Alexander C. Kaufman
Alexander C. Kaufman covers how energy systems, corporate decisions, and security questions shape the climate era, with a beat that runs from nuclear startups to global emissions trends. He is a correspondent at Heatmap and the main writer of its weekday morning newsletter, Heatmap AM, which focuses on the top stories in climate and energy. His reporting and newsletter work follow the money, technology, and policy fights that determine how the energy transition unfolds in practice. Across outlets, his pieces combine company-level scoops, regulatory detail, and on-the-ground reporting from four continents.
Energy, Climate, and Corporate Strategy
Kaufman’s coverage puts large companies at the center of the climate story, treating their energy decisions as major drivers of the transition rather than background context.
His Heatmap piece on Walmart and nuclear power examines how one of the world’s biggest retailers is engaging with atomic energy, framing the story as a strategic move in long-term decarbonization rather than a novelty. At Heatmap he has written on offshore wind projects returning to viability after setbacks, tracing how corporate and financial decisions at firms like Orsted shape the pace and direction of renewable deployment.
Across his work, Kaufman tends to anchor climate coverage in business realities: the projects companies choose to pursue, the technologies they fund, and the risks they accept. At Latitude Media, he has written about Lightship’s “mobile battery” play and about TerraPower’s progress on next-generation nuclear projects, using individual firms to illustrate broader trends in storage markets and advanced reactors.
His newsletter Heatmap AM routinely highlights corporate moves in energy and climate, putting them alongside policy developments to show how boardroom decisions and government actions interact.
Policy, Infrastructure, and the Power Grid
A recurring strand in Kaufman’s Heatmap reporting is the way climate policy and permitting rules govern pipelines, mines, and grid infrastructure. He has covered House Democrats’ investigation into a Trump-era official’s financial ties to a lithium mine, drawing out how conflicts of interest intersect with the push for critical minerals needed for clean energy.
In pieces on the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to curb states’ power to block pipelines and on New York regulators approving a controversial gas pipeline, he examines how legal authority and state-level politics determine what gets built and where.
His work also follows national and global indicators that show whether climate policy is working in practice. Kaufman has written on flat emissions in China and the extension of what he calls a climate “winning streak,” connecting country-level data to the trajectory of global warming. In Heatmap AM he has highlighted that renewables and batteries now comprise the overwhelming majority of new U.S. generating capacity, turning capacity statistics into a clear picture of how quickly the grid is changing.
His newsletter briefings have ranged across topics such as congestion pricing and deep sea mining, showing an interest in how infrastructure, finance, and resource extraction bind climate policy to everyday life.
Nuclear and Advanced Energy Technologies
Nuclear power and advanced energy technologies form one of Kaufman’s strongest sub-beats, cutting across his reporting and newsletter work. In Heatmap AM he has broken news on Oklo, noting that the company received its first license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to produce and sell isotopes for uses in medicine, research, advanced manufacturing, and national security, and explaining why this marks a first for a cohort of fourth-generation reactor startups.
His Heatmap reporting includes coverage of Shine Technologies raising significant capital for commercial fusion, positioning that deal within the broader landscape of experimental clean energy projects chasing market readiness.
Outside Heatmap, Kaufman’s work on nuclear extends to global case studies and future project pipelines.
At Latitude Media he has written about what TerraPower’s latest milestone reveals about the future of nuclear projects, using the company’s progress to discuss timelines, regulatory hurdles, and investor expectations for advanced reactors. Biographical notes accompanying his work describe dispatches from Finland’s world-first nuclear waste repository and the Philippines’ mothballed nuclear plant, signaling a long-running interest in how societies manage nuclear risks and legacies alongside ambitions for low-carbon power.
Global Field Reporting and Climate Storytelling
Kaufman’s climate reporting is distinguished by its mix of desk analysis and field reporting from widely different environments. Profiles of his work describe trips to Indigenous villages in the Brazilian Amazon, Mongolian nomads’ homes on the frigid steppe, Greenland’s ice sheet, and other sites where the politics of energy and climate play out beyond conference rooms and capitals. That global ground reporting informs his coverage of policy and technology, tying abstract debates over pipelines, mines, and reactors back to specific places and communities.
He extends this approach into his newsletters, where he writes FIELD NOTES and the weekday Heatmap AM briefing. Heatmap AM typically distills five major stories in climate change and energy each morning, often combining original reporting with sharp synthesis of other outlets’ work and official data. FIELD NOTES is described as a space for deeper reporting and analysis on energy, geopolitics, and “getting by in a hotter world,” underlining a concern with how global systems translate into lived experience.
His body of work at Heatmap, Canary Media, Latitude Media, and other publications shows a consistent through-line: climate change is treated as a story about power systems, corporate choices, and governance that can only be understood by following both the grid and the people who depend on it.
4 more environment journalists.
Alan Halaly
Alan Halaly is a water reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who treats the Colorado River as a working system, not a backdrop, making its governance, infrastructure and risks central to his beat. He covers how policy decisions and infrastructure projects shape the region’s water future, linking high-level choices on the Colorado River, dams, mining and data centers to everyday consequences under mounting heat and growth pressures. He reports deeply on new laws, lawsuits and regulatory shifts, focusing on on-the-ground impacts. His coverage spans Colorado River cuts, Hoover Dam operations, extreme weather, heat and parks, septic system rules, workplace and public health risks, lithium and gold mines, protected landscapes, data centers, AI infrastructure and public funding. Previously he reported for metropolitan dailies, digital outlets and public media, including the Miami Herald, WUFT, The Daily Beast and Miami New Times, with work recognized by Hearst, ONA and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Alejandra Borunda
Alejandra Borunda reports on how climate change affects human health for NPR. Her work treats global warming as a direct cause of physical and mental health risks. She covers extreme heat, including undercounted deaths, lost sleep and local efforts to track heat-related fatalities. She also reports on wildfire smoke, hurricanes, disease spread such as dengue fever, trauma, stress and unequal health impacts. Her stories examine how communities protect themselves and recover, as well as practical solutions involving climate-resilient crops, agriculture and diet. Before NPR, she wrote about climate science and environmental issues for National Geographic, including glacier retreat, shade and heat inequity, and shrinking ice-fishing seasons. A former climate scientist, she combines field reporting with scientific data to connect atmospheric research to everyday risks, choices and people’s lived experiences.
Alex Lubben
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune/The Advocate who connects climate risk to policy, industry and community change. He covers Gulf warming, flood protection, coastal restoration, wetlands litigation, industrial projects such as SpaceX’s possible expansion, invasive species and local ecosystems. His reporting tracks how law, politics and corporate decisions shape levees, drainage, marshes and long-term resilience. He also examines climate relocation, housing and labor, showing how hurricanes, floods and wildfires displace vulnerable communities and expose gaps in government systems. He works on a small environment team and brings an investigative background to document work, data analysis, legal and policy research, and field reporting. His work has appeared in VICE News, The Center for Public Integrity, The Nation, Jewish Currents and NBC News.
Alex Wigglesworth
Alex Wigglesworth reports on how climate, land use and public policy shape California communities. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of its environment team. Her beat includes wildfires, megadrought, extreme weather, desert development, conservation, wildlife, industrial hazards, aging infrastructure and regulatory enforcement. She has covered Western Joshua trees, desert tortoises, beaver-led restoration, toxic lead pipes, air-quality concerns after industrial fires and the effects of nuclear war on food systems. Earlier, she was a general assignment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. She combines breaking news with detailed reporting grounded in scientific studies, modeling and expert interviews. Her work connects fires, drought and other hazards to climate change, while examining how agencies, companies and land-use decisions affect people and ecosystems.