Heat and beats: Jael Holzman on energy reporting, misinformation, and finding harmony between journalism and music
The ‘Heatmap’ reporter discusses renewable energy conflict coverage, the parallel tactics of anti-trans and anti-climate movements, and her life in the punk band Ekko Astral.
When Jael Holzman began her journalism career the week of Trump's first inauguration, she couldn't have anticipated how her various beats would intertwine. Since then, the Washington, D.C.-based trans reporter has traced the complex web connecting climate policy, resource extraction, corporate influence, and the culture wars that have increasingly shaped American politics.
As a senior reporter at Heatmap, Holzman covers what she describes as “the fight over decarbonization at the granular level” — documenting local conflicts over individual solar, wind, and battery storage projects across the country. Her work spans traditional energy outlets like E&E News and Axios to newer climate-focused publications like Heatmap, while her reporting for Rolling Stone has examined legislative attacks on trans rights and what she discovered to be surprising connections between anti-renewable and anti-trans activist movements.
When she's not reporting, Holzman is the vocalist for the punk rock band Ekko Astral, finding in music an emotional outlet and connection that complements her journalistic work.
In this edition of Depth Perception, we speak with Holzman about finding patterns in seemingly disparate movements, balancing personal perspective with journalistic standards, and the profound concerns she has about both environmental disaster response and media coverage in our current political moment. —Parker Molloy
What drew you to climate and energy reporting specifically?
What's a bigger story than the fate of the planet? I don’t know one. I started in journalism the week that Trump was inaugurated the first time. And that was a prime time for new climate journalism. Around that same time, there was a new acceptance forming in mainstream journalism that climate change was the existential threat. We’ve always known it was, and that this circumstance required more shoe leather reporting, it required a bigger investment, investigative reporting.
The dominant story of the Trump administration’s first term, as it is again, was conflict of interest. Former oil and gas people, coal people, chemical people infiltrated or joined — depending on how you see it — government. And wound up making decisions that impact the whole country, in ways that benefit their former clients. You’ve got the fate of the world, you’ve got accusations of mass corruption. What a great time, as a would-be journalist, to hop into that.
I got lucky. I started covering energy and climate for CQ Roll Call. And then I got obsessed with this issue of minerals and the need to mine for raw materials to make the stuff that doesn’t use carbon emissions. And so that led me to take a random job writing about markets. And that would have been really boring if I hadn’t started that job the week of lockdown starting. So suffice to say, every time I take a job, it just so happens that the whole situation around whatever I’m covering just suddenly collapses.
For the last six months I've been writing about the fight over decarbonization at the granular level, at the local level, covering conflicts over individual solar projects, wind projects, and battery storage projects. I’m the only reporter nationally that I know of that only writes about the fight over solar, wind, and battery projects on a daily basis. And that is a deeply important beat. It's something that you'd think people would want to hear about. And I find that my readership just grows by the week.
“What's a bigger story than the fate of the planet? I don’t know one.” —Jael Holzman
As someone who reports on climate policy and has written about anti-trans legislation, you’ve witnessed political attacks on both fronts. Do you see parallels in how these issues are politicized and opposed?
Yes! That’s why I do what I do. It’s kind of my connective tissue. I think this is a fundamental question of our collective futures. What do you do to maintain equality in a society that is finding the voice to be a weapon that can be exploited? I don’t think our founding fathers predicted the way that conspiracies on the internet would erode our capacity for civil discourse.
I find that the rise of the anti-renewable energy movement at a grassroots level in this country is at least somewhat correlated with the rise of the anti-trans movement and anti-vax movement, at least recently, and the connective tissues between those movements need to be best understood by anyone who wants to deal with those at the same time.
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How does your music serve as an outlet for processing the sometimes heavy subject matter you cover as a journalist?
I’ve written articles that have produced investigative reports. I’ve done stuff that has made Trump officials stay up at night. I am proud of that work, but none of it has ever mattered as much to some kid out in the middle of America as one of the songs I’ve written. And that is irreplaceable.
Journalism is important, but it does a completely different thing. There was a kid that showed up to our show who couldn't have been over 18, showed up with pink balloons [album] art on their cheek and handed me a tiny corgi toy and [our drummer] Miri a little hammerhead. Tell me one journalist that has anyone even remotely liking them enough to give them a tiny little mini toy.
Clearly music does something that journalism is not doing in terms of nourishing the soul, nourishing people’s enthusiasm for the world. And I think journalism can do that still. There are still reporters out there that do such incredible work and present it in such entertaining fashion that it actually leads to fandoms, mini-fandoms. But it’s still a completely different thing. And I honestly have a lot more fun doing it. I find that I’m writing stories, and I’m looking forward to the end of the day to play my bass.
Artists and journalists are both truth-tellers in different mediums. How do you see these roles complementing each other in your work?
I feel like journalism is one side of my brain and music is the other.
What story of yours are you proudest of and why?
I’ve spent the last few weeks investigating how the world's largest battery fire happened days before Trump entered office, and people have been doing nothing about it. So many people there are scared.
It feels like it's straight out of the book White Noise. It's bizarre. How is it that there’s a zone for miles and miles on end in all directions where people are just deeply afraid, and have been for months, that their oxygen isn’t safe, and we’ve all just been carrying on like it’s nothing? The Times did one flyby story. Did they even go there? It sounds like if you even go there, you feel weird. I’m not even sure if it's safe for me to go.
I think that what I've found with this story is, more than anything else, beyond government failure, is a profound failure of our press. I do feel like this story is the most important story I’ve ever worked on, because it's an embodiment of all of the worst things about living in the Trump era today. It’s just different layers of governmental failure and communications failure and a toxic soup of chemicals and fear and conspiracy with a bunch of grifters mixed in.
“I’ve written articles that have produced investigative reports. I’ve done stuff that has made Trump officials stay up at night. I am proud of that work, but none of it has ever mattered as much to some kid out in the middle of America as one of the songs I’ve written. And that is irreplaceable.” —Jael Holzman
When covering environmental legislation that directly impacts marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ people, how do you approach balancing your personal perspective with journalistic standards?
I think that we have to credibly ask ourselves some difficult questions. Let's say the N-word comes back in vogue, politicians are using it, and then members of the media who are Black are on Capitol Hill, suddenly now, being around the N-word again. How do news companies know how they would respond?
It is quite unfortunate that writing and reporting on the fate of LGBTQ+ Americans is so controversial in some washed, gray-haired, and useless quarters of our mainstream press, that writing about [LGBTQ+] people in a way where their survival and protection is a priority in your copy.
It's a shame that we are called so controversial and important for merely just wanting to say as a band that trans people exist and deserve the care and rights that every other American is entitled to under the Constitution of this country. That’s a shame.
I find that balancing my desire to just say I want to live peacefully — thank you very much — and also, “Hey, did you know this about this renewable energy project?” is pretty easy, and if anyone doesn’t want to talk to me because I just want to live, then that's fine. I’ll get the news anyway. That’s my job.
Further reading from Jael Holzman
“The Mystery of the Moss Landing Battery Fire” (Heatmap, March 28, 2025)
“The Moss Landing Fire Is Radicalizing Battery Foes” (Heatmap, March 20, 2025)
“Will Democrats Let the GOP Gut Trans Health Care?” (Rolling Stone, Dec. 10, 2024)
“Democratic Lawmaker Clarifies He’s Not ‘Suddenly Anti-Trans’” (Rolling Stone, Nov. 25, 2024)
“Why I’m leaving congressional journalism” (Medium, June 1, 2024)