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Remember the climate crisis? The relentless, escalating threat to human health and safety that was once the main driver of clean energy policy?
You’d be forgiven if it’s all a bit hazy, given how swiftly the term was dropped from the energy-transition lexicon this year.
Starting on Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump not only eviscerated climate policy but completely upended the way Americans talk about energy. Though Trump seemed more concerned with taking down ideological rivals than helping constituents’ bottom lines, his new lexicon got a boost from consumer concerns about soaring energy prices that had people casting around for quick fixes. Climate change was out. Talk of “energy dominance,” “energy abundance,” and “unleashing American energy” rushed in. The shift was like “6-7” taking over a fourth-grade classroom: inexorable and irresistible.
The new terminology made the scene on Trump’s first day back in the White House, when he signed an executive order with a grab bag of fossil-fuel giveaways under the title “Unleashing American Energy.” A few weeks later, he used another executive order to create the National Energy Dominance Council. Both orders touted the country’s “abundant” resources.
Clean energy advocates quickly began invoking similar terminology in an attempt to shoehorn solar power into the new narrative. The Solar Energy Industries Association even passed out stickers with the phrase “energy dominance” on Capitol Hill as part of its lobbying efforts.
Some media outlets followed suit in deemphasizing climate. In November 2024, five major U.S. newspapers published a total of 524 stories about climate change; in the same month this year, those papers ran just 362 climate change articles, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder — a drop of almost a third. (Both numbers are way down from the October 2021 peak of 1,049 climate articles.)
A number of Democratic politicians embraced the vibe shift in their own ways. “All of the above” crept in among leaders — notably New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey — who wanted to signal they are open to the changing conversation, but not ready to give up on renewables entirely. In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger ran successful gubernatorial campaigns with hardly any mention of climate change; likewise, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani spent little time on the topic.
Most notably, Democrats this year prioritized the issue of energy affordability, an increasingly urgent concern among voters — and one that Trump is belligerently dismissing.
Two liberal groups, Fossil Free Media and Data for Progress, put out a memo in November that endorses this affordability focus, suggesting it’s a way for Democrats to reconcile the new discourse with the old. The memo encourages them to promote the benefits of renewable energy as a cheap source of power in 2026. The headline: “Don’t run from climate — translate it.”
Though Republicans are failing to reckon with the issue of soaring energy costs, there’s still something seductive about their energy rhetoric. It suggests an economy teeming with possibility, held back only by those meanie Democrats with their snowflakey concerns about climate and their insufficient will to dominate. The language implies there are easy answers to at least some of our woes. Worried about soaring energy bills? Unleash the beautiful coal. Concerned about grid reliability? Exploit those abundant energy supplies. Never mind that fossil fuels are most definitely not the cheapest sources of electricity.
The vocab shift, particularly around “dominance,” also captures a vibe that has always appealed to Trump supporters: “That language does have this bravado and machismo that is important to his movement,” Cara Daggett, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, told a reporter for Grist earlier this year.
What vocabulary will seize the collective imagination in 2026? Likely, more of the same (though Trump does have a seemingly inexhaustible ability to surprise us all with word choices). The bigger question for me, though, is which version of this new nomenclature will gain the most traction in the months to come. Will the left’s translations catch on, convincing people that clean energy too can be unleashed, abundant, and affordable? Or will the fossil fuel–loving MAGA crowd continue to corner the enticingly muscular language of supremacy?
This year was a big one for Canary Media. Our merger with the Energy News Network brought new reporters into the mix, expanding our focus on state and local clean energy policy and progress.
We sure needed the extra manpower to cover everything that 2025 brought. President Donald Trump shook up the clean energy landscape as soon as he entered the White House, taking particular aim at offshore wind and EVs. Worries about rising power demand from data centers reached a fever pitch. And startups boasted major breakthroughs in cleaning up manufacturing, decarbonizing home heating, and bringing battery storage to the masses.
That’s just a handful of the many, many topics Canary Media reporters covered this year through more than 600 stories. Here are 11 that you can’t miss, in chronological order.
Data centers are overwhelming the grid. Could they help it instead?
Jeff St. John started 2025 with a deep dive into what became one of the year’s hottest energy topics: data centers. In this first installment of a four-part series, Jeff explored the growing concern over AI data centers’ capacity to drive power demand to new heights, and how utilities may use that rising demand to justify new fossil fuel construction. But with effective regulation and demand management, it doesn’t have to be that way.
The smell of toasted rock could spell victory for geothermal energy
Julian Spector turned his visit to Quaise Energy’s Texas testing grounds into a feast for the senses. Whirring contraptions, hand-warming heat, and the smell of toasted marshmallows: Those are just a few of the ways Julian described the experience of watching the startup blast through rock with an electromagnetic beam. It’s all in hopes of accessing deeper, hotter levels of the Earth for geothermal power generation.
The rural N.C. mayor betting big on clean energy to uplift his hometown
Mayor Mondale Robinson has big clean energy dreams for his small rural town of Enfield, North Carolina, and shared them with Elizabeth Ouzts back in March. Residents of the largely Black, devastatingly poor town face massive winter energy bills, and Robinson envisions tackling them through a solar-plus-storage array that could help stabilize power costs — and a resilience hub that could teach residents about energy savings and keep them safe during emergencies.
From EVs to HVAC, clean energy means jobs in Central Illinois
In May, Canary Media joined fellow nonprofit newsrooms to report a series of stories on the growing clean energy workforce in rural America. That project took Kari Lydersen to Decatur, Illinois, which has been losing factory jobs for years. But a community college program is training a new generation of solar panel installers to change that dynamic, including Shawn Honorable, who’s planning to start a solar-powered hot dog stand called Buns on the Run.
US hydropower is at a make-or-break moment
Since the late 1800s, America’s network of hydroelectric dams has provided a steady, clean source of electricity. But their age is catching up with them, Alexander C. Kaufman reported in this deep dive. Nearly 450 dams across the country will need to be relicensed in the next decade, but many must make significant, costly upgrades to keep operating — and may opt to shut down instead.
How Trump gutted the team meant to build America’s energy future
The end of 2025 may also signal the end of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. Created under the Biden administration, the office was meant to be a federally backed launchpad for ambitious but unproven clean technologies. In a thoughtful obituary for OCED, Maria Gallucci recounts the office’s biggest wins, and how that all started crumbling on Day 1 of the Trump administration.
Inside the Colorado factory where AtmosZero is electrifying steam
Cheez Whiz, notepaper, and beer all have one thing in common: They’re made with the help of gas-burning boilers. But if it’s up to AtmosZero, that’ll soon change. Alison F. Takemura took us on a tour of the Colorado factory where AtmosZero will soon start building steam-producing heat pumps, in hopes of decarbonizing all sorts of polluting processes.
Why utility regulators need to do more than call ‘balls and strikes’
Marissa Gillett didn’t make a lot of friends during her time leading Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. While consumer advocates heralded her assertive oversight, investor-owned utility regulators accused her of inappropriate, and even unlawful, bias. In an interview with Sarah Shemkus after she stepped down from PURA, Gillett didn’t back down from her “sustained, rigorous” approach, and called on other regulators to do the same.
