What Happened to Running Tide? – Heatmap
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On the abrupt end of a carbon removal startup, Mecca’s extreme heat, and fireflies
Current conditions: Flooding in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city, killed at least eight people • A heat advisory remains in effect across many Northeastern states • A “winter” storm could bring up to 15 inches of snow to parts of Montana and Idaho.
At least 14 Jordanians died over the weekend from exposure to extreme heat during the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Another 17 pilgrims are missing. The holy trip, which all Muslims are encouraged to make during their lifetimes, began Friday and will run until Wednesday. It is expected to attract nearly 2 million people. But temperatures this year are dangerously hot, reaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit Sunday and forecast to stay in that range through the rest of the week. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange explained last year, “because the dates of the annual Hajj are dictated by the lunar calendar, the pilgrimage season has fallen during Saudi Arabia’s hottest months since 2017 and won’t move out of them until 2026.”
Carbon removal startup Running Tide is shutting down and laying off all its remaining employees, citing a lack of demand for the voluntary carbon market. The Portland-based company was founded in 2017. Its technology involved sinking biomass to speed up the ocean’s CO2-capturing capabilities, and with 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide removed and 21,000 credits delivered, it was “the largest company in the world to trap carbon without taking it directly from the air or point of emission,” the Portland Press Heraldreported. In March of last year, Running Tide signed a deal with Microsoft to remove 12,000 tons of CO2e over two years. Shopify was also a partner. But the startup began laying off employees in November after offset prices began to plummet and questions arose about the environmental benefits of the voluntary carbon market. CEO Marty Odlin told the Press Herald that a lack of investment from the U.S. government also stunted the company’s growth. “This was still at research scale,” he said. “This needs to be a thousand times larger at industrial scale and it’s going to take a ton of government leadership to get us there.”
Rebecca Kujawa, the CEO of NextEra Energy Resources, which is the largest renewables developer in the U.S., told the Financial Times that President Biden’s tariffs on Chinese clean energy technologies create uncertainty that can hinder development, hike costs, “and make it more difficult to get some of the clean energy goals that the Biden administration has over the finish line.” The White House has a goal for the U.S. of 80% renewable energy generation by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035. Biden imposed a new round of tariffs last month in an effort to protect U.S. manufacturers from cheap Chinese imports of things like solar panels and EVs. The FT noted the tariffs “underscore the difficult balancing act facing the Biden administration as it vies to green the world’s largest economy while building out a supply chain for clean technologies, the bulk of which are produced in China.”
Long-term weather patterns are some of the most important factors when it comes to the health of fireflies in North America, according to a new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. The researchers used machine learning models to analyze data from more than 24,000 surveys of firefly behavior and rank the importance of certain risk factors (like pesticides, light pollution, land cover, topography, and weather/climate patterns) on the insects’ populations. Their results point to more frequent hot days as one of the most “predictive” variables, meaning that firefly populations seem more vulnerable to changes in climate than to other factors like chemical sprays or artificial light. The researchers say that, “given the significant impact that climactic and weather conditions have on firefly abundance, there is a strong likelihood that firefly populations will be influenced by climate change, with some regions becoming higher quality and supporting larger firefly populations, and others potentially losing populations altogether.”
The European Union this morning approved a landmark environmental policy, paving the way for it to become law. The long-awaited “Nature Restoration Law” aims to restore ecosystems, bolster biodiversity, and help the bloc achieve its climate objectives. More than 80% of Europe’s habitats are in poor condition. The new law will require member states to restore at least 20% of their land and seas by 2030, with the aim of restoring all struggling ecosystems by 2050. Some countries opposed the measure due to concerns it will slow the expansion of new energy projects.
“You’ll never find an insurer saying, ‘I don’t believe in climate change.’” –John Neal, chief executive of Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance marketplace
Jessica Hullinger
Jessica Hullinger is a freelance writer and editor who likes to think deeply about climate science and sustainability. She previously served as Global Deputy Editor for The Week, and her writing has been featured in publications including Fast Company, Popular Science, and Fortune. Jessica is originally from Indiana but lives in London.
