You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
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.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Plus news on cloud seeding, fission for fusion, and more of the week’s biggest money moves.
From beaming solar power down from space to shooting storm clouds full of particles to make it rain, this week featured progress across a range of seemingly sci-fi technologies that have actually been researched — and in some cases deployed — for decades. There were, however, few actual funding announcements to speak of, as earlier-stage climate tech venture funds continue to confront a tough fundraising environment.
First up, I explore Meta’s bet on space-based solar as a way to squeeze more output from existing solar arrays to power data centers. Then there’s the fusion startup Zap Energy, which is shifting its near-term attention toward the more established fission sector. Meanwhile, a weather modification company says it’s found a way to quantify the impact of cloud seeding — a space-age sounding practice that’s actually been in use for roughly 80 years. And amidst a string of disappointments for alternate battery chemistries, this week brings multiple wins for the sodium-ion battery sector.
One might presume that terrestrial solar paired with batteries would prove perfectly adequate for securing 24/7 clean energy moving forward, as global prices for panels and battery packs continue to fall. But the startup Overview Energy, which uses lasers to beam solar power from space directly onto existing solar arrays, thinks its space-based solar energy systems will prove valuable for powering large loads like data centers through the night. Now Meta is backing that premise, signing a first-of-its-kind agreement with Overview this week that secures early access for up to a gigawatt of capacity from the startup’s system.
Initial orbital demonstrations are slated for 2028, with commercial power delivery targeted for 2030. It’s an ambitious timeline, and certainly not the first effort to commercialize space-based solar, though prior analyses have generally concluded that while the physics check out, the economics and logistics don’t. Overview Energy thinks its found the core unlocks though: “geographic untethering,” which allows it to direct its beam to ground-based solar arrays anywhere in the world based on demand, and high-efficiency lasers capable of converting near-infrared light into electricity much more efficiently than pure sunlight.
The startup is targeting between $60 and $100 per megawatt-hour by 2035, at which point the goal is to be putting gigawatts of space solar on the grid. “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere,” Marc Berte, founder and CEO of Overview Energy, told me when I interviewed him last December. “You’re profitable at $100 bucks a megawatt-hour somewhere, instantaneously, all the time.”
Launch costs have also fallen sharply since the last serious wave of space-solar research, and Overview has already booked a 2028 launch with SpaceX. Solar power beamed from space also sidesteps two earthly constraints — land use and protracted grid interconnection timelines. So while this seemingly sci-fi vision remains unproven, it might be significantly more plausible than it once appeared. And Meta’s certainly not alone in taking that bet — Overview has already raised a $20 million seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital, Prime Movers Lab, and Engine Ventures.
Fusion startups are increasingly looking to nearer-term revenue opportunities as they work toward commercializing the Holy Grail of energy generation. Industry leader Commonwealth Fusion Systems is selling its high-temperature superconducting magnets to other developers, while other companies including Shine Technologies are generating income by producing nuclear isotopes for medical imaging. Now one startup, Zap Energy, is pushing that playbook a step further, announcing this week that it plans to develop fission reactors before putting its first fusion electrons on the grid.
Specifically, the startup is now attempting to develop small modular reactors — hardly a novel idea, as companies like Oklo, Kairos, and TerraPower have already secured significant public and private funding and struck major data center deals. Zap, however, thinks it can catch up to these new competitors in part by leveraging design commonalities between fission and fusion systems, including the use of liquid metals, engineered neutron environments, and high-power-density systems. “Fission and fusion are two expressions of the same underlying physics," Zap’s co-founder Benj Conwayby said in the press release. "This isn’t a pivot — by integrating them into a single platform, we can move faster, reduce risk, and build a more enduring company."
As the company outlines on its website, pursuing both pathways could eventually manifest in the development of a hybrid fusion-fission system, while also giving Zap practical experience interfacing with regulators and securing approvals. As The New York Times reports, the company is targeting an early 2030s timeline for its fission reactors, although Zap has yet to specify a timeline for fusion commercialization. Like so many of its peers, the company is eyeing data centers as a promising initial market, though bringing its first units online will likely require a significant influx of additional capital.
