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Oh, he’d never self-identify as an environmentalist. But not even climate activists have had the courage to propose a 10% tax on energy.
Dear Donald Trump,
I will be honest with you. I doubted at first. I didn’t understand the plan. But now that I see what you are doing, I have to say: I underestimated you. I was not really familiar with your game.
Yes, I finally see it all now. Even though you have attacked environmentalists for years, even though you have called climate change a “hoax” and a “scam,” and even though you have given climate deniers access to the highest echelons of your administration, I finally appreciate your peculiar genius.
You say that your big and beautiful tariffs are meant to bring about a new American golden age, but I know you’re hiding the truth. With your unprecedented tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports — and your levies on building materials of all sorts — you are doing what nobody else has had the courage to do.
You are trying to engineer the shock decarbonization of America — no matter the peril, no matter the cost.
Yes, it might seem crazy. But think about it. For years, whenever environmentalists have gathered in secret — and I’m talking the real radicals here, not the ones who send out mailers or go on TV — they plot about a vast agenda to remake America. They hate the fossil fuel industry, of course. But they go further than that. They loathe driving, so they want to destroy the auto industry. They hate big trucks, especially SUVs and pickups. They want to make gasoline more expensive. And really, if we’re being honest, they want to force everyone to live in cities.
I don’t go for such a radical agenda, myself. I’m much more of a moderate. But I have to admit: I know a secret radical environmentalist when I see one. And you, Mr. Trump — well, I won’t say it out loud. But as one former Democratic climate official texted me (and this is real), it might be time to start talking about a “GREEN NEW DONALD.”
Just think about it. Transportation is the most carbon-intensive sector of the U.S. economy, and big personal vehicles — SUVs and pickups — are responsible for the largest share of that pollution. Selling those big trucks to Americans is what drives Ford and General Motors’ profits, and those two companies have developed complex supply chains that can cross the U.S., Mexican, and Canadian borders half a dozen times before their vehicles’ final assembly. The biggest trucks — like the Chevy Silverado — have a particularly arcane value chain, spanning Canada, Mexico, Germany, and Japan.
Environmentalists have struggled to figure out how to deal with Americans’ affinity for these big cars. But you, Mr. Trump, you knew just what needed to be done. You slapped giant tariffs on cars and trucks and auto parts, which could spike new car prices by $4,000 to $10,000, according to Anderson Economic Group.
There’s even a good chance that price hike could hit internal combustion cars worse than it hits EVs — in part because the internal-combustion car supply chain has existed for longer and has had more time to ooze across North America. This widespread damage could prompt layoffs at Ford and GM — but you didn’t hesitate for the climate’s sake, comrade! You were ruthless.
But Mr. Trump, you didn’t stop there. As you surely know, roughly a third of America’s greenhouse gas emissions come from natural gas. It is the prize jewel of fossil fuels, and it’s absolutely core to the U.S. energy system — and Mr. Trump, you did not hesitate to tax it directly. Thanks to your new 10% tariff on Canadian energy imports, American consumers can now expect to pay an extra $1.1 billion a year for natural gas, according to the American Gas Association. Those higher costs will be concentrated in western states and New England.
Your tariffs are also going to make electricity prices go up, particularly in some of the swingiest congressional districts around the Great Lakes. Electricity will also get more expensive in Maine, which has a Senate race in 2026. Mr. Trump, this is an act of true political courage. Normally, environmentalists wouldn’t support raising electricity prices, because it might discourage people from buying EVs or electrifying their homes. But since you’re raising electricity and natural gas and oil prices at the same time, you’re practically begging Americans to buy heat pumps, induction stoves, and invest in energy efficiency technologies essential for decarbonization. And to do so even though it might put your own party’s control of the Senate at risk? You are one hell of an environmental zealot.
Even your steel and aluminum tariffs and your new levies on Canadian lumber are inspired by your climate fervor. By raising the cost of new construction, you are discouraging single-family home construction and all but forcing more Americans to live in multi-family buildings, which are more energy efficient and have lower emissions. Mr. Trump, you really think of everything! I never should have doubted. You are going to make us live in the pods! And with your steep agricultural tariffs, you might even make us eat the bugs!
The most impressive thing you’ve done, though, is your sly little attack on the American oil industry.
The American fossil fuel industry imports more than a million barrels of oil from western Canada every day. This sulfurous sludge is important to the U.S. refining industry because it complements the lighter oil that comes roaring out of American fracking wells. By combining America’s lighter oil with Canada’s heavy crude, U.S. refineries can cheaply churn out a range of high-value products, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
It’s really important that these American refineries have easy access to as much western Canadian oil as they need as its easy availability lets them ramp up and down different types of fuel production depending on what the market requires at the moment. That’s why they have invested tens of billions of dollars in equipment specially designed to process heavy, sulfur-rich Canadian oil.
