$8B Of Climate Tech Projects Canceled | In Louisiana, A Successful, Growing Wetland

How will market uncertainty and a lack of federal support for climate efforts affect the future of clean energy in the United States? Plus, many wetlands are disappearing, but Louisiana’s “accidental” Wax Lake Delta is growing—and informing coastal restoration techniques.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  WNYC is supported by Bear. Science is about asking questions, testing, trying again. It's not easy, but it's relentless. It evolves, and that's why science delivers. Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.

• 0:14Ira Flatow?

  Science Friday is supported by MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Support for Science Friday comes from USA for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Here's a problem. How do you keep a house above freezing when the windows are gone and the power is out for 16 hours a day? In Ukraine this winter, the answer fits in a box. Reflective insulation, plastic sheeting to cover broken windows, draft blockers for the doors. Simple materials installed the same day a team arrives. Your gift delivers them, and until December 31st, it's matched. Donate at unrefugees.org/friday.

• 1:11Flora Lichtman?

  This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lixman. Late yesterday, the head of the National Science Foundation, Sethuraman Panchanathan, announced that he's resigning. His decision comes as the Trump administration slashes the agency's budget, cuts hundreds of jobs, and terminates active research grants. We'll continue to follow what this means for NSF. But those aren't the only cuts to science we're watching. The administration has also canceled climate change efforts, from layoffs at large science agencies, to leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, and rescinding federal funding for green research and infrastructure. So what do those federal policy changes mean for clean tech development and adoption? Here to break it down is Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology

• 1:56Flora Lichtman?

  Review. Welcome back to Science Friday, Casey. Thanks so much for having me.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Great to be here.

• 2:01Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so how is clean tech being affected by these priority shifts that we're seeing in Washington?

• 2:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, you really kind of laid it out there at the top, but we have seen, you know, since the first days of the Trump administration, that they would be kind of taking, let's call it a different approach to climate than what we've seen in the past few years. You know, pulling out of that Paris Climate Agreement, the global treaty that aims to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees C, canceling a lot of climate research, firing scientists at agencies like NOAA. And I think we're starting to see very early effects from it. A new report that came out last week from Group E2 found that about $8 billion worth of clean tech projects have been canceled, downsized, or shut down just in the first three months of this year.

• 2:46Flora Lichtman?

  Give me a sense of the trajectory of green tech, like solar panels and wind turbines, before the new Trump administration.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  I would say that the kind of atmosphere was very positive. You know, we saw hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal government investing into projects like factories for batteries and huge solar installations. The biggest change that I've seen is this injection of uncertainty. There's been, you know, fights over, you know, the Trump administration trying to pull back some of that funding. We talked about a lot of firings and a lot of kind of changes within the government. Whereas, you know, a few months ago, the the kind of outlook for the next 10 years was a lot of tax credits, a lot of support. And now there's kind of questions about, you know, will that money be there? How will things like tariffs affect efforts to build projects?

• 3:36Speaker 04

  So I would say we've gone to a very, very quickly into a very uncertain time.

• 3:42Flora Lichtman?

  Yeah, you reported this week that $8 billion of clean tech projects in the US have been canceled so far this year. Can you put that number in context? Like, it sounds really big, but is it a big percentage of all clean tech projects?

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that's a really good point. So we've seen, you know, much more than that be announced over the past few years. Since August 2022 is when a lot of groups kind of started tracking this. That's when the Inflation Reduction Act was passed with all of that money for for tax credits and the like. I will say from August 2022 to the end of 2024, there were about $2 billion worth of projects that got canceled. Just in the first few months of this year, we've seen almost $8 billion get canceled. So just a much larger number. I'll note that again, like there are more projects going forward, so there are more to get canceled. But experts that I spoke with said that, you know, this uncertain policy landscape is definitely

• 4:35Speaker 04

  leading to kind of this higher number of canceled and scaled back and shut down projects.

• 4:41Flora Lichtman?

