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In the far corner of the Crockett County Senior Center, 75-year-old Cynthia Flores almost always has a puzzle going. She and her friends sort colors and look for edge pieces while they gossip — “faster than the telephone” — in the Tex-Mex blend of Spanish and English they grew up speaking in Ozona, a tiny ranching and oil outpost in far West Texas. A couple of days before Valentine’s Day, their puzzle surface was one of the few in the center not covered in red and pink hearts; preparations were underway for the big dance the following night.
“La comida esta ready,” another senior said, calling the puzzlers to lunch. Flores placed one last piece, then took her seat at a long community table. The plate in front of her would have delighted a nutritionist with its lean protein and mountain of steamed broccoli. She pulled a tiny plastic container of teriyaki sauce out of her bag and poured the contents over the meat. “They feed us what we need,” Flores said, “but I always fix it up.” Mostly, she said, she’s just thankful not to have to cook. Like many of her friends, Flores still lives at home, but comes into the center for lunch most days. After being married at 16 and preparing food for herself and her family for almost 60 years, she said she was ready for a break.
Some might say Flores and her friends are living the retirement dream. The center is like a second home, with nutritious food and a full calendar of bingo, dominoes, and social events. Thanks to services like these, many of Crockett County’s aging residents have been able to stay in the familiar community where they, their parents, and sometimes even their grandparents grew up. Flores has been cutting hair locally for decades, working primarily out of her house. Many of her clients now are in their 90s. “I’ve been blessed to work in Ozona, where I can do my own thing,” she said.
Ozona is the only town in Crockett County’s 2,800 square miles, and technically, it’s not even that. “The Biggest Little Town in the World,” as it brands itself, is technically unincorporated, meaning that the county is the only municipal government for its 2,800 residents. One person per square mile means Crockett isn’t the most rural county in Texas, but it’s up there. Taxes and regulations are minimal. The nearest city, San Angelo (the locals just say “Angelo”), is 90 minutes away. The nearest metro area, San Antonio, is three hours.
In her chic, clear-frame bifocals and flowy duster, Flores makes aging gracefully in place in one of the most rural places in the United States look easy. It’s not. In many rural communities, seniors may find it hard or impossible to get the resources they need to remain in their homes and hometowns. Older Americans are already at risk of isolation, and living in a remote area can make that worse. Not to mention, resources are thin, local hospitals and other services are folding, and groceries may be pricey, far away, or both. According to the Rural Health Information Hub’s summary of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, 10.2 percent of seniors in rural areas don’t have sufficient access to healthy and nutritious food, compared with 8.5 percent in metro areas.
But in Ozona, older adults like Flores are thriving. The Crockett County government has created a strong network of senior services, and ensures that they are supported — with the help of a wonky tax arrangement and some powerful new neighbors: wind companies.
About 15 miles north of the senior center on State Highway 163, the wind turbines start cropping up, fleets of towering structures owned and operated by a company called NextEra Energy. In Texas, wind generates 29 percent of the power distributed by the state’s notoriously independent power grid — second only to natural gas. According to the state comptroller, Texas wind generation surpassed nuclear power in 2014 and overtook coal-fired generation in 2020. As of 2023, the state led the nation with 239 wind-related projects and more than 15,300 wind turbines.
In Crockett County, the turbines generate more than just electricity. Money from NextEra supports the meals that Flores and her friends enjoy at the center and helps make events like the Valentine’s Day dance possible.
It all comes down to clever utilization of a section of the Texas tax code. As a way of attracting large projects like wind farms, the state offers companies a temporary property tax break — up to 10 years — in exchange for local investment. This Texas Abatement Act (also known as Section 312) means less tax revenue in the short term, but more dollars immediately flowing to community projects and programs like the senior center in Crockett.
While some economists say the abatements are unnecessary to recruit the companies — there aren’t many places they can go where taxes would be lower — the opportunity to reduce startup costs for wind turbines or data centers or other developments gives the county a bargaining tool.
Many counties and cities use funding generated from these deals to improve roads and other infrastructure that might be strained by the new development, or to fund other public projects that don’t have a place in the regular budget. In Medina County, for instance, officials negotiated with incoming data centers to improve roads where locals were concerned about increased traffic.
In Crockett County, like many places in West Texas, roads, jobs, and public projects have long been tied to oil and natural gas revenue, with its attendant booms and busts. According to Crockett County Judge Frank Tambunga, oil and gas have kept public coffers full in Ozona, even with the ups and downs of the industry — and the steadier (though usually lower) revenues from wind farms will likely add consistency to an already healthy budget.
Ozona’s services for seniors are usually funded by a mix of federal and local funds, as well as charitable donations. As NextEra expanded its wind farms and more turbines cropped up, Tambunga saw the opportunity to offer those aging support services a boost.
Tambunga is a native of Ozona. Now in his early 60s, he’s well acquainted with the sorts of choices his slightly older peers are making. He hears their concerns about health care, groceries, and social isolation. When he considered what to ask for in the tax abatement negotiations with NextEra, those concerns were top of mind. But rather than push for a new public department or project, Tambunga looked to those already doing the work in the community.
“As we negotiate, we ask that, during the term of the abatement, that they make charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations to help the local groups,” said Tambunga. “It allows us to provide support for these organizations that help people within the community.”
Eligio Martinez remembers when the wind companies first arrived in Crockett County in the 2010s. He was a county commissioner back then (at times in Ozona, it feels like everyone has taken their turn in county office), and remembers talking to other counties to figure out the best terms for the tax abatement deal. Locally, he said, the wind turbines were an easy sell. “We welcomed them,” Martinez said. No one got caught up in the politics of green energy — something that Texas’ oil-funded politicians regularly debate — or even the aesthetic effect of adding turbines to the wide open vistas. They saw the chance to increase their tax base and gain funding for local services, Martinez said. “If it’s beneficial to the community, we’re going to stick together.”
For their part, the residents at the senior center didn’t understand exactly how the turbines worked — when the massive structures first arrived, they said, locals wondered if they could run electricity directly from the turbine and were skeptical when they learned that the electricity would be sent to Texas’ power grid to be used elsewhere. Energy-funded towns like theirs are used to asking: “How long will the royalties last?” They’re asking the same about the wind farms. They’ve lived long enough to watch booms and busts in nearly every industry — ranching, oil, and gas, banking — but donations from the tax abatement deals and the increased tax revenue for the school district are welcome while they last.
