Heatmap’s Annual Climate Insiders Survey Is Here

Summary

Shift Key – “Heatmap’s Annual Climate Insiders Survey Is Here”

Podcast: Shift Key with Robinson Meyer & Jesse Jenkins
Host: Heatmap News
Date: January 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special episode spotlights Heatmap News’ 2026 Insiders Survey, where influential climate experts, policymakers, and industry shapers anonymously weigh in on the most pressing questions driving the energy transition and decarbonization. But this week, co-host Jesse Jenkins, Princeton energy systems professor, is put directly in the “hot seat” and answers the survey’s toughest questions on the record—covering everything from the future of climate tech and decarbonization policy, to controversial climate jargon, political blame for energy prices, and predictions for global warming. The discussion is incisive, candid, and at times humorous, offering an insider’s perspective on the pulse of the climate sector at the start of 2026.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Decarbonization Technology furthest from 'Primetime'

[03:52]

• Jenkins points to industrial decarbonization technologies as most nascent.
• Technologies for truly greening steel, cement, and particularly petrochemicals remain early stage, complicated by the need for “chemical reductants” and novel feedstocks.
• Many industry forecasts have “assumed a can opener”—that breakthrough solutions will just arrive—but reality is more complex and solutions are “quite a long way from commercial readiness.”

“The companies that are working on this stuff are all quite nascent...with exciting green shoots coming from startups and research, but really quite a long way from commercial readiness and I think also a long way from the policy environment you need to launch those companies.” – Jesse Jenkins [05:18]

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2. Most Exciting Climate Tech Companies

[05:56]

• Jenkins lauds startups focused on clean industrial heat, including:
  • Dig Energy, Dulcie Madden (CEO featured previously),
  • Ever (geothermal),
  • Carmen Industries (advanced heat pumps),
  • Rondo Energy (heat batteries).
• Emphasizes that providing clean industrial heat at scale is both promising and rapidly progressing.

“I expect a lot of movement in 2026 in terms of commercial deployment, demonstrations…” – Jesse Jenkins [07:06]

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3. Jargon Jenkins Would Ban: The “Hydrogen Rainbow”

[07:30]

• Jenkins expresses strong dislike for the proliferation of color-coded hydrogen terms (“green,” “blue,” “pink,” “emerald”), arguing it is contentless and confusing for non-insiders.

“All of [the hydrogen rainbow terms] don’t tell you anything at all unless you’re already an insider... It just serves to obfuscate and...turn off folks who are not insiders.” – Jesse Jenkins [07:51]

• Robinson Meyer shares his favorite answer from Todd Stern, who dislikes omitting the “the” in “the COP.” (Memorable lighter moment)

“No one has the right to be suddenly become such intimate pals with COP...I never give in.” – Todd Stern (via R. Meyer) [09:29]

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4. Data Centers, AI, and Decarbonization Pace

[10:06] - [12:46]

• Jenkins says AI/data centers are significantly slowing decarbonization, because the surge in power demand threatens to overwhelm clean supply growth.
• Decarbonization’s “core challenge” is adding clean supply faster than demand—an uphill battle with rapid data center expansion.
• Jenkins believes US coal generation will remain higher than it would have without this demand spike, especially after the repeal of key Biden-era EPA regulations.

“We are not going to be able to both meet the large demand growth and eat into...remaining emissions...” – Jesse Jenkins [11:26]

Policy Shifts Due to Data Center Demand

• Jenkins now views strict EPA power sector regulations as more important than ever, since tax credits/tailwinds for clean energy have eroded.
• Coal plants get a “second lease on life” due to energy demand and lack of policy constraints.

“It looks like [the EPA regs] was a much more important driver of emissions reductions than we might have anticipated.” – Jesse Jenkins [14:24]

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5. Permitting Reform — Political Impasse

[14:46]

• Jenkins is not optimistic major “permitting reform” legislation will pass before 2027, citing opposition from both right (“too friendly to renewables”) and left (“doesn’t go far enough”).
• Current bills like the SPEED Act offer only “bare minimum” reforms and face significant headwinds.

“…I have a hard time seeing it moving forward even in that form. And that’s really quite a bit stripped down compared to the Manchin Barrasso bill...” – Jesse Jenkins [15:33]

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6. Who’ll Get Blamed for Rising Electricity Prices?

[16:39] - [18:53]

• Jenkins: Both major US parties will be blamed by their own “echo chambers.”
• Pressed for attribution, Jenkins points to Republicans for repealing subsidies, blocking clean energy permitting, and encouraging LNG exports—thus directly causing higher prices.

“...repealing tax credits that made new electricity sources 30 to 50% cheaper...standing in the way of permitting cost-effective new resources...” – Jesse Jenkins [18:12]

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7. Worst for Decarbonization (Besides Trump)

[19:03]

• Jenkins criticizes the Trump Administration’s crackdown on new wind/solar project permitting, especially targeting Department of Interior Secretary Burgum for about-turn on clean energy.

“The efforts to block permitting of cost-effective resources...is probably the most surprising...and the most damaging beyond all the policy reforms that we were expecting.” – Jesse Jenkins [19:16]

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8. Lessons from Clean Energy Tax Credit Cuts

[19:51]

• Jenkins voices concern that “ironclad political control” in the current GOP means lawmakers go against constituents’ and even district’s interests when commanded by party leadership.

