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:
A lookahead with Heatmap’s own Emily Pontecorvo, Matthew Zeitlin, and Jillian Goodman.
Rob and Jesse catch up with Mark Fitzgerald, CEO of the closed-loop geothermal startup Eavor.
Rob catches up with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Ilaria Mazzocco.
Jesse and Rob take stock of 2025.
Rob preps for Giving Tuesday with Giving Green’s Dan Stein.
Rob and Jesse talk data center finance with the Center for Public Enterprise’s Advait Arun.
Rob goes to Yale with Heatmap staff writers Emily Pontecorvo and Matthew Zeitlin.
It’s been a huge few weeks for climate news. Democrats swept state and local elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York City — and won two crucial regulatory races in Georgia. A few weeks before, the climate tech investor and philanthropist Bill Gates released a memo arguing for a pivot on climate funding vis a vis global health.
On this special episode of Shift Key, Rob talks to Heatmap staff writers Emily Pontecorvo and Matthew Zeitlin about what the 2025 elections might mean for climate policy, why “affordability” politics could hamper decarbonization, and whether the Gates memo represents anything but a rebrand. They recorded this conversation live at the Yale School of Management’s annual clean energy conference in New Haven, Connecticut.
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. Jesse is off this week.
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: When you talk to clean energy people about this race [for the Georgia Public Service Commission], how did they explain the stakes? Because one thing I've wondered is that, back during the Biden administration, when you talked to Biden energy officials about nuclear and about why nuclear was often unsuccessful, those officials — who are Democrats — would say, Oh, you gotta do what they did in Georgia. Look what they did in Georgia. That plant ran mega-over-budget and they just kept ratebasing it, and those ratepayers could absorb it. And that's how you should do nuclear, is find a sufficiently big electricity market where you can just begin pushing costs into the electricity market.
I'd also hear, to be fair, Biden energy officials basically saying, We have to authorize as many AP1000s as we can, which is the nuclear reactor that was built around Vogtle, that was built in Georgia. We have to authorize and get as many of these started as we can before the rate increases start hitting Georgia rate payers, because once they do, people are going to turn on the politics of nuclear in a way that maybe we're not anticipating.
Anyway, how did clean energy people think about this? Because one of the biggest drivers of rate increases in Georgia is the Georgia PSC’s total willingness to just keep taking costs from the 24/7 clean electricity giants that are nuclear plants and shoving them on rate payers.
Emily Pontecorvo: I actually think that the clean energy folks were thinking about this more in terms of the risks around a natural gas buildout in Georgia. Because Georgia Power, the biggest electricity utility in the state, has recently, in their most recent resource plan, proposed building, like, five nuclear power plants’ worth of new natural gas in the state to essentially power the data center buildout that they're anticipating. And like I said before, the commission has been known to basically just give them what they ask for, and say yes, and not ask questions, and not ask for alternatives. And also I think the commission has been accused of really stunting the growth of rooftop solar, facilitating more utility-scale solar but kind of stunting rooftop solar.
And so the Democrats really campaigned on saying, We're going to look at that resource plan, and we're going to ask questions, and we're going to ask to see what an alternative scenario with more renewable energy would look like. So I think those were the stakes.
Now, whether they're going to get anywhere is another question. Because of the lawsuits and the strange timeline for this election, one of the candidates will only serve for one year before having to be reelected. They also are only two out of five seats on the commission. The other three are Republicans. And so, it's a little bit unclear where they're going to find points of agreement with the other folks on the commission.
Mentioned:
How Mikie Sherrill Won New Jersey’s Electricity Election, by Matthew
Democrats Win 2 Key Energy Races in Georgia, by Emily
Zohran Mamdani’s Muted Climate Politics, by Rob
7 New Takes From Bill Gates on Climate ‘Doomsday’ Talk and Global Health
Where Bill Gates Got It Wrong, by Zeke Haufather
Previously on Shift Key: How to Talk to Your Friendly Neighborhood Public Utility Regulator
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Hydrostor is building the future of energy with Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage. Delivering clean, reliable power with 500-megawatt facilities sited on 100 acres, Hydrostor’s energy storage projects are transforming the grid and creating thousands of American jobs. Learn more at hydrostor.ca.
