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As the Trump administration doubles down on fossil fuels, the rest of the world is investing more and more in clean energy.
This year, $2.2 trillion will be invested in clean energy, efficiency, and electrification globally, according to the International Energy Agency — double the $1.1 trillion that will flow toward fossil fuels.
It’s a remarkable change from a decade ago. Back in 2015, fossil fuels still attracted more money than clean energy. In 2016, perhaps galvanized by the Paris Agreement signed the very same year, investors channeled more funding toward clean energy than toward fossil fuels.
Investors haven’t looked back since — and all forms of clean energy have taken off as a result, led by China, the world’s most prominent “electrostate.” Over the last decade, wind and solar have grown from making up just over 4% of global electricity production to accounting for 15% as of last year. Solar in particular has increased eightfold over that time; no energy category will attract more money than photovoltaics this year, per IEA.
This widening gap suggests some progress in the global effort to move away from fossil fuels. Investment is a leading indicator of actual, physical things — new solar plants, wind turbines, power lines, and more — being built. The trillions invested in this year, last year, and so on, will translate to record-breaking amounts of clean-energy installations in the years to come.
But despite the promise, IEA says current investment levels are not enough to meet global pledges made in late 2023 to boost renewables and energy efficiency. Investment in renewables needs to double. Energy efficiency, a sector experts have long viewed as underfunded, needs investment to almost triple. So does electrification.
Meanwhile, fossil fuel investment has remained stubbornly high even as it loses ground to clean energy. Only in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, did the world spend less than $1 trillion on coal, gas, and oil.
That mirrors a concerning trend within the global power sector: Renewables are growing at a record-breaking pace, faster than many thought possible, and yet emissions are still rising as countries simply use more electricity, burning more fossil fuels as a result. This dynamic will not solve climate change. In order for the world to decarbonize, investment in clean energy needs to be high enough for it to displace — and drive down — fossil-fuel use.
ENFIELD, N.C. — On a sweltering Saturday last month, climate activists, local elected leaders, and their families and friends gathered around a boarded-up home on the main strip of Enfield, North Carolina, donning sun hats and wielding garden tools.
To a hip-hop soundtrack blasting loud enough that the entire town of 2,000 could probably hear, the crew labored in the 90-degree heat to plant perennials, lay patio stones, and generally pretty-up the small yard in front of the nearly 1,800-square-foot bungalow.
“We are in beautification mode outside,” said Enfield Mayor Mondale Robinson, “because inside we’re at a standstill for the lack of funds right now.”
The century-old home will ultimately serve as a “weatherization hub” for Enfield, where many households hover near the poverty line but electricity bills regularly top $400. Powered by solar panels and a backup battery, the hub will host do-it-yourself energy-efficiency workshops and provide a stable internet connection for remote workers, Robinson said.
The hub is just one piece of a multifaceted clean energy vision charted by Robinson, together with other town leaders and climate nonprofits. Still recovering from a debilitating car accident from May, the wheelchair-bound mayor served as DJ, grounds supervisor, and occasional worker — to the certain chagrin of his doctor.
The scene was a fitting metaphor for where Robinson and his colleagues find themselves at the moment: hobbled by the ferocity with which the federal government has targeted clean energy and equity initiatives, but determined to press on no matter what.
“So, we stand in this heat,” Robinson said, “the same heat my grandfather and his grandfather labored in for free for somebody else. We do it for free right now, but not for somebody else — for what’s to come. It’s folk out there that don’t know that this building is for them. In spite of our federal government, in spite of, sometimes, our state government, we still stand up. We still try.”
The event last month was also about community. Climate leaders who’d worked together for years and others who’d just met took breaks in the shade to connect and reconnect.
“It’s all about people,” said Helen Whiteley, an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Design Climate program who is supporting the town in its clean energy ambitions. “When you find people who believe things that are similar, you hold onto them and try to collaborate with them.”
One of the poorest and Blackest towns in America, Enfield could have a bright future, leaders here believe: The Halifax County community could supply its own solar power, upgrade its housing stock to be more energy efficient, and create gathering places powered by clean energy.
But when Robinson and his allies were first laying their plans, the prospects for assistance from the federal government were far rosier than they are today.
The bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act — both signed into law by former President Joe Biden — promised aid for clean energy and for historically disadvantaged communities.
Federal programs spurred by these laws could have potentially funded a replacement of the town’s dilapidated and outdated grid. Tax credits might have offset at least 40% of the cost of a new solar farm and battery that would supply electricity to businesses and residences, stabilizing household electric bills. A planned resilience center on the town’s fairground, intended as a gathering place during weather disasters and as an incubator for sustainable businesses, could have also benefited.
But in six short months, President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have shut down or imperiled many of these initiatives. The Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, an initiative established by the 2021 infrastructure law that Enfield hoped to tap for funding, is kaput for the time being.
“That was the best one,” Nick Jimenez, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said with a sigh. “That could have done the grid plus solar.”
After Trump signed the budget bill into law July 4 and issued a subsequent executive order July 7, tax incentives are now sharply curtailed. Credits for home rooftop solar and energy-efficiency upgrades will dry up at year’s end.
“A fair number of our colleagues in Washington see just ink on paper,” said Rep. Rodney Pierce, a Democrat who represents Halifax County in the North Carolina House. “It’s not just letters and numbers. These are people. These are families, communities. It’s disappointing,” he said at the gathering last month.