“...rational self-interest and what’s good for your constituents...are outweighed by what the party leader tells you to do.” – Jesse Jenkins [20:07]

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9. Paris Agreement’s Legacy

[21:02]

• The Paris Agreement’s most significant impact is setting 1.5-2°C as a global climate target—now central across the climate movement.
• Jenkins critiques “bright line” targets, arguing every tenth of a degree matters and deployments should be accelerated over symbolic pledges.

“I wish that the legacy was...focused much more concretely on how do we accelerate deployment of clean energy to be faster than demand growth...” – Jesse Jenkins [21:56]

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10. The Sector in Most Trouble (Aside from Offshore Wind)

[22:59]

• Jenkins picks the US EV sector as most at risk due to loss of subsidies, hostile policy reversal, and insufficient consumer readiness.
• Carmakers are retreating to safe ground (SUVs, ICE), after gambling big on EVs—future leadership in EVs at risk.

“I’m very pessimistic about where the US EV sector and automakers in general sit right now and where they’ll sit in five or ten years relative to the rest of the world’s auto markets.” – Jesse Jenkins [25:13]

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Rapid Fire Round (Selected Highlights)

• Best Hyperscaler on Climate: Jenkins declines to answer due to professional conflict [27:13]
• China: Hero or Villain? — “Hero at the moment,” credits China’s strategic pivot toward non-fossil resources, but notes coal use is a concern [27:25]
• Will a country deploy solar radiation management globally in next decade? — “No.” [28:38]
• How much global warming by 2100? — Jenkins pegs it at “about 2.7°C above pre-industrial” ([29:04])
• When will global emissions peak? — “2028, before 2030” ([29:39])
• When will the US reach net zero? — “Still in play” for 2060s, but “not going to be 2050 anymore” ([30:36])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• The perils of climate jargon:
  “It just serves to obfuscate and I think turn off folks who are not insiders from understanding what we’re talking about.” – Jesse Jenkins [08:01]
• On policy under data center demand:
  “Coal plants are getting a second lease on life...” – Jesse Jenkins [11:53]
• Party leadership vs. constituent needs:
  “They took a vote that they knew was bad for their constituents and was bad for the future of US competitiveness...” – Jesse Jenkins [20:41]
• On Paris’s bright lines:
  “Every tenth of a degree matters.” – Jesse Jenkins [21:46]

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Notable References

• Jenkins refers listeners to the recently published Zero Lab / Encore report on flexible interconnection (“bring your own capacity”) for data center load growth ([31:17])
• Robinson Meyer’s best PDF of the year: “Philosophical introduction to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception” – which sparks a surprise detour into Jenkins’ background in philosophy ([32:13])

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Takeaway

Jenkins provides a candid, sometimes sobering, expert’s assessment of the state of climate technology and US policy at a pivotal moment. The episode brings out challenges in industrial decarbonization, the threat posed by runaway data center demand, erosion of bipartisan will on permitting and policy, and the costs of polarized political leadership. Jenkins stays grounded in the technical and political realities—eschewing hype, highlighting complexity, and stressing that “every tenth of a degree matters.”

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Timestamps Index

• [03:52] Most underdeveloped technology: Industrial decarbonization
• [05:56] Most exciting companies: Clean industrial heat startups
• [07:30] Jargon to ban: Hydrogen rainbow
• [10:06] Is AI/data center demand slowing decarb? — Yes
• [12:57] Policy: EPA regs more important post data center demand
• [14:46] Permitting reform unlikely in current Congress
• [16:39] Political blame for energy prices
• [19:03] Worst for decarb post-Trump: Interior Dept. crackdown
• [19:51] Lessons from clean energy tax credit scaleback
• [21:02] Paris Agreement’s enduring legacy and flaws
• [22:59] US EV sector most at risk post-IRA/tax credit repeal
• [27:25] China: “Hero at the moment” for climate
• [29:04] Predicted warming in 2100: ~2.7°C
• [29:39] Emissions peak by: 2028
• [31:17] Must-read PDF: Zero Lab report on flexible interconnection

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For more in-depth responses from Jesse Jenkins and the perspectives of over 50 other climate insiders, see the full Heatmap Insiders Survey on Heatmap News.

Transcript

[Robinson Meyer]

You are listening to Shift Key, heatmaps weekly podcast about decarbonization and the shift away from fossil fuels. This week we are releasing heatmap's insider survey. So every year, heatmap asks dozens of experts the same set of questions about climate and decarbonization. In order to get a sense of where we are, you know, kind of take the industry's temperature. These are people like former Biden officials, top US government climate scientists, lobbyists, venture capitalists, academics, energy CEOs, think tankers. It's a very fun group. It's very diverse. If you're interested in that survey, all the results right now are on heatmap News. Go read them. In this show though, we're going to ask those questions of my friend and esteemed co host, Jesse Jenkins. So questions like which key decarbonization technology is not ready for primetime? Which piece of climate tech jargon would you like to ban? And how hot will it be in 2100? Really? Jesse answers all those questions and more. It's a very fun episode and it's all coming up on on ShiftKey after this.

