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American fathers love EVs, support clean energy, and are trying to eat more plants.
Picture a stereotypical American father.
He’s tending to his grill on a hot summer day, grinning as he flips a burger, stabs at a hot dog sizzling on the rack. He’s a bit doughy from decades of drinking beer (he’s a Coors man, like his dad) and of sitting at a desk, comfortably trapped in middle management. He tells a joke, and you feign a laugh, realizing that it probably seemed funnier, and more acceptable, to him back when he was young. He’d voted for Obama in 2008 — simpler times, he shrugs — but now leans conservative. It’s 10 degrees warmer in his mosquito-filled backyard than it should be at this time of year, but he doesn’t want to hear about climate change. In fact, he rolls his eyes when he mentions the couple down the street — the ones with the Ioniq and the panels on their roof.
This cartoon of an American dad who scoffs about climate change is easy to conjure, abetted by a Republican campaign to make environmentalism seem the province of liberal elites. “People when they start talking about things like global warming,” Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida and likely presidential candidate, said in December, “they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things.” Things, of course, that would be anathema to such Coors-drinking, meat-stabbing Weber dads.
Yet the results of the inaugural Heatmap Climate Poll, conducted in late February by Benenson Strategy Group, contradict such facile assumptions. Although recent surveys have shown that men across all ideological lines are less concerned about climate change than women, having children seems to sharpen their focus. I spoke with Peter Olivier, the head of new markets for the carbon-removal company UNDO — and a self-proclaimed “climate dad” — about the phenomenon. “You have a young kid, you look at them, you think, oh my God, this kid’s gonna grow up and ask me what I did [about climate change] or what I didn’t do,” he said. “And I’m going to have to answer them.”
On a number of critical issues, those answers may indeed be coming from America’s dads. From EV adoption to beef consumption, fathers are helping lead the country towards a more sustainable future — or a least they say they are. Their answers were so strikingly climate-friendly that one wonders if they were trying to make the moms, and everybody else, look bad in comparison. (Knowing dads, it wouldn't be the first time.)
When it comes to vehicles, America’s fathers are on the forefront of decarbonization. Twenty-one percent of dads say they currently drive an electric vehicle, and 48% would like to in the future; those numbers dip to 12% and 43% for all men, 8% and 44% for moms, and to 8% and 39% for all respondents. They’re also more likely to say they currently or would like to ride an e-bike, ride a regular bicycle, or take public transportation. Everyone was about equally likely to say they currently walk instead of drive, but dads were more eager to do it in the future.
As to their homes, the trends were similar, albeit in a somewhat baffling way. Twenty-six percent of fathers, compared with 22% of all men, 17% of mothers, and 19% of all respondents, say they use heat pumps to warm and cool their houses. Thirty-seven percent of dads hope to switch to heat pumps in the future, 14 points higher than all men. Twenty-six percent of fathers say they currently power their homes with solar panels — compared to 19% of all men, 13% of all respondents, and, bizarrely, just 8% of moms — and compost at greater rates than the other demographics. Dads were also more willing than the other demographics to say they’d be willing to downsize their home.
While some of these results could be influenced by economic factors — it’s not cheap to install solar panels or buy an electric car, and there is a wide gender gap in American pay — the same cannot be said for the matter of diet. Sixteen percent of fathers say they currently do not eat meat (compared to 10% of all men, 8% of mothers, and 10% of all respondents), and 29% of dads want to do so in the future (that number drops by about 10 percentage points for the other demographics).
While fathers lag mothers and all respondents in currently limiting their beef intake, 34% of dads want to eat less red meat in the future — compared to 23% of all men, 17% of moms, and 21% of all respondents. Fathers were also more likely than all men, mothers and all respondents to say they limit their consumption of all animal products, by a slim margin in the present (25% to 21%, 23%, and 21%) and a wider one in the future (33% to 23%, 26%, and 22%).
And when it comes to cooking that meat — or its plant protein-based facsimile — 29% of dads would like to use an electric stove instead of gas, compared to 25% of all men, 18% of moms, and 20% of all respondents; the four groups currently eschew gas in roughly equal numbers.
