The New York Times is hiring another climate policy reporter. Come work with me! job-boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorkti...

Climate Policy Correspondent

Washington, DC

job-boards.greenhouse.io

@nytimes.com: Offshore wind is out. Geothermal power is in. And many climate technology start-ups are looking for ways to carry on without federal backing. “Clean energy isn’t dead in the Trump era. But it does look different these days,” writes @bradplumer.bsky.social

How Clean Energy Firms Are Trying to Survive the Trump Era

nytimes.com

The oil and gas industry wants to sell more LNG. The war in Iran -- and Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- might convince buyers that they would be better off with renewables, coal and nuclear power. by @rebeccafelliott.bsky.social and @bradplumer.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/b...

Why the Iran War May Force Countries to Rely Less on Natural Gas

nytimes.com

A giant wind farm in Wyoming died after facing permitting delays. In Indiana, a solar project stalled after the Trump administration blocked it from using a taxpayer-funded database. A federal permitting ‘blockade’ is hitting renewables projects hard. Story with @bradplumer.bsky.social:

A Trump ‘Blockade’ Is Stalling Hundreds of Wind and Solar Projects Nationwide

nytimes.com

I expected the cuts would be bad but I'm honestly stunned and sickened seeing how many great journalists the Washington Post just lost. People who nailed huge investigations, documented war zones, exposed horrific crimes, dropped all at once for failures they did not cause.

DOE cancels $3.7 billion in demonstration projects aimed at cutting emissions — a couple big carbon capture demos, but also cement, glass, iron, chemicals projects. Calpine and Exxon Mobil were hit, as were startups like Sublime and Brimstone. (Full list in story.) www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/c...

Energy Dept. Cancels $3.7 Billion for New Technologies to Lower Emissions

nytimes.com

Latest House GOP bill has faster phaseout of IRA clean electricity credits—need to start building wind/solar/battery/geothermal before 60 days after law passes and finish by end 2028, or no credit. Nuclear gets an exception—a new reactor can get the credit if it starts construction by end 2028.

DOE's super useful guides to commercializing key technologies are back! You can find the collection of "Pathways to Commercial Liftoff" reports here: yardsale.energy/liftoff-reports Plus check out my amazing graphic design skillz!

Since the IRA passed, companies have made plans to invest over $843 billion in clean energy projects. But just one-third of that has actually been invested, new data shows. Much of the rest is now at risk. On the new House Republican plan to dismantle the IRA, with @harrystevens.bsky.social

A Clean Energy Boom Was Just Starting. Now, a Republican Bill Aims to End It.

nytimes.com

Not an exaggeration to say this was pound-for-pound the most effective piece of US public diplomacy in China. Twitter was blocked, but U.S. embassy pollution tweets forced Beijing to start publishing its own pollution data, which fed public outrage. Result: millions breathing vastly less toxic air

U.S. Embassies Halt Air Quality Monitoring Abroad

Since 2008, embassies and other diplomatic posts had been publishing data about local air quality. In many countries, it was the only reliable source of such information.

nytimes.com

More than 300 workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration were told they were fired on Thursday. Now many of them are getting contacted and told to come back to their jobs: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/u...

Layoffs Expand at Federal Agencies, Part of Trump Purge

Mass firings have rocked multiple agencies as President Trump and Elon Musk ramp up plans to drastically slash and reshape the federal work force.

nytimes.com

New York Times is hiring for two climate reporter jobs — descriptions/how to apply at the links: 1) Climate policy reporter: nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NYT/de... 2) Climate adaptation reporter: nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NYT/de...

Update 2/2: Dept of Justice memo directs all agencies to comply with Friday's federal Court injunction prohibiting any arbitrary suspension of federal grants & assistance due to OMB memo or Trump's Executive Orders! Effective Monday 9am. Hat tip @benjaminwittes.bsky.social & @azevin.bsky.social

“These are real human beings. We have one woman in her 80s who lives alone, and if she does not get her roof fixed, well, we’re going to have a senior in her late 80s who is homeless." More on the human cost of this illegal freeze of obligated grants www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/c... 🎁🔗

Trump’s Halt on Climate Spending Freezes Jobs and Stalls Projects

nytimes.com

I've seen stories about how DeepSeek is upending expectations of rising demand but is that what the market's saying? Maybe things evolve further, but right now most of these stocks are back to… early January levels. A correction, sure, but doesn't seem like the big picture has hugely changed. No?

New Interior memo orders a 60-day pause on new approvals for all renewable energy development on federal land—not just wind, this one also affects solar. www.doi.gov/document-lib... (Very similar to an early Biden DOI memo ordering a 60-day freeze on new fossil fuel authorizations on public lands.)

Could the big VC Summer nuclear project in South Carolina come back from the dead? Santee Cooper is looking to sell the unfinished plant to buyers who might be interested in building two AP-1000s: www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Exclusive | South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand

Santee Cooper is working with bankers to solicit interest in V.C. Summer.

wsj.com

Desalination for drinking water is surprisingly affordable. Desalination for agriculture probably doesn't make a ton of economic sense apart from some high-value crops. Really interesting post by @hannahritchie.bsky.social www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/how-much-e...

How much energy does desalinisation use? Is it “absurdly cheap”?