[Heatmap News Host]

This episode of Shift Key is brought to you by heatmap Pro. You already rely on Heat Map for daily reporting and commentary on the energy transition. That's why you listen to this show. Well, Heat Map Pro brings all of our research, reporting and insights down to the local level. It's a software platform that tracks all local opposition to clean energy projects and data centers. It forecasts community sentiment and it guides data driven engagement campaigns. Go to heatmap News Pro to book a demo and see the premier intelligence platform for project permitting and community engagement. That's heatmap News Pro.

[Robinson Meyer]

Hi, I'm Robinson Meyer, the founding executive.

[Heatmap News Host]

Editor of heatmap News.

[Jesse Jenkins]

And I'm Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.

[Robinson Meyer]

On this week's show, we are doing.

[Heatmap News Host]

A special version of Heatmap's 2026 Insider Survey. So if you go to Heatmap News right now, you will see we have just published our giant package of what we call our insider survey. And it is our big kind of quasi on background survey of thinkers, doers, founders, other people whose title ends in er. All these people, we ask all of them scholars.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Except.

[Heatmap News Host]

Except you don't spell scholars like that. We call up our kind of favorite sources, sometimes our least favorite sources across the industry. We ask them the same questions and.

[Jesse Jenkins]

We won't tell you which is which.

[Robinson Meyer]

We won't tell you which is which.

[Heatmap News Host]

We give them. We ask them the same questions, we put their answers on background. We kind of take the temperature of the climate decarbonization industry and we tell you what we found. You can find all those results right now on heatmap News. Jesse, on this week's show, we're going to do a very special version of that survey. We're going to ask you these questions, but you can't answer them on background or you aren't in the hot seat. You are in the hot seat. You are giving us your take on these key questions on the record. And I don't know, it should be a fun time. There's about 10 questions. I'm going to tell you the same thing I've told everyone else, which is some of them I think you'll have an opinion on. Some of them you might not have an opinion on, but we want you to have an opinion on it anyway. We want your best guess, because I can't pass. Still relevant. You cannot pass. Exactly.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Okay, Only hot takes. Let's go.

[Heatmap News Host]

Only hot takes. Yes. Okay. Are you ready?

[Jesse Jenkins]

I'm ready. Let's do it.

[Robinson Meyer]

Okay.

[Heatmap News Host]

The Jesse Jenkins and I have not.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Seen these questions in advance. So this is.

[Heatmap News Host]

That's right, exactly. So this is all purely off the dome. Exactly. The Jesse Jenkins 2026 heat map news Insider survey. Let's go. In your opinion, what key decarbonization technology is furthest from being ready for primetime?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Furthest from being ready for primetime? I guess I would probably go to industrial decarbonization options. Might be tempting to say fusion, although there's lots of excitement around some of the progress some startups have made in that space. But I think furthest from being ready for primetime would be the suite of technologies we need to decarbonize, not the energy inputs to industry. I think we can do that with electrification and hydrogen and alternative fuels. But the kind of need for atoms and molecules. Right. The fact that we still need chemical reductance for certain processes, we need feedstocks that go into whole petrochemical supply chain. And you know, if you look at most decarbonization, deep decarbonization pathways, they kind of assume a can opener.

[Heatmap News Host]

Right.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Assume abundant clean hydrogen or assume carbon capture, and that'll clean up the mess from those industries. And I mean, here I'm talking about steel, cement, and mostly petrochemicals in particular, I think are really challenging. And there are lots of solutions emerging in that space, but they're all quite nascent. So we have some who are kind of moving to fully electrochemical processes for Making say steel or even cement. You have others who are pursuing biomass or bio feedstock based pathways, even microbial pathways for producing chemicals or plastics. I think a high level challenge is that all of these processes that they're going to use renewable electricity as their energy input have to be kind of redesigned in a fundamentally different way around cheap but intermittently available energy inputs. Which is just not how we design heavy industry today. Right. We design it to be running 24, 7 at very high efficiency, capital utilization, et cetera. And so that's a whole kind of different design paradigm that you also need to embed in all of these processes. And I think it's just pretty nascent on all of them with, with exciting green shoots kind of coming from lots of startups and research, but really quite a long way from commercial readiness and I think also a long way from the policy environment that you need to launch a lot of those companies.

[Heatmap News Host]

There's so much there, but I'm going to just skip it. We're not going to have a discussion about all this.

[Jesse Jenkins]

You got to keep moving. We can do a whole follow up episode on. This is our 2026 agenda here.

[Heatmap News Host]

Exactly what's the most important exciting or promising climate tech company working today?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Single company. Well, clearly firm of power. My own startup. No, that's too self serving. Yeah, that is really hard.

[Heatmap News Host]

You can see why we're doing it off the record for most people.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I have many children in this space too. I advise four startups in this space. So you know, I love them all equally.

