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Chaz Weatherford has a busy schedule. On a typical workday, the solar inspection technician for major U.S. rooftop solar company Freedom Forever drives to eight or nine homes across southern Arizona, checking to make sure their newly installed solar systems are safely configured and ready to turn on. Sometimes it’s hard to stay on schedule — especially when he has to wait around for hours for a city or county inspector to show up to review his work.
An employee of Lumina Solar uses his smartphone to conduct a remote video inspection of a rooftop solar installation in Baltimore County, Maryland. (Lumina Solar)
But at homes within the jurisdiction of Pima County, Arizona, Weatherford doesn’t have to wait very long. That’s because the county is one of a growing number doing remote virtual inspections, which cuts the time its inspectors need to approve home solar projects from hours to minutes.
Weatherford uses his smartphone camera to take photos and videos of everything on his inspection checklist: a home’s main electrical panel and the breakers within it, the disconnect switch, the electrical meter, and all the wires and conduits connecting them. Then, he sends those digital records to the county’s inspection office.
Soon after, “we get an email back saying if we’ve passed or not — and if not, there are instructions on how to fix it,” he said.
That’s good for Freedom Forever, for the homeowners who are installing solar, and for the county inspectors, he said.
Solar, battery, and home electrification advocates say the benefits of a virtual inspection make it a no-brainer policy. Any steps that can reduce the cost of rooftop solar are critical right now. Utility bills are rising nationwide, making home solar especially useful to households. But in the U.S., these systems are far more expensive than they are in most other countries. It doesn’t help that the Trump administration scrapped federal tax credits for rooftop solar last year.
Right now, just a few states have efficient permitting practices for rooftop solar and home battery projects, according to a recent report produced by advocacy nonprofits Environment America and Frontier Group.
While the report names streamlining installations via third-party and remote inspections as one of the top reforms, the approach is used by only a relative handful of the more than 40,000 county, city, and local permitting jurisdictions in the U.S.
Many of those jurisdictions allowing the remote reviews are in California, which was also the first state to pass an instant-solar-permitting mandate. Arizona, Florida, and Texas also have a significant number of jurisdictions that have adopted virtual inspections; New York state’s NY-Sun solar and storage subsidy program requires them as a follow-up to on-site local inspectors.
The number of jurisdictions using the technique is likely to grow. A half dozen states have advanced or are considering bills to reform solar and battery permitting this year, according to Permit Power, a nonprofit that advocates for permitting reform for residential clean energy. Several of those bills would impose mandates if passed, and some would offer state support for jurisdictions that adopt virtual inspection.
One such bill is already poised to become law. In Maryland, a bill to streamline solar and battery permitting was wrapped into a broader energy package that passed the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature this month and now awaits the signature of Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat.
“You’re seeing a real movement across both plug-in solar and more traditional solar and batteries to knock down the barriers and red tape that get in the way of American families buying and installing those systems,” said Nick Josefowitz, CEO of Permit Power.
The old adage is as true for solar permitting as it is for anything else: Time is money.
That’s why remote virtual inspections can add up to big savings, according to an exhaustive report from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a nonprofit clean-energy advocacy group. Using technology for virtual inspections can reduce costs by more than $30,000 per inspector annually, according to IREC, cutting expenses on vehicles and fuel as well as enabling inspectors to do roughly three times as many inspections per day.
Daniel Ice, a deputy director at Pima County’s development services department, certainly sees the savings on the ground. His office started doing virtual inspections for residential air-conditioning installations more than a decade ago, and has gradually expanded it to more tasks.
“We’re a large county — our inspectors were driving up to 150 miles per day,” he said. “This saved on our vehicle and fuel costs — and we could do more inspections.”
Like most building inspection departments, Pima County has more work than it has employees to do it, Ice said. Spending less time on everyday home solar inspections “freed up the planners to work on more complicated projects.”
Permit Power and other advocates want Pima County to become the rule — not the exception.
Statewide bills like Maryland’s are a good start to making that happen, said Erin Kelly, vice president of residential operations at Lumina Solar, an installer based in the state.
Maryland’s legislation will require counties to adopt online solar permitting by mid-2027, and it includes requirements that counties that can’t meet five-day turnarounds for these permit applications by mid-2028 “must offer a remote inspection option that provides inspection within five business days of a request.”
A few Maryland counties already offer virtual inspections, which have “saved a ton of time, a lot of headaches,” Kelly said. That’s particularly useful for follow-up inspections, which installers can respond to by fixing identified problems and sending in video evidence on the same day. Other counties, by contrast, can take from a day to more than a month to schedule on-site inspections and follow-ups, she said.
Not all Maryland counties are happy about adopting virtual inspections or online solar permitting, however. The Maryland Association of Counties warned state lawmakers in a March letter that “a highly prescriptive state mandate could undermine local flexibility, strain budgets, and compromise safety safeguards.”
Carla Blackwell, who led Pima County’s adoption of virtual inspections and instant solar permitting as director of its development services department before retiring last year, understands those concerns.
“We always hated when the state legislature got involved and passed some sort of mandate,” she said. “If you want to get people on board, you have to get them involved and part of the process — both so that they understand and support it and so they don’t sabotage it in some aspect.”
Pima County started using these technologies out of necessity, she added. The 2008 real-estate market crash forced her department to lay off about two-thirds of its staff, forcing it to find ways to do more with fewer employees.
It took some work. The county had to upgrade its permit management software to handle the new digital inputs, for example. That might not be a welcome prospect for smaller permitting agencies, she said. “The minute you mention IT to a government department, they’re like, ‘Uh-oh, I don’t want to deal with those guys.’”
But once the software is in place and employees are trained in using it, virtual inspections can improve the quality of work being done, she said. “I actually spend more time with you on these remote field inspections than if I had to drive out, spend five minutes, and then drive to the next one.”
Creating digital records of the projects can also help inspectors catch errors that brief on-site inspections can miss, she noted. That’s backed up by IREC’s report, which cited multiple building department officials affirming the benefits of being able to review photos and videos to do quality checks.
That’s true for more than solar and battery installations, said Colleen Corrigan, sustainability and resilience policy manager at the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). Her group and Permit Power are co-sponsoring a state bill that would give California homeowners the option of requesting remote inspections for water heaters, heat pumps, and rooftop solar installations. SPUR is also supporting another bill that would streamline permitting for heat pumps and plug-in solar systems.
“Permitting and inspection delays are these quiet but significant barriers to climate progress,” Corrigan said. The bills SPUR supports are aimed at “removing the friction at these key choke points in electrification,” she said.
But they’re also “rooted in best practices in jurisdictions already doing automated permitting or virtual inspections,” she added, as is happening in at least 19 places statewide, ranging from cities like Los Angeles and San Diego to rural areas such as Placer County in the Sierra Nevada.
