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Sparks

Heatmap Wins a National Magazine Award

We have some exciting news to share.

A bottle of champagne.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I wanted to update you on some very exciting news — our Decarbonize Your Life section just won the National Magazine Award for Service Journalism. It’s a huge honor for a publication that just turned two years old last month and a testament to the outstanding journalism our small but mighty newsroom does every day guiding our readers through the great energy transition.

A huge shout out, in particular, to our deputy editor Jillian Goodman for making the section so smart and helpful, to Robinson Meyer for dreaming up the idea, and to all the writers — Jeva, Katie, Emily, Charu, Taylor, and Andrew — who reported so insightfully for it. Tackling a complex but consequential subject like how to make better personal decisions around climate change was a massive undertaking, but a labor of love.

If you missed this special section, you can check it out here.

And thank you, as always, for reading us and making our work possible.

Nico
Founder & Editor in chief



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Sparks

Utilities Asked for a Lot More Money From Ratepayers Last Year

A new PowerLines report puts the total requested increases at $31 billion — more than double the number from 2024.

A very heavy electric bill.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Utilities asked regulators for permission to extract a lot more money from ratepayers last year.

Electric and gas utilities requested almost $31 billion worth of rate increases in 2025, according to an analysis by the energy policy nonprofit PowerLines released Thursday morning, compared to $15 billion worth of rate increases in 2024. In case you haven’t already done the math: That’s more than double what utilities asked for just a year earlier.

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Sparks

Trump Loses Another Case Against Offshore Wind

A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that construction on Vineyard Wind could proceed.

Offshore wind.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Vineyard Wind offshore wind project can continue construction while the company’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s stop work order proceeds, judge Brian E. Murphy for the District of Massachusetts ruled on Tuesday.

That makes four offshore wind farms that have now won preliminary injunctions against Trump’s freeze on the industry. Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Orsted’s Revolution Wind off the coast of New England, and Equinor’s Empire Wind near Long Island, New York, have all been allowed to proceed with construction while their individual legal challenges to the stop work order play out.

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Blue
Sparks

Chris Wright Is Overhauling $83 Billion of Loans. He Won’t Say Which Ones.

The Secretary of Energy announced the cuts and revisions on Thursday, though it’s unclear how many are new.

The Energy Department logo holding money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Department of Energy announced on Thursday that it has eliminated nearly $30 billion in loans and conditional commitments for clean energy projects issued by the Biden administration. The agency is also in the process of “restructuring” or “revising” an additional $53 billion worth of loans projects, it said in a press release.

The agency did not include a list of affected projects and did not respond to an emailed request for clarification. However the announcement came in the context of a 2025 year-in-review, meaning these numbers likely include previously-announced cancellations, such as the $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express transmission line and the $3 billion partial loan guarantee to solar and storage developer Sunnova, which were terminated last year.

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Green