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Sparks

Trump Promises ‘Fully Expedited’ Permitting in Exchange for $1 Billion of Investment

But ... how?

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday rocked the energy world when he promised “fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals” for “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America,” in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.

“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he added.

Trump has frequently derided regulatory barriers to development, including in his announcements of various economic and policy roles in his upcoming administration. His designee for Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, for instance, will also head a National Energy Council that will “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape … by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”

When Trump announced his nomination of Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency, he said Zeldin would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American business.”

Current interpretations of existing laws dictate that any project constituting a major federal action (e.g. one that uses public lands) must be reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act, the country’s signature permitting law. Federal courts are often asked in litigation to sign off on whether that review process — although not the outcome — was sufficient.

Regardless of any changes Trump may make to the federal regulatory system as president, that infrastructure is already in flux. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a ruling that throws into doubt decades of NEPA enforcement. Also on Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard a separate case on the limits of NEPA as it relates to aproposed rail line expansion to transport oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Although the court is unlikely to issue a decision until next year, its current membership has shown itself plenty willing to scrap longstanding precedent in the name of cutting the regulatory state down to size.

Trump did not support his announcement with any additional materials laying out the legal authorities he plans to exercise to exempt these projects from regulation or proposed legislation, but it already attracted criticism from environmentalists, with the Sierra Club describing it as a “plan to sell out communities and environment to the highest bidder.It’s also unclear whether Trump was referring to foreign direct investment in the United States, of which there was $177 billion in 2022,according to the Department of Commerce.

Trump’s appointed co-deregulator-in-chief, for one, approved of his message today. “This is awesome 🚀🇺🇸,” Elon Musk wrote on X in response.

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Sparks

Rhizome Raises $6.5 Million for AI Grid Resilience

The company will use the seed funding to bring on more engineers — and customers.

Power lines.
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As extreme weather becomes the norm, utilities are scrambling to improve the grid’s resilience, aiming to prevent the types of outages and infrastructure damage that often magnify the impact of already disastrous weather events. Those events cost the U.S. $182 billion in damages last year alone.

With the intensity of storms, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires growing every year, some utilities are now turning to artificial intelligence in their quest to adapt to new climate realities. Rhizome, which just announced a $6.5 million seed round, uses AI to help assess and prevent climate change-induced grid infrastructure vulnerabilities. It’s already working with utilities such as Avangrid, Seattle City Light, and Vermont Electric Power Company to do so.

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Don’t Look Now, But China Is Importing Less Coal

Add it to the evidence that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may be peaking, if they haven’t already.

A Chinese coal worker.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Exactly where China is in its energy transition remains somewhat fuzzy. Has the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases already hit peak emissions? Will it in 2025? That remains to be seen. But its import data for this year suggests an economy that’s in a rapid transition.

According to government trade data, in the first fourth months of this year, China imported $12.1 billion of coal, $100.4 billion of crude oil, and $18 billion of natural gas. In terms of value, that’s a 27% year over year decline in coal, a 8.5% decline in oil, and a 15.7% decline in natural gas. In terms of volume, it was a 5.3% decline, a slight 0.5% increase, and a 9.2% decline, respectively.

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Rewiring America Slashes Staff Due to Trump Funding Freeze

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

Surprised outlets.
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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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