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Even when the candidates aren’t talking about it, it’s still there.
Earlier this week, ProPublica published an investigation revealing that the Heritage Foundation, home of Project 2025, has been flooding the federal government with Freedom of Information Act requests targeted at federal employees, meant to discover which have used words including “climate change” and “climate equity” in emails and chats. A few hours later, JD Vance and Tim Walz met for what will likely be the final candidate debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, and got one question about climate — the same quantity asked of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in their debate last month.
The campaign is not quite over, but the role of climate change within it can be seen in these two stories. Climate has been a vital issue in this presidential race, but one that has been largely muted. Only occasionally has it intruded into the attention of those who weren’t already following the issue closely. But we’ve seen enough to understand that the next few years will be vital in shaping the government’s climate posture and the nation’s future.
Despite profound differences between the parties in both their beliefs about climate change and their policy preferences, there was some degree of convergence in their rhetoric. Smarter Republicans understand that Trump’s brand of flamboyant denialism is not a political winner for a national audience, and they’ve attempted to offer something more subtle. That’s why we saw Vance turn the climate question he got at the debate into an answer about boosting manufacturing, after admitting that “a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns” and noting that China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter. A viewer who knew nothing about what the Republican ticket actually wants to do might think the GOP is only slightly less committed to climate action than its opponents.
Walz’s response was that under the current administration, the country is already producing more energy than ever and boosting manufacturing. Which reflected another reality that came into focus in this campaign: While Democrats still favor restrictive regulation in some areas, their primary climate policies revolve around carrots rather than sticks, tax incentives and subsidies for states, businesses, and consumers to create a broad-based transition to a green economy. Those are the policies they want to talk about.
That shift makes their climate arguments far more politically appealing — and their legislative achievements potentially more durable. The enormous subsidies contained in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are making their way disproportionately to red states, which is why plenty of down-ballot candidates from both parties are lauding the jobs being created with government help. There may still be some vigorous debate within the GOP about whether they should try to repeal the IRA if they get the chance, but the mostly-carrots approach is now firmly embedded in Democratic policymaking, as is the idea that climate optimism is a savvier way to persuade the public than dire warnings of a frightening future, even if that’s what we do face.
Nevertheless, there will likely be no big-spending climate legislation resembling the IRA coming out of Congress in the near future. Control of the Senate sits on a knife edge, with Democrats needing to win nearly every closely contested seat to hang on to their majority. Even if they do and Harris wins the presidency, they may well decide that they took their shot and succeeded already, and therefore devote the once-per-year reconciliation bill (which cannot be filibustered) to other priorities. There are areas of bipartisan interest, including permitting reform, that could speed the development of clean energy projects, but they may wind up more limited in scope.
If Republicans take over the White House and Congress, on the other hand, the future is less clear. They may attempt a repeal of some of the IRA, along with the other major bills passed during the Biden administration, but much of their focus will probably be on what can be accomplished with executive branch authority.
Which is why all the scrutiny that Project 2025 has garnered has been one of the best things about this campaign, proving enormously instructive on a range of issues, including climate. More voters than ever now understand that when we elect a president we also elect a huge apparatus of governing. Policy is made at a variety of levels, and thousands of civil servants no one has ever heard of can do a great deal to improve or undermine people’s lives.
While Trump may deny that Project 2025 is his blueprint for governing, it certainly reflects his climate intentions and those of the people who will serve in his administration. He shares with the project a commitment to changing civil service rules to put loyal apparatchiks in positions throughout the federal government, and a devotion to fossil-fuel-friendly climate policies will be a key requirement for many who want to take those jobs in agencies including the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency. All that has become clear to a great many voters.
The vice presidential debate may not be the last time the candidates are asked to address climate; if nothing else, there will probably be a few more natural disasters in the next month, which could push the issue back on the agenda. But while we can’t say there was a detailed debate about climate in the 2024 election that grappled with our present and future in a nuanced way, one can’t really say that about any issue. The climate debate we got was far short of perfect, but it probably left voters knowing more than they did a year or two ago. Given the degraded state of so much of what passes for democratic deliberation, that isn’t so bad.