For all the concern surrounding geoengineering fixes for climate change such as solar radiation management, there’s one form of weather modification that’s been in use since the 1940s — cloud seeding. This practice typically involves flying planes into the center of storms and releasing flares that disperse a chemical called silver iodide into the clouds. This causes the water droplets within the clouds to freeze, increasing the amount of precipitation that falls as either rain or snow.
Alarming as it may sound for the uninitiated, there’s no evidence that silver iodide causes harm at current usage levels. But what has been far more difficult to pin down is efficacy — specifically, how much additional precipitation cloud seeding actually creates. That’s where the startup Rainmaker comes in. The company, which deploys unmanned drones to inject the silver iodide, says that its advanced radar and satellite systems indicate that its operations generated over 143 million gallons of additional freshwater in Oregon and Utah this year — roughly equivalent to the annual water usage of about 1,750 U.S. households. The findings have not yet been peer reviewed, but if accurate, they would make Rainmaker the first private company to quantify the impact of its cloud seeding operations.
Cloud seeding is already a well-oiled commercial business, with dozens of states, utility companies and ski resorts alike using it to increase snowfall in the drought-stricken American West and worldwide — China in particular spends tens of millions of dollars per year on the technology. Rainmaker has a particular aspiration: to help restore Utah’s Great Salt Lake, which has been shrinking since the 1980s amid rising water demand and increased evaporation driven by warmer temperatures.
In a press release, the company’s 26-year-old founder and CEO Augustus Doricko said, “With the newfound capability to measure our yields and quantify our results, Rainmaker will go forward and continue our mission to refill the Great Salt Lake, end drought in the American West and deliver water abundance wherever it is needed most around the world."
Sodium-ion batteries have long been touted as an enticing alternative — or at least complement — to lithium-ion systems for energy storage. They don’t rely on scarce and costly critical minerals like lithium, nickel, or cobalt, and have the potential to be far less flammable. The relatively nascent market also offers an opening for the U.S. to gain a foothold in this segment of the battery supply chain. But especially domestically, the industry has struggled to gain traction. Two sodium-ion startups, Natron and Bedrock Materials, both closed up shop last year as prices for lithium-iron-phosphate batteries cratered, eroding sodium-ion’s cost advantage, while the cost of manufacturing batteries in the U.S. constrained their ability to scale.
But one notable bright spot is the startup Alsym Energy, which announced this week that it has signed a letter-of-intent with long-duration energy storage company ESS Inc. for 8.5 gigawatt-hours of sodium-ion cells and modules, marking ESS’s expansion into the short and medium-duration storage market. Alsym’s CEO, Mukesh Chatter, told me this represents the largest deal for sodium-ion batteries in the U.S. to date — although it’s not yet a binding contract. Notably, it came just a day after the world’s largest-ever order for these batteries, as CATL disclosed a 60 gigawatt-hour sodium-ion agreement with energy storage integrator HyperStrong. Taken together, these partnerships suggest the sector is finally picking up durable traction both domestically and abroad.
ESS, however, is facing its own operational headwinds, nearly shuttering its Oregon manufacturing plant last year before securing an unexpected cash infusion and pivoting to a new, longer-duration storage product. Chatter remains exuberant about Alsym’s deal with the storage provider, however, telling me it represents a major proof point in terms of broader industry acceptance and an acknowledgement that “the benefits [sodium-ion] brings to the table are significant enough to overcome any stickiness” and hesitation around adopting new battery chemistries.
Chatter said that interest is now pouring in from all sides, citing inquiries from lithium-ion battery manufacturers, utilities, and defense companies and highlighting use cases ranging from data centers to apartment buildings and mining operations as likely early deployment targets.
A handful of startups are promising better, cheaper, safer water purification tech.
The need for desalination has long been clear in water-scarce regions of the planet. But with roughly a quarter of the global population now facing extreme water stress and drought conditions only projected to intensify, the technology is becoming an increasingly necessary tool for survival in a wider array of geographies.
Typically, scaling up desalination infrastructure has meant building costly, energy-intensive coastal plants that rely on a process called reverse osmosis, which involves pushing seawater through semi-permeable membranes that block salt and other contaminants, leaving only fresh water behind. Now, however, a number of startups are attempting to rework that model, with solutions that range from subsea facilities to portable desalination devices for individuals and families.