There’s a pragmatism, Martinez said, that comes from being so remote. “We’re very vulnerable here,” he said. When his mom got cancer in 2013, he saw just how vulnerable. He was lucky enough to have a job that allowed him the flexibility to take her to her chemotherapy appointments in San Angelo, but if he hadn’t, he wondered how she would have made the trek over and over, being as sick as she was.
Even for more able-bodied seniors, transportation is a hurdle in Ozona. The Concho Valley Transit buses make daily runs to San Angelo, and many use them for errands, but some don’t want to be out all day until the scheduled return trip. Some may have to check in for dialysis and cancer treatments at hours when the buses don’t run. And for those with more complex medical conditions or advanced cancer, San Angelo doesn’t have what they need. They have to go to San Antonio, Dallas, or even Houston — all between three and seven hours away. Whoever provides that transportation — usually a family member — is taking on substantial costs.
Martinez started looking for ways to raise funds to help others in his community pay for these travel expenses. He was a radio DJ, so his first idea was a music festival. He organized a daylong festival, and posted some student volunteers by the door to collect entry fees. Almost no one came to hear the music, he said, but when he checked with the students at the door, they had raised $5,000. People had simply dropped off donations. Even if they didn’t want to spend the day listening to music, they wanted to help. Everyone knew that this was a huge issue for rural Texans and that most likely, at some point, they too would need to make long drives to access various forms of medical treatment.
Martinez hosted a few more music festivals, but eventually realized that he didn’t need to put on an event — locals were ready to donate. He created a nonprofit, In Care of Ozona, or Coz 4 Oz, that provides gas cards and hotel funds for folks who need to travel for medical care.
This year, Martinez became a beneficiary of the very programs he helped negotiate back on the commissioners court: He received two donations from NextEra, totaling $3,000 — Coz 4 Oz’s entire budget for the moment.
It’s not just medical emergencies that create transportation woes in Ozona. Ordinary errands can be just as burdensome. As in many small towns, the local grocery store prices are high. Prices are better in San Angelo, so seniors will often carpool for the 90-minute drive, or if someone is planning to make a trip, they’ll take a list of what their neighbors need. Much of the impromptu organizing runs through the senior center, said Director Emily Marsh. “It’s like a huge family.”
Back at the Crockett County Senior Center, while Flores and her friends were working on their puzzles, 69-year-old Arletta Gandy loaded trays of hot meals into her small SUV. The former grocery store manager’s dangly, candy heart–inspired earrings bobbled as she heaved a box full of lunch sacks onto the back seat. She and two other volunteer drivers show up to the senior center every weekday to drive the three “Helping Hands” routes, delivering meals to 42 seniors around Ozona. It’s a good way to get out of the house in her retirement, said Gandy, who doesn’t consider herself “from Ozona” because, as she said, “I’ve only been here over 20 years.”
After eight years delivering meals in the community, she knows the routes by heart. She knows which recipients have dietary restrictions and which dogs will run out of the house if she opens the door too wide. At some houses, she chats briefly. Others have their own rituals. One man does little more than reach out from behind his screen door, but every day, as Gandy walks back down the plywood ramp overpassing the porch stairs, he says, “See you later, alligator.”
“After a while, crocodile,” Gandy responds.
“Nacho nacho,” the man calls back.
“Nacho nacho,” Gandy replies.
The Helping Hands program has been operating in Ozona for as long as Director Stacy Mendez can remember. She’s been involved since childhood. “I remember helping my grandmother and aunt deliver meals,” Mendez said. The program began in a local Catholic church, and when the Crockett County Senior Center opened with its commercial kitchen over 20 years ago, Helping Hands moved in.
In Texas alone, an estimated 100,000 seniors rely on meals funded through Meals on Wheels programs like this one. Across the board, federal funding for these programs has dwindled as pandemic-era appropriations expired and the Trump administration began canceling grants and slashing federal budgets. A government shutdown in the fall further disrupted an already unstable funding stream. Last September, a $20,000 donation from NextEra came just in time, Mendez said. It kept their lean operation afloat, replacing the lost federal dollars and allowing Helping Hands to continue operating through the shutdown, while other programs around the state had to cut back services.
Other Texas counties could also use the renewables boom to meet local needs. The number of Texans 65 and older is expected to more than double, from 3.9 million in 2020 to 8.3 million by 2050, making it the state’s fastest-growing population, according to AARP. That’s a concern for hunger advocates like Jeremy Everett, director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, because seniors are already one of the most food-insecure groups, after young children. But while kids can get food through their schools, such hubs don’t usually exist for seniors, especially in rural areas. In 2026, Meals on Wheels reported that nearly 14 million seniors worried about having enough food.
“Without the ability to safely and reliably access affordable food, senior adults may no longer be able to live in the rural communities they have called home,” Everett said. In Crockett County, money from the wind farms is helping to address that issue. The county is also working with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty to identify ongoing gaps. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, a coalition-based approach to senior hunger is vital, said Everett. No one sector can meet every need, so partnerships between local governments, industry, and nonprofits are key. “That’s how strong food systems are built from the ground up,” Everett said.
There’s another group of Crockett County seniors who benefit from the wind farms: ranchers. Steve Wilkins’ family has owned and operated the 6,000-acre Flying W Ranch for four generations, and he and his wife, Belinda, now breed Brahman beef cattle and lease part of their land to hunters. Belinda also sits on the board of the senior center.
As of Valentine’s Day, Wilkins reckoned he was probably a month or so away from signing a deal to lease part of his family ranch to a wind company. Most of the ranches around them have already done so. “I’ve kind of been dragging my feet on it,” Wilkins said. He’s not sure how he feels about wind energy, but these days ranchers have to be pragmatic. Many also lease to oil and gas companies — one of the more lucrative ways to keep a ranch intact. But in “mature regions” like Crockett County, many oil wells have already been producing for decades, putting them near the end of their productivity. Natural gas can have a similar lifespan, but big profits tend to drop sharply after the first six months to two years.
Wind, of course, is not a finite resource. Theoretically, the region could keep producing wind and reaping the benefits indefinitely, or as long as demand for electricity continues apace. Still, there’s skepticism about how long it will last, Belinda said. If the wind boom comes and goes, they’ll just have to keep adapting, as they always have.
In any case, the wind farms are a longer-term investment. Wind money doesn’t start flowing to the ranchers immediately, Wilkins said. The companies told him that it could be seven or eight years before they start seeing royalties. At 70, Wilkins said that this is of little use to him. But ranchers are also used to seeing land management in generational terms. “Maybe my kids can keep the ranch,” he said.
