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At COP28, Norway was consistently on the right side of climate. Why?
The annual COP 28 gathering is over, and it’s about time. As Robinson Meyer writes here at Heatmap, many important things came out of the conference, despite the utter joke of holding it in a notorious oil dictatorship — the United Arab Emirates — with the head of that country’s state oil company serving as president.
Yet another major oil-producing country at the conference was consistently on the right side of climate, namely Norway. The Norwegian delegation advocated for aggressive climate action, including a large energy transition fund to be focused on the poorest countries, announced millions in new investment to protect the rainforest in Brazil and for disaster insurance in Africa. Most importantly, it consistently pushed for a final agreement to phase out the use of fossil fuels. “It is not enough to say 1.5, we have to do 1.5. We have to deliver accordingly,” said Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide. Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China opposed this language. Eventually the conference settled on an agreement to “transition away from” rather than “phase out,” which while disappointing is better than nothing.
Why didn’t Norway side with its fellow oil-producing nations? The reason is decades ago, it approached its oil reserves wisely, both economically and politically. This has allowed it to enjoy the benefits of oil without becoming an oil-addicted petrostate.
On the economics, Norway has taken a frankly socialist approach. When the North Sea oil deposits were discovered in the 1960s, it did not simply sell off the rights to a private company. Instead the government declared the deposits the collective property of the Norwegian citizenry and founded a state-owned company, Statoil (now Equinor). That in turned hired Mobil to teach it how to build an offshore drilling platform, built up its own expertise from there, and is now one of the biggest offshore drilling companies in the world. The company was formally sold into the stock market in 2001, but the government still owns more than two-thirds of the shares. It’s a perfect example of that typically Nordic combination of idealism and extreme technical expertise.
A corollary of its state-led oil development is what Norway does with the resulting revenue — it invests it in a social wealth fund. The primary point of this is to avoid “Dutch disease,” in which a country experiencing a resource boom sees a movement of labor into the resource sector, as well as an influx of foreign currency. The labor shift increases costs for other industries, while the foreign currency pushes up the value of the domestic currency, making exports less competitive. This effect is why big oil-producing nations tend to experience deindustrialization.
Norway was already quite wealthy when it discovered oil, and the government wanted to preserve its industrial base, and did not want to become dependent on the wildly gyrating global market price of oil. So instead of spending the revenues on subsidies for the citizenry, or on the government budget, it invested the proceeds in the Government Pension Fund Global. This fund has become truly colossal over the years, with some $1.4 trillion in it — representing about $255,000 for each Norwegian citizen.
As Matt Bruenig points out at The People’s Policy Project, if you impute Norway’s state-owned wealth to individual Norwegians (which makes sense given that Norway is a healthy democracy), then the share of wealth owned by the top 1 percent falls from 53 percent to 27 percent, making it arguably the most equal country in terms of wealth in the world.
Incidentally, Norway’s experience provides an important lesson for other countries that hit upon resource strikes, whether it’s oil in Guyana or lithium in Chile. A sudden surge of resource revenues sounds like a lucky break, but it can do serious damage to your economy if you aren’t careful. Just look at Venezuela, which was devastated when the price of oil collapsed in 2014 (though that wasn’t its only problem). You can spend the first few checks on needed infrastructure upgrades, of course, but over the long term you want to sock the money away into a diversified investment portfolio that doesn’t ruin the rest of your economy and can provide reasonably predictable returns over the long term.
But another point of the state investment model is political. Oil is quite profitable, and if private companies are getting the money, a nation will see a marked increase in inequality, and develop a class of ultra-rich people with concomitant distorting effects on politics. Oil billionaires (like Charles Koch or Tim Dunn) are notoriously reactionary even by billionaire standards, and that’s saying a lot. It may have something to do with the fact that, as a rule, oil company owners neither create, nor discover, nor work to produce the oil that makes them so fabulously rich (that would be nature, scientists, and workers respectively), and so cultivate a snarling hatred of taxation and government regulation to compensate for so plainly not deserving their wealth.
