The Department of Treasury published new rules last year that will determine which new electric vehicles, purchased for personal use, will qualify for a $7,500 tax credit. They went into effect on April 18, 2023, and last for the next decade or so. These new tax credit rules are … | Continue reading
How is the electric car industry doing? It depends on how you ask the question and who you ask it of.Two leading U.S. companies — one a startup turned stalwart, the other still trying to secure itself a foothold in the market — reported their production and sales figures for the … | Continue reading
Current conditions: States in the Northeast are bracing for a major winter storm • Two months’ worth of rain fell in just three days in eastern Australia • Major floods brought parts of Saudi Arabia to a standstill.THE TOP FIVE1. Fewer cars eligible for 2024 EV tax creditThe numb … | Continue reading
Suppose you’d never heard of the gas-powered car. One day, someone comes along to evangelize a new Honda CR-V as the hottest thing in technology. You might rightfully ask: Are you serious? You want me to put my family inside a box propelled by petroleum explosions? I’m supposed t … | Continue reading
This year set a high bar for climate writing, from fiction like Eleanor Catton’s terrific Birnam Woods and Lydia Kiesling’s sharp and prescient Mobility to nonfiction like John Vaillant’s best-of-list-topping Fire Weather and Jeff Goodell’s timely The Heat Will Kill You First. Ne … | Continue reading
I may be the new kid on the block (ICYMI I joined in November as Heatmap’s deputy editor), but if anything, I think that makes me even more qualified to talk about the most popular stories from our nine-ish months in existence — after all, for most of that time I was reading them … | Continue reading
I respect that it is still 2023 for three more days and that, as an act of self-love, you’ve permitted yourself not to think about the presidential election until next year, but bear with me for a moment. If you want to understand the biggest climate story of 2023, you’ve got to … | Continue reading
Humans have a natural inclination toward trees, and to telling stories about them. Norse mythology tells the story of Yggrasil, the world tree, upon which all the realms sit. The Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, and its descendant has become a major pilgrimage … | Continue reading
People love to complain about how there aren’t enough good movies that deal with climate change, and that the ones that do all focus on disasters without giving us any reason for hope. They aren’t wrong. The two most famous climate-themed movies ever made are probably The Day Aft … | Continue reading
Growing up, I begrudgingly attended the annual Father’s Day car show on our local Main Street. My dad liked to spend the morning ogling muscle cars and chatting up their often tattooed or bearded owners. I tried my best to feign interest, but as much as I love my dad, I just coul … | Continue reading
One of the biggest climate stories of the year — the first, and perhaps only, to go viral — didn’t so much draw attention to the warming planet as it did to the dangers of using fossil fuels. During the second week of January, Bloomberg reported that a federal safety agency would … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Temperatures are about 30 degrees higher in the Plains and Midwest than what’s seasonally normal • Northern Vietnam is enduring a severe cold spell • High winds from Storm Pia helped the U.K. set a new record for wind energy generation in just 30 minutes. THE … | Continue reading
The most generous, lucrative, and all-around lavish subsidy in President Joe Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is the new tax credit for clean hydrogen production. Under the policy, a company can get a bounty of up to $3 for each kilogram of hydrogen made with cle … | Continue reading
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is out with its annual Automotive Trends Report for 2022 model-year vehicles, and the numbers are some of the best it’s seen. Average emissions are at a record low and fuel economy is at a record high — and according to preliminary 2023-mo … | Continue reading
Katherine Ricke, a University of California at San Diego sustainability professor, turned to face the roomful of attentive scientists at the American Geophysical Union a few weeks ago. In any other year, she would have been about to break one of climate science’s biggest taboos. … | Continue reading
Back in April, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new vehicle emissions standards that seem poised to transform how our roads look. They’re so strict, according to NPR, that up to 67% of new vehicles sold in 2032 would have to be electric to meet them. Immediately, it … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Southern California remains at risk of flooding and may even see some waterspouts or tornadoes • A wildfire is burning out of control in Perth, in Australia • It's the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. THE TOP FIVE 1. U.S. may hike tariffs o … | Continue reading
When Canadian wildfire smoke descended on my hometown in Indiana this summer, I was distraught. I live in London now, but much of my family remains in the Midwest, and as an orange haze blanketed the landscape and the air quality plummeted, I worried about their health. “Smoke ev … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Southern California is bracing for heavy rain • China's bitter cold is complicating earthquake rescue efforts • Iceland's capital of Reykjavik could be hit by pollution from a volcanic eruption.THE TOP FIVE1. E-scooter company Bird files for bankruptcyE-scoote … | Continue reading
I’m not normally concerned about having the perfect home — though I’m also not normally interviewing Mr. Christmas Tree himself from my living room, with a scraggly, disco-lit Nordmann fir in the background of my Zoom shot.A high-quality tree should have “up-turning branches, so … | Continue reading
Yesterday, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Nikola founder Trevor Milton to four years in prison for lying to his investors about his electric truck startup’s prospects and progress. Last year, a jury found Milton guilty on one count of securities fraud and two counts of wi … | Continue reading
There’s a brook that runs along the Mountain Home Park in Brattleboro, Vermont, providing the sort of pleasant babbling sound people play at night to help them fall asleep. On a typical morning, the water moves quickly and is shallow enough that you can see the rocks under the su … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A volcano on Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula has finally started to erupt • At least 120 people were killed in an earthquake in China • Meteorologists say Americans on the East Coast hoping for snow in January should keep “expectations in check.”THE TOP FIVE1. S … | Continue reading
Voters in Maine were confronted with an unusual decision when they went to the polls this November. Question three on the ballot asked Mainers if they wanted to eliminate the two private utilities that delivered electricity to 97% of the state. A new, nonprofit utility called Pin … | Continue reading
