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After years of false starts and amid an acute regional energy crunch, large-scale onshore wind power could finally take off in Maine in 2026. Utility regulators in five New England states are considering developers’ proposals to build up to 1.2 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity in Maine’s far north, following a deadline for bids earlier this month.
The coordination between Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont — all of which have ambitious clean energy goals — means this procurement is more likely to succeed than those that have fizzled out in years past, said Francis Pullaro, president of clean-energy industry association RENEW Northeast.
“The states have come together, and that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment on their part,” he said. “We’re in a much better position now that we have the states going into the process having conferred.”
Maine’s Public Utilities Commission confirmed that at least one bid was submitted, but declined to share any further details at this time.
New England leaders have for nearly two decades discussed harnessing northern Maine’s robust winds to boost the region’s supply of renewable energy, but the idea has gained more urgency in recent years. Financial challenges and hostility from the Trump administration have dampened the prospects for the offshore wind developments that much of the region was counting on to meet their clean energy goals. At the same time, soaring utility bills and volatile oil and gas prices driven by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have strengthened the case for turning to power generation with no fuel costs.
“It’s becoming more apparent that there is a need for solutions to confront the cost of energy,” said Eliza Donoghue, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association. “Certainly, this is not a silver bullet, but it is a way we can have more renewables injected into the system.”
Maine’s attempts to lean in to wind power began in 2008, with the adoption of a law that set a target of having 3 GW of wind power — some of it offshore — by 2020. Reality fell short of that goal: As of October 2025, the state had about 1.2 GW of land-based wind capacity and no offshore wind, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Clean energy boosters have long considered Aroostook County on the Canadian border a promising location for onshore wind development. However, the county is part of a small, local electrical network that is not connected to the New England grid. Any wind projects in the area would require new transmission lines to carry the power produced to the rest of the region.
Attempts to develop projects in remote Aroostook County floundered in 2016 and again in 2023. In both cases, the complications and cost of building transmission infrastructure were major obstacles.
Wind supporters are hoping this time will be different as the multistate collaboration supports much-needed power lines and streamlines bid assessment. All five states have set aggressive emissions-reduction targets: Maine is aiming for 100% clean energy by 2040, for example, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island both want to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
In recent years, they’ve worked together to achieve these goals across the region.
Last March, at the recommendation of the New England States Committee on Electricity, an organization representing the area’s governors on energy matters, grid operator ISO New England issued a request for proposals for transmission infrastructure connecting central Maine to the rest of the grid, shortening the distance power lines would have to travel from wind turbines in Aroostook County. ISO New England received six proposals, which it narrowed down to two after preliminary analysis. The organization will continue its assessments and may announce a preferred proposal in September, after which it will be up to the states to decide whether to proceed.
Also, the Maine Legislature passed a measure in 2023 allowing Maine to partner with other New England states on wind procurements. This move means Maine is sharing bids received in response to the most recent request for proposals with the other participating states, which will then coordinate on selecting a recommended wind farm. A winning bid is slated to be announced by the end of May.
“The fact that we’ve got five of the states signed on and committed to this is pretty important,” Pullaro said.
As power-hungry data centers and rising fuel prices put the squeeze on anxious voters last fall, Virginia Democrats secured a governing trifecta in Richmond partly on a promise to rein in energy costs.
Now, with a 60-day legislative session in the rearview mirror as of March 14, newly elected Gov. Abigail Spanberger and lawmakers in her party look primed to deliver on that pledge in spades.
Democrats, who grew their majority in the House of Delegates last November and have controlled the Senate since 2020, still remain divided on whether and how to continue the tax breaks that have helped make Virginia the data center capital of the world; a special session is scheduled next month to resolve the standoff.
But legislators already have plenty of bragging rights. A slew of bills that would maximize use of the state’s grid, pave the way for more batteries and solar arrays of all sizes, and take other steps to lower energy bills are poised to become law with Spanberger’s signature in the coming weeks.
“I think it was a good session for affordability,” said Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, a Democrat who represents a suburban Richmond district. “I think it was a good session for supply.”