They could find potential customers across the globe. Many countries in the Middle East — including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar — rely on desalination for the bulk of their municipal water. Meanwhile, drought-prone regions from Australia to the Caribbean and California have also turned to the technology to shore up supply. But as the Iran war has underscored, this vital infrastructure is increasingly being treated as a military target, exposing a significant vulnerability in a resource relied upon by hundreds of millions.
One more resilient alternative is to move the plants underwater — making them more difficult to target while also harnessing subsurface pressure to do some of the energy-intensive work of desalination.
“I came up with the idea of using natural pressure to run the process,” Robert Bergstrom, a veteran of the water industry and CEO of the desalination startup OceanWell, told me. That meant “putting the membranes in a place where it’s already 800 pounds [of pressure] per square inch” — e.g. inside pods on the ocean floor, each capable of producing 1 million gallons of freshwater daily. By using the natural pressure of the ocean to drive the reverse osmosis process, this approach cuts energy use by about 40%, he said, thus slashing the system’s largest operating cost: electricity.
OceanWell’s design maintains a lower internal pressure within each pod than the surrounding environment, causing seawater to flow passively inside and push through membranes — just like on land, but without the high-pressure pumps. Compact pumps inside the pods then push the freshwater up a pipeline to the shore, while the resulting brine dissipates in the deep ocean.
The method also helps solve another problem with conventional desalination: environmental impact. Today’s facilities typically produce a more concentrated brine that they discharge at the ocean’s surface, which is more disruptive to marine ecosystems. The plants also frequently cause damage to organisms large and small by either trapping them against water intake screens or pulling them into the plant itself. That’s been a big sticking point when it comes to permitting these facilities, especially in California where the startup is based. OceanWell’s system, Bergstrom said, is able to filter out larger organisms while allowing microscopic ones to pass through the pods and return to the ocean.
The company began a trial last year in partnership with Las Virgenes Municipal Water District in southern California, testing its system in a freshwater reservoir full of marine life to verify its safety. Next it will test its pods in the ocean before undertaking a pilot in a to-be-determined location — California, Hawaii, and Nice in southern France are all contenders. If all goes according to plan, OceanWell will follow that up with a full-fledged commercial system targeted for 2030.
But it’s not the only startup pursuing underwater desalination — or even the one with the most aggressive timeline. Two years ago, Norwegian startup Flocean spun out of the subsea pump specialist FSubsea with a similar technical approach and a plan to deploy its first commercial system off Norway’s western coast this year. Flocean has already logged over a year of testing in the deep ocean, a stage OceanWell has yet to reach.
OceanWell thinks it can differentiate itself by meeting the unusually stringent permitting required in California. “If we can get it done in California, then the rest of the world will follow,” Bergstrom told me, meaning more resilient, more energy-efficient freshwater infrastructure for all. But it’s a high bar. The last major effort to build a desalination facility in the state led to a long-running fight that ended in 2022 with a rejection. Over 100 groups opposed the facility proposed for Orange County, citing risks to marine life, as well as high energy requirements and costs, with many arguing that alternatives — such as conservation and wastewater treatment — would be more superior options.
Megan Mauter, an associate professor of civil engineering at Stanford, thinks the groups may have a point, especially when it comes to overall system costs. The high capex of desalination can be hard to justify in California, she told me, since the state doesn’t need it 100% of the time, only in bad drought years. For example, just a few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that San Diego County’s desalination plant, by far the largest in California, now has a surplus of desalinated water that it’s looking to sell to drought-ridden Western states such as Nevada and Arizona.
And while desalination startups purport to cut overall system costs, she has her doubts about that. “The energy savings that they’re going to get are offset by some pretty high increased costs of the other elements of their plant designs,” Mauter told me. “In a subsea system, you’ve got these unproven and not mass-manufactured skids. You’ve got subsea installation, and then mooring it, and putting in pipelines that you’ve got to maintain all the way to land. You’ve got to convey water back to shore, which takes energy, and you are going to have significantly higher maintenance burdens in an open ocean environment.”
