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Here’s what we know so far about the Senate, the House, and key local races.

American voters have chosen Donald Trump as their next president — again. The decision will have monumental consequences for the renewables transition, energy prices, and environmental issues. But it was not the only race of this election cycle.
Heatmap has been keeping tabs on 36 of the most important climate elections, from seats in the House and Senate down to local ballot measures and attorneys general. Though this is far from an exhaustive list of races that will touch the climate this year, we hope it’ll help you piece together how and where climate-related issues are resonating with voters around the country.
A few notes on how this list is organized:
Some key races remain undecided as of Thursday morning. While Republicans took control of the Senate, the House is still up for grabs.
Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans* vs. Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal
Status: 🔴 Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans wins
Kiggans, the vice chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus and a Trump ally, won her reelection in a tight race. She beat Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal in a swingy district with a diverse electorate of young voters, a robust LGBTQ community, and many military families. Kiggans backed the Default on America Act to repeal clean energy tax credits and has flip-flopped on her support of offshore wind (Kiggans says she supports it, despite voting to slash IRA incentives for the project) while her opponent had called climate change a crisis in need of “urgent action” and bipartisan solutions.
Governor
Republican Mark Robinson vs. Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein
Status: 🔵 Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein wins
North Carolina Attorney General Stein has won the election for governor. The state suffered one of the costliest storms in U.S. history earlier this year due to the flooding from Hurricane Helene, which drew attention to the divide between the two candidates who’d been running for the state’s highest office. Republican Mark Robinson called climate change “junk science” and said he’d attempt to block history and science from being taught in the first through fifth grades. He’d also said not pursuing the development of fossil fuels is an affront to God, and that he’d attempt to keep the “climate change cabal” in “chains.” By contrast, Stein had proposed a path to reach carbon neutrality in the state by 2050 and has a history of taking on polluters and Big Oil price gougers.
Commissioner of Insurance
Republican Mike Causey* vs. Democrat Natasha Marcus
Status: 🔴 Republican Mike Causey wins
Incumbent Republican Insurance Commissioner Causey has successfully fended off a challenge from the Climate Cabinet- backed state Senator Marcus, who took on Causey on the grounds that he’d approved too many rate increases and was too cozy with the companies he was in charge of regulating. Marcus had pushed for greater investment in home hardening and outraised Causey nearly twice over. While insurance commissioner isn’t the sexiest race, the election drew outsized attention in part because of Nationwide’s decision not to renew thousands of homeowner policies in eastern North Carolina in 2023 due to climate change, and the devastating flooding earlier this year from Hurricane Helene.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown* vs. Republican Bernie Moreno
Status: 🔴 Republican Bernie Moreno wins
MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno has flipped the seat of three-term Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Combined with Republican Jim Justice winning outgoing Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s seat earlier in the night, Brown’s loss makes it unlikely that Democrats retain control of the Senate. Climate and energy had not played a significant role in the race between Brown and Moreno, though Brown, who once voiced support for a Green New Deal, had broken in recent months with his Democratic colleagues on the IRA’s tax credit for EVs (which he says does not do enough to crack down on imported materials from China and Indonesia), backed overturning the Environmental Protection Agency’s new power plant regulations and tailpipe rules (which are “unrealistic” and a strain on the grid, he said), and joined Manchin in criticizing the Biden administration’s clean hydrogen tax credit. Moreno has stressed that “we need natural gas, we need oil” rather than “this move toward windmills, solar panels.”
Ohio’s 9th Congressional District
Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur* vs. Republican state Rep. Derek Merrin
Status: Pending
The race in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, which includes Toledo and the shores of Lake Erie, is about many things, but it’s also about algae. Kaptur sits on the House Appropriations Committee, where she has supported clean energy-related spending, and she’s also the ranking member of the Energy and Water Development appropriations subcommittee, where she fought for a $1.5 million federal project to combat warming-induced algal blooms in the Great Lakes. Her opponent, Merrin, voted against that bill as a state representative and for laws that would label methane as green energy. She claimed Kaptur and other Democrats’ clean energy pursuits threaten affordability and reliability.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.* vs. Republican David McCormick
Status: 🔴 Republican David McCormick wins
McCormick flipped the Pennsylvania Senate seat for Republicans in one of the most energy- and climate-centric races of the year. During the campaign, McCormick had painted the incumbent, Casey, as an enemy of fracking by tying him to Kamala Harris’ prior opposition to the industry. Casey, however, has always supported what he calls “responsible fracking,” including the proposed hydrogen hubs in the state (one of which would use fracked gas). McCormick, whose wife sits on the board of Exxon, has said renewable energy is making the U.S. more reliant on materials from China and that we “need to get back to the energy policies under President Trump,” including by repealing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and gutting the Inflation Reduction Act.
Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District
Democrat Rep. Susan Wild* vs. Republican state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie
Status: 🔴 Republican state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie wins
Wild conceded her race Wednesday morning to Mackenzie, a Republican lawmaker who had slammed her repeatedly for voting for the “failed” IRA while on the campaign trail. As a state representative, Mackenzie had also voted against environmental and clean energy measures, including rooftop solar panels for schools. In her concession speech, Wild stressed the importance of the continued fight for a “clean and safe planet.”