  Is that the main driver of the uncertainty?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  I think uncertainty in kind of all of its forms is one of them. I'll note that all of these cancellations come before things like the tariffs, which were announced earlier this month. But I think that that is really a big part of it. You'll see companies when they, in these announcements, they'll mention, you know, changing market conditions, they're shifting production to other countries. So I think there's definitely a range and some of this is just like the normal case of business. You know, companies go bankrupt all the time. Not everybody makes it.

• 5:15Flora Lichtman?

  Right.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  But I think that that uncertainty is certainly contributing to this really high number that we're seeing.

• 5:20Flora Lichtman?

  You know, I've heard solar and wind are some of the cheapest ways to make energy now. Despite what the administration is doing, do you think capitalism will continue to drive these projects forward?

• 5:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think that we'll see, you know, these technologies absolutely crash and burn or anything like that. I, I think that we'll still continue to see some projects succeed. We'll still see some, you know, solar installation. We'll still see some, you know, factories being built. But I think it'll be, you know, it might be shifted. I think one of the big questions that I have is, you know, how much all of this will cause the US to fall behind. I think we'll see a lot of, you know, folks moving to Europe or to China for a lot of this. So I don't think the energy transition is, is stopping, but I think that maybe what role the US and, and US companies play in it is kind of the big question.

• 6:12Flora Lichtman?

  Speaking of clean tech, tell me about this new startup that's recycling solar panels.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Yes, I love, I'm fascinated by. By trash caused by clean tech. I think it's a really interesting kind of problem that as we're seeing energy sources shift, there are challenges that come with this. So um, this company called One Planet is based in Jacksonville, Florida, and they recently raised some money to build a solar recycling plant in the state. They say that this will be one of the largest plants to recycle solar panels in the US. It's uh, expected to be a ninety million dollar facility. Um, and they can recover things like the glass, the silicon, the plastic and metals like aluminum and copper from solar panels.

• 6:52Flora Lichtman?

  Is, is there a reason why it's based in Florida?

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So Florida has emerged as kind of a, a big place for solar power in the US. Florida built more large scale solar than California in twenty twenty four. It's also, as you might know, a place that sees a lot of hurricanes. So I think we'll see a lot of solar panels just kind of coming off ready to be retired in, in the coming years, but then also a lot of damaged panels that need to be dealt with. Um, so I think it's a really kind of smart fit for that state right now.

• 7:22Flora Lichtman?

  Let's switch gears and check in on the measles outbreak. It is breaking records, unfortunately. Tell us about it.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this is the largest single outbreak of measles in the US since two thousand, which is when measles was declared to be eliminated in the US. We're seeing cases mostly across Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. And there have been over six hundred cases of measles in Texas alone since late January, um, with two people having died.

• 7:48Flora Lichtman?

  So there've been cuts to public health agencies. Has that affected the outbreak?

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's really expensive and very difficult to deal with outbreaks like this. Um, you know, the state has to do things like contact tracing to try to get a handle on this outbreak. Because you can be infectious or, or contagious with measles before you show symptoms. The state is doing that. They're running vaccine clinics. Um, they're getting extra CDC support. And so there's a lot of concern that, you know, those cuts to public health can really impede the ability of, of the state agencies to deal with outbreaks like this.

• 8:22Flora Lichtman?

  Do we know if the scale of this outbreak is prompting new people to get vaccinated?

• 8:27Speaker 04

  The state has been running vaccine clinics and they have been vaccinating people. Getting a vaccine even after exposure can help lessen the severity of the disease. But this is largely happening in a county called Gaines County, where there's a really large Mennonite community there that has very historically low vaccination rates. And so that's absolutely kind of one of the major things here is we know these vaccines are safe. We know that they're effective and it's really important to preventing outbreaks like this.

• 8:56Flora Lichtman?

  Moving on, a new analysis in Nature suggests that we're starting to see the beginning of a scientific brain drain in the US. Can you tell us about it?

