As I have written before, my father and grandfather sold automobiles in New York City, so I grew up with an eye to the other cars on the road. I still remember the first time I realized there was a whole new brand on American streets, when I came upon the Polestar dealership near Lincoln Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Finding out that a Chinese company was behind Polestar’s sleek sedans and growing slate of electric vehicles only piqued my interest that much more. An East Asian importer’s glow-up is one thing. East Asia’s new automotive Goliath finding a beachhead in the American market is quite another story. That story has now reached an abrupt climax as Polestar veers for the exit from the U.S. market. On Thursday, the company announced plans to quit the U.S. following a Department of Commerce decision to ban Polestar from selling new cars in the country. The move represents what The Wall Street Journal described as “the first major casualty of a U.S. rule to ban Chinese software in new vehicles that connect to the internet.”
At issue? The fact that the cameras and GPS equipment in cars could be exploited by certain foreign adversaries. The company, which is controlled by the Chinese auto giant Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, had requested the Trump administration’s permission to sell vehicles under a process that would have complied with the rule. But regulators said no. Polestar isn’t completely disappearing. The company said it would sell off its remaining stock of vehicles and keep open service centers for repairs, potentially retaining the infrastructure to redeploy if political winds shift. It bears mentioning, then, that the new rule was a product of the Biden administration. Here’s my colleague Robinson Meyer with more on the logic behind it.
2. Texas transmission fight tees up a permitting reform test
If you buy a parcel of land in Texas, there’s a reasonably good chance you can do what you want with it, unlike other parts of the U.S. with more restrictive zoning rules. As a result, Texas is a top destination for data centers, and the top destination for wind and solar developers. But the same cultural deference to property rights that allows companies to build stuff in Texas also grants landowners ample opportunity to challenge the sort of project that proves difficult in any American jurisdiction because it spans so many different tracts and municipalities: Transmission lines. On Thursday, Utility Dive reported that several hundred landowners in Central Texas had filed a petition with the Public Utility Commission of Texas, asking the regulator to pause permitting on a proposed 765-kilovolt transmission line that would stretch roughly 200 miles across the middle of the state from Big Hill, near where a 200-megawatt wind farm started up a few years ago, to Bell County, just north of Austin. Transmission lines are notoriously difficult to build in the U.S., and making construction easier is a key demand of clean energy supporters for any kind of federal permitting overhaul. Whether Republican support for streamlining the federal approval process can weather the winds of American politics long enough to counter the effects of the not-in-my-backyard types remains unclear. But opposition to the Texas power line grew after state Representative Brad Buckley, a Republican, joined 42 other lawmakers in filing an amicus brief supporting the group American Stewards of Liberty, a nonprofit that supports property rights.
In New York, meanwhile, Albany’s in-house energy innovation agency is putting up money to refresh the aging statewide grid. On Thursday, the New York Research and Development Authority unveiled $24 million in funding for projects to modernize the state’s poles and wires. “As New York’s electricity system evolves, improving how electricity is managed, delivered, and utilized will be critical to maximizing the performance of our existing grid infrastructure and delivering greater value to consumers,” Doreen Harris, NYSERDA’s chief executive, said in a statement.
3. TotalEnergies’ climate record draws fresh scrutiny in France
First came the Trump administration’s scrutiny of its offshore wind business. Then the federal deal to blow off its U.S. projects and refocus on gas drilling drew Democrat’s scrutiny. Now French energy giant TotalEnergies’ decision to take $1 billion from the Trump administration to back out of its two wind projects off U.S. coasts could draw a leery eye from authorities in its home country. On Thursday, a Paris court ruled that the company had to tighten its climate reporting by accounting for the planet-heating emissions produced when customers burn the oil and gas it sells.
The decision comes amid an unprecedented heat wave that saw France record its hottest temperature ever when, as I told you yesterday, thermometers nearly topped 111 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday. The case is the first to test whether France’s 2017 so-called corporate duty of vigilance law could be applied to climate change. The court ruled that the law is not intended to make companies “responsible for the risks linked to climate change, which result from all human activity on the planet since the Industrial Revolution,” the Associated Press quoted from the decision. But the statute does request that companies act “according to their own situation.” The ruling stopped short of ordering Total to reduce its output of oil and gas, but directed the company to complete an assessment of the emissions from its consumers in the next six months. It’s unclear whether the company will be able to meet that requirement, or what may come next as a result. But a growing renewables division to offset the emissions from elsewhere in its business probably wouldn’t hurt.