A deep-dive on desalinisation.

sustainabilitybynumbers.com

FID status is one way to break it down. Another is by which projects actually have federal permits, which I track. Federal permitting status courtesy of permits.performance.gov. I have 5.8 GW of #offshorewind under construction (surprised some have no FID) + another 8.1 GW w/ all fed permits. /1

A few early things jump out on Trump's crackdown on wind power: — may affect wind projects on private lands, since many still need federal permits. — several approved offshore projects face lawsuits, Trump could decline to defend  — possibly puts chill on investment even past the next four years.

Wind Power in U.S. Faces Hit From Trump’s Executive Order

In a sweeping order, President Trump halted federal approvals for new wind farms, in a move that could affect projects on land and in the ocean.

nytimes.com

Appreciate the opportunity to chat w/ @nytimes.com about how we can build smarter (and to code!!) after these wildfires. Suspending wildfire building codes only kicks the can down the road and invites another disaster. Hardened homes and defensible space for the win. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

How L.A.'s Housing Development Plays a Role in Wildfire Risk

Fierce winds and months of drought set the conditions for the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles, but the growth of housing in fire-prone areas also played a major role.

nytimes.com

Pretty big blow for efforts to make low-carbon steel in the U.S. (Also a strong possibility that $500 million won't be repurposed under Trump's DOE and will go unspent, though I guess we'll see...) www.canarymedia.com/articles/gre...

SSAB quietly pulls out of $500M green steel award negotiations

The Swedish company sought to make iron using green hydrogen in Mississippi, as part of the Biden administration's $6B Industrial Demonstrations Program.

canarymedia.com

Nice brief history of prescribed burning (and why we don’t do more of it to reduce wildfire risk): jabberwocking.com/why-dont-we-... by @kdrum.bsky.social

Why don’t we do more prescribed burning? An explainer. - Kevin Drum

Prescribed fires—or the lack of them—are on everybody's lip these days. Most people are just parroting talking points for political purposes, but perhaps you'd actually like to be a little smarter abo...

jabberwocking.com

What are the arguments that utility wildfire prevention measures (which have broad societal benefits) should be funded by ratepayers and higher electricity rates instead of out of general budgets? It seems like an odd system with some downsides but maybe there are good reasons for it.

“We’ve forecast peak coal at least three times,” said Rory Simington, a coal analyst with Wood Mackenzie, a natural-resources analytics company. “We keep getting surprised.” www.wsj.com/business/ene...

The Billionaire Mining Magnate Who Bet Coal Had a Future—And Won Big

The U.K. closed its last coal-powered plant, but 76-year-old Low Tuck Kwong ignored naysayers and built a fortune from the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.

wsj.com

Really great thread. A key part: “But I also know that you can rebuild and manage the land so that next time the houses won't burn down. I've seen it work.”

Dr. Crystal A. Kolden@pyrogeog.bsky.social · 2y ago

Here's the reality about the #LAFires this week: this isn't the first time ANY of these places have burned. Not even close. In 2018, we mapped CA fire history to look at fire frequency across SoCal. Santa Monica Mtns area burns more than anywhere else -- up to once per decade in a given spot. 🧵

Global climate change worsens disasters, but blaming climate change alone deflects responsibility from effective local governance, infrastructure, and warning systems to multinational corporations and international climate mitigation efforts. Time to re-read @frediotto.bsky.social.

Don’t let climate change take all the blame

OPINION: The climate crisis is a massive problem, but when politicians fault it entirely for every disaster, attention is deflected from local measures that might build resiliency. That needs to chang...

knowablemagazine.org

Brian Schatz@schatz.bsky.social · 2y ago

The reason we are seeing floods in new places and wildfires in the “wet” season, the reason we spend hundreds of billions on disaster response, is that climate change makes bad weather more common and more intense. Climate inaction costs you money and puts you in danger.

This is pretty interesting. An attempt to electrify an entire home without needing to upgrade the electrical panels (which can cost $3,000 or more).

Justin Gerdes@justingerdes.bsky.social · 2y ago

"The idea was to try to combine all the different things that we devised as strategies in the most extreme situation that we could think of, which was a 120V house, which had never been done, to my knowledge,” Redwood Energy's Sean Armstrong told me: www.quittingcarbonmedia.com/this-solutio... 🔌💡

“1.5C was never the difference between safety + ruin, between hope + despair. It was negotiated by govts trying to answer a big q: What’s the highest global temp increase — and associated level of dangers — societies should strive to avoid?” Well said @zhonggg.bsky.social & @bradplumer.bsky.social

2024’s Record-Breaking Heat Brought the World to a Dangerous Threshold. Now What?

Global temperatures last year crept past a key goal, raising questions about how much nations can stop the planet from heating up further.

nytimes.com

The quotes above are from the @nytimes.com article by @zhonggg.bsky.social and @bradplumer.bsky.social with visualizations by @rjnskl.bsky.social (and quotes/data from bluesky users @ingerandersen.bsky.social and @carlobuontempo.bsky.social and @robbieandrew.bsky.social ) To read for free 👇5/5

2024’s Record-Breaking Heat Brought the World to a Dangerous Threshold. Now What? (Gift Article)

Global temperatures last year crept past a key goal, raising questions about how much nations can stop the planet from heating up further.

nytimes.com