This Ohio county banned wind and solar. Now, residents are pushing back.
Ohio has become a hot spot for anti-clean-energy rules, with more than three dozen counties outlawing utility-scale solar development in at least one of their townships. Richland County is among them, but in the new year, residents may reverse the ban. Kathiann M. Kowalski reports on how a group of local advocates secured a referendum on the decision made by just three county commissioners — and how they could inspire other Ohioans to do the same.
As solar booms and coal fades, Greece’s mining region struggles to adapt
This fall, Dan McCarthy took us on a trip to Greece. Far from Athens and the iconic whitewashed buildings of the Cyclades islands is Western Macedonia, which remains the country’s energy-producing hub even as its coal plants and mines shutter. Solar farms have rapidly taken the fossil fuel’s place, but residents are frustrated that the region’s economy hasn’t kept up.
The man behind the fall of offshore wind
Our list closes with a story Clare Fieseler started following three years ago, at a time when Republican lawmakers didn’t have much to say about offshore wind. Since then, the industry has become a prime target for the Trump administration, and David Stevenson is a big reason why. Stevenson is a 75-year-old grandfather from Delaware who believes in climate change — but not in offshore wind’s ability to fight it. Through numerous conversations with Stevenson, Clare shares the winding tale of how his activism brought the fight against offshore to the highest levels of government.
Think of the Washington Monument. Imagine it sitting on the surface of the sea, with blades as long as a football field slowly spinning. It’s futuristic and white with rounded edges, like a rocketship. But there are no blasts or flares. There is no noise at all but calling gulls.
Sitting on the stern of a shrimp boat in early November, this is what I saw. The captain steered us directly under one of two “pilot” turbines. In the distance, I saw foundations for 176 more, poking a few dozen feet out of the sea. The Hoover Dam came to mind, another landmark feat of energy engineering. Each new turbine will be roughly the same height as the famous dam, from blade tip to the surf below.
“Why do people think they are an eyesore? Doesn’t bother me none,” said the captain, Bob Crisher, a commercial fisherman. He’s in favor of the wind farm and believes it will bring down his electricity bills.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, America’s largest planned offshore wind farm, was then being built about 27 miles east of Virginia Beach. It’s slated to power up to 660,000 homes in a region with the highest concentration of data centers in the world. With energy demand skyrocketing and electricity costs rising, Virginia needs the last construction push on this project to go smoothly. The developer, utility Dominion Energy, promised the turbines would start feeding the grid by March 2026.
How quickly things fell apart.
Last week, the Trump administration ordered a pause on all five in-progress offshore wind projects in America — including Virginia’s — citing unspecified risks to “national security.” It was the largest blow yet to a once-growing industry that Trump has brought to its knees in just 11 months. While Trump spent much of 2025 slowing the incredible rise of renewables, his unrelenting war on so-called “windmills” has been more vicious and personal.
In many ways, Trump’s attacks on offshore wind this year encapsulate this new era of politics. He throttles long-held norms in favor of retribution and personal grievance, acting with dizzying speed. He contorts facts and pushes officials in his administration to do the same.
Left in the wake are everyday citizens — including dozens I’ve interviewed over the past year — who are losing the prospect of good-paying jobs. They and their neighbors are also losing access to public goods like lower emissions, revitalized ports, reliable electricity, and a buffer against skyrocketing power bills driven by an AI boom.
Trump’s grudge against offshore wind began more than a decade ago, when he tried — and failed — to stop 11 turbines from being built within view of one of his Scottish golf courses. He has been disparaging offshore wind turbines as “ugly” and “eyesores” ever since.
He cranked up the intensity when he embarked on his second presidential campaign in 2023, branding big ocean turbines as dangerous. “[W]indmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before,” he said that year — a false statement. Still, attacking offshore wind seemed little more than an odd punchline for his campaign rallies. After all, the Trump administration backed the sector for much of his first presidential term, executing multiple offshore wind auctions that had been queued up by the Obama administration.
But Trump’s hyperactive second term has turned fringe movements and personal grudges into full-blown policies. Like his attacks on vaccines and higher education, his blitz on offshore wind farms is having far-reaching implications that will take years to fully enumerate.
Here’s some initial accounting: In-development wind projects have been paused, delayed, and paused again. One fell apart. Two are essentially mothballed after Trump sunsetted wind tax credits. Port revitalizations got cancelled. Developers lost billions. Related manufacturing is drying up. Tens of thousands of once-promised jobs may never be created. Workers already on the job are sitting idle.
One Trump-voting fisherman called the president’s anti-wind campaign “madness.”
But while vaccines and universities will endure through Trump’s political attacks, in one form or another, the U.S. offshore wind industry may not. Despite the ubiquity of offshore turbines in northern Europe and China, there is only one large-scale wind farm fully operational in American waters today. When Trump moved back into the White House, the industry was just taking off.
J. Timmons Roberts, a Brown University professor of environmental studies who tracks opposition to offshore wind, put it simply: “They’re killing the baby while it’s still in the cradle.”
When Trump’s first term ended, there were no federally approved plans for offshore wind farms. When President Joe Biden left office, there were nearly a dozen. All together, there were 40 active leases in various stages of planning, development, and construction in waters along the East Coast from Maine down to the Carolinas, across the Gulf of Mexico, and along the California coast.
But, on the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order that froze offshore wind permitting, blocking proposed projects that didn’t already have federal approval. And he ordered a new review of the projects that did have federal permits but were not yet fully completed, throwing their future into doubt. (The executive order was ultimately struck down by a federal court on December 9.)
Unease amongst state leaders, developers, and investors immediately took root.
Within days, the first permitted project began to fall apart due to “uncertainty” over federal actions. In late January, Shell — one of two developers of the Atlantic Shores wind farm slated to be built east of New Jersey — announced it was withdrawing from the project. New Jersey then abandoned plans to purchase power from the installation. The final blow came weeks later when Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency revoked a Clean Air Act permit for the project. One former EPA official called the move “unusual.”
Research cuts and funding clawbacks soon followed.
In May, Lincoln Varnum was called into his supervisor’s office at the University of Maine, where he worked as an instrumentation engineer. Varnum was one of nine employees laid off from the university’s high-profile engineering and offshore-wind research center due to the Trump administration pausing funding. The administration also cancelled federal funding for Maine’s first floating offshore wind array, which had been fully permitted; the project was then mothballed.
“I obviously got a little emotional in the meeting … Something that I cared about was getting terminated,” Varnum told me. “It was also the first time I had ever been laid off.”
He sees himself and others who’ve been working on offshore wind as collateral damage.
In the following weeks, Varnum, who once identified as a conservative, was hopeful that Republican members of Congress would speak up about the funding cuts, but none of them did — not even Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, a long-time offshore-wind supporter. He described Collins’ silence as “rough,” especially since he had voted for Collins in the past.
