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Super-Charged Clouds Are Dumping Rain and Snow on the U.S.

The rain may be over (for now), but the flood risk has yet to peak.

Snow in Iowa.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A surface cyclone dumped rain on the Northeast overnight, leaving millions of people under flood warnings. Streets were submerged in cities including Annapolis and Baltimore, Maryland; and Alexandria, Virginia. Washington, D.C. broke its daily rain record early Tuesday evening. The storm is also blasting states with strong wind gusts, and at least 15 tornadoes were reported in the South. More than 600,000 homes remain without power, most of those on the East Coast.

The rain is tapering off, but the worst may be yet to come. As National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Wilson told The New York Times: “The worst time for flooding is right after the rain stops.” It takes time for the water dumped by a storm to travel down from mountains and make its way into smaller streams and rivers, Wilson said. But when it does, those waterways can flood.

The National Weather Service says moderate to major river flooding could inundate parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast through Thursday. High water levels combined with wind gusts that could exceed 60 mph increase the chances of coastal flooding.

To make matters worse, there’s another storm on the way. The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for the Cascade and Olympic mountains, the first such warning in over a decade. That system will make its way east and is expected to “intensify explosively” by the weekend, bringing blizzard conditions to the Midwest, severe storms to the South, and more flooding to the East Coast.

“Much below normal temperatures along with gusty winds will lead to wind chills well below zero for many locations,” the NWS Weather Prediction Center tweeted. The cold snap will linger into next week, and more than 80% of the country could see below-freezing temperatures by Tuesday, Axios reported.

Isn’t climate change making winters warmer? Yes, the trend over time is for warmer winter temperatures with less snowfall. But “‘less cold’ does not mean ‘never cold,’” explains the Climate Reality Project. And when winter storms do hit, they’re likely to be more intense as global temperatures rise.

As Dr. Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, explained to the Union of Concerned Scientists last year, warmer temperatures give weather systems “more fuel to work with in the form of water vapor and heat, more moisture, and as a result, these storms are dumping more precipitation.”

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Sparks

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.

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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Sparks

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.

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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Sparks

An Emergency Trump-Coded Appeal to Save the Hydrogen Tax Credit

Featuring China, fossil fuels, and data centers.

The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As Republicans in Congress go hunting for ways to slash spending to carry out President Trump’s agenda, more than 100 energy businesses, trade groups, and advocacy organizations sent a letter to key House and Senate leaders on Tuesday requesting that one particular line item be spared: the hydrogen tax credit.

The tax credit “will serve as a catalyst to propel the United States to global energy dominance,” the letter argues, “while advancing American competitiveness in energy technologies that our adversaries are actively pursuing.” The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association organized the letter, which features signatures from the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, and numerous hydrogen, industrial gas, and chemical companies, among many others. Three out of the seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — the Mid-Atlantic, Heartland, and Pacific Northwest hubs — are also listed.

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