Heatmap News

Funding Friday: Tom Steyer Makes a Real Estate Play On Galvanize’s latest fund strategy and more of the week’s big money moves.

lots going on this week! tom steyer's investment firm raises a fund to decarbonize real estate, a dutch startup nabs $ for a novel method of clean heat production, a former tesla exec rolls out electric motorbikes in east africa, and an offshore wind developer seeks to power submerged data centers

China Loosens Its Climate Goals On fusion’s big fundraise, nuclear fears, and geothermal’s generations uniting

In Friday’s Heatmap AM:

🇨🇳 China softens its emissions targets
🙅 No one bids in Trump’s first Alaska oil and gas lease sale
❌ FEMA cancels managers trainings, except for World Cup

Close out your week with the latest from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/am/china-cli...

Scoop: FEMA Cancels All Emergency Manager Trainings Except for those related to the FIFA World Cup.

SCOOP:

FEMA has canceled all local emergency manager trainings due to the DHS shutdown — except for those related to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Here’s @jeva.bsky.social with the story:

heatmap.news/adaptation/f...

Trump’s Renewables Permitting Thaw Is Also a Legal Strategy The administration has begun shuffling projects forward as court challenges against the freeze heat up.

The Trump administration has restarted permitting processes that have been jammed up for months — just as it’s being forced to answer for the delays in court.

Here’s @jael.bsky.social on the secondary function of the permitting thaw:

heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

Bill Gates’ TerraPower Gets Nuclear Regulators’ Green Light On lithium demand, coal, and compressed air energy storage

NEW in Heatmap AM:

✅ NRC approves fourth-generation nuclear reactor for construction
📈 Lithium demand to hit 13 M tonnes by 2050
🇨🇳 China commissions world’s largest compressed air storage plant

Study up on the latest climate news from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/am/terrapowe...

Careful With That Wild-Caught Tuna The Trump administration’s rollback of coal plant emissions standards means that mercury is on the menu again.

Mercury poisoning is back on the menu.

Here’s @jeva.bsky.social with the story of how the Trump administration’s rollback of coal plant emissions regulations could wind up in your tuna:

heatmap.news/climate/trum...

Clean Energy Stocks Aren’t Yet Seeing a Boost From the Iran War On Qatari aluminum, floating offshore wind, and Taiwanese nuclear

In today’s Heatmap AM:

🇶🇦 Qatari aluminum smelter shuts down due to Iran War
🧪 A solar manufacturer spills 300 gallons of chemicals
⚡ A Quebec company claims it can stop lightning

Catch up on all the latest stories with @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

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Oil Is Surging. Clean Energy Stocks Are Down Anyway. Here are three reasons why.

Oil prices are up, so clean energy stocks must be celebrating, right?

Wrong.

Here’s @zeitlin.bsky.social with 3 reasons why:

heatmap.news/energy/why-i...

Judge to Trump on Congestion Pricing: Get Outta Here “It is difficult to imagine more arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking than that at issue here.”

BREAKING:

A federal judge dismissed Trump’s challenge to New York’s congestion pricing program, writing, “It is difficult to imagine more arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking than that at issue here.”

Here’s @emilypont.bsky.social with the backstory:

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Oil and Gas Prices Surge as Trump Warns of Prolonged War in Iran On BlackRock’s AES buy, Chinese solar, and Canadian uranium

Heatmap AM’s top stories:

👆 Oil and gas prices surge as war in Iran has no end in sight
💰 BlackRock buys utility heavyweight AES
☀️ China’s solar generation, up 40% from last year, overtakes its wind sector

Peruse the top news from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/am/trump-ira...

Why the Iran War Is a Warning for Natural Gas Podcast Episode · Shift Key with Robinson Meyer · March 2 · 28m

New on SHIFT KEY:

@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social has an emergency discussion with @eurasiagroup.net's @gbrew24.bsky.social on Iran, energy markets, and where this conflict will end.

Listen here — or wherever you get your podcasts:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

War With Iran Isn’t Just an Oil Story The U.S.-Israeli campaign will have, if anything, bigger implications for liquified natural gas.

War with Iran has big implications for oil markets — but it might have even bigger implications for natural gas.

@zeitlin.bsky.social explains:

heatmap.news/energy/iran-...

Trump’s Iran War Could Send Oil Prices Past $100 a Barrel On Greenpeace, deep-sea mining, and Lithuanian nuclear

Today in Heatmap AM:

🛢️ War with Iran could send oil prices over $100 a barrel
👨‍⚖️ Greenpeace USA faces $345 million in damages over DAPL
🌊 U.N. agency pledges to legalize deep-sea mining this year

Get up to speed with @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/am/trump-ira...

How Trump’s War Could Destabilize the Global Energy Market It starts — but doesn’t end — with the Strait of Hormuz.

The risk that this new Iran war destabilizes global energy prices is much higher than last time, analysts tell @zeitlin.bsky.social and @heatmap.news heatmap.news/energy/trump...

Glad to have you as a subscriber!