Attorney General
Democrat Eugene DePasquale vs. Republican Dave Sunday
Status: 🔴 Republican Dave Sunday wins
Sunday had not spoken about climate-related issues during the campaign and didn’t respond to a request for comment on the matter from The Philadelphia Citizen. However the next attorney general of Pennsylvania has an opportunity to pursue climate liability litigation during their term, with Bucks County suing the fossil fuel industry for misleading the public about the dangers of burning oil and gas, E&E News reports. DePasquale, who lost the race, had said he considers environmental justice a top priority.
Referred Law 21
Opportunity: To take a stance on carbon pipelines
Voters in South Dakota rejected a bill passed by their state legislature earlier this year that imposed a number of regulations on potential CO2 pipelines, including a modest $1-per-foot surcharge and requirements about minimum depth. Opponents wary of the carbon capture technology had forced the ballot measure on the law, which they claimed was a giveaway to pipeline companies since it gave the state’s Public Utilities Commissioners the ability to override local ordinances and zoning laws meant to block the pipeline. The rejection of Referred Law 21 will have major implications for the $8 billion Summit Carbon Solutions Pipeline, which would collect CO2 from regional ethanol plants and deliver it to an injection well in North Dakota as a means of dealing with planet-warming emissions. The uncertainty around whether or not Referred Law 21 would pass is part of why the project is one of Heatmap’s most at-risk energy transition proposals.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego vs. Republican Kari Lake
Status: Pending
Democrats will need a win in the Grand Canyon State if they have any chance of holding the Senate. While the pitch to undecided voters in Arizona has centered on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, Gallego helped to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in the House and has posited himself as a defender of Arizona’s public lands, water, and energy transition. Lake, a close ally of Trump’s, has boosted falsehoods about wind turbines killing an outsized number of birds and whales, and blamed the state’s heat deaths on drug overdoses. She has called climate change “fake science” and told voters that she’s “not going to be afraid of the weather.”
Arizona’s 1st Congressional District
Republican Rep. David Schweikert* vs. Democrat Amish Shah
Status: Pending
Arizona’s 1st congressional district, covering northeastern Phoenix and Scottsdale, was considered “ reliably Republican” for Schweikert’s first seven terms, but he’s facing a formidable challenge from Shah, a former ER doctor, in the recently redrawn district. Schweikert has taken a more moderate position on the energy transition than other Republicans in the state, arguing that “the government must stop picking winners and losers in the industry” but “we also should continue to expand into renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, and geothermal.” Shah, who green groups like the Sierra Club endorse, has pushed for a “healthier Arizona” by standing up to polluters and protecting Arizona’s public lands. This race is one of several that could decide control of the U.S. House.
Arizona’s 6th Congressional District
Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani* vs. Democrat Kirsten Engel
Status: Pending
Another close race that could decide control of the House is in the Tucson suburbs. Ciscomani is a Trump-endorsed moderate who voted against the IRA but has been friendlier on issues like residential solar projects. Engel’s team has positioned itself as better on water issues than Ciscomani and willing to stand up to foreign mining companies interested in the state’s copper resources.
The Arizona Corporation Commission
Opportunity: Flip three seats from Republicans
Status: Pending
The commission regulates utilities in the state, and in recent years it has actively dismantled clean energy policy and standards with particular aggression toward community solar. Arizona voters have an opportunity to elect representatives who will vote on rules for virtual power plants and can block the repeal of the state’s renewable energy and efficiency standards. There are three Democrats, two Green Party candidates, and three Republicans running for three of the commission’s five total seats.
Colorado’s 8th Congressional District
Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo* vs. Republican Gabe Evans
Status: Pending
Though the race in Colorado’s 8th congressional district has focused on the fentanyl and border crises, it encompasses the northern suburbs of Denver, including parts of the oil-and-gas-rich Front Range, where the fossil fuel industry has degraded local air quality for decades. Caraveo’s challenger Evans has dismissed “climate alarmism” and has a 0% score from Conservation Colorado for his “no” votes on everything from regulating toxic “forever chemicals” to transportation infrastructure development to holding gas companies accountable for their environmental impacts. Caraveo, a former pediatrician, has cited air pollution's impact on her patients as one of her motivations for running for office.
Iowa’s 1st Congressional District
Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks* vs. Democrat Christina Bohannan
Status: Pending
Miller-Meeks, who represents the southeasternmost part of the state, also chairs the Conservative Climate Caucus and is a more moderate “ all of the above” energy supporter. Democrats, however, see the race as an opportunity to flip a seat in the House via Bohannan and have out-raised the Republican renewable energy advocate by a 2-to-1 margin, E&E News reports. Bohannan has attacked Miller-Meeks for slow-walking action on addressing climate change through her soft hand with the oil and gas industry.
Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Zach Nunn* vs. Democrat Lanon Baccam
Status: 🔴 Republican Rep. Zach Nunn wins
Democrats in Iowa were hoping for another potential pick-up in the swingy 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of Des Moines and the Missouri border. Nunn made tax cuts a central component of his re-election bid, and he also voted to repeal tax credits for clean energy three times and bashed the IRA as “telling Iowans you should spend less, you should tighten your belt, but we're gonna go ahead and print off more money and spend more your tax dollars on projects.”
The Outer Continental Shelf Revenues for Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund Amendment
Opportunity: Requiring that federal reserves received by the state for alternative and renewable energy production off its coast go toward protecting the state’s oceanfronts
Status: 🟢 Passed
Louisiana voters opted to require that federal reserve revenue raised from renewable energy production in federal waters off its coast go into a fund that supports coastal restoration projects, including the construction of levees and protection of barrier islands. (Federal revenues received by oil and gas in the state already support this fund.) The Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund has been around since Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005, but most of its money came from damages paid after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and those funds will be exhausted by the end of 2031. Proponents argued the amendment is necessary to protect Louisiana’s coasts from worsening storms and rising sea levels, though opponents said it’s more important to keep the funds flexible for any legislative priorities that may arise.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin vs. Republican Mike Rogers
Status: 🔵 Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin wins
Despite Democrats’ poor performance in many of Tuesday night’s Senate races, Rep. Elissa Slotkin managed to hold a seat for the party by winning the race to replace outgoing Senator Debbie Stabenow. Her campaign against Republican Mike Rogers had become a referendum on the state’s electric vehicle manufacturing industry, with Rogers alleging Slotkin and other Democrats support a (nonexistent) “EV mandate” that destroys jobs (it doesn’t). The arguments had put Slotkin on her back foot, however: She ran ads telling voters she doesn’t own an electric car.
Michigan’s 8th Congressional District
Republican Paul Junge vs. Democrat state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet
Status: 🔵 Democrat state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet wins
Green groups like the LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power poured money and volunteer hours into picking up Michigan’s 8th Congressional District for Democrats, and on Tuesday their work paid off. McDonald Rivet has an impressive climate record, which includes helping to pass Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s 100% renewable energy bill while serving as a state senator. She has also fought for flood reduction infrastructure and lead pipe replacement funding in a district that includes Flint. Meanwhile, Junge dismissed solar and wind energy as not being “dependable,” talked up “clean coal” and expanding oil and gas leasing on public lands, and advocated for resuming construction on the Keystone Pipeline and maintaining the controversial Line 5 crude oil pipeline.
Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Don Bacon* vs. Democrat state Sen. Tony Vargas
Status: Pending
State Senator Tony Vargas is challenging the incumbent legislator in a district that includes Nebraska’s “blue dot” of Omaha. Though the race has centered mainly on issues like abortion, tax cuts, and immigration, Vargas is a former Earth sciences teacher who openly talks about combatting climate change and investing in clean energy (he even cosponsored a bill arguing the state Legislature has a “moral obligation” to do something about the issue). While in office, Bacon voted to repeal tax credits for wind and solar energy, and he’s chalked up extreme weather as having “cyclical impacts.”
New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District
Democrat Rep. Gabe Vasquez* vs. Republican Yvette Herrell
Status: 🔵 Democrat Rep. Gabe Vasquez wins
Democrat Rep. Vasquez managed to fend off a challenge from Republican Herrell, whose seat he flipped in the super swingy 2nd congressional district of New Mexico two years ago. The district includes a large swath of the oil-rich Permian Basin, and Vasquez had walked the line between promoting wind and solar manufacturing as part of the IRA while also “looking out for those fossil fuel communities.” Herrell had said that renewable subsidies create “unfair” competition for oil and gas businesses, and she has a 0% lifetime score from LCV for such positions as voting in favor of rolling back access to public land.
New York’s 4th Congressional District
Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito* vs. Democrat Laura Gillen
Status: 🔵 Democrat Laura Gillen wins
Gillen unseated D’Esposito in New York’s 4th Congressional District, which represents the southern part of Nassau County and is the second-wealthiest in the state. A Trump ally, D’Esposito had opposed local offshore wind projects as being “landscape-altering” and had helped to expand offshore drilling. Gillen previously lost to D’Esposito in 2022, but this time, she had played up her experience helping Hempstead recover from Hurricane Sandy and pushed for the protection of the district’s coastlines.
New York’s 17th Congressional District
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler* vs. Democrat Mondaire Jones
Status: 🔴 Rep. Mike Lawler wins
Elon Musk’s PAC dumped money into the race to help Lawler win New York’s 17th Congressional District. Located just north of the liberal bastion of New York City, New York’s 17th Congressional District was safely controlled by Democrats until 2020’s infamous redistricting. Though the map was again redrawn for the 2024 election, NY-17 went virtually untouched in a “win” for Lawler. Besides being a critical race for control of the House, NY-17 also pitted Lawler, a co-sponsor of the Energy Choice Act aiming to protect natural gas, against Jones, who represented a former iteration of the district and supported congestion pricing (except for Lower Hudson Valley residents, of course) and the build-out of renewables. The candidates diverge on their opinion of the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which Lawler called “foolish;” Jones, somewhat out of step with his party, opposes nuclear power.
Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden* vs. Democrat Rebecca Cooke
Status: 🔴 Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden wins
Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden won his reelection campaign for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District — which covers the exurbs of the Twin Cities and much of the southwestern part of the state — after making gas and energy prices a staple of his campaign. In addition to promoting increased domestic energy production, Van Orden is a member of the Congressional Biofuels Caucus and has pushed for renewable ethanol and sustainable aviation fuel, while at the same time stressing that tax dollars should not go toward “subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles.” He was also present in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 to attend the Stop the Steal rally that turned into an assault on the U.S. Capitol. His opponent, Cooke, had said she’d prioritize investment in clean energy infrastructure and new high-speed rail in Wisconsin and addressing PFAS in water.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Sen. Jon Tester* vs. Republican Tim Sheehy
Status: 🔴 Republican Tim Sheehy wins
The LCV Victory Fund named Sheehy as one of its “dirty dozen” priority targets due to his advocacy for privatizing public lands and calling climate change the belief of a leftist cult. Tester, meanwhile, has been described as a “hero” of green groups due to his support of renewable tax credits and stated dreams of owning an electric tractor. Though it had already become apparent that Democrats would lose control of the Senate by the time the race was called, Tester’s defeat is nevertheless a stinging blow to climate advocates who hoped to maintain an advantage there.
Attorney General
Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen* vs. Democrat Ben Alke
Status: 🔴 Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen wins
Knudsen leads the state’s case against the 16 young plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, who are suing lawmakers for allegedly violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment” as enshrined in the state’s constitution. Alke, the Democratic challenger, had the support of Montana Conservation Voters for his prior work in environmental law, including attempts to make public lands less accessible. Though a state panel recently recommended that he be suspended from practicing law for 90 days due to ethics violations, E&E News reported, in the end he carried the race by nearly 20 points.
The Montana Public Service Commission
Opportunity: Electing Independent Elena Evans to the commission
Status: 🟡 Failed
The three open seats on Montana’s PSC remained in Republican control, with incumbent Republican Jennifer Fielder holding out against her challenger, Elena Evans, a geologist and political Independent, who came in fourth. Their race had focused on energy affordability, especially after the Republican commission okayed a 28% rate increase for Northwestern Energy, the biggest utility in the state, last year. Evans had said she’d look closer at building climate resiliency into the state’s grid, while Fielder won on the message that it isn’t her place to weigh in on climate as a utility regulator.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Jacky Rosen vs. Republican Sam Brown
Status: Pending
Nevada’s junior senator, Jacky Rosen, is a clean energy enthusiast who helped pass the IRA and attempted to expand solar and geothermal energy within the Silver State. Brown has said he would not have supported the IRA and stood disagrees within the way of solar development in the state as a TK IN WHAT ROLE DID HE DO THIS?, while calling for expanding investment in fossil fuels. Brown also said he wants to cut the Department of Energy and any “environmental departments and agencies.”
Portland City Council
Opportunity: Portland voters are electing an entirely new city council and have the chance to choose representatives who will support the Portland Clean Energy Fund
Status: Pending
Portland has a new voting system for all new city council districts, meaning voters in Oregon’s biggest city will elect an entirely new set of representatives this fall. Lead Locally is backing five candidates in the race, including the executive director of an environmental justice group (Candace Avalos) and an energy economist for Bonneville Power Administration (Mitch Green). The next city council will make decisions about the fate of the Portland Clean Energy Fund, which allocates money for clean energy projects, and will weigh whether or not to transition away from fossil fuel infrastructure — namely, the Zenith Energy crude oil shipment facility and rail line in northwest Portland, which is an earthquake risk and contributes to the area’s poor air quality.
At stake is the continued progress of the Portland Clean Energy Fund, which allocates money for clean energy projects, as well as the potential closure of the Zenith Energy crude oil shipment facility in northwest Portland.
Measure 6-219 (Coos County) and Measure 8-116 (Curry County)
Opportunity: To directly express community opposition to offshore wind
Status: 🟡 Passed
Voters in two counties on the southern Oregon Coast expressed overwhelming opposition to offshore wind development in their region. The November ballots in Coos and Curry counties included a non-binding question intended to take the community’s temperature on potential offshore wind projects. More than 60% of Coos County voters registered their feelings against the development of offshore wind projects, while nearly 80% of Curry County voters objected specifically to floating offshore wind.
Proposition 4
Opportunity: Authorizes $10 billion in bonds for water quality, coastal resilience projects, wildfire prevention, and climate-risk protections
Californians have approved a proposition that will issue $10 billion in bonds, which will largely go toward infrastructure projects aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change, with at least 40% of the funds earmarked for disadvantaged communities. The bill had been backed by organizations like CALFIRE and the National Wildlife Federation and was opposed by Republicans for being unfocused and adding to the state deficit.