Gabe Armstrong, acting chief building official at Placer County’s Community Development Resource Agency, estimated that the agency is eliminating about 3,900 driving miles per year by using remote video inspections. It also offers them on the same day that projects are completed, which is convenient for contractors who don’t want to have to come back the next day just to meet an inspector.
Armstrong’s agency also retains the right to show up in person to check the work, which it does from time to time as part of a quality-control audit, he said. To ensure contractors aren’t misrepresenting their work, “we only do live video inspections,” he said. “We need to know we are at the right jobsite, not looking at some random photo.” If contractors aren’t being honest, “we’ll turn them into the state contractor licensing board — and we’ll ban them from the RVI program.”
Some projects, like new home builds, require on-site visits, he said. And inspectors will still come out in person if the contractor or property owner requests it. But for approved projects like solar panel systems and heating, cooling, and air-conditioning installations, “we have these really large monitors, and we’ll pull up the plans on one side, and we can zoom in and read all the notes — and we can also zoom in on the work being inspected.”
Using video taken from solar installers on rooftops also avoids having to send inspectors up there to check their work, which eliminates safety hazards, Armstrong added. As for contractors, “usually once we get someone doing it, they become a repeat customer,” he said. “Being able to pick the exact inspection time — think about how much money you’re saving.”
Last year was a huge one for renewable energy around the globe — but nothing showed up quite like solar power.
This week, energy think tank Ember released its review of where the world’s electricity came from in 2025, and it’s full of wins for clean energy. Last year marked the first time global renewables generation exceeded coal, with solar, wind, hydropower, and biofuels delivering just under 34% of the world’s power to coal’s 33%.
That milestone couldn’t have happened without solar power, which last year overtook wind to become the world’s biggest renewable power source. Here are three more takeaways that spotlight solar’s growth — and why it’s on track to continue.
1. Lots of countries are relying more on solar power.
Megawatt for megawatt, China is the world’s undeniable solar leader. But many smaller countries get a higher share of their power from solar.
Last year, Chile got a full quarter of its power from solar, while Hungary relied on solar for 27% of its electricity. That’s a huge spike from 2020, when the clean energy source generated less than 10% of the power in each of those countries.
They’re not alone. At least 50 countries relied on solar for at least a tenth of their power last year, up from just 15 countries doing the same in 2020.
2. Solar’s midday peaks are reaching new heights.
It’s no surprise that solar power generation hits its peak around noon. That was clear across last May, when solar generated an average of 25% of the world’s electricity around midday.
That’s a big share, but some individual countries had even more impressive results. The Netherlands generated an average of 77% of its midday power from solar across May 2025, while Hungary got a whopping 91%, easily beating its previous monthlong record of 67%.
The next step for many of these countries? Installing more battery storage so they can hold on to that power when the sun goes down.
3. Fossil fuel–dependent countries have huge untapped solar potential.
Solar is proving itself as a clean solution to rising power demand, but many countries aren’t taking full advantage.
The U.S. saw the third-largest rise in its electricity demand of any country last year, but it met 88% of that new need with clean power. India, meanwhile, saw the second-highest demand growth (after China), yet met more than half of it with fossil fuels.
That doesn’t have to be the case. India gets a ton of sunlight that’s still going untapped, as do Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries that are also still significantly expanding their fossil fuel use.
A judge this week temporarily halted the Trump administration’s enforcement of policies that had effectively blocked solar and wind projects that are on federal land or otherwise need a federal permit, Canary Media’s Maria Gallucci reports. Among the struck-down rules is a directive that required wind- and solar-related decisions to get Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s personal sign-off, adding costly delays to many projects.
In their lawsuit, clean energy advocates argued that these roadblocks had led to roughly 57 GW of new “wind, solar, hybrid, and offshore wind capacity” being either canceled or put at risk of delay or termination, and jeopardized at least $905 million in investments.
Although the pause is only temporary as the lawsuit works its way through court, the judge in the case said the advocates are likely to succeed in proving the blockade violates federal law.
Global offshore wind soars as U.S. struggles continue
Offshore wind power is sailing forward in China, the United Kingdom, and beyond, according to a new report from the Global Wind Energy Council that Canary Media’s Maria Gallucci dug into this week. More than 9 GW of new offshore capacity came online in 2025, bringing the world’s total offshore wind capacity to about 92 GW.
But back in the U.S., the offshore wind blowback continues. The Trump administration recently made a deal to refund French developer TotalEnergies if it canceled its offshore wind leases, and now, French utility Engie says it’s in talks with the federal government to do the same. Turbine manufacturers are facing struggles of their own, with an American subsidiary of Germany’s EEW Group declaring bankruptcy in New Jersey. GE Renewables is meanwhile looking to get out of its turbine maintenance contract with Vineyard Wind, though a judge struck down its plan earlier this week.
When it comes to clean energy, China makes — and the world takes.
The country produces the vast majority of the globe’s solar panels, batteries, and wind turbine equipment, and most of its EVs. Plenty of that tech is used in China itself, but the country also exports a lot of it elsewhere.
In recent years, China has seen the most growth in its exports of EVs and batteries in particular. For both technologies, European nations have been the main destination.
In the EU, Chinese-made EVs accounted for 9% of sales in December 2025 — up from 6% the prior year. That acceleration happened even though the EU slapped duties on Chinese-made EVs in October 2024, in an attempt to protect its domestic automakers.
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Though China still makes more than 90% of the world’s solar panels, its exports have declined from their peak in early 2023 as two key markets — Europe and Brazil — have imported and installed solar at a slower pace. Asian countries imported more Chinese solar equipment than did any other region across most of last year.
China’s clean-energy manufacturing machine has taken on new relevance since late February, as U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have spurred a historic disruption of global oil and gas markets.
Asian countries are bearing the brunt of the current energy crisis. Some especially hard-hit nations are taking extreme conservation measures — encouraging people to use less air conditioning, work from home, and even ration fuel. But energy costs are also soaring in other places, like Europe, which relies heavily on imported fossil fuels. Americans, meanwhile, are paying higher prices at the gasoline pump, where a gallon has surpassed $4 on average.
It’s the latest reminder of the perils that come with depending on fossil fuel imports — and it’s prompting some countries to double down on renewable energy to insulate themselves from future price shocks. True, importing clean-energy tech is still importing, but it’s fundamentally different from relying on fossil fuels from abroad. With clean energy, you buy it once, roll it out, and for decades it does its job within your borders. That’s not so with fossil-fueled infrastructure.
Ultimately, even if other regions invest in building out their own domestic clean-energy supply chains, China is the clear beneficiary of the coming shift to cleantech. Its head start is just that big.
