Jael Holzman
Jael Holzman is a senior reporter at Heatmap News who focuses on the political and local fights that determine whether renewable energy and data center projects move forward. Her coverage tracks conflicts over individual solar, wind, battery storage, and data center developments, connecting permitting battles and opposition campaigns to national policy and industry strategy. She approaches the beat as an investigative reporter, combining scoops, granular case studies, and proprietary data with regular interviews across government, industry, and activist networks.
Local fights over renewable energy projects
Holzman’s core beat is the contest over specific renewable energy and battery storage projects at the local level.
Through Heatmap’s newsletter The Fight, she documents conflicts around individual solar farms, wind developments, and storage facilities, detailing who is organizing opposition, how permitting processes are being used, and what political forces are shaping the outcome. She describes her work as covering “the fight over decarbonization at the granular level,” emphasizing daily reporting on the battles over solar, wind, and battery projects across the country.
Her stories and newsletter pieces combine original reporting with in‑depth case studies of why particular projects succeed or stall, giving close attention to zoning disputes, community campaigns, and legal challenges. Across this coverage, she highlights how gaps in local media and complex permitting regimes can leave major energy decisions under‑scrutinized.
Data centers, backlash, and the energy transition
Holzman has become a prominent voice on the emerging clash between data center expansion and the clean energy transition. In her reporting for Heatmap, she has quantified the “data center wars,” using Heatmap Pro’s tracking database to show that organized fights against data centers now outnumber fights against wind farms in the United States. She has written that the backlash against server farms is reshaping American politics, with residents blaming these facilities for rising electricity bills, heavy water use, and support for technologies perceived as threatening jobs. In her scoops, including coverage of companies exploring swaps of planned solar projects for data centers and gas plants, she examines how corporate decisions and federal policy together redirect land, grid capacity, and investment away from renewables toward computing infrastructure. This strand of her work consistently ties local disputes over individual projects to broader questions about who benefits from new infrastructure and how climate policy interacts with digital‑economy growth.
Politics, permitting, and the risks of the energy transition
Holzman covers the political and policy risks surrounding the American energy transition, with sustained attention to permitting and federal authority. Her reporting and podcast appearances have dissected how presidential directives and agency decisions can effectively halt offshore wind projects, including describing a multi‑agency campaign against such developments and its implications for industry finance and timelines.
In work highlighted by Heatmap, she has examined the threat of bankruptcy facing developers like US Wind if federal permits are revoked, framing the issue as a test of the durability of the energy transition under changing administrations. She also reports on congressional oversight and funding battles, such as Senate efforts to push back against freezes on environmental grant programs and the downstream effects those fights have on climate initiatives.
Across these stories, she treats permitting systems, executive power, and regulatory risk as central levers in climate politics, showing how they shape both investor behavior and local outcomes on the ground.
Background in energy, resources, and the culture wars
Holzman’s current beat builds on a career spent reporting on energy policy, resource extraction, and the politics of the energy transition. Before joining Heatmap, she covered energy and climate policy at Axios and reported on mining, metals, and energy transition resources for specialized industry and environment outlets, giving her deep familiarity with the supply chains and regulations behind renewable infrastructure.
Her work has also extended into the broader culture wars surrounding climate and trans rights, including reporting for Rolling Stone on legislative attacks on trans people and the connections she identified between anti‑renewable and anti‑trans activist movements. Profiles and interviews describe her as detail‑oriented and investigative, traits that carry through into her climate coverage as she traces the web of corporate, political, and cultural actors influencing project‑level decisions.
This mix of resource‑sector expertise and experience on polarizing social issues informs how she covers the energy transition as not just a technical shift, but a contested political and cultural process.
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