[Heatmap News Host]

Great. What I'm hearing is Tesla. Yes, Tesla, Tesla Motors, a little, little known company called Tesla Motors and all.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Of the space based solar companies, those are the one, those are the best. Now I don't know if I can name a single company but I would say in general the companies that I'm most excited about, the ones I work with, are all in the realm of clean heat. Because I guess maybe in contrast to my previous response, you know, the tough parts of industrial decarbonization, the easy parts are that we use a huge amount of heat for steam and food processing and all kinds of other applications. And heat is easy. It's like the lowest on the thermodynamic spectrum. Right. It's the easiest to produce and we have a ton of different ways to produce it and I think we can make a ton of progress in that space. So companies like Dig Energy, we had Dulcie Madden, the CEO on the show last year. Well, companies like ever with their closed loop direct geothermal heating Carmen Industries I work with on advanced efficient heat pumps and Rondo Energy on heat batteries. All of these are very exciting ways, I think, to make progress in that space. And so I expect a lot of movement in 2026 in terms of commercial deployment demonstrations of each of those technologies and that's pretty exciting.

[Heatmap News Host]

Great. So Tesla space based solar and new.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Scale and data centers in space.

[Heatmap News Host]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Exactly. What piece of climate jargon would you most like to ban? This can be climate or energy jargon? Anything from the. From our world.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah, I. Well, it's hard not to pick my favorite Rayyan, which is all of the colors of the hydrogen rainbow, green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, pink hydrogen, emerald hydrogen, whatever the heck, hydrogen. All of which don't tell you anything at all about their content unless you're already an insider and familiar with that jargon. It literally is a contentless statement. And so I think it does us no good to use those sort of terms. It's also not any shorter than saying like renewable hydrogen or electrolytic hydrogen or nuclear hydrogen or biobas based hydrogen. I mean it really doesn't save us anything. It just serves to obfuscate and I think turn off folks who are not insiders from understanding what we're talking about. So that would be one that I.

[Heatmap News Host]

Would love to put to bed on this front. Do you feel like the hydrogen rainbow is somewhat in recession? I feel like I hear a lot less about the hydrogen rainbow in 2025.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I think hydrogen in general is. Yeah, I think hydrogen in general is going through a challenging moment. So maybe there's just less talk about hydrogen too. But I do still when I see hydrogen reported, I often see blue hydrogen and green hydrogen and blah blah, blah. So I don't know that maybe it's just that hydrogen had its hype cycle and we are now on the bottom of that on the valley part of that cycle right now. And maybe that's a good thing.

[Heatmap News Host]

Before we continue, can I tell you my favorite response to this question?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Oh yeah.

[Heatmap News Host]

Yes. So this is from Todd Stern, the former US lead climate diplomat.

[Jesse Jenkins]

And he went on the record on this one. He hates.

[Heatmap News Host]

He went on the record in this one, which is why I can say it. He was the lead US climate negotiator for the Paris Agreement, among other major climate treaties. He said some years ago. Definitely. Well after Paris, people started saying cop, that is dropping the definite article that had always appropriately been included. As in the cop. He says, the way that I see it, no one has the right to be suddenly become such intimate pals with cop. You go to the ball game or the conference or what have you, and you also go to the cop. I'm clearly losing this battle, but no one will ever hear me drop the the. I fought for years to preserve the proper meaning of around. I lost that battle too, but I never give in.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Anyway, I appreciate a man who stands on principles and also proper use of grammar.

[Robinson Meyer]

Exactly.

[Heatmap News Host]

Well, I had just not even thought about that. I also talk about cop. The COP that's coming up. COP is coming up.

[Jesse Jenkins]

But go back and check the tape and see if I'm guilty of this or not.

[Heatmap News Host]

Next question. And we give everyone a chance to reply on this. So of course you're going to. You have to pick one and then you'll get a free response section. Do you think AI and data centers energy needs are significantly slowing down decarbonization? Yes or no?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Significantly? Yeah, I guess significantly it would, yes, I think so. I think in general, the challenge we have with decarbonization is we have to add new clean supplies of energy faster than demand growth.

[Heatmap News Host]

Right.

[Jesse Jenkins]

And so in order to make progress on existing emissions, you have to exceed the demand growth, meet all of that growth with clean resources and and then start to drive down emissions. If you look at what we've talked about as China's are China's emissions peaking or global emissions peaking, I mean that really is a game. It's a race between how fast we can add clean supply and how fast demand for energy is growing. And so in the power sector in particular, an area where we've made the most progress in recent years and cutting emissions, now having a large and rapid growth in electricity demand for kind of a whole new sector of the economy, one that really and one that doesn't directly contribute to decarbonization like say in contrast to electric vehicles or electrifying heating, certainly makes things harder. It just makes that you have to run that race even faster. And I would say in the US Context in particular, in a combination of sort of Trump policy environment, we are not keeping pace. Right. We are not going to be able to both meet the large demand growth and eat into the substantial remaining emissions that we have from coal and gas in our power sector and in particular, I think we're going to see a lot more coal generation over the next decade than we would have otherwise without a both AI and without the repeal of the Biden era EPA regulations, which were going to kind of really drive the entire coal fleet into a moment of truth. Right. Is it going to Are they going to retrofit for carbon capture? Are they going to retire? It was basically their option by 2035. And so without that, we still have on the order of 150 gigawatts of coal fired power plants in the United States. And many of those were on the way out. And I think they're getting a second lease on life because of the fact that demand for energy and particularly capacity are growing so rapidly that a lot of them are now saying, hey, you know what, we can actually make quite a bit of money if we stick around for another 5, 10, 15 years. So yeah, I'd say that's significantly harder. That isn't an indictment to say we shouldn't do AI. I mean it's happening, it's valuable and we need to meet as much if not all of that growth with clean energy. But then we still have to try to go faster and that's the key.

