The Chicago Teachers Union expects its new, hard-fought contract to help drive clean energy investments and train the next generation of clean energy workers, even as the Trump administration attacks such priorities. The contract approved by 97% of union members this month repres … | Continue reading
Californians face steep up-front costs if they want to install solar panels to produce clean power and batteries to back up their homes in outages. A new state program will cover those costs for low-income homeowners, but they still have to pay up to tens of thousands of dollars … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. On Wednesday afternoon, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to halt construction on Equinor’s Empire Wind project off the New Yo … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s "Chart of the week” column . The future of the U.S. electric vehicle transition is murky — but at least through the first three months of 2025, the data tells a clear story. Almost 300,000 EVs were sold in the first quarter of the year, according to a … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Floodlight. In a move energy advocates say will increase electric bills for Louisiana residents and allow the state’s utilities to keep earning money for electricity they don’t provide, Louisiana’s energy regulators voted 3–2 Wednesday to sc … | Continue reading
Aubrey Gunnels, CEO of 3V Infrastructure , understands the risks involved in installing and owning EV chargers in thousands of apartment building garages and condominium parking lots. She also sees the opportunity. Just look at the statistics. By 2030, EVs are expected to make up … | Continue reading
Ohio consumer and environmental advocates are calling on state regulators to address disparities within FirstEnergy’s grid after a recent report found disadvantaged communities are more likely to rely on older, more outage-prone equipment. Areas defined as disadvantaged under the … | Continue reading
The " Eating the Earth ” column explores the connections between the food we eat and the climate we live in. NEW YORK — Our food system generates one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and the human race has made almost no progress reducing them. Except in New York City’s pub … | Continue reading
Nearly 3 million Massachusetts households will have the chance to start saving money on heating next winter under new seasonal heat-pump rates from the state’s three major electric utilities. Regulators have approved plans from Unitil and National Grid to reduce electricity rates … | Continue reading
ENFIELD, NORTH CAROLINA — When history buffs reenacted a Revolutionary War general’s visit to this tiny, rural North Carolina town in February, its top elected official was notably absent. General Marquis de Lafayette may have helped liberate America from England, but over 240 ye … | Continue reading
California, for all its talk of clean energy and climate leadership, has long depended on fossil gas to keep its lights on. A decade ago, gas provided around 60% of the state’s electricity production. But this long-running dominance may be coming to an end. California’s solar sys … | Continue reading
The Trump administration is threatening to force U.S. grid operators and utilities to keep money-losing coal-fired power plants running, no matter how dirty and expensive their power is. Its stated reason? To shore up the reliability of the U.S. power grid. It’s the latest salvo … | Continue reading
An anticipated data-center boom is driving utility plans for massive natural gas investments in southeastern Wisconsin, raising objections from customer and climate advocates. Critics say they’ve seen big development plans fail to pan out before, and they don’t want to be stuck p … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. This week, Trump signed several more executive orders meant to advance his pro–fossil fuel, “energy dominance” agenda. Among them was a directive to Attorney General Pam … | Continue reading
Ohio legislators are considering bills that would bar local governments from having a say in permitting projects that capture carbon dioxide emissions and inject them underground. The legislation could even force some landowners to let their property be used for carbon dioxide st … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s "Chart of the week” column . For the first time, fossil fuels accounted for less than half of U.S. electricity production across an entire month as clean power generation surged in March. Last month, fossil gas and coal made up just over 49% of power … | Continue reading
Maryland just passed a raft of energy legislation designed to curb rising utility bills and boost in-state power generation. The reaction from climate advocates was mixed. On the one hand, advocates lauded steps to limit gas infrastructure investments, streamline the community so … | Continue reading
Tyson Slocum knew the Trump administration had an aggressive plan to bail out dirty, expensive coal plants. He was just waiting for it to put the idea in writing. His wait is over. President Donald Trump signed several executive orders on Tuesday to boost the moribund U.S. coal i … | Continue reading
Base Power , the Texas startup designing and installing very large home batteries for close to free, just pulled in an additional $200 million to fund its growth. Silicon Valley heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz co-led the Series B with Addition, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Va … | Continue reading
This article comes from Canary Media’s Ohio Utility Watch newsletter, a monthly update on Ohio’s HB6 power plant bailout scandal. Visit our newsletter page to sign up . Welcome to Ohio Utility Watch, a newsletter tracking Ohio’s ongoing public-corruption saga, often referred to a … | Continue reading
After eight years of planning and amid the Trump administration's all-out assault on the sector, an offshore wind project outside of New York City quietly began at-sea construction this month. Developer Equinor issued no press releases, held no ceremonies, and failed to respond t … | Continue reading
A message from Canary Media's executive director: Despite the current chaos in Washington, D.C., the transition to a clean energy future won’t be stopped. It’s now being led from the ground up, by local and state elected officials, impassioned advocates, creative entrepreneurs, u … | Continue reading
In 2021, Gayatri Sehgal moved away from the fresh air of upstate New York and into the smog-choked city of Los Angeles. The pollution quickly made their asthma worse. On a given day, Sehgal might be short of breath or wheezing as their airways inflame. “I’ve felt valid anxieties … | Continue reading