Current conditions: More than 130,000 people on the East Coast are without power after a weekend storm • Freakishly strong winds killed at least 13 people in Argentina • China’s deep freeze continues to defy forecasters’ expectations. THE TOP FIVE1. Australia’s Queensland flooded … | Continue reading
Faulkner Architects have practiced from Truckee, California in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range for 35 years. The firm’s particular approach to design takes inspiration from founder Greg Faulkner’s former work in aircraft design. “Precision is one of the things we’re about,” Faul … | Continue reading
When I was in high school, I had to memorize the entire taxonomic hierarchy of the American moose. But I never learned about greenhouse gases. This never struck me as odd until I read a recent op-ed in The Boston Globe by Anita Soracco, a professor of physics and environmental sc … | Continue reading
The annual COP 28 gathering is over, and it’s about time. As Robinson Meyer writes here at Heatmap, many important things came out of the conference, despite the utter joke of holding it in a notorious oil dictatorship — the United Arab Emirates — with the head of that country’s … | Continue reading
As climate world fixated this week on the final wranglings at COP28, the researchers studying our changing planet delivered more bad news about the Arctic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 18th annual Arctic Report Card was packed this year with words like “e … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A major storm will batter the U.S. Eastern Seaboard this weekend • Moscow is buried under record snowfall • It's 50 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy in Paris, which was recently named the world's top city destination. THE TOP FIVE1. IEA: Coal demand remains high, … | Continue reading
In the moments after Sultan Al Jaber, the president of this year’s COP, struck his gavel to finalize the text of the first-ever global stocktake, Anne Rasmussen, the lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, took the floor. “We are a little confused about what just … | Continue reading
When the announcement came that COP29 will be held in Baku in 2024, the immediate reaction in the climate community was “again?!” It wasn’t that Azerbaijan — a nation of about 10 million people, situated on the Caspian Sea at the southern tail of the Caucasus mountains — had host … | Continue reading
Current conditions: More than 125 highways are closed in China due to a record-setting winter storm • Tropical Cyclone Jasper downed trees in parts of Queensland in Australia • The Geminids meteor shower will peak tonight. THE TOP FIVE1. Trump promises to revoke U.S. pledge to Gr … | Continue reading
Now it is over. Early on Wednesday morning, negotiators in Dubai reached an agreement at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global meeting otherwise known as COP28. Their final text for the Global Stocktake — a kind of report … | Continue reading
More than 2 million Tesla vehicles are set to receive over-the-air updates to address failures in the Autopilot system, the carmaker’s much-hyped and oft-abused driver-assistance program. But the recall report published by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration … | Continue reading
This year may forever be remembered as the start of the American clean energy manufacturing boom. Since the beginning of 2023, companies have announced more than 150 separate investments in new and expanded factories to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and othe … | Continue reading
As North America slept, delegates from around the world concluded the global climate conference in Dubai, when the chair — local oilman Sultan al-Jaber — quick-gaveled through an agreement that included a sentence calling for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy system … | Continue reading
The 2020s got off to a parched, smoky start in the West. But after three years of unrelenting drought, 2023 brought the region some relief. Thanks to a very snowy winter followed by a very rainy spring, the worst of the Western drought receded rapidly in the early months of this … | Continue reading
After two weeks of intense negotiations and apparent stalemate in Dubai, all 198 delegates swiftly approved a breakthrough climate agreement this morning at COP28. The deal — a culmination of a two-year process known as the global stocktake — isn’t perfect, and it was met with a … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Spain recorded its highest-ever December temperature • Flooding forced some London drivers to abandon their cars • It will be cold but clear tonight in New York City for Taylor Swift's blowout birthday bash. THE TOP FIVE1. Breakthrough COP28 deal calls for tra … | Continue reading
This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, has been broadly defined by two facts. The first is that the conference is headed by the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company. The second is that this is the year of the first global stocktake, a doc … | Continue reading
In the weeks leading up to Elon Musk’s latest round of controversies, 27% percent of Americans who reported wanting to buy an EV in the future said that the billionaire’s behavior made them less likely to pick a Tesla, down from 36% who said the same in February. On the other han … | Continue reading
Current conditions: It’s getting windy in Queensland as Tropical Cyclone Jasper approaches land. America’s chances of a white Christmas are looking increasingly slim. It’s cold but sunny in Washington, D.C., today, where Ukrainian President Zelensky will meet with President Biden … | Continue reading
It didn’t attract a lot of attention, but for a few months, it looked like the United Nations climate process might break down. There, process is substance: One of the most important acts every year is the selection of the next country to run the Conference of the Parties to the … | Continue reading
Political protests are a staple of COP summits. Thousands of climate activists descend on the event each year to call for stronger global commitments to building renewables and quitting fossil fuels.But at COP28, United Arab Emirates laws restricting speech and banning most forms … | Continue reading
New clean energy projects have a lot going for them. For one, building them has gotten extremely cheap. At the same time, because the wind blowing and the sun shining are unlimited free resources, operating costs for a clean energy power plant are also pretty low. That’s the beau … | Continue reading
One of the most exciting and contentious questions looming over the COP28 climate summit in Dubai this year has been whether countries will agree to an historic phase out of fossil fuels to stave off the worst effects of climate change. With one day left on the official conferenc … | Continue reading
Current conditions: At least six were killed in tornadoes that ripped through Tennessee over the weekend • Severe Tropical Cyclone Jasper is intensifying off of Australia’s Queensland coast • Dubai’s air quality is “moderate” today.THE TOP FIVE1. Saudi Arabia opposes any mention … | Continue reading