In the hours leading up to the Valentine’s Day dance, Jerry and Willa Perry checked in for their weekly appointment at Flores’ in-home salon. Jerry removed a red MAGA-style cap that said “Make Texas A Country Again” and placed his hearing aids inside while Flores trimmed his white hair. Willa, his wife of 70 years, looked on, smiling. “I can’t wait to get you home,” she joked, raising her eyebrows playfully. Jerry smirked — although he could not hear her, he got her meaning just fine.
Flores charges on a sliding scale from about $12 to $40 to make sure all her clients can afford to stay coiffed. She makes enough to stay in the house, which she rents. But at her age, she said, she knows that she’s just one medical emergency away from needing full-time care, which she’ll likely find at the county’s local public nursing home.
After finishing with her last clients, Flores changed into a billowy red pantsuit, pearls, and bedazzled sneakers. The dance didn’t start until 6 p.m., but she and several other regulars were there by 5 to get a good table. Emily Marsh and Belinda Wilkins enlisted their help setting out food on the long buffet. By the time the DJ fired up the first cumbia number, about 60 seniors were seated around the dance floor with plates of chips, cookies, and veggies with dip.
Things started slowly, but began to pick up when a country two-step song came on. Judge Tambunga and his wife got up to dance, and other couples immediately followed. At the next cumbia, Flores rustled up a group of single ladies to take the floor. A couple songs later, she led a conga line.
This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network.
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When Krystal Steward started knocking on her neighbors’ doors in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2021, to discuss energy efficiency and sustainability upgrades, she was met with a lot of blank stares.
She was new to the issues herself, she said. But the longtime social worker kept at her new job doing outreach for Community Action Network, a local nonprofit dedicated to serving under-resourced communities. She slowly started getting people in her neighborhood to take part first in home-energy assessments, then in a city program to swap out appliances, make structural fixes, and more.
“In the beginning, it was kind of hard — a lot of people were reluctant. If someone is knocking on your door and telling you they can fix up your home for free, most people don’t believe that,” Steward said. But, she added, “Once one person tried it out, they’d tell their neighbors, and others would jump on board.”
Now, the neighborhood, Bryant, is set to pilot a first-in-the-country program that officials hope will speed the city’s transition to renewables — and offer a new model for how local governments can control their energy future.
The idea is technical, but has sparked enthusiasm across Bryant and Ann Arbor: a new city-created Sustainable Energy Utility, known colloquially as the SEU. Rather than replacing the privately owned utility that serves Ann Arbor, the plan is for this city agency to run in tandem, offering a supplemental service that residents can opt into.
If they do, they’ll stay connected to the regular grid, but will be outfitted with solar panels, battery backup systems, or other infrastructure, drawing on that power for their home use and opening up the prospect of selling any excess. The city, meanwhile, would pay for the installation and maintenance of these systems, which Ann Arbor would continue to own — a vision of energy generation and storage distributed across the city.
The plan begins in the coming months in Bryant, a 1970s-era community with about 260 homes, many of which are officially considered “energy burdened.” A quarter of residents pay more than a third of their incomes on utilities, in a neighborhood that is one of Ann Arbor’s only areas of unsubsidized affordable housing, according to Derrick Miller, Community Action Network’s executive director.
The SEU is a major step in a yearslong process to address Bryant’s energy affordability and sustainability concerns — and then expand the approach across the city.
“When we started having a conversation about how to decarbonize the neighborhood about four years ago, it felt outlandish. Now, it doesn’t feel like anyone can stop us,” Miller said.
The appeal of the SEU became clear in November 2024, when a ballot measure on the proposal was approved by nearly 80 percent of Ann Arbor voters. A little over a year later, city officials are ready to implement the vision, said SEU Executive Director Shoshannah Lenski.
In late February, the city announced that it was accepting expressions of interest from residents and businesses to take part, accompanied by a flurry of community meetings, animated videos, and ads in local theater playbills.
Customers who opt in will get two utility bills — one for the power supplied by these new city-owned clean energy systems, and one for any power they’re still drawing from the regular grid — which Lenski and her colleagues say will add up to less than they currently pay.
“Just like customers don’t own a power plant, the city owns and finances the system upfront, and they pay for that electricity through a monthly bill,” Lenski said. She noted that the model could prove particularly helpful for renters, who often get left out of green energy incentives. Signing up large multifamily buildings will be important to quickly expand the SEU’s size, she said.
In addition to installing clean energy systems at participants’ homes, the SEU could build its own microgrids, something that would set it apart from other municipal clean energy programs. For instance, the agency could install solar panels on a school to supply power when students and teachers are in the building, and that power could go to other SEU customers when classes are out.
Backers say the strategy allows Ann Arbor to build out its green energy system with lower financial risk — and lower potential for political or industry pushback.
“When coupled with DTE’s planned investments in clean energy, these voluntary, fee-based programs help accelerate economy-wide decarbonization while maintaining reliability and affordability,” Ryan Lowry, a spokesperson for DTE Energy, which currently supplies energy to the city, said in an email.
It might seem surprising that DTE, Michigan’s largest electric utility, is supportive of the SEU. But industry experts noted that many investor-owned utilities are struggling under the unprecedented new demands for power. Having a local government try to help manage power needs could be seen as an asset, they suggested — though DTE will have no formal role in the SEU.
So far, more than 1,500 people across Ann Arbor have indicated that they want to sign up. The SEU plans to serve around 100 to 150 customers in Bryant this year, expand out to reach 1,000 next year, and then grow by several thousand annually after that.
The approach answers a question prompted when Ann Arbor adopted an ambitious climate plan in 2020.
That framework included an electrical grid powered completely by renewable energy within a decade, but a city analysis in 2023 warned it was likely to miss that goal by more than 40 percent. In order to reach it, the city would need to push DTE to accelerate its renewable energy buildout, or lean on state officials to do so — or detach from DTE entirely and create a separate city-owned utility, an idea that does have some support in Ann Arbor.
But from the city’s perspective, these options seemed too risky or uncertain, Lenski said — until officials realized that the Michigan Constitution allows municipalities to create and run their own utility, even if there’s another present.
“That’s where the idea of the SEU was born,” she said.
When University of Michigan researchers compared the four options, they found the SEU model had the greatest potential to lower energy prices and emissions, boost reliability, and help low-income communities.
