katie brigham
@kbrigham.bsky.social
climate tech reporter (or energy dominance, energy security, resilient infra etc. etc. reporter) at @heatmap.news | signal: katieb.40 📍 Seattle, WA
@alexckaufman.bsky.social explains why nuclear plant uprates are in (⚛️🆙, for visual learners)
Big Tech’s Nuclear Hedge
Advanced nuclear will take a decade or more to hit commercial scale. Meanwhile, the hyperscalers need power now. Enter the uprate.
heatmap.news
I wrote about "project certainty" in the new permitting bill, looking at past examples like Obama vetoing the Spruce coal mine and Biden rejecting Keystone XL as case studies to show how the bill would (and would not) constrain executive power over energy projects. heatmap.news/politics/baa...
What a President Can and Can’t Do Under the Senate Permitting Bill
How the bill would have affected (or not affected) the Keystone XL pipeline, the Lava Ridge wind farm, and other major project proposals.
heatmap.news
permitting bonanza continues! i weigh in on the climate tech industries/companies that stand to benefit most from the senate's new permitting bill
The Climate Tech Winners and Losers of the Senate’s Permitting Bill
Spoiler: They’re mostly winners.
heatmap.news
opened chess dot com today. the bots are Halloween-themed. this is a huge relief because if they hadn't been Halloween-themed I would have done something drastic. I would have lost control
it's a good day for good news. last summer i wrote about how plug-in balcony solar is starting to catch on domestically. and lo, just a few mins ago california officially jumped on the bandwagon, clearing the way for residents to install these small-scale systems
California Joins Growing Plug-In Solar Boom as Power Costs Surge
The state is the 10th to allow so-called balcony solar as officials grapple with soaring electricity bills.
bloomberg.com
hi energy freaks, as you surely know, the senate has a permitting deal! heatmap explains!
The Senate’s Big Bipartisan Permitting Deal, Explained
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act would remove longstanding roadblocks to expanding the power grid and developing new energy infrastructure. Here’s our guide.
heatmap.news
Under the new bipartisan permitting bill, AI data centers and crypto miners would have to report their energy use to the federal government for the first time. This is already required for other large energy users. Has been long sought for data centers by Elizabeth Warren and others.
The Senate's permitting bill text is up. It's way too big/complex for anyone who didn't have early access to digest today, so beware hot takes, but this bit (p. 54 line 9) is funny: If an agency misses a deadline, the agency head can't travel >25 miles from their desk til the agency submits the doc.
energy.senate.gov
leaving aside the broader debate about whether it would be a useful or terrible intervention, this is a good piece on the true cost of solar geoengineering and its potential impact on CDR market
"Cheap" geoengineering is coming. Here's what it's really going to cost.
“Cheap” solar geoengineering is coming. Here’s what it’s really going to cost.
climatemoney.substack.com
great @emilypont.bsky.social story about a new initiative to quantify the energy intensity and emissions of proprietary AI models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI
Which AI Models Use the Most Energy?
A new dashboard from the Sustainable AI Group, founded by artificial intelligence alums, estimates the relative energy intensity of proprietary tools.
heatmap.news
in which i talk to a lot of investors and learn a big new word! another successful climate week in the books ✔️✔️✔️ heatmap.news/daily/ai-cli...
How AI Split Climate Tech in Two
Plus more venture capital musings on Day 4 of New York Climate Week.
heatmap.news
banger graph from @emilypont.bsky.social tracking how democrats' climate languaging has shifted with the release of their new climate policy agenda heatmap.news/politics/dem...
US Energy Data is an awesome new dashboard by @hannahritchie.bsky.social and the @ifp.bsky.social team that takes data from the inimitable DOE EIA and makes it far more accessible to the broader community: usenergydata.org
Understanding America's energy system
Track and understand the numbers behind US energy — year by year, and state by state.
usenergydata.org
📝 New article on Our World in Data: Is organic farming better for the environment than conventional farming? One of the most common questions we’re asked about food systems is whether organic farming is better for the environment than conventional methods.
