You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Skiers, snowboarders, and cross-country athletes are in mourning for snow.
On January 15, as the first major winter storm of the season screeched across the U.S., Minneapolis’ Theodore Wirth Regional Park remained cold, hard, and — most stubbornly — brown. “We continue to be denied any measurable amount of snow,” read the park’s trail report for the day. “Frozen dandruff-covered dirt is our destiny for the time being.”
In a few weeks, over Presidents Day weekend, the park is scheduled to host the United States’ first cross country skiing World Cup in more than 20 years. For an event like that, “dandruff-covered dirt” simply will not cut it. “We’re really excited to have a great event there with tons of friends and family,” Gus Schumacher, a 2022 Winter Olympian in skiathlon, told me. While he still has hope, the Twin Cities’ snow deficit remains around 18 inches for the season. “We have to cross our fingers for some winter in the next month,” he said.
For the 30 million Americans who enjoy snow sports every year, this sort of finger-crossing has become as much of a pre-season ritual as tightening bindings and waxing skis. While scientists have long taken note of dwindling snowpack — the Fifth National Climate Assessment, released last year, specifically cited winter recreation as a pending cultural and economic victim of climate change — data had only shakily linked snow level to human-driven warming until recently. This month, a study published in Nature confirmed that it’s not all in our heads: Some parts of the U.S. are losing 10% to 20% of their snowpack per decade because of anthropogenic climate change.
Perhaps even more concerning, the study’s authors found that snow loss has a tipping point: Once the average winter temperature in a region warms beyond 17 degrees Fahrenheit (-8 degrees Celsius), snow loss rapidly accelerates, even with small temperature rises.
In spite of headlines about arctic blasts and photos of buried football fields, snow levels in many parts of the country have remained worryingly low at the midpoint of this year’s meteorological winter — and temperatures, on average, remain high. In early January, most ski areas in the U.S. were only operating half of their lifts, “which is unusual for this time of year,” Chance Keso, a senior news producer for On the Snow, which tracks ski conditions, told me. “Typically,” he explained, “we would see most resorts almost all completely open by this time of year.”
The recent storm systems have helped somewhat, Keso said — Alyeska, a ski area in Alaska, “passed the 400 inches mark a few weeks ago.” But even Buffalo, which received record snow in January, is tracking behind average when the whole season is considered. In California, where the ski industry is a $1.6 billion business, snowpack is only 57% of normal.
Likewise, meteorologist Sven Sundgaard wrote for Minneapolis’ Bring Me the News that this winter has been “pretty weak” in Minnesota. It has been cold, no doubt, and yet “nowhere in the state reached 25 [degrees Fahrenheit] below zero, which should EASILY happen in a January cold snap in northern Minnesota, even in our much warmer climate,” he said. (This week, temperatures are expected to be 10 to 15 degrees above normal across the state.) On the Snow reported that, as of Monday, “snowpack levels across Minnesota are currently 73% of normal.”
Counterintuitive as it may be, researchers expect climate change to bring more snow to certain places, as extremely cold parts of the world warm to more snow-friendly temperatures and increased precipitation from a warmer atmosphere results in more flurries. Parts of Siberia and the northern Great Plains appear to be experiencing a deepening snowpack of over 20% per decade, Justin Mankin and Alexander Gottlieb, the co-authors of the Nature paper, found in their research. But just because snow loss hasn’t hit an area yet doesn’t mean it won’t soon; “basins that are hovering right at the edge of that cliff, for whom major snow losses have not yet emerged, are about to see the snow losses emerge,” Mankin said.
Despite the worries about Minnesota’s upcoming World Cup, Susanna Sieff — the sustainability director for the Switzerland-based International Ski and Snowboard Federation (known by its French initials, FIS) — told me that event cancellations for the six Olympic snow sport disciplines this season have so far “been on par with previous seasons.” A spate of foiled World Cups in Zermatt, Italy, Beaver Creek, Colorado, and the French Alps in late 2023, she said, was “due to inclement weather and not lack of snowfall.”