“Overall, it came down to having some benefits of local control without some of the costs,” said Mike Shriberg, a professor who led the research, noting a similar model should be possible in every state.
Still, some worry the strategy does not go far enough. Advocates who want the city to break with DTE and replace its services with a utility fully owned by Ann Arbor are seeking a November ballot measure to set that process in motion. (Organizers are currently collecting signatures.)
Brian Geiringer, executive director of the advocacy group Ann Arbor for Public Power, said the SEU plan still leaves too much responsibility for the city’s energy transition with DTE.
But if voters do approve creating a fully public utility, he said, it would not mean an end to the SEU: The two approaches could work together, with the SEU focused on generation within Ann Arbor, and a publicly owned utility able to make its own decisions on purchasing power.
“If you draw a circle around Ann Arbor, the SEU is doing stuff inside the circle. And we’re interested in having the city control what comes in from outside of the circle,” Geiringer said.
Like Ann Arbor, hundreds of cities are working to implement climate goals — and running into similar gaps between ambition and practicality, especially when it comes to control over energy sources.
“Cities have set these goals, and the utilities aren’t obligated to follow those,” said Matthew Popkin, manager for U.S. cities and communities at RMI, an energy think tank.
“So Ann Arbor’s SEU is an example of cities taking more control of their future without dismantling or acquiring existing utility systems,” said Popkin. “That’s a really interesting model.”
Other models also exist. In Washington, D.C., for instance, a program called the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility has been operating for 15 years, overseeing the city’s efforts to help residents use less energy.
The initiative is far narrower than the Ann Arbor vision, functioning not as a utility but rather as an organization contracted by the city to boost energy efficiency and increase access to clean energy through subsidies and rebates.
The program is a central part of the city’s goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, said managing director Benjamin Burdick, and has helped cut some 10 million metric tons of emissions while saving residents more than $2 billion from reduced energy use.
Nationally, “the conversation that we’re hearing is around how do you continue to talk about climate with affordability,” he said. “Programs like the D.C. SEU are going to continue to be the way that we double down.”
The work in Ann Arbor is now receiving its own attention across the country.
“What caught my eye about Ann Arbor’s efforts were the references to citizen involvement and co-investment in their own grid,” said Jim Gilbert, a retired medical product designer in Boulder, Colorado, who is now helping that city assess the Ann Arbor model.
Boulder has dealt with recent power outages due to worsening climate impacts and aging infrastructure, and Gilbert said an SEU could offer a way forward.
Back in Ann Arbor, as the city prepares to launch the initial pilot of its SEU, the plan is to reach half of the Bryant neighborhood by the end of the year — and local residents are “all in,” said Krystal Steward.
Older members of the community are particularly excited, she said, noting that many are on fixed incomes and will particularly benefit from lower energy bills.
“It’s hard for me to keep up,” Steward said. “Now it’s not me reaching out to residents to sign up — they’re blowing up my phone.”
Last spring, when the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina installed a giant solar array on its new headquarters in Winston-Salem, leaders of the project hoped it would inspire other nonprofits to follow suit.
Sure enough, it has done just that.
A 400-kilowatt solar array is now being built at the headquarters of Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina, less than two miles from Second Harvest.
“They’re our neighbor,” said Bill Haymore, a longtime Goodwill veteran who has worn many hats and today serves as its chief sustainability officer. “We partner closely with them. So we watched with great envy at the work that they had done, and we followed the model that they set forth.”
The installation will produce enough electricity to power about 40% of the building, Haymore said, and will save the nonprofit over $1 million in energy bills over the coming decades. Those savings will be plowed back into Goodwill’s mission of providing employment, job training, and other opportunities for the community.
What’s more, the clean energy project itself falls squarely within his organization’s sustainability ethos. “The work we are doing in this arena is something that we’ve been doing for 100 years,” Haymore said. “Every time we take a donation, we’re recycling.” But, he added, “we need to be bolder about it and show the community that we’re committed to this work. The solar panels were just one of the things that we have elected to do to reduce our carbon footprint and to be a better steward.”
A behemoth international network, Goodwill is made up of 150 independent organizations, each with its own board of directors and priorities. While the Goodwill serving northwest North Carolina doesn’t have any carbon reduction goals yet, Haymore says the plan is to change that.
“This past year, we purchased carbon-tracking software to help us benchmark where we’re at,” Haymore said. “Once we feel very, very confident with what our carbon footprint is, we’ll be able to measure success.”
As did Second Harvest, Goodwill will reap a 30% tax credit in the form of direct pay — a mechanism established by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act that allows nonprofits to access the incentive, which was formerly available only to entities that pay income tax. The organization also hopes to get a 10% bonus credit since it, like the food bank, is located in a low-income census tract.
These levers, designed to help institutions with no tax liabilities and thin operating margins, remain intact at least through the end of next year — despite the axe that congressional Republicans took last summer to a host of clean energy inducements established or enhanced during the Biden years.
But last summer’s law did include new red tape: Beneficiaries of clean energy tax credits now must verify that no components of their new systems were produced by a “foreign entity of concern.” The requirement took effect at the beginning of this year, spurring Goodwill to contract for the project by Dec. 31. The installation is expected to be completed sometime this fall.
Both Goodwill and Second Harvest were recruited to go solar by the Piedmont Environmental Alliance, a local group that formed the Green Business Network to encourage businesses and nonprofits to install solar, electrify their vehicle fleets, and reduce food waste.
If there was a “silver lining” to last summer’s clean energy rollbacks, it was that “Second Harvest and others were feeling the pressure that these tax credits might not exist forever,” said Will Eley, director of the alliance’s green economy program. “They wanted to move as quickly as possible, and Goodwill was certainly responsive to that.”
Eley and his group have been a key force behind an array of initiatives in Winston-Salem and the surrounding region, including the newly launched “Electrify the Triad” campaign and a training program for clean energy jobs hosted at the Goodwill.
That’s why Eley is most excited about the fact that the solar panels will be installed by workers trained at the nonprofit.
“You can actually see the rooftop from the classroom that’s been used for that,” he said. “It’s the full circle of positive feedback loops. It’s been a lot of fun.”
All five offshore wind farms being built in the U.S. are on track to hit key construction and operational milestones this month — even as the Trump administration continues its campaign to halt their development.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a 2.6-gigawatt project near Virginia Beach, Virginia, is expected to begin delivering power to the state’s energy-hungry grid by the end of March, according to its developer, Dominion Energy. As the first turbines start spinning, construction will proceed on the rest of the 176-turbine wind farm, which is now more than 70% finished.