Canary Media’s “Electrified Life” column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power.
Balcony solar is poised to take the U.S. by storm.
The DIY systems, which you can hang on a balcony and plug into a normal 120-volt outlet, help lower energy bills and carbon emissions. Already huge in Germany, solar that’s as easy to install as an appliance would be a game changer for the four out of 10 U.S. households that can’t get rooftop systems for financial or logistical reasons.
In 2025, deep-red Utah became the first state to pass a bill making it easier to adopt plug-in solar systems. So far this year, four more states have all advanced similar measures — and nearly two dozen others are weighing bills of their own.
Considering a balcony power plant yourself? Check our tracker to see the status of plug-in solar legislation in your state, and keep reading for some FAQs on the tech.
Balcony solar systems are modest in size, ranging from just one to a few solar panels. Most states, including California and New York, are considering capping systems at 1,200 watts — a sixth of the average home-solar installation.
The panels connect to an inverter that converts their direct current into alternating current, the kind our homes use. A plug from the inverter fits into a typical 120-volt outlet (15 or 20 amps), pumping the power of the sun directly into a home’s existing wiring.
The systems can cover a small but meaningful fraction of a home’s electricity use: An 800-watt unit can power the equivalent of a fridge or a few small appliances when the sun’s shining.
One or two people can set up a system in less than an hour without the help of a professional. In states with balcony solar laws, you don’t need permission from your utility, unlike when installing a larger rooftop array. Nor do you need to pay the utility a fee.
Balcony solar costs range from several hundred dollars to more than $1,000, depending on the system size, and can save a household hundreds of dollars per year.
In Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the plug-in solar nonprofit Bright Saver offers a two-panel, 800-watt system for $1,499 and a four-panel, 1,600-watt system for $2,348. (Because of utility rules, Bright Saver currently provides these products only to residents who already have rooftop solar and want to expand.)
At $1.47 to $1.87 per watt before taxes, that’s a pretty good deal in the U.S. Nationally, the average rooftop system costs $2.58 per watt before local and state incentives.
The payback period depends on how much electricity your home uses and your utility rate. But according to Bright Saver, these systems can save California households nearly $500 per year and have a payback period of four to five years.
Once they’re paid off, every sunny hour can provide you with free power for the life of the solar panels, many of which are warranted to last 30-plus years.
Absolutely. Physically, the panels can go anywhere they’re safely secured and able to soak up a lot of sun, such as a deck, patio, porch, fence, or yard.
Unless, of course, your home is subject to limiting regulations. Your city or homeowners’ association may have rules about where you can put solar panels. If you’re a renter, you’ll want to double-check your lease to make sure you’re not prohibited from hanging them outside.
Balcony solar produces electricity and sends it directly into the home’s circuitry at a wall outlet. Rooftop solar, by contrast, pours power into a home’s electrical panel.
That distinction has prompted some safety concerns, even as a few companies start to sell these products.
If the solar panels provide too much power, and circuit breakers don’t trip, the wires in the wall could overheat, creating a fire risk, said Ken Boyce, vice president of engineering at safety science company UL Solutions. If a person were to touch the plug prongs either while the panels are illuminated and partially plugged into an outlet or in the fraction of a second after the plug is disconnected but still energized, the individual could get shocked or electrocuted.
But these hazards can be tamed with technical fixes. For example, a special plug could be designed with a built-in circuit breaker and no exposed conductive parts.
In their plug-in solar bills, states are legislating that manufacturers adhere to rigorous standards to protect consumers. Utah’s law, for example, requires that systems are certified safe for consumers by UL Solutions or another nationally recognized testing laboratory, and that they meet the standards of the National Electric Code.
The National Electric Code doesn’t specifically address plug-in solar, leaving the tech in a legal gray area on that requirement. And as of publication, no manufacturer has had a complete balcony-solar product certified as safe.
But that could soon change. After Utah’s law passed, UL created a new safety standard for plug-in solar, UL 3700, and launched a certification program in January. The company is now working with manufacturers to get their systems certified. Boyce anticipates the first certification in “weeks to months rather than years.”
So, if you’re itching to get plug-in solar but concerned about safety, sit tight: A vetted product should hit the market soon.
And, bigger picture, take solace in the evidence from across the Atlantic.
Germany has seen balcony solar grow from roughly 40,000 systems in 2017 to as many as 4 million in 2025. Sebastian Müller, chair of the German Balcony Solar Association, said last year that the country had yet to see any safety issues beyond a few cases of individuals attempting to hook up unsuitable hardware, like a car battery, to the devices.
Not without a battery. For the safety of utility lineworkers, a blackout will trigger the inverter to stop putting out AC power. But if you plug the solar panels into a battery instead of an inverter that feeds your home, then you can pull the stored electrons when you need them.
That peace of mind isn’t cheap, though. For example, while EcoFlow’s inverter retails for $299, a 1.92-kilowatt-hour EcoFlow inverter-battery combo costs $1,199.
Indeed they are. Bright Saver estimates more than 1,000 plug-in solar systems have been installed in California alone.
Bentham Paulos, senior research associate for the Clean Energy States Alliance, recently installed a system at his home in Berkeley, California, for just $0.66 per watt. (He has a rooftop array, and his utility’s rules allow him to add up to 1,000 watts without another interconnection agreement.) To prepare, Paulos, who also authored a plug-in solar policy report released in January, spent many hours studying amps, volts, and wiring configurations on YouTube to assure himself that he could safely put plug-in solar on his garage.
The market for balcony solar could rapidly transform in the U.S. over the next year, as states green-light the tech and manufacturers roll out compliant products.
“I think a lot of companies are waiting for the regulatory landscape to be clear,” Paulos said. Once a handful of states explicitly allow balcony solar, he anticipates that manufacturers will show “a lot of innovation to make this a really super easy and safe consumer product.”
Balcony solar is one of the hottest ideas in renewable energy right now. Boosters say the systems — DIY kits that can be plugged right into a standard outlet — save users money without any need for subsidies, government incentives, or utility permission.
As Americans continue to struggle with soaring power prices, about half the states in the U.S. are considering legislation to pave the way for residents to adopt plug-in solar and start generating some of their own electricity from their own backyard or porch.
“It’s about energy affordability,” said Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a nonprofit that promotes plug-in solar. “Every legislator wants their constituency to have less trouble meeting their energy demands.”
As these efforts work their way through the legislative process, we will be monitoring the action here, using information from Bright Saver and bill-tracking databases.
Latest action: Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed the state’s plug-in solar bill into law on April 6.
The Trump administration has often evoked the plight of whales in its efforts to undermine U.S. offshore wind development — despite there being no evidence that wind-farm activities are harming the giant mammals.