Measure GG (Berkeley)
Opportunity: Adopting a tax on natural gas use in most buildings over 15,000 square feet
Status: 🟡 Failed
Over two-thirds of voters in Berkeley rejected a ballot measure backed by climate and labor groups that would have authorized a tax of $2.9647 per therm of natural gas in large buildings, with the funds going toward decarbonization programs. The ballot measure had been an attempt to functionally reinstate the city’s first-in-the-nation prohibition against gas hookups in new buildings, which a federal appeals court struck down last spring. Supporters of Measure GG had raised almost $72,000 by the end of September, while the no campaign — backed by real estate groups that said the tax was prohibitively expensive for small businesses, nonprofits, schools, and grocery stores — had raised $131,000 at the end of September.
Initiative 2117
Opportunity: To vote against repealing the state’s cap and invest program
Status: 🟡 Failed
The Republican-backed effort to repeal Washington state’s new cap and invest program has failed. Both the “no” and “yes” campaigns poured money into their respective sides, making the issue the most expensive ballot measure campaign of this election cycle. If I-2117 had passed, it would have left a gaping hole in the state’s revenue for transit projects, decarbonization initiatives, and clean air and water programs.
Initiative 2066
Opportunity: To support Washington’s transition away from natural gas
Status: Pending
Washingtonians will also vote on I-2066, which would prevent the state from incentivizing a transition from natural gas. The initiative would also jeopardize opportunities to promote thermal energy networks as a gas alternative and bar cities and towns, as well as Washington’s energy code, from “prohibiting, penalizing, or discouraging” gas appliances in buildings, imperiling programs like Seattle’s 2050 net-zero emissions target.
U.S. House Alaska At-Large District
Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola* vs. Republican Nick Begich III
Status: Pending
Peltola has played nice with the fossil fuel industry — defending the Biden administration’s reversal on the Willow Project and supporting the construction of a trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline — but she also boasts an 88% score from the League of Conservation Voters due to her otherwise environmentally friendly voting record, has advocated for more tribal involvement in the environmental review process, and she sits on the influential House Natural Resource Committee. Begich has pitched himself to voters as the better candidate for Alaska’s oil and gas industry, which he claims is besieged by Democrats like Peltola. This race is one of several that could decide control of the U.S. House.
Question 1 (Honolulu)
Opportunity: Would designate 0.5% of property taxes to a Climate Resiliency Fund
Status: 🟢 Passed
Honolulu residents were asked whether they want to create a Climate Resiliency Fund with money raised by half a percent of the city’s property taxes. Advocates argued that the waterfront city needs to prioritize climate the same way it prioritizes affordable housing and the environment, both of which also have funds that receive a half percent of property taxes. Opponents said the creation of an exclusive climate fund will make the revenue less flexible in the case of an unforeseen crisis like rising homelessness or COVID-19, while others worried any shortfalls in the city budget caused by the creation of the fund will result in a rise in property taxes. Honolulu residents approved the measure by a wide margin, with 58% voting in favor, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct site of the injection well for the Summit carbon pipeline.
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On China’s rare earths, Bill Gates’ nuclear dream, and Texas renewables
Current conditions: Hurricane Melissa exploded in intensity over the warm Caribbean waters and has now strengthened into a major storm, potentially slamming into Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica as a Category 5 in the coming days • The Northeast is bracing for a potential nor’easter, which will be followed by a plunge in temperatures of as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit lower than average • The northern Australian town of Julia Creek saw temperatures soar as high as 106 degrees.
Exxon Mobil filed a lawsuit against California late Friday on the grounds that two landmark new climate laws violate the oil giant’s free speech rights, The New York Times reported. The two laws would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to calculate and report the greenhouse gas pollution created by the use of their products, so-called Scope 3 emissions. “The statutes compel Exxon Mobil to trumpet California’s preferred message even though Exxon Mobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided,” Exxon complained through its lawyers. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said the statutes “have already been upheld in court and we continue to have confidence in them.” He condemned the lawsuit, calling it “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”
China will delay introducing export controls on rare earths, an unnamed U.S. official told the Financial Times following two days of talks in Malaysia. For years, Beijing has been ratcheting up trade restrictions on the global supply of metals its industry dominates. But this month, China slapped the harshest controls yet on rare earths. In response, stocks in rare earth mining and refining companies soared. Despite what Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin called the “paradox of Trump’s critical mineral crusade” to mine even as he reduced demand from electric vehicle factories, “everybody wants to invest in critical minerals startups,” Heatmap’s Katie Brigham wrote. That — as frequent readers of this newsletter will recall — includes the federal government, which under the Trump administration has been taking equity stakes in major projects as part of deals for federal funding.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission rewarded Bill Gates’ next-generation reactor company, TerraPower, with its final environment impact statement last week. The next step in the construction permit process is a final safety evaluation that the company expects to receive by the end of this year. If everything goes according to plan, TerraPower could end up winning the race to build the nation’s first commercial reactor to use a coolant other than water, and do so at a former coal-fired plant in the country’s top coal-producing state. “The Natrium plant in Wyoming, Kemmerer Unit 1, is now the first advanced reactor technology to successfully complete an environmental impact statement for the NRC, bringing us another step closer to delivering America’s next nuclear power plant,” said TerraPower president and CEO Chris Levesque.