Uplight is a clean energy technology company that helps energy providers unlock grid capacity by activating energy customers and their connected devices to generate, shift, and save energy. The Uplight Demand Stack — which integrates energy efficiency, electrification, rates, and flexibility programs — improves grid resilience, reduces costs, and accelerates decarbonization for energy providers and their customers. Learn more at uplight.com/heatmap.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
Rob and Jesse unpack one of the key questions of the global fight against climate change with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air’s Lauri Myllyvirta.
Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins are off this week. Please enjoy this selection from the Shift Key archive.
China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially flat in 2024 — or they recorded a tiny increase, according to a November report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA. A third of experts surveyed by the report believe that its coal emissions have peaked. Has the world’s No. 1 emitter of carbon pollution now turned a corner on climate change?
Lauri Myllyvirta is the co-founder and lead analyst at CREA, an independent research organization focused on air pollution and headquartered in Finland. Myllyvirta has worked on climate policy, pollution, and energy issues in Asia for the past decade, and he lived in Beijing from 2015 to 2019.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Lauri about whether China’s emissions have peaked, why the country is still building so much coal power (along with gobs of solar and wind), and the energy-intensive shift that its economy has taken in the past five years. 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: When we think about Chinese demand emissions going forward, it sounds like — somewhat to my surprise, perhaps — this is increasingly a power sector story, which is … is that wrong? Is it an industrial story? Is it a …
Lauri Myllyvirta: I want to emphasize the steel sector besides power. So if you simply look at what the China Steel Association is projecting, which is a gradual, gentle decline in total output and the increase in the availability of scrap. If you use that to replace coal-based with electricity-based steelmaking, you can achieve an about 40% reduction in steelmaking emissions over the next decade.
Of course, some of that is going to shift to electricity, so you need the clean electricity as well to realize it. But that’s at least as large an opportunity as there is on the power sector, so that’s what I’m telling everyone — that if you want to understand what China can accomplish over the next decade, it’s these two sectors, first and foremost.
Jesse Jenkins: Yeah. I mean, there’s some positive overall trends, right? If you look at the arc that we’re seeing in each sector, with renewables growth starting to outpace demand growth in electricity and eat into coal in absolute terms, not just market share, with the transition in the steel industry — which is sort of a story that we’ve seen in multiple countries as they move through different phases, right? As you’re building out your primary infrastructure, the first time you don’t have enough scrap, but as the infrastructure and rate of car recycling and things like that goes up, you now have a much larger supply. And that’s the case in the U.S., where the vast majority of our steel now comes from scrap.
And then, you know, the slowdown in the construction boom — China’s built an enormous amount of infrastructure and housing, and there’s only so much more that they need. And so the pace of that construction is likely to fall, as well. And then finally, the big shift to EVs in the transportation sector. So you’ve got your four largest-emitting sources on a very positive trajectory when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Mentioned:
CREA’s reports on China’s emissions trajectory
Chinese EV companies beat their own targets in 2024
How China Created an EV Juggernaut
Jeremy Wallace: China Can’t Decide if It Wants to Be the World’s First ‘Electrostate’
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Hydrostor is building the future of energy with Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage. Delivering clean, reliable power with 500-megawatt facilities sited on 100 acres, Hydrostor’s energy storage projects are transforming the grid and creating thousands of American jobs. Learn more at hydrostor.ca.
Uplight is a clean energy technology company that helps energy providers unlock grid capacity by activating energy customers and their connected devices to generate, shift, and save energy. The Uplight Demand Stack — which integrates energy efficiency, electrification, rates, and flexibility programs — improves grid resilience, reduces costs, and accelerates decarbonization for energy providers and their customers. Learn more at uplight.com/heatmap.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