But those purported concerns didn’t stop federal officials last week from voting unanimously to override Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled whales in order to unleash oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico. Extensive fossil-fuel production there is already known to hurt cetaceans through vessel strikes, oil spills, and noises that lead to chronic stress.
The dissonance isn’t surprising.
In recent years, the well-being of whales has become a potent political weapon for President Donald Trump, Republican politicians, and right-wing groups to wield against America’s fledgling offshore wind industry. Yet those same factions haven’t fought with similar fervor, if at all, to protect whales from the real leading threats: marine-gear entanglements, boat collisions, and the effects of climate change.
Last week’s decision only highlights that whales were never really the point, environmentalists argue.
“I think it’s pretty clear they don’t care about marine species,” Michael Jasny, director of marine mammals for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the Trump administration.
On March 31, a committee of Trump-appointed officials voted to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf from protections under the Endangered Species Act. The God Squad, so named because of its power to decide whether a species lives or dies, has convened only three other times since the landmark law was enacted over 50 years ago to prevent plant and animal extinctions.
The decision may not actually change that much on the ground for oil and gas companies developing and exploring resources in the Gulf. Operators are still expected to comply with existing measures to avoid and minimize environmental risks. These measures were set by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is in charge of planning offshore drilling operations, and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which provides regulatory oversight.
“It’s not going to be like the wild, wild west under this order,” said Seth Barsky, a partner at the Bracewell law firm and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the Justice Department.
He said that a key reason for lifting the Endangered Species Act requirements was to shield oil and gas developers from having to potentially meet new environmental regulations that could force them to shut down. Environmental groups last year sued the National Marine Fisheries Services over its latest biological opinion — a document the agency was required to issue under the ESA to analyze how oil and gas activities could affect wildlife in the Gulf. The groups argued that the opinion failed to require stringent measures to protect endangered species.
The God Squad decision gives drillers certainty that the status quo will stick, Barsky said.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum chaired the seven-member committee, which also included the U.S. secretaries of defense, agriculture, and the Army, as well as the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Council of Economic Advisors.
The group claimed its decision was a “national security imperative.” Global energy markets have been in disarray since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas supplies flow.
Oil production in the Gulf “provides a vital buffer, insulating our economy and military from foreign instability and reducing the strategic leverage of our adversaries,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during the committee’s brief meeting. He said the lawsuits brought by environmental groups risk “halting or severely compromising oil and gas activities in the Gulf.”
America’s offshore oil production has soared in recent years, even with endangered species protections in place.
Just a day after the meeting, Burgum announced that the U.S. produced over 714 million barrels in 2025 — the highest annual output on record. Some 3,500 oil and gas structures are spread across the Gulf, pumping out “beaucoup buckets of Texas tea,” as the journalist Craig Pittman recently put it.
The Interior Department also said last week that it is combining two of its bureaus in order to increase efficiency and accelerate permitting for offshore energy development, while still “maintaining all existing regulatory protections and rigorous safety standards,” according to the April 3 announcement.
Expanding offshore oil and gas development will likely only exacerbate the threats facing endangered whales, manatees, and five species of sea turtles in the Gulf, according to the fisheries agency’s biological opinion. Collisions with oil industry vessels in particular could “jeopardize the continued existence” of the endangered Rice’s whale, of which only 51 are estimated to remain.
The number of Rice’s whales has declined considerably since the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and subsequent cleanup efforts. Its tiny population size makes it harder for the species to bounce back from oil-industry disruptions.
The God Squad’s main argument — that energy security trumps all else — is similar to the “downside emphasis” tactic that fossil fuel companies use to delay climate action, said Alaina Kinol, a researcher at Northeastern University in Boston who studies resistance to climate policy.
“It’s this idea that if we take climate action, it’s going to really hurt us, or it’s going to hurt marginalized people, or that [fossil fuels] are necessary for society,” she said.
She noted that even as the Trump administration pushes to boost fossil fuel production, it is undermining efforts to develop other domestic sources of energy like renewables. Since 2025, the GOP-led Congress has worked to repeal or scale back much of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provided hundreds of billions of dollars in federal incentives for wind and solar, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, and other clean energy programs.
“That implies that this is really about supporting the oil and gas industry’s ability to extract fossil fuels from the Gulf,” Kinol said.
In the last year, the Interior Department has frozen almost all offshore wind development in the country, and Trump himself has regularly cited the health of whales as a key motivation for this. “The windmills are driving the whales crazy,” Trump said in January 2025, weeks before signing an executive order pausing federal permitting and new leasing for offshore wind farms.
More recent actions to stymie existing projects have used broad and ill-defined concerns about national security as the pretext.
The department has even tried — so far unsuccessfully — to halt construction of five in-progress offshore wind projects totaling nearly 6 gigawatts of capacity, even though those projects represent a crucial new energy source for densely populated and land-constrained East Coast states. Earlier this year, during a brutal cold snap, power plants fueled by fossil gas, oil, and coal were nearly pushed to the brink, a strain that existing offshore wind turbines helped alleviate in some places.
The double standard is a familiar move for the Trump administration, which has previously used the specter of bald eagle deaths to crack down on wind turbines while also easing the protections for the birds that could interfere with oil and gas production. The federal government has also quietly gutted key research programs meant to protect North Atlantic right whales and other marine mammals living in an increasingly industrialized ocean.
The God Squad decision is already facing legal challenges, and experts say it’s unclear whether this unprecedented maneuver will stand up in court. The Center for Biological Diversity, which initially sued to stop the meeting from happening, said it would amend its lawsuit to challenge last week’s outcome. The Natural Resources Defense Council also plans to take legal action, Jasny said.
The move to exempt Gulf oil and gas development from Endangered Species Act protections is likely a “test case” to see what the Trump administration can get away with, he added. The government is also looking to open up oil and gas operations off the coast of Alaska to flex America’s “energy dominance” and off California’s coast to protect Americans’ “energy security.”
“If the administration can allow the killing of [endangered] sea turtles and whales in the Gulf,” Jasny said, “then there’s no end to what this really dangerous development can lead to.”
As a key deadline for federal solar tax credits ticks closer, a Massachusetts program is helping the state’s nonprofits get solar projects underway before the incentive disappears.
The Solar Upgrading Nonprofits, or SUN, program provides nonprofits with financial and technical assistance to evaluate options for solar installations and seek out additional funding if they choose to go forward. The first round, in 2025, worked with 23 organizations. Five have decided to move forward with installations that total 1.5 megawatts of installed capacity — double the goal for that phase of the program.
The stakes are even higher for SUN’s second round, which kicked off at the end of March. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed last summer, put an expiration date on tax credits that can shave 30% to 50% off the cost of commercial-scale solar projects: They must start construction by July 4, 2026, or be placed in service by the end of 2027 to qualify — a tight timeline for most organizations.
