One recent day in a warehouse south of downtown Houston, I got a peek at something that just might revolutionize the clean energy transition: a molten orange puddle of instantly liquefied rock. Moments before, an attendant loaded a slug of basalt under a metal-frame structure tha … | Continue reading
The Trump administration has declared it is killing $20 billion in congressionally appropriated funding for solar power, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, and other money-saving and carbon-cutting investments for U.S. companies and low-income communities across the country. I … | Continue reading
As Illinois looks to prepare its electric grid for the future, a new voluntary program in the Chicago area promises to lower costs for both customers and the utility system as a whole. ComEd is finalizing plans to roll out time-of-use rates in 2026 following a four-year pilot pro … | Continue reading
Everyone agrees that California’s major utilities are charging too much for electricity. But as in previous years, state lawmakers, regulators, and consumer advocates are at odds about what to do about it. With the state’s three biggest utilities reporting record profits even as … | Continue reading
For most U.S. homes , heat pumps are a no-brainer: They can lower energy bills and eventually pay for themselves all while slashing carbon emissions. But the economics don’t work in favor of heat pumps for every home — and particularly not for those in states that have high elect … | Continue reading
Last May, Florida enacted a law deleting any reference to climate change from most of its state policies, a move Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis described as “restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.” That hasn’t stopped the S … | Continue reading
As the legal fight continues over whether the Trump administration can ignore climate spending laws passed by Congress, North Carolina advocates are preparing for the next brewing federal threat. A Republican-led budget bill working its way through Congress aims to cut $2 trillio … | Continue reading
As winter turns to spring, Texas is setting new records with its nation-leading clean energy fleet. In just the first week of March, the ERCOT power grid that supplies nearly all of Texas set records for most wind production (28,470 megawatts), most solar production (24,818 megaw … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Illinois legislators and clean energy advocates have found themselves in a déjà vu moment: working on a package to accelerate their clean energy transition while federal … | Continue reading
Months of proactive community engagement appeared to be paying off for the developer of the Grange Solar Grazing Center agrivoltaics project in central Ohio. Open Road Renewables knew it faced an uphill battle before the state energy-siting board, whose recent deference to local … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s "Chart of the week” column . Last year was fantastic for battery storage . This year is poised to be even better. The U.S. is set to plug over 18 gigawatts of new utility-scale energy storage capacity into the grid in 2025, up from 2024’s record-setti … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Grist . Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here . Editor’s note: This story, first published by Grist on Feb. 25, references the Trump administration’s withholding of federal Solar for All grants. The Environmental Protection Agency has s … | Continue reading
Two years after slashing compensation for rooftop-solar owners who send power back to the grid, California policymakers are once again looking for ways to contain high and rising electricity rates — which means the accusation that rooftop solar pushes costs onto other utility cus … | Continue reading
Since its founding back in 2010, Shine Technologies has raised over $200 million to deliver on the potential of generating cheap, abundant energy from fusion. Like the dozens of other startups at work in this field, Shine Technologies has yet to crack the code on fusion, an energ … | Continue reading
This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here . New York state is one step closer to banning fossil fuels in new buildings. On Friday, the State Fire Prevention and Building Code C … | Continue reading
Ascend Elements , a leading contender in advanced battery recycling, canceled a portion of its planned battery-materials plant last week. The company still aspires to expand a fully domestic battery supply chain but has had to adapt to tumultuous policy and market conditions. Chi … | Continue reading
Sunnova , one of the country’s largest residential-solar companies, has warned investors that it may run out of money within the next 12 months. It’s a snapshot of a company struggling to maintain financial viability amid a punishing economic climate for rooftop-solar installers … | Continue reading
U.S. manufacturers rely on more than 30,000 small industrial boilers to make a large number of things: foods, drinks, paper, chemicals, clothes, electronics, furniture, transportation equipment, and more. The vast majority of these smaller boilers burn fossil fuels — mostly gas, … | Continue reading
Maine’s solar incentive program has become a political scapegoat for rising electricity prices in the state, but clean-energy advocates say the numbers don’t add up. Maine utility customers pay some of the country’s highest electricity prices, but the portion of their monthly bil … | Continue reading
Since 2017, sweeping legislation in Illinois has sparked a solar-power boom and launched ambitious energy-equity and green-jobs programs. Now, for the third time in under a decade, state lawmakers, advocates, and industry groups have their sights set on ensuring that clean energy … | Continue reading
A 67-person Finnish startup called Hycamite has just completed a facility it hopes will revolutionize production of low-carbon hydrogen. The plant, in the industrial port city of Kokkola, on Finland’s west coast, will soon receive gas shipments from a nearby liquefied natural gas … | Continue reading
Welcome to Ohio Utility Watch, a monthly newsletter tracking developments in Ohio’s ongoing public-corruption saga, often referred to as the House Bill 6 or HB 6 scandal. I’m Kathiann Kowalski, a contributing reporter for Canary Media based in Ohio, and I’ve been following utilit … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. It’s been a roller coaster of a month for recipients of federal climate and energy funding. President Donald Trump’s January decision to freeze spending from the Inflatio … | Continue reading