At the same time, Pierce acknowledged, skepticism about clean energy has grown among state politicians. A bill to ratchet down local tax incentives for solar farms has cleared two committees in the state House. Another measure would eliminate an interim target for utility Duke Energy to curb its carbon emissions, removing a key driver for clean energy. The GOP-run General Assembly could yet enact the legislation, Senate Bill 266, by overriding the veto of Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat.
Both Black men in their mid-40s, Pierce and Robinson attended rival public high schools in the county, the state legislator said. Both are quick to link the quest for clean energy to the ongoing struggle for civil rights and economic justice.
“Those of us who grew up in persistently impoverished counties like Halifax — we can ill afford to be reticent to encouraging and exploring other sources of energy,” said Pierce, who voted against SB 266. “That’s why I’m out here. I count Mayor Robinson as a friend.”
To be sure, some remnants of Biden-era climate funding have slipped through the grasp of Trump and his allies in the GOP.
A multimillion-dollar grant for grid improvements deployed to the state thanks to the infrastructure law could yet help Enfield upgrade its aging substation and low-capacity power lines. “That hasn’t been targeted yet,” Jimenez said of the program.
Funding for EnergizeNC, meant to help develop rooftop and community solar in low-income areas like Enfield, is also intact. So are rebates designed to help households buy more efficient appliances and perform other upgrades to save energy. Indeed, because of its atrocious energy burden, Halifax County was among the first two counties to access the Energy Saver North Carolina program when it launched early this year.
That’s why Enfield leaders and their allies are focused on affordable, energy-efficient housing and the weatherization hub, for now.
“This was always going to be about what we could get from philanthropy and what the mayor could marshal up from his resources,” said William Munn, regional director of the Carolinas for advocacy group Vote Solar. “We think now, given the federal situation, this is probably the most likely thing we can get done as quickly as possible.”
Robinson bought the home on South McDaniel Street earlier this year for $32,500. For another $100,000 or so, Munn believes it can be upfitted and ready to serve.
“The sooner the money comes in, the faster it gets done,” he said. “We believe this is a small enough project that, once this is done, we can market it and keep pitching it. We want to send the message that this is just the beginning.”
Robinson has high hopes for the hub’s completion. “We’re at a point now where we need people to start seeing that this thing is not 12 years away, two years away, or even a year away,” he said. “With a little investment, this thing could be done by the end of the summer.”
It’s been a bad week for the U.S. energy transition.
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans effectively repealed large swaths of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act last Friday, a move that will set back the nation’s efforts to decarbonize just as they were gaining steam.
But the United States is not the only country in the world. It’s one of the biggest emitters, true, but it’s responsible for only about 13% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
And luckily, even as Trump hitches the U.S. to fossil fuels, the world is continuing to move quickly toward cleaner sources. Let’s take a tour of some global energy-transition bright spots.
In China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, wind and solar capacity overtook coal and gas in the first quarter of 2025 — a first, according to a Global Energy Monitor report released this week. The country is still building and using immense amounts of fossil fuels, but reports suggest its emissions may finally be in reverse.
In the European Union, solar was the largest source of electricity across all of June. It’s the first time solar has led the pack for an entire month in the EU, according to a new Ember report, producing 22% of the region’s electricity. Meanwhile, coal fell to its lowest-ever level, a reflection of the region’s push to eliminate the dirty fuel: Ireland shuttered its last coal plant in late June, becoming Europe’s 15th coal-free country. Italy and Spain are slated to close their last major coal plants this summer, too.
Across the entire world, $2 is now invested in clean energy, efficiency, and the grid for every $1 invested in fossil fuels. That’s serious progress, and a big reason why clean energy is growing so rapidly worldwide. Last year, more than 90% of the new electricity built globally was clean energy. Meanwhile, EV adoption is set to leap 25% this year, compared with 2024, setting yet another record even amid headwinds in the U.S., according to BloombergNEF. More than one-quarter of new passenger vehicles sold worldwide will be battery-powered.
To be clear, the trajectory the world is on right now is not fast enough to meet global climate commitments. All of the progress mentioned above needs to accelerate further — and the U.S. resisting the energy transition is a big deal. But with or without the U.S., the global energy transition is happening, and a future that’s powered by solar, wind, batteries, nuclear, and other forms of carbon-free power is on the way.
Megabill fallout
One week ago today, Trump signed the GOP megabill into law and changed the trajectory of the U.S. energy transition with the stroke of a pen.
The law made deep cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act, the national climate law passed by the Biden administration in 2022. As a result, the U.S. is now expected to install clean energy at a slower pace, sell fewer EVs, and emit a lot more carbon dioxide in the coming years. Oh, and energy prices are going to rise, too. If you’re looking for a piece to share widely that covers the basics, try this one I published on Monday.
Every sector faces slightly different challenges from the law. Even geothermal energy, a favored clean energy source among Republicans, faces a rocky road, Canary’s Maria Gallucci reported this week. The law could have been worse for solar and wind — but it will still pose big challenges, Jeff St. John reports. It could even prevent some fully permitted offshore wind projects from moving forward, Clare Fieseler writes.