“There is still time, but it is dwindling very quickly,” said Rachel Gentile, marketing and communications manager for Resonant Energy, the Boston-based solar company spearheading the initiative with funding from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a quasi-public economic development agency.
Adding to the urgency is the fact that nonprofits have had relatively little time to take advantage of the tax credit. While for-profit businesses have been able to claim the incentive for some 20 years, nonprofits became eligible only with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. So, the elimination of the credit means it is disappearing before many organizations have even had a chance to dig into the possibilities.
“Nonprofits that have other missions that they’re dedicated to, it’s not necessarily on their list of priorities,” said Sanne Wright, community partnerships manager for Resonant Energy. “They’re already usually pretty strapped for cash and tight on capacity.”
The SUN program tries to overcome this barrier by making it easier for nonprofits to evaluate their options. The idea is modeled on another Resonant program, Solar Technical Assistance Retrofit, or STAR, which provides similar support to affordable housing providers looking to add solar to their buildings. Since its launch in 2021, STAR has installed 4.8 MW of solar capacity, with another 13.5 MW in the pipeline. When nonprofits became eligible for the federal tax credits, Resonant started thinking about how to adapt STAR for a new constituency.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which also funds STAR alongside the Jampart Charitable Trust, awarded the SUN program $150,000 for its first round and another $150,000 for the latest cycle. Resonant works with two partner agencies — Providers’ Council and the Essex County Community Foundation — to connect with nonprofits that might benefit from the assistance.
“Power is very expensive here,” said Kate Machet, vice president of systems initiatives and government relations for the Essex County Community Foundation. “This program has really allowed us to bring to our nonprofits on the ground the ability to explore solar.”
Interested organizations do a short intake call to discuss their general goals for a solar project. Then they provide information about their electricity bills and roof age and condition, and Resonant completes an analysis of their options. Whether or not the nonprofit decides to move forward, it receives a stipend of between $2,500 and $7,500 as compensation for the staff time that went into the process. Those that opt to go ahead with an installation receive help identifying further funding opportunities and writing grant applications.
Grow Associates, a nonprofit that serves adults with developmental disabilities, applied to the SUN program in hopes of getting solar on the roof of its facility south of Boston. The grant-writing support helped the organization secure a $500,000 award from a state program that funds solar projects for nonprofits working with low-income populations. The money will cover almost the entire cost of the planned 162-kilowatt array.
“Without their help, we would not have been able to get the grant,” said Sarah Palin, Grow’s executive director. “We’re looking at saving about $72,000 a year in electricity costs that we can put back into our programs.”
Resonant is accepting applications for this round of SUN until at least July, but it will continue adding participants after that deadline as long as the funding holds out.
Though Resonant is trying to help as many nonprofits as possible take advantage of the expiring tax credit, organizations that aren’t able to make the deadline could still benefit from participating in SUN and installing solar, Wright said. Finding the money to cover the initial costs will still be a challenge, but the average 300-kilowatt array could still save an organization about $1.3 million over the expected 25-year life of the system, down from $1.6 million with the tax credit, according to Resonant’s calculations.
“Organizations are going to have to get a little more creative about how they fund the project up front,” Wright said.
After taking a beating for the first year of the Trump administration, the beleaguered wind energy industry may finally see a glimmer of hope.
President Donald Trump and Interior Department chief Doug Burgum have spent months in an all-out assault against the technology, and in particular against offshore wind projects in federal waters. They have frozen all new leases, repealed clean energy tax credits, and even paid off an oil company to not build a planned wind project. The most dramatic move came in December, when Burgum paused work on five under-construction wind farms on “national security” grounds.
The developers of these five projects — two off the Massachusetts coastline, two south of Long Island, and one off the coast of Virginia — sued over the stop-work orders, and a series of federal judges soon issued injunctions against the Interior Department’s interventions.
Burgum had vowed to fight back, but last week, the department quietly let the final deadline for appealing the courts’ decisions lapse. The move means construction of the nation’s first five major wind farms along the eastern seaboard can continue absent a change in the case. When complete, the wind farms will generate enough electricity to power well over 2 million homes.
The lack of appeals likely represents a recognition that the government couldn’t stop the five projects from moving forward, said Tony Irish, who served as an Interior Department lawyer for decades before leaving in 2025.
“If the actual reason behind the stop-work orders was legitimately founded in national security, I would be very surprised by the lack of appeal,” he said. “So I think the lack of appeal is telling in that regard.”
Developers of the five major wind projects haven’t wasted time, with several of the projects already producing power. Revolution Wind, a project from Danish company Ørsted, delivered its first electricity to the New England grid in mid-March. Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a project from the Virginia utility Dominion, is about 70 percent complete and also delivered its first electricity last month. The farthest-along project, Vineyard Wind, produced a massive amount of electricity earlier this year during Winter Storm Fern when other power resources were offline.
The lack of appeals could be good news for future wind projects as well. A bipartisan group of senators has been debating a long-delayed “permitting reform” bill for months. The bill would speed up environmental review for critical energy projects, make it easier to build interstate transmission lines, and protect clean energy permits from federal interventions like those of the Trump administration. (It would also likely afford the same protections to oil and gas projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Joe Biden scrapped after taking office in 2021.)
Those bipartisan talks broke down after Burgum’s stop-work order. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island who is leading the talks, told congressional Republicans and the Trump administration that they would only resume if the Interior Department declined to appeal the court injunctions for the offshore wind projects. Senate Democrats are also hoping to see Burgum advance solar projects on federal lands.
A potential thaw on offshore wind might benefit the president as he tries to manage the fallout from the Iran war, which has sent gasoline prices soaring and contributed to fears of an energy shortage around the world. The White House’s “energy dominance council” has begun participating in the congressional permitting talks.
“There’s a confluence of market realities that make this a particularly hopeful year for us,” said Chris Phalen, vice president of domestic policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, in an interview with Bloomberg Government. Proponents of permitting legislation stressed that the next few months before the midterm election season are pivotal for achieving a deal.
A broader set of reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act, the nation’s bedrock environmental permitting law, would be controversial, but research shows that it might accelerate the deployment of onshore wind energy: A recent survey of around 50 renewable developers found that around 80% of them had selected a project site so as to avoid the federal environmental permitting process.
Other developers reported that reviews for historical artifacts and endangered species can add months or years to project timelines, and that the reviews may have held up at least 11 gigawatts of energy, or enough to power almost 5 million homes. A reform effort, likely modeled on the House-passed “SPEED Act,” would aim to shorten review timelines and limit litigation. (The environmental review for the five in-progress offshore wind projects took multiple years, even under the wind-friendly Biden administration.)
