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Trump 2.0 may sound the death knell for climate tech — not the concept, of course, but the phrase. “Climate tech” became ubiquitous during the Biden era, attached to companies pitching anything vaguely related to either climate change or technology, as well as the specialized and well-resourced venture capital firms created to fund them. It’s even in my job title: climate tech reporter.
I’ve been hearing rumblings around the liabilities of this language for a while, going back well before the election. The big bummer truth is that talking about “climate” is polarizing, and though we may be mostly removed from the days of pure denialism, climate solutions are now being framed as a priority of the elites. “I’ll go anywhere to talk about how the climate agenda is ending the American dream,” the president of the Heritage Foundation and leader of Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, said at this year’s New York Climate Week.
Given that an unfortunately solid percentage of the next administration is likely sympathetic to Roberts’ notions, I was inclined to agree with Tommy Leep, the founder and sole operator of the software-focused “climate tech” venture firm Jetstream, when he posted this a few days after the election.
When I followed up with Leep, he told me, “I actually think it’s still a great time to start a climate startup. Just don’t call it a climate startup.” No matter who is in office, Leep said, he sees the arc of the startup universe bending toward companies with positive climate externalities. But that doesn’t mean we need to categorize them as such. “Call it ‘American dynamism,’ or ‘critical infrastructure,’ or ‘frontier tech,’ or any of these other things.”
Todd Khozein, co-founder and CEO of the startup incubator and investment firm SecondMuse, threw out some additional ideas — “energy efficiency,” “energy independence,” and “resilient cities” could all do the trick. After all, “Who doesn’t want a resilient city? Who doesn’t want to save?” Khozein asked.
And while Trump’s preferred term for his fossil-fuel oriented agenda, “energy dominance,” is a tad aggressive and definitely not something I’d want on my business card, many climate tech companies do play in the realm of “energy security” and “energy resilience” by providing baseload power to stabilize the grid, secure fuel supplies, and wean the U.S. off energy imports (a process that has been ongoing for more than a decade). These could be excellent euphemisms, because even if Trump guts the Department of Energy, he will definitely not do the same to the Department of Defense. DOD funding supports a number of clean technologies, including next generation geothermal, novel battery tech, and sustainable aviation fuel.
“I think that we’ll see a very rapid adaptation of the language of entrepreneurs because their survival is dependent upon it,” Khozein told me. “A lot of these businesses, if you’re not going to get that million dollar grant, if you’re not going to get that [Small Business Innovation Research funding], if you’re not going to get that support from the Department of Energy, then there’s simply no future.”
There’s certainly precedent for this type of alternate framing. This summer I reported on Florida’s climate resilience-focused tech hub, formed shortly after Governor Ron DeSantis deleted the words “climate change” from state law. But Francesca de Quesada Covey, who leads the hub’s development, told me that what resonates most with Floridians is the acknowledgement that their “relationship with water is changing.” And when I was researching the funding landscape for climate adaptation tech, Jay Koh, co-founder of the investment firm The Lightsmith Group, told me that the adaptation companies he’s interested in often “call themselves ‘business continuity’ or ‘water efficiency’ or ‘agricultural precision technologies’ or ‘supply chain management in the face of weather volatility.’”
Since Trump loyalists will be holding the purse strings of coveted government subsidies, grants, and loans, it’s clear why companies would want to rebrand. But Leep told me it’s an open question as to whether VCs such as Jetstream will feel compelled to follow suit. Personally, he’s now most excited to support startups that not only have a positive environmental impact, but are also aligned with the incoming administration’s focus on domestic manufacturing.
As for his website that advertises Jetstream’s focus on “pre-seed climate tech software startups?”
“Give me a couple months,” Leep assured me. “I’m sorting through what that language is.”
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How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.
The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.
As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.
What’s received less attention than the eagles is that Trump’s team signaled it could go even further by using the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a separate statute intended to support bird species flying south through the U.S. from Canada during typical seasonal migration periods. At the bottom of an Interior press release published in late July, the department admitted it was beginning a “careful review of avian mortality rates associated with the development of wind energy projects located in migratory flight paths,” and would determine whether migratory birds dying because of wind farms qualified as “‘incidental’ takings” – harm or death – under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
While not stated explicitly, what this means is that the department appears to be considering whether to redefine these deaths as intentional under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to Ben Cowan, a lawyer with the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
I reached out to Cowan after the eagle investigation began because his law firm posted a bulletin warning that developers “holding active eagle permits” might want to prepare for “subpoenas that may be forthcoming.” During our chat earlier this month, he told me that the eagle probe is likely going to strain financing for projects even on private lands that wouldn’t require any other forms of federal sign-off: “Folks don’t want to operate if they feel there’s a significant risk they might take an eagle without authorization.”
Cowan then voiced increasing concern about the migratory bird effort, however, because the law on this matter could be a quite powerful – if legally questionable – weapon against wind development.
Unlike the Endangered Species Act or the eagle protection law, there is currently no program on the books for a wind project developer to even obtain a permit for incidental impacts to a migratory bird. Part of the reason for the absence of such a program is the usual federal bureaucratic struggle that comes with implementing a complex statute, with the added effect of the ping-pong of federal control; the Biden administration started a process for permitting “incidental” impacts, but it was scrapped in April by the Trump team. Most protection of migratory birds under the law today comes from voluntary measures conducted by private companies and nonprofits in consultation with the federal government.
