Matthew Zeitlin
Matthew Zeitlin is an energy and economics correspondent at Heatmap News whose work follows money and policy through the power grid, electricity bills, and the broader energy transition. He focuses on how financial structures, regulation, and market design translate into real-world costs for households and businesses. His coverage sits at the intersection of climate, energy infrastructure, and domestic economic policy.
Energy Transition as an Economic Story
Zeitlin treats the energy transition primarily as an economic project, not just a technology or science story. His professional bio describes him as a correspondent who writes about the financing, policy fights, rate cases, nuclear deals, and clean energy credits that define the shift to low-carbon power.
He tracks how changes in federal policy and administration priorities reshape incentives for clean energy deployment, from tax credits to regulatory approvals. Coverage of tariffs on battery supply chains, shifts in electricity demand, and the durability of clean energy business models shows a consistent interest in the balance sheet side of climate policy.
His pieces often explain why specific decisions by regulators, utilities, and investors matter for long-term decarbonization, translating technical or financial detail into direct consequences for the energy system.
Electricity Bills and the Power Grid
A recurring thread in Zeitlin’s work is the cost of electricity and how grid conditions show up in monthly bills.
His article on electricity bills reaching record levels in July fits a broader pattern of coverage that treats utility bills as an entry point into complex debates about grid investment, pricing, and reliability. He uses high-load events to explore whether existing infrastructure and market rules are fit for a hotter, electrified economy.
His reporting on the Texas grid highlights how expanded solar generation and battery storage allowed the system to handle its highest-ever load without issuing conservation appeals that had been common just a few years earlier. In that story, he shows how what would once have been a crisis becomes “boring” when storage and renewables are integrated at scale, tying technical changes directly to consumer experience.
Whether the subject is peak demand, rate cases, or capacity markets, the emphasis is on what those terms mean for what households and businesses pay and how often they worry about the lights going out.
Climate Risk, Wildfires, and Insurance Markets
Zeitlin extends his energy and economics lens into climate risk and insurance, particularly where property values and extreme events collide. Coverage of the Los Angeles fire focuses on the economic impact of damage to high-value real estate and the stress that such events place on California’s already fragile home insurance market.
In that work, he treats wildfire not only as an environmental disaster but as a shock to financial systems underpinning homeownership and local economies.
By connecting specific climate events to insurers’ balance sheets and policy decisions, he shows how climate risk is priced, mispriced, or withdrawn entirely, and what that means for communities exposed to fire and flood. This strand of his reporting keeps climate impacts grounded in the mechanics of insurance, risk transfer, and regulatory oversight, rather than in broad generalities.
Policy, Tariffs, and Clean Energy Markets
Another consistent focus for Zeitlin is the policy architecture and trade environment around clean energy industries. His work highlights how tariffs affecting battery supply chains, and other trade measures, shape the economics of energy storage and electrification. He follows how federal policy changes under new administrations influence project timelines, investor confidence, and regional development tied to clean energy manufacturing. Coverage of quarterly clean energy performance and sector “themes of the week” shows him synthesizing disparate developments - tariffs, permitting decisions, demand forecasts - into a coherent picture of where the market is heading. Across these stories, he treats policy as a moving set of financial signals that either accelerate or slow the build-out of low-carbon infrastructure.
Background in Economics and Finance Reporting
Zeitlin’s current beat is built on a long-standing focus on economics and markets. Before joining Heatmap News as a correspondent, he reported on macroeconomics and energy for Grid and covered business and finance for BuzzFeed News.
He has also written for major outlets including The New York Times, the Guardian, Barron’s, and New York Magazine, bringing a general economics and consumer finance background to his current climate and energy work. This prior experience informs his present coverage, which routinely draws on tools from business journalism - close attention to balance sheets, regulatory filings, and market structure - to explain climate and energy developments.
The result is a beat defined less by atmospheric science and more by how institutions allocate capital, set prices, and manage risk in a warming world.
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.