In the past, Canadian companies have tried to expand these exports. As you remember, more than a decade ago, one Canadian company wanted to build a pipeline known as Keystone XL. But this came with downsides for the climate: Canadian crude is some of the most carbon-intensive oil in the world, and burning it in large quantities could have meant it was “game over for the climate,” according to journalist-turned-activist Bill McKibben.
The goal of fighting the Keystone XL pipeline was to raise the cost of importing Canadian crude oil, hopefully keeping it in the ground, while undercutting U.S. refinery profit margins. Activists won that fight — and they had your help, Mr. Trump. After the Biden administration revoked Keystone XL’s construction permit in 2021, its developer sued the U.S. government in international trade court and lost. Ironically, it may have had a better shot at winning its case under NAFTA than under its Trump-negotiated replacement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
But of course, even that didn’t unwind America’s and Canada’s decades of economic integration. The United States still imports hundreds of millions of barrels of Canadian oil a year, and all that oil damages the climate while simultaneously keeping U.S. gasoline prices low.
But Mr. Trump — you are now attacking this too! You astound me. You have bashed those Canadian oil imports with a 10% energy tax. This will prove even more effective at hurting the North American fossil fuel industry and raising American gasoline prices than blocking the Keystock XL pipeline did, because it will knock refineries right in their profit margins. If you play your cards right, you might even raise the cost of diesel and jet fuel too!
Now, Mr. Trump: I realize you can’t come out and say all this. In fact, you claimed last week that you wanted to revive Keystone XL, even though its developer has given up on it.
This struck many people as silly, but I know just what you are doing here. With your words, you are trying to look like a fossil-fuel-friendly Republican to please your base. But with your actions, you are actually raising taxes on the U.S. fossil fuel industry. What other explanation is there? Surely nobody would be so silly as to propose making it cheaper to import Canadian crude oil at the same time that they deliberately make it more expensive. And surely nobody would say they support autoworkers while actually destroying the U.S. auto industry. That would be truly self-defeating — and Mr. Trump, you are a winner!
Some people — well, really, just your Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — have implied that you might lift these tariffs as soon as tomorrow. I don’t believe them. I know what you’re up to here. You are not going to fold so soon. You are trying to keep talking the talk even as you whack away at cars, oil, and gas. I might even say that you are like a moldy strawberry: “Republican red” on the outside but “deep green” on the inside.
Now, you could go even further. Conservatives have long observed, however sarcastically, that since carbon emissions correlate with GDP in so many countries (although not in the U.S.), the fastest way to fight climate change is to engineer a giant recession. Some might assume this would be going too far for you — it would be going much too far for me. But on Tuesday, the International Chamber of Commerce warned that your tariffs could set off spiraling trade wars, putting the country in “1930s trade-war territory” and triggering a new Great Depression. Just think of how the emissions will fall from that!
Oh, Mr. Trump! You really ARE a Green New Donald. You truly are willing to sacrifice anything for the climate — even if it means kneecapping the American economy, bamboozling the world, and even ending industrial civilization to do it! Oh, Mr. Trump, I am overcome. You astound, captivate, and enthrall me. Now I understand how JD Vance feels.
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And it only gets worse from here.
Hot and humid weather stretching from Maine to Missouri is causing havoc for grid operators: blackouts, brownouts, emergency authorizations to exceed environmental restrictions, and high prices.
But in terms of what is on the grid and what is demanded of it, this may be the easiest summer for a long time.
That’s because demands on the grid are growing at the same time the resources powering it are changing. Between broad-based electrification, manufacturing additions, and especially data center construction, electricity load growth is forecast to grow several percent a year through at least the end of the decade. At the same time, aging plants reliant on oil, gas, and coal are being retired (although planned retirements are slowing down), while new resources, largely solar and batteries, are often stuck in long interconnection queues — and, when they do come online, offer unique challenges to grid operators when demand is high.
For the previous 20 years, load growth has been relatively steady, Abe Silverman, a research scholar at Johns Hopkins, explained to me. “What’s different is that load is trending up,” he said. “When you’re buying and making arrangements for the summer, you have to aim a bit higher.”
Nowhere is the combined and uneven development of the grid’s supply and demand more evident than in PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest electricity market, spanning from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. The grid now has to serve new load in Virginia’s “data center alley,” while aggressive public policy promoting renewables in states such as Maryland and New Jersey has made planning more complicated thanks to the different energy generation and economic profiles of wind, solar, and batteries compared to gas and coal.
