On a warming planet, knowing whether the home you’re about to invest your life savings in is at risk of being wiped out by a wildfire or drowned in a flood becomes paramount. And yet public data is almost nonexistent. While private companies offer property-level climate risk asse … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A midweek clipper storm is poised to bring as much as six more inches of snow to parts of the Great Lakes and Northeast • American Samoa is halfway through three days of fierce thunderstorms and temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit • Northern Portugal is … | Continue reading
There were 77,850 wildfires in the United States in 2025, and nearly half of those — 49% — ignited east of the Mississippi River, according to statistics released last week by the National Interagency Fire Center. That might come as a surprise to some in the West, who tend to bel … | Continue reading
The Treasury Department published proposed guidance last week for claiming the clean fuel tax credit — one of the few energy subsidies that was expanded, rather than diminished, by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. There was little of note in the proposal, since many of the hig … | Continue reading
The Treasury Department published proposed guidance last week for claiming the clean fuel tax credit — one of the few energy subsidies that was expanded, rather than diminished, by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. There was little of note in the proposal, since many of the hig … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The Seattle Seahawks returned home to a classically rainy, overcast city from their win in last night’s Super Bowl, though the sun is expected to come out for Wednesday's victory parade • Severe Tropical Cyclone Mitchell is pummeling Western Australia with as … | Continue reading
The permitting reform conversation is heating up.On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob talks to Senator Martin Heinrich about whether Republicans and Democrats will reach a permitting reform deal this year. They chat about what Democrats would need to see in such a deal, how i … | Continue reading
1. Marion County, Indiana — State legislators made a U-turn this week in Indiana.The Indiana House passed a bill on Tuesday that would have allowed solar projects, data centers, and oil refineries on “poor soil.” Critics lambasted the bill for language they said was too vague and … | Continue reading
This week’s conversation is with Emily Pritzkow, executive director for the Wisconsin Building Trades, which represents over 40,000 workers at 15 unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Union of Operating Engineers, and the Wiscons … | Continue reading
It’s probably an exaggeration to say that there are more alligators than people in Colleton County, South Carolina, but it’s close. A rural swath of the Lowcountry that went for Trump by almost 20%, the “alligator alley” is nearly 10% coastal marshes and wetlands, and is home to … | Continue reading
It’s a good time to be selling stuff to data center developers.That was the message from the beginning of earnings season for the renewables and the energy industry: If you can promise power to data centers quickly, you’re doing good business. (If you’re just a software business … | Continue reading
Everyone is talking about affordability and the rising cost of energy to power our lives — with good reason. Leading up to Winter Storm Fern, natural gas prices skyrocketed more than 50% in just two days. Since President Trump took office, electricity prices have risen by 13%, de … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, I covered a major raise in the virtual power plant space — a sector that may finally be ready to make a tangible impact on the grid after decades of theorizing. Beyond that, investors continued to place bets on both fusion and fission, as the Trump administration co … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Temperatures across the Northeast will drop nearly 30 degrees Fahrenheit below historical averages as another five inches snow heads for New England • Warmer air blowing eastward from the Pacific is set to ease the East Coast cold snap by mid-month • Storm Leo … | Continue reading
A group of local activists recently rallied against a major new industrial site in their area.They worried the new facility was going to suck up water and electricity. They fretted about the chemicals and risky materials it might store on site. And they argued that the land’s “li … | Continue reading
Big tech is spending big on data centers — which means it’s also spending big on power.Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced Wednesday that it expects to spend $175 billion to $185 billion on capital expenditures this year. That estimate is about double what it spent … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The snow squalls and cold air headed from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast are coming with winds of up to 55 miles per hour • A “western disturbance,” an extratropical storm that originates in the Mediterranean and travels eastward, is set to arrive in India a … | Continue reading
Long before the infamous trio of accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, nuclear scientists started working on a new type of fuel that would make a meltdown nearly impossible. The result was “tri-structural isotropic” fuel, better known as TRISO. The fuel encase … | Continue reading
The concept of virtual power plants has been kicking around for decades. Coordinating a network of distributed energy resources — think solar panels, batteries, and smart appliances — to operate like a single power plant upends our notion of what grid-scale electricity generation … | Continue reading
If all the snow and ice over the past week has you fed up, you might consider moving to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, or Atlanta. These five cities receive little to no measurable snow in a given year; subtropical Atlanta technically gets the most — maybe a couple … | Continue reading
Current conditions: After a brief reprieve of temperatures hovering around freezing, the Northeast is bracing for a return to Arctic air and potential snow squalls at the end of the week • Cyclone Fytia’s death toll more than doubled to seven people in Madagascar as flooding cont … | Continue reading
President Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. would create a domestic stockpile of critical minerals for civilian use — essentially a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but for lithium, copper, rare earths, and other rocks central to electronics and decarbonization.It’s one of many … | Continue reading
A specter is haunting permitting reform talks — the specter of regulatory uncertainty. That seemingly anodyne two-word term has become Beltway shorthand for President Donald Trump’s unrelenting campaign to rescind federal permits for offshore wind projects. The repeated failure o … | Continue reading