Farther up the east coast, near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind is effectively complete.
Iberdrola, the parent company of Avangrid, which is one of Vineyard Wind’s developers, said on Feb. 25 that the final two of the 62 turbines would be installed “in the next days,” and that about 85% of the turbines are either operating or approved to begin exporting electricity.
Ørsted, which is developing the 704-MW Revolution Wind near Rhode Island, said the project was expected to begin generating electricity “within weeks” of a Feb. 6 earnings call. At that time, the Danish developer was pushing to install the last of its 65 turbines before its contract with a specialized turbine-installation vessel expired in late February. As of Tuesday, 60 of the total turbines have been installed, a spokesperson confirmed.
The vessel, called Wind Scylla, is now at the Port of New London in Connecticut, where its equipment is being recalibrated as part of ongoing construction operations at Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project. Work on that 924-MW installation, off the coast of New York, was nearly halfway complete as of last month’s earnings call.
Meanwhile, Equinor’s Empire Wind just notched another legal victory. On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s latest effort to further delay construction on the 810-MW wind farm near New York. The project, which is more than 60% complete, is set to receive a new turbine-installation vessel this month to start putting towers and blades in the ocean.
Offshore wind companies have been charging ahead since federal judges gave them a temporary reprieve in January and early February from the Trump administration’s stop-work order. On Dec. 22, the Interior Department required all five projects to pause for 90 days, citing unspecified “national security” concerns. Most recently, the administration tried to pause Equinor’s lawsuit against the stoppage by 45 days, which the D.C. judge declined to do.
Interior’s sweeping suspension order threatened to derail the multibillion-dollar energy projects — which are meant to supply huge amounts of carbon-free power to a region that’s barreling toward an electricity shortfall. Developers said the forced pauses cost them millions of dollars a day and put them at risk of losing access to the specialized vessels they need to install turbines and other offshore equipment.
An attorney for Vineyard Wind said in court that the $4.5 billion project was “at a grave risk of failing to meet its construction schedule, and in turn, its financial obligations” if it couldn’t reach full commercial operations by the end of March, The Martha’s Vineyard Times reported in January. He noted that Vineyard Wind’s contract for a turbine installation vessel expires on March 31.
While Vineyard Wind nears completion, many of its turbines have already been supplying electricity to the New England grid — including during a major winter cold streak that forced grid operators to run expensive oil-burning power plants to avert blackouts.
The completed South Fork Wind farm, which came online in 2024 and delivers power to New York’s Long Island, was also a crucial resource. During that period, market electricity prices frequently exceeded the long-term, fixed rates that utilities pay for the offshore wind power, said Stephanie Francoeur, senior vice president of communications and external affairs for the Oceantic Network, which advocates for marine renewable energy sectors.
“We’re really encouraged by this real-world performance data,” she said. “It’s going to be exciting to see more of it as more projects come to completion this year.”
Yet even after offshore wind farms come online, they won’t necessarily be spared from future attacks by the Trump administration, which has indicated that it sees operating turbines as the real purported threat. In its Dec. 22 memo, the Interior Department noted that “the movement of massive turbine blades” creates radar interference — though experts say such potential impacts are manageable and often minor, as IEEE Spectrum reported this week.
In the meantime, offshore wind developers continue stressing the need for their large-scale energy projects to get built. Robert M. Blue, Dominion Energy’s president and CEO, recently pointed to the soaring demand from AI data centers that’s straining the grid in Virginia and the broader mid-Atlantic region.
The utility sees Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind “as the fastest way to get a significant amount of electricity at a low cost … for our customers who are leading the AI race, who are building ships for the Navy,” he said during a Feb. 23 earnings call. The project, which was initially expected to finish later this year, is now likely to wrap up in early 2027.
“Slowing it down, as was demonstrated with the last stop-work order, adds costs, and adding costs and delays in the data center capital of the world, we think, doesn’t make sense,” Blue said.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just buy a pair of solar panels at Walmart in the morning and plug them in on your deck in the afternoon — in the span of a few hours, setting yourself up to produce clean energy that will lower your electricity bill?
But that’s not an option for most Americans right now. For one thing, the devices aren’t widely available in U.S. stores. And if they were, you’d likely have to jump through a series of hoops with your utility to get them up and running.
Virginia lawmakers are about to change all that for residents of the state.
On Wednesday, the Democratic-controlled Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill legalizing “balcony solar” by a unanimous, bipartisan vote. The Senate, where Democrats also have a majority, had already approved the measure with only a handful of dissents. It will soon reach the desk of Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, who is expected to sign it.
Set to take effect next January, the law will make Virginia just the second state in the country, after Utah, to treat solar panels like an appliance you can buy at your local big-box store and set up yourself — on your balcony, in your yard, or anywhere the sun shines on your property.
“That removes all kinds of barriers — not just cost barriers, but time and bureaucracy barriers,” said Victoria Higgins, Virginia director for the lobbying arm of Chesapeake Climate Action Network Action Fund, an advocacy nonprofit. “It makes clean energy more accessible to so many more Virginians, whether they live in apartments, or condos, or just don’t have the funding to put up a whole rooftop system.”
Homeowners and renters alike will be able to buy and install the plug-in solar panels, which come with a microinverter that enables the devices to offset some household electricity use.
“This legislation is about putting practical energy solutions in the hands of Virginians,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a Democrat from Fairfax who sponsored the proposal, said in a news release.
The kits will be subject to safety standards and limited to a total of 1,200 watts, or about four panels, which is enough to supply between 5% and 15% of the average customer’s demand.
“On an extremely mild day in June, it might be pretty close to all of your energy needs, but that would be rare,” Higgins said. “Most of the time, you’re knocking off a chunk of energy that you would otherwise be buying from the utility.”
Like many Virginia Democrats who prevailed in the November elections, Spanberger campaigned on a promise to rein in costs. In December, she put balcony solar on her list of energy-affordability priorities, and her staff has advocated for the bill throughout Virginia’s 60-day legislative session, which ends at midnight on Saturday.
Balcony solar is already widespread in Europe, where over 1 million devices are in use in Germany alone. Proponents say the same could happen in the United States, with dozens of states, from Alaska to Illinois to South Carolina, considering legislation to allow the kits.
While a few states have deferred balcony solar bills because of safety concerns voiced by utilities, Higgins notes that Virginia’s bipartisan support helps show that red and blue states alike are eager to address energy affordability.
