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June 4 was a busy day for democracy.
Democracy is having a big year — heck, it’s having a big month. More people will vote in 2024 than in any other year in human history, and many of those elections are happening right now: In just the past four days, Mexicans elected a climate scientist to the presidency; Indians braved extreme heat to reelect Prime Minister Narendra Modi; and Donald Trump’s pal Nigel Farage announced his return to the scrum of British politics in the hopes of holding off an historic win by the Labour Party on July 4.
Americans still have another few months of suspense before their own general election, but voting is well underway stateside, too. In Tuesday’s primaries, voters cast ballots for local offices in Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota — including in several races with significant implications for the climate.
While the results were a mixed bag, they also speak to the fact that climate change is increasingly unignorable by politicians, and it signals where campaigners and activists should focus their attention as the November election approaches. Here are six of the major takeaways:
What happened: Mariannette Miller-Meeks won the First District Republican primary in Iowa
Why it matters: Miller-Meeks is the head of the House’s Conservative Climate Caucus and has championed wind, solar, and nuclear energy; her opponent, David Pautsch, attacked her for not being conservative enough on issues like abortion, the national debt, and her support of tax credits for carbon pipelines. Though Miller-Meeks’ history isn’t likely to impress too many climate activists — she’s been particularly sympathetic to the liquified natural gas industry, claiming, “If you want a cleaner, healthier planet, the best thing you could do is to export American oil and gas” — her victory over Pautsch in deep-red Iowa proves that being associated with the word “climate” isn’t an automatic black mark against a Republican in 2024. Still, it wasn’t a comfortable victory: Early Tuesday evening, the returns had looked pretty worrying for Miller-Meeks, and the slim margin in some areas suggested the risk of breaking with the party line.
What happened: Democratic voters in New Jersey weren’t convinced by Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, who lost the Eighth Congressional District primary to Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr.
Why it matters: Of all the candidates who ran in contested primaries on Tuesday, none seemed to position themselves more overtly as a climate candidate than Bhalla. As mayor of Hoboken, Bhalla created a Department of Climate Action & Innovation in part to adapt to a future of extreme flooding in the city, has sued Exxon Mobil for climate-related damages, and centered climate as a campaign priority, earning endorsements from environmental groups like the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters and Food & Water Action. While many different factors go into winning — and losing — a campaign (especially in a state like New Jersey), one lesson of the night is that “climate,” at least in so many words, might not be the selling point that progressives sometimes think it is. Case in point: Bhalla’s campaign page on climate framed electrification as a means of reducing the state’s “carbon footprint”; Menendez’s focused mainly on the economy and jobs.
What happened: Tim Sheehy won the Republican Senate primary, setting him up to take on Democrat Jon Tester in one of the most nail-biting races of November
Why it matters: Retired Navy SEAL and aerial firefighter Tim Sheehy overcame a scandal involving a lie about his gunshot wound to take on Tester in a race that could decide the balance of the U.S. Senate — and, by extension, Biden’s climate agenda — in five months’ time. A Trump endorsee, Sheehy is not afraid of a good old-fashioned culture war, as evidenced by Bridger Aerospace, his aerial firefighting company, quietly removing references to environmental, social, and governance issues from its website after Sheehy entered the race. Any mention of climate change? That was gone, too. But Sheehy’s rhetoric during his primary campaign also reeked of the green boogeyman, with the candidate repeatedly using the term “climate cult” to dismiss Tester, Biden, and other perceived enemies. Though Tester, a working farmer, has championed climate-related causes in a way that has resonated even with many Republicans, Sheehy hasn’t yet appeared interested in debating the finer points of things like federal subsidies for going electric. Expect the attacks to get more colorful in the coming months; polls show Sheehy and Tester neck-and-neck.
What happened: Voters in Montana winnowed downa crowded field of six Republican utility board candidates to three finalists
Why it matters: Utility boards are some of the most influential elected bodies that almost nobody pays attention to, and Republicans in red and red-leaning states like Arizona and Alaska tend to hold the edge even in bluer urban areas. In Montana, the Public Service Commission decides the energy mix of the region in and around Billings, Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, and Butte, and has been in Republican hands for two decades. That explains the high level of Republican interest in the primary races on Tuesday, where five candidates played musical chairs for two available seats. The apparent winners — Brad Molnar in District 2 and Jeff Welborn in District 3 (in addition to incumbent commissioner Jennifer Fielder, who ran unopposed) — have hit-and-miss records when it comes to renewable energy. Molnar, who was reelected to the seat he held from 2005 to 2012, told the Montana Free Press he’s concerned about the “xenophobia” of conservatives in his state and has been known to break from party lines in his votes, in addition to voicing some belief in climate change (though he doesn’t say we can do anything about it). Welborn, meanwhile, described himself to the Free Press as a “free market guy” interested in preventing rate hikes with an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy that includes new nuclear plants and hydrogen, though he’s previously sided with the local utility over Montana’s consumer advocate. In November, Welborn will face Leonard “Lenny” Williams, the uncontested Democrat in the race, who’s called the gerrymandered utility board districts a “racket.”
What happened: Angel Charley easily won the New Mexico Democratic primary in Senate District 30, to the west of Albuquerque, on an environmental justice platform
Why it matters: With around 63% of the vote as of Wednesday morning, first-time candidate Angel Charley appeared to be the clear winner in her race against former state Senator Clemente Sanchez. Charley, the former director of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, convinced voters in the recently redrawn district that climate goals aren’t different from popular policies like protecting vulnerable women living near extractive industries in their area, and can be pursued with projects like community solar development. As the experts I’ve spoken with have told me, sometimes the best way to move emissions-abating policies forward is by focusing on what climate activists might view more as positive externalities, but are more immediate to the communities in question. Charley’s victory on environmental justice grounds seems like further proof of concept. A Native American activist, Charley’s campaign focused largely on “lessening dependence on oil and gas and extractive industries, because there’s a correlation with violence against Native women when extractive industries are present.” Meanwhile, Sanchez’s campaign was heavily financed by corporate interests, including donations from an oil company, an auto dealer trade group, lobbyists, and utilities.
What happened: 17 out of 19 Republican and Democratic sponsors of a recent bill attempting to block a CO2 pipeline in the state who were up for reelection won their primaries
Why it matters:Located between the shale oil fields of North Dakota and the storage terminals of Texas, South Dakota is no stranger to pipeline proposals. Plans for a new pipeline that would funnel carbon dioxide produced by the local ethanol industry to North Dakota to be stored underground, however, have become a contentious wedge issue in the state and appeared to be behind some of the primary results on Tuesday night. Of the more than a dozen sponsors of a recent failed bill that would have prohibited the use of eminent domain for the construction of pipelines carrying carbon oxide, all but two who ran appeared to have been reelected as of Wednesday morning; some of the state’s losing incumbents, on the other hand, were behind a compromise bill that attempted to split the difference between protecting landowners and allowing the pipeline project to proceed. The slim margins in some races — The South Dakota Searchlight points to Mykala Voita, a landowner rights candidate who beat incumbent Republican Sen. Erin Tobin by 48 votes, within the margin to trigger a recount — speak to the deep divides and disagreements in the state. That also goes for divisions within the major parties about the use of eminent domain and suspicions about the technology of carbon capture and storage more largely.
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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.