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What Biden’s Budget Proposal Says About Climate Projects
Current conditions: Tropical storm Filipo will make landfall on Mozambique’s coast today • Morel season has begun in parts of the Midwest • It is cold and cloudy in Stockholm, where police forcibly removed climate activst Greta Thunberg from the entrance to parliament. THE TOP FIVE 1. Climate and energy ‘figure prominently’ in Biden’s budget President Biden proposed a $7.3 trillion budget yesterday, and his “climate and energy promises figured prominently,” reported E&E News. Biden requested $17.8 billion for the Interior Department to help with climate resilience, national parks, wildfire management, tribal programs, ecosystem restoration, and water infrastructure in the west. He...
Where Heat Pumps Win — And Where They Lose
Some Americans install heat pumps because they care about climate change. But most people aren’t going to make the switch until it makes sense economically. Pinpointing where and for whom heat pumps are a good investment is surprisingly tricky because U.S. housing is so diverse, with a wide range of building sizes and ages, situated in different local climates with different utility rates.But for the first time, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Lab have sorted through much of this complexity to get deeper to the truth about the costs, benefits, and challenges of deploying heat pumps in the...
Texas Doesn’t Like the EPA’s New Methane Rules
Current conditions: It will be very blustery across the northeast today • Flooding and landslides killed 26 people in Indonesia • Catholics in drought-stricken Barcelona celebrated the coming of rain by carrying a figure of the Holy Christ through the city’s old town. THE TOP FIVE1. Texas challenges EPA’s new methane rules Texas is suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its sweeping methane rules that target oil and gas operations. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is 80 times more warming than carbon dioxide, and oil and gas sites are a key source of man-made methane emissions. The EPA regulations,...
The Federal Reserve Needs to Get Serious About Climate Change
People really hate inflation. Fortunately, prices are no longer rising nearly as rapidly as they were in 2021 and 2022. However, we may be on the cusp of a longer epoch of periodic inflation caused by climate change, one of the biggest long-term threats to price stability. The Federal Reserve should act accordingly. America’s central bank has a dual mandate: It calibrates monetary policy to maximize employment while minimizing inflation. With unemployment reaching record lows, the Fed has been focused on controlling the spike in inflation we saw from 2021-2022. It quickly raised interest rates over the last two...
The R2 Is the Rivian That Matters
Rivian’s “one more thing” turned out to be the one big thing. At the end of its Orange County event to showcase R2, the $45,000 SUV meant to carry the EV brand into the mainstream, founder R.J. Scaringe rolled out a surprise (or two): The previously unannounced, even smaller R3 and the R3X, a “rally-inspired crossover designed for whatever you throw at it.” Car internet was set aflame. Indeed, the R3X in particular looks like a 2020s take on the hot hatch. It echoes automotive shapes that have become endangered in our trucks-and-crossovers-only car market. Lustful posts ensued, leading onlookers...
Heatmap Turns 1
I can’t quite believe it: Today is the one-year anniversary of Heatmap. And what a year it’s been.When I left my old job as editor of The Week, climate change had a reputation among journalists as being the one scary subject that nobody wanted to read. It was too depressing, too technical, too boring to sustain dedicated coverage. That misperception is finally ending — and I like to think Heatmap put some nails in the coffin.Heatmap’s mission is to tell the inside story of the race to fix the planet. We think this is the most important and interesting...
Look Closely at Rivian’s New SUV. You’ll See a Survival Strategy.
Let’s get the big news out of the way: The new Rivian cars are very cool. The airy R2 is a two-row SUV that, if released today, would rival anything else on the American electric vehicle market; Rivian claims that its entry level trim will cost $45,000 and that it will get more than 300 miles of range. After including the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives, that means the starting price for this car — for many Americans — will be $37,500.Even more exciting are the company’s R3 and performance-oriented R3X, a hot-hatchback-slash-crossover concept that will be even cheaper than...
We’re Thinking About ‘the Apocalypse’ All Wrong
It was another Emily who wrote, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” but Emily Raboteau’s Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse” builds on that notion in a fresh and literal fashion. The collection of essays, out March 12, is loosely structured around Raboteau’s attempt to see and photograph all of the paintings in the Audubon Mural Project in her New York City neighborhood, Washington Heights. In practice, though, the book is an honest look at the overlapping injustices of our current age and an inspiring suggestion — by way of example — of how to move forward and...
Rivian Just Unveiled 3 New Electric SUVs
Current conditions: Most of Alabama is under a flood watch • It will be so hot in Southern Australia this weekend that special bins have been set up to collect dead bats • Hazardous smog choked 54 of Thailand’s 77 provinces this week. THE TOP FIVE 1. Biden talks up energy and economic wins during SOTU President Biden’s final State of the Union address before the November election represented as good a chance as any for him to make his pitch to the American people — and he did so without ever saying the name of his most significant piece of legislation,...
Why Biden Talked Up the IRA Without Saying Its Name
Would the IRA by any other name be as sweet to voters? It’s a valid question. President Biden’s final State of the Union address before the November election represented as good a chance as any for him to make his pitch to the American people — and he did so without ever saying the name of his most significant piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. That might seem like a curious, or even downright disastrous, choice to make regarding a law that has struggled with branding. Though the actual contents of the law are popular with voters, some...
