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All American cities are at risk.
The fires that have swept greater Los Angeles over the past two weeks have shattered long-held assumptions about wildfire risk. Unlike many of the catastrophic, climate-intensified wildfires that have burned various swaths of California over the past decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires have blazed past the wildland-urban interface to devastate a wide variety of neighborhoods – some of the region’s oldest and some of its newest; gridded city blocks as well as winding mountainside subdivisions; apartments, duplexes, and bungalow courts as well as stand-alone suburban houses.
In other words, the places that have burned represent a far wider swath of the American urban landscape than most burn zones. Likewise, rebuilding these places is going to raise not only locally-specific questions of wildfire safety, adaptation, and retreat, but also universally-applicable questions about energy provision and decarbonization that every American city will eventually be forced to confront. In particular, greater Los Angeles’ burned neighborhoods are already revealing a looming natural gas crisis, decades before most American cities will face it.
In greater Los Angeles’ grim collection of leveled neighborhoods, gas meters protruding from the rubble serve as stark reminders of the elaborate buried pipeline network that powered homes and businesses. As communities begin to rebuild, California’s building code, state resiliency grants, and federal Inflation Reduction Act incentives together make it highly likely that the majority of new structures will go electric, cutting their dependence on the outmoded and dangerous gas connections that may have complicated firefighting efforts. This same transition to all-electric buildings is unfolding more slowly across the rest of the country, where many residents are just beginning to embrace the ease, efficiency, and quality of heat pumps and induction stoves, or to recognize the health risks of burning gas indoors.
In even the most thoroughly devastated neighborhoods, though, a few incongruous buildings have survived. As the rebuilding effort reaches its conclusion, these grizzled veterans will become solitary consumers of gas in a soon-to-be-electrified landscape. But the cost of maintaining the branching networks that provide gas won’t shrink along with the gas customer base. With maintenance costs fixed but revenue decimated, the gas system could begin to crumble. Remaining gas users could see their bills spiral higher as greater Los Angeles’ leading gas utility, SoCalGas, attempts to meet its costs and more customers flee the system. Worse still, declining revenue could pressure the utility to cut back on repairs, leading to neglected pipelines that leak, corrode, and even spark future fires.
A version of this crisis will come for every American neighborhood eventually. Gas networks only work economically and safely when costs are shared across a broad user base. Without coordination, maintaining the gas network in electrifying neighborhoods will rapidly become an unsustainable risk borne most by those least able to transition away from gas. The best solution to this approaching crisis is both bold and simple: act proactively.Prune back the branching gas pipeline network to protect both the system as a whole and the burned neighborhoods themselves.
Local government, state regulators, and our gas and electric utilities can together support the transition of burned neighborhoods’ remaining buildings off of gas so that entire branches of the system can be shut off, leaving safer and cleaner all-electric neighborhoods in their place. This is the only way Angelenos can begin to avoid the post-fire catastrophe of skyrocketing costs and collapsing safety.
By removing an entire branch of the gas distribution network, greater Los Angeles can simultaneously make the electric grid safer and more resilient. Over the past decade, overhead power lines have become famous as one of the leading causes of wildfire ignition – but burying them usually imposes an eye-watering cost that the electric system cannot afford. Much of that cost, though, stems from the need to dig by hand around existing gas lines. By shutting down their local gas networks for good, burned and high-fire-risk neighborhoods can eliminate the greatest risk and biggest expense of burying electric lines – and in some cases, might even be able to run electric lines through the decommissioned pipes themselves.
In one sweep, greater Los Angeles’ burn zones and high-fire-risk neighborhoods like them elsewhere can eliminate two major sources of fire danger and chart a path away from the looming threat of unmanaged gas system collapse. In the midst of the state’s intensifying insurance crisis, systematically reducing the risk of new fires at the neighborhood level would also offer insurers provable risk mitigation. Pulling off this transformation, though, will require quick action — before rebuilding begins. So far, state and local leaders have focused on promising the return of normalcy, in part by attempting to suspend all-electric building requirements. Given that all-electric construction is both faster and cheaper, this rollback makes little practical sense. At a broader level, these early rollbacks constitute an attempt to avoid the hard questions of how to rebuild more safely and resiliently – and when it has become too dangerous to rebuild at all. The win-win of systematic gas decommissioning and electric undergrounding offers an onramp to those more difficult conversations.
Just how to negotiate an entire neighborhood’s simultaneous transition away from natural gas remains an unsolved problem of political will and neighborly cooperation, but greater Los Angeles’ burned zones are suddenly forcing the question. Creating a clear, affordable path to electrification for the surviving buildings will require pairing increased financial support with coordinated planning and clear deadlines to help homeowners and businesses understand the urgency of the switch.
Amidst the incalculable losses of these fires, greater Los Angeles is being confronted not only with the painful challenges of recovery, but also with the looming specter of new crises accelerated by the fires’ devastation. The risk of gas system collapse has come to greater Los Angeles decades before it will reach most other American communities. Confronting it before it becomes a disaster of its own can help secure the region’s devastated neighborhoods against future fires, while blazing a trail for other high-fire-risk neighborhoods across the country to follow.
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On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.
From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.
The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.
Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.
The city of Halstead, under pressure from these locals, is now developing a battery storage zoning ordinance – and explicitly saying this will not mean a project “has been formally approved or can be built in the city.” The backlash is now so intense that Halstead’s mayor Dennis Travis has taken to fighting back against criticism on Facebook, writing in a series of posts about individuals in his community “trying to rule by MOB mentality, pushing out false information and intimidating” volunteers working for the city. “I’m exercising MY First Amendment Right and well, if you don’t like it you can kiss my grits,” he wrote. Other posts shared information on the financial benefits of building battery storage and facts to dispel worries about battery fires. “You might want to close your eyes and wish this technology away but that is not going to happen,” another post declared. “Isn’t it better to be able to regulate it in our community?”
What’s happening in Halstead is a sign of a slow-spreading public relations wildfire that’s nudging communities that were already skeptical of battery storage over the edge into outright opposition. We’re not seeing any evidence that communities are transforming from supportive to hostile – but we are seeing new areas that were predisposed to dislike battery storage grow more aggressive and aghast at the idea of new projects.
Heatmap Pro data actually tells the story quite neatly: Halstead is located in Harvey County, a high risk area for developers that already has a restrictive ordinance banning all large-scale solar and wind development. There’s nothing about battery storage on the books yet, but our own opinion poll modeling shows that individuals in this county are more likely to oppose battery storage than renewable energy.
We’re seeing this phenomenon play out elsewhere as well. Take Fannin County, Texas, where residents have begun brandishing the example of Moss Landing to rail against an Engie battery storage project, and our modeling similarly shows an intense hostility to battery projects. The same can be said about Brooklyn, New York, where anti-battery concerns are far higher in our polling forecasts – and opposition to battery storage on the ground is gaining steam.