PJM hit peak load on Monday of just over 161,000 megawatts, within kissing distance of its all-time record of 165,500 megawatts and far north of last year’s high demand of 152,700, with load hitting at least 158,000 megawatts on Tuesday. Forecast high load this year was around 154,000 megawatts. Earlier this spring, PJM warned that for the first time, “available generation capacity may fall short of required reserves in an extreme planning scenario that would result in an all-time PJM peak load of more than 166,000 megawatts.”
While that extreme demand has not been seen on the grid during this present heat wave, we’re still early in the year. Typically, PJM’s demand peaks in July or even August; according to the consulting firm ICF, the last June peak was in 2014, while demand last year peaked in July. On Monday, real time prices got just over $3,000 a megawatt, and reached just over $1,800 on Tuesday.
“This is a big test. A lot of capacity has retired since 2006 and the resource mix has changed some,” Connor Waldoch, head of strategy at GridStatus, told me. While exact data on the resource mix over the past 20 years isn’t available, Waldoch said that many of the fossil fuel plants on the grid — including those that help set the price of electricity — are quite old.
PJM’s operators have issued a “maximum generation alert” that will extend to Wednesday, warning generators and transmission owners to defer or cancel maintenance so that “units stay online and continue to produce energy that is needed.”
PJM also issued a load management alert, a warning that PJM may call upon some 8,000 megawatts of electricity users who have been paid in advance to reduce demand when the grid calls for it. Already, some large users of electricity in Virginia have reduced their power demand as part of the program. There are historically around one or two uses of demand response per year in each of the electricity market’s 21 zones.
“Demand response is a real hero,” Silverman said.
Elsewhere in the hot zone, thousands of customers of the New York Independent Systems Operator lost or saw reduced power on Monday, along with over 100,000 customers affected by voltage reductions. On Tuesday, NYISO issued an “energy watch” meaning that “operating reserves are expected to be lower than normal,” and asking customers to reduce their power consumption.
Further north, oil and coal made up 10% of the fuel mix in ISO New England by Monday night, according to GridStatus data. The region has greatly expanded behind-the-meter solar generation since 2010, which as of 2 p.m. Monday was generating over 21% of the region’s power. But the grid as a whole hasn’t been able to keep up, thanks to a nationally anomalous shortage of gas capacity and still-insufficient battery storage. As the sun faded, so too did New England’s renewable generation.
“You don’t see coal very often in the New England fuel mix,” Waldoch told me. In fact, there is only one remaining coal plant in New England, which can typically power around 440,000 homes — though that’s based on normal electricity usage. On days like the past few, it may power far fewer.
Moving into Tuesday, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright invoked emergency authorities to allow Duke Energy in the Carolinas to run certain of its units “at their maximum generation output levels due to ongoing extreme weather conditions and to preserve the reliability of bulk electric power system.”
The strained grid and high prices come as grid operators question how effectively their current and planned generation capacity can meet future demand. These questions have become especially pressing in PJM, which last year shelled out billions of dollars in payments to largely fossil fuel generators in what’s known as a capacity auction. That’s already translating to higher costs for consumers — in some cases as high as 20%. But even that could be nothing compared to what’s coming.
“If you take the current conditions that PJM is dealing with right now and you add tens of gigawatts of data to center demand, they would be in trouble,” Pieter Mul, an energy and infrastructure advisor at PA Consulting, told me.
Right now, Mul said, PJM can muddle through. “It is all hands on deck. Our prices are quite high. They’ve invoked some various emergency conditions.” But that’s before all those data centers are even online. “It’s a 2026, ’27, and beyond question,” Mul said.
Today, however, “it’s mostly just very hot weather.”
The state’s senior senator, Thom Tillis, has been vocal about the need to maintain clean energy tax credits.
The majority of voters in North Carolina want Congress to leave the Inflation Reduction Act well enough alone, a new poll from Data for Progress finds.
The survey, which asked North Carolina voters specifically about the clean energy and climate provisions in the bill, presented respondents with a choice between two statements: “The IRA should be repealed by Congress” and “The IRA should be kept in place by Congress.” (“Don’t know” was also an option.)
The responses from voters broke down predictably along party lines, with 71% of Democrats preferring to keep the IRA in place compared to just 31% of Republicans, with half of independent voters in favor of keeping the climate law. Overall, half of North Carolina voters surveyed wanted the IRA to stick around, compared to 37% who’d rather see it go — a significant spread for a state that, prior to the passage of the climate law, was home to little in the way of clean energy development.
