See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column . Last fall, as generous federal incentives for consumer cleantech were set to expire, people raced to lock in good deals on EVs and rooftop solar . Then, this year, sales cratered. But home batteries bucked the trend. … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Grist . Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter. A few years ago, environmental scientist Elliot Campbell went around asking people why they would, or would not, switch to an electric vehicle. A surprising number of them asked him a questi … | Continue reading
A recent ruling from federal regulators will let virtual power plants help meet surging energy demand in the county’s biggest energy market. Late last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered PJM Interconnection to accept statistical sampling as a valid method for … | Continue reading
It's almost an ironclad law: Over time, wind turbines get taller, better, and more cost-effective. A new proposed project in the U.K. demonstrates that. ScottishPower recently announced its intention to repower the U.K.’s largest onshore wind farm, a process that will involve re … | Continue reading
America’s aluminum sector is growing again after years of decline, spurred by tariffs and a push to revive domestic manufacturing. But the voracious power needs of aluminum smelters and communities’ concerns about pollution still pose major hurdles to scaling up production. Glob … | Continue reading
The Department of Energy is backing a major battery project to bolster Puerto Rico’s fragile electric grid — even as the Trump administration axes funding for key clean energy initiatives across the U.S. territory. Last week, the DOE said it closed a nearly $490 million loan to … | Continue reading
Krzysztof Wasowicz, mayor of Justice, Illinois, has some concerns about solar: that it takes up farmland and enriches China. But he’s all-in on the community solar array that was recently deployed at a Public Storage facility in his village, a suburb of Chicago. The panels are l … | Continue reading
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News , a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter. When Gerard Mullin decided to train in offshore wind, he didn’t know what to expect. But on his f … | Continue reading
Illinois had big plans to turn a bunch of old coal plant sites into solar and battery farms. But the program has turned out to be kind of a bust. The state created its Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Initiative five years ago, hoping it would speed clean energy deployment by ma … | Continue reading
California lawmakers are once again contending with how to curb the state’s high energy costs as they hurtle toward the end of this year’s legislative session on Aug. 31. So what’s on the table for utility rate reform in the final stretch? Enter Senate Bill 905 , a complicated p … | Continue reading
In many ways the world's oldest cheddar-maker hews to tradition. Since 1833, Barber’s Farmhouse Cheesemakers has operated from the rolling green pastures of southwest England, milking grass-fed cows and fermenting the milk with microbial starters passed down for generations. Tha … | Continue reading
Stew Miller, who launched his North Carolina rooftop solar company in the 2000s, says there’s “a lot of negativity” in his industry right now — and it’s easy to see why. A year ago, Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminating the 30% federal tax credit for ho … | Continue reading
A far-reaching new tariff on solar imports promises to both raise the cost of installing the clean energy source and strengthen efforts to reshore solar manufacturing. The White House announced the new tariffs Thursday on imported polysilicon and related products, including sili … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Ford’s first all-electric pickup truck didn’t exactly fly off the lot. The automaker is hoping a lower-cost model will fare better. On Thursday, the automaker rolled o … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column . This story and map will be regularly updated with the latest on the Trump administration’s orders forcing coal plants to stay open. It was shocking back in May 2025 when the Trump administration took the unprecedented s … | Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Defense has for months refused to conduct routine military evaluations of proposed onshore wind farms, creating a de facto moratorium on the clean energy source at a time of exploding electricity demand. On Thursday, a federal judge appointed by President … | Continue reading
When the Trump administration issued stop-work orders on all five offshore wind projects under construction late last year, it offered one justification: The turbines could compromise national security. Experts were immediately critical of this assertion , not least because it c … | Continue reading
Oklo , a publicly traded small-modular-reactor firm backed by OpenAI chief Sam Altman, has become one of the highest-profile companies working on next-generation nuclear energy technologies. Two years ago it debuted on the stock market and became retail investors’ go-to for betti … | Continue reading
Steel giant Cleveland-Cliffs was supposed to use up to $500 million from a Biden administration grant to usher in cleaner steelmaking in southwestern Ohio. Now, the company plans to instead put those funds toward a project that locks in old coal-based tech for decades and amps up … | Continue reading
In Wisconsin, utility Alliant Energy has called off a project meant to reduce power outages in disadvantaged and tribal communities, after the Trump administration terminated a federal grant that would have supported it. In California, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, … | Continue reading
Signs of the momentum behind virtual power plants (VPPs) are everywhere. States including New Jersey, Virginia, and Illinois are advancing legislation and regulations designed to accelerate VPP adoption, hoping to seize the potential of aggregated and managed distributed energy r … | Continue reading
PJM Interconnection, the biggest grid operator in the U.S., has finally settled on a plan to prevent data centers from causing other customers’ utility bills to soar further in its 13-state territory. That plan relies heavily on states themselves, and the utilities they regulate … | Continue reading
Home battery startup Base Power seems constitutionally incapable of standing still. After raising $1 billion last October, the Texas company has raised another $1 billion, and upped its valuation from $4 billion to $13 billion. The latest investment, led by Ribbit, Addition, Val … | Continue reading
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency acted improperly in terminating billions of dollars of “green bank” financing last year, setting up a potential showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court over one of the Trump administration's earliest attack … | Continue reading
