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Knock knock, it’s your local power provider. Can I interest you in a heat pump?
Natural gas utilities spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on pipelines and related infrastructure — costs they typically recoup from ratepayers over the course of decades. In the eyes of clean energy advocates, these investments are not only imprudent, but also a missed opportunity. If a utility needs to replace a section of old pipeline at risk of leaking, for example, it could instead pay to electrify all of the homes on that line and retire the pipeline altogether — sometimes for less than the cost of replacement.
Utilities in climate-leading states like New York and California, under the direction of their regulators, have started to give this a shot, asking homeowners one by one if they want to electrify. The results to date are not especially promising — mainly because any one building owner can simply reply “no thanks.” The problem is that, legally, utilities don’t really have any other option.
All states have anti-discrimination laws that require utilities to provide service to anyone who requests it, known as the “obligation to serve.” Utilities have long exploited these statutes to justify spending on gas infrastructure — but now that they are pursuing alternatives to that increased spending, the same provisions are holding them up. To avoid investing in a section of the gas system that requires expensive maintenance, for example, a utility would need to get 100% of the customers served by that section off gas. It only takes one customer with an attachment to their gas stove to derail a whole project.
As long as it’s illegal to take away someone’s gas stove, there won’t be any way to plan an orderly transition off gas. And that’s a problem because the scattershot, incentives-based transition that’s happening now — where early adopters are grabbing subsidies for heat pumps and induction stoves — is a recipe for vast inequity.
“If random homes are being taken off the gas system, the entire gas infrastructure continues to need to stay in place, and it needs to be paid for and maintained and reinvested in,” Nicole Abene, the senior New York legislative and regulatory manager for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, told me. “What you're doing is leaving the people remaining on the gas system to pay for the entire system.”
A report published in early May by National Grid, which operates both gas and electric companies in New York and Massachusetts, and the clean energy nonprofit RMI, chronicles how poorly efforts to implement “non-pipeline alternatives,” where utilities try to electrify homes instead of further investing in the gas system, have gone. It says that in one case, National Grid offered to pay the full cost of installing geothermal heating systems for 19 customers in rural upstate New York in order to avoid performing system upgrades. Just five showed interest, and only three moved forward with the installations. In another case, the company contacted nearly 400 New York customers by phone about the potential to electrify their homes in order for the company to avoid replacing leak-prone pipes. Only 149 responded, and just 18 expressed interest.
PG&E, in California, has seen slightly more success. Between 2019 and 2021, it approached 124 customers to negotiate agreements to disconnect their gas and convert them to electrified heating and cooking so that the company could decommission sections of the system. After spending more than $3 million on outreach, it got 68, or 55% of the customers to sign contracts. It has since signed up at least 37 more building owners for the program and decommissioned 22 miles of pipeline as a result.
I asked Mike Henchen, a principal on the carbon-free buildings team at RMI and one of the authors of the report, why we should trust any of this data. It doesn't seem like there's much incentive for the utilities to try that hard, I said. They could simply mail out a pamphlet, and then come back to regulators and say, “Well, we asked and they didn’t respond.”
Henchen had a few thoughts on this. For one, these companies have all made public commitments to decarbonization and showed at least some support for reducing gas consumption to help achieve state climate goals. “They’ve got to back that up and show that they’re serious,” he said. “I think it’s also true that within these companies, real humans are being tasked at their job to go do these projects. Those people, regardless of what the utility business model is, want to see success from their efforts.” Plus, regulators are also stepping up their oversight.
In New York, utilities have to report back to regulators on their efforts, providing a window into how aggressively they have conducted outreach. Last year, Con Edison, which also provides gas and electric service in the state, pursued 65 projects to avoid replacing risky gas infrastructure like leak-prone pipes through electrification. Public filings say that the company first tried mailing brochures to the buildings that explained the benefits of electrification, along with a letter explaining how the program would work if they opted in and including the program manager’s business card. Then Con Edison sent emails to the building owners once a month for three months. It also met in person with customers, though it did not say how many. After reaching out to the owners of the more than 150 buildings that would be affected, only five agreed to cooperate.
The filings also outlined why customers declined to participate, with the number one reason being that they had either recently installed a new gas stove or simply preferred gas cooking. Other concerns raised included worries about higher electric bills and vulnerability to power outages.
Henchen said that utilities are only just getting started learning how to sell electrification to customers, and there’s a lot of ideas about how to improve, including working with community partners and engaging with local contractors.
But outreach is just one piece of the puzzle. The bigger obstacle is the law. The exhaustingly named “Strategic Pathways and Analytics for Tactical Decommissioning of Portions of Gas Infrastructure in Northern California” report, written by several California-based energy research firms, notes that despite PG&E’s more than 100 successful conversions, each project has been relatively small and low-impact. That’s because the company has not been able to convince clusters of customers larger than five at a time to convert.