Trump’s pro-coal push faces challenges
A month and a half ago, the Department of Energy ordered two fossil-fueled plants that were on the brink of shutting down to stay open. It might have been an opening salvo in a major effort from the Trump administration to keep aging, dirty coal plants open past their planned close dates, Jeff St. John reported this week.
The move comes as the Trump administration, and in particular DOE Secretary Chris Wright, frequently refers to renewable energy as unreliable and calls for more fossil-fuel use instead. A new DOE report furthers that line of argument, though it has been criticized as relying on flawed assumptions. Meanwhile, examples pop up near-weekly of how clean energy actually helps the grid. During a heat wave in late June, for instance, solar and batteries helped save New England from potential blackouts, Sarah Shemkus reports for Canary Media.
Now, state regulators and environmental and consumer groups are challenging the legality of Trump’s pro-coal intervention, arguing that the grid can be safely run without it.
More reliable in Texas: Texas has dramatically increased its grid reliability and maintained affordable electricity prices as it’s integrated more solar, batteries, and wind, undermining Trump’s repeated claims that renewables make the grid unstable. (Reuters)
Rooftop regression: Rooftop solar installations are set to plummet following the GOP megabill’s repeal of a longstanding federal incentive, with analysts estimating between 40% and 85% less demand over the next decade. (Washington Post)
Ford-ging ahead: Ford says last-minute changes to Republicans’ big budget bill saved tax credits that it’s counting on as it builds a $3 billion Michigan battery factory. (New York Times)
Salt in the wound: President Trump directs the Treasury Department to strictly curtail which projects can access wind and solar tax credits before they are phased out in 2028 under the new Republican budget bill. (The Hill)
Permission denied: About one in five counties across the U.S. have passed laws to restrict or outright ban construction of new solar and wind farms, and are curtailing battery storage facilities too. (Heatmap)
A tough turn for tribes: Tribal leaders say the new federal tax and spending law will cause widespread clean-energy job losses in their communities and jeopardize climate projects. (Grist)
Drilling declines: A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey shows regional oil and gas production declined in the second quarter of 2025 amid global unrest and Trump administration trade policies, and many operators say they now plan to drill fewer wells than they predicted this year. (Axios)
Heat pumps are cool: If you’re thinking about getting central air conditioning at your house — or replacing your existing system — have you considered a heat pump instead? (Canary Media)
Time to go car shopping: And if you’re contemplating getting an electric vehicle anytime soon, here’s some advice: Do it before the end of September, when the federal tax credit now sunsets under the GOP law. (Canary Media)
Congress moved one step closer to passing President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” this week — and with that, one step closer to spiking power bills across the nation.
The bill would rapidly phase out tax credits for clean energy, slowing the construction of solar, wind, and battery projects, which made up over 90% of new electricity connected to the grid last year.
Repealing those tax credits would come at a steep cost to utility customers in every state, according to NERA analysis commissioned by the Clean Energy Buyers Association. The most impacted states could see electricity prices rise by nearly 30% by 2029.
The Senate bill passed Tuesday would require solar and wind projects to either start construction within a year of the bill’s passage or start service by the end of 2027 to receive the tax credits. Those that begin construction after this calendar year would be subject to “foreign entity of concern” restrictions so difficult to comply with that experts have said they amount to a “backdoor repeal.” Batteries, nuclear, and geothermal have a longer runway to claim the credits but would have to deal with the same unworkable foreign-entity strictures.
The bill is now being considered by House Republicans, who have set a self-imposed deadline of sending the bill to Trump’s desk by Friday. A previous version of the bill passed the House in May by just one vote.
Clean energy is the cheapest and easiest way to get power onto the grid. With demand for electricity nationwide rising due in large part to AI data centers, swiftly bringing affordable energy online is more crucial than ever.
But if tax incentives are repealed, fewer solar, wind, and storage projects will be built. Between now and 2035, the U.S. could see 57% to 72% less new clean-energy capacity come online than it would have with the tax credits in place, according to Rhodium Group. Meanwhile, new gas construction likely can’t make up the difference in the near term: Developers who want to build new gas power plants face wait times of up to five to seven years for turbines.
Rising power demand plus slower power-plant construction is a recipe for higher electricity bills.
Households and businesses in Wyoming, Illinois, and New Mexico would see the biggest jump in energy costs should the tax credits be repealed. Nationwide, electricity prices would increase by an average of 7.3% for households and 10.6% for businesses, worsening the increasingly steep energy costs Americans face.
The biggest loss, however, would be for attempts to decarbonize the U.S. power system. The Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S.’s first real stab at climate policy, had put the country nearly on track to cut carbon emissions in line with global climate commitments. Under this bill, however, U.S. efforts to move away from fossil fuels are certain to be slowed — even as the rest of the world speeds ahead toward clean power.
Dean Solon stands out as one of the very few self-made billionaires to emerge from the U.S. solar industry, following the tremendous 2021 initial public offering on the Nasdaq of his solar-equipment firm Shoals.
But a few weeks ago, as he and I found seats outside the Midwest Solar Expo in a far western suburb of Chicago, it was clear the major cashout hadn’t changed his style. Solon, age 61, was dressed not in Balenciaga or Louis Vuitton, but his trademark jean shorts and athletic sneakers.