“Right now, the estimated payback period is somewhere between two and five years,” she said. “You might see 20 states pass legislation to enable balcony solar this year. Once you get to economies of scale, the price is going to come down quickly.”
This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.
California made itself a rooftop solar leader — and now it’s undoing that legacy.
Sure, sunny skies have played a big role in getting Californians to install panels at their homes. But for years, the state has also offered hefty incentives to help rooftop solar grow, including net-metering policies, which determine how much utilities pay solar panel owners for sending excess generation back to the grid. Under the first two iterations of California’s net-energy metering policies — NEM 1.0, established in the 1990s, and NEM 2.0 in 2016 — that power was heavily rewarded. Those big payments for solar power made it easier to recoup the cost of putting up panels — and easier for homeowners to justify their clean investments.
Then came NEM 3.0. In 2022, California utility regulators approved a plan to slash net-metering payments by as much as 75%. The policy, which went into effect the following year, has seen numerous legal battles ever since. And just this week, a court upheld regulators’ solar-tanking move.
The decision comes at a crucial moment for rooftop solar nationwide. After years of setting records, residential solar installations in the U.S. slumped after 2023, falling in both 2024 and 2025, according to a new Solar Energy Industries Association report. Last year’s dip was largely due to economic uncertainty, tariffs, and contractors’ inability to quickly ramp up installations before federal tax credits expired, SEIA said.
In the post-incentive new year, some states have increased their own rebates and tax credits to keep clean energy rolling. But with this week’s ruling, California will continue heading in the opposite direction. Recent numbers of total residential solar installations in California suggest what the state’s future under NEM 3.0 will look like: Annual installations of residential solar dipped significantly from 2023 to 2024 and remained low in 2025. SEIA expects NEM 3.0 to slow installs even further in 2026.
The latest NEM 3.0 ruling could be appealed again to the state Supreme Court, and environmental advocates say they’re considering doing so. But as climate journalist Sammy Roth argues, maybe net metering isn’t worth the fight, and advocates should root for new ways to keep solar power growing.
Permissionless, plug-and-play balcony solar, anyone?
Good news for wind power in the U.S. and beyond
Wind power in the U.S. may be riding a roller coaster, but in the rest of the world, the industry is still on an upward climb.
A record 169 gigawatts of wind power came online around the globe last year, according to a report out this week from BloombergNEF. More than 100 gigawatts’ worth of those turbines were installed in China, though the rest of the world saw increases as well.
There’s also some good wind news to share on the home front. All five under-construction offshore wind farms the Trump administration tried to shut down are set to hit major milestones this month, Canary Media’s Maria Gallucci reports. Off Massachusetts, Vineyard Wind is nearly complete; the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project and Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind will soon begin delivering power to the grid; Sunrise Wind is about halfway complete; and New York’s Empire Wind is getting a turbine-installation vessel this month to continue building.
New York’s nuclear future is at a crossroads
New York has its sights set on scaling up nuclear power — but faces dueling proposals on how to make it happen.
It’s been nearly five years since the Indian Point nuclear plant fully shut down, taking with it a major supply of emissions-free power for New York City. Now, looking to spur a “nuclear renaissance,” the Trump administration is pushing for Indian Point’s restart. Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently joined the area’s Republican Congress member at a press event to call for the downstate plant’s reopening — an unlikely prospect given the surrounding communities’ opposition.
After Wright’s visit, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office affirmed she “will not support” Indian Point’s reopening. The plant is mired in intense controversy — something Hochul is probably reluctant to wade into during in an election year. But her administration is pressing on with plans to build a nuclear plant somewhere upstate, and so far, at least eight communities have said they’re interested in hosting it.
Release the reserves: The Trump administration says it will release 172 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — about 40% of its supply — in an attempt to curb rising prices. (Axios)
Nuclear pivot: Trump administration officials and industry sources say lagging talks with Westinghouse to construct its flagship AP1000 nuclear reactors are leading the DOE to explore rival developers. (Canary Media)
Plugging away: Virginia’s House passes a bill to legalize plug-in “balcony solar” panels, putting it on track to become the second state to allow for the easily installable clean-energy solution. (Canary Media)
Permission to pollute: Mississippi regulators have approved a plan by Elon Musk’s xAI to build 41 natural gas–burning turbines to power a large data center near Memphis, Tennessee, despite residents’ concerns about noise and air pollution. (Mississippi Today, CNBC)
Big battery buildout: Home-battery startup Base Power will use its recent $100 million fundraise to install 100 megawatts of residential energy storage outside Dallas — and the project will be completed quicker than building a typical gas-powered peaker plant with similar capacity. (Canary Media)
Solar influencers: A North Carolina food bank’s rooftop solar array inspired a nearby Goodwill headquarters to install its own panels, with plans to redirect its energy bill savings back to its mission. (Canary Media)
Drilling into the transition: Some former oil and gas workers are finding new work in the geothermal industry, which values their expertise in drilling and other essential skills. (Grist)
When Gary Dirks arrived in China in 1995, the country’s government was looking to source more of its energy at home. Dirks was the incoming country head for BP, but efforts to find more oil and gas in the country had largely fizzled.
So government leaders pivoted, Dirks said. China invested heavily in its domestic coal and, later, in building wind and solar energy. Now, those investments and other steps are shielding China from more severe impacts of the volatility unleashed by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, despite Beijing’s continued reliance on foreign oil.
“They’ve been taking measures for a very long time to try to maximize their use of their own resources,” said Dirks, now senior director at the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. “They’ve been aware of this vulnerability for a very long time.”
By some measures, China could appear to be highly exposed to the price spikes and supply disruptions the war has sparked in global oil and gas markets. The country gets nearly half of its oil and one-third of its liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from the Middle East, according to an analysis of data by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
Yet China has built up a crude oil stockpile of nearly 1.4 billion barrels, meaning the country could be cut off from imports for months, “and they’d be OK,” said Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy.
China is more vulnerable with natural gas, for which it doesn’t have such a substantial stockpile, experts say. Because the war has caused prices in Asia to spike, some industrial users in China, like chemical or glass plants, will need to pay more, cut back their operations or both.
“There is definitely going to be short-term pain,” Downs said. “But I think in the longer term there are definitely some silver linings for China.”
In an essay in Foreign Policy written with Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy, Downs argued that while the war has exposed China’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil, “it also underscores how deliberately Beijing has sought to prepare for a world in which energy security is inseparable from geopolitics—by electrifying its economy, securing domestic sources of energy, amassing stockpiles, and dominating clean technology supply chains.”