Lawmakers have started to act. In March, Washington State passed a law amending its statute, allowing gas companies to meet their obligation to serve by providing “thermal energy” through a network of geothermal heating systems.
Massachusetts legislators are considering a bill that would change the official definition of a “gas company,” adding that it can be a corporation organized for the purpose of selling “utility-scale non-emitting renewable thermal energy.” The bill would also change the obligation to serve to be inclusive of that definition.
In New York, where the current statute calls gas, among other energy sources, “necessary for the preservation of the health and general welfare,” a bill called the HEAT Act would strike the word “gas” altogether and allow utilities to discontinue service as long as a replacement plan has been approved by the utility commission. California is also considering similar legislation.
New York’s HEAT bill cleared the State Senate earlier this year. The Assembly refused to include the proposal in the state budget, but could still bring it to the floor before the legislative session closes in early June. Though neither Con Edison nor National Grid has come out swinging publicly for the bill, both companies have expressed support for many of the policies in it, including ending the obligation to serve. In the new report with RMI, National Grid concedes that changing the statute is necessary — and that not doing so threatens to balloon costs for customers.
“Utilities’ obligation to connect new gas customers upon request will require the construction of new gas infrastructure regardless of whether the expansion is economically viable,” it says. “This policy challenge requires designing a new process to enable projects driven by community needs or system economics rather than individual customer opt-in.”
In other words, without changes, these laws that were designed to prevent inequality could end up exacerbating it.
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What he wants them to do is one thing. What they’ll actually do is far less certain.
Donald Trump believes that tariffs have almost magical power to bring prosperity; as he said last month, “To me, the world’s most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariffs. It’s my favorite word.” In case anyone doubted his sincerity, before Thanksgiving he announced his intention to impose 25% tariffs on everything coming from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on all Chinese goods.
This is just the beginning. If the trade war he launched in his first term was haphazard and accomplished very little except costing Americans money, in his second term he plans to go much further. And the effects of these on clean energy and climate change will be anything but straightforward.
The theory behind tariffs is that by raising the price of an imported good, they give a stronger footing in the market; eventually, the domestic producer may no longer need the tariff to be competitive. Imposing a tariff means we’ve decided that a particular industry is important enough that it needs this kind of support — or as some might call it, protection — even if it means higher prices for a while.
The problem with across-the-board tariffs of the kind Trump proposes is that they create higher prices even for goods that are not being produced domestically and probably never will be. If tariffs raise the price of a six-pack of tube socks at Target from $9.99 to $14.99, it won’t mean we’ll start making tube socks in America again. It just means you’ll pay more. The same is often true for domestic industries that use foreign parts in their manufacturing: If no one is producing those parts domestically, their costs will unavoidably rise.
The U.S. imported over $3 trillion worth of goods in 2023, and $426 billion from China alone, so Trump’s proposed tariffs would represent hundreds of billions of dollars of increased costs. That’s before we account for the inevitable retaliatory tariffs, which is what we saw in Trump’s first term: He imposed tariffs on China, which responded by choking off its imports of American agricultural goods. In the end, the revenue collected from Trump’s tariffs went almost entirely to bailing out farmers whose export income disappeared.
The past almost-four years under Joe Biden have seen a series of back-and-forth moves in which new tariffs were announced, other tariffs were increased, exemptions were removed and reinstated. For instance, this May Biden increased the tariff on Chinese electric vehicles to over 100% while adding tariffs on certain EV batteries. But some of the provisions didn’t take effect right away, and only certain products were affected, so the net economic impact was minimal. And there’s been nothing like an across-the-board tariff.
It’s reasonable to criticize Biden’s tariff policies related to climate. But his administration was trying to navigate a dilemma, serving two goals at once: reducing emissions and promoting the development of domestic clean energy technology. Those goals are not always in alignment, at least in the short run, which we can see in the conflict within the solar industry. Companies that sell and install solar equipment benefit from cheap Chinese imports and therefore oppose tariffs, while domestic manufacturers want the tariffs to continue so they can be more competitive. The administration has attempted to accommodate both interests with a combination of subsidies to manufacturers and tariffs on certain kinds of imports — with exemptions peppered here and there. It’s been a difficult balancing act.
Then there are electric vehicles. The world’s largest EV manufacturer is Chinese company BYD, but if you haven’t seen any of their cars on the road, it’s because existing tariffs make it virtually impossible to import Chinese EVs to the United States. That will continue to be the case under Trump, and it would have been the case if Kamala Harris had been elected.
On one hand, it’s important for America to have the strongest possible green industries to insulate us from future supply shocks and create as many jobs-of-the-future as possible. On the other hand, that isn’t necessarily the fastest route to emissions reductions. In a world where we’ve eliminated all tariffs on EVs, the U.S. market would be flooded with inexpensive, high-quality Chinese EVs. That would dramatically accelerate adoption, which would be good for the climate.