But North Carolina now has a lot to lose with the potential repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has pointed out. The IRA brought more than 17,000 jobs to the state, per Climate Power, along with $20 billion in investment spread out over 34 clean energy projects. Electric vehicle and charging manufacturers in particular have flocked to the state, with Toyota investing $13.9 billion in its Liberty EV battery manufacturing facility, which opened this past April.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was one of the four co-authors of a letter sent to Majority Leader John Thune in April advocating for the preservation of the law. Together, they wrote that gutting the IRA’s tax credits “would create uncertainty, jeopardizing capital allocation, long-term project planning, and job creation in the energy sector and across our broader economy.” It seems that the majority of North Carolina voters are aligned with their senator — which is lucky for him, as he’s up for reelection in 2026.
The new Nissan Leaf is joining a whole crop of new electric cars in the $30,000 range.
Here is an odd sentence to write in the year 2025: One of the most interesting electric vehicles on the horizon is the Nissan Leaf.
The Japanese automaker last week revealed new images and specs of the redesign it had teased a few months ago. The new Leaf, which will arrive in 2026, is a small crossover that’s sleeker than, say, a Tesla Model Y, but more spacious than the previous hatchback versions of the car. Nissan promises it will have a max range above 300 miles, while industry experts expect the company to target a starting price not too far above $30,000.
The updated Leaf won’t be one of those EVs that smokes a gas-powered sports car in a drag race, not with the 214 horsepower from that debut version and certainly not with the 174 horsepower from the cheaper version that will arrive later on. Its 150-kilowatt max charging speed lags far behind the blazing fast 350-kilowatt charging capability Hyundai is building into its Ioniq electric vehicles. But because it lacks some of these refinements, the new Nissan may arrive as one of the most compelling of the “affordable” EVs that are, finally, coming to drivers.
Not bad for a car that had become an electric afterthought.
The original Nissan Leaf was a revelation merely for its existence. Never mind that it was a lumpy potato derived from the uninspired Nissan Versa — here was the first mass-market electric car, heralding the age of the EV and welcomed with plenty of “car of the year” laurels at the dawn of the 2010s. Its luster would not last, however, as the arrival of the Tesla Model S a couple of years later stole the world’s attention. The second-generation Leaf that arrived in 2017 was an aesthetic and technological leap forward from its predecessor, with a range that topped 200 miles in its most advanced form. It was, for the time, a pretty good EV. Almost immediately, it was overshadowed by the introduction of Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y, which catapulted Elon Musk’s company into complete dominance of the global EV market.
It took nearly a decade for Nissan (which fell into corporate mismanagement and outright crisis in the meantime) to update the stale and outdated Leaf. As a result, you might think the new version of the OG EV will arrive just in time to be outshone again. Yet the peculiar nature of the evolving electric car market has created an opportunity for the Leaf to finally grow and thrive.
There was a time when the mythical affordable Tesla could have taken the brand into the entry-level car market, and perhaps below the magic starting price of $30,000. But that has turned out to be a distraction dangled in front of fanboys and investors. In reality, Musk effectively killed the idea as he instead rolled out the Cybertruck and pivoted the company toward the dream of total vehicle autonomy.
Thanks to Tesla’s refusal to act like a normal car company, the affordable EV market is still there for the taking. Some are already in the game: Hyundai’s little Kona Electric starts at $33,000, and I’ve lauded Chevrolet for building a base version of the Equinox EV that starts around $35,000. In the next year or so, an influx of EVs in the $30,000 to $35,000 range might really change the game for electric-curious buyers.
The new Leaf is suddenly a big part of that mix. No, it won’t compete on price with a comparable combustion Nissan like the Kicks crossover that starts in the low $20,000s (not without the $7,500 tax credit, which would have made the new crop of affordable EVs directly cost-competitive with entry-level gas cars). The Leaf is likely to start just above $30,000, with the price creeping higher for buyers who opt for better performance or more range (and as I’ve noted numerous times, you ought to buy all the range you can afford if an EV is going to be your main car).
Arriving next year to compete with the Leaf is the new Chevy Bolt, another revival of an early EV icon. Experts expect a similar price range there. The anticipated Kia EV3 should come to America eventually with a starting cost around $35,000. The Jeff Bezos-backed Slate electric truck shocked the world with its promise of a bare-bones EV in the $20,000s — but, by the time the average buyer adds enough amenities to make it liveable, most Slate trucks will probably top $30,000.
Elon Musk may have abdicated his role as the Leaf’s antagonist via his refusal to build an affordable car, but erstwhile ally Donald Trump is poised to assume the role. Since the Leaf is slated to be built in Japan, the EV would be subject to whatever tariffs might be in place by the time it goes on sale next year. A 25% tariff, plus the federal government’s flip to punishing EVs with penalties instead of rewarding them with incentives, would kill the car’s value proposition in the U.S. Perhaps, then, it will become the next great affordable EV — for everybody else.