Debates over electricity policy usually have a common starting point: the “natural monopoly” of the transmission system, wherein the poles and wires that connect power plants to homes and businesses have exclusive franchises in a certain territory and charge regulated rates to ac … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Yet another snow storm is set to powder parts of the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic • Cyclone Fytia is deluging Madagascar, causing flooding that left at least three dead and 30,000 displaced in a country still reeling from the recent overthrow of its govern … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Yet another snow storm is set to powder parts of the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic • Cyclone Fytia is deluging Madagascar, causing flooding that left at least three dead and 30,000 displaced in a country still reeling from the recent overthrow of its govern … | Continue reading
The offshore wind industry is now five-for-five against Trump’s orders to halt construction. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Monday morning that Orsted could resume construction of the Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New England. This wasn’t a surprise considering Lambe … | Continue reading
The offshore wind industry is now five-for-five against Trump’s orders to halt construction. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Monday morning that Orsted could resume construction of the Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New England. This wasn’t a surprise considering Lambe … | Continue reading
The cars that sit atop the list of best-selling electric vehicles in the world wouldn’t surprise Americans. Through the first three quarters of 2025, Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 were the number one and two EVs in the world, just as they are in the United States. But after that, t … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A bomb cyclone dumped as much as 16 inches of snow on North Carolina, and more snow could come by midweek • Tampa, Florida, is seeing rare flurries, putting embattled citrus crops at risk • Sri Lanka is being inundated by intense thunderstorms as temperatures … | Continue reading
Any day now, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is expected to officially rescind what climate advocates refer to as “the endangerment finding,” its 2009 determination that greenhouse gas emissions threaten Americans’ public health and welfare and therefore require regulatio … | Continue reading
When Trump first entered office, he banned wind projects from receiving permits that would allow operators to unintentionally hurt or kill a certain number of federally protected eagles, transforming one of his favorite attacks on the industry into a dangerous weapon against clea … | Continue reading
It’s been a big few weeks for both minerals recycling and venture capital fundraising. As I wrote about earlier this week, battery recycling powerhouse Redwood Materials just closed a $475 million Series E round, fueled by its pivot to repurposing used electric vehicle batteries … | Continue reading
It’s been a big few weeks for both minerals recycling and venture capital fundraising. As I wrote about earlier this week, battery recycling powerhouse Redwood Materials just closed a $475 million Series E round, fueled by its pivot to repurposing used electric vehicle batteries … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The bomb cyclone barrelling toward the East Coast is set to dump up to 6 inches of snow on North Carolina in one of the state’s heaviest snowfalls in decades • The Arctic cold and heavy snow that came last weekend has already left more than 50 people dead acro … | Continue reading
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has been quietly accelerating the energy transition in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast since 2005. Lately, however, the noise around the carbon market has gotten louder as many of the compact’s member states have seen rising energy prices dom … | Continue reading
A new Trump administration policy is indefinitely delaying necessary water permits for solar and wind projects across the country, including those located entirely on private land. The Army Corps of Engineers published a brief notice to its website in September stating that Adam … | Continue reading
Dane County, Wisconsin – The QTS data center project we’ve been tracking closely is now dead, after town staff in the host community of DeForest declared its plans “unfeasible.” As I previously explained to Fight readers, this QTS project was a quintessential data center conflict … | Continue reading
This week’s conversation is with Connie Di Cicco, legislative director for Georgia Conservation Voters. I reached out to Connie because I wanted to best understand last November’s Public Service Commission elections which, as I explained at the time, focused almost exclusively on … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A bomb cyclone is headed up the East Coast, bringing more cold air and possible blizzard conditions to the Northeast, especially New England • Even Tampa Bay, where so-called snowbirds from the Northeast go to winter, could see snow by the end of this week • A … | Continue reading
Utilities asked regulators for permission to extract a lot more money from ratepayers last year.Electric and gas utilities requested almost $31 billion worth of rate increases in 2025, according to an analysis by the energy policy nonprofit PowerLines released Thursday morning, c … | Continue reading
Amidst a two year-long slump in lithium prices, the Nevada-based battery recycling company Redwood Materials announced last summer that it had begun a new venture focused on grid-scale energy storage. Today, it’s clear just how much that bet has paid off. The company announced a … | Continue reading
A new kind of climate lawsuit just dropped.Last week the state of Michigan joined the parade of governments at all levels suing fossil fuel companies for climate change-related damages. But it’s testing a decidedly different strategy: Rather than allege that Big Oil deceived the … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Temperatures as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit below average are expected to persist for at least another week throughout the Northeast, including in New York City • Midsummer heat is driving temperatures up near 100 degrees in Paraguay • Antarctica is facing in … | Continue reading
It’s been a huge few weeks for the electric vehicle industry — at least in North America.After a major trade deal, Canada is set to import tens of thousands of new electric vehicles from China every year, and it could soon invite a Chinese automaker to build a domestic factory. G … | Continue reading
The Vineyard Wind offshore wind project can continue construction while the company’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s stop work order proceeds, judge Brian E. Murphy for the District of Massachusetts ruled on Tuesday. That makes four offshore wind farms that have … | Continue reading
Whatever you think of as the most important topic in energy right now — whether it’s electricity affordability, grid resilience, or deep decarbonization — long-duration energy storage will be essential to achieving it. While standard lithium-ion batteries are great for smoothing … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Winter Storm Fern may have caused up to $115 billion in economic losses and triggered the longest stretch of subzero temperatures in New York City’s history • Temperatures across the American South plunged up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit below historical averages … | Continue reading