“I’m gonna go from a large Dunkin Donuts to an extra-large Dunkin Donuts now,” he said. “I still, to this day, drive a 2017 Chevy Bolt, 100% electric. I still live in the same house. I didn’t do it for the money then, I don’t do it now.”
In fact, Solon’s instinct to tinker and solve problems has thrust him back into the solar manufacturing space at the industry’s most chaotic moment in years.
“The renewables building is on fire, and it is hot as fuck, and everybody’s running away from the fire,” he said. “We have asbestos-clad underwear on. We have our fire suit on, and we got a hose, and we’re running into the fire.”
Solon has decided to compete in these dire circumstances by essentially building the entire menu of items needed for a modern solar, battery, or microgrid project, and designing all the pieces to fit together seamlessly. His new firm, Create Energy, will sell developers solar modules, trackers, batteries, inverters, power stations, and other auxiliary equipment. The goal is to save customers time and effort compared to buying separately from a tracker vendor, a module vendor, an inverter vendor, and so on, and then assembling all those components with separate crews.
It’s an ominous time to start a new solar manufacturing business in America, to say the least. After a booming few years following the implementation of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and its various, generous clean-energy manufacturing incentives, firms now find themselves squeezed between fluctuating tariffs and the detonation of those same incentives, following President Donald Trump’s signing of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act last week.
What better moment to check in with one of the most singular voices in the solar industry, who has survived and thrived through the solarcoaster of the last two decades without wavering in his commitment to American manufacturing?
Solon’s previous company Shoals originally made automotive parts for Bosch back in the ‘90s. But after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, lifting most tariffs between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, Bosch wanted to relocate its suppliers to the latter nation, and Solon refused to move his operation out of Tennessee, he recalled.
Around that same time, he got an inbound request from a budding solar enterprise that needed some manufactured junction boxes and cable assemblies; that upstart turned out to be First Solar, pretty much the only U.S. panel manufacturer that has excelled over the last few decades (and whose stock has been on a tear as Congress prepared to revoke tax credits for solar projects that use Chinese-made materials).
Once he made the jump into solar equipment in the early 2000s, Solon kept manufacturing in America, even as installers and developers embraced cheaper Chinese products and U.S. cell and module manufacturing collapsed.
“Solar makes sense, with or without incentives; Buying American-made products, even better,” Solon said. “Listen, I fly the American flag like crazy. I grew up in the ‘70s working on American cars. I’m a gearhead my whole life. I love American-made products, and I’m gonna push it.”
That ethos continues in the new venture. The strategy is to build high-quality equipment and find customers who understand its value, because they’re investing with a longer-term mindset.
“We’re not looking for every Tom, Dick, and Harry that’s trying to flip a project to build it as cheap as possible with garbage,” he said. “I’m looking for the [independent power producers], the big power companies, who want to buy systems that are going to last for decades.”
In theory, a company with this attitude would welcome tariffs, which raise the cost of cheaply produced competition from Chinese factories. The last few months have seen new tariffs aplenty, though Trump has waived some within days or weeks of announcing them. But while tariffs are often billed as helpful to domestic manufacturers, President Trump’s tariffs are also causing complications for the American factory buildout.
For starters, Trump’s blanket tariffs on all Chinese goods impact manufacturing equipment produced in that country. Not only does China make most of the world’s solar panels — it also makes many of the machines required to manufacture solar.
“To be clear on this point, there’s no better-built machines for solar than Chinese equipment, end of story,” Solon said. “That’s how good it is. It’s heads and tails better than anywhere else you could get machinery.”
“It was easy to order machinery, but then once the tariffs hit, there’s a lot of machinery just sitting in ports in China that hasn’t left,” he added.
Even if Solon could get his hands on that equipment without exorbitant price hikes, the U.S. lacks enough production of solar cells — the component that actually converts sunlight into electricity — to meet the demand for domestic module assembly. Factories that can’t obtain the limited domestic cells need to import them, but the so-called reciprocal tariffs Trump has announced on much of the world, and then delayed, have scrambled the economics for cells from outside the U.S.
Create is making other products at its Portland, Tennessee, factory, but the timeline for making solar modules in-house has been pushed back due to the macroeconomic headwinds.
A decade ago, solar module costs started to plunge, and the price of solar-generated power fell along with it. That has propelled solar to the front of the pack for new power plant construction. But lately the slope of cost declines has leveled off, and incremental module improvements do less and less to push the cost of solar power lower.
Solon is stepping into that mature marketplace, so he has to bring something new to the table to stand out. After years of making the electrical connectors needed to hook up solar panels into a functioning power plant, he realized he could eliminate several steps for installers with clever design hacks.
Today’s standard solar-plant construction process creates inefficiencies. “Everyone is this separate crew working on the same rows over and over and over ‘til they do it in the next location,” Solon said.
A singular project might have different crews clear the earth, pound the posts, add torque tubes, bolt the modules in place, check the torque on the bolts, handle the electrical work, and then clean up the site, he said.
The new products from Create come with electrical connections pre-wired into the modules and the torque tubes of the trackers. Installers can easily snap everything together, at which point, Solon insists, the systems won’t need any more maintenance.
Solon’s goal was to make installation so easy that it would be doable for an avatar of the modern man that he refers to as “Mr. Hot-Pocket Muncher,” who is “happy living in mommy’s basement eating Hot Pockets and playing 12 hours of Xbox.”