Whatever the case, oil magnates have vast funds for lobbying, which they use to attempt to capture the state for their own purposes — again, just look at America, or Canada. An extreme case of oil capture can be seen in Saudi Arabia or the U.A.E., which have wealth funds formally similar to Norway, but being dictatorships, ended up with governments actually constituted of oil billionaires, as if North Dakota was a hereditary monarchy.
The relative lack of oil influence also helps explain why Norway has set up one of the more aggressive decarbonization programs in the world. Now, its electricity sector has long been mostly decarbonized already thanks to tremendous hydropower resources, but that has made its crash transition away from oil-powered transportation all the more effective. Using a combination of subsidies and hefty, increasing taxes on gas- and oil-powered vehicles, the government has ensured that fully 80 percent of cars and trucks sold in Norway today are EVs, and that figure will continue to increase. Much work remains to be done (and EVs, while an improvement, are no magic bullet) but Norwegian carbon dioxide emissions per person plateaued in the late 90s and have since fallen by about a quarter, to 7.5 metric tons (or about half the American figure).
And this has been done with full knowledge that moving away from oil will mean substantial economic pain. A plan the government first adopted in 2019 faced the fact squarely: “Growth will have to take place in sectors where there is no economic resource rent. This means that tax revenues will be lower and companies cannot expect as high a return on their capital as in the petroleum sector.”
Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., of course, depend heavily on oil and gas for energy, and produce truly eye-popping emissions.
Now, I shouldn’t exaggerate the greatness of Norway here. Equinor has had its share of spills and scandals. And of course, it would have been better if humanity had never used oil in the first place. But for the time being, humanity needs oil to function, and Norway has provided that oil in about the least-damaging way imaginable — not least because now that the world must wean itself off fossil fuels, Norway is both able and willing to turn off the taps.
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It was a curious alliance from the start. On the one hand, Donald Trump, who made antipathy toward electric vehicles a core part of his meandering rants. On the other hand, Elon Musk, the man behind the world’s largest EV company, who nonetheless put all his weight, his millions of dollars, and the power of his social network behind the Trump campaign.
With Musk standing by his side on Election Day, Trump has once again secured the presidency. His reascendance sent shock waves through the automotive world, where companies that had been lurching toward electrification with varying levels of enthusiasm were left to wonder what happens now — and what benefits Tesla may reap from having hitched itself to the winning horse.
Certainly the federal government’s stated target of 50% of U.S. new car sales being electric by 2030 is toast, and many of the actions it took in pursuit of that goal are endangered. Although Trump has softened his rhetoric against EVs since becoming buddies with Musk, it’s hard to imagine a Trump administration with any kind of ambitious electrification goal.
During his first go-round as president, Trump attacked the state of California’s ability to set its own ambitious climate-focused rules for cars. No surprise there: Because of the size of the California car market, its regulations helped to drag the entire industry toward lower-emitting vehicles and, almost inevitably, EVs. If Trump changes course and doesn’t do the same thing this time, it’ll be because his new friend at Tesla supports those rules.
The biggest question hanging over electric vehicles, however, is the fate of the Biden administration’s signature achievements in climate and EV policy, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act’s $7,500 federal consumer tax credit for electric vehicles. A Trump administration looks poised to tear down whatever it can of its predecessor’s policy. Some analysts predict it’s unlikely the entire IRA will disappear, but concede Trump would try to kill off the incentives for electric vehicles however he can.
There’s no sugar-coating it: Without the federal incentives, the state of EVs looks somewhat bleak. Knocking $7,500 off the starting price is essential to negate the cost of manufacturing expensive lithium-ion batteries and making EVs cost-competitive with ordinary combustion cars. Consider a crucial model like the new Chevy Equinox EV: Counting the federal incentive, the most basic $35,000 model could come in under the starting price of a gasoline crossover like the Toyota RAV4. Without that benefit, buyers who want to go electric will have to pay a premium to do so — the thing that’s been holding back mass electrification all along.