Still, Sieff admitted that “for those that needed a wake-up call, the last few years have certainly provided it.” 2022 was especially bad for competitive ski and snowboarding — the organization canceled seven of its eight early-season World Cups for lack of snow. This month, FIS released an updated sustainability action plan that runs through the 2026 season and includes a particular focus on mitigation, environmental justice, and responsible stewardship. (Protect Our Winters, an environmental advocacy group that put me in touch with Schumacher, the ski athlete who serves as one of their ambassadors, has pressured FIS to be more transparent given the existential crisis facing competitive snow sports. My father is a longtime FIS event volunteer.)
Resort operators are increasingly using machine-made snow as a fall-back plan — as Schumacher told me, in cross-country, “we ski on warm, manmade snow far more than was the case 10 years ago.” It’s also common for XC events to move to alternate venues where snow can be stretched further. For example, Lillehammer, Norway has hosted a World Cup race in nine of the past 10 years. But “since I came on the World Cup in 2020, we haven’t been able to use the marquee trails built for the 1994 Olympics,” Schumacher said.
Even this “fake” snow is imperiled. “Snowmaking is not a climate solution,” the National Ski Areas Association, an industry group, has made clear. “It is an operational tool.”
It’s also expensive. Snowmaking can eat up to 15% of a ski area’s operating budget, draining the pockets of small and independent resorts. The consequence is yet another illustration of how climate change hits “the most vulnerable system and the most vulnerable people in that system,” Mankin said. “The ski industry is a really clear example of where you’re going to see consolidation onto better resourced, higher, more exclusive mountains that have the ability to produce human-made snow — and which are more difficult for the general population to access.”
Since the 1970s, ski areas in the U.S. have dwindled from roughly 1,000 locations to only about 470, according to SnowBrains, a ski and snowboard publication. It’s a trend climate change is helping to accelerate. That, of course, means fewer areas for athletes to compete and practice, as well as fewer local hills and trails for would-be athletes to fall in love with the sport.
For those in the snow sports world, this is nothing short of heartbreaking. The average American already doesn’t watch snow sports and “shouldn’t really care” whether cross-country or downhill skiing competitions survive, Schumacher told me. But the consequences are bigger than just competitive and recreational snow sports having shorter seasons of poorer quality or becoming more exclusive. A lack of snow is also about critical watersheds that are strained when snow doesn’t fall in the mountains, leaving ecosystems damaged and agriculture unirrigated. Heck, it’s about hardy, stoic Minnesotans losing what it means to be hardy, stoic Minnesotans. “What they should care about,” Schumacher said of his fellow Americans, “is the effects of climate change that come after the death of snow sport as we know it.”
Mankin told me something similar. “What happens in winter,” he warned, “doesn’t stay in winter.”
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
The Department of Energy has put together a list of sites and is requesting proposals from developers, Heatmap has learned.
The Department of Energy is moving ahead with plans to allow companies to build AI data centers and new power plants on federal land — and it has put together a list of more than a dozen sites nationwide that could receive the industrial-scale facilities, according to an internal memo obtained by Heatmap News.
The memo lists sites in Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado, and other locations. The government could even allow new power plants — including nuclear reactors and carbon-capture operations — to be built on the same sites to generate enough electricity to power the data centers, the memo says.
Trump officials hope to start construction on the new data centers by the end of this year and switch them on by the end of 2027, according to the memo.
The agency will request formal feedback from artificial intelligence companies and developers about how best to proceed with its proposal as soon as Thursday, according to an individual who wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly.
The effort, aimed at maintaining America’s “global AI dominance,” represents one of the few points of agreement between the Trump and Biden administrations. In the final days of his term, President Biden ordered the government to identify federal properties where new data centers could be built.
Scarcely a week later, President Trump issued an executive order lifting all Biden-era limits on AI development — but keeping the mandate to move quickly to maintain America’s alleged edge in the new technology. “It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance,” the Trump order said.
The new memo proposes a list of 16 federal sites that could host AI data centers, new power plants, and other “AI infrastructure.” They include several sites where nuclear weapon components are made, including the Pantex site near Amarillo, Texas, and the Kansas City National Security Campus, which is operated by Honeywell International. The other candidate sites are:
Other sites could still be considered, the memo says, and the current list has no particular ranking or order.
The offer may not be enough to convince developers to work with the federal government, one energy expert told me.