“Bipartisan permitting reform is the next critical step,” said Liz Burdock, the CEO of the Oceantic Network, a trade group that advocates for offshore wind. She added that ease of permitting could enable millions more homes’ worth of new wind development, but warned that “without a predictable path to build, manufacturers, shipyards, and skilled workers are forced to sit idle, creating gaps that raise costs and delay benefits for millions of ratepayers.”
RICHLAND COUNTY, Ohio — In a mostly rural stretch of Ohio nestled between Cleveland and Columbus, residents now have a rare opportunity: They get to vote directly on the future of renewable energy in their area.
Last July, Richland County banned large-scale wind and solar projects in 11 of its 18 townships. The decision not only caught many locals by surprise; it also struck them as bad for economic development and as encroaching on individual property rights.
Almost immediately after the county’s three commissioners made their decision, dozens of residents formed a group, called the Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development, to fight what they saw as an unjust restriction on renewable energy.
Their initial goal was clear but daunting: Collect thousands of in-person signatures within 30 days in order to put the clean energy ban on the ballot during the 2026 primary election. They succeeded.
Before early voting opened last week, the group held several town halls and spent months educating and canvassing voters. Now, their efforts face the final test. By May 5 at 7:30 p.m., every voter in Richland County will be able to weigh in on the question: Should the county keep its ban on most solar and wind farms — or scrap it and give clean energy a chance to be part of the area’s energy mix?
A majority of “yes” votes on the referendum will mean the ban remains. A majority of “no” votes will overturn it. The referendum comes as local restrictions on solar and wind energy have proliferated nationwide, rising by 16% from June 2024 to June 2025. More than 450 counties and municipalities across 44 states now severely limit whether renewables can be built, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
In recent years, these rules have been a stumbling block for renewable energy projects, which are needed both to decarbonize the energy system and to meet the nation’s soaring electricity demand. New solar and wind are also among the cheapest forms of energy — a crucial distinction as utility bills rise nationwide.
Restrictions on renewable energy are especially common in rural areas, where the vast majority of the nation’s utility-scale solar and wind projects are located.
Ohio, in particular, is a hot spot for efforts to stymie renewable energy. A 2021 state law, Senate Bill 52, gave counties the right to ban new large solar farms and wind farms of 5 megawatts and up. Roughly three dozen counties now have such restrictions in one or more of their townships.
The Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development and its supporters would like to see their county removed from that list.
The group reflects the composition of Richland County, with a range of ages, income levels, and professions; many members hadn’t known each other or worked together before last summer. And while some are concerned about climate change and air pollution, the group’s main arguments — evidenced by its name — echo familiar American issues: property rights and job creation.
“I just don’t think it’s right for the county commissioners to tell other property owners that they can’t do what they want with their land,” said Emily Adams, the group’s treasurer. “I have what I want on my roof. And I think farmers and landowners should be able to do what they want with their property, too.”
The effort to overturn Richland County’s ban could empower other communities to push back on similar restrictions, said Shayna Fritz, executive director of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, which favors an all-of-the-above energy policy.
“If you gather enough people and you really voice your concerns to them, you have a chance to walk it back,” Fritz said. “This does not have to be permanent.”
Coalition member Brian McPeek, who is the group’s deputy treasurer and also the business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 688, hopes that’s the case. Union workers stand to get jobs from both renewable energy projects and from other businesses that may move nearby to take advantage of their clean energy.
“I think it’s very important for the nation to see what we’re doing here,” said McPeek, who was among the dozens of local citizens who attended and spoke out at the Richland County Board of Commissioners’ meeting last July, when it voted in favor of the restrictions. “I feel like it kind of flipped the blueprint for what others can do if their commissioners do the same thing. We needn’t close off the county for development.”
Richland County’s ban originated in Sharon Township, an area of approximately 9,000 people in the northwestern part of the county.
In January 2025, the township’s zoning board members requested that the commissioners impose a ban there. The following month, the commissioners asked all 18 townships in Richland County if they also wanted to prohibit renewables. (The county’s authority under SB 52 doesn’t extend to its nearly half dozen villages and cities.)
More specifically, the commissioners sent a fill-in-the-blanks resolution to ban solar and wind development to the township trustees. Trustees simply had to add names and dates and put marks on a few lines to sign on to the restriction.
Eleven townships’ trustees ultimately sent back filled-out resolutions asking the board of county commissioners to institute a blanket prohibition in their townships.
So, “that’s exactly what we did,” Commissioner Darrell Banks said.
The three county commissioners did not consult with the general public during this time, according to opponents of the ban. Few people knew their township trustees had even considered the issue until last summer, when it appeared on the agenda of the July 17 commissioners’ meeting.
Dozens opposing the ban showed up to that meeting, held on a weekday morning, to speak out. Still, the commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the ban for those 11 townships. Rose Feagin, a council member for the city of Ontario who opposes the ban, expressed disappointment with the way the commissioners went about the process.
“Other avenues would have been a better way to get input from people, and from across the board, not just a couple of people in a bubble or in a boardroom somewhere making decisions for other people’s lives,” Feagin said.
Under SB 52, county-level bans on renewable energy can be challenged via referendum — so long as enough local residents support a ballot measure. But the law gives groups only 30 days to get enough signatures on petitions.
By the Aug. 18, 2025, deadline, the coalition had managed to collect thousands of signatures, and on Sept. 3 the Richland County Board of Elections ruled that they had cleared the threshold required to put it on the ballot.
It’s only the second time a county-level restriction on renewable energy has been challenged via referendum under SB 52.
In 2022, Crawford County commissioners blocked Apex Clean Energy from developing the 300-MW project Honey Creek Wind. A field manager for the company then helped lead the campaign to put it before voters, but ultimately that referendum failed.
At this time, no company is looking to develop a large solar or wind project in Richland County, noted Nolan Rutschilling, managing director of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council.
So, the Richland County ballot measure isn’t spearheaded by a company looking to profit from a particular project. Rather, it’s the work of citizens who want to preserve possibilities for the future — and restore the right to consider opportunities on a case-by-case basis.
In the lead-up to the election, the Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development has been using a slogan meant to win over their neighbors: “No Ban on Property Rights.”
Dan Fletcher, a Madison Township trustee who isn’t actively involved in the referendum campaign, said he knows how he plans to vote: “Taking the rights away from the property owner? That’s wrong in my opinion.”
Richland County is a farming powerhouse. More than 120,000 acres of cropland stretch across nearly 500 square miles. Farmers here mostly grow soybeans and corn, and to a lesser degree, forage, wheat, and other crops. The county also ranks among the top fifth of the nation’s leading producers of poultry, livestock, and other animal products.
The region’s agricultural character is the main focus of the campaign to keep the ban in place, run by a group named Richland Farmland Preservation.