“Take my module, and grab Mr. Hot-Pocket Muncher,” Solon envisioned, after showing me an AI rendering of the character, which his colleague on hand advised him against making available for publication. “He picks it up. He clicks it on the torque tube. Did I hear it click? Yes, I’m done. Grab the next one. Click, yes. All the wiring is done. All the mechanical connections are done, and they’re non-serviceable. There’s nothing for an [operations and maintenance] crew to ever do again.”
That vision would threaten a number of specialized jobs in the solar installation and maintenance business. But it would also deliver more efficient construction, so the same workforce could theoretically deliver more clean power in the same amount of time. If Solon can pull it off, that kind of benefit could be valuable as the industry stares down the loss of its decades-long tax-credit regime.
Solon doesn’t deny that the solar industry writ large is heading for a contraction, but he rejects the more apocalyptic outlooks some fear for the sector. Instead, he thinks it’ll be a reset for the industry after the bounty of Biden-era policy supercharged the pace of activity.
“Right now, the solar business is a drunk pirate that partied like a rock star all last night,” Solon mused. “We woke up, we’re hung over as hell, and we’re reaching for our wallet and our keys, and we can’t find either one of them. And we wonder what the hell happened? I think we’re gonna be hung over for about six months to a year.”
The wave of bankruptcies has already begun, taking down longtime industry stalwarts like solar loan provider Mosaic, rooftop solar financier Sunnova, grid-battery integrator Powin Energy, and more.
It’s not a bad time to have a billion dollars in the bank and several decades of manufacturing experience.
“If you’re in a consolidated market [and] people are going out of business, who are you going to run to to get your products and services?” chimed in Create’s chief of staff, Joe Fahrney, who was sitting next to Solon at the Midwest Solar Expo. “So people are lining up to buy from Dean Solon, because they know Dean and Create will be in business over the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years.”
“This time it won’t IPO though,” Solon interjected. “I’m not giving up control, because I want this little baby to run for hundreds of years.”
Two years after the last attempt to build out wind farms in Maine’s northern reaches fizzled, the state is again gearing up to seek developers to build at least 1,200 megawatts of land-based wind capacity and a transmission line to carry the electricity produced to the central part of the state. At the same time, grid operator ISO New England is accepting proposals for new transmission infrastructure that will allow that power to flow to the rest of the region.
For wind power advocates, these moves have sparked hope that a new source of renewable energy may finally be developed in the region.
“After talking about this for the last 15 years, I feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Francis Pullaro, president of clean-energy industry association RENEW Northeast. “It’s definitely complicated and a big undertaking, but I think the state has realized what a great opportunity northern Maine wind provides.”
Maine and most of its neighboring states have ambitious emissions-reduction targets: Maine just adopted legislation calling for 100% clean energy by 2040, for example, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island both aim to be carbon-neutral by 2050. Offshore wind has been a major part of the states’ strategies for transitioning away from a system that now leans heavily on natural gas for electricity generation. However, as the Trump administration throws up roadblocks to offshore wind development, it becomes even more important to tap into land-based wind to keep progressing toward a cleaner energy future, supporters said.
“It’s a really important medium-term piece of the puzzle in how we reduce our dependence on gas as a region and for our state,” said Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, an environmental advocacy group. “It’s a pretty big deal.”
Plans to build onshore wind in northern Maine’s remote Aroostook County have come and gone several times over the past two decades. In 2008, then-Gov. John Baldacci (D) signed a law setting a goal of bringing 2,000 MW of wind power online by 2015 and 3,000 MW, including some offshore wind, by 2020. As of this year, the state has 1,139 MW of onshore wind operational and no offshore turbines.
Aroostook County — with its strong winds and low population density — has long been considered a prime area for building turbines, but its promise has not been realized. One of the major obstacles has been the lack of transmission lines to carry power from the forests of northern Maine to the lightbulbs and dishwashers of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Most of Aroostook County is served by an electrical system connected only to Canada, with no direct links to any U.S. power grid. Building the needed lines is a complex, costly undertaking that has repeatedly stymied efforts to get wind generation up and spinning.
“For the southern New England states where all the load is, [northern Maine] always was a fairly distant resource,” Pullaro said. “The lack of transmission has always been the barrier.”
In 2013, Connecticut selected a planned wind development in Aroostook County — EDP Renewables’ Number Nine Wind Farm — to provide 250 MW of power to the state. By the end of 2016, the project had been cancelled, with EDP citing the lack of transmission capacity to get the electricity to customers farther south.
In the final days of 2022, Massachusetts agreed to buy 40% of the power generated by the proposed King Pine wind farm in Aroostook County, a deal that seemed to give the 1,000-MW project the financial security it needed to proceed. By the end of 2023, however, a separate agreement with LS Power to build a transmission line connecting the development to the rest of New England fell through over pricing disagreements, undermining the prospect of wind development.
“The contract negotiations were not successful, and the project stalled,” said Dan Burgess, director of the Maine Governor’s Energy Office.
Now the state has gone back to the drawing board. This time around, however, the plans are getting an unprecedented boost from ISO New England. The regional grid operator in late March issued a request for proposals for the development of a transmission project connecting the Maine town of Pittsfield to points farther south in New England, shortening the distance the power lines from future Aroostook County wind farms will have to travel. A plan could be chosen as soon as September 2026.