Fathers were also far more supportive of wind, nuclear, and geothermal energy than the other demographics (though the four groups were broadly in favor of solar panels). Eighty-one percent of fathers said they’d welcome wind turbines in their communities, compared to 70% of all men, 72% of all respondents, and 73% of mothers. Forty-six percent of dads would be similarly welcoming to nuclear power; that number dropped to 42% of all men, 32% of all respondents, and just 16% of moms. A whopping 83% of fathers would also welcome a geothermal station, far more than the 59% of all men, 62% of all respondents, and 47% of moms who said the same.
Fathers were also about twice as likely as the other demographics to say that renewable energy should be rolled out as quickly as possible, even if comes at the expense of natural land. They were also more likely than the other groups to be supportive of spraying chemicals in the atmosphere to counter the effects of climate change.
Some results did track more closely to what one might expect from American fathers — compared to mothers, they worry less about the effects of climate change on their homes (71% to 85%), their children (67% to 82%), and their own lives (59% to 80%). Elon Musk has made dads more, not less, likely to want to drive a Tesla, and they want to have fewer, or no, children in the future — ostensibly to combat climate change, but possibly also to be able to go fishing more often with their friends.
Despite the latter results, the broader picture makes it clear that American fathers are more engaged with battling climate change than the stereotype allows. “Dads are funny and strange and less ideological and pedantic and all these regular dad things too,” says Olivier. “And they don’t stop being that way when they get focused on climate. So they do funny stuff like talk obsessively about heat pumps and try to calculate their solar gains … just all kind of normal dad stuff.” In other words, fathers are beginning to shift their essential dad-ness to the crisis at hand, in their lovably corny way.
So the next time you’re in that sweltering, mosquito-filled backyard, take a good look at what that fictional father is cooking on his grill — those might just be Impossible Burgers he’s tending to.
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. You can read more about the results here.
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On storm damage, the Strait of Hormuz, and Volkswagen’s robotaxi
Current conditions: A dangerous heat dome is forming over central states today and will move progressively eastward over the next week • Wildfire warnings have been issued in London • Typhoon Wutip brought the worst flooding in a century to China’s southern province of Guangdong.
Hurricane Erick made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Mexico’s Pacific coast yesterday with maximum sustained winds around 125 mph. Damages are reported in Oaxaca and Guerrero. The storm is dissipating now, but it could drop up to 6 inches of rain in some parts of Mexico and trigger life-threatening flooding and mudslides, according to the National Hurricane Center. Erick is the earliest major hurricane to make landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast, and one of the fastest-intensifying storms on record: It strengthen from a tropical storm to a Category 4 storm in just 24 hours, a pattern of rapid intensification that is becoming more common as the Earth warms due to human-caused climate change. As meteorologist and hurricane expert Michael Lowry noted, Mexico’s Pacific coast was “previously unfamiliar with strong hurricanes” but has been battered by epic storms over the last two years. Acapulco is still recovering from Category 5 Hurricane Otis, which struck in late 2023.
AccuWeather
An oil tanker collision near the Strait of Hormuz is raising environmental and security concerns. The accident in the Gulf of Oman involved the Adalynn and Front Eagle tankers. It caused a “small oil spill,” according to the Emirati government, but Greenpeace analyzed satellite images and said the oil plume stretches some six square miles from the collision site. “This is just one of many dangerous incidents to take place in the past years,” said Greenpeace campaigner Farah Al Hattab. The Strait of Hormuz is a choke point for oil shipments, with about one-third of the volume of crude exported by sea moving through that route. Oil prices have been on a roller coaster ride since Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on June 13. Ships in the region have been reporting more GPS navigation interference in recent days. “If the conflict continues, we expect these interferences to continue as well,” Jean-Charles Gordon, senior director of ship tracking at research firm Kpler, toldThe New York Times.
North Carolina lawmakers finalized a bill repealing a mandate that directs electric regulators to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 70% by 2030. The mandate was part of a landmark 2021 law aimed at dramatically reducing the state’s power plant emissions. While at least 17 other states have similar laws in place, just two – North Carolina and Virginia – are in the Southeast. The new bill’s supporters say that the interim emissions goal would require energy providers to switch to more expensive power sources and that the costs would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher power bills.
