert for wildfires this weekend due to warm weather and high winds • The Canary Islands are cleaning up damage from Storm Nuria’s hurricane-force winds • Flooding in southeastern Oregon from historic levels of rain and snowmelt forced schools to close and 1,200 people to evacuate.
U.S. stocks plummeted Thursday as Wall Street digested President Trump’s new trade tariffs. The S&P 500 fell 4.8% in its worst day since the COVID pandemic, the Nasdaq lost 6%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 4%. Energy fuels are largely exempt from the tariffs, but stocks like Vistra, Constellation, and GE Vernova all dropped anyway. Why? As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin explains, anxiety is setting in about what the tariffs will do to economic growth — and electricity demand growth as a result. The tariffs will be a major hit to the country’s economic trajectory according to almost every non-White House economist that’s looked at them. “Economic growth and energy consumption are pretty closely linked,” Aurora Energy Research managing director Oliver Kerr told Zeitlin. “An economic slowdown tends to result in less demand for power overall. That's what the market is probably reacting to today.”
But Zeitlin says the one renewable energy winner from the tariffs may be American solar manufacturer First Solar. Its stock was up almost 5% as the broader market reels from the global tariffs. First Solar “is currently the largest domestic manufacturer of solar panels and is in the midst of expanding its domestic manufacturing footprint, which should serve as a competitive advantage over its peers,” Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Perocco wrote in a note to clients Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, automaker Stellantis is “temporarily” laying off 900 U.S. employees across five plants and pausing work at some of its Mexico and Canada facilities while the company is “continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the layoffs “a horrifying consequence of Trump’s tariffs.”
President Trump has exempted some — but certainly not all — of the critical minerals necessary for the energy transition from the sweeping tariffs. Heatmap’s Katie Brigham combed through the White House’s list of exempt products to identify key transition minerals. Here are some that caught her eye:
And if you’re curious, here are the minerals that are subject to tariffs.
The rest of the world is responding to the tariffs with a mix of exasperation and outrage. Canada announced 25% retaliatory tariffs on U.S. vehicles as President Trump’s 25% auto tariffs came into effect. China retaliate against the new 54% levies with its own 34% tariffs on all U.S. imports, and accused the U.S. of “unilateral bullying.” French President Emmanuel Macron called for European countries to pause planned U.S. investment. And Italy’s industry minister on Thursday signaled that the country plans to ask the European Union to suspend emissions rules aimed at the bloc’s industrial sectors because of the new 20% fees.
At least seven people have died in severe storms across the central U.S. this week. Hundreds of tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. In Nashville, some tornado sirens were so busy, they ran out of batteries. Boston meteorologist Tevin Wooten said nearly 400 tornado warnings had been issued in less than 24 hours. The National Weather Service warns the flooding could be “life-threatening, catastrophic, and potentially historic” as the storm lingers over the region through the weekend and drops huge amounts of rain. And another round of severe storms capable of producing strong tornadoes and baseball-size hail is taking aim at northeast Texas and western Arkansas today:
Researchers from Colorado State University’s Tropical Cyclones, Radar, Atmospheric Modeling and Software team put out their annual long-range forecast for the upcoming hurricane season on Thursday. Due largely to abnormally high sea surface temperatures, the experts are predicting “above-normal activity,” with 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes for 2025. Those numbers are down slightly from last year, but still, overall hurricane activity is expected to be roughly 125% higher than the 30-year averages. A lot of uncertainty remains, and forecasters will be able to narrow their predictions when the trajectory of La Niña or El Niño conditions become more clear. Hurricane season officially begins June 1. Last year’s hurricane season produced several record-breaking storms, including Beryl (the earliest Atlantic basin Category-5 hurricane on record), Helene (the deadliest hurricane since Katrina and the seventh costliest storm ever), and Milton (one of the fastest-intensifying hurricanes on record). All three of those names have now been retired due to their respective storms’ destruction.
President Trump’s new 10% baseline tariffs apply to the Heard and McDonalds Islands, remote and uninhabited Antarctic regions populated mostly by penguins and seals.
President Donald Trump has exempted some — but certainly not all — of the critical minerals necessary for the energy transition from the sweeping tariffs he announced Wednesday. Minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper are key components of clean energy infrastructure such as lithium-ion batteries, which are used in electric vehicles or stationary storage, and copper wires, which conduct electricity in solar panels and wind turbines.
The White House has published a complete list of hundreds of products that are exempt from tariffs. We combed through the list looking for key transition minerals. Here are the ones that caught our eye, plus some that were notably left off. If you see anything on the list you think we missed, my inbox is open.
A renewables fight in Arizona turns ugly.