Despite her reservations, she certainly sees the appeal of non-traditional water sources, “even at costs that would have been totally infeasible a decade ago.” Municipal planners are staring down a future of worsening drought at the same time that states in the Colorado River basin remain locked in contentious negotiations over water rights, debating how to allocate cuts as river flows have declined nearly 20% since 2000. California’s narrow continental shelf also makes it an ideal environment for subsea desalination, as having deep water close to shore allows the system to harness pressure depths while minimizing the length of the pipeline needed to transport freshwater to land. Norway is also favored in this way.
“I don’t know whether the cost gaps can be solved, but I bet that the technology gaps could be solved,” Mauter told me.
Ultimately, she thinks the binding constraint is likely to be regulatory rather than technical. “Permitting is going to be a nightmare unless something fundamentally changes,” she said. Bergstrom told me that OceanWell is currently working with the California State Water Resources Control Board to revise its rules that govern desalination facilities in order to account for new technologies, though how long that process will take is anyone’s guess.
There’s one idea emerging in this ecosystem that largely sidesteps the regulatory constraints that control our land and seas. The startup Vital Lyfe has developed a portable desalination unit roughly the size of a small cooler that allows individuals and households to produce freshwater on demand with reverse osmosis — effectively decentralizing the desalination industry in the same way that the startup’s founders, former SpaceX engineers, helped decentralize internet infrastructure with Starlink.
“We’ve seen this paradigm shift coming out of Starlink that traditional, large, centralized, systems are very expensive,” Vital Lyfe CEO Jon Criss told me. “They’re hard to deploy and hard to scale up when you really need them.”
After raising a $24 million seed round in December, the startup launched its first product a few weeks ago, which retails for $750. At that price point, it’s a great deal for sailors spending days or weeks at sea, but likely too expensive for the individuals in remote communities far from water infrastructure that might need it most. Criss’s goal is to quickly iterate on this first product to bring more affordable models to the market in short order.
Portable desalination devices aren’t anything new in and of themselves — they’ve been used in military, maritime, and humanitarian scenarios for decades. The startup’s breakthrough, Criss explained, is more about manufacturing efficiency than technology. “We went all the way back, looked at why every component was designed and how to redesign it for high rate manufacturing. So we were able to substantially drop the cost of ownership and operation of these things.”
You’ll soon find Vital Lyfe’s product in big box retail stores, Criss said, though he also aims to partner with large-scale desalination facilities and utilities to help boost their output. Either way, the startup is already generating buzz — it’s seen significant inbound interest as of late, as the inherent resilience of its small system stands in sharp contrast to the vulnerability of conventional desalination infrastructure now being targeted in the Middle East.
The company is scaling up to meet the moment, building out a facility in Los Angeles county that Criss said will eventually produce 120 portable units per hour. He’s aiming to start production by summer’s end, ramping to full capacity by October. “Within the next three years we plan to account for about 10% of total membrane production at Vital Lyfe alone,” he told me, referring specifically to the production for the desalination industry.
The future of the industry, of course, could look like any combination of all of these approaches — portable devices, conventional plants on land, and modular systems at sea. What seems certain is that as the globe continues to heat up, so will desalination tech.
Why local governments are getting an earful about “infrasound”
As the data center boom pressures counties, cities, and towns into fights over noise, the trickiest tone local officials are starting to hear complaints about is one they can’t even hear – a low-frequency rumble known as infrasound.
Infrasound is a phenomenon best described as sounds so low, they’re inaudible. These are the sorts of vibrations and pressure at the heart of earthquakes and volcanic activity. Infrasound can be anything from the waves shot out from a sonic boom or an explosion to very minute changes in air pressure around HVAC systems or refrigerators.
Knowing some of these facilities also have the capacity to produce significant audible noise, growing segments of the population’s more tech-skeptical and health-anxious corners are fretting some data centers could be making a lot of infrasound, too. The whizzing of so many large computational machines combined with cooling fans and other large devices creating so many new columns of air flow. Add onto that any rotational onsite power generation – think natural gas turbines, for example – and you get quite a lot of movement that could potentially produce what they say is infrasound.