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we talked about, you know, some of this at the top with things like research grants getting canceled. And so Nature did an analysis of job boards data and they found that US scientists are really looking to get out of the US and look for jobs abroad. US scientists submitted 32% more applications for jobs outside the US in the first three months of this year compared to the same period a year ago. And things really started to heat up in March when we saw more news about kind of the administration targeting science views of job postings abroad rose by almost 70% compared to March in 2024.

• 9:42Flora Lichtman?

  So it's like a warning sign of a brain drain and we'll see what happens.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Yeah, it's early, you know, we don't know if people will actually, you know, get jobs, move abroad. But you know, other countries are really looking to capitalize. There's one university in France that started something called the Safe Place for Science Initiative. And they had about $17 million to sponsor, you know, a handful of researchers working in climate, health, environment. They had to shut the applications down because they got so many applications and 70% of them were from US scientists.

• 10:10Flora Lichtman?

  Let's head to China. In lighter news, there was a half marathon in Beijing last Saturday and 21 of the participants weren't human at all. What was going on there?

• 10:21Speaker 04

  I love this story. I know there were 12,000 humans that ran this half marathon and the robots are getting all of the attention. So yeah, a handful of companies developed humanoid robots that attempted to start the half marathon. Twenty-one started, only six of them finished the course, largely much slower than the humans did.

• 10:40Flora Lichtman?

  Solidarity with the ones who didn't finish and the slow robots. But yeah, keep going.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  I know, I know. The fastest one finished in two hours and 40 minutes. It got its batteries changed three times and it fell down once, which I don't know, I think that's very relatable.

• 10:55Flora Lichtman?

  It's very relatable. Did you watch the video, Casey?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  I didn't, but I bet they're amazing.

• 11:01Flora Lichtman?

  They're amazing. First of all, some of them seem to be wearing shoes, like running shoes. And they look a lot like me trying to run a half marathon. It's like C3PO mall walking after hip surgery. Like, it's just highly recommend.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Amazing. You know, it's good signs that, you know, just a few years ago, robots couldn't really reliably walk. So it does show progress, but I do feel a little better about my abilities.

• 11:26Flora Lichtman?

  Athletic abilities.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:28Flora Lichtman?

  Speaking of athletic abilities, a study about bats was amazing this week. Tell us about it.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, so scientists have observed that bats tend to drink on the fly. Water holes can be very dangerous. That's kind of a gathering place for animals. And so most species of bats have developed this ability to, you know, kind of just swoop down over sources of water to take a drink. And so researchers really wanted to understand how they're doing this without crashing. And so they focused on a few bat species that tend to fly over water sources and lap up water with their tongues. And they set up all of these cameras around and use stereoscopic imaging to track the bats' bodies to better understand, you know, how they were able to do this multitasking.

• 12:11Flora Lichtman?

  What did they find?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, they found a few common techniques. They tend to reduce their flight speed as they approach the water, reduce kind of how far they're flapping their wings or their wing stroke, and then also use kind of a higher angle with their wings to counterbalance them moving their head down. What I found really fascinating about this is that they had to be really precise with this because bats, a lot of the times, they do echolocation kind of in their nose area. So if they were to get water up their nose, it would kind of interfere with their ability to, you know, quote unquote, see. So this is really important that the bats are able to do this really precisely.

• 12:47Flora Lichtman?

  You know, I feel like bats really don't always get their due. I mean, they are mammals, like our, you know, our relatives that can fly. And now they can drink and fly at the same time. I don't know, I would like just, I'm team bat here, I guess.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Me too, always. Especially as someone, again, I'm one of those people who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, so props to them.

• 13:08Flora Lichtman?

  There's also something about these videos that, of these bats drinking on the go, that like really reminds me of my personal ideal happy hour.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Just like swooping through. You're, you're kind of a quick one. Smooth through, grab a drink and go.

• 13:21Flora Lichtman?

  Just like in and out, you know?

• 13:25Flora Lichtman?

  Thanks, Casey, for coming on.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.

• 13:29Flora Lichtman?

  Casey Crownheart is a senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review.

• 13:36Flora Lichtman?