But that would also deal a crushing blow to the American car industry, which is why neither party will allow it. What may happen, though, is that Chinese car companies may build factories in Mexico, or even here in the U.S., just as many European and Japanese companies have, so that their cars wouldn’t be subject to tariffs. That will take time.
Of course, whatever happens will depend on Trump following through with his tariff promise. We’ve seen before how he declares victory even when he only does part of what he promised, which could happen here. Once he begins implementing his tariffs, his administration will be immediately besieged by a thousand industries demanding exemptions, carve-outs, and delays in the tariffs that affect them. Many will have powerful advocates — members of Congress, big donors, and large groups of constituents — behind them. It’s easy to imagine how “across-the-board” tariffs could, in practice, turn into Swiss cheese.
There’s no way to know yet which parts of the energy transition will be in the cheese, and which parts will be in the holes. The manufacturers can say that helping them will stick it to China; the installers may not get as friendly an audience with Trump and his team. And the EV tariffs certainly aren’t going anywhere.
There’s a great deal of uncertainty, but one thing is clear: This is a fight that will continue for the entirety of Trump’s term, and beyond.
Give the people what they want — big, family-friendly EVs.
The star of this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show was the Hyundai Ioniq 9, a rounded-off colossus of an EV that puts Hyundai’s signature EV styling on a three-row SUV cavernous enough to carry seven.
I was reminded of two years ago, when Hyundai stole the L.A. show with a different EV: The reveal of Ioniq 6, its “streamliner” aerodynamic sedan that looked like nothing else on the market. By comparison, Ioniq 9 is a little more banal. It’s a crucial vehicle that will occupy the large end of Hyundai's excellent and growing lineup of electric cars, and one that may sell in impressive numbers to large families that want to go electric. Even with all the sleek touches, though, it’s not quite interesting. But it is big, and at this moment in electric vehicles, big is what’s in.
The L.A. show is one the major events on the yearly circuit of car shows, where the car companies traditionally reveal new models for the media and show off their whole lineups of vehicles for the public. Given that California is the EV capital of America, carmakers like to talk up their electric models here.
Hyundai’s brand partner, Kia, debuted a GT performance version of its EV9, adding more horsepower and flashy racing touches to a giant family SUV. Jeep reminded everyone of its upcoming forays into full-size and premium electric SUVs in the form of the Recon and the Wagoneer S. VW trumpeted the ID.Buzz, the long-promised electrified take on the classic VW Microbus that has finally gone on sale in America. The VW is the quirkiest of the lot, but it’s a design we’ve known about since 2017, when the concept version was revealed.
Boring isn’t the worst thing in the world. It can be a sign of a maturing industry. At auto shows of old, long before this current EV revolution, car companies would bring exotic, sci-fi concept cars to dial up the intrigue compared to the bread-and-butter, conservatively styled vehicles that actually made them gobs of money. During the early EV years, electrics were the shiny thing to show off at the car show. Now, something of the old dynamic has come to the electric sector.
Acura and Chrysler brought wild concepts to Los Angeles that were meant to signify the direction of their EVs to come. But most of the EVs in production looked far more familiar. Beyond the new hulking models from Hyundai and Kia, much of what’s on offer includes long-standing models, but in EV (Chevy Equinox and Blazer) or plug-in hybrid (Jeep Grand Cherokee and Wrangler) configurations. One of the most “interesting” EVs on the show floor was the Cybertruck, which sat quietly in a barely-staffed display of Tesla vehicles. (Elon Musk reveals his projects at separate Tesla events, a strategy more carmakers have begun to steal as a way to avoid sharing the spotlight at a car show.)
The other reason boring isn’t bad: It’s what the people want. The majority of drivers don’t buy an exotic, fun vehicle. They buy a handsome, spacious car they can afford. That last part, of course, is where the problem kicks in.
We don’t yet know the price of the Ioniq 9, but it’s likely to be in the neighborhood of Kia’s three-row electric, the EV9, which starts in the mid-$50,000s and can rise steeply from there. Stellantis’ forthcoming push into the EV market will start with not only pricey premium Jeep SUVs, but also some fun, though relatively expensive, vehicles like the heralded Ramcharger extended-range EV truck and the Dodge Charger Daytona, an attempt to apply machismo-oozing, alpha-male muscle-car marketing to an electric vehicle.
You can see the rationale. It costs a lot to build a battery big enough to power a big EV, so they’re going to be priced higher. Helpfully for the car brands, Americans have proven they will pay a premium for size and power. That’s not to say we’re entering an era of nothing but bloated EV battleships. Models such as the overpowered electric Dodge Charger and Kia EV9 GT will reveal the appetite for performance EVs. Smaller models like the revived Chevy Bolt and Kia’s EV3, already on sale overseas, are coming to America, tax credit or not.