In many ways, Virginia is the poster child for the energy upheaval underway across the country. It’s ground zero for the AI boom and the massive computer warehouses needed to support it, which threaten to spike demand at rates not seen in decades. PJM Interconnection, the regional grid manager, is plagued by backlogs and barely capable of bringing new generation sources online. The cost of fossil fuels, together with the ongoing addition and upkeep of poles and wires, is contributing to skyrocketing utility bills.
Amid these pressures, the state hasn’t wavered from a law mandating 100% carbon-free electricity by midcentury — even as the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to derail Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the largest offshore wind farm in the country, and as congressional Republicans have slashed incentives and other inducements for solar and energy efficiency.
All that context was top of mind as lawmakers began their session this year, said Del. Phil Hernandez, a Democrat from Norfolk. “The assignment was crystal clear,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter where you are in Virginia: Electricity prices are salient. People are concerned, rightly, about the upward trajectory.”
Democrats’ strategy for tackling those worries was twofold, said VanValkenburg: to boost solar and storage, and to better utilize existing transmission and distribution infrastructure. “These are the two things we can do that are the cheapest, the fastest to get online, and the fastest way to save ratepayers money,” he said.
VanValkenburg has been on a long quest to speed the deployment of large-scale solar, promoting bills in 2024 and 2025 to ease local solar restrictions; they failed to become law. But the third time might be the charm. His latest attempt, Senate Bill 347, prohibits outright bans on large-scale solar while still leaving ultimate siting decisions up to local governments. It cleared both chambers last month and awaits Spanberger’s signature — though it’s among the few energy measures she hasn’t taken an explicit position on.
“I hope she signs it,” VanValkenburg said. “At the end of the day, this bill doesn’t mandate a single piece of solar. It just creates a better conversation, which I think will get us more solar.”
While that measure would pave the way for adding immense solar farms capable of powering thousands of homes, lawmakers also legalized a much smaller variant: balcony solar. Come January, Virginians should be able to buy and plug in the devices on their balcony or yard in the span of a few hours — avoiding permitting and utility red tape and shaving as much as 15% off their energy bills.
Lawmakers also sought to boost rooftop solar arrays this session, chiefly by increasing targets for these types of installations. The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act called on Dominion to get at least 1% of its electricity from renewable energy projects less than 1 megawatt in capacity. A bill sponsored by VanValkenburg, which now sits on the governor’s desk, would increase that number to 5%.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act could also get a refresh when it comes to batteries. The law was first written to require utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Co. to deploy a little over 3 gigawatts of short-duration batteries, a mature technology that is widely available. A measure sponsored by Democrat Del. Rip Sullivan of Fairfax would raise the target to nearly 17 gigawatts by 2045, with most coming in data center–heavy Dominion territory. By that same year, the bill requires the utilities to deploy a total of 4.5 gigawatts of long-duration storage; such batteries can discharge energy for 10 hours or more but are still nascent in the commercial sector.
“Storage is really a critical affordability component, especially over the long term,” said Nate Benforado, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “If we can build storage, that is going to obviate the need for a lot of this gas, which is expensive and risky for customers.” Noting the war in the Middle East as the latest global conflict to impact fossil fuel prices, Benforado added, “If we continue to invest in gas infrastructure, expect your bills to go up and up.”
Lawmakers also passed bills to better utilize the state’s existing network of poles, wires, and other electricity delivery infrastructure. Because the grid is built to accommodate the maximum amount of electrons that might ever flow through it — such as on a particularly cold winter morning when people crank up heating systems — about half of it goes unused 99% of the time.
One measure would require Dominion and Appalachian Power to quantify grid utilization across their systems, a first step toward the deployment of batteries, line sensors, and other grid-enhancing technologies to increase energy generation on the system.
Another bill, dubbed the Fast Access to Surplus Transmission, or FAST, Act, would spur the same companies to identify sites where batteries or other technologies could be added to existing solar projects, taking advantage of extra room on the grid at the point of interconnection. Under a first-of-its-kind trial program, the utilities could add a total of 600 megawatts of generation using the surplus capacity.