Energy industry analysts have been scrambling to assess the harms that President Donald Trump’s crushingly high tariffs will impose on the solar, wind, and battery projects now providing the vast majority of new electricity supply in the U.S. It's not looking good. They’ve also b … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Stateline . WATER VALLEY, Texas — On a recent day when the wind gusted close to 40 miles per hour, 82-year-old George Neill was making repairs on his ranch, oblivious to the nearby cluster of wind turbines churning the sky behind him. “After … | Continue reading
A first-of-its-kind pilot to electrify homes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard is set to finish construction in the coming weeks — and it could offer a blueprint for decarbonizing low- and moderate-income households in Massachusetts and beyond. The Cape and Vineyard Electrificati … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. On Wednesday, President Trump unveiled a suite of new tariffs that target pretty much every country and territory in the world — including some where nobody even lives . … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s "Chart of the week” column . Congressional Republicans are taking aim at the Inflation Reduction Act as they seek to slash federal spending. If they choose to repeal the law’s clean-energy tax credits entirely, it could cause energy bills around the c … | Continue reading
Under the Biden administration, the federal government gave out billions of dollars to companies looking to slash the planet-heating emissions from concrete, cement , and asphalt . Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the future of that support for low-carbon mate … | Continue reading
Landfills are a major problem for the climate: They’re the United States’ third-largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide in the short term. Last year, the federal government was poised to start reining in these emissions: In J … | Continue reading
Ground-source heat pumps, which tap into the stable temperatures found hundreds of feet beneath the Earth’s surface, are a super-efficient way to heat and cool homes . They’re also quite expensive to install in existing houses. There’s a pretty straightforward reason: It’s hard t … | Continue reading
The Environmental Protection Agency revoked an essential Clean Air Act permit last month from Atlantic Shores, an offshore wind development slated to be built off the New Jersey coast. One of the main justifications was President Donald Trump’s January executive order calling for … | Continue reading
A coalition of environmental justice advocates is pushing Illinois to become the first Midwest state to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Trucks standards designed to spur a transition to zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles over the next decade. “Air pollution is an equity issue,” … | Continue reading
Want to know why EV chargers can be so hard to connect to crowded urban power grids? Just look to San Francisco’s latest public charging station, opened by startup Revel last week. At first glance, the station, Revel’s first foray outside of its home city of New York, doesn’t see … | Continue reading
On March 6, at the start of the still-simmering trade war between the U.S. and Canada, hydropower generator Hydro‑Québec quietly stopped exporting electricity to New England. At a time of year when Canadian hydropower typically supplies up to a tenth of New England’s power, the r … | Continue reading
When ecologist Anthony Bicknell went looking for fish around the foundations of wind turbines a dozen or so miles off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea, he wasn’t sure what he’d find. But he was ready for something surprising. Around that time, some European lobsters were ca … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Floodlight and Barn Raiser. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on March 25 it will release previously authorized grant funds to farmers and small rural business owners to build renewable energy projects — but only if they rewrite a … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. A simple principle has shaped Texas’ electricity system for the last two decades: Developers should build the types of power plants they think will compete best on the st … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s "Chart of the week” column . Two opposing forces are tugging at the global energy transition: the inexorable rise of clean energy and the insatiable demand for electricity. Last year, over 700 gigawatts of clean energy capacity were installed worldwid … | Continue reading
Evanston, Illinois, just passed an ordinance requiring the city’s largest buildings to eliminate all fossil fuels and use 100% renewable electricity by 2050. On March 10, the Chicago suburb joined 14 other state and local governments across the U.S. that have enacted policies to … | Continue reading
Another proposed energy-saving program is on the chopping block in Ohio. Duke Energy Ohio quietly dropped plans late last year to roll out a broad portfolio of programs that would have boosted energy efficiency and encouraged customers to use less electricity during times of peak … | Continue reading
Airplanes. Power plants. Cars and trucks. Their images might be the first to spring to mind when thinking about the challenge posed by the energy transition. But what about plain old buildings? From their structural bones to the energy they constantly consume, buildings account f … | Continue reading
Hyundai Motor Group unveiled plans Monday for a $6 billion steel plant in Louisiana to provide the metal needed for its auto factories in Alabama and Georgia. The announcement came as part of a broader $21 billion investment into U.S. manufacturing facilities including EV factori … | Continue reading
Five years ago, San Francisco–based startup Span debuted a smartphone-controllable electrical panel that allows homeowners to manage their solar panels, backup batteries, EV chargers, HVAC systems, and other major household appliances in real time. It was a high-end product for a … | Continue reading
Clean energy advocates in North Carolina remain bullish about a Duke Energy initiative to help its poorest customers pay their bills and access weatherization programs, even though participation in its first year fell short of predictions. A side deal Duke struck in 2023 to lesse … | Continue reading
The batteries inside electric vehicles can do a lot more than power a car. They can back up homes, schools, and businesses during power outages. They can soak up grid power when it’s plentiful and cheap and send it back when it’s scarce and costly. And they could eventually provi … | Continue reading
Texas legislators have a new plan for their state’s famously competitive energy market, and it looks a lot like the government picking winners and losers. On Wednesday, the Texas Senate passed SB 388 , which would set a target for 50% of new power plant capacity to be “sourced fr … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Speaking to fossil fuel executives and other energy leaders at the CERAWeek conference last week, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright made a bold claim. “Everywhere wind a … | Continue reading