“We’re a poor state. We need industry. To have a new industry that is unique to us, floating offshore wind, now targeted by the feds … It feels like a kick in the teeth,” said Varnum.
Trump yanked funding in other ways.
In September, the Department of Transportation pulled back $679 million for infrastructure projects that supported offshore wind, including one that would have cleaned up and revitalized a massive California port. Mandy Davis, a California resident and anti-wind activist, aligns herself with Trump’s false narrative that turbines harm the ocean environment. She was elated by cuts that might block turbine construction in California’s waters, but her joy was short-lived.
In November, when the Trump administration announced plans for new oil drilling off the California coast, she told me it was a “betrayal.”
New England communities, which spent over a decade preparing to build America’s first offshore wind farms, also felt betrayed. Prior to Trump’s December halt, two massive projects had been paused by the Interior Department earlier in the year. One of the projects, Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, was already 80 percent completed.
“It’s like having the rug pulled out from under you,” Jack Morris, a Massachusetts-based scalloper and Trump voter, told me earlier this year. “Nobody understands why Trump did it. I don’t know what Trump’s agenda is.”
Revolution Wind had employed 80 local fishermen, including Morris, to help with construction. The project’s pause caused Morris and others to lose some of the part-time income that helps them pay their bills as fishing revenues dry up.
The stop-work orders for Revolution Wind and New York’s Empire Wind were each lifted or reversed after about a month. But some damage was permanent. According to Harrison Sholler, an energy analyst for BloombergNEF, the orders were a signal to companies that America is not a sound investment. Foreign firms had invested heavily in the sector, lost billions, and are now looking for the door.
Trump’s more sweeping wind halt last week only reinforced that assessment.
“What exactly will America have lost? How do you even begin to answer that question?” pondered Elizabeth Wilson, a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.
We could start by looking at how much new electricity capacity won’t be added to America’s increasingly strained grid.
Before Trump was elected last November, BNEF expected 39 gigawatts of offshore wind to be built in the U.S. by 2035. BNEF’s latest forecast is for just 6 gigawatts by 2035 — and even that number could come down thanks to Trump’s latest pause.
Another lens is employment. Together, the five wind farms currently underway have been slated to generate about 10,000 jobs. Now some of the highly skilled workers who have already trained for those projects face an uncertain future. And the 77,000 offshore wind jobs that the Biden administration had projected the country would see in the coming decades may never materialize.
Varnum, the laid-off engineer, said that if Maine’s nascent offshore wind industry rises from the ashes sometime in the future, he “certainly would want to help. It’s not something I’m turning my back on.”
He has since found a job working for a hydroelectric company. But Varnum said he fears for America’s energy future and how far Trump might take his broader war on carbon-free energy. The president has already boosted fossil-fuel production and nuclear power while trying to tamp down clean energy. His political revenge against offshore wind may be paving the way for more.
“The guy torpedoes us on Day One and how far is he going to go? How far will this go?” wonders Varnum.
Wilson of Dartmouth says that Trump’s assault on offshore wind is ultimately a battle over facts and truth.
Fossil fuel–backed activists and groups have for years been spreading misinformation about wind turbines harming whales. They lit the match and Trump fanned the flames. The president ranted and made false claims about offshore wind throughout 2025, in front of reporters, foreign heads of state, and the entire United Nations General Assembly
Meanwhile, his administration quietly axed over $5 million for research into the impact of offshore wind on the giant mammals, ending the best and longest-running studies on the issue, as Canary Media first reported.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum justified the Trump administration’s pause of the Empire Wind project by claiming the Biden administration approved it based on “flawed & bad science” about impacts on marine life, but the Interior Department refused to share the report that supposedly backed that up. The project’s developer and Democrats in Congress are still waiting for an unredacted version.
“There’s no proof, right? There are no receipts,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, told me in June. He said the administration hid the report and then used the permitting process as a “political tool,” something he sees as typical of “a banana republic.”
Without new offshore turbines going up, millions of households across the Northeast will soon pay more money for dirtier and less reliable electricity. According to a recent report, offshore wind power could help keep the lights on year-round in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, especially during harsh winter weather when gas plants can fail. Cuts to planet-warming pollution, mandated by several East Coast states, are also now out of reach. All signs point to Trump’s second term creating a hotter and less affordable future for Americans.
Few people interviewed for this story expressed hope that the damage from Trump’s war on “windmills” could be reversed anytime soon.
“What Trump really killed was hope,” said Wilson. “And what is the value of hope?”
Two corrections were made on January 5, 2026: This article originally implied that Maine had more than one Republican member of Congress. In fact, it has only one: Sen. Susan Collins. The article also originally misstated the number of offshore wind leases in planning or development at the end of the Biden administration. The number was 40.
We’re proud of the 650+ clean energy stories our small team brought you last year. We’re so proud we even made a reading list of our favorite articles.
But this is a different type of list. It’s about the stories we didn’t write but wish we had — sharp pieces from rival outlets big and small that uncovered new information, reframed the debate, or were simply fun to read.
Here are some of the stories from last year we wish we could claim as our own. (In a moment of meta-jealousy, it bears mentioning that the idea for a “jealousy list” is borrowed from Bloomberg Businessweek, which has been publishing annual versions since 2015.)