Last year more than half of new cars sold in China were electric, according to the energy think tank Ember, while the country is a leader in electrifying heavy-duty vehicles and high-speed rail, too. Meanwhile, a rapidly growing portion of its electricity is being generated by solar and wind energy as China installs more of those technologies than the rest of the world combined.
Gasoline and diesel demand have already begun to fall, despite rapid economic growth, while China’s total crude demand has plateaued, according to the International Energy Agency.
China has also retrofitted many of its coal plants to operate as flexible power sources, like natural gas turbines that can be turned on and off more easily than traditional coal plants, said Kate Logan, director of the China Climate Hub and Climate Diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“That set up China quite well in terms of any potential shocks to its power sector because China can ramp up coal usage,” Logan said.
Beyond the power sector, China could also use coal to produce liquid fuels and feedstocks to replace oil or gas in industrial processes or for chemical production. Any increased coal use could lead to a surge in greenhouse gas emissions.
“That’s something to keep an eye on in terms of the near-term impact on emissions,” Logan said.
Downs, at Columbia, said she expects any spike in coal use would be short-lived because of the country’s larger goals of reducing air pollution and climate emissions.
In its recently published 15th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government said it planned to cut its carbon intensity 17 percent by 2030. That’s a slight decrease in ambition from the previous plan, and the program also renewed the possibility of a new gas pipeline from Russia’s Siberia region. The Iran war could prompt more urgent discussions between the countries, Logan said.
“I’d imagine this is something, again, that would bring China closer to Russia for both oil and gas imports,” Logan said.
The chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for commercial shipping effectively blocked by the Iran war, is also affecting global fertilizer shipments, potentially imperiling the spring planting season across much of the world. Roughly one-third of the global seaborne fertilizer shipments go through the strait, a statistic that has panicked agricultural producers.
But China has attempted to protect itself from fertilizer disruptions, too. While the country imports sulfur, a critical fertilizer ingredient, from the Gulf, it has otherwise become largely self-sufficient.
Fred Gale, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture economist and China specialist, explained that China is a net exporter for nitrogen fertilizer, which is made using natural gas.
In February, weeks before the U.S. attack on Iran, Chinese authorities “issued a document ordering companies and rail transport to ensure fertilizer supplies and build up reserves ahead of spring planting,” Gale explained.
“For now China seems to be feeling pretty smug about the fertilizer situation,” Gale noted.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the government has called for an immediate halt to military operations in the region to prevent the conflict from spreading.
“The Strait of Hormuz and waters nearby are an important route for international goods and energy trade. Keeping the region safe and stable serves the common interests of the international community,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “China will do what is necessary to protect its energy security.” The spokesperson added, “We will continue to strengthen communication with relevant parties, including parties to the conflict, and play a constructive role for deescalation and restoration of peace.”
Perhaps the greatest benefit to China, Downs said, could come from overseas. As the country has pushed to electrify and generate more of its energy from renewable sources, Chinese companies have become global leaders in these technologies. Already, nations around the globe have been turning to Chinese firms to import or build solar panels, EVs and batteries. Now, Downs argues, price shocks from the Iran war could accelerate this trend.
Dirks said the war is a reminder that governments still see oil as a geopolitical weapon.
“Any nation today that imports hydrocarbons has to be aware of that,” Dirks said. “And I think now that wind and solar in particular have come down dramatically in price, more and more countries will be asking themselves, ‘What is the balance of risk in using wind and solar and battery resources as opposed to importing oil and gas?’”
Whether at home or abroad, many experts say, the war-induced shock to fossil fuel markets reinforces China’s energy policies.
“The big takeaway,” Logan said, “is that this really vindicates a lot of China’s clean energy push.”
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column.
The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas — and the war in the Middle East is about to bring massive profits to its gas producers.
As the war destabilizes oil and gas production in the region, LNG prices have shot up globally. Qatar — a U.S. ally and the world’s second-largest LNG supplier — halted production of the fuel on Monday after Iranian drones targeted its energy facilities in retaliation for ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes. The country accounts for one-fifth of the global LNG supply, and the vast majority of its output goes to Asia.
Analysts say American suppliers could be in for a windfall as desperate international buyers bid top dollar to secure what fuel is available. U.S. LNG export terminals are already operating at full bore, so there is unlikely to be a surge in the volume of gas sent abroad — just in the profits firms rake in on each shipment.
Already, the effects of the energy shock are rippling across the world.
In India, the government began rationing natural gas on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Taiwan, which gets 40% of its electricity from LNG and imports heavily from Qatar, said it will take immediate measures that include sourcing more gas from the U.S.
In Europe, natural gas prices have risen less sharply than in Asia but still enough to exacerbate energy affordability problems in the region, which was plunged into an energy crisis following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. After mostly quitting Russian gas, Europe has come to rely heavily on LNG from the U.S., though in recent months it has sought to diversify through deals with Qatar and other countries as the Trump administration threatened to annex Greenland.
Since returning to power last January, the Trump administration has pushed to further expand the nation’s lead in LNG exports, despite warnings from analysts that doing so will drive up costs at home. Before the war broke out, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast that natural gas prices would climb for Americans in 2027 in part due to expanding LNG exports. The country is already on track to double its LNG export capacity by 2029.
Amid this expansion, Trump has been pressuring allies from Japan to the EU to buy even more U.S. natural gas. But the war only strengthens the case against a deeper dependence on LNG. The more a country relies on shipped-in energy, the more vulnerable it is to global shocks like the one unfolding now.
Renewables, in contrast, are a source of refuge. You install them once and for decades they produce electricity that, though tied to the weather, is completely insulated from global energy markets. Just look at Europe: The region doubled down on wind and solar following the Russian gas crisis, not because of concern for the climate but because of a desire to make its energy system as self-sufficient as possible.
Now, yet another war underscores the perils of relying on imported energy in an increasingly volatile world.
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the week” column.
President Donald Trump claimed in his Tuesday night State of the Union speech that Americans worry that “we are winning too much” under his administration. That assessment does not apply to everyone in the U.S., judging by recent public opinion polls, but it rings surprisingly true for the clean energy sector in 2026.
Each year around this time, the federal government releases its expectations for new power plant construction. The latest data drop shows clean energy is going to dominate this year, just as it has for many years running. Even as the Trump administration has employed novel and at times legally dubious means to block renewable energy growth, the power sector keeps choosing clean energy again and again — attracted by its low costs, speed to build, and climate and environmental benefits.