Meanwhile Maine utilities regulators released a request for information to collect feedback from developers, industry members, and other stakeholders to help plan and schedule its next procurement. There has been a robust response to the request, though most comments were filed confidentially, said Susan Faloon, spokesperson for the Maine Public Utilities Commission. The tentative plan is to open up for proposals by the end of the year, she said.
Whether the next attempt will be successful hinges on a few factors, starting with its ability to financially weather Republicans’ scaleback of federal clean-energy tax credits and the administration’s continued, evolving hostility to renewable energy projects. Trump halted federal permitting and leasing for wind projects on his first day in office, and although 99% of onshore wind farms are built on private property, they still could need environmental permits from the administration.
“The economics of any specific project is really uncertain right now because we don’t know what will happen,” Shapiro said.
Still, Pullaro said, history suggests that onshore wind development could survive the blow of losing federal support. The grid needs more energy, and land-based wind is one of the least expensive power sources to build, even without incentives, while the cost of new natural gas generation is going up, according to a recent report from investment bank Lazard.
“From the industry point of view and for consumers, wind is still a good deal no matter where the tax situation is,” Pullaro said.
Tweaks to the state’s timeline for issuing a request for proposals and choosing a project could also increase the likelihood of success, Pullaro said. A wind development stands a much better chance of succeeding, he said, if another state commits to buying power from it, giving it a revenue stream it can count on. Getting Massachusetts on board could be even more crucial than federal support, he said.
Massachusetts is still authorized to enter into another such agreement until the end of the year, and Gov. Maura Healey (D) included in a supplemental budget bill a provision that would extend this authorization to 2027, but the legislation is still pending. In the meantime, if Maine waits until the end of 2025 or into 2026 to launch a new solicitation, the eventual development could lose its chance to secure a deal with Massachusetts. Pullaro, therefore, would like to see Maine issue a request for proposals by September.
“The economics don’t work for Maine going it alone,” he said.
As some state legislatures try to roll back clean energy measures, a successful policy for community solar in Minnesota has survived a political fight to end it.
Earlier this month, lawmakers ditched language from the state’s energy omnibus bill that would have terminated a successful state community-solar program in three years — and quashed the build-out of 500 megawatts of planned projects, according to advocates.
“I am absolutely thrilled that the community solar program will continue, [particularly] for the communities and individuals that will benefit from it,” said Keiko Miller, director of the community solar program at advocacy group Minneapolis Climate Action. “This really is a way of reducing household energy burden for those who have been left out [of the energy transition] traditionally, as well as increasing the availability of renewable energy resources.”
Minnesota’s Community Solar Garden program is crucial as the state aims to decarbonize its power system by 2040, Miller said. “There is absolutely no way we can get there without community solar being part of the portfolio.”
Community solar projects, which are typically up to 5 megawatts, make it easier for households to tap into the value of solar. Customers who might not be able to install photovoltaic panels on their own roofs, including renters and low-income families, can sign up for a shared solar project sited elsewhere, like on a community center’s roof or in a farmer’s field. Also known as community solar gardens or farms, they can guarantee subscribers a discount on electricity costs.
Minnesota was an early leader in the shared-solar approach, having started the state program in 2013. Last year, the North Star State ranked fourth in the nation for installed capacity with 939 megawatts, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s almost one-third of the state’s total solar capacity of 2.9 gigawatts.
The state revamped its solar garden initiative in 2023 to ensure that more households and lower-income customers would benefit from community solar projects. Lawmakers didn’t assign the initiative an expiration date at the time.
In late March, two Democrats and one Republican introduced Senate File 2855, a bill that would’ve sunset the community solar program in 2028. Senators then rolled the plan into their version of the energy bill.
Minnesota-based utility Xcel Energy supported terminating the program; in a March 26 hearing, a company representative criticized community solar as a costly way to deploy clean energy compared to utility-scale installations. Notably, companies other than utilities can develop community solar projects, and Xcel Energy doesn’t earn a profit on energy infrastructure it doesn’t own.
But the utility and other opponents aren’t accounting for community solar’s wide-ranging benefits, such as avoided transmission costs, the reduction in peak demand on the grid, and resilience, said Patty O’Keefe, Midwest regional director of national nonprofit Vote Solar.
In 2024, the Minnesota Department of Commerce, which oversees the state program, found that it’s expected to deliver $2.9 billion in net benefits over the next four decades. While the initiative is projected to increase bills by 2% to 3% for non-subscribers who aren’t considered low to moderate income, community solar is expected to lower energy bills for participating households by 3% to 8%.
Ultimately, lawmakers stripped the repeal language from the energy bill following pushback from community solar champions in the Legislature, including Democrats Rep. Patty Acomb, Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, and Rep. Melissa Hortman, O’Keefe said. (On June 14, Hortman and her husband were assassinated at their home in an act of politically motivated violence.)
Droves of supporters also helped save the state solar-garden program; they testified at hearings, marched, and protested, O’Keefe said. By her count, roughly 100 Minnesotans, including community solar subscribers, farmers, and clean energy advocates, called on legislators to reject the repeal.
