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Sea Turtles Have a Guy Problem

Climate change has done a number on the sex ratio.

A sea turtle.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Florida’s green sea turtles are making a comeback — sort of.

They had their best-ever nesting season in 2023, with 74,300 nests — a 40% increase over the previous record, set in 2017, The New York Timesreports. But this welcome news comes with an unsettling catch: The percentage of male turtle hatchlings has dropped precipitously. In recent seasons, according to the Times, “Between 87 and 100 percent of the hatchlings” tested by Dr. Jeanette Wyneken, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, were female.

Climate change is a likely contributor to the imbalance, as a green sea turtle’s sex is determined by the temperature of the sand in which its egg develops. Warmer sand results in more females; cooler sand, more males. In the short term, this might benefit the turtles, with more females able to produce more eggs once they reach maturity (providing “there’s enough boys to service the girls,” as Dr. Wyneken put it). But another side effect of the changing climate is that extreme heat dries out the turtles’ nests — killing the baby turtles before they’ve had a chance to hatch.

As with so much else in the natural world, such news is a case of two steps forward, one step back (or, perhaps, one flipper-crawl back). Thanks in part to decades of conservation efforts, 2023 has also seen record green sea turtle nest counts in Texas and Alabama — and while such milestones are a cause to celebrate, climate change’s effects on the resulting offspring are a reminder that there is always more work to do.

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Sparks

Rewiring America Slashes Staff Due to Trump Funding Freeze

The nonprofit laid off 36 employees, or 28% of its headcount.

Surprised outlets.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s funding freeze has hit the leading electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, which announced Thursday that it will be cutting its workforce by 28%, or 36 employees. In a letter to the team, the organization’s cofounder and CEO Ari Matusiak placed the blame squarely on the Trump administration’s attempts to claw back billions in funding allocated through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

“The volatility we face is not something we created: it is being directed at us,” Matusiak wrote in his public letter to employees. Along with a group of four other housing, climate, and community organizations, collectively known as Power Forward Communities, Rewiring America was the recipient of a $2 billion GGRF grant last April to help decarbonize American homes.

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Sparks

Sunrun Tells Investors That a Recession Could Be Just Fine, Actually

The company managed to put a positive spin on tariffs.

A house with solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Sunrun, Getty Images

The residential solar company Sunrun is, like much of the rest of the clean energy business, getting hit by tariffs. The company told investors in its first quarter earnings report Tuesday that about half its supply of solar modules comes from overseas, and thus is subject to import taxes. It’s trying to secure more modules domestically “as availability increases,” Sunrun said, but “costs are higher and availability limited near-term.”

“We do not directly import any solar equipment from China, although producers in China are important for various upstream components used by our suppliers,” Sunrun chief executive Mary Powell said on the call, indicating that having an entirely-China-free supply chain is likely impossible in the renewable energy industry.

Hardware makes up about a third of the company’s costs, according to Powell. “This cost will increase from tariffs,” she said, although some advance purchasing done before the end of last year will help mitigate that. All told, tariffs could lower the company’s cash generation by $100 million to $200 million, chief financial officer Danny Abajian said.

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The Power Sector Loves Big Tech’s Billion-Dollar Data Center Plans

Meta and Microsoft both confirmed plans to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.

Meta headquarters.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Big Tech said this week that it’s going full steam ahead with building out data centers, and the power industry loves it. Since Microsoft and Meta reported their earnings for the beginning of the year on Wednesday, including announcements either reaffirming their guidance on capital expenditures or even increasing it, power sector stocks have jumped.

Shares of Vistra, which has a fleet of power plants including nuclear, natural gas, coal, and renewables, are up almost 7% in early afternoon trading. Constellation, one of the largest nuclear producers in the country, is up 8%. GE Vernova, which makes in-demand gas turbines, is up 4%. Chip designer Nvidia’s shares are up 4%.

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