Rooftop solar is a miracle. Why are we killing it with red tape?Mother Jones
Why don’t we have solar panels on every rooftop? Bill McKibben’s story in Mother Jones exposes the stark contrast between installing home solar in the U.S., a process mired in red tape, and doing so in Australia, Spain, Germany, and other countries where it’s so much cheaper and easier. This feisty piece makes you want to slap your forehead and ask, “Why can’t we have nice things, too?” — Alison F. Takemura, reporter
When the blade breaksThe Verge
Nantucket native and novelist Gabriella Burnham wrote for The Verge about the fallout from a 2024 incident in which a turbine blade broke off a New England offshore wind project. With rich detail and narrative momentum, Burnham’s reporting reveals how wealth and island dynamics became a perfect storm for renewables pushback. Nowhere else will you read about local dudes making T-shirts that read “Vineyard Wind is ISIS,” and no one but a local writer like Burnham could have written a piece like this. — Clare Fieseler, reporter
Trump’s quest for ‘energy dominance’ is all about the vibesGrist
President Donald Trump has pulled a total Gretchen Wieners from “Mean Girls” this past year: Just like she wanted to make fetch happen, he’s trying his darnedest to make the term “American energy dominance” stick. But what does it actually mean? Grist’s ever-thoughtful Kate Yoder has answers in a story I wish I had written that draws on experts, history, and smart analysis. — Ysabelle Kempe, associate editor
How a Koch-funded campaign is trying to reverse climate action in VermontVTDigger
Apparently I let this one linger a little too long on my to-do list, because VTDigger’s Austyn Gaffney beat me to it — and, with her in-depth knowledge of Vermont politics, did a better job than I could have. It’s a fascinating, rigorously reported, and kind of frightening look into how the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity is setting up shop in one of the country’s bluest states, making inroads with its brand of clean-energy and climate disinformation. — Sarah Shemkus, reporter
Why did Hochul back down on New York’s gas ban?New York Focus
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to suspend the state’s first-in-the-nation all-electric buildings law had every climate-conscious New Yorker shaking their head and asking “Why?” Colin Kinniburgh of New York Focus provided an answer, albeit not a very satisfying one for anyone who cares about cleaner buildings and a healthier planet. Regardless of how you feel about the state’s constant climate backtracking, it’s a great example of journalism that breaks down the legalese so you don’t have to. — Kathryn Krawczyk, engagement editor
The airline industry’s dirty secret: Clean jet fuel failuresReuters
For journalists, there’s always a push and pull between covering news as it happens and stepping back to make sense of the headlines. This Reuters investigation on “sustainable aviation fuels” does an excellent job at the latter, with a data-driven, multimedia approach. The feature reveals that, behind all the promise of progress, airlines and energy companies are falling far behind on efforts to bring low-carbon jet fuel to the skies. — Maria Gallucci, senior reporter
Is data center flexibility a ‘regulatory fiction’?Latitude Media
Everyone’s talking about data center “flexibility” as the solution to the cost pressures the AI boom is putting on everyday utility customers. But what does “flexibility” mean — and is it allowed? In this quick-turnaround story, Maeve Allsup does an extraordinary job condensing the highly wonky conflicts between grid experts seeking to make data center flexibility a reality in the most data center–impacted U.S. power market. — Jeff St. John, chief reporter and policy specialist
River rafting in Colorado offers climate lessons for Southern CaliforniaLos Angeles Times
Sammy Roth excels at grounding big climate and energy debates in the parched dirt of the Western landscape. As a reporter and commentator for the L.A. Times, he held California leaders accountable when their actions on climate didn’t match their rhetoric. I’m especially partial to (and envious of) his dispatches from far-flung corners of the West, like this one in which a rafting trip in the high mountains of Colorado reveals unexpected linkages from wilderness river guides to inner-city L.A. renters. We’re lucky Sammy kept the whitewater off his notebook, and now he continues the chronicle at his new Substack, Climate Colored Goggles. — Julian Spector, senior reporter
The quick and shameful death of Biden’s biggest policyThe New Republic
Kate Aronoff gives the death of the Inflation Reduction Act the deep treatment it deserves. Her story is sweeping and nuanced, and explains not only the rise and fall of the now-gutted climate law, but also sketches out where climate politics might go from here. If you want to read one thing to better understand where U.S. climate policy stands as we enter 2026, it should be this. — Dan McCarthy, senior editor
Why the time has finally come for geothermal energyThe New Yorker
I’ve covered the rise of geothermal energy in recent years and, in 2024, I was lucky enough to visit Iceland to learn more firsthand. So I was especially jealous to see this beautifully written dispatch by Rivka Galchen about her own tour of the Nordic country. It’s filled with lush details about the landscape, people, and even tiny horses, and it’s a vivid account of how geothermal has developed over centuries — and could help meet the energy and climate challenges we’re facing today. — Maria Gallucci, senior reporter
The obscure philosophical battle that could reshape the clean energy economyHeatmap
If you’re an energy-policy nerd like me, you’ve probably seen he-said, she-said coverage of the battle playing out over renewable energy certificates, and perhaps you’ve asked yourself why we can’t find a win-win solution to the problem of properly accounting for the carbon impacts of clean energy purchases by tech and corporate giants. This story from Emily Pontecorvo does an excellent job of explaining what’s at stake and why it has been so hard to find consensus. — Jeff St. John, chief reporter and policy specialist
The backlash to high electric bills could transform U.S. politicsTIME
As an editor, I’m perpetually preoccupied with how to make wonky topics accessible to non–energy nerds. Rising power costs is one such topic — and the public is sitting up and paying attention to it. This TIME article by Justin Worland was published in the lead-up to the November election for two seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, but it remains relevant as an easy-to-grasp primer on things like data center growth, utility regulation, and surging electricity demand. Plus, it tees up all of the issues everyone will be talking about even more this coming year as the 2026 midterms approach. — Wendy Becktold, managing editor
Liberal Oregon and Washington vowed to pioneer green energy. Almost every other state is beating them.Oregon Public Radio/ProPublica
State leadership on clean energy has become all the more vital since the federal government launched an all-out war on renewables. This investigation, by Oregon Public Radio and ProPublica, shows why Oregon and Washington have struggled to build many clean energy projects in spite of passing some of the most ambitious climate laws in the country. Surprisingly, the evidence points to a nonprofit public power agency from the New Deal era holding things up. — Julian Spector, senior reporter
The Interior Department announced Monday it is pausing leases for all five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in America, citing unspecified issues of national security.
Canary Media obtained a copy of a letter notifying one of the affected wind farm developers, providing new details about the move — the Trump administration’s most sweeping attempt yet to halt offshore wind construction.
A Bureau of Ocean Energy Management letter to Dominion Energy executive Joshua Bennett orders the Virginia-based utility to “suspend all ongoing activities” related to its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, a 2.6-gigawatt wind farm slated to start coming online in less than four months, for “the next 90 days for reasons of national security.”
“Based on BOEM’s initial review of this classified information, the particularized harm posed by this project can only be feasibly averted by suspension of on-lease activities,” the letter reads.
The 90-day time frame is not mentioned in the Interior Department’s official statement on the order.
The letter adds that BOEM will work “in coordination with [the Department of War]” during the suspension to determine whether the risk posed by the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project can be mitigated. It also states that “BOEM will consider all feasible mitigation measures before making a decision as to whether the project must be cancelled.”
Ultimately, “BOEM may further extend the 90-day suspension period” based on its review of each project, according to the letter.
News of the pause was first reported by Fox News. Wind developers didn’t receive stop-work orders via letters from BOEM until roughly an hour or two later, according to a person familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly.
The letter obtained by Canary Media mentions an “assessment” completed by the “Department of War” in November that contains “new classified information, including the rapid evolution of relevant adversary technologies and the resulting direct impacts to national security from offshore wind projects. These impacts are heightened by the projects’ sensitive location on the East Coast and the potential to cause serious, immediate, and irreparable harm to our great nation.”
There is currently one large-scale offshore wind installation operating in the U.S. — the South Fork Wind farm off the coast of New York — as well as two pilot-scale projects generating electricity near Block Island, Rhode Island, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. The letter makes no mention of these East Coast projects or any national security risks their operation may pose.
The letter was signed by Matthew Giacona, the acting director of BOEM, a young political appointee and former oil and gas lobbyist for the National Ocean Industries Association.
In October, congressional Democrats asked the Interior Department’s inspector general to investigate Giacona following revelations, first reported by the news site Public Domain, that he has used his BOEM position to work on niche policy matters previously the focus of his oil lobbying role.
The Interior Department’s press release about the pause also cites claims not included in the letter to Dominion Energy, including mention of a 2024 Department of Energy study that determined offshore wind turbines could cause radar to “miss actual targets” while also noting that “wind energy will play a leading role in the nation’s transition to a clean energy economy.”