A judge gave New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration until February 6 to issue rules for its long-delayed cap-and-invest program, the Albany Times-Union reported. The government was supposed to issue the guidelines that would launch the program as early as 2024, but continuously pushed back the release. “Early outlines of New York’s cap and invest program indicate that regulators were considering a relatively low price ceiling on pollution, making it easier for companies to buy their way out of compliance with the cap,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote in January.

The Texas data center boom is being powered primarily with new wind, solar, and batteries, according to new analysis by the Energy Information Administration. Since 2021, electricity demand on the independent statewide grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has soared. Over the past year, wind, solar, and batteries have been supplying that rising demand. Utility-scale solar generated 45 terawatt-hours of electricity in the first nine months of 2025. That’s 50% more than the same period in 2024 and nearly four times more than the same period in 2021. Wind generation, meanwhile, totaled 87 terawatt-hours for the first nine months of this year, up 4% from last year and 36% since 2021. “Together,” the analysis stated, “wind and solar generation met 36% of ERCOT’s electricity demand in the first nine months of 2025.”
The question isn’t whether the flames will come — it’s when, and what it will take to recover.
In the two decades following the turn of the millennium, wildfires came within three miles of an estimated 21.8 million Americans’ homes. That number — which has no doubt grown substantially in the five years since — represents about 6% of the nation’s population, including the survivors of some of the deadliest and most destructive fires in the country’s history. But it also includes millions of stories that never made headlines.
For every Paradise, California, and Lahaina, Hawaii, there were also dozens of uneventful evacuations, in which regular people attempted to navigate the confusing jargon of government notices and warnings. Others lost their homes in fires that were too insignificant to meet the thresholds for federal aid. And there are countless others who have decided, after too many close calls, to move somewhere else.
By any metric, costly, catastrophic, and increasingly urban wildfires are on the rise. Nearly a third of the U.S. population, however, lives in a county with a high or very high risk of wildfire, including over 60% of the counties in the West. But the shape of the recovery from those disasters in the weeks and months that follow is often that of a maze, featuring heart-rending decisions and forced hands. Understanding wildfire recovery is critical, though, for when the next disaster follows — which is why we’ve set out to explore the topic in depth.
The most immediate concerns for many in the weeks following a wildfire are financial. Homeowners are still required to pay the mortgage on homes that are nothing more than piles of ash — one study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that 90-day delinquencies rose 4% and prepayments rose 16% on properties that were damaged by wildfires. Because properties destroyed in fires often receive insurance settlements that are lower than the cost to fully replace their home, “households face strong incentives to apply insurance funds toward the mortgage balance instead of rebuilding, and the observed increase in prepayment represents a symptom of broader frictions in insurance markets that leave households with large financial losses in the aftermath of a natural disaster,” the researchers explain.
Indeed, many people who believed they had adequate insurance only discover after a fire that their coverage limits are lower than 75% of their home’s actual replacement costs, putting them in the category of the underinsured. Homeowners still grappling with the loss of their residence and possessions are also left to navigate reams of required paperwork to get their money, a project one fire victim likened to having a “part-time job.” It’s not uncommon for fire survivors to wait months or even years for payouts, or to find that necessary steps to rebuilding, such as asbestos testing and dead tree removals, aren’t covered. Just last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law requiring insurers to pay at least 60% of a homeowner’s personal property coverage on a total loss without a detailed inventory, up to $350,000. The original proposal called for a 100% payout, but faced intense insurance industry blowback .
Even if your home doesn’t burn to the ground, you might be affected by the aftermath of a nearby fire. In California, a fifth of homes in the highest-risk wildfire areas have lost insurance coverage since 2019, while premiums in those same regions have increased by 42%. Insurers’ jitters have overflowedspilled over into other Western states like Washington, where there are fewer at-risk properties than in California — 16% compared to 41% — but premiums have similarly doubled in some cases due to the perceived hazardrisks.
Some experts argue that people should be priced out of the wildland-urban interface and that managed retreat will help prevent future tragedies. But as I report in my story on fire victims who’ve decided not to rebuild, that’s easier said than done. There are only three states where insured homeowners have the legal right to replace a wildfire-destroyed home by buying a new property instead of rebuilding, meaning many survivors end up shackled to a property that is likely to burn again.
The financial maze, of course, is only one aspect of recovery — the physical and mental health repercussions can also reverberate for years. A study that followed survivors of Australia’s Black Saturday bush fires in 2009, which killed over 170 people, found that five years after the disaster, a fifth of survivors still suffered from “serious mental health challenges” like post-traumatic stress disorder. In Lahaina, two years after the fire, nearly half of the children aged 10 to 17 who survived are suspected of coping with PTSD.