“We’ve started to see a drastic reduction in costs around energy storage,” said Jim Purekal, a director at Advanced Energy United who heads the group’s legislative work in Virginia. “The more we install these, especially if we use existing grid capacity, the more we’re saving everybody money. And if we’re able to install these projects in tandem with solar and wind, which are your cheapest forms of energy generation, now we’re off to the races.”
Hernandez was a sponsor of the FAST Act, and he is especially proud of its novelty. “Sometimes Virginia is not great at being first to move on a concept,” he said, “but in this case, it worked out.”
He also championed legislation requiring Dominion and Appalachian Power to invest millions in energy-efficiency upgrades for low-income, elderly, and disabled households. Another of his bills would streamline the permitting process for home rooftop solar.
“There were a whole lot more from other members,” Hernandez said. “This moment that we’re in is all about having 1,000 great ideas, because there’s no one thing you can do to fix every problem.”
To wit, over 50 energy and climate bills tracked and supported by the Virginia Conservation Network passed during the two-month session — including those setting the state up to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, adopt more community solar farms, study ratemaking reforms, and many others.
Spanberger has yet to sign any of the measures, and many passed with little help from Republicans. But the vast majority of these bills are almost certain to become law, and VanValkenburg is hopeful that they’ll endure with bipartisan support. That’s because the economics of clean energy — especially solar and storage — just keep improving.
“I think these laws are going to be durable from a free-market capitalism perspective,” VanValkenburg said. “But I also just think that those are also the only ways that you’re gonna keep energy bills down.”
The world is in a state of climate emergency, the head of the United Nations declared Sunday, following the release of the latest State of the Global Climate report from the World Meteorological Organization.
“Earth is being pushed beyond its limits while every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “Earth’s energy imbalance, the gap between heat absorbed and heat released, is the highest on record. Our planet is trapping heat faster than it can shed it.”
The consequences, he added, “are written into the daily lives of families struggling as droughts and storms drive up food prices, in workers pushed to the brink by extreme heat, in farmers watching crops wither, and in communities and homes swept away by floods.”
The report highlights the significance of record-high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and notes that the effects are visible everywhere, from the 11-year series of hottest-ever years to the way heat is accumulating deep in the oceans. For the first time, it includes a metric called Earth’s energy imbalance as a key climate indicator, measuring the rate at which energy from the sun enters and leaves the planet.
In a stable climate, incoming energy and outgoing energy are about the same. But activities such as burning fossil fuels, growing food and making steel, cement and plastic have upset that balance by pushing levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere to the highest level in at least 800,000 years. That’s trapping more of the sun’s energy in the Earth’s climate system than ever previously recorded.
“Improved scientific understanding of Earth’s energy imbalance shows the disruption is real and the reality facing our planet and climate right now,” said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, adding that, “We will live with these consequences for hundreds and thousands of years.”
The new metric shows a more complete picture of how the climate system is responding to human emissions by integrating all the heat accumulating in the oceans and atmosphere, on land and melting ice, said oceanographer Karina von Schuckmann, a senior science adviser with Mercator Ocean International and member of the WMO’s ocean observations panel.
U.S. climate scientist Ko Barrett, deputy secretary-general of the WMO, said Earth’s energy imbalance also helps show how different parts of the climate system are connected and identifies the central role of the oceans in absorbing most of the trapped heat.
The energy balance indicator highlighted by the WMO focuses on the fundamentals of climate change, said independent climate analyst Leon Simons, who co-authored several recent papers on the topic.
“Energy coming in, energy going out,” he said. “Greenhouse gases change how much energy escapes, and the system responds. That’s really what’s driving everything.”
That basic energy measurement is a better starting point than trying to establish temperature change relative to 1850 in international forums, which then quickly start quibbling over what a tenth of a degree means, Simons said. The measurement is also more significant now because there are 20 to 25 years of data from satellite sensors designed to study Earth’s energy balance.
Science basics also help explain one of the report’s most memorable conclusions. The air temperature people experience is only about 1 to 2 percent of all the energy trapped in the Earth’s systems by greenhouse gases. About 90 to 93 percent heats the oceans while about 5 to 6 percent melts ice and heats land.