The win for community solar in Minnesota comes as the broader solar industry — and the already-struggling rooftop solar sector in particular — faces serious federal headwinds. The Trump administration’s rapidly fluctuating tariffs and the looming repeal of solar and wind energy tax credits in the budget bill threaten to make solar more expensive to build. That could throw cold water on the record-breaking pace of solar deployment the U.S. has experienced in recent years.
But in Minnesota, at least, a major source of clean energy endures.
“This is a victory for the community solar movement,” O’Keefe said. “It just shows that even with a … forceful effort to try and repeal the entire program, we had enough power between the public and clean-energy champions to fight it back — and really send a message that Minnesota benefits from community solar.”
Massachusetts last week enacted a revamped version of its solar incentive program that developers and advocates say should keep the state’s solar industry moving forward even as the Trump administration pushes to undermine federal support for clean energy.
“In short, the program makes Massachusetts a very healthy market for solar,” said Nick d’Arbeloff, president of the Solar Energy Business Association of New England. “We’ll still be able to present a compelling case to an investor.”
The newest iteration of the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target program — generally called SMART — makes fundamental changes to the structure of the incentives to be more responsive to market conditions. Other provisions aim to make the benefits of solar available to more low-income residents, protect valuable open space from development, and encourage placement of panels on rooftops and in parking lots.
The state filed the new rules as emergency regulations, allowing them to go into effect immediately.
The move comes just in time, according to solar developers. The previous version of SMART hasn’t been effective in quite some time, they say. While draft regulations for this newest version of SMART were first released nearly a year ago, and a final revision was expected in fall 2024, months went by without new rules.
“The uncertainty we were facing was confusing inventors, was killing projects, and could have done even more damage,” d’Arbeloff said.
In the meantime, President Donald Trump took office and Republican legislators have been working on a budget bill that seems likely to accelerate the elimination of federal renewable energy tax credits. Massachusetts solar developers became increasingly worried they would find themselves in a “valley of death,” with neither state nor federal support, at least for a time, said Ben Underwood, co-CEO of Resonant Energy, a Boston-based solar company that specializes in projects serving environmental justice communities.
Developers, therefore, heaved a sigh of relief when the new state regulations were filed. The reimagined program will start accepting applications on October 15, which will give developers a chance to get projects in place and investors lined up, even with the threat of disruption at the federal level, Underwood said.
“Now we and other members of the industry can start to plan for the incentives,” he said. “It gives us a much easier transition in case federal incentives are taken away.”
Launched in 2018, SMART pays the owners of solar systems a set rate per kilowatt of energy generated by their panels. The base rate depends on project type, location, and size. Projects advancing goals the state supports — serving low-income communities, for example, or building on a closed landfill — receive a boost, known as an “adder,” to their base rate.
The program was initially designed to lower its rates as more solar installations were built. The thinking was that, as the solar industry became more established, the cost of developing projects would go down and developers would need less financial support to be viable.
For years, SMART helped drive solar growth in the state: From 2019 to 2021, annual solar installations more than doubled. Then the Covid-19 pandemic intervened, upending supply chains and sparking inflation. At the same time, SMART compensation rates had fallen, as intended. Suddenly, the incentive payments weren’t enough to cover growing costs, and the industry took a hit. In 2024, less than half as much solar capacity was installed than in 2021.
“You were finding that the incentive level for many projects was, in fact, zero,” d’Arbeloff said.
The new rules jettison the old system of declining rates, replacing it with one that resets the compensation and program size each year, allowing the program to adjust to future unexpected market changes. Annually, the state will conduct an economic analysis that considers progress toward emissions reduction goals, regional and national solar costs, current and historic program participation rates, and land-use and protection goals, and will use the results to set compensation for the coming year. Adders will still be part of the system, and will also be adjusted annually, as needed.
“We can understand the costs, we can understand the size of the program, and we can make adjustments with ratepayers in mind,” said Elizabeth Mahony, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. “That’s really important for ratepayers and the development community — we’re going to be so nimble.”
For 2025, the program will be open to up to 450 megawatts of capacity. The base compensation rates will be set after the state completes a new economic analysis in the next few months, Mahony said.
The revised regulations also aim to increase the amount of money flowing to solar projects serving low-income residents. For a development to receive an adder as a community shared solar project, it must allocate at least 40% of the bill credits it generates to low-income households and guarantee these customers a savings of at least 20%, compared with the basic retail price.
“It represents a substantial move toward having greater value for low-income community shared solar participants,” Underwood said. “It’s really good to see that.”
The new regulations also target ongoing tensions about how best to site solar projects while still protecting wildlife habitats and agricultural land.
“We hope the way this works is it pushes folks to do more on rooftops, to do more on canopies, and to do more on previously developed land,” said Michelle Manion, vice president of policy and advocacy for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. “When it comes down to the actual numbers, then we’ll see how well it actually works.”
Certain categories of land with particular environmental value have been declared ineligible for solar development going forward. Projects built on other open spaces will have to pay a mitigation fee that will be determined by a list of factors, including the land’s carbon storage and agricultural potential, the parcel’s ecological integrity, the cumulative impact of the proposed development and others in the area, and location of the planned project relative to grid infrastructure.
