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Sparks

A Hilariously Sad Chart of COP28 Climate Pledges

See if you can identify the biggest scrooge here.

Neel Dhanesha •
12/01/2023
A woman in Tuvalu.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Early on Thursday, the first day of the UN Climate Conference in Dubai, world leaders secured an agreement for a fund that will help vulnerable nations deal with the impacts of climate change. My colleague Charu has written about the fund in more detail, but I was curious about one thing: How do these pledges compare to each country’s GDP? The answer is hilariously stark — I originally tried making a chart of these pledges as a fraction of GDP, but they simply didn’t show up on the axes.

Chart of pledges vs GDP.

For a point of comparison, the United States has so far sent $75 billion worth of aid to Ukraine since the war began, while the Loss and Damage Fund will be doled among the various countries who ask the UN for assistance. Still, it’s a start, and hopefully these contributions will grow over time.

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Neel Dhanesha profile image

Neel Dhanesha

Neel is a former founding staff writer at Heatmap. Prior to Heatmap, he was a science and climate reporter at Vox, an editorial fellow at Audubon magazine, and an assistant producer at Radiolab, where he helped produce The Other Latif, a series about one detainee's journey to Guantanamo Bay. He is a graduate of the Literary Reportage program at NYU, which helped him turn incoherent scribbles into readable stories, and he grew up (mostly) in Bangalore. He tweets sporadically at @neel_dhan.

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Sparks

The Trump Administration Helped a Solar Farm

In the name of “energy dominance,” no less.

Jael Holzman •
03/14/2025
Solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration just did something surprising: It paved the way for a transmission line to a solar energy project.

On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Gen-Tie transmission line and associated facilities for the Sapphire Solar project, a solar farm sited on private lands in Riverside County, California, that will provide an estimated 117 megawatts to the Southern California Public Power Authority.

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These 21 House Republicans Want to Preserve Energy Tax Credits

For those keeping score, that’s three more than wanted to preserve them last year.

Jillian Goodman •
03/10/2025
The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Those who drew hope from the letter 18 House Republicans sent to Speaker Mike Johnson last August calling for the preservation of energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act must be jubilant this morning. On Sunday, 21 House Republicans sent a similar letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith. Those with sharp eyes will have noticed: That’s three more people than signed the letter last time, indicating that this is a coalition with teeth.

As Heatmap reported in the aftermath of November’s election, four of the original signatories were out of a job as of January, meaning that the new letter features a total of seven new recruits. So who are they?

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The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/26/2025
Natural gas pipelines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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