The WMO report is compiled with input from national weather agencies, international research programs and U.N. partners, drawing on data from satellites, ocean monitoring systems and weather stations worldwide. It reflects contributions from scientists and institutions across nearly 190 countries.
The information reflects the best available global science, despite concerns during the past year about cuts to U.S. climate programs, said Barrett, the WMO deputy and formerly a veteran leader of U.S. federal climate programs across several presidential administrations.
Critical data flows and climate observations have not been disrupted by any of the major contributors to the report, and she noted that Congress has restored “a lot of the funding” previously reported as having been cut. There also has been no decline in demand for accurate climate information, she added.
Guterres said that climate stress is exposing the fact that “our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilizing both the climate and global security.” Accelerating a global transition to renewable energy would “ deliver climate security, energy security and national security,” he said.
“Today’s report should come with a warning label,” he said. “Climate chaos is accelerating and delay is deadly. The way ahead must be grounded in science, common sense and the courage to act.”
As of January, California requires developers of new multifamily buildings to ensure that residents with parking have access to EV charging at home. It’s one of the most equitable EV-charging policies in the nation, according to climate advocates.
But in a bid to reduce costs for builders, a state lawmaker introduced a bill in February that would waive those requirements for affordable housing construction until at least 2036.
Most households don’t have EVs yet, but the vehicles are growing in popularity, their costs are falling, and local rebates are making them more affordable. Clean-driving proponents say the current state policy, which requires outlets for EVs to plug into, is crucial to ensure that residents of affordable housing units can easily transition to electric cars and reap the benefits.
“California shouldn’t drop back,” said Linda Hutchins-Knowles, co-leader of the nonprofit National Charging Access Coalition. “We have the most expensive cost of living in the country. We need to reduce costs for residents of apartments and condos, especially in affordable housing, by giving them access to the lowest-cost charging for the lowest-cost vehicles, which are used EVs.”
In California, where gas is nearly $6 a gallon, EVs are taking off. They made up nearly one-fifth of new cars sold in the last quarter of 2025. Even given the state’s high electricity prices, EVs can cut the cost of driving in half. And drivers benefit most when they can charge at home: It’s both more convenient and cheaper than using public chargers.
Now, affordable housing developers must install one EV-charging outlet per residence with parking that can provide low-power Level 2 EV charging (20 amps, 240 volts). These outlets deliver a charging speed that’s in between what you’d get from a full Level 2 charging outlet (40 amps, 240 volts) and a standard 120-volt outlet.
Assembly Bill 2748, sponsored by Democratic Assembly Member Sharon Quirk-Silva, would instead allow developers to follow the weaker 2022 building code, which doesn’t require any EV-charging infrastructure for up to 60% of parking spaces. Quirk-Silva did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the bill, which will be heard in committee on April 22.
The state has required new single-family homes, duplexes, and town houses to be built with an outlet for EV charging since the 2016 code. The latest code update “finally extended that courtesy to people who live in apartments,” said Sean Armstrong, managing principal of Redwood Energy, a design firm specializing in net-zero, all-electric affordable housing development.
If passed, AB 2748 could affect millions of Californians who move into affordable housing units constructed in the next decade. By 2030 alone, the state aims to build an additional 1 million units for low-income households.
The California Council for Affordable Housing, an industry trade group that supports waiving the EV-charging requirement, says the bill is necessary to ease economic pressure on developers. “Without this exemption, affordable housing projects, already operating within razor‑thin financial margins, would face substantial and unnecessary cost burdens,” the group wrote in a Feb. 25 post.
The EV-charging requirement does increase project costs — by about $1,000 to $2,500 per unit, said Armstrong, who has consulted on hundreds of housing projects. But these expenses add just 0.2% to 0.5% to the total project cost, he noted.
Adding EV-charging outlets after construction is challenging, as it requires digging up concrete, trenching, laying down conduit, and other changes, Hutchins-Knowles said. Plus, retrofits can be several times the cost of up-front installations, according to Peninsula Clean Energy, a public power agency in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The new bill is the latest example of the brewing tension between California’s pro-electrification building standards and its efforts to ease the housing crisis.
