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My colleague Emily Pontecorvo had a big scoop on Friday: The Trump administration is no longer defending the president’s moratorium on permitting wind projects. The Department of Justice filed a motion last week to dismiss its appeal of a federal court’s December decision vacating the order to halt wind energy approvals. Ending the White House’s all-of-government assault on wind and solar projects has been a key demand from Democrats seeking compromise for a permitting reform package. Experts say the procedural move in this case is a bullish sign for the various bills before Congress now. “The door to federal permitting is now unlocked again and each developer will be able to make the case for permitting their individual project based on the facts and the law,” Kit Kennedy, the managing director for power, climate, and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Emily.
The thaw in the permitting freeze comes as the SunZia Wind Project, the largest wind farm in the United States, is preparing to begin commercial operations in the coming days. The development in New Mexico, which has a total net summer generating capacity of 3,650 megawatts, is made up of 916 turbines.
The Budget Lab
Trump wants to temporarily suspend the federal tax on gasoline to ease surging fuel prices caused by the war with Iran. His proposal would waive the tax of $0.184 per gallon, but doing so requires an act of Congress. According to a new analysis from the Budget Lab at Yale University shared exclusively with Heatmap, lifting the levy would pay Americans back about $37 of the roughly $250 in higher gasoline costs paid over the course of three months. While richer households would spend a smaller share of total income on fuel, they would accrue more per-dollar benefits than lower-income Americans. Likewise, the gas tax holiday would afford more rewards to heavy drivers.
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It started out as a British nonprofit devoted to documenting, standardizing, and tracking how much carbon dioxide various partner organizations produce. Dubbed the Carbon Disclosure Project, the group, founded in 2000, had emerged as one of the central authorities on an issue increasingly baked into financial reporting rules. Now known only by its acronym, CDP said last week it would split its organization in two, segmenting a charitable, science-focused nonprofit called the CDP Foundation from a new commercial entity designed to deliver environmental data and disclosure services for a fee. The London private equity giant Permira will back the for-profit CDP’s launch. “For 25 years, CDP has been at the forefront of environmental disclosure, transforming it from the sidelines to the centre of decision-making,” the organization said in a statement. “To meet the scale and speed of today’s environmental challenges and market expectations, CDP is sharpening its focus, enabling stronger science-led disclosure and greater investment in technology to simplify the disclosure experience and deliver more decision-useful insights.”
Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, a key GOP tech policy reform voice in the Senate running for governor in her home state, just came out against a data center next to Nashville Zoo. “Tennessee should be thoughtful and considerate when deciding where data centers are located. The proposed site near the Nashville Zoo is neither,” she wrote in a post on X. “Let’s revisit this placement.” It’s yet another sign that the backlash against data centers is, as Heatmap’s Jael Holzman wrote, splintering the right.
The geothermal industry is gearing up for a next-generation boom. Until Fervo Energy’s big stock market debut last month, the big publicly-traded player in the business was Ormat Technologies, a conventional geothermal giant that both builds power stations and manufactures the parts needed for plants. Now, at the industry’s big trade show in Calgary this week, Ormat is unveiling a 100-megawatt power generation system designed for unconventional wells like those Fervo or Ormat’s partner Sage Geosystems are drilling. It’s a sign, Think GeoEnergy reported, that Ormat is seeking “to accelerate the commercial deployment of next-generation geothermal projects.”
With shares set to start trading on the Nasdaq this morning, SpaceX is on track to become a $1.7 trillion behemoth after raising roughly $75 billion at its stock market debut. Elon Musk’s rocket business, which has also emerged as one of the world’s leading satellite internet providers, is aiming to launch its first extraterrestrial data center in 2028.
Musk’s business empire has spawned an entire ecosystem of companies looking to innovate on hardware and categories venture capitalists call “deep tech.” As Emily and Matthew Zeitlin wrote in a feature yesterday, Musk — once a don of the PayPal mafia — has now emerged at the helm of a new “climate tech mafia” that includes such startups as the next-generation transformer maker Heron Power and the fusion company Maritime Fusion.
Consumers’ Lake Michigan pumped storage hydroelectric plant. Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Michigan utility regulators should reject utility giant Consumers Energy’s proposed sale of 13 hydroelectric dams to a private equity buyer. In a 312-page ruling detailed by Bridge Michigan, an administrative law judge called the utility’s plan to sell the dams and buy back power at an inflated price “highly problematic” and “inconsistent with the public interest.”
The proposed deal is a sign of growing interest in hydropower, even as existing dams struggle through lengthy relicensing processes. Just last month, the investment firm Hull Street bought the North American hydro giant First Light. Last July, Google brokered the biggest hydropower deal in history, purchasing 3 gigawatts of power.
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General Motors has inked a deal with the sodium-ion battery startup Peak Energy to deploy the competitors to lithium power packs as energy storage systems. The automaker’s investment arm, GM Ventures, will back a partnership with Peak Energy (incidentally another Musk mafia company, co-founded by former Tesla director Landon Mossburg). The move highlights electric vehicle manufacturers’ shift toward grid storage as the battery-making capacity that came online has failed to find demand for all-electric cars. “We believe sodium-ion will be a defining chemistry for grid-scale energy storage systems in the years ahead,” Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at General Motors, said in a statement to InsideEVs.
The United Kingdom is preparing to build Europe’s largest direct air capture facility. Three companies — the developer Progressive Energy, and the carbon-capture specialists Airhive and Mission Zero Technologies — formed a joint venture to build a new plant in northeast England, Bloomberg reported. The venture, wittily named UnionDAC, would come online in 2030 and sequester 60,000 tons annually within two years.
In the U.S., meanwhile, the startup Twelve brought America’s first commercial e-fuels plant online, using direct air capture to suck CO2 out of the thin air. The company, according to Hydrogen Insight, already has offtake agreements with Alaska Airlines, while Microsoft will purchase the environmental attributes of the fuel to reduce its reported emissions from air travel.
New York is officially moving forward with its ambitious nuclear plans. On Thursday, the state Public Service Commission launched a bid to procure 5 gigawatts of nuclear power to serve as the “backbone of zero emissions electricity.” The process kicks off with “a full examination of ways to bring new advanced nuclear power online in a timely, cost-effective manner.” In a statement, Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat up for reelection this year, said advanced nuclear “is one of the best available options to provide both relief to consumers and strengthen the resilience of New York’s grid with round-the-clock emissions-free energy,” noting that the push is part of her “vision for an all-of-the-above energy strategy that includes renewables and other forms of energy to keep the lights on.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct details related Twelve’s commercial operations and the number of gigawatts of nuclear power New York is attempting to procure.
