SUCH a fun conversation. Have been thinking about it since we did it. Thanks so much to @volts.wtf for having me on.

Exclusive: Where We’re At in the Race to Save the Planet Investor and philanthropist John Doerr shares a refresh to his Speed & Scale climate action tracker.

New this morning from @kbrigham.bsky.social, an EXCLUSIVE on the latest update to the Speed & Scale climate action tracker:

heatmap.news/climate-tech...

Carbon Removal After Microsoft Though the tech giant did not say its purchasing pause is permanent, the change will have lasting ripple effects.

Microsoft is the anchor of the carbon removal market. It bought 45 million tons of carbon removal last year; the next largest buyer has purchased 1.8 million tons *ever.*

So what happens now that Microsoft’s paused buying?

Spent the week talking to folks about it: heatmap.news/carbon-remov...

Funding Friday: Stretching the Limits of Climate Tech On Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ quantum computing investment, plus more of the week’s biggest money moves.

heatmap.news/climate-tech...

bill gates' climate-tech VC, breakthrough energy ventures, recently backed a startup building quantum computers for AI. in this week's installment of funding friday, i ask: is that really climate tech? and more!

heatmap.news/climate-tech...

san francisco doin its thing

www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/a...

New from me: No increase in global coal power generation after Hormuz closure - solar and wind growth covered the fall in gas-fired generation. The record buildout of clean energy in 2025 helped mitigate the impact of the Hormuz closure.

Tweet from @RyanDeto of Axios: BREAKING: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being sold to The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, the same nonprofit that owns the Baltimore Banner, sources inside a Post-Gazette meeting tell me. The P-G was set to close May 3 but appears now to be preserved. More details tk

Here’s some good journalism news (for once).

Why Data Center Opposition Is Getting Violent A conversation with anti-tech extremism researcher Mauro Lubrano on Sam Altman, Tesla protests, and 5G.

I spoke with one of the world’s leading experts on anti-tech extremism about the rising violence against executives and politicians who support AI data centers.

Our conclusion?

Expect a lot more future violence over AI data centers, period.

My latest for @heatmap.news

v interesting optimism gap here, via @technologyreview.com

www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/13/1...

Inertia Enterprises Links With Livermore Lab to Commercialize Fusion Energy The deal represents one of the largest public-private partnerships in the history of the national labs.

lawrence livermore national laboratory is teaming up with private fusion startup Inertia Enterprises to commercialize the lab’s approach to fusion energy — marking one of the largest public-private partnerships ever within the national lab system

On Wednesday, I'll be recording a special pod with @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social of @heatmap.news. Volts doesn't really cover breaking news, but Heatmap does, so we'll just be discussing ... things that have happened recently. Turns out lots of things have happened recently.

Got questions for Rob?

thanks fork

Exclusive: The Iran war has already cost Americans $17 billion at the pump, draining demand out of the economy and sending prices soaring more than $1.40/gallon in some states, per a new Brown University analysis heatmap.news/energy/iran-...

as the world stares down a transformer shortage, incumbents are racing to add capacity. but a wave of startups is also tackling the problem from first principles — either rethinking the manufacturing process and supply chain or overhauling standard transformer designs in favor of solid-state tech

The longer you work in policy-adjacent spaces, the more outraged you get when anyone suggests that individual (or even industrial) conservation measures can move the needle on water use, especially in the West.

It's cows.

It's all cows.

(And the alfalfa that feeds them).

what a world. irony identification courtesy of @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social

heatmap.news/energy/trump...

BREAKING: Extraordinary scenes as Iranian citizens start forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites.

This is Kazerun Power Plant in Fars province, southern Iran

(🎥 i24 News)

Exclusive: Merino Energy Launches an All-in-One Heat Pump for $3,800 The startup from Quilt and Gradient alums emerges from stealth today.

There's a new heat pump in town:

The Merino Mono

Retails for $3,800 including installation. Mounts to the wall with two small holes to exchange heat w/ outside, no outdoor unit. Just in SF and LA for now. Founding team is Ex-Quilt, Ex-Gradient.
heatmap.news/sustainabili...

Funding Friday: Micromobility, Grid Modeling, and Membranes News about Rivian spinoff Also, EmeraldAI, Via Separations, and more of the week’s big money moves.

In the latest FUNDING FRIDAY:

🛴 Rivian spinoff Also gets a $1B valuation and a deal with DoorDash
⚡ EmeraldAI raises a $25M expansion round
🚀 More cash for data centers in space

Read all about it from @kbrigham.bsky.social:

heatmap.news/climate-tech...

How the Iran War Could Scramble the Climate Tech Capital Stack Petrostates are also big cleantech investors.

the Iran war poses a paradox for climate tech. disrupted fossil fuel supply could speed the shift to renewables. but the Gulf also funnels lots of oil $ into climate-focused funds. as that revenue tightens, the climate tech capital stack could also take a hit

How the Iran War Could Scramble the Climate Tech Capital Stack Petrostates are also big cleantech investors.

Many of the Persian Gulf countries currently taking huge hits to their energy infrastructure and oil revenues are also big investors in climate tech.

Here's @kbrigham.bsky.social on how the war could scramble the capital stack for the most ambitious climate startups:

heatmap.news/climate-tech...

A New Look at Why Electricity Prices Have Gone Up in Your ZIP Code Rob announces the Electricity Price Hub, a new project from Heatmap News and MIT, alongside guests Brian Deese and Lauren Sidner.

check out the latest Shift Key ep by @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social featuring Brian Deese and Lauren Sidner to learn more about how our latest project, the Electricity Price Hub, came together!

Why Lower Electricity Prices May Not Mean Lower Electric Bills It may sound like splitting hairs, but the difference matters when it comes to policymaking.

For the launch of our new Electricity Price Hub, I wrote about why rates and bills are not the same.

We talk a lot about why rates are higher in some places than others.

But some places (i.e. the South) have low rates and high bills, and demand different policy fixes
heatmap.news/energy/elect...

big day for Heatmap! we just the Electricity Price Hub in collaboration with MIT! check it out now to compare regional electricity prices and household bills across the U.S

electricity.heatmap.news

😬

To keep climate science alive, researchers are speaking in code Words considered "woke" are vanishing from National Science Foundation proposals. Grist tracked the changes.

🌎🔥📝 American climate scientists are rewriting their own research proposals, scrubbing out words they've used for decades just to keep their funding alive. New from me, Kate Yoder, and Ayurella Horn-Muller for @grist.org: grist.org/language/cli... (1/n)

The global energy system will never be the same (or at least won't be for a very long time), almost regardless of when the Iran conflict ends.
heatmap.news/energy/energ...

Funding Friday: Climate Tech’s Pivot to Data Centers Continues News from Octopus Energy, Crusoe, Arbor, and Scalvy, plus more of the biggest money moves of the week.

have i mentioned that all climate tech startups are actually data center startups now??

it's unfortunate when it happens, but "overwritten" is a very funny thing for a piece to be... like damn you thought you were cooking... but you burnt it...