Some of the virality of this chatter about infrasound and data centers comes from a video about infrasound created by audio engineer and researcher Benn Jordan. Currently sitting at more than 1 million views, this short YouTube film documents claims that some data centers are operating like “acoustic weapons” through infrasound and harming people. Andy Masley, an “effective altruist” writer, has become the chief critic of the Jordan video, getting into a back-and-forth that’s raised the issue to Internet discourse territory.
The Jordan-Masley infrasound debate is honestly a bit of a mess. So I want to be clear: I’m not going to get into the science of whether or not infrasound poses any kind of public health risk in this article. We can get to that later. It’s worth saying that this subject may need more study and that work is ongoing. Also, talking about infrasound at all can make you honestly sound a little wacky (see: this study blaming people seeing ghosts on infrasound). It might also remind you of another panic in the Electric Age: electromagnetic fields, also known as EMFs. Developers of transmission lines and solar projects have long had to deal with people worried about transmission lines and large electrical equipment potentially glowing with invisible, unhealthy radiation.
In late 2024, I wrote about how an RFK Jr. supporter worried about this form of electrical emission was helping lead the fight against a transmission line in New Jersey for offshore wind. Maybe that’s why it didn’t surprise me one bit when the Health and Human Services secretary himself told a U.S. Senate Committee last week that he was asking the Surgeon General’s office to “do either meta reviews” or “base studies” on noise pollution and EMF radiation from data centers “so we can better inform the American public.”
“There’s a range of injuries that are very, very well documented. They’re neurological – very, very grave neurological injuries, cancer risk,” Kennedy Jr. told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on April 22 in response to a request from Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri to study the issue. “The risks, to me, are tremendous.”
There’s also the unfortunate reality that infrasound impacts have previously been a cudgel to slow down renewable energy deployment. Wind turbines create infrasound because of the subharmonic frequencies created when one turbine rotates at a slightly different pace than another, producing a slightly dissonant low frequency noise. Groups like the Heartland Institute proudly list this infrasound as one of the reasons wind energy “menaces man and nature.”
But regardless of merit, this concern is already impacting local government decisions around data center projects, much like how one Michigan county sought to restrict solar energy on the same basis.
In February Adrian Shelley, the Texas director for environmental group Public Citizen, implored the city of Red Rock to study changing their noise ordinance to take into account infrasound. “It has effects on sleep patterns, on stress, on cardiovascular health, and it is potentially a very serious concern,” Shelley said at a February 11 city council discussion on data center rules. “It will not be covered by the city’s noise ordinance, which only deals with audible sound.”
Earlier this month in Calvert County, Maryland, a volunteer for their environmental commission recently told the county government that infrasound needs to be factored into their future data center planning. “It will have significant impacts on our region and the Chesapeake and the Patuxent because infrasound isn’t stopped by walls,” commission member Janette Wysocki, a proud land conservationist, said at an April 15 hearing. “It will keep going, it will move through anything. It’s a very long wavelength. So we need to protect our ecosystem.” Wysocki implored the county to consider whether to adjust its noise regulations.
Around the same time, similar concerns were raised in Lebanon, a small city in east-central Pennsylvania. “It permeates through concrete walls, it permeates through the ground,” Thomas Dompier, an associate professor at Lebanon Valley College, said at an April 16 Lebanon County commission hearing on data centers.
Lastly, last week I explained how Loudon County wants to rethink its noise ordinance to deal with low-frequency “hums” from data centers – a concern echoing those who fret infrasound.
Ethan Bourdeau, executive director of standards at Quiet Parks Intentional and a career acoustician and building standards writer, told me that what makes data centers unique is the “constant drone” of noise that could potentially carry subharmonic frequencies. Bourdeau said cities or counties could possibly factor concerns about infrasound into noise ordinances to address those who are most concerned. One way they could do it is by changing how decibels are weighted in the government’s measurements. A-weighting decibel meters are a common form of sound measurement geared toward perceptible noise. Using different systems, like C-weighting or G-weighting, would avoid ways that A-weighting can filter out sub-hearing frequencies.
“These are reporting and weighting systems where a sound level meter taking background noise receives all the unweighted sound and then you apply all these filters afterwards, like an EQ curve,” Bourdeau said.
So I guess if those most concerned about infrasound have their way, a lot of country commissioners and local elected leaders will be heading to the mixing booth.