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The Loan Programs Office is good for more than just nuclear funding.
That China has a whip hand over the rare earths mining and refining industry is one of the few things Washington can agree on.
That’s why Alex Jacquez, who worked on industrial policy for Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, found it “astounding”when he read in the Washington Post this week that the White House was trying to figure out on the fly what to do about China restricting exports of rare earth metals in response to President Trump’s massive tariffs on the country’s imports.
Rare earth metals have a wide variety of applications, including for magnets in medical technology, defense, and energy productssuch as wind turbines and electric motors.
Jacquez told me there has been “years of work, including by the first Trump administration, that has pointed to this exact case as the worst-case scenario that could happen in an escalation with China.” It stands to reason, then, that experienced policymakers in the Trump administration might have been mindful of forestalling this when developing their tariff plan. But apparently not.
“The lines of attack here are numerous,” Jacquez said. “The fact that the National Economic Council and others are apparently just thinking about this for the first time is pretty shocking.”
And that’s not the only thing the Trump administration is doing that could hamper American access to rare earths and critical minerals.
Though China still effectively controls the global pipeline for most critical minerals (a broader category that includes rare earths as well as more commonly known metals and minerals such as lithium and cobalt), the U.S. has been at work for at least the past five years developing its own domestic supply chain. Much of that work has fallen to the Department of Energy, whose Loan Programs Office has funded mining and processing facilities, and whose Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains hasfunded and overseen demonstration projects for rare earths and critical minerals mining and refining.
The LPO is in line for dramatic cuts, as Heatmap has reported. So, too, are other departments working on rare earths, including the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains. In its zeal to slash the federal government, the Trump administration may have to start from scratch in its efforts to build up a rare earths supply chain.
The Department of Energy did not reply to a request for comment.
This vulnerability to China has been well known in Washington for years, including by the first Trump administration.
“Our dependence on one country, the People's Republic of China (China), for multiple critical minerals is particularly concerning,” then-President Trump said in a 2020 executive order declaring a “national emergency” to deal with “our Nation's undue reliance on critical minerals.” At around the same time, the Loan Programs Office issued guidance “stating a preference for projects related to critical mineral” for applicants for the office’s funding, noting that “80 percent of its rare earth elements directly from China.” Using the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration also issued a grant to the company operating America's sole rare earth mine, MP Materials, to help fund a processing facility at the site of its California mine.
The Biden administration’s work on rare earths and critical minerals was almost entirely consistent with its predecessor’s, just at a greater scale and more focused on energy. About a month after taking office, President Bidenissued an executive order calling for, among other things, a Defense Department report “identifying risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and other identified strategic materials, including rare earth elements.”
Then as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Biden administration increased funding for LPO, which supported a number of critical minerals projects. It also funneled more money into MP Materials — including a $35 million contract from the Department of Defense in 2022 for the California project. In 2024, it awarded the company a competitive tax credit worth $58.5 million to help finance construction of its neodymium-iron-boron magnet factory in Texas. That facilitybegan commercial operation earlier this year.
The finished magnets will be bought by General Motors for its electric vehicles. But even operating at full capacity, it won’t be able to do much to replace China’s production. The MP Metals facility is projected to produce 1,000 tons of the magnets per year.China produced 138,000 tons of NdFeB magnets in 2018.
The Trump administration is not averse to direct financial support for mining and minerals projects, but they seem to want to do it a different way. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has proposed using a sovereign wealth fund to invest in critical mineral mines. There is one big problem with that plan, however: the U.S. doesn’t have one (for the moment, at least).
“LPO can invest in mining projects now,” Jacquez told me. “Cutting 60% of their staff and the experts who work on this is not going to give certainty to the business community if they’re looking to invest in a mine that needs some government backstop.”
And while the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act remains very much in doubt, the subsidies it provided for electric vehicles, solar, and wind, along with domestic content requirements have been a major source of demand for critical minerals mining and refining projects in the United States.
“It’s not something we’re going to solve overnight,” Jacquez said. “But in the midst of a maximalist trade with China, it is something we will have to deal with on an overnight basis, unless and until there’s some kind of de-escalation or agreement.”
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.