Valar Atomics, the three-year-old microreactor developer that has a forged a close relationship with the Trump administration, has raised $1 billion in its Series B funding round as investors increasingly bet that the White House’s overhaul of nuclear regulations will clear the w … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Geothermal company Zanskar bought a New Mexico power plant in 2024 that appeared from the outside to be failing. The shallow wells had been rapidly losing heat, an … | Continue reading
When Marsha Gleason and her husband decided it was time to downsize from the 2,000-square-foot bungalow where they’d lived for the past 40 years, they didn’t head to Florida or research local retirement communities. Instead, they looked to their own backyard. The pair sold their … | Continue reading
A year ago, most Wisconsin residents thought little about data centers, according to local leaders and journalists. But today, the computing facilities — and where they get their energy — are a key issue in the hotly contested Aug. 11 Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor. … | Continue reading
As the world’s data center capital, Virginia faces a surge in energy demand that could spike power costs and lead to more polluting fossil fuel plants. At the same time, the state is seeing its farmland disappear at one of the fastest rates in the United States. The two problems … | Continue reading
Any time, day or night, parents experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, or other emergencies can drop their young kids off at the Crisis Nursery in Urbana, Illinois, and know they’ll be safe and cared for. Funding is a constant challenge for the 45-year-old nonprofit organ … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. In rural areas across the U.S., solar power opponents keep leaning on the argument that utility-scale arrays are gobbling up valuable farmland. But plenty of evidence p … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column . While the Trump administration is busy pointing out that the sun doesn’t shine at night , solar is breaking records around the world, including in sunny California. Solar panels produced 51% of California’s electricit … | Continue reading
The startup Antora Energy just raised $550 million to build and deploy more of its heat-storing batteries for powering data centers and cleaning up factories. On Thursday, San Jose, California–based Antora said it closed a Series C funding round co-led by climatetech investor G2 … | Continue reading
Construction is underway on a $1.7 billion solar and battery storage project in Texas that will turn existing coal mining land into a hub of clean energy generation. Panamint Capital announced last week that it broke ground on the 1.2-gigawatt Big Rooter Power solar farm in Brem … | Continue reading
Almost every station on the factory floor of Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ northeast Massachusetts headquarters was bustling on a steamy Friday morning in June. Hard-hatted workers ferried along the components for the company’s first fusion reactor, including giant slabs of magnet … | Continue reading
Citing national security concerns, the Trump administration has banned the import and domestic use of new power inverters made outside the United States. The move could throw sand in the gears of gigawatts’ worth of planned solar, wind, and battery installations — projects that m … | Continue reading
Just northeast of Columbus, Ohio, the leafy Main Street of New Albany gives way to lush green fields and agrarian ponds — but soon the countryside transitions into mile after mile of enormous white boxes that emit a low hum. This patch of former farmland has become one of the den … | Continue reading
So, how’s that clean energy transition going? It’s the essential inquiry that drives anyone reporting on climate solutions, and it got considerably more difficult to answer after President Donald Trump returned to the White House. He’s done everything in his power (and some thin … | Continue reading
The Trump administration seems to be doing all it can to give the coal industry everything it wants. Those efforts may not succeed, but they could keep the dying industry on life support, and soak U.S. citizens with the financial and environmental costs of doing so — unless legal … | Continue reading
Indiana — a state with a long history of coal mining and coal-fired power — has started undergoing a clean energy transition in recent years. It was among the top three states for solar installation last year, and more than a dozen coal plants have closed since 2010. But the sta … | Continue reading
Residents in four lower-income Massachusetts neighborhoods now have access to a new, low-cost option for running errands or getting to appointments: a shared, solar-powered electric vehicle. The innovative pilot program, CommunityEV Carshare , launched Monday and offers eligible … | Continue reading
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. When the power goes out, a home battery can keep you going. Energy storage, often paired with roofto … | Continue reading
In January, Illinois passed a law that is about to turn thousands of overlooked parcels across the Chicago area into some of the most sought-after real estate in the region's energy market. Not for buildings — for batteries. The underused lot behind a warehouse, the vacant parcel … | Continue reading
American households are all too familiar with the pain of high electric bills, which are climbing nationwide. The same problem is quietly hindering the country’s factories from cleaning up their operations, too. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing facilities burn fossil … | Continue reading
California is making a bet: Once you’ve driven an EV, you won’t want to go back to a gas-powered car. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation creating the MyFirstEV program. It’s the state’s first big attempt to make up for the loss of federal EV tax credits … | Continue reading
Yesterday, the Department of Energy took to social media to try and make a scandal out of a well-known fact: Solar panels do not generate power at night. It’s an old and lazy swipe that critics of renewable energy love to take, even though the people who operate our power grids … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. It’s no secret that data centers are slated to bring stunning levels of new power demand to the grid in the coming years. Report after report has tried to put a number … | Continue reading
This article is part of our “Chart of the Week” series . Europe has had a sunny start to its summer. Across both May and June, solar was the European Union’s top source of electricity — and provided a record-high 25% of the region’s power last month, per new data from think … | Continue reading