ALEXANDER C.
KAUFMAN • OCTOBER 24, 2025
|
Current
conditions: Tropical Storm Melissa is gathering enough
strength to potentially
reach Category 5 status as
the cyclone tracks
northward toward Florida
and the Bahamas • Up to
six storms are barreling
toward the Pacific
Northwest, threatening
flooding from up to six
inches of rain on Saturday
• Parts of South Africa’s
coast are roasting in
temperatures above 109
degrees Fahrenheit.
|
THE
TOP FIVE
1. Trump opens
Alaskan Arctic coastline to
energy development
|
The
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in
Alaska. Image: U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service/Getty Images
|
The
Department of the Interior
unveiled a package of executive
actions opening the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil
drilling and mining exploration, a
controversial move that fulfills a
decades-long ambition for
industry. The decision marks what
The
New York Times
described as “the latest twist in
a long-running fight over the fate
of the refuge’s coastal plain, an
unspoiled expanse of 1.56 million
acres that is believed to sit atop
billions of barrels of oil but is
also a critical habitat for polar
bears, caribou, migratory birds,
and other wildlife.” During his
first term, in 2017, President
Donald Trump signed a tax bill
that required two oil and gas
leases in the area, but the Biden
administration later blocked those
leases. “From day one, President
Trump directed us to unlock
Alaska’s energy and resource
potential while honoring
commitments to the state and local
communities,” Secretary of the
Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement.
“By reopening the Coastal Plain
and advancing key infrastructure,
we are strengthening energy
independence, creating jobs and
supporting Alaska’s communities
while driving economic growth
across the state.”
The
Trump administration has made
industrializing the northernmost
frontier state a key priority,
approving a mining road though
pristine forested lands and taking
an equity stake for the federal
government in the company aiming
to extract minerals in the region.
But the Environmental Protection
Agency also yanked funding meant
to help reinforce infrastructure
in Alaska Native villages against
warming-fueled floods, dismissing
the money as left-wing
ideologically driven “diversity,
equity, and inclusion” spending,
as I wrote
in this newsletter. Those
very communities were devastated
by a typhoon earlier this month,
displacing residents, with
evacuees struggling to adjust to
life in Alaska’s “concrete
jungles,” the Northern
Journal reported.
|
2. Stardust
Solutions raises $60 million to
develop a geoengineering system
|
Heatmap’s
Robinson Meyer has a big scoop
this morning: Geoengineering
startup Stardust Solutions is set
to announce that it has raised $60
million in venture capital to
develop the tools needed to
artificially cool the planet by
reflecting sunlight away from
Earth. The company, led by a team
of Israeli physicists, aims to
spray aerosols into the atmosphere
that will bounce energy from the
sun back into space to balance out
the effects of greenhouse gases.
The technology is on track to be
ready by the end of the decade.
Lowercarbon Capital led the
funding round, which is the
company’s second, following a $15
million seed round in 2024. Rob’s
story offers a measured assessment
of the dangers of potentially
geoengineering the atmosphere —
and the threat of failing to do so
when efforts to mitigate emissions
are so far from where they need to
be to preserve the climate norms
in which humans evolved as a
species. In a line that harkens to
one of my favorite books,
journalist Charles C. Mann’s
environmental history of the
global trade network that
developed after Christopher
Columbus’ arrival in the Americas
called 1493, Rob notes
that “the Earth has not been free
of human influence for millennia,”
and that “the world has over and
over again been remade by human
hands.”
“Stardust
may not play the Prometheus here
and bring this particular
capability into humanity’s hands,”
Rob writes. “But I have never been
so certain that someone will try
in our lifetimes. We find
ourselves, once again, in the
middle of things.”
|
3. Rivian lays off
nearly 5% of its workforce
|
Rivian,
the maker of luxury electric
trucks and SUVs, slashed more than
600 employees, representing nearly
4.5% of its roughly 15,000-person
workforce, The
Wall Street Journal
reported Thursday. “These are not
changes that were made lightly,”
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in an
email to staff. “With the changing
operating backdrop, we had to
rethink how we are scaling our
go-to-market functions.” The cuts
were meant to help “profitably
scale” the business as it prepares
to launch its new R2 midsize SUV.
The move
comes as electric automakers reel
from the Trump administration’s
elimination of the federal
electric vehicle tax credit.
Tesla, as I
reported here yesterday,
posted a nearly 40% drop in
profits on Wednesday afternoon as
the company lowered prices to keep
costs to customers in line with
what federal write-offs previously
made possible. But as Andrew
Moseman wrote in Heatmap,
the lower prices came with
stripped-down features.
|
4. Trump teams up
with Abu Dhabi for a critical
minerals fund
|
The U.S.
government has backed a new
billion-dollar fund to invest in
critical minerals along with the
New York-based Orion Resource
Partners and Abu Dhabi’s ADQ. The
investment vehicle, dubbed the
Orion Critical Mineral Consortium,
was announced Thursday with
support from the federal
International Development Finance
Corp. The funding totals more than
$1.8 billion, Bloomberg
reported.
This is just the Trump
administration’s latest foray into
mining. The Department of Defense
took the largest stake earlier
this year in MP
Materials, the only active
rare earths producer in the U.S.
Since then, the administration has
taken stakes in other critical
minerals projects, and considered
similar ownership positions in
companies developing rare earths
in Greenland.
|
5. South Carolina’s
nuclear boondoggle sees new life
|
VC
Summer, the project to build
Westinghouse’s state-of-the-art
AP1000 reactor in South Carolina,
became such a financial
boondoggle, utility executives
went to jail; The final defendant
was
sentenced just last year.
Yet the project — widely mocked as
a billion-dollar hole in the
ground — may end up built after
all. Utility Santee Cooper officially
notified regulators this
week that it plans to execute a
contract to restart the project.
The
announcement, part of what Heatmap’s
Katie Brigham called the
“nuclear dealmaking boom,” came
the same day Canada’s government put up
$2 billion to back a small modular
reactor project in Bowmanville,
Ontario. The progress north of
America’s border on new reactor
technologies has drawn attention
from potential Democratic
presidential candidates in the
U.S. When New York City mayoral
contender Zohran Mamdani expressed
support for building new
reactors in the state during this
week’s debate, Arizona Senator
Ruben Gallego — widely discussed
as a possible White House seeker —
responded to the news in a post on X:
“I am all for Nuclear power in
this country but it would be
quicker and cheaper to buy into
the Ontario plant being built and
coming online by 2030.”
|
Mining
giant Fortescue has made a
breakthrough. In its latest
earnings call with investors
Thursday, the Australian giant
said it planned to replace the
trucks that carry its ore with
electric alternatives. “We’re
not doing this because we don’t
think our total cost of
ownership is going to be less,”
Fortescue CEO Dino Otranto said in
a statement.
“Of course, we’re doing it because
of that.”
|
Opportunities
Advertising & Events
Want
to get in front of bipartisan
energy policymakers and
influencers? Get in touch with
mi...@heatmap.news to learn more
about thought leadership and
sponsorship opportunities with
Heatmap.
Heatmap Pro
Heatmap’s
Pro software brings all of our
research, reporting, and
insights down to the local
level. Our proprietary data
platform tracks and forecasts
community opposition to clean
energy development while helping
users surface the county-level
risks, regulations, and public
sentiment that shape project
viability. Book a
demo to see why the
leading developers, NGOs and
consultants rely on Heatmap
Pro.
|
|