[Heatmap News Host]

Can I actually ask a follow up to that? Yeah. Have you changed your mind about any policy because of this? Because of the kind of sudden appearance of massive demand from AI in a way that doesn't, I think interesting point that you made is like if we were talking about electrification, vehicle electrification, lots of people buying EVs that would also result in electricity demand growth in the US but it would be, we'd be switching kind of on the margin from gasoline combustion at the local level to like natural gas combustion at the grid.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Level, which is a win from a climate perspective.

[Heatmap News Host]

Right. But has the appearance of a huge amount of new data center capacity and load growth from data centers changed your opinion about any policy matter, really?

[Jesse Jenkins]

I would say I do think it makes the EPA regulations on the power sector more important than I would have thought a year, year and a half ago. The way I viewed those regulations was largely as a backstop, a belt and suspenders kind of approach where the real work was going to be done by the clean electricity tax credits that were going to drive lots of new wind and solar and batteries and other clean technologies eventually into the market and continue to sort of hasten the erosion of economic value from existing coal plants, which would help them retire and drive down the utilization of our existing gas power plants. The EPA regulations, when we modeled their impacts in Zero Lab in a paper that our postdoc Shan Lo led, basically found that the EPA regulations are, could be non binding in those sort of nominal scenarios where demand grew over only through electrification and where the tax credits remained in place and where gas prices remained low and where they were most valuable. Is the scenario where natural gas prices got higher, which made coal relatively more competitive, or if demand grew faster than we expected, in which case the renewables might already be kind of at their upper limit in terms of how fast they could go. And then the only option was to burn more fossil fuels. The EPA regulations would have prevented that and encouraged any demand growth from fossil to be met by gas power plants or by power plants with carbon capture. So, yeah, I think without now we've lost the tax credits that we're doing all that work. And gas prices are going up because of LNG exports and growing demand for gas from. For data centers and power prices are going up, which is keeping those coal plants around. So it looks like it was a much more important driver of emissions reductions than we might have anticipated. Of course, the odds that it survived and the tax credits didn't was always zero. I always kind of viewed it as, as going hand in hand with the tax credits. If either of them survived, it would have been the tax credits. But, yeah, it looks like it's causing more damage than I would have expected. So that's one.

[Heatmap News Host]

Will a major permitting reform law on par with what Senators John Barrasso and Joe Manchin proposed in 2024 pass in this Congress.

[Jesse Jenkins]

In 2026?

[Heatmap News Host]

In 2026. So the Congress that will end on December 31, 2026, because the Congress that is elected during the midterms will get sworn in right in the new year.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Look, I, I'd like to think so, but if I had to handicap and wager a bottle of Lagavulin 16, which is my favorite increment of bet to make sure you're really serious, I would probably have to say no. I think there's been progress made and movement forward on the SPEED act, which is really kind of the bare minimum of changes that we probably should be talking about, and even that is likely to run into opposition on both sides of the aisle. We're already hearing Chip Roy and others from the Freedom Caucus say that this bill is too friendly to renewables, which it's not at all. The only thing it does for renewables is say you can't cancel a legitimately granted permit already been granted, unless you have some national security or other grounds, which gives a plenty of a big loophole for this administration to still cancel projects. So anyway, it does very little for renewables, but we're already hearing the right complain about it. And then of course, those on the left who have a legitimate interest in making sure we clear away a lot of barriers to clean energy deployment, including for new permits, which is really the key crux of the issue, as Jill Holtzman's been reporting quite excellently for Heat Map. It does nothing on that front really. And so you have a bunch on the climate side of things saying this isn't doesn't go far enough. And so when you look at those two sides of the debate, I have a hard time seeing it moving forward even in that form. And that's really quite a bit stripped down compared to the Manchin Barrassa bill, which included major transmission permitting reforms, for example, and other key measures. So yeah, I'm not optimistic on that front, but God bless all the folks who are working hard to try to get some bipartisan compromise through that. That really is kind of tech neutral and makes a difference for how fast we can go in building new electricity supply in general, but particularly new clean electricity supply to meet the demand growth moment we were just talking about in.

[Heatmap News Host]

The midterms, which will happen later this year. Which party will get blamed for rising electricity prices and your options are obviously Republicans and Democrats or neither. Because it won't.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Wild card Green Party. No Green Party.

[Heatmap News Host]

That's right, exactly. The German Greens. It's actually their fault. No, neither. But not because neither will be responsible, but because it simply won't be a salient political issue by November, I would.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Imagine it will be a salient political issue. These issues are only going to mount. I think the week that we're recording this podcast, PJM is going to show the clearing results for its latest capacity market auction. And it's going to throw everybody into a tizzy again, I'm sure, because by my estimation and many others, the cost of new entry to actually meet demand growth in PJM is above the price cap that they've set. So we're definitely going to see prices remain high and, and that continue to put price pressure on bills. And PJM alone serves like 65 million Americans in several important battleground states and key voting states. And you've got of course, many others that are seeing similar issues around the country. So yeah, I think it'll still be an issue, I would say. Who's going to get blamed? Both parties are going to get blamed by their echo chambers. Right. Each party's going to do their best dependent on the other party. It's not an option.