Hypothetically, hurting a migratory bird should be legally permissible to the federal government. That’s because the administration loosened implementation of the law earlier this year with an Interior Department legal opinion that stated the agency would only go after harm that was “intentional” – a term of art under the statute.
This is precisely why Cowan is fretting about migratory birds, however. Asked why the wind industry hasn’t publicly voiced more anxiety about this potential move, he said industry insiders genuinely hope this is “bluster” because such a selective use of this law “would be so beyond the pale.”
“It’s basically saying the purpose of a wind farm is to kill migratory birds, which is very clearly not the case – it’s to generate renewable electricity,” Cowan told me, adding that any effort by the Interior Department would inevitably result in lawsuits. “I mean, look at what this interpretation would mean: To classify it as intentional take would say the purpose of operating a wind farm would be to kill a bird. It’s obviously not. But this seems to be a way this administration is contemplating using the MBTA to block the operation of wind farms.”
It’s worth acknowledging just how bonkers this notion is on first blush. Is the federal government actually going to decide that any operating wind farm could be illegal? That would put entire states’ power supplies – including GOP-heavy states like Iowa – in total jeopardy. Not to mention it would be harmful overall to take operating capacity offline in any fashion at a moment when energy demand is spiking because of data centers and artificial intelligence. Even I, someone who has broken quite a few eye-popping stories about Trump’s war on renewables, struggle to process the idea of the government truly going there on the MBTA.
And yet, a door to this activity is now open, like a cleaver hanging over the industry’s head.
I asked the Interior Department to clarify its timeline for the MBTA review. It declined to comment on the matter. I would note that in mid-August, the Trump administration began maintenance on a federal dashboard for tracking regulations such as these and hasn’t updated it since. So we’ll have to wait for nothing less than their word to know what direction this is going in.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – County commissioners approved the controversial AES Rancho Viejo solar project after months of local debate, which was rendered more intense by battery fire concerns.
2. Nantucket, Massachusetts – The latest episode of the Vineyard Wind debacle has dropped, and it appears the offshore wind project’s team is now playing ball with the vacation town.
3. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson is pausing permitting on Cypress Creek Renewables’ Carriger solar project despite a recommendation from his own permitting council, citing concerns from tribes that have dogged other renewables projects in the state.
4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – The county rejected what is believed to have been its first utility-scale solar project, flying in the face of its zoning staff.
5. Morrow County, Oregon – This county is opting into a new state program that purports to allow counties more input in how they review utility-scale solar projects.
6. Ocean County, New Jersey – The Jersey shoreline might not get a wind farm any time soon, but now that angst is spreading to battery storage.
7. Fairfield County, Ohio – Hey, at least another solar farm is getting permitted in Ohio.
Talking NEPA implementation and permitting reform with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer at Saul Ewing LLP.
This week’s conversation is with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP. I reached out to her to chat about permitting because, well, when is that not on all of our minds these days. I was curious, though, whether Trump’s reforms to National Environmental Policy Act regulations and recent court rulings on the law’s implementation would help renewables in any way, given how much attention has been paid to “permitting reform” over the years. To my surprise, there are some silver linings here – though you’ll have to squint to see them.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.
So walk me through how you see the Trump administration handling renewable energy projects right now under NEPA.
In general, the federal government has been much more reluctant to the timely issue of permits in contrast to what we might be seeing on the more traditional side of things.
But that’s separate from NEPA — it relates to public notice and comments and the opportunity for third parties to get involved, ensuring any decision-making on the government side is done in a way that’s evocative of a fair system. On the NEPA side, I don’t know if they’re going to treat renewables any differently than they’re going to treat other sorts of projects. That’s different, from a policy perspective, [from] how they’re handling the permits.
If, from a policy perspective, the federal government is less inclined to make a determination about a particular project — or if it decides that it doesn’t like wind, for example, and isn’t going to issue a permit — that’s different than the procedural elements associated with a NEPA review.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in the Seven County case that agencies can be granted a lot of deference in their reviews under NEPA, seeing it more as a procedural statute than a substantive roadblock. What will this lead to?
I think that what we’re seeing – and every agency’s different – but what the court said is that lower courts should defer to the agency to establish their own protocols under NEPA. They’ve begun to streamline the process by which they issue permits, issue notices of those permits, and give people the opportunity to comment on them.
What we’re anticipating will happen if the court gets its wishes – and candidly, I think this is a good thing for developers, on both the renewables and non-renewables side – is that we’ll see more expeditious permitting from the federal government.
You may not like the determinations. There’s a possibility that certain permits are denied if the nature of the permit is in conflict with the federal government’s policy and intention. But you’ll get a quicker decision than you used to get. And if there’s a will to issue a permit, you’ll get it faster.
We’ve heard the concept of permitting reform or NEPA reform as a leveling of the playing field, but in this environment, it is not entirely clear that’ll be the case. Where does the battleground turn then for those who get, as you put it, rejections faster?
That’s a great question. Regrettably, the immediate battleground is the courts. There is certainly a right and an opportunity for anybody who feels a determination was incorrect to challenge that, and to challenge the particular agency’s implementation of NEPA.
Okay, but what’s the remedy here if renewables companies are just getting rejections faster from the Trump team?
Without a real-world example, it’s hard to give you legal theories, but they will always exist. It’ll be circumstantial, and good lawyers always come up with good arguments. I don’t think this issue is fully resolved, either. The Supreme Court has done a favor to everybody by at least defining the issue, but now we’ll have to see what happens as agencies make these kinds of determinations.