Federal firefighting practices continue to focus on containing fires as quickly as possible, to the detriment of less showy but possibly more effective solutions such as prescribed burns and limits on development in fire-prone areas. Some of this is due to the long history of fire suppression in the West, but it persists due to ongoing political and public pressure. Still, you can find small and promising steps forward for forest management in places like Paradise, where the recreation and park district director has scraped together funds to begin to build a buffer between an ecosystem that is meant to burn and survivors of one of the worst fires in California’s history.
In the four pieces that follow, I’ve attempted to explore the challenges of wildfire recovery in the weeks and months after the disaster itself. In doing so, I’ve spoken to firefighters, victims, researchers, and many others to learn more about what can be done to make future recoveries easier and more effective.
The bottom line, though, is that there is no way to fully prevent wildfires. We have to learn to live alongside them, and that means recovering smarter, too. It’s not the kind of glamorous work that attracts TV cameras and headlines; often, the real work of recovery occurs in the many months after the fire is extinguished. But it also might just make the difference.
Wildfire evacuation notices are notoriously confusing, and the stakes are life or death. But how to make them better is far from obvious.
How many different ways are there to say “go”? In the emergency management world, it can seem at times like there are dozens.
Does a “level 2” alert during a wildfire, for example, mean it’s time to get out? How about a “level II” alert? Most people understand that an “evacuation order” means “you better leave now,” but how is an “evacuation warning” any different? And does a text warning that “these zones should EVACUATE NOW: SIS-5111, SIS-5108, SIS-5117…” even apply to you?
As someone who covers wildfires, I’ve been baffled not only by how difficult evacuation notices can be to parse, but also by the extent to which they vary in form and content across the United States. There is no centralized place to look up evacuation information, and even trying to follow how a single fire develops can require hopping among jargon-filled fire management websites, regional Facebook pages, and emergency department X accounts — with some anxious looking-out-the-window-at-the-approaching-pillar-of-smoke mixed in.
Google and Apple Maps don’t incorporate evacuation zone data. Third-party emergency alert programs have low subscriber rates, and official government-issued Wireless Emergency Alerts, or WEAs — messages that trigger a loud tone and vibration to all enabled phones in a specific geographic region — are often delayed, faulty, or contain bad information, none of which is ideal in a scenario where people are making life-or-death decisions. The difficulty in accessing reliable information during fast-moving disasters like wildfires is especially aggravating when you consider that nearly everyone in America owns a smartphone, i.e. a portal to all the information in the world.
So why is it still so hard to learn when and where specific evacuation notices are in place, or if they even apply to you? The answer comes down to the decentralized nature of emergency management in the United States.
A downed power line sparks a fire on a day with a Red Flag Warning. A family driving nearby notices the column of smoke and calls to report it to 911. The first responders on the scene realize that the winds are fanning the flames toward a neighborhood, and the sheriff decides to issue a wildfire warning, communicating to the residents that they should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. She radios her office — which is now fielding multiple calls asking for information about the smoke column — and asks for the one person in the office that day with training on the alert system to compose the message.
Scenarios like these are all too common. “The people who are put in the position of issuing the messages are doing 20 other things at the same time,” Jeannette Sutton, a researcher at the University at Albany’s Emergency and Risk Communication Message Testing Lab, told me. “They might have limited training and may not have had the opportunity to think about what the messages might contain — and then they’re told by an incident commander, Send this, and they’re like, Oh my God, what do I do?”
The primary way of issuing wildfire alerts is through WEAs, with 78,000 messages sent since 2012. Although partnerships between local emergency management officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, and cellular and internet providers facilitate the technology, it’s local departments that determine the actual content of the message. Messaging limits force some departments to condense the details of complicated and evolving fire events into 90 characters or fewer. Typos, confusing wording, and jargon inevitably abound.
Emergency management teams often prefer to err on the side of sending too few messages rather than too many for fear of inducing information overload. “We’re so attached to our devices, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook or text messages, that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak — to make sure that we are getting the right information out there,” John Rabin, the vice president of disaster management at the consulting firm ICF International and a former assistant administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told me. “One of the challenges for local and state governments is how to bring [pertinent information] up and out, so that when they send those really important notifications for evacuations, they really resonate.”
But while writing an emergency alert is a bit of an art, active prose alone doesn’t ensure an effective evacuation message.
California’s Cal Fire has found success with the “Ready, Set, Go” program, designed by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, which uses an intuitive traffic light framework — “ready” is the prep work of putting together a go-bag and waiting for more news if a fire is in the vicinity, escalating to the “go” of the actual evacuation order. Parts of Washington and Oregon use similar three-tiered systems of evacuation “levels” ranging from 1 to 3. Other places, like Montana, rely on two-step “evacuation warnings” and “evacuation orders.”
Watch Duty, a website and app that surged in popularity during the Los Angeles fires earlier this year, doesn’t worry about oversharing. Most information on Watch Duty comes from volunteers, who monitor radio scanners, check wildfire cameras, and review official law enforcement announcements, then funnel the information to the organization’s small staff, who vet it before posting. Though WatchDuty volunteers and staff — many of whom are former emergency managers or fire personnel themselves — actively review and curate the information on the app, the organization still publishes far more frequent and iterative updates than most people are used to seeing and interpreting. As a result, some users and emergency managers have criticized Watch Duty for having too much information available, as a result.