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4. Russia is building a ‘high capacity’ nuclear reprocessing plant
In the United States, the Department of Energy is racing to create nuclear “campuses” where startups can experiment with ways to affordably reprocess spent fuel to recycle the uranium in reactors and extract rare isotopes for medical treatments. The effort to establish a whole new industry to recycle nuclear waste comes more than half a century after then-President Jimmy Carter killed the nascent private-sector effort to reprocess atomic fuel, a technological capacity that significantly reduces the stockpile of highly radioactive fission byproducts but lays the groundwork for more enrichment of weapons-grade material. All the while, Russia emerged as one of the top nuclear recyclers. Now Moscow is looking to expand its dominance. This week, World Nuclear News reported that the Kremlin’s state-owned nuclear company Rosatom is planning a new reprocessing facility that aims, for the first time in the industry’s history, to have a modular design that makes expansion easy. The first module will have a capacity to produce 400 metric tons of new reactor fuel per year. “Industrial nuclear recycling technologies and a developed infrastructure are not only a solution to a pressing environmental challenge in our country,” Andrey Nikipelov, Rosatom’s deputy director general for mechanical engineering and industrial solutions, said in a statement. The project, the largest ever built in the country, would “provide Russia with a unique opportunity to cement its leadership in the global nuclear solutions market,” he said.
5. Copper deal creates the nation’s third-largest zone for mining the metal
Los Bronces mine in Chile. ARIEL MARINKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images
Yesterday I told you that the widening gap between future supply and demand of copper, which is needed for virtually every electric thing imaginable, was prompting a growth in output from two existing mines owned by a joint venture between Anglo American and the Chilean state-owned company Codelco. Another sign of bullishness on copper: The Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals just bought all the remaining shares it didn’t already own of the Arizona Sonoran Copper Company. The deal establishes the third-largest copper district, as regions with mining operations are known, in the U.S. In a press release, the company pitched the new combined portfolio as an asset to battery manufacturers looking for all-American mineral supplies.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military is making land on bases available to mining companies to speed up the domestic processing of more critical minerals. On Thursday night, The Wall Street Journal broke news that the U.S. Army had awarded long-term leases to mining and extraction companies Titan Mining Corporation, EnergyX, Ioneer, and REalloys for refining minerals needed for American manufacturing.
THE KICKER
Here’s a peek inside one of my daily groupchats: While discussing New York’s Democratic primary election results this week, my friend defended the progressive left’s energy record by pointing out Assemblymember Emily Gallagher’s recent victory in passing a law to legalize balcony solar. An apartment dweller himself, he was excited at the prospect of how generating a small amount of solar power might change how he thought about electricity. (Playing the cynic, I complained that there wasn’t enough widespread support for large-scale generating projects like restarting the Indian Point nuclear plant, building new reactors upstate, or celebrating the forthcoming transmission line to connect the five boroughs to Quebec’s hydroelectric system.) But if this is to catch on, it may be helped by different terminology. Let me introduce you to: Guerilla solar. Reading this latest piece from Dan Gearino at Inside Climate News, I was struck by just how much catchier the slick two-word name is than “balcony solar.”
The postgame beckons.Steph Schweitzer
Heatmap senior reporter Jael Holzman and Senator Hickenlooper discuss what — if any — climate and energy progress is possible next year.Steph Schweitzer
Jael Holzman and John HickenlooperSteph Schweitzer
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Heatmap executive editor Robinson Meyer and former FERC chairman Chatterjee discuss what the Trump administration has in store next year.Steph Schweitzer
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Michael Jung of Modern Hydrogen explains how climate tech is thinking about the election to Heatmap’s editor in chief and CEO Nico Lauricella.Steph Schweitzer
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The Heatmap teamSteph Schweitzer
The Polestar 4 SUV at the 2025 Chicago Auto Show. Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images
Los Bronces mine in Chile. ARIEL MARINKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images
The "Blank Slate," a compact truck in the spirit of decades past, has two seats up front and nothing more.Courtesy of Slate
The Slate's interior is minimalist verging on barebones: It has roll-down windows, climate control knobs, and no stereo.Courtesy of Slate
Slate will let owners customize their vehicles with new roof racks, seating set-ups, and dozens of color wraps.Courtesy of Slate