Musk, during his honeymoon with Trump, boasted that Tesla doesn’t need the tax credits, as if daring the president-elect to kill off the incentives. On the one hand, this is obviously false. Visit Tesla’s website and you’ll see the simplest Model 3 listed for $29,990, but this is a mirage. Take away the $7,500 in incentives and $5,000 in claimed savings versus buying gasoline, and the car actually starts at about $43,000, much further out of reach for non-wealthy buyers.
What Musk really means is that his company doesn’t need the incentives nearly as bad as other automakers do. Ford is hemorrhaging billions of dollars as it struggles to make EVs profitably. GM’s big plan to go entirely electric depended heavily on federal support. As InsideEVsnotes, the likely outcome of a Trump offensive against EVs is that the legacy car brands, faced with an unpredictable electrification roadmap as America oscillates between presidents, scale back their plans and lean back into the easy profitably of big, gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks. Such an about-face could hand Tesla the kind of EV market dominance it enjoyed four or five years ago when it sold around 75% of all electric vehicles in America.
That’s tough news for the climate-conscious Americans who want an electric vehicle built by someone not named Elon Musk. Hundreds of thousands of people, myself included, bought a Tesla during the past five or six years because it was the most practical EV for their lifestyle, only to see the company’s figurehead shift his public persona from goofy troll to Trump acolyte. It’s not uncommon now, as Democrats distance themselves from Tesla, to see Model 3s adorned with bumper stickers like the “Anti-Elon Tesla Club,” as one on a car I followed last month proclaimed. Musk’s newest vehicle, the Cybertruck, is a rolling embodiment of the man’s brand, a vehicle purpose-built to repel anyone not part of his cult of personality.
In a world where this version of Tesla retakes control of the electric car market, it becomes harder to ditch gasoline without indirectly supporting Donald Trump, by either buying a Tesla or topping off at its Superchargers. Blue voters will have some options outside of Tesla — the industry has come too far to simply evaporate because of one election. But it’s also easy to see dispirited progressives throwing up their hands and buying another carbon-spewing Subaru.
Republicans are taking over some of the most powerful institutions for crafting climate policy on Earth.
When Republicans flipped the Senate, they took the keys to three critical energy and climate-focused committees.
These are among the most powerful institutions for crafting climate policy on Earth. The Senate plays the role of gatekeeper for important legislation, as it requires a supermajority to overcome the filibuster. Hence, it’s both where many promising climate bills from the House go to die, as well as where key administrators such as the heads of the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are vetted and confirmed.
We’ll have to wait a bit for the Senate’s new committee chairs to be officially confirmed. But Jeff Navin, co-founder at the climate change-focused government affairs firm Boundary Stone Partners, told me that since selections are usually based on seniority, in many cases it’s already clear which Republicans are poised to lead under Trump and which Democrats will assume second-in-command (known as the ranking member). Here’s what we know so far.
This committee has been famously led by Joe Manchin, the former Democrat, now Independent senator from West Virginia, who will retire at the end of this legislative session. Energy and Natural Resources has a history of bipartisan collaboration and was integral in developing many of the key provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act — and could thus play a key role in dismantling them. Overall, the committee oversees the DOE, the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so it’s no small deal that its next chairman will likely be Mike Lee, the ultra-conservative Republican from Utah. That’s assuming that the committee's current ranking member, John Barrasso of Wyoming, wins his bid for Republican Senate whip, which seems very likely.
Lee opposes federal ownership of public lands, setting himself up to butt heads with Martin Heinrich, the Democrat from New Mexico and likely the committee’s next ranking member. Lee has also said that solving climate change is simply a matter of having more babies, as “problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they’re solved by more humans.” As Navin told me, “We've had this kind of safe space where so-called quiet climate policy could get done in the margins. And it’s not clear that that's going to continue to exist with the new leadership.”