The fact that Watch Duty was downloaded more than 2 million times during the L.A. fires, though, would seem to testify to the fact that people really are hungry for information in one easy-to-locate place. The app is now available in 22 states, with more than 250 volunteers working around the clock to keep wildfire information on the app up to date. John Clarke Mills, the app’s CEO and co-founder, has said he created the app out of “spite” over the fact that the government doesn’t have a better system in place for keeping people informed on wildfires.
“I’ve not known too many situations where not having information makes it better,” Katlyn Cummings, the community manager at Watch Duty, told me. But while the app’s philosophy is “rooted in transparency and trust with our users,” Cummings stressed to me that the app’s volunteers only use official and public sources of information for their updates and never include hearsay, separating it from other crowd-sourced community apps that have proved to be less than reliable.
Still, it takes an army of a dozen full-time staff and over 200 part-time volunteers, plus an obsessively orchestrated Slack channel to centralize the wildfire and evacuation updates — which might suggest why a more official version doesn’t exist yet, either from the government or a major tech company. Google Maps currently uses AI to visualize the boundaries of wildfires, but stops short of showing users the borders of local evacuation zones (though it will route you around known road closures). A spokesperson for Google also pointed me toward a feature in Maps that shares news articles, information from local authorities, and emergency numbers when users are in “the immediate vicinity” of an actively unfolding natural disaster — a kind of do-it-yourself Watch Duty. The company declined to comment on the record about why Maps specifically excludes evacuation zones. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
There is, of course, a major caveat to the usefulness of Watch Duty.
Users of the app tend to be a self-selecting group of hyper-plugged-in digital natives who are savvy enough to download it or otherwise know to visit the website during an unfolding emergency. As Rabin, the former FEMA official, pointed out, Watch Duty users aren’t the population that first responders are most concerned about — they’re like “Boy Scouts,” he said, because they’re “always prepared.” They’re the ones who already know what’s going on. “It’s reaching the folks that aren’t paying attention that is the big challenge,” he told me.
The older adult population is the most vulnerable in cases of wildfire. Death tolls often skew disproportionately toward the elderly; of the 30 people who died in the Los Angeles fires in January, for example, all but two were over 60 or disabled, with the average age of the deceased 77, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Part of that is because adults 65 and older are more likely to have physical impairments that make quick or unplanned evacuations challenging. Social and technological isolation are also factors — yes, almost everyone in America has a smartphone, but that includes just 80% of those 65 and older, and only 26% of the older adult population feels “very confident” using computers or smartphones. According to an extensive 2024 report on how extreme weather impacts older adults by CNA, an independent, nonprofit research organization, “Evacuation information, including orders, is not uniformly communicated in ways and via media that are accessible to older adults or those with access and functional needs.”
Sutton, the emergency warning researcher, also cautioned that more information isn’t always better. Similar to the way scary medical test results might appear in a health portal before a doctor has a chance to review them with you (and calm you down), wildfire information shared without context or interpretation from emergency management officials means the public is “making assumptions based upon what they see on Watch Duty without actually having those official messages coming from the public officials who are responsible for issuing those messages,” she said. One role of emergency managers is to translate the raw, on-the-ground information into actionable guidance. Absent that filter, panic is probable, which could lead to uncontrollable evacuation traffic or exacerbate alert fatigue. Alternatively, people might choose to opt out of future alerts or stop checking for updates.
Sutton, though she’s a strong advocate of creating standardized language for emergency alerts — “It would be wonderful if we had consistent language that was agreed upon” between departments, she told me — was ultimately skeptical of centralizing the emergency alert system under a large agency like FEMA. “The movement of wildfires is so fast, and it requires knowledge of the local communities and the local terrain as well as meteorological knowledge,” she said. “Alerts and warnings really should be local.”
The greater emphasis, Sutton stressed, should be on providing emergency managers with the training they need to communicate quickly, concisely, and effectively with the tools they already have.
The high wire act of emergency communications, though, is that while clear and regionally informed messages are critical during life-or-death situations, it also falls on residents in fire-risk areas to be ready to receive them. California first adopted the “Ready, Set, Go” framework in 2009, and it has spent an undisclosed amount of money over the years on a sustained messaging blitz to the public. (Cal Fire’s “land use planning and public education budget is estimated at $16 million, and funds things like the updated ad spots it released as recently as this August.) Still, there is evidence that even that has not been enough — and Cal Fire is the best-resourced firefighting agency in the country, setting the gold standard for an evacuation messaging campaign.
Drills and test messages are one way to bring residents up to speed, but participation is typically very low. Many communities and residents living in wildfire-risk areas continue to treat the threat with low urgency — something to get around to one day. But whether they’re coming from your local emergency management department or the White House itself, emergency notices are only as effective as the public is willing and able to heed them.