Last June, lawmakers passed a housing reform law meant to spur supply. As part of that policy, the state will skip the 2028 building code cycle, ceding the chance to push developers further toward fossil fuel–free buildings. Some legislators said the move would make housing more affordable. But climate advocates said there’s little evidence to back up that claim.
Debate over what services to install in low-income buildings stretches back even further.
Until the mid-1900s, building developers across the country often constructed housing without complete plumbing, including running hot water. People living in these cold-water flats had to heat water on wood- and coal-burning stoves for bathing, cooking, and cleaning. But cities and states eventually decided that hot water was a basic necessity, not a luxury only wealthier homes should have.
“It was a deep inequity that was fixed by building codes,” Hutchins-Knowles said. “No one argues that to make affordable housing less expensive, we should exempt them from providing hot water.”
“Everyone deserves charging at their house,” said Marc Geller, board member of EV-advocacy organization Plug In America.
Hutchins-Knowles predicts that higher gas prices will drive a surge of interest in EVs. As in the past, legislators need to take the long view for low-income renters, she said. “We shouldn’t block out the people who can least afford to pay more for transportation.”
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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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.”
It’s not an easy moment for renewable energy in the U.S., but the sector is still setting new records.
Just look at what happened last month: Over the course of March, the nation got more electricity from renewables than it did from natural gas, which is typically the single-largest source of energy on the U.S. grid.
It’s the first time renewables have bested the fossil fuel in the U.S. across an entire month, per data pulled from the think tank Ember. Meanwhile, emissions-free sources, a category that includes both renewables and nuclear, produced more than half of the nation’s electricity. It’s just the third time that’s happened across an entire month, the first instance being last March.
Sure, renewables only beat gas across a short time frame. And, yes, March is the start of the spring shoulder season, when electricity demand falls a bit from its winter highs and renewables tend to outperform.
But it’s a major milestone despite these caveats. Just five years ago, the gap between gas and even the best months for renewables was yawning. Since then, that gap has narrowed, thanks in large part to the rapid expansion of solar and the steady growth of wind power. Hydropower, bioenergy, and other sources of renewable energy have seen their combined share of electricity production slowly decline over the same time period.
Renewables have crossed this threshold amid serious political pushback. The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked the sector — especially wind — over the last year and change. Its policy shifts are likely to result in fewer new solar and wind farms over the medium term, but in the short term, they haven’t really derailed the growth of clean energy. In fact, March was the best-ever month for wind in terms of electricity output.
But perhaps more impressive is that renewables are growing their market share while overall electricity demand climbs. Put simply, clean energy is taking a bigger slice of a growing pie.
Gas power plants, for their part, remain difficult to build due to supply chain bottlenecks. Meanwhile, solar, batteries, and wind together will once again make up the overwhelming majority of new energy capacity added to the grid this year. The same was true last year. And the year before. And the year before that…
Even as the Trump administration creates obstacles to building renewables, a key pair of facts will hold: The U.S. needs more electricity, and renewables are the easiest way to get it. In other words, don’t expect this to be the last month in which renewables conquer gas.
There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring people together. This midterm election year, that enemy may be data centers.
As AI grows more powerful and more popular, tech companies are rushing to build facilities that house all that computing capability — and to secure tons of power to run them. But no one knows exactly how many of those data centers will get constructed, and how much electricity they’ll need. That’s a problem for utility customers, who may be saddled with the costs and climate impacts of an unnecessary gas power and grid infrastructure buildout.
Some states are tackling the problem with what are known as large-load tariffs: essentially, special rates and requirements that force big power users to shoulder the costs of grid buildouts. But this week, a small city in Wisconsin put its foot down. Port Washington, a suburb of Milwaukee, voted by a roughly 2-to-1 margin to require that city leaders get voter approval before awarding tax breaks to data centers and other large development projects. It’s a clear response to the $15 billion OpenAI and Oracle megaproject that’s being built in the city, though this newly approved measure comes too late to affect that project.
At the federal level, Democrats have spearheaded most of the campaigns against data centers, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) even proposing a nationwide moratorium. But Port Washington is part of Ozaukee County, which has voted for Republicans over the past 20-plus years of elections.