“It’s a good way to be a little more strategic about siting solar,” said Erin Smith, clean grid director for the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
These measures are combined with provisions that encourage more development on the built environment. The regulations expand the definition of a solar canopy that qualifies for an adder — which was limited to projects over parking lots, canals, and pedestrian walkways — to include any array raised high enough off the ground to allow the use of the area beneath for another function. The rules also create a new category of adder for panels mounted above other equipment atop buildings, allowing more efficient use of rooftop space.
Though the emergency regulations process put the new rules into effect immediately, the state must still hold three hearings within 90 days to gather public feedback and get final approval from utility regulators. Some tweaks to the program could be coming, but state officials are confident they’ve got the basics right.
“There are quite a few projects that have been waiting for this to come out,” Mahony said. “We believe this is one of the best ways we have to build energy generation in the next few years.”
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the week” column.
Wind and solar are on the rise worldwide — here are the 10 countries that rely on the clean-energy sources most for their electricity.
All of these countries used wind and solar to produce at least one-third of their electricity in 2024, according to a new report from the Energy Institute. For leading countries such as Denmark, Djibouti, and Lithuania, that figure was in the range of two-thirds or more.
Those numbers are much higher than the global average: Overall last year, wind and solar accounted for 15% of global power generation, up from 13% in 2023.
To be clear, China is still by far the largest producer of solar and wind energy in the world in terms of volume. The country generated 1,836 terawatt-hours of wind and solar last year. All of Europe, for comparison, generated 990 TWh over the same period. But despite that huge amount of renewable energy generation, China received a much lower share of its power from solar and wind in 2024 than the 10 countries on this list — just about 18%.
The list is mostly populated by smaller countries, but it does include some large economies like Germany and Spain. In Germany, wind and solar accounted for a combined 43% of power. In Spain, 42%. (Spain recently suffered a countrywide blackout for which its high share of renewables was blamed. The true culprit, according to a government report released last week, was poor grid planning.)
By the end of the decade, the International Energy Agency expects wind and solar together to account for nearly 30% of global electricity generation. So, while only a handful of countries boast high levels of renewable energy penetration today, many more will join their ranks in the coming years, as wind, and especially solar and batteries, get cheaper and harder to refuse.
A big-budget offshore wind project that would clean up a contaminated California port and turn it into America’s first hub for floating wind turbines is the latest target of an increasingly emboldened national anti-offshore wind movement.
Representatives of a D.C.-based conservative think tank, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and a local California community group asked the U.S. Department of Transportation early this month to cancel a $426 million grant issued last year to repurpose the Redwood Marine Terminal in Northern California’s Humboldt County for wind. If successful, they could stymie the state’s plan to generate up to 5 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 25 gigawatts by 2045.
Anti-wind activists told Canary Media they are looking to capitalize on the “timing” of a recent implosion of offshore wind plans in Maine, which — like California — sought to pioneer floating turbine technology in this country. Currently, all turbines operating or under construction in U.S. waters are fixed to the seafloor.
The move represents a westward spread of anti-wind activism from the East Coast, where longtime organized opposition has found sympathetic ears as it petitions the Trump administration to tank permitted projects.
For example, in February, groups lobbied for a halt to offshore projects already being built, an approach the Trump administration tested out in April by freezing New York’s Empire Wind installation, though construction was already underway. President Donald Trump reversed that decision after a month, but the move signaled that opposition groups have gained traction.
“They are clearly feeling emboldened by Donald Trump,” said J. Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies and sociology at Brown University, who studies networks of anti-wind activists. “They are taking these local victories on the East Coast and continuing to move along.”
Both CFACT and the California community group, Responsible Energy Adaptation for California’s Transition (REACT) Alliance, are part of the National Offshore Wind Opposition Alliance, a coalition formed last year to broaden the fight against offshore wind, which had previously played out mostly at the local level.
The Humboldt project was awarded the DOT grant in January 2024 and a developer has not yet been announced, but it’s been five years in the making. Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District has already used nearly $20 million in state and federal funds to design and permit much of the planned wharf. The federal grant includes additional funds for port expansion as well as environmental restoration, a solar array, trails, public kayaking access, and a fishing pier.
Earlier this month, CFACT and REACT Alliance sent a letter to DOT Secretary Sean Duffy challenging the project’s “public interest” grant requirement, citing the “lack of viability of the floating offshore wind ‘industry.’” The letter also points to Trump’s anti-wind directive, which halted federal permitting and leasing for wind projects but did not mention grants for supporting wind infrastructure, like ports.
“We decided that the timing and the political will was there for us to go ahead and write this letter and to ask for the grant to be terminated,” said Mandy Davis, REACT Alliance’s president.
Davis told Canary Media that two recent setbacks in Maine’s pursuit of floating offshore wind motivated the group to act. First, Maine’s application for the same DOT grant awarded to the Humboldt Bay Harbor project was rejected in October. Those funds would have helped finance a port for floating offshore wind on Sears Island, Maine. Secondly, this spring, the Department of Energy clawed back a grant to the University of Maine to build and test the state’s first floating turbines.
Davis leads both REACT Alliance and the National Offshore Wind Opposition Alliance. She insists that neither of those groups receive any monetary support from CFACT, though the D.C. think tank co-signed the letter. According to the research group DeSmog, CFACT has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from fossil-fuel groups over the years.
“CFACT has, for decades, been undermining the science of climate change and attacking efforts to address the issue. This is just their latest effort to destroy a climate solution,” said Roberts.
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