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Heatmap Wins a National Magazine Award

We have some exciting news to share.

Nico Lauricella •
04/11/2025
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



Nico Lauricella profile image

Nico Lauricella

Nico is the founder and editor in chief of Heatmap. He was previously the editor in chief of The Week online.

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Sparks

Trump’s USDA Using Farmland Rule to Go After Energy Companies, Democrats Say

A proposed change in how the agency implements an obscure Cold War-era law would impose onerous reporting requirements on renewables and pipelines.

Jael Holzman •
08/10/2026
Wind turbines and a farm.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Democrats in Congress claim that a new Trump administration proposal will have a chilling effect on the energy sector by subjecting renewables and fossil fuel pipelines alike to an obscure, rarely cited Cold War-era law requiring detailed information on foreign farmland ownership be submitted to the Agriculture Department.

In late June, the Agriculture Department released a proposal to change implementation of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, which requires companies to provide information to the federal government on foreign investors in farmland holdings, acquisitions, and sales. If finalized, the new rule would expand the definition of “agricultural land” in regulation to include all renewable energy facilities and pipeline corridors by explicitly tying the term to those industries’ formal codes under the North American Industry Classification System.

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Sparks

Electricity Bills Were Higher Than Ever in July

Americans paid $217 on average for electricity last month, according to Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub.

Matthew Zeitlin •
08/06/2026
A plug graph.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

July is typically the season of high electricity bills, and this year is no exception.

Nationally, the average electricity bill spiked to $217, an all-time high, according to new data from Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub. That’s up from $177 in June, and $215 last July. Meanwhile, electricity rates were 19 cents per kilowatt-hour, virtually unchanged from June and slightly higher than July of last year.

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Sparks

Scoop: Clearway Cancels Plan to Swap Solar Farm for Data Center and Gas Plant

The energy developer is backing off after a Heatmap report.

Jael Holzman •
08/03/2026
Solar panels and a gas plant.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Clearway says it is backing off its plans to build a data center and gas power plant on federal land, days after Heatmap revealed the energy developer’s proposal.

Last week, I reported that Clearway asked the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management to swap a five year-old application for a solar farm’s permits with “a proposed data center and natural gas facility.” Clearway’s chief development officer John Woody had written in a letter to BLM dated April 3 that the swap was “the result of a shift in our internal development priorities” and intended “to better align with the goals of our Administration.” He also noted the plans were in “exploratory early stages.”

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