[Heatmap News Host]

You have to say Democrats, Republicans or neither.

[Jesse Jenkins]

No, I mean both. I think that's reality. Right? I mean this is how this works is we live in a post truth era. There's no arbiter of this. Both will put their spin machines to work and Republicans are pretty good at meeting their base and Democrats are not so good. So just depends who you're talking to. Who's going to blame whom? I think. And that's the world we live in.

[Heatmap News Host]

Who would you blame?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Who would I blame? Oh, I would blame the Republicans for, you know. Yeah, I would blame Republicans for repealing tax credits that made new electricity sources 30 to 50% cheaper, for repealing tax credits that help people weatherize and upgrade the efficiency of their home to cut their bills and, you know, standing in the way of permitting cost effective new resources even when they're unsubsidized. So I think all of those are really good ways to drive up energy prices along with exporting a huge amount of lng, which drives up upper price pressure on US Natural gas. So putting clean energy aside, that's also going to drive up heating costs and cost for industry in the United States as well. So, yeah, when you're in charge of both chambers of Congress and the White.

[Heatmap News Host]

House, you get blamed. I mean, I think that's the point of it.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah.

[Heatmap News Host]

Other than Donald Trump, who in the federal government has been worst for decarbonization? One person.

[Jesse Jenkins]

It's hard to say who exactly is behind the crusade on permitting of new wind and solar resources. I've heard different stories there, whether it's Stephen Miller, Russ Vote, or who in the White House, if you may, is just coming down from Trump directly. But I would say that the efforts to block permitting of cost effective resources and solar resources across the country is probably the most surprising, honestly to me and the most damaging setback beyond all the policy reforms that we were expecting. And you know, I guess if you had to pick one person in charge of implementing that, it would be at Department of Interior where most of those decisions come down. Yeah. So Burgum, who, you know, was a fan of wind power when he was governor and doesn't seem to be such a fan now that he's part of the Trump administration.

[Heatmap News Host]

What, if any, lesson did you take from the dramatic scaleback of clean energy tax credits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Oh, we had a whole chat about this.

[Heatmap News Host]

I mean, we had a whole chat about this. Yes, yes.

[Jesse Jenkins]

So there's a lot more to say. But I guess what surprised me most and what I learned the most from it is that we live in an era where kind of rational self interest and what's good for your constituents and your, your district are outweighed by what the party leader tells you you have to do. And so even though there was a substantial, you know, several dozen House Republicans and chunk of senators who really did not want to pass this bill for energy reasons, and a good chunk of others who didn't want to pass it because of health care reasons, repeals of Medicaid that would hurt their constituents, all of them, at the end of the day, voted for the bill, with rare exceptions like Thom Tillis. And I think that's because of the kind of ironclad political control that President Trump has over his party and the kind of fear of primary challenges and everything else that has managed to keep his party in line in a way that is, I think, was surprising for me and quite unfortunate in the end, because it means that they took a vote that they knew was bad for their constituents and was bad for their districts and bad for the future of US Competitiveness and bad for energy affordability.

[Heatmap News Host]

The Paris agreement recently turned 10 years old. What do you think Happy birthday is its legacy?

[Jesse Jenkins]

What is its legacy? I would say its legacy is 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius as a political target that has permeated the entire climate discourse. I think the more substantive legacy is the kind of broad process of annual pledges or, you know, semiannual commitments to decarbonization and their kind of the public discussion that those generate at both the domestic level and internationally. But I think if you want to talk about one single thing, it would be the fact that the world committed in that agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a level that kept us, quote, unquote, well below 2 degrees Celsius and with an aspirational target of 1.5 degrees, which even at that time was quite clearly an aspirational target. And I think that drove a lot of bright line target setting, right? You know, these sort of round numbers of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius, they translate into like, do or die discussions in climate world. And I think, as we've talked about before, I don't think that serves us all that well. It's good to have a good target in mind, but every tenth of a degree matters. And bending the curve to net zero as rapidly as possible is the challenge that we really face. And so I guess I wish that the legacy was that it was focused much more concretely on, like, how do we accelerate deployment of clean energy to be faster than demand growth, rather than are we notionally pledging to cut emissions by 2035 to some level that, you know, looks on a piece of paper like it might be roughly commensurate with 1.5 C, but we're clearly not going to meet it, which is the situation we saw in the United States.

[Heatmap News Host]

Well, then it gives birth to the entire idea and it flows from the IEA report that there can be no further investment of fossil fuels in order to meet the 1.5 C. Well, I.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Mean, because that literally is true if you're trying to meet 1.5 C. Right, exactly.

[Heatmap News Host]

Which I think.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Not trying.

[Heatmap News Host]

Yeah. Which climate tech or clean energy sector is in the most trouble right now other than offshore wind in the US and I'm going to give you some examples. EVs, industrial materials, battery manufacturing, utility scale, renewables, rooftop solar, carbon removal or other.