Confusingly, regulators would still be asked to work toward carbon neutrality by 2050, even while the short-term emissions goal might be nixed. “Not having any target, even an aspirational target, could mean that we don’t stay on track to get to our 2050 goal,” Democratic Sen. Julie Mayfield said. The bill now goes to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s desk. There’s a chance he might veto it, but “with over a dozen House and Senate Democrats voting for the final version, the chances that any Stein veto could be overridden are higher,” The Associated Pressreported.
The United Kingdom issued long-awaited environmental guidance that it will use to determine whether new oil and gas proposals should be approved. The guidance requires that developers estimate and include scope 3 emissions – or the downstream pollution from burning oil and gas – in their drilling applications. This “will ensure the full effects of fossil fuel extraction on the environment are recognized in consenting decisions,” the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said. The government will consider these emissions, as well as other factors like “the potential economic impact” of a project and a company’s efforts to remove carbon dioxide when granting or denying approval. The guidance will help determine whether major new drilling projects from oil giants Shell and Equinor are approved for the North Sea.
Volkswagen Group unveiled its first fully autonomous production vehicle, the ID. Buzz AD. The electric robotaxis will target corporate customers and mobility services. They “come packed with everything that’s needed to operate them,” explained Iulian Dnistran at InsideEVs. “What makes this solution interesting compared to other ride-hailing platforms is that it enables anybody to start an Uber or Waymo rival without investing hundreds of millions of dollars in research, development, and certification.” The shuttles are slated for launch across Europe and the U.S. next year. Tesla recently announced that its first Robotaxis would hit the streets in Austin, Texas, sometime this month.
Volkswagen
In a new peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers conclude that offsetting the potential carbon emissions from reserves held by the world’s 200 largest fossil fuel companies would require planting new forests that are larger than the entire continent of North America.
The energy secretary's philosophy is all over the Senate mega-bill.
As the Senate Finance Committee worked on its version of the reconciliation bill that would, among things, overhaul the Inflation Reduction Act, there was much speculation among observers that there could be a carve out for sources of power like geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear, which provide steady generation and tend to be more popular among Republicans, along the lines of the slightly better treatment received by advanced nuclear in the House bill.
Instead, the Senate Finance Committee’s text didn’t carve out these “firm” sources of power, it carved out solar and wind, preserving tax credits for everything else through 2035, while sunsetting solar and wind by 2028.
For much of the last few months — and for years before he was sworn in as Secretary of Energy — Chris Wright has been expounding on his philosophy of energy and climate. If anything, the Senate Finance draft seems to hew closer to Wright’s worldview than Trump’s, which is less specific, even more critical of renewables (especially wind), and largely in favor of nuclear power when it comes to non-carbon-emitting generation.
“I’m sure Secretary Wright’s strong support for firm technologies over the past few months played a role in Chairman Crapo’s approach to energy tax credit reform,” Pavan Venkatakrishnan, an infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress, told me.
Wright argues that climate change is real but not a top-tier concern and that it certainly should not be addressed by restricting energy usage, which he sees as foundational to the good life here and abroad.
And among energy sources, the former fracking executive is no opponent of fossil fuels but is also enthusiastic about energy innovation.
In his company Liberty Energy’s Bettering Human Lives report, published last year, which doubles as a kind of manifesto, Wright wrote that “viable paths to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can only come from reliable and affordable low-carbon energy technologies,” and specifically listed next-generation nuclear and geothermal, which Liberty had invested in through the geothermal company Fervo and nuclear company Oklo.
“To achieve largescale human betterment, we will need significant future energy additions from nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, and all other viable energy technologies,” the report read.
And he’s often been skeptical of renewables along the lines of many Congressional Republicans, that they aren’t reliable enough and require additional resources to fully support the grid.
“Maybe the biggest problem is intermittency,” Wright said at a Liberty Energy event last year.
“You can build a lot of wind and solar, and then at night, the sun’s not shining and then sometimes the wind doesn’t blow, and you have no energy. So to keep society running, you have to have a whole second separate energy system,” Wright said.