Dominion Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Equinor, the partially state-owned Norwegian energy firm that is developing the Empire Wind project off the coast of New York, said, “We are evaluating the order and seeking further information from the federal government.”
The Trump administration had previously hit two of the affected projects — Empire Wind and Revolution Wind — with stop-work orders. Both installations were later allowed to proceed, although that construction pause cost Equinor nearly $1 billion. The remaining three projects, Coastal Virginia, Vineyard Wind, and Sunrise Wind, had been spared until now. Several of these projects are more than halfway complete; Revolution Wind is at least 80% finished.
Monday’s announcement is not the first time the administration has used national security as an excuse for throwing sand in the gears of offshore wind.
Upon pausing the Revolution Wind project in August, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum invoked national security concerns, including the threat posed by “undersea drones.”
But between 2020 and 2023, the Revolution Wind project endured an extensive regulatory review, including by the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration. BOEM approved the project under the condition that all turbines be built to lighting and marking standards that would ensure they’re visible to aircraft at night. Radar mitigation requirements were mentioned in the approval, demonstrating stakeholder engagement on this issue. In August 2023, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — a branch of the military — co-signed the authorization of plans for Danish developer Ørsted to build 65 wind turbines for the Revolution Wind project.
“Was the military at the table, represented and consulted with during this stakeholder process? The answer is: very much so,” wind energy veteran Bill White told Canary Media in August. From 2009 to 2015, White represented Massachusetts on a BOEM-led intergovernmental task force focused on the siting of New England offshore wind energy areas.
In February 2024, a Brown University research group examined 441 claims made against offshore wind during the first six months of 2023. They found multiple times “military readiness” and “radar interference” were mentioned in ways that the researchers found misleading or problematic.
“[S]uggesting that our military is unaware of this issue or has done nothing to address it is completely untrue,” the report concluded.
J. Timmons Roberts, a co-author of the report and a professor of environmental studies and sociology at Brown University, called the administration’s halt to five approved wind farms because of classified national security information “bonkers.”
“These claims aren’t new and they have been, in the past, shown to be quite baseless,” he said.
A correction was made on December 23, 2025: This story originally stated that Giacona had yet to receive Senate confirmation, but his position does not require such approval. It has also been updated to clarify the terms of Revolution Wind’s approval, which included radar mitigation requirements
Kansas ranks among the sunniest states in the nation, and its famously flat landscape is ideal for vast rows of solar panels. Yet it ranks just 41st for solar installations, raising the question: What’s the matter with Kansas?
The simple answer is that on the gusty Great Plains, wind energy gained an early foothold and dominated the renewable buildout. The wonkier explanation points to the state’s weak incentives — including a voluntary renewable energy portfolio standard and a limited net-metering rule — as well as pushback from residents who don’t want to live next to solar arrays. As a result, the state has few utility-scale solar installations.
The developer of a 270-megawatt project in the northwestern corner of Kansas thinks the Sunflower State’s solar industry is poised to bloom.
Last week, Doral Renewables announced a power-purchase agreement for its Lambs Draw Solar project in rural Decatur County, bordering Nebraska. The company declined to disclose its offtaker, but CEO Nick Cohen said, “It’s a major tech company with a big name that does a lot of data centers across the U.S.”
“This is a turning point,” Cohen said. “You’re going to see more and more solar in places like Kansas.”
As recently as five years ago, he said, “it would have been wind.” But the best tracts of land for building turbines have already been developed.
The data indicates that a solar boom is indeed getting underway in Kansas — one in which Lambs Draw will be a key participant but far from the only one. In May, the state plugged in its first major project in the 189 MW Pixley Solar Energy installation, a big leap from the state’s second-biggest array of just 20 MW. Several even larger projects are expected to come online over the next few years, including a sprawling 510 MW installation slated to go live next December.
Construction hasn’t yet begun on Lambs Draw, but Cohen said the site is “shovel ready” and expects the project to benefit from safe-harbor rules that allow developers to lock in expiring federal investment tax credits by breaking ground early next year.
“What has happened is that solar has become the lowest levelized cost of energy of any new-build energy source out there,” Cohen said. “Solar has reached the tipping point where it’s the most economical and achievable energy solution in places like Kansas.”
Lambs Draw will span 4,000 acres leased from four landowners, though not all of it will host panels. Part of Doral Renewables’ strategy is to “use avoidance and what I call neighborly courtesy,” Cohen said. That means “getting more land than we need, then avoiding any sort of environmental features, whether it’s a habitat or wetlands.”
Then, he said, “we’ll ask neighbors, ‘Is it OK if we put this here?’”
The local acceptance matters. At this point, solar development is “not really a question of state by state anymore,” said Pol Lezcano, the director of energy and renewables research at the real estate and consulting firm CBRE.
“It’s more like a county-by-county issue,” he said.
The economic development agency in Decatur County lured Doral to the region in hopes of generating more tax income and finding a way for farmers to diversify revenue.
“They respect landowner rights as sacred,” Cohen said. “The officials in the county are also very professional and see this as a generational uplift for everyone. They’ve been incredibly friendly. They convinced us to come, and it worked.”
Part of Doral’s appeal was that Lambs Draw may, in fact, involve lambs. The company plans to incorporate agrivoltaics, with crops planted between rows of panels and livestock employed to graze and keep the grasses trimmed. Cohen said the company and its landlords haven’t yet decided what to plant.
Despite the acreage, Lambs Draw’s 270 MW is smaller than the Philadelphia-based Doral’s typical 500 MW project. The size, Cohen said, is limited by what the local power lines — which connect to the Southwest Power Pool grid system — can handle.
“Originally, we wanted it to be more, but ultimately the grid is a constraint,” he said. “It’s healthy at 270, and that’s where we’re going to keep it.”
Nationwide, Doral has 400 MW of solar in operation, another gigawatt under construction, and more than 15 GW in the queue.
The company hasn’t yet selected the panels for Lambs Draw. But its 1.3 GW Mammoth Solar project currently underway in Indiana uses panels from manufacturers in Texas and India. Doral expects to make a similar deal for Lambs Draw, allowing the company to obtain panels quickly enough to access sunsetting federal tax credits and avoid new restrictions on imports from China.
“Solar is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for rural America, and places like northwestern Kansas have an opportunity to have a competitive advantage,” Cohen said. “They have something other people don’t have: flat, tillable farm fields with a strong grid connection.”
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
President Donald Trump spent most of 2025 hacking away at large parts of the federal government. His administration fired, bought out, or otherwise ousted hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Entire agencies were gutted. By so many metrics, this year in politics has been defined more by what has been cut away than by what’s been added on.
One tiny corner of regulation, however, has actually grown under Trump: the critical minerals list. Most people likely hadn’t heard of “critical minerals” until early this year when the president repeatedly inserted the phrase into his statements, turning the once obscure policy realm into a household phrase. In November, the U.S. Geological Survey quietly expanded the list from 50 to 60 items, adding copper, silver, uranium, and even metallurgical coal to the list. In mid-December, South Korean metal processor Korea Zinc announced that the federal government is investing in a new $7.4 billion zinc refinery in Tennessee, in which the Department of Defense will hold a stake.