Bitcoin Has a Feel-Good Energy Story
The price of Bitcoin set a new all time high this week, crossing the $69,000 mark on Tuesday before falling back down to around $67,500 by Thursday afternoon. That almost certainly means Bitcoin’s energy usage is rising, too — although any chance of getting a precise idea of how much, even just in the U.S., may be delayed for months. Last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration agreed to stop collecting data on crypto mining operations after a federal court in Texas put a halt on the project until the EIA goes through a more fulsome approval process. That...
Will Climate Get a SOTU Shout Out?
Current conditions: Red flag fire warnings are in place across West Texas • Heavy rainfall caused extreme flooding in parts of West Java • Tourists in Morocco are disappointed to find the country’s public baths have been closed three days a week due to severe drought. THE TOP FIVE 1. Biden urged to highlight climate wins in SOTU Happy State of the Union day! President Biden will address Congress this evening, just as election season gets going in earnest, and some in his party are urging him to use the opportunity to make a Very Big Deal of his progress in...
The One Big Change to the SEC’s Climate Rule
The Securities and Exchange Commission approved a highly anticipated rule on Wednesday that will require companies to disclose information about their climate-related risks to investors. But the final rule differs dramatically from the proposal the Commission released two years ago, with significantly weaker provisions that leave it up to companies to decide how much information to share.Perhaps the most dramatic change: Most of the climate-related disclosures the rule covers are now mandatory only if they’re considered “material.” Under the original rule, all public companies would have been required to calculate and report the greenhouse gas emissions they are directly...
It’s Decision Day for the SEC
Current conditions: Texas’ Smokehouse Creek Fire is now 37% contained • Parts of Oklahoma and Texas could see large hail today • An excessive heat warning is in place for Bangkok where the heat index hit 107 degrees Fahrenheit.THE TOP FIVE1. SEC set to vote on corporate climate disclosuresThe Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to issue a long-awaited, final rule today on what climate-related disclosures public companies have to make to their investors. The rules will cover a company’s greenhouse gas emissions and its exposure to climate-related risks, like extreme weather or future regulations. The SEC’s initial proposal...
Does Rooftop Solar Actually Help the Climate?
For a few weeks now, Heatmap’s staff writer, Emily Pontecorvo, has been trying to figure out if installing rooftop solar panels on your home actually reduces carbon pollution in a systematic way. In other words: If you own a home, and install solar panels on it, are you doing anything to change how much fossil fuel gets burned in your region or around the world? Or — somewhat counterintuitively — will your panels just increase the cost of electricity near you while shifting demand for those fossil fuels around? On this week’s episode, we try to answer these questions in...
Why Are There So Many Methane Satellites?
On Monday afternoon, a satellite the size of a washing machine hitched a ride on a SpaceX rocket and was launched into orbit. MethaneSAT, as the new satellite is called, is the latest to join more than a dozen other instruments currently circling the Earth monitoring emissions of the ultra-powerful greenhouse gas methane. But it won’t be the last. Over the next several months, at least two additional methane-detecting satellites from the U.S. and Japan are scheduled to join the fleet. There’s a joke among scientists that there are so many methane-detecting satellites in space that they are reducing...
Amazon Just Bought a Nuclear-Powered Data Center
Current conditions: A tumbleweed invasion nearly buried some houses in Utah • Storms triggered floods, avalanches, and tornadoes across Italy • California’s snowpack is above normal levels for the first time this year.THE TOP FIVE1. Amazon Web Services buys nuclear-powered data center Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, just paid $650 million for a data center that runs on nuclear power. Talen Energy’s Cumulus data center campus in Pennsylvania gets power from the Susquehanna nuclear plant, one of the largest nuclear power plants in the U.S. It will give Amazon a supply of clean carbon-free power, which the...
John Kerry’s Next Move
Current conditions: California’s Sierra Nevada range is expecting another snowstorm • Dangerous smog has settled on Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi • Drought-stricken Sicily has declared a state of emergency.THE TOP FIVE1. John Kerry nears last day as climate envoy This week marks the end of an era in climate diplomacy: John Kerry, the first special presidential envoy for climate, is leaving government. On Wednesday he’ll hand the reins to White House senior advisor John Podesta, though Kerry plans to stay involved in the global fight against climate change on a less formal level. “The reason that I’ve decided to...
A Carbon Tax Is Back on the Table
Climate policy has been all over the place lately thanks to pressure from interest groups, pre-election jitters, and the plausibility of a re-elected President Donald Trump laying waste to existing climate policy.But further in the future, beyond the ups and downs of electoral politics, there’s a policy cataclysm coming that, some hope, could create an opening for that long sought, always denied dream of climate policy: the carbon tax.Let’s back up. There are two things happening that might free up this policy space, one domestic, and the other overseas. At the end of 2025, much of the Tax Cuts...
Tesla’s Superchargers Just Got a Whole Lot Busier
It’s a strange sight: Ford F-150 Lightning trucks and Mustang Mach-E crossovers lined up at a Tesla Supercharger, plugged into the familiar red-and-white posts. After years of driving a Model 3, and greeting only other Teslas at our charging stops, I can’t quite get used to the visual. Yet I must, because a new phase of EV charging has arrived. In the year-plus since Tesla transformed its proprietary plug into an open standard and invited the other automakers to adopt it, they did. Company after company pledged to adopt the renamed North American Charging Standard (which has since been given...
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