  After the break, a trip to Louisiana, where a thriving wetland is teaching scientists how to rebuild these fragile ecosystems.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  Even though we have the tools to build more wetlands, we're not necessarily implementing them.

• 13:49Flora Lichtman?

  Stay with us.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Science Friday is supported by PBS, presenting Going Wild. If you love learning about the natural world and meeting the scientists who help us understand it, be sure to check out the new season of Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn Grant. It's the chart-topping and Webby Award-winning podcast from the folks at Nature on PBS, now with a video companion series. In this season of Going Wild, host acclaimed wildlife ecologist Dr. Ray Wynn Grant heads out into the field to explore the animals, people, and stories that make nature worth saving. Stops include a hibernating black bear den in Arkansas and an underwater shipwreck site off the Florida coast. If you're looking for a place to start, check out the season's debut episode, where Ray joins beloved biologist and influencer Jordan King in the Florida Everglades to learn about

• 14:40Speaker 00

  his unlikely journey into science and how to study a wetland when it's not very, well, wet. So don't miss out. Follow Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn Grant on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Science Friday comes from the William K. Bose Junior Foundation.

• 15:02Flora Lichtman?

  And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KER News.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  For WWNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News.

• 15:10Flora Lichtman?

  Local science stories of national significance. Wetlands across the country are in trouble. Pollution, climate change, and development are threatening them, and more than half of the wetlands in the lower 48 states have disappeared. We rely on these ecosystems to filter water, protect us from storms, and provide habitat for a variety of plant and animal life. So that's why scientists have their eyes on Louisiana's Wax Lake Delta. Because unlike the rest of the state's wetlands, this one is growing. It's being used as a living laboratory to study what makes a healthy wetland. Joining me to talk about this story is Eva Tesfi, environment reporter for WWNO's Coastal Desk. She reported this story in collaboration with Elise Plunk at the Louisiana Illuminator

• 15:54Flora Lichtman?

  for the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk. Eva, welcome to Science Friday.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me.

• 15:59Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, tell me about the Wax Lake Delta. Where is it? What should I picture?

• 16:04Speaker 05

  So if you think of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, there's an offshoot river of that called the Achafalaya. And Wax Lake Delta is the end of another offshoot of that that was manmade. It's like a straight canal that goes into the Gulf and then opens up into the Gulf. So if you picture that, at the end of that are these arrow-shaped islands at the end, and those are wetlands that have been built by that canal.

• 16:30Flora Lichtman?

  So Louisiana's coastal wetlands are disappearing because of sea level rise and erosion. Why is this delta staying strong?

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, so to understand that, I want to talk about like what's no longer happening with the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River Delta used to deposit sediment and build wetlands out into the Gulf of Mexico. But all the engineering we've done on the river has made that not possible anymore. So it's not building more land. So what's happening with Wax Lake Delta is it's carrying sediment from the Achafalaya River into the Gulf and then depositing that. And eventually, that sediment builds up and creates... These islands and then there's plants and wildlife moves in and it turns into wetlands. And basically, most rivers do this. The Mississippi River used to do this, but all the engineering we've done on the Mississippi River has made that not possible anymore. So because the Mississippi River is not building land and then there's coastal erosion and sea

• 17:24Speaker 05

  level rise, that means everywhere else in Louisiana is losing land. And I talked to Alicia Renfro. She's a scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. She explains it like this.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  We've had a lot of changes to the Mississippi River over time. There's dams that have reduced the amount of sediment. We have sea level rise, we have storms, but yet the Wax Lake Delta remains and continues to grow and build robust, healthy wetlands.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  So even though Wax Lake Delta was kind of like this manmade accident, the way it's depositing sediment and building these wetlands is mimicking how a river delta would naturally build wetlands.

• 17:55Flora Lichtman?

  What kind of research is going on there?