But what even is a critical mineral?
The concept dates back to the first half of the 20th century, especially World War II, when Congress passed legislation aimed at stockpiling materials vital to the United States’ well-being. President Trump established the critical minerals list in 2018, with the defining criteria being that any mineral included be “essential to the economic and national security of the United States” and have a supply chain that is “vulnerable to disruption.” A mineral’s presence on the list can convey a slew of benefits to anyone trying to extract or produce that mineral in the U.S., including faster permitting for extraction, tax incentives, or federal funding.
As Grist explored in its recent mining issue, critical minerals are shaping everything from geopolitics to water supplies, oceans, and recycling systems. If there is to be a true clean energy transition, these elements are key to it. Metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel form the backbone of the batteries that power electric vehicles. Silicon is the primary component of solar cells, and rare earth magnets help wind turbines function. Not to mention computers, microchips, and the multitude of other things that depend on critical minerals.
Currently, the vast majority of critical minerals used in the United States come from China — some 80%. In his first term, Trump tried to increase domestic production of these minerals. “The United States must not remain reliant on foreign competitors like Russia and China for the critical minerals needed to keep our economy strong and our country safe,” he said in 2017. Securing a domestic supply was also a cornerstone of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bills, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Now, as Trump has taken office again, he’s made critical minerals an ever more central part of his policy platform. We’re here to demystify why this has been a blockbuster year for critical minerals in the United States — and where the industry may go in the future.
In March, Trump issued an executive order meant to jump-start critical mineral production. “It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent,” he said. The executive order was just the first step in a coordinated effort by the Trump administration to strengthen U.S. control over existing supply chains for copper, lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and dozens of other critical minerals and to galvanize new mines, regardless of concerns raised by Indigenous peoples. The Trump administration has sought to accomplish these goals by both reducing the regulatory barriers to production and by investing in the companies poised to do it.
Since then, Trump has signed agreements with multiple countries to increase investments in critical minerals and strengthen supply chains. Most recently, the U.S. made a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which holds more than 70% of the world’s cobalt. He has pushed federal agencies to make it easier for mining companies to apply for federal funding, and is inviting companies to apply to pursue seabed mining in the deep waters around American Samoa, near Guam and the Northern Marianas, around the Cook Islands, and in international waters south of Hawaii — prompting global outrage and opposition from Native Hawaiian, Samoan, and Chamorro/CHamoru peoples. At the same time, Trump’s volatile tariff policies have made it harder for American companies to source minerals, and cuts to federal funding have harmed mining workforce training programs and research into critical minerals.
While the Biden administration provided grants and loans to various mining companies, Trump is deploying a highly unusual strategy of buying stakes in private companies, tying the financial interests of the U.S. government with the interests and success of these commercial mining operations. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has spent more than a billion dollars in public money to buy minority stakes in private companies like MP Materials, ReElement Technologies, and Vulcan Elements. In Alaska, that strategy has involved investing more than $35 million in Trilogy Metals to buy a 10% stake in the company, which is a major backer of a copper and cobalt mining project in Alaska.
In September, the Trump administration finalized another deal with the Canadian company Lithium Americas behind Thacker Pass in Nevada, which is expected to be the largest lithium mine in the U.S. The Biden administration approved a $2.23 billion loan to Lithium Americas in October 2024; the Trump administration then restructured the loan and obtained a 5% stake in the project and another 5% stake in Lithium Americas itself. (A top Interior Department official has since been reported to have benefited financially from the project.) That’s despite allegations that the mine violates the rights of neighboring tribal nations and is proceeding without their consent, which Lithium Americas has denied.
Historically, the federal government has only taken equity stakes in struggling companies, such as through the Troubled Asset Relief Program that sought to stabilize the auto industry and U.S. banks during the 2008 financial crisis. “What we’re talking about here is something very different, which is an industry that has not yet launched,” said Beia Spiller, who leads critical minerals work at the nonprofit research group Resources for the Future.
“Whether that’s going to work, I think is unlikely,” Spiller continued. “The best way to get an industry up and running is to have policies that raise the tide for everyone, not just choosing winners.”
In reference to Lithium Americas, Spiller said, “If you actually look at the cost fundamentals, it’s not a very competitive company.” Lithium Americas mines metal from clay, an old process that requires a lot of land, open pit mines, and heavy machinery — whereas some newer operations use direct lithium extraction, which is more cost-effective in the long term. “So we just took an equity stake in a company that is going to face headwinds in terms of costs — now the American public faces that downside.”
It must also be stressed that the Trump administration’s rapid push to shore up the U.S.’s control over critical minerals isn’t about transitioning the country away from fossil fuels. Instead, the whole effort seems to mostly be geared toward military uses. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $7.5 billion for critical minerals, $2 billion of which will go directly to the national defense stockpile. Another $5 billion was allocated for the Department of Defense to invest in critical mineral supply chains.
In October, a former official at the Defense Department told the Financial Times that the agency is “incredibly focused on the stockpile.”
“They’re definitely looking for more, and they’re doing it in a deliberate and expansive way, and looking for new sources of different ores needed for defense products,” the unnamed official said.
The administration recently announced that it plans to take equity stakes in more mining companies next year. It’s possible, Spiller said, these investments could extend to outfits that are piloting deep-sea mining. That carries a new set of risks, as many banks refuse to insure deep-sea mining operations, it’s unclear whether seabed mining operations will be able to even get off the ground before the end of Trump’s term, and the legal repercussions associated with undermining the Law of the Sea could fracture the stability among global powers — and make global climate action that much harder.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a year for clean energy. There’s no better way to show those ups and downs than with a chart, and luckily, we made a lot of those this year.
As 2025 comes to a close, let’s focus on just the ups. Here are 10 charts that prove the clean energy transition is still marching on in the U.S. and beyond.
We started 2025 with news of a big win from the year before. The U.S. added 56 gigawatts of power capacity to the grid in 2024, and nearly all of it came from solar, battery, wind, nuclear, and other carbon-free installations.
Solar, with 34 GW of new construction, made up more than half of the new additions. Batteries had a stellar year, too, nearly doubling the previous year’s total.
March brought a huge victory for clean energy in the U.S. Solar, hydropower, biofuels, and nuclear were all part of a clean team that covered 51% of electric power demand that month, while fossil fuels accounted for the remainder.
It’s not a surprise that this win came when it did. Milder temperatures that arrive with spring mean Americans are starting to switch off their heat, but don’t yet need air-conditioning, creating a low-demand “shoulder season.” Still, this chart shows how quickly the U.S. has closed a yawning gap between clean and fossil fuel power generation.
The U.S.’s steel and ironmakers are recording slow but steady progress toward getting off coal.
Steelmaking’s reliance on coal makes it one of the world’s dirtiest industries, but all new capacity in the works as of May will use technologies that sidestep the need to burn the fossil fuel. That includes several electric arc furnaces capable of producing millions of metric tons of steel each year.
