Scoop: The Draft Order that Offshore Wind Opponents Sent to Trump

Major groups in the anti-offshore wind movement are going big, submitting a lengthy policy wish list to the Trump transition team, according to documents obtained and first reported by Heatmap News. Key organizations in the movement against offshore wind submitted a draft executi … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 23 days ago

3 Takeaways From Chris Wright’s Confirmation Hearing

With Donald Trump due to take office in less than a week and a Republican Congress already sworn in, much of the Biden administration’s effort to advance clean and especially renewable energy is now in doubt. The fate of the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to be a major flashpo … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 23 days ago

GiveDirectly Is Giving Cash to L.A. Fire Victims, No Questions Asked

Whether they’re dealing with fires like the ones ravaging Los Angeles or hurricanes like those that wreaked havoc in Florida and North Carolina just a few months ago, when natural disasters lay waste to homes and towns, what low-income residents often need most is quick cash. Tha … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 23 days ago

What the Oil and Gas Industry Expects from Trump

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms brought transportation chaos to Sydney and left 120,000 homes without power • Greece may resort to filling hotel pools with seawater instead of fresh water due to extreme drought • A clipper storm will bring some snow to the Great Lakes an … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 24 days ago

A Beginner’s Guide to the Hydrogen Economy

Hydrogen. What are you even supposed to think about it? If you’ve spent serious time focusing on climate policy, you’ve heard the hype about hydrogen — about the miraculous things that it might do to eliminate carbon pollution from cars, power plants, steel mills, or more. You’ve … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 24 days ago

The Five Feet That Could Prevent the Next Palisades Fire

For more than four years, California has had a law on the books meant to protect homes and buildings during an urban firestorm like the Palisade and Eaton fires. But it’s never gone into effect. In theory, the policy was simple. It directed state officials to develop new rules fo … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 24 days ago

The Great ESG Retreat

The first veto of Joe Biden’s presidency, in March 2023, came on a bill that would have overturned a Department of Labor rule allowing retirement funds to consider environment, social, and governance factors — commonly known as ESG — when making investment decisions. At the time, … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 24 days ago

The Offshore Wind Ban Is Coming

Current conditions: Nearly 10 million people are under alert today for fire weather conditions in southern California • The coastal waters off China hit their highest average temperature, 70.7 degrees Fahrenheit, since record-keeping began • A blast of cold air will bring freezin … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 24 days ago

Trump’s Offshore Wind Ban Is Coming, Congressman Says

President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon. “T … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 25 days ago

An Unexpected Obstacle to Putting Out the L.A. Fires

Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as lo … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 25 days ago

Trump’s Cabinet Picks Face Confirmation Hearings This Week

Current conditions: Odd weather has caused broccoli and cauliflower plants to come up far too early in the UK • Another blast of Arctic air is headed for the Midwest • An air quality alert has been issued in Los Angeles due to windblown dust and ash. THE TOP FIVE 1. Strong winds … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 25 days ago

What You Need to Know About the Still-Burning L.A. Fires

A week ago, forecasters in Southern California warned residents of Los Angeles that conditions would be dry, windy, and conducive to wildfires. How bad things have gotten, though, has taken everyone by surprise. As of Monday morning, almost 40,000 acres of Los Angeles County have … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 25 days ago

5 Tech Startups Working to Prevent Future Fires

Los Angeles has a long way to go before city and state officials can start looking for lessons to take away from these fires. Likely topics of discussion will include building resilient structures, vegetation management, and community preparedness. But there are also some more ou … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 27 days ago

One Reason That Trump Wants Greenland: Critical Minerals

A top aide to incoming President Donald Trump is claiming the president-elect wants the U.S. to acquire Greenland to acquire more rare minerals. “This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources,” Trump’s soon-to-be national security advisor Michael Waltz told Fox … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 28 days ago

The Wind Forecast Brings New Worries in L.A.

On Friday, Angelenos awoke to their first good news in three days: that the battle against the city’s unprecedented fires had finally turned in firefighters’ favor. Though the two biggest blazes — the Palisades and the Eaton — were still only single-digit contained, at 8% and 3%, … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 28 days ago

Could More Controlled Burns Have Stopped the L.A. Fires?