Autumn Johnson told me some days it feels like she’s shouting into a void.
Johnson is the executive director for the Arizona branch of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the nation’s pre-eminent solar power trade group. Lately, she told me, she’s seeing an increasing number of communities go after potential solar farms, many of them places with little or no previous solar development. There’s so many she’s had to start “tracking them on a spreadsheet,” she tells me, then proceeding to rattle off the names of counties and towns like battles in a war. Heatmap Pro data reveals how restricted Arizona is today, with six out of the state’s 15 counties showing a restrictive ordinance on solar and/or wind energy.
One of those battles: Chino Valley, a small town in northern Arizona. For two years, Johnson and others in the solar industry worked to try and massage the town into enacting restrictions on solar that wouldn’t all but ban the industry. But a town council meeting in mid-March turned ugly, as a debate over the restrictions ultimately devolved to heckling and hollering. “I’m surprised they didn’t throw things,” she recalled to me over the phone.
Playing back tape of that meeting, I watched as anyone who even spoke up in favor of solar was booed. When Johnson got up to speak and say SEIA recommended a smaller setback than drafted – 150 feet – audience members loudly laughed at her. Ultimately she was interrupted so many times that her time to speak expired before she finished her comments.
She asked the Chino Valley town council: “Could I finish my thought since I had to stop several times?” BOO! The audience wasn’t having it. And neither was the town council, who declined to let her continue.
After another hour-plus of testimony, the town council was swayed: Chino Valley dropped the regulation their staff spent years on and instead instructed them to draft a complete ban on all solar – as well as battery storage and wind farms.
If enacted, this regulation would all but doom Draconis, a large-scale utility solar farm proposed by bp in Chino Valley. A bp representative briefly testified at the town council meeting to say members of the public who’d previously spoken had mischaracterized the water usage required for the solar farm, but was booed off the microphone. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Johnson told me Arizonans in many pockets of the state are starting to turn on solar for two major reasons. One: There’s a partisan affiliation with renewables and climate change due to the Inflation Reduction Act and Joe Biden’s involvement in crafting the law. The other motivation? “Part of it is old school NIMBYism,” Johnson told me. “We’re acting like this is a new thing but NIMBYism is not new. Everybody wants electricity but nobody wants the infrastructure that is necessary to facilitate their use of electricity.”
She added: “The way things are moving, the number of cities and counties that have restrictions is going to be more and more.” While some communities may be accepting utility-scale development now, she is concerned they’ll hit a “saturation point where people start to build up some kind of resentment about the quantity of projects.”
“It’s domino-y,” Johnson confessed.
I’m no Arizonan. But to me, what’s happening in Arizona is essentially one big redux of an infamous prank TV segment from the show “Who Is America?” in which actor Sasha Baron Cohen plays a coastal liberal stereotype posing as an economic development entrepreneur.
Cohen’s character visits Kingman, Arizona, a town northwest of Chino Valley. In that prank, Cohen walked Kingman residents through a presentation about a promising new source of tax revenue and local employment, only to reveal… he’s talking about building a mosque in Kingman funded by the Clinton Foundation.
Kingman is in Mohave County, which happened to be the first county Johnson mentioned when we spoke. Mohave – represented in Congress by far-right Republican Paul Gosar – is one of the sunniest parts of the country, smack dab in the Mohave Desert. It’s also one of the counties with a restrictive ordinance that routinely rejects solar farms, despite a willingness among local officials to approve new fossil energy. Why? Well, in the view of some folks out there, you might as well be building a Hillary Clinton-branded mosque. Not to mention Mohave has quite a few telltale signs of being tough to develop, according to Heatmap Pro – it’s an extremely white county with an economy heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, making land use and property value pronounced day-to-day concerns.
Stan Barnes, a lobbyist in Arizona who represents large-scale solar developers, told me that for “so long, renewable energy has been tightly embraced – even bearhugged – by the center-left side of the political spectrum.” Barnes said this fact alone has made it much harder to build in rural areas of Arizona that voted heavily for Donald Trump. “The center-right side of the political spectrum feels like it needs to resist.”
Developers are finding ways around this sticky wicket, Barnes said, but it requires being “wise” and “a certain degree of authenticity on the ground with local officials.” He noted the Palo Verde energy hub, a federally-designated energy and transmission project area in a mostly remote area that expands off of an existing power plant. Barnes also mentioned Mohave, where utility-scale solar is not banned outright but restricted to light industrial areas, as a place where development is still possible.
“There likely will not be that kind of development in Chino Valley and that’s the way it’s going to be in some jurisdictions," he said. “In other jurisdictions there’s going to be thoughtful ordinances that accommodate a variety of interests.”