Odyssey Energy Solutions just raised $74 million to help small solar installers in emerging markets like nigeria and india access the financing and equipment they need to build distributed solar — supplementing unreliable national grids as diesel costs climb and energy demand surges
Odyssey Energy Raises $74 Million to Supercharge Small-Scale Solar
Across the Global South, distributed energy is “leapfrogging a centralized grid,” Odyssey’s cofounder told Heatmap.
heatmap.news
It's very very hot in Texas. But the grid is fine. Electricity prices are manageable. What happened? 🔋🔋🔋🔋BATTERIES!!! 🔋🔋🔋 heatmap.news/energy/texas...
The Texas Grid Has Had a Boring Summer Thanks to Batteries
Temperatures are high, but electricity drama is low.
heatmap.news
the US is in the midst of a historic nat gas buildout — with much of it tied to data centers, many of the biggest projects going off-grid, and a meaningful chunk of it dirtier than the last big gas boom in the 2000s
Emily Pontecorvo@emilypont.bsky.social · 2mo agoThere's been a lot of news about natural gas megaprojects tied to data centers recently, and it's getting hard to keep track. I put together a list of the 10 biggest projects, (according to their developers' aspirations, at least,) and the status of each. heatmap.news/energy/10-bi...
More pushback against the recent "glass half full" analysis of OBBB impacts. "Economy-wide, the GOP tax law eliminates between 67% and 85% of the emissions reductions projected under the IRA, bringing us back nearly to the No IRA world."
A ‘Glass Half Full’ Isn’t Enough to Fight Climate Change
We have run out of time for half measures, argues the Natural Resources Defense Council’s head of climate science and policy.
heatmap.news
Imagine if hundreds of people died in hurricane or floods smashing through Europe Heatwaves have already killed that many ppl. They are a silent killer in that they dont generate outrage or fear. Hope this by @economist.com helps save lives as Europeans wake up to danger bsky.app/profile/eate...
Oliver Morton, Eater of Sun@eaterofsun.bsky.social · 4mo agoMy round up of @economist.com's heatwave coverage (gift link) www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
Pacific Fusion just broke ground in Albuquerque on a $1 billion fusion reactor designed to do what no company or lab ever has before: produce more energy than the entire machine consumes, by 2030
Pacific Fusion Just Broke Ground on a $1 Billion Test Reactor
The New Mexico facility aims to achieve net energy gain by 2030.
heatmap.news
The biggest fossil fueled power plant EVER BUILT IN THE US.... will get an environmental assessment, the less rigorous review under the national environmental policy act... and complete permitting in just 7 months, per the Trump admin. yep
jae holzman@jael.bsky.social · 2mo agoSCOOP: The Trump administration claims it will complete the entire federal environmental review for the biggest gas power project in the U.S. — the OpenAI-Nvidia data center in Ohio — within the span of only seven months. Not kidding! Source in the reply. For @heatmap.news
narrative violation: some left-wing voices have spent the past few days yelling at david crowley to endorse a data center moratorium in response to GOP attacks. but his data center policies are *already* generally far more restrictive than abdul el-sayed’s heatmap.news/daily/data-c...
The Data Center Trojan Horse
The last week of Wisconsin’s politics show the risks of the data center issue for Democrats — and decarbonization.
heatmap.news
Stunning reporting from @ericklinenberg.bsky.social on how climate change driven extreme heat in Europe is reshaping the continent. Must read.
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2mo agoAs extreme heat overwhelms Europe’s great cities, they are racing to adapt to a climate that they were never built to withstand. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
"The theoretical potential of California’s demand response strategy has far outpaced the realized grid benefits," writes @kbrigham.bsky.social. “Load flexibility has underdelivered for a long time,” says GridLab's @ricoconnell.bsky.social: heatmap.news/energy/calif... 🔌💡
Exclusive: How California Could Unlock Its Distributed Energy Potential
A new report from a coalition of energy and data analytics organizations offers recommendations for the country’s demand response leader.
heatmap.news