This year, solar will provide 51% of the new utility-scale electricity capacity slated to come online, batteries will deliver 28%, and wind will add 14%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Fossil gas, one of the polluting fuels most supported by the Trump administration, makes up only 7% of that new capacity. Coal, the other polluting fuel favored by the White House, does not appear in the ranks of power plants under construction.
This clean energy success is all the more notable because of the massive amount of total power plant capacity that developers are set to build in 2026: 86 gigawatts, more than the U.S. has ever added in a year. The U.S. constructed 33 GW less in 2025, which was the biggest yearly power plant build-out since 2002. Clean power plants are consuming nearly all of a vastly expanded pie, while gas gets a scant sliver.
Still, gas dominates the existing power plant fleet, producing about 40% of annual generation, compared with less than 10% percent from solar. But the renewable energy source’s odds of dethroning gas improve with each year that solar delivers such a lopsided share of new construction. In California, home to the world’s fourth-largest economy, ascendant solar generation is poised to imminently eclipse the gradually declining portion provided by gas.
The Trump administration’s anti-renewables machinations could slow this trend in coming years. Courts threw out an order to stop construction at five fully permitted offshore wind farms, but an effective blockade on new permits for projects touching federal lands could kill or delay installations that would otherwise get built in the late 2020s. Even so, solar developers hope they can keep the success going by serving the AI sector’s overwhelming demand for quick-turnaround power sources.
Whatever tumult comes after 2026, the U.S. will face the situation with tens of gigawatts of brand-new solar, wind, and batteries in its arsenal.
This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.
No matter how you feel about data centers, we all rely on them: for reading this email, for scrolling through TikTok when you should be asleep, for streaming last night’s “Traitors” finale, and so on. And as AI becomes more powerful and more widespread, tech companies are building more of these power-hungry facilities — though exactly how many, and how much energy they’ll need, is unclear.
That fuzzy future is what makes data centers so complicated. Utilities that are rushing to meet data centers’ massive projected demand run the risk of building too many power plants, locking in more greenhouse gas and health-harming emissions, and passing unnecessary costs on to households.
It’s a dilemma that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are finally waking up to. In the early years of the data center boom, governors and the federal government created tax breaks and other incentives to secure a slice, betting that the facilities would create jobs. But just last week, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) announced a two-year pause on tax incentives for data centers in his state. Similar rollbacks have been proposed in Maryland, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Virginia, Stateline reports.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has meanwhile called for data centers to make sure their power demand isn’t saddling residents with unfair costs. It’s a message with bipartisan support: U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced a long-shot bill earlier this month that would ensure each new data center has its own power supply that doesn’t connect to the grid that the public relies on.
The idea that data centers should pay their own way is gaining traction with the White House, too. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he will push tech companies to promise that their data center build-outs won’t leave Americans with higher power costs. This “ratepayer protection pledge” wouldn’t be binding, however.
It’s a conversation worth following as congressional primaries begin this month, including in the data center hotbeds of Illinois, North Carolina, and Texas. A handful of Democratic candidates are already looking to differentiate themselves from crowded primary fields by going hard on data centers’ energy impacts, E&E News reports. And we can expect that Pritzker, Shapiro, and other governors and senators will do the same as they gear up their reelection campaigns for November — and as they consider running for the White House in 2028.
Will these fossil-fuel plants ever shut down?
The Trump administration’s push to keep fossil-fueled power plants running past their prime is stretching into a new year.
Just this week, the Department of Energy ordered Pennsylvania’s Eddystone oil and gas plant to keep operating for another three months, stretching its life nearly a year past its planned retirement. It’s one of several fossil-fuel plants that were supposed to retire last year but are now racking up millions of dollars in costs for grid operators to contend with.
Those cost battles are coming to a head in the Midwest. Federal energy regulators already agreed to spread the cost of keeping a Michigan coal plant running across 11 states served by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. And in Indiana, the owners of two coal-fired plants forced to stay open are currently looking for a similar arrangement.
The problem is only likely to grow this year as the Trump administration forces gigawatts’ worth of fossil-fuel generation to keep operating with no end in sight.
Supreme Court considers a major climate case — with a catch
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed this week to take up the fossil fuel industry’s attempt to shut down city and state climate lawsuits — but it could face a surprising obstacle.
The case centers on a challenge brought by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, against two oil and gas companies. After the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in Boulder’s favor last year, the companies appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And now, the case could determine the fate of several dozen other local climate lawsuits.
But the EPA’s recent repeal of the endangerment finding could pose a problem for the fossil fuel companies it was intended to help. Because the rollback effectively erased federal climate and emissions regulations, legal experts tell E&E News, it could be harder for oil and gas companies to make their case against local protections.
Virtual popularity: Virtual power plants — which tie batteries, solar panels, and other resources into energy management systems — are gaining popularity across the U.S. as states look to curb rising power prices without the need for grid upgrades. (Canary Media)
Shifting gears: The U.S. EPA will“revamp” the Clean School Bus program and shift $2.3 billion in remaining funds away from electric buses and likely toward vehicles powered by natural gas, biofuel, and hydrogen. (Inside Climate News)
Solar finds a spark: A growing number of states are considering legislation to allow for “balcony solar” systems, which can plug in to conventional outlets and help users lower their utility bills. (Canary Media)
Escaping eternal limbo: The Interior Department is reviewing at least 20 commercial-scale projects that have been stuck in permitting since Trump took office, including the massive Esmeralda project in Nevada. (E&E News)
Resilient rebuilds: While Oregon loosened building codes for families rebuilding in the wake of devastating wildfires, state incentives have still encouraged some residents to opt for resilient, energy-efficient new homes. (Canary Media)
New federal funds: The DOE has announced a $26.5 billion loan, its largest ever, to help Southern Co.’s Georgia and Alabama subsidiaries build new gas plants and transmission lines and upgrade existing power plants. (Associated Press)
“Coal has become its curse”: A small Pennsylvania coal-mining town is on the verge of collapse under the pressure of noxious, smoldering underground fires; pollution; and economic challenges. (Morning Call)
Nuclear who? The Trump administration is considering awarding a $25 billion contract to little-known nuclear power company Entra1 Energy, which appears to have just a handful of employees, to build new energy infrastructure using money pledged by Japan to avoid tariffs. (Politico)
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