Heatmap News

At our second annual Energy Entrepreneurship Summit, we’re bringing together leaders across batteries, next-generation geothermal, nuclear fusion, advanced manufacturing, and more for a candid conversation about what comes next for American clean energy. We’ll also examine the industrial backbone of the transition: manufacturing capacity, workforce development, supply chains, and the economic realities behind deployment. In-person events are one of the best parts of what we do at Heatmap. If you’re building, investing, policymaking, or trying to understand where the energy transition is actually headed, this is the room to be in. 📅 June 3, 2026  📍 Washington, D.C. 🎟️ Free 🔗 Link to register is in the comments!  We're excited to hear from speakers Don Beyer, Qcells North America's Scott Moskowitz, Overview Energy's Marc Berte, Emerson Collective's Gabe Kleinman and Michael Bruce, Base Power Company's Travis Kavulla, Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council)'s Anna J Siefken, Lilac's Raef Sully, Commonwealth Fusion Systems' Trent Bauserman, Antora Energy's Justin Briggs – with more to be announced! Members of the Heatmap team, including Robinson Meyer, Jae Holzman, Jillian Goodman and Nico Lauricella, will be joining our lineup on stage. A big thank you to our sponsor Qcells North America for making this event possible. 

Very happy to see Heatmap in The Wall Street Journal’s big story today: “But all over the country, community-level organizations have been succeeding in blocking data-center projects. Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 48 projects valued at some $156 billion last year, according to Data Center Watch, an organization tracking the trend. A record of 20 were canceled in the first quarter of the year because of local backlash, figures from climate-media outlet and data provider Heatmap News show.” https://lnkd.in/eM79aYGK

Join Heatmap Founding Staff Writer Emily Pontecorvo and Heatmap’s Deputy Editor Jillian Goodman this Thursday as they talk through two of Emily’s latest big stories: the Trump administration’s attempts to pay off for canceling their offshore wind leases, and debates roiling the carbon accounting community about how to count up emissions. 🔗 This briefing is exclusively for Heatmap subscribers. Find the link to subscribe in the comments!

Today, Heatmap News published an op-ed I wrote laying out Invest in Our Future's view of where things stand for the builders of the clean energy economy—the setbacks we’ve encountered over the last few years, the opportunities we still have ahead of us, and the critical obstacles we must overcome to move forward faster. While the American people watch their energy bills rising, we have a chance to show that there is a better path forward. Clean energy is more affordable, more reliable, and more secure than fossil fuels, and those advantages will grow more obvious as deployment rises. But we won't capture clean energy's full potential without a concerted investment in deployment strategies from project development and financing to creating sustainable clean energy jobs. What we need in this moment is more projects moving in more places, delivering tangible benefits to more people. And that's exactly what our grantees are working toward every day. More here: https://lnkd.in/eAb4jJzA

Everyone is talking about data center development, but few people are tracking the debate as closely Jael Holzman. Her latest reporting for Heatmap News looks at data centers as a defining political issue of the 2026 election, parsing tensions around energy affordability, regulation, and environmental conservation. If you want more of this every week, Jael’s newsletter, The Fight, has quickly become essential reading for anyone tracking the future of U.S. energy infrastructure. Read the full article via the link in the comments.

Everyone is talking about data center development, but few people are tracking the debate as closely Jael Holzman. Her latest reporting for Heatmap News looks at data centers as a defining political issue of the 2026 election, parsing tensions around energy affordability, regulation, and environmental conservation. If you want more of this every week, Jael’s newsletter, The Fight, has quickly become essential reading for anyone tracking the future of U.S. energy infrastructure. Read the full article via the link in the comments.

New data from Heatmap Pro: At least 20 proposed projects were canceled after community pushback in Q1 2026, representing more than $41.7 billion in investment and 3.5 gigawatts of electricity demand. The conversation around AI and data centers is moving fast. At Heatmap, we’ll help you analyze the influence of local politics, internet culture, and macroeconomic forces as they shape the future of energy development in the U.S. Read Robinson Meyer’s latest on our Heatmap Pro data linked in the comments.

The Strait of Hormuz has been closed for two months. We are losing more than 10 million barrels a day of production. This is, as has been widely remarked, the worst oil supply crisis in world history. Yet I find myself totally baffled, because you can see the crisis everywhere… except in prices. The global crude benchmark is still below $110 a barrel. The S&P 500 keeps setting new all-time highs. And while domestic gasoline prices are high, they’re still below the records set in 2022. So what’s happening? Why aren’t oil prices absolutely screaming? To understand this moment, I was excited to welcome Jason Bordoff to Shift Key this week. Jason is, of course, one of the most important voices at the nexus of energy, environmental, and national security policy. He leads the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and is a co-founding dean of the new Columbia Climate School. And he previously served as a special assistant to President Obama and the senior director for energy and climate change at the White House National Security Council. We discuss the Iran crisis, of course, but also had a broader and substantive conversation about whether this will transform the energy system in Asia, the future of energy and climate policy in the United States, and what each of us has learned from the Biden era. I hope you make time to listen. Listen at Heatmap News: https://lnkd.in/eSTJqTFC Or wherever you get your podcasts: https://lnkd.in/enknPPuE

The data center backlash isn’t close to peaking. That’s the message of exclusive new Heatmap News data, which we released first to subscribers and the public on Wednesday. At least 20 proposed data centers were cancelled following local opposition during the first three months of this year, according to the new data, which comes from our Heatmap Pro market intelligence service. That completely smashes the last quarterly record of 12 canceled projects, which was set in Q4 2025. To give you a sense of just how many projects are getting canceled: 25 data center projects were terminated nationwide following local opposition in all of last year. We’re now likely to break that record in the next few weeks, if we haven’t already. The data centers canceled in Q1 represented at least $41.7 billion in investment and at least 3.5 gigawatts of power demand. The number of newly contested projects also hit an all-time high last quarter. Our Heatmap Pro researchers regularly review public records and press accounts, and call every county in the U.S., to produce this exclusive data. This information is always available in greater resolution to Pro subscribers, but we release periodic updates to the public to keep the discussion informed. Read my new story for the full rundown: https://lnkd.in/e8DKVhfJ

Affordability is now the driving force behind state energy policy, and advanced energy is emerging as a key solution. Join Heatmap News and Advanced Energy United this Thursday, April 30, for a live virtual conversation on how states are using advanced energy technologies to tackle rising demand, reliability challenges, and cost pressures. Hear directly from Ed Brolin (VP, Policy Development, RWE), Trish Demeter (Senior Managing Director, Advanced Energy United), Marcus C. Evans, Jr. (IL-33), Amy Heart (SVP, Public Policy, Sunrun), and Phil Hernandez (VA-94) as they share what’s working at the state level and where the biggest opportunities are emerging. 📅 April 30, 1:00 PM ET 🎟️ Free virtual event 🔗 Register: https://lnkd.in/gY5JXk4y