• 17:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I visited Wax Lake Delta to meet with a bunch of Louisiana State University researchers. And what I thought was really interesting that they were doing is they've already kind of studied how Wax Lake Delta has built land. So now they're mostly focusing on the benefits of wetlands and they're monitoring greenhouse gases to see how much carbon the wetlands are storing to, you know, keep it out of the atmosphere and help with our global warming problem. And they're also seeing how much nitrogen wetlands filter out of the water that's coming through, that's being released into the Gulf. And that's huge because the Gulf has this huge problem with nitrogen coming down the Mississippi River and creating what's known as the dead zone. So while we were out there, I talked to Ivan Vargas Lopez. He says there's a term that they like to use for Wax Lake Delta.

• 18:42Speaker 06

  Living lab. So it's a breathing system. It's forming really, really fast. I think that that gives us, to the scientists, a lot of tools to understand the delta formation processes in our lifetime.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  So because these wetlands are building so fast and like basically happening before our eyes, it makes it a great place for them to study.

• 19:04Flora Lichtman?

  Are there lessons that we can take from the Wax Lake Delta that can be applied to other wetlands?

• 19:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, so what scientists learn from how rivers build wetlands from Wax Lake Delta has actually already informed some coastal restoration projects in Louisiana. These are called sediment diversions. The idea is to send that freshwater-carrying sediment from the Mississippi into bays, and then they'll build up those wetlands like Wax Lake Delta did. And scientists are also finding in Wax Lake Delta that the older parts of Wax Lake are better at providing those benefits I mentioned earlier, like storing carbon and filtering nitrogen. So, once that research comes out, it can inform conservation efforts of wetlands across the United States.

• 19:46Flora Lichtman?

  You're an environmental reporter. Is it fun to have a good news story for a change?

• 19:50Speaker 05

  It is fun to have a good news story for a change. I mean, especially with coastal Louisiana's land loss crisis. I mean, we're losing massive amounts of land in Louisiana, and we're always talking about our coastal land loss problem. So, it is really nice to have a good story for a change. At the same time, I reported this in a time where there's a lot of controversy around those sediment diversions that I mentioned earlier, specifically one called Mid-Beretaria because of the way that that one would affect the oysters and fisheries in Beretaria Bay. So, this isn't completely a positive story because, you know, we have all this science for that, but that project has been paused, and there's a lot of controversy around it.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  So, even though we have the tools to build more wetlands, we're not necessarily implementing them.

• 20:38Flora Lichtman?

  That's interesting, because it could hurt the oyster fishery?

• 20:41Speaker 05

  Yes, because when you do that, you're bringing in a bunch of freshwater. And oysters, they live in estuary ecosystems, so they need like a certain balance of fresh and saltwater.

• 20:52Flora Lichtman?

  It's complicated, yeah. I mean, what about in terms of federal protections? Where do wetlands stand?

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, so what's really important to know about federal protections when it comes to wetlands is that in 2023, there was a Supreme Court ruling. The case was Sackett versus the EPA. And that ruling determined that wetlands have to be connected to a federal waterway for them to be protected as one of what is called, quote unquote, "the waters of the United States." And that's important because a lot of the protections under the Clean Water Act only apply to waters of the United States. So, now that these wetlands are not considered that, thousands of acres of wetlands are now unprotected.

• 21:33Flora Lichtman?

  And is that changing in this administration?

• 21:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, this administration is actually changing things to align with that ruling more. Under Trump, the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the EPA is rewriting the definition of waters of the United States, which has been reran many, many times already. They're rewriting it to align with the Sackett ruling. So the listening sessions for that are actually starting next week.

• 21:58Flora Lichtman?

  Oh, something to tune into.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 22:02Flora Lichtman?

  Thanks, Eva.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 22:04Flora Lichtman?

  Eva Tesfai, environment reporter for WWNO's Coastal Desk. She reported the story in collaboration with Elise Plunk at the Louisiana Illuminator. This story is part of the series Down the Drain from the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk. And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including... Shoshana Buckstom.

• 22:29Speaker 07

  Beth Ramey. Danielle Johnson. Jackie Hirschfeld.

• 22:34Flora Lichtman?

  I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.