Also this week, residents in Festus, Missouri, voted to oust every incumbent on their City Council, in large part because the decision-makers had approved a controversial $6 billion data center in the area. Jefferson County, where the city is situated, voted overwhelmingly for Republicans in the 2024 elections.
Indianapolis, meanwhile, saw a more violent reaction: Someone fired over a dozen bullets at City Council member Ron Gibson’s home on Monday, and left a note reading “No Data Centers” on the legislator’s doorstep. Gibson is a Democrat who has publicly supported a data center project in the city.
Across the U.S., more data center questions are on the ballot. Residents in Monterey Park, California, will determine in June whether to completely ban construction of the facilities. In the fall, Boulder City, Nevada, will vote on whether a municipally owned plot should host a data center, and residents in Janesville, Wisconsin, will decide whether to add more hurdles to a project turning a former General Motors plant into a data center.
At least 11 states are also considering legislation that would pause new data center construction, with a bill in Maine likely to be the first to become law.
City-level data center restrictions like Port Washington’s certainly don’t have the heft of state-level bans or even a nationwide moratorium, as far-fetched as its passage may be. But they do show that data center opposition is on the rise in every nook and cranny of the country — and it may have a massive influence on more than just local elections this November.
Clean Energy Team dominates Arizona utility election
Arizona voters this week selected a slate of candidates known as the Clean Energy Team to run the state’s largest public utility, the Salt River Project.
The winners may have Turning Point USA, the Charlie Kirk–founded conservative organization, to thank. The SRP delivers power and water to more than 1 million customers in the Phoenix area, and its leaders are chosen through an unusual election in which the number of acres a customer owns determines how many votes they can cast. These races typically don’t get much turnout, but this year, Turning Point stepped in to endorse candidates who supported converting retiring coal plants to gas. That prompted clean energy advocates, including the Sierra Club and actor and advocate Jane Fonda, to get involved.
All that attention definitely juiced turnout: This year’s election saw four times as many ballots as 2024’s, The New York Times reports. Two Turning Point–backed candidates did win races for SRP’s board presidency and vice presidency. But candidates who support clean energy swept the remaining races to take majority control of the board and double their representation on SRP’s advisory council.
Here’s where balcony solar is taking off
You’ve probably noticed that electricity bills are on the rise. If only curbing them were as easy as buying a portable solar panel and plugging it into your wall to generate your own clean power.
In two states, it pretty much is. This week, Maine joined Utah to become the second state to legalize the use of “balcony solar” panels, which can be plugged into standard outlets to help offset homeowners’ power usage. Other states may soon join them: Canary Media’s Sarah Shemkus has put together a map showing where bills to legalize balcony solar are in the works, with some needing only a governor’s signature to become law.
Whale, whale, whale: The Trump administration struck down Endangered Species Act protections for whales to unleash oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico — even though it has used unfounded claims about offshore wind’s risks to the creatures as an excuse to undermine that industry. (Canary Media)
Ceasefire’s energy impacts: Oil prices have fallen since the announcement of a two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, which analysts say may quickly translate into gasoline price relief for Americans. (The Hill, Axios)
New Jersey goes nuclear: New Jersey lifts its de facto ban on nuclear power construction, becoming the sixth state to reauthorize reactor development in the past decade and the second, after Illinois, to do so this year. (Canary Media)
Winds of change: The U.S. Interior Department quietly fails to appeal court decisions that allowed work to restart on offshore wind projects halted by the administration, an omission that experts say could be an early sign of hope for the industry. (Grist)
Digging clean heat: A geothermal heat pump system that’s heating and cooling a church just outside New York City could pave the way for similar projects in dense urban areas. (Inside Climate News)
Solar soars: A federal report shows rooftop solar now accounts for 20% of Puerto Rico’s energy production, surpassing natural gas to become the island’s second-largest generation source, behind petroleum liquids. (Utility Dive)
Renewables reign: In March, renewables generated more power than gas across a whole month, marking a first for the U.S. grid. (Canary Media)
Fervo Energy, the leading next-generation geothermal startup, is ramping up plans to build out new power plants.