[Jesse Jenkins]

That's a lot of good candidates. I think the US EV sector is the one I would pick. We had a pretty comprehensive industrial policy and regulatory environment put in place over the last four years to provide clear direction to the US Automakers and those who do, those others who manufacture here in the United States or sell in the US that they need to be steadily investing in electric vehicles and for figuring out how to make those costs more cost effective and to increase their share in the marketplace. There were subsidies available to consumers to take the upfront cost down to roughly parity. There was manufacturing subsidies in the form of the 45X, you know, EV or battery manufacturing subsidy that was making it very obvious and cost effective to manufacture batteries in the United States and other components in the battery supply chain. You had the EPA tailpipe emissions in California, greenhouse gas emission standards that were both providing very clear direction for how fast the industry needed to move as well. And now all of that is gone. And so I think the industry has basically invested huge amounts, billions of dollars, multi billion dollars at each company with one view in mind as to where they are headed. And now that, you know, is gone. Right. They're not receiving any of that policy support. The administration is hostile to the whole idea. And US consumers aren't there yet. They're not ready to buy 20, 30% EVs, especially if they cost $7,500 more than they did on September 30th. So we're seeing, I think, a lot of retrenchment and pivoting away from their EV strategies back to their kind of familiar, safe ground of building lots of big SUVs and trucks and selling them to consumers today. And, you know, I think in the long run, it doesn't set aside the fact that electric vehicles are the future of the automotive sector. They're the present in China and much of the rest of the world already. And they certainly will be the future for the sector writ large. Whether it's 50% EVs or 60% EVs or 80% EVs. That's a lot less internal combustion engine vehicles that are going to get bought in the world than are sold today. And so we now have a sector that doesn't really have a lifeline or a path to get there. They're going to have to get there on their own. And I think many of them won't be able to because of the kind of pressures of near term profits competitiveness versus that sort of long term challenge. And the fact that they've just taken a huge bet and gotten punished for it will also probably make the corporate culture pretty reticent to make that bet again. So I'm very pessimistic about where the US EV sector and automakers in general sit right now and where they'll sit in five or 10 years relative to the rest of the world's auto markets.

[Heatmap News Host]

Do you mean the Big three or do you mean the kind of.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I mean, I mean the Big three primarily. Yeah, primarily the Big three or two, whatever.

[Heatmap News Host]

I think what's interesting is there's like two different US auto industries. There's the Big three, which operates primarily in the upper Midwest, and then there's the global automakers and just some EV companies which are mostly in the South. It's just an interesting. Anyway though.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah, well, and then there's also Tesla, which we should say is its own beast and maybe Rivian joining them. And they are going to have a hard time too. I think they may still make it and they're in many ways our best bets for a globally competitive champion in this industry. But even there, you know, Tesla's made many of its own missteps and is certainly not in the best shape in terms of their market growth outlook. So yeah, we're on shaky ground, I would say. Interestingly, one of the wildcards coming in now is Honda and Toyota and Subaru, who were kind of late to the party. You know, their Japanese roots kind of tied them to hydrogen, made them skeptical of the early bet on EVs. But now Toyota just opened a giant battery manufacturing plant in the us. They've got a huge amount of capacity. They're trying to electrify with hybrids and plug in hybrids, kind of their whole fleet. And Toyota and Subaru are launching a number of pretty cost to track competitive new EV offerings in the next couple of years, sort of 30, 35, $40,000 price point. So you know, we'll see what we.

[Heatmap News Host]

Talk about in a future episode. Okay, we're going to do rapid fire round. Now, who is the best hyperscaler on climate and who is the worst? And for listeners who are not completely clued in here, hyperscaler is the term that for no particular reason we've started to use to refer to the big tech companies that invest in AI. And so to my mind, hyperscaler includes meta Google.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah, honestly Robin, this is what I probably can't answer.

[Heatmap News Host]

Okay, wow. Well fair enough because I have some.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Very strong views on this that will very much get my company in trouble. So I'm going to have to not answer that one.

[Heatmap News Host]

Is China more of a hero or a villain on climate change?

[Jesse Jenkins]

I mean, depends who you're rooting for, I guess. I mean they are their own, they're a sovereign country charting their path, right? I mean they're doing what is good for their own development. So we've talked about in the past very broadly aligned with electrifying large shares of their economy and to tapping non fossil resources, at least non oil and gas resources because they don't produce a lot domestically and they don't want to be importing it from around the world. And so their self interest aligns quite solidly with at least advancing the suite of climate solutions and technologies that we need. On the other hand, because they don't import a lot of, they don't want to import oil and gas and they want to electrify their economy, they also burn a lot of coal. And so from that perspective you could argue they're a villain. I think they are honestly moving very rapidly for a country in their position to move away from coal and they've basically halted growth in coal consumption that could quickly reverse as they still have a lot of spare coal power capacity. And so there's a lot of capacity sitting by that could ramp up in the future. But at the moment at least they seem to pretty strategically focused on turning that pivot. So I guess hero at the moment.

[Heatmap News Host]

Will a country attempt the global deployment of solar radiation management within the next decade? Yes, no or other than the next decade?

[Jesse Jenkins]

No. Within the decade after. We'll see.

[Heatmap News Host]

Okay, now true rapid fire. How much will global average temperatures have risen by 2100? Please provide your answer. In the number of degrees Celsius the temperatures will have risen above the pre industrial average. And for a reminder to our listeners, NASA currently estimates that global temperatures have already risen roughly 1.1 degrees above since 1880.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I'm going to go with like in the neighborhood of 2.7 degrees. Hopefully less. But that's our. I would say that's where our current trajectory is headed. 2.5 to 2.7.