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Environmentalists, however, still aren’t sold on the ADVANCE Act.
While climate change policy is typically heavily polarized along party lines, nuclear energy policy is not. The ADVANCE Act, which would reform the nuclear regulatory policy to encourage the development of advanced nuclear reactors, passed the Senate today, by a vote of 88-2, preparing it for an almost certain presidential signature.
The bill has been floating around Congress for about a year and is the product of bipartisanship within the relevant committees, a notable departure from increasingly top-down legislating in Washington. The House of Representatives has its own nuclear regulatory bill, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act, which the House overwhelmingly voted for in February.
The resulting bill — a.k.a. the one that just passed — is a compromise between the House bill and the ADVANCE Act originally introduced in 2023, has been stapled to the “Fire Grants and Safety Act,” a bipartisan bill that reauthorizes a gaggle of federal firefighting programs that has already passed the House.
The nuclear piece of it is designed to align the Nuclear Regulatory Commission around so-called “advanced” nuclear reactors, a catch-all term that covers a number of designs and concepts that are typically smaller than the existing light water reactor fleet and would, ideally, be largely factory-built to reduce costs. So far, the NRC has only approved one advanced reactor design, put forward by the nuclear startup NuScale, but plans to actually build it fell through due to escalating costs. Another advanced nuclear project, Bill-Gates-backed TerraPower, has started construction ahead of receiving approval from the NRC.
The ADVANCE Act would eliminate some fees for applicants going through the NRC approval process; instruct the NRC to develop specific rules for “microreactors,” which might only have 20 or so megawatts of capacity and could be used for single sites or rural areas; establish prizes for advanced reactors; and “streamline” the NRC process for advanced nuclear reactors. That last bit would involve beefing up the Commission with additional staffing, change its mission statement to be more supportive of nuclear energy’s benefits (as opposed to merely its risks), and come up with a way to make it easier to develop nuclear reactors on brownfield sites such as decommissioned coal plants.
The Nuclear Energy Institute said in a statement in April that the bill would “improve our ability to get more nuclear reactors approved and on the grid more quickly.” That is exactly what some environmental groups are unhappy about, however. “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s apparent embrace of new nuclear energy development represents a stark betrayal of the clean, safe renewable energy options like wind and solar that he claims to champion,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement last week.
The ADVANCE Act is just one of a flurry of legislative and executive actions to support the nuclear energy industry. Nuclear power qualifies for a number of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits and the beefed up Loan Programs Office has committed up to $1.5 billion for the re-opening of the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan.
On Equatic’s big news, heat waves, and the Paris Olympics
Current conditions: Tropical storm warnings have been issued for Texas and Mexico • Parts of southwestern France were hit with large hail stones • The temperature trend for June is making climate scientists awfully nervous.
About 77 million people are under some kind of heat advisory as a heat wave works its way across the Midwest and Northeast. In most of New England, the heat index is expected to reach or exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. What makes this heat wave especially dangerous is its “striking duration,” Jake Petr, the lead forecaster with National Weather Service Chicago, toldThe New York Times. Temperatures are projected to stay exceptionally high for several days before beginning to taper off only slightly over the weekend. According toThe Washington Post, temperatures could be up to 25 degrees higher than normal for this time of year. And forecasters expect it to be unseasonably hot across the country for at least the next three weeks. Below is a look at the NWS HeatRisk projections today (top) and Thursday (bottom). The darker the color, the warmer the temperature and the higher the health risks. 
Tuesday HeatRisk forecastNWS HeatRisk
Thursday HeatRisk forecastNWS HeatRisk
Meanwhile, about 30 groups (including health organizations, climate movements, and labor unions) have filed a petition urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to add extreme heat and wildfire smoke to the list of emergencies that are considered “major disasters.” Such a declaration could allow communities access to federal funds to prepare for heat and fire emergencies. It could also help pressure employers to provide better protections for workers who toil away in dangerously warm conditions.