Once the fires stop burning in Los Angeles and the city picks itself up from the rubble, the chorus of voices asking how such a disaster could have been prevented will rise. In California, the answer to that desperate query is so often “better forestry management practices,” and … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 28 days ago

Why Misinformation About the L.A. Fires Keeps Spreading

Almost no city in the country is destroyed more often than Los Angeles. America’s second-biggest city has been flattened, shaken, invaded, subsumed by lava, and calved off into the sea dozens of times on screen over the years; as the filmmaker and critic Thom Andersen has said, “ … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 28 days ago

2024 Was the Year We Broke 1.5C

Current conditions: A sinkhole threatens to swallow up Ecuador’s large hydroelectric power plant • Air quality is poor in Delhi where dense smog has caused travel chaos • Nearly 40,000 customers are already without power in Texas as a winter storm rolls in. THE TOP FIVE 1. Biden … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 28 days ago

The L.A. Fires Are an Epochal Economic Disaster

Recovering from the Los Angeles wildfires will be expensive. Really expensive. Insurance analysts and banks have already produced a wide range of estimates of both what insurance companies will pay out and overall economic loss. AccuWeather has put out an eye-catching preliminary … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

Why the L.A. Fires Are Exceptionally Hard to Fight

A fire needs three things to burn: heat, fuel, and oxygen. The first is important: At some point this week, for a reason we have yet to discover and may never will, a piece of flammable material in Los Angeles County got hot enough to ignite. The last is essential: The resulting … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

What Started the Fires in Los Angeles?

As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Thursday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place? Though fires are less common in California during this t … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

Fox News Goes After a Solar Farm

1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved. Last week, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said it wanted to lease more than 400 acres of undeveloped st … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

How to Solve a Problem Like a Wind Ban

1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind. “They litter our country like paper, like dropping garbage in a field,” Trump said at a press conference T … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

Are Anti-Renewables Activists Going Unchallenged?

This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful researc … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

Are Anti-Renewables Activists Going Unchallenged?

This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful researc … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

An Insurance Startup Faces a Major Test in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is on fire, and it’s possible that much of the city could burn to the ground. This would be a disaster for California’s already wobbly home insurance market and the residents who rely on it. Kettle Insurance, a fintech startup focused on wildfire insurance for Califor … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

What Happened to America’s Emissions in 2024?

Current conditions: Winter storm Cora is expected to disrupt more than 5,000 U.S. flights • Britain’s grid operator is asking power plants for more electricity as temperatures plummet • Parts of Australia could reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming days because the monsoon, … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 29 days ago

Could Los Angeles Burn to the Ground?

Everyone knows the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, the one that allegedly knocked over a lantern in 1871 and burned down 2,100 acres of downtown Chicago. While the wildfires raging in Los Angeles County have already far exceeded that legendary bovine’s total attributed damage — at t … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

It’s Time to Recruit the Rich

As wildfires spread through the Los Angeles area, one resident of a tony neighborhood made a desperate plea for help on social media. “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades?” asked Keith Wasserman on X. “Will pay any amount.” The … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

What the L.A. Fires Are Doing to the City’s Air

Wildfires have been raging across Los Angeles County since Tuesday morning, but only in the past 24 hours or so has the city’s air quality begun to suffer. That’s because of the classic path of the Santa Ana winds, Alistair Hayden, a public health professor at Cornell who studies … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

California’s Insurance Overhaul Came Too Late

The massive wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in Southern California may deal a devastating blow to the state’s fragile home insurance market, which is in the midst of large-scale reforms as part of an effort to lure private insurers back to the state. In the years runn … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

California’s Insurance Overhaul Came Too Late

The massive wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in Southern California may deal a devastating blow to the state’s fragile home insurance market, which is in the midst of large-scale reforms as part of an effort to lure private insurers back to the state. In the years runn … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

The New Age of Wildfire Is Overwhelming America’s Clean Air

The Greater Los Angeles area is awash in smoke and ash as multiple fires burn in and around the city. It’s too soon to assess the overall pollution impacts from this rare January event, but we know the smoke is filled with tiny particles known as PM2.5, one of the most pernicious … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Does Climate Change Make the Santa Ana Winds Worse?