“I think it’s important that the government is thinking about how to help the industry, but you also have to think about it from the perspective of the industry a little bit. Why is doing this on a DOE site better than doing this as a project in Texas?” said Peter Freed, a founding partner at the Near Horizon Group and the former director of energy strategy at Meta.
“Historically, the perspective is that anything involving government land just adds complexity,” Freed told me. “I love Idaho National Lab. It’s a national treasure. But if you want a data center there by the end of 2027 — where is the power going to come from?”
Only if the government were able to guarantee fast-track access to certain kinds of equipment — such as transformers or circuit breakers, which are in a severe shortage — would it make sense for most developers to work with them, he said.
The new memo raises the idea that “innovative energy technologies” including “nuclear reactors, enhanced geothermal systems, fuel cells, carbon capture, energy storage systems, and portfolios of on-site technologies” could be considered to power the new data centers.
The memo asks potential developers, “What information would you need to determine the suitability of various energy storage systems (e.g., subsurface thermal energy storage, flow battery, metal anode battery) as a means for supporting data center cooling or other operations?” It also asks what companies would need to know about a site’s suitability for carbon capture and storage operations. It asks, too, what information might be needed about a site’s topography, physical security, and earthquake risk to build a new nuclear power plant.
The memo doesn’t mention wind turbines or new solar farms, although they could fall under some of the terms it sets out. It also asks companies what information they might need about nearby nuclear power plants or the local power grid — and it inquires whether some data center operations could be turned on and off depending on local power availability.
Although the government could allow new data centers to be built, it won’t accept all liability for them. The memo adds that companies might need to “agree to bear all responsibility for costs and liabilities related to construction and operation of the Al data centers as well as other infrastructure upgrades necessary to support those data centers.”
The Trump administration seems intent on moving quickly on the proposal. Once it publishes the request, companies will have 30 days to respond.
Current conditions: A rare wildfire alert has been issued for London this week due to strong winds and unseasonably high temperatures • Schools are closed on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Paros after a storm caused intense flooding • Nearly 50 million people in the central U.S. are at risk of tornadoes, hail, and historic levels of rain today as a severe weather system barrels across the country.
President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.
Republican candidates won in two House races in Florida on Tuesday, one of which was looking surprisingly tight going into the special elections. The victories by Jimmy Patronis in Florida’s First District and Randy Fine in the Sixth District bolster the party’s slim House majority and could spell trouble for the Inflation Reduction Act as the House Ways and Means Committee mulls which programs to cut to pay for tax cuts. But the result in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election was less rosy for Republicans. Liberal Judge Susan Crawford defeated conservative Brad Schimel despite Schimel’s huge financial backing from Tesla CEO and Trump adviser Elon Musk, who poured some $15 million into the competition. The outcome “could tarnish the billionaire’s political clout and trigger worry for some Republicans about how voters are processing the opening months of Trump’s new administration,” as The Wall Street Journalexplained.
The Trump administration announced mass layoffs across the Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, part of a larger effort to reduce the agency’s workforce by 25%. The cuts included key staffers with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which has existed since 1981 and helps some 6.7 million low-income households pay their energy bills. A 2022 white paper calls LIHEAP “one of the most critical components of the social safety net.” The move comes at a time when many U.S. utilities are preparing to raise their energy prices to account for higher costs for materials, labor, and grid upgrades. In a scathing letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. Jr., Senate Energy and Commerce Democrats call the workforce cuts “reckless” and demand detailed explanations for why roles have been eliminated.
Energy storage startup Energy Vault on Wednesday announced it had closed $28 million in project financing for a hybrid green hydrogen microgrid energy storage facility in California. The firm says its Calistoga Resiliency Center, deployed in partnership with utility company Pacific Gas & Electric, is “specifically designed to address power resiliency given the growing challenges of wildfire risk in California.” The zero-emission system will feature advanced hydrogen fuel cells that are integrated with lithium-ion batteries, which can provide about 48 hours of back-up power via a microgrid to the city of Calistoga during wildfire-related power shutoffs. The site is expected to be commercially operational in the second quarter of 2025.
