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Doug Burgum is, by all accounts, a normie. Compared to some of the other picks for incoming President Trump’s cabinet, the former North Dakota governor is well respected by his political colleagues; even many of the Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee seemed chummy with the former software executive during his hearing on Thursday, praising his support of the outdoor recreation economy and his conservation efforts in his state. As if to confirm the low stakes of the hearing, Burgum used his closing remarks not as a final pitch of his qualifications — but to invite his interrogators to a Fourth of July party at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
That isn’t to say that the hearing doesn’t have consequences — or revelations about what can be expected from the all-but-certain-to-be-confirmed Interior secretary and future head of Trump’s National Energy Council. For many in the renewables space — particularly those in the wind industry — there was little in the way of reassurances that Burgum would temper his boss’ opposition to “windmills.” Additionally, the future Interior secretary dodged questions seeking reassurance about his commitment to protecting federal lands.
Below are some of the biggest takeaways from Thursday’s confirmation hearing.
Burgum referenced concerns about the “baseload” of the grid more than 15 times during the hearing, primarily as a way to oppose the buildout of renewable energy. “We’re short of electricity in this country, and we have to make sure that we have a balance,” he told Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, citing a standard Republican talking point about how the grid needs safeguards because “the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.” When pressured about how intermittent energy sources are used in combination with storage, he added that we’re still “a few years out” from such technologies and warned that in the meantime, there would be “more and more brownouts and blackouts because we aren’t going to have the balance in the grid.”
“I don’t want the word ‘baseload’ to be code for no renewables,” Angus King, the Independent Senator from Maine, later followed up. Burgum protested against that characterization — “It’s not for any political reasons that I distinguish [between intermittent and baseload], it’s just because of the physics of the grid” — but King wasn’t satisfied. “In your case, in North Dakota, 35% of your electricity comes from wind power,” King said. “I presume that your grid works well?”
Burgum stumbled in his answer: “It’s super stressed, as it is around the country,” he said. (In fact, transmission bottlenecks seem to be the bigger issue in the state.) He went on to say that renewables plus storage equals a baseload at a “much higher cost” than traditional energy sources like oil and gas.
“It sounds like no more renewables,” King rejoined. “I don’t think that’s a sustainable path for this country, and it’s certainly not a way of meeting the challenge of climate change.”
One carbon-free source of electricity emerged as a winner of the baseload fight, however: nuclear power. “I’m glad to hear you talk about baseload,” Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho told Burgum, “because when you’re talking about nuclear, you’re talking about baseload.” Burgum also called solar and geothermal “big opportunities” in Utah.
Ahead of Thursday’s confirmation hearing, Danielle Murray, the founder of the Public Lands Center, issued a statement arguing that if Burgum did not “[reject] any and all attempts to sell-off or give away our nation’s public lands,” it would be “disqualifying.”
She and other public land advocates are not likely to be satisfied with the answers they heard, however. Burgum responded positively to an opening question from Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah about restricting the size of National Monuments, noting that “a state like yours … already has over 60% of its land in public lands.” The Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s ranking member, Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, followed up on that point, asking Burgum how he plans to “stay true to our conservation history” given the mounting attempts by Lee and his colleagues to “somehow, in a wholesale way, divest of our public lands.”
Burgum remained noncommittal: “I think there is certainly the opportunity for us to find that balance going forward,” he said again.
Burgum promised senators from Montana and Wyoming that he opposed a “blanket approach of trying to block” new coal development. “We have an opportunity to decarbonize, to produce clean coal, and with that produce reliable baseload for this country,” he said.
Why is that so important? “Without baseload, we’re going to lose the AI arms race to China,” Burgum said.
Wind was another hot topic during Burgum’s confirmation hearing. King pointed out that North Dakota is a major wind-producing state, and asked if the Interior nominee would talk to President Trump about “the fact that wind has its virtues and can contribute significantly” to America’s energy supply.
Burgum was resistant. If wind projects “make sense, and they’re already in law, then they’ll continue,” he allowed. “I think President Trump has been very clear in his statements that he’s concerned about the significant amount of tax incentives that have gone towards some forms of energy that have helped exacerbate this imbalance that we’re seeing right now.”
Risch celebrated Burgum’s skepticism of wind, rooting for the end of the Lava Ridge wind farm, which Heatmap’s Jael Holzman has reported Trump may kill on day one. “My good friend Senator King and I have different views on windmills — and bless you for taking the windmills, you can have them all,” Risch offered during his allotted time. “We don’t want them in Idaho. We hate windmills in Idaho.” (In 2023, wind accounted for about 15% of Idaho’s electricity generation.)
But if there was something Republicans on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee hated even more than wind, it was bears. Senator Daines of Montana specifically requested Burgum’s commitment to delisting grizzlies from the Endangered Species List, and he got what he was looking for. “I’m with you,” Burgum said. “We should be celebrating when species come off the endangered species list, as opposed to fighting every way we can to try to keep them on that list.”
Risch was also excited about this promise. “We don’t want grizzly bears [in Idaho],” he said. “They kill people. You know, the federal government already gave us wolves.”
Grizzlies weren’t the only bears on the chopping block. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska slammed the Biden administration’s Interior for not finishing its revised incidental take regulations for North Slope oil and gas activities — that is, the gas industry’s exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 which otherwise prohibits the harassing, hunting, capturing, or killing of protected animals, including polar bears. “I need your commitment that you’ll work with Alaskans, particularly the Inupiat people up there, in the North Slope Borough, on basically all things polar bear,” Murkowski said.
“We’ll be happy to do that,” Burgum confirmed.
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On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.
From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.
The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.
Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.
The city of Halstead, under pressure from these locals, is now developing a battery storage zoning ordinance – and explicitly saying this will not mean a project “has been formally approved or can be built in the city.” The backlash is now so intense that Halstead’s mayor Dennis Travis has taken to fighting back against criticism on Facebook, writing in a series of posts about individuals in his community “trying to rule by MOB mentality, pushing out false information and intimidating” volunteers working for the city. “I’m exercising MY First Amendment Right and well, if you don’t like it you can kiss my grits,” he wrote. Other posts shared information on the financial benefits of building battery storage and facts to dispel worries about battery fires. “You might want to close your eyes and wish this technology away but that is not going to happen,” another post declared. “Isn’t it better to be able to regulate it in our community?”
What’s happening in Halstead is a sign of a slow-spreading public relations wildfire that’s nudging communities that were already skeptical of battery storage over the edge into outright opposition. We’re not seeing any evidence that communities are transforming from supportive to hostile – but we are seeing new areas that were predisposed to dislike battery storage grow more aggressive and aghast at the idea of new projects.
Heatmap Pro data actually tells the story quite neatly: Halstead is located in Harvey County, a high risk area for developers that already has a restrictive ordinance banning all large-scale solar and wind development. There’s nothing about battery storage on the books yet, but our own opinion poll modeling shows that individuals in this county are more likely to oppose battery storage than renewable energy.
We’re seeing this phenomenon play out elsewhere as well. Take Fannin County, Texas, where residents have begun brandishing the example of Moss Landing to rail against an Engie battery storage project, and our modeling similarly shows an intense hostility to battery projects. The same can be said about Brooklyn, New York, where anti-battery concerns are far higher in our polling forecasts – and opposition to battery storage on the ground is gaining steam.