The Trump administration axed hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the key agencies tasked with making sure offshore wind activities can coexist with wildlife, including whales. The firings on Thursday affected more than 800 federal … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media’s chart of the week column . The numbers are in, and clean energy is set to sweep U.S. power plant construction yet again this year. The U.S. is expected to build 63 gigawatts of power plant capacity this year, more than it has in decades, as new AI com … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Capital B , a nonprofit newsroom that centers Black voices and experiences. To read more of Adam Mahoney’s work, visit Capital B . Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and South Carolina Gov. Ibra Blackwood worked together to br … | Continue reading
A fast-growing startup is giving Texas homeowners cheap access to unusually large batteries for backup power — and paying for it by maneuvering those same batteries in the state’s ERCOT energy markets. Base Power launched last May and already has installed more than 1,000 home ba … | Continue reading
This is the fourth and final article in our series “ Boon or bane: What will data centers do to the grid?” Tom Wilson is aware that the explosive growth of data centers could make electricity costlier and dirtier. As a principal technical executive at the Electric Power Research … | Continue reading
It’s been a grim five weeks for the clean energy transition in North Carolina. From rooftop solar to electric vehicle charging to offshore wind , a slew of renewable energy advances have faced setbacks. President Donald Trump’s edicts against climate spending and wind and solar a … | Continue reading
This is the third article in our four-part series “ Boon or bane: What will data centers do to the grid? ” The world’s wealthiest tech companies want to build giant data centers across the United States to feed their AI ambitions, and they want to do it fast. Each data center can … | Continue reading
A handful of school buses in northern Illinois will soon have a new summer job. ComEd is the latest utility to explore whether electric school buses could help manage the grid when school is out of session and air conditioners are humming. Under such vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, arra … | Continue reading
The European Union is set to unveil its grand strategy to decarbonize factories and smelters and make its energy supply cheaper and less vulnerable to geopolitical meddling. Leaked drafts of the EU Clean Industrial Deal — copies of which Canary Media obtained — outline a plan to … | Continue reading
A Michigan nuclear plant is looking to make history not once but twice over: First by restarting a reactor shuttered in 2022 and second with newly solidified plans to build the nation's first small modular reactors. Holtec International — the nuclear company best known for decomm … | Continue reading
This is the second article in our four-part series on data centers and electricity demand. Read part 1 . There’s no question that data centers are about to cause U.S. electricity demand to spike. What remains unclear is by how much. Right now, there are few credible answers. Just … | Continue reading
A number of Connecticut cities and towns want to secure more clean electricity for residents using a program that has already saved millions of dollars for consumers in other states. Community choice aggregation allows cities and towns — or, in some cases, multiple municipalities … | Continue reading
This is the first article in our four-part series “ Boon or bane: What will data centers do to the grid?” Sign up for our Feb. 25 online panel discussion on the topic . In January, Virginia lawmakers unveiled a raft of legislation aimed at putting some guardrails on a data center … | Continue reading
In Ohio, county and township officials have a lot of influence over permitting decisions for wind and solar farms. So when local elected officials oppose a project, it matters whether they are doing so in their official role or as private individuals, says the developer of a cent … | Continue reading
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. When solar developers look to build big projects on farmland, the same arguments tend to come up: The array will waste useful agricultural tracts, ruin views, and sully t … | Continue reading
See more from Canary Media's chart of the week column . Cleantech companies have announced a whopping $129 billion worth of clean energy factory plans since August 2022, when former President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, according to new data from E2, a nonpartis … | Continue reading
In the disaster relief industry, it’s dubbed the “second disaster:” a mass of donations, from food to bars of deodorant, that ends up rotting or collecting dust on shelves because they serve the wrong need or can’t be distributed. Footprint Project — a small nonprofit that collec … | Continue reading
Cutting fossil fuels out of transportation and buildings will mean embracing electric vehicles and equipping homes and offices with heat pumps. But cleaning up these sectors will take much more than tackling their energy supply — it’ll also require eliminating carbon emissions th … | Continue reading
Connecticut could become the latest state to pursue networked geothermal systems as a way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, improving public health, and reducing energy cost burdens for residents. State lawmakers are considering a bill, HB 6929 , that would create a grant and … | Continue reading
Kathy Palmer was intrigued when her neighbor, an environmental lawyer she’d met while volunteering on a Minneapolis climate committee, sang the praises of the new heat pump he had installed in his home. Now, Palmer is enjoying the warmth of her own heat pump. For the past three d … | Continue reading
A new analysis shows that a clear majority of people submitting comments on a planned central Ohio solar farm support the project — a stark contrast with how opponents have portrayed public sentiment. Open Road Renewables, the developer seeking a permit to build the Grange Solar … | Continue reading
This story was first published by CalMatters . California’s push to electrify its cars is facing a potentially serious problem: People aren’t buying electric cars fast enough. After three straight years of strong growth, sales have stabilized in California, raising questions abou … | Continue reading
Ambitious, nonprofit journalism powered by RMI for the clean energy transition, economy-wide decarbonization, and climate tech markets. | Continue reading
One of the nation’s largest hydrogen-powered transit fleets is seeking to switch to a cleaner — and local — fuel source as part of a federally funded clean hydrogen hub. The Stark Area Regional Transit Authority, or SARTA, provides about 5,000 daily rides to commuters in the Cant … | Continue reading
PJM Interconnection, the organization that manages the transmission grid delivering electricity to about 65 million people from the mid-Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes, badly needs more power. In fact, its inability to connect projects languishing in its interconnection queues … | Continue reading