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President Trump has nominated Kathleen Sgamma, an oil and gas lobbyist, to lead the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM oversees 245 million acres of public lands, or about one in every 10 acres across the country. It also manages 700 million acres of mineral estate. Sgamma leads a Colorado-based fossil fuel trade group called the Western Energy Alliance. As The Associated Press reported, she “has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of U.S. oil and gas.” Environmentalists slammed the nomination. “It’s hard to imagine how Trump could give a bigger middle finger to America’s public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Everyone who treasures the outdoors should oppose her nomination.”
Public documents show that the State Department was planning to buy $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles, most likely Cybertrucks, Drop Sitereported yesterday. The 2025 procurement forecast has since been updated to remove any mention of Tesla, and now references only “armored electric vehicles.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become a key advisor to President Trump, scrutinizing government spending as leader of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” His role has “raised recurring questions about how he might police himself when one of his companies competes for official contracts,” Bloombergsaid. Musk posted on X that he was “pretty sure” his company wasn’t getting $400 million from the government. “No one mentioned it to me, at least.”
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The German government put out a report yesterday that says climate change poses a looming existential threat to the European Union. By 2040, the climate crisis will “increasingly impact political, economic, and social dynamics within the EU,” the report said. More frequent extreme weather events will burden public health and trigger mass migration both into and within Europe, and also threaten crop production and tourism in countries heavily reliant on both sectors. “A lack of tourism and crop failures can lead to economic instability and have the potential to cause conflict within the EU,” the report said. “It is in Germany and the EU’s interest to slow climate change and accelerate decarbonisation, not only from an economic and ecological perspective but also from a security policy perspective.”
National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment
Construction on coal-fired power plants in China soared last year to the highest level since 2015, according to analysis from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the Global Energy Monitor. China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but it has been applauded for its renewable energy expansion. Indeed, last year it added 356 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity. But China also started building lots of new coal power plants with electric-generating capacity totaling about 95 gigawatts. These plants will begin to come online in the next few years. “Instead of replacing coal, clean energy is being layered on top of an entrenched reliance on fossil fuels,” the report said. “The parallel expansion of coal and renewables risks undermining China’s clean energy transition.”
“The companies and local governments that are now being strung along by the Trump administration did not make a vague handshake agreement with the Biden administration. Instead, they signed a contract with the federal government to receive a certain amount of money in exchange for doing a certain activity. The administration might have changed since then. But the government is still bound by its debts and obligations.”
–Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer on contract law and the Trump spending fight
The U.S. added nearly 50% more clean energy capacity last year than in 2023, according to a new report from energy data company Cleanview. Most of the 48.2 gigawatts of new capacity came in the form of batteries and solar, with solar additions rising by 65%, mostly in southern states like Texas and Florida. As for battery storage, four states (California, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada) accounted for 70% of new capacity. Meanwhile, wind power missed out on growth, with capacity additions dropping by nearly a quarter year-over-year. The report says solar growth will likely slow down in 2025, battery storage could grow by nearly 70%, and wind capacity could grow by 80% if all planned projects manage to reach completion. One interesting tidbit is that Indiana is emerging as a solar hot spot. It ranks third on the list of states with the most solar additions planned for 2025, below Texas and California, but above Arizona. Of course, a lot will depend on the Trump administration.
Cleanview
Global air traffic rose by 10% to an all-time high last year, according to recent data from the International Air Transport Association. This means more aviation pollution. Air travel already accounts for 2.5% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, and has contributed an estimated 4% to global warming. As Ben Elgin at Bloombergnoted, the rise in air travel comes as airlines fail to adopt “sustainable” aviation fuel at meaningful levels, with SAF accounting for a paltry 0.3% of commercial jet fuel production in 2024. “SAF volumes are increasing, but disappointingly slowly,” the IATA said in December. “Governments are sending mixed signals to oil companies which continue to receive subsidies for their exploration and production of fossil oil and gas.” Airlines are relying on SAF to curb their emissions, with many pledging to consume 10% SAF by 2030. But “even if airlines can somehow replace 10% of their fuel with lower-emitting alternatives by the end of the decade, those climate benefits would be wiped out by the industry’s expected growth,” wrote Elgin. Yesterday the Trump administration released a $782 million loan for a plant in Montana to turn waste fats into biofuel. The loan was originally finalized under the Biden administration.
The CEO of Ford Motor yesterday warned that the company could be forced to lay off workers if President Trump raises tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and guts Biden-era legislation that supported electric vehicle production. “A 25% tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” Jim Farley said at a conference. He added that ending loans and subsidies for EV manufacturing projects would also put many Ford jobs at risk. The New York Times noted that his comments “offered a rare example of a corporate executive calling into question Mr. Trump’s policies or statements.”
Sales of electric vehicles were up 18% in January compared to the same time in 2024, but growth is slowing, according to research firm Rho Motion. Last month, 1.3 million EVs were sold worldwide. That’s down 35% from December’s numbers, and marks the third month in a row of slowing growth. China’s sales were down last month because of the Chinese New Year. Meanwhile, sales were up in Europe as new emissions standards came into effect. And in the U.S. and Canada, sales rose 22%. Rho Motion expects more than 20 million EVs will be sold this year.
$160 million – The amount raised in a Series B funding round by Chestnut Carbon. The startup focuses on planting trees and vegetation, and improving forest management practices to better remove carbon from the atmosphere. Chestnut will use this latest funding to build out afforestation projects — that is, planting trees in areas where, at least in modern times, forests have not existed.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the nature of the Trump administration’s actions on funding for a Montana biofuels plant.
