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It came out of nowhere.
Monsters don’t only sneak up on you in horror movies. In the dark of Monday night, a storm system brewing in the Eastern Pacific still looked as if it would make landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, as nothing greater than a tropical storm. But within just 12 hours on Tuesday, Tropical Storm Otis intensified by 80 mph into a full-blown hurricane; when it made landfall just after midnight on Wednesday morning, it had exploded into an unprecedented Category 5 storm. Eric Blake, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center, called the event nothing short of a “nightmare scenario.”
Hurricane Otis is not the first storm to sneak up on forecasters this year, and if new hurricane research I recently covered is any indication, it won’t be the last, either. Hurricanes are more than twice as likely to intensify from a Category 1 storm into a Category 3 or greater in a single day than they were between 1970 and 1990, Andra Garner, an assistant professor at Rowan University, found when she looked at historic patterns in the Atlantic. “When storms intensify quickly, they can become more difficult to forecast and to plan for in terms of emergency action plans for coastal residents,” she told me via email last week, adding presciently, “I think these findings should really serve as an urgent warning for us.”
Here’s how five meteorologists have illustrated the unprecedented danger of Hurricane Otis:
Just to emphasize how poorly hurricane & global models performed for Hurricane Otis... here's the intensity forecasts initialized 24 hours ago, with the dotted black line showing verification: pic.twitter.com/DN5pf7lcOS
— Tomer Burg (@burgwx) October 25, 2023
And here’s another fun fact from meteorologist Tomer Burg about hurricanes named Otis doing surprising things.
Not too many storms are this unpredictable. Each colored line represents an intensity forecast from the NHC, made every six hours. The thick black line is the observed intensity. None of the models saw this coming either. pic.twitter.com/ljwxPYnEbV
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) October 25, 2023
#Otis took full advantage of a warm patch of ocean last night... passing over 31°C water on its approach to #Acapulco. The extremely rapid intensification from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane took place over this tiny area. pic.twitter.com/f6fpYD1DOk
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) October 25, 2023
“Imagine starting your day expecting a stiff breeze and some rain, and overnight you get catastrophic 165 mph winds,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School, also tweeted.
This is not just a rare & dangerous event for October, but anytime of year in #Acapulco, which has not been directly impacted by a major hurricane like #Otis in the EPAC best-track record (back to 1949).
The last hurricane to affect the area directly was a 75 kt TC in 1951. pic.twitter.com/kBh1QoosGB
— Philippe Papin (@pppapin) October 25, 2023
The last hurricane to hit the Acapulco area directly was a significantly weaker tropical cyclone in 1951. Philippe Papin, with the National Hurricane Center, further explains on Twitter why Hurricane Otis is distinct from Hurricane Pauline in 1997, a Category 4 storm that killed hundreds near Alculpoco due to regional flooding and rainfall, but which actually made landfall further southeast.
#Hurricane #Otis has intensified by 80 mph in the past 12 hours (from 65 mph to 145 mph). That's the fastest 12 hr intensification rate in the eastern North Pacific (to 180°) in the satellite era (since 1966), breaking the old record of 75 mph/12 hr set by Patricia in 2015. pic.twitter.com/O5BrIrUi5X
— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) October 25, 2023
Colorado State University researcher Philip Klotzbach emphasized why it’s so hard to prepare for a storm like Otis — because with that sort of speed, you just can’t see it coming.
Wow...seeing #HurricaneOtis rapidly strengthen from a Tropical Storm yesterday at noon to a Category 5 Hurricane at midnight is astounding...almost mind boggling. #Acapulco #Hurricane pic.twitter.com/9jgOu1F8Bg
— Meteorologist Zach Maloch (@ZachMalochWX) October 25, 2023
Mind-boggling, indeed.
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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.
It is the first sign so far that some renewable energy requiring federal lands may be allowed to develop during the next four years, and is an about-face from the first weeks of Trump’s presidency.
BLM notably said the solar project’s transmission line will help “Unleash American Energy” (the bureau’s capitalization, not mine). And it said the move “aligns with” Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency — which discussed only fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydropower — because it was “supporting the integrity of the electric grid while creating jobs and economic prosperity for Americans.”
“The Bureau of Land Management supports American Energy Dominance that prioritizes needs of American families and businesses,” BLM California State Director Joe Stout said in a statement provided via press release.
Another executive order Trump issued on his first day back in office paused solar and wind project permitting for at least 60 days, leading to a halt on government activities required to construct and operate renewable energy projects. It’s unclear whether these actions to move Sapphire’s transmission line through agency review means the federal permitting pipes are finally unstuck for the solar industry, or if this is an exception to the rule — especially because the pause Trump ordered has yet to hit the expiration date he set on the calendar.
For those keeping score, that’s three more than wanted to preserve them last year.
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?
The new letter is different from the old one in a few key ways. First, it mentions neither the Inflation Reduction Act nor its slightly older cousin, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, by name. Instead, it emphasizes “the importance of prioritizing energy affordability for American families and keeping on our current path to energy dominance amid efforts to repeal or reform current energy tax credits.” The letter also advocates for an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy development that has long been popular among conservatives but has seemed to fall out of vogue under Trump 2.0.
Lastly, while the new letter repeats the previous version’s emphasis on policy stability for businesses, it adds a new plea on behalf of ratepayers. “As our conference works to make energy prices more affordable, tax reforms that would raise energy costs for hard working Americans would be contrary to this goal,” it reads. “Further, affordable and abundant energy will be critical as the President works to onshore domestic manufacturing, supply chains, and good paying jobs, particularly in Republican run states due to their business-friendly environments. Pro-energy growth policies will directly support these objectives.”
As my colleagues Robinson Meyer and Emily Pontecorvo have written, tariffs on Canadian fuel would raise energy prices in markets across the U.S. That includes some particularly swingy states, e.g. Michigan, which perhaps explains Rep. James’ seeming about-face.
Republicans’ House majority currently stands at all of four votes, so although 21 members might not be huge on the scale of the full House, they still represent a significant problem for Speaker Johnson.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Rep. James did not unseat Democrat Carl Marlinga in 2022 as the district had been newly created following the 2020 census.
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.
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.
Texas established a fund in 2023 to provide low-cost loans to new gas plants, but has had trouble finding viable projects. Engie pulled an 885 megawatt project from the program earlier this week, citing “equipment procurement constraints” and delays.
But PJM is working actively with a friendly administration in Washington to bring more natural gas to its grid. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently blessed a PJM plan to accelerate interconnection approvals for large generators — largely natural gas — so that it can bring them online more quickly.
But many developers and large power consumers are less than optimistic about the ability to bring new natural gas onto the grid at a pace that will keep up with demand growth, and are instead looking at “behind-the-meter” approaches to meet rising energy needs, especially from data centers. The asset manager Fortress said earlier this year that it had acquired 850 megawatts of generation capacity from APR Energy and formed a new company, fittingly named New APR Energy, which said this week that it was “deploying four mobile gas turbines providing 100MW+ of dedicated behind-the-meter power to a major U.S.-based AI hyperscaler.”
And all gas developers, whether they’re building on the grid or behind-the-meter, have to get their hands on turbines, which are in short supply. The NRG consortium called this out specifically, noting that it had secured the rights to two 7HA gas turbines by 2029. These kinds of announcements of agreements for specific turbines have become standard for companies showing their seriousness about gas development. When Chevron announced a joint venture with GE Vernova for co-located gas plants for data centers, it also noted that it had a reservation agreement for seven 7HA turbines. But until these turbines are made and installed, these announcements may all just be spin.