The question for the legacy car companies is where to go from here. It takes years to bring a vehicle from idea to production, so the models on offer today were conceived in a time when big federal support for EVs was in place to buoy the industry through its transition. Now, though, the automakers have some clear uncertainty about what to say.
Chevy, having revealed new electrics like the Equinox EV elsewhere, did not hold a media conference at the L.A. show. Ford, which is having a hellacious time losing money on its EVs, used its time to talk up combustion vehicles including a new version of the palatial Expedition, one of the oversized gas-guzzlers that defined the first SUV craze of the 1990s.
If it’s true that the death of federal subsidies will send EV sales into a slump, we may see messaging from Detroit and elsewhere that feels decidedly retro, with very profitable combustion front-and-center and the all-electric future suddenly less of a talking point. Whatever happens at the federal level, EVs aren’t going away. But as they become a core part of the car business, they are going to get less exciting.
Current conditions: Parts of southwest France that were freezing last week are now experiencing record high temperatures • Forecasters are monitoring a storm system that could become Australia’s first named tropical cyclone of this season • The Colorado Rockies could get several feet of snow today and tomorrow.
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season caused an estimated $500 billion in damage and economic losses, according to AccuWeather. “For perspective, this would equate to nearly 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter. The figure accounts for long-term economic impacts including job losses, medical costs, drops in tourism, and recovery expenses. “The combination of extremely warm water temperatures, a shift toward a La Niña pattern and favorable conditions for development created the perfect storm for what AccuWeather experts called ‘a supercharged hurricane season,’” said AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. “This was an exceptionally powerful and destructive year for hurricanes in America, despite an unusual and historic lull during the climatological peak of the season.”
AccuWeather
This year’s hurricane season produced 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes. Five hurricanes made landfall, two of which were major storms. According to NOAA, an “average” season produces 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. The season comes to an end on November 30.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced yesterday that if President-elect Donald Trump scraps the $7,500 EV tax credit, California will consider reviving its Clean Vehicle Rebate Program. The CVRP ran from 2010 to 2023 and helped fund nearly 600,000 EV purchases by offering rebates that started at $5,000 and increased to $7,500. But the program as it is now would exclude Tesla’s vehicles, because it is aimed at encouraging market competition, and Tesla already has a large share of the California market. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has cozied up to Trump, called California’s potential exclusion of Tesla “insane,” though he has said he’s okay with Trump nixing the federal subsidies. Newsom would need to go through the State Legislature to revive the program.
President-elect Donald Trump said yesterday he would impose steep new tariffs on all goods imported from China, Canada, and Mexico on day one of his presidency in a bid to stop “drugs” and “illegal aliens” from entering the United States. Specifically, Trump threatened Canada and Mexico each with a 25% tariff, and China with a 10% hike on existing levies. Such moves against three key U.S. trade partners would have major ramifications across many sectors, including the auto industry. Many car companies import vehicles and parts from plants in Mexico. The Canadian government responded with a statement reminding everyone that “Canada is essential to U.S. domestic energy supply, and last year 60% of U.S. crude oil imports originated in Canada.” Tariffs would be paid by U.S. companies buying the imported goods, and those costs would likely trickle down to consumers.
Amazon workers across the world plan to begin striking and protesting on Black Friday “to demand justice, fairness, and accountability” from the online retail giant. The protests are organized by the UNI Global Union’s Make Amazon Pay Campaign, which calls for better working conditions for employees and a commitment to “real environmental sustainability.” Workers in more than 20 countries including the U.S. are expected to join the protests, which will continue through Cyber Monday. Amazon’s carbon emissions last year totalled 68.8 million metric tons. That’s about 3% below 2022 levels, but more than 30% above 2019 levels.
Researchers from MIT have developed an AI tool called the “Earth Intelligence Engine” that can simulate realistic satellite images to show people what an area would look like if flooded by extreme weather. “Visualizing the potential impacts of a hurricane on people’s homes before it hits can help residents prepare and decide whether to evacuate,” wrote Jennifer Chu at MIT News. The team found that AI alone tended to “hallucinate,” generating images of flooding in areas that aren’t actually susceptible to a deluge. But when combined with a science-backed flood model, the tool became more accurate. “One of the biggest challenges is encouraging people to evacuate when they are at risk,” said MIT’s Björn Lütjens, who led the research. “Maybe this could be another visualization to help increase that readiness.” The tool is still in development and is available online. Here is an image it generated of flooding in Texas:
Maxar Open Data Program via Gupta et al., CVPR Workshop Proceedings. Lütjens et al., IEEE TGRS
A new installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris lets visitors listen to the sounds of endangered and extinct animals – along with the voice of the artist behind the piece, the one and only Björk.