The U.S. does still rely heavily on coal-fired blast furnaces to purify iron ore. But forthcoming projects will all use direct reduction, which uses natural gas as a fuel — and ironmakers could eventually replace that gas with carbon-free hydrogen.
As of mid-year, the world was on track to spend $2.2 trillion on renewable power, low-emission fuels, the power grid, and other clean energy sectors. Fossil fuels were on track to reap half of that: $1.1 trillion.
It’s a big shift from a decade ago, when coal, gas, and oil investments dominated energy spending. But with China leading the way, clean investments have surged.
Europe had a squeaky clean June. For the first time ever, solar provided more of the EU’s power than any other source, beating both gas and coal power combined. Solar power provided 22.2% of the region’s electricity, with nuclear at its heels, and wind also beating gas generation.
Just a decade ago, coal provided a quarter of the EU’s power, while solar generated just a sliver. Now, those electricity sources are on track to trade places.
The first half of 2025 produced a worldwide win for renewables. January through July was the first time in history that renewables produced more power than coal over that stretch.
Solar’s monumental rise is the main reason for the shift: The source more than doubled its share of global electricity production from 2021 to 2025. And while coal still remains the world’s largest source of electricity, it’s declining while solar and other renewable sources are on the rise.
U.S. battery storage deployment has skyrocketed over the past five years, and that progress isn’t stopping anytime soon. Over the next five years, the country will build nearly 67 gigawatts’ worth of new utility-scale batteries, BloombergNEF estimates.
If that comes to fruition, the U.S. will have nearly triple the battery storage capacity it does now. And there’s evidence to suggest it will: The One Big Beautiful Bill largely left utility-scale battery storage incentives intact, for starters.
Energy storage is crucial for renewables to take root, as batteries can store solar and wind power for use when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing.
The latest data shows solar and wind made a speedy ascent this year — so speedy that they’re more than covering new power demand around the world.
Between January and September, power demand around the world rose by 603 terawatt-hours compared to that same time period last year. Solar met nearly all of that new demand on its own, and with a boost from wind, was able to cover all of it.
That’s a huge deal for the clean energy transition. When we produce more renewable power than is needed to cover growing demand, that’s when we can start chipping away at fossil fuels.
EVs may have faced a year of setbacks in the U.S. and beyond, but they’re still on an upward trajectory worldwide. Nearly 11 million new EVs were sold around the globe last year, with most of those new EVs hitting the road in China. Sales of plug-in hybrids and hybrid electric cars are on the rise too. Compare that to 15 years ago, EVs and hybrids were practically nonexistent.
Meanwhile, internal combustion vehicles are officially past their peak. At their all-time high in 2017, global sales of pure ICE vehicles hit 79.9 million units. Last year, sales dropped to 54.8 million.
Our final chart of the year is the ultimate bright spot. While the vibes suggested this would be a dismal year for clean energy deployment in the U.S., it simply wasn’t. Solar, wind, and storage accounted for 92% of new power capacity added to the grid this year through November. It all goes to show that while fossil fuels still produce most of the country’s electricity, clean energy’s growth is hard to stop.
The wide expanses of rural America are foundational to one of the nation’s oldest businesses — raising crops and farm animals — along with one of the youngest: producing cheap, renewable energy.
Sometimes in conflict but often in harmony, the two industries are coming together in Raleigh, North Carolina, to form one of the Southeast’s first training facilities for agrivoltaics, in which the same land is used for agriculture and solar photovoltaic panels.
North Carolina State University launched the site last month and next semester will offer hands-on learning that focuses on solar grazing — sheep feeding on grasses and other vegetation beneath large ground-mounted arrays.
At the training ground, engineering students and solar professionals will be able to tinker with three rows of solar panels, learning how to mount and dismount panels from a unique racking system built for hilly terrain. Many might pet a sheep for the first time.
Meanwhile, would-be shepherds studying at N.C. State and practicing farmers could glimpse their first solar panels up close and learn how livestock interact with the equipment and its wires, inverters, and other related contraptions.
“A lot of sheep producers, they might be interested in solar grazing, but they’ve never stood next to a solar panel,” said Andrew Weaver, an assistant professor in animal science at the university. “What do these solar panels look like? How do they work? How do you graze around that panel?”
When it comes to large-scale solar projects, many rural communities in North Carolina and beyond have faced a steep learning curve. Just ask Steve Kalland, longtime director of the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, based at N.C. State.
The center has been conducting outreach sessions in rural North Carolina for years, countering both misinformation and a genuine lack of knowledge about whether solar panels degrade soil or threaten the state’s agricultural lands. Though the answer to both queries is generally no, he believes cooperation beats confrontation.
“We’re top five in the country in solar deployment and under 1% of agricultural land that’s being used for solar,” said Kalland, relaying stats backed up by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. “So I’m not worried about using up all of the agricultural land in the short run, the medium run, or even the long run. But finding ways to do things better together is always a better outcome.”
That’s why bringing solar and agriculture together for instruction at the university “is a perfect marriage in a lot of ways,” Kalland said.
Nevados, which produces solar mounting systems engineered for slopes of up to 37%, donated equipment for the Raleigh site and helped design the curriculum. The Oakland, California–based company wanted an East Coast “sandbox” to better connect with the solar developers that buy its product on the other side of the country.
The Nevados technology, which repositions solar panels throughout the day to follow the sun, doesn’t require leveling the ground. That makes it well suited for agrivoltaics: Pastureland often undulates, and cropland is best undisturbed, said Rahul Chandra, vice president of product marketing at the company.
“What makes it special is that we can get away with almost zero grading underneath the array,” Chandra said. “That gives you some advantages, whether it’s for livestock grazing or maintaining crop production [and] natural soil chemistry. Our whole ethos with the technology is ‘don’t touch the topsoil.’”
Many members of the solar industry are risk averse, Chandra said, making exposure to the relatively new Nevados design — which has been on the market for five years — vital to the tech’s takeoff.
“The N.C. State training is two parts,” he said. “You spend a few hours in the boring classroom right next door, and then you get to go hands-on with the tracking system. It’s a proven model in the solar industry.”
Weaver is eager to give his students practical experience, too. A sheep and goat specialist, he teaches a class on managing the ruminants that includes a lecture on solar grazing.
With the new training center up and running, Weaver said, he can better help pupils grapple with the nuances of raising sheep around solar infrastructure. “What can you touch? What don’t you touch? When do you call the solar company?”
Solar developers and operators can also learn some subtleties of sheep management, Weaver said. How do technicians move the livestock away from an area that needs repair while ensuring the animals still have water and a place to graze? When do they need to call a shepherd?
There’s no set formula for solar grazing, Weaver added. An acre of solar field can usually sustain between one and five sheep. Some immense solar projects can host a flock of sheep year-round; others contract with grazers the same way they would a mowing company.