“The CRC serves as a model for Energy Vault’s future utility-scale hybrid microgrid storage system deployments as the only existing zero-emission solution to address [power shutoff] events that is scalable and ready to be deployed across California and other regions prone to wildfires,” the company said in a press release. As Heatmap’s Katie Brigham wrote last fall, PG&E has become an important partner for climate and energy tech companies with the potential to reduce risk and improve service on the grid.
China will finalize its first-ever sale of a green sovereign bond Wednesday. The country is expected to issue the bond on the London Stock Exchange and has reportedly received more than $5 billion in bids. “It’s no coincidence that China has chosen to list its debut green bond in London, given European investors’ continued strong demand for environmental products,” Bloombergnoted. Green bonds are investment vehicles that raise money exclusively for projects that benefit the climate or environment. China’s finance ministry wants the bond to “attract international funds to support domestic green and low-carbon development,” and specifically climate change mitigation and adaptation, nature conservation and biodiversity, and pollution prevention and control. Some of the money raised might also go toward China’s EV charging infrastructure, according toReuters.
GE Vernova has now produced more than half of the turbines needed for the SunZia Wind project in New Mexico. When completed in 2026, the 2.4 gigawatt project will be the largest onshore wind farm in the Western Hemisphere.
Rob and Jesse catch up on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund with former White House official Kristina Costa.
The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.
It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Since February, Trump’s criminal justice appointees — led by Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — have tried to use criminal law to undo the program. After failing to get the FBI and Justice Department to block the flow of funds, Trump officials have successfully gotten the program’s bank partner to freeze relevant money. The new green banks have sued to gain access to the money.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Kristina Costa, who has been tracking the effort to bankrupt the green banks. Costa helped lead the Inflation Reduction Act’s implementation in the White House from 2022 to 2025 — and is a previous Shift Key guest. She joins us to discuss how Trump is weaponing criminal law to block a climate program, whether there’s any precedent for his actions, and what could come next in the legal battle. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: There's kind of two lines you hear from the Trump administration about this, two claims made by the Trump administration about the reason for these seizures, and I just wanna talk about them briefly because this is an unprecedented action. We should look at why the government has claimed that it needs to take this unprecedented action.
The first has to do with this video made by Project Veritas, a kind of conservative media organization …
Kristina Costa: A hit squad.
Meyer: A hit squad that recorded, unwittingly, an EPA official who described the EPA’s actions during December 2024, between the loss of the election and the inauguration, as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.” That the agency was so eager and desperate to spend as much of the IRA down as it could before the Trump administration took office that it was like they were throwing gold bars off the Titanic — you know, a sinking ship.
The EPA administrator has fixated on this line and described it as waste and self-dealing, suggesting reckless financial mismanagement, blatant conflicts of interest, astonishing sums of tax dollars awarded to unqualified recipients and severe deficiencies of regulatory oversight.
You were involved in setting up the IRA. I wonder, first of all, just how do you reflect on this episode? And second of all, was the Biden administration doing the proverbial version of throwing gold bars off the Titanic during the post-election period?
Costa: Yeah, so I mean, it falls apart as any sort of quote-unquote evidence in what's happening with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund if you just believe in the linear nature of time. So, as I said, we announced EPA made the selections in April of 2024. The funds were fully obligated in August of 2024. Grantees were starting to make announcements about investments in October of 2024 — all dates which precede election day by weeks to months. And so it is just a complete fabrication on the part of Lee Zeldin that there was any sort of inappropriate action on the part of the Biden EPA or any of the other agencies in doing what Congress directed us to do, which was to award and obligate funds to recipients consistent with the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that authorized and appropriated funds for the programs.
We had also — and I think I might have said this when I was with you guys in December — one of the first things that we did, from the White House implementation team, was to meet with all of our grant agencies and, in September and October of 2022, set targets for them for how much funding we wanted them to try to award and obligate by the end of the administration. And we set a goal, basically, that we would be aiming to have at least 80% of the available funds obligated by the end of 2024. And we hit that. And so the idea that there was some massive acceleration post-election — like, were there some contracts that the agencies obligated in December and January that, in the event of a Kamala Harris administration, they would've maybe obligated in February and March instead? Sure. I'm not going to say otherwise, but those grants had been made already. There wasn't this rush of actual decision-making.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.