The group’s website calls for farmland preservation and “commonsense limits” on solar and wind. It also includes a badge of endorsement from the Richland County Republican Party, which might go a long way in a county that went heavily for Trump in the last presidential election.
Banks, the county commissioner, is on the advisory committee for Richland Farmland Preservation. Other members include Richland County Prosecutor Jodie Schumacher and a trustee from each of the townships of Sharon, Blooming Grove, and Jefferson.
The group may have links to The Empowerment Alliance, a nationwide pro–natural gas organization that has been an impetus behind bills and resolutions labeling the fossil fuel as “green energy.”
A filing with the Richland County Board of Elections identifies the treasurer for Richland Farmland Preservation as Dustin McIntyre, with an address for a building with several offices in Bellville. But VoterRecords.com does not note any Dustin McIntyre in Richland County, nor does Whitepages.com show him living there.
Federal Elections Committee data does list a Dustin McIntyre with an address in Virginia as treasurer for multiple super PACs, including the Affordable Energy Fund PAC. That group was set up by The Empowerment Alliance in 2021.
The alliance began as a project of former Ariel Corp. chair Karen Buchwald Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin, who was also an executive there. Headquartered in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Ariel makes compressors for the oil and gas industry.
The Richland Farmland Preservation website also features anti–renewable energy talking points espoused by The Empowerment Alliance and other groups, including a variation of a graphic used by The Empowerment Alliance that implies gas-fired power plants should be favored over solar because of their smaller land footprint. (The illustration ignores the large swaths of land needed for drilling and pipelines, as well as pollution.)
Neither McIntyre nor Richland Farmland Preservation responded to Canary Media’s emails or calls.
The No Ban on Property Rights campaign held a fundraiser in February, and its volunteers have been distributing lawn signs, door hangers, and brochures. Volunteers with the nonprofit Ohio Citizen Action have also been helping with efforts to raise awareness and get out the vote.
As to whether the Richland Farmland Preservation group was mobilizing in a similar way, Banks told Canary Media he didn’t expect it to hold a general fundraiser. Instead, he noted that they planned to “call a few people.” Without saying who, he said, “There’s some people who will put some money towards this.”
Nonetheless, the push to preserve the renewable energy ban is tapping into real anxieties about ceding land to non-farming uses.
“We’re seeing more and more farmlands being used up for developments, and we want to keep them as farmlands,” said John Jaholnycky, who previously worked for natural gas and electric companies and is now a trustee for Mifflin Township, which opted for the ban.
In Jaholnycky’s view, solar should go on buildings and over parking lots. “I think it’s kind of shortsighted that we want to use up all of this farmland to put these solar panels up.”
Richland County Commissioner Cliff Mears pointed out that the city of Mansfield plans to add a solar farm at the site of a former landfill. But he added, “We feel that farmland overall should remain farmland.”
Still, blocking renewables won’t necessarily preserve farmland. In fact, urban and suburban development has been the major threat over the past several decades.
From 2002 through 2022, Ohio lost over 930,000 acres of farmland. Researchers at The Ohio State University reported last year that most of that loss occurred around metropolitan areas, where urban and suburban sprawl was extending into formerly rural areas. The number of acres for certified and planned utility-scale solar projects, meanwhile, is about one-tenth that amount.
Data centers are also a growing concern, with roughly 200 already in the state, and plans for another 100 or so.
For farmers, leasing their land for renewable energy can supplement income and actually let them keep the land in their families.
“The alternative is that [landowners] will sell it for development or data centers or something,” said Annette McCormick, a county resident and opponent of the prohibition.
Nor are renewables necessarily incompatible with farmland preservation.
Agrivoltaics uses land under and around solar panels for grazing sheep or growing forage or other crops. “There’s a lot of opportunities for farming” amid clean energy installations, McCormick said. “Maybe just not think about corn and soybeans all the time” as the only farming options.
Permit restrictions also generally require renewable energy companies to restore agricultural land when projects finish using it.
Both Banks and Mears criticized SB 52’s provision that lets all voters in the county — not just those in the relevant townships — sign a referendum petition and then vote on the issue. “It has nothing to do with anybody in the cities or villages,” Mears said. In his view, voters “should have some skin in the game.”
That arrangement was once on the table. An earlier version of SB 52 would have given each township the authority to ban solar and wind and then left any decisions on referendums solely up to its own voters. Ultimately, however, the law put the decision to enact prohibitions — and the rights of voters to seek their reversal — at the county level.
“Every voter in Richland County should have a voice on this important issue because it’s a countywide policy,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, who grew up in Richland County. Although the commissioners chose to defer to trustees in individual townships, “it is the role of county commissioners to represent every voter and to hear from every voter.”
Former Richland County Commissioner Gary Utt agreed: “It’s a county issue. Let the people decide.”
Energy costs are also a big issue this year, not just in Richland County but across the state. Utility bills are rising for all customers as electricity demand surges in Ohio, especially with the proliferation of data centers and growth in electrification. Solar power can come onto the grid faster than other sources. Adding more generation quickly could ease the supply crunch, and clean energy could help protect residents from the volatility of fossil fuel prices.
“That affects all of us — not just countywide, but statewide also,” said Christina O’Millian, a volunteer who worked on last year’s campaign to get the issue on the ballot.
Because SB 52’s hurdles apply only to solar and wind farms, it’s “picking winners and losers in what should be a free market,” said Fritz of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum.
For McPeek, the electrical union business manager, blocking renewables also means fewer jobs for himself and other IBEW members throughout the county.
“Historically, communities that sort of close themselves off often see investment and innovation going elsewhere,” he said.
Even if residents defeat the ban, it doesn’t mean that any large solar or wind projects will be built in Richland County.
“It just restores the right of a project to be considered,” McPeek said. “There are a lot of hurdles that they have to jump through.”
In unincorporated areas without any ban, SB 52 still lets county commissioners review almost all new large-scale solar and wind farms of 5 MW or more before developers can even file a permit application with the Ohio Power Siting Board.
The law gives commissioners 90 days in which they can prohibit a project, change its footprint, or do nothing. No action means a company can then file its application with the siting board, provided the developer also complied with additional notice and public meeting requirements.
If a company does get to file an application for a solar or wind farm with the siting board, SB 52 then calls for two ad hoc representatives of counties and townships where the development would be located. Those individuals take part in the case as voting members. Any project also must satisfy a long list of other requirements before the siting board grants its approval to move ahead.
Even for projects that have otherwise met all legal criteria, the siting board sometimes simply defers to local government opposition to conclude they are not in the “public interest” — a stance that is currently under review by the Ohio Supreme Court.