A general rule of thumb is that grazing can cut mowing frequency in half, reducing the need for fossil-fueled combustion engines, Weaver said. “To me, mowing is kind of hypocritical if we want to preach clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Like all livestock, sheep produce climate-warming pollution of their own, mostly in the form of methane. But solar grazing proponents say some of that can be offset with management practices that enhance a pasture’s ability to soak up carbon from the atmosphere.
Weaver is passionate about how solar projects could help foster a new generation of farmers who wouldn’t need to own land for pasture.
“Unless you come from family ground, it’s just about impossible to afford land these days,” he said. “Solar has really opened a door that the sheep industry hasn’t had for 50-plus years.”
Indeed, solar grazing is on the rise in North Carolina and across the country, with some 113,000 sheep responsible for maintaining the vegetation beneath 129,000 acres of solar panels, according to the American Solar Grazing Association.
The group doesn’t publish breakdowns by state, but the South leads the way, with nearly 62,000 sheep and over 87,000 acres — largely thanks to solar-abundant Texas.
And though the domestic lamb market today is small, with most of the meat Americans consume originating in Australia or New Zealand, that could change if more solar developers and sheep farmers work together, Weaver believes.
“You have a product that is 10,000 miles fresher, potentially has been harvested within the last week, and has a great story behind it,” he said.
Weaver says the future of solar grazing is bright: Many acres of existing solar projects aren’t yet maintained by sheep — meaning there’s lots of room for growth — and he predicts rural communities will increasingly require new arrays to include agrivoltaics.
“There’s a lot of young people that want to farm and don’t want to sit at a desk all day,” Weaver said. “Ten years ago, they didn’t have a choice: Finding that job in town was the only option. Now, with solar grazing, the opportunity exists to raise a large number of sheep at scale and make a good living doing it.”
The New York Power Authority approved a plan Tuesday to nearly double the state-owned utility’s goal for solar, wind, and energy storage projects to 5.5 gigawatts. The new investments would boost clean power in the state as the private market fails to deploy renewable energy fast enough to meet New York’s lofty decarbonization goals.
In a unanimous decision, the board of trustees voted to greenlight the utility’s new strategic plan for renewables. Though the 5.5 GW figure is an increase over the utility’s initial plan, released this January, it also represents a reduction from the 7 GW draft plan NYPA unveiled over the summer.
The utility blamed the slimmer target on private renewable-energy developers pulling out of 16 joint ventures. Activists, however, accused NYPA of dropping projects to boost plans for new fossil-fuel infrastructure recently approved by Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat.
The 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act requires New York to generate 70% of its power from renewables by 2030 and the rest of its electricity from zero-carbon sources by 2040. It’s one of the most ambitious decarbonization goals in the country, but the state is lagging behind on meeting its legally mandated benchmarks in virtually every category of clean power except for distributed energy sources that include rooftop solar.
Today, natural-gas-fired power stations provide about half New York’s electricity. Aging hydroelectric stations, backed up by additional dams in Canada, provide nearly one-quarter of the state’s power, closely followed by nuclear reactors from plants upstate. Solar and wind each account for only a single-digit share of the state’s power mix, below the U.S.-wide share and far below that of California, Texas, and other states.
NYPA, the second-largest state-owned utility after the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, is increasingly being called on to help close that gap.
Two years ago, Hochul approved measures to give NYPA a mandate to invest directly in clean energy projects — an authority modeled closely on a piece of legislation called the Build Public Renewables Act.
This January, NYPA unveiled a plan to build out more than 3 GW of wind, solar, and batteries using its expanded remit. In July, it released a draft plan that more than doubled that target to 7 GW
But NYPA, required by law to take majority stakes in the developments it backs, elected to own just 51% of these projects. So when developers backed out of the 16 joint ventures, due largely to the rollback of federal tax credits for wind and solar projects and a lack of available transmission capacity, NYPA said it was forced to move forward with fewer projects.
In a statement cautioning that the strategic plan “is an iterative document that will be continually re-assessed and updated,” NYPA’s chief executive Justin Driscoll called the latest proposal “a strong portfolio of refined project opportunities that builds on the energy capacity outlined in the inaugural plan.”
“Despite strong headwinds threatening the viability of renewables projects throughout the nation, NYPA continues to leverage its expertise and reputational strength to develop projects that will bolster the energy diversity of New York’s electric grid,” Driscoll said. “This updated plan is only a snapshot of our ongoing efforts, and NYPA will continue to assess the state’s addressable renewables market to identify new projects that can be added into future plans.”
While the state’s climate law sets deadlines for New York to up the share of renewables in its power mix, NYPA is not beholden to completing the full 5.5 GW by a specific date. The plan, though scheduled for an update only every two years, could be revised as early as next year as new projects become viable or existing ones go under.
The finalized plan drew sharp criticism from Public Power New York, a left-wing group that campaigned for the Build Public Renewables Act. Rather than cut back, the group said, NYPA should expand its target to 15 GW of solar, wind, and batteries. The organization helped marshal more than 10,000 public comments supporting the higher-end goal.
In an interview, Public Power New York’s co-chair Michael Paulson accused Hochul of deliberately dampening the state’s renewables potential to bolster the controversial Williams Companies gas pipeline into New York City, a project The New York Times reported would benefit clients of the law firm that employs the governor’s husband, William Hochul.
“This is unfortunately part of a pattern,” Paulson said. “Instead of using the tools to build a more affordable and better future, Hochul is pushing toxic fossil-fuel projects to enrich her utility donors and potentially even enrich her own family.”
In an email, Hochul’s office called the claims “both disingenuous and ludicrous.”
“NYPA’s plan represents a realistic strategy, as required by law, to build out a portfolio of new renewables,” Ken Lovett, a spokesperson for the governor, told Canary Media. “Under Governor Hochul’s leadership, New York continues to be a national clean energy leader. In the face of federal and economic roadblocks, and warnings of energy shortages downstate as soon as next summer, the Governor’s all-of-the-above energy agenda is designed to keep the lights on and costs down.”
In a June press release, Public Power New York also slammed Hochul and NYPA’s plan to build at least 1 GW of new nuclear power upstate by the time New York’s climate law requires a fully decarbonized system in 2040, calling the effort a distraction from wind and solar.
While Paulson acknowledged the real bottleneck the transmission system poses, he criticized the governor for not doing more to approve new power lines and said her administration should support more distributed solar and batteries in the region facing the state’s worst electricity shortages: New York City and its surrounding suburbs.
Paul Williams, the founder and executive director of the Center for Public Enterprise, a think tank that favors expanded state capacity, agreed New York lawmakers need to do more to make building transmission lines — a challenge everywhere in the U.S. — easier.
“What this strategic plan makes clear is that while NYPA was planning on more renewables projects, there are interconnection barriers that are keeping them from moving forward faster,” Williams said. “The question for those of us who want to see NYPA succeed and build more public renewables is, What can we do to help NYPA overcome interconnection barriers? The faster we can help solve that bottleneck, the faster we can build these projects.”
An update and a clarification were made on December 9, 2025: A statement from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office was added to this piece, and the story has been changed to make clear that NYPA is required by law to take a majority stake in the projects it backs
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