“It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows,” the great Los Angeles chronicler Joan Didion once wrote of the Santa Ana winds. It also happens to be the season of wildfires. The winds “bedeviled” efforts to fight the deadly Woolsey fire in 2 … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

In Los Angeles, Preparedness Wasn’t the Problem

January is one of the worst months of the year for wildfires — in southern Australia. Not in the metro area of Los Angeles, where it is, technically, supposed to be the rainy season. But try telling a fire that it’s unseasonal. At the time of this writing, three wildfires are bur … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

In Terror of Embers in Los Angeles

Ask me one thing I love about living in Los Angeles and there’s a good chance I’d say, Because it’s wild. The giant city park near us is no flat, grassy plane for picnicking and Frisbee, but a rugged expanse of coyotes and the occasional mountain lion, God rest his soul. Outside … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

The Growing Push to Ban Renewable Energy in Oklahoma

There’s a nascent, concerted effort to make Oklahoma the first state to ban new renewable energy projects. And it’s picking up steam. Across the U.S., activism against wind and solar energy has only grown in intensity, power, and scope in tandem with the recent renewables boom. T … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

11 Photos From a California on Fire

The Palisades, Hurst, and Eaton fires now spreading across Los Angeles are yet another reminder that our rapidly changing climate now acts in unprecedented ways, with hurricane-force winds, longstanding drought, and a host of other factors contributing to blazes that have so far … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Los Angeles’ Ferocious Fires

Current conditions: It is 27 degrees Fahrenheit in Dallas, Texas, and snow is expected • The whole of England is under a cold weather health warning until Sunday • A water boil advisory is in effect for Richmond, Virginia, after a winter storm cut power to the city’s water treatm … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Have China’s Emissions Already Peaked?

China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially flat this year — or they recorded a tiny increase, according to a recent report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA. A third of experts surveyed by the report believe that its coal emissions have peaked. … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

The Biden Administration Is Pitching Trump on Its Final Clean Energy Tax Credits

The Biden administration rolled out the pièce de résistance of its Inflation Reduction Act tax credits on Tuesday, publishing the final rules for its overhaul of the clean energy subsidies at the heart of both the bill and United States alternative energy policy going back decade … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

7 Very Trumpy Things Trump Said About Clean Energy Today

President-elect Donald Trump’s first press conference after yesterday’s certification of his election win (four years to the day since the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots) was never going to be a normal one. And so it proved that Trump’s wide-ranging comments at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesd … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Solar Microgrids for Data Centers? Not as Crazy as It Sounds!

After a year of concerted hand-wringing about the growing energy needs of data centers, a report that dropped just before the holidays proposed a solution that had been strangely absent from the discussion. AI companies have seemingly grasped for every imaginable source of clean … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Is the Texas Grid Ready for a Winter Storm?

Current conditions: Strong Santa Ana winds are bringing dangerous fire threats to Southern California • Heavy rainfall triggered severe floods in Mecca, Saudi Arabia • More than 2,300 flights were cancelled in the U.S. yesterday due to extreme winter weather. THE TOP FIVE 1. New … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

The Cybertruck Is the Third-Best-Selling EV in America. It’s Also a Failure.

It’s a bad sign when they won’t tell you the exact numbers. On Thursday, Tesla released final production figures for 2024, which saw the EV maker post a rare year-over-year decline in sales growth. It’s likely that a slow start for the Cybertruck, Tesla’s only new model in recent … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

The Search for a Somewhat Sustainable Aviation Fuel

There’s no quick fix for decarbonizing medium- and long-distance flights. Batteries are typically too heavy, and hydrogen fuel takes up too much space to offer a practical solution, leaving sustainable aviation fuels made from plants and other biomass, recycled carbon, or capture … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Congress Is Setting Up for a Public Lands Sell-Off

Americans love their public lands — particularly Americans living in the West, where easy access to the region’s undeveloped forests, mountains, rivers, deserts, and lakes is a point of identity and pride. But on Friday, in its first action as a voting body, the House of Represen … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago

Biden Just Issued a Huge Offshore Drilling Ban

Current conditions: Extreme heat in southeastern Australia triggered fire bans • More than 260 flood alerts are in place across England and Wales • A snow emergency is in effect in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are set to gather today to certify President-elect Donald Trump’s … | Continue reading


@heatmap.news | 1 month ago