Transition Finance Weekly -6/6/2025
BlackRock Satisfies Texas; Alaska's LNG Boondoggle; Progress in Colorado
1. BlackRock Removed from Texas Blacklist After Long Courtship, Climate Exits
Did they roll over? Or is this greenhushing?
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has officially removed BlackRock from the state’s energy boycott blacklist, restoring its access to billions in state-managed investments. Hegar cited Blackrock’s retreat from Climate Action 100+ and the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. In short: it looks a lot like BlackRock rolled over to placate the far-right.
To get back in Texas’s good graces, BlackRock did more than just pull out of climate alliances; it also backed the Texas right wing’s pet projects like the Texas Energy Fund (which can’t seem to give money away) and the Texas Stock Exchange (with its relaxed listing standards).
Yet, BlackRock still employs 700 ESG professionals and manages 300+ ESG labeled funds, with some market watchers suggesting that there has been more ‘greenhushing’ than actual policy change.
BlackRock’s apparent climate retreat concerns investors who acknowledge objective and growing climate-related risks and want to see them reflected in asset management decisions. This isn’t politics; it’s reality.
Frances Sawyer’s take: “In removing BlackRock from the blacklist, Texas is offering its blessing to the firm's current approach to managing climate and transition risks. But that blessing does nothing to change the fundamental reality that climate change presents a material financial risk that asset managers like BlackRock must manage in order to deliver a secure retirement for the working people who depend upon their products.”
2. Colorado Makes Progress on State Insurance Crisis
How a new law could mean more industry transparency and lower premiums.
Last week, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed HB 1182, the Risk Model Use in Property Insurance Policies bill, into law, giving hope to residents facing higher premiums and hard-to-get coverage as the insurance crisis mounts. It has two parts focused on helping consumers navigate previously opaque underwriting and ratemaking decisions:
Transparency: Insurers using wildfire risk models will have to disclose the underlying data behind them and share how they set rates and make underwriting decisions.
Risk mitigation: They’ll also have to take Coloradans’ substantial wildfire risk mitigation investments into account in wildfire models, which over time should help lower premiums.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brianna Titone (seen here high-fiving co-sponsor Rep. Kyle Brown when it passed the House) — a former volunteer firefighter herself — says it’s a win for everyone: “This program is going to get people to invest in making their homes less fire-prone, and that will reduce the risk pool” for insurers.
Jordan Haedtler, Climate Financial Policy Strategist with Climate Cabinet: “Colorado would move ahead of California by factoring wildfire resilience into insurance underwriting. . . states can act on their own to enhance climate resilience, even when the federal government won’t cooperate. And there has never been a more important time for states to act.”
3. The Dark Roof Lobby Kills a Common-Sense Climate Rule
Tennessee towns are getting hotter every year, and now they’ll get even hotter, even faster.
Reflective “cool roofs” are one of the cheapest, simplest ways to fight extreme heat and lower energy bills – in hot weather, they can be up to 60 degrees cooler than dark roofs, reduce building temperatures naturally, and cut air conditioning use and energy costs.
And yet Tennessee just repealed its reflective roof requirement on commercial buildings, thanks to the dark roofing materials industry. Lobbyists pitched the repeal as a matter of “consumer choice,” and lawmakers obliged, despite soaring summer temperatures and the very real health impacts posed by urban heat islands.
This isn’t just a Tennessee story. “Dark roof” dark money is paying for similar lobbying in Baltimore and Denver and within professional organizations, too, blocking cool roof ordinances and dashing standards that could have made a difference at very low cost.
Owen Henry, a homeowner in Baltimore, which overcame opposition by the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association to pass a “cool roofs” law: “Phooey to any manufacturer that’s going to try and stop us from maintaining our community and making it a pleasant place to live.”
4. Alaska LNG’s $44 Billion Boondoggle
Adventures in 20th century energy policy continue!
Trump’s energy team is in Alaska this week to push a colossal gas pipeline that almost nobody wants. First greenlit in 2023 by President Biden, the $44 billion Alaska LNG project, kitted out with a 1,300-kilometer pipeline and export terminal, will likely be bankrolled by as much as $30 billion in public subsidies that Alaska has aggressively lobbied for.
But even that hasn’t been enough assurance for nervous investors worried about the project’s climbing cost. Deemed too risky by companies like ExxonMobil and BP, the project got a new lease on life from Glenfarne, a developer with a spotty project completion record. Trump is so eager to get this pipeline built, he’s even using investment in it as a bargaining chip in tariff negotiations with Japan.
This boondoggle isn’t just a bad deal for investors and taxpayers; it’s a ticking carbon bomb (projected to drive incremental emissions in the range of 2 billion metric tons of CO2). But for the Trump administration, all that matters is giving the fossil fuel industry its payoff.
Friends of the Earth: “There is no climate, consumer, or taxpayer case for Alaska LNG. But that is not stopping the Trump Administration and its fossil fuel cronies from plowing ahead. . . The free market will not deliver this carbon bomb on its own, but billions of our tax dollars might.”
5. Trump’s Clean Energy Retreat’s Already Costing Billions
Trump has already killed thousands of manufacturing jobs across America.
More than $14 billion in clean energy and low-carbon manufacturing projects have already been canceled, downsized, or shelved this year — taking over 10,000 jobs with them — thanks to the Trump administration’s anti-clean energy push and chaotic trade policy. And there’s more to come if the House’s repeal of critical IRA provisions makes it through the Senate.
Manufacturing job cuts have hit the battery, solar, wind, and hydrogen subsectors, hitting rural red state communities — which a year ago were celebrating the IRA’s economic boon — especially hard.
Despite the political sabotage, renewable generation is still growing. 7.4 GW of new capacity came online in Q1 alone, representing $10 billion in private investment. But that’s small comfort for the people across America whose livelihoods have become victims of culture-war politics.
6. Trump’s Emergency Declarations — For Coal.
How an abuse of emergency powers is keeping outdated, unnecessary coal plants alive.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration ordered two aging coal plants, one in Michigan and one in Pennsylvania, to remain open past their scheduled retirement dates, declaring an “energy emergency” — to the bewilderment of state regulators.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, former gas industry executive and vocal climate denier, claimed there was a power shortage in the Midwest to justify the emergency orders. But state grid operators had already reviewed and approved the retirements, seeing no reliability risks.
Trump has made his love of coal clear, and now it appears he is comfortable abusing his emergency powers to prop up polluting, unnecessary, and costly coal infrastructure — to the detriment of customers, states, and our environment.
Sierra Club attorney Greg Wannier: “Donald Trump invoking the Federal Power Act is an illegal abuse of his presidential authority. Coal is expensive, outdated, and deadly.”