This committee is currently chaired by Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware, who is retiring after this term. Poised to take over is the Republican’s current ranking member, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. She’s been a strong advocate for continued reliance on coal and natural gas power plants, while also carving out areas of bipartisan consensus on issues such as nuclear energy, carbon capture, and infrastructure projects during her tenure on the committee. The job of the Environment and Public Works committee is in the name: It oversees the EPA, writes key pieces of environmental legislation such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and supervises public infrastructure projects such as highways, bridges, and dams.
Navin told me that many believe the new Democratic ranking member will be Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, although to do so, he would have to step down from his perch at the Senate Budget Committee, where he is currently chair. A tireless advocate of the climate cause, Whitehouse has worked on the Environment and Public Works committee for over 15 years, and lately seems to have had a relatively productive working relationship with Capito.
This subcommittee falls under the broader Senate Appropriations Committee and is responsible for allocating funding for the DOE, various water development projects, and various other agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
California’s Dianne Feinstein used to chair this subcommittee until her death last year, when Democrat Patty Murray of Washington took over. Navin told me that the subcommittee’s next leader will depend on how the game of “musical chairs” in the larger Appropriations Committee shakes out. Depending on their subcommittee preferences, the chair could end up being John Kennedy of Louisiana, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, or Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. It’s likewise hard to say who the top Democrat will be.
Inside a wild race sparked by a solar farm in Knox County, Ohio.
The most important climate election you’ve never heard of? Your local county commissioner.
County commissioners are usually the most powerful governing individuals in a county government. As officials closer to community-level planning than, say a sitting senator, commissioners wind up on the frontlines of grassroots opposition to renewables. And increasingly, property owners that may be personally impacted by solar or wind farms in their backyards are gunning for county commissioner positions on explicitly anti-development platforms.
Take the case of newly-elected Ohio county commissioner – and Christian social media lifestyle influencer – Drenda Keesee.
In March, Keesee beat fellow Republican Thom Collier in a primary to become a GOP nominee for a commissioner seat in Knox County, Ohio. Knox, a ruby red area with very few Democratic voters, is one of the hottest battlegrounds in the war over solar energy on prime farmland and one of the riskiest counties in the country for developers, according to Heatmap Pro’s database. But Collier had expressed openness to allowing new solar to be built on a case-by-case basis, while Keesee ran on a platform focused almost exclusively on blocking solar development. Collier ultimately placed third in the primary, behind Keesee and another anti-solar candidate placing second.
Fighting solar is a personal issue for Keesee (pronounced keh-see, like “messy”). She has aggressively fought Frasier Solar – a 120 megawatt solar project in the country proposed by Open Road Renewables – getting involved in organizing against the project and regularly attending state regulator hearings. Filings she submitted to the Ohio Power Siting Board state she owns a property at least somewhat adjacent to the proposed solar farm. Based on the sheer volume of those filings this is clearly her passion project – alongside preaching and comparing gay people to Hitler.
Yesterday I spoke to Collier who told me the Frasier Solar project motivated Keesee’s candidacy. He remembered first encountering her at a community meeting – “she verbally accosted me” – and that she “decided she’d run against me because [the solar farm] was going to be next to her house.” In his view, he lost the race because excitement and money combined to produce high anti-solar turnout in a kind of local government primary that ordinarily has low campaign spending and is quite quiet. Some of that funding and activity has been well documented.
“She did it right: tons of ground troops, people from her church, people she’s close with went door-to-door, and they put out lots of propaganda. She got them stirred up that we were going to take all the farmland and turn it into solar,” he said.
Collier’s takeaway from the race was that local commissioner races are particularly vulnerable to the sorts of disinformation, campaign spending and political attacks we’re used to seeing more often in races for higher offices at the state and federal level.
“Unfortunately it has become this,” he bemoaned, “fueled by people who have little to no knowledge of what we do or how we do it. If you stir up enough stuff and you cry out loud enough and put up enough misinformation, people will start to believe it.”
Races like these are happening elsewhere in Ohio and in other states like Georgia, where opposition to a battery plant mobilized Republican primaries. As the climate world digests the federal election results and tries to work backwards from there, perhaps at least some attention will refocus on local campaigns like these.