Ultimately, it may take a repeal of SB 52 and some other legal changes to put all types of energy generation on an equal footing when it comes to siting and permitting.
But for now, advocates for a “no” vote on Richland County’s ballot issue are focused on what they can most immediately control: defeating a ban that makes solar and wind a nonstarter from the get-go.
“I want to make my children proud,” said Morgan Carroll, a Shelby resident who urges people to vote no. “I want to say that we tried to help them with their energy costs in the future, help the future of clean energy in the county.”
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The wind turbines arrived in Gloucester at the same time I did. My husband and I moved into a cheap third-floor apartment in the small coastal city in northern Massachusetts in November 2012, just as cranes were assembling the imposing white towers right next to the highway that ushered us into town.
I loved them immediately. Like me, they were newcomers in an old town, looking to the future. Gloucester celebrated its 400th birthday a few years ago, and many families, including my husband’s, have lived here for well over a century. Our daughter, born in 2016, is at least a fifth-generation Gloucesterite. As a toddler playing in our yard, she would glimpse the blades turning in the distance and announce excitedly, “The fans are spinning!”
There were originally three turbines, standing sentinel over the town at the ocean’s edge. Two of these provided electricity to the city through a 25-year power purchase agreement, offsetting 50% to 70% of Gloucester’s municipal energy use. The city also received 20% of the money the spinning blades generated each year, a number that ranged from around $100,000 in the first year of operation to as much as $478,000 in later years.
The first turbine to go up was also the first to come down, removed in 2023 after a series of mechanical failures and a blade unexpectedly falling off. The two that remained continued generating power for years, though supply chain problems delayed needed maintenance and caused unexpected downtime, the owners said. In recent months, residents noticed the turbines appeared to be dripping oil. When the blades stopped turning this fall, people started asking questions about their future.
In January, our local paper broke the news that the turbines’ owner had decided to decommission them. The explanation: The company, a major semiconductor engineering firm, wants to expand its footprint here and needs the land. In compensation for the early termination, Gloucester will receive a payment of $587,000.
Some staunch opponents of wind power have taken the announcement as vindication. Community Facebook groups immediately lit up with I-told-you-sos, declaring the turbines’ 13 years of operation a clear failure. Some even used the early end of Gloucester’s three land-based turbines as proof that large-scale offshore wind could never be successful.
“They are painting the reason why they are being taken down as a failure of wind power,” said City Councilor Jason Grow, a vocal supporter of the turbines.
A second, somewhat quieter group, though, is lamenting their imminent loss.
“I have a feeling of not despair, certainly, but I feel stalled,” said Janet Ruth Young, a local writer and musician. “I feel that there’s a stagnancy where there used to be hope and movement and change.”
When new solar farms or wind turbines are proposed, news stories usually follow detailing opponents’ objections, which are largely rooted in a connection to place and respect for the character of a community. The opponents chose to live in this place — the small mountain town, the historic waterfront city — for the trees and the air and the character, not the lines of turbines on a hilltop or the sun glinting off expanses of solar panels. These positions are, at their heart, emotional and, it seems to me, sincerely felt. I am not here to judge motivations or to parse how much weight such arguments should be given.
However, stories about the debate depict support for clean energy as all about the money to be saved and the greenhouse gas emissions to be lowered. The proponents of solar panels and wind turbines are rendered as a collection of financial and environmental abstractions rather than real people.
In Gloucester, it is clear that framing doesn’t fully capture the reality. Though our community is deeply — sometimes stubbornly — dedicated to history and tradition, the turbines worked themselves into the fabric of the city. They were symbols of progress, an indelible part of our skyline, friendly ambassadors welcoming visitors and residents driving into town.
Linda Brayton was involved in the turbine project from the very beginning, when she volunteered in 2005, she thinks, to serve on a task force investigating the possibility of bringing wind energy to the city. Renewable power was still on the margins of the energy conversation then — Massachusetts had less than a gigawatt of installed capacity, a number that more than quintupled from 2013 to 2024.
For years, Brayton sat in meetings and listened to opponents hurl insults and misinformation. She stuck with it through the evaluation of several potential sites, timelines, and ownership structures.
In October 2012, when the first components finally arrived by boat in Gloucester Harbor, she sat by the water with her niece and watched as a crane lifted the long white tower from a ship onto a flatbed truck, to be driven through the winding downtown streets to its destination in an industrial park.
“It was really the most amazing day,” Brayton said. “I broke into tears. It was so beautiful, and it had been such a long time coming.”
As the turbines were going up, the city held an event during which more than 2,000 residents inked their names on a blade, quite literally signing on to the progressive vision the project represented for many residents. At the event, then-Mayor Carolyn Kirk (who now heads up the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a public agency supporting innovation) read the poem “Sea-Fever” by John Masefield, placing the turbines squarely within the fishing town’s legacy of depending on the wind: “And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying.”
The following year, Kirk remembers, she had a chance to climb to the top of one of the turbines, gripping the ladder rungs tightly as it shook and swayed. The experience of standing, exhausted, at the top, some 400 feet in the air, was “incredible,” she said.
The turbines punctuating the horizon quickly became part of the city. They even earned nicknames. Young wrote and performed a song for the city council praising the “Three Sisters.” Brayton recalls people referring to them as the “Three Magi.” In a letter in the Gloucester Daily Times, one supporter likened them to kinetic sculptures and shared the names he gave them: Remus, Romulus, and Big Earl.
One local resident said on Facebook that when she saw the turbines on her first job interview in Gloucester, she knew the community would be a great place to live. A neighbor told me that spotting them — they are highly visible from many spots in the city — often helped relieve some of his stress as a renewable energy supporter enduring the Trump administration’s relentless hostility. They were a sign of something going right.
As the two remaining turbines get ready to come down, though, must we feel that something has gone wrong? It is, perhaps, a hard conclusion to avoid when a once-promising project comes to an end 12 years early. If the turbines had been more profitable or productive or required less maintenance, maybe the owners would have chosen to keep them and expand elsewhere. And the decommissioning plan has fueled the fire of those who are anti-wind, onshore or off.
The world is a different place now than back when Gloucester first started discussing the possibility of turbines, and coal and oil were still significant contributors to energy production in New England. Vitriol against offshore wind may be at an all-time high, yet projects off Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island are churning out power, with more expected in coming years. While the Trump administration has done its best to pull back funding for solar, the grid operator ISO New England projects that by 2040 the region will add another 28 GW of solar capacity to the roughly 6.5 GW it had in 2024.
What those next 14 years will bring for Gloucester is an open question. The removal of the wind turbines, however, can not reverse the trends that have gained momentum throughout the region. Nor can it undo the excitement and joy the spinning blades brought to many residents. It can’t stop us from looking forward, and it can’t stop us from hoping.
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