The Houston-based company has signed a three-year binding agreement with Turboden America, which will supply 1.75 gigawatts of organic Rankine cycle turbine capacity for Fervo’s forthcoming geothermal projects in the United States. The startup will use the equipment to convert heat pulled from deep underground into carbon-free electricity for data centers and the grid.
Fervo, which is reportedly preparing for an IPO, is currently building the first 100 megawatts of its 500-MW Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah. The project, which will be the world’s largest enhanced geothermal system, is slated to start producing power later this year.
Turboden America is already supplying over half of Cape Station’s total turbine capacity. The company, a subsidiary of the Italian manufacturer Turboden, says it will expand its U.S. operations to fulfill the deal, which calls for nearly three dozen 50-MW power-plant units.
The agreement, announced Tuesday, sheds more light on Fervo’s development plans beyond Cape Station, which broke ground about two and half years ago.
Fervo declined to share specific details about where and when it intends to deploy the new units. However, the company has “multiple projects in various stages of progress” and is pursuing “multi-year, multi-gigawatt offtake partnerships with both utilities and hyperscalers,” Sarah Jewett, Fervo’s senior vice president of strategy, told Canary Media in an email.
She added that the Cape Station site has an estimated 4.3 GW of capacity potential, based on internal and independent estimates. Fervo is also developing an enhanced geothermal system in Nevada, called Corsac Station, which is set to supply 115 MW of electricity to Google and the utility NV Energy.
This week’s development with Turboden “helps streamline project execution and accelerate deployment as our project pipeline advances,” Jewett said.
Together, Cape Station and the new turbines represent over 2.2 GW in geothermal power capacity. If completed and brought online, that amount would be equal to more than 50% of the current installed capacity of U.S. geothermal plants — which provide less than 1% of the country’s total electricity generation. Virtually all those existing plants rely on conventional hydrothermal resources, such as geysers and hot springs.
“Geothermal energy will be essential in stabilizing a strained power grid with clean, firm energy, and Fervo has shown strong leadership in advancing the sector,” Paolo Bertuzzi, president of Turboden America and CEO of Turboden, said in a statement. “With this announcement, we are prepared to scale delivery in the U.S. market and add megawatts of new generation wherever and however they are required.”
In signing the deal, Fervo and Turboden are aiming to avoid a potential bottleneck that threatens to slow the larger buildout of next-generation geothermal: the power-plant supply chain.
Today, the global market for organic Rankine cycle systems, heat exchangers, and other components is concentrated among a small set of manufacturers based in Israel, Turkey, and parts of Europe. Until very recently, those companies had little reason to scale production or revamp designs, given the sector’s limited growth. Most geothermal equipment is highly customized, and it can take over 18 months to bring it stateside.
“The ORC market has always been a very niche market and quite stable in the past,” Bertuzzi told Canary Media in an earlier interview.
But recent U.S. innovations in geothermal technology are making it possible to harness Earth’s heat from a wider range of places than conventional geothermal plants can reach. For instance, Fervo’s Cape Station uses horizontal drilling techniques and fiber-optic sensing tools to fracture hard, impermeable rocks and create artificial reservoirs. The startups Sage Geosystems and Quaise Energy are taking a similar approach, while companies like Rodatherm Energy and XGS Energy are building novel closed-loop systems deep underground.
Turboden, which is owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said it can presently deliver about 20 of its 50-MW turbine units per year. Nearly half of its global business is from the geothermal industry. The rest is from biomass-burning power plants as well as industrial facilities that use waste heat to generate electricity, such as data centers and gas-compressor stations.
The manufacturer is now set to scale production in both Italy and the United States in order to meet the growing demand from next-generation geothermal developers like Fervo. In an email, Turboden said it is adopting “multiple business and procurement models … to ensure larger volumes and faster delivery times, including domestic content to support tax credit mechanisms for American customers.”
A community north of San Diego has blocked a major grid battery that a developer had hoped to build in a residential area near a major hospital.