Crux, the New York-based startup that helps companies trade clean energy tax credits made transferable by the Inflation Reduction Act, announced this morning that it has secured strategic investments from some of the largest energy developers, including Clearway Energy, Intersect Power, Pattern Energy, and Électricité de France. “We had an opportunity to bring in some of the leading developers who collectively represent a pipeline of more than 100 gigawatts of power,” Alfred Johnson, Crux’s CEO, told Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer.
Let’s back up a bit. As Meyer explains, companies can claim money on their taxes by building zero-carbon electricity generation, new factories, buying electric vehicles, and more. But energy developers and utilities rarely need to use all the tax credits they generate from their projects. The IRA created a market for those tax credits, and Crux forecasts that $7 to $9 billion of these new “transferrable tax credits” will be sold in that new market this year (with huge potential for growth through 2030). Its product is a platform that lets developers, utilities, and manufacturing companies describe and sell their tax credits to buyers, with the goal being to make these transactions “efficient and standardized.” Crux has now raised more than $27 million in capital since its founding early last year.
Plans are underway to build North America’s first commercial-scale ocean-based carbon removal plant and have it up and running by 2027. The facility will be built in Quebec, Canada, by carbon removal startup Equatic in partnership with Deep Sky, a Canadian-based developer of carbon removal projects. Equatic uses electrolysis on seawater to trap carbon both in the ocean and in the air. The process also creates clean hydrogen, which the company plans to sell, and use to power its own technology. Equatic already has two pilot plants – one in Los Angeles and another in Singapore. It says that in its first year, the commercial-scale plant will remove 109,500 metric tons of CO2 and produce 3,600 metric tons of green hydrogen, and help bring the cost of carbon dioxide removal down below the key benchmark of $100 per metric ton by 2030.
A group of Olympians have teamed up with academics to put out a new report warning that the Paris Olympics could be dangerously hot for athletes. The 2024 Games run from July 26 through August 11, the hottest part of the year in Europe. The 2024 “Rings of Fire” report found that July in Paris is 5.58 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than it was in 1924 when the city last hosted the sporting event. Last year more than 5,000 people died in France due to excessive heat. The report has several recommendations, including scheduling events for cooler times of the day, but also includes suggestions from the athletes themselves, such as eliminating the stigma that may come with speaking out about heat risk, and weeding out fossil-fuel sponsorship in sports.
Vermont’s House and Senate yesterday pushed through a law that will significantly shift the state’s utilities to renewable electricity within the next decade. The legislature voted to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of H.289, a bill that will require all electric utilities to get to 100% renewable energy by 2035 – a shift from the existing law that says utilities must hit 75% renewables by 2032.
More than 800 coal plants in developing nations have the potential to be profitably decomissioned and transitioned to large-scale solar and storage systems, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Equatic’s carbon removal process.
The New York-based startup aims to create a market for clean energy tax credits.
One of the least-noticed changes in the Inflation Reduction Act may be one of the most important.
For years, the government has encouraged developers, power utilities, and other companies to build clean energy by offering tax credits. But those tax credits were difficult to transfer to other companies, meaning that complicated financial instruments had to be created to allow them to share in the wealth.
The IRA continues to employ tax credits. But for the first time, it allows companies to buy and sell tax credits to each other.
A new crop of startups have appeared to help companies trade these new “transferable” tax credits. One of the largest is Crux, a New York-based startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Lowercarbon Capital.
On Tuesday, Crux announced that it has now brought some of the country’s largest energy developers into its fold. Clearway Energy, Intersect Power, Pattern Energy, and Électricité de France (commonly known as EDF) have all made strategic investments in Crux, the company announced. It had not previously disclosed their involvement in January’s $18.2 million Series A round.