In testimony to the House of Representatives last week, Wright said “If you’re not there at peak demand, you’re just a parasite on the grid, because you just make the other sources turn up and down as you come and go.”
Many critics of the Republican reconciliation bills have noted that much of the electricity generation pipeline is solar, wind, or storage, and so cutting off their tax credits risks leaving the country at an energy shortage while gas turbines take years and years to actually get on the grid.
But as Congress was working on the reconciliation bill, Wright made a series of widely noted public appearances where he promoted clean firm power and continued government support for it.
“My recommendation has been to leave behind the equivalent of the wind and solar tax credits — through if you start construction by 2031 — for nuclear fission and fusion and geothermal,” Wright said at an event earlier this month.
In May, Wright addressed the Nuclear Energy Institute, outlining his support for sunsetting wind and solar tax credits will working to kickstart nuclear power. “My personal goal would be to much more rapidly sunset the technologies that have been around and have been living on decades of subsidies,” Wright said. He also supported a “window” of “favorable treatment” for nuclear and geothermal.
“I’m in favor of every nudge, every incentive we can get from the federal government to restart this industry,” Wright said.
While Wright has been skeptical of wind and solar and optimistic about nuclear and geothermal for years, he’s also started talking more positively about energy storage. In the past, he’s talked up hydrocarbons for “coming with their own storage,” as he put it in a 2018 podcast.
But at an appearance at ARPA-E in March, Wright gave some of his most extended thoughts on energy storage, which sits somewhat awkwardly between variable resources like solar and wind and firm resources like nuclear and geothermal.
“Solar is growing very fast, getting more efficient and taking panels, cheaper materials and developing energy,” Wright said. “The biggest problem there is the sun doesn’t always shine, and we don’t know when clouds are going to come and when it’s not going to shine, but if we can get energy storage better, that’s a game changer.”
At least until 2035.
When I reached out to climate tech investors on Tuesday to gauge their reaction to the Senate’s proposed overhaul of the clean energy tax credits, I thought I might get a standard dose of can-do investor optimism. Though the proposal from the Senate Finance committee would cut tax credits for wind and solar, it would preserve them for other sources of clean energy, such as geothermal, nuclear, and batteries — areas of significant focus and investment for many climate-focused venture firms.
But the vibe ended up being fairly divided. While many investors expressed cautious optimism about what this latest text could mean for their particular portfolio companies, others worried that by slashing incentives for solar and wind, the bill’s implications for the energy transition at large would be categorically terrible.
“We have investments in nuclear, we have investments in geothermal, we have investments in carbon capture. All of that stuff is probably going to get a boost from this, because so much money is going to be flowing out of quote, unquote, ‘slightly more established’ zero emissions technologies,” Susan Su, a climate tech investor at Toba Capital, told me. “So we’re diversified. But for me, as a human being, and as somebody that cares about climate change and cares about having an abundant energy future, this is very short-sighted.”
Bigger picture aside, the idea that the Senate proposal could lead to more capital for non-solar, non-wind clean energy technologies was shared by other investors, many of whom responded with tentative hope when I asked for their thoughts on the bill.
“The extension of the nuclear and geothermal tax credits compared to the House bill is really important,” Rachel Slaybaugh, a climate tech investor at DCVC, told me. The venture firm has invested in the nuclear fission company Radiant Nuclear, the fusion company Zap Energy, and the geothermal startup Fervo Energy. As for how Slaybaugh has been feeling since the bill’s passage as well as the general sentiment among DCVC’s portfolio companies, she told me that “it's mostly been the relief of like, thank you for at least supporting clean, firm and bringing transferability back.”
Indeed, the proposed bill not only fully preserves tax credits for most forms of zero-emissions power until 2034, but also keeps tax credit transferability on the books. This financing mechanism is essential for renewable energy developers who cannot fully utilize the tax credits themselves, as it allows them to sell credits to other companies for cash. All of this puts nascent clean, firm technologies on far more stable footing than after the House’s version of the bill was released last month.
Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures echoed these sentiments via email when he told me, “the Senate proposal is a meaningful improvement over the House version for clean energy companies. It creates more predictability and a clearer runway for emerging technologies that are not yet fully commercial.” Breakthrough invests in multiple fusion, geothermal, and long-duration energy storage startups.
Amy Duffuor, co-founder and general partner at Azolla Ventures, also acknowledged in an email that it’s “encouraging” that the Senate has “seen the way forward on clean firm baseload power.” However, she issued a warning that the unsettled policy environment is leading to “material risks and uncertainties for start-ups reliant on current tax incentives.”
Solar and wind are by far the most widely deployed and cost-competitive forms of renewable energy. So while they now mainly exist outside the remit of venture firms, there are numerous climate-focused startups that operate downstream of this tech. Think about all the software companies working to optimize load forecasting, implement demand response programs, facilitate power purchase agreements, monitor grid assets, and so much more. By proxy, these startups are now threatened by the Senate’s proposal to phase out the investment and production tax credits for solar and wind projects beginning next year, with a full termination after 2027.
“I think solar and wind will survive. But it's going to be like 80% of the deals don't pencil for a long time,” Ryan Guay, co-founder and president of the software startup Euclid Power, told me. Euclid makes data management and workflow tools for renewable project developers, so if the tax credits for solar and wind go kaput, that will mean less business for them. In the meantime though, Guay expects to be especially busy as developers rush to build projects before their tax credit eligibility expires.
As Guay explained to me, it’s not just the rescission of tax credits that he believes will kill such a large percent of solar and wind projects. It’s the combined impact of those cuts, the bill’s foreign entity of concern rules restricting materials from China, and Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made components. “You’re not giving the industry enough time to actually build that robust domestic supply chain, which I agree needs to happen,” Guay told me. “I’m all for the security of the grid, but our supply chains are already very constrained.”
Many investors also expressed frustration and confusion over why Senate Republicans, and the Trump administration at large, would target incentives for solar and wind — the fastest growing domestic energy sources — while touting an agenda of energy dominance and American leadership. Some even used the president’s own language around energy issues to deride the One Big Beautiful Bill’s treatment of solar and wind as well as its repeal of the electric vehicle tax credits.
“The rollbacks of the IRA weaken the U.S. in key areas like energy dominance and the auto industry, which is rapidly becoming synonymous with the EV industry,” Matt Eggers, a managing director at the climate-tech investment firm Prelude Ventures, wrote to me in an email. “This bill will still ultimately cost us economic growth, jobs, and strategic positioning on the world stage.”
“The only real question is, are we going to double down on the future and on American dynamism?” Andrew Beebe, managing director at Obvious Ventures, asked in an emailed response. “Or are we going to cling to the past by trying to hold back a future of abundant, clean, and affordable energy?”
Su wanted to focus on the bigger picture too. While the Senate’s proposal gives tax credits for solar and wind a much longer phaseout period than the House’s bill — which would have required projects to start construction within 60 days of the bill’s passage and enter service by 2028 — Su still doesn’t think the Senate’s version is much to celebrate.
“The specific changes that came through in the Senate version are really kind of nibbling at the edges and at the end of the day, this is a huge blow for our emissions trajectory,” Su told me. She’s always been a big believer that there’s still a significant amount of cutting edge innovation in the solar and wind sectors, she told me. For example, Toba is an investor in Swift Solar, a startup developing high-efficiency perovskite solar cells. Nixing tax credits that benefit the solar industry will hit these smaller players especially hard, she told me.
With the Senate now working to finalize the bill, investors agreed that the current proposal is certainly not the worst case scenario. But many did say it was worse than they had — perhaps overly optimistically — been holding out for.
“To me, it's really bad because it now has a major Senate stamp of approval,” Su told me. The Senate usually tempers the more extreme, partisan impulses of the House. Thus, the closer a bill gets to clearing the Senate, the closer it usually is to its final form. Now, it seems, the reconciliation bill is suddenly feeling very real for people.
“At least back between May 22 and [Monday], we didn't know what was going to get amended, so there was still this window of hope that things could change more dramatically." Su said. Now that window is slowly closing, and the picture of what incentives will — and won’t — survive is coming into greater focus.