Independent power producer AES Corp. withdrew its application to develop the Seguro battery system in Escondido, 30 miles from San Diego. The company had intended to fill a former horse ranch with 320 megawatts of battery containers, which would have been one of the most powerful stand-alone energy storage facilities in the country. The facility would have strengthened the Southern California grid late in the day, when solar generation fades and home consumption surges, pushing the state forward on its quest to produce 100% clean electricity by 2045.
But the development ran into a barrage of local opposition, as residents decried adding large-scale power infrastructure so close to homes and 1,600 feet from Palomar Medical Center Escondido, especially given the multiday, high-octane fires at other large batteries in the state. The outcome was a high-profile win for local battery opponents, and a warning sign to developers in famously pro-battery California.
AES said in a statement that it would prioritize other development efforts, but remained “committed to advancing projects that can provide the safe, reliable, and affordable power needed to strengthen the region’s electric grid and generate meaningful economic benefits locally.”
JP Theberge, a board member of the Elfin Forest Harmony Grove Town Council who rallied resistance to the battery, framed his neighbors as a victorious David smiting a corporate Goliath.
“The forces of greed are very powerful in this world. The only way to stop them is to be united and determined and forceful,” he wrote in a post on the Stop Seguro Facebook group. “This was a great win and we should all be proud of our efforts.”
AES is, to be sure, a profit-driven company, but the vast majority of U.S. energy infrastructure is built and operated by for-profit entities. What AES hoped to profit from was delivering a large amount of emissions-free grid capacity at a time when California desperately needs more of it — and when the nation as a whole is grasping for more power.
Opponents also called out the risks of large agglomerations of lithium-ion batteries, which have in certain circumstances gone into “thermal runaway,” when cells heat up and kick off ferocious blazes that spread to all the batteries within reach.
Escondido has experience with batteries. AES built a large-scale lithium-ion battery in 2017 that utility San Diego Gas & Electric owns and operates on its substation property. One battery container at that site caught fire in 2024 and prompted local evacuation orders that were lifted two days later. Two other California batteries loom even larger in the minds of the Stop Seguro advocates: An Otay Mesa battery, also in San Diego County, caught fire and then smoldered for 17 days in 2024, destroying one section of a larger facility. A Moss Landing project had a string of small fires, followed by catastrophic one in January 2025, which forced the evacuation of the surrounding community.
Crucially, those two fires involved older models of battery cells, and a now-outdated design that packed them into buildings, which was like piling dry timber ahead of lighting a spark. Since then, battery cell technology has improved, and the industry has abandoned storing batteries in large buildings in favor of compartmentalized containers spread across a site. These designs are tested to make sure that a fire in one unit cannot reach surrounding units. Thus, a really bad failure could burn up one container but not produce the kind of dayslong conflagration seen in the highest-profile battery fires.
That’s where separating fact from fearmongering can get tricky. Otay Mesa and Moss Landing were approved by the necessary authorities, and then combusted in catastrophic fashion. Any community would be justified in wanting to prevent something like that from happening. At the same time, the physical causes of those massive blazes simply don’t exist in the battery projects that are getting built today.
Even so, Seguro would have pushed the boundaries in terms of proximity to homes and to the hospital. If one container started smoking, that could be enough to force the hospital’s patients and staff to either evacuate or shelter in place. This fact became pertinent to the case, because AES needed the hospital to sign off on running high-voltage wires through its property, which the hospital board voted down in 2024.
Generally speaking, though, recent battery failures have not put a stop to new battery construction.
Elsewhere in California, developer Arevon broke ground this year on a 250-megawatt battery in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. The battery fires in other parts of the state did not stop the company from securing permits and easements to connect to a nearby substation. That project will inject $73 million dollars into the local tax base, and give San Francisco a major new source of on-demand power to carry it through heat waves and other moments of stress for the grid.
Indeed, batteries continue to set records for participation in California’s energy system. On a given spring day, they show up in force in the evening hours, displacing expensive, more polluting gas plants by shifting the day’s solar production to meet the hours of highest demand. On March 29 at 7 p.m., for instance, batteries delivered a record 44% of total electricity demand, with more than 12 gigawatts injected into the grid.
A clarification was made on April 9, 2026: This story was updated to clarify that the battery AES built at the utility substation has been owned and operated by San Diego Gas & Electric since 2017.
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