[Heatmap News Host]

Optimistic. In what year will global.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I think we can do better than that. I think we can get it under that.

[Heatmap News Host]

I just think. But yes, I actually think 2.7 is the optimistic, pessimistic. Break even.

[Jesse Jenkins]

That's the cutoff.

[Heatmap News Host]

Okay, for this moment.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah, for this moment. Yeah. That's the 50. 50. Right on target. Okay.

[Heatmap News Host]

In what year will global greenhouse gas emissions peak?

[Jesse Jenkins]

2028. I mean, you made me pick a year. I had to pick one year. Yeah. I would say before 2030, I think. I think with China's trajectory.

[Heatmap News Host]

You think global greenhouse gas emissions will peak before 2030?

[Jesse Jenkins]

I think so. I mean, they might plateau and roll along a little, but yeah, I think they're going to.

[Heatmap News Host]

Yeah. I mean, it's going to be a. It's hard to call a peak in a plateau, but let's say.

[Jesse Jenkins]

But yes, I think it will plateau. I don't know that it will start on a regular downward trajectory at that point.

[Robinson Meyer]

Yeah.

[Heatmap News Host]

If I had to ask you, what year would they stop growing? You would say 2028. Is that what I'm hearing? Okay, great. In what decade will China's greenhouse gas emissions peak?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah, 2028. Because it's the same answer.

[Heatmap News Host]

What decade?

[Jesse Jenkins]

More or less. Oh, what decade? Yeah, I think before 2030.

[Heatmap News Host]

Yes. In what decade will the United states reach net zero? And your answers are the 2000s through the 2020 90s.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yeah.

[Heatmap News Host]

And then I think the 20 is 2100 2060s.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I would. I would say the 2000s is still in play. Let's hope we get there.

[Heatmap News Host]

Okay.

[Jesse Jenkins]

It's not going to be 2050 anymore. I don't think we had a shot, but we may have blown it.

[Heatmap News Host]

And finally, what is the best PDF you've read this year?

[Jesse Jenkins]

Best PDF?

[Heatmap News Host]

Yeah. So the premise of this question is everyone reads PDFs. We're all reading PDFs all the time. What is energy and climate but just a great global exchange of PDFs? And so everyone, you must have a best one.

[Jesse Jenkins]

That implies I have time to read PDFs. That's what I have graduate students in ChatGPT for.

[Heatmap News Host]

You have a remarkable. Come on, you must have read at least one PDF.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I mean, I read the ones that we published ourselves because I had to review them. Yeah, I'm revealing my lack of attention span here. I think that the report that we put out that Google sponsored on flexible interconnection and bring your own capacity is a pretty. It's a banger. It's pretty good. That came out in early December and I think we'll probably talk about it more in the new year on the show. But that was a report led by Camus with Zero Lab and the consultancy Encore, looking at how we can connect data centers without stranding a bunch of underutilized infrastructure that's only used 1% of the year. And then how do we meet the other 99% of hours once they still have a lot of firm demand? And that the solution to that is the kind of bring your own capacity and energy construct that again. My company that I've started, Firm of Power, is trying to provide one way to bring that to market. There are others as well. But yeah, I think it's a good one, two punch way to both accommodate energy demand growth from data centers and to avoid shifting costs onto lots of other consumers. And there's a lot of depth in that paper if folks want to check it out.

[Heatmap News Host]

The best PDF I read this year was a philosophical introduction to Merleau Ponty's phenomenology of perception.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Oh, come on. You read a PDF introduction to Merleau Ponty? I did that in like 2005 in my.

[Heatmap News Host]

You guys got really into Merleau Ponty.

[Jesse Jenkins]

This year I did an entire semester on Merleau Ponty.

[Robinson Meyer]

Really?

[Heatmap News Host]

I feel more important than ever in the age of AI. I think technology. Surprisingly important. Thinker.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Fair enough. Yeah. Listeners may not know I was a dual major in both computer science and philosophy.

[Heatmap News Host]

I did not know this.

[Jesse Jenkins]

Yes. And so I took quite a bit of philosophy classes, including one semester study abroad in Australia at anu. Australian National University. And we just read Merleau Ponty for an entire semester.

[Heatmap News Host]

Wow, huh? Yep. Fascinating. Well, that brings us to the end of this survey.

[Jesse Jenkins]

I'm sweating. That was a sprint.

[Robinson Meyer]

Thanks so much for listening. So you can find the full set of survey stories from leaders across the industry, not just Jesse. From everyone on Heatmap News right now we've got former Biden officials, top US government climate scientists, lobbyists, venture capitalists, energy CEOs, academics. It's a fun group. And it's all on Heatmap News right now. You can find me on bluesky on LinkedIn under my name, Robinson Meyer. If you enjoyed this episode, of course, share it with your friends. Tell them about it. Until next time, Shift Key is a production of Heatmap News. Our editors are Jillian Go Menonico Loricella. Multimedia editing and audio engineering is by Jacob Lambert and by Nick Woodbury. Our music is by Adam Kramelau. Thank you so much for listening and.

[Heatmap News Host]

See you next week.