How Trump’s War Could Destabilize the Global Energy Market It starts — but doesn’t end — with the Strait of Hormuz.

So far, U.S. attacks are “targeting, fairly heavily, naval assets and assets that are close to the Gulf,” Greg Brew, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, told @zeitlin.bsky.social, which “suggests that they are trying to degrade Iran’s ability to disrupt energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Funding Friday: Google Locks Down 20 Years of Data Center Power This week is light on the funding, heavy on the deals.

In this week’s FUNDING FRIDAY:

🔌 Google signs a 20-year data center deal with AES
🚙 Rivian and EnergyHub link EVs into VPPs
:✨ Shine Technologies raises a quarter-billion dollars

Here’s all the news from @kbrigham.bsky.social:

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The Peril of Talking About Electricity Affordability Podcast Episode · Shift Key with Robinson Meyer · February 27 · 36m

New on SHIFT KEY:

Electricity affordability has become one of the dominant currents (pun intended) in U.S. politics — and decarbonization. But is that a mistake on the climate side?

@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social hashes it out with @janeaflegal.bsky.social:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Trump Makes Headway on Plan to Build 10 New Large Reactors On the solar siege, New York’s climate law, and radioactive data center

In Friday’s Heatmap AM:

☢️ Energy Department in talks on 10 new large reactors
🌤️ Trump admin starts reviewing new solar projects
👎 Support for data centers is deep underwater

Finish out your workweek with the top stories from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/am/trump-nuc...

The speed with which American voters are turning against data centers is breathtaking.

One comparison might be what happened to nuclear after the doublewhammy of "The China Syndrome" debuting days before Three Mile Island, except there's no equivalent in terms of Hollywood or industrial accidents.

Data Center Support Plummets in Latest Heatmap Pro Poll The proportion of voters who strongly oppose development grew by nearly 50%.

Our latest Heatmap Pro poll found that support for data centers has plummeted. The massive computing warehouses are now 24 points underwater with voters, compared to 2 points above in September 2025.

Here’s the full story from @alexckaufman.bsky.social for The Fight:

heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

Scoop: Energy Department Meeting With Utilities, Developers on Trump’s Nuclear Plans The public-private project aims to realize the president’s goal of building 10 new reactors by 2030.

SCOOP:

The Energy Department is meeting with utilities, developers, and independent power producers about advancing Trump’s plans to build 10 new nuclear reactors by 2030.

Here’s the full story from @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/energy/trump...

Energy Department Gives Southern Company Its Largest-Ever Loan On nuclear tax credits, BLM controversy, and a fusion maverick’s fundraise

NEW in Heatmap AM:

💰 Energy Department gives largest-ever loan of nearly $27B
☢️ New nuclear is tricky to build, even with tax credits
🤝 Big tech companies to sign data center pledge at White House

Learn all about this and more from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

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Shine Technologies Raises Nearly a Quarter of a Billion Dollars for Commercial Fusion That doesn’t mean it plans to produce electricity anytime soon.

Scoop in @heatmap.news: Shine Technologies, the fusion company that's producing medical isotopes and plans to get into spent nuclear recycling, just raised $240 million.

63% of the funding came from Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who owns the LA Times. heatmap.news/climate-tech...

Our blogpost was featured in this morning's @heatmap.news AM newsletter alongside news about the LPO's loan to Southern Company.

Thanks @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

The Energy Transition Won’t Work Without Coal Towns A senior scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy on what Trump has lost by dismantling Biden’s energy resilience strategy.

We often leap from “every tenth of a degree matters” (basically true) to “all incremental climate progress matters equally” (not true).
We’re no longer pursuing the major economic shifts needed to sustain emissions reductions over decades.
heatmap.news/ideas/trump-...

Today on Shift Key: HOW THE DATA CENTER BOOM IS CHANGING IN 2026

I’m joined by Peter Freed, former head of energy strategy at Meta, to discuss the challenge of financing the data center boom & how data center developers are pairing two unlikely energy sources together: heatmap.news/podcast/shif...

Inside Form Energy’s Big Google Data Center Deal The long-duration energy storage startup is scaling up fast, but as Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo told Heatmap, “There aren’t any shortcuts.”

“It was arduous and challenging sometimes, but there aren’t any shortcuts. Pilots are easy, and scale is hard.”

Read more from @kbrigham.bsky.social’s interview with Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo on the startup’s major new energy storage deal:

heatmap.news/climate-tech...

How Clean Energy Was — and Wasn’t — Funded in 2025 Four takeaways from a stormy year.

Clean energy got slammed by political and policy changes in 2025. But how did that actually play out in investment?

@zeitlin.bsky.social has the story, based on the latest data from energy investment platform Crux:

heatmap.news/economy/crux...

Blizzard Blackout Hits More Than Half a Million Homes On geoengineering, Boston Metal’s setback, and French fusion

In today’s Heatmap AM:

❄️ Half a million in U.S. lost power in blizzard
👨‍⚖️ Supreme Court to hear Exxon Mobil case vs. Boulder
🌎 NRDC starts geoengineering research project

Read all the top stories from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/am/blizzard-...