“We had an opportunity to bring in some of the leading developers who collectively represent a pipeline of more than 100 gigawatts of power,” Alfred Johnson, Crux’s CEO, told me.
Crux has now raised more than $27 million in capital since its founding early last year. The offshore wind developer Orsted, as well as the energy developers LS Power and Hartree, have previously joined as strategic investors.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, as in the past, companies can claim money on their taxes by building zero-carbon electricity generation, new factories, buying electric vehicles, and more.
But energy developers and utilities rarely need to use all the tax credits that they generate from their projects. A $30 million solar farm might generate as much as $10 million of tax credits, for instance — far too much for most companies to use in a reasonable amount of time.
That meant that developers had to bring in a third-party firm — usually a bank or another financial institution — that could pay for the privilege of using those tax credits. Before the IRA passed, many clean energy projects were therefore structured as complicated “tax equity” deals, where the bank or tax credit “buyer” owned part of the project so that it could claim its tax credits. About $20 billion in tax equity deals happened last year, according to research from the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.
The IRA aimed to make that process easier by, in essence, creating a market for tax credits.
Crux estimates that $7 to $9 billion of these new “transferrable tax credits” were sold in that new market last year. It believes that the opportunity will grow rapidly. The advisory firm Evercore has projected that the transferrable tax credit market could exceed $100 billion by 2030.
Crux is not the only company that hopes to capitalize on that burgeoning market, potentially speeding the energy transition at the same time. Basis Climate, another New York-based startup, is also trying to serve as a key platform in the space.
Ilmi Granoff is an expert on climate finance, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Law, and an advisor to Basis Climate. “The market is going to be diverse and large enough to support a number of pure play platforms that are specialists in this — and you’re going to have the banks moving in, consultancies, the tax advisors, and more,” Granoff told me. “For those looking for an environmental commodities market that really drives climate change, you can stop looking at the voluntary carbon market and just monetize the tax credit market for carbon solutions. It is going to be a very reliable market, backed by the government.”
Johnson, the Crux chief executive, also pointed to the scale of climate-related investment on the horizon. “We just have to build so much in the next 10 years. The level of infrastructure investments that have happened up to this point — and the scale of what will be built — is really, really dramatic,” Johnson said.
Crux’s product is a standardized platform where developers, utilities, and manufacturing companies can describe and sell their tax credits to buyers.
When a buyer first uses Crux, all tax credits available on the service are presented anonymously. They can then anonymously contact a specific seller. The buyer and seller can gradually reveal information to each other throughout the ensuing negotiation, culminating in a Crux-hosted “data room” where each teams’ accountants and lawyers can trade and view documents relevant to the sale.
“This is not a point and click transaction,” Johnson told me. “These are still complicated transactions with lots of moving pieces, with many underlying documents and lots of stakeholders at the table.” The goal of Crux, he said, is to make these transactions “efficient and standardized.”
The company says it’s already having some success speeding up the average sale. It recently facilitated a deal between an electricity utility, which was selling tax credits, and a Fortune 100 company, which was buying them, in just 22 days, Johnson told me. By contrast, a traditional tax equity deal would take six to nine months to structure and close, he said.
Many of the company’s leaders once helped shape high-level Democratic policy. Johnson, a former White House aide under President Barack Obama, was deputy chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen until 2022. He and Crux’s cofounder, Allen Kramer, previously cofounded the startup Mobilize, which helped organizations manage and recruit volunteers.
William Daley, a former Obama White House chief of staff and Commerce Secretary under President Bill Clinton, joined Crux as a senior advisor last week.
In an interview, Daley told me that — with the defense industry excepted — he could not remember the government investing in a strategic industry the way it is now investing in clean energy. “These are economic decisions that investors are making — they’re not just going out there and doing things that may or may not be financially rewarding,” he told me. “For every dollar the government puts forward in a subsidy or credit, the private sector is investing $5.”